Deleuze, Strauss and a gap in the middle of Spinoza

Abstract

We propose to study the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Leo Strauss from the stand point of the opposed interpretation than this two influential philosophers of the twentieth century have made of the political ontology of Spinoza. Both share a common problematic: how substance and existent modes do relate. But where Strauss makes a call to Revelation and the demand to love one’s neighbour to fulfil the gulf, and avoid that being wise means to expel the suffering of the multitude from the sphere of one’s own life, Deleuze posits an interpretation of the theory of finite modes that allows us to distinguish the stand point of Eternity from that of Duration, without by doing so subjecting finite modes to the random order of encounters, that is, allowing them to find their conatus in divine power.