The philosophy of Deleuze:
On its thoroughness, historical relativity
and usefulness
First Version Master’s Thesis Philosophy
Marijn Knieriem 10018735
marijnknieriem@hotmail.com
4 August 2017
Supervisor: prof. dr. J. Früchtl Second reader: dr. A. van Rooden
21230 words
Abstract
This thesis is concerned with three problems that appear with respect to Deleuze’s philosophy. The first issue deals with the question of whether Deleuze argues thoroughly for his positions, or whether he merely provides views that cannot convince anyone, but might be taken up if someone considers them useful. The second problem concerns the question of whether Deleuze’s philosophy is historically relative. The final issue considers in what way Deleuze and Guattari’s books Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus can be understood as political philosophy. In order to deal with these issues, Deleuze’s endeavour to think difference in itself will be discussed, as well as his conception of philosophy.
Table of Contents
Abbreviations p. 3
1. Introduction p. 4
2. Method, or How to Read Deleuze? p. 9
3. The Dogmatic Image of Thought and Difference in Itself p. 15
4. Ideas and the Necessity of Chance p. 26
5. Deleuze’s Conception of Philosophy p. 37
6. Conclusion and Discussion p. 44
Abbreviations
The following list contains the abbreviations of Deleuze’s works that are used in this thesis. It contains both works of which Deleuze was the single author, and works that he wrote in collaboration with others.
AO Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2016a). Anti-Oedipus. London: Bloomsbury. B Deleuze, G. (2011). Bergsonism. New York: Zone Books.
D Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2007). Dialogues II. New York: Columbia University Press. DI Deleuze, G. (2004). Desert Island and Other Texts 1953-1974. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). DR Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and Repetition. New York: Columbia University Press. ES Deleuze, G. (1991). Empiricism and Subjectivity. New York: Columbia University Press. LS Deleuze, G. (2015). Logic of Sense. London: Bloomsbury.
N Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations, 1972-1990. New York: Columbia University Press. NP Deleuze, G. (1983). Nietzsche and Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press. PS Deleuze, G. (2008). Proust and Signs. London: Continuum.
TP Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2016b). A Thousand Plateaus. London: Bloomsbury.
TRM Deleuze, G. (2006). Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995. New York: Semiotext(e).
1. Introduction
Gilles Deleuze has produced a body of work that is remarkably rich, but which can also be—and maybe for that very reason—quite elusive at the same time. Among other things, Deleuze has written extensively on the history of philosophy (e.g. on Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche and Spinoza), on several branches of art (e.g. cinema, painting and literature), on language and on issues of a political nature. As if the difficulties that stem from the fact that this list contains a vast array of topics were not enough, Deleuze complicated his oeuvre even more by changing his vocabulary with every book that he wrote. The evasiveness of Deleuze’s oeuvre is reflected in the secondary literature that surrounds his work; thus far, no consensus has been reached with respect to how Deleuze’s philosophy should be approached (this point will be discussed in more detail in the next section).
However, the disagreements surrounding Deleuze’s thought are not merely due to the scope of his work and the language he employs; it also results from the fact that, in Deleuze’s work, one can find arguments in favour of theses which appear to be mutually exclusive. I will now turn to three of these issue that can be discerned in Deleuze’s oeuvre.
First issue
The first issue that can be discerned in Deleuze’s philosophy has to do with how one should evaluate the theses that Deleuze brings forth. Are his claims the result of a process of rigorous reasoning that convinces the reader of the value of these theses, or do they rather present views that one can use and cherish if they please, and forget and ignore if they do not? There is textual evidence to be found in favour of both of these ways to assess Deleuze’s work. For example, in the middle chapter of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze deals with the question of where to begin in philosophy: what should philosophy’s starting point be? By doing this, Deleuze is inscribing himself in the Cartesian project of finding an absolute beginning from which philosophy should proceed. Deleuze does not criticize the effort to find philosophy’s starting point, nor does he deny the importance of the ideal of finding such a beginning; in fact, he subscribes to the project of doing philosophy without any presuppositions (Bryant, 2008, p. 15). While supporting this ideal, Deleuze criticizes Descartes for not being severe enough, since Deleuze thinks that Descartes, while doubting a lot, was still assuming too much, namely “subjective or implicit presuppositions contained in opinions rather than concepts: it is presumed that everyone knows, independently of concepts, what is meant by self, thinking, and being” (DR, p. 129). In other words, Deleuze is criticizing Descartes for not being rigorous enough, and Deleuze tried to point out and overcome these shortcomings. Deleuze is not the only one who criticized Descartes in this respect. Descartes’s contemporaries already made the objection that, given his deceiver hypothesis, he
could not claim to know the meaning of words like ‘thought’ and ‘existence’, since he might have been deluded in their meaning (Wilson, 2005, p. 31-33). Husserl, in his Cartesian Meditations, also criticizes Descartes for not pushing his doubt far enough; in the phenomenological epoché, questions of existence are suspended, and hence one does not encounter a thinking substance under these conditions (Husserl, 1999, p. 24). Deleuze, thus, does not lack fellow-thinkers in his critique on Descartes.
However, there are also remarks of Deleuze that give rise to the suspicion that he is not at all interested in being a meticulous thinker. In the Dialogues II, for example, Deleuze says that he does not want to deal with the opposition that other people bring forth towards his work: “Every time someone puts an objection to me, I want to say: ‘OK, OK, let’s go on to something else’” (D, p. 1). Moreover, Deleuze does not seem to care very much about how his philosophy is employed exactly: “concepts are exactly like sounds, colours or images, they are intensities which suit you or not, which are acceptable or aren’t acceptable. Pop philosophy. There’s nothing to understand, nothing to interpret” (p. 3). To amplify this point, Deleuze adds: “all mistranslations are good – always provided that they do not consist in interpretations, but relate to the use of the book, that they multiply its use” (p. 4). Here, Deleuze thus shows himself to be a pragmatist (cf. Patton, 2000, pp. 6, 27-28).
On the one hand, we thus have a Deleuze who tries to be as thorough as he can be; on the other hand, there is a Deleuze who says light-heartedly that he does not like to put forth arguments and does not care about how his work is employed exactly. The question, then, is how the tension between these two aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy should be understood. Is it possible to explain why both facets are present in his philosophy?
Second issue
What kind of validity should be granted to Deleuze’s work? Is the validity of his books tied to a specific historical period, or does his oeuvre transcend the era in which it was written? Just as with the first issue, arguments in favour of both positions can be found in Deleuze’s philosophy.
