Welcome to The Spinoza Study

[Copy of final Earthlink-hosted website]

Alice meets the mirror of imagination.
Site last modified
(except minor corrections):

June 7th, 2013
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email to Terry Neff:
tneff [at] earthlink [dot] net
Eternal Now

   Spinoza expressed his resolve to: "...inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else; whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness." He found, for himself, that the "chief good" is "knowledge of the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature."

   The true study of Spinoza's ideas involves the study of our own particular nature, seeking to clarify the confusions and passive emotions brought about through our own imagination and, by using Reason and Intuition, to direct our mind toward union with our Eternal Essential Being.


This site is dedicated to the memory... -- No! -- to the Living Ideas expressed by Benedict de Spinoza, and to Frederick Kettner [see The Biosophical Institute web site] and Gregory Grover, both of whom grasped the essence of those ideas and applied themselves to awakening knowledge of the Eternal and Infinite One in the minds of their students.

A Note on the use of Browser Frames on this web site:

    This site uses browser frames. If you attempt to enter it other than by starting at this Home Page the frames will not load properly and, as a result, the navigation features will not work as intended. This may occur if you follow a link which someone else has provided to a specific internal page rather than to this Home Page. The use of framesets/frames has been deprecated because they are problematic and no completely satisfactory solution to those problems has been developed. However...

    The ability to show two pages at once using frames, especially while following Spinoza's many references to previous elements in The Ethics, was the main reason for choosing frames when this site was first built back in 1998.

    For now, as long as framesets continue to be supported by most browsers, the site will remain as it is and I hope that you might find it useful as you work to follow Spinoza's long chains of reasoning especially as expressed in The Ethics using the Geometric Method.

William Blakes Urizen meets his maker.

This site includes hypertext, indexed versions of the major works of Benedict de Spinoza. You will find the complete English language text from the Unabridged R.H.M. Elwes Translation [from the Latin] (1883) of:

  • The Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order
  • On the Improvement of the Understanding (also known as The Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and referred to here as TEI)
  • The Theological-Political Treatise (referred to here as TPT)
  • Correspondence (by Spinoza)

You will also find the Abraham Wolf Translation [from the Dutch] (1910) of:

  • Spinoza's Short Treatise On God, Man, And His Well-Being (referred to here as ST)
and the Halbert Hains Britan translation [from the Latin] (1905) of:
  • Metaphysical Thoughts (Cogitata Metaphysica) --the appendix to Spinoza's "The Principles of Descartes' Philosophy" (referred to here as MT)
Using a "split-frame" mode of presentation you can view two different areas of the documents at the same time. In The Ethics this can be especially useful since it is written in the same form as Euclid's Elements where the demonstration of a given Proposition usually refers back to earlier Axioms, Definitions, Postulates, and/or Propositions and Lemmas. See the "Introduction to this hypertext version" under Spinoza's Works for more information.

Most browsers now support frames but a few older versions do not. Without frame support you should still be able to navigate through all the pages though some features will not have their intended effect.
For Spinoza's Works in other languages see the following sites:
  • For Spinoza's Ethics and commentary in French see Henrique Diaz's wonderful site.
  • The Spinoza Society of Japan (includes an English language section). Has a wonderful collection of links to scanned images of many Latin original editions of Spinoza's writings. Spinoza Society of Japan
  • For Spinoza's Ethics in the original Latin version visit Rudolf W. Meijer's excellent site.
To download a full copy of this web site for offline use click here: Spinoza Study - Site Copy (As of 2012-07-15, 1849KB) Unzip into a directory/folder and open the file "index.html" with your browser. Add to Bookmarks/Favorites for quick access.

 

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In addition to those shown above, here are some links to other Spinoza related sites (will open in a new window):

Necessarily Eternal "A Catablog of (All) Things Spinoza"
Way of Spinoza Lewis Almeida's: "Way of Spinoza" web site.
A Dedication to Spinoza's Insights Joseph B. Yesselman's Spinoza site with many commentaries.
The Biosophical Institute Dr. Frederick Kettner; "...received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vienna in 1919 after writing his thesis on 'The Unity of the Five Books in Spinoza's Ethics.'"
Constantin Brunner Barrett Pashak's site devoted to Constantin Brunner's ideas; "Brunner relies heavily on Spinoza in all matters, including Christology".

