Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
, literature, film, and
fine art
In European academic traditions, fine art is developed primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork ...
. His most popular works were the two volumes of ''
Capitalism and Schizophrenia
''Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: Capitalisme et Schizophrénie) is a two-volume theoretical work by the French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, respectively a philosopher and a psychoanalyst. Its volumes are ''Anti-Oedipus'' ...
'': ''
Anti-Oedipus
''Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe) is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first vol ...
'' (1972) and ''
A Thousand Plateaus
''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: link=no, Mille plateaux) is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative ...
'' (1980), both co-written with psychoanalyst
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari ( , ; 30 April 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næss, ...
. His metaphysical treatise ''
Difference and Repetition
''Difference and Repetition'' (french: Différence et répétition, link=no) is a 1968 book by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Originally published in France, it was translated into English by Paul Patton in 1994.
''Difference and Repetition ...
'' (1968) is considered by many scholars to be his
magnum opus
A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...
.
[ See also: "''Difference and Repetition'' is definitely the most important work published by Deleuze." (Edouard Morot-Sir, from the back cover of the first edition of the English translation), or James Williams' judgment: "It is nothing less than a revolution in philosophy and stands out as one of the great philosophical works of the twentieth century" (James Williams, ''Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide'' dinburgh UP, 2003 p. 1).]
An important part of Deleuze's oeuvre is devoted to the reading of other philosophers: the
Stoics
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting that th ...
,
Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
,
Hume,
Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemolo ...
,
Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, Prose poetry, prose poet, cultural critic, Philology, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philo ...
, and
Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson , with particular influence derived from
Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...
.
A. W. Moore, citing
Bernard Williams
Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, FBA (21 September 1929 – 10 June 2003) was an English moral philosopher. His publications include ''Problems of the Self'' (1973), ''Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy'' (1985), ''Shame and Necessity'' ...
's criteria for a great thinker, ranks Deleuze among the "greatest philosophers".
[ A. W. Moore]
''The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things''
Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 543: 'intellectual power and depth; a grasp of the sciences; a sense of the political, and of human destructiveness as well as creativity; a broad range and a fertile imagination; an unwillingness to settle for the superficially reassuring; and, in an unusually lucky case, the gifts of a great writer.' Although he once characterized himself as a "pure
metaphysician
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
", his work has influenced a variety of disciplines across the
humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...
, including
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
,
art
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...
, and
literary theory
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mo ...
, as well as movements such as
post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
and
postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...
.
[See, for example, ]Steven Best
Steven Best (born December 1955) is an American philosopher, writer, speaker and activist. His concerns include animal rights, species extinction, human overpopulation, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media ...
and Douglas Kellner
Douglas Kellner (born May 31, 1943) is an American academic who works at the intersection of "third-generation" critical theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, and in cultural studies in the ...
, ''Postmodern Theory'' (Guilford Press, 1991), which devotes a chapter to Deleuze and Guattari.
Life
Early life
Gilles Deleuze was born into a middle-class family in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
and lived there for most of his life. His mother was Odette Camaüer and his father, Louis, was an engineer. His initial schooling was undertaken during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, during which time he attended the
Lycée Carnot
The Lycée Carnot is a Public school (government funded), public secondary school, secondary and higher education school at 145 Boulevard Malesherbes in the XVIIe arrondissement, 17th arrondissement, Paris, France. The Lycée Carnot was founded in ...
. He also spent a year in ''
khâgne
(), officially known as , is a two-year academic program in the French “” (≈undergraduate) system, with a specialization in literature and the humanities. It is one of the three main types of (CPGE, informally ), contrasting with other CPGE ...
'' at the
Lycée Henri IV
In France, secondary education is in two stages:
* ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 15.
* ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for children between ...
. During the
Nazi occupation of France
The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zo ...
, Deleuze's brother, three years his senior, Georges, was arrested for his participation in the
French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
, and died while in transit to a concentration camp. In 1944, Deleuze went to study at the
Sorbonne
Sorbonne may refer to:
* Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities.
*the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970)
*one of its components or linked institution, ...
. His teachers there included several noted specialists in the history of philosophy, such as
Georges Canguilhem
Georges Canguilhem (; ; 4 June 1904 – 11 September 1995) was a French philosopher and physician who specialized in epistemology and the philosophy of science (in particular, biology).
Life and work
Canguilhem entered the École Normale Supé ...
,
Jean Hyppolite
Jean Hyppolite (; 8 January 1907 – 26 October 1968) was a French philosopher known for championing the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and other German philosophers, and educating some of France's most prominent post-war thinkers. His ...
,
Ferdinand Alquié
Ferdinand Alquié (; 18 December 1906, Carcassonne, Aude – 28 February 1985, Montpellier) was a French philosopher and member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques from 1978.
In the years 1931 to 1945 he was a professor in var ...
, and
Maurice de Gandillac. Deleuze's lifelong interest in the canonical figures of modern philosophy owed much to these teachers.
Career
Deleuze passed the
agrégation
In France, the ''agrégation'' () is a competitive examination for civil service in the French public education system. Candidates for the examination, or ''agrégatifs'', become ''agrégés'' once they are admitted to the position of ''professe ...
in philosophy in 1948, and taught at various
lycées
In France, secondary education is in two stages:
* ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 15.
* ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for children between ...
(Amiens, Orléans,
Louis le Grand) until 1957, when he took up a position at the University of Paris. In 1953, he published his first monograph, ''Empiricism and Subjectivity'', on
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
. This monograph was based on his 1947 DES (') thesis,
[Alan D. Schrift (2006), ''Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers'', Blackwell Publishing, p. 117.] roughly equivalent to an
M.A.
A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
thesis, which was conducted under the direction of
Jean Hyppolite
Jean Hyppolite (; 8 January 1907 – 26 October 1968) was a French philosopher known for championing the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and other German philosophers, and educating some of France's most prominent post-war thinkers. His ...
and
Georges Canguilhem
Georges Canguilhem (; ; 4 June 1904 – 11 September 1995) was a French philosopher and physician who specialized in epistemology and the philosophy of science (in particular, biology).
