The Essential Baruch Spinoza

Three philosophical works by the seventeenth-century Enlightenment thinker and author of Ethics.

How to Improve Your Mind

In this earlier work, Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza articulates his view that life is best lived with the supreme happiness of knowing God’s infinite love. By extension, all earthly pursuits—including money, fame, and sex—are mere distractions from the greater joy of the soul’s quietude.

Translated by the philosopher and founder of the Philosophical Library, Dagobert D. Runes. Runes also provides exclusive commentary and biographical notes.

The Road to Inner Freedom

Spinoza views the ability to experience rational love of God as the key to mastering the contradictory and violent human emotions.

The Book of God

The Book of God, one of Spinzoa’s earliest works, came to light only a hundred years ago in two slightly varying Dutch manuscripts. Its youthful author lived in turbulent times, when the Western world was torn by civil and religious strife, and bullies, bigots and pseudo-prophets vied for the ear of a fearful people. While Europe was in an uproar over the right church, Spinoza was seeking the right God. This book is the first known report of his findings.
Translated by Dr. A. Wolf from the Dutch [the author’s Tractatus de Deo et homine version] and edited and with an introduction by Dagobert D. Runes.