Spinoza, Baruch (1632–77). Jewish philosopher. Despite his traditional education in Amsterdam, he associated with free-thinkers in his youth, and was excommunicated from the community in 1656. His Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670, published anonymously) was a work of biblical criticism which questioned revealed religion, opposed persecuting churches (including Calvinism), and argued for religious freedom. His major work, Ethics, was not published until after his death. His pantheistic, impersonal God was completely alien to the Jewish community and he remained under a ban (ḥerem) for the rest of his life, once the edict had been issued.

In contrast, Novalis called him Gott-trunckener Mensch (‘God-intoxicated man’), and there is no doubt of the centrality of God in his understanding of all things.

Spinoza began with axioms which had to be true because they could not logically be denied. But looking at it, so to speak, backwards, and tracing the chain of propositions back to deductions back to axioms, everything is logically and actually dependent on an absolutely infinite Being whose existence cannot be denied, and this is what Spinoza called God, though equally it is Nature—understood in this way; hence his saying, Deus sive Natura. Clearly this is far from the personal creator outside and apart from his creation. Spinoza allowed a small space for human endeavour (conatus) within the strictly determined, and that was in the human effort to raise its life above all that seeks to destroy it, including passions and emotions. This effort to become ‘the captain of one's soul’ and to rise above passion through reason is called ‘the concept of positive freedom’, and has been an important goal in other systems of ethics.