This A-to-Z reference volume presents definitions, propositions, and explanations of Spinoza’s thought—all in the philosopher’s own words. The seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza remains one of the most significant thinkers of our time. Yet his works, written in a rigidly geometric form of argumentation, are notoriously difficult to navigate. Expertly edited by Dagobert D. Runes, Spinoza Dictionary presents an alphabetical selection of Spinoza’s own writings, making essential definitions, concepts, and passages immediately accessible. In his introduction, Runes sheds new light on Spinoza’s private, political, and religious life, and exposes and explains the dramatic story of his apostasy. If the reader despairs of finding his way through Spinoza’s works, here he will find a reliable guide speaking in Spinoza’s own words. “The grand ideas of Spinoza’s Ethics are brought out clearly in this book: not less than the heroic illusions of this great and passionate man.” —Albert Einstein

Metaphysics is what Aristotle described as 'the First Philosophy' or 'first science,' a comprehensive inquiry into the ultimate nature of reality. As such, metaphysics consists of a systematic study of the more general categories of being and of the more general ways of relating entities. The Historical Dictionary of Metaphysics focuses on metaphysics in Western philosophy, the metaphysical tradition that developed under the influence of Greek philosophy, and especially Plato and Aristotle. It offers a comprehensive guide to the many facets of metaphysics through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries on concepts, people, works, and technical terms. This volume is an invaluable resource for student and scholar alike.

Spinoza's theoretical philosophy is one of the most radical attempts to construct a pure ontology with a single infinite substance. This book, which presents Spinoza's main ideas in dictionary form, has as its subject the opposition between ethics and morality, and the link between ethical and ontological propositions. His ethics is an ethology, rather than a moral science. Attention has been drawn to Spinoza by deep ecologists such as Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher; and this reading of Spinoza by Deleuze lends itself to a radical ecological ethic. As Robert Hurley says in his introduction, "Deleuze opens us to the idea that the elements of the different individuals we compose may be nonhuman within us. One wonders, finally, whether Man might be defined as a territory, a set of boundaries, a limit on existence." Gilles Deleuze, known for his inquiries into desire, language, politics, and power, finds a kinship between Spinoza and Nietzsche. He writes, ""Spinoza did not believe in hope or even in courage; he believed only in joy and in vision . . . he more than any other gave me the feeling of a gust of air from behind each time I read him, of a witch's broom that he makes one mount. Gilles Deleuze was a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris at Vincennes. Robert Hurley is the translator of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality.