Morejon - Differentiation and Distinction

Differentiation and Distinction
on the problem of individuation from Scotus to Deleuze

with an appendix on the history of calculus1
gil morejn, 5.26.2015
Introduction
This paper takes up the philosophical problem of individuation, or differentiation. We
will argue that there are important resources to be found in Duns Scotus and Gilles
Deleuze that allow us to articulate a crucial insight: that what exists prior to
differentiation or individuation, which is figured variously as the common nature and
the virtual, is not at all undifferentiated. This is an important insight because it forces a
re-evaluation of the idea of possibility, which was classically understood as the
negation of actuality.2 Hegels famous critique, that Schellings philosophy of
Indifferenz amounted to the night where all cows are black, exposes the paucity of
such a conception, through which we ultimately are left incapable of accounting for the
reality of actual individuals or distinguishing between empirical instances.3 However,
ironically, we would claim that the Hegelian hypothesis of an ontologically absolute
process of self-negation is similarly inadequate, insofar as it posits the relationship
between possibility and actuality as one of an abstract, that is, insufficiently dialectical
negation, in which the passage from the chaos of the latter to the distinctness of the
former remains inexplicable or mysterious. While we will not pursue this critique here,
what we will suggest is that the positive notion of common nature or virtuality, as
something both completely determined and undifferentiated, far exceeds in its
explanatory capacities a negative notion of possibility as purely indifferent.4 But in

Page 18.
In particular here we have in mind Aristotles Metaphysics, in which he argues for the temporal and
logical priority of actuality to potentiality. Cf., for instance, Metaphysics Z.8
3
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface, 16.
4
Similar notions can be found in Gilbert Simondon, who with his concept of metastable states as
determinate but preindividual systems suffused with potentials clearly influenced Deleuze; and Manuel
DeLanda, whose Deleuzian-inspired philosophy of science invokes phase spaces and possibility
spaces. Miguel De Beistigui, John Protevi, and Alberto Toscano have all contributed substantially to
1
2
morejn | differentiation and distinction | 2
order to think this pre-individual nature, to pose philosophically the problem of

genesis, as Scotus already demonstrates and as we will see, it is necessary to abandon
hylomorphism.
Why do we say individuation or differentiation? We mean this not in the sense
of an alternative but in the sense of a Spinozist Deus sive Natura that is, as a
polemical formulation indicating an inclusive disjunction.5 To the extent that one
thinks the individual under the aspect of identity, one might conclude that
individuation and differentiation are opposed. However, the individual is precisely
distinct insofar as it is not identical to other individuals, although the positive account
of in what this nonidentity consists may remain obscure. For this reason, as we will see,
Scotus is already able to develop a concept of singularity whose fundamental trait is its
irreducibility or uniqueness with regard to what is common, which is opposed to a
concept of individuality whose fundamental character is its indifferent participation
with regard to a universal. Moreover, this peculiar coincidence of irreducibility and
commonness in actual singularity cannot, as we will see, be understood in terms of
negation, but only by reference to the positivity of a difference. In other words, the
process by which differentiation unfolds is precisely the genesis of individuals.
In this paper, we will first assess Scotus critique of the conceptual inadequacy of
Aristotelian hylomorphism to the issue of individuation: neither form, matter, nor their
relationship can provide a convincing account of what constitutes an individual.
Scotuss exhaustive negative-critical analysis yields the positive result that some
minimal immanent criteria are ascertained regarding the problem of individuation and
the concept of common nature. Subsequently, we will turn to Deleuze, and in particular
to his interpretation of differential calculus, since it is here that he uncovers
substantial resources for thinking the process of differentiation, which he articulates in
terms of the actualization of a problematic Idea (his theory of dialectics). Thus we will
ask: why does Deleuze turn to the calculus, and what is at stake in his interpretation of
it? For although Deleuzes reference to the calculus does not commit him to a
mathematical ontology la Badiou, he nevertheless clearly insists that neither is it to
be understood as metaphoric. As we will argue, the metaphysics of differential calculus

research into Deleuzes relationship to the philosophy and history of the problem of individuation.
References for all of these works can be found in our bibliography at the end of this essay.
5
Cf., for example, Spinoza, Ethics, IV, Preface: "the eternal and infinite being, whom we call God, or
nature, acts by the same necessity whereby it exists." For a thoughtful discussion of this rhetorical tactic
in Spinoza and contemporary philosophers following in his footsteps, see Montag, Althusser and His
Contemporaries, 116.
provides a model for grasping how, according to Deleuze and following the insights of
Scotus, pre-individual reality is completely determined in a way which is obscure
(rather than clear) and distinct.
I.
Scotus immanent critique of individuation
Duns Scotus asks: how can we account for individuality? To reformulate the question in
such a way that elucidates the intimate connection between individuation and
differentiation, we might say: How is a specific difference the difference that
distinguishes the essence of one species from that of another within the same genus or
generic difference itself differentiated into individuals of that species? To answer this
question, the Aristotelian framework that formed the conceptual and metaphysical
basis for much of the scholastic tradition would prove inadequate. Scotus exhaustive
method shows that none of the received categories can possibly account for this
differentiation of specific differences, and thus that this problematic of individuation
requires the development and deployment of new categories entirely: no longer the
universal, but the common; no longer the individual, but the singular. Let us follow his
path and join in the exhaustion, seeking the point at which there are no more
possibilities; from this vantage point, significant characteristics of the common nature
will become apparent.6
In Ordinatio II, Distinction 3, Part 1, Scotus concerns himself with the issue of
individuation, rejecting in turn the following suggestions for what could count as a
principium individuationis:
1. that things are individual by virtue of their nature (question 1);
2. that things are individual by virtue of a double negation (q. 2);
3. that things are individual by virtue of their act of existence (q. 3);
4. that things are individual by virtue of their accidents, especially quantity (q. 4);
5. that things are individual by virtue of their matter (q. 5).
Numbers 1 and 2 establish the coordinates within which the rest of his investigation
proceeds: they make it clear that our principle must be something positive which is
distinct from the individuals specific difference. The subsequent questions, all
answered in the negative, all serve to demonstrate the inadequacy of the accounts of
his predecessors and interlocutors, insofar as they seek to locate the principle of
Cf. Deleuze, The Exhausted.
individuation in the already existing individual (3), some one of its accidental qualities
(4), or in the inadequate hylomorphic concept of matter (5).
1.
The first possibility, that a thing is individual by virtue of its very nature, or
from itself, is the position Scotus attributes to Roger Marston.7 This would mean that
the very nature of a thing, or its specific difference, is that by virtue of which there are
individuals of that species. However, his leads to the problematic contention that the
nature of stoneness is what accounts for the individual differences between this and
that stone, whereas it seems clear that what two things have in common cannot be that
by which they are distinguished from each other.8 Scotus argues that there is some real
unity in the thing that is less than numerical unity or the proper unity of the singular.
This unity belongs to the nature in itself.9 In other words, that which is held in
common is real, but its unity is less than numerical insofar as it is insufficient on its
own terms to constitute any this it does not individuate on its own.
This common nature, as less than numerical, is nevertheless not incompatible
with universality, or else we would not be able to talk about what it is to be a stone, nor
with individuality, since there are indeed individual stones.10 Consider that when we
say: these two are both stones, we mean at once that these two are both stones, or really
have something in common, and at the same time that these two are both stones, that
is, they are nevertheless distinct from one another, or they are individuals. Universality
and individuality, therefore, are both compatible with the nature insofar as it is
common, but insofar as it is less-than-numerical it is neither universal nor singular on
its own: although [the nature] never really exists without some of these [features],
nevertheless of itself it is not any of them. Rather, [the nature] is naturally prior to all

