International Journal of Philosophical Studies

Vol. 16(4), 509532

International Journal of Philosophical Studies

ISSN 09672559 print 14664542 online 2008 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09672550802335879

Deleuzes Difference

Matthew S. Linck

Taylor and Francis RIPH_A_333754.sgm 10.1080/09672550802335879 International Journal of Philosophical Studies 0967-2559 (print)/1466-4542 (online) Original Article 2008 Taylor & Francis 16 40000002008 MatthewLinck matthew.linck@gmail.com
Abstract

This article delineates the core concerns and motivations of the ontological
work of Gilles Deleuze, and is intended as a programmatic statement for a
general philosophical audience. The article consists of two main parts. In the
first, two early writings by Deleuze are analysed in order to clarify his under-
standing of ontology broadly, and to specify the precise aim of his understand-
ing of being in terms of difference. The second part of the article looks at the
work of Heidegger and Derrida in order to distinguish Deleuzes conceptions
of ontology and difference from theirs. A final section clarifies Deleuzes
efforts to undertake the construction of an ontology divergent from the domi-
nant tradition and in contrast to the emphasis on the closure of metaphysics in
the thought of Heidegger and Derrida.

Keywords:

Deleuze; ontology; difference; Hegel; Heidegger; Derrida

Introduction

Deleuze remarked once in an interview that he felt himself to be a pure
metaphysician. Bergson says that modern science hasnt found its meta-
physics, the metaphysics it would need. It is this metaphysics that interests
me.

1

In this respect, Deleuze is quite literally a meta

physic

ian in the sense
that his thought never travels far from a direct engagement with physical
phenomena. In Deleuzes locution, being a metaphysician is synonymous
with pursuing ontology. Deleuze is an ontological thinker through and
through. The key task of this article will be to clarify what Deleuze under-
stands ontology to be, without going too far into what exactly that
ontology entails. This article is in fact undertaken in light of the growing
number of detailed and insightful treatments of Deleuzes ontological
thought.

2

While such works contribute significantly to the continuing
project of explicating Deleuzes difficult texts, they can remain opaque to
the reader of Deleuzes work who has not already grasped Deleuzes
unique ontological project, especially if such a reader expects to encounter
a thinker whose work is self-evidently continuous with certain other
strains of Continental thought, particularly those rooted in Hegel and
Heidegger. It is to such a reader that this article is addressed.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

510
In order to illuminate Deleuzes core ontological vision better, I will
contrast his thinking to that of Heidegger and especially Derrida. The two
chief points of contrast will be (1) how ontology is understood and the meth-
ods of its pursuit, and (2) the relationship of the pursuit of ontology to the
reading of the history of philosophy. I will proceed by offering comments on
a number of discrete texts. Two of Deleuzes early writings, the review of
Jean Hyppolites

Logic and Existence

(1954) and Bergsons Conception of
Difference (1956), provide clear indications of Deleuzes chief ontological
concerns at an early stage. By commenting on Heideggers

Being and Time

and

Identity and Difference

I hope to illuminate Deleuzes rather different
orientation toward the question of being and different manner of engage-
ment with the philosophical tradition a difference which distinguishes his
work from much of contemporary philosophical commentary. A brief look
at Derridas Diffrance will indicate Derridas continuation of Heideggers
treatment of the history of philosophy as well as the different register of
Derridas deployment of concepts of difference from those of Deleuze. This
will be followed by a brief reading of one small section from the first chapter
of

Difference and Repetition

concerning the univocity of being.

1 Deleuzes Review of Jean Hyppolites

Logic and Existence

(1954)

It is perhaps surprising that one of Deleuzes earliest mature writings is a
sympathetic review of a book about Hegel. Given what appears to be great
antipathy to Hegel in his later writings,

3

the measured tones of the review
are at least unexpected. However we take Deleuzes attitude here, the
review serves as a platform for Deleuze to announce subtly the concerns of
his own burgeoning thought.
Hyppolites book of 1953, following his celebrated commentary of 1946
on Hegels

Phenomenology of Spirit

, staked a claim against the Man-
centred reading of Hegel provided by Kojve which had had such vast
influence in France in the previous decades.

4

Rather than stressing the role
of Man at the end of history, Hyppolite provides a reading of Hegel that
displaces Man from centre-stage and focuses on Hegelian philosophy as a
grand ontological project. It is this emphasis on ontology that Deleuze
highlights at the outset of his review and that provides the first key to
understanding Deleuzes later writings. Deleuze writes,
Hyppolite questions the

Logic

, the

Phenomenology

, and the

Encyclo-
pedia

on the basis of a precise idea and on a precise point.

Philosophy
must be ontology, it cannot be anything else; but there is no ontology of
essence, there is only an ontology of sense

. That philosophy must be
ontology means first of all that it is not anthropology.

5

Deleuze explicates this contrast between anthropology and ontology with
respect to Kantian thought. The key point concerns the asymmetry that
DELEUZES DIFFERENCE

511
remains in Kants critical thought with respect to subjectivity and objectivity.
While Kant does propose an identity of the subject with the object of knowl-
edge, this object is not the thing itself, but only, as Deleuze says, something
relative that is, relative to the faculties of the transcendental subject. Being
as such is not reached in Kantian thought, which remains anthropological
despite moving beyond the psychological and the empirical.
Hegelian thought, by contrast (according to Deleuzes reading of
Hyppolite), seeks to reduce the anthropological remnants of Kantian
philosophy. The external difference between reflection and being is in
another view the internal difference of Being itself, in other words, Being
identical to difference, identical to mediation (RLE 192). (We can note
here that this language of internal difference and of Being as identical to
difference will resurface in Deleuzes essay on Bergson and in

Difference
and Repetition

as keystones to his own (anti-Hegelian) ontology. We must
then remain attuned to the precise point of divergence between the two.)
The frequent retort to the purported pretensions of Hegelian invocations
of the absolute is that Hegelian thought returns us to the dogmatic meta-
physics of pre-Kantian philosophy. In Deleuzes terms, the move from
anthropology to ontology is viewed as a taking oneself for God (RLE
193). But as Deleuze reads Hyppolite (reading Hegel) this criticism is
misplaced because Being is not

essence

, but

sense

(RLE 193). For
Deleuze in this context this means that there is no beyond of the world,
and he ties this directly to Hyppolites emphasis on the Hegelian transfor-
mation of metaphysics into logic. The wager of Hegelian thought on this
view is, we might say, the maintenance of a (quasi-)divine

logos

without
any transcendence. This move has implications not only for being itself,
but also for philosophical method.
The key problem, as Deleuze formulates it, is: if ontology is an ontology
of sense and not of essence, if there is no second world, how can absolute
knowledge still be distinguished from empirical knowledge? (RLE 193).
Since there is no beyond of this world, it alone must be the object of philo-
sophical knowledge. But if this is the case, what would be the difference
between empirical knowledge and absolute knowledge, if not a difference
of object? Hyppolites answer, according to Deleuze, cannot be mapped
onto a traditional distinction between essentialism and empiricism. That is,
the absolute cannot be identified with the essential that lies beneath, or
behind, the empirical. Furthermore, for Deleuze, essentialism and empiri-
cism are equivalent in the way that really matters, that is, reflection remains
external to its object. The Hegelian solution removes the external moment
of reflection, but in doing so internalizes difference within being itself (of
which reflection is now a moment). In other words, the absolute will not be
another being (essentialism), but rather a certain view on beings. (We can
certainly see how Kant prepares the Hegelian move: the thing-in-itself,
while retaining the form of a being standing behind phenomena, is not,
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

