ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with a few problems, principles and insights encountered in translating the writings of Baruch Spinoza into English. Every sentence of the translations has been compared with standard Dutch, English, French and German translations of Spinoza, of which there are uncommonly few that are complete and by a single hand. The notion of egolessness in Zen Buddhism, as well as some experience of egolessness, albeit very small, resulted in seeing that Spinoza’s description of God in the Ethica may well be taken as a description of egolessness. The Affections for Spinoza are kinds of behaviour rather than states of character or dispositions to kinds of behaviour. The example brings out or helps to make clear the fact that scientific thinking or reason, in Spinoza’s term, is an activity of imagination, again in his sense.
