ABSTRACT
Benedict Spinoza, born in Amsterdam and a descendant of Jews who fled to Holland to escape the Inquisition in Portugal, is one of the forerunners of a secular-based, liberal democracy. His view of liberal democracy is designed to advance among citizens the free use of reason as the basis for their determining judgments of personal and public matters. Democracy, which embraces Spinoza's preference, can be seen as a progressive step away from a "dark" period. For Spinoza, then, there is direct link between the use of reason to discern knowledge a basic principle of the Enlightenment and of modern science and the achievement of democratic citizenship. None of the aforementioned should be construed, however, to mean that Spinoza objects to religion because for him it is a fundamental part of a decent culture along with philosophy. Spinoza's liberal democracy would encourage as well as benefit from a civil society that maintained itself as a separate sphere of groups and associations.
