DOI: 10.4231/wrxk-z390
title: Leibniz and the Baroque, Lecture 3, 18 November 1986

description: &lt;p&gt;The Deleuze Seminars is a collection of audio recordings, transcriptions, and English translations of, and supplemental materials from, the lectures French philosopher Gilles Deleuze gave during his career at the University of Paris 8. This seminar clearly prepares publication of his 1988 book on Leibniz, The Fold, Leibniz and the Baroque. This third lecture is organized within a 20-lecture seminar that Deleuze taught between October 1986 and June 1987, presented on November 18, 1986.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Having laid out the bases for studying &ldquo;Leibniz as Baroque philosopher&rdquo; in the first two sessions, here Deleuze offers a detailed analysis of theories of perspective and point of view in relation to the previously defined elements of the fold. Deleuze concludes that point of view serves as the subject of inclusion, and whereas the city is always folded, existing or included within the point of view, it is the accord of subjects or of points of view, i.e., of superjects. After reviewing the levels on which Leibniz speaks about point of view, Deleuze adds that each subject is like a concave mirror on the world and that each monad is a mirror of the universe according to its point of view. Deleuze situates the session&rsquo;s discussion on the Baroque house&rsquo;s upper floor, moving from inflection to inclusion within a point of view, provided that point of view has no reference to an exteriority and solely to other points of view, the information grid.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This meeting is exceptional because, in contrast to nearly all the others that are available only through audio recordings (usually with gaps due to cassette changes), the 18 November seminar was filmed for broadcast on RAI-3, directed by Marielle Burkhalter (as student in Deleuze&#39;s seminar), and accessible through YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEg4Tc40rWM), hence is a nearly complete class. Also, in contrast to the audio recordings, the viewer can see Deleuze&#39;s gestures as well as his use of the blackboard, an important context nearly entirely absent from the translations based on audio transcripts. At one point, however, there is an unexplained 90-second gap in the film, completed for the transcript and translation with access to the audio recording.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This dataset includes one .mp3 audio file of the original recorded lecture and the complete French transcription and English translation in odt format.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yEg4Tc40rWM?si=NskJGsDWgWomU9sd" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;


&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Les S&eacute;minaires de Deleuze sont une collection d&#39;enregistrements audio, de transcriptions et de traductions en anglais et de documents compl&eacute;mentaires des conf&eacute;rences que le philosophe fran&ccedil;ais Gilles Deleuze a donn&eacute; lors de sa carri&egrave;re &agrave; l&#39;Universit&eacute; de Paris 8.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Ayant &eacute;tabli les bases de l&rsquo;&eacute;tude de &quot;Leibniz comme philosophe baroque&quot; dans les deux premi&egrave;res s&eacute;ances, Deleuze aborde un examen &eacute;labor&eacute; des th&eacute;ories de perspective vis-&agrave;-vis des &eacute;l&eacute;ments d&eacute;finis quant au pli.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;La transcription s&rsquo;est faite, d&rsquo;abord, &agrave; partir de la piste sonore du film de la s&eacute;ance (disponible sur YouTube), et puis &agrave; partir des enregistrements disponibles &agrave; la BNF et &agrave; Web Deleuze. Pourtant, &agrave; un moment donn&eacute;, il semble que l&rsquo;enregistrement de la BNF ne corresponde plus &agrave; celui d&rsquo;un magn&eacute;tophone et corresponde plut&ocirc;t &agrave; la piste sonore du film. De toute mani&egrave;re, les indices temporels correspondent exceptionnellement au film plut&ocirc;t qu&rsquo;&agrave; l&rsquo;enregistrement.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Seminar of 20 sessions given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at Paris 8-St. Denis University, October 28, 1986, to June 2, 1987, Deleuze’s final seminar in his career. This third session was presented on November 18, 1986.