Leibniz - Philosophy and the Creation of Concepts, Lecture 3, 29 April 1980

<p><em>The Deleuze Seminars</em> is a collection of audio recordings, transcriptions, and English translations of, and supplemental materials from, the lectures French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave during his career at the University of Paris 8.</p>

<p>At the start of the 26 February 1980 seminar, Deleuze explains, “some of you asked me to do something that would be a kind of presentation on a very great philosopher, one that is very difficult, named Leibniz. So, I could do so unless there are any… if you have subjects or problems connected to your own research, we could see. … This depends greatly on you, a certain number of whom have been working with me for… a long time, a lot of years, and all that we’ve done for four or five years, I think are some very different things, but these are things focusing on some of the same notions. So, it could be very useful again to take up certain notions that we have worked on over several years…. So anything is possible; it’s up to you, but as of now, or in a coming meeting, I will do something on Leibniz… a special request.”</p>

<p>This brief seminar clearly predates publication of his 1988 book on Leibniz, <em>The Fold, Leibniz and the Baroque</em>, by 6 years, as well as the twenty-session seminar undertaken in 1986-87.</p>

<p>The third of five sessions focuses on an introduction to Leibniz's philosophy, particularly emphasizing the role of singularities as both psychological and mathematical concepts for infinite analysis through the concepts of compossibility and incompossibility, for which Deleuze offers three “solutions”: first, incompossibility as an infinite contradiction (solution rejected the previous session); second, given our finite understanding, the roots of compossibility will elude us (another rejected solution); third, Leibniz’s solution, to introduce the mathematical-psychological theory of singularities.</p>

<p>This dataset includes a .mp3 audio file of the original recorded lecture alongside the complete French transcription and English translation in odt format, and the original WebDeleuze French transcription. [WebDeleuze was founded by Richard Pinhas -- a student in Deleuze's seminars -- who, with the Deleuze family's support, developed transcripts and translations of many of the seminars including the Leibniz 1980 sessions.]</p>

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<p><em>Les Séminaires de Deleuze</em> 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>Une série de séminaires qui était donnée par le philosophe français Gilles Deleuze à l’Université de Paris 8. Ce cours est organisé dans un séminaire de 5 conférences (qui dure environ 11 heures) que Deleuze a enseigné d’avril 1980 à mai 1980.</p>

<p>La troisième séance de cinq consacrées à la philosophie de Leibniz, à la lumière des questions suivantes : qu'est-ce que c'est qu'une singularité au niveau mathématique, et qu'est-ce que Leibniz crée là-dedans ? … Deuxième question : qu'est-ce que c'est que la théorie leibnizienne des singularités psychologiques? Et dernière question : en quoi est-ce que la théorie mathématico-psychologique des singularités, telle qu'elle est esquissée chez Leibniz nous donne-t-elle une réponse à la question : qu'est-ce que l'incompossible, et donc à la question qu'est-ce que l'analyse infinie ? Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette notion mathématique de singularité ?</p>