Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Matysik has written a thoughtful, deeply researched, and elegantly structured intellectual history that fastens our attention on certain key chapters in the European reception of Spinoza’s philosophy.
When Spinoza Met Marx is an excellent book, and it deserves considerable attention from readers in modern European intellectual history and from anyone interested in the modern fortunes of Marxism and posthumanist social theory.” * Peter E. Gordon, coauthor of 'Authoritarianism: Three Inquiries in Critical Theory' *
“
When Spinoza Met Marx is essential reading. It fills a gap in the history of European Spinozism, and it provides a new context for the histories of Marxism and socialism—one that it is crucial to understand as scholars and political actors seek to adapt Marxist frameworks to ongoing matters of social and environmental justice. It also provides a new intellectual history of nineteenth-century German political thought that is truly innovative in its approach.” * Knox Peden, author of 'Spinoza Contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze' *
Table of ContentsAbbreviations, Citational Shortcuts, and a Note on Translation
Preface
Introduction: When Spinoza Met Marx, or Activity in a Nonhumanist Key
Chapter 1. The Headless Revolution: Heinrich Heine’s Ethos of “Vigorous Repose”
Chapter 2. Love and Friendship: Berthold Auerbach and Moses Hess on Understanding and Activity
Chapter 3. When Marx Met Spinoza: Determination, Contingency, and Substance
Chapter 4. Spinoza against Bismarck, or Johann Jacoby and the Pursuit of Monist Democracy
Chapter 5. An Ethics of Natural Necessity: Jakob Stern, Free Thought, and German Social Democracy
Chapter 6. What Is “Nature”? Georgi Plekhanov and the Dilemmas of Consistent Materialism
Conclusion: The Persistence of Vigorous Repose
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
