Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I Deleuze and Systematic Philosophy 13
1 The shape of systematic philosophy 13
2 Deleuze's slogan of the middle 18
3 The middle as becoming 20
4 Deleuze's problem, differential, or abstract machine 23
4.1 The thought of incommensurability 23
4.2 The place of critique 25
4.3 Rethinking identity and difference 30
4.4 The social as site of invention 31
4.5 The body as site of creativity and risk 33
Part II Theatre of Operations 35
1 The exclusive disjunctive synthesis of professional philosophy 37
1.1 The average post-structuralist, the average postmodernist 38
1.2 The average continental philosopher 42
2 Affirmative philosophy 44
3 Three conceptual personae: the Anglo-American philosopher, the French philosopher, and the logician 48
4 The philosopher, the artist, the scientist, the historian, and the logician 53
5 The phenomenologist as hero; the phenomenologist as parasite 70
5.1 Counter-actualization and conceptual personae 70
5.2 The phenomenology series 73
6 The structuralist as hero; the structuralist as palace dog 88
7 Philosophy's encounter with literature 93
7.1 Literary genre and the book of life 94
7.2 The literature of capitalism 98
7.3 Two more portraits: Whitman and Proust as philosophers 99
7.4 Deleuze as philosophy's Dashiell Hammett 101
7.5 Philosophy is not poetry; poetry is not philosophy 105
8 Why does the hero loath discussion? The abstract machine of philosophical discourse 107
8.1 Discussion and debate as Deleuzian concepts 108
8.2 How do the concepts operate within Deleuze's system? 110
8.3 There is no language, only an abstract machine 111
8.4 The major side of philosophical discourse 118
8.5 One more battle: the philosopher versus the academic 121
Part III Affirming Philosophy 125
1 Philosophy's demise has been greatly exaggerated 129
1.1 The abstract machine of the end of philosophy 130
1.2 The concept of philosophy's closure 132
1.3 Deleuze's laugh 132
2 The first metaphilosophical question: what is a philosophy? 139
2.1 Philosophical history 139
2.2 The incommensurability and interpenetration of problems 140
2.3 A problem is difference 142
2.4 The question of evaluation 147
3 The second metaphilosophical question: what does it mean to think? 154
3.1 What is an image of thought? 155
3.2 The idea of a dogmatic image 155
3.3 The dogmatic image and the problem of creativity 156
3.4 The dogmatic postulates and the Deleuzian alternative 162
4 Ethico-political metaphysics 177
4.1 The figure of difference in Deleuze's portrait of Hume 180
4.2 The figure of difference in Deleuze's portrait of Bergson 182
4.3 The figure of difference in Deleuze's portrait of Nietzsche 185
4.4 The figure of difference in Deleuze's portrait of Spinoza 191
4.5 Summary: counterfeit difference, genuine difference, and ethico-political difference 203
4.6 This world of forms: difference and repetition and the logic of sense 205
Notes 227
Bibliography 250
Index 259
