Idea, multiplicity, becoming
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2025
- In this video we examine the concept of idea in Deleuze's philosophy, its relation to multiplicity and the Eternal Return, and the great paradox at the heart of becoming.
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your content is so solid
Thank you PunishedFelix, that means a lot
Amazing content, the images that you select are very beatiful and potent. Thank you so much for the effort!
Thank you Jonas! I appreciate your feedback. By the way following your request and someone else's, I'll be working on D&R and hopefully publish a video on it in the future :)
Really love your videos. Been reading Deleuze for several years now and I love seeing people try and put Deleuze in simple language. Your project is probably the best i've come across! Can I suggest you do a deep dive into Difference and Repetition at some point like you did Logic of Sense?
Thanks a lot! I've received another request for D&R so I'll put it on top of my list. There might be a couple projects published in the meantime but I'll start working on it :)
@@deleuzephilosophy Yes do D&R bro!! That would be awesome!
Please , do D&R™️
@@ilyataraschansky9527 First video on D&R is coming out this week!
Not to ridicule anyone here but you are really god-sent.
Really appreciate your videos!
Appreciate the kind word, and glad you like this content!
Thank you very much for your videos on Deleuze, they are really usefull and help to build on the understanding of his works. Keep up the good work!
Thank you, I appreciate it!
GOATED
Hi DP, your videos have done a lot for me. Just wanted to say how grateful I am that you put all this work into helping people understand Deleuze. Can you explain though, why/how the Eternal Return eliminates the presuppositions of representation? And you can elucidate how it appears to us in real life? Is it as simple as the idea of a subject changing yet staying the same, therein containing the one and the many? The concept of Eternal Return is simple enough to understand, if I have it right, it's Nietzsche's thought experiment testing a person's will to live? As in, if you can accept the idea of living the same life forever and ever, you can accept life itself fundamentally?
Hello, thank you very much for your comment, I'm very grateful this content is helpful to you.
To answer your questions, I'd say that from a Deleuzian perspective, the Eternal Return is not merely a test of one’s will to live or an ethical challenge, it points to the return of difference itself, rather than the repetition of the same--it is the affirmation of becoming, flux, and multiplicity over (or perhaps, after) static identities or fixed representations. Both identities and difference are necessary for thought, and ER gives us the encounter of both in what Deleuze calls the third synthesis of time.
Why and how does the Eternal Return eliminate presuppositions of representation? Representation presupposes stable categories: identity, resemblance, analogy, and opposition (cf. D&R). In its classical understanding, ER means the repetiton of the same, because at the end of each cycle, everything begins again in the same way that it did in the previous cycle: you and I live in the same way, have the same names, the same interactions. This assumes that reality can be organised through fixed identities and relations that are the eternal model of temporal copies (our world). The Eternal Return in the Nietzschean sense, for Deleuze, eliminates these presuppositions by affirming only what is really capable of returning: pure difference and singularities that exist outside the constraints of representation. It is not the repetition of things as they are but the repetition of difference, which is the only thing that can be genuinely repeated, precisely because it is not self-identical. What returns is the creative process of differentiation itself-a perpetual reconfiguration of forces that resists being pinned down by representation.
In real life, ER manifests in moments when fixed identities or structures dissolve, when affective becomings reveal the dynamic interplay of forces beneath. That is, when there is no "I" but a before and an after of affection where a new "I" is formed. It's found in very simple things, like looking at a bird flying away, or at the most important things, such as the existence of the universe, the cycles of thought, creativity or art.
While the one and the many touches on the paradox of identity and difference, Deleuze would resist reducing ER to a dialectical unity of the one and the many or a simple transformation of the subject. It is true that these things are involved, perhaps secondarily, but the question is how they are formed in practice, from which singularities, in which context. The subject, for Deleuze, is itself de-centred in the process. ER is not about a subject persisting through change, or at least not primarily. It's about how concepts, affects, percepts can ground creation in a plane of immanence that is itself the elevation to the infinite of a finite perception, this elevation being conditioned by the affect in its different moments or phases.
So ER is not just about testing the will to live or accepting life as it is--it is about embracing life as a site of pure immanence, where creation, transformation, and difference are constantly at work. It demands not just passive acceptance but active affirmation: a joyous embrace of the multiplicity of life, its contradictions, its flux, and its impermanence. In this sense, ER is less about enduring sameness and more about celebrating the relentless novelty of existence. It's about adequate knowledge, which only ever relates to "what we do" rather than "what there is", and the joy of effectuating this creation, even when it "fails". In a sense, as long as you don't repeat the same, or proceed by stereotypes (analogies), or simply give up (negation)--that is, as long as you "become who you are" in the process of creating your life, you cannot fail.
Sorry for the long block of text! I hope it can be useful at least.
@@deleuzephilosophy Man, this is why I'm subbed to you. You really cracked the egg for me just now. Thank you so much!! It's really wild how getting to know Deleuzean thought better feels like flipping every paradigm on its head. My mind wants to resist it and at the same time it makes so much sense on an almost instinctual, unconscious level. It sends me reeling every time, like the ground beneath me disappearing, which is why I think there is a feeling of innate resistance or almost intentional misunderstanding for me and yet I can't stop seeking a greater understanding of it. Wild. Thank you again.
@@crocskull3098 You're very welcome. I've got pretty much the exact same experience :) It's a very compelling thought, and an extremely complex one too, which makes it really, really interesting.
What an insightful video… you have such great teaching skills, it’s crazy. You HAVE to make a video on Delleuze’s work on cinema and movement!! Not only because it’s an amazing topic, but because next week I have a presentation on the topic at college and learning it from you would be very welcoming 😂😂😂
Greetings from Brazil! Keep up the awesome work
Thanks a lot, Hector! Glad you like this content. I probably won't be able to make a video on Cinema by next week tbh :D Best of luck for your presentation, though!
Love your videos pls more difference and rep stuff it’s a dousy
the continued process of going away from and coming back to
❤️
Wow your videos are really good, I immediately subscribed. If you don't mind, what I never really understood is how positive and reactive forces differ from Hegel's Dialectic? And what do you think of Badious criticism of Deleuze (Deleuze is a thinker of the One and Badiou is a thinker of multiplicities etc.)? Would make interesting videos. Keep up the good work!
Thank you, appreciate it!
Hegel's dialectics is directly opposed by Deleuze (in particular in chapter 1 of D&R if you want to have a look) on the basis of Deleuze's critique of representation, where he argues that Hegelian dialectics, for all its genius, still proceeds from the Platonic assumption that there are certain foundational principles (matter, mind, finiteness and the infinite in the case of Hegel) that are given in advance rather than synthesized. This makes for the "magic trick" that you see in all forms of Platonism.
As for Badiou, I (humbly) think he is wrong about Deleuze. I also know that some of Badiou's disciples, like Quentin Meillassoux (who is otherwise a brilliant thinker) still maintain that Deleuze is a hypostatic thinker. But the whole of Deleuze's philosophy consists precisely in a critique of the given in the form of the One, the subject, the material world, etc., so I don't know how they can maintain their critique without entertaining a serious misunderstanding of Deleuze's thought at the same time.
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What's the major difference between "D&R and A Thousand Plateaus"?