“Every creation is singular, and the concept as a specifically philosophical creation is always a singularity. The first principle of philosophy is that Universals explain nothing but must themselves be explained.”
According to Deleuze and Guattari, the question “What is philosophy?” is not one to ask meaningfully at the beginning of one’s intellectual journey. It is a question for old age. For a moment of clarity between life and death, when everything comes together, albeit briefly. When younger, one may dominate, analyze, and theorize the question. But it is only later that the question can finally grab hold of one.
For Deleuze and Guattari, now is that moment. And their answer remains constant: philosophy is the art of creating concepts. But this answer is not abstract or general. To say what philosophy is requires one to pose the question among friends, in the face of enemies, within particular historical and existential circumstances. It is not merely a definition but an act, an occasion, a creation.
An evocative idea of Deleuze and Guattari is that philosophy emerges with the figure of the friend. Where other cultures had sages, the Greeks invented the philosopher, not the wise man, but the lover of wisdom, the friend of wisdom. The friend here is not an empirical person but a conceptual persona, a condition of thought itself. This friendship is not passive affection. It is an active engagement –a challenge, rivalry, dialectical tension. The friend in philosophy becomes a “claimant,” even a “rival”, especially in the agonistic setting of the Greek polis. Here, the philosopher enters a political and intellectual contest, creating concepts as claims to truth that must withstand dispute.
For Deleuze and Guattari, the true work of philosophy is the creation of concepts. Not merely reflecting and/or conveying them but instead inventing them. Concepts do not present themselves readily as pre-formed kernels of truth. They are to be crafted, often with pain, often with strange or poetic language, and with a signature. Philosophy is not contemplation, which belongs to the objects themselves. It is not reflection, which is something anyone can do without philosophy. And it is not communication that trades in opinion, not creation. Philosophy creates the concepts of these actions, but is not reducible to them.
Concepts are not eternal essences. They are singular, contingent, and historical; yet, they are not arbitrary. They carry a kind of necessity –one that belongs to their creator. As such, philosophy is always personal: “You will know nothing through concepts unless you have first created them.” Philosophers leave a trail of conceptual singularities: Aristotle’s substance, Descartes’ cogito, Kant’s condition, Bergson’s durée. But these are not static monuments; they live, mutate, and demand new articulations across time and space.
Philosophy has always faced rivals: first the sophist, then the human sciences, and today, marketing, advertising, and tech design. These new “concepts” claim creativity without thought. Concepts are emptied of their philosophical rigor and repackaged as brands. In this context, philosophy must resist becoming promotional. It must hold onto its task, not to sell, reflect, or opine, but to create. Even if others borrow the term “concept”, only philosophy remains committed to its true labor, which is to think anew.
Deleuze and Guattari are critical of post-Kantian thought’s encyclopedic engagements and ambitions and the banal professionalization of philosophy today. Instead, they call for a pedagogy of the concept –a way of training the mind in the art of creating. This means confronting the conditions under which concepts are born: their historical and existential urgency, the conceptual personae (like the friend, the rival, the lover) that animate them, and the necessity of their form and style. The concept is not given; it is to be created. And the philosopher is not a teacher of truths, but a maker of meanings.
What Is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, Columbia University Press, 1996
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