Gilles deleuze is an influential postmodern philosopher in France and a key figure in the revival of Nietzsche's movement in France since 1960s. It is by activating Nietzsche that Deleuze aroused the enthusiasm of the French for the philosophy of difference and desire. Today, Deleuze's influence is all over the humanities, and his Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateau have gained worldwide fame. In view of the fact that Deleuze has not received due attention in China academic circles, we hereby publish the following articles to arouse the interest and attention of intellectuals to Deleuze. Deleuze's early major philosophical works (before his cooperation with Guattari) can be simply summarized as systematically reversing the relationship between "identity" and "difference" in classical metaphysics. In classical metaphysics, the difference stems from the same: "X is different from Y because there is a difference between the nature of X with fixed properties and the nature of Y with fixed properties". Deleuze believes that all identities are made up of differences. Identity does not precede differences in logic or metaphysics. "There are also differences between objects belonging to the same class in nature", that is to say, we divide "identity" from differences. Obviously, identity is made up of endless differences: "Big X is a collection of differences of various small X, and small X is a collection of differences of various X …" In the face of the real world, Deleuze thinks that we must grasp the truth of existence, and the concepts in the sense of classification cannot achieve internal differences. "If philosophy really focuses on things directly, it must be' about grasping things themselves, achieving what things are, and achieving the same with things.
For example, Kant and Bergson, Deleuze thinks that the traditional view of time and space is based on the position and movement of the subject. He believes that pure difference is "non-temporal" and difference is a "virtual" concept. The "emptiness" is not the "emptiness" of the "reality" here, but about Proust's definition of the "past" in Memories of Time Past: "real but not real, ideal but not abstract". Deleuze said "virtual", it is in this sense. In other words, Deleuze's "virtuality" is as common as "the past" to "the present". Deleuze's "virtuality" is the pre-existing environmental condition of real experience at present, and it is the internal difference of things themselves. "The concept thus constructed is integrated with what the concept refers to." Deleuze's exposition of difference is not an empty talk and abstraction of practice, but a system that really works-the relationship structure of different things, which constructs real space, time and perception. At the same time, Deleuze believes that existence and concept are single, that is to say, all perception is proved by "one". Here, Deleuze borrowed the theory of "ontological singularity" from the medieval philosopher Dunce Scott. In the debate about God in the Middle Ages, many famous philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas, believed that when "God is good", God's "goodness" was only similar to human's "goodness" in rhetorical sense. Scott, on the other hand, thinks that when God is good, God's goodness and Jenny's goodness have the same meaning-they are not just similar, but basically the same-just different in degree. When it comes to attribute concepts such as "good" and "powerful", these concepts are all applied in a single sense, whether they are applied to gods, people or insects.
Deleuze applied the singularity theory to "Being is different in a single sense". "This is not to say that the difference itself is inevitable, but that existence (in a single sense) is absolutely different, because existence has different attributes. Furthermore, we don't mean that our "single meaning" (absolute) is different from our existence, but that we and our personality traits are absolutely different (polysemy). Here, Deleuze echoes and reverses Spinoza's argument: "Everything that exists is the deformation of" One ". Deleuze believes that there is no "one", only the flow process of eternal differences. Deleuze summed this up as "one equals more".
Difference and Repetition is the most persistent and systematic work of Deleuze in this metaphysics. In his other works, similar concepts have also been developed, such as "organ-free body" in Anti-Oedipus, "internal plane" and "chaos" in What is philosophy. Deleuze's unusual metaphysics needs an unusual set of epistemology, which he calls "turning" (the image of thought). Deleuze believes that the thinking images in Aristotle, Descartes, Husserl and other classical theories mistakenly regard thinking as an act without thinking: truth may be difficult to obtain, but thinking must have the ability to obtain correct facts and concepts; The eye of god and the neutral angle may be difficult to achieve, but they are the ideal goals of our rational thinking; The orderly extension of deterministic truth and perception. Deleuze rejected classical epistemology through "flow" in the metaphysical sense. He believes that real thinking is a violent confrontation with reality and an unconscious break of order. The real world can change and adjust our thinking. Deleuze believes that our thinking is "thinking without images", rather than understanding the real world-a thinking process determined by problems, rather than actively solving problems. "All the symbols, theorems, etc. As a premise, they are not accidental, but they are not comfortable and rational. They are like theology: you believe it, it is, and its rational logic works. Rationality is always a belief carved out of irrationality: it is not a principle hidden in irrationality, but a specific relationship between irrational elements, which is only defined as irrational elements. Under all rationality, there is madness and mobility. "
Based on the unique epistemology, Deleuze has his own unique interpretation of the history of philosophy. Reading philosophical works is no longer to seek a definite explanation, but to present philosophers' difficult grasp of truth. "Philosophers introduce new concepts and explain them, but they don't tell us that these concepts are responses to problems ... The history of philosophy should not just repeat what philosophers say, but should pay attention to the subconscious and hints that philosophers don't say."
Similarly, Deleuze believes that philosophy should be regarded as the creation of concepts, not the search for truth. For Deleuze, concept is not a fixed premise or proposition, but a metaphysical definition of a series of thoughts (such as Plato's thoughts, Descartes' thoughts on me, etc.). A philosophical concept "asserted the concept and its object when it was created". Deleuze believes that philosophy is therefore more like a practical or artistic work than an accessory to the pre-material world that can be described in scientific language as Locke and Quine said.
In his subsequent works, Deleuze divided art, philosophy and science into three different norms, each of which has its own different ways to explain the world: philosophy creates concepts, the concrete expression of artistic creation perception, and scientific creation creates special theories based on meta-points and functional elements. Deleuze believes that these three norms are not superior to each other, and they are different ways to interpret and organize the stream of metaphysics. For example, Deleuze does not think that movies are true expressions of the outside world, but that creating a new way to organize movement and time is an ontological practice (see movie I: Movement-Image). Philosophy, science and art are equal, and they are all creative and practical in nature. So, instead of asking, "Is this true?" "What is it?" Deleuze suggested that we ask some functional and practical questions, such as "What did it do?" "How does it work?" Deleuze's interpretation method
Deleuze's study of philosophers and artists is a deliberate heresy. In Nietzsche and Philosophy, Deleuze claimed that Nietzsche's Moral Genealogy was an attempt to rewrite Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, although Nietzsche didn't mention it at all, and the chapters about morality in Moral Genealogy were far from Kant's concern. Similarly, Deleuze claimed that singularity was the organizing principle of Spinoza's philosophy, although Spinoza did not mention it at all. Deleuze once described his method of explaining philosophers as "sodomy": a method of secretly adopting an author's theory and deriving a strange and different theory. In these works, Deleuze is not presenting the thoughts of Nietzsche and Spinoza truthfully, but refining and developing the highlights that he thinks are useful. Deleuze's restatement of other philosophers' thoughts is not a deliberate misunderstanding, but a practice that he insists on "the inherent creativity of philosophy". Similarly, in Deleuze's view, in his own mathematical and scientific language, "I'm not saying that Les Ness and I.llyaPrigogine, Godard and R.Thom did the same thing. I mean, there are many similarities between scientific equations and movie images. These similarities also apply to philosophical concepts, because there are various concepts in these spaces. "