EXPERIENCE, TIME, AND THE SUBJECT: DELEUZE’S TRANSFORMATION OF KANT’S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY

by

Anupa Batra

B.S., Bradley University, 1994 M.Ed., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1996

M.A., Boston College, 1999

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Philosophy

in the Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale

August 2010

UMI Number: 3426647

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DISSERTATION APPROVAL

EXPERIENCE, TIME, AND THE SUBJECT: DELEUZE’S TRANSFORMATION OF KANT’S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY

By

Anupa Batra

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Ph.D.

in the field of Philosophy

Approved by:

Dr. Sara Beardsworth, Chair

Dr. Douglas Anderson

Dr. Ryan Netzley

Dr. Kenneth Stikkers

Dr. Stephen Tyman

Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale

June 8, 2010

i

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Anupa Batra, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Philosophy, presented on June 8, 2010, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: EXPERIENCE, TIME, AND THE SUBJECT: DELEUZE’S TRANSFORMATION OF KANT’S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Sara Beardsworth The aim of this thesis is to show that Deleuze develops a new conception of experience. I

do so by showing the roots of this new conception in a transformation of Kant’s

transcendental philosophy. Kant is central to Deleuze’s project because Deleuze finds in

Kant the idea that the justification for truth is internal to the relation of subject and object.

Since the internal relation is vital to Deleuze’s notion of experience, his project is formed

as the problem of transcendental conditioning, as was Kant’s. However, Deleuze argues

that Kant did not take the critique far enough since he was able to examine claims to truth

but not the idea of truth itself. Deleuze’s notion of experience is developed in and

through his attempt to overcome this problem.

I show that Deleuze transforms Kant by rethinking four key notions. First, Deleuze

reconceives the notion of the system of experience. He argues that Kant’s notion of the

system of experience closes off experience so that nothing genuinely new could occur.

For Deleuze, experience does not form a single system but, instead, there are multiple

systems of experience and they arise from within experience. In addition, new systems of

experience can occur for Deleuze. Second, he rethinks the notion of the transcendental

conditions of experience such that they condition experience but arise from within

experience. Experience can always be opened up in a new way. Moreover, since

experience can occur in a genuinely new way, the subject must be able to be transformed

ii

as well. Third, then, he also rethinks the notion of the subject. For Deleuze, we cannot

begin with a subject that is self-identical. He provides an account for the production of

the subject. The transcendental conditions of experience belong to experience itself, not

the subject. The subject and the object of knowledge are produced together when a

system of experience opens up. As a result, the subject and object are necessarily in

relation and, for this reason, the object can always in principle be known by the subject.

Fourth, although Deleuze relies on Kant’s conception of time to explain the subject’s

relation to itself, he transforms both the subject’s self-relation and the conception of time.

In Kant the subject simply cannot know itself as it is, but only as it is given to itself.

Deleuze’s subject, which also cannot know itself, can nonetheless genuinely be

transformed and become different from itself. The transformation of the subject occurs at

the moment that a new field of experience is opened up. In conclusion, Deleuze shows

that new experience can always occur.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... i

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER 1 – On the Centrality of the Kantian Critical Philosophy for Deleuze ...... 13

CHAPTER 2 – The Notion of System .......................................................................... 57

CHAPTER 3 – The Production of a System of Experience ....................................... 104

CHAPTER 4 – The Subject and Time ........................................................................ 147

CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 189

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................... 195

VITA ..................................................................................................................... 199

1

INTRODUCTION

This thesis claims that for Deleuze philosophy is the task of overcoming the hindrance to

thought represented by what he calls “the dogmatic image of thought,” in order to free

thought to create new concepts and new kinds of life. I argue for the importance in his

endeavor of Deleuze’s relation to Kant. This project is an interpretation of Difference

and Repetition,1 which is acknowledged as Deleuze’s major work on Kant. It will show

the intelligibility of Deleuze’s concept of thinking by demonstrating its roots in a

transformation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. A further objective is to contribute,

thereby, to making Deleuze’s philosophy accessible to a more general philosophical

audience.

Deleuze argues that the dogmatic image of thought represents a tendency that occurs

in philosophy itself, and for this reason we need a new conception of philosophy that

includes within it the self-critical relation. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant had

conceived of the critical philosophy precisely for this purpose.2 Reason examines its own

limits in order to avoid overstepping them. If philosophy is to have a critical relation to

itself it must reflexively ask the question of what philosophy is. Metaphysics in the sense

of a critical self-examination is therefore the most immediate task of philosophy.

However, Deleuze finds that the Kantian critical philosophy, too, falls into the dogmatic

image and therefore represents the hindrance to thought. For Deleuze, we must

understand how thinking has been hindered and how it must now be conceived. I claim

1 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton (Columbia University Press: New York, 1994); page 86. Hereafter cited as DR followed by the page number. 2 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), A158/B197. Hereafter cited as CPR followed by the page number in the A edition and B editions.

2

that Deleuze’s project is carried through as a critical transformation of Kant’s critical

philosophy and his new conception of thinking is the result. Deleuze reserves the term

“experience” for this new conception since conceptual thought will have to be understood

as occurring in and through experience, not apart from it.

I argue that Kant is central to Deleuze’s project because he finds in Kant the idea that

the justification for truth is internal to the relation of thought and its object. In other

words, thought and its object are understood as being in an essential relationship. Since

this relation is vital to Deleuze’s notion of experience, his project is formed as the

problem of transcendental conditioning, as was Kant’s. However, Deleuze also argues

that Kant did not take the critique far enough since he was able to examine claims to truth

but not the idea of truth itself. For Deleuze, Kant’s dogmatism is represented in his

theory of transcendental Ideas, which express the relation between the transcendental

conditions of experience and empirical experience. In Kant the relation is one of simple

correspondence. Deleuze retains but transforms the Ideas, thereby transforming the idea

of transcendental conditioning. This enables him, in turn, to account for how we can

think what is new.

According to Deleuze, Kant’s shortcoming lies in his method. In seeking the

transcendental conditions of experience, he simply traced back from the end result,

knowledge, to its conditions. As a result, experience can only occur as recognition for

Kant: the subsumption of particulars under given universals. For Deleuze, in contrast,

recognition is itself grounded in a more profound act of thinking. I show that what

allows Deleuze to account for thinking the new is that he draws the transcendental

conditions from the process of learning, not from the end result. Deleuze argues that

3

experience begins from problems, and Kant’s theory of Ideas provides him with a way of

developing his own conception of problems. Ideas, or transcendental problems, pose a

systematic field and thereby open up knowledge. Knowledge is knowledge of empirical

objects or, in other words, empirical inquiry. There is knowledge only insofar as

empirical objects appear as the solution to a transcendental problem. Recognition occurs

at this level of empirical inquiry. But experience, for Deleuze, is the opening up of the

systematic field of empirical inquiry. Problems therefore represent the only

transcendental conditions of experience for Deleuze. Ideas function both

epistemologically and ontologically in Deleuze. They account both for the fact that

objects can be known and for the being of these objects.

I then show how Deleuze accounts for the production of a system of experience once

it has opened up. The objects that belong to a system are produced internally to the

system through a process of individuation. Kant had, of course, used the forms of space

and time to account for the difference between individuals. In contrast, Deleuze argues

that space and time do not serve to explain individual difference but must themselves be

explained. Thus Deleuze gives an account of the production of space and time. The

spatiotemporality of individuals is the result of the process of individuation. In this way,

Deleuze avoids the problem Kant could not seem to resolve: showing how intuition could

come into relation with concepts. The end result of the production of a system of

experience is objects that can be recognized and known conceptually.

Deleuze’s account of experience forces us to reconsider the question of the subject.

Since experience is essentially experience of the new, for Deleuze, the subject is itself

transformed through experience. In other words, a self-identical subject could not

4

withstand experience. Deleuze develops his idea of the subject out of a tension he

discovers in Kant. For Kant, the subject’s relation to itself occurs as the relation between

the transcendental and empirical subject, and time is the form in which this relation

occurs. Deleuze argues that the subject’s relation to itself is static in Kant since the

empirical subject corresponds exactly with the transcendental subject. In Deleuze, in

contrast, the transcendental conditions can never be brought into complete resolution with

the empirical (that is to say, with what is conditioned). The subject’s relation to itself is

therefore always in the process of occurring and is never complete. Since time is the

form of the relation between the transcendental and empirical subject, it is understood by

Deleuze as the form of change itself, and as the condition of the transformation of the

subject. Experience is only possible for Deleuze because it can be temporally

differentiated. The transformation of the subject occurs at the moment that a field of

empirical inquiry opens up. Moreover, the subject can always be transformed anew since

experience can never be complete.

Chapter 1 presents Deleuze’s relation to the Kantian conception of critique. I show

that in a range of texts—from Difference and Repetition to Nietzsche and Philosophy and

selected seminars on Kant and Leibniz—Deleuze is arguing that the question of truth is

not the primary question for philosophy since it depends on sense or meaning.3 The more

fundamental question of sense cannot be asked at the empirical level and requires the

move to the transcendental level. I am therefore claiming that Deleuze is primarily

interested in the Kantian critical philosophy because it is the discovery of the

transcendental. With the notion of the transcendental, Kant is able to conceive of internal

3 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). Hereafter cited as NP followed by the page number.

5

critique. Internal critique is grounded in the idea that the relationship between knowledge

and the objects of knowledge is internal. As a result, we can understand how truth, the

agreement of knowledge with its object, occurs internally to this relation, in contrast to

the idea that truth is justified by something external to the relation. This makes it

possible to critique claims to truth. Deleuze proposes to advance the idea of internal

critique not only in order to understand truth as internal but also to explain how the

relation by which truth is justified comes to be generated internally. From this, we will

be able to understand how the new arises internally, from within experience. As a result,

we can examine when thought is hindered and falls into dogmatism.

My major argument in chapter 1 is that, according to Deleuze, internal critique in Kant

is made possible by the theory of the transcendental Ideas of reason, discussed by Kant in

the “Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic: The Regulative Employment of the Ideas

of Pure Reason” and “Transcendental Doctrine of Method: The Architectonic of Pure

Reason” in the Critique of Pure Reason. There are three Ideas that are important here:

God, World, and Self. Their significance lies not in the content of these Ideas but in their

manner of functioning and their role in experience. In Difference and Repetition Deleuze

argues that what is interesting is the regulative functioning of the Ideas, the fact that they

are “problematizing.” The Ideas postulate that what we find empirically forms a

complete system, that it is completely ordered, and that this is due to order imposed

transcendentally. Since the object of the Ideas is the complete system, which is not

empirically given but must be represented, the Ideas serve to draw together empirical

inquiries that would otherwise remain fragmented. In other words, they provide meaning

otherwise lacking to particular empirical cases. Without the Ideas, empirical particulars

6

would remain fragmented and indifferent to one another. Thanks to the Ideas, the object

of knowledge does not occur apart from the concept by which it can be known. The

Ideas thereby open up the field of inquiry and, through them, we can examine the field of

inquiry itself.

I make clear in this chapter that Deleuze’s general criticism of Kant is that he, too,

falls into dogmatism. Deleuze’s reason for this criticism has to do with Kant’s method

for seeking the transcendental conditions of experience. In claiming that Kant simply

traced from the end result, knowledge, back to its conditions (the transcendental concepts

of the understanding), Deleuze is arguing that Kant treats experience as though it were

hypothetical instead of real. The result of his method is that the conditions of experience

are static and unchanging. They are simply conditions of possibility and they remain

external to what they condition. Experience occurs when the transcendental concepts of

the understanding enter into relation with the empirical, yet, because these conditions are

static for Kant, experience can only occur as recognition: knowledge, an empirical case

of cognition, occurs when the manifold of intuition is recognized as a particular case of a

universal concept. Since the Ideas express the way in which the transcendental concepts

of the understanding relate to the empirical, they represent Kant’s dogmatism. The

relation is one of simple correspondence. The Ideas therefore bring the empirical and

these transcendental conditions (the categories of the understanding) into complete

resolution. In other words, in Kant, experience is closed off through the Ideas and must

be understood as forming a totality.

Chapter 2 shows that Deleuze’s own conception of experience arises in and through

his transformation of central notions of Kant’s critical philosophy. For both Kant and

7

Deleuze, the meaning of objects is only possible because experience forms a system. In

Kant all of experience forms a single system, which can be conceived through the Ideas

of reason. Difference and Repetition reconceives the relation between the system and

what lies beyond it, the indeterminate, thereby transforming the notion of system. For

Deleuze, there are multiple systems and they arise from what is indeterminate. This is

because, for him, a system is not the totality of experience. A system is only experience

insofar as it is ordered by one particular Idea. The notion of the Idea is transformed as

well, such that it indicates one aspect of experience that becomes extracted from it, by

which experience is then found to be systematically ordered. Once a system of

experience has opened up, the production of the diversity of individual cases of objects

follows. These cases are meaningful and are distinguished according to the order of that

particular system. In this way, the transcendental conditions of experience themselves

account for the systematization of experience and for the diversity of cases that occur

within it. For Deleuze, experience can never be resolved into a totality, that is to say, into

a single Idea or set of Ideas, because it cannot be determined in advance what new Ideas

can occur.

I go on to show that, since transcendental conditions emerge from experience or, in

other words, objects of experience, these objects are not completely ordered. In Kant

something is an object only insofar as it has exactly one meaning, which is found by

identifying the object in the system within which its meaning arises. Since this is not the

case for Deleuze, he does not refer to objects as empirical but instead claims they are

8

always partly “virtual” and partly “actual.”4 Transcendental conditions, or Ideas, arise

from experience as problems because the meaning of the object can come into question

through tensions within it that are virtual and, in this way, the source of meaning also

becomes a question. The object then becomes reoriented in accordance with its new

meaning, as a solution to the problem that had arisen from it. It is transformed through its

reorientation. The term “actual” reflects the fact that the object has become a solution.

Deleuze continues to use the term empirical only in regard to knowledge of the empirical

object in Kant’s sense. Yet, for Deleuze, knowledge is knowledge of the object insofar as

it is the solution to a problem.

Chapter 3 focuses specifically on how the individuals or empirical cases that comprise

a system are produced once the system has opened up. Deleuze argues that the forms of

space and time cannot be used to explain the difference between empirical cases, as Kant

had done. For Deleuze, empirical cases can only be explained as arising through the

process of individuation. Individuals come to have spatiotemporality through this

process. He uses the term “intensity,” which is taken from physics and biology, to

develop this account. For him, intensity is an internal difference in that it does not occur

between two units that are already distinct but, instead, occurs within a singular thing and

creates a difference within it. The notion of intensity takes us from the Idea to the

production of individuals within a system of experience.

This chapter also explains how experience occurs for a human subject. I show that the

process of learning, and hence experience, begins because the transcendental does not

completely overlap with the empirical. It begins when a sign appears to us as a shock.

4 Deleuze develops the notions of the virtual and actual in Chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition and in the essay, “The Actual and the Virtual” in Dialogues II, trans. Eliot Ross Albert (New York: Columbia University Press), 2002.

9

The sign is emitted in the rupture of a virtual tension of an object. The ambiguous status

of the sign reflects the complex relation between the transcendental and empirical: the

sign is not empirically known but it appears within empirical experience precisely as that

which is outside of ordered experience. I argue that during the shock there is a

disorganization of experience, which entails an undoing of the transcendental order by

which experience had been structured meaningfully up to that point. No particular

meaningful object can be thought since meaning itself has arisen as a question. In other

words, during the shock there is nothing empirical since experience has not yet been

ordered by transcendental conditions. As experience organizes itself, there is a

corresponding activity occurring within the unconscious of the subject. The subject can

only learn insofar as she is willing to engage with a particular external element, such as

water when learning to swim. Once the system has been produced, the subject is able to

use concepts to refer to the stable cases of the system. Concepts occur at the empirical

level of the organization of experience, for Deleuze, as they express the kinds of

empirical cases that occur. At this stage, the subject is able, once again, to recognize

objects or cases around her.

Chapter 4 turns to the question of the subject. On this question Deleuze both

maintains the internal relation of the subject with the object that he finds in Kant and

addresses problems he finds in the Kantian conception of the subject.5 The central

complaint that Deleuze makes of Kant is that he simply attributed the conditions of 5 Deleuze’s criticisms of the Kantian subject are scattered through a number of texts: the second, third, and forth chapters of Difference and Repetition, “Preface: On the Four Poetic Formulas Which Might Summarize the Kantian Philosophy,” and several seminars on Kant dated 14 March 1978, 21 March 1978, and 28 March 1978, and the 20 May 1980 seminar on Leibniz. Gilles Deleuze, “Preface: On the Four Poetic Formulas Which Might Summarize the Kantian Philosophy” in Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).

10

experience to the subject. This, of course, allowed Kant to successfully argue that the

relation of subject and object is an internal one. However, Kant did not show why these

conditions come to belong to the subject. Deleuze solves this problem by arguing that the

subject is produced anew along with a system of experience. Since there is no subject

prior to the objects it knows, the relation between them will be a necessary and internal

one. The chapter shows how the subject is produced in experience for Deleuze. In Kant

every representation of the subject must become part of the inner state of the subject.

Since time is the form of inner intuition, any change in the subject or in the subject’s

experience is given in time. Thus the subject in Kant can only know itself in time.

Deleuze takes his cue from Kant in making time central to understanding the identity of

the subject. However, for Deleuze, time is not merely a subjective condition. It is a

condition of experience itself and, as a result, we can have not only a transformation in

the subject’s representation but a transformation in the subject as well.

I therefore show how Deleuze’s conception of the subject arises from Kant’s. Deleuze

claims that since the transcendental conditions correspond exactly with the empirical for

Kant, the subject’s relation to itself is in fact static and reduced to the instant. His

criticism of Kant on this point is that the subject can never change or be new but always

remains the same. Deleuze agrees with Kant that the subject’s relation to itself is

temporal but, since new transcendental conditions can always arise from experience for

Deleuze, the subject’s relation to itself is always in the process of occurring and is never

complete. In this sense, the subject is always fractured and never identical to itself. For

Deleuze, then, the subject genuinely changes. Time is the form of change because the

subject comes into relation with itself and becomes different from itself through time.

11

Kant’s “Transcendental Deduction” provides three syntheses by which experience

occurs: the synthesis of apprehension in an intuition, the synthesis of reproduction in

imagination, and the synthesis of recognition in a concept. These also show how the

subject synthesizes experience in time since, in the first synthesis, the manifold of

sensibility is synthesized in a single moment, in the second the multiplicity of

representations is synthesized across time, and in the third the multiplicity of

representations is synthesized by subordinating them to a concept. Deleuze argues that

Kant simply presumes the form of time, and that an account of time must be given. To

this end, he sets out three passive syntheses of time, which serve to account for the

synthesis of time itself: the synthesis of the living present, the synthesis of the past and

foundation of time, and the groundless form of time. The first synthesis gives us the

continuity of ordinary clock time. The second synthesis gives us the absolute past of

ordinary time, and it explains why ordinary time appears to have no beginning. The third

synthesis gives us the institution of ordinary time. For Deleuze, each system of

experience has its own temporality or its own order of ordinary time. The third synthesis,

I argue, is the key to understanding time as the form of experience in Deleuze and so the

constitution of the subject in experience. The opening up of a new system is only

possible because experience can be temporally differentiated. In other words, experience

only occurs as temporal disruption. The introduction of transcendental differentiation

constitutes a break in experience, and it is only in this break that a new system and its

order of time can occur, as well as the subject of that system. Thus, chapter 4 will show

that Deleuze’s novel conception of time allows him to conceive of the subject as always

open to transformation and to conceive of experience as always able to occur in a new

12

way. Together, the four chapters will show how Deleuze transforms the notion of

transcendental conditioning such that conditions are understood as arising from within

experience. That is to say, Deleuze accounts for the opening up of experience and

transforming of experience internally, from within experience.

The overall objective of the dissertation is to demonstrate that Deleuze’s philosophy

articulates a post-critical metaphysics. I will show that his conception of philosophy

retains the critical relation that philosophy has with itself, following Kant. In addition,

Deleuze retains the idea that the subject and object have an internal relation. Moreover,

his critique of Kant transforms the notion of transcendental conditioning so that it

accounts not only for our knowledge but also for the being or reality of things. As the

dissertation will show, this is not a return to a precritical metaphysics. Rather, as I will

articulate in the conclusion, Deleuze’s metaphysics opens up the “sphere of immanence.”

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CHAPTER 1

THE CENTRALITY OF THE KANTIAN CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY FOR DELEUZE

INTRODUCTION

My thesis claims that Deleuze develops a new conception of experience. I argue that this

new conception must be understood as developing out of Kant’s critical philosophy. This

chapter examines what Deleuze finds so vitally important in Kant: the idea that the

relation of thought and object is an internal not an external one. With Kant, it is no

longer the case that thought tries to grasp objects that appear according to laws beyond

us, like divine laws we cannot know. Instead, objects appear for thought only because

thought structures experience a priori. The internal relation of thought and object means

that we can grasp the laws by which objects appear to us. I argue that the internal

relation of thought and object is important for Deleuze because it allows him to develop a

conception of thought whose task is not simply to grasp an object correctly, but to grasp

what allows objects to appear. Deleuze’s purpose is to rectify the fact that philosophy

has traditionally conceived of thinking as “representational.” The idea that thought is

representational is grounded in the claim that thought simply represents what is real, and

thinking is equated with making true or correct judgments. Deleuze’s criticism is that the

idea that thought is primarily representational is a narrow conception of thought. Simply

being able to make true statements does not mean there is possession of knowledge in a

genuine sense. I will show that Deleuze’s own conception of experience is intended to be

a richer conception of thinking. According to Deleuze, thinking is not simply the correct

application of concepts. Instead, it is what occurs in the production of concepts. In this

sense, thinking is inherently thinking what is new.

14

In order to develop the idea of the internal relation of thought and object, Deleuze

must turn to the idea of system in Kant. This chapter works out the connection between

the internal relation and system in Kant. In order for an object, a particular case, or a

judgment to be meaningful for thought, whether the judgment is true or false, it must

occur in relation to a system. If knowledge did not form a system and were merely an

aggregate, that is to say, if it were merely a collection of fragments with no unifying

laws, it would mean that the principles of knowledge lay outside of thought. In other

words, if knowledge in Kant did not form a system, the relation of thought and object

could not be internal. The transcendental Ideas of reason are what make the system

possible. Thus in order to develop the idea of the internal relation Deleuze must turn to

Kant’s theory of Ideas. The Ideas allow us to conceive of experience as forming a whole.

For this reason, according to Deleuze, they make it possible for us to examine not only

the truth or falsity of judgments but also meaning, on which truth and falsity depend.

Meaning only arises through the system and, therefore, the Ideas allow us to see how

meaning arises.6

However, Deleuze finds that Kant’s project is not sufficient for philosophy to be truly

critical. The critical philosophy was supposed to free thought from the authority of what

is transcendent to thought and to legitimize what it can know on its own grounds. I will

show that, for Deleuze, Kant’s shortcoming was due to his method. Kant presupposed

what would count as pure knowledge–mathematics and geometry, and then determined

the transcendental conditions by simply tracing back from these. The problem is that

Kant discovers conditions that are merely static and are simply part of the structure of

6 I will therefore return to the question of meaning in section 3 below, after the discussion of the transcendental ideas in section 2.

15

thought. As a result, knowledge can only occur as recognition: correctly subsuming what

is given in intuition under a concept. Deleuze considers this to be dogmatism because

thought can do no more than identify what is given as a particular case of what is already

known in the form of concepts. He argues that thought is still not free with Kant because

it is now subject to the demands of reason. Thought is no longer subject to an authority

beyond itself but it serves only to legitimize what is already known. For Deleuze, we

must have a broader conception of thought that allows us to see how we produce the

concepts by which we know something. Examining Deleuze’s criticism of Kant will

allow us to see the problems Deleuze must overcome in developing his own conception

of experience, which I will turn to in Chapter 2.

1. KANT'S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Kant’s project must be understood in relation to the philosophical atmosphere at that

time, as a response to it. In developing Deleuze’s relation with Kant, Christian Kerslake

provides an excellent interpretation of the motivation behind Kant’s project in his article,

“Kant, Deleuze, and Metacritique.”7 Kerslake argues that Kant perceived that intellectual

intuition is impossible for human thought. For finite rational beings there can be no

immediate, intellectual knowledge of things in themselves since they must appear as

spatial and temporal. Nor do we have divine intuition since we cannot produce the object

that we think in intuition. Our intuition is passive in that an object must be given to us.

