Baruch Spinoza vs. René Descartes
Side-by-side comparison of two thinkers
Baruch Spinoza
1632 – 1677
Baruch (de) Spinoza, also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza, was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, who was born and lived in the Dutch Republic. A forerunner of the Age of Enlightenment, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century rationalism, and Dutch intellectual culture, establishing himself as one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period. Influenced by Stoicism, Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, Ibn Tufayl, and heterodox Christians, Spinoza was a leading philosopher of the Dutch Golden Age.
"...In a few words, we can define the true relation of Spinozist teaching on passions to explanatory and descriptive psychology of emotions, saying that, practic…"
René Descartes
1596 – 1650
French philosopher known for Cogito ergo sum. Father of modern Western philosophy.
"In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things."