Baruch spinoza biography resumen de don

The body in question is the human body; and its corresponding idea is the human mind or soul. The mind, then, like any other idea, is simply one particular mode of God's attribute, Thought. Whatever happens in the body is reflected or expressed in the mind. In this way, the mind perceives, more or less obscurely, what is taking place in its body.

And through its body's interactions with other bodies, the mind is aware of what is happening in the physical world around it. But the human mind no more interacts with its body than any mode of Thought interacts with a mode of Extension. One of the pressing questions in seventeenth century philosophy, and perhaps the most celebrated legacy of Descartes's dualism, is the problem of how two radically different substances such as mind and body enter into a union in a human being and cause effects in each other.

Spinoza, in effect, denies that the human being is a union of two substances. The human mind and the human body are two different expressions—under Thought and under Extension—of one and the same thing: the person. And because there is no causal interaction between the mind and the body, the so-called mind-body problem does not, technically speaking, arise.

The human mind, like God, contains ideas. Such ideas do not convey adequate and true knowledge of the world, but only a relative, partial and subjective picture of how things presently seem to be to the perceiver. There is no systematic order to these perceptions, nor any critical oversight by reason. Under such circumstances, we are simply determined in our ideas by our fortuitous and haphazard encounter with things in the external world.

This superficial acquaintance will never provide us with knowledge of the essences of those things. In fact, it is an invariable source of falsehood and error. Adequate ideas, on the other hand, are formed in a rational and orderly manner, and are necessarily true and revelatory of the essences of things. It involves grasping a thing's causal connections not just to other objects but, more importantly, to the attributes of God and the infinite modes the laws of nature that follow immediately from them.

The adequate idea of a thing clearly and distinctly situates its object in all of its causal nexuses and shows not just that it is, but how and why it is. The person who truly knows a thing sees the reasons why the thing was determined to be and could not have been otherwise. To perceive by way of adequate ideas is to perceive the necessity inherent in Nature.

Sense experience alone could never provide the information conveyed by an adequate idea. The senses present things only as they appear from a given perspective at a given moment in time. And Reason perceives this necessity of things truly, i. But this necessity of things is the very necessity of God's eternal nature. The third kind of knowledge, intuition, takes what is known by Reason and grasps it in a single act of the mind.

Spinoza's conception of adequate knowledge reveals an unrivaled optimism in the cognitive powers of the human being.

Baruch spinoza biography resumen de don: Spinoza was born in

Not even Descartes believed that we could know all of Nature and its innermost secrets with the degree of depth and certainty that Spinoza thought possible. Most remarkably, because Spinoza thought that the adequate knowledge of any object, and of Nature as a whole, involves a thorough knowledge of God and of how things related to God and his attributes, he also had no scruples about claiming that we can, at least in principle, know God perfectly and adequately.

No other philosopher in history has been willing to make this claim. But, then again, no other philosopher identified God with Nature. Spinoza engages in such a detailed analysis of the composition of the human being because it is essential to his goal of showing how the human being is a part of Nature, existing within the same causal nexuses as other extended and mental beings.

This has serious ethical implications. First, it implies that a human being is not endowed with freedom, at least in the ordinary sense of that term. Because our minds and the events in our minds are simply ideas that exist within the causal series of ideas that follows from God's attribute Thought, our actions and volitions are as necessarily determined as any other natural events.

What is true of the will and, of course, of our bodies is true of all the phenomena of our psychological lives. Spinoza believes that this is something that has not been sufficiently understood by previous thinkers, who seem to have wanted to place the human being on a pedestal outside of or above nature. Descartes, for example, believed that if the freedom of the human being is to be preserved, the soul must be exempt from the kind of deterministic laws that rule over the material universe.

Spinoza's aim in Parts Three and Four is, as he says in his Preface to Part Three, to restore the human being and his volitional and emotional life into their proper place in nature. For nothing stands outside of nature, not even the human mind. Our affects—our love, anger, hate, envy, pride, jealousy, etc. Spinoza, therefore, explains these emotions—as determined in their occurrence as are a body in motion and the properties of a mathematical figure—just as he would explain any other things in nature.

Our affects are divided into actions and passions. When the cause of an event lies in our own nature—more particularly, our knowledge or adequate ideas—then it is a case of the mind acting. On the other hand, when something happens in us the cause of which lies outside of our nature, then we are passive and being acted upon. All beings are naturally endowed with such a power or striving.

