Spinoza’s Climatology of Affects and the Diagram of Painting

In his lectures from November 1980 to March 1981, Deleuze describes the immanent and compositional nature of Spinoza’s philosophy expressed in the content, the method, and the form of his writings. Spinoza himself uses in the Ethics and the TP the images of the climatologist studying the weather and the geometric drawing of lines and surfaces for his technical, artisanal, and neutral approach to the affects and political life. His ontology is characterized by the absence of hierarchical order and by nature as the principle and source of diversity. This approach is reminiscent of art, which also orders the chaos of human existence and makes it productive in a free and immeasurable way. Deleuze conceives of Spinoza’s ontology as a practical philosophy, leading him to the examples and the analysis of paintings (and, vice versa, from the art of painting to Spinoza’s philosophy), to which he dedicates his subsequent lectures from March to June 1981. In this article I reflect on the link between Deleuze’s lectures on Spinoza and on painting, and therefore also between Spinoza’s compositional thought itself and painting.