Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause (<i>Ethics,</i> part III, proposition 13, scholium). - Benedictus de Spinoza

...I had just finished my first semester (at the university) and had brought along Spinoza's Ethics to read during that vacation. I was never found without the small book. If we went into the woods, I carried it in the pocket of my rainproof cape; and while the others lolled around under the trees, I would search out a deer lookout, climb up to it, and then become absorbed, alternately, in deductions about the sole substance, and then in the view of sky, mountains, and woods.

By posing the question of the ‘givenness’ of the object, Marx poses the question of the object itself, of its nature and limits, and therefore of the domain of its existence, since the modality according to which a theory thinks its object affects not only the nature of that object but also the situation and extent of its domain of existence. As an indication, let us adopt a famous thesis of Spinoza's: as a first approximation, we can suggest that Political Economy's existence is no more possible than the existence of any science of ‘conclusions’ as such: a science of ‘conclusions’ is not a science, since it would be the actual ignorance (‘ignorance en acte’) of its ‘premises’ – it is only the Imaginary in action (the ‘first kind’).

dulce, que la libertad, he creído hacer una buena obra, y de alguna utilidad, tal vez, enseñando que la libertad de pensar, no tan sólo puede conciliarse con la paz y salvación del estado, sino que no puede destruirse sin destruir al mismo tiempo esa paz del estado y la piedad misma. He aquí lo principal que yo he deseado establecer en este tratado. (TTP Praef.)