Categories for a Deleuzian Philosophy of Nature

My research project focuses on the distinction between psychosocial types and conceptual personae. The distinction was made by Gilles Deleuze (19251995) in his late masterwork What Is Philosophy? (1991), written in collaboration with Félix Guattari (19301992). This work consists of a contemporary philosophy of nature, one that is related to our inherently capitalist communication society and is compatible with modern scientific knowledge. My project is entitled Categories for a Deleuzian Philosophy of Nature, because the list of character traits that make up conceptual personae has to be seen as a table of categories. A conceptual persona is a tool invented by a philosopher to create new philosophical ideas or concepts. Accordingly, their character traits are categories that make possible the exercise and experience of philosophy as creative thinking. The primary aim of my project is to move forward with Deleuze and to elaborate the precise method of a contemporary philosophy of nature. Since all our modes of thought and existence are determined by prevailing opinions, this method has to explain how, or in what way, it is possible to escape the ordinary formation of opinion and to create new concepts, which do not immediately belong to opinion. My research project investigates the characteristics of psychosocial types with which the different modes of thought and existence can be associated, and deals with the character traits of conceptual personae that necessarily correspond to these characteristics. It makes an important contribution to Deleuze research, which has so far barely considered the connections and transitions between psychosocial types and conceptual personae, and decisively increases the international significance of the Deleuze research taking place in Austria. The study of the characteristics of psychosocial types is expected to lead to a typology that takes into account todays sociopolitical and economic preconditions. The examination of conceptual personae in turn is intended to explain how the traits of conceptual personae must be derived, so that the attempt to derive the traits, or categories for the creative thinking of philosophy, we need today can finally be made. Thus my project ultimately continues Deleuzes philosophy of nature in an innovative and independent way and serves a renewal of philosophy a renewal that is necessary to unfold philosophy as a living way of thinking, which is connected with the given preconditions and meets science at the level of its time.

The primary aim of the project was to investigate the method of philosophy's creative thinking in an engagement with the philosophy of nature that Gilles Deleuze sets out with Félix Guattari in "What is Philosophy?", published in 1991. The project focused on the distinction between psychosocial types and conceptual personae that Deleuze and Guattari advance in "What is Philosophy?". A conceptual persona is a tool invented by a philosopher to free her thinking from ordinary routines dominated by opinion, so that she is able to create new philosophical ideas or concepts. Although Deleuze and Guattari present the conceptual persona as one of the three elements of philosophy, its nature, function and, especially, its connection to psychosocial types, had not been considered by Deleuze scholars. The project revealed that the list of character traits that, for Deleuze and Guattari, make up conceptual personae must be regarded as a table of categories that enable the exercise and experience of philosophy as creative thinking. Thus, the conceptual persona is the element that allows us to elaborate the method for creative thinking as a precise approach with convincing and transparent results. This method takes into account the fact that a philosopher, with his modes of existence, is entangled in the formation of history just like any other psychosocial type. The project significantly expanded the field of Deleuze research in two ways. Firstly, it did so by articulating the connections and transitions between the psychosocial types and the conceptual personae, and by redefining the method of philosophy on the basis of the element of the conceptual persona; secondly, it elaborated Deleuze and Guattari's typology. One tangible result of the project has been to demonstrate that they draw on Michel Foucault in specifying the five classes of characteristics of psychosocial types, and they map his analysis of power relations onto a grouping of territorial movements within the social field and mental landscape. In addition, by historicizing and periodizing Deleuze's thought, the project advanced a more differentiated engagement with his philosophy. For it made clear the extent to which the connections and transitions between psychosocial types and conceptual personae pose a problem that, for Deleuze, is related to the historical changes brought about by the reactionary turn that took place in France beginning in the late 1970s. Finally, the project demonstrated that philosophy, starting from the historical changes, requires renewal over and over again in order to unfold itself as a living way of thinking. In doing so, it also fostered an understanding of philosophy that conceives of itself not as an endeavor directed toward the eternal and universal, but as a creation of new concepts, as an experimental and constantly renewing activity.