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Baruch Spinoza Quotes
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Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Sephardi/Portuguese origin. 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. Along with René Descartes, Spinoza was a leading philosophical figure of the Dutch Golden Age. Spinoza's given name, which means "Blessed", varies among different languages. In Hebrew, it is written ברוך שפינוזה. His Portuguese name is Benedito "Bento" de Espinosa. In his Latin works, he used Latin: Benedictus de Spinoza.

Spinoza's magnum opus, Ethics, was published posthumously in 1677. The work opposed Descartes' philosophy on mind–body dualism, and earned Spinoza recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers. In the Ethics, "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely". Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all." His philosophical accomplishments and moral character prompted philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him "the 'prince' of philosophers."

Spinoza was raised in a Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly-controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine. Jewish religious authorities issued a herem against him, causing him to be effectively shunned by Jewish society at age 23. His books were also later put on the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books.

Spinoza lived an outwardly-simple life as a lens grinder, turning down rewards and honours throughout his life, including prestigious teaching positions. He died at the age of 44 allegedly of a lung illness, perhaps tuberculosis or silicosis exacerbated by the inhalation of fine glass dust while grinding optical lenses. He is buried in the churchyard of the Christian Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague.

✵ 24. November 1632 – 21. February 1677   •   Other names Baruch de Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza photo
Baruch Spinoza: 210   quotes 5   likes

Baruch Spinoza Quotes

“This I know, that between finite and infinite there is no comparison; so that the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no less than the difference between God and the least created thing.”

Baruch Spinoza

Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).

God

“A God-intoxicated man.”

Baruch Spinoza

Novalis, as quoted in Novalis (1829) by Thomas Carlyle: "Spinoza is a God-intoxicated man (Gott-trunkenet Mensch)."

God

“And then, a little Jew, with a long nose and a pale complexion, Poor but satisfied, pensive and reserved, A subtle but hollow spirit, less read than celebrated, Hidden under the mantle of Descartes, his mentor, Walking with measured steps, comes close to the great being: Excuse me, he says, addressing him in a whisper, But I think, just between us, that you do not exist at all.”

Baruch Spinoza

Voltaire's poem, as quoted in António Damásio's Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2003)
S - Z

Thinking , Reading

“Spinoza in particular belongs to the immortal authors. He is great because of the sublime simplicity of his thoughts and his way of writing, great because of his distance from all scholasticism, and, on the other hand, from all false embellishment or ostentation of language.”

Baruch Spinoza

Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy (1833) [Translated from the German by Andrew Bowie]
S - Z

Way , Falseness

“It is unquestionably the peacefulness and calm of the Spinozist system which particularly produces the idea of its depth, and which, with hidden but irresistible charm, has attracted so many minds. The Spinozist system will also always remain in a certain sense a model. A system of freedom — but with just as great contours, with the same simplicity, as a perfect counter-image (Gegenbild) of the Spinozist system — this would really be the highest system. This is why Spinozism, despite the many attacks on it, and the many supposed refutations, has never really become something truly past, never been really overcome up to now, and no one can hope to progress to the true and the complete in philosophy who has not at least once in his life lost himself in the abyss of Spinozism. Nobody who wishes to arrive at his own firm conviction should leave unread the main work of Spinoza, his Ethics (for he presented his system under this title), and I should like to urge everyone who is seriously concerned with his education not only to study assiduously on his own, which no teacher can replace, but to be most conscientious and careful in the choice of what he reads.”

Baruch Spinoza

Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy (1833) [Translated from the German by Andrew Bowie]
S - Z

Peace , Study , Reading , Freedom

“Even in the case of philosophers who give systematic form to their work, Spinoza for instance, the true inner structure of the system is quite unlike the form in which it was consciously presented by him.”

Baruch Spinoza

Karl Marx, in his letter to Ferdinand Lassalle, 31 May 1858 [original in German]
M - R

“It is to the highest credit of the philosophy of the time that it did not let itself be led astray by the restricted state of contemporary natural knowledge, and that — from Spinoza down to the great French materialists — it insisted on explaining the world from the world itself and left the justification in detail to the natural science of the future.”

