Which Spinoza is this?
Plateau 1 The Monster
How does one understand the relationship between Deleuze and his Spinoza(s)? Formerly that relationship appears easy enough to grasp. Spinoza was the subject of two studies in the history of philosophy series, Expressions and Practical philosophy, both written within three years of yeas other (1967 and 1970), and then there are some mentions in Thousand Plateaus, and What is Philosophy, a few letters and a late essay in Essay Critical and Clinical. And yet , these scattered reference give witness to a strange inflation in Spinoza’s position. In Difference and Repetition Spinoza was firmly a philosopher who the thinker of the eternal return could and did break with: he was the last stepping stone of the road to Nietzsche, (DR377); by thousand Plateaus by contrast he was the one thinker you was essential to the formation of a Body without Organs (TP 158); while by What is Philosophy he ascended to become the prince or even the Christ of Philosophy (WiP 48 and 60 respectively). Moreover there is in this inflation a clearly a series of changes what Deleuze understands Spinoza to be saying. Take as a n example the position of substance (and so God). In Expressionism Deleuze involve the infinite capacity to be affect while individuals represent a finite quanta of the capacity (Ex 218).; Bu three years latter (or so) God is being thought of in terms of a single plane of consistency or immanence Moreover this nature is itself to be understood as an infinite individual capable of changing in an infinity of ways (PrP 122). By What is Philosophy this second element is explicitly ruled out as the plane of immanence is distinct from concepts (and a concept which included it would be chaos WiP 39); while substance itself is explicitly thought now to turn on pure immanence rather than the other way around WiP). There is clear that numerous and rather subtle changes in the interpretation of Spinoza run parallel to his movement up the Deleuzian hit Parade.
This by itself be might well be complex enough but it is very clear, at least in Expressionism that Deleuze does not understand Spinoza in isolation. On the contrary in at leas that work Deleuze is interested in creation a point of indescernibility between Spinoza and Leibniz. Deleuze names impure crystal the ‘Anti-Cartesian Reaction’. And it is in the name of this reaction that Deleuze strips out of Leibniz certain key ideas and applies then to Spinoza. In particular Deleuze takes and freely applies to Spinoza Leibniz’s arguments about the difference between force and motion. The Latter becomes a purely extrinsic quanta; while the former becomes the force of acting and suffering . A move, which can of course be read in Spinoza, but is very certainly not specified by him, an yet is central to Leibniz.
And yet there is more to this process than merely filching some on the best ideas of one philosopher, and claiming to find them in the somewhat confused terminology of another. The Process is unstable because Deleuze is in effect only in responsible for one half of the exchange. He therefore engineers a sense the Leibniz can be taken into Spinoza (and so transformed into a philosophy of immanence); and yet this move is itself only possible if Leibniz had not already taken up, and transformed the nature of Spinoza in his own work. This transformation is perhaps contained most clearly in two key texts (although it runs through Leibniz’s work). The first of these text is the notes that the young Leibniz made after having met Spinoza. In this text that Leibniz appears to outline a philosophy that is neither Spinoza’s (it rejects the attribute) or yet his own, a philosophy that worries about the notion of difference (and which can only be countered by the need for a moral universe). The second main text is the essay ‘On Nature itself’, written in 1698 ostensively against the writer Sturm and the argument that Nature can be taken as a whole. In this essay however, after dismissing Sturm’s implicit and overtly mechanistic Spinoza-ism, Leibniz introduces on his own account the notion of an immanent force. This immanent force can he suggests only be contained by, and turned towards the moral through the action of self-sufficient substances or monad (P.E. 161); moreover this jump to the monad represents the first use of the phrase within Leibniz’s writings. That is Leibniz not only appear to be adapting or adopting element of Spinoza-ism to his own philosophy, but also then defining one of his key ideas against his own apparently Spinoza-ist conjurations.
It is then is a sense this Spinoza, the one that is being taken up of reflected in the mind of Leibniz which fascinated Deleuze so much, and whose imperceptible nature he can only get at by bending his own interpretations of Spinoza in the light of this ‘other’ Spinoza. It is moreover this relationship that proves so volatile and unstable within Deleuze’s own thought. Three times he works out a different solution of what this ‘other’ Spinoza might involves, as his understanding of Leibniz (and so how he might be interpreting Spinoza) shifts and changes. In the rest of this essay I will trace something of the nature of these three plateaus in Spinoza scholarship, as well as hint to the strange passages and odd encounters which held one from plateau to plateau.
