{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "spinoza.letters_en",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/spinoza/letters-en/reference-section-0100/",
    "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": "adequate_idea",
            "label": "Adequate idea"
        },
        {
            "id": "attribute",
            "label": "Attribute"
        },
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul"
        },
        {
            "id": "ether_field",
            "label": "Ether and field"
        },
        {
            "id": "freedom",
            "label": "Freedom"
        },
        {
            "id": "god",
            "label": "God"
        },
        {
            "id": "messiah",
            "label": "Messiah"
        },
        {
            "id": "mindfulness",
            "label": "Mindfulness"
        },
        {
            "id": "mode",
            "label": "Mode"
        },
        {
            "id": "nature",
            "label": "Nature"
        },
        {
            "id": "necessity",
            "label": "Necessity"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "id": "roles",
            "label": "Roles and relationships"
        },
        {
            "id": "service",
            "label": "Service"
        },
        {
            "id": "sin",
            "label": "Sin"
        },
        {
            "id": "substance",
            "label": "Substance"
        }
    ],
    "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-0100",
    "canonical_ref": "section-0100",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "Spinoza To * * * * *.1\nHonoured Sir.—\nBetween a true and an adequate idea, I recognize no difference, except that the epithet\ntrue only has regard to the agreement between the idea and its object, whereas the\nepithet adequate has regard to the nature of the idea in itself; so that in reality there is\nno difference between a true and an adequate idea beyond this extrinsic relation.\nHowever, in order that I may know, from which idea out of many all the properties of\nits object may be deduced, I pay attention to one point only, namely, that the idea or\ndefinition should express the efficient cause of its object. For instance, in inquiring\ninto the properties of a circle, I ask, whether from the idea of a circle, that it consists\nof infinite right angles, I can deduce all its properties. I ask, I repeat, whether this idea\ninvolves the efficient cause of a circle. If it does not, I look for another, namely, that a\ncircle is the space described by a line, of which one point is fixed, and the other\nmovable. As this definition explains the efficient cause, I know that I can deduce from\nit all the properties of a circle. So, also, when I define God as a supremely perfect\nBeing, then, since that definition does not express the efficient cause (I mean the\nefficient cause internal as well as external) I shall not be able to infer therefrom all the\nproperties of God; as I can, when I define God as a Being, &c. (see Ethics, I. Def. vi.).\nAs for your other inquiries, namely, that concerning motion, and those pertaining to\nmethod, my observations on them are not yet written out in due order, so I will\nreserve them for another occasion.",
            "translator": "R. H. M. Elwes",
            "source_id": "source-1",
            "translation_type": "historical_translation"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "Spinoza à * * * * *.1\nHonoré Monsieur,\nEntre une idée vraie et une idée adéquate, je ne reconnais aucune différence, si ce n’est que l’épithète vraie ne concerne que l’accord de l’idée avec son objet, tandis que l’épithète adéquate concerne la nature de l’idée en elle-même ; de sorte qu’en réalité il n’existe entre une idée vraie et une idée adéquate aucune différence au-delà de cette relation extrinsèque. Toutefois, pour savoir de quelle idée, parmi plusieurs, toutes les propriétés de son objet peuvent être déduites, je ne prête attention qu’à un seul point, à savoir que l’idée ou la définition exprime la cause efficiente de son objet. Par exemple, en recherchant les propriétés d’un cercle, je demande si je peux déduire toutes ses propriétés de l’idée d’un cercle selon laquelle il consiste en une infinité d’angles droits. Je demande, je le répète, si cette idée enveloppe la cause efficiente d’un cercle. Si elle ne l’enveloppe pas, j’en cherche une autre, à savoir qu’un cercle est l’espace décrit par une ligne dont un point est fixe et l’autre mobile. Comme cette définition explique la cause efficiente, je sais que je peux en déduire toutes les propriétés d’un cercle. De même, lorsque je définis Dieu comme un Être souverainement parfait, puisque cette définition n’exprime pas la cause efficiente, j’entends la cause efficiente tant interne qu’externe, je ne pourrai en inférer toutes les propriétés de Dieu ; tandis que je le peux lorsque je définis Dieu comme un Être, etc. (voir Éthique, I, déf. VI). Quant à vos autres questions, à savoir celle qui concerne le mouvement et celles qui se rapportent à la méthode, mes observations sur ces sujets ne sont pas encore rédigées dans l’ordre requis ; je les réserverai donc pour une autre occasion.",
            "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": "3076786f04e60399856ac1441060fe404d98d3e19e47eb10819a6324d0600371"
}