Deleuze and Negri on the Spinozist Distinction Between Potentia and Potestas: A Brief Outline In Spinoza’s philosophy, potentia refers to the immanent causal power intrinsic to every mode and ultimately grounded in God/Nature itself, whereas potestas denotes the juridical and institutional authority that emerges from the organization of collective power within a political community. Antonio Negri and Gilles Deleuze, two of Spinoza’s most influential twentieth-century readers