Description
Book SynopsisDeleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception offers the only full-length examination of the relationships between Deleuze, Bergson and Merleau-Ponty. Henri Bergson (18591941), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), and Gilles Deleuze (19251995) succeeded one another as leading voices in French philosophy over a span of 136 years. Their relationship to one another's work involved far more than their overlapping lifetimes. Bergson became both the source of philosophical insight and a focus of criticism for Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. Deleuze criticized Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology as well as his interest in cognitive and natural science. Author Dorothea Olkowski points out that each of these philosophers situated their thought in relation to their understandings of crucial developments and theories taken up in the history and philosophy of science, and this has been difficult for Continental philosophy to grasp. She articulates the dif
Trade Review"Expertly detailed by Dorothea Olkowski, this book reveals the profound implication and importance of understandings of ontology, multiplicity, and the sensible on phenomenology."—Gregg Lambert, author of To Have Done with the State of Exception, Syracuse University
"Dorothea Olkowski extracts from these three philosophers a sense of how to understand the outcomes and prospects of "continental" metaphysical thought today, avoiding both a logicist or scientific reduction of space, time, and experience to the objective framework and a classically phenomenological or transcendental-idealist location of the basis of metaphysics."—Paul Livingston, author of The Politics of Logic, The University of New Mexico
"In this deeply original study, Dorothea Olkowski gives a lucid and erudite version of the ideas connecting Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty and Peirce. Surprisingly, yet convincingly, complex arguments about formalism and logic explain why they respond differently to the problem of the relation of thought to life."—James Williams, Deakin University
"Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty offers a fresh, cutting-edge, and profoundly original examination of the complex relations between Deleuze, his inspiration Bergson, and his seeming "rival" Merleau-Ponty. Olkowski adeptly weaves through disparate domains – including aesthetics, physics, logic, philosophy of time, semiotics, mathematics, pragmatics, metaphysics, and phenomenology – to ultimately pave a way to address and answer the question: can philosophy itself become something new? Beautifully written, inspiring, and utterly compelling, Olkowski's book makes great advances in our understanding of these thinkers, all while proving exciting and enjoyable to read."—Corry Shores, author of The Logic of Gilles Deleuze: Basic Principles
"In her most recent opus, Dorothea E. Olkowski brilliantly takes her readers on a journey in the realms of arts and sciences that leads to the Cosmos in the company of the key figures of contemporary continental philosophy. A must for an insightful exploration of Deleuze/Guattari's pragmatic thinking and its interconnections with Bergson and Merleau-Ponty."—Alain Beaulieu, Laurentian University
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty
1. Naturalism, Formalism, Phenomenology, and Semiology in Postmodern Philosophy
2. Deleuze and Guattari's Critique of Logic
3. Bergson and Bergsonism
4. Duration, Motion, and Temporalization: Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty
5. Phenomenology and the Event: Merleau-Ponty's Radical Concepts
6. The Philosophy of the Event: The Dark Precursor, the Chaos, and the Cosmos
Bibliography
Index