Plateau 2 The Physiological Spinoza
In Deleuze’s first formation of Spinoza, as I briefly mentioned above, it is clear that the Leibniz Essay On Nature Itself is critical to Deleuze’s own reading of Spinoza. In that Essay Leibniz suggests that it simply is not good enough (as the Cartesian’s believed) to understand the material world in terms of a mechanical relations of movement. This is because if that movement really involved elements which were really utterly identical to one another (save by the fact that they moved_ then is would follow, that at each moment the entire plenum of matter would be in fact indistinguishable from any previous or succeeding states, as all elements would be in effect indistinguishable from one another (P E. 164). There must therefore be more to matter than mere movement and rest. This extra element Leibniz suggests is the ‘force for acting and being acted upon (P.E 159), which acting in the moment differs past from future, and so is the true agent of difference. And yet Leibniz goes on to suggests as this agent only operates within moments, it is necessary to think of a ‘primary substance; (or monad) which is capable of enveloping all this force, and by giving it a sufficient reason gathering it in one specific individual (P.E.160)
It is then this argument explicit argument of Leibniz which Deleuze, though an appeal to a supposed shared ‘anti-Cartesian reaction’ applies freely to Spinoza (where the argument is implicit at best – Ex228). Deleuze explicitly argues that one can take this three fold division of reality into movement, the force for acting and suffering, and substance into Spinoza. In this account the middle term becomes the capacity for being affected (a phrase which Spinoza does use, but does not directly link to God), while the substance that is capable of enveloping this power is given in individual essences (Ex229). This argument is only possible because Deleuze has made two other moves within Spinoza. On the one hand he has been very careful to argue that each essence represents a certain quanta of power (Ex. 197), which is associated within a fixed capacity for being effect which is fused into one fixed body `(Ex 222). On the other hand Deleuze also needs to argue that Spinoza relations of motion and rest are purely extrinsic in their nature as they clearly are for Leibniz, and yet not so clearly from Spinoza (Deleuze will have to cite the Kantain example of space which is external to me and yet does so from within me to support his case – Ex214).
This Deleuze’s Spinoza is therefore squeezed into giving an immanent account of problematic field Leibniz mapped out (where Leibniz himself gave a transient account and do preserved morality). What is more, for this move to be possible Spinoza must conform to the overall contours of this field. Essence therefore must involve individuality, and therefore becomes fixed within a body, and associated with a certain physically fixed capacity for affection. Each essence will then at every moment be as perfect as it can be, and yet the state of that perfection will vary from moment to moment, as the individual as a whole becomes more or less able to act. The conatus becomes in this account an expression of an individual’s wholeness in the light of these changes, and in the face of the whole of nature that underpins them.
This last move imposes a strictly dualism of the position of nature in this argument. On the one hand nature understood as a causal nexus defined the creation of an individual body in terms of an extrinsic causal nexus (and only once this body as come into play does a body have fixed capacity for affection and so an essence Ex 233). On the other hand the order of nature is understood as the rules by which existing modes enter into differing compositions (for their good or ill) with one another (Ex236-237). Nature therefore defines what an individual is, but then also articulates the sense in which that individuals nature can then change (within certain physically fixed boundaries Ex 220). These two elements are of course one and the same to the face of nature itself nature and yet must, Deleuze argues be kept apart, by the individuals inhabiting that nature, so save nature itself becoming a moral concern (as it does for Leibniz).
The result is a profoundly dualistic account o the world. On the one hand there exists the personal order of causes (where the possibility of by being is fixed) and on the other the order in which I feel joy and pain or good an evil, according to how causes effect my being.. The Dualism is moreover carried into adequate ideas themselves. These ideas as common notion come into two distinct varieties. On the one hand one might form an idea of nature itself, and grasp oneself as a product in its infinite order, an order which would imply that another series of causes (and so combination) where possible (Ex 286) . On the other one can form common notions of the intense parts of ones own body (ones bodies anatomical component Ex 283) as they are caught up in the act of constructing ones own being (and therefore as one is the whole to their parts). If one forms then an idea of these elements, these parts, one grasps in the fact that these elements could be caught up in making a whole variety of differing individuals (which they are common to), and therefore the very idea of them allows one allows one power to shift ones understanding of what one is. Thence Common notions are divided between understanding oneself as a part in nature or understanding how oneself depends upon ones own parts. These two remain as yet unreconcilled (as for expressionism they are only interlaced within the third form of knowledge (Ex 313). Moreover of these two Deleuze is clear that his Spinoza clearly prefers the second, the least general form of common notions. It is always these notions that are the ones which as they encompasses the richest intensities are the more powerful and convey on us the most freedom. The common notion therefore ones one forms involving other humans (and the sliding possibilities of other-human nature) are therefore Deleuze argues by far the most useful. The Dualism of nature as cause and individual in nature is therefore productive in the sense that the greater the latter is differed from the form, the deeper its power (here of course Deleuze is finding a fair degree of Bergson in his Spinoza)
The Spinoza of Expressionism is very much a philosopher on the stepping stone to difference. The Philosopher who got all the ‘correct’ ingredients for understanding the eternal return, but then put them together in the wrong order. An error which clearly for Deleuze involved two problem. Firstly, this Spinoza makes his system on attributes and therefore qualities, and not difference as such. Secondly at the core of Spinoza lies a residue Arstotliannism that saw a body rivet down an identity, and do so through extrinsic agencies. as opposed to understanding all extrinsic movements are the expression of intense powers (DR292 ).
