Spinoza and Signs: Semiology and Empiricism in Deleuze’s Course on Spinoza

This article addresses an apparent tension in Deleuze’s philosophy: while his own work consistently valorizes the encounter and the role of signs in the genesis of thought, his interpretation of Spinoza seems to offer a radical critique of signs as sources of imagination, superstition, and servitude. The article argues that this tension is only apparent provided that Deleuze’s reconstruction of a Spinozist empiricist semiology is carefully examined. By analyzing Spinoza’s definition of the sign, its classification into scalar and vectorial types, and its grounding in an ethology of the body and affects, the article shows that Deleuze sharply distinguishes between signs that constitute vague experience and certain privileged signs—joyful passions and the “good encounter”—that make the formation of reason possible. The critique of the sign thus targets a specific regime of imaginative thought, while the valorization of the encounter concerns the empirical conditions for engendering thinking. This reconstruction ultimately reveals an isomorphism between Spinoza’s rationalism and Deleuze’s project of transcendental empiricism.