512
strictly speaking, a different being from what appears; it is just what
appears without being worked upon by the faculties of the transcendental
subject.) It is worth quoting Deleuze in full on this point:
In contrast [to essentialism], the ontology of sense is the total
Thought knowing itself only in its determinations, which are the
moments of form. In the empirical and in the absolute, it is the same
being and the same thought; but the external, empirical difference of
thought and being has given way to the difference identical with
Being, to the difference internal to Being which thinks itself.
Thereby, absolute knowledge actually distinguishes itself from
empirical knowledge, but it distinguishes itself only by also negating
the knowledge of indifferent essence.
(RLE 194)
While Deleuze will question Hyppolites Hegelianism in the next and final
paragraph of the review, the terms of this explication anticipate much that
will be of concern for Deleuze in his own work. Most especially, Deleuze
will strive in the later writings to formulate an ontology that does just what
Hyppolites Hegel does, in one precise respect: comprehends being as such
without positing any being beyond the empirical, but nevertheless maintains
a distinction between empirical knowledge and ontological knowledge.
Deleuzes project along these lines will follow a rather different path from
Hegels (a path marked by a commitment to immanence and what Deleuze
calls transcendental empiricism), but bears a striking family resemblance.
Once this is seen, the sympathetic tone of Deleuzes review is much easier
to understand.
While Deleuzes mature alternative to this Hegelian ontology of sense is
extremely subtle and elaborate, the fundamental divergence is already
announced by Deleuze at the end of the review. Lets listen again to
Deleuze as he articulates his agreement with Hegel/Hyppolite:
Following Hyppolite, we recognize that philosophy, if it has any
meaning, can only be ontology and an ontology of sense. The same
being and the same thought are in the empirical and in the absolute.
But the difference between thought and being is sublated in the
absolute by the positing of the Being identical to difference which, as
such, thinks itself and reflects itself in man. This absolute identity of
being and difference is called sense.
(RLE 195)
Deleuze, it seems, is ready to follow Hegel/Hyppolite this far and on these
terms (at least in 1954). Where, then, does Deleuze diverge? The key issue,
DELEUZES DIFFERENCE

513
one that will resurface frequently as a leitmotif in Deleuzes work, is
contradiction. According to Deleuze, Hyppolite is altogether Hegelian in
his adherence to Hegels commitment to contradiction as the highest form
of difference. Only when difference is carried up to contradiction is the
absolute reached. Being must not only differ from itself; it must contradict
itself. Internal difference must be realized as internal contradiction.
Deleuzes anti-Hegelian project is then succinctly announced in one
compact question: can we not construct an ontology of difference which
would not have to go up to contradiction, because contradiction would be
less than difference and not more? (RLE 195). This ontology of being as
difference, in which contradiction is less than difference, is announced but
not developed here in the Hyppolite review. For the initial stages of that
development, we must turn to Deleuzes essay on Bergson from 1956.

2 Bergsons Conception of Difference (1956)

If the review of Hyppolites book provides some signposts directing us to
Deleuzes mature ideas about difference and ontology, these ideas begin to
get worked out in earnest in his 1956 essay on Bergson. While published in
1956, this essay was composed a few years earlier, closer to the composition
of the Hyppolite review.

6

Indeed, some of the language cited above is
directly echoed in the Bergson essay. That this essay represents a positive
working-out of the possibilities hinted at at the end of the review can be
seen in the following:
The originality of Bergsons conception resides in showing that internal
difference does not go, and is not required to go as far as contradiction,
alterity, and negativity, because these three notions are in fact less
profound than itself, or they are viewpoints only from the outside. The
real sense of Bergsons endeavor is thinking internal difference as such,
as pure difference, and raising difference up to the absolute.

7

As my goal is only to give a clear outline of the nature of Deleuzes concep-
tion of an ontology of difference, I will not offer here a detailed exposition
of Deleuzes dense and difficult commentary on Bergsons philosophy. That
would require continual reference to Bergsons own writings and is outside
the scope of my concerns. Rather, I want to focus on those aspects of
Deleuzes essay on Bergson that provide an understanding of the registers
of being and conceptuality that difference occupies for Deleuze. It will be
my contention hereinafter that Deleuzes concern for difference is in no way
diffuse and has a rather specific target. By specifying this target, we will get
a better sense of the distinctness of Deleuzes thinking.
The notion of

internal difference

lies at the heart of Deleuzes explication
of Bergsonian philosophy and his own thinking as well. Internal difference
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

514
is meant to redress two deficiencies of classical thought. On the one hand,
internal difference stands for the difference of an individual from others of
the same kind. As Deleuze works out later and at length in

Difference and
Repetition

, the seminal reference for the traditional concept of difference is
found in Aristotle, where difference is a matter of differentiating species
within a genus.

8

The uniqueness of the individual represents a severe
aporia in Aristotelian thought. Indeed, only by leaning on the dualism of
hylomorphic schemas is Aristotle able to account for the uniqueness of
individuals (i.e., individuality is grounded in an individuals material [

hyle

]
and is not a conceptual matter).

9

For Deleuze/Bergson, this represents a
fundamental failure of philosophical thought philosophy must attempt to
account conceptually for the individuation of individuals.
The other aspect of internal difference concerns

differences of nature

,
which cannot be aligned with generic differences. Our commonsense group-
ings according to genera are often organized along the lines of utilitarian
interests. Deleuze cites Bergsons example of pleasure. While there exists
the generic group of pleasures, this grouping is effected by a uniformity of
human interests, interests that likely obscure the inherent differences of
those things categorized under the genus (BCD 33). The crucial point here
is that being cannot simply be divided along seemingly self-evident generic
lines since these will usually obscure the true differences of being, differ-
ences of nature. These two aspects of internal difference are summed up in
the following:
[E]ither philosophy proposes for itself

this

means (differences of
nature) and

this

end (to arrive at internal difference), or else it will
have merely a negative or generic relation to things and will end up a
part of criticism and mere generalities in any case, it will run the risk
of ending up in a merely external state of reflection. Opting for the
first alternative, Bergson puts forward philosophys ideal: to tailor for
the object a concept appropriate to that object alone, a concept that
one can hardly still call a concept, since it applies to only one thing.
This unity of the thing and the concept is internal difference, which
one reaches through differences of nature.
(BCD 33)
Two complementary currents run through Deleuzes reading of Bergson
indeed, they run through all of his work: one concerns giving an account of
being as it is, and the other concerns the methods by which we can come to
know the ways of being. There is a subtle interplay between these two
dimensions being will determine those methods that grant us insight into
its ways, and successful insight will allow us better to articulate being
from within. As Deleuze lays out clearly in his later book

Bergsonism

, the
DELEUZES DIFFERENCE

515
overarching name for Bergsons method is intuition, and it possesses
a precisely isomorphic relationship to being as captured by the main
Bergsonian concepts (

dure

, memory,

lan vital

).

