The term Spinozism has almost invariably been used, by both defenders and detractors, to refer to doctrines held or allegedly held by Benedict de Spinoza. Unlike "Platonism," for example, it has not generally been used to refer to a developing doctrine arising out of Spinoza's philosophy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the term was frequently used to disparage various types of atheistic doctrines that were held to be attributable to Spinoza. For almost a century after his death, his work was neglected by philosophers, execrated by orthodox theologians of diverse denominations, and slighted even by freethinkers. It is not always possible, however, to distinguish between those genuinely opposed to Spinoza's alleged atheism and those who really espoused atheism while pretending to disparage it.

Bayle and the "Philosophes"

Spinoza's early reputation rested almost entirely on the long article in Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire philosophique (1697), for some time the only...