Essays on Deleuze Read online

  Essays on Deleuze

  Essays on Deleuze

  Daniel W. Smith

  EDINBURGH

  University Press

  © Daniel W. Smith, 2012

  Edinburgh University Press Ltd

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  ISBN 978 0 7486 5536 6 (Amazon ebook)

  The right of Daniel W. Smith

  to be identified as author of this work

  has been asserted in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Abbreviations

  Preface

  I. Deleuze and the History of Philosophy

  1.

  Platonism

  The Concept of the Simulacrum: Deleuze and the Overturning of Platonism

  2.

  Univocity

  The Doctrine of Univocity: Deleuze's Ontology of Immanence

  3.

  Leibniz

  Deleuze on Leibniz: Difference, Continuity, and the Calculus

  4.

  Hegel

  Deleuze, Hegel, and the Post-Kantian Tradition

  5.

  Pre- and Post-Kantianism

  Logic and Existence: Deleuze on the Conditions of the Real

  II. Deleuze's Philosophical System

  6.

  Aesthetics

  Deleuze's Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the Kantian Duality

  7.

  Dialectics

  Deleuze, Kant, and the Theory of Immanent Ideas

  8.

  Analytics

  On the Becoming of Concepts

  9.

  Ethics

  The Place of Ethics in Deleuze's Philosophy: Three Questions of Immanence

  10.

  Politics

  Flow, Code, and Stock: A Note on Deleuze's Political Philosophy

  III. Five Deleuzian Concepts

  11.

  Desire

  Deleuze and the Question of Desire: Toward an Immanent Theory of Ethics

  12.

  Life

  “A Life of Pure Immanence”: Deleuze's “Critique et clinique” Project

  13.

  Sensation

  Deleuze on Bacon: Three Conceptual Trajectories in “The Logic of Sensation”

  14.

  The New

  The Conditions of the New

  15.

  The Open

  The Idea of the Open: Bergson's Theses on Movement

  IV. Deleuze and Contemporary Philosophy

  16.

  Jacques Derrida

  Deleuze and Derrida, Immanence and Transcendence: Two Directions in Recent French Thought

  17.

  Alain Badiou

  Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities: Deleuze and Badiou Revisited

  18.

  Jacques Lacan

  The Inverse Side of the Structure: Žižek on Deleuze on Lacan

  19.

  Pierre Klossowski

  Klossowski's Reading of Nietzsche: Impulses, Phantasms, Simulacra, Stereotypes

  20.

  Paul Patton

  Deleuze and the Liberal Tradition: Normativity, Freedom, and Judgment

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the publishers for permission to reprint material from the following articles and chapters:

  “Deleuze and the Overturning of Platonism: The Concept of the Simulacrum,” in Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 38, Nos. 1–2 (Apr 2005), 89–123. Reprinted with permission of the editors.

  “The Doctrine of Univocity: Deleuze's Ontology of Immanence,” in Deleuze and Religion, ed. Mary Bryden (London: Routledge, 2001), 167–83. Reproduced with the permission of the Taylor & Francis Group.

  “G. W. F. Leibniz,” in Deleuze's Philosophical Lineage, ed. Graham Jones and Jon Roffe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 44–66. Reproduced with the permission of Edinburgh University Press.

  “Deleuze, Hegel, and the Post-Kantian Tradition,” in Philosophy Today (Supplement, 2001), 126–38. Reprinted with the permission of the editors.

  “Logic and Existence: Deleuze on the ‘Conditions of the Real,’” in Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty, Vol. 13 (2011), 361–77. Reprinted with permission.

  “Deleuze's Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the Kantian Duality,” in Deleuze: A Critical Reader, ed. Paul Patton (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1996), 29–56. By kind permission of Basil Blackwell.

  “Deleuze, Kant, and the Theory of Immanent Ideas,” in Deleuze and Philosophy, ed. Constantin V. Boundas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 43–61. With the permission of Edinburgh University Press.

  “The Place of Ethics in Deleuze's Philosophy: Three Questions of Immanence,” in Deleuze and Guattari: New Mappings in Politics and Philosophy, ed. Eleanor Kaufman and Kevin Heller (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 251–69. Reproduced with the permission of the University of Minnesota Press.