10

A key methodological
concept that Deleuze borrows from Bergson is the

problem

. Intuition as
method can be understood as the correct posing of problems, the problems
themselves being understood as constitutive of certain states of affairs in
the world. Problems thus are not conceptual difficulties to be solved, but are
rather ontological dispositions that are the fundamental constitutive aspects
of being itself. Intuition as method is then an attempt to capture in thought
the way that being is in itself. In order later to see the contrast to Heidegge-
rian phenomenology, emphasis should be given here to the way in which
natural/physical phenomena (e.g., the dissolving of a cube of sugar) occupy
a central position in the thinking of Bergson and Deleuze. Superficial as
such concerns might seem, I would argue that they fundamentally set
Deleuze apart from a thinker like Derrida. But more on this below.
What, then, is announced already in Deleuzes essay on Bergson? Para-
mount is Deleuzes insistence that difference be understood to be operating
within being itself in a primary fashion and that this is true difference.
Again, in contrast to the Aristotelian legacy, which will articulate true
difference at the level of the concept, indeed, as a matter that can only really

exist

on the plane of thought and speech (

logos

) (difference among individ-
uals is a kind of mute, almost unknowable, certainly unarticulable type of
difference), Deleuze views difference as operating prior to, underneath, and
perhaps against the grain of the concept in its traditional sense. We must
immediately qualify these remarks and make clear that Deleuze is not
simply trying to save the dignity of the individual from its absorption into
the conceptual differentiations of species and genera. The positing of the
individual (

this

thing in front of me) is itself bound up with the operation of
the concept to the extent that I identify it already as belonging to or falling
under a universal. To understand being as difference we cannot begin with
individuals in the usual sense rather we must inquire into the

genesis

of
individuals, we must come to understand how individuals come to be from
their ways of being, especially since we will never be able to provide a
convincing account of how real individuals might fall out of concepts. Thus
we must venture with Deleuze into an understanding of difference as
temporal. This necessity is brought out in the essay on Bergson with the
introduction of the notion of

tendency

.
It is not things, nor the states of things, nor is it characteristics, that
differ in nature; it is

tendencies

. This is why the conception of species-
specific difference is unsatisfactory: we must closely follow not the
presence of characteristics, but their tendency to develop.
(BCD 34)
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

516
This represents the first step on the way toward an ontology that bears little
resemblance to those having Aristotelian roots, an ontology that Deleuze
will at first identify closely with Bergsons own. What Deleuze has in his
sights is an account of being which begins from beings internal differentia-
tion (as beings most fundamental trait) and that this difference is not
conceptual difference (in the Aristotelian sense). Furthermore, we cannot
think this difference as a static attribute of being but rather must think it in
terms of development and temporality. In addition, a preoccupation with
substantial individuals must be replaced by new kinds of categories, e.g.,
tendencies.
In the next few pages of his essay, Deleuze goes on to explain why the
notion of tendency (which I have invoked but not really explained) is not yet
sufficient and must give way to what Bergson calls duration. By quoting
Deleuze again, we will see clearly that the burden of his project is to arrive
at an understanding of being in which the foundation is difference, an
account in which being and difference can be identified

immediately

:
In a word, duration is what differs, and this is no longer what differs
from other things, but what differs from itself. What differs has itself
become a thing, a

substance

. Bergsons thesis could be summed up in
this way: real time is alteration, and alteration is substance. Difference
of nature is therefore no longer between two things or rather two
tendencies; difference of nature is itself a thing, a tendency opposed to
some other tendency. The decomposition of the composite does not
just give us two tendencies that differ in nature; it gives us difference
of nature as one of the two tendencies. And just as difference has
become a substance, so movement is no longer the characteristic of
something, but has itself acquired a substantial character. It presup-
poses nothing else, no body in motion. Duration or tendency is the
difference of self with itself; and what differs from itself is, in an

unme-
diated

way, the unity of substance and subject.

11

(BCD 38)
The above will no doubt fail to convey the fine-grained conclusions of
Deleuzes Bergsonian reflections in this essay, but the crucial point is now
clear. Only by articulating a set of concepts that allow us to see being as a
matter of internal differentiation, and then using such concepts to work
toward an understanding of being in its specific-generic register (here is the
place of the virtuality/actuality distinction in Bergsons and Deleuzes work),
can we do justice to being itself. To state the matter rather simply, difference
is not a concept for Deleuze; it is the name for being. To the extent that
Deleuze is a philosopher of difference, this is true only to the extent that for
Deleuze difference is being, and philosophy is and must be ontology.
DELEUZES DIFFERENCE

517
As it will be a key issue in what follows, it should be stressed here that
my core contention in the remarks above is that Deleuze, qua philosopher
of difference, is in a fundamental sense a classic metaphysician inasmuch
as he wants to provide a philosophical (i.e., conceptual) account of the
physical world. It is telling in this regard that this aspect of Deleuzes work
remained at the forefront (or, at least, on the surface) until the end. Invok-
ing an often-used example in Deleuzes work, we read the following in his
late book on Leibniz:
To be sure, organic folds have their own specificity, as fossils demon-
strate. But on the one hand, the division of parts in matter does not go
without decomposition of bending movement or of flexions. We see
this in the development of the egg, where numerical division is only
the condition of morphogenic movements, and of invagination as a
pleating. On the other hand, the formation of the organism would
remain an improbable mystery, or a miracle, even if matter were to
divide infinitely into independent points.

12

As a programmatic encapsulation, we might say that Deleuze wanted to be
a

philosopher

of embryonic development.

13

3 Heidegger, Ontology, and Tradition

Deleuzes questioning of the Hegelian recourse to contradiction, of the
elevation of contradiction as the purest form of difference, is at the same
time a questioning of Hegels dialectical method. This method, we come to
learn in Hegels logical writings, is not an external, or formal, method
imposed upon the content of thinking; rather, it turns out that the method
and content are identical. The movement-through-contradiction that takes
us through the conceptual registers of the

Science of Logic

is, ultimately,
the self-thinking of that which is to be thought. And what is to be thought is
being. Hence, logic turns out to be identical with ontology.

