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Matt Lee
To get in touch: messages through academia are great and appreciated but it's not a place I check regularly enough to have a conversation, so if you want to get in touch use my profile page at https://about.me/philosophermattlee to find connections.
PhD in Philosophy from Sussex University completed in 2004 (submitted Jan 2005), I then taught philosophy at the University of Greenwich until Summer 2013. I currently teach at the Free University of Brighton (https://freeuniversitybrighton.org).
During my doctorate in philosophy, originally focused on Heidegger and Wittgenstein, I bumped into the works of Deleuze. The next few years drew me into an increasing relationship to this obscure and beautiful philosopher, although as I gradually came to understand what he was talking about the real focus of my interest became his concept of a 'transcendental empiricism'. My interest in Heidegger and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus had, I realised, also been bound up in the problems of the 'transcendental' and the Kantian enemy that I was encountering.
My research interests continue to be in the realm of transcendental thought and focuses on developing a materialism that isn’t reductive or naïve. I am working on transcendental arguments and structures, in particular trying to understand and articulate that strange concept of a ‘transcendental empiricism’. I also have an interest in philosophy of mind, Wittgensteinian semantics and Quinian holism as well as a developing interest in Robert Brandom's 'normative pragmatics'.
During my time at the University of Greenwich (2005-2013) I coordinated an initiative of the Philosophy Group called 'Volcanic Lines – deleuzian research group' (link included bottom left column) and currently I am working with the Free University of Brighton developing a 'free degree' program as part of resistance to the neo-liberal academic agenda (again, link available at the bottom of the left column).
As well as my work as a philosopher I practise as an independent film-maker and experiment with and carry out research into contemporary poetic, erotic and magical-shamanic practices. I am currently working on two monograph projects. The first is tentatively entitled “Practical Metaphysics” and will attempt to give a philosophical account of practises derived from Deleuze’s account of ‘becoming’. The second, entitled "Necessary Matter", will attempt to reconceive the problem of modality by pursuing an ontological strategy in which the root of modality would be located in some notion - albeit reworked - of matter.
I maintain a philosophy blog called Notebookeleven where I discuss my ongoing research.
I taught on a range of course including 'Introduction to Philosophy' (level 1), 'Existentialism and Phenomenology' (level 2), 'Fundamental Texts of Philosophy' (level 3) and 'Modern Philosophy: Deleuze' (MA level).
Supervisors: Dr Paul Davies
PhD in Philosophy from Sussex University completed in 2004 (submitted Jan 2005), I then taught philosophy at the University of Greenwich until Summer 2013. I currently teach at the Free University of Brighton (https://freeuniversitybrighton.org).
During my doctorate in philosophy, originally focused on Heidegger and Wittgenstein, I bumped into the works of Deleuze. The next few years drew me into an increasing relationship to this obscure and beautiful philosopher, although as I gradually came to understand what he was talking about the real focus of my interest became his concept of a 'transcendental empiricism'. My interest in Heidegger and the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus had, I realised, also been bound up in the problems of the 'transcendental' and the Kantian enemy that I was encountering.
My research interests continue to be in the realm of transcendental thought and focuses on developing a materialism that isn’t reductive or naïve. I am working on transcendental arguments and structures, in particular trying to understand and articulate that strange concept of a ‘transcendental empiricism’. I also have an interest in philosophy of mind, Wittgensteinian semantics and Quinian holism as well as a developing interest in Robert Brandom's 'normative pragmatics'.
During my time at the University of Greenwich (2005-2013) I coordinated an initiative of the Philosophy Group called 'Volcanic Lines – deleuzian research group' (link included bottom left column) and currently I am working with the Free University of Brighton developing a 'free degree' program as part of resistance to the neo-liberal academic agenda (again, link available at the bottom of the left column).
As well as my work as a philosopher I practise as an independent film-maker and experiment with and carry out research into contemporary poetic, erotic and magical-shamanic practices. I am currently working on two monograph projects. The first is tentatively entitled “Practical Metaphysics” and will attempt to give a philosophical account of practises derived from Deleuze’s account of ‘becoming’. The second, entitled "Necessary Matter", will attempt to reconceive the problem of modality by pursuing an ontological strategy in which the root of modality would be located in some notion - albeit reworked - of matter.
I maintain a philosophy blog called Notebookeleven where I discuss my ongoing research.
I taught on a range of course including 'Introduction to Philosophy' (level 1), 'Existentialism and Phenomenology' (level 2), 'Fundamental Texts of Philosophy' (level 3) and 'Modern Philosophy: Deleuze' (MA level).
