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Complete Works
The only single edition of the Spinoza corpus available in English, this volume features Samuel Shirley's pre-eminent translations of Ethics; Theological-Political Treatise; Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect; Metaphysical Thoughts; The Letters; Principles of Cartesian Philosophy; and Political Treatise. Also includes The Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, and Hebrew Grammar. Michael Morgan provides a general Introduction that places Spinoza in Western philosophy and culture, and sketches the philosophical, scientific, and religious moral and political dimensions of Spinoza's thought. Brief introductions to each work give succinct historical and philosophical overviews. A bibliography and index are also included.
967 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1677
252 people are currently reading
1355 people want to read
About the author
Baruch Spinoza
792 books2,048 followersControversial pantheistic doctrine of Dutch philosopher and theologian Baruch Spinoza or Benedict advocated an intellectual love of God; people best know
Ethics
, his work of 1677.
People came considered this great rationalist of 17th century.
In his posthumous magnum opus, he opposed mind–body dualism of René Descartes and earned recognition of most important thinkers of west. This last indisputable Latin masterpiece, which Spinoza wrote, finally turns and entirely destroys the refined medieval conceptions.
After death of Baruch Spinoza, often Benedictus de Spinoza, people realized not fully his breadth and importance until many years. He laid the ground for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern Biblical criticism, including conceptions of the self and arguably the universe. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all contemporaries, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."
People came considered this great rationalist of 17th century.
In his posthumous magnum opus, he opposed mind–body dualism of René Descartes and earned recognition of most important thinkers of west. This last indisputable Latin masterpiece, which Spinoza wrote, finally turns and entirely destroys the refined medieval conceptions.
After death of Baruch Spinoza, often Benedictus de Spinoza, people realized not fully his breadth and importance until many years. He laid the ground for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern Biblical criticism, including conceptions of the self and arguably the universe. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all contemporaries, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 15, 2016
doing a "review" now, even though I have only read The Ethics, some of the Letters and a few other bits and bobs, because I will just be bouncing around it a bit over the rest of the year and could not be bothered to leave it on my "currently reading".
Simply put, if you want to read more than the Ethics, this is the book to get - lovely hardback edition, excellently translated.
as for the Spinster himself, well, I am certainly not qualified to say much more than that the structure of his arguments are beautiful to behold, and he reaches some powerful conclusions, though the universe he inhabits is a very very different one to mine.
Simply put, if you want to read more than the Ethics, this is the book to get - lovely hardback edition, excellently translated.
as for the Spinster himself, well, I am certainly not qualified to say much more than that the structure of his arguments are beautiful to behold, and he reaches some powerful conclusions, though the universe he inhabits is a very very different one to mine.
March 21, 2016
Spinoza, I must sadly confess, has turned out to be a partial disappointment. This may be down to a simple inability to understand him, or the caution with which he necessarily wrote, and I will certainly have to re-read this in a year or two after some time for digestion, but I suspect that it has more to do with his position on the watershed at which the Dark Ages finally faded and the Enlightenment began to take shape. All the elements for which Spinoza has received so much credit are here to be seen, yet for me the overwhelming impression was left of an author giving incoherent ontological arguments for the existence of God and inferring therefrom a set of nonsensical attributes, mostly involving infinities, which were of course not fully understood yet. He is credited with overturning Cartesian dualism, yet at times he sems positively to be endorsing it. The collection of letters ending this tome do something to clarify his intentions, yet to some extent deepened my confusion.
This said, there is an enormous amount in Spinoza which I found admirable. I rather skipped his treatise on Hebrew grammar, sadly, as I had been quite looking forward to it. I have an interest in Semitic languages and the grammars of different language groups, but his account goes a bit deep, a bit fast, and requires more time to assimilate than I was prepared to invest. (You have to start reading Hebrew almost immediately to understand it!) Much of what Spinoza has to say about Scripture requires that one read the original texts to evaluate, so if you want to pursue his arguments back to their sources you will not have the luxury of skipping this part. For myself, I accepted his account as it stood and tried to follow it from there.
