The Rise and Fall of the Simulacrum

Charles Mayell

The University of Liverpool

Abstract
Deleuze adopts Nietzsches manifesto for an overturning of Platonism.
However, the consensus view is that Deleuzes project is best understood
as a revision not a repudiation of Platonism. Deleuzes engagement
with Platonism centres on The Sophist. Out of Platos concept of
phantasm, Deleuze fashions a new concept: simulacrum. In Difference
and Repetition, simulacra are invited to rise and affirm their rights; and
yet Deleuze later abandons the concept entirely. Why? Although suitable
for the purposes of critique, it became otiose in wider applications. More
generally, and against the consensus view, I argue that the trajectory of
the concept of the simulacrum is emblematic of Deleuzes anti-Platonism.
Keywords: Plato, Sophist, Aristotle, image, simulacrum, multiplicity

I. A Reversal that Changes Everything

Deleuzes ambition in his 1968 masterwork Difference and Repetition
is To rescue difference from its maledictory state (Deleuze 2001: 29).
Against the backdrop of a failed classical philosophy of difference,
he marks out a new domain of ontological difference that is prior to
identity. Integral to this project, it seems, is the creation of the concept
of simulacrum. Simulacrum can simply mean an image or a semblance.
Daniel W. Smith explains that it is the Latin term for statue or idol,
and translates the Greek phantasma (Smith 2006a: 89). However,
Deleuze gives the term a new definition and a special status within
the radical philosophy of difference: Simulacra are those systems in
which different relates to different by means of difference itself (Deleuze
2001: 299). And yet by 1993, Deleuze muses, as if only with the benefit
Deleuze Studies 8.4 (2014): 445469
DOI: 10.3366/dls.2014.0165
Edinburgh University Press
www.euppublishing.com/dls

446 Charles Mayell

of hindsight, It seems to me that I have completely abandoned the
notion of the simulacrum (Deleuze 1993: 8, cited in Smith 2006a:
116). Even more startlingly, In his . . . Preface to . . . Clet-Martins
book . . . Deleuze states that the concept of simulacrum was never an
essential part of his philosophy (Roffe 2005: 250).
When, echoing Nietzsche, Deleuze announces, The task of modern
philosophy has been defined: to overturn Platonism, we may understand
this as a necessary condition for rescuing difference (Deleuze 2001:
59). However, the translation of renversement du platonisme has
been a bone of contention (Deleuze 1968: 82). Warning of a fatal
misunderstanding, James Williams points out that the primary sense of
renversement is reversing and that this is the most apposite translation
(Williams 2003: 79). I will not disagree but dispute where that leaves us.
In The Logic of Sense, Deleuze puts the assertion made in Difference
and Repetition into the question that we now want to ask: What does it
mean to reverse Platonism?(Deleuze 2003: 253). Although Deleuzes
answer only raises more questions, it explicitly links reversed Platonism
with simulacra: to reverse Platonism means to make the simulacra
rise and to affirm their rights among icons and copies (262).
The secondary literature on reversed Platonism is well-trodden ground
which I will not re-tread here.1 No single or simple interpretation
emerges but on one point there is a consensus. According to Williams,
by reversing Platonism, Deleuze aims only to tweak the Platonic
structure in order to avoid an error with severe consequences with
regard to difference (Williams 2003: 79). If tweaking means slightly
revising, this takes us uncomfortably close to validating Alain Badious
provocative complaint that, far from overturning Platonism, Deleuze has
only produced a Platonism with a different accentuation (Badiou 2000:
26). Smith, like Williams, is keen to emphasise that the issue is structural
and reversal (or inversion) is very far from repudiation:
Far from refusing Platonism in its entirety . . . Deleuzes inverted Platonism
retrieves almost every aspect of the Platonic project . . . Deleuzes inverted
Platonism can . . . be seen as a rejuvenated and even a completed Platonism.
(Smith 2006a: 105)

This is the view against which I argue.

What is a Platonic structure? Paul Pattons adumbration of the theory
of Ideas or Forms would probably pass muster as the standard account:
[Platonism is] the distinction between the realm of Ideas or that which
truly is, and the sensuous realm of relative nonbeing or mere appearance
(Patton 1994: 144). So, a Platonic structure has two tiers. However,

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447

Deleuze invariably wants to go one step beyond any standard account,

and in this case, several steps. First, it is insufficient to define Platonism
by reference to the distinction between essence and appearance. The
primary distinction which Plato rigorously establishes is the one between
the model and the copy (Deleuze 2001: 264). Plato is the father of
Western philosophy only because he is the creator of the malign concept
of representation:
Platonism . . . founds the entire domain that philosophy will later recognize
as its own: the domain of representation filled by copies-icons . . . defined by
an intrinsic relation to the model or foundation . . . To the pure identity of
the model or original there corresponds an exemplary similitude; to the pure
resemblance of the copy there corresponds the similitude called imitative.
(Deleuze 2003: 259)

Representation is wholly at variance with the new domain of difference

that Deleuze wishes to inaugurate: We propose to think difference in
itself independently of the forms of representation which reduce it to the
Same (Deleuze 2001: xix).
Let us set the supposed structural affinity between Deleuzianism and
Platonism alongside the following passage:
Consider the two propositions: only that which is alike differs; and only
differences are alike. The first formula posits resemblance as the condition
of difference . . . According to the other formula, by contrast, resemblance,
identity . . . can no longer be considered anything but effects, the products
of a primary difference . . . The question is whether these two formulae are
simply two manners of speaking which do not change things very much, or
whether they apply to two completely different systems . . . one of which is
capable of changing everything. (Deleuze 2001: 11617)

The first formula privileges resemblance: the hallmark of Platonism.

In choosing the second formula, Deleuze reverses the priority normally
given to identity over difference but in so doing intends to leave nothing
in its original place. It is a reversal that changes everything.

