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Expressionism in Philosophy is both a pivotal reading of Spinoza's work and also a crucial text within the development of Deleuze's own thought. It was the culmination of a series of monographic studies by Deleuze (on Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche, Proust, Kant, and Sacher-Masoch), and it prepared the transition from these abstract treatments of historical schemes of experience to the nomadology of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.In this extraordinary work, Deleuze reflects on one of the thinkers of the past who most influenced his own sweeping reconfiguration of the tasks of philosophy. For Deleuze, Spinoza, along with Nietzsche and Lucretius, conceived of philosophy as an enterprise of liberation and radical demystification.Gilles Deleuze is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Paris VIII, Vincennes/Saint Denis. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Extraordinary
An excellent monograph by the great metaphysician, Deleuze. This elaborate text attempts to demonstrate the expressivity of Spinoza's theory of immanence. Deleuze argues that the attributes of God express the essence of substance in its necessity and infinity. There is remarkable explication of finite modes in this text-Deleuze indicates that a mode's essence is a determinate degree of intensity, an "irreducible degree of power." I found this description helpful as the transition from infinite substance to finite modes has always been ambiguous for me. There is also some remarkable work on scholastic philosophy in this work-Deleuze incorporates some insightful comparisons with Scotus' theology in the section on numerical and real distinction. Perhaps most importantly, Deleuze is able to synthesize expressivity in Spinoza with Leibniz and to show how these two figures successfully launched an anti-Cartesian movement. Although this text has been criticized for allowing too much conceptual work to take place at the level of attribution, I found it to be a remarkably precise exegesis.

Deleuze's minor thesis for professorship
This is very strange intersection of popular media (and its evaluative mechanisms) and somewhat esoteric philosophy. I mean, really, who buys Expressionism in Philosophy on the basis of an Amazon review? I guess all I can contribute is that, for those with disposable incomes and a desire to familiarise themselves with Deleuze, Nietzsche in Philosophy is a much better starting point. You can then work chronologically, through Bergson etc. up to Spinoza, or perhaps buy the shorter Practical Philosophy as a reference point to aid in the reading of Expressionism. The Spinoza books are certainly indispensible for reading the D/Guattari collaborative works. This is the first paper back edition, as far as I'm aware.

A REVIEW BY A REAL PHILOSOPHER
It is not without reason that Deleuze called Spinoza the "prince of the philosophers". The reason can be discerned from the very pages of this book. The importance of this work cannot be underestimated.

Of profound significance is the idea that Being is explicative and does not become less in each of its expression. This affirms the sense of beings and gives voice to the power and beauty of "life".

Spinoza's/ Deleuze's philosophy is against everything that is life-negative, instead, it is life-affirmative and celebrates joy as a powerful and adequate response to the life that we are given.

A reading of Hegel's critique and Nietzsche's Zarathustra would be sufficient as background to this complex but powerful and rewarding text. If I may suggest a further reading: Badiou's "Clamour of Being" adds new dimensions to Deleuze's thinking.

For fans of either Deleuze or Spinoza
Though this book dates from the less well-known "academic" phase of Deleuze's career, and thus completely lacks the stylistic exuberance of his later works, you can immediately see how it pre-figures many of the concepts he was to create with Guattari.It is interesting, then, both from the perspective of studying Deleuze, as well as for its clear, almost dry, presentation of Spinoza's philosophy.In fact, the book can serve as a bridge between these philosophers irrespective of which of the two names drew you to the title: a Spinoza for the Deleuzians, and a Deleuze that even a Spinozist could love, the two tied together by a shared conception of pure immanence.

