{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "spinoza.emendation_en",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/spinoza/emendation-en/reference-section-0010/",
    "language": "en",
    "title": "Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, English Manifestation",
    "author": "Baruch Spinoza",
    "date": "c. 1661, unfinished",
    "summary": "Spinoza opens this unfinished treatise with a decision about life: leave uncertain goods to seek one capable of producing stable joy. He then examines modes of perception and the method by which understanding forms true ideas.",
    "learning": "Compare modes of perception, understand the true idea as a methodological starting point, and respect the treatise’s incompletion in reconstruction.",
    "long_summary": "Wealth, honour, and pleasure are assessed through the dependence and distraction they can produce. Inquiry distinguishes hearsay, random experience, reasoning, and intuitive grasp, then seeks a method advancing from a true idea rather than requiring an infinite series of tools.\n\nThe text breaks off during its development of definition and investigative order. This English manifestation makes the argument accessible without filling the gap. Comparison with the Ethics assists interpretation but does not turn the sketch into a finished version of the system.",
    "historical_context": "The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.",
    "material_world_label": "Europe and the Atlantic, 15th-17th centuries",
    "material_world": {
        "technology": "Printing, artillery, clocks, ocean-going sail, and navigational instruments change the scale of states, trade, and travel.",
        "science": "Instrumented observation, calculation, anatomy, and astronomy gradually challenge inherited frameworks. Practice remains mixed with ancient authority.",
        "medicine": "Dissection, surgery, plants, and pharmacopoeias expand, but infection, pain, and epidemics remain poorly controlled.",
        "transport": "Walking, horses, coaches, river boats, and great sailing ships. Crossing an ocean takes weeks or months and remains dangerous.",
        "agriculture": "Grain, livestock, and gardens predominate; Atlantic exchange moves maize, potatoes, tomatoes, sugar, and animals with major consequences.",
        "communication": "Printed books, broadsheets, letters, and regular posts speed circulation without making it instant.",
        "clothing": "Doublets, breeches, structured dresses, caps, ruffs, and cloaks use wool, linen, silk, and lace; rank strongly controls silhouette."
    },
    "material_world_scenes": [
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/19-1610-ce/world-01.webp",
            "title": "Technology, science, and care",
            "description": "Printing, artillery, clocks, ocean-going sail, and navigational instruments change the scale of states, trade, and travel. Instrumented observation, calculation, anatomy, and astronomy gradually challenge inherited frameworks. Practice remains mixed with ancient authority. Dissection, surgery, plants, and pharmacopoeias expand, but infection, pain, and epidemics remain poorly controlled."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/19-1610-ce/world-02.webp",
            "title": "Travel and communication",
            "description": "Walking, horses, coaches, river boats, and great sailing ships. Crossing an ocean takes weeks or months and remains dangerous. Printed books, broadsheets, letters, and regular posts speed circulation without making it instant."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/19-1610-ce/world-03.webp",
            "title": "Farming and food",
            "description": "Grain, livestock, and gardens predominate; Atlantic exchange moves maize, potatoes, tomatoes, sugar, and animals with major consequences."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/19-1610-ce/world-04.webp",
            "title": "Clothing, women and men",
            "description": "Doublets, breeches, structured dresses, caps, ruffs, and cloaks use wool, linen, silk, and lace; rank strongly controls silhouette."
        }
    ],
    "intellectual_tradition": {
        "id": "modern-philosophy",
        "label": "Modern and contemporary philosophy"
    },
    "period": {
        "id": "modern",
        "label": "Modern era"
    },
    "languages": [
        "en",
        "fr"
    ],
    "manifestations": [
        {
            "coverage": "complete",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/spinoza/emendation_en/representations/en.ndjson",
            "language": "en",
            "records": 44,
            "role": "complete_source_selection",
            "sha256": "dffee8c29ce0a2ac1d146c53369c37a47a2bd1255dd21f293510d696ecb61c4a",
            "source_id": "emendation_en"
        },
        {
            "coverage": "complete",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/spinoza/emendation_en/representations/ai-generated/fr-gpt-5-6-sol-corpus-passage-translation-v1.ndjson",
            "generated_on": "2026-09-11",
            "language": "fr",
            "model": "gpt-5.6-sol",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "prompt_version": "corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "provider": "codex_subscription",
            "records": 44,
            "role": "ai_generated_translation_non_official",
            "sha256": "4c699072bd45ad8140d5efca563fbc40997f08124577edf92bc3486b8374a9ef",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation"
        }
    ],
    "concepts": [
        {
            "id": "adequate_idea",
            "label": "Adequate idea"
        },
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul"
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family"
        },
        {
            "id": "knowledge",