II. The Nature of Images

As we have seen, Deleuze baulks at defining Platonism in terms of the
two-tiered distinction between essence and appearance, and proposes
instead the distinction between model and copy. However, this too turns
out to be insufficient. To follow in Deleuzes footsteps to the source of
Platonism, we need to consider the complications that flow from Platos
treatment of the nature of images. In the Republic, using the example of

448 Charles Mayell

a bed, Socrates adds a third tier to the Platonic structure when he posits
three kinds of beds. The first is in nature a bed, and . . . a god makes
it . . . The second is the work of a carpenter . . . And the third is the one
the painter makes (Plato 1997: 1201; 597). Socrates makes it clear that
the god and the craftsman can both be said to be the maker of a bed.
The painter, however, is only an imitator of what the others make.
Deleuze notes how, in the Sophist, this Platonic structure is elaborated
again, turning three tiers into four, by another distinction within the tier
of imitation: Plato divides in two the domain of images-idols: on the one
hand there are copies-icons, on the other there are simulacra-phantasms
(Deleuze 2003: 256). The thrust of Platos argument runs:
Visitor: One type of imitation . . . is . . . likeness-making. Thats . . . whenever
someone produces an imitation by keeping to the proportions of length,
breadth, and depth of his model, and also by keeping to the appropriate
colours . . .
Theaetetus: But dont all imitators try to do that?
Visitor: Not the ones who sculpt or draw very large works. If they
reproduced the true proportions of their beautiful subjects . . . the upper parts
would appear smaller than they should, and the lower parts would appear
larger, because we see the upper parts from farther away and the lower
parts from closer . . . What are we going to call something that appears to
be like a beautiful thing, but only because its seen from a viewpoint . . . ?
Wouldnt appearance-making be the right thing to call expertise in producing
appearances that arent likenesses? (Plato 1997: 256; 235d236c)

Stepping beyond the model and the copy, Deleuze now, therefore,
defines Platonism by reference to:
[the] more profound distinction . . . between the copy itself and the phantasm.
It is clear that Plato distinguishes, and even opposes, models and copies only
in order to obtain a selective criterion with which to separate copies and
simulacra, the former founded upon their relation to the model while the
latter are disqualified because they fail both the test of the copy and the
requirements of the model. (Deleuze 2001: 265)

Deleuze and Guattari defer to Jean-Pierre Vernants analysis of the

origins of Greek thought (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 4; see n. 4).
Yet Vernant flatly contradicts the crux of Deleuzes argument: The
opposition Plato establishes at Sophist 235de between two types of
eidola
[images] cannot have any fundamental import (Vernant 1991:
169). He notes that Plato, having made the distinction between icon and
phantasm, only a little later runs the two back together again: those
things . . . which you [Theaetetus] thought you should call by the one

The Rise and Fall of the Simulacrum

449

name, copy, to cover them all (Plato 1997: 260; 240a). Stanley Rosen
also notices that the initial distinction between icons and fantasms is
blurred at crucial points (Rosen 1983: 151). For Vernant, Platos aim is
only to establish an opposition between demiurgic activity, on the one
hand, and mimetic [imitative] activity on the other (Vernant 1991: 170).
Divine demiurges have populated the natural world with plants and
animals and so forth. Human craftsmen lack true knowledge of the Idea
but by virtue of what Plato, in the Republic, calls right opinion, make
beds that one can actually sleep on and houses that one can actually live
in (Plato 1997: 1206; 601e). By contrast, Imitation is far removed from
the truth, for it touches only a small part of each thing and a part that is
itself only an image (1202; 598b).
So in Vernants analysis, the general lesson given in the Republic
applies with equal force to the distinction made in the Sophist:
The painters bed, whether it is a faithful copy (eikon)
. . . or whether it
is a simulacrum (phantasma) intended to produce an effect of trompeloeil . . . is . . . in both cases an imitation of a visible bed produced by the
artisan; it is not an imitation of . . . the idea . . . of the bed. (Vernant 1991:
169)

In a rather jumbled footnote, Vernant seems to include Deleuze among

those who claim there was a mimeticism of Forms that Plato would have
admitted as both possible and desirable in the domain of art (Vernant
1991: 169; n. 6). This is, possibly, implicit in Deleuzes claim that:
If copies or icons are good images . . . it is because they are endowed with
resemblance. But resemblance . . . goes less from one thing to another than
from one thing to an Idea, since it is the Idea which comprehends the
relations and proportions constitutive of the internal essence . . . The copy
truly resembles something only to the degree that it resembles the Idea of
that thing. (Deleuze 2003: 257)

Be that as it may, it is clear that Deleuzes more substantial point

is to ask us to consider now the . . . simulacra. That to which they
pretend . . . they pretend to underhandedly . . . without passing through
the Idea. And in the parallel passage in Difference and Repetition,
after first clarifying that the same . . . characterises the Idea as the thing
itself, he goes on, The whole of Platonism . . . is dominated by the idea
of drawing a distinction between the thing itself and the simulacra
(Deleuze 2001: 66). Smith defends Deleuze against Vernants objection
by claiming that Vernant nonetheless supports the thrust of Deleuzes
reading when he says that the problem of the Sophist is to articulate
what an image is, not in its seeming but in its being . . . the being of

450 Charles Mayell

semblance (Smith 2006a: 119; n. 31). But if Vernant is right and, for
Plato, the domains of the Idea and the Image (be it icon or phantasm)
are fundamentally disconnected, the platform for Deleuzes critique of
Platonism seems rather fragile.
Which is not to say that Vernants objection carries all before it. For
example, it can be argued that the use of the Theory of Forms in the
particular passage of the Republic upon which Vernant relies
[Is itself] in some respects anomalous . . . Plato has a god bring Forms into
existence, though elsewhere they exist eternally and no one creates them.
Forms are often thought to be paradigms existing in nature, which perhaps
makes it puzzling how there could be Forms of man-made objects such as a
bed (as opposed to the Forms of Justice, Beauty . . . ) For someone seeking a
coherent interpretation of Platos philosophy, this passage . . . may raise more
puzzles than it solves. (Janaway 2009: 392)

So, perhaps Deleuzes claim can evade Vernants objection entirely.

Deleuze argues that Plato distinguishes, and even opposes, models and
copies only in order to obtain a selective criterion with which to separate
copies and simulacra. Deleuze is, in effect, claiming that Platonism is not
founded on the Theory of Forms; it is instead the Theory of Forms that is
founded on the distinction between icons and simulacra. Ideas or Forms
are only a downstream effect, a consequence of Platos more covert
concerns. Hence, Deleuze and Guattari can complain: Plato said that
Ideas must be contemplated, but first of all he had to create the concept
of Idea (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 6). Smith gestures towards a similar
reading when he says that In Deleuzes interpretation, Platos singularity
lies in a delicate operation of sorting or selection that precedes the
discovery of the Idea (Smith 2006a: 91). On this view, Platos real
concerns ultimately find their best expression in the distinction between
two kinds of image. If that is the case, Deleuze can still coherently claim
that the distinction between images is the fulcrum of Platonism. Whether
it is the case, comes down to an analysis of Platos motives.

