The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues
both timely and timeless. The Stone is a forum for contemporary
philosophers on issues both timely and timeless. Spinoza was
incited to write the “Treatise” when he recognized that the
Dutch Republic, and his own province of Holland in particular,
was wavering from its uncommonly liberal and relatively tolerant
traditions. He feared that with the rising political influence
in the 1660s of the more orthodox and narrow-minded elements in
the Dutch Reformed Church, and the willingness of civil
authorities to placate the preachers by acting against works
they deemed “irreligious,” “licentious” and “subversive,” the
nearly two decades-long period of the “True Freedom” was coming
to an end. The “Treatise” is both a personally angry book — a
friend of Spinoza’s, the author of a radical treatise, had
recently been thrown in prison, where he soon died — and a very
public plea to the Dutch republic not to betray the political,
legal and religious principles t