‘For the last fifteen years, all of us have read one or two of Daniel Smith’s remarkable essays on Deleuze. But now, we have all of them. Finally and thankfully, we have Essays on Deleuze, a book that will become immediately essential reading for anyone interested in twentieth-century continental philosophy.’Leonard Lawlor, Sparks Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University

‘For many years now Daniel Smith’s work has led us through Deleuze’s philosophy with an unmatched clarity. It is thanks to him that the many historical connections of that philosophy have been grasped in their full rigour and depth. No researcher on Deleuze’s philosophy can pass this work by. No reader can fail to benefit from an engagement with Smith’s groundbreaking interpretation.’James Williams, Professor of European Philosophy, University of Dundee

Essays on Deleuze gathers twenty of Smith’s new and classic essays into one volume for the first time.Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth-century, and Daniel W. Smith is widely recognized to be one of his most penetrating interpreters, as well as an important philosophical voice in his own right. Combining his most important pieces over the last fifteen years along with two new essays, this book is Smith’s definitive treatise on Deleuze. The essays are divided into four sections, which cover Deleuze’s use of the history of philosophy, an overview of his philosophical system, an analysis of several Deleuzian concepts, as well as an assessment of his position within contemporary philosophy.

Smith’s essays have become frequent references for students and scholars working on Deleuze. Several of the articles have already become touchstones in the field, notably those on Alain Badiou and Jacques Derrida.

For anyone interested in Deleuze’s philosophy, this book is not to be missed.

Daniel W. Smith is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University.

Cover design: Robert Smail’s Printing Works / Barrie Tullett

www.euppublishing.com

ISBN 978-0-7486-4332-5

Essays on Deleuze

Daniel W. Smith

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© Daniel W. Smith, 2012

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Contents

Acknowledgments viiAbbreviations ixPreface xii

I. Deleuze and the History of Philosophy

1. Platonism The Concept of the Simulacrum: Deleuze and the Overturning of Platonism 3 2. Univocity The Doctrine of Univocity: Deleuze’s Ontology of Immanence 27 3. Leibniz Deleuze on Leibniz: Difference, Continuity, and the Calculus 43 4. Hegel Deleuze, Hegel, and the Post-Kantian Tradition 59 5. Pre- and Post-Kantianism Logic and Existence: Deleuze on the Conditions of the Real 72

II. Deleuze’s Philosophical System

6. Aesthetics Deleuze’s Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the Kantian Duality 89 7. Dialectics Deleuze, Kant, and the Theory of Immanent Ideas 106 8. Analytics On the Becoming of Concepts 122 9. Ethics The Place of Ethics in Deleuze’s Philosophy: Three Questions of Immanence 14610. Politics Flow, Code, and Stock: A Note on Deleuze’s Political Philosophy 160

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vi contents

III. Five Deleuzian Concepts

11. Desire Deleuze and the Question of Desire: Toward an Immanent Theory of Ethics 17512. Life “A Life of Pure Immanence”: Deleuze’s “Critique et clinique” Project 18913. Sensation Deleuze on Bacon: Three Conceptual Trajectories in “The Logic of Sensation” 22214. The New The Conditions of the New 23515. The Open The Idea of the Open: Bergson’s Theses on Movement 256

IV. Deleuze and Contemporary Philosophy

16. Jacques Derrida Deleuze and Derrida, Immanence and Transcendence: Two Directions in

Recent French Thought 27117. Alain Badiou Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities: Deleuze and Badiou Revisited 28718. Jacques Lacan The Inverse Side of the Structure: Žižek on Deleuze on Lacan 31219. Pierre Klossowski Klossowski’s Reading of Nietzsche: Impulses, Phantasms, Simulacra,

Stereotypes 32520. Paul Patton Deleuze and the Liberal Tradition: Normativity, Freedom, and Judgment 339

Notes 361Bibliography 428Index 443

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Abbreviations

References to the works below are given in the text using the following abbrevia-tions, followed by the page number(s). I have occasionally introduced slight modifi -cations 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).

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x abbreviations

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,

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abbreviations xi

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).

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Preface

This volume brings together twenty essays on the work of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) that I have written over the past fi fteen years. The

fi rst (Essay 6) was published in 1996, while the most recent (Essay 8) is appearing for the fi rst time in this book. The original pieces were written as journal articles, book prefaces, and lectures, and although I have introduced minor revisions through-out—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 dif-ferent 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 fi gures in the history of philosophy—Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson, and Spinoza—and the fi rst set of essays explores three broad trajectories in Deleuze’s approach to the history of philosophy. The fi rst 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 over-turning of the medieval Aristotelian tradition. The fi nal 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 fi fth 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 once 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

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preface xiii

systems in the history of philosophy, namely, Kant’s critical philosophy. In particu-lar, the essays explore fi ve 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 specifi city 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 defi ned philosophy as the creation of concepts, and this section moves from the broad outlines of Deleuze’s philosophical system to a consideration of fi ve specifi c Deleuzian concepts. The essays on the “New” and the “Open” deal primarily with issues in Deleuze’s meta-physics 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. 4. Deleuze and Contemporary Philosophy. The last section, fi nally, is devoted to analyzing the position that Deleuze occupies within contemporary philosophy, and the implications that his thought has for future philosophy. The fi rst three essays contrast Deleuze with the work of three of his infl uential contemporaries with regard to a specifi c topic of debate: Jacques Derrida (on the relation of immanence and transcendence), Alain Badiou (on the nature of multiplicities), and Jacques Lacan (on the concept of structure). The fourth essay presents a Deleuzian reading of the work of Pierre Klossowski, an often-overlooked fi gure who exerted a strong infl uence on Deleuze. The fi nal essay examines Paul Patton’s important work on the ways in which Deleuze’s thought might serve to rejuvenate the liberal tradition in political philosophy.

* Gilles Deleuze, “Letter Preface,” in Jean-Clet Martin, Variations: The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, trans. Constantin V. Boundas and Susan Dyrkton (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 8: “I believe in philosophy as system. For me, the system must not only be in perpetual heterogeneity, it must be a heterogenesis—something which, it seems to me, has never been attempted.”

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