BA (Vind), MA (Western), PhD (McMaster)
Mike Bennett’s research has focused on the appropriation of ancient Greek philosophies of nature in twentieth-century French philosophy. He is the author of Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics: The Image of Nature (Bloomsbury 2017), a critical study of how Gilles Deleuze takes up, transforms, and deploys ancient Greek materials in service of his poststructuralist project. It argues that understanding this inheritance is necessary for understanding Deleuze’s key concepts of event, difference, and problem.
Dr. Bennett’s ongoing work examines the areas of overlap between continental philosophy and the philosophy of biology. He is currently editing an interdisciplinary collection of essays on Deleuze and evolutionary theory, both historical and contemporary, and his next project will be a monograph study of French philosophy of biology in the first half of the twentieth-century.
Since earning his PhD in Philosophy from McMaster University in 2014, Dr. Bennett has taught at King’s in various positions, including Assistant Professor (sessional) in the Contemporary Studies Programme and Lecturer in the History of Science and Technology. He joined the Foundation Year Programme in 2016.
Selected Publications:
Books
- Deleuze and Evolutionary Theory, co-edited with Tano Posteraro (Penn State), Edinburgh University Press, under contract.
- Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics. Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2017.
Essays
- “Deleuze, Developmental Systems Theory, and the Philosophy of Nature,” Deleuze and Evolutionary Theory, edited by Michael J. Bennett and Tano Posteraro, Edinburgh University Press.
- “Lucretius.” Deleuze’s Philosophical Legacy, Vol. II, edited by Graham Jones and Jon Roffe, Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming.
- “Cicero’s De Fato in Deleuze’s Logic of Sense.” Deleuze Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2015.
- “Deleuze and Epicurean Philosophy: Atomic Speed and Swerve Speed.” Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, vol. 21, no. 2, 2013.
- “Bergson’s Environmental Aesthetic.” Environmental Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 2, 2012.
Interests: Continental philosophy, history and philosophy of science (especially biology), historical epistemology, evolutionary theory, structuralism and post-structuralism, ancient Greek and Roman thought, metaphysics, logic, music, bioethics, science and politics.
