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Deleuze: The Clamor of Being
The works of Gilles Deleuze -- on cinema, literature, painting, and philosophy -- have made him one of the most widely read thinkers of his generation. This compact critical volume is not only a powerful reappraisal of Deleuze's thought, but also the first major work by Alain Badiou available in English. Badiou compellingly redefines "Deleuzian, " throwing down the gauntlet in the battle over the very meaning of Deleuze's legacy.For those who view Deleuze as the apostle of desire, flu, and multiplicity, Badiou's book is a deliberate provocation. Through a deep philosophical engagement with his writings, Badiou contends that Deleuze is not the Dionysian thinker of becoming he took himself to be; on the contrary, he is an ascetic philosopher of Being and Oneness. Deleuze's self-declared anti-Platonism fails -- and that, in Badiou's view, may ultimately be to his credit. "Perhaps it is not Platonism that has to be overturned, " Badiou writes, "but the anti-Platonism taken as evident throughout this entire century."
This volume draws on a five-year correspondence undertaken by Badiou and Deleuze near the end of Deleuze's life, when the two put aside long-standing political and philosophical differences to exchange ideas about similar problems in their work. Badiou's incomparably attentive readings of key Deleuzian concepts radically revise reigning interpretations, offering new insights to even the veteran Deleuze reader and serving as an entree to the controversial notion of a "restoration" of Plato advocated by Badiou -- in his own right one of the most original figures in postwar French philosophy.
The result is a critical tour de force that repositions Deleuze, one of the mostimportant thinkers of our time, and introduces Badiou to English-speaking readers.
This volume draws on a five-year correspondence undertaken by Badiou and Deleuze near the end of Deleuze's life, when the two put aside long-standing political and philosophical differences to exchange ideas about similar problems in their work. Badiou's incomparably attentive readings of key Deleuzian concepts radically revise reigning interpretations, offering new insights to even the veteran Deleuze reader and serving as an entree to the controversial notion of a "restoration" of Plato advocated by Badiou -- in his own right one of the most original figures in postwar French philosophy.
The result is a critical tour de force that repositions Deleuze, one of the mostimportant thinkers of our time, and introduces Badiou to English-speaking readers.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
About the author
Alain Badiou
323 books933 followersAlain Badiou, Ph.D., born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. Alain Badiou was a student at the École Normale Supérieure in the 1950s. He taught at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) from 1969 until 1999, when he returned to ENS as the Chair of the philosophy department. He continues to teach a popular seminar at the Collège International de Philosophie, on topics ranging from the great 'antiphilosophers' (Saint-Paul, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lacan) to the major conceptual innovations of the twentieth century. Much of Badiou's life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of the May 1968 revolt in Paris. Long a leading member of Union des jeunesses communistes de France (marxistes-léninistes), he remains with Sylvain Lazarus and Natacha Michel at the center of L'Organisation Politique, a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works.
Trained as a mathematician, Alain Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today. Influenced by Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic as well as the postmodern schools of thoughts. His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention, transfiguration) in every situation.
Trained as a mathematician, Alain Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today. Influenced by Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic as well as the postmodern schools of thoughts. His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention, transfiguration) in every situation.
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March 8, 2017
This is an interesting, if rather troubling work of interpretation. Badiou here radically reinterprets Deleuze’s philosophy as something very different than what Deleuze or his more traditional commentators had ever proclaimed it to be- a neo-idealist thought that radically reimagines, rather than rejects, Platonic idealism. Badiou openly does this so as to show that Deleuze, whether he knows it or not, is a problematic, if not utterly failing, neo-idealist. To Deleuze’s deeply flawed idealism, Badiou contrasts his own, clearly superior, neo-Platonic philosophy.
Badiou anticipates that readers will find his Deleuze hard to recognize, and might object that his method is rather self-serving. He doesn’t really apologize so much as to say that Deleuze has it coming. There is, perhaps, a degree of truth to this. Deleuze’s interpretations of earlier, canonical philosophers are brilliantly inventive, but hardly slavishly loyal to the spirit of the authors he is discussing. Deleuze takes concepts introduced by earlier philosophers and rearranges and reinvents the philosophies he writes about, rather like a jazz musician improvising around and recreating a tune. It is true, and perhaps methodologically questionable, that Deleuze does not acknowledge his own creative process when discussing, for instance, Nietzsche but surreptitiously impregnates an old philosophy with his own.
Badiou’s method is much more above board. Indeed, as always, I greatly enjoyed his challenging yet almost conversational writing style. Yet, if Deleuze shows through his writing the way that one system of thought almost subconsciously begets another, Badiou seems to me to be offering a problematic at best, perhaps intentionally distorted presentation of his subject- Deleuzean philosophy- just to show how Badiou better addressed questions that Deleuze denied even having an interest in.
Badiou claims that what he sees as Deleuze’s many epigones underestimate the role of Deleuze’s concept of the univocity, or oneness, of being in his oeuvre. Indeed, for Badiou, Deleuze’s commitment to a renewed concept of oneness is the key to his thought. Everything, for Badiou’s Deleuze (henceforth BD) is always already contained, in the One-All. That is to say that for BD being occurs the same way in all of its manifestations. Deleuze’s “epigones” like, Badiou complains, to talk about their hero’s supposed love of multiplicity, and Badiou of course acknowledges the important role of multiplicity in Deleuze’s work. In fact, he sees the role of multiplicity in Deleuze’s and his own works as being one of the main things that links the two thinkers. However, Badiou understands Deleuze’s multiplicities as only expressions of the One. We beings are but momentary manifestations of Being. Multiplicity is of the order of simulacra- the world of beings.
Rather than the radically desiring subjectivity often ascribed to Deleuze, Badiou argues that thinking, in Deleuze’s work, chooses its subject, not the other way around. Badiou will allow that for BD, one must, as in the work of Kierkegaard, choose to be chosen, accept the terrifying responsibility of thought that the One offers some beings. Indeed, rather than an ecstatic subjectivity, thought demands a rarified ability to overcome the self and submit to the process demanded by the machinations of the One-All. BD’s concept of Being can be characterized as a double movement from the one to the All and from the All to the one. The philosophical intuition of Being is an adventure, a quest, in which one subjectively reproduces the movement of Being through this intuition. The results of this quest are the senses of meaning that collectively form the simulacra known as beings from the non-sense of Being.
As previously mentioned, one of the major ways that Badiou will criticize Deleuze’s thought in this work, and make a contrast with his own, is in their extremely different attitudes towards Plato. Badiou correctly assesses that Deleuze assails Plato for denigrating simulacra to the ideal and its manifestation thereby establishing a hierarchy of being that would negate univocity. If Deleuze has indeed theorized a truly univocal sense of being, Badiou challenges, by what name should we refer to a One that contains all multiplicity? Much of Badiou’s critique of Deleuze, or rather BD, shall hinge on Badiou’s claim that one name can never suffice for the One. It requires, Badiou thinks, a name for the One, and another for the multiplicity(ies) that manifest it. Badiou will argue that Deleuze consistently uses pairs of names, although he tries to hide this both from himself and his readers by presenting his terminology as a set of binaries rather than double-names. Badiou goes on to examine such Deleuzean binaries as virtual/actual, time/truth, chance/ eternal return and fold/ outside.
The binary “virtual/ actual” is BD’s primary double-name for Being. It is not surprising, then, that Badiou’s discussion of it is where he makes his central critique of Deleuze, and where he contrasts Deleuze’s work most specifically with his own. BD holds that univocity does away with the need for philosophical grounding in the Platonic sense. The One-All is such exactly because it grounds itself/ is groundless. It simply is, and it is everything.
Badiou holds that it is imperative for philosophy to rethink the meaning of grounding, as it is necessary to revisit and reconsider Plato. “Virtual/ actual”, Badiou maintains, is a very ground-based concept, and one that is imperative to BD’s univocity. It is only ground that can connect singular beings to the One, as formal manifestations of Being. Whether BD is willing to admit it or not, BD uses the virtual as the ground of the actual.
The virtual is the ground for problems to which actualities serve as solutions. The virtual grounds a double determination- that of a problem (Being) and a multiplicity of problems (beings). Deleuze maintains that the virtual and the actual must be thought as two parts of a whole, as “unequal halves that do not resemble one another.” Deleuze also insists that the virtual and the actual are both merely images. But if the virtual is an image, Badiou complains, then it too is merely simulacrum. And, indeed, Deleuze simultaneously asserts that “the virtual is fully actual… one cannot discern the two parts [the virtual and the actual]...” The actual, then, is indiscernible as such. The actual cannot be grounded by the virtual, Badiou concludes, without the actual either becoming a meaningless blur or by the actual tearing itself away from the virtual, which would negate univocity.
