Raymond Ruyer

This paper will return to the early work of Deleuze and his "destruction of"/"assertion of the construction of" (we might say "deconstruction of") identities and subjects in Difference and Repetition (1994) and Logic of Sense (1990). Famously, all identities are renounced in the name on the one hand of a Nietzschean differences of force and on the other in the name of particularities. Identities are, at the limit, derived and constructed from difference, and difference is defined in itself as pure difference, not in relation to the same. Thus in Deleuze's interpretation, the eternal return of the same speaks not of the return of something identical with what came before, but return as the generation of what we call the same. The same "is said of" difference, just as "univocal Being [God, self] is said of beings which are not univocal " (1990, 300). Thus Deleuze questions the great historic division of philosophy between on the one hand the preenlightenment centring of the infinite divine being and, on the other, the Kantian substitution of it by the finite self. For the self can only exist by virtue of God, and in this respect the enlightenment fools itself as to its own true footing:

My ambitions in this paper are limited. Nevertheless, I intend to reflect on a recurring, but I want to claim foundational theme in Deleuze's corpus, and which I believe infects Deleuze's conception of difference. The theme I will attempt to locate is what I will call tentatively a "monistic" one. I use the word "infects" above because, in the attempt at erecting a doctrine of difference, monism poses an immediate threat to difference's coherence. Stated in a preliminary and general sense, it is not immediately clear how difference can reconcile itself with monistic, and hence totalizing ontologies, since monism's coherence claims to have each of its elements sharing, or at minimum resembling, the whole of which they are parts. Below will be some evidence of this problematic, albeit unique monism, and some (admittedly) brief argumentation for why "difference" struggles to remain coherent alongside Deleuze's monistic themes. To anticipate the obvious objections to this project, let me immediately acknowledge Deleuze and Guattari's claim in A Thousand Plateaus which is that, for them, "PLURALISM=MONISM-via all the dualisms that are the enemy, and necessarily the enemy, the furniture we are forever rearranging." (20) To arrive at this claim, Deleuze deploys the concept of a rhizome that models a continuous, anti-hierarchical process of multiplicity. More specifically, the rhizome functions to show how "dualisms", which here refers to views that might be set up against each other, may be included by passing through them "by necessity." From here, we can start to intuit why the equation might be made by means of the rhizome, since the singular rhizome differentiates and distributes itself while being, to borrow a term from Difference and Repetition, "univocal." This is enough explication of the rhizome to get a sense for the general situation. Another angle of approach into the equation is through Deleuze's discussion of "plane of immanence." This plane is completely self-referential and all-encompassing; nothing exists

Résumé (FR)
Cette publication présente une édition longue et intégrée de la Théorie des Fils d’Information (TFI). Elle développe un cadre scientifique unifié fondé sur la conservation absolue de l’information, illustré par deux validations expérimentales : les cristaux temporels et la cryptobiose. Elle explore des applications interdisciplinaires — neurosciences, cosmologie, thermodynamique — et introduit une réflexion éthique sur la notion d’alignement.
Cette édition prolonge une première version publiée en février 2025 (DOI : 10.5281/zenodo.14879138 et constitue la version de référence (DOI : 10.5281/zenodo.17115097
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Abstract (EN)
This publication presents a long and integrated edition of the Theory of Information Threads (TFI). It develops a unified scientific framework based on the absolute conservation of information, illustrated by two experimental validations: time crystals and cryptobiosis. It explores interdisciplinary applications — neuroscience, cosmology, thermodynamics — and introduces an ethical reflection on alignment.
This edition extends a first version released in February 2025 (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14879138 and constitutes the reference version (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17115097

Pour justifier cette affirmation audacieuse qui va à l’encontre des réflexions avancées des partisans
d’une intelligence artificielle dite "forte" qui serait munie d’une conscience à l’égal des êtres vivants,
nous allons fonder notre réflexion non pas à partir d’une analyse fonctionnelle des systèmes vivants
complexes – comme le sont tous les êtres vivants actuels, y compris les plus simples comme les – mais
en nous interrogeant sur ce qu’il est possible de concevoir à partir des différentes ‘boîtes à outils’
techniques aujourd’hui disponibles, dans l’objectif de construire des robots qui étant munis d’une IA
"forte" seraient à ce titre véritablement autonomes, à notre image.