The plan of the book is based around the structure of the Ethics and outlines all the main points of Spinoza's masterpiece, starting with Substance and ending in Beatitude.Special care is taken to situate Spinoza with respect to his historical context, particularly next to the philosophies of Descartes and Leibniz.To this end, Deleuze develops his thesis that it is a shared philosophy of "expression" that, despite their differences, unites Leibniz and Spinoza in founding a post-cartesian philosophy.For readers of A Thousand Plateaus, the idea that Nature is expressive will come as no surprise, but seeing this in light of Spinoza adds a valuable depth to it.

el unico
Deleuze, el último filósofo.
Se encarno una vez - igual que Spinoza - para mostarnos que no hay otra preocupacion que el Ser y el Pensamiento. ... Read more

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French journalist Claire Parnet's famous dialogues with Gilles Deleuze offer an intimate portrait of the philosopher's life and thought. Conversational in tone, their engaging discussions delve deeply into Deleuze's philosophical background and development, the major concepts that shaped his work, and the essence of some of his famous relationships, especially his long collaboration with the philosopher Félix Guattari. Deleuze reconsiders Spinoza, empiricism, and the stoics alongside literature, psychoanalysis, and politics. He returns to the notions of minor literature, deterritorialization, the critical and clinical, and begins a nascent study of cinema. New to this edition is Deleuze's essay "Pericles and Verdi," which reflects on politics and historical materialism in the work of the influential French philosopher François Châtelet. An enduring record of Deleuze's unique personality and profound contributions to culture and philosophy,Dialogues II is a highly personable account of the evolution of one of the greatest critics and theorists of the twentieth century.

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Gilles Deleuze, a major figure in the intellectual history of the late-20th century, inaugurated the radical non-Hegelianism that has marked French intellectual life during the past three decades. Many poststructuralist and postmodernist practices can be traced to Deleuze's 1962 resurrection of Nietzsche against Hegel. Hardt shows how Deleuze's early analysis of Bergson's critique of ontology and determination led him to a conception of a positive movement of differentiation and becoming, which in turn led him to the field of forces, sense, value, and the thematic of power and affirmation in Nietzsche. The theory of power in Nietzsche provided the link for Deleuze to an ethics of active expression in Spinoza: Deleuze's discovery and analysis of Spinoza's cultivation of joy and practice at the center of ontology finally resulted in a complete break from the Hegelian paradigm that had reigned over continental philosophy and history.Michael Hardt is the translator of Antonio Negri's "The Savage Anomaly: the Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics" (Minnesota, 1990), Giorgio Agamben's "The Coming Community" (Minnesota, 1993), and co-author (with Antonio Negri) of "Labor of Dionysus" (Minnesota). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Paradox of Enemies
Hardt's book on Deleuze can be applauded for two reasons:its carefulreading of Deleuze's texts and its attempt to situate them critically amongcontinental philosophy.Hardt is a clear writer, and his insights areoften quite powerful and suggestive.However, like most writer on Deleuzehis "deleuzian" reading seeks too much to reconfigure the texts(Bergson, Nietzsche,and Spinoza). Beyond Hardt's text stands the imposingshadow of Hegel -- perhaps my only hesitation with its analysis.There isa desire to find unity in difference however radical this difference mightbe. The key problem of scholarship on Deleuze seem to be precisely how toread him -- is the project Deleuze has laid out to reread his texts as hehas reread others? How is one to be Deluezian?This said, Hardt's work isexceptional in most areas.

Hardt's Deleuze shows us how one can break whith Hegel
In Gilles Deleuze, Michael Hardt analyzes the development of Deleuze's thought focussing on his works in the history of philosophy. From this historical perspective, Hardt renders possible to see the very intensive forcing bettwen Hegel's dialectics and this new afirmative thougth. Theoriginal reference to Scholastic's philosophy, for example, open thehorizont to a new comprenhension of the arguments used by Deleuze, no sooften explained. It would be very interesting to read this book in pararelwhith Vicent Descombes' La même et l'autre, a totaly oposite interpretationof Deleuze, where the battle whith Hegel is mised from the very begining. ... Read more

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A concern for this world lies at the heart of discussing the relation between philosophy and ethics. Kathrin Thiele elaborates in this book that in such endeavor one has to argue against two common misperceptions. Instead of understanding philosophy and ethics as abstraction from the world, she shows in what sense both are constructive of it; and instead of following the opinion that the poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze cannot contribute anything to the debate at stake, she shows that his whole work is speaking but one formula: ?ontology = ethics?.While this formula might estrange at first, the author, by approaching it through the conceptual figure of becoming, not only manages to carefully develop the Deleuzian thought-universe via its coordinates Spinoza, Bergson, and Nietzsche, but shows in her argument as well that the substitution of becoming for Being is no insignificant matter but rather the preparation for a new thought of ontology as an ontology of becoming and - as such - for a new thought of ethics as a poetics of life.?Indirection? is the movement of becoming into this world, brought forth here as the most compelling dimension of Deleuze's thought. Such a position dares to conceive of thought as practice without collapsing the gap that always persists between thinking and acting. ... Read more

