The Spinoza-Machiavelli Encounter

A first book, and a masterful strike! This rigorous investigation, based on careful textual readings and imaginative interpretations, beautifully demonstrates how the "encounter" reverberates on both sides. Politics, history, ontology of time form the multiple dimensions of a dialogic production of ideas which, for 500 years now, never ceased to question the dominant representations of modernity. * Étienne Balibar, Author of Spinoza and Politics *
The relationship with Machiavelli is not just an element of Spinoza’s ethico-political research, but a deep thread that spans the whole Spinozist metaphysics. Following this thread reveals unexpected inteterpretative opportunities. Morfino offers a highly original understanding of the interweaving of natural causality and historical time, finding in the relation between the two philosophers a new germination of political realism and an anti-humanist concept of eternity. This interweaving opens up a new space of possibilities for the history – and future – of individuals and institutions. Does Spinoza offer, then, a paradoxical philosophy of history? Potentially, but only if we read it as a reflection on the aleatory connection between freedom and necessity and a route toward an open horizon. Drawing on his profound understanding of Machiavelli and Spinoza, Morfino not only offers a new historiographic frame for these two fundamental thinkers, but a strong and effective critical approach that brings these new possibilities closer. * Toni Negri, Euronomade *