Love for knowledge

Reflections on Spinoza’s ethics and the pursuit of knowledge

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I would like, in this short period of time, to give to you a picture of a wonderful cathedral which, in my understanding, it is reflected the becoming of the world. 

The book in which this building is portrayed is the Ethics from Baruch Spinoza.

Let me spend a couple of minutes on the author and the book, to place them in space and time.

Baruch Spinoza was born on 24 November 1632 in Amsterdam in a jewish community and due to his radical ideas he was harshly censured on 27 Juli 1656. This led to the impossibility for him to publish this work under his name, so the Ethics was published anonymously after his death. He lived a very humble life, carving lenses as a job, living in a small house and devoting himself to knowledge, understood as a mean to foster what is human in us. He died on 21 February 1677.

This book is written in an unorthodox way, its contents are “more geometrico demostrati”,

demonstrated in geometrical order. Is compound of five parts, each of which begins with axioms, which are self-evident truth, and definitions. They are followed by other statements which can be inferred from these, which are called propositions or theorems, in which their truth lies in what they are based on, because an idea based on a true idea is also true. From these then is possible to infer other statements and propositions for the same reason.

So it is like a cathedral, which is built on foundations and columns, the more stable they are, the greater it can soar. So let me try to show you the gesture of this building.

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