Difference

Philadelphia philosophy professor, Keli Birchfield, asked the following question:

Could you say a little more about how "difference deep down" relates to a transcendental "difference in itself."

This is a great question, because she asked it in response to my initial explanation of the way we distinguish structures of identity to make our understanding of the world. In review, we make sense of the world through a logical discernment of individual things and their relationship to other things. In other words, we separate "this thing" from "that thing" in order to better understand what is true about our world. That focus on IDENTITY, the conceptual boundaries between things established by classical logical thinking, represents the primary way that we structure our world. Deleuze refers to this as identity in concepts.

It's very important to define this understanding of structure, because the main point of Deleuze's philosophy is to explain a different type of structure that should be primary in our thinking, over identity. Difference, Deleuze argues, is a more accurate way of describing our world because the arbitrary distinctions we make in our logical thinking are not completely precise. Difference-in-itself, is where things can be subdivided up so small that they dissolve into vanishing terms. They may have independent characteristics, but they are indistinguishable from a fluidity.

A famous quote about Deleuze's philosophy comes from Alain Badiou's book: Deleuze, The Clamour of Being.

A single and same voice for the whole thousand-voice multiple, a single and same Ocean for all the drops, a single clamour of Being for all beings, on condition that each being, each drop, and each voice has reached the state of excess...

In this quote, Badiou is essentially saying that the formless state of fluidity described above is like an ocean, whereas the individual beings recognized by a mind dissolve from being independent drops to being the same fluid whole. This concept illustrated by the ocean-drops relationship is called the one-multiple, or in other words, the whole and its parts. This concept is very important to understanding Deleuze's philosophy and very important to explaining what I hope can be taken from Deleuze in terms of peace through creativity.

Deleuze's philosophy is often referred to as Transcendental Empiricism precisely because he believes that we do not attain optimal living by striving for some end state. The popular belief we have that we can create a perfect representation of our world by carving it up into identities, make us feel that we are on a path through life compelled to reach an end, some perfect completion of knowledge or other form of accomplishment. In reality, Deleuze teaches, reality is immanent, meaning is emerges from within (from nature), so our attempts to strive to obtain knowledge are mistaken. We can know reality through our experiences (empiricism) and becoming attuned to sensations. Deleuze believes that our experience is constantly evolving and changing, so trying to control it by fixing it into unchanging categories is also mistaken. Transcendental just means the conditions that make experience possible.

So, for the Philosophy of Creativity, what this means is that our traditional modes of knowledge attainment, which while well-suited for making decisions and taking action when necessary, create in us a sense of tension or unease because our fundamental way of making sense itself makes us feel that we are on a path toward something, that we are perpetually reaching or striving. This is not a recipe for optimal living, as evidenced by the tremendous problem with mental health in America today. As you will see, as I continue this series, striving only benefits us in limited and specific situations where that type of thinking is required. Sometimes stretching toward a goal benefits our growth, but In other aspects of our lives, we can fall back into the waters of Deleuze's ocean, receiving a replenishing sense of stillness, while being invigorated at all the new ways we might live, ways not clear to us according to our previous narrow way of thinking. Creativity can be a respite. Creativity can bring peace.