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Dorothea Olkowski's exploration of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze clarifies the gifted French thinker's writings for specialists and nonspecialists alike. Deleuze, she says, accomplished the "ruin of representation," the complete overthrow of hierarchic, organic thought in philosophy, politics, aesthetics, and ethics, as well as in society at large. In Deleuze's philosophy of difference, she discovers the source of a new ontology of change, which in turn opens up the creation of new modes of life and thought, not only in philosophy and feminism but wherever creation is at stake.
The work of contemporary artist Mary Kelly has been central to Olkowski's thinking. In Kelly she finds an artist at work whose creative acts are in themselves the ruin of representation as a whole, and the text is illustrated with Kelly's art. This original and provocative account of Deleuze contributes significantly to a critical feminist politics and philosophy, as well as to an understanding of feminist art. ... Read more

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In Without Criteria, Steven Shaviro proposes and explores a philosophical fantasy: imagine a world in which Alfred North Whitehead takes the place of Martin Heidegger. What if Whitehead, instead of Heidegger, had set the agenda for postmodern thought? Heidegger asks, "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" Whitehead asks, "How is it that there is always something new?" In a world where everything from popular music to DNA is being sampled and recombined, argues Shaviro, Whitehead's question is the truly urgent one. Without Criteria is Shaviro's experiment in rethinking postmodern theory, especially the theory of aesthetics, from a point of view that hearkens back to Whitehead rather than Heidegger.

Shaviro does this largely by reading Whitehead in conjunction with Gilles Deleuze, finding important resonances and affinities between them, suggesting both a Deleuzian reading of Whitehead and a Whiteheadian reading of Deleuze. In working through the ideas of Whitehead and Deleuze, Shaviro also appeals to Kant, arguing that certain aspects of Kant's thought pave the way for the philosophical "constructivism" embraced by both Whitehead and Deleuze.

Kant, Whitehead, and Deleuze are not commonly grouped together, but the juxtaposition of them in Without Criteria helps to shed light on a variety of issues that are of concern to contemporary art and media practices (especially developments in digital film and video), and to controversies in cultural theory (including questions about commodity fetishism and about immanence and transcendence). Moreover, in his rereading of Whitehead (and in deliberate contrast to the "ethical turn" in much recent theoretical discourse), Shaviro opens the possibility of a critical aesthetics of contemporary culture.

Technologies of Lived Abstraction series ... Read more

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This book is a Reader's Guide for the book Francis Bacon: The logic Of Sensation. This book unfolds the art of painting through Deleuze's philosophy and then narrates Francis Bacon's Paintings as a story [though Bacon is strongly against narration in his paintings], reflecting the understanding of The Logic Of Sensation. This guide is intended as a quick reference of Deleuze's philosophy over Bacon's paintings with Kant's philosophy as complementary theory. This book does not follow the order of "Logic Of Sensation", instead its complete data of is rephrased in "Deleuze Over Bacon" to assist better flow and understanding. ... Read more

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This accessible introduction to the comprehensive work of the influential French thinker Gilles Deleuze explains key Deleuzian concepts and illustrates the political, stylistic, and theoretical complexities of each. A glossary of key Deleuzean terms and a description of the impact of Deleuze are provided. ... Read more

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The final work of the late philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) includes essays on such diverse literary figures as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, Lewis Carroll, and others, along with philosophers Plato, Spinoza, Kant, and others. Taken together, these 18 essays--all newly revised or published here for the first time--present a profoundly new approach to literature . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

