Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos: Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of Difference (review)

In Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos, Jeffrey A. Bell analyses the ways in which Deleuze's philosophy of difference maintains a systematic approach in order to make difference thinkable without reducing it to a predetermined identity or a systemic closure. He situates Deleuze's thought within the tradition of Western metaphysics by referring to the critique of the metaphysics of presence that is carried out by Heidegger and Derrida. Bell rightfully argues for affinities between Deleuze, Heidegger, and Derrida with regard to their philosophical commitment to thinking difference. However, he attempts to show that it is only Deleuze who manages to sustain a valid account of a philosophical system that can think pure difference without eliminating the possibility of meaning. He argues that although both Deleuze and Derrida demonstrate the limits of the logic of either/or or of oppositional differentiation, only Deleuze gives us an account of a positive, non-binary mode of differentiation.

In the first chapter, entitled "Systematic Thinking and the Philosophy of Difference," Bell outlines two antagonistic trajectories in Western philosophy that have generated diverse approaches to the question of system on the basis of the idea of the condition, which gives a sufficient account of what is real. He takes Hegel as the most distinctive representative of the first camp that attempted to maintain a self-present conceptual totality based on an understanding of reality that is coming into an ever-increasing comprehension of itself via the self-conscious realization of the Spirit. As opposed to Hegel's systematic account that is anchored by the self-comprehending Notion, Bell proposes Nietzsche's perspectivism that evaluates a complete philosophical system against the backdrop of the life-condition that it presupposes. Nietzsche suggests an evaluation of philosophical systems by looking at whether they are expressions of a descending or ascending life. Will to power refers to that irreducible and unique condition that distributes identifiable states and their associated values upon which beliefs and philosophical systems are erected. According to Bell, Nietzsche proposes will to power as the unidentifiable, uncommon condition that lies at the heart of any identifiable system.

Bell starts his second chapter on Spinoza with the question of the nature of the relation between substance and its attributes. Drawing his inspiration from Deleuze's non-dualistic reading of the Ethica, Bell claims that Spinoza's substance should be understood as the self-ordering becoming which serves as the absolutely indeterminate condition for the actualization of determinate beings. Consequently, he argues that the attributes are the determinate order of identities immanent to the absolutely indeterminate substance as the self-ordering becoming. Modes, on the other hand, are the actualization of the determinate order of attributes that become identifiable only when the latter are modified. Although the attributes are the intelligible identity and order immanent to self-ordering becoming, this identity is not something that is already established and waiting to be discovered. While the determinate things express the essence of self-ordering becoming, they are made determinate by virtue of the attributes and the modifications of these attributes. By giving a non-dualistic account of substance as the indeterminate and non-identifiable condition for the actualization of determinate beings, Bell demonstrates the centrality of the concept of expression in Deleuze's reading of Spinoza.

Bell continues to trace the theme of the conditions of possibility throughout his third chapter on Nietzsche. He interprets Nietzsche's reversal of Platonism with regard to the shift that Nietzsche signaled concerning the philosophical understanding of the conditions that explain how things become. Taking sides with Deleuze against Heidegger, Bell argues that Nietzsche's reversal amounts to a fundamental overcoming insofar as his critique attempts to reverse the very notion of reversal as well as its presupposed binary opposition. From that perspective, Nietzsche can be considered as a follower of Spinoza to the extent that their philosophical rigor amounts to a similar understanding of the...