Life and work
Canguilhem entered the École Normale Supé ...
. From 1960 to 1964, he held a position at the
Centre National de Recherche Scientifique
The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.
In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...
. During this time he published the seminal ''
Nietzsche and Philosophy
''Nietzsche and Philosophy'' (french: Nietzsche et la philosophie) is a 1962 book about Friedrich Nietzsche by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, in which the author treats Nietzsche as a systematically coherent philosopher, discussing concepts such ...
'' (1962) and befriended
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
. From 1964 to 1969, he was a professor at the
University of Lyon
The University of Lyon (french: Université de Lyon), located in Lyon and Saint-Étienne, France, is a center for higher education and research comprising 11 members and 24 associated institutions. The three main universities in this center are: ...
. In 1968, Deleuze defended his two
DrE DRE may refer to:
* ''Dre'' (album), 2010 by American rapper Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, 2010
* Dre (name)
**Dr. Dre, American rapper and producer
* DRE voting machine
* Digital rectal examination, in medicine
* Director of religious education; for exam ...
dissertations amid the ongoing
May 68
Beginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting some seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, as well as the occupation of universities and factories. At the height of events, which ha ...
demonstrations; he later published his two dissertations under the titles ''
Difference and Repetition
''Difference and Repetition'' (french: Différence et répétition, link=no) is a 1968 book by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Originally published in France, it was translated into English by Paul Patton in 1994.
''Difference and Repetition ...
'' (supervised by Gandillac) and ''Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza'' (supervised by Alquié).
In 1969, he was appointed to the
University of Paris VIII
Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis (french: Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) is a public university in Paris, France. Once part of the historic University of Paris, it is now an autonomous public institution.
It is one of the th ...
at Vincennes/St. Denis, an experimental school organized to implement educational reform. This new university drew a number of well-known academics, including Foucault (who suggested Deleuze's hiring) and the psychoanalyst
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari ( , ; 30 April 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næss, ...
. Deleuze taught at Paris VIII until his retirement in 1987.
Personal life
Deleuze's outlook on life was sympathetic to
transcendental ideas, "nature as god" ethics, and the
monist
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
* Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
experience. Some of the important ideas he advocated for and found inspiration in include his personally coined expression
pluralism = monism, as well as the concepts of
Being
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
and
Univocity
Univocity of being is the idea that words describing the properties of God mean the same thing as when they apply to people or things. It is associated with the doctrines of the Scholastic theologian John Duns Scotus.
Scotus
In medieval disputes ...
. His thoughts were shaped by Spinoza's leanings and inclinations; for Deleuze, Spinoza was the "prince" or even the “Christ” of philosophers.
He married Denise Paul "Fanny" Grandjouan in 1956 and they had two children.
According to James Miller, Deleuze portrayed little visible interest in actually ''doing'' many of the risky things he so vividly conjured up in his lectures and writing. Married, with two children, he outwardly lived the life of a conventional French professor. He kept his fingernails untrimmed because, as he once explained, he lacked "normal protective fingerprints", and therefore could not "touch an object, particularly a piece of cloth, with the pads of my fingers without sharp pain".
When once asked to talk about his life, he replied: "Academics' lives are seldom interesting." Deleuze concludes his reply to this critic thus:
Death
Deleuze, who had suffered from respiratory ailments from a young age, developed
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
in 1968 and underwent lung removal. He suffered increasingly severe respiratory symptoms for the rest of his life. In the last years of his life, simple tasks such as writing required laborious effort. Overwhelmed by his respiratory problems, he committed
suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...
on 4 November 1995, throwing himself from the window of his apartment.
Before his death, Deleuze had announced his intention to write a book entitled ''La Grandeur de Marx'' (''The Greatness of Marx''), and left behind two chapters of an unfinished project entitled ''Ensembles and Multiplicities'' (these chapters have been published as the essays "Immanence: A Life" and "The Actual and the Virtual"). He is buried in the cemetery of the village of
Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat
Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat (; ) is a commune in the Haute-Vienne department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region in west-central France, on a hill above the river Vienne. It is named after Saint Leonard of Noblac. The commune of Saint-Léonard-de-Nobl ...
.
Philosophy
Deleuze's works fall into two groups: on the one hand, monographs interpreting the work of other philosophers (
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...
,
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
,
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
,
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
,
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
,
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson ,
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
) and artists (
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...
,
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...
,
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
); on the other, eclectic philosophical tomes organized by concept (e.g., difference, sense, events, schizophrenia, economy, cinema, desire, philosophy). However, both of these aspects are seen by his critics and analysts as often overlapping, in particular, due to his
prose
Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the f ...
and the unique mapping of his books that allow for multifaceted readings.
Metaphysics
Deleuze's main philosophical project in the works he wrote prior to his collaborations with Guattari can be summarized as an inversion of the traditional
metaphysical
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
relationship between
identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
and
difference
Difference, The Difference, Differences or Differently may refer to:
Music
* ''Difference'' (album), by Dreamtale, 2005
* ''Differently'' (album), by Cassie Davis, 2009
** "Differently" (song), by Cassie Davis, 2009
* ''The Difference'' (al ...
. Traditionally, difference is seen as derivative from identity: e.g., to say that "X is different from Y" assumes some X and Y with at least relatively stable identities (as in Plato's forms). On the contrary, Deleuze claims that all identities are effects of difference. Identities are neither logically nor metaphysically prior to difference, Deleuze argues, "given that there exist differences of nature between things of the same genus." That is, not only are no two things ever the same, the categories we use to identify individuals in the first place derive from differences. Apparent identities such as "X" are composed of endless series of differences, where "X" = "the difference between x and x
", and "x
" = "the difference between...", and so forth. Difference, in other words, goes all the way down. To confront reality honestly, Deleuze argues, we must grasp beings exactly as they are, and concepts of identity (forms, categories, resemblances, unities of apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain what he calls "difference in itself." "If philosophy has a positive and direct relation to things, it is only insofar as philosophy claims to grasp the thing itself, according to what it is, in its difference from everything it is not, in other words, in its ''internal difference''."
