Alan Saunders: At the age of seventy, Gilles Deleuze, the French philosopher, took his own life, on November 4th, 1995. He'd been a heavy smoker and suffered from a debilitating pulmonary ailment throughout the last 25 years of his life. He'd had a lung removed, undergone a tracheotomy, lost the power of speech and considered himself 'chained like a dog' to an oxygen machine. By the last years of his life, even handwriting required laborious effort.

Hello, this is The Philosopher's Zone, and I'm Alan Saunders, welcoming you to the first of two programs examining the work of one of the most influential and prolific French philosophers of the second half of the 20th century.

To guide us around the deep and complex subject of Deleuze's thought, we're joined by Robert Sinnerbrink who teaches philosophy at Macquarie University and is chair of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy. Robert, welcome to the show.

Robert Sinnerbrink: Thanks for having me.

Alan Saunders: What would you say is Deleuze's standing as a French philosopher of the 20th century?

Robert Sinnerbrink: That's a very good question. French philosophers, I think they tend to be grouped together as a single bunch or a single group. People will often talk about the French philosophers of the '60s, or the French post-structuralists, but Deleuze seems to fit very uneasily into any kind of straightforward category. I think among those philosophers, let's say Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and others, he seems to be the one philosopher whose work has really I think been taken up in all sorts of different areas, probably in the last 20 years or so in the English speaking world, in ways I think would be very hard to predict. So you have, for example, in film and media studies, a huge interest in Deleuze, in areas like ecology, ecological thinking, areas like architecture, as well as philosophy and ethics more generally. I suppose the thing that's striking about Deleuze is the very idiosyncratic relationship to the history of philosophy, and at the same time, a real passion for inventing new ways of doing philosophy, and it's those two aspects I think that make him very distinctive.

Alan Saunders: Well you talk about the very many areas in which his work has been taken up, and of course he himself makes reference in his work, to a vast range of topics: differential calculus, thermodynamics, geology, molecular biology, population genetics, ethology, embryology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, economics and linguistics and of course film studies, to which he contributed. But just to take one of the areas that you mentioned, and to look perhaps at what sort of practical effect his thought might have had, how did he affect ecological thinking?

Robert Sinnerbrink: Well, again, it's interesting to think about philosophers in terms of traditions, and I think Deleuze is one of those philosophers. And there is a tradition in philosophy of, you might call it vitalism or romanticism or philosophies of life, and there are other ways of describing this kind of philosophy; process philosophy is another term that we use. And for me, Deleuze has been taken up I think in interesting ways in relation to ways of thinking about the environment, or about nature, about ecology, about animals, because of his interest in life, or life construed very broadly. I said before he's a kind of vitalist philosopher. His mentor, one of the key influences I think, for his early thought was certainly Henri Bergson, who is probably the most famous French vitalist philosopher, as well as Nietzsche, Hume, and others as well. There's this focus on nature, on life, and the way philosophy can enliven, and if you like, open up a different way of relating to the natural world, that has been taken up in all sorts of interesting ways. So relating to the environment as we are part of it, we are a kind of expression of, or a constituent part of a larger whole, that we have to understand holistically, dynamically, as a kind of complex system, where things are inter-connected in complex ways, but at the same time there's enormous differentiation and individuation, and how to think those two dynamics together, you know, individuation on the one hand and a kind of complex whole on the other, that's dynamic and in motion, and constantly transforming.

Alan Saunders: He has an interesting view on how philosophy gets done. A lot of us think that philosophy has got something to do with Socrates wandering around the Athenian agora asking awkward questions, or the dialogues of Plato, or at least the modern academic seminar, a lot of people talking. But he thinks that thought takes form in writing, not in dialogue, not in discussion.

Robert Sinnerbrink: Now that's a very good point, and it's also one of the things that people have been troubled by, or at least, you know, there is a line of criticism of Deleuze as a philosopher, who doesn't really like to argue or debate, or engage in that kind of philosophical to and fro that we tend to think of as part and parcel of philosophy: you know, the philosophy seminar, the debate, the discussion, the arguments, the objections that are the lifeguard of philosophical discussion. Again, Deleuze has a quite idiosyncratic approach. There are other philosophers of this ilk I think, a kind of tradition you could say, where the practice of philosophy is about constructing a consensual map of the world, if you like, and this kind of philosophy doesn't really then end up having a lot of interest or time for technical debates. Now again, that's one of the aspects of Deleuze that's often taken as a criticism, you know, that, well, Deleuzean philosophy is about this kind of complex, metaphysical, almost baroque structure that's very impressive, but how do you argue or debate or enter into it. And again, I mean, it's a question of different styles or different ways of doing philosophy. He's quite scathing of the emphasis on communication and dialogue that's very common today, not because his a solipsist or some sort of sceptic, but I think it's because the key thing for Deleuzean philosophy is to be able to try and think things differently, to think anew. So if we're simply engaging in a kind of language game, where we're, you know, batting debating points back and forth, or just refining our terms, there's a place for that, but at the same time, we might be missing the opportunity to really push the boundaries of what we understand, or what we can conceptualise. So there's a strong idea I think of trying to push through, or break down the kinds of frameworks of thinking, of representation that we move within, or that we think within, and to try to see if we can push ourselves into thinking something new.