Here and in what follows, we are not concerned with whether Scotus representations of his
interlocutors Roger Marston, Henry of Ghent, and so on are accurate or fair; even if he misrepresents
them, we are concerned with the logic of his arguments.
8
This is the same argument that Spinoza makes in Ethics I, Proposition 5, according to which there
cannot be more than one substance with a given attribute. For if an attribute is what the intellect
perceives as constituting the essence of a thing, and we say that two things are distinct insofar as they
have the same attribute, then we are claiming that we distinguish them from one another by virtue of the
essence they have in common, which is absurd. (Cf. Spinoza, Ethics, I P5 Dem.)
9
Scotus, Ordinatio II, Distinction 3, Part 1, Question 1, 30. Every reference to Scotus in what follows will
be from this First Part of Distinction 3 of Book II of the Ordinatio, commonly referred to as the Treatise on
the Common Nature and its Individuation; thus we will cite this hereafter as Treatise with Question and
Paragraph number.
10
It would be interesting here to compare the logic of this objection to those raised by Malebranche's
fictional interlocutor Aristes in his Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion, regarding the conditions for
the possibility of generalizing concepts, in Dialogues I and II. These powerful objections were very
influential in the development of Hume's empiricism.
7
of these [features].11 The common nature is neither universal nor particular, neither
singular nor plural; rather, it is prior to and compatible with receiving any of these
determinations.
Scotus argues that we must be careful not to think that the nature is common
insofar as we understand it, and singular insofar as it really is out there in the world,
which would simply repeat the nominalist position. This is inadequate because common
natures are not abstractions:
Commonness is suitable to the nature outside the intellect, and likewise singularity:
commonness is suitable to the nature from itself, while singularity is suitable to the
nature through something in the thing that contracts [the nature]. But universality is
not suitable to the thing from itself. And so I grant that a cause of universality should be
looked for, [as maintained in n.6]. Nevertheless, no cause of commonness other than the
nature itself need be looked for. Once commonness is postulated in the nature itself
according to its proper beingness and unity, one must necessarily look for the cause of
singularity, which adds something more to the nature to which it belongs.12
Scotus recognizes, on the one hand, that insofar as we agree that something is held in
common between individuals, it must be something real. But, on the other hand, and
against the (Platonic) realists, he holds that it is in fact singulars which are ultimately
actual, since only they, and not abstract universals, have numeric unity; this numeric
unity is the something more they add to the common nature. Hence when we say that
the common nature has less than numeric unity, as Paolo Virno argues, this amounts
to a realism of the Common and a nominalism of the Universal.13 Now, on the basis of
this formulation of the common nature, we will need to ask the question of
individuation anew: what is it that, as he puts it, contracts the nature to individuality?
2.
Scotus moves immediately to argue that this contracting factor must be
something positive, contra Henry of Ghent, for whom individuation is the result of a
twofold negation. According to the latter, an individual is not its species, and it is not
any other individual of its species. On this account, since singularity or
individuality only mean a double negation, it is not necessary to seek something
positive as its cause, for the negation is sufficient.14 However, Scotus asks, what do we

Scotus, Treatise, Q1 32
13
Virno, Angels and the General Intellect, 62
14
11
12
mean when we say that something is an individual? We mean, above all else, that it
cannot be divided into subjective parts: [there is something] to which being divided into
many parts of which any given one is that thing is formally incompatible.15 While the
species human may be divided into members of that species, an individual human
cannot be divided without being destroyed as such. As Timothy B. Noone writes, for
Scotus instantiability is contradictory with the notion of individuality as such.16 The
question is, by virtue of what is an individual incompatible with being divided? And as
Scotus argues, the answer cannot be a negation or privation, but must be something
positive: nothing is simply incompatible with some being through a privation in it
alone, but rather through something positive in it.17 Or again: No imperfection is
formally incompatible with something except through some perfection.18
Individuality, or incompatibility with being divided, is in fact a positive feature of
things, and thus cannot be explained by means of negation alone.
But even more directly, Scotus argues that this attempt in fact begs the question:
I ask whence a negation is a this, since it is of the same account in this [singular] and
in that one.19 If the question is: by virtue of what is something a this? then to answer:
this negation is obviously insufficient and circular. Clearly, it is true that individuals
are not their species and not other individuals of that species, but these negative
relationships are secondary effects of that which positively individuates them.20
3.
In Question 3, Scotus very quickly dismisses the idea that it is the act of existing
that individuates or contracts the common nature. The suggestion is that whatever
distinguishes something cannot be its potential being, but its actuality; but existing is
the ultimate act of individuals, compared to which everything else about them is

Noone, Universals and Individuation, 114
17
18
Scotus, Treatise, Q2 52. Again the parallels with Spinoza are striking. For Spinoza as for Scotus,
negation is insufficient to account for the positive qualities of any given thing. See, for instance, Ethics I,
Axiom 3; I P4; I P26-28; III P4-8, etc. For this reason, we would argue that Hegel's influential
interpretation of Spinozism in The Science of Logic and the Lectures on the History of Philosophy turns on a
problematic misreading of "omnis determinatio est negatio." On this point we follow Macherey, Hegel or
Spinoza; see in particular Chapters 1 and 4.
19
20
Scotus, Treatise, Q2 58. Deleuze says almost the same exact thing in criticizing the Hegelian theory of
the primacy of the Negative: It is of the essence of affirmation to be in itself multiple and to affirm
difference. As for the negative, this is only the shadow cast upon the affirmations produced by a
problem: negation appears alongside affirmation like a powerless double, albeit one which testifies to
the existence of another power, that of the effective and persistent problem. (Deleuze, Difference and
Repetition, 267)
15
16
merely possible; and thus this very act of existing, esse existentiae, is that which
distinguishes or individuates the common nature.21 Scotus objects to this, first, that
whatever distinguishes or determines individuals must itself be distinct and
determinate, but the act of existing is itself neither of these things; in fact, 'that it
exists' seems to be about as indeterminate a claim as can be made about something.22
And second, he repeats the argument from 56, since it can be asked through what the
existence is a this.23 Simply put, this existence is again circular and insufficient as an
answer to the question of what makes something a this.
4.
Scotus turns then to the position that it is matter, and material quantity, that
individuates. This seems minimally plausible as an account of individuation given a
hylomorphic model in which an individuals form is distinct from its matter: since
ostensibly the formal cause is identical in the case of two individuals for example,
universal humanity would be the same for any two humans then perhaps it is the
material cause, or the relationship between the form and its matter, which provides the
principle of individual difference. Scotus quotes Boethius: The variety of accidents
produces difference in number, for three men differ neither in species nor in genus, but
in their accidents.24 We can therefore also formulate this suggestion as follows: two
members of a species are the same in essence; but they are not identical insofar as they
are individuals with different accidental qualities; thus it must be their accidental
qualities are what individuates them. But Scotus argues that this attempt also fails, for
the simple reason that an individual substance is prior by nature and by definition
to its accidents, and it is absurd to argue that anything can cause what precedes it: no
accident can per se be an account through which material substance is individuated.25
Thus, the general lesson is that the principium individuationis cannot be found among
any individuals accidental characteristics, and in particular the quantity of material
that an individual possesses falls into this category.
Moreover, if we understand by a substance something that is logically prior to its
accidents, then we must similarly reject the idea that it is the composite of substance
and its accidents which individuates the former, since any such aggregate would itself
have to be accidental.26 Simply on the basis of the logical priority of material

Scotus, Treatise, Q3 61-2
23
24
25
26
21
22
substantial individuality to its accidents, Scotus concludes that it is impossible for

substance to be individual through some accident.27 We can also put this in the nowfamiliar terms of the charge of circularity: we presuppose its being a this when we say
that this quantity of material can be that through which something is individuated.28
Even the apparently more sophisticated suggestion, that the individuating
difference is the relationship between a things form and matter, fails for the same
reason. Given that the form, ex hypothesi, is identical in the case of two members of a
species, the difference in the relationships between their forms and the matter that
together constitute them will turn out to be nothing but the difference in their matter.
For there are only two terms in this relationship, the form and the matter; and so if,
when we compare two such composites, one of the terms is identical in both, then the
difference between these two composites will be entirely dependent on the second
term, in this case matter.29
5.
But there is another way in which this hylomorphic account cannot account for
individuation by material difference. In the third question, Scotus did not object to the
idea that individuals must be distinguished in their actuality rather than their
potentiality; he objected rather to the suggestion that the simple act of existence
sufficed to account for individuation. Indeed of two things that are actually identical
but which may both be different, we must conclude that they are in fact not distinct.
But on the hylomorphic account, matter is taken to be the principle of pure potentiality
or dynamis; how, then, would it be possible for a differential distribution of potentiality
to account for actual individuation? As Noone puts it, positing matter as the principle
of individuation seems to entail locating the source of the greatest unity (unitas