What we should strive for is to be free from the passions—or, since this is not absolutely possible, at least to learn how to moderate and restrain them—and become active, autonomous beings. We will, consequently, be truly liberated from the troublesome emotional ups and downs of this life. The way to bring this about is to increase our knowledge, our store of adequate ideas, and eliminate as far as possible our inadequate ideas, which follow not from the nature of the mind alone but from its being an expresssion of how our body is affected by other bodies.

In other words, we need to free ourselves from a reliance on the senses and the imagination, since a life of the senses and images is a life being affected and led by the objects around us, and rely as much as we can only on our rational faculties. This provides Spinoza with a foundation for cataloguing the human passions. For the passions are all functions of the ways in which external things affect our baruch spinoza biographies resumen de don or capacities.

Being a passion, joy is always brought about by some external object. Love is simply Joy accompanied by an awareness of the external cause that brings about the passage to a greater perfection. We love that object that benefits us and causes us joy. We hope for a thing whose presence, as yet uncertain, will bring about joy. We fear, however, a thing whose presence, equally uncertain, will bring about sadness.

When that whose outcome was doubtful becomes certain, hope is changed into confidence, while fear is changed into despair. All of the human emotions, in so far as they are passions, are constantly directed outward, towards things and their capacities to affect us one way or another. Aroused by our passions and desires, we seek or flee those things that we believe cause joy or sadness.

But the objects of our passions, being external to us, are completely beyond our control. Thus, the more we allow ourselves to be controlled by themthe more we are subject to passions and the less active and free we are. The solution to this predicament is an ancient one. Since we cannot control the objects that we tend to value and that we allow to influence our well-being, we ought instead to try to control our evaluations themselves and thereby minimize the sway that external objects and the passions have over us.

We can never eliminate the passive affects entirely. We are essentially a part of nature, and can never fully remove ourselves from the causal series that link us to external things. But we can, ultimately, counteract the passions, control them, and achieve a certain degree of relief from their turmoil. The path to restraining and moderating the affects is through virtue.

Spinoza is a psychological and ethical egoist. All beings naturally seek their own advantage—to preserve their own being—and it is right for them do so. This is what virtue consists in. Since we are thinking beings, endowed with intelligence and reason, what is to our greatest advantage is knowledge. Our virtue, therefore, consists in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, of adequate ideas.

The best kind of knowledge is a purely intellectual intuition of the essences of things. They are apprehended, that is, in their conceptual and causal relationship to the universal essences thought and extension and the eternal laws of nature. But this is just to say that, ultimately, we strive for a knowledge of God. The concept of any body involves the concept of extension; and the concept of any idea or mind involves the concept of thought.

But thought and extension just are God's attributes. So the proper and adequate conception of any body or mind necessarily involves the concept or knowledge of God. Knowledge of God is, thus, the Mind's greatest good and its greatest virtue. What we see when we understand things through the third kind of knowledge, under the aspect of eternity and in relation to God, is the deterministic necessity of all things.

We see that all bodies and their states follow necessarily from the essence of baruch spinoza biography resumen de don and the universal laws of physics; and we see that all ideas, including all the properties of minds, follow necessarily from the essence of thought and its universal laws. This insight can only weaken the power that the passions have over us.

We are no longer hopeful or fearful of what shall come to pass, and no longer anxious or despondent over our possessions. We regard all things with equanimity, and we are not inordinately and irrationally affected in different ways by past, present or future events. The result is self-control and a calmness of mind. Our affects themselves can be understood in this way, which further diminishes their power over us.

Spinoza's ethical theory is, to a certain degree, Stoic, and recalls the doctrines of thinkers such as Cicero and Seneca:. The third kind of knowledge generates a love for its object, and in this love consists not joy, a passion, but blessedness itself. It is also our freedom and autonomy, as we approach the condition wherein what happens to us follows from our nature as a determinate and determined mode of one of God's attributes alone and not as a result of the ways external things affect us.

He also, despite the fundamental egoism, engages in behavior toward others that is typically regarded as "ethical", even altruistic. He takes care for the well-being and virtuous flourishing of other human beings.

