How to Read Spinoza's Ethics on Your Own, Proof by Proof

You can read Spinoza’s Ethics without a teacher, and in one way it suits that better than most classics of philosophy: it shows its work. Here is the procedure that fits it:

1. Learn the numbering before anything else. The book is five parts of definitions, axioms, propositions and proofs, and the proofs cite earlier items by number. “Ip11” means Part I, Proposition 11, in the notation the Stanford Encyclopedia uses. You will be looking things up constantly.
2. Copy Part I’s eight definitions and seven axioms onto one page and keep it beside the book. Everything after them is built from them.
3. Look up every citation at the step where it appears. When a proof says “(Prop. vii.)”, go to Proposition 7 and read it before you accept the step. Not at the end of the page. At the step.
4. Once per sitting, cover a proof and rebuild it from the items it cites. Then look for the step it uses without citing anything.
5. Read the prose for the map. The notes, the prefaces and the Appendix to Part I are where Spinoza stops proving and tells you what the proofs are for.
6. Keep Part I alive. The proofs in Part V still cite Part I’s axioms and propositions by number.

Step 4 is the one that decides whether you read the book or just turned its pages. With Kant, the danger is a misreading you never notice. With Heidegger, it is learning to repeat the vocabulary. With Spinoza it is a third thing: agreeing with every line and having no idea where you are.

Is Spinoza’s Ethics hard to read?

Yes. Sean Greenberg, answering a reader on AskPhilosophers on 21 October 2005, put it as plainly as anyone has: “Spinoza’s Ethics is an extraordinarily difficult work. I find that it is one of the two most difficult texts written by an early modern philosopher: the other is Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature.” (source)

It is not hard because it is long. The free English translation on Project Gutenberg, R. H. M. Elwes’s from 1883, runs to about 87,700 words by our count, well under half of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. It is hard because it is dense in a specific way: 259 propositions by our count, each with a proof, many of them only a few lines long, each leaning on others.

Greenberg names the effect: “Spinoza’s geometrical method is designed to preclude the reader from attending to anything but the particular propositions of the work, and their proofs, and consequently, it is most difficult for the reader to find her bearings in the work.”

That produces two failures, and solo readers usually have both.

• Nodding through. Each proof is short, and each step sounds reasonable when you read it. You agree with every line. Twenty propositions later you cannot say why there is only one substance, because you never checked what any line rested on.
• Losing the map. You are reading propositions one at a time with no idea what they are for, so nothing tells you which ones matter.

The Stanford Encyclopedia’s entry on Spinoza warns about the starting point, too. Part I “begins with some deceptively simple definitions.” The definitions look like dictionary entries. They are the whole argument in compressed form.

How does the geometric method work?

The full Latin title is Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata: ethics demonstrated in geometrical order. Spinoza wrote it the way Euclid wrote geometry.

• Definitions fix what the key words mean (“By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself”).
• Axioms are claims he takes as obvious (“Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else”).
• Propositions are what he proves, each followed by a proof (Elwes’s word; others say “demonstration”) that cites the definitions, axioms and earlier propositions it uses.
• Corollaries follow directly from a proposition. Notes (Elwes’s word for scholia) are prose asides.

The Stanford Encyclopedia describes the payoff: “every subsequent proposition can be demonstrated using only what precedes it.” The encyclopedia’s notation extends the same way: “IIIp11s” is the scholium to Part III, Proposition 11. Use one form consistently in your own notes.

This form is what makes the book hard, and it is also a gift to anyone reading alone. In Kant or Heidegger you often cannot tell what a sentence depends on. In the Ethics, the proof tells you. That turns “did I understand this?” from a feeling into something you can check, which is exactly how the cumulative kind of difficult book has to be read: do the work before you turn the page.

How do you know you understood a proof?

Take a famous one. Proposition 11 of Part I: “God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists.” The first proof Elwes gives is three sentences long:

“If this be denied, conceive, if possible, that God does not exist: then his essence does not involve existence. But this (Prop. vii.) is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists.”

