View source for Gilles Deleuze

{{Short description|French philosopher (1925–1995)}}
{{Redirect|Deleuze|the French botanist|Joseph-Philippe-François Deleuze}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}
{{Infobox philosopher
|notable_students ={{hlist|[[Jean-Luc Marion]]<ref>{{cite book
 | last = Horner
 | first = Robyn
 | title = Jean-Luc Marion: a Theo-Logical Introduction
 | publisher = Ashgate
 | date = 2005
 | location = Burlington
 |page=3
}}</ref>
|[[Claire Parnet]]
}}
|region = [[Western philosophy]]
|era     = [[20th-century philosophy]]
|image   = Gilles Deleuze.webp
|caption = 
|name       = Gilles Deleuze
|birth_date = 18 January 1925
|birth_place = [[Paris]], France
|death_date  = {{death date and age|df=yes|1995|11|4|1925|1|18}}
|death_place = Paris, France
|alma_mater        = [[University of Paris]]<br />([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]], [[Master of Arts|MA]], [[Doctorat d'État|DrE]])
|institutions     = [[University of Paris VIII]]
|school_tradition  = {{plainlist|
* [[Continental philosophy]]
* [[Post-Marxism]]
* [[French Nietzscheanism]]
* [[Materialism]]<ref name=SEP/>
* [[Post-structuralism]]<ref>Simon Choat, ''Marx Through Post-Structuralism: Lyotard, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze'', Continuum, 2010, ch. 5.</ref>
* [[Empiricism]]
}}
|main_interests    = {{hlist|[[Aesthetics]]|[[history of Western philosophy]]|[[literary theory]]|[[metaphilosophy]]|[[metaphysics]]|[[psychoanalysis]]|[[semiotics]]
* [[film semiotics]]}}
|notable_ideas = {{collapsible list
|[[Affect (philosophy)|Affect]] and [[percept]]
|[[Arborescent]]
|[[Assemblage (philosophy)|Assemblage]]
|[[Body without organs]]
|[[Desiring-production]]
|[[Deterritorialization]]
|[[Event (philosophy)|Event]]
|[[Haecceity]]
|[[Identity (philosophy)|Identity]]–[[Difference (poststructuralism)|difference]] distinction
|[[Immanent evaluation]]
|[[Individuation]]
|[[Line of flight]]
|[[Minority (philosophy)|Minority]]
|[[Molar configuration]]
|[[Multiplicity (philosophy)|Multiplicity]]
|[[Plane of immanence]]
|[[Reterritorialization]]
|[[Rhizome (philosophy)|Rhizome]]
|[[Schizoanalysis]]
|[[Societies of control]]
|[[Socius (philosophy)|Socius]]
|[[Subjectification]]
|[[Transcendental empiricism]]
|[[Univocity of being]]
|[[Virtuality (philosophy)|Virtuality]]
|Movement-image
|Time-image
|title={{nbsp}}
}}
}}
{{Cyber anthropology|theorists}}
'''Gilles Louis René Deleuze''' ({{IPAc-en|d|ə|ˈ|l|uː|z}} {{respell|də|LOOZ}}; {{IPA|fr|ʒil dəløz|lang}}; 18 January 1925&nbsp;– 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of ''[[Capitalism and Schizophrenia]]'': ''[[Anti-Oedipus]]'' (1972) and ''[[A Thousand Plateaus]]'' (1980), both co-written with psychoanalyst [[Félix Guattari]]. His [[Metaphysics|metaphysical]] treatise ''[[Difference and Repetition]]'' (1968) is considered by many scholars to be his [[magnum opus]].<ref name="SEP">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Gilles Deleuze |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/ |access-date=17 February 2011 |last1=Smith |first1=Daniel W. |author-link=Daniel W. Smith (philosopher) |display-authors= |last2=Protevi |first2=John |last3=Voss |first3=Daniela}}</ref>{{efn|"''Difference and Repetition'' is definitely the most important work published by Deleuze." (Edouard Morot-Sir, from the back cover of the first edition of the English translation)}}{{efn|James Williams: "It is nothing less than a revolution in philosophy and stands out as one of the great philosophical works of the twentieth century" (James Williams, ''Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide'' [Edinburgh UP, 2003], p. 1).}}

An important part of Deleuze's oeuvre is devoted to the reading of other philosophers: the [[w:Stoicism|Stoics]], [[Leibniz]], [[David Hume|Hume]], [[Kant]], [[Nietzsche]], [[Spinoza]], and [[Henri Bergson|Bergson]]. [[A. W. Moore (philosopher)|A. W. Moore]], citing [[Bernard Williams]]'s criteria for a great thinker, ranks Deleuze among the "greatest philosophers".<ref name="Moore" >[[A. W. Moore (philosopher)|A. W. Moore]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=vo-ZLmfwe_oC&pg=PA543  ''The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things''], Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 543: 'intellectual power and depth; a grasp of the sciences; a sense of the political, and of human destructiveness as well as creativity; a broad range and a fertile imagination; an unwillingness to settle for the superficially reassuring; and, in an unusually lucky case, the gifts of a great writer.'</ref> Although he once characterized himself as a "pure [[metaphysician]]",<ref>Beaulieu, Alain; Kazarian, Edward; Sushytska, Julia (eds.): ''Gilles Deleuze and Metaphysics''. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014)</ref> his work has influenced a variety of disciplines across the humanities, including philosophy, art, and literary theory, as well as movements such as [[post-structuralism]] and [[postmodernism]].<ref name="See 1991">See, for example, [[Steven Best]] and [[Douglas Kellner]], ''Postmodern Theory'' (Guilford Press, 1991), which devotes a chapter to Deleuze and Guattari.</ref>

== Life ==
=== Early life ===
Gilles Deleuze was born into a middle-class family in Paris and lived there for most of his life. His mother was Odette Camaüer and his father, Louis, was an engineer.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Beckman |first=Frida |title=Gilles Deleuze: Critical Lives |publisher=Reaktion Books |year=2017 |isbn=9781780237770 |pages=15}}</ref> His initial schooling was undertaken during World War II, during which time he attended the [[Lycée Carnot]]. He also spent a year in ''[[khâgne]]'' at the [[Lycée Henri IV]]. During the [[Nazi occupation of France]], Deleuze's brother, three years his senior, Georges, was arrested for his participation in the [[French Resistance]], and died while in transit to a concentration camp.<ref>[[François Dosse]], ''Gilles Deleuze and [[Felix Guattari]]: Intersecting Lives'', trans. Deborah Glassman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), p. 89.</ref> In 1944, Deleuze went to study at the [[University of Paris|Sorbonne]]. His teachers there included several noted specialists in the history of philosophy, such as [[Georges Canguilhem]], [[Jean Hyppolite]], [[Ferdinand Alquié]], and [[Maurice de Gandillac]]. Deleuze's lifelong interest in the canonical figures of modern philosophy owed much to these teachers.

