This book is the complete writings of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza (b. 1632, d. 1677) was one of the first of the Enlightenment philosophers. He was born to Sephardic Portuguese Jewish parents, living in the Netherlands due to the Inquisition. His views were so novel, particularly his biblical criticism, that some of his works were only published posthumously, particularly the Ethics. He was essentially excommunicated from the Jewish community, and took on the name Benedictus, the Latin translation of Baruch, 'Blessed.' He worked all his life as a lens grinder.
Author
Baruch Spinoza, often Benedictus de Spinoza, was a Dutch philosopher. The breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until many years after his death. By laying the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and, arguably, the universe, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy. His magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes' mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers. In the Ethics, "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely." Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all contemporary philosophers, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."