14

For my
account of Derrida below, it is also important to note that Hegel explicitly
sees the work of systematic philosophy, logic most of all, as the culmination
of and reflection upon the tradition of Western philosophy. The theses,
formulations, and positions of earlier philosophers come to be seen as the
external, historical working-out of the self-development of the concept
(

Begriff

), a working-out that only comes to consciousness of itself in
Hegels own thinking.
Various aspects of this basic Hegelian approach to ontology and philoso-
phy influence the aims and methods of Derridas work. But we must also
consider Heidegger in order to understand why and how Derridas thinking
proceeds as it does. Additionally, I have included these remarks about
Hegel here in this section to show how, despite important differences,
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

518
Heideggers thought shares two fundamental similarities to Hegels. First,
just as for Hegel there is no essential difference between the form and
content of philosophical thought, the same holds for Heidegger;

and

these
forms and contents spring from reflection upon the very posing of the
question of being. The second part of this sentence is important since it
might be only on its basis, and not on that of the first part, that we might
distinguish Hegelian or Heideggerian ontology from Deleuzes. Indeed, it
might be the case that all (or most) genuine ontological thought discovers
this identity of form and content. Second, a going-over of the traditional
texts and thoughts of the tradition finds a fundamental place in the ontolog-
ical project that Heidegger pursues, just as it does for Hegel. Indeed, we
might say quite succinctly that for both Hegel and Heidegger, ontology
requires the simultaneous retrieval and de(con)struction/overcoming of the
tradition.
I will outline briefly below the formulation of Heideggers ontological
project in the Introduction to

Being and Time

and analyse an example of
his recourse to the tradition in a late text,

Identity and Difference

. These
discussions will serve as reference points in later sections of the article.
As anticipated above, Heideggers project in

Being and Time

unfolds
from an analysis of the projects own starting point. In the brief Preface to
the book (with the epigraph from Platos

Sophist

concerning a battle of
giants over the question of being) Heidegger announces that he will be
rais[ing] anew

the question of the meaning

[Sinn]

of being

.

15

He also
makes clear that by being he means at the outset nothing more than the
being that we attest to in everyday speech. Hence the question of the mean-
ing of being amounts, in the first instance, to something like the question of
what it means to make statements such as (to use Heideggers examples),
The sky

is

blue, or I

am

happy. From the outset, then, being is not to be
interrogated as

a

being, or as what is common to beings, but rather in terms
of what is implied in our own attestations to matters at hand.
Yet before taking up any such analyses of propositional usage, Heidegger
focuses attention on the

question

of the meaning of being rather than the
meaning itself. Again, we will see that the meaning will come to be revealed
from within the question (or the questioning) itself. Heidegger states that
the question of the meaning of being must be

formulated

(i.e., analysed and
worked out in a self-conscious manner) and that such formulation requires
the elucidation of various

structural moments

: what is asked about, what is
to be ascertained, and what is to be interrogated (see

BT

4). What is asked
about (first moment), is nothing more than that which determines beings as
beings. Heidegger emphasizes here (in advance) that what does such
determining is itself not a being, and that one must avoid the essentially
mythological tendency to trace beings back in their origins to another
being (

BT

5). What is to be ascertained (second moment) is the meaning of
being itself. Heidegger alerts the reader here to the fact that, given that what
DELEUZES DIFFERENCE

519
is asked about is not a being, the conceptualization required to ascertain the
meaning of what is asked about will be essentially distinct from the
concepts in which beings receive their determination of meaning (

BT

5).
The third moment of the question is that which is interrogated.

16

It is here
that we can see how ontology is identical to phenomenology for Heidegger.
It is worth quoting some lines here:
Insofar as being constitutes what is asked about, and insofar as being
means the being of beings, beings themselves turn out to be what is

interrogated

in the question of being. Beings are, so to speak, inter-
rogated with regard to their being. But if they are to exhibit the
characteristics of their being without falsification they must for their
part become accessible in advance as they are in themselves. The
question of being demands that the right access to beings be gained
and secured in advance with regard to what it interrogates.
(

BT

5)
Ontology, as the pursuit of the question of the meaning of being, will
require that beings, or some being (

das Seiende

), become accessible as they
are in themselves. As Heidegger makes clear in 7, The Phenomenological
Method of Investigation, the cultivation of such accessibility is the very
task of phenomenology and hence of ontology. Human being (Dasein), as
that being that poses the question of the meaning of being, marks itself as
the privileged being that must be interrogated, indicating another way in
which the unfolding of the project is simply an analysis of the question of
being itself.
Once it is made clear that it will be a self-showing of the human that will
be needed to pursue the question of the meaning of being (i.e., to pursue
ontology), another theme arises, namely, the important role of a retrieval
(

