The Creation of the Concept through the

Interaction of Philosophy with Science

and Art

Mathias Schnher

University of Vienna

Abstract
In What Is Philosophy? we find philosophy devised as that power of
thinking and creating which, in a division of labour with science and art,
creates the concept. This division of labour points to the free interplay of
Reason, Understanding and Imagination in Kants Critique of Judgement
and enables us to affirm, without obliterating the differences in kind, the
non-hierarchical relationship between the three forms of thought that
is asserted by Deleuze and Guattari. However, as powers of thinking
and creating, philosophy, science and art do not inscribe themselves in a
transcendental subject. Rather, Deleuze and Guattari conceive of them,
following Spinozas creating nature, as powers that express themselves
in an attribute in which every thinking subject participates.
Keywords: Deleuze and Guattari, Kant, Spinoza, What Is Philosophy?,
concept, creation, interaction, power

I. The Creative Powers of Thinking

Although Gilles Deleuze is one of the most influential philosophers of the
second half of the twentieth century, his last book, What Is Philosophy?,
written in collaboration with Flix Guattari, has received relatively little
attention. For many readers, this book came as a surprise, even as
something of a disappointment, recalls Isabelle Stengers, noting that it
faced readers with a strong differentiation between the creations which
Deleuze Studies 7.1 (2013): 2652
DOI: 10.3366/dls.2013.0093
Edinburgh University Press
www.euppublishing.com/dls

The Creation of the Concept 27

are proper to philosophy, to science, and to art (Stengers 2005: 151).
The creative ideas pertaining to philosophy, through which philosophy
performs its thought, are the concepts it creates by means of conceptual
personae on the plane of immanence; those pertaining to science are
the functions created by means of partial observers on the plane of
reference; those pertaining to art are the compounds of sensations
consisting of percepts and affects created by means of aesthetic figures
on the plane of composition. Thinking is thought through concepts,
or functions, or sensations, state Deleuze and Guattari, and no one
of these thoughts is better than another, or more fully, completely, or
synthetically thought (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 198). In all three
cases, the modes of thinking are specific, each as direct as the others, and
they are distinguished by the nature of the plane and by what occupies
it (198).
Regardless of this explicit dismissal of any hierarchy of the three
forms of thought, Peter Hallward, for instance, argues for the precedence
of philosophy. He underlines the clear distinction between the forms
by examining them independently of each other, then ranking them.
The fact that he gives philosophy precedence is surprising, however,
since he criticises the conception of philosophy proposed by Deleuze
and Guattari, which, he writes, leads forever out of our actual world
(Hallward 2006: 164). It would therefore seem to make sense for
Hallward to argue for the precedence of science, which deals with the
actual world. But in his assessment, Hallward turns his attention to the
three forms of thought in terms of the product of their creation, and
defines philosophy as the most immediate discipline of thought, which
unlike science or art, . . . can claim to think at the highest degree of
proximity to absolute chaos because it has the privilege of going furthest
in the spiritualisation of its medium, in which it brings forth creation
(129, 132).
In a paper based mainly on Deleuzes essay on Melvilles Bartleby
the Scrivener, Joost de Bloois makes an exemplary attempt to counter
arguments in favour of a hierarchy of the three forms of thought,
looking at the relationship between conceptual persona and aesthetic
figure. He argues that the very classical distinction between philosophy
as such and art as such that prevails in What Is Philosophy?
leads to an artificial distinction between conceptual persona and
aesthetic figure, whose fundamental shared image of philosophy and
literature reveals its common indetermination in the figure of Bartleby
(de Bloois 2004: 124, 126; my translation). According to de Bloois,
Deleuze and Guattaris stroke of genius consists in having realised

28 Mathias Schnher
that philosophers, too, write fables (118; my translation). Bartleby
thus points to writing as the common characteristic of philosophy and
literature: he is at once a figure and a persona and, as the mask of
any writer, presents nothing less than the precondition of all possible
writers (115; my translation). Since, by analogy with the dichotomy
of concept and affect, the conceptual persona presupposes the aesthetic
figure, philosophy appears as merely a derivative of literature: The
conceptual persona . . . transforms the philosopher into a writer, and
an aesthetic paradigm becomes the pivot of philosophical activity (120;
my translation). Thus, whereas Hallward establishes a hierarchy by
evaluating the product of creative activity with regard to its contiguity
to chaos, what de Bloois attempts is to undermine hierarchy by reducing
the clearly distinct forms of thought through a sufficiently neutralised
figure on a common plane. Having deprived philosophy of its clearly
distinguished realm, de Bloois then criticises Deleuze and Guattari for
subordinating their philosophical project to aesthetic modernity and
curtailing the critical potential of philosophy by denying it autonomy
(128; my translation).
My interpretation of What Is Philosophy?, in contrast, grants neither
science nor art nor philosophy priority as a more perfect or more
direct form of thought, while refusing to obliterate the difference in
kind between them. On the contrary, each of these forms is assigned
a specific activity, which finds expression in the creative ideas that can
only be produced on its own plane; and each form secures its own
realm precisely by positing its own objects through these creative ideas.
With its concepts, philosophy brings forth events. Art erects monuments
with its sensations. Science constructs matters of fact with its functions
(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 199).1 Philosophy, science and art must
not be identified from the outset as three disciplines that consist in the
collection of the products of their creation as universalities formed
by an abstraction of the products, abandoning the singularity of each
creation. Instead, we must define them as those ways of thinking and
creating, those modes of ideation, that express themselves in the act
of creating the concept, the function or the compound of sensations
through the conceptual persona, the partial observer or the aesthetic
figure; or, to put it another way, which unfold as the power of thinking
and creating in always singular moments in which thought is raised
time and again anew to a specific creative faculty or power, precisely
through creative ideas (8, 12). However, in What Is Philosophy?
Deleuze and Guattari say that philosophy creates concepts in interaction
with science and art. Philosophy, science, and art, they write, are

