Spinoza: Practical Philosophy
.jpg) Cover of the second edition | |
| Author | Gilles Deleuze |
|---|---|
| Original title | Spinoza: Philosophie pratique |
| Translator | Robert Hurley |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Subject | Baruch Spinoza |
| Publisher | Presses Universitaires de France, City Lights Books |
Publication date | 1970 |
Published in English | 1988 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and Paperback) |
| Pages | 130 (City Lights edition) |
| ISBN | 978-0872862180 |
Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (French: Spinoza: Philosophie pratique) (1970; second edition 1981) is a book by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, in which the author examines Baruch Spinoza's philosophy, discussing Ethics (1677) and other works such as the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), providing a lengthy chapter defining Spinoza's main concepts in dictionary form. Deleuze relates Spinoza's ethical philosophy to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Willem van Blijenbergh, a grain broker who corresponded with Spinoza in the first half of 1665 and questioned the ethics of his concept of evil. The work has received praise from commentators.
Summary[edit]
Deleuze discusses Spinoza's philosophy, providing a chapter defining Spinoza's main concepts in dictionary form.[1] He relates Spinoza's ethical philosophy to the writings of Nietzsche, citing On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) and an 1881 letter to the theologian Franz Overbeck,[2] and Blijenbergh, a grain broker who corresponded with Spinoza in the first half of 1665 and questioned the ethics of his concept of evil. Deleuze observes that Spinoza's letters to Blijenbergh are the only place in his work where he "considers the problem of evil per se", making them of unique importance, and records Spinoza's developing frustration with Blijenbergh.[3] Explaining Spinoza's use of the body as a model for philosophers, Deleuze writes that, "When a body 'encounters' another body, or an idea another idea, it happens that the two relations sometimes combine to form a more powerful whole, and sometimes one decomposes the other, destroying the cohesion of its parts...we experience joy when a body encounters ours and enters into composition with it, and sadness when, on the contrary, a body or an idea threatens our own coherence."[4]
According to Deleuze, Spinoza sees consciousness as "transitive": "Consciousness is the passage, or rather the awareness of the passage from these less potent totalities to the more potent ones, and vice versa." Consciousness "is not a property of the Whole...it has only an informational value, and what is more, the information is necessarily confused and distorted."[5] To show how decomposition works, Deleuze uses Spinoza's example from the Hebrew Bible: the forbidden fruit that Adam eats in the Garden of Eden.[6]
When Adam hears God's command not to eat the forbidden fruit, he understands it as a prohibition. Deleuze notes that God's command refers to a fruit that will poison Adam if he eats it, which he describes as "an instance of an encounter between two bodies whose characteristic relations are not compatible...the fruit will determine the parts of Adam's body to enter into new relations that no longer accord with his own essence." Deleuze writes that, "...because Adam is ignorant of causes, he thinks that God morally forbids him something, whereas God only reveals the natural consequence of ingesting the fruit." He explains that Spinoza believes that everything defined as "evil" is of this type: "bad encounters, poisoning, intoxication, relational decomposition."[6]
Spinoza thus replaces morality, which in Deleuze's words "always refers existence to transcendent values" and which represents God's judgment, with ethics, "a typology of immanent modes of existence". The opposition between good and evil is replaced by "the qualitative differences of modes of existence", an opposition between what is good and what is simply bad. In Spinoza's account, as described by Deleuze, "consciousness misapprehends all of Nature", and "...all one needs in order to moralize is to fail to understand." Misunderstanding a law makes it appear in the form of a moral 'You must.'"[7] The domain of the eternal truths of nature and that of the moral laws of institutions can be separated through considering their effects. Deleuze writes that, "Law, whether moral or ethical, does not provide us with any knowledge; it makes nothing known. At worst it prevents the formation of knowledge (the law of the tyrant). At best, it prepares for knowledge and makes it possible (the law of Abraham or of Christ)." He believes that ontology has historically been compromised by an error "whereby the command is mistaken for something to be understood, obedience for knowledge itself, and Being for Fiat."[8]
Publication history[edit]
Spinoza: Practical Philosophy was first published in 1970 by Presses Universitaires de France. In 1981, a revised and expanded edition was published by Les Éditions de Minuit. In 1988, the book was published in Robert Hurley's English translation by City Lights Books.[9]
Reception[edit]
Hurley credited Deleuze with making clear the kinship of Spinoza and Nietzsche. Observing that Spinoza: Practical Philosophy is difficult, Hurley wrote that, "...the situation is helped by the author's word to the wise: one doesn't have to follow every proposition, make every connection — the intuitive or affective reading may be more practical anyway." Hurley suggested that the book should be read like poetry.[10] The philosopher Pierre-François Moreau wrote that Deleuze sees in Spinozism a philosophy of power.[11] The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio suggested that Deleuze provided a reading of Spinoza's thinking compatible with the view that the mind arises from the body.[12] The philosopher Alan D. Schrift wrote that, together with Deleuze's Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (1968), Spinoza: Practical Philosophy "influenced several generations of French Spinozism".[13]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Deleuze 1988, pp. 44–109.
- ^ Deleuze 1988, pp. 3, 129.
- ^ Deleuze 1988, p. 30.
- ^ Deleuze 1988, p. 19.
- ^ Deleuze 1988, p. 21.
- ^ a b Deleuze 1988, p. 22.
- ^ Deleuze 1988, p. 23.
- ^ Deleuze 1988, p. 24.
- ^ Deleuze 1988, p. iv.
- ^ Hurley 1988, pp. i–iii.
- ^ Moreau 1996, p. 430.
- ^ Damasio 2003, pp. 216, 325–326.
- ^ Schrift 2017, p. 251.
Bibliography[edit]
- Books
- Damasio, Antonio (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando: Harcourt Books. ISBN 0-15-100557-5.
- Deleuze, Gilles (1988). Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights Books. ISBN 0-87286-218-6.
- Hurley, Robert (1988). "Preface". Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights Books. ISBN 0-87286-218-6.
- Moreau, Pierre-François (1996). "Spinoza's reception and influence". In Garrett, Don (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-39865-7.
- Schrift, Alan D. (2017). "Deleuze, Gilles". In Audi, Robert (ed.). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-64379-6.
===
Spinoza: Practical Philosophy Paperback – 1 January 2001
by Gilles Deleuze (Author), Robert Hurley (Translator)
4.7 out of 5 stars 135 ratings
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Spinoza: Practical Philosophy Paperback – 1 January 2001
by Gilles Deleuze (Author), Robert Hurley (Translator)
4.7 out of 5 stars 135 ratings
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Spinoza's theoretical philosophy is one of the most radical attempts to construct a pure ontology with a single infinite substance. This book, which presents Spinoza's main ideas in dictionary form, has as its subject the opposition between ethics and morality, and the link between ethical and ontological propositions. His ethics is an ethology, rather than a moral science. Attention has been drawn to Spinoza by deep ecologists such as Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher; and this reading of Spinoza by Deleuze lends itself to a radical ecological ethic. As Robert Hurley says in his introduction, “Deleuze opens us to the idea that the elements of the different individuals we compose may be nonhuman within us. One wonders, finally, whether Man might be defined as a territory, a set of boundaries, a limit on existence.”
Gilles Deleuze, known for his inquiries into desire, language, politics, and power, finds a kinship between Spinoza and Nietzsche. He writes, ""Spinoza did not believe in hope or even in courage; he believed only in joy and in vision . . . he more than any other gave me the feeling of a gust of air from behind each time I read him, of a witch's broom that he makes one mount.
Gilles Deleuze was a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris at Vincennes. Robert Hurley is the translator of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality.
Read less
Print length
130 pages
Language
English
Publisher
City Lights Publishers
Product description
About the Author
Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was a French philosopher whose writings influenced many philosophical disciplines such as literary theory, post-structuralism and postmodernism. He also taught philosophy at the University of Paris at Vicennes.
Robert Hurley was a translator for many French philosophers including Michael Foucault (History of Sexuality), Gilles Deleuze and George Bataille (Theory of Religion).
Gilles Deleuze, known for his inquiries into desire, language, politics, and power, finds a kinship between Spinoza and Nietzsche. He writes, ""Spinoza did not believe in hope or even in courage; he believed only in joy and in vision . . . he more than any other gave me the feeling of a gust of air from behind each time I read him, of a witch's broom that he makes one mount.
Gilles Deleuze was a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris at Vincennes. Robert Hurley is the translator of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality.
