Spinoza

Don't mean to be a stickler but a majority of definitions for this man appear to be gravely erroneous. He was a rationalist of Portuguese Jewish descent with a nascent philosophical background in the same vein as Descartes, Democritus and Epicurus. Stoicism if you will.

He was issued a Cherem and ostracized from the Jewish community in the Netherlands for his Theologico-Political Treatise which suggested that sacred works such as the bible be examined critically and rationally as opposed to arbitrarily treating such works as infallible works of a supreme being with a specific purpose for humans. Spent the rest of his life working as a lens grinder. What better way for the man who supposedly moved Einstein to bad poetry to live? Building tools to help us see the world better, and trying to understand the world? Wow. He dies in his mid-forties. His philosophy revolves around a deterministic monism.

Simply put, Spinoza advanced the proposition that there is only one eternal substance, nothing exists outside of it and this substance is God and everything including our thoughts are all in God. Deus sive Natura.

Last point of note: He spent a great deal of time in his work ethics, which was presented in geometric order, refuting the idea of an anthropomorphic deity. By the standards of the Abrahamic religions and probably all religions, this view would be atheistic, so be careful.

Fun Facts: Spinoza posited that a life devoted trying to understand the universe and everything in it and ignoring ephemeral goods like paris hilton and the new iphone was the true path to immortaility. He called this filling the mind, which is a mode of the attribute of thought (God has infinite attributes) with adequate ideas.

His ideas were considered heretical so he was extremely careful. People were being slaughtered for much less in his time and still are. "Sub Rosa" was an emblem on a ring he allegedly wore.

Last factoid: He solved Descartes notorious mind/body problem by positing that mind and body were two modes of expression of the same substance, God, under two distinct attributes: Thought and Extension.

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