Baruch Spinoza Timeline

Sometime between 1654 and 1657, Spinoza started studying Latin with political radical Franciscus van den Enden, a former Jesuit and atheist, who likely introduced him to scholastic and modern philosophy, including Descartes, whose ideas came to dominate Spinoza's philosophy.

After learning Latin with Van den Enden, Spinoza studied at Leiden University around 1658, where he audited classes in Cartesian philosophy.

Image source: Leiden University

Spinoza's first publication was his 1663 geometric exposition of proofs using Euclid's model with definitions and axioms of Descartes's Principles of Philosophy. It was one of only two works published in his lifetime under his own name.

Image source: Principles of Philosophy

In 1665, Spinoza began writing the Theological-Political Treatise, addressing theological and political issues such as the interpretation of scripture, the origins of the state, and the bounds of political and religious authority, while arguing for a secular, democratic state.

Image source: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Anticipating the reaction to his ideas, Spinoza published his treatise in 1670 under a false publisher and a fictitious place of publication. The work immediately caused an uproar across Europe.

Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (The Ethics) was finished in 1674 but published posthumously, its title added posthumously.

Image source: Ethics (Spinoza book)

Tractatus Politicus was an unfinished work from 1676 concerning how states can function well, intended to show that democratic states are best.

Image source: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Spinoza's works were published posthumously by his friends, published by Jan Rieuwertsz in Amsterdam though both publisher and place were purposely omitted, and influenced philosophers for the next two centuries.

The Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being, a long-forgotten text that only survived in Dutch translation, was first published by Johannes van Vloten in 1862, remaining unpublished until the 19th century.

Image source: Baruch Spinoza

From 1656 to 1661, Spinoza found lodgings elsewhere in Amsterdam and Leiden, supporting himself with teaching while learning lens grinding and constructing microscopes and telescopes. His circle of discussion partners included Van den Enden, Pieter Balling, Jarig Jelles, Lodewijk Meyer, Johannes Bouwmeester, and Adriaan Koerbagh.

Between 1660 and 1661, Spinoza moved from Amsterdam to Rijnsburg, seeking a quiet retreat in the country with access to the university town of Leiden, where he still had many friends.

Image source: Rijnsburg

In 1663, Spinoza moved to Voorburg for an unknown reason.

Image source: Voorburg

Serrarius maintained his relationship with Spinoza until his death in 1669.

Image source: Petrus Serrarius

In 1670, Spinoza moved to The Hague for easier access to intellectual life with his friends and followers.

Image source: The Hague

In 1675, Albert Burgh, a friend and possibly former pupil of Spinoza, wrote to him repudiating his teachings and announcing his conversion to the Catholic Church.

Image source: Albert Burgh

In 1676, Leibniz traveled to The Hague to meet Spinoza, remaining with him for three days to converse about current events and philosophy.

Image source: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Spinoza's health began to fail in 1676, and he died in The Hague on 21 February 1677 at age 44, attended by a physician friend, Georg Herman Schuller. Reports circulated that he repented his philosophical stances on his deathbed, but these tales petered out in the 18th century. In the 18th century, his vault was emptied and remnants scattered across the churchyard.

Few of Spinoza's letters are extant, and none before 1661, making this year significant for scholars reconstructing his intellectual development.

A few decades after Spinoza's death, Pierre Bayle, in his famous Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697), pointed out a link between Spinoza's alleged atheism and 'the theology of a Chinese sect', supposedly called 'Foe Kiao', which he had learned about through testimonies of Jesuit missions in Eastern Asia.

Image source: Pierre Bayle

A century after Bayle, Kant also established a parallel between Spinoza's philosophy and the thinking of Laozi, grouping both under pantheists and criticizing what he described as mystical tendencies. In 1785, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi published a condemnation of Spinoza's pantheism after Lessing was thought to have confessed on his deathbed to being a 'Spinozist', equivalent to being called an atheist. Spinoza's philosophy attracted late 18th-century Europeans as an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism.

Image source: Immanuel Kant

The poet Heinrich Heine was lavish in praise for Spinoza in On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (1834).

Image source: Heinrich Heine

In 1837 the German writer Berthold Auerbach dedicated to Spinoza the first novel in his series on Jewish history, translated into English in 1882 as Spinoza: A Novel. Auerbach later helped shape Spinoza's image among Jewish writers revisiting his expulsion.

Image source: Berthold Auerbach

In 1863, Elijah Benamozegh purported to establish that the main source of Spinoza's ontology is Kabbalah.

Image source: Elijah Benamozegh

Theodor Goldstücker was one of the early figures to notice similarities between Spinoza's religious conceptions and the Vedanta tradition of India. By 1879, Spinoza's pantheism was praised by many but considered alarming and dangerously inimical by some.

In 1886, the young George Santayana published 'The Ethical Doctrine of Spinoza' in The Harvard Monthly. In 1932, he presented 'Ultimate Religion' at The Hague celebrating the tricentennial of Spinoza's birth.

Image source: George Santayana

Elsewhere, Wittgenstein borrowed the expression sub specie aeternitatis from Spinoza in his Notebooks 1914–16.

Image source: Ludwig Wittgenstein

In 1929, Einstein was asked in a telegram by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein whether he believed in God. Einstein responded: 'I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.' He later wrote the preface to a biography of Spinoza published in 1946.

Image source: Albert Einstein

Jorge Luis Borges famously wrote two sonnets in Spinoza's honor: 'Spinoza' in El otro, el mismo (1964) and 'Baruch Spinoza' in La moneda de hierro (1976), with several direct references to his philosophy found throughout Borges's work.

Image source: Jorge Luis Borges

In his 1968 doctoral thesis, Gilles Deleuze named Spinoza 'the prince of philosophers'. Antonio Negri also wrote books on Spinoza, most notably The Savage Anomaly (1981), reconfiguring Italian Autonomia Operaia.

Image source: Gilles Deleuze

A conference was organized at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York entitled 'From Heretic to Hero: A Symposium on the Impact of Baruch Spinoza on the 350th Anniversary of His Excommunication, 1656–2006'.

Image source: YIVO

The Spinoza Foundation Monument statue of Spinoza was created by Dutch sculptor Nicolas Dings and erected in front of the Amsterdam City Hall (at Zwanenburgwal).

Image source: Amsterdam

In 2014 a copy of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was presented to the Chair of the Dutch Parliament, sharing a shelf with the Bible and the Quran.

The Amsterdam Jewish community organised a symposium in December 2015 to discuss lifting the cherem, inviting scholars from around the world to form an advisory committee at the meeting.