“Supposing that truth is a women-what then?” This is the very first sentence in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil . Not very often are philosophers so disarmingly explicit in their intention to discomfort the reader. In fact, one might say that the natural state of Nietzsche’s reader is one of perplexity. Yet it is in the process of overcoming the perplexity that one realizes how rewarding to have one’s ideas challenged. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche critiques the mediocre in (...) modernity and challenges the reader to accept their state of becoming and accept improvisation and creativity of the process. Nietzsche’s book is carefully designed to disorient the reader, to systematically provoke and tease her to the point of stealing away her certainties. It is challenging yet rewarding to overcome the perplexities of Nietzsche’s teachings. (shrink)

The second edition incorporates Samuel Shirley's pre-eminent translation with corrections of the typographical errors of its first edition, and a new general index. Seymour Feldman has contributed a new Bibliography and notes.

Benedict de Spinoza is one of the most controversial and enigmatic thinkers in the history of philosophy. His greatest work, Ethics (1677), developed a comprehensive philosophical system and argued that God and Nature are identical. His scandalous Theological-Political Treatise (1670) provoked outrage during his lifetime due to its biblical criticism, anticlericalism, and defense of the freedom to philosophize. Together, these works earned Spinoza a reputation as a singularly radical thinker. -/- In this book, Steinberg and Viljanen offer a concise and (...) up-to-date account of Spinoza’s thought and its philosophical legacy. They explore the full range of Spinoza’s ideas, from politics and theology to ontology and epistemology. Drawing broadly on Spinoza’s impressive oeuvre, they have crafted a lucid introduction for readers unfamiliar with this important philosopher, as well as a nuanced and enlightening study for more experienced readers. (shrink)

Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer was one of the seminal works of political philosophy in recent decades. It was also the beginning of a series of interconnected investigations of staggering ambition and scope, investigating the deepest foundations of Western politics and thought. The Use of Bodies represents the ninth and final volume in this twenty-year undertaking, breaking considerable new ground while clarifying the stakes and implications of the project as a whole. It comprises three major sections. The first uses Aristotle's discussion (...) of slavery as a starting point for radically rethinking notions of selfhood; the second calls for a complete reworking of Western ontology; and the third explores the enigmatic concept of "form-of-life," which is in many ways the motivating force behind the entire Homo Sacer project. Interwoven between these major sections are shorter reflections on individual thinkers, while the epilogue pushes toward a new approach to political life that breaks with the destructive deadlocks of Western thought. The Use of Bodies represents a true masterwork by one of our greatest living philosophers. (shrink)

In attempting to answer the question posed by this book's title, Giorgio Agamben does not address the idea of philosophy itself. Rather, he turns to the apparently most insignificant of its components: the phonemes, letters, syllables, and words that come together to make up the phrases and ideas of philosophical discourse. A summa, of sorts, of Agamben's thought, the book consists of five essays on five emblematic topics: the Voice, the Sayable, the Demand, the Proem, and the Muse. In keeping (...) with the author's trademark methodology, each essay weaves together archaeological and theoretical investigations: to a patient reconstruction of how the concept of language was invented there corresponds an attempt to restore thought to its place within the voice; to an unusual interpretation of the Platonic Idea corresponds a lucid analysis of the relationship between philosophy and science, and of the crisis that both are undergoing today. In the end, there is no universal answer to what is an impossible or inexhaustible question, and philosophical writing—a problem Agamben has never ceased to grapple with—assumes the form of a prelude to a work that must remain unwritten. (shrink)

Deleuze's interpretation of Spinozan philosophy is intrinsically related to the concept of intensity. Attributes are defined as intensive qualities, modal essences as intensive quantities or degrees of power; the life of affects corresponds to continuous variations in intensity. This essay will show why Deleuze needs the concept of intensity for his reading of Spinozan philosophy as a philosophy of expressive immanence. It will also discuss the problems that spring from this reading: in what way, if any, are modal essences modified (...) by the intensive variations of affects? How can the Spinozan conception of eternal modal essences be reconciled with the idea of affections of essence? What is the ethical import of the life of existing modes, when modal essences are considered as eternal? While these questions, in particular the last two, confront each commentator on Spinoza and demand a solution in one way or another, the essay will conclude with a question which is posed from an exclusively Deleuzian perspective: why is the concept of the virtual, which takes centre stage in Deleuze's own philosophy of immanence, missing in his account of Spinoza? (shrink)