=== Career ===
Deleuze passed the [[agrégation]] in philosophy in 1948, and taught at various [[Secondary education in France|lycées]] (Amiens, Orléans, [[Lycée Louis le Grand|Louis le Grand]]) until 1957, when he took up a position at the [[University of Paris]]. In 1953, he published his first monograph, ''Empiricism and Subjectivity'', on [[David Hume]]. This monograph was based on his 1947 DES (''{{Interlanguage link multi|diplôme d'études supérieures|fr}}'') thesis,<ref name="Schrift p. 120">Alan D. Schrift (2006), ''Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers'', Blackwell Publishing, p. 117.</ref> roughly equivalent to an [[Master of Arts|M.A.]] thesis, which was conducted under the direction of [[Jean Hyppolite]] and [[Georges Canguilhem]].<ref>Daniela Voss, ''Conditions of Thought: Deleuze and Transcendental Ideas'', Edinburgh University Press, 2013, p. 76.</ref> From 1960 to 1964, he held a position at the [[French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique|Centre National de Recherche Scientifique]]. During this time he published the seminal ''[[Nietzsche and Philosophy]]'' (1962) and befriended [[Michel Foucault]]. From 1964 to 1969, he was a professor at the [[University of Lyon]]. In 1968, Deleuze defended his two [[Doctorat d'État|DrE]] dissertations amid the ongoing [[May 68]] demonstrations; he later published his two dissertations under the titles ''[[Difference and Repetition]]'' (supervised by Gandillac) and ''Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza'' (supervised by Alquié).

In 1969, he was appointed to the [[University of Paris VIII]], an experimental school organized to implement educational reform.<ref>{{cite web |title=Gilles Deleuze |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/ |website=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=16 Feb 2025}}</ref> This new university drew a number of well-known academics, including Foucault (who suggested Deleuze's hiring) and the psychoanalyst [[Félix Guattari]]. Deleuze taught at Paris VIII until his retirement in 1987.

===Personal life===
Deleuze's outlook on life was sympathetic to [[Transcendentalism|transcendental]] ideas, "nature as god" ethics, and the [[Monism|monist]] experience. Some of the important ideas he advocated for and found inspiration in include his personally coined expression [[Pluralism (philosophy)|pluralism]] = monism, as well as the concepts of [[Being]] and [[Univocity of being|Univocity]].

He married Denise Paul "Fanny" Grandjouan in 1956 and they had two children.

According to James Miller, Deleuze portrayed little visible interest in actually ''doing'' many of the risky things he so vividly conjured up{{clarify|date=April 2021}} in his lectures and writing. Married, with two children, he outwardly lived the life of a conventional French professor. He kept his fingernails untrimmed because, as he once explained, he lacked "normal protective fingerprints", and therefore could not "touch an object, particularly a piece of cloth, with the pads of my fingers without sharp pain".<ref>James Miller, ''The Passion of Michel Foucault'', New York: Harper Collins, 1993, p. 196.</ref>

When once asked to talk about his life, he replied: "Academics' lives are seldom interesting."<ref>''Negotiations'', p. 137.</ref> Deleuze concludes his reply to this critic thus:

{{blockquote|What do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy?&nbsp;... If I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write.&nbsp;... Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad and reactionary arguments.<ref>''Negotiations'', pp. 11–12.</ref>}}

===Death===
Deleuze, who had suffered from respiratory ailments from a young age,<ref>François Dosse, ''Deleuze and Guattari: Intersecting Lives'', trans D. Glassman, CUP 2010, p. 98.</ref> developed [[tuberculosis]] in 1968 and underwent lung removal.<ref>François Dosse, ''Deleuze and Guattari: Intersecting Lives'', trans D. Glassman, CUP 2010, p. 178.</ref> He suffered increasingly severe respiratory symptoms for the rest of his life.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Bolzinger|first=Jean-Michel|date=26 December 2003|title=Gilles Deleuze et les médecins|url=http://www.ammppu.org/litterature/deleuze.htm|website=Association Médicale Mosellane de Perfectionnement Post Universitaire|access-date=4 October 2006|archive-date=5 May 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190505050918/http://www.ammppu.org/litterature/deleuze.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.ammppu.org/litterature/deleuze.htm#(4) |title=Gilles Deleuze et les médecins |access-date=4 October 2006 |archive-date=5 May 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190505050918/http://www.ammppu.org/litterature/deleuze.htm#(4) |url-status=dead }}</ref> In the last years of his life, simple tasks such as writing required laborious effort. Overwhelmed by his respiratory problems, he died by suicide on 4 November 1995,<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/156476/Gilles-Deleuze|title=Gilles Deleuze|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]|access-date=8 July 2009}}</ref> throwing himself from the window of his apartment.<ref>{{Cite web|title=French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze Commits Suicide at 70|url=https://apnews.com/article/bdba0e6c95bf6c5368be01fedfcff197|access-date=2021-04-15|website=AP NEWS}}</ref>

Before his death, Deleuze had announced his intention to write a book entitled ''La Grandeur de Marx'' (''The Greatness of Marx''), and left behind two chapters of an unfinished project entitled ''Ensembles and Multiplicities'' (these chapters have been published as the essays "Immanence: A Life" and "The Actual and the Virtual").<ref>François Dosse, ''Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Intersecting Lives'', pp. 454–455.  "Immanence: A Life" has been translated and published in ''Pure Immanence'' and ''Two Regimes of Madness'', while "The Actual and Virtual" has been translated and published as an appendix to the second edition of ''Dialogues''.</ref> He is buried in the cemetery of the village of [[Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.ccnoblat.fr/otsi_v2/images/publications/guides/Saint%20Leonard%20de%20Noblat.pdf|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20141018104643/http://www.ccnoblat.fr/otsi_v2/images/publications/guides/Saint%20Leonard%20de%20Noblat.pdf|url-status=dead|title=Communauté de Communes de Noblat|archivedate=18 October 2014}}</ref>

== Philosophy ==
Deleuze's works fall into two groups: on the one hand, monographs interpreting the work of other philosophers ([[Baruch Spinoza]], [[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]], [[David Hume]], [[Immanuel Kant]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], [[Henri Bergson]], [[Michel Foucault]]) and artists ([[Marcel Proust]], [[Franz Kafka]], [[Francis Bacon (artist)|Francis Bacon]]); on the other, eclectic philosophical tomes organized by concept (e.g., difference, sense, event, economy, cinema, desire, philosophy). However, both of these aspects are seen by his critics and analysts as often overlapping, in particular, due to his prose and the unique mapping of his books that allow for multifaceted readings.

