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Baruch Spinoza

ברוך שפינוזה

1632 – 1677Historically documented person

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin, was expelled from Amsterdam's Jewish community in 1656 and lived by grinding lenses. His Theological-Political Treatise (1670) founded modern biblical criticism and defended freedom of thought; his Ethics, published posthumously in 1677, identifies God with Nature and proposes a path to freedom through knowledge. Considered an atheist for a century, he is one of the central figures of rationalism and the radical Enlightenment.

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Retrato anónimo de Spinoza (Wolfenbüttel)

Retrato anónimo de Spinoza (Wolfenbüttel) · Public domain

In their words

«By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite—that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.»

Ética, I, definición 6 (trad. inglesa de Elwes)

Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order — Baruch Spinoza

Their central idea

Deus sive Natura: God or Nature: The core of the Ethics is that there exists only one substance, absolutely infinite, which is cause of itself and of which everything else is a mode or affection: that substance is God, and it is also Nature.

See in context

Biography

5 min read

The Portuguese nation of Amsterdam

Baruch Espinosa was born in Amsterdam on 24 November 1632, into the Portuguese Jewish community, formed by descendants of conversos who had fled the Iberian Inquisition and who in the Dutch Republic could openly return to Judaism. His father, Michael, was a respected importing merchant who became an officer of the Talmud Torah congregation; his mother, Hannah Deborah, died in November 1638, a few days before the boy turned six. Baruch studied at the community school, where he learned Hebrew, read the Torah with its commentaries and was taught in Spanish and Portuguese, his family languages. Around the age of seventeen he left his studies to work in the family business, which the Anglo-Dutch wars ruined. When his father died in 1654 he took charge of the firm with his brother Gabriel.

The herem of 1656

On 27 July 1656 the leaders of the congregation pronounced against him, then twenty-three, a herem, a writ of expulsion of unprecedented harshness in the community: it cursed him by day and by night, lying down and rising up, and forbade anyone to speak to him, read his writings or come within four cubits of him. The text does not specify the "abominable heresies" he was charged with; later testimonies suggest he already denied the immortality of the soul, the Mosaic authorship of the Torah and the election of Israel. He never recanted, and the sentence was never lifted. According to his first biographer, the Lutheran pastor Johannes Colerus, he replied with an apology in Spanish that has not survived. He did not convert to Christianity or join any church: from then on he signed himself Benedictus, the Latin form of his name.

Latin, Descartes and the circle of friends

At the school of Franciscus van den Enden, a former Jesuit of radical views, he learned Latin and discovered the philosophy of Descartes, which would be his starting point and his chief adversary. He frequented Collegiants and dissenting Mennonites, Christians without a church who discussed Scripture without clergy, and surrounded himself with a group of friends—Jarig Jelles, Pieter Balling, Lodewijk Meyer, Simon de Vries, Johannes Bouwmeester, the publisher Jan Rieuwertsz—who read drafts of his philosophy at their meetings. Around 1658 he attended classes at Leiden University.

Rijnsburg and Voorburg: the lens grinder

In 1661 he settled in Rijnsburg, near Leiden, where he earned his living grinding lenses for microscopes and telescopes, a craft for which Christiaan Huygens praised the quality of his work. There he wrote the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, which remained unfinished, and the Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being, known only in the nineteenth century through two Dutch copies. In 1663 he published under his name the Principles of Descartes' Philosophy, with the appendix of Metaphysical Thoughts, the only work he signed in his lifetime. That same year he moved to Voorburg, near The Hague, where he went on working on the Ethics and corresponded with Henry Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society.

The Theological-Political Treatise

In 1665 he interrupted the Ethics to write a fighting book. The Tractatus theologico-politicus appeared in 1670, anonymous and with a false imprint placing it in Hamburg. It held that the Bible must be read like any other historical text, from its language and context; that Moses did not write the Pentateuch; that miracles, understood as violations of natural laws, are impossible; and that true religion comes down to justice and charity. Its political conclusion was that the end of the state is freedom, and that the freedom to philosophise not only can be granted without harm to peace and piety but cannot be suppressed without destroying them. Theologians of every confession denounced it as the work of an atheist, and in 1674 the Court of Holland banned it. The fate of his friend Adriaan Koerbagh, who died in prison in 1669 for similar ideas written in Dutch, explains the author's caution; he asked that the book not be translated.

The Hague: the Ethics and caution

From 1670 he lived in The Hague, first in lodgings and then in the house of the painter Hendrik van der Spyck on the Paviljoensgracht. He lived frugally: according to Colerus, he declined to be the heir of his friend Simon de Vries and reduced from five hundred to three hundred guilders the pension the latter's family paid him; in 1673 he also refused the chair of philosophy offered him by the Elector Palatine at Heidelberg, fearing that the condition not to disturb the established religion would limit his freedom. He received visitors—Leibniz spent several days with him in November 1676—and sealed his letters with a ring bearing the word Caute, "cautiously". Around 1675 he finished the Ethics, demonstrated in geometrical order, and gave up publishing it amid rumours that he was preparing a book on God that denied his existence. He then worked on a Political Treatise and a Hebrew grammar, both unfinished.

Death and posthumous works

He died in The Hague on 21 February 1677, aged forty-four, of a lung disease, probably tuberculosis, which glass dust may have aggravated. According to Colerus, who reconstructed his last day from Van der Spyck's recollections, that morning he came down to talk with the family and died at about three in the afternoon, with no company but a physician from Amsterdam. He was buried on 25 February in the Nieuwe Kerk. His friends saved his manuscripts and at the end of that year published, without the name of author or printer, the Opera posthuma in Latin and their Dutch translation, De nagelate schriften: the Ethics, the Political Treatise, the Emendation of the Intellect, the grammar and a selection of letters. In 1678 the States of Holland banned them. In 2010 the only known complete manuscript copy of the Ethics, handed to the Holy Office in 1677, was identified in the Vatican Library.