The Creation of the Concept 29

immediately posited or reconstituted in a respective independence, in
a division of labor that gives rise to relationships of connection between
them (91). This division of labour does not limit their independence,
because each form, in its own realm, remains independent of the other
two. Nor does it contradict the autonomy of each form, an autonomy
lent by its own creation; rather, this interaction serves precisely to enable
philosophy, science and art to stimulate each other strongly enough to
become capable of bringing forth a creation and expressing themselves as
autonomous faculties or powers of thinking and creating. That they are
dependent on one another, yet do not restrict each others independence,
confounds the dispute over the precedence of one or other of these
forms of thought. Philosophy arrives at the concept with the help of
science and art, in that these latter intervene freely in the creative process
and support philosophy in creating its specific ideas and, in turn, in
positing its objects in a realm where science and art themselves are quite
unable to do so. Philosophys concepts thus acquire their determinations
through allusions to the actual with the help of science, which, for its
part, finds expression through the partial observer as scientific faculty
of knowledge (215). And philosophy arrives at the sensations of the
concepts with the help of art, which, for its part, finds expression
through the aesthetic figure as faculty of feeling (212).
My interpretation considers Deleuze and Guattaris last joint work
in the lineage of Kants Critique of Judgement, lauded by the authors
as an unrestrained work of old age, which his successors have still
not caught up with, where all the minds faculties overcome their
limits, the very limits that Kant had so carefully laid down in the works
of his prime (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 2). Seven years before the
publication of What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze declared in his preface
to Kants Critical Philosophy that an unregulated exercise of all the
faculties would define future philosophy (Deleuze 1984: xiii). Whereas
in his first two Critiques, Kant assumes an interrelationship which is
dominated by one of the faculties and rigorously regulated by its laws,
in the Critique of Judgement he finds, beneath this hierarchy of faculties,
unregulated use and with it the basis of all harmonious interaction. In
the aesthetic of the beautiful and the sublime, the various faculties enter
into an accord which is no longer determined by any one of them,
and which is all the deeper because it no longer has any rule; they
correspondingly find their accord in a fundamental discord (Deleuze
1984: xii). In What Is Philosophy?, philosophy is finally devised in its
relation to science and art as one of these three faculties or powers of
thinking and creating which, in free interplay, create the philosophical

30 Mathias Schnher
concept. And we can say of this work what Deleuze wrote in 1963
of Kants third Critique: that it goes beyond presenting the exercise of
ready-made faculties under particular conditions to offer insight into the
genesis of those faculties, which are engendered in their original free
state and in reciprocal agreement (Deleuze 2004: 68). However, the
three faculties do not inscribe themselves in a transcendental subject, as
with Kant, or depend on a predefined subject, but posit and reconstitute
themselves at the same time as the subject, which only distinguishes itself
from thought by carrying out the movements of that plane on which it
is creative. The possibility of a subject that does not precede its own
creative activity or, conversely, the becoming-subject that necessarily
occurs when carrying out these movements by means of the conceptual
persona, the partial observer or the aesthetic figure is based on every
creation being a construction on a plane that gives it an autonomous
existence (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 7). The plane gives autonomy
to the creation, because it is the plane itself which, in performing its
movements, becomes the brain layer of a singular subject. That subject
unfolds out of thinking only when it creates, so that a creation never
remains dependent on an already given subject of lived experience.
Deleuze and Guattaris reference to a brain layer becomes clear
through the example of Raymond Ruyer and the illustrations he
provides. Ruyer presents a man on a chair; he is wearing glasses, looking
at his writing hand and the sheet or layer of paper on the table before
him. Ruyer then puts us in the mans position, showing us his visual
field (now framed by the glasses on our nose), which moves out from
our body along the writing hand to the sheet of paper and the table.
Our visual field is thus composed, like a collage, of the parts of our
body and the various objects. During the absolute survey of my visual
field, writes Ruyer, I am everywhere at once: The multiple details of
sensation are distinct one from another, but nevertheless the ones are
not really other for the others, because together they make up my
sensation, which is only one (Ruyer 1952: 99; my translation). With
respect to Leibnizs monad, Deleuze refers to Robert Rauschenberg,
whose collages weave their components into surfaces so dense that they
become opaque and lose all referential function (Deleuze 2006: 30).
They form smooth spaces with close vision visual fields that, without
a prevailing perspective or rigid spatial dimensions, do not allow any
strictly definable exterior point of view. While the writing mans habitual
gaze at the objects in front of him already marks one exterior point of
view, and our observation of the man at work adds another, the absolute
survey cannot attain its unity by referring to a subject of lived experience,

The Creation of the Concept 31

because that would lead to an infinite regress of echelons of viewers.
Between the I-unity and the visual field there is only a purely symbolic
distance . . . My visual field itself necessarily sees itself through an
absolute survey (Ruyer 1952: 1012; my translation). The primary
plane of sensation has to perceive itself; the viewer is thus completely
embedded in the plane, just as Rauschenbergs 1963 collage Estate, as a
visual field, immerses the viewer in the sensation of early 1960s New
York with its survey. The collage releases the viewer from any kind
of experience that might be felt by a city tourist, who can confirm his
expectations using prepared routes to continue his accustomed routine
with the happy feeling of having seen what there is to be seen. Finally,
a further illustration presents the previously observed visual field as a
layer or sheet of paper that from a distance looks like a picture postcard.
Ruyer shows that this distance of the I-unity in the absolute survey
does not exist: he labels the illustration false representation of the visual
field (Ruyer 1952: 103; my translation). The self-surveying field of
consciousness cannot be represented, just as the plane as the brain layer
in What Is Philosophy? is only given in the survey on that plane by the I
of thinking, in which the plane raises itself to a singular power.

II. The Distinction of Planes as Aspects and as Layers of the

Brain-Subject
Philosophy, science and art transect chaos in order to produce their
creative ideas on a specific plane of creation always confronting
chaos, laying out a plane, throwing a plane over chaos (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 197). The plane of transections particular relation
with chaos defines which type of movement of thought is carried
out, and determines the power of thinking; the plane itself defines
the elements that are created on it and warrants for their cohesion.
Hence, only on the plane of immanence, with its infinite movements,
is it possible to create the concept which brings forth the event and
does thinking accede to the infinite movement . . . and reconquers an
immanent power of creation (140). Only on the plane of reference,
with its finite movements, are those referential relations possible by
which science constitutes or modifies matters of fact and bodies and
science gains its power: Functions derive all their power from reference
(138). And finally, only on the plane of composition is it possible to
create compounds of sensations, which in the finite restore the infinite
and are forces in themselves. Philosophys plane of immanence, with
concept and conceptual persona, sciences plane of reference, with

32 Mathias Schnher
function and partial observer, and arts plane of composition, with
compound of sensations and aesthetic figure, cannot be reduced to one
another through their specific relation to chaos nor can they join up to
form a neutral plane: The three planes, along with their elements, are
irreducible (216).
Laying out a plane is the condition for that plane to rise to the
power of thinking and creating by virtue of the creation it bears. As
a power, the plane is a layer of a brain-subject, and is what unfolds the
subject out of the thinking whose movements that very subject carries
out (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 214). Carrying out these movements is
only possible by means of the conceptual persona, the partial observer
or the aesthetic figure, which expose us to chaos and draw us into a
becoming-subject in line with the aspect of the respective plane. The
three great forms of thought constitute the three aspects under which
the brain becomes subject, Thought-brain. They are the three planes, the
rafts on which the brain plunges into and confronts the chaos (210).
The raft image is apt in that, similar to the notion of point of view that
Deleuze develops in his study on Leibniz with recourse to Whiteheads
superject, the aspect is not so much a point as a place, a position, a
site (Deleuze 2006: 20). It does not mean a dependence in respect to
a pregiven or defined subject; to the contrary, a subject will be what
comes to the point of view, or rather what remains in the point of view
(21). This differentiation between the aspect and the layer of a brainsubject with regard to the planes recalls Spinozas distinction of attribute
and power, which Deleuze and Guattari condense into their conception
of planes. When they write that immanence does not refer back to
the Spinozist substance and modes but, on the contrary, the Spinozist
concepts of substance and modes refer back to the plane of immanence
as their presupposition, they are linking the creative divine substance,
and the created modes, to the plane of immanence as the precondition
of creation, which determines the relation between substance and modes
(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 48). When they then add that this plane
presents two sides to us, Extension and Thought, or more accurately, its
two powers, power of being and power of thinking, they are referring to
the distinction between the attributes of Extension and Thought on the
one hand, and the powers of being and thinking on the other (48/50;
translation modified). Because Deleuze and Guattari apply this dual
distinction to the plane of immanence itself, the plane with these two
attributes as its two sides represents the condition for it to unfold as the
power of thinking and creating by virtue of the creation it carries, and
thus also to unfold as the two powers.

