Baruch Spinoza

Benedictus de Spinoza (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677), was named Baruch Spinoza by his synagogue elders and known as Bento de Spinoza or Bento d'Espiñoza in his native Amsterdam. Along with René Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz, he was one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy. He is considered the founder of modern Biblical criticism. His magnum opus was the Ethics.

Life

Born to a Sephardic family among the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam, he gained fame for his positions of pantheism and neutral monism, as well as the fact that his Ethics was written in the form of postulates and definitions, as though it were a geometry treatise. In the summer of 1656, he was excommunicated from the Jewish community for his claims that God is the mechanism of nature and the universe, having no personality, and that the Bible is a metaphorical and allegorical work used to teach the nature of God, both of which were based on a form of Cartesianism (see René Descartes). Following his excommunication, he adopted the first name Benedictus (the Latin equivalent of his given name, either Baruch or Bento). The terms of his excommunication were quite severe; excerpts from the text may be found at http://www.mnstate.edu/mouch/spinoza/excomm.html.

Related Topics:
Sephardi - Portuguese Jews - Pantheism - Neutral monism - Geometry - 1656 - Excommunicated - God - Bible - René Descartes - Latin

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Since the public reactions to the anonymously published Theologico-Political Treatise turned unfavourable to his brand of http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/descarte.htm Cartesianism, he abstained from publishing more of his works. The Ethics was published after his death, in the Opera postuma edited by his friends.

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Some of the major figures whom Spinoza met include Henry Oldenburg and Leibniz.

Related Topics:
Henry Oldenburg - Leibniz

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