On 27 July 1656, the Talmud Torah congregation of Amsterdam issued a writ of herem (Hebrew: חרם‎, a kind of ban, shunning, ostracism, expulsion, or excommunication) against the 23-year-old Spinoza. [44] [50] [51] The Talmud Torah congregation issued censures routinely, on matters great and small, so such an edict was not unusual. [52] The language of Spinoza's censure is unusually harsh, however, and does not appear in any other censure known to have been issued by the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. [53] The exact reason for expelling Spinoza is not stated. [54] The censure refers only to the "abominable heresies [ horrendas heregias] that he practised and taught", to his "monstrous deeds", and to the testimony of witnesses "in the presence of the said Espinoza". There is no record of such testimony, but there appear to have been several likely reasons for the issuance of the censure. [55] Spinoza's contemporary, Simon de Vries, raised the objection that Spinoza fails to prove that substances may possess multiple attributes, but that if substances have only a single attribute, "where there are two different attributes, there are also different substances". [31] This is a serious weakness in Spinoza's logic, which has yet to be conclusively resolved. Some have attempted to resolve this conflict, such as Linda Trompetter, who writes that "attributes are singly essential properties, which together constitute the one essence of a substance", [32] but this interpretation is not universal, and Spinoza did not clarify the issue in his response to de Vries. [33] On the other hand, Stanley Martens states that "an attribute of a substance is that substance; it is that substance insofar as it has a certain nature" [34] in an analysis of Spinoza's ideas of attributes. When George Santayana graduated from college, he published an essay, "The Ethical Doctrine of Spinoza", in The Harvard Monthly. [149] Later, he wrote an introduction to Spinoza's Ethics and "De Intellectus Emendatione". [150] In 1932, Santayana was invited to present an essay (published as "Ultimate Religion") [151] at a meeting at The Hague celebrating the tricentennial of Spinoza's birth. In Santayana's autobiography, he characterized Spinoza as his "master and model" in understanding the naturalistic basis of morality. [152]

Stefano Di Bella, Tad M. Schmaltz (eds.), The Problem of Universals in Early Modern Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 64 "there is a strong case to be made that Spinoza was a conceptualist about universals..." a b Dutton, Blake D. "Benedict De Spinoza (1632–1677)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Retrieved 7 July 2019. Why Spinoza Was Excommunicated". The National Endowment for the Humanities . Retrieved 13 April 2023.P. TOTARO, "The Young Spinoza and the Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza's Ethics", in The Young Spinoza. A Metaphysician in the Making, ed. by YITZHAK Y. MELAMED, New York, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 319–332 at 321–2. The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late 18th-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism. Three of Spinoza's ideas strongly appealed to them: Western philosophy - The rationalism of Spinoza and Leibniz | Britannica". www.britannica.com . Retrieved 25 December 2022. In the same kind of way the Attribute Thought exercises its activity in various mental processes, and in such systems of mental process as are called minds or souls. But in this case, as in the case of Extension, Spinoza conceives of the finite modes of Thought as mediated by infinite modes. The immediate infinite mode of Thought he describes as "the idea of God"; the mediate infinite mode he calls "the infinite idea" or "the idea of all things". The other Attributes (if any) must be conceived in an analogous manner. And the whole Universe or Substance is conceived as one dynamic system of which the various Attributes are the several world-lines along which it expresses itself in all the infinite variety of events. [18] [22] Edwin Curley (ed.), 1985, 2016. The Collected Works of Spinoza (two volumes), Princeton: Princeton University Press.(Not including the Compendium grammatices linguae hebraeae).

