2023/05/01

Baruch Spinoza - Wikipedia

Baruch Spinoza - Wikipedia

Baruch Spinoza

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Baruch Spinoza
Anonymous - Portret van Baruch de Spinoza - MB01920 - Jewish Museum.jpg
Born
Baruch Espinosa[1] /
Bento de Spinosa[2]

24 November 1632
Amsterdam, Dutch Republic
Died21 February 1677 (aged 44)
The Hague, Dutch Republic
Other namesBenedictus de Spinoza
EducationTalmud Torah of Amsterdam[3]
(withdrew)[4]
University of Leiden
(no degree)[5]
Era17th-century philosophy
Age of Enlightenment
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolCartesianism[6]
Conceptualism[7]
Correspondence theory of truth[a][9]
Direct realism[10]
Foundationalism (according to Hegel)[11]
Rationalism
Spinozism
Main interests
Influences
Influenced
Signature
Benedictus de Spinoza - Letter in Latin to Johannes Georgius Graevius (Epistolae 49), 14 December 1664 - Signature.jpg

Baruch (de) Spinoza[13][b] (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677)[20][21] was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin,[22] born in Amsterdam, the Dutch Republic,[23] and mostly known under the Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza. One of the foremost and seminal thinkers of the Enlightenment,[20][24] modern biblical criticism,[25] and 17th-century Rationalism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe,[26] he came to be considered "one of the most important philosophers—and certainly the most radical—of the early modern period".[27] Inspired by Stoicism, Jewish Rationalism, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, and a variety of heterodox religious thinkers of his day,[21] Spinoza became a leading philosophical figure in Dutch Golden Age.

Spinoza was raised in the Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine.[28] Jewish religious authorities issued a herem (חרם‎) against him, causing him to be effectively expelled and shunned by Jewish society at age 23, including by his own family. He was frequently called an "atheist" by contemporaries, although nowhere in his work does Spinoza argue against the existence of God.[29][30][31] Spinoza lived an outwardly simple life as an optical lens grinder, collaborating on microscope and telescope lens designs with Constantijn and Christiaan Huygens. He turned down rewards and honours throughout his life, including prestigious teaching positions. He died at the age of 44 in 1677 from a lung illness, perhaps tuberculosis or silicosis exacerbated by the inhalation of fine glass dust while grinding lenses. He is buried in the Christian churchyard of Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague.[32] In June 1678—just over a year after Spinoza's death—the States of Holland banned his entire works, since they "contain very many profane, blasphemous and atheistic propositions." The prohibition included the owning, reading, distribution, copying, and restating of Spinoza's books, and even the reworking of his fundamental ideas.[33] Shortly after (1679/1690) his books were added to the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books.[34]

Spinoza's philosophy encompasses nearly every area of philosophical discourse,[35] including metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. It earned Spinoza an enduring reputation as one of the most important and original thinkers of the seventeenth century. Spinoza's philosophy is largely contained in two books: the Theologico-Political Treatise, and the Ethics. The rest of the writings we have from Spinoza are either earlier or incomplete works expressing thoughts that were crystallized in the two aforementioned books (e.g., the Short Treatise and the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect), or else they are not directly concerned with Spinoza's own philosophy (e.g., The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy and The Hebrew Grammar). He also left behind many letters that help to illuminate his ideas and provide some insight into what may have been motivating his views.[36] The Theologico-Political Treatise was published during his lifetime, but the work which contains the entirety of his philosophical system in its most rigorous form, the Ethics, was published posthumously in the year of his death. The work opposed Descartes's philosophy of mind–body dualism and earned Spinoza recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers.[37]

Biography[edit]

Spinoza lived where the Moses and Aaron Church is located now, and there is strong evidence that he may have been born there.[38]

Early life[edit]

Baruch Espinosa[1] was born on 24 November 1632 in the Jodenbuurt in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was the second son of Miguel de Espinoza, a successful, although not wealthy, Portuguese Sephardic Jewish merchant in Amsterdam.[18] His mother, Ana Débora, Miguel's second wife, died when Baruch was only six years old.[39] Although he wrote in Latin, Spinoza learned the language only later in his youth. His primary language was Portuguese, although he also knew Hebrew and Dutch.[40]

Spinoza had a traditional Jewish upbringing, attending the Keter Torah yeshiva of the Amsterdam Talmud Torah congregation headed by the learned and traditional senior Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira.[41] His teachers also included the less traditional Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel.[42] However, Spinoza never reached the advanced study of the Torah,[18] dropping out at the age of 17 in order to work in the family importing business after the death of his elder brother, Isaac.[18] Spinoza's father, Miguel, died in 1654 when Spinoza was 21. He duly recited Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning, for eleven months as required by Jewish law.[18] When his sister Rebekah disputed his inheritance seeking it for herself, on principle he sued her to seek a court judgment, he won the case, but then renounced claim to the court’s judgment in his favour and assigned his inheritance to her.[43] After his father's death in 1654, Spinoza and his younger brother Gabriel (Abraham)[18] ran the family importing business, which was in serious debt. In March 1656, Spinoza filed suit with the Amsterdam municipal authorities to be declared an orphan, which allowed him to inherit his mother's estate without it being subject to his father's creditors and devote himself chiefly to the study of philosophy, especially the system expounded by Descartes, and to optics.[44]

Some time between 1654 and 1658, Spinoza began to study Latin with Franciscus van den Enden. Van den Enden was a former Jesuit who was a political radical, and likely introduced Spinoza to scholastic and modern philosophy, including that of Descartes.[45][46][47] Spinoza adopted the Latin name Benedictus de Spinoza,[48] began boarding with Van den Enden, and began teaching in his school.[43][46][47]

During this period Spinoza also became acquainted with the Collegiants, an anti-clerical sect of Remonstrants with tendencies towards rationalism, and with the liberal faction among the Mennonites who had existed for a century but were close to the Remonstrants.[49] Many of his friends belonged to dissident Christian groups which met regularly as discussion groups and which typically rejected the authority of established churches as well as traditional dogmas.[22] In the second half on the 1650s and the first half of the 1660s Spinoza became acquainted with several persons who would themselves emerge as unorthodox thinkers: this group, known as the Spinoza Circle, included Pieter Balling [Wikidata], Jarig Jelles [Wikidata], Lodewijk Meyer, Johannes Bouwmeester and Adriaen Koerbagh.

Spinoza's break with the prevailing dogmas of Judaism, and particularly the insistence on non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, was not sudden; rather, it appears to have been the result of a lengthy internal struggle. Nevertheless, after he was branded as a heretic, Spinoza's clashes with authority became more pronounced. For example, questioned by two members of his synagogue, Spinoza apparently responded that God has a body and nothing in scripture says otherwise.[43] He was later attacked on the steps of the synagogue by a knife-wielding assailant shouting "Heretic!" He was apparently quite shaken by this attack and for years kept (and wore) his torn cloak, unmended, as a reminder.[43]

Expulsion from the Jewish community[edit]

Spinoza and the Rabbis by Samuel Hirszenberg (1907)

On 27 July 1656, the Talmud Torah congregation of Amsterdam issued a writ of cherem (Hebrew: חרם‎, a kind of ban, shunning, ostracism, expulsion, or excommunication) against the 23-year-old Spinoza.[43][50][51] The Talmud Torah congregation issued censure routinely, on matters great and small, so such an edict was not unusual.[52][53] The language of Spinoza's censure is unusually harsh, however, and does not appear in any other censure known to have been issued by the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam.[54] The exact reason for expelling Spinoza is not stated.[55] The censure refers only to the "abominable heresies [horrendas heregias] that he practised and taught", to his "monstrous deeds", and to the testimony of witnesses "in the presence of the said Espinoza". There is no record of such testimony, but there appear to have been several likely reasons for the issuance of the censure.

