In this chapter, I propose that we now turn to Spinoza's major work, entitled Ethics, published posthumously in 1677.

Why posthumously? Well, because his ideas were revolutionary, or at least counterintuitive and disruptive, and therefore very dangerous at the time, even in the liberal context of the 17th-century United Provinces.

The Ethics is a work written in Latin in the manner of geometers, probably inspired by the scientific spirit of Galileo (1564-1642), the father, along with Kepler (1571-1630), of modern science, according to whom mathematics is the language of the universe. Spinoza develops his ideas in five main parts, using propositions accompanied by demonstrations, scolia, axioms and definitions.

As such, the Ethics is, in Spinoza's words, "a way of arriving at freedom or the paths leading to it", and is not really a book that can be read from cover to cover, but rather one that can be worked through by reading, for example, one proposition that refers to another, which in turn is understood through a third, and so on, in a perfectly coherent, rational and logical system.

I'd like to point out that when you open the Ethics, it's recommended to begin with the postfaces and appendices, these short sections are written by Spinoza in everyday language, so they're easy to understand and, in a way, a summary of his sometimes complex thought.

By subjecting the world around us to the "microscope of reason", Spinoza's work dissects human nature on the principle that the human being is not self-caused, i.e. that we did not ask to be born, neither here, nor in our time, nor with such physical or intellectual attribute.

And he says we are not above nature. We are not exempt from its laws, whether in body or mind. In other words, we are as much a part of nature as any other living being, animal or vegetable.

For Spinoza, all fields of human activity depend on the capacity of reason to understand the world in a perfectly coherent and determined system.

A world in which chance doesn't exist.

Everything that happens is "necessary" and the result of a cause, according to the idea that "what is and what happens, must be and must happen". This is absolute determinism.

But there are two points to keep in mind:

Firstly, if chance doesn't exist for Spinoza, it's because it's an event whose cause we don't know. But, of course, he says, just because we don't know the cause doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Secondly, there's absolutely no question of fatalism either, since nature is not endowed with intention. Lightning, for example, has no intention of punishing anyone, as one might think in the case of a tragedy. No, it simply expresses the essence of its own nature, which is to strike with lightning. To strike.

Spinoza thus defends the idea that reality, i.e. everyday life with both good and bad aspects, is perfectly intelligible, and that there is no phenomenon in nature that is not causally linked. Of course, this raises the question of evil, particularly absolute evil, which we'll look at a little later.

Finally, it's important to note that ethics is not morality.

According to Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), the famous professor of philosophy and Spinoza specialist, morality is a system of judgment useful for living in society. But it's a subjective system, since what's right here may be wrong elsewhere, and what's wrong today may be right later.

And rather than determining what is right or wrong, ethics establishes what is good or bad for our own nature and our capacity, says Spinoza, to preserve in our being. To be free. It is, therefore, a true ethology, that is to say, a science of ways of being, or, as Gilles Deleuze further explains, the art of making good encounters.

Or the art of making the right choices to extricate ourselves from the servitudes that confine us and because of which, according to Spinoza, men are often reduced to "seeing the best, approving it, and doing the worst".

In other words, "to fight for their servitude as if they were fighting for their freedom".