Gilles Deleuze Affirmation In Philosophy

Why does knowledge of philosophy presuppose knowledge of reality? What are the characters in Deleuze's theatre and philosophy? How are his famous metaphysical distinctions secondary to the concept of philosophy as practice and politics? These questions are answered through careful analysis and application of Deleuzian principles.

This book re-explores Friedrich Nietzsches critique of nihilism through the lenses of Gilles Deleuze. A Deleuzian reading of Nietzsche is motivated by a post-deconstructive style of interpretation, inasmuch as Deleuze goes beyond, or in between, hermeneutics and deconstruction. The book is not about Deleuzes reading per se; rather, it is an appraisal of Nietzsches critique of nihilism using Deleuzes experimental reading. As such, the book is an experiment in itself, as it shows how to partly gloss Nietzsches critique of nihilism through Deleuzian phraseology.

The first book to present Gilles Deleuze's philosophy in language the nonphilosopher can understand. This book is a map of the work of Gilles Deleuze—the man Michel Foucault would call the "only real philosophical intelligence in France." It is not only for professional philosophers, but for those engaged in what Deleuze called the "nonphilosophical understanding of philosophy" in other domains, such as the arts, architecture, design, urbanism, new technologies, and politics. For Deleuze's philosophy is meant to go off in many directions at once, opening up zones of unforeseen connections between disciplines. Rajchman isolates the logic at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy and the "image of thought" that it supposes. He then works out its implications for social and cultural thought, as well as for art and design—for how to do critical theory today. In this way he clarifies the aims and assumptions of a philosophy that looks constantly to invent new ways to affirm the "free differences" and the "complex repetitions" in the histories and spaces in which we find ourselves. He looks at the particular realism and empiricism that this affirmation implies and how they might be used to diagnose new forces confronting us today. In the process, he explores the many connections that Deleuze himself constructs in working out his philosophy, with the arts, political movements, even the neurosciences and artificial intelligence.

Presents important accounts of Nietzsche's philosophy. The author shows how Nietzsche began a new way of thinking which breaks with the dialectic as a method and escapes the confines of philosophy itself.

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.

Gilles Deleuze has been labelled as the "post-x" thinker: post-structuralist, post-modern, post-Spinozist, post-Nietzschean, and even post-utopian. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze explores such categorizations and places Deleuze and Deleuzian method at the heart of contemporary thought.Contributors include: Giorgio Agamben, Mary Bryden, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Khalfa, Claude Imbert, Alain MTnil, Bento Prado, Juliette Simont, Ronald Bogue, Jonathan Philippe.

"In this book, author Philip Goodchild tries to uncover the image of thought used by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. He does so by focusing on the question, "What is philosophy?" posed implicitly throughout Deleuze's publications. Goodchild traces the development of a highly sophisticated, coherent, and rigorous practice of thought that underlies Deleuze's apparently flamboyant and anarchic discourse." "This question of philosophy is posed in the context of an awareness of the historical, social, and cultural conditioning of a plurality of rationalities that bring into question the value of the philosophical enterprise as a whole. Deleuze meets this problem by identifying something "unthought" and "unthinkable" that conditions the way in which people do in fact think, and by directing philosophy toward this as its transcendental field. Philosophy is no longer seen as an attempt to ascertain, evaluate, criticize, or interpret knowledge or meaning, but is seen as an exercise in creating concepts for use in the practical problems of life." "Ultimately, Deleuze's philosophy constructs an affirmative and interactive kind of social relation, which was embodied in his own intellectional relationship with Felix Guattari and which can form the basis for the organization of a new kind of society." "In conclusion, this book examines Deleuze's deepest metaphysical presuppositions and finds that, while a certain kind of materialism pervades Deleuze's thought, the practice of that thought also presupposes a kind of metaphysics of creative awareness, where planes, lines, and crystals are folded onto each other into a "fractal of philosophy." By rethinking the question of philosophy in Deleuze's thought, one can be led to open up a new meaning of life in terms of the "Transcendence" of this awareness to that which it conditions. The result is an escape from the dead ends of postmodern thought."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved