Between Hegel and Spinoza

Recent<br/>work in political philosophy and the history of ideas presents Spinoza and<br/>Hegel as the most powerful living alternatives to mainstream Enlightenment<br/>thought. Yet for many philosophers and political theorists today one must<br/>choose between Hegel or Spinoza. As Deleuze's influential interpretation<br/>maintains Hegel exemplifies and promotes the modern cults of death while<br/>Spinoza embodies an irrepressible appetite for living. Hegel is the figure of<br/>negation while Spinoza is the thinker of pure affirmation. Yet between<br/>Hegel and Spinoza there is not only opposition. This collection of essays seeks<br/>to find the suppressed kinship between Hegel and Spinoza. Both philosophers<br/>offer vigorous and profound alternatives to the methodological individualism of<br/>classical liberalism. Likewise they sketch portraits of reason that are<br/>context-responsive and emotionally contoured offering an especially rich appreciation<br/>of our embodied and historical existence. The authors of this collection<br/>carefully lay the groundwork for a complex and delicate alliance between these<br/>two great iconoclasts both within and against the Enlightenment tradition.