How did Spinoza earn a living?

How did Spinoza earn a living?

He worked as a lens grinder for most of his life To make a living, he worked as a lens grinder and made delicate scientific instruments. His lenses were fabled throughout the Netherlands and Spinoza’s apparatus was prized by famous Dutch scientists such as Christiaan Huygens and Theodor Kerckring.

What did Benedict de Spinoza do?

Among philosophers, Spinoza is best known for his Ethics, a monumental work that presents an ethical vision unfolding out of a monistic metaphysics in which God and Nature are identified. …

Is Spinoza a determinist?

The human world is an ethical world because within it there is also causality, rationality, differentiation, sense and “conatus to preserve the nature of the thing itself.” Spinoza’s actuality is not due to his determinist rationalism, but to his endeavor to seek the logos of the human affects, and to understand the …

Did Spinoza argue for the existence of a transcendent God?

In those works, Spinoza denies the immortality of the soul; strongly rejects the notion of a transcendent, providential God—the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and claims that the Law (i.e., the commandments of the Torah and rabbinic legal principles) was neither literally given by God nor any longer binding on Jews.

What did Spinoza believe?

Spinoza’s most famous and provocative idea is that God is not the creator of the world, but that the world is part of God. This is often identified as pantheism, the doctrine that God and the world are the same thing – which conflicts with both Jewish and Christian teachings.

What did Spinoza say about the Bible?

Later in the Treatise Spinoza stated: “I insist that [the Bible] expressly affirms and teaches that God is jealous…and I assert that such a doctrine is repugnant to reason.” After mentioning additional irrational teachings, Spinoza pushed his case even further.

Did Spinoza write in Dutch?

In Hebrew, his full name is written ברוך שפינוזה‎. In the Netherlands he used the Portuguese name Bento. In his Latin and Dutch works, he used Latin: Benedictus de Spinoza….

Why did Spinoza disagree with Descartes?

Yet Spinoza had substantial disagreements with Descartes over a wide range of metaphysical issues that bear on physical theory. Most obviously, he rejected Descartes’ dualism of extended and mental substances in favor of substance monism, and correspondingly rejected Cartesian mind-body interactionism.