You can nod at that. Or you can follow the citation. Proposition 7 says “Existence belongs to the nature of substances,” and its proof cites the corollary to Proposition 6. That corollary cites Proposition 6, Axioms 1 and 4, and Definitions 3 and 5. Proposition 6 cites Propositions 2 and 3. Proposition 2 cites Definition 3. Proposition 3 cites Axioms 5 and 4. So the three-sentence proof that God exists stands on a tree of five earlier propositions and corollaries, two definitions and three axioms, and you can lay that tree out on half a page.

Then look for what the proofs do not cite. Proposition 7’s proof reads: substance cannot be produced by anything external, so “it must, therefore, be its own cause—that is, its essence necessarily involves existence.” The clause after “that is” is Definition 1 nearly word for word (“that of which the essence involves existence”), and the proof does not name it. Proposition 11 needs God to be a substance, which is Definition 6, and does not name that either. Neither is a mistake. They are the joints of the argument, and they are where readers who want to argue with Spinoza aim. Spinoza saw this proof as a sticking point himself. In the second note to Proposition 8 he writes that “it will be difficult for those who think about things loosely … to comprehend the demonstration of Prop. vii.”

Here is the test, then. Cover the proof of a proposition you have just read. Write it out from its cited items. Mark any step where you needed something the proof did not cite.

• If you can rebuild it and name the silent step, you understood the proof.
• If what you can produce is the conclusion in other words (“God exists because substance exists necessarily”), you have the result, not the reason. That is the nodding failure, and it feels exactly like understanding.

This is the same discipline as checking your own proofs in a maths book with no answer key, and it has the same weak point. When you mark your own rebuild against the text, the gap you are most likely to miss is the one you could not see while writing.

How do you keep your bearings in the Ethics?

The proofs will not tell you where you are. The prose will. Spinoza wrote a fair amount of it, and he put it where readers would need it.

• The Appendix to Part I is a long prose essay that comes after Proposition 36. It opens by summarizing what Part I proved and says why the essay is there: “I have further, where occasion afforded, taken care to remove the prejudices, which might impede the comprehension of my demonstrations. Yet there still remain misconceptions not a few”. Our advice: read it twice, once after the definitions as a preview of where Part I is going, and once at the end.
• The prefaces to Parts II, IV and V, and the untitled opening of Part III, say what each part is for. Part II’s preface promises only those results “which are able to lead us, as it were by the hand, to the knowledge of the human mind and its highest blessedness.”
• The notes after many propositions are Spinoza talking instead of proving: examples, objections, the occasional complaint about his critics. When a run of propositions has lost you, find the next note.

He also told readers what to do when they stall. In the note to Proposition 11 of Part II, he writes: “Here, I doubt not, readers will come to a stand, and will call to mind many things which will cause them to hesitate; I therefore beg them to accompany me slowly, step by step, and not to pronounce on my statements, till they have read to the end.” That is a reading instruction from the author. Slow down, check each step, and hold your verdict.

Which translation of Spinoza’s Ethics should you read?

Three are worth knowing about.

• Edwin Curley (Princeton, The Collected Writings of Spinoza, vol. 1, 1985). This is the scholarly standard. Steven Nadler, who wrote the Stanford Encyclopedia entry, says Curley’s edition “will, and should, remain the standard text of Spinoza in English for generations to come” (Princeton). It is in copyright.
• Samuel Shirley (Hackett, Complete Works, 2002). The other modern complete translation listed in the Stanford Encyclopedia’s bibliography.
• R. H. M. Elwes (1883, made for Bohn’s Philosophical Library and reprinted by Dover). It is public domain and free as Project Gutenberg eBook #3800. It is the oldest of the three and uses older wording.

The wording matters when you move between the book and the commentaries. Elwes calls Part III “On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions”. The Stanford Encyclopedia, quoting the opening of the same part, says “Affects”. Elwes renders the same idea about humans as “a kingdom within a kingdom” where the encyclopedia’s quotation says “a dominion within a dominion”. It is the same Latin underneath. If you read with a commentary, either match its translation or keep a glossary keyed to the Latin term, the way the Heidegger guide recommends for German.

Our view: Curley if you will read the commentaries seriously. Elwes is good enough to learn how to follow the proofs, which is the hard part, and you can start it tonight for nothing.

