Editing Gilles Deleuze (section)

== Life ==
=== Early life ===
Gilles Deleuze was born into a middle-class family in Paris and lived there for most of his life. His mother was Odette Camaüer and his father, Louis, was an engineer.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Beckman |first=Frida |title=Gilles Deleuze: Critical Lives |publisher=Reaktion Books |year=2017 |isbn=9781780237770 |pages=15}}</ref> His initial schooling was undertaken during World War II, during which time he attended the [[Lycée Carnot]]. He also spent a year in ''[[khâgne]]'' at the [[Lycée Henri IV]]. During the [[Nazi occupation of France]], Deleuze's brother, three years his senior, Georges, was arrested for his participation in the [[French Resistance]], and died while in transit to a concentration camp.<ref>[[François Dosse]], ''Gilles Deleuze and [[Felix Guattari]]: Intersecting Lives'', trans. Deborah Glassman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), p. 89.</ref> In 1944, Deleuze went to study at the [[University of Paris|Sorbonne]]. His teachers there included several noted specialists in the history of philosophy, such as [[Georges Canguilhem]], [[Jean Hyppolite]], [[Ferdinand Alquié]], and [[Maurice de Gandillac]]. Deleuze's lifelong interest in the canonical figures of modern philosophy owed much to these teachers.

=== Career ===
Deleuze passed the [[agrégation]] in philosophy in 1948, and taught at various [[Secondary education in France|lycées]] (Amiens, Orléans, [[Lycée Louis le Grand|Louis le Grand]]) until 1957, when he took up a position at the [[University of Paris]]. In 1953, he published his first monograph, ''Empiricism and Subjectivity'', on [[David Hume]]. This monograph was based on his 1947 DES (''{{Interlanguage link multi|diplôme d'études supérieures|fr}}'') thesis,<ref name="Schrift p. 120">Alan D. Schrift (2006), ''Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers'', Blackwell Publishing, p. 117.</ref> roughly equivalent to an [[Master of Arts|M.A.]] thesis, which was conducted under the direction of [[Jean Hyppolite]] and [[Georges Canguilhem]].<ref>Daniela Voss, ''Conditions of Thought: Deleuze and Transcendental Ideas'', Edinburgh University Press, 2013, p. 76.</ref> From 1960 to 1964, he held a position at the [[French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique|Centre National de Recherche Scientifique]]. During this time he published the seminal ''[[Nietzsche and Philosophy]]'' (1962) and befriended [[Michel Foucault]]. From 1964 to 1969, he was a professor at the [[University of Lyon]]. In 1968, Deleuze defended his two [[Doctorat d'État|DrE]] dissertations amid the ongoing [[May 68]] demonstrations; he later published his two dissertations under the titles ''[[Difference and Repetition]]'' (supervised by Gandillac) and ''Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza'' (supervised by Alquié).

In 1970, he was appointed to the [[University of Paris VIII]], an experimental school organized to implement educational reform.<ref>{{cite web |title=Gilles Deleuze |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/ |website=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=16 Feb 2025}}</ref> This new university drew a number of well-known academics, including Foucault (who suggested Deleuze's hiring) and the psychoanalyst [[Félix Guattari]]. Deleuze taught at Paris VIII until his retirement in 1987.

===Personal life===
Deleuze's outlook on life was sympathetic to [[Transcendentalism|transcendental]] ideas, "nature as god" ethics, and the [[Monism|monist]] experience. Some of the important ideas he advocated for and found inspiration in include his personally coined expression [[Pluralism (philosophy)|pluralism]] = monism, as well as the concepts of [[Being]] and [[Univocity of being|Univocity]].

He married Denise Paul "Fanny" Grandjouan in 1956 and they had two children.

According to James Miller, Deleuze portrayed little visible interest in actually ''doing'' many of the risky things he so vividly conjured up{{clarify|date=April 2021}} in his lectures and writing. Married, with two children, he outwardly lived the life of a conventional French professor. He kept his fingernails untrimmed because, as he once explained, he lacked "normal protective fingerprints", and therefore could not "touch an object, particularly a piece of cloth, with the pads of my fingers without sharp pain".<ref>James Miller, ''The Passion of Michel Foucault'', New York: Harper Collins, 1993, p. 196.</ref>

When once asked to talk about his life, he replied: "Academics' lives are seldom interesting."<ref>''Negotiations'', p. 137.</ref> Deleuze concludes his reply to this critic thus:

{{blockquote|What do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy?&nbsp;... If I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write.&nbsp;... Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad and reactionary arguments.<ref>''Negotiations'', pp. 11–12.</ref>}}

===Death===
Deleuze, who had suffered from respiratory ailments from a young age,<ref>François Dosse, ''Deleuze and Guattari: Intersecting Lives'', trans D. Glassman, CUP 2010, p. 98.</ref> developed [[tuberculosis]] in 1968 and underwent lung removal.<ref>François Dosse, ''Deleuze and Guattari: Intersecting Lives'', trans D. Glassman, CUP 2010, p. 178.</ref> He suffered increasingly severe respiratory symptoms for the rest of his life.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Bolzinger|first=Jean-Michel|date=26 December 2003|title=Gilles Deleuze et les médecins|url=http://www.ammppu.org/litterature/deleuze.htm|website=Association Médicale Mosellane de Perfectionnement Post Universitaire|access-date=4 October 2006|archive-date=5 May 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190505050918/http://www.ammppu.org/litterature/deleuze.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.ammppu.org/litterature/deleuze.htm#(4) |title=Gilles Deleuze et les médecins |access-date=4 October 2006 |archive-date=5 May 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190505050918/http://www.ammppu.org/litterature/deleuze.htm#(4) |url-status=dead }}</ref> In the last years of his life, simple tasks such as writing required laborious effort. Overwhelmed by his respiratory problems, he died by suicide on 4 November 1995,<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/156476/Gilles-Deleuze|title=Gilles Deleuze|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]|access-date=8 July 2009}}</ref> throwing himself from the window of his apartment.<ref>{{Cite web|title=French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze Commits Suicide at 70|url=https://apnews.com/article/bdba0e6c95bf6c5368be01fedfcff197|access-date=2021-04-15|website=AP NEWS}}</ref>

Before his death, Deleuze had announced his intention to write a book entitled ''La Grandeur de Marx'' (''The Greatness of Marx''), and left behind two chapters of an unfinished project entitled ''Ensembles and Multiplicities'' (these chapters have been published as the essays "Immanence: A Life" and "The Actual and the Virtual").<ref>François Dosse, ''Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Intersecting Lives'', pp. 454–455.  "Immanence: A Life" has been translated and published in ''Pure Immanence'' and ''Two Regimes of Madness'', while "The Actual and Virtual" has been translated and published as an appendix to the second edition of ''Dialogues''.</ref> He is buried in the cemetery of the village of [[Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.ccnoblat.fr/otsi_v2/images/publications/guides/Saint%20Leonard%20de%20Noblat.pdf|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20141018104643/http://www.ccnoblat.fr/otsi_v2/images/publications/guides/Saint%20Leonard%20de%20Noblat.pdf|url-status=dead|title=Communauté de Communes de Noblat|archivedate=18 October 2014}}</ref>