The paper takes as the starting point a dense and notorious quote by Lacan where he takes up in a single gesture three concepts of ancient philosophy, tyche, clinamen and den. The contention is that all three aim at the status of the object, although by different means and in different philosophical contexts, and the paper tries to spell out some crucial points concerning each. Tyche, usually translated as chance and put into an opposition with automaton, requires a reading of (...) some passages of Aristotle’s Physics where Lacan took it from, and an account of the problem of repetition in psychoanalysis. Clinamen, the swerve, stemming from Epicure and Lucretius, requires a condensed reading of the tradition which took it up, from Cicero to Hegel, Marx, Deleuze and Badiou, pinpointing the dilemmas and contradictions of this tradition. Den, stemming from Democritus who coined this neologism, brings up an entity which is neither being nor nothing, neither one nor zero nor multiple. It is perhaps the best evocation, at the dawn of philosophy, of what Lacan would call object a, and it allows to sidestep the difficulties and the pitfalls presented by the other two notions. The paper tries to pin down the minimal requirement for the Lacanian theory with the irreducible and incommensurable (non)relation of ‘minus one’ and den. (shrink)

The collection Virtual Mathematics: the logic of difference brings together a range of new philosophical engagements with mathematics, using the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as its focus. Deleuze’s engagements with mathematics rely upon the construction of alternative lineages in the history of mathematics in order to reconfigure particular philosophical problems and to develop new concepts. These alternative conceptual histories also challenge some of the self-imposed limits of the discipline of mathematics, and suggest the possibility of forging new connections (...) between philosophy and more recent developments in mathematics. This component of Deleuze’s work has, to date, been rather neglected by commentators working in the field of Deleuze studies. One of the aims of this collection is to address this critical deficit by providing a philosophical presentation of Deleuze’s relation to mathematics; one that is adequate to his project of constructing a philosophy of difference and to the exploration of some of its applications. This project developed as a result of encounters with an increasing number of researchers who have been working on the mathematical aspects of Deleuze’s work and the key role that these play in his philosophy. By bringing this work together for the first time, this collection makes an important contribution to the emerging body of work that endeavours to explore the broad range of Deleuze’s philosophy. (shrink)

A critical survey of the main philosophical theories about events and event talk, organized in three main sections: (i) Events and Other Categories (Events vs. Objects; Events vs. Facts; Events vs. Properties; Events vs. Times); (ii) Types of Events (Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, and States; Static and Dynamic Events; Actions and Bodily Movements; Mental and Physical Events; Negative Events); (iii) Existence, Identity, and Indeterminacy.

According to Gilles Deleuze, the underground world of Alice in Wonderland has been strongly associated with animality and embodiment. Thus the need for Alice's eventual climb to the surface and her discovery that everything linguistic happens at that border. Yet, strangely, in spite of the claim that Alice disavows false depth and returns to the surface, it seems that it is precisely in the depths that she finally wakes from her sleepy, stupified surface state and investigates the deep structures, the (...) rules of logic. In this investigation, Alice questions many formal structures, such as causality, identity, reference and the rules of replacement. She discovers that Wonderland does not generate consequential conduct; in fact, it generates no conduct whatsoever! In other words, when it comes to consequences, Wonderland may not be all that wonderful. Yet, we do not live in Wonderland and therefore, our actions have consequences. The question this poses is, why organise language so as to escape causal relations and why choose the little girl as emblematic of this organisation? (shrink)

Many interpretations have been put forward for Walter Benjamin's short essay “On the Concept of History” (Benjamin 2003), an aphoristic text written in 1940 in Paris under the Nazi occupation. Most...

Translated from: W.V.O.Quine, W. H. O. (1986): Philosophy of Logic. Second Edition. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 47-61.

Ya desde los años sesenta, sólo un problema obsesionaba a Deleuze: el ejercicio del pensamiento, “¿qué significa pensar? ¿A qué llamamos pensar?”. Su preocupación se orientaba, por ello, a pensar de otro modo, de manera diferente. Su cometido era, en palabras de José Luis Pardo, “introducir una diferencia en la práctica de la filosofía”. Pero como preludio a esta tarea era preciso perder toda nuestra memoria, coagulada en palabras, prácticas y conceptos ya establecidos, era necesario alterar nuestros hábitos especulativos.

"Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communication to reflect on human psyche, social behavior, community organization, communication, and inter-individual relationships. His essay rehearses the swarms of insects embedded in contemporary philosophy and literary theory, not only showing how many of the major concepts (or philosophemes) in continental philosophy – sexuality, politics, thinking, time, interdependence, and language – draw lessons from the world of insects, but also illustrating again how the insect world spurred human reflection.".

