Shortly after his death in 1677, Spinoza's works were placed on the Catholic Church's Index of Banned Books. Condemnations soon appeared, such as Aubert de Versé's L'impie convaincu (1685). According to its subtitle, in this work "the foundations of [Spinoza's] atheism are refuted". In June 1678 —just over a year after Spinoza's death—the States of Holland banned his entire works, since they “contain very many profane, blasphemous and atheistic propositions.” The prohibition included the owning, reading, distribution, copying, and restating of Spinoza's books, and even the reworking of his fundamental ideas.[27]
For the next hundred years, if European philosophers read this so-called heretic, they did so almost entirely in secret. How much forbidden Spinozism they were sneaking into their diets remains a subject of continual intrigue. Locke, Hume, Leibniz and Kant all stand accused by later scholars of indulging in periods of closeted Spinozism.[28] At the close of the 18th century, a controversy centering on the Ethics scandalized the German philosophy scene.
The first known translation of the Ethics into English was completed in 1856 by the novelist George Eliot, though not published until much later. The book next appeared in English in 1883, by the hand of the novelist Hale White. Spinoza rose clearly into view for anglophone metaphysicians in the late nineteenth century, during the British craze for Hegel. In his admiration for Spinoza, Hegel was joined in this period by his countrymen Schelling, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In the twentieth century, the ghost of Spinoza continued to show itself, for example in the writings of Russell, Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Deleuze. Among writers of fiction and poetry, the influential thinkers inspired by Spinoza include Coleridge, George Eliot, Melville, Borges, and Malamud.
The first published Dutch translations were by the poet Herman Gorter (1895)[29] and by Willem Meyer (1896).[30]