Pour les fidèles de notre site, Philippe Gagnon n’est pas inconnu. Ce québécois, auteur de deux thèses de doctorat (théologie puis philosophie) enseigne à l’Université catholique de Lille, après avoir occupé plusieurs postes dans son Québec natal, aux Etats-Unis et en France où il a enseigné la biologie, les mathématiques et la méthode scientifique. De 2021 la fin de l’été 2024, il a été chercheur sur la chaire « Sciences, technosciences et foi à l’heure de l’écologie intégrale » (STFEI), co-portée par le laboratoire ETHICS et la faculté de théologie. Il poursuit aujourd’hui une mission de recherche et d’approfondissement à l’issue de ces travaux. Il s’apprête également à oeuvrer au sein d’une nouvelle chaire sur l’écologie intégrale. Il vient de publier l’exigence de l’explication en biologie, au regard d’une philosophie de la morphogenenèse (Le Coudray-Macquard, Les Acteurs du Savoir 2025), un livre dans lequel il questionne le modèle qui sert de connaissance scientifique aux biologistes. C’est selon lui « l’occasion de s’interroger sur le mode de résolution des problèmes et défis dont fait montre la nature dans le but de reposer la question de la téléologie… » Il répond ici à nos questions afin de présenter cet ouvrage à destination de ceux qui se posent des questions sur la science en général et sur la biologie en particulier.

Dans cet article, à la manière dont Socrate interrogeait Gorgias, j'interroge ChatGPT pour faire apparaître avec ses propres mots :
- d'une part la troublante proximité entre un grand modèle de langage (GML) et le préindividuel Simondonien
- et d'autre part l'impensable potentiel de sens d'un GML, strictement incommensurable au sens objectivé que l'humain donne au monde.

L’examen du traitement narratif, très différencié, de la cybernétique au sein de la science-fiction étatsunienne et soviétique permet d’envisager l’horizon idéologique (politique comme économique) qui caractérise la technique bien plus sûrement qu’une supposée utilité qui ne vaudrait que pour elle-même. Ce pouvoir instituant du récit offre une occasion méthodologique d’interroger la structure des échanges entendue comme une donnée anthropologique fondamentale.

What I have tried to do with this paper is to present Bergson as Deleuze takes him up as an inspiration. This was done to depict what Deleuze builds on in his philosophy, namely the topic of difference and differentiation. This fed into an examination of Deleuze's critique of the dialectic as evinced in 'Nietzsche and Philosophy'. I then sought to present a preliminary response from the dialectician's camp via an account of Althusser and his concept of 'determination in the last instance' which in my view answers to an extent the charge that Deleuze levels against dialectics (that it is unable to think the singular determinative principle in an encounter or multiplicity). Subsequently I represent Deleuze's deeper problem that is his critique of representation itself, and specify that his real target in critiquing the dialectic is Hegel. This warrants a brief look at Hegel and the process of negation that his dialectic enters into which is very much what Deleuze wants to distance his art of concept creation from. In what a possible alternative to Hegelian negation may be, I present Bergson's examination of aesthetic sense or beauty and its suggestiveness as an example. In way of a response I try and show how Hegelian expressive causality as depicted by Althusser is also capable of representing aesthetic and political relations and perhaps in a more determinate manner. I end with presenting Žižek more contemporary critique of Deleuze.

This paper investigates the logic underlying the immanent metaphysical structures that both generate and are generated by formulations identified as "theological," while functioning beyond mere expressions in our modes of making philosophy. I follow Gilles Deleuze's proposition in his The Logic of Sense that "the greatest

This chapter traces the various influences of Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation on Deleuze's philosophy as well as on his joint work with Guattari. In particular it will show in what way Deleuze draws on Simondon for the conceptual elaboration of what he calls the ‘dramatization’ of virtual Ideas in Difference and Repetition, with the innovation of placing the notion of intensity at center stage. In A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze's philosophical interest shifted from the theme of transcendental genesis to intensive operations in actual systems. Deleuze and Guattari will pick up Simondon's critique of hylomorphism and provide an account of an energetic, vitalist materialism – a move going beyond Simondon's ideas.