Since God must be understood as infinite and since knowledge of the infinite could only

occur directly and immediately, the loss of intellectual intuition amounts to the

speculative death of God. Knowledge of God is impossible for humans. This is 7 Christian Kerslake, “Deleuze, Kant, and the Question of Metacritique,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy XLII (2004), pp. 481-508.

16

understood as a crisis in thought since the relation between thought and being can no

longer be understood as direct and immediate. A chasm is opened up between thought

and being because of the passivity of our intuition. We do not even know if thought has

any relation to objects. Therefore in order to claim that knowledge is possible, it must

first be shown that a relation between thought and being does, indeed, occur through the

chasm. Kant’s work is aimed at determining what relation human thought has with being

and, thus, what we can legitimately know.

For Kant, the crisis in thought meant that we could not presume the existence of an

independent object causing sensation. Kant’s critical philosophy is distinct from both

rationalism and empiricism in this regard. The latter function under the presumption that

thought comes into relation with an object that is independent of it. The way in which the

Kantian philosophy is situated in relation to rationalism and empiricism is important for

Deleuze. It seems to be his concern in the seminar of 20 May 1980 on Leibniz, which is

devoted to a comparison of Leibniz and Kant on the ideas of the finite and infinite. He

argues that one reason for Kant’s success in rethinking the relation of thought and being

is that he begins from the idea of the finite. In Deleuze’s view, the rationalists began

thinking from the infinite. For this reason, finitude was conceived as occurring only as a

consequence of the limitation of the infinite. According to the Leibnizian view, the

model of finite human knowledge is divine knowledge, of which our knowledge is only

an imperfect version. Divine and human knowledge differ only in degree not in kind.

The accuracy of human knowledge is evaluated in reference to divine knowledge (the

criterion for its truth), that is to say, in how close it comes to the latter. In other words,

human knowledge has legitimacy only in relation to infinite divine knowledge. When

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human knowledge is understood through its difference from divine knowledge, the

objects of knowledge must be things in themselves, not simply what they are for us. For

the Leibnizian, what appears to the senses can only be considered distorted in comparison

to the objects of divine knowledge, which are essences of things. Deleuze suggests that

before Kant the subject is understood in the history of philosophy as having a

fundamental defect. It is as a result of this defect that things appear as they do to the

subject. The sensible element of finite knowledge is the result of our imperfection and

limitation, of our not being God, and it is sensibility that prevents us from having

knowledge to the same degree as the divine. The sensible is not anything positive and,

for this reason, our concepts of space and time are entirely conceptual even though they

are perceived through the senses. We arrive at these concepts by abstraction, so they are

objective and not a priori. On this view, our sensible cognitions are the same in kind as

our intellectual cognitions, just less clear and distinct. When something appears to us, it

is the occasion to try to know it, to try to get to its essence. Deleuze claims that the

motivation behind Plato’s epistemology, to take one case, is to find a way to overcome

our infirmity, on account of which we experience mere appearance, in order to get to

essence. Although we try to get to what the object is apart from its relation to us, we can

never succeed. This is only possible for the subject whose intuition is not limited by

sensibility.

Deleuze’s aim in characterizing Kant’s project as established in the finite human

condition is to bring our attention to the fact that the critical philosophy does not begin

from the assumption that human knowledge is a flawed and imperfect version of another

kind, divine knowledge. We could only consider human knowledge flawed if there were

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an object it could not get to, an object which was not graspable for it because of its finite

nature. Kant reinterprets sense intuition as a unique kind of intuition rather than as a

flawed and limited version of intellectual intuition. Since our intuition is passive, finite

human knowledge cannot be compared to knowledge that is possible through another

kind of intuition. In other words, Kant examines human knowledge on its own terms, not

in reference to divine knowledge. The contribution of sensible intuition is therefore

considered something positive. In the seminar on Kant dated 14 March 1978 Deleuze

makes the argument that, with Kant, appearance in intuition is not to be interpreted as a

distortion of a true object, but as the appearing of the object itself. In other words, the

subject is no longer understood to be defective and instead is constitutive of the appearing

of objects. The appearance cannot legitimately be contrasted with a so-called true object

or essence. The notion of appearance implies that something can be an object only under

certain conditions –space and time. These are subjective and in us since they are the

conditions under which anything can come into relation with the subject. Space and time

are not conceptual and abstracted from objects but, instead, the forms of sensible

intuition. Whatever falls outside of the limits of these conditions can never be an object

for us. Kant thereby critically restricts theoretical knowledge to possible objects, that is

to say, to appearances only. Since essence, in the Platonic sense, cannot come into

relation with us in principle, it is not a possible object of knowledge. In other words,

with Kant, the object is not something independent of the subject, whose essence the

subject simply grasps correctly or incorrectly.

As I said earlier, the problem Kant feels he must address is how a relation between

thought and being could occur. As Kerslake argues, “thought is cast adrift” in having no

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direct relation to the object and in having to rely on intuition that is passive.8 However, it

is the passivity of intuition that also makes it possible for Kant to transform the relation

of thought and being. The object is no longer understood as something independent of

thought, but instead there is an object only insofar as something appears in sensible

intuition. In sum, the relation becomes internalized. What is given in intuition is taken

as object. Kerslake argues that it is the Kantian ‘as’ that is central to the Copernican

turn.9 There is no object apart from the fact that the subject organizes sensation into an

object. Empirically, we know objects because what is given in sensation is taken as an

instantiation of a concept and thereby as an object. Thus the categories of the

understanding, which give us the concept of an object in general, must apply to whatever

is given in sensation. It is only because we passively receive something in intuition that

it can be organized. In other words, with Kant, thought does not simply seek to reveal

what is out there. This kind of direct relation is impossible. We can no longer presume

that being is ordered prior to its coming into relation with thought. The ordering of being

occurs when sensation is taken as an object because sensation is taken as a part of the

ordered system. Therefore, while it had previously been understood that the relation of

thought was with what already had order, with Kant the relation of thought is with what

thought itself organizes into an object.

As said, the relation between thought and object must be understood as an internal

one. In other words, the critical restriction of objects of knowledge to appearances allows

us to understand the object and knowledge as fundamentally related. The conditions of

the former are also the conditions of the latter. This relation is given as the axiomatic

8 Christian Kerslake, “Deleuze, Kant, and the Question of Metacritique,” p. 493. 9 Ibid., p. 498.

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claim: “The conditions of the possibility of experience in general are likewise conditions

of the possibility of the objects [Gegenstände] of experience.”10 In Deleuze’s view the

entire Critique of Pure Reason is devoted to establishing this principle and, thereby, to

establishing the internal relation of thought and being. He thinks that the internalization

of the relation is the creative moment of the critical philosophy. Its significance is not

only epistemological but also ontological

Kant therefore adds a third logical value: the determinable or rather the form in

which the undetermined is determinable (by the determination)…It amounts to the

discovery of Difference…no longer in the form of an external difference which

separates, but in the form of an internal Difference which establishes an a priori

relation between thought and being.11

Thought and being are brought about together in Kant because there is nothing, no

being, until there is organization. Just to be clear, for Kant this “nothing” is what is

transcendentally negated. In other words, for Kant we cannot claim anything is, in a

positive sense, without the ordering structure of thought. The internal relation of thought

and being makes the self-reflective moment of the critical philosophy possible. Since we

can interpret what we are able to know as something positive, we can understand human

knowledge on its own terms and for what it actually is, rather than in relation to some

other kind of knowledge. That is to say, we can ask the question, what are the structures

of reason that make possible what we are, in fact, able to know? When we properly

understand the structures of reason, we can determine what kind of object we can know,

10 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), A158/B197. Hereafter cited as CPR followed by the page number in the A edition and B edition. 11 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton (Columbia University Press: New York, 1994); page 86. Hereafter cited as DR followed by the page number.

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in principle: the object to which we have the right (the question de jure that Kant is so

concerned with).

As a point of comparison, we can examine what the relation of thought and being is

for empiricism and rationalism. In Kant’s Critical Philosophy Deleuze makes the point

that while empiricism and rationalism are opposed to each other in certain essential

respects, they both require a final harmony of subject with object.12 For the empiricists,

the object of knowledge can be reduced to its sensual aspect, while the claim of

rationalism is that objects are, at bottom, purely conceptual. In both cases, however, the

mind simply conforms to the object in knowing it, and therefore their relationship is

external. The object has an identity independent of the knowledge of it. Knowledge is

simply the agreement of mind with object, and the relation between the order of ideas and

the order of things is simply correspondence. Neither empiricism nor rationalism is able

to explain the agreement of a correct idea with the object. Neither is able to explain truth.

Something external and transcendent must be invoked to legitimate and guarantee the

correspondence, that is to say, God. Since the relation is external and is legitimated by

what is beyond the possibility of human knowledge, the correspondence of idea and

object cannot be understood in principle.

Since the relation is internal for Kant, knowledge and its objects are necessarily

related. It is the necessity that the relation carries that makes Kant revolutionary. As a

result of this necessity, the critical philosophy is able to achieve a kind of certainty that is

impossible for empiricism or rationalism. For Kant, the empirical identity of the object is

not independent of the possible knowledge of it, since the transcendental conditions are

12 Gilles Deleuze, Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 11-14. Hereafter cited in the text as KCP, followed by the page number.

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the same for both (empirically, of course, the object could be unknown or incorrectly

known). Deleuze expresses it in this way: Kant “[substitutes] the principle of a necessary

submission of object to subject for the idea of a harmony between subject and object

(final accord)” (KCP 14). The principle by which the object submits to the subject is the

principle of possible experience. The agreement of a correct idea with the object is not

just correspondence and can be understood because their relation is internal. As a result,

truth occurs internally to the relationship of knowledge and the objects proper to it.

Critically restricted theoretical knowledge contains its own validity. We are able to make

necessary and universal judgments about experience, about objects, only because they are

our own representations, because the conditions for objects are subjective. The empirical

laws we discover in experience derive their necessity from the pure laws of the

understanding, without which experience would not be possible. In fact, we discover

such laws only because the understanding prescribes laws a priori to experience. We can

then gather these empirical laws into a science such as physics. These laws hold with

necessity and universality because they apply only to our own representations. We have

the expectation of consistency and of order: that whatever will come will fit in with the

order we have already seen. In fact, we always assume our experience is consistent with

what we already know. Since all empirical laws derive their necessity from the pure laws

of the understanding, theoretical knowledge itself provides the grounds by which to judge

whether a particular judgment is true or false. Theoretical knowledge, as conceived by

Kant, contains its own criterion of truth.

Moreover, the internal relationship of thought and being makes the critical self-

examination of philosophy possible because it allows the critique of claims to truth to

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occur. As we said above, Kant shows that theoretically restricted knowledge has the right

to possible objects of knowledge. It has this right because it has a necessary relation to

its object. Therefore the judgment of true or false can apply only to knowledge of

possible objects. (Whatever is not a possible object is simply off-limits for theoretical

knowledge.) Kant shows that in order for the relation of thought and being to occur,

thought must take what is given in a particular way. We get to the foundation of truth

because, through an examination of our faculties, we can determine how thought must

take what is given. Since truth is nominally defined as the agreement of knowledge with

its object, here the question is to determine if knowledge is in agreement with how

something must be taken as object. A judgment is considered true if that is how,

empirically, an object must appear to us because of the way the understanding necessarily

functions. For Kant, since we can understand the basis on which a judgment is true or

false, we are able to critique any claim to truth. This is revolutionary since, before Kant,

the justification of the truth of a judgment was external, and therefore we could not

possess the criteria by which to distinguish between the true and the false. Kant’s critical

philosophy is self-reflective because of the internal relation of thought and object.

However, the internal relation of thought and being that is proposed by Kant requires

the idea of the totality of experience. By itself, a single judgment is a fragment. It

requires a broader context, or system, since a judgment can only be meaningful through

its relation to other judgments and to the system. When the relation of thought and being

was understood as external, the judgment was presumed to occur in relation to a broader

context that was transcendent. It was understood as transcendent since, of course,

experience as a whole was beyond the scope of finite thought and could not be grasped

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by it. Deleuze is interested in how Kant responds to this issue. He provides a discussion

of it in his seminar on Kant dated 14 March 1978. Kant emphasizes that knowledge

consists of universal and necessary claims, which are universal and necessary only

because they apply to experience as a whole. Therefore we need the idea of the totality

of experience. However, since experience only gives us the particular and contingent, a

posteriori claims will only be particular and contingent. We can never form the idea of

the totality of experience when we consider experience empirically. We are always led to

make another addition because experience is fundamentally fragmented. Empirically we

can never know if the next case will not be the exception: maybe the sun won’t rise

tomorrow. Thus the idea of the totality of experience is only possible a priori, through

the Ideas. Even though we never have experience of the totality of experience, we still

have an idea of it. In this way, the Ideas provide a way of understanding the system of

experience as being internal and, thus, the internal relation of thought and object is

possible only through them.

2. THE THEORY OF TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant defines the Ideas in general in Book I of the

“Transcendental Dialectic” entitled “The Concepts of Pure Reason.” An Idea is a

concept of an object that transcends possible experience. We can think these objects but

never know them. Although there is an indefinite number of Ideas, Kant focuses on three

in the Critique of Pure Reason, the Ideas of God, Self, and World. The Ideas are derived

from the activity of reason, which takes as its object the judgments of the understanding.

In other words, the understanding takes the manifold of intuition as its object, while

reason takes the concepts of the understanding as its object. The distinction between the

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categories (the pure concepts of the understanding) and the transcendental Ideas (the pure

concepts of reason) is important: the former relate to possible objects of experience while

the latter relate to the totality of possible experience. Reason seeks the condition that

makes each particular judgment possible, that is to say, the more general condition of

which a particular judgment is a singular case. Reason proceeds by inference from a

conditioned given to its conditions. There are three kinds of syllogistic inference reason

draws, categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive. Therefore there are three ways in which

reason seeks to bring particular judgments into relation with other judgments. In this

way, reason situates particular judgments within a broader context. Reason seeks the

condition of particular judgments because in general it is driven to seek systematic unity.

In the “Transcendental Doctrine of Method: The Architectonic of Pure Reason” Kant

describes reason as architectonic in nature. Through its systematizing activity, reason

tries to give the manifold knowledge of the understanding an a priori unity (which is

unlike any unity that can be accomplished through the understanding). As said above, for

Kant knowledge cannot occur as a mere aggregate of fragments but must be understood

as an organized unity. Reason seeks the totality of conditions through its systematizing

activity and thereby pursues unconditioned unity, or the Ideas. The transcendental Ideas

of reason are derived from the three kinds of syllogistic inference. We get the indefinite

series of causes through use of the hypothetical syllogism. The Idea of the World is the

totality of this series. We get the Idea of God, which is the total community of excluded

parts, from the disjunctive syllogism. From the categorical syllogism, we get the Idea of

the Self, the subject that can never itself be predicated of anything. Together, these three

Ideas represent the totality of conditions of experience. Reason can never actually reach

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the unity of the Ideas, yet they condition its activity. Since reason is systematizing by

nature, the Ideas represent the endpoint of its systematization or the complete system of

knowledge.

Essentially the entire Critique of Pure Reason is dedicated to explaining how

knowledge forms a system. The demonstration of the principle, “the conditions of

possible objects is also the conditions of possible experience,” is given in the entire

critique. Kant deploys the idea of schematism, the concepts of reflection, and the

transcendental Ideas of reason to this end. Deleuze does not disregard these other ways

of conceiving of system. For example, he provides his own version of schematism in

chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition. However, he places a special emphasis on the

Ideas of reason. What is unique about Deleuze’s reading is that for him the Ideas

represent the relation between possible objects and possible experience in an exemplary

way. Deleuze identifies three crucial aspects of Kant’s Ideas. “Ideas, therefore, present

three moments: undetermined with regard to their object, determinable with regard to

objects of experience, and bearing the idea of an infinite determination with regard to

concepts of the understanding” (DR 169).13 These allow us to see how, for Deleuze, the

Ideas postulate that what we empirically find is completely ordered according to

transcendental conditions, i.e., that there is harmony between the order we find

empirically and the order imposed transcendentally. Although this harmony is brought

about by means of several mechanisms, the important thing for Deleuze is that it can only

be conceived through the Ideas.

The first aspect, that the Ideas are undetermined, reflects the fact that they have an

ambiguous status for Kant. Deleuze generally uses the term ‘problematic’ to refer to this 13 The same discussion is found at KCP 21.

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ambiguous status. The object of the Ideas, the complete system, would, in a sense, follow

from the total application of the transcendental concepts of the understanding. In fact,

however, it must be presupposed in order for the concepts to apply at all. In other words,

the Ideas must be presupposed in order for knowledge to be possible, but their object, the

complete system, does not exist, nor is it required to exist. Deleuze frequently expresses

this idea by saying that the Ideas are problems to which there is no solution. In Kant the

goal of the complete system (the ideal focus or horizon) is outside the bounds of

experience and, because of this, Kant is careful to say that the concepts of the

understanding do not in reality proceed to that goal. In other words, the goal of the unity

of conceptual knowledge is transcendent to experience. The complete system of

knowledge cannot be given to us in experience. Kant distinguishes the constitutive use of

the Ideas from their regulative use because the object of the Ideas is transcendent. We

are restricted from their constitutive use because when we seek their object in experience,

reason falls into transcendental illusions particular to it: paralogisms, antinomies, and

impossible proofs. In the “Appendix to the Dialectic: The Regulative Employment of the

Ideas of Pure Reason” Kant explains that their proper function is their regulative use. It

is in this way that the Ideas are necessary for experience. In their regulative use the Ideas

guide the concepts of the understanding. Even though we can never know whether the

complete system does, in fact, exist, in order for our judgments to be meaningful we must

presuppose that it does. Deleuze is particularly interested in the regulative use of the

Ideas. Kant sometimes uses the term “problematic” to describe the status of the Ideas

when they are used regulatively, but more often he uses the term “undetermined.”

Deleuze picks up the term “problematic” and uses it almost exclusively. According to

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Deleuze: “Kant never ceased to remind us that Ideas are essentially ‘problematic’.

Conversely, problems are Ideas” (DR 168).

In developing his interpretation of the problematic Ideas Deleuze will go on to draw

some further distinctions that Kant himself would not recognize. We will examine them

later but, for the moment, we can simply say that the fact that the Ideas are problematic

means there can be no “solution” within experience. In other words, the object of the

Ideas cannot be given in experience. In the end, this first aspect of Kant’s ideas, that they

are problematic, is the only one Deleuze will retain in his own conception of

transcendental Ideas.

Deleuze identifies a second and third aspect of the Ideas. Only by means of these two

aspects can the Ideas represent that what we empirically find forms a complete system.

He discusses the second aspect of the Ideas, that they are determinable with regard to

objects of experience, most clearly in Kant’s Critical Philosophy (KCP 20).14 The

second aspect represents the content to which our concepts would apply. In order for

knowledge to be possible, the content of phenomena must correspond to the Ideas. In

other words, the content of phenomena cannot show a radical diversity. If there were no

resemblance at all in the content, we could not detect the slightest similarity. In other

words, the second aspect of the Ideas represents something essential about what we find

empirically, that it can take on order.

The third aspect of the Ideas is that they represent the ideal of the complete application

of the concepts of the understanding. This aspect represents the idea that the concepts

can be applied in such a way that they organize what is given to completion. In the

“Appendix to the Dialectic: The Regulative Employment of the Ideas of Pure Reason” 14 The core of the discussion occurs in DR as well, at p. 169.

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Kant explains how the Ideas function in regard to the concepts. Concepts are arranged on

lines that converge on an ideal focus outside of experience or within a horizon that

embraces all concepts. The Ideas are these focus points or horizons. The Ideas are not to

be used constitutively, but in their regulative use they order the concepts of the

understanding. In this way, the Ideas direct the activity of the understanding toward a

particular goal. The Ideas serve to give the concepts the greatest possible unity and the

greatest possible extension. In chapter 4 of Difference and Repetition Deleuze argues

that without the activity of reason, and hence the Ideas that condition the activity of

reason, the understanding could never by itself constitute knowledge. “The

understanding by itself would remain entangled in its separate and divided procedures, a

prisoner of partial empirical enquiries or researches in regard to this or that object” (DR

168). It would remain lost in its own private activity, yielding only fragments. Deleuze’s

point is that the understanding, by itself, is unable to grasp the significance of its own

activity. Since the understanding cannot organize itself to stage inquiries, it has no

driving force of its own to pursue knowledge. The idea of the complete system

necessarily carries with it the imperative to completely solve or explicate the problem of

the system. In other words, their problematic status provides the Ideas with directing

force (i.e. that the understanding must be directed toward explicating the system). In this

way, Deleuze points out, the concepts of the understanding only find the ground of their

full experimental use in relation to the Ideas. Thanks to the Ideas, the concepts form an

organized unity, not merely an aggregate of fragments. Together, the second and third

aspects of the Ideas express the harmony of the content of phenomena and the form (the

application of the concepts of the understanding). It is only possible for our concepts to

30

apply to what is given if what is empirically given follows the same principles as our

concepts. The Ideas make the internal relation of subject and object possible because

together they represent the harmony of the empirical and transcendental. However, this

harmony can only be postulated since it could occur only as the complete system of

knowledge, which is outside of experience. The Ideas allow us to conceive of the system

of knowledge, and they have a problematic or undetermined status because the complete

system is only postulated. If the order we find in experience were given to experience

transcendently (rather than occurring transcendentally), that is to say, if the relation of

subject and object were external, we could never be sure experience was systematic.

With Kant, everything as it is given empirically is understood as already being within the

system. In other words, everything we empirically find is, in principle, knowable without

exception because the transcendental conditions apply to everything that can be known.

Deleuze finds that the function carried out by transcendental Ideas in Kant is pivotal in

the internal production of the system. He focuses on the Ideas for this reason.

3. THE ISSUE OF MEANING

We return now to the issue of truth in the critical philosophy, an issue I took up above,

prior to the discussion of the transcendental Ideas. Since truth occurs internally to the

relation of the subject and object, the conditions of its validity are also internal to the

relation. In this way, the justification for truth, that is to say, the reason why something is

true can be understood through the relation. As we saw, the justification for truth is not

external to the relation, as with empiricism and rationalism, but internal to that relation.

As a result, the critical philosophy is able to respond to dogmatism by examining claims

to truth. What is novel about Deleuze’s interpretation of Kant is his claim that truth is

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grounded in meaning. Before the determination can be made that a judgment is true or

false, the judgment must be seen as meaningful. For example, the statement that the sky

is purple is false but still meaningful. It is not nonsense. Truth simply expresses the fact

that the subject and object are in agreement. Something is true or false only in relation to

meaning. In fact, we can only say the statement above is false because it is meaningful.

As a result, Deleuze places priority on meaning. We must understand how meaning

arises. Since truth is dependent on meaning, truth can be understood as arising internally

in the relation of subject and object only insofar as meaning is understood as being

internal to the relation as well. In Deleuze’s view, Kant’s account of the internal relation

of subject and object makes it possible for us to understand how meaning arises.

Meaning only arises along with the system of experience. For this reason, we can

adequately address the question of meaning only at this point, after our discussion of the

Ideas, since they make it possible to examine the system of experience.

Particular empirical cases or objects can have meaning only through their relation to

each other: they must not be indifferent to each other. In other words, a particular

empirical case is significant precisely in that it is distinguished from others and that it is

not like the others. Empirical cases can be compared with one another. The significance

of an empirical case lies in the fact that it does not form an indistinguishable mass with

other cases. Cases are distinguished qua empirical cases. In Kant, the categories form

the criteria or the basis on which something is carved out as an empirical case and is

thereby individuated. The relations the cases have with one another are due to the nature

of the categories. In other words, since objects have certain characteristics qua objects,

these characteristics determine how they are related. For example, since cause is one

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criterion, a particular object can be understood as a distinct empirical case because it has

a different cause than other cases. Multiple empirical cases are related as cause and

effect of each other. To be defined as an empirical case at all is to be distinguished

according to these criteria. There are multiple empirical cases, which are distinguishable

because they form different representations or expressions of the categories. In other

words, particular objects are variations on the form of object itself. They are meaningful

precisely because they are distinguished in terms of these criteria. In fact, they can be

known as individuals on the basis of these criteria because their differences occur in

terms of these criteria. An individual is considered distinct from others in the

characteristics that make it an empirical case (although it may also be distinct in other,

inessential ways). In other words, we never know the form of object itself. We only

know particular objects. Therefore the meaning or sense of a particular empirical case is

given as its own particular cause, the unity it has, its coming to be and ceasing to be, etc.