In support of the claim that the usefulness of Deleuze’s ideas is relative to a historical era, we can direct attention to what Deleuze wrote in the Postscript on Societies of Control (N, pp. 177-182). In this short essay, he argued that the disciplinary societies that were described by Foucault (1995) were on the verge of disappearing. In their place, a new societal form was in the process of emerging. Deleuze called these new societies ‘control societies’ (N, p. 178). These societies no longer try to mould people such that their behaviour coincides with a fixed norm; instead, the norm itself now varies, such that people have to adapt themselves according to the circumstances. Hence, Deleuze writes: “school is being replaced by continuing education and exams by continuous assessment” (p. 179, emphases in original). Deleuze argues that one cannot say in general which
of these societal forms is the worst and which is the best, since each provides its own dangers and opportunities (p. 178). However, if one wants to withstand control societies, one has to create new means to resist them, since opposition to a new societal form demands new forms of resistance, according to Deleuze: “It’s not a question of worrying or of hoping for the best, but of finding new weapons” (ibid.). This provides an example of a more general thesis of Deleuze, which he formulates in a conversation with Foucault: “A theory has to be used, it has to work … If there is no one to use it … then a theory is worthless, or its time has not yet arrived” (DI, p. 208). Hence, for Deleuze, the usefulness of a theory, and thus its validity, seems to be tied to a historical period. On the other hand, in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze has formulated an ontology of which the validity does not seem to be relative to a historical period. In The Method of Dramatization (DI, pp. 94-116)—a text which contains an examination of elements of Deleuze’s ontology that are discussed at greater length in Difference and Repetition—Deleuze, after having elaborated on determinations such as the ‘field of individuation’ and ‘larval subjects’, writes the following: “These determinations as a whole indeed are not connected with any particular example borrowed from a physical or biological system, but articulate the categories of every system in general” (DI, p. 98, my emphasis). Deleuze thus seems to believe that the validity of his ontology is not tied to this or that particular system, but holds for every system; hence, its correctness and its usefulness is not a relative to a historical period.
Deleuze thus sometimes talks as if the validity of theory is dependent on a historical period; at other moments, he writes that his theory has a general validity. How can the presence of both aspects in Deleuze’s philosophy be explained?
Third issue
The third and final issue has to do with Deleuze’s ethics and his political philosophy. In what sense can Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus be understood as works of ethics or of political philosophy?
Foucault, in his preface to Anti-Oedipus, calls it “a book of ethics” (Foucault, 2016, p. xiii), and he manages to distil seven principles from the book that together form an art of living which can guard the reader against the seductions of fascism (pp. xiii-xiv). However, as Buchanan (2011) points out, the principles that are formulated by Foucault are merely negative: “Foucault’s instructions only specify what we should not do, and say nothing at all about what we should do” (Buchanan, 2011, p. 11, emphasis in original). In other words, it is not clear what art of living is actually affirmed in Anti-Oedipus.
Concerning the political aspirations of the Anti-Oedipus, the situation is not any clearer. Deleuze can say that “Anti-Oedipus was from beginning to end a book of political philosophy” (N, p. 170), but since the book does not engage in detail with topics that are traditionally seen as
topics belonging to political philosophy—like what a just distribution of wealth would be, or how far the people should go in obeying their government—it is not evident what Deleuze exactly means when he calls it ‘political philosophy’. Moreover, even though Deleuze says that the “question [of revolution] has always been organizational, not at all ideological” (D, p. 109), he never deals in detail with organizational difficulties that have to be solved in order to generate social or cultural change (Buchanan, 2011, p. 7).
Given the fact that Deleuze and Guattari do not provide clarity on what art of living is affirmed, nor sketch a picture of how their ideal society would look like, nor provide an account of how organizational problems should be solved, then in what respect can Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus perform a practical function and form “a little cog in much more complicated external machinery” (N, p. 8)? What is the objective with which these books have been written by Deleuze and Guattari?
This thesis will deal with the questions that follow from these three issues. The goal of this thesis is to show how these issues can be handled when the later works, namely Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy? are connected to Deleuze’s earlier books, in particular Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense. It will be argued that these three issues are consequences from Deleuze’s earlier philosophy, and that Deleuze ultimately presents a coherent view. One has to take the development of Deleuze’s thought into account, in order to appreciate this point.
Although this thesis is concerned with the practical philosophy of Deleuze as it is formulated in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, I will not engage a lot with these books directly. This is due to the fact that Deleuze contends that these books should be used rather than interpreted; hence, they do not lend themselves for commentary of clarification (Stengers, 2005, p. 151; 2012, p. 268; Colombat, 1991, p. 12). Instead, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus will be treated as paradigms of a certain conception of philosophy; this conception of philosophy, in turn, is something that can be clarified, and this, then, will be done.
This thesis is structured as follows. In the next section, the method that is employed in this thesis to approach Deleuze’s philosophy will be discussed. This will be done by contrasting it with other methods that are found in the secondary literature. The method used in this thesis consists of starting from Deleuze’s project to think difference in itself, and then deduces which commitments follow from this. In section three, we will deal with the questions of why it is necessary, according to Deleuze, to think difference in itself, and why Deleuze thinks that other thinkers failed in this respect. In order to do this, we have to discuss, among other things, what Deleuze called the ‘dogmatic image of thought’ and his critique on this image. Then, in section four, we will deal with the issue of how Deleuze tries to think difference in itself. He does this by
developing a theory of Ideas. These Ideas, as well as other notions that are necessary to understand them, will be discussed in some detail in this section. Here, we will also discuss Deleuze’s claim that thought is the result of fortuitous encounters, and discuss his thesis on the necessity of chance. In section five, we will examine Deleuze’s conception of philosophy that follows from what has been discussed thus far. Here, we will see why Deleuze conceives of philosophy as the creation of concepts that should make a difference in the present. Finally, in the conclusion and the discussion, we will return to the three issues that were presented in this introduction. By then, all the elements should be present to deal with the questions that followed from these issues.
2. Method, or How to Read Deleuze?
Why is it necessary to ask how one should read Deleuze? It has to do with the fact that Deleuze’s oeuvre allows for multiple ways of approaching it, without there being one single method that is clearly superior to the others. Nonetheless, the way in which Deleuze’s work is accessed is of the utmost importance, since it ultimately determines which picture of Deleuze’s philosophy emerges. In this section I will discuss several of the methods that are found in the secondary literature, in combination with some of Deleuze’s remarks that justify these different methods. The goal of this overview is not to give an extensive review of all the strategies that are employed; rather, the different methods are presented in order to form a contrast with the method that will be used in this thesis, such that the merits and dangers of the latter will come into focus.
The different approaches to Deleuze’s oeuvre that are distilled from the secondary literature are categorized around three topics. The first topic deals with the issue of what role Deleuze’s studies in the history of philosophy play in Deleuze’s own philosophy. Do Deleuze’s historical studies form an integral part of Deleuze’s philosophy, or should a distinction be made between his historical studies and the philosophy that he has written in his own name? The second topic has to do with the internal consistency and the internal evolution of Deleuze’s oeuvre. Should we see Deleuze’s work as a whole, in which one issue follows more or less naturally from something that he discussed in an earlier book? Or are his different books separate entities that do not have a necessary relation to one another, and should we hence also not expect that the different works are consistent with each other? The third topic has to do with Deleuze’s rigour. Should we approach Deleuze’s oeuvre as an attempt to be more rigorous than his predecessors, pointing out their blind spots, compromises and concessions, or should we see his philosophy simply as an alternative that is not necessarily more adequate than other philosophies?
