Deleuze Studies Vol. 11, No. 2, May, 2017

Deleuze Studies Volume 11 Number 2 2017
Published four times in a year, in February, May, August and November
Edited by a team of highly respected Deleuze scholars, Deleuze Studies is a forum for new work on the
writings of Gilles Deleuze.
Deleuze Studies is a bold journal that challenges orthodoxies, encourages debate, invites controversy, seeks
new applications, proposes new interpretations, and above all makes new connections between scholars
and ideas in the field.
Editor
Ian Buchanan, University of Wollongong
Executive Editor
David Savat, University of Western Australia
Editorial Assistant
Christina Chau, University of Western Australia
Art Editor Reviews Editor

Andrea Eckersley, R.M.I.T. University Ian Buchanan, University of Wollongong
Co-editors
Claire Colebrook, Penn State Gregg Lambert, Syracuse University
Tom Conley, Harvard University Dorothea Olkowski, University of Colorado
Gary Genosko, University of James Williams, Dundee University
Ontario Institute of Technology
Editorial Board
Jeff Bell, Southeastern Louisiana University Adrian Parr, University of Cincinnati
Hanjo Berressem, University of Cologne Paul Patton, University of NSW
Ronald Bogue, University of Georgia Keith Ansell Pearson, Warwick University
Constantin Boundas, Trent University (Emeritus) Peter Pal Pelbart, PUC-SP
Rosi Braidotti, Utrecht University Patricia Pisters, Amsterdam University
Levi Bryant, Collin College Anna Powell, Manchester Metropolitan University
Gregg Flaxman, University of North Carolina John Protevi, Louisiana State University
Barbara Glowczewski, College de France D. N. Rodowick, Harvard University
Michael Hardt, Duke University Anne Sauvagnargues, cole Normale
Eugene Holland, Ohio State University Suprieure de Lyon
Fredric Jameson, Duke University Daniel Smith, Purdue University
David Martin-Jones, St Andrews University Bent Meier Sorensen, Copenhagen Business School
Brian Massumi, University of Montreal Charles Stivale, Wayne State University
Philippe Mengue, Independent Scholar Marcelo Svirsky, University of Wollongong
Tim Murray, Cornell University Janell Watson, Virginia Tech
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iv Contents
Philosophical and Scientific Intensity in the Thought

of Gilles Deleuze 259
Mary Beth Mader
Deleuzes Concept of Quasi-cause 278

Jon Roffe
Notes on Contributors 295
This publication is available as a book (ISBN: 9781474425773) or as

a single issue or part of a subscription to Deleuze Studies, Volume 11
(ISSN: 1750-2241). Please visit www.euppublishing.com/dls for more
information.
Introduction: The Virtual, the Actual and
the Intensive: Contentions, Reflections
and Interpretations
Dale Clisby Deakin University

Sean Bowden Deakin University
As Deleuze scholars, or as philosophers seeking to apply his philo-
sophical insights in various domains, we sometimes speak and write as
though Deleuzes concepts were well understood. When we examine the
literature, however, we find a surprising lack of consensus regarding the
sense of his core concepts and the relations between them even those as
central as the virtual, the actual and the intensive. To take the relation
between the virtual and the actual as a significant example, we find on
the one hand that a number of Deleuzes readers and critics understand
him to assert a kind of ontological priority of the virtual over the
actual, whereby the virtual asserts a one-way power of creation vis--vis
the actual. Badiou and Hallward both argue for such a view, but so too
does a sympathetic reader such as Ansell-Pearson (Badiou 2000: 435;
Hallward 2006: 28, 37, 47; Ansell-Pearson 2002: 99, 111). On the other
hand, and in direct contrast with this view, a number of commentators
understand there to be a relation of ontological influence between the
domain of virtuality and that of actuality. Smith, for example, argues
that the actualisation of the virtual also produces the virtual and
that the actual and the virtual are like the recto and verso of a single
coin (see Smith 2012: 253). In a related vein, Williams too speaks of
a relation of reciprocal determination of the virtual and the actual
(see Williams 2003: 21).1
But this divergence of readings regarding the relation between the
virtual and the actual is further complicated by a second one concerning
Deleuze Studies 11.2 (2017): 153155

DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0259
Edinburgh University Press
www.euppublishing.com/dls
154 Dale Clisby and Sean Bowden
the status of the relation between the virtualactual couple (however that
might be conceived) and the intensive. Indeed, in searching the secondary
literature, commentators appear to be divided as to whether the intensive
is virtual in nature,2 actual in nature,3 or whether it constitutes a third
ontological realm.4 A further point of divergence regarding the intensive
concerns the proximity of the philosophical conception of intensity to
a scientific one. For example, as is well known, in their discussions of
Deleuzes conception of intensity DeLanda and Protevi tend to focus on
the kinds of intensive systems studied by the sciences (DeLanda 2003;
Protevi 2013). On the other hand, Williams (2006) has questioned the
attribution of a scientific, as opposed to philosophical and metaphysical,
conception of intensity to Deleuze.
It is with an eye to such discordances that the present special issue has
been assembled. Thus, beyond the entire question of whether the virtual
maintains a kind of ontological priority vis--vis the actual, or whether
the two domains reciprocally determine each other, Voss and Roffe both
demonstrate in their own ways that the virtual is not a master concept
in Deleuzes oeuvre. It is, in fact, conspicuously absent in both Deleuzes
works on Spinoza and in later works such as Anti-Oedipus, where it is
eclipsed by the notion of intensity. Clisby and Bowden, by contrast, are
concerned to address the question of the relation between intensity and
the virtual-actual couple in Difference and Repetition. Mader, for her
part, argues for the need to clearly distinguish the scientific conception
of intensity from Deleuzes philosophical conception. Finally, Lundy and
Bell shed important light on intensity by clarifying for us some of the
under-appreciated sources of Deleuzes conception of it, in Bergson and
in Kant and Hume respectively.
It should not be thought, however, that the contributors to this special
issue have resolved all of the points of disagreement with regard to the
relation between the virtual, the actual and the intensive to be found in
the secondary literature. Rather, the value of this special issue lies in the
way it brings these disagreements to light, problematises in novel ways
the sense and status of the concepts of the virtual, the actual and the
intensive, and opens up a space in which we might think them anew.
Notes
1. For more on this divergence in the literature, see also Clisby 2015: 1313.
2. See, for example, Hallward 2006: 38; Williams 2003: 78, 14, 184.
3. See Roffe 2012: 1423, 150; Clisby 2015: 135, 1446.
4. See, for example, DeLanda 2005: 86; Protevi 2010: 4212.
Introduction: The Virtual, the Actual and the Intensive 155
References
Ansell-Pearson, Keith (2002) Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson
and the Time of Life, London: Routledge.
Badiou, Alain (2000) Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, trans. Louise Burchill,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Clisby, Dale (2015) Deleuzes Secret Dualism? Competing Accounts of the
Relationship between the Virtual and the Actual, Parrhesia, 24, pp. 12749.
DeLanda, Manuel (2003) Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, London:
Continuum.
DeLanda, Manuel (2005) Space: Extensive and Intensive, Actual and Virtual, in Ian
Buchanan and Gregg Lambert (eds), Deleuze and Space, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, pp. 808.
Hallward, Peter (2006) Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation,
New York: Verso.
Protevi, John (2010) Adding Deleuze to the Mix, Phenomenology and the Cognitive
Sciences, 9:3, pp. 41736.
Protevi, John (2013) Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Roffe, Jon (2012) Badious Deleuze, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
Smith, Daniel W. (2012) Essays on Deleuze, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Williams, James (2003) Gilles Deleuzes Difference and Repetition: A Critical
Introduction and Guide, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Williams, James (2006) Science and Dialectics in the Philosophies of Deleuze,
Bachelard and DeLanda, Paragraph, 29:2, pp. 98114.
Intensity and the Missing Virtual:
Deleuzes Reading of Spinoza
Daniela Voss Deakin University
Abstract
Deleuzes interpretation of Spinozan philosophy is intrinsically related
to the concept of intensity. Attributes are defined as intensive qualities,
modal essences as intensive quantities or degrees of power; the life of
affects corresponds to continuous variations in intensity. This essay
will show why Deleuze needs the concept of intensity for his reading
of Spinozan philosophy as a philosophy of expressive immanence. It
will also discuss the problems that spring from this reading: in what
way, if any, are modal essences modified by the intensive variations of
affects? How can the Spinozan conception of eternal modal essences be
reconciled with the idea of affections of essence? What is the ethical
import of the life of existing modes, when modal essences are considered
as eternal? While these questions, in particular the last two, confront
each commentator on Spinoza and demand a solution in one way or
another, the essay will conclude with a question which is posed from
an exclusively Deleuzian perspective: why is the concept of the virtual,
which takes centre stage in Deleuzes own philosophy of immanence,
missing in his account of Spinoza?
Keywords: Spinoza, Deleuze, immanence, intensity, virtuality, eternity,
affects, essence
I. A Philosophy of Immanence in Terms of Expression

In the first book of the Ethics, Spinoza elaborates a monism of substance
in a couple of definitions, axioms and propositions. He does not

DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0260
Deleuzes Reading of Spinoza 157
start immediately from the premise that there is only one substance,
that is, God. His argument proceeds slowly, step by step, excluding
all other possibilities. Then in proposition 11 he finally states: God,
or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, . . . necessarily exists
(E1P11)1 and in proposition 14: Except God, no substance can be
nor be conceived (E1P14). God or substance is self-caused, a causa sui.
There is nothing outside God that could have caused him or have an
effect on him. Spinoza further states that from Gods nature infinitely
many things follow [sequi] in infinitely many ways (E1P16).
One possible reading of this latter proposition would be to draw on a
Neoplatonist doctrine of emanation, according to which substance is the
emanative cause of everything that exists. The Latin verb sequi would
then be translated in an emanative sense of flowing forth. However,
it is not at all clear what Spinoza means exactly by the term sequi.
Deleuzes reading of Spinoza adopts a very different course, arguing for
a philosophy of immanence in terms of expression. Deleuze will say
that traces of emanation can indeed be found in Spinoza, yet in his view,
it is the most fundamental attempt to think a philosophy of immanence
and to give priority to immanent causality. To support his contention,
Deleuze paradoxically borrows elements from Neoplatonism (Plotinus),
which he elaborates to a theory of expressionism. The main idea of this
approach is to determine the relations between substance and attributes,
and between attributes and modes as relations of expression.
Spinoza applies the term expression frequently, although indirectly
in the verbal forms of the Latin verb exprimere. He uses it when he
defines God or the absolutely infinite substance as consisting of an
infinity of attributes, of which each expresses an eternal and infinite
essence (E1DEF6). Or when he states that particular things are nothing
but affections of Gods attributes, or modes by which Gods attributes
are expressed in a certain and determinate way (E1P25C). However,
one might object that the concept of expression does not take the central
place that Deleuze ascribes to it (Macherey 1996: 144). It is certainly
not specific to Spinozas project, but Deleuzes great achievement is that
by placing the concept of expression in the heart of Spinozan philosophy
he creates a new trajectory of thought, a thought of pure immanence,
which renders Spinoza relevant up to this day: ontologically, ethically
and politically.
For Deleuze, the concept of expression goes hand in hand with the
concept of immanence. Expressive immanence solves the problem of
the One and the Many, inasmuch as expression is one in relation to
what expresses itself, and multiple in relation to what is expressed
158 Daniela Voss
(Deleuze 1990: 179). However, in order to make use of the concept

of expression, he has to free it from any reference to transcendence
or emanation. In this sense, it might be confusing that Deleuze refers
to Plotinus to establish his argument: Plotinus philosophy is usually
considered as the paradigmatic case of a theory of emanation. Deleuze
admits that Plotinus applies the principle of emanation, according to
which Being emanates from the One. However, besides emanative
causality Plotinus also makes use of immanent causality. Deleuze
contends that there is already in Plotinus an immanence of Being
correlative with a philosophy of the supereminence of the One (1745).
The aspect of immanence precisely manifests itself in the use of the
term expression, which characterises the relationship between Being
and the multiplicity of beings. Key terms are the Latin verb forms
complicare, explicare and implicare. Applied to Spinozas ontology, this
means the following: absolute and infinite substance complicates, that
is, comprehends all finite beings or modes in itself, while the multiplicity
of modes remains implicated in substance as their immanent cause. At
the same time it is said that the One explicates or unfolds itself in
the Many, or in other words, substance is implicated in the essence of
modes. The relation of implication is the most fundamental of those
three, as complication is an implication in oneself, while explication is
an implication in something else.
II. The Intensive Nature of Attributes and Modal Essences

How we are to understand the implication of finite modes in
the absolutely infinite substance? Deleuze responds, in terms of
participation. Participation is always thought of by Spinoza as a
participation of powers (Deleuze 1990: 92). Indeed, Spinoza claims that
human beings participate in the infinite power of God under a particular
point of view, that is, insofar as human beings are explained through
their actual human essence. In Spinozas words:
The power by which singular things (and consequently, [any] man) preserve
their being is the power itself of God, or Nature . . . not insofar as it is infinite,
but insofar as it can be explained through the mans actual essence . . . The
mans power, therefore, insofar as it is explained through his actual essence,
is a part of God or Natures infinite power, that is . . . of its essence. (E4P4D)
There is something very remarkable about Spinozas explanation,

which is his identification of essence and power. Gods power, he says,
is his essence itself (E1P34). Equally, the power of human beings is
defined as that which makes up their actual essence. More generally,

each individual mode is a singular reality and has its own particular
essence according to its degree of power: Each thing (unaquaeque res),
as far as it can by its own power, strives (conatur) to persevere in its
being (E3P6). The striving (conatus) by which each thing strives to per-
severe in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing (E3P7).
In one of his lectures on Spinoza, Deleuze states that he prefers the
term power (puissance), or power to act, to the term conatus, or
desire to persevere in ones being (Deleuze 1980). Equally, in the Index
of the Main Concepts of the Ethics in Spinoza: Practical Philosophy,
the reader who looks for the term conatus is referred to the entry on
power. Power is the superior term; the term conatus only comes
into play from the moment the mode exists, when it envelops duration.
Therefore Deleuze claims that the entire Ethics presents itself as a theory
of power (Deleuze 1988: 104). As such, Deleuze renders it compatible
with a theory of the univocity of Being a claim that Duns Scotus set
forth in the Middle Ages (Deleuze 1990: 63) and that Deleuze also
discerns in Spinoza: Being is said of all beings in one and the same sense.
If Being is defined as power, all beings are the same; they all participate
in and express Gods power to a certain degree. There is in this respect
no difference between wise man and fool, reasonable and demented men,
strong man and weak (Deleuze 1990: 258). This is not to say that modes
do not differ in terms of degrees of power. But from a certain point of
view, each mode is equal: each realises or exercises its power as much as
its singular reality allows. Under the point of view of the actual power
each one has, the performance of the one is not better or worse than
the performance of the other. Indeed, in the preface of the fourth book
of the Ethics, Spinoza tells us that the terms good or bad, perfect
or imperfect do not indicate a positive quality in things regarded in
themselves, but are simply modes of thinking that we invented for our
own use. We call things imperfect for the way they affect us, not
because something is lacking in them which is theirs, or because Nature
has sinned (E4PR). Each thing has just as much reality or perfection as it
necessarily possesses by nature. Its essence cannot involve any negation,
since it is implicated in a common attribute that expresses the essence of
God. Attributes are the univocal or common forms that both constitute
the essence of God and complicate the essences of finite things. As
Deleuze says, finite things are parts of the divine power because they
are modes of Gods attributes . . . and thus modes, implicating these
same attributes that constitute Gods essence are said to explicate
or express divine power (Deleuze 1990: 92). Expressive immanence
160 Daniela Voss
confirms the theory of univocal being. There is no superior term and

no hierarchy of beings; Gods essence or power, which is the immanent
cause of all things, is not separated from its effects but rather expressed
by them. All things express and participate in Gods power, and under a
certain point of view Gods infinite power is implicated in the power of
finite things.
There is a second reason why Deleuze is drawn to the concept of
power (puissance) more than to the concept of conatus. By explaining
modal essences as degrees of power, he can introduce the concept of
intensity.2 In the Scholastic tradition, especially Scotism, we find a theory
of intrinsic modes or degrees. Spinoza, so Deleuze, follows this tradition,
according to which modus intrinsecus = gradus = intensio (Deleuze
1990: 191). In the light of this view, modal essences are intrinsic
modes or intensive quantities (196). Now, as intensive quantities, the
connection between distinct modes cannot be one of contiguity or
juxtaposition. Only extensive quantities are distinguished by extrinsic
spatial differences. Intensive quantities differ in terms of degrees; they are
related qua intrinsic differences. Together they form an actually infinite
series of essences or, in other words, a system of complication of
essences (198).
What exactly is an intensive quantity? Examples would be
temperature, pressure, speed or colour. These are intensive magnitudes,
which are characterised by continuity, indivisibility, degree and
thresholds that designate complete negation or change of nature.
Thus, given a volume of water which is heated up to 80 degrees
Celsius, the temperature cannot be divided into extrinsic or extensive
parts, as if 40 degrees Celsius and 40 degrees Celsius added up to
80 degrees Celsius. The waters temperature is generated by a continuous
nexus of infinitely different degrees from its beginning = 0 and can
be increased up to a certain threshold where it changes its nature
(the phase transition from liquid to gas at the boiling point of
100 degrees Celsius). Deleuze refers to Duns Scotus example of a white
wall (Deleuze 1990: 196): the quality of whiteness does not contain any
extensive parts that are extrinsically distinct from one another. Rather, it
complicates various degrees of intensity, a continuous and infinite series
of different degrees of whiteness. Those are intrinsic modes that are all
implicated in the quality of whiteness that remains univocally the same.
In this sense, Deleuze argues, the relation between attributes and modes
are to be understood. Modal essences are intensive quantities that are
distinguished from one another through intrinsic differences, yet they
are all implicated in an infinite attribute that remains indivisible.
The term attribute, for Spinoza, has a very specific meaning.

According to Descartes, each substance has only one attribute and
thus he distinguishes two distinct substances, thought and extension,
or res cogitans and res extensae. For Spinoza, on the contrary, God or
substance is an absolutely infinite being, of whom no attribute which
expresses an essence of substance can be denied (E1P14D). Nevertheless
God is not divided into an infinite multiplicity of attributes; he remains
a single, absolute substance. One approach to solve this problem of the
One and the Many would be to conceive attributes as different aspects
of one and the same substance, as ways of conceiving, or conceptions,
that we have of substance. As such they would grant an epistemic access
to Being. In the beginning of the Ethics, Spinoza states the following
definition: By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a
substance, as constituting its essence (E1DEF4). This definition clearly
involves the epistemic dimension with reference to the perception of the
intellect. However, there is also mention of a constitutive dimension of
attributes, and it is this aspect that Deleuze is interested in. In a Scotist
fashion, Deleuze interprets attributes as qualities that are constitutive of
the essence of substance. As infinite and eternal qualities they express
the essence of substance each in its own way. They are not distinguished
numerically but through formal distinctions (Deleuze 1990: 37). They
are quiddities of substance, that is, that which expresses what the essence
of substance is. By defining attributes as qualities, Deleuze explains at the
same time the equally difficult relation between attributes and modes
(and here, Duns Scotus example of whiteness comes into play):
An attribute remains as a quality univocally what it is, containing all the

degrees that affect it without modifying its formal reason. Modal essences are
thus distinguished from their attribute as intensities of its quality, and from
one another as different degrees of intensity. One may be permitted to think
that, while he does not explicitly develop such a theory, Spinoza is looking
toward the idea of a distinction or singularity belonging to modal essences as
such. (Deleuze 1990: 1967)
In fact, it is a theory of distinction or difference that Deleuze

explicitly introduces and embeds in Spinoza, and Duns Scotus is his
most important reference. Besides the theory of univocity, he owes to
him the idea of a formal distinction between attributes as qualities of
substance (Deleuze 1990: 46), as well as the idea of intrinsic differences
between modal essences as intensive quantities.3 Only a quantitative
distinction of beings is consistent with the qualitative identity of the
absolute. And this quantitative distinction is no mere appearance, but
162 Daniela Voss
an internal difference, a difference of intensity (197). Perhaps now it

becomes clear why it is necessary for Deleuze to take recourse to the
dimension of intensity. Modal essences are degrees of power, which is
to say, intensive quantities. They are all implicated in Gods attributes,
that is, in the infinite and eternal qualities that constitute Gods essence.
It is in this sense, as we have already seen, that modes of a divine
attribute necessarily participate in Gods power: their essence is itself
part of Gods power, is an intensive part, or a degree of that power
(199).
III. The Life of Affects as Variations in Intensity

So far, we have considered modal essences as intensive realities contained
in Gods attributes, but modes can also be assigned existence in a second
sense, in terms of duration. Spinoza tells us that:
we conceive things as actual in two ways: either insofar as we conceive them

to exist in relation to a certain time and place, or insofar as we conceive them
to be contained in God and to follow from the necessity of the divine nature
(E5P29S)
While things considered in the second way would be modal essences

implicated in Gods attributes, things considered in the first way are finite
beings that come into existence by some external cause and cease to exist
if they are destroyed by a cause external to themselves (E3P4). Thus to
every modal essence corresponds an extrinsic modal reality that occurs
outside the attribute (Deleuze 1990: 213) in duration; it occupies an
extrinsic position in relation to time and space.4
It is through duration (and also, in the case of modes of Extension,
through figure and place) that existing modes have their strictly extrinsic
individuation (Deleuze 1990: 196). This is to say that individual
existing modes are distinguished extrinsically from one another. In the
case of modes of extension, this is easier to understand than for modes
of thinking. But it is important to note that modes of the attribute of
Thought, that is, souls in the case of human beings, are also considered
as composed of extrinsic parts. They have a composite nature, inasmuch
as they form the idea of a body that is itself composed of extensive
bodies (311). According to Deleuze, attributes must be of a double
nature: to every attribute as eternal and infinite quality corresponds an
intensive as well as an extensive quantity, which exists in duration. As
Deleuze says, an attribute not only has an infinite intensive quantity,
but an infinite extensive quantity also. It is the extensive quantity that is

actually divided into an infinity of extensive parts (205).
According to this point of view, each mode of whatever attribute
is composed of an infinity of extrinsic parts which are related to one
another through motion and rest, speed and slowness. Spinoza deals
with this question of the composite nature of individual modes in a
brief analysis of the physics of bodies after proposition 13 of the second
book of the Ethics. There he distinguishes different kinds of individuals
that differ with regard to their degree of complexity. The extrinsic
parts of individuals can be simple bodies, or individuals composed of
simple bodies (individuals of the first kind), or individuals composed
of individuals (individuals of the second kind), and so on to infinity.
What accounts for the coherence between the extrinsic parts belonging
to one individual mode, is that they are grouped together in a certain
characteristic relation or rule [certa quadam ratione] (E2P13DEF). This
ratio is the individual form of the particular mode, through which the
modal essence expresses itself. As long as the vital relations of motion
and rest are preserved, the individual mode keeps its original nature
without a change of form (E2P13L5).
By means of this brief explanation of the composite nature of
individual modes, Spinoza intends no special treatise on bodies from
the viewpoint of physics, rather he points out how little we know about
the human body and explains why it is that we have only a confused
knowledge of it (E2P13S). Moreover, he make us understand the
extent to which bodies can be affected and affect other bodies without
losing their characteristic internal coherence or form (E2P13L7S). In
the following analyses, in particular in Book III, Spinoza reveals the
mechanisms by which bodies mutually affect one another. By way of
affection individual modes are conditioned to act, and they exercise their
power by affecting other modes. To this dimension of bodily affections
corresponds a life of affects, that is, in the case of human beings, all the
variations of desire (cupiditas), joy (laetitia) and sadness (tristitia) that
arise from these three (E3P11S).
The general definition of affects that Spinoza presents in the beginning
of the third book explains affects as affections of the body by which the
bodys power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained,
and at the same time, the ideas of these affections (E3DEF3). In
addition, Spinoza remarks that affects can be distinguished in passions
and actions. Active affects are those that are not caused by some
external impact from other bodies on our own, but those that can be
explained through our nature alone. In this case we act as the adequate
164 Daniela Voss
cause, which is to say that the affect can be clearly and distinctly
perceived through our own activity; we can form an adequate idea of
the affect.
Affects evolve in time. They are enveloped in bodily affections and
mark a lived passage or transition from one state to another. As such,
joy signifies a transition to a state of greater perfection, since the power
to act is increased, whereas sadness diminishes the power of action and
results in a state of lesser perfection.
There is, however, a problem that touches on the definition of modal
essence. If modal essence is a degree of power and if the power of
an existing mode is ceaselessly, in duration, increasing and decreasing
because of the change of affects, does this have an effect on its essence?
For Spinoza, essences are eternal realities and it seems odd to claim that
essences could be affected by processes which take place in duration. A
modal essence has no duration, in fact, no relation to time at all. It must
be conceived by a certain eternal necessity (E5P22D) because it derives
its existence from the very essence of God as its cause. Spinoza here
introduces the notion of an eternal mode of thinking, which is without
relation to the body (E5P20S).
Precisely at this point, in the middle of the fifth book of the Ethics,
commentators on Spinozan philosophy felt that with the notion of an
eternal mode of thinking the book falls apart, perhaps with no way of
reconciling the two halves. A first obvious objection would be that the
contention of an eternal mode of thinking breaks with the parallelism
of the attributes. Deleuze responds that the break is only apparent
(Deleuze 1988: 901). The eternal part of the mind that remains is
nothing but the idea of the essence of the body. In other words, while the
singular essence of this or that body remains, so does the corresponding
idea, that is, the idea that expresses the essence of this or that human
body, under a species of eternity (E5P22). The more difficult issue
concerns the notion of eternity. Does Spinoza here confirm the
immortality of the soul, satisfying Jewish and Christian beliefs, to
the detriment of the consistency of his philosophical system? Or
does Spinoza very well distinguish between eternity and immortality,
introducing with eternity a philosophical, theoretical term, which has
nothing to do with the traditional notion of the immortality of the soul?
(Moreau 1994: 5326).
The textual evidence that one finds in Spinozas Ethics points to the
latter: Spinoza clearly states that eternity has no relation to time at all
(E5P23S); it is a completely atemporal conception: in eternity, there is
neither when, nor before, nor after (E1P33S2). He explicitly criticises
the common belief which considers eternity in terms of an indefinite

duration and which presumes a persistence of memory and imagination
after death (E5P34S). For Spinoza, on the contrary, eternity is primarily
a modal notion, which is to say that it expresses a unique kind of
necessity or necessary existence. The definition in the beginning of the
first book states: By eternity I understand existence itself, insofar as it is
conceived to follow necessarily from the definition alone of the eternal
thing (E1DEF8). In the first place, eternity can be said of God, insofar
as his definition of essence necessarily implies existence. Equally, all
attributes are eternal, insofar as they express everything that belongs to
Gods essence (E1P19). Now, Spinoza also considers individual modal
essences as eternal. Yet, it is clear that modal essences have no self-
necessitated existence; they are not a causa sui like divine substance.
Thus, Spinoza argues, they can be called eternal only in respect to a
given efficient cause (E1P33S1). In other words, insofar as individual
modes participate in the very essence of God, they thereby involve the
necessary existence, which is Gods essence, that is, eternity.
It is inevitable that Spinozas commentators should rather take offence
at this conception of eternity. Leibniz, one of his critics, attacks
Spinoza for corrupting the notion of immortality and replacing it by
an illusionary and abstract notion of eternity. Why should this Platonic
idea of my being concern me at all? (Lrke 2008: 90821). After the
disappearance of the body, the soul is supposed to lose all memory and
imagination. What then is the moral significance of existence, of reward
and punishment, if after death the soul is nothing but the idea of an
eternal truth?
Deleuze, who is well aware of Leibnizs criticism of Spinozas
conception of eternity, also joins in expressing the concern what is in
the end the real problem with Spinozism: if Spinoza were right, there
would be no point in perfecting oneself in order to leave behind one
a still more perfect eternal essence (Deleuze 1990: 317). The question
thus becomes: what is the use of our efforts while in existence if our
essence is in any case just what it is, a degree of power unaffected by the
extensive parts that were only temporarily and externally related to it?
(317).
In order to tackle the problem, Deleuze first of all cautions us not to
jump too quickly to an intellectualist or idealist interpretation (Deleuze
1990: 312). A modal essence is not in itself eternal, but only by virtue
of its cause (God). A purely causal argument should not be taken as
a proof of ideality. A modal essence is in no way an ideal entity but
a physical reality; thus affections are affections of an essence and the
166 Daniela Voss
essence itself the essence of a body. The physical reality is an intensive

reality, an intensive existence (312). Yet, how are we to understand the
phrase affections of an essence? Is it not a peculiar idea that essences
are susceptible to affections? It is actually Spinoza himself who makes
use of this term, when he states: by an affection of the human essence
we understand any constitution of that essence, whether it is innate [NS:
or has come from outside] (E3DEF1EX).5 Thus there seems to be a
certain disposition of essences to be affected through external influence.
What exactly is the relation between this eternal part and our extrinsic
existence in duration?
In the fifth book of the Ethics Spinoza affirms that by acquiring
adequate ideas (the second and third kind of knowledge), our mind
becomes active and can reduce the inadequate ideas and related passions
to a very small part of the mind; and thus active affections and the
intellectual love of God will occupy the greater part of our mind
(E5P20S): the more the mind knows things by the second and third
kind of knowledge, the greater the part of it that remains (remanet) . . .
and consequently . . . the greater the part of it that is not touched by
affects (affectibus) (E5P38D). The human mind can be of such a nature
that the part of the mind which we have shown perishes with the body
. . . is of no moment in relation to what remains (remanet) (E5P38S).
These passages evince the importance of adequate ideas and active
affections that belong to our essence, while inadequate ideas and
passions, such as joy or sadness, have no real lasting effect on our
essence. Hence only adequate ideas and active affections can truly count
as affections of essence. Passions, although they contribute to the
increase and diminution of a modes degree of power, cannot belong
to the essence in the same way. How can this be understood?
Deleuze suggests the following solution: to every power of action
(potentia) corresponds an aptitude or capacity (potestas). Thus to
the modes power to act corresponds a capacity of being affected.
This capacity is always exercised, since power is defined as actual, as
necessarily in action. According to Deleuze, the ability to be affected is
necessarily filled by affections that realize it (Deleuze 1988: 94) and
the power of acting varies materially within the limits of this ability
(104). However, passive affections, whether of sadness or joy, are caused
by the influence of external bodies and can only ever be a power of
suffering. In fact, a mode, which suffers, is cut off from its power of
action and its capacity to be affected is reduced to a minimum. Even
if a mode experiences predominantly joyful affects, which increase the
power of action, these affects will never render it active in the sense
that the mode itself was the adequate cause of its effects. Deleuze
contends that the increase may proceed indefinitely, but we will never
come into full possession of our power of action until we have active
affections (Deleuze 1990: 246). Hence only active affections really and
positively exercise the capacity of being affected. Active affections are
innate because they are explained by our essence or our power of
understanding (307). In this sense they assert the modes essence; they
belong to the essence even after the mode has ceased to exist. What is
important, however, is that these affections are to be exercised during
our existence. We are born cut off from our power of action or power
of understanding; thus in our existence we need to gain access to what
belongs to our essence (307). This is why existence functions as a kind
of test. Not, it is true, a moral one, but a physical or chemical test (317).
By means of this additional remark, Deleuze emphasises that test does
not mean a kind of divine trial associated with punishment and reward.
Essences, for Deleuze, are intensive or physical realities; affections of
essence can only occur on an intensive scale, from a physical viewpoint.
For Deleuze, the test consists in maximizing the proportion of active
affections and thereby actively exercising ones capacity to be affected.
He explains:
if our capacity is completely exercised while we exist by passive affections,

then it will remain empty, and our essence will remain abstract, once we
have ceased to exist. It will be absolutely realized by affections of the third
kind if we have exercised it with a maximum proportion of active affections.
(Deleuze 1990: 319)
In Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, Deleuze adds that as long as our

capacity of being affected is only exercised by passive affections, it is
not yet formally possessed by us (Deleuze 1988: 104) and our essence
remains unaffected:
It is when . . . ideas become adequate, and the affects active, it is when we

ourselves become causes of our own affects and masters of our adequate
perceptions, that our body gains access to the power of acting, and our
mind to the power of comprehending, which is its way of acting. (Deleuze
1988: 104)
If we return to our initial problem concerning the eternity of modal

essences, we are now in a position to refine the problem and to
distinguish two different senses according to which a mode can be
conceived as eternal: an absolute and a differential perspective (cf.
Moreau 1994: 536). From a perspective of absolute immanence, every
168 Daniela Voss
mode is eternal insofar as it participates in the essence of God and

thereby involves Gods necessary existence, that is, eternity. The eternal
existence of modes in this sense is nothing specific to human beings but
pertains to all modes as degrees of power (potentia). However, there
is also a second sense according to which human beings specifically
can access eternal being in proportion to the adequate ideas and
active affections they possess. The more adequate knowledge and active
affections they have, the greater is the eternal part of their mind. Seen
from this differential perspective, a sort of active eternity pertains to
human beings, or at least to certain human beings endowed with the
third kind of knowledge. It is this differential perspective that Leibniz
overlooked, although it is carefully elaborated by Spinoza. Deleuze takes
account of this differential perspective by taking recourse to the capacity
of being affected (potestas) a capacity which is as such identical and
invariant but whose content varies in proportion to the passions and
actions of the existing mode.
Deleuzes solution comes at a certain cost. He contends that while
there is a constant change of the proportion of passive and active
affects, the capacity for being affected remains fixed, an invariant
identical with regard to the eternal essence (Deleuze 1990: 312). This
characterization is reminiscent of the Kantian idea of an invariant form
(the forms of intuition) that is filled with sensation, which Kant defines
as the real or matter in perception, or intensive magnitude (Kant 1998:
2905). But this would permit an element of idealism that Deleuze would
rather want to reject. So instead of using the term form, he reminds
us that intensive quantities have certain limits or thresholds between
which they vary: each modal essence as a degree of power comprises
a maximum and a minimum (Deleuze 1988: 78); the constancy of the
ability to be affected is only relative and is contained within certain
limits (Deleuze 1988: 101). This is to say that the limits of the capacity
of being affected do not remain fixed for all times; they are instead
endowed with a kind of elasticity (Deleuze 1990: 222) depending on
the particular relation that characterises an existing mode or, in other
words, in accordance with the different stages through which the mode
passes (youth, ageing, illness, and so forth). Thus Deleuze avoids the idea
of an a priori and universal form. However, he has to accept the rather
unfortunate term of eternal intensive quantities: A mode has a singular
essence, which is a degree of power or an intensive part, a pars aeterna
(Deleuze 1988: 76). He has to maintain a coexistence of eternity and
duration: While in existence we are composed of an eternal intensive
part, constituting our essence, and extensive parts which belong to us in
time within a certain relation (Deleuze 1990: 318). How can Deleuze
come to terms with Spinozas atemporal conception of eternity?
IV. The Missing Virtual or the Problem of Eternity

It is striking that Deleuze does not use the notion of virtuality in either of
his two books on Spinoza, whereas the notion of intensity is ubiquitous.
How can Deleuze avoid the virtual, even and above all in a philosophy
of immanence? He hails Spinoza as the prince and even Christ of
philosophers because he was able to think immanence in the purest
possible way that leaves no traces of transcendence remaining (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 48, 60). The notion of virtuality is Deleuzes solution
to a philosophy of immanence: the dimension of the virtual is not a
second world over and above nature; it does not exist outside of bodies;
it is precisely that which bodies implicate, the intensive depth of nature.
So it seems that the virtual should play a role in his version of Spinozism.
Yet there is no mention of the virtual.
The reason for this omission lies perhaps in the irreducible rest
of idealism that Spinoza maintains with his atemporal conception of
eternity. Although Deleuze makes an effort to escape this burden of
idealism, it is hard to see how the eternal part of modal essences can be
dissolved into an intensive depth of Nature, a purely physical intensity,
a naturalist philosophy. Eternal intensive quantities are a monstrous
conception for a Deleuzian thinker. In fact, intensity is a profoundly
temporal notion. For Deleuze, all ruptures that one may experience
through encounters and that give rise to affects are not only transitions
from one state to another, but intensive becomings that draw those
who are caught by surprise into a new temporal dimension that breaks
with the previous one. In depth, we can live several dimensions of time
simultaneously: our self is fractured into distinct temporal series and
no identity is ever fixed. In depth, these dimensions of time do not
succeed one another in a chronological manner: they are implicated in
the actual, and it is this reciprocal implication of temporal dimensions
that Deleuze calls virtual. Each present is an actualisation of a temporal
dimension the consistency of which is purely intensive (Zourabichvili
2012: 100). Zourabichvili contends that the Deleuzian conception of
time is an intensive one; time progresses by intensities: there is no reason
here to suspect some sort of substantialisation of time, since intensity is
said only of bodies. Time is the intensity of bodies (100).
By invoking the virtual, Deleuze introduces a perspectivism of tem-
poral dimensions, which is not that of Leibnizian possibles. Possibilities
170 Daniela Voss
are only copies of actual things which are retroactively given a priority
they do not have. They are infertile copies and resemble the actual thing
perfectly. By contrast, the virtual is the productive pole of the process
that goes from the virtual to the actual; it is not determined by resem-
blance with the actual thing. Bodies implicate the virtual and when they
are separated from it, they retain only the disincarnated appearance of
a pure actuality (representation) (Zourabichvili 2012: 107). They are
then separated from what they can do, from the form of pure change.
In the discussion annexed to The Method of Dramatization Deleuze
says (answering a remark about Leibniz):
I dont think virtuality can ever correspond to the actual in the way essence
does to an existence. This would be to confuse the virtual with the possible. In
any event, the virtual and actual correspond but do not resemble one another.
(Deleuze 2004: 110)
Certainly, this conception of essence relates to Leibniz rather than to

