Spinoza Contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze

381 Pages·2014·1.91 MB·English

by  Knox Peden

spinoza contra phenomenology

Cultural Memory
in
the
Present
Hent de Vries, Editor

SPINOZA CONTRA PHENOMENOLOGY
French Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze
Knox Peden
stanford university press
stanford, california
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
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Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been requested.
isbn 978-0-8047-8741-3 (cloth)
isbn 978-0-8047-9134-2 (pbk.)
isbn 978-0-8047-9136-6 (electronic)
Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 11/13.5 Adobe Garamond
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction
Spinozism: A Source of Enthusiasm 1
1. From Consciousness to the Concept:
The Spinozism of Jean Cavaillès 17
2. Spinoza Contra Descartes:
Martial Gueroult versus Ferdinand Alquié 65
3. From Stalinism to Asceticism:
Jean-Toussaint Desanti between Spinoza and Husserl 95
4. Recuperating Science:
The Sources of Louis Althusser’s Spinozism 127
5. Redefining Philosophy:
The Development of Louis Althusser’s Spinozism 149
6. Toward a Science of the Singular:
Gilles Deleuze between Heidegger and Spinoza 191
7. Nothing Is Possible:
The Strange Spinozism of Gilles Deleuze 219
Conclusion
The Sense of Spinozism 257
Notes 267
Bibliography 319
Index 341

Acknowledgments
Work on this book has taken me from California to Australia by
way of France, and I have accumulated a number of debts along the way.
Material support at Berkeley came from the Department of History, the
Institute of European Studies, and the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial
Fund. Carla Hesse and David Bates were judicious readers and encourag-
ing interlocutors throughout the project. I am pleased to join a chorus of
students who express gratitude for the distinctive blend of probity, sever-
ity, and above all generosity that Martin Jay brings to the task of advising.
Amid all the talk of the crisis of the humanities, his contribution to the de-
bate in a July 2013 edition of the Daily Cal also expresses something of the
model of intellectual history he promotes, one grounded in ruthless self-
scrutiny and an appreciation of the benefits that accrue when you cherish
what you criticize.
Beyond Berkeley, three mentors share a measure of responsibility for
this book. Monty Holamon set me on this path when he took me to Paris
in 1994 along with other classmates in French, and he ensured that the
path would be absurd when he cast me as Pa Ubu in a production of Alfred
Jarry’s Ubu plays the next year. At Penn, Marc Trachtenberg introduced
me to the tasks, protocols, and joys of historical scholarship. My interests
have taken me afield from the diplomatic history that I studied with him,
but his lessons about how to read critically—and to think historically—
have proved foundational for all of my work. Though I knew him for only
several months, the last of his life as it turned out, Richard Popkin shaped
my thinking about the history of philosophy and helped me realize that,
especially when it comes to Spinoza, skepticism and enthusiasm are not
antithetical sentiments but in fact prerequisites of one another.
The bulk of the research for this project was conducted in France,
and it is a pleasure to acknowledge the librarians and archivists who assisted