In this essay I consider the relationship between Heidegger’s famous “turn” and realism. I begin with Heidegger’s critique of the problem of an external world, and I describe how this critique anticipates New Realism. I then provide a reconstruction of Heidegger’s self-critique of Being and Time, showing how this work exhibits a higher-order antirealism. Next, I show how Heidegger’s turn is motivated by the inadequacy of this earlier anti-realism. In his philosophy of the event he moves towards a realist ontology (...) by developing concepts such as “destiny”, which he understands to be independent of human attitudes. Nevertheless, Heidegger ultimately falls back into an anti-realism, because Being still remains dependent upon the involvement of human beings. I therefore conclude this essay by briefly arguing for my own version of New Realism, according to which objects are meaningful in a way that is independent of our attitudes towards them. (shrink)

Resumen El concepto de “quiasmo” es fundamental en la filosofía del “último” Merleau-Ponty. Me interesa retomar este concepto para mostrar que, en la nueva ontología esbozada en Le visible et l’invisible y en las notas de la misma época, su función guarda correspondencia con la tarea que, a lo largo de la historia de la filosofía, ha desempeñado la imaginación. En este sentido, una ontología del quiasmo supone por necesidad pensar una ontología de la imaginación. Además, este concepto permite arrojar (...) una luz nueva sobre el problema de la subjetividad.The concept of “chiasm” is central to the philosophy of the “late” Merleau-Ponty. My aim is to retrieve this concept in order to show that, within the framework of the new ontology outlined in Le visible et l’invisible and the notes written during the same period, its function corresponds to the function that imagination has performed throughout the history of philosophy. Thus, an ontology of chiasm necessarily involves reflecting upon an ontology of imagination. Furthermore, the concept of chiasm enables us to shed new light on the problem of subjectivity. (shrink)

The fundamental basis of the project concentrates upon an interactive manoeuvre involving Modern Continental Philosophy and the Postmodern Visual Arts. The primary components that structure the thesis conduct a Deleuzoguattarian "process” of action to produce a series of mechanisms designed to “open-up" a space in which to manifest a range of interpretations/translations that follow the developmentary trajectory of designated specific areas of art production. The primary aims concern the advance of the action to communicate an innovative/original set of expositions with (...) a view to both “animate" and enhance these designated perspectives. The structural framework of the project tracks through “passages'/lines of flight” that occur/result from the impact of the Deleuzoguattarian mechanisms upon chosen material - "Introduction" sets forth some guiding themes. “Tours of the Black Clock" elaborates the Nietzschean background that informs the philosophical basis of the complete project. “Electrolite”, “Where Angels Play", “Not to Touch the Earth” “Across” are sections designed to trace a number of alternative pathways through the major texts of the Deleuzoguattarian enterprise. “Becoming X" initiates a secondary movement of experimentation. “Animal Nitrate" effects “an encounter" with the work of painter Francis Bacon via the Deleuze text “Logique de la Sensation", “Time and Again" introduces and articulates a number of instances from Deleuzian film-theory “The Fountainhead” is the main section of the project which evolves a detailed process analysing the paintings of American painter David Salle “The Mirror of Enigmas" traces related Deleuzeoguattarian themes through the films of David Lynch, maintaining as a background an examination of Postmodern American culture/society. “Breaking into Heaven" returns to the more specific analysis of the late paintings of David Salle and uses the mechanics elaborated in Deleuze's book “Le Pli”. “Final Cut”/”Last Exit”/”Memorial Beach" is an attempt at a series of concluding remarks within the project divisions are resolved within a comprehensive Deleuzoguattarian structural system - evolving to be primarily defined in terms of two “active" processes/movements which engage theory and explanation, practice and application respectively, being therefore both a philosophical /academic debate while incorporating a high-level of “creative" experimentation. The first sections of the project detail an extensive series of explanatory “pathways/journeys” through the texts of Deleuze and Guattari with a view to indicating measures that can be deployed/utilized in a Deleuzoguattarian process of art/cultural analysis. Constructing the architectural pattern/”anatomy” of a series of interpretative surfaces to reflect the dimensions of the cultural material approached. The sections in the second part of the project enact a number of experimental designs, dispatching Deleuzoguattarian mechanisms in the body of the chosen cultural material. An interpretative surface is never under the influence of a single differentiated flow it constitutes the mutual boundary of numerous adjacent flows. The same interpretative surface is therefore available to be understood in as many different ways as there are adjacent flows along its fractural surface. This project is essentially a speculative enterprise, a philosophical experiment whose aim is to enhance, enlarge and intensify our “knowledge" of the area defined, through a synthesis, here labelled as a “Deleuzoguattarian process of Art analysis”. For Deleuze, thought creates what it thinks, as perception creates what it perceives. The philosophical concept does not refer to the lived, but consists through its own creation, in setting up an event that surveys the whole of the lived no less than every state of affairs Deleuzoguattarian philosophy does not establish a relationship “between” philosophy and other disciplines, other ways of making sure, but eliminates this relationship to the advantage of a type of “greater philosophy” Thought/Philosophy thinks the sufficient reason of the actual in this manner. For Nietzsche, whose enterprise constitutes the base/departure for the Deleuzoguattarian program, “the world" we know lies in our interpretation of it. However, the task of interpretation is not to discover “truth" but to “create" it. According to Nietzsche, there is no “world-in-itself, no unconditioned and stable entities that await our discovery, but a dynamic and turbulent “becoming" in which the forms we perceive are not separate from our interpretations of them Because we are ourselves part of this becoming, there is no vantage point from which it is possible to gain the absolute/unconditioned knowledge that we have imbued with the idea of “truth”. The exercise merely becomes self-reflective. However, despite this skepticism, Nietzsche realizes that the game of truth is unavoidable, so therefore he, and In consequence we, departing/initiating the pathways through this project, have to cast in the role of the philosopher who knows what he invents and invents while he knows. In Postmodern Art no style dominates. Alternatively we experience endless improvisations and variations on themes, parody/playfulness. Postmodern artists are unabashedly eclectic and call attention to it, combining traditions borrowing from rituals and myths. All the world's cultural symbols are now available in the public domain - “SANTA CLAUS IS ON THE CROSS". The Deleuzoguattarian process of art delineated is a play with the game of “truth” and not an explanation of a “whole" a description of the network of the "dynamic”/fluid nature of our transitional relationship to it. It is the flow of energy that encompasses what Deleuze/Nietzsche refer to as “the whole" A flow invokes the dynamic/fluid nature of becoming, while energy/activity implies a potentiality - the inherent capacity and growth actuated by the will to power. The flows of energy are manifested into differentiated flows within flows, “Ad infinitum” and powered by the parameters of state space - a potential i.e field defined by the characteristics of the subject flows associated Nothing exists in isolation Differentiation exists only via relations to other flows in a dynamic/non linear network of resistances. (shrink)