Wiederholung) of the question of being or destructuring (Destruktion) of
the history of metaphysics. In a compressed form, we can say that Dasein is
historical in its very being, and this whether or not Dasein is aware of its
historicality. Being historical means that Dasein, whether self-consciously so
or not, is determined by its history. If Dasein is to become accessible to itself
in its being, Dasein must show itself as historical. Only by becoming trans-
parent to itself in its specific modes of historical determination can Dasein
free itself from the determining influences of a tradition into which it is
thrown (and it must be thrown into some such tradition). (See BT 1718 on
these points.) Foremost amongst the traditional inheritances of Dasein
17
is
the history of metaphysics. Heidegger writes that inasmuch as tradition
deprives Dasein of its own leadership in questioning and choosing this is
especially true of that understanding (and its possible development) which
is rooted in the most proper being of Dasein the ontological understanding
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
520
(BT 1819). Hence the retrieval of the originary sources of Greek ontology
(enigmatically indicated by Heidegger in this immediate context by refer-
ence to the original experiences in which the first and subsequently guiding
determinations of being were gained (BT 20)) and the destructuring of the
development of metaphysics which follows become a key aspect of gaining
the phenomenological accessibility required for the pursuit of the question
of being. Let it then suffice to say that what Heidegger seeks to find in the
history of philosophy, from Plato onwards, is the record of a waywardness
in our thinking, however hard to avoid that waywardness may have been.
It is equally the case, however, that Heidegger continually turns to the
dominant voices in the Western tradition in order (by a careful listening) to
hear what might be genuine thinking of being in their texts. The hermeneu-
tical approach that Heidegger develops in his readings of traditional texts,
from the seminars on Aristotle in the early 1920s through to the end of his
career, has been highly influential. Without examining it in depth, we might
only note that Heidegger seems at all times to aim to disclose in such texts
intimations of his own ontological thinking even though these cannot be
read right off the page. This is one way of construing something mentioned
above, namely, that Heideggers treatment of the metaphysical tradition is
meant to be at once both a repetition or retrieval and an overcoming; we can
work toward that overcoming (which is perhaps only always to-come) by
disclosing through careful reading that which the tradition has thought
despite itself.
A very brief consideration of one such reading from The Principle of
Identity will help to illustrate this mode of reading and its goals. The pre-
Socratics hold a special place in this regard. (It seems that they stood closer
to the primordial experiences mentioned above.) In this lecture, Heidegger
uses the consideration of a Parmenidean fragment to step back before the
entrenchment of metaphysical categories and at the same time prepare the
way for a leap beyond the limitations imposed upon the questioning of being
by traditional metaphysics. The fragment at issue is one that posits (at first
glance) an identity between thinking and being. The fragment can be trans-
lated, For thinking and being [are] the same.
18
While this identity will be
affirmed in various ways throughout the tradition, culminating in Hegels
Science of Logic, Heidegger wants to use the fragment to rethink what the
Parmenidean relationship between thinking and being indicates. What I
want to stress here is the way in which Heideggers treatment of texts from
the tradition is continuous with his overall phenomenological orientation.
Through a consideration of (in this case) Parmenides, Heidegger wants to
show how we can do some work toward letting being show itself as itself.
Less an argument than a sequence of indications, Heideggers reflections
on Parmenides fragment begin by pointing out that in contrast to the
metaphysical thesis that identity belongs to being Parmenides says:
being belongs to an identity
19
(ID 27). That is, identity is not an attribute
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(even the attribute) of being; rather, thinking and being belong together in
the Same and by virtue of the Same. But if, Heidegger says, we simply stop
here, we only think of the belonging together in terms of traditional meta-
physical categories, that is, the relationship is thought of as being deter-
mined by the together, and this is construed as that which is established
in the unity of a manifold, combined into the unity of a system, mediated
by the unifying center of an authoritative synthesis (ID 29). We have not
left the orbit of metaphysics.
To do so, according to Heidegger, we must lay stress on the belonging
instead of the together. Aware that his audience might suspect that his
reflections are no more than an empty play on words, he claims that this
suspicion will be dispelled if we let the matter speak for itself. Note the indi-
cations of phenomenological method. Heidegger moves rather quickly here,
but his next comments suggest that letting the matter speak for itself means
paying attention to the fact that already in our consideration of the belonging
together of thinking and being we have been attending to the belonging
together of man and being. And it will be by a reflection on the essential
belonging that binds man and being that we will grasp the meaning of
Parmenides fragment. It is worth quoting in full Heideggers statement
concerning this belonging, as it succinctly encapsulates both his style of
thought and its aim:
Man [Mensch] obviously is a being. As such he belongs to the totality
of being just like the stone, the tree, or the eagle. To belong here
still means to be in the order of being. But mans distinctive feature
lies in this, that he, as the being who thinks, is open to being, face to
face with being; thus man remains referred to being and so answers
to it. Man is essentially this relationship of responding to being, and
he is only this. This only does not mean a limitation, but rather an
excess. A belonging to being prevails within man, a belonging which
listens to being because it is appropriated to being. And being? Let
us think of being according to its original meaning, as presence.
Being is present to man neither incidentally nor only on rare
occasions. Being is present and abides only as it concerns man
through the claim it makes on him. For it is man, open toward being,
who alone lets being arrive as presence. Such becoming present
needs the openness of a clearing [Lichtung], and by this need remains
appropriated [bereignet] to human being [Menschenwesen]. This
does not at all mean that being is posited first and only by man. On
the contrary, the following becomes clear:
Man and being are appropriated to each other. They belong to each
other. From this belonging to each other, which has not been
thought out more closely, man and being have first received those
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determinations of essence by which man and being are grasped
metaphysically in philosophy.
(ID 312)
Metaphysics and its categories (e.g., being as presence) are determined by
the more primordial belonging together of man and being, a belonging
together that Heidegger indicates with the language of appropriation,
Ereignis. A genuine thinking of being would require us to leap beyond the
language of metaphysics. Let us note that in the companion lecture to The
Principle of Identity Heidegger raises some doubts about whether this leap
out of our traditional metaphysical language is possible, or whether we are
confined to tracing the limitations of this/these language(s).
In some respects, Deleuze and Heidegger are very close in their concep-
tions of ontology. Indeed, Heidegger announces in the opening pages of
Being and Time that philosophy should be identified with ontology the
same point that Deleuze stresses in the Hyppolite review. Also shared is a
refusal to engage in an ontology that seeks to delineate a being that would
stand apart from all other beings and be responsible for beings as their
cause and ground. In this respect, both adhere to an ontology of sense.
But, as I would like to emphasize here, Deleuzes preoccupations stand
quite apart from the Heideggerian ones. Two key differences stand out.
On the one hand, Heideggerian philosophy would remain much too
anthropological for Deleuze. Deleuze does not seek to have being show
itself through our own way of being, or through a preparation that we
might make for beings own self-showing. Deleuze instead will turn largely
to phenomena revealed by the physical sciences to disclose ways of being
that can serve as catalysts for the formation of concepts through which we
can construct the metaphysics appropriate to these phenomena. Hence,
this difference encompasses differences of both object and method
between Heidegger and Deleuze. On the other hand, Deleuze largely
eschews the end-of-metaphysics and epochal registers of Heideggers
thinking. As this is something Derrida takes from Heidegger, I will leave
mention of this for the sections below.
We will now pass to Derrida and see how both the conceptual play
characteristic of Hegels Logic and the end-of-metaphysics concerns of
Heidegger sharply distinguish Derrida from Deleuze as a philosopher of
difference.
4 Derrida and Diffrance
Derridas lecture Diffrance was delivered in January 1968 and published
later in the same year. This was the year after Derrida published Writing
