What Is Philosophy?

by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze

Book Overview

Called by many France's foremost philosopher, Gilles Deleuze is one of the leading thinkers in the Western World. His acclaimed works and celebrated collaborations with F lix Guattari have established him as a seminal figure in the fields of literary criticism and philosophy. The long-awaited publication of What Is Philosophy? in English marks the culmination of Deleuze's career.

Deleuze and Guattari differentiate between philosophy,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000OPCA2W
• ISBN13: 9780231079891
• Release Date: April 1996
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

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Condition? Unbelievable! Delivery? It arrived so fast, time was suspended and then went backward for about half a second. Seriously.

Deleuze is difficult but not whimsical

For a grad class "Recent French Philosophy" I am reading Deleuze and Guattari's "What is Philosophy?". I certainly don't have a review ready for it. Nor can I claim to have concrete and clear thoughts about it yet. But I do have questions and rough ideas which I will endeavor to set down simply for the practice of articulating these thoughts. Regarding style: Many have and will complain that Deleuze obfuscates what he ought to want to make clear. The meaning of a sentence or paragraph, I will admit, is not always clear if only because Deleuze refers often to ideas outside philosophy without providing clear meaning. He alludes or make explicit reference to art works, history, his previous work, film, and political concerns without pausing to describe more completely each of these. Deleuze however is completely serious in his task; I would deny anyone who wished to claim Deleuze was trying to evoke a mind-fudge which would somehow disrupt the knowledge-seeking mind the same way knowledge-seeking has been disrupted by poststructuralist insights. He may do this in Mille Plateau but so far in "What is Philosophy?" he is not being artful with his style. His style is dictated not by a desire to have commensurability between "gist" and mode of expression. His style is dense and difficult because he has a lot to say, is at the end of a career with much ground work done; and feels he must talk to his schoolmates (to use a phrase of Spivak's concerning Derrida). The issues dealt with in "What is Philosophy?" exist at a high level of abstraction which Deleuze has arrived at the end of his career. Let his earlier work, a familiarity with art and culture, and a close dedicated slow reading fill in the gaps in his style. Deleuze begins with an introduction in which he suggests that the question of what is philosophy, is a question proper for old age. Indeed, this book was written not long before Guattari died and after many of their great collaborative works. Deleuze wrote at the beginning of his career detailed histories of particular individual philosophers that he felt to be in line with his and his generations project to do without Hegelian dialectics (this according to Hardt's reading). Deleuze wrote on Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche and Spinoza in this fashion. Deleuze then partnered with Guattari, a psychoanalyst and activist, to write "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" as well as the sequel, "Thousand Plateaus." "What is Philosophy?" is very much a work in which Deleuze and Gauttari step back to survey as only an older person can do what it is they've been doing all along. The book does actually provide definitions of what philosophy is and is rigorous in explaining what the definitions mean. Philosophy is the creation of concepts. It is not an extension of logic, nor an inquiry into the textual nature of everything. Nor is philosophy reflection, contemplation or communication although philosophy creates concepts of each of those three eventually. So, what is it

The last try

The book is what one could call the image-thought of Deleuze himself. What is explained in chapter two is the book itself. If one wants the answer to the question: "¿what is then the image of thought of Deleuze and Guattari?" then this book is the answer. Now, one cannot simply answer: "Creation". After reading the book and some other parts of their philosophy, one understands that that is just the external form of the answer, not worng, but not whole. A new system of philosophy "is finished" with this book. Not a hegelian system, but as Hegel did.

Culmination of D-G

Deleuze and Guattari present their perspective on philosophy, science and art. According to them, philosophy is to create concepts. The writing is quite dense but you will find the D-G's final spark in this book.

A successful exposition of knowledge

First of all, this book is not an introduction to philosophy and should not be read by beginners who has not read any philosophical text before. Rather, as the writers say, this should be read by people who are engaged with philosophy for sometime either as a student or as an enthusiastic reader and who reached the point of asking the question ''What the hell I' m doing?'' This book gives the answer and lets the philosophy student recognise his/her task and continue work being much more conscious about the topic. The book carefully analyses the differences between scientific, philosophic and artistic knowledge and also succeeds in giving their relations in a clear way. Defining philosophy as ''creation of concepts'' may, at first, seem like an old and unoriginal definition but as you continue reading the book you will easily see that that definition gives way to a really original and successful conceptualization of philosophy and science. As a result I recommend this book to all students of philosophy except the freshmen whether coming from the analytic or continental tradition.