The political writings borrow heavily from Hobbes, while also deviating from him in some important respects. The most salient detail that occurs to me here is that Spinoza held rights to be inherent, and thus inalienable, and present even in our "natural" state. Hobbes viewed our natural state as a form of no-holds-barred, Saturday-night-at-the-Peartree social warfare, with rights only emerging out of the power of the state to give and withhold them. The idea of rights being inherent and inalienable may be one of the most significant legacies of the Enlightenment, and it appears to have started right here.
Spinoza was widely accused of atheism, although he repudiates the accusation, and he sought to keep much of his writing to a limited audience in the expectation of exactly this crippling perception. He wrote with circumspection. This was a century before the last atheists were burned for blasphemy, let us not forget. Nevertheless, much of what he writes lays the foundations for being an intellectually-satisifed atheist (trademark: Richard Dawkins), and even more so a pantheist or deist. Deism is one of the key themes of Enlightenment thinking, especially that of the founders of the US Republic, so it is remarkable to see it being born here.
Spinoza's God was everywhere. It feels a little like this at my place, with the maniacs next door clashing their bells for hours at a time over the weekend, but Spinoza would not have endorsed their crazed hammering. His God was not behind Scripture or any single religion but behind all of reality. One could not do good without expressing his nature. One could not do evil without expressing his nature. One could not wonder at a mountain or flower without engaging in prayer. Readers of Thomas Paine will recognise this, I think. The Prophets did not perform miracles, for any suspension of natural law must imply an imperfection in reality, but conjured and invented in order to teach principles in a language that their audience would understand. A "miracle" was itself just a natural occurrence whose provenance we do not yet grasp - advocates of scientism will definitely recognise this. Nature was just a miracle which is consistent, law-based and omnipresent.
There is far more here than a short review can encompass, and my own understanding has clearly failed somewhat at the first pass. I can see myself returning to this prodigious work more than once in whatever years may remain. I really cannot yet deliver a verdict at all.
This said, there is an enormous amount in Spinoza which I found admirable. I rather skipped his treatise on Hebrew grammar, sadly, as I had been quite looking forward to it. I have an interest in Semitic languages and the grammars of different language groups, but his account goes a bit deep, a bit fast, and requires more time to assimilate than I was prepared to invest. (You have to start reading Hebrew almost immediately to understand it!) Much of what Spinoza has to say about Scripture requires that one read the original texts to evaluate, so if you want to pursue his arguments back to their sources you will not have the luxury of skipping this part. For myself, I accepted his account as it stood and tried to follow it from there.
The political writings borrow heavily from Hobbes, while also deviating from him in some important respects. The most salient detail that occurs to me here is that Spinoza held rights to be inherent, and thus inalienable, and present even in our "natural" state. Hobbes viewed our natural state as a form of no-holds-barred, Saturday-night-at-the-Peartree social warfare, with rights only emerging out of the power of the state to give and withhold them. The idea of rights being inherent and inalienable may be one of the most significant legacies of the Enlightenment, and it appears to have started right here.
Spinoza was widely accused of atheism, although he repudiates the accusation, and he sought to keep much of his writing to a limited audience in the expectation of exactly this crippling perception. He wrote with circumspection. This was a century before the last atheists were burned for blasphemy, let us not forget. Nevertheless, much of what he writes lays the foundations for being an intellectually-satisifed atheist (trademark: Richard Dawkins), and even more so a pantheist or deist. Deism is one of the key themes of Enlightenment thinking, especially that of the founders of the US Republic, so it is remarkable to see it being born here.
Spinoza's God was everywhere. It feels a little like this at my place, with the maniacs next door clashing their bells for hours at a time over the weekend, but Spinoza would not have endorsed their crazed hammering. His God was not behind Scripture or any single religion but behind all of reality. One could not do good without expressing his nature. One could not do evil without expressing his nature. One could not wonder at a mountain or flower without engaging in prayer. Readers of Thomas Paine will recognise this, I think. The Prophets did not perform miracles, for any suspension of natural law must imply an imperfection in reality, but conjured and invented in order to teach principles in a language that their audience would understand. A "miracle" was itself just a natural occurrence whose provenance we do not yet grasp - advocates of scientism will definitely recognise this. Nature was just a miracle which is consistent, law-based and omnipresent.