III. Platos Motives

Deleuze is not alone in reading the Sophist as an experimental Platonism
that is not necessarily consistent with the Republic.2 More importantly,
Deleuzes readings in the history of philosophy are always partisan and
creative, always a matter of looking through the cracks. Returning to
the question of what it means to reverse Platonism, Deleuze tells us that
to reverse Platonism must mean to bring . . . [its] motivation out into the

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451

light of day, to track it down the way Plato tracks down the Sophist
(Deleuze 2003: 253).3 So, if reverse is the right word to use, it may be
because the reversal which is at stake is what we might now call reverse
engineering: taking an existing product or application apart and finding
how it works, reducing it to formula, tracking it back to the machine
code, as it were. Hence, Deleuze takes yet another step in search of the
motive power of Platonism. Before following, let us notice that if Deleuze
finds no sympathy with Platos motives, then reversing Platonism is a
repudiation of it.
According to Deleuze,
The motive of the theory of Ideas must be sought in a will to select and
to choose. It is a question of making a difference, of distinguishing the
thing itself from its images, the original from the copy, the model from the
simulacrum . . . The Platonic project comes to light only when we turn back
to the method of division. (Deleuze 2003: 253)

The following questions are supposed to be rhetorical:

Far from being one dialectical procedure among others . . . is not division the
one which replaces all the other procedures from the moment it appears,
and gathers up all the dialectical power in favour of a genuine philosophy
of difference? Is it not simultaneously the measure of both Platonism and the
possibility of overturning Platonism? (Deleuze 2001: 59)

I still feel in need of an answer. Why does division deserve this status?
Deleuze does not provide an answer until his final summing up:
In [Platos] case . . . a moral motivation in all its purity is avowed: the will to
eliminate simulacra or phantasms has no motivation apart from the moral.
What is condemned in the figure of the simulacra is the state of free, oceanic
differences. (Deleuze 2001: 265)

Ultimately then, behind the method of division lies Platos will to

separate the sheep of identity/sameness (the originals and icons) from
the goats of pure difference (the simulacra). Deleuze makes it clear that
Platos project is inimical to his own.
According to Deleuze, Platos dialectical method for achieving his
moral ends comprises four figures: . . . the selection of difference, the
installation of a mythic circle, the establishment of a foundation, and
the position of a questionproblem complex (Deleuze 2001: 66). This
emphasis on method and structure supports Williams case for arguing
that reversal is not repudiation but revision:
Each of the figures of the Platonic structure corresponds to an aspect of
Deleuzes own work . . . Thus, in parallel to Platos structure . . . we find

452 Charles Mayell

Deleuzes structure of selection through affirmation or expression, of eternal
return and dramatisation, of ideas as multiplicities of pure differences and
problems. (Williams 2003: 80, 82)

Williams goes on to concede: That this is only a parallel and not an exact
correspondence can be explained through Deleuzes main criticism of
Plato. For Deleuze, ideas do not have an identity they are multiplicities
of pure differences (Williams 2003: 82). What strikes me about the
above elements is how stratospherically far they take us from Plato:
it is not Platos name that resonates in the background but Nietzsche
(affirmation, eternal return and dramatisation), Spinoza (expression),
Bergson (multiplicities) and Kant (ideas and problems).
What is more, the four figures of the Platonic dialectic are only that
because Deleuze told us that they were in the first place. Contrast it, for
example, with what has come to be called Platos method of hypothesis:

First, it consists of the process of identifying a hypothesis such that its truth
is necessary and sufficient for a determinate answer to the question under
consideration . . . The second process is to determine whether the hypothesis
in question is true. (Benson 2009: 88)

Is there not already a suspicion that Deleuze has created a Platonic

dialectic in his own image? If so, it is not particularly surprising that
Williams should be able to map elements of Deleuzes project onto it.
Moreover, quite apart from the supposed Platonic dialectic, there is the
problem of the supposed Deleuzian dialectic. Constructing a Deleuzian
dialectic of any sort flies in the face of the fact, as Ian Buchanan puts
it, that Deleuze does not have any truck with dialectics in general
(Buchanan 2000: 192). Insofar as Buchanan then goes on to construct a
Deleuzian dialectic, it is notable that it is closer to Adorno than to Plato.
Williams himself offers yet another version of a Deleuzian dialectic: [1]
Critique; [2] The reciprocal search for actual and virtual conditions;
[3] The search for completeness in terms of reasons determined by
conditions; [4] The dice throw, or creative and destructive forgetting
(Williams 2003: 19). My point is that, when freed from the factitious
constraint of a Platonic context, the Deleuzian dialectic, if there is one,
turns out to be remote from the supposed four figures of the Platonic
dialectic; that being said, I will now track Deleuzes account of those
four figures.

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453

IV. The Selection of Difference

Deleuzes grand project is to rescue difference. Accordingly, the first
substantive chapter of Difference and Repetition is entitled Difference
in Itself. If reversing Platonism involves bringing its motivation to light,
and if that motivation is a will to select or choose, then one must be
clear about the nature of the concept of difference within which one is
operating. If one is going to try to discriminate between true images
(icons) and false ones (simulacra), how does one tell the difference,
without knowing what makes a difference in the first place? Deleuze
goes on to write an alternative history of Western philosophy from the
perspective of a concept of difference; a history that starts with Aristotle
and ends with Plato, having gone via Hegel and Leibniz (Deleuze 2001:
3068). This bizarre trajectory can only be justified by the fact that, for
a reason yet to be determined, Deleuze wants to end with Plato. But
for the moment, let us note that Deleuzes reading of Plato is set in the
context of his reading of Aristotle.
It is not fanciful of Deleuze to attribute a concept of difference
to Aristotle: Aristotle says: there is a difference which is at once
the greatest and the most perfect (Deleuze 2001: 30); and references
Metaphysics X (Deleuze 2001: 308; n. 2). Thus Aristotle lends his
huge authority to Deleuzes project. Aristotle interprets the search for
the greatest difference in terms of seeking the maximum scope, or
stretch, of difference. He seeks a perfect difference. Deleuzes critique of
Aristotles concept of difference operates at three levels: genus; species;
and the individual. Deleuze, like Aristotle, begins in the middle. Aristotle
is here accused of a confusion disastrous for the entire philosophy
of difference: assigning a distinctive concept of difference is confused
with the inscription of difference within concepts in general (Deleuze
2001: 32). What characterises Aristotles concept of specific difference
is that two terms differ when they are other, not in themselves, but in
something else, thus when they also agree in something else (Deleuze
2001: 30). Aristotle operates within the horizontal plane, distinguishing
one species from another species (e.g., bird from man) by their unique
differentiating features (see Widder 2001: 439). But by Aristotles
account, for two things to differ at all, they must first be gathered
under a higher overarching conceptual identity (e.g., animal). Identity
is prior to difference; and it is Aristotles deference to identity that is the
target of Deleuzes negative critique: only in relation to the supposed
identity of a concept is specific difference called the greatest (Deleuze
2001: 31).

