What is Grounding? is (https://www.facebook.com/deleuze) Gilles Deleuze ’s first seminar, and is distinguished in that, rather than “taking an author from behind and giving him a child that would be his offspring, yet monstrous”, the work focuses instead on the question of grounding, defined both as “the sufficient reason for concrete entities”, and “the point of departure for philosophy”, in translator Arjen Kleinherenbrink’s terms. Rather than foregrounding method, in which human subjective experience remains primary, here Deleuze affirms the centrality of system, of things and the relations between things.
“Nothing less than the ur-text for Deleuze’s pre-1970s philosophy, an original sketch of his main themes and problems, which are all present in intensely compacted form” – Christian Kerslake (Radical Philosophy)
https://syntheticzero.net/2015/05/25/deleuze-what-is-grounding/
COVER PAGE 1
Copyright 5
EDITORS’ PREFACE 6
TABLE OF CONTENTS 8
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION 9
1 FROM MYTHOLOGY TO PHILOSOPHY 15
1.1 Natural ends and infinite tasks 15
1.2 Will, value, ground 17
2 THE ESSENTIAL BEING OF A GROUNDOR REASON 19
2.1 Claims and rights 19
2.2 Hume to Kant: formation of the idea ofthe transcendental 21
2.3 Characteristics of the ground in theCritique of Pure Reason 24
2.4 Heidegger after Kant 27
2.5 Conclusion to the second chapter 29
3 GROUND AND QUESTION 30
3.1 Socrates and the question 32
3.2 The question that silences: Kierkegaard andShestov 37
3.2.1 The most lyrical and themost simple 37
3.2.2 Morality, duty, law, and power 39
3.2.3 Essence and existence, quality and quantity 42
3.2.4 Repetition 45
3.2.5 Eternal return in Nietzsche 48
3.2.6 Intermediate conclusion I 51
3.3 The question which yields a principle to solveall problems: Leibniz 52
3.3.1 Leibniz and the concept of expression 57
3.3.2 Leibniz and principles 61
3.3.3 Intermediate conclusion II 63
3.4 The third type of question: the critical question 64
3.4.1 The concept of error in philosophy 64
3.4.2 Transformation of a doctrine of truth 65
3.4.3 Critique of metaphysics 66
3.5 Conclusion to the third chapter 69
4 GROUND AND PRINCIPLE 71
4.1 Method and system 72
4.2 Principle and ground in the method 77
4.2.1 Descartes, Spinoza, Kant 77
4.2.2 Bacon and middle axioms 78
4.2.3 Two senses of ‘principle’ 81
4.3 System and Kantian critique 82
4.3.1 Kant’s analytic 83
4.3.2 Post-Kantian objections 85
4.4 Finitude and ground 88
4.5 Conclusion to the fourth chapter 91
5 CONCLUSION TO THE SEMINAR 96
BIBLIOGRAPHY 98
BACK COVER 102

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from (http://tripleampersand.org/books/what-is-grounding/) http://tripleampersand.org/books/what-is-grounding/ :
“Nothing less than the ur-text for Deleuze’s pre-1970s
philosophy, an original sketch of his main themes and
problems, which are all present in intensely compacted
form . . . What is Grounding? is the only one of Deleuze’s
lecture courses to devote itself directly to fundamental
philosophical themes, rather than ventriloquising
through the ideas of a philosopher of the canon . . . [and]
concerns grounding, the great theme of modern philosophy:
the starting point, the beginning. How does one
begin in philosophy?”
– Christian Kerslake (Radical Philosophy)

The inaugural text in the series is the first English language translation of the near-complete transcription/ lecture notes taken by a student enrolled in the earliest recorded course offered by Gilles Deleuze, What is grounding?
(Quest-ce que fonder?). It is here that the history of philosophy is engaged in a direct manner (prior to the method of dramatization); that the originating ideas of Difference and Repetition begin to develop; and, that the key to groundbreaking readings of Deleuze is introduced (e.g., Christian Kerslakes Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy: From Kant to Deleuze).

2025-10-27