Abstract
The challenge of reading Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead together may be characterized as the challenge of resisting the temptation of comparison. Comparison always entails the risk of reducing philosophical thoughts to a matter of opinions to be compared from an outside, apparently neutral, standpoint, that is by an unmoved reader, and this risk becomes lethal when, as is the case with both Whitehead and Deleuze, the philosophers explicitly define their own enterprise as challenging any neutral judgement. Deleuze characterizes thought as an exercise of bad will, and Whitehead never stops emphasizing that public, consensual matters of fact, precisely because we are able to characterize them in a consensual way, are shaped by language, and as such are the worst starting point for philosophy. For Whitehead, philosophy demands experimentation with language, knowing that any ready-made use of words means failure.
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References
Deleuze, G. 1969 Logique du sens (Paris: Minuit)
Deleuze G. and Guattari F. 1994 What is Philosophy? Trans. G. Burchell and H. Tomlinson (London: Verso)
Whitehead, A. N. 1979 Process and Reality. Corrected edition (New York: The Free Press)
Whitehead, A. N. 1967 Science and the Modern World (New York: The Free Press)
Whitehead, A. N. 1964 Concept of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Whitehead, A. N. 1968 Modes of Thought (New York: The Free Press)
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© 2009 Isabelle Stengers
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Stengers, I. (2009). Thinking with Deleuze and Whitehead: a Double Test. In: Robinson, K. (eds) Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230280731_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230280731_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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