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On Deleuze's Ontology
Project: Polytopia
Project: Polytopia
“A philosopher’s ontology is the set of entities he or she assumes to exist in reality, the types of entities he or she is committed to assert actually exist. Although in the history of philosophy there are a great variety of ontological commitments, we can very roughly classify these into three main groups. For some philosophers reality has no existence independently from the human mind that perceives it, so their ontology consists mostly of mental entities, whether these are thought as transcendent objects or, on the contrary, as linguistic representations or social conventions. Other philosophers grant to the objects of everyday experience a mind independent existence, but remain unconvinced that theoretical entities, whether unobservable relations such as physical causes, or unobservable entities such as electrons, possess such an ontological autonomy. Finally, there are philosophers who grant reality full autonomy from the human mind, disregarding the difference between the observable and the unobservable and the anthropocentrism this distinction implies. These philosophers are said to have a realist ontology. Deleuze is such a realist philosopher, a fact that by itself should distinguish him from most post-modern philosophies which remain basically non-realist.
Realist philosophers, on the other hand, need not agree about the contents of this mind-independent reality. In particular, Deleuze rejects several of the entities taken for granted in ordinary forms of realism . To take the most obvious example, in some realist approaches the world is thought to be composed of fully formed objects whose identity is guaranteed by their possession of an essence, a core set of properties that defines what these objects are. Deleuze is not a realist about essences, or any other transcendent entity, so in his philosophy something else is needed to explain what gives objects their identity and what preserves this identity through time. Briefly, this something else is dynamical processes. Some of these processes are material and energetic, some are not, but even the latter remain immanent to the world of matter and energy. Thus, Deleuze’s process ontology breaks with the essentialism that characterizes naive realism and, simultaneously. removes one of the main objections that non-realists make against the postulation of an autonomous reality.”
(Manuel DeLanda: IS&VP pp. 2-3)
Realist philosophers, on the other hand, need not agree about the contents of this mind-independent reality. In particular, Deleuze rejects several of the entities taken for granted in ordinary forms of realism . To take the most obvious example, in some realist approaches the world is thought to be composed of fully formed objects whose identity is guaranteed by their possession of an essence, a core set of properties that defines what these objects are. Deleuze is not a realist about essences, or any other transcendent entity, so in his philosophy something else is needed to explain what gives objects their identity and what preserves this identity through time. Briefly, this something else is dynamical processes. Some of these processes are material and energetic, some are not, but even the latter remain immanent to the world of matter and energy. Thus, Deleuze’s process ontology breaks with the essentialism that characterizes naive realism and, simultaneously. removes one of the main objections that non-realists make against the postulation of an autonomous reality.”
(Manuel DeLanda: IS&VP pp. 2-3)
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