Sun Lin: The Quasi-Cause of Affects, or the Empty Set of a State of Affairs? — A Comparison of Event Theory between Deleuze and Badiou

It is no historical accident that the contemporary philosophy of the event has itself become a philosophical event. The event as such stems from an inquiry into the problem of the "overflow" of presence, tracing a brand-new triadic structure ^[1] of "both... and...," while simultaneously investigating the laws governing the repeated arrival of that which is absent and has not yet occurred. It directly confronts the cracks of co-presence ^[2] that constantly emerge between the present and the absent. This problem of the "overflow" of presence serves as the common foundational starting point for the theories of the event in both Deleuze and Badiou. It is also the problem that various methodological schools—phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction—have collectively endeavored to resolve since the era of Hegelian and Marxian dialectics. Although Deleuze and Badiou move toward two different directions—"relative nothingness" and the "void" respectively—both ground themselves in the standpoint of Marx’s historical materialism. They critique the Illusory nature of the "One" established by Hegel's "supersensible world" and gaze into the fissures of the system governed by it—a system comprising "self-consciousness," "ethical substance," "absolute spirit," and the "Trinity" (hereafter referred to as the "triadic structure"). Any triadic structure constituted by a metaphysical synthesis of presence—whether it be the synthesis of apprehension in Kantian intuition, the synthesis of reproduction in imagination, the synthesis of recognition in a concept, or Hegel’s final synthesis—belongs to the synthesis of the "Great One" under the mechanism of "onto-theology" ^[3] (Wu Xiaoming).

Currently, comparative research on the event theories of these two thinkers, both in China and abroad, exhibits two entirely different trends. In international academia, Deleuze and Badiou appear as a dyadic pair, almost like brothers; as Badiou himself remarked, "it is not absurd to compare the two of us; this is gradually becoming a public conviction" (Badiou, 2018a, p. 6). Žižek, a mutual friend of both, revealed the shared materialistic nature of their two views on the event: "In their view, the affirmation of the independence of the level of the sense-event is not a compromise with idealism, but a necessary theme of a true materialism" (Žižek, 2019, p. 78). Žižek excavated the Spinozist and Hegelian elements in Deleuze, arguing that the "One" buried deep within Deleuze’s "body without organs" is constantly approaching Hegel, replacing Hegel’s final synthesis with a "disjunctive synthesis" (Deleuze, 2004, p. xvi). Žižek also analyzed Badiou’s triadic structure of "being-world-event" (Žižek, 2013, p. 71), but disagreed with Badiou’s "active Gelassenheit ^[4]" (ibid., p. 82) toward events of social transformation, arguing that the quartet of the generic time of the event can only be an "attention deficit disorder" (ibid., p. 81).

Comparative research in Chinese academic circles is currently in its nascent stages. Domestic and international scholars have yet to reach an integrated consensus regarding their subjective innovations based on the body, intuition, and difference; their historical opening toward repetition, multiplicity, and exceptions at the site of fissures; or their analysis of the internal drives—such as immanence, force, and cause—that constitute the remainder of presence. Deleuze and Badiou’s thinking on the event represents a non-sensible yet non-rational direct intuition of the Hegelian supersensible world descending into the real world. It is a rethinking of Heidegger’s authentic impossible co-presence; a capable thinking that explores historical laws, strengthens historical initiative, and constructs new historical subjects. Moreover, it is a limit-thinking regarding the overflow and remainder of presence—a thinking of "appearance" that grasps the "real wonder" of the potential of absence within the reality of presence, unfolding an affective thinking on the community with a shared future for humanity. Conducting comparative research on the event theories of these two philosophers around these issues holds significant practical importance for our perspective on the development of world history and for breaking through the central focuses and difficulties in the critique of capital modernity.

I. The Subjective Rebirth of the Event: Body, Intuition, and Difference

The occurrence of an event within the horizon of materialism cannot, first of all, bypass the active body. Only the body can carry the unstoppable internal forces, subsequently reconstructing the field through bodily intuition within absolute conceptless difference, or the difference of multiple differences. An event is not a process of the subject, but a process of subjectivization. It no longer merely replaces the subject's frame—manipulated by the supersensible world—with a corporeal body. Both Deleuze and Badiou believe that the subject is constantly transforming, opening the process of subjectivization through the self-transformation of the immanent active body, intuition, and difference. When the subject is reduced to a "surveilled subject" (in Foucault’s terms), it simultaneously possesses the real power to constantly overflow the field, pushing the old subject to become a "'germinal' subject" (Deleuze, 2018, p. 137) or a "resurrected subject" (Žižek, 2013, p. 66).

1. The "Body" That Cannot Be Set Aside

The Spinozist triad of "substance, cause, and force," along with the "intuition" of Husserlian phenomenology, remains clearly visible in Deleuze’s work. Deleuze manifests their fusion in the depths of "affect." His Spinoza complex is particularly evident in his argumentation for the importance of the "body." The "body without organs" he proposed is a development of Spinoza’s finite modes of substance differentiation—specifically, the active "mind" and "body." Deleuze argues that Spinoza elevated the "body" to a status equal to that of the active "mind," which was not a devaluation of extension by thought, but rather a devaluation of the thought-relation by consciousness. The importance of the "body" lies in the discovery of the unconscious, clarifying that consciousness is, by its very nature, the locus of illusion. Surging beneath the Spinozist strata of consciousness is the "cause" buried deep within the "body" that is capable of breaking through the soil. The "cause" is the "force" of the agent through which the body insists upon its extension and the concept or idea insists upon its thought.