First, there were Spinoza's radical theological views that he was apparently expressing in public. As philosopher and Spinoza biographer Steven Nadler puts it: "No doubt he was giving utterance to just those ideas that would soon appear in his philosophical treatises. In those works, Spinoza denies the immortality of the soul; strongly rejects the notion of a providential God—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and claims that the Law was neither literally given by God nor any longer binding on Jews. Can there be any mystery as to why one of history's boldest and most radical thinkers was sanctioned by an orthodox Jewish community?"[56]

Second, the Amsterdam Jewish community was largely composed of Spanish and Portuguese former conversos who had respectively fled from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition within the previous century, with their children and grandchildren. This community must have been concerned to protect its reputation from any association with Spinoza lest his controversial views provide the basis for their own possible persecution or expulsion.[57] There is little evidence that the Amsterdam municipal authorities were directly involved in Spinoza's censure itself. But "in 1619, the town council expressly ordered [the Portuguese Jewish community] to regulate their conduct and ensure that the members of the community kept to a strict observance of Jewish law."[58] Other evidence makes it clear that the danger of upsetting the civil authorities was never far from mind, such as bans adopted by the synagogue on public wedding or funeral processions and on discussing religious matters with Christians, lest such activity might "disturb the liberty we enjoy".[59] Thus, the issuance of Spinoza's censure was almost certainly, in part, an exercise in self-censorship by the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam.[60]

Ban in Portuguese of Baruch Spinoza by his Portuguese Jewish synagogue community of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 6 Av 5416 (27 July 1656)

Third, it appears likely that Spinoza had already taken the initiative to separate himself from the Talmud Torah congregation and was vocally expressing his hostility to Judaism itself, also through his philosophical works, such as the Part I of Ethics.[61] He had probably stopped attending services at the synagogue, either after the lawsuit with his sister or after the knife attack on its steps. He might already have been voicing the view expressed later in his Theological-Political Treatise that the civil authorities should suppress Judaism as harmful to the Jews themselves. Either for financial or other reasons,[62][47] he had in any case effectively stopped contributing to the synagogue by March 1656. He had also committed the "monstrous deed", contrary to the regulations of the synagogue and the views of some rabbinical authorities (including Maimonides), of filing suit in a civil court rather than with the synagogue authorities[44]—to renounce his father's heritage, no less. Upon being notified of the issuance of the censure, he is reported to have said: "Very well; this does not force me to do anything that I would not have done of my own accord, had I not been afraid of a scandal."[63] Thus, unlike most of the censure issued routinely by the Amsterdam congregation to discipline its members, the censure issued against Spinoza did not lead to repentance and so was never withdrawn. After the censure, Spinoza is said to have addressed an "Apology" (defence), written in Spanish, to the elders of the synagogue, "in which he defended his views as orthodox, and condemned the rabbis for accusing him of 'horrible practices and other enormities' merely because he had neglected ceremonial observances".[63] This "Apology" does not survive, but some of its contents may later have been included in his Theological-Political Treatise.[63]

The most remarkable aspect of the censure may be not so much its issuance, or even Spinoza's refusal to submit, but the fact that Spinoza's expulsion from the Jewish community did not lead to his conversion to Christianity.[52] Spinoza kept the Latin (and so implicitly Christian) name Benedict de Spinoza, maintained a close association with the Collegiants (a Christian sect of Remonstrants) and Quakers,[64] even moved to a town near the Collegiants' headquarters, and was buried at the Protestant Church, Nieuwe Kerk, The Hague.[65] While he had not received baptism, there is evidence to suggest he joined the meetings of the Collegiants.[30][66] Hava Tirosh-Samuelson explains "For Spinoza truth is not a property of Scripture, as Jewish philosophers since Philo had maintained, but a characteristic of the method of interpreting Scripture."[67] Neither is there evidence he maintained any sense of Jewish identity. Furthermore, "Spinoza did not envision secular Judaism. To be a secular and assimilated Jew is, in his view, nonsense."[68]

Later life and career[edit]

Study room of Spinoza in Rijnsburg

Spinoza spent his remaining 21 years writing and studying as a private scholar.[22] After the cherem, the Amsterdam municipal authorities expelled Spinoza from Amsterdam, "responding to the appeals of the rabbis, and also of the Calvinist clergy, who had been vicariously offended by the existence of a free thinker in the synagogue".[63] He spent a brief time in or near the village of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, but returned soon afterwards to Amsterdam and lived there quietly for several years, giving private philosophy lessons and grinding lenses, before leaving the city in 1660 or 1661.[63] During this time in Amsterdam, Spinoza wrote his Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, which he never published in his lifetime—assuming with good reason that it might get suppressed. Two Dutch translations of it survive, discovered about 1810.[63] In 1660 or 1661, Spinoza moved from Amsterdam to Rijnsburg (near Leiden), the headquarters of the Collegiants.[69][70] In Rijnsburg, he began work on his Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy" as well as on his masterpiece, the Ethics. In 1663, he returned briefly to Amsterdam, where he finished and published Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy", the only work published in his lifetime under his own name, and then moved the same year to Voorburg.[71]

Voorburg[edit]

In Voorburg, Spinoza continued work on the Ethics and corresponded with scientists, philosophers, and theologians throughout Europe.[72] He also wrote and published his Theological-Political Treatise in 1670, in defence of secular and constitutional government, and in support of Jan de Witt, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, against the Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange.[72][73] Leibniz visited Spinoza and claimed that Spinoza's life was in danger when supporters of the Prince of Orange murdered de Witt in 1672.[74] While published anonymously, the work did not long remain so, and de Witt's enemies characterized it as "forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil, and issued with the knowledge of Jan de Witt".[73] It was condemned in 1673 by the Synod of the Reformed Church and formally banned in 1674.[73]

Burial monument of Spinoza at the churchyard of the Nieuwe Kerk (The Hague). This monument at the marks what may or may not be some of the remains of Benedictus de Spinoza.[75][better source needed]

Lens-grinding and optics[edit]

Spinoza earned a modest living from lens-grinding and instrument making, yet he was involved in important optical investigations of the day while living in Voorburg, through correspondence and friendships with scientist Christiaan Huygens and mathematician Johannes Hudde, including debate over microscope design with Huygens, favouring small objectives[76] and collaborating on calculations for a prospective 40-foot (12 m) focal length telescope which would have been one of the largest in Europe at the time.[77] He was known for making not just lenses but also telescopes and microscopes.[78] The quality of Spinoza's lenses was much praised by Christiaan Huygens, among others.[79] In fact, his technique and instruments were so esteemed that Constantijn Huygens ground a "clear and bright" telescope lens with focal length of 42 feet (13 m) in 1687 from one of Spinoza's grinding dishes, ten years after his death.[80] He was said by anatomist Theodor Kerckring to have produced an "excellent" microscope, the quality of which was the foundation of Kerckring's anatomy claims.[81] During his time as a lens and instrument maker, he was also supported by small but regular donations from close friends.[22]

