Deleuze And Ancient Greek Physics

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.

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.

Political Physics analyses the work of two of the most influential thinkers of our time - Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. The book takes the reader on a transversal journey, crossing the boundaries of philosophy and science.Political Physics explores the limits and strengths of Derridean and Deleuzean philosophical approaches. Focussing on their differing approaches to the question of the 'body politic' - in all its registers, from the physical-chemical body, to the economic, the social and the political body - the book reveals a profound difference in ontological commitment. The book argues that the straightforward materialism of Deleuzean philosophy can operate across the range of analysis whereas Derridean deconstruction effectively operates at the level of reason, consciousness and culture.Cross-cutting a Derridean analysis of the history of philosophy with a Deleuzian approach to creative dialogue and complexity theory, Political Physics illuminates the value of both approaches to the analysis of contemporary culture, politics and science and to the rereading of the history of ideas.

The impact of Gilles Deleuze on critical thought in the opening decades of the twenty-first century rivals that of Jacques Derrida or Michel Foucault on critical thought in the closing decades of the twentieth. The Deleuze and... industry is in overdrive in the humanities, the social sciences, and beyond, busily connecting Deleuzian philosophy to everything from literature to architecture, metaphysics to mathematics, ethics to physics, sexuality to technology, and ecology to theology. What of Deleuze and the Bible? What does the Bible become when it is plugged into the Deleuzian corpus? An immense affective assemblage, among other things. And what does biblical criticism become in the process? A practice of close reading that is other than interpretation and renounces the concept of representation. Not just for those already familiar with the work of Deleuze, the book begins with an extended introduction to Deleuzian thought. It then proceeds to unexegetical explorations of five successive themes: Text (how to make yourself a Bible without Organs, and why); Body (why there are no bodies in the Bible, and how to read them anyway); Sex (a thousand tiny sexes, a trillion tiny Jesuses); Race (Jesus and the white faciality machine); and Politics (democracy, despots, pandemics, ancient prophets). Cumulatively, these explorations limn the fluid contours of a Bible after Deleuze.

In response to Bergson's claim that modern science has not found its metaphysics, Deleuze remarked that it was this metaphysics that particularly interested him. In recent years, as the complexities of Deleuze's work have been critically evaluated, interest has grown in the important part that science and a corresponding metaphysics plays in this work, including the publications that were co-authored with Felix Guattari. Necessarily, much of this critical work has explored the precise nature of Deleuze's expressive materialism. It has been suggested, by Manuel DeLanda for example, that Deleuze's realist ontology has much in common with an intensive science that concentrates on the divergent processes that underpin the extensive world of finished products that we see around us. John Protevi and Mark Bonta have suggested that, in the same way that Kant's Critiques corresponded to a world of Euclidean space, Aristotelian time, and Newtonian physics, so Deleuze's philosophy helps to make sense of the world of fragmented space, twisted time and far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics that science is now exploring. This collection brings together a series of papers that deal with Deleuze and Guattari's treatment of science in A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy?, as well as looking in detail at scientific issues such as emergence, complexity theory, non-linear dynamics, modern mathematics and physics and nanotechnology. As well showing how science functions in Deleuze and Guattari's work, these papers also explore the ways in which Deleuze and Guattari were keenly aware of the related revolutions in physics, biology and information technology that gathered pace in the post-war period. Much exegetical work on Deleuze in recent times has emphasised the importance of the articulation between the virtual and the actual as the key co-ordinates of Deleuze's 'image of thought'. The papers in this collection show just how important science was for Deleuze in elaborating th

'Deleuze and Evolutionary Theory' gathers together contributions by many of the central theorists in Deleuze studies who have led the way in breaking down the boundaries between philosophical and biological research. They focus on the significance of Deleuze and Guattari's engagements with evolutionary theory across the full range of their work, from the interpretation of Darwin in 'Difference and Repetition', to the symbiotic alliances of wasp and orchid in 'A Thousand Plateaus'. In this way, they explore the anthropological, social and biopolitical significance of the convergences and divergences between philosophy and evolutionary science.

"Deleuze and Evolutionary Theory gathers together contributions by many of the central theorists in Deleuze studies, who have led the way in breaking down the boundaries between philosophical and biological research. They focus on Deleuze and Guattari's engagements with evolutionary theory across the full range of their work, from the interpretation of Darwin in Difference and Repetition, to the symbiotic alliances of wasp and orchid in A Thousand Plateaus, and explore the anthropological, social and biopolitical significance of the convergences and divergences between philosophy and evolutionary science"--Back cover.

This volume of 18 essays shows how leading philosophers address the problems of ancient metaphysics: one and the many, the potential and the actual, the material and immaterial, the divine and the world itself. Includes three original and previously unpublished translations of texts by Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Aubenque and Barbara Cassin.