Project Gutenberg's The Philosophy of Spinoza, by Baruch de Spinoza

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Title: The Philosophy of Spinoza

Author: Baruch de Spinoza

Editor: Joseph Ratner

Release Date: February 7, 2010 [EBook #31205]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE PHILOSOPHY

OF

SPINOZA

EDITED BY
JOSEPH RATNER

TUDOR PUBLISHING COMPANY

_Printed in the United States of America_

PREFACE

Selections usually need no justifications. Some justification, however,
of the treatment accorded Spinoza's _Ethics_ may be necessary in this
place. The object in taking the _Ethics_ as much as possible out of the
geometrical form, was not to improve upon the author's text; it was to
give the lay reader a text of Spinoza he would find pleasanter to read
and easier to understand. To the practice of popularization, Spinoza,
one may confidently feel, would not be averse. He himself gave a short
popular statement of his philosophy in the _Political Treatise_.

The lay reader of philosophy is chiefly, if not wholly, interested in
grasping a philosophic point of view. He is not interested in highly
meticulous details, and still less is he interested in checking up the
author's statements to see if the author is consistent with himself. He
takes such consistency, even if unwarrantedly, for granted. A continuous
reading of the original _Ethics_, even on a single topic, is impossible.
The subject-matter is coherent, but the propositions do not hang
together. By omitting the formal statement of the propositions; by
omitting many of th