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Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library
Geometry of the Passions

Geometry of the Passions

Fear, Hope, Happiness: Philosophy and Political Use

by Remo Bodei

Translated by Gianpiero W. Doebler

Published by: University of Toronto Press

Series: Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

520 Pages, 140.00 × 231.00 × 41.00 mm

Hardcover
9781487503369
Published: July 2018

£92.00

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Description
Contents
Authors

The passions have long been condemned as a creator of disturbance and purveyor of the temporary loss of reason, but as Remo Bodei argues in Geometry of the Passions, we must abandon the perception that order and disorder are in a constant state of collision.

By means of a theoretical and historical analysis, Bodei interprets the relationship between passion and reason as a conflict between two complementary logics. Geometry of the Passions investigates the paradoxical conflict-collaboration between passions and reason, and between individual and political projects. Tracing the roles passion and reason have played throughout history, including in the political agendas of Descartes, Hobbes, and the French Jacobins, Geometry of the Passions reveals how passion and reason may be used as a vehicle for affirmation rather than self-enslavement.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
by Remo Bodei

INTRODUCTION

PART 1: PASSIONS OF EXPECTATION

1 The Disorder of the Passions
2 Hope and Fear
3 Hobbes: Politics and Fear
4 Evil Because Unhappy
5 Amor mortis
6 Vanitas
7 Fear and Rejection
8 The Lynx and the Cuttlefish
9 Superstition

PART 2: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF WILL

Section 1: Consistency and Self-Control
1 Itineraries, Deviations, and Crossroads
2 Persuasion and Toughness
3 Consistency and Constancy
4 Fear and Delusion
5 Constancy: Neostoicism and Justus Lipsius
6 Rationalizing Hope

Section 2: Descartes, or the Good Use of the Passions
1 Masters of Themselves
2 Will and Joy
3 The Key to All Virtues
4 Medicine of the Passions

PART 3: THE GRAMMAR OF LOVE

1 Transitions
2 Loving without Being Loved

PART 4: THE GREAT HOPE

Section 1: Terror and Virtue
1 The Form of the Future
2 The Despotism of Liberty
3 Between Hope and Fear

Section 2: The Invisible Sovereign
1 Homo ideologicus

Section 3: Heaven on Earth
1 Reason in Myth

ABBREVIATIONS

INDEX

Remo Bodei was a professor of the history of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Gianpiero W. Doebler received his PhD in Italian from the University of California, Los Angeles, and works as a translator, specializing in texts using older forms of Italian and in poetry.