Baruch spinoza biography resumen de don: Bento (in Hebrew, Baruch;

He does what he can through rational benevolence as opposed to pity or some other passion to insure that they, too, achieve relief from the disturbances of the passions through understanding, and thus that they become more like him and therefore most useful to him. Moreover, the free person is not anxious about death. The free person neither hopes for any eternal, otherworldly rewards nor fears any eternal punishments.

He knows that the soul is not immortal in any personal sense, but is endowed only with a certain kind of eternity. The more the mind consists of true and adequate ideas which are eternalthe more of it remains—within God's attribute of Thought—after the death of the body and the disappearance of that part of the mind that corresponds to the body's duration.

This understanding of his place in the natural scheme of things brings to the free individual true peace of mind. There are a number of social and political ramifications that follow from Spinoza's ethical doctrines of human action and well-being. Free human beings will be mutually beneficial and useful, and will be tolerant of the opinions and even the errors of others.

However, human beings do not generally live under the guidance of reason. The state or sovereign, therefore, is required in order to insure—not by reason, but by the threat of force—that individuals are protected from the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest on the part of other individuals. The ostensive aim of the Theological-Political Treatise TTPwidely vilified in its time, is to show that the freedom to philosophize can not only be granted without injury to piety and the peace of the Commonwealth, but that the peace of the Commonwealth and Piety are endangered by the suppression of this freedom.

But Spinoza's ultimate intention is reveal the truth about Scripture and religion, and thereby to undercut the political power exercised in modern states by religious authorities. He also defends, at least as a political ideal, the tolerant, secular, and democratic polity. A person guided by fear and hope, the main emotions in a life devoted to the pursuit of temporal advantages, turns, in the face of the vagaries of fortune, to behaviors calculated to secure the goods he desires.

Baruch spinoza biography resumen de don: Spinoza was the most

Thus, we pray, worship, make votive offerings, sacrifice and engage in all the various rituals of popular religion. But the emotions are as fleeting as the objects that occasion them, and thus the superstitions grounded in those emotions subject to fluctuations. Ambitious and self-serving clergy do their best to stabilize this situation and give some permanence to those beliefs and behaviors.

Only then will we be able to delimit exactly what we need to do to show proper respect for God and obtain blessedness. This will reduce the sway that religious authorities have over our emotional, intellectual and physical lives, and reinstate a proper and healthy relationship between the state and religion. A close analysis of the Bible is particularly important for any argument that the freedom of philosophizing—essentially, freedom of thought and speech—is not prejudicial to piety.

Spinoza intends to show that in that moral message alone—and not in Scripture's words or history—lies the sacredness of what is otherwise merely a human document. Thus, philosophy and religion, reason and faith, inhabit two distinct and exclusive spheres, and neither should tread in the domain of the other. The freedom to philosophize and speculate can therefore be granted without any harm to true religion.

In fact, such freedom is essential to public peace and piety, since most civil disturbances arise from sectarian disputes. From a proper and informed reading of Scripture, a number of things become clear. First, the prophets were not men of exceptional intellectual talents—they were not, that is, naturally gifted philosophers—but simply very pious, even morally superior individuals endowed with vivid imaginations.

They were able to perceive God's revelation through their imaginative faculties via words or real or imaginary figures. This is what allowed them to apprehend that which lies beyond the boundary of the intellect. Moreover, the content of a prophecy varied according to the physical temperament, imaginative powers, and particular opinions or prejudices of the prophet.

It follows that prophecy, while it has its origins in the power of God—and in this respect it is, in Spinoza's metaphysical scheme, no different from any other natural event—does not provide privileged knowledge of natural or spiritual phenomena. The prophets are not necessarily to be trusted when it comes to matters of the intellect, on questions of philosophy, history or science; and their pronouncements set no parameters on what should or should not be believed about the natural world on the basis of our rational faculties.

The ancient Hebrews, in fact, did not surpass other nations in their wisdom or in their proximity to God. They were neither intellectually nor morally superior to other peoples. God or Nature gave them a set of laws and they obeyed those laws, with the natural result that their society was well-ordered and their autonomous government persisted for a long time.

Their election was thus a temporal and conditional one, and their kingdom is now long gone. Spinoza thereby rejects the baruch spinoza biography resumen de don that many—including Amsterdam's Sephardic rabbis—insisted was essential to Judaism. True piety and blessedness are universal in their scope and accesssible to anyone, regardless of their confessional creed.

