We are now in a position to contrast the differing views of difference as conceived by Derrida and Deleuze. As we have said, their respective uses of Nietzsche in the face of Heidegger's criticisms, along with their respective interpretations of Heidegger's criticisms, reveal the fundamental structure at work in their respective concepts of difference. So we shall begin by summarising Heidegger's criticisms, showing point by point why Deleuze rejects them, before turning to Derrida. Deleuze agrees with Heidegger's basic point that Nietzsche is formulating an ontology, while rejecting the substance of the rest of Heidegger's reading. Derrida, on the contrary, agrees with Heidegger that, if Nietzsche were an ontological thinker, then Heidegger's criticisms would indeed apply. For Derrida, however, Nietzsche is not a thinker of ontology, but rather, one who has articulated a new conception of the sign, one devoid of any traditional pretences to truth.

Deleuze contra Heidegger

By way of introduction, we can say that Deleuze would agree with Heidegger's evaluation that Nietzsche is an ontological thinker, in the sense of one who attempts to formulate an account of being. This, however, is where Deleuze's consonance with Heidegger ends. For Heidegger, in so far as Nietzsche is an ontological thinker, and in so far as all ontology determines being as presence, Nietzsche too is a thinker of presence. Thus, when Nietzsche employs the term ‘will’, as in ‘will to power’, in order to characterise the fundamental creative, expressive, and expansive impulse underlying all of life, Heidegger unavoidably reads this in a substantialist way, assigning it a quiddity. Conversely, Deleuze says, ‘when we posit the unity, the identity, of the will we must necessarily repudiate the will itself’. Deleuze reads will to power in a purely relational way, as the explosive, pulsational communication between two or more divergent series. Moreover, though it is certainly elemental and constitutive in the creation of spatio-temporal dynamisms, in the production of qualities and extensions, it is not the differential element for Deleuze. Rather, this role is occupied by the notion of intensity, an essentially asymmetrical, implicated inequality, a fundamental difference. The will to power is the differential principle.