To put it simply, Badiou is saying that Deleuze does in fact rely on philosophical grounding in a Platonic sense, but does so clumsily. Badiou makes the radical claim that Deleuze is in fact a neo-Platonist like himself, he just won’t admit it. Both philosophers are trying to rethink and reaffirm the univocity of ground. The difference between them is that Deleuze prioritizes the virtual- the Idea as the totality of a virtual multiplicity. Badiou, on the other hand, affirms multiplicity, but negates the virtual. The ground of the multiple for Badiou is the empty set- the mathematical expression of nothingness.
Badiou then moves on to focus on the Deleuzean binary (double-name for the One) “time/truth”. Deleuze claimed to have little use for the concept of truth, but Badiou is unconvinced. Badiou senses an alternative concept of truth at work in the philosophy of BD- that of the false. Truth, for BD, is the power of narration to manipulate time. The past, which is available to the present only as narrative, is the product of time, a process by which the actual gives way to the virtual. Time is the becoming virtual of the actual, the process by which the object takes its place in the One, the truth of the false, of narration.
For Badiou, this too reveals the secret Platonic core of BD’s thinking. As with Plato, the Real is only such through its relation to the idea, the virtuality, that it manifests. Badiou, of course, has never denied his use for the concept of truth. And he uses BD’s concept to illustrate his own. If for BD truth is the narrational power of memory, then for Badiou truth lies in the commencing power of forgetting. Truth, indeed, is commencement- the Event, which establishes a new world that cannot yet be described, and which reveals to the subject new possibilities.
Badiou’s discussion of Deleuze’s concept of eternal return is, to this reader, his least idiosyncratic and most faithful to a more traditional reading of Deleuze. As was established in the discussion of “time/truth”, the true only becomes such through returning as the virtuality of memory. Eternal return is never the return of the same. The object returns as part of the One narrative, and narrative is never identical. It is constantly being reinterpreted and thus rewritten, transformed into something different. What returns is difference and this is the only truth.
Badiou’s discussion of “fold/outside” relies primarily on an interpretation of Deleuze’s book on Foucault and The Fold, neither of which I have read. Perhaps due to my ignorance of this part of Deleuze’s oeuvre, I found this discussion the most interesting in the book. According to Badiou, Deleuze uses Foucault’s thought to elaborate his own notion of thinking as a disjunctive synthesis- one in which the synthesized elements never meet up. For BD’s Foucault (yes…) truth is always severed in two, divided into visibilities (which correlate fairly closely, it seems to me, to the concept that Deleuze refers to as the actual) and statements (which I read as roughly corresponding to Deleuze’s concept of virtuality). Thinking requires, for BD, a plunging into the disjunction while maintaining a fidelity to univocity. The trick is to at once think over the disjunctive crevice and think of the crevice as such. BD takes the geographical metaphor so far as to say that one can, by tracing the fault lines of the crevice, see the trace of the original univocity of truth.
This is where the concept of the fold comes in. BD’s fold is the process by which that which is external to being becomes internal. The fold is the act of thought tracing the fault lines between visibilities and statements, actuality and virtuality, and discovering the hidden connection, the univocity of truth. Through the fold that is thought, the disjunction becomes a modality of oneness.
Badiou cannot embrace the concept of the fold because he is committed to a philosophy that allows for radical transformation. The fold implies that thought can only serve as an apprehension of an established world. There is, for BD, only the one world and the one thought to capture univocity. What Badiou can embrace is the notion from Deleuze’s book on Foucault that to think is to plunge into the void, the crevice in every truth. But the disjucture does not, for Badiou, reveal a hidden oneness but rather the site least defined by the state-of-things. It is where, Badiou hopes, the empty set that is for him the mathematical foundation of being can reveal itself and the transient nature of all worlds be revealed.
Badiou concludes by characterizing Deleuze as a pre-Socratic thinker- one for whom philosophy is a physics. (This is very strange as he has based most of his critique of Deleuze on the notion that he is an unintentional Platonist.) Plato, Badiou claims, freed philosophy from physics. He transformed philosophy into a meta-thought that does not have to refer to the already-there. Philosophy can therefore think towards a new world, if not a new physics.
My biggest reservation about Badiou’s reading of Deleuze is how much stress he puts on the notion that the One-All cannot be named with one term. It seems to me that in Difference & Repetition Deleuze does offer a one-word name for univocity: difference. And difference can be this name precisely because Delezue, as he himself proclaims, is not an idealist. Univocity is, as I read Deleuze, closer to Althusser’s materialist concept of the world as a totality of infinite contradiction than to a Platonic notion of a grounding idea. The world is one because there are no ones, no beings, only becomings of becoming. So Badiou’s notion that univocity can only be described by referring to both Being and beings seems to me misplaced when discussing Deleuze. Somewhat ironically, I think the anti-communist Deleuze may have been more of an Althusserean materialist than Althusser’s commie-hypothesizing heir, Badiou.
In his introduction, Badiou discusses how after putting their political differences aside, the two men corresponded before Deleuze’s suicide. Deleuze told Badiou that he found his ideas interesting, but saw no correlation between their two philosophies. Badiou, by his own admission, barraged the older man with letters trying to convince him of the similarities between their projects. Shortly before taking his own life, Deleuze sent Badiou a letter basically saying, “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” which Badiou takes as a kind of validation. I always enjoy reading Badiou, and this book was no exception. But here I was left with this rather unphilosophical evaluation of Badiou: “What an asshole…”
Badiou anticipates that readers will find his Deleuze hard to recognize, and might object that his method is rather self-serving. He doesn’t really apologize so much as to say that Deleuze has it coming. There is, perhaps, a degree of truth to this. Deleuze’s interpretations of earlier, canonical philosophers are brilliantly inventive, but hardly slavishly loyal to the spirit of the authors he is discussing. Deleuze takes concepts introduced by earlier philosophers and rearranges and reinvents the philosophies he writes about, rather like a jazz musician improvising around and recreating a tune. It is true, and perhaps methodologically questionable, that Deleuze does not acknowledge his own creative process when discussing, for instance, Nietzsche but surreptitiously impregnates an old philosophy with his own.
Badiou’s method is much more above board. Indeed, as always, I greatly enjoyed his challenging yet almost conversational writing style. Yet, if Deleuze shows through his writing the way that one system of thought almost subconsciously begets another, Badiou seems to me to be offering a problematic at best, perhaps intentionally distorted presentation of his subject- Deleuzean philosophy- just to show how Badiou better addressed questions that Deleuze denied even having an interest in.
Badiou claims that what he sees as Deleuze’s many epigones underestimate the role of Deleuze’s concept of the univocity, or oneness, of being in his oeuvre. Indeed, for Badiou, Deleuze’s commitment to a renewed concept of oneness is the key to his thought. Everything, for Badiou’s Deleuze (henceforth BD) is always already contained, in the One-All. That is to say that for BD being occurs the same way in all of its manifestations. Deleuze’s “epigones” like, Badiou complains, to talk about their hero’s supposed love of multiplicity, and Badiou of course acknowledges the important role of multiplicity in Deleuze’s work. In fact, he sees the role of multiplicity in Deleuze’s and his own works as being one of the main things that links the two thinkers. However, Badiou understands Deleuze’s multiplicities as only expressions of the One. We beings are but momentary manifestations of Being. Multiplicity is of the order of simulacra- the world of beings.
Rather than the radically desiring subjectivity often ascribed to Deleuze, Badiou argues that thinking, in Deleuze’s work, chooses its subject, not the other way around. Badiou will allow that for BD, one must, as in the work of Kierkegaard, choose to be chosen, accept the terrifying responsibility of thought that the One offers some beings. Indeed, rather than an ecstatic subjectivity, thought demands a rarified ability to overcome the self and submit to the process demanded by the machinations of the One-All. BD’s concept of Being can be characterized as a double movement from the one to the All and from the All to the one. The philosophical intuition of Being is an adventure, a quest, in which one subjectively reproduces the movement of Being through this intuition. The results of this quest are the senses of meaning that collectively form the simulacra known as beings from the non-sense of Being.
As previously mentioned, one of the major ways that Badiou will criticize Deleuze’s thought in this work, and make a contrast with his own, is in their extremely different attitudes towards Plato. Badiou correctly assesses that Deleuze assails Plato for denigrating simulacra to the ideal and its manifestation thereby establishing a hierarchy of being that would negate univocity. If Deleuze has indeed theorized a truly univocal sense of being, Badiou challenges, by what name should we refer to a One that contains all multiplicity? Much of Badiou’s critique of Deleuze, or rather BD, shall hinge on Badiou’s claim that one name can never suffice for the One. It requires, Badiou thinks, a name for the One, and another for the multiplicity(ies) that manifest it. Badiou will argue that Deleuze consistently uses pairs of names, although he tries to hide this both from himself and his readers by presenting his terminology as a set of binaries rather than double-names. Badiou goes on to examine such Deleuzean binaries as virtual/actual, time/truth, chance/ eternal return and fold/ outside.