At last, a clear explanation!
I must confess, I've only read three of the essays so far in this book, but it's the introduction that I'm most grateful for.Daniel W. Smith does a magnificent job of explicating many of the concepts that have perplexed and confounded my poor artistic mind.I feel that Deleuze had a special understanding of literature, and I was interested to see what he has to say about some of the writers I also love (Beckett, Kafka, Melville).But I've mostly had this experience of wishing I could get what it was he was saying.I felt all along like I was just-this-close, until Smith cracked it open for me.Lots of "Aha" experiences.For people with an artistic bent and with an attraction to philosophy, Deleuze is perhaps a kindred spirit whose words and thoughts about literature, painting and music can give hope and faith to whatever projects we work on at the foot of the capitalist mountain.I've also read his book on Kafka, and I selected that one because I want to understand more, and based on a review here on Amazon where someone said "this was the one to start with."I would say, that Kafka is definitely the one to start with, but Smith's intro to this book gives a very helpful overview of what one can expect.So Start with the Intro, go to Kafka, then come back to the essays.My .02.

Critique et Clinique. . .Real Horrorshow
Deleuze follows Nietzsche in asserting that literature, at its strongest, plays a *clinical* role in our lives, providing us with a technology to discharge blockages, to liberate the penal colonies of our overcodedneuroses. Literature is a vector of disease, the writer a physician of thespirit, the world a dissoluted Body without Organs shimmering between theescape-routes of Life and the leprous snares of a doctrinaljudge-mentality. Sickness and disequilibrium on a world-historical scale, adelirium far beyond the personal and the individual, the great authors (inthis anthology: Melville, Whitman, Carroll, Lawrence, Jarry, Masoch,Beckett) struggling to plot the epidemiology of these terrors, groping foran escape-hatch that may redeem the years of incarceration, both psychicaland political. Illness is defined as the *stopping* or interruption of thewriting process, the exhaustion of the literary machine, when theschizo-author feels abandoned by the world's epic Traverse and wills herown destruction. Where once the literary agent had all her powers engagedin the machinic exploration of her own narrative Immanence, there nowremains only an outmoded cyborg husk, having lost "the spontaneity orthe innate feeling for the fragmentary, and the reflection on livingrelations that must constantly be acquired and created. Spontaneousfragments constitute the element through which, or in the intervals ofwhich, we attain the great and carefully considered visions and sounds ofboth Nature and history"(60). These essays show how every great writeris also a master aetiologist, a "holistic pathologist" trying toidentify and dissolve the negative forces which separate Life from what itcan do, that keep Immanence from exploding against its world-historicaltargets. As a supplement to *Capitalism and Schizophrenia* (that immaculatePublic Health textbook), these discourses are outstanding. ... Read more

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Bogue provides a systematic overview and introduction to Deleuze's writings on music and painting, and an assessment of their position within his aesthetics as a whole. Deleuze on Music, Painting and the Arts breaks new ground in the scholarship on Deleuze's aesthetics, while providing a clear and accessible guide to his often overlooked writings in the fields of music and painting. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Sexy Intelligentsia
Deleuze's work is complex and often difficult, especially for the reader who comes with an interest in art, music, and literature but little familiarity with (or perhaps tolerance for) late-twentieth century philosophy.

In this study of Deleuze's writing on music and painting, Ronald Bogue distills the essence of the philosopher's decades-long interest in these disciplines. This is no "Deleuze for Dummies"--some familiarity with Deleuzian concepts is assumed and expected. As with similar texts (Harari's _How James Joyce Made His Name: A Reading of the Final Lacan_, for example, or Rochlitz's _The Disenchantment of Art: The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin_), _Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts_ tells us probably as much about Bogue as it does about Deleuze.

This is useful, however, because Bogue has read widely and with comprehension not only in Deleuze but in the whole network of related subject matter touching on his concerns--Jacob von Uexkull, Susan Oyama, Paul Griffiths and Alois Riegl among others. Additionally, Bogue's consideration of Modern music is exemplary for its clear-sighted and vivid engagement with difficult (what Adorno might even call radical) music. Take as an example this brief segment from the discussion of Messiaen's spectacular _Catalogue d'oiseaux_: "...Messiaen never approaches an individual bird's song in isolation, but instead juxtaposes it with the songs of other species and situates it within an evocative sonic landscape....Such pictorialism might suggest that Messiaen's aesthetic is purely mimetic, but the actual results of his practice belie this suspicion." He goes on to discuss the piece's motivic development and the composer's modal style.

