Benedict de Spinoza lived a life of blameless simplicity as alens-grinder in Holland. And yet in his lifetime, he was expelledfrom the Jewish community in Amsterdam as a heretic, and after hisdeath his words were first banned by the Christian authorities asatheistic, then hailed by humanists as the gospel of Pantheism. His"Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order" shows us the realitybehind this enigmatic figure. First published by his friends afterhis premature death at the age of 44, the "Ethics" uses the methodsof Euclid to describe a single entity, properly called both "God"and "Nature", of which mind and matter are two manifestations. Fromthis follow, in ways that are strikingly modern, the identity ofmind and body, the necessary causation of events and actions, andthe illusory nature of free will.
