Deleuze on Spinoza’s Geometrism

In his seminars, Deleuze claims that Spinoza is ‘an absolute geometrist’. This article contextualizes, explains and substantiates this aspect of Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza. I position Deleuze’s reading within both the long-running scholarly debate on Spinoza’s relationship to mathematics and within the evolution of Deleuze’s own relation to Spinoza. Deleuze’s idea that Spinoza is a geometrist is shown to consist of three elements. First, according to Spinoza, geometry is more fundamental than arithmetic. Second, Spinoza frees geometry from the realm of fiction and abstract and develops, as Deleuze says, a ‘mathematics of the real’. Third, Spinoza finds in geometry a language of univocity, by which he can avoid the equivocity and hierarchy of the Aristotelian worldview.