The reason Deleuze uses the "body without organs" to replace various abstract subject-consciousnesses and intentional consciousnesses is that what consciousness can determine and perceive is only "having an affair ^[5]" (有事), rather than the "nothing-affair" (无事) that always remains in an unknown state. Phenomenology, by "possessing judgment," temporarily suspends the "is-judgment" of speculative dialectics, intending to exhaust the intentional objects of the remainder of presence. Although it provides a certain foundation for the Idea, it still falls into the error of reducing toward a transcendental or transcendent principle and making preliminary judgments. In reality, only in the "body" does there exist an "affective" essence that communicates with the mind, endures, and flows, thereby constituting the essential state within relations. This is something no consciousness can change, and it serves as the foundation of Deleuze’s materialism. The massive energy and anonymous whispers surging inside the body may not directly deconstruct the subject, but Deleuze deliberately follows the subject-less pace of Heidegger and Foucault, replacing the abstract capitalized Subject and its consciousness with subjectivization. If there is a subject, it is an unrecognizable one. Meanwhile, inspired by psychoanalysis drawing on the terrestrial energy of the phenomenology of spirit, Deleuze believes the task of ethics is not to reconstruct a moral order, but is directly the bodily state and its internal order within the relations of the here and now. Thus, subjectivization makes the subject unrecognizable, capable only of constant rebirth. In this regard, individual eternal essences, specific relations of motion and rest, and extended bodies constitute a new triad reflecting Spinoza’s "substance, cause, and force," transforming Hegel’s old triad of "substance, subject, and absolute."

Unlike Deleuze’s method of returning to the Spinozist triad (which is actually an indirect return to Hegel) through the body, Badiou places the body within a "historical-social situation" (Badiou, 2013, p. 13). In his meditation on Hegel, he also employs Hegelian-style art to demonstrate spiritual power. He uses metaphors and metonymies from the plays of Aristophanes and others to analyze the remainder of presence; he also integrates Heidegger’s perspective of "situatedness" (Befindlichkeit) to explore the role of the bodies and language that constitute drama in the presentation and representation of historical situations. In The Second Trial of Socrates, Badiou uses the "bodies" of actors to perform "tautological" language, reproducing the hot-spring-like "total impetus" (Badiou, 2018c, p. 145) of Socrates "diving in the abyss of thought" (ibid., p. 63). Badiou uses four generic procedures to stipulate that "every subject is an artistic subject, a scientific subject, a political subject, or a subject of love" (Badiou, 2014a, p. 82). These are subjects of the finite moments of generic procedures—historically plural subjects. On this basis, the "existence of truth, namely generic multiplicity" (Badiou, 2014b, p. 34) can be constituted, establishing the triad of "being, subject, and truth" (Badiou, 2014a, p. 81). Within this, the artistic subject is primarily constructed through arts such as poetry and drama, where the body becomes the "material collateral" of language (Badiou, 2012, p. 66). If there is a "Language" with a capital L, then there is a "Body" with a capital B. Badiou prefers to use the term "incorporation" (Badiou, 2014b, p. 42) to describe the body and poses the question: "In the becoming of the body immanent to the world, to what instructions shall we make this body submit?" (ibid., p. 43). The body outfitted by the technological world is a one-dimensional, surveilled body, obscuring an active, glorious body—namely, "incorporation." Just as the dramatic subject flows with absoluteness and truth through the physical rituals of the "body," the subject of love likewise transmits the idea of a beautiful life through physical rituals. The finite multiple subjects of the generic anticipate that the "appearance" of truth can only be attributed to the "body of truth" or the "subjectivizable body" (ibid., p. 34). In short, "except for the existence of truth, there exist only bodies and languages" (ibid., p. 53). This is also the foundation of Badiou’s materialism.

The author contends that Badiou is dedicated to curing Hegel’s "pathos" (also translated as qingzhi 情致 or beiqing 悲情) in a Hegelian manner, curing the concept through a "grasping" of the concept. This is also a reproduction of the Hegelian spirit of physicality (cf. Hegel, pp. 435-436) that combines force and beauty, "wandering" with the pure upward life-impetus of Hegel’s flesh-and-blood mysterious ritual. Through the duality of the body, it transforms into a reborn subject. Deleuze and Badiou, through the process of subjectivization, allow the surveilled subject to be reborn.

2. What is "Intuition"?

A primary purpose of Deleuze’s analysis of the body is to safeguard the intuition within it. Kant believed that sensible intuition could not intimate the categories; Husserl, however, elevated sensible intuition to categorial intuition—that is, intellectual intuition—and further enriched active categorial intuition into essential intuition (Wesensschau). Here, essential variation (Wesensänderung) and internal time-consciousness are interconnected to grasp the essential attributes of imaginative variation. This bears a striking resemblance to Hegel’s grasping of categorial intuition on the basis of practice, and it also inspired Bergson’s intuition of time and the intuition of life presented therein.

"Intuition leads us to the very depths of life" (Bergson, p. 178). On the question of intuition, Deleuze not only possesses a strong Spinoza complex but also exhibits a deeper Bergson complex. Why Bergson and not Heidegger? Although he appears so close to Heidegger, Deleuze believes that Heidegger’s formal indication ^[6] is mixed with too much transcendence from phenomenological reduction, which instead obscures the intuitive manifestation of time. Deleuze grasped two intuitive elements in Bergsonian time that are without inference or mediation: first, being "given by itself"; second, "repetition" (Deleuze, 2018, p. 25). Thus, intuition is internal and durational. The "internal" guards the motive force and impetus of life, while "duration" points toward the generative movement of continuity; similarly, the internal points toward the narcissist ego of the given, while duration points toward the constantly repeating death drive. Deleuze’s intuition of time is also not the Kantian "representation which can be given only through a single object" (Deng Xiaomang, p. 349). For the intuition of time is an instantaneous intuition and does not necessarily follow a succession. Although it escapes representation and ascends to the Idea only by means of duration—that is, "continuity"—and "prescribes an ideal cause for continuity" (Deleuze, 2019a, p. 295), intuition itself is merely an instantaneous sensation and apprehension. It "occurs only by virtue of a momentary sensation and not through a successive synthesis of many sensations, and thus does not proceed from parts to the whole" (ibid., p. 390).

