Dear Rafael,

I would recommend that your nephew begin by reading Spinoza’s Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect). It is brief and very incomplete, but the first few pages are beautifully written and inspiring. There is nothing obscure in these pages, and they should suffice to give your nephew a clear sense of the almost unimaginable power and concentration of Spinoza’s thinking.

In considering your request, Rafael, I have in mind a curious fact about the reception of Spinoza’s works, which is that, since the time when they were first published even to the present time, a very large portion of Spinoza’s most devoted readers, perhaps the majority, have come from outside the academic world, outside the circles of professional scholarship. I do not think there is another major philosopher with this kind of non-academic, non-professional readership. 

How can this be explained? It cannot be said that Spinoza’s writings are easy or popular — although they are extraordinarily clear and precise and their difficulties are due not to any obscurity of style but to the intrinsic difficulty of the questions with which Spinoza is dealing. And Spinoza’s non-academic readers are willing to grapple with the rigorous demands of reading his works, not because they want to know Spinoza’s opinions, but because they find the experience of reading Spinoza to be therapeutic.

If your nephew really wishes to discover Spinoza, therefore, I would urge him to begin by reading — and re-reading — Spinoza’s works, beginning, as I said, with the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and then going on the the Ethics. In fact the Ethics is not a very long book, and one of the nice things about Spinoza is that his total literary output is the briefest among all the major philosophers (setting aside Parmenides and Socrates). 

Many readers find the geometric form of the Ethics rather confronting, and some are completely stopped by that experience. Ultimately the Ethics cannot be understood without working through the proofs, but if your nephew finds himself stopped at first, here is what I recommend: Start by familiarizing yourself with the overall structure and design of the work. Read through the propositions (and maybe the scholia). The Ethics consists of five parts. The first part is overwhelmingly the most difficult. The second part is still difficult, but less so than the first. The last three parts are much easier and even enjoyable. so you might try reading the latter three parts and then going back to the beginning.

One of the difficulties of reading Spinoza, especially part one of the Ethics, is his use of Aristotelian/Scholastic terms such as substance, attribute, mode, etc. Some scholars treat Spinoza as a successor to Descartes and attempt to explain Spinoza’s terms by reference to Descartes. Personally I find that understanding Spinoza is helpful toward understanding Descartes, but not so much the other way around. More helpful than reading Descartes is to read Aristotle — the logical treatises and the Metaphysics.

After your nephew has read and re-read the Ethics two or three times, then he might wish to consult some secondary literature. Among the Spinoza scholars I recommend one as overwhelmingly the best: Harold F. Hallett, especially his last book: Creation, Emanation and Salvation.

Lance Fletcher

On Mar 30, 2016, at 10:39 PM, Rafael Serrano raserran@... [spinoza] <spinoza@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear friends,

My nephew wants a book to begin his discovering of Spinoza. Can you help me?

,

Thanks,

Rafael Serrano