Lesesaal

Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order

Baruch Spinoza

His major work, set out like Euclid's geometry, with definitions, axioms, propositions, demonstrations and scholia, in five parts: God; the nature and origin of the mind; the origin and nature of the affects; human bondage, or the strength of the affects; the power of the intellect, or human freedom. It starts from a single infinite substance, God or Nature, of which all things are modes; denies free will and final causes; analyses the passions as natural phenomena arising from the striving to persevere in being; and proposes an ethics of joy and knowledge culminating in the intellectual love of God and the experience of the eternity of the intellect.