The Hague[edit]

In 1670, Spinoza moved to The Hague where he lived on a small pension from Jan de Witt and a small annuity from the brother of his dead friend, Simon de Vries.[73] He worked on the Ethics, wrote an unfinished Hebrew grammar, began his Political Treatise, wrote two scientific essays ("On the Rainbow" and "On the Calculation of Chances"), and began a Dutch translation of the Bible (which he later destroyed).[73] Spinoza was offered the chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, but he refused it, perhaps because of the possibility that it might in some way curb his freedom of thought.[82]

Spinoza also corresponded with Peter Serrarius, a radical Protestant and millenarian merchant. Serrarius was a patron to Spinoza after Spinoza left the Jewish community and even had letters sent and received for the philosopher to and from third parties. Spinoza and Serrarius maintained their relationship until Serrarius' death in 1669.[83] By the beginning of the 1660s, Spinoza's name became more widely known. Henry Oldenburg paid him visits and became a correspondent with Spinoza for the rest of his life.[84] In 1676, Leibniz came to the Hague to discuss the Ethics, Spinoza's principal philosophical work which he had completed earlier that year.[85]

Death[edit]

Spinoza's health began to fail in 1676, and he died on 21 February 1677 at the age of 44.[86] His premature death was said to be due to lung illness, possibly silicosis as a result of breathing in glass dust from the lenses that he ground.[citation needed]

Philosophy[edit]

Spinoza's philosophy has been associated with that of Leibniz and René Descartes as part of the rationalist school of thought,[87] which includes the assumption that ideas correspond to reality perfectly, in the same way that mathematics is supposed to be an exact representation of the world.[88] The writings of René Descartes have been described as "Spinoza's starting point".[89] Spinoza's first publication was his 1663 geometric exposition of proofs using Euclid's model with definitions and axioms of Descartes' Principles of Philosophy. Following Descartes, Spinoza aimed to understand truth through logical deductions from 'clear and distinct ideas', a process which always begins from the 'self-evident truths' of axioms.[90]

Metaphysics[edit]

Part of a series on
Jewish philosophy
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Spinoza's metaphysics consists of one thing, substance, and its modifications (modes). Early in The Ethics Spinoza argues that there is only one substance, which is absolutely infinite, self-caused, and eternal. He calls this substance "God", or "Nature". In fact, he takes these two terms to be synonymous (in the Latin the phrase he uses is "Deus sive Natura"). For Spinoza the whole of the natural universe is made of one substance, God, or, what's the same, Nature, and its modifications (modes).

It cannot be overemphasized how the rest of Spinoza's philosophy—his philosophy of mind, his epistemology, his psychology, his moral philosophy, his political philosophy, and his philosophy of religion—flows more or less directly from the metaphysical underpinnings in Part I of the Ethics.[91]

Substance, attributes, and modes[edit]

These are the fundamental concepts with which Spinoza sets forth a vision of Being, illuminated by his awareness of God. They may seem strange at first sight. To the question "What is?" he replies: "Substance, its attributes, and modes".

— Karl Jaspers[92]

Following Maimonides, Spinoza defined substance as "that which is in itself and is conceived through itself", meaning that it can be understood without any reference to anything external.[93] Being conceptually independent also means that the same thing is ontologically independent, depending on nothing else for its existence and being the 'cause of itself' (causa sui).[93] A mode is something which cannot exist independently but rather must do so as part of something else on which it depends, including properties (for example colour), relations (such as size) and individual things.[94] Modes can be further divided into 'finite' and 'infinite' ones, with the latter being evident in every finite mode (he gives the examples of "motion" and "rest").[95] The traditional understanding of an attribute in philosophy is similar to Spinoza's modes, though he uses that word differently.[94] To him, an attribute is "that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance", and there are possibly an infinite number of them.[96] It is the essential nature which is "attributed" to reality by intellect.[97]

Probable portrait of Spinoza, by Barend Graat, 1666.

Spinoza defined God as "a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence", and since "no cause or reason" can prevent such a being from existing, it therefore must exist.[97] This is a form of the ontological argument, which is claimed to prove the existence of God, but Spinoza went further in stating that it showed that only God exists.[98] Accordingly, he stated that "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God".[98] This means that God is identical with the universe, an idea which he encapsulated in the phrase "Deus sive Natura" ('God or Nature'), which has been interpreted by some as atheism or pantheism.[99] God can be known either through the attribute of extension or the attribute of thought.[100] Thought and extension represent giving complete accounts of the world in mental or physical terms.[101] To this end, he says that "the mind and the body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension".[102]

After stating his proof for God’s existence, Spinoza addresses who "God" is. Spinoza believed that God is "the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator".[103] Spinoza attempts to prove that God is just the substance of the universe by first stating that substances do not share attributes or essences and then demonstrating that God is a "substance" with an infinite number of attributes, thus the attributes possessed by any other substances must also be possessed by God. Therefore, God is just the sum of all the substances of the universe. God is the only substance in the universe, and everything is a part of God. This view was described by Charles Hartshorne as Classical Pantheism.[104]

Spinoza argues that "things could not have been produced by God in any other way or in any other order than is the case".[105] Therefore, concepts such as 'freedom' and 'chance' have little meaning.[99] This picture of Spinoza's determinism is illuminated in Ethics: "the infant believes that it is by free will that it seeks the breast; the angry boy believes that by free will he wishes vengeance; the timid man thinks it is with free will he seeks flight; the drunkard believes that by a free command of his mind he speaks the things which when sober he wishes he had left unsaid. … All believe that they speak by a free command of the mind, whilst, in truth, they have no power to restrain the impulse which they have to speak."[106] In his letter to G. H. Schuller (Letter 58), he wrote: "men are conscious of their desire and unaware of the causes by which [their desires] are determined."[107] He also held that knowledge of true causes of passive emotion can transform it into an active emotion, thus anticipating one of the key ideas of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis.[108]

According to Professor Eric Schliesser, Spinoza was skeptical regarding the possibility of knowledge of nature and as a consequence at odds with scientists like Galileo and Huygens.[109]

Causality[edit]

Though the principle of sufficient reason is most commonly associated with Gottfried Leibniz,[110] it is arguably found in its strongest form in Spinoza's philosophy.[111] Within the context of Spinoza's philosophical system, the principle can be understood to unify causation and explanation.[112] What this means is that for Spinoza, questions regarding the reason why a given phenomenon is the way it is (or exists) are always answerable, and are always answerable in terms of the relevant cause(s). This constitutes a rejection of teleological, or final causation, except possibly in a more restricted sense for human beings.[113][page needed][112] Given this, Spinoza's views regarding causality and modality begin to make much more sense.

