What is Grounding? is Gilles Deleuze’s first seminar, and is distinguished in that, rather than “taking an author from behind and giving him a child that would be his offspring, yet monstrous”, the work focuses instead on the question of grounding, defined both as “the sufficient reason for concrete entities”, and “the point of departure for philosophy”, in translator Arjen Kleinherenbrink’s terms. Rather than the foregrounding method, in which human subjective experience remains primary, here Deleuze affirms the centrality of a system, of things and the relations between things.
“Nothing less than the ur-text for Deleuze’s pre-1970s philosophy, an original sketch of his main themes and problems, which are all present in intensely compacted form . . . What is Grounding? is the only one of Deleuze’s lecture courses to devote itself directly to fundamental philosophical themes, rather than ventriloquising through the ideas of a philosopher of the canon . . . [and] concerns grounding, the great theme of modern philosophy: the starting point, the beginning. How does one begin in philosophy?”
– Christian Kerslake (Radical Philosophy)
DETAILS
Gilles Deleuze, What is grounding?
Translation by: Arjen Kleinherenbrink
This translation is from transcripted notes taken by Pierre Lefebvre.
Cover art: Robert Smithson, #7 Red Sandstone Mirror, 1971
Copyright (1956-57): Emilie Deleuze and Julien.
&&& Series: Mémoires Involontaire
Publication Date: 25 May, 2015
ISBN 978-0-692-45454-1
eBook, 185 pages.