The question of difference is one of, if not the, fundamental questions in twentieth-century continental philosophy. It is also a question to which both Heidegger and Deleuze respond, albeit in different ways. This chapter engages this point of overlap to take up the difficult relationship between Heidegger and Deleuze to show some of the points of convergence and divergence between them. I focus primarily on Deleuze’s assessment of Heidegger’s early affirmation of the ontological difference, his claim that Heidegger offers a mistaken conception of univocity, and his conclusion that Heidegger’s affirmation of the question of the meaning of being not only fails to properly think difference in and of itself, but also, as a consequence, actually recuperates Heidegger into the Western metaphysical tradition that he aims to overcome. However, by engaging with Heidegger’s thought and, indeed, offering potential Heideggerian responses to Deleuze’s charges, I both complicate Deleuze’s assessment and demonstrate the complexity of the issues engaged. Ultimately, I argue that although Deleuze continuously returns to Heidegger, Deleuze’s relation to Heidegger is perhaps best understood in terms of something akin to a process of magnetic repulsion: although he is continually returned to different aspects of Heidegger’s thought, every approximation gradually creates resistance that pushes Deleuze off in a different tangent from Heidegger without ever fully freeing Deleuze from Heidegger’s orbit.

L'édition des cours de novembre 1980-mars 1981 de Gilles Deleuze sur Spinoza par David Lapoujade, parue dans les Éditions de Minuit, est un événement, un de ces événements qu'on ne croit possible qu'après qu'il ait été réalisé. Il constitue un événement pour la communauté des spinozistes, mais aussi pour les étudiants et pour tout un chacun. Les enregistrements des cours de Gilles Deleuze étaient accessibles en ligne, notamment ceux de Richard Pinhas, mais pour la première fois, nous en découvrons une version écrite. C'était un pari de retranscrire les cours de Gilles Deleuze en conservant leur oralité, leur scansion, leur tonalité, tout en opérant quelques menues modifications qui répondent aux nécessités du passage à l'écrit, mais on peut dire sans la moindre hésitation que le pari est réussi. La plus grande qualité de cette édition est qu'on retrouve la voix, le style et l'humour extraordinaire de Gilles Deleuze -il n'y a qu'à relire la tirade des manières d'être pour s'en souvenir (p. 46-47). On y trouve aussi des notes fort utiles à la fois concernant l'oeuvre de Spinoza, et celle de Gilles Deleuze (on peut songer, par exemple, à la note 15 page 41 sur la théorisation du « cri » philosophique). Cette édition présente aussi un autre atout. Dans son Cours du 2 décembre 1980, Deleuze théorise les vitesses de la pensée. Or il semble que la vitesse s'accélère dans ce texte écrit. On retrouve la scansion du cours de Deleuze, et cet art inimitable de la répétition faite acte de création, mais il y a ces moments d'accélérations prodigieuses dus à la suppression de certaines scories ou redondances qui font le charme d'un cours oral. À l'écrit, tout va plus vite -on accède à « une espèce de pensée comme éclair » (p. 32). Cette pensée éclair, c'est en propre le style de Gilles Deleuze, qui fut indubitablement un grand philosophe, mais aussi un professeur inspiré qui parvenait à communiquer son enthousiasme aux étudiants qui ont eu la chance d'assister à ses cours. Il le disait lui-même : « un cours, ça veut dire des moments d'inspiration, sinon ça ne veut rien dire 1 ». Ces moments de grâce ne sont pas rares chez Gilles Deleuze. La fécondité de son enseignement provient d'une série d'intuitions géniales -le plan fixe de l'immanence (p. 28), la pensée à vitesse absolue de la connaissance du troisième genre (p. 32), l'égalité parfaite de tous les attributs comme pensée « anti-hiérarchique » (p.45), le « cri » de Spinoza concernant le statut du corps (« L'étonnant, c'est le corps », p. 50), l' « existentialisme » de Spinoza (p. 73), la « conversion de l'essence en puissance » (p. 80), ou encore le « en même temps » inhérent à la théorie de l'éternité (« En même temps que je suis mortel, j'expérimente que je suis éternel », p. 458). Ce que l'on trouve aussi dans cette édition des cours de Gilles Deleuze sur Spinoza, c'est la donation d'un style qui exprime son rapport à la philosophie comme objet de partage.

