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Brief Lives

Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677)

Brad Rappaport expresses the essential attributes of the prophet of pantheism.

Sidney Morgenbesser, the ‘apostate’ philosopher of Columbia University, is said to have written on the board as an exam question, “Some say Marx and Freud went too far. How far would you go?” Baruch (Latinised to ‘Benedict’) Spinoza called Jesus the Christ, and even among this company of unbelieving Jews, that’s pretty far. Nevertheless, if Christianity and Islam are Judaic in origin, then Spinoza’s work could be said to be so too, since it originated in, among other things, a preoccupation with the Bible, which he criticized as no one else had before, but never disregarded.

Spinoza and the Rabbis Samuel Hirszenberg 1907

Biography

Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (1670) exercised a great influence largely because of its attempt to throw off constraints on freedom of thinking by religious officials – originally the leaders of his synagogue.

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