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Until the last century, it was generally agreed that Maimonides was a great defender of Judaism, and Spinoza—as an Enlightenment advocate for secularization—among its key opponents. However, a new scholarly consensus has recently emerged that the teachings of the two philosophers were in fact much closer than was previously thought. In his perceptive new book, Joshua Parens sets out to challenge the now predominant view of Maimonides as a protomodern forerunner to Spinoza—and to show that a chief reason to read Maimonides is in fact to gain distance from our progressively secularized worldview.

Offering an innovative and illuminating new reading of Spinoza and Novalis

This rigorously researched study reframes our understanding of the intellectual currents in Germany around 1800 through a careful reinterpretation of its key thinker, Novalis, in conversation with Spinoza’s philosophy. Siarhei Biareishyk presents an alternative to the standard narrative that resolutely links emergent modernity and secularization to philosophical “idealism” by showing how Spinozan materialism informs the scientific experiments, metaphysical inquiries, and political debates of Novalis and his contemporaries. Shifting our focus away from the historical interpretation of Novalis as a mystic and theorist of subjectivity, Biareishyk elaborates on the Spinozan materialist strain in Novalis in three key domains: ontology and the conception of nature, theories of singularity and individuation, and the concept of the political. He brings current romanticist scholarship into conversation with contemporary discussions of Spinoza in continental philosophy, in the Marxist tradition particularly, demonstrating that the Spinoza–Novalis encounter provides a viable alternative—in its articulation of causality, dialectics, and the political—to the dominant conceptual apparatuses of both Kant and Hegel.

Through newly transcribed and translated lectures, Deleuze explores Spinoza’s philosophy concerning questions of good and evil and humanity’s potential for realizing a full life

Available for the first time in English, On Spinoza presents the annotated transcripts of Gilles Deleuze’s fifteen seminars on the seventeenth-century philosopher’s Ethics, delivered at Experimental University Center at Vincennes. Spinoza’s ambitious treatise was central to Deleuze’s thought, and his course provides an accessible framework for understanding the vitality of Spinoza’s philosophy.

In an informal classroom setting, Deleuze addresses fundamental aspects of Spinoza’s thought: How does one undo the negativity of harmful passions such as hate, resentment, and envy? How can a system of moral judgment based on good and evil be replaced by a more sophisticated ethics of the good and the bad? And since such questions commit Spinoza to a new theory of signs, Deleuze also delves into his thinking on how these signs should guide human existence and the differences between concepts of eternity, experienced in the here and now, and the immortality promised by philosophy and religion.

Building gradually from session to session, Deleuze shows how Spinoza rejects a hierarchical reality dominated by an authoritarian and impenetrable God, instead proposing a world ruled by light and reason in which all beings are equal. Annotated by David Lapoujade and including recorded exchanges with Deleuze’s students, On Spinoza offers a rare window into Deleuze’s teaching, offering readers a guide for linking Spinoza to other philosophers—including Deleuze himself.

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