This paper argues that Spinoza's notions of “conatus” and “power of acting” are derived by means of generalization from the notions of “force of motion” and “force of determination” that Spinoza discussed in his Principles of Cartesian Philosophy to account for interactions among bodies on the basis of their degrees of contrariety. I argue that in the Ethics, Spinoza's ontology entails that interactions must always be accounted for in terms of degrees of “agreement or disagreement in nature” among interacting things. (...) The notion of “power of acting” is used to express the extent to which a thing's conatus is aided or restrained by external causes on the basis of its degree of agreement or disagreement in nature with them. “Power of acting” generalizes the same approach and method of resolution at the basis of the notion of “force of determination” in order to account for causal interactions not only among the simplest bodies but also among more complex individuals. (shrink)

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. in the appendix to the first part of the Ethics, Spinoza famously claims that “all final causes are nothing but human fictions”. From the very beginning of its reception until the (...) present day, supporters of Spinoza’s philosophy commonly praised this attack on final causes. In fact, Spinoza emphatically introduces the Appendix by making clear that a correct... (shrink)

One of the strongest strands in Nancy's philosophy is an attempt to rethink community and the very idea of the social in a way that does not ground these ideas in some individual subject or subjectivity. The fundamental argument of this book is that being is always 'being with', that 'I' is not prior to 'we', that existence is essentially co-existence. He thinks this being together, not as a comfortable enclosure in a pre-existing group, but as a mutual abandonment and (...) exposure to each other, one that would preserve the 'I' and its freedom in a mode of imagining community as neither a 'society of spectacle' nor via some form of 'authenticity'. (shrink)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 3, Page 570-573, May 2011.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spinoza’s Cosmological Argument in the EthicsMogens Lærke (bio)1. IntroductionIn this paper,1 i discuss Spinoza’s version of the cosmological argument for the existence of God (hereafter CA), specifically as it can be found in EIP11D3.2 By a CA, I broadly understand an argument which infers a posteriori the existence of an independent, necessary being, usually identified as God, from the experience that there exists some other being, often oneself, whose (...) existence is dependent on this independent, necessary being.3 Generally, I will speak of the dependence [End Page 439] relation that any CA relies on in terms of “existential dependence.” Such a dependence relation can be considered as causal, conceptual, or other. Much of the following will be a discussion of what kind of existential dependence relation governs Spinoza’s CA. The CA in EIP11D3, as we shall see, explicitly turns on a relation of “being in” (i.e. the fact that all finite things are in some way in God and that God is in himself). I argue however that the context of the argument makes this “in-relation” inseparable from both Spinoza’s theory of causation and his theory of power, and that it consequently must be understood in the context of what Alexandre Matheron dubbed Spinoza’s “ontology of power.”4The study attempts to fill a lacuna in the study of Spinoza’s arguments for the existence of God. Don Garret, in his classic “Spinoza’s Ontological Arguments,” and Martin Lin, in his “Spinoza’s Arguments for the Existence of God,” discuss Spinoza’s various arguments for the existence of God.5 None of them, however, consider the passage in EIP11D3 which contains Spinoza’s CA, but focus exclusively on other proofs. There is something to be said for not attaching too much importance to the CA in EIP11D3. Spinoza himself, as we shall see, did not consider it his principal argument for the existence of God. Moreover, there is good reason to think that at least part of Spinoza’s argument in EIP11D3 is unsound. One could then reasonably argue for not giving it any consideration on the grounds that it is both unimportant and unsound.Nonetheless, studying the argument helps clarify what Spinoza thought in general about the necessary existence of God6 and about the relations between the infinite being, God, and finite beings such as ourselves. There is thus something to add to the existing accounts. Indeed, I believe that when we do include [End Page 440] considerations regarding this argument, we must considerably revise the general metaphysical framework that especially Lin argues underlies Spinoza’s other arguments for the existence of God. Lin’s approach is strongly informed by Michael Della Rocca’s reading of Spinoza, developed in a multitude of articles over the last decade and recently presented in full in Spinoza from 2008. Della Rocca’s work constitutes the broader context and motivation for this article. His book is an impressive and already hugely influential attempt to account for the systematic unity and fundamental principles of Spinoza’s metaphysics. To my mind, however, some of its basic interpretative choices are problematic. I have chosen to discuss the CA and the form it takes in the Ethics as a good point of departure for arguing this and for suggesting what I take to be a better approach. Following Della Rocca’s account, all dependence relations in Spinoza can be reduced to conceptual ones, including the sort of relations that the CA relies on. I maintain to the contrary that Spinoza’s version of the CA is inextricably linked to his theories of causation and power. Thus, the CA in EIP11D3 provides a good example of how Spinoza’s philosophy is an ontology of power grounded in a theory of causation, and not the sort of conceptualist ontology that Della Rocca attributes to him.72. The Cosmological Argument in Eip11d3Before scrutinizing in detail Spinoza’s CA in EIP11D3, it is important to note the subsidiary role of the argument in relation to Spinoza’s various other demonstrations of the existence of God. Contrary to Thomas Aquinas, for example, who denies that a... (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of the treatment of Leibniz's conception of substance in Heidegger's The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. I explain Heidegger's account, consider its relation to recent interpretations of Leibniz in the Anglophone secondary literature, and reflect on the ways in which Heidegger's methodology may illuminate what it is to read Leibniz and other figures in the history of philosophy.