These three topics will now be discussed. I will not immediately take a stance in the debates; at first, the different positions and their arguments will be only presented. After this has been done, I will present the method that will be employed in this thesis and reflect on how this relates to the different approaches to Deleuze’s philosophy that are found in the secondary literature.
Deleuze and the History of Philosophy
Deleuze has written extensively on several figures in the history of philosophy. However, it is not exactly clear how these written histories fit in his oeuvre as a whole. Bryant (2008) argues that a distinction should be made between Deleuze’s historical work and his own, original philosophy: “We cannot assume that the contents of Deleuze’s [historical] studies are identical to his independent philosophical works” (p. xi). Deleuze himself gives rise to the position that is held by
Bryant, since Deleuze himself subscribes to the same distinction between his original philosophy and his historical studies:
There is a great difference between writing history of philosophy and writing philosophy. In the one case, we study the arrows or the tools of a great thinker, the trophies and the prey, the continents discovered. In the other case, we trim our own arrows, or gather those which seem to us the finest in order to try to send them in other directions, even if the distance covered is not astronomical but relatively small. (DR, p. xv)
Deleuze thus clearly does not group his historical studies together with his independent, original work. Bryant suggests that the emphasis in the secondary literature on Deleuze’s historical studies stems from the difficulty of Deleuze’s work; Bryant, however, disapproves of this practice: “In a curious manner, this has given rise to a tendency to transform Deleuze into his histories rather than to see how Deleuze departs from these histories” (Bryant, 2008, p. 222). Bryant therefore thinks that, in studies regarding Deleuze’s own philosophy, references to his historical studies are only justified when similar concepts and theories are found in the works that are written in Deleuze’s own name (p. xii).
On the other side of this issue we find May (2005). May thinks that Spinoza, Bergson and Nietzsche are the most important philosophers for Deleuze, and hence calls them “the Holy Trinity” (p. 26). “It is they”, May writes, “who provide the motivation and the framework for the ontologies Deleuze constructs over the course of his many writings” (ibid.). For May, there is thus no need to make a categorical distinction between Deleuze’s historical works and the books containing his own, original philosophy, since the latter are informed by and build upon the former. Moreover, Deleuze has a very particular conception of what the history of philosophy is. He writes the following about it:
I suppose the main way I coped with it at the time was to see the history of philosophy as a sort of buggery or (it comes to the same thing) immaculate conception. I saw myself as taking an author from behind and giving him a child that would be his own offspring, yet monstrous. It was really important for it to be his own child, because the author had to actually say all I had him saying. But the child was bound to be monstrous too, because it resulted from all sorts of shifting, slipping, dislocations, and hidden emissions that I really enjoyed. (N, p. 6).
This quote clearly shows that Deleuze did not merely want to explicate what the philosophers whom he studied had written. Hence, Deleuze’s studies in the history of philosophy definitely bear
his signature. This makes that the borderline between Deleuze’s original thought and his historical studies becomes fuzzy.
The Internal Development of Deleuze’s Oeuvre
How should one understand the development of Deleuze’s philosophy? Does his oeuvre develop more or less naturally from one issue to the next, whereby the first subject matter preludes to the second, the second to the third, etcetera? Or is it rather the case that Deleuze’s philosophy displays ruptures that make it impossible to conceive it as a consistent whole?
Hardt (2007), although limiting himself to Deleuze’s apprenticeship in the philosophies of Bergson, Nietzsche and Spinoza, thinks that his oeuvre should be approached as having its own internal progression. Hardt argues, for example, that Deleuze’s study of Bergson left some themes undeveloped and problems unresolved. These themes only reached maturity and these problems only were solved when Deleuze got to the next phase of his development and turned towards Nietzsche (pp. 21-22). Hardt therefore writes that Deleuze’s thought is characterized by “a sort of theoretical process of aggregation” (p. xix) and hence posits the following methodological principle: “Read Deleuze’s thought as an evolution” (p. xx).
Other scholars, however, think that Deleuze’s philosophy consists of breaks that preclude it from being presented as a unified whole. Boundas, for example, writes that “Deleuze’s own rhizomatic growth and his strategy of writing should have warned against homocentric evolutionist readings” (Boundas, 1991, p. 11), and he presents three theses of Deleuze on subjectivity that are, according to him, incomprehensible in an evolutionist reading. Bryant (2008) argues that there is no simple evolution in Deleuze’s work, because the ontology of active and reactive forces which Deleuze presents in Nietzsche and Philosophy, whereby one force overpowers another, is inconsistent with the ontology of reciprocal determination between differential relations that is found in Difference and Repetition. (Although it should be noted that Somers-Hall [2013, pp. 38-42] does find a Nietzschean ontology of forces in Difference and Repetition.) Finally, Patton argues that Deleuze “is an experimental thinker committed to a conception of movement in thought … There is always movement and discontinuity in his thinking from one problem or series of problems to the next” (Patton, 2010, p. 10). Hence, according to Patton, it is only in vain that one could seek for “an essence of his philosophy” (p. 15). (It should be remarked, though, that in an earlier book on Deleuze, Patton found more continuity in Deleuze’s thought. This is shown by Patton’s remark that “In many respects, Deleuze’s constant engagement in his earlier writings with the question of the nature of thought is a prolegomenon to the distinctive practice of philosophy developed in collaboration with Guattari” [Patton, 2000, p. 18].)
Deleuze’s Philosophy: Is it Superior or Merely One Alternative Among Others?
This third topic deals with the following issue: to what extent does Deleuze provide a philosophy that is in some sense superior to the philosophies of earlier thinkers? Is it possible to say that Deleuze’s thought provides an improvement in one respect or another, or is he merely providing an alternative way to perceive the world, a model that can be used if it pleases and be forgotten if it does not?
According to May (2003; 2005), Deleuze did the latter thing. May thinks that Deleuze’s philosophy offers a new way of looking at things, without providing an ontology that is in some way superior to others. As May writes of Deleuze: “He does not like to argue. He does not like to harp on weaknesses in a philosopher’s work. He would rather change the subject” (May, 2005, p. 32). This is also how Deleuze appropriates other philosophers, according to May: “It is not that Spinoza has detailed the difficulties of transcendence that fascinates Deleuze. Rather, it is that Spinoza has successfully changed the subject, gone on to something else” (p. 33). May thus thinks that Deleuze’s philosophy does not provide more satisfactory solutions to philosophical problems than other systems of thought: “to follow Deleuze’s discussion of difference is not so much to substitute a more adequate philosophical approach for a less adequate one. It is to follow thought down another, more adventurous path: the path of concept-creation” (May, 2003, p. 145).
