DOI: 10.4231/nwsq-7746
title: Leibniz and the Baroque, Lecture 12, 10 March1987

description: &lt;p&gt;A series of lectures given by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the University of Paris 8. This twelfth lecture is organized within a 20-lecture seminar that Deleuze taught between October 1986 and June 1987, presented on March 10, 1987.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Putting aside discussion of Leibniz&rsquo;s notion of substance, Deleuze proposes to discuss some problems of physics in Leibniz and Whitehead, with the help of Isabelle Stengers (in attendance). Deleuze calls &ldquo;Whitehead&rsquo;s cry&rdquo; to be: the predicate is irreducible to any attribute because the predicate is an event, and in fact, everything is an event. Following Whitehead, Deleuze insists that any &ldquo;actual occasion&rdquo; refers to others, each presupposing data that precede actual occasions, and since each new actual occasion defines something new, from concrescence to concrescence, with the actual occasion itself consisting of an aggregate of &ldquo;prehensions&rdquo;. Deleuze selects some examples, an instrument prehending other instruments (the fictional composer Vinteuil in Proust&rsquo;s &lt;em&gt;Remembrance of Things Past&lt;/em&gt;); Alban Berg&rsquo;s &ldquo;cry&rdquo; in &ldquo;Wozzeck&rdquo;, to which Deleuze links to the &lt;em&gt;Monadology&lt;/em&gt;, bodies in a perpetual state of flux. Hence, having an idea is an actual occasion, a concrescence, and to Leibniz, Deleuze attributes a filtering system, such as the action of light filtering from the shadows the dark depth of colors. He also associates this to the screening act, the &lt;em&gt;cribratio &lt;/em&gt;as an organization of the world, notably developed by Plato in &lt;em&gt;Timaeus&lt;/em&gt; that Deleuze recommends as reading for the next session.&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;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;Laissant de c&ocirc;t&eacute; la discussion de la notion leibnizienne de substance, Deleuze propose de discuter quelques probl&egrave;mes de physique chez Leibniz et Whitehead, avec l&rsquo;aide d&rsquo;Isabelle Stengers (pr&eacute;sente). &Agrave; la suite de Whitehead, Deleuze insiste sur le fait que toute &laquo; occasion actuelle &raquo; renvoie &agrave; d&rsquo;autres, chacune pr&eacute;supposant des donn&eacute;es qui pr&eacute;c&egrave;dent les occasions actuelles, et puisque chaque nouvelle occasion actuelle d&eacute;finit quelque chose de nouveau, de concrescence en concrescence, l&rsquo;occasion actuelle elle-m&ecirc;me consistant en un agr&eacute;gat de &laquo; pr&eacute;hensions &raquo;. Deleuze s&eacute;lectionne quelques exemples, un instrument qui pr&eacute;hende d&rsquo;autres instruments (le compositeur fictif Vinteuil dans &lt;em&gt;&Agrave; la recherche du temps perdu&lt;/em&gt; de Proust) ; le &laquo; cri &raquo; d&rsquo;Alban Berg dans &laquo; Wozzeck &raquo;, auquel Deleuze fait le lien avec la &lt;em&gt;Monadologie&lt;/em&gt;, des corps en &eacute;tat de flux perp&eacute;tuel.&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 twelfth session was presented on March 10, 1987.