On the origin of the concept of "Immanence" in Gilles Deleuze

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1807-1384.2014v11n2p15

The concept of Immanence plays a fundamental role in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. While his notion of "plan of immanence" is often underlined, the French thinker developed a comprehensive approach on this concept, connecting it with political problems (capitalism is described as an immanent system) and ethical (universal morality is replaced by an ethics of immanent values). However, the first appearance of the concept of immanence in his work has not been thoroughly studied. Therefore, we propose the analysis of conceptual and philological aspects of the context of the origin of the deleuzian idea of immanence. According to our hypothesis, the first occurrence of the concept is situated in Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza, particularly in Spinoza et le problème de l'expression (1968), where our author inscribed Spinoza in the tradition of the univocatio entis initiated by Duns Scotus. We hold that the Deleuzian immanence derives from two perspectives: the scotist thesis of the univocatio against the analogia entis of thomistic filiation and the Spinozian cause sui against the Neoplatonist emanative cause and the thomistic analogical cause. The formula "Immanence = univocity", emphasized by Badiou, expresses this conceptual knot that we will develop. From the philological point of view, we will show that Deleuze coined the term "to be immanated", at the time of describing the specificity of the immanent cause, from a heterodox use of the Latin verbs manare and manere.