More than any other 20th-century philosopher, Deleuze considers himself an apprentice to the history of philosophy. But scholarship has ignored one of the more formative influences on Deleuze: Lucretian atomism. Deleuze's encounter with Lucretius sparked a way of thinking that resonates throughout all his writings: from immanent ontology to affirmative ethics, from dynamic materialism to the generation of thought itself. Filling a significant gap in Deleuze Studies, Ryan J. Johnson tells the story of the Deleuze-Lucretius encounter that begins and ends with a powerful claim: Lucretian atomism...

18 essays breathe new life into the classic problems of ancient metaphysics using contemporary continental materialisms and realisms
In this volume, leading philosophers address the varied, volatile and novel encounters between contemporary and antique thought. They reconceive and redeploy the problems of ancient metaphysics: one and the many, the potential and the actual, the material and immaterial, the divine and the world itself. Alongside these essays are three original and previously unpublished translations of texts by Gilles Deleuze, Pierre Aubenque and Barbara...

Deleuze shows that Stoicism is a philosophical operation that turns the history of thought inside out. Deleuze dramatizes the story of ancient philosophy as a rivalry of four types of thinkers: the subverting pre-Socratics, the ascending Plato, the interiorizing Aristotle and the perverting Stoics. Deleuze assigns the Stoics a privileged place because they introduced a new orientation for thinking and living that turns the whole story of philosophy inside out.Ryan Johnson reveals how Deleuze's provocative reading of ancient Stoicism produced many of his most singular and powerful ideas. For...