Gilles Deleuze

1925-1995 · French · Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophy of Mind, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Cinema, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Difference, Continental Philosophy

A life is everywhere, in all the moments that a given living subject goes through.

When Gilles Deleuze arrived at the Sorbonne in the late 1940s, French philosophy was dominated by Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. His response was to write a book on Hume. That provocation announced a lifelong program: replacing the tradition of identity, negation, and transcendence with a philosophy built from difference, immanence, and what he called transcendental empiricism. His solo masterpieces "Difference and Repetition" and "The Logic of Sense" argue that identity and resemblance are not fundamental — they are effects produced by a deeper play of differences. Ideas are not Platonic…

Topics Gilles Deleuze addresses

• difference and repetition
• univocity of being
• the simulacrum
• the overturning of Platonism
• transcendental empiricism
• the virtual and the actual
• the plane of immanence
• the body without organs
• desire as production
• assemblages
• rhizome
• deterritorialization and reterritorialization
• lines of flight
• becoming
• becoming-animal
• becoming-woman
• becoming-imperceptible
• smooth and striated space
• the war machine
• the fold
• schizoanalysis
• the time-image
• the movement-image
• the theory of multiplicities

Questions to put to Gilles Deleuze

Difference, the Simulacrum, and the Overturning of Platonism

• What do you mean by the overturning of Platonism?
• How is the simulacrum different from a copy or image?
• Why do you say difference-in-itself is more fundamental than identity?
• What's wrong with asking 'What is X?' as the basic philosophical question?
• How does your view escape the charge that you're just inverting Plato rather than overcoming him?

The Virtual, the Actual, and Bergson's Duration

• What do you mean when you say the virtual is real?
• How does the virtual differ from the possible?
• What's the difference between differentiation and differenciation?
• Why does Bergson matter so much to your philosophy?
• How do you understand the relationship between time and the open Whole?
• What is the time-image in cinema, and why does it emerge after World War II?

Univocity, Immanence, and the Plane of Philosophy

• What does it mean to say being is univocal?
• How can philosophy operate without any appeal to transcendence?
• What's at stake for you in the critique of Plato's transcendent Ideas?
• How do you construct a plane of immanence?
• Why do you call Spinoza one of the great philosophers of immanence?

Desire, Schizoanalysis, and Anti-Oedipus

• How is desire production rather than lack?
• What are desiring-machines, and how do they work?
• Why do you reject the Oedipal triangle as the structure of the unconscious?
• What's the difference between schizoanalysis and psychoanalysis?
• How are libidinal economy and political economy the same thing?
• What does it mean to say capitalism decodes flows?

Rhizomes, Assemblages, and A Thousand Plateaus

• What is a rhizome, and why does it matter?
• How does the rhizome differ from the tree as a model of thought?
• What do you mean by an assemblage?
• What's the difference between smooth space and striated space?
• How does the war machine relate to the State apparatus?
• What is a line of flight, and how does it work in an assemblage?

Becoming, the Body without Organs, and Nomad Thought

• What does it mean to become-animal or become-imperceptible?
• What is the body without organs?
• How is becoming different from imitation or metaphor?
• Why do you oppose State philosophy with nomad thought?
• What role does deterritorialization play in your philosophy?
• How should I understand your claim that a life is everywhere, in all the moments a living subject goes through?

Converse with Gilles Deleuze on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Gilles Deleuze's own writing, cited to the page.