Abstract

Deleuze’s sense of the history of philosophy in Difference and Repetition is manifestly agonistic and counter-dialectic. Against a history of philosophy that has only considered difference as a relation between or among competing terms, Deleuze affirms a philosophy of immanence where the task of philosophy is to think difference in itself. This ‘overcoming’ of Hegel (and Plato) nevertheless intensifies rather than vanquishes Hegel’s own demand for immanence: philosophy is not one event among others, but the necessary means through which life appears to, and recognizes, itself. Life is the absolute appearing to itself. For Deleuze philosophy is also, ultimately, the means through which life takes on a higher power of expression. A world that has overcome representation is a world made expressive.