            "label": "Knowledge"
        },
        {
            "id": "law",
            "label": "Law"
        },
        {
            "id": "nature",
            "label": "Nature"
        },
        {
            "id": "necessity",
            "label": "Necessity"
        },
        {
            "id": "psychological_complex",
            "label": "Psychological complex"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "id": "truth",
            "label": "Truth"
        },
        {
            "id": "wisdom",
            "label": "Wisdom"
        }
    ],
    "source_work_ids": [
        "spinoza.emendation_en"
    ],
    "passages": 44,
    "word_count": 14176,
    "word_counts_by_language": {
        "en": 14176,
        "fr": 13799
    },
    "editorial_status": "gpt_5_6_semantic_draft_v1",
    "structure": {
        "citation_scheme": "source-section-v1",
        "kind": "native",
        "levels": [
            {
                "key": "section",
                "label_fr": "Section",
                "label_en": "Section"
            }
        ],
        "leaf_fr": "Section",
        "leaf_en": "Section"
    },
    "canonical_passage_id": "passage:spinoza.emendation_en:section-0010",
    "canonical_ref": "section-0010",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "Now that we know what kind of knowledge is necessary for us, we must indicate the\nway and the method whereby we may gain the said knowledge concerning the things\nneedful to be known. In order to accomplish this, we must first take care not to\ncommit ourselves to a search, going back to infinity—that is, in order to discover the\nbest method for finding out the truth, there is no need of another method to discover\nsuch method; nor of a third method for discovering the second, and so on to infinity.\nBy such proceedings, we should never arrive at the knowledge of the truth, or, indeed,\nat any knowledge at all. The matter stands on the same footing as the making of\nmaterial tools, which might be argued about in a similar way. For, in order to work\niron, a hammer is needed, and the hammer cannot be forthcoming unless it has been\nmade; but, in order to make it, there was need of another hammer and other tools, and\nso on to infinity. We might thus vainly endeavour to prove that men have no power of\nworking iron. But as men at first made use of the instruments supplied by nature to\naccomplish very easy pieces of workmanship, laboriously and imperfectly, and then,\nwhen these were finished, wrought other things more difficult with less labour and\ngreater perfection; and so gradually mounted from the simplest operations to the\nmaking of tools, and from the making of tools to the making of more complex tools,\nand fresh feats of workmanship, till they arrived at making, with small expenditure of\nlabour, the vast number of complicated mechanisms which they now possess. So, in\nlike manner, the intellect, by its native strength,1 makes for itself intellectual\ninstruments, whereby it acquires strength for performing other intellectual\noperations,2 and from these operations gets again fresh instruments, or the power of\npushing its investigations further, and thus gradually proceeds till it reaches the\nsummit of wisdom.",
            "translator": "R. H. M. Elwes",
            "source_id": "source-1",
            "translation_type": "historical_translation"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "Maintenant que nous savons quel genre de connaissance nous est nécessaire, nous devons indiquer la voie et la méthode par lesquelles nous pouvons acquérir cette connaissance au sujet des choses qu’il est nécessaire de connaître. Pour y parvenir, nous devons d’abord veiller à ne pas nous engager dans une recherche qui remonte à l’infini. En effet, pour découvrir la meilleure méthode de recherche de la vérité, nul besoin d’une autre méthode permettant de découvrir cette méthode, ni d’une troisième méthode pour découvrir la seconde, et ainsi à l’infini. En procédant ainsi, nous ne parviendrions jamais à la connaissance de la vérité, ni même à aucune connaissance. Il en va ici comme de la fabrication des outils matériels, au sujet de laquelle on pourrait raisonner de manière analogue. Pour travailler le fer, il faut un marteau, et ce marteau ne peut être disponible sans avoir été fabriqué. Mais sa fabrication exigeait un autre marteau et d’autres outils, et ainsi à l’infini. On pourrait ainsi s’efforcer vainement de prouver que les hommes n’ont aucun pouvoir de travailler le fer. Mais les hommes se servirent d’abord des instruments fournis par la nature pour accomplir, laborieusement et imparfaitement, des ouvrages très faciles. Ceux-ci achevés, ils produisirent d’autres choses plus difficiles avec moins de travail et une plus grande perfection. Ils s’élevèrent ainsi graduellement des opérations les plus simples à la fabrication des outils, puis de la fabrication des outils à celle d’outils plus complexes et à de nouveaux ouvrages, jusqu’à parvenir à produire, avec une faible dépense de travail, le grand nombre de mécanismes compliqués qu’ils possèdent aujourd’hui. De même, l’entendement se forge par sa force native1 des instruments intellectuels qui lui donnent la force d’accomplir d’autres opérations intellectuelles.2 De ces opérations, il tire à nouveau de nouveaux instruments, autrement dit le pouvoir de pousser plus loin ses recherches, et il progresse ainsi graduellement jusqu’à atteindre le sommet de la sagesse.",
            "translator": "Codex gpt-5.6-sol",
            "edition": "Prokopton42 non-official AI translation, 2026-09-11",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "generation_model": "gpt-5.6-sol"
        }
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    "content_checksum": "844aa138fc9ac37f1d0a7cce530a3f40243dec432aeb32593c76ef2caeb2f404"
}