Product Description

"The question 'what is philosophy?' can perhaps only be posed lat in life, with the arrival of old age and the time for speaking concretely. It is a question posed in a moment of quiet restlessness, at midnight, when there is no longer anything to ask." Posing that question, Deleuze and Guattari worked together for what turned out to be the last tiome, to produce a book which can be seen as a condensation of everything they had written before, together and separately. Twenty years on from their endlessly influential Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari have lost none of their inspirational radicalism, only deepened it. Their book is a profound and careful interrogation of what it might mean to be a 'friend of wisdom', but it is also a devastating attack on the sterility of what has become, when 'the only events are exhibitions and the only concepts are products which can be sold'. Philosophy, they insist, is not contemplation, reflection or communication, but the creation of concepts. The first part of the book explores the concept, the 'plane of immanence' in which it can be born and the conceptual personae' which can activate it. It concludes with a brilliant account of philosophy's relation to social and economic development, from ancient Greece to the modern capitalist state. Part two considers other forms of thought: science, art, literature and music. By the light of its 'rivals', Deleuze and Guattari illuminate philosophy in all its distinctiveness, displaying the same light-footed erudition whether they are discussing Godel's Theorem, Proust and Pessoa, Mondrian or Boulez. Written with the energy and inventiveness that marked their earlier collaborations, What is Philosophy? is an enormous achievement. It is a vital book, not only for philosophers but for everyone concerned with the uses of human intelligence in a time when, as the authors remark, sales promotion has replaced critique.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #160110 in Books
• Published on: 1994-06-24
• Original language: French
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
"A very great book ... one of the rare ones which compel us to se things differently ... it will very soon become a classic." - Didier Eribon, Le nouvel observateur

About the Author
Giles Deleuze was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII until his retirement in 1987. Felix Guattari worked for many years at the psychiatric clinic of La Borde, near Paris. He died in 1992.

Customer Reviews

Roll out the inobjectifiable Brain!
Deleuze and Guattari's last cooperation marks out the distinctive force of philosophy as the creation of concepts in contrast to its rivals. Let us be clear this is quite simply an extraordinary book! Sure it comes in for a lot of criticism particulary for the departures it makes from Capitalism and Schizophrenia. However it is perhaps the finest exemplification of why Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy is amoung the most important of the age. Essentially a manifesto for immanence in thought, nonhierachically affirmed as philosophy, science and art, 'What is Philosophy?' is an intoxicated bath in that very immanence. In the tradition of the finest moments of Spinoza, Schelling, Bergson etc, this book sweeps us off our feet, to create a positive conception of thought that provides a refreshing antidote to the pessimism of the concept we find throughout modern philosophy from Adorno to Derrida. The message is that thinking is as possible and urgent as ever. Read this book! No more important work of Philosophy has appeared in the 1990's!