Un soffio prima dell’eterno nero: Un Il problema dell’ἐξαίφνης e le sintesi passive nella filosofia di Gilles Deleuze

A Breath Before the Eternal Dark. The Problem of ἐξαίφνης and the Passive Syntheses in the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze In my article, I set out first of all to investigate the aporetic nature of the ἐξαίφνης by way of an interpretation of Deleuze's The Exhausted. The hypothesis put forward is that the limit-point of time — the ephemeral, or the instant — may reveal the energeia of an infinite act. In connection with the possibility of thinking an infinite act, itself non-objectifiable, the question of the status of philosophy in its relation to truth will be raised. These themes will then be investigated by retracing the three passive syntheses that form the central theme of the second chapter of Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. In the three syntheses we will see certain classical aporias of time reappear, and we will analyse the way in which Deleuze attempts to resolve the paradoxes bound up with temporality, in particular through the introduction of the concept of the virtual. Taken together, the three syntheses lead, on my interpretation, to the positing of an infinite act that grounds both the constitution of temporality and the genesis of thought, of consciousness, and of representation. Finally, I will attempt to sketch, first, the strictly metaphysical problem of the relation between identity and difference and between eternity and time, and, second, the question of whether philosophy can construct a discourse on the infinite energeia and on the instant.