Afterlife

For a century his name was a byword for atheism. The pantheism controversy, which broke out in Germany in 1785, made him a reference point for Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schelling and Hegel; Novalis called him "the God-intoxicated man", and Einstein declared that he believed in Spinoza's God. Today he is read at once as the great systematiser of rationalism, the founder of modern biblical criticism and one of the first theorists of democracy and toleration, and scholars debate whether his Deus sive Natura is a pantheism, a naturalism or a form of atheism.

Sources: Nadler, Steven. Spinoza: A Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (2.ª ed. 2018). ISBN 9780521552103. · Colerus, Johannes. Korte, dog waaragtige levens-beschryving van Benedictus de Spinosa. Ámsterdam, 1705; trad. francesa «La Vie de B. de Spinosa» (1706), en Œuvres de Spinoza, trad. Émile Saisset, t. II, París, Charpentier, 1861 (Wikisource). · B. d. S. Opera posthuma. [Ámsterdam: Jan Rieuwertsz], 1677; y De nagelate schriften van B. d. S., trad. Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker, 1677. · Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (texto latino en Wikisource, a partir de la ed. bilingüe de Appuhn, Garnier, 1913); The Ethics, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (Londres, 1883), Project Gutenberg #3800. · Spinoza, Benedictus de. Tractatus theologico-politicus. «Hamburgi» [Ámsterdam], 1670 (texto latino en Wikisource, ed. Gebhardt); A Theologico-Political Treatise, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (1883), Project Gutenberg #989-992.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

  1. November 24, 1632 · age 0

    Birth of Baruch Espinosa

    Born in the Jewish quarter of Vlooienburg, son of the merchant Michael de Espinosa and Hannah Deborah.

    Documented

  2. 1638 · age 5

    Death of his mother

    Hannah Deborah dies, a few days before the boy turns six.

    Documented

  3. 1649 · age 16

    Leaves his studies for the family business

    After the death of his brother Isaac he leaves the community school to work with his father.

    Documented

  4. March 1654 · age 21

    Death of his father

    He takes charge of the family firm, ruined by the Anglo-Dutch war, with his brother Gabriel.

    Documented

  5. July 27, 1656 · age 23

    Herem of the Talmud Torah congregation

    The leaders of the Portuguese community expel him with a sentence of exceptional harshness that was never lifted.

    Documented

  6. c. 1657 · age 24

    Latin with Van den Enden

    Studies Latin and Cartesian philosophy at Franciscus van den Enden's school; frequents Collegiants and Mennonites.

    Probable

  7. c. 1658 · age 25

    Classes at Leiden University

    Attends courses in Cartesian philosophy.

    Probable

  8. 1661 · age 28

    Settles in Rijnsburg

    Lives by grinding lenses; his surviving correspondence and the writing of the Short Treatise and the Ethics begin.

    Documented

  9. 1663 · age 30

    Principles of Descartes' Philosophy; move to Voorburg

    Publishes under his name the geometrical exposition of Descartes and the Metaphysical Thoughts, and moves to Voorburg.

    Documented

  10. 1665 · age 32

    Begins the Theological-Political Treatise

    Interrupts the Ethics to write a defence of the freedom to philosophise.

    Documented

  11. 1670 · age 37

    Anonymous publication of the TTP; move to The Hague

    The book appears with a false imprint and provokes condemnations from theologians of every confession.

    Documented

  12. August 20, 1672 · age 39

    Murder of the De Witt brothers

    According to Leibniz, Spinoza wished to post a placard with the words 'ultimi barbarorum' and his landlord prevented him by locking him in.

    Probable

  13. March 30, 1673 · age 40

    Declines the Heidelberg chair

    Replies to Johann Ludwig Fabritius declining the chair of philosophy offered by the Elector Palatine.

    Documented

  14. July 1673 · age 40

    Journey to the French camp at Utrecht

    Visits the headquarters of the invading French army; on his return, according to Colerus, the family fears a riot and he replies 'I am a good republican'.

    Probable

  15. July 1674 · age 41

    Ban of the Theological-Political Treatise

    The Court of Holland bans the book together with Hobbes' Leviathan and other heterodox writings.

    Documented

  16. 1675 · age 42

    Gives up publishing the Ethics

    Finishes the work and abandons printing it amid rumours that he is preparing a book denying God.

    Documented

  17. November 1676 · age 43

    Leibniz's visit

    Leibniz spends several days in conversation with him.

    Documented

  18. February 21, 1677 · age 44

    Death

    Dies at about three in the afternoon of a lung disease; buried on 25 February in the Nieuwe Kerk.

    Documented

  19. December 1677

    Opera posthuma

    His friends publish the Ethics and the unpublished works in Latin and Dutch.

    Probable

  20. June 1678

    Ban of the posthumous works

    The States of Holland ban the Opera posthuma.

    Probable

  21. 1785

    The pantheism controversy

    The dispute between Jacobi and Mendelssohn over Lessing's alleged Spinozism revives his reading in German idealism.

    Documented

  22. 2010

    Discovery of the Vatican manuscript of the Ethics

    Leen Spruit and Pina Totaro identify codex Vat. lat. 12838, handed to the Holy Office by Niels Stensen in 1677.

    Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order — Baruch Spinoza

Posthumous work · 1677

Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order

Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata

His major work, set out like Euclid's geometry, with definitions, axioms, propositions, demonstrations and scholia, in five parts: God; the nature and origin of the mind; the origin and nature of the affects; human bondage, or the strength of the affects; the power of the intellect, or human freedom. It starts from a single infinite substance, God or Nature, of which all things are modes; denies free will and final causes; analyses the passions as natural phenomena arising from the striving to persevere in being; and proposes an ethics of joy and knowledge culminating in the intellectual love of God and the experience of the eternity of the intellect.