Baruch Spinoza

Friedrich Engels, in his The Dialectics of Nature
A - F

Time , Future , Nature , Knowledge

“In America we are such rowdies in church and state and the very boys are so soon ripe, that I think no philosophical skepticism will make much sensation. Spinoza pronounced that there was but one substance; yea, verily, but that boy yonder told me yesterday he thought the pinelog was God, and that God was in the jakes. What can Spinoza tell the boy?”

Baruch Spinoza

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his journal entry
A - F

God , Thinking , Making love , Boy

“Can any one doubt that if the noblest saint among the Buddhists, the best Mahometan, the highest Stoic of Athens, the purest and wisest Christian, — Buddha and Menu in India, Confucius in China, Spinoza in Holland, could somewhere meet and converse, — they would all find themselves of one religion, — would find themselves denounced by their own sects, and sustained by these believed adversaries of their sects.”

Baruch Spinoza

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his lecture entitled “Essential Principles of Religion,”
A - F

Religion

“Is Spinoza baroque? No, but if we find, through this line of thinking, a spurious and worn-out figure that rejects the crisis, that repeats the utopia in its ingenuous Renaissance form, what we have found is merely Spinozism. When classical idealism takes up Spinoza, in effect it only takes up (or invents?) Spinozism, a Renaissance philosophy of the bourgeois revolution of the capitalist market!”

Baruch Spinoza

Selected works, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (1991)

Thinking

“In Spinoza, at the origin of the Modern world, metaphysical theory and the theory of science are given in complete agreement for the first time. They represent the alternative to the entire subsequent path of metaphysics and of the bourgeois theory of science. Spinoza lives as an alternative: Today this alternative is real. The Spinozian analytic of full space and open time are becoming an ethics of liberation in all the dimensions that this discourse constructs and makes available.”

Baruch Spinoza

Selected works, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (1991)

World , Science , Time , Making love

“And therefore we can see just how constructive this Spinozian difference is, just how constructive this negativity really is! The organic interweaving of these two motifs is fundamental in the history of European philosophy. Spinoza is the first to mold this logical mechanism that bourgeois philosophy would constantly and continually try to abrogate during its subsequent development. In Kantianism, as in classical idealism, Spinoza continually remains the object of opposition and polemic: What is destroyed is precisely the intersection between the negation of the ideology and the construction of the world, the inherence of the limit, of the materiality, to the infinite.”

Baruch Spinoza

Selected works, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (1991)

World , History

“Spinoza accomplishes the synthesis of traditional philosophical components by means of breaking and shattering. It is useless to pursue the presuppositions of Spinozian philosophy if we do not look for them in the qualitative leap determined by his philosophy. The continuity of Spinozian thought with respect to the preceding course of the history of metaphysics consists of a radical discontinuity, one that exalts the utopia of consciousness and freedom (a patrimony of Western thought) in a project of liberation. The perspective of the world is not a utopia, the immanentism is not aesthetic, and the liberation is no longer artisanal, but all of this is presupposed, it is taken as a basis.”

Baruch Spinoza

Selected works, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (1991)

World , History , Freedom

“Some have spoken of a liberal Spinoza, and others, of a democratic Spinoza. By the same standard one could also speak of an artistocratic Spinoza or a monarchical Spinoza — and it has been done. Perhaps also an anarchic Spinoza? No one has ever said that.”

Baruch Spinoza

Selected works, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (1991)

“However, his contemporary, Leibnitz, the father of the German enlightenment, who created an optimistic world-picture, always remained only a philosopher for philosophers. Even Immanuel Kant, although always famous, was never popular. In his own fatherland he was all but forgotten for most of the nineteenth century until revived by Hermann Cohen and his school. Spinoza, however, was never exhumed because he was never buried. Kant, because of his exclusive intellectuality, has influenced only his students, while Spinoza, because of his emotional appeal, has ruled even those who have never heard his name.”

Baruch Spinoza

Selected works, Spinoza and Buddha: Visions of a Dead God (1933)

World , School

“It may be observed, however, that Spinoza was not the first prominent monist and pantheist in modern Europe. A generation before him Bruno conveyed a similar message to humanity. Yet Bruno is merely a beautiful episode in the history of the human mind, while Spinoza is one of its most potent forces. Bruno was a rhapsodist and a poet, who was overwhelmed with artistic emotions; Spinoza, however, was spiritus purus and in his method the prototype of the philosopher.”

