This article proposes the double perspective of a cosmogenesis and a cosmic experimentation as the two directions that a Deleuzian cosmology could take following Difference and Repetition. In order to do so, we take the concept of intensity (intensive quantity) not only as the main guiding thread of our inquiry but also as the axis of comprehension of a dynamic conception of space and time (the so called theory of spatio-temporal dynamisms). Under such conditions, we will analyze how a process (...) of genesis discovers the emergence of the cosmos, first of all, in the creation of multiple lines of differenciation based on the complication of its various spatio-temporal modalities. Afterwards, a cosmic experimentation will describe how an individual experience (a life, a sensibility) may provide a second perspective by establishing a clear-confused explication of such genetic spatio-temporal modalities. In this way, made explicit between two registers, the notion of cosmos will finally appear as a "phantastical" notion insofar as equivalent to the reciprocal relationship woven between a genetic process of transformation and an empirical process of development. (shrink)

There are two links that stand in the foreground of Deleuze’s treatment of Epicurus and Lucretius: the themes of immanent naturalism and of the externality of ontological relations. However, the links are problematised in Difference and Repetition, which presents an important critique of the concept of the atom. I will argue that this critique reveals the limits of the intellectual affinity between ancient atomism and Deleuzian metaphysics; in particular, that Deleuze’s notions of relationality and spatium respond to problems raised by (...) the relations between atoms and by the not-being of the atomists’ vacuum. In this sense, Deleuze’s treatment of atomism is significant because it makes clear Deleuze’s aim in shifting the mereological vocabulary from points to lines; it shows what, in Deleuze’s sense, it means to unfound and sets down the conditions for a successful Deleuzian critique of essentialist varieties of the metaphysics of structure. (shrink)