All of these characteristics are derived from the categories and are different from those of

other empirical cases. Thanks to the categories, an empirical case is immediately in

relation to other cases.

Ultimately, however, the relation that empirical cases have with one another is only

made possible by the Ideas. Each empirical case becomes differentiated from others and

individuated into a singular case through the categories. However, with the categories

alone we would only get a collection of individual cases that were not in relation with

each other. We could not know the meaning of an individual case from this. We can

only conceive of the collection of individual cases together as a system through the Ideas

because the object of the Ideas is the whole of possible experience. The relations that

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individual cases have with one another depend on the complete system. The individual

cases only arise in relation to the complete system and derive their significance from it.

The Ideas allow us to see the categories in relation to the whole of possible experience, as

the distinguishing factors of the whole, by which the whole is divided into empirical

cases. It is by means of these factors that empirical cases are understood as being part of

the organized unity. Empirical cases are meaningful only because they can be situated

within the whole. In this way, the Ideas allow us to conceive of each empirical case in

relation to other cases. Each empirical case has a meaning in relation to the whole of

possible experience from which it arises. We can only conceive of the relation between

the particular judgment and the whole by means of the Ideas because we can never have

an idea of the whole empirically. It is in relation to this point that Deleuze claims that

truth never occurs in isolation and that a true statement never stands alone apart from its

context, except when arbitrarily detached and employed as an example (DR 154). His

point is that meaning only occurs in the relation of a particular case, such as a particular

statement, to its context. For example, a sentence is only meaningful in relation to a

language. Language, taken as a whole, forms a system. Meaning arises from the

relations between sounds and between words. Meaning is not found in the case

considered by itself because it can only occur in a system. A word is meaningful only

because of its relation to the language in which it occurs. For this reason, Deleuze’s

concern is not with the similarity and differences between cases, but with the fact that an

empirical case is a solution to a problem which presents a context.

This brings us back to the self-reflexive nature of the Kantian philosophy. The

Kantian philosophy provides us with a way to understand meaning as arising internally to

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experience. Each case is meaningful simply by virtue of being an empirical case since it

carries with it its relation to the whole of possible experience, as the latter is represented

by the Ideas. Deleuze in fact takes up the theory of transcendental Ideas because it

allows him to understand how meaning arises internally. His seminar on Kant dated 14

March 1978 argues that the question of transcendental conditioning is really the question

of meaning or sense. We no longer ask ourselves if there is something behind the

appearance. Deleuze argues that now, with Kant, we ask a different question:

“Something appears, tell me what it signifies or, and this amounts to the same thing, tell

me what its condition is.” And later: “Since Kant we spontaneously think in terms of the

relation apparition/conditions of the apparition, or apparition/sense of what appears, and

no longer in terms of essence/appearance.” The question of transcendental conditioning

is the question of how something comes to be object qua object. This is also the question

of how something comes to be meaningful. Deleuze can equate these two, transcendental

conditioning and meaning, because meaning always arises from the totality of

experience, which is given by the totality of conditions. The Ideas make it possible to

conceive of the totality of the conditions of experience. For the relation of subject and

object to be truly internal, the meaning or sense of the object must arise from within the

relation as well. The conditions of the object are the conditions by which it is meaningful

to us, that is to say, the conditions by which it becomes an object at all. It is meaningful

within the framework set by the conditions. In other words, it becomes demarcated as an

object only in relation to the system that would follow from the conditions. The theory of

Ideas allows us to understand how the complete system is postulated with every empirical

cognition that takes place. For this reason, in Kant an object is always a priori

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meaningful. Something can only be an object insofar as it has meaning. We are able to

understand the source of meaning, which is the system or framework, through the

consideration of the Ideas.

For Deleuze, the idea of legislation in Kant can therefore be understood in terms of the

issue of meaning. Kant argues that philosophy, understood in the critical sense, is

legislative. In the “Architectonic of Pure Reason” he makes the point that the idea of

legislation is found in the reason of every human being, which takes on this role when it

prescribes in regard to systematic unity (CPR A839/B867). Reason judges what is true or

not and, in this way, persuades us to seek the truth. In this way, we are not subject to

anything external to reason. In Nietzsche and Philosophy Deleuze argues that the

legislative character of the Kantian philosophy is the essence of its Copernican revolution

and, in this way, critique is opposed to dogmatic and theological subjection.15 According

to Deleuze, the legislative character of reason depends on the fact that meaning arises

internally to the relation of subject and object. Reason legislates because it can grasp the

foundation of meaning. Philosophy, in Kant’s sense, is thus the examination of the

system of knowledge and of the foundation of meaning. A distinction is made between

what is included in the system and what is outside of it, between what is considered

meaningful and what is not. In Kant’s terms, we can say that this is the distinction

between what is transcendentally affirmed and what is transcendentally negated. This

distinction serves as the foundation of the system of knowledge. Philosophy is legislative

because it grasps the distinction and, thereby, the foundation of the system.

15 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 92. Hereafter cited as NP followed by the page number.

36

It is important to note that for Deleuze this distinction must be understood as a

distinction of value. He argues that only what is selected and included is valued. It is

considered meaningful and important. Whatever is excluded is irrelevant by definition.

According to Deleuze, then, philosophy is legislative because it is creative of values. In

this way, he reinterprets the idea of legislation in Kant. We are able to say that the

distinction between important and unimportant is created because it arises through

philosophy’s own method. In other words, this creation is not some sort of voluntaristic

act. Rather, philosophy provides the ground for the distinction. The philosopher does

not merely take on the function of legislating in addition to doing philosophy. Instead, the

point is “that the philosopher, as philosopher, is not a sage, that the philosopher, as

philosopher, ceases to obey, that he replaces the old wisdom by command, that he

destroys the old values and creates new ones, that the whole of science is legislative in

this sense” (NP 92). Philosophy’s legislative character is essential to it. Deleuze claims

that with the Kantian philosophy there is a shift in how the distinction between what is

important and unimportant is understood to arise. With Kant, philosophy no longer relies

on something external to provide this distinction, to which it then subordinates itself.

Philosophy is now self-reflective and is able to grasp the source of meaning of

judgments. Since philosophy provides the distinction between what is important and

unimportant, it provides its own ground. As a result, philosophy can critique any claim to

the authority of truth. The legislative character of philosophy in Kant is particularly

important for Deleuze. However, he argues that Kant betrayed his discovery. The

critical philosophy was supposed to make the reasoning human independent of the

dogmatism of external authority, since reason was thought to be self-governing and

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independent of political interests, cultural traditions, and individual desires. However,

Deleuze finds that Kant’s idea of philosophy does not actually give us the autonomy it

promised.

4. KANT'S DOGMATISM

Deleuze’s view is that, in the end, Kant’s conception of thinking is too narrow.

Knowledge for Kant is merely recognition: correctly subsuming intuition under a

concept. According to Deleuze, this is the most mundane conception of thinking. While

it is true that the act of recognition occurs often enough in our daily life, it depends on a

more profound kind of thinking. It is thinking in the latter sense that gives us the

production of concepts. In contrast, the model of recognition cannot account for how we

could know anything new. According to Kant’s account of knowledge, anything new

would simply be beyond the categories and would register as nonsense for the subject.

Deleuze’s criticism is that if we take recognition as the model of thinking in general, we

are unable to grasp those acts of thinking that are not recognition. Using this model

fosters the expectation that we should only be interested in recognition, not in knowing

anything new. These other acts of thinking cannot be considered legitimate under the

model of recognition. The model of recognition perpetuates prejudices about what

thinking is and denies those cases in which someone does not think in same way or is not

able to recognize the truths “everybody” recognizes. As a result, this model does not

even permit a critical stance. In what follows, I show in detail why Deleuze thinks Kant

has a narrow conception of thinking and what is restrictive about Kant’s view.

Deleuze claims that Kant’s dogmatism follows from the method he employed. His

point is that Kant’s method amounts to explaining thought simply by explaining how its

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end-product, knowledge, is possible. He argues that Kant begins from what he claims we

actually know, and he then attempts to explain how this is possible. In other words, he

traces back from the end result, empirical knowledge, to its conditions. This amounts to

tracing the transcendental from the empirical (DR 143). Generally, this is considered by

most commentators to be the exemplary case of the method of transcendental

conditioning and, for this reason, Deleuze stands out in his criticism. Kant’s concern is to

justify the validity of knowledge by showing that thinking can legitimately get to

knowledge. The Critique of Pure Reason is structured in such a way as to answer this

question. Kant begins his project by purifying what he will examine of any particular

claims to truth (that is to say, empirical claims) in order to examine pure knowledge. In

this way, he intends to bring all claims to knowledge under critique. Pure knowledge

consists of synthetic a priori judgments. Kant goes on to claim that mathematics and

geometry qualify as pure knowledge since these fields do, indeed, consist of synthetic a

priori judgments. For Kant, the existence of these fields of knowledge is evidence that

we are capable of having knowledge. The guiding question of the Critique of Pure

Reason is, therefore, how are these judgments possible? Kant finds that synthetic a priori

judgments are only possible by means of certain concepts, which are the transcendental

concepts. With his discovery of the transcendental concepts, he claims to have found the

concepts according to which thinking must occur. Deleuze’s objection is that Kant

presumes this kind of knowledge to be the goal of thinking. We must remember that

Deleuze is not denying the importance of these concepts. We do, indeed, use these

concepts as we go about our ordinary lives. However, his point is that thinking functions

in this way only when we are in the mode of ordinary recognition. Thinking in Kant to

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be defined solely in terms of producing this end-product. Deleuze says that Kant begins

by presupposing thought’s desired end, synthetic a priori judgments, rather than asking

what thinking seeks. In this way, Kant closes the door to acts of thinking that may not be

directed toward recognition.

Deleuze argues that Kant’s approach of tracing transcendental conditions from the

empirical follows a more general pattern of tracing problems from solutions. In chapter 3

of Difference and Repetition he explains how this pattern tends to turn up in the history of

philosophy, including as early as Aristotle (DR 157-158). Deleuze says that philosophers

have often thought of solutions as being expressed by propositions. The problem is then

traced from that proposition and rearranged into a question. In other words, the question

is traced from a giveable or possible response. Deleuze says that the question is a kind of

“neutralized double” of the pre-existing proposition that serves as a response (DR 156).

It merely doubles the proposition that is seen as the solution without adding anything new

to it. The result is that we come to think that questions are asked only under the

condition that the answer is given, in principle. “What time is it? – You who have a

watch or are close to a clock. When was Caesar born? – You who know Roman history”

(DR 157). Deleuze’s point is that such questions are anemic and do not provoke genuine

thinking. In the first example, the question presupposes that everyone schedules her or

his days hour to hour. They do not ask anything new or demand real thought. Deleuze’s

criticism of such tracing of problems (and questions, which express problems) from

solutions is that it leads us to believe that problems are given to us ready-made. Deleuze

likens this condition to that of a student who is only given problems to solve by the

teacher and does not learn to construct problems. An educational system that is set up in

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this way does not yield students who truly think. The difficulty of thinking is reduced to

producing certain solutions. “We are led to believe that the activity of thinking…begins

only with the search for solutions” (DR 158). Deleuze’s point is that this method gives

us only a mundane conception of thinking. In the case of Kant the concern is not simply

with any proposition but specifically with synthetic a priori judgments. In rearranging

this into a question, Kant asks how such judgments are possible. For Kant, then, thinking

is said to take place whenever we make synthetic a priori judgments (or a posteriori

judgments about objects). Deleuze’s objection is that when we are simply looking for a

solution, when we make a judgment, we are not necessarily thinking because there is

already a framework in place in which these are the solutions. This is a framework that

everyone is presumed to recognize. Here, Deleuze would agree with Nietzsche when he

asks, why would we want to make a priori synthetic judgments? Who does it serve?

According to Deleuze, we must critically examine the implications of equating thinking

with recognition. The danger of claiming that the exemplary form of thinking is

recognition is that it supports established values at the most fundamental level of thinking

(DR 136). This comes at the expense of what might be marginalized or might break with

the established values. In any case, Kant does not take up the question of what would

lead to the production of the transcendental concepts in the first place, or what would lead

to experience being structured in this way. Deleuze argues that when we begin our

inquiry by looking at solutions, the emphasis is on showing that what constitutes the

solution cannot not be. As a result, we are prevented from asking why this particular

solution occurs (DR 160). In other words, we are unable to ask the question of its

genesis, which has to do with the problem to which it is the solution. Thus, the more

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important issue is not learning which solutions are true or false, but which problems are

true or false, which are well-constituted or not. Deleuze argues that problems are never

simply given. Thinking, for Deleuze, has essentially to do with the production of

problems, not simply with knowing solutions to problems.

However, in his view Kant did attempt to examine problems themselves, to a certain

degree. “More than anyone, however, Kant wanted to apply the test of truth and

falsehood to problems and questions: he even defined Critique in these terms” (DR 161).

In other words, Deleuze thinks that Kant did, to an extent, conceive of problems as not

simply given but something we have to consider on their own terms. Deleuze is, of

course, referring to the Kantian Ideas as problems since they drive the activity of reason.

Kant distinguishes between false problems, which lead reason into transcendental

illusion, and true problems, which have the positive function of making it possible for

reason to draw judgments together. However, Deleuze says, Kant still defined the truth

of the problem in terms of the possibility of finding a solution, even though for him it was

transcendental possibility (DR 161). In other words, his criticism is that Kant defined the

Ideas in such a way that they determine in advance what will count as knowledge. Insofar

as the faculties function under the guidance of reason in the domain of speculative

knowledge, only judgments that are consistent with the system of knowledge are

possible.

Even if we leave aside the question of whether the presuppositions of Kant’s method

are illegitimate, Deleuze argues that other difficulties occur because of his method. Kant

asks, what kind of thought does empirical knowledge depend on or presuppose? The

answer is the transcendental concepts. For this reason, the form of experience can only

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be static, since knowledge (or judgments) is only the end product of a process. The

transcendental concepts or categories give us the fixed ways in which the understanding

can synthesize intuition, and they cannot change or be transformed. Kant must presume

the categories are simply given since he cannot give an account for how they might arise.

The nature of the categories is independent of intuition and of the process by which they

come into relation with intuition. The categories, taken together, give us an order that is

completely external to, and outside of, what is ordered, outside of time and space. This

order is indifferent to spatial and temporal differences. The post-Kantians, beginning

with Salomon Maimon and including Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, are known

for criticizing Kant for being unable to explain how the categories and intuition come into

relation.16 Deleuze takes up this criticism as well, frequently referring to the issue by

saying that the conditions in Kant are external to what they condition. His point is that

conditions are independent of what they condition and remain unchanged by the process

of conditioning, which gives us experience. Kant attempts to account for how we pass

from the conditions to the end result, in order to justify that the conditions necessarily

take us to empirical knowledge. However, he is considered unsuccessful by Deleuze and

other post-Kantians. Kant is unable to explain why intuition does, indeed, correspond to

the categories such that experience is possible. In fact, since the categories are external

to intuition, we cannot even know if experience is in fact ordered by them.

Deleuze argues in Kant’s Critical Philosophy that, in effect, Kant is still dealing with

the problem of the relation of subject and object. As we said earlier, empiricism and

16 In his book The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), Frederick Beiser argues that it was Maimon’s critique of the gap between the understanding and sensibility in Kant, and hence of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, that provoked the work of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

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rationalism were criticized, according to Deleuze, for relying on something transcendent

to the relation of subject and object in order to justify it. This is the problem the critical

philosophy was supposed to overcome. Yet Kant’s problem of categories and intuition is

just another incarnation of the problem. “In Kant, the problem of the relation of subject

and object tends to be internalized; it becomes the problem of a relation between

subjective faculties which differ in nature (receptive sensibility and active

understanding)” (KCP 14). To show how intuitions and concepts, the faculties of

sensibility and of the understanding, come into relation, Kant appeals to the schematism

of the imagination, which applies a priori to the forms of sensibility in accordance with

concepts. However, this only shifts the problem further along since the imagination and

the understanding differ in nature and their relation must now be explained. In his lecture

on Leibniz, dated 20 May 1980, Deleuze argues that, in the end, Kant can only argue that

the conditioned (empirical knowledge, which is the end result) agrees with the conditions

(the categories) because of the harmony of our faculties. However, Kant is unable to

account for why the faculties are in harmony and must simply presuppose it. In other

words, he can only postulate their agreement and, like the rationalists and empiricists he

wants to surpass, he too turns to the idea of a transcendent and benevolent God to

guarantee the agreement. In the end, Deleuze argues, he can no more account for the

relation of the subject and object than could empiricism or rationalism. Although he goes

a certain extent toward giving an internal account of the relation of subject and object,

Kant ultimately fails.

Deleuze gives us another criticism of Kant’s method. The conditions of experience

are merely conditions of possibility because they are static. Deleuze claims it is as

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though these possibilities already exist, ready-made and prior to experience. What is real,

that is to say, experience, then simply occurs as the selection of one of the possibilities.

The possibilities are interchangeable in the sense that none has priority over the other. In

other words, there is no essential difference between possibilities such that one of them

would tend toward experience. There is nothing internal to any possibility itself that

would lead to experience. The realization of one of the possibilities occurs only through

the limitation or negation of the other possibilities. In this way, the difference between

possibilities is given externally to them, only through their realization. For this reason,

Deleuze argues that difference is understood to be outside of but indifferent to the

concept, where the concept is understood as giving us the essence of something. What

does not exist is understood as already possible. The only difference between the

possible and the real is one of brute existence (DR 211). To account for the occurrence

of the real, Kant can only argue that all of the possibilities are already there for whatever

might occur. However, the problem of the relation of subject to object is simply pushed

back, so that we must account for how the conditions of experience arise. Kant’s account

is not an account of experience as it actually occurs since he is unable to solve this

problem.

Experience can only have a restricted sense for Kant because the conditions of

experience are static and external to what is conditioned, to intuition. Experience or

empirical knowledge is explained as occurring through the synthesis of the diversity of

intuition according to certain kinds of unity, found in the transcendental concepts of the

understanding. An intuition is taken as a particular case of a universal concept because

intuition must conform to the categories. The categories taken together give us the form

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of the object, which is the general kind or form of experience we can have. Therefore,

when we actually have experience, it is always simply a particular case of this general

form. Transcendentally, we possess all possibilities, and experience occurs as the

selection of one. This is why, for Kant, experience can only occur as recognition.

Knowledge consists of correctly matching intuition with the concept, that is to say, of

merely identifying which possibility was actualized in experience. The transcendental

conditions that Kant discovers only make possible what we already know. Whatever we

can experience has already been accounted for transcendentally. There can be no

experience outside of this. In other words, the transcendental form of experience restricts

experience so that only what agrees with that form can be known in experience. Deleuze

criticizes this idea of form. “Form will never inspire anything but conformities” (DR

134). In principle, form precludes whatever does not agree with the form. With form,

that is to say, with static conditions, it is impossible to know anything that does not agree

with the form. Experience occurs in the application of the form. For Kant, it is as though

the content of phenomena is simply given to be informed, and knowledge occurs when

we correctly match the form to the content. The only obstacle to thinking is the incorrect

application of the transcendental concepts, which leads to incorrect judgments. For this

reason, Deleuze claims that Kant is only concerned about the most banal kind of error. In

contrast, Deleuze thinks there are more profound difficulties that confront thought. I will

discuss these difficulties further, in section 4 of chapter 3, after developing Deleuze’s

conception of thinking.

Kant sets out to show that the ordered nature of experience does not come simply from

experience being given as ordered but from its coming to be ordered. However, in so

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doing, he claims to have discovered the way in which finite thought must organize what

is given to it. In other words, Deleuze objects that Kant ascribes natural properties to

thought rather than asking what occurs in the process of thinking. For Kant, experience

only comes to be ordered as it does because the nature of thought requires that what is

given in sense intuition must be taken as a spatiotemporal object. To this end, Kant

examines the faculties and shows that the understanding, imagination, memory, and

reason must play specific roles. Together these form the structure of thought, which is to

say, the transcendental subject. However, Kant does not answer the question, what

causes thought to be structured in this way, so that it takes what is given as

spatiotemporal object? Iain Mackenzie examines this problem in terms of the

presumptions with which Kant begins the critical philosophy.17 For him, Kant’s

dogmatism is due to the fact that the critical philosophy fails to bring everything under

critique. He argues that in the end, “reason remains, at least partially, beyond the reach

of criticism.”18 In other words, Kant brings all particular claims to truth under critique

but since he ascribed natural qualities to reason he does not bring reason, which serves as

the ground of truth, under critique. Kant presumes thought has a given nature but does

not show how it arises. As the result of this presumption, thought is subject to “truth”

just as it is for empiricism and rationalism. Kant simply offers a different account of this.

Rather than thought aligning itself with experience in a truthful way (as empiricism and

rationalism must claim), thought must experience objects as it does because of its nature.

Along with the nature of thought, truth is given as well for Kant, in the way that thought

must experience objects. In Nietzsche and Philosophy Deleuze argues that, for Kant,

17 Iain Mackenzie, The Idea of Pure Critique (New York: Continuum Press, 2004). 18 Ibid., p. 17.

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thought formally possesses the true as a priori concepts. It needs only to apply these

concepts correctly in order to possess the true in reality. Thought is simply presumed to

function in this way. Thus, what Kant discovers is the order to which thought is subject.

Deleuze’s critique of truth must be understood as directed at truth in this sense. He

says that Kant has essentially defined the nature of thought in terms of its alignment with

truth. “We are told that the thinker as thinker wants and loves truth…that it is therefore

sufficient to think “truly” or “really” in order to think with truth (sincere nature of the

truth, universally shared good sense)” (NP 103). However, it is not love of truth that

leads to thinking, Deleuze will argue, but difficulty and uneasiness because thought must

be awakened from its natural stupor (DR 139). The issue of truth is really the issue of the

nature of thought and its relation to being. Earlier we said that Kant’s project in the

critical philosophy is his response to the crisis in thought resulting from the loss of the

possibility of intellectual intuition. Kerslake argues that Deleuze’s criticism of Kant is

that he did not fully appreciate the magnitude of the crisis.19 Kant saw that a gap had

opened up between thought and being but he moved too quickly to close the gap. In

other words, Kant continues to maintain that the relation of thought and being is one of

affinity, that is to say, a relation of truth in the sense outlined above. In tracing the

conditions of experience from the end result, Kant presumes that thought naturally

reaches truth and that it is in its nature to form true judgments. Kant argues that

experience can only occur on the condition that what is given is taken by thought and

ordered in a certain way as an object that is part of the system of knowledge. However,

the problem is that Kant simply ascribes this to the nature of thought. Instead of

examining the fact that the ordered nature of experience can no longer be understood as 19 Christian Kerslake, “Deleuze, Kant, and the Question of Metacritique, ” p. 493.

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simply given but must be the result of a process, Kant avoids the problem by showing

that experience can only occur if it is ordered in this particular way. As a result, in

principle there can be nothing knowable outside of the parameters given by the system.

Although Deleuze does not use the term “totalizing,” this term captures his concerns

because his criticism is that Kant’s system of knowledge presumes that everything that

can be experienced must fall under this organization. In addition, Deleuze argues that the

effects of this account of knowledge might not be significant when considering it as a

speculative model, since it means only that the way in which knowledge is acquired has

been understood correctly or incorrectly. Yet it has serious consequences when we

consider the practical applications of this theory because it can be used to demand

conformity to established values. Since we all have reason, that is to say, because we all

have the transcendental concepts, we can demand that everyone recognize the same truths

(DR 135-136).

5. THE IDEAS AS REPRESENTATIVE OF KANT'S DOGMATISM

I have just said that Kant’s notion of experience is a narrow one. Deleuze describes it

as dogmatic because knowledge is merely recognition, that is to say, the application of

categories one already possesses. We have also seen why Deleuze finds the theory of

transcendental Ideas important in Kant’s account of experience. Experience can only

occur in the relation of transcendental and empirical, and the Ideas represent this relation.

For Deleuze the Ideas represent the system of knowledge in an exemplary way. As a

result, we can also examine how Kant’s dogmatism is exhibited in his theory of Ideas.

There is the question of the status of the Ideas themselves. Earlier, I described their three

aspects. First, the Ideas are problematic since their object cannot be given in experience.

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As I said earlier, it is the problematic aspect of the Ideas that Deleuze finds so promising

and, in fact, this is the only aspect of the Ideas he will retain. Second, the Ideas express

that the content of phenomena tend toward complete unity. This is the empirical

component. Third, the Ideas express the complete application of the concepts of the

understanding: the transcendental component. Deleuze argues that the second and thirds

aspects must be abandoned.

