ABSTRACT
In the second phase, associated primarily with Deleuze's collaboration with Guattari, the notion of force is effectively generalized, so that it expresses a power that ranges over the entirety of the social order. Here another set of definitions and principles comes to the forefront, even if the earlier indebtedness to the archive associated with Spinoza and Nietzsche is retained, so that the notion of force as a movement with its characteristic speeds and slownesses is still operative for Deleuze. This time, however, the emphasis is more on a specific effect of force,
In Spinoza’s magnum opus, Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (1677), each being has an essential and intrinsic disposition to preserve its own being, a tendency Spinoza terms conatus (Spinoza 2000: 171). For Spinoza, a being’s good is that which adds to its capacity to preserve itself and, conversely, the bad is that which militates against this capacity for self-preservation. Each being’s desire (appetitio) is precisely for that which conduces to its self-preservation.3 A being’s capacity for action increases, accordingly, in proportion to the strength of its conatus; and conversely, the weaker its conatus, the more diminished is its capacity for action. A being enhances its capacity for action when it actively transmits its force; its capacity for action is reduced when it is the pas sive recipient of some other being’s forces. Pleasure or joy ensue when the capacity for action is enhanced, and pain when it is diminished, so that for Spinoza pain is passion only and not action, whereas joy is both pleasure and action.4
