Renati des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I, & II, More Geometrico demonstratae. Accesserunt Cogitata Metaphysica, In quibus difficiliores, quaetam in parte Metaphysices generali, quàm speciali occurrunt, quaestiones brevitur explicantur. - [REFORMATION OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY] by SPINOZA, BENEDICTUS de - 1663

1663. Amsterdam, Apud Johannem Riewerts, 1663. Small 4to. Orig. blank paper boards, most of backstrip lacking and wear to extremities, but tight. Woodcut illustr. to title-page and several woodcut mathematical and physical illustrations throughout. Annotations to both free end-paper. Some minor brownspotting and even light browning to leaves. A very nice and attractive copy. (16), 140 pp. (being title-page, Preface w. Errata, Index, Ad Librum, the main text (pp. 1- 90) and the Appendix, being the Cogitata Metaphysica w. its own half-title, (pp. (91-140). The rare first edition of Spinoza's first published work, his critical exposition of Descartes's "Principles of Philosophy", which was the only work that he published under his own name in his life-time.In 1660 Spinoza began writing a work on God, man and the happiness of man. This treatise is the first known work by the great philosopher. The book was not published in his life-time, though, and it is now only known through a Dutch translation (it was originally written in Latin), which was not published until 1862, and the present work on Descartes' philosophy ("Descartes' Principles of Philosophy. Proven by the Geometrical Method") thus constitutes his first published work; it is also the only work that he published which bears his name on the title-page, all of his other works were published anonymously. An expanded Dutch version of the work appeared in 1664.Benedictus Spinoza is one of the most important thinkers of early modern philosophy and all of his works are of groundbreaking character. His name was actually Baruch Espinoza, but he Latinized his name in 1657 after having been expelled from the Jewish community; his philosophical and scientific studies had caused him to remove himself further and further away from the Jewish comprehension of God, he rejected the idea that the Jewish people were God's chosen people, and he refused to live by the laws and rules of the Jewish religion. It is also after this event that Spinoza chooses to become a lens-cutter, a toughly required skill, which not only took good craftsmanship but also great mathematical knowledge; Spinoza became one of the greatest lens-cutters of his time, and his lenses were in demand all over Europe. In 1660 Spinoza moves from Amsterdam to Rijnsburg, where he begins working on his first philosophical work, his "Short Treatise on God, Man and Human Welfare", which is sort of a preliminary study for his "Ethica". He now also works on a guiding work for those who seek to apprehend God, i.e. the highest good, entitled "Tractatus de intellectus emendatione". The work was never finished, though, and now he begins working on the work that is going to constitute his debut, his exposition of Descartes' "Principia", which had been published in 1644. Spinoza's work was printed in 1663, and it immediately became very popular and widely read, causing vast discussions of his philosophy and his view on Descartes throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This highly important work, the only to be published under Spinoza's own name in his life-time, stands at the centre of the understanding of the entire trajectory of Spinoza's philosophical career. It is likely, based on the evidence of contemporary Dutch thinkers, that Spinoza's move to Rijnsberg in the summer of 1661 was prompted by a wish to be nearer to the university and the many heated debates on Descartes that famously took place there at the time and thus the polemic philosophical centre of the Netherlands. It has now also been recognized that Spinoza here attracted numerous students who came to him to take lessons in geometry and Cartesian philosophy, and it is very likely that it was in connection with this that he wrote his famous work on Descartes' "Principia". The work came to be understood as more than a textbook, though. It evoked numerous heated and dangerous debates on the real intention of the great thinker, who later became so influential. Did Spinoza really set out to explain Descartes' system and provide an even more solid foundation for Descartes' philosophy, or did he in fact hide behind that great man and instead, in reality, expound his own philosophy by subtly perverting Descartes' thought and in his disguise expound something that went directly against the fundamental thought of the "Principia"? Many great thinkers of the time thought so, e.g. Steno, Bontekoe, and Baumgarten; Bontekoe for instance states in a letter: "to mix his diabolical concepts among those of Descartes and coax the Cartesians to accept