Baruch Spinoza

Selected works, Spinoza and Buddha: Visions of a Dead God (1933)

Beauty , History

“Baruch Spinoza, the excommunicated Jew, made the Jewish cultural position in the West not only tenable, but impregnable. But the same Baruch Spinoza was actually responsible for the cultural anti-Semitism of modern Europe. He shaped the strong anti-Jewish attitude of his greatest admirers, followers, and adepts Herder, Goethe, Hegel, and Fichte. They were outspoken Jew-haters. They admired Spinoza, but with their master hated his race and its world-picture.”

Baruch Spinoza

Selected works, Spinoza and Buddha: Visions of a Dead God (1933)

World , Strong , Hate

“Nothing is less Greek than the conceptual web-spinning of a hermit—amor intellectualis dei—after the fashion of Spinoza.”

Baruch Spinoza

Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilights of Idols (1888), "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man", 23.
M - R

Fashion

“When I speak of Plato, Pascal, Spinoza and Goethe, I know that their blood flows in mine—I am proud, when I tell the truth about them—the family is good enough not to have to poeticize or to conceal; and thus I stand to everything that has been, I am proud of the humanity, and especially proud of unconditional truthfulness.”

Baruch Spinoza

Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1950)
M - R

Truth , Family

“Spinoza, too, whom I was reading under Royce himself, filled me with joy and enthusiasm: I gathered at once from him a doctrine which has remained axiomatic with me ever since, namely that good and evil are relative to the natures of animals, irreversible in that relation, but indifferent to the march of cosmic events, since the force of the universe infinitely exceeds the force of any of its parts.”

Baruch Spinoza

George Santayana, in his A General Confession (from The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings)
S - Z, George Santayana

Reading , Indifference , Nature , Universe

“When you say Spinoza, however, besides being too flattering, the comparison is not biographically so true. My Spinozism is in the Life of Reason, less obviously, perhaps, yet more dominantly, than in Realms of Being.”

Baruch Spinoza

These, as you know, are not at all like Spinoza's attributes. They are not aspects or forms of the same reality, absolutely parallel and coextensive. My realms are layers: more as in Plotinus; and my moral or “spiritual” philosophy is again less Spinozistic than in the humanistic period. Spinoza's moral sentiments were plebeian, Dutch, and Jewish: perfectly happy in his corner, polishing his lenses, and saying, Great is Allah. No art, no high politics, no sympathy with greatness, no understanding of courage or of despair.
George Santayana, in his letter to Daniel MacGhie Cory, 25 January 1937
S - Z, George Santayana

Life

“I believe there is another reason also why Spinoza seems to me so pre-eminent: that in spite of being traditional, or because he was not distracted by side issues, he was an entire and majestic mind, a singularly consecrated soul. All these trite dogmas and problems lived in him and were the natural channels for his intuitions and emotions. That is what I feel to make a real philosopher and not, what we are condemned to be, professors of the philosophy of other people, or of our own opinions.”

Baruch Spinoza

George Santayana, in his letter to Harry Austryn Wolfson, 16 June 1934
S - Z, George Santayana

Soul , People , Nature , Problem

“My philosophy is normal human orthodox philosophy, such as has come down from the Indians through the Greeks, to Spinoza. It is simply not Protestant philosophy. The problems of Protestant philosophy do not exist for me: I regard them as products of a confusion of thought, of a heresy. Catholic philosophy differs from the normal only in that it accepts sacred history as well as natural history as the true account of the facts: but when the facts are agreed upon, one way or another, philosophy has no real difficulty in discovering what to say. It has said everything essential already. To invent a philosophy would be not to have understood.”

Baruch Spinoza

George Santayana, in his letter to John Boynton Priestley, 15 September 1924
S - Z, George Santayana

Way , Problem , History , Nature

“I can always say to myself that my atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests; and that even in this denial I am no rude iconoclast, but full of secret sympathy with the impulses of idolaters.”

Baruch Spinoza

George Santayana, in "On My Friendly Critics", in Soliloquies in England (1922)
S - Z, George Santayana

God , Universe , Secret , Fashion

“I proposed not to bore you with any more of my metaphysics or ethics, but I will say a word by way of conclusion. If you want any more, go to Spinoza and Schopenhauer, where I get mine.”

