Ethics Summary | Chapterly

Ethics by Baruch Spinoza: A Complete Summary "I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them." Overview Ethics (published posthumously in 1677) is one of the most audacious and challenging works in the history of philosophy. Written by Baruch Spinoza in the geometric method — definitions, axioms, propositions, and proofs, modeled on Euclid's Elements — it attempts to derive an entire metaphysical, psychological, and ethical system from first principles with the rigor of mathematics. Spinoza's conclusions were so radical that the book could only be published after his death. He argues that God and Nature are the same thing — one infinite substance of which everything is a part. Free will is an illusion; everything that happens is determined by the necessary laws of this one substance. The emotions that torment us — fear, hatred, jealousy — arise from confused understanding, and true freedom consists not in choosing differently but in understanding why things are as they are. The Ethics was denounced as atheism in its time, but later thinkers recognized its profundity. Einstein said his God was "Spinoza's God." Goethe, Hegel, and Deleuze considered the Ethics...