Spinoza, Socrates of Deleuze

Before tracing the importance of Spinoza for Deleuze’s conception of affect, I trace his importance for Deleuze’s philosophy in general. While Deleuze’s critics and his disciples tend to stress his definition of philosophy as ‘the creation of concepts’, the invention of ‘conceptual characters’ is equally indispensable to philosophy as Deleuze defines it. Hence, although he never says so, Deleuze needs a conceptual character, as well. Spinoza, I argue, constitutes the ‘conceptual character’ of What Is Philosophy? and of philosophy as Deleuze defines it in general. The conceptual character, however, is always distinct from its namesake, and I demonstrate Deleuze’s characterisation of Spinoza by emphasising evolutions in his reading. While Deleuze proclaims Spinoza to be the only philosopher never to have compromised with transcendence in What Is Philosophy?, he argues two and half decades earlier in Difference and Repetition that Spinoza is only a step toward absolute immanence. When one insists upon the earlier critique, which Deleuze never redresses, one begins to suspect that Deleuze and Guattari invent the Spinoza of What Is Philosophy? to operate philosophy as they define it there.