Gisteren had The gardian/The Observer een door Robert McCrum samengestelde rubriek van "The 10 most difficult books to finish – in pictures". Daaronder ook de Ethica van Spinoza met daarbij dat onmogelijke fantasieplaatje van “Benoist Spinosa” dat helemaal Spinoza niet voorstelt. Daarbij deze tekst:
“Ethics
by Baruch Spinoza
A byword for difficulty among Wodehouse devotees, the works of professional lens-grinder Spinoza (Jeeves’s favourite author) are central to the Enlightenment. It was Spinoza’s insight to understand good and evil as relative concepts. Things that had classically been seen as good or evil, he argued, were simply good or bad for humans. He also believed in a deterministic universe where nothing happens by chance. The first English translation of his Ethics was made by George Eliot, though Wodehouse never tells us if this was the version Jeeves favoured.” [zie hier]