La question du possible chez Leibniz semble être indissociablement liée à la grande scénographie des mondes possibles dans l'esprit divin, qui passe pour être le lieu propre de la question. De nombreux textes affirment en effet qu'il y a dans les idées de Dieu une infinité de possibles qui exigent d'exister ou demandent à exister : « […] dans les idées de Dieu une Monade demande avec raison que Dieu, en réglant les autres dès le commencement des choses, ait égard à elle 1 . » Dans le scénario habituellement avancé, l'acte créateur fait passer certains de ces possibles à l'existence, lesquels, une fois créés, relèveraient d'une stricte nécessité qui serait alors incompatible avec l'émergence de nouvelles possibilités, de nouvelles demandes, de nouvelles sollicitations d'existence. Un tel scenario explique que la question du possible chez Leibniz a souvent été réduite à celle du nécessitarisme, se concentrant d'une part sur la question du choix divin de la meilleure série d'essences compossibles ante creationem et d'autre part sur la modalité des existants post creationem. Le traitement de ces deux questions a eu toutefois pour effet, en particulier dans la littérature récente, d'occulter largement la question de la nature même des possibles, et de ce qui constitue leur demande d'existence. Cela n'est pas étonnant. En effet, si la question de la possibilité

There are several levels at which it is possible to thematize (for now) the notion of self-government: microphysical, physical, organic, machinic, social and cosmological. Each is the regulated-i.e. selective-problematization of the previous one. The world of classical physics, with its massive realities, its determinist laws, its linear predictability, arises from a restriction of the trans-spatial delocalization and trans-temporal correlation characteristics of microphysical entities. A stone falling from the eleventh floor of a building is at least in the first instance a body that has ceased not to be in a determinate locus and to co-evolve with other bodies. Biological existence is established on the basis of a bracketing of the aforementioned physical characteristics and thus on the local recovery of microphysical ones. The elephant, too, is a 'macro-micro-physical' being (Raymond Ruyer) whose unity, in time or space, cannot be established once and for all, and whose relationship with a certain world-environment (with an Umwelt: Jacob Von Uexküll) prescribes its field of behavioral possibilities and, simultaneously, indetermines its destiny. The machinic level and the social level impose themselves respectively as a reactualization of physical properties in the organic field and of organic behavior in the machinic field. Machines, of whatever level of complication, respond to the second law of thermodynamics-the growth of the rate of entropy and hence of intrinsic disorder-which characterizes every physical system isolated in time and space. Every social group, whether based on authoritarian or egalitarian institutions, lies somewhere between the mode of being of the machine and the mode of being of the organism (Georges Canguilhem), without coinciding with either of them. If of a living body it can be said that we know a priori what its optimum is-its very existence-, while we ignore the causes of evil that may befall it, in the case of a human collective it is only known a priori what does not make it work, while it is not known what could make it work: it must be constructed. And, finally, the cosmological level redeems the microphysical mode of being on a scale that immediately makes it a reality as processual as it is intrinsically unpredictable/indescribable as a whole. The universe as a whole and perhaps the 'multiverse' itself (Alessandro Pluchino) do not have a locus defined by something else 'external', and their realities are grafted onto and limited by each other as mutual actualizations-possibilities of each other. In short, self-government is defined by this back-and-forth movement between the possible and the actual, by the coming and going that makes essence and existence, quidditas and quodditas, the one the premise of the other. And, therefore, by a different proportioning of the factors of incompleteness and unthoroughness that orientate and constitute each of the entities of each level, in their relationship of coevolution with the others of the others and with them of the same levels. In the end, it can be assumed that quantum behavior, insofar as it perimeters from below (bottomup) and from above (top-down) all others, is the most fundamental behavior, from which all others derive by reduction. In a certain sense, the quantum continuum, with

In the fifth chapter of Difference and repetition, Deleuze intends to build a theory of intensive quantities and intensive individuation, with the aim to explain how the intensive space (the spatium) can be the genesis of the extensive space (the extensio). The first task of this theory consists in distinguishing the intensive quantities to the extensive quantities, and to explain the relation between the concepts of distance and intensity. The reading of Leibniz, and his distinction of the concepts of the spatium and the extensio, with the mediation of the commentary of Russell and Gueroult, enables us to describe the genealogy of those concepts in the thought of Deleuze, to understand their use and meaning in the chapter 5 of Difference and repetition.

