Spinoza and Leibniz contributed to the history of philosophy in very different ways.
Spinoza was deplored and was regarded as an awful atheist though in reality he was not. He simply dismissed some of the absurdities of the religion of his day.
With the later Romantic Movement, Herder and Goethe enable Spinoza to come into his own however.
He had not been a person of great ambition or great self-affirmation.
However, Spinoza was a person of great sincerity.
He was very genuine and was admired for this.
It is unfortunate that he did not devote more time and effort to technical philosophy.
It is interesting that Bertrand Russell only wrote one biography in his lifetime and the subject of that biography was Spinoza.
Whereas Spinoza adopted science and recommends a religious attitude, Leibniz approaches the issues from the opposite perspective. He focused on religion and then moves to science.
For him the world is by nature "religious" and far more so than science recommends. In short Leibniz argued that there is an infinitely intelligent being behind all of reality.
