Family background

Both sides of Spinoza’s family were originally Sephardic Jews from Iberia. His immediate family migrated to Amsterdam, arriving in the early seventeenth century, as Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands were openly establishing a community and could practice their religion without persecution by the Inquisition. The family in Portugal were New Christians, forced converts (conversos) to Catholicism. In Portugal in the early sixteenth century, the crown initially looked the other way as outwardly Catholic New Christians practiced Judaism in private. The Portuguese Inquisition was not even established until 1536. As the Inquisition increasingly cracked down, more New Christians continued practicing Judaism in secrecy.^[34] A legacy of the era was that many in Spinoza's family had both Christian and Jewish names.

Spinoza's father Michael married his cousin Rachael d’Espinosa, daughter of his uncle Abraham d’Espinosa. Such a pattern of intermarriage was fairly common in the Jewish merchant community, keeping commercial and religious ties strong, and secrets safe. Marrying his cousin Rachel gave Michael access to his uncle/father-in-law's commercial network and capital.

When Michael’s wife died in 1627, he married again to Hannah Deborah. 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. Michael was a successful, although not enormously wealthy, merchant in Amsterdam, prominent in the community. ^[15]

The first-born of his second marriage was Miriam, followed by Isaac (1631-49). Isaac d'Espinosa was expected to take over as head of family and its commercial enterprise.

Baruch Espinosa,^[1] the third child and second son, was born on 24 November 1632 in the Jodenbuurt in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was 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.^[35]

His mother, Hannah Déborah, Michael's second wife, died when Baruch was only six years old. Michael remarried to give his five children a mother figure. The third marriage was childless so that Spinoza and his siblings had no half- or step-siblings.^[36]

Spinoza was related in a complicated way with the highly controversial figure in the Amsterdam Portuguese 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.^[37]

School days

Baruch's family spoke Portuguese, as did other Sephardim. He studied Hebrew at school and heard it Jewish liturgy; he knew Dutch, which he likely learned informally. He learned Latin only later as a young man. ^[38]

His name in contemporary documents before his 1656 expulsion from the Jewish community is given as the Portuguese "Bento"; his Hebrew name "Baruch" was used in the religious context. Following his expulsion at age 23, he used the Latinized version of his name, "Benedictus de Spinoza."

Spinoza had a traditional upbringing for a Jewish boy, attending a local religious school, the Keter Torah yeshiva of the Amsterdam Talmud Torah congregation headed by the learned and traditional senior Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira.^[39] Teachers also included the less traditional Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel. Since Spinoza never reached the level of advanced study of the Torah,^[15] the senior rabbis were unlikely to have had Spinoza as their pupil. Spinoza's end of schooling was due the unexpected death of his elder brother Isaac, who had been actively involved in the family business.^[15]

The family business and intellectual explorations

When Spinoza's father, Michael, died in 1654, Spinoza had been actively involved in the running of the family business. Although Spinoza duly recited Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning, for eleven months as required by Jewish law,^[15] there is evidence that his relations with his father had been chilly.

As with other merchants in Amsterdam, the Spinozas' business was affected by the First Anglo-Dutch War in the years of 1652-1654, as well as by some commercial deals that soured, and found itself in severe difficulty. In addition Michael had absorbed the dowry of Spinoza's mother as regular capital for his business, rather than keeping it separate for her children after her death. As such, the money was at risk for collection by Michael's many creditors.

Spinoza was just 21 when his father died, in Dutch law a legal minor until age 25. Nonetheless, he and his younger brother Gabriel (Abraham) formed a business partnership, attempting to continue the family business, including collecting unpaid debts owed by merchants to their father's estate.

