Ethics (Penguin Classics)

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Spinoza Lyceum, a high school in Amsterdam South was named after Spinoza. There is also a 3 metre tall marble statute of him on the grounds of the school carved by Hildo Krop. [165] According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), when Spinoza wrote Deus sive Natura (Latin for 'God or Nature'), Spinoza meant God was natura naturans (nature doing what nature does; literally, 'nature naturing'), not natura naturata (nature already created; literally, 'nature natured'). Jaspers believed that Spinoza, in his philosophical system, did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence. [140] Even God under the attributes of thought and extension cannot be identified strictly with our world. That world is of course "divisible"; it has parts. But Spinoza said, "no attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided", meaning that one cannot conceive an attribute in a way that leads to division of substance. He also said, "a substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible" (Ethics, Part I, Propositions 12 and 13). [141] Following this logic, our world should be considered as a mode under two attributes of thought and extension. Therefore, according to Jaspers, the pantheist formula "One and All" would apply to Spinoza only if the "One" preserves its transcendence and the "All" were not interpreted as the totality of finite things. [140] Steven Nadler suggests that settling the question of Spinoza's atheism or pantheism depends on an analysis of attitudes. If pantheism is associated with religiosity, then Spinoza is not a pantheist, since Spinoza believes that the proper stance to take towards God is not one of reverence or religious awe, but instead one of objective study and reason, since taking the religious stance would leave one open to the possibility of error and superstition. [143] In modern and contemporary philosophy [ edit ] Though the principle of sufficient reason is most commonly associated with Gottfried Leibniz, [122] it is arguably found in its strongest form in Spinoza's philosophy. [123] Smith, Steven B. Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity. New Haven: Yale University Press 1997, 2

Scruton, Roger (2002). Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280316-0. Stolze, Ted and Warren Montag (eds.), The New Spinoza, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

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Nadler, Steven (16 April 2020). "Baruch Spinoza". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Mo 50 – Statue Spinoza – Amsterdam" (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 22 January 2022 . Retrieved 20 June 2023.

George Santayana, "Ultimate Religion", in Obiter Scripta, eds. Justus Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz (New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936) 280–97. Spinoza, Baruch (2003). Correspondence of Spinoza. Translated by A. Wolf. Kessinger Publishing, LLC. p.354. Magnusson 1990: Magnusson, M (ed.), Spinoza, Baruch, Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Chambers 1990, ISBN 978-0-550-16041-6. The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late 18th-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism. Three of Spinoza's ideas strongly appealed to them:Jaspers, Karl (23 October 1974). Spinoza. Great Philosophers. Harvest Books. ISBN 978-0-15-684730-8. Hübner, Karolina (2022), "Spinoza's Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University , retrieved 4 April 2023

Further, there is no difference between contemplating an idea and thinking that it is true, and there is no freedom of the will at all. Sensory perception, which Spinoza calls "knowledge of the first kind", is entirely inaccurate, since it reflects how our own bodies work more than how things really are. We can also have a kind of accurate knowledge called "knowledge of the second kind", or "reason". This encompasses knowledge of the features common to all things, and includes principles of physics and geometry. We can also have "knowledge of the third kind", or " intuitive knowledge". This is a sort of knowledge that, somehow, relates particular things to the nature of God. Therefore, Spinoza affirms that the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, "follow from this same necessity and efficacy of nature; they answer to certain definite causes, through which they are understood, and possess certain properties as worthy of being known as the properties of anything else". Humans are not different in kind from the rest of the natural world; they are part of it. [17] Steven Nadler, Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 27: "Spinoza attended lectures and anatomical dissections at the University of Leiden..." Bennett, Jonathan (July 1984). A Study of Spinoza's 'Ethics' . CUP Archive. ISBN 978-0-521-27742-6. How to Study Spinoza's Tractus Theologico-Politicus;" reprinted in Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, ed. Kenneth Hart Green (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), 181–233.

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The Religious Difficulties of India". The Westminster Review (Americaned.). New York: Leonard Scott. 78: 256–257. October 1862. hdl: 2027/mdp.39015013165819.

Curley, Edwin (31 March 2020). A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Princeton University Press. p.xii. ISBN 978-0-691-20928-9. Baruch Espinosa [8] was born on 24 November 1632 in the Jodenbuurt in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was the third child and second son of Michael de Espinoza, a successful, although not enormously wealthy, Portuguese Sephardic Jewish merchant in Amsterdam, prominent in the community. [16] His mother, Hannah Déborah, Michael's second wife, died when Baruch was only six years old and Michael remarried to give his five children a mother figure; the third marriage was childless so that Spinoza and his siblings had no half- or step-siblings. [41] The family spoke Portuguese, as did other Sephardim. He studied Hebrew at school and heard it Jewish liturgy; he knew Dutch, which he likely learned informally. He learned Latin only later as a young man. [42] His name in contemporary documents before his 1656 expulsion from the Jewish community is given as the Portuguese "Bento"; his Hebrew name "Baruch" was used in the religious context. Following his expulsion at age 23, he used the Latinized version of his name, "Benedictus de Spinoza." Nadler, Steven (2001b). "The Excommunication of Spinoza: Trouble and Toleration in the "Dutch Jerusalem" ". Shofar. 19 (4): 40–52. ISSN 0882-8539. JSTOR 42943396.

Gullan-Whur, Margaret, 1998. Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-05046-3