Deleuze has suggested that Spinoza and Foucault share common concerns, particularly the notion of immanence and their mutual hostility to theories of subjective intentionality and contract-based theories of state power. This article explores these shared concerns. On the one hand Foucault's view of governmentality and its re-theorization of power, sovereignty and resistance provide insights into how humans are constituted as individualized subjects and how populations are formed as subject to specific regimes or mentalities of government. On the other, Spinoza was (...) concerned with how humans organized themselves into communities capable of self-government. In particular, his idea of immanent causality was crucial because central to his ideas of freedom and power. We argue that Spinoza's approach to power and causality prefigures ideas developed by Foucault in his theory of governmentality, especially with respect to his biopolitical rethinking of power and resistance. (shrink)

Spinoza claims both that a thing’s essence is identical to power, and that emotions are fundamentally variations in this power. The conjunction of these two theses creates difficulties for his metaphysics and ethics alike. The three main worries concern the coherence of Spinoza’s accounts of essence, diachronic identity, and emotional “bondage,” and put in question his ability to derive ethical and psychological doctrines from his metaphysical claims. In response to these difficulties, this paper offers a new interpretation of Spinoza’s account (...) of affects and his doctrine of the identity of power and essence. It shows that what is fundamental to his ontology of affects is the relation of modification or determination, a relation central to his ontology more generally. The paper argues that we cannot simply identify power and essence but should instead take affects to modify or determine essences as particular exercises of power (particular desires, appetites, and volitions). That is, Spinozistic essences should be viewed as intrinsically determinable, with affects supplying the determinations, and as consisting not in rigid sets of determinate properties, but in ranges of variable properties. (shrink)

In this paper, I put forward some remarks supporting a reading of Spinoza's metaphysics in terms of process ontology, that is, the notion that processes or activities, rather than things, are the most basic entities. I suggest that this reading, while not the only possible one, offers advantages over the traditional substance-properties interpretation. While this claim may sound implausible vis-à-vis Spinoza's language of ‘substance’ and ‘attributes’, I show that process ontology illuminates important features of Spinoza's thought and can facilitate solutions (...) to some interpretive problems. (shrink)

In the perspective of the philosophical archaeology proposed, here, the arkhé towards which archaeology regresses must not be understood in any way as an element that can be situated in chronology ; it is, rather, a force that operates in history—much in the same way in which Indoeuropean words express a system of connections among historically accessible languages, in which the child in psychoanalysis expresses an active force in the psychic life of the adult, in which the big bang, which (...) is supposed to have originated the universe, continues to send towards us its fossil radiation. But the arkhé is not a datum or a substance. It is much rather a field of bipolar historical currents within the tension of anthropogenesis and history, between point of emergence and becoming, between arch-past and present. And as such—that is to say, to the extent to which it is something that it is necessarily supposed to have factually happened, and which yet cannot be hypostatized in any chronologically identifiable event—it is solely capable of guaranteeing the intelligibility of historical phenomena, of ‘saving’ them archaeologically within a future perfect, yet not grasping its origin, but rather its history, at once finite and untotalizable. (shrink)

The work of Giorgio Agamben, one of Italy's most important and original philosophers, has been based on an uncommon erudition in classical traditions of philosophy and rhetoric, the grammarians of late antiquity, Christian theology, and modern philosophy. Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethico-political conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it. In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem of (...) pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucault's fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotle's notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty, a notion of sovereignty as power over "life" is implicit. The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmitt's idea of the sovereign's status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificed—a paradox he sees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective "naked life" of all individuals. (shrink)

In this extraordinary work Gilles Deleuze reflects on one of the figures of the past who has most influenced his own sweeping reconfiguration of the tasks of philosophy.

