gilles deleuze (18 january 1925 - 4 november 1995) was a french philosopher and, to me, the philosopher's philosopher and a sagesage
for a platonist or a stoic, a sage (sophos) is one who has attained wisdom. philosophy is only the love of wisdom, the philosopher only a friend of wisdom.
. his work grapples with differencedifference
thinkers of difference include hegel, heidegger, deleuze, and jacques derrida, the goal being to show that identity is conditioned by difference rather than the other way around.
h..., creativitycreativity
creativity is the ability to come up with interesting and effective solutions. in lifelong kindergarten, mitchel resnick, creator of the scratch language, points to 4 components needed for creativi..., thoughtthought
, and becoming and references a diverse set of works.
although he's connected to post-structuralpost-structural
post-structuralism was a movement responding to structuralism. for deleuze in particular, the question is where the structures of language, culture, meaning, and representation come from.
and postmodernpostmodern
postmodernism is a school of philosophy and art that comes after modernism.
movement, he's more complex than that.
context
in order to understand deleuze, it is helpful to situate him in time. deleuze comes after structuralismstructuralism
structuralism was an intellectual movement led by thinkers like ferdinand de saussure.
and existentialismexistentialism
existentialism is a stance regarding the meaningness of the human condition as a response to nihilism from Jean-Paul sartre and others, coming from nietzsche, kierkegaard, [.... and he's also one of the writers who experienced may 68may 68
may 68 was a political revolt in france by students.
claire colebrook writes about deleuze that
the political problem of may 1968 was whether there could be an active political theory, a w....
so deleuze's project can be seen as one that is going to dethrone representation, which depends on structure, and put difference in its place. there is not being but becoming.
why stop at the human (humanist Private or Broken Links
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)?
problems
deleuze's philosophy centers on problemproblem
all life is problem solving. all organisms are inventors and technicians, good or not so good, successful or not so successful, in solving technical problems. This is how it is among animals - s...s.
there are a few ways of reading deleuze's central problem.
- todd may: how might one live?
- claire colebrook: can thinking grasp the forces or differences that precede and produce it?
claire colebrook also talks about the prehuman problem: what are the syntheses which produce recognizable entities such as human beings or political classes?
against this, deleuze ties philosophy and politics together by affirming the continual revolution in thinking enabled by these positive, imperceptible, and productive differences. deleuze, typically, refers to the totality or plane of these prehuman, prelinguistic, and profound differences in a number of ways: as the abstract machine, as chaoschaos
before the seas and land had been created,
before the sky that covers everything,
nature displayed a single aspect only
throughout the cosmos; chaos was its name,
a shapeless, unwrought mass of ..., as the BwOBwO
the body without organs (BwO) is a concept from logic of sense and anti-oedipus, first used by Antonin Artaud. It is a way of escaping the psychoanalysis of freud and lacan.
, as difference in itself, or as the virtual multiplicity … this is why deleuze objects to existentialismexistentialism
existentialism is a stance regarding the meaningness of the human condition as a response to nihilism from Jean-Paul sartre and others, coming from nietzsche, kierkegaard, [... and phenomenologyphenomenology
Phenomenology (Greek for the study of appearances of things) is a discipline in philosophy that looks at consciousness as experienced. The key thinkers are Husserl, heidegger, Merleau-P....
she adds, "for deleuze, all life is constant becoming, including inorganic, organic, and even virtual life."
influences & philosophical lineage
In the introduction to Deleuze's Philosophical Lineage, graham jones and jon roffe make some important points about why it's hard to read Deleuze.
his work is richly detailed and complex. There are lots of concepts that he assumes you know. if you turn to commentary, Deleuze Studies has created its own Image of Deleuzian Thought because of overdue translations in a non-chronological order and accepting at face value Deleuze's own personal utterances. in some cases, people pick and choose pieces of his work without considering the whole by citing the 'rhizome' and 'nomad.' Or one might make capitalism and schizophreniacapitalism and schizophrenia
capitalisme et schizophrénie is a two-volume work by deleuze and guattari. it consists of anti-oedipus and a thousand plateaus.
the essence or summit of his project and interpret too literally machinic desire in anti-oedipus Private or Broken Links
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. Or there are those who grant too much significance to nietzschenietzsche
friedrich wilhelm nietzsche (1844-1900) was a philosopher from germany. in 1869, at the age of 24, he became a professor. his first book was The Birth of Tragedy, published in 1872, about greek tra... and spinozaspinoza
baruch1 spinoza (1632-1677) was a philosopher who wrote tractatus theologico-politicus and ethica. because he didn't believe in the traditional religion of his time, he was cast out of amsterda..., which, although Deleuze validated, doesn't take into account his whole oeuvre.
instead, Deleuze's thought unfolds internal to an examination of the thought of others. Deleuze's method is one of reading. "His reading practice is clearly one of close, attentive excavation, a careful sieving of the conceptual top-soil in search of latent or even nascent elements beneath." "Deleuze's strategy is more geared towards conceptual and functional differentiation, exploring the horizon of Ideas (in the Kantian sense) and bringing forth the machinic and operative features of the philosophies with which he engages." He teases out the thought they never intended but are there nonetheless, e.g. extracting structure in nietzsche and philosophy Private or Broken Links
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. He finds implicit structure in other's work that then resonates with his own. His work is like a history of philosophy in itself.
apprenticeships
his work responds to mainstream western philosophers, which the sorbonne, his alma mater, emphasized through close readings, by challenging their fundamental notions. The Great Oral Exam included a French, Greek, and Latin text. But he champions and harnesses minor (in the sense of undervaluation) philosophers.
his big thinkers are Spinoza, Bergson, and Nietzsche. From Spinoza, he takes up immanenceimmanence
immanence (from latin in + manere) holds that there is nothing outside and other to itself, against transcendence. It is the view adopted by deleuze and spinoza.
