Spinoza contra phenomenology : French rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze

318 Pages·2014·3.09 MB·English

by  Peden

Stanford University Press Stanford, California
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SPINOZA CONTRA
PHENOMENOLOGY
French Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze
Knox Peden
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
Cultural Memory in the Present
Hent de Vries, Editor
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Spinozism: A Source of Enthusiasm
1. From Consciousness to the Concept:
The Spinozism of Jean Cavaillès
2. Spinoza Contra Descartes:
Martial Gueroult versus Ferdinand Alquié
3. From Stalinism to Asceticism:
Jean-Toussaint Desanti between Spinoza and Husserl
4. Recuperating Science:
The Sources of Louis Althusser’s Spinozism
5. Redefining Philosophy:
The Development of Louis Althusser’s Spinozism
6. Toward a Science of the Singular:
Gilles Deleuze between Heidegger and Spinoza
7. Nothing Is Possible:
The Strange Spinozism of Gilles Deleuze
Conclusion
The Sense of Spinozism
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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 encouraging interlocutors throughout the
project. I am pleased to join a chorus of students who express gratitude for the
distinctive blend of probity, severity, 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 debate 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 my efforts at
the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the École Normale Supérieure at rue
d’Ulm, the Institut d’éditions de memoire contemporaine in Caen, and the
Institut Desanti at the École Normale Supérieure–LHS in Lyon. I am also
grateful to the scholars who took time to discuss this project with me. My chief
debt is to Chantal Jaquet, who, in addition to indulging my earliest musings on
this subject, wrote a letter of recommendation that helped me secure a
Chateaubriand Fellowship to support my time in Paris. Others who met with me
in cafés and bureaus to discuss Spinoza’s rationalism include Alain Badiou,
Étienne Balibar, Pierre Cassou-Noguès, Pierre Macherey, Pierre-François
Moreau, Bernard Pautrat, and Frédéric Worms. Hourya Sinaceur read my chapter
on Cavaillès with a discerning eye and gave fruitful advice on how to approach
his philosophy of mathematics. I thank Vincent Gerard and Dominique Pradelle
for welcoming me to their reading group of Desanti’s Idéalités mathématiques,
and remain grateful to Dominique Desanti for responding to my queries about
her husband’s life and work. I was saddened to learn of her death in 2011 and am
honored that Christine Goémé has authorized a treasure from the Desantis’ estate
to serve as the cover for this book. Michel Tort kindly permitted the reproduction
of a sketch he likely had no idea had been preserved. A special word of thanks is
due Quentin Meillassoux for alerting me to an interview with Jean-Luc Marion
in Le Monde.
The book was completed during my time as a postdoctoral research fellow in
the Centre for the History of European Discourses (CHED) at the University of
Queensland (UQ), and I am grateful to the Faculty of Arts for so generously
supporting my work through the UQ postdoctoral fellowship scheme. I am also
pleased to thank the two directors of the center I have known, Peter Cryle and
Peter Harrison, along with my colleagues at CHED, for creating such an
impossibly ideal venue for research in European intellectual history in its myriad
forms.
The final draft of the manuscript benefited enormously from the insightful
remarks and initially anonymous criticisms that Stanford University Press
solicited from Samuel Moyn and Peter Gordon. I am grateful to Emily-Jane
Cohen at Stanford for her support for the project and helpful advice, as well as to
Hent de Vries for including the book in a series I have long admired. Emily
Smith’s diligence and patience have been instrumental in turning the manuscript
into a book, and the sharp eyes and sound advice of my copyeditor Cynthia
Lindlof have spared me much embarrassment.
For a publication that has been so long in the making, I have naturally
accumulated a sizable debt to friends and colleagues who have discussed this
project with me in various settings. There is not space—in this book or my
memory—to name them all, but I am happy to acknowledge the audiences who
responded to my claims at the following institutions: the Australian National
University, the University of New South Wales, the University of Queensland,
the annual meeting of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, the
Consortium for Intellectual and Cultural History at CUNY, the École Normale
Supérieure, the annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature
Association, Cornell University, and the Centre for Research in Modern
