ABSTRACT
The political philosophy of Spinoza is the first statement in history of the standpoint of a democratic liberalism. The liberal political philosophy, despite the power of its economic rationality, was confronted, none the less, by the fact that the majority of Dutch people, especially among the lower classes, was often neither liberal nor rational. The great dominant fact, which posed the primary problem for Spinoza's political reflections, was the experiment in the republican form of government in the Netherlands. The ethics of political participation was surmounting, in Spinoza's mind, that of political withdrawal. The commercial prosperity of Amsterdam, Spinoza held, was the outcome of its religious and intellectual freedom. In the seventeenth century, religious passions entangled themselves in the political and economic disputes of men. Spinoza called on the political-religious history of the Netherlands to bear witness to the baneful effects of religious ideology in politics.