Spinoza. For Leibniz, the individual essence is a concept, prefigured
in Gods understanding, which already entails all determinations
of the individuals existence in every detail. Hence there is a
perfect resemblance between essence and existence. The course of
the individuals existence is already preordained by its essence. With
Spinoza, things are more complicated:
One cannot say of the essence itself that it is only possible, nor can one say
that a nonexistent mode tends, by virtue of its essence, toward existence. On
these two points Spinoza and Leibniz are radically opposed: in Leibniz an
essence or individual notion is a logical possibility, inseparable from a certain
metaphysical reality, that is, from a claim to existence, a tendency to exist.
In Spinoza this is not the case: an essence is not a possibility, but possesses a
real existence that belongs to it itself; a nonexistent mode lacks nothing and
claims nothing, but is conceived in Gods understanding as the correlate of
its real essence. Neither a metaphysical reality nor a logical possibility, the
essence of a mode is a pure physical reality. (Deleuze 1990: 193)
As such, Spinozan essence bears no resemblance to existence just as

little as intensity resembles extension. Intensity is a productive principle
or genetic condition of what exists. Moreover, it is a plastic and changing
condition, neither abstract nor universal. Similarly, Spinozan essence is
defined as a degree of power, which exists by virtue of Gods infinite
power. It comes into (spatial and temporal) existence through external
causes and needs to be actualised during a modes existence. Yet it does
not rule despotically over existence, that is, the actually existing mode.
As we have seen, there is also the reverse process by means of which
existence has an effect on eternal essence (what Spinoza calls affections

of essence). For this reason I think that the Spinozan relation between
essence and existence is not completely at odds with the Deleuzian
relation between virtual and actual. Deleuze admits a process that goes
from the actual towards the virtual, and that can be described as an
affirmation and even co-creation of eternal truths.
To summarise the main points of comparison between Spinozas
eternal essence and Deleuzes notion of the virtual, one could say: (1) the
virtual is an inherently temporal notion, while Spinoza emphasises the
atemporal nature of eternal essence. (2) Deleuzes virtual is implicated
in the intensive nature of bodies and can be seen as a kind of productive
reservoir for processes of individuation which are never fully completed.
The virtual is the condition for the production of the new. The Spinozan
eternal essence is also productive in the sense that it is defined as a
degree of power or desire. However, while the Deleuzian virtual is
pre-individual, in Spinoza there is a one-to-one relationship between
essences and actually or potentially existing individuals. (3) In spite of
this one-to-one relationship, essence and existence bear no resemblance
to one another; the essence is not a possible, a mere copy of actual
existence. Essences have a full existence that belongs to them by virtue of
God as their cause. Furthermore, individual existence is not completely
predetermined by the essence: there is the possibility of affection of
essence. Thus existence can become the quasi-cause of essentiality:
adequate ideas and active affections that we acquire during our existence
not only actualise the essence but also let us gain access to the eternal
part of our mind. In this respect, the conceptual couple essence/existence
comes close to the Deleuzian couple of virtual/actual. However, there is
no way for Deleuze to call Spinozas eternal essences virtual; it would
mean to contradict Spinozas explicit determination of the atemporal
nature of eternity.
The crux of the matter is the notion of eternity after all. In early
modern philosophy, the notion of eternity was still broadly discussed
among philosophers, though an increasing number was questioning the
traditional Boethian notion, the notion of an infinite duration which
embraces the whole all at once (tota simul) (cf. Melamed 2016: 1312).
As for Spinoza, he invented a new conception of eternity that has
nothing to do with duration. Eternity, as we have seen, is rather a
modal notion related to necessary existence. However, in both cases,
eternity is a notion that suspends with real life and opens up the
perspective of an existence beyond our everyday lives. As Daniel Smith
succinctly puts it: Throughout the seventeenth century, one could say
172 Daniela Voss
that philosophically, everyday life was suspended in order to accede to

something that was not everyday: namely, a meditation on the eternal
(Smith 2012: 132). According to Deleuze, Kant is the figure who finally
liberated time from eternity, by posing the problem of time in a new
way. Time becomes the invariant or pure form of all that changes. But
time is not an eternal form: rather it has to be conceived as an a priori,
universal form of the transcendental subject. In his own philosophy,
Deleuze will go further than Kant, committing himself to a strong and
profound empiricism, a transcendental empiricism: The aim is not
to rediscover the eternal or the universal, but to find the conditions
under which something new is produced (creativeness) (Deleuze and
Parnet 1987: vii). Thus Deleuze poses the problem of time, relating time
to intensity, and thus to continuous variation or pure variability. We
can see that it is precisely at this point that Deleuze parts company
with Spinoza: the atemporal notion of eternity corresponds to a false
problem, an illusion of transcendence, and cannot have any significance
for a philosophy of immanence. This is why Deleuze, when formulating
his own immanentism, abandons the notion of eternity and replaces it
with the notion of the virtual.
Notes
1. 1. For citations to the Ethics (Spinoza 1994), I follow the standard conventions
which include the symbols E for Ethics, DEF for definitions, A for axioms,
L for lemmas, P for propositions, C for corollaries, D for demonstrations,
S for scholia, EX for explications, PR for prefaces.
2. Deleuze comments on introducing the concept of intensity in the appended notes
of the English translator in Expressionism in Philosophy: It is quite true that
one doesnt, strictly speaking, find intensity in Spinoza. But potentia and vis
cannot be understood in terms of extension. And potentia, being essentially
variable, showing increase and diminution, having degrees in relation to finite
modes, is an intensity. If Spinoza doesnt use this word, current up to the time of
Descartes, I imagine this is because he doesnt want to appear to be returning to
a Precartesian physics. Leibniz is less concerned by such worries. And does one
not find in Spinoza the expression pars potentiae divinae? (Deleuze 1990:
41718)
3. Deleuze makes no secret of the way that he deliberately connects the
Scotist conception of formal distinction with Spinoza: Spinoza restores formal
distinction, and even gives it a range it didnt have in Scotus. It is formal
distinction that provides an absolutely coherent concept of the unity of substance
and the plurality of attributes, and gives real distinction a new logic. One may
then ask why Spinoza never uses the term, and speaks only of real distinction.
The answer is that formal distinction is indeed a real distinction, and that it
was to Spinozas advantage to use a term that Descartes, by the use he had
made of it, had in a sense neutralized theologically. So that the term real
distinction allowed great audacity without stirring up old controversies which
Spinoza doubtless considered pointless or even harmful (Deleuze 1990: 66).
4. Deleuze adds that the existence of modes outside their attribute does not
contradict the theory of immanence, for Spinoza doesnt say that existing modes
are no longer contained in substance, but rather that they are no longer only
contained in substance or attribute. The difficulty is easily resolved if we consider
that extrinsic distinction remains always and only a modal distinction. Modes
do not cease to be modes once they are posited outside their attribute, for this
extrinsic position is purely modal rather than substantial (Deleuze 1990: 214).
5. The important addition in brackets relies on the Dutch translation of Spinozas
manuscript of the Ethics and does not appear in the Latin version of the Opera
posthuma. Spinozas original manuscript had not been maintained. All we have
is this early Dutch translation and the Latin edition that were both released in
1677 (after Spinozas death). Both versions deviate, at times, significantly from
one another, and there is controversy over the extent to which the Latin version
is perhaps to be modified with recourse to the Dutch translation. Cf. Bartuschat
2010.
References
Bartuschat, Wolfgang (2010) Einleitung, in Baruch de Spinoza, Ethik in
geometrischer Ordnung dargestellt (Lateinisch Deutsch), Hamburg: Meiner,
pp. xviiixix.
Deleuze, Gilles (1980) Lecture course on Spinoza, held at Vincennes on
12 December, available at < http://www.webdeleuze.com > (accessed 18 January
2017).
Deleuze, Gilles (1988) Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, San Francisco: City Lights
Books.
Deleuze, Gilles (1990) Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, New York: Zone
Books.
Deleuze, Gilles (2004) Desert Islands and Other Texts, 19531974, New York:
Semiotext(e).
Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1994) What Is Philosophy?, New York:
Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles and Claire Parnet (1987) Dialogues, New York: Columbia University
Press.
Kant, Immanuel (1998) Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Lrke, Mogens (2008) Leibniz lecteur de Spinoza. La gense dune opposition
complexe, Paris: Honor Champion.
Macherey, Pierre (1996) The Encounter with Spinoza, in Paul Patton (ed.), Deleuze:
A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 13961.
Melamed, Yitzhak Y. (2016) Eternity in Early Modern Philosophy, in Yitzhak Y.
Melamed (ed.), Eternity: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 12967.
Moreau, Pierre-Franois (1994) Spinoza: lexprience et lternit, Paris: Presses
universitaires de France.
Spinoza, Benedict de (1994) A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works,
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Zourabichvili, Franois (2012) Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Tracking the Triple Form of Difference:
Deleuzes Bergsonism and the
Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible
Craig Lundy Nottingham Trent University
Abstract
This paper will explore the notions of intensity, the virtual/actual and
different/ciation in Gilles Deleuzes work. It will focus in particular
on excavating the Bergsonian dimension of these terms in Deleuzes
philosophy and their relations to one another. While much has been
written on the role of Bergson in shaping Deleuzes virtual/actual
philosophy, far less attention has been paid to the way in which
Deleuzes thoughts on intensity and the movements of different/ciation
are also developed out of his reading of Bergson. To address this I will
explicate the triple form of difference that Deleuze locates in Bergson,
which includes renditions of intensity and the process of differentiation,
after which I will map the movements from this early Bergsonian work
to Deleuzes mature position on the matter, as it is found in the final
chapter of Difference and Repetition.
Keywords: intensity, virtual, actual, different/ciation, Bergson, Deleuze
I. Introduction
Intensity, the virtual/actual and different/ciation are central concepts
for Gilles Deleuze. As has been widely remarked upon within Deleuze
studies, Henri Bergson is the primary source for Deleuzes categories
of the virtual and actual. Deleuzes debt to Bergson on the notions of
intensity and different/ciation, however, has received far less attention.

DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0261
Tracking the Triple Form of Difference 175
The reasons for this are quite straightforward and understandable: in

Deleuzes most significant and extensive discussion of intensity and
different/ciation chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition Bergson is
only mentioned once, and this reference seems at first glance to be a
criticism. An objective of this paper will be to demonstrate that contrary
to initial appearances Deleuze does not disavow Bergson on the issue of
intensity. More broadly, I will seek to show in this paper how Deleuzes
mature philosophy of intensity and different/ciation relies heavily on his
reading of Bergson, and in this respect could be called Bergsonian. In
pursuing this agenda, I will begin by explicating what Deleuze refers to
as Bergsons triple form of difference. Following this I will explore its
manifestation in Deleuzes later work on intensity, the virtual/actual and
different/ciation. Some speculative remarks on connections to the notion
of individuation will also be made. From this analysis it is hoped that a
greater appreciation will be gained of Deleuzes philosophy of difference,
and in particular the genesis of its Bergsonian movements.1
II. The Triple Form of Difference and Its Movement

as Differentiation
It is in the final chapter of Difference and Repetition The Asymmetrical
Synthesis of the Sensible that Deleuze addresses most fully the
relation between intensity, the virtual/actual and the processes of
different/ciation. The details of this relation, however, are closely
prefigured in the final chapter of Deleuzes book on Bergson,
Bergsonism. Indeed, chapter 5 of Bergsonism arguably serves as a
blueprint for chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition. I will attempt to
justify this claim later on in this paper, but before doing so let me first
explicate the relation of the virtual/actual, intensity and differentiation
as it appears in Bergsonism. Following this I will elucidate, or perhaps
more accurately reinject, the secret Bergsonism of Deleuzes mature
position on the subject as it appears in chapter 5 of Difference and
Repetition secret inasmuch as Deleuze himself fails to adequately
acknowledge the connection.
Deleuze published two essays on Bergson in 1956. The first, titled
Bergson, 18591941 (Deleuze 2004a), was an entry for a collection
that Maurice Merleau-Ponty was putting together on the history of
philosophy, and the second essay was a much longer piece titled
Bergsons Conception of Difference (Deleuze 2004b). This second essay
was actually first presented by Deleuze in 1954 to the Association of
Friends of Bergson, so in a way it is his first essay on Bergson. It
176 Craig Lundy
is also, one could note, the second major piece of scholarship that
Deleuze wrote, following closely on the heels of his book Empiricism
and Subjectivity (1953) and a full eight years before the publication
of his next book Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962).2 Another way of
looking at the two early essays on Bergson, especially if one reads
them consecutively in their publication order, is that the first essay is
an overview of Bergsons philosophy as a whole, focusing in particular
on the method by which Bergsonism proceeds (intuition), while the
second essay devotes itself to explaining the novelty and significance of
major Bergsonian concepts, most notably his conception and theory of
difference. In this way, the two taken together form a miniature version
of Deleuzes later book on Bergson, Bergsonism (1966), which will flesh
out in greater detail the insights of his two early essays, commencing
with a discussion of method before explicating Bergsons principle
conceptual contributions. What this tells us, amongst other things, is that
although Deleuzes book on Bergson does not come out until 1966, by
which time Deleuze has published books on Nietzsche, Kant and Proust,
it would be erroneous to think that Deleuze only started working on
Bergson after these projects. On the contrary, one could argue, as Eric
Alliez does, that Deleuzes work of the early 1960s can, if not should, be
read in the light of his already existing Bergsonism.3
If we compare the conclusions of the two early essays and Deleuzes
book on Bergson, we will find some important similarities namely,
Bergsonism is essentially a philosophy of difference, and what it
articulates, to be precise, is a triple form of difference (Deleuze 2004a:
31). These three forms, as they are described in the first essay on Bergson,
are: (1) the notion of difference of nature; (2) the coexistent degrees of
difference; and (3) the process of differentiation. In Bergsonism, these
three are recast as: (1) virtual multiplicity; (2) virtual coexistence; and
(3) the actualisation of the virtual according to lines of differentiation
(Deleuze 1988: 11213). These three aspects of difference have been
drawn by Deleuze from what he refers to as the three stages or efforts
of Bergsonism duration, memory and the lan vital the three of which
form a whole that progressively emerges as Bergson writes his first three
books, Time and Free Will ([1889] 2001), Matter and Memory ([1896]
1994) and Creative Evolution ([1907] 1998). It is in explicating the third
stage or form of difference that Deleuze commences his investigation of
the relation between the virtual/actual, intensity and differentiation.
Interestingly, Deleuze begins the last chapter of Bergsonism, which
is called lan Vital as Movement of Differentiation, with a discussion
of intensity. This is interesting because the notion of intensity is only
very briefly mentioned in Deleuzes early essays on Bergson, and when

spoken of it is not exactly given a glowing endorsement. As Deleuze
tells us in the early essays, the idea of intensity in Bergson invariably
covers over differences of nature with differences in degree and fails to
get at the internal difference of a thing in itself, being content to instead
distinguish between beings. So when Bergson criticises the reduction of
differences in kind to differences in degree in his first book, Time and
Free Will, he is also criticising the reduction of quality to intensity as
differences in degree (see Deleuze 2004a: 26; 2004b: 37). My stipulation
here to Bergsons first book is of crucial importance, because as Deleuze
will point out in Bergsonism, this critique of intensity is by no means
Bergsons last word on the matter. In Deleuzes words, Bergsons critique
of intensity is highly ambiguous (Deleuze 1988: 91). This critique
revolves around the idea that intensity is never given in pure experience,
but as Deleuze cunningly picks up, if this is the case it might be because
intensity is the very thing that produces experience the quality and
extensity of experience. As he says in the opening to chapter 5 of
Bergsonism: If it is true that intensity is never given in a pure experience,
is it not then intensity that gives all the qualities with which we make
experience? (92). Intensities, as such, are included in duration (92).
In order to explain this ambiguity of intensity, Deleuze quickly
runs through a step-by-step explanation an explanation that effectively
summarises the major movements of his book thus far. This progressive
explanation of intensity, most crucially, also corresponds to Deleuzes
explanation of the triple form of difference. Let us then go back and
take a more careful look at the three stages of Bergsonism, for we
can now see that this triple form of difference will hold the key to
unlocking the developed theory of intensity that Deleuze draws from
Bergson a theory, moreover, that will form the launch pad for Deleuzes
Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible.
As with the three-part explication of Bergsonism as a whole, Deleuze
starts by reiterating Bergsons point about the confusion of differences
of kind with differences in degree, and along with this, the tendency
of people to deal in composites without realising it. Bergsons initial
task is therefore to articulate the real by separating out differences of
nature the division or de-composition of a composite that discovers
differences in kind between actual tendencies. But as we have seen
before, if there is something exceptional about Bergsons analysis here, it
is that he makes an effort to not merely distinguish between differences
in kind this kind from that kind but to form a division between
differences in kind on the one hand and differences in degree on the
178 Craig Lundy
other. This effort leads us to a notion of internal difference or alteration

in relation to itself, which is none other than duration the nature of
duration being to continually change, to differ from what it is, which is
why it is defined as internal difference.
So on one side of the division we have differences in kind, and on the
other side we have differences in degree. Deleuze then says that between
the two there are all the degrees of difference or, in other words, the
whole nature of difference (Deleuze 1988: 93). This might sound like
an odd thing to say, but Deleuze has basically spent the previous four
chapters of the book preparing for this moment. In the context of
Bergsonism, the question has to do with dualism and monism. Bergson
would appear to want it both ways: on the one hand he establishes a
dualism between kind and degree, but on the other hand he insists on
there being a Totality in which the two are reincorporated. The answer
to this riddle has to do with the actual and the virtual. When differences
were split up into differences in kind on the one hand and differences
in degree on the other, what was being divided were actual tendencies.
All of these actual tendencies are unified, however, at the level of the
virtual, or as Deleuze puts it in Bergsonism, they coexist in a dimension
of depth (92).
This virtual dimension of depth is best represented by Bergsons
infamous cone of memory. To explain the cone in brief, imagine a plane
or a circle which contains all of your past; this circle is like a lasso that
encircles every single individual memory or moment of your past, where
no two are alike, which is to say that each one is singular. Now, this past,
by definition, is not present, but it is still very much real it does exist,
just not as the present. We could therefore say that it is virtual, not
actual, since the actual is defined by Bergson as that which is acting or
currently in use. Now imagine another circle, which also contains the
whole of your past, but in this instance each moment or memory is not
quite as specific so for example, all the occasions in which you kissed
someone are in a sense grouped together. In this instance, the circle will
contain the whole of your past, just like the other one, but the circle
will be smaller, more contracted, as it is populated by fewer images.
If you were to take all of the possible levels of contraction/expansion
and stack them together in descending or ascending order, this stack
would resemble a cone. In one respect, we could say that there is a
difference in kind between each plane or circle, because each plane is
a qualitative multiplicity that cannot be divided without changing in
nature indeed, what distinguishes one circle from another is the way
in which a complexe exists; or put differently, the unique memory of
your first kiss does not merely differ in degree from your memory of all
kisses, they differ in kind. But in another respect, we could also say that
what distinguishes each level of the cone is the degree of contraction or
expansion the degree of aperture and in this respect, it is the degree
of difference that defines each level. The cone, as a virtual whole, is
thus at one and the same time all the degrees of difference and the
whole nature of difference. In Deleuzes words: There is no longer
any dualism between nature and degrees. All the degrees coexist in a
single Nature that is expressed, on the one hand, in differences in kind,
and on the other, in differences in degree (Deleuze 1988: 93). And as
Deleuze concludes a few sentences later, bringing the conversation back
to intensity: This is why Bergson is not contradicting himself when he
speaks of different intensities or degrees in a virtual coexistence, in a
single Time, in a simple Totality (94). There is no contradiction, because
there is a world of difference between intensity as a difference of degree
in the actual and intensity as a degree of difference in the virtual.
As will have been noticed, in this discussion of intensity from
Bergsonism I have only gone through the first two efforts or stages
of difference. The recapitulation that comprises the opening section of
chapter 5 of Bergsonism therefore finishes by bringing us up to the third
stage or effort that being the movement of differentiation which we
can already tell from the chapter title is Bergsons lan vital. Another
way of putting this is to say that our journey thus far has gone from
actual tendencies in nature to a virtual unity, and what remains for
us to explore now is how the virtual comes to be actualised. At this
point one might ask: what is the lan vital and what is its relevance
here? Deleuze is actually quite clear on this. He says that when Bergson
speaks of the lan vital, or vital impetus, it is always a case of a
virtuality in the process of being actualized, a simplicity in the process
of differentiating, a totality in the process of dividing up (Deleuze 1988:
94). Differentiation is an actualisation because it presupposes a virtual
unity that is then dissociated according to lines of difference. When this
happens, it is not as if the actual replaces the virtual, for the virtual
totality is carried along in each actualisation. For example, life is split
into animal and plant, both of which carry the whole of life, each
in its own way. Thus: Differentiation is always the actualization of
a virtuality that persists across its actual divergent lines (95). Now,
most importantly, the division that is being described here is not the
same division that we started with. The division that we started with
was the division of a composite into differences of nature. This latter
division, in contrast, is of the virtual totality, containing all the degrees
180 Craig Lundy
of difference, into divergent lines differing in kind (95). So in the first

case we are going from mixture to pure kinds, and in the latter case we
go from the simple and pure totality of the virtual into diverging lines of
actualisation, all of which carry the whole along with it. And unlike the
first division, this second division is genetic or generative.
It is at this moment of Bergsonism that Deleuze choses to describe
the distinction between the possible and the virtual a fundamental
distinction in Deleuzian ontology that has received no shortage
of attention in the secondary literature. Somewhat curiously, this
presentation of the distinction appears quite late in the book; given
its centrality to Deleuzes Bergsonism going forward, one might have
expected to see it feature earlier and more frequently. The reason for
its late appearance, however, is because the distinction of the real and
the possible with the actual and the virtual does not merely concern
ontological categories. More specifically, and importantly, it concerns
genetic processes, and asymmetrical ones at that. The explanation of this
distinction, as it appears in chapter 5 of Bergsonism (and is subsequently
transplanted to chapter 4 of Difference and Repetition; see Deleuze
1994: 21112), roughly goes as follows:
The possible, as it is commonly understood, is the opposite of the
real it has no reality, it is lacking in reality. The virtual is not the
opposite of the real, it is the opposite of the actual (or perhaps
more accurately, the complementary dimension to the actual). The
virtual and the actual are therefore both real, they possess reality, but
different forms of it, one virtual and the other actual.
The possible is also that which is realised, or more exactly, can
be realised or not. In other words, according to our conventional
understanding of possibility, a possibility is something that is not real
but will either be realised or fail to be realised one or the other. This
relation between the possible and the real is subject to two essential
rules or principles: one of resemblance and another of limitation
(Deleuze 1988: 97).
i According to the rule of resemblance, the real and
the possible are said to resemble one another. As the
conventional understanding of possibility would have us
think, there are innumerable possibilities laid out before us,
one of which is then selected in a process of realisation.
In this respect, the possible pre-exists the real, and the two
resemble one another they look exactly the same, the only
difference being that the possible is an empty or hollow
version while the real is a filled-in version of the same image.

Put differently, the real is the image of a possible with
existence added to it. As such, from the point of view of
the concept there is no difference between the possible and
the real, for the image of a possibility will look exactly the
same as the real that takes on that image when realising it.
ii This movement from the possible to the real is in turn
guided by a rule of limitation or elimination, by which
some possibles are supposed to be repulsed or thwarted,
while others pass into the real (Deleuze 1988: 97).
In contrast to this, the virtual does not need to be realised, since it
is already real. Instead, the virtual becomes actualised. The virtual
cannot proceed by eliminating the possibilities before it, for the virtual
and the actual do not resemble one another as was the case with
the possible and the real the actual that is actualised is not simply
the same shape as the virtual it was, with actuality added to it. The
process of actualisation is rather one of differentiation, whereby a
virtual unity diverges along different lines. Difference, as opposed
to the resemblance of identities, is thus primary in the process of
actualisation: what are actualised are lines of divergence, lines of
difference that differ according to the way in which differentiation
occurs on each of them (similar the different levels of the cone
described above). Furthermore, it is in this very act of diverging or
splitting that the lines of differentiation are created in the first place.
Lines of actualisation therefore do not pre-exist their reality, such
as we find in the conventional schema of the possible and the real,
but are created in and through the act of actualisation itself. We
can then say that unlike the process of realisation, which obeys the
principles of resemblance/identity and limitation/negation, the process
of actualisation adheres to the principles of divergence/difference
and proliferation/creation. As Deleuze concludes: the characteristic
of virtuality is to exist in such a way that it is actualized by
being differentiated and is forced to differentiate itself, to create
its lines of differentiation in order to be actualized (Deleuze
1988: 97).
In order to illustrate what Bergson means by this distinction between
the possible/real and the virtual/actual, Deleuze draws on examples of
biology (a move he will replicate, looking ahead, in Difference and
Repetition). Evolution, Deleuze says, takes place from the virtual to
actuals. Evolution is actualization, actualization is creation (Deleuze
182 Craig Lundy
1988: 98). According to Deleuze, the significance of Bergsons theory of

evolution (or part of its significance) is that it rejects both pre-formism
and evolutionism, as those two are conventionally understood. Pre-
formism relies upon the conceptual set-up of the possible and the real,
whereby forms pre-exist their reality as possibilities. As for evolutionism,
it aims to interpret change as the movement from one actual to another
actual, rendering a line of divergence in evolutionism as a line-up
of actuals. Bergsons creative evolution, by contrast, involves lines of
differentiation from the virtual to the actual. Unlike evolutionism, which
attempts to move between actuals through a process of addition and
association, Bergsons creative evolution moves by way of division
and dissociation from a virtual term to the heterogeneous terms that
actualize it along a ramified series (100).
Halfway through chapter 5 of Bergsonism Deleuze gives us a handy
diagram of differentiation to help explain the situation. The diagram,
moving from left to right, begins with a single term or virtual totality,
memory-duration, which then divides into matter and life. Life in turn
divides into plant and animal, each of which engages in further divisions
across the page. The key feature of this diagram is not really the
terms animal, plant, etc. Rather, differentiation is represented in the
diagram by the arrows and lines between the terms. When thinking
of evolution, it is common to focus on the actuals and compare the
terms down the page plant with animal, instinct with intelligence,
etc. But in doing so, one is led to locate difference between terms
in the same column, and these differences are reflected as one of
degree. The paired actuals are also commonly presumed to be the
contrary or negative of one another a negation that is indeed sometimes
construed as being that which produces the nature of each to begin with.
This manner of thinking, however, misplaces production. According to
Bergsonian differentiation, actuals are neither produced nor determined
by negating one another. They are instead the result of a diverging line
of differentiation that spreads out from the virtual totality to the actual.
And this is why differentiation, on Bergson and Deleuzes schema,
does not concern the opposition or negation of actuals, but a positive
creation that is actualisation. Each line of actualization, Deleuze will
say, corresponds to a virtual level; but each time, it must invent the
figure of this correspondence and create the means for the development
of that which was only enveloped [. . . ] (Deleuze 1988: 106).
Now, to remind, the lines of actualisation do not reproduce or
resemble the virtual level of the cone. In the act of differentiation,
what coexisted in virtuality ceases to coexist in actuality. Rather,
the virtual whole is distributed in lines of divergence, each of which

retains the whole from a certain perspective or point of view. And
it is these lines that are truly creative, not the virtual whole on its
own or the actuals on their own. But in saying all this, it must be
nevertheless admitted that creation no less involves a closing off. While
such a statement immediately calls to mind Nietzsches Untimely a
very important concept for Deleuze (see Lundy 2009) it is equally
assignable to Bergson. The virtual whole, we must remember, is never
given as such. The virtual, moreover, does not do anything. Rather,
as Deleuze puts it in Bergsonism, it is acted out, which is to say that it is
actualised through a process of differentiation. So in the biological case,
by actualizing itself, by differentiating itself, it loses contact with the
rest of itself. Every species is thus an arrest of movement; it could be
said that the living being turns on itself and closes itself (Deleuze 1988:
104). This closing off or turning in on itself should not be seen as a bad
thing, because without it all would be given and creation would become
impossible, a fait accompli. Again, Nietzsches Untimely works in the
same way, but as Deleuze puts it in Bergsonism, we should be delighted
that the Whole is not given, for There is an efficacy, a positivity of time,
that is identical to a hesitation of things and, in this way, to creation
in the world (105).
III. From the Form and Movement of Difference to the

Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible
The question may now be posed: what relevance is this discussion of
the form and movement of difference drawn from Deleuzes early work
on Bergson to his mature philosophy of intensity, the virtual/actual
and different/ciation as it is found in Difference and Repetition? Given
that Bergson is only mentioned once in the Asymmetrical Synthesis of
Sensible, one might surmise that his influence is minimal at best. A
closer comparison of this chapter alongside chapter 5 of Bergsonism,
however, reveals otherwise. For the remainder of this paper I will explore
the manner in which Deleuzes underlying Bergsonism manifests in
and significantly influences the culminating chapter of Difference and
Repetition.4 Along the way I will also aim to debunk the suggestion that
Bergson, according to Deleuze, got intensity wrong.
The first thing to note is that both chapter 5 of Bergsonism and
chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition share the same trajectory. Both
begin with a discussion of intensity before moving to a discussion of
differentiation and the relations that intensity forms with the virtual and
184 Craig Lundy
the actual. In both cases this discussion engages quite heavily with the
field of evolutionary biology, before finishing with a discussion of the
human species and social/ethical relations.5 Both chapters also come
off the back of a sustained discussion of virtual difference and virtual
coexistence by which I mean more specifically, the problematic nature
of a virtual multiplicity. We can then say that both chapters share not
only the direction of their movement and their concern for asymmetrical
synthesis, but also their position and function within the book as a
whole.
General affinities aside, let us look more carefully at three major
facets of the Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible: intensity,
different/ciation and individuation. The first task that Deleuze gives
himself in chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition is setting out his notion
of intensity or intensive quantities, and he begins this by saying that
whereas diversity is given, difference is that by which the given is
given (Deleuze 1994: 222). We are then told that by difference Deleuze
specifically means intensity: Intensity is the form of difference in so far
as this is the reason of the sensible (222). Note the similarity here with
the opening of chapter 5 of Bergsonism, discussed above, where Deleuze
says: If it is true that intensity is never given in a pure experience,
is it not then intensity that gives all the qualities with which we
make experience? (Deleuze 1988: 92).6 The most significant conceptual
connection, however, is the obvious affinity between intensity and the
Bergsonian notion of internal difference, as it is developed by Deleuze in
the two early essays on Bergson. Unlike extensity, which measures the
relational difference between external identities and therefore reduces
difference to homogeneous identities, intensity concerns an internal
dimension or in order words, depth which is not an extension but
rather the heterogeneous dimension from which extensity emerges.
The association that Deleuze draws in this passage between intensive
depth and the second synthesis of time from chapter 2 of Difference and
Repetition (otherwise known as the Bergsonian synthesis) confirms the
conceptual debt.
The invisible hand of Bergson similarly guides Deleuze in his
stipulation of the three characteristics of intensity. To begin with, the
notion of internal difference developed by Deleuze in his essay Bergsons
Conception of Difference provides the primary source for the first
characteristic of intensity, the inclusion of the unequal in itself, since
duration is described in the same way. The second characteristic of
intensity, that it affirms difference, also gets its first run out in the early
essays on Bergson. Affirmation is of course a major motif of Deleuzes
reading of Nietzsche, but this might be one of those instances that Alliez
mentioned of Deleuze reading Nietzsche through Bergson (and we can
probably say the same thing about depth). At any rate, it is hard to
find any major takeaway points from this description of the second
characteristic that are not present in the essay on Bergsons Conception
of Difference, such as the assertion that difference is not negation, the
latter of which proceeds by limitation and opposition.7 As for the third
characteristic of intensity, that intensity is implicated and implicating,
its Bergsonian tenor is indisputable, for it is here that Deleuze describes
intensity as a heterogeneous multiplicity that cannot be divided without
changing in nature.8 Deleuze even comes to the conclusion that We must
henceforth distinguish between two types of multiplicities perhaps his
most classic and oft-repeated Bergsonian manoeuver (Deleuze 1994:
238).
Such trainspotting might seem rather pedantic, but it is worthy of
attention when one considers that Bergson is referenced not once by
Deleuze in this explication of intensity. In fact, to make matters worse,
it is on the very next page following his description of the three
characteristics that Deleuze finally mentions Bergson by stating: This is
why the Bergsonian critique of intensity seems unconvincing (Deleuze
1994: 239). This sentence is followed by a long paragraph, the first
half of which explains Bergsons supposed error. As Deleuze recounts,
Bergson divides difference into differences in kind and differences in
degree. Differences in kind have to do with quality whereas differences
in degree have to do with extensity. Deleuze then says that in this set-up
Bergson has already attributed to the side of quality the various things
that Deleuze has been previously describing as the nature of intensity.
For instance, Deleuze says: It is striking that Bergson should define
qualitative duration not as indivisible but as that which changes its
nature in dividing, that which does not cease to divide and change its
nature (239). But starting from the very next sentence, Deleuze reveals,
as he did in chapter 5 of Bergsonism, that this is not Bergsons last word
on the matter:
There comes a moment, however, in this philosophy of Difference which
the whole of Bergsonism represents, when Bergson raises the question of
the double genesis of quality and extensity. This fundamental differenciation
(quality-extensity) can find its reason only in the great synthesis of Memory
which allows all the degrees of difference to coexist as degrees of relaxation
and contraction, and rediscovers at the heart of duration the implicated order
of that intensity which had been denounced only provisionally and from
without. (Deleuze 1994: 239)
186 Craig Lundy
This moment is exactly what the final chapter of Bergsonism focuses

on. At this point in the paragraph Deleuze inserts a long footnote, in
which he repeats his discussion of the ambiguity of intensity that is,
the progressive stages of Bergsons triple form of difference. As Deleuze
concludes in this highly condensed summary: hence the reintroduction
of intensities within duration, and the idea of a coexistence in duration of
all the degrees of relaxation and contraction (Deleuze 1994: 331, n.14).
Or as he otherwise puts it, beneath the two, that being differences of
kind and differences of degree, lies the entire nature of difference in
other words, the intensive (239).9
Bergson thus ultimately emerges from this investigation with his
reputation intact, and in retrospect we can see the importance of the
word seems in the opening salvo of the passage. This recuperation
of Bergson was perhaps to be expected, seeing as so many features of
Deleuzes notion of intensity, if not the problematic framework itself,
can be clearly traced in the first if not foremost instance to his reading
of Bergson.10
In capping his discussion of intensity, it will be observed that Deleuze
engages with Carnot and Curie on the issue of energy and Nietzsche on
the manner in which the different returns the eternal return. While
these passages add much richness to Deleuzes notion of intensity, it
should be noted that both conversations were initially had in the context
of Bergsons philosophy of difference in the mid-1950s. For instance,
refer to Deleuzes essay on Bergsons Conception of Difference where
he says: Bergsons philosophy comes to completion in a cosmology
where everything is changes in tension, changes in energy, and nothing
else (Deleuze 2004b: 478). It could be further noted that Deleuzes
first engagements with Curie occur through his study of Bergson (see
Deleuze 2007: 87). As for Nietzsche, it is also no accident that Deleuzes
discussion of energy and the eternal return at this point of Difference
and Repetition is immediately preceded by his passage on Bergson,
which concludes with the statement:
What differences in kind or of degree separate or differenciate, the degrees

or nature of difference make the Same, but the same which is said of the
different. Bergson, as we have seen, went as far as this extreme conclusion:
perhaps this same, the identity of nature and degrees of difference, is
Repetition (ontological repetition) . . . (Deleuze 1994: 23940)
For those familiar with Deleuzes Nietzsche, the connection in this

statement between Bergson and the eternal return (arguably with the
latter read through the former) is glaring, lending further legitimacy
to the claim that Deleuzes various developments of intensity through

engagements with Carnot/Curie and Nietzsche are grounded in (or at
the very least informed by) his longstanding Bergsonism.
Having now articulated a notion of intensity, Deleuze proceeds to
put the pieces of his puzzle together most importantly, the connection
between the fourth chapter of Difference and Repetition on Ideas with
intensity and the dual process of different/ciation. In his first stab at it,
Deleuze says:
Ideas are problematic or perplexed virtual multiplicities, made up

of relations between differential elements. Intensities are implicated
multiplicities, implexes, made up of relations between asymmetrical
elements which direct the course of the actualisation of Ideas and determine
the cases of solutions for problems. (Deleuze 1994: 244)
Not everything in this quote can be traced back to Deleuzes reading

of Bergson, but much of it can, and more of it can than any other
single source: the virtual/actual, the theory of multiplicities, the relation
of problem and solution, the course of actualisation from a virtual
multiplicity to certain cases of solutions for problems all of this goes
back to Bergson. And I say this not just because the ideas initially
came from Deleuzes study of Bergson, but also because it is hard to
find any major discrepancies between their initial appearance and later
presentation in Difference and Repetition enhancements and additions
certainly, but that is what they are, enhancements and additions.
If one thing has changed, it is that Deleuze now spells different/ciation
in two different ways, one with a t and one with a c. While this
development is certainly a terminological improvement from his earlier
work on the topic, both processes or directions, it should be noted,
are very much present in chapter 5 of Bergsonism. Indeed, they have
to be, because this is entirely the point of the analysis: to explain the
multifarious connections between the virtual and the actual, including
the manner in which a virtual totality of difference is formed and
actually dispersed within the process of creation. You will recall that
when we were talking about the second stage or form of difference, we
ended up with the cone of memory, which was effectively an illustration
of difference divided up or differentiated into all its various degrees
of difference. But we then went on to describe how these degrees of
difference become actualised, and this actualisation was referred to as
a movement of differentiation. In both cases, you will have noticed,
the word differentiation was used, even though what we were talking
about was two quite different things. In the first case, the term refers
188 Craig Lundy
to the movement from actual tendencies to the virtual Whole (or in

other words, the second effort of Bergsonism), whereas in the second
case, the term refers to the movement from the virtual totality to lines
of actualisation (or in other words, the third effort of Bergsonism). In
order to better distinguish between the two stages, Deleuze comes up
with the very sensible idea of spelling them differently in Difference and
Repetition. In this respect, the process that is the main subject of chapter
5 of Bergsonism is actually differenciation with a c. And to confirm
this, on the one occasion that Deleuze mentions Bergson in chapter
5 of Difference and Repetition, discussed above, the word is spelt
with a c.
We now arrive at the question, what is it that connects the
differentiation in the virtual with its actualisation in quality and
extensity?:
Intensity is the determinant in the process of actualisation. It is intensity

which dramatises. [. . . ] We speak of differenciation in relation to the Idea
which is actualised. We speak of explication in relation to the intensity which
develops and which, precisely, determines the movement of actualisation.
However, it remains literally true that intensity creates the qualities and
extensities in which it explicates itself, because these qualities and extensities
do not in any way resemble the ideal relations which are actualised within
them: differenciation implies the creation of the lines along which it operates.
(Deleuze 1994: 2456)
Once again, much of this very important passage finds its genesis in
Deleuzes early study of Bergson, and not just tangentially, but explicitly.
First, intensity is what dramatises, or as he puts it in Bergsonism, it is
the acting out of the virtual Whole. Second, as we saw in the discussion
of the possible/real and virtual/actual, the lines of differenciation do not
pre-exist their actualisation but are rather created in their explication,
and not a moment before or after. Third, we also saw in the same
discussion why it is inappropriate to say that the explicated qualities and
extensities resemble the virtual relations to which they correspond. And
finally, as a fourth point (though perhaps of less significance), to better
explain himself in this passage Deleuze uses the example of colour, which
was the same example he used in Bergsons Conception of Difference
to explain Bergsons philosophy of differentiation (Deleuze 2004b: 43),
this example itself being taken from Bergsons essay on Flix Ravaisson
(Bergson 2007).
So we now know that intensity is what determines actualisation, but
what is it that determines intensity? Individuation is the act by which
intensity determines differential relations to be actualised, along the

lines of differenciation and within the qualities and extensities it creates
(Deleuze 1994: 246). The upshot of this is that individuation precedes
differenciation in principle, that every differenciation presupposes a
prior intense field of individuation (Deleuze 1994: 247). If there has
been a great advancement in Deleuzes thinking on this point since his
earlier work on Bergson (in the context of chapter 5 of Difference and
Repetition), it is perhaps his engagement with Gilbert Simondon and
the development of individuation as a notion. That being said, I would
point out that the biological discussion which occurs on this issue is
a direct continuation of Deleuzes engagement with Bergsons Creative
Evolution, which comprises the bulk of chapter 5 of Bergsonism and is
first discussed by Deleuze in his two essays on Bergson from the mid-
1950s.11 In this respect, I think it would be fair to say that Deleuze
was well and truly primed to receive Simondons work on individuation.
Or put differently, Simondon greatly enhances and advances
Deleuzes thinking on the problem, but he does not give him the
problem.
To further justify this claim let us go back again to Deleuzes second
essay on Bergson, first written four years before Simondon defended
his thesis. As Deleuze tells us there, Bergsons aim, contra Kant, is
not to articulate the conditions of all possible experience, but to reach
the conditions of real experience. So the purpose of Bergsons method
of intuition is to reach the conditions of the given, which, Deleuze
importantly points out, are given in a certain way: they are lived
(Deleuze 2004b: 36; emphasis added). What is more, as he goes on
to say:
they are at once the pure and the lived, the living and the lived, the absolute
and the lived. [. . . ] These conditions can and must be grasped in an intuition
precisely because they are the conditions of real experience, because they
are not broader than what is conditioned, because the concept they form is
identical to its object. It will come as no surprise, then, that a kind of principle
of sufficient reason, as well as indiscernibles, can be found in Bergsons work.
What he rejects is a distribution that locates cause or reason in the genus and
the category and abandons the individual to contingency, stranding him in
space. Reason must reach all the way to the individual, the genuine concept
all the way to the thing, and comprehension all the way to this. (Deleuze
2004b: 36; emphasis added)
What we see from this passage is that Deleuzes Bergsonism, at bottom,

consists in developing and employing a method (intuition) that is capable
190 Craig Lundy
of reaching the conditions of real experience, which is to say the unique

pairing of a thing and a concept, and to do this the cause or reason of a
thing cannot be reduced to or subsumed under categories such as species;
instead, reason must be able to reach all the way to the individual (and
vice versa, we might add), since the conditions are lived. In chapter 5
of Bergsonism Deleuze spells this out in the context of biology, but let
us jump to the corresponding discussion of individuation in Difference
and Repetition, where Deleuze now says:
The great taxonomic units genera, families, orders and classes no longer
provide a means of understanding difference by relating it to such apparent
conditions as resemblances, identities, analogies and determined oppositions.
On the contrary, these taxonomic units are understood on the basis of
such fundamental mechanisms of natural selection as difference and the
differenciation of difference. (Deleuze 1994: 248)
And in the next paragraph:

