biography
| name: |
Spinoza, Baruch or Benedictus de
|
pronunciation:
[spinohza]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1632–77)
|
| biography:
| Philosopher and theologian, born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, into a Jewish emigré family from Portugal. His deep interest in optics, the new astronomy, and Cartesian philosophy made him unpopular, and he was expelled from the Jewish community in 1656. He became the leader of a small philosophical circle and made a living grinding and polishing lenses. His major works include the Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670), published anonymously in 1670 but banned in 1674 for its controversial views on the Bible and Christian theology, and his Ethica, published posthumously in 1677, a complete, deductive, metaphysical system, intended to be a proof of what is good for human beings derived with mathematical certainty from axioms, theorems, and definitions. He rejected Cartesian dualism in favour of a pantheistic God who has matter and mind as two of his attributes and is the ultimate substance and explanation of the world. He is regarded, along with Descartes and Leibniz, as one of the great Rationalist thinkers of the 18th-c. |
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