The Delirium of Rationalism: Why Deleuze Invokes Spinoza and Leibniz

Abstract

Why does Deleuze rely so heavily on Spinoza and Leibniz? At first glance, his critique of representation and the traditional ‘image of thought’ seems to oppose him to rationalism. However, Deleuze says that when the ‘cry of rationalism’ is pursued until the end, rationalism becomes ‘delirious’. In such a state, it undermines the model of representation. This delirium is found in Spinoza and Leibniz's critique of generality and their conflation of essence and existence, through which they ruin the traditional mediation of difference by identity and generality. However, for this rationalism to completely break with representationalism it must undergo some Deleuzian corrections.