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Looking For Spinoza
  • Published: 1 July 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099421832
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $29.99

Looking For Spinoza

Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain



'Looking for Spinoza is exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying. Its erudition and wisdom provide a powerful statement that the pursuit of scientific knowledge about the human brain can go hand in hand with an overarching concern for our fellow humans' Nature

Joy, sorrow, jealousy and awe - these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. Presumed to be too private for science to explain and not to be essential for comprehending human rationality and understanding, they have largely been ignored. But not by the great seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Spinoza. And not by Antonio Damasio. In this book Dr. Damasio draws on his innovative research and on his experience with neurological patients to examine how feelings and the emotions that underlie them support the governance of human affairs.

  • Published: 1 July 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099421832
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Antonio Damasio

Born in Portugal, Antonio Damasio became Van Allen Distinguished Professor and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. He is the author of Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain and The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness.

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Praise for Looking For Spinoza

Big claims, well made: it is a rare pleasure to pick up such a rigorous and readable book about scientific advance that is so firmly anchored in philosophical history

Time Out

Virtually all the interesting philosophy today is done, not by professional philosophers, but by scientists like Damasio... The map may be incomplete, but thanks to Damasio we do at least know the principal landmarks

New Humanist

Damasio's book interweaves lucid and fascinating explanations of neurological findings with historical and philosophical ruminations on Spinoza... Rich and informative

New Scientist

There is much in this book to please Damasio's fans. He is a lively and humane writer, and ranges easily across a wide variety of topics

Independent