Spinoza's 'Ethics': What do you mean by 'God'?

Jonathan Rée discusses Spinoza's philosophical treatise the Ethics, an 'idealised intellectual autobiography' that, through its dry definitions and propositions, manages to tell a gripping story. Through this story emerges some of Spinoza's key ideas: that knowledge is a continuum rather than a dichotomy between sensation and reason; that the path to freedom is not about getting what you want but learning to love the world rationally; and his concept of God not as a separate supernatural being, but rather as nature or the universe as a whole, which one comes to love with 'intellectual love' as individual identity is subsumed into the greater whole.

Film by Anthony Wilks

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Read more on Spinoza in the LRB:

Jonathan Rée: Spinoza's Big Idea https://lrb.me/8x8
Richard Popkin: Spinoza v the Synagogue https://lrb.me/kx8
George Steiner on 'Spinoza and Other Heretics' https://lrb.me/cx8
Jonathan Rée: Exit Cogito https://lrb.me/5x8
Stuart Hampshire: Small Creatures https://lrb.me/hx8
Frank Kermode: Theory and Truth https://lrb.me/3x8
Margaret Jacob: Radical Enlightenment https://lrb.me/ux8

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