“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

Dutch Republic philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, 17th century

Baruch Spinoza, also known by the Latin name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a Dutch Republic philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin who lived in the 17th century. He is known as a forerunner of the Enlightenment and as one of the most important and radical thinkers of the early modern period. Spinoza helped shape modern biblical criticism, 17th-century rationalism, and Dutch intellectual culture. His thought was influenced by Stoicism, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, and heterodox Christians, and he became a leading philosopher of the Dutch Golden Age.