“In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari make the following provocative claim: “Plato said that Ideas must be contemplated, but first of all he had to create the concept of Idea” (WP 6). The assertion that Plato’s philosophy is fundamentally creative appears radically at odds with Socrates’ frequent claims, most notably in the Meno and Phaedo, that knowledge is attained through the reminiscence of our perception of real things prior to the soul inhabiting the body.” - (2012-09-27). The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) (p. 3). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
And here we have it: the dichotomy that has haunted philosophy since its very beginnings: the pragmatic/Rortian distinction between understanding as making and finding. And it is that which has culminated in the occasional animosity between continental and analytic approaches.
But then it’s not like there haven’t been overlaps. Rorty (w/ his continental sensibility spoken in his native tongue: the analytic (points to both Quine and Wittgenstein as heroes. And while I can tell you little about Quine, I get it as far as Wittgenstein in that he started with Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (that which focused on philosophy as finding (which followed his adage:
“And whereof one cannot speak, one must be silent.”
:then evolved into his recognition of the import of language games: our tendency to engage in discourse purely for the sake of bringing the words we use to describe reality closer to reality itself: that which focused on philosophy as making.
And we can see a similar overlap in Russell when he describes philosophy as that which lays in that no man’s land between Science (the art of finding (and theology: the art of making. But if we (being in more secular times (replace the term Theology with literature, and replace “no man’s land” with spectrum, we find a domain (a multiplicity to match our multiplicity as molecular individuals (by which we can analyze our own place in the scheme of things as the intellectually and creatively curious.
And this is rooted in a problem the ancient philosophers were dealing with: how to establish stable truths in a universe that was constantly changing. Of course, Plato’s solution was to come up w/ (make as Deleuze points out (a metaphysical realm of ideal forms that all earthly efforts (nature, art, language ( are trying to immolate. And this could only lead to the ethical assertions of Plato’s Republic based on an analogical hierarchy based on mind, emotion, and body. In this lies the heart of the classicist disposition.
But after several generations of authoritarian social systems based on Plato’s model, we made the romantic break by reversing the early civilization notion of civilization good/ nature bad. This went on to the bridge provided by Nietzsche from romanticism to existentialism (with the neo-classicism of the analytic serving a reactionary role (on to modernism and then (via structuralism and post-structuralism: that which recognizes the futility of language in the face of the reality it is trying to reflect (on to postmodernism.
Against this background, we can see the import of philosopher’s like Deleuze and Rorty (and even Zizek despite his assertion that “the truth is out there” (in that they represent the diametrical opposite of Plato’s assertion that philosophy is a matter of gravitating towards the realm of ideal forms. They, rather, embrace the creative potential of language in the face of a reality that can never be ideal. They establish themselves as an endgame in the ancient dichotomy between making (the side they’re on (and finding.