Leibniz and the Baroque, Lecture 15, 28 April 1987

<p>A series of lectures given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8. This fifteenth lecture is organized within a 20-lecture seminar that Deleuze taught between October 1986 and June 1987, presented on April 28, 1987.</p>

<p>Deleuze takes the opportunity to outline an early version of his study on the very important question, “What is philosophy?”, and then to begin to address a final point for the course’s second part, the notion of substance. Deleuze links the meaning of the Whitehead-Leibniz comparison to the philosophical enterprise, notably the statement “everything is event” since, for Whitehead, the components of the event are capable of making us understand its different domains and their relations. Deleuze then returns to the comparative study of the notion of substance, turning to the Greek use of the term in Aristotle as something concrete, “that which is” or “Be-ing” (<em>l’étant</em>), then jumping to Descartes and on to Leibniz. Deleuze examines the sense of “distinct” in Descartes who seeks to define each substance through an attribute belonging to it properly and positively, and he provides a logic of distinction with three types (abstraction, modal distinction, real distinction). Deleuze suggests in closing it is on Descartes theory of distinction that Leibniz’s polemic with him will explode.</p>

<p>This dataset includes one .mp3 audio file of the original recorded lecture and the complete French transcription and English translation in odt format.</p>

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<p>Les Séminaires de Deleuze sont une collection d'enregistrements audio, de transcriptions et de traductions en anglais et de documents complémentaires des conférences que le philosophe français Gilles Deleuze a donné lors de sa carrière à l'Université de Paris 8.</p>

<p>Deleuze saisit l’occasion d’esquisser une première version de son étude sur la question très importante « Qu’est-ce que la philosophie ? », puis de commencer à aborder un dernier point de la deuxième partie du cours, la notion de substance. Deleuze rappelle qu’à l’essentialisme commun à Aristote et à Descartes, Leibniz oppose un « maniérisme », et il ajoute un commentaire sur la manie des oppositions dans la pensée antique pour souligner la grande innovation du XVIIe siècle consistant à réduire les oppositions à une simple limitation, en substituant à la théorie des contraires une logique de pure distinction. Deleuze suggère en conclusion que c’est sur la théorie de la distinction de Descartes que la polémique de Leibniz avec lui va éclater.</p>