Benedict de Spinoza

Spinoza was a male philosopher from Earth whose written work was highly intellectual.

As a lieutenant at Starfleet Academy, James T. Kirk was an enthusiast of Spinoza's thought. However, student Gary Mitchell considered it to be "longhair stuff." Only fifteen years into their friendship, shortly after a disastrous encounter with the galactic barrier that gradually mutated Mitchell, did his opinion of the writer change, at one point implying to now-Captain Kirk that he was getting "even better ideas" from the text than having set Kirk up with a female lab technician, years previously. Mitchell studied Spinoza's book The Ethics while confined to sickbay of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), wherein he read the text on a reading viewer. Mitchell remarked of Spinoza, "Once you get into him, he's rather simple, though. Childish, almost. I don't agree with him at all."