Benedictus (Baruch) de Spinoza (1632-1677)

• A philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin.

• A forerunner of the Age of Enlightenment, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century rationalism, and Dutch intellectual culture, establishing himself as one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period.

• Influenced by Stoicism, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Ibn Tufayl, and heterodox Christians, Spinoza was a leading philosopher of the Dutch Golden Age.

• Spinoza was born in Amsterdam to a Marrano family that fled Portugal for the more tolerant Dutch Republic. He received a traditional Jewish education, learning Hebrew and studying sacred texts within the Portuguese Jewish community, where his father was a prominent merchant.

• As a young man, Spinoza challenged rabbinic authority and questioned Jewish doctrines, leading to his permanent expulsion from the Jewish community in 1656.

• Following his excommunication, he distanced himself from all religious affiliations and devoted himself to philosophical inquiry and lens grinding.

• Spinoza attracted a dedicated circle of followers who gathered to discuss his writings and joined him in the intellectual pursuit of truth.

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Quotes By Spinoza:

• Nature offers nothing that can be called this man’s rather than another’s; but under nature everything belongs to all.

• The better part of us is in harmony with the order of the whole of Nature.​

• A thing does not cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

• We affirm and deny many things because the nature of words, not the nature of things, makes us to do so.

• Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

• The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

• The investigation of Nature in general is the basis of philosophy.

• In demonstrating the truths of Nature does not truth reveal its own self?

• A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.

• When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.

• Conduct that brings about harmony is that which is related to justice, equity, and honorable dealing.

• Minds are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.

• A society will be more secure, stable & less exposed to fortune, which is founded & governed mainly by people of wisdom and vigilance.

• The real slave lives under the sway of pleasure and can neither see nor do what is for their own good.

• The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

• ​We are so constituted by nature that we are ready to believe what we hope and reluctant to believe what we fear.

• Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.

• Superstition is founded on ignorance.

• We are correct to call inhuman those who are moved neither by reason nor by pity to render help to others.

• The mind of God is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time, the diffused consciousness that animates the world.

• Outside Nature, which is infinite, there is, and can be, no being.

• A miracle–either contrary to Nature or above Nature–is mere absurdity.

• Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

• The prideful love the company of parasites or flatterers, and hate the company of those of noble spirit.

• Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.

• The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.

• The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.

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