ABSTRACT
Spinoza as a moral and political philosopher was the proponent of a radical and extremely consistent version of seventeenth-century Dutch naturalism. As a consequence of the burgeoning bourgeois self-confidence during the heyday of their Golden Age, Dutch philosophers, attracted by Ciceronian republican moral ideas prepared the way for a philosophy of man and society in which natural processes and mechanisms had an important role to perform. Political philosophy may well be seen as one of the most important topics in Spinoza's philosophical system, as far as modern Spinoza research is concerned. The central contentions of Spinoza's political philosophy itself point to its relevance in the overall philosophical system. Freedom, being the core concept of the Ethics, refers as by logical necessity to the social and political conditions of its realization.