Baruch Spinoza

George Santayana, in a letter to Henry Ward Abbot, December 1886. As quoted in A Philosophical Novelist: George Santayana and The Last Puritan, edited by H. T. Kirby-Smith (Southern Illinois University Press, 1997)
S - Z, George Santayana

Way

“As a student, in an hour when he was needing the help of sages, he followed Renan; Spinoza freed his mind in matters of religion; from afar came the brotherly greeting of Tolstoi.”

Baruch Spinoza

Stefan Zweig, in his book Romain Rolland: The Man and His Work. Translated from the original manuscript by Eden and Cedar Paul. (New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1921)
S - Z

Religion , Help

“But how to write about a man who lived such a contemplative life marked by so few striking external events? He was extraordinarily private, and he kept his own person invisible in his writing. I had none of the material that ordinarily lends itself to narrative—no family dramas, no love affairs, jealousies, curious anecdotes, feuds, spats, or reunions. He had a large correspondence, but after his death his colleagues followed his instructions and removed almost all personal comments from his letters. No, not much external drama in his life: most scholars regard Spinoza as a placid and gentle soul—some compare his life to that of Christian saints, some even to Jesus.”

Baruch Spinoza

Irvin D. Yalom, in his novel The Spinoza Problem, prologue. (New York: Basic Books, 2012)
S - Z

Family , Soul , Making love , Personality

“I also believe that Spinoza, like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, on whose lives and philosophy I have based two earlier novels, wrote much that is highly relevant to my field of psychiatry and psychotherapy—for example, that ideas, thoughts, and feelings are caused by previous experiences, that passions may be studied dispassionately, that understanding leads to transcendence—and I wished to celebrate his contributions through a novel of ideas.”

Baruch Spinoza

Irvin D. Yalom, in his novel The Spinoza Problem, prologue. (New York: Basic Books, 2012)
S - Z

Study , Understanding , Passion , Idea

“Monist is, in fact, every philosophy that is not an eclectic patchwork. Therefore, I gladly admit to you that I myself consider my positions even more monist than yours, because I try to give my monism a broader extension, following as far as possible the example of the greatest of all monists: Spinoza.”

Baruch Spinoza

Wilhelm Wundt, in a letter to Ernst Haeckel, September 1899 [original in German]. As quoted in Saulo de Freitas Araujo, Wundt and the Philosophical Foundations of Psychology: A Reappraisal (Springer, 2015)
S - Z

“Just as Hegel later developed the metaphysical and rationalistic bases of the Spinoza philosophy giving the only possible refutation to Spinozism, that is, by converting the substance of Spinoza into an absolute idea, into the absolute spirit, and in this way, presented an antithesis to Spinozist teaching, so in his time, Spinoza presented an antithesis with respect to Descartes, but a materialistic antithesis.”

Baruch Spinoza

Lev Vygotsky, in his collected notebooks [original in Russian]
S - Z

Way , Idea , Time

“And then, a little Jew, with a long nose and a pale complexion, Poor but satisfied, pensive and reserved, A subtle but hollow spirit, less read than celebrated, Hidden under the mantle of Descartes, his mentor, Walking with measured steps, comes close to the great being: Excuse me, he says, addressing him in a whisper, But I think, just between us, that you do not exist at all.”

Baruch Spinoza

Voltaire's poem, as quoted in António Damásio's Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2003)
S - Z

Thinking , Reading

“The (respective) position of Judaism toward Spinoza coincides with the (respective) position of Europe toward him. However, it does not completely coincide with it. Spinoza played a special role in the Judaism of the past century. When what mattered was the justification of the breakup of the Jewish tradition and the entry of the Jews into modern Europe, perhaps no better, but certainly no more convenient, reference offered itself than the appeal to Spinoza. Who was more suitable for undertaking the justification of modern Judaism before the tribunal of the Jewish tradition, on the one hand, and before the tribunal of modern Europe, on the other, than Spinoza, who, as was almost universally recognized, was a classical exponent of this Europe and who, as one did not grow weary of at least asserting, had thought his thoughts in the spirit of Judaism and by means of Judaism? It is clear that, at a time when modern Europe has been shaken to its foundations, one can no longer justify oneself before this Europe for the sake of Judaism, nor before Judaism for the sake of this Europe, supposing one still wants to do so.”

