Gilles Deleuze

All of Deleuze’s philosophical work (often in conjunction with Guattari) is marked by a fundamental affinity with the arts. For Deleuze the ‘art of philosophy’ as the creation of concepts only emerges in the face of a vital encounter with something ‘outside’ thought; thought is always moved from without, as a result of some shock or encounter. ¬ Deleuze repeatedly calls upon an encounter with art as a means for guiding philosophical thought out of the habitual ‘images of thought’ under which philosophy often labours. It is no longer feasible to posit reason, common sense and pre-existing powers of recognition at the origin of a philosophical construction of concepts. Rather, contemporary philosophy must creatively construct its concepts ¬ ‘outside’ its own conceptual field, from¬ within science, the visual arts, literature and cinema. Philosophy must actively engage with and emulate non-philosophical realms in order to begin constructing its activity of thought upon the ground of ‘something that does not think’ philosophically, to relate itself to an unthinkable and imperceptible exteriority. This exteriority, Deleuze argues, ‘calls forth forces in thought which are not the forces of recognition, today or tomorrow, but the powers of a completely other model, from an unrecognised and unrecognisable terra incognito’. ('Difference and Repetition', p. 172) Hence, the creative activity of philosophy necessarily rests upon it being intertwined and co-implicated with the ‘autopoiesis’ (the creatively autonomous movement of self-positing) of the non-philosophical realms.