The binary “virtual/ actual” is BD’s primary double-name for Being. It is not surprising, then, that Badiou’s discussion of it is where he makes his central critique of Deleuze, and where he contrasts Deleuze’s work most specifically with his own. BD holds that univocity does away with the need for philosophical grounding in the Platonic sense. The One-All is such exactly because it grounds itself/ is groundless. It simply is, and it is everything.
Badiou holds that it is imperative for philosophy to rethink the meaning of grounding, as it is necessary to revisit and reconsider Plato. “Virtual/ actual”, Badiou maintains, is a very ground-based concept, and one that is imperative to BD’s univocity. It is only ground that can connect singular beings to the One, as formal manifestations of Being. Whether BD is willing to admit it or not, BD uses the virtual as the ground of the actual.
The virtual is the ground for problems to which actualities serve as solutions. The virtual grounds a double determination- that of a problem (Being) and a multiplicity of problems (beings). Deleuze maintains that the virtual and the actual must be thought as two parts of a whole, as “unequal halves that do not resemble one another.” Deleuze also insists that the virtual and the actual are both merely images. But if the virtual is an image, Badiou complains, then it too is merely simulacrum. And, indeed, Deleuze simultaneously asserts that “the virtual is fully actual… one cannot discern the two parts [the virtual and the actual]...” The actual, then, is indiscernible as such. The actual cannot be grounded by the virtual, Badiou concludes, without the actual either becoming a meaningless blur or by the actual tearing itself away from the virtual, which would negate univocity.
To put it simply, Badiou is saying that Deleuze does in fact rely on philosophical grounding in a Platonic sense, but does so clumsily. Badiou makes the radical claim that Deleuze is in fact a neo-Platonist like himself, he just won’t admit it. Both philosophers are trying to rethink and reaffirm the univocity of ground. The difference between them is that Deleuze prioritizes the virtual- the Idea as the totality of a virtual multiplicity. Badiou, on the other hand, affirms multiplicity, but negates the virtual. The ground of the multiple for Badiou is the empty set- the mathematical expression of nothingness.
Badiou then moves on to focus on the Deleuzean binary (double-name for the One) “time/truth”. Deleuze claimed to have little use for the concept of truth, but Badiou is unconvinced. Badiou senses an alternative concept of truth at work in the philosophy of BD- that of the false. Truth, for BD, is the power of narration to manipulate time. The past, which is available to the present only as narrative, is the product of time, a process by which the actual gives way to the virtual. Time is the becoming virtual of the actual, the process by which the object takes its place in the One, the truth of the false, of narration.
For Badiou, this too reveals the secret Platonic core of BD’s thinking. As with Plato, the Real is only such through its relation to the idea, the virtuality, that it manifests. Badiou, of course, has never denied his use for the concept of truth. And he uses BD’s concept to illustrate his own. If for BD truth is the narrational power of memory, then for Badiou truth lies in the commencing power of forgetting. Truth, indeed, is commencement- the Event, which establishes a new world that cannot yet be described, and which reveals to the subject new possibilities.
Badiou’s discussion of Deleuze’s concept of eternal return is, to this reader, his least idiosyncratic and most faithful to a more traditional reading of Deleuze. As was established in the discussion of “time/truth”, the true only becomes such through returning as the virtuality of memory. Eternal return is never the return of the same. The object returns as part of the One narrative, and narrative is never identical. It is constantly being reinterpreted and thus rewritten, transformed into something different. What returns is difference and this is the only truth.
Badiou’s discussion of “fold/outside” relies primarily on an interpretation of Deleuze’s book on Foucault and The Fold, neither of which I have read. Perhaps due to my ignorance of this part of Deleuze’s oeuvre, I found this discussion the most interesting in the book. According to Badiou, Deleuze uses Foucault’s thought to elaborate his own notion of thinking as a disjunctive synthesis- one in which the synthesized elements never meet up. For BD’s Foucault (yes…) truth is always severed in two, divided into visibilities (which correlate fairly closely, it seems to me, to the concept that Deleuze refers to as the actual) and statements (which I read as roughly corresponding to Deleuze’s concept of virtuality). Thinking requires, for BD, a plunging into the disjunction while maintaining a fidelity to univocity. The trick is to at once think over the disjunctive crevice and think of the crevice as such. BD takes the geographical metaphor so far as to say that one can, by tracing the fault lines of the crevice, see the trace of the original univocity of truth.
This is where the concept of the fold comes in. BD’s fold is the process by which that which is external to being becomes internal. The fold is the act of thought tracing the fault lines between visibilities and statements, actuality and virtuality, and discovering the hidden connection, the univocity of truth. Through the fold that is thought, the disjunction becomes a modality of oneness.
Badiou cannot embrace the concept of the fold because he is committed to a philosophy that allows for radical transformation. The fold implies that thought can only serve as an apprehension of an established world. There is, for BD, only the one world and the one thought to capture univocity. What Badiou can embrace is the notion from Deleuze’s book on Foucault that to think is to plunge into the void, the crevice in every truth. But the disjucture does not, for Badiou, reveal a hidden oneness but rather the site least defined by the state-of-things. It is where, Badiou hopes, the empty set that is for him the mathematical foundation of being can reveal itself and the transient nature of all worlds be revealed.
Badiou concludes by characterizing Deleuze as a pre-Socratic thinker- one for whom philosophy is a physics. (This is very strange as he has based most of his critique of Deleuze on the notion that he is an unintentional Platonist.) Plato, Badiou claims, freed philosophy from physics. He transformed philosophy into a meta-thought that does not have to refer to the already-there. Philosophy can therefore think towards a new world, if not a new physics.
My biggest reservation about Badiou’s reading of Deleuze is how much stress he puts on the notion that the One-All cannot be named with one term. It seems to me that in Difference & Repetition Deleuze does offer a one-word name for univocity: difference. And difference can be this name precisely because Delezue, as he himself proclaims, is not an idealist. Univocity is, as I read Deleuze, closer to Althusser’s materialist concept of the world as a totality of infinite contradiction than to a Platonic notion of a grounding idea. The world is one because there are no ones, no beings, only becomings of becoming. So Badiou’s notion that univocity can only be described by referring to both Being and beings seems to me misplaced when discussing Deleuze. Somewhat ironically, I think the anti-communist Deleuze may have been more of an Althusserean materialist than Althusser’s commie-hypothesizing heir, Badiou.
In his introduction, Badiou discusses how after putting their political differences aside, the two men corresponded before Deleuze’s suicide. Deleuze told Badiou that he found his ideas interesting, but saw no correlation between their two philosophies. Badiou, by his own admission, barraged the older man with letters trying to convince him of the similarities between their projects. Shortly before taking his own life, Deleuze sent Badiou a letter basically saying, “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” which Badiou takes as a kind of validation. I always enjoy reading Badiou, and this book was no exception. But here I was left with this rather unphilosophical evaluation of Badiou: “What an asshole…”
July 17, 2018
"في مؤلفاته المتعددة، أكد دولوز ضرورة اللجوء إلى فهم جديد للفلسفة ولمفاهيمها و لتاريخها العريق من خلال الانخراط الفاعل في الحياة. ومن هنا يرى دولوز أن الفلسفة مازالت صامدة في وجه من يروج لموتها، وصمود الفلسفة هذا يتطلب احتفاءها بالإبداع من خلال وظيفتها الإجرائية والمعرفية، كون الفلسفة هي بمثابة" الحقل المعرفي القائم على إبداع المفاهيم، في حين أن موضوعها هو إبداع مفاهيم دائمة الجدّة.
………
خطاب دولوز الفلسفي، لا يحتفل بالهوية، والأصل، أو المثال، أو المعنى المجرد، فلا توجد هويات مسبقة أو قبلية، يندرج، بها الوجود ، ويتحقق على منوالها."
نتعرف في هذا الكتاب على بعض أبرز الوجوه الفلسفية عند دلوز، وعلى اشتغاله الفلسفي العميق في الفكر، حيث أبدع مفاهيم جديدة .
يصرّح:
"إن تاريخ الفلسفة هو إعادة إنتاج الفلسفة ذاتها ." هذا التأكيد الذي نجده في الصفحات الأولى من كتاب جيل دولوز «الفرق والمعاودة» يضعنا رأساً في صلب التعاطي الدولوزي مع دلالات الزمن والتاريخ والإبداع، ويقطع الطريق على الذين يؤاخذون دولوز إما على منحاه التلفيقي الذي همه الاكتفاء بالتعليق وإما نهجه التعسفي الذي يجبر الفلاسفة الذين درسهم على أن يكونوا دولوزيين. فالذين يفهمون التاريخ بصفته تتابعاً خطياً ويطبّقون ذلك على الفلسفة وتاريخ��ا، يخطئون الفلسفة والتاريخ معاً، وذلك لأن الفلسفة ذاتها لا تُختزل في تاريخها لأنها لا تكف عن الانفصال عنه لتبدع مفاهيم جديدة. ولأن تاريخها ليس له نفسه وتيرة تاريخ الناس.