Signalling light 1: Between the Body and the Rhythm.
A Spinoza is thereby conjured forth who is reassuringly close to Deleuze’s own project, and agreeable fails to achieve that project is a believable manner. And yet there is a real problem at the heart of such an interpretation. The central dualism between man and nature, that is between nature in terms of a causal axis, and man acting within that nature, is not really native to Spinoza (it comes from Leibniz). Spinoza on his own emphasis the connection between Nature Sive God and Man. Moreover world becomes all the more problematic, when one allows for Spinoza’s attack on the notion that their can be a potential infinite intellect (2/49). Deleuze an argument Deleuze in Expressionism whole heartedly endorse, and goes on to ague that it must entail that non-existence essences are fully real if virtual intense differences
Within a singe attribute of God ( Ex 192), a move which is only possible because it endorse a highly idiosyncratic reading of certain propositions pf ethics (see translators note in the previous reference). What is more even if one accepts this reading one is left with a strange asymmetry. On the one hand there is nature that is always real actual and vibrantly realized, while on the other are essence whose own individuality remains abstract and at a distance from anything which nature itself directly could actualize, and does so even as that abstract agent, that fixed quanta o power is said to be running the show. In short the individuality which Deleuze ‘borrowed from Leibniz comes this an additional surplus of abstract universality that does not sit too comfortably within Spinoza’s metaphysics which appears o set itself against such abstract (which was always Leibniz critique of Spinoza).
It is clear that Deleuze himself was not for very long happy with the Spinoza he had created. In Practical philosophy, written in 1970, it is clear he is trying to change his account of Spinoza in two main ways. Firstly he in his understanding of common notions. In Expressionism Common notions revolved either around the way I understood how I was being created within nature, or hw I was a part of natures causal set. In practical Philosophy by contrast they relate to the way I as an individual enter into relation with others to form an individual beyond the two (or more) of us. The Common notions is therefore that series of difference which runs between me and some others, though which exchange be communicate to one another, and increase the number of things we can do (PrP.54). The part and whole therefore swap around. In Expressionism I was the whole, and common notions relate to my understanding of my own components, while in Practical philosophy I become the part to a whole which is elsewhere. The dualism of nature and individual are apparently then occluded. I make common notions clearly as I directly participate within nature (that is as I experience myself a part in a far greater whole or series of whole).
On the other hand the nature of affects subtly changes in the light of this change in common notions. Expressionism certainly introduce he key Deleuzian distinction of affectio and affectus, ideas of another, and the passage (or becoming) in me that idea produces. And yet in that work what then matters is that one forms an idea of the affecting body (affectio) as quickly as one can, his idea is moreover necessarily a common notion (Ex 220-221). In Practical Philosophy the emphasis very subtly shifts. The affectus itself (PrP 50), the shift appears the central concern. But even more critically, in Practical philosophy he links the adequate idea one might form of the affectio to the third type of knowledge (and so not common notions – prP51). This last move is all the more odd because in the common notion entry of the same book, a far greater emphasis had been on starting with the affect of job as the starting point of a common notion (rather than as it is Expressionism, the fabric on ones own body). Therefore Deleuze at once reaches for an affect centred take on common notions, even as he pulls affects themselves away from common notions, and makes the revolve around the third type of knowledge. And yet Practical philosopher is also the more remarkable for what it does not change. Common notions might properly an individual towards nature, and yet that individuals nature, at another level still remains rivet into a specific individuality, and defined body, and a preset capacity for affection. To break this bound a bolt has to all from outside. In comes then from a possibly surprising source. It comes from Guattari.
