Deleuze A Stoic

Ryan Johnson reveals that Deleuze's provocative reading of ancient Stoicism produced many of his most singular and powerful ideas. Including previously untranslated French Stoic scholarship, Johnson unearths new possibilities for bridging contemporary and ancient philosophy.

Deleuze dramatises the story of ancient philosophy as a rivalry of four types of thinkers: the subverting pre-Socratics, the ascending Plato, the interiorising Aristotle and the perverting Stoics. Deleuze assigns the Stoics a privileged place because they introduced a new orientation for thinking and living that turns the whole story of philosophy inside out. Ryan Johnson reveals Deleuze's provocative reading of ancient Stoicism produced many of his most singular and powerful ideas. For Deleuze, the Stoics were innovators of an entire system of philosophy which they structured like an egg. Johnson structures his book in this way: Part I looks at physics (the yolk), Part II is logic (the shell) and Part III covers ethics (the albumen). Including previously untranslated French Stoic scholarship, Johnson unearths new possibilities for bridging contemporary and ancient philosophy.

The importance of Stoicism for Gilles Deleuze's Logic of Sense and Michel Foucault's Hermeneutics of the Subject and The Care of the Self is well known. However, few students of either classics or philosophy are aware of the breadth of French and Italian receptions of Stoicism. This book firstly presents this broad field to readers, and secondly advances it by renewing dialogues with ancient Stoic texts. The authors in this volume, who combine expertise in continental and Hellenistic philosophy, challenge our understanding of both modern and ancient concepts, arguments, exercises, and therapies. It conceives of Stoicism as a vital strand of philosophy which contributes to the life of contemporary thought. Flowing through the sustained, varied engagement with Stoicism by continental thinkers, this volume covers Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Alain Badiou, Émile Bréhier, Barbara Cassin, Giorgio Agamben, and Pierre Hadot. Stoic sources addressed range from doxography and well-known authors like Epictetus and Seneca to more obscure authorites like Musonius Rufus and Cornutus.

In 1988 the philosopher Gilles Deleuze remarked that, throughout his career, he had always been 'circling around' a concept of nature. Providing critical analysis of his highly original readings of Stoicism, Aristotle, and Epicurus, this book shows that it is Deleuze's interpretations of ancient Greek physics that provide the key to understanding his conception of nature. Using the works of Aristotle, Plato, Chrysippus, and Epicurus, Michael Bennett traces the development of Deleuze's key concepts of event, difference, and problem. Arguing that it is difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand these ideas without an appreciation of Deleuze's Hellenistic influences, Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics situates his commentaries in the context of contemporary scholarship on ancient Greek philosophy. Delving into the original Greek and Latin texts, this book shows that Deleuze's readings are more complex and controversial than they first appear, simultaneously advancing Deleuze as a new voice in interpretations of ancient Greek philosophy. Generating both new critical analyses of Deleuze and a new appreciation for his classical erudition, Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in ancient Greek philosophy, Deleuze's philosophical project or his unique methodology in the history of philosophy.

This is the first introduction to Stoic philosophy for 30 years. Aimed at readers new to Stoicism and to ancient philosophy, it outlines the central philosophical ideas of Stoicism and introduces the reader to the different ancient authors and sources that they will encounter when exploring Stoicism. The range of sources that are drawn upon in the reconstruction of Stoic philosophy can be bewildering for the beginner. Sellars guides the reader through the surviving works of the late Stoic authors, Seneca and Epictetus, and the fragments relating to the early Stoics found in authors such as Plutarch and Stobaeus. The opening chapter offers an introduction to the ancient Stoics, their works, and other ancient authors who report material about ancient Stoic philosophy. The second chapter considers how the Stoics themselves conceived philosophy and how they structured their own philosophical system. Chapters 3-5 offer accounts of Stoic philosophical doctrines arranged according to the Stoic division of philosophical discourse into three parts: logic, physics, and ethics. The final chapter considers the later impact of Stoicism on Western philosophy. At the end of the volume there is a detailed guide to further reading.

This book offers a readable and compelling introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century's most important and elusive thinkers. Other books have tried to explain Deleuze in general terms. Todd May organizes his book around a central question at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy: how might we live? The author then goes on to explain how Deleuze offers a view of the cosmos as a living thing that provides ways of conducting our lives that we may not have dreamed of. Through this approach the full range of Deleuze's philosophy is covered. Offering a lucid account of a highly technical philosophy, Todd May's introduction will be widely read amongst those in philosophy, political science, cultural studies and French studies.

An incisive analysis of Deleuze's philosophy of eventsSean Bowden shows how the Deleuzian event should be understood in terms of the broader metaphysical thesis that substances are ontologically secondary with respect to events. He achieves this through a reconstruction of Deleuze's relation to the history of thought from the Stoics through to Simondon, taking account of Leibniz, Lautman, structuralism and psychoanalysis along the way.This exciting new reading of Deleuze focuses firmly on his approach to events. Bowden also examines and clarifies a number of Deleuze's most difficult philosophical concepts, including sense, problematic Ideas and intensive individuation, and engages with material by Lautman and Simondon that has not yet been translated into English.

Considered one of the most important works of one of France's foremost philosophers, and long-awaited in English, "The Logic Of Sense" is an essay in literary and psychoanalytic theory, and philosophy, and helps to illuminate such works as "Anti-Oedipus".