454 Charles Mayell

Damned as the enemy of difference, Aristotle is also, however,
recognised as its friend. Deleuze warms to the manner in which,
for Aristotle, difference can only operate over a certain range. Once
over-stretched, difference breaks and assumes a different nature;
once it escapes the domain of identity, it tends to become simple
otherness . . . established between uncombinable objects (Deleuze 2001:
30). Aristotle is the fair-weather friend of difference because for
Aristotle, difference is a means of connection not disconnection. This
explains why Williams, for example, can distil out of Difference and
Repetition the ethical principle that: It is best for our actions to
connect with all things that have brought them about and that they
can bring about (Williams 2003: 5). It is a principle that has a
future in Deleuzianism: Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any
point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be
(Deleuze and Guattari 2002: 7). In Aristotles philosophy, as much as in
Platos, Deleuze looks for points of contact with his own philosophy of
difference.
Deleuzes history of the philosophy of difference moves on to Hegel
and Leibniz; it is a catalogue of errors, albeit that Leibniz emerges
with the most credit of anyone (even if we included Plato). So, why
does Deleuze want to end with Plato? Plato, like Aristotle, turns out
to be not only villain but also hero; or more precisely, he could have
been the hero. Deleuze ends his history of difference with Platonism
because here Deleuze claims to detect the first glimmer of the gold that
is pure difference. Difference has, we are told, been placed under cruel
constraint by Aristotle and Hegel: like an animal in the process of being
tamed, whose final resistant movements bear witness . . . to a nature soon
to be lost . . . With Plato [however] the issue is still in doubt (Deleuze
2001: 59). Deleuzes support for this assertion lies in his analysis of the
Sophist.
Deleuzes critique of Plato begins by looking back to Aristotle: Our
mistake lies in trying to understand Platonic division on the basis of
Aristotelian requirements. According to Aristotle, it is a question of
dividing a genus into opposing species (Deleuze 2001: 59). Rosen
concurs that diaeresis, or the division and collection in accordance with
kinds [is] a method that will play an important role in the Sophist
(Rosen 1983: 2). Whether Plato is, in fact, collecting in accordance
with kinds is precisely the issue that Deleuze will dispute. Were one to
orientate the Sophist relative to Aristotles method, one might say that
the parties were setting out to differentiate the species sophist from
that of statesman and philosopher, each of which is part of some

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455

larger genus. Deleuze asks an apparently incongruous question: [Plato]

divide[s] art into arts of production and arts of acquisition: but then why
is fishing among the arts of acquisition? (Deleuze 2001: 59).
The relevance of this question is partly explained by the fact that
before beginning the serious business of tracking down the nature of the
sophist himself, the parties to the dialogue agree to try out the method of
division on an angler . . . recognizable to everybody, but not worth being
too serious about (Plato 1997: 239; 218e). Rosen sees more Platonic
irony at work here than Deleuze, and accordingly offers yet another
definition of Platonism:
Platonism may be equated . . . with the thesis that human beings in general,
and philosophers in particular, have access to the true nature of things.
Platonism in this sense asserts that vision of pure form is the acquisition,
not the production, of truth. (Rosen 1983: 14)

So, Platos otherwise rather capricious-sounding choice to begin

the divisions by dividing acquisition and production is already
philosophically loaded. Rosen, like Vernant, argues that, for Plato,
Images in general are and are not and are thus all [i.e., icons as
well as phantasms] associated with non-being and falsehood (Rosen
1983: 152). And yet the crucial distinction between the acquisition of
truth and the production of truth still seems to be bubbling underneath
the Platonic distinction between images; Rosen goes on: An accurate
image [an icon] is not false in the same sense as an inaccurate image [a
phantasm]. The latter deceives, whereas the former does not, concerning
the proportions of the original (152). Plato surely intends us to align the
maker of accurate images with the philosopher, who acquires the truth,
ugly though it might seem, and the maker of beautiful but inaccurate
images with the sophist, who produces a truth tailored to human
desires and matching a distorted human perspective.
The Visitor asks Theaetetus If every expertise falls under acquisition
or production . . . which one shall we put angling in?; and Theaetetus
answers, Acquisition, obviously (Plato 1997: 239; 219d). So, to go back
to the point of Deleuzes earlier question, Deleuze is, in effect, asking,
why is it obvious? But this, in turn, is only an echo of Aristotles famous
critique of Platos method: According to Aristotle . . . [the method of
division] not only lacks reason by itself, it lacks a reason in terms of
which we could decide whether something falls into one species rather
than another (Deleuze 2001: 59). Aristotle complains that it is simply
assumed that it does. To see Aristotles point we might consider how
the method is applied once matters do become serious. After the practice

456 Charles Mayell

session, the Visitor and Theaetetus go on to make five different episodes
of division. At the end of each of the divisions they locate the sophist.
Taking the first division as an example, it is agreed that the sophist
and the angler are both hunters. Hunting is divided into two: one for
land animals and one for swimming animals (Plato 1997: 242; 221e).
They choose to follow the branch devoted to land animals because they
already know that is where the sophist is to be found. This branch is
further divided into Tame things and wild ones (222b). After some
discussion as to whether human beings are wild or tame, they settle on
tame; and they choose that branch of the division because they know
that is where the sophist is to be found, no other reason is offered. And
so on and so on, down and down.
We see, therefore, the wisdom of Deleuzes insight that unlike
Aristotle, The essence of division does not appear in its breadth, in
the determination of the species of a genus, but in its depth, in the
selection of the lineage (Deleuze 2003: 254). Plato is drawing a family
tree: Difference is not between species . . . but entirely on one side,
within the chosen line of descent: there are no longer contraries within
a single genus but pure and impure, good and bad (Deleuze 2001:
60). For Deleuze, Aristotles objection is a cause for celebration not
condemnation:
Aristotle . . . saw what is irreplaceable in Platonism, even though he made it
precisely the basis of a criticism of Plato: the dialectic of difference has its
own method division but this operates without mediation, without middle
term or reason; it acts in the immediate and is inspired by Ideas. (Deleuze
2001: 59)

This is how Plato makes a difference in contrast to how Aristotle

does it.
For reasons that will become plain in a moment, Deleuzes analysis
shifts at this point, from the Sophist to the Statesman:
The statesman is defined as the one who knows the pastoral care of men
but many introduce themselves by saying I am the true shepherd of men,
including merchants, farmers, bakers, as well as athletes and the entire
medical profession. (Deleuze 2001: 60)