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17 editions · amazon.com

Theological-Political Treatise — Baruch Spinoza

Written work · 1670

Theological-Political Treatise

Tractatus theologico-politicus

A defence of the freedom to philosophise in twenty chapters. The first fifteen subject the Bible to historical and philological examination: prophecy as imagination, the election of the Hebrews as political prosperity, miracles as ignorance of causes, the authorship of the Pentateuch and the historical books, the method of interpreting Scripture by Scripture itself. The last five ground the state in natural right, identified with power, analyse the Hebrew theocracy and conclude that the end of the state is freedom and that everyone must be able to think what he wishes and say what he thinks. It is one of the founding works of modern biblical criticism and of liberal and democratic political thought.

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9 editions · amazon.com

Political Treatise — Baruch Spinoza

Posthumous work · 1677

Political Treatise

Tractatus politicus

A treatise of political theory which, unlike the Theological-Political Treatise, leaves biblical exegesis aside and studies how monarchy, aristocracy and democracy must be organised so that peace and freedom do not depend on the virtue of rulers. It starts from the idea that human actions are to be understood, not laughed at, lamented or detested, and that each one's right extends as far as his power. It remained unfinished just as it was to deal with democracy, the form of government he considered most absolute.

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5 editions · amazon.es

Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect — Baruch Spinoza

Posthumous work · 1677

Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect

Tractatus de intellectus emendatione

An essay on method that opens with one of the most famous autobiographical pages in philosophy: the experience that the goods men pursue—wealth, honour, pleasure—are vain, and the resolve to seek a true good that would give continuous and supreme joy. It distinguishes four modes of perception, analyses the true idea, fiction, falsity and doubt, and seeks the way to direct the intellect towards knowledge of nature. It is the most accessible way into his thought.

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7 editions · amazon.com

Complete works (22)

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite—that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.

Per Deum intelligo ens absolute infinitum, hoc est, substantiam constantem infinitis attributis, quorum unumquodque aeternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit.

VerifiedÉtica, I, definición 6 (trad. inglesa de Elwes)

1 / 12
Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (2)

  • «'Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would end, I would still plant an apple tree today.'»

    Attributed to Spinoza and, more often, to Luther; it appears in no work or letter of Spinoza's, and for Luther too there is no source before the twentieth century.

  • «'God would say: stop praying and beating your breast; what I want you to do is go out into the world and enjoy your life…' (the so-called 'God of Spinoza')»

    A text spread on social media since the 2010s under the title 'If God Spoke' or 'The God of Spinoza'. It belongs to no work of Spinoza's: its style and personal theology (a God who speaks, loves and advises) contradict the Ethics, which denies that God has will or human affects. It is usually linked to Einstein's remark 'I believe in Spinoza's God'.

Last words

There are no verifiable records of their last words.

No reliable last words survive. Colerus, who questioned his landlords, relates that that morning he came down to talk with the family, took chicken broth at midday and died at about three in the afternoon, alone with a physician from Amsterdam whom he designates as 'L. M.' (later research usually identifies him with Georg Hermann Schuller). Colerus expressly denies that he said 'O God, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner' or asked for pastors to be kept away: no one in the house heard any such thing, and those repentance stories died out in the eighteenth century.

Source: Colerus, Johannes. Korte, dog waaragtige levens-beschryving van Benedictus de Spinosa. Ámsterdam, 1705; trad. francesa «La Vie de B. de Spinosa» (1706), en Œuvres de Spinoza, trad. Émile Saisset, t. II, París, Charpentier, 1861 (Wikisource).

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What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

  • What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

    God, or Nature: an infinite substance without will or ends

    An impersonal AbsoluteStated explicitly

    Spinoza understands by God an absolutely infinite being, a substance consisting of infinite attributes, and demonstrates that apart from it no other can exist or be conceived: whatever is, is in God. This God is not a person. He does not act for ends or by a free decree of the will, but from the necessity of His nature, as its properties follow from the nature of a triangle. The appendix to the first part of the Ethics dismantles the image of a God who arranges the world for man and rewards or punishes, and the preface to the fourth states that the reason why God, or Nature, acts and exists is one and the same. The Absolute is the whole of reality understood in its necessity, accessible to the intellect and the object of an intellectual love that does not expect to be returned.

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  • Who am I? Is there a true self?

    The mind is part of the infinite intellect of God

    The Self is the AbsoluteInferred from their doctrine

    Spinoza denies that the soul is a substance: the human mind is the idea of an actually existing body and, as such, a finite mode of God's thought. From this he draws a consequence he states plainly: the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God. Its actual essence is the striving (conatus) to persevere in its being. While it knows itself confusedly, it takes itself for a dominion within a dominion, free and independent; when it knows itself adequately, it knows that it is in God and is conceived through God. The fifth part of the Ethics adds that something of the mind is eternal, and that the intellectual love with which the mind loves God is part of the love with which God loves Himself. The true self is the one that understands itself from the Absolute.

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  • Why do we suffer?

    We suffer because we know the causes of our affects badly

    Ignorance of what we areStated explicitly

    Spinoza calls bondage human powerlessness to moderate and restrain the affects: a man subject to them is not his own master but at the mercy of fortune. Sadness is the passage to a lesser perfection, and the sad passions — hatred, fear, envy, anxious hope — arise from inadequate ideas, that is, from knowing in a mutilated and confused way what affects us and what we are. That is why the remedy is cognitive: an affect that is a passion ceases to be one as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it. Understanding that everything happens necessarily gives the mind greater power over the affects and makes it suffer less from them. His maxim of method sums up the attitude: not to laugh at human actions, nor weep over them, nor detest them, but to understand them.

