Routledge Philosophy Guidebook To Spinoza And The Ethics

Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Spinoza and the Ethics ■ Genevieve Lloyd LONDON AND NEW YORK -iii- First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1996 Genevieve Lloyd Text design: Barker/Hilsdon Typeset in Times and Frutiger by Florencetype Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St. Ives PLC All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lloyd, Genevieve Routledge philosophy guidebook to Spinoza and the Ethics/ Genevieve Lloyd. p. cm. —(Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks) 1. Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677. Ethica. 2. Ethics—Early works to 1800. I. Title II. Series B3974. L57 1996 170-dc20 96-6392 ISBN 0-415-10781-4 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-10782-2 (pbk) -iv- Contents ix x 1 1 11 18 24 29 31 38 42 48 55 Acknowledgments Abbreviations 1 Spinoza in his time and ours The outsider How many ‘Spinozas’? Reading Spinoza The text 2 God, minds and bodies God and ‘his’ attributes God and the world The mind and will of God The idea of the body Ways of knowing -vii- 3 From bondage to freedom The emotions Striving to persist: an ethic of joy The ‘free man’ 4 Intuitive knowledge and the intellectual love of God The eternity of the mind The self-knowledge of the ‘blessed’ 5 The way to wisdom Notes Bibliography Index -viii- 71 71 83 98 109 114 123 133 145 151 159 Acknowledgments This book was completed with the assistance of an Australian Research Council Small Grant. I am grateful also to Sandra Lynch for research assistance; to Moira Gatens and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty for helpful discussion of points of interpretation; to Susan James and Thomas Cook for constructive critical comments on the manuscript; to the School of Philosophy and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales for practical assistance; to the Department of General Philosophy at the University of Sydney for a visiting professorship during the first semester of 1994; and to students of the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney for their lively engagement with Spinoza’s Ethics, and their intelligent critical response to sections of this book which I tried out in their courses. -ix- Abbreviations Abbreviated references to the Ethics follow the conventions introduced by Curley in the introduction to A Spinoza Reader (Curley 1994: xxxv). Thus: E= Ethics A= Axiom P= Proposition D (following a Roman numeral)= Definition D (following P+an arabic numeral)= the Demonstration of the proposition C= Corollary S= Scholium Exp= Explanation L= Lemma Post= Postulate Pref= Preface App= Appendix DefAff= the definition of the affects at th