Baer concludes that epigenesis proceeds from more to less general in other
words, from the most general types to generic and specific determinations.
However, this high level of generality has nothing to do with an abstract
taxonomic concept since it is, as such, lived by the embryo. It refers, on
the one hand, to the differential relations which constitute the virtuality
which exists prior to the actualisation of the species; on the other hand, it
refers to the first movements of that actualisation, and particularly to its
condition namely, individuation as it finds its field of constitution in the
egg. (Deleuze 1994: 249)
There are several other clear connections that I could draw from
this passage of Difference and Repetition to Bergsonism, such as the
discussion of pre-formism and evolutionism, or the principle of
indiscernibles, which as we saw just a moment ago is found by Deleuze
in the work of Bergson. But I would like to finish by noting that
these discussions of categories and eggs are advanced by Deleuze for
the reason that they illustrate how individuation emerges like the act
of solving a problem. In Deleuzes words: The act of individuation
consists not in suppressing the problem, but in integrating the elements
of the disparateness into a state of coupling which ensures its internal
resonance (Deleuze 1994: 246). This is why, as Deleuze puts it in
chapter 5 of Bergsonism, the living being, in relation to matter, appears
primarily as the stating of a problem, and the capacity to solve problems
(Deleuze 1988: 103). The biological example that Deleuze goes on to
cite there, well known amongst Bergsonians, is the construction of an
eye, which is primarily the solution to a problem posed in terms of
light (Deleuze 1988: 103).12 Therefore, while the term individuation

might not appear much in Deleuzes earlier work on Bergson, perhaps
we could say that it is already there, as a dark precursor. Put differently,
it is through an engagement with Bergson that the problematic field
is first laid out by Deleuze, the full articulation of individuation being
one notion that emerges when he comes to explain this problem as the
asymmetrical synthesis of the sensible.
IV. Conclusion
It has not been the aim of this paper to reduce the entirety of Deleuzes
thoughts on intensity, the virtual/actual and different/ciation to Bergson.
As one of the great philosophical texts of the twentieth century,
Difference and Repetition, to put it mildly, is a work of breathtaking
originality that draws on and synthesises insights from an enormous
range of sources. Nevertheless, it is hard to deny that Deleuzes reading
of Bergson plays a significant role in shaping his understanding of
the relations between intensity, the virtual/actual and different/ciation
(not to mention individuation), and that this role has been somewhat
obscured in that text, judging by the paucity of references to Bergson in
the final chapter. Moreover, the situation has been exacerbated by the
one reference to Bergson that does appear in the Asymmetrical Synthesis
of the Sensible, given that at first glance it appears to be a critique and
thus rejection of Bergson. For these reasons, a re-reading of Difference
and Repetitions final chapter alongside the corresponding chapter of
Bergsonism (and prior affiliated essays) would appear to be a worthy and
justified exercise one, I would also wager, that can usefully contribute
to our understanding of the relations between intensity, the virtual/actual
and different/ciation in Deleuzes philosophy of difference.13
Notes
1. It should be noted that it is not an objective of this paper to ascertain the extent
to which Deleuzes reading of Bergson departs from Bergson himself. While
such a task would be no doubt interesting and important, this paper is rather
concerned with excavating how Deleuzes Bergsonism influences his mature
philosophy of intensity, the virtual/actual and different/ciation the significance
of which is established below. To this end, the issue of Deleuzes fidelity to
Bergson is tangential; and for the same reasons, the appropriate resources for
establishing and defending the papers main claims are Deleuzes early writings
on Bergson, not Bergsons texts.
192 Craig Lundy
2. While certainly important, I have omitted from this assessment the various book
reviews and other pieces under ten pages that Deleuze wrote between 1953 and
1955.
3. Alliez in fact goes farther than this, suggesting that Deleuzes late discovery of
Nietzsche was inspired by his initial studies of Bergson. See Alliez 1998: 2278.
See also Borradori 1999; Gunter 2009. In this paper Gunter further points out
that Deleuze published a selection of Bergsons writings under the title Mmoire
et vie in 1957, with a new edition published in 1963.
4. Deleuzians will of course be aware that Bergson features in earlier parts of
Difference and Repetition, most notably in Deleuzes discussion of the three
syntheses of time and ideas as virtual multiplicities. These discussions are most
certainly connected to the Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible, but this if
anything makes the failure of Deleuze to acknowledge the importance of Bergson
in chapter 5 even more perplexing.
5. Speaking of evolution necessarily leads us to psychic systems (Deleuze 1994:
256).
6. Deleuze also notes in this opening that the fact that everything is not
given, forms the condition of the world, where the world is regarded as
a remainder another point, which I mentioned earlier, that was made in
chapter 5 of Bergsonism.
7. See above for the relevant discussion of limitation in Deleuzes Bergsonism. As
for opposition, see the essay on Bergsons Conception of Difference, and in
particular the following passage: Everything comes back to Bergsons critique
of the negative: his whole effort is aimed at a conception of difference without
negation, a conception of difference that does not contain the negative. In his
critique of disorder, as well as his critique of nothingness or contradiction,
Bergson tries to show that the negation of one real term by the other is only
the positive actualization of a virtuality that contains both terms at once. [. . . ]
It is our ignorance of the virtual that makes us believe in contradiction and
negation. The opposition of two terms is only the actualization of a virtuality
that contained them both: this is tantamount to saying that difference is more
profound than negation or contradiction (Deleuze 2004b: 423). We should
also not be surprised that the critique of Plato in this section of Difference
and Repetition also originally comes from the essay Bergsons Conception of
Difference.
8. As Deleuze puts it in the second essay on Bergson: duration is that which differs
or that which changes nature, quality, heterogeneity, what differs from itself
(Deleuze 2004a: 26).
9. Deleuze will also use the term beneath in the first essay on Bergson (see Deleuze
2004a: 24).
10. While it might be argued that Deleuze is only able to save Bergson by
changing him, such a stance would not invalidate my major point here: that
Deleuzes understanding of intensity is significantly shaped by his engagement
with Bergson and the favourable reading of Bergsonian intensity that he develops
in the 1950s and early 1960s, even if this reading is ultimately deemed by other
scholars to be on the creative side.
11. See also Deleuze 2007: 89: So, what is the origin of individuation? It is this
resistance of a matter that is opposed to life.
12. At this point of the text Deleuze adds in a footnote: This character of life, posing
and solution of a problem, appears to Bergson to be more important than the
negative determination of need (Deleuze 1988: 133, n.15).
13. While there has been some excellent scholarship published on Difference and
Repetition that naturally discusses Deleuzes reading of Bergson, tracking the
connections between the final chapters of Bergsonism and Difference and

Repetition vis--vis Deleuzes earlier work on Bergson has not featured in this
material. I am predominantly thinking here of Williams 2003; Hughes 2009;
Somers-Hall 2013; Bryant 2008. Bryants book discusses the DeleuzeBergson
connection at length, but is silent when it comes to chapter 5 of Bergsonism
(despite his interest on givenness and extensive treatment of actualisation,
different/ciation and individuation). Bryant also argues that Deleuze disavows
Bergson in favour of Kant on intensity (Bryant 2008: 2424). The major
exception to the above would be Keith Ansell-Pearsons outstanding Germinal
Life: The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze (1999). It could be noted,
however, that Ansell-Pearsons discussion of the final chapter of Bergsonism
does not focus to the same extent as this paper on its ramifications for the
corresponding discussions in Difference and Repetition, and when he does
touch on this topic Ansell-Pearsons aim is to explore how Deleuzes mature
philosophy departs from Bergsons original work a task ancillary to this paper
(see note 1 above), thus rendering our treatments complementary.
References
Alliez, Eric (1998) On Deleuzes Bergsonism, Discourse, 20:3, pp. 22646.
Ansell-Pearson, Keith (1999) Germinal Life: The Difference and Repetition of
Deleuze, New York: Routledge.
Bergson, Henri [1896] (1994) Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and
W. Scott Palmer, New York: Zone Books.
Bergson, Henri [1907] (1998) Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell, Mineola,
NY: Dover.
Bergson, Henri [1889] (2001) Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data
of Consciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson, Mineola, NY: Dover.
Bergson, Henri (2007) The Life and Work of Ravaisson, in The Creative Mind:
An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Mabelle L. Andison, Mineola, NY: Dover
Publications, pp. 187216.
Borradori, Giovanna (1999) On the Presence of Bergson in Deleuzes Nietzsche,
Philosophy Today, 43, pp. 1405.
Bryant, Levi (2008) Difference and Givenness: Deleuzes Transcendental Empiricism
and the Ontology of Immanence, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles (1994) Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York:
Deleuze, Gilles (1988) Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam,
New York: Zone Books.
Deleuze, Gilles (2004a) Bergson, 18591941, in Desert Islands and Other Texts:
19531974, trans. Michael Taormina, Los Angeles and New York: Semiotext(e),
pp. 2231.
Deleuze, Gilles (2004b) Bergsons Conception of Difference, in Desert Islands and
Other Texts: 19531974, trans. Michael Taormina, Los Angeles and New York:
Semiotext(e), pp. 3251.
Deleuze, Gilles (2007) Lecture Course on Chapter Three of Bergsons Creative
Evolution 2nd May 1960, SubStance, issue 114, 36:3, pp. 7290.
Gunter, Peter (2009) Gilles Deleuze, Deleuzes Bergson and Bergson Himself, in
Keith Robinson (ed.), Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson: Rhizomatic Connections,
New York: Palgrave, pp. 16780.
Hughes, Joe (2009) Deleuzes Difference and Repetition: A Readers Guide, London:
Continuum.
194 Craig Lundy
Lundy, Craig (2009) Deleuzes Untimely: Uses and Abuses in the Appropriation of
Nietzsche, in Jeffrey A. Bell and Claire Colebrook (eds), Deleuze and History,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 188205.
Somers-Hall, Henry (2013) Deleuzes Difference and Repetition, Edinburgh:
Are We Mad? Intensity and the Problems
of Modern Philosophy
Jeffrey A. Bell Southeastern Louisiana University
Abstract
In this essay Deleuzes concept of intensity is placed into the context of
the problem of accounting for the relationship between sense perception
and our conceptual categories. By developing the manner in which
Kant responds to Humes critique of metaphysics, this essay shows how
Deleuze develops a Humean line of thought whereby the heterogeneous
as heterogeneous is embraced rather than, as is done in Kant, being
largely held in relationship to an already prior unity.
Keywords: Kant, Hume, theory of taste, Empiricism and Subjectivity,
apperception, madness
In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Sren Kierkegaard claims that

the modern age . . . proclaims itself in the question: What is madness?
(Kierkegaard [1846] 2009: 1734). The question of determining whether
or not one is mad is precisely the problem of modern philosophy. What
criterion or standard, if any, are we to use to differentiate between
sanity and insanity? In Kierkegaards famous reading of the story of
Abraham and Isaac, this problem emerges as that of establishing a
moral justification for ones actions. Could God suspend our normal,
established ethical standards and order Abraham to slay his only
son Isaac, and on what basis should Abraham follow through with
this action, given no doubt the fact that others would think he was
crazy to set off to sacrifice his son? For our purposes here, the
problem Kierkegaard draws our attention to was already at work in
the philosophy of David Hume, and the manner in which this problem

DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0262
196 Jeffrey A. Bell
emerges in Hume will motivate the responses of the philosophers that

will most concern us in this essay namely, Kant and Deleuze.
In particular, what we will show in this essay is that Humes attempt
to reconcile the role of the imagination with that of the understanding
is complicated by the question regarding the nature of madness in that
the possibility of madness challenges our attempts to account for the
processes of thought and the relationship of thought to reality. Kant
will follow through on Humes efforts to account for the relationship
between the imagination and the understanding, and do so in a way
that sets up a retaining wall to keep the worst excesses of imagination,
and hence the risks of delusion, at bay. As Kants solution to the
problem unfolds, he calls upon a fundamental a priori unity in his effort
to reconcile the heterogeneity between the appearances that are given
through sensibility and the concepts of the understanding. One of the
consequences of this approach, as Deleuze will point out, is that Kant
will not adequately account for the heterogeneity as heterogeneity and
difference but will instead understand it in terms of a fundamental a
priori unity. On this account, therefore, Deleuze will argue that the
heterogeneity is displaced in favour of a presupposed unity and identity;
or, as Deleuze will also put it, we will have a mediated difference,
a difference mediated by a fundamental a priori unity. Deleuze will
address the heterogeneity of sensibility and understanding by embracing
the heterogeneous itself, or what he will refer to in Difference and
Repetition (1994) as difference in itself. Central to Deleuzes arguments
for difference in itself is a theory of intensity. By placing Deleuzes theory
of intensity in the context of Hume and Kant, we will discover at least
one way in which Kierkegaard was right in his characterisation of the
modern age. We will also set the stage for Deleuzes more general and
metaphysical understanding of intensity. In short, while Deleuzes theory
of intensity does offer an account of the heterogeneity of sensibility
and understanding, Deleuzes theory of intensity as a theory emerges
in Deleuzes work as a general account of all processes of individuation,
processes that are irreducible to the metaphysical norms and standards
of identity and unity.
I.
On Deleuzes reading of Hume, a notable feature of Humes thought
is that rather than presuppose the rational operations of our minds,
Hume to the contrary assumes that rationality itself emerges from what
is essentially madness and delirium. Deleuze is quite forthright on this
Intensity and the Problems of Modern Philosophy 197
point, arguing in Empiricism and Subjectivity (1991) that if the mind is

manifested as a delirium, it is because it is first of all, and essentially,
madness (Deleuze 1991: 83). Hume himself recognises the threat of
madness when he claims that one of its effects is that Every loose
fiction or idea operates with equal force on the passions, when a lively
imagination degenerates into madness or folly (Hume [1739] 2007:
1.3.10.9). In a fit of paranoia, for instance, a madman may suddenly
fear a person who had never before given any indication or reason to
doubt their motives. In other words, the usual manner of coming to our
beliefs through a customary conjunction and association of experiences
comes undone with madness and, as Hume says, any random idea or
encounter can suddenly throw all these usual modes of thinking into
disarray. These effects of imagination, however, are not isolated to cases
of madness. Take the case of a loved one who receives a serious medical
diagnosis. In such circumstances it is not uncommon to find that one
may let their imagination run far ahead and generate a whole host of
scenarios that we begin to fear. The imagination, in other words, creates
a series of problems and scenarios that exceed what is justified by the
facts at hand, or by the facts as we usually come to know and believe in
them.
One might suspect at this point that given the pitfalls of the
imagination its tendency toward delirium that Hume would seek
to lessen its influence. To the contrary, and as Deleuze shows, Hume
makes the imagination a central pillar of his philosophy. Most notably,
for Hume, Deleuze argues, With the belief in the existence of bodies,
fiction itself as a principle is opposed to the principles of association
. . . [and] in the hypothesis of an independent existence [Hume takes]
the first step toward this delirium (Deleuze 1991: 83). In other words,
the very belief in an independently existent object, and in fact the
very idea of a continuing, identifiable thing, is itself the result of a
fiction. The impressions themselves do not justify, for Hume, the belief
in a continued, independently existing thing as the reason or cause
that underlies and connects these impressions to one another, and
thus for Hume the only justification for the belief in an objective,
independently existing thing is the fact that our imagination has fictioned
this underlying identity. At the same time, however, Deleuze argues
that Hume recognises the important role of an opposing principle
namely, the principle of association and this principle operates in
a completely contrasting manner. Rather than fictioning identities that
are not justified based upon what is given that is, the impressions the
understanding works by charting the associations and regularities of that
198 Jeffrey A. Bell
which is given that is, that which is fictioned. The understanding thus
dissects and analyses the given in terms of its probabilistic likelihood,
and in terms of the likelihood of mistake or error, seeking to further
justify that which is given but in the process undermining it. As Deleuze
puts it, the understanding can do only one thing ad infinitum to
correct its corrections, so that all certainty, even practical certainty, is
compromised and lost (Deleuze 1991: 84).1 What the understanding
leaves us with, then, if pushed to its fullest extent, is Pyrrhonian
scepticism, for by its means we suddenly find that we have reasons to
doubt anything and everything that is given.2 For Hume we are thus left
with a terrible choice: we either accept the fictions of the imagination
and the threats of delirium and madness it brings in its wake, or we
critically examine the creations of the imagination by way of reason and
the understanding and in doing so we ultimately undermine all certainty
and basis for action. Hume was quite aware of this predicament and
admits that We have, therefore, no choice left but betwixt a false reason
and none at all (Hume [1739] 2007: 1.4.7.7).
Humes response to this predicament, however, is precisely what
initiates the philosophical trajectory that will be the focus of this essay.
In particular, Hume creates a concept of taste in an effort to steer a
course between the false reason that operates solely upon what is already
created and actualised and an imagination that tends toward madness
and delirium. In their own way, both Kant and Deleuze will follow a
similar path. Let us begin with Hume.
II.
The problem of the standard of taste is similar to the problem with
which we began the problem of differentiating between madness and
sanity. On the one hand, just as Hume wants to avoid the case of
madness which is, for Hume, a case where ones beliefs result from
the predispositions or diseased temperament of the subject, so too he
wants to avoid the situation where aesthetic judgements are simply
the reflection of subjective reactions. On the other hand, judgements
regarding art also resist being captured by objective standards and
criteria. How then do we account for what Hume takes to be the fact
that some claims regarding art are better than others? What accounts
for a superiority in taste regarding art? Humes answer, in short, is
threefold. The first important feature of good taste for Hume is that
ones faculties are in proper working order and thus one is capable of
discerning as much of what is to be discerned as possible. The second
feature is that with repeated exposure to and experience of artworks one

becomes better acquainted with the elements that come to constitute
these works and hence better able again to discern what is going on in
a work and therefore what does or does not work in it. The third and
perhaps most important characteristic of good taste is that a person with
good taste does not allow prejudice to predetermine their reactions to an
artwork. This is perhaps the most difficult virtue to attain, as Hume
himself admits, and it is one reason why the true value of an artwork
often takes several generations to reveal itself for over time the prejudices
of one generation subside and yet if a work continues to draw positive
attention then this is likely due to the excellence of the work itself rather
than the prejudices of any given time.
With Humes theory of taste we can return to the problem of the
imagination its tendency toward delirium and madness. In the case of
prejudices, the imagination likewise creates beliefs that exceed what is
justified by the facts. Hume offers the example of the then contemporary
prejudices regarding the Irish and the French. As Hume notes, we may
believe that An Irishman cannot have wit, and a Frenchman cannot have
solidity, and continue to entertain such a prejudice against them . . . in
spite of sense and reason. Human nature is very subject to errors of this
kind; and perhaps this nation as much as any other (Hume [1739] 2007:
1.3.13.7). The running away of the imagination into prejudice is thus
not only a characteristic of individuals but of nations and peoples, and
it is this prejudice that often clouds our aesthetic judgements as well.
But the cure, as we have seen, is equally problematic. An unchecked
analysis of reason and understanding will simply undermine all practical
certainty and leave us in a paralytic state of scepticism. The problem with
which we began has thus transformed into another: how do we avoid
the paralysing effects of scepticism and understanding on the one
hand and the follies, prejudices, superstitions and delirium of the
imagination on the other? In the preface to his Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding ([1748] 2004), Hume admits the need for a
middle path between these two extremes, calling for a philosophy that
avoids the extremes of what he calls abstruse thought while remaining
vigilant against the excesses of the imagination. As Hume puts it, Be
a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man (Hume
[1748] 2004b8: 3).3
Deleuzes philosophy will be in large part a response to a similar
problem that motivated Humes efforts in his Enquiry namely, and
to state it in Humean terms, the problem of accounting for processes
that are able to avoid the excesses of delirium and madness and
200 Jeffrey A. Bell
avoid undermining all that the imagination has fictioned and created.
Deleuzes theory of intensity will do the bulk of the work in providing
for this account, but before turning to this theory let us first turn to
Kants efforts to respond to Hume. By doing this we will be better able
to show how Deleuzes theory of intensity not only tracks and develops
Humes initial responses to the problem of the imagination but it also
tracks and parallels Kants own efforts.
III.
The impact of Humes thought on Kant is well known, as Kant himself
attests to when he famously asserts that it was Humes philosophy
that woke him from his dogmatic slumber. Once awoken, however,
Kant quickly turned to address what he saw as the limitations in
Humes thought. Chief among these limitations is the inability of Humes
philosophy to account for the very nature of experience itself, and in
particular to the fact, as Kant sees it, that experience essentially involves
an experience that is in accord with the necessity of certain universal
rules. More to the point and to the purposes of this essay, Hume accepts
all too blithely the givenness of the impressions and operates under
the assumption that the impressions alone, along with the ideas that
are their less lively copies, are sufficient to account for the nature of
experience itself. For Kant impressions, or what he calls appearances, do
not adequately account for experience but to the contrary actually point
to the fact that experience is often heterogeneous with what is given to
us by way of appearances. To make this point, Kant uses the famous
example of looking at ones left hand in the mirror. By all appearances,
the hand as it appears in the mirror appears in every way the same
as the hand itself, and yet the left hand in the mirror is incongruent
with the hand itself but rather appears as a right hand and thus would
not fit in a left-handed glove like the left hand would. The lesson Kant
draws from this is precisely that appearances do not give us things as
they are in themselves and that experience also involves a conceptual
categorisation Hume fails to address. It is this conceptual categorisation
that accounts for the phenomena of the left hand in the mirror in other
words, the categories of left hand and right hand are not aligned with
the appearances of the left hand in the mirror. The problem this leaves
us with, therefore, and one Kant spends a tremendous amount of time
addressing, is precisely how that which is given in appearances comes
to be reconciled and aligned with the conceptual categories that attend
all experience. In Kants terms, this is the problem of accounting for the
relationship between two very heterogeneous elements, namely a matter
for cognition from the senses [that is, appearances] and a certain form
for ordering it from the inner source of pure intuiting and thinking [that
is, understanding] . . . (Kant [1781] 1998: A86 B118).
Kants efforts to account for the relationship between these
heterogeneous elements will bring us back to Humes efforts to address
the relationship between imagination and understanding. With Kant, for
instance, the appearances that make up the content of our experience
are assured of being connected to one another by virtue of the fact
that time itself is the a priori form of all sensibility. All appearances
(or representations, as Kant also puts it) are related to another in time
this occurs before that, after that, at the same time as this, etc. But
in addition to this temporal connection there is also a unity that needs
to be manufactured or produced, and this is precisely the role of what
Kant calls the productive imagination. For instance, if we take, to use
Kants own example, the image of the number 5 as represented by
five dots, . . . . ., or think of the pattern of five dots on the side of a
die, then we could see that the image of these dots does nicely agree
with our conceptual understanding of the number five. However, if we
were to place before us the image of a thousand dots we would no
longer have the easy agreement between this image and its corresponding
conceptual category. What we would need to do then is to go through
the multiplicity of dots, count them up, and then place them under
the corresponding numerical category. This is true, however, for Kant,
even of the first image. On reading the above line, the reader may
well have counted the dots, or think of a child learning to count and
methodically using their fingers to do so. For this reason Kant argues
that when we think of number in general, whether it be five or a
hundred, this thought is rather the representation of a method whereby
a multiplicity, for instance a thousand, may be represented in an image
in conformity with a certain concept (Kant [1781] 1998: A140 B179).
It is in this way that Kant understands and formulates his concept of
the schema, the schema being, for Kant, a method whereby the contents
of experience come to be represented in conformity with the unity of
a certain concept. The production of unity is just what the productive
imagination does. For Kant, in fact, all the imagination ever wants is
a unity in the determination of sensibility. Like Hume, therefore, the
imagination produces a unity that was not there before, and the same is
true of the transcendental schema for Kant: the schema is in itself always
a product of the imagination.
As the example of the left hand in the mirror has shown us, however,
the unities of our perceptual experience are not necessarily congruent
with their corresponding conceptual categories. The left hand in the
202 Jeffrey A. Bell
mirror is seen as our left hand and yet it is incongruent with a

left hand for it would not fit in a left-handed glove. Kant is aware
of this problem and admits that the image of experience that is a
product of the productive imagination is something that is as it were
a monogram of pure a priori imagination through which images become
possible and become connected with a concept but are nonetheless never
fully congruent with these concepts. The problem this leaves us with,
according to Kant, is thus one of continuing to work to address the
contents of experience in such a way that over time they produce a better
and better congruence with the categories and concepts that are essential
to each and every experience. Let us clarify this point.
For Kant it is crucial to detail what it means to have an experience.
This was the critical detail missing in Humes account. On the one hand,
for Kant an experience is not simply an awareness or apprehension
of appearances. As Kant argues, it would be possible for a swarm of
appearances to fill up our soul without experience ever being able to
arise from it, for what an experience presupposes, Kant claims, is a
transcendental ground of unity (Kant [1781] 1998: A111). Appearances
are not only connected as appearances in time but they are also
appearances that presuppose a unified subject of the experience the
transcendental ground of unity and a unified object or something
in general = X that provides the underlying unity for the objects of
experience. This unity, in short, provides the basis for a synthetic process
that draws together a manifold of appearances such that they are not
simply appearances but experiences. These synthetic processes, however,
are not random processes but are rather necessarily in accordance with
rules, for otherwise the experiences we have would never come to be. As
Kant famously points out:
if cinnabar were sometimes red, sometimes black, sometimes light, sometimes
heavy, if a man changed sometimes into this and sometimes into that animal
form, if the country on the longest day were sometimes covered with fruit,
sometimes with ice and snow, my empirical imagination would never find
opportunity when representing red colour to bring to mind heavy cinnabar.
(Kant [1781] 1998: A100)
Kant thus concludes that:

The objective unity of all (empirical) consciousness in one consciousness (of
original apperception) is thus the necessary condition even of all possible
perception, and the affinity of all appearances (near or remote) is a necessary
consequence of a synthesis in the imagination that is grounded a priori on
rules. (Kant [1781] 1998: A123)
The task for Kant, therefore, and this is what much of the Critique
of Pure Reason consists of doing, is to detail what the a priori rules
of all possible experience are. By doing this, Kant is able to avoid the
Humean problem of madness. We avoid madness, according to Kant,
for experience itself, if it is to be possible at all, presupposes a process
of synthesis in accordance with universal a priori rules. The threat that
madness poses to our ordinary way of justifying beliefs in accordance
with rules derived from custom and habit is inoculated against by Kants
approach in that the very syntheses of empirical cognition presuppose
certain a priori rules. But this has only displaced our problem. Just
as there is a necessary lawfulness to the connections of appearances
in order for these appearances to become objects of experience for
example, the thought of heavy cinnabar so too there is the need for
a unity of the rules of pure concepts, the concepts that are not related
to appearances but rather to the rules of the concepts of understanding
itself. As Kant puts it, the schema of a pure concept of understanding
can never be reduced to any image whatsoever. It is simply the pure
synthesis, determined by a rule of that unity, in accordance with the
concepts to which the category gives expression (Kant [1781] 1998:
A142 B181). And yet what accounts for the application of one rule
rather than another, for if we repeat, at the level of pure concepts, the
arbitrariness of appearances that would undermine the ability to think
heavy cinnabar then similarly we would undermine the ability to think
in terms of pure concepts as well. Kants solution is to call upon the
faculty of reason in order to provide for the unity necessary in order to
think in terms of pure concepts. It is for this reason that Kant claims that
Understanding may be regarded as a faculty which secures the unity of
appearances by means of rules, and reason as being the faculty which
secures the unity of the rules of understanding under principles, and
thus reason is never applied directly to experience or to any object, but
to understanding under principles (Kant [1781] 1998: A302 B359).
In returning to the problem of differentiating between madness and
sanity, we can begin to fill in Kants response. As we have seen, we
do not simply abandon a lawful, rule-based approach to experience, or
succumb to madness in Humes sense, for the manifold of appearances
is assured of being both connected by virtue of the temporal nature of
all sensibility and in accordance with the a priori rules of the syntheses
of the understanding. The a priori rules of the understanding that
is, the pure concepts of the understanding are the conditions for the
possibility of experience at all. As the paradox of symmetrical objects
has illustrated, however, the content of our experience as perceived is
204 Jeffrey A. Bell
not necessarily congruent with the nature of this experience as conceived

through concepts. For Kant this heterogeneity opens the door for the
continued work of science, or for the ongoing process of reconciling
appearances with the unity of the world as it really is, or for an
increasingly accurate approximation to a concept, the concept in this
case being the world. Stated differently and in fact as Kant states
it the work becomes a matter of relating appearances to that which
conditioned them with the assumption of reason being that there is
a fundamental world that serves as the unconditioned condition for
the entire series of representations of experience, for the series of
approximations. This unity of the world, however, is itself never an
object or image to which we can refer but is rather what Kant calls
a transcendental idea that is like a problem without any solution, the
problem of providing for better approximations regarding the nature of
the world in its absolute totality.
We have now provided the background necessary to understand the
motivation for Deleuzes theory of intensity. In short, Hume sought to
avoid the excesses of understanding and imagination by calling for a
balanced approach that serves the purposes of life, and these purposes
are best served, Hume argues, by adhering to the customary habits and
expectations laid down through experience. Deleuze, as we will see,
continues this Humean approach to a degree that is often overlooked,
and yet Deleuze is also heavily indebted to Kant, and in particular to
Kants transcendental project. As we saw, Kant does not presuppose
the regularities of experience, as Hume does, but argues that they
themselves need to be accounted for, otherwise experience itself would
not be possible. Kant thus grounds all experience on the fundamental
unities of apperception, an object in general, and the unity of reason
in accordance with certain transcendental ideas. Deleuze will largely
repeat Kants criticism of Hume, but this time direct it at Kant namely,
whereas Hume attempts to reconcile the heterogeneity of the elements of
experience through the regularities of custom and habit, regularities that
in turn need to be accounted for, Kant will likewise attempt to reconcile
the heterogeneity of sensibility and understanding by grounding it in
transcendental unities. By doing this, however, Kant does not account
for the heterogeneity of experience but rather imprisons it in what
Deleuze calls a general difference, or a difference that is subordinate
to a prior unity.4 What Deleuze will set out to do is to embrace the
fundamental heterogeneity of experience, or what he will call difference
in itself, and his theory of intensity will be central to this attempt. It is
to Deleuzes theory of intensity that we now turn.
IV.
In What Is Philosophy? (1994) Deleuze and Guattari set up a parallel
between Kant and the approach to philosophy they are setting forth
in their book. Philosophy, Deleuze and Guattari argue, involves laying
out a plane of immanence, inventing conceptual personae and creating
concepts. These three elements constitute the philosophical trinity, as
they call it, and it is at this point where they draw a parallel with Kant
and invoke a Humean theory of taste. This is the key passage:
Since none of these elements [plane of immanence, conceptual personae,
concepts] are deduced from the others, there must be coadaptation of
the three. The philosophical faculty of coadaptation, which also regulates
the creation of concepts, is called taste. If the laying-out of the plane is
called Reason, the invention of personae Imagination, and the creation
of concepts Understanding, then taste appears as the triple faculty of the
still-undetermined concept, of the persona still in limbo, and of the still-
transparent plane. (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 77)
Without digressing too far into the intricacies of the arguments from
What Is Philosophy? we can bring to bear our earlier discussions
of Kant and Hume to clarify the significance of the parallel Deleuze
and Guattari are setting up. For Kant Reason, as we saw, consists
of the transcendental Ideas that provide for the unity of the rules
of the understanding. These transcendental ideas, however, are never
themselves subject to being an object of perception and serve rather
as a problem without a solution, such as the problem of forever
approximating the nature of the world as it is in itself. The
transcendental ideas reflect the subjective necessity, Kant argues, of
their being a unity to the pure concepts of the understanding, a
unity of principle that allows for the possibility of being able to
have an experience in accordance with a pure concept. This subjective
necessity, however, does not entail the objective necessity of that which
corresponds to the Ideas. For instance, although the unity of the world
may provide the unity of principle that regulates our efforts to overcome
the heterogeneity of appearances and concepts by pursuing an ever better
approximation of the nature of the world, this does not prove that there
is a world as the totality of all that is, the unconditioned absolute from
which everything else is derived. To believe there is such a world is an
example of what Kant calls a transcendental illusion, and these illusions,
Kant adds, are inevitable precisely because of the very nature of Reason
itself and the necessary unity Reason provides to the concepts of the
understanding.
206 Jeffrey A. Bell
For Deleuze, and Deleuze and Guattari, Ideas are also problems, and
problems that are distinct from and not subordinate to the solutions they
make possible.5 Moreover, and continuing the parallel with Kant, we can
think of laying out a plane of immanence as creating a problem space,
a space that then makes it possible for various solutions to emerge. For
instance, in learning to swim, to use Deleuzes example from Difference
and Repetition, one must, as Deleuze puts it, put oneself in a situation
where ones body combines some of its own distinctive points with those
of a wave, distinctive points that Deleuze will call signs. As Deleuze will
come to characterise the process, he will claim that to learn is indeed
to constitute this space of an encounter with signs . . . (Deleuze 1994:
23). An Idea for Deleuze, therefore, is precisely this problem space, this
space of an encounter with signs. An Idea, however, does not guarantee
learning will occur. In fact, Deleuze argues that there is something
amorous but also something fatal about all education (23), by which
he means that the encounter may fail the problem space may give way
to chaos and a failure to establish the connections necessary to learn. For
learning to take place, however, it is necessary that there be at least the
problem space drawn, or the laying out of a plane of immanence, that
involves the encounter with signs (on which, see below).
There is a further parallel with Deleuze and Guattari and Kant with
respect to Reason that is critically important both to Deleuzes project
and to his theory of intensity. When Reason guides and regulates
our experiences properly, according to Kant, then we are able to
reconcile, more or less, the appearances that constitute the content of our
experiences with the concepts that provide the form and rules whereby
these appearances come to be the objects of experience. The tendency,
however, is for the principles of Reason that provide for the unity of
the concepts of the understanding to be confused with the nature of
objective reality itself. We are thus naturally led to illusion, such as the
illusions of an absolute unconditioned world and an absolute beginning
in time, and we must thus be careful if we are to stay on the path of
knowledge. Kants critical project, as he envisions it, is precisely the
necessary remedy to our natural tendency to illusion. For Deleuze as well
there is a risk associated with laying out a plane of immanence. The risk
is that rather than draw from the problem space of connections necessary
for learning, for instance, one might instead collapse into chaos, or into
the absolute speeds that undermine the possibility of connections being
drawn.6
As for the Imagination, this faculty was critical to Kant for it
produces the unity of appearances that is necessary for the possibility of
experience, since experience is, for Kant, always a subjects experience

