Baruch, in the Bible. 1 Jeremiah's scribe, for whom the book of Baruch is named. 2 Builder of the wall. 3 Signer of the Covenant.

Baruch, Bernard Mannes, 1870-1965, U.S. financier and government adviser, b. Camden, S.C. He grew rich through stockmarket speculation before he was 30. In World War I he advised on national defense and was (1918-19) chairman of the War Industries Board; he helped frame the economic provisions of the Versailles Treaty (1919). In World War II he became (1942) special adviser to James F. Byrnes and wrote the report (1943) on postwar conversion. As U.S. Representative to the UN Atomic Energy Commission (1946) he formulated plans for international control of atomic energy.

Baruch, early Jewish book included in the Septuagint, but not included in the Hebrew Bible and placed in the Apocrypha in the Authorized Version. It is named for a Jewish prince Baruch (fl. 600 B.C.), friend and editor of Jeremiah the prophet (see Jeremiah, book of the Bible). Baruch comprises: a message from the exiled Jews to the Jews still at home, including a prayer for Palestinian Jews to use, confessing sin and asking divine mercy; a hymn in praise of wisdom, including a reference to the incarnation of Wisdom in the form of the Torah, i.e., the law of God, understood in the early Church as an allusion to the incarnation of Jesus; a consolation of Jerusalem containing a lament; finally chapter 6, which is a letter of Jeremiah warning the exiles against idolatry. While there exist versions of Baruch in Syriac, Ethiopic, Latin and other ancient languages, these are based on the Greek, which in turn probably derives from a Hebrew original. Critics disagree greatly over the dates of Baruch; some see it as a collection of works by several authors. For the Apocalypse of Baruch, or Syriac Baruch, see Pseudepigrapha. For further bibliography, see Apocrypha.

Spinoza, Baruch or Benedict, 1632-77, Dutch philosopher, b. Amsterdam.

Spinoza's Life

He belonged to the community of Jews from Spain and Portugal who had fled the Inquisition. Educated in the orthodox Jewish manner, he also studied Latin and the works of René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and other writers of the period, and also had a thorough grounding in scholastic theology and philosophy. His independence of thought led to his excommunication from the Jewish group in 1656; at about that time he abandoned the Hebrew form of his name, Baruch, for the Latin form, Benedict.

Until about 1660, Spinoza lived in or near Amsterdam, and afterward he lived in Rijnsburg, Voorburg, and The Hague. He was a lens grinder of great skill, but this activity was probably more related to his scientific interests than to any economic necessity. With his needs largely provided for by a series of grants, pensions, and bequests, he lived modestly, devoting much of his time to the development of his philosophy. Spinoza became known in spite of his retiring mode of life; he had wide correspondence and was visited by other philosophers. In 1673, he was offered a professorship at Heidelberg, but he elected to retain his peaceful life and especially his independence of thought. He died of tuberculosis, apparently aggravated by his inhaling glass dust from lens grinding. Through Gotthold Lessing, Johann Gottfried von Herder, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Spinoza influenced German idealism. During his lifetime and for a period afterward, however, his pantheism was regarded as blasphemous, which is one reason why most of his writing was published after his death.

Spinoza's Works

His major works, virtually all of which are available in English translation, include a rewording (1663) of part of Descartes's work, A Treatise on Religious and Political Philosophy (1670, the only example of his own thought published in his lifetime), and his important Ethics, probably finished in 1665 but published posthumously (1677). His Opera Posthuma (1677) also include his Political Treatise, Treatise on the Improvement of Understanding, Letters, and Hebrew Grammar. He began a translation of the Hebrew Bible and was one of the first to raise questions of higher criticism of the Bible.

Metaphysics

Spinoza's philosophy is deductive, rational, and monist. He shares with Descartes an intensely mathematical appreciation of the universe: Things make sense when understood in relation to a total structure; truth, like geometry, follows from first principles with a logic accessible and evident to man's mind. Whereas for Descartes mind and body are different substances, Spinoza holds that the two are different aspects of a single substance, which he called alternately God and Nature. Just as the mind is not substantially alien to the body, so Nature is not the product or agency of a supernatural God. The universe is a single substance, capable of an infinity of attributes, but known through two of them: physical "extension" and "thought." God is not the creator of a Nature beyond himself; God is Nature in its fullness.

Spinoza's rationalism, unlike that of later idealists, does not proceed at the expense of empirical observation. "Adequate ideas" are a coherent logical association of physical experiences. When ideas are confused or contradictory it is not because they are false (in the sense of contrary to fact) but because they are incomplete or improperly related to the totality of experience.

Ethics

Spinoza's ethics proceed from a premise similar to that of Hobbes—that men call "good" whatever gives them pleasure—but they reach very different conclusions. Human beings, indeed all of Nature, share a common drive for self-preservation, the conatus sese conservandi. By this drive all individuals seek to maintain the power of their being, and in this sense virtue and power are one. But in Spinoza's system power is discovered to be a knowledge of necessity. Powerful, or virtuous, persons act because they understand why they must; others act because they cannot help themselves.