Spinoza has also been described as an "Epicurean materialist",[89] specifically in reference to his opposition to Cartesian mind-body dualism. This view was held by Epicureans before him, as they believed that atoms with their probabilistic paths were the only substance that existed fundamentally.[114][115] Spinoza, however, deviated significantly from Epicureans by adhering to strict determinism, much like the Stoics before him, in contrast to the Epicurean belief in the probabilistic path of atoms, which is more in line with contemporary thought on quantum mechanics.[114][116]

The emotions[edit]

One thing which seems, on the surface, to distinguish Spinoza's view of the emotions from both Descartes' and Hume's pictures of them is that he takes the emotions to be cognitive in some important respect. Jonathan Bennett claims that "Spinoza mainly saw emotions as caused by cognitions. [However] he did not say this clearly enough and sometimes lost sight of it entirely."[117] Spinoza provides several demonstrations which purport to show truths about how human emotions work. The picture presented is, according to Bennett, "unflattering, coloured as it is by universal egoism".[118]

Ethical philosophy[edit]

Spinoza's notion of blessedness figures centrally in his ethical philosophy. Blessedness (or salvation or freedom), Spinoza thinks,

consists...in a constant and eternal love of God, or in God's love for men.(E5P36s)[113][page needed]

And this means, as Jonathan Bennett explains, that "Spinoza wants "blessedness" to stand for the most elevated and desirable state one could possibly be in."[119] Here, understanding what is meant by 'most elevated and desirable state' requires understanding Spinoza's notion of conatus (read: striving, but not necessarily with any teleological baggage) and that "perfection" refers not to (moral) value, but to completeness. Given that individuals are identified as mere modifications of the infinite Substance, it follows that no individual can ever be fully complete, i.e., perfect, or blessed. Absolute perfection, is, as noted above, reserved solely for Substance. Nevertheless, mere modes can attain a lesser form of blessedness, namely, that of pure understanding of oneself as one really is, i.e., as a definite modification of Substance in a certain set of relationships with everything else in the universe. That this is what Spinoza has in mind can be seen at the end of the Ethics, in E5P24 and E5P25, wherein Spinoza makes two final key moves, unifying the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical propositions he has developed over the course of the work. In E5P24, he links the understanding of particular things to the understanding of God, or Substance; in E5P25, the conatus of the mind is linked to the third kind of knowledge (Intuition). From here, it is a short step to the connection of Blessedness with the amor dei intellectualis ("intellectual love of God").

Writings[edit]

When the public reactions to the anonymously published Theologico-Political Treatise were extremely unfavourable to his brand of Cartesianism, Spinoza was compelled to abstain from publishing more of his works. Wary and independent, he wore a signet ring which he used to mark his letters and which was engraved with the word caute (Latin for "cautiously") underneath a rose, itself a symbol of secrecy.[120]

The Ethics and all other works, apart from the Descartes' Principles of Philosophy and the Theologico-Political Treatise, were published after his death in the Opera Posthuma, edited by his friends in secrecy to avoid confiscation and destruction of manuscripts. The Ethics contains many still-unresolved obscurities and is written with a forbidding mathematical structure modeled on Euclid's geometry[22] and has been described as a "superbly cryptic masterwork".[89]

Jeroen van de Ven has published a descriptive bibliography that contextualizes all aspects of the publication history of Spinoza’s writings from manuscript to print.[121]

Correspondence[edit]

See also: Epistolae (Spinoza) and List of Epistolae (Letters) of Spinoza

Spinoza engaged in correspondence from December 1664 to June 1665 with Willem van Blijenbergh, an amateur Calvinist theologian, who questioned Spinoza on the definition of evil. Later in 1665, Spinoza notified Oldenburg that he had started to work on a new book, the Theologico-Political Treatise, published in 1670. Leibniz disagreed harshly with Spinoza in his own manuscript "Refutation of Spinoza",[122] but he is also known to have met with Spinoza on at least one occasion[84][87] (as mentioned above), and his own work bears some striking resemblances to specific important parts of Spinoza's philosophy (see: Monadology).

In a letter, written in December 1675 and sent to Albert Burgh, who wanted to defend Catholicism, Spinoza clearly explained his view of both Catholicism and Islam. He stated that both religions are made "to deceive the people and to constrain the minds of men". He also states that Islam far surpasses Catholicism in doing so.[123][124] The Tractatus de Deo, Homine, ejusque Felicitate (Treatise on God, man and his happiness) was one of the last Spinoza's works to be published, between 1851[125] and 1862.[126]

Legacy[edit]

Engraving of Spinoza, captioned in Latin, "A Jew and an atheist"

Pantheism controversy[edit]

See also: Pantheism controversy

In 1785, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi published a condemnation of Spinoza's pantheism, after Gotthold Lessing was thought to have confessed on his deathbed to being a "Spinozist", which was the equivalent in his time of being called an atheist. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was pure materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but extended substance. This, for Jacobi, was the result of Enlightenment rationalism and it would finally end in absolute atheism. Moses Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that there is no actual difference between theism and pantheism. The issue became a major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at the time.

The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late 18th-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism. Three of Spinoza's ideas strongly appealed to them:

  • the unity of all that exists;
  • the regularity of all that happens;
  • the identity of spirit and nature.[127]

By 1879, Spinoza’s pantheism was praised by many, but was considered by some to be alarming and dangerously inimical.[128]

Spinoza's "God or Nature" (Deus sive Natura) provided a living, natural God, in contrast to Isaac Newton's first cause argument and the dead mechanism of Julien Offray de La Mettrie's (1709–1751) work, Man a Machine (L'homme machine). Coleridge and Shelley saw in Spinoza's philosophy a religion of nature.[22] Novalis called him the "God-intoxicated man".[89][129] Spinoza inspired the poet Shelley to write his essay "The Necessity of Atheism".[89]

Spinoza was considered to be an atheist because he used the word "God" [Deus] to signify a concept that was different from that of traditional Judeo–Christian monotheism. "Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God; he has neither intelligence, feeling, nor will; he does not act according to purpose, but everything follows necessarily from his nature, according to law...."[130] Thus, Spinoza's cool, indifferent God differs from the concept of an anthropomorphic, fatherly God who cares about humanity.[131]

It is a widespread belief that Spinoza equated God with the material universe. He has therefore been called the "prophet"[132] and "prince"[133] and most eminent expounder of pantheism. More specifically, in a letter to Henry Oldenburg he states, "as to the view of certain people that I identify God with Nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken".[134] For Spinoza, the universe (cosmos) is a mode under two attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in the world.

According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), when Spinoza wrote Deus sive Natura (Latin for 'God or Nature'), Spinoza meant God was natura naturans (nature doing what nature does; literally, 'nature naturing'), not natura naturata (nature already created; literally, 'nature natured'). Jaspers believed that Spinoza, in his philosophical system, did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence.[135] Even God under the attributes of thought and extension cannot be identified strictly with our world. That world is of course "divisible"; it has parts. But Spinoza said, "no attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided", meaning that one cannot conceive an attribute in a way that leads to division of substance. He also said, "a substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible" (Ethics, Part I, Propositions 12 and 13).[136] Following this logic, our world should be considered as a mode under two attributes of thought and extension. Therefore, according to Jaspers, the pantheist formula "One and All" would apply to Spinoza only if the "One" preserves its transcendence and the "All" were not interpreted as the totality of finite things.[135]

Martial Guéroult (1891–1976) suggested the term "panentheism", rather than "pantheism" to describe Spinoza's view of the relation between God and the world. The world is not God, but it is, in a strong sense, "in" God. Not only do finite things have God as their cause; they cannot be conceived without God.[136] However, American panentheist philosopher Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) insisted on the term Classical Pantheism to describe Spinoza's view.[104]

