I really want to read Spinoza's Ethics because its format

>>9580378
I'll preface this by admitting I haven't read Spinoza yet, but from the (i creasingly frequent) mentions of him in my readings of plato/aristotle/general philosophy, and from peeking at the Ethics a few times, what I've gathered or at the very least guessed is:

The ethics use the vocabulary and likely the corresponding concepts of aristotelian metaphysics. I do not know how anyone could understand the ethics without first reading aristotle's physics (and probably metaphysics, but I can't say for sure as I havenm'y read that). I would also guess that the Ethics leans on aquinas' summa, since aquinas also heavily drew on Aristotle and (I've been led to believe) heavily inflemce spinoza. Also aristotle's physics/metaphysics build on the organon, so you could go pretty far back if you really wanted to..

Besides that all I really remember is that Spinoza's formal structure is in the tradition of euclid, so you may want to check him out too.

Sorry for any typos, I'm on my phone and mid workout.

>>9580378
Descartes Meditations (essential, a thorough reading must be done of this first or you'll be wasting your time)

Euclid's Elements (general understanding of the method)

Highly recommend Curley, Bennett, Hegel, and Deleuze as supplementary material (though stay away from the latter for awhile...muh expressionism is quite the leap)

Aristotle's okay to know but really the rationalists were anti Aristotilean and should be taken seriously on their claims to build a new philosophy from the ground up. But i cannot reiterate how essential Descartes is for understanding Spinoza.

>>9580695
>I haven't read Spinoza yet
Stopped reading there.

>>9580695
>I'm on my phone and mid workout.
Stopped reading there.

>>9580695
>.
Stopped reading there.

It's a waste of time. The proof-form in Ethics is too autistic to bear. Just read about his philosophy through Scruton and Deleuze instead.

>>9580782
This

>>9581404
Fuck off

>>9580782
Thanks for the advice. I figured I would read Discourse and Meditations by Descartes first to see the basis for rationalism (which I guess Spinoza is criticizing), but I was wondering what Greeks I needed to read, or anyone else, first. I figure I don't need Euclid because I already do modern math, which is prop-proof style.

You don't need any prior knowledge other than knowing what rationalists are. Anyone saying you need this and that is retarded, he defines and gives everything you need. Go to the rationalsim SEP article and you're straight

t. Someone who has read Spinoza

What's the best/canonical translation?

>>9580378
I did a senior thesis (that I later used to get into grad school) on Spinoza and, honestly, there isn't much prior reading you need to do. Descartes' Meditations will obviously be a help as it'll help you understand the context of Spinoza's work and some of their language is similar.

It depends on how deeply you want to get into his writing, like do you just want to have some basic knowledge of Spinoza's philosophy or would you be interested in seeing how he relates to other rationalists as well ? If the latter, you might have a good time reading some people like Leibniz (especially the Mondaology), Arnauld, and Malebranche. These will give you a better knowledge of the rationalist tradition and what is specifically unique about Spinoza.

If you're having trouble understanding him and want to read some secondary work, I'd recommend Curley and Della Rocca

>>9582475
Same poster, ignore people saying you need to read the fucking Greeks or Hegel + Deleuze (seriously? Hegel to understand Spinoza better??) to understand Spinoza. He's extremely self-explanatory and the "geometrical order" of the work gives you all the definitions and axioms he's beginning with. You just do your best to follow from there and see how the axioms and defs lead to postulates.

Of course you should read the Greeks regardless, I'm mainly an ancients / virtue ethics scholar , but that really didn't do all that much to help me in understanding Spinoza. If people think you need to read Aristotle or Euclid to understand Spinoza, they either haven't actually studied him, or they don't understand him at all.

There's some good radio documentaries on bbc iplayer. in our time, sunday feature etc.... if you want to get some context without having to read some dense tome

>>9582685
>dense tome
Ethics is like 250 pages

>>9582800
i meant if you didn't want to read the entire philosophical cannon leading up to spinoza to give you some context of ethics.

given your reading comprehension i find it difficult to believe that you, personally, would breeze through ethics

>>9582492
Anon, could you tell me a little bit about the third type of knowledge? Can you explain me what it is, how the fuck do we get that beatitude he talks about, and how to jump from second type to the third type? I'm stuck at part V since ever.

>>9580695
As someone who has read a lot of Aquinas, I have to say aside using the same words in certain cases, there are almost no points of correspondence. Spiniza may or may have not been familiar with Aquinas, but he's not responding to his theories at all and often implies views to the scholastic tradition it did not have.