=== Metaphysics<!--'Transcendental empiricism' and 'Transcendental Empiricism' redirect here--> ===
Deleuze's main philosophical project in the works he wrote prior to his collaborations with Guattari can be summarized as an inversion of the traditional [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] relationship between [[Identity (philosophy)|identity]] and [[Difference (poststructuralism)|difference]]. Traditionally, difference is seen as derivative from identity: e.g., to say that "X is different from Y" assumes some X and Y with at least relatively stable identities (as in Plato's forms). On the contrary, Deleuze claims that all identities are effects of difference. Identities are neither logically nor metaphysically prior to difference, Deleuze argues, "given that there exist differences of nature between things of the same genus."<ref>"Bergson's Conception of Difference", in ''Desert Islands'', p. 33.</ref> That is, not only are no two things ever the same, the categories used to identify individuals in the first place derive from differences. Apparent identities such as "X" are composed of endless series of differences, where "X" = "the difference between x and x<math>^\prime</math>", and "x<math>^\prime</math>" = "the difference between...", and so forth. Difference, in other words, goes all the way down. To confront reality honestly, Deleuze argues, beings must be grasped exactly as they are, and concepts of identity (forms, categories, resemblances, unities of apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain what he calls "difference in itself." "If philosophy has a positive and direct relation to things, it is only insofar as philosophy claims to grasp the thing itself, according to what it is, in its difference from everything it is not, in other words, in its ''internal difference''."<ref>''Desert Islands'', p. 32.</ref>

Like Kant, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the [[subject (philosophy)|subject]]. He, therefore, concludes that pure difference is non-spatiotemporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "[[Virtuality (philosophy)|the virtual]]". (The coinage refers to Proust's definition of what is constant in both the past and the present: "real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.")<ref>Proust, ''Le Temps Retrouvé'', ch. III.</ref> While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble [[Plato]]'s forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they [the conditions] form is identical to its object."<ref>''Desert Islands'', p. 36.</ref> A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is therefore not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.<ref>See "The Method of Dramatization" in ''Desert Islands'', and "Actual and Virtual" in ''Dialogues II''.</ref>

Thus, Deleuze at times refers to his philosophy as a '''transcendental empiricism'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> ({{lang|fr|empirisme transcendantal}}), alluding to Kant.<ref>Gilles Deleuze, ''[[Difference and Repetition]]'', Continuum, 2004[1968], pp. 56 and 143.</ref><ref>[[Adrian Parr]] (ed.), ''The Deleuze Dictionary (Revised Edition)'', Edinburgh University Press, 2010, p. 289: "Unlike Kant, Deleuze does not conceive of [...] unthought conditions as abstract or necessary philosophical entities, but as contingent tendencies beyond the reach of empirical consciousness."</ref> In Kant's [[transcendental idealism]], experience only makes sense when organized by intuitions (namely, space and time) and concepts (such as causality). Assuming the content of these intuitions and concepts to be qualities of the world as it exists independently of human perceptual access, according to Kant, spawns seductive but senseless metaphysical beliefs (for example, extending the concept of causality beyond possible experience results in unverifiable speculation about a first cause). Deleuze inverts the Kantian arrangement: experience exceeds human concepts by presenting novelty, and this raw experience of difference actualizes an idea, unfettered by prior categories, forcing the invention of new ways of thinking (see ''[[#Epistemology|Epistemology]]'').

Simultaneously, Deleuze claims that [[univocity of being|being is univocal]], i.e., that all of its senses are affirmed in one voice. Deleuze borrows the doctrine of ''[[ontological]] [[univocity]]'' from the medieval philosopher [[Duns Scotus|John Duns Scotus]]. In medieval disputes over the nature of God, many eminent theologians and philosophers (such as [[Thomas Aquinas]]) held that when one says that "God is good", God's goodness is only analogous to human goodness. Scotus argued to the contrary that when one says that "God is good", the goodness in question is exactly the same sort of goodness that is meant when one says "Jane is good". That is, God only differs from humans in degree, and properties such as [[good and evil|goodness]], [[Power (philosophy)|power]], [[reason]], and so forth are univocally applied, regardless of whether one is talking about God, a person, or a flea.

Deleuze adapts the doctrine of univocity to claim that being is, univocally, difference. "With univocity, however, it is not the differences which are and must be: it is being which is Difference, in the sense that it is said of difference. Moreover, it is not we who are univocal in a Being which is not; it is we and our individuality which remains equivocal in and for a univocal Being."<ref>''[[Difference and Repetition]]'', p. 39.</ref> Here Deleuze at once echoes and inverts Spinoza, who maintained that everything that exists is a modification of the one [[substance theory|substance]], [[God]] or [[Nature]]. For Deleuze, there is no one substance, only an always-differentiating [[process philosophy|process]], an [[origami]] cosmos, always folding, unfolding, refolding. Deleuze summarizes this ontology in the paradoxical formula "[[pluralism (philosophy)|pluralism]] = [[monism]]".<ref>''A Thousand Plateaus'', p. 20.</ref>

''[[Difference and Repetition]]'' (1968) is Deleuze's most sustained and systematic attempt to work out the details of such a metaphysics, but his other works develop similar ideas. In ''Nietzsche and Philosophy'' (1962), for example, reality is a play of forces; in ''[[Anti-Oedipus]]'' (1972), a "[[body without organs]]"; in ''[[What is Philosophy? (Deleuze and Guattari)|What is Philosophy?]]'' (1991), a "[[plane of immanence]]" or "chaosmos".

=== Epistemology ===
Deleuze's unusual metaphysics entails an equally atypical [[epistemology]], or what he calls a transformation of "the image of thought". According to Deleuze, the traditional image of thought, found in philosophers such as [[Aristotle]], [[René Descartes]], and [[Edmund Husserl]], misconceives thinking as a mostly unproblematic business. Truth may be hard to discover—it may require a life of pure theorizing, or rigorous computation, or systematic doubt—but thinking is able, at least in principle, to correctly grasp facts, forms, ideas, etc. It may be practically impossible to attain a God's-eye, [[Objectivity (philosophy)|neutral point of view]], but that is the ideal to approximate: a disinterested pursuit that results in a determinate, fixed truth; an orderly extension of common sense. Deleuze rejects this view as papering over the metaphysical flux, instead claiming that genuine thinking is a violent confrontation with reality, an involuntary rupture of established categories. Truth changes thought; it alters what people think is possible. By setting aside the assumption that thinking has a natural ability to recognize the truth, Deleuze says, people attain a "thought without image", a thought always determined by problems rather than solving them. "All this, however, presupposes codes or axioms which do not result by chance, but which do not have an intrinsic rationality either. It's just like theology: everything about it is quite rational if you accept sin, the immaculate conception, and the incarnation. Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational—not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift."<ref>''Desert Islands'', p. 262.</ref>

