Deleuze practical philosophy spinoza biography

GREAT THINKERS Baruch Spinoza

Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2001.

From the Publisher:

“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.”

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    • Spinoza: Practical Philosophy

    1970 book by Gilles Deleuze

    Cover of the second edition

    AuthorGilles Deleuze
    Original titleSpinoza: Philosophie pratique
    TranslatorRobert Hurley
    LanguageFrench
    SubjectBaruch Spinoza
    PublisherPresses Universitaires de France, City Lights Books

    Publication date

    		1970
    Publication placeFrance

    Published in English

    		1988
    Media typePrint (Hardback and Paperback)
    Pages130 (City Lights edition)
    ISBN978-0872862180

    Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (French: Spinoza: Philosophie pratique) (1970; second edition 1981) is a book written by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze which 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.

    Summary

    Deleuze discusses Spinoza's philosophy, providing a chapter defining Spinoza's main concepts in dictionary form. 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, 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. 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 sometime

  • Deleuze history of philosophy

    • Spinoza: Practical Philosophy

    February 6, 2021
    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
  • Spinoza metaphysics

    • Spinoza: Practical Philosophy

    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.