As the ideal cause, the intuition of time is no longer the Cartesian "natural light" style of intuition—one that isolates all ideas, attaches to no ambiguous "substratum" (Deleuze, 2019a, p. 57), and remains clear within the mind. It is not a "sudden glimpse" (Badiou, 2018a, p. 45), but a direct confrontation with the given manifold and ambiguity, facing the "chaosmos" ^[7] (cf. Deleuze, 2019a, p. 107). Deleuze established a given cause for the Cartesian cogito and sum; it is precisely this passive ego that can ground the cogito and sum, because "the complementarity of the narcissist ego and the death drive defines the third synthesis" (Deleuze, 2019a, p. 202). The "third synthesis of time," which pierces the sky like a lightning bolt, is Aion ^[8]. The passive ego is "fractured by the pure and empty form of time. In this form, it is the correlate of the passive ego which appears in time" (ibid., p. 156). Intuition can distinguish between a clear substratum and an ambiguous one. Only by reactivating the "already passed" parts—those vividly swallowed by the clear substratum, namely the ambiguous substratum of continuity—can one complete an open, manifold intuition of time filled with discrete elements, thus manifesting an immanent intuition of life. In previous forms of intuition, if "external differences that cannot be reduced to the conceptual order were recognized," then "these differences remained 'internal' differences" (ibid., p. 53). Consequently, only the intuition of time can summon the irreducible, immanent, and constantly overflowing "intensity" (ibid., p. 54) and its "eternal reconnection" (Badiou, 2018a, p. 46). This intensity is an immanent force. Unlike Spinoza’s indestructible causa sui, it is capable of constant repetition and eternal reconnection; it stands in antagonism to negativity and is a "quasi-cause" (Deleuze, 1990, p. 86) that has ascended to the level of ontology and positivity.

Badiou grasps an Althusserian multiple subject through "direct emotions" (Badiou, 2012, p. 113) that are "unexplainable," directly connected to the "body," and diffused through language and poetry. Unlike Althusser, however, this multiple subject is full of passion and constantly constructs brand-new "situations" (Badiou, 2018b, p. 643) through the rifts of being. But the body itself possesses a duality; thus, Badiou cannot agree with Deleuze’s intuition of time, which originates within the body and combines Spinozist causa sui with Bergsonian duration. Badiou even explicitly opposes intuition. Deleuze’s intuition is the key to ensuring historical duration, but for Badiou, history necessarily passes through the rupture of historical situations. Corresponding to the multiplicity of the subject, Badiou points out four types of situations (cf. Badiou, 2014c, p. 52) and their two natures (cf. Badiou, 2018b, pp. 643–644). Natural and neutral situations are factual in nature, while historical and quasi-perfect situations are evental in nature. Only evental situations can puncture or bore holes in knowledge, creating rifts in the earth of objectivity. "Neither intuition nor language can guarantee the pure multiple" (Badiou, 2018b, p. 59). Whether it is the object of intuition or the capacity for intuition, they only produce "a pseudo-presentation in which coherence and incoherence, being and non-being, are indistinguishable" (ibid., p. 60). A certain incoherent time demonstrates that an event is possible only through a specific procedure of organized control. This is "fidelity." Guided by the results of the operation, time controls from beginning to end when to introduce the specific procedure into the "paradoxical multiple" (ibid., p. 262). One can only intervene in and retroactively return to the event—where "objects" and "relations" finally find their destination—through this specific procedure (namely, the generic procedure endogenous to the fidelity procedure) amidst the uncertainty of time and the "post-evental" mutation. The duality of time itself brings about the duality of fidelity, and even the duality of historical situations. Here, Badiou differs from Deleuze: if time were merely the simple intuition of "the One," it would be impossible to establish a meta-ontology of the multiple-as-multiple in opposition to the One through its own duality.

3. Facing "Difference" Itself

Difference is an unavoidable stage in Hegelian dialectics. When movement passes from objectivity into actuality, difference is necessarily produced; only after difference is withdrawn upward and inward toward identity can the subject establish itself and achieve identity with substance. Building upon Husserl’s "to the things themselves," Heideggerian existentialism demonstrated the rootlessness of identity through the pre-reflective "ontological difference." Deleuzian difference, however, stems from the respect for and guarding of intuition; difference is an absolutely non-conceptual difference, as well as a differential (micro) difference or a minimum difference. It is neither the specific difference ^[9] that determines alterity nor a material difference; nor is it a generic difference ^[10] that cannot enter into any contrary relationship or an indivisible individual difference—all of which belong to conceptual difference. Differential difference is established upon "infinitesimal difference" and occurs in the empty form of time; it is the "undifferentiated difference" (cf. Deleuze, 2019a, pp. 61, 65, 62, 89, 34) that finds its own concept. Difference, through differential singularities, constructs a continuum of minimum difference. However, as a pure limit, it can only lead to a "relative nothingness" whose occurrence is unknown. Upon the "singularity of the continuum" of the differential minimum difference, the "ideal event" (cf. Deleuze, 1990, p. 36, pp. 50–52) is born. The ideal event is not an active "thing" or "fact" in presence; we cannot say it exists, but only that it inheres or persists. Thus, it is the Aion of minimum difference and infinite divisibility. This "minimum pertains to a non-being, a 'passive' entity and a passive result... Time must be grasped twice, in a manner at once complementary and mutually exclusive. The first time, it must be grasped as a living, co-present, active body of pleasure or suffering pain; the second time, it must be grasped as a whole entity infinitely divisible into past-future, and as the incorporeal effect composed by the infinite division into bodies, actions, and passions" (Deleuze, 2013, p. 14). The ideal event, which exists extra-linguistically within capital-B Being, cannot be realized in the present reality. This paradox is called the "Meno Paradox," because Meno knows how to extract the most beautiful and radiant non-being from the present Being. Due to this dynamism, the "nothing" of "relative nothingness" is a "creative nothing."

