Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza: Free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB Download

Philosophy · Metaphysics

Ethics

By Benedictus de Spinoza · (Published 1677) · Trans. by R. H. M. Elwes · All Benedictus de Spinoza books

Word Count ~91,000 words (estimated)

Reading Time Approx. 5.1 hours (estimated)

Copyright Status Public Domain in the US; check local laws

Source Project Gutenberg #3800

Source Edition Project Gutenberg #3800

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The first three definitions of Part I

I. By that which is self—caused, I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent.

II. A thing is called finite after its kind, when it can be limited by another thing of the same nature; for instance, a body is called finite because we always conceive another greater body. So, also, a thought is limited by another thought, but a body is not limited by thought, nor a thought by body.

III. By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.

The excerpt below is the opening of Part I: the first three of the eight definitions that stand at the head of the book, before the axioms and the propositions. The first defines what is self-caused, the second what it is for a thing to be finite after its kind, and the third defines substance as that which is in itself and is conceived through itself, so that a conception of it can be formed without any other conception. The third is the one the rest of the book depends on, since everything else is either substance or a modification of it.

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Further Reading

Read next: Leviathan and Hume’s Enquiry

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Leviathan

By Thomas Hobbes · The other great system of the seventeenth century, built on motion

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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

By David Hume · A century later, the empiricist answer to the same questions

Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza: Summary, Ideas & Arguments

This page offers a summary and analysis of Ethics, with the definitions of Part I, the five parts and both appendices set out in reading order, the step each one takes described, and the terms the argument depends on explained as they come up. Benedict de Spinoza left the book to be printed in 1677, the year its title page gives; it is printed here in R. H. M. Elwes’s translation from the Latin, with the Latin title, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata, kept above the text. Nothing in it is asserted without a proof attached: each part begins from definitions and axioms and proceeds by propositions, demonstrations and corollaries. The translation carries a small number of editorial notes, marked by figures, which record the readings of other editors and point to the Latin where Elwes’s English needs it. It belongs with the rest of the Philosophy Classics on this site.

Part I begins with eight definitions. Substance, the third of them, is that which is in itself and is conceived through itself, so that a conception of it can be formed without any other conception; an attribute is what the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of that substance; and a mode is a modification of substance, which exists in something else and is conceived through that thing. From these and seven axioms Spinoza argues that there can be only one substance, that it necessarily exists, and that it is what the book calls God, a being absolutely infinite, consisting of infinite attributes, of which thought and extension are the two the book follows. Whatever is, is in God, and nothing in the universe is contingent; the same necessity runs through the least thing and through the whole.

Part II turns to the mind. Its object, Spinoza argues, is the body, so that the mind is the idea of the body, and mind and body are one and the same thing considered under two attributes; the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. An adequate idea is one that, considered in itself and without relation to its object, has all the intrinsic marks of a true idea; an inadequate idea is a fragment, true only in part, and error consists in the privation of knowledge such fragments involve. From this follow the three kinds of knowledge: opinion or imagination, reason, and intuition. The part ends by arguing that truth is its own standard, as light displays both itself and darkness, and that there is no free will, since will and understanding are one and the same.

Part III treats the emotions as natural events. Spinoza denies that man is a kingdom within a kingdom, and says he will consider human actions and desires as though he were concerned with lines, planes and solids. The key is the conatus, the endeavour by which each thing persists in its own being, which is nothing else than its actual essence; in the mind it is called will, and, as joined to the body, appetite; desire is appetite with consciousness of it. From pleasure, pain and desire the rest of the emotions are defined. Part IV then describes bondage: we are passive in so far as we are a part of nature that cannot be conceived by itself, and an emotion can be restrained only by a stronger contrary emotion. Reason’s demands are nonetheless natural, and the free man thinks of death least of all things.

