Gilles Deleuze makes a paradox of ethics. Throughout his oeuvre, he establishes polarities (affirmation versus negation, difference versus identity, rhizome versus arborescence, etc.), and demonstrates rhetorically a preference for one pole over the other. This would seem to constitute, if not an obligation or imperative, at least an urgency, a suggestion that those who find his discussion compelling should favor that one pole and act in such a way as to promote it or move toward it. However, for a variety of reasons, it proves difficult or even impossible to put this 'ethics' into practice. / This thesis examines the reasons for this impossibility through close readings of four of Deleuze's texts, Nietzsche and Philosophy, Difference and Repetition, Anti-Oedipus, and A Thousand Plateaus. In each text, I highlight the polarities, showing where Deleuze's expressed preference lies. Then I demonstrate the obstacles to an implementation of this preference. Moving from text to text, I trace how Deleuze's attempts to deal with the question of ethics change over his career, becoming more sophisticated and opening up new problems and possibilities. / Although the nature of the paradox of ethics varies from case to case, I discover at least two difficulties in general. The first concerns the move from the abstract to the concrete: Deleuze often expresses a polarity in abstract or metaphysical terms, which collapses when extended into the concrete. Metaphysically, affirmation is sharply distinguished from negation; where affirmation creates difference, negation levels difference to produce homogeneity. Practically, however, it is impossible to locate this distinction in the world; no person, place, thing, or event can be said to be either affirmative or negative. / This relates closely to the second general difficulty, the insertion of the subject. Even if it were possible to make a practical distinction between two poles of value, it is impossible to locate the subject in relation to those poles. That is, even if the world can be said to behave affirmatively or negatively, the subject is only accidentally related to this behavior, and so ethics becomes a purely ontological matter, bearing no relation to the will or intention of a subject.

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