Badiou’s "difference" no longer argues for the relationship between identity and difference based on the transcendental principles of the supersensible world, but uses the "Two" (cf. Badiou, 2014b, pp. 127–129) to express the difference that cannot be identical. Thus, duality occupies a foundational status in Badiou’s thought. He believes the logic of the world is a multiple composed of sets of "differences of differences," and maintains that only by respecting differentiation can a new subject be constructed through the "incorporation" (which likewise possesses duality). The specificity brought by differentiation need not be regularization; regularization can only bring about an identity politics controlled by designation. Differentiation unfolds the finest parts that can be presented in the present through "atomic logic," while simultaneously plunging into the "tension of existence." For instance, in the construction of a political subject, one must announce, like Merleau-Ponty, that "history never needs recognition" (ibid., pp. 89, 126). This is because any form of recognition ultimately becomes recognition of "the One." The political subject respects difference rather than subduing it, realizing love and tolerance for the difference of differences (rather than the identity of differences), thus escaping identity politics. Consequently, the event, in the form of the "empty set," stands in opposition to the whole and its manifestations, and opposes any form of "the One" at the ontological level. The event is established in the process of the subjectivization of the body; it is the undifferentiated state after the differentiation or pluralization that growls in the future. Therefore, it is the "post-event" marked by the subjectivized body, rather than the event itself, that can be synchronized with the present. The present Dasein of the multiple faces "difference and pre-objectivity," while "the void" faces undifferentiation and the "total absence of the object" (Badiou, 2014b, p. 83). The process of subjectivization lies in the difficult self-struggle of the faithful subject, the reactive subject, and the obscure subject (cf. ibid., p. 122) within a situation, after which the subject is reborn through the "post-event"—which is precisely the creative "Great Subject."

II. The Objective Rift of the Event: Repetition, Multiplicity, and Exception

The "door" (Deleuze, 2019a, p. 68) through which the event haunts is also described by most philosophers of the event as a "rift." This actually connects to a broad socio-historical context. My line of reasoning here is that, having analyzed the subjectivization process of the event in the previous stage, this stage will explore the objective rift of the event. Repetition, multiplicity, and exception are three important markers through which Deleuze and Badiou collectively perceive the occurrence of rifts in the objective field.

1. Repetition: Creation or Fidelity

Repetition was originally Plato’s anamnesis of the soul and the awakening of Hegel’s absolute recollection, used to prove indestructibility and immortality. How then does one awaken that absolute recollection of Hegel’s, which is cut off by the waters of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in the underworld?

Freud already proved the necessity of the unconscious bursting into the processes of the consciousness, the preconscious, and the subconscious. However, how the unconscious slips beneath the bottomless Styx ^[11] by way of the conscious, preconscious, and subconscious remains a difficult problem. It can only be grasped through the "force" of the "intensive quantity" within the instincts. Deleuze believes that the unconscious is differential; it is an unconscious of micro-perceptions under minute differences. The "third transcendence" can only be completed within a suddenly arriving, irreducible "third synthesis." This means that the ego, driven by the internal intensity of the unconscious, triggers an empty form of time—a continuous event within the instant. (Cf. ibid., pp. 158-162) Echoing Badiou’s theatrical mode of argumentation, Deleuze's concept of "repetition" can also be deeply linked to drama; they both seem to perform an innovative repetition of "tragedy" and "comedy" as found in Marx's Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Tragedy and comedy also constitute Deleuze's two most fundamental repetitions. However, while Marx moves toward an irony and critique of historical reality, the latter moves toward an intensive affirmation of nature and spirit. In Hegel’s aesthetic religion, tragedy and comedy point respectively to the irony of self-negation and the certainty of self-consciousness in inward-withdrawing reflection. Deleuze, however, borrows psychoanalytic terminology to transform them into the "unknown knowledge" of "not knowing what one knows" and the nature of "repressed knowledge." He thereby transforms individualistic psychoanalysis into a schizoanalysis of the critique of capitalist ideology. In the practice of repetition, time and space are reduced to media; thus, this is not the Hegelian unity of rational physiognomy and phrenology, but rather "that which contains in itself all the forces of nature and spirit" (Deleuze, 2019a, p. 33). To use psychoanalytic terms, an important result of investigating the phenomenon of repetition is the discovery of the death drive, in which Thanatos and Eros mirror one another. Eros can only be experienced through repetition; Thanatos, as a transcendental principle, is given to Eros through the mode of repetition: "For repetition, the death drive has the value of an original positive principle; it is the very domain and meaning of repetition" (Deleuze, 2019a, p. 35). The death drive is the transcendental principle capable of surpassing the pleasure principle and the reality principle; it replaces any transcendent or capitalistically ideologized empirical object with a Great Murmur ^[12] of silence. Above the two most basic repetitions, there is a highest "third repetition," a "repetition based on difference and the excess in the Idea" (ibid., p. 41). This is a repetition based on surpassing conceptual identity and the condition of negativity; it is a repetition of eternal return in overflow, a repetition that moves toward the "absolute concept-less difference" (ibid., p. 34) of the "One," and a practical repetition based on human communicative action and total liberation. Whether it be difference or repetition, both point toward a base of presence-in-overflow and surplus—a creative repetition that requires no movement of return.