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spinoza's God is an "infinite intellect" (Ethics 2p11c) — all knowing (2p3), and capable of loving both himself—and us, insofar as we are part of his perfection (5p35c). And if the mark of a personal being is that it is one towards which we can entertain personal attitudes, then we should note too that Spinoza recommends amor intellectualis dei (the intellectual love of God) as the supreme good for man (5p33). However, the matter is complex. Spinoza's God does not have free will (1p32c1), he does not have purposes or intentions (1 appendix), and Spinoza insists that "neither intellect nor will pertain to the nature of God" (1p17s1). Moreover, while we may love God, we need to remember that God is really not the kind of being who could ever love us back. "He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return", says Spinoza (5p19).[137]

Steven Nadler suggests that settling the question of Spinoza's atheism or pantheism depends on an analysis of attitudes. If pantheism is associated with religiosity, then Spinoza is not a pantheist, since Spinoza believes that the proper stance to take towards God is not one of reverence or religious awe, but instead one of objective study and reason, since taking the religious stance would leave one open to the possibility of error and superstition.[138]

In modern and contemporary philosophy[edit]

Hegel said, "The fact is that Spinoza is made a testing-point in modern philosophy, so that it may really be said: You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."[139] His philosophical accomplishments and moral character prompted Gilles Deleuze to name him "the 'prince' of philosophers".[140]

A Dutch commemorative coin issued on the 250th death anniversary of Spinoza, 1927.

Similarities between Spinoza's philosophy and Eastern philosophical traditions have been discussed by many authors. The 19th-century German Sanskritist Theodor Goldstücker was one of the early figures to notice the similarities between Spinoza's religious conceptions and the Vedanta tradition of India, writing that Spinoza's thought was "... so exact a representation of the ideas of the Vedanta, that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus, did his biography not satisfy us that he was wholly unacquainted with their doctrines..."[141][142] Max Müller also noted the striking similarities between Vedanta and the system of Spinoza, equating the Brahman in Vedanta to Spinoza's 'Substantia.'[143]

When George Santayana graduated from college, he published an essay, "The Ethical Doctrine of Spinoza", in The Harvard Monthly.[144] Later, he wrote an introduction to Spinoza's Ethics and "De Intellectus Emendatione".[145] In 1932, Santayana was invited to present an essay (published as "Ultimate Religion")[146] at a meeting at The Hague celebrating the tricentennial of Spinoza's birth. In Santayana's autobiography, he characterized Spinoza as his "master and model" in understanding the naturalistic basis of morality.[147]

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein evoked Spinoza with the title (suggested to him by G. E. Moore) of the English translation of his first definitive philosophical work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, an allusion to Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Elsewhere, Wittgenstein deliberately borrowed the expression sub specie aeternitatis from Spinoza (Notebooks, 1914–16, p. 83). The structure of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus does have some structural affinities with Spinoza's Ethics (though, admittedly, not with the Spinoza's Tractatus) in erecting complex philosophical arguments upon basic logical assertions and principles. Furthermore, in propositions 6.4311 and 6.45 he alludes to a Spinozian understanding of eternity and interpretation of the religious concept of eternal life, stating, "If by eternity is understood not eternal temporal duration, but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present." (6.4311) "The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole." (6.45)

Spinoza's philosophy played an important role in the development of post-war French philosophy. Many of these philosophers "used Spinoza to erect a bulwark against the nominally irrationalist tendencies of phenomenology", which was associated with the dominance of Hegel, Martin Heidegger, and Edmund Husserl in France at that time.[148] Louis Althusser, as well as his colleagues such as Étienne Balibar, saw in Spinoza a philosophy which could lead Marxism out of what they considered to be flaws in its original formulation, particularly its reliance upon Hegel's conception of the dialectic, as well as Spinoza's concept of immanent causality. Antonio Negri, in exile in France for much of this period, also wrote a number of books on Spinoza, most notably The Savage Anomaly (1981) in his own reconfiguration of Italian Autonomia Operaia. Other notable French scholars of Spinoza in this period included Alexandre Matheron, Martial Gueroult, André Tosel, and Pierre Macherey, the last of whom published a widely read and influential five-volume commentary on Spinoza's Ethics, which has been described as "a monument of Spinoza commentary".[149] Gilles Deleuze, in his doctoral thesis (1968), called Spinoza "the prince of philosophers".[150] Deleuze's interpretation of Spinoza's philosophy was highly influential among French philosophers, especially in restoring to prominence the political dimension of Spinoza's thought.[151] Deleuze published two books on Spinoza and gave numerous lectures on Spinoza in his capacity as a professor at the University of Paris VIII. His own work was deeply influenced by Spinoza's philosophy, particularly the concepts of immanence and univocity. Marilena de Souza Chaui described Deleuze's Expressionism in Philosophy (1968) as a "revolutionary work for its discovery of expression as a central concept in Spinoza’s philosophy."[151]

Albert Einstein named Spinoza as the philosopher who exerted the most influence on his world view (Weltanschauung). Spinoza equated God (infinite substance) with Nature, consistent with Einstein's belief in an impersonal deity. In 1929, Einstein was asked in a telegram by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein whether he believed in God. Einstein responded by telegram: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."[152][153]

Leo Strauss dedicated his first book, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, to an examination of the latter's ideas. In the book, Strauss identified Spinoza as part of the tradition of Enlightenment rationalism that eventually produced Modernity. Moreover, he identifies Spinoza and his works as the beginning of Jewish Modernity.[89] More recently Jonathan Israel argued that, from 1650 to 1750, Spinoza was "the chief challenger of the fundamentals of revealed religion, received ideas, tradition, morality, and what was everywhere regarded, in absolutist and non-absolutist states alike, as divinely constituted political authority."[154]

Statue (2008) of Spinoza by Nicolas Dings, Amsterdam, Zwanenburgwal, with inscription "The objective of the state is freedom" (translation, quote from Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1677)

Spinoza is an important historical figure in the Netherlands, where his portrait was featured prominently on the Dutch 1000-guilder banknote, legal tender until the euro was introduced in 2002. The highest and most prestigious scientific award of the Netherlands is named the Spinozaprijs (Spinoza prize). Spinoza was included in a 50 theme canon that attempts to summarise the history of the Netherlands.[155] In 2014 a copy of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was presented to the Chair of the Dutch Parliament, and shares a shelf with the Bible and the Quran.[156]

Reconsideration of excommunication in modern times[edit]

There has been a renewed debate in modern times about Spinoza's excommunication among Israeli politicians, rabbis and Jewish press, with many calling for the cherem to be reversed.[157] Since such a cherem can only be rescinded by the congregation that issued it, and the chief rabbi of that community,[c] Haham Pinchas Toledano, declined to do so, citing Spinoza's "preposterous ideas, where he was tearing apart the very fundamentals of our religion".,[158] the Amsterdam Jewish community organised a symposium in December 2015 to discuss lifting the cherem, inviting scholars from around the world to form an advisory committee at the meeting. However, the rabbi of the congregation ruled that it should hold, on the basis that he had no greater wisdom than his predecessors, and that Spinoza's views had not become less problematic over time.[157]

Memory and memorials[edit]

  • Spinoza Lyceum, a high school in Amsterdam South was named after Spinoza. There is also a statute of him on the grounds of the school.[citation needed]
  • The Spinoza Havurah (a Humanistic Jewish community) was named in Spinoza's honor.[159]
  • The Spinoza Foundation Monument has a statute of Spinoza located in front of the Amsterdam City Hall (at Zwanenburgwal) [160] It was created by Dutch sculptor Nicolas Dings and was erected in 2008.[161][162]

