A01=Dan Taylor
affect
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Dan Taylor
automatic-update
Baruch Spinoza
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HPS
Category=QDTS
collective action
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
desire
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
freedom
Language_English
PA=Available
politics
power
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781474478403
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 05 Dec 2022
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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 how the conflicts within his work inform contemporary theoretical discussions around democracy, the multitude, populism and power.
Dan Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Thought at the Open University. He specialises in political theory and British politics. He’s the author of three books including Spinoza and the Politics of Freedom (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), and Island Story: Journeys Through Unfamiliar Britain (shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2017). In 2023 he was awarded the title BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.
