Wolfgang Neuhaus

This paper offers a reconstructive reading of Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. Rather than providing a comprehensive commentary on Deleuze’s philosophy or engaging in debates within the extensive secondary literature, it seeks to clarify the conceptual architecture that underlies the work by reconstructing the sequence of philosophical problems through which its central concepts are developed. The analysis argues that Difference and Repetition is best understood as a systematic project of genetic ontology. Beginning with a critique of identity as the traditional foundation of metaphysics, Deleuze establishes difference as the primary ontological principle, reconceives repetition as the productive movement of becoming, develops a genetic account of thought through the critique of recognition, and explains the emergence of individuals through processes of individuation. These concepts are interpreted not as independent doctrines but as interconnected stages within a unified explanatory framework. The paper argues that Deleuze’s originality lies less in the individual concepts he introduces than in his systematic replacement of static modes of explanation with genetic ones. Read in this way, Difference and Repetition emerges as a coherent ontological project that explains the genesis of relatively stable identities from ongoing processes of differentiation and becoming.

Process and Reality is widely regarded as Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophical masterpiece, yet its conceptual architecture is often obscured by the complexity of its presentation. Rather than offering a historical commentary or an exegetical reading, this paper reconstructs the philosophical core of Whitehead’s ontology by reorganizing its central ideas according to their logical dependencies. Beginning with the problem of how stability can emerge within a world of continuous becoming, it traces Whitehead’s shift from substance to process and reconstructs the conceptual framework that follows from this transformation. The paper argues that actual occasions, prehensions, concrescence, nexus, societies, and creativity constitute the ontological core of Whitehead’s process philosophy, while eternal objects and God complete its broader metaphysical system through distinct explanatory functions. This layered reconstruction preserves the integrity of Whitehead’s speculative vision while clarifying the internal architecture of his process ontology and making its central philosophical insights more accessible for contemporary discussion.

This paper develops an account of structure within a process-based ontology by introducing the concept of sedimentation. It argues that structures are not static entities or underlying substrates, but dynamically stabilized patterns emerging from repeated interactions. By interpreting structure as sedimented play, the paper explains how persistence can arise without presupposing fixed foundations. This framework provides a unified account of stability, constraint, and transformation across physical, biological, and social systems.

This paper develops a process-oriented ontology in which being is understood as “play”: a dynamic configuration of interactions, degrees of freedom, and emergent regularities. Against substance-based and information-theoretic ontologies, it argues that reality consists not of underlying entities or pre-given structures, but of relational processes that continuously generate and transform stability. “Play” is introduced as a conceptual framework to describe how patterns, rules, and structures emerge immanently through recurring interactions and balancing processes between order and disorder. Within this framework, rules are neither externally imposed nor fundamentally fixed, but arise contingently and stabilize through resistance and repetition. The paper further interprets life and consciousness as reflexive forms of play in which the world becomes capable of relating to itself. By rejecting teleological explanations and first-cause metaphysics, the proposed ontology conceives of reality as an open-ended process of becoming.