Als je wilt dat het heden verschilt van het verleden, bestudeer dan het verleden. - Benedictus de Spinoza

Spinoza redefines the problem of Modern philosophy, which is the conquest of the world and the liberation of humanity, and destroys both its multiple antinomies and the continually resurgent separation (dualistic, transcendental, etc.) in the theory of knowledge and history, in the same way that criticism has always destroyed Zenonian sophism: moving forward, putting reality in motion. Spinoza's philosophy is born from the radicalization of the ontological paradox of being: in the recognition that the hypostasis, the only possible hypostasis, is that of the world and of the development of its necessity from physics to practice. It is a conception of the world that immediately produces, as if from its own basis, a completely modern conception of science and worldly knowledge, both technical and liberatory. It is a radically materialistic conception of being and of the world.

I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.

[Ramin Jahanbegloo's question: Hegel was very much influenced by Spinoza. Don't you think so?] I think Hegel was much more influenced by Aristotle than by Spinoza. As for the influence of Spinoza on Hegel, it exists. But the Spinoza of the eighteenth century is not Spinoza; the Spinoza of Herder, the Spinoza of Goethe, is not Spinoza, nor is the Spinoza of Diderot. In the case of the Germans his world turns into an active pantheism; “Deus sive Natura” turns into a quasi-mystical doctrine, a romantic approach remote from the dry light of Spinoza.