the ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all p… - Benedictus de Spinoza

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

...[H]e was one of the most illustrious advocates of religious toleration; when his landlords, members of a peaceful and tolerant Mennonite community, asked him whether he thought their religion was good, he said yes, it was good and they should stick to it. For although in his writings he urged us to strive towards a mystical sort of union with God, towards intellectual love and philosophical reconciliation with whatever fate should bring, he knew that his advice was meant for only a very select few, and that the rest, the common folk who are incapable of subordinating their lives to reason, would still need advice about how to lead a good life – the kind of advice that religion provides. This was fine as long as the religion was one that preached peace and unity, and did not breed fanaticism, hatred or despotic government. In the whole history of philosophy there is no figure as lonely as Spinoza.

Few philosophers have been so mythologised as the 17th century Jew, Baruch Spinoza. Legends abound regarding his life, thought and character. He has been claimed as hero and as villain by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities. During his life he was widely attacked for his 'blasphemous' and 'heretical' opinions on God, the bible, and religion, even suffering one of the most vitriolic cherem (excommunication) ever issued by the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community. But after his death he was appropriated by others who believed that within his complex writings could be found a deeply religious instinct. To German Romantics like the poet Novalis, he was "a God intoxicated man", while Goethe called him simply theissimus, 'most theistic'. So what was Spinoza's attitude to God? Certainly no one who read his work thoroughly could argue that he held a traditional theistic conception of a divine being, the providential God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In the Ethics, his philosophical masterpiece, Spinoza says that God is 'immanent' in nature, not some supernatural entity beyond the world. But does this mean that we can describe him as a pantheist, as someone who believes that God is revealed in every aspect of the natural world that lies around us? This was certainly a popular interpretation.