of an object. Without the unifying syntheses the Imagination provides,
we may have a flood of appearances swarm about our soul, but we could
not be said to be having an experience, nor would we have the unities
with which Reason could work and apply its principles and Ideas. The
risk of the imagination, as Hume himself was keenly aware, is that the
productive syntheses may extend beyond what is properly justified by
the facts. The very nature of the facts themselves may be brought into
question by an overly charged imagination, and thus the delusion and
madness that underlies reason resurfaces and leaves us with the problem
of selecting the appropriate forms and unities. In other words, we are left
with the need for a faculty of taste that can discern the appropriate forms
and unities while discarding those that are irrelevant or unjustified. This
will be what Deleuze and Guattari call for when they claim we need a
faculty of taste . . . that also regulates the creation of concepts (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 77). For Kant, however, the risk of the imagination is
forestalled because of the presupposed unity of the transcendental unity
of apperception and the unity of the object or something in general = X.
For Deleuze and Guattari the concept of the conceptual persona plays
a distinctive role in their view of the nature of philosophy. In short, the
conceptual persona will provide the necessary unity, but a unity that
is not guaranteed a priori, as it is for Kant, but a mobile, dynamic
unity that is drawn on a plane of immanence. It is in the Conceptual
Personae chapter where Deleuze and Guattari most thoroughly develop
the parallels with Kant. For our purposes it is important to note that the
role of the conceptual personae is to provide the unity, what Deleuze and
Guattari will call the mobile territory, that enables the signs and elements
on the plane of immanence to be drawn into a plane of consistency that
then allows for the possibility of being actualised as a created concept.
The conceptual persona, in other words, is integral to philosophy for
if philosophy is, as Deleuze and Guattari argue it is, nothing less than
the task of creating concepts, then this task cannot be done without the
mobile territories that allow for the foothold necessary to actually create
a concept. The risk associated with the Imagination, if it is identified with
the faculty of inventing personae as Deleuze and Guattari do, is that the
forms themselves will be identified as being the purpose of philosophy
rather than a condition for the possibility of creating concepts. Rather
than call upon the importance of conceptual personae, one might, if one
falls prey to the dangers of the imagination, identify philosophy with
a particular philosopher, or with a particular philosophical school. By
doing this one undermines the process of creating concepts by erecting
208 Jeffrey A. Bell
an orthodoxy and dogma that straightjackets and predetermines the

manner in which philosophical activity should be pursued.
We come now to the Understanding, or to the creation of concepts
as Deleuze and Guattari connect their understanding of philosophy
to Kants. For Kant the understanding allows for the possibility
of experiencing objects by virtue of certain a priori rules, rules
that determine the syntheses of appearances. As Kant puts it, the
understanding is always busy poring through appearances with the aim
of finding some sort of rule in them (Kant [1781] 1998: A126). In
finding such a rule the understanding in essence allows for the possibility
of thinking the appearances in the manner of an object, and thus it allows
for the possibility of experience itself. This follows for Kant since, as he
argues, all experience does indeed contain, in addition to the intuition
of the senses through which something is given, a concept of an object as
being thereby given, that is to say, as appearing (Kant [1781] 1998: A93
B126). It is the Understanding, therefore, which mediates between the
manifold of appearances, poring through them in search of a rule, and
the principles of reason so as to create the possibility of an experience
that encompasses the heterogeneity of appearances and conceptual form.
For Deleuze and Guattari what is essential to creating concepts is
that a plane of consistency be drawn on the plane of immanence,
and the intensive features (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 77) of this
plane that allows for the creative process to unfold. As with Kant, the
Understanding, in Deleuze and Guattaris sense of this as the creation
of concepts, proceeds by poring through elements such that the creation
of concepts becomes possible. Where Kant and Deleuze differ is with
respect to the nature of these elements. For Kant these elements are
signs in the extensive sense, by which I mean that the sign can refer
to a number of elements that are encompassed within the extension
of this sign. In summarising the progression of thought from mere
awareness of appearances to reasoning by pure concepts, Kant argues
that either the intermediate step of cognition can take the form of being
an intuition, and an intuition in the form of space and time, or this
cognition can be a concept, and a concept, Kant claims, is mediate,
by means of a mark, which can be common to several things (Kant
[1781] 1998: A322 B379). The understanding, therefore, encounters a
manifold of appearances, and in poring through them for a rule it seeks
out the marks that can extend to other possible objects of experience
and not just simply to the object at hand, to the object given through
intuition and which Kant refers to as a singular cognition in contrast
to the mediated cognition of concepts. For Deleuze and Guattari, by
contrast, the Understanding does not seek out marks that extend to other
possible objects of experience but rather they search out the intensive
features of that which is given, the intensive features that underlie
the extensive properties and qualities of the objects that are given in
experience. This is the sense in which Deleuze, and Deleuze and Guattari,
will affirm the fundamental difference and heterogeneity in contrast to
Kants understanding of difference as difference within a certain form
or concept. The intensive is the concept Deleuze uses to characterise this
difference. In Difference and Repetition, for example, Deleuze argues
that:
Difference is a matter of degree only within the extensity in which it is

explicated; it is a matter of kind only with regard to the quality which covers
it within that extensity. Between the two are all the degrees of difference
beneath the two lies the entire nature of difference in other words, the
intensive. (Deleuze 1994: 239)
Now what are these intensive features, or what Deleuze will also
refer to as the pre-individual singularities that are drawn together, or
pored through, in a process that establishes a plane of consistency
that enables the actualisation and explication of the extensive features
and qualities? The answer, put briefly, is that the intensive features
that are drawn together are incorporeal transformations. For Deleuze
these intensive features, incorporeal transformations or pre-individual
singularities will become part of his general metaphysical process
and will be used, in books from Difference and Repetition up to
A Thousand Plateaus (1987) and beyond, to account for dynamic
processes of individuation in general. For the purposes of clarification,
however, we can turn to Deleuzes discussion of the incorporeal nature
of sense. Deleuze does this in a number of places, especially in The
Logic of Sense (1990), but for the purposes of this essay the most
relevant discussion is the Postulates of Linguistics plateau from A
Thousand Plateaus. In this plateau Deleuze and Guattari argue that
an incorporeal transformation is recognizable by its instantaneousness,
its immediacy, by the simultaneity of the statement expressing the
transformation and the effect the transformation produces (Deleuze
and Guattari 1987: 81). For example, when a judge or jury foreman
reads the verdict guilty, this statement, the speaking of the word itself,
immediately and instantaneously transforms the accused person into a
convict. This transformation is incorporeal, for while no doubt there are
many corporeal presuppositions and consequences to the verdict, the
transformation itself is irreducible to these extensive, physical contexts
210 Jeffrey A. Bell
and circumstances. This is the sense then in which the transformation is

incorporeal. At the same time, however, not anyone can transform the
accused into a convict. A series of other incorporeal transformations
must also come into play and are presupposed by the incorporeal
transformation. The appointment of the judge, passing a bar exam,
graduating from college, the passing of legislation relevant to the
case at hand, etc., are all instances of incorporeal transformations
that allow for the possibility that when the judge reads the verdict
the statement does indeed produce the transformation. Deleuze and
Guattari use the term effectuated variable to refer to the capacity of a
statement to produce an incorporeal transformation, and what allows
for a statement to be an effectuated variable is that it brings to bear a
multiplicity of other incorporeal transformations, or intensive features,
that are the conditions for the possibility of effectuating the incorporeal
transformation. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari refer
to this multiplicity of intensive features as the collective assemblage
of enunciation. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze refers to this as
implicated multiplicities, or as intensities. Here is the key passage, and
the echoing of Kant should be apparent:
Ideas are problematic or perplexed virtual multiplicities, made up

of relations between differential elements. Intensities are implicated
multiplicities, implexes, made up of relations between asymmetrical
elements which direct the course of the actualization of Ideas and determine
the cases of solution for problems. (Deleuze 1994: 244)
What the parallel with Kant should help us with is to understand

the relationship between Ideas as perplexed virtual multiplicities and
intensities as implicated multiplicities, implexes. To return to the
example of learning to swim discussed earlier, the Idea or problem space
consists of the signs distinctive points of the body, waves, currents,
etc. that need to be brought together in order for learning to take
place. This problem space or Idea, however, is not itself the process
of learning. For learning to occur what needs to happen is for an
implicated multiplicity, or what Deleuze and Guattari will also call a
plane of consistency, to be drawn within the problem space, and it is
this implicated multiplicity (or collective assemblage of enunciation) that
allows for the effectuated variable or transformation that is the process
whereby learning creates knowledge. In Difference and Repetition,
Deleuze refers to Harlows learning set experiments where Harlow
shows that there is a point in the process of learning to identify the boxes
of a particular colour where food will be hidden when the monkeys
actions are no longer random but it has not yet grasped the rule or
acquired the knowledge of what coloured box to look under (see Deleuze
1994: 164). In other words, there is problematic state of searching for
food, and encountering the elements of the relevant problem space
the food, boxes of particular colours, etc. which is the perplexed or
virtual multiplicity. That paradoxical period, as Deleuze (1994: 163)
puts it, during which the number of errors diminishes even though
the monkey does not yet possess the knowledge or truth of a solution
in each case, constitutes the implicated multiplicities or intensities
that allow for the process whereby learning becomes knowledge, or a
problem space becomes actualised in a determinate solution.
Generalising from the context of learning which we have used in
order to clarify the processes associated with intensities as implicated
multiplicities, Deleuze argues that intensities make possible extensities
and the qualities and properties that hide intensities as implicated
multiplicities become explicated. Deleuze is quite explicit on this point:
However, it remains literally true that intensity creates the qualities
and extensities in which it explicates itself, because these qualities and
extensities do not in any way resemble the ideal relations which are
actualised within them . . . (Deleuze 1994: 246). Moreover, not only
is this is true for Deleuze in cases of learning or of the incorporeal
transformations associated with the reading of a verdict, etc., but it is
true of all qualities and extensities. All extensities and qualities that fill
these extensities are explications of implicated multiplicities.
The mistake, or Deleuzes version of Kants transcendental illusion,
is to assume that it is the explicated qualities and differences of
degree within extensities that accounts for the transformations and
processes that interest philosophers, historians, etc. In the Postulates
of Linguistics plateau, for instance, Deleuze and Guattari subtitle the
plateau with the date November 20, 1923, which is the date the
Rentenbank in Germany declared what the exchange rate would be for
the recently issued currency, the Rentenmark, and thus on this date the
hyperinflation that had plagued the Weimar Republic effectively came
to an end. For Deleuze and Guattari, one can write a traditional history
that details the development of events that led to the new currency and
the declared exchange rate that ended the hyperinflation, but beneath
this history, they argue, there are the pure acts intercalated into that
development (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 81) that is, there are the
intensities, the implicated multiplicities and incorporeal transformations
that are explicated within the determinate events that historians
discuss.
212 Jeffrey A. Bell
V.
We are now in a position to return to the problem with which we began
to wit, the Kierkegaardian problem of determining whether or not
we are mad. To address this problem we can turn to quite a telling
and significant passage from Difference and Repetition. In this passage,
Deleuze offers us an ethics of intensities, and we must think here of ethics
in Spinozas sense, the ethics of his Ethics. Deleuze states what could be
considered his fundamental ethical principal as follows:
The ethics of intensive quantities has only two principles: affirm even the
lowest, do not explicate oneself (too much). (Deleuze 1994: 244)
If we understand the process of individuation by which implicated

multiplicities become explicated in terms of learning, a process of
learning that Deleuze understands more generally and metaphysically,
whereby intensities become explicated as extensities along with the
qualities that fill them, then to affirm even the lowest entails the necessity
of a minimal problem space. In the examples of learning to swim, or
the monkey who searches for food under boxes of a particular colour,
for learning to occur there must first be an encounter with the elements
that constitute a problem space the coloured boxes and food for
the monkey; the distinctive points of ones body and the water and
currents for the aspiring swimmer. As Deleuze puts it in Difference and
Repetition, Learning is the appropriate name for the subjective acts
carried out when one is confronted with the objectivity of a problem
(Idea), whereas knowledge designates only the generality of concepts
or the calm possession of a rule enabling solutions (Deleuze 1994:
164). To learn, therefore, one must affirm, minimally, the problem
space that becomes, through the explication of implicated multiplicities,
actualised as knowledge and the possession of rules. The objectivity
of a problem or Idea, or what Deleuze will frequently refer to as
the virtual, is not a pre-existent state. One does not come upon the
virtual and then transform it into an actualised state; rather, the virtual
is a tendency within real, dynamic processes toward the problematic,
toward a destabilisation of routinised, habituated processes. The risk
inseparable from this tendency is that the move toward the virtual and
problematic becomes the chaos whereby the infinite speeds of chaos
prevent the possibility of even affirming a minimal problem space and
hence prevent the possibility of learning. As Deleuze and Guattari state
this point in What Is Philosophy?, and this largely repeats the ethics
of intensive quantities from Difference and Repetition, we face two
extreme dangers: either leading us back to the opinion from which

we wanted to escape or precipitating us into the chaos we wanted to
confront (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 199). To learn we must move
toward the problematic, toward the chaos that undermines established
connections, relations and opinions, but we must do so without falling
into the chaos.
At the same time, and as the previous quote warns us, we also risk
falling back into the opinion from which we wanted to escape; or, we
should not explicate too much as the ethics of intensive quantities puts
this. As the intensities as implicated multiplicities become explicated
in the process of learning at the paradoxical point, for instance,
where the monkey made fewer mistakes but had still not yet grasped
the rule or knowledge of where the food would be learning makes
possible the knowledge, rules and common opinions that then serve
as predetermining guides in life. The risk associated with explicating
too much is that the dynamism of a life lived in intensity, a life
of learning, will become overwhelmed by stratification, rules and the
stifling imprisonment of opinion. With this the tendency toward the
problematic and virtual is sapped of its power and this, ultimately, is
fatal to dynamic processes. As with the virtual, however, this tendency
toward knowledge, rules, opinion or the actual as it is usually contrasted
with the virtual, is just that, a tendency toward dynamic processes. The
actual is not a static state, a completed process that is immune to all
transformation; to the contrary, the actual is a habituated tendency
of processes themselves, processes that also presuppose the tendency
toward the problematic and virtual that is essential, as we have seen,
to all learning and, more generally for Deleuze, to all processes of
individuation whereby intensities become explicated.
To return, finally, to the question with which we began to wit,
how do we know if we are mad or not? we can call upon Spinozas
Ethics (1994) to see where Deleuzes theory of intensity leaves us with
respect to that question. For Spinoza, one way to understand the ethical
principle implicit throughout much of his Ethics is that for any finite
mode or being to continue to persevere in its existence what Spinoza
calls conatus it must both embrace difference but not too much, for
excessive difference would destroy it. In the context of the Humean and
Deleuzian discussion of this essay, then we must all be mad, must all
maintain an intensity that tends toward the problematic and chaotic, but
to maintain the integrity of the dynamic, open system that is presupposed
by individuals we must not become too mad. Thus in response to
Kierkegaards claim that differentiating between madness and sanity is
214 Jeffrey A. Bell
the problem of modern philosophy, we can say that the problem is not
to identify madness and sequester it safely on the other side of a walled
barrier; rather, the problem is to affirm the madness that is essential to all
dynamic processes, and thus recognise, as Deleuze says, that underneath
all reason lies delirium, and drift (Deleuze 2003: 262). There is no
determinate rule that will predetermine what is and is not mad; we must
rely on a taste for problems, a taste for the slightly mad, for life itself
is not a solution to a problem but is a continuing encounter with and
response to the objectivity of a problem, and it is a life of intensity that
is the ongoing response to this problem. A life of intensity, therefore, is
not an option; it is all there is.
Notes
1. Deleuze draws from the following passage from Hume: For I have already
shown, that the understanding, when it acts alone, and according to its most
general principles, entirely subverts itself, and leaves not the lowest degree of
evidence in any proposition, either in philosophy or in common life (Hume
[1739] 2007: 1.4.7.7)
2. For the best presentation of Pyrrhonian scepticism, see Empiricus 1990
3. It is important to note at this point a few key issues regarding the imagination
as understood in this essay. On the one hand, the imagination serves for Hume
both as a transcendental principle (avant la lettre) in that it is the condition
for the possibility of given identities, for the identities that are then worked
upon by the principles of association; and the imagination is understood as an
empirical phenomenon, and it is this latter that is susceptible to excesses in that
it creates identities that are not justified by empirical evidence. In his discussion
of the passions in Book II of his Treatise, Hume recognises the importance of
habit in providing a buttress against the excesses of imagination, and, moreover,
this is where Humes theory of institutions would also provide an important
means of channelling passions into acceptable patterns. This latter theme cannot
be discussed here, but as evidenced by Deleuzes early essay Instincts and
Institutions (Deleuze 2003: 1921), coupled with his early work on Hume, we
can see how this would be an important topic ripe for further research.
4. It could be argued at this point that in the anticipations of perceptions section
of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant does indeed recognise the significance of
heterogeneity when he discusses what he calls an intensive magnitude, by which
he means a multiplicity that can be represented only through approximation to
negation = 0 (Kant [1781] 1998: A168 B210). A friendly reading of Kants
project could well develop this section and argue that Kant does give credit
to heterogeneity. This reading will not be pursued here and the weight of the
concerns expressed throughout the Critique of Pure Reason tend most heavily
toward an a priori unity that short-circuits from the beginning any possibility
that this heterogeneity may become active in itself; or, as Deleuze would argue,
Kant does not think difference in itself.
5. Deleuze begins the fourth chapter of Difference and Repetition, Ideas and the
Syntheses of Difference, with an acknowledgement and extension of Kants
claim that Ideas are problems: Kant never ceased to remind us that Ideas are
essentially problematic. Conversely, problems are Ideas (Deleuze 1994: 168).
6. See, for instance, Deleuze and Guattaris What Is Philosophy?: The plane of
immanence is like a section of chaos and acts like a sieve. In fact, chaos is
characterised less by the absence of determinations than by the infinite speed
with which they take shape and vanish. This is not a movement from one
determination to the other but, on the contrary, the impossibility of a connection
between them, since one does not appear without the other having already
disappeared . . . (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 42).
References
Deleuze, Gilles (1990) The Logic of Sense, ed. Constantin Boundas, trans. Mark
Lester with Charles Stivale, New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles (1991) Empiricism and Subjectivity, trans. Constantin Boundas, New
York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles (1994) Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, London:
Athlone.
Deleuze, Gilles (2003) Desert Islands and Other Texts (19531974), trans. Mike
Taormina, New York: Semiotext(e).
Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1994) What Is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh
Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, New York: Columbia University Press.
Empiricus, Sextus [?] (1990) Outlines of Pyrrhonism, trans. R. G. Bury, Buffalo,
NY: Prometheus.
Hume, David [1748] (2004) Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Mineola,
NY: Dover.
Hume, David [1739] (2007) A Treatise of Human Nature: Volume 1, Oxford:
Clarendon.
Kant, Immanuel [1781] (1998) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. P. Guyer and A. W.
Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kierkegaard, Sren [1846] 2009, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Alastair
Hannay, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spinoza, Benedict de (1994) A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works, trans.
Edwin M. Curley, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
The Intensive Expression of the Virtual:
Revisiting the Relation of Expression in
Difference and Repetition
Sean Bowden Deakin University
Abstract
In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze claims that it is in virtue of
a relation of expression which holds between intensive processes of
individuation and virtual Ideas that the former determines the latter to
be actualised in concrete entities. He is, however, less than forthcoming
in this book about exactly how we should understand the relation of
expression. This article addresses itself to this lacuna. It clarifies five
characteristic features of the expressive relation, partly by drawing on
Deleuzes discussion of the relation of expression in Expressionism
in Philosophy, party by examining familiar examples of expressive
relations. It then maps these characteristic features of expression onto
Deleuzes discussion of the relation between Ideas and intensity in
Difference and Repetition, showing that virtual Ideas are ontologically
inseparable from the intensive processes that both constitute and
actualise them in the production of actual entities. By way of conclusion,
this expressive account of the relation between the virtual, the actual
and the intensive will be compared and contrasted with several leading
accounts to be found in the secondary literature.
Keywords: virtual Ideas, intensity, individuation, the actual, expression,
Deleuze
As is well known, Deleuzes Difference and Repetition claims to present
a fully differential vision of the world (Deleuze 1994). Generally
speaking, this world comprises several orders: fully differential virtual

DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0263
The Intensive Expression of the Virtual 217
Ideas; a diversity of terms or entities in which virtual Ideas are actualised

(differenciated, incarnated, etc.); and the intensive differences which
somehow bring about this actualisation. However, when we try to
understand the precise nature of the relation between the virtual, the
actual and the intensive, we are presented with a difficulty. The difficulty
is this: Deleuze not only asserts that the actualisation or differenciation
of Ideas is determined by intensity; he also asserts that the process of
intensity individuation is essentially independent of, and different in
kind to, the process of actualisation.
In the space of several pages in the fifth chapter of Difference
and Repetition, Deleuze makes two claims which seem prima facie
incompatible. He first of all claims that intensity or intensive
individuation determines the differential relations of the Idea to be
differenciated or actualised. He writes:
How is the Idea determined to incarnate itself in differenciated qualities and
differenciated extensities? What determines the relations coexisting within the
Idea to differenciate themselves in qualities and extensities? The answer lies
precisely in the intensive quantities. Intensity is the determinant in the process
of actualisation. (Deleuze 1994: 245)
Or again, the essential process of intensive quantities is individuation

. . . Individuation is the act by which intensity determines differential
relations to become actualised (Deleuze 1994: 246).
He then claims that intensity, although determinant, is nevertheless
independent of . . . differenciation by virtue of its own essential process
[i.e. individuation] (Deleuze 1994: 246; emphasis added). Or again,
even more strongly, there is a difference in kind between individuation
and differenciation in general, and any confusion between the two
processes . . . compromises the whole of the philosophy of difference
(247; emphasis added).
However, how could it be the case that the actualisation of virtual
Ideas is determined by a process that is different in kind to actualisation?
Actualisation and intensive individuation are not of the same order,
and yet the latter somehow brings about or determines the former.
Deleuze claims that the difference in kind between individuation and
differenciation:
remains unintelligible so long as we do not accept the necessary consequence:
that individuation precedes differenciation in principle, that every differen-
ciation presupposes a prior intense field of individuation. It is because of the
action of the field of individuation that such and such differential relations
and such and such distinctive points (pre-individual fields) are actualised
218 Sean Bowden
. . . Individuation does not presuppose any differenciation; it gives rise to it.

(Deleuze 1994: 247)
But now, it is not at all obvious why the dependence of actualisation

upon an intensive individuation that precedes it in principle follows as
a necessary consequence from the fact that the two processes differ in
nature. It is still not clear how, if the two processes are different in kind,
the one determines the other.
In subsequent pages, Deleuze proceeds to explain that it is by virtue
of a relation of expression that holds between intensities and Ideas that
intensity is able play this determining role in the process of actualisation
or differenciation. He writes, variously:
We think that difference of intensity . . . expresses first the differential
relation or virtual matter to be organised. This intensive field of individuation
determines the relations that it expresses to be incarnated . . . Individuation
always governs actualisation. (Deleuze 1994: 251; emphasis added)
Intensities presuppose and express only differential relations; individuals

presuppose only Ideas . . . Ideas are expressed by intensities or individuals
. . . Intensity or difference in itself thus expresses differential relations . . .
(Deleuze 1994: 252; emphasis added)
Every body, every thing, thinks and is a thought to the extent that, reduced
to its intensive reasons, it expresses an Idea the actualisation of which it
determines. (Deleuze 1994: 254; emphasis added)
It follows, then, that a precise understanding of the relation between

the virtual, the actual and the intensive hinges on our ability to grasp
the relation of expression. It has to be said, however, that Deleuze does
precious little in Difference and Repetition to help us understand exactly
what it means for intensity to express Ideas. It is the aim of this article
to address this. It will do this, in part, with reference to Deleuzes more
extensive discussion of the relation of expression in Expressionism in
Philosophy: Spinoza (Deleuze 1990a) Deleuzes secondary thesis and
published in the same year as Difference and Repetition, his primary
thesis. But we shall also initially approach the notion of expression
through an act of conceptual clarification that draws on everyday
examples of expressive relations. The reason why the latter task is
necessary is that Deleuzes discussion of the relation of expression in
the Spinoza book is very closely tied to his discussion of the particular
expressive relata comprising the two expressive triads that Spinoza is
metaphysically committed to: substanceattributesessence of substance
and attributesmodesmodifications of substance. Clearly, in Difference
and Repetition, Deleuze is not metaphysically committed to these same

specific relata. Indeed, Deleuze explicitly rejects Spinozan substance (see
Deleuze 1994: 40). Moreover, as discussed below, it prima facie appears
that Deleuzes work does not consistently treat expression as involving a
triadic relation. So we must make an effort to understand the relation
of expression in a more general way, apart from its Spinozan context of
articulation.
I. Clarifying the Concept of Expression

What, then, are the most general features of the relation of expression?
Commonly, in fact, expression is taken to be a relation between two
things, two relata: an expression (expressor, expressive element, etc.)
and an expressed (that is, something which the expression expresses). We
talk of a relation of expression that holds between all kinds of relata all
kinds of pairs of expressions and expresseds and understand that the
expression makes manifest an otherwise unmanifested expressed. We
say that, for example, emotions, dispositions and attitudes are expressed
or made manifest in facial expressions and gestures. My spontaneous
smile, for example, is said to be an expression of my friendliness,
my raised fist an expression of my anger, etc. We sometimes also say
that thoughts are expressed in language, that feelings and moods are
expressed in artworks, and that unconscious intentions and desires are
expressed in overt behaviours. In all of these cases, an expression makes
manifest an expressed by, as it were, incarnating it in a particular way.
Deleuze, however, appears to oscillate between treating expression as
involving a two-place relation and a three-place relation. On the one
hand, in Expressionism in Philosophy, Deleuze insists that expression is
a relation between three relata. As he puts it, we must distinguish what
expresses itself, the expression itself and what is expressed (Deleuze
1990a: 333). Moreover, in the context of the Spinoza book at least, this
is a strict condition, since the idea of expression remains unintelligible
while we see only two of the terms whose relations it presents (27).
In Difference and Repetition, on the other hand, Deleuze seems to
emphasise relations between two relata: By expression we mean, as
always, that relation which involves a torsion between an expressor and
an expressed (Deleuze 1994: 260). Indeed, there is next to no account of
something that expresses itself in Difference and Repetition, especially
in Deleuzes discussion of the intensive expression of Ideas in chapter 5,
which is the concern of this article.1 It can also be noted that, elsewhere
is his oeuvre, Deleuze tends to treat expression as involving a two-place
220 Sean Bowden
relation, such as in The Logic of Sense (Deleuze 1990b) where he claims

that sense is the expressed of propositions, or in The Fold (Deleuze
1993) where Deleuze talks about the way in which, for Leibniz, existing
monads express the best of all possible worlds in varying degrees of
clarity and obscurity. In these latter two texts, again, there is little to
no discussion of some third thing that expresses itself in the expressive
relation.
Be that as it may, I would like to suggest that the concepts
of expression in Expressionism in Philosophy and Difference and
Repetition share the same conceptual components. This comes out more
clearly if we focus on a number of other features of expression that arise
in the Spinoza book, and that are also presupposed in more everyday
(two-place) uses of the concept of expression.
The first feature of the concept of expression is that what is expressed
in the expressive relation does not exist outside of its expression. In other
words, there is a kind of ontological inseparability between the expressed
and its expression. Deleuze makes this point in both Expressionism in
Philosophy and Difference and Repetition. In the former, he asserts that
what is expressed has no existence outside its expression (Deleuze
1990a: 333, 42). In the latter, he affirms that the expressed does not
exist apart from the expressor (Deleuze 1994: 260). But this particular
feature of the expressive relation is also familiar to us in an everyday
way. Take, for example, the familiar claim that a persons spontaneous
smile expresses friendliness. Clearly, the expressed friendliness does
not exist outside of its expression in things like smiles. Indeed, a
person could hardly be said to be friendly if that friendliness was never
expressed or made manifest in some way. Un-manifested friendliness is a
contradiction in terms. My friendliness thus exists in, or is ontologically
inseparable from, its expressions in things like smiles.
But now, while there is an ontological inseparability between the
expressed and its expression, Deleuze also insists that the expressed
bears no resemblance to its expression (Deleuze 1990a: 333), or again
that the expression relates to the expressed as though to something
completely different (Deleuze 1994: 260).2 In other words, and this is
the second characteristic feature of expression, what is expressed cannot
resemble its expression. Following Lawlor, the non-resemblance of the
expressed and the expression is a logical and ontological requirement:
if the expressed in some sense explains or causes the expressions from
which it is nevertheless ontologically inseparable (see the fourth point,
below), the expressed cannot also be explained by, or thought in the
image of, these expressions, on pain of circularity.3 But this feature of
non-resemblance or non-identity can also be understood with reference

to the everyday example of expression given above. Clearly, my smile
and my friendliness are not identical. Indeed, even though friendliness is
ontologically inseparable from some kind of expression, my friendliness
can be expressed in a variety of different ways. Or again, consider an
artist attempting to express a complex feeling through a painting. The
painting, insofar as the artist deems it a success, will be considered
the embodied manifestation of that complex feeling. Nevertheless, the
feeling is not identical with its expression. After all, the feeling might
have been successfully expressed in other ways in a poem, for example,
or a piece of music, or even in bodily behaviour. In short, then, in a
relation of expression, what is expressed cannot be said to exist apart
from some form of expression, but what is expressed is not identical
with its expression.
The third point to be made is that, while what is expressed is
ontologically inseparable from an expressive element that makes it
manifest, the expressed is not something already fully formed that
needs only to be presented in an appropriate way. The expression is
rather the dynamic accomplishing or as Deleuze variously puts it in
Expressionism in Philosophy, the explication, unfolding, evolution and
constitution of what is expressed (Deleuze 1990a: 14, 16, 18).4 To
illustrate this idea by returning to one of our examples, we can note
that an expression such as my smile does not express something internal
and already fully formed. The expression is rather an accomplishing
of what is expressed, that is, of my friendliness towards the person
at whom the smile is directed. The expression constitutes, in a certain
sense, what is expressed. Through its expression in my spontaneous
smile, the expressed my friendliness towards someone becomes what
it is or acquires a determinate reality. Or to take another example,
consider a philosophical thought that is expressed in an essay. We can
consider the thought to be ontologically inseparable from the essay that
embodies it, even if it is not entirely reducible to that essay (the thought
might also have been expressed in the form of a dramatic dialogue, a
book, or perhaps a series of books). But also, the essay is the creative
accomplishment of that thought. The thought is not something already
fully formed that only needs to be written down. The writing of the
essay struggling with the articulation of the argument, elaborating its
concepts, responding to the criticisms and concerns of reviewers, etc., all
in the particular expressive medium that is the essay form is rather the
creative and dynamic accomplishing of that thought: the way in which
that thought acquires its determinate reality.5
222 Sean Bowden
But now, it follows from this that the expressed cannot be related
to what expresses it as a prior and separately identifiable cause is to
its subsequent effect. Because the expressed is not something already
formed prior to its expression, it cannot be correlated with that
expression in a law-like way. The expressed is not an independently
existing and prior condition of the expression. Indeed, as has been said,
the expressed is ontologically inseparable from its expression and is
accomplished in it. So my friendliness towards you is not the prior
and independent cause of my smiling at you, so much as my smile is
a particular embodied accomplishing of my friendliness. Similarly, my
intentions or desires are not the prior and separately identifiable causes
of my actions. In situations of non-reluctance and non-interference, my
intention exists in the unfolding action that gives it a determinate reality
by embodying and manifesting its defining characteristics. Or again,
my action is the dynamic specification of what it is that I intend in a
particular set of circumstances.6 In the Spinoza book, of course, Deleuze
is clear that the expressive relation that holds between substance and its
expressions is not a relation of external or emanative causality (Deleuze
1990a: 1712). There is, however, a relation between expression and
an internal or immanent causality, which takes us to a fourth, crucial
point.
Although it does not play the role of an external cause, the expressed
still has an explanatory role to play with regards to its expression. To
return to our illustrative examples, we explain my smile with reference
to my friendliness: I smile because I am friendly. We also explain my
action with reference to my intention or desires: I act as I do because of
my intentions or desires. The use of the word because here suggests
that we need to maintain the vocabulary of causality. But if we do,
we would have to say that the cause the expressed is not external
to its expression, but somehow internal or immanent to the unfolding
of its expression. As Deleuze puts it in chapter 11 of Expressionism in
Philosophy, as opposed to an emanative cause, a cause is said to be
immanent when its expression or its effect is in it in it, of course, as in
something else, but still being and remaining in it (Deleuze 1990a: 172).
This way of putting the point respects the features of both ontological
inseparability and non-resemblance between a thing and its expression-
effect. But Deleuzes discussion of immanent causality here also brings
in and qualifies the third point discussed above. Indeed, as has been said,
expressions progressively explicate and constitute what is expressed; but
equally, what is expressed complicates, inheres or remains implicated
in in the sense of immanent cause its expressions.7 In fact, for Deleuze,
immanence is nothing other than the expressive unity of explication and

implication. Translated into the terms or expressive relata of Spinozas
expressive ontology, this means that:
Things remain inherent in God who complicates them, and God remains
implicated in things which explicate him . . . [There is] the immediate and
adequate expression of an absolute Being that comprises in it all beings, and
is explicated in the essence of each. Expression comprehends all these as-
pects: complication, explication, inherence, implication. And these aspects of
expression are also the categories of immanence. Immanence is revealed as ex-
pressive, and expression as immanent. (Deleuze 1990a: 175; see also 1617)
Finally, and this is the fifth point, the movement of expression (the
explication of the implicated cause) involves a form of understanding
or comprehension, in some broad acceptation of this term. This is an
underappreciated and complex feature of expression which needs to be
clarified in three steps. First step: as has been argued, an expression
or expressive element itself reveals, makes manifest or as it were says
something about what it expresses. Thus my smile says something about
me (namely, that I am friendly); my embodied actions say something
about what I intend or desire (my actions are sometimes said to speak
louder than my words), and so on. But now, second step: what this
expressive saying involves is not only a relation between the expression
and what is expressed but also a relation between the expressive
phenomenon composed of these two elements and something that, as it
were, understands or comprehends what the expression expresses, which
is to say, comprehends the sense of what is expressed in the expression.
The expression says something about the expressed, but the sense of
what the expression says depends on how it is comprehended. Thus, to
return to an example, my embodied behaviour says something about
the desire that animates it, but the sense of what my behaviour says
about my desire can be understood in a variety of ways, by myself as
much as by others (as when someone reads in my actions a desire that
I was not consciously aware of, or could not admit to myself).
These two ideas that an expression says something about what it
expresses, and that the sense of what the expression says refers to an
understanding that grasps this sense are both present in the Spinoza
book. We should note in this regard Deleuzes claim in Expressionism
in Philosophy that one of the sources of the concept of expression is
logical, relating to what is expressed by propositions (Deleuze 1990a:
323; see also 1045). Indeed, following Deleuze, the attributes, which
express the essence of substance, are divine names: they not only say
224 Sean Bowden
something about God or substance, they are also necessarily referred

to the understanding as to the only capacity for perceiving what is
expressed (612). Or again, more fully:
What is expressed [in a proposition] is, so to speak, a sense that has no

existence outside the expression; it must thus be referred to an understanding
that grasps it objectively, that is, ideally . . . [An] understanding relates it
to the object designated, as the essence of that object . . . There is a sort of
transposition of this theory of sense in Spinozas conception of attributes.
Each attribute is a distinct name or expression; what it expresses is so to speak
its sense; but if it be true that what is expressed has no existence outside the
attribute, it is nonetheless related to substance as to the object designated by
all the attributes. Thus all the expressed senses together form the expressible
or the essence of substance, and the latter may in its turn be said to express
itself in the attributes. (Deleuze 1990a: 62)
But now, third step: the comprehension of the sense of what is ex-
pressed in an expression has consequences for the ongoing movement of
expression that is, for the ongoing explication of the immanent cause
implicated in its expressions. This idea can again be illustrated with
one of our examples: if, as has been claimed above, our behaviour says
something about our desires; and if the sense of what our behaviour
says about our desires is a matter of how they are understood; then how
this sense of our current behaviour is grasped will influence to a very
great degree our future behaviour (which is the ongoing explication
of what we are about, where what we are about is implicated in
everything we do and say about what we do).
But we can also remark that Deleuzes reading of Spinoza in
Expressionism in Philosophy takes particularly seriously the role of
the understanding or comprehension in the ongoing movement of
expression. Indeed, following Deleuze, Spinozas argument for why
God produces a modal universe depends on this feature of expression.
The argument is this: God necessarily understands himself through
his attributes which express at once his essence and existence; and
understanding himself in this way he also necessarily produces all the
things both contained in, and constituting, the attributes that is, the
things in which the attributes express themselves (the modes). Or as
Deleuze puts it:
Understanding himself as a substance composed of an infinity of attributes,

existing as a substance composed of an infinity of attributes, God acts as he
understands and as he exists, this then in these attributes that express at once
his essence and existence. He produces an infinity of things, in an infinity of
modes. That is: The things produced have no existence outside the attributes
that contain them. Attributes are univocal conditions of Gods existence, and
also of his action. (Deleuze 1990a: 102)
Or again, with reference to the above-mentioned logical source of the

concept of expression:
Spinoza is too careful a grammarian to allow us to miss the linguistic
origins of expression. Attributes are, as we have seen, names . . . The
traditional distinction between the sense expressed and the object designated
(and expressing itself in this sense) thus finds in Spinozism direct application.
The distinction necessarily generates a certain movement of expression . . .
Expression has within it the sufficient reason of a re-expression. This second
level defines production itself: God is said to produce things, as his attributes
find expression. (Deleuze 1990a: 1045)
We have now outlined five characteristic features of expression. We

have been at pains both to show how these features of expression are
addressed in Expressionism in Philosophy, and to clarify these aspects
of the concept of expression in isolation from the particular expressive
relata (or expressive triads) to which Spinoza is metaphysically
committed. This clarification was undertaken in order to clear the
ground for a fresh examination of the nature and role of expression
in Difference and Repetition. But also, having clarified the concept of
expression in this way, it now seems much less problematic that Deleuze
treats expression as involving a three-place relation in the Spinoza
book, and as involving a two-place relation elsewhere in his oeuvre.
The suggestion here is that it would be helpful to replace talk about
expressions, expresseds, and (sometimes) something that expresses
itself, with talk about (1) an immanent cause, (2) the expression of such
a cause, and (3) the sense of the immanent cause that is comprehended
in that causes expression. Moreover, it is suggested that these three
expressive elements be grasped in the context of three theses three
theses which capture the five characteristic features of the concept of
expression just adumbrated:
1. The first thesis is a claim about ontological inseparability. It holds
that some internal or immanent cause is expressed in an expression
with which it is not identical, but apart from which it does not have
actual existence.
2. The second thesis is an epistemological one. It maintains that what
the expression expresses is something like the sense of its internal
or immanent cause. We might say that, insofar as the expression is
the existence of its immanent cause, the characteristic features or
226 Sean Bowden
sense of this immanent cause, while not reducible to its expression,

can nevertheless only be grasped with reference to it.
3. The third thesis has to do with activity or production. What is
claimed here, finally, is that the expression not only expresses
the sense of its immanent cause, the expression also dynamically
constitutes or accomplishes its immanent cause, in particular
through the way in which what the expression expresses is
comprehended.
I take it that Deleuze also acknowledges these three theses regarding
expression in his Spinoza book, when he writes that Being, knowing
and acting are the three forms of expression (Deleuze 1990a: 321).
II. The Intensive Expression of the Virtual in

