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Showing posts with the label Ontology

Baudrillard, Marxism, and the Ecological Limits of Modernity

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Steinbruch mit Bauarbeitern und Maschinen. AI image Introduction — The Ecological Crisis Beyond Capitalism The ecological crisis is frequently described as the consequence of excessive capitalism: overproduction, relentless consumption, and the unchecked expansion of markets. Within this framework, the proposed remedies often appear straightforward—regulate industry, redistribute resources, reform economic institutions, or replace private ownership with collective control. Yet such responses may remain confined within the very conceptual horizon they seek to challenge. In The Mirror of Production , Jean Baudrillard advances a more unsettling diagnosis. The central issue, he argues, is not merely who controls production, but the privileged status production itself has acquired within modern thought. Both capitalism and Marxism, despite their political antagonism, continue to define humanity through labor, technological transformation, and the expansion of productive capacity. This...

Difference Comes First: Deleuze’s Ontology Beyond Identity

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Nietzsche’s dice throw Introduction The history of philosophy is marked by an obsession with identity. From Plato’s ideal Forms to Hegel’s dialectic, difference has traditionally been defined as a derivative — a deviation, a negation, or a limit imposed upon the identical. Gilles Deleuze, in Difference and Repetition (1968/1994), turns this order upside down. His project is nothing less than a new ontology: one in which difference precedes identity, and being itself is understood as a field of differentiation rather than a collection of stable substances. Deleuze’s challenge to metaphysics consists in thinking difference “in itself,” without reducing it to comparison or opposition. What appears as identity, permanence, or repetition is, for him, only the visible pattern of an underlying movement of becoming. Through this reversal, Deleuze opens the possibility of an affirmative philosophy of life, one that celebrates creation, transformation, and multiplicity. The Reversal of M...