We welcome Craig Lundy, Reader in Social and Political Thought at the London Metropolitan University, and Robin Durie, Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Exeter, for this Faculty Colloquium. Lundy and Durie will give a research talk about the principle of sufficient reason in Deleuze's philosophy. The talk will be accessible to a broad audience, including students. You can find the abstract for the talk below.
Deleuze’s Problematic Principle of Sufficient Reason
Gilles Deleuze's interpretation and use of the principle of sufficient reason is an important element in his philosophy, especially in his seminal Difference and Repetition. Most of the scholarship that has examined this aspect of his work has focused on Deleuze's reading of Leibniz and Spinoza. This is understandable, not only because of Deleuze's explicit reference to these authors’ thoughts on the principle of sufficient reason, but also because they are commonly positioned as two of the most central figures in the tradition of the principle of sufficient reason. Lesser noted, however, is that Deleuze's views on the principle of sufficient reason are foregrounded in his studies of Hume, Bergson and Nietzsche. This paper will explore the extent to which these other contexts are responsible for setting the terms of Deleuze's mature treatment of the principle of sufficient reason.
Robin Durie is Honorary Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Exeter. He has edited and co-translated Bergson’s Duration and Simultaneity, and the transdisciplinary collection Time and the Instant. He has published articles on Bergson, Deleuze, Husserl, Derrida and Levinas, amongst others. More recently, he has applied fundamental research in complexity theory to the development of the transformative community regeneration programme Connecting Communities. On the basis of this work, he has become a leading practitioner and theoretician in the area of community engaged research, writing a number of sections of the Lancet Commission Report on “The Value of Death”; and co-authoring the Evaluation of the World Health Organisation’s Community Engagement Research Initiative.
Craig Lundy is a Reader in Social and Political Thought at London Metropolitan University. The majority of his research has been concerned with exploring the nature of transformational processes, in particular the role that history plays in shaping socio-political formations. Craig is the author of Deleuze’s Bergsonism (2018), History and Becoming: Deleuze’s Philosophy of Creativity (2012), and he co-edited with Daniela Voss the collection At the Edges of Thought: Deleuze and Post-Kantian Philosophy (2015), all published by Edinburgh University Press. His most recent book is the volume After Progress (Sociological Review Monograph Series, 2022), co-edited with Martin Savransky.
