{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "spinoza.letters_en",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/spinoza/letters-en/reference-section-0103/",
    "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": "ether_field",
            "label": "Ether and field"
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family"
        },
        {
            "id": "freedom",
            "label": "Freedom"
        },
        {
            "id": "friendship",
            "label": "Friendship"
        },
        {
            "id": "god",
            "label": "God"
        },
        {
            "id": "hope",
            "label": "Hope"
        },
        {
            "id": "mode",
            "label": "Mode"
        },
        {
            "id": "necessity",
            "label": "Necessity"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "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-0103",
    "canonical_ref": "section-0103",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "Moreover this proposition might be proved more readily by a reduction to the absurd;\nI am accustomed, when the proposition is negative, to employ this mode of\ndemonstration as more in character. However, as the question you ask is positive, I\nmake use of the positive method, and ask, whether one thing can be produced from\nanother, from which it differs both in essence and existence; for things which differ to\nthis extent seem to have nothing in common. But since all particular things, except\nthose which are produced from things similar to themselves, differ from their causes\nboth in essence and existence, I see here no reason for doubt.\n\nThe sense in which I mean that God is the efficient cause of things, no less of their\nessence than of their existence, I think has been sufficiently explained in Ethics I. xxv.\nnote and corollary. The axiom in the note to Ethics I. x., as I hinted at the end of the\nsaid note, is based on the idea which we have of a Being absolutely infinite, not on the\nfact, that there are or may be beings possessing three, four, or more attributes.\n\nLastly, the examples you ask for of the first kind are, in thought, absolutely infinite\nunderstanding; in extension, motion and rest; an example of the second kind is the\nsum of the whole extended universe (facies totius universi), which, though it varies in\ninfinite modes, yet remains always the same. Cf. Ethics II. note to Lemma vii. before\nProp. xiv.\n\nThus, most excellent Sir, I have answered, as I think, the objections of yourself and\nyour friend. If you think any uncertainty remains, I hope you will not neglect to tell\nme, so that I may, if possible, remove it.\n\nThe Hague, 29 July, 1675.\n\nLETTER_BOUNDARY\n\nLETTER LXVIII. (LXVI.)",
            "translator": "R. H. M. Elwes",
            "source_id": "source-1",
            "translation_type": "historical_translation"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "De plus, cette proposition pourrait se prouver plus aisément par une réduction à l’absurde ; lorsqu’une proposition est négative, j’ai coutume d’employer ce mode de démonstration comme mieux approprié. Toutefois, puisque la question que vous posez est positive, j’emploie la méthode positive et demande si une chose peut être produite par une autre dont elle diffère tant par l’essence que par l’existence ; car les choses qui diffèrent à ce point semblent n’avoir rien de commun. Mais puisque toutes les choses particulières, excepté celles qui sont produites par des choses semblables à elles-mêmes, diffèrent de leurs causes tant par l’essence que par l’existence, je ne vois ici aucune raison de douter.\n\nLe sens dans lequel j’entends que Dieu est la cause efficiente des choses, aussi bien de leur essence que de leur existence, a été, je pense, suffisamment expliqué dans le scolie et le corollaire d’Éthique, I, XXV. L’axiome du scolie d’Éthique, I, X, comme je l’ai indiqué à la fin dudit scolie, est fondé sur l’idée que nous avons d’un Être absolument infini, et non sur le fait qu’il existe ou puisse exister des êtres possédant trois, quatre attributs ou davantage.\n\nEnfin, les exemples que vous demandez de la première sorte sont, dans la pensée, l’entendement absolument infini ; dans l’étendue, le mouvement et le repos. Un exemple de la seconde sorte est l’aspect de l’univers étendu tout entier (facies totius universi), qui, bien qu’il varie d’une infinité de manières, demeure néanmoins toujours le même. Cf. Éthique, II, scolie du lemme VII précédant la proposition XIV.\n\nAinsi, très excellent Monsieur, j’ai répondu, à ce que je pense, à vos objections et à celles de votre ami. Si vous pensez qu’il subsiste quelque incertitude, j’espère que vous ne négligerez pas de me le dire, afin que je puisse, si possible, la dissiper.\n\nLa Haye, le 29 juillet 1675.\n\nLETTER_BOUNDARY\n\nLETTRE LXVIII. (LXVI.)",
            "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": "da8e3475e68c29daf79cc5ec54ec272a180ddcddc33a795abf8820542a1fc47b"
}