Download Baruch Spinoza: The Giants of Philosophy AudioBook Free
A Portuguese Jew moving into Holland, Spinoza was excommunicated because of the unorthodox view he took of God. Spinoza wrote in the rationalist design of a geometric proof to develop his idea of God as the infinite, indwelling reason behind everything, a unified causal system that is virtually synonymous with nature. In this system, there is no free will, for everything are essential and inevitable, and all objects, including humans, are part of God's active self-expression. Our minds can participate in the eternity of God by concentrating on natural laws and just how everything follow from God or nature. Human fulfillment is possible, he believed, only by rejecting our finite, flawed selves and identifying with the eternal within us. Spinoza believed that by doing so we can love God with an instantaneous devotion without asking anything in return.
