20th Series on the Moral Problem in Stoic Philosophy

This chapter concerns the spatio-temporal actualization of the event into a state of affairs. The Stoic master wills the embodiment of the event into a limited present. The Stoic master identifies with the quasi-cause (events causing other events) to will the embodiment of the event. This also becomes the representation of the event. This willing of the event seems a dramatisation with the Stoic master as first, an actor with the pure event in eternal time (the Aion) being the character. Later Deleuze calls the actor a mime. The Stoic master in this role gets compared to a Zen master. Deleuze begins with the example of Diogenes Laertius comparing philosophy to an egg with the shell as Logic, the white as Ethics, and the yolk as Physics but says that Diogenes rationalizes - what we really need is aphorisms/anecdotes or koans. Later he criticizes Plutarch for rationality hostile to Stoic philosophy. Hence this series reads more like a collection of koans than a rational presentation. For example, Deleuze says that Divination grounds Ethics and discusses the fortune-telling art. The dramatisation of the Idea from virtual into actual as discussed in Difference & Repetition p. 216 - 218 (Columbia University Press edition) compares with the dramatisation of the actualization of the event.