Adam Kirsch writes about the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, the subject of Ian Buruma’s “Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah.”
Baruch (de) Spinoza[b] (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677), also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, who was born and lived in the Dutch Republic.
All of this has given rise to a great deal of scholarly debate as to what Spinoza means by saying all things being modes of or “in” God. They may also explain why, as of Proposition Sixteen, there is a subtle but important shift in Spinoza’s language.
Benedict de Spinoza, Dutch Jewish philosopher, one of the foremost exponents of 17th-century Rationalism and one of the early and seminal figures of the Enlightenment. His masterwork is the treatise Ethics (1677). Learn more about Spinoza’s life and work.
Among philosophers, Spinoza is best known for his Ethics, a monumental work that presents an ethical vision unfolding out of a monistic metaphysics in which God and Nature are identified.
Baruch Spinoza, born on , in Amsterdam, is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures of early modern philosophy. Spinoza’s life and work unfolded during a period of profound social, political, and intellectual transformation in Europe, known as the Dutch Golden Age.
The Spinoza Web is a website that seeks to make the Dutch philosopher Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677) accessible to a wide range of users from interested novices to advanced scholars, and everything in between. It is a continually developing, active project whose success depends on its users.
Spinoza (1632-1677) was a 17th-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher whose philosophy stood apart from both religious orthodoxy and the mainstream rationalism of his time. His goal was not merely to describe the world but to prove it – deductively, systematically, from first principles.