The Creation of the Concept 33

For Spinoza,2 Gods absolute essence is formally the power of
being, and objectively the power of thinking. It is expressed by Gods
formally producing in the attributes and at the same time objectively
understanding how he produces. The power of being finds its expression
in the modes of the attributes, which also include Gods infinite intellect
as a mode of the attribute of Thought. With respect to the power of
being, this attribute is not distinct from the attribute of Extension, so
that in their formal being, ideas also take on a form of existence. The
power of being is established according to its possibility and according to
its necessity by the formally distinct attributes, for these are the condition
of its being active, and taken together are the formal essence of God,
which makes them necessary. The power of thinking finds its expression
in the objective being of the ideas, in other words the ideas insofar as they
represent something. Deleuze stresses that the objective being, even the
idea of God as the objective being of infinite intellect, would be nothing
without this formal being through which it is a mode of the attribute
of Thought. Or, if you like, it would be only potential, without this
potentiality ever being actualized (Deleuze 1990: 122). Accordingly, the
power of thinking which, as a divine power, is always an actualised,
active power points to the attribute of Thought not only as its sole
objective condition, but at the same time as its formal condition. Thus
the formal possibility of the idea of God is established in the attribute
of Thought, while its objective necessity is established in Gods absolute
essence.
In any case, to return now to What Is Philosophy?, the attributes are
always the condition of the powers. It is for this reason that Deleuze
and Guattari find it more accurate to say that the plane of immanence
presents its two powers to us than to say that the plane of immanence
presents its two sides, Extension and Thought, to us because strictly
speaking it is only the plane of immanence when it becomes a power
of thinking and creating, or, to put it another way, because it is only
through the creation of concepts that philosophy itself rises to become a
power, to become the plane of immanence as the layer of a brain-subject:
At the same time that the brain becomes subject or rather superject, as
Whitehead puts it the concept becomes object as created, as event or creation
itself; and philosophy becomes the plane of immanence that supports the
concepts and that the brain lays out. Cerebral movements also give rise to
conceptual personae. (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 211)

The moment of creation corresponds in Spinoza to the transition from

created nature to creating nature, from infinity to the absolute, from

34 Mathias Schnher
the infinite movements to the power of thinking and creating. Laid out
as a presupposition, the plane remains prephilosophical for as long as
the concept has not been posited as creation. Prephilosophical does
not mean something preexistent but rather something that does not
exist outside philosophy, although philosophy presupposes it. These
are its internal conditions (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 41). It is only
with the creation of concepts according to the specified aspect that the
plane becomes the plane of immanence, becomes a power, becomes
philosophy. The always singular moment of creation is the moment
when, as ric Alliez emphasises, philosophy as the expression of a
constructivism unfolds its power (Alliez 2004: 15). Philosophy does
not remain dependent on a pregiven subject of lived experience that
subject is located in a historically determined mental landscape, as is
everything that, in Ruyers example, is on the table or the sheet of paper
and is identified by the subject present, thus being defined as a historical
state of affairs in agreement with the collective milieu. Even when the
philosopher constructs concepts, he uses components taken from this
mental landscape, breaks them out of it and reassembles them like a
collage, forming Riemannian spaces in which the connection between
one term and the next is not defined and can be effected in an infinite
number of ways. This construction makes it possible, in the survey
of the plane, to be immediately co-present to all its components and,
in the condensation effected by the survey, to create those opaque
surfaces which are absolute and stand for themselves. The intentionally
opened rift, the hiatus, as Deleuze writes with reference to Book V of
Spinozas Ethics, functions to bring together to the maximum degree
terms that are distant as such, and thereby to assure a speed of absolute
survey (Deleuze 1998: 150). These hiatuses require one to reconstitute
a missing chain, but in return allow one to jump from a relative speed
(the greatest) to an absolute speed, which Deleuze calls the speed of
power (14951).
To explain how it is possible for thought to gain access to the infinite
movement and to reconquer an immanent power of creation, it is
necessary to follow a strong hint by Deleuze and Guattari and probe
more deeply into Spinozas work. We must go beyond the ordinary
ideas of opinion and arrive as quickly as possible at mental objects
determinable as real beings (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 207). To this
end, however in order to reach concepts, in other words those ideas
that must be created we must also make use of opinion, but only so
far as is necessary to get to a plane where we go from real being to
real being and advance through the construction of concepts, through

The Creation of the Concept 35

reconnecting the components taken from chaos into a concept and
sequencing the concepts among themselves, until they are created in their
full maturity (207). We must connect the ideas to their causes, even if we
draw on opinion to do so, writes Deleuze of Spinoza, in order to reach
the idea of God as quickly as possible and to proceed in a manner
excluding all opinion, in a way that moves from one real being to
another, deducing ideas one from another, starting from the idea of God
(Deleuze 1990: 1378). In this way, we will arrive at the adequate ideas,
which are distinguished by the fact that they express their own cause.
The cause of ideas in their objective being is the idea of God, so that the
adequate ideas give expression to the absolute power of thinking, or the
objective essence of God, which corresponds to the idea of God. As God
formally produces in the attributes the way he objectively understands
himself, the ideas connect in the attribute of Thought in accordance
with their own content: the content of an idea (in other words, what
the idea objectively is) is identical with the formal existence of the idea
in the attribute. Starting from the idea of God, ideas are then linked
according to their own content; but their content is also determined by
this sequence that is to say, it is in the content or objective being of
the idea that the power of thinking finds its expression, as the power of
being finds expression in the form of that idea (138). The form of the
idea is automatically united with the content through its autonomous
sequencing with the other ideas following the order of infinite intellect.
Ideas are mental objects, determinable as real beings, if they express the
power of thinking in which they participate, the objective essence of
divine nature. In the same way, for Deleuze and Guattari, the plane of
immanence as an immanent power of creation finds its expression in
the concepts, through their sequencing in accordance with the infinite
movements of the plane, which gives creation an autonomous existence.
In the creation of the concepts the plane of immanence becomes the
power of thinking and creating, which unfolds as a layer of a brainsubject:
[The brain, under the] aspect of absolute form, appears as the faculty of
concepts, that is to say, as the faculty of their creation, at the same time that it
sets up the plane of immanence on which concepts are placed, move, change
order and relations, are renewed, and never cease being created. (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 211)

