Table Of ContentGEOPHILOSOPHY
Studies in Comparative
and
Continental Philosophy
Series Editors David Jones
Michael Schwartz
Jason Wirth
G OPHILOSOPHY
On Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari/s What Is Phi/osophy?
Rodolphe Gasché
Northwestern Un
Evanston, Illinois
BM0660327
Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
Copyright © 2014 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2014.
AlI rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gasché, Rodolphe, author.
Geophilosophy: on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's What is
philosophy? / Rodolphe Gasché.
pages cm. _. (Northwestern University studies in comparative and
continental philosophy)
"This book in the main consists of lectures that 1 first delivered in
2010 at the Collegium Phenomenologicum at Citta di Castello, Italy, and
subsequently expanded for a three-day seminal' at the Universidad Diego
Portales at Santiago, Chile, in 2011. In spring 2012 my gradua te lecture
course in the Department of Comparative Literature at the State University
of New York at Buffalo was devoted to the subject 'geophilosophy.' Tt was on
this occasion that 1 expanded the earlier lectures to the dimensions of the
book in its present form."
ISBN 978-0-8101-2944-3 (pbk.) - ISBN 978-0-8101-2972-6 (doth)
1. Deleuze, Gilles, 1925-1995. Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? 2. Guattari,
Félix, 1930-1992.3. Philosophy. 4. Earth (Planet)-Philosophy. 5. Science.
6. Logic. I. Title. II. Series: Nol'thwestern University studies in comparative
and continental philosophy.
B2430.D453Q47342014
100-dc23
2013025592
@ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
Amel'ican National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Matel'ials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Acknowledgrnents vii
Introduction ix
The Greek Mirac/ell 3
Il
2 Which Earth? 14
3 An Autochthonous No Longer Earthbound 23
4 The Friend, for Exarnple 36
5 Taking Flight 43
6 Liberating Opinion 65
7 The Fractalization of Greece 82
8 Earth-Thought 90
9 Earth, Nature, Cosmos 107
Notes 117
Bibliography 135
Index 139
Acknowledgments
This book in the main consists of lectures that 1 first delivered in 2010
at the Collegium Phenomenologicum at Citta di Castello, Italy, and sub
sequently expanded for a three-day seminar at the Universidad Diego
Portales at Santiago, Chile, in 201l. In spring 2012 my graduate lecture
course in the Department of Comparative Literature at the State Univer
sity of New York at Buffalo was devoted to the subject "geophilosophy."
It was on this occasion that 1 expanded the earlier lectures to the dimen
sions of the book in its present form. In summer 2012, 1 tested the ide as
presented in chapters 2 and 3 one last time during a workshop on geo
philosophy at the Zentrum für Literatur-und Kulturforschung in Berlin,
Germany.
1 am indebted to aIl who attended those lectures, seminars, and
workshops, and who provided me with constructive feedback as 1 was
bringing these investigations to a conclusion. Grateful thanks are due
to Donald Cross, who helped me a great deal with editing and prepar
ing the manuscript for publication. But above aIl 1 want to thank Bronia
Karst for her patience and encouragement throughout the time 1 worked
on this project. 1 cannot thank her enough.
vii
ntrod uction
1
vVhat Is Philosophy?, the last work published under the names of both
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, was, as their biographer, François
Dosse, acknowledges, "written somewhat differently than the earlier
books."l It "was manifestly written by Deleuze alone, but he agreed to a
coauthor credit with Guattari, as a tribu te to their exceptionally intense
friendship, suggesting too that the ideas developed in the book and its
language were the fruit of their common endeavors since 1969."2 In the
following commentary on VVhat Is Philosophy?, if l use the abbreviation
D&G to refer to both authors rather than each time spelling their names
in full, it is not only for reasons of economy but also to honor their
friendship and to pay tribute to the fact that Guattari suggested sorne re
visions and defined new directions, working, apparently, from the manu
script that Deleuze sent him. But perhaps more important than the fact
that the work was written primarily by Deleuze himself, the project to
write a book on VVhat 1s Philosophy? was conceived by Deleuze after D&G
had published A Thousand Plateaus. Dosse writes: "Indeed, ever since
A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze had been saying that he wanted to work on
this theme; his closing words to his final class at Paris-VIII in 1980 were,
'Next year, l have to find something new. My dream would be a course on
"what is philosophy?" , His students thought he was joking and broke out
laughing. During the 1980s, Deleuze repeated this to his students, saying
he had never managed to do the course on philosophy because he was
not yet ready to answer that question."3 Several other statements, such
as that in a letter to Guattari from 1981, or his comment in an interview
from 1988 following the publication of TheFold that he "want(s) to write
a book on 'What Is Philosophy?,'" indicate that the project to address
this question was continuously on Deleuze's mind.4 Dosse's observation
that VVhat 1s Philosophy? is "both a very personal project and something of
a crowning moment in a philosopher's life"5 is thus to the point. Indeed,
according to the first sentences of the book, the question "what is philos
ophy?" is one that "can perhaps be posed only late in life," after having
done philosophy aIl one's life without ever having had the leisure of ex
plicitly reflecting on what it is that one has been doing, and, "when there
ix
x
GEOPHllOSOPHY
is no longer anything to ask," the question "what is philosophy?" is the
crowning question in the life of the philosopher.6
The reading of vVhat Is Philosophy? that 1 propose hereafter does not
intend to establish what Deleuze's or, for that matter, D&G's philosophy
is. 1 do not pretend to have discovered the essence of their thought.
By contrast, 1 will be interested in what they themselves define as phi
losophy in distinction from the sciences and the arts and what it is that
they understand to have done while doing philosophy. Furthermore,
1 will be concerned with the authors' daim not only that philosophy
is a Greek thing but also that, as such, it is, for fundamental reasons,
geophilosophical in nature. Although it is only in this late work that this
point is made, 1 will also intimate that, rather than a marginal issue of
Deleuze's or D&G's conception of philosophy, a certain geocentrism is
from the beginning a central dimension of his, or their, thinking. In
deed, as 1 will argue, if aIl the principal traits that constitute philosophy
according to D&G-autochthony, philia, and doxa-imply in an essential
manner a concern with the Earth, it follows that what Deleuze or D&G
have been doing while doing philosophy has been marked by this con
cern from the start.
My commentary will thus focus on the concept of philosophy ad
vanced in VVhat 1s Philosophy? Everything that is established with regard to
the sciences and the arts will be taken up only inasmuch as it is necessary
to provide a more precise account of philosophy and its intrinsic rela
tion to the Earth. Systematic attention will therefore be given to exactly
how the three traits that constitute philosophy as something Greek are
grounded in this fundamental concern with the Earth. To elaborate on
the three traits in question a number of detours through D&G's Greek
sources and through the scholars on whose work they have relied to
make their point will prove to be inevitable. Indeed, in my reading of
D&G's last work 1 give privilege to their own sources for their thought
over the enormous Deleuze scholarship, which in any case has taken
up the issue of the geophilosophical, to my knowledge, only on a few
occasions. Methodically speaking wherever possible, 1 will also retrans
late their terminology back into more traditional philosophical concep
tuality, instead of merely rehashing it. D&G's technical language is not
self-explicatory and cannot be taken at face value. This concern with
retranslating D&G's peculiar conceptuality back into more conventional
terms distinguishes my reading also from Eric Alliez's The Signature of the
World, or VVhat 1s Deleuze and Guattari 's Philosophy?, the only other book
that, to my knowledge, is solely devoted to VVhat Is PhilosoplZy?ï ln addi
tion, special attention will be paid to the way D&G translate the language
and conceptuality of other thinkers into their own technical idiom. To
