1. Sign and Idea

We have defined the idea or concept as an element of philosophy and the sign as that which forces thought to think. Yet these two defini¬tions do not proceed in the same way: one concerns nature, the other concerns function. So nothing prevents one from functioning as the other. Thus, here is our hypothesis with respect to the first difficulty: what forces us to think, what poses a problem, what confronts our faculties with their limit is sometimes the encounter of a concept. This does not in principle concern a necessary identity in kind but an occasional identity in function.

This is a hypothesis replete with consequences. From a general point of view, it implies that in the beginning of philosophy was phi¬losophy itself, that what impels us to create concepts is the encounter with a philosophical work. The fact that the history of philosophy constitutes a moment of creation has no other meaning: it is not just the instrument of creation but also its detonation. Once again, it is Deleuze's philosophy that would constitute the best realisation of his conception of philosophy: it began with commentaries, with studies of the history of philosophy, because these are systems of the past that would have required the creation of concepts. Deleuze admits this when he refers to Bergson or to Hume: ‘There's something extraordinary in the way they tell us: thinking means something else than what you believe.’

1. The Problem of Method

The Deleuzian definition of philosophy consists of three terms: an element, the concept; an activity, creation; and a conjunction that ties them together. Each of these terms raises a question: what is a concept? What is creation, or how do we create concepts? When is creation the creation of concepts and not something else? The first question, nevertheless, reveals itself to be relatively narrow because philosophy involves three elements: we must add the plane of imma¬nence and the conceptual persona to the concept. This is why it drifted into a theory of elements that exceeds the theory of the concept. Yet how is the concept created? The Deleuzian definition of philosophy presupposes not only an object, a what, but also an activity, a how. How is creation to be understood? How does philosophy proceed in order to create concepts? But now that we know the elements of philosophy, we can dedicate ourselves to the heart of our problem: must we understand this creation as a break with the past that would atomise the history of philosophy and prevent us from assigning an identity to the discipline? If, on the contrary, this involves a creation that does not imply a break with the tradition, how would it make the production of original concepts possible? Thus, we need to inter¬rogate the Deleuzian conception of philosophy from a methodologi¬cal point of view. But in the same way that the theory of the concept does not exhaust the question of what, we will see that the theory of method does not exhaust the question of how. This question also takes on a historiographical aspect (how does the philosopher relate to the history of philosophy?) and a discursive aspect (how does the philosopher make use of the language of the philosophical tradi¬tion?).