There are other authors, however, who think that Deleuze does provide a philosophy that is in some sense more adequate than others and which solves certain problems in philosophy. Foucault, for example, thinks that Deleuze does indeed deal with the weaknesses in the works of other philosophers. Foucault writes the following about Deleuze’s relation to Western philosophy: “He points out its interruption, its gaps, those small things of little value neglected by philosophical discourse. He carefully reintroduces the barely perceptible omissions, knowing full well that they imply an unlimited negligence” (Foucault, 1998, p. 348). In agreement with Foucault and contrary to May, Hardt thinks that Deleuze does argue for his points of view: “the coherence of his positions and the mode of explanation that supports them remain on the highest logical and ontological planes” (Hardt, 2007, p. xviii). Finally, Bryant presents himself as a supporter of this viewpoint when he writes that “one adopts the position [of transcendental empiricism] because something is wrong with the philosophy of representation and transcendental empiricism is able to solve this problem” (Bryant, 2008, p. 4). Explanations of Deleuze’s work that fail to argue for the essential need of their positions “give one the sense that perhaps Deleuze’s thought amounts to a simple thought experiment that ultimately amounts to nothing more than a set of ideas that one might try out at one’s leisure” (p. 5).
Now that these three topics and the different positions within the debates have been discussed, it is time to turn to the method that will be applied in this thesis. This method consists of one
guideline: start from Deleuze’s attempt to think difference in itself and analyze what commitments follow from this endeavour.
First of all, I should clarify what is meant by starting from Deleuze’s attempt to think difference in itself. This consists of two parts: the first part deals with the question of why Deleuze thinks that it is necessary to think difference in itself; the second part deals with the question of why Deleuze thinks that other philosophers before him did not succeed in doing this. When this is done, it should be shown how Deleuze tries to think difference in itself.
By taking Deleuze’s project to think difference in itself as our starting point, his book Difference and Repetition comes to occupy a privileged position, since that is the book in which he takes on this project in the most direct fashion. Deleuze himself also attributes a prominent place in his oeuvre to Difference and Repetition; he writes about it that it was “the first book in which I tried to ‘do philosophy’. All that I have done since is connected to this book, including what I wrote with Guattari” (DR, p. xv).
This immediately brings us to the issue of the internal development of Deleuze’s oeuvre. The aforementioned quote testifies of the fact that Deleuze thinks that a continuity exists between Difference and Repetition and his later work; this is a thought that will be employed in this thesis. Hence, I will assume that Deleuze displays more continuity in his thought than Boundas (1991) and Patton (2010) give him credit for. In fact, this thesis can be read as a construction of what Deleuze could mean with the following remark: “In my earlier books, I tried to describe a certain exercise of thought; but describing it was not yet exercising thought in that way … With Félix [Guattari], all that became possible, even if we failed” (D, p. 13). With respect to the issue of whether Deleuze’s philosophy should be considered as a whole, the position in this thesis is thus that it should; his philosophy can be understood as a unity. However, for now, this can only be stated, rather than shown; it is an issue that we will have to come back to in the discussion.
With respect to the issue of whether Deleuze’s work should be seen as an attempt to be as rigorous as he can be, or merely as an alternative that provides an alternative lens through which the world can be perceived, this method allies with the former position. Since it starts from Deleuze’s attempt to think difference in itself, tries to explain why Deleuze thinks that it is necessary to do so and to what positions this endeavour commits him, this thesis will try to paint a picture of Deleuze as an uncompromising thinker.
Lastly, concerning the remaining topic: in what position does the methodological principle that informs this thesis stand regarding the relationship between Deleuze’s original philosophy and his studies in the history of philosophy? As was said above, starting from the attempt to think difference in itself privileges Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition above other books. In this respect, it can be said that the central focus of this thesis is on his original philosophy.
Nevertheless, his studies in the history of philosophy will also be employed. However, in the case of discrepancies, the original philosophy will preponderate.
With respect to the method that is employed in this thesis, one thing remains to be done, and that is answering the following question: why is Deleuze’s attempt to think difference in itself the starting point that is chosen? Are there no other aspects of Deleuze’s work that could serve equally well, or even better, as a way into his thought? There are three reasons that can be given in favour of the starting point that is chosen in this thesis.
First of all, the attempt to think difference in itself is a central concern in Deleuze’s philosophy. We have already seen the importance that Deleuze has granted to his book Difference and Repetition in relation to the rest of his oeuvre. Moreover, Deleuze does not eschew big words when he reflects on the significance of thinking difference in itself. The attempt to think difference no longer as a derivative of identity, but rather to think identity as a derivative of difference— which then would need to have its own concept, i.e. difference in itself—amounts, according to Deleuze, to nothing less than “a Copernican revolution” (DR, p. 40) in philosophy.
The second reason is of a pragmatic nature. By starting from Deleuze’s attempt to think difference in itself, and following the consequences of what this project entails, all the elements that are necessary to answer the questions that were posed in the introduction, will be presented. However, again, for now this can only be declared, and not yet demonstrated; hence, it is an issue that has to be reflected upon in the discussion.
The third and final reason has to do with the issue of what picture of Deleuze will be painted in this thesis. By taking difference in itself as a starting point and analysing what commitments follow from this, it is possible to display Deleuze as a rigorous thinker. This is not the only image of Deleuze that can be drawn—the other approaches in the secondary literature that were discussed above testify of this fact—and it is not to say that the other appropriations of Deleuze’s philosophy are incorrect. However, the upside of the current method is that it constructs Deleuze’s philosophy as a body of work that is compelling; it cannot simply be put aside if it does not please, but instead it demands a reaction. In that respect, this method is close to the position of Bryant (2008, p. 5), namely in that it tries to avoid to present Deleuze as a philosopher who only has something to say to those who already find him appealing, while others may simply leave his thought behind.
Now we can end our methodological reflections. It has been an extensive discussion of the method employed, and how it relates to other approaches to Deleuze’s work; however, given Deleuze’s elusive philosophy and the different readings that it has given rise to, it was necessary to linger over the method. Now, after a long detour, we can finally turn to Deleuze’s philosophy itself.
3. The Dogmatic Image of Thought and Difference in Itself
In this section, we will deal with two issues in Deleuze’s attempt to think difference in itself. The first question is: why does Deleuze think that it is necessary to think difference in itself? What is missing from a philosophy that does not include difference in itself? The second question is: why is it, according to Deleuze, that other philosophers before him did not succeed in thinking difference in itself? What is it that they overlooked, and why does Deleuze think that he can avoid this omission? For finding an answer to the first question, we have to examine why Deleuze thinks that problems emerge in a philosophy that lacks a concept for difference in itself. In order to answer the second question, we have to discuss what Deleuze called the ‘dogmatic image of thought’ and his critique on it. According to Deleuze, this image consists of a wrong understanding of what it means to think, and this is what precluded his predecessors from thinking difference in itself. First of all, however, we need to introduce what Deleuze has in mind when he talks about difference.