Plateau two the Rhythmic Spinoza.
Guattari in the letters he wrote to Deleuze prior to the publication of Anti-Oedipus modifies Deleuze’s own synthesis of Leibniz and Spinoza in three main ways.
Firstly he argues that the modal essence and monads were not different takes in the same problem, but rather different responses to a different problems. One should one argue that because these accounts end in the same place (a deep connection between the natural and the moral) that their path to that place was one and the same.(he thereby in part reject the Anti-Cartesian Orthodoxy line).
The problem that the monad faces in then a problem of profound and deep deterritorilization. Each monad perpetually interrupts the course on the universe, . each then naturally break are re-breaks the world of all other monads (including its own), Leibniz problem is then almost that he has pushed difference to far. He can invented an individual, the monad capable of inhabiting an impossible degree of difference moment by moment (AOP 259). Morality is then his solution to this problem. There is only one world, and difference is not that unstable, because a good and rational God must create only the best of worlds (or none at all AoP ibid). The Mode by contrast is frozen within its own specific power relations. Riveted then is a specific Body, it remains Guattari remarks very re-assuringly like the soul. Sealed in its own body, it removed from all the worrying implication of difference, which remain the property of substance alone (the capacity to change infinite things in infinite ways –AOP 262-263).
Moreover each represent a flowed method for tackling the mechanism of Descartes (this was the essence of the Anti-Cartesian reaction) Spinoza can only tackle in be creating a false ego (mode) buttressed by a body, and the physisics of possibility and perfection (the mode is always as perfect as it can be). In contrast Leibniz can only counter it by forcing the very unity of nature into a necessary moral order. Spinoza therefore as recourse to an essence which is of itself always upstream of the actualization of events, while Leibniz warps those events in the light of what happens down stream of them (that is their eventual consequence). But either way around nature itself is made to made to respect something which remain external to it (essence or God’s choice AOP 261)) . But more than that its very unit thereby becomes able to bend to create a unity for nature which is ultimately founded on a moral order. Thence a mode therefore just as much as a monad will treat the unity of nature (the order of composition and decompositions of its relations) in as a moral question: that is both can only grasp nature in terms of an order which is defined in relation to a pre-existing notion of perfection (AOP 266). To set nature free one from its own unity and own morality) one needs therefore to free from the need to conform to abstract individuality and the implied moral order that follows from that need.
Secondly and building on the last point, Guattari suggests where Leibniz and Spinoza meet (or at least should have meet) in a conception of nature which involves a real exchange between genuinely different agents. Nature at this point be( from Leibniz) defines the sense in which in the course of this exchange each individual is reworked. Moreover nature will then (following now Spinoza) define a model from how individuals might inhabit such a domain of breakage. Nature, understood as a plane of compositions, forms a domain in which intensities not only are created, but are also as a point of exchange of communication of difference. Nature itself therefore forms a machanic assemblage of powers, albeit on a global level (AOP 263). It is the this nature, replete with endlessly exchanging, and never abstract intensities, which will form the model for understanding the individual.
Thirdly it is clears in this move the position of Spinoza I likely to be augmented, while the position of Leibniz is somewhat problematic. Deleuze’s Spinoza is after all the philosopher who started with the fixed body, and then understood what really mattered abut that body through what it could then do. It is then these actions which are now being supposed to matter (rather than the fixing of the body), as it is through these actions that an individual participated within nature and becomes itself a Body Without Organs akin to nature itself. All that is lost then is the tie in between having a fixed body, an a capacity for affection (which was never explicit in Spinoza anyway). All hat one needs to two is then separate this ‘hard domain in which the molar body is fixed from the free flowing physics of relations of motion and rest (which were never specific to any one individual TP 252-256)), and intensity (which are defined in the exchange with other individuals, and which inherit the fixed capacity for affection (TP 256-260). It will then be the role of these intensities (and not essence) to factualise the nature of events (AOP 266 and TP260-265). Leibniz by contrast likely to be the loser in such an exchange simply because the tenor of his argument appears to run very much in the opposite direction to that of Spinoza’s. Leibniz after all starts with the molecular and then proceeds to understand how that molecules comes caught up in agglomerations, and molar organization. Additionally these agglomeration are ultimately only really unified by an appeal to harmony, and through harmony to the best of possible words . Where therefore the position is likely to be once again enhanced by Guattari’s suggested approach the position of Leibniz is very likely to be occluded as he ‘takes the blame’ form the molar-moral dimension of expressive philosophy.