These people seem to have nothing to do with one another. The Platonic
process seems to have produced a muddle but, according to Deleuze, this
is because we are thinking too much like Aristotle. According to Deleuze,
the method of division has nothing to do with species: The meaning and
the goal of the method of division is [not the analysis of species among

The Rise and Fall of the Simulacrum

457

a larger genus but] the selection among rivals, the testing of claimants
(Deleuze 2001: 60).
What is germane for my general purposes, and has special relevance
in the context of the selection of difference, is that, even if Deleuze
has rescued Plato from Aristotles objection, it is not so as to give
Platonism a stake in the modern philosophy of difference. Platos
vertically orientated branching structure is an example of what Deleuze
and Guattari will come to describe as arborescent: Arborescent systems
are hierarchical systems . . . [in which] an individual has only one
active neighbour, his or her hierarchical superior . . . The channels of
transmission are preestablished (Deleuze and Guattari 2002: 16). Far
from it being the case that, despite wide differences in philosophical
content, there are, nonetheless, structural affinities between Deleuze
and Plato, the iconic Platonic structure, the tree, is entirely inimical to
Deleuzes project: Were tired of trees . . . Theyve made us suffer too
much (15). The authors place their modern schema in sharp opposition:
Multiplicities are rhizomatic, and expose arborescent pseudomultiplicities for
what they are . . . An assemblage is precisely this increase in the dimensions of
a multiplicity that necessarily changes in nature as it expands its connections.
There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a
structure, tree, or root. (Deleuze and Guattari 2002: 8)

The concept of multiplicity, with its components of rhizome and

assemblage, will fill the place left by simulacra.

V. The Installation of a Mythic Circle

I left Plato in an apparent muddle. Deleuze rightly reflects the readers
great surprise when the way out of it comes by introducing a myth
(Deleuze 2001: 60). The role of the myth in Deleuzes reading of Plato
can be expressed more clearly in the context of the Phaedrus. Here the
target is the lover: the one who has lost his head, has gone mad. Should
he/she still enjoy our favour? According to Platos voicing of Socrates,
it would be an easy question to answer if madness were bad, pure and
simple; but in fact the best things we have come from madness when it is
given as a gift of the god (Plato 1997: 522; 244a). Plato tells a complex
story about the origin and nature of souls. Souls chase the chariots of
the gods around a circuit, beyond the rim of which lies the plain where
truth stands: the realm of the Ideas or Forms. All the souls strain to
keep pace with the gods so as to be able to see what lies there (526;
248cd). For Deleuze, this allows Plato to determine which lover,

458 Charles Mayell

poet, priest, soothsayer or philosopher is elected to participation in
reminiscence . . . : which is the true claimant, the true participant, and
in what order the others follow (Deleuze 2001: 61). How exactly?
Williams advises: the myth tells of how things were originally divided
and it allows that division to return later (Williams 2003: 81). By
originally, I gather we are to understand an archetype in the manner
of Mircea Eliades thesis with regard to the structure of Platonism:
reality is acquired solely through repetition or participation; everything
which lacks an exemplary model is meaningless i.e., it lacks reality
(Eliade 1989: 34). Such a philosophy of static identity clearly has no
Deleuzian future. Indeed, Williams point is only that a modern dynamic
Deleuzian concept of the Idea will, as we shall see, come to occupy a
similar position in an overall structure. Deleuze emphasises that even if
the Platonic Idea allows a return, of some kind, Plato is certainly not a
protagonist of eternal return (Deleuze 2001: 61). Certainly not, because
Deleuze is invoking his radical reading of Nietzsche:
We misinterpret the . . . eternal return if we understand it as return of
the same. It is not being that returns but rather the returning itself that
constitutes being insofar as it is affirmed of becoming and of that which
passes. (Deleuze 1983: 48)

Deleuze remains loyal to the doctrine of the eternal return and yet
abandons the concept of the simulacrum. This presents a problem
because Deleuze explicitly connects the eternal return with the concept
of the simulacrum: What . . . is the content of this third time . . . What is
this content which is affected . . . by the eternal return? . . . it is a question
of simulacra, and simulacra alone (Deleuze 2001: 299). In his book on
Deleuzes philosophy of time, Williams has no doubt that The content
of eternal return is series and simulacra (Williams 2011: 127). I am
arguing that Deleuze abandons the concept of the simulacrum because
it becomes otiose. However, if the concept of the simulacrum includes
a component of novelty, without which we cannot drive the eternal
return, my argument is stopped dead in its tracks. In a seminal article
Smith asks: What are the conditions of the new that one finds laid
out in Gilles Deleuzes philosophy? (Smith 2007: 1). The concept of
the simulacrum finds no place in his reply. Instead we find: When the
virtual is actualised, it differentiates itself, it produces the new (17). I,
therefore, agree with Smith, who concludes, in the wake of Deleuzes
abandonment of the concept of the simulacrum, that The process of
simulation is more properly characterized as the process of actualization
(or even more precisely, the complex process of different/ciation)

The Rise and Fall of the Simulacrum

459

(Smith 2006a: 116). If this is all the conceptual machinery we need for
radical novelty, I may now take up again Deleuzes critique of Plato.
We have seen that Deleuze claims to detect in the dialogues of
division a repeated four-fold pattern, the third element of which is the
invocation of a myth. However, this scheme is immediately threatened
(and this explains the earlier mentioned shift to the Statesman): It will
be objected that . . . the Sophist, presents no such myth (Deleuze 2001:
61).4 Deleuze replies that this is because in this text, by a paradoxical
utilization of the method, a counter-utilization, Plato proposes to isolate
the false claimant par excellence, the one who lays claim to everything,
without any right: the sophist. Smith notes how
Deleuze distinguishes between two spatial dimensions in Platos thought. The
dialogues of the Phaedrus and the Statesman move upward toward the true
lover or the true statesman, which are legitimated by their resemblance to
the pure model . . . Platonic irony is, in this sense, a technique of ascent. (Smith
2006a: 98)

