| Summary: | Introduction:
Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) was one of the major figures in French philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century. His work builds on the post-phenomenological approach to fundamental questions of thought, being and knowledge that is usually referred to as ‘continental philosophy’ (to distinguish it from the so-called ‘analytical’ approach that has dominated the discipline of Philosophy in the English-speaking world since the mid twentieth century). Deleuze’s early works are philosophically inventive re-readings of singular intellectual figures such as Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Bergson, whose metaphysics Deleuze re-imagined for a modern audience. His major works Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense appeared in the late 1960s, during a time of major political and social unrest across Europe (notably ‘the events’ in Paris of May 1968). Although Deleuze was not as publicly engaged with politics as his friend and colleague Michel Foucault, his collaborative work with the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari - in particular Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus - developed a complex and heterogeneous account of history and subjectivity (amongst many other topics) that has proved profoundly influential to critical social science. Deleuze also extensively engaged with questions of aesthetics, affect and perception, most notably in the two Cinema books which reflected his lifelong interest in the medium.
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