Scotus, Treatise, QQ5-6 138
29
We will return to this later, but we note in passing that Scotus beautiful critique of this relational
position amounts to demonstrating that it is not relational at all, because one of the terms of the relation
is completely static, and so what was supposed to have been a dynamism is anything but. Following the
same logic, we will come to see, according to Deleuze, that it is not enough to relate dx to x, or dy to y; in
these relations they are completely undetermined, since x and y are algebraic symbols representing values
that are always actually only indifferently determinate; that is, x and y are, in principle, constants. It is only
when we relate the two dynamic variables, dx and dy, that we find that they are reciprocally determinable
(dydx), and this is completely determined when its power is conditioned by a distribution of singular
points (dydx=f'(x)). (Deleuze, D&R, 172-6)
It is not going too far to suggest that Scotus is among the first to recognize that individuation or
differentiation remains inexplicable in principle so long as we remain within the ambit of a relation
between terms that may appear variable but which are actually just indifferent or indeterminate
constants.
27
28
maxima) and actuality in a principle that is ordinarily the source of multiplicity and
potentiality.30 For this reason, matter is not capable of furnishing us with a principle of
individuation: the pure capacity to receive a form logically cannot be a positive factor
that contracts a common nature into singularity.
This distinguishing or contracting positive factor cannot be an essential,
specific, or quidditative distinction, since this would entail a difference at the level of
the common nature and not at the level of the individual: the singular is not definable
by some definition other than the definition of the species. The [singular] is
nevertheless per se a being, adding some beingness to the specific beingness. However,
the per se beingness that [the singular] adds [to the specific beingness] is not
quidditative beingness.31 Thus there is no science of the singular. If we ask after the
quidditative being or essence of an individual, we must conclude that it is its specific
difference; however, it is also the case that the individual adds something to the
common nature that it contracts. As Virno argues, this yields the surprising, even
paradoxical conclusion that the individual is both more and less than the species:
the individual adds something to the common nature and, in contracting it, gives it the
mode of ultimate existence or actuality; however, the common nature is never
exhausted by the singular into which it is contracted.32 And one immediate
consequence of this analysis, as we suggested at the outset, is that the common nature
is not thinkable as indifferent, even though it is logically pre-individual. That is, the
positive contracting factor is not the only positivity at play in differentiation: the
common nature, too, is positive and determinate, although on its own it is neither
singular nor universal. This pre-individual determinacy is what Deleuze, in Difference &
Repetition, calls the virtual, and it is to his investigation that we will now turn.
II.
Deleuze: the distinctness of the virtual
The virtual occupies a vexing position in Deleuze's philosophy and in studies on his
thought. On the one hand, it is quite obvious, at least in Difference & Repetition, that it
plays a central role in his metaphysics; on the other hand, any survey of the secondary
literature is more likely to confuse than clarify what precisely this role is. For instance,
iek, in his monograph on Deleuze, writes that we must be careful not to conflate it
with virtual reality, before attempting to reformulate it using his familiar Lacanian

Scotus, Treatise, QQ5-6 192
32
Virno, Angels and the General Intellect
30
31
vocabulary, in which he somewhat confusingly claims both that it as such is the Real,
and that it is also the Symbolic as such.33 Moreover, he suggests that we understand by
it a kind of quantum oscillation,34 and that the virtual names an ineliminable excess of
becoming over being.35 On the other hand, Badiou, in his own monograph Deleuze: The
Clamor of Being, argues that the virtual is the name of Being, the very Being of
beings, ultimately suggesting that the virtual is an idealist Platonic hangover, the
postulate of a transcendent One-All that results from Deleuzes inadequate reckoning
with post-Cantorian mathematics.36 Even more sympathetic readings of Deleuze are
often misleading and contradictory. Brian Massumi claims that the virtual names the
real but abstract incorporeality of the body,37 arguing that certain fashionable forms
of social critique are not abstract enough; he tends to characterize it as a kind of total
space of incompossible and unlivable coexistences whose affective relation to the
actual is apparently the object of quantum mechanical inquiry.38 It seems difficult to
reconcile this characterization of the virtual as real but abstract, given that Deleuze
cites Proust as having articulated the formula of virtuality: it is real without being
actual, ideal without being abstract.39
For my part, I want to suggest that it is within the context of the problem of
individuation, which we have been exploring in Duns Scotus, that the concept of the
virtual gains its sense and becomes intelligible. The theory of the virtual, as I will try to
show, is Deleuzes response to the question of how and in what way pre-individual

iek, Organs Without Bodies, 3-4
iek, Organs Without Bodies. Here as elsewhere iek follows the so-called Copenhagen interpretation
of quantum physics, which is by no means the only one possible, even if it is currently the dominant one.
But even in terms of this approach, his presentation is somewhat problematic; for instance, he suggests
that Werner Heisenbergs uncertainty principle is what Niels Bohrs complementarity is all about,
when these two were actually competing, incompatible interpretations, and Heisenberg ultimately
retracted his position, ceding to Bohr. See iek, The Indivisible Remainder, Chapter 3. For a recent
critical analysis of ieks interpretation and usage of quantum physics in his Lacanian-Hegelian
ontology, see Johnston, Adventures in Transcendental Materialism, Chapter 7. For helpful introductions to
quantum physics and its history, see Feynman, QED; Omns, Quantum Philosophy; Barad, Meeting the
Universe Halfway; and Prigogine, e.g. From Being to Becoming. For a rigorously informed polemic against
the hegemony of the Copenhagen indeterminist interpretation in favor of a Bohmian determinist one,
see Drr et al., Quantum Physics Without Quantum Philosophy. For a helpful discussion of the role in
Deleuzes philosophy of quantum field theory, see Plotinsky, Chaosmologies.
35
iek, Organs Without Bodies, 18-20
36
Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamor of Being, 43, 48
37
Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, 19-21
38
Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, 36-8. See note 33 above for some observations about the surprisingly
common references, usually confusing when not confused, to quantum physics in this context.
39
Deleuze, Difference & Repetition, 208
33
34
reality, like Scotus common nature, is anything but indistinct. Rather than the abyss of
undifferentiated (in)difference, the virtual is completely determined, in a way that is
distinct and obscure.
Just as Scotus reached the postulate of a common nature essentially prior to and
compatible with both individuality and universality, Deleuze argues that we can grasp
the virtual only on condition that we think it as pure past: The virtual object is not a
former present, which is the thought of a relative past, a past thought only in relation
to the contracted present; rather, it is the past as contemporaneous with its own
present, as pre-existing the passing present and as that which causes the present to
pass. Virtual objects are shreds of pure past.40 The virtual is thus what is behind the
actual present in two senses: it is behind logically and temporally, as that which has
been actualized; but moreover it is what is behind the contraction of the present as
what causes it. Indeed, the contemporaneity of the virtual past with regard to the actual
present is a consequence of the former being the cause of the latter. Here already at the
level of language we can begin to see the connection between the problem of
individuation in both Scotus and Deleuze: the virtual is that by virtue of which the
present is contracted into actual states populated by individuals.
It is in the fourth chapter of Difference & Repetition, Ideal Synthesis of
Difference,41 that Deleuze attempts to work out the logic of this virtual contraction.
Claiming to find in Kant a theory of Ideas as being essentially problematic, and in this
way objective, he suggests that they present three moments: undetermined with
regard to their objects, determinable with regard to objects of experience, and having
the ideal of an infinite determination with regard to concepts of the understanding.42
The plausibility of his theory of Ideas will turn on whether or not he is able to
demonstrate intrinsic and necessary connections between these three modalities of
determination, which are the key moments of a theory of differentiation: the
undetermined, the determinable, and the completely or infinitely determined. In order
to do this, he turns immediately to the differential calculus and proposes a novel
interpretation.43