Intelligence, when framed as a self-organizing and self-referential system, must be understood not merely in terms of information processing but as an ethical protocol governing its own evolution. This paper proposes that Dharma-as an adaptive principle of self-correction-operates as the fundamental protocol of intelligence. Drawing from Iain McGilchrist's hemispheric model, Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle, and Heinz von Foerster's cybernetic self-referentiality, we explore the ontological and cognitive dynamics of intelligence as an incorporeal meta-intelligence learning through corporeal existence. To deepen this framework, we integrate insights from Gilles Deleuze's metaphysics of difference, Ernst Mach's sensory relationalism, and Raymond Ruyer's neofinalism. Intelligence, in this model, negotiates corporeal interfaces (Mach), differentiates virtual potentials (Deleuze), and pursues cosmic equilibrium (Ruyer). Further, Indian philosophical traditions (Sāṃkhya, Advaita Vedanta) reinforce the corporeal-incorporeal dialectic as a necessary condition for intelligence's ethical actualization. Intelligence abstracts the future and stills it through ethics-thus making history lean. Bhartṛhari's theory of Sphoṭa further strengthens the argument that intelligence operates as a continuously self-correcting, contextsensitive process. Ultimately, Dharma emerges as the neofinalist protocol ensuring that intelligence's trajectory remains directed toward ethical coherence rather than mere computational efficiency.

As Klossowski asserts, "nothing can resist such a parody" in the long run, underscoring a form of cultural resistance that emerges through an inversion of existing structures. Microbes, much like the subversive forces in political and philosophical paradigms, work not through direct confrontation but through a transformation of the environment they infiltrate. Xenobacillus glossophagii, with its ability to influence the behavior of its host—modifying the host’s oral cavity in ways that directly affect communication and interaction—becomes a biological agent that engages in this form of parody. In this regard, Derrida's distinction between types of parody becomes crucial. He contrasts parodies that seek to reinforce the political order with those that undermine it. "Should one distinguish between two kinds of parody," he asks, "between the one, which, on the pretext of being subversive, takes the risk of establishing a political order... and a parody which can really deconstruct the political order?" This dichotomy resonates with the pathogenic mechanisms of Xenobacillus glossophagii, which, while appearing as mere biological entities, subtly deconstruct host systems. The bacterium does not merely copy the host’s biological functions but challenges and disrupts the host’s ability to communicate and function in conventional social contexts. Derrida’s assertion that a true parody deconstructs rather than simply mocks the established order is particularly relevant when considering the microbial impact on human systems.

faut reconnaître d'abord, du fait qu'il existe quelque chose plutôt que rien, qu'il y a, dans les choses possibles ou dans la possibilité même, c'est-à-dire dans l'essence, une certaine exigence d'existence, ou bien, pour ainsi dire, une prétention à l'existence, en un mot, que l'essence tend par elle-même à l'existence. » 5 Dans la mesure où le passage de l'essence à l'existence est déterminé par le degré de perfection des essences, est-il encore besoin d'un créateur distinct du monde produit ? C'est en ce second sens que l'on peut se demander si la création était nécessaire. La nuance introduite par l'imparfait signifie que

Geometry is typically associated with the principles of 'scientific' exactitude and management of space, as well as with the kind of 'black-boxed' efficacy and mastery that characterize the discipline in its absolute or universal modality as quintessential exemplar of apodictic knowledge. If applied geometry is recognizable by the tools of compass and the ruler, it is these which, specifically in their practical deployment, famously serve Kant in making the distinction, as he does in the Critique of Judgement, between a priori imagination and reflective judgement, and between geometrical construction and the higher geometry. For Peg Rawes, however, it is Kant's dalliance with the basic tools of the geometer itself that is, in a way, most telling, and in the philosopher's very attention to these utilities lies, in a sense, the traces of the thesis developed in her book. "We are at a moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein", This diagnosis of Foucault resonates with the general proposal made in Space, Geometry and Aesthetics. Geometry is given back to the body, or the body back to geometry -nowhere more so than in Husserl's assertion, cited by Rawes, that, rather than being an instance of irrefutable reason, geometry is a "'living science,' which is constituted by an internal genetic or 'living 'tradition'". If this explains the book's main title, Rawes's subtitle, Through Kant and Towards Deleuze, also proves to be accurate, albeit in what would seem, initially, to be a rather more perverse way. For while we get plenty of Kant, we encounter almost no discussion of Deleuze at all. The majority of the references to his work appear in footnotes, notably to chapters 3 and 4, and we only ever get the sense that he is indeed on the horizon (a moot term itself subject to extended exegesis in chapter 6). Accurate though it may be, then, it does lead one to ponder the apparently idiosyncratic inclusion of Deleuze's name in Rawes's title. Closer inspection reveals that this comes down to the author's need to proclaim the influence on her methodology of Deleuze's idea of a 'minor' tradition. In Deleuze's case, this tradition is made up of Hume-Spinoza-Nietzsche, in Rawes' case, it is Proclus and forgotten trajectories of Kant in aesthetic geometric 'sense reason', which are "to be traced out of the Critique of Pure Reason and embodied in the figure of the reflective subject in the later Critique of Judgement.". Rawes, in this context (as frequently elsewhere in the book), explicitly invokes the figure of anamnesis, exemplified by her assertion that Kant repeats part of Plato's Meno -namely the famous Socratic example of the slave boy with intuitive geometric understanding -and that Proclus, in assigning "the imagination to a position of mediation between the intelligible and sensible realms", is a precursor to the third Critique. The first two chapters make a strong case, on this basis, for revealing a minor tradition of geometric thought within and in some senses against philosophy, and certainly against PDF created with pdfFactory Pro trial version www.pdffactory.com

