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Spinoza Studies

Ethics and Politics in Spinoza and Sartre

By Gaye Çankaya Eksen

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Published 30 November 2026

About this book

Reads Spinoza and Sartre together as complementary thinkers of political transformation

  • The first and only comparative study of the philosophical theories of Spinoza and Sartre
  • Discusses in detail the consequences and implications of the ground-breaking work on Spinoza by Alexandre Matheron
  • Proposes striking parallels across the history of philosophy for rethinking the relation between ethics and politics

Gaye Çankaya Eksen examines the philosophical relation between Spinoza and Sartre and presents a rigorous study of their respective political and ethical theories.

Inspired by an enigmatic line in the work of the distinguished Spinoza scholar, Alexandre Matheron, Eksen explores the social contract theory of Thomas Hobbes to argue that Spinoza and Sartre produce strikingly similar rejections of the classical account of the passage from the state of nature to civil society. Despite the obvious and well-known differences between the two thinkers who are separated by centuries of philosophical history, Eksen persuasively argues that both Spinoza and Sartre develop sophisticated political theories from their shared emphasis on the irreducibility of the singular existence of each human being. Politics, for these two thinkers, becomes the domain of ongoing struggles to realise, in ever greater ways, human freedom.

Reviews

The 20th century read Spinoza through the prism of structuralism, thereby contrasting the Dutch philosopher with Sartre’s philosophy of freedom. By examining Spinoza’s political and historical philosophy in light of the Sartrean model of the transition from series to group, Gaye Çankaya Eksen reveals, on the contrary, that the question of the constitution and preservation of freedom lies at the very heart of Spinoza’s political philosophy. This approach offers a highly original and illuminating perspective on the internal resonance between two philosophies that appeared diametrically opposed.
Table of contents

Translator’s Introduction
By David Maruzzella

Preface by Chantal Jaquet

Abbreviations

Introduction: Reopening the Question of Community: Spinoza, Sartre and the Critique of Contractualism

Part I Political Thought in Spinoza and Sartre: Response to Alexandre Matheron’s Question

Chapter 1 The Classical Problematic of the Passage from the State of Nature to Civil Society: Hobbes

Chapter 2 The Concepts of Seriality and Group in Sartre’s Political Thought
-Seriality and the Fused Group
-The Question of the Group’s Permanence

Chapter 3 Spinoza’s Account of the Passage from the State of Nature to Civil Society
-The Role of Indignation as Motor of Political Society

Chapter 4 Spinoza and Sartre’s Shared Political Horizon: The Constitution of Political Society as Collective Liberation
-Preliminary Parallels
-The Irreducibility of Each Individual and Each Human Plurality. Originary Experience, exis and ingenium
-The Transformation of the “Subjected Multitude” into the “Free Multitude”, or the Structural Necessity of the Transformation of Quantity into Power


Part II The Articulation of the Politics of Singularities and the Ethics of Generosity in Spinoza and Sartre

Chapter 5 The Surviving Group and the Permanence of the Free Multitude: Staying Together by and for the Freedom of All

Chapter 6 From Shared Reflective Freedom to Individual Authenticity
-The Articulation of Political Reflection and the Ethics of Pure Reflection in Sartre
-Authenticity and Pure Reflection
-The Being of Value and the Idea of Singularity in Being and Nothingness
-Social Value: Generosity

Chapter 7 Peace and the Concept of Strength of Character in Spinoza: The Intersection of Politics and Ethics
-The Political Concept of Peace in Spinoza and its Roots in the Ethics
-Adequate Understanding of Being in Sartre and Spinoza: Pure Reflection and Strength of Character as Terms for the Condition of Possibility of Free Collective Life

Conclusion: Generosity and the Continuous Construction of Community

Works Cited
Index

About the contributors

Gaye Çankaya Eksen

Gaye Çankaya Eksen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Galatasaray University. She earned her PhD in Philosophy in 2013 through a joint doctoral program between Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and Galatasaray University. A revised version of her doctoral dissertation was published in French under the title Spinoza et Sartre. De la politique des singularités à l’éthique de générosité (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017). In collaboration with Turhan Ilgaz, she translated Jean-Paul Sartre’s L’Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness) into Turkish. Her research and publications specialise in early modern and contemporary philosophy, with a particular emphasis on the thought of Baruch Spinoza and Jean-Paul Sartre. Her work addresses issues in ethics, political philosophy, phenomenology, environmental philosophy, and contemporary debates concerning non-human animals.

David Maruzzella

David Maruzzella is a writer, editor and translator based in Chicago. He earned his PhD in philosophy from DePaul University and holds an MA in philosophie contemporaine from the École normale supérieure. He translated Ethics and Politics in Spinoza and Sartre by Gaye Cankaya Eksen and with Gil Moréjon, Politics, Ontology and Knowledge in Spinoza by Alexandre Matheron.

Chantal Jaquet

Chantal Jaquet is Professor of Philosophy at the Université Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne. She is the author of numerous books on Spinoza in French including Sub specie aeternitatis: étude des concepts de temps, durée et éternité chez Spinoza (1997), Spinoza ou la Prudence (1997), L’unité d corps et de l’esprit: Affects, actions, passions chez Spinoza (2004), Les expressions de la puissance d’agir chez Spinoza (2005), and Spinoza à l’oeuvre, composition des corps et force des idées (2017).

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