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  • What happens after death?

    Something of the mind is eternal: not lasting afterwards, but outside time

    What I am is never born and never diesStated explicitly

    Spinoza denies personal immortality as it is usually understood: the mind can imagine or remember nothing except while the body endures, so no memory or personality survives. But he affirms that the mind cannot be entirely destroyed with the body: something of it remains that is eternal, the idea that expresses the essence of this body under the aspect of eternity. That eternity is not an endless duration that would begin after death, but a way of being outside time, and it is experienced even now: we feel and know by experience that we are eternal. The more the mind understands by the third kind of knowledge, the greater the part that does not perish and the less it fears death. That is why the free man thinks of nothing less than of death.

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  • How is liberation or salvation attained?

    Freedom is born of understanding: happiness is virtue itself

    Through direct knowledgeStated explicitly

    Spinoza calls by the same name freedom, blessedness or salvation: the constant and eternal love of God that is born of knowledge. The fifth part of the Ethics traces the way. First, reason orders the affects and weakens them by understanding their causes; then the third kind of knowledge, intuitive science, sees each singular thing in God and produces the greatest contentment of mind. From it arises the intellectual love of God, which does not expect to be returned and in which salvation consists. Happiness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself: we do not enjoy it because we restrain our passions; we restrain them because we enjoy it. The way is hard, he admits, but all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

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  • Is a teacher necessary?

    Neither prophets nor theologians: in speculative matters, reason alone judges

    No spiritual authorityStated explicitly

    The Theological-Political Treatise is largely a plea against spiritual authority in matters of truth. Spinoza shows that the prophets excelled in imagination and moral uprightness, not in philosophical knowledge, and that their opinions about nature bind no one. Scripture teaches only obedience, justice and charity; its interpretation belongs to each person by the natural light, without need of a caste of interpreters. That is why philosophy must not be the handmaid of theology, nor theology of philosophy, and the State must guarantee freedom to philosophise. Spinoza had teachers and correspondents, but in the Ethics the only guide is the order of the demonstrations, which anyone can follow and check.

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  • Is the world real?

    Everything follows necessarily from God: nothing is contingent, nothing is a miracle

    Natural order in transformationStated explicitly

    For Spinoza the world is real and governed by a seamless necessity. In nature there is nothing contingent: everything is determined by the necessity of the divine nature to exist and to act in a certain way, and things could not have been produced in any other manner or order. He distinguishes natura naturans, God as free cause, from natura naturata, the totality of modes that follow from it. The Theological-Political Treatise draws the consequence: a miracle understood as a violation of natural laws is impossible, because those laws are eternal decrees of God; what we call a miracle is an event whose cause we do not know. The world is neither appearance nor a stage for man: it is the very order of the real.

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  • What is love?

    Intellectual love of God and desire of the good for all men

    Love of God and neighbourStated explicitly

    Spinoza defines love as joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and from there builds an ethics of love without sentimentality. Whoever loves God cannot strive for God to love him in return: the intellectual love of God, born of the third kind of knowledge, expects nothing back, and is part of the love with which God loves Himself. That love does not isolate: the good that whoever follows virtue desires for himself he also desires for others, and all the more the greater his knowledge of God. Towards others, reason counsels answering hatred with love and generosity, because hatred conquered by love turns into love, and that love is greater than if hatred had not preceded it.

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  • Are we free, or is everything determined?

    We think ourselves free because we ignore the causes; freedom is understanding

    We are machines until we awakenStated explicitly

    Spinoza denies free will: in the mind there is no absolute will; it is determined to will this or that by a cause, which is determined by another, and so on to infinity. Men believe themselves free because they are conscious of their desires and ignorant of the causes that determine them; in a letter he illustrates this with a thrown stone that, if it could think, would believe it moved by its own will. While man lives under the passions he is driven by external causes like the sea by contrary winds. But there is a true freedom: to act from the necessity of one's own nature alone, guided by reason. One is free not by escaping necessity but by understanding it.

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  • Why meditate or pray?

    Not praying to change the order of nature, but understanding it

    Seeing reality as it isInferred from their doctrine

    Spinoza does not pray in the usual sense: if God does not act for ends or change His decrees, asking Him to alter the course of nature makes no sense, and the Theological-Political Treatise analyses superstition as the child of fear and hope. What takes the place of prayer is meditation on life, not on death, and the exercise of understanding. In the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect he tells how he resolved to seek a true good which, once found, would give continuous and supreme joy, and the Ethics identifies it with knowledge of the union of the mind with the whole of Nature. His practice is to see each thing in God, under the aspect of eternity, and in this he finds contentment.

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  • Can reason know the ultimate?

    The human mind has adequate knowledge of the essence of God

    Study and learningStated explicitly

    Spinoza is the most confident in this group in the power of reason. In the Ethics he demonstrates that the human mind has adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God, and he distinguishes three kinds of knowledge: imagination, source of error; reason, which forms common notions; and intuitive science, which sees each singular thing in God. The ultimate is not beyond the mind: it is its supreme object. At the same time he separates philosophy from faith: in the Theological-Political Treatise he holds that Scripture teaches not speculative truths but obedience and charity, and that neither must theology be the handmaid of reason nor reason of theology. Knowing is a long road, requiring method and the emendation of the intellect.

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  • Withdraw from the world or transform it?

    The end of the State is freedom: a political order that lets people think

    Order societyStated explicitly

    Spinoza led a retired life: he ground lenses, declined a chair at Heidelberg to preserve his freedom and lived soberly in lodgings in Rijnsburg, Voorburg and The Hague. But his philosophy does not counsel flight from the world. The free man sketched in the Ethics is freer in the State, where he lives by common laws, than in solitude, and nothing is more useful to man than another man guided by reason. His two political treatises seek the conditions of a just and stable order: the Theological-Political Treatise concludes that the end of the State is in truth freedom, and defends tolerance and freedom of expression. For Spinoza the philosophical life needs a well-ordered society, and thinking about it is part of his task.

