The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (137 page)

Note: throughout this chapter I use the following abbreviations for Deleuze’s works:
A Thousand Plateaus
for Deleuze and Guattari (
1987
);
Bergson
for Deleuze (
1988b
); ‘Breaking Open’ for Deleuze (
1995b
);
Dialogues
for Deleuze and Parnet (
1987
);
Difference and Repetition
for Deleuze (
1994
);
Foucault
for Deleuze (
2006b
);
Hume
for Deleuze (
1991
); ‘Immanence’ for Deleuze (
2001
);
Kant
for Deleuze (
1984
);
Leibniz
for Deleuze (
1993
); ‘Letter to a Critic’ for Deleuze (
1995a
); ‘Letter to Bensmaïa’ for Deleuze (
1995e
);
Logic of Sense
for Deleuze (
1990b
); ‘Mediators’ for Deleuze (
1995c
);
Nietzsche
for Deleuze (
2006a
); ‘Philosophy’ for Deleuze (
1995d
);
Practical Philosophy
for Deleuze (
1988a
);
Spinoza
for Deleuze (
1990a
); and
What Is Philosophy?
for Deleuze and Guattari (
1994
). All unaccompanied page references are to
Difference and Repetition
.

4
Respectively:
Spinoza
(but see also, more briefly,
Practical Philosophy
);
Leibniz
;
Hume
;
Kant
;
Nietzsche
; and
Bergson
.

5
The way Deleuze himself puts it is by saying that he ‘likes writers who seem to be part of the history of philosophy, but who escape from it in one respect, or altogether’ (
Dialogues
, pp. 14–15, transposed from the first person to the third person and from the past tense to the present tense). He then lists the same three figures together with Lucretius and Hume.

We shall return to the idea that philosophy, at its best, is always ‘untimely’, in §6.

6
The fact that Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson are three of the philosophers to whom Deleuze devotes books prompts the following question: is his affinity to any given philosopher proportional to the amount that he writes about that philosopher? The answer is: only very roughly. Take Kant. Kant is another of the philosophers to whom Deleuze devotes a book. But Deleuze himself contrasts that book with the rest, claiming, ‘[This one] is different; … I did it as a book on an enemy that tries to show how his system works’ (‘Letter to a Critic’, p. 6). Conversely, there is great affinity between Deleuze and the Stoics, even though he has no single study of them. (The book in which he engages most with the Stoics, and in which his debt to them is clearest, is
Logic of Sense
.)

7
It is in this connection that Philip Turetzky uses his very apt metaphor of a ‘distaff tradition’: see Introduction, n. 44. Cf. also Rajchman (
2000
), pp. 39–40, and Duffy (
2006
), pp. 2–3 and 249–254.

8
The exception is
Leibniz
, the original version of which was published in 1988. (For these purposes I am not counting
Foucault
as a historical work, though it should be noted that the original version of that was published in 1986, which was two years after its subject’s death.)

9
Cf. Williams (
2008
), p. 203. And cf. ‘Breaking Open’, pp. 88–89, for Deleuze’s own reflections on his non-revolutionary approach to the history of philosophy.

10
For one of the many commentaries on Deleuze that especially emphasize his inheritance from Bergson, see Ansell Pearson (
1999
). See also Boundas (
1996
) – pp. 85–86 of which contain a good summary of how Deleuze wants to reorient philosophy. (An interesting essay that explores the ‘biophilosophical’ aspects of Deleuze’s work
without
reference to Bergson is Caygill (
1997
).)

11
I refer rather breezily to ‘its own identity’. But we need to tread very carefully here. Eternal return does have an identity of its own. There is sheer linguistic pressure on us to say that. (I have in mind the fact that the phrase ‘eternal return’ functions as a singular term: cf. §5(a).) Moreover, Deleuze identifies a sense of ‘the same’ in which the same is ‘indistinguishable from the eternal return itself’ (p. 126). He amplifies on this as follows: ‘The same is said of that which differs and remains different. The eternal return is the same of the different’ (ibid.). (There is something similar in the quotation about to follow in the main text and in
Logic of Sense
, pp. 300–301.) All of that granted, Deleuze wants to resist any intimation of Platonism (e.g. pp. 126–128). He also insists that eternal return ‘denounces’ every appeal to identity other than whatever identities it itself produces (pp. 301–302; and see the material immediately following this note in the main text). The only safe conclusion, it seems to me, is that, although it is true that eternal return has an identity of its own, there is something deeply paradoxical about this. In §4 we shall be exploring another paradox, at the very core of reality. These paradoxes, I submit, are of a piece.

12
This is a reference to Heraclitus’ famous saying, ‘On those who enter the same rivers, ever different waters flow’ (Barnes (
1987
), p. 116).

13
Deleuze’s conception of time is articulated most fully in
Difference and Repetition
,
Ch. II
. For an excellent account, see Turetzky (
1998
),
Ch. XIV
.

14
But see also
Nietzsche
,
Ch. 5
, §8.

15
For an excellent discussion, see Turetzky (
1998
), pp. 109–116. Also very helpful on Deleuze on eternal return is May (
2005
),
Ch. 2
, §IX.

Note: to say that eternal return applies ultimately to the second kind of becoming must not be allowed to obscure the fact that ‘everywhere [reactive forces] are triumphant’ (
Nietzsche
, p. 59). Roughly: only active forces return, but by no means all active forces return.