Spinoza had continued to support the synagogue financially and attend services. When his sister Rebekah disputed his inheritance seeking it for herself, he sued her to seek a court judgment, won the case, but then renounced his claim to the court's judgment in his favor and assigned his inheritance to her.^[40]

In March 1656, Spinoza filed suit with the Amsterdam municipal authorities to be declared an orphan, since he was still a legal minor. He sought relief through Dutch law, not through judgment by Jewish authorities, from whom he had become increasingly estranged, but not openly as yet. He won the civil lawsuit, which allowed him to inherit his mother's estate without it being subject to his father's creditors and devote himself chiefly to the study of philosophy, especially the system expounded by Descartes, and to optics.^[41]

At some point between 1654 and 1658, Spinoza began to study Latin with Franciscus van den Enden. Van den Enden was a former Jesuit who was a political radical, and likely introduced Spinoza to scholastic and modern philosophy, including that of Descartes.^[42][43] Spinoza adopted the Latin name Benedictus de Spinoza, began boarding with Van den Enden, and began teaching in his school.^[42][43]

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.^[44] 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.^[21] In the second half of 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,^[45] included Pieter Balling , Jarig Jelles , Lodewijk Meyer, Johannes Bouwmeester and Adriaen Koerbagh.

Expulsion from the Jewish community

Spinoza and the Rabbis by Samuel Hirszenberg (1907)

Spinoza's name crossed out on the list of pupils of Ets Haim

Seal with Spinoza's initials and the Latin word meaning "caution"

Spinoza did not openly break with Jewish authorities until after his father's death in 1654. He challenged the prevailing dogmas of Judaism, and particularly the insistence on non-Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. His break was not sudden; rather, it appears to have been the result of a lengthy internal struggle as well as a degree of filial piety. Nevertheless, after he was branded as a heretic, Spinoza's clashes with authority became more pronounced. 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 reminder.^[40]

On 27 July 1656, the Sepharadi Talmud Torah congregation of Amsterdam, which included Aboab de Fonseca^[46], issued a writ of herem (Hebrew: חרם‎, a kind of ban, shunning, ostracism, expulsion, or excommunication) against the 23-year-old Spinoza.^[40][47][48] The Talmud Torah congregation issued censures routinely, on matters great and small, so such an edict was not unusual.^[49]

The language of Spinoza's censure is unusually harsh, however, and does not appear in any other censure known to have been issued by the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam.^[50] The exact reason for expelling Spinoza is not stated.^[51] The censure refers only to the "abominable heresies [horrendas heregias] that he practised and taught", to his "monstrous deeds", and to the testimony of witnesses "in the presence of the said Espinoza". There is no record of such testimony, but there appear to have been several likely reasons for the issuance of the censure.^[52]

Spinoza began publicly expressing radical religious views that were highly controversial. Spinoza biographer Steven Nadler wrote: "No doubt he was giving utterance to just those ideas that would soon appear in his philosophical treatises. In those works, Spinoza denies the immortality of the soul; strongly rejects the notion of a providential god—the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and claims that the [Mosiac] Law was neither literally given by God nor any longer binding on Jews." ^[53]

The Amsterdam Jewish community was largely composed of Spanish and Portuguese conversos, "New Christians", who had respectively migrated from Spain via Portugal to escape the Spanish Inquisition and Portuguese conversos, following the establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition, with their children and grandchildren. Amsterdam was tolerant of religious diversity so long as it was practiced discreetly. Jews were not legally confined to a ghetto and the city presented economic opportunities for those willing to move.^[54] This community must have been concerned to protect its reputation from any association with Spinoza lest his controversial views provide the basis for their own possible persecution or expulsion.^[55]

There is little evidence that the Amsterdam municipal authorities were directly involved in Spinoza's censure itself. But "in 1619, the town council expressly ordered [the Portuguese Jewish community] to regulate their conduct and ensure that the members of the community kept to a strict observance of Jewish law."^[56] Other evidence makes it clear that the danger of upsetting the civil authorities was never far from mind, such as bans adopted by the synagogue on public wedding or funeral processions and on discussing religious matters with Christians, lest such activity might "disturb the liberty we enjoy".^[57] Thus, the issuance of Spinoza's censure was almost certainly, in part, an exercise in self-censorship by the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam.^[58]