Deleuze is at his most brilliant in the writings on Messiaen and Francis Bacon, and Bogue's book allows easier access for readers without the necessary time or desire to wade through thousands of pages to find what they're looking for. Of course, the ideas about music and painting are inextricable from the other ideas in those pages (there are, after all, 'a thousand plateaus', and it is not impossible that the reader may feel the need to explore further to obtain a more complete understanding--which is, after all, not such a bad thing....)

At the beginning of the twenty-first century we could do worse than immerse ourselves in a study of Deleuze. For the student of music and art, as well as for those interested in expanding their knowledge of one of the great thinkers of that long, dark, and now late century, this is a valuable book. ... Read more

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Gilles Deleuze has produced some of the most important--and most formidable--theory on cinema to appear in the last half-century. Deleuze on Cinema provides a thorough and reliable guide to Deleuze's thought on the art of film, elucidating in clear language the shape and thrust of Deleuze's arguments found in his influential books on cinema. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Hang in there - Bogue will help!
I am a graduate student in French Studies who is interested in Deleuze but weak in theory.I read Bogue's 'Deleuze on Cinema' in three days and wrote this on my Facebook page:

If you're using Ronald Bogue's 'Deleuze on Cinema' as a 'Deleuze for Dummies' and finding it barely any easier than Deleuze, keep reading. Bogue repeats and repeats terms and concepts from previous chapters and uses fewer but more detailed examples from specific films. Hang in there with it. At the end, you will feel confident enough to crack "the actual" (ahem) Deleuze.

Not a Deleuze for Dumbies book, but insightful and well written
Bogue's three-volume series on Deleuze and the arts is a welcome addition to Deleuze's daunting body of work. Although I haven't finished the book, I've read enough to offer a few comments that may help you decided if "Deleuze on Cinema" is right for you.

First of all, as the previous reviewer notes, this is not "Deleuze-made-easy" or anything close. Bogue assumes a small amount of background knowledge that most will have if they're at all familiar with Deleuze. The difficulty comes in Bogue's compact summations of philosophies (other than Deleuze, Bergson is the big one). You may be familiar with some Deleuzian concepts, but Bergson will present a whole new challenge.

I found Bogue's explanations of Bergson and Deleuze's reading of Bergson to be more difficult than I would like. The topic is, of course, complex, but I have seen authors greatly increase the level of approachability in thinkers from Lacan to Adorno. The book is ostensibly a resource for introducing Deleuze's concepts of cinema, but it is more like a condensed version - fewer words and more direct, but difficult all the same.

The best parts come at the end of the long theoretical sections where Bogue puts Deleuze and Bergson into more intuitive examples. If you can make it through the theory, the examples tie the ideas together sufficiently, but understanding will not arrive without considerable work on the part of the reader.

My main comment is, this is not significantly easier than reading Deleuze directly. It's a high quality, detailed study of Deleuze and the cinema and accordingly, it is not going to reveal its secrets easily.

If you're already familiar with Deleuze or have a strong interest in his work, this is a great find. If you're new to Deleuze or film theory in general, this is not the best place to start, in my opinion. There are a number of resources that will give the necessary background before committing to this text such as the Deleuze Dictionary. Bogue's style is very clear and precise and my understanding has increased significantly since beginning. Just be aware that he doesn't make Deleuze "easy".

learn it....love it....LIVE IT!
My friends all think I hate movies. This isn't true, but I admit that I'm often reluctant to see them--like most important artistic media (contemporary poetry and the plastic arts, to say nothing of ubiquitous pop music), there is too much worthless drivel to wade through.

I've always held that cimema can be a powerful artistic medium, but until recently I was much too ignorant of classic films. A life-long student of literature, I decided to educate myself in 'reading' films. This book is where I started--correction: this book, my local dvd rental store, and a friend to watch some great movies with.

I'd known of Bogue's three-volume study of Deleuze and the Arts (see my review of Bogue's _Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts_), so after my cinema-knowledgeable friend drew up a list of the 50 most important classic films I needed to know, I ordered a copy of _Deleuze on Cinema_.

