The Multiplicity of Immanence: Gilles Deleuze’s Understanding and Application of Chinese Thought

Abstract

Gilles Deleuze spends his whole life exploring the question of what philosophy is by unconventional approaches to establish the ontology of Becoming and he collaborates with Félix Guattari, integrating Chinese thought into his philosophical discourse directly to support the Becoming theory. Different from the tendency to associate Deleuze’s references to Tao with the philosophy of arts or body aesthetics, this paper argues Tao is introduced because of the consistency with the multiplicity of immanence raised by Deleuze who has updated the connotation of Western philosophical concepts with the help of Tao. Therefore, Tao is no longer defined as the ultimate Being claimed by some French sinologists and philosophers, but as an internal field or the Plane. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the immanence without any certainty (the multiplicity of immanence) itself is a kind of nomadic life, which is also the real meaning of Tao. In this way, Chinese philosophy’s function has far more significant than footnotes and evidence in the construction of Deleuze’s theory.