Spinoza's Geographical Ethics

Joe Gerlach

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Examines and animates the geographical ethics of Spinoza’s philosophy

Animated by contemporary ethical and political concerns, from the rights of nature in Ecuador to British political satire
Harnesses conceptual innovation across geography, philosophy and the geohumanities
Advances the revitalisation of interest in Spinoza across contemporary human geography
Foregrounds the geophilosophy at the heart of Spinoza’s metaphysics

Harnessing the enigmatic and radical philosophy of Dutch rationalist Baruch Spinoza, this book examines and animates the occluded geography beating at the heart of his work. Essays attending to matters of space, nature, hope, aesthetics and politics recast the Dutch rationalist in geographical terms, spotlighting Spinoza’s re-thinking and re-writing of earth and world. Advancing a renaissance in Spinozist scholarship, the book argues that Spinoza offers conceptual techniques to better apprehend and negotiate the affects and passions catalysing twenty-first century societal, environmental and political transformation. The stakes of a geographical Spinoza, for ethics, politics, ecology and thought itself, could not be higher.

Contents

Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Note on the Text

Writing Earths Otherwise: Spinoza’s Geography

Chapter One: Cartography

Chapter Two: Right

Chapter Three: Hope

Chapter Four: Chiaroscuro

Chapter Five: Compact

Coda: Under the aspect of geography

References
Notes
Index

Reviews

Razor-sharp and gleefully acerbic, Joe Gerlach delivers a brilliant and uncompromising corrective to a politics too often tethered to optimism and hope as ready-made responses to the crises that beset us. Spinoza’s Geographical Ethics truly frames a Spinoza for our time—one that reckons with the irreducible ambivalence of existence, warts and all.
– David Bissell, The University of Melbourne

With a compelling combination of erudition, conceptual invention, and a singular and unique voice, Spinoza’s Geographical Ethics performs a melancholic geography of positive and negative dispositions by reading Spinoza against the grain. The result is the most significant geographical engagement with Spinoza, as well as a bold challenge to ethical thinking and practice in and beyond geography.
– Ben Anderson, Durham University

About the Author

Joe Gerlach is Associate Professor in Cultural Geography at the University of Bristol. He is a cultural geographer whose research interests are centred conceptually on geophilosophy, micropolitics, posthuman ethics, and Spinoza. He is co-editor of Why Guattari? A Liberation of Politics, Cartographies and Ecologies (Routledge, 2021).

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