Baruch Spinoza

Leo Strauss, Das Testament Spinozas (1932) [original in German]
S - Z

Universe , Past , Time

“In the strident world of seventeenth-century philosophy, the mind-body problem was not a word puzzle that could be safely relegated to undergraduate classes. For men such as Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz, solving the mind-body problem was vital to preserving the theological and political order inherited from the Middle Ages and, more generally, to protecting human self-esteem in the face of an increasingly truculent universe. For Spinoza, it was a means of destroying that same order and discovering a new foundation for human worth.”

Baruch Spinoza

Matthew Stewart, in his book The Courtier and the Heretic (2006)
S - Z

Universe , Problem , Self-confidence , Age

“Regarding my reputation among physicians, it really does not mean much. They know me through my textbooks, which are to me what lens polishing was to the great philosopher Spinoza. I have to do this as a secondary occupation, necessary to sustenance.”

Baruch Spinoza

Wilhelm Wundt, in a letter to his future wife Sophie Mau, June 1872 [original in German]. As quoted in Saulo de Freitas Araujo, Wundt and the Philosophical Foundations of Psychology: A Reappraisal (Springer, 2015)
S - Z

“Offer with me reverently a tribute to the manes of the holy, rejected Spinoza. The high World-Spirit pervaded him; the Infinite was his beginning and his end; the Universe was his only and his everlasting love. In holy innocence and in deep humility he beheld himself mirrored in the eternal world, and perceived how he also was its most worthy mirror. He was full of religion, full of the Holy Spirit. Wherefore, he stands there alone and unequalled; master in his art, yet without disciples and without citizenship, sublime above the profane tribe.”

Baruch Spinoza

Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799) [original in German]
S - Z

Religion , Art , Universe , World

“As interpolation instead of interpretation was not then so common or so honourable as at present, I believed that a part of my work was well done. How was I to expect that, because I ascribed piety to Spinoza, I would myself be taken for a Spinozist? Yet I had never defended his system, and anything philosophic that was in my book was manifestly inconsistent with the characteristics of his views and had quite a different basis than the unity of substance.”

Baruch Spinoza

Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799) [original in German]
S - Z

Books , Parting

“Novalis was cried down as an enthusiastic mystic by the prosaic, and Spinoza as godless by the literalists. It was incumbent upon me to protest against this view of Spinoza, seeing I would review the whole sphere of piety. Something essential would have been wanting in the ex position of my views if I had not in some way said that the mind and heart of this great man seemed deeply influenced by piety, even though it were not Christian piety. The result might have been different, had not the Christianity of that time been so distorted and obscured by dry formulas and vain subtilties that the divine form could not be expected to win the regard of a stranger. This I said in the first edition, somewhat youthfully indeed, yet so that I have found nothing now needing to be altered, for there was no reason to believe that I ascribed the Holy Spirit to Spinoza in the special Christian sense of the word.”

Baruch Spinoza

Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799) [original in German]
S - Z

Way , Sense , Time , Heart

“And if I place so much emphasis on Spinoza, it is indeed not from any subjective preference (I have expressly omitted the objects of such a preference) or to establish him as master of a new autocracy, but because I could demonstrate by this example in a most striking and illuminating way my ideas about the value and dignity of mysticism and its relation to poetry. Because of his objectivity in this respect, I chose him as a representative of all the others.”

Baruch Spinoza

Original in German: Und wenn ich einen so großen Akzent auf den Spinosa lege, so geschieht es wahrlich nicht aus einer subjektiven Vorliebe (deren Gegenstände ich vielmehr ausdrücklich entfernt gehalten habe) oder um ihn als Meister einer neuen Alleinherrschaft zu erheben; sondern weil ich an diesem Beispiel am auffallendsten und einleuchtendsten meine Gedanken vom Wert und der Würde der Mystik und ihrem Verhältnis zur Poesie zeigen konnte. Ich wählte ihn wegen seiner Objektivität in dieser Rücksicht als Repräsentanten aller übrigen.
Friedrich Schlegel, Rede über die Mythologie, in Friedrich Schlegels Gespräch über die Poesie (1800)
S - Z

Way , Idea , Relation ships

“Indeed, I scarcely comprehend how one can be a poet without revering and loving Spinoza and becoming completely his. Your own fantasy is rich enough for the invention of the particular: nothing is better suited to entice your fantasy, to stimulate and nourish it, than the poetic creations of other artists. But in Spinoza you find the beginning and the end of all fantasy, the universal ground on which your particularity rests — and you should welcome precisely this separation of that which is originary and eternal in fantasy from everything particular and specific.”

