SearchMy accountHelpBasket0 items

Spinoza Studies

Power, Necessity and Freedom in Spinoza

By Emilia Giancotti and Daniela Bostrenghi

Pre-order
Format

£105.00

Pre-order

Published 30 November 2026

About this book

The first translation of Emilia Giancotti’s work into English

  • Assembles the most influential articles written by the preeminent scholar of Spinoza studies in Italy, one who changed the very style of Spinoza scholarship
  • Unites the examination of political themes – democracy, freedom, power – with metaphysical themes – the absolute, determinism, power, materialism – without compartmentalising them
  • Stages encounters between Spinoza and Hobbes, Spinoza and Marx
  • Shows us how to actualise Spinoza for our times: how to think the anomaly of Spinoza as an absolute contemporary

Two key features mark out Emilia Giancotti’s approach as unique: with a Marxist background, she focused heavily on political themes – liberty, democracy, power, the state and the individual; she also developed a historiographical approach and engaged in philological work to establish solid and reliable texts as the very basis of her interpretation of Spinoza’s thought. Hers is the most authoritative Italian translation of the Ethics.

Giancotti’s specific contribution to Spinoza studies was that of uniting the philological rigour of her approach to the texts to a lucid yet passionate reading of the Dutch philosopher’s thinking.

For three decades Emilia Giancotti was the central figure in Spinoza Studies in Italy. She organised international conferences on Spinoza and participated in international debates, during a time in which Spinoza studies were often confined within national boundaries.

This collection of her most influential essays brings the work of this preeminent scholar of Spinoza studies in Italy to a wider English-speaking audience for the first time.

Reviews

Emilia Giancotti was one of the most original and influential interpreters of Spinoza in the twentieth century. Her work remains indispensable for understanding the profound unity of Spinoza's ontology, politics and conception of freedom. A landmark edition that finally brings Giancotti's enduring scholarship to English-speaking readers.
This volume brings together—making them available in English for the first time—the essays on Spinoza by the most important 20th-century Italian interpreter of his work. A Marxist, rationalist and materialist, Giancotti explores, with philological rigor and militant passion, the theoretical knots of Spinozism—from the concept of God to that of freedom, from that of power to that of democracy—restoring to us the full systematic force of a body of thought that remains indispensable to contemporary critical theory.
Table of contents

Introduction: Reason as a tool for freedom. Emilia Giancotti interpreter of Spinoza
Daniela Bostrenghi

Translator's Notes and Acknowledgements
Oliver Feltham

Abbreviations
Essays by Emilia Giancotti

Chapter 1. Freedom, Democracy and Revolution in Spinoza: Notes for a Discussion
Chapter 2. On the Question of Materialism in Spinoza
Chapter 3. Humanity as a Part of Nature
Chapter 4. Necessity and Freedom: Reflections on Texts by Spinoza
Chapter 5. Realism and Utopia: Limits to Political Freedom and the Prospective of Liberation in Spinoza’s Political Philosophy
Chapter 6. The Birth of Modern Materialism in Hobbes and Spinoza
Chapter 7. The Theory of Absolutism in Hobbes and Spinoza
Chapter 8. Spinoza's God
Chapter 9. Theory and Practice of Freedom in the Light of Spinozian Ontology
Chapter 10. On the Concepts of Potenza and Potere in Spinoza
Chapter 11. On the Problem of Infinite Modes
Chapter 12. Religion and Politics in Spinoza
Chapter 13. On the Spinozian Concept of Virtue
Chapter 14. Individual and State in the Early Theorizations of the Modern State: Hobbes and Spinoza in Comparison
Chapter 15. Giovanni Gentile: Editor and Interpreter of the Ethics

Index of names
Index

About the contributors

Emilia Giancotti

Well-known at the international level as the author of the famous Lexicon Spinozanum (The Hague, 1970), Emilia Giancotti (Reggio Calabria 1930-Rome 1992) was a moving force in the rebirth of Spinoza studies in Italy through her efforts in the fields of translation and commentary of the Dutch philosopher, first with the revision of the Droetto translation of the Theologico-Political Treatise (Turin: 1972) and then with the translation and commentary of The Ethics (Rome: 1988). We are also indebted to her for the foundation, in 1987, along with Paolo Cristofolini and Filippo Mignini, of the “Italian Association of the Friends of Spinoza” (Associazione Italiana degli Amici di Spinoza), of which she was first president. She was a tireless organizer of colloquiums, conferences and seminars, amongst which the first international conference on Spinoza in Italy “Spinoza in the 350th anniversary of his birth” (Spinoza nel 350° anniversario della nascita) in Urbino from the 4th-8th October 1982, and the “Hobbes and Spinoza: Science and Politics” conference on the occasion of Hobbes’ 400-year anniversary (Hobbes è Spinoza: scienza e politica) held in Urbino from the 14th to the 17th October, 1988. From the first year of its foundation onwards, she was part of the scientific committee of the journal Studia Spinozana, for which she edited, along with Manfred Walther and Alexandre Matheron, the first volume of 1985: “Spinoza’s Philosophy of Society”.

Daniela Bostrenghi

Daniela Bostrenghi is a researcher in Theoretical Philosophy at the Department of Humanities of the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, where she teaches "Theories of Morals and Politics". At the time a student and collaborator of Emilia Giancotti, her research areas concern in particular Spinoza, Hobbes, the theory of the imagination and its ethical-political implications in modern thought. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the ‘Societas Spinozana’ (Rome).

Oliver Feltham

Oliver Feltham is Professor of Philosophy at the American University of Paris. His training in Sydney and Paris was in contemporary French philosophy, psychoanalysis, theatre and eco-design. During his career he has used this training to develop an innovative method and apply it to the question of the ontology of political action in early modern philosophy, aesthetics and metaphysics. His current research concerns the genealogy of the concept of political action in modernity, and the relation between action, time and the collective imagination.

More in this series

See the series →