Daniel W. Smith has argued that Deleuze’s theory of Ideas, which occurs in

Difference and Repetition, is primarily developed in relation to Kant’s theory of

transcendental Ideas, and he has shown why Deleuze is critical of Kant’s Ideas.20 Smith

argues that Deleuze’s main criticism is that although the Ideas have a problematic

objective unity, the second and third moments remain extrinsic to each other. On the one

hand, the Ideas can legislate directly over the concepts of the understanding since they

are our own representations. On the other hand, according to Deleuze, the fact that the

content of phenomena corresponds to the Ideas of reason means that the relation is not a

necessary subjection but can only be postulated (KCP 20). Since the concepts of the

understanding and the content of phenomena are extrinsic to each other, they could not

come into relation by themselves without the Ideas bringing them into relation. There is

nothing internal to each that refers to the other. For that reason, in Smith’s reading,

Deleuze believed Kant had failed to provide an immanent conception of Ideas (KCP 48).

In order to bring them into relation, the complete system that the Ideas represent must be

presumed. Experience can only be accounted for by relying on something outside of

20Daniel W. Smith, “Deleuze’s Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the Kantian Duality,” Deleuze: A Critical Reader, edited by Paul Patton (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1996), p. 29-56.

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experience. Kant thereby undermines his entire project of providing an internal relation

of subject and object since the relation is conditioned by something transcendent.

Besides the criticism that the Ideas are not truly immanent to experience, Deleuze

argues that there is a problem with the fact of presumption. In drawing inferences,

reason, which is the faculty of Ideas, says “everything happens as if….” In other words,

Kant treats experience as though it were hypothetical: only if we presume the objects of

experience tend toward the unity of nature are our empirical cognitions are meaningful.

We can only have knowledge under the condition that we act as if the complete system

could be given. In Kant the Ideas can only serve as problems, that is to say, supply the

directing force to explicate the problem of the system of knowledge, if their object is

presupposed. This is because the two moments of the Ideas, which represent the concepts

of the understanding and the content of phenomena, are external to each other. The result

is that experience becomes entirely hypothetical in Kant and is not real. We never know

for sure if, indeed, our empirical cognitions are meaningful. Deleuze argues that this

procedure of beginning from the hypothetical betrays the real movement of thought (DR

197). The hypothetical character of experience is reflected in Kant’s theory of Ideas.

The fact that the Ideas are problematic means there can be no “solution” within

experience or, in other words, their object cannot be given in experience: the system of

experience cannot be given in experience. Yet, in Kant the Ideas are problematic only

because they cannot be given in experience. According to Deleuze, they are not truly

problematic in themselves because they still represent an existing unity—it is now merely

transcendent to experience. There is a solution to the Ideas in Kant but it is one that

cannot occur within experience. Thus, Deleuze says that their problematic character is

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not real for Kant. For Deleuze, it will have to be the case that there is no solution at all to

the Ideas: there will have to be no existing unity, either in or outside of experience, only a

kind of difference. In this way, Deleuze will argue that unity is not foundational for

experience, but difference, as this occurs in problems. Therefore, even though Deleuze

retains the problematic aspect of the Ideas, he rethinks the notion of the problem. For

Deleuze, the Ideas must be immanent to experience in order to be truly problematic. In

this way, their problematic character will be something real within experience.

In addition to the concerns outlined above, there is the question of what the relation of

the transcendental and empirical is like. The transcendental (the categories of the

understanding) and the empirical are external to each other. As a result, their relation can

only occur as simple correspondence. It can only occur as the complete overlapping of

the transcendental concepts and the empirical. The complete correspondence forms the

system of knowledge in Kant. In postulating a complete system, which is their object, the

Ideas postulate that there can be nothing outside of it. In this way, the Ideas guide the

application of the categories to what is given empirically. Under their guidance, the

categories of the understanding impose a specific set of relations on what is given

empirically. As a result experience can only be understood as being ordered according to

a set of principles. The Ideas represent the complete relation of the categories of the

understanding and of what is given in intuition. They determine a priori what kind of

relations can occur in the empirical and, thereby, formally limit what can be known.

Only certain relations within the empirical are considered meaningful and significant:

relations that determine what can be considered an empirical case. As a result, what is

given is simply “located” within the system. According to the Ideas, the system is

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understood as already having a place for every possible object. Rather than explaining

how something becomes an empirical object for us, the Ideas close off what can be an

object for us. They provide the parameters within which something must fall in order to

become an object for experience. Whatever is outside of these parameters can never be

an object of knowledge and can only be considered meaningless. In this way, knowledge

is simply the filling in of the system. In sum, the Ideas allow us to see that experience

can only occur as recognition.

Kant’s account of experience therefore presumes the kind of relation thought can have

with its object. This is because, while he succeeds in bringing all truth claims under

critique, he cannot bring the idea of truth itself under critique. Thought finds the same

order and the same meaning everywhere: the meaning that is founded on the categories.

Kant presumes that meaning can only occur in this way, that only meaning in this sense is

possible. It would be more accurate to say, therefore, that with Kant thought is presumed

to have an affinity for truth understood only in this sense.

Smith has argued that a criticism that Deleuze levels at Kant is that he cannot examine

the idea of truth because he does not ask the question of the genesis of the system of

categories, which is the foundation of truth in his philosophy.21 In other words, Kant’s

idea of truth is dogmatic because it presumes meaning that it occurs by means of the

categories as its foundation. This foundation itself is beyond examination. Thought only

recognizes objects as particular cases of what is “already known,” i.e. what it possesses

as categories. It therefore finds only confirmation of what is already known. Everything

encountered in space and time is understood only in its relation to the system. The

particularity (the time and space) of the case is irrelevant precisely because it is the same 21Daniel W. Smith, “Deleuze’s Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the Kantian Duality.”

53

organization that occurs everywhere and every time. Kant’s account of the system is

totalizing because nothing can occur empirically (that is to say, be an object) that does

not “fit” into the system (and therefore into this system). Central to the idea of system in

Kant is therefore the claim that it accounts for everything. Since it is the Ideas of reason

that make possible the system of knowledge on which meaning depends, we can locate

the totalizing character of the system in the theory of Ideas.

CONCLUSION

We can now comprehend, in relation to his treatment of Kant, Deleuze’s intention of

articulating a conception of experience that does not simply account for the relation of

subject and object but includes within itself the opening up of a field of experience for the

subject such that something new can be thought. For Deleuze, philosophy must be

reconceived to include within it the self-critical relation. I have shown that he thinks that

the question of how something new can be thought can only be answered in terms of the

internal relation of subject and object. It is for this reason that Deleuze turned to Kant’s

critical philosophy. With Kant we see that the fact the relation is internal implies

something is knowable only insofar as it appears for, or comes into relation with, the

subject rather than having an identity apart from or external to the subject. This makes it

possible to determine the conditions under which something is knowable or can be an

object of experience. Kant explained the internal relation by saying that the subject is

constitutive in the appearing of the object. In other words, what Kant claims to have

discovered is that philosophy can understand the principle by which objects must

conform to the subject, that is to say, the principle by which they are objects in the first

place.

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We have equally seen that Deleuze criticizes this explanation because by attributing

the conditions of experience to the transcendental subject, Kant simply pushes the

question back to another level. Deleuze will therefore retain the internal relation of

subject and object but will find another way to account for it. The importance of the

internal relation, according to Deleuze, is that meaning can be explained through it.

Deleuze finds in Kant that the object arises for the subject only insofar as it is

meaningful—there is no object apart from the meaning it has. In other words, meaning

occurs along with the object. However, Kant simply accounted for meaning by claiming

that reason is structured such that thinking occurs by concepts, that is to say, that thought

is conceptual. Again, the problem for Deleuze is that Kant’s account presumes the nature

of the subject. In Deleuze’s view, we must instead understand conceptual thought as

arising within experience, not simply begin with the presumption that it is a capacity we

possess. The internal relation of subject and object is therefore vital to Deleuze’s notion

of experience, and he must find a way to account for it such that both subject and object

arise in experience.

I have shown that Deleuze argues that the internal relation of thought and object in

Kant is made possible by the idea that experience forms a system. The notion of system

that Kant develops is that it is given to the subject as an Idea only, since the complete

system of knowledge cannot be given in experience. However, Deleuze thinks there are

certain problems with Kant’s conception of the system: Deleuze criticizes the method by

which Kant uses to explain knowledge and, hence, the method by which he arrives as his

notion of the system of experience. In addition, Kant cannot explain how concepts and

intuition come into relation or, in other words, the conditions of experience are external

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to what they condition. Also, Deleuze finds that the system of knowledge is static, and

that Kant does not give an account of its genesis. However, the major problem is that the

system is a closed one. Even though the complete system of experience can never be

given in experience, there is a unity of the system. Even though we can learn new things

in an empirical sense, their significance is only possible because of the system of

knowledge. New things can occur only insofar as they conform to the principles of the

Kantian system: Deleuze’s objection is that these are not new in a genuine sense. In

other words, Kant’s notion of the system accounts for how meaning occurs internally to

the relation of subject and object, but meaning does not arise, strictly speaking, because

the system does not itself arise. Insofar as something is an object, it simply is meaningful

already, so to speak. While Kant’s account of the conditions of possible experience does,

indeed, explain why objects are already meaningful, it prevents the possibility, a priori,

for anything to occur that might be grounded in principles other than those derived from

the categories of the understanding. In this sense, Kant’s notion of system is totalizing.

Nothing can occur that is unexpected. Deleuze himself takes the notion of system from

Kant in order to account for the internal relation of subject and object. He wants to retain

the fact that it accounts for the relation between objects and the relation between

judgments such that they are not just fragments. However, the notion of system will have

to be transformed in Deleuze so that it is not totalizing.

In developing his own notion of system Deleuze will retain the theory of

transcendental Ideas but transform them. For Deleuze, they are essentially problems and,

as in Kant, they express the relation of thought and the object. Deleuze will, however,

use the notion of the Ideas to show how the relation is generated and a domain of

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knowledge is opened up. According to him, there can be an internal relation of thought

and object only insofar as the subject and object are generated together. Smith has

argued that Deleuze’s primary question is that of the genesis of experience and I will be

following him in this.22 Kant was able to give an account of experience that is internal to

the relation of subject and object only by presuming that thought has a natural structure.

As a result of this presumption, Kant remains with the question of the conditioning of

experience and, in Deleuze’s words, is unable to pose the question of its genesis. In the

end, although Kant is able to show that truth and meaning can be understood as occurring

internally to the relation of subject and object, he cannot show how truth is produced.

That is to say, Kant was unable to critically examine the a priori concepts as the

foundation of truth. By answering the question of the genesis of experience Deleuze will

be able to account for the production of meaning and, thereby, the foundation of truth.

According to Deleuze, in presupposing the nature of thought Kant presupposed that

thought had a natural inclination or affinity for knowledge. Deleuze will argue that, rather

than a relation of affinity with being, thought’s relation with being is one of malevolence.

In other words, the opening up of a system of knowledge occurs only as a violent event.

In chapter 2, I will show how Deleuze reconceives the notion of system, while chapter 3

will show why the opening up of a system is violent.

22 ”Deleuze’s Theory of Sensation: Overcoming the Kantian Duality.”

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CHAPTER 2

THE NOTION OF SYSTEM

INTRODUCTION

This chapter will show how Deleuze’s notion of system is developed out of Kant’s. We

have seen in chapter 1 that Deleuze wants to develop an account of experience in which

the subject and object are related to each other in an internal way. In such a relation the

object does not occur independently of the possible knowledge of it, but, rather, thought

and object are essentially related. The task of thinking, then, is not simply to grasp an

object correctly but to grasp the conditions by which it occurs, thereby grasping the

object in relation to what makes it meaningful. For this reason, Deleuze must examine

experience at the transcendental level, by discovering its transcendental conditions.

Moreover, since the internal relation of thought and object can be achieved only if

experience occurs as a system, the notion of system is crucial to Deleuze’s account of

experience. In fact, for him, experience can only be opened up as a system. - It is only

insofar as a system is opened up that there can be objects that can be known and concepts

by which to know them. For Deleuze, this is not merely of logical importance. It is not

just that knowledge is opened up as a system so that we can know objects but that objects

in their reality are opened up through a system. By reality, then, we do not mean an

objective reality that occurs independently of the subject. There is no “objective reality”

in this sense for either Kant or Deleuze.

Deleuze finds certain problems with Kant’s notion of system. The central issue is that

he believes the Kantian system is closed off, since it delineates in advance what can be a

possible object of experience. The notions of the determinable and the indeterminate and

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their relation are crucial here since they tell us about the limit or boundary of the system.

For Kant, the system of knowledge includes within itself whatever can be a possible

object of experience, which can be given as the idea of the determinable. Kant does not

only claim to account for every possible object of experience. Whatever falls outside of

certain limits simply can never be an object at all. The determinable and, therefore, the

system of knowledge, are simply demarcated from what is indeterminate, which simply

cannot be known. This gives us a static notion of system. In contrast, for Deleuze, a

single system cannot account for all of knowledge. For this reason, he must transform the

relation of the determinable and the indeterminate, so that it is not fixed and

unchanging. In tracing these notions from Kant through their development in Deleuze, I

will be able to show how Deleuze resolves the problem of the system that he sees in Kant

and thereby develops his own notion of the system.

Deleuze uses the term “transcendental difference” (also referred to as “internal

difference”) to indicate the difference or relation between the determinable and the

indeterminate. Transcendental difference is a transcendental event. Deleuze is perhaps

best known for being a philosopher of difference, in the sense of transcendental

difference, and we will see how it comes into play here in his notion of the systems of

experience. He uses the theory of Ideas to articulate the notion of transcendental

difference. Thus, in Deleuze, the Idea no longer has the sense it does for Kant. I must

therefore show how the Ideas function in Kant, and then in Deleuze. We will then be

able to see how the Ideas are important for Deleuze’s notion of system in a way that

parallels yet greatly differs from Kant. Deleuze maintains the problematizing aspect of

the Ideas. However, for him, Ideas arise from within experience. This would, of course,

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make no sense in the Kantian framework since Ideas are transcendent to experience. In

that framework we can conceive of an Idea but its unity lies outside of experience.

Deleuze disconnects the Ideas from the subject. They are not merely problems for reason

but problems within experience itself. The Ideas will now function ontologically. Kant

could do no more than circumscribe the system of experience, that is to say, draw the

boundary of the system of knowledge. We will see, in contrast, that Deleuze argues that

the drawing of the limit of a system is the event by which the system arises. This event is

the occurrence of transcendental difference or of an Idea.

I will also need to develop the idea of “external difference” in Deleuze, also referred

to as “diversity.” That is to say, the objects of a system can be described as different

from one another in an external way. The central issue is that in Kant space and time are

the forms of diversity and are subjective. Since Deleuze’s account of experience is not

grounded in the transcendental subject, he argues that external difference (that is to say,

diversity) is dependent on and arises from transcendental difference.

Deleuze must transform a number of Kant’s concepts in order to accommodate the

changes in the notion of the systems of experience and the metaphysics. For Deleuze,

there are transcendental structures of experience but they do not belong to the subject.

Instead, they occur within experience itself. In addition, transcendental structures are

static for Kant but are not for Deleuze. Deleuze must include this dynamic character

within his account. He sometimes uses the term “transcendental” to make it clear that his

concern is with conditions of experience. To a certain extent, his conditions can be said

to be a priori in Kant’s sense. They are prior to organized experience but they are not

independent of experience as Kant’s conditions are. Deleuze introduces the terms

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“virtual” and “actual” to account for these conditions. The relation of the virtual and

actual is analogous, in some ways, to that of the transcendental and empirical in Kant.

However, virtual conditions occur within experience whereas Kant’s transcendental

conditions are prior to experience. The language of the virtual and actual will allow

Deleuze to give an account of how new systems arise within experience. I begin by

examining the notions of the determinable and the indeterminate in Kant, showing

precisely what Deleuze criticizes here. In this way, we will see how the system is related

to and demarcated from the indeterminate in Deleuze.

1. NOUMENA AND THE LIMIT OF KNOWLEDGE IN KANT

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant seeks to examine what we can legitimately know.

To this end, he examines the transcendental conditions of knowledge. He argues that we

cannot simply concern ourselves with whatever can possibly exist, apart from how it

must necessarily come into being in space and time. Accordingly, he restricts knowledge

to what can be a possible object of experience. This is expressed through the terms

transcendental negation and transcendental affirmation in Kant.

A transcendental negation…signifies not-being in itself, and is opposed to

transcendental affirmation, which is something the very concept of which in itself

expresses a being. Transcendental affirmation is therefore entitled reality,

because through it alone, and so far only as it reaches, are objects something

(things). (CPR A574/B602)

Transcendental affirmation gives us reality or being. It means that we take what

appears to us in sensible intuition as something positive, as actually existing, and not as

the distortion of an essence. Since the sensible is not a limitation of our knowledge, but,

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rather an element of it, our relation to things is not merely rational or logical.

Transcendental affirmation means that we can only know an object in relation to its

conditions of appearing, and so to the forms of intuition, not in relation to what it would

be for an infinite intellect. Nothing can be an object for us independently of its relation to

us. According to Kant, when we distinguish the mode in which we intuit objects as

appearances (phenomena) from their nature as it belongs to them in themselves apart

from how they appear, we imply the idea of noumena (CPR B306-307). Since we can

conceive of the conditions of the appearing of objects, we can conceive of phenomena as

forming a whole or a system. Since reason legislates that knowledge must form a system,

the limits of possible knowledge are determined a priori (CPR A833/B861). The fact

that the system of knowledge has a limit means there can be arbitrary additions. If

knowledge merely formed an aggregate, not a system, there would be no limits. What is

important here is the notion of limit. The keystone of the critical philosophy is that we

can know the limit of knowledge.

As a result of reason’s critical activity, we can divide objects into noumena and

phenomena. Whatever occur within the limit of possible experience are phenomena and

can be objects of knowledge. The field of phenomena necessarily implies a space of

indeterminacy beyond its limit. Whatever falls outside that limit is transcendentally

negated. Transcendental negation signifies what is not real or what is indeterminate.

However, we can form a concept of what is transcendentally negated. Noumena are

thought as objects merely through the understanding not as they are given to sense. In

other words, for Kant we form concepts of noumena when we conceive of the idea of

things as they are in themselves apart from how they appear. Concepts of noumena are

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indeterminate and, therefore, noumena cannot be said to be in a positive sense. “If the

objective reality of a concept cannot be in any way known, while yet the concept contains

no contradiction and also at the same time is connected with other modes of knowledge

that involve given concepts which it serves to limit, I entitle that concept problematic”

(CPR B310). Kant uses the terms “problematic” and “indeterminate” to mean simply that

knowledge of the object is not possible. In other words, reason determines the limit of

possible objects of experience, and whatever is beyond that limit is described by Kant as

indeterminate or problematic. We cannot presume there is nothing outside the limit of

experience, nor can we say anything determinate about it. Noumena cannot be subject to

a priori laws, which only apply to possible experience. For this reason, our knowledge

cannot extend to them. As said earlier, the relation of thought and object is internal here

because all phenomena are subject to a priori laws, which we can grasp. However,

noumena have no assignable positive meaning (CPR A287/B343). Since the

understanding can extend farther than sensibility, intuition is tempted to claim to have an

object to which the understanding can apply. However, the understanding must restrict

intuition from claiming to have an object in these cases. Concepts of noumena can only

be used negatively. They can only legitimately be understood as indeterminate, concepts

to which we can give no content, and not as a determinate concept that can actually be

known in a purely intelligible manner. They serve to remind us to not extend our

presumption to knowledge beyond the limits of possible knowledge. In other words,

noumena indicate only that our sensibility is limited.

With Kant, there can only be an idea of the indeterminate and unknowable, in

distinction from what is determinable, because knowledge is restricted to objects that

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appear to us and does not extend to what they are in themselves. This makes it possible

to determine the transcendental conditions of experience and, thereby, to know the limit

of possible experience. What is interesting for Deleuze is the idea that in knowing the

limit of possible experience, we are led to form a concept of what is outside the limit,

what is indeterminate. For Deleuze, what is indeterminate does not appear and therefore

cannot be known. So far he is in agreement with Kant. However, for Deleuze, it makes

no sense to speak of objects in themselves apart from their appearing. The indeterminate

is not something in itself, as it is for Kant. The difference between them can be

understood in terms of how they understand the limit of the field of phenomena and,

hence, how they understand the relation of this field to the indeterminate space beyond its

limit. For Kant there is a space of indeterminacy because we know nothing about

intuition other than our sensible kind. “The concept of the noumenon is, therefore, not

the concept of an object, but is a problem unavoidably bound up with the limitation of

our sensibility—the problem, namely, as to whether there may not be objects entirely

disengaged from any such kind of intuition” (CPR A287/B344). In other words, for Kant

the field of phenomena has this necessary relation to a space of indeterminacy for the

subject. Only by taking into account how something must come into being in space and

time, by considering how it appears, can we think of something that is determinable,

something that can be a possible object of experience. What appears in space and time

comes into relation with us. What is important to Kant is that it must come into relation

with the subject in order to be determinable, in order to be an object. For Kant, we can

imagine another kind of subject for which knowledge would not depend on the appearing

of the object. In contrast, for Deleuze, experience simply is the occurrence of the relation

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of the subject to what appears. His account is ontological rather than subjective

(transcendentally subjective). Outside of the field in which a particular kind of object is

given, an object has no coherence or unity. In other words, the appearing of the object is

precisely what makes it an object. We could also say that there is an object for Deleuze

only insofar as something comes into relation with the subject. However, this is not the

case for Kant. There is no interaction between the field of phenomena and the

indeterminate space beyond its limit. Phenomena are simply demarcated from what is

indeterminate. We have the idea of indeterminate existence because we can think,

logically, of what can possibly exist. However, we cannot know indeterminate existence,

what does not appear in space and time.

For Deleuze, however, there must be more of a relation between the field of

phenomena and the indeterminate since the determinable occurs through its distinction

from undetermined existence. Kant’s notion of the undetermined becomes, for Deleuze,

the two notions: undetermined existence and the problematic. Deleuze is much more

interested in the latter. In Deleuze the problematic occurs as that which distinguishes

itself from the indeterminate or, in other words, as the boundary of the determinable in

relation to indeterminate existence. In Kant these notions are not distinct and refer to the

same thing: the noumenon is indeterminate existence. This is because the spheres of

phenomena (the determinable) and noumena do not change. In other words, since the

determinable is delimited by the range of the concept for Kant, undetermined existence is

simply outside the boundary of what is determinable. The boundary statically marks the

distinction. For Deleuze, on the other hand, what is determinable arises from the

indeterminate, so the boundary functions in a different way. The formation of the

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boundary is the formation of the determinable as a system. The problematic is bound up

in its own way with the limitation of what is knowable. It is the problem of how to

conceive of the limitation of the knowable or what is outside it. For both Kant and

Deleuze, concepts can only be applied to what is determinable, to objects of knowledge.

For Deleuze, it is certainly true that it is not possible to have a concept of the

problematic, since concepts arise only secondarily to what is problematic. However, this

is not the defining characteristic of the problematic for Deleuze. Instead, what defines

the problematic is that it becomes determinable. As long as we are considering what is

outside the limit of the determinable, no concept can apply. Deleuze differs from Kant in

the way he defines the undetermined: the undetermined is that which has not yet ceased

being indifferent. The undetermined is what we can say nothing about, neither that it is

knowable nor that it is unknowable.

2. THE SYSTEMATIZING ACTIVITY OF REASON AND THE IDEAS IN KANT

The transcendental Ideas of reason are unlike other noumena. Similar to concepts of

other noumena, we can never have knowledge of them. However, the Ideas are the only

noumena that are not simply situated outside the limit of knowledge. Instead, they are

necessary for producing the limit of the system of knowledge and, in this way, for the

production of the system of knowledge. In other words, the Ideas are necessary in

helping us acquire knowledge. For this reason, Deleuze considers them truly

problematic. For Deleuze, a problem is not just what has indeterminate status, as for

Kant, but what causes the delimitation of what is determinate from what is outside that

limit. What is problematic overcomes indeterminacy and produces a system. Deleuze

develops this thought from Kantian reason, which is systematizing by nature. For Kant,

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reason systematizes knowledge by means of the Ideas of God, Soul, and World. Thus,

Deleuze’s notion of the problem is modeled on Kant’s Ideas of reason. In what follows, I

will show how Deleuze can interpret Kant’s Ideas as functioning between the

indeterminate and the determinable understood as the system of knowledge.

