Spinoza has an unusual historical position. For practical purposes we can disregard his direct historical influence. What took place at his meetings with Leibniz in 1676, and the subsequent effects on the work of Leibniz, can only be guessed. There were no other noticeable effects on other important philosophers in the seventeenth century. The emergence of Spinozism in the German Romantic movement has its own interest, but it has little to do with the true force of Spinoza's case.

The explanation for this lack of direct influence is not at all obscure. The Theological-Political Treatise, like any shocking book, sold extremely well. It engendered a torrent of refutations and denunciations. A personal influence remained significant in Protestant groups in the Netherlands, but otherwise for a century Spinoza and his work were unmentionable except in terms of abuse or ridicule. And it has to be said that he himself did not do much to prevent this. Despite the rhetorical tone of the Theological-Political Treatise, he was no propagandist and even less of a diplomat. Almost all his writing was difficult, with minimal exposition and with virtually no attempt to please or reassure the reader.

Alan Donagan remarked that two of the best commentators, Sir Frederick Pollock and Edwin Curley, ‘rescue Spinoza for the twentieth century by restoring him to the seventeenth’. The varnish applied by nineteenth-century idealism has been thoroughly stripped from the portrait. Curley has also done a good deal to destroy a stereotype of Spinoza as a ‘rationalist’ in any meaningful sense in relation to knowledge.