{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "spinoza.letters_en",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/spinoza/letters-en/reference-section-0054/",
    "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": "faith",
            "label": "Faith"
        },
        {
            "id": "freedom",
            "label": "Freedom"
        },
        {
            "id": "god",
            "label": "God"
        },
        {
            "id": "justice",
            "label": "Justice"
        },
        {
            "id": "mode",
            "label": "Mode"
        },
        {
            "id": "necessity",
            "label": "Necessity"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "id": "service",
            "label": "Service"
        },
        {
            "id": "substance",
            "label": "Substance"
        },
        {
            "id": "time",
            "label": "Time"
        },
        {
            "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-0054",
    "canonical_ref": "section-0054",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "As for the rest, such are the general accompaniments of controversy, so that I would\nnot on that account transgress the limits of courtesy: I will, therefore, pass over in\nyour second letter, and in this, these and similar expressions, as though they had never\nbeen observed. So much for your taking offence; to show you that I have given you\nno just cause, and, also, that I am quite willing to brook contradiction. I now turn a\nsecond time to answering your objections.\n\nI maintain, in the first place, that God is absolutely and really the cause of all things\nwhich have essence, whatsoever they may be. If you can demonstrate that evil, error,\ncrime, &c., have any positive existence, which expresses essence, I will fully grant\n\nyou that God is the cause of crime, evil, error, &c. I believe myself to have\nsufficiently shown, that that which constitutes the reality of evil, error, crime, &c.,\ndoes not consist in anything, which expresses essence, and therefore we cannot say\nthat God is its cause. For instance, Nero’s matricide, in so far as it comprehended\nanything positive, was not a crime; the same outward act was perpetrated, and the\nsame matricidal intention was entertained by Orestes; who, nevertheless, is not\nblamed—at any rate, not so much as Nero. Wherein, then, did Nero’s crime consist?\nIn nothing else, but that by his deed he showed himself to be ungrateful, unmerciful,\nand disobedient. Certainly none of these qualities express aught of essence, therefore\nGod was not the cause of them, though He was the cause of Nero’s act and intention.",
            "translator": "R. H. M. Elwes",
            "source_id": "source-1",
            "translation_type": "historical_translation"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "Quant au reste, ce sont là les accompagnements ordinaires de la controverse, de sorte que je ne dépasserai pas pour cela les limites de la courtoisie. Je passerai donc sur ces expressions et d’autres semblables, dans votre seconde lettre et dans celle-ci, comme si je ne les avais jamais remarquées. Voilà pour l’offense que vous avez prise, afin de vous montrer que je ne vous en ai fourni aucun juste motif et que je suis tout disposé à supporter la contradiction. J’en viens maintenant, pour la seconde fois, à répondre à vos objections.\n\nJe soutiens, en premier lieu, que Dieu est absolument et réellement la cause de toutes les choses qui ont une essence, quelles qu’elles soient. Si vous pouvez démontrer que le mal, l’erreur, le crime, etc., ont quelque existence positive qui exprime une essence, je vous accorderai pleinement que Dieu est la cause du crime, du mal, de l’erreur, etc. Je crois avoir suffisamment montré que ce qui constitue la réalité du mal, de l’erreur, du crime, etc., ne consiste en rien qui exprime une essence, et que nous ne pouvons donc pas dire que Dieu en est la cause. Par exemple, le matricide de Néron, dans la mesure où il comprenait quelque chose de positif, n’était pas un crime. Oreste accomplit le même acte extérieur et conçut la même intention matricide, sans être néanmoins blâmé, du moins pas autant que Néron. En quoi consistait donc le crime de Néron ? En rien d’autre que ceci : par son acte, il se montra ingrat, impitoyable et désobéissant. Assurément, aucune de ces qualités n’exprime quoi que ce soit d’une essence. Dieu n’en était donc pas la cause, bien qu’il fût la cause de l’acte et de l’intention de Néron.",
            "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": "fc8002d2749eecad367e72845220df93c81b75a36035039f9006d7d5eb24ab5b"
}