La genesi del virtuale

The Origins of the Virtual. From Marcel Proust and the Signs to Difference and Repetition This article reconstructs the genealogy of Deleuze's concept of the virtual, arguing that its formulation in Difference and Repetition constitutes the point of convergence of a theoretical trajectory extending from Proust and Signs through Bergsonism to Deleuze's engagement with Albert Lautman's philosophy of mathematics. Beginning with the transcendental problem of the genesis of thought first articulated in Deleuze's reading of Proust, the article traces the progressive development of the concept of the virtual as a real multiplicity, culminating in the reworking of the theory of Ideas through Lautman's notions of problematic structure and Idea. The concepts of multiplicity, reciprocal determination, singularities, and the relation between the virtual and the actual are thus interpreted as the outcome of the convergence between Bergson's ontology of differentiation and the relational conception of genesis developed within twentieth-century philosophy of mathematics. Far from providing either a mere repertoire of metaphors or a model of formal rigor, mathematics supplies Deleuze with the conceptual language required to formulate a fully immanent theory of genesis. The virtual consequently emerges as a fully real and completely determined problematic structure, composed of differential relations and distributions of singularities, from which the processes of individuation that characterize actuality arise.