March 4, 1978
Every reader of Spinoza knows that, for Spinoza, bodies and minds are neither substances nor subjects, but rather—as he calls them—modes. However, while merely conceiving of such a proposition theoretically is already a significant step, it is not sufficient; for, concretely speaking, a mode is a complex set of relations of speeds and kinds of slowness, within the body as well as within the thought that corresponds to that body. Furthermore, a mode is a power—of the body or of the mind—to affect and to be affected. This capacity for affect is a notion that is ubiquitous in Spinoza’s work, running throughout Ethics.
Introduction
From the “Anthologie sonore de la pensée française” [Audio Anthology of French Thought] introduction to Gilles Deleuze, “The Work of Affect in Spinoza’s Ethics”, the broadcast is an excerpt from a program titled “Avez-vous lu Baruch? Ou portrait présumé de Spinoza” [Have You Read Baruch? Or Supposed Portrait of Spinoza”], produced by Michel Cohen, in the series “The Saturdays of France-Culture”, on 4 March 1978.
As readers are aware, Deleuze’s first book on Spinoza was published as Spinoza et le problème de l’expression (Paris: PUF, 1967; Expression in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin New York: Zone Books, 1990). Following this text, Deleuze published a little known volume, Spinoza. Textes choisis (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1970), which Deleuze will re-edit and add several chapters to produce Spinoza. Philosophie pratique (Paris: Minuit, 1981); Spinoza. Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights, 1987).
However, the period of the late 1970s was also a fertile time for Deleuze’s “renewed” interest in Spinoza (that is, if he ever lost interest, a doubtful supposition). First, Deleuze offered a hitherto unknown seminar on Spinoza in the second semester of the 1977-78 year, prior to the mini-seminar on Kant (for which we have transcripts four sessions); while the Spinoza mini-seminar was announced on the Vincennes/Paris 8 course program, the Kant mini-seminar was not. Second, during the year prior to this mini-seminar, Deleuze broadcast on 1 May 1977 a presentation titled “Spinoza et nous” (Spinoza and Us), on Radio France’s “Les Nuits de France Culture” (www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/les-nuits-de-france-culture/spinoza-et-nous-une-conference-de-gilles-deleuze-9908244). This text was published subsequently in Revue de synthèse III.89-91 (January-September 1978), 271-78, and it would serve as the first draft of the new concluding chapter in Spinoza. Practical Philosophy.
The lecture segment transcribed and translated here follows the Spinoza mini-seminar by several months. In the opening remarks to the lone Spinoza mini-seminar session available (24 January 1978), Deleuze indicates the mini-seminar’s theme, “what is an idea and what is an affect in Spinoza?,” thereby providing the title, “Affect and Idea”. However, despite the apparently predominant focus on affect and idea, Deleuze develops the concept of continuous variation in this session as part of an important overview on how affect, idea and variation are situated more broadly within Spinoza’s works. Hence, the thematic overlap between these two texts, while quite significant, still reveals Deleuze’s specific foci in each distinct presentation.
The audio recording may be heard on the following link.
English
See the translation in the pdf below.
French
See the transcription in the pdf below.