Baruch Spinoza

Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632 into a Portuguese-Jewish family that had fled the Inquisition. He was educated in the Jewish community, but his unorthodox views led to his expulsion in 1656, and he earned his living grinding lenses while living quietly in Dutch towns.

His Ethics sets out, in the form of geometric proofs, a single infinite substance that he calls God or Nature, in which thought and extension are two attributes. Mind and body are not two things but one seen in two ways; freedom is the understanding of necessity, and the passions can be ordered by reason.

He published the Theological-Political Treatise anonymously, arguing for freedom of thought and a critical reading of Scripture, and declined a professorship to keep his independence. He died in The Hague in 1677, his Ethics still unpublished.

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