El artículo presenta la “inmanencia práctica” como clave de la ética que G. Deleuze elabora a partir de B. Spinoza y F. Nietzsche. La noción involucra tres tesis que manifiestan la reivindicación incondicional de la inmanencia y la crítica a toda trascendencia: valorización del cuerpo en detrimento de la conciencia; apelación a lo bueno y lo malo, en lugar del bien y el mal; y apología de la alegría e inocencia del devenir. Se sostiene que esta ética naturalista y pluralista (...) se apoya en criterios de valoración ligados a la vida como punto fundamental de apreciación, y se propone la creación de nuevas maneras de ser como medio de enfrentar al sistema del juicio moral sobre el que descansa el nihilismo. (shrink)

O objetivo geral da pesquisa da qual esse artigo faz parte é investigar o sistema metafísico que emerge dos trabalhos de David Lewis. Esse sistema pode ser decomposto em pelo menos duas teorias. A primeira nomeada como realismo modal genuíno (RMG) e a segunda como mosaico neo-humeano. O RMG é, sem dúvida, mais popular e defende a hipótese metafísica da existência de uma pluralidade de mundos possíveis. A principal razão em favor dessa hipótese é a sua aplicabilidade na discussão de (...) problemas losó cos, esse motivo não será diretamente abordado neste artigo. Pois, o foco está em compreender o mosaico neo-humea- no e como ele relaciona-se com a metafísica de mundos possíveis. Em outras palavras, o meu objetivo é entender as bases losó cas que sus- tentam o realismo modal genuíno. (shrink)

In the two volumes which make up Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari propose new concepts of “machine” and “organism.” The problem of the relationship between machines and organisms has a long philosophical history, and this essay treats their work as a contribution to this debate. It is argued that their solution to this problem is found in their difficult concept of the “body without organs,” a concept that is given some much-needed clarification in the essay. The first section details (...) Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the machine, examining the ways in which it differs from the traditional concept as described by Canguilhem: their machines do not have predictable movements, but instead produce events; they do not have a purpose; they are able to reproduce themselves. The second section details their conception of the organism through their account of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire: organisms are bodies which normalize and which create hierarchies; they also do not have a purpose; they have a “unity of composition.” The final section argues that their concept of the “body without organs” shows us how to understand the relation between the two transformed concepts, and defines the body without organs as the becoming-machine of the organism. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the nature of Deleuze’s commitment to an affirmative naturalism that is based on certain Epicurean principles and insights. The essay is divided into two main parts. In the first part I bring to light some of the key features of Lucretius’s great poem on the nature of things, and I do so with the aid of Bergson and his reading of the teaching as fundamentally melancholic. In the second part I switch my attention to Deleuze (...) and show how he links together physics and ethics as a way of providing an emancipatory and affirmative philosophy of life and one that aims to defeat sadness. In the conclusion I return to the question of melancholy and indicate how the problem might be best negotiated. (shrink)

