Suggests an open system of psychological exploration to cut through accepted norms of morality, language, and politics.

Of fundamental importance to literary critics and philosophers, Difference and Repetition develops two central concepts -- pure difference and complex ...

Deleuze and Guattari differentiate between philosophy, science, and the arts - seeing each as a 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 this book, along with engaging discussions of composers, painters, writers, and architects.

Praised for its rare combination of scholarly rigor and imaginative interpretation, _Nietzsche and Philosophy_ has long been recognized as one of the most important analyses of Nietzsche. It is also one of the best introductions to Deleuze's thought, establishing many of his central philosophical positions. In _Nietzsche and Philosophy_, Deleuze identifies and explores three crucial concepts in Nietzschean thought-multiplicity, becoming, and affirmation-and clarifies Nietzsche's views regarding the will to power, eternal return, nihilism, and difference. For Deleuze, Nietzsche challenged conventional philosophical (...) ideas and provided a means of escape from Hegel's dialectical thinking, which had come to dominate French philosophy. He also offered a path toward a politics of difference. In this new edition, Michael Hardt's foreword examines the profound influence of Deleuze's provocative interpretations on the study of Nietzsche, which opened a whole new avenue in postwar thought. (shrink)

This book, which presents Spinoza's main ideas in dictionary form, has as its subject the opposition between ethics and morality, and the link between ethical ...

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".

In The Fold Deleuze proposes a new and radical way of understanding philosophy and art.

Examines the philosophical foundations of Foucault's writings and discusses his views on knowledge, punishment, power, and subjectivation.

Examines the philosophy of Henri Bergson, explains his concepts of duration, memory, and elan vital, and discusses the influence of science on Bergson.

In this extraordinary work Gilles Deleuze reflects on one of the figures of the past who has most influenced his own sweeping reconfiguration of the tasks of philosophy.

For those not yet acquainted with the work of this philosopher, this book provides a point of entry to his complex theories. For those more familiar with Deleuze, this collection should be useful in broadening their understanding of this influential thinker's journey in search of knowledge.

"Mille Plateaux (Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 1980) est le second des deux volumes ayant pour sous-titre Capitalisme et schizophrénie issu de la collaboration entre le philosophe Gilles Deleuze et le philosophe et psychanalyste Félix Guattari. Cet ouvrage continue à explorer par des voies inédites - en s'attaquant notamment à une série d'erreurs afférentes selon les auteurs à l'arborescence, à l'État, au langage... - la question déjà avancée dans L'Anti-Œdipe (premier volume) d'une ontologie révolutionnaire des devenirs ("presque imperceptibles") qui ne cessent (...) de défaire l'histoire des identités ("primauté des lignes de fuite") et de produire des "coups" imprévisibles au sociologue et au militant. Sans doute le livre politique de Deleuze et Guattari le plus important, grâce à sa conception originale du pluralisme (l'individu n'y est pas conçu comme fondement de l'organisation sociale : les subjectivités sociales sont toujours au-dessus ou en dessous du niveau de l'individu, composant et décomposant des collectivités de toutes sortes)"--Wikipedia = Mille Plateaux (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980) is the second of two volumes which comes in the series of Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a result of collaboration between the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, philosopher and psychoanalyst. This book continues to explore new paths - including addressing a series of errors by the authors related to the tree, the state, the language... - that are already dealt with in Anti-Oedipus (first volume) of an ontology of revolutionary futures; the latter continues to unravel the history of identities ("primacy of lines of flight") and produce "coups" unforeseeable to the sociologist and activist. No doubt the political book of Deleuze and Guattari's is the most important, with its original conception of pluralism (the individual is not conceived as the foundation of social organization: social subjectivities are always above or below of the individual level, composing and decomposing communities of all kinds).". (shrink)

A critical examination of the figure of Oedipus in psychoanalysis and Western culture as it relates to the history of society and capitalism.

In the most accessible and personal of his works, Deleuze examines, through a series of discussions with Claire Parnet, such revealing topics as his own philosophical background and development, the central themes of his work, and some of his relationships, in particular with the philosopher Flix Guattari. This new edition contains a new essay, "The Actual and the Virtual.".