''[[The Logic of Sense]]'', published in 1969, is one of Deleuze's most peculiar works in the field of epistemology. [[Michel Foucault]], in his essay "Theatrum Philosophicum" about the book, attributed this to how he begins with his metaphysics but approaches it through language and truth; the book is focused on "the simple condition that instead of denouncing metaphysics as the neglect of being, we force it to speak of extrabeing".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.generation-online.org/p/fpfoucault5.htm|title=Theatrum Philosophicum|website=www.generation-online.org}}</ref> In it, he refers to epistemological [[paradox]]es: in the first series, as he analyzes [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland|Alice in Wonderland]]'', he remarks that "the personal self requires [[God]] and the world in general. But when substantives and adjectives begin to dissolve, when the names of pause and rest are carried away by the verbs of pure becoming and slide into the language of events, all identity disappears from the self, the world, and God."<ref>''The Logic of Sense'', p. 3.</ref>

Deleuze's peculiar readings of the history of philosophy stem from this unusual epistemological perspective. To read a philosopher is no longer to aim at finding a single, correct interpretation, but is instead to present a philosopher's attempt to grapple with the problematic nature of reality. "Philosophers introduce new concepts, they explain them, but they don't tell us, not completely anyway, the problems to which those concepts are a response. [...] The history of philosophy, rather than repeating what a philosopher says, has to say what he must have taken for granted, what he didn't say but is nonetheless present in what he did say."<ref>''Negotiations'', p. 136.</ref>

Likewise, rather than seeing philosophy as a timeless pursuit of truth, reason, or universals, Deleuze [[Definitions of philosophy|defines philosophy]] as the creation of [[concept]]s. For Deleuze, concepts are not identity conditions or propositions, but metaphysical constructions that define a range of thinking, such as Plato's [[theory of forms|ideas]], Descartes's ''[[cogito ergo sum|cogito]]'', or Kant's doctrine of the faculties. A philosophical concept "posits itself and its object at the same time as it is created."<ref>''What Is Philosophy?'', p. 22.</ref> In Deleuze's view, then, philosophy more closely resembles practical or artistic production than it does an adjunct to a definitive scientific description of a pre-existing world (as in the tradition of [[John Locke]] or [[Willard Van Orman Quine]]).

In his later work (from roughly 1981 onward), Deleuze sharply distinguishes art, philosophy, and science as three distinct disciplines, each relating to reality in different ways. While philosophy creates concepts, the arts create novel qualitative combinations of sensation and feeling (what Deleuze calls "[[percept]]s" and "[[Affect (philosophy)|affects]]"), and the sciences create quantitative theories based on fixed points of reference such as the [[speed of light]] or [[absolute zero]] (which Deleuze calls "functives"). According to Deleuze, none of these disciplines enjoy primacy over the others:<ref>''Negotiations'', p. 123.</ref> they are different ways of organizing the metaphysical flux, "separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another."<ref>''Negotiations'', p. 125.</ref> For example, Deleuze does not treat cinema as an art representing an external reality, but as an ontological practice that creates different ways of organizing movement and time.<ref>''[[Cinema 1: The Movement Image]]''</ref> Philosophy, science, and art are equally, and essentially, creative and practical. Hence, instead of asking traditional questions of identity such as "is it true?" or "what is it?", Deleuze proposes that inquiries should be functional or practical: "what does it do?" or "how does it work?"<ref>''Negotiations'', p. 21: "We're strict functionalists: what we're interested in is how something works".</ref>

=== Values<!--'Control society', 'Society of control', 'Societies of control' and 'Socius (philosophy)' redirect here--> ===
{{redirect|Control society|the broader social-scientific concept|Social control}}
In ethics and politics Deleuze again echoes Spinoza, albeit in a sharply Nietzschean key. Following his rejection of any metaphysics based on identity, Deleuze criticizes the notion of an individual as an arresting or halting of differentiation (as the etymology of the word "individual" suggests{{clarify|how so? differentiation is not not dividing|date=February 2025}}). Guided by the [[Ethical naturalism|naturalistic ethics]] of Spinoza and Nietzsche, Deleuze instead seeks to understand individuals and their moralities as products of the organization of pre-individual desires and powers.<ref>{{Citation | title= Love's Lessons: Intimacy, Pedagogy and Political Community| first1= Timothy | last1= Laurie | first2= Hannah | last2= Stark | journal=[[Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities]] | volume= 22 | issue= 4 | pages= 69–79 | year= 2017 | url = https://www.academia.edu/35349930}}</ref> 

In the two volumes of ''[[Capitalism and Schizophrenia]]'', ''[[Anti-Oedipus]]'' (1972) and ''[[A Thousand Plateaus]]'' (1980), Deleuze and Guattari describe history as a congealing and regimentation of "[[desiring-production]]" (a concept combining features of [[Sigmund Freud|Freudian]] drives and [[Marxism|Marxist]] [[Labour economics|labor]]) into the modern individual (typically neurotic and repressed), the nation-state (a society of continuous control), and [[capitalism]] (an anarchy domesticated into infantilizing commodification). Deleuze, following [[Karl Marx]], welcomes capitalism's destruction of traditional social hierarchies as liberating but inveighs against its homogenization of all values to the aims of the market.

The first part of ''Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' undertakes a [[Universal history (genre)|universal history]] and posits the existence of a separate '''socius'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> (the social body that takes credit for [[Production (economics)|production]]) for each [[mode of production]]: the earth for the [[tribe]], the body of the [[Despotism|despot]] for the [[empire]], and [[Capital (economics)|capital]] for [[capitalism]]."<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Gilles Deleuze|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/|encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|access-date=1 July 2018}}).</ref><ref>[[Daniel W. Smith (philosopher)|Daniel W. Smith]], Henry Somers-Hall (eds.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze'', Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 137.</ref>

In his 1990 essay "Postscript on the Societies of Control" ("Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle"), Deleuze builds on Foucault's notion of the society of discipline to argue that society is undergoing a shift in structure and control. Where societies of discipline were characterized by discrete physical enclosures (such as schools, factories, prisons, office buildings, etc.), institutions and technologies introduced since World War II have dissolved the boundaries between these enclosures. As a result, social coercion and discipline have moved into the lives of individuals considered as "masses, samples, data, markets, or 'banks'." The mechanisms of modern '''societies of control'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> are described as continuous, following and tracking individuals throughout their existence via transaction records, mobile location tracking, and other [[personally identifiable information]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Deleuze|first1=Gilles|title=Postscript on the Societies of Control|journal= October|date=October 1992|volume=59|pages=3–7|jstor=778828}}</ref>

But how does Deleuze square his pessimistic diagnoses with his ethical naturalism? Deleuze claims that standards of value are internal or [[Immanence|immanent]]: to live well is to fully express one's power, to go to the limits of one's potential, rather than to judge what exists by non-empirical, transcendent standards. Modern society still suppresses difference and alienates people from what they can do. To affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, established identities must be overturned and so become all that they can become—though exactly what cannot be known in advance. The pinnacle of Deleuzean practice, then, is creativity. "Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary, because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?"<ref>''Essays Critical and Clinical'', p. 135.</ref>

