The Handbook of Individualism

Why do you not name Spinoza? Spinoza’s life was admirable. He lived modestly, on a few grains of groats and a bit of milk soup. Refusing the chairs that were offered him, he always earned his daily bread through manual labor. His moral doctrine is a stoic mysticism. But too exclusively intellectual, he professed a strange absolutist politics and, in the face of power, only reserved the freedom to think. In any case, his name puts one in mind more of a great metaphysical power than of a great moral beauty.