, rather than Transcendence. He is against Hegel and Kant wants to put the reversal of Platonism into motion. He takes up Expression rather than Emanation or Creation. Then, there is a univocity of being. Things fold, unfold, refold.
From Bergson, he takes up temporality.
- The present passes from present to past.
- The present exists in actuality.
- The past exists virtually.
- The actualization of the past by a person is the psychological moment.
- The virtual past that is actualized is the ontological moment.
Substance is duration, the virtual that is there in all of its modes.
From Nietzsche, he takes up the eternal return. (Deleuze likes becoming over being. He is a process philosopher.) The future is the eternal return, the return of difference. The future is virtual difference that has not yet actualized itself into a particular present.
Thought, Science, and Language
Abandon the dogmatic image of thought, which operates with common sense and good sense. Allow for immanence, duration, affirmation of difference.
"The coordination of common sense and good sense offers us a model of judgement as recognition. To judge is to recognize."
philosophy is left without means to realize its project of breaking with doxa. (difference and repetitiondifference and repetition
différence et répétition (1968) is deleuze's magnum opus, which made him a philosopher of difference as becoming rather than opposition or negation. One could see it as a response to kant a...)
How do we consider new possibilities? We have to think in terms of problems. "For the dogmatic image of thought, being is defined in terms of actuality rather than virtuality. It is a matter of stable identities rather than difference. To think ontologically in terms of stable identities is to read solutions back into problems, to approach problems in terms of solutions."
Science can think difference too, where it is a matter of understanding systems of difference in dynamic relation. Here, Deleuze looks to Simondon's preindividual state. Biological individuals actualize a virtual intensive state. For example, the genes are a virtual field of intensities that actualize into specific concrete beings. This preindividual state is a multiplicity. The process is primary. Deleuze and Guattari also pick up on Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity which shows that some enzymes already have a self-ordering behavior. Or there's Prigogine and Stengers Order Out of Chaos, which looks at Emergence. They also look at chaos in terms of bifurcations. This is Nietzsche's dice throw.
Biography
Deleuze was born in Paris to a middle-class family.
Deleuze's older brother George was a big influence on him. Georges Deleuze joined the Resistance but died en route to a concentration camp after being caught, making him a hero while Gilles was neglected to some extent. At 15, Gilles was sent to boarding school in Brittany. His literature professor Pierre Halbwachs introduced him to literature, and he couldn't get enough. He was introduced to philosophy by his friend Michel Tournier and a philosophy class in his last year of high school. He was excited by sartresartre
Existence precedes essence. – Sartre
jean-paul sartre (1905-80) was a philosopher from france who worked on existentialism. his work being and nothingness is seen as a brilliant misreading...'s Being and Nothingness, which he read in a week. He and Tournier were upset by his lecture "Existentialism Is a Humanism." As early as 1947, he saw bergsonbergson
henri bergson (1859-1941) was a french philosopher. he wants to distinguish objective understanding from interior experience. his most well-known books are introduction à la métaphysique, Creative ... as a great philosopher.
Deleuze thinks of himself as a classic philosopher and works with ontology. He wants to know what the forms and beings in life are. He wants to use philosophy to create conceptconcept
In what is philosophy?, a concept is a creation (act of creativity) that testifies to the positive power of thinking as an event of life. philosophy creates concepts and puts th...s and disturb the nature of things. Concepts link together on a plane of immanence, palpating difference. Deleuze cares about thought more than knowledge.
He took his own life at the age of 70. He had a pulmonary ailment and had lost a lung.
Pragmatism
Deleuze has affinity with pragmatismpragmatism
pragmatism is an american school of philosophical thought led by William James and C.S. peirce that focuses on the practical difference that philosophy makes. It orients itself toward whatever ....
Misc
- Deleuze thinks about philosophy as happening in Writing Private or Broken Links
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(?) It definitely does not happen in communication or dialectic. - He thinks of himself as working in the line of empiricismempiricism
empiricism is the view that experience is the only source of knowledge. or, if you are deleuze, it's about how the human subject is constituted.
. - Deleuze Dictionary
- deleuze uses mathematics from leibniz, riemannriemann
riemann was a mathematician. he studied under gauss.
, poincare Private or Broken Links
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, etc.
I get the sense that Deleuze would have liked aspects of metamorphosesmetamorphoses
omnia mutantur, nihil interit (15.165)
metamorphoses (Greek/Latin for transformations) is a lengthy narrative poem (is it an epic poem?) written in Latin by the Roman poet ovid. It cov... and some of the work of nabokovnabokov
vladimir nabokov (1899 - 1977) was a writer of novels and poems. he grew up in russia speaking russian, french, and english. he went to cambridge.
play was an important part of....