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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Anecdotes and stories

Anecdotes and stories

Documented1656

The herem

On 27 July 1656, from the reader's platform of the Talmud Torah synagogue, the sentence against Baruch Espinosa was read in Portuguese. The lords of the Mahamad declared that they had tried by various means to turn him from his 'evil ways' and that, in view of his 'abominable heresies' and 'monstrous deeds', confirmed by witnesses, they expelled him from the people of Israel. They cursed him by day and by night, lying down and rising up, going out and coming in, and ordered that no one should communicate with him orally or in writing, do him any favour, stay under the same roof or within four cubits of him, or read any paper made or written by him. No other herem in the community was so harsh, nor was this one ever lifted. The text, however, does not say what he had done or thought.

Origin of the story: The text is preserved in the community's book of ordinances (Stadsarchief Amsterdam) and is edited and analysed by Nadler and Wikipedia; the reasons are a matter of conjecture.

Source: Nadler, Steven. Spinoza: A Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (2.ª ed. 2018). ISBN 9780521552103.

Disputedc. 1656

The knife at the exit

Pierre Bayle related in his Dictionary (1697) that a Jew tried to kill Spinoza on his way out of a theatre performance, wounding him with a knife in the face, and tradition added that the philosopher kept the torn coat as a reminder. Colerus, who knew Spinoza's landlords, gives another version, which they said they had heard from his own mouth: one evening, leaving the old Portuguese synagogue, he saw someone approach with a knife and stepped aside in time; the blow reached only his clothes. The two versions differ in place and wound, and neither can be verified, but both reflect the violence of the conflict surrounding his break with the community.

Origin of the story: Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697), art. 'Spinoza'; Colerus, Life (1705), correcting Bayle from the Van der Spycks' testimony. The detail of the coat comes from later traditions.

Source: Colerus, Johannes. Korte, dog waaragtige levens-beschryving van Benedictus de Spinosa. Ámsterdam, 1705; trad. francesa «La Vie de B. de Spinosa» (1706), en Œuvres de Spinoza, trad. Émile Saisset, t. II, París, Charpentier, 1861 (Wikisource).

Testimony1672

Ultimi barbarorum

On 20 August 1672, in the midst of the French invasion, a mob lynched in The Hague Johan de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland, and his brother Cornelis, and tore their bodies apart. Spinoza, who admired De Witt's republican regime, wanted to go out at night and post near the site of the massacre a placard with the words 'ultimi barbarorum', 'the lowest of barbarians'. His landlord, Van der Spyck, fearing he too would be killed, locked the door and would not let him out. It is one of the rare moments when the philosopher of serenity lost his composure.

Origin of the story: Leibniz records it in a note as something Spinoza himself told him during the 1676 visit; Nadler and the biographical tradition report it.

Source: Nadler, Steven. Spinoza: A Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (2.ª ed. 2018). ISBN 9780521552103.

Testimony1673

'I am a good republican'

In the summer of 1673, when Louis XIV's army occupied Utrecht, Spinoza travelled to the French headquarters, apparently at the invitation of the circle of the Prince of Condé, who was interested in his books; the prince had already left and they never met. On his return to The Hague a rumour spread that he was a spy, and his landlord feared people would storm the house. Colerus relates that Spinoza reassured him: he had nothing to fear, important people knew why he had made the journey, and if the mob gathered at the door he would go out to meet them even if they did to him what they had done to the De Witts, for he was a good republican and had sought only the glory and advantage of the State.

Origin of the story: Colerus, Life (1705), from Van der Spyck's testimony. Stouppe's role and Condé's absence are recorded in Colerus and Lucas.

Source: Colerus, Johannes. Korte, dog waaragtige levens-beschryving van Benedictus de Spinosa. Ámsterdam, 1705; trad. francesa «La Vie de B. de Spinosa» (1706), en Œuvres de Spinoza, trad. Émile Saisset, t. II, París, Charpentier, 1861 (Wikisource).

Documented1673

The chair he did not want

In February 1673 Johann Ludwig Fabritius, counsellor of the Elector Palatine Karl Ludwig, wrote to Spinoza offering him in his prince's name the ordinary chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, with the fullest freedom to philosophise, provided he did not use it to disturb the publicly established religion. Spinoza took some six weeks to reply. He thanked him for the honour but declined: he had never wished to teach in public, teaching would take time from his own philosophy and, above all, he did not know within what limits that freedom should be confined so as not to seem to wish to disturb religion. He preferred, he said, his tranquillity.

Origin of the story: Letters 47 (Fabritius, 16 February 1673) and 48 (Spinoza, 30 March 1673), published in the Opera posthuma.

Source: Wikipedia (en), «Epistolae (Spinoza)» y «List of Epistolae (Letters) of Spinoza» (88 cartas: 50 de Spinoza, 38 de sus corresponsales).

Testimony1671-1677

Spiders, a pipe and a single bed

Colerus gathered from the Van der Spycks the habits of their lodger. Spinoza sometimes spent whole days without leaving his room, ate little—gruel with raisins and butter, a little wine—and, when tired of meditating, came down to talk of anything with the family or smoked a pipe. For distraction he looked for spiders and made them fight, or threw flies into the web and watched the battle laughing out loud; he also examined insects under the microscope. When he won the lawsuit against his sisters over his father's inheritance, he left them everything except a bed. And at his death the inventory of his goods fitted into a few lines: books, prints, some polished glasses and the tools for polishing them.

