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..).

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..).