  “Flow, Code, and Stock: A Note on Deleuze's Political Philosophy,” in Deleuze Studies, Vol. 5, supplement, Deleuzian Futures (Dec 2011), 36–55. Reprinted with the kind permission of Edinburgh University Press.

  “Deleuze and the Question of Desire: Toward an Immanent Theory of Ethics,” in Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy, No. 2 (2007), 66–78. Reprinted with permission.

  “‘A Life of Pure Immanence’: Deleuze's ‘Critique et clinique’ Project,” translators’ introduction to Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), xi–liii. Reproduced with the kind permission of the University of Minnesota Press.

  “Deleuze on Bacon: Three Conceptual Trajectories in The Logic of Sensation,” translator's preface to Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), vii–xxxiii. Reproduced with the permission of the University of Minnesota Press.

  “The Conditions of the New,” in Deleuze Studies, Vol. 1. No. 1 (Jun 2007), 1–21. Reprinted with the permission of Edinburgh University Press.

  “Deleuze and Derrida, Immanence and Transcendence: Two Directions in Recent French Thought,” in Between Deleuze and Derrida, ed. John Protevi and Paul Patton (New York: Routledge, 2003), 46–66. With the permission of the Taylor & Francis Group.

  “Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities: Deleuze and Badiou Revisited,” in Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Fall 2003), 411–49. Reprinted with permission.

  “The Inverse Side of the Structure: Žižek on Deleuze on Lacan,” in Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Fall 2004), 635–50. Reprinted with permission.

  “Klossowski's Reading of Nietzsche: Impulses, Phantasms, Simulacra, Stereotypes,” in Diacritics, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2007), 8–21. Reprinted with permission.

  “Deleuze and the Liberal Tradition: Normativity, Freedom, and Judgment,” in Economy and Society, Vol. 32, No. 2 (May 2003), 299–324. With the kind permission of the Taylor & Francis Group.

  Research for this book was
undertaken with the financial support of the Center for Humanistic Studies at Purdue University, a Visiting Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Middlesex University, a Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of New South Wales, the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago, and a Chateaubriand Fellowship from the Embassy of France in the United States. The book was completed while I was a Visiting Professor at the American University of Beirut, and I am grateful to my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy for their hospitality and encouragement.

  I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to Carol MacDonald at Edinburgh University Press, who suggested I gather together these essays and showed almost infinite patience and support during the preparation of the manuscript.

  Abbreviations

  References to the works below are given in the text using the following abbreviations, followed by the page number(s). I have occasionally introduced slight modifications in the cited translations.

  The seminars Deleuze gave at the Université de Paris VIII–Vincennes à St. Denis are in the process of being transcribed and made available online by Richard Pinhas (at Web Deleuze, webdeleuze.com) and Marielle Burkhalter (at La Voix de Gilles Deleuze, www2.univ-paris8.fr/Deleuze), and are referred to in the text by their date, e.g., 15 Apr 1980.

  ABC

  L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, avec Claire Parnet, Paris: DVD Editions Montparnasse (1996, 2004). An English presentation of these interviews, by Charles Stivale, can be found at www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/d-g. References are by letter, not page number.

  AO

  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (New York: Viking, 1977).

  B

  Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone, 1988).

  D

  Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987).

  DI

  Gilles Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts, ed. Sylvère Lotinger, trans. Michael Taormina (New York: Semiotext(e), 2004).

  DP

  Paul Patton, Deleuze and the Political (London and New York, Routledge, 2000).

  DR

  Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).

  ECC

  Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).

  EPS

  Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone, 1990).

  ES

  Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume's Theory of Human Nature, trans. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

  F

  Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, trans. Seán Hand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

  FB

  Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

  FLB

  Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

  K

  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).

  KCP

  Gilles Deleuze, Kant's Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1984).

  LS

  Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester, with Charles Stivale, ed. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).

  M

  Gilles Deleuze, Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty, trans. Jean McNeil (New York: Zone, 1989).

  MI

  Gilles Deleuze, The Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).

  N

  Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, 1972–1990, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Colombia University Press, 1995).

