Spinoza's understanding and understanding Spinoza - Spinoza's understanding - Understanding Spinoza - The metaphysics of substance - Descartes and substance - Spinoza contra Descartes on substance - Modes - Necessitarianism - The purpose of it all - The human mind - Parallelism and representation - Essence and representation - Parallelism and mind-body identity - The idea of the human body - The pancreas problem, the pan problem, and panpsychism - Nothing but representation - Representation, will, and belief - Skepticism - Psychology : striving and self-preservation - Conatus - Desire, joy, and sadness - Love, hate, and all that - The ethics of the ethics - The good notion of the good - The right notion of the right - Knowledge and morality - Freedom and morality - Helping others - Lies and degrees of freedom - The state, religion, and scripture - Rights and power - Religion and the state - Scripture - Prophecy and the truth of the Bible - From PSR to eternity - The aftermath of Spinoza - Leibniz - Bayle and Hume - The pantheism controversy - Hegel - Nietzsche - Prospects of spinozistic rationalism. Providing a clear introduction to a daunting philosopher, this book serves as a starting point for anyone coming to Spinoza's thought for the first time. The author unpacks and explains Spinoza's philosophy, his metaphysics of substance and argument that God is the sole independent substance, which forms the cornerstone of his thinking.