Like Kant, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the
subject
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...
. He, therefore, concludes that pure difference is non-spatiotemporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "the virtual". (The coinage refers to Proust's definition of what is constant in both the past and the present: "real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.") While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
's forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they
he conditionsform is identical to its object." A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is therefore not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.
Thus, Deleuze at times refers to his philosophy as a transcendental empiricism (), alluding to Kant. In Kant's
transcendental idealism
Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781). By ''transcendental'' (a term that des ...
, experience only makes sense when organized by intuitions (namely, space and time) and concepts (such as causality). Assuming the content of these intuitions and concepts to be qualities of the world as it exists independently of our perceptual access, according to Kant, spawns seductive but senseless metaphysical beliefs (for example, extending the concept of causality beyond possible experience results in unverifiable speculation about a first cause). Deleuze inverts the Kantian arrangement: experience exceeds our concepts by presenting novelty, and this raw experience of difference actualizes an idea, unfettered by our prior categories, forcing us to invent new ways of thinking (see ''
Epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
'').
Simultaneously, Deleuze claims that
being is univocal, i.e., that all of its senses are affirmed in one voice. Deleuze borrows the doctrine of ''
ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
univocity
Univocity of being is the idea that words describing the properties of God mean the same thing as when they apply to people or things. It is associated with the doctrines of the Scholastic theologian John Duns Scotus.
Scotus
In medieval disputes ...
'' from the medieval philosopher
John Duns Scotus
John Duns Scotus ( – 8 November 1308), commonly called Duns Scotus ( ; ; "Duns the Scot"), was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher, and theologian. He is one of the four most important ...
. In medieval disputes over the nature of God, many eminent theologians and philosophers (such as
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...
) held that when one says that "God is good", God's goodness is only analogous to human goodness. Scotus argued to the contrary that when one says that "God is good", the goodness in question is exactly the same sort of goodness that is meant when one says "Jane is good". That is, God only differs from us in degree, and properties such as
goodness,
power
Power most often refers to:
* Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work"
** Engine power, the power put out by an engine
** Electric power
* Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events
** Abusive power
Power may a ...
,
reason
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...
, and so forth are univocally applied, regardless of whether one is talking about God, a person, or a flea.
Deleuze adapts the doctrine of univocity to claim that being is, univocally, difference. "With univocity, however, it is not the differences which are and must be: it is being which is Difference, in the sense that it is said of difference. Moreover, it is not we who are univocal in a Being which is not; it is we and our individuality which remains equivocal in and for a univocal Being." Here Deleuze at once echoes and inverts Spinoza, who maintained that everything that exists is a modification of the one
substance
Substance may refer to:
* Matter, anything that has mass and takes up space
Chemistry
* Chemical substance, a material with a definite chemical composition
* Drug substance
** Substance abuse, drug-related healthcare and social policy diagnosis ...
,
God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
or
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
. For Deleuze, there is no one substance, only an always-differentiating
process
A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic.
Things called a process include:
Business and management
*Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...
, an
origami
) is the Japanese paper art, art of paper folding. In modern usage, the word "origami" is often used as an inclusive term for all folding practices, regardless of their culture of origin. The goal is to transform a flat square sheet of pape ...
cosmos, always folding, unfolding, refolding. Deleuze summarizes this ontology in the paradoxical formula "
pluralism =
monism
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
* Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
".
''
Difference and Repetition
''Difference and Repetition'' (french: Différence et répétition, link=no) is a 1968 book by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Originally published in France, it was translated into English by Paul Patton in 1994.
''Difference and Repetition ...
'' (1968) is Deleuze's most sustained and systematic attempt to work out the details of such a metaphysics, but his other works develop similar ideas. In ''Nietzsche and Philosophy'' (1962), for example, reality is a play of forces; in ''
Anti-Oedipus
''Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe) is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first vol ...
'' (1972), a "
body without organs
The body without organs (or BwO; French: or ) is a philosophical concept used in the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The term was first used by French writer Antonin Artaud in his 1947 play ''To Have Done With t ...
"; in ''
What is Philosophy?'' (1991), a "
plane of immanence
Plane of immanence (french: plan d'immanence) is a founding concept in the metaphysics or ontology of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
Immanence, meaning residing or becoming within, generally offers a relative opposition to transcendence, tha ...
" or "chaosmos".
Epistemology
Deleuze's unusual metaphysics entails an equally atypical
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
, or what he calls a transformation of "the image of thought". According to Deleuze, the traditional image of thought, found in philosophers such as
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
,
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathem ...
, and
Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
, misconceives thinking as a mostly unproblematic business. Truth may be hard to discover—it may require a life of pure theorizing, or rigorous computation, or systematic doubt—but thinking is able, at least in principle, to correctly grasp facts, forms, ideas, etc. It may be practically impossible to attain a God's-eye,
neutral point of view
Neutral point of view may refer to:
* Objectivity (science), the concept of a position formed without incorporating one's own prejudice
* Neutrality (philosophy)
Neutrality is the tendency not to ''side'' in a conflict (physical or ideological ...
, but that is the ideal to approximate: a disinterested pursuit that results in a determinate, fixed truth; an orderly extension of common sense. Deleuze rejects this view as papering over the metaphysical flux, instead claiming that genuine thinking is a violent confrontation with reality, an involuntary rupture of established categories. Truth changes what we think; it alters what we think is possible. By setting aside the assumption that thinking has a natural ability to recognize the truth, Deleuze says, we attain a "thought without image", a thought always determined by problems rather than solving them. "All this, however, presupposes codes or axioms which do not result by chance, but which do not have an intrinsic rationality either. It's just like theology: everything about it is quite rational if you accept sin, the immaculate conception, and the incarnation. Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational—not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift."
