For his part, Deleuze preferred to refer to a time that he called ‘stratigraphic.’ It is certainly important that philosophies succeed one another in time. Nevertheless, these philosophies are virtually coexistent. Every philosophy is virtually contemporary with every other, even if certain logics creep into those that preceded them, and certain concepts are reclaimed in their original form. Thus, in the present, every system of ethics rivals every other, since, in reality, all logics are in non-dialectical conflict with each other.
More precisely, according to Deleuze, any philosopher worthy of the name – that is to say, any philosopher-creator – traces out a plane within chaos. For concepts are born of thought’s confrontation with chaos. Or, in other words: concepts must be created. They are dated and signed, even if later philosophers must divert them from their original function, hijacking their components and their flows. This means that every new plane, if it is to inaugurate a truly new philosophy, even if it should have originated from an anterior plane, must distinguish itself from and find its own autonomy from the latter. But how? Most fundamentally, it is through assuming his own problematics – even if these problematics are not explicitly thematized – that the philosopher has a chance of tracing such a plane. And, on this plane, a new consistency may be given to chaos, by means of the singular creation of the arsenal of connected concepts that populate it. For Deleuze, the style is the philosopher.
Thoma Duzer – in Memorian: Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) in Collapse III