Baruch de Spinoza
- Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher that was very proficient in science. Most of Spinoza’s work was not recognized until after his death. Today, Spinoza is regarded as one of the greatest 17th century philosophers. His work in philosophy laid the foundation for the 18th century Enlightenment.
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Baruch Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Jewish-Dutch philosopher.[1] Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. By laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment[citation needed] and modern biblical criticism,[2] he came to be considered one of the great rationalists[2] of 17th-century philosophy. His magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes's mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important contributors. In the Ethics, "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely."[3] Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all contemporary philosophers, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."[4]
Spinoza's name in different languages is Hebrew: ברוך שפינוזה‎ Baruch Spinoza, Portuguese: Benedito or Bento de Espinosa and Latin: Benedictus de Spinoza; in all these languages, the given name means "the Blessed". Spinoza was raised in the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine. The Jewish religious authorities issued a cherem (Hebrew: חרם, a kind of ban, shunning, ostracism, expulsion, or excommunication) against him, effectively excluding him from Jewish society at age 23. His books were also later put on the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books.
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 philosophical accomplishments and moral character prompted 20th century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him "the 'prince' of philosophers."[5]
Spinoza died at the age of 44 allegedly of a lung illness, perhaps tuberculosis or silicosis exacerbated by fine glass dust inhaled while grinding optical lenses. Spinoza is buried in the churchyard of the Christian Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague.[6]

Spinoza's ancestors were of Sephardic Jewish descent, and were a part of the community of Portuguese Jews that grew in the city of Amsterdam after the Alhambra Decree in Spain (1492) and the Portuguese Inquisition (1536) had led to forced conversions and expulsions from the Iberian peninsula.[7]
Attracted by the Decree of Toleration issued in 1579 by the Union of Utrecht, Portuguese "conversos" first sailed to Amsterdam in 1593 and promptly reconverted to Judaism.[8] In 1598 permission was granted to build a synagogue, and in 1615 an ordinance for the admission and government of the Jews was passed.[9] As a community of exiles, the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam were highly jealous of their identity.[9]
Some historians argue the Spinoza family ("Espinosa" in Portuguese) had its origins in Espinosa de los Monteros, near Burgos, Spain.[10] Others claim they were Portuguese Jews who had moved to Spain and then were expelled back to their home country in 1492, only to be forcibly converted to Catholicism in 1498.[citation needed]
Spinoza's father was born roughly a century after this forced conversion in the small Portuguese city of Vidigueira, near Beja in Alentejo. When Spinoza's father was still a child, Spinoza's grandfather, Isaac de Spinoza (who was from Lisbon), took his family to Nantes in France. They were expelled in 1615 and moved to Rotterdam, where Isaac died in 1627.
Spinoza's father, Miguel (Michael), and his uncle, Manuel, then moved to Amsterdam where they resumed practicing Judaism. Miguel was a successful merchant and became a warden of the synagogue and of the Amsterdam Jewish school.[9] He buried three wives, however, and three of his six children died before reaching adulthood.[11]

Spinoza lived where the Moses and Aaron church is located now, and there is strong evidence he was born there too.[12]
Baruch de Espinoza, as he was called in Portuguese, 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 (i.e. Sephardic Jewish) merchant in Amsterdam.[13] His mother, Ana Débora, Miguel's second wife, died when Baruch was only six years old. Spinoza's mother tongue was Spanish, although he also knew Hebrew, Portuguese, Dutch, perhaps French, and later Latin.[15] Although he wrote in Latin, Spinoza learned Latin late in his youth.
Spinoza had a traditional Jewish upbringing, attending the Keter Torah yeshiva of the Amsterdam Talmud Torah congregation headed by the learned and traditional senior Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira. His teachers also included the less traditional Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel, "a man of wide learning and secular interests, a friend of Vossius, Grotius, and Rembrandt,"[16] whose home was a center for Jewish scholars in Amsterdam[4][page needed] and who later took a leading part in promoting the readmission of Jews to England.[17] While presumably a star pupil, and perhaps considered as a potential rabbi, Spinoza never reached the advanced study of the Torah in the upper levels of the curriculum.[18] Instead, at the age of 17, after the death of his elder brother, Isaac, he cut short his formal studies in order to begin working in the family importing business.[18]
In 1653, at age 20, Spinoza began studying Latin with Frances van den Enden (Franciscus van den Enden), a notorious free thinker, former Jesuit, and radical democrat who likely introduced Spinoza to scholastic and modern philosophy, including that of Descartes.[19] (A decade later, in the early 1660s, Van den Enden was considered to be a Cartesian and atheist,[20] and his books were put on the Catholic Index of banned books.)
Spinoza's father, Miguel, died in 1654 when Spinoza was 21. He duly recited Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning, for eleven months as required by Jewish law.[21] When his sister Rebekah disputed his inheritance, he took her to court to establish his claim, and then renounced it in her favor.[22]
Spinoza adopted the Latin name Benedictus de Spinoza,[23] began boarding with Van den Enden, and began teaching in his school.[24] He is said to have fallen in love with his teacher's daughter, Clara, but she rejected him for a richer student (although this story has also been discounted on the basis that Clara Maria van den Enden was born in 1643 and would have been no more than about 18 years old at the time Spinoza left Amsterdam.[15] In 1671 she married Dirck Kerckring).
During this period Spinoza also became acquainted with the Collegiants, an anti-clerical sect of Remonstrants with tendencies towards rationalism, and with the Mennonites who had existed for a century but were close to the Remonstrants.[25] Many of his friends belonged to dissident Christian groups which met regularly as discussion groups and which typically rejected the authority of established churches as well as traditional dogmas.[1]
Questioned by two members of the synagogue, Spinoza at this time apparently responded that God has a body and nothing in scripture says otherwise.[26] He was later attacked on the steps of the synagogue by a knife-wielding assailant shouting "Heretic!" He was apparently quite shaken by this attack and for years kept (and wore) his torn cloak, unmended, as a souvenir.[27]
After his father's death in 1654, Spinoza ran the family importing business along with his younger brother Gabriel (Abraham).[21] The business ran into serious financial difficulties, however, perhaps as a result of wars involving Holland, England and France.[vague] In March 1656, Spinoza filed suit with the Amsterdam municipal authorities to be declared an orphan in order to escape his father's business debts, so that he could inherit his mother's estate (which his father had inherited in trust for him) without it being subject to his father's creditors.[28] In addition, after having made substantial contributions to the Talmud Torah synagogue in 1654 and 1655, he reduced his December 1655 contribution and his March 1656 pledge to nominal amounts (and the March 1656 pledge was never paid).
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