All these three point were then taken up first in Anti-Oedipus, but also and far more richly in Thousand Plateaus. In this latter book, the question of agglomeration, and the interlink to morality (as Judgements of Gods) is fully developed in the appropriately named Geology of Morality plateau (TP 40-74). In the course of this argument is suggested that such agglomeration are only possible because of molecular movements which create necessarily ‘besides ‘ that are necessary to the formation of such strata (para and epi-strata. TP51-52). And yet these movements are it is also argued (in the How do you make yourself a body without organs pplateua0dangerous and suspect, the agent of cancer both of the mind and the body (TP159). On will therefore each the molecular level (that is form common notions) only through the way they are affected by others (through their perception including the perception of their body), and thereby enter into an exchange with these others. That is what matters are the common notions of Practical philosophy, and not those of Expressionism (TP69). The Individual becomes at once- part-whole and whole-parts. As the former, then exist as a body into organs, populated by shifting and communicating intensities, which are endlessly exchanging with one another, and rendering each configuration provisional, a mere part in the affair (TP 161). While at the same time each such body will to other bodies appear as an intensity in is own right, to be taken up as a single plateau and used as a part of something else (TP158). Nature itself will the form the totalities of these bodies, and yet as long as that totalities is always understood as something under construction, something infinitely changing, and evolving- the infinitely plastic face of nature itself (Tp157). The Bergonsian dualism, that saw nature as the field of immanent cause is then transformed. Nature a plane of consistency is the site of endless construction, and possibility, and not merely a dreary world of cause and effect.
In outlining this argument, Deleuze and Guattari further enriches in the refrain plateau there understanding of common notions. They keep the old idea that the first common notions are the most local, and most cautious. One does not get to the plane of nature or form a Body without organs by pulling oneself apart (TP 161). But this caution id no longer the produce of a deep dualisms of Man on nature. On the contrary the aim of common notions is allow one how to understand (and partially navigate) the sense one is always bound up with the plane of consistency itself (TP 59). Common notions that is refrains are therefore always pitched between milieus, and so between individuals, (TP 313). And yet they also involve their own dualism. Each refrain is at once deterritorilising somewhere, and reterritiorisling elsewhere, they are both at one with the cosmos itself, but also staking out across numerous shared milieus a sense in which this little piece of that cosmos can be my own (TP 327). Each refrain creates a point of exchange, setting a certain number of elements a jangle, while all the while also appeal to the wider unities of earth and beyond it cosmos ( Tp349). As such each notion in simultaneous represent a while (a territory, but also be a part of the ‘immense earth’ in which things can always be thrown otherwise or be a part of some other very different assemblage (Tp347). This dualism of territory is then added not to dualism of molar and molecular that is strata/milieu and intensity (Tp345).
The argument of practical Philosophy that common notions were involved the communication between differing individuals (now intensities),and that of such unions not only particular whole, but also the cosmos itself was built, has therefore been developed and expanded. It has become great system within which all of nature can be understood as a common notion or even a concept ( Neg 137). However this development hat been at the cost of losing on the one side a connection between molar body and molecular interaction, but also of allow the individual to understand themselves and their own nature as an event as such. Moreover in the latter move what is also occluded is the notion that concept ought to relate to a domain other than the factualization of events ( Guatteri’s phrase), a domain that cannot then be bound within the orbit of nature itself (even as it is understood as plane of consistency). Finally the rather careful distinctions between affect and concept which were being slowly developed in Practical philosophy, have been eclipse by the power and useful of the concept.
It is clear enough that is last point two points that perhaps were most troubling to Deleuze, at least initially when he returns once again to his solo work.
Signalling light 2 : The other voices of becoming.
In Cinema one it is clear Deleuze is attempting to explore some if the territory that Thousand plateau covered, but from a very different perspective. He self consciously establish distance by making two moves. On the one hand Cinema one is very much a book about sight and light, while in the Refrain, Deleuze and Guattari had lauded music an somehow more fundamental that visual arts (TP347). By writing then about light, Deleuze is already at a distance from the refrain. And yet it is clear that this distance is a creative one., as it allows hum to develop and use otherwise themes from Thousand Plateaus. Take for example in Plateau Year zero : Faciality (TP167-19) Deleuze first in the consideration of film outlines the importance of the face in defining affects (and in the course of this argument introduces the percept). In Cinema 1 then takes up that argument, but ultimately moves it from being centred on an actually embodiment of the face. Linking affects rather with ‘Any Space Whatever’ rather than with faces as such (C1110-111).