Yahoo! Groups (Hosted by Lance Fletcher, of The Free Lance Academy):
Spinoza discussion at Yahoo! Groups "The Spinoza list is intended for thoughtful discussion about the philosophy of Spinoza and, especially, slow readings of his works."
Spinoza Ethics at Yahoo! Groups Spinoza, "The Ethics" slow reading list.
Spinoza TIE at Yahoo! Groups Spinoza, "On The Improvement of the Understanding" slow reading list.
Spinoza TTP at Yahoo! Groups Spinoza, "Theologico-Political Treatise" slow reading list.

Other sites of interest:

Free Lance Academy Philosophy Slow Reading groups.
The Gnosis Archive Gnostic texts and other information.
The William Blake Archive Works by William Blake: illuminated books, drawings, paintings, engravings, and more.
Gurdjieff International Review Essays, articles, and book reviews regarding Georgii Ivanovich Gurdzhiev and his teachings.

 

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SITE CHANGE HISTORY (Changes from 3/22/2000 forward, minor changes not indicated.)

6/7/2013 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
2/18/2013 Added "Self Observation by Gregory Grover" to the Introduction section.
3/21/2012 Added link (above on this Home Page) to Lewis Almeida's Living Spinoza web site.
8/5/2011 Fixed problem with page transition links and included some minor edits. Also brought site download file for offline use up to date.
10/8/2010 Additions to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
1/19/2010 Included the original Latin term in The Ethics for some of Elwes' translated terms. See "Introduction to this hypertext version" - "Change History"; MENU: Spinoza's Works.
11/18/2009 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
1/14/2009 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
10/31/2008 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
10/12/2008 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
4/13/2008 OCR copy corrections (done on occasion as discovered.)
7/22/2007 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
6/19/2007 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
6/6/2007 Additions to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
4/23/2007 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
12/26/2006 Updated links to other sites.
4/21/2006 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
3/9/2006 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
2/28/2006 thru 3/6/2006 Addition(s) to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes" (same topic, further discussion.)
8/14/2005 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
7/28/2005 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
12/3/2004 Additional links and corrections.
11/6/2004 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
10/25/2004 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
5/19/2004 Modified headings for Letters 39, 40 (35), and 41 (36) in the Selected Correspondence section to include the following note:
[the Elwes translation shows this as Christian Huyghens, Shirley and others show it as John Hudde.]
3/30/2004 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
3/18/2004 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
2/23/2004 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
7/21/2003 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
3/21/2003 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
1/7/2003 Added link on this page to download a full ZIP'd copy of this site for offline use.
8/19/2002 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes" and modified general Note. Also added the rest of the books of the New Testament to the "Gospel of Jesus"
6/10/2002 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
5/29/2002 Added a list of corrections or clarifications to the text of The Ethics as found in the Dover edition of the R.H.M. Elwes translation. These were applied to the version at this site but never indicated. See the "Introduction to this hypertext version" page under; MENU: Spinoza's Works.
4/22/2002 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
2/27/2002 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
1/21/2001 Modified the Emotion list in the Topic Index per several corrections/suggestions by Rudolf W. Meijer whose excellent Latin Spinoza site I highly recommend.
10/03/2000 Modified target frame for each of the Ethics "Contents" pages so pages linked to in upper frame appear in lower frame. The previously inconsistent action (which did have a "logic" to it) finally became enough of an annoyance in my own study usage to cause me to change it!
7/23/2000 Several minor corrections.
5/30/2000 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
5/17/2000 Additions to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes"
4/14/2000 Addition to: "Related Thoughts" / "Kahlil Gibran"
4/1/2000 Additions and changes to: "Spinoza Works": Added several letters written by Spinoza which were inadvertently left out. Also some minor corrections to text and an addition to "Studies" section.
3/26/2000 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Spinoza Study Keys"
3/22/2000 Addition to: "Introduction" / "Personal Notes" / "The World"
Slack padding.