Central to Spinoza's analysis of the Jewish religion—although it is applicable to any religion whatsoever—is the distinction between the divine law and the ceremonial law. The law of God commands only the knowledge and love of God and the actions required for attaining that condition. Such love must arise not from fear of possible penalties or hope for any rewards, but solely from the goodness of its object.

The divine law does not demand any particular rites or ceremonies such as sacrifices or dietary restrictions or festival observances. The six hundred and thirteen precepts of the Torah have nothing to do with blessedness or virtue. They were directed only at the Hebrews so that they might govern themselves in an autonomous state. The ceremonial laws helped preserve their kingdom and insure its prosperity, but were valid only as long as that political entity lasted.

They are not binding on all Jews under all circumstances. They were, in fact, instituted by Moses for a purely practical reason: so that people might do their duty and not go their own way. This is true not just of the rites and practices of Judaism, but of the outer ceremonies of all religions. None of these activities have anything to do with true happiness or piety.

They serve only to control people's behavior and preserve a particular society. A similar practical function is served by stories of miracles. Scripture speaks in a language suited to affect the imagination of ordinary people and compel their obedience. Rather than appealing to the natural and real causes of all events, its authors sometimes narrate things in a way calculated to move people—particularly uneducated people—to devotion.

Every event, no matter how extraordinary, has a natural cause and explanation. This is simply a consequence of Spinoza's metaphysical doctrines. Miracles as traditionally conceived require a distinction between God and nature, something that Spinoza's philosophy rules out in principle. Moreover, nature's order is inviolable in so far as the sequence of events in nature is a necessary consequence of God's attributes.

By analyzing prophecy in terms of vividness of imagination, Jewish election as political fortune, the ceremonial law as a kind of social and political expediency, and the belief in miracles as an ignorance of nature's necessary causal operations, Spinoza naturalizes and, consequently, demystifies some of the fundamental elements of Judaism and other religions and undermines the foundations of their external, superstitious rites.

At the same time, he thereby reduces the fundamental doctrine of piety to a simple and universal formula, naturalistic in itself, involving love and knowledge. This process of naturalization achieves its stunning climax when Spinoza turns to consider the authorship and interpretation of the Bible itself. Spinoza's views on Scripture constitute, without question, the most radical theses of the Treatiseand explain why he was attacked with such vitriol by his contemporaries.

Baruch spinoza biography resumen de don: Spinoza advances a number

Others before Spinoza had suggested that Moses was not the author of the entire Pentateuch. But no one had taken that claim to the extreme limit that Spinoza did, arguing for it with such boldness and at such length. Nor had anyone before Spinoza been willing to draw from it the conclusions about the status, meaning and interpretation of Scripture that Spinoza drew.

Spinoza denied that Moses wrote all, or even most of the Torah. Moses did, to be sure, compose some books of history and of law; and remnants of those long lost books can be found in the Pentateuch. But the Torah as we have it, as well as as other books of the Hebrew Bible such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings were written neither by the individuals whose names they bear nor by any person appearing in them.

God is the only substance in the universe, and everything is a part of God. This view was described by Charles Hartshorne as Classical Pantheism. Spinoza argues that "things could not have been produced by God in any other way or in any other order than is the case". Schuller Letter 58he wrote: "men are conscious of their desire and unaware of the causes by which [their desires] are determined.

According to Eric Schliesser, Spinoza was skeptical regarding the possibility of knowledge of nature and as a consequence at odds with scientists such as Galileo and Huygens. Although the principle of sufficient reason is commonly associated with Gottfried LeibnizSpinoza employs it in a more systematic manner. In Spinoza's philosophical framework, questions concerning why a particular phenomenon exists are always answerable, and these answers are provided in terms of the relevant cause.

Spinoza's approach involves first providing an account of a phenomenon, such as goodness or consciousness, to explain it, and then further explaining the phenomenon in terms of itself. For instance, he might argue that consciousness is the degree of power of a mental state. Spinoza has also been described as an " Epicurean materialist", [ ] specifically in reference to his opposition to Cartesian mind-body dualism.

