Gilles Deleuze was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth-century, and Smith is widely recognized to be one of his most penetrating interpreters, as well as an important philosophical voice in his own right. Combining his most important pieces over the last fifteen years along with two new essays, this book is Smith 's definitive treatise on Deleuze. The essays are divided into four sections, which cover Deleuze's use of the history of philosophy, an overview of his philosophical (...) system, an analysis of several Deleuzian concepts, as well as an assessment of his position within contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

In this article I analyse some moments of Nietzsche’s reception and influence between Europe and America (namely in Martin Heidegger, Giovanni Papini and Josiah Royce) from a pragmatist perspective, in order to show how a selective monism and a realist pluralism emerge from their interpretations of Nietzsche. On the basis of this historiographic and theoretical reconstruction, I emphasize that Nietzsche, through both his monism and his pluralism, can question any presumed irreversibility in the moral field. By recognising the subject’s possibility (...) of change, of reversing the only superficial irreversibility of its Da-sein, Nietzsche’s pragmatism in this sense represents a great theoretical achievement, indispensable for the definition of a new bio-anthropological paradigm, in which identity can effectively coexist with difference. (shrink)

I would like to offer an interpretation of the Genealogy of Morals, of the relationship of master morality to slave morality, and of Nietzsche's philosophy of history that is different from the interpretation that is normally offered by Nietzsche scholars. Contrary to Nehamas, Deleuze, Danto, and many others, I wish to argue that Nietzsche does not simply embrace master morality and spurn slave morality.1 I also wish to reject the view, considered simply obvious by most scholars, that the iibermensch develops (...) out of, or on the model of, the master, not the slave.2 And to make the case for all of this, I want to explore the relationship between Hegel's master-slave dialectic and the conflict Nietzsche sees between master morality and slave morality. That Nietzsche does not intend us to recall the famous master-slave dialectic of Hegel's Phenomenology as we read the Genealogy of Morals, I find difficult to believe. Yet very few commentators ever notice, let alone explore, this connection. (shrink)