Baruch Spinoza
1632-1677 · Rationalism · Household name
Spinoza's Amsterdam synagogue excommunicated him at twenty-three. He argued that God and Nature are two names for one infinite substance, with nothing at all standing outside it, and he laid the case out like geometry, proposition by proposition. You become free by understanding the order that had to be rather than straining against it, and at its height he called that understanding the intellectual love of God.
Signature
The position Spinoza is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity
- Theology
- Pantheism
Positions on the 13 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Mechanistic (13 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (80 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- mildly leans Describable (38 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Subjective (21 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- mildly between Realism and Nominalism (50 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (19 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity (0 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (15 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- strongly leans Objective (100 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- leans Liberalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (75 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
7 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Spinoza refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Pantheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Knowledge
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Personal Judgment
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Idealism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Receptive Intellect
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Natural Law / Egoism
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Hard Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Causa Sui
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Block Universe
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Rational Expertise
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Representation
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Social Contract
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Union with the One
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Cognitive Theory of Emotion / Embodied Appraisal
What is the proper role of emotion? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?