*علام�� عبقرية دلوز هي أنه شيد من فلسفته، جينالوجيا أصيلة بالتمام .
لا ريب أن دولوز قدم الأفلاطونية-المضادة الأكثر سخاء، والأكثر انفتاحاً على الابداعات المعاصرة، والأقل مصيرية، والأكثر تقدمية. ولم يعوزه إلا أن يفرغ من الأفلاطونية المضادة نفسها.
ذلك أنه كان بلاشك مثل هيدغر، ما قبل سقراطياً.—ألان باديو
"يُعرَف جيل دولوز على أنه مؤرخ للفلسفة، بمعنى؛ أنه صاحب نظرية في كيفية التأريخ للفكر (ص11)، بيْد أن تأريخ دولوز للفلسفة، ليس تأريخًا خطيًّا أو أفقيًّا؛ بل إنه يؤرخ للفلسفة من منطلق فلسفي (ص11)، وتأريخ دولوز للفلسفة، لا يهتم بنقطة بداية أو نهاية، كما أنه لم يهتم، إطلاقًا، بالأسئلة الفلسفية التقليدية، حول ما إذا كان، مثلًا، نيتشه ينتمي إلى تاريخ الميتافيزيقا، أم أنه استطاع تجاوزها؛ فهو يهتم بالفلاسفة الذين ينتمون لتاريخ الفلسفة، ولكنهم ينفلتون من إحدى جوانبه، ويزيغون عنه، فينزوون إلى الهامش، أو يخرجون منه كلية، مثل؛ برغسون، وإسبينوزا، ونيتشه، وهيوم، وليبنز.
تاريخ الفلسفة ليس تاريخًا موحدًا، ولا متجانسًا، إنه تاريخ متقطع ومنفصل، تسود فيه الفراغات والهوامش، أكثر من الامتلاء والمركز، وهو تاريخ للتكرار، ينتج أوجه التشابه بوسائل مخالفة تمامًا.
لهذه الأسباب؛ يهتم دولوز ببرغسون، كفيلسوف للاختلاف والمحايثة (ص16)، على أن أهم مفهوم أثار انتباه دولوز؛ هو الحدس البرغسوني، وإذا كان الحدس الديكارتي يدرك الفكرة الواضحة المتميزة والعقلانية؛ فإن الحدس البرغسوني أو الدولوزي، يدرك الوجود دون شرائط للمعرفة، أو مقولات جاهزة؛ فهو يدرك الديمومة كما تتجلى في الوجود (ص16)، والديمومة هي نوع من التغير الأنطولوجي، الذي لا يدرك بمنطق الثبات والحساب (ص22)، إنها حركة حية لا تقبل التكميم.
أما اهتمام دولوز بهيوم؛ فيعود إلى بداياته الفلسفية الأولى، ��ينما ألف كتابًا حوله في فترة كان الفكر الفرنسي يهتم كثيرًا بهيغل، وهوسرل، وهيدغر، فجاء كتابه حول هيوم نشازًا تامًّا بالفعل، مردُّ هذا الاهتمام، إلى كون تجريبية هيوم، لا تعبر فقط عن الوقوف على حدود التجارب؛ بل إن التجريبية بالنسبة إلى دولوز، هي التوجه الذي ينظر إلى التجارب، بما هي إمكانات؛ أي التفكير الذي ينكب على الشروط القبلية لكل معرفة، دونما الاستناد إلى أية مرجعية معينة (ص28)؛ فكل موجود عند هيوم، هو صادر عما يتجاوزه، ولا شيء يحصل في الداخل؛ بل كل شيء في الخارج (ص29).
أبدع جيل دولوز جملة مفاهيم، تركت بصمتها على الفلسفة المعاصرة، من بينها، نجد؛ المفهوم أو الأفهوم، والزمان، والاختلاف، والسيمولاكر، والهوية، والتكرار، والجذمور، ...إلخ، ومن المعلوم: أن دولوز يُعتبر فيلسوف المفهوم، وأنه يعتبر أن الفلسفة: هي إبداع المفاهيم، كما هو مشاع؛ فالفلسفة تبدع المفاهيم لبعث الحركة في الفكر، وتحرير الممكن الحي في التجربة، وتقريب العقل من الوجود والحدث؛ فالمفاهيم عبارة عن أحداث وأفراد، والسبب الذي يجعل الفلسفة تبدع المفاهيم: هو التخلص من المفاهيم الجامدة، والثابتة، والماهيات، ودخولها إلى منطق المعنى، كما يتحدد عند نيتشه (ص146)، لا يعبر المفهوم الدولوزي عن الوحدة؛ بل عن التعدد، ولا يعبر عن التشابه؛ بل الاختلاف، كما أنه لا يهتم بالمركز؛ بل بالهامش والأطراف، ولِنقل بالجذمور؛ أي حقل ترابط محايث لذاته، ولا يأتي المفهوم جوابًا عن الماهية؛ بل عن الكيف، كونه يجاور المكونات ولا يجمعها (ص147).
يعبر مفهوم الزمن، عند دولوز، عن العادة والتكرار؛ فالأنا الحاضرة في الزمن، ليست سوى إعادة وتكرار لذاتها، داخل العادات البسيطة والصغرى، التي تكسر بنية الزمن، والحاضر لا يعبر، مع دولوز، عن ما هو موجود؛ بل عما مضى، والذات التي تشكل الحاضر توجد في الماضي، فما نحياه تجريبيًّا كتعاقب للحاضر، هو، في العمق، مستويات جزئية من الماضي، تتزايد وتتحقق في تركيب هذا الحاضر المنفعل (ص189).
إن زمن دولوز ليس زمنًا مترابطًا خطيًّا؛ بل إنه زمن بدون حركة، يتمثل الماضي في الحاضر، إنه زمن العود الأبدي، زمن التنافر والاختلاف والتباين، إنه العود الذي يعود بطريقة أخرى؛ أي عودة الاختلافات بما هي تكرار، فالاختلافات، هي وحدها، ما يعود (ص194)، لذلك؛ فدورة الزمن تعبر عن الوجود المشترك للكل، وهو ما يحفظ للاختلاف، من حيث هو تكرار منزاح، ماهيته، كونه تعدد وتغاير لأدوار متزامنة."— من كتاب فلسفة جيل دولوز -"عن الوجود والاختلاف" للمؤلف عادل حدجامي.| يصف هذا الاقتباس ويشرح الكثير-القليل، مما جاء في أروقة هذا الكتاب .
"هناك دائماً العشب بين الأحجار." —دولوز
دولوز معقد ومركب؛ لغوياً ، فكريا، وكذا مفاهيمياً. و أطروحاته متداخلة ومتشابكة، يحتاج القارئ إلى التعمق في القراءة له، كي يصل إلى جذور فكره الفلسفي الملغوم.
سؤال الكينونة؛ وعلى وجه الخصوص" تواطؤ الكينونة" هو أكثر ما أشكل علي، ووضعني في حيرة وشك من ذاتي ، وخلط العديد من المفاهيم المسبقة لدي.
رغم العذاب الفكري والنفسي، إلا أنه كتاب رائع جداً!
………
خطاب دولوز الفلسفي، لا يحتفل بالهوية، والأصل، أو المثال، أو المعنى المجرد، فلا توجد هويات مسبقة أو قبلية، يندرج، بها الوجود ، ويتحقق على منوالها."
نتعرف في هذا الكتاب على بعض أبرز الوجوه الفلسفية عند دلوز، وعلى اشتغاله الفلسفي العميق في الفكر، حيث أبدع مفاهيم جديدة .
يصرّح:
"إن تاريخ الفلسفة هو إعادة إنتاج الفلسفة ذاتها ." هذا التأكيد الذي نجده في الصفحات الأولى من كتاب جيل دولوز «الفرق والمعاودة» يضعنا رأساً في صلب التعاطي الدولوزي مع دلالات الزمن والتاريخ والإبداع، ويقطع الطريق على الذين يؤاخذون دولوز إما على منحاه التلفيقي الذي همه الاكتفاء بالتعليق وإما نهجه التعسفي الذي يجبر الفلاسفة الذين درسهم على أن يكونوا دولوزيين. فالذين يفهمون التاريخ بصفته تتابعاً خطياً ويطبّقون ذلك على الفلسفة وتاريخ��ا، يخطئون الفلسفة والتاريخ معاً، وذلك لأن الفلسفة ذاتها لا تُختزل في تاريخها لأنها لا تكف عن الانفصال عنه لتبدع مفاهيم جديدة. ولأن تاريخها ليس له نفسه وتيرة تاريخ الناس.
*علام�� عبقرية دلوز هي أنه شيد من فلسفته، جينالوجيا أصيلة بالتمام .