Origin of the story: Colerus, Life (1705); the detail of the inheritance and the bed also in Colerus. Indirect testimony of the landlords, gathered almost thirty years later.

Source: Colerus, Johannes. Korte, dog waaragtige levens-beschryving van Benedictus de Spinosa. Ámsterdam, 1705; trad. francesa «La Vie de B. de Spinosa» (1706), en Œuvres de Spinoza, trad. Émile Saisset, t. II, París, Charpentier, 1861 (Wikisource).

Documented1676

Three days with Leibniz

In November 1676, on his way to Hanover, the young Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz stopped in The Hague and spent several days in conversation with Spinoza, to whom he had written years earlier about optics and whose manuscript of the Ethics he wished to see. They talked of philosophy and current politics, and Leibniz took notes, among them a proof of God's existence that he discussed with him. In public Leibniz always distanced himself from Spinoza and called him dangerous; in private he acknowledged the importance of the meeting, and his concern that his name not appear in the letters of the Opera posthuma shows how much it compromised him.

Origin of the story: Documented by Leibniz's notes and correspondence and by Leibniz's 1671 letter to Spinoza published in the Opera posthuma.

Source: Wikipedia (en), «Baruch Spinoza»; y (es), «Baruch Spinoza».

Teachings

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

Deus sive Natura: God or Naturedeus-sive-natura
The core of the Ethics is that there exists only one substance, absolutely infinite, which is cause of itself and of which everything else is a mode or affection: that substance is God, and it is also Nature. God is not a personal being who creates the world from outside by an act of will, but the infinite power expressed in all things by the necessity of its nature. The formula Deus seu Natura appears in the preface to Part Four: the reason why God or Nature exists and the reason why it acts are one and the same, and as it does not exist for an end, neither does it act for an end. He distinguishes natura naturans, God as free cause, from natura naturata, the modes that follow from him. Whether this is pantheism, panentheism, naturalism or atheism is the great dispute of his reception.

A radical reworking of the Cartesian notion of substance; it has disputed antecedents in Jewish mysticism and Giordano Bruno.

Source: Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (texto latino en Wikisource, a partir de la ed. bilingüe de Appuhn, Garnier, 1913); The Ethics, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (Londres, 1883), Project Gutenberg #3800.

Substance, attributes and modesatributos-y-modos
Spinoza defines substance as what is in itself and conceived through itself; attribute as what the intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence; mode as the affections of substance, which are in another and conceived through another. God has infinite attributes, of which we know two: thought and extension. Mind and body are not two substances interacting, as in Descartes, but one and the same thing expressed under two attributes: the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. Hence the human mind is the idea of the human body, and its power of thinking grows with the body's aptitude to be affected in many ways. This parallelism, as his interpreters called it, dissolves the Cartesian problem of the communication of substances.

Ethics, Parts I and II.

Source: Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (texto latino en Wikisource, a partir de la ed. bilingüe de Appuhn, Garnier, 1913); The Ethics, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (Londres, 1883), Project Gutenberg #3800.

Conatus and the affectsconatus
Each thing, in so far as it is in itself, strives to persevere in its being, and that striving, the conatus, is its actual essence. In the human being, conscious of itself, it is called desire, and desire is the very essence of man. All affects derive from three primary ones: desire; joy, the passage to a greater perfection or power of acting; and sadness, the passage to a lesser. Love is joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause; hatred, sadness with the idea of its cause. Spinoza announces that he will treat human actions and appetites as if they were lines, planes or bodies, and from this comes a naturalistic psychology of the passions—hope and fear, envy, ambition, pity—that does not condemn them but explains their necessity. A thing is not good because we desire it: we desire it and therefore call it good.

Ethics, Part III; antecedents in Hobbes and the Stoics.

Source: Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (texto latino en Wikisource, a partir de la ed. bilingüe de Appuhn, Garnier, 1913); The Ethics, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (Londres, 1883), Project Gutenberg #3800.

The three kinds of knowledgetres-generos-de-conocimiento
Spinoza distinguishes opinion or imagination, formed from vague experience and signs, the source of all falsity; reason, which knows through common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things; and intuitive science, which proceeds from an adequate idea of the essence of certain attributes of God to adequate knowledge of the essence of singular things. He illustrates the difference with the problem of finding the fourth proportional of three numbers: one may know the rule by hearsay, deduce it from Euclid or see it at a glance. From the third kind arises the highest contentment of mind and the intellectual love of God, which is eternal. Falsity is nothing positive but a privation of knowledge.

Ethics, II, proposition 40, scholium 2; antecedent in the four modes of perception of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect.

Source: Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (texto latino en Wikisource, a partir de la ed. bilingüe de Appuhn, Garnier, 1913); The Ethics, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (Londres, 1883), Project Gutenberg #3800.

Necessity, bondage and freedomlibertad-y-servidumbre
For Spinoza nothing in nature is contingent: everything is determined by the necessity of the divine nature. Men believe themselves free because they are conscious of their desires and ignorant of the causes that determine them, like a thrown stone that, if it could think, would believe itself free. Bondage is human impotence to moderate and restrain the affects, which drive us to see the better and do the worse. Freedom is not free will but acting from the necessity of one's own nature alone, that is, being guided by reason: an affect that is a passion ceases to be one as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it, and no affect can be restrained except by a stronger one. The free man does not think of death, seeks his true advantage, which coincides with that of others, and overcomes hatred with love.

Ethics, Parts IV and V; Letter 58 to Schuller (the stone that believes itself free).

Source: Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (texto latino en Wikisource, a partir de la ed. bilingüe de Appuhn, Garnier, 1913); The Ethics, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (Londres, 1883), Project Gutenberg #3800.

