Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time: A Critical Introduction and Guide

by James Williams

Overview

Throughout his career, Deleuze developed a series of original philosophies of time and applied them successfully to many different fields. Now James Williams presents Deleuze's philosophy of time as the central concept that connects his philosophy as a whole. Through this conceptual approach, the book covers all the main periods of Deleuze's philosophy: the early studies of Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson and Spinoza, the two great philosophical works, Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense, the Capitalism and Schizophrenia works with Guattari, and the late influential studies of literature, film and painting. The result is an important reading of Deleuze and the first full interpretation of his philosophy of time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780748638543
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/23/2011
Series:	Critical Introductions and Guides
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James Williams is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of York. He is the author of Edward Lear (Liverpool UniversityPress, 2018) and co-editor, with Matthew Bevis, of Edward Lear and the Play of Poetry (OUP, 2016). He has published articles on Alfred Tennyson, Samuel Beckett, Lewis Carroll, and Victorian comic verse.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Abbreviations ix

1 Introduction 1

Why Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of time? 1

The do's and don'ts of time travel 7

The critical power of Deleuze's philosophy of time 16

2 The first synthesis of time 21

The living present 21

Synthesis and method in the first synthesis of time 30

Of pebbles and their habits 38

The passing present 45

3 The second synthesis of time 51

A time within which time passes 51

The deduction of the pure past 59

Destiny and freedom 68

How to save all the past for us? 75

4 The third synthesis of time 79

From Descartes to Kant 79

Back to Plato 84

The pure and empty form of time 86

History, repetition and the symbolic image 95

Past and present as dimensions of the future 102

Transcendental dogmatism? 106

5 Time and eternal return 113

Only difference returns and never the same 113

Eternal return and death 118

Series and eternal return 124

Disparity and difference in eternal return 130

6 Time in Logic of Sense 134

Of wounds and time 134

How much, how and where? 138

Time and the surface between depths and heights 145

From principles to acts 154

7 Conclusion: the place of film in Deleuze's philosophy of time 159

Endnotes 165

Bibliography 194

Index 203

Editorial Reviews

Williams offers us a remarkable book – not only has he produced a Critical Introduction to the famous (and famously difficult) three syntheses of time, he has also invested in its implications to show us its centrality as a 'process philosophy of time'. This book renews the meaning of Deleuze’s early philosophy and invites the reader to rethink its relation to the promise of a new future in his later work with Guattari.

Eric Alliez