Under the cover of this protective distance Deleuze starts to outline agencies and properties which found so place in Thousand Plateaus;, or rather were the not differentiated from the concept, namely the affect and percept. The latter of these (which he calls in Cinema 1 Gaseous Perception) is the Genetic form of perception. As such it is at a point before identity or even individuation, (C1 81), the point akin to the clinamen from which any individual take on a perception tumbles (C1 83).That is it is the point the universe enters into the mind, in an open form, lending the mind some of its own force, and allowing the mind to become other than it was. At the same time Deleuze clearly advances of modifies his understanding of Affects. Where in Thousand Plateaus affects had been linked to the factualization of the events (in Cinema 1 they are concerned rather with the interactions and endless interplay of events (C1 103). Each affect therefore takes on itself something of the Body without Organs, in that it is what facilitates the differences that events open up.; albeit they do it firmly from the position of phenomena. In the affect the one affirms, in a single expression ones own ability to straddle numerous world, and is thereby opened up to possibility, and to the sense that it is its own another :one affirms then the act of choosing beyond any specific choice(C1 116).
Through the notions of affect and gaseous perception (percept) Deleuze clearly is reaching towards a different account to the one he and Guattari gave in the Refrain. And yet it is clearly that there is an element still missing. In Cinema 1 he understands this domain as being supported by ‘any-space-what-evers’. This space which is always constructed point , and could be linked up in a very great many ways (C1 120).is essentially the same as the plane of Composition of thousand Plateaus. Ultimately therefore affects remain caught up in the space of concept, while percepts remain under theorised. And Deleuze can clearly only free the latter, and examine property the former if he can form another ‘take’ on space.
However to make this move, it will also be first necessary to further clarify the difference between affect and concept. It is of course at just this point the Leibniz once again enters the picture. Deleuze retuning to Leibniz in the Fold, suddenly realizes the deep importance of a very genuine Leibnizian distinction. A Monad is only substantial because it is able to distinguish between affects and events. God fixes it in the world of events, and yet allows it to be free in the world of affect. Each monad therefore really old have felt differently, and each of there feelings enfold very many other worlds, even though the monad is tied to the one world (and that the best) by the events that must happen within it. This then allows Deleuze to articulate where Guattari’s critique of him was simply wrong. Guatteri, the non-philosopher had confused the Monads freedom in relation to affects, with their freedom in relation concepts (and event).
Moreover Leibniz’s concentration on affects as indexes of possibility, allow two other move. On the one hand Leibniz very clearly links affects to differential feelings and perception. Or perhaps t be more truthful Leibniz produces an account of the affects which involves differentials of feeling, which are integrated into apperception, a theory Deleuze very freely applies to perception as well (F97-113). On the other hand Leibniz suppose the body to relate not to the constructionalist ‘any space-whatever’ but rather to preformism understood as the move from fold to fold, a difference which allows the differentiated to be differed. (F11). This last move then matters as Deleuze provides an cogent account of how the plastic forces of the body hook back into percept-affect, in what Deleuze refers to at the end of the Fold, as accords (F150). Each accords reflect a certain ever evolving intergration of perception and feelings (a clear zone) . this zone in nonetheless pitched up within the differential world of shifting micro feeling and perception. It will therefore vary in its application moment by moment ( F80). This zone is then reflected within the body, through plastic forces. These forces exist neither as molar or molecular, but rather a crowd phenomena suspended between the two (F 131. this crowd neither therefore defines the body as entity (or strata) as such; Nor yet does it define the sense of an exchange by which an individual is drawn of into an other nature; But rather is gives the sense that a body is only my own, and only given to me, as I is grasping a world beyond myself: my Body is mine therefore only as it allows be to see or talk or others (F109). It is the enframing in which those others are to me. Additionally this framing includes within it,, the very creative forces of the material universe itself (elastic forces). Such forces of themselves pertain to a space beyond any one individual (and are defined ultimately in entelechies without bodies), and will all the same be in me, and of me, my elastic forces, as they are caught up in the universe itself (133-134)
The domain of perception-affection is define as something apart from the domain of concepts. This latter remain is fixed within the monad, as only God has been given the freedom to link up events in different orders and manners. However this riveting of events in a single concept (the Best of worlds), cannot survive the death of God. This last fact matter to the distinct world of accords as such accords where only fixed in specific individuals as those individuals were thought to contain a certain set or series of event. Once this possession (in the Monad) is no more the accords, the world of vinculums are excused either from resolving into harmonies or even or even from being specific to one body : the same series of plastic forces might then be caught up in very many bodies, or might by caught up in elastic forces impelling them beyond all bodies (F157), while the affection and perceptions that accompany these forces, will like open out in to the universe itself, as percept-affects, which encompass many differing individuals and possible worlds.
