Gilles Deleuze, one of France's leading philosophers, was Profesor of Philosophy at the University de Paris VIII until his retirement in 1987. His other works include What is Philosophy? andThe Logic of Sense, both published by Columbia University Press.
This is a long-overdue, and skillful, translation of one of Deleuzes most important and original works...It occupies an important place in Deleuzes oeuvre as the first text, following a series of historical commentaries, in which he philosophizes on his own behalf. It occupies an equally important place in the evolution of French philosophy in the 20th century, as it articulates a profound critique of the philosophy of representation while constructing a metaphysics of difference freed from subordination to a logic of identity. While charting the development through the history of philosophy of the concepts of ' pure difference and ' complex repetition, Deleuze proposes a new image of thought, which readers familiar with his later works will recognize. A difficult and challenging text that has done as much as any to initiate the philosophy of difference that characterizes much recent French thought, this book is one of the classics of recent European philosophy.