Concepts
Twenty terms from Spinoza's technical vocabulary
Each concept links to occurrences in the text and notes where Elwes's English diverges from the technical Latin sense.
Deus
Substance constituted by infinite attributes, each expressing eternal and infinite essence.
Elwes: God
affectus
Modifications of the body whereby its power of acting is increased or diminished, together with the ideas of those modifications (E3D3).
Elwes: emotion / affection / passion
attributum
That which the intellect perceives of a substance as constituting its essence. Thought and extension are the two attributes Spinoza names; God has infinitely many.
Elwes: attribute
beatitudo
The intellectual love of God — the highest good and the reward of right understanding (E5).
Elwes: blessedness
causa sui
That whose essence involves existence — applied by Spinoza only to substance.
Elwes: self-caused / cause of itself
conatus
The striving by which each thing endeavours to persevere in its own being — for Spinoza, identical with the thing's actual essence.
Elwes: endeavour / striving
corpus
A mode that expresses, in a definite manner, God's essence in so far as he is considered as an extended thing (E2D1).
Elwes: body
cupiditas
Appetite together with consciousness thereof — the technical foundation of all human striving.
Elwes: desire
essentia
What a thing is — its defining nature. For Spinoza, essentia is what an idea expresses (E2D2) and what conatus is identical with (E3P7).
Elwes: essence / essentiality
existentia
That a thing is. In Spinoza, substance's existence follows from its essence alone (E1D1, E1P7, E1P11).
Elwes: existence
idea
A mental conception formed by the mind as a thinking thing (E2D3).
Elwes: idea
laetitia
The passion by which the mind passes to a state of greater perfection (E3DA2).
Elwes: pleasure / joy
libertas
Acting from the necessity of one's own nature — not freedom-of-indifference but freedom-from-passion (E1D7, E5).
Elwes: freedom / liberty
mens
The actually-existing idea of an actually-existing thing — for humans, the idea of the body.
Elwes: mind
modus
An affection of substance — that which is in another, by which it is also conceived.
Elwes: mode
natura naturans
Substance considered as cause: God under the attributes of eternal and infinite essence (E1P29S).
Elwes: Natura naturans
natura naturata
All that follows from the necessity of God's nature, considered as effects (E1P29S).
Elwes: Natura naturata
ratio
Reason as the second kind of cognition (E2P40S2), distinct from imagination and intuition.
Elwes: reason / kind of knowledge / proportion
servitus
Human powerlessness in the face of the passions; the inability to moderate emotion by reason (E4Pref).
Elwes: bondage
substantia
That which is in itself and is conceived through itself. For Spinoza there is only one substance, identified with God or Nature.
Elwes: substance
tristitia
The passion by which the mind passes to a state of lesser perfection.
Elwes: pain / sorrow
virtus
Power: human virtue is the power of acting from the laws of one's own nature alone (E4D8).
Elwes: virtue / power