=== Deleuze's interpretations ===
Deleuze's studies of individual philosophers and artists are purposely heterodox. Deleuze once famously described his method of interpreting philosophers as "buggery (''enculage'')", as sneaking behind an author and producing an offspring which is recognizably his, yet also monstrous and different.<ref>''Negotiations'', p. 6. See also: Daniel W. Smith, "The Inverse Side of the Structure: Zizek on Deleuze on Lacan", ''Criticism'' (2004): "Deleuze's all-too-well-known image of philosophical "buggery," which makes thinkers produce their own "monstrous" children"; Robert Sinnerbrink (in "Nomadology or Ideology? Zizek’s Critique of Deleuze", ''Parrhesia'' 1 (2006): 62–87) describes the "popular topic" of Deleuze's "notorious remarks"; Donald Callen (in "The Difficult Middle", ''Rhizomes'' 10 (Spring 2005)) describes "intellectual buggery" as "what Deleuze himself famously said about his encounters with the works of other philosophers." Deleuze's buggery analogy is also cited by, among many others, Brian Massumi, ''A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (MIT Press, 1992), p. 2; Slavoj Žižek, ''Organs without Bodies'' (Routledge, 2004), p. 48; Ian Buchanan, ''A Deleuzian Century?'' (Duke UP, 1999), p. 8; Jean-Jacques Lecercle, ''Deleuze and Language'' (Macmillan, 2002), p. 37; [[Gregg Lambert]], ''The Non-Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze'' (Continuum, 2002), p. x; [[Claire Colebrook]], ''Understanding Deleuze'' (Allen & Unwin, 2003), p. 73; and Charles Stivale, ''Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts'' (McGill-Queen's, 2005), p. 3.</ref>

The various monographs thus are not attempts to present what Nietzsche or Spinoza strictly intended, but re-stagings of their ideas in different and unexpected ways. Deleuze's peculiar readings aim to enact the creativity he believes is the acme of philosophical practice.<ref>''Desert Islands'', p. 144.</ref> A parallel in painting Deleuze points to is Francis Bacon's ''[[Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X|Study after Velázquez]]''—it is quite beside the point to say that Bacon "gets Velasquez wrong".<ref>''Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation'', pp. 46f: "[Bacon] let loose ... presences" already in Velázquez's painting. Cf. the passage cited above, from ''Negotiations'', p. 136: "The history of philosophy, rather than repeating what a philosopher says, has to say what he must have taken for granted, what he didn't say but is nonetheless present in what he did say."</ref> Similar considerations apply, in Deleuze's view, to his own uses of mathematical and scientific terms, ''pace'' critics such as [[Alan Sokal]]: "I'm not saying that [[Alain Resnais|Resnais]] and [[Ilya Prigogine|Prigogine]], or [[Jean-Luc Godard|Godard]] and [[René Thom|Thom]], are doing the same thing. I'm pointing out, rather, that there are remarkable similarities between scientific creators of functions and cinematic creators of images. And the same goes for philosophical concepts, since there are distinct concepts of these spaces."<ref>''Negotiations'', pp. 124–125.</ref>

=== Similarities with Heidegger ===
From the 1930s onward, German philosopher [[Martin Heidegger]] wrote in a series of manuscripts and books on concepts of Difference, Identity, [[Object (philosophy)|Representation]], and [[Event (philosophy)|Event]]; notably among these the [[Contributions to Philosophy|''Beiträge zur Philosophie'' ''(Vom Ereignis)'']] (Written 1936-38; published posthumously 1989); none of the relevant texts were translated into French by Deleuze's death in 1995, excluding any strong possibility of appropriation. However, Heidegger's early work can be traced through mathematician [[Albert Lautman]], who drew heavily from Heidegger's ''[[Being and Time|Sein und Zeit]]'' and ''Vom Wesen des Grundes'' (1928), which James Bahoh describes as having "...decisive influence on the twentieth century mathematician and philosopher [...] whose theory of dialectical Ideas Deleuze appropriated and modified for his own use."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bahoh |first=James |title=Heidegger and Deleuze: The Groundwork of Evental Ontology |publisher=Duquesne University |year=2016 |pages=3 |language=EN}}</ref> The similarities between Heidegger's later, [[Kehre|post-turn]], 1930-1976 thought and Deleuze's early works in the 60s and 70s are generally described by Deleuze-scholar [[Daniel W. Smith (philosopher)|Daniel W. Smith]] in the following way: <blockquote>"''Difference and Repetition'' could be read as a response to ''Being and Time'' (for Deleuze, Being is difference, and time is repetition)."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Smith |first=Daniel |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1302164289 |title=Essays on Deleuze |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-7486-4334-9 |pages=30 |oclc=1302164289}}</ref></blockquote>Bahoh continues in saying that: "...then ''Beiträge'' could be read as ''Difference and Repetition''<nowiki/>'s unknowing and anachronistic doppelgänger."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bahoh |first=James |title=Heidegger and Deleuze: The Groundwork of Evental Ontology |publisher=Duquesne University |year=2016 |pages=6–7 |language=EN}}</ref> Deleuze and Heidegger's philosophy is considered to converge on the topics of Difference and the Event. Where, for Heidegger, an evental being is constituted in part by difference as "...an essential dimension of the concept of event"; for Deleuze, being is difference, and difference "differentiates by way of events." In contrast to this, however, Jussi Backman argues that, for Heidegger, being is united only insofar as it consists of and ''is'' difference, or rather as the movement of difference, not too dissimilar to Deleuze's later claims:<blockquote>"...the unity and univocity of being (in the sense of being), its 'selfsameness,' paradoxically consists exclusively in difference."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Backman |first=Jussi |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/946567759 |title=Complicated Presence: Heidegger and the Postmetaphysical Unity of Being |publisher=SUNY Press |year=2015 |isbn=978-1-4384-5648-5 |pages=234 |oclc=946567759}}</ref></blockquote>This mutual apprehension of a differential, Evental ontology lead both thinkers into an extended critique of the representation characteristic to Platonic, Aristotelian, and Cartesian thought; as Joe Hughes states: "''Difference and Repetition'' is a detective novel. It tells the story of what some readers of Deleuze might consider a horrendous crime [...]: the birth of representation."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hughes |first=Joe |title=Deleuze's Difference and Repetition |publisher=Continuum |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-8264-2112-8 |location=London |pages=24 |language=EN}}</ref> Heidegger formed his critiques most decisively in the concept of the fourfold [''German: das Geviert''], a non-metaphysical grounding for the thing (as opposed to "object") as "ungrounded, mediated, meaningful, and shared"<ref>{{Cite book |author-link= Andrew J. Mitchell |last=Mitchell |first=Andrew |title=The Fourfold: Reading the Late Heidegger |publisher=Northwestern University |year=2015 |isbn=978-0-8101-3076-0 |pages=308 |language=EN}}</ref> united in an "event of appropriation" [''Ereignis'']. This evental ontology continues in ''Identität und Differenz'', where the fundamental concept expressed in ''Difference and Repetition'', of dethroning the primacy of identity, can be seen throughout the text. Even in earlier Heideggerian texts such as ''Sein und Zeit'', however, the critique of representation is "...cast in terms of the being of truth, or the processes of uncovering and covering (grounded in Dasein's existence) whereby beings come into and withdraw from phenomenal presence." In parallel, Deleuze's extended critique of representation (in the sense of detailing a "genealogy" of the antiquated beliefs as well) is given "...in terms of being or becoming as difference and repetition, together with genetic processes of individuation whereby beings come to exist and pass out of existence."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bahoh |first=James |title=Heidegger and Deleuze: The Groundwork of Evental Ontology |publisher=Duquesne University |year=2016 |pages=113 |language=EN}}</ref> 

