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Benedict (Baruch)
Spinoza
Born: November 24, 1632 in Marrano, Portugal
Died: February 21, 1677 in The Hague
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| Famous For:
One of the
three major Rationalists of the time along with Descartes and Liebniz.
For acquiring knowledge, he moved away from the sense of perception and
replaced it with a "purely intellectual form of
cognition." As a model for philosophy, he used idealized
geometry. |
Humanist Ideas:
Believed in a species of
monism but claimed there is only one substance. A few of his
definitions of this substance are:
ID3: By substance I understand what is in itself and is
conceived through itself, that is, that whose concept does not
require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed.
ID4: By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives
of a substance, as constituting its essence.
ID5: By mode I understand the affections of a substance, or
that which is in another through which it is also conceived.
ID6: By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, that
is, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which
each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence. |
| Monism - the doctrine that all of reality is,
in some significant sense, one. |
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Noted Sayings:
"Nature abhors a vacuum."
(Ethics(1677) pt I
proposition 15)
"Nothing exists from whose
nature some effect does not follow. " (Ethics (1677) pt I proposition 36)
"He who would distinguish the true from the false must have
an adequate idea of what is true and false. "
(Ethics (1677) pt II proposition 42; proof)
"Will and intellect are one and the same thing."
( Ethics (1677) pt II proposition 49; corollary.)
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