Selections

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was born in Amsterdam to a family of Portuguese Jewish merchants. At twenty-three he was expelled from the Jewish community for his views, and he spent the rest of his life quietly, grinding lenses for telescopes and microscopes and corresponding with the scientists of Europe. He refused a professorship at Heidelberg so as to keep his freedom of thought.

His Theological-Political Treatise, published anonymously in 1670, argued for freedom of thought and a historical reading of scripture; it is also in the library in Arabic. His Ethics appeared after his death at forty-four, probably hastened by the glass dust of his work, and made him one of the great philosophers of freedom.