ABSTRACT
Artifice is fully a part of Nature, since each thing, on the immanent plane of Nature, is defined by the arrangements of motions and affects into which it enters, whether these arrangements are artificial or natural. Long after Spinoza, biologists and naturalists will try to describe animal worlds defined by affects and capacities for affecting and being affected. Spinoza’s ethics has nothing to do with a morality; he conceives it as an ethology, that is, a composition of fast and slow speeds, of capacities for affecting and being affected on this plane of immanence or consistency. Ethology is first of all the study of the relations of speed and slowness, of the capacities for affecting and being affected that characterize each thing. The speed or slowness of metabolisms, perceptions, actions and reactions link together to constitute a particular individual in the world.
