Wisdom and the Improvement of the Understanding

Abstract

Abstract Born in Amsterdam to a Jewish family of Portuguese origin, Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) received his first education in scriptural and Talmudic studies. Influenced by his reading of Maimonides, he turned to philosophy and immersed himself in Cartesian studies. As his views on the divine nature became increasingly unorthodox, he ceased being a practicing Jew and was excommunicated by the Jewish community in 1656. In 1663, he recast and revised Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy in a deductive form. The Theological-Political Treatise— which argued for the freedom of thought and speech as a support for civic peace and harmony—appeared anonymously in 1670. Deeply affected by the political turbulence marked by the murder of the DeWitt brothers, Spinoza determined to avoid being entangled in political and religious controversies. He declined a professorship in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in 1673 on the grounds that he wanted to philosophize “in accordance with his own mind.” Earning his living as a lens grinder, he contributed to the optics of the times. Along with his unfinished Political Treatise and the Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, Spinoza’s major work, Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, was published posthumously, in 1677. Cast on the deductive model of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry—with definitions, postulates, and axioms—the book begins with a theological treatise on divine substance; it then turns to an argument for nonreductive mind-body identity, moves to an attack on the distinction between the will and the understanding, and to a psychological study of the correction of the passions. The book culminates with an argument that freedom and salvation are achieved through the intellectual love of God.