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by Benedict de Spinoza (Author)
According to Spinoza, God is Nature and Nature is God. First published by his friends after his death, the Ethics uses the methods of Euclid to describe a single entity, properly called both 'God' and 'Nature', of which mind and matter are two manifestations. Spinoza regarded ethics as a rational system corresponding to the rational nature of the universe and employed a deductive method derived from Euclidean geometry to show that the validity of ethical ideas can be demonstrated by a mathematical style argument. His conclusion: to be guided by reason is to live freely, motivated by love and goodwill rather than fear or hatred. Ethics is undoubtedly Spinoza's greatest work - an elegant, fully cohesive cosmology derived from first principles, providing a coherent picture of reality, and a guide to the meaning of an ethical life, it defines in turn the nature of God, the mind, the emotions, human bondage to the emotions, and the power of understanding - moving from a consideration of the eternal, to speculate upon humanity's place in the natural order, the nature of freedom and the path to attainable happiness. A powerful work of elegant simplicity, the Ethics is a brilliantly insightful consideration of the possibility of redemption through intense thought and philosophical reflection.
