Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632 into a family of Portuguese Jews who had fled the Inquisition. He was educated in the Jewish community, and worked in his family’s trading business. In 1656, at the age of twenty-three, he was expelled from the community with a severe ban (ḥerem), for reasons that are not fully known but were probably related to his opinions about God and scripture.

He lived the rest of his life modestly, at Rijnsburg, Voorburg and The Hague, earning part of his living by grinding lenses, and corresponding with scientists and philosophers across Europe. His Theological-Political Treatise, published anonymously in 1670, argued for freedom of thought and a historical reading of the Bible, and caused a scandal. He declined a professorship at Heidelberg in 1673 to keep his independence, and died in 1677, probably of lung disease.

His Ethics, set out in the manner of geometry, with definitions, axioms and propositions, was published after his death. Long condemned as an atheist, he was rediscovered by the German Romantics and idealists; Novalis is said to have called him a “God-intoxicated man”.