Difference and Repetition
Having clarified the concept of expression, we must now examine afresh
the expressive relation between virtual Ideas and intensity in Difference
and Repetition. Before doing so, however, it will be helpful to briefly
recall how Deleuze conceives of virtual Ideas and intensity.
For Deleuze, an Idea is, on the one hand, comprised of purely
differential elements which are completely determined (albeit in virtual
or potential form) through the multiple reciprocal relations they
maintain with one another. On the other hand, these virtual elements
and relations of the Idea must also be actualised in the concrete terms
and relationships that the Idea will be said to structure. Or, more fully,
as Deleuze puts it:
There are three conditions which together allow us to define the moment at
which an Idea emerges: (1) the elements of the multiplicity must have neither
sensible form nor conceptual signification, nor, therefore, any assignable
function. They are not even actually existent, but inseparable from a
potentiality or a virtuality. In this sense they imply no prior identity . . .
(2) These elements must in effect be determined, but reciprocally, by
reciprocal relations which allow no independence whatsoever to subsist.
Such relations are precisely non-localisable ideal connections, whether
they characterise the multiplicity [of elements] globally or proceed by
the juxtaposition of neighbouring regions. In all cases the multiplicity is
intrinsically defined . . . (3) A multiple ideal connection, a differential relation,
must be actualised in diverse spatio-temporal relationships, at the same time
as its elements are actually incarnated in a variety of terms and forms. The
Idea is thus defined as a structure. A structure of an Idea is a complex theme,
an internal multiplicity in other words, a system of multiple, non-localisable
connections between differential elements which is incarnated in real relations

and actual terms. (Deleuze 1994: 183)
But now, if Ideas are virtual multiplicities that are made up

of reciprocal relations between differential elements, intensities are
implicated multiplicities . . . made up of relations between asymmetrical
elements (Deleuze 1994: 244). Intensities, for Deleuze, are relations
between heterogeneous orders or magnitudes, but where each element of
this relation is itself constituted by a relation between different orders,
and so on ad infinitum. As Deleuze puts it, every intensity is E-E , where
E itself refers to an e-e , and e to - etc. (222). Moreover, in this state of
infinitely doubled difference which resonates to infinity, intensity should
be considered as the sufficient reason of everything which happens and
everything which appears, insofar as it continually creates extensities
and qualities in which its constitutive inequality is equalised or cancelled,
though without this inequality ever being exhausted (222, 228). Indeed,
throughout chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze discusses
the intensive processes at work in the production of entities in various
domains: the physical domain (thermodynamic processes), the biological
(embryogenesis, evolution), the visual (the perception of space), the
mathematical (generation of numbers), and so on. He also argues that,
in each of these domains, intensity operates as a type of transcendental
principle, always-already implicated in itself in the form of differences
all the way down, but also giving rise to qualified and extended
entities through processes which explicate (cancel or equalise) these
differences (2401). Deleuze calls these processes, following Simondon,
processes of individuation, by which is meant the establishment of
a productive communication between heterogeneous orders, and the
partial resolution of these differences in the production of qualified and
extended, metastable individuals and their characteristic milieus (246).8
These two ontological orders Ideas and intensity are thus clearly
different in nature. What, then, can be said about the expressive relation
that is supposed to hold between them? Let us turn to what Deleuze
has to say about the relation between virtual Ideas and intensity in
Difference and Repetition and map this onto the five characteristic
features of expression outlined above.
Beginning with the first feature we examined, in what sense might it
be said that the virtual Idea is ontologically inseparable from intensity?
Deleuze, as we have just seen, maintains that the virtual Idea has a
type of reality or existence of its own, namely, that of a reciprocally
and completely determined structure of purely differential elements.
228 Sean Bowden
However, Deleuze also asserts that the virtual Idea does not have
actual existence. What this means is that the virtual Idea cannot be
straightforwardly considered a stand-alone and independently existing
differential structure: we must make reference to the actual terms and
relations in which this structure is incarnated. Indeed, it would not
make sense to say that there exists a structure that is not the structure
of anything. As Deleuze asserts, we should not withdraw from virtual
Ideas a reality which they do have (that is, as a differential structure),
but we must also avoid giving the elements and relations which form a
structure an actuality which they do not have (Deleuze 1994: 209). Or
again, more fully:
The reality of the virtual consists of the differential elements and relations
along with the singular points which correspond to them. The reality of
the virtual is structure . . . We have seen that a double process of reciprocal
determination and complete determination defined that reality: far from being
undetermined, the virtual is completely determined . . . What the complete
determination lacks [however] is the whole set of relations belonging to actual
existence. (Deleuze 1994: 209)
A virtual Idea is thus said to be at once transcendent and immanent:

Transcendent, because it consists in a system of ideal liaisons or
differential relations between genetic elements. Immanent, because these
liaisons or relations are incarnated in the actual relations which do
not resemble them (Deleuze 1994: 163). However, to say that virtual
Ideas do not have actual existence outside of the concrete terms
and relations in which their structures are incarnated is not yet to
say that virtual Ideas are ontologically inseparable from intensity.
To take this step, it must be the case that intensity produces the
concrete terms and relations in which virtual Ideas have their actual
existence, by expressing, and in their own way, the differential relations
constitutive of virtual Ideas in the production of these existents. And
this is indeed the conclusion we must draw when we turn to the text
of Difference and Repetition. As noted above, intensity is certainly
independent of differenciation or actualisation by virtue of its own
essential process individuation wherein it creates the qualities and
extensities in which [intensity] explicates itself (246). But at the same
time, and despite the independence of its process, intensity determines
the differential relations of the Idea to become actualised, along
the lines of differenciation and within the qualities and extensities
[that intensity] creates (246). How can these two claims be reconciled?
It appears that we must consider the structure of differential relations
that constitutes the virtual Idea to be ontologically inseparable (as

far as its actual reality goes) from the intensive differences which,
in explicating themselves in the processes of individuation generative
of concrete entities, simultaneously determine the actualisation of this
structure in the qualities and extensities characteristic of these concrete
entities. Indeed, it seems to us that it is precisely due to this expressive
ontological inseparability of Ideas and intensity that the virtual is able to
be defined as strictly a part of the real object as though the object had
one part of itself in the virtual into which it plunged as though into an
objective dimension (209).
But now, we also see here the instantiation of the second point we
made about the non-identity or non-resemblance of the expressed and
its expression. On the one hand, the actual existence of virtual Ideas is
ontologically inseparable from the intensities that express them in the
production of concrete entities. On the other hand, virtual Ideas are
not identical with intensities, and do not resemble the actual terms and
relations the qualities and extensities in which Ideas are said to be
intensively incarnated. As already noted, the virtual Idea has its own
reality, which can be independently defined in terms of a structure of
reciprocally and completely determined elements elements which in
themselves are, as it were, merely determinable or fully differential
(Deleuze 1994: 209). And this reality resembles neither the diversity
of qualified and extended entities we encounter in experience, nor the
real processes of intensive individuation which establish the interactive
communication and resolution of disparates in the production of these
entities.
It can also be noted that Deleuze emphasises the non-identity/non-
resemblance of the virtual Idea and its expression when he recalls the
Bergsonian critique of the possible, and opposes the realisation of
the possible to the actualisation of virtual Ideas (see Deleuze 1994:
21112). Indeed, for Deleuze, as opposed to the possible, the virtual
is not thought in the image of the reality that expresses it. Whereas
the possible is an image of some actually existing state of affairs that
is mentally projected back in time prior to its supposed realisation,
the virtual is itself real. It is a differential reality which can be said
to structure actual entities and their relations, but only insofar as it is
expressed in the intensive and differential processes of individuation
which produce these entities and relations in their own way.
We thus might think of the relation between virtual Ideas, intensity
and actual entities in the following way. Virtual Ideas are comprised
of reciprocally determined relations between differential elements, as
230 Sean Bowden
well as singularities or potentials corresponding to these relations.

This differential structure is thus something like a state of differential
potentiality that will be said to be actualised in the intensive production
of actual existents. As Deleuze puts it, the power of intensity to produce
actual existents is grounded in the potentiality of virtual Ideas (Deleuze
1994: 244). At the same time, however, it is intensive individuation
which determines the specific manner in which this potentiality is
actualised (246). Actual terms and relations will thus not resemble
the virtual Ideas that structure them via the intermediary of intensive
processes of individuation.
Let us now turn to the third characteristic feature of expression
examined above: the expression is an accomplishing or constituting of
what is expressed. This aspect of expression appears in Difference and
Repetition when Deleuze discusses what he calls the progressive deter-
mination of virtual Ideas. The point seems to be this: while the reality
of the virtual Idea consists in a reciprocal and complete determination
of differential elements and relations, this reality this reciprocal and
complete determination itself depends on a progressivity that Deleuze
links with the time of actualisation, and thus with intensity. He writes:
the essential aspects of sufficient reason [that is, of the virtual
Idea] determinability, reciprocal determination, complete determina-
tion find their systematic unity in progressive determination. In effect, the
reciprocity of determination does not signify a regression, nor a marking time,
but a veritable progression in which the reciprocal terms must be secured step
by step, and the relations themselves established between them. The complete-
ness of the determination also implies the progressivity of adjunct fields . . . In
this sense, by virtue of this progressivity, every structure has a purely logical,
ideal or dialectical time. However, this virtual time itself determines a time
of differenciation, or rather rhythms or different times of actualisation which
correspond to the relations and singularities of the structure and, for their
part, measure the passage from virtual to actual. (Deleuze 1994: 21011)
So, if it is the case that, as Deleuze affirms, intensive processes of

individuation govern the actualisation of virtual Ideas, and that they
do so by expressing the differential elements and relations of Ideas
in the production of actual entities, we also see here that intensive
expression involves the accomplishing or constituting the progressive
determination of what is expressed. To put it another way, as
Deleuze does, the problematic or virtual Idea is determined at the same
time as it is actualised or solved, with the determination amounting
to the genesis of the concomitant solution (Deleuze 1994: 163).
In other words, because virtual Ideas are ontologically inseparable
(as far as their actual existence goes) from their intensive expression,
intensive individuation itself progressively determines the particular
elements, relations and singularities characterising the differential
structures of actual entities. And this should not be surprising. After
all, the structures of actual entities cannot be given ready-made: virtual
Ideas are not Platonic Ideas. Moreover, if, as seems clearly the case, the
ideal relations constituting the structures of actual entities change over
time, this will need to be explained (consider, for example, the evolution
of the characteristic phonetic structure of a particular language, or the
phenomenon of phonetic drift).9 And Deleuzes explanation would
appear to be that intensive processes of individuation determine from
one moment to the next the particular differential elements, relations
and singularities to be actualised in the structure of this or that
concrete entity (consider, for example, the way in which the phonetic
structure of a given language would be transformed over time by an
intensive mlange of phonetic variations between geographical regions
and classes, the speech of immigrants for whom that language is a second
language, the adoption of foreign words into the lexicon, etc.).
The fourth feature of expression examined above concerned a kind of
expressive causality. It was argued that the expressed cannot be related
to what expresses it as an external, prior and separately identifiable cause
is to its subsequent effect. And it should already be clear that the virtual
Idea is not related to its intensive expression as a prior and external cause
is to its effect. There is certainly nothing in Difference and Repetition to
justify such a reading. As we have seen, intensive individuation gives
rise to actualisation by expressing the elements and relations of the Idea
in the production of actual existents. However, the converse does not
hold: the actualisation of the Idea does not give rise to individuation.
Moreover, intensity is in a certain sense self-caused. Always-already
implicated in itself as differences all the way down, intensity itself is by
itself the sufficient reason and transcendental principle of all phenomena.
It is nevertheless clear that, in Difference and Repetition, the virtual
Idea the expressed still has some explanatory role to play. We can
recall here what Deleuze takes to be the order of reasons in the
production of reality (Deleuze 1994: 251). His point here is related
to the one addressed above: the virtual Idea is first in the order of
reasons insofar as it is a state of differential potentiality between merely
determinable elements that will be actualised in a specific way through
the intermediary of intensive processes. These intensive processes give
expression to the terms and relations constitutive of this potentiality
in the production of actual existents existents which the Idea will
232 Sean Bowden
therefore be said to structure. In this regard, it is useful to consider

the relation, touched on by Deleuze, between genetic potential and the
intensive environment through which this potential is actualised in
the production of organic individuals. Indeed, we can consider an
organisms genetic code to be the Idea or structure of an organism,
and thus primary in the order of reasons. It is important to remember,
however, that the elements of genetic code, considered structurally, are
determined only in relation to one another, and thus merely constitute
a potential. And this potential is actualised in specific ways insofar as
particular relations find expression in a field of variables in intensive
interaction (both within the organism, and between the organism and
its environment), and in the intensive processes that ensue from this
interaction.10 As Deleuze puts it:
genes express differential elements which . . . characterise an organism in a
global manner, and play the role of distinctive points in a double process of
reciprocal and complete determination; the double aspect of genes involves
commanding several characteristics at once, and acting only in relation
to other genes; the whole constitutes a virtuality, a potentiality; and this
structure is incarnated in actual organisms, as much from the point of view
of the determination of their species as from that of the differenciation
of their parts, according to rhythms that are precisely called differential,
according to comparative speeds or slownesses which measure the movement
of actualisation. (Deleuze 1994: 185)
And again, focusing on the example of embryology:

difference of intensity, as this is implicated in the egg, expresses first
the differential relations or virtual matter to be organised. This intensive
field of individuation determines the relations that it expresses to be
incarnated in spatio-temporal dynamisms (dramatisation), in species which
correspond to these relations (specific differenciation), and in organic parts
which correspond to the distinctive points in these relations (organic
differenciation). Individuation always governs actualisation . . . The nucleus
and genes designate only the differentiated matter in order words, the
differential relations which constitute the pre-individual field to be actualised;
but their actualisation is determined only by the cytoplasm, with its gradients
and its fields of individuation. (Deleuze 1994: 251)
In short, then, genetic information should not be considered the

external and independently existing cause of individual organisms, as
though the genes themselves produced organisms by directly operating
on and organising inert matter.11 If genetic information is explanatory
in the production of organisms, it is as an internal or immanent cause
that is inseparable from the intensive processes that selectively express

and progressively explicate it in the production of actual entities.
Genetic information is ontologically inseparable (as far as its actual
existence goes) from the intensive processes that give it expression in the
production of actual organisms; it resembles neither the actual organisms
it structures, nor the intensive processes which give it expression; and
finally, it is accomplished in or constituted by the complex intensive
processes that naturally select the characteristic structures of organisms
over time.
The fifth and last feature of expression we examined was that
what the expression expresses is the sense of its immanent cause, but
where this depends on something that comprehends or understands
the sense of what is expressed, and where this form of comprehension
or understanding has consequences for the ongoing movement of
expression the ongoing explication of the implicated cause. How is this
feature of expression instantiated in Difference and Repetition? Deleuze
quite explicitly asserts that the virtual Ideas or systems of differential
elements and relations which we call structures are also senses from
a genetic point of view, with regard to the actual terms and relations
in which they are incarnated (Deleuze 1994: 191). And in light of
the above analyses, we should understand this to mean that intensive
processes of individuation express virtual Ideas as the senses (the fully
differential essences, as it were) of the entities these processes generate.
But what can be said about the form of understanding or comprehension
upon which this expression of sense depends? What consequences does
this have for the ongoing movement of the intensive expression of Ideas?
And what does it mean to say that the virtual Idea is both an immanent
cause, as we have just seen, and, as we will now argue, the sense of this
immanent cause?
To tackle the last question first, we must recall that part of what
is meant when we say that virtual Ideas are expressed by intensity
is that virtual Ideas are constituted by intensity (the third feature of
expression). As we saw, for Deleuze, intensity and intensive processes
progressively secure the terms and the reciprocal relations that define
the Idea. The virtual Idea is indeed something like a state of differential
potentiality that will be said to be actualised in the intensive production
of actual existents (actual existents which the Idea, accordingly, will be
said to structure). Nevertheless, intensity and intensive processes secure
the differential potential that will be actualised in the production of
concrete entities. The immanent cause expressed by intensive processes
(the Idea) is thus, at bottom, intensity or difference in itself, albeit
234 Sean Bowden
seen from the point of view of the state of differential potentiality

that intensive processes establish, as opposed to the specific, differential
intensive processes which subsequently actualise this potentiality in the
production of individuals. In other words, intensity, always-already
implicated in itself, is both cause of itself and by itself the sufficient
reason of everything that happens and appears. And the virtual Idea
is this immanent cause in a certain sense: the pure, differential
potentiality implicated in, and both constituted and actualised by,
the intensive production of concrete entities. We should also note
that this clarification does not violate the non-resemblance criterion,
since the merely determinable terms of the ideal potentiality secured
by intensive processes are not identical to the asymmetrical elements
involved in these intensive processes (e.g. genetic information in no
way resembles intensive environmental factors that both constitute
and express/actualise it; phonetic structure in no way resembles the
mlange of variations in spoken language that both constitute and
express/actualise it, etc.).
But now, in what way does the intensive expression of the virtual
Idea as the sense of the immanent cause that is explicated in the
differential production of reality depend on a form of understanding
or comprehension? This question should not be taken to suggest that
Ideas in themselves might be ontologically dependent on a form of
understanding or comprehension. It is clear that Deleuze is a realist
about virtual Ideas. Rather, this question is an epistemological one about
how the immanent cause expressed in the intensive production of reality
is grasped, that is to say, how it is made sense of. And nor should we
consider the question to imply that the thinker or knower the one who
understands or comprehends the sense of the immanent cause of the
intensive production of reality might stand apart from the differential
reality whose sense he or she seeks to grasp. Indeed, for Deleuze,
not only are thinkers themselves intensive individuals (see Deleuze
1994: 2534), it is an encounter with intensity or difference that causes
thinkers to think (139, 1445).
A detailed account of the form of comprehension or understanding
that grasps virtual Ideas as the sense of what intensity expresses in
the production of actual entities is beyond the scope of this essay.
It would require a close reading of several sections of chapter 3 of
Difference and Repetition (especially Deleuze 1994: 13846, 1647), as
well as that section of chapter 4 dealing with the origin of Ideas (see
194202). Suffice it here, then, to simply outline the main claim, namely,
that a thinkers grasp of virtual Ideas that is, of the problematic or
differential potential which is expressed by intensity is due to: (1) the

thinkers encounter with something that intensively differs from and
disrupts habitual forms of recognition; and (2) the manner in which
this encounter with difference intensively generates thought, which is
to say, forces the thinker to pose a problem (see 13940, 144). For
Deleuze, when one encounters an intensive difference that cannot be
recognised or placed in habitual categories of thought, the object of
that encounter is a sign. As a sign, it expresses or says something.
It clearly does not say something about this or that determinate object;
the sign is rather said to express or to be the bearer of a problem. In
other words, the encountered intensity says something, but the sense of
what it says can only be grasped in the form a problem. However, this
problem is one that the thinker must themselves pose or constitute
(140, 164). The thinker whom Deleuze also calls an apprentice is
tasked with exploring and constituting the sense of what is expressed in
his or her encounter with intensive difference as a problematic Idea. This
problematic Idea is at first a set of merely potential relations between
elements or terms adduced by the thinker-apprentice as pertinent to the
encounter, but to progressively and more precisely specify the elements
and relations of this problematic Idea is also to generate a solution
to the problem, which is to say, a set of actual terms and relations (new
items of knowledge) which the elements and relations of the problematic
Idea will be said to have structured. In other words, thinking itself is an
intensive process that constitutes and actualises problematic or virtual
Ideas as a response to the experience of intensity. And as such, the
thought of what is expressed in the experience of intensity (of the sense
of an intensive experience) clearly has consequences for the ongoing
movement of expression, which is to say, for the ongoing explication of
the immanent cause (difference) implicated in its intensive expressions.
For the way in which intensity is comprehended by thinkers is itself an
intensive movement generative of new entities: new forms of theoretical
and practical knowledge.
III. Conclusions
The five features of the concept of expression examined in the first
part of this article are thus instantiated in the expressive relation that
holds between virtual Ideas and intensity in Difference and Repetition.
The exploration of these features of the expressive relation has helped
us to understand how intensive individuation, despite differing in
nature from the process of actualisation, can nevertheless bring about
236 Sean Bowden
the actualisation of virtual Ideas. Virtual Ideas, while not resembling

intensities, are nevertheless ontologically inseparable from the intensive
processes that both constitute and actualise them in the production of
the actual entities that these Ideas will be said to have structured.
By way of conclusion, then, and in line with the theme and concerns of
this special issue, let us note several consequences of this account of the
intensive expression of Ideas vis--vis some of the secondary literature
on Difference and Repetition and the virtualactualintensity relation.
First of all, and contrary to some widely accepted claims, it has to
be emphasised that virtual Ideas themselves do not act. Virtual Ideas
(understood here as an intensively constituted differential potentiality)
are actualised by means of their intensive expression, but they do not
by themselves have a power of action or actualisation. This claim about
the virtual thus stands in opposition to the claims made by philosophers
such as Hallward and Badiou, but also Ansell-Pearson, that the virtual
itself possesses a certain power of activity or power of creation.12
The second thing to be noted is that, contrary to the claims of critics
such as Hallward, as well as more sympathetic readers of Deleuze such as
Williams, intensities cannot be said to be virtual.13 As has been argued,
the merely determinable terms constitutive of the potentiality of the
virtual Idea do not resemble the asymmetrical elements involved in the
intensive processes that express them, which is to say, the intensive
processes that both constitute and determine the actualisation of these
ideal relations.
But nor can intensities be said to be actual, as Clisby and Roffe
appear to claim.14 The fact that intensity is defined as an order of
implicated differences between asymmetrical elements all the way down
(intensity is the unequal in itself), and the fact that intensity is the
transcendental principle and sufficient reason of all actual entities,
should caution against qualifying the intensive as actual. While I am
sympathetic to Clisbys and Roffes position, perhaps a better way to
put the point and one that I think is more in line with the general
tenor of their arguments is that the actual is intensive. Actual entities
are metastable or intensive individuals. They in some sense are their
constitutive intensive differences, and may be implicated in other,
ongoing or future intensive processes. Nevertheless, insofar as intensity is
in itself uncancellable with regard to the actual extended and qualified
forms that explicate it, intensity is something other than actual.
Finally, if intensity is neither virtual nor actual, I also cannot entirely
agree with DeLanda and Protevi that intensity is a third ontological
order, at least if this means that intensity is on an ontological par
with the virtual and the actual.15 For while it is true that, for analytic
purposes, we should not collapse the distinction between the virtual, the
intensive and the actual, there is a sense in which, in Difference and
Repetition, the intensive has a type of ontological priority with respect
to the virtual and the actual. As has just been argued, actual entities
are intensive. Moreover, if the virtual is inseparable from its intensive
expression, this means not only that the actualisation of the virtual
depends on intensity, but also that the potentiality characteristic of the
virtual Idea is constituted by intensity.
Seen through the lens of the conception of expression, such as it has
been clarified and developed here, it will appear to some readers that the
relation between the virtual, the actual and the intensive in Difference
and Repetition has now taken a quite unfamiliar form. Nevertheless, the
claims made are well grounded in Deleuzes texts, and it is therefore
hoped they will be found compelling.16
Notes
1. Deleuzes main use of the verb sexprimer in the reflexive sense as opposed to the
passive sense of the pronominal occurs in the context of his account of the model
of the proposition, which is in turn used to clarify the ontological proposition
that Being is univocal. As he puts it, being, this common designated, in so far
as it expresses itself, is said . . . in a single and same sense of all the numerically
distinct designators and expressors (Deleuze 1994: 35). Readers will note that,
in the Spinoza book, a similar argument drawing on the model of the proposition
is used to clarify the way in which substance expresses itself in the attributes
which express the essence (or sense) of substance (see Deleuze 1990a: 62). And
of course, Spinoza is a key figure in the history of the thought of univocal Being
that Deleuze constructs in Difference and Repetition. Nevertheless, outside of
this Spinozan context, there is next to no talk in Difference and Repetition of
something that expresses itself in the expressive relation.
2. It is these two aspects of expression ontological inseparability and non-
resemblance that Lawlor rightly focuses upon in Lawlor 1998, 2012.
3. As Lawlor puts it, drawing primarily on Difference and Repetition and The
Logic of Sense, the ground must remain immanent and yet, as immanent, not
result in a vicious circle (Lawlor 2012: 103). In Expressionism in Philosophy,
the non-resemblance of the expressed and the expression is also an ontological
and logical requirement, albeit of a different kind. For Deleuzes Spinoza, each
of substances attributes expresses an infinite essence, but these essences are
attributed to substance as to something else that is, to an other thing which
is the same for, and also the same as, all the attributes (Deleuze 1990a: 65).
And this must be the case, for if the essence of substance were strictly identical
with each really distinct attribute, we would have to say that for each really
distinct attribute there is a distinct substance whose essence it would express.
For a discussion of this last point, see also Nail 2008: 2068.
4. See also chapter 11: Gods nature is, as natura naturans, in itself expressive. This
expression is so natural, or essential, to God, that it does not merely reflect a
238 Sean Bowden
ready-made God, but forms a kind of unfolding of divinity, a logical and genetic
constitution of divine substance (Deleuze 1990a: 99).
5. David Morris, after recognising along with Lawlor the features of ontological
inseparability and non-resemblance, focuses on this aspect of expression in
Morris 2005: 22831.
6. For a discussion of this expressive conception of intentional action in Deleuzes
work, see Bowden 2014.
7. Wasser makes a similar point, drawing parallels between Deleuzes discussion
of expression in Expressionism in Philosophy and The Logic of Sense, when she
argues that in each case what is expressed is also the genesis or cause of the
expression. See Wasser 2007: 53.
8. On the conceptual debt that Deleuze would appear to owe to Simondon in this
regard, see Deleuze 2004; Bowden 2012.
9. For a discussion of this point, see also Bowden 2011: 159.
10. On this example, see also Somers-Hall 2013: 1806; May 2005: 88.
11. Something like this image of genetic causality is operative, not only in the
popular imagination, but also in genetic theory. See Somers-Hall 2013: 181.
12. See, for example, Hallward 2006: 28, 37, 47; Badiou 2000: 435; Ansell-Pearson
2002: 99, 111. Others have also critiqued this attribution of a certain creative
power to Deleuzes virtual. See especially Clisby 2015: 1323, 143, 145; Roffe
2012: 75, 143.
13. See, for example, Hallward 2006: 38; Williams 2003: 78, 14, 184. See also on
this, Clisby 2015: 1345; Roffe 2012: 150.
14. See Clisby 2015: 135, 1446; Roffe 2012: 1423, 150.
15. See, for example, DeLanda 2005: 86; Protevi 2010: 4212. See also John
Protevis ambivalent acceptance of this thesis in Protevi 2007.
16. My thanks to Daniela Voss and two referees for their helpful comments and
criticisms on an earlier version of this paper. The remaining faults of the article
are entirely my own.
References
Ansell-Pearson, Keith (2002) Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson
and the Time of Life, London: Routledge.
Bowden, Sean (2011) The Priority of Events: Deleuzes Logic of Sense, Edinburgh:
Bowden, Sean (2012) Gilles Deleuze, a Reader of Gilbert Simondon, in Arne de
Boever, Alex Murray, Jon Roffe and Ashley Woodward (eds), Gilbert Simondon:
Being and Technology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 13553.
Bowden, Sean (2014) Willing the Event: Expressive Agency in Deleuzes Logic of
Sense, Critical Horizons, 15:3, pp. 23148.
Clisby, Dale (2015) Deleuzes Secret Dualism? Competing Accounts of the
Relationship between the Virtual and the Actual, Parrhesia, 24, pp. 12749.
DeLanda, Manuel (2005) Space: Extensive and Intensive, Actual and Virtual, in Ian
Buchanan and Gregg Lambert (eds), Deleuze and Space, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, pp. 808.
Deleuze, Gilles (1990a) Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin
Joughin, New York: Zone Books.
Deleuze, Gilles (1990b) The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale,
ed. Constantin V. Boundas, New York: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles (1993) The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley,
London: Athlone.
Deleuze, Gilles (1994) Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, London:
Athlone.
Deleuze, Gilles (2004) On Gilbert Simondon, in Desert Islands and Other
Texts, 19531974, trans. Michael Taormina, ed. David Lapoujade, New York:
Semiotext(e), pp. 869.
New York: Verso.
Lawlor, Leonard (1998) The End of Phenomenology: Expressionism in Deleuze and
Merleau-Ponty, Continental Philosophy Review, 31, pp. 1534.
Lawlor, Leonard (2012) Phenomenology and Metaphysics, and Chaos: On the
Fragility of the Event in Deleuze, in Daniel W. Smith and Henry Somers-Hall
(eds), The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 10325.
May, Todd (2005) Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Morris, David (2005) What Is Living and What Is Non-Living in Merleau-Pontys
Philosophy of Movement and Expression, Chiasmi International, 7, pp. 22539.
Nail, Thomas (2008) Expression, Immanence and Constructivism: Spinozism and
Gilles Deleuze, Deleuze Studies, 2:2, pp. 20119.
Protevi, John (2007) Review of Hallward, Out of This World: Deleuze and the
Philosophy of Creation, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: An Electronic
Journal, 2007.08.03.
Protevi, John (2010) Adding Deleuze to the Mix, Phenomenology and the Cognitive
Sciences, 9:3, pp. 41736.
Roffe, Jon (2012) Badious Deleuze, Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
Wasser, Audrey (2007) Deleuzes Expressionism, Angelaki, 12:2, pp. 4966.
Intensity in Context: Thermodynamics
and Transcendental Philosophy
Dale Clisby Deakin University
Abstract
Deleuzes use of thermodynamics in the fifth chapter of his masterwork
Difference and Repetition ushers in perhaps the most crucial notion
for understanding this work: intensity. Given that the process of
actualisation relies on the intensive necessarily means that any discussion
of the relationship between the virtual and the actual must include a
thorough explanation of the role of intensity, and where exactly this
notion sits within the virtualactual doublet. As such, we must return
to the fifth chapter of Difference and Repetition in order to assess the
way in which Deleuze conceives of this complex and indispensable cog
in his ontological and metaphysical philosophy. In this paper we turn,
then, to Deleuzes engagement with the theories of the intensive as found
in classical thermodynamic theory. Quite simply, Deleuze will highlight
the way in which the productive force of differences in intensity remains
under-appreciated in contrast to the extensive states they create in this
classical framework. We can understand this engagement, then, as an
example of the way in which the extensive is continually privileged over
the intensive. In this paper we will outline the details of the engagement
between Deleuze and thermodynamics, as this paves the way for his own
philosophy of intensity. Furthermore, we will provide a theory of the
relationship between intensity, the virtual and the actual as these notions
appear in Difference and Repetition.
Keywords: Deleuze, intensity, thermodynamics, entropy, virtual, actual
Deleuzes work on thermodynamics in Difference and Repetition (1994)
foreshadows perhaps his most important metaphysical statements
DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0264
Thermodynamics and Transcendental Philosophy 241
regarding intensity and the production of reality. This paper will

focus on the way in which Deleuze engages with the principles of
thermodynamics in the fifth chapter of arguably his most influential solo
writing.
The concept of intensity is crucial to any reading of Deleuze that
includes any discussion of his metaphysics, be that as it appears in
conjunction with the virtual and the actual in Difference and Repetition
or in his later works with Flix Guattari. As such, an accurate reading of
this concept proves indispensable for any exposition, or indeed critique,
of Deleuzes philosophy. This latter chapter of Difference and Repetition
is the focus of this piece as it is here that Deleuze first sets out his concept
of intensity and provides a critique of the implicit presuppositions of
classical thermodynamic theory: that to focus solely on the explicated
state of equilibrium fails to take adequate account of the creative genesis
of this state. This is to say that Deleuze is not providing a scientific
critique of thermodynamics; he is no mere philosopher of science. The
principles of classical thermodynamics are utilised here to provide an
example of the more general way the extensive is privileged over the
intensive across varying domains.
We should note at the outset of this piece that the development
of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics has served to address the
main critique Deleuze makes against the implicit presuppositions of
the classical thermodynamic model.1 However, Deleuzes arguments
concerning traditional thermodynamics must be understood within the
wider context of his philosophical search for a concept of difference-
in-itself. We will find that it is precisely intensity that fills the role of
difference-in-itself in Deleuzes metaphysics.
While the development of Deleuzes argument for an expanded
conceptual understanding of intensity is crucial to his metaphysics, there
is a general lack of consensus regarding the precise role of intensity
within Deleuzes broader metaphysics in Difference and Repetition.
That is to say, there is considerable disagreement in the literature
as to where the productive potential of intensity belongs within the
relationship between the virtual and the actual.2 We will find that
Deleuzes work on thermodynamics in the fifth chapter of Difference and
Repetition makes clear the importance and precise role of the intensive
within the relationship between the dual processes of actualisation and
individuation.
The first goal of this paper will be to outline Deleuzes arguments
against the thermodynamic distinction between intensive quality and
extensive quantity, namely, that by focusing on already constituted
242 Dale Clisby
states of equilibrium classical thermodynamics ignores the differences of

intensity which produce these qualified and extended states. The papers
second aim is to outline the problematising placement of intensity
within the relationship between the virtual and the actual. In the first
section we will explore the basic principles of the first and second laws
of thermodynamics, introducing the theory of Carnot regarding the
efficiency of steam engines, the notion of entropy, and the way in which
intensity and extensity are divided based on an association with quality
and quantity. In the second and third sections the concept of entropy
will be explored more fully, including Deleuzes argument that entropy
is an extensive domain that only exists as implicated in the intensive.
In the fourth section we will encounter Deleuzes understanding of
the transcendental illusion of intensity. This will be to uncover the
productive role of intensity in the process of cancellation that underlies
the genesis of extended and qualified objects. In the fifth section we will
consider the role and placement of intensity in the metaphysical system
developed in Difference and Repetition, particularly with regard to the
relation between the virtual and the actual.
I. Principles of Thermodynamics
To come to terms with the way in which Deleuze challenges classical
thermodynamics we must first understand the principles that underpin
it. Interestingly, this is not to start with the first law of thermodynamics,
but rather with what is known as the zeroth law. This law is not
the first law of thermodynamics, but it is first in sequence, as it was
added after the development of the first three laws.3 It is the stating
of a general assumption on which the other laws rest. This law simply
states that when we bring two temperatures into contact that are the
same they will stay the same. In a more technical thermodynamic sense
the zeroth law states: There is a single property of systems at thermal
equilibrium that determines their propensity to transfer thermal
energy (Kaufman 2001: 4). This property is temperature.
The numerical value assigned to any given temperature refers
to specific molecular density and speed fluctuation. This numerical
representation of the quality of temperature as it relates to us is really
an abstract reference to the most probable distribution of populations
of molecules over the available states of a system at equilibrium
(Atkins 2010: 11). In the most general sense then, hotter temperatures
correspond to more molecules moving at a faster speed, and by contrast,
slower movement corresponds to colder states. Another way to state
the zeroth law, then, would be: temperature measures the mean kinetic
energy of the molecules (Mller 2007: 77). The usefulness of the zeroth
law is that we know when a thermodynamic system is at equilibrium, as
there is no change when two zones of temperature are the same.
The first law of thermodynamics states rather broadly that: In any
process, the energy of the universe is conserved (Kaufman 2001: 49).
This is to state the general law of the conservation of energy within a
system. In other words, energy can be used but not created or completely
destroyed. The language around the first law tends to be in terms of a
systems capacity to do work. For example, A litre of hot water has the
capacity to do more work than the same litre of cold water: a litre of hot
water has a greater energy than a litre of cold water (Atkins 2010: 18).
There is then a sense in which the capacity to do work is related to
energy in the form of heat. In classical thermodynamics, however, heat
was not recognised as a form of energy related to molecular temperature,
but rather the capacity to do work was thought to be due to a gas called
caloric. This represents the idea widely believed in this time period:
that heat is a substance that travels from a hot object to a cold one
(Ben-Naim 2008: 2). Therefore, the notion of heat we must take forward
into our engagement with nineteenth-century thermodynamics is one
where combustion is used to create a caloric that, in the case of a steam
engine, is transferred through the medium of steam in order to provide
motive power by the movement of pistons in the engine.
The first law of thermodynamics finds practical importance with the
development of the steam engine. Carnot is a crucial figure in the history
of thermodynamics as his work revolutionised the way in which this
kind of motive power is produced. Carnot is credited with greatly
improving the efficiency of the industrial steam engine. Quite simply,
a steam engine is one where the difference in temperature between
two extremes produces steam and moves a piston. Thermodynamically
speaking, then, A heat engine is a device that converts heat into work
(Kaufman 2001: 64). Before Carnot, however, it was thought that heat
(or caloric) was used up in the production of power. Carnots work
challenged this understanding. For him, the production of motive power
is . . . due in steam-engines not to an actual consumption of caloric, but
to its transportation from a warm body to a cold body, that is, to its
re-establishment of equilibrium (Carnot [1824] 1960: 51; my emphasis).
It is in this way that Carnot realises that wherever there exists a
difference of temperature, motive power can be produced (Carnot
[1824] 1960: 54). This is because of the tendency of two separate
temperatures to reach equilibrium when they come into contact.
244 Dale Clisby
Indeed, Carnot was able to identify that neither the construction

nor the type of working fluid is important for the maximum energy
production of a steam engine. As Thess makes clear, what is
important are the temperatures of the two reservoirs with which the
engine interacts (Thess 2011: 70). This is because the spontaneous
establishment of equilibrium between two different temperatures does
the thermodynamic work of the engine.
II. Entropy and the Second Law