Supervisors: Dr Paul Davies
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This is the first session from my recent seminar course. The seminar explored the ongoing project I’m working on with Dr Eric Harper called ‘The Freudian Spaceship’, an attempt to develop a Fanonian Schizoanalysis. The videos from the series, held during my Monday night philosophy session on Twitch, are being uploaded to my YouTube channel and Facebook page, so these notes are the text accompaniments to those video sessions. As part of the course, participants were reading through a text called ‘Breath’ that is part of the project. There are a few printed versions available, as well as a PDF, get in contact with me if you would like a copy.
https://youtu.be/DUpC6ie4pCk
To be published in 'Dark glamour: accelerationism and the occult', forthcoming 2018.
Directed by Matt Lee, the film was made by Indifference Productions and Weigh In, Way Out Productions, independent film-makers active in Brighton, UK.
Bringing together the work of international experts from both Deleuze scholarship and Kant scholarship, Thinking Between Deleuze and Kant addresses explicitly the varied and various connections between these two great European philosophers, providing key material for understanding the central philosophical problems in the wider 'naturalism/ transcendental philosophy' debate. The book reflects an area of great current interest in Deleuze Studies and initiates an ongoing interest in Deleuze within Kant scholarship. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/thinking-between-deleuze-and-kant-9781441186416/
(It is a draft paper, presented to a seminar at UWE a few years ago but left idling since then.)
This is the first session from my recent seminar course. The seminar explored the ongoing project I’m working on with Dr Eric Harper called ‘The Freudian Spaceship’, an attempt to develop a Fanonian Schizoanalysis. The videos from the series, held during my Monday night philosophy session on Twitch, are being uploaded to my YouTube channel and Facebook page, so these notes are the text accompaniments to those video sessions. As part of the course, participants were reading through a text called ‘Breath’ that is part of the project. There are a few printed versions available, as well as a PDF, get in contact with me if you would like a copy.
https://youtu.be/DUpC6ie4pCk
To be published in 'Dark glamour: accelerationism and the occult', forthcoming 2018.
Directed by Matt Lee, the film was made by Indifference Productions and Weigh In, Way Out Productions, independent film-makers active in Brighton, UK.
Bringing together the work of international experts from both Deleuze scholarship and Kant scholarship, Thinking Between Deleuze and Kant addresses explicitly the varied and various connections between these two great European philosophers, providing key material for understanding the central philosophical problems in the wider 'naturalism/ transcendental philosophy' debate. The book reflects an area of great current interest in Deleuze Studies and initiates an ongoing interest in Deleuze within Kant scholarship. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/thinking-between-deleuze-and-kant-9781441186416/
(It is a draft paper, presented to a seminar at UWE a few years ago but left idling since then.)
This is a handout accompanying the paper of the same name.
The paper presents a ‘creative’ concept of philosophy that is central to the work of both Nietzsche and Deleuze and one of the problems that such creativity encounters, the problem of stupidity.
http://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/deleuze-studies/journal/av-7/
The revision process ended up being a complete rewriting, producing a new, much extended essay, which is currently being finalised. To that end I have now archived the PDF print version of the paper here. This original paper is a work in progress, complete with scribbled edits and notes for further work at the end.
In the 'Western Kabbalah' – that version of the Judaic tradition which underlies large portions of the work of Western Hermetic magicians – one of the central concepts is that of 'da'ath', a non-existent 'sephiroth' encountered in the experience known as 'Crossing the Abyss'. This experience constitutes one of the central initiatory experiences of the various traditions of Western Hermetic magic. It can be understood as the point at which the practitioner succeeds in their aim but in doing so find themselves caught within a paranoiac machine. The 'abyss' is the point at which everything in the universe is to be understood as directly speaking to the individual – it is an exercise in constituting a paranoiac machine of intense and immense over-determination.
The core practice of magic, as a 'body-spirituality', involves a continual process of learning, the aim of which is 'knowledge'. The particular understanding of knowledge, however, is transformed from a possessive content or object (a 'know-that') into a transformative apprenticeship – but an apprenticeship to what? It is, I will argue, an apprenticeship to the event and the experience of the 'abyss' is a salutary lesson or warning in the power and anger involved in such an apprenticeship. Deleuze warns that the task with regard the event is to be worthy of it, to be able to sustain it or bear it, a theme that directly relates to the encounter with the demon of the eternal return in Nietzsche's most important presentation of that concept.
In Nietzsche's eternal return, Deleuze's call to be worthy of the event and Western magical practice of 'crossing the abyss' this underlying theme of danger, of death, abounds. Is the event, then, always an event of death, rebirth, loss? Is this the central aspect of what it means to encounter the event – to lose something, to lose our selves, to die in some way or another? Does this suggest that perhaps the event is a hidden encoding of the transcendent? Is the purity of the event, the cry of affirmation, merely another way to regain what is lost with the death of god.
notebookeleven.com/sfb