Translated and with an Introduction by Daniel W. Smith Afterword by Tom Conley Gilles Deleuze had several paintings by Francis Bacon hanging in his Paris apartment, and the painter’s method and style as well as his motifs of seriality, difference, and repetition influenced Deleuze’s work. This first English translation shows us one of the most original and important French philosophers of the twentieth century in intimate confrontation with one of that century’s most original and important painters. In considering Bacon, Deleuze (...) offers implicit and explicit insights into the origins and development of his own philosophical and aesthetic ideas, ideas that represent a turning point in his intellectual trajectory. First published in French in 1981, _Francis Bacon_ has come to be recognized as one of Deleuze’s most significant texts in aesthetics. Anticipating his work on cinema, the baroque, and literary criticism, the book can be read not only as a study of Bacon’s paintings but also as a crucial text within Deleuze’s broader philosophy of art. In it, Deleuze creates a series of philosophical concepts, each of which relates to a particular aspect of Bacon’s paintings but at the same time finds a place in the “general logic of sensation.” Illuminating Bacon’s paintings, the nonrational logic of sensation, and the act of painting itself, this work—presented in lucid and nuanced translation—also points beyond painting toward connections with other arts such as music, cinema, and literature. _Francis Bacon_ is an indispensable entry point into the conceptual proliferation of Deleuze’s philosophy as a whole. Gilles Deleuze was professor of philosophy at the University of Paris, Vincennes–St. Denis. He coauthored _Anti-Oedipus_ and _A Thousand Plateaus_ with Félix Guattari. These works, as well as _Cinema 1, Cinema 2, The Fold, Proust and Signs_, and others, are published in English by Minnesota. Daniel W. Smith teaches in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University. (shrink)

La philosophie n'est ni contemplation, ni réflexion, ni communication. Elle est l'activité qui crée les concepts. Comment se distingue-t-elle de ses rivales, qui prétendent nous fournir en concepts? La philosophie doit nous dire quelle est la nature créative du concept, et quels en sont les concomitants : la pure immanence, le plan d'immanence, et les personnages conceptuels. Par là, la philosophie se distingue de la science et de la logique. Celles-ci n'opèrent pas par concepts, mais par fonctions, sur un plan (...) de référence et avec des observateurs partiels. L'art opère par percepts et affects, sur un plan de composition avec des figures esthétiques. La philosophie n'est pas interdisciplinaire, elle est elle-même une discipline entière qui entre en résonance avec la science et avec l'art, comme ceux-ci avec elle : trouver le concept d'une fonction, etc. C'est que les trois plans sont les trois manières dont le cerveau recoupe le chaos, et l'affronte. Ce sont les Chaoïdes. La pensée ne se constitue que dans ce rapport où elle risque toujours de sombrer. (shrink)

The final work of the late philosopher Gilles Deleuze includes essays on such diverse literary figures as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, Lewis Carroll, and others, along with philosophers Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and others. Taken together, these 18 essays--all newly revised or published here for the first time--present a profoundly new approach to literature.

The essays in this book present a complex theme at the heart of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, what in his last writing he called simply "a life." They capture a problem that runs throughout his work--his long search for a new and superior empiricism. Announced in his first book, on David Hume, then taking off with his early studies of Nietzsche and Bergson, the problem of an "empiricist conversion" became central to Deleuze's work, in particular to his aesthetics and (...) his conception of the art of cinema. In the new regime of communication and information-machines with which he thought we are confronted today, he came to believe that such a conversion, such an empiricism, such a new art and will-to-art, was what we need most. The last, seemingly minor question of "a life" is thus inseparable from Deleuze's striking image of philosophy not as a wisdom we already possess, but as a pure immanence of what is yet to come. Perhaps the full exploitation of that image, from one of the most original trajectories in contemporary philosophy, is also yet to come. (shrink)

A fascinating anthology of texts and interviews written over 20 years by renowned French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. "One day, perhaps, this century will be Deleuzian," Michel Foucault once wrote. This book anthologizes 40 texts and interviews written over 20 years by renowned French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who died in 1995. The early texts, from 1953-1966, belong to literary criticism and announce Deleuze's last book, Critique and Clinic. But philosophy clearly predominates in the rest of the book, with sharp appraisals of (...) the thinkers he always felt indebted to: Spinoza, Bergson. More surprising is his acknowledgement of Jean-Paul Sartre as his master. "The new themes, a certain new style, a new aggressive and polemical way of raising questions," he wrote, "come from Sartre." But the figure of Nietzsche remains by far the most seminal, and the presence throughout of his friends and close collaborators, Felix Guattari and Michel Foucault. The book stops shortly after the publication of Anti-Oedipus, and presents a kind of genealogy of Deleuze's thought as well as his attempt to leave philosophy and connect it to the outside—but, he cautions, as a philosopher. (shrink)

At last available in paperback, this book anticipates and explains the post-structuralist turn to empiricism. Presenting a challenging reading of David Hume's philosophy, the work is invaluable for understanding the progress of Deleuze's thought.

Provides a short introduction to Kant, emphasizing Kant's own view of his philosophy. Deleuze offers an overview of the whole of Kant's critical philosophy.

