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Richard Popkin taught intellectual historians that context matters, and that context changes. More to the point, context matters precisely because it is always changing. So, in an effort to pay homage to this methodological disposition, let us begin with some comments about the original, shifting context of this Popkin-inspired inquiry into the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and its debts to Hume and Spinoza, respectively. In the academic year of 2004–2005, the context of my work, a dissertation on Spinoza and twentieth-century French thought, underwent a shift of its own when developments in my personal life brought me away from my home campus Berkeley to Los Angeles for my first year of dissertation work in earnest. During that year, I had the opportunity to work as Popkin's research assistant to supplement my fellowship stipend. Fresh off my Ph.D. exams, I was familiar with Popkin's work on skepticism, and I also knew that in recent years he had devoted serious attention to Spinoza. When I read the notice from UCLA's history department that Popkin was in need of an assistant I sent the revered scholar an eager email, outlining the details of my own work and of course its indebtedness to his. It is only now, when my debts to Popkin are increasingly apparent as I pursue my own research, that I can admit to what was merely nervous exaggeration at the time. As luck would have it, in January 2005 Popkin responded to my message with the news that he was glad to meet me and that he looked forward to working out some sort of research assistance arrangement.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-8474-4_5

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