“Deleuze draws a clear distinction between ethics and morality. Morality is a set of constraining rules that judge actions and intentions in relation to transcendent values of good and evil. Morality is a way of judging life, whereas ethics is a way of assessing what we do in terms of ways of existing in the world.
Ethics involves a creative commitment to maximizing connections, and of maximizing the powers that will expand the possibilities of life. In this way, ethics for Deleuze is inextricably linked with the notion of becoming.
Morality implies that we judge ourselves and others on the basis of what we are and should be, whereas ethics implies that we do not yet know what we might become.
For Deleuze, there are no transcendent values against which we should measure life. It is rather ‘Life’ itself that constitutes its own immanent ethics. An ethical approach is, in this way, essentially pragmatic, and it is no surprise that Deleuze admires the American pragmatist model that substitutes experimentation for salvation." (85)
--John Marks, “Ethics.” The Deleuze Dictionary. Edited by Adrian Parr. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2005.
Deleuze elaborates these concepts in his book Spinoza: Practical Philosophy.
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