Baruch Spinoza was a 17th century Dutch philosopher who developed a metaphysical system that viewed reality as a single substance with both mind and matter as attributes of God or Nature. He believed ideas correspond perfectly to reality similar to mathematics. Spinoza argued there is only one substance which is God or Nature, and all things in the natural universe are modifications of this single substance. His philosophy was considered radical for the time as he denied personality and consciousness to God, instead viewing God as an impersonal order of nature. Spinoza's works were published after his death due to fears of censorship during his life.
3. • Other names: Benedictus de Spinoza.
• Era: 17th-century philosophyAge of Enlightenment.
• Region: Western philosophy.
• Main interests:
1. Ethics
2. Epistemology
3. Metaphysics
4. Hebrew Bible
4. Biography
• Baruch Espinosa 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. His mother, Ana Débora, Miguel's second wife, died when
Baruch was only six years old. 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.
5. Biography (early life)
• 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. Spinoza adopted the Latin name Benedictus de Spinoza, began boarding
with Van den Enden, and began teaching in his school.
• 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
6. Philosophy
• Spinoza's philosophy has been associated with that of Leibniz and René Descartes
as part of the rationalist school of thought, 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. The writings of René Descartes have
been described as "Spinoza's starting point". 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.
7. Metaphysics
• 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).
8. Philosophy ( the emotion )
• 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." 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".
9. Legacy
• 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.
10. Legacy
• 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...."]
Thus, Spinoza's cool, indifferent God differs from the concept of an
anthropomorphic, fatherly God who cares about humanity.
11. Writings
• 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 and has been described as a
"superbly cryptic masterwork".
