One of the main items in Spinoza's philosophy is the non-existence of evil in nature. A thing may be good or bad for other finite beings or may be imagined as evil in itself. A scientific analysis, however, forbids us to attribute an ontological value to the moral concepts originating from our comparison of things. The rather extended correspondence between Spinoza and the Calvinistic merchant Willem van Blijenbergh gives us a lively access to all the ins and outs of the (...) traditional philosophical problem of evil. The four letters in which Spinoza reacts to the questions and objections of Christian dogmatics, constitute nothing less than a full treatise on the subject. Never before this part of the correspondence has been the object of a separate study. The result is not only a clarification of the systematic relevance of Spinoza's theory. Research also throws light on the principles of his reasoning and contributes to a better understanding of his hermeneutics as well as of his attitude towards Cartesianism. (shrink)