---
date: '2024-02-24'
description: Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche, distinguishing forces, will to power, and affirmation.
id: Giles Deleuze
modified: 2026-10-12 09:10:45 GMT-04:00
tags:
  - philosophy
  - seed
title: Gilles Deleuze
created: '2024-02-24'
published: '2024-02-24'
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permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/thoughts/Giles-Deleuze.md
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---
French philosopher whose work explores multiplicity, becoming, and the creation of concepts. These notes concern his reading of Nietzsche.

## forces.

See also: [[thoughts/action theory|action theory]] and [[thoughts/Philosophy and Nietzsche|Nietzsche]].

In [[library/Nietzsche and Philosophy]], Deleuze treats [[thoughts/Will to Power|will to power]] as the principle determining relations between forces. Calling it another force obscures that distinction. A [[thoughts/desire|desire]] for domination already presupposes a valuation of power.[^3]

Active and reactive name qualities of forces: active forces create forms and directions, while reactive forces conserve and adapt. Affirmation and negation name qualities of the [[thoughts/Will|will]] to power. These pairs are related and must be kept distinct.[^3]

In his reading of Nietzsche’s [[library/On The Genealogy of Morals|genealogy of morals]], overcoming nihilism requires a change in how values are produced. Negation becomes subordinate to affirmation; opposition to existing values alone leaves that source of evaluation unexamined.[^3]

His account of multiplicity asks how something acquires consistency while its relations change. Tampio distinguishes countable multiplicities from qualitative ones, such as a changing mood. The two can coexist in the same experience.[^1]

Deleuze reads the dice throw as an affirmation of becoming. Throwing affirms chance, including its multiplicity and [[thoughts/Chaos|chaos]]; the combination formed when the dice land affirms necessity. Both moments belong to the same throw. This is his philosophical reading of eternal return.[^2][^3]

## Capitalism and Schizophrenia

[^1]: Nicholas Tampio, [“Multiplicity”](https://faculty.fordham.edu/tampio/Tampio%20-%20Multiplicity.pdf)

[^2]: [chances](https://piratesandrevolutionaries.blogspot.com/2009/05/dicethrow-11-in-deleuze-nietzsche.html?m=1): “Nietzsche identifie le hasard au multiple, aux fragments, aux membres, au chaos: chaos des dés qu’on choque et qu’on lance.”

[^3]: Gilles Deleuze, [Nietzsche and Philosophy](https://on-air.caricomassimo.org/media/pages/airchive/nietzsche-and-philosophy/7c243c2804-1715897949/gilles-deleuze-nietzsche-and-philosophy.pdf), translated by Hugh Tomlinson, preface pp. xi–xii; pp. 25–27, 40–41, 49–54, 175–176.