Ethics (Penguin Classics)

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Spinoza Lyceum, a high school in Amsterdam South was named after Spinoza. There is also a 3 metre tall marble statute of him on the grounds of the school carved by Hildo Krop. [165]

Yovel, Yirmiyahu (1992). Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence. Princeton University Press. p.3. ISBN 0691020795.Ives, David (2009). New Jerusalem; The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, 27 July 1656. New York: Dramatists Play Service. ISBN 978-0-8222-2385-6. ) Spinoza's ideas relating to the character and structure of reality are expressed by him in terms of substance, attributes, and modes. These terms are very old and familiar, but not in the sense in which Spinoza employs them. To understand Spinoza, it is necessary to lay aside all preconceptions [19] about them, and follow Spinoza closely. [18] [20] Spinoza found it impossible to understand the finite, dependent, transient objects and events of experience without assuming some reality not dependent on anything else but self-existent, not produced by anything else but eternal, not restricted or limited by anything else but infinite. Such an uncaused, self-sustaining reality he called substance. So, for instance, he could not understand the reality of material objects and physical events without assuming the reality of a self-existing, infinite and eternal physical force which expresses itself in all the movements and changes which occur, as we say, in space. a b Lisa Montanarelli (book reviewer) (8 January 2006). "Spinoza stymies 'God's attorney' – Stewart argues the secular world was at stake in Leibniz face off". San Francisco Chronicle . Retrieved 8 September 2009. The Coherence Theory of Truth (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Archived from the original on 1 November 2019 . Retrieved 1 November 2019. Leo Strauss dedicated his first book, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, to an examination of the latter's ideas. In the book, 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. [92] More recently Jonathan Israel argued that, from 1650 to 1750, Spinoza was "the chief challenger of the fundamentals of revealed religion, received ideas, tradition, morality, and what was everywhere regarded, in absolutist and non-absolutist states alike, as divinely constituted political authority." [160] Statue (2008) of Spinoza by Nicolas Dings, Amsterdam, Zwanenburgwal, with inscription "The objective of the state is freedom" (translation, quote from Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1677)

Bennett, Jonathan (July 1984). A Study of Spinoza's 'Ethics' . CUP Archive. ISBN 978-0-521-27742-6. 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. "Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God; he has neither intelligence, feeling, nor will; he does not act according to purpose, but everything follows necessarily from his nature, according to law...." [132] Thus, Spinoza's cool, indifferent God differs from the concept of an anthropomorphic, fatherly God who cares about humanity. [133]Spinoza holds that everything that exists is part of nature, and everything in nature follows the same basic laws. In this perspective, human beings are part of nature, and hence they can be explained and understood in the same way as everything else in nature. This aspect of Spinoza's philosophy — his naturalism — was radical for its time, and perhaps even for today. In the preface to Part III of Ethics (relating to emotions), he writes: Spinoza provides several demonstrations which purport to show truths about how human emotions work. The picture presented is, according to Bennett, "unflattering, coloured as it is by universal egoism". [130] Ethical philosophy [ edit ] During this period Spinoza also became acquainted with the Collegiants, an anti-clerical sect of Remonstrants with tendencies towards rationalism, and with the liberal faction among the Mennonites who had existed for a century but were close to the Remonstrants. [48] 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. [20] In the second half on the 1650s and the first half of the 1660s Spinoza became acquainted with several persons who would themselves emerge as unorthodox thinkers: this group, known as the Spinoza Circle, [49] included Pieter Balling [ Wikidata], Jarig Jelles [ Wikidata], Lodewijk Meyer, Johannes Bouwmeester and Adriaen Koerbagh. When Michael’s wife died in 1627, he married again to Hannah Deborah, and had five children, including Spinoza, the second son. His second wife brought a dowry to the marriage, which should not have been absorbed into the capital of the family business. This marriage proved fruitful, with five children who survived to adulthood. The first-born was Miriam, followed by Isaac (1631-49). Isaac d'Espinosa was expected to take over as head of family and its commercial enterprise. Spinoza was born in 1632 and named as per tradition for his maternal grandfather. Spinoza’s younger brother Gabriel (Abraham) was born in 1634, followed by another sister, Rebecca (Ribca). Spinoza’s sister Miriam married Samuel de Caceres, but Miriam died shortly after giving birth. Following Jewish tradition, the widower Samuel married his former sister-in-law Rebecca. Spinoza's sisters' marriages to Caceres and his honored place in the Spinoza family as a scholar, meant that Spinoza's own ambitions as a scholar were shunted aside. There was discord between Spinoza and his sister and brother-in-law over inheritance, which played out later when Spinoza broke with rabbinic authorities and the Jewish community. [39] Spinoza was related in a complicated way with the highly controversial figure in the Amsterdam Jewish community, Uriel da Costa (1585-1640), through his mother’s family in Porto. DaCosta was twice sanctioned by rabbinic authorities, and committed suicide in 1640, when Spinoza was eight years old. He might not have known of the scandalous family connection until he was an adolescent. [40] School days [ edit ] Hutchison, Percy (20 November 1932). "Spinoza, "God-Intoxicated Man"; Three Books Which Mark the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the Philosopher's Birth". The New York Times . Retrieved 8 September 2009.

Spinoza resumed work on his masterpiece, the Ethica ( Ethics), finishing a five-part version by 1675. He delayed its publication, however, after being advised that it would cause even greater controversy than the Tractatus. It was finally published, together with the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and an unfinished work on politics, the Tractatus Politicus, at the instigation of some of his Collegiant friends a few months after his death in 1677.

Magnusson 1990: Magnusson, M (ed.), Spinoza, Baruch, Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Chambers 1990, ISBN 978-0-550-16041-6.

a b c d e f Bloom, Harold (16 June 2006). "Deciphering Spinoza, the Great Original – Book review of Betraying Spinoza. The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity by Rebecca Goldstein". The New York Times . Retrieved 8 September 2009. Nadler, Steven, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2011. The reaction to the anonymously published work, Theologico-Political Treatise (TTP)(1670), was extremely unfavorable. Spinoza abstained from publishing further, but his writings circulated among his supporters during his lifetime. Wary and independent, he wore a signet ring which he used to mark his letters and which was engraved with the word caute (Latin for "cautiously") underneath a rose, itself a symbol of secrecy. [91] Steven Nadler, Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 27: "Spinoza attended lectures and anatomical dissections at the University of Leiden..." Gullan-Whur, Margaret, 1998. Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-05046-3

Though the principle of sufficient reason is most commonly associated with Gottfried Leibniz, [122] it is arguably found in its strongest form in Spinoza's philosophy. [123] Rowland, Robert, "New Christian, Marrano, Jew" in The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800, Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering, eds. New York: Berghahn Books 2001, 131-37 Nadler, Steven, Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die, 2020 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0691183848).