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For a first pass I highly recommend reading the Ethics backwards, and only focusing on the collaries and the notes at the end of each section. Ignore the axioms

For a first pass I highly recommend reading the Ethics backwards, and only focusing on the collaries and the notes at the end of each section. Ignore the axioms and proofs for the first few passes through the book. The content and notes at the end of sections are much easier to read and quite beautiful. When I first read Ethics in the order presented I was deeply confused as to why Spinoza was considered the "prince of philosophers". After revising my approach he's rapidly becoming one of my favorite. Despite it's presentation, the Ethics is much better approached in a very non-linear fashion. edit: I also recommend Deleuze's Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. If you've read Deleuze's other work you may or may not be put off by this recommendation, but his work on Spinoza covers a lot of ground an is very readable.

nologic01 3y ago
This totally makes sense. The axiomatic derivation and "mathematical" presentation may have had good motivation at the time (maybe to intimidate critics?) but it seems to raise the bar unnecessarily high given this is philosophical text, not rigorous mathematics. Reading it sequentially and taking the mathematical form seriously makes it subject to a "propagation of errors" type pathology [1] (the unease that the next statement simply follows logically from the previous ones keeps growing). In the end what is interesting is to understand his philosophical world view which no doubt had internal coherence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propagation_of_uncertainty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propagation_of_uncertainty