Spinoza (1632 - 1677)

                                                                                                     Baruch Spinoza (

 born Benedito de Espinosa,  24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677, later Benedict de Spinoza) was a Dutch philosopher of Sephardi/Portugueseorigin.^[3] By laying the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism including modern conceptions of the self and the universe, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy..
Spinoza's ancestors were of Sephardic Jewish descent and were a part of the community of Portuguese Jews that had settled in the city of Amsterdam in the wake of the Alhambra Decree in Spain (1492) and the Portuguese Inquisition (1536), which had resulted in forced conversions and expulsions from the Iberian peninsula.Amsterdam and Rotterdam operated as important cosmopolitan centres where merchant ships from many parts of the world brought people of various customs and beliefs. This flourishing commercial activity encouraged a culture relatively tolerant of the play of new ideas, sheltered from the censorious hand of ecclesiastical authority. Not by chance were the philosophical works of both Descartes and Spinoza developed in the cultural and intellectual background of the Dutch Republic in the 17th century. Spinoza may have had access to a circle of friends who were unconventional in terms of social tradition, including members of the Collegiants. One of the people he knew was Niels Stensen, a brilliant Danish student in Leiden; others included Albert Burgh, with whom Spinoza is known to have corresponded.
Benedito de Espinoza was born on 24 November 1632 in the Jodenbuurt in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was the second son of Miguel de Espinoza, a successful, although not wealthy, Portuguese Sephardic Jewish merchant in Amsterdam. His mother, Ana Débora, Miguel's second wife, died when Baruch was only six years old. Spinoza's mother tongue was Portuguese, although he also knew Hebrew, Spanish, Dutch, perhaps French, and later Latin. Although he wrote in Latin, Spinoza learned Latin late in his youth.
In Voorburg, Spinoza continued work on the Ethics and corresponded with scientists, philosophers, and theologians throughout Europe. He also wrote and published his Theological Political Treatise in 1670, in defence of secular and constitutional government, and in support of Jan de Witt, the Grand Pensionary of the Netherlands, against the Stadholder, the Prince of Orange. Leibniz visited Spinoza and claimed that Spinoza's life was in danger when supporters of the Prince of Orange murdered de Witt in 1672. While published anonymously, the work did not long remain so, and de Witt's enemies characterized it as "forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil, and issued with the knowledge of Jan de Witt." It was condemned in 1673 by the Synod of the Reformed Church and formally banned in 1674.
The writings of René Descartes have been described as "Spinoza's starting point." Spinoza's first publication was his geometric exposition (proofs using the geometric method on the model of Euclid with definitions, axioms, etc.) of Descartes's Parts I and II ofPrinciples of Philosophy (1663). Spinoza has been associated with Leibniz and Descartes as "rationalists" in contrast to "empiricists".