This weekly seminar will be devoted to a serial discussion of Gilles Deleuze’s oeuvre. The first twelve weeks will discuss those works in the history of philosophy, the studies of literature and the two books (Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense) that elaborate his own position that were published between 1953 and 1969. The second twelve week period will begin by discussing the three books written with Félix Guattari during the 1970’s and will finish by considering Deleuze’s final published essay, “Immanence: A Life …”
Much of Deleuze’s own philosophy emerges through a complex series of interventions and discussions of the work of others. This seminar, however, will not be concerned with questions about the accuracy of his readings of, for example, Nietzsche or Kant, but will instead foreground what Deleuze takes as crucial in their work as he accounts for it. Each week a short text will be provided for students online to read in advance of the seminar. Though this is by no means compulsory, it will provide some basic coordinates for the material to be covered in the lectures.
Part One
Week One: Introduction – The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze in Outline (March 7)
Week Two: Empiricism and Subjectivity (March 14)
Week Three: Nietzsche and Philosophy (March 21)
Week Four: Kant’s Critical Philosophy (March 28)
Week Five: Bergsonism (April 4)
Week Six: “Masochism” [on Leopold von Sacher Masoch] (April 11)
Week Seven: Proust and Signs (April 18)
*One week break*
Week Eight: Deleuze’s Spinoza [both of the Spinoza books will be considered] (May 2)
Week Nine: Difference and Repetition I: the critique of the objective and subjective presuppositions of Western philosophy concerning difference (May 9)
Week Ten: Difference and Repetition II: constituting a philosophy of difference (May 16)
Week Eleven: Logic of Sense I: the structural account (May 23)
Week Twelve: Logic of Sense II: the genetic account (May 30)