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For decades Continental theorists from Derrida to Deleuze have engaged in provocative, penetrating, and often extensive examinations of modern philosophers-studies that have opened up new ways to think about figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant. This volume, for the first time, gives this work its due. A systematic rereading of early modern philosophers in the light of recent Continental philosophy, it exposes overlooked but critical aspects of sixteenth- through eighteenth-century philosophy even as it brings to light certain historical assumptions that have colored-and distorted-our understanding of modernist thought. This volume thus retrieves modern thinkers from the modernistic ways in which they have been portrayed since the nineteenth century; at the same time, it enhances our view of the roots and concerns of current Continental thought.

What claims does the early modern period have on contemporary philosophy? How have recent theorists engaged this material, and why? In answer, some of these essays explore how major Continental theorists such as Derrida, Deleuze, Le Doeuff, Irigaray, Kristeva, and Althusser explicate the ideas of classical modern thinkers; others draw on recent Continental insights to examine the doctrines of modern philosophers beginning with Machiavelli and ending with Kant. Together they show how current Continental theory reinvigorates the study of the history of modern philosophers by transforming not only how we interpret their answers to certain questions, but also how we understand the very nature of these questions.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Frontmatter
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. v-vi
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  1. Preface
  2. pp. vii-ix
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  1. Introduction
  2. pp. xi-xvi
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  1. Machiavelli, Historical Repetition, and French Philosophies of Difference
  2. pp. 3-20
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  1. Truth and Evidence in Descartes and Levinas
  2. pp. 21-35
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  1. Le Doeuff and Irigaray on Descartes
  2. pp. 36-57
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  1. Between Pascal and Spinoza: The Vacuum
  2. pp. 58-69
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  1. Potentia multitudinis, quae una veluti mente ducitur: Spinoza on the Body Politic
  2. pp. 70-99
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  1. Spinoza and Materialism
  2. pp. 100-113
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  1. Deleuze’s Spinoza: Thinker of Difference, or Deleuze against the Valley Girls
  2. pp. 114-126
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  1. Deleuze on Leibniz: Difference, Continuity, and the Calculus
  2. pp. 127-147
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  1. On the Function of the Concept of Origin: Althusser’s Reading of Locke
  2. pp. 148-161
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  1. Locke and the Event of Appropriation: A Heideggerian Reading of “Of Property”
  2. pp. 162-178
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  1. From Kristeva to Deleuze: The Encyclopedists and the Philosophical Imaginary
  2. pp. 179-196
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  1. Deleuze’s Hume and Creative History of Philosophy
  2. pp. 197-209
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  1. Althusser and Hume: A Materialist Encounter
  2. pp. 210-222
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  1. Loving the Impossible: Derrida, Rousseau, and the Politics of Perfectibility
  2. pp. 223-239
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  1. “What We Cannot Say”: Gadamer, Kant, and Freedom
  2. pp. 240-253
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  1. The Art of Begetting Monsters: The Unnatural Nuptials of Deleuze and Kant
  2. pp. 254-279
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 281-287
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  1. Notes on Contributors
  2. pp. 289-290
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