Thinker · TH-0017
Baruch Spinoza
Dutch philosopher from Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community who was expelled from the synagogue in 1656 and earned his living partly as a lens grinder. His…
Also known as Spinoza, Benedictus de Spinoza, Bento de Espinosa
1632 – 1677 · Amsterdam, Rijnsburg, Voorburg, The Hague
Traditions: Modern European
Schools: Rationalism
Dutch philosopher from Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community who was expelled from the synagogue in 1656 and earned his living partly as a lens grinder. His Ethics, written in geometrical order, identifies God with nature and argues that freedom lies in understanding necessity.
Key ideas
- One infinite substance: God or Nature (Deus sive Natura)
- Mind and body as two attributes of one reality
- Determinism and freedom as understanding of necessity
- Biblical criticism and the defence of freedom of thought
Major works
- Theological-Political Treatise (1670)
- Ethics (published posthumously, 1677)
- Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (unfinished, published 1677)
- Political Treatise (unfinished, published 1677)
In the conversation
- Question Could the constants have been different? Spinoza says no; the Ashʿarites say God could change them tomorrow
- Discussion Does a deterministic program “choose”?
- Question Rumi and Spinoza: are they describing the same God?
- Discussion Spinoza’s God as Nature: an engineer’s reading of Ethics Part I
- Question What was Hasdai Crescas’s case that an actual infinite is possible?
- Question If everything is empty, is emptiness itself empty too? Or does that make the idea collapse?
- Question Does Spinoza solve the mind–body problem or just rename it?
- Debate Brute facts are not a cop-out: some things just are, and the universe may be one of them