Translation modified. Patton has Ideas and the Synthesis of Difference, while Deleuze writes
Synthse idelle de la diffrence.
42
43
Deleuze presupposes a fairly robust understanding of the calculus and its history as the backdrop
against which the novelty of his interpretation would be apparent. Such an understanding is only
presupposed at the risk of being totally inaccessible to many readers, while on the other hand an
40
41
The inadequacy of transcendental philosophy, from Deleuzes perspective, is

most acutely articulated in the early critiques of Salomon Mamon: it is necessary to
pass from a theory of extrinsic conditions to one of intrinsic genesis. From the point of
view of transcendental conditions alone, the relationship between the determinable
and the determined remains extrinsic: if the condition for the possibility of any
representation are the pure forms of intuition, this tells us nothing about this
representation not only does it tell us nothing about what it is in its particularity, but
we have no way of grasping why we have this one and not another. Deleuze considers
the introduction of the schematism to be evidence of this inadequacy, through which
difference remains external and as such empirical and impure, suspended outside the
construction between the determinable intuition and the determinant concept.44
Hence if we are to develop a theory of individuation, it cannot be grounded upon a
system of extrinsic conditioning. The theory of conditions is necessarily formal, but the
genetic problem of individuation, as we saw with Scotus, is one that cannot be resolved
by formal or extrinsic accounts; surely it is necessary that individual substances have
matter (angels notwithstanding), but in any event the fact of having matter is not
sufficient for their individuation.
For Deleuze, every individual is the actual solution or resolution of a virtual
problem. As Dan Smith argues, it is false, or at least inadequate, to consider Deleuze an
anti-dialectical thinker; rather, he proposes a new concept of dialectics.45 Deleuze
writes: Problems are always dialectical: the dialectic has no other sense, nor do
problems have any other sense [] it must be said that there are mathematical,
physical, biological, psychical and sociological problems, even though every problem is
dialectical and there are no non-dialectical problems.46 Dialectics is the art of
problems, or of problematic Ideas; we say art, on condition that it is understood that
art no less than science is compelled in its movement by a strict necessity in fact, by a

explanatory digression at this juncture risks losing the thread of our philosophical discussion. As such,
the reader can find at the end of this essay an extensive Appendix, which attempts to provide an
accessible introduction to the motivating problems and stakes of the differential calculus, as well as a
sketch of its scientific development and the history of its philosophical interpretation. In what follows
we will attempt to discuss the philosophical problem at hand while presupposing as little technical
mathematical understanding as possible, and will seek to explain the relevant mathematical concepts
and terms when their introduction is unavoidable.
44
Deleuze, Difference & Repetition, 173-4
45
Smith, Axiomatics and Problematics, 147; see also Smith, Deleuze, Hegel, and the Post-Kantian
Tradition, and Deleuze, Kant, and the Theory of Immanent Ideas.
46
principle of sufficient reason. In his lectures on Leibniz, Deleuze argues that the
difference between cause and reason comes down again to the distinction between
condition and genesis, extrinsic and intrinsic relations of determination: Cause is
never sufficient. One must say that the principle of causality poses a necessary cause,
but never a sufficient one. We must distinguish between necessary cause and sufficient
reason [] sufficient reason expresses the relation of a thing with its own notion,
whereas cause expresses the relations of the thing with something else.47 The
problematic, which Deleuze defines as the ensemble of the problem and its
conditions,48 is a virtual multiplicity in which the relations between the undetermined,
determinable, and completely determined particular to it are intrinsic, thus
constituting a principle of sufficient reason.
Differential calculus, according to Deleuze, provides a model for such a
problematic or dialectical Idea, without constituting an archetype or even being the
exclusive formulation of the mathematical Idea. It is not a matter of opposing the
infinitely small (Leibniz) to the infinity large (Hegel), but of exhibiting the moments of
the process of differentiation which constitute its sufficient reason:
The
symbol
appears
as
simultaneously
undetermined,
determinable
and
determination. Three principles which together form a sufficient reason correspond to

these three aspects: a principle of determinability corresponds to the undetermined as
such (, ); a principle of reciprocal determination corresponds to the reciprocally
!"
determinable ( ); a principle of complete determination corresponds to the effectively

!"
determined (values of
!"
!"
). In short, is the Idea the Platonic, Leibnizian or Kantian
Idea, the problem and its being.49
For a given function (), represents the rate of change of the value. In relation
to alone, is completely undetermined nothing about the value indicates
anything about the rate at which the value changes, and at any given point literally
does not exist; and the same holds for in relation solely to . However, they are
perfectly determinable in relation to one another. For this reason, a principle of
determinability corresponds to the undetermined as such.50 As Hegel recognized, in

Deleuze, Lecture on Leibniz, April 15 1980
49
50
47
48
the differential
!"
!"
the two terms are only moments of a process, and have sense as
determinable only in relation to one another.51 Deleuze argues therefore that the
principle of reciprocal determinability is not extrinsic to, but entailed by, the very
nature of the undetermined.
Moreover, in this passage from the undetermined to reciprocal determination,
Deleuze argues, we have also passed from quantitability to qualitability. Leibnizs
method for finding the derivative invoked infinitesimals, infinitely small quantities,
which traverse an ideal distance and at the limit vanish entirely, such that, based on his
principle of the identity of indiscernibles, the secant becomes identical to the tangent.52
But until the middle of the nineteenth century, much of the controversy about the
legitimacy of these methods came down to a concern over the validity of mathematical
concepts derived from geometric intuition, and in particular about the geometric
intuitions of continuous spatial magnitudes and their infinite divisibility.53 Now
Deleuze is similarly skeptical about geometric intuition, but unlike the mathematicians
who sought to eliminate any trace of these concepts (Cauchy, Weierstrass), he seeks to
retain the concept of continuousness as the pure element of quantitability, which
must be distinguished both from the fixed quantities of intuition [quantum] and from
variable quantities in the form of concepts of the understanding [quantitas].54
Reversing the classical order, he argues
that this continuity is grounded by, rather
than grounding, the limit as a genuine cut
[coupre], a border between the changeable
and the unchangeable within the function
itself.55
When we find the derivative of a
function (), we obtain a new function:
!"
!"
() or ! (). But between these two
functions there is a difference which is no

longer simply quantitative, but rather
Figure 1

See Hegel, Science of Logic, 253; his interpretation of the calculus is discussed in Section II of the
Appendix below.
52
See Section II of our Appendix.
53
See Section III of our Appendix.
54
55
Deleuze, Differnece & Repetition, 172
51
qualitative, insofar as the functions necessarily have different powers.56 That is, for
example, there is a qualitative difference between a parabolic curve and the straight
line of its derivative [figure 1]. This is the sense in which Deleuze writes that the
differential relation is determinable in a qualitative form. But in the example we have
given, as with any such example, in so far as it expresses another quality, the
differential relation remains tied to the individual values or to the quantitative
variations corresponding to that quality.57 However, if we attend to the universal logic
of the differential determination, rather than the particular qualitative difference, we
discern in this transformation a pure element of qualitability which derives from the
principle of reciprocal determination.58
The qualitative difference here is, as we
said, one of powers; and it is in this way,
Deleuze argues, that we move from the second
principle to the third: the differential relation
presents a third element, that of pure
potentiality. Power is the form of reciprocal
determination according to which variable
magnitudes are taken to be functions of one
another [] A principle of complete
determination corresponds to this element of
Figure 2
potentiality.59
For
every
power,
there
corresponds a distribution of singular points, which are completely determined. Simon
Duffy offers an illuminating diagram illustrating what is meant by singular point [figure
2]. Singular points are points of articulation where the nature of the curve changes or
the function alters its behavior [] The differential relation characterises or qualifies
not only the distinctive points which it determines, but also the nature of the regular
points in the immediate neighbourhood of these points.60 If we were to take the
derivative of the function graphically represented in figure 2, we would obtain a new

