Spinoza in Post-Marxist Philosophy

Katja Diefenbach is Professor of Cultural Philosophy at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt, Germany. She is a member of the scientific committee of Sive Natura: International Center for Spinozan Studies, Bologna, and the German Spinoza Society. She won Geisteswissenschaften International’s special award in 2021 and is a co-initiator of the research project Perception, Jurisdiction, and Valorization in Colonial Modernity as well as a member of the editorial board of the Berlin publishing house collective b_books. Katja has published widely in German and also in English. She is co-editor of Encountering Althusser: Politics and Materialism in Contemporary Radical Thought (Bloomsbury, 2013) and she has contributed to Radical Philosophy. This is her first book to appear in English. Gerrit Jackson studied literature and philosophy and works as a translator on a regular basis for a number of museums; longstanding clients include the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Lenbachhaus, Munich. His published translation projects include Christoph Menke, Force: A Fundamental Concept of Aesthetic Anthropology (Fordham University Press, 2012), Karl Schlögel, In Space We Read Time: On the History of Civilization and Geopolitics (Bard Graduate Center, 2016), Ukraine: A Nation on the Borderland (London: Reaktion, 2018) and Peter Geimer, Inadvertent Images: A History of Photographic Apparitions (University of Chicago Press, 2018).

Exegetically rigorous and boldly argued, this book is one of the finest contributions to recent German-language Spinoza scholarship and a notable essay in contemporary Spinozist Marxism. It has had a substantial influence on the German academic discussion, and its translation is certain to captivate a discerning international readership.

