Continuity in Leibniz and Deleuze: A reading of Difference and Repetition and The Fold

Abstract

The status of continuity in Deleuze’s metaphysics is a subject of debate. Deleuze calls the virtual, in Difference and Repetition, an Ideal continuum, and the differential relations that constitute the Ideal imply the continuity of this field. But, Deleuze does not hesitate to formulate the same field by the affirmation of divergence (incompossibility) that can be regarded as a form of discontinuity. It is, hence, unclear how these two ostensibly contradictory accounts might reconcile. This article attempts to reconstitute a Deleuzian theory of continuity through Leibniz, whose philosophy is equally subject to a tension between the law of continuity, prevalent in his mathematics and metaphysics, and the discontinuity or absolute individuality of monads. By reorienting The Fold around the motif of continuity a new conceptual space is opened for continuity qua heterogeneity-and-inseparability. Then, enfolding the conceptual personae of The Fold onto Difference and Repetition reveals the tacit though decisive presence of different types of continuity operational in Deleuze’s metaphysics that will be called divergent, intensive, torsional, and tenorsional continuities.