  NP

  Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

  NVC

  Pierre Klossowski, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, trans. Daniel W. Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

  OB

  Slavoj Žižek, Organs Without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences (London: Routledge, 2003).

  PI

  Gilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life, trans. Anne Boyman (New York: Zone, 2001).

  PS

  Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs: The Complete Text, trans. Richard Howard (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

  PV

  Gilles Deleuze, Périclès et Verdi (Paris: Minuit, 1988).

  RP

  “Reversing Platonism (Simulacra),” trans. Heath Massey, published as an appendix to Leonard Lawlor, Thinking Through French Philosophy: The Being of the Question (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), 163–77.

  SPP

  Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights, 1988).

  TI

  Gilles Deleuze, The Time-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Goleta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

  TP

  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).

  TRM

  Gilles Deleuze, Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995, trans. Ames Hodges and Mike Taormina (New York: Semiotext(e), 2006).

  WP

  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

  Preface

  T

  his volume brings together twenty essays on the work of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) that I have written over the past fifteen years. The first (Essay 6) was published in 1996, while the most recent (Essay 8) is appearing for the first time in this book. The original pieces were written as journal articles, book prefaces, and lectures, and although I have introduced minor revisions throughout—and in one case (Essay 2) restored an omitted section—the essays have been reproduced here largely in their original form. As a result, there remains a certain overlap among the essays, which occasionally return to the same themes from different points of view, while pursuing different trajectories. The essays have been organized into four sections, each of which examines a particular aspect of Deleuze's thought.

  1. Deleuze and the History of Philosophy. Deleuze began his career with a series of books on various figures in the history of philosophy—Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson, and Spinoza—and the first set of essays explores three broad trajectories in Deleuze's approach to the history of philosophy. The first essay presents Deleuze's reading of Plato in light of Nietzsche's call for the “overturning” of Platonism, while the second essay uses Duns Scotus's concept of univocity to explore Spinoza's overturning of the medieval Aristotelian tradition. The final three essays constitute a trilogy that examines Deleuze's relationship to the pre- and post-Kantian traditions. Essay 3 provides a Deleuzian reading of Leibniz's philosophy, and Essay 4 discusses the frequently laid charge that Deleuze is anti-Hegelian. The fifth essay recapitulates these readings of Leibniz and Hegel by placing them in the context of the problem of the relation between logic and existence, and explores the reasons why Deleuze turned to the development of a philosophy of difference. Taken together, these essays show Deleuze's deep indebtedness to these traditions, as well as the manner in which he transformed them in the pursuit of his own philosophical project.

  2. Deleuze's Philosophical System. Deleuze o
nce remarked that he conceived of philosophy as a system, albeit a system that was open and “heterogenetic.” The essays collected in this section attempt to explicate the broad outlines of Deleuze's philosophical system by taking as their initial point of reference one of the great systems in the history of philosophy, namely, Kant's critical philosophy. In particular, the essays explore five philosophical domains derived from the architectonic structure of Kant's philosophy: aesthetics (theory of sensation), dialectics (theory of the Idea), analytics (theory of the concept), ethics (theory of affectivity), and politics (socio-political theory). Each essay, to a greater or lesser degree, shows how Deleuze takes Kant's characterization of these domains and reconceives them in a new manner, inserting them into a very different systematic framework. The use of these Kantian rubrics is primarily a heuristic device designed to exemplify the specificity of Deleuze's conception of a philosophical system, which, he says, “must not only be in perpetual heterogeneity, it must be a heterogenesis”—that is, it must have as its aim the genesis of the heterogeneous, the production of difference, the creation of the new.*

  3. Five Deleuzian Concepts. Similarly, Deleuze famously defined philosophy as the creation of concepts, and this section moves from the broad outlines of Deleuze's philosophical system to a consideration of five specific Deleuzian concepts. The essays on the “New” and the “Open” deal primarily with issues in Deleuze's metaphysics and ontology, while the essay on “Desire” examines the role this concept plays in Deleuze's ethics of immanence. Many of Deleuze's writings were devoted to philosophical analyses of the arts, and the essays on “Life” and “Sensation” deal with, respectively, Deleuze's analyses of literature in Essays Critical and Clinical and the “logic of sensation” presented in his work on the painter Francis Bacon.