لا ريب أن دولوز قدم الأفلاطونية-المضادة الأكثر سخاء، والأكثر انفتاحاً على الابداعات المعاصرة، والأقل مصيرية، والأكثر تقدمية. ولم يعوزه إلا أن يفرغ من الأفلاطونية المضادة نفسها.
ذلك أنه كان بلاشك مثل هيدغر، ما قبل سقراطياً.—ألان باديو
"يُعرَف جيل دولوز على أنه مؤرخ للفلسفة، بمعنى؛ أنه صاحب نظرية في كيفية التأريخ للفكر (ص11)، بيْد أن تأريخ دولوز للفلسفة، ليس تأريخًا خطيًّا أو أفقيًّا؛ بل إنه يؤرخ للفلسفة من منطلق فلسفي (ص11)، وتأريخ دولوز للفلسفة، لا يهتم بنقطة بداية أو نهاية، كما أنه لم يهتم، إطلاقًا، بالأسئلة الفلسفية التقليدية، حول ما إذا كان، مثلًا، نيتشه ينتمي إلى تاريخ الميتافيزيقا، أم أنه استطاع تجاوزها؛ فهو يهتم بالفلاسفة الذين ينتمون لتاريخ الفلسفة، ولكنهم ينفلتون من إحدى جوانبه، ويزيغون عنه، فينزوون إلى الهامش، أو يخرجون منه كلية، مثل؛ برغسون، وإسبينوزا، ونيتشه، وهيوم، وليبنز.
تاريخ الفلسفة ليس تاريخًا موحدًا، ولا متجانسًا، إنه تاريخ متقطع ومنفصل، تسود فيه الفراغات والهوامش، أكثر من الامتلاء والمركز، وهو تاريخ للتكرار، ينتج أوجه التشابه بوسائل مخالفة تمامًا.
لهذه الأسباب؛ يهتم دولوز ببرغسون، كفيلسوف للاختلاف والمحايثة (ص16)، على أن أهم مفهوم أثار انتباه دولوز؛ هو الحدس البرغسوني، وإذا كان الحدس الديكارتي يدرك الفكرة الواضحة المتميزة والعقلانية؛ فإن الحدس البرغسوني أو الدولوزي، يدرك الوجود دون شرائط للمعرفة، أو مقولات جاهزة؛ فهو يدرك الديمومة كما تتجلى في الوجود (ص16)، والديمومة هي نوع من التغير الأنطولوجي، الذي لا يدرك بمنطق الثبات والحساب (ص22)، إنها حركة حية لا تقبل التكميم.
أما اهتمام دولوز بهيوم؛ فيعود إلى بداياته الفلسفية الأولى، ��ينما ألف كتابًا حوله في فترة كان الفكر الفرنسي يهتم كثيرًا بهيغل، وهوسرل، وهيدغر، فجاء كتابه حول هيوم نشازًا تامًّا بالفعل، مردُّ هذا الاهتمام، إلى كون تجريبية هيوم، لا تعبر فقط عن الوقوف على حدود التجارب؛ بل إن التجريبية بالنسبة إلى دولوز، هي التوجه الذي ينظر إلى التجارب، بما هي إمكانات؛ أي التفكير الذي ينكب على الشروط القبلية لكل معرفة، دونما الاستناد إلى أية مرجعية معينة (ص28)؛ فكل موجود عند هيوم، هو صادر عما يتجاوزه، ولا شيء يحصل في الداخل؛ بل كل شيء في الخارج (ص29).
أبدع جيل دولوز جملة مفاهيم، تركت بصمتها على الفلسفة المعاصرة، من بينها، نجد؛ المفهوم أو الأفهوم، والزمان، والاختلاف، والسيمولاكر، والهوية، والتكرار، والجذمور، ...إلخ، ومن المعلوم: أن دولوز يُعتبر فيلسوف المفهوم، وأنه يعتبر أن الفلسفة: هي إبداع المفاهيم، كما هو مشاع؛ فالفلسفة تبدع المفاهيم لبعث الحركة في الفكر، وتحرير الممكن الحي في التجربة، وتقريب العقل من الوجود والحدث؛ فالمفاهيم عبارة عن أحداث وأفراد، والسبب الذي يجعل الفلسفة تبدع المفاهيم: هو التخلص من المفاهيم الجامدة، والثابتة، والماهيات، ودخولها إلى منطق المعنى، كما يتحدد عند نيتشه (ص146)، لا يعبر المفهوم الدولوزي عن الوحدة؛ بل عن التعدد، ولا يعبر عن التشابه؛ بل الاختلاف، كما أنه لا يهتم بالمركز؛ بل بالهامش والأطراف، ولِنقل بالجذمور؛ أي حقل ترابط محايث لذاته، ولا يأتي المفهوم جوابًا عن الماهية؛ بل عن الكيف، كونه يجاور المكونات ولا يجمعها (ص147).
يعبر مفهوم الزمن، عند دولوز، عن العادة والتكرار؛ فالأنا الحاضرة في الزمن، ليست سوى إعادة وتكرار لذاتها، داخل العادات البسيطة والصغرى، التي تكسر بنية الزمن، والحاضر لا يعبر، مع دولوز، عن ما هو موجود؛ بل عما مضى، والذات التي تشكل الحاضر توجد في الماضي، فما نحياه تجريبيًّا كتعاقب للحاضر، هو، في العمق، مستويات جزئية من الماضي، تتزايد وتتحقق في تركيب هذا الحاضر المنفعل (ص189).
إن زمن دولوز ليس زمنًا مترابطًا خطيًّا؛ بل إنه زمن بدون حركة، يتمثل الماضي في الحاضر، إنه زمن العود الأبدي، زمن التنافر والاختلاف والتباين، إنه العود الذي يعود بطريقة أخرى؛ أي عودة الاختلافات بما هي تكرار، فالاختلافات، هي وحدها، ما يعود (ص194)، لذلك؛ فدورة الزمن تعبر عن الوجود المشترك للكل، وهو ما يحفظ للاختلاف، من حيث هو تكرار منزاح، ماهيته، كونه تعدد وتغاير لأدوار متزامنة."— من كتاب فلسفة جيل دولوز -"عن الوجود والاختلاف" للمؤلف عادل حدجامي.| يصف هذا الاقتباس ويشرح الكثير-القليل، مما جاء في أروقة هذا الكتاب .
"هناك دائماً العشب بين الأحجار." —دولوز
دولوز معقد ومركب؛ لغوياً ، فكريا، وكذا مفاهيمياً. و أطروحاته متداخلة ومتشابكة، يحتاج القارئ إلى التعمق في القراءة له، كي يصل إلى جذور فكره الفلسفي الملغوم.
سؤال الكينونة؛ وعلى وجه الخصوص" تواطؤ الكينونة" هو أكثر ما أشكل علي، ووضعني في حيرة وشك من ذاتي ، وخلط العديد من المفاهيم المسبقة لدي.
رغم العذاب الفكري والنفسي، إلا أنه كتاب رائع جداً!
February 1, 2008
Badiou does a masterly job here of fleshing out the ontological side of Deleuzian theory, delving especially into the latter's doctoral work (and possibly one of his most difficult works) on difference as such (Difference and Repetition) as vastly grander than simply the domain of the "accidental" to which Aristotle relegated it--propounding a thesis that Deleuze himself in fact corroborates: the univocity of being, thereby explicating a monist reversal of Plato's idealism, in favour of the "virtual", a key concept in Deleuzian philosophy. Badiou strives in this study to show just how close Deleuze is in fact to Aristotelian philosophy where the equivocity of being is concerned, and furthermore, just how close Deleuze's concept of the univocity of being puts him in alliance with Plato especially, a thinker Badiou clearly esteems very highly for having delineated the four domains or sites in which truths operate, of which philosophy is appointed to be the perennial guardian: mathematical reasoning (& pure science-- ie: Cantor), poesis (& artistic creation-- ie: Mallarme, Beckett, Pessoa), politics, and love. One can't help but to remain skeptical as to whether or not Badiou is forcing the conclusions he draws upon Deleuzian thought (in absentia of the latter), but nonetheless one can't help furthermore to be drawn in by Badiou's special engagement and correspondence with Deleuze, which lasted until the latter's last days in his struggle with terminal illness, and enmity that was perhaps the most fruitful for him, in his own words, "a conflictual friendship that, in a certain sense, had never taken place," because of philosophical and perhaps political differences. Badiou's notion that being is multiplicity, and that these are infinite, drawing on the reaches of Cantor's mathematics of infinity and set theory, surfaces in the struggle with Deleuzian monism as perhaps the paradigm the world seems still at odds to accept, and yet, always seems to be implying. Whereas it was once said by Foucault that "the next century will be Deleuzian," it is very possible in hindsight, from a vantage point of a luminous and infinite futurity that not our century per se, but some era, will be known as Badiou-ian, or something of that nature. Which is equal to saying, perhaps, it will be Mallarmean and Cantorian at the same time, and also radically Platonic (arguably in the skeptical vein, insofar as skepsis is inquiry), moreover Lacanian (Badiou's treatment of love being informed by Plato and Lacan's analytic of desire).
