Summary: Ethics
Spinoza's Ethics was not published before his death, in 1677, to avoid censorship. In fact, the book was banned the following year. In it, he develops his ideas in the manner of mathematicians (by stringing together propositions that are rigorously deduced from one another). God, freedom and the passions are examined in turn, to develop a new definition of the wise man.
Book I: On God
In the Ethics, Spinoza, fascinated by the rigour and clarity of the mathematical model, sets himself the goal of applying the geometrical method to philosophy.
We know that this method proceeds by definitions, axioms, then rises from proposition to proposition rigorously deduced from one another until it reaches the truth to be demonstrated.
The purpose of definitions is to indicate precisely the meaning of the terms we are going to use, so that there is no possible ambiguity or equivocation.
Axioms state truths that are considered self-evident, and that will serve as the basis for demonstrations. They are no longer mere definitions, in the sense that they do not merely determine the meaning of a word that we are going to use: they are true predicative judgements that say something about something and claim the status of self-evident truth.
Let us take a few examples of definitions and axioms proposed by Spinoza.
Among the definitions, we find in Book I the famous one of the cause of itself (causa sui): By cause of itself, I mean that whose essence envelops existence, in other words that whose nature can only be conceived of as existing
1.
Or again that of substance: By substance, I mean that which is in itself and is conceived of by itself: that is, that whose concept does not need the concept of something else, from which it must be formed
2.
These two definitions are fundamental, because they define God for Spinoza. God is self-caused, and God is substance. More precisely, God is alone self-caused, and alone substance.
Among the axioms we find, for example, Given a determinate cause, an effect necessarily follows, and on the contrary, if there is no determinate cause, it is impossible for an effect to follow
3.
We can see that Spinoza is not merely defining the concept of cause here, but asserting a truth recognised as self-evident about the reality of the relationship between an effect and a cause.
From this "more geometrico" argumentative mechanism, Spinoza thus rises from proposition to proposition, which he deduces from one another.
For example, from proposition 7: To the nature of a substance belongs to exist
4, and from proposition 8: Any substance is necessarily infinite
5, Spinoza deduces proposition 11:
God in other words a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence necessarily exists 6.
Spinoza uses terms from ancient Scholasticism: substance, attribute, essence, etc., but he gives them a new meaning, and the use of this geometrical method in philosophy is innovative.
Most importantly, the results he will reach in the Ethics are eminently modern.
God indeed is certainly infinite substance, from which all else is only attribute, God certainly is perfection, from which all else proceeds. However, Spinoza in Book IV, at the turn of a proposition, defines what he means by God: the Nature.
He speaks of the power itself of God, in other words of Nature
7: Deus sive Natura.
In fact, if God is nothing other than Nature, there is no God. God is only a name given to Nature, and there is no God transcendent (external and superior) to it.
He is therefore one of the first philosophers who, in the 17th century, developed, in a concealed way to escape censorship, an atheism at the heart of his philosophy.
God, in other words Nature, is thus defined as a substance with an infinity of attributes. Let us quickly explain the traditional meaning of these terms "substance" and "attribute". Let us consider this man. He is rich, tall and famous. These determinations are attributes, in the sense that they can be changed without the subject disappearing. This rich man can become poor, but he will still be this individual. They are therefore non-essential determinations of a person (or a thing), which we call attributes.
1 Ethics, Part I, def. 1
2 I, def. 3
3 I, axiom 3
4 Ibid.
5 ibid.
6 ibid.
7 IV, prop. 4