Resources for the Study of Spinoza



This website is an attempt to bring together resources for the study of Spinoza, including images, primary texts, commentaries, historical sources, and expository and critical articles. The emphasis throughout is on Spinoza as an analyst of the forces that make people's lives oppressive, damaged, sad, and hateful, and as a philosopher who points the way from our current bondage to genuine freedom. I have tried to bring images and text together in mutually illuminating ways, especially in illustrating Spinoza's Ethics as well as his Theological-Politcal Treatise. Spinoza usually characterizes the imaginary as the lowest level of knowledge, and shows that the production of images often occurs in the service of a distorted view of life, a view that ties us to the very forces that seek our slavery and destruction. But, according to him, the imaginary can function as one of our own powers as well, provided that we use it in clear-sighted and life affirmative ways. I hope that I have been able to do that here, even if only in limited fashion.




Ethics (Illustrated)

Ethics - Scholia

Theological-Political Treatise (Illustrated)

The Rise of Dutch Capitalism

Dutch Wars of Liberation From Spanish Rule

Religious Struggles Within the Dutch Reformation

Political Struggles Within the Dutch Republic

Portraits of Spinoza

Amsterdam

Scenes of the Portuguese Synagogue

Spinoza's House in Rinjsburg

The Hague

Teachers, Friends, and Associates

Influences

Sources of Spinoza's Metaphyics

Spinoza's Metaphysics

Spinoza On The Emotions

The Eternity of the Mind

Spinoza's Writings

Secondary Sources

Spinoza's Delayed Influence

Radical Spinoza

From Bondage to Freedom