September 17, 2015
I've read this book three times. As long as I've been reading post-structuralism, I have pursued an understanding of Deleuze's work. But only on this last round have I really begun to grasp Badiou's own work.
Badiou here, presents a Deleuze that is in some respects barely recognizable. Nonetheless, he is able to pull through Deleuze's rhetorical structure in order to present how he and Deleuze differ and are the same. The obvious difference is their approaches. Badiou takes formalism to be standing on its own, that all is reducable to formalism. Deleuze would understand that content and form are the same; that a given content formulates form but that formulation is only one aspect of the virtuality of that content (this reading is available from Difference and Repetition). This is one way to specify their difference but we can talk about it geometrically.
Said another way this difference is in terms of boundaries. For example, Badiou understands events as being incompossible in terms of time. For Deleuze however, each event also is an absolute reference (a static segment) but the boundaries of that event coexist through their incompossibility. Badiou would negate all the relations that do not appear within the scope of a given event. Badiou would seal that event as an infinite extension that forms a transcendental. So for Badiou, a world qua transcendental is sealed as a complete and consistent entity. While Deleuze has this structure available as well, as seen through incompossibility, his "worlds" are not sealed. His worlds qua folds are in fact, intermixing with each, influencing one another. Given where you are locally, certain relations within the virtual become available, and you experience them in their actuality.
In this sense, what Badiou calls "logic" would be concepts that are always present for Deleuze, although they may be inexpressed. This reading is available for Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, as Kant understood that concepts are only guidelines. The difference is that Kant also took his concepts seriously and tried to ground these ideas in terms of a non-idea, the thing-in-itself. He nailed the transcendental conception down and in this manner both Deleuze and Badiou would avoid Kantian noumenal/phenomenal split because it suggests a singular logic rather than a multiplicity/multitude. A thing-in-itself traps Kant within one world.
So while both Deleuze and Badiou are interested in multiple/mutiplicity the difference in their world/folds lies in how open or closed they believe those relations to be. For Badiou there is less interaction within these worlds than Deleuze. Deleuze would think the substance-relations at their contingency, in a sense, sacrificing consistency for a recognition of the virtual completeness. This is also why Badiou's book Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II begins to recognize the need for a Deleuzeian "leakiness" between worlds, although for Badiou, the transcendental remains the limit of a worldly domain, even though he recognizes the (in)existence of relations from world to world. So from the view of a given transcendental, a certain relation may not be available.
In this sense, Badiou's Logic presents many tiny ones, all of which share the same structure of the One. Badiou claims that the One does not exist. And certainly not as a logic nor as an ontological content -- though Badiou would insist that each one amounts to the same One in terms of an empty formalism, which is why he can talk about each world's structure by invoking any given world.
I used to be confused as to why Badiou saw Deleuze as being a philosopher who primarily invokes the univocity of the One, when that seemed to somewhat antithetical to Deleuze's multiplicities. I see the answer now though, for Deleuze through elan vital talks about a second order of conception. By understanding Deleuzian formalism as being a kind of monad, a form that carries with it seeds of content, Badiou would read Deleuze as necessarily needing a One in order to meld a common domain. In terms of transcendental logics, it is impossible to have phenomenon within a given interaction without there being a whole, a common domain that specifies the absolute infinite totality. Because Deleuze would speak from the interstice between domain logics, Badiou assumes that Deleuze necessarily invokes a univocal One.
I am not certain how Deleuze would respond to this, but let me try. The passages that Badiou references do suggest that Deleuze may agree, although I think that Deleuze would understand the formalism of conception within the virtual as being a derivable non-world that is material process on its own, a vitality that continued chaotic mix of originary essences that contain the seeds of their own localized differentiation. Concepts here are tactical, differenciations (events) always derived from the particularity of the atoms involved.
I do not think that Deleuze would agree to an infinite extension of conception that Badiou would insist on in order to create a transcendental completeness qua world. I do believe that the insistence of a Deleuzian One is possible but gives up too much. Badiou would seek to be rid of Kantian noumenal nonsense, as an academic "left over" of Kant's conception, when Badiou himself would posit a many worlds of "complete" consistency, a very heavy conception of infinite extension of each brand of logic. For Deleuze this is probably too much; infinite extension is not necessary when we only need to deal with tactical, localized differenciations that arise on their own. This is of course, where territorializing machines and abstract assemblages interact, in the space of many plateaus that would constantly overcode. In these there is no need of One because there is no need to guarantee that machinic assemblages are compatible with each other or that any given assemblage can interact with every other one, because they are not, and they do not need to.
In this sense, Deleuze's philosophy is on a second order of conception, about the differences and processes inherent within concepts themselves as they self generate. Badiou seems to recognize this when he understands that for Deleuze there is no chance of chance -- that Deleuzian concepts like the fold only operate as a way of interiorizing the exterior; the becoming of concepts through their own vitalism. Yet Badiou would want to extend this as another kind of ontology. This is also where I find Deleuze and Badiou differ at their very root; in terms how central they see formalism.
For Badiou class equivalence would mean ontological equivalence. After all, Badiou as a formalist understands content as only being wholly derived from form. For Deleuze, class equivalence is too controlling. He would reject formalist equivalence as he would reject Kant's transcendental structure as a chimera. Any kind of formalism only captures one kind of plateau/consistency in logic. After all, the entire book Anti-Oedipus is an attempt to get away from the control of metaphysical consistency in psychoanalysis and social structure/planning. Thus, Badiou's move to equate one rhetorical form with another is a falsity that Badiou himself imposes but reads onto Deleuze. As Badiou later on notes, the eternal return is not a return of the same, it cannot be. But what is it a return of?
Badiou accepts that each Event cannot be the same Event even if it meta-functionally works in a similar fashion as the last. And so it is with eternal returns; that each return is a return of pure difference. Thus, for Deleuze, such a "return" may not mean entirely different worlds, it does mean different slices (folds) that can interact but also may be varying degrees of incompossible with each other in terms of immanence, even as some interact, colliding and recoding one another. In a way, Badiou approaches Deleuzian understanding as he starts to shed the strict boundaries of his transcendental qua worlds and allow them to interact in the non-space inbetween plateaus.
Over all this book is still a good book. Badiou goes very far in grasping and concisely stating Deleuze's words and thoughts. Badiou seeks to refract on Deleuze the way Deleuze through free and indirect speech refracted on other thinkers. Though I think in this reading there is still too much Badiou, that the torsion of a barely recognizable Deleuze is due mostly to Badiou's appropriation of Deleuzean concepts but attempting to guide and understand Deleuze in terms of a Badiouian formalism.
Badiou here, presents a Deleuze that is in some respects barely recognizable. Nonetheless, he is able to pull through Deleuze's rhetorical structure in order to present how he and Deleuze differ and are the same. The obvious difference is their approaches. Badiou takes formalism to be standing on its own, that all is reducable to formalism. Deleuze would understand that content and form are the same; that a given content formulates form but that formulation is only one aspect of the virtuality of that content (this reading is available from Difference and Repetition). This is one way to specify their difference but we can talk about it geometrically.
Said another way this difference is in terms of boundaries. For example, Badiou understands events as being incompossible in terms of time. For Deleuze however, each event also is an absolute reference (a static segment) but the boundaries of that event coexist through their incompossibility. Badiou would negate all the relations that do not appear within the scope of a given event. Badiou would seal that event as an infinite extension that forms a transcendental. So for Badiou, a world qua transcendental is sealed as a complete and consistent entity. While Deleuze has this structure available as well, as seen through incompossibility, his "worlds" are not sealed. His worlds qua folds are in fact, intermixing with each, influencing one another. Given where you are locally, certain relations within the virtual become available, and you experience them in their actuality.
In this sense, what Badiou calls "logic" would be concepts that are always present for Deleuze, although they may be inexpressed. This reading is available for Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, as Kant understood that concepts are only guidelines. The difference is that Kant also took his concepts seriously and tried to ground these ideas in terms of a non-idea, the thing-in-itself. He nailed the transcendental conception down and in this manner both Deleuze and Badiou would avoid Kantian noumenal/phenomenal split because it suggests a singular logic rather than a multiplicity/multitude. A thing-in-itself traps Kant within one world.
So while both Deleuze and Badiou are interested in multiple/mutiplicity the difference in their world/folds lies in how open or closed they believe those relations to be. For Badiou there is less interaction within these worlds than Deleuze. Deleuze would think the substance-relations at their contingency, in a sense, sacrificing consistency for a recognition of the virtual completeness. This is also why Badiou's book Logics of Worlds: Being and Event II begins to recognize the need for a Deleuzeian "leakiness" between worlds, although for Badiou, the transcendental remains the limit of a worldly domain, even though he recognizes the (in)existence of relations from world to world. So from the view of a given transcendental, a certain relation may not be available.
