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Deleuze Studies, 2010
In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze effectively argues that two types of relation between events gover... more In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze effectively argues that two types of relation between events govern their 'evental' or 'ideal play', and ultimately underlie determined substances, that is, worldly individuals and persons. Leibniz calls these relations 'compossibility' and 'incompossibility'. Deleuze calls them 'convergence' and 'divergence'. This paper explores how Deleuze appropriates and extends a number of Leibnizian concepts in order to ground the idea that events have ontological priority over substances 'all the way down'.
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 2005
Book chapters by Sean Bowden
The Oxford Handbook of Modern French Philosophy, 2024
Since the publication and subsequent English translation of "Deleuze: The Clamor of Being", a con... more Since the publication and subsequent English translation of "Deleuze: The Clamor of Being", a considerable amount of ink has been spilled probing Badiou’s critical encounter with Deleuze’s philosophy. We argue that, although Badiou ultimately mischaracterized Deleuze’s ontology of the multiple, on a rectied understanding of Deleuze’s philosophy and at a certain level of generality, the two thinkers share important theses regarding the role played by truth, events, and subjects in the production of the new. After clarifying the main claims comprising Badiou’s reading of Deleuze, particularly by situating them in relation to Badiou’s earlier and heavily politicized reviews of Deleuze’s work with Guattari, it raises some objections to Badiou’s reading and shows that Deleuze’s discussions of truth, the event, and the subject resonate with Badiou’s own treatment of these concepts in the "Being and Event" trilogy.
Deleuze and the Non/Human, 2015
The concept of agency in Deleuze's work has received no small amount of attention in the secondar... more The concept of agency in Deleuze's work has received no small amount of attention in the secondary literature. It is fair to say, however, that the treatment of Deleuzian agency has taken a variety of different and sometimes incompatible forms. A useful way of framing these differences in approach is to view them as turning on the question of the relation between human and nonhuman agencies, where 'nonhuman agency' sometimes means 'the agency of that which subtends the human', and sometimes 'the agency of entities other than human beings'. I would suggest that we can distinguish the ways in which scholars have understood Deleuze's conception of agency by dividing them into two broad camps. On the one hand, there are those who see Deleuze as denying agency to human beings because real agency is essentially nonhuman, in the first sense of this phrase. In other words, for a number of readers of Deleuze, agency must be ontologically identified with something like the 'virtual' ground of all actual things and the events attributable to them. On the other hand, there are those who understand Deleuze as granting agency to human beings. Within this second camp, however, we must further distinguish between those who take Deleuze to treat human and nonhuman agency in a symmetrical way (with 'nonhuman' in this case meaning animals, but also non-organic things); and those who see in Deleuze's work a connection between human agency and some form of nonhuman agency (in the first and/or second sense of this phrase), but who nevertheless also affirm a distinct kind of human intentional agency.
Deleuze Studies, 2010
In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze effectively argues that two types of relation between events gover... more In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze effectively argues that two types of relation between events govern their 'evental' or 'ideal play', and ultimately underlie determined substances, that is, worldly individuals and persons. Leibniz calls these relations 'compossibility' and 'incompossibility'. Deleuze calls them 'convergence' and 'divergence'. This paper explores how Deleuze appropriates and extends a number of Leibnizian concepts in order to ground the idea that events have ontological priority over substances 'all the way down'.
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 2005
The Oxford Handbook of Modern French Philosophy, 2024
Since the publication and subsequent English translation of "Deleuze: The Clamor of Being", a con... more Since the publication and subsequent English translation of "Deleuze: The Clamor of Being", a considerable amount of ink has been spilled probing Badiou’s critical encounter with Deleuze’s philosophy. We argue that, although Badiou ultimately mischaracterized Deleuze’s ontology of the multiple, on a rectied understanding of Deleuze’s philosophy and at a certain level of generality, the two thinkers share important theses regarding the role played by truth, events, and subjects in the production of the new. After clarifying the main claims comprising Badiou’s reading of Deleuze, particularly by situating them in relation to Badiou’s earlier and heavily politicized reviews of Deleuze’s work with Guattari, it raises some objections to Badiou’s reading and shows that Deleuze’s discussions of truth, the event, and the subject resonate with Badiou’s own treatment of these concepts in the "Being and Event" trilogy.
Deleuze and the Non/Human, 2015
The concept of agency in Deleuze's work has received no small amount of attention in the secondar... more The concept of agency in Deleuze's work has received no small amount of attention in the secondary literature. It is fair to say, however, that the treatment of Deleuzian agency has taken a variety of different and sometimes incompatible forms. A useful way of framing these differences in approach is to view them as turning on the question of the relation between human and nonhuman agencies, where 'nonhuman agency' sometimes means 'the agency of that which subtends the human', and sometimes 'the agency of entities other than human beings'. I would suggest that we can distinguish the ways in which scholars have understood Deleuze's conception of agency by dividing them into two broad camps. On the one hand, there are those who see Deleuze as denying agency to human beings because real agency is essentially nonhuman, in the first sense of this phrase. In other words, for a number of readers of Deleuze, agency must be ontologically identified with something like the 'virtual' ground of all actual things and the events attributable to them. On the other hand, there are those who understand Deleuze as granting agency to human beings. Within this second camp, however, we must further distinguish between those who take Deleuze to treat human and nonhuman agency in a symmetrical way (with 'nonhuman' in this case meaning animals, but also non-organic things); and those who see in Deleuze's work a connection between human agency and some form of nonhuman agency (in the first and/or second sense of this phrase), but who nevertheless also affirm a distinct kind of human intentional agency.
Being and Technology, 2013
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2011
... of subject-formation can complement in an important way Davidson's account of linguistic... more ... of subject-formation can complement in an important way Davidson's account of linguistic interpretation, and Paul Patton argues that Foucault's work on forms of governmental reason provides a vital supplement to Rawls's account of ... Sean Bowden. Deakin University. Librarians. ...
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Review by Sean Bowden of Jean Wahl, Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings, ed. Alan D... more Review by Sean Bowden of Jean Wahl, Transcendence and the Concrete: Selected Writings, ed. Alan D. Schrift and Ian Alexander Moore (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017). 291 pp.
Journal of Applied Philosophy