Spinoz Biography

He tried not only to make the philosophy more scientific and strict, but to approach it from the point of view of formal axiomatics. Like Rene Descartes, Spinoza wanted to proceed in philosophy from self -evident axioms and strictly logically draw consistent conclusions. As a result, he managed to build a philosophical system that harmoniously and consistently combined the doctrine of God, the doctrine of nature, the doctrine of morality, man, about society and the state.

He wrote many treatises, but only one of them was published during his lifetime under his own name. The rest of the work was published posthumously or under pseudonyms - the author was afraid of persecution by church and state authorities. Many of his books were introduced by the Catholic Church in the index of prohibited books. Spinoza was considered a heretic, an atheist, an apostate, but, despite the misunderstanding of most contemporaries, he stubbornly continued to develop his own very original philosophical system.

He was brought up in an orthodox Jewish family. Then he made a close acquaintance and friendship with representatives of European Protestantism. But the Catholic religion was familiar to him firsthand. At that time in Amsterdam there were constant disputes between Catholics and Protestants. Young Barukha was very interested in the intellectual atmosphere of these disputes. Having learned Latin, he thoroughly studied the Bible - so much so that by the age of 22 local Catholics and Protestants considered him an expert on the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.

He was able to detached and incredibly consider the main provisions of the main European religions of that time and approached them from a rational point of view. Not many thinkers tried to develop his approach. Perhaps the teachings of Spinoza would be more appropriate in the ancient era, during the great ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides. Spinoza, like Parmenid, argued that everything was absolutely one, he tried to imagine the world not from the point of view of its fragmentation, multiplicity and diversity, but from the point of view of its essential substantial ultimate unity.

They are perceived as very advanced and consistent with modern science. This statement gives a person an important landmark in the field of morality. Let's look at the key facts of the biography of Benedict Spinoza. Spinoza was born in the family of a Jewish merchant in Amsterdam. Initially, his surname sounded like an escinosis, and his name was Baruch. The ancestors of the Dutch philosopher were from Portugal.

They had to flee from the Pyrenean Peninsula, fearing the persecution of the Inquisition. In Amsterdam, there was a rather large Jewish community, and the young Barukh received orthodox Jewish education and education. He studied the Torah, Talmud and the treatises of the great Jewish philosophers, and with them ancient Greek and Arabic. Subsequently, almost nothing of this philosophical heritage had influenced his own ideas.

Mother died when he was only 8 years old.

The boy had to help his father in a trade business, but Baruch dreamed of more. He made his acquaintance with the enlightened intellectuals of Amsterdam, which were part of the collegiate sect - this is a kind of Protestantism, which denied the need for a priest, and all the clergy were carried out collegially. Apparently, from colleagues Spinoza learned religious free -thinking.

Soon after the death of his father, when Baruhu was 18, the Jewish community expelled him from their ranks. Now the exact reasons are unknown. For the Jew, the "hem" - exile - was almost equal to death. Having lost the support of the community, Baruch could not find a traditional work and take up the appropriate social position. The philosopher accepted the Latin name Benedict, which means “blessed”, and began to build his life from scratch.

He gave his share in his father’s business, and first he settled in the suburbs of Amsterdam, and then moved to a village near the city of Leiden. He earned a living by a very jewelry art - he polished diamonds and lenses. Some historians of philosophy draw an interesting analogy: in those days, the grinder of the lens was like a software developer today. For a smart and hardworking person, this profession was quite easy to master, and the demand for it was quite large.

Splastic pipes and telescopes were needed not only by scientists, but also by military, geographers, travelers and sailors. Spinoza had no shortage of orders and he had enough money to publish his books at his own expense. He published many of them with a small circulation and distributed only to friends, so great philosophical glory, came to the Dutch thinker much later than his death.

Spinoza was engaged in self -education and went to study with one local philosopher, a follower of the Cartesianism of the teachings of Rene Descartes. Spinoza was attracted by a strict, scientific, logical, methodologically verified style of Cartesian philosophy, but he was in no hurry to accept the main axioms of Descartes, but tried to develop his own philosophical axiomatics.

In the mature years, he moves to the Hague. He was about 40 years old, and he was already quite famous.He was offered a professorship at the University of Heidelberg, but he refused because he was afraid to lose freedom of thought and independence, which he greatly appreciated. At that time, Spinoza talked with the great scientists of his time, for example, with the Dutch physicist and mathematician Christian Huygens and the German mathematician Erenfried von Chirnhaus.

Especially to get acquainted with Benedict, the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz came to the Hague. Spinoza died in the year from tuberculosis, which he was sick for 20 years. There is an opinion that the disease was aggravated by the fact that the philosopher constantly inhaled the dust during grinding of optical lenses and smoked a lot. At that time, smoking tobacco was considered a healing agent against tuberculosis.

The philosopher was only 44 years old.