Bibliography[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ However, Spinoza has also been interpreted as a defender of the coherence theory of truth.[8]
  2. ^ Baruch Spinoza is pronounced, in English, /bəˈruːk spɪˈnoʊzə/;[14][15][16] in Dutch, [baːˈrux spɪˈnoːzaː]; and, in Portuguese, [ðɨ ʃpiˈnɔzɐ]. He was born Baruch Espinosa.[1] His given name, Baruch, which means "Blessed", varies among different languages. In most of the documents and records contemporary with Spinoza's years within the Jewish community, his name is given as the Portuguese Bento.[17][18][19] In Hebrew, his full name is written ברוך שפינוזה‎. Later, as an author and correspondent, he was known both in Latin and in Dutch, the languages of his writings, as Benedictus de Spinoza, his preferred name also of his signature, with the first name sometimes anglicized as Benedict.
  3. ^ Portugees-Israëlietische Gemeente te Amsterdam (Portuguese-Israelite commune of Amsterdam)

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ Jump up to:a b c Nadler 1999, p. 45.
  2. ^ Nadler 1999, p. 119.
  3. ^ Nadler 1999, p. 64.
  4. ^ Nadler 1999, p. 65.
  5. ^ Steven Nadler, Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 27: "Spinoza attended lectures and anatomical dissections at the University of Leiden..."
  6. ^ Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), The Young Spinoza: A Metaphysician in the Making, Oxford University Press, 2015, ch. 7 Archived 1 January 2023 at the Wayback Machine.
  7. ^ Stefano Di Bella, Tad M. Schmaltz (eds.), The Problem of Universals in Early Modern Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 64 "there is a strong case to be made that Spinoza was a conceptualist about universals..."
  8. ^ "The Coherence Theory of Truth (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Archived from the original on 1 November 2019. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  9. ^ David, Marian (28 May 2015). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Correspondence theory of truth – The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 14 May 2019 – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  10. ^ Michael Della Rocca (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 288.
  11. ^ James Kreines, Reason in the World: Hegel's Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal, Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 25: "Spinoza's foundationalism (Hegel argues) threatens to eliminate all determinate reality, leaving only one indeterminate substance."
  12. ^ Vittorio Morfino (14 November 2018). Spinoza-Machiavelli Encounter: Time and Occasion. Edinburgh University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-4744-2125-6. OCLC 1233303557.
  13. ^ Jonathan Israel in his various works on the Enlightenment, e.g., Israel, Jonathan (2001). Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750. (in the index "Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch) de") and Israel, Jonathan (2011). Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790.
  14. ^ "Spinoza". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  15. ^ ""Baruch"". www.merriam-webster.com.
  16. ^ ""Spinoza"". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 27 April 2019.)
  17. ^ Nadler 1999, p. 42.
  18. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Nadler 2001, p. 1.
  19. ^ Nadler, Steven (2022), "Baruch Spinoza", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 20 November 2022
  20. ^ Jump up to:a b Richard H. Popkin, Benedict de Spinoza at the Encyclopædia Britannica
  21. ^ Jump up to:a b Dutton, Blake D. "Benedict De Spinoza (1632–1677)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 7 July 2019.
  22. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Gottlieb, Anthony (18 July 1999). "God Exists, Philosophically (review of Spinoza: A Life by Steven Nadler)". Books. The New York Times. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
  23. ^ "Why Spinoza Was Excommunicated". The National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 13 April 2023.
  24. ^ Yalom, Irvin (21 February 2012). "The Spinoza Problem". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 12 November 2013. Retrieved 7 March 2013.
  25. ^ Yovel, Yirmiyahu (1992). Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence. Princeton University Press. p. 3. ISBN 0691020795.
  26. ^ "Destroyer and Builder". The New Republic. 3 May 2012. Retrieved 7 March 2013.
  27. ^ Nadler, Steven (16 April 2020). "Baruch Spinoza". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  28. ^ "Spinoza on God, Affects, and the Nature of Sorrow – Florida Philosophical Review". cah.ucf.edu. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
  29. ^ Stewart 2007, p. 352.
  30. ^ Jump up to:a b Simkins, James (2014). "On the Development of Spinoza's Account of Human Religion". Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies. 5 (1).
  31. ^ Jones, Tod E. "Benedict de Spinoza". Unpublished Essays by an Impoverished Scholar (PDF).
  32. ^ de Spinoza, Benedictus; Hessing, Siegfried (1977). Speculum Spinozanum, 1677–1977. Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. 828. ISBN 9780710087164.
  33. ^ See: Jonathan Israel, "The Banning of Spinoza's Works in the Dutch Republic (1670–1678)", in: Wiep van Bunge and Wim Klever (eds.) Disguised and Overt Spinozism around 1700 (Leiden, 1996), pp. 3–14 (online Archived 28 September 2022 at the Wayback Machine).
  34. ^ P. TOTARO, "The Young Spinoza and the Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza’s Ethics", in The Young Spinoza. A Metaphysician in the Making, ed. by YITZHAK Y. MELAMED, New York, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 319–332 at 321–2.
  35. ^ Hübner, Karolina (2022), "Spinoza's Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 4 April 2023
  36. ^ Shirley, Samuel (2002). Complete Works. Hackett.
  37. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 32.
  38. ^ Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas. Zweite, stark erweiterte und vollständig neu kommentierte Auflage der Ausgabe von Jakob Freudenthal 1899. M. e. Bibliographie hg. v. Manfred Walther unter Mitarbeit v. Michael Czelinski. 2 Bde. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: frommann-holzboog, 2006. (Specula 4,1 – 4,2.) Erläuterungen. p. 98, 119.
  39. ^ Nadler 2001, p. 23.
  40. ^ Nadler 1999, p. 47.
  41. ^ Nadler 1999, pp. 64–65.
  42. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 8.
  43. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Scruton 2002, p. 21.
  44. ^ Jump up to:a b Nadler 2001, p. 25.
  45. ^ Scruton 2002, pp. 20–21.
  46. ^ Jump up to:a b Nadler 2001, p. 27.
  47. ^ Jump up to:a b c Nadler 2001, p. 189.
  48. ^ Strathern, Paul (1998). Spinoza in 90 Minutes. Ivan R. Dee. pp. 24–25. ISBN 978-1-56663-215-7.
  49. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 20.
  50. ^ Curley, Edwin (31 March 2020). A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Princeton University Press. p. xii. ISBN 978-0-691-20928-9.
  51. ^ Touber, Jetze (21 June 2018). Spinoza and Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1660–1710. Oxford University Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-19-252718-9.
  52. ^ Jump up to:a b Yitzhak Melamed, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, speaking at an Artistic Director's Roundtable, Theater J, Washington D.C., 18 March 2012.
  53. ^ Nadler 2001, p. 7.
  54. ^ Nadler 2001, p. 2.
  55. ^ Steven B. Smith, Spinoza's book of life: freedom and redemption in the Ethics, Yale University Press (2003), p. xx: "Introduction."
  56. ^ Nadler 2008, Biography.
  57. ^ Nadler 2001, pp. 17–22.
  58. ^ Nadler 2001, p. 19.
  59. ^ Nadler 2001, p. 20.
  60. ^ Nadler 2001, pp. 19–21.
