Abstract
Deleuze and Guattari’s manner of distinguishing science from philosophy in their last collaboration What is Philosophy? (1991) seems to imply a hierarchy, according to which philosophy is more adequate to the reality of virtual events than science is. This suggests, in turn, that philosophy has a better claim than science to truth. This paper clarifies Deleuze‘s views about truth throughout his career. Deleuze equivocates over the term, using it in an “originary” and a “derived” sense, probably under the influence of Henri Bergson, who does similarly. Moreover, William James and pragmatism were to Bergson what the early analytic philosophers Frege and Russell are to Deleuze: excessively scientistic foils whose confusions about truth arise as a result of failing to distinguish science from philosophy. By situating Deleuze’s conception of truth in relation to the early Heidegger’s, which it to some extent resembles, the paper concludes by suggesting that, surprisingly, neither kind of truth Deleuze licenses applies to science, while both apply to philosophy. Science is indifferent to truth in the way that some of Deleuze‘s readers have incorrectly wanted to say that he thinks philosophy is.
References
Allen, Barry. Truth in Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.Search in Google Scholar
Allen, Barry. “The Use of Useless Knowledge: Bergson Against the Pragmatists.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43, no. 1 (2013): 37-59.10.1080/00455091.2013.774846Search in Google Scholar
Allen, Barry. “The Deleuze-Rorty Pas de deux.” In Deleuze and Pragmatism, edited by Sean Bowden, Simone Bignall, and Paul Patton, 163-79. New York: Routledge, 2015.Search in Google Scholar
Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by W. D. Ross. In The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.Search in Google Scholar
Beistegui, Miguel. Truth and Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.Search in Google Scholar
Bennett, Michael James. Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics: The Image of Nature. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2017.Search in Google Scholar
Bennett, Michael James. “Deleuze, Developmental Systems Theory, and the Philosophy of Nature.” In Deleuze and Evolutionary Theory, edited by Michael J. Bennett and Tano Posteraro. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming.Search in Google Scholar
Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Translated by Arthur Mitchell. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1998.Search in Google Scholar
Bergson, Henri. The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Mabelle L. Andison. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007.Search in Google Scholar
Bergson, Henri. “On the Pragmatism of William James: Truth and Reality.” In Key Writings, edited by John Mullarkey and KeithSearch in Google Scholar
Ansell Pearson, 267-73. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.Search in Google Scholar
Bergson, Henri. “Bergson-James Correspondence.” In Key Writings, edited by John Mullarkey and Keith Ansell Pearson, 357-65. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.Search in Google Scholar
Boundas, Constantin V. “Martin Heidegger.” In Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage, edited by Graham Jones and Jon Roffe, 321-38. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.10.3366/edinburgh/9780748632992.003.0017Search in Google Scholar
Chase, James and Jack Reynolds. “The Fate of Transcendental Reasoning in Contemporary Philosophy.” In Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides, edited by Jack Reynolds et al., 27-52. New York: Continuum, 2010.Search in Google Scholar
Dahlstrom, Daniel O. Heidegger’s Concept of Truth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Search in Google Scholar
De Landa, Manuel. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. New York: Continuum, 2002.Search in Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Zone Books, 1991.Search in Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.Search in Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.Search in Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. Negotiations, 1972-1990. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.Search in Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.Search in Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. Proust and Signs: The Complete Text. Translated by Richard Howard. London: Continuum, 2000.Search in Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. What is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.Search in Google Scholar
Frege, Gottlob. “On Sense and Reference.” In Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege. Translated by Max Black and Peter Geach, 56-78. New York. Blackwell, 1952.Search in Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2001.Search in Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. “On the Essence of Truth.” In Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill, 136-54. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.10.1017/CBO9780511812637.008Search in Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” In Heidegger: Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, 143-212. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.Search in Google Scholar
James, William. Pragmatism. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998.Search in Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allan W. Wood. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.10.1017/CBO9780511804649Search in Google Scholar
Lambert, Gregg. The Non-Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. New York: Continuum, 2002.10.5040/9781472547682Search in Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale and Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1989.Search in Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.Search in Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand. “Vagueness.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 1, no. 2 (1923): 84-92.10.1080/00048402308540623Search in Google Scholar
Skirke, Christian. “Tugendhat’s Idea of Truth.” European Journal of Philosophy 22, no. 4 (2016): 831-54.10.1111/ejop.12136Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Daniel W. “Deleuze’s Concept of the Virtual and the Critique of the Possible.” Journal of Philosophy 4, no. 9 (2009): 34-43.10.5840/jphilnepal20094913Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Daniel W. “Analytics: On the Becoming of Concepts.” In Essays on Deleuze, 122-45. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.Search in Google Scholar
Sokal, Alan and Jean Bricmont. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. New York: Picador, 1997.Search in Google Scholar
Somers-Hall, Henry. “Sartre and the Virtual: A Deleuzian Interpretation of The Transcendence of the Ego.” Philosophy Today 50 (2006): 126-32.10.5840/philtoday200650Supplement14Search in Google Scholar
Stengers, Isabelle. “Deleuze and Guattari’s Last Enigmatic Message.” Angelaki 10, no. 2 (2005): 151-67.10.1080/09697250500417399Search in Google Scholar
Tugendhat, Ernst. “Heidegger’s Idea of Truth.” In The Heidegger Controversy, edited by Richard Wolin, 247-63. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.Search in Google Scholar
Voss, Daniela. Conditions of Thought: Deleuze and the Transcendental Ideas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676255.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Voss, Daniela. “Deleuze’s Rethinking of the Notion of Sense.” Deleuze Studies 7, no. 1 (2013): 1-25.10.3366/dls.2013.0092Search in Google Scholar
Widder, Nathan. “John Duns Scotus.” In Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage, edited by Graham Jones and Jon Roffe, 27-43. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.10.3366/edinburgh/9780748632992.003.0002Search in Google Scholar
Wrathall, Mark. “The Conditions of Truth in Heidegger and Davidson.” The Monist 82, no. 2 (1999): 304 -23.10.5840/monist19998229Search in Google Scholar
Wrathall, Mark. Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.10.1017/CBO9780511777974Search in Google Scholar
© by Michael James Bennett, published by De Gruyter
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