• AcknowledgmentsReference ConventionsA Note on the TranslationIntroduction: Althusser’s OvertureWhich Spinoza?Spinoza Between Structuralism and Post-MarxismThe Concept of Immanent Causality in Althusser‘[…] A Knowledge, in That Which Permits Us to Think Against Hegel, of That Which Remains Hegelian’Immanence Immanent to Itself: From Althusser to DeleuzePost-Marxist Spinoza Studies Between the Poles of Negri and BalibarI. Of the Agency of the Multitude: Negri’s Interpretation of the Conatus Doctrine1. Philosophy of JoyThe Excess of the Positive PassionsNatural Right without State of NatureAs Much Right as PowerThe Dethematisation of the Sad PassionsLabour Power and ConatusThe Real-Imaginary Constitution of Society in Balibar2. The Pantheistic Undercurrent of MaterialismThe Conatus of Metaphysics Cassirer’s SpinozaNegri’s Deleuze: The Birth of Materialism from Pantheism3. The Controversy over the Doctrine of AttributesTranscendent AttributesThe First Propositions of the Ethics and the Enigma of Their MeaningOntologically One, Formally Different: The Doctrine of Attributes in Gueroult and DeleuzeNegri’s Re-Idealisation of Spinoza4. Of the Conatus PrincipleConatus Doctrine and Anti-Finalist AnthropologySpinoza with Hobbes: Egalitarianism of AbilityLast-Ditch Teleological Defences in FénelonCommunism of ConatusFrom the Physics of Bodies to the Doctrine of Essences: The Anarchy of the Conatus PrincipleConsubstantiality of Affect and Reason: The Three Kinds of Life and KnowledgeFrom Knowledge of Effects to Common Notions and Essential Ideas: Excess of Joy and Becoming-CauseInversion of the Mind-Body ParallelismMaterialism of Thinking and Exaltation of Being5. Spinoza contra Hobbes: Possessive Transindividualism‘The first anti-Hobbes that the history of Western political thought presents’Passions and InterestsBeing Able to Kill: Hobbes’s Anthropology of FearThe Sacrifice of Society in Leviathan6. Which Eternity, Whose Blessedness?A Vitalism That Incorporates NihilismNeither Master nor Servant: Matheron’s Conception of Ego-AltruismThe Socialisation of the Affects through Processes of ImitationThe Annulment of Affective AmbivalenceBecoming-Eternal and the Genesis of the Third Kind of KnowledgePolitics of the Third KindII. History and Ontology: Holland’s Historical Untimeliness1. The Savage Anomaly of the United ProvincesHuizinga’s Moderation, Negri’s IncongruityThe Dutch Model of Accumulation‘County without a Count’: The Republic of the RegentsSpinoza, a Heretic among HereticsHeterodoxies in the Amsterdam Jewish CommunityMarrano PowerDerrida contra Negri: Creation, Crypt2. Of Spinoza’s Fear of His Own ThinkingBalibar on Spinoza’s FearBetween Sects and RegentsOn the Power of the Political-Theological State Apparatus: Spinoza’s Critique of LiberalismThe Religion of Obedience and the Controversy over Grace within ProtestantismThe Exclusion of the Multitudo from Democracy3. Colonial Hallucinations: Marronage and Political ViolenceSpinoza and Caliban: The Lepers of This EarthAtlantic Diaspora: Amsterdam Sephardim in PernambucoHenrique Dias, Maroon CommanderRacism and Anti-Semitism in the Dutch-Portuguese AtlanticThe Immanent Transformation of Political ViolenceIII. Of the Physics of the Political: Balibar and the Paradoxes of Spinozist Philosophy1. Ambivalences of the Political Theory of the StateProposition 37 of Part IV of the EthicsThe Complexity of Real-Imaginary SocialisationThe Transindividuation of Multitude and StateTheory between Government and Revolution2. Wherein Lies the Power of the ‘Multitude Led as If by One Mind’?Potentia Multitudinis, Quae Una Veluti Mente DuciturMatheron with Foucault: The Birth of Democracy from the Lynch MobPolitics and Mass ImaginationThe Theory of National Ingenia in the Theological-Political TreatiseFrom Rule of Law to Power StateFrom Monos to Demos: The Production of Mass IntellectualityWherein Does the Power of the ‘Multitude Led as If by One Mind’ Lie?3. Active Matter: Spinoza’s Speculative MaterialismBalibar on the Relation between Physics and MetaphysicsThings Bring Themselves into ExistenceIs There a Quiet Rule of the Essences?4. The Birth of a Non-Cartesian EpistemologyThe Differentiality of the Simple Physics of the Transindividual, Primacy of Relations: The Interpretation of the Corpora Simplicissima in Deleuze and GueroultThe Infinite Modulation of NatureFrom Analysis to SynthesisBachelard’s Quiet SpinozismHomonymy of Concepts of OrderSpinoza contra Descartes: From the Finalism of Nature to the Voluntarism of MindIV. Spinoza or Descartes: Immanent or Impossible Cause1. Heterodox Readings of Descartes in Structuralism and PhenomenologyGueroult and Alquié between Descartes and SpinozaAlquié’s Descartes: The Trauma of the Thinking ThingGueroult’s Objection: Descartes according to the Order of ReasonsSum Cogitans, Sum Ambulans: Wherein Lies the Ego Sum’s Primacy?The In/Comprehensibility of God: Alquié and Gueroult Trade Accusations of TheologyStructuralism and Phenomenology: Crossed ReadingsCavaillès’s Anti-Phenomenological Rallying Cry: Against the ‘Philosophy of Consciousness’Derrida contra Foucault: ‘Whether I am mad or not, Cogito, sum.’Différance and Cartesian CausalityFoucault contra Derrida: Let Us Not Forget – History2. Lacan’s Detour through Descartes: Negative Potentiality of BeingThe Cogito as Subject of the UnconsciousCogito without SumCausality through ObjectBeing without ThinkingThe Two Walls of the ImpossibleThe Excess of the DriveThe Impossibility of RepetitionThe Potentiality of the Negative, or The Myth of the LamellaFrom Mēden to Den: ‘Less Than Nothing’Excrement and ExpropriationCerteau’s Lacan: Between Mysticism and Torture3. The Cogito as Subject of the Revolution: Žižek Reading LeninPolitics of the Death DrivePhilosophical Fictionalisation of LeninAnti-Evolutionist MaterialismSacrifice and AdministrationGuattari’s Lenin: The Megalomania of the Subjugated GroupPolitics of Violence, Government of ThingsExacerbating the Class Struggle from the Height of the Party4. Deleuze and Badiou between Descartes and Spinoza Althusser with DeleuzeThe Event in Badiou and Deleuze: Disjunction or Turn?Badiou’s Minimal MarxismThe Causa Errans of the VoidThe Grace of the EventDeleuze contra Badiou: Beyond One and ManyDeleuze’s Rewriting of Transcendental PhilosophySpinoza with Duns ScotusTranscendental Empiricism and Difference of Intensity‘Is There Such a Thing as a Deleuzian Politics?’Politics of PotentialityConclusion: Thinking, DifferingBibliography