Spinoza: A Brief Guide to His Life and Work (Annotated)

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About Spinoza: A Brief Guide To His Life And Work

Originally published in 1910 as a portion of the author’s larger “Masters of Achievement,” this Kindle edition, equivalent in length to a physical book of approximately 16 pages, describes the life and work of seventeenth century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza.Includes Supplemental Material:• A Brief Summary of the Life and Philosophy of Spinoza• About Atheism, Agnosticism, and PantheismSample passages:Spinoza, now cut off from the faith of his fathers, was also exiled from Amsterdam by the magistrates on application of the rabbis. A forlorn outcast and an alien, without a home and without citizenship, he attached himself to a learned physician by the name of Francis Van den Ende, who kept a school in Amsterdam for the better class of young Dutchmen. In this school, which was afterward broken up through the sleepless malice of his enemies, Spinoza was tutor in mathematics and modern languages, while at the same time he was taught Latin by the daughter of the master, with whom he fell passionately in love. Fortunately or unfortunately, he was rejected. From that time forth philosophy became the sole aim and object of his life.…He therefore assumes, first of all, three fundamental things, which he calls, respectively, substance, attributes, and mode. By substance he understands, like Descartes, that which needs nothing else to its existence; but, unlike Descartes, he assumed only one such substance—God. Yet this term is not to be understood in the ordinary sense, for Spinoza’s God neither thinks nor creates. There is no real difference, he holds, between mind, as represented by God, and matter, as represented by nature. They are one, and, according to the light under which they are viewed, may be called either God or nature. The visible world is not distinct from him. It is only his visible manifestation, flowing out of him, who is the last fountain of life and essence, as a finite from the infinite, variet