Despite the distance between the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and of Deleuze, it is possible to discover not only analogue complicity with regard to thecriticism addressed to Husserl. In the aesthetic, for example, we note that the last thoughtsof Merleau-Ponty, present mainly in The visible and the invisible, are a constant referencefor the works that Deleuze dedicates to the painter Francis Bacon. In the present researchwe expect to define the passages on account of the reading of Husserl, and to show thepoint (...) of contact between Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. So, we hope to change the image of apparent indifference with regard to understanding their philosophies. (shrink)

It has gone largely unnoticed that when Deleuze opposes the “private thinker” to the “public professor,” he is invoking the existential thought of Lev Shestov. The public professor defends established values and preaches submission to the demands of reason and the State; the private thinker opposes thought to reason, “idiocy” to common sense, a people to come to what exists. Private thinkers are solitary, singular and untimely, forced to think against consensus and “the crowd.” Deleuze takes from Shestov and Kierkegaard (...) the idea that genuine thinking manifests itself in a thinking which rebels against rational necessity, a theme central to Shestov’s leading French interpreter, Benjamin Fondane. Although Deleuze at first expresses doubts as to whether Shestov’s critique of reason can overcome the legislative reason of Kant, or whether it is entirely free of ressentiment, I argue that Shestov and Fondane’s anti-rationalism is more radical than Deleuze sometimes admits, and show how Deleuze’s attitude toward Shestov became more unreservedly positive over the years. On the other hand, against Shestov and Fondane, I agree with Deleuze that the private thinker is in solidarity with the “strange powers” which can remake the world, and thus with “the people to come.” Nonetheless, I argue that Deleuze’s philosophy cannot form the basis of a politics of egalitarian consensus, but that “the people to come” can only be a “broken chain” of untimely and singular exceptions. (shrink)

This article is about Gilles Deleuze's book Le Pli. Leibniz et le Baroque from 1988. It shows how Deleuze's notion of folding captures some basic intuitions in Leibniz and how they relate to each other. To this purpose, I propose five figures, all referring to the same basic fold, all illustrating how the consideration of such figures allows developing central elements of Leibniz's monadology. These figures can help, I hope, alleviate some of the fundamental difficulties in understanding Deleuze's approach to (...) the Monadology from the non-Deleuzian perspective of contemporary Leibniz scholarship and give a sense of the synthetic, explanatory force that Deleuze's notion of folding has in relation to Leibniz's monadological metaphysics. (shrink)

re s u m o O pre s e nte artigo se inic ia com uma cláusula interna à filosof ia de l e u z e a na, a de que todo pens a me nto pode ser carc t e r i z a do pelo grau de ima n ê nc ia que o me s mo realiza. O pens a me nto de Hu me, como “e m p i r i s mo superior”, segundo ex (...) p ressão de Deleuze, pro mo v e r ia a ima n ê nc ia, ou seja, ele não se re nde r ia a ne n hum tra ns c e nde nt e. Ao me s mo tempo, como s u p e r i o r, se trata de um empirismo que não se pre nde ao ime d ia - t a me nte da do, como suporia um “e m p i r i s mo ing ê nuo”. Por isso, o empirismo seria um p e ns a me nto da ima n ê nc ia que apre s e nta certa alçada tra ns c e ndental, permitindo a Deleuze falar em “e m p i r i s mo tra ns c e nde nt a l ”. A complexa fórmula filosófica re s u m ida nessa ex p ressão de l e u z e a na será por nós, aqui, tratada sob o ponto de vista Hume, de mo do que o ceticismo humeano será tomado como um operador de imanência que of e - rece ao empirismo sua dimensão transcendental. Tal tra t a mento será levado a cabo em duas etapas, quais sejam: a) ceticismo e pro b l e ma da disjunção inclusiva na int e ra ç ã o das fa c u l da des ; b) ceticismo e tra ns c e ndent a l ida de dos juízos empíric o s. palavras-chave Ceticismo; Empirismo; Hume; Deleuze; Transcendental; Imanência. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Deleuze’s treatment of the Nietzschean problem of nihilism. Of all the major figures in contemporary continental thought, Deleuze is at once one of the most luminous, and practically a lone voice in suggesting that nihilism may successfully be overcome. Whether or not he is correct on this point is thus a commanding question in relation to our understanding of the issue. Many commentators on Nietzsche have argued that his project of overcoming nihilism is destined to failure (...) because of the affinity between the problem of nihilism and the logic of negation. While Nietzsche wants an absolute affirmation of life, Spinoza’s principle that “all determination is negation,” as well as Hegel’s dialectical conception of negation, suggest that affirmation free of negation is not possible. However, some commentators indicate that Deleuze successfully shows how overcoming nihilism is possible because his “logic of difference” allows for an affirmation which is not dialectically reappropriated by negation. This paper argues that beyond such logical considerations, there are metaphysical and existential reasons why Deleuze’s interpretation of nihilism fails to show that it can be overcome. For Deleuze, the overcoming of nihilism hinges not just on a logic of difference, but on a radical interpretation of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return as “selective being.” Drawing on recent scholarship and on Nietzsche’s own writings I argue that this is not a tenable interpretation, and also, more importantly, that the metaphysical and existential implications of this understanding of eternal return reinstate nihilism at the very point where it is supposedly overcome. Moreover, I argue that there are attendant ethical and political dangers to Deleuze’s position on nihilism. (shrink)

