This course focuses on a single text, Ethics by Spinoza. We will read this short, but seminal book in its entirety. This book is probably the most radical of the innumerable seventeenth-century adaptations of the methodologies that had been developing in mathematics over the previous century for metaphysical and ethical concerns. Such adaptations are essential for what is known as early modern philosophy (roughly, 1500-1789), but also for the development of the modern world in more general terms. Spinoza takes this geometrical and algebraic approach to questions of God, nature, the mind, the emotions, and society in the most intense and explicit fashion.

            Because of this relationship to both mathematics and metaphysics, reading Ethics requires some background. To that end, we will begin the course with a brief introduction to ancient geometry by reading Euclid. We will then turn to Aquinas to get a handle on the medieval metaphysical vocabulary that is also essential for understanding Spinoza, to Suárez for an understanding of modal distinctions, and then to a portion of Descartes’ Replies to objections given for his Meditations on First Philosophy for Spinoza’s most immediate and important precursor. After these readings, we will examine his Ethics exclusively and closely.