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Biography of Baruch Spinoza
Name: Baruch Spinoza
Birth Date: November 24, 1632
Death Date: February 20, 1677
Place of Birth: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Nationality: Dutch
Gender: Male
Occupations: philosopher
Baruch Spinoza
The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) ranks as a major thinker in the rationalist tradition, and his Ethics is a classic of Western philosophy. In his writings the crucial issues of metaphysics are exemplified more clearly than in any thinker since Plato.Baruch, or Benedict, Spinoza was born on Nov. 24, 1632, in Amsterdam, where his family had settled after fleeing religious persecution in Portugal. His grandfather, Abraham, was the acknowledged leader of the Jewish community, and his father was a successful merchant and active in civic affairs. Michael Spinoza had three children, of whom the future philosopher was the only son. Spinoza's mother died when he was 6, and his father and one sister died by the time he was in his early 20s. Little is precisely known about his early education except that biblical and Talmudic texts were studied at the synagogue school and that the young Spinoza showed a facility for …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…with nature, whereas men suffer in proportion to the number of inadequate ideas that they have.The essence of man is the struggle "to preserve in being." Adequate ideas replace passions, rational self-control supplants the impotence of desires. The issue is life itself: whether one is ensnared in "human bondage" as a prey to the whims of desire or external persons or objects, or one achieves the freedom that Spinoza calls "blessedness" and that is virtue's own reward. He was enough of a psychologist to see that ultimately passions can be overcome only by stronger passions. Thus in cultivating a knowledge and intellectual love of God man comes to know himself and to experience a freedom from external restraint. Further Reading For studies of Spinoza consult the following works: F. Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880); E. Caird, Spinoza (1902); H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (1934); and S. Hampshire, Spinoza (1956).
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