Hi, Thanks for your videos and the time you spend on them. I would recommend, if you haven't already listen to them, the courses that Deleuze gave about Spinoza (you can find them on KZfaq, and it's maybe subtitled in English). I've spent a lot of time reading Spinoza and, at the start, it was really hard to me to really differenciate him from other philosophers such as Descartes. But, and Deleuze relates it well, the fact is that Spinoza use a relatively scholastic language (good, evil, essence, immortality etc.) but that's just in apparence. These terms are used by Spinoza in a very cheeky and provocative ways against their traditionnal definitions. For example, the Essence, for Spinoza, is equal to the actual potentia. And that would be a non-sense if we took this proposition in a scholastic way, as the essence was for them the opposite of the potentia. And, in fact, there is no such thing as an "Essence of humanity", as each existant (modus) has its own essence. As Deleuze explain it well in the courses, the central concept of Spinoza is the Modus (existant), that is not a substance, but a modification within the substance, une "manière d'être" (way of being) of the substance. To really understand what he means by that just unlocked so much things in my lecture, as all his theory about ethics, politics and epistemology are directly linked to that fact that we aren't substances, but modus of the Substance. Anyway, thanks again for all your videos.

thank you, david! all good, i agree with you ;-) and i also read kierkegaard and nietzsche. take care. fran