stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

Deleuze often says that difference is being to the extent that it is said of difference: “it is
being which is Difference, in the sense that it is said of difference” (DR 39). On its own this
certainly sounds like a stupid argument, if it even sounds like one. But it is not stupid if we
consider Deleuze’s starting point. To the extent that Deleuze does not start with the Cogito, but
rather with the passive self means that being must be univocal and that univocal being must be
the power of difference. This is why Deleuze claims that Kant’s discovery of the passive self is
actually the discovery of the power of difference. “This third value suffices to make logic a
transcendental instance. It amounts to the discovery of Difference;…no longer in the form of an
external difference which separates, but in the form of an internal Difference which establishes
an a priori relation between thought and being” (DR 86). In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant
gives the following dichotomy. “Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must
conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing
something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption ended in
failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of
metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge” (CPR Bxvi). But
Deleuze suggests that we begin neither with the object nor with the subject. Instead, he suggests
that we begin with the passive self. But what does this mean other than that philosophy must
begin with difference and repetition? “We may conclude that there is no true beginning in
philosophy, or rather that the true philosophical beginning, Difference, is in-itself already
Repetition” (DR 129). In this sense, the point of philosophy, Deleuze argues, is “making
repetition, not that from which one ‘draws of’ a difference, nor that which includes difference as
a variant, but making it the thought and the production of the ‘absolutely different;’ making it so
that repetition is, for itself, difference in itself” (DR 94). Difference and repetition are the same
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