Philosophy Spinoza, Baruch: The Ethics HYPERLINKED. v1. 24 October 2009

[WT Sharpe]

The thing that stuck me most the first time I looked into The Ethics by Baruch Spinoza was his unusual writing style. To prove his points, he constantly refers the reader to other sections in his book, which often refer in turn to still other sections, et cetera. The entire book seems to be a kind of matrix that had been written neither forward nor backwards, but sideways. Reading the printed text is a chore that involves seemingly endless repetitive flipping between sections in order to follow his arguments.

Years ago, it occurred to me that Spinoza’s plan all along in writing his magnum opus was to wait until modern computers and hand-held e-readers were invented so he could properly hyperlink his work prior to publishing. Unfortunately, he died in 1766, a few years prior to the introduction of Windows computers, Macs, and Rocket eBooks and their descendants. After his death, someone — not realizing Spinoza’s intentions — went ahead and published The Ethics posthumously in 1677. Fortunately, I have now corrected that publisher’s mistake with this eBook edition..

This book contains well over a thousand hyper-links. When I first created the Word document on which this edition is based it took several months of intense work to complete. Now I offer this MOBI-formatted version to you, the lover of philosophy, free of charge and with no restrictions, as a labor of love.

This work is in the Canadian public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. It may still be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[Superlucky]

Thank you so much for this! I used calibre to convert it to epub and put on my PRS-505. The hyperlinks all work perfectly. Beautiful work.

[Patricia]

This is a really good conversion. The hyperlinking makes it so much easier to trace a proposition back to the axioms. As the original Latin title reminds us, Spinoza was aiming to apply the methods of Euclidean proof to philosophical enquiry, and this conversion makes the process much easier.

For completeness, I'll just mention some bibliographical details:

Author: Baruch [Benedict] Spinoza, 1632-1677
Title: Ethics [Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata]
Translated from the Latin by R. H. M. Elwes (1853-?]
1883.

Incidentally, are you the person who uploaded the Project Gutenberg version, Tom?

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Superlucky

Thank you so much for this! I used calibre to convert it to epub and put on my PRS-505. The hyperlinks all work perfectly. Beautiful work.

Thanks!

Feel free to upload the epub version if you like, especially since I have no way at present to do the conversion myself.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Patricia

This is a really good conversion. The hyperlinking makes it so much easier to trace a proposition back to the axioms. As the original Latin title reminds us, Spinoza was aiming to apply the methods of Euclidean proof to philosophical enquiry, and this conversion makes the process much easier.

For completeness, I'll just mention some bibliographical details:

Author: Baruch [Benedict] Spinoza, 1632-1677
Title: Ethics [Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata]
Translated from the Latin by R. H. M. Elwes (1853-?]
1883.

Incidentally, are you the person who uploaded the Project Gutenberg version, Tom?

Long story, but yes; the present complete PG version is "mine". I had originally downloaded the version they had at the time to use as the backbone of my present hyper-linked version. Long story short, I found a lot of typos in that version, which I proof-read against a paper version of the Elwes’ translation. After the conversion, I contacted Michael Hart (the Project's founder) and let him know what I had done, and offered him both the hyper-linked Word document (this was before the days of e-readers) and the corrected text version. If I recall correctly, at the time Project Gutenberg only offered text files. I believe mine was the only Word document available for download on the site.

The hyper-linked document I submitted to Project Gutenberg has long since vanished into limbo on their site (at least I can't find it). Mr. Hart gave me the credit for the current text version; although, in truth, I was only the proof-reader/editor. Someone else had already done the heavy lifting of scanning or typing the original text.

[Superlucky]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Feel free to upload the epub version if you like, especially since I have no way at present to do the conversion myself.

Sure. It might be good to move it to your first post on this thread.

This work is in the Canadian public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. It may still be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Superlucky

Sure. It might be good to move it to your first post on this thread.

Thanks big time! I started the following thread in the epub forum:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...457#post637457

[Superlucky]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Thanks big time! I started the following thread in the epub forum:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...457#post637457

Sorry, didn't think of that.