This book, like the others in the series, is not a "Deleuze for Dummies." Bogue--like Deleuze--assumes quite a bit of knowledge on the reader's part. This is refreshing. It's a supplement--something to read in preparation for watching the movies as well as for making sense of them after the show's over. Just paging through the ample index will offer a taste of what's offered: directors include Hitchcock, Resnais, Eisenstein, Robbe-Grillet, Bunuel, Godard, Bresson, Kurosawa, and Antonioni, among others.

Take this insightful passage on Orson Welles as one example of the clarity and brilliance of Bogue on Deleuze: "In each of Welles' films, sheets of the past coexist within a transpersonal memory, but Deleuze argues as well that in individual shorts one can actually see characters inhabiting a region of time....Deleuze observes that others before Welles had used deep focus shots, but usually with the planes of the image remaining relatively isolated from one another. What Welles achieves by contrast is a communication and interpenetration of foreground, middle ground, and background, each shot a dynamic space-in-depth" (pgs 142-43).

This book will be of essential interest to students and lovers of Deleuze, film, literature--and especially to those who, like me, need a little extra meat and potatoes with their buttered popcorn. ... Read more

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In his stunning essay, Coldness and Cruelty, Gilles Deleuze examines the work of the late-nineteenth-century German novelist Leopold von Sacher-­Masoch. He shows that masochism is something far Tore subtle and complex than the enjoyment of pain, that masochism has nothing to do with sadism; their worlds do not communicate, just as the genius of those who created them - Masoch and Sade - lie stylistically, philosophically, and politically poles apart. Venus in Furs, the most famous of all of Masoch's novels, belongs to an unfinished cycle of works that Masoch entitled The Heritage of Cain. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A literary masterpiece and some rather misguided philosophy
Venus in Furs is undeniably a genuine literary masterpiece. It has been sadly neglected due to Krafft-Ebing's labeling of the author's name as a diagnosis for, well, masochism. It is definitely worth a read, or many, and is wonderful as both a novel-in-itself and as a description of how a fantasy which gets realized can be a terrible thing. To it, I'd give the full five stars.

Deleuze's introductory essay, on the other hand, is a very low-quality piece of work. His argumentation is brilliant (as practically always - I admit that I love his works), but the essay itself is completely misleading. This is because it has been based on his ideology and some highly faulty reference material: Krafft-Ebing never bothered with empirics, just quoted mostly literary sources, and what empiric references (e.g. Freud) Deleuze does use were done on psychiatric patients, not what we'd nowadays consider "sado-masochists". Therefore, despite the excellent reasoning in the text, Deleuze arrives into completely ridiculous conclusions that contradict the reality of the phenomenon. As an example of Deleuzian philosophy, the essay is very good. As an analysis of masochism, it is not only worthless, but actually harmful. Read it for the former, but not the latter.

A lot to learn
For those who want to become acquainted with the deepest mysteries of mind and their relationship to behavior, not only sexual, this book is indispensable.

Not So Painful
For those who have tried their hand at Deleuze's other works--notably _A Thousand Pleateus_ and _Anti-Oedipus_--the title of my review will completely make sense. In this essay, Deleuze presents an engaging arguement about the development of the Oedipal complex and its relation to masochism. Basically, in the final stage of Freud's Oedipus the son is meant to internalize an identification with the father. In revolt he engages in the masochistic drama--a desperate attempt to re-enter the early stage of identification with the mother. By engaging in Masoch's drama, the woman becomes the subject's mother, and she proceeds to ritualistically beat the father out of the son. After all, dad is the one guilty of forcing the two apart in the first place. But this woman, this actress playing the mother, is certainly not a "sadist"; she herself is a masochist, because masochism has by this point proven to be an entire setting--an entire life--all of the characters, tools, words, rituals and scripted parts involved therein.

Contract, ritual, drama and fear combine to show us complexities of human expressions of violence, care, sexuality and the inter-relation between these three. I do not understand why this book has not recieved as much attention as some of Deleuze's others; its brilliance and accessibility--packaged of course with the eloquent and important _Venus in Furs_--make it well worth your time and money.

man oh man!!!
this is HOT stuff!!!do yourself a favor and get yer mitts on this one!!!

