Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza

Description

In this extraordinary work Gilles Deleuze, the most renowned living philosopher in France, reflects on one of the figures of the past who has most influenced his own sweeping reconfiguration of the tasks of philosophy. Deleuze's brilliant text shows how current definitions of philosophy do not apply to Spinoza: a solitary thinker (yet scandalous and hated), he conceived of philosophy as an enterprise of liberation and radical demystification much as did Leibniz or, later Nietzsche. Spinoza confronts the grand philosophical problems that are still current today: the comparative role of ontology (the theory of substance), of epistemology (the theory of ideas), and of political anthropology (the theory of modes, passions, and actions). The goal of this book is to determine the rapport among the univocity of Being in the theory of substance; the production of truth and the genesis of sense in the theory of ideas; and practical joy (or the elimination of the sad passions) and the selective organization of the passions in the theory of modes. Contents Translator's Preface Introduction: The Role and Importance of Expression PART ONE: The Triads of Substance 1. Numerical and Real Distinction 2. Attributes as Expression 3. Attributes and Divine Names 4. The Absolute 5. Power PART TWO: Parallelism and Immanence 6. Expression in Parallelism 7. The Two Powers and the Idea of God 8. Expression and Idea 9. Inadequacy 10. Spinoza Against Descartes 11. Immanence and the Historical Components of Expression PART THREE: The Theory of Finite Modes 12. Modal Essence: The Passage from Infinite to Finite 13. Modal Existence 14. What Can a Body Do? 15. The Three Orders and the Problem of Evil 16. The Ethical Vision of the World 17. Common Notions 18. Toward the Third Kind of Knowledge 19. Beatitude Conclusion: The Theory of Expression in Leibniz and Spinoza: Expressionism in Philosophy Appendix: A Formal Study of the Plan of the Ethics, and of the Role of Scholia in its Realization: The Two Ethics Notes Translator's Notes Index Index of Textual References