The Fold, and Deleuze himself remarks (N 137) was critical in that it allowed him to tell affect percept and concept apart. This distinction no doubt had always been in his work (Practical Philosophy is clearly reaching towards it without finding it), and yet had even eclipsed by the confusion of non-philosophy Guattari). Deleuze’s challenge is of course now to develop this distinction more fully, and to do this he naturally enough once again returns to Spinoza.
Plateau 3: the Light Spinoza.
Deleuze will use Spinoza to both understand why Guattari had made his mistake (what the non-philosopher fails to grasp in philosophy) but also to exploit that error and stitch in into new philosophy which is able to tackle the non-philosophic. Spinoza is thereby transfigured and the Christ for Philosophy, who can speak both the language of the philosopher and non=philosopher alike (WiP 59-60). It is will allow one to understand who affect, concept and percept are ‘all mixed up’ with one another (N137), that is all represent different ways of knowing. Or perhaps it is better to say, it will be Spinoza who will allow one to sort though this mixing up’ and show how each of these forms of knowing is conjoined to another (affect-concept or affect-percept, percept-concept), and how this conjunction relates to all the others. However the dominant image for this Spinoza is no longer music, but rather Following (Cinema 1) light, and his position in philosophy is to render Cartesian philosophy Luminous rather than merely tactile (CC 141). Such a Spinoza will then be a complex affair, as it will need to be at once a philosopher and an non-philosopher; it will need to talk of concepts and their link to affects, but also of affects and percept. Deleuze therefore is very careful from this point to avoid simply setting his Spinoza in stone and presents two quite different takes upon such (a) Spinoza(s).
In Essays Critical and Clinical one meets therefore very much the philosopher Spinoza, who non-philosophic element (Spinoza is of course also a lens grinder), inspired him to produce an account of the world infused with light. Common notions might then retain their central ole, and are still understood as rhythm, and yet that rhythm is to be understood in terms of colour and light (CC 143). Affects play the role of shadow which describes as feeling, that as a darkened reflection, the phenomena of colour (CC. 141). Joy I therefore the dark precursor to the concept (CC. 144). The link therefore very much remains between affect and concept. The third form of knowledge (called explicitly the percept), is then treated as a thing apart. They are the ‘figure’ of light itself, in its absolute speed, grasped as a single move, and not therefore in terms of the relations and relative speeds on concepts (CC148).
The Spinoza therefore in Essays Critical and Clinical is therefore still developing thesis akin to the Spinoza of the Anti-Oedipus papers, in that he is developing thesis which links affect to concept (while percept remains a thing apart),Deleuze then in contrast develops very much the mirror hypothesis in ‘What is Philosophy?’ (a question aimed at Guattri?), where concepts stand free, and affects and percepts are combined.
In this end several moves are made, all of which have the effect of creating a domain for Philosophy that remains distinct from nature , and so also the event a reality which can remain distinct from mere factualizations.. Firstly concepts remain common notions, whose role is to establish zones of connection or indesernibility between desperate singularities (WiP20). Each concept will therefore operate as a point of focus for differing events, which articulates the inter-play of singularities one against one other, and defines as a axis of philosophical becoming the sense in which events avoid what they are (WiP177). However this is just a hint that the old definition of common notions as anatomical components is not absolutely lost, as each concepts necessarily involves bridging point with other concepts, through which it changes into another concept(WiP 25-26), in the same manner as each body contains components which could always be otherwise (that is in other bodies). Additionally the domain in which these concepts exists is on longer nature or yet the infinite capacity for affection, but rather pure immanence, which is now aid to be the point upon which all of Spinoza in fact turns (rather than nature WiP 48). The role of this immanence is not to totalises or contained concepts (was that containment it is now claimed would amount to anarchy), .On the contrary its role is to establish a point of exchange between differing motions, allowing a moment to pass, and yet to also communicate to another something of what it was (WiP 42). Philosophical immanence therefore acts not as a totalizing force, so much as a filter over chaos, a filter that allows thought to be..
