Spinoza

Died
 Relevant Work
(NATC, 3rd ed.)

## Biography

Baruch Spinoza was born Benedito de Espinoza on 24 November 1632 in Amsterdam, Netherlands to Miguel de Espinoza, a successful Portuguese Sephardic Jewish merchant and Miguel's second wife, Ana Débora. Spinoza was raised speaking Portuguese, although he alsok new Hebrew, Spanish, Dutch, perhaps French, and later Latin. Spinoza had a traditional Jewish upbringing. Seemingly an excellent student and perhaps considered as a rabbi, he abandoned his formal studies at the age of 17 to join the family business when his elder brother, Isaac, died.

 At some point between 1654 and 1658, Spinoza began studying Latin with Francis van den Enden. Van den Enden was a notorious free thinker, former Jesuit, and radical democrat who likely introduced Spinoza to scholastic and modern philosophy. Later, in the early 1660s, van den Enden's books were put on the Catholic Index of Banned Books, as were Spinoza's eventually. Miguel, Spinoza's father, died in 1654 when Spinoza was 21. Spinoza began boarding with van den Enden and teaching at his school. His break from the teachings of Judaism appears to have been a length personal trouble. However, once he was publicly branded a heretic, his clashes with Jewish authority became more public and pronounced. He was once attacked on the steps of the synagogue by a knife-wielding stranger yelling, "Heretic!" He also reduced his pledges to the syngagogue considerably before ceasing payment altogether in March 1656.

 On the 27th of July 1656, the Talmud Torah congregation of Amsterdam issued a writ of *cherem,* the highest ecclesiastical censure in the Jewish community and a form of shunning, similar to Catholic excommunication. Following this censure, Spinoza spent the remainder of his life writing as a private scholar and the first secular Jew in modern Europe, given the lack of evidence that he ever ended up converting to Christianity. In 1676, his health began to fail. He died on 21 February 1677 at the age of 44.

## *Theological-Political Treatise*

### **Key Words and Terms**

**Authorship -**the state or fact of being the writer of a book, article, or document, or the creator of a work of art

**The Canon/Tradition -** a body of books, narratives and other texts considered to be the most important and influential of a particular time period or place

**Enlightenment Theory -** a range of ideas centered on the sovereignty of reason and the evidence of the senses as the primary sources of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state

**Hermeneutics -** the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts

**Interpretation Theory -** exploring the nature, ethics, and politics of representation

**Language -** the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way

**Modernity -** the quality or condition of being modern

**Philology -** the branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language or languages

**Religion -** the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods

### **Key Quotations**

"...if men were really sincere in what they profess with regard to Holy Scripture, they would conduct themselves quite differently; they would not be racked by so much quarrelling and such bitter feuding, and they would not be gripped by this blind and passionate desire to interpret Scripture and to introduce innovations in religion" (NATC 314).