"Virtual" as "productive force": the genealogy of the concept from scholasticism to Simondon and Deleuze

The relevance of this study is determined by the crisis of classical metaphysical categories in understanding the dynamic and hybrid realities of the 21st century – from digital environments and biotechnologies to nonlinear social processes. The appeal to the concept of "virtual" as a productive force offers an alternative to outdated oppositions of the possible and the actual, the subject and the object, opening a path to an ontology that is adequate to the current conditions of continuous becoming, emergent phenomena, and immanent transformations. In this context, the philosophical systems of Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze serve not as a historical curiosity, but as a necessary theoretical toolkit for analyzing how novelty is generated across various fields – from aesthetics and politics to artificial intelligence research and ecology. The "virtual" emerges as an intensive layer of reality from which the new is born. The research is based on a historical-genetic method that traces the transformation of the "virtual" from scholasticism to non-classical ontology. The conceptual reconstruction explicates and contrasts key categories – "pre-individual field" and "transduction" (Simondon) with "differential field of singularities" and "actualization" (Deleuze). A problem-oriented comparative analysis reveals points of convergence and divergence between the thinkers, while the hermeneutics of the texts ensures accuracy in modeling. These methods serve a dual purpose: demonstrating the internal logic of each system and articulating their common contribution to a non-substantial ontology of process. The novelty of the work lies in the synthetic and contrastive analysis of two key versions of the "virtual," highlighting both their common anti-substantial orientation and their internal polemics. In addition to tracing the genealogy of the concept from scholasticism, the author elaborates on how the genesis of stable forms from primal tensions in Simondon's philosophical system becomes possible through the logic of transduction, operating in a metastable (pre-individual) field that constitutes the essence of the "virtual." Concurrently, the study uncovers the nature of the "virtual" in Deleuze, defined as the differential field of singularities. His immanent operator of creative actualization is aimed at producing difference and pure novelty, which constitutes the essence of a fundamental ontological event. As a result, the article not only presents the two theories comparatively but also constructively confronts them, offering a more detailed map of the "virtual," which allows for a more precise articulation of its role in contemporary interdisciplinary studies that aim to overcome static metaphysics.