Texts and interviews from the period that saw the publication of Deleuze's major works. People tend to confuse winning freedom with conversion to capitalism. It is doubtful that the joys of capitalism are enough to free peoples.... The American “revolution” failed long ago, long before the Soviet one. Revolutionary situations and attempts are born of capitalism itself and will not soon disappear, alas. Philosophy remains tied to a revolutionary becoming that is not to be confused with the history of revolutions.—from (...) Two Regimes of Madness Covering the last twenty years of Gilles Deleuze's life, the texts and interviews gathered in this volume complete those collected in Desert Islands and Other Texts. This period saw the publication of his major works: A Thousand Plateaus, Cinema I: Image-Movement, Cinema II: Image-Time, all leading through language, concept and art to What is Philosophy?. Two Regimes of Madness also documents Deleuze's increasing involvement with politics. Both volumes were conceived by the author himself and will be his last. Michel Foucault famously wrote: “One day, perhaps, this century will be Deleuzian.” This book provides a prodigious entry into the work of the most important philosopher of our time. Unlike Foucault, Deleuze never stopped digging further into the same furrow. Concepts for him came from life. He was a vitalist and remained one to the last. This volume restores the full text of the original French edition. (shrink)

New to this edition is Deleuze's essay "Pericles and Verdi," which reflects on politics and historical materialism in the work of the influential French ...

This brilliant exposition of the critique of identity is a classic in contemporary philosophy and one of Deleuze's most important works. Of fundamental importance to literary critics and philosophers,Difference and Repetition develops two central concepts—pure difference and complex repetition&mdasha;and shows how the two concepts are related. While difference implies divergence and decentering, repetition is associated with displacement and disguising. Central in initiating the shift in French thought away from Hegel and Marx toward Nietzsche and Freud, _Difference and Repetition_ moves deftly (...) to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics. (shrink)

"Le projet le plus général de Nietzsche consiste en ceci : introduire en philosophie les concepts de sens et de valeur. Nietzsche n'a jamais caché que la philosophie du sens et des valeurs dut être une critique. Que Kant n'ait pas mené la vraie critique, parce qu'il n'a pas su en poser le problème en termes de valeurs, tel est même un des mobiles principaux de l'oeuvre de Nietzsche". Cette analyse rigoureuse et critique de la philosophie de Nietzsche est une (...) lumineuse introduction à l'oeuvre d'un philosophe trop souvent réduit au nihilisme, à la volonté de puissance et l'image du surhomme. Gilles Deleuze remarque que "la philosophie moderne présente des amalgames, qui témoignent de sa vigueur et de sa vivacité, mais qui comportent aussi des dangers pour l'esprit" et que la force du projet philosophique de Nietzsche dans le "dépassement" de la métaphysique est "de dénoncer toutes les mystifications qui trouvent dans la dialectique un dernier refuge. La philosophie de Nietzsche a une grande portée polémique". (shrink)

A criticism of the book "a la recherche du temps perdu".

"Durée, mémoire, élan vital marquent les grandes étapes de la philosophie bergsonienne. L'objet de ce livre est la détermination du rapport entre ces trois notions et du progrès qu'elles impliquent. L'intuition est la méthode du bergsonisme et l'intuition telle qu'il l'entend méthodiquement suppose la durée". Analysant le travail philosophique de Bergson, Gilles Deleuze s'interroge sur la possibilité d'établir une méthode philosophique rigoureuse et précise, fondée sur l'intuition et sur la manière dont Bergson en a élaboré les règles pour construire sa (...) philosophie. Il s'attache à étudier les relations établies tout au long de l'oeuvre, entre les trois concepts majeurs de la philosophie bergsonienne : la durée comme donnée immédiate, la mémoire comme existence virtuelle et l'élan vital comme mouvement de la différenciation. (shrink)

French journalist Claire Parnet's famous dialogues with Gilles Deleuze offer an intimate portrait of the philosopher's life and thought. Conversational in tone, their engaging discussions delve deeply into Deleuze's philosophical background and development, the major concepts that shaped his work, and the essence of some of his famous relationships, especially his long collaboration with the philosopher Félix Guattari. Deleuze reconsiders Spinoza, empiricism, and the stoics alongside literature, psychoanalysis, and politics. He returns to the notions of minor literature, deterritorialization, the critical (...) and clinical, and begins a nascent study of cinema. New to this edition is Deleuze's essay "Pericles and Verdi," which reflects on politics and historical materialism in the work of the influential French philosopher François Châtelet. An enduring record of Deleuze's unique personality and profound contributions to culture and philosophy, _Dialogues II_ is a highly personable account of the evolution of one of the greatest critics and theorists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

- Comment une autre langue se crée dans la langue, de telle manière que le langage tout entier tende vers sa limite ou son propre " dehors "? - Comment la possibilité de la psychose et la réalité du délire s'inscrivent dans ce parcours? - Comment le dehors du langage est fait de visions et d'auditions non-langagières, mais que seul le langage rend possibles? - Pourquoi les écrivains sont dès lors, à travers les mots, des coloristes et des musiciens?

