Father of the Enlightenment and the last guardian of the medieval world, Spinoza made a brilliant attempt to reconcile the conflicting moral and intellectual demands of his epoch and to present a vision of man as simultaneously bound by necessity and eternally free. Ostracized by the Jewish community in Amsterddam to which he was born, Spinoza developed a political philosophy that set out to justify the secular state ruled by a liberal constitution, and a metaphysics that sought to reconcile human freedom with a belief in scientific explanation. Here, Roger Scruton presents a clear and systematic analysis of Spinoza's thought and shows its relevance to today's intellectual preoccupations.

斯宾诺莎是启蒙运动之父，也是中世纪世界的最后一位守护者，他做出了杰出的尝试，以调和他那个时代相互冲突的道德和智力要求，并提出了一个同时被必然性约束和永恒自由的人类愿景。斯宾诺莎被他所出生的阿姆斯特丹的犹太社区所排斥，他发展了一种政治哲学，旨在为由自由主义宪法所统治的世俗国家进行辩护，并发展了一种形而上学，试图将人类自由与对科学解释的信仰相协调。在这里，罗杰-斯克鲁顿对斯宾诺莎的思想进行了清晰而系统的分析，并展示了它与当今知识界关注的问题的相关性。