As the condition of reason’s systematizing activity, the Ideas represent the activity of

reason in general. Therefore we must examine the systematizing activity of reason to

understand the function of the Ideas. In the Transcendental Dialectic, when Kant is

explaining the function of reason, he argues that we could derive a particular proposition

from experience by means of the understanding alone (CPR A322/B378). For example,

the proposition “Caius is mortal” could be derived simply through experience of the

person named Caius. However, the understanding alone can only give us what is

particular and contingent, never anything universal and necessary about experience. We

only get a description of experience, so to speak. The proposition would not be

considered knowledge in the proper sense because it would not have the weight of the

universal and necessary, which can only be provided by appeal to a principle. A

proposition can never be raised to the level of knowledge because the understanding

cannot bring it into relation with the totality of possible experience. Through the

understanding alone we can know that a proposition is true but not why it is true. The

understanding cannot view concepts as being in relation (beyond the most immediate

inference) and, therefore, cannot constitute knowledge on its own.

Knowledge is only possible through the activity of reason because reason projects

systematic unity. Reason seeks to bring concepts into relation through inference. It tries

to find a second concept that conditions the attribution of the first concept to an object.

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Through inference reason tries to find the conditions under which the proposition occurs

according to a universal rule. Deleuze characterizes this activity as the posing of

problems and describes reason as the faculty of posing problems. Reason asks, by what

other concept is the first concept known, or by appeal to what principle is it maintained?

Reason poses a problem when it asks what makes that proposition true. It tries to bring

the proposition or case into relation with the universal so that it does not remain merely

partial. By itself, the proposition is never universal, only partial, because by itself

experience gives us only what is contingent and partial. The problem orients the

proposition in terms of something universal and necessary. When it has received

orientation in this way, it is a solution, according to Deleuze. Only through reason can

we say something universal and necessary because reason brings the proposition in

relation with the whole of possible experience, which has the status of a problem.

Deleuze describes the Idea or problem as universal: “Only the Idea or problem is

universal. It is not the solution which lends its generality to the problem, but the problem

which lends its universality to the solution” (DR 162). The point is that it is through its

relation to the Idea that a proposition is no longer merely particular and contingent.23 The

proposition receives universality in the form of an appeal to a principle and therefore

from its relation to the system. As a result, the proposition is understood as a particular

case of a universal rule. In our example, since all men are mortal and Caius is a man,

Caius must necessarily be mortal. It is only because the proposition is seen as part of a

systematic unity that it can appeal to a universal and necessary principle. Only this is

23 Deleuze points to this as one source of transcendental illusion. Once we know how a proposition appeals to the universality of the problem by means of a principle, that is to say, how it is a solution, it becomes possible to “forget” the actual source and to think that it is the proposition that primarily possesses universality.

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knowledge in the proper sense because it allows us to assert the proposition through its

appeal to the necessity of a principle. For Deleuze, the proposition is considered

knowledge insofar as it can be understood how it forms a solution, which is to say, how it

is ordered or oriented by the problem. The proposition is understood as a solution

because it contributes to the completion of the system of knowledge. The proposition

tells us something universal and necessary about experience. Only through reason, not

merely through the understanding, can we say something happens necessarily, since the

idea of necessity cannot be given in experience.

By examining the activity of reason, we can characterize Ideas or problems in general.

The Ideas represent the positive, systematizing activity of reason, rather than its critical

or negative function. Unlike other noumena, the Ideas are truly problematic, in Deleuze’s

view, because they condition the systematizing activity of reason and thereby provide

order to experience. Kantian Ideas are problems since their object, the complete system

of knowledge, is not given. The object of the Ideas is a problem in the sense that it

represents a process. It demands that this process be undertaken, and the result of the

process is the organization of empirical cases. The system of knowledge is a problem

because it demands solutions: it demands that empirical cases be ordered in such a way

that they contribute to the completion of the system of knowledge. Reason is driven to

draw propositions into relation in such a way that they contribute to the completion of the

system. It is driven to orient propositions in this way. “These concepts of reason are not

derived from nature; on the contrary, we interrogate nature in accordance with these

ideas” (CPR A645/B673). By means of Ideas, reason can demand answers or solutions

of experience. This drives reason to seek the principles by which propositions can be

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understood as universal and necessary. The defining characteristic of problems is

therefore that they carry force and demand something of experience. They demand

solutions.

Let us return briefly to the issue of the indeterminate and the determinable. Deleuze

claims that through the Kantian Ideas we can conceive, in general, of the difference

between the determinable and what is indeterminate. For Deleuze, the idea of the

determinable is the idea of a field or system. It is the entire domain of objects to which a

set of determinations can apply. Hence it is the domain that is systematically

determinable in that particular way. This is a distinction that is made within experience.

We only have the idea of the determinable insofar as we can conceive of a system.

Therefore the Ideas, which make the delimitation of a system possible, also allow us to

conceive of the determinable in its distinction from what is indeterminate. Deleuze

argues that this must be understood as an internal difference, which opens up the system

of knowledge. There must be a limit drawn around the system. A system is understood

as that which is delimited from what is indeterminate.

3. DELEUZE’S THEORY OF IDEAS: TRANSCENDENTAL DIFFERENCE

Kant’s theory of Ideas allows Deleuze to develop his own notion of the problem. We

have seen that the defining characteristic of the Idea is that it is a problem that forces

experience to become ordered. It forces a process to occur. The Ideas lead to viewing

empirical propositions in a certain way. For Kant, when reason posits the Ideas, reason is

driven to do something. However, for Kant, these are problems for reason. In other

words, they only have a logical function. On the other hand, since problems exist for

experience itself for Deleuze, they function ontologically.

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For Deleuze, the Idea is an instability: elements are extracted from experience and

brought into a new relation. This relation is unstable for empirical experience but arises

from what is given within experience. Deleuze also uses the term “differential”,

symbolized in mathematics as dx/dy, to refer to the Idea. This symbol is taken from the

differential calculus and represents the slope of a line, where y=mx + b. “dx” indicates

an infinitely small change in x, and “dy” indicates an infinitely small change in y. Thus

Deleuze uses the differential symbol to mean that the relation between x and y are prior

to and, in fact, constitutive of the elements x and y. The key is that the Deleuzian Idea

must result in ordered experience. “If the differentials [or problem] disappear in the

result [or solution], this is to the extent that the problem-instance differs in kind from the

solution-instance; it is the movement by which the solutions necessarily come to conceal

the problem” (DR 177-178). The empirical cases arise from the Idea because they

stabilize or solve the instability, and their order and meaning arise in and through their

stabilization of the problem. For this reason, the instability as such never occurs in

experience. It is covered over or stabilized immediately. For Deleuze, a problem forces

experience to become ordered. Order can never simply be found in empirical experience

nor is it imposed on experience by the subject, as it is in Kant. For Deleuze, the order of

experience is the result of the problem. The last quote also indicates that we are able to

conceive of a problem only by extracting pure, ideal elements occurring in experience,

around which empirical cases have come to be arranged. In other words, even though the

problem is unstable for experience, it can still be an object of thought. (The distinction

between knowledge, which concerns experience, and thought is important here, and

parallels Kant’s distinction between knowledge and the critical activity of reason.) Ideas

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occur in experience but they can never themselves be experienced. Since we can only

experience their results or products, Ideas or problems must be characterized as

transcendental.

What we have brought into view is that although, for both Kant and Deleuze,

experience is drawn together by means of an organizing or ordering principle, an Idea,

they disagree on how the organization occurs. Deleuze argues that organization arises

from within experience, or is immanent to experience, rather than being imposed from

without, as in Kant. For Kant, the object of the Ideas is a completely organized system

and empirical cases are meaningful and ordered because they are presumed to fit into that

system. The objects of the Ideas are transcendent to experience, but when used

regulatively the Ideas function immanently. Thus, we are prohibited from their

transcendent use: from seeking their object. The Kantian Ideas can only direct

knowledge and act as a horizon and focus for concepts insofar as they form a unity

outside of experience. In other words, since their transcendence is still vital for

experience, they do not provide us with an account of experience that is fully immanent.

Since the Ideas order experience in a transcendent way, the resulting organization is only

hypothetical. For Kant, a solution has the force of a principle only if the complete system

is presumed to exist. If the complete system exists, it would explain in a necessary way

why these empirical cases occur as they do. The Idea of unity only serves the method of

knowledge and is not constitutive of its content. What is given is understood as merely

the content that takes on the order provided by the Idea of the complete system.

However, we can never know if the complete system actually exists and, therefore, if the

order we find in nature is real. Yet empirical cases do, in fact, exist and the Kantian

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Ideas cannot account for this. Deleuze argues that this problem can only be addressed if

Ideas are understood as occurring within experience.

The answer, for him, is that Ideas must be fully immanent to experience. Although he

describes the Ideas as both transcendent and immanent (DR 163), they are never

transcendent in Kant’s sense. They are transcendent because their objects are pure or

universal elements that are extracted from experience, which always occurs as an impure

mixture. In this sense, the elements and their relations can also be described as ideal

(although not ideal in the sense that they are only objects of thought.) For Deleuze, the

elements and their relations can be described as immanent because they are incarnated in

the actual relations of solutions. The Ideas are to be found nowhere but in experience

itself (DR 163). The Deleuzian Ideas never form a unity outside of experience, as do the

objects of Kant’s Ideas. Even though it does not form a unity, the Deleuzian problem is

able to act on experience because it is extracted from experience itself. For Deleuze,

Ideas are problems in themselves. They are not problems merely from the viewpoint of

empirical knowledge. To be sure, Ideas are not determinable in the same way as an

empirical proposition is. Deleuze is concerned to show that the Ideas have their own

consistency, not merely the consistency of what is transcendent to experience. However,

they certainly do not function in merely a hypothetical way, as they do in Kant, but

actually open up an ordered system from within experience.

Since the Ideas are involved in delimiting the domain of experience for both Kant and

Deleuze, the difference between them is a question of the role the Ideas play. For Kant,

the Ideas are static conditions of experience. They are indeterminate because their object

is transcendent to experience. The limit of possible experience merely marks the system

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off from what is outside of it. Deleuze argues that, for Kant, Ideas can only be

considered indeterminate from the viewpoint of empirical knowledge, and by its

standards. In other words, for Kant it is only from the viewpoint of empirical knowledge

that they are problems at all. In themselves the Ideas form a unity. It is we who cannot

know this. Christian Kerslake points out that, for Deleuze, Ideas are not indeterminate,

but fully determined as problems.24

In Deleuze an Idea is a movement or becoming since it is the arising of the distinction

of what is determinable, or what is in relation, from what is indeterminate or indifferent.

In other words, the Deleuzian Idea occurs as a movement from what is indeterminate.

This difference between the determinable and the indeterminate is transcendental. Hence

Deleuze also refers to the Idea as transcendental difference and sometimes as internal

difference. The Idea is the limit of experience and is productive of a system of

experience.

Deleuze begins his first chapter of Difference and Repetition with a brief discussion of

the indeterminate ground from which determination arises:

Indifference has two aspects: the undifferentiated abyss, the black nothingness,

the indeterminate animal in which everything is dissolved – but also the white

nothingness, the once more calm surface upon which float unconnected

determinations like scattered members: a head without a neck, an arm without a

shoulder, eyes without brows. The indeterminate is completely indifferent, but

such floating determinations are no less indifferent to each other. Is difference

intermediate between these two extremes? Or is it not rather the only extreme,

24 Christian Kerslake, “The Vertigo of Philosophy: Deleuze and the Problem of Immanence” in Radical Philosophy, vol. 113, May-Jun 2002, pp. 10-23.

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the only moment of presence and precision? Difference is the state in which one

can speak of determination as such (DR 28).

His characterization of indeterminacy is ontological. As we said earlier, what is

indeterminate for Deleuze is not simply what cannot appear to us and, therefore, a

characterization of what the object is apart from its appearing. The appearing of the

object is the object. Indeterminacy is that state in which objects cannot occur. His notion

of transcendental difference (simply referred to as ‘difference’ above) allows him to give

an account of the appearing of objects. The Idea is a movement or event in the sense that

it is the coming into relation of elements that were indifferent to each other and not in

relation. In this way, the Idea is purely a relation. By coming into relation, these

elements become extracted from the flux of the indeterminate. In other words, they can

be understood as discrete elements only because they have come into relation. The

relation occurs as a problem that produces or opens up a system. Since elements are now

in relation, they can be understood as different from rather than indifferent to each other.

In other words, elements are in relation with each other because of their difference from

each other. The articulation of an Idea, that is to say, the event by which its constitutive

elements are distinguished and, thereby, brought into relation, is what Deleuze calls

“differentiation.” (This is spelled with a “t”. Later, I will discuss the process of

differenciation, spelled with a “c.”) To be clear, transcendental difference acts on what is

indeterminate. In other words, the movement from the indeterminate to the determinate

is transcendental difference itself.

Deleuze describes two aspects of indifference in the quote above, but both are

abstractions since, properly speaking, there could be neither finite, distinct determinations

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nor absence of such determinations. These determinations would not be able to maintain

their distinction so that, in fact, there could be no determinations. There would only be a

fluid movement. (Later, in What is Philosophy? Deleuze will describe this movement as

occurring at infinite speeds.)25 However, for the sake of trying to understand how

difference emerges from the state of indifference or indeterminacy, if we consider the

second aspect of indifference that Deleuze describes, the white nothingness, we can see

that transcendental difference overcomes the indifference of the unconnected, floating

determinations. Transcendental difference must be understood as the establishment of

the connection or relation of determinations. In this sense transcendental difference is

also a synthesis. Deleuze argues that the difference “between” two things is empirical

and the resulting determinations are extrinsic. This empirical or external difference

requires as its transcendental condition the difference by which they can be considered

two different things. In other words, transcendental difference does not occur between

two things. “However, instead of something distinguished from something else, imagine

something which distinguishes itself – and yet that from which it distinguishes itself does

not distinguish itself from it” (DR 28). Since transcendental difference establishes the

relation between elements, so that they are no longer indifferent to one another, it

distinguishes itself from its ground of indifference. In this sense, difference must occur

as unilateral distinction. It is distinguished from its ground as partial and incomplete.

Something of the ground arises to distinguish itself from the ground. Transcendental

difference forms the reason (or cause) for why certain elements stand out, as their

principle of selection. In this way transcendental difference is the difference between

25 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Hereafter cited as WP followed by the page number.

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what stands out and what cannot be differentiated. Selection is partial in principle since

what is selected is only a portion. Transcendental difference forms the reason why this

aspect emerges and does not blend into the nothingness of indeterminacy. The act of

emerging from the undifferentiated and indeterminate ground makes “determinations” no

longer indifferent to each other. (Obviously they can only be considered

“determinations” once they are no longer indifferent to each other. Thus, there could

never be unconnected determinations.)26 It is in this regard that Deleuze can agree with

Heidegger’s description of the ontological difference, which he quotes in Difference and

Repetition, even though they disagree in a number of other ways: “Difference must be

articulation and connection in itself” (DR 117).

4. A SYSTEM AND ITS RELATION TO OTHER SYSTEMS

On the ground of the difference between what stands out and what goes unnoticed,

what stands out can be considered on its own, as a system or field. To be clear, this

difference is transcendental since it opens up an empirical field of experience but cannot

itself be experienced. Once the field is opened up, its relations can be determined and

explored. There can only be an ordered field on the ground that ‘determinations’ relevant

to it are first of all not indifferent to each other. The determinable defines what is given

for thought, in respect of which thought can predicate determinations. Transcendental

difference can also be described as a filter by which something stands out from the

undifferentiated ground from which it arises. As a result, other particular determinations

(if they could be considered as such) can continue to remain indifferent to one another

26 We must keep in mind that for Deleuze, we can only think of determinations as unconnected, and this only in retrospect, since there can be no unconnected determinations in experience. Again, the distinction between thought and experience is important here.

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and effectively be “ignored” or “forgotten” in this way. Transcendental difference is a

filter in the sense that it selects certain determinations. It forms the means of their

selection by bringing them into relation. A system is opened up on the basis of the

selection established by the relation. In other words, the basis of the system is formed by

a principle or set of principles that can be given to the way in which the elements are in

relation. Based on how the Idea, and thereby the system, arises for Deleuze, an Idea only

synthesizes a portion rather than some kind of whole. In What is Philosophy? Deleuze

also uses the term “sieve” to describe the relation of a system to that from which it arises.

A particular system acts as a sieve because it is a selecting. Therefore experience by its

very nature is incomplete, prejudiced, and partial rather than complete and impartial. The

condition of a system of experience is the event of becoming partial: difference or

selection. For this reason, no Idea or set of Ideas can exhaust experience for Deleuze.

Since no system occurs as a completed system in Kant’s sense, there is no single

system that incorporates and thereby accounts for everything. Deleuze later calls them

planes, which better reflects the fact that they are not closed off as a system might be.

There are many systems and Ideas. When he articulates what Ideas arise from, he

characterizes the latter only as the unground or groundless. To articulate this unground

would require grasping the whole, which consists of the indifference from which

difference arises. There can be no articulation of the whole. In fact there is no whole. It

would be incorrect to say that the indeterminate exists as a whole, precisely because it is

not. However, if we were to describe it as existing, we would say it exists only as self-

differing. Because of this Deleuze refers to it as the “unground” or the “groundless” (DR

67). It can only be understood as that from which determination arises and which

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dissolves all determination. Therefore we are not justified in speaking of everything that

can be extracted, since all possible determinations do not pre-exist their selection. They

only become determinations through their selection. In Difference and Repetition

Deleuze does not develop the notion of the unground very much, reserving his emphasis

for the transcendental difference that arises from it. In Difference and Repetition

transcendental difference is being, a point I will develop in the next section. However,

the notion of unground continues to be important and is developed further in Deleuze’s

work. Later it becomes the notion of chaosmos, which is mentioned in Difference and

Repetition but occurs in greater frequency in What is Philosophy? (DR 199). The totality

of the systems and that from which they arise is “thus a formless ungrounded chaos” (DR

69).

In Deleuze’s view the development of a particular science or other field of study

occurs on the basis of an initial discovery of a system. The development is the

exploitation of all of the possibilities opened up by that discovery. In What is

Philosophy? Deleuze argues that the philosophies of Plato, Kant, and Descartes all form

different systems or planes that are based on initial discoveries that were exploited and

developed (WP 29-32). The concepts within each of the systems are only meaningful in

the context of their respective systems. Thus the Cartesian cogito cannot be directly

compared with the Kantian cogito without bringing in other concepts. In this sense the

concepts of different planes are not comparable. “The fact that Kant ‘criticizes’

Descartes means only that he sets up a plane and constructs a problem that could not be

occupied or completed by the Cartesian cogito” (WP 32). In other words, “criticism” is

not an accurate characterization of what Kant did. It would be better to say that he

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opened up a new plane or system. A new system can only be opened up by examining

the objects (or concepts) of an already existing system and by seeing a new problem that

can be drawn out of what is presupposed, out of tendencies within that system. All of the

objects of a system fit together, often like a puzzle, and together they enact the tendencies

of the system. The new system will come from seeing something about a previously

existing system, as a whole, qua system. However, since the Kantian cogito can be

compared to the Cartesian in a certain way, the two planes do, indeed, have a

relationship. There are many systems of experience, and they interact, but each applies to

experience completely. “But the domains are distributive and cannot be added” (DR 241).

All of the systems together will not give us a totality because experience can never be

exhausted. However, all of the various systems intersect with each other at certain points

and thereby interact as well. We can also say that every system or plane implies every

other one: in order to properly understand the meaning of the Kantian cogito, we are

taken to the Cartesian cogito and, hence, the plane formed by Descartes’ philosophy.

These planes imply each other because they can interact: We can, for example, bring the

Kantian cogito in relation to the Cartesian cogito, and compare them. In this way, the

objects or concepts of a particular system refer to objects and concepts of all other planes.

5. TRANSCENDENTAL DIFFERENCE AND BEING

It is helpful to understand Deleuze’s notion of transcendental difference in relation to

discussions of being. Deleuze provides us with a way to understand the fact that

empirical cases or entities are or have being. The question is: what does it mean to say

that something has being? As I said in the discussion on transcendental affirmation

above, Kant’s critical restriction of knowledge also had the effect of restricting the

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concept of being. Only what is affirmed transcendentally can be said to be. Kant’s

philosophy is important to Deleuze not only epistemologically but also metaphysically. In

Deleuze there is a new conception of being, too. As for Kant, the indeterminate cannot

be said to be in the positive sense. Indeterminacy is a kind of nothingness, the

nothingness of indifference or incoherence. Deleuze also refers to it as chaos. In

contrast, transcendental difference must be understood as being.

Daniel W. Smith has argued that in Difference and Repetition Deleuze must be

understood to be participating in the debate about being as it is revived by Heidegger and

to be offering his own solution to the problem of ontological difference.27 Heidegger

argues that throughout the history of Western thought we have failed to think the

difference between being and beings (or entities). We have only conceived of being in

terms of beings, as simply the highest being. We should note that Deleuze believes that

Heidegger was unsuccessful in developing his conception of being: “But does he

[Heidegger] effectuate the conversion after which univocal Being belongs only to

difference and, in this sense, revolves around being?…It would seem not…” (DR 66).

According to Smith, the reason is that Heidegger was unwilling or unable to push the

ontological difference to its conclusion.28 Thus Deleuze sees himself as truly developing

this conception.

Smith argues that Deleuze returns to the Scholastics and retrieves the concept of

“univocity” with which to develop his conception of being. In the Scholastics’ debate

concerning the nature of being, three terms designated the ways of solving the problem:

equivocity, univocity, and analogy. Smith’s discussion centers on the point that Deleuze

27 Daniel W. Smith, “The Doctrine of Univocity: Deleuze’s Ontology of Immanence,” in Deleuze and Religion, edited by Mary Bryden (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 167-183. 28 Ibid., p. 169.

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argues for an ontology that is immanent and univocal rather than equivocal or analogical.

If being were equivocal, it would mean that being is said of beings in several senses and

there is no common measure. Two beings, such as God and human are in two different

manners and so cannot be compared. Smith’s point is that being as equivocity was

rejected by the Scholastics because it denied order in the cosmos. If being were

analogical, it would mean that beings can be compared in their being. God and humans

are in analogical ways. However, both analogy and equivocity allow for a hierarchy

among beings, according to the way in which they are (that is to say, the way in which

they possess being). Deleuze claims to be following in the footsteps of Spinoza in

arguing that there is no order or hierarchy among beings and that there is only a kind of

anarchy of beings. “In an immanent ontology, Being necessarily becomes univocal: not

only is Being equal in itself, it is equally and immediately present in all beings, without

mediation or intermediary.”29 The relation between univocity and immanence is

important in understanding Deleuze’s conception of being.

Deleuze is arguing for a conception of being that is common to all entities or beings.

In a sense, being is common in Aristotle, for example. Being is the highest concept in

Aristotle, while the categories are the different senses in which being is said of beings.

The problem with this, Smith points out, is that being comes to have only the sense of an

empty universal and, in addition, cannot account for what constitutes the individuality of

beings. To say being is an “empty universal” means that being is the most general or

universal concept in that it is predicated of every single entity. “We have no difficulty in

understanding that Being, even if it is absolutely common, is nevertheless not a genus”

(DR 35). For Deleuze, being is not abstract but concrete. He often characterizes the Idea 29 Ibid., p. 174.

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as a concrete universal to make this point. In other words, being is not simply the

broadest class under which all entities fall. Being is common to all beings in the sense

that everything is in the same way.

Smith claims that with his notion of univocal being, Deleuze is able to account for the

difference between individual beings while maintaining that being is present in the same

way in all individual beings. On the other hand, Aristotle can only attribute the principle

of individuation to some element of fully constituted individual entities. “An equivocal

or analogical concept of Being, in other words, can only grasp that which is univocal in

beings”.30 What is univocal about individual beings can be given as the categories. In

other words, only what is universal about an individual can be grasped, while that which

individualizes the individual cannot. For Aristotle, being is related to the categories (the

most general concepts and the highest genera) equivocally, while the categories are

related univocally to the species that fall under it. However, for a univocal ontology like

Deleuze’s, Smith points out, there can be no categories. The difference between

individuals cannot be qualitative (or difference in essence) but only quantitative, the

degree to which they realize being.