Intellectual love of God and eternity of the mindamor-intellectualis-dei
The fifth part of the Ethics culminates in an affect that is not a passion: the intellectual love of God, the joy that accompanies knowledge of the third kind with the idea of God as cause. It is the same love with which God loves himself, and in it consist salvation, blessedness or freedom. Spinoza also holds that something of the human mind is eternal: not a personal immortality with memory and duration, which he denies, but the idea that expresses the essence of the body under the aspect of eternity. 'We feel and know that we are eternal.' Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself, and the way to it, though arduous, can be found: all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Ethics, V, propositions 21-42; the expression sub specie aeternitatis.

Source: Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (texto latino en Wikisource, a partir de la ed. bilingüe de Appuhn, Garnier, 1913); The Ethics, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (Londres, 1883), Project Gutenberg #3800.

Freedom to philosophise and critique of Scripturelibertas-philosophandi
The Theological-Political Treatise separates philosophy, which seeks truth, from theology, which seeks only obedience, and holds that Scripture teaches neither science nor metaphysics but a simple moral doctrine: to love God and one's neighbour. To understand it he proposes interpreting the Bible by the Bible itself, as nature is studied, reconstructing the Hebrew language, the history of each book, its authors and its transmission; hence his conclusion that Moses did not write the Pentateuch and that Ezra compiled the historical books. In politics, he grounds the state in natural right, which he identifies with power, and concludes that the sovereign can regulate actions but not thoughts: the end of the state is freedom, and the freedom to think and to say what one thinks cannot be suppressed without harm to peace.

Theological-Political Treatise; antecedents in Hobbes, Ibn Ezra and Uriel da Costa.

Source: Spinoza, Benedictus de. Tractatus theologico-politicus. «Hamburgi» [Ámsterdam], 1670 (texto latino en Wikisource, ed. Gebhardt); A Theologico-Political Treatise, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (1883), Project Gutenberg #989-992.

Videos

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

  • Steven Nadler on Spinoza and the Herem

    Lecture· EN· 68 min

    Institute for Tolerance StudiesOfficial channel

  • Spinoza on the Divinity of Scripture | Prof. Steven Nadler

    Lecture· EN· 73 min

    The Van Leer Jerusalem InstituteOfficial channel

  • Spinozarede 2025 Steven Nadler

    Lecture· EN· 2025· 58 min

    Stichting Spinoza Den HaagOfficial channel

  • Steven Nadler, Spinoza and Menasseh..., Spinoza's Ethics... - 20-21 maggio 2019

    Lecture· EN· 2019· 171 min

    SNS Humanities (Scuola Normale Superiore)Official channel

  • The Philosophy of Spinoza & Leibniz - Bryan Magee & Anthony Quinton (1987)

    Interview· EN· 1987· 44 min

    Philosophy Overdose

  • Why Study Baruch Spinoza with Agata Bielik-Robson

    Lecture· EN· 12 min

    University of NottinghamOfficial channel

  • Spinoza, religio, and the re-conceiving of religion, God and Nature w/ Clare Carlisle

    Interview· EN· 82 min

    John Vervaeke's Lectern

  • Spinoza | Por Darío Sztajnszrajber

    Lecture· ES· 142 min

    Facultad Libre

  • Spinoza materialista. Gabriel Albiac

    Lecture· ES· 61 min

    Cima & Holzenthal

  • El papel del Tractatus Politicus en la estructura de la Ética de Spinoza. Gabriel Albiac

    Lecture· ES· 2024· 112 min

    Sociedad Filosofía Alicante

  • Diego Tatián: Spinoza y la filosofía de la liberación

    Interview· ES· 39 min

    Canal Abierto

  • Grandes documentales: Baruch Spinoza y Gottfried Leibniz

    Documentary· ES· 53 min

    ABC TV Paraguay

  • Gilles Deleuze : cours sur Spinoza n°1/14 (remasterisé en 2023)

    Lecture· FR· 1980· 124 min

    Louis Simon

  • Pourquoi il faut relire Spinoza aujourd'hui

    Interview· FR· 39 min

    France CultureOfficial channel

  • Spinoza | The Apostle of Reason, 1994

    Watch on YouTube

    This video cannot be embedded; it opens on YouTube.

    Spinoza | The Apostle of Reason, 1994

    Documentary· EN· 1994· 51 min

    STEFAN CLASSIC FILMS

Gallery

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

  • LA · Latin · c. 1675

    Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata

    Surviving witness
    Copia manuscrita completa anterior a la edición de 1677
    Custodian
    Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana · Vat. lat. 12838

  • NL · Latin · c. 1660-1662

    Korte verhandeling van God, de mensch en deszelvs welstand (códice A)

    Surviving witness
    Copia de finales del siglo XVII
    Custodian
    Koninklijke Bibliotheek, La Haya · 75 G 15

  • NL · Latin · c. 1660-1662

    Korte verhandeling van God, de mensch en deszelvs welstand (códice B)

    Surviving witness
    Copia de mediados del siglo XVIII, revisión de A
    Custodian
    Koninklijke Bibliotheek, La Haya
Manuscripts →

Connections

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

  • Influenced by

    Thomas Hobbes

    His theory of natural right as power and his biblical criticism engage with Leviathan.

    Documented relation

  • Disagreed with

    Maimonides

    The Theological-Political Treatise expressly criticises his method of accommodating Scripture to philosophy.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    René Descartes

    His starting point: he expounded his Principles in 1663 and built his system in critical dialogue with him.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Uriel da Costa

    A relative on his mother's side; his heterodoxy and excommunication marked the community in which Spinoza grew up.

    Documented relation

  • Met

    Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

    Correspondence from 1671 and a visit of several days in The Hague in November 1676.

    Documented relation

  • Corresponded with

    Henry Oldenburg

    Secretary of the Royal Society; his most frequent correspondent (1661-1676).

