Deleuze and Hegel compared: Difference and Contradiction tested by a geometric example

Abstract

The concept of multiplicity is a link between the extensive multiplicities of what is actual and the intensive multiplicities of the virtual. Multiplicities in the Deleuzian sense have a full ontological status, even if problematic, but we must consider that Deleuze was the first to attempt the philosophical formalization of these multiplicities to replace the concept of essence. Considering the features of this philosophical work, we will try to show how mathematics plays a role in the development of Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of difference as an alternative to the dialectical philosophy determined by the Hegelian dialectic logic; for this aim we analyse the texts in which they discuss the geometrical example of Spinoza’s Letter XII.