In large part, I agree with Deleuze regarding free-will and his emphasis on desire, becoming, and immanence. I believe that individuals are not fixed subjects with predetermined choices but are constantly shaped by flows of desire, power, and relational networks. Deleuze suggests that human agency emerges from assemblages—dynamic systems of forces, bodies, and affects. He rejects the notion of a fully autonomous, self-contained subject who exercises free will in a vacuum. Instead, agency is distributed across networks of relations, where individuals are both constrained and enabled by their environments, desires, and interactions. For Deleuze, freedom isn’t about an absolute ability to choose independently but about the capacity to create new possibilities within these networks, what he might call “lines of flight.” This aligns more with a compatibilist view of free will, where freedom exists within constraints.
From Nietzsche, Deleuze takes the idea that freedom is about affirming one’s power to act and create, not escaping determinism. From Spinoza, he adopts the view that freedom comes from understanding and navigating the causes that shape us, increasing our capacity to act (what Spinoza calls “conatus”). Deleuze might argue that the question of free will is less important than how we experiment with our desires and connections to produce new ways of being.
Freedom is less about individual control and more about creative potential within a web of forces.