In this course, I'm delighted to present the philosophy of Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), the famous 17th-century philosopher considered to be the father of rational Enlightenment philosophy.

Portrait of Spinoza

These courses are based on my two essays on the subject, "Spinoza's true religion" and "Bitcoin, the gospel of freedom", available in paper form either online or directly from my website, and digitally on Amazon Kindle.

The goal of this course is, first of all, to provide a simplified understanding of a philosophy that is often considered highly complex and inaccessible, despite the renewed interest it enjoys today.

Indeed, this philosophy allows us not only to question the meaning of things when everything goes wrong, which is generally what religion, philosophy and the human sciences are all about, but also, and perhaps mostly, to question ourselves when everything is going well.

When life smiles at us and we feel like we don't need to question ourselves, considering with a pride seen as illusory and slavish that our happiness, or success, would only come from our talent, work or supposedly free choices; in short, from our own free will, rather than from the determinism to which we are subjected.

In this way, we can make the link between this practical philosophy of freedom - or, as Spinoza puts it, "toward the means to achieve it" - and the new technological world we're interested in here, crypto in general and Bitcoin in particular.

And particularly in its philosophical aspect, which makes us reflect precisely on the notion of freedom: the freedom to think, to express oneself, to respect privacy and, of course, in our case, the freedom to exchange.

First, I'll introduce you to Spinoza, his character, his social, religious and family background, and the historical context of the United Provinces where he lived.

Portrait of Spinoza

We will then see what this new rational philosophy is according to which "nothing exists in nature that cannot be explained without the exercise of reason".

It's the idea that we can only understand the world and human nature in terms of the causal link between things, according to which, an effect always has a cause, and this cause is itself the effect of another cause and so on, all the way back to the first cause, which we have no access to and which, according to Spinoza, is Nature.

Nature, in other words God, is the famous "Deus sive Natura" in Latin that illustrates the whole meaning of Spinozism.

We'll also take a look at Spinoza's two major works, starting with the Ethics, published posthumously in 1677, which focuses entirely on freedom and the need to liberate ourselves from the servitudes that confine us.

Then we'll look at the Traité théologico-Politique, published during his lifetime in 1670, which let us consider freedom from another angle: freedom of thought and belief. In other words, religious freedom, but above all political freedom.

Finally, we'll see why Spinozism is a Copernican revolution of ideas, and how it represents a new definition of the world and human nature, by studying the 3 fundamental illusions denounced by Spinoza: the illusion of free will, the illusion of final causes or finalism, and the theological illusion.

Thanks to the theory of affects developed in the manner of the geometers, "more geometrico", we will finally see how Spinoza offers us a practical method for freeing ourselves, or attempting to free ourselves, from the servitudes inherent in human nature and external passions. A rational mechanism which, to fight against ignorance, can be compared to the certainty that the three angles of a triangle always equal 180°, and will allow us to connect the spirit of the Enlightenment that resulted from it with the liberal currents of the 19th century or libertarianism of the 20th century, which are directly linked to the invention of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin.

We'll then understand that, among the many points in common between Spinozist concepts and this tool of freedom invented by Satoshi Nakamoto, the first is that, in both cases, if we are curious, well-intentioned, as it was said at the time, have "understanding", then we cannot help but adhere to it. And if we don't adhere to it, which would of course be our most absolute right since it's fundamental to respect the freedom to believe, or not to believe, then we'd be determined not to be able to, or not to want to, which amounts to the same thing.

And that's how we can understand that a religious fundamentalist, for example, will never be able to accept, or listen to the slightest Copernican thought such as Spinozism, just as a central banker will find it very difficult to accept Bitcoin.

Although, as you know, things are currently moving in the right direction.