The ultimate — what this line takes as final
T
The one substance.
Not a person, not a mind, not a maker — and therefore not something that can want anything from you. Spinoza still called it God, and meant it.
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Founders & teachers — the ones who opened the way
B
Baruch Spinoza — the lens grinder.
He turned down a chair at Heidelberg to keep his freedom to write, published almost nothing under his own name in his lifetime, and died at forty-four in rented rooms in The Hague.
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The shared center — held across the tradition
Deus sive Natura — God, or Nature.
One substance, infinite, self-caused, of which every rock and thought is a mode. There is no outside for a creator to stand in.
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Contested within — affirmed by some schools, refused by others
Whether this is religion or atheism with better manners.
Spinoza's contemporaries called him an atheist; he denied it, and so do modern pantheists. The word has been an accusation for as long as it has existed.
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Cosmos & Afterlife
how reality is built, and what follows deathThe nature of reality
One infinite substance; everything that exists is a mode of it
After death
None for the individual, generally. Matter and energy persist and are reused; the person does not.