This paper sets out a series of critical contrasts between Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze's philosophies of the event. It does so in the context of some likely objections to their positions from a broadly analytic position. These objections concern problems of individuation and location in space-time. The paper also explains Deleuze and Badiou's views on the event through a literary application on a short story by John Cheever. In conclusion it is argued that both thinkers have good answers to (...) the objections, but that they diverge on the ontological commitments of their definitions of the event. (shrink)

This paper aims to clear two regular misunderstandings when comparing the thoughts of Gilles Deleuze and Martin Heidegger: firstly, the alleged opposition between Heideggerian negativity and Deleuzian positivity; secondly, the assumed contrariety between Deleuzian immanence and Heideggerian transcendence. In this fashion, the proposal is not so much to point at coincidences as to underline the fact that the differences are not where they are usually sought. The method used consists in taking Deleuze’s mentions to Heidegger in Difference and Repetition as (...) a common thread for tracking the Deleuzian use of Heideggerian concepts. We will attempt to show that both aspects of the Deleuzian transcendental field, the virtual and the intensive, hold a certain “negativity” and “concealment”, respectively, which runs against the picture of Deleuze as a philosopher of thorough and unconcealed manifestation. We will likewise argue that Heideggerian transcendence is not necessarily opposed to Deleuzian immanence, and that the Heideggerian concepts of Zwiefalt and Selbe are used by Deleuze in order to think of immanence. We contend that the distinction between the negative and the problematic allows Deleuze to speak of being even while accepting ontological difference. (shrink)

This work examines Gilles Deleuze’s concept of intensity and the role of this concept in his philosophy of technology. The work has two main objectives. First, it analyses the role of Deleuze’s theory of intensity in his metaphysical system and in his philosophy of technology. Second, on the basis of this theory, it presents an original analysis of the creative potential of technology. The importance of the concept of intensity in Deleuze’s philosophy has been acknowledged, but so far, his views (...) on intensity have not been analysed in terms of a consistent theory. Furthermore, the implications of Deleuze’s theory of intensity for his and Félix Guattari’s analysis of technology have been entirely overlooked. This thesis shows for the first time the pivotal role of intensity in Deleuze’s philosophy and demonstrates the importance of the concept of intensity for the analysis of technicity. Part I explicates Deleuze’s theory of intensity. For Deleuze, intensity is the nature of the gradual variation of material, heterogeneous wholes. Within such wholes, intensity characterises variation in processes of individuation and systemic transformation. Moreover, these intensive processes and transformations take place within a sphere of material immediacy. Part II fleshes out the implications of this theory for a philosophy of technics. It proposes a definition of technics as immediate interaction with material variation. Technics always has an established role as a component of a particular social system, but it also bears a constant undercurrent of creative and transformative potential. Finally, the current dominance of information technology and the potential for technical creativity in contemporary society are examined on the basis of the analysis of intensive technics. The work offers an original and comprehensive analysis of Deleuze’s theory of intensity and demonstrates his contribution to the philosophy of technology. It also clarifies the processual nature of materiality and the nature of systemic transformation. Finally, it offers conceptual tools for fathoming the constraints as well as the creative potential of technics in contemporary culture. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se procurará subrayar la dimensión política del concepto de sentido común en la filosofía de Gilles Deleuze, señalando algunas transformaciones al respecto desde Diferencia y repetición hasta sus textos de los años ‘80. Mostraremos que el sentido común implica una presencia implícita de la comunidad en el ejercicio de las facultades, que sin embargo invisibiliza y despolitiza su propia presencia, y rastrearemos la letra kantiana para señalar que la comunidad implícita en el sensus communisse revela como (...) una comunidad “mayoritaria” relativa a un modelo que no se corresponde con los devenires efectivos. (shrink)

