This book is the fruit of twenty-five years of study of Spinoza by the editor and translator of a new and widely acclaimed edition of Spinoza's collected works.

"With an astonishing erudition... and in a direct no-nonsense style, Bennett expounds, compares, and criticizes Spinoza’s theses.... No one can fail to profit from it. Bennett has succeeded in making Spinoza a philosopher of our time." --W. N. A. Klever, _Studia Spinoza_.

Suggests an open system of psychological exploration to cut through accepted norms of morality, language, and politics.

This paper is an attempt to identify the source of Deleuzian thought, that is, the "plane" or "image" from which it unfolds despite its many twists and turns. This, I believe, is immanence. The thread of immanence appears most clearly in What Is Philosophy? but can be shown to have been at work from the very start. But immanence is not just the plane of Deleuzian thought. It is also, and above all, that of philosophy itself, especially in its difference (...) from religion and onto-theology. This in turn means that, following Spinoza and his univocal ontology, Deleuzian thought can be seen as completing or realizing the conditions of philosophy itself. (shrink)