Read less
Print length
130 pages
Language
English
Publisher
City Lights Publishers
Product description
About the Author
Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was a French philosopher whose writings influenced many philosophical disciplines such as literary theory, post-structuralism and postmodernism. He also taught philosophy at the University of Paris at Vicennes.
Robert Hurley was a translator for many French philosophers including Michael Foucault (History of Sexuality), Gilles Deleuze and George Bataille (Theory of Religion).
===
Spinoza: Practical Philosophy
by Gilles Deleuze,
Robert Hurley (Translator)
4.21 · Rating details · 1,571 ratings · 116 reviews
Gilles Deleuze, known for his inquiries into desire, language, politics, and power, finds a kinship between Spinoza and Nietzsche. He writes, "Spinoza did not believe in hope or even in courage; he believed only in joy and in vision . . . he more than any other gave me the feeling of a gust of air from behind each time I read him, of a witch's broom that he makes one mount."
Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was a French philosopher whose writings influenced many philosophical disciplines such as literary theory, post-structuralism, and postmodernism. He also taught philosophy at the University of Paris at Vicennes.
Robert Hurley was a translator for many French philosophers including Michael Foucault (History of Sexuality), Gilles Deleuze, and George Bataille (Theory of Religion).
Paperback, 130 pages
Published January 1st 2001 by City Lights Publishers (first published 1970)
Original Title
Spinoza. Philosophie pratique
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· 1,571 ratings · 116 reviews
Nov 02, 2019Campbell Rider added it
lmao what if god is just nature. haha only joking... unless?
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Feb 18, 2008Jenny rated it it was amazing
chapter two is changing my mode of living, specifically how I organize my relations to (and of) joy and sadness in order to increase of decrease my power to act and think. Spinoza works to produce or better, propose , a philosophy that is not grounded in cartesian subjectivity and individualism, but instead derived from the material, affective, and realtional experiences of situated bodies. This book is an open door and a relief, at once.
and my conceptual paradigm (from morals to ethics).
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Feb 08, 2020Dario added it
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This book is a huge undertaking. Not because it is necessarily more challenging than Deleuze's other works, nor indeed Spinoza's, but because when read in conjunction with or parallel to The Ethics, the two books form a near infinite maze or puzzle, one in which we may find ourselves chasing down seemingly endless trails and avenues of propositions, definitions, scholia, corollaries and notions. The middle passage of Practical Philosophy, in particular, which is itself a sort of dictionary of the Ethics, a maze of a maze, is a pursuit that seems to span the universe itself. Now, I put a lot of energy into reading The Ethics, and I got a lot out of it; moreover, I felt that I gained quite a good handle on its implications. What this book does a fantastic job of, however, is taking us down strange, surprising, yet ultimately quite clear paths through Spinoza's thought. Deleuze manages to nudge us in certain directions, along certain lines, many of which may have been uncharted, unexplored by us.
Deleuze has a deep love of Spinoza, the type of love - Spinoza might say - pertaining to a pure bond of friendship; the type of love that would course through all of those who lived in Spinoza's vision of 'the state of reason'. Indeed, it is precisely this same love that is found in Nietzsche's letter from mid-1881: "I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! . . . In summa: my lonesomeness, which, as on very high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and make my blood rush out, is now at least a twosomeness." The love that may cause any of us to realize suddenly that they are Spinozist; a pure love, that we feel and experience upon being caught in the middle of Spinoza.
Deleuze characterises Spinoza as a liberator and a demystifier. The Spinozan ethics is not at all a morality; whereas morality sets itself up as a system of transcendent truths, based on the idea of god as either a commanding tyrant or a legislature working to a set of standards that are somehow above himself (theological contradiction of omnipotence), The Ethics is rather an ethology. It is an immanent system grounded in affective capacities. Everything, when one lives in this manner, can be thought of as a food or a poison: does that which I am encountering decompose my relation (weakening my state, preoccupying my energy with reaction) or does it enter into composition with me (having a common internal relation whereby the bodies in question combine to form a stronger whole or body or Individual)? In this light, the Spinozist becomes an experimenter: we do not know in advance the affects that we are capable of, our thresholds, what bodies may empower us and in what combination; we must have the prudence of men of the line, the quiet consideration and childlike wonder of all great experimenters.
It is interesting to me to note upon how I have come across a number of sources who describe Spinoza's theory of mind, or, more precisely, of consciousness, as somewhat incomplete or lacking; they suggest that it almost requires some other concept to fill it out. But this is precisely where Deleuze comes in with his notion of the Spinozan unconscious. For Deleuze, following the famous parallelism, Spinoza discovers "an unconscious of thought just as profound as the unknown of the body". "We do not know what a body can do": for all of the parts of the body we are unaware of, there is simultaneously, or rather, in parallel, an idea of that part in the attribute of thought (and within our mind, as the idea of our body), of which we are likewise unaware. Indeed, it is precisely the ideas of these parts, which constitute our mind but of which we are unaware, that comprise the unconscious of the mind.
(As an aside, it's interesting that when neurotics and critics parse through the work of Deleuze & Guattari, trying to identify and portion off who out of the couple did what, they often comment upon how Guattari was already formulating the machinic unconscious before meeting Deleuze, thereby ignoring the fact that Deleuze was also conceptualising a very similar notion of the unconscious through Spinoza, and, worse still, completely missing the incredibly beautiful fact that both of them were in actuality already travelling down such similar and resonant lines.)
The section of The Ethics which most directly pertains to Spinoza's notion of consciousness is roughly IIP12-24, and, suffice to say, things get fairly complex in there. We know, fairly clearly, from the famous 'parallelism' proposition of IIP7S (and as also explicated by Spinoza in IIIP2S) that to each body in extension there is a parallel idea; the idea represents its object (epistemological parallelism). Furthermore, by the time we get to IIP13 we know that the object corresponding to the idea that we call the human mind is the human body and nothing else. So far so good. Where things start to get complicated is in the tension between IIP12 and IIP19 & IIP24: according to the former, anything that happens in the body must necessarily be perceived by the mind, whereas the latter state, firstly, that the human mind does not know the human body itself, except through ideas of its affections, and secondly, that the human mind does not have adequate knowledge of the parts composing the human body. How are we to reconcile this apparent tension? Well, Deleuze tells us that "we have to distinguish the idea that we are (the mind as the idea of the body) from the ideas that we have. The idea that we are is in God . . . Therefore we do not have this idea immediately. The only ideas we have under the natural conditions of our perception are the ideas that represent what happens to our body" (original italics) (cf. Idea). Also in p.19: "We are in a condition such that we only take in "what happens" to our body, "what happens" to our mind." We take the body as a model for experimentation in order that we may in parallel discover the powers of our mind alongside.
Any review of Practical Philosophy would be amiss if it did not mention Deleuze's exploration of the common notions in Spinoza. For Deleuze, the common notions take on a central significance in The Ethics: "The common notions are an Art, the art of the Ethics itself." It's quite remarkable really, because when I started reading Practical Philosophy I could barely recall this Spinozist concept; not that their movement and idea was foreign to me, nor that the content of the concept was alien, but I had barely realised the extent to which Spinoza had defined and articulated some of these ideas. You see, despite the fact that, as Deleuze shows, the common notions are the key to the second kind of knowledge, and that they also embody the passage to the third kind of knowledge, Spinoza actually only mentions them rather fleetingly, in IIP38 & IIP39. Nevertheless, they answer an incredibly important question: "how do we manage to form adequate ideas, and in what order, given that the natural conditions of our perception condemn us to have only inadequate ideas?" The answer is in the common notions. You see, when something affects us with joy, that is, when something enters into composition with us, strengthens and empowers us, this can only be due to a certain common relation within both bodies. There is a certain relation common to both bodies that allows the two to compose each other into a stronger body; there is an agreement. If we put a flat object on a flat table, they enter into a composition with each other, they agree with each other, due to a certain shared relation. If, on the other hand, we put a spherical object onto a flat table, we can say that that common relation which allowed the two bodies to enter into composition with one another is now missing; hence, the bodies will seek to expel each other; the sphere will roll off the table.
On p.75 Deleuze refers to how the inadequate idea misses "the concatenation of ideas." When I first came across this word I was overjoyed: it perfectly sums up the process of reason that leads us to the formation of common notions. Concatenation = The action of linking things together in a series; a series of interconnected things. I later discovered, by chance, that in fact many translations of The Ethics entirely substitute this word for the word 'connection' which is used in my copy. It seems strange to me, therefore, that Spinoza spends so little time fleshing out these notions. However, Deleuze clues us that it is not until the beginning of book V that Spinoza actually elucidates upon how we can attain these notions. (less)
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Sep 14, 2007Teggan rated it really liked it
This book is the easiest way to approach Spinoza that I'm aware of.
