Reddit reviews Spinoza (The Routledge Philosophers)

• Kisner and Youpa have edited an anthology on Spinoza's ethical theory. Several of the essays deal with his metaethics. If you can find this and follow up on the pertinent essays, it would be your best bet. Youpa has spent a lot of his career on the ethical theories of the 17th century continentals, so pursuing his work might be worth it.
  
  
• Della Rocca's Spinoza has an entire section focused on his ethics (and metaethics). You could likely find some additional secondary sources in the bibliography.
  
  I hope these help!

First, as another poster stated, it is helpful to know the work of Descartes pretty well before tackling Spinoza - Spinoza very much saw himself as taking the philosophy of Descartes (or at least, what he saw as the better parts of the philosophy of Descartes) to its own logical conclusions.

But, most importantly, I want to say that you really should be reading a secondary text BEFORE you read a historical text. Some of the people on this subreddit will disagree, but they are the people who generally understand 4% of a text and misunderstand the other 96% of it.

The fact of the matter is that there is just a ton of background information that you simply don't have access to when reading the primary source - who was the author responding to in each particular passage? which words were technical terms? which things did he think were obvious and didn't need explanation? You simply can't glean this type of information from the vast majority of primary historical texts.

As for Spinoza, I think that Michael Della Rocca's introductory book is phenomenal, and most university libraries will have a copy.

>I'm not sure about reading secondary texts, I know that would help, but for some reason, I would like to try and read this text itself, after all one has to start reading philosophy somewhere...I want to read it slowly, I have all the time(years and years, barring mortality of course), and carefully, but I want to read the text itself...

I'm confused by this. Secondary texts would definitely help. Della Rocca has an overview book by Routledge, there's a very short introduction by Scruton, and Jarrett has a guide for the perplexed on Spinoza.

Wanting to read the text itself is not mutually exclusive from reading secondary literature, especially literature that'll help you read the text itself. Reading historical figures is particularly difficult because just like all other philosophers, they're situated in a place and time where certain ideas were in vogue and they're responding to certain thinkers of that time. Unlike contemporary philosophers (and this is what makes them difficult), they don't really tell you who they're responding to or give a full bibliography of what they've read. Secondary literature, especially the kind I tried to recommend you, makes these connections for you so that when you read the text yourself, you can actually understand, as best as possible, the philosopher's intent and position. Considering this is basically the way all graduate students and professional philosophers approach reading historical figures, it seems odd that you, a non-philosophers with no training, want to try and do it all yourself.

You, of course, can just slog through reading an incredibly complex historical philosophical text by yourself, take an extremely long time to do so, and probably get a horrible off the mark understanding of the view, OR you can avail yourself of the experts who have spent significant portions of their career on Spinoza and let them teach you how to read his work, so you actually get something like a good understanding out of it.

Considering that you don't find time to be an issue, this seems like an obvious route to take.

I can't reccomend Della Rocca's Spinoza enough. It makes it so much easier.

One of the most famous Spinoza scholars is Micheal Della Rocca. This book is extremely useful: https://www.amazon.com/Spinoza-Routledge-Philosophers-Michael-Della/dp/0415283302

How to deal with controversies? Controversies exist in academic philosophy because there is no final settlement on a certain topic. So the manner in which you want to approach them depends on how you want to learn. Either you want to take a side and believe hard on that one view is better than the other, or you just acknowledge that there is a controversy and your goal is not to take a side but to understand the many ways in which the philosopher can be understood.

My early modern phil class read Della Rocca 2002 as secondary lit on Spinoza. It's a fairly accessible paper. The prof recommended his Routledge Philosophers entry for further reading.

The absolute best secondary literature is Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Process of His Reasoning by Harry Austryn Wolfson. It's kinda hard to simply summarize why Wolfson is so good. He covers everything. He has footnotes in Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic for Christ's sake. Just a solid, thorough explanation of both Spinoza's work, and the philosophical underpinnings of the work. Wolfson tries to account for the other works that influenced Spinoza, which is a hella daunting task.

If you want to understand how Spinoza fits into the history of philosophy, and the other philosophers to whom his system is related, get the Wolfson book.

Behind the Geometrical Method by Edwin Curley is a good introductory summary of Spinoza's project. It's kinda amusingly organized into three chapters:

• On God
  
  
• On Man
  
  
• On Man's Well-Being
  
  Since that is what the Ethics is all about. Curley translates Spinoza's geometry into a digestible form. If you find the writing style of the Ethics cumbersome, this book is a good way to break through to the main argument.
  
  The Collected Works of Spinoza volume 1 and Volume 2 translated by Edwin Curley is another good resource. It's the primary texts, but Curley's work is full of footnotes and annotations to explain why he deviates from other translations, most notably the Elwes translation, which was the standard until Curley came along.
  
  There's also Spinoza by Michael Della Rocca and a more recently published Essays on Spinoza's Ethical Theory. They are fine. But those have sort of a more lowercase-m-modern take on Spinoza. The Cambridge companions are similar, and good. Pick them up if you find them at a local used book store.
  
  For my money, Wolfson is the best secondary reading. You can find volume 1 online if you want to preview it before purchase. At least read those first few pages to which I linked. Wolfson is the old-school rigorous academic that we do not find in academia anymore.