What is a Work of Philosophy?

The three slides below were created for a workshop that I led on the question, “What is a Work of Philosophy?”

The first two slides below, the darker slides, feature a passage interpolated from a lecture that Gilles Deleuze gave on Leibniz. This passage, which I have modified in a number of ways for my own purposes, has been a source of inspiration for me for more than a decade now. Deleuze’s likening of philosophers to painters and musicians is so intuitive for me because I feel as if philosophers’ creations, their concepts, have sounds, colors, rhythms, and shapes, and the making and studying of philosophy is a kinesthetic experience for me.

The third slide, the lighter slide, features a text transcribed from an old notebook of mine, circa 2015. It connects the two approaches to philosophy that I have sought to make my own for the past decade. “One can very well think without concepts,” Gilles Deleuze notes, yet his work is all about conceptualizing. Jacques Derrida’s work, on the other hand, is deconceptualizing: it would enable us to think without concepts, to elude and escape conceptual thinking when conceptual thinking inhibits the flow of thoughts.

Working with and through the work of both Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, this was my answer to the question, “What is a Work of Philosophy?”

1. A work of philosophy is a (de-/re-)construction that filters and channels flows of thought.

2. A lesser work of philosophy is a (de-/re-)construction that stops currents of thought from flowing and that generates stagnant pools of thought.

3. A greater work of philosophy is a (de-/re-)construction that generates flowing currents of thought and that dissipates stagnant pools of thought.