As a locus for philosophy i.e. asking questions with no possible final answer I find Spinoza a great starting point for (modern western) philosophy. A distinct

As a locus for philosophy i.e. asking questions with no possible final answer I find Spinoza a great starting point for (modern western) philosophy. A distinction needs to be made between his later reception (18th century to now) and his influence during his times in the 17th century. His later reception is much charaterized by talking/writing about his works in terms of influence. As with other works (Newtons's Principia, Kant's Critique or Wittgenstein's Tractatus come to mind) with some inital investment required by the reader very few actually read his works in its whole context; e.g. Nietzsche probably only read an introduction to Spinoza's philosophy by Kuno Fischer [0]. Spinoza's work (especially Ethics) can be seen as systematic dismantlement of the all pervading scholastic thinking of his time which already suffered heavy losses by prominent brilliant minds as Francis Bacon ("Empiricism") or Descartes' ("Rationalism"). Exceptional in the Classics he was casting his radical thinking in Ethics into the form of Euclid's "Elements"; back then - arguably the most accomplished kind of reasoning: strictly deducting from evident truths (axioms). [1] At the time the impression of someone reading the forbidden "Ethics" must have been something like: throwing a half-assed Cartesian Dualism in its own black hole and emerge with an undeniable singularity, later coined by Raphson as "Pantheism". This vantage point totally freed from any remnants of scholastic shackles allowed for a livley discourse e.g. the pantheism controversy [2] in Germany about a century later and I guess also a deeper appreciation for Eastern philosophy (see: Schopenhauer). Its influence on psychoanalysis is not as widely covered, this book I find an accessible introduction to Spinoza in this regard [3]. [0]https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/niet.2012.41.1.308/html?lang=en https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/niet.2012.41.... [1]humanas actiones atque appetitus considerabo perinde ac si quæstio de lineis, planis aut de corporibus esset. ("I will consider human actions and appetites just as if the question were about lines, planes or bodies.") https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/spinoza.ethica3.html https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/spinoza.ethica3.html [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism_controversy [3]https://www.routledge.com/Clinical-Spinoza-Integrating-His-Philosophy-with-Contemporary-Therapeutic/Miller/p/book/9781032159348 https://www.routledge.com/Clinical-Spinoza-Integrating-His-P...