Henry Somers-Hall

_ Source: _Volume 47, Issue 1, pp 85 - 107 The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of Henri Bergson to the philosophical development of Jean-Paul Sartre’s thought. Despite Sartre’s early enthusiasm for Bergson’s description of consciousness, and the frequent references to Bergson in Sartre’s early work, there has been virtually no analysis of the influence of Bergson’s thought on Sartre’s development. This paper addresses this deficit. The first part of the paper explores Sartre’s analysis of the function of the imagination in his two early works on the subject, _The Imagination_, and _The Imaginary_. I argue that many of Sartre’s central criticisms of what he calls “the illusion of immanence” can be traced back to Bergson, and that, despite Sartre’s rejection of Bergson’s account of consciousness, Sartre’s account of the imagination is still heavily indebted to Bergson’s logic of multiplicities. The second part argues that Sartre’s analysis of the imagination leads, in _Being and Nothingness_, to an account of freedom that still bears traces of his early Bergsonism, even if it reverses the direction of Bergson’s own analysis of freedom.

In this paper, I want to look at Deleuze’s philosophical heritage in two different senses. In the first part of the paper, I explore his relationship to perhaps the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger. Heidegger plays a central role in Deleuze’s early philosophy, and even when in his later collaborations with Guattari their explicit references to Heidegger are dismissive, Heidegger’s influence can clearly be detected, particularly in their critiques of other philosophers. In the second part of the paper, I look at Deleuze’s own contribution to philosophy, and to see how this contribution has been assessed by one of the most influential contemporary French philosophers, Alain Badiou. For Heidegger, Deleuze, and Badiou, perhaps the central problem for philosophy emerges from thinking about totality. For all three, the traditional metaphysical view of totality, derived from Aristotle’s concept of paronymy, occludes rather than solves the problem of how we characterise our most general concepts. As we shall see, Heidegger’s diagnosis of metaphysics, as constituted by what he calls onto-theology, is shared by all three philosophers, while their responses to this diagnosis differ. Deleuze and Badiou both reject Heidegger’s poetics of being in favour of the language of mathematics, but the question I want to explore in the final part of the paper is, which mathematics? The mathematics of the continuous, or the mathematics of the discrete?

The purposes of this paper are, first, to show the importance within Deleuze's aesthetics of the notion of the Gestalt, conceived as a figure against a background, and second to show that recognizing the importance of this notion leads to a sympathy for themes in the work of Merleau-Ponty. After showing the motivations for Merleau-Ponty's adoption of the concept of the Gestalt, and its application within Eye and Mind, I wish to show that despite the similarities in their analyses Merleau-Ponty's analysis is ultimately incapable of providing a complete description of the work of art.

The aim of this paper is to explore the metaphysical foundations of Throne of Blood , Kurosawa's reworking of Shakespeare's Macbeth . Using Hegel's theory of tragedy, I develop the distinction between Greek and modern tragedy, with their differing bases in ethical and subjective freedom. I then show that Noh drama also includes a very different metaphysical account, stemming from its theoretical roots in Buddhism. I then use these three differing accounts (Greek, modern and Noh drama) to explore the effect of Kurosawa's use Noh aesthetics in Throne of Blood on the metaphysical ground of the film itself

The aim of this paper is to explore the uses made of the calculus by Gilles Deleuze and G. W. F. Hegel. I show how both Deleuze and Hegel see the calculus as providing a way of thinking outside of finite representation. For Hegel, this involves attempting to show that the foundations of the calculus cannot be thought by the finite understanding, and necessitate a move to the standpoint of infinite reason. I analyse Hegel’s justification for this introduction of dialectical reason by looking at his responses to Berkeley’s criticisms of the calculus. For Deleuze, instead, I show that the differential must be understood as escaping from both finite and infinite representation. By highlighting the sub-representational character of the differential in his system, I show how the differential is a key moment in Deleuze’s formulation of a transcendental empiricism. I conclude by dealing with some of the common misunderstandings that occur when Deleuze is read as endorsing a modern mathematical interpretation of the calculus.

When students read Difference and Repetition for the first time, they face two main hurdles: the wide range of sources that Deleuze draws upon and his dense writing style. This Edinburgh Philosophical Guide helps students to negotiate these hurdles, taking them through the text step by step. It situates Deleuze within Continental philosophy more broadly and explains why he develops his philosophy in his unique way. Seasoned Deleuzians will also be interested in Somers-Hall's novel interpretation of Difference and Repetition.

The aim of this paper is to respond to the discussions by John McCumber and Joshua Ramey of my monograph, Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. In the first part of this paper, I analyse McCumber’s claim that Deleuze’s concept of difference is already present within Hegel’s thought in the form of diversity. I make the claim that Deleuze formulates his concept of difference as the transcendental ground for Hegelian diversity, arguing that as such it differs in kind from it. I show how Deleuze’s concept of difference leads him to develop an alternative solution to the one and the many to that of Hegel, and trace some of the systematic implications of this for both philosophers. In the second part of the paper, I engage with Ramey’s analysis of chance within Deleuze’s philosophy, arguing that Ramey wrongly looks for a model of chance in Deleuze in the category of the virtual, rather than in a transition between virtual and actual. I then show how a proper understanding of chance in Deleuze’s thought allows us to develop a non-teleological account of Deleuze’s ethics.

The aim of this paper is to explore why Deleuze takes up Hamlet's claim that ‘time is out of joint’. In the first part of this paper, I explore this claim by looking at how Deleuze relates it to Plato's Timaeus and its conception of the relationship between movement and time. Once we have seen how time functions when it is ‘in joint’, I explore what it would mean for time to no longer be understood in terms of an underlying rational structure. The claim can be understood as about a relationship between time and action. In the second part of this paper, I want to relate this new understanding of time to Hamlet itself, in order to see how temporality operates within the play. I will conclude by relating these two different conceptions of time out of joint to one another through Nietzsche's eternal return.

A critical account of the key connections between twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and nineteenth-century German idealist G. W. F. Hegel. Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation provides a critical account of the key connections between twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and nineteenth-century German idealist G. W. F. Hegel. While Hegel has been recognized as one of the key targets of Deleuze’s philosophical writing, Henry Somers-Hall shows how Deleuze’s antipathy to Hegel has its roots in a problem the two thinkers both try to address: getting beyond a philosophy of judgment and the restrictions of Kant’s transcendental idealism. By tracing the development of their attempts to address this problem, Somers-Hall offers an interpretation of the sweep of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, providing a series of analyses of key moments in the history of thought, including the logics of Aristotle and Russell, Kant’s own philosophy of judgment, and the philosophy of Bergson. He also develops a novel interpretation of Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, and situates his philosophy in relation to the broader post-Kantian tradition. In addition to Deleuze’s relation to Hegel, the book makes important contributions to the study of Deleuze’s philosophy of mathematics, as well as to the study of several underappreciated areas of Hegel’s own philosophy.