Book 11 - Gilles Deleuze "Spinoza - Practical Philosophy"

[jazzy_dave]

Gilles Deleuze "Spinoza - Practical Philosophy" (City Lights)





This is a perfect point of entry for the newcomer to Spinoza as well as to Deleuze. Deleuze' 'small' book on Spinoza is more accessible than his other monographies (on Hume, Nietzsche, Bergson, Kant, etc.), but nonetheless of such profundity that no one ought to be disappointed. It is highly innovative and 'to the point' concerning the practical implications of the philosophy of Spinoza. Written as a text of introduction the book makes the reader intimate with the 'spirit' of Spinoza without going into too much detail concerning scholarly interpretation of this or that proposition, corollary, scholium, etc. One of the books great merits is a 60+ page alphabetically ordered dictionary that accounts for the main concepts of Spinoza in a concentrated manner that leaves exegetical digressions out of sight. Welcome to the world of Spinoza through the eyes of one of the 20th century's 'sharpest knives in the drawer'! (A Danish proverb..).

Comments

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

Spinoza: philosopher much admired by women in P.G. Wodehouse novels, his works frequently recommended to the men they wish to improve.

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

I covered him in an old Open University course years back!

[thespian15.livejournal.com]

Do I dare admit I don't have a clue what Spinoza is? :o
Hugs, Jon

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

Baruch Spinoza, born Benedito de Espinosa; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677, later Benedict de Spinoza) was a Dutch philosopher. The breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until many years after his death. By laying the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and, arguably, the universe, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy. His magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes's mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers. In the Ethics, "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely.".

[thespian15.livejournal.com]

You said a mouth full. :o