DOI: 10.4231/23t0-nm63
title: Anti-Oedipus III, Lecture 2, 14 January 1974

description: &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Deleuze Seminars&lt;/em&gt; 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.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With &lt;em&gt;Anti-Oedipus &lt;/em&gt;published the previous year, this seminar clearly develops more consistently toward concepts in the different plateaus in &lt;em&gt;A Thousand Plateaus&lt;/em&gt;, and corresponding to this academic year are several publications linked to this development: in late 1973, Deleuze and Guattari present another chapter, plateau 2 in &lt;em&gt;A Thousand Plateaus, &lt;/em&gt;on Freud&rsquo;s case of &lsquo;The Wolf Man&rsquo;, and several months later, they publish an essay on Kafka&rsquo;s novel &lt;em&gt;The Castle,&lt;/em&gt; developing a separate project that will result in &lt;em&gt;Kafka. Towards a Minor Literature.&lt;/em&gt; Finally, with no available transcripts for academic year 1974-75, two more texts will be published during that missing year: material from another chapter which will become plateau 6 in &lt;em&gt;A Thousand Plateaus, &lt;/em&gt;on the Body without Organs, and publication of &lt;em&gt;Kafka. Towards a Minor Literature&lt;/em&gt; (1975).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In session 2, 14 January 1974, Deleuze seems to introduce the session as a &ldquo;terminological detour&rdquo;, but he remains within the problem of statements, the detour concerning the nature of being and notions connected to the topic, i.e., equivocity, analogy, and univocity. He shifts the focus back to univocity as something strange and difficult to think about, introducing Duns Scotus&rsquo;s views on univocal being, at the border of heresy, but maintaining being as physically analogical while metaphysically univocal. To get out of the analogical-univocal impasse Deleuze concludes, with Spinoza, that differences between beings consist in difference understood solely as degrees of power (&lt;em&gt;puissance&lt;/em&gt;), and not distinguished by their form, genus, or species. To a student&rsquo;s comment, Deleuze distinguishes Spinoza&rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;puissance&lt;/em&gt;, or potential energy, from Nietzsche&rsquo;s concept of will to power. Deleuze concludes the session by tracing how &lt;em&gt;The Ethics&lt;/em&gt; functions to undermine analogical representation, via an appearance of continuity which, in fact, is sequences of propositions, demonstrations, corollaries, and &lt;em&gt;scholia&lt;/em&gt;, hence a secret mode of discontinuity.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;No recording of this session is available currently. This dataset includes three files: a revised French transcription and new English translation in odt format, and the original French transcript from WebDeleuze. [WebDeleuze was founded by Richard Pinhas -- a student in Deleuze&#39;s seminars -- who, with the Deleuze family&#39;s support, developed transcripts and translations of many of the seminars including the Leibniz 1980 sessions.]&lt;/p&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;Dans la s&eacute;ance 2, le 14 janvier 1974, Deleuze semble introduire la s&eacute;ance comme un &laquo; d&eacute;tour terminologique &raquo;, mais il reste dans le probl&egrave;me des &eacute;nonc&eacute;s, le d&eacute;tour concernant la nature de l&rsquo;&ecirc;tre et les notions li&eacute;es au sujet, c&rsquo;est-&agrave;-dire l&rsquo;&eacute;quivoque, l&rsquo;analogie et l&rsquo;univocit&eacute;. Il ram&egrave;ne l&rsquo;attention sur l&rsquo;univocit&eacute; comme quelque chose d&rsquo;&eacute;trange et de difficile &agrave; penser, en introduisant les perspectives de Duns Scot sur l&rsquo;&ecirc;tre univoque, &agrave; la limite de l&rsquo;h&eacute;r&eacute;sie, mais en maintenant l&rsquo;&ecirc;tre comme physiquement analogique tout en &eacute;tant m&eacute;taphysiquement univoque. Pour sortir de l&rsquo;impasse analogique-univoque, Deleuze conclut, avec Spinoza, que les diff&eacute;rences entre les &ecirc;tres consistent en une diff&eacute;rence comprise uniquement comme des degr&eacute;s de puissance, et non distingu&eacute;e par leur forme, leur genre ou leur esp&egrave;ce. En r&eacute;pondant &agrave; un commentaire d&rsquo;un &eacute;tudiant, Deleuze distingue le terme &lt;em&gt;puissance&lt;/em&gt; de Spinoza, ou l&rsquo;&eacute;nergie potentielle, du concept de volont&eacute; de puissance de Nietzsche. Deleuze conclut la s&eacute;ance en retra&ccedil;ant comment l&#39;&lt;em&gt;&Eacute;thique&lt;/em&gt; de Spinoza fonctionne pour saper la repr&eacute;sentation analogique, par une apparence de continuit&eacute; qui, en fait, est constitu&eacute;e de s&eacute;quences de propositions, de d&eacute;monstrations, de corollaires et de scholies, donc d&#39;un mode secret de discontinuit&eacute;.&lt;/p&gt;
description: Seminar with only 3 sessions available, given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the Vincennes University. The second lecture available was presented on 14 January 1974.