Affirmation and Resistance in Spinoza - (Spinoza Studies) by Laurent Bove (Paperback)

About the Book

Offers a powerful and influential interpretation of Spinoza's conatus

Book Synopsis

Offers a powerful and influential interpretation of Spinoza's conatus - the essential striving that defines each of us - as fundamentally strategic.
Spinozism must be understood as a dynamic ontology that necessarily unfolds on practical terrain. Laurent Bove analyses Spinoza's theory of affects as rooted in Habit, generating the constituent power of human beings, commonwealths, nations and multitudes. By interpreting sovereignty as a power that emerges through the active resistance of the always singular body of the multitude, Bove discovers in Spinoza a radically new approach to the State, to citizenship and to history.

Review Quotes

Affirmation and Resistance in Spinoza is a totally new perspective on the relation between ontology and politics in Spinoza. By identifying with clarity and breathtaking acuity the notion of strategy as the negotiation, always contested, between the causality that determines us and the striving for self-preservation, Bove does not only offer a radical new reading of Spinoza, but also a vision of a radical politics of resistance much needed today.-- "Dimitris Vardoulakis, author of Spinoza, the Epicurean"