1On October 24th, Spinoza was born in Amsterdam to a Jewish family who fled from Spain to the Netherlands. His parents make a living by doing import and export trade, and their lives are relatively comfortable. Therefore, Spinoza was able to enter the local Jewish god school to study Hebrew, Talmud and medieval Jewish philosophy. The elders of the church recognized him as a brilliant man and regarded him as the hope of the group and faith.
1598, the first synagogue was established in Amsterdam. When Spinoza 15 years old, a young man felt the influence of the Renaissance and wrote an article attacking the belief in the afterlife. The church forced him to admit his mistake in public and ordered him to cross the threshold of the church and let the congregation pass by him. After returning home, the young man wrote an article condemning the authorities who oppressed him, and then committed suicide. The background of such a country and its religion influenced Spinoza's life.
At the age of twenty, she studied Latin with the Dutch scholar Vahland, and Clara Marie, the beautiful daughter of the teacher, became Spinoza's first love. However, the charming feelings in this teenager's heart can't last long-a handsome young man proposed to Mary with an expensive gift, and Mary chose to agree. Losing love hit Spinoza hard. This is his first and last love.
At the age of 22, Spinoza's father died, and her sister took Spinoza to court in order to seize the poor inheritance right. Although Spinoza won the lawsuit, she still gave most of her father's inheritance to her sister.
As he read more and more books and thought more and more, his original simple faith became more and more suspicious and confused. Contradictions and doubts in the Old Testament haunted his mind, and he began to question Jewish beliefs and put forward some opposite views, which caused panic in the church. At the age of 24, he was summoned by the elders of the Jewish church and asked if he had made any rebellious remarks. The elders asked him to admit his mistake, and the church offered to pay him an annuity in exchange for his at least superficial loyalty to the church and religion. He refused without hesitation. So the elders decided to expel him from the church.
1656 held the most gloomy and tragic ceremony in Hebrew canon. The church announced that no one should come within four feet of him, talk to him, write letters, serve him, or read any of his words or documents, or he would be possessed by the devil.
Since then, Spinoza has lived a lonely and miserable life, alienated from others and isolated from the world. Many Christians want to kill him for meritorious service. He rented a house on the top floor outside Amsterdam. He once taught children in a school and then made a living by grinding glasses.
1660, he moved to Linsburg with his master. The house is still there, and the street is named after a philosopher. He lived a very simple life, made a living by grinding glasses, spent a lot of time reading, thinking and writing, and completed many great works that made him famous in history. At the kind request of friends and correspondents of 1665, he moved to Voorburg near The Hague and moved to The Hague on 1670.
1677 February 2 1 is a Sunday. In an ordinary house in The Hague, the Netherlands, Spinoza, who suffered from lung disease for a long time and lived in a small space and dusty working environment, finally came to the end of her life. That day was nine months and three days short of his 45th birthday.
When Spinoza was alive, his only published works were Principles of Descartes' Philosophy and Theological Politics, which banned the authorities as soon as they came out. Some theologians will sue him in the local court. One of his students wrote to accuse him that his views were sloppy, crazy, sad and pitiful, and he was cursed by everyone.
He refused the gorgeous robe given to him by a prominent official. He said: "a person will not become more valuable just because he wears a good robe, and it is unreasonable to pack inferior things with expensive packaging"; He refused a gift from Simon Frith, a wealthy businessman. He said, "Naturally, I won't ask too much, and neither will I." He declined the generous annuity of King Louis XIV of France because he refused the proposal to dedicate his next book to the monarch. He refused the invitation of Heidelberg University to hire him as a professor of philosophy, because he could not agree to the request of His Royal Highness Prince Baladin to stop judging religion.
1672, he accepted the invitation of Prince Conte, commander-in-chief of the French army who invaded the Netherlands, and went to the French military camp, because he thought it was no big deal, and he was a "real European" rather than a nationalist. Unexpectedly, this behavior made him easily get the title of "traitor", and many "patriots" wanted to prove their patriotic behavior by killing him. Fortunately, when people knew that he was just a philosopher and would not have any hostility, the storm subsided.
The works that I dared not publish before my death were finally published after my death. The publication and distribution of those works spread like a plague in European religious circles, academic circles and social strata. After his death, a whole generation hated Spinoza's name. Hume said that his theory was an "abominable hypothesis" and Lessing said that "people mentioned Spinoza as if they were referring to a dead dog", but Lessing once asserted that "there is no other philosophy except Spinoza's philosophy."
While being hated, Goethe found the philosophy of "the soul has been longing for a long time" in Spinoza's works, and infiltrated this philosophical thought into his poems and essays; Spinoza's rationality and epistemology made Fichte, Schelling and Hegel put forward different pantheism. Spinoza's theological ethics has become an important theoretical basis for Schopenhauer's "will to life", Nietzsche's "will to power" and Bergson's "impulse to life". Spinoza's emotional view has become a key idea of Freud's psychoanalysis; Spinoza's intellectual development and political theory have deeply influenced a large number of philosophers, scientists and poets, such as Schelling, Marx, Engels, Feuerbach, Einstein, Wordsworth and Shelley.
Will durant, an American philosopher, once used a passage in Ecclesiastes of the Old Testament to evaluate Spinoza-one person can't fully understand him, and the last person can't fully understand him, because his thoughts are broader than the ocean, and his wisdom is deeper than the ocean.