Badiou is unwilling to use the word "repetition," which heavily overlaps with metaphysics, because it is truly powerless to demonstrate the creativity of the event. Instead, he uses "fidelity" to express the Truth of an internal force that is constantly surging and re-presented. In my view, Badiou uses "counting" to critique the eternal return of the Same—much like the "Sisyphus stone"—to interpret the "Capital-O One" of its own destiny through eternal self-repetition. This destiny of identity necessarily requires a Big Other as a pillar; its object of critique is precisely the Hegelian universal, absolute "One." The relationship between Badiou's matheme logic and Hegel's dialectical logic can be mapped as follows: the "One" is a metaphor for the abstract and monolithic "Absolute Idea"; "count-as-one" within a situation requires the "forming-into-one," implying that the latter is the mode of the former; "the operation of forming-into-one is the only operation applicable to any multiplicity considered to exist" (Badiou, 2018b, p. 118), implying that "forming-into-one" can concretize the "count-as-one" by applying it to the "existing multiple." "Count-as-one" hints at Hegel’s identity of difference; in the "situation," the "count-as-one," within the state of the composition of continuous multiples, is "counted-as-one." The latter is the "count of the count," such that the "result of the count" is the "one of itself" (ibid., p. 122), responding to the singularity behind Hegel’s objective movement—that is, the "one-of-one" (ibid.). Therefore, the count of the count is self-counting, and the "meta-structure" that completes the eternal return is precisely the "state of the situation" (ibid.). Regarding the presentation of the multiple, a duality of "appearing" exists within the count: the "presentation" in the "situation," and the "re-presentation" of that "presentation" in the "state of the situation." The existing "one" consists of the "consistent multiples" that are "presented and re-presented," as well as the "multiplicity-of-one" that is "presented but cannot be re-presented"; these represent the "elements of the multiple." Yet within the latter, there remains hidden an indeterminate part of "overflow," which becomes the "superfluity" of the multiple; it is the "part of the multiple" or set that is "unpresentable but only representable"—the "sub-multiple" (ibid., p. 64). Multiples that are "not yet" or "still required" do not exist; they are merely the composition of continuous multiples and the developmental state of the situation. Thus, regarding the ontological structure of the situation, the non-existent multiple can only be named as the void, suturing the situation with its non-existent but non-separated state. This determines the duality and paradoxical naming of the state of the situation. Superfluity is not the original structure. Fidelity is the repetition of the law of the "count"; the subject is a process linked to the fidelity procedure by the intervened event. Within the fidelity procedure lies the indiscernible, indivisible "new-multiple" (ibid., p. 416). Deleuze’s "One" of "relative nothingness," which allows for continuous creative repetition, can only be traced back as a "state" within Badiou’s fictional "not-yet"/“still required,” forming a "meta-multiple" (ibid., p. 129) distinct from the "sub-multiple." The fidelity to the situational counting procedure makes the multiple necessarily exist or repeat within the situation, while the state unearths the wandering void within ontology—this is the "tension of existence."

2. Multiplicity: Toward the "One" or the "Ultra-One"? Deleuze's differential difference is the "Event=X" of a generative multiplicity. The manifestation of the "event" is passive, multiple, and diverse; however, behind the discreteness of multiplicity serves the "One" as a foundation: the force buried deep in the Hegelian earth of night, polished into the "midday" by Nietzsche—this is power ^[13]. The "circumstance" and "affect" of the field are catalyzed by power; the generative drive from the historical "strata" (Deleuze & Guattari, p. 1), the "fold" (Deleuze, 2006, p. 101), and the "lines of flight" (Deleuze & Guattari, p. 1) is power; that which necessarily returns in the chance throw of the dice can only be power. In the game of dice, the throw is the sole activity, the intuitive affirmation of the whole; it can prove that the locus of the permanent return to the ideal event is necessarily inherent within the accidental and indeterminate event "X." Deleuze's "event" exists as a "quasi-cause," much like Lacan’s "objet petit a"; the "event" can gush forth through the "symptom" of the rift in presence. It is invisible and intangible, yet it is there, and it repeats in an infinitive mode. It can be said that it is precisely the infinitive event that Deleuze uses as a metaphor for the dice throw. Within the accidental result of this continuously occurring throwing activity lies the absolute necessity of the "One" of infinite truth and the "power" of eternal return. Thus, the event is the "One" within the multiple infinitive "X." As a necessity within chance, it differs from Kant's synthetic a priori judgment, Husserl's passive synthetic analysis, and Hegel’s final synthesis toward the Absolute; as Žižek says, it is a "disjunctive synthesis" where the form is dispersed but the spirit is concentrated. This leads the discrete multiplicity and the infinitive event of infinitely differential difference to ultimately move toward the ideal event of the indivisible, holistic "One." This is also why Deleuze styled himself as a metaphysician of a certain kind.

Contrary to Deleuze’s view that the event is the "becoming" of the infinitive multiple "X," Badiou does not believe the event itself is a multiple. If there exists an anomalous multiple distinct from the governance of structure, being, or logic, it can only be the "site" of the event (Badiou, 2014b, p. 107). This "site" is the "evental site," which links the "event" to the "situation." It can only occur in historical situations that are anomalous to natural or neutral situations. The multiplicity of a historical situation possesses a unique instability; it is the "withdrawn point" (Badiou, 2018b, p. 217) that the meta-structure of the state of the situation—which ensures identity and necessity through a second count—"fails to grasp." This "totally anomalous multiple," as a "site," stands on the edge of the "void," with no other related elements presented within the historical situation. Therefore, regarding the evental site, "this multiple exists, but what is beneath this multiple does not exist" (ibid., p. 218). The evental site is a "foundational multiple"; it separates the event from the void and becomes the "Ultra-One" (ibid., p. 227) capable of naming the void. The structure and ultimate essence of the "Ultra-One" is the "Grand Two" (ibid., p. 258)—the "Big-letter Two" written through "singularity" (Badiou & Žižek, p. 21). Multiple is no longer the elements and sets of multiples governed by any structured "Capital-O One," but is a "generic multiplicity," making the multiple a name for practice. Badiou’s event thus produces an ontological difference from Deleuze’s ideal event. In terms of the empty set, the "Grand Two" is a transitive set, such that the singleton set (possessing only one "element") is contained as a "part" of the "Grand Two" within the binary set itself; part and element thus form a relation of congruence. Yet this congruence is not an existing identity; it is merely the "Ultra-One."