''
The Logic of Sense
''The Logic of Sense'' (french: Logique du sens) is a 1969 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The English edition was translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale, and edited by Constantin V. Boundas.
Summary
An exploration of meani ...
'', published in 1969, is one of Deleuze's most peculiar works in the field of epistemology.
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
, in his essay "Theatrum Philosophicum" about the book, attributed this to how he begins with his metaphysics but approaches it through language and truth; the book is focused on "the simple condition that instead of denouncing metaphysics as the neglect of being, we force it to speak of extrabeing". In it, he refers to epistemological
paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...
es: in the first series, as he analyzes
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
's ''
Alice in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatur ...
'', he remarks that "the personal self requires
God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
and the world in general. But when substantives and adjectives begin to dissolve, when the names of pause and rest are carried away by the verbs of pure becoming and slide into the language of events, all identity disappears from the self, the world, and God."
Deleuze's peculiar readings of the history of philosophy stem from this unusual epistemological perspective. To read a philosopher is no longer to aim at finding a single, correct interpretation, but is instead to present a philosopher's attempt to grapple with the problematic nature of reality. "Philosophers introduce new concepts, they explain them, but they don't tell us, not completely anyway, the problems to which those concepts are a response.
..The history of philosophy, rather than repeating what a philosopher says, has to say what he must have taken for granted, what he didn't say but is nonetheless present in what he did say."
Likewise, rather than seeing philosophy as a timeless pursuit of truth, reason, or universals, Deleuze
defines philosophy as the creation of
concept
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs.
They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...
s. For Deleuze, concepts are not identity conditions or propositions, but metaphysical constructions that define a range of thinking, such as Plato's
ideas
In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being. ...
, Descartes's ''
cogito'', or Kant's doctrine of the faculties. A philosophical concept "posits itself and its object at the same time as it is created." In Deleuze's view, then, philosophy more closely resembles practical or artistic production than it does an adjunct to a definitive scientific description of a pre-existing world (as in the tradition of
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
or
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". ...
).
In his later work (from roughly 1981 onward), Deleuze sharply distinguishes art, philosophy, and science as three distinct disciplines, each analyzing reality in different ways. While philosophy creates concepts, the arts create novel qualitative combinations of sensation and feeling (what Deleuze calls "
percept
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
s" and "
affects"), and the sciences create quantitative theories based on fixed points of reference such as the
speed of light
The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit ...
or
absolute zero
Absolute zero is the lowest limit of the thermodynamic temperature scale, a state at which the enthalpy and entropy of a cooled ideal gas reach their minimum value, taken as zero kelvin. The fundamental particles of nature have minimum vibration ...
(which Deleuze calls "functives"). According to Deleuze, none of these disciplines enjoy primacy over the others: they are different ways of organizing the metaphysical flux, "separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another." For example, Deleuze does not treat cinema as an art representing an external reality, but as an ontological practice that creates different ways of organizing movement and time. Philosophy, science, and art are equally, and essentially, creative and practical. Hence, instead of asking traditional questions of identity such as "is it true?" or "what is it?", Deleuze proposes that inquiries should be functional or practical: "what does it do?" or "how does it work?"
Values
In ethics and politics, Deleuze again echoes Spinoza, albeit in a sharply Nietzschean key. In a
classical liberal
Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with especial emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic ...
model of society, morality begins from individuals, who bear abstract
natural rights
Some philosophers distinguish two types of rights, natural rights and legal rights.
* Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and so are ''universal'', ''fundamental'' and ...
or duties set by themselves or a God. Following his rejection of any metaphysics based on identity, Deleuze criticizes the notion of an individual as an arresting or halting of differentiation (as the etymology of the word "individual" suggests). Guided by the
naturalistic ethics of Spinoza and Nietzsche, Deleuze instead seeks to understand individuals and their moralities as products of the organization of pre-individual desires and powers.
In the two volumes of ''
Capitalism and Schizophrenia
''Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: Capitalisme et Schizophrénie) is a two-volume theoretical work by the French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, respectively a philosopher and a psychoanalyst. Its volumes are ''Anti-Oedipus'' ...
'', ''
Anti-Oedipus
''Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe) is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first vol ...
'' (1972) and ''
A Thousand Plateaus
''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: link=no, Mille plateaux) is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative ...
'' (1980), Deleuze and Guattari describe history as a congealing and regimentation of "
desiring-production
Desiring-production (french: production désirante) is a term coined by the French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book ''Anti-Oedipus'' (1972).
Overview
Deleuze and Guattari oppose the Freudian conception of the unconscious ...
" (a concept combining features of
Freudian
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...
drives and
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
) into the modern individual (typically neurotic and repressed), the nation-state (a society of continuous control), and
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...
(an anarchy domesticated into infantilizing commodification). Deleuze, following
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
, welcomes capitalism's destruction of traditional social hierarchies as liberating but inveighs against its homogenization of all values to the aims of the market.
The first part of ''Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' undertakes a
universal history
A universal history is a work aiming at the presentation of a history of all of mankind as a whole, coherent unit. A universal chronicle or world chronicle typically traces history from the beginning of written information about the past up to t ...
and posits the existence of a separate socius (the social body that takes credit for
production
Production may refer to:
Economics and business
* Production (economics)
* Production, the act of manufacturing goods
* Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services)
* Production as a stati ...
) for each
mode of production
In the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production (German: ''Produktionsweise'', "the way of producing") is a specific combination of the:
* Productive forces: these include human labour power and means of production (tools ...
: the earth for the
tribe
The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English language, English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in p ...
, the body of the
despot for the
empire
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
, and
capital
Capital may refer to:
Common uses
* Capital city, a municipality of primary status
** List of national capital cities
* Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences
* Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...
for
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...
."
In his 1990 essay "Postscript on the Societies of Control" ("Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle"), Deleuze builds on Foucault's notion of the society of discipline to argue that society is undergoing a shift in structure and control. Where societies of discipline were characterized by discrete physical enclosures (such as schools, factories, prisons, office buildings, etc.), institutions and technologies introduced since World War II have dissolved the boundaries between these enclosures. As a result, social coercion and discipline have moved into the lives of individuals considered as "masses, samples, data, markets, or 'banks'." The mechanisms of modern societies of control are described as continuous, following and tracking individuals throughout their existence via transaction records, mobile location tracking, and other
personally identifiable information
Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person.
The abbreviation PII is widely accepted in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates ha ...
.
But how does Deleuze square his pessimistic diagnoses with his ethical naturalism? Deleuze claims that standards of value are internal or
immanent
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, pantheis ...
: to live well is to fully express one's power, to go to the limits of one's potential, rather than to judge what exists by non-empirical, transcendent standards. Modern society still suppresses difference and alienates people from what they can do. To affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, we must overturn established identities and so become all that we can become—though we cannot know what that is in advance. The pinnacle of Deleuzean practice, then, is creativity. "Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary, because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?"
Deleuze's interpretations
Deleuze's studies of individual philosophers and artists are purposely heterodox. In ''Nietzsche and Philosophy'', for example, Deleuze claims that Nietzsche's ''
On the Genealogy of Morality
''On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic'' (german: Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift) is an 1887 book by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It consists of a preface and three interrelated treatises ('Abhandlungen' in German) that ...
'' (1887) is an attempt to rewrite Kant's ''
Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781), even though Nietzsche nowhere mentions the First Critique in the ''Genealogy'', and the ''Genealogys moral topics are far removed from the epistemological focus of Kant's book. Likewise, Deleuze claims that univocity is the organizing principle of Spinoza's philosophy, despite the total absence of the term from any of Spinoza's works. Deleuze once famously described his method of interpreting philosophers as "buggery (''enculage'')", as sneaking behind an author and producing an offspring which is recognizably his, yet also monstrous and different.
The various monographs thus are not attempts to present what Nietzsche or Spinoza strictly intended, but re-stagings of their ideas in different and unexpected ways. Deleuze's peculiar readings aim to enact the creativity he believes is the acme of philosophical practice. A parallel in painting Deleuze points to is Francis Bacon's ''
Study after Velázquez''—it is quite beside the point to say that Bacon "gets Velasquez wrong". Similar considerations apply, in Deleuze's view, to his own uses of mathematical and scientific terms, ''pace'' critics such as
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal (; born January 24, 1955) is an American professor of mathematics at University College London and professor emeritus of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. He is a critic of postmo ...
: "I'm not saying that
Resnais and
Prigogine, or
Godard and
Thom, are doing the same thing. I'm pointing out, rather, that there are remarkable similarities between scientific creators of functions and cinematic creators of images. And the same goes for philosophical concepts, since there are distinct concepts of these spaces."
Along with several French and Italian Marxist-inspired thinkers like
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy.
Althusser ...
,
Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar (; ; born 23 April 1942) is a French philosopher. He has taught at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, at the University of California Irvine and is currently an Anniversary Chair Professor at the Centre for Research in Modern Eu ...
, and
Antonio Negri
Antonio "Toni" Negri (born 1 August 1933) is an Italian Spinozistic- Marxist sociologist and political philosopher, best known for his co-authorship of ''Empire'' and secondarily for his work on Spinoza.
Born in Padua, he became a political ...
, he was one of the central figures in a great flowering of
Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...
studies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries
continental philosophy
Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Pri ...
(or the rise of French-inspired post-structuralist
Neo-Spinozism)
[Vinciguerra, Lorenzo (2009), 'Spinoza in French Philosophy Today,'. ''Philosophy Today'' 53(4): 422–437][Duffy, Simon B. (2014), 'French and Italian Spinozism,'. In: ]Rosi Braidotti
Rosi Braidotti (; born 28 September 1954) is a contemporary philosopher and feminist theoretician.
Biography
Career
Braidotti, who holds Italian and Australian citizenship, was born in Italy and moved to Australia when she was 16, where she ...
(ed.), ''After Poststructuralism
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critiques ...
: Transitions and Transformations''. (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 148–168 that was the second remarkable Spinoza revival in history, after highly significant Neo-Spinozism in German philosophy and literature of approximately the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A fervent Spinozist in many respects, Deleuze's preoccupation with and reverence for Spinoza are well known in contemporary philosophy.
Philosophical similarities with Heidegger
From the 1930s onward, German philosopher
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
wrote in a series of manuscripts and books on concepts of Difference, Identity,
Representation, and
Event
Event may refer to:
Gatherings of people
* Ceremony, an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion
* Convention (meeting), a gathering of individuals engaged in some common interest
* Event management, the organization of eve ...
; notably among these the
''Beiträge zur Philosophie'' ''(Vom Ereignis)'' (Written 1936-38; published posthumously 1989); none of the relevant texts were translated into French by Deleuze's death in 1995, excluding any strong possibility of appropriation. However, Heidegger's early work can be traced through mathematician
Albert Lautman, who drew heavily from Heidegger's ''
Sein und Zeit
''Being and Time'' (german: Sein und Zeit) is the 1927 ''magnum opus'' of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and a key document of existentialism. ''Being and Time'' had a notable impact on subsequent philosophy, literary theory and many other f ...
'' and ''Vom Wesen des Grundes'' (1928), which James Bahoh describes as having "...decisive influence on the twentieth century mathematician and philosopher
..whose theory of dialectical Ideas Deleuze appropriated and modified for his own use." The similarities between Heidegger's later,
post-turn, 1930-1976 thought and Deleuze's early works in the 60s and 70s are generally described by Deleuze-scholar Daniel W. Smith in the following way:
"''Difference and Repetition'' could be read as a response to ''Being and Time'' (for Deleuze, Being is difference, and time is repetition)."
