Why abstract? Book

There's at least a double kind of misdirection involved in the seemingly innocent title of Deleuze and Guattari's last and powerfully written book: What Is Philosophy? (WIP). To start, this isn't at all a book for beginners, those wandering into philosophy for the first time, looking to get a handle on what exactly all the fuss is about. Written at the twilight of their careers (Guattari would die a year after its publication, Deleuze three years later), WIP is a condensation of two lifetimes of philosophical practice, pitched at a level of intensity equal to the marshalled momentum of their collective intellectual trajectories. This, though, ought to be no surprise to anyone at least minimally acquainted with these two doyens of French post-structuralism.

It's the title's second snare then, which really makes WIP a work of genuine adventure and surprise: in fact not just philosophy, but very nature of thought itself is the true subject of this work. From whence does thought come, and to what does it respond? It's these questions above all which preside over this magnificent book. As far as 'philosophy' goes, in truth it stands for one of the three 'great forms of thought' detailed here, alongside - and with no more and no less dignity than - both science and art. Thus not one but three questions really constitute the beating heart of this book: What is philosophy? What is science? and What is art?

And while there's a case to be made for science and art being invoked here only so as to better distinguish the specificity of philosophy against its 'peers in thought' as it were, D&G are consistently at pains to argue for the creative, inventive and original standing of each of the three modes of thought engaged with here. So while philosophy is (famously) said to be the art of 'inventing, creating, and fabulating concepts', both science and art too are accorded the powers of creation: the construction of 'functives' in the case of science, and of 'percepts and affects' in the case of art. What this all means of course is just the subject of this book, and while it's no easy reading, the results are worth every laboured-over word.

In a less constructive vein, it's also an equal delight to read Deleuze and Guattari's polemics against (formal) logic, as well as their sharp and brutal critique of phenomenology, each of which is pilloried for effectively reducing philosophy to a shell of what it could otherwise be ("A real hatred inspires logic" they declare - it "kills the concept twice over"!). Nonetheless, if the words strike harshly, it's only because of a clear and passionate love of this thing called philosophy, a love of which pervades every page of this wondrously written tract. If, as D&G proclaim, to be a philosopher is to be a 'friend of the concept', this book is a testament to those among the greatest friends the concept has ever had.