Spinoza in modern French philosophy

This chapter treats the upsurge of interest in Spinoza's philosophy in twentieth-century France as a response to broader philosophical developments. It stresses the need felt by philosophers working in different milieus to provide a rationalist alternative to the trajectory offered by phenomenology, in particular in its Heideggerian guise, whose impact in France was enormous. Special attention is given to Louis Althusser, whose Spinozist reading of Marx-often characterized as structuralist-was emblematic of the moment. The chapter also devotes attention to a lesser-known French Spinoza scholar, Alexandre Matheron, and situates his major study of Spinoza's thought alongside works by Martial Gueroult and Gilles Deleuze that appeared alongside it at the end of the 1960s.