The Dutch philosopher with Sephardic (Iberian-Jewish) ancestors was a rationalist and is considered one of the founders of modern biblical criticism. Baruch Spinoza (Latinized Benedictus de Spinoza) taught a philosophy of ethical rationalism and pantheism. It recognizes the people fit into a world order that applies to automatic way his luck. God is his substance, therefore, all earthly things divine modes of being. Spinoza is the same God with nature and thus makes it noticeable. Right knowledge, which is equal to the determined pursuit of reason leads to virtue. The peak degree of virtue is the recognition of God …
Benedictus de Spinoza was the son of a Portuguese-Jewish family on 24 Born November 1632 in Amsterdam.
Spinoza, Baruch de Spinoza also called himself as a Romanization of Benedictus. His father emigrated before the end of the 16th inquisitorial persecution in Spain Century from the Portuguese Vidiguera in the Netherlands. Baruch Spinoza was the age of five years in the Jewish community “Ets Haim”, in German: “Date Tree of Life.” He attended the Talmud Torah school, and came into contact with the Jewish doctrine of faith and scholasticism. He also learned Hebrew there. 1649 died in the half-brother of Baruch Spinoza. From that time he worked as a merchant in his father’s business. At the same time he continued his studies through.
Spinoza was worried with the works of René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Giordano Bruno and Thomas Campanella, who influenced him greatly in his thought. Thus he gradually went away from his Jewish faith, but then more rigorously. In his critical view towards the Jewish faith, he developed a real doubt. Spinoza’s critique in 1656 led to expulsion from the Jewish community. His critique of Spinoza developed in his major work, published in 1667, “Ethics” section. Is found in this he was based solidly on Descartes’ method, in truth only by the mathematical way of thought. By excluding from the flock was forced to retire from economic hardship Spinoza’s business operations.
Spinoza then worked as a grinder of optical glasses. In the period 1661 to 1663 he lived in Rijnsburg, where his first writings emerged. Even there his threads are made, but then he worked with mathematical methods in his major work. During this time also led to the fragmentary work titled “Treatise on the perfection of the mind”, which was not published until his death in 1677. 1663 Spinoza left Rijnsburg and matured in Voorburg. There, the work started on the “ethics”. He also commented on the current mental events. The conflict between Calvinists and the liberal supporters of the murdered Dutch politician later Jan de Witt used Spinoza to make his views on religious conviction and tolerance in public policy. In 1669 he went to The Hague.
There was in 1670, his “Tractatus Politicus, Theological-” issued, which was banned four years later. In 1673 he declined the appointment to a professorship of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg by the Elector Palatine Karl Ludwig. Spinoza was in his mind to remain independent. According to Spinoza, the recognition results on the organization and the laws of nature for their own happiness. The higher these skills are, the superior the happiness, because then the man knows best what is excellent for him. In nature there is nothing that runs counter to its laws. Thus certain causes and certain effects that are produced in a levelheaded chain. So too the soul, which, if it detects an object produced continuously effects in an objective manner.
For Spinoza, the soul belongs to nature, the man in the expansion and thought is revealed. Nature is thus both matter and spirit. All things in the world, all thoughts are modifications of a single substance which is eternal and infinite. About this matter, there is no being. Spinoza uses this same substance with God. For him, nature is equated with God, which is perceptible and thus no longer transcendent being. This means for him again if the person can recognize as many individual things, the more he knows God. The higher the knowledge is, the higher the affection for God, in which the happiness of man consists. Spinoza teaches here a austere determinism, which man is exposed. The apparent freedom of man consists of his awareness of this non-determinism.
Spinoza’s doctrine was controversial at first, and found small support. The general interest grew in the perspective of a conflict between the philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn on the views of Spinoza Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Dissemination and a high acceptance Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Herder contributed to.
Benedictus de Spinoza died on 21 February 1677 in The Hague tuberculosis.