Time and space, for both thinkers, is also constituted in nearly identical ways. Time-space in the ''Beiträge'' and the three syntheses in ''Difference and Repetition''<ref>{{Cite book |last=Deleuze |first=Gilles |title=Difference and Repetition |publisher=Continuum |year=2001 |isbn=0-8264-5957-9 |location=London |pages=79 |language=EN}}</ref> both apprehend time as grounded in difference, whilst the distinction between the time-space of the world [Welt] and the time-space as the eventual production of such a time-space is mirrored by Deleuze's categorization between the temporality of what is actual and temporality of the virtual in the first and the second/third syntheses respectively. 

Another parallel can be found in their utilization of so-called "generative paradoxes," or rather problems whose fundamental problematic element is constantly outside the categorical grasp fond of formal, natural, and human sciences. For Heidegger, this is the Earth in the fourfold, something which has as one of its traits the behaviour of "resisting articulation," what he characterizes as a "strife";<ref>{{Citation |last=Canan |first=Alberto Carillo |title=The Concept of "Earth" in Heidegger: History and the "Oblivion of Being" |date=2001 |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0930-0_8 |work=Passions of the Earth in Human Existence, Creativity, and Literature |pages=101–110 |editor-last=Tymieniecka |editor-first=Anna-Teresa |place=Dordrecht |publisher=Springer Netherlands |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-94-010-0930-0_8 |isbn=978-94-010-0930-0 |access-date=2022-05-03}}</ref> for Deleuze, a similar example can be spotted in the paradox of regress, or of indefinite proliferation in the ''Logic of Sense''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Deleuze |first=Gilles |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/920869689 |title=Logic of Sense |publisher=The Athlone Press |year=1990 |isbn=1-4742-3488-7 |location=London |pages=28 |language=EN |oclc=920869689}}</ref>

== Reception ==
In the 1960s, Deleuze's portrayal of Nietzsche as a metaphysician of difference rather than a reactionary mystic contributed greatly to the plausibility and popularity of "left-wing Nietzscheanism" as an intellectual stance.<ref>See, e.g., the approving reference to Deleuze's Nietzsche study in [[Jacques Derrida]]'s essay "''Différance''", or [[Pierre Klossowski]]'s monograph ''Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle'', dedicated to Deleuze. More generally, see D. Allison (ed.), ''The New Nietzsche'' (MIT Press, 1985), and L. Ferry and A. Renaut (eds.), ''Why We Are Not Nietzscheans'' (University of Chicago Press, 1997).</ref> His books ''[[Difference and Repetition]]'' (1968) and ''[[The Logic of Sense]]'' (1969) led [[Michel Foucault]] to declare that "one day, perhaps, this century will be called Deleuzian."<ref>Foucault, "Theatrum Philosophicum", ''Critique'' 282, p. 885.</ref> (Deleuze, for his part, said Foucault's comment was "a joke meant to make people who like us laugh, and make everyone else livid."<ref>''Negotiations'', p. 4. However, in a later interview, Deleuze commented: "I don't know what Foucault meant, I never asked him" (''Negotiations'', p. 88).</ref>) In the 1970s, the ''[[Anti-Oedipus]]'', written in a style by turns vulgar and esoteric,<ref>Sometimes in the same sentence: "one is thus traversed, broken, fucked by the [[Socius (philosophy)|socius]]" (''Anti-Oedipus'', p. 347).</ref> offering a sweeping analysis of the family, language, capitalism, and history via eclectic borrowings from primarily [[Marx]], [[Freud]], [[Lacan]], and [[Nietzsche]], but also featuring insights from dozens of other writers, was received as a theoretical embodiment of the anarchic spirit of [[May 1968 in France|May 1968]]. In 1994 and 1995, ''[[L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze]]'', an eight-hour series of interviews between Deleuze and [[Claire Parnet]], aired on France's [[Arte]] Channel.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/D-G/ABC1.html|title=Charles J. Stivale -- A-F Summary of L'Abecedaire de Gilles Deleuze|website=www.langlab.wayne.edu|date=6 December 2021}}</ref>

In the 1980s and 1990s, almost all of Deleuze's books were translated into English. Deleuze's work is frequently cited in English-speaking academia (in 2007, e.g., he was the 11th most frequently cited author in English-speaking publications in the humanities, between Freud and Kant).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=405956&sectioncode=26 |title=The most cited authors of books in the humanities |publisher=timeshighereducation.co.uk |date=2009-03-26 |access-date=2010-07-04}}</ref> In the English-speaking academy, Deleuze's work is typically classified as [[continental philosophy]].<ref>See, e.g., Simon Glendinning, ''The Idea of Continental Philosophy'' (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), p. 54.</ref>

However, some French and some Anglophone philosophers criticised Deleuze's work.

