Baruch Spinoza
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Baruch Spinoza
Also known as Benedict Spinoza and influenced by the philosopher Rene Descartes, he developed a pantheistic philosophy in which all of existence is embraced by the infinite essence of God or Nature.
His most famous work was his Ethics (1677).
In 1656 Spinoza was excommunicated from his Jewish community for unorthodoxy of thought.
Spinoza is often credited as being the originator of the concept of the separation of church and state.
Spinoza was little appreciated in his own time, but is now respected, along with Descartes and Leibniz, as one of the great Continental Rationalist philosophers.
Anthony Quinton on Spinoza and Leibniz (Part 1)
Interview with Bryan Magee
Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (Jewish Encounters)
Amazon Price: $5.51 (as of 02/17/2012)
This biography of 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) may seem out of place in the Jewish Encounters series, devoted to Jewish thinkers and themes, because Spinoza denied the importance of Jewish identity, and Amsterdam's Jewish community expelled him for heresy.
But Goldstein, author of The Mind-Body Problem and Incompleteness and a professor of philosophy, reconstructs Spinoza's life and traces his metaphysics to his efforts to solve the dilemmas of Jewish identity. The philosopher grew up in a community of Jews who had fled the Spanish-Portuguese Inquisition. As Goldstein argues, Spinoza's "determination to think through his community's tragedy in the most universal terms possible compelled him to devise a unique life for himself, insisting on secularism when the concept of it had not yet been conceived."
For Spinoza, "salvation" lay in achieving the radical objectivity of pure reason, which dissolves the contingent facts of one's personal history and religious and ethnic identity. Spinoza's effort to live as neither Jew nor Christian nor Muslim was unthinkable in the 17th century, but his arguments for political and religious tolerance were forerunners for the U.S. Constitution. In this admirable biography, Goldstein shows that Spinoza is paradoxically Jewish, "[f]or what can be more characteristic of a Jewish thinker than to use the Jewish experience as a conduit to universality?" (May)
In 1656, Amsterdam's Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, and, at the age of twenty-three, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He was already germinating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original. He went on to produce one of the most ambitious systems in the history of Western philosophy, so ahead of its time that scientists today, from string theorists to neurobiologists, count themselves among Spinoza's progeny.
In Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often hidden beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality, and to crack the mystery of the breach between the philosopher and his Jewish past. Goldstein argues that the trauma of the Inquisition's persecution of its forced Jewish converts plays itself out in Spinoza's philosophy. The excommunicated Spinoza, no less than his excommunicators, was responding to Europe's first experiment with racial anti-Semitism.
Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero-a surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age.
God Equals Nature
Deus, sive Natura. (God, or in other words, Nature.)
-- Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (1677)
Baruch Spinoza (article)
Spinoza lived quietly as a lens grinder, turning down rewards and honors throughout his life, including prestigious teaching positions, and gave his family inheritance to his sister. Spinoza's moral character and philosophical accomplishments prompted 20th century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him "the absolute philosopher." Spinoza died in February 1677 of a lung illness, perhaps tuberculosis or silicosis caused by fine glass dust inhaled while tending to his trade.
Source: Wikipedia
Latest News on Baruch Spinoza
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byAnthony Quinton on Spinoza and Leibniz (Part 2)
Interview with Bryan Magee
Ethics (by Baruch Spinoza)
Ethics (Penguin Classics)
Amazon Price: $6.78 (as of 02/17/2012)
Spinoza worked through his ideas using his mathematical background. He diligently recorded his postulates in a very studied order. Remember, he wrote this in the 1600's under trying circumstances.
Anyone can pick up the "Ethics" today, randomly open the book and find meaning on just about any topic. For example, I'm opening the book now, Page 132, the first thing I read in Italics is:
"Only insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, must they always agree in nature."
At the top of that same page it says, "Peter has the idea of a thing he loves which is already possessed, whereas Paul has the idea of a thing he loves which is lost. That is why one is affected with joy and the other with sadness, and to that extent they are contrary to one another."
Spinoza teaches us to be moral without religion, but with a total belief in God. His view is that there is nothing that cannot be known. Try it, for this book will end up being well worn by you.
Have something to say about this lens or about Baruch Spinoza?
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perrybenard
Feb 7, 2012 @ 4:51 pm | delete
- very interesting and as unique as the individual, are the thoughts
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BrookeRuSchu
Apr 30, 2009 @ 8:33 am | delete
- I've been a fan of Spinoza since the first time I read Ethics. I love the extensive list of all of the emotions and their definitions. It gives a lot to consider. Great lens!
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