I've noticed that Spinoza is repeatedly referenced as a major influence by my favorite philosphers. This book expertly conveys the subtle joy and peace that comes from viewing the world through a Spinozist lense.
Oh, did I mention that it's short too? (less)
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Feb 05, 2021Aung Sett Kyaw Min rated it it was ok
Deleuze imo is right on the money when suggests that Spinoza's Ethics mobilizes the order of causes and effects to purify all traces of a moral imperative. Things and deeds are deemed good because we desire them and because through joining with them we feel that our own capacity to act is being augmented. Only ignorance of the true causes and of art of selecting compositional encounters leads one to mistake the law of cause and effect for a moral command, a kind of biblical 'thou shall not'. Why shouldn't Adam ingest the apple from the tree of knowledge? For Deleuze's Spinoza it is because the apple will fatally decompose Adam's body and force the extensive parts that compose the latter to enter into new relations. Pace Heidegger, death is not an ownmost possibility of the Dasein. Each finite mode seeks to preserve in its own force of existence and death only invades from the without. Nature/God/Substance is the sole Individual that always maintain net compositional gain by producing everything immanently and comprehending everything immanently without divorcing itself from its products. This is because Deleuze's Spinoza recognizes only one modality--necessity and therefore does not recognize modality at all. Hence such bold theses as "Interiority is selected exteriority and exteriority is projected interiority". However it is contentious to what extent Deleuze himself endorses the wholesale demystification of the normative in his interpretation of Spinoza. To go back to the thesis advanced above, both 'selection' and 'projection' imply agency, which Deleuze's Spinoza grants provisionally in the form of the mind's power to form adequate ideas. But then the impasse is whether the mind really possesses this power on its own accord or whether it has to be determined from without to seek after the second knowledge (common notions, compositional laws) and third and the ultimate knowledge (singular essences of things and their order of connection; i.e. the mind's comprehension of God as he comprehends himself). (less)
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Jan 15, 2016Jacob rated it really liked it
Shelves: deleuze
This book consists of 6 chapters. The first examines the life of Spinoza. This helps the read to gain an understanding, or at least a connection with Spinoza in his writing. It also helps bring about some of the concepts that Deleuze puts forward later (such as the idea that Spinoza was never a Cartesian). Chapter 2 interrogates the three denunciations which Spinoza must make before moving towards the univocity of being. They are the devaluation of consciousness, values, and sad passions. The third chapter examines the correspondence between Blyenbergh and Spinoza in regard to the problem of evil. Through this correspondence, Deleuze unpacks what Spinoza might mean when he states that there is no evil. The fourth and longest chapter contains an index of terms used by Spinoza. This might be useful when reading through texts written by Spinoza, and speaks to Deleuze's understanding of philosophy as creating concepts. The fifth chapter returns to essay form. In this essay Deleuze talks about the evolution of Spinoza's thought, and why his later understanding of 'common notions' undoes much of his work from his initial, unfinished Treatise. Finally, the sixth chapter, and fifth essay, places us in the middle of Spinoza's philosophy. It places bodes as modes which are situated in the plane of immanence. Bodies are described by their affective capacity. This chapter helps set the stage for Deleuze's plane of immanence and the body without organs. (less)
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Dec 31, 2017Alexander Smith rated it it was amazing
I cried at 9:37 pm on December 31st 2017 in a small bar in the middle of the Bible Belt. Surrounded by University of West Georgia undergrad Greek life students watching football, waiting for the year, they waited for some difference, for new relationships, for new days. Meanwhile I cried feeling I was already anew. Chapter 2 and 5 were clarity and serious solidarity to my first reading of Spinoza. There is not much in the world that seems to have a harmony with my vision of this universes' ontology than Spinoza's Ethics. And there isn't a more brief "interpretation" than this to justify that Spinoza is present in the modern mind of the academic and in need of being grasped by the modern theist than this work. I've never read something more wholesome than Deleuze's idea of Spinoza's life and work.
This one is for anyone searching...
2018, take my lead. (less)
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May 03, 2021Sietse van Mierlo rated it really liked it
When on summer holidays (we went to Blanes so that must be 8 years ago), I once tried to read Anti-Oedipus. I brought a couple of books with me to Spain: the stranger by Camus, Het Verdriet van België, de Kelner en de Levenden and Deleuze's book. At the end of the summer, I read the stranger five times and never finished anti-oedipus. I thought Deleuze's book was one of the worst books I ever tried to read. I didn't understand it at all, it didn't make any sense to me.
What I remember of anti-oedipus: it was about a machine that pooped and pissed and fucked (his words). Furthermore, a whole method was developed why method was no good (I always feel uncomfortable reading philosophers that seem so self-contradictory).
So, I was positively surprised when reading this book about Spinoza: it kind of makes sense! Spinoza: Practical Philosophy is well written, clear, and nicely structured. Sometimes you get the feeling that the book is more about Deleuze himself than Spinoza (e.g. when Deleuze makes spelling mistakes writing the names of Spinoza's inner circle: i.e. Van den Enden without a N), but overall this book is a joy to read. His understanding of Spinoza's Ethics is mind-blowing, very original, and overall - partly - convincing.
I just disagree with Deleuze's picture of Spinoza as an anti-platonist. (1) For example, Deleuze says that for Spinoza goodness is relative. But that is only right to some extent, since Spinoza indeed says that God is our highest good. (2) Deleuze says that Spinoza is an anti-platonist because he thinks that joy is what we aim for. Yet Spinoza says that joy - just like Aquinas and Augustine - is the vision of God. (3) Deleuze says that Spinoza says goodbye to the Christian tradition because Spinoza denies the existence of Evil. Yet he fails to mention that it was Augustine - not Spinoza - who introduced the idea that evil is a privation of goodness. (4) The idea that goodness and being are identical, is also not a radical materialist idea, as Deleuze suggests, but an idea deeply imbedded in the Platonist/Christian tradition of Aquinas and Augustine.
(5) Deleuze says that Spinoza deconstructs the division between mind and body. This is true, but in the end Spinoza remains truthful to the division between natura naturata and natura naturans. That is, both mind and body must be grounded in natura naturans: the power of God. (6) Deleuze says that Spinoza believes in a plane of immanence. This is to an extent right: Spinoza does think that the world is identical to the world. Yet the world is not identical to God. God has infinitely more attributes than extension and thought. Spinoza is therefore an panENtheist: God still transcends our experience of the world.
Through contemplation (that is: intuitive knowledge) we can have knowledge and thereby love of God, but this is a knowledge of the infinite, of what transcends all our experiences. With such knowledge we can finally find rest, security in God's love (see: Ethics book 5). Maybe Deleuze would have written a better book about Spinoza if he did not start his book with Nietzsche's name but with the name of Plato! (less)
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Jun 27, 2008Andrew added it
Shelves: philosophy, deleuze-deleuzeans
As a long time fan of both Mssrs. Spinoza and Deleuze, this made for a very impressive synthesis. Deleuze loses his weird, babbling writing style and becomes pretty lucid, showing the linkages between his own philosophy and the ecstatic monist perspective of Spinoza, showing subversive possibilities everywhere.
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Aug 10, 2021Peter rated it it was amazing
I’m reading supplementary material around Deleuze before I dive into the big stuff. This led me down a rather extensive detour through Spinoza. Whether or not I actually end up enjoying Anti-Oedipus or A Thousand Plateaus, I have deeply enjoyed reading spinoza - this has been a reward in and of itself.
Deleuze does a fantastic job of explaining the terms and objectives of Ethics, and this book was valuable in sketching out some of the more complicated aspects for a non-philosopher like myself. I have a pretty good understanding of Nietzsche, so his decision to begin with him worked very well for me. The index of terms is particularly useful, although I far more enjoyed the short essays contained regarding Spinoza.
In short - a great work that was immensely helpful for understanding Ethics, and I think also valuable in understanding Deleuze’s philosophy as well. (less)
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May 10, 2019Michael rated it it was amazing
An absolute whirlwind (as Deleuze says of Spinoza) of ideas. Deleuze finds himself in the same awe as most readers of Spinoza - the humility in his words gives way to the beautiful composition and entwinement of Deleuze himself and Spinoza. One finds in this book more than an expository text concerning the systemat of Spinoza’s thought, but a living, breathing encounter with the Ethics - a road map for renewed experience in light of Spinoza’s radical thought.