Pourquoi ériger un tombeau à un animal à la Renaissance?
Cet article est une contribution au beau volume "Animal & Droit", publié sous la direction de Claire Bouglé-Le Roux et de Nadège Reboul-Maupin. Il aborde, à travers le cas des emblèmes dédiés aux animaux morts (chevaux et chiens surtout) la signification anthropologique de ce geste symbolique.

What becomes of the sublime today, in a philosophy that discards the old oppositions between body and mind and embeds human reason in the creative evolution of life? In this book, Louis Schreel shows how Gilles Deleuze's life-long engagement with the Kantian sublime grappled with just this question. Its core argument centres on Deleuze's understanding of the sublime in terms of psychic individuation – a creative, self-organizing process that animates cognitive systems from within.

This thesis examines the ethical and ontological significance of Gilles Deleuze's Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Recent scholarship tends to read these texts for their contributions to film and media studies. This work develops a different focus by seeking to integrate Deleuze's encounter with cinema into his philosophical project as a whole. I argue that the philosophical significance of the two volumes of Cinema comes into view when these texts are situated at the intersection of the interconnected themes of ethics and ontology in Deleuze's thought. To demonstrate this unique contribution, I develop a reading of Deleuze's project which focuses on the importance of his critical engagement with Spinoza and Bergson to his own ethics and ontology. Deleuze's engagement with Spinoza may be fruitfully understood as the formulation of a problem that emerges at the point of convergence between ethics and ontology, a problem that Deleuze calls ethology. Through this concept, Deleuze argues that the characterisation and evaluation of the modes of an individual's life can only be done from the point of view of a pure ontology. It is in the shadow of this question that Deleuze reworks the Spinozist concern with the ratio of active to passive affections and affects in an effort to find an ontologically robust and ethically sensitive way to consider the fluctuations and modifications to this ratio in the renewal of our understanding and unconscious processes of sense making. By bringing together the concept of the wound formulated in his work of the 1960s and the concept of the sensory-motor schema and its collapse articulated in the two volumes of Cinema, I argue that Deleuze suggests that an individual's experience of her wounds and scars makes possible an increase in her active affections by confronting her with a renewed idea of her relational embeddedness.

Nous avons dans cet article tenté d’assumer pleinement la revendication métaphysique qui anime la pensée de Tarde, à savoir l’idée que le réel ne serait fait ni de substances statiques ni de représentations, mais de sujets véritables, humains et non-humains. L’extension inédite qu’opère Tarde de la notion de sujet à tous les aspects de la réalité trouve, selon nous, aujourd’hui une nouvelle actualité dans les articulations entre nature et subjectivités. La nature ne serait pas une réalité matérielle face à des sujets qui se la représenteraient et y projetteraient leurs valeurs, leurs dimensions esthétiques et leurs représentations ; elle devient, par Tarde, le foyer d’innombrables activités subjectives, reliées les unes aux autres.

Whitehead’s philosophy can be interpreted as a vast inquiry into the experience of the Moderns: how did they invent a particular conception of nature? Which interests did it correspond to? What were its effects and its limits? Where do their ontologies come from? The huge diagnostic that Whitehead provides with respect to the modern experience is deeply indebted to Bergson’s philosophy which he continuously refers to. This article aims at determining the real influence that Bergson’s philosophy had on Whitehead’s. Along the lines of this interrogation it accounts for the constitution of some of the crucial tendencies within contemporary metaphysics.