Reason as a tool for freedom. Emilia Giancotti interpreter of Spinoza

For three decades Emilia Giancotti was the central figure in Spinoza studies in Italy. She had a stable university position and used it as a platform to organize international conferences on Spinoza and to participate in international debates, during a time in which Spinoza studies were often confined within national boundaries. Two key features mark out her approach as unique: with a Marxist background, which remained implicit in her work, she focused heavily on political themes – liberty, power, the state and the individual; she also developed a historiographical approach and engaged in a lot of philological work to establish a solid and reliable texts as the very basis of her efforts in political theory. For instance, for over thirty years hers was the most authoritative translation of the Ethics. This is an anthology of articles written over a sixteen-year period on a set of interrelated themes in Spinoza’s philosophy and also in that of Hobbes for three articles. Giancotti develops detailed investigations of themes such as state absolutism, democracy, freedom and necessity, materialism, the nature of God, revolution, the social compact and the state, and the twin concepts of power as potentia and potestas.