If one wants to understand Deleuze, it is indeed through Spinoza. (less)
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Jun 14, 2013Ade Bailey rated it it was amazing
Shelves: philosophy
Loving this. Brief but super introduction too by Robert Hurley. He warns that the bokk may be 'difficult', and advises the reader to read lightly. I didn't find ithard, I found it delightful and rich. Coming from Gilles it was easy! (less)
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Jul 31, 2022Hinch rated it it was amazing
Shelves: philosophy
‘In his whole way of living and thinking, Spinoza projects an image of the positive, affirmative life, which stands in opposition to the semblances men are content with. Not only are they content with semblances of life, they feel a hatred of life, they are ashamed of it; a humanity bent on self-destruction, multiplying the cults of death, always busy running life into the ground, mutilating it, killing it outright or by degrees, overlaying it or suffocating it with laws, properties, duties - this is what Spinoza diagnoses in this world, this betrayal of the universe and mankind.’
Deleuze’s approach in all his books about other philosophers is as follows: to imagine himself ‘ass-fucking’ other philosophers and producing ‘offspring that are recognisably both [his] and the other’s’ (paraphrased). Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (S:PP) is a book that begins with the name ‘Nietzsche’. So, we can imagine it as a kind of threesome between Deleuze, Spinoza and Nietzsche, and via some strange m-preg antics Deleuze gives birth to pretty beautiful offspring.
S:PP is a book about two things: ontology (the study of what is out there in the world, of reality) and ethics. But you see, and here’s the catch, Deleuze in S:PP derives his ethics from his ontology. An ‘ethology’. I’ll only go briefly into Deleuze’s ontology here, I’ll focus on his ethics, as this is only a brief overview of the book and his ontology is… somewhat complicated to explain quickly.
Deleuze distinguishes between morality, which is transcendent, and ethics, which is immanent. Transcendent meaning above, outside, superimposed onto the world, and immanent meaning pervading, infusing, being present in the world. Deleuze argues that transcendent concepts (i.e. God, identity, etc.) are essentially repressive to life, for the most part: they remove us from what’s in front of us. They are symptoms of our alienation from the world. Morality is a transcendental idea: the idea of a kind of plan imposed from above on us, acting as a kind of system of law demanding our obedience, with Good referring to obedience and Evil to disobedience. Morality is the concept of a system of law.
On the other hand, ethics is a ‘voyage in immanence’. Instead of being a top-down plan, ethics is a diagram of encounters. Ethics is concerned with how we experience the world and ourselves, with how we act and how we live. Ethics is not a system of law with pretensions of objective values, or even values at all. Ethics is our practise of life.
Deleuze rejects morality and embraces Spinozist ethics. Deleuze’s ethics consists in maximising joy and minimising sad passions. Joy occurs when my body comes into contact with something that joins with me to create something greater. Joy consists in composition between me and something else, in short, in good relations. The sad passions - sadness itself, hatred, aversion, mockery, fear, despair, pity, indignation, envy, humility, anger, regret, vengeance, cruelty, etc.. - occur when my body comes into contact with something poisonous to it, something it does not agree with, something that in short decomposes me. The sad passions decompose my relations in negative ways, make me withdraw from the world.
Joy increases my power, and sadness decreases my power. Sad passions occur when I am most alienated, mystified, most separated from power, and the sad passions make me act in ways harmful to others - ways that are symptomatic of the pathetic life I must live to act in such ways.
What is so important here, is that myself, as an I, as a subject, is not the focus of Deleuze’s ethics. The ethics here is an ethics of intensities, an ethics of increasing power. Power here is not to be understood as domineering (a sad passion!), but as a creative force, as the ability to exert oneself in the world. Power is the capacity of acting. Deleuze’s ethics is based on speeds, accelerations, unformed elements, nonsubjectified values. They are not based on anything relating to me as an identity at all.
(I mean, let’s think for a moment: why should our ethics be based around the subject, the self? Consciousness is only the small part of thought we are aware of, yet we exalt it as some special thing above the rest of thought. Similarly, we are aware of very little of our bodily processes. We do not even know what the body can do, let alone what the mind can do! ‘The infant freely believes he wants milk, the angry man that he freely desires vengeance’.)
Acting ethically means organising good encounters, composing new relations, forming powers, experimenting, etc. , not in judging, blaming, imposing values on the world. It means the joy of discovering what we can do, and maximising what we can do.
The question left at the end of S:PP is: how do we enter into composition with one another to heighten our power, ad infinitum?
Spinozist ethics give us a beautiful way of living. By denouncing everything that separates us from life, they allow us to become free. (less)
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Nov 18, 2013Christopher Boerdam rated it really liked it
A genius writing about a genius - Deleuze's introduction to Spinoza is mind-blowing. As I am new to Spinoza, I definitely do not feel I have grasped everything Deleuze has packed into this little book. But this little work definitely encouraged me to see the audacity and originality of Spinoza's philosophy. Deleuze is perfectly suited to explain to the reader precisely what distinguishes Spinoza from his contemporaries, and what makes Spinoza still relevant today. The final chapter is especially pertinent in this regard. The A-Z glossary of Spinoza's philosophy was not as easy to read as the other chapters, but still well worth a ponder. (less)
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Aug 03, 2016Rui Coelho rated it it was ok
A specially bad introduction to Spinoza. Please read Deleuze's semminar on Spinoza at Vicennes instead. It presents the uniquely nietzschean reading of Spinoza that informs Deleuze work as a whole. (less)
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Apr 01, 2020Noé rated it it was amazing
More Spinoza is always a treat.
This book is wildly interesting because it goes beyond summarizing the ideas of Spinoza. Deleuze gives a fair reading of Spinoza and highlights certain of his ideas that didn't stick out to me when first reading him. He lays out the Ethics as a map of meaning to be explored tirelessly.
Firstly, this book improved my understanding of Spinoza, as well as made me see what outreach and application his ideas can have. Second, the way Deleuze passionately explores Spinoza is fascinating and has a contagious sense of energy.
Another thing I appreciated is that this book answered many of the questions I had when initially reading the Ethics. What about evil, what do we make of that? Why is this book called Ethics in the first place?
The latter is probably one of the biggest takeaways, which gives me a key understanding of the distinction between morality and ethics. This has illuminated some of my thought process, and seems to be an important concept to grasp to approach Deleuze himself.
It is also really interesting to see how a philosopher reads a philosopher. It shows the meta conversations that happen with thinkers across time and made me think about philosophy itself in a broader scope.
Deleuze's descriptions of Spinoza as a gust of wind or the scholia of the Ethics as an underground maze were simultaneously evocative while providing an enhanced intuitive meaning. It was refreshing and gave me appetite to read more meta-philosophical texts that are both analytical and entertaining.
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Apr 01, 2017sologdin rated it it was ok
Shelves: dilectio-sapientiae
Text opens with a biographical note on Spinoza, but it is more a rumination based on Nietzsche’s belief that the “mystery of a philosopher’s life” was in how one “appropriates the ascetic virtues—humility, poverty, chastity—and makes them serve ends completely his own, extraordinary ends that are not very ascetic at all”; they are by contrast “an expression of his singularity” (3). These are not a morality, but the “effects of philosophy itself,” a superabundance that has “conquered thought and subordinated every other instinct to itself” (id.). For Spinoza, this is ‘Nature,’ “a life no longer lived on the basis of need, in terms of means and ends, but according to production, a productivity, a potency, in terms of causes and effects” (id.). For the agambenians, it might strike one as the philosopher’s bios, or perhaps even the eidos zoe, the form-of-life of the philosopher, wherein this form is inseparable from life itself, wherein the rule and the life coincide without remainder. Curious! (a philosopher is also marked out by ‘solitude’ in this FoL; perhaps a comparison with the eremite in Homo Sacer part VIII is in order.)
Spinoza may have spoken about the “harmfulness of revolutions” in a period wherein “’revolutionary’ ideology is permeated with theology and is often, as with the Calvinist part, in the service of politics of reaction” (9). Spinoza was interested in popular irrationality, in pride in enslavement, in the reasons that peoples fought for their own bondage—quite simply, he was curious about the existence of rightwing populism. Like the Frankfurt School centuries later, “Why is it so difficult not only to win but to bear freedom?” (10). This political critique extends to those “bent on self-destruction” and “the union of the tyrant and the slave” (12).