When Deleuze uses the word ‘difference’, he is not referring to the variety of phenomena that exist in the world. As he explains it: “Difference is not diversity. Diversity is given, but difference is that by which the given is given, that by which the given is given as diverse. Difference is not phenomenon but the noumenon closest to the phenomenon” (DR, p. 222). This quote testifies of the fact that Deleuze operates against a transcendental-philosophical background, and that there is something beyond what we perceive, and which gives rise to the perceived. Diversity, then, means that there are multiple individuals and that there “is no individual absolutely identical to another individual” (LS, p. 275). Or, as Deleuze formulates it elsewhere: “no two grains of dust are absolutely identical, no two hands have the same distinctive points, no two typewriters have the same strike, no two revolvers score their bullets in the same manner” (DR, p. 26). It is difference, however, that gives rise to this diversity of entities: “Every phenomenon refers to an inequality by which it is conditioned. Every diversity and every change refers to a difference which is its sufficient reason” (DR, p. 222). It is clear, then, that Deleuze thinks that we should not search for difference at the level of phenomena; we have to go beyond the phenomena and into metaphysics in order to reach difference in itself.
Why Difference in Itself?
Why is it necessary to think difference in itself? The short answer is that without difference in itself, it is impossible to account for the genesis of both thought and beings. In other words, this issue has both a transcendental and an ontological component.
Aristotle is a main target in Deleuze’s critique on how difference has been conceptualized in the history of philosophy. For Aristotle, there can only be a difference between two entities if
these entities have something in common at a higher level (Somers-Hall, 2013, p. 25; Smith, 2012, p. 38). As Deleuze explains Aristotle’s notion of difference: “two terms differ when they are other, not in themselves, but in something else; thus when they also agree in something else: in genus when they are differences in species, in species for differences in number” (DR, p. 30). Hence, man, as a rational being, differs from other animals by the fact that he is endowed with the ability to think rationally; but this only counts as a difference, because man and other animals have something in common, namely their belonging to the genus of animals (Somers-Hall, 2013, p. 25). This Aristotelian conception of difference, in which difference between two entities refers back to what they have in common, corresponds to what Deleuze calls a ‘sedentary distribution’ (DR, p. 36; Somers-Hall, 2013, p. 40). “A distribution of this type”, Deleuze writes, “proceeds by fixed and proportional determinations which may be assimilated to ‘properties’ or limited territories within representation” (DR, p. 36). According to Deleuze, representation consists of four elements: identity (the concept has an identity and is hence always applicable in the same way); analogy (judgment operates in the same way with respect to different concepts: a table is a table because it satisfies the properties of the concept table, just as an animal is an animal because it satisfies the predicates of the concept animal); opposition (two concepts are each other’s negation: A is not-B and B is not-A); and resemblance (two different things belong to the same concept because of a resemblance between these two things) (DR, pp. 29, 137-138; Groot, 2012, p. 117; Williams, 2003, p. 62). These four elements make that an animated, rational being fits the concept of man and hence belongs to that species. Moreover, by being a man this entity forfeits the possibility of being anything else than a human being; since this being is rational, and rationality is a property that only belongs to the species of man, this being cannot belong to any other species (cf. May, 2005, p. 75). Therefore, Deleuze writes that the different determinations occupy a ‘limited territory’ within the system of representation.
The sedentary distribution thus grants a concept to each individual and negates the possibility of attributing another concept to that individual. In this distribution, things are what they are, because they have properties that exclude them from being a member of another class; the sedentary distribution operates according to the logic of “this and not that” (Somers-Hall, 2013, p. 41). The identity of a thing makes that it differs from another species, because it does not have the properties of this other species; difference is thus derived from identity and conceptualized as negation, that is, as the negation of belonging to another species. Now, what does the sedentary distribution fail to explain? According to Deleuze, this distribution is “a dividing up of that which is distributed” (DR, p. 36). Hence, the sedentary distribution only applies a certain order to that which exists; it does assume the existence of that which is divided up, and thus fails to explain how it came into being: “[Representation] mediates everything, but mobilises and moves nothing” (pp. 55-56). If there is nothing essential above the identity of things, nothing
that distorts their identities, then their creation and their destruction cannot be explained. Deleuze, however, wants to give a sufficient reason for the existence of a variety of beings and thus has to account for how they came into being. The notion of sufficient reason is borrowed by Deleuze from Leibniz and refers to the principle that a reason should be given for why existing beings exist, rather than other beings (Smith, 2012, pp. 44-45). In order to fulfil his aim, Deleuze has to turn to those aspects that escape the sedentary distribution.
In order to understand the becoming of beings, we need to turn to another kind of distribution. Deleuze, in this respect, talks about a ‘nomadic distribution’ (DR, p. 36). In this distribution, “there is no longer a division of that which is distributed but rather a division among those who distribute themselves in an open space – a space which is unlimited, or at least without precise limits” (DR, p. 36, emphasis in original). In this distribution, beings are not organized according to the categories of representation. Rather, in the nomadic distribution, beings organize themselves and break through the conceptual determinations of representation: objects no longer have a fixed identity, but are understood in their process of coming into being (p. 37). This means that the nomadic distribution is not limited; if beings come into existence through a process of becoming, and if this process continues to produce new beings, then the distribution cannot be closed-off (ibid.; cf. Baugh, 1992, p. 136). If beings can no longer be understood as having an unchanging identity, then the process of becoming must remain opaque for an understanding that operates via representation which tries to capture beings within concepts (Williams, 2003, p. 66).
The nomadic distribution presents a world in which beings overflow the identities that are assigned to them by representation, and representation cannot capture this overflowing. How, then, can this world be grasped? Deleuze says the following about it: “There is a crucial experience of difference and a corresponding experiment: every time we find ourselves confronted or bound by a limitation or an opposition, we should ask what such a situation presupposes” (DR, p. 50). Thus, one cannot remain satisfied with merely representing the world as it appears. Instead, one has to investigate what is presupposed by the identities that are represented in concepts. Deleuze’s answer is the following: “It presupposes a swarm of differences, a pluralism of free, wild or untamed differences” (ibid.). These differences belong to a ‘sub-representative’ domain (p. 56). The continuous change and becoming of objects makes that beings cannot be understood as fixed by a concept. “The object must therefore be in no way identical, but torn asunder in a difference in which the identity of the object as seen by a seeing subject vanishes” (ibid.). Deleuze consequently formulates the following requirement that a philosophy of difference should fulfil: “Every object, every thing, must see its own identity swallowed up in difference, each being no more than a difference between differences. Difference must be shown differing” (ibid., emphasis in original). One can only understand how the variety of beings came into existence if one breaks free from the demands of representation and no longer thinks that the identity of beings is
ontologically primitive: “difference, potential difference and difference in intensity as the reason behind qualitative diversity. It is in difference that movement is produced as an ‘effect’” (p. 57).
