Baruch (or Benedict de) Spinoza (1632-1677) was born and raised a Jew, though his parents were Conversos from Portugal, Jews who had “converted” to Christianity under threat of the Portuguese Inquisition (1536). Religious toleration in the Netherlands drew many of these Sephardic Jews to Amsterdam, who reconverted to Judaism on arrival. Spinoza’s father was a merchant.

After a long struggle, the Dutch Republic had recently secured its independence from the Spanish Crown, becoming the first real republic in Europe. In this burgeoning commercial nation, Enlightenment ideals germinated. But Spinoza’s ideas pushed too far even for this tolerant regime: he questioned the authenticity of Scripture and the nature of divinity. He was excommunicated from Jewish society at 23. Living the seemingly innocuous life of an optical lens grinder, Spinoza was the great figure behind what has been called the “Radical Enlightenment.” The Ethics (written in Latin) resulted from nearly fifteen years of reflection, the epitome of early modern philosophical ambition: a comprehensive system covering the range of philosophical topics, and all according to the strictest kind of geometric method, inspired by Descartes’s philosophical approach—though Spinoza disagreed with Descartes on multiple points. (Cartesianism was itself suspect to the Dutch Calvinist religious authorities, as they were committed to a kind of Aristotelian scholasticism.) Spinoza argues that God is identical to nature (Deus sive Natura), a revolutionary proposition. The question of his pantheism would be a live issue even at the end of the eighteenth century, in the Pantheismusstreit, which would influence Hegel, Goethe, Schleiermacher and other luminaries of the Romantic period.