The basis of spinozist (love that adjectival form) ethics is a “triple denunciation of ‘consciousness,’ of ‘values,’ and of ‘sad passions’” (17), which led him to being accused contemporaneously of “materialism, immoralism, and atheism” (id.). Spinoza is famous for the doctrine of parallelism, which “does not consist merely in denying any real causality between the mind and the body, [but] disallows any primacy of the one over the other” (18). This results in a “reversal of the traditional principle on which Morality was founded as an enterprise of domination of the passions by consciousness” (id.). Plenty on this. Lotsa nifty insights, such as “the confusion that compromises the whole of ontology,” “the history of a long error whereby the command is mistaken for something to be understood, obedience for knowledge itself” (24), a fatal commingling of power with truth, one supposes. Ultimately, the Ethics as composed of “great theories” regarding “the oneness of substance, the univocity of the attributes, immanence, universal necessity, parallelism,” but also how the aforesaid “cannot be treated apart from the three practical theses concerning consciousness, values, and the sad passions” (28).
Thereafter follows a brief essay on the ‘letters on evil,’ which is correspondence with one Blyenbergh, a numbnut “amateur Calvinist theologian” (30), whom Spinoza crushed in a series of letters, via working out his ontological theses on composition/decomposition. The main section of the volume, however, is an index of concepts from the Ethics (44 ff); it is weighty, and likely only becomes fully significant if read directly in conjunction with the principal text for which it is supplement (my reading of the Ethics is 20 years distant, and accordingly I am an incompetent reader of this text). For instance, the article on ‘Mode’ (91 ff) includes the argument that “one of the essential points of Spinozism is in its identification of the ontological relationship of substances and modes [cf. Agamben HS IX, of course] with the epistemological relationship of essences and properties and the physical relationship of cause and effect” (loc. cit.).
Or, the article on ‘Necessary’ (93 ff) notes that “Spinoza’s critique has two culminating points: nothing is possible in Nature; that is, the essences of nonexisting modes are not models or possibilities in a divine legislative intellect; there is nothing contingent in Nature; that is, existences are not produced through the action of a divine will which, in the manner of a prince, could have chosen a different world with different laws” (94). Or on ‘Power’ (97 ff): “one of the basic points of the Ethics consists in denying that God has any power analogous to that of a tyrant” (loc. cit.).
Thoughtful concluding essays on Spinoza’s intellectual development as well as his continuing relevance.
Recommended for those who believe in philosophy’s function as a radical enterprise of demystification, thinkers who conceal their boldest and least orthodox arguments in appendices and notes, and readers who present ethics as a theory of power rather than a theory of obligations.
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Nov 06, 2016Alex Obrigewitsch rated it it was amazing
This short work is an amazing aid for those interested in the thought of both Spinoza and Deleuze. It makes abundantly clear how close Deleuze's thought is to that of Spinoza - how the thought of Spinoza flows not through Deleuze's mind, but through his heart.
"The entire Ethics is a voyage in immanence, but immanence is the unconscious itself, and the conquest of the unconscious. Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation" (29). Life is an ever moving flow, without beginning or end. It is always taken or experienced from a middle point, from within, immanently. It is never consciously known or governed by any law or consciousness beforehand; we don't even know what a body can do. And so is life an experience, a testing, an experiment, an attempt.
This is but one way of understanding the interrelations between Spinoza and Deleuze. The final section of this work, "Spinoza and Us," is imperative for any understanding of Deleuze (with or without Guattari); it is by far the peak of this piece. The life and affirmation flow through it so strongly, coalescing in a final encomium to Spinoza and all that his thought and writings may do for us - opening us up to the nonphilosophical, affective life of joy that we are always already participating in and as, however blindly.
Helpful to those studying Spinoza, though a general understanding of his thought is definitely useful here, it is of even greater value to the student of Deleuze, of which it may perhaps be the best introductory text. Regardless, this work is beneficial for any who seek to live a joyful life, to every gay scientist. (less)
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Jun 21, 2018Alice Nilsson rated it really liked it
Ever think wow i should read spinoza, but need some coaxing to actually get urself around to read it. Read this. The dictionary section is kinda boring but the other parts are very good. The last essay is good intro to Deleuze's idea of a Plane of Immanence (less)
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Jul 29, 2007Francesca rated it it was amazing
Amazing, accessible intro to both Spinoza AND Deleuze, if you ask me.
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Dec 03, 2020Michael rated it it was amazing
Wow, just: damn. Famously difficult philosopher
===
Spinoza: Practical Philosophy
by Gilles Deleuze,
Robert Hurley (Translator)
4.21 · Rating details · 1,571 ratings · 116 reviews
Gilles Deleuze, known for his inquiries into desire, language, politics, and power, finds a kinship between Spinoza and Nietzsche. He writes, "Spinoza did not believe in hope or even in courage; he believed only in joy and in vision . . . he more than any other gave me the feeling of a gust of air from behind each time I read him, of a witch's broom that he makes one mount."
Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was a French philosopher whose writings influenced many philosophical disciplines such as literary theory, post-structuralism, and postmodernism. He also taught philosophy at the University of Paris at Vicennes.
Robert Hurley was a translator for many French philosophers including Michael Foucault (History of Sexuality), Gilles Deleuze, and George Bataille (Theory of Religion).
Paperback, 130 pages
Published January 1st 2001 by City Lights Publishers (first published 1970)
Original Title
Spinoza. Philosophie pratique
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Nov 02, 2019Campbell Rider added it
lmao what if god is just nature. haha only joking... unless?
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Feb 18, 2008Jenny rated it it was amazing
chapter two is changing my mode of living, specifically how I organize my relations to (and of) joy and sadness in order to increase of decrease my power to act and think. Spinoza works to produce or better, propose , a philosophy that is not grounded in cartesian subjectivity and individualism, but instead derived from the material, affective, and realtional experiences of situated bodies. This book is an open door and a relief, at once.
and my conceptual paradigm (from morals to ethics).
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Feb 08, 2020Dario added it
Shelves: favorites, philosophy
This book is a huge undertaking. Not because it is necessarily more challenging than Deleuze's other works, nor indeed Spinoza's, but because when read in conjunction with or parallel to The Ethics, the two books form a near infinite maze or puzzle, one in which we may find ourselves chasing down seemingly endless trails and avenues of propositions, definitions, scholia, corollaries and notions. The middle passage of Practical Philosophy, in particular, which is itself a sort of dictionary of the Ethics, a maze of a maze, is a pursuit that seems to span the universe itself. Now, I put a lot of energy into reading The Ethics, and I got a lot out of it; moreover, I felt that I gained quite a good handle on its implications. What this book does a fantastic job of, however, is taking us down strange, surprising, yet ultimately quite clear paths through Spinoza's thought. Deleuze manages to nudge us in certain directions, along certain lines, many of which may have been uncharted, unexplored by us.
Deleuze has a deep love of Spinoza, the type of love - Spinoza might say - pertaining to a pure bond of friendship; the type of love that would course through all of those who lived in Spinoza's vision of 'the state of reason'. Indeed, it is precisely this same love that is found in Nietzsche's letter from mid-1881: "I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! . . . In summa: my lonesomeness, which, as on very high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and make my blood rush out, is now at least a twosomeness." The love that may cause any of us to realize suddenly that they are Spinozist; a pure love, that we feel and experience upon being caught in the middle of Spinoza.
Deleuze characterises Spinoza as a liberator and a demystifier. The Spinozan ethics is not at all a morality; whereas morality sets itself up as a system of transcendent truths, based on the idea of god as either a commanding tyrant or a legislature working to a set of standards that are somehow above himself (theological contradiction of omnipotence), The Ethics is rather an ethology. It is an immanent system grounded in affective capacities. Everything, when one lives in this manner, can be thought of as a food or a poison: does that which I am encountering decompose my relation (weakening my state, preoccupying my energy with reaction) or does it enter into composition with me (having a common internal relation whereby the bodies in question combine to form a stronger whole or body or Individual)? In this light, the Spinozist becomes an experimenter: we do not know in advance the affects that we are capable of, our thresholds, what bodies may empower us and in what combination; we must have the prudence of men of the line, the quiet consideration and childlike wonder of all great experimenters.
