PHI 520 Deleuze Seminar

Prerequisites: Enrollment in GCAS College Dublin MA Program or authorized by Dean of Student Affairs

Academic Level: Year 1 MA (open to the public for non-credit)

Credits: 3

Schedule: Saturdays Dec 3, 10, 17, Jan 7 at 1pm New York time

Instructor: Keith Faulkner, PhD

“To be done with the judgment of God,” perfectly describes Deleuze’s philosophy of immanence. “The death of God” matters little, he says, if we do not also bring about “the death of man.” It consists of the supposed power of the soul to control and to organize bodies. To make oneself a “body without organs,” in his terms, is to replace the faculty of judgment with an immanent method of comparing powers. As Deleuze writes,

Thus instead of merely invoking consciousness and concluding hastily in favor of the alleged power of the “soul” over the body, one will engage in a comparison of powers that leads us to discover more in the body than we know, and hence more in the mind than we are conscious of.

In this course, we will explore this alternative philosophical method. We will begin with a critique of Kant’s transcendental conditioning, which organizes bodies from above, in order to replace it with an affective genesis from within bodies. At the end of this course, researchers will begin to appreciate what Deleuze calls the non-philosophical reading of philosophy:

…on one hand, a systematic reading in pursuit of the general idea and the unity of parts, but on the other hand and at the same time, the affective reading, without an idea of the whole, where one is carried along or set down, put into motion or at rest, shaken or calmed according to the velocity of this or that part.

Intended Learning Outcomes:

• Ability to understand the basic structure and appreciation for Ability to engage texts and conversation critically and coherently

• Ability to communicate clearly and analytically about all the major subjects and figures that comprise this course

• Ability to understand the social and ecological consequences of language and their uses to which humanity has employed them.

Required Texts:

Deleuze, Gilles. Letters and Other Texts. Semiotext(e), 2020

Smith, Daniel W., Essays on Deleuze. Edinburgh University Press, 2012

Smith, Daniel W. (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Columbia University Press, 1994.

Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense. Columbia University Press, 1990.   

Deleuze, Gilles. Gilles Deleuze from A to Z. Semiotext(e), 2011.

Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Columbia University Press, 1983.

Deleuze, Gilles. Kant’s Critical Philosophy. University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Bowden, Sean. The Priority of Events: Deleuze’s Logic of Sense. Edinburgh University Press, 2011.

Accommodations:

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