Most interpreters of Spinoza treat him as a pure metaphysician, a grim determinist, or a stoic moralist, but none of these descriptions captures the author of the Ethics, argues Steven B. Smith in this intriguing book. Offering a new reading of Spinoza's masterpiece, Smith asserts that the Ethics is a celebration of human freedom and its attendant joys and responsibilities and that it should be placed among the great founding documents of the Enlightenment.

Two aspects of Smith's book distinguish it from other studies. First, it treats the famous "geometrical method" of the Ethics as a form of moral rhetoric, a model for the construction of individuality, of the modern self. Second, it presents the Ethics as a companion to Spinoza's major work of political philosophy, the Theologico-Political Treatise, each work helping to fill out and explore the problem of freedom. The Ethics in particular, says Smith, is one of the most insightful studies of the moral and psychological dimensions of liberty, of the awesome possibilities of free human agency.

The book situates Spinoza's life and work within the context of early modernity and Jewish thought. It also examines the role of his ideas in shaping a set of complex reactions against the Enlightenment that began in the late eighteenth century with F. H. Jacobi and was given powerful expression in the twentieth century with Leo Strauss's critique of Spinoza. Affirming the centrality of Spinoza for both critics and defenders of modernity, the book will be of value to students of political theory, philosophy and intellectual history.