Yes — when Deleuze said that we could no longer write philosophy in the “old” ways, he was pointing toward a radical break in how philosophy should be done, written, and lived. This wasn’t merely about style — it was about thought itself undergoing transformation in the wake of 20th-century events, both philosophical and historical.
Let’s unpack what he meant:
1.
Against Representation, Identity, and the Traditional Subject
Classical philosophy (the “old” way) relied heavily on representation:
- Ideas represent reality
- The subject reflects the object
- Logic orders thought
But Deleuze, influenced by Nietzsche, Bergson, and Spinoza, challenges this entire image of thought. In Difference and Repetition, he writes:
“Representation fails to capture the affirmed world of difference.”
Deleuze doesn’t want thought to mirror the world — he wants it to create. He wants philosophy to stop speaking about things and instead start producing intensities, like art or music.
2.
Philosophy as Concept-Creation
In What is Philosophy? (with Guattari), Deleuze proposes a new model:
“Philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts.”
This is a rejection of the “old” mode of commentary, system-building, or interpreting canonical texts. Instead, a philosopher is a conceptual artist, responding to problems through invention — not through solutions, but through new maps, tools, styles of life.
“There is no other truth than the creation of the New.”
3.
Rhizome over Tree: Writing as Multiplicity
In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari abandon the “arborescent” (tree-like, hierarchical) mode of writing — typical of classical philosophy — in favor of the rhizome:
non-linear, non-hierarchical, nomadic, fragmented.
Each chapter is a plateau. You can read them in any order. Their writing mimics multiplicity itself.
“We’re tired of trees. We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They’ve made us suffer too much.”
This is not a metaphor. It is a call to write, think, and live differently.
4.
Style as a Mode of Thought
Deleuze believed that style is not decoration — it is how thought moves.
Hence, the “old” academic or expository style — introduction, thesis, argument, conclusion — was no longer adequate.
“You don’t think and write in the same way after Auschwitz.”
(Deleuze paraphrasing Adorno’s deeper provocation)
That means:
- Kafka is a philosopher.
- So is Proust, Artaud, Carroll, Bacon (the painter).
- Philosophy needs to become minor, become literary, become experimental.
5.
Events, Not Essences
The “old” way of philosophy tried to define things in terms of their essence.
Deleuze shifts the focus to events:
a concept doesn’t represent something — it captures an event, a becoming.
This is also why his writing often feels unstable, moving, on the verge — because it performs what it thinks.
6.
Why This Matters
To Deleuze, to keep writing philosophy the “old” way was to be complicit with the violence of order, hierarchy, and representation — the very structures that had led to colonization, fascism, institutional oppression.
New times demand new weapons:
- New forms of writing
- New concepts of self, desire, community, life
- New conjunctions of philosophy + art + science
This is also why his books are sometimes hard — because he’s asking us not just to read, but to ride the wave of a new mode of thinking.
In Short:
When Deleuze said we cannot write philosophy in the old ways, he meant:
We can no longer afford to think through trees, through essences, through identities, through representation.
We must think through rhizomes, through difference, through affects, through becoming.
Or as he once said:
“Write with love, write with hatred, never write for the academy.”
Would you like a short piece titled
“為什麼我們不能再用舊方式寫哲學：德勒茲的思維革命”
to use as a seminar handout or reflection?