En este artículo nos proponemos analizar, desde una perspectiva lógica y ontológica, la noción de una “cuarta persona de la Trinidad”, tal como aparece en el De fide orthodoxa y De imaginibus de Juan de Damasco. Sostendremos que esta “cuarta persona” pone en cuestión la lógica de la teología trinitaria. En la medida en que es irreductible a lo divino y a lo humano, así como a la materia y al espíritu, la cuarta persona posee una naturaleza extra-ontológica que exige (...) para expresarse, consecuentemente, una cuarta persona extra-gramatical más allá de la sintaxis. (shrink)

“Deleuze and the Inversion of Kantism”. In this paper we aim to look into French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s work in order to see whether there is such a thing as a ‘reversal of Kantianism’, parallel to his more well-known reversal of Platonism. To this end, we will propose, firstly, to read in the key of reversal the movements made by Deleuze regarding intensity and extension, on the one hand, and the paradox of inner sense, on the other. Then, we will (...) analyze why Kant had already accomplished two great reversals, regarding the classical conception of both time and law, and consequently, we will develop the Deleuzean conception of Nietzschean eternal return as a simultaneous reversal of both aspects. Finally, we will inquire about the tropos of the aforementioned reversal, calling on the concepts of humor and irony. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an account of the conceptual shift that occurs between the work completed by Gilles Deleuze prior to 1969 and his later work with Félix Guattari, beginning in 1972 with Anti-Oedipus. Against previous interpretations, which have concentrated on the developments initiated by Deleuze, I argue for the primary importance of Guattari's influence, especially his insistence on a theory of “machinic processes.” The importance of these processes is made manifest in Deleuze and Guattari's move away from theories (...) of structuralism. In order to carry out this task, I offer a close reading of Guattari's essay “Machine and Structure.” This essay was first written as a review of Deleuze's acclaimed work in Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense and formed the basis for Deleuze and Guattari's first meeting. In the concluding sections of the paper, I show how the integration of the concept of the machine allows Deleuze and Guattari to develop a theory of the unconscious that operates outside of the boundaries traditionally set by structuralist analysis. (shrink)

En el marco del debate sobre los lineamientos fundamentales de la ética de Deleuze, diversos autores han reparado en nociones destacadas de su obra: el deseo, el devenir, la afirmación, el nomadismo. Mi propuesta en este artículo es desarrollar una vía poco estudiada, que gira alrededor de la idea de prudencia práctica experimental. Según mi hipótesis, este concepto reúne perspectivas relevantes de la producción deleuzeana posterior a L'Anti-Œdipe, en particular su orientación vitalista, su opción por la desubjetivación y su apelación (...) a una dimensión ascética vinculada con el deseo como impulsor de la experimentación. Within the realm of debate on fundamental layouts of Deleuze's ethics, several authors have concentrated on significant notions in his work: desire, becoming, affirmation, nomadism. In this article my proposal is to develop a road, scarcely studied yet, in connection with the idea of experimental practical prudence. Respect to my hypothesis, this concept assembles relevant perspectives of Deleuze's post L'Anti-Œdipe production, especially his orientation towards vitalism, his choice for desubjectivation and his appeal to an ascetic dimension linked to desire as motor to experimentation. (shrink)

According to Peirce one of the most important philosophical problems is continuity. Consequently, he set forth an innovative and peculiar approach in order to elucidate at once its mathematical and metaphysical challenges through proper non-classical logical reasoning. I will restrain my argument to the definition of the different types of discrete collections according to Peirce, with a special regard to the phenomenon called ?premonition of continuity? (Peirce, 1976, Vol. 3, p. 87, c. 1897).

