Baruch Spinoza

A Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish descent, born and raised in Amsterdam, where he ground optical lenses for a living after being placed under a writ of cherem, permanent excommunication, by the Amsterdam Jewish community in 1656 for views its leaders judged heretical. Spinoza's Ethics, written in a geometric method of definitions, axioms and propositions and published only after his death in 1677, argues that there is exactly one infinite substance, which can be called equally God or Nature, and that everything that exists is a necessary expression of that substance's own nature, leaving no room for a personal creator, a free will, or an objective good and evil apart from what increases or diminishes a thing's own power to persist. The Theological-Political Treatise (1670), published anonymously, argued for freedom of thought and a separation of religious authority from the state and was itself banned in several jurisdictions.