Corry Shores
Gilles Deleuze, ‘Gueroult's General Method for Spinoza,’ in Desert
Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974 (London: Semiotext(e), 2004): 145-155.
Gueroult's original genetic-structural method
"renewed the history of philosophy." He defined structure as the order
of reasons, which are "the differential and generative elements of the
corresponding system; they are genuine philosophemes that exist only in
relation to one another" (146b).
Reasons are of two types: 1) simple reasons of
an analytic order of knowledge, or 2) genuine reasons of a synthetic order of
knowledge, through which the system's genesis is as well a genesis "of
things through and in the system" (146c). These two systems are
distinguished structurally, which is a more profound distinction than mere
opposition: in analysis, synthesis' role is to determine the order of reason,
and analysis leads immediately to giving reasons of being through a progressive
synthesis (146-147).
Gueroult illustrated these orders' complication
by comparing Fichte's method with Kant's analytical one. Fichte does not
neglect the analytic method, but rather says that it works to suppress itself.
Spinoza does not begin with a presynthesized notion of God, rather he begins
with simpler ideas and moves synthetically toward God. We see he does this in
the first eight or so propositions of the ethics, which are the focus of
Gueroult's work (147b).
The order of reasons resides on the same plane
of the system and is always overtly articulated. Structure is not hidden
beneath what is said, because it is explicit and manifest. And yet, it often
goes unnoticed, because structure is the fact of saying, and it becomes
convoluted as we continue to say it (147c).
Seeing structure or the order of reasons is thus following the
path along which the material is dissociated according to the demands of the
order, and the ideas decomposed according to their generative differential
elements, along which also the elements or reasons are organized into
"series;" one must follow the chains to where independent series form
a "nexus," the
intersection of problems or solutions. (147c.d)
Gueroult proceeds thoroughly through each
smallest partition of the Ethics so to 1) bring-out the structure of
Spinoza's system, namely, its generative elements, their interrelations, and
their proper series, 2) show why Spinoza's geometrical system was appropriate
for his structure, and 3) account for each demonstration's various
characteristics, such as position, reference, and accompaniments (149-148).
The historical development of the system's
structure may be deduced from its states, so for example we may compare the
structural state of the Ethics with that of the Short Treatise to
see if they bear different structural features.
In general, a system evolves inasmuch as certain pieces change
their position, in such a way that they cover a larger space than before, even
while they more tightly control this space. (148c)
But yet a system may contain so many
indeterminate points that several orders coexist within it (as Gueroult showed
in Malebranche). Gueroult says that Spinoza's structure, like Fichte's, has
"internal surges" that "determine new dissociations,
displacements, and relations," which can be found where Spinoza discusses
God's essence, proofs of His existence, and substance's and attribute's
definitions (148d).
Because the Short Treatise is concerned
with identifying God and Nature -- and hence also substance and attributes --
Spinoza valorizes Nature, because "God is defined as Being which presents
only every attribute or substance, and a devalorization of substances or
attributes, which are not yet self-caused but only self-conceived"
(148-149). But on the other hand, because the Ethics aims to identify
God with substance, Spinoza valorizes substance itself, taken to be made up of
attributes or qualified substances, each of which is fully self-caused.
Furthermore, Nature is displaced and thus not initially identified with God,
which "aptly expresses the mutual immanence of created nature and creative
nature" (149ab). We then can see that each text not so much presents a
different structure as much as another state of the same structure.
