Becoming is a particularly hard thought to think. So hard, in fact, that at almost every point is it subordinated instead to 'Being'. This is particularly the case when becoming is thought of as simply another word for 'change'. But to think becoming as change is to more or less forget the specificity of becoming altogether. Why? Because to assert the primacy of becoming is precisely to assert what we might call becoming without terms. That is, it's not that one 'thing' becomes another 'thing'. Thinking of Becoming in this way just reverts back to thinking in terms of Being (becoming here is subordinate to 'things', which are primary). If becoming has any cogency at all, it must not be thought of as occurring between two terms, but as a concept self-sufficient unto itself.

Consider Deleuze: "[in Becoming] There is no terminus from which you set out, none which you arrive at or which you ought to arrive at. Nor are there two terms which are exchanged. The question ‘What are you becoming?’ is particularly stupid. For as someone becomes, what he is becoming changes as much as he does himself."

To properly understand this, one needs to turn to the question of relation, which is inseparable from the question of becoming. This is because relations, like becoming, always stand outside the identity of any one thing. For example, while the predicate 'blue' might belong to the subject 'sky', the relation "taller than" does not necessarily 'belong' to the subject Peter. Peter might be taller than Paul, but shorter than Mary. In this case, "taller than" does not properly 'belong' to the concept of Peter (there is nothing 'intrinsically' "taller than" about Peter). The relation stands outside of it's terms.

Relations then, belong not to being, but to becoming. Here is the philosopher Daniel Smith, writing on the topic: "If properties belong to something solid, relations are far more fragile, and are inseparable from a perpetual becoming... If relations are external to their terms and do not depend on them, if relation is the domain of becoming (if every relation envelops or implies change), then one might say that, at the limit, or at a deeper level, there are not even terms, but only packets of variable relations. What we call a term in itself is only a packet of relations." (Daniel Smith, The New).

One way to understand the scope of these claims is to recognize in them some of the central principles of empiricism. Whereas rationalism staked it's claim in grasping the world from the point of view of a concept which could be analytically decomposed into exhaustive predicates (e.g. the concept triangle, with it's three sides and interior angles adding up to 180 degrees, etc), empiricism begins not from concepts, but from a kind of exploration of the world that begins instead in relations. Insofar as relations escape the 'solidity' of the concept (of the 'thing'), it's to relations which empiricism looks to kick-start it's philosophical program.

Whether or not one agrees with the perspective above, I think it's important to at least recognize the strangeness and the specificity of the notion of becoming. To respect, as it were, the singularity of becoming to at least give it a fair hearing, whatever one may make of the idea.