Ethics/On the Improvement of the Understanding

Spinoza places freedom as the ultimate aim & central value of life. His philosophy is marked by the most thoroughgoing naturalism of its period. Many of its central tenets remain matters of debate. His commitment to the search for a comprehensive understanding of everything inspired, among others, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Einstein, and Althusser. The Radical Enlightenment has been laid largely at his feet. Recent discoveries in the neurosciences suggest his biological understanding of the emotions may have been correct. It was upon this prescient naturalistic scientific foundation that he developed a new approach to ethics. Yet the last words in the Ethics sound a note of caution, even of warning: "All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare." Time is finally catching up with him. The study of his philosophy is worth the effort, capturing contemporary scientific imagination & ethical sensibility.A.