Macrotoma spinoza biography

Born in 1632 in Amsterdam to a modest Jewish family, Baruch (sometimes Benedict) Spinoza became one of the key figures of the seventeenth-century Dutch and European Enlightenment.

As a young man, he was considered an outstanding student of the Talmud and a promising religious scholar.

But he soon found himself on the outside of the orthodox tradition due to his radical and unorthodox opinions.

Macrotoma spinoza biography

The influence of a new orientation, inspired by the philosophic writings of René Descartes and Francis Bacon, among others, could be seen at a very young age. In 1656 the Amsterdam rabbis excommunicated Spinoza. He lived the remainder of his life as a lens grinder while writing anonymously published philosophic treatises and covertly exchanging letters with many of the philosophically minded luminaries of the broader European Enlightenment.

Deeply concerned for the political future of Amsterdam and Europe, he published the Theologico-Political Treatise in 1670, which, among other goals, wa