It is interesting to me to note upon how I have come across a number of sources who describe Spinoza's theory of mind, or, more precisely, of consciousness, as somewhat incomplete or lacking; they suggest that it almost requires some other concept to fill it out. But this is precisely where Deleuze comes in with his notion of the Spinozan unconscious. For Deleuze, following the famous parallelism, Spinoza discovers "an unconscious of thought just as profound as the unknown of the body". "We do not know what a body can do": for all of the parts of the body we are unaware of, there is simultaneously, or rather, in parallel, an idea of that part in the attribute of thought (and within our mind, as the idea of our body), of which we are likewise unaware. Indeed, it is precisely the ideas of these parts, which constitute our mind but of which we are unaware, that comprise the unconscious of the mind.
(As an aside, it's interesting that when neurotics and critics parse through the work of Deleuze & Guattari, trying to identify and portion off who out of the couple did what, they often comment upon how Guattari was already formulating the machinic unconscious before meeting Deleuze, thereby ignoring the fact that Deleuze was also conceptualising a very similar notion of the unconscious through Spinoza, and, worse still, completely missing the incredibly beautiful fact that both of them were in actuality already travelling down such similar and resonant lines.)
The section of The Ethics which most directly pertains to Spinoza's notion of consciousness is roughly IIP12-24, and, suffice to say, things get fairly complex in there. We know, fairly clearly, from the famous 'parallelism' proposition of IIP7S (and as also explicated by Spinoza in IIIP2S) that to each body in extension there is a parallel idea; the idea represents its object (epistemological parallelism). Furthermore, by the time we get to IIP13 we know that the object corresponding to the idea that we call the human mind is the human body and nothing else. So far so good. Where things start to get complicated is in the tension between IIP12 and IIP19 & IIP24: according to the former, anything that happens in the body must necessarily be perceived by the mind, whereas the latter state, firstly, that the human mind does not know the human body itself, except through ideas of its affections, and secondly, that the human mind does not have adequate knowledge of the parts composing the human body. How are we to reconcile this apparent tension? Well, Deleuze tells us that "we have to distinguish the idea that we are (the mind as the idea of the body) from the ideas that we have. The idea that we are is in God . . . Therefore we do not have this idea immediately. The only ideas we have under the natural conditions of our perception are the ideas that represent what happens to our body" (original italics) (cf. Idea). Also in p.19: "We are in a condition such that we only take in "what happens" to our body, "what happens" to our mind." We take the body as a model for experimentation in order that we may in parallel discover the powers of our mind alongside.
Any review of Practical Philosophy would be amiss if it did not mention Deleuze's exploration of the common notions in Spinoza. For Deleuze, the common notions take on a central significance in The Ethics: "The common notions are an Art, the art of the Ethics itself." It's quite remarkable really, because when I started reading Practical Philosophy I could barely recall this Spinozist concept; not that their movement and idea was foreign to me, nor that the content of the concept was alien, but I had barely realised the extent to which Spinoza had defined and articulated some of these ideas. You see, despite the fact that, as Deleuze shows, the common notions are the key to the second kind of knowledge, and that they also embody the passage to the third kind of knowledge, Spinoza actually only mentions them rather fleetingly, in IIP38 & IIP39. Nevertheless, they answer an incredibly important question: "how do we manage to form adequate ideas, and in what order, given that the natural conditions of our perception condemn us to have only inadequate ideas?" The answer is in the common notions. You see, when something affects us with joy, that is, when something enters into composition with us, strengthens and empowers us, this can only be due to a certain common relation within both bodies. There is a certain relation common to both bodies that allows the two to compose each other into a stronger body; there is an agreement. If we put a flat object on a flat table, they enter into a composition with each other, they agree with each other, due to a certain shared relation. If, on the other hand, we put a spherical object onto a flat table, we can say that that common relation which allowed the two bodies to enter into composition with one another is now missing; hence, the bodies will seek to expel each other; the sphere will roll off the table.
On p.75 Deleuze refers to how the inadequate idea misses "the concatenation of ideas." When I first came across this word I was overjoyed: it perfectly sums up the process of reason that leads us to the formation of common notions. Concatenation = The action of linking things together in a series; a series of interconnected things. I later discovered, by chance, that in fact many translations of The Ethics entirely substitute this word for the word 'connection' which is used in my copy. It seems strange to me, therefore, that Spinoza spends so little time fleshing out these notions. However, Deleuze clues us that it is not until the beginning of book V that Spinoza actually elucidates upon how we can attain these notions. (less)
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Sep 14, 2007Teggan rated it really liked it
This book is the easiest way to approach Spinoza that I'm aware of.
I've noticed that Spinoza is repeatedly referenced as a major influence by my favorite philosphers. This book expertly conveys the subtle joy and peace that comes from viewing the world through a Spinozist lense.
Oh, did I mention that it's short too? (less)
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Feb 05, 2021Aung Sett Kyaw Min rated it it was ok
Deleuze imo is right on the money when suggests that Spinoza's Ethics mobilizes the order of causes and effects to purify all traces of a moral imperative. Things and deeds are deemed good because we desire them and because through joining with them we feel that our own capacity to act is being augmented. Only ignorance of the true causes and of art of selecting compositional encounters leads one to mistake the law of cause and effect for a moral command, a kind of biblical 'thou shall not'. Why shouldn't Adam ingest the apple from the tree of knowledge? For Deleuze's Spinoza it is because the apple will fatally decompose Adam's body and force the extensive parts that compose the latter to enter into new relations. Pace Heidegger, death is not an ownmost possibility of the Dasein. Each finite mode seeks to preserve in its own force of existence and death only invades from the without. Nature/God/Substance is the sole Individual that always maintain net compositional gain by producing everything immanently and comprehending everything immanently without divorcing itself from its products. This is because Deleuze's Spinoza recognizes only one modality--necessity and therefore does not recognize modality at all. Hence such bold theses as "Interiority is selected exteriority and exteriority is projected interiority". However it is contentious to what extent Deleuze himself endorses the wholesale demystification of the normative in his interpretation of Spinoza. To go back to the thesis advanced above, both 'selection' and 'projection' imply agency, which Deleuze's Spinoza grants provisionally in the form of the mind's power to form adequate ideas. But then the impasse is whether the mind really possesses this power on its own accord or whether it has to be determined from without to seek after the second knowledge (common notions, compositional laws) and third and the ultimate knowledge (singular essences of things and their order of connection; i.e. the mind's comprehension of God as he comprehends himself). (less)
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Jan 15, 2016Jacob rated it really liked it
Shelves: deleuze
This book consists of 6 chapters. The first examines the life of Spinoza. This helps the read to gain an understanding, or at least a connection with Spinoza in his writing. It also helps bring about some of the concepts that Deleuze puts forward later (such as the idea that Spinoza was never a Cartesian). Chapter 2 interrogates the three denunciations which Spinoza must make before moving towards the univocity of being. They are the devaluation of consciousness, values, and sad passions. The third chapter examines the correspondence between Blyenbergh and Spinoza in regard to the problem of evil. Through this correspondence, Deleuze unpacks what Spinoza might mean when he states that there is no evil. The fourth and longest chapter contains an index of terms used by Spinoza. This might be useful when reading through texts written by Spinoza, and speaks to Deleuze's understanding of philosophy as creating concepts. The fifth chapter returns to essay form. In this essay Deleuze talks about the evolution of Spinoza's thought, and why his later understanding of 'common notions' undoes much of his work from his initial, unfinished Treatise. Finally, the sixth chapter, and fifth essay, places us in the middle of Spinoza's philosophy. It places bodes as modes which are situated in the plane of immanence. Bodies are described by their affective capacity. This chapter helps set the stage for Deleuze's plane of immanence and the body without organs. (less)
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Dec 31, 2017Alexander Smith rated it it was amazing
I cried at 9:37 pm on December 31st 2017 in a small bar in the middle of the Bible Belt. Surrounded by University of West Georgia undergrad Greek life students watching football, waiting for the year, they waited for some difference, for new relationships, for new days. Meanwhile I cried feeling I was already anew. Chapter 2 and 5 were clarity and serious solidarity to my first reading of Spinoza. There is not much in the world that seems to have a harmony with my vision of this universes' ontology than Spinoza's Ethics. And there isn't a more brief "interpretation" than this to justify that Spinoza is present in the modern mind of the academic and in need of being grasped by the modern theist than this work. I've never read something more wholesome than Deleuze's idea of Spinoza's life and work.
This one is for anyone searching...