The infinite movements of the plane of immanence can only be

performed as a subject which itself only arises in that process, in line
with the aspect of the plane. The cerebral movements give rise to

36 Mathias Schnher
conceptual personae, for maintaining oneself on the plane of immanence,
remaining in thinking, is possible only through a continuous sequencing
of concepts. The conceptual personae proceed by linking concepts, they
designate insistence in philosophical thinking, they draw us into a
becoming-subject (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 76), and we could say,
with Spinoza, that they set a spiritual automaton in motion. They are
the only compass for carrying out the movements, and in this sense
correspond to the idea of God, which guides us in the linking of adequate
ideas. When the brain becomes subject, Thought-brain, it is as a line of
becoming on the plane, as a hyphen between thought and brain. The
plane of immanence has two facets as Thought and as Nature, write
Deleuze and Guattari, and it is unceasingly permeated by unlimited
movements . . . on two sides (38, 44). As a fold between Thought and
Nature, which arises with the movements on both sides of the folded
plane at once, the brain-subject expresses the actual mental objects,
which have become nature, as real beings, with their power to posit
themselves as creative ideas. Infinite movement is double, and there is
only a fold from one to the other. It is in this sense that thinking and
being are said to be one and the same (38). Philosophy, as this ThoughtBeing, creates the concept that is, a chaos that has become Thought,
mental chaosmos (208).
In What Is Philosophy?, Spinoza is hailed as the only philosopher
never to have compromised with transcendence, as having postulated
immanence as only immanent to itself and hence as a plane which,
even as a power of thinking, does not inscribe itself in the subject of
thinking (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 48). By doing so, he fulfilled
philosophy because he satisfied its prephilosophical presupposition,
since in carrying out the movements, as a fold running through the
whole plane, the I of thinking does not set itself apart as an overriding
I (48). Philosophy as a plane of immanence thus does not add itself to
the prephilosophical plane through the creation of concepts. This is the
vertigo of immanence to which the I succumbs a spiritual automaton
or a sort of child-player against whom we can no longer do anything, a
Spinoza who leaves no illusion of transcendence remaining (48, 72).
But despite the high status of Spinoza in What Is Philosophy?, it is
Jean Hyppolites characterisation of Kants Critique of Judgement as
a Leibnizianism of immanence that seems best to fit the philosophy
of Deleuze and Guattari (qtd in Kerslake 2009: 105). For if they tie
the creative divine substance and the created modes to the plane of
immanence as the presupposition of creation, then substance exists
only in the moment of creation as an expression in the modes; it

The Creation of the Concept 37

exists only in the transition in which the modes themselves become
substantial. A becoming-substantial of the modes is, so to speak, a
becoming-monad in the vertigo of immanence, a becoming-subject in
the crossing of the entire plane, in the survey: I am no longer myself
but thoughts aptitude for finding itself and spreading across a plane
that passes through me at several places (Deleuze and Guattari 1994:
64). And this I is constantly torn apart by the divergent planes, by
philosophy, science and art, or, as Deleuze writes about Whitehead in
his Leibniz study, pushed apart, kept open through divergent series and
incompossible totalities for Whitehead, the bifurcations, divergences,
incompossibilities, and discord belong to the same motley world that
can no longer be included in expressive units, but only made or
undone (Deleuze 2006: 92). In What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze and
Guattari counter this unfurling of divergent series, this emancipation of
dissonance or of unresolved accords, with their conception of thinking,
in which the motley world no longer posits itself as immanent to a
subjective unit, but in the junction of the three possibly incompossible
planes. It could be said that the monad, astraddle over several worlds, is
kept half open as if by a pair of pliers; it could also be said that the I torn
apart in a perpetual show of strength, the acrobat, constantly ties itself
up again into a brain-subject and makes and undoes the world (Deleuze
2006: 157).

III. The Extrinsic Interferences of Philosophy with Science

Philosophy modulates the concept with inseparable components,
positing it as object or event. The concept posits itself and its object
at the same time as it is created (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 22). The
positional enunciation is strictly immanent to the concept because the
latters sole object is the inseparability of the components of which
it, and hence the event as concept, is composed (23). For its part,
science posits the actual matter of fact with the function: an object is
scientifically constructed by functions (117). The function posits the
matter of fact as external, though not as independent but in reference
to the scientific plane, which also defines the conditions of reference.
The functions are defined by their reference, which concerns not the
Event but rather a relationship with a matter of fact or body and
with the conditions of this relationship (22). The scientific act of
positional enunciation thus remains external to the proposition [or
function] because the latters object is a matter of fact as referent (23).
Science constitutes or modifies the actual matter of fact, constructing

38 Mathias Schnher
this, its object, with distinct determinations: Acts of reference are finite
movements of thought by which science constitutes or modifies matters
of fact and bodies (138). These acts of reference of the function are, as
Deleuze and Guattari point out, very different from the philosophical
concept, involving no longer inseparable components but rather distinct
determinations. The realm of function does not, however, just extend
to that of the scientific function, but also to that of the logical function
and that of opinion. Through functions, science continually actualizes
the event in a matter of fact, thing, or body that can be referred to,
whereby these relationships are made with the plane of reference and not
with a pregiven subject whereas opinion, with its function of the lived,
refers to already constituted objects, which it relates to a subject of lived
experience (126, 144). Opinion founds its reference on pure qualities,
such as can be abstracted from a universal subject in the perception of
an object, in order to form the arguments of the functions of opinion as
lived states (151).
Art thinks through affects and percepts; it uses sensations to create the
compounds of sensations themselves: We paint, sculpt, compose, and
write with sensations. We paint, sculpt, compose, and write sensations
(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 166). Art does not actualise the virtual
event but expresses the event without actualising it, by giving it a
universe which sets the compounds of sensations in motion; art erects
monuments with its sensations and posits its object in this way. In
contrast to opinion, art does not abstract any pure quality; as percepts,
sensations are not perceptions referring to an object (reference) (166).
Art goes beyond the perceptual states and affective transitions of
the lived, for we attain to the percept and the affect only as to
autonomous and sufficient beings that no longer owe anything to those
who experience or have experienced them (171, 168). The pure quality
of opinion, which serves for reference, remains isolated from the universe
in which it unfolds, whereas art precisely considers the quality . . . from
the standpoint of the becoming that grasps it (Deleuze and Guattari
2005b: 306). Art implies the emergence of pure sensory qualities, of
sensibilia that cease to be merely functional and become expressive
features, making possible a transformation of functions (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 183). The qualities of art, the qualities in becoming,
cannot be apprehended by functions; they remain what the Middle
Ages called the signifiable complex of a proposition, distinct from the
matter of fact (Deleuze 1997: 105; translation modified).
Concept, scientific function and compound of sensations must each be
created separately, even though philosophy, science and art each need

