Enlightenment1632–1677 · Dutch

Baruch Spinoza

Excommunicated from his Amsterdam Jewish community for his radical views, Spinoza lived quietly grinding optical lenses and refused academic honors to preserve his independence. He built a rigorous metaphysical system arguing that there is only one substance — God or Nature — of which everything is a mode. His naturalism and his defense of free thought made him a forerunner of the Enlightenment.

Schools

RationalismMonism

Key concepts

Substance MonismDeus sive NaturaConatusIntellectual Love of God

Core works

Ethics
1677
Spinoza's Ethics is written like a geometry textbook — definitions, axioms, propositions, and proofs — to derive a complete picture of reality and the good life. He argues that there exists only one infinite substance, which may be called God or Nature, and that everything else is a mode of it. Mind and body are not two things but one reality grasped under two attributes. From this metaphysics he draws an ethics: human bondage is being driven by passions we don't understand, while freedom is the power of reason to understand the causes of our emotions. The highest state is the 'intellectual love of God' — a serene understanding of our place within the necessary order of nature.
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Core works

Ethics