Baruch Spinoza

1632 – 1677 · died at about 45^[1][2]

Philosophy & Thought

Fun Facts About Baruch Spinoza

• Baruch Spinoza earned his living grinding optical lenses, and the scientist Christiaan Huygens praised their quality.^[1]
• Asked by telegram in 1929 whether he believed in God, Albert Einstein replied: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists".^[1][3][4]
• At 23, Spinoza was expelled from Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community with the harshest censure it ever pronounced, and the ban was never rescinded.^[1]
• Spinoza's portrait was featured on the Dutch 1000-guilder banknote, legal tender until the euro arrived in 2002.^[1]
• Spinoza published his Theological-Political Treatise in 1670 under a false publisher and a fictitious place of publication, and he forbade its translation from Latin.^[1]
• Spinoza considered the Ethics his chief project, and he wrote it with a forbidding mathematical structure modeled on Euclid's geometry, and it was published only after his death.^[1][5][6]
• Baruch Spinoza was alive at the same time as Galileo Galilei — their lives overlapped for 10 years (1632–1642).^[1][2][7][8]
• Baruch Spinoza shares a birthday with Scott Joplin: both were born on November 24.^{[1][2][9][10]}

Baruch (de) Spinoza, also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin who was born and lived in the Dutch Republic. A forerunner of the Enlightenment, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century rationalism, and Dutch intellectual culture, establishing himself as one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period. Influenced by Stoicism, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, and heterodox Christians, Spinoza was a leading philosopher of the Dutch Golden Age.^[1]

Contemporaries

John Locke

45 yr overlap

Christopher Wren

45 yr overlap

Johannes Vermeer

43 yr overlap

Molière

41 yr overlap

Louis XIV

39 yr overlap

Rembrandt

37 yr overlap

Isaac Newton

34 yr overlap

Matsuo Bashō

33 yr overlap

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

31 yr overlap

Blaise Pascal

30 yr overlap

Diego Velázquez

28 yr overlap

Oliver Cromwell

26 yr overlap

Their World

Questions About Baruch Spinoza

When was Baruch Spinoza born?

Baruch Spinoza was born on November 24, 1632, and died on February 21, 1677.

How old was Baruch Spinoza at death?

Baruch Spinoza was born on November 24, 1632, and died on February 21, 1677, at age 44.

What was Baruch Spinoza known for?

Baruch Spinoza was known for: Dutch rationalist philosopher of the Ethics. Baruch (de) Spinoza, also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin who was born and lived in the Dutch Republic. A forerunner of the Enlightenment, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century rationalism, and Dutch intellectual culture, establishing himself as one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period. Influenced by Stoicism, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, and heterodox Christians, Spinoza was a leading philosopher of the Dutch Golden Age.

Who was alive at the same time as Baruch Spinoza?

Baruch Spinoza's closest contemporary was John Locke. Their lives overlapped for 45 years.