Ebook: Deleuze, Kierkegaard and the Ethics of Selfhood

Explores Gilles Deleuze and Søren Kierkegaard’s radical ethics of ‘becoming what one is’

• Compares Deleuze and Kierkegaard on the topics of personal identity and moral philosophy
• Situates the two philosophers in relation to a tradition of post-Kantian reflection on identity and ethics
• Analyses Kierkegaard’s shifting status within Deleuze’s oeuvre, from his early ‘What is Grounding?’ lectures to his late, co-authored What is Philosophy?
• Elaborates an implicit materialist political philosophy contained in Deleuze and Kierkegaard’s work

Andrew Jampol-Petzinger pursues Gilles Deleuze’s significantly under-discussed interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard. He presents a view of ethics and selfhood that responds to theories of moral judgment and selfhood based on stable, substance-orientated forms of identity.

Starting from their common rejection of these categories of moral judgement, and looking at their shared projects of ethics as fundamentally a matter of becoming who one is, Jampol-Petzinger argues for a conception of normativity that privileges ideas of growth and self-overcoming while also recognising the importance and need for values adequate to leading a liveable life.