3. Exception: Becoming or Rupture? Deleuze’s movement of repetition is actually a creative practical movement that breaks the panoptic perspective of the subject. The outward movement is no longer one of objectification or intentionality, but an expansion of the volume of the object-plane, called the movement of the plane of consistency. Deleuze’s "repetition belongs to humor and irony; it is by nature... the exception" (Deleuze, 2019a, p. 15). The exception opposes the particulars of existing rules, manifesting a "singular point" at a turning juncture; "it is itself a system of differential relations" and a "distribution of distinct-singularities (Ideal events)" (Deleuze, 2018, p. 137). Before the Ideal event is differentiated in reality, it is already fully "differentiated" (ibid.). The Ideal event faces the event of "relative nothingness" in the chaotic universe through the logic of "distinct-obscure" (ibid. ^[14]); the repetition of excess triggers the overflow of the exceptional Ideal event. Similar to Bergson's creative evolution, Deleuze’s exception excites wonder and the extraordinary in reality; it is a continuous exception within a holistic entity that becomes indivisible because it is infinitely divisible. This is no longer "nothing new under the sun" or the "new as old" of déjà vu, but "the old as new" (Deleuze, 2019a, p. 38). Under the intuitive manifestation of the body's time, creative "becoming" "belongs only to being or duration, and only concerns the becoming of states within being" (Deleuze, 2004, p. 45). It triggers "affect" from "essence," agitating "circumstances" between intersubjective parties and advancing the "becoming" of events in historical reality. Power is the endlessly repeating "essence" within overflow. The overflow of presence, or the eternal repetition of excess, is exactly like the quantum flow in quantum physics; the lines of flight composed of quantum flows are curves, which take priority over volumes and planes. They construct the objective war machine, the plane of consistency, and nomadic smooth space, breaking through the constraints of "strata" and "folds" toward the "exception." People nomadize and live freely within this space. "Flow" is the power that the war machine uses to drive world history into continuous appearance; micro-pragmatics is the thought-form that expresses this power. Repetition as an event, through the singularity, creativity, and universality of the exception, engages in ontological antagonism against the generality of rule-making.

Similarly, Badiou believes that truth which truly exists—rather than the so-called truths of real existence—is the law of the world...

"Exception" (Badiou, 2014b, p. 103) expresses the "fissure" that inevitably arrives at the limit of the capacity of an existing situation. The exception is faithful only to the event itself, because the event does not occur within the step-by-step "normalcy." Political engagement, traumatic love, the creation of poetry, and the discovery of the mathematical empty set are all exceptions. It must be particularly emphasized that, in algebra, "the axiom of the empty set is an exception" (Badiou, 2018b, p. 595). How, then, does a given multiple "perform an operation that is an exception to transcendental laws?" (Badiou, 2014b, p. 106). Using breathtaking formulas of mathematical logic, Badiou proves the illusoriness of the truth-value of historical metaphysics; the foundational architecture of the exceptional operation lies in the distinction between "belonging to" and "being included in." As mentioned above, in all systems that can be counted, there is one exception: the empty set. The mathematical empty set corresponds to a philosophical proposition of real existence: the void is precisely the proper name of being. The characteristic of "the void" is proven by the "empty set"; it cannot be presented or represented by a "situation," but requires recognition through the "generic" and "forcing" (Badiou, 2018b, pp. 22, 23). The void is not nothingness or non-being, because it can still be presented by the count; nothingness is merely "nil" ^[15], not the void. The crack opened by Deleuze's empty form of time becomes "nil" in Badiou's work. Using the proper name of "the void," Badiou explores the "event" that is absent and cannot "belong to" any "situation." Therefore, the "event" can only be "included in" the "exception" of the fissure of a historical situation. This is fundamentally different from Deleuze's logic of the "One" behind the appearance of the absent event through the fissure of presence. In Badiou's view, although Deleuze's event possesses the attributes and modes of the multiple, the driving force behind the "affect" that brings the event to appearance is the unique "Big One." This has nothing to do with creation, whereas "creation is the nodal point of the problem of choice (or decision), the problem of distance (or the fissure), and the problem of the exception (or the event)" (Badiou and Žižek, p. 12).

III. The Internal Drive of the Event: Immanence, Intensity, and Cause

Whether it is Deleuze's event or Badiou's, both utilize an immanent intensity to link the processes of subjective rebirth and objective fissure. Whether it is a subjectless historical process or a multi-subject historical process, there surges within the body a fundamental cause that differs both from traditional causes that take the Other as the result and from the causa sui (self-cause) that takes itself as the result. In their simultaneous distancing from and proximity to Hegel, they deploy a new materialist attempt: Deleuze's is called democratic materialism, while Badiou calls his own Platonic materialism.

1. Immanence: Rhizomatics and the Descending Dialectic

In Deleuze, the event under the intuitive manifestation of time is a movement of immanent becoming. The immanent event utilizes "singularities" to occupy positions, expressing "individualization" and the repetition of subjectivization. The "affect" of an immanence without a Capital-S Subject, together with the mutually influencing and surging "affections," causes the rigid lines—bent by the stratified forces of the exterior—to curve once again and return to the immanent life itself. The first two meanings of "affection" face and are influenced by the external environment; active joy can only be produced within the third connotation of passive joy, transforming the reactive force into an active force. "Affections" in social interaction and the mutual emotional surging between them are rooted in the "rhizome" (Deleuze and Guattari, p. 6) deep within the earth; the rhizome connects these A Thousand Plateaus, these thousands of atomic individuals. The rhizome grows in the earth, drawing nutrients from Mother Earth, fusing the mystery of the bread and wine with the mystery of the flesh and blood into an immanent upward vital intensity. This allows the "war machine" to transcend the "desiring machine" and "becoming" to cross the timeline of past, present, and future, while external environmental strata are penetrated by the new life of "affect." With the difference of liberated potentials, it completes the dialectical cycle of the event’s territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization.