The Creation of the Concept 39

the assistance of the others to do so. When an object a geometrical
space, for example is scientifically constructed by functions, its
philosophical concept, which is by no means given in the function,
must still be discovered (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 117). If this
geometrical space is determined by a function as a scientific matter of
fact, the concept of this space is not therefore given, but must first be
created on the plane of immanence: A function of space can be given
without the concept of this space yet being given (133). Likewise, a
compound of sensations may be given without the correlate concept
having been created or, as Deleuze and Guattari put it, a sensation
exists in its possible universe without the concept necessarily existing in
its absolute form (178). Like the function, the compound of sensations
can thus be created before the concept, and conversely the concept
before either, for it is said of each of these three elements that none
of these elements can appear without the other being still to come,
still indeterminate or unknown, and each created element on a plane
calls on other heterogeneous elements, which are still to be created on
other planes (199). Just as, for example, a new space function calls
for the creation of a correlating concept, and on that basis philosophy
spins forth thought in a heterogenesis (199), so art occasionally to
return to Deleuzes examination of the play of faculties in Kant pushes
philosophy towards an inspiration which it would not have had alone
(Deleuze 1984: xii). But more than that, the creation of a concept
will entail the creation of further concepts on the same plane as well
(see Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 19). In other words, a concept itself
will also call for the creation of new concepts with which it can link
up. The degree of attention that Deleuze pays to this heterogenesis of
thought is evidenced in particular by his cinema books and his study on
Leibniz. But even if he notes the simultaneous appearance of the film
and Bergsons thinking, or explains how the fold as the characteristic of
the Baroque finds expression through the different forms of thought at
the same time, Deleuze still emphasises in both cases that philosophy,
science and art must be creative on their own account without direct
transposition, although he goes so far as to say that the monad and its
system . . . cannot be understood if they are not compared to Baroque
architecture (Deleuze 2006: 31).
With their creative ideas, philosophy, science and art each posit their
own object, or more precisely the event, the actual matter of fact or the
monument. Even when science, for example, is concerned with the same
objects it is not from the viewpoint of the concept; it is not by creating
concepts (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 33). Indeed, it is only the same

40 Mathias Schnher
object inasmuch as it is identified as such by recognition, in What Is
Philosophy? the finite movement of thought that gathers together the
whole of the negative. Joining together in the brain and continually
knotting up the brain-subject, the planes of philosophy, science and art
do not address the same object with concept, function and compound
of sensations. The three thoughts intersect and intertwine but without
synthesis or identification (1989). Each posits its own object, but they
must intertwine in order to allow the free interplay from which creation
emerges. To this end, though, they must first of all free themselves
from the well-coordinated interaction to which opinion subjects them.
Lacking creative force, opinion cannot avoid designating solely an
already constituted object, starting from a pregiven subject of lived
experience. Conceptual art, while directly raising the question of its own
relationship to the concept and to the function, is a prime example of
how opinion crosses the boundaries of philosophy and art to support
itself, and for this reason can go no further than, as Deleuze and Guattari
put it, to find ordinary perceptions and affections in the infinite and
to reduce the concept to a doxa of the social body or great American
metropolis (198). So when Joseph Kosuth in his 1965 artwork One
and Three Chairs, to which What Is Philosophy? unmistakably alludes,
installs a sufficiently neutralized plane of composition, on which the
supposed artwork hierarchically arranges a thing, its photograph on
the same scale and in the same place, its dictionary definition, he
is referring to the recognition of the viewer, the subject of reflection
who brings forth the intended artwork by identifying an object in this
hierarchical arrangement with the help of the prevailing opinion (198).
A chair, a photograph thereof and the definition of a chair provides us
with everything we need to form the clich of a chair, supplying the
referents for what we mean when we say: This is a chair. And as Kosuth
leaves the selection of the chair and the photography to an arbitrary
agent, the object is hardly likely to escape from the sphere of functions
whose arguments are consensual perceptions and affections. The agent
must subject himself to the disciplinary power of the system of opinion
implemented in the social body in order to make the right choice, namely
a seat with a back, and often arms, usually for one person. This is how
the functions of the lived calibrate themselves against the given state
of affairs and set up linguistically and culturally separate social milieus
into which philosophers, like anyone else, are bound, right down to their
mental movements.
Now, of the different types of interference between the planes that
join up in the brain, the extrinsic interferences are those in which

The Creation of the Concept 41

each of the three forms of thought remains on its own plane and
utilizes its own elements (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 21617). In
the division of labour involved in the creation of the concept, the
extrinsic interferences establish those relationships of interconnection on
which the interaction of philosophy and science rests. Philosophy has a
fundamental need for . . . science, say Deleuze and Guattari in summary,
because science constantly intersects with the possibility of concepts and
because concepts necessarily involve allusions to science that are neither
examples nor applications, nor even reflections (162). Science cannot
provide a basis for the possibility of concepts that can only be done by
the plane of immanence laid out by the philosopher but science does
intersect this possibility with actual matters of fact and bodies, which it
constitutes or modifies with its functions, and thus calls for the creation
of correlate concepts. Concepts necessarily involve allusions to science
because philosophy will be able to draw out concepts from these matters
of fact inasmuch as it extracts the event from them, and this extraction
of the event implies that we find allusions to them on the plane of
immanence and in the event (52, 161). In order to create the concept as
event, it would be necessary to return to the interior of scientific matters
of fact or bodies in the process of being constituted (140). To be precise,
the philosopher extracts the event from everything that a subject may
live, from its own body, from other bodies and objects distinct from it,
and from the matter of fact (159). As is made clear at several points
in What Is Philosophy?, if not only the realm of scientific function, but
the realm of function as a whole including the mental landscape and
the historical milieu formed by opinion forms the actual factors on
whose basis philosophy determines concepts, then the philosopher in
any case neither reproduces the matter of fact nor imitates the lived
(160). He or she does not look for the function of what happens
but extracts the event from it, so that the concept itself abandons all
reference and instead contains allusions to the actual (160). In respect
of the creation of the concept, therefore, we must not separate what the
scientific faculty of knowledge determines as matter of fact from what
this faculty or power, in its degenerate form, accommodates through
the application of recognition in the function of the lived even if great
importance is attached to that separation in answering the question of
sciences creative activity. In the process of the concepts constitution,
a distinction in the realm of function cannot be upheld at all, because
in that process wresting the determinations away from the matter of
fact, the body, the lived, means nothing other than removing them from