More than meets the eye
This refers to the book, Venus in Furs, not the essay by Deleuze. I loved this book. Not because I'm some psycho who enjoys pain, but because it tastefully deals with an issue that is too often either misrepresented as some libertine taboo or dealt with in a clinical way. Instead you have a story that deals with love in a different way than a typical Danielle Steele romance novel or a "boy meets girl," sappy drugstore paperback. And while it deals with passionate cruelty it, unlike books by Sade, captures unbridled desire and an inflamed heart. It is truly a great work of literature, easily comparable to "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Goethe.
If you like sappy romance stories, buy something else. If you want an intriguing love story full of the passion of life and the strumming of the stings of emotion, read away. ... Read more

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Although he is best known as a philosopher, Deleuze´s interests were extremely far-reaching. In addition to his important critiques of major philosophers like Kant, Hume, and Spinoza, he also wrote extensively on literature, cinema, and art. Deleuze wrote monographs on Proust, Kafka, and Sacher-Masoch. He also wrote essays on Beckett, Melville, Jarry, T.E. Lawrence, D. H. Lawrence, and Whitman. The essays collected in this volume are the first devoted solely to Deleuze´s work on literature. Written by leading Deleuzian scholars, the essays focus on two main questions: how does Deleuze read literary texts and how can we read texts in a Deleuzian way? ... Read more

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Provides a short introduction to Kant, emphasizing Kant's own view of his philosophy. Deleuze offers an overview of the whole of Kant's "critical philosophy". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Final Kantian Reversal, or: Nuncle Lear Cometh
Deleuze has long apprehended the *Critique of Judgement* as that rarest of philosophical achievements, a work of hoary old age whose radical and "deeply romantic"(xi) precepts are somberly misunderstood by students, most of whom pass it off as a clunky, fossilized curio of old-school aesthetic theory.As argued in this text, however, Kant's project is sensible (one might even say consummated) only in the light of this penultimate work, the keys to which are well worth questing for: "What is in question is how certain phenomena which come to define the Beautiful give an autonomous supplementary dimension to the inner sense of time, a power of free reflection to the imagination, an infinite conceptual power to the understanding....It is a terrible struggle between imagination and reason, and also between understanding and the inner sense, a struggle whose episodes are the two forms of the Sublime, and then Genius.It is a tempest in the depths of a chasm opened up in the subject.The faculties confront one another, each stretched to its own limit, and find their accord in a fundamental discord: a discordant accord is the great discovery of the *Critique of Judgement*, the final Kantian reversal...the source of time"(xii-xiii).

Radically, Deleuze follows De Quincey's *The Last days of Emmanuel Kant* by casting the later Kant as a grizzly King Lear of sorts, exiled from his "reasonable" philosophical kingdom and stepping precariously to a mad song of Romantic apperception.Hamlet's "time out of joint" becomes the unhinged temporality of movement subordinated and conditioned by time, or the Borgesian "labyrinth which is composed of a single straight line, and which is indivisible, incessant."While Rimbaud's "I is another" becomes the form under which the I affects the ego, or the mind affecting itself, an interiorized temporality that constantly divides us from ourselves, "a giddiness, an oscillation which constitutes time"(ix).Kafka's "The Good is what the Law says" reminds us that there is nothing to "know" in the law, simply that it *is*, and that we only come across this "ism" through action and execution, by which we must deduce the Good.Finally, Rimbaud's "disorder of all the senses" becomes that autopoetic civil war of the faculties pushing themselves to act and cooperate in unique and unprecedented ways, leading one faculty to an achievement or realization it would never have had on its own, pushing the known boundaries of genius and creativity, onward to mutation.

This is a "brief" treatise whose length should not be underestimated.As always, Deleuze's exegetical style is diamond-sharp, tracing an analytical razorline through the architectontic reversals of Kant's ever-burgeoning spiritual maturity, from the brilliant technician and moral demiurge of the first two critiques, to the wild, discordant Kant of old age.

