CONTRIBUTI / 5 / Harrie Manders /
Are the main topics in the works of Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) significantly influenced by his study of the philosophy of Leibniz (1646-1716)? I shall approach this question by looking at some central concepts in the philosophy of Deleuze and will demonstrate how these themes go back to Leibniz. Deleuze characterized himself as a pure metaphysician. I compare Leibniz’s art of invention with Deleuze’s creation of concepts. In the opinion of Deleuze, Leibniz yielded to the most insane creation of concepts that we have ever witnessed in philosophy and Deleuze used and transformed many of these concepts to establish his own philosophy. Many of the concepts that Deleuze develops in Difference and Repetition regarding thinking and representation – the differential relation, singularities, multiplicities, the virtual, the problematic – are derived from the history of calculus. Differential calculus is a symbolism for the exploration of existence. Here Deleuze meets Leibniz.