and Difference and the same year that Deleuze published Difference and
DELEUZES DIFFERENCE
523
Repetition. Along with Derridas Of Grammatology and Speech and
Phenomena, also published in 1967, Derridas books represent reflections
on difference that had occupied him at least from his work on Husserl in
the late 1950s.
In the discussion above we saw that Deleuzes commitment to an ontol-
ogy of difference goes back to the early 1950s. There we saw that difference
names for Deleuze being itself, and that being is spoken of by Deleuze most
particularly by reference to the physical world (with all of the qualifications
physical would require here). We should take seriously Deleuzes claim to
be an empiricist, at least in the sense that he wants to provide a comprehen-
sive ontology that accounts for the (nave as it might sound) becoming
(genesis) and being (individuation) of the things around us (both those
typically considered natural as well as ourselves and our social and political
structures).
20
Therefore, even while Deleuze will state late in his career that
philosophy is the invention of concepts, at a fundamental level concepts are
not what Deleuzes thinking is about.
In what follows, I want to suggest that Derridas work is about concepts.
That is, Derridas thought does not just use, discuss, or invent concepts; at
its very core is the attempt to wrestle with conceptuality itself. To put it
bluntly, where Deleuzes thought attempts to construct an ontological
account of the world, Derridas thought attempts to comment on metaphys-
ics as a discourse. And even if Derrida might wish to extend the notion of
discourse so that it (almost) meets up with ontology, he will not, in the most
basic of ways, be thinking about the same things as Deleuze. Let me then
attempt to capture succinctly this (rather Hegelian)
21
aspect of conceptual
discursivity in Diffrance and what I take to be its relationship to a rather
Heideggerian engagement with the history of philosophy.
The point here will not be to provide an overview of Derridas work, but
only to indicate that with which it is primarily engaged. Putting this in terms
of difference, we can ask what it is that Derrida sees as differing. As for
Deleuze, for whom difference becomes a kind of first principle, indicating
not a relation between more primary things but the very constitutive source
of thingliness itself, so for Derrida diffrance is not secondary to fixed
entities that would differ from one another, but instead names a (rather
ineffable) operation which also accounts for the possibility of differential
relations themselves. But what then would the objects of these relations be?
Midway into Diffrance, after drawing some structural connections
between the work of Saussure and diffrance, Derrida writes:
Essentially and lawfully, every concept is inscribed in a chain or in a
system within which it refers to the other, to other concepts, by means
of the systematic play of differences. Such a play, diffrance, is thus no
longer simply a concept, but rather the possibility of conceptuality, of
a conceptual process and system in general.
22
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Hence Derrida makes it quite clear here that diffrance, while not itself a
concept, is something like the ground of conceptuality itself. Indeed, the
qualifier is necessary here since diffrance cannot be taken to be some
primary being that would simply precede that which it makes possible.
Diffrance is the non-full, non-simple, structured and differentiating origin
of differences. Thus, the name origin no longer suits it (D 11).
Along with what Derrida will call the spacing of differentiation indicated
above, diffrance is also a matter of temporality, temporization. This dimen-
sion of Derridas work connects it directly to the project of Heideggerian
ontology. At the heart of Heideggers project is the critique and exposure of
the privileging of presence in the key concepts and structures of Western
metaphysics. This, indeed, is the great error in the tradition according to
Heidegger, the one that obscures and occludes the primordial futurity of
Daseins being-in-the-world and, later, the eventful character of being
(being as Ereignis). Diffrance is continuous with this Heideggerian critique
to the extent that as a quasi-arche of that which stands in the present,
diffrance is marked by deferral and delay. Or, more properly, those very
concepts and structures of presentness are themselves, despite their overt
character, marked by deferral and delay, and this markedness is diffrance.
When they are characterized in this way, it is certainly possible to draw
parallels between Derridas diffrance and Deleuzes difference, especially
to the extent that both attempt to mark out a non-entitive source of
determinate individuation. The difference seems to be between what is
being individuated: concepts on the one hand, physical/psychical/social
entities on the other. In order to bear this out, let us see why and how
Derrida turns to Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger in the final portion of
the lecture.
Derrida claims that [d]iffrance appears almost by name in their texts
(D 17). What does it mean for diffrance to appear in texts that are not
Derridas? Derrida devotes only one long paragraph to Nietzsche. The
unfolding of this paragraph is instructive for discerning the focus of
Derridas thinking. He sets out by indicating the way in which conscious-
ness is not a primitive phenomenon for Nietzsche but is rather the product
of a play of differential forces. That is, this differential play is anterior to
the existence of consciousness. Furthermore, [f]orce itself is never present;
it is only a play of differences and quantities (D 17).
23
Force for Nietzsche
would thus name the kind of differing/deferring principle that Derrida
names diffrance. But where we might anticipate how force, in its constitu-
tion-by-differing, is explanatory of certain biological, psychic, or moral
phenomena for Nietzsche, Derrida emphasizes a rather different register:
Is not all of Nietzsches thought a critique of philosophy as an active
indifference to difference, as the system of adiaphoristic reduction or
repression? Which according to the same logic, according to logic
DELEUZES DIFFERENCE
525
itself, does not exclude that philosophy lives in and on diffrance,
thereby blinding itself to the same, which is not the identical.
(D 17)
Derridas wording does not demand that this is Nietzsches principal or sole
target in his thought, but it is significant that Derrida here emphasizes the
implications of Nietzsches thought for philosophy (rather than, say, life as
Deleuze would have it). As the lines that follow make clear, Derridas
concern here is to see how the thought of diffrance might allow us to gain
some transparency with respect to our traditional categories. It is worth
quoting these lines in full in order to see more fully how Derridas thought
is directed toward conceptual discursivity:
The same, precisely is diffrance (with an a) as the displaced and
equivocal passage of one different thing to another, from one term of
an opposition to the other. Thus one could reconsider all the pairs of
opposites on which philosophy is constructed and on which our
discourse lives, not in order to see opposition erase itself but to see
what indicates that each of the terms must appear as the diffrance of
the other, as the other different and deferred in the economy of the
same (the intelligible as differing-deferring the sensible, as the
sensible different and deferred; the concept as different and deferred,
differing-deferring intuition; culture as nature different and deferred,
differing-deferring; all the others of physis tekhn[ emacr ] , nomos, thesis,
society, freedom, history, mind, etc. as physis different and deferred,
or as physis differing and deferring. Physis in diffrance. And in this
we may see the site of a reinterpretation of mim sis in its alleged
opposition to physis).
(D 17)
There is certainly a gesture here toward a differential ontology of the kind
Deleuze pursues, but such an ontology requires more than exposing the
differential play of concepts with which the tradition has pursued ontology.
It requires, as Deleuze emphasizes, the invention of new concepts, concepts
that would account for the way in which a self-differing and deferring physis
can manifest itself as tekhne, nomos, thesis, society, freedom, history, mind.
But let us move on to Derridas brief discussion of Freud.
Derrida seems to turn to Freud in order to pick up on the relationship
between a play of forces (or energetics in Freuds locution) and conscious-
ness. Once again, the primacy of consciousness is at issue in such a way that
consciousness will be seen as the manifestation of a hidden, yet constitutive,
differential play. The concepts of trace (Spur), breaching (Bahnung), and
e
e
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inscription (Niederschrift) are invoked as those aspects of psychic life which
operate in the mode of diffrance, explanatory of the conscious life of the
subject. Derrida even mentions that this play is a matter of life, an effort of
life to protect itself by deferring the dangerous investment (D 18). At this
point, however, an apparent ambiguity enters the text. Once again, it is
unclear whether Derridas discourse means to say something about the
differential play that constitutes the conscious subject or the play of
concepts employed to explicate this constitution.
And all the oppositions that furrow Freudian thought relate each of
his concepts one to another as moments of a detour in the economy of
diffrance. One is but the other different and deferred, one differing
and deferring the other. One is the other in diffrance, one is the
