Difference and the Liberation of Sufficient Reason

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) holds that every event and entity can be explained by a sufficient reason or cause. Philosophers have long struggled with the question of the PSR's compatibility with freedom, for if what occurs or exists follows necessarily from its sufficient reason then it seems it could not have been otherwise. Contemporary philosophy has largely abandoned the effort to resolve this problem, treating it either as obsolete because the principle itself is judged to have failed or as intractable by asserting that one can preserve the PSR or freedom, but not both. This paper challenges these verdicts by recovering a neglected compatibilist strategy in Gilles Deleuze's transcendental empiricism. It argues that Deleuze rejects the subordination of difference to identity in Leibniz's and Kant's formulations of the PSR and reconstructs it on the ground of a liberated difference. In doing so, he produces a uniquely successful principle from within the transcendental tradition, securing the intelligibility the PSR demands without sacrificing freedom.