Spinoza · Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata · 1677

The geometry, checked

Spinoza wrote the Ethics as a dependency graph — definitions, axioms, and propositions whose every demonstration cites its premises. Three centuries later, that structure runs: the whole of Part I verified acyclic and grounded in your browser, necessity computed on a one-world frame, and the therapy of the passions executed as belief revision.

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FROM THE FIVE-PART BOOK PASS · 119 ASSERTIONS · 0 ENGINE CHANGES

De Deo, as a picture

Every demonstration in Part I says what it rests on — "(by Prop. vii.)", "This is clear from Deff. iii. and v." Those citations, extracted mechanically from the book pass's committed text (Elwes translation, Project Gutenberg #3800), form the 102-edge graph below. Read it top-down: definitions and axioms across the top, each proposition hanging from its premises, and the two deepest theorems of the book — p32 (will is not free) and p33 (things could not have been otherwise) — at the very bottom, ten steps from the foundations. The green nodes are the four pillars everything leans on: the definition of substance (d3), God's existence (p11), "all is in God" (p15), and p16. And two axioms hang in the corner, cited by nothing.

ethics_p1 a1 a1 a3 a3 a4 a4 a5 a5 a6 a6 d1 d1 d2 d2 d3 d3 d4 d4 d5 d5 d6 d6 d7 d7 d8 d8 p1 p1 p1->d3 p1->d5 p10 p10 p10->d3 p10->d4 p11 p11 p11->a1 p11->d6 p2 p2 p11->p2 p7 p7 p11->p7 p12 p12 p12->d4 p12->p10 p12->p2 p5 p5 p12->p5 p6 p6 p12->p6 p12->p7 p8 p8 p12->p8 p13 p13 p13->p11 p13->p5 p13->p7 p14 p14 p14->d6 p14->p11 p14->p5 p15 p15 p15->a1 p15->d3 p15->d5 p15->p14 p16 p16 p16->d6 p17 p17 p17->p15 p17->p16 p18 p18 p18->p14 p18->p15 p18->p16 p19 p19 p19->d4 p19->d6 p19->d8 p19->p11 p19->p7 p2->d3 p20 p20 p20->d8 p20->p19 p21 p21 p21->d2 p21->p11 p21->p20 p22 p22 p22->p21 p23 p23 p23->d5 p23->d8 p23->p15 p23->p21 p23->p22 p24 p24 p24->d1 p25 p25 p25->a4 p25->p15 p26 p26 p26->p16 p26->p25 p27 p27 p27->a3 p28 p28 p28->a1 p28->d3 p28->d5 p28->p21 p28->p24 p28->p26 p29 p29 p29->p11 p29->p15 p29->p16 p29->p24 p29->p26 p29->p27 p3 p3 p3->a4 p3->a5 p30 p30 p30->a6 p30->p14 p30->p15 p31 p31 p31->d5 p31->d6 p31->p15 p32 p32 p32->d7 p32->p23 p32->p28 p33 p33 p33->p11 p33->p14 p33->p16 p33->p29 p34 p34 p34->p11 p34->p16 p35 p35 p35->p34 p36 p36 p36->p16 p36->p25 p36->p34 p4 p4 p4->a1 p4->a4 p4->d3 p4->d5 p5->d3 p5->d6 p5->p1 p5->p4 p6->p2 p6->p3 p7->p6 p8->d2 p8->p5 p8->p7 p9 p9 p9->d4 a2 a2 (never cited) a7 a7 (never cited)

Part I, complete. □ definitions d1–d8 · □ axioms a1–a7 · ○ the in-degree-7 pillars · ○ the depth-10 theorems · dashed = never cited in any demonstration. Arrows point from each proposition to what its proof cites.

E1 DEF. 3, 5, 6 · AXIOM 1

The first axiom is a partition

"Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else."— Ethics I, axiom 1 (Elwes tr.)

That is not prose here — it is a partition of being, with substance (def. 3: "in itself") and mode (def. 5: "in something else") hanging off its two cells. The tableau then derives the exclusions Spinoza needs: nothing can be both substance and mode, and a substance-in-another is incoherent, not merely undeclared.

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E1 PROP. 1–36 · THE HEADLINE

All of Part I, checked in one run

The card below carries the entire demonstrative skeleton of Part I — all 102 citation edges — plus one recursive rule pair for the closure. What Spinoza asserted by construction, the engine now checks: the geometric order is acyclic, every proposition bottoms out in definitions and axioms, axioms 2 and 7 are never used (an observation from the formalization literature — Jarrett 1978 — here a set difference), and the deepest theorems are the denial of free will and necessitarianism.

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E1 PROP. 29, 33, 35

Necessity: the frame has one world

"Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained."— Ethics I, prop. 33

Where Leibniz's God surveys infinitely many possible worlds, Spinoza's universe is the only world. On a reflexive single-world frame the modalities collapse — □p ≡ p ≡ ◇p — so nothing is contingent (E1p29) and whatever is possible necessarily exists (E1p35). Necessitarianism is a fact about the frame.

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E2 PROP. 40 NOTE 2, PROP. 41

Three roads to the number six

Spinoza's own example: given 1, 2, 3, find the fourth proportional. The tradesman answers by a rule "received from a master without any proof" — a bare datum. Reason derives it through Euclid VII.19 — a theorem. Intuition sees 6 at once. Same answer, three epistemic grades — and E2p41 ("knowledge of the first kind is the only source of falsity") becomes the behavior of cancel: the rote answer withdraws; the theorem refuses.

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E3 PROP. 17 · FLUCTUATIO ANIMI

Loving and hating the same thing

Spinoza calls it vacillation of spirit: contrary affects toward one object. That is not an error to purge but a state to represent — the Belnap knowledge-join takes the love-report and the hate-report to the glut ⊤⊥ᵇ, and the glut is designated: the vacillating mind still acts. Ambivalence without explosion.

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E5 PROP. 3 · THE REMEDY

The therapy of the passions

"An emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be a passion, as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof."— Ethics V, prop. 3

A passion is a conjecture of the mind — an affect derived defeasibly from a confused idea. Form the clear idea, retract the confused premise, and the passion lifts with its ground; what replaces it is an action of the mind that refuses defeat. Spinoza's remedy is a truth-maintenance system.

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E5 PROP. 42 · THE LAST PROPOSITION

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue

…but virtue itself: not two things joined by payment — one state under two names. Coreference, not compensation. (And the value axis beneath this whole study — "good and bad indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves", E4 preface — is the same architecture as Tractatus 6.41: see the Tractatus study.)

blessedness.axOpen in Playground ↗

Go deeper

Six scripts, 119 assertions, all five parts — parallelism as graph isomorphism, mind and body as one thing under two designations, the 48 emotion definitions as a derivation tree — with the full Elwes text and an honest gap ledger beside the code.