References
- An earlier version of this paper appeared in Man and World, vol. 25, no. 2, 1992. I would like to thank the editors of Man and World and Kluwer Academic Publishers for permission to publish this revised version in this special issue of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenolooy. I would also like to thank Andrew Irvine, Steve Savitt and especially Constantin Boundas for comments on earlier versions of this paper. Funding for research leading to this paper was generously provided by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post-Doctoral Fellowship.
- See for example Vincent Descombes, Le Même et l'autre: quarante-cinq ans de la philosphie française, (Paris: Minuit, 1979); translated as Modem French Philosophy by L. Scott-Fox and J.M. Harding (Cambridge University Press, 1980). See also Gillian Rose, The Dialectic of Nihilism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984).
- Gilles Deleuze, Empirisme et subjectivité: Essai sur la nature humaine selon Hume (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953, second edition, 1972); translated with an introduction by Constantin V. Boundas as Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume's Theory of Human Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). Further references to this work will be given parenthetically as ES; references are to the English translation unless otherwise noted, and references to the French are to the second edition. See also Deleuze's article on Hume in Histoire de la philosphie, edited by François Châtelet et al. (Paris: Hachette, 1972–73), vol. 4, 65–78.
- Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Naw York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 54; hereafter cited parenthetically as D. See also ES 87.
- Vincent Descombes has said that Deleuze's philosophy is above all, post-Kantian; see Descombes, Modem French Philosophy, p. 152. I would argue that insofar as Deleuze's empiricism is meant to meet the challenge of Hegel's critique of empiricism, it is “above all” post-Hegelian.
- See Deleuze, Différence et répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), pp. 21–23, 36, 41, 48 and passim; hereafter given in parentheses as DR.
- See Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, translated by Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990), p 36; hereafter EPS. Originally published as Spinoza et le problème de l'expression (Paris: Minuit, 1968). References are to the English translation unless otherwise indicated.
- See section 4 below.
- G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller (Oxford University Press, 1977), A. I., “Sense-Certainty: Or the ‘This’ and ‘Meaning’”.
- See Hegel's Science of Logic, translated by A.V. Miller (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989), Book I, chapter 1, p 82.
- For Deleuze, as for Kant, “representation” presupposes identity, the sameness of what can be presented repeatedly. At the same time, the term “representation” contains an ambiguity. On the one hand, it refers to what is presented, and hence to the content of the representation as determined by the concept. On the other, it refers to a given, actual “representation”, and hence to the actual instantiation of the concept in experience. See Deleuze, Kant's Critical Philosopnhy, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), pp. 8–9; originally published as La Philosophie Critique de Kant (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963).
- The set of clones of an organism might be an example of a discotinuous mutiplicity
- Deleuze identifies four elements of the logic of the concept: 1) identity of form 2) analogy of relations 3) opposition of internal determinations or differentia and 4) resemblance of the determined object to its concept; DR 44–45. A logic of difference would have to avoid or subvert all four elements (see DR 52).
- See Gilles Deleuze, Le Pli: Leibniz et le baroque (Paris: Minuit, 1988), pp. 149–150; hereafter L. In Leibnizian “fluxions”, “variables can exist without the relation and the relation without the variables: the relation is external to the variables, just as it is outside of the constant”.
- Deleuze refers to such banal conjunctions as “the glass is on the table” (D 55), in which the relation does not affect the being of the glass or the table, but he may have been inspired by such Surrealist conjunctions as “the surprising encounter between an operating table, a sewing machine and an umbrella” (Breton).
- On the theme of “the throw of the dice”, see Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, translated by Hugh Tomlinson (London: Athlone Press, 1983) pp. 25–29, hereafter cited as N; originally published as Nietzsche et la philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), pp. 29–33. See also Ronald Bogue, Deleuze and Guattari (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 29–30, and Michel Foucault, “Theatrum Philosophicum”, in Lanquaqe, Counter-Memory, Practice, translated by Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 165–166.
- See Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by Ernest C. Mossner (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), Book I, part I, section 4.
