This book integrates insights from Spinoza’s metaphysics, Peirce’s semiotic theory and Deleuze’s philosophy of difference in conjunction with the formal operations of category theory. Spinoza, Peirce and Deleuze are all, in different ways, philosophers of immanence. The methodological questions raised by a commitment to immanence in their respective philosophies are addressed by author Rocco Gangle in terms of diagrammatic practices understood in a highly general sense. The link between philosophical immanence and diagrammatic practice is established by demonstrating with the tools of category ... More

This book integrates insights from Spinoza’s metaphysics, Peirce’s semiotic theory and Deleuze’s philosophy of difference in conjunction with the formal operations of category theory. Spinoza, Peirce and Deleuze are all, in different ways, philosophers of immanence. The methodological questions raised by a commitment to immanence in their respective philosophies are addressed by author Rocco Gangle in terms of diagrammatic practices understood in a highly general sense. The link between philosophical immanence and diagrammatic practice is established by demonstrating with the tools of category theory how diagrams may be used both as tools and as objects of philosophical inquiry via diagrammatic reasoning. Category theory reveals deep structural connections among logic, topology and diverse other areas of mathematics, and it provides constructive and rigorous concepts for investigating how diagrams work in a variety of contexts. Gangle offers a basic introduction to the relevant methods of category theory from a philosophical and diagrammatic perspective that allows philosophers with little or no mathematical training to come to grips with this important field. This coordination of immanent metaphysics, diagrammatic method and category theoretical mathematics opens a new horizon for contemporary thought.