Alan Saunders: One of the consequences of this approach is that it's often quite difficult to understand what he's saying. I mean there's a lot of Deleuzean-speak in what he says. So is this the result of the complexity of his though, or his lack of interest in me wanting to understand him?

Robert Sinnerbrink: Again, fantastic question. And look, it's something I grapple with in my own sort of work or interest in Deleuze. And this is true also of a lot of other continental philosophers. I mean it's a similar problem, if you think about Heidegger, or maybe Jacques Derrida, or others as well, you know, very idiosyncratic, philosophical languages are immediately apparent when you read this philosophers. You know, there's lots of neologisms, lots of unusual turns of phrase, ways of using language, it's not sort of orthodox, dry, dusty, academic kind of prose. So there is a danger that you generate a kind of argot, or a kind of jargon that instead of opening up new ways of thinking, becomes a kind of end in itself. So there is a risk I think sometimes, with a philosopher like Deleuze, that we just get caught up in the Deleuzean terminology, the kind of Deleuzean phrases and coinages.

So the difficulty then is to try and think in the spirit of a Deleuzean philosophy, without simply getting caught up in the terminology. And again, only one of the things that's been interesting about the way Deleuze has been taken up in the English-speaking world, and certainly in Australia, I would say, is lots of people have been really concerned to try and if you like, translate Deleuzean philosophy into different areas, new debates, you know, whether it's in political philosophy, or in later ethics, aesthetics, and so on, and an attempt to try and show, 'Look, here's how this philosophy might work in a context that we're familiar with, that might be quite removed from the sort of original context in which Deleuze was writing. I mean one example might be the way Deleuzean concepts were used to think about the Mabo case and the whole concept of terra nullius and what does that mean from understanding our relationship to law. And I know Paul Patton and others have done really interesting work trying to make Deleuzean philosophy as a way of thinking about this very particular and very important Australian example, Australian case study, and seeing if Deleuzean philosophy can somehow help us think that in a fresher or a more enlightening way. You know, so your question's a good one. We do have to engage in debate and argument, that's true of Deleuze as much as any other philosopher. But at the same time we want to, so to speak, catch something of the spirit of the thinking, and not get too caught up in reproducing the terminology but try to find ways to think in a Deleuzean style.

Alan Saunders: Now Deleuze obviously is a continental philosopher, and there is a long-standing distinction - I'm not sure whether it's still going as strongly as it used to - but there's a long-standing distinction between Continental philosophers, particularly those of France and Germany, and the philosophers of the Anglophone world, including Australia. And in a way this hinges on the difference between two great movements of thought that really have their origins in the 17th century: rationalism and empiricism. Rationalist, the great European philosophers, say that we can have knowledge by virtue of our rational nature; Empiricists essentially say that there is nothing in the mind that doesn't get there by way of the organs of sense. Deleuze describes himself as an Empiricist. Why is that?

