Research: Virtualitas. History of a deleuzian concept from its scholastic roots to neo-materialist implications
The process of interpreting a concept by following its evolution over time is like tracing the path of a river's waters as they have already flowed. Traces, residues and debris remain in the banks, which are now inexorably different from those where the concept emerged. This is one of the fundamental prerogatives of the historian of philosophy: to identify the semantic source of a given lemma in order to show the process of re-semantisation to which it has been subjected. Giving new meaning: is this really what philosophy does? Indeed, the philosophical paradox par excellence: using a standard language to express, abstract and define what lies outside language and common sense. But is this conception based on solid foundations? Is it possible that meaning is already present? An intrinsic, inauthentic, non-explicit meaning. A virtual meaning, always in potential actualisation. Could we therefore infer that philosophical action itself is a practice linked to the virtual, to the ever-possible becoming of the unexpressed meaning of a word and that, in this sense, it is intrinsically linked to its historical development?
These questions guide the present research, which aims to investigate the history of the deleuzian concept of “virtual”. The adjective “deleuzian” not only circumscribes the scope of research on the virtual, excluding the common uses of the term, to an exquisitely philosophical theme – the 'virtual' as Gilles Deleuze defined it – but at the same time indicates the perspective from which we position ourselves and which guides our research. The latter is divided into three sections. The first analyses the stratification of the conceptual structure of the virtual in Gilles Deleuze, through an
examination of the plurality of materials that allowed him to develop an original perspective. The second section reconstructs the stages of the evolution of the concept of the “virtual” in the history of philosophy, tracing its lexical and semantic transformations until the age in which this concept came into the hands of Deleuze himself. Finally, the third section explores its modes of application in contemporary thought after the death of the Parisian author.
The tripartite structure of the thesis aims to reflect the threefold intent underlying the research work. Firstly, to demonstrate both the peculiarity of Deleuze's historical-philosophical method tout court and the concept of “virtual” itself. Secondly, to reveal the deep connection that unites an idea that is now in the public domain of the globalised world, known as the 'the West', with its roots in the historical-philosophical thought of Western culture itself. And finally, to broaden the question of the historical and theoretical essence of a concept to a question about its pragmatics: not only how it is defined and, therefore, what the virtual is, but also what it does, particularly on the margins of contemporary philosophical thought.