Abstract
In the previous chapter we saw that Deleuze is keen to argue that the mental and physical realms are irreducible1 and mainly because this would be consistent with his substance monism and attribute pluralism. We also examined his argument that ideas and bodies are numerically identical; that they are the same thing. I suggested that he confuses the proposition of numerical identity with the quite different claim that the actual content of the idea is the body or the physical alteration of the body. I showed how this confusion would be exacerbated if we, as Deleuze proposes, consider the term ‘idea’ to be coextensive with the term ‘mind’. By putting these different postulates together, we saw how Deleuze’s account of the mind and body, although explicitly something like a double-aspect theory, is in fact much closer to an extreme form of materialism. I concluded that Deleuze’s attempt to flesh out a non-reductive materialism fails due to the twin problems concerning privacy and ideational content. Although I have reserved judgement as to Hegel’s explanation for the ‘blotting out of the principle of subjectivity’ in the Ethics, I have advanced the suggestion that we can find the same phenomenon in Expressionism appearing in three guises. It appears first in the way that Deleuze is unable to account for the existence, necessary or otherwise, of finite modes.
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Notes
Here I am following the example of Mason who uses the term ‘realm’ as way to avoid the problem of the distinction in re and in de dicto, which is our problem of weakened sense of real distinction. R. Mason, ‘Spinoza on Modality’, The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 144, July 1986, 311–42.
This work is commonly referred to as The Emandation of the Intellect. Emandation connotes correction or improvement. It was both early and unfinished, although some have claimed that it was his first published work. Deleuze’s description of the structure is supported by Feldman. See B. Spinoza, Ethics, Treatise on The Emandation of the Intellect and Selected Letters, trans. S. Shirley, edited and introduced by S. Feldman (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992).
For the meaning of this term see C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke, 1st pub. 1962 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
This is the second modal triad. It is worth noting here that ‘power’ can be translated as pouvoir or puissance. Both have the same origin: the Latin verb ‘posse’ (to be capable of, to have the strength to). Pouvoir is the infinitive of the verb and according to Littré’s definition, ‘merely denotes the action’ while puissance (the participle) designates ‘something lasting’ and ‘permanent’. One has the puissance to do something and one exercises the pouvoir to do it. An English equivalent might be ‘potential’ and ‘act’. For the use of these terms in political philosophy, see discussion in D.D. Raphael, Problems of Political Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1976), pp. 66–9.
It might be helpful to see much of this as a discussion between Deleuze and Aristotle of the Metaphysics: for example, bk 5: 3:15 on organic unity and bk 11: 1: 10 on forms and perishability. R. McKeon ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York and London: Random House, 1968).
J. Annas, Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 70.
For a discussion on the explanatory potential of goals see J. Bennett (1979), Linguistic Behaviour, 1st pub. 1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)
‘What I mean by the concept of a person is the concept of a type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics, a physical situation etc are equally applicable to a single individuals of that single type’. P.F. Strawson, Individuals: an Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, 1st pub. 1959 (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 102.
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© 2002 Gillian Howie
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Howie, G. (2002). The Body and its Passions. In: Deleuze and Spinoza. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403990204_5
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