Baruch Spinoza
1632 – 1677 Dutch philosopher
The rationalist who identified God with nature and founded modern secular thought.
- Religion
- Born Jewish but expelled from the Amsterdam Jewish community for heresy; he identified God with nature itself, a pantheism many read as atheism.
- Affiliations
- None. He lived quietly as a lens grinder after his excommunication.
Spinoza argued in the Ethics that God and nature are one infinite substance, ruled by necessity rather than a personal will. Cast out by his community and banned by the churches, he lived modestly grinding lenses. His work seeded the radical Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism.
In the timeline
- 1600 The Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam mentioned