Q0058

Baruch Spinoza

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

God, or Nature.
Thinker Baruch Spinoza
School Modern Rationalism
Source Ethics I
Theme Nature
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Ethics I, within the tradition of Modern Rationalism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of nature, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Baruch Spinoza's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Baruch Spinoza. (n.d.). God, or Nature. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0058

MLA: Baruch Spinoza. “God, or Nature..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0058.

Chicago: Baruch Spinoza. “God, or Nature..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0058.

Same thinker

More from Baruch Spinoza

  1. A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
  2. Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
  3. It is of the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity.
  4. The true end of the state is in reality freedom.
  5. A free man thinks of nothing less than of death.

All quotations by Baruch Spinoza

Same theme

More on nature

  1. Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow.
  2. Nothing can be created from nothing by divine agency.
  3. [In the state of nature, the life of man is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
  4. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
  5. The world is my representation.

Browse the nature theme