In the Theological Political Treatise (TTP), Spinoza posits that “the goal of Philosophy is nothing but the Truth” (G III/179). This characterization is completed by the first pages of the Treatise of Emendation of the Intellect (TdIE) in which Spinoza presents his own motives for taking recourse to philosophical inquiry. In these pages, Spinoza states that the inquiry into the question of whether there exists a true good was brought about by his experience of a sense of futility related to most ordinary life events. This experience made him ask whether there was a good which, in itself, manages to affect the spirit and which would give him “the greatest joy, to eternity” in a consistent way (G II/5). The need of the search for the truth was, then, imposed on him as a result of what we could call a life experience.
But the desire to find the true good implied a complete change in his way of living. He had to give up the pursuit of what people generally associate with highest goods:...
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Solé, M.J. (2018). Spinoza’s Ethics Teachings. In: Peters, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_616-3
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