= = Scripture and nature: the materiality of the letter The authority of Plato, Aristotle or Socrates carries little weight with me. ...

In this major work, Blumenberg takes issue with Karl Lowith's well-known thesis that the idea of progress is a secularized version of Christian eschatology, which promises a dramatic intervention that will consummate the history of the ...

Roberto Esposito is one of leading figures in a new generation of Italian philosophers. This book criticizes the notion of the person and develops an original account of the concept of the impersonal - what he calls the third person.

"What is the pervasive character of the world? The answer is force." But, as Heidegger asks next: "What is force?" Connors sets out to answer this question, tracing a genealogy of the idea of force through the writings of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida. These thinkers try to pin down what force is, but know too that it is something which cannot be neutrally described. Their vigorously literary writings must therefore be read as much for the stylistic and rhetorical ways (...) in which they render force's powerful elusiveness as for the content of their arguments. And it is perhaps literature, rather than philosophy, which best engages with force. Certainly, for Connors, these philosophical positions are foreshadowed in remarkable detail by Shakespeare's Henry V - a play shot through with forces, imaginary, military, rhetorical and bodily. (shrink)

This work examines the unique way in which Benedict de Spinoza combines two significant philosophical principles: that real existence requires causal power and that geometrical objects display exceptionally clearly how things have properties in virtue of their essences. Valtteri Viljanen argues that underlying Spinoza's psychology and ethics is a compelling metaphysical theory according to which each and every genuine thing is an entity of power endowed with an internal structure akin to that of geometrical objects. This allows Spinoza to offer (...) a theory of existence and of action - human and non-human alike - as dynamic striving that takes place with the same kind of necessity and intelligibility that pertain to geometry. This fresh and original study will interest a wide range of readers in Spinoza studies and early modern philosophy more generally. (shrink)

_Interprets Heidegger’s phenomenological reading of Aristotle’s philosophy._.

This paper argues that God's immanent causation and Spinoza's account of activity as adequate causation (of finite modes) do not always go together in Spinoza's thought. We show that there is good reason to doubt that this is the case in Spinoza's early Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well‐being. In the Short Treatise, Spinoza defends an account of God's immanent causation without fully endorsing the account of activity as adequate causation that he will later introduce in the Ethics (...) (E3def2). We turn to an examination of how God's immanent causation relates to the activity of finite things in the Ethics. We consider two ways to think about the link between God, seen as immanent cause, and the activity of finite things: namely, in terms of entailment and in terms of production. We argue that the productive model is most promising for understanding the way in which the activity of finite things and God's immanent causality are connected in Spinoza's (mature) philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, for Spinoza, the power to produce effects through one's nature alone is the key constituent of the good life. Indeed, to exist in the strict sense is to be the causal source of effects. On this reading, a temporally long life that is entirely governed by causal factors external to one's essence is not a genuine existence.

This paper discusses Baruch de Spinoza’s cosmological argument for the existence of God (CA) as it can be found in ’Ethics’, I, proposition 11, demonstration 3. The aim of the article is to provide a reconstruction of the argument by developing the underlying metaphysical framework governing it. It is partly motivated by Michael Della Rocca’s attempt to account of fundamental principles of Spinoza’s philosophy. According to him, all dependence relations in Spinoza can be reduced to conceptual ones. I argue to (...) the contrary that Spinoza’s theories of causation and power are more fundamental than his theory of concepts. I discuss the CA as a point of departure for arguing this, and for suggesting what I consider to be a more faithful approach to Spinoza’s metaphysics as a whole. (shrink)

The research of H.-G. Gadamer and F. Volpi have showed the intimate connection between Sein und Zeit and the philosophy of Aristotle, specially the Nicomachean Ethics. The influence of other thinkers on the hermeneutical phenomenology has received less attention. Amongst the thinkers, whose contributions have not been sufficiently highlighted figures Leibniz. In this context, some relations between Leibniz’s monadological thinking and the metaphysics of Heidegger’s Dasein are considered and interpreted in this paper. It is argued that, to certain extent, an (...) appropriation of Monadology’s metaphysics takes place in Dasein’s metaphysics. (shrink)