Ban in Portuguese of Baruch Spinoza by his Portuguese Jewish synagogue community of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 6 Av 5416 (27 July 1656)

It appears likely that Spinoza had already taken the initiative to separate himself from the Talmud Torah congregation and was vocally expressing his hostility to Judaism itself, also through his philosophical works, such as the Part I of Ethics.^[59] He had probably stopped attending services at the synagogue, either after the lawsuit with his sister or after the knife attack on its steps. He might already have been voicing the view expressed later in his Theological-Political Treatise that the civil authorities should suppress Judaism as harmful to the Jews themselves. Either for financial or other reasons,^[60][43] he had in any case effectively stopped contributing to the synagogue by March 1656.

He had also committed the "monstrous deed", contrary to the regulations of the synagogue and the views of some rabbinical authorities (including Maimonides), of filing suit in a civil court rather than with the synagogue authorities^[41]—to renounce his father's heritage, no less. Upon being notified of the issuance of the censure, he is reported to have said: "Very well; this does not force me to do anything that I would not have done of my own accord, had I not been afraid of a scandal."^[61] Thus, unlike most of the censure issued routinely by the Amsterdam congregation to discipline its members, the censure issued against Spinoza did not lead to repentance and so was never withdrawn. After the censure, Spinoza is said to have addressed an Apologia (defense), written in Spanish, to the elders of the synagogue, "in which he defended his views as orthodox, and condemned the rabbis for accusing him of 'horrible practices and other enormities' merely because he had neglected ceremonial observances".^[61] This apologia does not survive, but some of its contents may later have been included in his Theological-Political Treatise.^[61]

Spinoza's expulsion from the Jewish community did not lead to his conversion to Christianity. Spinoza used the Latinized name Benedictus de Spinoza and maintained a close association with the Collegiants (a liberal Protestant sect of Remonstrants) and Quakers,^[62] even moved to a town near the Collegiants' headquarters, and was buried at the Protestant Church, Nieuwe Kerk, The Hague, since burial was a sectarian matter and he was ineligible to be buried in the Jewish cemetery.^[63]

There is no evidence he maintained any sense of Jewish identity. "Spinoza did not envision secular Judaism. To be a secular and assimilated Jew is, in his view, nonsense."^[64] Spinoza scholar Yirmiyahu Yovel raises the question of whether or not Spinoza could be categorized as the first "secular Jew" since he was still regarded as a Jew although he did not adhere to Jewish law or belong to the Jewish community. Yovel writes that Spinoza "exemplifies the situation of the modern Jew—secular, assimilationist, or national—without himself falling neatly into any of these categories. Countless Jews in the coming centuries were to find themselves in a similar predicament."^[65]

Career as a philosopher

Study room of Spinoza in Rijnsburg

Spinoza spent his remaining 22 years writing and studying as a private scholar,^[21] initially teaching in the school of his Latin tutor, Franciscus Van den Enden, with whom he boarded for a time, and later, upon leaving Amsterdam, earning a living as a lens grinder. He also received some financial assistance from supporters of his intellectual stance. After the herem, the Amsterdam municipal authorities expelled Spinoza from Amsterdam, "responding to the appeals of the rabbis, and also of the Calvinist clergy, who had been vicariously offended by the existence of a free thinker in the synagogue".

He spent a brief time in or near the village of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, but returned soon afterwards to Amsterdam and lived there quietly for several years, giving private philosophy lessons and grinding lenses, before leaving the city in 1660 or 1661.^[61] During this time in Amsterdam, Spinoza wrote his Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, which he never published in his lifetime—assuming with good reason that it might get suppressed. Two Dutch translations of it survive, discovered about 1810.^[61]

In 1660 or 1661, Spinoza moved from Amsterdam to Rijnsburg (near Leiden), the center of Dutch Remonstrants known as the Collegiants.^[66] In Rijnsburg, he began work on his Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy" as well as on his masterpiece, the Ethics. In 1663, he returned briefly to Amsterdam, where he finished and published Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy", the only work published in his lifetime under his own name, and then moved the same year to Voorburg.

