Henri Maldiney

Henri Maldiney (1912-2013) was an French philosopher who was one of the primary representatives of the phenomenological tradition in France. He was influenced by Husserl, Heidegger, and Binswanger, and his prolific writings focused primarily on issues in psychiatry and aesthetics.

Deleuze was notably influenced by Maldiney’s 1973 book Regard Parole Espace (Lausanne: L’Âge d’homme), in which Maldiney developd his concepts of “sensing,” “rhythm,” and “openness to the event.”  Deleuze seems to have taken up Maldiney’s interpretation of Kant’s concept of the sublime using the Cézanne’s notions of “chaos” and “catastrophe.”

Maldiney was friends with Jean Oury, who founded the Le Borde clinic where Félix Guattari worked, and whose practices were influenced by Maldiney’s writings on schizophrenia.

The “Association Internationale Henri Maldiney,” created in 2007, runs a website dedicated to Maldiney’s work, www.henri-maldiney.org, which includes includes a helpful introductory English-language article by Samuel Thoma and an essay (in French) on Maldiney’s influence on Deleuze by Jean-Christophe Goddard.