To be free is to be guided by the law of one's own nature (which in Spinoza's rational universe is never at variance with the law of another nature); bondage consists in being moved by causes of which we are unaware because our ideas are confused. Another important feature of Spinoza's ethical system is his view of the intellect as active. He rejects the distinction between reason and will that assumes that ideas can be passively entertained. All thinking is action, and all action has its accompaniment in thought. What accounts for action is not an agency (the will) beyond the intellect, but ideas. Ideas are active and move us to act; an absence of action may be accounted an absence of insight: knowledge, virtue, and power are one.

Political Philosophy

Politically, Spinoza and Hobbes again share assumptions about the social contract: Right derives from power, and the contract binds only as long as it is to one's advantage. The important difference between the two men is their understanding of the ends of the system: for Hobbes advantage lies in satisfying as many desires as possible, for Spinoza advantage lies in an escape from those desires through understanding. Put another way, Hobbes does not imagine a community of individuals whose desires can be consistently satisfied, so repression is always necessary; Spinoza can imagine such a community and such consistent satisfaction, so in his political and religious thought the notion of freedom, especially freedom of inquiry, is basic.

(born July 28, 1925, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. research physician. He received his M.D. from Columbia University. His discovery of an antigen that he later proved to be part of the hepatitis B virus, and which causes the body to produce antibodies to the virus, led to blood-donor screening and a vaccine. He shared a 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with D. Carleton Gajdusek.

Learn more about Blumberg, Baruch S(amuel) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Aug. 19, 1870, Camden, S.C., U.S.—died June 20, 1965, New York, N.Y.) U.S. financier and adviser to presidents. After graduating from the College of the City of New York in 1889, he went to work in Wall Street brokerage houses, where he amassed a fortune as a speculator. During World War I he was appointed chairman of the War Industries Board by Pres. Woodrow Wilson. In 1919 he was a member of the Supreme Economic Council at the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles and one of Wilson's advisers on the terms of peace. During World War II he served as an unofficial adviser on economic mobilization to Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Later he was instrumental in setting UN policy on the international control of atomic energy.

Learn more about Baruch, Bernard (Mannes) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Aug. 19, 1870, Camden, S.C., U.S.—died June 20, 1965, New York, N.Y.) U.S. financier and adviser to presidents. After graduating from the College of the City of New York in 1889, he went to work in Wall Street brokerage houses, where he amassed a fortune as a speculator. During World War I he was appointed chairman of the War Industries Board by Pres. Woodrow Wilson. In 1919 he was a member of the Supreme Economic Council at the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles and one of Wilson's advisers on the terms of peace. During World War II he served as an unofficial adviser on economic mobilization to Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Later he was instrumental in setting UN policy on the international control of atomic energy.

Learn more about Baruch, Bernard (Mannes) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born July 28, 1925, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. research physician. He received his M.D. from Columbia University. His discovery of an antigen that he later proved to be part of the hepatitis B virus, and which causes the body to produce antibodies to the virus, led to blood-donor screening and a vaccine. He shared a 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with D. Carleton Gajdusek.

Learn more about Blumberg, Baruch S(amuel) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Baruch has been a given name among Jews from Biblical times up to the present, on some occasions also used as surname. It is also found, though more rarely, among Christians - particularly among Protestants who use Old Testament names.

Except for its use as a name, this is also related to "berakhah" or bracha (Hebrew: ברכה; plural ברכות, berakhot), which is a Jewish blessing. See also: Baraka and Barakah.

The root B-R-K meaning "blessing" is also present in other Semitic languages. The most common Arabic form is the passive form Mubarak, but the form Barack is also used.

People with the given name Baruch

Bible

• Baruch ben Neriah, aide to the prophet Jeremiah
• Baruch, son of Zabbai; one of Nehemiah's helpers in repairing the walls of Jerusalem
• Baruch, son of Col-Hozeh; a member of the Tribe of Judah who settled in Jerusalem

Later times

• Baruch Spinoza, Dutch rationalist philosopher
• Baruch Blumberg, American Nobel-prize winning physician, developed Hepatitis B vaccine
• Baruch Goldstein, American-Israeli settler physician who murdered 29 Muslim worshipers in 1994

Fictional Caharacters

• The Baruch of Baghdad, the king of the Saracens in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival
• Baruch (His Dark Materials), a fictional angel in the His Dark Materials series

People with the surname Baruch

• Bernard Baruch, American financier, stock market speculator, statesman, and presidential adviser.

Scriptures attributed to Baruch ben Neriah

• Book of Baruch or 1 Baruch, a deuterocanonical book, considered by Jews and most Protestants to be apocryphal
• 2 Baruch, also called the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch
• 3 Baruch, also called the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch
• 4 Baruch, also known as the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah

Other uses of "Baruch"

• Baruch College, part of the City University of New York
• Baruch Plan, a proposed U.S. atomic energy plan following WWII