- See Hume, Treatise, Book II, Part I, section 9, p. 359: “For as all relations are nothing but a propensity to pass from one idea to another, whatever strengthens the propensity strengthens the relation…;” the specific cases discussed refer to the propensity to pass from one idea to another because of the relation between the emotions the ideas occasion, not because of the relation between the ideas themselves. See also Treatise, Book II, Part II, section 8 and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, edited and introduced by Charles W. Hendel (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), pp. 33–34.
- Translation altered; see Empirisme et subjectivité, p. 58.
- See Locke, An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding, edited by Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), Part IV, chapter 3, section 14: “So let our Idea of any Species of Substance, be what it will, we can hardly, from the simple Ideas contained in it, certainly determine the necessary co-existence of any other Quality whatsoever… For all the Qualities that are co-existent in any Subject… we cannot know certainly any two to co-exist any farther, than Experience, by our Senses, informs us. Thus though we see the yellow Colour, and upon trial find the Weight, Malleableness, Fusibility and Fixedness, that are united in a piece of Gold, yet because no one of these Ideas has any evident dependence, or necessary connexion with the other, we cannot certainly know, that where any four of these are, the fifth will be there also, how highly probable soever it may be…” See also Part IV, chapter 12, sections 9–10, pp. 644–645.
- Compare Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Lasalle: Open Court, 1966), p. 36, cited at ES 133.
- See Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, edited by Roger Woolhouse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988), sections 30–32 and 107, pp. 63–64 and 93.
- Berkeley, Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, Dialogue IV, in Berkeley: Selections, edited by Mary W. Calkins (New York: Scribner's, n.d.), pp. 366–368; see also p. 361. The “providential” connection between signifier and signified is, for Berkeley, the strongest evidence of Divine Providence, but for Hume it is merely further evidence for the impossibility of any rational justification of induction; see Treatise, Book I, Part III, sections 2–4, 14–15.
- Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, especially paragraphs 10–16, 23 (pp. 40–46, 50).
- See David Pears, Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in Philosophy (New York: Vintage, 1967), chapter 10.
- Jean Wahl, Les Philosophies pluralistes d'Anqleterre et d'Amerique (Paris: Alcan, 1920). See Deleuze, DR 81.
- For Wahl, pluralism is defined in opposition to monism. In the monism of Bradley or T.H. Green, terms are related to each other through the mediation of a totality, in which case all relations are really internal, and in fact not relations between different terms at all, but various aspects of a non-relational One (Philosophies pluralistes, pp. 2–15). Pluralism, by contrast, insists on the absolute or irreducible reality of individuals, on difference and on the externality of relations (ibid., pp. 28–29, 83, 93). If, as James argues, it is possible to have knowledge in a particular domain without knowing everything, then the knowable parts are independent of the (unknowable) whole: “For [partial knowledge] to be possible, there must be multiplicity and contingency, the independence of terms with respect to the relations they enter into” (ibid., p. 93). If the reality of the terms is not relative to the relation, then it follows that the reality of the known object is not relative to the knower: it exists independently of the knower (ibid., p. 217). “A consistent pluralist must be a realist… To be a realist is to negate absolute unity, it is to affirm the externality of certain things in relation to certain others” (ibid., p. 94). The real existence of individuals follows, then, from the externality of relations, and the latter doctrine can be defended in two ways which Wahl draws from Russell: there is no a priori demonstration that it is not true that many things exist, and monism is internally contradictory, since even though it considers all relations to be predicates of the One, there is a relation between the predicate and the Absolute, and so diversity reappears: “there is an irreducible multiplicity both in the world of relations and the world of terms” (ibid., pp. 215–221).
- Deleuze has in mind Schelling's doctrine of the primal ground (Urgrund) that is a non-ground (Urgrund) or abyss. (Abgrund), which Schelling develops in his Philosophical Investigaions into the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters (1809), and which Heidegger discusses in his Vom Wesen des Grundes, or The Essence of Grounds (1929).
