There is Just One Thing

Spinoza: Ethics

In this course, Professor Susan James (Birkbeck, University of London) discusses Spinoza's Ethics, widely considered to be his magnum opus. In the first module, we think about Spinoza's ontological framework, including his remarkable claim that there is only one substance, God, which has two attributes (thought and extension) and infinite modes. After that, we turn to Spinoza's 'parallelism doctrine', which states that 'the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things'. In the third module, we think about Spinoza's understanding of human beings, focusing in particular on the fundamental desire to increase one's own power. In the fourth module, we consider the problems that human beings run into when attempting to increase their own power, before moving on in the fifth module to consider how humans can overcome these difficulties.

There is Just One Thing

In this module, we think about Spinoza's ontological framework, focusing in particular on the distinction between substances, attributes, and modes.