Spinoza Beyond Philosophy

This book of 10 engaging and original essays brings Spinoza outside the realm of academic philosophy, and presents him as a thinker who is relevant to contemporary problems and questions across a variety of disciplines.

Everything you need to know about Spinoza's Ethics in one volume.The Ethics presents a complete metaphysical, epistemological and ethical world-view that is immensely inspiring. However, it is also an extremely difficult text to read. This book takes readers through the text, stopping at the most perplexing passages to explain key terms, unfold arguments, offer concrete examples and raise questions for further thought. It is designed to be read alongside the Ethics, enabling students to think critically about Spinoza's views and build an understanding of his complex system.

Most writers on the emotions and on human conduct... attribute human infirmities and fickleness, not to the power of nature in general, but to some mysterious flaw in the nature of man... -from Ethics Considered a rationalist in the ranks of Descartes and Leibniz, Benedict De Spinoza was so unorthodox in his philosophies that his writings, published in 1678 just after his death, were immediately banned in his homeland of Holland. The spreading influencing of his thinking could not be stopped, however, and Spinoza overarching contention-that human happiness could be achieved only through a reasoned understanding of the universe-remains provocative and significant today. This collection, translated from Latin by R.H.M. Elwes and published in 1901, brings together Spinoza's best known work, Ethics, in which he postulates that God and Nature constitute one deterministic system, a single divine machine, in which humans are a vital part; his treatise "On the Improvement of the Understanding," in which he discusses the very nature of the mind itself; and a selection of his correspondence that elucidates his reasoning. AUTHOR BIO: BENEDICT DE SPINOZA (1632-1677) was born in Amsterdam to a prosperous merchant family. He also wrote A Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, which he never completed, and A Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being.

Ethics is a philosophical book written by Baruch Spinoza that best summarizes his work as a philosopher. The book is overtly ambitious as it strives to question and provide a definite thought on the universe and the significant aspects that shape it like God. The book is split into five categories that feed off each category to give a well-thought-out philosophy on God, nature, origin, humanity, emotions, servitude, intellect, and liberty. Spinoza writes that rational thought can be broken down into three different things; confidence in our knowledge, assurance that the universe is controlled by the law of rationality, and the voice of reason that acts as a guide. He further states that all it takes is the tiniest leap of faith and surrender to the idea that every action has a purpose. Only a degree of belief in the world can provide humans with enough motivation and drive to push beyond your limits. Despite the book being split into different sections to tackle different aspects, it follows a linear line that connects the entire thought as one singular unit. Spinoza argues that knowledge is discovered in three sequential stages. The lower stage knowledge is acquired through a sense of perception which holds little to no value because it lacks consistency and authenticity. The middle stage knowledge is discovered through scientific research. It's considered rational and adequate. They are also more dependable. The final stage of knowledge is based on scientific intuition. This stage solely depends on the complete mastery of the lower and middle stages. This last stage brings about transcendence. The idea that humans can see and understand beyond the known realms of this world. An individual that possesses this level of knowledge views everything in the universe as a singular unit and every single thing adds up to the outcome that supersedes every system set by mankind.

This groundbreaking account of the concept of a philosophical religion traces its history from antiquity to the Enlightenment.

Spinoza's theoretical philosophy is one of the most radical attempts to construct a pure ontology with a single infinite substance. This book, which presents Spinoza's main ideas in dictionary form, has as its subject the opposition between ethics and morality, and the link between ethical and ontological propositions. His ethics is an ethology, rather than a moral science. Attention has been drawn to Spinoza by deep ecologists such as Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher; and this reading of Spinoza by Deleuze lends itself to a radical ecological ethic. As Robert Hurley says in his introduction, "Deleuze opens us to the idea that the elements of the different individuals we compose may be nonhuman within us. One wonders, finally, whether Man might be defined as a territory, a set of boundaries, a limit on existence." Gilles Deleuze, known for his inquiries into desire, language, politics, and power, finds a kinship between Spinoza and Nietzsche. He writes, ""Spinoza did not believe in hope or even in courage; he believed only in joy and in vision . . . he more than any other gave me the feeling of a gust of air from behind each time I read him, of a witch's broom that he makes one mount. Gilles Deleuze was a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris at Vincennes. Robert Hurley is the translator of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality.

There have been many Spinozas over the centuries: atheist, romantic pantheist, great thinker of the multitude, advocate of the liberated individual, and rigorous rationalist. The common thread connecting all of these clashing perspectives is Spinoza’s naturalism, the idea that humanity is part of nature, not above it. In this sophisticated new interpretation of Spinoza’s iconoclastic philosophy, Hasana Sharp draws on his uncompromising naturalism to rethink human agency, ethics, and political practice. Sharp uses Spinoza to outline a practical wisdom of “renaturalization,” showing how ideas, actions, and institutions are never merely products of human intention or design, but outcomes of the complex relationships among natural forces beyond our control. This lack of a metaphysical or moral division between humanity and the rest of nature, Sharp contends, can provide the basis for an ethical and political practice free from the tendency to view ourselves as either gods or beasts. Sharp’s groundbreaking argument critically engages with important contemporary thinkers—including deep ecologists, feminists, and race and critical theorists—making Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization vital for a wide range of scholars.

In this remarkable work, Gilles Deleuze, the renowned French philosopher, reflects on one of the thinkers of the past who most influenced his own sweeping reconfiguration of the tasks of philosophy. For Deleuze, Spinoza, along with Nietzsche and Lucretius, conceived of philosophy as an enterprise of liberation and radical demystification. He locates in Spinoza “a set of affects, a kinetic determination, an impulse” and makes Spinoza into “an encounter, a passion.” Expressionism in Philosophy was the culmination of a series of monographic studies by Deleuze (on Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche, Proust, Kant, and Sacher-Masoch) and prepared the transition from these abstract treatments of historical schemes of experience to the nomadology of Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, co-authored with Félix Guattari). Thus, Expressionism in Philosophy is both a pivotal reading of Spinoza’s work and a crucial text within the development of Deleuze’s thought.