"This is a scholarly edition of Eliot's translation of Spinoza's Ethics, which today reads as a fresh, elegant and faithful rendering of the original Latin text. The editor's notes on the text will indicate Eliot's amendments to her manuscript, and discuss those translation decisions which differ from the standard modern English editions, and have a bearing on interpretive and philosophical issues. Eliot's translation of the Ethics is prefaced by an editorial essay which briefly introduces Spinoza's text in its 17th-century context and outlines its key philosophical claims, before discussing Eliot's interest in Spinoza, the circumstances of her translation of the Ethics, and the influence of Spinoza's ideas on her literary work. It presents Eliot's reading of Spinoza in the broader context of the 19th-century reception of his philosophy by Romantic writers, while tracing the distinctive ways in which Eliot drew on Spinoza's radical views on religion, ethics, and human psychology"--.

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• George Eliot’s Spinoza An Introduction
• A Note on the Text
• ETHICS by Benedict de Spinoza
• PART I. Of God
• PART II. On the Nature and Origin of the Mind
• PART III. On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions
• PART IV. On the Servitude of Man and on the Power of the Passions
• PART V. On the Power of the Intellect, or, On Human Liberty
• APPENDIX 1. The Wise Woman
• APPENDIX 2. Table of Emotions
• APPENDIX 3. List of George Eliot’s Revisions to Her Translation
• Notes
• Index of Names and Works
• Subject Index