All posts tagged: deleuze

What Is the Baroque? Deleuze and Leibniz on Style and Thought

What Is the Baroque? Deleuze and Leibniz on Style and Thought

Published by Sam Flores

Add Us Summary Gilles Deleuze redefines the Baroque as a philosophical condition of continuous variation rather than merely an art style. Deleuze frames Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz as the ultimate Baroque thinker who replaced Cartesian dualism with living force. The Baroque House allegory connects lower material pleats to the upper windowless soul via pre-established harmony. The concept of the Fold serves as the core operation, bridging physical matter and spiritual perception. Baroque thought acts as an antidote to reductive rationality, favoring continuous, infinite complexity over rigid binaries. Show more   Beyond its traditional definition as an extravagant style, the Baroque is reframed by Gilles Deleuze as a unique philosophical condition of thought. Drawing on the metaphysics of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the Fold replaces Cartesian dualism with a universe of absolute connectivity, vital force, and continuous variation. Through the allegory of the Baroque House and the mathematical genius Leibniz, Deleuze demonstrates how reality operates as an unbroken, shifting fabric. This perspective provides an alternative genealogy of modernity that effectively challenges contemporary reductive, mechanistic rationality.   For Deleuze, …

What Is the Baroque? Deleuze and Leibniz on Style and Thought

How Deleuze “Folded Leibniz in Half”

Published by Sam Flores

Add Us Summary Deleuze “folds” Leibniz by turning a rationalist system into a dynamic philosophy of multiplying folds. The Fold is an operation, not a shape: it transforms matter and thought through inside/outside relations. For Deleuze, the Baroque is not just a style; it is a philosophical way of thinking in folds. Leibniz’s windowless monads become folded spaces, where the outside is internalized without becoming identical. Deleuze’s neo-Baroque helps rethink reality as fragmented, layered, and boundaryless. Show more   One could say Deleuze decided to “fold Leibniz in half.” But as he folded him once, he had to fold him again, over and over again, until each fold produced more folds. The infinite crimping, which the Leibnizian rationalist system should have been very susceptible to, suddenly produced as many neat folds as it gave birth to crumpled corners and numerous productive contradictions. And as the folds and creases accumulated, the more difficult it became to tell the difference between the inside and the outside of the surface. Resulting in a monstrous creation: the Fold.   Deleuze Turned to Leibniz Because the Most Orderly Metaphysician Was the Hardest to Fold Portrait of Gottfried Wilhelm …

What Is the Baroque? Deleuze and Leibniz on Style and Thought

What Is the Rhizome According To Deleuze?

Published by Sam Flores

Add Us Summary Concept of Rhizome: Introduced by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, the rhizome is a non-hierarchical, decentralized model of thought and organization, inspired by botanical root systems that grow laterally and unpredictably. Challenges Traditional Structures: It opposes linear, hierarchical systems and promotes multiplicity, interconnectedness, and fluidity in knowledge, power, and creativity. Key Characteristics: The rhizome emphasizes connection (everything links to everything else), heterogeneity (diversity and non-uniformity), and atemporality (non-linear time and development). Applications: It influences social movements (e.g., feminism, Black Lives Matter), art, and digital networks, fostering decentralized, collaborative, and innovative approaches to organization and creativity. Criticisms: Critics argue the rhizome can be overly abstract, difficult to apply practically, and may inadvertently create new forms of hierarchy despite its anti-authoritarian stance. Show more   Deleuze and Guattari are daring modern philosophers who question fixed thought systems. Among the most notable of their ideas is the rhizome, which denies any form of linear organization, celebrates multiplicity, and claims that unity is always lacunae. Instead of plain beginnings or derivations with separate independent …