In Voorburg, Spinoza continued work on his magnum opus, eventually entitled Ethics, and corresponded with scientists, philosophers, and theologians throughout Europe. He published in Latin, anonymously, and with false printer information Theological-Political Treatise (TTP) in 1670, in defense of secular and constitutional government, and in support of Jan de Witt, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, against the Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange.

Leibniz visited Spinoza and claimed that Spinoza's life was in danger when supporters of the Prince of Orange murdered de Witt in 1672.^[67] While the TTP was published anonymously, the work did not long remain so, and de Witt's enemies characterized it as "forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil, and issued with the knowledge of Jan de Witt". It was condemned in 1673 by the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church and formally banned in 1674.^[68]

In 1670, Spinoza moved to The Hague, where he lived on a small pension from Jan de Witt and a small annuity from the brother of his dead friend, Simon de Vries.^[69] He worked on the Ethics, wrote an unfinished Hebrew grammar, began his Political Treatise (TP), left unfinished at his death, wrote two scientific essays ("On the Rainbow" and "On the Calculation of Chances"), and began a Dutch translation of the Bible (which he later destroyed).^[69] Spinoza was offered the chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, but he refused it, perhaps because of the possibility that it might in some way curb his freedom of thought.^[70]

Spinoza also corresponded with Peter Serrarius, a radical Protestant and millenarian merchant. Serrarius was a patron to Spinoza after Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community. He acted as an intermediary for Spinoza's correspondence, sending and receiving letters of the philosopher to and from third parties. Spinoza and Serrarius maintained their relationship until Serrarius' death in 1669.^[71]

By the beginning of the 1660s, Spinoza's name became more widely known. The Secretary of the British Royal Society Henry Oldenburg paid him visits and became a correspondent with Spinoza for the rest of his life.^[72] In 1676, Leibniz came to the Hague to discuss the unpublished Ethics, Spinoza's principal philosophical work, parts of which apparently had circulated in manuscript form.^[73]

Death and burial

Burial monument of Spinoza at the churchyard of the Nieuwe Kerk (The Hague).

Spinoza's health began to fail in 1676, dying in The Hague on 21 February 1677 at the age of 44, attended by a physician friend, Georg Herman Schuller. Although he had been ill with some form of lung affliction, described as "ex phthisi [from consumption]", perhaps complicated by silicosis brought on by grinding glass lenses,^[80] his death on that particular day was unexpected by himself or his landlord and landlady with whom he lived, and he died without leaving a will.^[81][82] His personal belongings and papers, most importantly his unpublished manuscripts, were stored in a cabinet attached to his writing desk, and were taken away for safekeeping from seizure by those wishing to suppress his writings. They do not appear in the inventory of his possessions at death. There were assertions that he had repented his philosophical stances on his deathbed, but all credible evidence points to his dying unrepentant and in tranquility.^[83] The first biography of Spinoza^[84] by Lutheran preacher Johannes Colerus (1647-1707), was prompted to investigate Spinoza's last days.^[85]

Spinoza was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) on the Spui four days after his death, on 25 February, inside the church, with six others in the same vault. At the time there was no memorial plaque for Spinoza. In the 18th century, the vault was emptied and the remains disposed of, with the "remnants scattered over the earth of the churchyard." The memorial plaque visitors now see is outside, where some of his remains are part of the churchyard's soil.^[86]

Major publications

• c. 1660. Korte Verhandeling van God, de mensch en deszelvs welstand (A Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being).
• 1662. Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (On the Improvement of the Understanding) (unfinished).
• 1663. Principia philosophiae cartesianae (The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, translated by Samuel Shirley, with an Introduction and Notes by Steven Barbone and Lee Rice, Indianapolis, 1998). Gallica (in Latin).
• 1670. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (A Theologico-Political Treatise).
• 1675–76. Tractatus Politicus (unfinished) (PDF version)
• 1677. Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (The Ethics, finished 1674, but published posthumously)
• 1677. Compendium grammatices linguae hebraeae (Hebrew Grammar).^[90]
• Morgan, Michael L. (ed.), 2002. Spinoza: Complete Works, with the Translation of Samuel Shirley, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-87220-620-5.
• Edwin Curley (ed.), 1985, 2016. The Collected Works of Spinoza (two volumes), Princeton: Princeton University Press.(Not including the Compendium grammatices linguae hebraeae).
• Spruit, Leen and Pina Totaro, 2011. The Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza's Ethica, Leiden: Brill.