Bahoh continues in saying that: "...then ''Beiträge'' could be read as ''Difference and Repetition''
's unknowing and anachronistic doppelgänger." Deleuze and Heidegger's philosophy is considered to converge on the topics of Difference and the Event. Where, for Heidegger, an evental being is constituted in part by difference as "...an essential dimension of the concept of event"; for Deleuze, being is difference, and difference "differentiates by way of events." In contrast, to this, however, Jussi Backman argues that, for Heidegger, being is united only insofar as it consists of and ''is'' difference, or rather as the movement of difference, not too dissimilar to Deleuze's later claims:
"...the unity and univocity of being (in the sense of being), its 'selfsameness,' paradoxically consists exclusively in difference."
This mutual apprehension of a differential, Evental ontology lead both thinkers into an extended critique of the representation characteristic to Platonic, Aristotelian, and Cartesian thought; as Joe Hughes states: "''Difference and Repetition'' is a detective novel. It tells the story of what some readers of Deleuze might consider a horrendous crime
.. the birth of representation." Heidegger formed his critiques most decisively in the concept of the fourfold
'German: das Geviert'' a non-metaphysical grounding for the thing (as opposed to "object") as "ungrounded, mediated, meaningful, and shared" united in an "event of appropriation"
'Ereignis'' This evental ontology continues in ''Identität und Differenz'', where the fundamental concept expressed in ''Difference and Repetition'', of dethroning the primacy of identity, can be seen throughout the text. Even in earlier Heideggerian texts such as ''Sein und Zeit'', however, the critique of representation is "...cast in terms of the being of truth, or the processes of uncovering and covering (grounded in Dasein's existence) whereby beings come into and withdraw from phenomenal presence." In parallel, Deleuze's extended critique of representation (in the sense of detailing a "genealogy" of the antiquated beliefs as well) is given "...in terms of being or becoming as difference and repetition, together with genetic processes of individuation whereby beings come to exist and pass out of existence."
Time and space, for both thinkers, is also constituted in nearly identical ways. Time-space in the ''Beiträge'' and the three syntheses in ''Difference and Repetition'' both apprehend time as grounded in difference, whilst the distinction between the time-space of the world
elt
ELT may refer to:
Education
* English language teaching
* Expanded learning time, an American education strategy
* Kolb's experiential learning theory
Mathematics and science
* Ending lamination theorem
* Extremely large telescope, a type ...
and the time-space as the evental production of such a time-space is mirrored by Deleuze's categorization between the temporality of what is actual and temporality of the virtual in the first and the second/third syntheses respectively.
Another parallel can be found in their utilization of so-called "generative paradoxes," or rather problems whose fundamental problematic element is constantly outside the categorical grasp fond of formal, natural, and human sciences. For Heidegger, this is the Earth in the fourfold, something which has as one of its traits the behaviour of "resisting articulation," what he characterizes as a "strife"; for Deleuze, a similar example can be spotted in the paradox of regress, or of indefinite proliferation in the ''Logic of Sense''.
Reception
In the 1960s, Deleuze's portrayal of Nietzsche as a metaphysician of difference rather than a reactionary mystic contributed greatly to the plausibility and popularity of "left-wing Nietzscheanism" as an intellectual stance. His books ''
Difference and Repetition
''Difference and Repetition'' (french: Différence et répétition, link=no) is a 1968 book by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Originally published in France, it was translated into English by Paul Patton in 1994.
''Difference and Repetition ...
'' (1968) and ''
The Logic of Sense
''The Logic of Sense'' (french: Logique du sens) is a 1969 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The English edition was translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale, and edited by Constantin V. Boundas.
Summary
An exploration of meani ...
'' (1969) led
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
to declare that "one day, perhaps, this century will be called Deleuzian." (Deleuze, for his part, said Foucault's comment was "a joke meant to make people who like us laugh, and make everyone else livid.") In the 1970s, the ''
Anti-Oedipus
''Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe) is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first vol ...
'', written in a style by turns vulgar and esoteric, offering a sweeping analysis of the family, language, capitalism, and history via eclectic borrowings from Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, and dozens of other writers, was received as a theoretical embodiment of the anarchic spirit of
May 1968
The following events occurred in May 1968:
May 1, 1968 (Wednesday)
*CARIFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade Association, was formally created as an agreement between Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago.
*RAF Strike Co ...
. In 1994 and 1995, ''
L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze
''L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze'' (“Gilles Deleuze's alphabet book”) is a French television program produced by Pierre-André Boutang in 1988–1989, consisting of an eight-hour series of interviews between Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parne ...
'', an eight-hour series of interviews between Deleuze and
Claire Parnet
Claire Parnet is a French journalist.
She is famous for having co-written with Gilles Deleuze (her former teacher) the book ''Dialogues'' (1977). It is a book of exchanges, interspersed with questions, where each author responds by contributing a ...
, aired on France's
Arte
Arte (; (), sometimes stylized in lowercase or uppercase in its logo) is a European public service channel dedicated to culture.
It is made up of three separate companies: the Strasbourg-based European Economic Interest Grouping ARTE, plus ...
Channel.
In the 1980s and 1990s, almost all of Deleuze's books were translated into English. Deleuze's work is frequently cited in English-speaking academia (in 2007, e.g., he was the 11th most frequently cited author in English-speaking publications in the humanities, between Freud and Kant). Like his contemporaries Foucault,
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...
, and
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...
, Deleuze's influence has been most strongly felt in North American humanities departments, particularly in
literary theory
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mo ...
, where ''Anti-Oedipus'' and ''A Thousand Plateaus'' are oft regarded as major statements of
post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though post-structuralists all present different critique ...
and
postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...
