Baruch Spinoza or Benedict de

Spinoza, Baruch, or Benedict de (1632–77), Dutch philosopher who held that God is nature or all that is, an interpretation that brought him expulsion from the Amsterdam Jewish community. He claimed that matter and mind are attributes of the one substance: God. His most famous work, Ethics (1677), contains the development of his pantheism, which is both rationalist and mystical.

See also: Philosophy.