Correspondence

Letter from Spinoza to Leibniz, with his BdS seal

Few letters are extant for such an important intellectual figure and none before 1661. Spinoza engaged in correspondence from December 1664 to June 1665 with Willem van Blijenbergh, an amateur Calvinist theologian, who questioned Spinoza on the definition of evil. Later in 1665, Spinoza notified Oldenburg that he had started to work on a new book, the Theologico-Political Treatise, published in 1670. Leibniz disagreed harshly with Spinoza in his own manuscript "Refutation of Spinoza",^[91] but he is also known to have met with Spinoza on at least one occasion^[72][92] (as mentioned above), and his own work bears some striking resemblances to specific important parts of Spinoza's philosophy (see: Monadology).

In a letter, written in December 1675 and sent to Albert Burgh, who wanted to defend Catholicism, Spinoza clearly explained his view of both Catholicism and Islam. He stated that both religions are made "to deceive the people and to constrain the minds of men". He also states that Islam far surpasses Catholicism in doing so.^[93][94] The Tractatus de Deo, Homine, ejusque Felicitate (Treatise on God, man and his happiness) was one of the last Spinoza's works to be published, between 1851^[95] and 1862.^[96]

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Despite its being published in Latin rather than a vernacular language, this 1670 treatise published in Spinoza's lifetime caused a huge reaction, described as "one of the most significant events in European intellectual history,"^[97] with a prolonged furore "that has no parallel in early modern intellectual history."^[98]

Ethics

The Ethics has been associated with that of Leibniz and René Descartes as part of the rationalist school of thought,^[92] which includes the assumption that ideas correspond to reality perfectly, in the same way that mathematics is supposed to be an exact representation of the world. The writings of René Descartes have been described as "Spinoza's starting point".^[89] Spinoza's first publication was his 1663 geometric exposition of proofs using Euclid's model with definitions and axioms of Descartes' Principles of Philosophy. Following Descartes, Spinoza aimed to understand truth through logical deductions from 'clear and distinct ideas', a process which always begins from the 'self-evident truths' of axioms.^[99]

Metaphysics

Part of a series on
Jewish philosophy
Hellenistic Positions: Hasmonean Sadducean Pharisee Boethusian People: Aristobulus of Alexandria Philo of Alexandria
Medieval Influenced by: Brethren of Purity Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) Ismaili philosophy Jewish Kalam Kabbalah Rabbinic Judaism Spanish and European: Hasdai ibn Shaprut Ibn Gabirol Abraham bar Hiyya Bahya ibn Paquda Judah Halevi Abraham ibn Daud Joseph ibn Tzaddik Abraham ibn Ezra Maimonides Nachmanides Samuel ibn Tibbon Joseph ben Judah Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera Gersonides Moses of Narbonne Isaac ben Sheshet Hasdai Crescas Joseph Albo Elia del Medigo Judah Minz Isaac Abarbanel Judah Leon Abravanel Yemenite: Natan'el al-Fayyumi Mansur ibn Sulayman al-Ghamari Other: Isaac Israeli Saadia Gaon al-Mukkamas Hibat Allah Abu'l-Barakat Ibn Kammuna Positions: Maimonidean / Anti-Maimonidean Kabbalist Karaism Talmudic Tosafist
Modern Positions: Orthodox Sephardic Chabad Chassidic Conservative Reform Existentialist Reconstructionist Holocaust Renewal Neo-Hasidic Mussar Rambamist People: Francisco Sanches Uriel da Costa Baruch Spinoza Salomon Maimon Joseph Solomon Delmedigo Elijah Ba'al Shem of Chelm Eliezer ben Elijah Ashkenazi Tzvi Ashkenazi Jacob Emden Samuel Hirsch Shneur Zalman of Liadi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa Samson Raphael Hirsch Jacob Abendana Isaac Cardoso David Nieto Isaac Orobio de Castro Moses Mendelssohn Samuel David Luzzatto Elijah Benamozegh Moses Hess Eliezer Berkovits Eliyahu Dessler Monsieur Chouchani Emmanuel Levinas Martin Buber Gershom Scholem Abraham Isaac Kook Joseph Soloveitchik Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Topics Anger Chosen people Eschatology Ethics Faith God Happiness Holiness Holocaust Messiah Microcosm–macrocosm Righteousness