- Deleuze's “crowned anarchy” recalls Wahl's discussion of Menard (Philosophies pluralists, p. 58), who spoke of “an anarchic, disordered Olympus” of natural forces: “If Menard's Gods are living, if his Olympus is so varied, it is because he knows that ‘anarchic and multiform’ nature laughs at our systems,… that nature cannot be circumscribed, and has its centre everywhere. If he imagines multiple Gods, it is because the diversity of effects lead him logically to the diversity of causes.” Talk of anarchy does not fail to arouse anxiety in some commentators, such as Gillian Rose, The Dialectic of Nihilism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), chapter 6, “The New Bergsonism: Deleuze”. The title of the book expresses Rose's orientation clearly enough, and calls to mind Lukaçs' rather frantic response to existentialism, The Destruction of Reason (1955); indeed, Rose warns us, in the most apocalyptic tone, that Deleuze and his ilk want nothing less than “the destruction of knowledge” (p. 1). In response, one might again cite Wahl, who approvingly quotes Renouvier and Proudhon's arguments (pp. 61–10) that monism is celestial autocracy, the theocratic support of terrestial absolutists and kings; pluralism is the cure for this disease, and pluralism is polytheistic and anarchist.
- See Deleuze, Bergsonism, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone Books, 1988); hereafter cited in parentheses as B.
- Compare Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, pp. 92–93: “The pragmatist philsopher does not seek the help of abstractions to gather together the greatest possible number of concrete objects; the concrete is not explained by the abstract.” See also ibid., p. 37.
- See Deleuze's criticisms of Hegel's attempts to explain the concrete through the abstract in Bergsonism, p. 120nl4 and p. 44: “…we are told that the One is already multiple, that Being passes into nonbeing and produces becoming… To Bergson, it seems that in this type of dialectical method, one begins with concepts that, like baggy clothes, are much too big… In such cases the real is recomposed with abstracts; but of what use is a dialectic that believes itself to be united with the real when it compensates for the inadequacy of a concept that is too broad or too general by invoking the opposite concept, which is no less broad and general? The singular will never be attained by correcting a generality with another generality.” See also Différence et répétition pp. 16, 73ff and pp. 18–19: “Hegel substitutes the abstract relation of the particular to the concept in general for the true relation of the singular and the universal in the Idea… One must ask how Hegel betrays and denatures the immediate in order to found his dialectic upon this misunderstanding, and introduce mediation in a movement which is nothing more than that of… the generalities of [his] thought”.
- See also Deleuze, Logique du sens (Paris:-Minuit, 1969), pp. 190–97, 208–211, 300–302; English translation by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, edited by Constantin V. Boundas, The Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); see pp. 162–168, 177–180, 260–262. Further references given parenthetically as LS, with the French page numbers given first, followed by the page numbers of the English translation.
- Wahl calls the chance interplay of forces and conditions, through which the new emerges and the forces in play risk their destruction, an “adventure”, one characteristic of multiplicities in which individuals are affirmed, such as American democracy; Philosophies pluralistes, p. 88.
- See also Deleuze, Foucault, translated by Sean Hand, foreword by Paul Bové (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), hereafter given as F, p. 60: Although Foucault analyses “a priori conditions under which all ideas are formulated and all behaviours displayed”, “Foucault differs in certain fundamental respects from Kant: the conditions are those of real experience… they are on the side of the object and the historical formation, not a universal subject (the a priori itself is historical)…”. For Deleuze, at any rate, Foucault. is also a practitioner of Bergson's “higher empiricism”.
- Altered; see Empirisme et subjectivité, p. 126.
- Unconscious, but not unconsciousness, which, according to Deleuze, is an effect, something produced; see D 78.
- See Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, p. 45: “If there is a plurality of beings in the world, there can also be the creation of new points of application for the forces present in it”.
- Compare Sartre, “Jean Giradoux and the Philosophy of Aristotle,” in Literary Essays, translated by Annette Michelson (New York: Philosophical Library, c1955), p. 45: “an event [is]… the irruption of a new phenomenon whose very novelty exceeds all expectation and upsets [bouleverse] the order of concepts”. (Translation modified; see Sartre, Situations I, Collection “Idées” [Paris: Gallimard, 1975], p. 105.)
- See also Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, translated by Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights, 1988), pp. 67, 71, 76f, 93–96, 102–103; hereafter cited as SPP. Originally published as Spinoza: Philosophie pratique (Paris: Minuit, 1970; revised 1981).
- Compare Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, p. 82: “Only chance explains growth, the developing complexity, the infinite diversity of the universe; and at the same time as it explains diversity and irregularity, chance also explains regularity itself, as the calculus of probabilities teaches us.”