,
though neither Deleuze nor Guattari described their work in those terms. Likewise in the English-speaking academy, Deleuze's work is typically classified as
continental philosophy
Continental philosophy is a term used to describe some philosophers and philosophical traditions that do not fall under the umbrella of analytic philosophy. However, there is no academic consensus on the definition of continental philosophy. Pri ...
.
Deleuze has attracted critics as well. The following list is not exhaustive and gives only the briefest of summaries.
Among French philosophers,
Vincent Descombes
Vincent Descombes (; born 1943) is a French philosopher. His major work has been in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind.
Philosophical work
Descombes is particularly noted for a lengthy critique in two volumes of the project he cal ...
argues that Deleuze's account of a difference that is not derived from identity (in ''Nietzsche and Philosophy'') is incoherent, and that his analysis of history in ''Anti-Oedipus'' is 'utter idealism', criticizing reality for falling short of a non-existent ideal of schizophrenic becoming. According to
Pascal Engel
Pascal Engel (; born 1954) is a French philosopher, working on the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology and philosophy of logic. He was a professor of philosophy of logic at the Sorbonne. He currently works at the University ...
, Deleuze's metaphilosophical approach makes it impossible to reasonably disagree with a philosophical system, and so destroys meaning, truth, and philosophy itself. Engel summarizes Deleuze's metaphilosophy thus: "When faced with a beautiful philosophical concept you should just sit back and admire it. You should not question it."
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucau ...
claims that Deleuze's metaphysics only apparently embraces plurality and diversity, remaining at bottom
monist
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
* Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
. Badiou further argues that, in practical matters, Deleuze's monism entails an ascetic, aristocratic
fatalism
Fatalism is a family of related philosophical doctrines that stress the subjugation of all events or actions to fate or destiny, and is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are thou ...
akin to ancient
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century Common Era, BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asser ...
.
Other European philosophers have criticized Deleuze's theory of subjectivity. For example,
Manfred Frank
Manfred Frank (born March 22, 1945) is a German philosopher, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen. His work focuses on German idealism, romanticism, and the concepts of subjectivity and self-consciousness. His 950-page ...
claims that Deleuze's theory of
individuation
The principle of individuation, or ', describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinct from other things.
The concept appears in numerous fields and is encountered in works of Leibniz, Carl Gustav Jung, Gunther Anders, Gilbert Sim ...
as a process of bottomless differentiation fails to explain the unity of consciousness.
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New Y ...
claims that Deleuze's
ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
oscillates between
materialism
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...
and
idealism
In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ide ...
, and that the Deleuze of ''Anti-Oedipus'' ("arguably Deleuze's worst book"), the "political" Deleuze under the "'bad' influence" of Guattari, ends up, despite protestations to the contrary, as "the ideologist of late capitalism". Žižek also calls Deleuze to task for allegedly reducing the subject to "just another" substance and thereby failing to grasp the
nothingness
Nothing, the complete absence of anything, has been a matter of philosophical debate since at least the 5th century BC. Early Greek philosophers argued that it was impossible for ''nothing'' to exist. The atomists allowed ''nothing'' but only i ...
that, according to Lacan and Žižek, defines
subjectivity
Subjectivity in a philosophical context has to do with a lack of objective reality. Subjectivity has been given various and ambiguous definitions by differing sources as it is not often the focal point of philosophical discourse.Bykova, Marina F ...
. What remains worthwhile in Deleuze's oeuvre, Žižek finds, are precisely Deleuze's engagements with virtuality as the product of negativity.
English-speaking philosophers have also criticized aspects of Deleuze's work.
Stanley Rosen
Stanley Rosen (July 29, 1929 – May 4, 2014) was Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy and Professor Emeritus at Boston University. His research and teaching focused on the fundamental questions of philosophy and on the most important figur ...
objects to Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche's
eternal return
Eternal return (german: Ewige Wiederkunft; also known as eternal recurrence) is a concept that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur in a self similar form an infinite number of times across in ...
.
Todd May
Todd Gifford May (born May 13, 1955) is a political philosopher who writes on topics of anarchism, poststructuralism, and post-structuralist anarchism. More recently he has published books on existentialism and moral philosophy. He is currentl ...
argues that Deleuze's claim that difference is ontologically primary ultimately contradicts his embrace of immanence, i.e., his monism. However, May believes that Deleuze can discard the primacy-of-difference thesis, and accept a
Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrians, Austrian-British people, British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy o ...
ian
holism
Holism () is the idea that various systems (e.g. physical, biological, social) should be viewed as wholes, not merely as a collection of parts. The term "holism" was coined by Jan Smuts in his 1926 book ''Holism and Evolution''."holism, n." OED Onl ...
without significantly altering his practical philosophy.
Peter Hallward
Peter Hallward is a political philosopher, best known for his work on Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze. He has also published works on post-colonialism and contemporary Haiti. Hallward is a member of the editorial collective of the journal ''Radi ...
argues that Deleuze's insistence that being is necessarily creative and always-differentiating entails that his philosophy can offer no insight into, and is supremely indifferent to, the material, actual conditions of existence. Thus Hallward claims that Deleuze's thought is literally other-worldly, aiming only at a passive contemplation of the dissolution of all identity into the
theophanic self-creation of nature.
In ''
Fashionable Nonsense
''Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science'' (1998; UK: ''Intellectual Impostures''), first published in French in 1997 as french: Impostures intellectuelles, label=none, is a book by physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont ...