diffrance of the other. This is why every apparently rigorous and
irreducible opposition (for example the opposition of the secondary
to the primary) comes to be qualified, at one moment or another, as a
theoretical fiction. Again, it is thereby, for example (but such an
example governs, and communicates with, everything), that the
difference between the pleasure principle and the reality principle is
only diffrance as detour.
(D 18)
Without venturing to diagnose the sources or implications of Derridas
effacement of Freuds energetics, let us only note again the emphasis placed
here on the discursive and conceptual registers. This, it seems, is the proper
domain for the operation and explication of diffrance. Let this suffice for
the place of Freud in the lecture.
The final portion of Derridas lecture takes up diffrance in an explicitly
ontological manner. In a series of transitional paragraphs (where Levinas
plays a brief but pivotal role) in which he emphasizes the delaying aspects
of diffrance, Derrida brings the discussion into direct contact with
Heideggers thought. The initial question posed is how diffrance stands in
relation to the ontological difference as thought by Heidegger and how the
traditional ontology of being as presence can be interrogated by
diffrance. In some respects, Derrida wants to indicate that his discourse
on diffrance is scarcely different from Heideggers:
In a certain aspect of itself, diffrance is certainly but the historical and
epochal unfolding of Being or of the ontological difference. The a of
diffrance marks the movement of this unfolding.
(D 22)
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527
Derrida certainly recognizes and means to extend Heideggers challenge
to Western metaphysics. Just as Heidegger wants to bring our thought to
the point that we can see the covering-over of the ontological distinction
as a necessary moment of being itself, Derrida means to employ diffrance
as the graphic placeholder for the necessarily unrepresentable, unpresent-
able, quasi-transcendental condition for beings in their presentness and
multiplicity.
But the thought made possible via diffrance extends further than this.
Derrida asks, in what seems the key ontological paragraph of the lecture,
whether the (Heideggerian) quest for the meaning or truth of being and
the determination of diffrance as the onticontological difference are not
still intrametaphysical effects of diffrance (D 22). In other words, Derrida
asks boldly, if quietly, whether the Heideggerian project is not still a part of
metaphysics, rather than the initial step out of metaphysics. Or, more
precisely, if Heideggers attempt to think being not as presence but as differ-
ence is a genuine challenge to Western metaphysics, does diffrance allow
us to comprehend this (Heideggers) attempt as part of the movement of
diffrance itself, a movement which would be constitutive of, but also
exceed, the metaphysical epoch? For our purposes, I would only emphasize
that despite the challenge levelled at Heideggers thought here, Derridas
understanding of his challenge remains essentially Heideggerian. The
project of diffrance appears here as a radicalization of the Heideggerian
project. Inasmuch as diffrance is a matter of ontology, it is Heideggerian
ontology.
It is not necessary here to analyse the reading of Heideggers The
Anaximander Fragment that Derrida undertakes in the final pages of the
lecture; but it is worth mentioning where this analysis terminates. The final
note of the lecture is that ontology, even as pursued by Heidegger, is
impossible even as pursued by Heidegger, Derrida insists, because
Heidegger holds out the hope of a word that will disclose being beyond
the strictures of metaphysics. Derrida thinks we should abandon this hope:
For us, diffrance remains a metaphysical name, and all names that it
receives in our language are still, as names, metaphysical. And this is
particularly the case when these names state the determination of
diffrance as the difference between presence and the present
(Anwesen/Anwesend), and above all, and is already the case when
they state the determination of diffrance as the difference of Being
and beings.
(D 26)
What we know, or what we would know if it were simply a question
here of something to know, is that there has never been, never will
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be, a unique word, a master-name. This is why the thought of the
letter a in diffrance is not the primary prescription or the prophetic
annunciation of an immanent and as yet unheard-of nomination.
There is nothing kerygmatic about this word, provided that one
perceives its decapita(liza)tion. And that one puts into question the
name of the name.
There will be no unique name, even if it were the name of Being. And
we must think this without nostalgia, that is, outside the myth of a
purely maternal or parental language, a lost native country of thought.
On the contrary, we must affirm this, in the sense in which Nietzsche
puts affirmation into play, in a certain laughter and a certain step of
the dance.
(D 27)
Let us note that Derrida returns again to the level of discourse as the level
at which ultimate statements about ontology need to be made. This is one
of the ways in which, as I stated above, Derrida is very much a Heideggerian
thinker. Let us note too that while Derrida instructs us not to mourn the loss
of our ontological hopes, that we must joyfully affirm their impossibility, in
doing so he acknowledges that these hopes are impossible.
24
5 The Univocity of Being, or Why Ontology is Yet to Come
In contrast to Heideggers attempt to read the history of metaphysics as
symptomatic of the necessary self-oblivion of being and Derridas attempt
to think the impossibility of even Heideggers ontological hopes, Deleuze
undertakes a very different attitude regarding the history of metaphysics
and the possibility of pursuing ontology in the opening chapter of Difference
and Repetition. And while Deleuze has his own diagnosis of the origin of the
errors of the ontological tradition (i.e., common sense and good sense),
25
he
thinks that there is a way out and that the way out has been prepared
already by a small set of figures from the tradition. In other words, Deleuze
simply thinks that most ontological thought has been wrong and that a
correct ontology is possible given the right principles. We have seen already
that this ontology, in its Bergsonian mode, is one in which being as such
must be thought as difference and that difference cannot be thought in
terms of the Aristotelian account of genetic difference. The lasting legacy of
this Aristotelian account is the thinking of being in terms of analogy a term
and conceptual scheme developed by the Arabic and Scholastic thinkers to
deal with the Aristotelian problem of homonymy. That is, while a science of
being qua being is possible, according to Aristotle, being is not said of each
and every being in the same way. Rather, it is only if it is recognized that all
DELEUZES DIFFERENCE
529
ascriptions of being point toward substance/ousia that being as such can be
investigated. This recourse, however, leads to the privileging of substances
over the other categories as those beings which are most pre-eminently
indicative of being qua being, so much so that ultimately only one being
(the first cause) can truly be said to be. That would not be the official
Aristotelian position (Aristotle has too much concern for concrete particu-
lars), one suspects, but the thought tends in this direction. And it is this
movement toward a hierarchy of beings within ontology proper that
Deleuze cannot abide.
Hence we must take Deleuze in all seriousness when he says shortly into
the first chapter of Difference and Repetition, There has only ever been one
ontological proposition: Being is univocal.
26
He goes on to say, [t]here has
only ever been one ontology, that of Duns Scotus, which gave being a single
voice. We say Duns Scotus because he was the one who elevated univocal
being to the highest point of subtlety, albeit at the price of abstraction (DR
35). We find here, in Deleuzes retrieval (to use Heideggers term) of
Scotus ontology, an inversion of the approach taken by Heidegger and
Derrida. The tradition is not to be read in order to trace and comprehend
its waywardness and closure; instead, Deleuze looks to the tradition for
figures who have already worked against the grain of that tradition and help
to indicate a way out. Scotus represents for Deleuze (despite his undeniable
embeddedness within the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition) the most
important historical marker for a way out of traditional metaphysics.
This is not the place to give an extensive treatment of the concept of
univocal being.
27
In brief, against the dominant trends of theologically
minded metaphysics that strove to distinguish a transcendent being from the
being of created things, Scotus declares that a science of being must
acknowledge that being, wherever it is encountered, however it is thought,
must be the same being. Scotus has his own theological motives for such a
declaration (i.e., doctrines of analogy threaten to cut us off from God
conceptually), but these matter little to Deleuze. Instead, Deleuze finds
here the grounds for a radical ontology of difference. How so? The key is
that even though it is the same being that is met with in all encounters with
and thoughts of beings, being is not said in the same sense for every being.
That is, while the dominant tradition would have it that there is a difference
of being between (some) beings (e.g., God and his creatures), for Deleuze,
it is the same being that differs in such ways that differences of beings are