In this sense, Badiou's Logic presents many tiny ones, all of which share the same structure of the One. Badiou claims that the One does not exist. And certainly not as a logic nor as an ontological content -- though Badiou would insist that each one amounts to the same One in terms of an empty formalism, which is why he can talk about each world's structure by invoking any given world.
I used to be confused as to why Badiou saw Deleuze as being a philosopher who primarily invokes the univocity of the One, when that seemed to somewhat antithetical to Deleuze's multiplicities. I see the answer now though, for Deleuze through elan vital talks about a second order of conception. By understanding Deleuzian formalism as being a kind of monad, a form that carries with it seeds of content, Badiou would read Deleuze as necessarily needing a One in order to meld a common domain. In terms of transcendental logics, it is impossible to have phenomenon within a given interaction without there being a whole, a common domain that specifies the absolute infinite totality. Because Deleuze would speak from the interstice between domain logics, Badiou assumes that Deleuze necessarily invokes a univocal One.
I am not certain how Deleuze would respond to this, but let me try. The passages that Badiou references do suggest that Deleuze may agree, although I think that Deleuze would understand the formalism of conception within the virtual as being a derivable non-world that is material process on its own, a vitality that continued chaotic mix of originary essences that contain the seeds of their own localized differentiation. Concepts here are tactical, differenciations (events) always derived from the particularity of the atoms involved.
I do not think that Deleuze would agree to an infinite extension of conception that Badiou would insist on in order to create a transcendental completeness qua world. I do believe that the insistence of a Deleuzian One is possible but gives up too much. Badiou would seek to be rid of Kantian noumenal nonsense, as an academic "left over" of Kant's conception, when Badiou himself would posit a many worlds of "complete" consistency, a very heavy conception of infinite extension of each brand of logic. For Deleuze this is probably too much; infinite extension is not necessary when we only need to deal with tactical, localized differenciations that arise on their own. This is of course, where territorializing machines and abstract assemblages interact, in the space of many plateaus that would constantly overcode. In these there is no need of One because there is no need to guarantee that machinic assemblages are compatible with each other or that any given assemblage can interact with every other one, because they are not, and they do not need to.
In this sense, Deleuze's philosophy is on a second order of conception, about the differences and processes inherent within concepts themselves as they self generate. Badiou seems to recognize this when he understands that for Deleuze there is no chance of chance -- that Deleuzian concepts like the fold only operate as a way of interiorizing the exterior; the becoming of concepts through their own vitalism. Yet Badiou would want to extend this as another kind of ontology. This is also where I find Deleuze and Badiou differ at their very root; in terms how central they see formalism.
For Badiou class equivalence would mean ontological equivalence. After all, Badiou as a formalist understands content as only being wholly derived from form. For Deleuze, class equivalence is too controlling. He would reject formalist equivalence as he would reject Kant's transcendental structure as a chimera. Any kind of formalism only captures one kind of plateau/consistency in logic. After all, the entire book Anti-Oedipus is an attempt to get away from the control of metaphysical consistency in psychoanalysis and social structure/planning. Thus, Badiou's move to equate one rhetorical form with another is a falsity that Badiou himself imposes but reads onto Deleuze. As Badiou later on notes, the eternal return is not a return of the same, it cannot be. But what is it a return of?
Badiou accepts that each Event cannot be the same Event even if it meta-functionally works in a similar fashion as the last. And so it is with eternal returns; that each return is a return of pure difference. Thus, for Deleuze, such a "return" may not mean entirely different worlds, it does mean different slices (folds) that can interact but also may be varying degrees of incompossible with each other in terms of immanence, even as some interact, colliding and recoding one another. In a way, Badiou approaches Deleuzian understanding as he starts to shed the strict boundaries of his transcendental qua worlds and allow them to interact in the non-space inbetween plateaus.
Over all this book is still a good book. Badiou goes very far in grasping and concisely stating Deleuze's words and thoughts. Badiou seeks to refract on Deleuze the way Deleuze through free and indirect speech refracted on other thinkers. Though I think in this reading there is still too much Badiou, that the torsion of a barely recognizable Deleuze is due mostly to Badiou's appropriation of Deleuzean concepts but attempting to guide and understand Deleuze in terms of a Badiouian formalism.
November 14, 2021
Deleuze als denker van het worden en veelheid? Niets van waar zegt Badiou, wat menig Deleuze-enthousiastelingen zal doen fronsen. Daarentegen is Deleuze steeds verleid door de roep van het Zijn en het Al-Ene. Badiou geeft toe dat hij heel zijn leven op gespannen voet stond met Deleuze en zijn filosofie, en gaat na diens dood in kritische dialoog met het hele oeuvre. Hierbij is Deleuze voorgesteld als een filosoof die dichtst bij Spinoza staat, met voorkeur voor het al en het systeem. Net geschreven na de dood van Deleuze worden alle wrange gevoelens opgeheven, en heeft Badiou het over de problemen die beide denkers hebben vastgehouden, en waar hun talrijke gesprekken over gingen begin de jaren 90'.
Het is een opvallend eigenzinnige en onorthodoxe lezing van Deleuze dat blijkt van bekendheid met het oeuvre, maar ook een interpretatie waarin Badiou duidelijk stelling inneemt.
Het is een opvallend eigenzinnige en onorthodoxe lezing van Deleuze dat blijkt van bekendheid met het oeuvre, maar ook een interpretatie waarin Badiou duidelijk stelling inneemt.
December 5, 2012
Badiou basically cherry picks choice quotations and selectively reads, ignoring large swaths of what makes Deleuze interesting. Its this Derridean 'margins' stuff that bothers me about his reading. I think it takes what he can to make an argument against Deleuze without really absorbing what is most fascinating and interesting about his work, which is really about ambiguity and intuitive contradictions (a totally post-Kantian move).
Read
December 26, 2020Malditos franceses e sua filosofia difícil (vale pro Deleuze e pro próprio Badiou)
March 1, 2021
Last chapter made me cry
December 21, 2017
From what I understand of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, this book about his work, The Clamor of Being, is not helpful. In fact it seems to deliberately obfuscate rather than clarify. I managed to wrest some useful ideas out of it, but I can’t recommend it to others.
Author Badiou was a co-founder of the University of Paris VIII, along with Deleuze, and with Michel Foucault and Jean-Francoise Lyotard. Deleuze committed suicide in 1995, presumably in despair over his quality of life, which was marred by respiratory illness.
In the comments below, I understand ontology to be the study of what exists. I understand epistemology to be the study of knowledge. How knowledge is related to what exists is a fundamental problem of philosophy.
Deleuze’s main work is considered by many to be Difference and Repetition (1968), in which he inverts the traditional relationship between being and knowing. Traditionally, one says that X is different from Y, which presupposes that you know what X and Y are. That is, X and Y exist, are given, and the question is whether they are the same or different.
Deleuze said, no, X and Y are only defined by their differences. One comes to identify them as X and Y because one detects differences, or discriminates patterns in the flux of experience.
For example, at first one might decide that “wine tastes good!” Only after some experience does one discriminate that some wine is gold, other is red, some fruity, some tannic, and so on, and eventually, one comes to understand that there are Chardonnay and Cabernet wines. The identity of the two classes arose from discriminated differences in experience.
This book seems to me Badiou’s attempt to articulate his own ontology by contrasting his views to the ontological views of Deleuze. But I understand Deleuze to be first an epistemologist. While Deleuze’s analysis of knowledge does inevitably lead to a study of what’s “there” (e.g., what one knows), Badiou wants to start with ontology and derive epistemology from it, a doomed endeavor, in my opinion.
I believe that if you are going to write a philosophy book, as Badiou did, you are entering the scene in the philosophical attitude and it is disingenuous to pretend you are starting with a pre-philosophical ontology. So I am still annoyed at Badiou and his book, even while I admit I gained significant insights from it.
Author Badiou was a co-founder of the University of Paris VIII, along with Deleuze, and with Michel Foucault and Jean-Francoise Lyotard. Deleuze committed suicide in 1995, presumably in despair over his quality of life, which was marred by respiratory illness.
In the comments below, I understand ontology to be the study of what exists. I understand epistemology to be the study of knowledge. How knowledge is related to what exists is a fundamental problem of philosophy.
Deleuze’s main work is considered by many to be Difference and Repetition (1968), in which he inverts the traditional relationship between being and knowing. Traditionally, one says that X is different from Y, which presupposes that you know what X and Y are. That is, X and Y exist, are given, and the question is whether they are the same or different.
Deleuze said, no, X and Y are only defined by their differences. One comes to identify them as X and Y because one detects differences, or discriminates patterns in the flux of experience.