Reading the Ethics with Study Junkie

Study Junkie is built for the step that solo readers skip: being asked to produce the reasoning, and having what you wrote read by something that has the text.

It works like this. You upload the file you have. The Gutenberg Elwes text works as a plain-text or EPUB download. It becomes a course of chapters built from the full text, not a summary. Treat each chapter as a lecture on your file, and keep the book itself open for the proofs. For each chapter you can ask for problems. They are written from that chapter, mostly free-form, asking you to explain and derive in your own words. Answer them the way step 4 says: rebuild the argument and name what it rests on. Each problem has its own tutor that gives hints without handing you the answer, and marks the problem solved when your answer is right in substance. The chapter tutor is grounded in your upload, so “which items does Proposition 14 cite, and where is each one?” is answered from your Elwes, not from the internet’s idea of Spinoza. You can also paste your rebuild of a specific proof into the chat and ask what it leans on that the text does not give you. Recall is opt-in: it brings questions on a chapter back after 1, 3 and 7 days by default (you can change the days), which is the spaced repetition without flashcards a book like this needs, because Part V still leans on Part I.

We have not recorded it on Spinoza. You can watch it on Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason demo: it sets a question, reads a written answer, and names the misconception in it rather than saying “not quite”.

Signup gives you 1,500 free Study Credits after you verify your email, with no card. After that it is one-time credit packs from $10 that never expire, not a subscription.

The limits, plainly:

• The free text is the 1883 translation. Curley’s is in copyright. If you own it only as a paperback, or as an ebook you cannot export, there is nothing to upload.
• A grounded tutor is not a Spinoza scholar. It can show you which items a proof cites and whether your rebuild uses something the text does not give you. It cannot settle what the definitions of substance and attribute finally mean. On contested ground you get a reading, not a verdict.
• A good seminar or reading group beats this. If you can join one, do.
• Nothing makes this book fast. Spinoza closes it by granting that the way he has shown “seems exceedingly hard”, and ends: “But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” What can go is the week lost to a proof you nodded through and never noticed. If that is where your last attempt ended, start a course from the Gutenberg text and see whether being made to rebuild the proofs is what was missing.

FAQ

Should I read Descartes before Spinoza’s Ethics? It helps. Greenberg recommends Descartes’ Meditations, Part I of the Principles of Philosophy and The Passions of the Soul first, and “at least … the first two parts of Leviathan” by Hobbes before Parts III and IV. Edwin Curley’s Behind the Geometrical Method (Princeton, 1988) is written for readers without a philosophy background and traces the Ethics back to Descartes and Hobbes. If you would rather start now, start: the definitions and the proofs will show you where you are missing context.

Is there a free copy of Spinoza’s Ethics? Yes, and it is legal. The 1883 Elwes translation is public domain and free on Project Gutenberg as eBook #3800, in plain text and EPUB.

How long does it take to read Spinoza’s Ethics? At least six hours, and in practice much longer. The Elwes text is about 87,700 words by our count. Adults read ordinary nonfiction at an average of 238 words per minute, according to Marc Brysbaert’s 2019 meta-analysis in the Journal of Memory and Language, so just moving your eyes over every word takes about six hours. Treat that as a floor. Looking up every citation and rebuilding a proof per sitting multiplies it several times. Count a proposition as read when you can rebuild its proof, not when you have seen it.

Can I skip Part I and go straight to the ethics in Parts IV and V? You can read the prefaces and the Appendix to Part I for orientation, but the proofs in the later parts cite Part I by number, so skipping it means following those citations back anyway. Part I is about 14,000 words in Elwes, about a sixth of the book.

Where do beginners usually get stuck? Early. Proposition 7 of Part I, which Spinoza himself flags as hard, and the run up to Proposition 14 (“Besides God no substance can be granted or conceived”). Then Part II around Proposition 11, where he says himself that readers “will come to a stand”. If you stall there, that is the book, not you. Use the triage for difficult books to confirm what kind of hard you are facing, and the general method for reading philosophy without a teacher for everything that is not specific to the proofs.