Thought and Its Outside
show. The act of thinking is modeled on puerile and scholarly situations. “We are led to believe that the activity of thinking, along with truth and falsehood in relation to that activity, begins only with the search for solutions, that both of these concern only solutions” (DR 158). “From earliest times philosophy has encountered the danger of evaluating thought by reference to such uninteresting cases as saying ‘Hello, Theodorus’ when Theatetus is passing by” (WP 139; cf. also NP 105 and DR 150). Whence emerges the pious and humanistic idea that the problems are and have always been the same, that they constitute a common cultural patrimony beyond time, and that thought navigates between entirely divergent solutions, themselves equally incomplete and unsatisfying. Philosophy is presented with the dilemma of either seeking out new solutions that would condemn its entire past, or else tending to the cult of the eternal enigmas posed to man (and philosophers would at least have the social merit of accepting this role on behalf of others), often by deploying a disinterested ardor in the conservation of past solutions (fortunately, the history of philosophy has not always remained at this level). Grounding
Finally, the a priori relation of thought and truth is expressed in the equivocation of the beginning [commencement ] (DR 129 ff.). Philosophy has always been preoccupied with beginnings, constantly seeking out the right principle: Ideas, causes, the Cogito, the principle of sufficient reason, etc. It is not only a question of introducing an order within concepts; the demand for an order implies a division, a difference in status between those concepts that ground and those that are grounded—the former, absolutely necessary, are supposed to guarantee the necessity of the latter. “Once and for all”: this applies not only to the end (knowledge), but also to the beginning. Philosophy demands a point of departure as a definitive rupture with that which it is not. Philosophy requires a grounding [ fondement ] as a mark indicating that it has finally begun to think, that it has left behind for good the horizon of a thought that would be merely possible (opinion, doxa). Here again, as with the theme of exteriority, it is a question of knowing whether or not philosophy, by posing the problem in terms of grounding, can claim to effectively go beyond the simple possibility of thinking. Deleuze emphasizes the inability of philosophers to truly begin 49