Part V asks how far the intellect can free us. An emotion that is a passion ceases to be one as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it, and the mind is less subject to emotion in proportion as it understands things as necessary. The mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, Spinoza argues, but something of it remains that is eternal; from the third kind of knowledge arises the intellectual love of God, which is part of the infinite love with which God loves himself. Blessedness, the book concludes, is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself. The Project Gutenberg #3800 text is the one this page follows. Readers who want the same questions from other hands can take Hobbes’s Leviathan, the other great system of the century, which builds on motion, or Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the empiricist answer a hundred years later.

Historical Context

The book is printed as its title page has it: Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata, in Elwes’s English, with the Latin kept at the head. It appeared in 1677, after Spinoza’s death, and opens without a preface; the first thing the reader meets is the definitions of Part I, then its axioms, then its propositions. Parts II, IV and V each have a preface of their own, and two appendices interrupt the run of demonstrations, one at the end of Part I and one at the end of Part IV; they are the only places where the book argues at length outside the proposition form. The geometrical order is the book’s own claim about itself, and it is carried through without exception.

The philosophy Spinoza is answering is named inside the text. Descartes is credited with trying to explain the emotions by their causes and with locating the mind’s union with the body in the pineal gland; the Stoics are said to have thought the emotions depend absolutely on the will; and the schoolmen survive in the Latin the translation keeps, affectiones for modes, forma for the actual being of man, essendi rerum for the being of things. Moses and Christ are read in Part IV for what they signify about freedom, Ovid is quoted on seeing the better and following the worse, and a note cites Bacon’s Novum Organum for a phrase. Others record the readings of Van Vloten, Bruder, Camerer, Land and Pollock.

The demonstrations are Euclidean in form, and the text acknowledges the debt where it uses the nineteenth proposition of the seventh book of Euclid for a proof about proportionals. A proposition is stated, a proof follows, and a Q.E.D. closes it; corollaries and notes draw out what the proof yields, and the notes are where most of the consequences are worked out. The translation keeps the Latin in brackets where an English word would slip, as with honestas for honour and animata for animated. The book carries no dedication, and the reader is asked at one point to go slowly, step by step, and not to judge before the end. The notes are editorial rather than Spinoza’s, and they say so: one phrase is marked as Baconian, one rendering is credited to Pollock.

Key Ideas & Arguments

• Substance: That which is in itself, and is conceived through itself, so that a conception of it can be formed without any other conception. Part I argues that there can be only one, that existence belongs to its nature, and that it is God. Everything else is either an attribute of it or a mode.
• Attribute: What the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance. Each attribute is conceived through itself, and the book follows two of them, extension and thought: the same things are modes of extension and ideas in thought, in the same order, so that the order appears twice.
• Mode: A modification of substance, which exists in something else and is conceived through that thing. Particular bodies, particular ideas, minds and emotions are all modes, and the word keeps them from being mistaken for small substances with a being of their own. Substance is prior to them in nature, and they cannot exist without it.
• God, or Nature: The one substance, absolutely infinite, consisting of infinite attributes, which acts solely by the laws of its own nature and is the immanent, not the transient, cause of all things. It has no ends and no purposes, and no will of the kind men claim for themselves. The phrase itself is given in the preface to Part IV.
• Conatus: The endeavour by which each thing persists in its own being, which is nothing else than its actual essence. In the mind it is called will, joined to the body appetite, and desire is appetite with consciousness of it. Part IV makes this endeavour the first foundation of virtue.
• Adequate idea: An idea which, considered in itself without relation to its object, has all the intrinsic marks of a true idea. Adequate ideas are the ones the mind has in so far as it is active; they are the basis of reason and of the third kind of knowledge, intuition.

