Reviews for Philosophy and theological discourse

The average rating for Philosophy and theological discourse based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-10-14 00:00:00 William Dick My dad was a Presbyterian minister who discovered Spinoza quite accidentally and late in life and never looked back. So my childhood was spent listening to my dad quote Spinoza in response to almost any question I ever asked. When I left for college my dad's gift to me was the Dover editions of the Elwes translation of the "Ethics" and the "Theologico-Political Treatise," with an exhortation to always read the unfinished "Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect" before reading either major work. Eventually I abandoned the pre-med program to become a philosophy major and wrote my senior thesis on Spinoza. I guess a love of Spinoza turned out to be my inheritance. If you have the honesty and strength to read objectively and carefully, to accept Spinoza on his terms, which, thankfully, are clearly defined and stated from the beginning, you will most likely never experience another work in the way you can experience the Ethics. There is no dogma, no proof from authority; there is only the beauty of human reason unfolding in geometrically deductive method all it can know and discover about itself and the reality of the world around it. Few books are as difficult as this one, and even fewer are as rewarding. "All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare." - Scholium, V.42

Review # 2 was written on 2018-12-27 00:00:00 Ed Poe Spinoza is the most systematic and reasoned thinker of the Rationalists. His ethics is a huge set of definitions, axioms, propositions, proofs, and corollaries in a bizarre format called the "geometrical" style, loosely based on the very rigid and sequential nature of mathematical proofs. His systematic approach leads him to some very unusual conclusions about the nature of God, the human being and its relation to the world, and his ultimate ethical imperatives, but it is nonetheless a very original and interesting train of thought, and a much bolder and more striking set of ideas than those posited by the other most well-known Rationalists (Descartes and Leibniz).