The Ethics

The Ethics is a philosophical treatise written by Benedict de Spinoza. The opening page of Spinoza's magnum opus, Ethics The full title of the book is Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order. The book closely resembles Euclid's Elements. At the beginning of Part 1, Spinoza defines key terms and lists axioms. On the basis of these and other definitions and axioms provided in the remaining four parts of the book, Spinoza offers proofs of hundreds of propositions and corollaries such as "When the Mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it", "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death", and "The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal." The impersonal style is frequently interrupted by stretches of informal and at times pugnacious prose, criticizing the views of philosophers such as René Descartes and Moses Maimonides.