SPINOZA, BENEDICT DE

( (English), ) born Nov. 24, 1632, Amsterdam died Feb. 21, 1677, The Hague Hebrew forename Baruch, Latin forename Bendictus, Portuguese Bento De Espinosa Dutch-Jewish philosopher, the foremost exponent of 17th-century Rationalism. Additional reading An early biography is found in Frederick Pollock, Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880), available in many later editions. Dan Levin, Spinoza, the Young Thinker Who Destroyed the Past (1970), focuses on the details of the philosopher's Sephardic Jewish background. Roger Scruton, Spinoza (1986), is a later biography. Important analyses of his ethical and philosophical thought are offered in Henry E. Allison, Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction, rev. ed. (1987); Alan Donagan, Spinoza (1989); Paul Wienpahl, The Radical Spinoza (1979); and, more specifically, in Thomas C. Mark, Spinoza's Theory of Truth (1972); Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics (1984); Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza's Ethics (1988); S. Paul Kashap, Spinoza and Moral Freedom (1987); Jon Wetlesen, The Sage and the Way: Spinoza's Ethics of Freedom (1979); James Collins, Spinoza on Nature (1984); and Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, 2 vol. (1989). On Spinoza as active scientist and on his epistemology, see Marjorie Grene and Debra Nails (eds.), Spinoza and the Sciences (1986).