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There have been many Spinozas over the centuries: atheist, romantic pantheist, great thinker of the multitude, advocate of the liberated individual, and rigorous rationalist. The common thread connecting all of these clashing perspectives is Spinoza's naturalism, the idea that humanity is part of nature, not above it. In this sophisticated new interpretation of Spinoza's iconoclastic philosophy, Hasana Sharp draws on his uncompromising naturalism to rethink human agency, ethics, and political practice. Sharp uses Spinoza to outline a practical wisdom of "renaturalization," showing how ideas, a

There have been many Spinozas over the centuries: atheist, romantic pantheist, great thinker of the multitude, advocate of the liberated individual, and rigorous rationalist. The common thread connecting all of these clashing perspectives is Spinoza's naturalism, the idea that humanity is part of nature, not above it. In this sophisticated new interpretation of Spinoza's iconoclastic philosophy, Hasana Sharp draws on his uncompromising naturalism to rethink human agency, ethics, and political practice. Sharp uses Spinoza to outline a practical wisdom of "renaturalization," showing how ideas, actions, and institutions are never merely products of human intention or design, but outcomes of the complex relationships among natural forces beyond our control. This lack of a metaphysical or moral division between humanity and the rest of nature, Sharp contends, can provide the basis for an ethical and political practice free from the tendency to view ourselves as either gods or beasts. Sharp's groundbreaking argument critically engages with important contemporary thinkers-including deep ecologists, feminists, and race and critical theorists-making Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization vital for a wide range of scholars

A reply to Rorty's article "The Politics of Spinoza's Vanishing Dichotomies.". [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

This essay examines Elizabeth Grosz's provocative claim that feminist and anti-racist theorists should reject a politics of recognition in favor of "a politics of imperceptibility." She criticizes any humanist politics centered upon a dialectic between self and other. I turn to Spinoza to develop and explore her alternative proposal. I claim that Spinoza offers resources for her promising politics of corporeality, proximity, power, and connection that includes all of nature, which feminists should explore.

This paper offers an interpretation of Spinoza's theory of ideas as a theory of power. The consideration of ideas in terms of force and vitality figures ideology critique as a struggle within the power of thought to give life support to some ideas, while starving others. Because ideas, considered absolutely on Spinoza's terms, are indifferent to human flourishing, they survive, thrive, or atrophy on the basis of their relationship to ambient ideas. Thus, the effort to think and live well requires attention to the collective dimensions of thinking life, where "collective" refers to a transpersonal accumulation of ideal power that includes human as well as nonhuman beings. Because it is a matter of force and power rather than truth and falsity, the project of thinking otherwise entails an effort to displace and to reorganize ideas that is best undertaken by coordinating and galvanizing many thinking powers.

"Much of the history of western ethical thought has been composed of debates about the bases of "the good life." It has typically been taken for granted that "the good life" is achievable only by (certain) human beings. Feminists and Continental philosophers have long challenged both the descriptive accuracy and the prescriptive hold of the idea of the human life whose goodness is under discussion. Beyond the normative demands implicit in the idea of the good life, or the properly human life, more and more philosophers are now interrogating the question of life from within a broader frame. Feminist Philosophies of Life signals the importance of distinctively feminist reflections upon matters of shared concern among living beings. For many of the contributors to this volume, it is not enough to expose the tendency of discourses to normalize and exclude differently-abled, racialized, feminized, and gender nonconforming people, although this task remains central. It is also necessary to ask what life is or how life is constituted. What are the conditions under which life on earth is possible? To what extent do we share the struggles and needs of other living beings? And what is it about living bodies that enables them to develop in so-called "social" or "spiritual" ways? How, as feminist philosophers, do we respond to the precarious existences of people experiencing disability, prisoners, fetuses and pregnant women, murdered and missing indigenous women, and of life itself on a planet that is rapidly being impacted by climate change?"--