Deleuze and Italian Thought

Abstract

The tradition of Italian Thought – not the political one but the poetic and naturalistic one – finds in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze a way to enter into the new century, the century of immanence and animality. In fact, Deleuze himself remained outside the main philosophical traditions of his own time (structuralism and phenomenology). The tradition to which Deleuze refers is the one that begins with Spinoza and ends with Nietzsche. It is an ontological tradition, which deals mainly with life and the world rather than with the human subject and knowledge. Finally, the text sketches a possible dialogue between Deleuze and the poet-philosopher Giacomo Leopardi, one of the most important (and still unknown) figures of Italian Thought.