42 Mathias Schnher
chaos, for they appear first of all as chaotic. Creation requires that we
plunge into chaos and free ourselves from all the historical ballast that
is still preventing us from becoming philosophers anew. The difference
between science and philosophy in their respective attitudes towards
chaos establishes a difference in kind between concept and function,
and assigns them to their belonging on their own plane (see Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 11718). Since concept and function order chaos in
different ways within a chaosmos, philosophy cannot adopt the order
of science and simply transpose the elements of science directly onto its
plane. For this reason it is the extrinsic interferences with science that are
necessary for the creation of the concept, because philosophy remains
on its own plane and utilizes its own elements, so that it always creates
with its specific means (217, 161). And these interferences are necessary
not only when a correlating concept is created for an already given
function of science, because every kind of determination has recourse
to sciences and opinions acts of reference. Concept and function are
not creations ex nihilo, since chaos is not a nothingness. Chaos first and
foremost contains that which we expose to chaos when we plunge into
it in order to produce something new. Chaos is characterized less by the
absence of determinations than by the impossibility of a connection
between them, by the fact that there is not a movement from one
determination to the other (42). Only through determinations taken
from chaos being reconnected within a concept in accordance with the
order of philosophy, and through the sequencing of the concepts among
themselves, does thought accede to the infinite movement of the plane
of immanence and reconquer an immanent power of creation. Thus, if
science supports philosophy in the creation of the concept, it does so
precisely not by assuring a reference of the concept.
The extrinsic interferences that occur between all forms of thought
when the interfering discipline proceeds with its own methods or
means therefore appear when a philosopher attempts to create the
concept of . . . a function (for example, a concept peculiar to Riemannian
space) (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 217). The concept of a function
strictly speaking means creating the concept which is peculiar to a
function, or as Deleuze and Guattari put it, the concept for Riemannian
space. The extrinsic interferences with science and the allusions in
the completely created concept both relate to the object that science
constitutes or modifies with the functions and that it thereby posits as
extrinsic. The concept does not reflect on the function any more than the
function is applied to the concept. Concept and function must intersect,

The Creation of the Concept 43

each according to its line (161). In the case of philosophy, this line leads
from the matters of fact that science actualises to the events; in the case
of science, it leads from the events to the matters of fact:
If the two lines are inseparable it is in their respective sufficiency, and
philosophical concepts act no more in the constitution of scientific functions
than do functions in the constitution of concepts. It is in their full maturity,
and not in the process of their constitution, that concepts and functions
necessarily intersect, each being created only by their specific means. (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 161)

In their full maturity, the two heterogeneous elements concept and

function outline an object as though they tied together the event and the
object posited as matter of fact, as though enveloping them with the two
lines of philosophy and science. The two lines are therefore inseparable
but independent, each complete in itself: it is like the envelopes of the
two very different planes (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 161). We find
allusions to the matters of fact, to the object of science, we find only
allusions to them on the plane of immanence and in the event (161).
The event, on the other hand, wrests itself from the function and cannot
be grasped as a matter of fact. Deleuze and Guattari liken the event from
the viewpoint of science to a cloud: Philosophy can speak of science
only by allusion, and science can speak of philosophy only as of a cloud
(161). Philosophy has a fundamental need for science, although the two
lines of philosophy and science are independent and each is complete
in itself and science is . . . equally and intensely in need of philosophy
(162). But philosophy does not reflect on the function, and provides
science with no sort of criterion for a distinction in the realm of function.

IV. The Intrinsic Interferences of Philosophy with Art

In Kants aesthetic of the beautiful and the sublime, the various faculties
of thought enter into a discordant accord which is not dominated by any
one of these faculties and not regulated by any predefined law. And it is
precisely beauty which, in What Is Philosophy?, reveals the division
of labour of philosophy with art that leads us to a free interaction,
guided by taste, of all three forms of thought. The starting point for
characterising the intrinsic interferences by which philosophy arrives at
the sensation of the concept is the following passage:
The fact that there are specifically philosophical perceptions and affections
and specifically scientific ones in short, sensibilia of the concept and
sensibilia of the function already indicates the basis of a relationship

44 Mathias Schnher
between science and philosophy on the one hand, and art on the other, such
that we can say that a function is beautiful and a concept is beautiful. The
special perceptions and affections of science or philosophy necessarily adhere
to the percepts and affects of art, those of science just as much as those of
philosophy. (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 132/126; translation modified)

This relationship, which enables us to say that a concept or a function

is beautiful, thus consists in the perceptions and affections of science or
philosophy adhering to the sensations of art. The interference in question
is intrinsic, and must not be confused with an extrinsic interference,
which appears even when, for instance, a philosopher attempts to create
the concept of a sensation or when a scientist tries to create functions
of sensations as long as they use their own methods or means (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 217).
[Sometimes] we speak of the intrinsic beauty of a geometrical figure, . . . but so
long as this beauty is defined by criteria taken from science, like proportion,
symmetry, dissymmetry, projection, or transformation, then there is nothing
aesthetic about it: this is what Kant demonstrated with such force. (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 217)

Because science remains on its own plane and utilizes its own elements,
this beauty, even if it is described as intrinsic beauty, is completely
different from the beauty that points to intrinsic interferences (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 217). Only these intrinsic interferences with art can
be the reason why there are sensibilia of the concept and sensibilia of the
function and thus the conceptual persona, which can raise the concept to
creation, or the partial observer, who can raise the function to creation.
Partial observers are sensibilia, write Deleuze and Guattari, the
perceptions or sensory affections of functives themselves . . . For their
part, conceptual personae are philosophical sensibilia, the perceptions
and affections of fragmentary concepts themselves (131).
In order to create the function, explain Deleuze and Guattari
immediately after discussing the intrinsic beauty of a geometrical figure,
the function must be grasped within a sensation that gives it percepts
and affects composed exclusively by art, on a specific plane of creation
that wrests it from any reference (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 217).
In the same way, philosophy is dependent on art because its special
perceptions and affections also necessarily adhere to the percepts and
affects of art. As the perceptions and affections of philosophy are neither
percepts and affects themselves nor derive from habitual experience,
they must go back to art, or to be more precise, to the conceptual
persona, which philosophy can only awaken to life with the help of

