It is a living reference of contemporary critical thought. He studied at the Sorbonne, the Istituto Croce of Naples and the universities of Tuebingen, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Hannover, Munich and Frankfurt. He graduated in philosophy from the University of Padua with a thesis on German historicism. Then come two monumental studies: Stato e nel diritto giovane Hegel and Alle origini of giuridico formalism. In 1967 he became Professor of State Doctrine in the Faculty of Political Sciences of Padua. But since the early sixties participated in the founding of various journals militant Italian creative Marxism, theoretical and organizational experiences militancy continues in mass as Potere Operaio and later Autonomia Operaia. On April 7, 1979 he was arrested and jailed along militants Autonomia, in an amazing series of processes which only rid him in 1983 election as deputy for the Radical Party and the political asylum granted, after his escape from Italy, by the French government. The fourteen years of exile in Paris see him as undocumented professor at Paris-VIII, a member of the Collège International de Philosophie, founder of crucial magazines like Futur antérieur and writer studies as the constituent power. Essay on alternative modernity. Hoping to contribute to achieving a political solution for the hundreds of political prisoners and exiles linked to the social struggles of the seventies, Negri decides to return to Italy in July 1997, and was immediately imprisoned in the prison of Rebibbia Rome. Until 2003 will not recover freedom.
Among its many translated into Spanish works include: The State-form (2003), Europe and Empire (2005), Factories of the subject / ontology of subversion (2006) and political Descartes (2008), apart from his work in co-authored with Michael Hardt.