According to [[Pascal Engel]], Deleuze's metaphilosophical approach makes it impossible to reasonably disagree with a philosophical system, and so destroys meaning, truth, and philosophy itself. Engel summarizes Deleuze's metaphilosophy thus: "When faced with a beautiful philosophical concept you should just sit back and admire it. You should not question it."<ref>Barry Smith (ed.), ''European Philosophy and the American Academy'', p. 34.</ref>

American philosopher [[Stanley Rosen]] objects to Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche's [[eternal return]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Rosen|first=Stanley|title=The Mask of Enlightenment|year=1995|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=0-521-49546-6|pages=ix–x}}</ref>

[[Vincent Descombes]] argues that Deleuze's account of a difference that is not derived from identity (in ''Nietzsche and Philosophy'') is incoherent.<ref name=":0" />

[[Slavoj Žižek]] states that the Deleuze of ''Anti-Oedipus'' ("arguably Deleuze's worst book"),<ref>Žižek 2004, p. 21</ref> the "political" Deleuze under the "'bad' influence" of Guattari, ends up, despite protestations to the contrary, as "the ideologist of late capitalism".<ref>Žižek 2004, pp. 32, 20, and 184.</ref>

=== Allegations of idealism and negligence of material conditions ===
[[Peter Hallward]] argues that Deleuze's insistence that being is necessarily creative and always-differentiating entails that his philosophy can offer no insight into, and is supremely indifferent to, the material conditions of existence. Thus Hallward claims that Deleuze's thought is literally other-worldly, aiming only at a passive contemplation of the dissolution of all identity into the [[theophany|theophanic]] self-creation of nature.<ref>{{cite book|last=Hallward|first=Peter|title=Out of This World|year=2006|publisher=Verso|location=New York|isbn=978-1844675555}}</ref>

<!--Among French philosophers, -->Descombes<!-- mentioned above --> argues that his analysis of history in ''Anti-Oedipus'' is 'utter idealism', criticizing reality for falling short of a non-existent ideal of schizophrenic becoming.<ref name=":0">{{cite book|last=Descombes|first=Vincent|title=Modern French Philosophy|url=https://archive.org/details/modernfrenchphil0000desc|url-access=registration|year=1998|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=0-521-29672-2|pages=[https://archive.org/details/modernfrenchphil0000desc/page/155 155]–6, 175–8}}</ref>  

Žižek claims that Deleuze's [[ontology]] oscillates between [[materialism]] and [[idealism]].<ref>Slavoj Žižek, ''Organs without Bodies'', 2004, pp. 19–32, esp. p. 21: "Is this opposition not, yet again, that of materialism versus idealism? In Deleuze, this means ''The Logic of Sense'' versus ''Anti-Oedipus''." See also p. 28 for "Deleuze's oscillation between the two models" of becoming.</ref>

=== Relation with monism ===
[[Alain Badiou]] claims that Deleuze's metaphysics only apparently embraces plurality and diversity, remaining at bottom [[monism|monist]]. Badiou further argues that, in practical matters, Deleuze's monism entails an ascetic, aristocratic [[fatalism]] akin to ancient [[Stoicism]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Badiou|first=Alain|title=Deleuze: the clamor of being|year=2000|publisher=University of Minnesota|location=Minneapolis, MN|isbn=0-8166-3139-5}}</ref>

American philosopher [[Todd May (philosopher)|Todd May]] argues that Deleuze's claim that difference is ontologically primary ultimately contradicts his embrace of immanence, i.e., his monism. However, May believes that Deleuze can discard the primacy-of-difference thesis, and accept a [[Wittgenstein]]ian [[holism]] without significantly altering his practical philosophy.<ref>{{Cite book| publisher = Pennsylvania State Univ Pr| isbn = 978-0-271-01657-3| last = May| first = Todd| title = Reconsidering Difference: Nancy, Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze| date = 1997-07-01}}</ref>

It has more recently been argued by the Swedish philosopher {{ill|Rafael Holmberg|wd=Q131381563|short=yes}} that Deleuze's criticism of the history of philosophy as the metaphysical priority of identity over difference is a false distinction, and that Deleuze inadvertently reaches conclusions akin to such idealist philosophers of identity as [[Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling|Schelling]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Holmberg |first1=Rafael |title=The Indifference of Objectivity to Difference and Identity: The Paradox of Subject-Object Obfuscation Between Schelling and Deleuze |journal=Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy |date=2022 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=112–128 |url=https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1059}}</ref>

=== Subjectivity and individuality ===
Other European philosophers have criticized Deleuze's theory of subjectivity. For example, [[Manfred Frank]] claims that Deleuze's theory of [[individuation]] as a process of bottomless differentiation fails to explain the unity of consciousness.<ref>{{cite book|last=Frank|first=Manfred|title=What Is Neostructuralism?|year=1989|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|page=385|isbn=978-0816616022}}</ref> 

Žižek also calls Deleuze to task for allegedly reducing the subject to "just another" substance and thereby failing to grasp the [[nothingness]] that, according to Lacan and Žižek, defines [[subjectivity]]. What remains worthwhile in Deleuze's oeuvre, Žižek finds, are precisely Deleuze's engagements with [[Virtuality (philosophy)|virtuality]] as the product of negativity.<ref>Žižek 2004, p. 68: "This brings us to the topic of the ''subject'' that, according to Lacan, emerges in the interstice of the 'minimal difference,' in the minimal gap between two signifiers. In this sense, the subject is 'a nothingness, a void, which exists.' ... This, then, is what Deleuze seems to get wrong in his reduction of the subject to (just another) substance. Far from belonging to the level of actualization, of distinct entities in the order of constituted reality, the dimension of the 'subject' designates the ''reemergence of the virtual within the order of actuality''. 'Subject' names the unique space of the explosion of virtuality within constituted reality."</ref>

=== Science wars ===
{{further|Science wars}}
In ''[[Fashionable Nonsense]]'' (1997), physicists [[Alan Sokal]] and [[Jean Bricmont]] accuse Deleuze of abusing mathematical and scientific terms, particularly by sliding between accepted technical meanings and his own idiosyncratic use of those terms in his works. Sokal and Bricmont state that they don't object to metaphorical reasoning, including with mathematical concepts, but mathematical and scientific terms are useful only insofar as they are precise. They give examples of mathematical concepts being "abused" by taking them out of their intended meaning, rendering the idea into normal language reduces it to truism or nonsense. In their opinion, Deleuze used mathematical concepts about which the typical reader might be not knowledgeable, and thus served to display [[Boasting|erudition]] rather than enlightening the reader. Sokal and Bricmont state that they only deal with the "abuse" of mathematical and scientific concepts and explicitly suspend judgment about Deleuze's wider contributions.<ref name="SokalBricmont1999">{{cite book|author1=Alan Sokal|author2=Jean Bricmont|title=Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SM8zAd3z3ugC|date=29 October 1999|publisher=St Martins Press (ny)|isbn=978-0-312-20407-5|pages=22–25, 154–169}}</ref>

== Influence ==
{{Needs expansion|date=January 2023}}
Other scholars in continental philosophy, feminist studies and sexuality studies have taken Deleuze's analysis of the sexual dynamics of sadism and masochism with a level of uncritical celebration following the 1989 Zone Books translation of the 1967 booklet on [[Leopold von Sacher-Masoch]], ''Le froid et le cruel'' (Coldness and Cruelty). As sexuality historian Alison M. Moore notes, Deleuze's own value placed on difference is poorly reflected in this booklet which fails to differentiate between Masoch's own view of his desire and that imposed upon him by the pathologizing forms of psychiatric thought prevailing in the late nineteenth century which produced the concept of 'masochism' (a term Masoch himself emphatically rejected).<ref>Alison Moore, Recovering Difference in the Deleuzian Dichotomy of Masochism-without-Sadism, ''Angelaki'' volume 14, issue 3</ref>