The Creation of the Concept 45

art. The division of labour between these two forms of thought does
not, however, imply that with the completely given concept, art has
already posited a correlating artwork: the artwork must likewise be
created for itself. In addition, philosophy or science does not call for
a single and precisely defined artwork that art still has to create. Thus,
the Rauschenberg collage is an artwork for the Riemannian space of
mathematics, but so are the smooth spaces with close vision in Bressons
films.
At the same time as the concepts are attaching themselves to the
corresponding sensations, the conceptual personae slip in among the
aesthetic figures. There is an intrinsic type of interference when concepts
and conceptual personae seem to leave a plane of immanence . . . so as to
slip in . . . among the sensations and aesthetic figures; and these slidings
are so subtle, like those of Zarathustra in Nietzsches philosophy or of
Igitur in Mallarms poetry, that we find ourselves on complex planes
that are difficult to qualify (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 217). In turn,
partial observers, continue Deleuze and Guattari now returning to
science, introduce into science sensibilia that are sometimes close to
aesthetic figures on a mixed plane, whose subtle slippings advance
so far onto arts plane of composition that the partial observers mix
with the aesthetic figures (217). It is difficult to separate the aesthetic
figures from the compounds of sensations on the plane of composition.
Aesthetic figures . . . are sensations: percepts and affects, landscapes and
faces, visions and becomings (177). Their seeing is only perceiving
inasmuch as they have passed into the landscape and are themselves
part of the compound of sensations: not perception but percept (169).
That the aesthetic figures are sensations by no means excludes arts being
dependent on an interaction with philosophy and science to create the
compounds of sensations in its possible universe a universe that sets
these compounds of sensations in motion. In this interaction, art creates
the compounds of sensations by rising, through the performance of the
movements by means of the aesthetic figure, to the power of thinking
and creating, to be a layer of the brain-subject. Art . . . lays out a plane
of composition that, in turn, through the action of aesthetic figures, bears
monuments or composite sensations (197).
For concepts and conceptual personae to be able to mix with the
sensations and aesthetic figures at all, the intrinsic interferences of
philosophy with art must imply that art, in order to support philosophy
in a division of labour for the creation of the concept, composes the
percepts and affects to which the concepts adhere that art, in an
interaction with philosophy, awakens to life the conceptual persona that

46 Mathias Schnher
raises the concept to creation. Everything points to the conclusion that
the subtle slippings of philosophy open up concepts to the plane of
composition to such an extent that the concepts form a universe for
art, setting in motion the corresponding percepts and affects that art
has composed. And indeed, Deleuze and Guattari say that concepts
are centers of vibrations, each in itself and every one in relation to
all the others, counting the vibration (because it is already durable or
compound) as one of the different monumental types, or varieties, of
compounds of sensations of art (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 23, 168).
They also describe concepts given in their full maturity as conceptual
blocs, and by comparison, the work of art as a bloc of sensation
(208, 164). In any case, there must be a real interplay between the
planes in order to arrive at the concepts as conceptual blocs. To this
end, philosophy must connect up the concepts to the percepts and
affects of art, so that these percepts and affects are set in motion; this
motion, in turn, induces an aesthetic figure on the plane of composition,
and with this aesthetic figure, the conceptual persona arises on the
plane of immanence through the connecting up of the concepts to
the percepts and affects. This interplay even leads to the conceptual
personae seeming to leave a plane of immanence and mixing with the
aesthetic figures, so that between them, not only alliances but also
branchings and substitutions take place (66). And all this is possible
because the plane of composition of art and the plane of immanence
of philosophy can slip into each other to the degree that parts of
one may be occupied by entities of the other, without fusing (66). In
fact, in each case the plane and that which occupies it are like two
relatively distinct and heterogeneous parts (66). The reason why the
planes slip into each other, according to Deleuze and Guattari, is that
the concept as such can be concept of the affect, just as the affect can
be affect of the concept (66). And together with concept and sensation,
conceptual persona and aesthetic figure also pass into one another, but
again they do not fuse: even if aesthetic figures are not the same as
conceptual personae they pass into one another, in either direction,
like Igitur or Zarathustra, but this is insofar as there are sensations of
concepts and concepts of sensations (177). This mixing of concept and
conceptual persona with sensation and aesthetic figure, as the plane of
immanence and the plane of composition slip into each other, derives
from a becoming that is produced through the affect, when philosophy
connects up concepts with the percepts and affects composed by art.
The affect thus causes the concepts to vibrate, and these vibrations are
transferred to the extent that branchings and substitutions, interlinking

The Creation of the Concept 47

the planes, arise between conceptual persona and aesthetic figure. The
conceptual persona and the aesthetic figure, asserts What Is Philosophy?,
can pass into each other in a becoming that sweeps them both up
in an intensity which co-determines them (66). Despite their shared
intensity, it is still possible to distinguish a sensory becoming from a
conceptual becoming even in the affect of the concept, the affect being
on the plane of composition and the concept on the plane of immanence.
Accordingly, the aesthetic figures never fuse in the conceptual personae,
whose sensation is only a perception inasmuch as, having totally
passed into the concept, for them the concepts themselves are the
percepts:
Sensory becoming is the action by which something or someone is ceaselessly
becoming-other (while continuing to be what they are), . . . whereas
conceptual becoming is the action by which the common event itself eludes
what is. Conceptual becoming is heterogeneity grasped in an absolute form;
sensory becoming is otherness caught in a matter of expression. (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 177)

The intrinsic interferences of philosophy with art draw the thinker into
a form of athleticism, for he or she is on two planes at the same
time and does not produce a synthesis but ties the planes together
without referring them back to a unity, in a constant battle, since Kant
again they struggle against one another in him or her (Deleuze 1984:
xii). This struggle is a condition of creation itself, to the extent that
it tears the planes from their tacit connection by opinion; they shake
off the stabilised I of opinion to knot themselves always anew in
singular moments of creation. According to Deleuze and Guattari,
Igitur is just such a case of a conceptual persona transported onto
a plane of composition, an aesthetic figure carried onto a plane of
immanence: his proper name is a conjunction (Deleuze and Guattari
1994: 67). As conjunctions, these thinkers do not produce a synthesis
of art and philosophy but branch out and do not stop branching
out (67):
They are hybrid geniuses who neither erase nor cover over differences in
kind but, on the contrary, use all the resources of their athleticism to install
themselves within this very difference, like acrobats torn apart in a perpetual
show of strength. (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 67)

In this perpetual show of strength, the hybrid genius establishes the

correspondence between the planes, bridging the I of thinking, which
is constantly split anew like a tightrope walker, like Zarathustra