What Is the Baroque? Deleuze and Leibniz on Style and Thought

Gilles Deleuze Really Admired Egyptian Art and Its Resilience

Published by Sam Flores

Summary A Crystalline Technique: Philosopher Gilles Deleuze saw Egyptian art not as primitive, but as a triumph of preserving eternal essences through a “crystalline” technique. Visual Mummification: The art’s flat, rigid style is a form of visual mummification, designed to rescue subjects from the decay of time. Haptic Vision: Egyptian art creates a “haptic” space, where the eye “touches” a flat surface, eliminating the distance between foreground and background. Resemblance Without Resembling: It achieves a truer resemblance by abandoning realism, capturing an eternal form rather than a fleeting, lifelike moment. Show more   Egyptian art does not always get its due credit. It often gets overshadowed by its Greek successor. The classical Western narrative and the history of ideas tend to favor Greek cultures as the wellspring of civilization. Late twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze offers a brand new way to think about Egyptian art; he invents a concept of the crystal. You might remember the images with flat two-dimensional surfaces. If you stare long enough at these cartoonish figures, you might feel an overwhelming sense of permanence. They refuse to budge even in our …

What Is the Baroque? Deleuze and Leibniz on Style and Thought

Deleuze Turned Leibniz’s Windowless Monad Into a Folded Space

Published by Sam Flores

Summary Deleuze recasts Leibniz’s windowless monad as a folded interior, not a sealed metaphysical box. The fold turns substance into a process of becoming, where interiority is produced, not given. Perception emerges from tiny petites perceptions, which build consciousness through differential relations. Leibnizian substance is redefined by events, not essences: what happens inside matters most. The subject becomes a dynamic point of view, formed through folds, clarity, and world-expression. Show more   In his book, The Fold (1988), as well as the lectures on Leibniz, French philosopher Deleuze puts forward a radical reframing of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s philosophy. While traditional scholarship views the Leibnizian monad as a windowless, isolated, and strictly hierarchical substance ordered by divine decree, Deleuze introduces a more dynamic account. By viewing the monad through the mathematical and aesthetic concept of the fold, Deleuze transforms substance from a fixed essence into a continuous manner of becoming. This provocative reinterpretation reframes perception, subjectivity, and interiority, entirely shifting our understanding of substance.   The Standard Monad Is Windowless, Self-Sufficient, and Ranked by God Philosopher in his Study (Filosoof in zijn studeervertrek), Jacob van Spreeuwen, 1645. Source: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam   The monad, …

Why Gilles Deleuze Preferred Spinozian Ethics Over Traditional Morality

Why Gilles Deleuze Preferred Spinozian Ethics Over Traditional Morality

Published by Sam Flores

Summary Deleuze champions Spinoza’s immanent ethics over transcendent morality, judging actions by their effect on one’s power to act. Spinozian ethics seeks joyful encounters that increase our capacity, rejecting morality based on sad passions like guilt and fear. The body is a site of knowledge and capacity, challenging the traditional philosophical hierarchy of mind over body. Traditional morality relies on illusions of consciousness like sin and free will to dominate people through obedience and shame. Show more   Spinoza was a significant influence on the French philosopher Deleuze. By reading Spinoza, Deleuze formulated a new theory of morality that rejects both the sad passions that often impose themselves through morality and the philosophy of transcendence that supports it. Spinoza’s Ethics offered a manual for self-guidance that rejected punishment. This is because Deleuze saw the ideas emerging from the geometrical method pioneered in Ethics as an impartial system of observations and descriptions of how bodies move and act upon one another.   Decomposing Transcendence The Dance, Henri Matisse, 1910. Source: The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg   Deleuze believes the most extraordinary achievement of …

Combating “Opinion”: Gilles Deleuze Meets Timothy “Speed” Levitch

Combating “Opinion”: Gilles Deleuze Meets Timothy “Speed” Levitch

Published by Jenni Sidey

Below we find a clip from The Cruise, a 1998 documentary by Bennett Miller that follows the now-infamous New York City tour bus guide Timothy “Speed” Levitch on some of his untraditional excursions into the “total cacophony” that is New York. In the clip, Levitch recalls a conversation wherein he denounces the city grid plan, only to be met with the response, “everyone likes the grid plan.” Levitch diagnoses this response as a form of the exclusionary power intrinsic to common sense. In this way, he allows us to appreciate Gilles Deleuze’s critique of “opinion,” as opposed to “thought,” in a refreshing light. In teaching Introduction to Philosophy, I find that conveying the difference between thought and opinion, critical insight and common sense, can be one of the most difficult tasks. While students often prove eager to weigh in on particular debates or passages, it can be challenging to grasp the difference between a well-argued position and an unscrutinized belief, a philosophically grounded argument and an expression of personal agreement or preference. A course that …