Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), the greatest modern Jewish philosopher, was excommunicated by the Jewish community of Amsterdam, Holland, for his belief that God and Nature are one . His philosophy is called pantheism. A rationalist who wrote his Ethics in a geometric style, he rejected Descartes' dualism in favor of monism, which sees mind and matter as attributes of the one substance, God. His philosophy has been compared with that of Wittgenstein and Strawson in this century.