"Men would never be superstitious if they could govern all their circumstances by set rule, or if..."

By: vivian on domingo, dezembro 10, 2017

“Men would never be superstitious if they could govern all their circumstances by set rule, or if they were always favored by fortune. But being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept in fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune’s greedily coveted favors, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity.”

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Baruch Spinoza, from the Theologico-Political Treatise. His parents were Jewish, and for that were tortured and condemned by the Inquisition in Portugal; they escaped to Amsterdam where Baruch was born.

He received Jewish schooling, but became interested in the historical inaccuracies of the Bible, and was excommunicated from the Jewish community in Amsterdam for heresy in 1656. In 1661, Spinoza moved to a small town on the Dutch coast where he wrote the above treatise.

This was just one of many works Spinoza wrote, although it was the most controversial; other notable writings include a demonstration of Descartes’ thinking and a master work on Ethics. He is known today as one of the most influential philosophers of the Enlightenment.

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