Kant and Spinoza by Beth Lord

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Kant and Spinoza: Transcendental Idealism and Immanence from Jacobi to Deleuze ✍🏼 Beth Lord 📖 Long Summary (One Paragraph): In Kant and Spinoza: Transcendental Idealism and Immanence from Jacobi to Deleuze, Beth Lord offers a rich and detailed analysis of the complex philosophical relationship between Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism and Baruch Spinoza’s metaphysics of immanence. Lord traces the historical and conceptual dialogues between these two monumental thinkers, focusing on how their ideas were received, contrasted, and synthesized by later philosophers from the late 18th century through the 20th century. Beginning with Jacobi’s critique, which cast Spinoza as a figure of fatalism and atheism in opposition to Kant’s moral idealism, Lord explores how figures like Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, and ultimately Deleuze reinterpreted and transformed this dichotomy. Rather than seeing Kant and Spinoza as simply oppositional, Lord argues that their philosophies engage in a dynamic and productive tension: Kant’s emphasis on the limits of knowledge and moral freedom contrasts but also resonates with Spinoza’s emphasis on the unity of substance and the necessity of natural laws. The book culminates in Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza as a philosopher of joy and immanence who provides a powerful alternative to transcendental thinking. Lord’s work demonstrates how these two great systems continue to inform contemporary debates on metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy, offering readers a sophisticated understanding of how transcendence and immanence shape our conceptual frameworks.