For example, at first one might decide that “wine tastes good!” Only after some experience does one discriminate that some wine is gold, other is red, some fruity, some tannic, and so on, and eventually, one comes to understand that there are Chardonnay and Cabernet wines. The identity of the two classes arose from discriminated differences in experience.
This book seems to me Badiou’s attempt to articulate his own ontology by contrasting his views to the ontological views of Deleuze. But I understand Deleuze to be first an epistemologist. While Deleuze’s analysis of knowledge does inevitably lead to a study of what’s “there” (e.g., what one knows), Badiou wants to start with ontology and derive epistemology from it, a doomed endeavor, in my opinion.
I believe that if you are going to write a philosophy book, as Badiou did, you are entering the scene in the philosophical attitude and it is disingenuous to pretend you are starting with a pre-philosophical ontology. So I am still annoyed at Badiou and his book, even while I admit I gained significant insights from it.
August 4, 2020
According to Deleuze, Badiou is a suicidal neo-Kantian; according to Badiou, Deleuze is a crypto-fascist vitalist. This dispute at its heart concerns the nature of a return to Plato, between a Platonism of the virtual and a Platonism of the multiple. Badiou's key argument, that Deleuze is (contrary to popular belief) a partisan of the One is right, but lacks generosity in its approach to its enemy. An interesting point of contact pointed out by Deleuze (and endorsed by Badiou) between the two respective systems is the expression "on the edge of the void" which corresponds to "the intersection between the territory (the space of actualization) and the process of deterritorialization (the overflowing of the territory by the event that is the real-virtual of all actualization)." Amidst the argumentative fireworks, what is missing is a recognition of the extent to which Badiou and Deleuze respond to many of the same Nietzchean and Heideggerean questions, and there are moments where Badiou's arguments apply just as much to himself.
Much can be salvaged from this text, as the intensely vicious rhetoric is ultimately Badiou's way of taking seriously a thinker whose greatness he appreciates. Badiou's treatment of Spinoza, however, is unjust. The blurring together of natura naturata and naturans (we are informed this is barely a distinction) and the translation of beautitude as enjoyment of dispossession (an egregious distortion of Spinoza's analysis of the sad passions, including abjection) reduces him to a caricature. For anyone who wants to learn from both thinkers while remaining beholden to neither, this approach to beautitude misses the point. After all, "The intellectual love of the mind towards God is that very love of God whereby God loves himself, not in so far as he is infinite, but *in so far as he can be explained* through the essence of the human mind regarded under the form of eternity" (5P36, my emphasis) unites these thinkers in their shared commitment to Absoluteness.
Much can be salvaged from this text, as the intensely vicious rhetoric is ultimately Badiou's way of taking seriously a thinker whose greatness he appreciates. Badiou's treatment of Spinoza, however, is unjust. The blurring together of natura naturata and naturans (we are informed this is barely a distinction) and the translation of beautitude as enjoyment of dispossession (an egregious distortion of Spinoza's analysis of the sad passions, including abjection) reduces him to a caricature. For anyone who wants to learn from both thinkers while remaining beholden to neither, this approach to beautitude misses the point. After all, "The intellectual love of the mind towards God is that very love of God whereby God loves himself, not in so far as he is infinite, but *in so far as he can be explained* through the essence of the human mind regarded under the form of eternity" (5P36, my emphasis) unites these thinkers in their shared commitment to Absoluteness.
December 28, 2007
i did find it useful to read another philosopher's reading of deleuze, and i really like the focus and brevity of the work. however, there was too much of badiou's own somewhat flawed philosophical ideas out of context, a bit of self-publicity if you ask me ...if deleuze had been alive when this came out, badiou would have gotten straight bitch slapped.. i mean i would have died laughing to read it. i give it four stars because it was well written and i adored the subject of his foray into deleuze. in general, i don't see philosophers taking deleuze seriously enough, and frankly it's an embarassment to the entire state of philosophy today... people just nibble at deleuze because the body of his work is pretty much over everyone's head. it's why i would never go back to school for philosophy.
August 19, 2015
«Ha detto di Spinoza che è stato il Cristo della filosofia. Diciamo allora, per rendergli pienamente giustizia, che Deleuze è stato di questo Cristo - annuncio inflessibile della salvezza da parte del Tutto, salvezza che non promette nulla, salvezza che è già sempre qui - uno dei più degni apostoli».
April 24, 2019
دلوز الملهم الفلسفي الفوضويين الراغبين . ان التصور الدلوزي للتفكير هو في العمق ارستقراطي ، في تضاد مع كل معيار يقوم على المساواة او التآاف ، فلا يوجد التفكير الا في فضاء تراتبي . لذا ان فلسفة دلوز نظامية مجردة بكيفية مخصوصة من حيث انها تلنقط كل الدوافع طبقاً لخط اقتدار لن يكون من الممكن ان يتغير فلسفة تضطلع كلياً بفرادتها فلسفة مجردة . تتمفصل هذه الفلسفة حول ميتافيزيقا في الواحد . تقدم هذه الفلسفة إتيقا في التفكير تقتضي عدم التملك والتزهد .
ليس الخدس الدلوزي لحظ عين التفس بل مسار رياضة التفكير وليس هو ذرة ذهنية بل كثرة مفتوحة وليس حركة خطية بل بنا مركب عالباً ما يسميه دلوز " معاودة سلسلة دائبة . يمكن لقول في المنهج الحدسي حين ينتهي التفكير بلا مقولات الى بناء السبيل المنعطفة التي تؤدي على سطح ما هو كائن من حالة ما الى الواحد ، ثم من الواحد الى الخالة ، فانه يحدس حركة الواحد نفسه وبما ان الواحد هو حركته فإن التفكير يحدس الواحد .
يثبت دلوز ان الزمان هو الحقيقة نفسها . الزمان باعتباره حقيقة ، ليس زمنياً انه افتراضية شاملة . ثمة عدم قابلية للتمييز بين الكينونة المطلقة للماضي وبين الابد . ان ماهية الزمان بالنسبة الى دلوز هي التعبير عن الابد التي يمكن تحييزها في الاقتدار الخلاق للكل ، هي " صور - احجام في ما ابعد من الحركة نفسها " وهذا يعني ايضاً ان الكينونة العميقة للزمان حقيقته ساكنة
ليس الخدس الدلوزي لحظ عين التفس بل مسار رياضة التفكير وليس هو ذرة ذهنية بل كثرة مفتوحة وليس حركة خطية بل بنا مركب عالباً ما يسميه دلوز " معاودة سلسلة دائبة . يمكن لقول في المنهج الحدسي حين ينتهي التفكير بلا مقولات الى بناء السبيل المنعطفة التي تؤدي على سطح ما هو كائن من حالة ما الى الواحد ، ثم من الواحد الى الخالة ، فانه يحدس حركة الواحد نفسه وبما ان الواحد هو حركته فإن التفكير يحدس الواحد .
يثبت دلوز ان الزمان هو الحقيقة نفسها . الزمان باعتباره حقيقة ، ليس زمنياً انه افتراضية شاملة . ثمة عدم قابلية للتمييز بين الكينونة المطلقة للماضي وبين الابد . ان ماهية الزمان بالنسبة الى دلوز هي التعبير عن الابد التي يمكن تحييزها في الاقتدار الخلاق للكل ، هي " صور - احجام في ما ابعد من الحركة نفسها " وهذا يعني ايضاً ان الكينونة العميقة للزمان حقيقته ساكنة
August 21, 2017
Badiou, reading Deleuze against Deleuze, defaces to erase. In doing so, I suppose, there's nothing to lose but Deleuze. Or anyway one Deleuze among the morass; which is also what Badiou finds, after planting him there--a slender strain of monism, somewhat brutally cultivated, bonsaied according to Badiou's blueprint.
November 26, 2020
Deleuze'u anlamak ve anlatmak için mükemmel bir rehber.
July 25, 2011
(Im positiven Sinne) polemische und (vielleicht zu) systematische Kritik an Deleuzes Denken, aufschlussreich vor allem auch hinsichtlich Badious Position. Aber auch wenn Badiou Deleuze fast etwas reduziert und in ein metaphysisches Korsett zwängt, wird der postmodernen Gigantomachia peri tès ousias in der philosophischen Tradition (Bergson - Brunshvig oder Vorsokratiker - Plato) doch eine klar ausgezirkelte Arena bereitet.
May 8, 2013
The purest reading of Deleuze. Ontology at its finest. The argument between Badiou and Deleuze (there is an unpublished correspondence between them) summarizes the debate in "leftist" post-modern philosophy.
July 28, 2012
Badiou's wonderful ability to put thoughts in such clear statements is here paramount. The dash of intimacy spices this book for the better.
October 21, 2014
Tengo una copia en castellano, traducido por D. Scavino para Manantial. Algún día voy a volver a leerlo en inglés
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews