The Collected Works of Spinoza (Volume I)

"Almost complete. Volume I and volume II were translated by Edwin Curley. Volume I includes the early writings, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and the Short Treatise on God, Man and his Wellbeing and the Ethics , plus all the correspondence up to, I think, 1665. The second volume includes the Theological-Political Treatise and the Political Treatise and all the correspondence up to his death in 1677. The only things that Spinoza published in his lifetime were: his summary presentation of Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy . That’s in volume I and he did that under his name, in Latin. Then, in 1670, he published the Theological-Political Treatise anonymously, because I think he had a sense of how scandalously it would be received. Everything else remained unpublished in his lifetime and appeared only after his death. The reason why I say this is not the complete works is because Curley decided not to include Spinoza’s Compendium of Hebrew Grammar . He wrote this in the 1670s. I am actually in the process of translating that, so there will be a volume III in the Princeton edition, which will include the Hebrew grammar, plus the herem document. That will be a more accurate and, I hope from now on, the standard translation. There will also be some other relevant documents, including the inventory of his library, which was made when he died. As herem documents go, it was quite long. Usually a herem document in Amsterdam in this period was just a couple of sentences saying ‘so-and-so has been put under herem for assaulting a rabbi’, or something like that, and you’re told how the person will be able to make amends and reintegrate themselves into the community. In Spinoza’s case, by contrast, it’s a relatively long document, full of curses and damnations, expelling him from the people of Israel, seemingly for good, without offering any means of restitution or reintegration. It’s in Portuguese. The original document is in the Jewish archives in the Amsterdam municipal archives. A lot of translations have been very loose, for example, they use the word ‘excommunication’. In fact, that word doesn’t appear. The Amsterdam Portuguese invented a word, ‘ enhermar ’, which means to put under herem , combining the Hebrew with Portuguese. So I think a more literal translation is better. Yes. He really pissed people off. But there is a debate about why. Some people think that his offences were not matters of ideas and heresy, but that he had engaged in business practices that undermined the Jewish community in the eyes of the Dutch. When his father died he inherited a great deal of debt because the business wasn’t doing well. In order to relieve himself of the debt, rather than going to the leaders of the Jewish community, he went to the Dutch authorities and had himself declared an orphan, which he could legally do because he was under the age of 25. By being declared an orphan, he was no longer responsible for those debts, many of which were owed within the Jewish community. He became a preferred creditor on his father’s estate. So, he breached the regulations of the Jewish community, which stated that all such legal matters had to be resolved within the community. But, also, if a member of the Jewish community could avoid paying their debts in that way, that wasn’t good for business with the Dutch. Exactly. There’s a Princeton paperback edition of Curley’s translation of the Ethics along with selections from other items in volume I, and a Hackett paperback edition of the Theological-Political Treatise , translated by Samuel Shirley. I want to say you should go for the Ethics first because that is his philosophical masterpiece. But it’s a really tough book to read because it’s in the geometrical Euclidean format. So I would suggest the Theological-Political Treatise . It’s a very different kind of book. It’s a political work. It’s a treatise on religion and politics and it’s much more accessible. It’ll start to give you a sense of what Spinoza is about. And then you’ll be ready for the Ethics ."