Resonances of the Voice of Being: Analogy and Univocity in Deleuze and Kant

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the problem of the univocity and equivocity of being in Deleuze by contrasting the Deleuzian account with that of Kant. I will argue that univocity and equivocity are present in both philosophers’ work, albeit in very different ways. Kant’s point of departure is the unity of apperception, and hence, in order to relate it to the multiplicity given in sensibility, he must perform a transubstantiation of unity in the categories. In doing so, he produces a partial equivocity of being—that is, analogy—and thus generates a merely relative unity in objectivity. In this manner, there are, in Kant, two mirrored poles of unity—that of the cogito and that of the object—plus a variety of intermediary forms. Deleuze, on the other hand, avoids all mediations between unity and multiplicity, predicating only one and the same sense of being of all its individuating differences. By skipping all mediations between the extreme poles of unity and multiplicity, the voice of being is directly expressed in each occasion within the process of production of the real, the nature of which is, for Deleuze, that of becoming or differentiation.