{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "spinoza.letters_en",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/spinoza/letters-en/reference-section-0019/",
    "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": "affects",
            "label": "Affects"
        },
        {
            "id": "anger",
            "label": "Anger"
        },
        {
            "id": "attribute",
            "label": "Attribute"
        },
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul"
        },
        {
            "id": "death",
            "label": "Death"
        },
        {
            "id": "discipleship",
            "label": "Discipleship"
        },
        {
            "id": "faith",
            "label": "Faith"
        },
        {
            "id": "freedom",
            "label": "Freedom"
        },
        {
            "id": "friendship",
            "label": "Friendship"
        },
        {
            "id": "god",
            "label": "God"
        },
        {
            "id": "hope",
            "label": "Hope"
        },
        {
            "id": "human_wisdom",
            "label": "Human wisdom"
        },
        {
            "id": "judgment",
            "label": "Judgment"
        },
        {
            "id": "knowledge",
            "label": "Knowledge"
        },
        {
            "id": "messiah",
            "label": "Messiah"
        },
        {
            "id": "mode",
            "label": "Mode"
        },
        {
            "id": "nature",
            "label": "Nature"
        },
        {
            "id": "necessity",
            "label": "Necessity"
        },
        {
            "id": "prophecy",
            "label": "Prophecy"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "id": "resurrection",
            "label": "Resurrection"
        },
        {
            "id": "sin",
            "label": "Sin"
        },
        {
            "id": "spirit",
            "label": "Spirit"
        },
        {
            "id": "substance",
            "label": "Substance"
        },
        {
            "id": "suffering",
            "label": "Suffering"
        },
        {
            "id": "time",
            "label": "Time"
        },
        {
            "id": "truth",
            "label": "Truth"
        },
        {
            "id": "war_and_peace",
            "label": "War and peace"
        }
    ],
    "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-0019",
    "canonical_ref": "section-0019",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "How, by taking miracles and ignorance as equivalent terms, I reduce God’s power and\nman’s knowledge within the same limits, I am unable to discern.\n\nFor the rest, I accept Christ’s passion, death, and burial literally, as you do, but His\nresurrection I understand allegorically. I admit, that it is related by the Evangelists in\nsuch detail, that we cannot deny that they themselves believed Christ’s body to have\n\nrisen from the dead and ascended to heaven, in order to sit at the right hand of God, or\nthat they believed that Christ might have been seen by unbelievers, if they had\nhappened to be at hand, in the places where He appeared to His disciples; but in these\nmatters they might, without injury to Gospel teaching, have been deceived, as was the\ncase with other prophets mentioned in my last letter. But Paul, to whom Christ\nafterwards appeared, rejoices, that he knew Christ not after the flesh, but after the\nspirit.1 Farewell, honourable Sir, and believe me yours in all affection and zeal.\n\nLETTER_BOUNDARY\n\nLETTER XXVII. (IX.)\n\nSpinoza To Simon De Vries.\nRespected Friend,—\nI have received2 your long wished-for letter, for which, and for your affection\ntowards me, I heartily thank you. Your long absence has been no less grievous to me\nthan to you; yet in the meantime I rejoice that my trifling studies are of profit to you\nand our friends. For thus while you3 are away, I in my absence speak to you. You\nneed not envy my fellow-lodger. There is no one who is more displeasing to me, nor\nagainst whom I have been more anxiously on my guard; and therefore I would have\nyou and all my acquaintance warned not to communicate my opinions to him, except\nwhen he has come to maturer years. So far he is too childish and inconstant, and is\nfonder of novelty than of truth. But I hope, that in a few years he will amend these\nchildish faults. Indeed I am almost sure of it, as far as I can judge from his nature.\nAnd so his temperament bids me like him.",
            "translator": "R. H. M. Elwes",
            "source_id": "source-1",
            "translation_type": "historical_translation"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "Comment, en tenant les miracles et l'ignorance pour des termes équivalents, je réduis la puissance de Dieu et la connaissance de l'homme aux mêmes limites, je ne puis le discerner.\n\nPour le reste, j'accepte littéralement, comme vous, la passion, la mort et l'ensevelissement du Christ, mais j'entends sa résurrection allégoriquement. J'admets qu'elle est relatée par les Évangélistes avec tant de détails que nous ne pouvons nier qu'ils aient eux-mêmes cru que le corps du Christ était ressuscité des morts et monté au ciel afin de s'asseoir à la droite de Dieu, ni qu'ils aient cru que le Christ aurait pu être vu par des incroyants si ceux-ci s'étaient trouvés à proximité, dans les lieux où il apparut à ses disciples ; mais ils ont pu, en ces matières, se tromper sans porter atteinte à l'enseignement évangélique, comme ce fut le cas d'autres prophètes mentionnés dans ma dernière lettre. Quant à Paul, à qui le Christ apparut ensuite, il se réjouit de connaître le Christ non selon la chair, mais selon l'esprit.1 Adieu, honorable Monsieur, et croyez-moi tout à vous par l'affection et le zèle.\n\nLETTER_BOUNDARY\n\nLETTRE XXVII. (IX.)\n\nSpinoza à Simon de Vries.\nCher ami,\nJ'ai reçu2 votre lettre si longtemps désirée, pour laquelle, ainsi que pour votre affection à mon égard, je vous remercie cordialement. Votre longue absence ne m'a pas été moins pénible qu'à vous ; cependant, je me réjouis entre-temps que mes modestes études vous soient utiles, à vous et à nos amis. Car ainsi, tandis que vous3 êtes absent, je vous parle en mon absence. Vous ne devez pas envier mon compagnon de logement. Il n'est personne qui me déplaise davantage ni contre qui je me sois tenu plus anxieusement en garde ; aussi voudrais-je vous avertir, ainsi que toutes mes connaissances, de ne pas lui communiquer mes opinions avant qu'il ait atteint un âge plus mûr. Jusqu'ici, il est trop enfantin et inconstant, et plus épris de nouveauté que de vérité. Mais j'espère que, dans quelques années, il se corrigera de ces défauts enfantins. J'en suis même presque certain, autant que je puis en juger par sa nature. Et ainsi son tempérament m'engage à l'aimer.",
            "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": "83048d77996d52270ead503e840f3998beb5d6e731556ec3e0394f0fc740a2fe"
}