Spinoza's metaphysics consists of one thing, substance, and its modifications (modes). Early in The Ethics Spinoza argues that there is only one substance, which is absolutely infinite, self-caused, and eternal. He calls this substance "God", or "Nature". In fact, he takes these two terms to be synonymous (in the Latin the phrase he uses is "Deus sive Natura"). For Spinoza the whole of the natural universe is made of one substance, God, or, what is the same, Nature, and its modifications (modes).

It cannot be overemphasized how the rest of Spinoza's philosophy—his philosophy of mind, his epistemology, his psychology, his moral philosophy, his political philosophy, and his philosophy of religion—flows more or less directly from the metaphysical underpinnings in Part I of the Ethics.^[100]

Substance, attributes, and modes

These are the fundamental concepts with which Spinoza sets forth a vision of Being, illuminated by his awareness of God. They may seem strange at first sight. To the question "What is?" he replies: "Substance, its attributes, and modes".

— Karl Jaspers^[101]

Following Maimonides, Spinoza defined substance as "that which is in itself and is conceived through itself", meaning that it can be understood without any reference to anything external.^[102] Being conceptually independent also means that the same thing is ontologically independent, depending on nothing else for its existence and being the 'cause of itself' (causa sui).^[102] A mode is something which cannot exist independently but rather must do so as part of something else on which it depends, including properties (for example colour), relations (such as size) and individual things.^[103] Modes can be further divided into 'finite' and 'infinite' ones, with the latter being evident in every finite mode (he gives the examples of "motion" and "rest").^[104] The traditional understanding of an attribute in philosophy is similar to Spinoza's modes, though he uses that word differently.^[103] To him, an attribute is "that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance", and there are possibly an infinite number of them.^[105] It is the essential nature which is "attributed" to reality by intellect.^[106]

Probable portrait of Spinoza, by Barend Graat, 1666.

Spinoza defined God as "a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence", and since "no cause or reason" can prevent such a being from existing, it therefore must exist.^[106] This is a form of the ontological argument, which is claimed to prove the existence of God, but Spinoza went further in stating that it showed that only God exists.^[107] Accordingly, he stated that "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God".^[107] This means that God is identical with the universe, an idea which he encapsulated in the phrase "Deus sive Natura" ('God or Nature'), which has been interpreted by some as atheism or pantheism.^[108] God can be known either through the attribute of extension or the attribute of thought.^[109] Thought and extension represent giving complete accounts of the world in mental or physical terms.^[110] To this end, he says that "the mind and the body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension".^[111]

After stating his proof for God's existence, Spinoza addresses who "God" is. Spinoza believed that God is "the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator".^[112] Spinoza attempts to prove that God is just the substance of the universe by first stating that substances do not share attributes or essences and then demonstrating that God is a "substance" with an infinite number of attributes, thus the attributes possessed by any other substances must also be possessed by God. Therefore, God is just the sum of all the substances of the universe. 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.^[113]

