Abstract

This paper attempts a parallelism, through the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s conception of a practical philosophy, between the thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche and Benedict de Spinoza. Inspired by Nietzsche’s image as a nomadic thinker, Deleuze presents us with a more convincing image of Spinoza: a man who is closer to LIFE. The specific aspect of the Nietzsche-Spinoza relation I want to discuss in what follows is the difference between “morality” and “ethics” — it will become clear that with Nietzsche and Spinoza, ethics has an “ethological” basis. It is hoped that the distinction between morality and ethics will illuminate what Deleuze sees in both Nietzsche and Spinoza as a basic notion of philosophical thinking — a way of thinking which is beyond good and evil, that is, beyond moralistic ontology.