Jason E Smith – författare

Recentwork in political philosophy and the history of ideas presents Spinoza andHegel as the most powerful living alternatives to mainstream Enlightenmentthought. Yet, for many philosophers and political theorists today, one mustchoose between Hegel or Spinoza. As Deleuze's influential interpretationmaintains, Hegel exemplifies and promotes the modern "cults of death," whileSpinoza embodies an irrepressible "appetite for living." Hegel is the figure ofnegation, while Spinoza is the thinker of "pure affirmation". Yet, betweenHegel and Spinoza there is not only opposition. This collection of essays seeksto find the suppressed kinship between Hegel and Spinoza. Both philosophersoffer vigorous and profound alternatives to the methodological individualism ofclassical liberalism. Likewise, they sketch portraits of reason that arecontext-responsive and emotionally contoured, offering an especially rich appreciationof our embodied and historical existence. The authors of this collectioncarefully lay the groundwork for a complex and delicate alliance between thesetwo great iconoclasts, both within and against the Enlightenment tradition.

Recentwork in political philosophy and the history of ideas presents Spinoza andHegel as the most powerful living alternatives to mainstream Enlightenmentthought. Yet, for many philosophers and political theorists today, one mustchoose between Hegel or Spinoza. As Deleuze's influential interpretationmaintains, Hegel exemplifies and promotes the modern "cults of death," whileSpinoza embodies an irrepressible "appetite for living." Hegel is the figure ofnegation, while Spinoza is the thinker of "pure affirmation". Yet, betweenHegel and Spinoza there is not only opposition. This collection of essays seeksto find the suppressed kinship between Hegel and Spinoza. Both philosophersoffer vigorous and profound alternatives to the methodological individualism ofclassical liberalism. Likewise, they sketch portraits of reason that arecontext-responsive and emotionally contoured, offering an especially rich appreciationof our embodied and historical existence. The authors of this collectioncarefully lay the groundwork for a complex and delicate alliance between thesetwo great iconoclasts, both within and against the Enlightenment tradition.

In recent decades digital devices have reshaped daily life, while tech companies’ stock prices have thrust them to the forefront of the business world. In this rapid, global development, the promise of a new machine age has been accompanied by worries about accelerated joblessness thanks to new forms of automation. Jason E. Smith looks behind the techno-hype to lay out the realities of a period of economic slowdown and expanding debt: low growth rates and an increase of labour-intensive jobs at the bottom of the service sector. He shows how increasing inequality and poor working conditions have led to new forms of workers’ struggles. Ours is less an age of automation, Smith contends, than one in which stagnation is intertwined with class conflict.