In Deleuze being must be understood as transcendental difference. Insofar as every

Idea-problem in Deleuze is transcendental difference, it is being. What is interesting for

us here, however, is that if being is understood as the opening up of a system, we can see

both how being is not merely an empty universal and how the individuality of beings or

empirical entities can be accounted for. All empirical objects equally have as their basis

the relation to system in which they arise and to which they belong. The individuality of

each empirical case is constituted as offering a different solution to the problem of the 30 Ibid., p. 177.

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system in relation to which it arises, and individuals differ in the degree to which they

express or solve the problem. In this way, being is not understood as an abstract

universal under which empirical cases fall as particulars through resemblance. Rather,

every empirical case is equally a solution and thereby equally is (or equally has being).

There is only one kind of being for all empirical beings. Another difference among

empirical objects is the different systems to which they are in relation. From an empirical

perspective, being is nothing (that is to say, no-thing) or, alternatively, (non)-being or ?-

being (DR 64, 202, 205). Being is not in the way that we say that an empirical entity is.

As Smith argues, being must be understood as having the reality of the problematic for

Deleuze.31

6. EXTERNAL DIFFERENCE OR DIVERSITY

Thus far we have been examining Deleuze notion of transcendental or internal

difference. However, he also offers the notion of external difference, which is

interchangeable with the term “diversity” or “manifold.” External difference is the

difference between empirical entities. We can also say that a “diversity” of entities are

given within a system. His account of diversity is meant to address a problem he sees in

Kant’s account of diversity. We can think of Kant as beginning from the point that

experience does, indeed, consist of diversity. The question is: how can we account for

this diversity? For Kant, it is owed to the fact that the forms of intuition, space and time,

are themselves pure a priori diversity. Since the forms of intuition are diversity,

whatever presents itself to us within those forms will also be diversity. For him, the

diversity of space and time cannot be reduced to the conceptual. In contrast, the

31 Ibid., p. 179.

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rationalists do, indeed, claim that spatiotemporal determinations are reducible to

conceptual ones. Spatiotemporal determinations only seem to be distinct from conceptual

ones because of our limitations. However, for Kant, spatiotemporal determinations

provide us with distinct information about objects and they can be grasped only through

intuition. Thus there can be multiple cases that occur in various points in space and time

but fall under a single concept. The idea that spatiotemporal difference is different in

kind from conceptual difference is important in Kant. Deleuze wants to retain the idea

that spatiotemporal determinations provide us with unique information but also to

overcome the problem of having two completely different kinds of determinations.32

We can understand Deleuze as offering two criticisms of Kant. One is that Kant

simply attributes the forms of diversity to the subject. He deduces the forms of external

difference (difference between two empirical things) as the forms of intuition (space and

time) and attributes them to the subject. According to Deleuze, Kant was right in seeing

that space and time do not belong to objects apart from the relation to the subject, but

argues that neither do they belong to the subject, as Kant claims. For Kant, we can only

grasp an object through sensible intuition. It comes into relation with us if it appears in

space and time: this is the significance of space and time. In other words, for him, the

transcendental subject is the condition for experience. For Deleuze, too, sensible

intuition is the faculty by which we grasp something external to us. However, space and

time do not belong to subjectivity but are produced instead when a system of experience

is opened up. The transcendental conditions of experience are to be found in experience

itself, not in the subject. Thus space and time belong to objects of experience (not to

32 Smith argues that Deleuze follows in the path of Salomon Maimon in solving the problem of the difference between spatiotemporal determinations and conceptual determinations. Essentially Maimon takes the route of the rationalists.

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objects apart from their ability to be known by a subject). In addition, space and time are

not forms of diversity for Deleuze. For him, we must consider external difference

independently from the question of space and time.

The second criticism is that Kant cannot account for how the forms of intuition and

the understanding, or spatiotemporal determinations and conceptual determinations, come

into relation. Concept and intuition have separate sources and knowledge occurs when

conceptual determinations come to be synthesized with spatiotemporal determinations.

This is how the empirical comes to be in relation with the transcendental and tells us

about the relation of diversity to the system: how it is organized in it. According to

Deleuze, the problem of two different kinds of determinations is actually just a symptom

of the real problem: that Kant provided a principle of experience that was merely

conditioning not genetic. Kant took for granted the sphere of the determinable, which is

the ground of meaning, in that he presumed its existence and did not show how it arises.

From there, he only gave conditions of the system, which are the categories of the

understanding. Since the system as a whole makes meaning possible, the source of

meaning is simply given with the sphere of the determinable that Kant presumes. He

only needs then to account for the diversity of empirical cases which take on meaning. In

this way, he treats form (concept) as occurring separately from content (intuition) that

takes on form. In other words, he accounts for empirical cases and the system separately

and then tries to bring them together. However, he fails to provide a convincing account

for how intuition and concepts come together. The significance of this problem, in regard

to the issue of meaning, is that Kant cannot truly explain why these particulars express

this meaning. In contrast, Deleuze will demonstrate that individuals arise only insofar as

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they express a certain meaning—in other words, how a meaningful individual arises. He

will argue that an individual arises out of necessity, in order to express a certain meaning.

For both Kant and Deleuze, the diversity of empirical cases (external differences)

must be understood as being in relation with transcendental difference or internal

difference (the latter being the determinable insofar as it is bounded off from the

indeterminate, to use Kant’s language). Deleuze’s point is that external difference cannot

stand on its own—yet, this is precisely what Kant tries to claim. In other words, for

Deleuze, there can be no form of external difference. In attributing the forms of intuition

to the subject, Kant only shows that the subject is capable of distinguishing between

empirical objects, but not how the distinction among objects actually occurs. In other

words, Kant only shows that the diversity of intuition corresponds with categories, that is

to say, with the system of experience. He does not show the grounds by which this

diversity is produced in the system. Deleuze explains why Kant has been criticized by

Maimon, Fichte, and others for this: “With regard to such a principle of internal

difference or determination they [Kant’s critics] demanded grounds not only for the

synthesis but for the reproduction of diversity in the synthesis as such” (NP 52). Kant is

not justified in treating the forms of intuition separately from the categories (i.e. from the

conditions of the system).

Empirical cases must embody meaning. This is as much true for Deleuze as for Kant.

However, for Kant an object embodies exactly one meaning. Since his account of

empirical diversity is given independently of his account of internal difference, by which

the system is opened up, the consequence is that the object must be fully expressive of

meaning, that is to say, of its conditions, with nothing in reserve. The transcendental and

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empirical, or concept and intuition, must correspond exactly. In this way the object of

experience reflects the fact that experience occurs as the complete expression of the

determinable. In the synthesis of intuition according to the categories, the empirical

object comes to be meaningful by locating it within the system, by determining what

place it has in the system. The object is understood as occupying a place in the system.

Experience can only be ordered in one way, and for this reason objects have only a single

meaning. In fact, for Kant, something is an object insofar as it is the embodiment of a

single meaning.

According to Deleuze, overcoming the problems requires a genetic principle to

account for the production of the system. The account of the diversity of empirical

objects must be given through the account of internal difference from which it arises.

Unlike Kant, Deleuze thinks that diversity cannot be accounted for separately from the

genesis of the system. Thus space and time cannot be forms of diversity. He claims that

the external difference between empirical cases (that is to say, different empirical cases)

arises from the opening of the field itself. In other words, he seeks to show that empirical

diversity arises from the internal difference of the system. The key is that Deleuze takes

the selecting activity of transcendental difference, which gives us the sphere of the

determinable, as the ground of experience. In contrast, Kant took the result of this

activity as forming a unity and as grounding experience. Since a system of experience,

for Deleuze, is partial by definition, it does not capture all of experience. Thus, meaning

is also necessarily partial. There can be no diversity, or difference between things, unless

the criterion by which they can be individual things is first selected as the defining

criterion. Therefore empirical diversity can only be produced as a result of the selecting

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activity that results from the production of the determinable. Before that, there are no

criteria by which to mark an individual as individual. This is why the particular cases of

any system refer endlessly to each other, and not to anything outside the system, that is to

say, not to a totality beyond that. The external differences are specific to the system,

since they arise from it, and therefore cannot be understood apart from it. In other words,

it is only known as diversity in light of the system in which those differences are

meaningful. Deleuze begins chapter 5 with the following statement: “Difference is not

diversity. Diversity is given, but difference is that by which the given is given, that by

which the given is given as diverse” (DR 222). There are different sets of external

differences for different systems. Thus we can only know the diversity of empirical cases

in light of the transcendental difference by which the system is opened up. It is for this

reason that Deleuze emphasizes the act of individuation over the types of individuals (or

species) that are produced. In Deleuze a system is driven to create individuals. The

production of individuals must be understood as a tendency of the system itself.

Therefore the process of individuation plays an important role in the production of the

system for Deleuze, something I will examine below in the first section of chapter 3.

When Kant considers external difference on its own, as the forms of intuition, he does

so only by abstraction. The external differences are meaningless if considered on their

own. By themselves, they are without their proper context. They would give us only

partial inquiries but not the field that orientates them. Deleuze does not disagree that

empirical cases are spatiotemporal. Rather, his point is that space and time are not forms

that belong to the subject and that condition diversity. Insofar as we understand them as

forms internal to the subject, they have already been given or conditioned by the

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determinable. Space and time do not account for diversity since they themselves must be

accounted for. Cases do not simply occur in space and time that is already there. The

production of the determinable is the opening up of a field, a theater of spatiotemporal

diversity. Empirical cases themselves measure out the distances between each other.

These distances, which together comprise space that can be considered abstractly, are

created as a result of each case individuating itself. Therefore space and time can only be

considered on their own once they have been measured out by empirical cases occupying

the field. I will develop Deleuze’s account of the construction of space in section 2 of

chapter 3. What is important to see is that for Deleuze space does not condition empirical

diversity. Empirical cases are indeed externally different from one another, that is to say,

different in space and time. However, their difference from each other is made possible

by their relation to the field to which they belong.

The relation of empirical cases to meaning is therefore more complex in Deleuze than

in Kant. Like Kant, he must also show that empirical particulars come to embody

meaning. For both, the meaning of an object reflects the fact that the object is ordered

according to the principles of the system. Thus, for Kant, as we have shown, the

diversity given in intuition is not meaningful until it is synthesized according to the

categories. However, for Deleuze it is not so much that empirical cases come to embody

meaning. Prior to the opening of the system, there are no individuals, properly speaking.

Therefore he does not need to account for why individuals are meaningful: the fact that

they come to be individualized implies that they are, in principle, meaningful.

Individuals occur for the system. The process of individuation has its own importance, in

contrast to Kant, where they are simply the realization of possibilities. The process of

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individuation is independent of the process by which a system is opened up, and has its

own logic.

In a sense, one can say that empirical cases do not have exactly one meaning. Since

each case occurs in light of a system that is opened up by selection and since selection

implies something that is not selected, each case carries with it other “determinations”

that were not selected. These are precisely not known, or can be characterized as

inessential. These “determinations” have not come into relation with anything else, so

they continue to move at infinite speeds. In other words, they are not determinations,

properly speaking, since they have not been differentiated from the chaos. Since no

system of experience captures all of experience, an empirical object can never be simply

the materialization of a single meaning. Now, the object does, indeed, completely

express the meaning derived from that particular system. However, as we discussed

earlier, each system of experience refers to or implies every other system. This

relationship of implication is carried on to every object of every system. Thus, while an

object expresses meaning it also complicates the transcendental in a new way, retaining

something in reserve. In this reserve an object implicates other “determinations” that

have not yet ceased being indifferent to one another but could come into tension and,

thereby, be selected. In this way, the empirical object has a certain relationship to the

system in which it occurs and, equally, has a relationship to all other systems of

experience. Thus, in a sense, the object is not completely ordered for Deleuze.

We must be clear that for him objects of experience can change in an empirical sense

just as they can for Kant. It is more accurate to say that for Deleuze we can understand

change in an empirical way by noting static extrinsic changes and calculating the changes

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according to the extrinsic measurements of space and time. In contrast to Kant, Deleuze

argues that the object is like the stable state reached by a process. What we recognize as

objects are objects only because they are at a stable point, or at equilibrium. He would

argue that, for Kant, knowledge of an object is limited to only its static features. The

Deleuzian object can be seen to resemble the Kantian object if we consider only its static,

geometric properties. However, to understand the changes in these properties in a more

profound way, we would need to understand the constituting processes of the object,

since these give rise to its static properties. These processes are transcendental since they

are not themselves experienced but are, instead, the condition of experience. To be clear,

we cannot know these constituting processes since there can only be knowledge of the

result of the process: the stable and discrete object. We can only model the processes

using tools like calculus. Therefore the object is understood to occur as it does because

of its own tendencies, the tendencies of its constituting processes. An object is not

primarily something with a unity that exists in a space that serves as container for it.

Instead, its unity occurs alongside and as an effect of its parts, which are the constituting

processes. In other words, the external characteristics tell us less about an object for

Deleuze than do the features of its constituting processes.

Since Deleuze speaks of objects that change in a way that is not merely empirical, he

must transform Kant’s language of the transcendental and empirical into that of the

virtual and the actual, as we will now show.

7. THE VIRTUAL AND THE ACTUAL

Insofar as it is stable and can be described with static properties, the object is actual.

Insofar as we consider its constituting processes, the object is virtual. Constitutive

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processes are virtual because they are not themselves experienced but are, instead, the

conditions for the objects that are experienced. For Deleuze, every object of experience

is always both partially virtual and partially actual. “Indeed, the virtual must be defined

as strictly a part of the real object – as though the object had one part of itself in the

virtual into which it plunged as though into an objective dimension” (DR 209). In

contrast, for Kant, every object as object is fully empirical. In Deleuze, since the virtual

is part of experience and is fully real, it is not real in the same way as the actual.

The virtual can be understood as the creative processes that is part of every object. All

constitutive processes occur as instability or disequilibrium and tend to move toward a

stable state. These processes occur by the bringing together of elements into unstable

relations or tensions. Deleuze uses the term differential to express the virtual. The

differential gives the pure relationship between two processes and in this way expresses

the point of change or transformation. The relation is objectively unstable because it

cannot maintain itself. The actual object can be understood as an external form that is

generated spontaneously by these processes. The constituting process produces the actual

around it to contain it, to stabilize it. In this way, an actual object tends to cover over the

creative activity that produces it. The actual is a sort of flattening of the instability of the

virtual, a flattening which is possible only on the surface and, in this way, the actual is

polarized on a single plane. In other words, the actual is created as a dimension or as

space. “For difference, to be explicated is to be cancelled or to dispel the inequality

which constitutes it” (DR 228). On that plane, and only on it, the actual cancels out the

instability of the virtual that is its condition. However, the creative activity continues to

exist. In its virtual part an object implicates the system of which it is a part. This is the

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reason that, even though the actual object covers over the virtual instability that produces

it, the system continues to exist as the virtual part of the object. Even while the virtual

inequality cancels itself in actual objects, it remains implicated in the object and in itself.

It is for this reason that an object’s equilibrium or stability can be disrupted. This only

occurs when the object comes into relation with another object. It is important to note

that, for Deleuze, it is precisely the change itself, expressed in the differential, that we

cannot experience. Instead we only experience the result of it, which is the actual.

Since all objects, for Deleuze, are partly virtual, we can examine the virtual on its own

to determine its nature. It is for this reason that he claims that the virtual always exists on

its own plane. We can study the virtual features of an object, using mathematical

modeling, for example. A science like that only allows us to theorize about virtual

features. But in ordinary experience the virtual features become apparent or become

known only by paying attention to how the object changes. In other words, we need to

examine how the virtual comes into play in ordinary experience. For Deleuze, the virtual

must be understood as part of experience itself, not simply a condition of it. It is for this

reason that he describes lived experience as absolutely abstract. For example, an expert

woodcrafter will have developed this kind of experiential knowledge. He or she will not

know the biochemistry of wood and why it has the texture it does. The virtual features

only become apparent when the object approaches a critical point. In other words, when

examining experience, virtual features only become apparent at the point of destruction

or transformation, especially if we examine the different ways in which something can be

transformed. At these critical points the object is no longer in a stable state, no longer at

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equilibrium. The virtual features of the wood only become apparent, are forced to

become apparent, in the interaction with the woodworker.

However, let us return to Deleuze’s use of mathematics to describe the virtual. The

purpose is to understand the tendencies of processes that compose the object, and it is

interesting to note that Deleuze’s notion of the virtual allows us to examine these

processes on their own. One notion Deleuze focuses on from mathematics is

“singularity.” For Deleuze, singularities are properties of the constituting processes.

They are the points of transformation that define a certain kind of process. For example,

every person has a point at which she breaks down in tears, boils over in anger, or

dissolves into giggles. To take another example, a physical object has a freezing point

when it becomes a solid, and a melting point when it becomes a liquid. These features

can seem abstract and universal but they occur generally for a certain kind of object

because of the processes that constitute it. The features are particular to their respective

processes. However, they do not guide the processes in a transcendent way, only

marking the critical points of the processes and of their interrelations. Since we can

examine the virtual on its own, Deleuze describes features like singularities as having

their own life. Whether they become actualized or not, they continue to exist because

they always remain features of that object’s constituting processes.

It is important to note that we can never experience or empirically know the

constitutive processes that comprise the virtual. They can only be given as an Idea to

thought. The virtual is completely real, but not in the way the actual is real. As we have

seen, Deleuze describes Ideas as problematic, taking this up from Kant and, in fact, this is

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the only component of the latter’s transcendental Ideas that he retains.33 In Kant the

Ideas are necessary for empirical experience but cannot themselves be experienced. The

proper “object” of the Idea is the problem, which transcends experience, not an object of

experience. Although only an object of experience can actually have unity, for Kant the

Ideas still have a kind of unity since they posit the unity of our empirical knowledge.

Kerslake points out that what is important for Deleuze is that it is only from the

perspective of empirical experience that the object of the Idea appears as unity. In other

words, the projection of unity onto the Ideas only occurs from the perspective of

empirical knowledge.34 Kerslake argues, then, that Deleuze can be seen as radicalizing

Kant’s notion of Ideas by conceiving them not from the perspective of empirical

knowledge but in themselves the “object” of the Idea is not unity but difference, and it

has its own consistency. “Problems are always dialectical: the dialectic has no other

sense, nor do problems have any other sense. What is mathematical (or physical,

biological, psychical or sociological) are the solutions” (DR 179). Ideas can only be

understood as bringing (elements) into relation. Since Ideas in themselves are

problematic, they are not transcendent to experience in Deleuze. We have said that, for

him, the virtual can be understood as the constituting processes of objects. These

processes can be described as problematic because they do not have the unity of the

actual. In experience the virtual occurs as lines of tension or instability. They indicate

that the object can be taken in a different way. The key is that its parts relate in a way

that is not possible for the actual, a way that cannot be reconciled into a unity. We can

only grasp the virtual through thought, as an Idea, by conceiving the pure relation.

33 Daniel W. Smith, “Deleuze, Kant, and the Theory of Immanent Ideas” in Deleuze and Philosophy, edited by Constantin V. Boundas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp. 43-61. 34 Christian Kerslake, “The Vertigo of Philosophy,” p.18.

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However, what is thought is not a totality or unity, as in Kant, but difference. What

Kant’s and Deleuze’s conceptions of Ideas have in common is that, for both, the Ideas

pose something that cannot come together as a unity in experience. More importantly,

however, for both the Ideas are regulative. For Kant, the Ideas direct us to seek the next

cause in the series, thereby extending our knowledge. For Deleuze, the Ideas produce

empirical cases, as solutions, and produce concepts by which knowledge occurs.

An important criticism of Deleuze has recently emerged in Peter Hallward’s Out of

this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation.35 Hallward’s central criticism is

that Deleuze must be understood as devaluing actual existence in favor of an other-

worldly dimension (the virtual). The key to understanding Hallward’s criticism is the

relation of the virtual and actual. Hallward characterizes the relation as one of the

activity of creating (the virtual) and the creatural confinement of that activity (the actual).

Self-identical creatures or objects are therefore treated as though they are merely

containers for that activity. Hallward describes the actual object as an “unavoidable

obstacle” to the creative movement.36 He does make clear that he understands that the

virtual and actual cannot be understood separately, interpreting Deleuze’s project as an

attempt to free the creating spark within us. “The destiny of the creature…is simply to

invent the means of emptying or dissolving itself so as to impose the least possible

limitation upon the creating that sustains it.”37 John Protevi has recently claimed that

Hallward is guilty of interpreting Deleuze’s virtual and actual as a simple duality, even

35 Peter Hallward, Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation (Continuum Press: New York, 2006). 36 Ibid., p. 30. 37 Ibid., p. 29.

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though Hallward takes pains to avoid this.38 The actual cannot be considered passive in

relation to the virtual that creates it because the actual is a dimension of that creating

activity, the virtual. In the introduction of Difference and Repetition Deleuze

characterizes identity (or solidity) as a mere optical effect (DR xix). His point is that the

solidity of the identity of the creature (or any object) is misleading. The actual cannot be

understood as an obstacle to creative activity because the idea that the actual is an

encasing is the illusion. This is both an ontological and epistemological issue. The

ontological issue is that there is no solidity to destroy or anything from which to free the

creative spark. However, the actual appears to be something separate from the virtual.

The surface (the actual) is completely part of the object: it is simply the inside (the

virtual, constitutive processes) limiting itself.

It is at least clear that the relation of the virtual and actual is complex. Since, for

Deleuze, transcendental conditions (the virtual conditions) do not belong to the subject

(given that there is no transcendental subject) but to experience as such, the opening up of

a new field will occur in experience itself. It will be opened up within the objects of

experience. To be clear, the new field will not come from the object in itself, as it would

for the empiricist, but from the object of experience. However, these conditions arise

from the virtual portion of the object not the actual. Deleuze does not develop this part of

his theory in much detail in Difference and Repetition but it is implied in the theory of

experience he builds up there. He also provides hints of how new conditions arise, mostly

in chapter 5, “Assymetrical Synthesis of the Sensible.” It is absolutely vital for Deleuze

that new conditions arise from experience since, without this, his theory is reduced to

38 John Protevi, “Review of Peter Hallward, Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation,” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, http://ndpr.nd.edu (2007).

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Kant’s theory of transcendental conditioning. Deleuze’s virtual would be no different

than Kant’s possible (i.e. the concept in Kant). It is useful to consider Deleuze’s

statement that the conditions of experience are no broader than what they condition (DR

285). In a sense the process of actualization occurs as the complete expenditure of virtual

conditions. For example, the virtual conditions of water, which includes the virtual

relations therein, cause water to boil when it comes into relation to heat, when the water

reaches 212 degrees Fahrenheit. At the point at which the water starts boiling, those

particular virtual conditions have, in a sense, expended themselves in creating the actual

state of boiling water. In this way, virtual conditions are no broader than what they

condition. However, in another sense, virtual conditions continue to exist. “The virtual

intensity is only cancelled outside itself, in extensity, but remains implicated within

itself” (DR 240). Virtual conditions continue to exist in the way that the boiling point of

water continues to remain the point at which water boils even when a particular pot of

water reaches the boiling point. In this way, virtual conditions can connect and come into

relation with other virtual relations and be transformed. It is important to keep in mind

that the actual does not result from the limitation of pre-existing possibility. However, in

order to understand how the conditions of experience arise, we must always look to what

was previously experienced. We would have to understand the object itself, that is to say,

its constitutive processes, in order to determine what would result in change in that

object. These processes determine how the object is able to interact with other objects,

how it will affect and be affected by them. Therefore new conditions do not arise from

the actual, or the static features of the object.

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Deleuze proposes the virtual/actual couple in order to replace the possible/real

relation. For this reason, he takes great pains to argue that the virtual is not like the

possible. The most explicit discussion of the virtual occurs in Chapter 4, where he

compares the virtual/actual relation to the possible/real (DR 208-214). In Deleuze’s

reading of Kant, the possible and the real have equal status but the real simply occurs as

the selection of one of the possibilities that falls under a concept. (This is the process of

‘realization.’) However, there is no conceptual difference between the possibilities that

would account for why a particular one is selected. “What difference can there be

between the existent and the non-existent if the non-existent is already possible, already

included in the concept and having all the characteristics that the concept confers upon it

as possibility? Existence is the same as but outside the concept” (DR 211). In Kant, all

of the possibilities can equally be selected. The real or empirical object is recognized

simply as embodying one of the possibilities and, because of this the real simply

resembles the possible, according to Deleuze. The existence of something can only be

explained as brute eruption. Existence is supposed to occur in space and time.