European Philosophy in London.
Among the many friends who have supported my work, a handful read
portions of the book and responded with invaluable criticism and feedback. A
special acknowledgment on this score is due Nathan Brown, who read the initial
manuscript in one heroic sitting and expressed an enthusiasm for the project that
has sustained me in periods of heightened skepticism. My debt is no less great to
these other readers who responded to various sections of the book: Ed Baring,
Giuseppe Bianco, Ray Brassier, Marija Cetinic, Stefanos Geroulanos, G. M.
Goshgarian, Martin Hägglund, Peter Hallward, Ian Hesketh, Ian Hunter, Rob
Lehman, Ozren Pupovac, Joel Revill, Audrey Wasser, and Ben Wurgaft. This
book would not be the reality it is without the critical advice of these readers.
And despite Spinoza’s contention that perfection and reality are one and the
same, its imperfections are still my doing.
Some readers will recognize that the title of this book pays homage to Gillian
Rose’s classic Hegel Contra Sociology. Though I admire many things about
Rose’s book, in particular her focus on the persistence of neo-Kantianism in
European thought and her insistence on the value of speculative philosophy, this
homage also includes an emotional component. In 1991, three years before Rose
died from ovarian cancer at the age of forty-eight, and thirteen years before I
even knew who she was, my mother died at the age of forty-nine in similar
circumstances. I have read enough Lacan to appreciate that the acknowledgment
of a debt typically does not go without a measure of transference, and I’m happy
to be explicit about that here. I’m also pleased to experience the merits of
Spinoza’s insistence that our affective inclinations acquire a richer meaning
when we seek to form an adequate idea of them.
My family in Texas has been a constant source of sustenance and a site of
joyful reprieve from the stresses work on this book has involved. As for my
father, there really is no way to give an adequate idea of my love for him and my
gratitude for his support for all of my intellectual adventures, from Pa Ubu to
this one.
Leslie Barnes has lived with this book and its author for ten years and on three
continents. Here my debt is incalculable. This book is dedicated to her.
. . .
For the most part, I cite from English translations of French texts where they
are available, but in some cases I have seen fit to cite from both the French
original and the English translation. Instances where the translation has been
modified have been identified as such. Unless otherwise noted, translations from
the French are my own, though I am pleased to acknowledge David Webb for his
contribution to the translated portions of Cavaillès’s Sur la logique et la théorie
de la science and to thank him for productive exchanges grappling with this
difficult text. I am also grateful to Cambridge University Press and the editors of
Modern Intellectual History for allowing my article “Descartes, Spinoza, and the
Impasse of French Philosophy: Ferdinand Alquié versus Martial Gueroult” to be
reproduced here in a revised form.
Abbreviations
BT Heidegger, Being and Time
CC Deleuze, Essays: Critical and Clinical
Découverte Alquié, La Découverte métaphysique de l’homme chez Descartes
Destin Desanti, Un Destin philosophique
DR Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
Encounter Althusser, Philosophy of the Encounter ESC Althusser, Essays in
Self-Criticism
FM Althusser, For Marx
Future Althusser, The Future Lasts Forever GDFG Dosse, Gilles Deleuze et
Félix Guattari Humanist Althusser, The Humanist Controversy and Other
Writings ID Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts IHP Desanti,
Introduction à l’histoire de la philosophie IP Desanti, Introduction à la
phénoménologie Lenin Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays
Liberté Droit, La Liberté nous aime encore LS Deleuze, The Logic of Sense
LTS Cavaillès, Sur la logique et la théorie de la science Matrice Moulier
Boutang, Louis Althusser, une biographie: La Formation du mythe, 1918–
1945: La Matrice Nostalgie Alquié, La Nostalgie de l’être
OC Cavaillès, Oeuvres complètes de philosophie des sciences “Path” Desanti,
“A Path in Philosophy”
PC Desanti, Une Pensée captive
PH Althusser, Politics and History
PM Cavaillès, Philosophie mathématique
PSPS Althusser, Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists
and Other Essays Rationalisme Alquié, Le Rationalisme de Spinoza
RC Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital
Ruptures Moulier Boutang, Louis Althusser, une biographie: La formation du
mythe, 1946–1956: Ruptures et plis SPE Deleuze, Expressionism in
Philosophy:Spinoza Spectre Althusser, The Spectre of Hegel
TEI Spinoza, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect VM Canguilhem, Vie
et mort de Jean Cavaillès