16
Recall Deleuze’s emphasis, in his commentary on Spinoza’s
Ethics
, on the question of what a body can do (
Ch. 2
, §3; and see
Spinoza
,
Ch. XIV
).

17
Cf. Daniel Smith (
2007
).

18
See
A Thousand Plateaus
, p. 283.

19
Cf.
Nietzsche
,
Ch. 2
, §13.

20
See n. 16.

21
Cf. Duffy (
2006
), pp. 109ff.

22
For part of the reason why I include the word ‘radically’, see
Ch. 2
, n. 11.

23
For a helpful discussion, see May (
2005
),
Ch. 2
, §§I–III.

24
But see n. 11.

25
For helpful discussions of Deleuze on the univocity of being, see Hardt (
1993
),
Ch. 4
, and Smith (
2001
).

26
Deleuze’s own opposition to Hegel is well brought out in Hardt (
1993
), passim, and Duffy (
2006
), passim.

27
Purists will insist that Deleuze should be talking here, not about possible worlds, but about ranges of possible worlds. (To say that a world is terrifying is to leave open many questions about how else it is. There is no such thing as ‘the’ terrifying world.) But such purism arguably misses the point, which is that Deleuze is putting Leibniz’ notion to work by
adapting
it, thereby showing just the kind of creative appropriation of ideas that I have been applauding in this section (see
What Is Philosophy?
, pp. 17ff.). Why ‘arguably’? Well, it is a real question how far this kind of licence can extend. Consider the related Leibnizian notion of incompossibility. Incompossibility is a relation between possible monads (
Ch. 3
, §3). Deleuze, however, without signalling any departure from Leibniz, allows it a much wider application. For instance, he sometimes treats it as a relation between what he calls events (e.g.
Logic of Sense
, p. 172 – see below, §4, for an account of how he uses the word ‘event’), and sometimes indeed as a relation between possible worlds (e.g. ibid., pp. 111ff.). Nor is that the worst of it. Elsewhere he treats its complement, compossibility, as a non-relational property of worlds (e.g.
Leibniz
, p. 63) – the sort of thing that a suitably donnish critic would call a ‘howler’. Can
this
be regarded as a creative appropriation of Leibniz’ ideas? (A genuine question, not a rhetorical question. Part of what is going on here is that Deleuze is treating as primary, in his conception of worlds, the idea that they are what monads express, rather than the more familiar idea that they are sets of monads. As we saw in
Ch. 3
, §3, there are delicate exegetical issues about how these relate to each other. For Deleuze’s own contribution to the exegesis, see e.g.
Leibniz
, pp. 25–26.)

28
See Smith (
2005
).

29
This is not to be confused with the notion of the given famously attacked by Wilfrid Sellars in Sellars (
1997
). Sellars’ notion is intended to capture whatever is experienced, independently of how it is conceptualized, and there are good reasons, as Sellars argues, to doubt the very applicability of such a notion. Deleuze’s notion is much wider and quite immune to Sellars’ attack. See further §7(a). (One person who arguably does accept the notion of the given attacked by Sellars is Carnap: see Carnap (
1967a
), p. v.)

30
This doctrine did not feature in
Ch. 4
. For Hume’s discussion, see Hume (
1978a
), Bk I, Pt IV, §VI.

31
For discussion, see Buchanan (
2000
), pp. 75–87. And concerning the idea that the core thesis of empiricism, as standardly construed, is really an implicit definition of ‘derives from’ and ‘sense experience’, cf. Williams (
2006l
), pp. 29–33.

32
The key phrase here is ‘
ab initio
’. The empiricist too can say that what is given is given to the subject. (That is precisely what makes the language of givenness appropriate.) For the empiricist, however, the subject is not at the origin of the given. Cf. ‘Immanence’, pp. 25ff.

33
Cf.
Ch. 16
, n. 24.

34
Cf. also Turetzky (
1998
), p. 221.

35
Note that the basic Kantian error of construing what is given as what is given
ab initio
to the subject is one which, in different forms, Deleuze finds in other philosophers too, notably Descartes and Husserl: see e.g.
What Is Philosophy?
, p. 46, and
Logic of Sense
, p. 98; and cf. Williams (
2008
), pp. 133–134.

36
Has he? What about all those kinds of Being? (Cf. also Heidegger (
1982b
), p. 176. And see McDaniel (2009) for a discussion that takes for granted that Heidegger opposes the univocity of Being.) The matter is complex and merits far more extensive treatment than I can give it here. I simply note the following: for there to be different kinds of Being is one thing; for there to be different ways of understanding Being is another.

37
Cf. Hegel (
1979
), Preface, ¶16.

38
In his own terms too: see the quotations given by Daniel W. Smith in Smith (
2001
), p. 175 and n. 22.

39
See also McMahon (
2005
).

40
Cf. Hume (
1978a
), Bk I, Pt I, §V, the final paragraph of which looks like a clear statement of just this prioritization (though it uses different terminology). In fact, however, the case of Hume is complicated by his idiosyncratic conception of how discrete entities and their features are constituted. Recall in this connection the idea that we considered in §2(d): that the subject of sense-making needs to be constituted inside the given. There is a more uncompromising commitment to the prioritization both in Hegel (
1975a
), §38
Z
, p. 63, and Lewis (
1986a
), p. x.