This view was held by Epicureans before him, as they believed that atoms with their probabilistic paths were the only substance that existed fundamentally. 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. The picture presented is, according to Bennett, "unflattering, coloured as it is by universal egoism ". Spinoza's notion of blessedness figures centrally in his ethical philosophy. Spinoza writes that blessedness or salvation or freedom"consists, namely, in a constant and eternal love of God, or in God's love for men.

Given that individuals are identified as mere modifications of the infinite Substance, it follows that no individual can ever be fully complete, i. Absolute perfection, is, in Spinoza's thought, reserved solely for Substance. Nevertheless, modes can attain a lesser form of blessedness, namely, that of pure understanding of oneself as one really is, i.

That this is what Spinoza has in mind can be seen at the end of the Ethicsin E5P24 and E5P25, where Spinoza makes two final key moves, unifying the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical propositions he has developed over the course of the work. In E5P24, he links the understanding of particular things to the understanding of God, or Substance; in E5P25, the conatus of the mind is linked to the third kind of knowledge Intuition.

From here, it is a short step to the connection of Blessedness with the amor dei intellectualis "intellectual love of God". This unfinished treatise in Latin expounds Spinoza's ideas about forms of government. As with the Ethicsthis work was published posthumously by his circle of supporters in Latin and in Dutch. The subtitle is " In quo demonstratur, quomodo Societas, ubi Imperium Monarchicum locum habet, sicut et ea, ubi Optimi imperant, debet institui, ne in Tyrannidem labatur, et ut Pax, Libertasque civium inviolata maneat.

Although Spinoza's political and theological thought was radical in many ways, he held traditional views on the place of women. In the TP, he writes briefly on the last page of the TP that women were "naturally" subordinate to men, stating bluntly his women are "by nature" not by "institutional practice" subordinate to men. Both his major biographers in English remark on his view of women.

Biographer Steven Nadler is clearly disappointed by Spinoza's only statement on women. Israel says that Spinoza's views are "hugely disappointing to the modern reader" and that the most that can be said in his defense is that "in his age rampant tyrannizing over women was indeed universal. 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.

InFriedrich Heinrich Jacobi published a condemnation of Spinoza's pantheism, after Gotthold Lessing was thought to have confessed on his deathbed to being a "Spinozist", which was the equivalent in his time of being called an atheist. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was pure materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but extended substance.

This, for Jacobi, was the result of Enlightenment rationalism and it would finally end in absolute atheism. Moses Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that there is no actual difference between theism and pantheism. The issue became a major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at the time. 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:. BySpinoza's pantheism was praised by many, but was considered by some to be alarming and dangerously inimical. Coleridge and Shelley saw in Spinoza's philosophy a religion of nature. It is a widespread baruch spinoza biography resumen de don that Spinoza equated God with the material universe.

He has therefore been called the "prophet" [ ] and "prince" [ ] and most eminent expounder of pantheism. More specifically, in a letter to Henry Oldenburg he states, "as to the view of certain people that I identify God with Nature taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matterthey are quite mistaken". God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in the world.

According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers —when Spinoza wrote Deus sive Natura Latin for 'God or Nature'Spinoza meant God was natura naturans nature doing what nature does; literally, 'nature naturing'not natura naturata nature already created; literally, 'nature natured'. Jaspers believed that Spinoza, in his philosophical system, did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence.

That world is of course "divisible"; it has parts. But Spinoza said, "no attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided", meaning that one cannot conceive an attribute in a way that leads to division of substance. He also said, "a substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible" Ethics, Part I, Propositions 12 and Therefore, according to Jaspers, the pantheist formula "One and All" would apply to Spinoza only if the "One" preserves its transcendence and the "All" were not interpreted as the totality of finite things.

The world is not God, but in a strong sense, "in" God. Not only do finite things have God as their cause; they cannot be conceived without God. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophySpinoza's God is an "infinite intellect" Ethics 2p11c — all-knowing 2p3and capable of loving both himself—and us, insofar as we are part of his perfection 5p35c.

And if the mark of a personal being is that it is one towards which we can entertain personal attitudes, then we should note too that Spinoza recommends amor intellectualis dei the intellectual love of God as the supreme good for man 5p However, the matter is complex. Spinoza's God does not have free will 1p32c1he does not have purposes or intentions 1 appendixand Spinoza insists that "neither intellect nor will pertain to the nature of God" 1p17s1.