In Deleuzes own words: The popular and technical images of the

philosopher seem to have been set by Platonism: the philosopher is
a being of ascents (Deleuze 2003: 127). Whereas, The Sophist, by
contrast, follows a descending movement . . . a technique of descent
(Smith 2006a: 98). Rosen, in turn, reflects that We are not simply
engaged in the task of defining a pure form . . . We are hunting men
(Rosen 1983: 84). The distinction between the directions of the dialogues
adds lustre to Deleuzes claim that, at the nadir of the descent, Plato
himself is the first to toy with a radical anti-Platonism: It may be
that the end of the Sophist contains the most extraordinary adventure
of Platonism: as a consequence of searching in the direction of the
simulacrum and of leaning over its abyss (Deleuze 2003: 256).
Rosen quotes, initially with approval, Deleuzes general claim that In
Plato, an obscure debate is carried out in the depths of things, between
that which submits to the action of the Idea and that which escapes this
action (copies and simulacra) (Deleuze 2003: 7, cited in Rosen 1983:
172). However, Rosen objects that Deleuze oversimplifies in saying that
the copy is an image endowed with resemblance; the simulacrum is an
image without resemblance (Rosen 1983: 172, citing Deleuze 2003:
257). To follow Rosens objection we need to recall the paradigm of
monumental statuary or huge paintings that is played out in the Sophist.
Deleuze seems to be content to remain within this paradigm of the
observer of an optical image:

460 Charles Mayell

Plato specifies how this nonproductive effect is obtained: the simulacrum
implies huge dimensions, depths and distances that the observer cannot
master. It is precisely because he cannot master them that he experiences an
impression of resemblance. This simulacrum includes the differential point of
view . . . which is transformed and deformed by his point of view. (Deleuze
2003: 258)

But Rosen argues, An image that does not resemble X cannot be an

image of X. Despite its dissymmetry, the fantasm looks like the
original to the viewer (Rosen 1983: 1723). From the observers point
of view, the huge statue has the look of a human being: it is, therefore,
contrary to Deleuzes claim, an image that resembles something, namely
that look that we recognise as human.
Rosens objection is reasonable, but is it fatal to Deleuzes argument?
To oversimplify is not the same as being wrong. But perhaps the
more accurate accusation, in this context, is exaggeration rather than
oversimplification. Deleuze can quite coherently concede the existence
of the phenomenon of resemblance, indeed at times he does. All that he
needs to deny is that resemblance is fundamental. Beyond that, perhaps
Rosens objection would be fatal, if it were to be the case that one could
not, even in principle, make sense of an image without resemblance.
And yet Rosen, earlier, manages to make sense of it himself. He notes
how the Visitor is happy to shift the paradigm away from the optical,
and towards the discursive, by the dramatic device of speculating that
the sophist will sometimes seem to you [Theaetetus] to have his eyes
shut, or else not to have any eyes at all (Plato 1997: 260; 239e). Now,
a true statement, about a tree, for example, does not look like a tree.
Yet Rosen concludes that, for the Stranger, true statements are images
as well [as false statements] (Rosen 1983: 155). This kind of linguistic
turn is not the direction of Deleuzes argument, but we may grant that
Deleuze has, thus far, only given a negative definition: the simulacrum is
an image without resemblance. If Deleuze can also make positive sense
of the nature of an image without resemblance, then Rosens objection
is not fatal. I shall return to this later.

VI. The Establishment of a Foundation

For Deleuze, the essence of Platonism is its four-fold method. We
are now brought to see how the third element of that method is the
establishment of a foundation: The role of the ground appears in all
clarity in the Platonic conception of participation . . . (And no doubt it is
this foundation which provides division with the mediation it seems to

The Rise and Fall of the Simulacrum

461

lack . . . ) (Deleuze 2001: 62). Williams is the first to admit that, having
established such a foundation, Deleuze and Plato part company forever:
For Deleuze, ideas do not have an identity they are multiplicities of
pure differences . . . Deleuze and Plato cannot be reconciled on this issue
(Williams 2003: 82).
So far, I have characterised simulacral as being the nature of images
without resemblance, as images built on difference. In fact, Deleuzes
definition of the concept is much denser: These differential systems with
their disparate and resonating series, their dark precursor and forced
movements, are what we call simulacra (Deleuze 2001: 126). Indeed,
it conforms to Deleuze and Guattaris stricture that Every concept has
components that may, in turn, be grasped as concepts (Deleuze and
Guattari 1994: 19). Let us take just one of those components, namely,
the concept of series. Does it have a Platonic parallel? I raise this
question here because one might seek such a parallel in the seminal
Platonic doctrine of participation. The Idea of Justice, for example,
possesses justice in first place: What possesses in first place is the
ground itself . . . As for those whom we call just, they possess the quality
of being just in second, third or fourth place . . . or in simulacral fashion
(Deleuze 2001: 62). However, the instances of justice do not form a
series. To be a series entails a connection between the members of the
series, whereas here the only connection is back to the Idea, albeit at
varying levels of participation. What is more, for Plato, to the extent that
the actual diverse instances of justice participate in the Idea, at whatever
remove, they are, by definition, not simulacra.
However, perhaps a more obvious place to look for a Platonic parallel
might be in reading the Platonic concept to mean copies of copies. But
this is the very interpretation that Deleuze denies:
If we say of the simulacrum that it is a copy of a copy, an infinitely degraded
icon, an infinitely loose resemblance, we then miss the essential, that is, the
difference in nature between simulacrum and copy . . . If the simulacrum still
has a model, it is . . . a model of the Other. (Deleuze 2003: 2578)

In other words, there is, on the basis of Deleuzes own reading of Plato,
only the false image and the Idea of dissemblance which it internalises:
there is no series. As we have seen, the concept of series is but one
of a number of necessary components of Deleuzes larger concept of
simulacrum, and yet it is already a component that finds no Platonic
parallel. My interim conclusion is that the point of contact between
Deleuzes dense concept of simulacrum and Platos phantasm is, at best,
skin-deep. Although well adapted for the purposes of Deleuzes critique

462 Charles Mayell

of Plato, once the Deleuzian concept broke free of those confines it
became otiose.

