“An emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be a passion, as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof.” For Spinoza, understanding a feeling is not merely observing it—it is the beginning of freedom from its hold. Written in the seventeenth century, this final part of Spinoza’s Ethics presses his geometric method into the intimate territory of human feeling. Proposition by proposition, he asks how the mind can understand its emotions, see events as necessary, and become less captive to passions that once seemed to rule it. The stakes are nothing less than a life guided by reason, and the possibility of blessedness. How far can clear understanding carry us toward freedom? With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.
