Spinoza and the Politics of Freedom

In Spinoza's philosophy, human freedom is seen as intrinsically social and politically committed. This book offers a new reading of Spinoza's Latin that presents fresh textual findings from critical editions and engages with diverse hermeneutic traditions. It critically examines key concepts such as the conatus, desire, freedom, collective power, voluntary servitude, and the politicization of joyous affects. The book contextualizes Spinoza's accounts within past and present critical theory and re-establishes him as a collectivist philosopher. It argues that Spinoza's vision of human freedom and power is realized socially and collectively through desire, friendship, imagination, and transforming social institutions. This book contributes to the continental tradition of Spinozism and offers a fresh perspective on debates about democracy, the multitude, populism, and power.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 30 November 2022
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Reconceives human freedom in Spinoza as intrinsically social and politically committed

Offers a reading fluent in Spinoza's Latin that presents new textual findings from recent critical editions of his works as well as emerging French scholarship.

Critically engages with a diverse set of hermeneutic traditions in Spinoza studies, including historicist, continental, and analytic approaches, as well as those of different political backgrounds like Marxism, feminism, liberalism, and deep ecology.

Presents a new analysis of key Spinozan and neo-Spinozist concepts like the conatus, desire, freedom, collective power, the multitude, voluntary servitude, and the politicisation of joyous affects.

Contextualises and debates Spinoza's accounts of collective power, democracy, agency, and desire with past and present critical theory.

Combining careful historical and textual analysis with comparisons across past and present political theory, this book re-establishes Spinoza as a collectivist philosopher.

Taking as its starting point the formative role of fear in Spinoza's thought, Dan Taylor argues that Spinoza's vision of human freedom and power is realised socially and collectively. He offers a new critical study of the collectivist Spinoza, where we can become freer through desire, friendship, the imagination, and transforming the social institutions that structure a given community.

A freedom for one and all, attuned to the vicissitudes of human life and the capabilities of each one of us to live up to the demands and constraints of our limited autonomy.

This book develops and enriches the continental tradition of Spinozism, drawing on a range of untranslated materials and bringing a fresh perspective to key debates. It repositions Spinoza as the central thinker of desire and freedom and demonstrates his enduring relevance to contemporary political and philosophical debates.

Weight: 470g
Dimension: 156 x 234 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474478403