Afterword to Spinoza: Journal of an Emendation

What is it about?

This text is the final chapter of Spinoza: Journal of an Emendation. Spinoza’s work advises to emend our ways of thinking and bodying. “To emend” means to shift perspectives. This final chapter summarizes this effort of emendation undertaken in this journal, surveying all aspects of this shift in thinking and bodying. In the end, an emendation is nothing more than the process of tirelessly evaluating what is assumed acquired and/or emotionally secure. An emendation is thereby an act of critical reflection that cannot happen otherwise. This is no wisdom. This is just an acknowledgment that the emendation of body and mind is nothing more than the fall of the last breath, the fall of the last thought. Realising this fall is what ultimately can only make Spinoza happy when he said that his supreme happiness would be to persuade as many people as possible to also undertake such an emendation, so that their understanding and desire entirely accords with his own. This journal testifies to this effort to accord with Spinoza’s project and to join him in this supreme happiness.

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Photo by Giuseppe Mondì on Unsplash

Photo by Giuseppe Mondì on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This book is a genre-defying journal / philosophical essay exploring Spinoza’s emendation. It challenges contemporary readings of Spinoza’s views on nature and proposes a radically new interpretation of Spinoza’s ideas on time and eternity. This book also explores his 17th century texts through a contemporary life experience instead of neutrally explaining them.

Perspectives