The picture we have of the utilisation of energy after the zeroth and
first laws of thermodynamics is one where a difference in temperature
creates work. However, there is an important part of the classical
thermodynamic theory missing here. That is, any utilisation of energy
necessarily results in some degradation. If this were not the case, we
could consistently reuse energy. Unfortunately, this is not the case;
rather, as we use energy, its quantity remains constant, but its quality
is degraded (Kaufman 2001: 71). This is Carnots Achilles heel: he can
never produce a totally efficient steam engine. What he is unaware of
is that during every cycle of his engine, every time the temperatures
produce work in their movement towards equilibrium, there is energy
lost in the form of temperature change in the surroundings of the engine.
In other words, every time energy is used, some is lost or degraded in
the form of heat escaping into the surroundings of the thermal system.
We are facing the second law of thermodynamics and its measurement:
entropy.
The second law of thermodynamics can be stated in many different
ways. Most of them, however, relate to entropy. This property is tied
to the degradation of energy. More specifically: higher entropy equals
more degradation while lower entropy signals less degradation. The
important point here is that any use of energy can only mean an increase
in entropy. In this way the second law can be stated as: any process that
reduces the entropy of the universe is forbidden (Shankar 2014: 824). In
another way, the second law of thermodynamics denies the possibility of
processes in which the only change is transfer of heat from a higher to a
lower temperature (Kaufman 2001: 78). Entropy, then, is the empirical
measurement of the state of degradation of energy based on the second
law of thermodynamics. To more clearly understand this crucial feature
of thermodynamics we can approach it through three different motifs.
Entropy is often associated with the arrow of time. That is, there
are certain spontaneous processes that occur that could never happen
in reverse. A leaf falling off a tree. A pebble splashing in a pond.
An egg breaking on the floor. These are all examples of processes

that cannot spontaneously occur in reverse. Leaves do not float from
the ground to attach themselves to trees; eggs do not spontaneously
reassemble themselves and fly upwards into our hand. In the same way,
any spontaneous change in entropy will be an increase. In the language
of the steam engine, this is to state the second law as follows: You
cannot build an engine whose sole effect is to transfer some heat from
a cold body to a hot body (Shankar 2014: 795). This is because any
spontaneous transfer of cold to hot would mean a decrease in entropy,
which is akin to expecting to see a stone spontaneously fly out of a pond
and into your hand.
Another way of understanding entropy is through the order or
disorder of molecules. If we recall, we can think of temperature as the
measurement of the relative speed and density of molecules. A system
that is high in entropy would correspond to a system that is more
disordered. This in turn leads to less ability for work. Conversely, a
system that is low in entropy would be a very ordered system that has
high capacity for work. Increases in entropy, then, result in a higher
level of entropy, less capacity for work and more disorder. In this way
increases in entropy are associated with an increase of disorder in a
thermodynamic system.
Finally, we can understand entropy through the idea of tax. As
Atkins states: nature exerts a tax on the conversion of heat into work,
some of the energy supplied by the hot source must be paid into the
surroundings as heat (Atkins 2010: 41). To take this idea to its logical
conclusion, then, is to infer that at one point in the future there will be
no more available energy to use. This is what referred to as the heat-
death of the universe, a time when all the energy in the universe has
been utilised and hence depreciated through increases in entropy. We
will see that Deleuze has very specific objections to this understanding.
However, for now we can be content in the understanding of the second
law of thermodynamics as tied to the spontaneous increase of entropy
with any utilisation of energy.
A classical thermodynamic example will further help to highlight the
relationship between states of equilibrium and increases in entropy. As
DeLanda explains:
If one creates a container separated into two compartments, and one fills
one compartment with cold air and the other with hot air, one thereby
creates a system embodying a difference in intensity, the intensity in this case
being temperature. If one then opens a small hole in the wall dividing the
compartments, the intensity difference causes the onset of a spontaneous flow
of air from one side to the other. (DeLanda 1998: n.p.)
246 Dale Clisby
In this case we create a spontaneous process, a thermodynamic reaction

of the mixture of heat from the hot air side of the box to the cold
air side, eventually creating a state of thermal equilibrium. In other
words, the faster moving molecules begin to populate the cold, slower
moving, less dense side of the box. This results in a process whereby
the difference between the two temperatures is cancelled, producing a
state of equilibrium. This is the crucial feature of thermodynamics that
interests Deleuze, as Somers-Hall makes clear: what allows work to be
done by a system is not intensity (temperature in this case), but rather
difference in intensity (Somers-Hall 2013: 167; my emphasis). In the
language of order and disorder, then, the spontaneous process of two
systems (the two boxes with their molecules contained) combine into a
single system that contains more disorder, as the molecules are more
chaotically mixed in the closed system.4
The zeroth, first and second laws of thermodynamics, such as they
have been presented above, are pertinent to Deleuzes engagement
with classical thermodynamics. The zeroth law makes clear that if
two states are in equilibrium, they must be the same temperature.
Following from this, the first law states that energy is neither created
nor destroyed, rather differences in temperature relate to the ability to
do work. As we saw with Carnots steam engine, the tendency of two
separate temperatures to come to equilibrium to create work is the very
embodiment of the first law. Finally, we see with the second law the way
in which any utilisation of energy results in an increase of entropy. This
increase can be characterised in terms of the arrow of time or disorder,
or as a natural tax. What is important for us here, however, is the way
in which Deleuze engages with these fundamental principles of classical
thermodynamics in the latter stages of Difference and Repetition.
III. Entropy in Deleuzes Metaphysics

One of the most basic distinctions of thermodynamics is that between
intensive quality and extensive quantity. This is to mark the difference in
kind between the qualitative feeling of temperature and the quantitative
measurement of the molecules present in the system. To explore
this further we can return to our boxes of air. When each box is
at equilibrium we can measure the level of order of the extensive
molecules present and their relative positions. There is also a qualitative,
intensive feel to each box. When we open the hole in the wall dividing
our boxes we create a thermodynamic system. The prior equilibrium
states are disrupted by the spontaneous flow from the hot air side to
the cold air side. Thus we are presented with a mixture of two separate
zones of intensity that over time will form a new state of equilibrium.
The new placement of the molecules in equilibrium then provides us
with our new extensive and quantitative measurement of entropy.
In the words of Williams, thermodynamics for Deleuze engenders a
view of reality where energy or intensity has to be cancelled out and
distributed spatially in order to be understood and in order to have an
effect (Williams 2003: 169). As we have witnessed, thermodynamics
does uncover a principle of productive difference: the key factor for
the production of motive power is the cancellation of a difference in
temperature. However, with entropy and the consequent fixation on the
final state of equilibrium, classical thermodynamics effectively annuls
this principle of difference by fixating on the final state of equilibrium.
That is, the problem with the logic of classical thermodynamics is that
it ignores the way in which intensity actually engenders extensive states.
The key to realising this important function lies in the discovery of the
illusion of increases in entropy.
If we recall, entropy is understood as an extensive quantity (as a
measurement of a state of equilibrium) in relation to the intensive quality
of temperature. There is a problem, however, in the distinction between
the extensive and intensive when applied to entropy and temperature.
That is, entropy does not appear to be quantitative in the way that,
for example, extensive mass is in relation to intensive force. The
demarcation between extensive and intensive properties is clearer in the
relationship between mass and force, as Kaufman explains: a body of
mass M in the Earths gravitational field experiences a gravitation force
of magnitude Mg directed downward (g is the acceleration of gravity)
(Kaufman 2001: 43). What is important here is the way in which
this distinction becomes problematised in the classical thermodynamic
system.
Deleuze leans on the work of Leon Selme5 here when he states that,
of all extensions, entropy is the only one which is not measurable
either directly or indirectly by any procedure independent of energetics
(Deleuze 1994: 228). Although the precise technical details of his work
lie outside the bounds of this paper, Selmes discovery highlights for
Deleuze that the way in which we conceptualise increases in entropy
involves a form of transcendental illusion. While we will unpack the
details of this claim in time, for now we can appreciate the way
in which reformulating the relationship between energy and entropy
problematises the classical thermodynamic theory. As we saw in our
discussion of entropy, if increases in entropy are the result of the
utilisation of energy, it follows that the passage of time indicates the
using up of available energy in the universe (assuming the universe is
248 Dale Clisby
a closed thermal system). This is the classical thermodynamic model:

intensity, or energy, is cancelled in changes of entropy in the production
of states of equilibrium. As Somers-Hall makes clear, however, Deleuzes
view of changes of entropy as a transcendental illusion means that:
Whereas in the thermodynamic model, difference is cancelled within its own
domain, leading to the idea of the heat death of the universe, for Deleuze
difference can only be equalised in a constituted realm, leaving it unequalised
in its original domain. (Somers-Hall 2013: 176)
We will see in the following section that this is precisely what it means
for intensity to remain implicated in itself underneath the extension it
creates. The idea that the universe will suffer a complete devolution into
heat death as a result of entropic chaos suffers from the transcendental
illusion of intensity: that in the production of extensity, intensity is used
up. Rather, Deleuze wants to show that energy remains implicated in the
quantity and quality it creates in extension.
IV. Intensity and the Transcendental Illusion

As we come to the notion of intensity as cancelled in the production
of the extensive, there is an important distinction to be made between
the classical view of the relation between the extensive and quantity
and intensity and quality, and Deleuzes own view. Importantly, the
notion of intensity as cancelled in the production of the extensive is
key to this new distinction. As Deleuze claims, intensity is cancelled
in so far as it is drawn outside itself, in extensity and in the quality
which fills that extensity. However, difference creates both this extensity
and this quality (Deleuze 1994: 228). Deleuze here is making a clear
distinction between intensity and quality. Intensity, for Deleuze, is not
tied to quality but, in the form of its cancellation, produces extensity
and is covered over by quality (see Deleuze 1994: 223). Again, Deleuzes
argument here rests on the very fact that intensity remains covered over
by the very quality and extension that it engenders.
The production of qualified extension is, for Deleuze, only brought
about by the cancellation of intensity. How are we to interpret this
term? Cancellation is tied to the transcendental illusion. As Deleuze puts
it in a key passage:
There is an illusion tied to intensive quantities. This illusion, however, is not
intensity itself, but rather the movement by which difference in intensity is
cancelled. Nor is it only apparently cancelled. It is really cancelled, but outside
itself, in extensity and underneath quality. (Deleuze 1994: 240)
In other words, in the production of extended form, difference is covered

over. That is, intensity becomes obscured by the very extensity that it
creates. Smith provides us with a prescient example: The phenomenon
of lightning . . . is the result of a difference of potential in a cloud, a
difference in charge, but the condition under which the lightning appears
is the resolution of this charge, the cancellation of the difference (Smith
2012: 84). We are presented with the cancellation of a difference in an
extensive state, the very constitution of which covers over the process of
intensive production that lies at its constitutive heart. This idea of the
cancellation of intensity lies at the heart of the transcendental illusion
of the constitution of reality.
Of course, Deleuze is not unique in positing a transcendental illusion.
This concept first appears in Kant, as the statement of the misuse of
reason that carries us away beyond the empirical use of the categories
(Kant 1998: 385 A296, B352). For Kant, the transcendental illusion is
an erroneous exercise of thought. However, Deleuze, through Maimons
critique of Kant, deploys the transcendental illusion in a different way.
That is, it is something to be overcome in order to discover the genesis
of the objects of experience. Turning back to the principles of classical
thermodynamics, the transcendental illusion here finds form in the
misrecognition of the true nature of intensity as genetic principle in
favour of viewing intensity as purely a quality that already belongs to
extension.
A by-product of this explanation is that we are faced with the heat-
death of the universe, where all available energy is used up. This error,
for Deleuze, is precisely the result of the transcendental illusion tied
to the explication of intensity. That is, rather than disappearing in the
production of extensity, intensity remains implicated as a transcendental
principle. As Deleuze makes clear, the vanishing of difference is precisely
inseparable from an effect of which we are victims (Deleuze 1994:
228). In other words, while we only experience extended objects, we
know now that these objects are inseparable from the intensive process
that produced the extended and qualified objects of experience. Thus
the intensive remains implicated within the objects of our experience,
as an intensive spatium, in other words, a transcendental spatiality
immeasurable in any extensive way.
Deleuzes engagement with classical thermodynamic theory leaves
us with a more complex and nuanced understanding of the role of
intensive difference in the production of extended quality and quantity.
Indeed, rather than tying intensity to quality and extensity to quantity
as in the thermodynamic model, Deleuze explores intensity as a more
250 Dale Clisby
primal and productive transcendental principle. That is, the cancellation

of differences of intensity becomes the mode by which any extensive
quantity and quality originates. We must recognise, however, that
Deleuze has expanded the notion of intensity found in thermodynamics.
Intensity, as the pure form of difference, becomes arguably the central
concept in Deleuzes metaphysics.
V. Intensity and the Relationship between the Virtual

and the Actual
We are now in a position to understand how intensity is both explicated
and implicated in the objects of experience. In other words, intensity lies
beyond experience, as a transcendental principle. However, what is also
crucial to understand is the way in which intensity relates to the wider
metaphysical system Deleuze presents in the latter stages of Difference
and Repetition. That is, we must ask ourselves how intensity is related
to the virtual and the actual. Answering this question will allow us to
gauge the role of the intensity within Deleuzes broader metaphysics.
If we return to the opening of the fifth chapter, we can see
Deleuze explicitly referencing the importance of intensity for his whole
metaphysical project. Of crucial importance here is that, as Deleuze
makes clear, Everything which happens and everything which appears
is correlated with orders of differences: differences of level, temperature,
pressure, tension, potential, difference of intensity (Deleuze 1994:
222). Deleuzes intent for intensity is clear: even before he provides
the structured argument around which the expanded understanding
of intensity is to be understood, we have this statement regarding
the transcendental role of the intensive. That is, everything has its
fundamental constitution in the cancellation of an inequality. Again, as
Deleuze makes clear in regard to the Kantian view, The reason of the
sensible, the condition of that which appears, is not space and time but
the Unequal in itself, disparateness as it is determined and comprised in
difference of intensity, in intensity as difference (2223). As we have
seen, Deleuze is here referring to the way in which intensity necessarily
lies beyond experience, as a transcendental principle.
Deleuze uses the fundamentals of classical thermodynamics in order
to explore his own distinct theory of the intensive as it relates to the
production of quantity and quality. As Hughes succinctly highlights,
Science never leaves the realm of fact, but Deleuze is interested in the
constitution of facticity itself (Hughes 2009: 153). In other words, the
scientific notion of intensity provides Deleuze with inspiration for his
own philosophy, but this does not mean Deleuze is a philosopher of

science. We see this in the critical shift from the scientific notion of
intensity as tied with qualities to Deleuzes formulation of intensity
as a transcendental principle. As has become clear, intensity holds a
much greater significance and productive role in Deleuzes philosophy
than originally in the theory of Carnot and classical thermodynamics
in general. However, we are faced with a problem with this expanded
explanation of intensity in Deleuzes philosophy: how are we to
understand the transcendental principle of intensity within the wider
context of the relationship between the virtual and the actual?
One could be forgiven for considering the virtual the primary notion
in Difference and Repetition. Indeed, much of the latter stages of
Deleuzes text are taken up exploring virtual Ideas and in turn their
relation to the actual. However, our contention here is that intensity
holds the true key for Deleuzes metaphysical system. Perhaps the most
problematic and possibly contentious distinction for those considering
Deleuzes metaphysics in Difference and Repetition, then, is between the
virtual and intensity. We have seen the critical view of Deleuzes work
when this distinction between the virtual and the intensive is conflated
in the works of Badiou and Hallward respectively (see Badiou 2000;
Hallward 2006). Much of the confusion and critique of the so-called
power or force of the virtual comes from a basic misunderstanding
of the way in which the productive potential of intensity is either
connected with, or attributed to, the virtual. Indeed, as will become
clear, even within a collection of purportedly standard definitions
of the relationship between the virtual, actual and intensity we come
across varying placements and emphases concerning these central
processes.
The most potentially problematic placement of intensity within the
relationship between the virtual and the actual is to assign intensity to
the virtual. We see this most clearly in Hallwards critique of Deleuze.
Much of Hallwards argument rests on the analysis of intensities
as virtual, as he makes clear: The virtual is more real than the
actual, precisely because its reality is intensive rather than extensive,
constituent rather than constituted, spiritual rather than material
(Hallward 2006: 38). This characterisation of the virtual as more real
based on the idea that it is expressed through the reality of the intensive
propels Hallwards critique towards a conclusion in which actual beings
are mere vehicles through which the virtual is said to act. Taken to
its conclusion, this is to argue the virtual is the only domain of true
creativity in Deleuzes philosophy.
252 Dale Clisby
We come across a similar relationship between intensity and

the virtual in the work of James Williams. Somewhat surprisingly,
Williamss view is strikingly close to Hallwards. As Williams states:
Many of the most important arguments of Difference and Repetition are
developed either to show the reality and necessity of intensities as a condition
for significant events or to show that there are such things as virtual intensities
that cannot be accounted for in terms of actual identities. (Williams 2003: 8)
While the tenor of the argument is explanatory rather than critical,

we can still appreciate the way in which intensity here is described
as virtual in contradistinction to actual identities. Furthermore, for
Williams, intensive processes imply a necessary relation to the actual
and condition for the actual but also a resistance to being fully thought
in terms of the actual (Williams 2003: 178; my emphasis). Clearly
there is a distinction here for both Williams and Hallward between
intensity and the actual. In a sense, there is a certain harmony in
this description: virtual intensities opposed to actual extensities. This
harmony will become problematised, however, when we consult the text
of Difference and Repetition.
In the work of Protevi and DeLanda we come across a different
configuration of the relationship between the virtual, actual and
intensive. Rather than associate intensity to either the virtual or the
actual, these thinkers understand intensity as constitutive of a third
ontological domain. In DeLandas case, this is specifically spelled out
due to the nature of reality as a composition of different, overlapping
multiplicities. That is, below the homogeneous level of extended objects
we find a heterogeneous mixture of different processes at work in the
development of the objects of our experience. The important point
here is that for DeLanda, the virtual, actual and intensive would be
. . . the three ontological dimensions which constitute the Deleuzian
world (DeLanda 2002: 51). The formation of the object of experience
would develop along the lines of these three separate but intertwined
ontological domains: virtual Ideas to intensity to actual objects.
In the work of Protevi we find the development of a similar system.
As he states, In Difference and Repetition, then, we find a tripartite
ontological scheme positing three interdependent registers: the virtual,
the intensive, and the actual (Protevi 2013: 4). Protevi understands
the relationship between the virtual and the actual (as embodied in the
process of actualisation) as related to the process of individuation, which
is necessarily the domain of the intensive. Both DeLanda and Protevi
provide us with another way of explaining the relationship between
the virtual, actual and intensity, one in which intensity and intensive
processes are ontologically distinct from the process of actualisation that

embodies the virtual and the actual.
In contrast to these accounts we now confront the final configuration
of this seemingly troublesome relationship between the virtual, actual
and intensive. Although by no means the most widespread view, Roffe
puts forward a robust thesis wherein the intensive is to be understood
as neither a virtual principle nor a separate ontological register, but the
being of the actual. Roffe contends, in the same vein as those above,
that with intensity Deleuze comes to a concept called for at the outset
of Difference and Repetition: difference-in-itself. That is, with intensity
we can conceptualise difference as a transcendental principle. Key to
Roffes analysis is the idea that intensity is the being of the actual
as both implicated in itself and explicated in quality and extensity.
As Roffe states: For all his (important) remarks about the reality of
virtual Ideas, it is intensity that characterises the being of the actual,
both as implicated intensive quantity and as explicated quality and
extensity (Roffe 2012: 141). Intensity, conceptualised as the being of
the actual, allows for a view of the actual as a dynamic and creative
domain. Importantly, for Roffe, any conflation of intensive processes
with virtuality discounts this fundamental creativity of the realm of the
actual in Deleuzes philosophy.
We are thus faced with three different approaches to the relationship
between the virtual, actual and intensity. As highlighted above, the most
problematic distribution is to align the intensive with the virtual. This
gives the virtual a productive potential that threatens to distort Deleuzes
metaphysics into an otherworldly philosophy wherein the virtual is
said to hold some power over the actual. As regards the other two
distributions (the intensive as part of the actual or as a third ontological
domain), we can remain agnostic about them for the purposes of this
paper. We will rather turn to Deleuzes explanation of the way in which
intensity, as individuating, relates to the virtual and the actual, or more
precisely, to the process of actualisation.
In the fifth chapter of Difference and Repetition, Deleuze posits a
relation between the processes of individuation and actualisation. There
are two crucial factors concerning this relation: on the one hand, these
processes are different in kind; on the other hand, individuation precedes
and gives rise to actualisation. Deleuze states:
Any reduction of individuation to a limit or complication of differenciation,

compromises the whole of the philosophy of difference. This would be
to commit an error, this time in the actual, analogous to that made in
confusing the virtual with the possible. Individuation does not presuppose
any differenciation; it gives rise to it. (Deleuze 1994: 247)
254 Dale Clisby
At the same time, however:
It is not sufficient . . . to mark a difference in kind between individuation

and differenciation in general. This difference in kind remains unintelligible
so long as we do not accept the necessary consequence: that individuation
precedes differenciation in principle, that every differenciation presupposes a
prior intense field of individuation. (Deleuze 1994: 247)
The importance of this statement cannot be overstated: individuation

precedes and gives rise to actualisation.
When we ask ourselves what occupies the position of intensity with
regard to physical systems, we can only reply: energy. It is through
energetic differences (intensities) that extensive and qualitative objects
are developed. As an extension of the concept of intensity found
in classical thermodynamics, it is differences of intensive energy that
form the basic environment for the production and actualisation of
virtual Ideas in actual extensities. This is because, as Hughes states:
Intensity belongs to the present. It expresses the degree to which
a subject is affected by the environment in which it finds itself
(Hughes 2009: 150). That is, intensive processes occur at the level
of the environmental present, the background, or perhaps rather
underground, through which the theatre of actualisation takes place.
The process of actualisation does not occur in a vacuum. At every
moment there exists a field of intensity implicated in the explicated
objects of experience. This is what Deleuze means when he states that
individuation precedes actualisation.
Turning back to the relationship between the virtual, actual and
intensity, we can appreciate that quite simply, the virtual is limited
in its scope of influence to one half of the process of actualisation.
Individuation, on the other hand, is the process of intensity. It makes
little sense to conceive of intensities as virtual when both the virtual
and the intensive belong to two distinct but intertwined processes. In
this respect it makes as much sense to speak of actual Ideas as it does
virtual intensities. However, how are we to understand this relationship
between the virtual and intensity? In virtue of what does intensity bring
about the actualisation of the virtual?
Once again we can turn to the fifth chapter of Difference and
Repetition to find our answer to this question. It is here that Deleuze
states: Intensity or difference in itself thus expresses differential relations
and their corresponding distinctive points (Deleuze 1994: 252). In
other words, the individuating field of intensity is said to express the
differential relations of the virtual Idea. A useful example here is the
development of the embryo.6 In the development of the embryo we find
the distinctive relations between the virtual and the actual as defined by
the dual processes of individuation and actualisation. The virtual Idea
corresponds to genetic potentiality. The development of the biological
form contains the virtual, genetic potential within it, as imminent. This
potential determines the lines along which the actual organism forms.
Will this limb bud form into a hand or a wing? This biological formation
depends on a prior field of intensity, both as the environment in which it
is formed and as the constitutive elements of its own development. It is
as an intensive individual that the embryo lives the unlivable, sustaining
forced movements of a scope which would break any skeleton or tear
ligaments (215). The actual being emerges from this process of intensive
individuation. This limb bud is now a hand. In this instance we see
very clearly the distinction between the virtual Idea and the intensive
individual. The former provides the genetic potential, the latter the
environment in which the actual species comes to form.
There is a crucial clarification to be made here. Deleuze is not blind
to the Kantian problematic; there is a fundamental difference between
things in themselves and things as they appear. However, Deleuze adds
a nuance to this distinction. The intensive is not a thing-in-itself as in
the Kantian system, but rather, the intensive signifies an ontological
process by which sensible objects come to be explicated. This is the
true distinction between the actual and the intensive, whether or not
they form one or two ontological domains. As Deleuze makes clear:
Before the embryo as general support of qualities and parts there is the
embryo as individual and patient subject of spatio-temporal dynamisms,
the larval subject (Deleuze 1994: 215). Expressed in a more Kantian
way, intensity is the noumenon closest to the phenomenon (222). In
other words, intensity occupies a position as paradoxically that which
gives rise to sensation but also that which is not perceived directly. This
is due to the fact that we only know intensity as already explicated. In
the terms of our example, before the embryo develops into an actual
form that corresponds to species distinctions it occupies the position of
an intensive individual, informed by the potentiality of the virtual Idea.
This is why we must say that not only are the processes of individuation
and actualisation different, but also that individuation precedes
actualisation. In a certain sense it is quite simple: the intensive thing-
in-itself always precedes the final object as an actual, extensive form.
VI. Concluding Remarks

This paper has explored the way in which Deleuze utilises the principles
of classical thermodynamics to both explore the way in which intensity
256 Dale Clisby
is misunderstood in this classical model, and more importantly, as

a springboard for his own formulation of the relationship between
intensity and extensity. Crucially, within the classical thermodynamic
framework, intensity is only considered insofar as it is equalised in
the production of states of equilibrium. Deleuze, on the other hand,
wishes to uncouple intensity from the domain of a quality that already
belongs to an extension. As we have seen, the confusion concerning
the precise role of intensity in the production of explicated objects of
experience is based on the transcendental illusion: intensity only appears
to be fully cancelled, as intensity is thought of as a quality that belongs
to an extension. Rather, intensity remains implicated underneath the
quality and quantity it creates, as a productive difference underlying and
producing all qualified extension.
We then approached a lack of consensus within secondary literature
on the precise placement of intensity within the wider metaphysical
context of the relationship between the virtual and the actual. We face
three propositions for this placement: virtual intensities, three separate
ontological domains and actual intensity. The contention put forward
here is that, as pointed to by Deleuze, intensity has a relation to the
virtual and, by extension, the process of actualisation. Understanding
intensity as distinct from the virtual nullifies the kinds of critiques we see
in Badiou and Hallward, where the virtual is said to have some power
or force over the actual. We found that key to this formulation of the
relationship between the virtual, actual and intensity is the relationship
between the two processes of actualisation and individuation. Not only
are these processes different, they necessarily have a relation, one in
which individuation always precedes actualisation. This is due to the
intensive, as the noumenon, providing the sufficient reason of any
actual extensity. That is, just as the virtual is said to be real without
being actual, the intensive environmental present could similarly be
described as real without being extensive. While any judgement over
intensity as part of the actual or forming a third ontological domain has
been reserved, what we must understand here is that intensity forms a
fundamental cog in Deleuzes metaphysic that is often understated.
Notes
1. Essentially, the development of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics allows for
intensive differences to be cancelled into any number of potential final states;
as such, the actual process of intensive formation can be studied. For a more
detailed analysis, see DeLanda 2002: 667.
2. For a more detailed account of the divergence of views on the relationship

between the virtual, actual and intensity, see Clisby 2015.
3. It was not until the twentieth century that the zeroth law would receive its name,
as Atkins states: The zeroth law is an afterthought. Although it had long been
known that such a law was essential to the logical structure of thermodynamics,
it was not dignified with a name and number until early in the twentieth century.
By then, the first and second laws had become so firmly established that there
was no hope of going back and renumbering them (Atkins 2010: 1).
4. This definition of entropy as defined by an increase of disorder is debated within
thermodynamic theory. For our purposes, we could instead state that an increase
in entropy is associated with an increase in molecular complexity.
5. For the original work, see Leon 1917.
6. For Deleuzes use of this example, see Deleuze 1994: 251.
References
Atkins, Peter (2010) The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ben-Naim, Arieh (2008) A Farewell to Entropy: Statistical Thermodynamics Based
on Information, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.
Carnot, Sadi [1824] (1960) Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, New York:
Dover.
Clisby, Dale (2015) Deleuzes Secret Dualism?, Parrhesia, 24, pp. 12749.
DeLanda, Manuel (1998) Deleuze and the Open-Ended Becoming of the
World, paper presented at Chaos/Control: Complexity Conference, University
of Bielefeld, Germany, and at Stockholm University, Sweden, available at
< http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/delanda/pages/becoming.htm > (accessed
24 January 2017).
DeLanda, Manuel (2002) Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, London;
New York: Continuum.
London; New York: Verso.
Hughes, Joe (2009) Deleuzes Difference and Repetition, London; New York:
Continuum.
Kant, Immanuel (1998) Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen
W. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kaufman, Myron (2001) Principles of Thermodynamics, New York: Marcel Dekker.
Mller, Ingo (2007) A History of Thermodynamics: The Doctrine of Energy and
Entropy, Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Protevi, John (2013) Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences, Minneapolis;
London: University of Minnesota Press.
Roffe, Jon (2012) Badious Deleuze, Montreal; Kingston: McGill-Queens University
Press.
Selme, Leon (1917) Principe de Carnot contre formule empirique de Clausius, Paris:
H. Dunod & E. Pinat.
Shankar, R. (2014) Fundamentals of Physics: Mechanics, Relativity, and
Thermodynamics, New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press.
258 Dale Clisby

Thess, Andr (2011) The Entropy Principle: Thermodynamics for the Unsatisfied,
Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Philosophical and Scientific Intensity in
the Thought of Gilles Deleuze
Mary Beth Mader University of Memphis
Abstract
The physical sciences include highly developed fields that investigate
intensities in the form of intensive quantities like speeds, temperatures,
pressures and altitudes. Some contemporary readers of Deleuze
interested in the physical sciences at times attribute to Deleuze a
common, contemporary scientific concept of intensive magnitude. These
readings identify Deleuzes philosophical conception of intensity with an
existing scientific conception of intensity. The essay argues that Deleuze
does not in fact lift a conception of intensity from the physical sciences
to embed it as the fundamental term in his differential ontology.
Keywords: intensity, ontology, quantity, science, quality, distance,
Russell, Rosny
The physical sciences include highly developed fields that investigate

intensities in the form of intensive quantities like speeds, temperatures,
pressures and altitudes. Some contemporary readers of Deleuze
interested in the physical sciences at times attribute to Deleuze a
common, contemporary scientific concept of intensive magnitude. These
readings identify Deleuzes philosophical conception of intensity with an
existing scientific conception of intensity. But Deleuze does not in fact
lift a conception of intensity from the physical sciences to embed it as
the fundamental term in his differential ontology. Nonetheless, thinking
as inventive, erudite and influential as that of Manuel DeLanda in
Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002) or Deleuze: History and
Science (2009) appears to content itself with this misleading equivalence.

DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0265
260 Mary Beth Mader
One unfortunate result of that identification is that it contributes to a

mistaken view of Deleuze as undertaking a sort of apriorist science or
philosophy of science, and of doing so by conceptual predation on the
genuine labours of scientific inquiry. None of these characterisations is
the case, as the reflections below should make clear.
Doubtless, Deleuze does discuss scientific conceptions of intensity. But
is Deleuzes concept of intensity a scientific concept? Does he adopt a
scientific concept of intensity as his own? Is the concept he devises and
endorses in his differential ontology a scientific concept of intensity? This
essay takes the position that the answer to these questions is no. The
following reflections seek to help demonstrate how Deleuze departs from
scientific conceptions of intensity, despite the fact that he does employ
them in a certain way to construct his own philosophical ontology. Thus,
the essay argues that although Deleuze discusses scientific conceptions
of intensive magnitudes, nowhere does he endorse them as ontologically
sufficient to describe the most ultimate aspects of his own differential
ontology. Rather, intensive magnitudes and their scientific construals are
in fact given an ontological description as Deleuze situates them within
a larger, general ontology of difference.
We can specify briefly here how Deleuzes conception of intensity
is distinct from properly scientific conceptions of intensity. It is
specifically the quantification of intensities, their quantified expression,
or more precisely a particular kind of their quantification, that separates
Deleuzes ontological account of the nature and roles of intensity from
strictly scientific conceptions and uses of the concept. More precisely
still, it is practices that express intensive phenomena in extensive terms
that mark the difference between contemporary scientific conceptions
and treatments of intensities in the natural world, on the one hand,
and Deleuzes philosophical ontology of intensity, on the other. For
such extensive expression of supposedly intensive phenomena evacuates
the specificities of the very nature of intensities, for Deleuze, in the
service of the specific aims of scientific inquiry. Deleuze clearly does
not fault science for having its own aims and means, and for its
long history of devising highly refined ways of expressing intensities in
extensive terms. But such expression does not preserve the supposedly
distinctive non-extensive nature of intensive phenomena. And the heart
of Deleuzes entire philosophical ontology reposes exactly upon this
distinctive non-extensive nature of intensive phenomena. So, any attempt
to express the distinctive non-extensive nature of intensity that does not
display or account for that nature would be ontologically insufficient
for Deleuze. It may well be absolutely essential for scientific and
Philosophical and Scientific Intensity in Deleuze 261
technical purposes precisely to render intensive natural phenomena in

extensive and quantified terms, but those purposes are not the aims of a
philosophical ontology.
The effort of this article is thus to argue that: Deleuze does not
accept certain contemporary and scientific senses of the concept of
intensity; he rejects those for philosophical purposes and reasons; his
own philosophical ontology does not conceptually endorse or adopt
scientific senses of intensity; but his ontology does seek to explain the
existence of intensive phenomena described in scientific accounts of
intensive quantities.
The argument for the view that we have strong reason to believe that
Deleuzes distinctive concept of intensity is not identical to standard
scientific conceptions of intensities is presented in four parts. The first
part briefly sketches the historical origin of the concept of intensity
in Aristotles metaphysical philosophy and its medieval reception. The
essays second part shows how Deleuze deals with a particular notion of
intensity, namely, that of intensive distance, in relation to the thought
of Bertrand Russell. A third section sketches the unorthodox reading of
thermodynamics put forth by the pseudonymous science fiction author,
J.-H. Rosny. Deleuze draws in part upon this reading in his discussions
of energetics in Difference and Repetition. The fourth part of the essay
discusses Deleuzes ontological philosophy of intensity in relation to his
distinction between intensive ordination and extensive coordination.
I. A Sketch of the Origins of the Concept of Intensity

Deleuzes focus on the concept of intensity explicitly draws upon the
concepts history to make a version of intensity absolutely central to
his own philosophical ontology. Intensity is the principal name for the
kind of becoming that Deleuze deems foundational to his ontology
of difference. All conceptions of intensity in Western philosophy,
as well as the scientific approach to intensive phenomena, have an
ancient origin in classical Greek metaphysics as well as a medieval
source in the philosophy, theology and early mechanics of medieval
Europe. The concept of intensity, and the term intensity, originates in
medieval European philosophy. But its prehistory lies in ancient Greek
philosophy, specifically in a problem set out by Aristotles work. The
problem was how to understand qualitative change, or cases in which
a quality becomes more or less of itself: more or less hot, more or less
bright, more or less sweet, more or less loving. Medieval philosophy
devises the concept of intensity as a solution to this problem. More
262 Mary Beth Mader
particularly, medieval debate on the intensification, or intensio, and

remission, or remissio, of qualities responds to Aristotles view in
Categoriae 8 that some qualities, as accidental beings, admit of the more
and the less (Solre 2001: 582): states and dispositions (e.g. virtue);
affections of bodies (e.g. sweetness, heat); and affections of the soul (e.g.
anger) (Aristotle 1963: Cat. 8, b26; Cat. 8, 9a14; Cat. 8, 9a28). Aristotle
held that these changes ought to be considered of a purely qualitative
kind, despite his formulation the more or the less, with its apparently
quantitative ring. He termed this qualitative sort of change alteration,
and distinguished it from his concept of quantitative change (increase or
decrease). Change in quantity by definition requires that what undergoes
such change have distinct, additive parts and be divisible. Alteration is
analytically distinct from this kind of quantitative change (increase and
decrease) because a quality can become more or less of itself without any
strictly quantitative increase or decrease, and vice versa. Thus, alteration
is a kind of change that is not quantitative; the more and less here must
themselves be thoroughly qualitative.
Beginning in the medieval period itself, however, this purely
qualitative version of alteration or intensive change is treated
to increasingly quantitative explanation, ending in the complete
quantification of quality and its becoming that we find in todays
scientific conceptions of intensive quantities. That is, a quality itself
comes to be understood as having parts that are susceptible to addition
and subtraction and thus are liable to being treated, ultimately, in
quantitative terms of some sort.1 Thus, the question whether alteration
in quality (later, intensive change) may be expressed correctly in
quantitative terms not only is found explicitly in Aristotles own
philosophy, it is the source of the very invention of the notion of intensity
and intensive change in philosophy after Aristotle. This question persists
in contemporary philosophy and is at the heart of the question of the
distinction between philosophical and scientific conceptions of intensity.
II. Becoming Measurable: Deleuze and Russell on the

Conversion of Intensive Distance into Extensive Length
To approach directly the question of this distinction between scientific
conceptions of intensity and Deleuzes philosophical concept of intensity,
let us now turn to Deleuzes thought on intensive quantity and the
ontology of measure. Deleuze holds that science identifies intensities in
the natural world (pressures, temperatures, altitudes), but does not have
a theory of intensity that does not ultimately reduce intensity to extensive
terms. What is the evidence for this view? To show how science, and
much of mathematics, reduces intensive realities to extensive ones, let
me turn to a clear paradigm case of this, drawn from the mathematical
thought of Bertrand Russell. This is Russells explicit account of how
an intensive quantity may conceptually be rendered in extensive terms.
Russells account is not only known by Deleuze, but is cited by him
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 483).2 First, however, let me note that my
shift to a mathematical instance, here, presumes a good deal about the
relation between mathematics and the physical sciences. In particular,
it presumes that mathematical expression is fundamental to the proper
pursuits of scientific inquiry, and that the distinction between extensive
and intensive quantities in the physical sciences is also expressed in
mathematical terms, and hence is a part of the mathematical sciences.
I take it that Deleuze accepts these general points, as do many physical
scientists themselves, and many philosophers of science.3 It is also an
assumption almost too common to mention that many physical scientists
and philosophers of science conceive of mathematics of some sort as the
ultimate, universal and necessary language of science Hartry Fields
fascinating 1981 work, Science Without Numbers, notwithstanding.
With respect to Deleuzes acceptance of this view, we might quibble
about whether he simply accepts a common self-conception of scientific
practitioners, because it is theirs, or whether he has a more developed
philosophical argument that leads him to this position. I will not
satisfactorily enter this debate here. Suffice it to say, for the present,
that he does seem to accept the position, especially in What Is
Philosophy?4
In A Thousand Plateaus, in the section entitled The Mathematical
Model, Deleuze and Guattari make explicit use of Russell and
Meinongs mathematical thought, and in particular of Russells account
of magnitude and distance and the question of their measurability. There
they employ Russells thought from The Principles of Mathematics to
help them distinguish between two kinds of multiplicities, one metric
and striated, and the other not metric, but allowing itself to be
striated and measured only by indirect means, which they always resist
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 483). They are particularly interested in a
concept of distance that they think of as intensive, although Russell
himself reserves the term for other phenomena.5 In The Principles
of Mathematics, Russell proposes a conception of distance according
to which distance may be a quantity or magnitude, but it need not
be one. He specifies that his conception of distance is used in a
generalized sense, and not uniquely with respect to space or time
264 Mary Beth Mader
(Russell 1903: 171). Distances are relations that apply to certain kinds of
series, including a series such as colours arranged in terms of immediate
resemblance of shade, or a time-series about which one can say that it
includes more and less recent events, which may be understood as having
a distance from the present less than that of other events (Russell
1903: 171).
To be more precise, as he defines it, a distance is a one-to-one relation
that holds between any pair of terms of a given class (Russell 1903:
180), is asymmetrical, commutative (253), indivisible, and is not additive
(180). It also holds only between terms in a series, is intimately
connected with order and implies that the terms between which it holds
have an ultimate and simple difference, and not one capable of analysis
into constituents (172). Moreover, it is to be distinguished from mere
or bare difference, especially for the reason that distance actually has
a sense (or a direction) (172). Russell specifies: we can distinguish the
distance of A from B from that of B from A (172). Further, distances,
he holds, are no more capable of being added than are pleasures: The
sum of two pleasures is not a new pleasure, but is merely two pleasures.
The sum of two distances is also not properly one distance (17980).
Russell makes it clear that because distances are . . . relations, they are
therefore indivisible and incapable of addition proper. No distance is
really a sum of other distances, therefore (181). Hence, strictly speaking,
distances are not measurable.
However, Russell also argues that the relation of distance, despite
having the properties of indivisibility, directionality and non-additivity,
can become measurable. But in order for a distance to become
measurable, and hence additive, it must undergo a special sort of
treatment, for Russell. For a thing to be measurable Russell means that
it has the ability to have numbers assigned to it. So, the question is how
numbers could be applied to these kinds of relations called distances,
even though these relations appear to lack the properties requisite for
measure. That is, how can an indivisible, non-additive relation have
numbers assigned to it in a legitimate way?
Russells reply is that two axioms must be applied so as to render
distances measurable: the axiom of Archimedes and the axiom of
linearity. In the plain language that Russell supplies, these amount, first,
to the proposition that given any two magnitudes of a kind, some finite
multiple of the lesser exceeds the greater; and, second, that a magnitude
can be divided into n equal parts (Russell 1903: 181, n.*) or every
linear quantity can be divided into n equal parts, where n is any integer
(254).
Russell explains the modifications that must be made:

Let it be agreed that, when the distances a0 a1 , a1 a2 . . . an1 an are all equal and
in the same sense, then a0 an is said to be n times each of the distances a0 a1 ,
etc., i.e. is to be measured by a number n times as great. This has generally
been regarded as not a convention, but an obvious truth; owing however to
the fact that distances are indivisible, no distance is really a sum of other
distances, and numerical measurement must be in part conventional. (Russell
1903: 180181)
He concludes:
It then becomes an axiom, which may or may not hold in a given case,
that equal stretches correspond to equal distances. In this case, co-ordinates
measure two entirely distinct magnitudes, which, owing to their common
measure, are perpetually confounded. (Russell 1903: 181)
By reference to this Russellian argument, we can now understand

Deleuzes position on the distinction between intensity in his sense and
its treatment in scientific discourse. Deleuzes position is that science or
what he means by science operates, to use Russells terms, with the
conventional type of numerical measurement of supposedly intensive
realities that have actually been converted into extensive quantities.
We find evidence that this is Deleuzes position, as well as evidence
that Deleuze endorses and positively employs a notion of intensive
distance in his own ontology, in Difference and Repetition. There, he
writes, about an intensive notion of depth:
In a sense, difference in depth is composed of distances, distance being not
an extensive quantity, but an indivisible asymmetrical relation, ordinal and
intensive in character, which is established between series of heterogeneous
terms and expresses at each moment the nature of that which does not divide
without changing its nature. (Deleuze 1994: 2378)
The first part of the definition here is exactly the Russellian notion of
distance; the definition concludes with the Bergsonian claim that such a
reality can only divide if it also changes in nature.
More importantly, still, Deleuze writes: Ordination in no way
presupposes the repetition of the same unit and Ordinal construction
does not imply a supposed same unit but only . . . an irreducible notion
of distance the distances implicated in the depth of an intensive spatium
(ordered differences) (Deleuze 1994: 2323). The position Deleuze
argues for here is that ordinality does not require identical units. All
that ordinality needs is a certain kind of serial difference that is ordered,
and that this order can be conceived as a kind of distance, albeit an
266 Mary Beth Mader
intensive and not a conventionally converted one. This distance he calls

irreducible.
It is here that the logical notion of distance crafted by Russell plays
an evident role. But Deleuze resolves the problem of the divisibility of
the intensive and the ordinal differently than does Russell. Recall that
Russell eventually admits a kind of measurability of distances, which
are intensive (since they have a sense and are asymmetric), through
the conversion process described. This he does following Meinong,
who specified that such devolved forms of measure were surrogate
measures (surrogative Messungen). Russell and Meinong thus both held
that although distances are immeasurable, they can be made indirectly
to correspond to lengths, which by contrast are typical, Euclidean
extended quantities that are measurable. In this way, we can produce
a class of devolved measures, useful perhaps for practical purposes,
but philosophical and logically weak. The above-described process
of making intensive distances measurable was just this mathematical
procedure for converting them into measurable lengths.
Deleuzes solution is not to distinguish between a pure, correct
philosophical account of intensive difference, on the one hand, and an
applied, unfortunately impure and indirect form of measure, on the
other, as do Russell and Meinong. Deleuzes solution, which draws to
some extent upon Bergsonian insights about qualitative multiplicities,
denies both that intensity is divisible and that it is indivisible.
Deleuze very clearly identifies many of the key features of extensive
quantities in a way that accords neatly with Russells exposition.
Notably, he provides the heart of the axiom of linearity as a necessary
feature of extensive quantities, writing that these quantities are defined
by the equivalence of the parts determined by the unit (Deleuze 1994:
237).6 Deleuzes enumeration of the essential features of extensive
quantity is meant in part to demonstrate clearly the ontological ground
for a particular kind of divisibility that extensive quantity can undergo.
In the case of an extensive quantity, Division can therefore take place
and be continued without any change in the nature of what is being
divided (Deleuze 1994: 237). By contrast, intensive quantity may be
divided, although in a special sense, since intensive quantities are
continuous and insofar as they have parts those parts are not external
to each other. We can think of intensive distance as a generalised notion
of an ordinal distance with which we are already familiar: an altitude. An
altitude, even if it is expressed in quantitative, extensive terms, cannot
be disaggregated into like parts. It is not composed of traditional or
Euclidean distances, but of degrees of distance from some orienting
point; it is not a length, symmetrically measurable from either end. But

we could still say that an altitude could in a sense be divided: the jet could
drop or the falcon dive and we can compare the new and old altitudes.
But the comparison should force us to notice that even if we impose an
identical cardinal unit of length on the ordinal reality of a distance from
an orientating point, we cannot hold that the first metre above sea level
is of the same nature as the final 10,668th metre the airliner occupies at
cruising altitude. This change in an intensive quantity not merely tracks,
but positively generates a qualitatively new state, and the same is true
for an increase in altitude. The asymmetry of the intensive quantity
that is altitude is vividly clear when looking down a mountainside
differs so starkly from looking up the same mountainside. Deleuze
contends that such intensive distance and the novelty it generates is
fundamental to being, although it can be rendered measurable, following
such procedures as those Russell outlines. (Once that intensive distance
is rendered measurable, we can then perhaps comfort ourselves with
the thought that, after all, the final metre at the mountains summit is
just another metre, identical to the climbs first.) Intensity describes the
difference that makes a difference in the ordinal and oriented realities
of the physical world. For one consequence of Deleuzes view is that
such intensive ordinates are not mere products of consciousness but
are veritable elements of being quite apart from a phenomenology of
intensive difference. A full account of this generative aspect of intensive
difference is beyond the scope of this essay. But we can note here that
although Russell identifies the obstacles that lie in the way of measuring
intensive distance and the conventional suppositions needed to overcome
them, Deleuze emphasises the positively generative ontological nature of
such intensive realities.
Thus, an intensive quantity for Deleuze is also not indivisible, because
it can in a sense be divided, or decomposed, in the case of a speed, into
its parts. However, its parts, times and distances, are not capable of
being added together, since they are different sorts of things without an
equivalent unit in common. Therefore, what is paradoxical or odd about
the claim that an intensive quantity is not indivisible is that the kind of
divisibility it has, in an important way does not divide it, since the initial
it (in this case, a speed or a temperature) does not remain the same in
kind. A speed divided does not survive this division as a speed, that is,
as a relation, or better, a co-ordination, of a set of times with a set of
positions. So, Deleuze writes: In a sense, it is therefore indivisible, but
only because no part exists prior to the division and no part retains the
same nature after division (Deleuze 1994: 237). Where Deleuze grants
268 Mary Beth Mader
this as a kind of division that is most interesting and important precisely

because of its exposure of the fusion of heterogeneous terms found in
intensive quantities, Russell simply sees relatively weak correspondences
established between such intensive quantities and legitimately divisible
and measurable extensive quantities.
Here, we are struck by the convergence of twentieth-century
mathematical philosophy with the medieval history of the philosophy
of intensity. For Russells examples preserve a resistance to measure
that recalls the ancient and medieval insistence upon a fundamentally
and stubbornly heterogeneous form of qualitative becoming. What is
proper to intensive quantities prior to their conversion was, it turns
out, unconvertible. With the axiomatic conversion of intensive distances
to extensive lengths, the difference at the heart of intensive distance is
left behind, is rendered equal by the axiomatic stipulation that posits
identical units of measure. As we have seen, Deleuze is very clear on
the point that the sort of ordinality he identifies and affirms is one that
does not require identical units so as to order. Thus, Deleuze reads
the sort of order Russell analyses in his mathematical philosophy of
intensive distance as a kind of order that is anti-measurable or that
resists measure, rather than a kind of order that would simply be proto-
measurable, or awaiting measure.7 In other words, the imposition of
measure upon these ordered, intensive series does not transmit their
native sort of non-metric ordinality into the language of extensive,
symmetrical lengths.
III. An Unorthodox Thermodynamics: Rosny,

Energetics and Intensity
Most of the works in science and the philosophy of science that
Deleuze considers in his published writings date chiefly from the early to
mid-twentieth century. Numerous developments in the natural sciences
subsequent to the mid-twentieth century go unmentioned by him; he can
hardly be said to have sought to develop a comprehensive philosophy of
science. But he was strongly influenced by philosophers more narrowly
devoted to just that sort of philosophical task. For instance, he admired
and used the work of the progressive and contrarian philosophers of
science, Gilbert Simondon and Raymond Ruyer, even in his last writings.
Among the important but overlooked sources for Deleuzes thought
on science is the heterodox reading of thermodynamics proposed
in J.-H. Rosnys 1922 book, Les Sciences et le pluralisme (Rosny
1930).8 Although Rosny was the pseudonym for several authors known
mainly as important originators of the genre of science fiction, only

one of these, J.-H. Rosny, the Elder, or Joseph Henri Honor Boex-
Borel, authored this work. The book offers an analysis of the status
of intensive quantities in energetics and an argument for the view
that intensive quantities cannot be reduced to homogeneous, extensive
quantities in the sciences of energy as they are construed in the early
twentieth century. That is, Rosny clearly argues that, philosophically and
conceptually speaking, probabilistic expressions of relations between
quantities are useful, shorthand formulations, but they should not
be considered to be conceptually reliable representations of the real
nature of intensive quantity. This is because intensive quantity in the
scientific discourses important to Rosny is always composed of a ratio
or relation between two quantities, and because this relation itself
is not properly speaking describable as quantitative. In his analysis
of the thermodynamics and energetics of the period, Rosny argues
that work takes place only under conditions of orders of differences:
differences of temperature, pressure, potential intensities in the science
of thermodynamics (Rosny 1930: 65). He then generalises this principle
to cover all change, claiming that a perfectly homogeneous world
would be devoid of change. The source of any instance of energy
is an intensity, he holds, and every intensity is the product of a
difference. He further claims that if energy is fundamentally intensity,
then sums of energy would be sums of differences (66). The
conclusion to this series of proposed equivalences, for Rosny, is
that we ought not to conceive of energetic quantity as founded in
homogeneity. That is, homogeneous quantity in energetics would be
nothing more than a handy fiction; we would be adding differences,
differences of the same order, and moreover, differences that would be
convertible into differences of another order (67). So, if every energetic
phenomenon is ultimately and finally a difference in charge, potential,
temperature, etc. that cannot be reduced to any unitary expression,
then Rosny thinks that the application of certain familiar mathematical
operations to thermodynamic phenomena is threatened when we
properly conceive of those phenomena as irreducibly heterogeneous
at base. In particular, features that depend on the supposition of
homogeneous units, such as additivity,9 would have no founded
conceptual basis. Rosny thus takes himself to be identifying a conceptual
error in the quantitative reasoning at the heart of thermodynamics.
Thus, his charge is that there is a conceptual or philosophical error
in the application of certain mathematical operations to the field of
thermodynamics.
270 Mary Beth Mader
His view implies that thermodynamic thinking requires modification.

Discussing this allegedly necessary modification, Rosny explains that:
since intensity always expresses a difference . . . it cannot be composed of two

homogeneous terms, but it must be composed of two series of heterogeneous
terms. Thus, a difference of temperature or of potential would be comparable
not to a difference between two uniform levels, but to a difference between
irregular levels, for example, the difference of level between the irregular
mountain summit and its less irregular base. (Rosny 1930: 67)
Lest this not be sufficiently unorthodox, Rosnys subsequent argument

advances the same position with respect to extensity. Just as
conventional thermodynamic accounts that use the notion of
homogeneous quantity to understand intensive phenomena are fictions
that do not correspond to the reality concerning work or change in the
physical world so, likewise, Rosny holds, the notion of uniform energy
in thermodynamics should be considered to be a mere (useful) fiction. As
in the case of the addition of intensive quantities, he argues, Energetic
extensity is an addition of differences to which we can attribute only a
kind of statistical equivalence and not a real uniformity (Rosny 1930:
68). In Rosnys refusal of statistical measure we should surely see the sort
of reluctance to grant a scientific legitimacy to statistical representation
that Bachelard discusses in his account of the rise of the probabilistic
sciences.
As for Deleuze, he clearly adopts and endorses from the work
of Rosny the view that intensity in itself should be conceived of as
ineliminably complex, or coupled. Deleuze writes: each intensity is
already a coupling (in which each element of the couple refers in turn
to couple of elements of another order), thereby revealing the properly
qualitative content of quantity (Deleuze 1994: 222). Indeed, it is this
qualitative content of quantity, philosophically discernible at the heart
of quantity, that Deleuze seems to hold is of no interest or use to
the sciences he discusses. Deleuze affirms this understanding of the
properly qualitative nature of quantity when he claims, by reference
to Rosny, that: the fiction of a homogeneous quantity vanishes with
intensity (Deleuze 1994: 237). For his part, Rosny writes about pairs
of energetic differences that account for work, such as the presence
of two different volumes of water at different temperatures: we do
not get identical couples; what we get are couples where the averages
of infinitesimal energies form totals that are sufficiently equivalent for
our rough measures. Further: We are becoming more and more used
to considering formulas in mechanics and even more so in physical
chemistry, as sums of approximations none of which prevents us from

using them as if they were absolute formulas (Rosny 1930: 68).
It must be recognised, then, that although Rosny accepts and employs
certain contemporary, standard definitions of intensive and extensive
quantity, his philosophical argument expressly challenges the standard
practices of using averages and statistical probability to equalise or
to homogenise quantities that by definition contain units, measures
or elements that differ from each other in non-quantitative ways.
Again, the issues are how such equalisations or homogenisations take
place, and whether they are philosophically legitimate. Rosny discusses
practices for rendering internally differing types of quantities additive,
and it is here that averages and probabilities play a homogenising role;
they permit approximations instead of absolute expressions of measure
or of quantities in relation to each other. The approximations are
accomplishments; for Deleuze, they are achieved at the expense not
simply of an absolute form of measure, but at the cost of concealing
their source, namely, intensive difference. Deleuze looks to both Russell
and Rosny for efforts to display these processes of crafting equalities and
homogeneities out of the intensively unequal and heterogeneous.
In fact, in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze specifically describes
the very quest for the equalisation of values as thermodynamic, there
hardly a philosophically laudatory characterisation (Deleuze 1994: 225).
However, he is concerned not only with the reduction of difference,
but with its production. He seeks an ontology that would express both
of these processes. However, this aim is complicated by the intrinsic
nature of the intensity he seeks to describe. Deleuze says at least
twice that our tendency to consider intensive quantities with epistemic
suspicion is based on the ontological reality that intensity in itself is
not known; it is only grasped once it is cancelled out in extensity and
quality that is, once it has undergone the sorts of conversions and
reductions we have seen, in the order of reasons, in the arguments
of Russell and Rosny (2234). This self-undoing is expressed in the
formulation: difference is the sufficient reason of change only to the
extent that the change tends to negate the difference (223).
IV. Intensive Ordination and Extensive Coordination

Specialist views diverge on how to understand Deleuzes conception of
intensity.10 This divergence includes disagreement on whether intensity
for Deleuze is actual, virtual or of some third ontological sort. It may be
that Deleuzes very understanding of intensity can go some way towards
272 Mary Beth Mader
explaining some of this divergence. Deleuze construes intensity as the

ultimate matrix of all phenomena, of the sensible, and as the source
of extensity and quality (Deleuze 1994: 222). Despite this, however,
intensity is not graspable in itself; intensive, ordinal difference generates
the sensible, but as originating difference it is not itself sensible. So,
if intensity generates extensity and quality, but is itself not discernible
as those products, we can go wrong in our understanding of it if
we expect it to be graspable and comprehensible as an extended or
qualitative phenomenon. If we understand intensity only through its
extensive and qualitative yield, that is, on the basis of its after-the-
fact products, we will go wrong. To develop an ontology of intensity
based on the cancellation of difference that occurs in the actualisation
of an extensity out of an intensive matrix would be to craft only a
partial ontology, an ontology of actualised phenomena rather than an
ontology of actualisation. In Difference and Repetition, this is what
Deleuze identifies as an alliance between science, philosophy and good
sense, but it is not Deleuzes own ontology of intensive difference
(Deleuze 1994: 224). It should be noted, however, that in his last work,
What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze also clearly rejects Bergsons and Erwin
Strauss views of science, arguing that they wrongly see science as dealing
only with the actualised instead of the actualisation or actualising, and
hence represent philosophers who operate with a bad caricature of
science (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 155). Instead, Deleuze endorses
the position he identifies with Paul Klee, namely, that mathematics and
physics address the functional and in so doing take not the completed
form but formation itself as their object (Deleuze and Guattari 1994:
155).
Deleuzes focus on the mathematical function is indeed essential to
his understanding of the proper place and scope of science. It is this
focus that allows us to differentiate between science and philosophy, and
between Deleuzes philosophical notion of intensity and what he takes to
be the keystone of scientific inquiry and practice. The passages in What
Is Philosophy? on the distinctive centrality of the function to science are
illuminating on this question. From Deleuzes rich analysis of the role
of the function in science, we wish to highlight here the identification
of the function with the coordination of independent variables (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 155). As I have elsewhere argued, Deleuze regularly
distinguishes between the coordination of independent variables and the
ordination of variations.11 The former is an operation characteristic of
the sciences while the latter is the province of philosophical expression.
Notice the explicit distinction between intensive ordination, on the
one hand, and spatio-temporal coordinates, on the other, in Deleuzes

presentation of an ontology of the concept itself as an intensity. About
the concept itself, Deleuze writes: It does not have spatiotemporal
coordinates, only intensive ordinates (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 23).12
According to Deleuze, the aim of science is to create the conditions
for reference to states of affairs so as to determine the truth or falsity
of propositions and functions that express referential claims.13 At the
conceptual heart of this endeavour is the coordination of variables. This
is a project entirely different from the philosophical effort to compose
concepts, that is, to put conceptual elements together in an intensive
formation. The concept, Deleuze claims, is not a proposition at all;
it is not propositional . . . Propositions are defined by their reference
(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 22). Deleuze speaks of propositions and
functions indifferently in this text: A scientific notion is defined not
by concepts but by functions or propositions (117). One condition
necessary for the referential power of functions and propositions is the
coordination of intensive phenomena with points in space and time; to
map purely intensive ordinates onto space and time is to functionalise
an intensive reality. Deleuze here attempts to expose the conceptual
conditions for the very referential force of scientific propositions and
functions. The operations he has in mind are those operations by
which abscissas or successive linearizations are formed that force
intensive ordinates into spatiotemporal and energetic coordinates, by
which the sets so determined are made to correspond to each other
(22). Once again, we see Deleuzes attention to a process of matching
up, of mapping onto, or of co-ordering. These moments of co-ordering
are crucial to his argument that although intensive realities can be
paired up with extensive (or spatio-temporal) ones, and this is exactly
what scientific thought does, philosophically they must be conceived
of as distinctively different and independent sorts of realities. Scientific
intensity is Deleuzes philosophical intensity rendered measurable. For
Deleuze, philosophical intensity is the ground for scientific intensity.14
In fact, this distinction is clearly stated in terms that admit that in
the context of scientific expression intensive ordinates have become
tied to extensities. Deleuze explains that intensive ordinates have
different statuses, depending on whether they are parts of an intensive
philosophical concept or a scientific function. In the first case, intensive
ordinates are internal components of the concept. However, in the
second case, intensive ordinates are only coordinates of extensive
abscissas in functions (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 127). Hence, when
they are expressed as functions in the discourses of science a form of
274 Mary Beth Mader
expression that is a necessary condition for reference itself intensive

ordinates are only co-ordered with extensive abscissas, and no longer
purely intensive phenomena. In other words, the ordering mechanism
of the mathematical function pairs intensive ordinates with extended
phenomena (abscissas) thereby extensifying them, and so depurifying
them as intensive phenomena. The echo of the Russellian process by
which intensive distance is converted to extensive length resounds here.
A final point of evidence for the non-scientific character of Deleuzes
concept of intensity can be adduced: several important pages in
Difference and Repetition make it clear that Deleuze seeks to distinguish
his own philosophical conception of intensive quantity from the scientific
conceptions of intensive quantity with which he is familiar. There,
Deleuze works to make room not merely for the idea of particular
energetic systems, but for the idea of what he terms energy in
general or intensive quantity (Deleuze 1994: 240). Crucially, about
this concept of intensive quantity as energy in general, he writes: In
this sense, energy or intensive quantity is a transcendental principle,
not a scientific concept (240; emphasis added). These passages seem
to be stark evidence for the view that Deleuze aims to develop his own,
philosophical or ontological conception of intensive quantity. Further,
here he explicitly asserts that this sense of intensive quantity is not
a scientific one. Plainly, part of what separates his conception from
the scientific conception rests on his distinction between empirical and
transcendental principles (241).15 This essay has not addressed this
critical distinction in Deleuzes thought, but its evocation in Difference
and Repetition would seem a clear indication that his own conception
of intensity is not synonymous with any scientific notions of intensive
quantity. So, although it is of course possible to reject or critique this
distinction between types of principles, or its supposed place in Deleuzes
argument, it does not seem plausible to deny that in these passages
Deleuze seeks to develop an expressly non-scientific, but philosophical,
conception of intensive quantity, or of intensity.
V. Conclusion
In Science and Dialectics in the Philosophies of Deleuze, Bachelard and
DeLanda, James Williams argues that Manuel DeLandas reading of
Deleuze runs the risk of identifying scientific theory with philosophical
theory (Williams 2006: 101). As I hope to have shown, this strikes me
as indeed a risk if we do not heed the sorts of distinctions Deleuze seeks
to craft regarding the conceptual conditions for the project of science.
Deleuzes position is that there is a reality to intensive phenomena

that is inexpressible in extensive terms, and that this reality is falsely
expressed if rendered in extensive terms. Deleuze does not endorse
scientific accounts of intensive phenomena as philosophically adequate.
To return to the Russellian example, the initial intensive conception
of distance simply does not survive its rendering in extensive terms.
For Deleuze, the proper province of philosophy, as distinct from that
of the sciences, is to attend ontologically to intensive realities and to
their unique relations with extensity and quality. It is not the purpose
of science to seek to develop an ontology of these intensive realities.
Deleuze does not enjoin science to adopt the project of ontology that is
philosophys pursuit. For these reasons, we must be cautious when we
suppose that the convergence between contemporary scientific accounts
of intensive phenomena and Deleuzes positive ontology of intensity is
strong or complete.
The preceding reflections suggest a related matter for further
investigation. Deleuzes conception of intensity raises the question of
the place of order in Deleuzes ontology. For if intensity is a privileged
instance of difference and if intensities are precisely ordered differences,
then it would appear that a kind of order is at least equally foundational,
or equiprimordial, with difference in Deleuzes ontology. This in turn
would imply that his is not merely an ontology of difference, nor an
ontology of intensive difference, but an ontology of ordinal, intensive
difference. Thus, even if we grasp his conception of difference as
necessarily intensive, we remain faced with the question of how to
understand the ontological nature and status of the sorts of order
pertinent to the difference at the heart of his ontology.16
Notes
1. Clearly, this historical development could be called the quantification of a
qualitative phenomenon. But we may also consider it an episode in the history
of the very constituting of a certain version of quantity, namely, one that is held
to apply to both extensive and qualitative phenomena or properties.
2. See also references to Russells The Principles of Mathematics (1903) in
Difference and Repetition (Deleuze 1994: 2378, 3301). For an insightful
alternative discussion of these passages in Deleuze, see DeLanda 2002: 82.
3. There exists a distinction between those quantities whose magnitudes are
additive for subsystems, which are known as extensive quantities and those that
are not and which are known as intensive quantities. Examples of extensive
quantities are length, mass and electric current and examples of intensive
quantities are pressure, temperature and chemical potential (partial molar Gibbs
energy). All of this is part of the formal grammar of quantity calculus. Much
of it is so obvious that it can seem trivial when stated explicitly but it underlies
276 Mary Beth Mader
all of our mathematical representation of the natural world (Quinn 2007: 67;
emphasis added).
4. See chapter 6, Prospects and Concepts (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 13562).
5. Deleuze and Guattari do not take themselves to be strictly faithful to every aspect
of Russells thought. They note: The following discussion does not conform to
Russells theory (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 573, n.15).
6. This passage strongly resembles the account offered by Albert Spaier in La
Pense et la quantit (Spaier 1927). Deleuze and Guattari cite this work in
A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 573, n.15).
7. My claims here are indebted to discussions with Maia Nahele Huff-Owen.
8. All quotes from Rosny 1930 are my translations. See especially Deleuze 1994:
222, 3289, n.2.
9. Additivity, here, means the property of being able to be added.
10. See, among others, Hallward 2006; Protevi 2007, 2013; Olkowski 2012; Duffy
2006; Somers-Hall 2012, 2013.
11. Cf. Mader 2011. See Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 23: The independence of
variables in propositions is opposed to the inseparability of variations in the
concept. In this analysis, the proposition and the function share this feature.
Further, the concept itself is conceived of as intensive, hence as being composed
of inseparable variations.
12. Further, concepts have only consistency or intensive ordinates outside of any
coordinates (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 23).
13. See Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 33: science which, moreover, has no need of
the concept and concerns itself only with states of affairs and their conditions.
Science needs only propositions or functions . . . .
14. Deleuze argues that intensities generate extensity and quality; I have not
presented his arguments for those views here.
15. For important clarifications on Deleuzes account of the transcendental in
relation to Hegel, see Somers-Hall 2012: ch. 7.
16. I would like to thank Sean Bowden, Dale Clisby and the papers anonymous
reviewers for their insightful guidance and corrections to an earlier version of
the paper. Thank you, also, to Eliza Wright for copyediting expertise. Remaining
errors are my own.
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Somers-Hall, Henry (2012) Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation:
Dialectics of Negation and Difference, Albany: State University of New York
Press.
Spaier, Albert (1927) La Pense et la quantit: essai sur la signification et la ralit
des grandeurs, Paris: F. Alcan.
Williams, James (2006) Science and Dialectics in the Philosophies of Deleuze,
Bachelard and DeLanda, Paragraph, 29:2, pp. 98114.
Deleuzes Concept of Quasi-cause
Jon Roffe University of New South Wales
Abstract
The concept of quasi-cause is a relatively marginal one in the work
of Gilles Deleuze, appearing briefly in The Logic of Sense and then
Anti-Oedipus three years later. In part because of this marginality the
meagre degree to which it is integrated into the respective metaphysical
system of the two works it provides us with a useful vantage point
from which to examine these systems themselves. In particular, a careful
exposition of the two forms that the concept of the quasi-cause takes
provides us with an aperture on the shifting role of the concepts of the
virtual and the intensive in Deleuzes ongoing project. In this paper, I will
argue that, through this aperture, it is possible to see the displacement
of the virtual in favour of the intensive. In turn, we can characterise
Anti-Oedipus as the birth of a fully actualist Deleuzian metaphysics.
Keywords: virtual, intensive, quasi-cause, socius
The sense and relative status of the categories of the virtual and the
intensive are as difficult to definitively establish as they are important to
Deleuzes philosophical system. This is already the case within particular
works; the difficulty is dramatically ramified when it comes to Deleuzes
oeuvre as a whole. For instance, in both Difference and Repetition
and What Is Philosophy?, the nature of the concept is conceived in
terms of intensity. In the former, Deleuze writes that concepts are [. . . ]
intensities from the point of view of philosophical systems (Deleuze
1994: 118), while the latter describes concepts as composed of intensive
ordinates (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 40). In both cases, moreover,
the register of the intensive is closely related to that of the virtual. But
while in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze asserts that The reality

DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0266
of the virtual is structure (Deleuze 1994: 209), What Is Philosophy?

straightforwardly identifies the virtual with the chaos of a so-called
infinite speed (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 108).
These kinds of shifts in Deleuzes work have been treated at length
and in great detail by many of Deleuzes most perceptive readers, and
my goal here is neither to summarise the advances already made nor
propose to overturn them. Instead, I would simply like to examine one of
Deleuzes more marginal concepts, that of the quasi-cause. My argument
is that it provides us with a precise point of access into the shifting
network of concepts in and across Deleuzes works. The concept appears
explicitly in The Logic of Sense and Anti-Oedipus, thereby spanning
an often invoked gap between the establishment of Deleuzes mature
metaphysics and his work with Guattari. While it is taken as given
that this shift is a key one though this can be challenged on a number
of levels1 my interest in it here concerns the way the concepts of the
virtual and the intensive are played out. In brief, my contention is that
the concept of the quasi-cause gives us an excellent aperture onto the
shifting place of these two rather more central concepts.
To be clear, my claim here is not that quasi-cause is a hitherto
unnoticed passe partout for Deleuzes thought. It is indeed a marginal
concept, a fact reflected in the small place it holds in scholarship on
Deleuze.2 Nevertheless, in this concept it provides a rather unique way
of considering concepts that really are at the heart of his endeavour.
I. Difference and Repetition: A Non-causal Expressive

