2 - Breaking Theological Icons

Summary

This chapter introduces the first and perhaps most obvious sense in which Deleuze's theology is iconoclastic: it hammers away at the Platonic notion of icons as good copies of ideal models. In fact, his whole philosophical project contributed to the inversion or “reversal of Platonism,” a phrase Deleuze borrows from Nietzsche but develops in his own way. Here, as elsewhere, his hammering is both critical and constructive. Deleuze aims to destroy both copies and models “in order to institute the chaos which creates, making the simulacra function and raising a phantasm – the most innocent of all destructions, the destruction of Platonism.”

Exploring Deleuze's passion for overturning Platonism is also a good place to start because it further clarfies the sense in which his iconoclasm is theological. He rejects Plato's hypotheses about the conditions for the experience of axiological engagement, challenging the way in which they appeal to iconic representations of idealized and morally determinative transcendent entities. Deleuze is even more combative toward the appropriations of Plato among later Christian theologians and philosophers who attempt to represent the infinite as a personal creator and legislator. As we will see, Deleuze's own theological proposals will attempt to invert the entire domain of representation.

This chapter also explores a first sense in which a Deleuzian inspired iconoclastic theology can be considered “Anti-Christ.” Deleuze would expose and flatten every putative image of transcendence, and he is well aware of the way in which “Christ” has functioned as such an image in Christianity.