Spinoza Paper

de de de Spinozas Effect on Being Judaic
If you were to gestate the average educated person to name the Enlightenment psyche who had the greatest influence on modern society you would likely hear the names Locke, Jefferson, Rousseau, Voltaire or Descartes. But in particular many modern philosophers will point Baruch Spinoza as the most influential member of the Enlightenment movement . Spinoza changed how people looked at God, nature and the universe. Spinoza was a proponent of liberty and democracy, while at the same he had in high spirits criticisms of religion and the clergy, who he thought possessed too frequently power. Because of his thoughts on religion, Spinoza was excommunicated in 1656, non by the Catholic Church where excommunication was common for so-called heretics, but by the Jewish community in Amsterdam. Although his community abandoned him, Spinoza never renounced his Judaism, by doing this he changed the definition of being Jewish. By still considering himself Jewish, Spinoza cleared the path for secular Judaism . For the archetypal time, people could call themselves a Jew without practicing the religion; he bringed the replacement of Judaism from an ethnicity based solely on religion to a grotesque culture that has many definitions.



Not only did the notable Jew feign the Enlightenment, but also the Enlightenment had a profound disturb on being Jewish in Europe from its start in the 17th century until the foundation of the nation-state Israel in 1948. I will argue that Baruch Spinoza and the Enlightenment as a whole, have both drastically affected the course of westerly civilization and Jewish history as well as changed what it means to be Jewish. Both Jewish history and Jewish identity would not be what they are today if it had not been for Baruch Spinoza and the Enlightenment.
To fully appreciate and understand why Spinozas work had such a profound shock on both the Enlightenment and being Jewish, his work ineluctably to be analyzed. Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632. His family...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



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