Conception of the VirtualIntensity Relationship
Before I turn to these two works, a few notes on the metaphysics of
Difference and Repetition, since it is there that the category of the virtual
is given the richest and most sustained treatment by Deleuze, one that
will be built upon in the later Logic of Sense. What does the virtual name
there? I would like to briefly highlight three elements of an answer.
The first is found in the following crucial passage: The reality
of the virtual is structure (Deleuze 1994: 209). The virtual is a
differential structure, possessing the reality proper to structure as such,
that is, involving no recourse to identity or given terms between
which relations hold. One of Deleuzes passing points of reference
here is the work of Claude Lvi-Strauss, a point we will return to
below. Deleuze notes that, for Lvi-Strauss, identity and its attendant
categories (particularly resemblance) must be understood in terms of a
subsistent serial and differential structure, and not the other way around
280 Jon Roffe
(Deleuze 1994: 318, n.24).3 On this view, the systems of myth and
kinship examined by Lvi-Strauss are virtual structures, rather than any
kind of intersubjective convention or elaborated biological traits.
The structural character of the virtual also implies the second element
of the answer, this time concerning its strict causal neutrality. Contrary
to the vitalist reading of Difference and Repetition that only functions
to the degree that it conflates the virtual and the intensive leading to
the inevitable if mostly implicit identification of Deleuzes project with
a kind of Neoplatonism4 the virtual possesses for Deleuze no causal
efficacy whatsoever.
On the one hand, the virtual qua structure is made up of reciprocal
relations between differential elements, [and] completely determined by
those relations (Deleuze 1994: 203). Correlatively and on the other
hand, the progressive determination of the virtual structure and the
singularities that belong to it is not driven by the virtual itself, but by
the ongoing dynamic processes belonging to the intensive. The account
of genesis that Deleuze provides in this context therefore has nothing in
common with a theory of causality. As he says:
the genesis takes place in time not between one actual term, however small,
and another actual term, but between the virtual and its actualisation in
other words, it goes from the structure to its incarnation, from the conditions
of a problem to the cases of solution, from the differential elements and their
ideal connections to actual terms and diverse real relations which constitute
at each moment the actuality of time. This is a genesis without dynamism,
evolving necessarily in the element of a supra-historicity, a static genesis,
which may be understood as the correlate of the notion of passive synthesis,
and which in turn illuminates that notion. (Deleuze 1994: 183)
This latter connection with the passive syntheses directs us in turn to the
true locus of causality in the system of Difference and Repetition, namely
repetition itself, a point Deleuze already makes in the books opening
pages. (Deleuze 1994: 20) But if we say that the relationship between
the virtual and intensity cannot be characterised in causal terms, how
should we conceive it? The answer is found in the notion of expression.
A problematic Idea is not the cause of anything, but is expressed by
an intensive individual such that the current formation of extended and
qualified reality is problematised by it.5
In order to conceive this intensive, expressive individual, Deleuze turns
to Leibniz and his famous theory of the monadic expression of the world
(Deleuze 1994: 2523). Though he clearly dispenses with the closure and
harmony that the postulate of God provides in Leibnizs system, Deleuze
thinks that there is a place for the monads, their closure undone and their
trajectories unspun from their shared axis.
Intensity is identified by Deleuze as difference-in-itself, difference in
its implicated form.6 The various instances that compose this riot of
intensities are distinguished from each other in terms of the relations and
their corresponding singularities of the virtual structure that they express
clearly. In turn, these distinct intensities or intensive regions are what
Deleuze calls intensive individuals, implicated organised states whose
coordinates are provided by a certain region of virtual structure just as
each monad expresses the whole of the world clearly from a particular
point of view.7
There is thus an important sense in which Deleuzes project in
Difference and Repetition is oriented to a much greater degree by the
pair intensiveactual than the famous virtualactual coupling. Without
the regime of intensive individuals, there would be no way for this
structure to play any role in the constitution of reality whatsoever.
The third and final element of the argument in Difference and
Repetition relevant here is Deleuzes insistence that the passage from
intensity to qualified extension is attended by an illusion, such that the
latter appears as primary in relation to the former, reversing the order
of its genesis.8 Consequently, he writes:
Only transcendental enquiry can discover that intensity remains implicated
in itself and continues to envelop difference at the very moment when it is
reflected in the extensity and the quality that it creates, which implicate it
only secondarily, just enough to explicate it. (Deleuze 1994: 240)
Key here is the fact that virtual structure, and not just the intensive
individuals which express it, is obscured in the process of actualisation
that turns around it. Like much else in Difference and Repetition, this
theme of Deleuzes account has an explicit Kantian heritage, even if Kant
betrays his own insight. (Deleuze 1994: 1367) The illusory apparition
of a given subject whose thought moves naturally in the direction of
the truth, and a stable world presented for the subject to recognise
is the effect of the processes of individuation, spatio-temporalisation,
qualification and specification that is, actualisation themselves. It is
not an extrinsic or contingent state of affairs at all but what is proper to
actualisation. The significance of this point, and the entire problematic of
transcendental illusion, cannot in my view be overstated; we will return
to it later in the paper. But here the point is that, according to the Deleuze
of Difference and Repetition, the process of actualisation obscures its
relationship to the virtual by its very nature.
282 Jon Roffe
II. The Logic of Sense: The Quasi-causal Role of the

Sense-Event
When we turn to The Logic of Sense, a similar structure may be
observed. On the one hand, and despite the well-known absence of
the term virtual from the book, Deleuze again makes the case for the
subsistence of a differential, problematic structure that is real without
being actual, possessing the singularities now throughout identified as
events proper to it. On the other, we find an identification of materiality
with a primary field of intensity (Deleuze 1990: 225), even if it is the
human body that is the more or less exclusive case Deleuze deals with,
and even if, as in Difference and Repetition, its primary intensive nature
is covered over in the development of the coordinated individual that the
body comes to be.
But now, Deleuze will explicitly introduce for the first time a certain
causal relationship between the virtual (sense, or the event) and the
intensive (the realm of bodies). What is absent from Difference and
Repetition is a signal element in the theoretical construction of its
successor. The neo-Stoic claim that Deleuze makes is famous: events are
the effects of the interaction of bodies, that is, the network of causal
relations, but irreducible to them. When a scalpel is applied to an arm,
the effect itself is not of the order of bodies but concerns the production
of an event (to cut), which is at the same time a lekton, an incorporeal
sayable attributed to the arm.9
It is important to be clear that Deleuze does not suggest a causal
relationship between virtual events and the intensive. While events are
the effects of the causal interaction of bodies, events do not play a
causal role in these subsequent interactions. Once again, the relationship
between events and bodies is an expressive one: the arm cut by the scalpel
now expresses this incorporeal attribute, in its having been cut.
But now we must turn to the novel element of the analysis, the
introduction of a certain kind of unusual causal relationship within the
register of the virtual, the quasi-cause. As Deleuze puts it, Incorporeal
effects are never themselves causes in relation to each other; rather, they
are only quasi-causes following laws which perhaps express in each
case the relative unity or mixture of bodies on which they depend for
their real causes (Deleuze 1990: 6). Or again: Events are never causes
of one another, but rather enter into relations of quasi-causality, an
unreal and ghostly causality (Deleuze 1990: 33). At first blush, elliptical
passages like this not to mention the equivocity of that perhaps seem
to vindicate the kind of critical response to the concept advanced by
James Williams when he describes quasi-causality as one of the rare

heavy and clumsy concepts of Deleuzes work (Williams 2008: 130).
The introduction of a species of unreal and ghostly causality hardly
seems to improve on the crystalline chronostructuralism of Difference
and Repetition.10
As is often the case, however, closer attention to the resources on
which Deleuze is drawing allows for a more sophisticated appreciation
of his goals. Michael Bennett, in one of two recent papers tracing the
origins of the category of quasi-causality back to the Stoics, writes that
The equation of incorporeal lekta with events, and the emphasis on the
quasi-causality of lekta, are the two key facets of Deleuzes interpretation
of Stoicism (Bennett 2015a: 29; see also Bennett 2015b). Sean Bowden
makes a related point when he writes that:
Deleuzes interest in the logic of the Stoics is not limited to the way in which
their propositional connectives express relations between events. He is also
interested in their theory of modality or, more precisely, in the Stoic thesis
which affirms physical fate but denies necessity. (Bowden 2011: 36)
The former emphasis on the sense-event is well known, but it is the

second that interests us here.
Deleuze makes use of one particular source in formulating the notion
of quasi-causality, or rather uses one text in particular to frame his
engagement with a range of Stoic works: Clement of Alexandrias
Stromata. But as Bennett points out, Deleuzes reference to this Stoic
trope is obscured by not one but two poor translations, the English
from Deleuzes French, and the French translation of a passage from
Clement. The passage in question is better rendered as follows: the
Stoics, Clement writes, say that body is cause properly speaking, and
that the incorporeal is, in a manner of speaking [katakhrstiks], as
it were causal [hoion aitids] (Bennett 2015a: 54, n.2). This as it
were causality is what Deleuze will call the quasi-cause; and indeed, as
Bennett notes, it would be quite economical to render hoion aitids
as quasi-causally (Bennett 2015b: 6).
Here is Deleuzes rendering of the idea: The Stoics saw clearly that
the event is subject to a double causality, referring on the one hand to
mixtures of bodies which are its cause and, on the other, to other events
which are its quasi-cause (Deleuze 1990: 94). But what precisely is at
issue here? The quasi-causality of events names, in the first instance,
the way in which any given event is topologically disposed by an other
or others. Take the following example: Concerning cause and effect,
events, only ever being effects, are better able to form among themselves
284 Jon Roffe
functions of quasi-causes or relations of quasi-causality which are always

reversible (the wound and the scar) (Deleuze 1990: 8). The two events
to wound and to scar have, beyond their sequential expression by or
attribution to my body, a relation proper to their status of events. But
this merely describes their co-existence as events. The earlier description
of ghostly causality is in fact more helpful here than it may have
appeared:
Events are never causes of one another, but rather enter the relations of quasi-
causality, an unreal and ghostly causality, endlessly reappearing in the two
senses. It is neither at the same time, nor in relation to the same thing, that I
am younger or older, but it is at the same time and by the same relation that
I become so. (Deleuze 1990: 33)
Here, the two events to grow older and to grow younger are bound
together by a quasi-causal relation. The relation is neither causal in the
corporeal sense, nor logical (i.e. concerned with universal concepts).
At the same time, though, these events belong together, each making
(a) sense of the other, providing a point of view from which the other
is able to be expressed. No matter how old I become, I continue to
become younger insofar as that this event has a quasi-causal relationship
to growing old, giving it a particular compatriot sense.
We must be careful here to avoid a confusion of the evental and
logical registers. Younger and older are not necessarily bound together
because they are (logical, propositional) opposites. Indeed, while they
are always related to each at the level of sense or the event, so too are
all other events, whose coexistence with to grow older comes to bear
as well. The sense that my becoming older has is inflected in a variety
of ways depending on the other events that happen to me finishing
a book, falling out of love, drinking less gin, and so on. Thus, for
Deleuze, the questions that Jean-Franois Lyotard poses to Arakawa
and Gins must be answered in the affirmative: Would the possibilities
reserved for childhood remain open in every circumstance? Might they
even multiply? Could the body be younger at sixty years of age than at
fifteen? (Lyotard 1997: n.p.).
We know that at the limit, Deleuze famously or infamously will
unify the entire ramified series of events under the banner of the Event,
Eventum tantum (e.g. Deleuze 1990: 176). But now we can see that
what this really means is simply that quasi-causality is always operative
with respect to any given event. The significance the locus of the sense
of this or that event is framed by the differential relations it possesses
with others.
We see how this might be the case in the best and most moving
example that Deleuze gives of the quasi-cause, his discussion of the role
of Nietzsches illness in his work. This example is also significant because
it traverses the same terrain that Anti-Oedipus will engage with directly,
though, as we will see, in quite different terms:
Nietzsche, it seems, became insane and died of general paralysis, a corporeal

syphilitic mixture. But the pathway which this event followed, this time in
relation to the quasi-cause inspiring his entire work and co-inspiring his
life, has nothing to do with general paralysis, the ocular migraines and the
vomiting from which he suffered, except that it gave them a new causality,
that is, an eternal truth independent of their corporeal realisation a style in
an oeuvre in place of a mixture in the body. We see no other way of raising
the question of the relations between an oeuvre and illness except by means
of this double causality. (Deleuze 1990: 108)
This new causality that comes to obtain for the events to grow sick, to
suffer from migraines and even to die functions to resituate the other
events expressed by Nietzsches body, giving them a new meaning. All of
this, in turn, is captured in Deleuzes enigmatic term style quasi-cause
as the singular stylistic unity of events.
In passing, let us note that it is this analysis that allows us to make
sense of the prima facie puzzling reference to astrology in the Logic
of Sense. When Deleuze writes that Astrology was perhaps the first
important attempt to establish a theory of alogical incompatibilities and
noncausal correspondences (Deleuze 1990: 171), he is reflecting on the
fact that what the act of predicting a future occurrence involves is not the
projection into the future of an unfolding sequence of causal relations,
but the examination of the quasi-causal relations that hold between
events: Not both: Fabius is born at the dawn of the dog-star and
Fabius will die at sea (Chrysippus, cited in Bennett 2015b: 50).11
III. Anti-Oedipus: Quasi-causality, Intensity and

the Place of the Fetish
A rather different account of quasi-causality appears with Anti-Oedipus,
and the terminological proximity must be handled carefully. While
the virtual appears here under neither its own name nor any other,
the opposition between intensive and extensive, the two poles between
which the process of dramatisation takes place according to Difference
and Repetition, are once again fundamental. The virtual is absent, but
intensity is not.
286 Jon Roffe
Anti-Oedipus is, let us recall, oriented by a distinction between

desiring-production and social-production. This opposition is often
taken as a kind of good versus bad pairing, one that pits natural
desire against repressive socialisation in the style of a Rousseau, but
this is far from the case. In fact, not only is social-production only
desiring-production under determinate conditions (Deleuze and Guattari
1983: 287), it is never the case that particular determinate conditions
are absent. Though this is somewhat obscured by the order of the
books argumentation, Deleuze and Guattari are very clear that our
very access to desiring-production as such goes by way of the social
organisation of desire. It is notable, for instance, that when they
first introduce the difficult notion of the body without organs, they
will almost immediately note that if we wish to have some idea
of the forces that the body without organs exerts . . . we must first
establish a parallel between desiring-production and social-production
(Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 10).
The real problem is the one already identified in Difference and
Repetition, that the organisation of desire that is, the qualification and
quantification of intensive dynamisms is accompanied by an illusion
that inverts the genetic sequence and establishes the subject, recognisable
objects and stable social relations as primary. And, as in Difference and
Repetition, this is not merely a case of misunderstanding, but a feature
of this genesis itself.
This is one of the senses in which Anti-Oedipus is, as Deleuze
indicates, a Critique of Pure Reason for the unconscious (Deleuze
2003: 289). What is required is a transcendental perspective on social-
production, one that reveals the necessary conditions for its advent that
are nevertheless necessarily covered up by it. Here, the Kantian critique
meets up with Marx. Early in the book, they write that we should:
remember once again one of Marxs caveats: we cannot tell from the mere
taste of wheat who grew it; the product gives us no hint as to the system and
the relations of production, . . . to the real process of production on which it
depends. (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 24)
So, in Anti-Oedipus the virtual and the event are both absent, but
what remains is the genetic primacy of intensity, its real structuration,
and the transcendental illusion that belongs to this structuration.
What also remains is the notion of quasi-causality, and, as in The
Logic of Sense, it once again concerns the relationship between a surface
and a causal chain. The causal chain in question is nothing other than
the connective synthesis, that is, the multiple series of interlocking
desiring-machines. This first synthesis is doubled by a second, what

Deleuze and Guattari call the disjunctive synthesis of recording, and it is
here that the very particular surface of the body without organs enters
the picture.
When a connection between intensive processes of desire takes place,
it is at the same time recorded, registered or inscribed on the surface
of this body. Here, we find an analogue of the splitting of effects we
saw in The Logic of Sense. An important difference, though, lies in
the fact that the body without organs is material, unlike the sterile
ideational metaphysical surface peopled by events. Nevertheless, just as
in The Logic of Sense, once the conceptual pair of process and surface
is present, Deleuze will invoke quasi-causality to explain something
essential about their relationship.
In fact, we can be more precise again and note that it is once our
attention is drawn to social-production, with its specific surfaces and
coded processes, that Deleuze and Guattari introduce the quasi-cause
as an element in the system, that the concept of quasi-cause enters the
picture.
Social processes are what Deleuze and Guattari call coded flows,
that is, intensive dynamisms subject to (what else?) qualification and
quantification. Correlatively, these social processes are inscribed on the
recording surface that they will call the full body of the social formation,
or more often just the socius. The socius, Deleuze and Guattari argue,
is essentially intensive, the intensive surface of the social. Consequently,
changes in society social dynamisms do not involve a passage from
one actual series to another, but the passage from the intensive to the
extensive. Discussing the way in which kinship systems play out in
so-called primitive societies and closely following the structure of the
argument about the passage from the virtual to the actual in Difference
and Repetition they say that:
the problem does not in the least consist of going from filiations to alliances,
or of deducing the latter from the former. The problem is one of passing
from an intensive energetic order to an extensive system, which comprises
both qualitative alliances and extended filiations. (Deleuze and Guattari
1983: 155)
Particularly telling here is the way in which Deleuze and Guattari

make use of these analyses of kinship structure in anthropology. Unlike
the account advanced in Difference and Repetition, which presents this
structure as virtual, here it appears as fully intensive in character, a set of
intensive loci on the surface of the socius. When we identify the various
288 Jon Roffe
structural positions of mother, father, son, mothers brother, sons sister

[. . . ] it is evident and striking that these are not persons. Their names do
not designate persons, but rather the intensive variations [. . . ] through
which the subject passes on the cosmic egg (Deleuze and Guattari 1983:
188; cf. 162).
Now, the means by which this surface acts in the structuring of social
dynamisms is what Deleuze and Guattari identify as the quasi-cause.
Here is the key passage:
If the full body falls back on the productive connections and inscribes them
in a network of intensive and inclusive disjunctions, it still has to find again
and reanimate lateral connections in the network itself, and it must attribute
them to itself as though it were their cause. These are the two aspects of
the full body: an enchanted surface of inscription, the fantastic law, or the
apparent objective movement; but also a magical agent or fetish, the quasi
cause. (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 154)
Whatever the social formation in question, the same structure is in

play: the coded productive connections, that is, the organised intensive
dynamisms, are inscribed on the socius, constituting a very particular
social memory. In turn, the inscribed surface appears as an agent for
that social formation itself. Deleuze and Guattari repeat this point over
and over again, as they track the shifts between the three kinds of social
formations. In the first case of savage pre-State societies, the surface in
question is the Earth itself:
the Earth is the great unengendered stasis, the element superior to production
that conditions the common appropriation and utilization of the ground. It is
the surface on which the whole process of production is inscribed, on which
the forces and means of labor are recorded, and the agents and the products
distributed. It appears here as the quasi cause of production and the object of
desire. (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 141)
Upon the emergence of the State, the locus of the socius shifts:
The full body as socius has ceased to be the earth, it has become the body of
the despot, the despot himself or his god. The prescriptions and prohibitions
that often render him almost incapable of acting make of him a body without
organs. He is the sole quasi cause, the source and fountainhead and estuary
of the apparent objective movement. (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 194)
Finally, in the case of capitalism they write, explicitly replaying Marxs

analysis, Everything seems objectively to be produced by capital as quasi
cause (Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 11).
It is hard to miss the critical tone with which Deleuze and Guattari
speak about the quasi-cause in these passages. At times, it almost seems
that they conceive it as a kind of ideological kernel, as if what the
quasi-cause effects is the deployment of a veil that obscures the truth
of desiring-production. This, however, is not the case. We have already
seen that there is an objective illusion that pertains to social organisation,
but that what it obscures is in the ontological rather than epistemological
register. Furthermore, this illusion is not an ancillary feature of social-
production but rather that social-production itself, and its particular way
of qualifying and quantifying the intensive variations at play in social-
production.
There remains, nevertheless, a positive and productive function
effected by the quasi-cause. The first time Deleuze and Guattari invoke
the term, they state that:
Society constructs its own delirium by recording the process of production;

but it is not a conscious delirium, or rather is a true consciousness of a
false movement, a true perception of an apparent objective movement, a
true perception of the movement that is produced on the recording surface.
(Deleuze and Guattari 1983: 10)
The final phrase is telling in particular. What the quasi-cause does is

insist in its being, which is to say, manifest the recorded traces of
previous social organisation. In this way, it earns the title of social
memory that Deleuze and Guattari give to it. The past insists in the
present as traces on the intensive surface of the socius. To use a term
from Difference and Repetition, but now in a new sense bound to
the intensive and not the virtual, we can say that the inscriptions on
the socius problematise subsequent acts of social organisation. This
problematisation is simply due to the fact that the presence of the past
qua inscription is intensive in character, only able to be assimilated by
being misrecognised.
In this way, the quasi-cause of the surface is a cause in being rather
than in effect. Inscriptions on the surface are results that have no
further direct efficacy. Their significance resides solely in the fact that
they insist and it is here that we arrive at the kernel of the issue. The
role that these inscriptions play in social organisation concerns the fact
that they are present to that organisation, while being at the same time
irreducible to the ensemble of processes subject to this organisation. The
surface, that is, gives to the social order a second, entirely different,
object that must be subordinated to the evaluative, pre-dispositional
order of coding.
290 Jon Roffe
In sum, what the quasi-cause effects in social organisation as it does

in desiring-production itself is precisely a gap in the regime of the
connective synthesis, one that guarantees the impossibility that the circle
of qualification and quantification can be closed over.
It seems to me, in fact, that the theory of the inscriptive surface
developed in Anti-Oedipus fulfils the promise of the accounts of the
surface and the asymmetrical causal set-up elaborated in The Logic of
Sense. Indeed, it gives us a fully actualist Deleuzian metaphysics, one
that repeats the tripartite moment of cause, effect and quasi-cause that
links together the intensive and its qualified extension, but in a way that
invokes neither the virtual nor any ideational element.12
IV. Conclusion
In sum, then, we can say that in The Logic of Sense, and under the
influence of the Stoics, Deleuze introduces the notion of the quasi-cause
to make sense of the nature of compatibility and incompatibility between
events, a problem that the mathematical framework of Difference and
Repetitions chronostructuralism did not evince. This account of quasi-
causality is strictly horizontal, pertaining solely to the relationships
between events on the metaphysical surface, and must not be confused
therefore with either the regime of bodies or their actualisation, which
remains here an expressive relation. This means, in turn, that it bears
no causal relationship with the dynamic order of bodies and their
intensive physical surfaces. In Anti-Oedipus, quasi-causality becomes
vertical, and expresses the modality according to which intensive social
inscriptions then come to bear on (se rabattre sur, as they like to say) the
ongoing organisation of the social processes of connection.
The aim of this brief discussion was to track the relationship between
the virtual and intensity during this important four-year period in
Deleuzes work. We are now in a position to say that, at least from
the vantage offered by the concept of the quasi-cause, a clear diminution
of the importance of the virtual takes place. In the Logic of Sense, quasi-
causality is a feature of the virtual; in Anti-Oedipus, it is a feature of
the intensive, there where there appears to be no element of virtuality in
play.
We might add the following point about the status of transcendental
reasoning across the three works. Deleuzes explication of the notion of
the virtual in Difference and Repetition unfolds within the framework
of Kantian thought, but it only makes reference to transcendental
philosophy explicitly and as such when the nature of intensity is at
issue. In The Logic of Sense, correlatively, we can note that the surface
orientation in thought that the Stoics introduce for Deleuze involves
a double combat with illusion, such that the pre-Socratic orientation
towards depth is a digestive illusion which complements the ideal
optical illusion of Platonism (Deleuze 1990: 130). This structural
observation is doubled by the recognition that these illusions are the
product of the genesis of the metaphysical surface. In Anti-Oedipus,
finally, the objective production of social formations necessarily obscures
the intensive dynamism of desire, constituting what Eugene Holland
usefully calls an objective error (Holland 1999: 41) attendant to all
social-production. Consequently, we can say that the abiding kernel of
Deleuzes allegiance to transcendental philosophy is not found in the
category of the virtual, but in that of intensity, and the unavoidable
transcendental illusion that its extension and qualification give
rise to.
Notes
1. One important continuity is the Kantian framework within which the arguments
of Difference and Repetition and Anti-Oedipus play out. As Deleuze himself
says, Anti-Oedipus is a sort of Critique of Pure Reason for the unconscious
(Deleuze 2003: 289). But this is something that could also be used to describe a
major gambit of Difference and Repetition, in which the concept of the virtual is
presented in the wake of Leibniz and Solomon Maimon as the differential
unconscious (Deleuze 1994: 174). In turn, this account is a renovation of
Kants faculty of Reason as problematising. Of course, this is not to deny their
differences while Difference and Repetition gives an important place to the
Transcendental Dialectic, Anti-Oedipus makes powerful use of the Antinomy
of Pure Reason without ever invoking the Dialectic or the Ideas of Reason it
is concerned with but only to insist on a broader continuity of philosophical
framework.
2. Certainly, exceptions exist for instance, iek 2004: 2632 in particular; note 9
below; Angelova 2006. Many other studies invoke the concept in passing see,
for instance, Read 2003; Williams 2008: 1312; Lundy 2012: 1278). By far
the most sustained engagement with the term is found in Jay Lamperts work
Deleuze and Guattaris Philosophy of History (Lampert 2006). In two of this
books central chapters, and especially chapter 6, Quasi-Causes and Becoming-
Causal, Lampert gives the concept of quasi-cause an absolutely central role in
his reconstruction of Deleuzes account of the relationship between history and
time. There are many points at which I feel Lamperts reading of Deleuze on
this point is tendentious, but since this is not the place for a detailed critique I
would just make a quick remark about the status of the concept in Lampert. In
essence, I do not think that the set of extant claims that Deleuze makes about
the quasi-cause are conceptually unified or unifiable (this is part of what is at
stake here), and I do not think that they are significant enough to ground a fully-
fledged doctrine on their own terms. As a consequence, any use of this concept
must really involve developing a new concept inspired by Deleuze. This is what
292 Jon Roffe
I have tried to do in Roffe 2015a: 1025 in particular in the context of the

philosophy of the market, but it is also what I take Lampert to be doing not a
reconstruction but a creation.
3. Deleuzes striking if idiosyncratic summary of structuralism, How Do We
Recognise Structuralism? (Deleuze 2004), makes this point much more
significantly. In order to maintain the limited focus of this little comparative
exercise, I leave aside discussion of it here.
4. A signal text in this trajectory is Peter Hallwards forceful if finally unconvincing
critical reconstruction of Deleuzes philosophy (Hallward 2006). But the same
account, with the conflation in play, is also found in expositions by proponents
of Deleuze (see, for example, Williams 2008), and in thinkers inspired by his
work (see, for example, Bennett 2010).
5. See Deleuze 1994: 245 for one explication of this passage. In truth, however,
the entire second half of the fifth chapter in Difference and Repetition, and
the closing passages of the fourth, are devoted to this theme. This thread of
Deleuzes argument in Difference and Repetition is discussed in detail in Roffe
2012: 14454 and in relation to Ray Brassiers detailed critique of Deleuzes
ontology in Roffe 2015b.
6. Here, see the work of Mary Beth Mader (Mader 2008, 2011), who has published
ground-breaking work on the topic of the intensive in Deleuze
7. See Smith 2012 for a particularly clear account of the historical and conceptual
elements of Deleuzes account here.
8. Deleuzes treatment of this famous Kantian theme is the subject of a number
of important studies of its own. It is a running theme throughout Christian
Kerslakes Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy (Kerslake 2009), but see
too Somers-Hall 2013. Roffe 2014 takes up this theme by way of contrasting
Deleuze and William James.
9. For Deleuzes account of the effect relation, see the Second Series of Paradoxes
of Surface Effects (Deleuze 1990: 411) For his identification of the ideal effect
with the lekton, see, for instance, Deleuze 1990: 701.
10. The term chronostructuralism I borrow from an equally crystalline yet
unfortunately unpublished study of Deleuzes Difference and Repetition
and its relationship to the works of Deleuzes that preceded it: Graham
Joness Difference and Determination: Prolegomena Concerning Deleuzes Early
Metaphysic. The term itself expresses the dynamic ontology found in Difference
and Repetition, according to which virtual structure is actualised according to
the three syntheses of time.
11. This passage is in fact Bennett citing Cicero, who is citing Chrysippus in turn.
12. In light of these points, Slavoj ieks prominent account of the concept of
quasi-causality in Organs without Bodies appears in a critical light. iek
argues, rightly in my view, that we must conceive it as an heir to Lacans
notion of the objet petit a, that is, as a species of structural causality. His
explication of this interesting claim, however, leads him to the assertion that
There is no place for Deleuzes key concept of quasi-cause in Anti-Oedipus
(iek 2004: 92). Clearly, iek has not read this book, preferring to riff on
the opposition between productive becoming versus reified being, and on the
malevolent influence of Guattari. What is amusing about this is that in fact the
account of quasi-causality in Anti-Oedipus presents precisely the view that he
attributes to the Logic of Sense, up to and including the identification of the
quasi-cause with the agency of the fetish. This is a situation perhaps worthy
of the name ieks paradox, the paradox of retroactive justification through
self-falsification.
References
Angelova, Emilia (2006) Quasi-Cause in Deleuze: Inverting the Body Without
Organs, Symposium, 10:1, pp. 11733.
Bennett, Jane (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Bennett, Michael James (2015a) Ciceros De Fato in Deleuzes Logic of Sense,
Deleuze Studies, 9:1, pp. 2558.
Bennett, Michael James (2015b) Deleuzes Concept of Quasi-Causality and its
Greek Sources, unpublished paper, available at < https://www.academia.edu/
9062058/Deleuzes_Concept_of_Quasi-Causality_and_its_Greek_Sources >
(accessed 20 January 2017).
Bowden, Sean (2011) The Priority of Events: Deleuzes Logic of Sense, Edinburgh:
Deleuze, Gilles (1990) The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale,
ed. Constantin V. Boundas, London: Athlone.
Deleuze, Gilles (2003) Deux rgimes de fous et autres textes, ed. David Lapoujade,
Paris: Minuit.
Deleuze, Gilles (2004) How Do We Recognise Structuralism?, in Desert Islands
and Other Texts, 19531974, ed. David Lapoujade, trans. Michael Taormina,
New York: Semiotext(e), pp. 17092.
Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1983) Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark
Seem and Helen R. Lane, London: Athlone.
New York: Verso.
Holland, Eugene (1999) Deleuze and Guattaris Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to
Schizoanalysis, New York: Routledge.
Kerslake, Christian (2009) Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy: From Kant to
Deleuze, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Lampert, Jay (2006) Deleuze and Guattaris Philosophy of History, London:
Continuum.
Lundy, Craig (2012) History and Becoming: Deleuzes Philosophy of Creativity,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Lyotard, Jean-Franois (1997) Letter from Jean-Franois Lyotard to Arakawa
and Madeline Gins, 1 January, trans. Stephen Sartarelli, The Funambulist,
available at < http://thefunambulist.net/2011/04/24/philosophy-letter-from-jean-
francois-lyotard-to-arakawa-and-madeline-gins/ > (accessed 20 January 2017).
Mader, Mary Beth (2008) The Difference of Intensity: Deleuze and Nicolas
Oresme, unpublished paper presented at the Society for Phenomenology and
Existential Philosophy Annual Meeting.
Mader, Mary Beth (2011) Sleights of Reason: Norm, Bisexuality, Development,
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Read, Jason (2003) A Universal History of Contingency: Deleuze and Guattari on
the History of Capitalism, Borderlands, 2:3, n.p.
Roffe, Jon (2012) Badious Deleuze, Durham, NC: Acumen.
Roffe, Jon (2014) Error, Illusion, Deception: Deleuze against James, in Sean
Bowden, Simone Bignall and Paul Patton (eds), Deleuze and Pragmatism, London:
Routledge, pp. 7388.
Roffe, Jon (2015a) Abstract Market Theory, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
294 Jon Roffe
Roffe, Jon (2015b) Objectal Human: On the Place of Psychic Systems in Difference
and Repetition, in Jon Roffe and Hannah Stark (eds), Deleuze and the
Non/Human, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 4259.
Smith, Daniel W. (2012) Deleuzes Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the
Kantian Duality, in Essays on Deleuze, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
pp. 89105.
Somers-Hall, Henry (2013) Henry, Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of
Representation, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Williams, James (2008) Gilles Deleuzes Logic of Sense: A Critical Introduction and
Guide, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
iek, Slavoj (2004) Organs without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences, New York:
Routledge.
Notes on Contributors
Jeffrey Bell is Professor of Philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana
University. He is the author and editor of several books, including
Philosophy at the Edge of Chaos (2006), Deleuzes Hume: Philosophy,
Culture, and the Scottish Enlightenment (2009), Deleuze and History
(2009), and Deleuze and Guattaris What is Philosophy?: A Critical
Introduction and Guide (2016). Bell is currently working on a book on
metaphysics and continental philosophy.
Sean Bowden is Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University. He is the
author of The Priority of Events: Deleuzes Logic of Sense (EUP 2011),
and the co-editor of Badiou and Philosophy (EUP 2012 with Simon
Duffy) and Deleuze and Pragmatism (Routledge 2015 with Simone
Bignall and Paul Patton).
Dale Clisby is a PhD candidate at Deakin University. His PhD thesis
concerns the relationship between the virtual, the actual, and intensity in
Deleuzes Difference and Repetition. He is the author of Deleuzes secret
dualism? Competing accounts of the relationship between the virtual and
the actual (Parrhesia 24, 2015).
Craig Lundy is a Senior Lecturer in Social Theory at Nottingham
Trent University. He is the author of History and Becoming: Deleuzes
Philosophy of Creativity (2012), Deleuzes Bergsonism (forthcoming)
and co-editor with Daniela Voss of At the Edges of Thought: Deleuze
and Post-Kantian Philosophy (2015), all published by Edinburgh
University Press.
Mary Beth Mader is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Memphis. She is the author of Sleights of Reason: Norm, Bisexuality,
Development (SUNY Press, 2011), and articles on the work of Luce
Irigaray, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. Her current work focuses
on the ontology of genealogy and on the history of the philosophical
concept of intensity.
Jon Roffe is a Vice-Chancellors Postdoctoral Fellow at the University
of New South Wales. The co-editor of a number of books on
twentieth-century French philosophy, Jon is the author of Badious
DOI: 10.3366/dls.2017.0267
296 Notes on Contributors
Deleuze (Acumen 2012), Abstract Market Theory (Palgrave 2015),

Gilles Deleuzes Empiricism and Subjectivity (EUP 2016), The Works of
Gilles Deleuze (forthcoming re.press 2017), and the co-author of Lacan
Deleuze Badiou (EUP 2014).
Daniela Voss is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin
Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University,
Melbourne. She has also taught philosophy at the Free University of
Berlin and the University of Hildesheim. She is the author of Conditions
of Thought: Deleuze and Transcendental Ideas (EUP 2013) and the
co-editor with Craig Lundy of At the Edges of Thought: Deleuze and
Post-Kantian Philosophy (EUP 2015).

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Philosophical and Scientific Intensity in the Thought

Deleuzes Concept of Quasi-cause 278

Notes on Contributors 295

This publication is available as a book (ISBN: 9781474425773) or as

Dale Clisby Deakin University

Deleuze Studies 11.2 (2017): 153155

Daniela Voss Deakin University

I. A Philosophy of Immanence in Terms of Expression

Deleuze Studies 11.2 (2017): 156173

(Deleuze 1990: 179). However, in order to make use of the concept

II. The Intensive Nature of Attributes and Modal Essences

There is something very remarkable about Spinozas explanation,

defined as that which makes up their actual essence. More generally,

confirms the theory of univocal being. There is no superior term and

The term attribute, for Spinoza, has a very specific meaning.

An attribute remains as a quality univocally what it is, containing all the

In fact, it is a theory of distinction or difference that Deleuze

an internal difference, a difference of intensity (197). Perhaps now it

III. The Life of Affects as Variations in Intensity

we conceive things as actual in two ways: either insofar as we conceive them

While things considered in the second way would be modal essences

but an infinite extensive quantity also. It is the extensive quantity that is

the common belief which considers eternity in terms of an indefinite

essence itself the essence of a body. The physical reality is an intensive

if our capacity is completely exercised while we exist by passive affections,

In Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, Deleuze adds that as long as our

It is when . . . ideas become adequate, and the affects active, it is when we

If we return to our initial problem concerning the eternity of modal

mode is eternal insofar as it participates in the essence of God and

IV. The Missing Virtual or the Problem of Eternity

Certainly, this conception of essence relates to Leibniz rather than to

As such, Spinozan essence bears no resemblance to existence just as

existence has an effect on eternal essence (what Spinoza calls affections

that philosophically, everyday life was suspended in order to accede to

Craig Lundy Nottingham Trent University

Deleuze Studies 11.2 (2017): 174194

The reasons for this are quite straightforward and understandable: in

II. The Triple Form of Difference and Its Movement

very briefly mentioned in Deleuzes early essays on Bergson, and when

other. This effort leads us to a notion of internal difference or alteration

of difference, into divergent lines differing in kind (95). So in the first

version while the real is a filled-in version of the same image.

1988: 98). According to Deleuze, the significance of Bergsons theory of

the virtual whole is distributed in lines of divergence, each of which

III. From the Form and Movement of Difference to the

This moment is exactly what the final chapter of Bergsonism focuses

What differences in kind or of degree separate or differenciate, the degrees

For those familiar with Deleuzes Nietzsche, the connection in this

to the claim that Deleuzes various developments of intensity through

Ideas are problematic or perplexed virtual multiplicities, made up

Not everything in this quote can be traced back to Deleuzes reading

to the movement from actual tendencies to the virtual Whole (or in

Intensity is the determinant in the process of actualisation. It is intensity

intensity determines differential relations to be actualised, along the

What we see from this passage is that Deleuzes Bergsonism, at bottom,

of reaching the conditions of real experience, which is to say the unique

And in the next paragraph:

light (Deleuze 1988: 103).12 Therefore, while the term individuation

connections between the final chapters of Bergsonism and Difference and