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Some years ago I was invited to address the inmates of a newly founded institution for the rehabilitation of drug addicts. I chose to speak to them about the philosophy of Spinoza — in particular, his conception of human bondage. Although most of them had very little schooling, their experience of bondage to drugs made them especially receptive to Spinoza's thought, and gave to his thought, in turn, a startling contemporary relevance. A similar relevance might have been recognized in other aspects of Spinoza's understanding of the whole range of experiences of anxiety, compulsion and guilt.
Such experiences and how to cope with them are in our time associated with the name of Freud. While historians of philosophy have often said that “to form a correct estimate of Spinoza's worth we must keep in view his relation to Descartes”, (1) to form a correct estimate of his contemporary relevance we would do well to keep in view his relation to Freud. This relation, though far from elusive, has been noted less often than one might expect. There are a few pages listing points of similarity to Freud in Stuart Hampshire's book on Spinoza, scattered references to Spinoza in the writings of Erich Fromm, and an occasional article on the relation of the two men in the philosophical journals (2).
I am not referring to any purported psychoanalysis either of Spinoza or of his thought (3), a futile and profitless undertaking, at best. My theme is, rather, the significance of a certain body of