"The book recounts how a series of French philosophers used Spinoza's rationalism to erect a bulwark against the nominally irrationalist tendencies of Husserl's and Heidegger's thought in France. From its beginnings in the interwar years in philosophy of science and the history of philosophy, this Spinozist rationalism would prove foundational for Louis Althusser's rethinking of Marxism and Gilles Deleuze's ambitious metaphysics. There has been a renewed enthusiasm for Spinozism in various quarters of late by those who would see it as a kind of neo-vitalism or philosophy of life and affect. Peden bucks the trend by tracking a decisive and neglected aspect of Spinoza's philosophy—his rationalism—in a body of thought too often presumed to have rejected reason. In the process, he demonstrates that the critical resources of Spinoza's rationalism have yet to be exhausted today." - Jason Adams, August 7, 2014
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Knox Peden (Author)
Book Description
Publication Date: June 4, 2014
Spinoza Contra Phenomenology fundamentally recasts the history of postwar French thought, which is typically presumed by detractors and celebrants alike to have been driven by a critique of reason indebted above all to Nietzsche and Heidegger. Although the reception of German phenomenology gave rise to many of the most innovative developments in French philosophy, from existentialism to deconstruction, not everyone in France was pleased with this German import. The book recounts how a series of French philosophers used Spinoza's rationalism to erect a bulwark against the nominally irrationalist tendencies of Husserl's and Heidegger's thought in France. From its beginnings in the interwar years in philosophy of science and the history of philosophy, this Spinozist rationalism would prove foundational for Louis Althusser's rethinking of Marxism and Gilles Deleuze's ambitious metaphysics. There has been a renewed enthusiasm for Spinozism in various quarters of late by those who would see it as a kind of neo-vitalism or philosophy of life and affect. Peden bucks the trend by tracking a decisive and neglected aspect of Spinoza's philosophy—his rationalism—in a body of thought too often presumed to have rejected reason. In the process, he demonstrates that the critical resources of Spinoza's rationalism have yet to be exhausted today.
Product Details
File Size: 1568 KB
Print Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Stanford University Press (June 4, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00LBWK4IO
Publisher: Stanford University Press (June 4, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00LBWK4IO
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
This is a very well written, very careful study of a French thematic that has been overshadowed by the better known existentialist and phenomenological stories. It deals primarily with what could be called the anti-Cartesian approach to reality (beyond subjectivity) through (originally) the model of Spinoza. Much of the later part of the work is very dense, in its exposition of the vagaries of Althusser and Deleuze. I found the first two chapters the most interesting, since they retrieve the role of mathematical speculation (mathematics naturally raising the classic question of what the ontological status of mathematical truths might be); and I particularly appreciated the extraordinary story of Cavailles in the earlier part of this period. For a general reader, even more exposition of the basic background later history (Althusser, Deleuze, etc.) would have helped, though the details that were provided on French Communist Party politics were very interesting and valuable. This is not a book for people just coming to modern French philosophy, phenomenology, or Spinoza for that matter! -- you need to be very familiar with the "state of play".