Sorry if everyone already knows about this, or if some people feel it's
not appropriate on this list, but I felt it was important enough to merit
a cross-posting to the foucault list, the death of the one whom Foucault
called the "only philosophical mind in France."
PARIS (AP) -- Prominent French philosopher, writer and university
professor Gilles Deleuze committed suicide by leaping from the
window of his Paris apartment, his family said Sunday.
Deleuze, whom French philosopher Michel Foucault once called
``the only philosophical mind in France,'' died Saturday. He was
70.
The author of one of the world's best selling philosophy books,
``The Anti-Oedipus,'' had suffered for years from a serious
respiratory illness and recently underwent a tracheotomy.
Deleuze was born in 1925 into a conservative Paris family, but
spent his life as a leftist and considered himself almost
militantly so. He became a familiar figure in the city's bohemian
Latin Quarter, his trademark felt hat cocked at a rakish angle.
Deleuze began his academic life in 1955 as a teaching assistant
at the Sorbonne and taught later at the university at Vincennes,
retiring in 1987.
In 1972, he and longtime friend Felix Guattari published ``The
Anti-Oedipus,'' a scathing look at the concepts and
``schizo-analysis'' of Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein.
In 1993, he published ``Critic and Clinic,'' in which he
explored the works of Herman Melville and Lewis Carroll, among
others.
Throughout his long career, Deleuze refused to appear on
television, but he agreed earlier this year to develop a
philosophy-oriented program for France's arts-oriented Arte
channel.
Details on Deleuze's survivors were not immediately available.
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