    Documented relation

  • Met

    Christiaan Huygens

    A neighbour at Voorburg; he praised his lenses and they discussed optics.

    Documented relation

  • Disciple of

    Franciscus van den Enden

    His teacher of Latin and modern philosophy in Amsterdam.

    Documented relation

  • Contemporary of

    Johan de Witt

    Republican Grand Pensionary whose murder in 1672 outraged him; some biographers credit him with a pension from De Witt, which is unproven.

    Documented relation

  • Ideas akin to

    Estoicos

    An ethics of understanding necessity and of serenity before the passions.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Zeno of Citium

    Identification of God with the rational nature of the cosmos and life according to reason.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Meister Eckhart

    A mysticism of union with God through knowledge, in another theological frame.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Influenced

    Martin Buber

    Critically discussed Spinoza's impersonal God from his philosophy of dialogue.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Influenced

    Albert Einstein

    Declared in 1929 that he believed in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    G. W. F. Hegel

    Declared that one is either a Spinozist or no philosopher at all; the pantheism controversy made Spinoza an interlocutor of German idealism.

    Documented relation

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

  1. Nadler, Steven. Spinoza: A Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 (2.ª ed. 2018). ISBN 9780521552103.
  2. Nadler, Steven. «Baruch Spinoza». The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, publicado el 29-6-2001, revisión sustantiva del 8-11-2023.
  3. Wikidata, «Benedictus de Spinoza» (Q35802).
  4. Wikipedia (en), «Baruch Spinoza»; y (es), «Baruch Spinoza».
  5. Colerus, Johannes. Korte, dog waaragtige levens-beschryving van Benedictus de Spinosa. Ámsterdam, 1705; trad. francesa «La Vie de B. de Spinosa» (1706), en Œuvres de Spinoza, trad. Émile Saisset, t. II, París, Charpentier, 1861 (Wikisource).
  6. B. d. S. Opera posthuma. [Ámsterdam: Jan Rieuwertsz], 1677; y De nagelate schriften van B. d. S., trad. Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker, 1677.
  7. Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (texto latino en Wikisource, a partir de la ed. bilingüe de Appuhn, Garnier, 1913); The Ethics, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (Londres, 1883), Project Gutenberg #3800.
  8. Spinoza, Benedictus de. Tractatus theologico-politicus. «Hamburgi» [Ámsterdam], 1670 (texto latino en Wikisource, ed. Gebhardt); A Theologico-Political Treatise, trad. R. H. M. Elwes (1883), Project Gutenberg #989-992.
  9. Spinoza, Benedictus de. Tractatus politicus, en Opera posthuma, 1677 (texto latino en Wikisource).
  10. Wikipedia (en), «Epistolae (Spinoza)» y «List of Epistolae (Letters) of Spinoza» (88 cartas: 50 de Spinoza, 38 de sus corresponsales).
  11. Spruit, Leen, y Pina Totaro (eds.). The Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza's Ethica. Leiden: Brill, 2011. ISBN 9789004209268.
  12. Koninklijke Bibliotheek (La Haya), «Korte verhandeling van God, de mensch, en deszelvs welstand by Baruch Spinoza» (KB 75 G 15) y colección especial «Benedictus de Spinoza»; Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon, «Short Treatise on God, Man and His Wellbeing».
  13. Bayle, Pierre. Dictionnaire historique et critique, art. «Spinoza». Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1697.
  14. Lucas, Jean-Maximilien. La Vie de feu Monsieur de Spinosa (1719), en Œuvres de Spinoza, trad. Saisset, t. II, 1861 (Wikisource).
  15. Open Library, ediciones de Spinoza (Ethica, Tratado teológico-político, Tratado político, Correspondencia, Collected Works de Curley, Complete Works de Shirley, Opere de Mignini, etc.).
  16. Wikisource: «Scriptor:Benedictus de Spinoza» (la), «Auteur:Baruch Spinoza» (fr), «Author:Benedictus de Spinoza» (en) y «Autore:Baruch Spinoza» (it).
Rights holder
Dominio público (el autor murió en 1677). Las traducciones modernas pertenecen a sus traductores y editoriales.

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

  • Sala de lectura en español: no se ha localizado ninguna traducción española en dominio público con texto en línea. La Ética de Manuel Machado (Garnier, 1913) quedará libre en España el 1-1-2028 (murió en 1947); conviene buscar un texto digitalizado limpio para entonces.
  • Correspondencia completa en inglés (Elwes, 1883-1884) solo está en escaneos de Internet Archive y en sacred-texts.com, que bloqueó la consulta; verificar una fuente de texto limpio.
  • Principios de la filosofía de Descartes, Pensamientos metafísicos y Compendio de gramática hebrea: las páginas latinas enlazadas desde Wikisource no existen aún; buscar texto latino limpio (p. ej., ed. Van Vloten-Land o Bruder en Internet Archive, OCR por revisar).
  • Confirmar el año de muerte de R. H. M. Elwes (Project Gutenberg indica 1892) y la signatura del códice B del Tratado breve en la Koninklijke Bibliotheek.
  • Precisar el editor de la Hebrew Grammar de M. J. Bloom (Londres, 1963) y añadir ediciones con ISBN en ruso, hebreo y árabe (p. ej., el Tratado teológico-político traducido por Hasan Hanafi).
  • Relaciones con slugs fuera del catálogo (rene-descartes, thomas-hobbes, uriel-da-costa, gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, henry-oldenburg, christiaan-huygens, franciscus-van-den-enden, johan-de-witt, estoicismo, albert-einstein, g-w-f-hegel).
  • Vídeos: no hay grabaciones de universidades o televisiones públicas españolas sobre Spinoza localizadas por la búsqueda; los documentales en español son divulgativos.

Researched on 2026-10-25