[MD] MOQ & Deleuze

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, David --


I'm indebted to you for referencing this source:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleuze
>
> some interesting ideas of Deleuze about how experience
> and concepts relate that MOQers might like to ponder. Deleuze puts 
> difference before identity, or could that be
> DQ/flux over SQ?

How Deleuze's metaphysical concept of Difference may relate to Pirsig's 
levels and patterns remains to be seen.  But his theory offers new support 
for my ontogeny of differentiated existents.  I was particularly struck by 
Wiki's interpretation of this concept:

    Traditionally, difference is seen as derivative from identity:
    e.g., to say that "X is different from Y" assumes some X and Y
    with at least relatively stable identities.  To the contrary, Deleuze
    claims that all identities are effects of difference.  Identities are
    not logically or metaphysically prior to difference, Deleuze argues,
    "given that there exist differences of nature between things of
    the same genus."  That is, not only are no two things ever the
    same, the categories we use to identify individuals in the first
    place derive from differences.

Here's how The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes this French 
academician's contribution to philosophy:

"Deleuze conceived of philosophy as the production of concepts, and he 
characterized himself as a 'pure metaphysician.'  In his magnum opus 
Difference and Repetition, he tries to develop a metaphysics adequate to 
contemporary mathematics and science - a metaphysics in which the concept of 
multiplicity replaces that of substance, event replaces essence and 
virtuality replaces possibility."

Thanks for pointing us to this reference, Dave.  It puts a new slant on the 
Beingness of Sartrean Existentialism.  I shall have to explore Deleuze more 
thoroughly.

Regards,
Ham