VII. The Position of a Questionproblem Complex

Let us move on to the final stage of Deleuzes reading of the Platonic
dialectic. Deleuze presses Plato for an answer to the question, In
what, exactly, does the grounding test consist? (Deleuze 2001: 63).
Smith explains that If the foundation as essence is defined by the
original and superior identity or sameness of the Idea, the claimant will
be well-founded only to the degree that it resembles or imitates the
foundation (Smith 2006a: 96). However, to know to what extent the
image resembles the Idea, one would first have to know what the Idea,
in some sense beyond the limits of a purely visual paradigm, looked like.
Yet, as Rosen points out: [the Visitor] never explains how we know pure
forms. They are simply cited as though they are directly accessible; and in
discussing them, [he] continues to use cognitive terms derived primarily
from the language of vision (Rosen 1983: 87). Rosen seems to settle
for the Platonic myth and signs off with: If Plato teaches us anything,
it is that philosophers identify themselves, through speeches and deeds,
by the nobility and comprehensive eros of their souls and sophists by
the weakness of their souls (326). In effect, philosophers will just know
how to pass the grounding test, whereas sophists will not.
Deleuze is not content with either of the above replies to the
question: In what, exactly, does the grounding test consist? In
the most innovative part of his critique of Plato, Deleuze links the
mythical component of the Platonic dialectic with what he calls the
questionproblem complex:
Myth tells us that it always involves a further task to be performed, an enigma
to be resolved. The oracle is questioned, but the oracles response is itself a
problem . . . We must recall that Plato defined the dialectic as proceeding by
problems. (Deleuze 2001: 63)

This explains Deleuzes claim that within Platonism in general, myth

and dialectic are distinct forces . . . Division overcomes this duality and
integrates myth into the dialectic (Deleuze 2001: 61). Rosen offers
some general support: Philosophy, as portrayed in the Sophist, and
in the entire Platonic corpus, is not a doctrine but a problem (Rosen
1983: 324). However, Deleuze presses this insight further than Rosen,
or possibly, Plato would be prepared to go.

The Rise and Fall of the Simulacrum

463

The argument is akin to that which begins The Logic of Sense. Here,
the text at stake is the famous passage in Alice in Wonderland when Alice
changes size. Why should this be seen as problematic in any fundamental
sense? Williams, in his book on Deleuzes philosophy of time, translates
the relevant passage: It is at the same time, in the same play, that
one becomes bigger than one was, and that one renders oneself smaller
than one becomes (Williams 2011: 139). One might object that this
is obfuscation on Deleuzes part because Alice is never both larger and
smaller in the same instant of time. However, as Williams goes on to
explain, Deleuze is not referring to instants but to plays, to a process
like a move in a game (139). This is to say, not unreasonably, that
the implications of the current move, in a game of chess for example,
reverberate through all the previous moves, as well as the moves yet to
come, but not within any conventional measurable stretch of time. It is,
instead, part of a process, and Deleuzes general point, as Williams puts
it, is that all processes of becoming take place together (139).
But what has it got to do with Plato? According to Deleuze, Plato
invites us to distinguish between two dimensions: (1) that of limited
and measured things . . . and (2) a pure becoming without measure
(Deleuze 2003: 1). The allusion is to the following passage from
Philebus:
Socrates: Check first in the case of the hotter and the colder whether you can
conceive of a limit, or whether the more and less do not rather reside in these
kinds, and . . . do not permit the attainment of any end . . . [Protarchus agrees
strongly]. You . . . remind me rightly with your pronouncement of strongly
that it and equally its counterpart gently are of the same caliber as the
more and less. Wherever they apply, they prevent everything from adopting a
definite quantity. (Plato 1997: 41112; 24ac)

As Deleuze takes up the story, Hotter never stops where it is but

is always going a point further, and the same applies to colder
(Deleuze 2003: 2). Deleuze looks only for what he needs in the
history of philosophy. Accordingly, in Platonism he finds traces of the
fecund problematicity that we recognise as central to his own theory
of Ideas, but it places Deleuze in closer proximity to Kant than to
Plato.
Indeed, elsewhere, this is exactly how Smith argues: Difference and
Repetition can be read as Deleuzes Critique of Pure Reason (Smith
2006b: 45). The grand structure of Difference and Repetition traces a
series of transcendental deductions, very loosely in the manner of Kant.
In chapter two for example, Deleuze deduces the existence of the three

464 Charles Mayell

syntheses of Time; in chapter five, he carries out a parallel deduction
with regard to the nature of Space. The Deleuzian theory of Ideas may
have a Platonic ring to it, but it owes more to Kant. The opening of
chapter four makes it evident that Deleuze intends it to be a creative
reworking of the Transcendental Dialectic: Kant never ceased to remind
us that Ideas are essentially problematic (Deleuze 2001: 168). Kant
distinguishes three such Ideas: Pure reason . . . furnishes the idea for a
transcendental doctrine of the soul . . . a transcendental science of the
world . . . and . . . a transcendental knowledge of God (Kant 1983: 323;
A3345). Smith explains that Such Ideas are thinkable . . . but they are
not knowable, since there could never be an object of experience that
would correspond to them (Smith 2007: 45).
For Kant, therefore, it is not the world (qua an actual thing) that
is the object of the Idea of the world, it is rather this problem.
Conventional wisdom has it that, for Kant, Ideas are concepts that
lack an intuition. Deleuze radicalises this by arguing that Kant had
a better insight (but did not realise it): the Idea is, in Kants own
words, a problem to which there is no solution (Kant 1983: 319;
A328). Deleuze extends Kants unwitting insight to argue for Ideas as
structures that are inherently and infinitely problematic: These Ideas do
not disappear with their solutions, since they are the indispensable
condition without which no solution would ever exist (Deleuze 2001:
168). Deleuzes complaint against Kant is that it is only the Idea that is
inherently problematic: The problem lies wholly with the Idea objects
of experience and concepts can be detached from its problems
(Williams 2003: 142). Deleuze aims to make actual things inherently
problematic.
For Deleuze, Every thing, animal or being assumes the status of
simulacrum (Deleuze 2001: 67). But it is equally true that Everything
is a multiplicity in so far as it incarnates an Idea (182). And it is
the concept of multiplicity that stands the test of time. Deleuze claims
that Ideas . . . do not exist only in our heads but occur here and there
in the production of an actual historical world (190). Ideas have us,
rather than the other way around. Deleuze transmutes Kantian Ideas into
vehicles of ontological difference: Modern thought and the renaissance
of ontology is based upon the questionproblem complex (195). To
answer the question from Rosen, that I left hanging earlier, Deleuze
does provide a positive account of how there can be an image of X that
does not resemble X: the relation of actual things to Ideas is not one of
resemblance but is, instead, akin to the intimate relationship between a
question and an answer.

