Parallel Masterpieces

Abstract

Abstract Though Spinoza’s two masterpieces, the Ethics and the Tractatus theologico-politicus, were written for different audiences and for different purposes, they belong to one master plan—a coherent project of individual and collective liberation. This chapter develops two arguments. First it offers a detailed chronological reconstruction: Spinoza worked on the Ethics between 1662 and 1665 and again between 1669 and 1675; and on the TTP between 1665 and 1669. The second argument presents the hypothesis that the Ethics and the TTP are systematically coherent. This is set out by analysing a number of textual correspondences and divergences. Two cases are worked out in more detail: the notion of the model (exemplar) of a true life (identified with the free person in the Ethics and with God in the TTP); and the seeming tensions between God in the Ethics and the seven tenets of the universal faith in the TTP. The key is the definition of faith (TTP ch. 14).