THE INDIFFERENCE OF OBJECTIVITY TO DIFFERENCE AND IDENTITY THE PARADOX OF SUBJECT-OBJECT OBFUSCATION BETWEEN SCHELLING AND DELEUZE

• Published in: Cosmos and history Vol. 18; no. 2; pp. 112 - 128
• Main Author: Holmberg, Rafael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ashton and Rafferty 01.07.2022
• Subjects: Abstraction; Analysis; Criticism and interpretation; Deleuze, Gilles; Identity; Objectivity; Ontology; Philosophers; Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von; United Kingdom
• ISSN: 1832-9101; 1832-9101

Schelling and Deleuze are polarised respectively as philosopher of identity and philosopher of difference par excellence. Schelling grounds reason in his early Naturphilosophie in the a priori identity deduced from the abstraction of the proposition A=A. Deleuze, however, reworks the Platonic Idea and Nietzsche's Eternal Return in the service of an a priori 'problematic being', an ontological difference-in-itself, which precedes metaphysical identity. Despite their apparently polarised metaphysical groundwork, they stumble across a similar consequence: the distinction between subject and object, and any problematic derived thereof, is in consequence of the ontological constitution of the object itself. The paradox of objectivity as indifference to an a priori difference or identity is presented, and preliminarily suggested to be due to the Deleuze-Schelling opposition not being a difference-identity opposition, but an opposition between difference and a 'blind act' which retroactively precedes the making-identical to itself of the one as distinguished from the many. Keywords: Schelling; Deleuze; Paradox; Identity; Difference; Act; Objectivity; Ontology