Badiou's immanence constitutes a methodology of descending from an abstract One to the multiple, a "materialist dialectic" (Badiou, 2014b, p. 94) that contends with totality. This materialist dialectic is also often regarded as a "'descending' philosophical methodology" (Vernon and Calcagno, p. 36); it is a descending dialectic that moves from the "Capital One" to descend, arrive, and be-situated within "generic multiplicity." An immanent methodology implies the emergence of multiple subjects at infinitely localizable evental points; it is also a call for the authentic arrival of Heideggerian being-there which remains as a surplus of presence. An immanent methodology also means that the so-called whole is nothing more than a named "nil." Although, like Deleuze, Badiou displays certain infinitely subdivided immanences, this is not an intuitive immanence, but an immanence that reverses the transcendental pressure of the super-sensible world, forming a methodological confrontation with the spiraling, abstract, and ascending dialectic. Immanence is a decompression of the whole of reality, a "force" (Badiou, 2018b, p. 6) that punches holes in the knowledge of the concrete-total; it is also a generic set of multiple subjects, opposing the logical process of achieving a totality that fits seamlessly with identity through a coercive, interlocking ascent. How can one "un-suture"—that is, unbind the necessity that has been sutured into identity? This is the "disjunctive fissure" (Badiou, 2014a, p. 55) of the totality of being itself, in which the wandering void is produced. This is not being-in-the-world, but "being-in-truth" (ibid., p. 56).

2. Intensity: Eternal Return and "Generic-Forcing"

Drawing Nietzschean nourishment filtered through Spinoza, Deleuze dissects the "conscious impulse" (Deleuze, 2004, p. 24) and the "cause" driving it from behind, manifesting that unnamable emotional state through action. "Affection" is the capacity to receive influence; under the division of passivity and activity, it is the transformation of reactive force and active force. This transformation corresponds to the third connotation of affection, and the driving force of the transformation is "affect," which can only come from passive affection. Passivity includes joy and pain; the process of transformation from passivity to activity has a locus of force, where active joy can only be produced outwardly from the experience of passive joy. Active force is the active power within the passive, rather than the substantive power of objectifying movement. Active force can rise to the level of happiness and love. This passivity is the given passive self, and that which is given by the self is nothing other than intensity. Deleuze uses "power," "the infinity of the once," and "the eternity of the moment" (Deleuze, 2019a, p. 19) to express this intensity. Drawing from Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge, Deleuze argues that history forms strata through integration; it is a structural product of geological layers. In the process of sedimentation, "folds" occur. This fold is like the wake stirred by a boat on the sea—it is a necessary folding of the exterior of the boat into the interior. In Foucault's "Panopticon," the identifiable visible and the decidable articulable are the primary sediments of the strata; what is deposited is nothing other than "knowledge," "force," and the "self." Deleuze, on the one hand, releases intensity from the depths of the earth and fields to achieve the mapping of the nomadic "steppe"; on the other hand, he removes God from intensity, using it to drive the fold to be distorted by flows into lines once again, transforming the Capital-S Subject into a "larval subject" ^[16]. This stirs the nomadic peoples into resonance within affections, galloping joyfully across the steppe.

On the basis of generic multiplicity, Badiou employs the "generic-forcing" procedure to subjectivize the subject into a "Grand Subject" ^[17], pointing toward the "void" subject that is not yet present at the site of rupture, linking the invisible and the inarticulable located in Foucault’s "diagram" and Deleuze’s "geography." The inarticulable in particular is the root of subjectivization. Badiou points out, "The final connection between what is indiscernible and what is undecidable is the trajectory of the existence of the Grand Subject in ontology" (Badiou, 2018b, p. 529). The presence of the "void" represents absence; the fissure between absence and presence cannot be "sutured" (Badiou, 2014a, p. 37) within existence; it can only be sutured through the paradoxical naming of the "void" to reach the "super-one" of the Big Two. The generic procedure produced by the evental "super-one" can under no circumstances be consistent with the procedure of presentation. The generic procedure is the result of the infinite affirmation inherent in the procedure of fidelity; the Grand Subject emerges from the subject. Badiou links the subject with the "super-one," the void with being, and truth with the indiscernible. The sudden event of the indiscernible and the undecidable is that which "forces the event to decide the real of the situation" (Badiou, 2018b, p. 531). If the "situation" represents the objective natural and social fields, then the "Grand Subject" is the place where the field of thought occurs. The "void" exists in both; it achieves forcing through the generic extension of the "Grand Subject" within the "situation," and forcing in turn decides the real of the "situation"—namely, the "void"—through generic extension. "Without the void, philosophy could not be a field of thought" (Badiou, 2014c, p. 67). But the result of philosophy remains immanent because "this void is only a positive opposite, namely the void of action, the void of operation" (ibid., p. 55). Only the active power of the "void, split, non-substantial, and non-reflective" (Badiou, 2018b, p. 4) Grand Subject can expose the fissures that cannot be sutured in existence.

3. Cause: Essence or Event

Deleuze’s A Thousand Plateaus, constructed by affect, comes from internal quasi-causes. A quasi-cause is not a "cause" of forms that must be inferred from other results, nor is it the "self-cause" (Spinoza, p. 1) inferred as its own result; rather, it is the cause of the cause as essence, pushing the event into appearance. "To know is to know through causes" (Deleuze, 2019b, p. 79). The cause makes it necessary for me to achieve self-preservation by means of this "force" (Deleuze, 2004, pp. 60, 120). Cause is force, and "force is identical to essence" (Deleuze, 2019b, p. 82). Essence does not need to achieve necessary existence through any external cause; it is the immanent power, namely "intensity" (puissance). It is active and is the necessary existence of action. "Intensity" is the "identical connection" between causes, embodying the powerful will-force of the immanent "principle of identity or equality, the identity of being or the ontological unity" (ibid., p. 103). The "quasi-cause," as immanent and self-contained intensity, is a "surplus cause" that overflows and cannot be reduced to any cause of presence. It is therefore an "ideal cause" that penetrates into the surplus of presence and achieves a "reversible causality" (Deleuze, 2013, p. 17)—that is, a "quasi-cause." The "quasi-cause" produces "incorporeal effects" and is the essence of "affect." "Affect" belongs to the third connotation of "affection," yet it is the site where "affection" is able to become "affection." "The active causes of these infinite affections come from substance itself" (Deleuze, 2019b, p. 88). It exerts a massive anonymous energy within "diverse affections" (Deleuze, 2004, p. 120), enabling the subject to open up modes of emotional identification within the process of social interaction, to open the schizoanalysis of capitalism, and to establish A Thousand Plateaus of mutually surging connections, making rhizomes connect, intellects clarify, souls purify, and subjects be reborn.