'' (1997), physicists
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal (; born January 24, 1955) is an American professor of mathematics at University College London and professor emeritus of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. He is a critic of postmo ...
and
Jean Bricmont
Jean Bricmont (; born 12 April 1952) is a Belgian theoretical physicist and philosopher of science. Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain), he works on renormalization group and nonlinear differential equations. Since 2004, ...
accuse Deleuze of abusing mathematical and scientific terms, particularly by sliding between accepted technical meanings and his own idiosyncratic use of those terms in his works. Sokal and Bricmont state that they don't object to metaphorical reasoning, including with mathematical concepts, but mathematical and scientific terms are useful only insofar as they are precise. They give examples of mathematical concepts being "abused" by taking them out of their intended meaning, rendering the idea into normal language reduces it to truism or nonsense. In their opinion, Deleuze used mathematical concepts about which the typical reader might be not knowledgeable, and thus served to display
erudition rather than enlightening the reader. Sokal and Bricmont state that they only deal with the "abuse" of mathematical and scientific concepts and explicitly suspend judgment about Deleuze's wider contributions.
Other scholars in continental philosophy, feminist studies and sexuality studies have taken Deleuze's analysis of the sexual dynamics of sadism and masochism with a level of uncritical celebration following the 1989 Zone Books translation of the 1967 booklet on
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (; 27 January 1836 – 9 March 1895) was an Austrian nobleman, writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term ''masochism'' is derived from his name, invented by h ...
, ''Le froid et le cruel'' (Coldness and Cruelty). As sexuality historian Alison M. Moore notes, Deleuze's own value placed on difference is poorly reflected in this booklet which fails to differentiate between Masoch's own view of his desire and that imposed upon him by the pathologizing forms of psychiatric thought prevailing in the late nineteenth century which produced the concept of 'masochism' (a term Masoch himself emphatically rejected).
[Alison Moore, Recovering Difference in the Deleuzian Dichotomy of Masochism-without-Sadism, ''Angelaki'' volume 14, issue 3]
Bibliography
;Single-authored
;
;In collaboration with
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari ( , ; 30 April 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næss, ...
* ''Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 1. L'Anti-Œdipe'' (1972). Trans. ''
Anti-Oedipus
''Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe) is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first vol ...
'' (1977).
* ''On the Line'', New York:
Semiotext(e)
Semiotext(e) is an independent publisher of critical theory, fiction, philosophy, art criticism, activist texts and non-fiction.
History
Founded in 1974, ''Semiotext(e)'' began as a journal that emerged from a semiotics reading group led by Sylv ...
, translated by John Johnson (1983).
* ''Kafka: Pour une Littérature Mineure'' (1975). Trans. ''
Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature'' (1986).
* ''Rhizome'' (1976). Trans., in revised form, in ''
A Thousand Plateaus
''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: link=no, Mille plateaux) is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative ...
'' (1987).
* ''
Nomadology: The War Machine'' (1986). Trans. in ''
A Thousand Plateaus
''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: link=no, Mille plateaux) is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative ...
'' (1987).
* ''Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 2. Mille Plateaux'' (1980). Trans. ''
A Thousand Plateaus
''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: link=no, Mille plateaux) is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative ...
'' (1987).
* ''Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?'' (1991). Trans. ''
What is Philosophy?'' (1994).
* ''Part I: Deleuze and Guattari on Anti-Oedipus'' of ''Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972–77'' (2009) Edited by Sylvere Lotringer. (pp. 35–118).
;
;In collaboration with
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
* "Intellectuals and Power: A Discussion Between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault". ''
TELOS
Telos (; ) is a term used by philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of a work of human art. Intentional actualization of potential or inherent purpose,"Telos.''Philosophy Terms'' Retrieved 3 May 2020. ...
'' 16 (Summer 1973). New York: Telos Press (reprinted in ''L'île déserte et autres textes'' / ''Desert Islands and Other Texts''; see above)
Documentaries
* ''
L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze
''L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze'' (“Gilles Deleuze's alphabet book”) is a French television program produced by Pierre-André Boutang in 1988–1989, consisting of an eight-hour series of interviews between Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parne ...
'', with Claire Parnet, produced by Pierre-André Boutang. Éditions Montparnasse.
Audio (lectures)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: Immortalité et éternité''
ouble CD (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2001)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 1'', 2 December 1980. (
Purdue University
Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...
Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 2'', 9 December 1980. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 3'', 16 December 1980. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 4'', 6 January 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 5'', 13 January 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 6'', 20 January 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 7'', 27 January 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 8'', 3 February 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 9'', 10 February 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 10'', 17 February 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 11'', 10 March 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 12'', 17 March 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 13'', 24 March 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017)
* Deleuze, Gilles: ''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought: Lecture 14'', 31 March 1981. (Purdue University Research Repository, 2017) . «''Spinoza: The Velocities of Thought''» («''Spinoza: Des vitesses de la pensée''») was a 14-lecture seminar given by Deleuze at the
University of Paris 8
Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis (french: Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) is a public university in Paris, France. Once part of the historic University of Paris, it is now an autonomous public institution.
It is one of the th ...
from December 1980 to March 1981. Deleuze had previously published two books on Spinoza, including ''Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza'' (''Spinoza et le problème de l'expression'', 1968), and ''Spinoza: Practical Philosophy'' (''Spinoza: Philosophie pratique'', 1970, 2nd ed. 1981). The majority of these lectures were given the same year as the publication of the second edition of the latter title.
See also
Notes and references
External links
Webdeleuze– Courses & audio , etc.
*
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. Eac ...
:
Gilles Deleuze, by Daniel Smith & John Protevi.
*
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''IEP'') is a scholarly online encyclopedia, dealing with philosophy, philosophical topics, and philosophers. The IEP combines open access publication with peer reviewed publication of original pape ...
Gilles Deleuze, by Jon Roffe.
Near complete bibliographyincluding various translations
*
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucau ...
,
The Event in Deleuze. (English translation).
Rhizomes.Online journal inspired by Deleuzian thought.
from
Wayne State University
Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...
.
Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium (1995).*
Institute of Art and Ideas
The Institute of Art and Ideas (IAI) is a British philosophy organisation founded in 2008.
Overview
Cambridge University described it as "engaged in changing the current cultural landscape through the pursuit and promotion of big ideas, boundary-p ...
:
Deleuze and the Time for Non-Reason, by James R. Williams.
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