The Broken Promise of Univocity: Deleuze's Struggle with Ontological Difference

This article examines the way in which Gilles Deleuze reformulated the thesis of the univocity of being, originally developed in the Middle Ages by Duns Scotus, making it a matter of affirmative difference rather than logical neutrality, whilst demonstrating, however, how the attempt to develop a univocal ontology of the virtual leads Deleuze to reproduce the structure that Heidegger called «ontological difference» and which is compromised by a form of transcendence, entirely contrary to Deleuze’s hope that univocity would prove to be a key to a philosophy of pure immanence. The critique of Deleuze’s attempt suggests the opportunity to conceive of immanence in non-univocal terms; accordingly, an appendix is included which shows how Deleuze’s thought has, in recent years, been developed along three lines that distance it from univocity and make it the linchpin of a «modal revolution» in ontology: style, manner, and modes of existence.