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In L'image de la pensée, the interesting third chapter of Différence et répétition, Gilles Deleuze discusses the issue of the presuppositions of philosophical thought. He denounces the fact that, however much philosophy has tried to avoid objective presuppositions, that is, the "concepts explicitly presupposed by a given concept," it has not been able to do without "subjective or implicit presuppositions contained in feelings rather than concepts." Such sentiments presupposed in all of philosophical thought – which, as a result, is always dogmatic and orthodox – are the right nature and good will of thought and ultimately converge in common sense: "This element consists only of the supposition that thought is the natural exercise of a faculty, of the presupposition that there is a natural capacity for thought endowed with a talent for truth or an affinity with the true, under the double aspect of a good will on the part of the thinker and an up right nature on the part of thought." This determines, according to him, the constitutively representational character of thought, due to which it is unable to think difference: "In this sense, conceptual philosophical thought has as its implicit presupposition a pre-philosophical and natural Image of thought, borrowed from the pure element of common sense. According to this image, thought has an affinity with the true; it formally possesses the true and materially wants the true. It is in terms of this image that everybody knows and is presumed to know what it means to think. Thereafter it matters little whether philosophy begins with the object or the subject, with Being or with beings, as long as thought remains subject to this Image which already prejudges everything: the distribution of the object and the subject as well as that of Being and beings."

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-52812-0_4

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