Spatiotemporality indicates which of the possibilities was selected, but since space and

time are simply given, they do not help to explain why that particular possibility was

selected: that is to say, spatiotemporality does not help explain why that one was selected.

Therefore we know that the one that will be selected to exist will occur as spatiotemporal

but we do not know the reason why that particular one will, in fact, be selected. In other

words, understanding the space and time of an object is not connected to its reason for

selection. It is for this reason that Deleuze claims that space and time are indifferent to

the production of an object (DR 211). The point is that the possible/real relation in Kant

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cannot account for real existence. For Kant, the conditions of experience determine

beforehand what is possible in experience. Even though we genuinely discover the

empirical laws of nature, they derive their necessity from a priori conditions because the

goal of the complete system of knowledge is already given. Empirical laws are not given

beforehand, yet only what is consistent with the transcendental logic of Kant’s

conditions, and therefore with the totality of Nature, will be an empirical law. In this

way, in Kant’s system, every single possibility is accounted for. As a result, realization

of possibility is not the creation of anything new. For Deleuze, possibility cannot be

calculated as it can for Kant. The calculation of possibility could never explain why only

certain ones, in fact, occur. The virtual/actual couple is meant to replace the possible/real

couple in such a way as to explain the existence of each thing. An object comes into

existence through the process of actualization. “In this sense, actualization or

differenciation is always a genuine creation. It does not result from any limitation of a

pre-existing possibility” (DR 212).39 Actualization is genuine creation because the actual

does not resemble the virtual for Deleuze as the real resembles the possible in Kant.

CONCLUSION

In developing an account of experience that allows for something genuinely new to

occur, Deleuze has to reconceive the notion of the system. The problem he finds in

respect of the system of experience in Kant is that in his attempt to account for the

system, Kant limits what can be an object of experience. Kant uses the idea of possible

objects of experience to delineate the boundary of the system. Kant is criticized for being

interested only in showing what the limit of experience is, in drawing the boundary of

39 The process of differenciation will be discussed in section 4 of chapter 3.

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possible experience, without showing how the limit arises. Deleuze locates this problem

in Kant’s conception of the system of experience. I have shown in this chapter that

Deleuze offers a new conception of the system. The key is that Deleuze reconceives the

limit of the system. He argues that the boundary of a system of experience arises in and

through the formation of a system. Thus his concern is with the genesis of systems of

experience.

This chapter has argued for the importance of Deleuze’s reconfiguration of the relation

of what is indeterminate to the determinable, that is to say, to the sphere of a system of

experience. The limit of a system is at issue here. In Kant the determinable (the entirety

of possible objects) is simply marked off from what is indeterminate. In other words, all

that can be said with Kant is that the determinable is distinguishable from the

indeterminate. In this way Kant does, indeed, establish the sphere of possible experience.

However, he only succeeds in marking off what can be known from what cannot. In

contrast, for Deleuze, the relation between the determinable and indeterminate is a

genetic one. What is determinable arises from the indeterminate. Deleuze takes the

transcendental Ideas from Kant but now they are the foundation of what is determinable.

As in Kant an Idea can be thought but never known because it is the condition for

experience. In Kant the indeterminate is simply what cannot be a possible object of

experience for us. It might be knowable for a subject with a different kind of intuition.

In contrast, for Deleuze, the indeterminate has no unity or consistency for any subject. It

simply cannot be an object. In order for anything determinable to arise from the

indeterminate, it must first acquire consistency. The Deleuzian Idea allows us to

understand how a framework of relations can arise, and thereby a framework in which

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consistency can occur. Objects can then occur within that framework. Thus, for

Deleuze, a determinable field or system can only arise from what is indeterminate. The

emphasis must be placed on the differentiating movement by which the determinable

field arises. By rethinking the notions of the indeterminate and the determinable and of

their relation, Deleuze is able to show the genesis of a determinable field. In other words,

something new can arise as a determinable field.

Another important consequence of Deleuze’s account is that there is no single system

that encompasses all of experience for the finite human subject. A system applies fully to

a certain cross-section of experience and, thus, it fully organizes experience in a

particular way. However, it does not preclude the organization of experience in other,

non-overlapping ways. In Deleuze’s account, no system occurs as a closed system. The

relation of a system to what is outside of it differs from Kant. It is always possible for a

new Idea to occur because new elements and relations can always arise. Hence, it is

always possible for a new field of experience to occur. Ideas serve as transcendental

conditions for Deleuze, yet he has to transform Kant’s language. The notions of

transcendental and empirical become the virtual and the actual. In developing their

relation, he also shows how the relation of a system and what is beyond it is transformed.

The indeterminate for Deleuze is like a bottomless reservoir that cannot be exhausted and

offers the possibility of endless creativity. When a new system opens up it in no way

diminishes the indeterminate. Thus creativity is purely a positive movement in Deleuze,

with no negativity: it is a movement that occurs out of excess.

Once we account for the opening up of a system of experience, we can then

consider the objects that populate the system. It is important to note that transcendental

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or internal difference is primary, for Deleuze. For Kant, spatiotemporal difference was

simply a different kind of difference than conceptual difference. Deleuze disagrees with

him on this point. Spatiotemporal difference becomes incorporated into individual

difference. In other words, the difference between individuals is not that one thing has a

different spatiotemporal determination than another. All external difference is really

individual difference, which is dependent on and arises from transcendental difference.

The crucial point is that the opening up of a system, which occurs through transcendental

difference, must be explained before external difference is explained. What is necessary

at this point is an account of individual difference. This was not something Kant required

since his account of the forms of space and time made individual objects possible. If we

examine how individual difference occurs in Deleuze, and its relation to space and time,

we will have an account not only of the opening up of a system of experience but also of

the production of the individuals that constitute that system. Individuation will be the

subject of chapter 3.

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CHAPTER 3

THE PRODUCTION OF A SYSTEM OF EXPERIENCE

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 2 has shown how Deleuze has transformed the notion of system taken from Kant.

Deleuze provides an account, lacking in Kant, of how a new system of experience is

generated. A system arises from the indeterminate, a movement we can conceive of by

means of an Idea. In addition, there are multiple systems for Deleuze, all of which

interact with each other but do not thereby form a whole when taken together.

It is now necessary to show how the individual empirical cases or objects occur in a

system. I will show that Deleuze can account for the production of individuals such that

they are produced internally to the system that is opened up. In other words, it must be

the case that the occurrence of the Idea or the opening up of the system itself gives rise to

individuals that compose the system. If this cannot be shown, Deleuze has not truly

given an account in which the conditions by which experience is ordered arise from

within experience itself. The production of the system occurs as the production of

spatiotemporal individuals, which is equally the production of knowable objects. Once

again, for Deleuze the relation between subject and object is an internal one. In other

words, the objects produced are also the objects that can be known to the subject. Kant’s

explanation for this was, of course, that the conditions for possible objects belonged to

the transcendental subject. In contrast, in Deleuze’s account, the conditions are found in

experience itself, giving rise to objects that can, in principle, be fully known.

In Deleuze the problem of empirical cases is the problem of individuation. As shown in

chapter 2, unlike Kant Deleuze cannot rely on the forms of space and time to explain the

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differences between empirical cases. Instead, individuals arise through a process whose

nature will be shown in this chapter. The spatiotemporality of individuals is a result of

this process. The notion of “intensity” is central to Deleuze’s account. For him, it is

intensity that takes us from the relations and elements of the Idea to the production of

individuals. In other words, an Idea gives rise to intensity such that a progressive

movement of development occurs. Thus intensity is more fundamental than

spatiotemporality for Deleuze and in fact gives rise to the latter. Intensity is

individualizing. Individuals are produced insofar as they have spatiotemporality. This

chapter will therefore show the relation of intensity to the Idea and how intensity gives us

the individuals of a system. In addition, it will show how space and time are opened up

and how they occur within the process of individuation. In section 4 I will examine a

system of experience from the perspective of the subject. That is to say, once I have

considered the notion of intensity in its role in the production of a system, I will examine

intensity in the way it is experienced by the subject and in its significance for the subject.

I will show how a system is opened up for a subject.

In order to accomplish this I must first introduce the terms “differentiation” (spelled

with a “t”) and “differenciation” (spelled with a “c”), which are important for Deleuze in

that they allow him to account for the progressive development of a system of

experience. This language is important because it provides Deleuze with the means to

show how an Idea arises within experience—something Kant could not do and did not

have the language to do. The term “differentiation” indicates the development of an Idea:

the elements and their relations that, together, constitute an Idea. Once there is an Idea

the system can be produced for the subject. Deleuze uses the term “differenciation” to

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indicate the movement by which distinct objects are produced in the system. As I have

said above, for Deleuze there is no subject prior to the opening up of experience. In other

words, there is no transcendental subject as there is in Kant. I will show that certain

developments in the subject correspond to the opening up of experience. A full account

of the subject is essential to Deleuze’s account of experience and will be given in chapter

4. Here my concern is simply to discuss what is necessary for demonstrating how the

opening up and production of a system occur for the subject.

1. PRODUCTION OF A SYSTEM: THE PROCESS OF INDIVIDUATION

The most extensive interpretation of the account of individuation in Deleuze has been

given by Manuel DeLanda in his Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy.40 DeLanda is

primarily concerned to show how recent research in mathematics and the natural sciences

can account for the processes that would be required for individuation to occur as

Deleuze conceives of it. More recently, Alberto Toscano has taken up the question of

individuation in The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation Between Kant

and Deleuze.41 While Toscano also turns to the sciences to some extent, his aim is to

bring Deleuze into relation with the history of philosophy on the question of

individuation. He argues that certain philosophical notions, such as cause and essence to

take just two examples, are transformed as a result of Deleuze’s theory of individuation.

In what follows I try to show how the systematic field of experience is produced in and

through the production of individuals, bringing in the works of DeLanda and Toscano

insofar as they help in developing this account.

40 Manuel DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (Continuum Press: New York, 2002). 41 Alberto Toscano, The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation Between Kant and Deleuze (Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2006).

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We have said that Ideas are the opening up of a systematic field. However, the

production of the field only occurs as the actualization of the Idea. The Idea continues to

exist but not in the same way as what is actual. Its existence has the character of

virtuality. To explain how actualization occurs, Deleuze introduces the concept of

intensity. He uses the terms intensity and intensive difference interchangeably because,

for him, intensity is a kind of difference. We have said that Ideas are composed of virtual

elements and their differential relations. Insofar as they are in the Idea, these elements

coexist. Elements coexist in the Idea because they are reciprocally related and because

they have no existence apart from their relations. The differential is the symbol for the

reciprocal relation. However, the elements can come into other relations in which they

do not coexist. These relations occur as intensities. In other words, an intensity is this

new kind of relation between elements. “Intensities are implicated multiplicities,

‘implexes’, made up of relations between asymmetrical elements which direct the course

of the actualization of Ideas and determine the cases of solution for problems” (DR 244).

Intensity brings the elements into asymmetrical relations, whereas in Ideas the elements

are in reciprocal relations. In a sense, intensity expresses the Idea in a new way since it

brings its composing elements into a new relation. “The aesthetic of intensities thus

develops each of its moments in correspondence with the dialectic of Ideas: the power of

intensity (depth) is grounded in the potentiality of the Idea” (DR 244). Intensity follows

directly from the Idea. We should note that Deleuze often characterizes Ideas and

intensive differences in similar ways. For example, he uses “power” to describe both.

The reason for this is their close connection. Ideas are virtual, while it is intensity that

takes from the virtual to the actual. In other words, intensity occurs during actualization

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but is not itself actual. Intensity arises from the Idea as a new kind of relation between

elements that compose the Idea.

Deleuze relies heavily on the concept of intensity to give an account of the production

of the system and thereby the production of individuals. This account occurs for the most

part in chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition, in which this concept figures heavily. The

concept of intensity occurs in the context of discussions of physics and biology, which

make up a large part of that chapter. It is helpful to remember that Deleuze is attempting

to give a philosophical account of reality as we experience it. Since physics and biology

study that same reality, Deleuze utilizes the discoveries made in these fields to

conceptualize the problem of experience. The concept of intensity is taken from physics,

primarily thermodynamics, which is the study of the movement of energy and matter in

systems. DeLanda provides an excellent introductory discussion of the concept,

indicating the crucial difference between intensive and extensive properties of a system.

Intensive properties are those that are continuous and do not change if the quantity of

matter changes. Examples include temperature, pressure, and density. In other words,

intensive properties cannot simply be added together. On the other hand, extensive

properties can be divided and added in a simple way and do, indeed, change according to

the quantity of matter. Mass and total volume are examples of extensive properties.

However, DeLanda points out that there is a more important way of understanding the

difference since qualities like color would be considered intensive properties according to

this explanation. Rather than varying according to the quantity of matter, intensive

properties like temperature average when brought together. For example, when two

bodies of different temperatures come into contact, the final temperature will be the

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average of the two. “Differences in thermodynamic intensities are capable of driving a

process of equilibration in a population of molecules, a process in which these differences

will tend to average themselves.”42 The key is that intensive properties are differences

that spontaneously drive movements of matter or energy. In this way, intensive

differences act as a driving force of change. The direction of change is always toward

equilibrium, which cancels the difference. In this way, systems always tend toward

stabilization. Deleuze is interested in the concept of intensity because it describes a

particular kind of difference that produces change. “Difference is the sufficient reason of

change only to the extent that the change tends to negate difference” (DR 223). In

addition, intensity tends to cancel itself through the change it produces. For Deleuze,

intensity is a transcendental condition and cannot be empirically known. What we know,

or experience, is the change that it produces. By and large, what we know as actual

objects are at equilibrium, which means that the intensive differences that produced them

have been cancelled. Deleuze argues that this gives rise to a kind of transcendental

physical illusion (DR 228). Since intensity disappears under the extensive properties it

produces, we fall under the illusion that extensive properties are the cause rather than

merely the product. In this way, we mistakenly give extensive properties a greater

importance than they really have. We tend to think that the existence of an object or

system can be explained by its extensive properties rather than its intensive ones.

Deleuze argues that it is a physical illusion because it is not merely due to the structure of

knowledge, but, rather, reality organizes itself in this way. Toscano claims that Deleuze

must be understood as rethinking the notion of cause. According to Toscano, the

traditional idea of cause implies that the cause is an extensive or actual object just as is 42 Manuel DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, p. 60.

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the effect. However, in Deleuze’s account, where the production of a system follows

from an Idea, or production occurs as the passage from virtual to actual, a different

conception of cause is at work. Deleuze himself generally tends to use the term

“sufficient reason” rather than cause.

For him, intensity can be considered a system by itself since each intensive difference

drives a process and, thereby, sets up the poles between which the movement of matter or

energy occurs. Intensity is also the means by which individuation occurs, since

individuals are produced in and through the system that unfolds from the Idea. Beyond

the discussions of physics and biology, Chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition also relies

on the work of Gilbert Simondon to develop the account of individuation. A brief review

of Simondon’s L’individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information

(Individuation Through the Notions of Form and Information), published as “On Gilbert

Simondon” in Desert Islands, is somewhat more explicit on how the use of Simondon fits

into Deleuze’s project.43 For Deleuze, there are individuals only through a process of

becoming individual. What is prior to individuals must be more than individual, or a

surplus of reality. For Deleuze, being is not the individual but what exists prior to the

individual. “However, on this view, individuation is no longer coextensive with being; it

must represent a moment, which is neither all of being nor its first moment.”44 Deleuze

generally refers to this state before there are individuals as the “field of individuation.” It

is in accounting for the system at this point that Deleuze turns to Simondon. Toscano,

devotes a chapter of his book to developing the relation between Simondon and Deleuze.

He argues that what is important here is to understand what exists before there are

43 Gilles Deleuze, “On Gilbert Simondon,” in Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953-1974), translated by Mike Taormina and edited by David Lapoujade (Semiotext(e): Cambridge, MA, 3003). 44 Gilles Deleuze, “On Gilbert Simondon,” p. 86.

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individuals. He shows how Deleuze and others (Simondon, and Whitehead and Pierce to

a lesser extent) attempt to develop an account of individuation that does not begin with

individuals and simply extrapolate from them to their constituting processes. “With

regard to the processes of individuation themselves, the concepts designed to express

them must be operational or relational concepts that do not rest on the predetermined

properties of constituted individuals.”45 This point is important for us here in

understanding the relation of the individual to what it arises from.

Deleuze uses Simondon’s concept of the “metastable” to explain what the field of

individuation is like. This state of being consists of different levels or dimensions of

reality that are not integrated together and do not form a whole. These dimensions

coexist and do not interact in this state. If they were to interact, they could not exist

together because they are incompatible with each other. Deleuze also takes the term

“disparate” from Simondon, which indicates the incompatibility of these levels or

dimensions. The key feature of the metastable system for Deleuze is that it is a state of

difference or dissymmetry such that this difference exists in it as potential energy.

Deleuze sees himself as generalizing Simondon’s concept of the metastable system since,

for Deleuze, each intensity can be described as a system of dissymmetry or difference

that has potential energy. In other words, for Deleuze, “intensity” simply connotes this

state of potential energy. It is helpful to note that in the Idea the dimensions or levels are

not yet in a state of dissymmetry. It is in intensity that they are brought into this tension.

“Like the metastable system, an intensive quantum is the structure (not yet the synthesis)

of heterogeneity.”46 The synthesis is the cancellation of intensity. In other words, what

45 Alberto Toscano, The Theatre of Production, p. 14. 46 Gilles Deleuze, “On Gilbert Simondon,” p. 87.

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Deleuze refers to as intensity is the state before the movement by which it will be

cancelled has been produced. Deleuze also uses the term “singularity,” which he says

corresponds to each potential. Singularities simply occur as features of preindividual

systems. Individuation arises from this condition only by resolving this incompatibility

or difference of dimensions. It begins by establishing communication between these

realities. (“Internal resonance,” another term from Simondon, is a primitive mode of

communication.) Communication is the beginning of the movement by which the

difference is cancelled or resolved. The movement by which it is cancelled is also the

synthesizing of intensity. Ultimately individuation solves the problem of the

incompatibility of dimensions of reality “by organizing a new dimension in which they

form a unique whole at a higher level (analogous to the perception of depth that emerges

from retinal images).”47 In the end the actual or complete individuals, whether they are

physical objects, biological organisms, or human subjects, are characterized by these new

dimensions which have resolved their constituting intensities.

To highlight the fact that this process of individuation occurs as a movement of

production, not of limitation, Deleuze describes each reconciliation or solution that

occurs as an affirmation and says that it only appears limited or suffering from lack when

cut off from its movement of actualization (DR 207). In other words, the synthesis of

intensity only occurs in and through the creation of a new dimension, which is positive

because it occurs not by reduction of pregiven possibilities but as the creation of

something new. The new dimensions are created by actualizing or synthesizing the

potential energies. It will be by means of these new dimensions that we will be able to

grasp determined and actual objects. This new dimension is like a surface created by 47 Ibid., p. 87-88.

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intensive difference. “Difference pursues its subterranean life while its image reflected

by the surface is scattered. Moreover, it is in the nature of that image, but only that

image, to be scattered, just as it is in the nature of the surface to cancel difference, but

only on the surface” (DR 240). It is on this new dimension created by intensity, the

surface, and only on it, that intensity is cancelled. In itself, intensive difference is not

cancelled but continues to exist.

In addition to the fact that intensity cannot be divided as extensive properties can,

Deleuze also explains that intensity is not indivisible in the way that quality is (DR 237).

Intensity cannot be divided without changing its nature as a quality can. Neither is it a

homogenous quantity (DR 237). He uses the example of temperature again. Since

temperature is not a homogenous quantity it is not made up of other temperatures added

together. Temperature is already a difference and is not made up of differences of the

same order (that is to say, other temperatures) but implies, instead, series of

heterogeneous terms (DR 237). Intensive difference is always made up of, or implies,

differences of different orders, while extensive difference is made up of differences of the

same order, which is why it does not change in nature when divided. In this way,

intensive difference brings the coexisting elements and relations of the Idea into a new

relation: they are made to occur in orders that are made up of each other. “Every

intensity is E-E’, where E itself refers to an e-e’, and e to ε-ε’ etc.: each intensity is

already a coupling (in which each element of the couple refers in turn to couples of

elements of another order), thereby revealing the properly qualitative content of quantity”

(DR 222). The reason for this is that each division of intensity is a change in kind. In

other words, intensity can, indeed, be divided, but only by producing a new intensity.

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Toscano explains that what is interesting here is that every division of intensity occurs as

a new event of individuation and leads to a new system. In a sense, different orders are

imbedded in one other. Deleuze uses the term “implication” to describe this state of

intensity. In other words, these orders are brought together in a particular kind of relation

through intensity. Even if an intensity is not divided according to each order, these

orders continue to exist by virtue of their implication by the intensity. Deleuze also says

that intensity implicates other intensities. Intensities are related to one another in this

way. What makes them different is the portion they express clearly.

It is important to note, then, that intensity is an internal kind of difference. It does not

serve to distinguish two things, which would presuppose that each has an identity prior to

their distinction. Intensity differentiates itself from itself.

Individuation is a complex event and occurs by means of many intensities that are

related to one another. However, it is helpful to understand how a single intensity, taken

by itself, is synthesized to produce the organizing and individuating dimension. As we

recall, the Idea can be described as a differential of the type dy/dx. Daniel W. Smith

argues that Deleuze develops the concept of the differential from Leibniz and Maimon.48

The idea is taken from the differential calculus. Deleuze uses the differential because the

Idea occurs as the reciprocal relation between elements and it is only through their

relation to each other that these elements can be said to exist. The operation of

differentiation gives us this relation. Now, the synthesis of intensity can be described

using the integration of the differential relation, like the operation in calculus. In calculus

the process of finding the value of an integral is called integration. Through integration

48 Daniel W. Smith, “Deleuze on Leibniz: Difference, Continuity, and the Calculus” in Current Continental Theory and Modern Philosophy, edited by Stephen Daniel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005), pp. 127-147.

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we get the value for an area or a volume of a complex figure. In this sense integration

gives us the figure as a whole. The important point is that in calculus differentiation and

integration are inverse operations since differentiation gives us the boundary of the figure

by giving us the relation between variables. These operations have the same relationship

in Deleuze. Each integration or synthesis produces something new. “The differential

relation signifies nothing concrete in relation to what it is derived from, that is, in relation

to x or y, but it signifies something else concrete, names a z, which is something new, and

this is how it assures the passage to limits.”49 In this way, what is produced, z, does not

resemble its conditions, dx and dy. This is the operation of integration in the sense used

in calculus. As Smith explains, differential analysis allows us to understand how

infinitely small relations can occur. When the differential relation is integrated it

produces infinitely small changes. In this way intensity can be synthesized along a

continuum, thereby producing individuals that differ externally from each other by

infinitely small amounts or, in other words, which form a continuum of external

difference. Intensive difference simply occurs when the relation occurs. However, it is

the synthesis of intensity that is the performance of that relation, producing each case of

z. In this way, intensity is individuating because it gives us each individual case of z. Z

is the new dimension that is produced through intensity. DeLanda says that the new

dimension created can be understood as an equilibrium structure.50 In fact all extensive

properties of an actual individual are produced during the synthesis of intensity as

additional and stabilizing dimensions. Insofar as the individual is defined by these

stabilizing dimensions, it is a solution to a problem.

49 Ibid., p. 140. 50 Manuel DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, p. 60.

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We can examine more closely what occurs during the process of individuation for

Deleuze. Toscano argues that for Simondon the individual must be understood not

merely as the result of the process of individuation but equally as the site or theater of

individuation.51 Deleuze maintains this same conception of the individual. The

individual is not the agent but the theater of individuation. The individual is produced as

the differences of intensity play themselves out and resolve themselves. As a result of

this, during its formation, the individual undergoes the most extreme movements and

torsions. Deleuze turns to embryology to understand the field of the individuation.

“There are ‘things’ that only an embryo can do, movements that it alone can undertake or

even withstand (for example, the anterior member of the tortoise undergoes a relative

displacement of 180 degrees, while the neck involves the forward slippage of a variable

number of proto-vertebrae). The destiny and achievement of the embryo is to live the

unlivable, to sustain forced movements of a scope that would break any skeleton or tear

ligaments” (DR 215). Deleuze also calls this the larval subject since it is not yet an actual

individual. These movements are produced as the syntheses of intensities. They are

experiences of intensity since there is a subject (that is to say, a larval subject) who

undergoes these experiences as it is progressively generated and becomes a fully

complete individual. It is not just animals or humans that occur as larval subjects but

whatever undergoes a synthesis of this kind. “There is a self wherever a furtive

contemplation has been established, whenever a contracting machine capable of drawing

a difference from repetition functions somewhere” (DR 78). Wherever there is synthesis

or contraction, there is a larval subject undergoing the contraction. We should note that

since the subject is produced through the synthesis of intensity, the subject carries with it 51 Alberto Toscano, The Theatre of Production, p. 149-150.