48 Mathias Schnher
(Nietzsche 1976: 124). The brain, under its first aspect of absolute
form, appears as the faculty of concepts, as the power of the concept
to become a subject through the conceptual persona, by creating the
concept itself as event, a conceptual becoming as heterogeneity grasped
in an absolute form (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 211). And this I is not
only the I conceive of the brain as philosophy, it is also the I feel of
the brain as art (211).
When the concept itself, as conceptual persona, becomes subject,
it determines, as intensity, our becoming or to be more precise,
the conceptual persona is nothing but this becoming, the thinking,
perceiving and feeling of the concept. This is the moment in which
philosophy finds its expression through the concept, as that power of
thinking and creating which is the power of the concept itself. What
depends on a free creative activity is also that which, independently and
necessarily, posits itself in itself (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 11). The
concept, created relative to its own components, to other concepts, to
the plane, posits itself as absolute through the condensation it carries
out (21). The moment of creation is the transition from the infinite
movements to the concept as intensity, and corresponds to the transition
in Spinoza from created nature to creating nature, from the infinite
to the absolute: the concept unfolds its power, it posits itself and its
object at the same time as it is created in carrying out the infinite
movements of the plane of immanence, in the thinking, perceiving and
feeling of the concept (22). The concept itself is what makes us think
through the conceptual persona, makes us see and become. It is no
objection to say that creation is the prerogative of the sensory and the
arts, since . . . philosophical concepts are also sensibilia (5). Concepts
are of a creating nature, in the same sense as Deleuze and Guattari say
with reference to art that the sensation is not colored but, as Czanne
said, coloring (167). Through the intrinsic interferences with art with
which philosophy awakens to life its conceptual persona which, as a
living category, applies the movements of the plane to the concepts the
concept is created as a vital idea, becomes an intensity, and posits itself as
absolute (3). The conceptual persona performs the infinite movements of
thought on the plane of immanence and erects interferences, intervening
between the plane and the intensive features of the concepts that happen
to populate it. Igitur (75). Or, to make it explicit: This was to take
place in the combinations of the Infinite face to face with the Absolute.
Necessary the extracted Idea. Profitable madness. There one of the acts
of the universe was just committed . . . Proof (Mallarm 1982: 92).

The Creation of the Concept 49

V. The Interaction Led by Taste

At the beginning of What Is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari assert
that the time has come for us to ask what philosophy is, noting that they
have often raised this question and always provided the same answer:
Philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts
(Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 2). However, they continue, the answer not
only had to take note of the question, it had to determine its moment, its
occasion and circumstances, its landscapes and personae, its conditions
and unknowns (2). As long as the concept has not yet received these
determinations, as long as it is formed but not yet created, linked to other
concepts, given in its full maturity, the plane remains still-transparent, in
other words prephilosophical, and the conceptual persona still in limbo.
All three elements must be constructed as such; and as none of them is
deduced from the others, there must be coadaptation of the three (77).
Because, on this basis, the concept must be created, it refers back to the
philosopher as the one who has it potentially, or who has its power and
competence, who awakens the conceptual persona to life precisely by
surrendering to the power of the concept (5):
The philosopher is the concepts friend; he is potentiality of the concept.
That is, philosophy is not a simple art of forming, inventing, or fabricating
concepts, because concepts are not necessarily forms, discoveries, or products.
More rigorously, philosophy is the discipline that consists in creating
concepts . . . Because the concept must be created, it refers back to the
philosopher as the one who has it potentially, or who has its power and
competence. (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 5/10; translation modified)

Philosophy is the activity of creating concepts to the same extent that

science and art consist in scientific or artistic activity; it consists as
philosophy only in the creative implementation of the movements of
thought on the plane of immanence, which entails the now of our
becoming (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 8).
The philosophical faculty of coadaptation, which also regulates the
creation of concepts, is called taste (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 77).
Thus taste guides not only the construction of the elements and their
mutual coadaptation but also, starting from this basis, the positing of the
concept as event in each singular moment of creation. Taste first appears
as the triple faculty which imposes on itself the rule for the coadaptation
of the three elements of philosophy: No rule . . . will say in advance
whether this is the good plane, the good persona, or the good concept;
for each of them determines if the other two have succeeded or not, but
each must be constructed on its own account, and we construct only

50 Mathias Schnher
as we go along and on the basis of their coadaptations (82). In respect
of taste, as the triple faculty of the still-undetermined concept, of the
persona still in limbo, and of the still-transparent plane, write Deleuze
and Guattari, the laying-out of the plane is called Reason, the invention
of personae Imagination, and the creation of concepts Understanding
(77). Art serves as Imagination, with whose help philosophy invents
the conceptual personae and brings them to life; science serves as
Understanding, with whose help philosophy constructs and determines
concepts; philosophy is in this case Reason, which is stimulated in this
free yet also necessary interaction until, in the moment of creation, it
finds its expression as the power or faculty of thinking and creating, in
the creation of concepts. Alongside coadaptation, the free creation . . . of
concepts calls for a taste that guides it and at the same time appears
as philosophical taste, as love of the well-made concept, well-made
meaning not a moderation of the concept but a sort of stimulation a
stimulation through interference with science and slippings into the
sensations and aesthetic figures of art (778).
While opinion proceeds by applying recognition and mediates
between a subject of lived experience and its object, the philosophical
concept needs taste in order to become the object of creation, just as
the brain becomes subject through the conceptual persona. Apart from
a rule that the philosopher imposes on himself, no rule is valid for
the free interplay. The philosopher . . . can determine a concept only
through a measureless creation whose only rule is a plane of immanence
that he lays out and whose only compass are the strange personae to
which it gives life (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 78). The conceptual
persona, which advances through reconnections of the components
taken from chaos in a concept and in the sequencing of the concepts
among themselves, is not prescribed any rigid categories by the plane:
the plane implies a sort of groping experimentation and points to an
instinctive, almost animal sapere (41, 79). Nietzsche, suggest Deleuze
and Guattari, sensed this relationship of the creation of concepts with a
specifically philosophical taste and was aware that it is certainly not for
rational or reasonable reasons that a particular concept is created or a
particular component chosen (78). A groping experimentation, a taste,
remains the only possibility of orienting oneself in the smooth spaces,
given in close vision, of sequencing the concepts beyond the intentionally
opened rift, the hiatus, when the linkage between one of them and the
next is not defined in advance.
Because the concept is given its determination by allusions to the
actual, we need have no sympathy for Hallwards characterisation, in

The Creation of the Concept 51

a detailed discussion of What Is Philosophy?, of Deleuzes thought
as post-mystical philosophy with no relation to the actual (Hallward
2006: 133). Due to the interaction of philosophy with science and art
for the creation of concepts, it makes no sense to allow philosophy
the exclusive privilege of being capable, with concepts, of creation in
its purest form. Yet this does not mean obliterating the differences in
kind between these three forms of thought and denying philosophy the
potential for its very own and specific creation, as de Bloois does. It is
not in spite of, but precisely because of the intrinsic interferences that
philosophy posits the concept as a singular creation and expresses itself
as an autonomous power of thinking and creating. The hybrid genius of
Deleuze and Guattari therefore reveals itself in the stimulation of taste
for a free interplay of thought in its three great forms, an interplay that
resists the degeneration of thought into opinion.3

Notes
1. I am following Stengerss use of matter of fact instead of state of affairs for the
translation of tat des choses (Stengers 2005: 153). For all quotations from What
Is Philosophy? (Deleuze and Guattari 1994) that include other modifications to
the English translation, the second page number refers to the French edition
(Deleuze and Guattari 2005a).
2. I base my considerations of Spinoza entirely on Deleuze (Deleuze 1990: ch. 7).
3. This article was translated from the German with the help of Michael Scuffil
and Kate Sturge. It outlines the framework of my forthcoming book on What
Is Philosophy? I would like to thank Professor Richard Heinrich (University of
Vienna) for his continuous support.

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