Now, one might protest and say the following: what if there is not necessarily something that eludes concepts? If there are concepts that do not merely capture the properties of things as they are, but also all the relations to all other beings that generated their becoming in the first place? In that case, concepts would express the totality of the world from their own point of view (since they would contain all relations of a being to all other beings), and have an extension of one (since this set of relations is unique for each individual being); in other words, it would be much like the way in which Leibniz conceived of concepts, i.e. as referring to individual beings, thus without any generality (see Smith, 2012, pp. 44-48). In that case, the difference between two beings is captured by the differences between their respective concepts, and hence difference would always be conceptual difference, which would make a concept of difference in itself superfluous (DR, pp. 11-12; Smith, 2012, p. 49). However, we then have to ask the following question: is it possible to develop these complete concepts, that refer to one object only and express the totality of the world? Deleuze thinks that this is a hopeless endeavour. One of Deleuze’s arguments is found in the existence of words (DR, p. 13). Words have definitions, but these do not preclude words from being applied in different sentences, different contexts, etcetera (ibid.). One and the same word is necessarily applicable on multiple occasions; this “forms the real power of language in speech and writing” (ibid.). The concept or definition of a word thus necessarily has an extension that is greater than one. (For a more comprehensive discussion of the incompleteness of concepts in the context of Deleuze’s philosophy, see Bearn [2000, pp. 444-446].)
Here, Deleuze makes the same point as Derrida when the latter refers to the essential iterability of words (Derrida, 1988, p. 7). The meaning of a word always contains an excess that makes it possible to use it in different contexts, but this also implies that a word always means more than was intended by the writer or the speaker: “it leaves us no choice but to mean (to say) something that is (already, always, also) other than what we mean (to say)” (p. 62). For Derrida, concepts are thus never able to refer to one thing and to one thing only, and Deleuze agrees with him in this respect. However, Deleuze does not remain satisfied with this point, for it is one thing to talk about the inadequacy of concepts, it is quite another to explain why this adequacy becomes manifest; in this regard, Deleuze moves beyond the Derridean point (Bearn, 2000, p. 446). It may be true that concepts do not refer to one single object, but this does not yet explain how the different referents came into being in the first place. As Bearn expresses this point: “The top may have been loose, but all by itself, that will not explain why the jar leaked: the jar could have been empty” (Bearn, 2000, p. 446). Therefore, Deleuze thinks of the inadequacy of the concept that it only provides a negative explanation (DR, p. 16). What is still needed is a positive explanation, and
Deleuze finds this in difference in itself. Here we see the importance of what Deleuze called ‘the experience of difference’, as we have seen above: the fact that concepts fail to refer to one thing and one thing only does not merely presuppose the inadequacy of concepts (a negative explanation), but also the genesis of different beings that can be subsumed under the same concept. This process of genesis is captured by Deleuze’s nomadic distribution.
This nomadic distribution is ontologically prior to the sedentary distribution, according to Deleuze. This is because of the fact that one can go from the nomadic distribution to the sedentary distribution, but one cannot go the other way around. The sedentary distribution can be derived from the nomadic distribution when the four elements of representation are imposed on the latter; things are then understood as having an identity, and one perceives objects as static beings, rather than grasping their process of becoming. Inversely, the nomadic distribution cannot be derived from the sedentary distribution. When objects are captured by concepts, and difference is consequently understood as the negation of belonging to another concept, then one cannot account for how these objects came into being in the first place; this makes it impossible to grasp the processes that overflow the categories of representation and which are the subject matter of the nomadic distribution. Hence Deleuze concludes: “Those who bear the negative know not what they do: they take the shadow for the reality, they encourage phantoms, they uncouple consequences from premises and they give epiphenomena the value of phenomena and essences” (DR, p. 55).
This also accounts for Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s eternal return, and for why Deleuze uses the eternal return as a model to conceive of the world of difference in itself. If it is no longer possible to think of identity as the primary ontological term, but one rather has to take difference as ontologically primitive, then it is no longer the same that returns, but rather the different; identity, then, is only derived from difference. What is it, therefore, that returns? “Returning is being, but only the being of becoming. The eternal return does not bring back ‘the same’, but returning constitutes the only Same of that which becomes” (DR, p. 41). Thus, it is only that which becomes, what differs from itself, that returns. Therefore, it is true that the eternal return can be said to be the recurrence of the same, but only under the condition that the same refers to difference: “the circle of the eternal return … is a tortuous circle in which Sameness is said only of that which differs” (p. 57). Now, one might object against taking Nietzsche’s eternal return as an ontological doctrine in which the same (as the same) does not return, and ask, as Tanner does: “if by ‘Eternal Recurrence’ [Nietzsche] did not mean Eternal Recurrence, why did he not call it what he did mean?” (Tanner, 2000, p. 62). Deleuze’s interpretation is susceptible to this critique, since he clearly appropriates Nietzsche’s doctrine and uses it for his own philosophy of difference (cf. Malabou, 2010). However, rather than criticizing Deleuze for distorting the Nietzschean view, one might also argue, like Foucault, that it is a creative misreading, such that
the originality of this vision should not be attributed to Nietzsche, but “will bear the name of Deleuze” (Foucault, 1998, p. 367; see also Leigh, 1978, p. 223).
Up to now, we have only seen why Deleuze thinks that it is necessary to think difference in itself, and what requirements the thought of difference in itself should fulfil. It should be emphasized, however, that Deleuze does not argue that identity does not exist; rather, he argues against the primacy of identity and replaces this with the primacy of difference. Deleuze does not deny identity, but argues that it should not be taken as ontologically primitive: “That identity not be first, that is exist as a principle but as a second principle, as a principle become; that it revolve around the Different” (DR, p. 40, emphasis in original), such is the philosophy that Deleuze propagates. This puts Deleuze to the task of thinking difference in itself. We have not yet seen how Deleuze actually fulfils this job; this is the subject matter of the next chapter. First, however, we need to turn to another question: how does Deleuze explain that other philosophers did not manage to think difference in itself? In order to find an answer to this question, we have to discuss Deleuze’s conception of the dogmatic image of thought.
The Dogmatic Image of Thought
The most extensive discussion of the dogmatic image of thought that Deleuze provides, is found in the middle chapter of Difference and Repetition, of which he writes in the preface to the English edition that it “now seems to me the most necessary and the most concrete, and which serves to introduce subsequent books up to and including the research undertaken with Guattari” (DR, p. xvii). The image of thought is an issue that preoccupies Deleuze during his entire philosophical life: it is found in the books that he wrote early in his career (in Nietzsche and Philosophy and Proust and Signs), up until his latest collaboration with Guattari (What is Philosophy?). For Deleuze, the image of thought is “the image thought gives itself of what it means to think” (WP, p. 37). The image of thought fulfils a regulative function with respect to thought: “The image of thought retains only what thought can claim by right” (ibid.). Hence, the image of thought determines which elements belong essentially to thought, and what the contingent features are from which thought should be purified.