Hegel too argued that the reciprocal relation of dydx has an essentially qualitative, rather than simply
quantitative, character. See Section II of our Appendix.
57
58
59
60
Duffy, The mathematics of Deleuzes differential logic and metaphysics, 128
56
function with a lower power61 describing a parabola, in which the stationary points
would become the points at which the curve passes through the x-axis ( ! () = 0), and
the point of inflection would become the parabolas nadir ( !! () = 0).
The singular points on their own do not yet constitute the function they are
not the principium individuationis, although they provide the coordinates within which
the functions individuation occurs. It is the distribution of these singular points that is
the object of the principle of complete determination.62 The differential establishes not
only the singular points, but also the way in which they establish neighborhoods
within which the ideal infinite continuity is quantitatively determined. In other words,
each completely determined pre-individual singular point ranges over an infinity of
ordinary points within its area of influence: a series of powers with numerical
coefficients surround one singular point, and only one at a time.63 As Dan Smith
writes, in this way we obtain a definition of the individual: one can say of any
determination in general (any thing) that it is a combination of the singular and the
ordinary: that is, it is a multiplicity constituted by its singular and ordinary points.64
It is here, finally, that we return directly to our question about individuation: the
completely determined distribution of such singular points, as fully real but preindividual and only actualized through infinite variations at the level of individual
differences, is precisely the way in which the virtual is not undifferentiated: they
constitute the distinctness of Ideas.65 For this reason Deleuze develops the notion of
different/ciation:66 We call determination of the virtual content of an Idea
differentiation; we call the actualization of that virtuality into species and
distinguished parts differenciation.67 As with Scotus investigation, all the difficulty
lies in evading the Scylla of affirming actuality (Platonic realism), and the Charybdis of
denying reality (nominalism), when it comes to the virtual or the common nature. For

depotentialization conditions pure potentiality by allowing an evolution of the function of a
variable in a series constituted by the powers of i (undetermined quantity) and the coefficients of these
powers (new functions of x), in such a way that the evolution function of that variable be comparable to
that of others. (Deleuze, Difference & Repetition, 175)
62
63
64
Smith, Deleuze on Leibniz, 56
65
66
If not intentionally significant, it is perhaps serendipitous for our purposes that, unlike in the English
publication, the original French publication of Difference & Repetition utilized mathematical fractional
!
notation to mark this distinction: diffren iation.
61
67
in both cases, we are indeed considering a reality: The reality of the virtual consists of
the differential elements and relations along with the singular poins which correspond
to them [] far from being undetermined, the virtual is completely determined.68 This
is the sense in which, as Deleuze argues, the undetermined of the problematic Idea is
nevertheless objective, and non-knowledge is transformed not into an absence but a
positivity of what is to be learned.
Conclusion
More than a shared affirmation of the univocity of being,69 it is the discovery of and
rigorous insistence upon the objectivity and positivity of the undetermined, of the preindividual, that constitutes the thread uniting both Deleuze and Scotus in their efforts
to think through the problem of individuation. As Deleuze writes, the virtual or the
Idea is that which must be understood as both distinct, as the completely determined
distribution of singular points (differentiated) but also as obscure, as not yet
actualized or distinguishable as individuals (differenciated). In this sense preindividual singularities and their distribution possess, as Scotus would say, a less-thannumeric unity. In describing distinctness-obscurity, Deleuze refers to Leibnizs notion
of petites perceptions: the sound of a crashing wave that I hear is actually constituted by
an infinite multiplicity of minute perceptions, each drop of water contributing to the
cacophony, of which I am unconscious and which I am entirely incapable of
distinguishing.70 The astonishing thing is that these indistinguishable infinitesimals
might be contracted into an individual, that somehow less-than-numeric unity or preindividual reality is actualized. With this insight, that of the determinacy of
problematics, the very questions of metaphysics change: no longer what is this? but
why this one? and even why this now?71 And it is on the basis of this insight and
these transformations that philosophical inquiry can become adequate to the politically
exigent tasks of intervening not at the level of actual distributions, but that of virtual
structures and pre-individual determinations.

70
Deleuze, Difference & Repetition, 213; see also the Lecture on Leibniz, April 15 1980; and Leibniz, New
Essays, 54-7. This is also why Dan Smith suggests a Leibnizian inspiration underlying Anti-Oedipus, in
which the unconscious is differential and genetic rather than representative. (Smith, Deleuze on
Leibniz, 55)
71
See Lampert, Deleuze and Guattaris Philosophy of History, especially chapters 1 and 7-9.
68
69
Appendix
A Brief History of the Calculus and its Metaphysics72
I. Introduction: what is differential calculus?

Differential calculus attempts to establish the rate of change, also called the derivative,
!"
!"
(), for any given function (). On a Cartesian coordinate plane, the value of a
point on the x-axis, or ordinate, is that which enters into the function (), yielding a
new value that is plotted on the y-axis, or abscissa. Graphed this way on a plane, many
functions can be geometrically represented as curves, in which the rate at which the
value changes relative to rate of change of the value is not constant: the value may
change at a greater or lesser rate given the same change in . Differential calculus seeks
to establish this variable rate. Now, given any two points on a curve, (! , ! ) and
(! , ! ), the rate at which the value changes relative to the value of between these
!"
! !!
two points, !" , can therefore be calculated as !! !!! .

!
For linear equations, which can be expressed in the form = () = + ,

where and are both constants, the derivative or differential is nothing other than
the slope of the line or the value of , and the derivation is therefore entirely trivial,
since the rate of change of y is the same at every x. This is not the case for polynomial
functions that involve variables with powers greater than 1, such as the function we will
take as our example throughout this appendix: () = ! 2 + 3. Here the function
can be geometrically represented as a parabolic curve, and therefore the rate at which
changes relative to is different depending on the value of . The rate of change of a
curve is equal to the gradient or slope of the line tangential to the curve at a point, and
that tangent is different at different points. Differential calculus thus tries to determine
the function that expresses this difference in the rate of change of relative to the
change in .
But at a given point on a curve, (! , ! ), how do we calculate the rate at which y is
changing relative to x? The problem is that our method for determining the rate of
change requires calculating the difference between the rates at which y changes relative

Please let it be understood that what follows is necessarily cursory and, at times, surely oversimplifies
the complexities of the work discussed. As the author is not a trained mathematician, it is also possible
that some aspects of the exposition are incorrect or misleading. Any objections, clarifications,
suggestions, or complaints will be received with great appreciation at gdmorejon@gmail.com.
72

! !!
to x of two different points, !! !!! ; this actually determines the gradient of a secant of the
!
curve, not a tangent. But, by hypothesis, at a single point on a curve there is no second
point, (! , ! ), with which we could make this calculation. How then can we determine
the differential of a curve at a single point on that curve? Attempting to answer this
question is what motivated Leibnizs approach, which employed infinitesimals or
infinitely small quantities.
II. From Leibniz to Hegel on mathematical infinities73
Leibniz and Newton are generally credited with having discovered the calculus
independently, although to claim that either of them is its discoverer is problematic
and reductive given the long history of contributions to mathematical thought.74 Let us
look at Leibnizs method for determining the derivative, which relies on the notion of
infinitesimals, or infinitely small quantities. We have our function, () = ! 2 + 3.
We want to determine
will calculate
!! !!!
!! !!!
!"
!"
, the rate at which changes relative to the change of . We
on the hypothesis that the difference beween ! and ! , or , and
that between ! and ! , or , is infinitely small that it infinitely approaches and

becomes functionally equivalent to zero.
First we note that = ! ! . In our function, is the independent variable,
which means that is a function of ; so, ! is a function of ! and ! is a function of ! .
Thus we can now articulate strictly in terms of :
1. = ! ! = (!! 2! + 3) (!! 2! + 3), and simplify:
2. = !! 2! !! + 2!
But we also know that = ! ! or, equivalently, ! = + ! . So now:
3. = ( + ! )! 2( + ! )!! + 2!
Now we expand our terms using the binomial theorem and the distributive property:
4. = ! + 2! + !! 2 2! !! + 2! , and simplify:
5. = ! + 2! 2
!"
Dividing both sides by gives us what we were after, a formula for !" :
6.
!"
!"
= + 2! 2
Now, however, we seem to have a problem, for our equation literally begs the question:
we are defining the rate at which changes relative to the change of in terms of the

