This endeavour to do a thing or leave it undone, solely in order to please men, we call ambition, especially when we so eagerly endeavour to please t… - Benedictus de Spinoza

...[T]he once-accepted assumption that Spinoza was considered a “dead dog” in Kant's day [i.e. before the break of the Pantheismusstreit] is no longer tenable. [...] Suffice it here to recall the well-known fact that Spinoza is the subject of the single longest entry in Bayle's Dictionnaire (1702). It is true that Bayle attempts to refute Spinoza (though some have doubted the sincerity of his intentions) but unlikely that so much space would be dedicated to refuting a neglected philosopher—unlikely, indeed, that Spinoza's relevance would wane once this high-profile entry had been published about him. J. Zedler's Grosses Universal Lexikon (1731–54) gives a similar impression, devoting to Spinoza a five-page discussion. Descartes, by comparison, is discussed in one page. Hume, Locke, Hobbes, and Plato are equally dealt with in one page (or less) each. D. Diderot and J. d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (1751–72) similarly dedicates to Spinoza five times more space than to most relevant thinkers in the history of philosophy. While speaking of Spinoza's metaphysics in extremely hostile terms, the Encyclopédie gives a reliable account of the Ethics definitions and axioms and discusses at length its most important demonstrations, especially E1p1–11. The Dictionnaire, the Lexikon, and the Encyclopédie were the main transmitters of Enlightenment thought. The attention they devoted to Spinoza ensured him a place at the heart of Enlightenment debate. It would be impossible for any educated reader to avoid contact with Spinoza's ideas. It would be easy for every metaphysician to get a grasp on the system of the Ethics. And it would be tempting, for every philosophically inclined thinker, to read Spinoza for themselves.

Spinoza's extraordinary views on freedom have never been more relevant. In 2010, for example, the United States Supreme Court declared constitutional a law that, among other things, criminalized certain kinds of speech. The speech in question need not be extremely and imminently threatening to anyone or pose “a clear and present danger” (to use Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' phrase). It may involve no incitement to action or violence whatsoever; indeed, it can be an exhortation to non-violence. In a troubling 6-3 decision, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the Court, acceding to most of the arguments presented by President Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, upheld a federal law which makes it a crime to provide support for a foreign group designated by the State Department as a “terrorist organization,” even if the “help” one provides involves only peaceful and legal advice, including speech encouraging that organization to adopt nonviolent means for resolving conflicts and educating it in the means to do so. (The United States, of course, is not alone among Western nations in restricting freedom of expression. Just this week, France — fresh from outlawing the wearing of veils by Muslim women, and in a mirror image of Turkey's criminalizing the public affirmation of the Armenian genocide — made it illegal to deny, in print or public speech, officially recognized genocides. [...] I cited the case of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project not to make a constitutional point — I leave it to legal scholars to determine whether or not the Supreme Court's decision represents a betrayal of our country's highest ideals — but rather to underscore the continuing value of Spinoza's philosophical one.

How many philosophers and historians of philosophy have gone along with the academies, burning with the desire to be able to sit there! The Dutch thought and art of the siècle d'or reside not only outside of the academies but also, to a large extent, outside of the universities. Spinoza's example serves for all the others. When declining the proposal of the excellent and honorable Sir J. L. Fabritius, who in the name of the Palatine Elector offers him a chair at Heidelberg, Spinoza reminds him that the freedom to philosophize cannot be limited in any way.