Nature
Everything that is naturally occurring in the word—in the universe, actually—is essentially a symbol of the existence of God. Spinoza argues that since every creation in the natural world was conceived through the mind of God, all natural events require a connection back to God as its creator. Thus, even the tiniest aspect of nature is a symbol of the very existence of a supreme creator deity.
Appetite
The definition of appetite is greatly expanded and takes on a vast symbolic meaning within the philosophical outline of the relationship between God and man. Appetite is explicitly defined as the consciousness of desire and is labeled by the author as nothing more nor less than “the essence of man.”
Love and Hate
Love is situated as the antithesis of hate, and both are purely symbolic within the construct of Spinoza’s theology. His definition of love is decidedly anti-romantic: it is nothing but a feeling of pleasure the cause of which has been directed outward to an external source. In other words, love is really just a disembodied concept that springs forth from an imagined source. Likewise with hate: ”It is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.” Neither emotion is generated organically and internally but is dependent upon a symbolic foundation.
Axioms, Definitions, Propositions
Axiomatic statements are presented through the text as a recurring motif alongside definitions of terms and propositions to be considered. These recurring motifs lend the text a geometric structure that serves the purpose of creating a work of philosophy which is by design almost more mathematical than literary in the sense that The Ethics does not read like a straightforward academic essay.
Women
Keeping in mind that this is a text which was first published in 1677 and its references to women are few. When they do occur, they are tainted by misogyny. These few acknowledgements of the existence of half the population of the planet receive the most intense devotion of authorial passion on the subject, ironically, of laws designed to prohibit the slaughtering of animals. Spinoza’s own perspective on such laws is briefly but efficiently outlined as an encapsulation of women as a collective symbol: “…it is plain that the law against the slaughtering of animals is founded rather on vain superstition and womanish pity than on sound reason.”
