What contribution did Benedict de Spinoza make?

Ethics
Dutch Jewish philosopher Benedict de Spinoza was best known for his Ethics (1677), which laid out in geometric form arguments for the existence of an impersonal God, the identity of mind and body, determinism, and a way of overcoming the dominance of the passions and achieving freedom and blessedness.

What did Spinoza contribute to the Enlightenment?

His teachings on the divine, on the psychological basis of prophecy, and on the limits of religious authority clearly challenged the claims of orthodoxy. Spinoza defended the philosophic life against religious persecution and argued for a new, liberal, democratic regime supportive of that life.

What did Baruch Spinoza discover?

Spinoza solved the mind-body dilemma of Descartes by maintaining that God and Nature are one, that indeed everything is one, with mind and body being just different facets of one infinite entity.

What is substance according to Spinoza?

According to Spinoza, everything that exists is either a substance or a mode (E1a1). A substance is something that needs nothing else in order to exist or be conceived. A mode or property is something that needs a substance in order to exist, and cannot exist without a substance (E1d5).

What is Spinoza best known for?

Among philosophers, Spinoza is best known for his Ethics, a monumental work that presents an ethical vision unfolding out of a monistic metaphysics in which God and Nature are identified.

What does Spinoza say about God?

Spinoza’s metaphysics of God is neatly summed up in a phrase that occurs in the Latin (but not the original Dutch) edition of the Ethics: “God, or Nature”, Deus, sive Natura: “That eternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature, acts from the same necessity from which he exists” (Part IV, Preface).

Who was Benedict de Spinoza and what did he do?

Written By: Benedict de Spinoza, Hebrew forename Baruch, Latin forename Benedictus, Portuguese Bento de Espinosa, (born November 24, 1632, Amsterdam—died February 21, 1677, The Hague), Dutch Jewish philosopher, one of the foremost exponents of 17th-century Rationalism and one of the early and seminal figures of the Enlightenment.

When did the Jewish community excommunicate Benedict de Spinoza?

In the late 20th century it was discovered that the herem pronounced against Spinoza used a formulation that was given to the Amsterdam Jewish community by the Venetian Jewish community in 1617 and was specifically intended for heretics. Despite the severity of the excommunication, it was apparently undertaken with some reluctance.

What did Bento de Spinoza do in Amsterdam?

Bento de Spinoza was a young merchant in Amsterdam, one of many Sephardic Jews in that city involved in overseas trade in the early 1650s. The specialty of his family’s firm, which he and his brother Gabriel had been running since their father’s death in 1654, was importing dried fruit.

What did Baruch Spinoza do with his inheritance?

He gave away his share of his father’s inheritance to his sister, and lived the rest of his life in genteel poverty as a grinder of optical lenses.

What contribution did Benedict de Spinoza make? Ethics Dutch Jewish philosopher Benedict de Spinoza was best known for his Ethics (1677), which laid out in geometric form arguments for the existence of an impersonal God, the identity of mind and body, determinism, and a way of overcoming the dominance of the passions and achieving freedom…