Deleuze's ethics constitutes the core of his philosophy, which proposes a post-humanistic but robust nomadic vision of the subject that respects the complexity of our times while avoiding the pitfalls of postmodern and other forms of relativism. Deleuze's neo-Spinozist ethics rests on an active relational ontology that looks for the ways in which otherness prompts, mobilises and allows for flows of affirmation of values and forces which are not yet sustained by the current conditions. Insofar as the conditions need to (...) be brought about or actualised by collective efforts to induce qualitative transformations in our interactions, it requires the praxis of affirmative ethics. The process of becoming-minor, which necessarily involves becoming-woman, is central to this pragmatic ethical project that includes human as well as non-human actors. This paper addresses this ethics in terms of ontological relationality, affectivity and endurance. (shrink)

The paper identifies three recent lines of interpretation of the politics that can be derived from Deleuze and Guattari, all of which share a way of reading the dualisms in their work that can be traced back to how they understand the actual/virtual partition, and to an alleged pre-eminence of the virtual over the actual. It is argued that this reading is not only inaccurate, but obscures the political dimension of Deleuze and Guattari's work. Clarifying the latter requires a reinterpretation (...) of the dualisms involved (as dyads rather than binaries), of the relation between virtual and actual (as a formal distinction where one acts back upon the other), and the drawing of a clear distinction between what Deleuze calls a ‘transcendent exercise’ of thought and sensibility and the properly metaphysical exercise that sets up the distinction between virtual and actual. What then appears is an image of Deleuze's and Guattari's thought that is far more concerned with practical questions and with a situated political practice of intervention. (shrink)

Eternal return is the paradox that accounts for the interplay between difference and repetition, a dynamic at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy, and Blanchot's approach to this paradox, even and especially through what it elides, further illuminates it. Deleuze draws on Blanchot's characterisations of difference, forgetting, and the unlivable to depict the ‘sense’ produced via eternal return, which, for Blanchot, is where repetition implicates or ‘carries’ pure difference. However, for Deleuze, difference and the unlivable are also developed by the living (...) repetition or ‘contraction’ of habit, which results in his distinctive characterization of ‘force’, ‘levity’, and sense in eternal return. (shrink)

It is argued that the focus within organization studies on wisdom is one-sided in the sense that it ignores stupidity, wisdom's little stepbrother. Too often it is simply taken for granted that an increase in wisdom will lead to a decrease in stupidity. The problem with this assumption is that it is philosophically uninformed. Stupidity and wisdom stand in a deeply paradoxical relationship, which has been studied by philosophers at least since the Stoics. Some recent contributions to this endless debate (...) will be highlighted in this paper. However, the overall aim of the paper is to show that organizations too are familiar with these philosophical paradoxes. (shrink)

To address the theological turn in phenomenology, this paper sets out critical arguments opposing the theist phenomenology of Michel Henry and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of the event. Henry’s phenomenology has been overlooked in recent commentaries compared with, for example, Jean-Luc Marion’s work. It will be shown here that Henry’s philosophy presents a detailed novel turn in phenomenology structured according to critical moves against positions developed from Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. This demonstration is done through a strong contrast with Deleuze and (...) a short engagement with Quentin Meillassoux. The paper presents an argument against the theological turn on the grounds that it misunderstands the form of affectivity when compared to Deleuze’s work on affect and event. It will be argued that Henry’s search for a free-standing affect deduced as a condition for any appearance underplays the way any affect is included in many causal and transcendentally determined series such that any notion of the pure affect independent of other processes is a fiction. The loss of this pure affect entails the questioning of the theological turn in Henry. (shrink)

En este trabajo se reflexiona sobre la propuesta de Jacques Derrida a propósito de la relación de la filosofía con su institución y enseñanza actuales. El objetivo de esta reflexión es exponer, analizar e interpretar las aporías que, según Derrida, se refieren a la escena escolar, finalidad, lugar, enseñanza, institución, magisterio, didáctica y tiempo de la filosofía. En el análisis y la interpretación se defiende que la propuesta de Derrida es compatible y puede completarse con las aportaciones de filósofos de (...) corrientes diversas: Martha Nussbaum, Gianni Vattimo, Max Horkheimer, Alain Badiou, Pierre Hadot, Dario Antiseri. El concepto de síntesis disyuntiva, concebido por Gilles Deleuze, posibilita la realización de esta tarea constructiva, afirmativa y reivindicativa. (shrink)

Inaugural lecture as Professor of Women's Studies in the Arts Faculty of the University of Utrecht, May 16, 1990.

The work is the presentation of a logical theory - Logic in Reality (LIR) - and of applications of that theory in natural science and philosophy, including ...