Moreover, baruch spinoza biography resumen de don we may love God, we need to remember that God is not a being who could ever love us back. Steven Nadler suggests that settling the question of Spinoza's atheism or pantheism depends on an analysis of attitudes. If pantheism is associated with religiosity, then Spinoza is not a pantheist, since Spinoza believes that the proper stance to take towards God is not one of reverence or religious awe, but instead one of objective study and reason, since taking the religious stance would leave one open to the possibility of error and superstition.

Many authors have discussed similarities between Spinoza's philosophy and Eastern philosophical traditions. A few decades after the philosopher's death, Pierre Baylein his famous Historical and Critical Dictionary pointed out a link between Spinoza's alleged atheism with "the "baruch spinoza biography resumen de don" of a Chinese sect", supposedly called "Foe Kiao", [ ] of which he had learned thanks to the testimonies of the Jesuit missions in Eastern Asia.

A century later, Kant also established a parallel between the philosophy of Spinoza and the thinking of Laozi a "monstrous system" in his wordsgrouping both under the name of pantheists, criticizing what he described as mystical tendencies in them. InElijah Benamozegh purported to establish that the main source of Spinoza's ontology is Kabbalah.

Spinoza's ideas have had a major impact on intellectual debates from the seventeenth century to the current era. How Spinoza is viewed has gone from the atheistic author of treatises that undermine Judaism and organized religion, to a cultural hero, the first secular Jew. He is not a despairing nihilistbut rather Spinoza says that "blessedness is nothing else but the contentment of spirit, which arises from the intuitive knowledge of God.

Israelargues that "No leading figure of the post later Enlightenment, for example, or the nineteenth century, was engaged with the philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, Bayle, Locke, or Leibniz, to the degree leading figures such as LessingGoethe, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Heine, George Eliotand Nietzsche, remained preoccupied throughout their creative lives with Spinoza.

His expulsion from the Portuguese synagogue in has stirred debate over the years on whether he is the "first modern Jew". Spinoza influenced discussions of the so-called Jewish questionthe examination of the idea of Judaism and the modern, secular Jew. In Santayana's autobiography, he characterized Spinoza as his "master and model" in understanding the naturalistic basis of morality.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein evoked Spinoza with the title suggested to him by G. Moore of the English translation of his first definitive philosophical work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicusan allusion to Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Elsewhere, Wittgenstein deliberately borrowed the expression sub specie aeternitatis from Spinoza Notebooks, —16p.

The structure of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus does have some structural affinities with Spinoza's Ethics though, admittedly, not with the Spinoza's Tractatus in erecting complex philosophical arguments upon basic logical propositions and principles. In propositions 6. Spinoza's philosophy played an important role in the development of post-war French philosophy.

Many of these philosophers "used Spinoza to erect a bulwark against the nominally irrationalist tendencies of phenomenology", which was associated with the dominance of HegelMartin Heideggerand Edmund Husserl in France at that time. Antonio Negriin exile in France for much of this period, also wrote a number of books on Spinoza, most notably The Savage Anomaly in his own reconfiguration of Italian Autonomia Operaia.

His own work was deeply influenced by Spinoza's philosophy, particularly the concepts of immanence and univocity. Marilena de Souza Chaui described Deleuze's Expressionism in Philosophy as a "revolutionary work for its discovery of expression as a central concept in Spinoza's philosophy. Albert Einstein named Spinoza as the philosopher who exerted the most influence on his world view Weltanschauung.

Spinoza equated God infinite substance with Nature, consistent with Einstein's belief in an impersonal deity. InEinstein was asked in a telegram by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein whether he believed in God. Einstein responded by telegram: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.

Leo Strauss dedicated his first book, Spinoza's Critique of Religionto an examination of his ideas. Strauss identified Spinoza as part of the tradition of Enlightenment rationalism that eventually produced Modernity. Moreover, he identifies Spinoza and his works as the beginning of Jewish Modernity. Spinoza is an important historical figure in the Netherlandswhere his portrait was featured prominently on the Dutch guilder banknotelegal tender until the euro was introduced in The highest and most prestigious scientific award of the Netherlands is named the Spinozaprijs Spinoza prize.

