The Body and its Passions

Abstract

In the previous chapter we saw that Deleuze is keen to argue that the mental and physical realms are irreducible¹ and mainly because this would be consistent with his substance monism and attribute pluralism. We also examined his argument that ideas and bodies are numerically identical; that they are the same thing. I suggested that he confuses the proposition of numerical identity with the quite different claim that the actual content of the idea is the body or the physical alteration of the body. I showed how this confusion would be exacerbated if we, as Deleuze proposes, consider the term ‘idea’ to be coextensive with the term ‘mind’. By putting these different postulates together, we saw how Deleuze’s account of the mind and body, although explicitly something like a double-aspect theory, is in fact much closer to an extreme form of materialism. I concluded that Deleuze’s attempt to flesh out a non-reductive materialism fails due to the twin problems concerning privacy and ideational content. Although I have reserved judgement as to Hegel’s explanation for the ‘blotting out of the principle of subjectivity’ in the Ethics, I have advanced the suggestion that we can find the same phenomenon in Expressionism appearing in three guises. It appears first in the way that Deleuze is unable to account for the existence, necessary or otherwise, of finite modes.