In this paper I investigate the relation between physics and metaphysics in Plato’s participation theory. I show that the logic shoring up Plato’s metaphysics in paraconsistent, as had been suggested already by Graham Priest. The transformation of the paradoxical One-and-Many of the pre-Socratics into a paraconsistent Great-and-Small bridges the abyss between archaic rationality and the world of classical logic based ultimately on the principle of contradiction. Indeed, language is an organ of perception, not simply a means of communication. J. Jaynes, (...) Origin of Consciousness. (shrink)

‘À quoi sert la littérature?’, Deleuze opens his book on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with a question that this paper will pose again, trying to propose an answer to it, and to put to test the methodological approach that can be obtained from that answer: what are the uses of literature and, more specifically, how could the philosopher use literature, what could be done with it? To this end, this paper will focus on Deleuze’s symptomatological conception of literature. The second part (...) of the paper will be dedicated to the reading of two novels, 1984 by George Orwell and The Circle by Dave Eggers. The novels will be put in in a relation of resonation with two concepts sketched in Deleuze’s Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle: Foucauldian disciplinary societies and control societies. These novels will be considered as signaletic material, symptomatologies of two conditions of society, from which this paper proposes to extract two types of signs: Signs of Order and Signs of Suggestion. These signs will be made react with the concepts of Foucault and Deleuze, in order to see if they can produce the ground for a therapeutic. The paper will therefore combine literary symptomatologies and philosophical aetiology, in the attempt to make them react together, Foucault and Orwell, Eggers and Deleuze, to extract and describe signs from the literary material considered that may be brought to the fore only after the consideration of the causes of the most important symptoms of discipline and control. (shrink)

Purpose. The signification of the theoretical grounds for the conceptual reconstruction of the dichotomy "spirit-body" in the field of postmodern notions in philosophy and culture, the identification of the location of the given dichotomy in the processes of the transition of philosophy from being classical to the postclassical one, simultaneously, culture – to the cultural forms of postmodernity. Theoretical basis. The changing systems of post paradigm relations, radically transforming human life in the postmodern world, represent the obvious transformations of the (...) fundamental conceptual schemes. For postmodern philosophers, the dichotomy "spirit-body" does not mean better interpretation of separate substances any more, but the development of the relationship between mental and physical properties. Feminist philosophers assert that the "spirit-body" opposition occupies the special place among classical dichotomies, as it acquires the key meaning in the patriarchal concepts of masculinity and femininity. In the post modernity, the body and corporality become dominant themes not only in the philosophy and "high" culture, but also in mass culture; at the same time, the emphasis on their common narratives and intertexts testifies to the fundamental transformations that reflect the "condition" of postmodernity. Originality of this research lies in the expose of the specific transformation features of the dichotomy "spirit-body" as a philosophic opposition closely connected with postmodernism and realized in the practices of mass culture. This research is reflectedof the idea of the absoluteness and invariabilityof this duality as thebasicdichotomy of the classical philosophy in its correlation with cultural logic of the postmodernity at the end of the 20 – the beginning of the 21st centuries. Conclusions. With the reinterpretation of the "spirit-body" dichotomy, the body is theorized as a cognitive agent with desires independent of the mind. In postmodernism, the body is the source of charm, and aversion and destruction, and restoration. At the same time, with the growth of the visualization factor and the change in the status of "high" culture, the "turn" in the status of mass culture is created: today both the former and the letter have many common discourses, narratives and intertexts. (shrink)

Deleuze speaks about specific time of the event, which he names – following the stoics – Aion. Time that is eternal, immovable, incorporeal; time that is in opposition to Chronos, in which everything takes place and is corporeal. To understand this temporality, one can explain the concept of an event by asking about its place. An event is contained neither in objects nor in meanings nor in subjects. It is close to what Kapuściński calls „teatrum”: simultaneously a subject and an (...) object. These particular properties are the result of the makeup of an event, of the singularities which create an event as one transforms into another, causing a cloud of virtualities and becomings to emerge. In the quotation from Kapuściński, the grandfather who foretells war to the children is those children to some extent: he projects his life onto them; the coming tragedy and the presence of children make him sensitive to „what needs to be saved in them”, which is also „what needs to be saved in him.” This process of becoming, which here is a part of the „war” event is not merely a subjective impression; as an event it seems to enjoy an existence of its own, inseparable from the theatrum of circumstances or „states of being”. Sense emerges from circumstances, yet it seems to be outside time, unmoving, always both already gone and coming: Aion. (shrink)

The theme of the other (autrui) in Deleuze is confused with the double task of articulating a new perspective of the sense while questioning the traditional image of thought. This opens up ground from which to analyze this theme in the work of Deleuze which although is systematically visible in Différence et répétition (1968) and Logique du sens (1969) some elements of are discernable in Proust et les signes (1964). This study addresses the idea that the territory of the other (...) is the sense as identified in these three texts. Further ideas will also be introduced that center on the face and the manner in which it reformulates ties to sense. As suggested in Deleuze, a type of thinking is installed in the opening to the other, however not necessarily entering into the registry of morality nor of knowledge. (shrink)