In these sections, I draw substantially from Gerdes 1985 and Duffy 2006.
Cf. Boyer, The History of the Calculus,177-8; consider also Anne McClintocks reflections on the logic of
narratives of male birthing in Imperial Leather, e.g. in Chapter 6.
73
74
rate of change of ; that is, appears both on the left and right sides of the equation.
Leibnizs solution is, at this point, to suppress or eliminate any terms on the right
side of the equation that still include . Why is he able to do this? Because, as per our
hypothesis, is infinitely small, or approximately and thus functionally equivalent to
zero, and so can be ignored. As Leibniz writes in justification of this procedure:
anyone who is not satisfied with this can be shown in the manner of Archimedes that
the error is less than any assignable quantity and cannot be given by any
construction.75 So, we are left with the general formula that expresses the rate at
which changes relative to the change of for our function:
7.
!"
!"
= 2 2
And indeed, for any point on the curve described by () = ! 2 + 3, the slope or
gradient of the line tangential to it at that point is given by our derivative function
() = 2 2, as verification by experimental application makes apparent.
Leibniz provides a diagram in his justification for this infinitesimal method
[figure 3].76 We have two straight lines, and , which meet at point . Lines and
are perpendicular to the line . Let be the length of line , be the length of
, be the length of , and be the length of . Now, and form two
similar right triangles, meaning that the only difference between them is one of scale
i.e., their angles map onto one another. Due to this similarity, we note that
!!!
!
= !. If
now we continuously slide the line rightward while maintaining its gradient (as in
the dotted line), the lengths and triangle will shrink, while the ratio of to
will remain constant. As he writes:
Now assume the case when the straight line passes through itself; it is obvious that
the points and will fall on , that the straight lines and , or and , will
vanish, and that the proportion or equation
!!!
!
!
!
will become
!
!
= . Then in the
!
present case, assuming that it falls under the general rule, = . Yet and [which
now both = 0] will not be absolutely nothing, since they still preserve the ratio of to
[...] and still have an algebraic relation to each other. And so they are treated as
infinitesimals, exactly as are the elements which our differential calculus recognizes in
the ordinates of curves for momentary increments and decrements.77

Leibniz, Justification of the Infinitesimal Calculus by That of Ordinary Algebra, 546
Leibniz, "Justification", 545
77
Leibniz, "Justification", 545
75
76
The central insight here is that, although these

quantities approach zero, they still maintain a
nonzero relationship with respect to one another
even as they vanish. Or in other words, even if
and both themselves = 0 at the terminal point
of the continuous movement of the line, the ratio
!"
!"
is not therefore nothing; rather, paradoxically,
we obtain a
!
!
which expresses a specific algebraic
relationship: the function of the tangent of a curve

at a given point. More precisely, we can say that at
Figure 3
this limit the gradient of secant of the curve and
that of its tangent at a single point become
identical.
However, some serious issues trouble this method. First, in practically working
through our calculations, we must at first and for the most part treat and as if
they were not equal to zero, for if we immediately eliminate or suppress them we end
up with nothing at all. If in step 3 above when we substituted + ! for ! , we took
to be functionally equivalent to zero, we would get:
8. = (0 + ! )! 2(0 + ! )!! + 2!
9. = !! 2! !! + 2!
10. = 0
Which obviously doesnt get us anywhere; as Marx emphatically notes, this leads
literally to nothing.78 So what justifies holding off on treating and as zero until
the very end, in step 7 above? That the derivation works, in that our new function
() = 2 2 in fact yields the slope of the line tangent to the curve described by
() = ! 2 + 3, is in no way a proof that the method of derivation is accurate or
scientific. Marx refers to this Leibnizian approach as the mystical variant of
differential calculus. Following Hegel, he argues that its procedures, and in particular
the suppression of and at the very end, were justified not by rigorous
mathematics but precisely because the experimental results were known in advance.79

78
79
Marx, On the Concept of the Derived Function, 3

Marx, On the History of Differential Calculus, 91-4; Hegel, Science of Logic, 273
Leibniz was well acquainted with these charges, and struggled to demonstrate
the scientificity of this procedure.80 As Deleuze and Guattari write in A Thousand
Plateaus, for a long time, [differential calculus] had only parascientific status and was
labeled a Gothic hypothesis; royal science only accorded it the value of a convenient
convention or a well-founded fiction,81 since its reliance on the ambiguous notion of
the infinitesimal was considered unacceptable. As infinitely small quantities, and
are in this method sometimes treated as very small but nonzero finite quantities (steps
1-6) and at other times treated as zero (step 7). This in fact was the thrust of Berkeleys
influential response to Leibnizian and Newtonian calculus, The Analyst: Or a Discourse
Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician.82
Many of the subsequent attempts at providing a rigorous ground for differential
calculus, such as those of DAlembert, Euler, and Lagrange, sought to eliminate the
need to make use of these infinitely small quantities, which were seen as ad hoc
solutions at best, and metaphysical absurdities compromising the rigor of mathematics
at worst. However, it was not until Bolzano, Cauchy, and Weierstrass that these
fundamental issues were considered to be resolved.
Before turning to them, however, let us consider briefly Hegels reflection on the
differential calculus as he found it in the early nineteenth century, in the first Remark
on quantiative infinity in the Science of Logic. Hegels remarks are interesting in that,
while he agreed that the justifications of the infinitesimal calculus were inadequate and
its methods ultimately inconsistent, he nevertheless considered the calculus to have
effected a genuine breakthrough in the problem of the representation of the
mathematical infinite. He tries to show that the true mathematical infinite erupts, as
though irrepressible, in the work of Euler and Lagrange, in spite of their efforts to do
away with the infinitesimals via limits and series. This tension was expressed in the
fact that while the methods employed in the calculus at this stage were not consistent,
its outcomes were anything but faulty:
The procedure of the infinitesimal calculus shows itself burdened with a seeming
inexactitude, namely, having increased finite magnitudes by an infinitely small
quantity, this quantity is in the subsequent operation in part retained and in part

The same can be said of Newton, whose method relied on fluxions which were, despite his protests to
the contrary, functionally the same as infinitesimals, except that they represented infinitely small
increases rather than vanishingly small quantities. See Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 190-6
81
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 363
82
Cf. Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 224-9
80

ignored. The peculiarity of this procedure is that in spite of the admitted inexactitude, a
result is obtained which is not merely fairly close and such that the difference can be
ignored, but is perfectly exact. In the operation itself, however, which precedes the
result, one cannot dispense with the conception that a quantity is not equal to nothing,
yet is so inconsiderable that it can be left out of the account.83
Hegels distinction between spurious and true mathematical infinities turns

on the way in which the mathematical infinite is represented. Consider the equation:
!
!
= 2.58714 On the right side, we have the bad representation: an infinite series of
numbers, which exhibits the contradiction of representing that which is a relation

possessing a qualitative nature, as devoid of relation, as a mere quantum, as an
amount.84 As compensation for this reduction of qualitative relation to quantitative
amount, the infinite series is always incomplete the representation always
terminates with an ellipsis; in trying to represent the determinate finite quantity in
this way, we must therefore always add another number, and so the infinite is
represented as an essential incompleteness or the positing of a beyond. On the left
side, we find the other side of the contradiction: here there is no beyond, as its
expression lacks nothing, but at the same time this captures the infinite series by
means of a relationship between finite quantities: in the finite expression which is a
ratio, the negative is immanent as the reciprocal determining of the sides of the ratio
and this is an accomplished return-into-itself, a self-related unity as a negation of the
negation (both sides of the ratio are only moments), and consequently has within it the
determination of infinity.85 Paradoxically, then, it is in fact the endless series which is
the deficient finite expression of the infinite.
With the calculus, new modes of mathematical representation were developed,
particularly in the infinitesimals and , and it here that Hegels real interest lies. In
what he calls power-relations, such as the function of a parabola,
!!
!
= , the
quantitative relationship between and is not constant but variable; he argues that
this indicates that the relationship of a magnitude to a power is in fact fundamentally
qualitative. Moreover, he suggests that this should have prompted the development of
distinct symbols expressing the difference between a variable understood as a
genuinely variable magnitude, on the one hand, and one understood as an unknown