- In the same way that Kuhn and others have argued that observations are determined by the scientific practice to which they belong, a practice that is constituted by a certain vocabulary, according to which problems, phenomena and evidence are defined. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
- Compare with Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, p. 46, where Wahl says that Lotze's empiricism “wants to restore to things their multiple determinations, determinations of variety and relation, which they must have in order to condition the sequence of the facts of experience, which is so varied. The similar takes the place of the identical; the dissimilar acts on the dissimilar”.
- Similarily, Deleuze argues that Spinoza's God is coextensive with his expressions (modes), not a transcendent God that precedes and controls those expressions, or lies behind them; see EPS 81–82.
- Translation altered. See also EPS 80 and SPP 94–97.
- Deleuze, like Arthur Danto, is fond of Borges' story of Pierre Menard's version of Don Quixote, which is word for word identical to Cervantes' and yet, because it includes Cervantes' version within its causal history, is different (and indeed, “infinitely richer”). See Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 33–37.
- See Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, pp. 22, 59–62, 74, 95–96, 222. Pluralism is not defined simply by multiplicity (since even Hegelianism can allow for certain forms of multiplicity and difference), but by “development over time [dans la durée],” “the mobility of things and beings, the idea of time [temps]” and the mutability of forces through new combinations. Because new combinations result from chance, rather than any dialectical necessity, the future is open and real, rather than already contained in the present. Duration, then, is oriented towards the future, not driven by the past, and time is discontinuous, rather than a necessary evolution of a unified whole, since it is constituted from the chance encounters of irreducibly particular things according to the interaction of forces. This Bergsonian note also resounds in Deleuze; see Bergsonism, especially chapters 3 and 4.
- See Foucault, “Theatrum Philosophicum,” p. 194.
- Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, p. 38. See DR 52.
- Deleuze does not develop the formal side of his theory, but refers to the work of mathematicians such as Riemann and Albert Lautman; I am sure that Deleuze would also feel an affinity for recent work on the theory of “chaos”.
- See SPP 100f on the capacity to be affected, which is consciously experienced as sensibility, as openness to the outside.
- (Paris: Vrin, 1932). See Deleuze, D 57–58: “Apart from Sartre, who remained caught none the less in the verb to be, the most important philosopher in France was Jean Wahl. He not only introduced us to an encounter with English and American thought [i.e., pluralist empiricism], but he had the ability to make us think, in French, things which were very new…” The assertion of the and over against the IS, of multiplicity and difference over against identity, and of “the concrete richness of the sensible” over against abstract principles, these are the characteristics that Deleuze's empiricism (see D 54–59) inherits from the empiricist “pluralism” of Wahl's Vers le concret and his Les philosophies pluralistes d'Angleterre et d'Amerique, which Deleuze cites at DR 81n. In fact, Deleuze was gracious enough to write, “The entire oeuvre of Jean Wahl is a profound meditation on difference; on empiricism's possibilities to express poetic nature, free and wild; on the irreducibility of difference to the simple negative; on the non-Hegelian relations of affirmation and negation” (DR 81). Deleuze also cites Vers le concret at L 103nl and Wahl's Le Malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie de Hegel (Paris: Rieder, 1929) at N 217n12 (original French, p. 180n2.)
- See Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, pp. 102–103.
- Compare Deleuze, IS 67–73/52–57, 124–127/102–105.
- Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, p. 104.
- See Vers le concret, pp. 235–238.
- See Hegel's Logic. Being Part One of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, translated by William Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), §61-§70 (p. 95–105).
- Vers le concret, pp. 3–4n.
- Vers le concret, p. 8.
- Vers le concret, p. 238. Compare Deleuze, Empirisme et subjectivité, p. 152 (ES 133): “Philosophy must be constituted as the theory of what we do and make, not as the theory of what is. What we do and make has its principles; Being can never be grasped except through the very principles of our doing and making, as the object of a synthetic relation”. Since the relations that constitute Being as a synthetic totality are not due to any intrinsic connection among the givens of experience, but to need and passion, the concrete totality encountered in experience is, as in Wahl, not a rational or logical one, that is, not a dialectical synthesis of internally related terms.
- See Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, p. 58.
- See Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, pp. 102–103.
- See Wahl, Philosophies pluralistes, p. 104.