What is Grounding?

by Gilles Deleuze, Arjen Kleinherenbrink (Translator)

The inaugural text in the series is the first English language translation of the near-complete transcription/ lecture notes taken by a student enrolled in the earliest recorded course offered by Gilles Deleuze, What is grounding?
(Qu’est-ce que fonder?). It is here that the history of philosophy is engaged in a direct manner (prior to the “method of dramatization”); that the originating ideas of Difference and Repetition begin to develop; and, that the key to groundbreaking readings of Deleuze is introduced (e.g., Christian Kerslake’s Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy: From Kant to Deleuze).

Genres: Philosophy

185 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Deleuze is a key figure in poststructuralist French philosophy. Considering himself an empiricist and a vitalist, his body of work, which rests upon concepts such as multiplicity, constructivism, difference and desire, stands at a substantial remove from the main traditions of 20th century Continental thought. His thought locates him as an influential figure in present-day considerations of society, creativity and subjectivity. Notably, within his metaphysics he favored a Spinozian concept of a plane of immanence with everything a mode of one substance, and thus on the same level of existence. He argued, then, that there is no good and evil, but rather only relationships which are beneficial or harmful to the particular individuals. This ethics influences his approach to society and politics, especially as he was so politically active in struggles for rights and freedoms. Later in his career he wrote some of the more infamous texts of the period, in particular, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These texts are collaborative works with the radical psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, and they exhibit Deleuze’s social and political commitment.

Gilles Deleuze began his career with a number of idiosyncratic yet rigorous historical studies of figures outside of the Continental tradition in vogue at the time. His first book, Empirisism and Subjectivity, is a study of Hume, interpreted by Deleuze to be a radical subjectivist. Deleuze became known for writing about other philosophers with new insights and different readings, interested as he was in liberating philosophical history from the hegemony of one perspective. He wrote on Spinoza, Nietzche, Kant, Leibniz and others, including literary authors and works, cinema, and art. Deleuze claimed that he did not write “about” art, literature, or cinema, but, rather, undertook philosophical “encounters” that led him to new concepts. As a constructivist, he was adamant that philosophers are creators, and that each reading of philosophy, or each philosophical encounter, ought to inspire new concepts. Additionally, according to Deleuze and his concepts of difference, there is no identity, and in repetition, nothing is ever the same. Rather, there is only difference: copies are something new, everything is constantly changing, and reality is a becoming, not a being.

He often collaborated with philosophers and artists as Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Guy Hocquenghem, René Schérer, Carmelo Bene, François Châtelet, Olivier Revault d'Allonnes, Jean-François Lyotard, Georges Lapassade, Kateb Yacine and many others.

Reviews

[Talha C]

"But if the human being does not realize natural ends, this does mean that they do not exist. they do not lend themselves to realization, because the transformation of natural ends into cultural ends renders them infinite. This must be taken literally. The dead whom we love are an inexhaustible task for us. It matters little if we distance ourselves from that. It remains infinite. saying 'I love you' instead of saying 'I desire you' is to propose an infinite task."

[Katherine]

Available from this link : here
An odd find - recommended to me by a twitter account; this is essentially a transcription of a seminar by Deleuze from 1956-57. Apparently 1-to-1 from his mouth, these appeared online about two decades ago in the French, albeit in a raw and quite hard to comprehend form. This translation has the advantage of "cleaning up" the text, so to say, but is also riddled with inconsistencies - apart from poor spelling by the hand of the translator, there are still gaps and slippages that have to be filled in by the reader. Compared to the usual complexity of Deleuze, however, this is fairly approachable, albeit with the caveat that, as with every written seminar, it can present itself rather obscurely from one sentence to the next. The main content is considering the problem of grounding, sketching roughly from Parmenides' alethiea/doxa to Socratic dialogues to Cartesian doubt to Hume's psychologism, and then exploding into Kant and the post-Kantians. Bergson is mentioned here and there as a kind of limit figure, but the most attention is surrounding Kant.
Historically, this is incredibly interesting - a care for the post-Kantians is shown here (Fichte, Hegel, Heidegger, even Schelling and Husserl) that is almost entirely absent in Deleuze's published works, which seemingly dis-arms many of the criticisms that Deleuze simply did not read or understand their work. As has been present in discussions within the last decade of anglophonic Deleuze studies (a la Houle & Vernon and Somers-Hall), it seems that Deleuze is less combative to that "state philosopher" than the usual narrative prescribes, respecting Hegel's attempts at overcoming the problems of the transcendental idealism. Indeed, this reads mostly as a work of post-Kantian critique of the tradition of ontology, without necessarily betting his hand on the "death of metaphysics". Also of note here is Leibniz; while he has always maintained a certain position in Deleuze's thought, it was not until '88 'till he wrote a full monograph. The seminar, on the other hand, suggests that Leibniz is far more impactful to Deleuze's formative years, making explicit the dynamics of the differential which would appear in Difference and Repetition. Similarly, the reading of Kierkegaard via a (silent) Camus towards Shestov is something I've never seen explicitly commented on in discussions of Deleuze's work.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lecture series from 1956, but recorded in astonishing detail by one of Deleuze's students, exhibits a surprising but otherwise untold-of moment of Deleuze's thought. In relation to its title, the text shifts subtly from the question 'What is Grounding?' which is given a Platonic, then Hegelian answer, to the question 'What is grounding for?' in response to which Deleuze considers deeply both Kierkegaard and Heidegger. For a philosopher so frequently accused of ahistoricality, this text ehibits the centrality of history to the origin of concepts, as he recognises the specific cultural provenance of his own concept of repetition in 19th century Denmark. Otherwise, how closely he follows Hegel in these lectures overturns readings of Deleuze, such as that of the Open Marxists, on which his ultimate rejection of Hegelianism is a product of his failure to ever read, let alone consider, the great German philosopher. These lectures show that Deleuze had an intimate understanding of the Phenomenology of Spirit as well as the Science of Logic, and in this context he even endorses the definition of true positivity as the negation of the negation.

[Ishaan Saxena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lowkey a book of all time. Gilles was always a great historian of philosophy before he was a philosopher:
"In short, the choice of psychology [philosophy] may be strangely expressed thus: be an ethicist, a sociologist, a historian, before being a psychologist [philosopher], for being a psychologist [philosopher]." (Empirisme et Subjectivité, 2).

[Nalanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

อ่านทั้งคืนจนจบ แม้เล่มนี้ไม่ได้พูดเรื่องเบสิคขนาดนั้น ไม่ใช่หนังสือปรัชญาเบื้องต้นที่เป็นเล่มแรกๆ อันจะต้องอ่าน แต่เล่มนี้ก็เหมาะสำหรับปูพื้นปรัชญาทีเดียว โดยเฉพาะเกี่ยวกับ Immanuel Kant เป็นสำคัญ

[Bogdan Stefan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting introduction for anyone interested in the way Deleuze thinks. Too obtuse at times

[Anna Nicole Smith & Wesson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting early lectures from Gilly-boy. What is ground? That is the question. The question is the ground. etc.