Robert Sinnerbrink: Yes. There is an element of provocation there. I mean Deleuze's context I think you know, as a young philosopher, was very much dominated by, you know, what historians of philosophy often call the three H's of Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, so there's this strong connection to Hegelian philosophy, Hegelian idolism - done in the French style, which is different from, say, British Hegelianism - and of course Phenomenology, German Phenomenology. So those were really dominant currents in postwar France. So Deleuze comes along with a very idiosyncratic, again, and unorthodox take on the history of philosophy, and the argument seems to be something like this: rather than look to the orthodox stories or histories, you know, we start with Rationalism, and then the British Empiricists come along and then we move to Idolism and so on, look for the minor or minoritarian tradition and see you know, in each age, in each epoch, you can see this alternative tradition of philosophers who are doing something unusual or different in respectively more mainstream philosophical traditions, look to those minor philosophers and see what it is that they're doing that's striking, that's unusual, and you'll usually find something like what Deleuze calls a philosophy of immanence, basically a kind of empiricist philosophy grounded in experience, but not, if you like, experience strictly taken in an epistemological sense as in Where's knowledge come from? It comes from experience. Deleuze is much more interested in asking the question, well how can experience be transformed, what are the conditions of real experience, not just possible experience, as Kant's question was. Now that immediately, if you pose the question that way, you're not just asking what can I know? You're asking what can I think and What can I become? So it immediately takes on a kind of transformative aspect, and that fits again, with this very, if you like, vitalist process philosophy orientation that Deleuze's metaphysics has. So if you like a philosopher like Hume, for Deleuze, what he's looking for is the unusual or radical aspects of Hume's philosophy, so he offers, again, a very original reading of Hume as a philosopher who's done away with this transcendental realm that becomes so important with Kant, and offers instead a radical, immanent philosophy, a radical empiricist philosophy, where we don't have to go beyond the conditions of experience to explain experience. We have to have a broad enough concept of experience to account for its complexity and the kind of loose unity that for Hume, the self actually was. And for that, you need to look at things like habit, association, the kind of mixture of psychology and naturalistic philosophy that Hume was famous for. So that's just one example, but what you find there is an emphasis on experience in a very broad sense, a kind of scepticism towards any kind of transcendental, other-worldly realm, and a focus on how experience can be transformed. But it's a way of trying to get out of this dichotomy between, as you put it, rationalism and empiricism. You know, we're looking for that point where philosophy doesn't just reflect the world or give us access to how things are in the world, some kind of accurate knowledge, we're also looking for the ways in which philosophy can transform what we experience, and what we can make of the world. So that's one way I try to characterise it, and in that sense, Deleuze as a Continental philosopher, is again unusual because, you know, he doesn't have the same kind of scepticism towards, say, science, and other forms of philosophy, as you can find in some Continental philosophers. You know, as you mentioned before, he draws very readily on all sorts of disciplines, including mathematics and physics and so on. But the way in which the philosophy is supposed to relate to those disciplines is more a constructive one, creative one, where we're not trying to so to speak, just get the world right and see what it's like; we're trying to draw from experience, and that includes domains of note, we're trying to draw concepts out that will allow us to again, experience things in a richer, or more vital, or transformative kind of way.

Alan Saunders: On ABC Radio National, you're with The Philosopher's Zone, and I'm talking about the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, with Robert Sinnerbrink from Macquarie University.

Robert, let's move to a central theme in Deleuze's thought and that's difference. What did he mean by difference and why was it important to him?

Robert Sinnerbrink: Right, yes that's the big question. I mentioned at the outset that Deleuze is often described as one of the philosophers of difference, French philosophers of difference, and it's clear that this is one of the absolutely key concepts or ideas in Deleuze's thought from start to finish. I mean, very simply put, I think the philosophical tradition from Plato onwards for Deleuze is really geared towards thinking about the world in terms of unity, identity, resemblance, analogy and so on. And there are good reasons for this, I mean if you like cognitive reasons. We really do need to map the world and understand, be able to identify objects, be able to navigate and predict as far as we can, what's coming up next, you know, in my immediate environment. So the kinds of cognitive ways we have of representing the world are, let's face it, for good evolutionary reasons, really important, really valuable. The problem though for Deleuze is that we as it were, get trapped by, or at least in some way limited by these familiar, habitual, you know, clichéd almost ways of representing and grasping the world. It's not that they don't work, they work terribly well, but they do also limit the kind of horizon or possibility of horizon of thinking and action that might otherwise be possible. So what Deleuze is interested in is looking at how representing the world in terms of identity and unity, conceptualising things in terms of the same. I mean we do this for example when we teach kids, you know, we say, well, you know, pick out the ones that look similar. You know, what's the next number in the series? And these are all very important cognitive operations that you know, centre on repetition, unity and sameness and identity and so on. But for Deleuze the problem there is that we tend to think in a way that subordinates or in some way obliterates forms of difference that might otherwise be extremely important. Philosophy, you know if you think about the very act of conceptualising something, what we're doing is picking out particulars, giving it a name or a concept, and grouping things together in terms of their similarities, you know, so apples and apples, pears and pears, and so on. Deleuze is one of those philosophers, a bit of a nominalist philosopher if you like, who thinks that the world really is made up of very singular events, or singular entities, things really are unique, and have their own idiosyncratic ontological features. So it's fine to conceptualise the world in terms of sameness, but in doing that, we really do miss, if you like, this flux, or this dynamism of reality at a level that generally escapes us. So you might say, well, that's all very well, but you know, how is philosophy or anything else for that matter, supposed to get to this level of experience, that's ordinarily inaccessible? Well this is where the idea of differences comes in. It's supposed to be that which makes possible the ordinary ways we have of representing the world. You know, if it weren't for differentiation between entities, we couldn't pick them out as thus and so; it's just that we tend to miss that, given the way that we ordinarily, habitually think. So what happens then is, if you like a critique of given forms of representation, an attempt to somehow push beyond those. Philosophy, if you like, then needs to draw on the ways of thinking offered by art or other forms of knowledge or relating to the world, to try and get a sense of what thinking difference will look like. I think this is why Deleuze when he's conceptualising or trying to philosophise about difference, again and again has recourse to examples from literature, from art, because those are forms of experience , of aesthetic experience, where we get some sense of what it would be like to grasp, or somehow intuit difference at this more fundamental level. It does put our ordinary frames of reference into flux, or into crisis, and, you know, there are, if you like, empirical examples of how art works, really Modernist art, that does exactly this. I mean, one really good example would be Deleuze's work on the British painter, Francis Bacon, and I mean there for Deleuze, as for many Continental philosophers, you look at an artist's work because you want to see what the philosophical significance of that work might be. And in the case of Bacon, it's a kind of visual art that really does give us some kind of sense of, or experience of this pre-representational level of difference, pure difference, or difference in itself.

