Deleuze- Entry for Affections, Affects in Chapter 4 of Practical Philosophy 

 
1. Modes are affections of substance, o​ r ​that which is in another and through which it is also 
conceived.  
2. But then, affections (affectio) are modes themselves. 
 
  
Affections​ in statement 1 is to be understood thus:  
 
I P25 Cor. “Particular things are nothing but affections of God’s attributes, or modes by which 
God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way.   
 
This is more clear when we understand modes under the aspect of Natura naturata1. So, these are 
active affections, because they do not exist or cannot be conceived by any other substance except 
God. 
 
Affections​ in statement 2 is to be understood thus: 
 
Affections designate that which happens to a mode. One mode can be a modification of another 
mode and their ideas involve both the nature of the affecting body and the affected body. Spinoza 
calls these affections images or corporeal traces. These image affections or ideas form a certain state 
of the affected body and mind, which implies more or less perfection than the preceding state. 
Therefore, from one state to another, from one image or idea to another, there are transitions, 
passages that are experienced, durations which we pass to a greater or lesser perfection.  
Furthermore, these affections are not separable from the duration that attaches them to the 
previous state. These continual durations or variations of perfection are called “affects” or feelings 
(affectus). 
   
[Are these passages not images themselves? Are there affects of affects?] 
 
Feeling affects may be presented as particular type of ideas or affections. Vide definition of affect in 
part 3 of Ethics. But it is not confined to the image or idea; it is of another nature, purely transitive, 
and not indicative or representative, since it is experienced in a lived duration between two states. 
 
Vide h ​ ttp://deleuzelectures.blogspot.com/2007/02/on-spinoza.html 
 
“​we call affect any mode of thought which doesn't represent anything. So what does that mean? Take
at random what anybody would call affect or feeling, a hope for example, a pain, a love, this is not
representational. There is an idea of the loved thing, to be sure, there is an idea of something hoped
for, but hope as such or love as such represents nothing, strictly nothing.

1
​IP29 By Natura Naturata I understand … all the modes of God’s attributes insofar as they are considered as things 
which are in God, and can neither be nor conceived without God. 
“That the affect presupposes the idea above all does not mean that it is reduced to the idea or to a
combination of ideas. We must proceed from the following point, that idea and affect are two kinds of
modes of thought which differ in nature, which are irreducible to one another but simply taken up in a
relation such that affect presupposes an idea, however confused it may be.

“When I say on the other hand that the idea is that which has in itself an intrinsic reality, and the
affect is the continuous variation or passage from one degree of reality to another or from one degree
of perfection to another, we are no longer in the domain of so-called nominal definitions, here we
already acquire a real definition, that is a definition which, at the same time as it defines the thing,
also shows the very possibility of this thing. What is important is that you see how, according to
Spinoza, we are fabricated as such spiritual automata. 

Affect is not a comparison of ideas. The passage to a greater perfection is called joy and the passage 
to a lesser perfection or the diminution of the power of action is called sadness. Insofar as we are 
affected, our affects are passions.  

Vide Spinoza and the Three Ethics

There are three kinds of vectorial signs of affects: augmentative, diminutive and fluctuating… Signs do
not have objects as their direct referents. Signs refer to signs. Signs are effects: the effect of one body
over another (affection), the effect of an affection on duration (affect).

Spinoza’s definition of duration in part 2 of Ethics “Duration is an indefinite continuation of existing.”

An idea of affectio always gives rise to affects. But if the idea is adequate instead of being a 
confused image, i.e. if it directly expresses the essence of the affecting body, then the affects that 
arise from it are actions. They no longer imply transitions and passages, but express themselves and 
one another in an eternal mode, together with the adequate ideas from which they issue.