In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze argues that the dogmatic image of thought consists of eight postulates (DR, p. 167). In the Dialogues II, an abbreviated version of these is formulated:
They can all be summarized in the order-word: have correct ideas! It is first of all the image of good nature and good will – good will of the thinker who seeks the ‘truth’, good nature of thought which possesses ‘the true’ by right. Then, it is the image of a ‘common sense’ – harmony of all the faculties of a thinking being. Then, again, it is the image of recognition – ‘to recognize’, doesn’t this mean that something or someone is set up as a model of the
activities of the thinker who makes use of all his faculties on an object which is supposedly the same. Then again, it is the image of error – as if thought had only to mistrust external influences capable of making it take the ‘false’ as true. Finally, it is the image of knowledge – as place of truth, and truth as sanctioning answers or solutions for questions and problems which are supposedly ‘given’. (D, p. 18)
What is it, according to Deleuze, that is wrong with this image? The problem with this image of thought is that it presupposes too much. It assumes that thought has a natural affinity with the truth, but does not explain where this affinity comes from. It assumes that thought is directed at producing knowledge by answering certain questions, but does not explain why these questions are the only questions worth asking. Deleuze does not argue that there are no correct ideas (which would be a self-contradictory statement), but that it should not be assumed that thought converges naturally towards the correct and the true. Thought can also be about ideas that are not correct. As Deleuze expresses it: “no correct ideas, just ideas [pas d’idées justes, justes des idées]” (D, p. 7). If one assumes as a fact of nature that an alliance exists between thought on the one hand and truth and knowledge on the other hand, and if one is interested in the conditions that make these facts of nature possible, one only finds out what one has assumed beforehand; this is the mistake that Kant made (Smith, 2012, p. 238). As Deleuze elucidates: “Kant traces the so-called transcendental structures from the empirical acts of a psychological consciousness: the transcendental synthesis of apprehension is directly induced from an empirical apprehension, and so on” (DR, p. 135). When one tries to explain an empirical phenomenon by finding the conditions that make it possible, one is merely finding back what one has presupposed all along; hence, such a project involves circular reasoning that should be avoided, at least according to Deleuze (p. 129). Moreover, it is not only Kant who makes this mistake of tracing the transcendental from the empirical; Deleuze discerns the same mistake in the philosophy of Husserl (LS, p. 100).
Tracing the transcendental conditions from the empirical exercise of a faculty amounts to anticipating the results of an investigation; one knows what should be looked for and only focuses on that. Deleuze, however, argues that “nothing can be said in advance, one cannot prejudge the outcome of research” (DR, p. 143). The reason for this is that, in searching for what one is looking for, one loses sight of all the things that were not anticipated and which may surprise the researcher. Therefore, Deleuze argues that we should not presuppose what thought is; we should thus not assume beforehand that thought is about recognition. Deleuze writes the following about this:
it is apparent that acts of recognition exist and occupy a large part of our daily life: this is a table, this is an apple, this the piece of wax, Good morning Theaetetus. But who can believe that the destiny of thought is at stake in these acts, and that when we recognise, we are thinking? (p. 135)
If we want to know what thought is capable of, then we should not limit ourselves to investigating only the cognitive acts of everyday life. The dogmatic image of thought should be criticized for taking these acts as a model, and turning them into a norm by extrapolating an ideal of what belongs to thought by right from what belongs to thought by fact, “as though thought should not seek its models among stranger and more compromising adventures” (ibid.).
Deleuze’s focus on the ‘strange adventures’ of thought is not the result of a particular taste for the extraordinary and the bizarre, but should rather be seen as a consequence of methodological considerations. By concentrating on what falls outside of the everyday and ordinary operation of thought, one can avoid turning the normal functioning of thought into a model to which thought should obey, and hence find out of what thought is capable (Bryant, 2008, p. 138). This also explains the role of paradoxes in Deleuze’s Logic of Sense. They are not evoked, just for the fun of it:
Paradoxes are recreational only when they are considered as initiatives of thought. They are not recreational when they are considered as ‘the Passion of thought’, or as discovering what can only be thought, what can only be spoken, despite the fact that it is both ineffable and unthinkable. (LS, p. 77)
Paradoxes put thought into movement; they generate thought by showing that current solutions and the current understanding do not suffice, and hence that thought should proceed along other paths (Williams, 2008, pp. 24-25).
Why is it, according to Deleuze, that recognition should not be counted as thought? Deleuze defines recognition as “the harmonious exercise of all the faculties upon a supposed same object: the same object may be seen, touched, remembered, imagined or conceived” (DR, p. 133). One can walk past a house and see how it looks; this view coincides with the memory that one has of how the house looked yesterday; one can then touch the bricks of the house and feel that they engender the excitement that one expected, etcetera. If all these different sensations agree with one another, there is a reciprocal confirmation of the correctness of all of them, and one recognizes the house as a house. The possibility of recognition, then, is based upon the sameness of the object that is experienced: “An object is recognized … when one faculty locates it as identical to that of another, or rather when all the faculties together relate their given and relate themselves to a form
of identity in the object” (ibid.). Recognition is thus intimately related to representation: recognition as the accord of the different faculties paves the way for thinking that objects have fixed identities. When all the faculties are in agreement, it becomes possible to think of objects in terms of identities from which nothing escapes; in this way, recognition is a first step on the way towards representation (p. 138). When objects are seen as having identities, and difference is reduced to difference between these identities, it is no longer possible to conceive of difference in itself.
Moreover, if everything is captured by the identities of things, there is nothing left that disturbs thought. In order to understand what animates thinking, we need to leave the domain of representation and recognition and enter the realm of encounters. As Deleuze says: “recognizing is the opposite of the encounter” (D, p. 7). The concept of the encounter refers to something very specific in Deleuze’s philosophy. It is important to emphasize this, since, one might ask, is it not true that one also encounters the objects of recognition? Not according to the vocabulary that Deleuze employs. For Deleuze, we can only speak of an encounter if “Something in the world forces us to think” (DR, p. 139). The object of the encounter is thus not something that can be recognized. Deleuze uses the word ‘sign’ to refer to the object of the encounter (PS, p. 62). The sign is hence something on which the different faculties cannot find an accord with one another.
Deleuze characterizes the sign as follows: “its primary characteristic is that it can only be sensed … It is not a sensible being but the being of the sensible (DR, pp. 139-140, emphasis in original). Deleuze calls it the ‘being of the sensible’, because it is not the sensible itself, but rather that which gives rise to the variety of experiences (Bryant, 2008, p. 64). As Deleuze says of the sign: “It is not the given but that by which the given is given. It is therefore in a certain sense the imperceptible. It is imperceptible precisely from the point of view of recognition” (DR, p. 140).
As we saw, the sign is that which forces us to think. Hence, thought has an essential relationship with signs, and no longer with truths and certainties: “Certainties force us to think no more than doubts” (DR, p. 139). What is lacking from the dogmatic image of thought are “the claws of absolute necessity … of a strangeness or an enmity which alone would awaken thought from its natural stupor or eternal possibility” (ibid.). In terms of modality, we could thus say the following: one could try to determine the conditions of possible experience, but this does not yet explain how actual experience is realized. The conditions of possible experience “are too general or too large for the real. The net is so loose that the largest fish pass through” (DR, p. 68). In order to account for real experience, one has to determine what adds necessity to the possibility, such that the latter will be realized. Deleuze finds this necessity in the encounter with the sign.
