Plural Temporality

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Published Nov 2016
ISBN: 9789004270541

Transindividuality and the Aleatory Between Spinoza and Althusser

Vittorio Morfino, University of Milano-Bicocca

Plural Temporality traces out a dynamic historical relationship between the texts of Spinoza and Althusser. It interrogates Spinoza’s thought through Althusser’s and vice versa, with the intention of opening new horizons for the question of materialism. From the fragmentary intuitions Althusser produced about Spinoza throughout his life, Morfino builds a new and comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza’s philosophy. In the later sections of the book, this interpretation is put to work to help to clarify some of the more problematic aspects of the late Althusser’s philosophy, thereby offering new concepts for a materialist position in philosophy and the development of Marxist theory.

Biographical note

Vittorio Morfino is a Senior Researcher in the History of Philosophy at the Università di Milano-Bicocca. He has been a visiting professor at the Universidade de São Paulo and the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is the author of Il tempo e l’occasione. L’incontro Spinoza Machiavelli (Milano 2002, Paris 2012), Incursioni spinoziste (Milano 2002), Il tempo della moltitudine (Roma 2005, Paris 2010) and Spinoza e il non contemporaneo (Verona 2009). He is an editor of Quaderni materialisti and of Décalages.

Readership

All interested in radical philosophy, history of philosophy, Marxism.

Table of contents

Preface: The Multitude and the Moving Train, Jason E. Smith
Introduction

1 Causa Sui or Wechselwirkung: Engels between Hegel and Spinoza
2 Spinoza: An Ontology of Relation?
3 ‘The World by Chance’: On Lucretius and Spinoza
4 The Primacy of the Encounter over Form
5 The Syntax of Violence between Hegel and Marx
6 The Many Times of the Multitude

Bibliography
Index