Article: OBITUARY: Gilles Deleuze

In the introduction to Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? (1991) the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his co-author the psychoanalyst Felix Guattari suggest that one cannot ask such a question until late in life, in old age which is the time to "speak concretely" at last. When that book was written, at the age of 65, Deleuze could hardly be called "old" by today's standards. But "What is philosophy?" is indeed the sort of question one asks oneself, as he tells us, "at midnight, when one no longer has anything to lose".

He goes on:

In younger days, of course, one never stopped asking it, but in a manner too indirect, or oblique, too artificial, too abstract, and one expatiated upon it, dominating it ...

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