  61. ^ Nadler, Steven (Summer 2020). "Baruch Spinoza: God or Nature". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University. ISSN 1095-5054. OCLC 643092515. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 5 August 2021. In propositions one through fifteen of Part One, Spinoza presents the basic elements of his picture of God. God is the infinite, necessarily existing (that is, self-caused), unique substance of the universe. There is only one substance in the universe; it is God; and everything else that is, is in God. [...] As soon as this preliminary conclusion has been established, Spinoza immediately reveals the objective of his attack. His definition of God—condemned since his excommunication from the Jewish community as a "God existing in only a philosophical sense"—is meant to preclude any anthropomorphizing of the divine being. In the scholium to proposition fifteen, he writes against "those who feign a God, like man, consisting of a body and a mind, and subject to passions. But how far they wander from the true knowledge of God, is sufficiently established by what has already been demonstrated." Besides being false, such an anthropomorphic conception of God standing as judge over us can have only deleterious effects on human freedom and activity, insofar as it fosters a life enslaved to hope and fear and the superstitions to which such emotions give rise.
  62. ^ Nadler 2001, p. 28.
  63. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Scruton 2002, p. 22.
  64. ^ Spinoza's Biography Archived 26 September 2022 at the Wayback Machine in the Encyclopædia Britannica. 14 February 2018.
  65. ^ Kramer, Howard (17 July 2020). "HOME & GRAVESITE OF BARUCH SPINOZA – The Complete Pilgrim – Religious Travel Sites". The Complete Pilgrim. Retrieved 14 March 2022.
  66. ^ "Spinoza" (PDF). Retrieved 14 March 2022.
  67. ^ Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava. 'The Bible in the Jewish Philosophical Tradition'. In Berlin, Adele. and Brettler, Marc Zvi, editors.(2014). The Jewish study Bible : Tanakh translation : [Torah, Neviím, Kethuvim]. Oxford : Oxford University Press, p. 1931. ISBN 9780199978465.
  68. ^ Nadler 2011, p. 167.
  69. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 23.
  70. ^ Steven Nadler, Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 27: "Spinoza attended lectures and anatomical dissections at the University of Leiden..."
  71. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 24.
  72. ^ Jump up to:a b Scruton 2002, p. 25.
  73. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Scruton 2002, p. 26.
  74. ^ "…he [Spinoza] told me [Leibniz] he had a strong desire, on the day of the massacre of Mess. De Witt, to sally forth at night, and put up somewhere, near the place of the massacre, a paper with the words Ultimi barbarorum [ultimate barbarians]. But his host had shut the house to prevent his going out, for he would have run the risk of being torn to pieces." (A Refutation Recently Discovered of Spinoza by Leibnitz, "Remarks on the Unpublished Refutation of Spinoza by Leibnitz", Edinburg: Thomas Constable and Company, 1855. p. 70.
  75. ^ See: Antonio Damasio Looking for Spinoza, pg. 19. "Spinoza's remains are not really inside the tomb...his body was stolen, no one knows by whom, sometime after the burial when the corpse lay inside the church..."
  76. ^ Christiaan Huygens, Oeuvres complètes, Letter No. 1638, 11 May 1668
  77. ^ Christiaan Huygens, Oeuvres complètes, letter to his brother 23 September 1667
  78. ^ Nadler 1999, p. 215.
  79. ^ Nadler 2001, p. 183.
  80. ^ Christiaan Huygens, Oeuvres complètes, vol. XXII, p. 732, footnote
  81. ^ Theodore Kerckring, "Spicilegium Anatomicum" Observatio XCIII (1670)
  82. ^ Chauí 2001, pp. 30–31: "A commentary on Descartes' work, Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, only work published under his own name, brought him on an invitation to teach philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. Spinoza, however, refused, thinking that it might be demanded the renouncement of his freedom of thought, for the invite stipulated that all care should be taken to 'not insult the principles of the established religion'."
  83. ^ Popkin, Richard H., "Spinoza de Spinoza" in The Columbia History of Western Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 381.
  84. ^ Jump up to:a b Lucas 1960.
  85. ^ Stewart 2007, p. [page needed].
  86. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 29.
  87. ^ Jump up to:a b Lisa Montanarelli (book reviewer) (8 January 2006). "Spinoza stymies 'God's attorney' – Stewart argues the secular world was at stake in Leibniz face off". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 8 September 2009.
  88. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 39.
  89. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Bloom, Harold (16 June 2006). "Deciphering Spinoza, the Great Original – Book review of Betraying Spinoza. The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity by Rebecca Goldstein". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 September 2009.
  90. ^ Scruton 2002, pp. 31–32.
  91. ^ Della Rocca, Michael. (2008). Spinoza. Routledge., pg. 33.
  92. ^ Jaspers 1974, p. 9.
  93. ^ Jump up to:a b Scruton 2002, p. 41
  94. ^ Jump up to:a b Scruton 2002, p. 42
  95. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 43.
  96. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 44.
  97. ^ Jump up to:a b Scruton 2002, p. 45.
  98. ^ Jump up to:a b Scruton 2002, p. 38
  99. ^ Jump up to:a b Scruton 2002, p. 51.
  100. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 57.
  101. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 59.
  102. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 60.
  103. ^ Cannon, J. A. (2009, May 17). World in time of upheaval: Sources of enlightenment. Deseret News.
  104. ^ Jump up to:a b Charles Hartshorne and William Reese, "Philosophers Speak of God", Humanity Books, 1953 ch. 4
  105. ^ Baruch Spinoza. Ethics, in Spinoza: Complete Works, trans. by Samuel Shirley and ed. by Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2002), see Part I, Proposition 33.
  106. ^ Ethics, Part III, Proposition 2.
  107. ^ Ethics, Pt. I, Prop. XXXVI, Appendix: "[M]en think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed of them so to wish and desire."
  108. ^ Scruton 2002, p. 86.
  109. ^ ""Spinoza and the Philosophy of Science: Mathematics, Motion, and Being"". 9 July 2012.
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  126. ^ Soley, W.R. (1 July 1880). Jewish Mediaeval Philosophy in Spinoza. Mind. Vol. os–V. Oxford University Press. pp. 362–384. doi:10.1093/mind/os-V.19.362. ISSN 0026-4423. JSTOR 2246395. OCLC 5545819846. other hand, the discovery and publication in 1862 of a lost treatise of Spinoza's—the Tractatus brtvia de Deo et homine ejusque felicitate"
  127. ^ Lange, Frederick Albert (1880). History of Materialism and Criticism of its Present Importance, Vol. II. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, & Co. p. 147. Retrieved 11 November 2015.
  128. ^ "The Pantheism of Spinoza Dr. Smith regarded as the most dangerous enemy of Christianity, and as he announced his conviction that it had gained the control of the schools, press and pulpit of the Old World [Europe], and was rapidly gaining the same control of the New [United States], his alarm and indignation sometimes rose to the eloquence of genuine passion." Memorial of the Rev. Henry Smith, D.D., LL D., Professor of Sacred Rhetoric and Pastoral Theology in Lane Theological Seminary, Consisting of Addresses on Occasion of the Anniversary of the Seminary, 8 May 1879, Together with Commemorative Resolutions, p. 26.
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  130. ^ Frank Thilly, A History of Philosophy, § 47, Holt & Co., New York, 1914
  131. ^ "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." These words were spoken by Albert Einstein, upon being asked if he believed in God by Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue, New York, April 24, 1921, published in the New York Times, April 25, 1929; from Einstein: The Life and Times Ronald W. Clark, New York: World Publishing Co., 1971, p. 413; also cited as a telegram to a Jewish newspaper, 1929, Einstein Archive 33–272, from Alice Calaprice, ed., The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
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Sources[edit]

