Quotation
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“A free person thinks of death least of all things, and their wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.”
Baruch Spinoza · Rationalism · Early modern · written by 1675; published 1677
What does it mean?
Freedom, on the usual reading, is the power of acting from understanding, and a person living that way is occupied with life rather than with brooding on death. The free person is not someone uncaused. A rival reading hears a ban on grief, on wills, and on any thought of mortality, which the proposition does not say: it says that wisdom's meditation is on life, so that death is not the centre of gravity. The line is Ethics, part four, proposition 67, inside a book written in geometrical order.
Did Baruch Spinoza really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Standard English of Ethics, part four, proposition 67, in Edwin Curley's translation of the Latin. Spinoza wrote in geometrical order. A free person here means someone who lives by reason, not someone who is uncaused. The sentence is a translation.
Where it comes from
Ethics, part IV, proposition 67
Approximate date: written by 1675; published 1677.
How to use it
Notice whether the week in a care rota in Dundee is organised around avoiding every reminder of death, or around what a living day is for the person being looked after. He thinks wisdom has the second centre of gravity. Writing a will, or sitting with someone who is dying, is not a failure of the proposition; Making dread the only plan is closer to what he is setting aside.
A mindset reading
The sentence is a claim about the centre of a rational life, not a rule against mourning or against practical preparation. A free person, in his terms, is led by adequate ideas rather than jerked about by passions. Quoting it at a funeral as if sorrow were a philosophical mistake uses the line against the life it praises.
Understand the philosophy
In the Ethics a free person is not outside nature, because freedom is necessity understood rather than an escape from causes. The key term is the free person, someone who lives by reason, contrasted with bondage to passions that follow from inadequate ideas. Part four places this proposition among the prescriptions of reason. Edwin Curley's English is the translation this library follows for the Latin.
- death
- freedom
- meaning
FAQ
What does it mean?
Freedom, on the usual reading, is the power of acting from understanding, and a person living that way is occupied with life rather than with brooding on death. The free person is not someone uncaused. A rival reading hears a ban on grief, on wills, and on any thought of mortality, which the proposition does not say: it says that wisdom's meditation is on life, so that death is not the centre of gravity. The line is Ethics, part four, proposition 67, inside a book written in geometrical order.
Did Baruch Spinoza really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Standard English of Ethics, part four, proposition 67, in Edwin Curley's translation of the Latin. Spinoza wrote in geometrical order. A free person here means someone who lives by reason, not someone who is uncaused. The sentence is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Ethics, part IV, proposition 67 Approximate date: written by 1675; published 1677.