Ontology in Heidegger and Deleuze Also by Gavin Rae REALIZING FREEDOM: Hegel, Sartre, and the Alienation of Human Being Ontology in Heidegger and Deleuze A Comparative Analysis Gavin Rae American University in Cairo, Egypt © Gavin Rae 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-40455-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-48736-3 ISBN 978-1-137-40456-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137404565 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 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Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations for Works Cited xi 1 Introduction 1 Heidegger and Deleuze 2 The argument developed 5 Structure of the book 12 2 Rethinking the Human: Heidegger, Fundamental Ontology, and Humanism 16 In search of being 17 Metaphysical humanism 27 Human ek-sistence 31 The importance of being 38 3 Being and Technology: Heidegger on the Overcoming of Metaphysics 43 Being, metaphysics, and anthropocentrism 47 Technology 51 Overcoming the enframing of modern technology 59 The destruction of metaphysics 62 4 Philosophy as World-view: Metaphysics and the Thinking of Being 69 The being of philosophy 70 The questioning of philosophy 72 Revealing philosophy by doing philosophy 75 Philosophy as world-view 78 5 Transforming Thought: Heidegger and Meditative Thinking 87 Overcoming philosophy through thinking 88 Meditative thinking and being 91 Meditative thinking and the ab-ground of being 96 The movement to meditative thinking 102 Willing the overcoming of metaphysical thinking 108 v vi Contents 6 Deleuze on Being as Becoming: Multiplicity, Difference, and Virtuality 116 Being as becoming 117 Becoming as multiplicity 125 Difference and negation 130 Virtuality, actuality, possibility, and reality 137 7 Deleuze and the Structural Conditions of Philosophy 145 The image of thought 146 Philosophy as concept-creation 152 The plane of immanence 163 Conceptual personae 172 8 Deleuze on the Purpose and Place of Philosophy 174 The problems of philosophy 174 Geo-philosophy 180 The place of philosophy in relation to science and art 187 Thinking the relationship between the disciplines 191 9 Identity in Deleuze’s Differential Ontology 200 Reconciling the irreconcilable 201 Different senses of identity 206 Examples of identity in Deleuze’s differential ontology 209 Concluding remarks 212 W orks Cited 216 Index 221 Preface What is at issue is philosophy – one of the few great things of humanity. Martin Heidegger (IM: 16) The primary purpose of this book is to offer a comparative analysis of the ontologies of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Gilles Deleuze (1925–1975), where ontology refers to the study of the nature of being. While there are many ways to understand what this means, perhaps the most basic, although not necessarily the easiest, is to think of it as trying to answer the question: what does it mean to say that something is ? By examining their responses to this question through the mediating lens of their respective analyses of metaphysics and thinking, this book also explores their thinking about thought ‘itself’. Heidegger’s and Deleuze’s reflections on thought echo and resonate between each other, sometimes harmoniously, but more often than not discordantly. Their relation- ship is, therefore, one of discordant harmony where they relate to each other through differences. By showing that their analyses of thinking are intimately connected to their analyses of metaphysics, which are linked to their respective ontologies, this book examines the relation- ship between epistemology, metaphysics, and ontology in Heidegger and Deleuze. The title does not reflect this because one of the main arguments made is that Heidegger’s and Deleuze’s views on thinking and metaphysics are ‘grounded’ in their respective ontologies, meaning that a genuine comparative analysis must be conducted through their ontologies. Indeed, to my knowledge, this is one of the first, if not the first, book that offers an extended, comparative analysis of the ontolo- gies of Heidegger and Deleuze. A number of contributions are made by undertaking this study in this way: (1) we obtain a clear understanding of Heidegger’s and Deleuze’s analyses of ontology, metaphysics, and epistemology, including the way the former ‘grounds’ the latter two; (2) we bring two representatives of the phenomenological and post-structuralist traditions into discussion with one another and so start to show some of the connections and differences between these ‘schools’ of thought; and (3) by discussing the relationship between being, difference, and identity, contribute to discussions that dominated much of the latter half of twentieth-century vii viii Preface European, so-called ‘continental’, philosophy. To highlight their respec- tive understandings and show their historical relevance, I suggest that the Heidegger–Deleuze relationship is fundamentally a discussion about two questions: (1) how to overcome ontologies that privilege identity or that think of being in terms of presence? and (2) how to think the relationship between identity and difference? Heidegger’s response to the second question is to suggest that ‘identity’ and ‘difference’ are ‘grounded’ in being while Deleuze claims that ‘identity’ emanates from ‘difference’. This brings us to the first question with Heidegger claiming that overcoming the privileging of identity requires that being be thought through its difference to entities and Deleuze claiming, in contrast, that it requires that being be thought as difference. Their responses to these questions shape their respective analyses of the ‘proper’ way to think with Heidegger claiming that philosophy must be overcome by, what he will call, meditative thinking that reflects being’s temporal becoming, and Deleuze claiming, in contrast, that philosophy must be transformed to creatively express being’s differential becoming. Because Heidegger’s and Deleuze’s analyses of the ‘proper’ way to think are ‘grounded’ in their analyses of being, any comparison of the two must be located at the level of their respective ontologies. Acknowledgements This book has a diverse history encompassing two continents (Africa and Europe) and three countries (Egypt, Scotland, and Spain). The project was started just prior to the so-called revolution that swept Mubarak from power in Egypt and was completed just after the ‘coup ’ that removed his successor from office. It was, therefore, written during a time of tremendous upheaval, social trouble, economic problems, and increasing lawlessness in Egypt. Indeed, there can’t be too many books out there whose gestation encompasses a ‘revolution’ and a ‘coup ’. While this horizon was not particularly conducive to study, it did provide many memories, the most comical of which was probably caused by the increasingly lengthy electricity blackouts that occurred just prior to the ‘coup ’ that regularly left me reading and writing in a large, otherwise empty, pitch-black apartment using something akin to a miner’s lamp strapped to my head. While there were, therefore, significant difficulties encountered during the completion of this book, I was fortunate to have the support of a number of individuals who, to varying degrees, made the process far less painful than it would otherwise have been. While there were, most probably, a number of others whose implicit contribution shaped its content, I’m explicitly aware of the contribution of the following and so I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge them. First, I’d like to thank my friends here in Cairo who have made the last few years bearable and memorial. There are too many to name specifically, and many have now gone on to pastures new, but, by now, you, hopefully, know who you are. My family have also, once again, been a source of invaluable support throughout my Egyptian adventure, even if this has, at times, caused them much worry. Professionally speaking, I’d like to thank my colleagues in the philosophy department for their support and daily interactions as we struggle together to teach philosophy in the desert. This book also benefited from two summer research grants from the American University in Cairo, which allowed me to undertake research at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Spain. I am particularly grateful to Graham Harman for his support during the process through which these were obtained. I’d also like to thank the staff at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland for their help in obtaining some of the materials for the Deleuze chapters.