Further reading[edit]

  • Albiac, Gabriel [es], 1987. La sinagoga vacía: un estudio de las fuentes marranas del espinosismo. Madrid: Hiperión D.L. ISBN 978-84-7517-214-9
  • Balibar, Étienne, 1985. Spinoza et la politique ("Spinoza and politics") Paris: PUF.
  • Belcaro Anna Maddalena, Effetto Spinoza. Avventure filosofiche, Ianieri Ed., 2020, ISBN 979-12-80022-21-9
  • Bennett, Jonathan, 1984. A Study of Spinoza's Ethics. Hackett.
  • Boucher, Wayne I., 1999. Spinoza in English: A Bibliography from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. 2nd edn. Thoemmes Press.
  • Boucher, Wayne I., ed., 1999. Spinoza: Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Discussions. 6 vols. Thoemmes Press.
  • Carlisle, Clare. "Questioning Transcendence, Teleology and Truth" in Kierkegaard and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions (ed. Jon Stewart. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2009).
  • ———, 2021. Spinoza's Religion: A New Reading of the Ethics. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691176598
  • Edwin M. Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method. A Reading of Spinoza's Ethics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
  • Damásio, António, 2003. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Harvest Books, ISBN 978-0-15-602871-4
  • Deleuze, Gilles, 1968. Spinoza et le problème de l'expression. Trans. "Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza" Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books).
  • ———, 1970. Spinoza: Philosophie pratique. Transl. "Spinoza: Practical Philosophy".
  • ———, 1990. Negotiations trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press).
  • Della Rocca, Michael. 1996. Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-509562-3
  • Michael Della Rocca, Spinoza, New York: Routledge, 2008.
  • Garrett, Don, ed., 1995. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. Cambridge Uni. Press.
  • Gatens, Moira, and Lloyd, Genevieve, 1999. Collective imaginings : Spinoza, past and present. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-16570-9, 978-0-415-16571-6
  • Goldstein, Rebecca, 2006. Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity. Schocken. ISBN 978-0-8052-1159-7
  • Goode, Francis, 2012. Life of Spinoza. Smashwords edition. ISBN 978-1-4661-3399-0
  • Gullan-Whur, Margaret, 1998. Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-05046-3
  • Hampshire, Stuart, 1951. Spinoza and Spinozism, OUP, 2005 ISBN 978-0-19-927954-8
  • Hardt, Michael, trans., University of Minnesota Press. Preface, in French, by Gilles Deleuze, available here: "01. Préface à L'Anomalie sauvage de Negri". Multitudes.samizdat.net. Archived from the original on 11 June 2011. Retrieved 2 May 2011.
  • Israel, Jonathan, 2001. The Radical Enlightenment, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • ———, 2006. Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752, (ISBN 978-0-19-927922-7 hardback)
  • Kasher, Asa, and Shlomo Biderman. "Why Was Baruch de Spinoza Excommunicated?"
  • Kayser, Rudolf, 1946, with an introduction by Albert Einstein. Spinoza: Portrait of a Spiritual Hero. New York: The Philosophical Library.
  • Krop, H. A., 2002, Spinoza Ethica, Amsterdam: Bert Bakker. Later editions, 2017, Amsterdam: Prometheus. In Dutch with Latin text by Spinoza.
  • ———, 2013, Spinoza, een paradoxale icoon van Nederland, Amsterdam: Prometheus Bert Bakker. In Dutch.
  • Lloyd, Genevieve, 1996. Spinoza and the Ethics. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-10781-5, 978-0-415-10782-2
  • ———, 2018. Reclaiming wonder . After the sublime. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-3311-2
  • LeBuffe, Michael. 2010. Spinoza and Human Freedom. Oxford University Press.
  • Lovejoy, Arthur O., 1936. "Plenitude and Sufficient Reason in Leibniz and Spinoza" in his The Great Chain of Being. Harvard University Press: 144–82 (ISBN 978-0-674-36153-9). Reprinted in Frankfurt, H. G., ed., 1972. Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays. Anchor Books.
  • Macherey, Pierre, 1977. Hegel ou Spinoza, Maspéro (2nd ed. La Découverte, 2004).
  • ———, 1994–98. Introduction à l'Ethique de Spinoza. Paris: PUF.
  • Magnusson 1990: Magnusson, M (ed.), Spinoza, Baruch, Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Chambers 1990, ISBN 978-0-550-16041-6.
  • Matheron, Alexandre, 1969. Individu et communauté chez Spinoza, Paris: Minuit.
  • Melamed, Yitzhak Y., Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). xxii+232 pp.
  • Melamed, Yitzhak Y. (ed.), The Young Spinoza: A Metaphysician in the Making (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
  • Melamed, Yitzhak Y. (ed.), Spinoza’s Ethics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
  • Millner, Simon L., The Face of Benedictus Spinoza (New York: Machmadim Art Editions, Inc., 1946).
  • Montag, Warren. Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and his Contemporaries. (London: Verso, 2002).
  • Moreau, Pierre-François, 2003, Spinoza et le spinozisme, PUF (Presses Universitaires de France)
  • Nadler, Steven, Spinoza's Ethics: An Introduction, 2006 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge England, ISBN 978-0-521-83620-3).
  • Negri, Antonio, 1991. The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics.
  • ———, 2004. Subversive Spinoza: (Un)Contemporary Variations.
  • Popkin, R. H., 2004. Spinoza (Oxford: One World Publications)
  • Prokhovnik, Raia (2004). Spinoza and republicanism. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0333733905.
  • Ratner, Joseph, 1927. The Philosophy of Spinoza (The Modern Library: Random House)
  • Smilevski, Goce, 2006. Conversation with Spinoza: A Cobweb Novel, translated from the Macedonian by Filip Korzenski. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
  • Stolze, Ted and Warren Montag (eds.), The New Spinoza, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
  • Strauss, Leo. Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1952. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
  • ———ch. 5, "How to Study Spinoza's Tractus Theologico-Politicus;" reprinted in Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), 181–233.
  • ———Spinoza's Critique of Religion. New York: Schocken Books, 1965. Reprint. University of Chicago Press, 1996.
  • ——— "Preface to the English Translation" reprinted as "Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion", in Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968, 224–59; also in Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, 137–77).
  • Valentiner, W.R., 1957. Rembrandt and Spinoza: A Study of the Spiritual Conflicts in Seventeenth-Century Holland, London: Phaidon Press.
  • Vinciguerra, Lorenzo Spinoza in French Philosophy Today. Philosophy Today, Vol. 53, No. 4, Winter 2009.
  • Williams, David Lay. 2010. "Spinoza and the General Will", The Journal of Politics, vol. 72 (April): 341–356.
  • Wolfson, Henry A. "The Philosophy of Spinoza". 2 vols. Harvard University Press.
  • Yalom, I. (2012). The Spinoza Problem: A Novel. New York: Basic Books.
  • Yovel, Yirmiyahu, "Spinoza and Other Heretics, Vol. 1: The Marrano of Reason". Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989.
  • Yovel, Yirmiyahu, "Spinoza and Other Heretics, Vol. 2: The Adventures of Immanence". Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989.

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