Baruch Spinoza

Original in German: In der Tat, ich begreife kaum, wie man ein Dichter sein kann, ohne den Spinosa zu verehren, zu lieben und ganz der seinige zu werden. In Erfindung des Einzelnen ist Eure eigne Fantasie reich genug; sie anzuregen, zur Tätigkeit zu reizen und ihr Nahrung zu geben, nichts geschickter als die Dichtungen andrer Künstler. Im Spinosa aber findet Ihr den Anfang und das Ende aller Fantasie, den allgemeinen Grund und Boden, auf dem Euer Einzelnes ruht und eben diese Absonderung des Ursprünglichen, Ewigen der Fantasie von allem Einzelnen und Besondern muß Euch sehr willkommen sein.
Friedrich Schlegel, Rede über die Mythologie, in Friedrich Schlegels Gespräch über die Poesie (1800)
S - Z

Universe , Love , Making love

“It seems to me that Spinoza shares the fate of good old Saturn in the fable. The new gods pulled down the sublime one from the lofty throne of knowledge. He faded back into the solemn obscurity of the imagination; there he lives and now dwells with the other Titans in dignified exile.”

Baruch Spinoza

Original in German: Spinosa, scheint mirs, hat ein gleiches Schicksal, wie der gute alte Saturn der Fabel. Die neuen Götter haben den Herrlichen vom hohen Thron der Wissenschaft herabgestürzt. In das heilige Dunkel der Fantasie ist er zurückgewichen, da lebt und haust er nun mit den andern Titanen in ehrwürdiger Verbannung.
Friedrich Schlegel, Rede über die Mythologie, in Friedrich Schlegels Gespräch über die Poesie (1800)
S - Z

Knowledge , God , Imagination , Fate

“It is also a very curious thing. Why should a 17th-century Portuguese-Jewish philosopher whose dense and opaque writings are notoriously difficult to understand incite such passionate devotion, even obsession, among a lay audience in the 21st century? Part of the answer is the drama and mystery at the centre of his life: why exactly was Spinoza so harshly punished by the community that raised and nurtured him? Just as significant, I suspect, is that everyone loves an iconoclast – especially a radical and fearless one that suffered persecution in his lifetime for ideas and values that are still so important to us today. Spinoza is a model of intellectual courage. Like a prophet, he took on the powers-that-be with an unflinching honesty that revealed ugly truths about his fellow citizens and their society.”

Baruch Spinoza

Steven Nadler, in his article Why Spinoza still matters https://aeon.co/essays/at-a-time-of-zealotry-spinoza-matters-more-than-ever (Aeon.co, 28 April 2016)
M - R, Steven Nadler

Courage , Understanding , Suffering , Communication

“For Spinoza, by contrast, there is to be no criminalization of ideas in the well-ordered state. Libertas philosophandi, the freedom of philosophizing, must be upheld for the sake of a healthy, secure and peaceful commonwealth and material and intellectual progress.”

Baruch Spinoza

Steven Nadler, in his article Spinoza's Vision of Freedom, and Ours https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/spinozas-vision-of-freedom-and-ours/ (The New York Times, 5 February 2012)
M - R, Steven Nadler

Idea , Peace , Freedom

“Without a doubt, the Theologico-Politicus Theological-Political Treatise is one of the most important and influential books in the history of philosophy, in religious and political thought, and even in Bible studies. More than any other work, it laid the foundation for modern critical and historical approaches to the Bible. And while often overlooked in books on the history of political thought, the Treatise also has a proud and well-deserved place in the rise of democratic theory, civil liberties, and politcal liberalism.”

