THE PHILOSOPHY

OF

SPINOZA

edited by
JOSEPH RATNER

TUDOR PUBLISHING COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

[v]

PREFACE

Selections usually need no justifications. Somejustification, however, of the treatment accordedSpinoza's Ethics may be necessary in this place. Theobject in taking the Ethics as much as possible outof the geometrical form, was not to improve upon theauthor's text; it was to give the lay reader a text ofSpinoza he would find pleasanter to read and easier tounderstand. To the practice of popularization, Spinoza,one may confidently feel, would not be averse.He himself gave a short popular statement of hisphilosophy in the Political Treatise.

The lay reader of philosophy is chiefly, if not wholly,interested in grasping a philosophic point of view. Heis not interested in highly meticulous details, and stillless is he interested in checking up the author's statementsto see if the author is consistent with himself.He takes such consistency, even if unwarrantedly, forgranted. A continuous reading of the original Ethics,even on a single topic, is impossible. The subject-matteris coherent, but the propositions do not hangtogether. By omitting the formal statement of thepropositions; by omitting many of the demonstrationsand almost all cross-references; by grouping relatedsections of the Ethics (with selections from the Lettersand the Improvement of the Understanding) under[vi]sectional headings, the text has been made more continuous.It is the only time, probably, dismemberinga treatise actually made it more unified.

In an Appendix, the sources of the selections fromthe Ethics are summarily indicated. It would be ameaningless burden on the text to make full acknowledgmentsin footnotes. For the same reason, therehas been almost no attempt made to show, by meansof the conventional devices, the re-arrangements andabridgements that have been made. Every care hasbeen taken not to distort in any way the meaning ofthe text. And that is all that is important in a volumeof this kind.

Wherever possible Spinoza's own chapter headingshave been retained; and some of the sectional headingshave either been taken from, or have been based uponexpressions in the text. It would have been more inkeeping with contemporary form to use the title OnHistorical Method or The New History instead of Ofthe Interpretation of Scripture; a chapter on RaceSuperiority would sound more important than one onThe Vocation of the Hebrews; but such modernizingchanges were not made because the aim has been togive the reader a text as faithful to the original as thecharacter of this volume would allow.

The selections have been taken from Elwes' translationof the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, A PoliticalTreatise and the Improvement of the Understanding;and from White's translation of the Ethics. Thesetranslations are no longer in copyright and hence it wasnot necessary to secure permission from the publishersto use them. Nonetheless, grateful acknowledgment...