Spinoza Now
Dimitris Vardoulakis
Abstract
What does it mean to think about, and with, Spinoza today? This book asserts the importance of Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence for contemporary cultural and philosophical debates. Engaging with Spinoza’s insistence on the centrality of the passions as the site of the creative and productive forces shaping society, this book critiques the impulse to transcendence and regimes of mastery, exposing universal values as illusory. The book pursues Spinoza’s challenge to abandon the temptation to think through the prism of death in order to arrive at a truly liberatory notion of freedom. The chapter ... More
What does it mean to think about, and with, Spinoza today? This book asserts the importance of Spinoza’s philosophy of immanence for contemporary cultural and philosophical debates. Engaging with Spinoza’s insistence on the centrality of the passions as the site of the creative and productive forces shaping society, this book critiques the impulse to transcendence and regimes of mastery, exposing universal values as illusory. The book pursues Spinoza’s challenge to abandon the temptation to think through the prism of death in order to arrive at a truly liberatory notion of freedom. The chapters here extend the Spinozan project beyond the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy to encompass all forms of life-affirming activity, including the arts and literature. The chapters, taken together, suggest that “Spinoza now” is not so much a statement about a “truth” that Spinoza’s writings can reveal to us in our present situation. It is, rather, the injunction to adhere to the attitude that affirms both necessity and impossibility.
Keywords:
Spinoza,
immanence,
contemporary cultural debate,
passions,
creative forces,
productive forces,
universal values,
prism of death,
necessity,
impossibility
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780816672806 |
| Published to Minnesota Scholarship Online: August 2015 |
DOI:10.5749/minnesota/9780816672806.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Dimitris Vardoulakis, editor
Professor, English and Comparative Literature, Occidental College
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