Jason Cullen | The University of Queensland, Australia (original) (raw)
Papers by Jason Cullen
This thesis examines the ethical and ontological significance of Gilles Deleuze's Cinema 1: The M... more This thesis examines the ethical and ontological significance of Gilles Deleuze's Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Recent scholarship tends to read these texts for their contributions to film and media studies. This work develops a different focus by seeking to integrate Deleuze's encounter with cinema into his philosophical project as a whole. I argue that the philosophical significance of the two volumes of Cinema comes into view when these texts are situated at the intersection of the interconnected themes of ethics and ontology in Deleuze's thought. To demonstrate this unique contribution, I develop a reading of Deleuze's project which focuses on the importance of his critical engagement with Spinoza and Bergson to his own ethics and ontology. Deleuze's engagement with Spinoza may be fruitfully understood as the formulation of a problem that emerges at the point of convergence between ethics and ontology, a problem that Deleuze calls ethology. Through this concept, Deleuze argues that the characterisation and evaluation of the modes of an individual's life can only be Publications during candidature
Culture, Theory and Critique, 2011
In spite of common assumptions to the contrary, the debt to religion found in Deleuze’s philosoph... more In spite of common assumptions to the contrary, the debt to religion found in Deleuze’s philosophy is undeniable when one considers his use of the concept of univocity, which he takes primarily from Duns Scotus and finds at work in Spinoza. It seems to be generally accepted, however, that this concept is abandoned in Deleuze’s later career along with many of the religious overtones that necessarily accompanied this concept in his earlier work. Given that the general doxa around Deleuze is that God’s only place in Deleuze’s latter work is as the source of judgements we must resist (an interpretation that owes as much to Nietzsche as to Artaud), this is, perhaps, understandable. However, this doxa is not fair to the extent of the debt Deleuze owes to theology so, whilst Deleuze scholarship has recently turned its attention to the religious underpinnings of much of Deleuze’s thought, in this paper we wish not only to retrace these theological antecedents but to also examine the ways in which a specific concept that is rooted in philosophical theology is unpacked in the very genesis of Deleuze’s own thought. In doing this, we will ascertain the extent to which Scotus’ conception of univocal predication can be said to infuse Deleuze’s entire philosophical project, rather than just a specific portion of it, and how, then, God always inhabits the Deleuzean system even after Deleuze has forsaken an explicitly theological vocabulary.
This thesis examines the ethical and ontological significance of Gilles Deleuze's Cinema 1: The M... more This thesis examines the ethical and ontological significance of Gilles Deleuze's Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Recent scholarship tends to read these texts for their contributions to film and media studies. This work develops a different focus by seeking to integrate Deleuze's encounter with cinema into his philosophical project as a whole. I argue that the philosophical significance of the two volumes of Cinema comes into view when these texts are situated at the intersection of the interconnected themes of ethics and ontology in Deleuze's thought. To demonstrate this unique contribution, I develop a reading of Deleuze's project which focuses on the importance of his critical engagement with Spinoza and Bergson to his own ethics and ontology. Deleuze's engagement with Spinoza may be fruitfully understood as the formulation of a problem that emerges at the point of convergence between ethics and ontology, a problem that Deleuze calls ethology. Through this concept, Deleuze argues that the characterisation and evaluation of the modes of an individual's life can only be Publications during candidature
Culture, Theory and Critique, 2011
In spite of common assumptions to the contrary, the debt to religion found in Deleuze’s philosoph... more In spite of common assumptions to the contrary, the debt to religion found in Deleuze’s philosophy is undeniable when one considers his use of the concept of univocity, which he takes primarily from Duns Scotus and finds at work in Spinoza. It seems to be generally accepted, however, that this concept is abandoned in Deleuze’s later career along with many of the religious overtones that necessarily accompanied this concept in his earlier work. Given that the general doxa around Deleuze is that God’s only place in Deleuze’s latter work is as the source of judgements we must resist (an interpretation that owes as much to Nietzsche as to Artaud), this is, perhaps, understandable. However, this doxa is not fair to the extent of the debt Deleuze owes to theology so, whilst Deleuze scholarship has recently turned its attention to the religious underpinnings of much of Deleuze’s thought, in this paper we wish not only to retrace these theological antecedents but to also examine the ways in which a specific concept that is rooted in philosophical theology is unpacked in the very genesis of Deleuze’s own thought. In doing this, we will ascertain the extent to which Scotus’ conception of univocal predication can be said to infuse Deleuze’s entire philosophical project, rather than just a specific portion of it, and how, then, God always inhabits the Deleuzean system even after Deleuze has forsaken an explicitly theological vocabulary.