2018, take my lead. (less)
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May 03, 2021Sietse van Mierlo rated it really liked it
When on summer holidays (we went to Blanes so that must be 8 years ago), I once tried to read Anti-Oedipus. I brought a couple of books with me to Spain: the stranger by Camus, Het Verdriet van België, de Kelner en de Levenden and Deleuze's book. At the end of the summer, I read the stranger five times and never finished anti-oedipus. I thought Deleuze's book was one of the worst books I ever tried to read. I didn't understand it at all, it didn't make any sense to me.
What I remember of anti-oedipus: it was about a machine that pooped and pissed and fucked (his words). Furthermore, a whole method was developed why method was no good (I always feel uncomfortable reading philosophers that seem so self-contradictory).
So, I was positively surprised when reading this book about Spinoza: it kind of makes sense! Spinoza: Practical Philosophy is well written, clear, and nicely structured. Sometimes you get the feeling that the book is more about Deleuze himself than Spinoza (e.g. when Deleuze makes spelling mistakes writing the names of Spinoza's inner circle: i.e. Van den Enden without a N), but overall this book is a joy to read. His understanding of Spinoza's Ethics is mind-blowing, very original, and overall - partly - convincing.
I just disagree with Deleuze's picture of Spinoza as an anti-platonist. (1) For example, Deleuze says that for Spinoza goodness is relative. But that is only right to some extent, since Spinoza indeed says that God is our highest good. (2) Deleuze says that Spinoza is an anti-platonist because he thinks that joy is what we aim for. Yet Spinoza says that joy - just like Aquinas and Augustine - is the vision of God. (3) Deleuze says that Spinoza says goodbye to the Christian tradition because Spinoza denies the existence of Evil. Yet he fails to mention that it was Augustine - not Spinoza - who introduced the idea that evil is a privation of goodness. (4) The idea that goodness and being are identical, is also not a radical materialist idea, as Deleuze suggests, but an idea deeply imbedded in the Platonist/Christian tradition of Aquinas and Augustine.
(5) Deleuze says that Spinoza deconstructs the division between mind and body. This is true, but in the end Spinoza remains truthful to the division between natura naturata and natura naturans. That is, both mind and body must be grounded in natura naturans: the power of God. (6) Deleuze says that Spinoza believes in a plane of immanence. This is to an extent right: Spinoza does think that the world is identical to the world. Yet the world is not identical to God. God has infinitely more attributes than extension and thought. Spinoza is therefore an panENtheist: God still transcends our experience of the world.
Through contemplation (that is: intuitive knowledge) we can have knowledge and thereby love of God, but this is a knowledge of the infinite, of what transcends all our experiences. With such knowledge we can finally find rest, security in God's love (see: Ethics book 5). Maybe Deleuze would have written a better book about Spinoza if he did not start his book with Nietzsche's name but with the name of Plato! (less)
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Jun 27, 2008Andrew added it
Shelves: philosophy, deleuze-deleuzeans
As a long time fan of both Mssrs. Spinoza and Deleuze, this made for a very impressive synthesis. Deleuze loses his weird, babbling writing style and becomes pretty lucid, showing the linkages between his own philosophy and the ecstatic monist perspective of Spinoza, showing subversive possibilities everywhere.
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Aug 10, 2021Peter rated it it was amazing
I’m reading supplementary material around Deleuze before I dive into the big stuff. This led me down a rather extensive detour through Spinoza. Whether or not I actually end up enjoying Anti-Oedipus or A Thousand Plateaus, I have deeply enjoyed reading spinoza - this has been a reward in and of itself.
Deleuze does a fantastic job of explaining the terms and objectives of Ethics, and this book was valuable in sketching out some of the more complicated aspects for a non-philosopher like myself. I have a pretty good understanding of Nietzsche, so his decision to begin with him worked very well for me. The index of terms is particularly useful, although I far more enjoyed the short essays contained regarding Spinoza.
In short - a great work that was immensely helpful for understanding Ethics, and I think also valuable in understanding Deleuze’s philosophy as well. (less)
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May 10, 2019Michael rated it it was amazing
An absolute whirlwind (as Deleuze says of Spinoza) of ideas. Deleuze finds himself in the same awe as most readers of Spinoza - the humility in his words gives way to the beautiful composition and entwinement of Deleuze himself and Spinoza. One finds in this book more than an expository text concerning the systemat of Spinoza’s thought, but a living, breathing encounter with the Ethics - a road map for renewed experience in light of Spinoza’s radical thought.
If one wants to understand Deleuze, it is indeed through Spinoza. (less)
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Jun 14, 2013Ade Bailey rated it it was amazing
Shelves: philosophy
Loving this. Brief but super introduction too by Robert Hurley. He warns that the bokk may be 'difficult', and advises the reader to read lightly. I didn't find ithard, I found it delightful and rich. Coming from Gilles it was easy! (less)
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Jul 31, 2022Hinch rated it it was amazing
Shelves: philosophy
‘In his whole way of living and thinking, Spinoza projects an image of the positive, affirmative life, which stands in opposition to the semblances men are content with. Not only are they content with semblances of life, they feel a hatred of life, they are ashamed of it; a humanity bent on self-destruction, multiplying the cults of death, always busy running life into the ground, mutilating it, killing it outright or by degrees, overlaying it or suffocating it with laws, properties, duties - this is what Spinoza diagnoses in this world, this betrayal of the universe and mankind.’
Deleuze’s approach in all his books about other philosophers is as follows: to imagine himself ‘ass-fucking’ other philosophers and producing ‘offspring that are recognisably both [his] and the other’s’ (paraphrased). Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (S:PP) is a book that begins with the name ‘Nietzsche’. So, we can imagine it as a kind of threesome between Deleuze, Spinoza and Nietzsche, and via some strange m-preg antics Deleuze gives birth to pretty beautiful offspring.
S:PP is a book about two things: ontology (the study of what is out there in the world, of reality) and ethics. But you see, and here’s the catch, Deleuze in S:PP derives his ethics from his ontology. An ‘ethology’. I’ll only go briefly into Deleuze’s ontology here, I’ll focus on his ethics, as this is only a brief overview of the book and his ontology is… somewhat complicated to explain quickly.
Deleuze distinguishes between morality, which is transcendent, and ethics, which is immanent. Transcendent meaning above, outside, superimposed onto the world, and immanent meaning pervading, infusing, being present in the world. Deleuze argues that transcendent concepts (i.e. God, identity, etc.) are essentially repressive to life, for the most part: they remove us from what’s in front of us. They are symptoms of our alienation from the world. Morality is a transcendental idea: the idea of a kind of plan imposed from above on us, acting as a kind of system of law demanding our obedience, with Good referring to obedience and Evil to disobedience. Morality is the concept of a system of law.
On the other hand, ethics is a ‘voyage in immanence’. Instead of being a top-down plan, ethics is a diagram of encounters. Ethics is concerned with how we experience the world and ourselves, with how we act and how we live. Ethics is not a system of law with pretensions of objective values, or even values at all. Ethics is our practise of life.
Deleuze rejects morality and embraces Spinozist ethics. Deleuze’s ethics consists in maximising joy and minimising sad passions. Joy occurs when my body comes into contact with something that joins with me to create something greater. Joy consists in composition between me and something else, in short, in good relations. The sad passions - sadness itself, hatred, aversion, mockery, fear, despair, pity, indignation, envy, humility, anger, regret, vengeance, cruelty, etc.. - occur when my body comes into contact with something poisonous to it, something it does not agree with, something that in short decomposes me. The sad passions decompose my relations in negative ways, make me withdraw from the world.
Joy increases my power, and sadness decreases my power. Sad passions occur when I am most alienated, mystified, most separated from power, and the sad passions make me act in ways harmful to others - ways that are symptomatic of the pathetic life I must live to act in such ways.
What is so important here, is that myself, as an I, as a subject, is not the focus of Deleuze’s ethics. The ethics here is an ethics of intensities, an ethics of increasing power. Power here is not to be understood as domineering (a sad passion!), but as a creative force, as the ability to exert oneself in the world. Power is the capacity of acting. Deleuze’s ethics is based on speeds, accelerations, unformed elements, nonsubjectified values. They are not based on anything relating to me as an identity at all.
(I mean, let’s think for a moment: why should our ethics be based around the subject, the self? Consciousness is only the small part of thought we are aware of, yet we exalt it as some special thing above the rest of thought. Similarly, we are aware of very little of our bodily processes. We do not even know what the body can do, let alone what the mind can do! ‘The infant freely believes he wants milk, the angry man that he freely desires vengeance’.)
Acting ethically means organising good encounters, composing new relations, forming powers, experimenting, etc. , not in judging, blaming, imposing values on the world. It means the joy of discovering what we can do, and maximising what we can do.
