Leibniz and the Baroque, Lecture 6, 13 January 1987

<p>A series of lectures given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8. This sixth lecture is organized within a 20-lecture seminar that Deleuze taught between October 1986 and June 1987, presented on January 13, 1987.</p>

<p>Having finally completed the first part of the seminar, "Leibniz as Baroque philosopher”, Deleuze introduces here the second part of the course, “Principles and Freedom,” based on the ground work of earlier course material that roughly encompasses <em>The Fold, </em>chapters 1 and 2, and part of 3. The seminar’s part II starts with Leibniz’s conception of sufficient reason and the three forms of inclusion (cf. <em>The Fold</em>, chapter 4), but also with Leibniz’s understanding of the individual and the conceptions of compossibility and incompossibility (cf. <em>The Fold</em>, chapter 5). Deleuze follows Leibniz’s sense of the term “freedom” in relation to the word “multiple” as in a labyrinth with many paths, with "being free" meaning to inflect or fold oneself, falling under Leibniz’s principle of “sufficient reason”, i.e., everything that occurs has a reason. Deleuze refers to Leibniz’s assertions that, first, rather than create Adam as a sinner, God created the world in which Adam sinned, and second, the world does not exist outside the individual notions that express it (e.g., Adam, Caesar, Alexander). Leibniz’s assertions lead Deleuze to wonder why the opposite of an individual notion is possible, with the answer emerging from Leibniz’s concept of “incompossibility”, i.e., the possibility of Adam as non-sinner, incompossible with our world, but compossible with another, this concept left for the next session.</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>Ayant enfin terminé la première partie du séminaire, Leibniz comme philosophe baroque, Deleuze introduit le 13 janvier 1987 la deuxième partie du cours avec l’appui du travail déjà entrepris qui correspond grosso modo aux trois premiers chapitres de <em>Le Pli.</em></p>