> I had heard that he actually got thrown out of the community for going
> to the Dutch secular authority in order to resolve a business dispute,
> rather than first turning to the sectarian authorities.... robert wood
>
> ----------
>
> (You mean `religious authorities' rather than `secular' in the last
> sentence?)
>
> According to several biographies and histories I've read, Spinoza was
> thrown out of or banned from the extended congregational community
> (the Jewish ghetto), by the head rabbi of Amsterdam's Talmud Torah
> synegoue for propogating materalist herasy. This was the same rabbi who
> trained Spinoza in Hebrew and Latin in school when Spinoza was a
> teenager. Their despute was both theological and personal hence the
> usual Writ of Cherim.
>
> It's difficult to tell the specifics of the conflict, but it came
> down to Spinoza's fascination with Descartes, and his intellectual
> friendships with the Cartiseans and rising so-called scientific minded
> supporters of the `New Sciences', aka Galileo et al. He must have
> spoken about it in public, before getting printed.
>
> After the official Writ, the Jewish community was banned from any
> contact, including doing business with Spinoza. He became an silent
> partner with his brother to run their father's merchant trade in dried
> fruit from Spain, Portugal and North Africa. Spinoza gave it up
> interest in the family business and turned to the lens grinding
> trade. Lens grinding was new and not part of the traditional trade
> guild system, which was dominated in other countries by both merchant
> guilds and the church. Lens grinding was Spinoza's entrance into the
> sciences of astronomy, microscopy, and optics as well as mathematics,
> via geometry.
>
> The secular authorities were attempting to remain neutral in the whole
> affair between religious fanatics lead by the Calvinists. The DeWiit
> brothers held power in a delicate balance between the Calvinists and a
> threatened re-establishment of a monarchy from the English exiled
> William of Orange, the Orangists... Calvinist mobs assasinate the
> DeWitt brothers... Retrenchment is afoot, the thriving publishing
> trades that printed books in philosopy and science are threatened,
> Spinoza goes into obscurity, but the radical enlightenment prevails
> muted in Locke and Liebniz.
>
> I lose track somewhere in these perginations.
>
> CG
>
>
>
>
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