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BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

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Introduction<br />

certainly the historical, politically engaged Spinoza (and by the Dutch to<br />

write him out of Dutch history) may perhaps best be explained by the<br />

expansion of reading and education and the view that children, students and<br />

the general public should be shielded as far as possible from such‘atheistic’,<br />

anti-Scriptural, democratic and libertarian concepts, ideas which down to<br />

the 1940s continued to be generally regarded in the world as deeply<br />

subversive,licentious and shocking.How farSpinoza’s thought is su⁄ciently<br />

relevant today to merit widespread revival and study in universities is<br />

something about which I leave readers, in the true tradition of his subversive<br />

critical-historical-empirical philosophy,to make up their own minds.<br />

xxxiv

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