Spinoza's political thought has been subject to a significant revival of interest in recent years. As a response to difficult times, students and scholars have returned to this founding figure of modern philosophy as a means to help reinterpret and rethink the political present. Spinoza's Authority makes a significant contribution to this ongoing reception and utilization of Spinoza's political thought, and takes the 1670 text, Theologico-Political Treatise, as a primary focal point. By taking the concept of authority as an original framework, this books asks: How is authority related to ethics, ontology, and epistemology? What are the social, historical and representational processes that produce authority and resistance? And what are the conditions of effective resistance?

Spinoza's Authority features a roster of internationally established theorists of Spinoza's work, and covers key elements of Spinoza's political philosophy, including: questions of authority, the resistance to authority, sovereign power, democratic control, and the role of Spinoza's "multitudes".

A. Kiarina Kordela is Professor of German and Director of the Critical Theory Program, at Macalester College, and honorary adjunct professor at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.

Dimitris Vardoulakis is Senior Lecturer in philosophy at the University of Western Sydney

1. On the Relation between Passive And Active Power in Spinoza's Ethics and Politics
Aurelia Armstrong
2. On the Ontological Primacy of Resistance in Baruch Spinoza
Cesare Casarino
3. Jura communia as anima imperii: The symptomatic relationship between law and conflict
in Spinoza
Filippo Del Lucchese
4. Interrupting the System: Spinoza and Maroon Thought
James Edward Ford III
5. The Problem of Disobedience in Absolute Democracy
Stathis Gourgouris & Andreas Kalyvas
6. Spinoza and the Biopolitical Roots of Modernity
Peter Gratton
7. Jewish Apostasy from Paul to Simone Weil
Eleanor Kaufman
8. Spinoza's Laying the Ground of Biopolitics
Kiarina Kordela
9. On Spinoza and “signs”
Gregg Lambert
10. Marranos that we are?
Jacques Lezra
11. Spinoza, Superiority, and Hierarchy
Beth Lord
12. The Seditious Body: A Reading of Ethics III, P2, Sch.
Warren Montag
13. Spinoza: une autre puissance d'agir
Antonio Negri
14. A Different Sovereignty?
Dimitris Vardoulakis

Bibliography
Index