Ethics

Spinoza's Ethics is written like a geometry book, with definitions, axioms and numbered propositions, yet its subject is how to live a free and joyful life. He argues that God and Nature are one and the same, that everything follows from necessity, and that our happiness grows as we understand our emotions instead of being driven by them.

Spinoza, a lens grinder expelled from Amsterdam's Jewish community, did not dare publish it; it appeared in 1677, the year he died. It is one of the hardest and most rewarding books in philosophy, and many readers start with Part Three, on the emotions, before going back to the beginning.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was born in Amsterdam to a family of Portuguese Jewish merchants. At twenty-three he was expelled from the Jewish community for his views, and he spent the rest of his life quietly, grinding lenses for telescopes and microscopes and corresponding with the scientists of Europe. He refused a professorship at Heidelberg so as to keep his freedom of thought.

His Theological-Political Treatise, published anonymously in 1670, argued for freedom of thought and a historical reading of scripture; it is also in the library in Arabic. His Ethics appeared after his death at forty-four, probably hastened by the glass dust of his work, and made him one of the great philosophers of freedom.