them the more easily, and they, taking him to be a true Cartesian, often acknowledge these as being authentic Cartesian ideas when in fact they are not, being concepts which on the contrary besmirch that philosophy, obscure and destroy it and often without anyone noticing, overthrow it. One sees all this from the work's foul preface, and from the Cogitata Metaphysica which he appended to it. Indeed, in the preface, Spinoza has the effrontery to assert not only that he had had to deal with things in that book according to Descartes' opinion, but that he had gained insight into still higher principia whereby he can provide other and better explanations of things than does Descartes" ("Brief Aen Johan Frederik Swetzer").Whatever may be concluded as to the real intentions of Spinoza, it can safely be said that "there is far more (in the "Principiorum Philosophiae" and the appendix "Cogita metaphysics") than a simple summary of Cartesian philosophy, and that these works are of considerable value for understanding Spinoza's own development." (Barbone and Rice, Introduction to the English Translation, p. XXI). Until recent times, 19th and 20th century scholarship in general has treated the present work as being merely an exposition of Descartes' philosophy, but extensive research has proven this to me much misguided. When the work first appeared, it was taken to be an authentically Cartesian work, and it counted as one of the most important and authoritative commentaries on Descartes' philosophy. This, however, seems to be only part of the truth. Spinoza does not simply repeat Descartes' arguments and try to clarify the meaning of them, he seems to be doing something that has had far-reaching consequences for the understanding of Descartes and the philosophical development of the 17th and 18th centuries. It seems highly improbable that a thinker like Spinoza, though perhaps partly a Cartesian at the time, at the same time as working on his highly controversial "Ethica", should have written a clarification of the arguments of Descartes without commenting on them and without elaborating on them, merely placing them in a more satisfactory order; apart from that, the reading of the text and the many letters that were written between Spinoza and his fellow collaborators, clearly indicate that there is talk of some act of philosophical subversion of Descartes' thoughts and that Spinoza's own philosophy hides underneath the seemingly innocent exposition of Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy". This did not go unnoticed, however, and the work evoked great controversy. Nicolai Steno, for instance, was one of the first to accuse Spinoza, a friend of his, to work directly against the doctrines of Descartes. He saw the work as that of a materialist whose aim was to fundamentally reform Descartes' philosophy and destroy the "soul". Did Spinoza have these intentions, which seems probable, it does not take much to explain why he chose to conceal them, in a time of official suppression of books and imprisonment of the offending authors.The work thus constitutes one of the most important works of early modern philosophy, uniting the two greatest philosophical minds of that period, Descartes and Spinoza, showing Spinoza as the expounder and critic of Descartes and his main work as well as one of the most authoritative and important commentators on Descartes' philosophy, but also as one of the greatest and most radical thinkers in his own right. The present work provides us with testimony to the Cartesianism of Spinoza, perhaps the means by which he could inconspicuously spread his own philosophy and his own philosophical principles. As such, the work provides us with the earliest testimony to the radical thoughts that have made Spinoza one of the most criticized, admired, discussed, and banned philosophers of modern times. It is perhaps in this work we see the paving of the way towards the overthrow of the "true philosophy" of Descartes as well as all religion and truth. Through the high impact of Cartesianism, Spinozism came to grasp the philosophy of the centuries to follow."Baruch (or Benedictus) Spinoza is one of the most important philosophers-and certainly the most radical-of the early modern period. His thought combines a commitment to Cartesian metaphysical and epistemological principles with elements from ancient Stoicism and medieval Jewish rationalism into a nonetheless highly original system. His extremely naturalistic views on God, the world, the human being and knowledge serve to ground a moral philosophy centered on the control of the passions leading to virtue and happiness. They also lay the foundations for a strongly democratic political thought and a deep critique of the pretensions of Scripture and sectarian religion. Of all the philosophers of the seventeenth-century, perhaps none have more relevance today than Spinoza." (SEP)Van der Linde I:1.