Book Report: Ethics
Author: Baruch Spinoza
Publication: ~1656
Pages: 88
Completion Date: 5/10/25
I had a hard time reading this due to the style of English in which it is written, but I muddled through a major part of it. I am listing out the important parts (and I think they are really important) below.
1) There can be no beginning of existence; for if existence itself had a beginning, it would mean that before existence there had to be nothing. In other words, nothingness would have risen to something, to the beginning of the whole universe. Spinoza said this is logically absurd. Therefore, the universe as a whole, must be thought of existing without any beginning. There must have always been something (God).
2) By the same reasoning as above, the stream of existence can have no end. It is impossible to turn something into nothing as it is also impossible to make something out of nothing.
3) The totality of existence must be without beginning or end. Thus, when we speak of God in a rational sense, we must identify Him and the totality of existence. Anything less would make God only a part of the totality – hence finite instead of infinite. In that case, there would be something greater than God, which is the totality.
4) Since infinity includes everything, if an outside creator were needed to account for existence, something outside the creator would be needed to account for the creator. Therefore, God and the totality of existence are one.
5) A philosopher asked, “If God were in everything, would there be more of God in an elephant than a mouse?” Spinoza’s response was God is in the elephant and the mouse not as a quantity of matter, but as indestructibility of basic element. The elephant and the mouse, like everything else, can be “destroyed” only as individual forms. Their substance is eternal, as expressed by the law of conservation of energy. To imagine that the substance of an elephant is more eternal than the substance of a mouse is to imagine that a larger circle is more circular than a small one.
6) From a given determinate cause an effect necessarily follows; and if no determinate cause can be given, it is impossible that an effect can follow. This can be called the law of universal causation; the principle underlying all other principles in the rational understanding of anything that exists.
7) The will of God is the law of nature. To know the universe, man must learn its ways. To know God, man must understand His will. That is what is meant by the intellectual love of God.
8) Determinism asserts that whatever happens is the result of specific causes and that if the causes were different, the results would also have to be different.
9) According to Spinoza – money, fame & pleasure are very largely beyond the control of the individual. He can so easily be deprived of them by external forces that it is almost impossible to count on them.
10) Is there anything within the individual’s own control that can yield continuous happiness? For Spinoza, the answer is rational understanding of life and the world. The individual who develops this understanding will when considering the past, realize that everything that has actually happened has come about through the operation of definite causes. The results could not have been different since the causes were what they were.
The above is what I gleaned from the book. If I read through this again, I believe that this rationally proves that there is a God. I already believed in God, but it is interesting to have it proven in a different sort of way.
