Rousseau and Bergson

Deleuze taught philosophy at the Lycée Orleans from 1953-1955 and at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris from 1955-1957. He then became an assistant professor at the Sorbonne, where he taught from 1957-1960, replacing Jean Hyppolite, who had been appointed to a position at the École normale supérieure on rue d’Ulm.

At the Sorbonne, Deleuze taught a course on Wednesdays in Cavailles Hall from 2:00-3:00pm. In his 1957-1958 course, he lectured on Jean Wahl’s concepts of diversity, pluralism, the irreducibility of the many, and a philosophy of the “and.” In his 1959-1960 course, Deleuze focused on Rousseau and chapter three of Bergson’s Creative Evolution. It is these latter two courses from 1959-1960 that are available here.

The manuscripts of these courses have been preserved in the archives of the École normale supérieure at Fontenay Saint-Cloud in the ENS-LSH library in Lyon. The archive contains manuscripts of Deleuze’s lectures on Bergson (19 pp.), Rousseau (27 pp.), Kant (24 pp.), and Hume (38 pp.).

The English translation of Deleuze’s 1960 course on Rousseau (Lecture 01) is by Arjen Kleinherenbrink and is entitled “A Politics of Things.”

The English translation of Deleuze’s 1960 course on Bergson (Lecture 02) is by Brian Loban. It appeared in the journal SubStance 114 (2007), Vol. 36, No. 3, special issue on “Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution: 100 Years Later,” pp. 72-90, under the title “Lecture Course on Chapter Three of Bergson’s Creative Evolution.”

Deleuze, in an undated 15 minute tape, recorded a summary of his 1953 book on Hume which unfortunately is no longer available online.