Deleuze, Plato. Phantom, phantasy and simulacrum

Abstract

The main object of this paper is to demonstrate that some of the main traces of Deleuze’s concepts of phantasm and simulacrum stem from the platonic concept of phántasma. As I intend to show, the first of these concepts is an assembly of the platonic phántasma and Freud’s notion of phantasy and the second is the product of a Nietzschean reading of the platonic phántasma as the symptom that shows the way to the reversal of Plato’s philosophy. Both concepts articulate the critic that Deleuze directs against the dogmatic image of thought in the project of reversal of Platonism which is central to his particular reading of the Sophist’s main problem, that of non-being.