Etica della potenza. Percorsi spinoziani

Maximilian Tedesco; Sabrina De Crescenzo; Roberto Madonna; Myriam Panico

doi:10.6093/978-88-6887-415-5

Authors

Maximilian Tedesco

University of Naples Federico II

https://orcid.org/0009-0009-2253-6221 (unauthenticated)

Sabrina De Crescenzo

University of Naples Federico II

https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0275-8470 (unauthenticated)

Roberto Madonna

University of Naples Federico II

https://orcid.org/0009-0007-9359-2947 (unauthenticated)

Myriam Panico

University of Naples Federico II

https://orcid.org/0009-0000-3345-0321 (unauthenticated)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/978-88-6887-415-5

Keywords:

Spinoza, Ethics, Desire, Potentia, Multitude

Synopsis

Editore: FedOA - Federico II University Press

Series: Miscellaneous

Pages: 234

Language: Italian

Abstract: What is produced when a classic is wrested from the stillness of reverential exegesis and rigorously returned to the living point of its friction with the present? The Ethics of Potentia takes shape within this question: not as a pacified compendium of interpretations, but as a torsional field, an open threshold traversed by heterogeneous lines that, in Spinoza’s Ethics, find both a center of gravity and a site of collision. The contributions gathered here do not seek to harmonize Spinoza along a monolithic exegetical axis; rather, they endeavor to weave a fabric of differences, diffractions, proximities, and displacements, in which Spinozist concepts are pushed and inflected—without ever being distorted—through dialogue with other interlocutors, disciplines, and urgencies of thought. Originating within the “Laboratory on the Classics” promoted by the MA program in Philosophy at the University of Naples Federico II, the volume unfolds along a double trajectory. On the one hand, it offers a historical-philological and conceptual investigation of Spinoza’s work, developed through rigorous engagements with Descartes, Hobbes, Jacobi, Hegel, and Brentano, and structured around decisive theoretical focus: the mos geometricus as an ethical and political instrument; the single substance; attributes and modes; the three kinds of knowledge; and the conatus as the essence of the singular thing. On the other hand, it tests Spinoza as a reference for contemporary thought, placing him in dialogue with Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan and Leopardi, as well as with new materialism and eco-cyborg-transfeminist theories. What emerges is a heterogeneous and plural Spinoza, capable of traversing mathematics and ontology, psychoanalysis and phenomenology, literature, perception, and the new materialisms. The themes of potentia as ontological affirmation, liberation from teleology and superstition, desire as the essence of the human, tyranny as a horizontal condition of mind and body, and democracy as the political form of the multitudo constitute the thread that binds the collection together. The volume thus presents itself not as a conclusive synthesis, but as the material trace of a collective experience and, at the same time, of singular expression: a mobile, oscillating composition that, in the genuine spirit of the Ethics, takes the Spinozist text not as an object to be preserved, but as a living dispositif of conceptual and practical transformation.

Author Biographies

Maximilian Tedesco, University of Naples Federico II

Maximilian Tedesco studied Philosophy at the University of Naples “Federico II”, where he graduated cum laude in Political Philosophy with a thesis entitled Topologies of Eternity. The Political Use of Mathematics in Spinoza. He is currently a training fellow at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, within the seminar series “Philosophy and Anthropology” and “Voices of the Contemporary”. His research interest lies at the intersection of political ontology, philosophy of nature, and history of the sciences, with particular attention to the problem of the organisation of the living and its implications for political theory. His work aims to build a dialogue between the Spinozian and post-structuralist tradition and the philosophies of complexity and biology, interrogating the categories through which contemporary political thought addresses the ecological crisis and the transformation of living systems.

Sabrina De Crescenzo, University of Naples Federico II

Sabrina De Crescenzo studied Philosophy at the University of Naples Federico II, and for a period also at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. She graduated cum laude in 2025 with a thesis in Political Philosophy entitled Spinoza and Multitudes in Motion: Aesthetic Practices for a Democratic Political Body. She is currently a research fellow at the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies. Her current research focuses on articulating and consolidating a functional cooperation between politics and aesthetics in Spinoza’s thought, a conjunction intended to serve as a critical framework for the analysis of a wide range of contemporary political phenomena.

Roberto Madonna, University of Naples Federico II

Roberto Madonna is pursuing a degree in Philosophy at the University of Naples Federico II, where he also graduated cum laude for his bachelor’s degree with a thesis in Aesthetics titled Deformation and redemption. The work of Franz Kafka in the thought of Walter Benjamin (2024). He has attended a studying period in Paris at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is currently researching for his master’s degree in Aesthetics on the thought of Walter Benjamin, with specific focus on theory of knowledge, philosophy of language and his approach to dialectic materialism.

Myriam Panico, University of Naples Federico II

Myriam Panico graduated cum laude in Philosophical Sciences from the University of Naples Federico II, where she wrote a thesis in Political Philosophy exploring the underlying connection between Lacanian psychoanalysis and contemporary political theory. Her current research lies at the shifting intersection of political philosophy and psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on processes of subject formation, the dynamics of desire, and the workings of power. She is currently working on an article that examines the political dimension of Lacan’s thought.