Spinoza was included in a 50 theme canon that attempts to summarise the history of the Netherlands. In the Tractatus Spinoza said, in passing, about the Jews that "were it not that the fundamental principles of their religion discourage manliness, I would not hesitate to believe that they will one day, given the opportunity, [ Some scholars agree to various degrees with the characterization of Spinoza as proto-Zionist [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]while other scholars are critical of it.

There has been a renewed debate in modern times about Spinoza's excommunication among Israeli politicians, rabbis and Jewish press, with many calling for the cherem to be reversed. Presenters included Steven NadlerJonathan I. IsraelSteven B. Smith, and Daniel B. However, the rabbi of the congregation ruled that it should hold, on the basis that he had no greater wisdom than his predecessors, and that Spinoza's views had not become less problematic over time.

Spinoza's life and work have been the subject of interest for several writers. For example, this influence was considerably early in German literature, where Goethe makes a glowing mention of the philosopher in his memoirs, highlighting the positive influence of the Ethics in his personal life. In the following century, the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges famously wrote two sonnets in his honor "Spinoza" in El otro, el mismo; and "Baruch Spinoza" in La moneda de hierro, and several direct references to Spinoza's philosophy can be found in this writer's work.

That is not the only work of fiction where the philosopher appears as the main character. In the German writer Berthold Auerbach dedicated to him the first novel in his series on Jewish history, translated into English in Spinoza: a Novel. Yalomor O Segredo de Espinosa lit. The main character, Dr. Nahum Fischelson, studies the book religiously, and holds Spinoza in divine esteem.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. For other uses, see Spinoza disambiguation. AmsterdamDutch Republic. The HagueDutch Republic. Talmud Torah University of Leiden no degree [ 11 ]. Western philosophy.

Cartesianism [ 1 ] Conceptualism [ 2 ] Correspondence theory of truth [ a ] [ 4 ] Direct realism [ 5 ] Foundationalism according to Hegel [ 6 ] Rationalism Psychological Egoism [ 7 ]. Epistemology ethics Hebrew Bible [ 8 ] metaphysics. Biography [ edit ]. Family background [ edit ]. See also: History of the Jews in Amsterdam. Uriel da Costa's early influence [ edit ].

School days and the family business [ edit ]. Expulsion from the Jewish community [ edit ]. Education and study group [ edit ]. Career as a philosopher [ edit ]. Rijnsburg [ edit ]. Voorburg [ edit ]. The Hague [ edit ]. Correspondence [ edit ]. Death and rescue of unpublished writings [ edit ]. Philosophy [ edit ]. Positions: Hasmonean Sadducean Pharisee Boethusian.

People: Aristobulus of Alexandria Philo of Alexandria. Main article: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. See also: Thomas Hobbes. Ethics [ edit ]. Main article: Ethics Spinoza book. Metaphysics [ edit ]. Substance, attributes, and modes [ edit ]. Causality [ edit ]. The emotions [ edit ]. Ethical philosophy [ edit ]. Main article: Tractatus Politicus.

Pantheism [ edit ]. See also: Pantheism controversy. Other philosophical connections [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. Modern era [ edit ]. Spinoza and Zionism [ edit ]. Reconsideration of Spinoza's expulsion [ edit ]. Memory and memorials [ edit ]. Depictions and influence in literature [ edit ]. Works [ edit ]. Original Editions [ edit ].

Contemporary Editions [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. His boyhood and early adult business name was "Bento", and his synagogue name was "Baruch", the Hebrew translation of "Bento", which means "blessed". Citations [ edit ]. In Zalta, Edward N. I, Prop. XIV, parte I, Ethica. La esencia de Dios implica su existencia, por su misma naturaleza, tiene atributos ilimitados, infinitos.

Spinoza escribe: «De la necesidad de su naturaleza divina deben seguirse infinitas cosas en infinitos modos» Prop. XIX, parte I. Entonces, Dios y sus atributos son eternos. En esta parte, sobre la mente y el cuerpo humano, Spinoza vuelve a oponerse a proposiciones cartesianas. Argumenta, al contrario de Descartes, que el pensamiento y el cuerpo, son uno solo, pensado de dos maneras diferentes.

No se pueden mezclar estas dos cosas, la naturaleza puede, en su totalidad, describirse en forma de pensamiento o de cuerpo.