These three early modern philosophers understood that minds necessarily involve ideas and patterns of thinking that are not conscious. Gil Morejon shows that in this way they sharply distinguish themselves from other major early modern thinkers whose conceptions of the mind tended to identify thinking with consciousness, such as Descartes, Malebranche and Locke. This understanding of the thinking mind as conscious remains popular even today. By contrast, Leibniz, Spinoza and Hume argue instead that thought is not, as such, a matter of consciousness. Morejon explores the significance of this insight for their conceptions of freedom and ethics. By systematically and creatively analysing the major writings of these three thinkers and placing them in the context of the history of Western philosophy, he shows that together they provide us with a metaphysics of ideas that is uniquely helpful for thinking through important problems in contemporary political theory and philosophy of mind. In particular, it allows us to understand how it is possible for people to act against their own interests and in spite of their consciously knowing better.

Francois Zourabichvili wrote two major contributions to Spinoza scholarship. While Une physique de la pensee (PUF, 2002) concerns Spinoza's epistemology and metaphysics of ideas, Spinoza's Paradoxical Conservatism focuses on his political philosophy. Zourabichvili's interpretation of Spinoza's political philosophy is radically unlike the established tradition. In this book he explores Spinoza's philosophical theory of change across three different studies. First, within ethical transition, secondly within the image of the infant in Spinoza's work and third dealing with absolute monarchy which was dominant during Spinoza's time and provided his polemical writings with a concrete target. The book's challenging and carefully-argued claims will be of serious interest to anyone working in political theory, early modern philosophy or contemporary French thought.

Alexandre Matheron has worked and written substantially on Spinoza since the publication of his influential 1969 masterpiece 'Individu et communaute chez Spinoza' (Editions de Minuit) and he is considered one of the most important interpreters of Spinoza's philosophy in the 20th century. The 20 essays gathered here focus on the themes of ontology, knowledge, politics and ethics in Spinoza, his predecessors and his contemporaries. This is a crucial collection for anyone seeking to understand 20th-century continental Spinozism.

Examines the role of literature in representing and critiquing the exclusion from law as an enduring tactic of state power Outlaws are often viewed as historical figures of popular resistance, but there is another side to legal exclusion. In offering readings from two bodies of literature not normally read together -- the literature of outlawry and the literature of espionage -- this book shows that a substantial body of writing within these genres serves an important purpose in representing and critiquing the longstanding use of legal exclusion as a means of supporting state power.