Alan Saunders: He also wrote a book called The Logic of Sense. Now the idea of sense, what we mean when we use words to apply to things, that had been studied in close detail by two empiricist philosophers of late 19th and early 20th century, Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Deleuze acknowledges their work, but he also finds inspiration in Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. I'm very curious to know what he gets from Lewis Carroll.

Robert Sinnerbrink: Yes. Yes, again, fantastic reference. The Logic of Sense is along with difference and repetition, probably the other major text, or major work that Deleuze published in the late '60s, and it's where you find a lot of the kind of theoretical and philosophical reflection on difference and so on. But in this case it's focused on language, and it's again, a kind of peculiar philosophy of language like Deleuze develops. His interest in Frege and Russell and the whole I suppose, traditional philosophy of language discussion of reference and sense, or sense/ reference kind of relationships. But he's also very interested in Meinong, and Meinong's fascination...

Alan Saunders: This is the - he was Austrian, wasn't he? The Austrian philosopher, yes.

Robert Sinnerbrink: Yes, that's right. And this whole circle dealing with questions of logic and reference and sense at the time, and what's of interest in Meinong is this fascination with entities or phenomena that have a very peculiar kind of status, that can't be said to exist in any straightforward way, have some sort of sense or meaning, yet we struggle to specify them any more than that, they have this ontologically very peculiar indeterminate status. And Deleuze was interested in exploring, well if you think about ordinary notions of sense, and of reference, isn't there a background that we assume here, against which we make sense of the world, you know, we pick out entities, we make statements, we have propositions with this or that content, and the fascination that Lewis Carroll exerted for him was ,again, a kind of practical one. I mean Carroll was a logician and was interested in these paradoxes of logic, which he found brilliant creative expression in, by writing children's stories, like Alice in Wonderland. Through the Looking Glass, Hunting of the Snark and so on, and in these nonsense rhymes, I mean I think Deleuze quite literally takes these as kind of case studies in non-sense. So you've got something that makes a certain kind of sense, that draws on language, on linguistic elements, what was it, 'Twas Brillig and the slivy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe ...' etc. It sounds like language; you can read it to children and they'll laugh; it does make a certain odd kind of sense, yet it's non-sense. I mean English philosophy and literature is quite fascinated by non-sense, and there's a great tradition in it. So with Carroll as an addition here, he takes these paradoxes of non-sense, how can something be nonsensical yet at the same time, make an odd kind of sense? And makes children's fiction in all sorts of wonderful, paradoxical fictional writing out of that.

Alan Saunders: Well for more on Gilles Deleuze, or to share your thoughts on the subject with us and your fellow listeners, check out our website.

Robert Sinnerbrink, thank you very much for being with us.

Robert Sinnerbrink: Thank you very much.

Alan Saunders: Robert teaches philosophy at Macquarie University.

The show is produced by Kyla Slaven, Charlie McCune is the sound engineer, I'm Alan Saunders; I'll be back next week.