SOURCE: “The Uses of Anachronism: Deleuze's History of the Subject,” in Philosophy Today, Vol. 42, No. 4, Winter, 1998, pp. 418-31.

In the following essay, Neil traces Deleuze's philosophical development by discussing important influences on his work.

Even the history of philosophy is completely without interest if it does not undertake to awaken a dormant concept and to play it again on a new stage, even if this comes at the price of turning it against itself.¹

History of Philosophy: Recounting Imaginary Books

Gilles Deleuze observes a distinction between writing history of philosophy and “doing” philosophy. We are interested here in how this distinction is set up. How does Deleuze conceive of the relation between history of philosophy and doing philosophy? What is the use of historiography and how can it be brought to bear on the present? In the preface to the English edition of Difference and Repetition Deleuze writes...