Preface to the English Translation" reprinted as "Preface to Spinoza's Critique of Religion", in Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968, 224–59; also in Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, 137–77). Spinoza provides several demonstrations which purport to show truths about how human emotions work. The picture presented is, according to Bennett, "unflattering, coloured as it is by universal egoism". [130] Ethical philosophy [ edit ] This section may contain information not important or relevant to the article's subject. Please help improve this section. ( January 2020) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Magnusson 1990: Magnusson, M (ed.), Spinoza, Baruch, Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Chambers 1990, ISBN 978-0-550-16041-6. Spinoza's philosophy is explicated in his two major publications originally written in Latin, the Tratacus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) (1670) and the Ethics, published posthumously in Latin and Dutch.In 1673 Spinoza was invited to Utrecht to meet Louis II, prince de Condé, whose armies had occupied much of the Netherlands since 1672. There he also met the French poet Saint Évremonde. When he returned to The Hague with presents from the prince, he was immediately accused of being in league with the country’s enemy. One year earlier the political leaders of the Netherlands, Johan De Witt and his brother Cornelius, who had been accused of conspiring against the young prince of Orange, William III, had been torn apart by an angry mob. At this point Spinoza, concerned for his safety, seems to have wanted to leave the Netherlands, and he considered an invitation from Louis II to move to Paris, as well as an offer of a professorship from the University of Heidelburg. He ultimately decided against going to Paris, because he feared that Louis did not have enough power to protect him from bigots in France, and he declined the offer from Heidelburg because he did not think he would have complete freedom to teach as he wished. His famous letter to the Heidelburg authorities, which contains an impressive defense of academic freedom, may in fact have been composed after the offer was withdrawn. At any rate, Spinoza seems to have reconciled himself to staying in the Netherlands for the rest of his life. Nadler, Steven M. (2001). Spinoza's Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-926887-0.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein evoked Spinoza with the title (suggested to him by G. E. Moore) of the English translation of his first definitive philosophical work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, an allusion to Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Elsewhere, Wittgenstein deliberately borrowed the expression sub specie aeternitatis from Spinoza ( Notebooks, 1914–16, p.83). The structure of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus does have some structural affinities with Spinoza's Ethics (though, admittedly, not with the Spinoza's Tractatus) in erecting complex philosophical arguments upon basic logical assertions and principles. Furthermore, in propositions 6.4311 and 6.45 he alludes to a Spinozian understanding of eternity and interpretation of the religious concept of eternal life, stating, "If by eternity is understood not eternal temporal duration, but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present." (6.4311) "The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole." (6.45) There is no evidence he maintained any sense of Jewish identity. "Spinoza did not envision secular Judaism. To be a secular and assimilated Jew is, in his view, nonsense." [67] Spinoza scholar Yirmiyahu Yovel raises the question of whether or not Spinoza could be categorized as the first "secular Jew" since he was still regarded as a Jew although he did not adhere to Jewish law or belong to the Jewish community. Yovel writes that Spinoza "exemplifies the situation of the modern Jew—secular, assimilationist, or national—without himself falling neatly into any of these categories. Countless Jews in the coming centuries were to find themselves in a similar predicament." [68] Career as a philosopher [ edit ] Study room of Spinoza in RijnsburgJonathan Israel in his various works on the Enlightenment, Spinoza, Life & Legacy. Oxford:Oxford University Press 2023 Spinoza's health began to fail in 1676, dying in The Hague on 21 February 1677 at the age of 44, attended by a physician friend, Georg Herman Schuller. Although he had been ill with some form of lung affliction, described as " ex phthisi [from consumption]", perhaps complicated by silicosis brought on by grinding glass lenses, [83] his death on that particular day was unexpected by himself or his landlord and landlady with whom he lived, and he died without leaving a will. [84] [85] His personal belongings and papers, most importantly his unpublished manuscripts, were stored in a cabinet attached to his writing desk, and were taken away for safekeeping from seizure by those wishing to suppress his writings. They do not appear in the inventory of his possessions at death. There were assertions that he had repented his philosophical stances on his deathbed, but all credible evidence points to his dying unrepentant and in tranquility. [86] The first biography of Spinoza [87] by Lutheran preacher Johannes Colerus (1647-1707), was prompted to investigate Spinoza's last days. [88] Spinoza was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) on the Spui four days after his death, on 25 February, inside the church, with six others in the same vault. At the time there was no memorial plaque for Spinoza. In the 18th century, the vault was emptied, and the remains disposed of, with the "remnants scattered over the earth of the churchyard." The memorial plaque visitors now see is outside, where some of his remains are part of the churchyard's soil. [89] Writings [ edit ]

Steven Nadler, Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 27: "Spinoza attended lectures and anatomical dissections at the University of Leiden..." Hübner, Karolina (2022), "Spinoza's Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University , retrieved 4 April 2023Scruton, Roger (2002). Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280316-0. a b c d e f Bloom, Harold (16 June 2006). "Deciphering Spinoza, the Great Original – Book review of Betraying Spinoza. The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity by Rebecca Goldstein". The New York Times . Retrieved 8 September 2009. Simkins, James (2014). "On the Development of Spinoza's Account of Human Religion". Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies. 5 (1). a b Genevieve Lloyd, Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Spinoza and The Ethics (Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks), Routledge; 1 edition (2 October 1996), ISBN 978-0-415-10782-2, p. 40 a b Rutledge, David (3 October 2020). "The Jewish philosopher Spinoza was one of the great Enlightenment thinkers. So why was he 'cancelled'?". ABC News. ABC Radio National (The Philosopher's Zone). Australian Broadcasting Corporation . Retrieved 7 October 2020.