Spinoza, A Physics of Thought

François Zourabichvili was a director at the Collège international de philosophie in Paris from 1998 to 2004. He is the author of Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event (Edinburgh University Press, 2012) and Spinoza: Une physique de la pensée (Presses Universitaires de Paris, 2002) Eric Aldieri is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bridgewater State University. He has been published in Hypatia, Deleuze & Guattari Studies, and Derrida Today and The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. He has translated several works of French Spinozism into English, including Chantal Jaquet’s Time, Duration, and Eternity in Spinoza, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2023. His co-authored translation of François Zourabichvili’s Spinoza, A Physics of Thought: Form and Individuation will publish in March 2026, also with Edinburgh University Press. Gil Morejón is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and teaches at Loyola University Chicago. His research focuses on the history of ideas and contemporary political thought.

Many have turned to Spinoza for a theory of the body, restoring affects and desire to a philosophical tradition burdened by idealism. Zourabichvili demonstrates that Spinoza is also a thinker of the mind, of the production, generation, and transformation of ideas. A fundamental contribution to Spinoza scholarship and contemporary philosophy.

• Reference ConventionsNotes on Translation and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction to Spinozist Modernism, by Eric Aldieri and Gil MorejónIntroductionChapter I: The New Concept of Form1. Simultaneous Transport: The Inconsistency of the Cartesian Composite2. The Piece of Wax: Quantity of Matter and Identity3. Individual and Species in Spinoza4. Chemical and Political Community5. What Happens to the Notion of Form in DescartesChapter II: The Concept of ‘Relation of Motion and Rest’ and Its Polysemy1. Which Relation between Motion and Rest? (the Short Treatise)2. The Relation of Motion and Rest between Parts (the Ethics)3. The Interpretation of the Four Lemmas Concerning the Conservation of Form4. The Status of Sickness in the EthicsChapter III: Extension and Conatus (Power and Causality)1. The Power of Essence2. From Finite Forms to the Infinite Form; The Status of Transformation3. Self-Affirmation and Exteriority4. The Union of ConatusChapter IV: What is a Physics of Thought?1. The Problem of the Status of the Infinite Idea2. The Mirage of Splitting (The Relation between Essence and Existence)3. The Thesis of the Real Identity of the Idea and Its Object, and Its Ambiguities4. Lineaments of Cogitative Physics5. Mental Transformations and a Hypothesis Concerning Amnesia6. The Status of Sensation7. The Unity of the MindChapter V: Speaking Spinozan1. What ‘Having’ Means in Spinozan2. Ideal Composition: Genetic Definition3. Sketch of a Grammar of the Idea4. In What Sense Common Notions Are Ideas5. Once Again, Concerning Essences, and Concerning Readers Afflicted by Double VisionChapter VI: Mental Transmutations, Eternity, and Death1. In What Sense the Mind is Eternal (and, Once Again, In What Sense Common Notions are Ideas)2. A Return to Two Sequences [Enchaînements], and the Case of LoveChapter VII: The Dream of Supernatural Transformations1. The Logic of the Chimera2. The Paradox of the Being of Non-Being2.1. The Power of Impotence: Confusion2.2. Imaging a Negation?3. Dreaming with Open Eyes3.1 Don Quixote and the Rabbis3.2. Spells of Ignorance (The Banality of Hallucination)3.3. The Confusion between Affections and Things, and the Dream of Free WillEpilogue: Involving and DyingConclusionWorks CitedIndex