Spinoza’s Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Demonstrated in a Geometrical Manner) is a notoriously difficult and forbidding book. Both its unfamiliar scholastic terminology and the geometrical manner in which its argument is presented provide formidable barriers to even the philosophically trained reader, and undoubtedly help to explain the great diversity of ways in which it has been interpreted. Thus, rather than plunging immediately into the argument of the work, I shall attempt to sketch the historical context in which Spinoza wrote and, in light of this, to introduce the central themes of his philosophy, or at least those dealt with in the Ethics. This will be the task of the present chapter, which is intended to provide the context for the more systematic and detailed analysis contained in the following five chapters.