Spinoza for Our Time: Politics and Postmodernity (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780231160469)

Antonio Negri, one of the world's leading scholars on Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) and his contemporary legacy, offers a straightforward explanation of the philosopher's elaborate arguments and a persuasive case for his ongoing relevance. Responding to a resurgent interest in Spinoza's thought and its potential application to contemporary global issues, Negri demonstrates the thinker's special value to politics, philosophy, and related disciplines.

Negri's work is both a return to and an advancement of his initial affirmation of Spinozian thought in The Savage Anomaly. He further defends his understanding of the philosopher as a proto-postmodernist, or a thinker who is just now, with the advent of the postmodern, becoming contemporary. Negri also connects Spinoza's theories to recent trends in political philosophy, particularly the reengagement with Carl Schmitt's "political theology," and the history of philosophy, including the argument that Spinoza belongs to a "radical enlightenment." By positioning Spinoza as a contemporary revolutionary intellectual, Negri addresses and effectively defeats twentieth-century critiques of the thinker waged by Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, and Giorgio Agamben.

Author: Antonio Negri
ISBN-10: 0231160461
ISBN-13: 9780231160469
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/24/2013
Pages: 152
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 7.10h x 5.70w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 10/15/2013 pg. 105
Choice 05/01/2014