There is far more here than a short review can encompass, and my own understanding has clearly failed somewhat at the first pass. I can see myself returning to this prodigious work more than once in whatever years may remain. I really cannot yet deliver a verdict at all.
August 9, 2007
Ok, read the Ethics one for the bias -- the TTP and the TP are underrated as fuck.
Reading guide for the TTP, skip to Chapter 16, read to the end, and then go back to chapter 4, then read 1-16. You'll see.
I would read the TP after Ethics book 4. They are a nice pair.
Reading guide for the TTP, skip to Chapter 16, read to the end, and then go back to chapter 4, then read 1-16. You'll see.
I would read the TP after Ethics book 4. They are a nice pair.
December 2, 2011
Read the Ethics.
June 20, 2025
It is useful and convenient to have a philosopher's complete works in a single volume, especially given how so many thinkers spin books that can line multiple shelves on your bookcase. It is also impressive that Spinoza was as influential as he was with only these works to testify to his thought. There is some good and some bad here. My star rating looks a little more to the usefulness of this volume in accounting for philosophical history rather than Spinoza being right in his convictions.
The good: Spinoza provides a continuation of Cartesian thought, building on the Modern philosophy that is beginning to take the European continent. He rationally evaluates as much as he can and provides a well-knit system of belief to evaluate the universe. This is principally in his quintessential "Ethics" but also found in a couple other works here. The letters were incredibly useful for understanding his thought as he was explaining it to others. Also of note is Spinoza's reflections on Christ as being a Jew converted to deism (a heretical offshoot of true Christianity) and his Hebrew Grammar which is worth a skin even for those who are not looking to learn Hebrew. Spinoza wrote it to assist Christian theologians who were having trouble understanding the particulars of the Old Testament text.
The bad: Spinoza created a heretical and deterministic system of thought that denies God and free will in its reductionism. This is known as Spinozism and was a thorn in the side of universities for years (even Hegel more or less used this system, putting his own flair on it so that he could deny he was a Spinozist). Spinoza reduces all things to a singular substance and thus devises all things came from that; therefore, all things are collectively God (aka. pantheism). All this comes down to his mistaken premises which are based on geometrical argumentation, not exactly philosophical or empirical information and knowledge. Of worth to me was a series of letters Spinoza wrote to someone which was dealing with the illogic of his system, with the same questions I had. In the end, I better understood Spinoza but that understanding made me further convinced he was plain wrong.
The good: Spinoza provides a continuation of Cartesian thought, building on the Modern philosophy that is beginning to take the European continent. He rationally evaluates as much as he can and provides a well-knit system of belief to evaluate the universe. This is principally in his quintessential "Ethics" but also found in a couple other works here. The letters were incredibly useful for understanding his thought as he was explaining it to others. Also of note is Spinoza's reflections on Christ as being a Jew converted to deism (a heretical offshoot of true Christianity) and his Hebrew Grammar which is worth a skin even for those who are not looking to learn Hebrew. Spinoza wrote it to assist Christian theologians who were having trouble understanding the particulars of the Old Testament text.
The bad: Spinoza created a heretical and deterministic system of thought that denies God and free will in its reductionism. This is known as Spinozism and was a thorn in the side of universities for years (even Hegel more or less used this system, putting his own flair on it so that he could deny he was a Spinozist). Spinoza reduces all things to a singular substance and thus devises all things came from that; therefore, all things are collectively God (aka. pantheism). All this comes down to his mistaken premises which are based on geometrical argumentation, not exactly philosophical or empirical information and knowledge. Of worth to me was a series of letters Spinoza wrote to someone which was dealing with the illogic of his system, with the same questions I had. In the end, I better understood Spinoza but that understanding made me further convinced he was plain wrong.
December 12, 2023
He's a genius. Worth reading. Ahead of his time.
Read
November 2, 2025[Ethics]
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews