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Quotation from Ethics by Baruch Spinoza
“As I have heard tell of a certain Spanish poet, who had been seized with sickness, and though he recovered therefrom yet remained so oblivious of his past life, that he would not believe the plays and tragedies he had written to be his own”
Ethics, Part IV, Prop. XXXIX, Note, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (1883)
Spinoza uses a case of post-illness amnesia to argue that a body can change its nature, and in a sense die, without becoming a corpse.
Citation: "As I have heard tell of a certain Spanish poet, who had been seized with sickness, and though he recovered therefrom yet remained so oblivious of his past life, that he would not believe the plays and tragedies he had written to be his own" — Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, Part IV, Prop. XXXIX, Note, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (1883). (id ethics-q7)
Portrait: Spinoza Ethica, Unknown, Public domain.