Hegel, Science of Logic, 242
85
83
84
quantity which is completely determined on the other (we will return to this).86 But
whatever the nature of this relationship, and still signify quanta here. This is not
the case in the equations of the calculus:
, are no longer quanta, nor are they supposed to signify quanta; it is solely in their
relation to each other that they have any meaning, a meaning merely as moments. They
are no longer something (something taken as a quantum), not finite differences; but
neither are they nothing; not empty nullities. Apart from their relation they are pure
nullities, but they are intended to be taken only as moments of the relation, as
determinations of the differential co-efficient
!"
!"
In this concept of the infinite, the quantum is genuinely completed into a qualitative
reality; it is posited as actually infinite; it is sublated not merely as this or that quantum
but as quantum generally.87
In other words, differentials really do not express finite magnitudes; they are
completely undetermined in themselves, but reciprocally determining in relation to
one another. Hegel argues that the vanishing of the magnitudes and , when they
stand in this reciprocally determining relationship, testifies to the qualitative nature
of what is quantitative, of a moment of a ratio as such;88 and that what remains is, as
with Leibniz, not absolutely nothing but indeed their quantitative relation solely as
qualitatively determined.89
Hegel thus reproaches the mathematicians, not for their making use of
mathematical concepts of the infinitely small, but for their failing to draw out the
radical conclusions of this sense of the mathematical infinite; in their work, the
genuine Notion of the infinite is, in fact, implied in them, but [] the specific nature of
that Notion has not been brought to notice and grasped.90 Indeed the persistence of
infinitesimals, infinite series, and approaches toward limits remained something of a
scandal, and mathematicians sought to eliminate the need to refer to them entirely. It
was not until Abraham Robinson provided rigorous but controversial foundations for
the concept of the infinitesimal with the development of the axioms of non-standard

Hegel, Science of Logic, 252-3
88
89
90
86
87
analysis in the late twentieth century that the Leibnizian approach found itself
vindicated rather than repudiated.91 But now let us turn to the other trajectory, which
culminated in Weierstrass fully arithmetized approach to the problems of calculus.
III. Bolzano, Cauchy and Weierstrass: towards non-geometric foundations
In his landmark The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development, Carl Boyer
astutely notes that the contradictions haunting the formulations of the calculus from
Leibniz and Newton until the nineteenth century were in the last analysis equivalent
to those which Zeno had raised over two thousand years previously and were based on
questions of infinity and continuity.92 The apparently insoluble paradoxes of the
infinitely small in the calculus stem from a confusion between geometric and
arithmetic concepts, which do not have the same foundation or status. Arithmetic
concepts deal with the properties of numbers, and the relations between them.
Geometric concepts, on the other hand, deal with the properties of spatial figures. It
became apparent, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, that many of the
concepts essential for the method of calculus, in particular function and limit, were
based on geometric intuition. As we have seen, such intuitions are metaphysically
suspect insofar as they seem necessarily to involve speculation as to whether or not
continuous spatial magnitudes, such as any given section of a curve, are infinitely
divisible.93
Another aspect of the problem, however, was quite practical rather than
metaphysical, and lay in the fact that geometric intuition proved to be frequently
unreliable when it came to problems of differentiation. As Dan Smith writes, geometric
intuition refers not to empirical perception but rather to the ideal geometrical notion
of continuous movement and space.94 The trouble began with Bernard Bolzano's
construction, in 1837, of a function which, although continuous everywhere, could not

Duffy, The mathematics of Deleuzes differential logic and metaphysics, 125
Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 267
93
To provide yet another example of the kind of metaphysical speculation into which geometrical
intuitions can lead: when Descartes, in his Principles of Philosophy, argues for the infinite divisibility of
matter, or against the possibility of indivisible atoms, he does so on the basis of a geometric intuition of
the nature of extension, rather than on the basis of numerical properties of matter: "it is impossible that
there should be atoms, that is, pieces of matter that are by their nature indivisible. For if there were any
atoms, then no matter how small we imagined them to be, they would necessarily have to be extended;
and hence we could in our thought divide each of them into two or more smaller parts, and hence
recognize their divisibility." (Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, II 20)
94
Smith, Axiomatics and Problematics, 153
91
92
be differentiated at any point; this is to say that he proved that a function might have
no tangents at all even if it is entirely continuous a claim unlikely to be intuitively
accepted.95 Even more strikingly, it was later shown that there are continuous curves
defined by motion through space that have no tangents, which again is
incommensurable with geometric intuition.96 Hence in order to avoid the
metaphysically problematic consequences that otherwise threatened to condemn the
calculus to the status of mere unscientific conjecture, and in order to ground rigorously
a method which was not liable to be misled in being guided by a geometric intuition
which had proven itself unreliable, mathematicians by the early nineteenth century
sought to provide arithmetic, non-geometrical foundations and definitions for all the
concepts involved in the methods of differentiation and integration.
Let us take the concept of limit. In its geometrical articulation, which we saw
above in Leibniz, a limit is intuitively intelligible as a kind of threshold point at which
differences tend to vanish. A classical example of the geometric concept of limit is that
of a polygon inscribed within a circle: the more sides the polygon has, the closer it
seems to come to being identical with the circle in which it is inscribed. At the limit, if it
had infinitely many sides, would the polygon become actually identical with the circle?
Boyer cites a late nineteenth century mathematician who advances such a geometric
conception: whether one calls the circle the limit of a polygon as the sides are
indefinitely decreased, or whether one looks upon it as a polygon with an infinite
number of infinitesimal sides, is immaterial, inasmuch as in either case in the end 'the
specific difference' between the polygon and the circle is destroyed.97 It is clear how
this notion of the dynamic disappearance of differences was central to the infinitesimal
calculus: the real differences between (! , ! ) and (! , ! ) at the limit, where the
distance between them become infinitely small, are taken to actually vanish, and we
obtain the derivative by their elimination.
An arithmetic definition of the concept of limit was proposed by Augustin-Louis
Cauchy in the early nineteenth century: When the successive values attributed to a
variable approach indefinitely a fixed value so as to end by differing from it by as little
as one wishes, this last is called the limit of all the others.98 As Boyer writes, Cauchy's
definition appealed to the notions of number, variable, and function, rather than to

Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 269-70

Cf. Neikirk, A Class of Continuous Curves
97
Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 272 (citing Giulio Vivanti, "Il concetto d'infinitesimo e la sua
applicazione alla matematica." Mantova, 1894.)
98
Cauchy, uvres (2), III, 19 (cited in Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 272; his translation)
95
96
intuitions of geometry and dynamics.99 That the variable can differ from the limit as
little as one wishes suggests that it is always possible to determine a finite, nonzero
quantity which is closer to the limit than any other given quantity. We might say that
Cauchy reversed the order of definition: rather than defining the limit as that into
which infinitesimal differences vanish, he defined it in terms of the indefinite
diminution of a variable without ever vanishing; and on the basis of this new arithmetic
definition of limit, he redefined the infinitesimal arithmetically as a variable quantity
whose indefinite diminution converges toward zero.100
With this arithmetic conception of limit, Cauchy was able to articulate a nongeometric method for differentiation. Still, Cauchy's formulations indefinite
approach, as little as one likes, and so on risk suggesting precisely the geometric
intuitions, the dynamics of infinitely vanishing movements across continuous
distances, whose avoidance was his aim. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, as long as
we retain anything like tending to , as a fundamental idea, we are really in the
clutches of the infinitely small; for we imply the notion of being infinitely near to .
This is just what we want to get rid of.101 It was Karl Weierstrass whose formulations in
the middle of the nineteenth century finally removed all remnants of geometric
intuition and dynamism from the foundations of the calculus.
Weierstrass developed what is often referred to today as the epsilon-delta
definition of the limit. Boyer expresses this definition with clarity: The number is
the limit of the function () for = ! if, given any arbitrarily small number
[epsilon], another number [delta] can be found such that for all values of differing
from ! by less than , the value of () will differ from by less than .102 While this
is basically a reiteration of Cauchy's definition of limit, it notably no longer has any
reference to the apparent dynamism of variable values approaching it. This in fact
involves a redefinition of the concept of variable, which does not represent a
progressive passage through all the values of an interval, but the disjunctive
assumption of any one of the values in the interval.103 That is, there is no longer
anything in the definition that might suggest that either or () are mobile; they do
not move at all, but rather simply stand in for one value within a fixed range of values.
This, it is worth recalling, is precisely the distinction that Hegel suggested we make


101
Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics, 229
102
103
99
100
between variable magnitudes and unknown but completely determined quanta; on

Weierstrass account, however, only the latter are legitimate.
For example, if we consider the difference between () where = 1 and again
where = 3, we are quite clearly considering two different cases which are perfectly
static, where the function yields two distinct outputs; nothing about this difference
indicates that somehow has moved to 3 from 1, or that (1) has moved to (3). We
need not make any recourse to infinitely small or vanishing quantities to establish the
limit of a function () where = . It suffices to show that, for any given value
between = and = + , some finite value ! can always be determined such
that (! ) quantitatively differs from () less than both ( ) and ( + ).
With this clarified concept of limit, we can now turn back to Cauchys method
for finding the derivative of a function, which was essentially the same as that given
earlier by Bolzano,104 without fear of sliding back into conceiving of approaching a
limit as the continuous movement of a variable. For a given function () = , we
want to know the rate at which varies relative to the rate at which does,
!"
!"
, at a
given point, . Let = , that is, an incremental difference in magnitude added to .

( + ) ()
=
( + )
Simplifying the denominator, we obtain the general form of the derivative of a function
as a ratio:
( + ) ()
=
Now, we establish the limit of this ratio as converges on zero:

!!
( + ) ()

The solution to which establishes the rate of change of relative to the rate of change
of , or the gradient of the tangent to the curve described by () at a given point. This
arithmetic definition of the derivative of a function is entirely non-geometric, relying
only on the concepts of function, as a particular relationship between sets of ordered
pairs; and limit, as defined above.
As we have said, the insight in this reformulation of the method for finding the
derivative is that it does not rely on an understanding of the variables , ! , and so on

104
as traversing the distance of an ideally continuous space. Rather, they represent fixed
and discrete magnitudes, which are in the last analysis each completely determined and
static.
IV. Concluding remarks: on scientific images of thought
While the approach championed by Cauchy and Weierstrass has been generally
accepted as successfully having provided at long last a rigorous foundation for the
calculus, a few final comments are in order. First, not only did proceeding via
infinitesimals persist as a practical approach for deriving functions long after
Weierstrass formulation, but also, as we mentioned, these methods also found
rigorous formulation in the work of Abraham Robinson, who wrote in 1966: Even now,
there are many classical results in differential geometry which have never been
established in any oher way [than through the use of infinitesimals], the assumption
being that somehow the rigorous but less intuitive , method would lead to the same
result.105 The crucial philosophical questions here, as in the case of the contemporary
victory of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics,106 are: what are the
conditions under which a particular scientific interpretation gains legitimacy and
acceptance? On the basis of what, and by whom, is this legitimacy delivered? These are
emphatically political questions.
It must be said that the program of arithmetization and discretization advanced
by Weierstrass and his students, along with the related post-Cantorian impulse to
reduce all mathematical objects to set-theoretic constructions, has become something
of an orthodoxy in contemporary mathematics and its spontaneous philosophy. It is the
implicit and explicit presuppositions of such a scientific image of thought (e.g., that
only arithmetic is rigorous107) which stand in need of critique. Moreover, there are
socio-political and historical reasons to be suspicious of these axiomatic analytic
approaches, as for instance Nicolas Bourbaki and more recently Alex Galloway have
argued.108 Deleuze and Guattari, in A Thousand Plateaus and elsewhere, argue for a
metascientific distinction between the nomad or minor sciences that develop
problematics, and the major sciences that axiomatically pursue their formalization

Robinson, Non-Standard Analysis, 83; cited in Smith, Axiomatics and Problematics, 155
See note 33, above.
107
Smith, Axiomatics and Problematics, 154
108
Cf. for example Bourbaki, The Architecture of Mathematics, 31; Galloway, The Poverty of
Philosophy
105
106
(and often their neutralization) under conditions determined by state interests.109 The
philosopher of mathematics Fernando Zalamea has recently made compelling
arguments against the hegemony of axiomatic set-theory, suggesting that the diverse
advances in twentieth-century mathematics can furnish conceptual frameworks
adequate to articulating transitory ontologies of irreducibly complex metastable
objects.110 All of this is simply to suggest that what is meant by rigor is not always
obvious; and that philosophical histories of science, if they are to avoid relapsing into
rehearsals of state-sanctioned ideologies of inimitable progress, require a sensitivity to
the political stakes of how rigor and legitimacy are conceived and established that is,
they must take seriously the historical character of scientific practices. As Althusser
said of the spontaneous philosophy of scientists, which is to say their spontaneous
ideology: not only is it inseparable from scientific practice, but it is spontaneous
because it is not.111
Cf. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 12 and 13; see also the critique of logicism
developed in Chapter 6 of What is Philosophy? On this distinction see Smith, Axiomatics and
Problematics and Mathematics and the Theory of Multiplicities
110
Cf. Zalamea, Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics, especially Part Three
111
Althusser, Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists, 88
109
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Differentiation and Distinction

on the problem of individuation from Scotus to Deleuze

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 2

order to think this pre-individual nature, to pose philosophically the problem of

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 3

Cf. Deleuze, The Exhausted.

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 4

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 5

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 6

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 7

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substantial individuality to its accidents, Scotus concludes that it is impossible for

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 9

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 10

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 11

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 12

The inadequacy of transcendental philosophy, from Deleuzes perspective, is

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 13

determination. Three principles which together form a sufficient reason correspond to

determinable ( ); a principle of complete determination corresponds to the effectively

). In short, is the Idea the Platonic, Leibnizian or Kantian

Idea, the problem and its being.49

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 14

() or ! (). But between these two

functions there is a difference which is no

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 15

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 16

Deleuze, Difference & Repetition, 207

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 17

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 18

A Brief History of the Calculus and its Metaphysics72

I. Introduction: what is differential calculus?

two points, !" , can therefore be calculated as !! !!! .

For linear equations, which can be expressed in the form = () = + ,

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 19

, the rate at which changes relative to the change of . We

on the hypothesis that the difference beween ! and ! , or , and

that between ! and ! , or , is infinitely small that it infinitely approaches and

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 20

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 21

The central insight here is that, although these

is not therefore nothing; rather, paradoxically,

which expresses a specific algebraic

relationship: the function of the tangent of a curve

Marx, On the Concept of the Derived Function, 3

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morejn | differentiation and distinction | 23

Hegels distinction between spurious and true mathematical infinities turns

numbers, which exhibits the contradiction of representing that which is a relation

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 24

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 25

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 26

Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 269-70

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 27

Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 273

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 28

between variable magnitudes and unknown but completely determined quanta; on

given point, . Let = , that is, an incremental difference in magnitude added to .

Now, we establish the limit of this ratio as converges on zero:

Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 275-9

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 29

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 30

morejn | differentiation and distinction | 31

The Exhausted. Trans. Anthony Uhlmann. SubStance 24:3 (1995), 3-28.