The Self-Consistency Problem of the Philosophy of Difference: How Can Stability and Openness Coexist?
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The philosophy of difference gives priority to difference over identity, yet this very priority presents a fundamental problem of self-consistency: If difference is primary, how are stable structures possible? And why is generation not entirely absorbed by structure? This paper argues that the problem ultimately concerns time. A review of major lines of thought, from Heraclitus to Simondon, suggests that although existing theories have approached the relationship between generation and stability from different directions, they have not simultaneously established the conditions under which stable structures emerge and the structural grounds for their impossibility of complete closure. Against this background, the paper examines a new theoretical approach: understanding the differencing operation of difference as time. This approach identifies three minimal constraints—distinguishability, asymmetric differentiation, and persistence—to explain how stable structures emerge. It invokes the incompleteness of finite structures to explain why a structure cannot fully encompass its own conditions of generation. Stability and openness can thus coexist within the same process. Building on this account, the paper positions Ω (the primordial field of difference) as the ontological locus of the non-internalizability of finite structures, rather than as a new substantial principle. It also understands measurable time t as the projection of temporality onto stable structures. The paper does not seek to provide a final answer. Rather, from the perspectives of intellectual history and theoretical comparison, it aims to clarify the key conditions for the philosophy of difference to overcome its problem of self-consistency and to examine one possible path toward a solution.
Author: Chen, Lijun
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225732839
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