Baruch Spinoza

Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)
M - R, Steven Nadler

Study , Books , History

“The wish to preserve oneself is the symptom of a condition of distress, of a limitation of the really fundamental instinct of life which aims at the expansion of power and, wishing for that, frequently risks and even sacrifices self-preservation. It should be considered symptomatic when some philosophers–for example, Spinoza who was consumptive–considered the instinct of self-preservation decisive and had to see it that way; for they were individuals in conditions of distress.”

Baruch Spinoza

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Edited by Bernard Williams, translated by Josefine Nauckhoff. (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
M - R

Way , Self-confidence , Life , Decision

“Spinoza is the clear and luminous side of Modern philosophy. He is the negation of bourgeois mediation and of all the logical, metaphysical, and juridical fictions that organize its expansion. He is the attempt to determine the continuity of the revolutionary project of humanism. With Spinoza, philosophy succeeds for the first time in negating itself as a science of mediation. In Spinoza there is the sense of a great anticipation of the future centuries; there is the intuition of such a radical truth of future philosophy that it not only keeps him from being flattened onto seventeenth-century thought but also, it often seems, denies any confrontation, any comparison. Really, none of his contemporaries understands him or refutes him.”

Baruch Spinoza

Antonio Negri, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). Translated from the Italian by Michael Hardt. Originally published as L'anomalia selvaggia. Saggio su potere e potenza in Baruch Spinoza (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1981)
M - R

Time , Understanding , Future , Truth

“Philopon: The misfortune of this man has always touched me in an extraordinary way. He lived in moderation, alone and irreproachable; he renounced all human idols and devoted his entire life to reflection, and look what happened! In the labyrinth of his meditations, he goes astray and, out of error, maintains much that agrees very little with his innocent way of life and that the most depraved scoundrel might wish for in order to be able to indulge his evil desires with impunity. How unjust is the irreconcilable hatred of scholars towards someone so unfortunate!”

Baruch Spinoza

Moses Mendelssohn, in his Philosophical Writings (1755–77) [original in German]
M - R

Way , Life , Error , Evil

“Neophil: …Leibniz, Wolff, and their various successors, to what a level of perfection and completeness they have brought philosophy! How proud Germany can be of them! Yet what does it help to claim more for oneself than is right? Let us always acknowledge that someone other than a German, I add further, someone other than a Christian, namely, Spinoza, has participated immensely in the work of bettering philosophy. Before the transition from the Cartesian to the Leibnizian philosophy could occur, it was necessary for someone to take the plunge into the monstrous abyss lying between them. This unhappy lot fell to Spinoza. How his fate is to be pitied! He was a sacrifice for the human intellect, but one that deserves to be decorated with flowers. Without him, philosophy would never have been able to extend its borders so far.”

Baruch Spinoza

Moses Mendelssohn, in his Philosophical Writings (1755–77) [original in German]
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Fate , Help , Perfection , Flowers

“Spinoza is a highly systematic thinker, but still I do not think I can offer a single key for all things Spinozistic. Personally, one thing which got me excited about Spinoza is his philosophical boldness, i. e., his willingness to pursue philosophical exploration as far as he can, making very little concessions to commonly accepted beliefs and norms. In terms of content, I take his attempt to conceive of God, nature, and ethics in a manner that is free from anthropomorphism and anthropocentric illusions as one of the deepest elements of his philosophical thinking. A closely related issue is his advocacy of actual infinity (an issue that has been mostly neglected in recent literature). Finally, the very attempt to do philosophy systematically (rather than rely on fragmented and disassociated intuitions) and transparently (laying bare the logical structure of his arguments) commands my respect, indeed admiration.”

Baruch Spinoza

Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Spinoza's Metaphysics and His Relationship to Hegel and the German Idealists, an interview by Richard Marshall (3:AM Magazine, 30 December 2017) https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/spinozas-metaphysics-relationship-hegel-german-idealists/
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God , Personality , Nature , Thinking

“It is clear that the origins of the discourse on multitude are to be found in the subversive interpretation of the thinking of Spinoza. I can never tire of stressing the importance of the Spinozan premise in the treatment of this thematic. And one highly Spinozist theme is that of the body, and particularly that of the potent body.”

Baruch Spinoza

Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Reflections on Empire (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2008)
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Thinking

“No great philosopher has so much to offer in the way of clarification and articulation of basic ecological attitudes as Baruch Spinoza.”

Baruch Spinoza

Arne Næss, Spinoza and Ecology
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Way