À quelles conditions peut-on, dans un discours réel, utiliser un énoncé comme argument en faveur d’un autre? La réponse semble aller de soi, au moins si l’on assimile l’argumentation à une espèce de raisonnement - peut-être lâche et flou, mais analogue en son fond à la démonstration étudiée par les logiciens. Dans ce cas, l’enchaînement des énoncés se fonde sur les informations qu’ils véhiculent, sur ce qu’ils disent de la réalité. C’est justement l’inverse que veut montrer la théorie des échelles (...) argumentatives. Selon elle, la structure des énoncés, au sens le plus étroitement grammatical du terme, contient, indépendamment des informations qu’ils donnent, des indications sur le type de conclusions qu’ils peuvent servir. Le sens même de nos paroles doit alors être vu comme étant, de façon intrinsèque, un moyen pour orienter le discours de l’autre, l’intention de dire ne se distinguant pas de l’intention de faire dire. Ce qui fait triompher le structuralisme là où on l’attend le moins, en sémantique - la valeur sémantique d’un énoncé est constituée par allusion à la possibilité d’un autre énoncé - l’énoncé de l’autre. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari redefine the relation between the state and its war machine. Far from being a part of the state, warriers are nomads who always come from the outside and keep threatening the authority of the state. In this daring essay inspired by Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari redefine the relation between the state and its war machine. Far from being a part of the state, warriers are nomads who always come from the outside and keep (...) threatening the authority of the state. In the same vein, nomadic science keeps infiltrating royal science, undermining its axioms and principles. Nomadology is a speedy, pocket-sized treatise that refuses to be pinned down. Theorizing a dynamic relationship between sedentary power and "schizophrenic lines of flight," this volume is meant to be read in transit, smuggled into urban nightclubs, offices, and subways. Deleuze and Guattari propose a creative and resistant ethics of becoming-imperceptible, strategizing a continuous invention of weapons on the run. An anarchic bricolage of ideas uprooted from anthropology, aesthetics, history, and military strategy, Nomadology carries out Deleuze's desire to "leave philosophy, but to leave it as a philosopher.". (shrink)

Le pli a toujours existé dans les arts, mais le propre du Baroque est de porter le pli à l'infini. Si la philosophie de Leibniz est baroque par excellence, c'est parce que tout se plie, se déplie, se replie. Sa thèse la plus célèbre est celle de l'âme comme " monade " sans porte ni fenêtre, qui tire d'un sombre fond toutes ses perceptions claires : elle ne peut se confondre que par analogie avec l'intérieur d'une chapelle baroque, de marbre (...) noir, où la lumière n'arrive que par des ouvertures imperceptibles à l'observateur du dedans : aussi l'âme est-elle pleine de plis obscurs. Pour découvrir un néo-Baroque moderne, il suffit de suivre l'histoire du pli infini dans tous les arts : " pli selon pli " avec la poésie de Mallarmé et le roman de Proust, mais aussi l'œuvre de Michaux, la musique de Boulez, la peinture de Hantaï. Et ce néoleibnizianisme n'a cessé d'inspirer la philosophie. (shrink)

Pourquoi réunir des textes d'entretiens qui s'étendent presque sur vingt ans? Il arrive que des pourparlers durent si longtemps qu'on ne sait plus s'ils font encore partie de la guerre ou déjà de la paix. Il est vrai que la philosophie ne se sépare pas d'une colère contre l'époque, mais aussi d'une sérénité qu'elle nous assure. La philosophie cependant n'est pas une Puissance. Les religions, les Etats, le capitalisme, la science, le droit, l'opinion, la télévision sont des puissances, mais pas (...) la philosophie. La philosophie peut avoir de grandes batailles intérieures (idéalisme - réalisme etc.) mais ce sont des batailles pour rire. N'étant pas une puissance, la philosophie ne peut pas engager de bataille avec les puissances, elle mène en revanche une guerre sans bataille, une guérilla contre elles. Et elle ne peut pas parler avec elles, elle n'a rien à leur dire, rien à communiquer, et mène seulement des pourparlers. Comme les puissances ne se contentent pas d'être extérieures, mais aussi passent en chacun de nous, c'est chacun de nous qui se trouve sans cesse en pourparlers et en guérilla avec lui-même, grâce à la philosophie. (shrink)