If, as the Ontic Principle affirms, there is no difference that does not make a difference, then the Ontological Principle directly follows. Deleuze, following Duns Scotus, gives a particularly clear formulation of the Ontological Principle:
…Being is said in a single and same sense… of all its individuating differences or intrinsic modalities. Being is the same for all these modalities, but these modalities are not the same. It is ‘equal’ for all, but they themselves are not equal… The essence of unvocal being is to include individuating differences, while these differences do not have the same essence and do not change the essence of being… (Difference and Repetition, 36)
A bit later Deleuze goes on to remark that,
The words ‘everything is equal’ may therefore resound joyfully, on condition that they are said of that which is not equal in this equal, univocal Being: equal being is immediately present in everything, without mediation or intermediary, even though things reside unequally in this equal being. (DR, 37)
As Deleuze puts it in the magnificent elevenths chapter of Expressionism and Philosophy (a chapter that should banish all doubt that Deleuze’s thought is a variant of neo-Platonism),
…[P]ure immanence requires as a principle the equality of being, or the positing of equal Being: not only is being equal in itself, but it is seen to be equally present in all beings. And the Cause appears as everywhere equally close: there is no remote causation. Beings are not defined by their rank in a hierarchy, are not more or less remote from the One, but each… participat[es] in the equality of being, receiving immediately all that it is by its essence fitted to receive, irrespective of any proximity or remoteness. Furthermore, pure immanence requires a Being that is univocal and constitutes a Nature, and that consists of positive forms, common to producer and product, to cause and effect… Thus the superiority of causes subsists within the viewpoint of immanence, but now involves no eminence, involves that is, no positing of any principle beyond the forms that are themselves present in the effect. Immanence is opposed to any eminence of the cause, any negative theology, any method of analogy, any hierarchical conception of the world. (173)
In many respects, the Ontological Principle is simply another way of formulating the Ontic Principle. If there is no difference that does not make a difference, then it follows that “to be” is to both differ and produce difference. When Deleuze evokes remote causation, his target is entities such as the Platonic forms, Plotinus’ One from which all else is said to emanate, Kant’s categories, Hegel’s Geist, the sense-bestowing cogito of phenomenology, signifiers, etc. In other words, the Ontological Principle is an affirmation that banishes any sort of overdetermining cause that affects all other beings without itself, in turn, being affected. Henceforth, all vertical being will be banished and the world or universe will necessarily be understood as flat or horizontal without any causes that are “out of scene” and secretly determinative of the rest. The Ontological Principle thus announces a democracy of being as opposed to an aristocracy of being, insofar as there is no sovereign form of being (forms, categories, subject, signifier, God, etc) that coordinates the rest without itself being coordinated in terms. All beings are equal in the sense that all beings are and insofar as all are differences.
I am tempted to say that the Ontological Principle is a peculiar sort of principle in that it seems to mark the closure of any ontology. Here, of course, I do not have in mind the understanding of ontology as articulating the “furniture of the universe”, but rather of ontology as asking the question of “being qua being” or what can be said of being as such independent of any beings. Here being qua being would be exhausted in the declaration that being is said in a single and same sense for all that is. The Ontological Principle would thus direct us squarely to the ontic.
As a consequence of the Ontological Principle it thus seems that another principle, again articulated by Latour, follows: The Principle of Irreduction. The Principle of Irreduction states:
Nothing can be reduced to anything else.
If the Ontic and Ontological Principles are both affirmed, it follows that no being can merely be an effect or product of anything else insofar as any being, as a being, makes a difference. To reduce one being to another being, say signifiers or atoms, is to declare the only the being to which the other being is reduced makes a difference. The Principle of Irreduction sounds, at the outset, scandalous as, for example, it seems to return us to mind/body dualism and a world where everything is disconnected from everything else. However, the Principle of Irreduction does not state that there are no relations of dependency in and among beings, only that all beings contribute a difference. Consequently, while it is certainly the case that my body would not be possible without DNA, DNA, in unfolding, must nonetheless undergo translation as it transports itself (Latour’s Principle, which I now think is distinct from the Ontic Principle), and the body formed in translation with DNA produces its own differences. The Principle of Irreduction leads to a very strange ontology that spells the ruin for the principle of individuation wherein act-ualities are individuated from one another by not being able to occupy the same position in place and in time. Rather, the Principle of Irreduction opens a world in which individuals can exist within other individuals, all existing at different levels of scale such that an individual even exists with spatially dispersed parts as in the case of a social movement like the Zapatista movement which is both an individual and composed of many individuals. In all events, the relation between individuals is not one where one type of individual explains the rest without remainder, but where processes of translation must take place.
