Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding

The following pages offer, for the first time in English, a translation of Spinoza's Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione which aims to render Spinoza's views as literally as possible; the aim is accuracy rather than elegance. In addition to this new translation itself, I have prepared an extensive commentary on textual problems posed, e.g., by discrepancies between the original Latin and the original Dutch editions of the treatise, or by the difficulties of rendering certain of Spinoza's phrases into English. There is also a relatively brief introduction, and a detailed index.