Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography

And yet Spinoza puts it back in the game. Happiness is the singular-

ity that brings its desire to fulfilment. Joyfulness is the coincidence

between the singular trajectory and the refrains of recognition in the

world.

These are the two nodes on which the Deleuzian reflection gazes:

the first is the folding, the passion, or the affection that determines the

forms of cognitive apprehension. The second is explication, that is, the

expressive projection, the becoming world of language.

Two symmetrical movements, the two movements of the mind:

the becoming mental of the world and the becoming world of the

mind.

Desire is ‘appetite accompanied by the consciousness thereof’.

It is clear from the above considerations that we do not endeavor,

will, seek after or desire because we judge a thing to be good. On

the contrary, we judge a thing to be good because we endeavor,

will, seek after and desire it. (Spinoza, Ethics, Part III, Prop. 9;

109)

The notion of desire is fundamental in Deleuze’s thought, and

here we can see its genesis: desire is opposed to lack (it is around this

question that Anti-Oedipusdevelops its entire discourse) because desire

produces, realizes, creates.

And what precisely does desire create? Not so much its object in its

materiality, in its causality, but the qualities of this object, the qualities

of the world. Desire changes the world because it constitutes the con-

dition of possibility for desiring projections.

Along the curve of desire unfolds the diversified action of the fold:

Explain is a ‘strong’ term in Spinoza. It does not signify an opera-

tion of the intellect external to the thing, but an operation of the

thing internal to the intellect. (Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy,

68)

This road opened by Spinoza is where Hegel’s thought starts as

well: with him, the constructive power of explication is transferred

from the sphere of the desiring singularity to the sphere of historical

subjectivity.

But Deleuze himself wants to interrupt this line of development of

modern philosophical thought, placing himself between Spinoza and

Hegel, avoiding this ‘strange mixture of ontology and anthropology, of

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