Badiou's accidental transcendence...

The "event" of the "One" is the "cause" that activates all elements in presence; as a "wandering cause" (Badiou, 2018b, p. 74), it does not belong to any situation in presence. On the one hand, the event is a name for the void, and the event can activate the void; on the other hand, it interposes itself between the void and itself. It is both the name of the void and the "supra-One" of the presentation structure. The real is universal, producing events of pure contingency; truth is inaugurated within the event, linking the contingent and the eternal. It exists at the "interior-exterior" of the historical situation: "in the torsion of order, it manifests the being of non-being, which is to say, existence" (ibid., p. 228). The event as cause itself is also the potentiality of the "supra-One," the incoherent real of being, and the occurrence of an interrupted count, pointing toward a fragmented "de-non-being" ^[18] within existence. The original "suspended interval" ^[19] determines a split "Two," a "meta-ontology" that simultaneously excludes and embraces mathematics and ontology.

IV. Differences and Insights from Deleuze and Badiou’s Conceptions of the Event

Both Deleuze and Badiou possess a certain "new Trinity" thought, which constitutes a reconstruction of Spinoza’s trinity of substance, cause, and force. Deleuze’s new Trinity consists of affect, nomadic space, and intensity; Badiou’s consists of being, appearing (the world), and the event. While the two appear vastly different, they are a pair of "paradoxical companions" (Badiou, 2018a, p. 7). They both coincidentally arrive at the rebirth of the subject and the perspective of objective volume, adding invisible immanent intensity as a third term to construct a new Trinity through "1+1+a," presenting and exposing the event through the overflow and surplus of this third term. Within this "new Trinity" framework, the two conceptions of the event first demonstrate a high degree of consistency. Both Deleuze's and Badiou’s conceptions of the event are materialist conceptions with a horizon of historical development; both oppose negative speculative dialectics and objective idealism. Their alignment with historical materialism is mainly reflected in the following: first, history develops immanently, and a comprehensive reflection on capitalism requires a holistic confrontation with capitalist ideology to cut through the reified thorns ^[20] strewn by capitalist modern civilization; second, the new subject is built upon the community of individuals and their immanent, powerful willpower; third, the driving force of history is the creative, hands-on ^[21] action of the community; fourth, world history can only reconstruct the field dominated by instrumental rationality through the warmth of mutual love between human beings.

However, the so-called paradox means that despite their endogenous similarities, they are also full of differences. First, is the event an infinitely differential continuum of a total substance, or a "rupture" confronting a total historical situation? That is to say, is the event calculated via differential calculus or algebraic sets? These different modes of demonstration conceal different epistemological lineages. Deleuze's event, like Foucault's archaeology of knowledge, is broken but not severed, thus belonging to a post-structuralist epistemology. Badiou's rupture between being and the event's situation provides a foundation for the "epistemological break" ^[22]; in this regard, he is closer to the structuralist epistemology of his teacher, Althusser. Concepts such as the "Two" and the generic subject are also further inheritances of Althusser's historical overdetermination and multiple subjects. Second, is the event-fissure sutured within the "empty form of time" of "relative nothingness," or is it exposed in the "void" of the state of the situation? To put it another way, is the event a continuous nothingness or a discontinuous void? The author contends that Deleuze's "relative nothingness" is similar to Derrida's "non-being," implying that in a specific space-time, this nothingness is realized in a particular way. Badiou, however, opposes "non-being" because it is merely a "nothing" in the sense of naming; one can "de-non-be" rather than "de-be" or simply "non-be." Time is not an empty form linking being and non-being; the principle of time is the "sole foundation" of the event (Badiou, 2018b, p. 263). Third, how do ruptural fissures perform objective activity? Contrary to Deleuze's view, Badiou's event cannot use an empty form of time to infinitely differentiate and fill the "fissure"; the fissure of existence can only be exposed, intervened in, and retroactively grasped, rather than selected, judged, or used to "fill in the blanks." Structurally, Deleuze's objective rupture is a Foucauldian stratified rupture that is linked but not continuous, whereas Badiou's is an Althusserian structural rupture. More paradoxically still, while Badiou firmly declares himself to "stand on the anti-humanist front of Althusser, Foucault, and Lacan" (Badiou, 2014b, p. 80), in practice, he moves toward the opposite side—the humanism of Sartre.

Within the brilliant galaxy of French thought, the theory of this paradoxical pair stands as tall as mountains ^[23]. Their small pantheon gathers the essence of thought from literature, history, philosophy, mathematics, and science, as well as the theoretical fruits of various methodologies. There remains significant research space for analyzing the conceptions of the event held by Deleuze and Badiou and their theoretical merits and flaws; the present work can only offer a glimpse ^[24]. Regardless, while focusing on the goals and drivers of historical development, we must not allow the materialist conception of history to spin off-axis away from the reality of the earth, nor ignore the laws of the dialectical development of the productive forces and relations of production.

(Author’s affiliation: School of Marxism, Ningbo University) Source: Philosophical Research (《哲学研究》), Issue 12, 2025 Editor: Huihui