Edwin Curley is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Michigan. His books include A Spinoza Reader, Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza's "Ethics," and Spinoza's Metaphysics. He is also the author of Descartes Against the Skeptics and the editor of an edition of Hobbes's Leviathan. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The Collected Works of Spinoza provides, for the first time in English, a truly satisfactory edition of all of Spinoza's writings, with accurate and readable translations, based on the best critical editions of the original-language texts, done by a scholar who has published extensively on the philosopher's work.

The centerpiece of this second volume is Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, a landmark work in the history of biblical scholarship, the first argument for democracy by a major philosopher, and a forceful defense of freedom of thought and expression. This work is accompanied by Spinoza’s later correspondence, much of which responds to criticism of the Theological-Political Treatise. The volume also includes his last work, the unfinished Political Treatise, which builds on the foundations of the Theological-Political Treatise to offer plans for the organization of nontyrannical monarchies and aristocracies.