Core Arguments & Influence

• The geometrical method: Spinoza does not argue by essays. Each part starts from definitions and axioms, states propositions, and proves them; corollaries and notes carry the consequences. The form is not decoration: it is how the book keeps its promise that nothing is asserted without a reason, and it is why an objection can be answered by pointing to a step. Part III says the method will treat human actions and desires as though they were lines, planes and solids, and the promise is kept to the last page. It also explains the book’s difficulty: a reader who skips a definition will find the next proposition unproved.
• Nature has no ends: The Appendix to Part I attacks the belief that things act for a purpose. Men think so, Spinoza says, because they are ignorant of causes and conscious of their own desires, and when the chain of causes runs out they take refuge in the will of God, the sanctuary of ignorance. Good and bad, order and confusion, beauty and deformity are then shown to be modes of imagining, not qualities in things. The argument clears the ground for the necessity that runs through the rest of the book, and its consequence is stated without softening: perfection is measured by a thing’s own nature and power, not by its service to us.
• The emotions are natural: Part III refuses to treat the passions as a flaw in nature. Hatred, anger and envy follow from definite causes and have properties as worth knowing as those of anything else. Everything strives to persist in its being, pleasure and pain are the transitions to greater and less perfection, and the forty-eight definitions at the end of the part give each emotion its place. The point is not to condemn the emotions but to understand their strength, so that Part IV can say what reason can do against them. Bondage, in the title of that part, is not sin: it is the condition of a man led by external causes rather than by his own nature.
• Reason and the common good: Part IV argues that reason demands each man love himself and seek what is useful to him, and that nothing is more useful to a man than a man who lives by reason. The highest good is common to all, so that the followers of virtue desire for others what they desire for themselves. The state, sin and merit, justice and injustice are then explained as products of common consent rather than as features of nature; law enters because reason alone is powerless to restrain emotion and works by threats. The free man, who thinks of death least of all things, is the portrait the part ends with.
• Freedom as understanding: Part V answers the question the whole book has been preparing. An emotion ceases to be a passion when we form a clear and distinct idea of it, and the mind is less subject to emotion in so far as it understands all things as necessary. Something of the mind is eternal, and the third kind of knowledge gives rise to the intellectual love of God. The last propositions identify blessedness with virtue itself, and the book closes by saying that all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare. The eternity argued for is not survival in time: the eternal part of the mind is its understanding, and the book denies that we can remember having existed before the body.

Why Download Our Custom E-Reader Edition of Ethics?

The download is the whole book. The definitions and axioms are here, then all five parts with their proofs, corollaries and notes, both appendices, and the forty-eight definitions of the emotions with the general definition at the end of Part III. Nothing is summarised in place of itself and no demonstration is left out, so a proposition can be followed from its statement to its proof without leaving the page. The Latin title and Elwes’s rendering of the technical vocabulary are kept as the edition prints them.

The page is arranged to be read beside the text. Ten groups follow the book’s own divisions and stop where each division stops; six notes explain the terms the argument turns on; five themes follow the system from the one substance to the intellectual love of God. A short historical section names the philosophers Spinoza is answering and the editorial notes that record the readings of other editors. The appendix to Part IV is summarised under its own thirty-two heads, so the rules of life can be found without going back through the propositions.

The files come in three formats with the same text and the same divisions. The EPUB opens in Apple Books, Calibre and most Android readers; the AZW3 is the file for a Kindle; the KEPUB is the one Kobo devices read best. No account is needed for any of them, and nothing in the downloads is locked, watermarked or time limited. The translation is Elwes’s throughout, so a passage found here can be looked up in any printing of it.

• Project Gutenberg transcription, via Project Gutenberg #3800 — the complete text, unabridged, with the definitions, the five parts, both appendices and the definitions of the emotions.
• Both appendices in full The Appendix to Part I on final causes and the Appendix to Part IV with its thirty-two heads on the right way of life are printed as Spinoza wrote them, not summarised.
• Ten groups, one for each division Every division of the book has its own summary, from the definitions and axioms to the last proposition of Part V, and each stops where the division it covers stops.
• EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB files The same text in three formats, for Apple Books, Kindle and Kobo, with the part divisions intact and nothing to install beyond the reading app you already use.

Part of: Philosophy Classics · Benedictus de Spinoza