Other philosophical connections[edit]

Many authors have discussed similarities between Spinoza's philosophy and Eastern philosophical traditions. Few decades after the philosopher's death, Pierre Bayle, in his famous Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697) pointed out a link between Spinoza's alleged atheism with "the theology of a Chinese sect", supposedly called "Foe Kiao",^[174] of which had learned thanks to the testimonies of the Jesuit missions in Eastern Asia. A century later, Kant also established a parallel between the philosophy of Spinoza and the think of Laozi (a "monstrous system" in his words), grouping both under the name of pantheists, criticizing what he described as mystical tendencies in them.^[175]


In 1863, Elijah Benamozegh purported to establish that the main source of Spinoza's ontology is Kabbalah.^[176] The most recent research in the field seems to vindicate that claim.^[177]


The 19th-century German Sanskritist Theodor Goldstücker was one of the early figures to notice the similarities between Spinoza's religious conceptions and the Vedanta tradition of India, writing that Spinoza's thought was "... so exact a representation of the ideas of the Vedanta, that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus, did his biography not satisfy us that he was wholly unacquainted with their doctrines..."^[178][179] Max Müller also noted the striking similarities between Vedanta and the system of Spinoza, equating the Brahman in Vedanta to Spinoza's 'Substantia.'^[180]