Advanced Search Filters
Filter search results by source, date, and more with our premium search tools.
" "What is remarkable is how popular this heretic remains nearly three and a half centuries after his death, and not just among scholars. Spinoza's contemporaries, René Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz, made enormously important and influential contributions to the rise of modern philosophy and science, but you won’t find many committed Cartesians or Leibnizians around today. The Spinozists, however, walk among us. They are non-academic devotees who form Spinoza societies and study groups, who gather to read him in public libraries and in synagogues and Jewish community centres. Hundreds of people, of various political and religious persuasions, will turn out for a day of lectures on Spinoza, whether or not they have ever read him. There have been novels, poems, sculptures, paintings, even plays and operas devoted to Spinoza.
Benedictus de Spinoza (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a social and metaphysical philosopher known for the elaborate development of his monist philosophy, which has become known as Spinozism. Controversy regarding his ideas led to his excommunication from the Jewish community of his native Amsterdam. He was named Baruch ("blessed" in Hebrew) Spinoza by his synagogue elders and known as Bento de Spinoza or Bento d'Espiñoza, but afterwards used the name Benedictus ("blessed" in Latin) de Spinoza.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Filter search results by source, date, and more with our premium search tools.
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
The superstitious, who know how to reprove vices rather than how to teach virtues, and who strive, not to lead people by reason, but to restrain them by fear in such a way that they flee what is bad rather than love the virtues, simply intend all other people to be as miserable as they are, and so it is not surprising that they are for the most part irksome and hateful to human beings.
Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.
Beauty, my dear Sir, is not so much a quality of the object beheld, as an effect in him who beholds it. If our sight were longer or shorter, or if our constitution were different, what now appears beautiful to us would seem misshapen, and what we now think misshapen we should regard as beautiful. The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible. Some things are beautiful at a distance, but ugly near; thus things regarded in themselves, and in relation to God, are neither ugly nor beautiful. Therefore, he who says that God has created the world, so that it might be beautiful, is bound to adopt one of the two alternatives, either that God created the world for the sake of men's pleasure and eyesight, or else that He created men's pleasure and eyesight for the sake of the world. Now, whether we adopt the former or the latter of these views, how God could have furthered His object by the creation of ghosts, I cannot see. Perfection and imperfection are names which do not differ much from the names beauty and ugliness.