Overview

Spinoza and Marx would seem to be two very opposed philosophers. Spinoza was interested in contemplating eternal truths of nature while Marx was interested in the history of capital. Franck Fischbach suggests that by reading the two together we may better understand both history and nature, as well as ourselves, making possible a new understanding of human nature. Rather than see history and nature as opposed, history is nothing but the constant transformation of nature. Central to this transformation is a new understanding of alienation not as loss of the self in a world of objects, but as loss of objects in a world that disconnects us from nature and social relations, leaving us isolated as a subject. The isolated individual, the kingdom within a kingdom, as Spinoza put it, is not the condition of our liberation but the basis of our subjection.

Full Product Details

9781399507660

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Twentieth-century Marxism has often turned to Spinoza to breathe new life into Marx's thought (think of Louis Althusser and Antonio Negri). In a similar vein, Franck Fischbach offers us an astonishing new reading of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts in the light of Spinoza, simultaneously generating an original reading of Spinoza in the light of Marx. At the intersection of these two interpretive movements lies a novel conception of alienation, which, in Fischbach's hands, becomes a sharp theoretical tool for reading the present."" -Vittorio Morfino, University of Milan-Bicocca

"""Twentieth-century Marxism has often turned to Spinoza to breathe new life into Marx's thought (think of Louis Althusser and Antonio Negri). In a similar vein, Franck Fischbach offers us an astonishing new reading of Marx's 1844 Manuscripts in the light of Spinoza, simultaneously generating an original reading of Spinoza in the light of Marx. At the intersection of these two interpretive movements lies a novel conception of alienation, which, in Fischbach's hands, becomes a sharp theoretical tool for reading the present."" -Vittorio Morfino, University of Milan-Bicocca"

Author Information

Franck Fischbach is Professor of the History of German Philosophy at the Sorbonne (University of Paris, One). He is the author of Après la production. Travail, nature et capital (Vrin, 2019), La privation de monde. Temps, espace et capital (Vrin, 2011) and L'être et l'acte. Enquête sur les fondements de l'ontologie moderne de l'agir, (Vrin, 2002). Jason Read is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine, USA. He is the author of The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present (2003), The Politics of Transindividuality (2016) and The Production of Subjectivity: Marx and Philosophy (2022).

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available