Determining the conditions of real experience: this is one of Deleuze’s main goals in Difference and Repetition. These conditions of real experience “are not larger than the conditioned” (DR, p. 68). If the conditions were larger, then they would merely be conditions of
possible experience (Smith, 2012, p. 240). Encounters fulfil this requirement of not being larger than what they condition, since they are the encounters with signs, i.e. beings that force us to think; if they do not force to think, they are not signs. In other words, the potential of signs to engender thinking is always fully realized; signs do not have an excess potential which was not realized, but could have led to thought if the circumstances were somewhat different. Signs are thus not larger than what they engender, namely instances of thought. Each encounter has its own signs and forces us to think in its own way. Therefore, encounters are the conditions of real experience, rather than merely of possible experience.
Now, we have seen that recognition and representation fail to capture difference in itself. We have also seen that signs are the opposite of recognition; while the latter is only the condition of possible experience, the encounters of signs are the conditions of real experience. Signs escape thought that is understood on the basis of the model of recognition and representation. What, then, is the relationship between difference in itself and signs? Deleuze writes the following about it: “It is in difference that movement is produced as an ‘effect’, that phenomena flash their meaning like signs” (DR, p. 57). It is thus difference that gives rise to signs. There are therefore two aspects to Deleuze’s project of thinking difference in itself. On the one hand, difference in itself is a necessary concept to account for the nomadic distribution, which is that which generates the sedentary distribution and thus accounts for the coming into existence of the phenomena to which the categories of representation, in turn, can be applied. This is the ontological aspect. On the other hand, difference in itself is that which gives rise to signs that account for real experience. This, then, is the transcendental aspect of Deleuze’s philosophy of difference.
In this chapter, we have first dealt with the question of why Deleuze thinks that it is necessary to come up with a concept of difference in itself. Deleuze argues that the categories of representation primarily conceive of beings in terms of identity. Difference, then, is understood as a derivative of identity; a thing is different from another thing when it has other properties and therefore cannot share the latter thing’s identity. When the categories of representation are into play, difference is understood as negation. A thing has an identity of which nothing escapes; therefore, a being is ‘this and not that’, i.e. it is negated the identities of other things. However, this leaves unexplained how things came into being, and in order to account for that, one has to refer to that which escapes from the identities that things have under the reign of representation; therefore, one can no longer think of difference as something that exists because things have an identity. Rather, one has to take difference as the primary term, and identity as a derivative, in order to account for the becoming of being. Hence, one has to think difference in itself.
The reason that philosophers before him (with the exception of Nietzsche) have not been able to think difference in itself, is explained by Deleuze by the fact that they were subject to the
dogmatic image of thought. One of the elements of this image is the postulate of recognition, which entails the agreement of different faculties and is based on the supposed identity of the object that is apprehended; this, in turn, makes it impossible to think difference in itself. However, the dogmatic image of thought cannot account for what gives rise to thought; it merely provides a picture of possible thought, but lacks the necessity that ensures that thought is realized. The encounter with a sign provides the necessity to thought, and it is difference that gives rise to the sign. It is thus difference in itself that provides the key to the process of genesis in Deleuze’s philosophy: difference in itself gives rise both to beings and to thought.
We have not yet discussed in what way Deleuze actually fulfils his project of thinking difference in itself. We did see, however, what difference was not: difference should not be confused with diversity of phenomena, it is not something that can be represented, and difference should not be thought of as a derivative of identity. How can this be done, thinking difference in itself, independent of a prior identity? The answer to this question lies in Deleuze’s appropriation of empiricism. According to Deleuze, the distinctive property of empiricism is the externality of relations: “Relations are external to their terms” (ES, p. 99). Deleuze will employ this thesis and push it to its extremes, up to the point that relations no longer even require prior relata (Smith, 2012, p. 245). Empiricism, then, is a theory of multiplicities, since in “a multiplicity, what counts are not the terms or the elements, but what there is ‘between’, the between, a set of relations which are not separable from each other” (D, p. vii).
This leads us to the topic of the next chapter: how does Deleuze proceed in thinking difference in itself? How does he think relations without prior relata? In order to answer these questions, we have to turn to Deleuze’s notion of ‘Ideas’ and his discussion of the differential calculus.
4. Ideas and the Necessity of Chance
In this chapter, Deleuze’s notion of Ideas will be discussed. Deleuze adopts this notion from Kant, for whom Ideas are intimately connected to problems: “Kant never ceased to remind us that Ideas are essentially ‘problematic’. Conversely, problems are Ideas” (DR, p. 168). For Kant, Ideas result when the categories are used outside of their rightful domain, i.e. when they are no longer tied to the intuition (Kant, 1998, B377). For example, the category of causality can be applied in such a way that we can think of the totality of all causal relations (in other words: the world), even though we can never know it (since knowing, for Kant, involves both concepts and intuition) (B391-392; Smith, 2012, p. 108). Now, when the causal nexus is extended to infinity, we can ask questions like: did the world have a beginning? To such a question, no answer can be given, because it refers to an object that we do not find in experience (Smith, 2012, p. 109). Hence, for Kant, the object of the Idea is “a problem permitting of no solution” (Kant, 1998, B510). Ideas are thus problems that are constructed by reason when the categories are applied without the input of the intuition.
However, Deleuze does not remain satisfied with Kant’s discussion. With Kant, according to Deleuze, the Ideas are only determined by means of an analogy with the objects of experience, which leaves their determination extrinsic to the Ideas themselves (DR, p. 169-170; Smith, 2012, p. 110). Deleuze believes that this shortcoming can be overcome if the challenge that Salomon Maimon posed to Kant is taken up. Maimon argued that Kant simply assumes knowledge and morality as matters of fact, and subsequently seeks the conditions of their possibility; instead, Kant should have shown how knowledge and morality are generated in the first place (Smith, 2012, p. 111). As a second point of critique, Maimon argued that Kant did not succeed in explaining why the categories of the understanding are applicable to the sensed data of the intuition; there is a gap between the understanding and sensibility, and Kant did not manage to bridge this gap (for a more comprehensive discussion of this point, see Voss [2011, pp. 63-67]). Therefore, Maimon thinks that Kant’s viewpoint of external conditioning between concepts and intuition should be replaced by a method of internal genesis (Smith, 2012, p. 111; Voss, 2011, p. 63). This internal genesis is based on differentials that determine each other in a reciprocal relationship, and are therefore not determined extrinsically. Deleuze follows Maimon in this respect, but disagrees with the latter regarding the location of the differential Ideas; for Maimon, these Ideas are enclosed within the understanding of the subject, whereas for Deleuze these Ideas are not enclosed within the realm of a subject (Voss, 2011, p. 71). Instead, Deleuze speaks of “a fractured I” (DR, p. 169) and that “Ideas swarm in the fracture” (ibid.), which means that there is an essential relation between thought and an outside.
In this chapter, we will discuss Deleuze’s theory of Ideas. These Ideas allow Deleuze to elaborate on how one can think of difference in itself, without subordinating it to a prior identity.