Larval Subjects . 
January 11, 2009 at 9:31 pm
[…] of the object-oriented metaphysics I’ve been developing in my recent posts (here, here, and here). I am deeply flattered by the thoughtfulness and time that Reid has put into this. Reid’s […]
January 17, 2009 at 8:21 pm
hi again,
One comment related to my comment on the other post. Again, a lot of this is over my head and/as I’ve not read many/any of the works you’re referencing. But in as much as I get it (and maybe I don’t, if so then I apologize) it seems to me that The Principle of Irreduction is false, or that it’s at least as much prescriptive as it is descriptive. I mean, reduction is an action. I think we could think of contexts wherein people reduce some things to others, and do so successfully and without problems at least as judged by the standards of the people who make those reductions. The principle seems to imply that all standards which allow reduction must be mistaken (if not then I’d like to hear how, please); if that’s the case then that seems to me to be itself a mistake.
take care,
Nate
January 17, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Yeah, the Principle of Irreduction is, in part, polemical and hyperbolic. I’ve drawn it from Latour where, in its full form, it reads “nothing is either reducible or irreducible to anything else.” Ultimately the Principle of Irreduction is a principle pertaining to work, labor, or cost. The idea isn’t so much that nothing can be reduced to something else– we can always attempt reductions and sometimes we’re successful –but rather that any reduction requires labor, cost, work, or translation from the one thing to another. The Principle of Irreduction thus functions as a sort of injunction to keep track of this labor and these costs.
In order to illustrate this point, I’ll start in the ontic realm of relations among objects, where one object strives to reduce another object to itself. The benefit of this approach is that it underlines how the Principle of Irreduction is an ontological affair rather than an epistemological affair. Thus, for example, what is a cell doing when it takes nutrients from its environment? The cell is striving to reduce this other entity to itself insofar as the nutrients are both to become elements of the cell or to allow the cell to continue on in its processes and activities. However, in order for this translation to take place there is a cost and a labor because the other element resists in a variety of ways. In reducing the other entity to itself it never simply reduces it to itself, but also transforms it. Similarly, one can always try to reduce the world to signifiers as some linguistic idealists do, but this requires all sorts of labor and struggle with the other things of the world that resist the signifier or don’t quite fit with the signifier. Lacan is better than most in this register because at least he leaves a place for waste or the remainder (objet a), rather than claiming that the signifier is unilaterally successful in its reduction.
In the case of the sciences, what we refer to as successful reductions– say, for example, “water = H2O” –are generally final products of a long line of translations, that involved a good deal of collective and technological struggle. Laboratories and new technologies had to be made, all sorts of scientists had to be enlisted, bodies of knowledge had to be mobilized, etc. In the final equation we miss all this and forget just how much labor or cost was involved in this reduction. Moreover, the “black box” (water is H20) can always be re-opened and new controversies or disputes can ensue. The point is that the other entities must be “convinced” to play along, and often they only play along in a half-assed way, resisting in a number of ways. Not only must other humans be convinced of the reduction, but there’s a struggle that ensues among objects themselves– as in the case of the cell and its nutrients –where there’s a struggle on the part of one entity to enlist other entities in its aims.
January 18, 2009 at 11:55 pm
hey LS,
thanks for clarifying. If you don’t mind my asking, what’s the scope of application you have in mind for all this? That is – is this for dealing with issues in the philosophy of science or does it also travel to social analysis? I ask in part because one of the things that I think has given me pause in this (in addition to just not understanding a lot of it and not having read almost anything you’re talking about, an experience which is important because humbling but also uncomfortable) is that some of the time I get a sort “this could be a theory of everything!” kind of vibe. That may be a mistake on my part, though.
take care,
Nate
January 19, 2009 at 6:09 pm
[…] that “There is no difference that does not make a difference”, which is to say that every being both is and makes a difference. But what is difference if not a relation of some kind? And it is precisely the priority of […]
January 20, 2009 at 6:16 am
Thanks for posting these valuable quotes (for those like me, who are unfamiliar with Deleuze’s texts) and brief exposition.
Peace~Thomas Bridges
January 20, 2009 at 7:35 am
[…] of my metaphysical project– a principle which sadly has gotten scant attention –is the Ontological Principle which states that being is said in a single and same sense for all that is. This principle is […]
May 15, 2009 at 8:16 pm
[…] would look like in very schematic forms in my post Principles of Onticology (and here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). In developing this ontology it should be noted that […]