Ethics

⚖The case for it

The book asks for weeks and often gives back a headache. What the work buys is the coldest voice in philosophy handing out its warmest advice: understand a thing down to what caused it, Spinoza says, and the hatred goes out of it. Fear, envy and pity get treated the way weather gets treated, as effects with causes rather than sins to be scolded. Free will quietly disappears, and what replaces it is sturdier, a freedom that consists in knowing what you are. Few books ask this much, and fewer leave you different at the end.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Geometry was the wrong costume. The definitions smuggle in everything the propositions pretend to prove, so the QED at each step is theater; meanwhile the form forbids skimming, since Part 5 cites Part 1 like a legal code. Nobody gets through unassisted. Buy a commentary or accept that you are reading conclusions while the arguments happen somewhere offstage.

— the honest librarian