A Li(f)e The World of Gilles Deleuze and Its Problems

Chris Chrappa

Date of Award

2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Berggren, Douglas

Keywords

Deleuze, Gilles, Plateaus, Oedipus

Area of Concentration

Philosophy

Abstract

Given the dearth of informed material on the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), 1 undertook a careful reading of his oeuvre and set out to explicate the key concepts and ideas contained therein. Since his books are infamously difficult, I sought various and somewhat more neutral contexts to both mediate and connect with Deleuze. Beginning with his reading of Plato (Chapter I), I trace through the history of Western science, mathematics, ethics, and philosophy (Chapters II and III) some of the consequences of what I call 'Plato's lie,' a moral decision made to the detriment and exclusion of alternative ways of thinking, existing, and investigating the world. I suggest that such fields as complexity theory, topology, evolutionary biology, and far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics have opened up the gates to many of these 'ways of being,' and show that Deleuze, despite appearances, engaged these fields seriously, albeit not without idiosyncrasy. My conclusions are quite general, that Deleuze viewed an open- mindedness to risk and uncertainty as a shift ftom 'lie' to 'life' (hence the title of the thesis), and that his work can be of value and relevance to people in any number of contexts, intellectual or otherwise.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS