Antonio Negri is the coauthor (with Michael Hardt) of Empire; Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire; and Commonwealth. Timothy S. Murphy is Houston-Truax-Wentz Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. He has translated several of Negri's works, including Trilogy of Resistance; Books for Burning: Between Civil War and Democracy in 1970s Italy; and Subversive Spinoza: (Un)contemporary Variations.

Translator's Note and Acknowledgments
Translator's Introduction: Leopardi and Us
Preface to the French Translation (2006)
Preface to the First Edition: The European Leopardi

1. The Catastrophe of Memory

Time of the Dialectic
Experimenting with the Infinite
The Critical Question

2. The Web of Sense

Solid Nothingness
Pain and Desire
Imagining

3. Poetics of True Being

Metaphysics of Morals
The Sense of True Being
Grasping Nothingness

4. Dialects of Illusion

Irony; or Concerning the Psyche
Deception; or Concerning Knowledge
Sarcasm; or Concerning Politics

5. A Lyric Machiavelli

The Event of Critique
Ethics as Foundation
Materialism and Poetry

Notes
Index