Book | Chapter

We have already said that for "late philosophy," the history of philosophy is not a mere illustration, a sort of complementary addition to the development of discourse: a method of enriching and specifying a meaning otherwise completely expressed in itself. History is the diachronic dimension of philosophical process, an essential aspect of positioning new meaning. "The history of philosophy," G. Deleuze wrote in his dissertation, "in our opinion, has to play a role similar in many respects to the role of collage in painting."¹ The collage allows us to make a new meaning out of meanings already expressed and historically connected with a certain context; the new meaning then appears as a figure of meanings, an arrangement or rather a consonance of meanings. I think we are dealing here not so much with collage as with a polyphonic development of the perennial philosophical theme — what is a being as being?We shall begin with a graphical illustration, at first taking the term "textual collage" almost literally.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-3407-3_6

Full citation: