Biography of Gilles Deleuze

The health of thought

January 18, 1925
November 4, 1995
The French philosophical landscape is characterized, in the years following the second world war, by the presence of a thinker who was able to give a substantial contribution to contemporary thought, not giving up such an original vision and value "eccentric" of its positions compared to traditional areas: starting from the activity around the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, Deleuze will know the academic reputation in France and in Europe. The philosopher was born in Paris the day January 18, 1925: young student will make his first decisive encounter at school with a professor named distinguished, Pierre Halbwachs, son of Maurice, one of the fathers of French sociology, which will bring you to the reading of the great classics of contemporary French literature (on all Andre Gide, Anatole France and Charles Baudelaire). He attended the Lycée Carnot in Paris and decides to enroll at the Sorbonne, where you will stay, since 1944, until 1948, when it achieved a Licentiate in philosophy: its professors are f. Alquié, j. Hippolyte and g. Canguilhelm. During this period will be just as decisive for the formation of the Parisian thinker, friendships with f. Châtelet and future writers like M.
Tournier and m. Butor. The college years are characterized also by a certain impatience and a polemic against traditional schools and its methodologies, marking the personality traits of the future Professor. The speculative route of the French thinker will be deeply scarred from the reading of these authors, which Deleuze, together with others not specifically mentioned in the Declaration, he dedicated monographs, articles, anthologies of writings and lectures. In the period between 1948 and 1957, when he became an Assistant in history of philosophy at the Sorbonne, he taught at high schools in Amiens, Orleans and Paris. At this time will publish its first monograph on the thought of David Hume, "Empirisme et subjectivité": followed by a long silence broken by the publication of its study on Nietzsche. Since 1960 the research moves to the CNRS, to then arrive in 1964 at the University of Lyon. The publication of two doctoral theses (as envisaged at that time sorting French University), the first (considered the theoretical masterpiece), under the direction of m. de Gandillac, entitled "difference and repetition" and the second, under the direction of f.
Alquié, "Spinoza and the problem of the expression", won him the appointment of Professor in 1969. Publishes at the same time another work intended to attract the interest of specialized environments, "the logic of sense", presenting the innovations in terms of form. Thanks to the efforts of his friend Michel Foucault will get a professorship at the University of Paris VIII-Vincennes, experimental University, extending the philosophical discourse to non-specialists, responding to a need ever-living in thinker Deleuze, worried to speak to individuals who did not have a philosophical education. During the 1970s the collaboration with French psychiatrist Félix Guattari (1930-1992), and the publication of works, the result of the Association, "anti-Oedipus ' and ' a thousand plateaus", will give the philosopher the fame in the international arena, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world.
Through a comprehensive criticism of psychoanalysis, the two authors, moreover, sooner or later, much later, at work, almost instructive "what is philosophy?", which could clarify the position with regard to aspects of classical philosophical tradition, it could be said, more creative and, at the same time, more functional to new openings of thought proposed by two scholars, with regard, for example , science and art. The vast production of Gilles Deleuze has always dedicated to this type of perspective, alternating volumes of historical character, texts devoted to film and literary criticism, through painting and Theater: in all contributions is never missing the author's philosophical technicality and awareness of qualified knowledge philosophy open to different instances. In the 1980s, near the sick leave from teaching in 1987, Gilles Deleuze will return to the kind of activity that had marked its beginnings, namely those exercises that allowed the historiographic Parisian thinker to build his philosophy in comparison with the great referees of his thought: among them seems to be of special importance is the study dedicated to his friend Michel Foucault , in which the synthesis of the philosophy of the celebrated French thinker wrought by Deleuze appears as a speculative meditation imbued with deep admiration.
Suffering from a serious illness (suffered from respiratory deficiencies that they had forced him to undergo a tracheotomy) Gilles Deleuze commits suicide on November 4, 1995, defenestrandosi from his home in Paris: he had 70 years. So says Jacques Derrida, when the death of a philosopher who has left a deep mark on contemporary thought: "the sign of a great philosopher and a great Professor. The historian of philosophy that drew a sort of election have to configure their own genealogy (the Stoics, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Lucretius, Nietzsche, Bergson, etc.) was also the inventor of philosophy that you forced ever within a few ' coveted ' philosophical [...] ". Two months before the tragic death will appear the text most significantly, an article titled "the immanence: a life," which, almost in the manner of a speculative view the legacy of a philosophy that sought to reflect on life and its many perspectives, to make thought a real «exercise of health '.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.