Spinoza argues that "things could not have been produced by God in any other way or in any other order than is the case".^[114] Therefore, concepts such as 'freedom' and 'chance' have little meaning.^[108] This picture of Spinoza's determinism is illuminated in Ethics: "the infant believes that it is by free will that it seeks the breast; the angry boy believes that by free will he wishes vengeance; the timid man thinks it is with free will he seeks flight; the drunkard believes that by a free command of his mind he speaks the things which when sober he wishes he had left unsaid. … All believe that they speak by a free command of the mind, whilst, in truth, they have no power to restrain the impulse which they have to speak."^[115] In his letter to G. H. Schuller (Letter 58), he wrote: "men are conscious of their desire and unaware of the causes by which [their desires] are determined."^[116] He also held that knowledge of true causes of passive emotion can transform it into an active emotion, thus anticipating one of the key ideas of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis.^[117]

According to Professor Eric Schliesser, Spinoza was skeptical regarding the possibility of knowledge of nature and as a consequence at odds with scientists like Galileo and Huygens.^[118]

Causality

Though the principle of sufficient reason is most commonly associated with Gottfried Leibniz,^[119] it is arguably found in its strongest form in Spinoza's philosophy.^[120] Within the context of Spinoza's philosophical system, the principle can be understood to unify causation and explanation.^[121] What this means is that for Spinoza, questions regarding the reason why a given phenomenon is the way it is (or exists) are always answerable, and are always answerable in terms of the relevant cause(s). This constitutes a rejection of teleological, or final causation, except possibly in a more restricted sense for human beings.^[122][121] Given this, Spinoza's views regarding causality and modality begin to make much more sense.

Spinoza has also been described as an "Epicurean materialist",^[89] 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.^[123][124] Spinoza, however, deviated significantly from Epicureans by adhering to strict determinism, much like the Stoics before him, in contrast to the Epicurean belief in the probabilistic path of atoms, which is more in line with contemporary thought on quantum mechanics.^[123][125]

The emotions

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. [However] he did not say this clearly enough and sometimes lost sight of it entirely."^[126] 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".^[127]

Ethical philosophy

Spinoza's notion of blessedness figures centrally in his ethical philosophy. Blessedness (or salvation or freedom), Spinoza thinks,

consists...in a constant and eternal love of God, or in God's love for men.(E5P36s)^[122]

And this means, as Jonathan Bennett explains, that "Spinoza wants "blessedness" to stand for the most elevated and desirable state one could possibly be in."^[128] Here, understanding what is meant by 'most elevated and desirable state' requires understanding Spinoza's notion of conatus (read: striving, but not necessarily with any teleological baggage) and that "perfection" refers not to (moral) value, but to completeness. Given that individuals are identified as mere modifications of the infinite Substance, it follows that no individual can ever be fully complete, i.e., perfect, or blessed. Absolute perfection, is, as noted above, reserved solely for Substance. Nevertheless, mere modes can attain a lesser form of blessedness, namely, that of pure understanding of oneself as one really is, i.e., as a definite modification of Substance in a certain set of relationships with everything else in the universe. That this is what Spinoza has in mind can be seen at the end of the Ethics, in E5P24 and E5P25, wherein 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").

Engraving of Spinoza, captioned in Latin, "A Jew and an atheist"; he vehemently denied being an atheist.

Reconsideration of Enlightenment

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.^[161] Since such a cherem can only be rescinded by the congregation that issued it, and the chief rabbi of that community,^{[lower-alpha 3]} Haham Pinchas Toledano, declined to do so, citing Spinoza's "preposterous ideas, where he was tearing apart the very fundamentals of our religion",^[162] the Amsterdam Jewish community organised a symposium in December 2015 to discuss lifting the cherem, inviting scholars from around the world to form an advisory committee at the meeting. 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.^[161]

Memory and memorials

• 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.^[163]
• The Spinoza Havurah (a Humanistic Jewish community) was named in Spinoza's honor.^[164]
• The Spinoza Foundation Monument has a statute of Spinoza located in front of the Amsterdam City Hall (at Zwanenburgwal) ^[165] It was created by Dutch sculptor Nicolas Dings and was erected in 2008.^[166][167]

Notes

References

Biographies and reference works

Other works