PHIL 11
Spinoza's "Ethics" Winter 2019

This is not the current course catalog

Spinoza’s Ethics aims to prove that human happiness consists in our rationally perceiving that God is all there is, and that all there is–including you and I–is God. Yet the Christian Church immediately deemed the Ethics “a book which, perhaps since the beginning of the world until the present day, surpasses all others in godlessness and endeavors to do away with religion and set godlessness on the throne.” Spinoza’s own Jewish community issued a writ of herem, excommunicating him for “monstrous deeds” and “abominable heresies.” In our Winter Study we will closely read Spinoza’s Ethics together, in order to understand how its doctrine that God is everything could be so profoundly godless. Our goal will be to view the universe from the standpoint of eternity. This may involve some monstrous deeds and abominable heresies of our own.