[[Daniel W. Smith (philosopher)|Smith]], Protevi and Voss note "Sokal and Bricmont’s 1999 intimations" underestimated Deleuze's awareness of mathematics and pointed out several "positive views of Deleuze’s use of mathematics as provocations for [...] his philosophical concepts", and that Deleuze's epistemology and ontology can be "brought together" with [[dynamical systems theory]], [[chaos theory]], biology, and geography.<ref name='SEP'/>

==Bibliography==
;Single-authored
{| class="wikitable"
! Original French
! English Translation
|-
|''Empirisme et subjectivité'' (1953)
|''Empiricism and Subjectivity'' (1991)
|-
|''Nietzsche et la philosophie'' (1962)
|''[[Nietzsche and Philosophy]]'' (1983)
|-
|''La philosophie critique de Kant'' (1963)
|''Kant's Critical Philosophy'' (1983)
|-
|''Proust et les signes'' 
<small>(1964, 3rd exp. ed. 1976)</small>
|''[[Proust and Signs]]'' 
<small>(1973, 2nd exp. ed. 2000)</small>
|-
|''Nietzsche'' (1965)
|''Pure Immanence'' (2001)
|-
|''Le Bergsonisme'' (1966)
|''Bergsonism'' (1988)
|-
|''Présentation de Sacher-Masoch'' (1967)
|''[[Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty]]'' (1989)
|-
|''Différence et répétition'' (1968)
|''[[Difference and Repetition]]'' (1994)
|-
|''Spinoza et le problème de l'expression'' 
<small>(Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1968 & 1985)</small>
|''[[Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza]]'' (1990)
|-
|''Logique du sens'' (1969)
|''[[The Logic of Sense]]'' (1990)
|-
|''Dialogues'' 
<small>(1977, 2nd exp. ed. 1996, with [[Claire Parnet]])</small>
|''[[Dialogues II (Gilles Deleuze)|Dialogues II]]'' 
<small>(1987, 2nd exp. ed. 2002)</small>
|-
|''One Less Manifesto'' (1978)
| In ''Superpositions'' (with [[Carmelo Bene]])
|-
|''Spinoza – Philosophie pratique'', 2nd ed. 
<small>(Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1981)</small>
|''[[Spinoza: Practical Philosophy]]'' (1988)
|-
|''Francis Bacon – Logique de la sensation'' (1981)
|''[[Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation]]'' (2003)
|-
|''Cinéma I: L'image-mouvement'' (1983)
|''[[Cinema 1: The Movement Image|Cinema 1: The Movement-Image]]'' (1986)
|-
|''Cinéma II: L'image-temps'' (1985)
|''[[Cinema 2: The Time-Image]]'' (1989)
|-
|''Foucault'' (1986)
|''[[Foucault (Deleuze book)|Foucault]]'' (1988)
|-
|''Le pli – Leibniz et le baroque'' (1988)
|''The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque'' (1993)
|-
|''Périclès et Verdi: La philosophie de Francois Châtelet'' (1988)
| In ''Dialogues II'', revised ed. (2007)
|-
|''Pourparlers'' (1990)
|''Negotiations'' (1995).
|-
|''Critique et clinique'' (1993)
|''Essays Critical and Clinical'' (1997)
|-
|''L'île déserte et autres textes'' (2002)
|''Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953–1974'' (2003)
|-
|''Deux régimes de fous et autres textes'' (2004)
|''Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995'' (2006)
|}
;
;In collaboration with [[Félix Guattari]]
* ''Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 1. L'Anti-Œdipe'' (1972). Trans. ''[[Anti-Oedipus]]'' (1977).
* ''On the Line'', New York: [[Semiotext(e)]], translated by John Johnson (1983). 
* ''Kafka: Pour une Littérature Mineure'' (1975). Trans. ''[[Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature]]'' (1986).
* ''Rhizome'' (1976). Trans., in revised form, in ''[[A Thousand Plateaus]]'' (1987). 
* ''[[Nomadology: The War Machine]]'' (1986). Trans. in ''[[A Thousand Plateaus]]'' (1987). 
* ''Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 2. Mille Plateaux'' (1980). Trans. ''[[A Thousand Plateaus]]'' (1987).
* ''Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?'' (1991). Trans. ''[[What is Philosophy? (Deleuze and Guattari)|What is Philosophy?]]'' (1994).
* ''Part I: Deleuze and Guattari on Anti-Oedipus'' of ''Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972–77'' (2009) Edited by Sylvere Lotringer. (pp.&nbsp;35–118).
;
;In collaboration with [[Michel Foucault]]
* "Intellectuals and Power: A Discussion Between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault". ''[[Telos (journal)|Telos]]'' 16 (Summer 1973). New York: Telos Press (reprinted in ''L'île déserte et autres textes'' / ''Desert Islands and Other Texts''; see above)

== Documentaries ==
* ''[[L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze]]'', with Claire Parnet, produced by Pierre-André Boutang. Éditions Montparnasse.

== See also ==
{{Columns-list|colwidth=50em|
* [[Deleuze and Guattari]]
* [[Gilbert Simondon]]'s theory of [[individuation]]
* [[Kantian empiricism]]
* [[Problem of future contingents]]
* [[Speculative realism]]
* [[Transcendental nominalism]]
}}

== Notes ==
{{Notelist|30em}}
==References==
{{reflist|30em|group=note}}
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
{{commons category}}
{{wikiquote}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060111103417/http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/sommaire.html Webdeleuze] – Courses & audio {{in lang|fr|en|it|es|pt}}, etc.
* [[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]: "[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/ Gilles Deleuze]", by [[Daniel W. Smith (philosopher)|Daniel Smith]] & John Protevi.
* [[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]: [http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/deleuze.htm Gilles Deleuze]", by Jon Roffe.
* [https://archive.today/20120525150452/http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/texte.php?cle=187&groupe=Bibliographie%20et%20mondes%20in%E9dits&langue=2 Near complete bibliography] including various translations
* [[Alain Badiou]], "[http://www.lacan.com/baddel.htm The Event in Deleuze.]" (English translation).
* [http://www.protevi.com/john/DG/index.html Lectures and notes on work by Deleuze and Guattari.]
* [http://www.rhizomes.net Rhizomes.] Online journal inspired by Deleuzian thought.
* [http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/D-G/index.html Web resources] from [[Wayne State University]].
* [http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpdeleuze7.htm Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium (1995).]
* [[Institute of Art and Ideas]]: "[https://iai.tv/articles/deleuze-and-the-time-for-non-reason-auid-1243 Deleuze and the Time for Non-Reason]", by James R. Williams.

{{Deleuze-Guattari}}
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