{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "spinoza.letters_en",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/spinoza/letters-en/reference-section-0002/",
    "language": "en",
    "title": "Spinoza’s Correspondence: Spinoza-Authored Letters, English Manifestation",
    "author": "Baruch Spinoza",
    "date": "surviving correspondence, 1661-1676",
    "summary": "These letters written by Spinoza answer questions about God, infinity, freedom, the Bible, optics, and works in progress. Epistolary form reveals thought adjusted to particular correspondents rather than a continuous treatise.",
    "learning": "Distinguish Spinoza’s voice from correspondents, contextualize a reply, and compare epistolary formulation cautiously with published work.",
    "long_summary": "Spinoza clarifies a definition, refuses an objection, recommends an experiment, or explains disagreement with a friend. Correspondence connects metaphysics, science, and political caution while showing concepts before or after published formulation.\n\nThis projection preserves Spinoza’s letters and should not assign correspondents’ questions to him. Absent addressees, documentary loss, and translation limit context. A familiar or polemical sentence does not automatically have the status of a proposition demonstrated in the Ethics.",
    "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/letters_en/representations/en.ndjson",
            "language": "en",
            "records": 114,
            "role": "complete_source_selection",
            "sha256": "cc2ed3e9377f16911b0e73279be0227e741c3146b54e9728d6041feb73311fee",
            "source_id": "letters_en"
        },
        {
            "coverage": "complete",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/spinoza/letters_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": 114,
            "role": "ai_generated_translation_non_official",
            "sha256": "4d6830a619437164f74de4b6cb82dadafb5f31b4f142c4d65d146a670e176543",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation"
        }
    ],
    "concepts": [
        {
            "id": "attribute",
            "label": "Attribute"
        },
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul"
        },
        {
            "id": "education",
            "label": "Education"
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family"
        },
        {
            "id": "freedom",
            "label": "Freedom"
        },
        {
            "id": "god",
            "label": "God"
        },
        {
            "id": "jedi_training",
            "label": "Jedi training"
        },
        {
            "id": "judgment",
            "label": "Judgment"
        },
        {
            "id": "knowledge",
            "label": "Knowledge"
        },
        {
            "id": "messiah",
            "label": "Messiah"
        },
        {
            "id": "mindfulness",
            "label": "Mindfulness"
        },
        {
            "id": "mode",
            "label": "Mode"
        },
        {
            "id": "nature",
            "label": "Nature"
        },
        {
            "id": "necessity",
            "label": "Necessity"
        },
        {
            "id": "philosophical_training",
            "label": "Philosophical training"
        },
        {
            "id": "prudent_choice",
            "label": "Prudent choice of pleasures"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "id": "substance",
            "label": "Substance"
        },
        {
            "id": "time",
            "label": "Time"
        }
    ],
    "source_work_ids": [
        "spinoza.letters_en"
    ],
    "passages": 114,
    "word_count": 34964,
    "word_counts_by_language": {
        "en": 34964,
        "fr": 34642
    },
    "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.letters_en:section-0002",
    "canonical_ref": "section-0002",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "That the definition above given of God is true appears from the fact, that by God we\nmean a Being supremely perfect and absolutely infinite. That such a Being exists may\neasily be proved from the definition; but as this is not the place for such proof, I will\npass it over. What I am bound here to prove, in order to satisfy the first inquiry of my\ndistinguished questioner, are the following consequences; first, that in the universe\nthere cannot exist two substances without their differing utterly in essence; secondly,\nthat substance cannot be produced or created—existence pertains to its actual essence;\nthirdly, that all substance must be infinite or supremely perfect after its kind.\n\nWhen these points have been demonstrated, my distinguished questioner will readily\nperceive my drift, if he reflects at the same time on the definition of God. In order to\nprove them clearly and briefly, I can think of nothing better than to submit them to the\nbar of your judgment proved in the geometrical method.1 I therefore enclose them\nseparately and await your verdict upon them.\n\nAgain, you ask me what errors I detect in the Cartesian and Baconian philosophies. It\nis not my custom to expose the errors of others, nevertheless I will yield to your\nrequest. The first and the greatest error is, that these philosophers have strayed so far\nfrom the knowledge of the first cause and origin of all things; the second is, that they\ndid not know the true nature of the human mind; the third, that they never grasped the\ntrue cause of error. The necessity for correct knowledge on these three points can only\nbe ignored by persons completely devoid of learning and training.",
            "translator": "R. H. M. Elwes",
            "source_id": "source-1",
            "translation_type": "historical_translation"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "Que la définition de Dieu donnée ci-dessus soit vraie ressort du fait que, par Dieu, nous entendons un Être suprêmement parfait et absolument infini. On peut aisément prouver par cette définition qu'un tel Être existe, mais, comme ce n'est pas ici le lieu d'une telle démonstration, je la laisserai de côté. Ce que je suis tenu de prouver ici, afin de satisfaire à la première question de mon distingué interlocuteur, ce sont les conséquences suivantes : premièrement, qu'il ne peut exister dans l'univers deux substances sans qu'elles diffèrent entièrement par leur essence ; deuxièmement, que la substance ne peut être produite ou créée, l'existence appartient à son essence actuelle ; troisièmement, que toute substance doit être infinie ou suprêmement parfaite en son genre.\n\nUne fois ces points démontrés, mon distingué interlocuteur apercevra aisément où je veux en venir, s'il réfléchit en même temps à la définition de Dieu. Pour les prouver clairement et brièvement, je ne puis imaginer rien de mieux que de les soumettre à votre jugement, démontrés selon la méthode géométrique.1 Je vous les joins donc séparément et attends votre verdict à leur sujet.\n\nVous me demandez encore quelles erreurs je découvre dans les philosophies cartésienne et baconienne. Il n'est pas dans mes habitudes d'exposer les erreurs d'autrui ; néanmoins, je céderai à votre demande. La première et la plus grande erreur est que ces philosophes se sont écartés si loin de la connaissance de la cause première et de l'origine de toutes choses ; la deuxième, qu'ils n'ont pas connu la vraie nature de l'esprit humain ; la troisième, qu'ils n'ont jamais saisi la vraie cause de l'erreur. Seules des personnes entièrement dépourvues de savoir et de formation peuvent méconnaître la nécessité d'une connaissance correcte de ces trois points.",
            "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"
        }
    ],
    "content_checksum": "c1293dd8ad9854a0df121ee50ab2bea7e411e9e9869d2a84604415a7c3a6663a"
}