"Until the publication of Jacobi's Briefe über die Lehre von Spinoza in 1785, Spinoza was a notorious figure in Germany. For more than a century the academic and ecclesiastical establishment had treated him “like a dead dog” as Lessing later put it. The Ethica was published in Germany in 1677, and the Tractatus Theologico-politicus in 1670 (though it appeared anonymously, Spinoza was known to be the author). Until the middle of the eighteenth century it was de rigueur for every professor and cleric to prove his orthodoxy before taking office; and proving one's orthodoxy demanded denouncing Spinoza as a heretic. Since attacks on Spinoza became a virtual ritual, there was an abundance of defamatory and polemical tracts against him. Indeed, by 1710 so many professors and clerics had attacked Spinoza that there was a Catalogus scriptorum Anti-spinozanorum in Leipzig. And in 1759 Trinius counted, probably too modestly, 129 enemies of Spinoza in his Freydenkerlexicon. Such was Spinoza's reputation that he was often identified with Satan himself. Spinoza was seen as not only one form of atheism, but as the worst form. Thus Spinoza was dubbed the "Euclides atheisticus', the 'princips atheorum."
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Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), Chap. 2 : Jacobi and the Pantheism Controversy
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza
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Baruch Spinoza
philosopher, Bible translator, grinder of lenses
1632 – 1677 · Dutch Republic
Benedictus de Spinoza (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a social and metaphysical philosopher known for the elaborate development of his monist philosophy, which has become known as Spinozism. Controversy regarding his ideas led to his excommunication from the Jewish community of his native Amsterdam. He was named Baruch ("blessed" in Hebrew) Spinoza by his synagogue elders and known as Bento de Spinoza or Bento d'Espiñoza, but afterwards used the name Benedictus ("blessed" in Latin) de
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