What Becomes of Mathematics in Deleuze’s Philosophy?

Abstract

This article reconstructs the complex relationship between mathematics and philosophy in Gilles Deleuze’s work, showing that mathematical concepts play a consistent and systematic role in his metaphysical project. Drawing on the French epistemological tradition of Brunschvicg and Lautman, Deleuze treats mathematics not as a formal language, but as a privileged site for thinking the real through its virtual structure. Through a reading of Difference and Repetition, A Thousand Plateaus, The Fold, and What Is Philosophy?, the article shows how mathematical models help Deleuze describe processes of actualization and singularity. However, in his final work with Guattari, Deleuze explicitly distinguishes philosophy from science: while science constructs functions that slow down chaos, philosophy creates concepts that reopen it. The article argues that this division is not a break with Deleuze’s earlier texts, but their coherent outcome. Philosophy is not mathematical, but it can extract the virtual from mathematics—because mathematics, like art and science, belongs to the real that philosophy thinks.