The Rise and Fall of the Simulacrum

465

VIII. The Fall of the Simulacrum

What, then, are we to make of the peculiar fate of the concept that
ties Deleuze most closely to Plato? Smith offers the following conjecture
on Deleuzes abandonment of the concept of simulacrum: That things
simulate a transcendent Idea has a meaning only in the context of
Platonism. In Deleuzes own ontology, things no longer simulate
anything (Smith 2006a: 116). In other words, Deleuze drops the concept
because it becomes not only otiose but also potentially misleading. Smith
also extends the scope of the question I have posed in this article by
asking: why does Deleuze not turn to Plato again, in earnest, until What
Is Philosophy? (Deleuze and Guattari 1994).5 He answers:
Deleuze does not ascribe to Greek thought the importance that one finds in
Nietzsche . . . or Heidegger . . . Deleuzes philosophical heroes . . . tend to be
found, not at the origins of philosophical thought (Socrates, Plato), but in
its maturation in the seventeenth century (Spinoza, Leibniz). (Smith 2006a:
116)

Agreed, but this sits unhappily with the same authors claim that
Deleuzianism can be seen as a completion of Platonism.
I have to some extent already anticipated the starkest challenge to
the redundancy of the concept of the simulacrum, which comes from
Williams: The concept of the simulacrum is crucial to understanding
the relation between times and between the actual and virtual in
Deleuzes thought (Williams 2011: 190; n. 5). If this is right, then
I am wrong, but then again, so, apparently, is Deleuze. However, in
the same endnote, Williams offers only reservations about approaches
that leave it [simulacra] out, citing Miguel de Beisteguis Truth and
Genesis: Philosophy as Differential Ontology (2004). Earlier Williams
stresses the parallels between [Beisteguis] process account of genesis
and Deleuzes process account of time (Williams 2011: 190; n. 2). But
Williams goes on to claim that Beistegui is forced to introduce a Kantian
and phenomenological vocabulary of noumenon and phenomenon
which remains abstract in terms of actual processes and ties Deleuze
too closely to phenomenology (190; n.5).6 To my mind, Beisteguis
explicit denial of such a charge remains fully Deleuzian in vocabulary
and structure:
If there is anything like a phenomenological reduction in Deleuzes
thought . . . it lies . . . not in the reduction of . . . [the] phenomenon to the
transcendent sphere of consciousness . . . but in the reduction of the
phenomenal to its . . . pre-individual and genetic horizon . . . In other words,

466 Charles Mayell

phenomena are themselves reductions, they are . . . instances of the solutions
of problems or differential relations that constitute them. (Beistegui 2004:
286)

If Beistegui really does leave the simulacrum out whilst remaining fully
Deleuzian, he must, on the face of it, be an ally to any thesis concerning
the redundancy of the concept of the simulacrum. In fact, things do not
turn out that way. Deep in the endnotes we find: In a way . . . the entirety
of Deleuzes thought . . . can be seen as a meditation on the simulacrum
(Beistegui 2004: 3712; n. 56). And in plain sight:
Phenomena are not so much constituted or given as they are generated
or produced, not by external causes and first principles . . . but by a preindividual differential complex that is entirely immanent to the system in
which it explicates itself, a set of conditions that are far more impersonal
than phenomenology will have ever allowed. This . . . is what allows Deleuze
to speak of the phenomenal as illusory . . . and . . . brings Deleuze in great
proximity to Plato. (Beistegui 2004: 311)

However having built this sandcastle, Beistegui immediately knocks it

down by clarifying that if phenomena, for Deleuze, are illusions, it is
not by virtue of their relation to a sphere of being . . . that would be less
illusory, more real, really real as it were . . . Such a view would amount
to . . . the crudest of Platonism (Beistegui 2004: 311). Beistegui seems
to argue that it is to avoid such crudity that Deleuze calls phenomena
simulacra. In other words, there are no foundational identities of the
sort we find in Plato.
And yet, ironically, the concept of the simulacrum seems to court the
very misunderstanding that Deleuze, it seems, wished to avoid. Williams
is forced to address it:
The misunderstanding would be that he is opposing simulacra to another kind
of real entity in his system. This is not the case: simulacra and differences
are all that there is in series and an error is made when something that is a
simulacrum is taken to be objectively real. (Williams 2011: 128)

Does this mean that the phenomenal world of actual things is, in
some way, not real? Williams plays this question through Deleuzes
philosophy of time which is not quite the same thing, and yet he is
prepared to go as far as to say that It would be a mistake to speak of
the real time of objects, because when viewed in relation to the processes
giving rise to them, the objects are not real (Williams 2011: 129).
Yet, if we take the longer view, we cannot seriously doubt Deleuzes
commitment to the reality of the world: It may be that believing in

The Rise and Fall of the Simulacrum

467

this world . . . becomes our most difficult task . . . This is the empiricist
conversion . . . we have lost the world (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 75).
In the longer run too, and despite his own testimony, in what sense can
Deleuze really be said to have abandoned the concept of the simulacrum?
The answer is not purely a matter of conjecture. We know that, for
Deleuze, a philosophical concept is not the same as the name of that
concept: Although concepts are . . . baptized, they have their own way
of not dying while remaining subject to constraints of renewal (Deleuze
and Guattari 1994: 8). Concepts are, instead, multiplicities: There are
no simple concepts. Every concept has components and is defined by
them (15). Accordingly, as we have seen, the concept of the simulacrum
contains the components of series, dark precursor and more; one can,
however, find very little parallel for this inner conceptual machinery
in Deleuzes critique of Plato. Looking at Deleuzes philosophy as a
whole, it is clear that he does not abandon the concept of series, for
example, when he abandons the concept of simulacrum. All he realises
he has thrown overboard, I suggest, is the name of the concept and with
it the Platonic ballast that was never really an important part of his
system and which muddles us more than it enlightens us. Deleuze knows
that Concepts are not eternal; they are born and die in response to
our problems, to our history, and above all, to our becomings (27).
In what sense, therefore, had the problem or history changed? Not
because difference had been rescued but, possibly, because Plato had
been overthrown.

Notes
1. Patton, for example, argues that both senses [overturning and reversing] are
involved in Deleuzes version of the escape from philosophys Platonic past
(Patton 1994: 143).
2. Much of Stanley Rosens commentary is devoted to refuting the so-called
predicationalists (e.g., G. E. L. Owen) for whom Platos metaphysics is a
gradually ripening episode in the ancestral saga of Fregean analysis . . . Owens
assertion that the paradigm-copy model does not appear in Platos later
dialogues . . . is . . . indefensible (Rosen 1983: 196).
3. Typographical error corrected: the English text reads reserve instead of
reverse.
4. In fact the Sophist does contain a myth: the Visitor tells the story of the Battle
of the Giants (Plato 1997: 267; 246a). We must conclude that, for Deleuze, it is
the wrong kind of myth.
5. There is also the, breathtakingly brief, late essay, Plato, the Greeks (Deleuze
1997: 1367).
6. Williams reference to Beistegui 2004: 227 is incorrect. Perhaps p. 277 was
intended; also see p. 311.

468 Charles Mayell

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