Spinoza’s influence on the Enlightenment has been the subject of recent interest, largely kindled by the work of Jonathan Israel. Israel proposes that Spinoza provided the intellectual foundation for a pan-European movement promoting democracy and egalitarianism: the ‘Radical Enlightenment’. Like most Spinoza scholars, I am unconvinced. As others have argued, Spinoza’s philosophy provides few arguments to support the normative position Israel identifies with the Radical Enlightenment and even provides arguments against it.