Baruch de Spinoza was born in the Jewish community of Amsterdam. His early education was almost entirely religious, but his later teachers included Manasseh ben Israel, a major figure in seventeenth-century Judaism who introduced Spinoza to non-Jewish philosophy, languages, mathematics, and physics. In 1656, Spinoza was excommunicated from the synagogue, and he began using the Latin version of his name, Benedict. His family disowned him, and he chose the trade of making and polishing lenses for spectacles, microscopes, and telescopes. From 1660 to 1663, Spinoza lived near Leiden, and he joined the study groups of the Collegiant sect, who were opposed to rigid orthodoxy. Spinoza worked on his major book, The Ethics, intermittently from 1662 to 1675. In the meantime, in 1663, he published the Principles of the Philosophy of René Descartes. In 1670, he moved to The Hague, where he spent the rest of his life. During his last years, Spinoza wrote a Hebrew grammar, a scientific treatise on the rainbow, and the Tractatus Politicus.
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