Technologies of Difference
1 Sep - 17 Nov 2026
Tuesdays
6:00pm - 8:00pm
About
French philosopher Martial Guéroult, a decisive influence on the generation of the 1960s including Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, held the Chair of the History and Technology of Philosophical Systems at the Collège de France in the 1950s. But what would it mean to speak of philosophical systems as a “technology”? And are philosophers, in some sense, technologists of thought? For Guéroult, every philosophy is a constructed architecture of concepts: a system whose internal structure is organised by reasons that make its world of ideas intelligible.
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This course explores how modern philosophy reshaped our understanding of art, technology and science through a rethinking of what we might call a technology of difference. Rather than treating difference as a secondary variation within a stable world, philosophical thought increasingly came to understand it as a productive force, something that generates change, creativity and new forms of experience. This shift transformed how knowledge, artistic practice and technological activity came to be understood.
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At the centre of the course is the idea that philosophical concepts function as technologies of difference. They do not simply describe reality but actively shape how it appears, how time unfolds and how transformation becomes possible. Through these conceptual tools, philosophy recast reality as dynamic, historical and open-ended.
The course follows this trajectory through four key thinkers: Leibniz, Fichte, Bergson and Heidegger. From Leibniz’s account of singular perspectives, through Fichte’s philosophy of activity, Bergson’s concept of duration and Heidegger’s rethinking of being and technics, we trace how difference becomes central to thought itself.
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Across these figures, art emerges as a site of creation rather than representation, science as a historically situated practice, and technology as a mode of revealing rather than a neutral instrument. The course invites participants to see philosophy as an active force that reshapes how we understand change, creativity and modern life.
What will we cover?
G.W. Leibniz’s Differential World
Close readings from texts such as Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology to explore how Leibniz reconceives reality as composed of singular perspectives rather than identical substances. Difference appears here as internal to the structure of the world itself, expressed through the multiplicity of viewpoints that make up a unified cosmos.
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J.G. Fichte’s Productive Difference
Examination of selections from the Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) to understand how difference emerges from activity. The self is not a fixed identity but arises through acts of self-positing and limitation, revealing thinking itself as a dynamic process structured by tension and opposition.
Henri Bergson’s Temporal Difference
Readings from Time and Free Will and Creative Evolution to explore how Bergson’s concept of duration (durée) reconceives time as a qualitative flow. Difference here becomes the internal creativity of time itself, through which novelty and transformation continuously arise.
Martin Heidegger’s Ontological Difference
Close engagement with Being and Time and later essays to unpack Heidegger’s distinction between Being and beings. This difference reveals how worlds are disclosed through historical configurations of thought, reshaping our understanding of art, science and technology.
Requirements
This course is designed for students with some background in modern philosophy, though more important than prior expertise is an open and curious mind.
Tutor
Daniel Weizman
Price
£300
Location
Fitzrovia, London
Our Location
We are located at Fitzrovia Community Centre, 2 Foley Street, London W1W 6DL
Our classes take place in a modern meeting room, just a short walk from Goodge Street and Oxford Circus Underground stations.
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The location is fully accessible, with step-free access and facilities to accommodate all mobility needs.
