Deleuze and Derrida, Immanence and Transcendence: Two Directions in Recent French Thought

Giorgio Agamben, in a recent essay,has identified two different trajectories in contemporary French philosophy, both of which pass through Heidegger: a trajectory of transcendence, which includes Levinas and Derrida, and goes back through Husserl to Kant; and a trajectory of immanence, which includes Foucault and Deleuze, and goes back through Nietzsche to Spinoza.Deleuze and Levinas are no doubt the most obvious representatives of these two trajectories; Deleuze explicitly describes himself as a philosopher of immanence, while Levinas explicitly claims the mantle of transcendence (the “Other” being the paradigmatic concept of transcendence). But Derrida clearly belongs to the trajectory of transcendence as well, and Agamben’s typology can thus provide us with a valuable grid for assessing the relation between Derrida and Deleuze, at least in a preliminary manner. Agamben does not himself develop his insight in detail, and perhaps for good reason. Immanence and transcendence are both highly overdetermined terms in the history of philosophy, and it is not immediately clear what it would mean to be a philosopher of either one. The very term “transcendence” has theological and spiritual overtones that tend to obscure the wider history and varied philosophical uses of the concept. Moreover, one might be tempted to question the use of such a “binary opposition” to characterize philosophers like Derrida and Deleuze, given their shared critique of the use of oppositional strategies in philosophy. But such a dismissal would be both hasty and superficial. Immanence and transcendence are relative terms, not opposites, which means that in each case one must ask: Immanent to what? Or transcendent to what? As such, immanence and transcendence can be helpful terms, not so much in determining the differing “positions” of Derrida and Deleuze, but rather as means of charting out their differing philosophical “trajectories,” at least relative to each other.