achieved without any real differences of being having to be posited.
This thought now links up with where we left off with Deleuzes early
reading of Bergson. In outline, univocal being as the ground of an ontology
of difference is identical to the Bergsonian orientation toward duration,
where duration is conceived as the self-differing whole of being. Bergson
thus represents one of those figures from the history of philosophy to whom
Deleuze will look for something right that the tradition largely got wrong.
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530
Spinoza and Nietzsche represent two others (see DR 402), the two who
extend and improve the univocal ontology of Duns Scotus. Deleuzes use of
Stoic thinking and Lucretius poem in The Logic of Sense should also be
mentioned here. This Deleuzian constructive project of assembling an ontol-
ogy that finds foundational concepts in marginal figures of the Aristotelian
tradition is in marked contrast to the de(con)structive project that Heidegger
sketched out for Part Two of Being and Time, and partially realized in the
summer lecture course of 1927 (published as Die Grundprobleme der
Phnomenologie in 1975) and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1929).
In this sketch that closes the Introduction to Being and Time, Heidegger
states that Part Two will contain the [b]asic features of a phenomenological
destructuring of the history of ontology on the guideline of the problem of
temporality (BT 35). This phenomenological destructuring, we are told, will
proceed through considerations of, in turn, Kant, Descartes, and Aristotle.
Is it insignificant that these are all named by Deleuze as enemies?
Let me finish merely by drawing out the conclusion that for Deleuze
ontology need not be done in accordance with the dominant strains of the
tradition and that, therefore, it need not be constrained by the limitations
of that tradition (as Heidegger and Derrida would have it). Rather, given
the creation and deployment of new concepts, some to be built upon
concepts from the history of philosophy, ontology can still be pursued
unhesitatingly. For Deleuze the problem is not that we have come to the
end of the epoch of ontology; rather, true ontology is only now beginning to
be done. Ontology is yet to come.
28
St. Johns College, Annapolis
Notes
1 Quoted in Paul Patton and John Protevi (eds), Between Derrida and Deleuze
(London: Continuum, 2003), p. 49.
2 See: Miguel de Beistegui, Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential
Ontology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); Manuel Delanda,
Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2002); James
Williams, Gilles Deleuzes Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction
and Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003); Peter Hallward,
Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Difference (London: Verso,
2006); John Mullarkey, Post-Continental Philosophy (London: Continuum,
2006).
3 For a diagnosis and imaginative response to this antipathy, see Catherine
Malabou, Whos Afraid of Hegelian Wolves?, in Paul Patton (ed.) Deleuze: A
Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), pp. 11438.
4 For accounts of Kojves influence in French philosophy, see Michael S. Roth,
Knowing and History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth-Century France
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), and Judith Butler, Subjects of Desire:
Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1987).
DELEUZES DIFFERENCE
531
5 Gilles Deleuze, Review of Jean Hyppolite, Logique et Existence, p. 191, printed
as an appendix in Jean Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, trans. Leonard Lawlor
and Amit Sen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 1915. In
subsequent citations in the text the abbreviation RLE will be used.
6 According to Keith Ansell Pearson in Germinal Life: The Difference and
Repetition of Deleuze (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 21.
7 Deleuze, Bergsons Conception of Difference, in Desert Islands and Other
Texts, 19531974, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Michael Taorima (Los Angeles:
Semiotext(e), 2004), p. 39. In subsequent citations in the text the abbreviation
BCD will be used.
8 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994), pp. 305.
9 See Aristotle, Metaphysics, Zeta, 8.
10 See Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam
(New York: Zone Books, 1991), Ch. 1.
11 We might recall here the following from G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of
Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 10: [T]he
living substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what is the same, is in truth
actual only in so far as it is the movement of positing itself, or is the mediation of
its self-othering with itself.
12 Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), pp. 67.
13 Embryonic development is standing in here for self-differentiating and individu-
ating events in the broadest sense. Note as well the need to differentiate
between an ontology of being that would do justice to phenomena such as
embryonic development and the science of embryonic development. On the
latter issue, see Todd May, Gilles Deleuze, Difference, and Science, in Gary
Gutting (ed.) Continental Philosophy of Science (Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishers, 2005), pp. 23957.
14 We can leave aside here why and how logic must alienate and contradict itself by
positing the (logically mute) realm of nature, only to be reunited with itself in the
sphere of Geist.
15 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1996), p. xix. In subsequent citations in the text
the abbreviation BT will be used.
16 These three moments, the asked about, the ascertained, and the interrogated,
correspond to the German words das Gefragte, das Erfragte, and das Befragte.
The first carries connotations of something sought out or in demand; the second
indicates that which is asked for, the third refers especially to someone being
asked questions.
17 Here, of course, we can see the Eurocentric, even German-centric, orientation
of Heideggers historical thinking, an orientation that he was not blind to and
quite willing to justify. See Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics,
trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), Ch. 1.
18 Joan Stambaughs translation of Heideggers German translation is For the
same perceiving (thinking) as well as being. Heideggers German is Das
Selbe nmlich ist Vernehmen (Denken) sowohl als auch Sein. The original
Greek is See Identity and Difference, trans.
Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 27, 90. In
subsequent citations in the text the abbreviation ID will be used.
19 I have changed the capitalized instances of Being in this text to lowercase in
conformity with Stambaughs practice in her more recent translation of Being
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532
and Time. For her own account of this practice, see her Introduction to her Being
and Time translation.
20 In other senses, it is not self-evident what Deleuze means by calling himself an
empiricist. That he wants to resist what he sees as the basic position of rationalist
philosophy is clear. This position, for Deleuze, is one where certain ideals
become realized in the phenomenal world. Deleuze wants to reverse this order
and conduct philosophy in such a way that idealizations are drawn out of
phenomena, indeed, are discovered there for the first time. A succinct account
of what Deleuze means by empiricism can be found in the Preface to the English
Language Edition of Dialogues II (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002),
pp. viiix.
21 One would do well to read Diffrance in conjunction with From Restricted to
General Economy: A Hegelianism Without Reserve, in Writing and Difference,
trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), on the issue of
diffrance in terms of conceptual economy.
22 Jacques Derrida, Diffrance, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 11. In subsequent citations in the
text the abbreviation D will be used.
23 It is interesting to note that in this place in the text Derrida quotes a few
sentences from Deleuzes Nietzsche et la philosophie concerning quantity and
force.
24 It would be worthwhile to draw out a comparison of Deleuzes ontological
programme with that of Jean-Luc Nancy. Like Derrida, Nancy draws his princi-
pal points of orientation, as well as his conceptual and linguistic register, from
Hegel and Heidegger. But unlike Derrida, Nancy seems to have set aside the
end-of-metaphysics preoccupations of Heideggerian thought and has set himself
the task of working out a rather traditionally conceived ontology using the traces
of (what we might call) diffrance in the tradition and in Heidegger (in some
respects rewriting the fundamental ontology of Being and Time by strongly
emphasizing the place of Mitsein). In this respect, like Deleuze, Nancy is at work
on a constructive differential ontology. That they share this ground would be the
beginning of a fruitful contrasting. See, especially, Jean-Luc Nancy, Of Being
Singular Plural, in Being Singular Plural, trans. Robert D. Richardson and
Anne E. OByrne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
25 See Todd May, Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), pp. 7481.
26 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 35. In subsequent citations in the text the
abbreviation DR will be used.
27 With respect to its importance for Deleuze, see de Beistegui, Truth and Genesis,
pp. 22541, and Hallward, Out of this World, Ch. 1.
28 I want to thank Ed Butler for his very helpful remarks on numerous drafts of this
article.