For those uncomfortable with Deleuze's controversial approach to Nietzsche and Spinoza, this volume is much more Kantian than Deleuzian.But its originalities are impossible to deny, its exegetical precision a godsend.Deleuze's extraordinary personality is stamped on every page, while the unchained spirit of the later Kant shines provocatively through.This treatise should be special-ordered for all university courses on Kant's philosophy.It is an outstanding 20th-century reaction to a now misappropriated philosophical visionary, the grandeur of whose final work is too often obscured by the first two Critiques, which are merely its prologue or conceptual training-ground.

A masterly focus
This is a slim volume, unusual because it operates at a very general level across all three of Kant's Critiques instead of the more usual focus on asingle Critique. Deleuze's aim is architectonic: to show how the threeCritiques fit together to form a coherent whole. This is a valuableundertaking since it's very easy to get lost in the Kantian thickets, whichare arguably the densest in all of Western philosophy.

Deleuzeorganizes the three Critiques around the core notion of faculties and theobjects over which they legislate. For example, understanding legislates inthe faculty of knowledge, while reason operates over the faculty of desire;taken individually, the study of each makes up the content of the first twoof Kant's celebrated Critiques. Their respective functions are shown byDeleuze to culminate in the third Critique (i.e. *Critique of PureJudgement*), wherein the notion of "ends", both moral and cognitive, reachsynthetic fulfillment. Hence, it is in the third Critique, instead of thefirst two, in which the capstone of Kant's Copernican revolution isreached. Here in the arena of art and aesthetics, no faculty legislates,nor are generic objects present. Rather aesthetic judgement involves thefaculties and imagination in a kind of free play aimed at some type ofoverall harmony.Rather than knowledge, which can only be phenomenal,culture represents humankind's highest achievement and its measurement; andthe highway into 19th century Romanticism opens.

Kant is a giant ofWestern philosophy. This book aids in an understanding of his overallundertaking. ... Read more

Product Description
Deleuze and Guattari's landmark philosophical project, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, has been hailed as a 'highly original and sensational' major philosophical work. The collaboration of two of the most remarkable and influential minds of the twentieth century, it is a project that still sets the terms of contemporary philosophical debate. It provides a radical and compelling analysis of social and cultural phenomena, offering fresh alternatives for thinking about history, society, capitalism and culture. In "Who's Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari?", Gregg Lambert revisits this seminal work and re-evaluates Deleuze and Guattari's legacy in philosophy, literary criticism and cultural studies since the early 1980s. Lambert offers the first detailed analysis of the reception of the Capitalism and Schizophrenia project by such key figures as Jameson, Zizek, Badiou, Hardt, Negri and Agamben. He argues that the project has suffered from being underappreciated and too hastily dismissed on the one hand and, on the other, too quickly assimilated to the objectives of other desires such as multiculturalism or American identity politics.In the light of the limitations of this reception-history, Lambert offers a fresh evaluation of the project and its influences that promise to challenge the ways in which Deleuze and Guattari's controversial and remarkable project has been received. Divided into four key sections, Aesthetics, Psychoanalysis, Politics and Power, "Who's Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari?" offers a fresh, witty and intelligent analysis of this major philosophical project. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential Reading
First, a disclosure: I have been an admirer of Gregg Lambert's work on Deleuze and Guattari for more than ten years; I have even co-edited a book with him. But I'm always anxious to see his new work. This book is I think his best because it really breaks new ground. I would go so far as to say it inaugurates Deleuze Studies, if by that one means as I do, it studies how Deleuze is studied and critcally evaluates the various approaches to Deleuze with a view to weighing up what is useful and what isn't. He doesn't quibble in some pedantic doctrinal way about whether certain interpretations of Deleuze are accurate or not; rather he explores whether they can be put to productive use. The chapter replying to Zizek's terrible book on Deleuze is masterful in this respect, because it not only shows that Zizek is a terrible reader of Deleuze (I would claim he never actually read more than a few pages of Deleuze in writing his book, but simply relied on Badiou's book), but his own theoretical system is sterile for not being able to engage Deleuze; and while I don't quite agree with him I think the chapter on Jameson throws down the gauntlet to people like myself who see a strong connection between Deleuze and Jameson in a way that is very productive. I hope more people write books like this! ... Read more