8.4 /10 1 Votes
Country France ISBN 978-0231079891 Translator Hugh Tomlinson Subjects Philosophy, Science | 4.2/5 Goodreads Language French Originally published 1991 Editor Félix Guattari | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Original title Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) Pages 256 (1996 Columbia University Press edition) Page count 256 (1996 Columbia University Press edition) Similar Gilles Deleuze books, Philosophy books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What is Philosophy? (French: Qu'est-ce que la philosophie?) is a 1991 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, respectively a philosopher and a psychoanalyst.
Contents
Background
Deleuze commented in a letter to one of his translators that in What is Philosophy? he was trying to return to "the problem of absolute immanence" and to say why for him Baruch Spinoza is the "prince of philosophers."
Summary
Deleuze and Guattari deal with the distinction between philosophy and science, arguing that the former deals with concepts and the latter with functions. They discuss the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mathematics.
Reception
The book became a best-seller in France in 1991. Physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont write in Fashionable Nonsense (1997) that in attempting to show how philosophy and science are distinct, Deleuze and Guattari use scientific terms such as "chaos" in incorrect or misleading ways. They argue that while in some passages of the book, the authors seem to discuss serious problems in the philosophy of science and mathematics, these passages prove to be largely meaningless on close inspection.