Baruch Spinoza

Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza, one of the world’s greatest philosophers, was born in Amsterdam to parents of Portuguese New Christian origin and educated in the Talmud Torah of the Portuguese Sephardic community. He read extensively, including Hobbes and Descartes. In 1656, the Jewish community excommunicated Spinoza for “abominable heresies” and “monstrous deeds,” likely related to his denial of God’s transcendence, the divine origin of the Hebrew Bible, and immortality of the soul. In contrast to Uriel da Costa, Spinoza sought neither to rejoin the Jewish community nor to convert to Christianity; some consider him Europe’s first intentionally secular Jew. His biblical source criticism and arguments for religious toleration are articulated in his major works Theological-Political Treatise (1670) and Ethics (1677).