Abstract

Deleuze places the general project of Difference and Repetition within the history of “philosophies of difference”. Our aim is to follow this history, which he analyzes in particular in the second chapter, focusing on his reading of Aristotle. In these pages, the challenge is to distinguish between difference and analogy, in order to note in the theory of categories the ontological moment when the possibility of a purely differential conception of being is reduced to an analogical understanding. From this perspective, we ask how Deleuze intends to think of difference without analogy, i.e. how he deals with the following question: what of the difference between two beings in relation can exceed analogy understood as the reason for what differs? In this way, we identify the originality of a thought of pure difference, what it implies as a new understanding of the distribution of being, and its consequences for what we call thinking.