On Friday 9 November, the Philosophy Department at the University of Warwick will host a one-day workshop on the topic of Gilles Deleuze’sNietzsche and Philosophy:
Fifty years ago, Gilles Deleuze published his second book, a monograph on Nietzsche. In this book, Deleuze poses Nietzsche’s philosophy as an attempt to rethink Kant’s project as an alternative to Hegel’s. In his reading of Nietzsche, Deleuze develops his philosophy in contrast to the Hegelian dialectic and develops extensively for the first time a philosophy of affirmation. In addition to developing many of Nietzsche’s concepts, features of Deleuze’s later philosophy (e.g. new and dogmatic images of thought) appear for the first time in Nietzsche and Philosophy. However, the book has been marginalised in many areas of scholarship: by Hegelian scholars who reject Deleuze’s polemical stance against Hegel; by Nietzschean scholars who regard the book warily as too systematic a reading of Nietzsche’s philosophy; and by Deleuzian scholars who prefer those later works in which Deleuze “does philosophy” as opposed to his earlier, historical works.
The aims of the workshop are philosophical as well as historical: through close readings of the text and of scholarship about the text, papers will: (i) critically engage with the problems and tensions which occupy Deleuze in this work; (ii) and critically assess and evaluate the importance of this work both in its contribution to past and present Nietzschean and Deleuzian scholarship.
Anyone interested in attending this event should contact Keith Ansell-Pearson (k.j.ansell-pearson@warwick.ac.uk) or Simon Scott (S.Scott.3@warwick.ac.uk) for further information. There is a £5 registration fee for the workshop to cover the costs of providing tea and coffee and basic administrative costs. Places for the workshop are limited, and you are advised to register your interest as soon as possible.
