Gilles Deleuze And The Question Of Philosophy

"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

Called by many France's foremost philosopher, Gilles Deleuze is one of the leading thinkers in the Western World. His acclaimed works and celebrated collaborations with Félix Guattari have established him as a seminal figure in the fields of literary criticism and philosophy. The long-awaited publication of What Is Philosophy? in English marks the culmination of Deleuze's career. Deleuze and Guattari differentiate between philosophy, science, and the arts, seeing as means of confronting chaos, and challenge the common view that philosophy is an extension of logic. The authors also discuss the similarities and distinctions between creative and philosophical writing. Fresh anecdotes from the history of philosophy illuminate the book, along with engaging discussions of composers, painters, writers, and architects. A milestone in Deleuze's collaboration with Guattari, What Is Philosophy? brings a new perspective to Deleuze's studies of cinema, painting, and music, while setting a brilliant capstone upon his work.

Deleuze and Philosophy provides an exploration of the continuing philosophical relevance of Gilles Deleuze. This collection of essays uses Deleuze to move between thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Husserl, Hume, Locke, Kant, Foucault, Badiou and Agamben. As such the reader is left with a comprehensive understanding not just of the philosophy of Deleuze but how he can be situated within a much broader philosophical trajectory. Constantin Boundas has gathered together recent scholarship on Deleuze's philosophy by an acclaimed line-up of international contributors, all of whom seek to provide new and previously unexplored theoretical terrains that will be of interest to both the Deleuze specialist and student alike. Three of the essays are by key French Deleuzians whose work is not widely available in translation. This enticing collection is essential reading for anyone interested not just in Deleuze but in the history of philosophical ideas. Contributors include: Zsuzsa Baross, Veronique Bergen, Ronald Bogue, Bruce Baugh, Rosi Braidotti, Claire Colebrook, Bela Egyed, Philippe Mengue, Dorothea Olkowski, Davide Panagia, Daniel W. Smith, Jeremie Valentin, Arnaud Villani.

Deleuze remains indifferent to the ambient pathos related to the end of metaphysics and compares the undertakings of destruction, overcoming and deconstruction of metaphysics with the gestures of murderers. He considers himself “a pure metaphysician,” which is rather unique in the contemporary philosophical landscape. What are we to make of this and similar claims? What do they mean in light of the effort made during the last several centuries to overcome, overturn, destroy, or deconstruct metaphysics? If we consider Deleuze’s work more closely, might find him engaging in the kind of thinking that is commonly referred to as metaphysical? And if Deleuze is indeed a metaphysician, does this undercut the many insightful contributions of the twentieth century philosophers who dedicate their thought to bringing down Western metaphysical tradition? Or does it suggest that there is a sense of metaphysics that should nevertheless be preserved? These and similar questions are addressed in this volume by a series of international scholars. The goal of the book is to critically engage an aspect of Deleuze’s thought that, for the most part, has been neglected, and to understand better his “immanent metaphysics.” It also seeks to explore the consequences of such an engagement.

One of the first comprehensive treatments of Deleuzian thought. There is always something schizophrenic about logic in Deleuze, which represents another distinctive characteristic: a deep perversion of the very heart of philosophy. Thus, a preliminary definition of Deleuze's philosophy emerges: an irrational logic of aberrant movements. —from Aberrant Movements In Aberrant Movements, David Lapoujade offers one of the first comprehensive treatments of Deleuzian thought. Drawing on the entirety of Deleuze's work as well as his collaborations with Félix Guattari, from the “transcendental empiricism” of Difference and Repetition to the schizoanalysis and geophilosophy of Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, Lapoujade explores the central problem underlying the delirious coherence of Deleuze's philosophy: aberrant movements. These are the movements that Deleuze wrests from Kantian idealism, Nietzsche's eternal return, and the nonsense of Lewis Carroll; they are the schizophrenic processes of the unconscious and the nomadic line of flight traversing history—in short, the forces that permeate life and thought. Tracing and classifying their “irrational logics” represent the quintessential tasks of Deleuzian philosophy. Rather than abstract notions, though, these logics constitute various modes of populating the earth—involving the human as much as the animal, physical, and chemical—and the affective, mental, and political populations that populate human thought. Lapoujade argues that aberrant movements become the figures in a combat against the forms of political, social, philosophical, aesthetic, and scientific organization that attempt to deny, counter, or crush their existence. In this study of a thinker whose insights, theoretical confrontations, and perverse critiques have profoundly influenced philosophy, literature, film, and art over the last fifty years, Lapoujade invites us to join in the discordant harmonies of Deleuze's work—and in the battle that constitutes the thought of philosophy, politics, and life.

2008 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine In recent years, the recognition of Gilles Deleuze as one of the major philosophers of the twentieth century has heightened attention to his brilliant and complex writings on film. What is the place of Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 in the corpus of his philosophy? How and why does Deleuze consider cinema as a singular object of philosophical attention, a specific mode of thought? How does his philosophy of film combine and further his approaches to time, movement, and perception, and how does it produce an escape from subjectivity and a plunge into the immanence of images? How does it recode and utilize Henri Bergson's thought and André Bazin's film theory? What does it tell us about perceiving a world in images—indeed about our relation to the world? These are the central questions addressed in Paola Marrati's powerful and clear elucidation of Deleuze's philosophy of film. Humanities, film studies, and social science scholars will find this book a valuable contribution to the philosophical literature on cinema and its pertinence in contemporary life.

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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.