MARIA LUIZA LIMA SEABRA

Our research proposal is to conduct an investigation of the deleuzian interpretation of Leibniz based on the approximation between Leibniz and Nietzsche, who is considered to be a decisive influence in the development of Deleuze’s philosophy of difference. In Difference and Repetition and The Fold, Deleuze emphasizes the obscure and dionysian side of Leibniz, specially regarding the images of intoxication [ivresse] and dizziness [étourdissement] that accompany the leibnizian notion of small perceptions. Deleuze considers Nietzsche’s will to power to be the “true sufficient reason”. We aim to evaluate Deleuze’s interpretation as a duplication or perversion of leibnizianism, that lays claim to a “neo-leibnizianism” based on the overthrowing of the Identity Principle in favor of the primacy of difference. Deleuze urges for an inversion, a “fold” of sufficient reason that opens it to unreason, and conducts grounding to the groundless in what he calls a universal “effondrement”, that is, a collapse and loss of ground. From this first inversion follow two others: the opening of the monad and the affirmation of the incompossibles, which we aim to explain.