A Genealogy of Spinozism in Postwar France: Althusser and Deleuze

This dissertation explores the impact of the work of seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza in French theory during the last half of the twentieth century. It examines the use of Spinoza in the work of Louis Althusser and Gilles Deleuze in their efforts to formulate materialist philosophies opposed to a number philosophies of consciousness, subjectivity, and humanism associated with the tradition of French phenomenology. For Althusser, Spinoza provided a means for reading Marx that bypassed the humanist readings in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For Deleuze, Spinoza's immanent philosophy provided a model for thinking multiplicity and resistance against systems of oppression.;This work approaches the topic using the genealogical method of Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche in order to argue that the presence of Spinoza in France was much greater than earlier scholars acknowledged. In particular, both Althusser and Deleuze offer different subversive methods of reading Spinoza (and others) based on Spinoza's own style of reading demonstrated in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and Ethica. Concepts influenced by Spinoza such as Althusser's epistemological break and Deleuze's plane of immanence are also examined in detail in their French contexts.;The Spinozisms of Althusser and Deleuze have each influence a great number of other scholars since the 1970s, including Etienne Balibar, Pierre Macherey, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, and Warren Montag.