The placing of this argument in Spinoza’s ethics is plain enough. In book five Spinoza contrasts the idea of God with common notions, which tend toward that idea (and are transformed by it) without ever becoming it (5/14-20). This Idea then forms the reference point for philosophy, the horizon line on the non-philosophic, which when reached will necessarily require the philosopher to grasp the world not by concept but percept (third kind of knowledge). This Spinoza therefore allows philosophy itself space (the rhythm of concepts, and of most of Ethics) but also defines the point it becomes something else. However it is now a mistake to confuse this other, this domain of non-philosophy with philosophy, with the concept itself. it must be mapped put by something quite different. it must be mapped out by affect and percept.
The domain the of the non-philosophic is defined by two distinct element. On the one hand there is the conjoining of affect-percept. In this conjunction the percept is defined as the landscape before man or force of the universe render visible, while the affect are the non-human becomings that open out from this visions (WiP 167); that is the percept as differential perception, opens the mind up be being other than it is, and the becoming express that others (WiP 173). These two form together a Bloc of sensation’ which is caught up not in virtualities and surveying every possible universe, but rather in conveying endless possibility to this universe (WiP 177). On the other hand these blocs are then bound up in nature in frames (or houses) which operate as plasticating forces in which whizzing the non-human becoming and forces and adjusting them against one another. And as these forces themselves open out onto the universe itself (elasticating forces), the frame will always in itself open to the cosmos, and to the possibility of being dissolved into something unutterly other (WiP182-183).
The move then to affect-percept and house-cosmos, modifies the refrain in three important respects., all of which revolve around the distinction of philosophy and non-philosophy. Firstly and perhaps most critically the domain of nature is clearly removed from the orbit of philosophy in itself. Philosophy tackles the virtuality of events, and their ability to straddle many different universe. It related therefore to noumena, and things in themselves. The nature by contrast involves making the one world the one nature endlessly open out and express possibility with matter. It therefore relates to the domain of phenomena (WiP 65), and a different kind of becoming (WiP 177). From which is also follows that the definition of affects as slices of duration will from this perspective be rejected. That definition realities only to the affectus-affectio distinction and so is caught up with concepts (WiP 154 and 173) Secondly The body itself is explicitly removed from the domain of flesh (that is strata, Wip 179), and belong therefore only to the re/deterritorization duality, and not that other own, which pitched refrain against milieu. ‘Molar’ matter is therefore spiritualized; and enabled to sing it own song free from the taint of morality or the clump of agglomeration. Finally it is clear enough that art and non-philosophy does to directly deal with constructionalist any-space whatevers. On the contrary art only reveals the infinite through first housing that if within the finite. It is therefore the house which involving plasticating forces, open the mind to the wider elastic cosmos. To be finite (and to have an essence) is therefore to open out on the universe, and be caught up within rendering that universe visible and tangible. That is it is o be caught up in the world of the percept, and the affects which spin out from it. In this final formation Deleuze reaches back to the formation of affect in practical philosophy (or a least to part of it0. the affect might now involve an index of possibility rather than a slice of duration, but as it does so it opens on their third type of knowledge and the transformations which the world beyond Philosophy, but not beyond Spinoza opens out.
Plateau 5: Where the paths meet again?
I started this essay with a fairly complex formula notion. Deleuze is fascinated less by Spinoza and more by the idea that Leibniz has of Spinoza. it is this hidden Spinoza that he dedicated much of his time to uncovering. Moreover this becoming Leibniz becoming Spinoza of Deleuze is all to more complex because it will enfold not but Deleuze but also Guattari. If this last point was not complicated enough, the complexity is further increased because Deleuze only considers Leibniz in himself without Spinoza relatively late in the game, in the Fold,. And it is then only then after he has created his Leibniz as a thing apart (in the Fold the difference between Spinoza and Leibniz are emphasized) can he understand how that Leibniz might really relate to an Other Spinoza, and through that Spinoza to Guattari. Complex as there signals of other Spinoza’s and Plateaus of partial resolution are, they are worth tracing, as it is across the complex interchange and overlapping the philosophy of Deleuze himself is crafted. To ask then one many Deleuze’s there are is to ask in what sense he is reading his Spinoza (and so becoming Leibniz). Are these many interpretations, one superseding the other? Or it is far more likely that Deleuze holds them all is a different sense, and sees in their very difference and apparent contradictions only the provocation for more thought. This last is of course the more likely. To uncover this complex weave should not be the work academic geology so much as the definition of a creative territory, whose shifting paths and plateaus, one can all share.