Ethics

Spinoza wrote philosophy the way Euclid wrote geometry: definitions, axioms, propositions, proofs, each one leaning on the last. What comes out of that austere machinery is startling. There is only one substance, God or Nature, and everything else, minds and bodies and stones alike, is a mode of it. Nothing could have been otherwise. Free will is a story we tell ourselves because we notice our desires but not their causes. The later books treat human emotion with the same cool method, promising freedom not through escape but through understanding what holds us. Friends published the book months after his death in 1677, and the Dutch authorities banned it within a year. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.