Spinoza's Geographical Ethics - (Geotheory) by Joe Gerlach (Hardcover)

About the Book

Examines and animates the geographical ethics of Spinoza's philosophy.

Book Synopsis

Harnessing the enigmatic and radical philosophy of Dutch rationalist Baruch Spinoza, this book examines and animates the occluded geography beating at the heart of his work. Essays attending to matters of space, nature, hope, aesthetics and politics recast the Dutch rationalist in geographical terms, spotlighting Spinoza's re-thinking and re-writing of earth and world. Advancing a renaissance in Spinozist scholarship, the book argues that Spinoza offers conceptual techniques to better apprehend and negotiate the affects and passions catalysing twenty-first century societal, environmental and political transformation. The stakes of a geographical Spinoza, for ethics, politics, ecology and thought itself, could not be higher.

Review Quotes

With a compelling combination of erudition, conceptual invention, and a singular and unique voice, Spinoza's Geographical Ethics performs a melancholic geography of positive and negative dispositions by reading Spinoza against the grain. The result is the most significant geographical engagement with Spinoza, as well as a bold challenge to ethical thinking and practice in and beyond geography.--Ben Anderson, Durham University

Razor-sharp and gleefully acerbic, Joe Gerlach delivers a brilliant and uncompromising corrective to a politics too often tethered to optimism and hope as ready-made responses to the crises that beset us. Spinoza's Geographical Ethics truly frames a Spinoza for our time--one that reckons with the irreducible ambivalence of existence, warts and all.--David Bissell, The University of Melbourne