Paper Summary:

The paper relates that Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch-born philosopher of Portuguese Sephardic ancestry who has proven over the centuries to be very influential in this thought, although he was much maligned during his lifetime. The paper notes that probably his greatest extended work, the "Ethics" (Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata), was only published shortly after his own death, and in this book, Spinoza advances a number of important and even somewhat radical concepts about God, the universe, and the makeup of the human mind and emotions and the relationship between these things. This paper shows that Spinoza's unique concept of "God" is closely connected to his unique concept and definition of "freedom", and that an analysis of one of these concepts can be used to shed light on the other.

From the Paper:

"Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Dutch-born philosopher of Portuguese Sephardic ancestry who has proven over the centuries to be very influential in this thought, although he was much maligned during his lifetime and his philosophical work mostly ignored if not condemned. Probably his greatest extended work, the "Ethics" (Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata), was only published shortly after his own death. In this book, Spinoza advances a number of important and even somewhat radical concepts about God, the universe, and the makeup of the human mind and emotions and the relationship between these things. This paper will try to..."

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