The question left at the end of S:PP is: how do we enter into composition with one another to heighten our power, ad infinitum?
Spinozist ethics give us a beautiful way of living. By denouncing everything that separates us from life, they allow us to become free. (less)
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Nov 18, 2013Christopher Boerdam rated it really liked it
A genius writing about a genius - Deleuze's introduction to Spinoza is mind-blowing. As I am new to Spinoza, I definitely do not feel I have grasped everything Deleuze has packed into this little book. But this little work definitely encouraged me to see the audacity and originality of Spinoza's philosophy. Deleuze is perfectly suited to explain to the reader precisely what distinguishes Spinoza from his contemporaries, and what makes Spinoza still relevant today. The final chapter is especially pertinent in this regard. The A-Z glossary of Spinoza's philosophy was not as easy to read as the other chapters, but still well worth a ponder. (less)
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Aug 03, 2016Rui Coelho rated it it was ok
A specially bad introduction to Spinoza. Please read Deleuze's semminar on Spinoza at Vicennes instead. It presents the uniquely nietzschean reading of Spinoza that informs Deleuze work as a whole. (less)
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Apr 01, 2020Noé rated it it was amazing
More Spinoza is always a treat.
This book is wildly interesting because it goes beyond summarizing the ideas of Spinoza. Deleuze gives a fair reading of Spinoza and highlights certain of his ideas that didn't stick out to me when first reading him. He lays out the Ethics as a map of meaning to be explored tirelessly.
Firstly, this book improved my understanding of Spinoza, as well as made me see what outreach and application his ideas can have. Second, the way Deleuze passionately explores Spinoza is fascinating and has a contagious sense of energy.
Another thing I appreciated is that this book answered many of the questions I had when initially reading the Ethics. What about evil, what do we make of that? Why is this book called Ethics in the first place?
The latter is probably one of the biggest takeaways, which gives me a key understanding of the distinction between morality and ethics. This has illuminated some of my thought process, and seems to be an important concept to grasp to approach Deleuze himself.
It is also really interesting to see how a philosopher reads a philosopher. It shows the meta conversations that happen with thinkers across time and made me think about philosophy itself in a broader scope.
Deleuze's descriptions of Spinoza as a gust of wind or the scholia of the Ethics as an underground maze were simultaneously evocative while providing an enhanced intuitive meaning. It was refreshing and gave me appetite to read more meta-philosophical texts that are both analytical and entertaining.
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Apr 01, 2017sologdin rated it it was ok
Shelves: dilectio-sapientiae
Text opens with a biographical note on Spinoza, but it is more a rumination based on Nietzsche’s belief that the “mystery of a philosopher’s life” was in how one “appropriates the ascetic virtues—humility, poverty, chastity—and makes them serve ends completely his own, extraordinary ends that are not very ascetic at all”; they are by contrast “an expression of his singularity” (3). These are not a morality, but the “effects of philosophy itself,” a superabundance that has “conquered thought and subordinated every other instinct to itself” (id.). For Spinoza, this is ‘Nature,’ “a life no longer lived on the basis of need, in terms of means and ends, but according to production, a productivity, a potency, in terms of causes and effects” (id.). For the agambenians, it might strike one as the philosopher’s bios, or perhaps even the eidos zoe, the form-of-life of the philosopher, wherein this form is inseparable from life itself, wherein the rule and the life coincide without remainder. Curious! (a philosopher is also marked out by ‘solitude’ in this FoL; perhaps a comparison with the eremite in Homo Sacer part VIII is in order.)
Spinoza may have spoken about the “harmfulness of revolutions” in a period wherein “’revolutionary’ ideology is permeated with theology and is often, as with the Calvinist part, in the service of politics of reaction” (9). Spinoza was interested in popular irrationality, in pride in enslavement, in the reasons that peoples fought for their own bondage—quite simply, he was curious about the existence of rightwing populism. Like the Frankfurt School centuries later, “Why is it so difficult not only to win but to bear freedom?” (10). This political critique extends to those “bent on self-destruction” and “the union of the tyrant and the slave” (12).
The basis of spinozist (love that adjectival form) ethics is a “triple denunciation of ‘consciousness,’ of ‘values,’ and of ‘sad passions’” (17), which led him to being accused contemporaneously of “materialism, immoralism, and atheism” (id.). Spinoza is famous for the doctrine of parallelism, which “does not consist merely in denying any real causality between the mind and the body, [but] disallows any primacy of the one over the other” (18). This results in a “reversal of the traditional principle on which Morality was founded as an enterprise of domination of the passions by consciousness” (id.). Plenty on this. Lotsa nifty insights, such as “the confusion that compromises the whole of ontology,” “the history of a long error whereby the command is mistaken for something to be understood, obedience for knowledge itself” (24), a fatal commingling of power with truth, one supposes. Ultimately, the Ethics as composed of “great theories” regarding “the oneness of substance, the univocity of the attributes, immanence, universal necessity, parallelism,” but also how the aforesaid “cannot be treated apart from the three practical theses concerning consciousness, values, and the sad passions” (28).
Thereafter follows a brief essay on the ‘letters on evil,’ which is correspondence with one Blyenbergh, a numbnut “amateur Calvinist theologian” (30), whom Spinoza crushed in a series of letters, via working out his ontological theses on composition/decomposition. The main section of the volume, however, is an index of concepts from the Ethics (44 ff); it is weighty, and likely only becomes fully significant if read directly in conjunction with the principal text for which it is supplement (my reading of the Ethics is 20 years distant, and accordingly I am an incompetent reader of this text). For instance, the article on ‘Mode’ (91 ff) includes the argument that “one of the essential points of Spinozism is in its identification of the ontological relationship of substances and modes [cf. Agamben HS IX, of course] with the epistemological relationship of essences and properties and the physical relationship of cause and effect” (loc. cit.).
Or, the article on ‘Necessary’ (93 ff) notes that “Spinoza’s critique has two culminating points: nothing is possible in Nature; that is, the essences of nonexisting modes are not models or possibilities in a divine legislative intellect; there is nothing contingent in Nature; that is, existences are not produced through the action of a divine will which, in the manner of a prince, could have chosen a different world with different laws” (94). Or on ‘Power’ (97 ff): “one of the basic points of the Ethics consists in denying that God has any power analogous to that of a tyrant” (loc. cit.).
Thoughtful concluding essays on Spinoza’s intellectual development as well as his continuing relevance.
Recommended for those who believe in philosophy’s function as a radical enterprise of demystification, thinkers who conceal their boldest and least orthodox arguments in appendices and notes, and readers who present ethics as a theory of power rather than a theory of obligations.
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Nov 06, 2016Alex Obrigewitsch rated it it was amazing
This short work is an amazing aid for those interested in the thought of both Spinoza and Deleuze. It makes abundantly clear how close Deleuze's thought is to that of Spinoza - how the thought of Spinoza flows not through Deleuze's mind, but through his heart.
"The entire Ethics is a voyage in immanence, but immanence is the unconscious itself, and the conquest of the unconscious. Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation" (29). Life is an ever moving flow, without beginning or end. It is always taken or experienced from a middle point, from within, immanently. It is never consciously known or governed by any law or consciousness beforehand; we don't even know what a body can do. And so is life an experience, a testing, an experiment, an attempt.
This is but one way of understanding the interrelations between Spinoza and Deleuze. The final section of this work, "Spinoza and Us," is imperative for any understanding of Deleuze (with or without Guattari); it is by far the peak of this piece. The life and affirmation flow through it so strongly, coalescing in a final encomium to Spinoza and all that his thought and writings may do for us - opening us up to the nonphilosophical, affective life of joy that we are always already participating in and as, however blindly.
Helpful to those studying Spinoza, though a general understanding of his thought is definitely useful here, it is of even greater value to the student of Deleuze, of which it may perhaps be the best introductory text. Regardless, this work is beneficial for any who seek to live a joyful life, to every gay scientist. (less)
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Jun 21, 2018Alice Nilsson rated it really liked it
Ever think wow i should read spinoza, but need some coaxing to actually get urself around to read it. Read this. The dictionary section is kinda boring but the other parts are very good. The last essay is good intro to Deleuze's idea of a Plane of Immanence (less)
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Jul 29, 2007Francesca rated it it was amazing
Amazing, accessible intro to both Spinoza AND Deleuze, if you ask me.
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Dec 03, 2020Michael rated it it was amazing
Wow, just: damn. Famously difficult philosopher
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