For the radical thinkers of the Enlightenment, he was the first man to have lived and died as a true atheist. For others, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he provides perhaps the most profound conception of God to be found in Western philosophy. He was bold enough to defy the thinking of his time, yet too modest to accept the fame of public office, despite numerous offers, and he died, along with Socrates and Seneca, one of the three great deaths in philosophy. His name is Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch Jewish philosopher from the 17th century, who can claim influence on both the Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century and great minds of the 19th, notably Hegel, and his ideas were so radical that they could only be fully published after his death.
But what were the ideas that caused such controversy in Spinoza’s lifetime, how did they influence the generations after, and can Spinoza really be seen as the first philosopher of the rational Enlightenment?
Contributors
Jonathan Rée, historian and philosopher and Visiting Professor at Roehampton University
Sarah Hutton, Professor of English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
John Cottingham, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading