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all of the orders implicated in that intensity. This part of the individual or subject can

continue to participate in the Idea from which the intensity arises.

2. THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE AND TIME

To return to the movements that are the syntheses of intensity, it is important to note

that Deleuze also calls these movements spatiotemporal dynamisms because they carve

out a characteristic space and time as they occur. This space and time cannot be

distinguished from the space and time it takes for these movements to occur. In other

words, there is no space before a space is opened up. The time is how long it takes for

the intensive difference to be nullified, to be completely synthesized. An egg (or other

site of individuation) forms a space in the sense that there are linkages or connections

between points or intensities. The connections and movements are not relations that can

be explained using Euclidean geometry. For this reason, Deleuze utilizes concepts from

Riemannian geometry and topological space. DeLanda attempts to develop arguments

for these points, which remain rather cryptic in Deleuze. The relations between intensive

processes are not rigid Euclidean relations of distance and length, etc. but topological

connections.52 De Landa argues that these relations or linkages between intensities

become progressively more fixed as the individual becomes an actual entity so that

distances between them are unchanging and can be measured metrically.53 It is only in

the end, when intensive differences have been discharged and have reached equilibrium,

that the site has spatial and temporal characteristics that can be described using Euclidean

relations. DeLanda argues that individuals as actual entities cannot be understood as put

together in an assembly-line procedure, but only as produced in a more fluid way. As a 52 Manuel DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, p. 56. 53Ibid., p. 52.

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result, the completed individual is less adaptable and more rigid than its embryonic

counterpart. We get completed individuals insofar as the systematic field comes to be

progressively developed.

For Deleuze, then, we cannot begin with space and time as a priori forms, as Kant

does, for whom the form of space is characterized by its geometrical extension. In the

“Anticipations of Perception” Kant had argued that intensity is the matter that fills

extended space. However, according to Smith, Deleuze follows Hermann Cohen and

Salomon Maimon on the following point: Space must first be produced through intensive

difference.54 The reason is that space as pure intuition is a continuum and extensive

difference could never account for a continuum. No matter how much an extensive

quantity is divided, there are always discrete individuals. In other words, extensive

difference presupposes individuals. Only intensity can produce a continuous difference.

Kant defines intensity as the degree or amount of a quality or condition beginning from

zero.55 For Deleuze, intensity is also individuating because each magnitude is

apprehended as a unity and cannot be taken and added as parts of a whole. It is

something only insofar as it is a difference from zero. Deleuze considers this an

important point. Intensity begins from zero, not from unity. In other words, unity does

not have to be presupposed. Each difference from zero can form a unity, or individual.

We get a continuum because what is important is the magnitude in relation to zero, and

that each is apprehended or synthesized as a unity. Since intensity gives us a continuum

of difference, it gives us differences of degree and of kind.

54 Daniel W. Smith, “Deleuze’s Theory of Sensation,” p. 36. 55 CPR B208.

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Deleuze says that intensive difference gives a rule of production and serves to replace

the notion of schema in Kant. In Kant knowledge is only possible if we can subsume the

object, or the appearance, under the concept. However, appearances are spatiotemporal

while concepts are universals. The question is how two very different kinds of things can

have any relation. Kant lays out the schematism in order to respond to the problem of

how the spatiotemporal diversity of intuition can correspond to the concept. “The

schema of sensible concepts, such as of figures in space, is a product and, as it were, a

monogram, of pure a priori imagination, through which, and in accordance with which,

images themselves first become possible” (CPR A142/B181). In Kant the faculty of the

imagination bridges the gap between intuition and concept. Deleuze says that Kant’s

schema is like a Euclidean notion and simply occurs ‘between’ the concept and intuition,

both of which must be presupposed (DR 174). His notion of the spatiotemporal

dynamism attempts to replace the notion of schema. Deleuze uses the example of the

straight line: the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. “In this sense, the

mathematician Houël remarked that the shortest distance is not a Euclidean notion at all,

but an Archimedean one, more physical than mathematical; that it was inseparable from a

method of exhaustion, and that it served less to determine the straight line than to

determine the length of a curve by means of the straight line – ‘integral calculus

performed unknowingly’” (DR 174). What Deleuze means in referring to the method of

exhaustion is that the rule of production provides a step-by-step process. The synthesis

of intensity induces a movement through infinitely small increments and gives direction

to them. The rule of production does not give the object by reference to an already-

constituted space, but, instead, a whole set of mechanisms unfolds from the synthesis of

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intensities by which the object is incrementally produced. “It is intensity which

dramatizes. It is intensity which is immediately expressed in the basic spatio-temporal

dynamisms” (DR 245). In other words, intensity is expressed in the movements by which

a space and time is incrementally carved out. It is the larval subject that experiences

these spatiotemporal dynamisms.

3. FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS ON THE INDIVIDUAL

The embryonic or larval subject proceeds to the completed individual. The intensities

composing the larval subject reach stable states such that we can say that it is individual,

since, prior to that, there is only an event or a movement occurring. In other words, the

completed individual is both actual and virtual, whereas the larval subject occurs only in

the passage from the virtual to the actual. The individual comes about through the

stabilization of the larval subject, and it is the individual in this sense that can be the

subject of perception and for whom experience can occur anew. The subject will be the

topic of consideration in chapter 4. However, we must first examine what it means to say

that the individual is both actual and virtual, since it is through the relation of these

aspects that experience can occur for the subject.

Each individual, in the process of its constitution, occurs as the imbedding of a virtual

“half” and an actual “half” (DR 280). Insofar as it is a solution to a problem, an

individual is the actualization of the problem in one, particular way. However, this one

solution does not exhaust the problem or completely express it. The individual, as a

solution, virtually implicates the entire system to which it is a solution. Thus, the

individual continues to have a relation to the entire Idea. “What is complete is only the

ideal [or virtual] part of the object, which participates with other parts of objects in the

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Idea (other relations, other singular points), but never constitutes an integral whole” (DR

209). Even though certain relations or singularities are not actualized in the object or

individual, these relations and singularities still exist for the object or individual, but

virtually. By means of its relation to the Idea, the individual has a virtual relation to all

other individuals that occur from the Idea or in that system.

In addition to the relation to the Idea from which it follows, the individual also has a

relation to other Ideas. In order to see this, we must examine the relation that any

particular Idea has to other Ideas. Every Idea “interacts” with other Ideas. Insofar as an

Idea is the marking off what is determinable from the indeterminate, the Idea continues to

have a relation with what is indeterminate, by its exclusion. As a result, any particular

Idea has a relation to other Ideas, which is to say, to other ways of marking off and,

thereby, making something determinable. “In a certain sense all Ideas coexist, but they

do so at points, on the edges, and under glimmerings which never have the uniformity of

a natural light. On each occasion, obscurities and zones of shadow correspond to their

distinction” (DR 187). An Idea, by definition, occurs by bringing something to the

forefront in making it determinable. Each Idea orders all of experience, but in its own

way. Ideas cannot exist together on the same plane, since each Idea institutes its own

plane. In a reference to Descartes, Deleuze says Ideas do not coexist in the sense of the

uniformity of a natural light because they do not all occur together equally. Therefore we

do not say Ideas are actually in relation, yet, they do have a certain kind of relation.

Deleuze describes their relation as “perplication”. Since the Idea occurs in relation to

other Ideas, the virtual half of the individual consists not only of the Idea in relation to

which it is a solution, but also of other Ideas that are perplicated by the first Idea. These

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will appear at the edge of the individual’s experience, so to speak, because at the center

of its experience are the Ideas by which it occurs as an individual, to which it is a

solution. Of course the Ideas are not all perplicated in an equal way but, rather, in an

order according to how far removed they are from the Ideas to which the individual is a

solution or to what degree they are perplicated. Deleuze describes an individual’s virtual

half as its “zone” or “fringe” of indetermination (DR 257-258). Thus the virtual half of

an individual is composed of the virtual existence of all Ideas, in their particular state of

existence, the state of perplication. However, from another perspective, the virtual half

of an individual can be described in terms of singularities and other virtual events.

Deleuze also says that the fringe of indetermination is the fluid character of individuality

itself. It is this aspect that allows the individual to be open to and to genuinely interact

with what is around it. The individual is more open to coming into relation with

something the nearer the Idea of that relation is in perplication within the individual’s

virtual half.

Deleuze also uses the concept of perspective to explain the relation of the virtual and

actual. This is a notion he takes from Leibniz, transforming it for his own purposes (DR

47-48). In Leibniz monads express the entire world but are distinguished from each other

in that each expresses a different portion clearly and the rest obscurely. Their perspective

is determined by the portion they express clearly. In turning to Leibniz on this point,

Deleuze also reacts to Descartes and his criteria of the clear and distinct (DR 213 and

146). According to Deleuze, the Cartesian model presupposes the mind’s affinity with

the true, which is represented by the idea of innateness, and we only need a method to

insure knowledge. If an idea appears clear and distinct, it is true. Knowledge occurs in

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direct proportion to the Idea: the clearer the Idea, the clearer the knowledge. The

Cartesian model of knowledge has sameness or identity at its foundation. Deleuze

suggests that the “clear” must be split from the “distinct.” The result is the concept of

perspective. For Deleuze, individuals or real entities are characterized by their

perspective. The Idea, taken by itself, can be described as obscure and distinct, while the

individual that occurs as its solution is clear and confused. Insofar as a portion is

expressed clearly, the rest must be expressed confusedly. The actual half of the

individual is its “clear zone” in relation to its virtual half, which remains obscure. In

other words, the individual occurs in inverse proportion to the Idea, rather than in direct

proportion as in the Cartesian model. The individual does not occur as a reflection or

faithful representation of the problem or Idea, which would make its relation to the Idea

one of direct proportion. Instead, the individual occurs in and through its perspective on

the Idea. This reflects the fact that, for Deleuze, an individual only occurs in and through

the fact that it is a response, so to speak, to an Idea-problem.

In the production of the system from the Idea perspective is produced during the

synthesis of each intensity. As we said earlier, each intensity is composed of different

orders, which are implicated within the intensity. These orders of differences become

actual only if intensity is divided along that particular line. Otherwise, these orders

continue to exist virtually. In other words, the intensity expresses the entire system, or

Idea, but obscurely. The perspective of an individual occurs as the part of it that is actual

in contrast to what is virtual. However, it is important to remember that there can be no

clear zone or actual half without its relation to what is confused or virtual. “This would

be again to neglect the indissolubility of the clear and the confused. It would be to forget

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that the clear is confused by itself, in so far as it is clear” (DR 254). Something is actual

only insofar as it carries the Idea with it and carries its relation to the Idea with it. What

is actualized is what is clearly expressed by the individual, while the virtual is expressed

confusedly. The production of perspective occurs through intensity in that it expresses

clearly the order of difference along which it is actually divided, while expressing the

implicated orders of differences confusedly. The virtual half of the individual, or what it

expresses confusedly, is what Deleuze also calls the unconscious of an individual

(although, of course, this term is only used in relation to one kind of individual, the

human). The individual expresses clearly only the portion that is synthesized. In other

words, the individual does not represent the Idea in an impartial or unbiased way (i.e.

apart from a particular perspective). In fact, for Deleuze, there can be an actual

individual only insofar it is perspectival.56

For Leibniz, there is no world apart from the monads that express the world. In the

concept of perspective Deleuze follows Leibniz on this point to a certain extent, claiming

that there is no system of experience outside of the individuals that occur as solutions to

the problem (DR 163). However, while for Leibniz monads express the same world, for

Deleuze, in contrast, individuals express divergent worlds. “Each series tells a story: not

different points of view on the same story, like the different points of view on the town

we find in Leibniz, but completely distinct stories which unfold simultaneously. The

basic series are divergent: not relatively, in the sense that one could retrace one’s path

and find a point of convergence, but absolutely divergent in the sense that the point or

horizon of convergence lies in a chaos or is constantly displaced within that chaos” (DR

56 Daniel W. Smith expresses this point succinctly: “Subjectivity is (rather than simply has) an incomplete, prejudiced, and partial perception” in “Deleuze’s Theory of Sensation,” p. 38.

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123). For Leibniz, there are different points of view or perspectives but one single world.

However, for Deleuze, perspectives cannot be reconciled to form a single story or world.

These stories or series do, indeed, refer to each other, and they even intersect in places,

but they do not form one unified story. The chaos Deleuze describes is due to the relation

of the Ideas to each other, and that they cannot be brought together additively and do not

form a unifying plane. To compare, in Kant there is a point on which experience

converges, even though it transcends possible experience and can only be given as the

Idea of Nature.

We have examined the relations that Deleuze uses to account for the production of

each system. “The trinity complication-explication-implication accounts for the totality

of the system – in other words, the chaos which contains all, the divergent series which

lead out and back in, and the differentiator which relates them one to another. Each

series explicates or develops itself, but in its difference from the other series which it

implicates and which implicate it, which it envelops and which envelop it; in this chaos

which complicates everything” (DR 123-124). These complex relations, complication,

implication, and explication, give us different series and make it possible for each system

to be in relation to others without forming a unity. They account for the different

perspectives of individuals and for the relation they have to each other. The totality, or

chaos, referred to above must be understood as excess. The diverging worlds exceed the

unity of a single world in which the stories of individuals might converge. Ideas and

intensities coexist, but this coexistence must be understood as a kind of excess. We could

examine each system opened up by an Idea and see that it operates or functions only

through its excess (DR 115). For example, if we take the system of language, it is clear

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that this system cannot be exhausted by all of the books ever written. It will always be

possible to write something genuinely new. In other words, an individual case of the

system is not produced by depleting the system. The individual we get by means of an

intensity can implicate and be in relation with many different systems. Even though all

intensities implicate each other, they do not therefore express the same world. In other

words, we could not “add” together all of the possible systems into a single whole. There

is no totality from which they draw or which they form when added together. In other

words, experience comes to be organized in genuinely different ways that cannot be

reconciled.

I have tried to show that, for Deleuze, the individual is structured in such a way that it

is capable of being transformed. As a result of this, experience can occur for it. No

individual is “solid” or closed off because it has a fringe of indetermination. The

individual is not a seamless unit. It is from the individual’s fringe of indetermination or

virtual half that a new Idea can occur and a new system can be opened up. However, it is

important to note that experience will occur only when it is forced to occur. In other

words, things will continue to make sense in an ordinary way, according to our ordinary

empirical judgments so long as nothing happens that disturbs this. An individual’s

ordinary experience will be disrupted when it is confronted by something unrecognizable.

The distortion of the individual’s empirical experience will necessarily be sensible, and it

will appear as a sign. A sign is intensive difference, but from the perspective of the

sensibility of the subject. The sign will appear precisely as something unrecognizable, as

something that is not meaningful according to any system of meaning available to the

subject. Sensibility tries to grasp it but cannot because the sign appears purely as a

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difference or movement. In other words, the sign occurs as the transcendental condition

of sensibility for the subject because it cannot be grasped through the empirical exercise

of sensibility.

It is important to note that what is given as a sign is another individual. In this way,

experience begins only when the individual, the subject, comes into relation with another

individual, whether the second individual is an object, a piece of music, or another

person. This other individual can only be sensed. When the two individuals come into

relation, the intensities that comprise their virtual halves can lead to the formation of new

relations, and thus a new Idea. In other words, when sensation tries to grasp the sign, it

forces thought to occur and to pose a problem or Idea. This is the process of learning,

and Deleuze contrasts learning with the possession of knowledge. “Learning to swim or

learning a foreign language means composing the singular points of one’s own body or

one’s own language with those of another shape or element, which tears us apart but also

propels us into a hitherto unknown and unheard-of world of problems” (DR 192). In

other words, learning can only occur through the encounter between two individuals. In a

sense, the other individual is the one we confront. However, Deleuze also says there is

an a priori Other (DR 260). The relation with another individual is only possible

because, first of all, each individual has a virtual half that allows it to be transformed. “In

every psychic system there is a swarm of possibilities around reality, but our possibles

are always Others” (DR 260). Each system can be transformed because it implicates

other intensities. Each possible transformation is an Other, which expresses a world. In

other words, the Other is part of the structure of the individual. “That the Other should

not, properly speaking, be anyone, neither you nor I, signifies that it is a structure which

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is implemented only by variable terms in a different perceptual world – me for you in

yours, you for me in mine” (DR 281). Since the encounter with the other depends on

chance, Deleuze says there is only involuntary thought. Deleuze criticizes what he calls

hypothetical truths because the new Idea that is opened up does not simply exist as a

possibility prior to the encounter. We only think when an encounter with another forces

us to think (DR 139).

The new Idea that is opened up transforms both individuals but to different degrees.

This is only possible because both individuals have a virtual half. Experience can occur

for the subject in that a new system of meaning can open up for it, which can appear as a

new kind of engagement with things or as a new set of practices. Insofar as a new system

opens up, the subject undergoes the experience. In other words, the subject is passive, or

a larval subject, and not the agent in relation to the opening up of experience. However,

since the subject occurs in relation to many Ideas, not all of which are directly related to

the Idea which has opened up, the subject retains its identity in terms of these other Ideas.

As we said above, experience begins with the Idea. However, since there is not yet an

individual until there are syntheses of intensities, and since an Idea can only be grasped in

thought by the individual, any relation of the individual to the Idea can only occur “after”

the system is already produced. In other words, the individual can only think the Idea

retrospectively. This is why Deleuze says thought must follow the path of experience in

reverse (DR 282). In What is Philosophy?, too, Deleuze says that thought works

backwards, in contrast to science, which works in a forward direction.

Thus far, I have been showing how a system is produced for Deleuze. As my concern

here is the question of experience, it is important to show, too, how the production of a

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system is experienced by the subject. From our discussions up to this point, it is clear

that the issue of the subject is a complex one. As I have said, I will be developing

Deleuze’s notion of the subject in greater depth in chapter 4, but raising this issue earlier

is unavoidable. The main reason is that for Deleuze the subject is produced in

experience, in the opening up of a system. I have briefly discussed the larval subject,

which is not a fully-formed subject or, rather, it is not the subject that we mean when

using the term in its everyday sense. In what follows, I will be showing what the

production of the system is like for a fully formed subject.

4. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE OPENING UP AND PRODUCTION OF A SYSTEM

It is important for us to see here how a system of experience is opened up for a

subject. Ordinarily, for Deleuze, our relationship to objects is simply one of recognition.

It is the sphere of established knowledge. However, this relationship can be disrupted.

Deleuze argues that experience always begins with sensibility. “It is true that on the path

which leads to that which is to be thought, all begins with sensibility” (DR 144).

Something appears to sensibility that is disturbingly unfamiliar and unexpected. We

know it does not make sense in the way we had thought. It is not recognizable and

therefore not an object but a “sign.” “The contingently imperceptible, that which is too

small or too far for the empirical exercise of our senses, stands opposed to an essentially

imperceptible which is indistinguishable from that which can be sensed only from the

point of view of a transcendental exercise” (DR 140-1). A sign is unrecognizable in

principle and not merely misrecognized empirically. We can only recognize what it

conditions, a stable object, not the event of becoming itself, which is the condition. A

sign is precisely not meaningful because it occurs outside of any previously known

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system of meaning. However, signs are given off by an object of experience when they

become distorted and reveal a virtual characteristic that was not apparent because of the

previous conditions. Since the sign is something that exceeds empirical experience, we

can say that in Deleuze the transcendental does not completely overlap with the empirical

but, instead, exceeds it. We can also use Deleuze’s language of virtual and actual,

recalling that every object is partly virtual and partly actual. Thus conditions arise from

within experience but they appear as what exceeds any particular system of experience.

Smith has argued that the sign in Deleuze must be understood as intensity.57 Distortions

of the object must occur as intensive change, not change in spatiotemporal relations,

since the change is sensible but not recognizable. Only a recognizable object could have

spatiotemporal determinations. Deleuze expresses an interest in sensory distortions

achieved in pharmacodynamic experiences and physical experiences like vertigo because

they are experiences of signs (DR 237). The distortion of the object is not due to the

problem to which the object is an object, that is, the field to which it belongs as object.

In a sense the virtual tension is “alongside” the object. Signs are the hints we get in

empirical experience of the constituting processes of the object and, thus, of the system to

which it belongs and of the other systems which are in its periphery.

Signs are always encountered unexpectedly and often as a shock. For example, if it is

my first time swimming, obviously I expect to be in the water. But the signs I encounter

are still unexpected—the visual aspects, the sounds, the physical sensations, etc. The

appearing of the sign, of an intensity, means something has come into relation with us. In

this example the relation is between myself and the water. The opening up of a system

cannot begin from the subject alone since there is no subject with regard to the new 57 Daniel W. Smith, “Deleuze’s Theory of Sensation,” p. 36.

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system of experience that has yet to open up. It can occur only when the subject comes

into relation with something else. This relation can only be given to the subject as

something sensible. Signs, too, are given off when two (or more) individuals come into

relation. A sign is precisely something sensible, not something given to thought, since

intensities are never given to thought. Again, experience can only begin anew from

something sensible, not from a concept, for example, since concepts belong to the subject

alone.

We can understand how things proceed for the subject in terms of the other faculties.

Deleuze offers his own theory of faculties, not so much to establish such a doctrine, but

to show what its requirements would be. He is arguing against Kant on this point, for

whom the faculties function in harmony around a recognizable object. For Deleuze, in

contrast, the faculties could only be connected through a kind of discord. “Rather than all

the faculties converging and contributing to a common project of recognizing an object,

we see divergent projects in which, with regard to what concerns it essentially, each

faculty is in the presence of that which is its ‘own’” (DR 141). Each faculty is forced to

grasp that which it cannot empirically grasp but which belongs uniquely to it. Thus each

faculty is taken to its limit, in the transcendental sense, and this is what Deleuze calls the

transcendental form of the faculty. He claims that the transcendental form of each faculty

is both the dissolution of the faculty in the empirical sense and what gives rise to the

faculty. In this way, each faculty must be forced into existence. An example is the

faculty of memory. Transcendental memory “grasps that which from the outset can only

be recalled, even the first time: not a contingent past, but the being of the past as such and

the past of every time” (DR 140). Each faculty is brought into existence when it strives

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to grasp what only it can grasp: the transcendental object of the faculty. As I said above,

experience begins with sensibility. When intensive difference is given to sensibility,

sensibility is taken to its transcendental limit.58 It is not the common object that is

communicated between the faculties, as it is for Kant, but, rather, the violence when each

faculty undergoes its dissolution. This violence is communicated to and awakes another

faculty. In each case, it is a form of difference unique to the faculty that awakens it. For

sensibility, it is intensive difference; for imagination, it is disparity in the phantasm; for

thought, it is the differential, and so on (DR 145). These forms of difference are given

off by an Idea. “[We] reserve the name of Ideas not for pure cogitanda but rather for

those instances which go from sensibility to thought and from thought to sensibility,

capable of engendering in each case, according to their own order, the limit- or

transcendent-object of each faculty” (DR 146). Ideas, then, belong to no one faculty, but

to all faculties.

For my purpose here, which is to show why Deleuze is critical of Kant’s theory of

faculties, we do not need to develop Deleuze’s own theory of the faculties in detail. It is

important only to underline that experience necessarily begins with sensibility, and then

leads to thought. There can be systems of sensibility, like the system of color or a system

of music. However, in order to understand a system, it must be grasped by thought. This

is the reason for my focus on the faculty of thought.

Deleuze himself privileges thought over the other faculties. As with the other

faculties, thought only occurs when it is forced to occur, by a violence done to it. “There

is only involuntary thought, aroused but constrained within thought, and all the more

58 Thus, intensity is not the anticipation of perception as it is for Kant, but the transcendental object of sensibility (DR 237).

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absolutely necessary for being born, illegitimately, of fortuitousness in the world.

Thought is primarily trespass and violence, the enemy, and nothing presupposes

philosophy: everything begins with misosophy” (DR 139). In fact, Deleuze says that by

itself thought would only remain within possibility. We are only forced to think because

thought is taken to its transcendental limit at which it is unable to think, unable to

recognize and understand what occurred. Deleuze also says that the transcendental limit

of thought is a kind of stupidity, and for this reason he describes stupidity as a

transcendental problem (DR 151). The transcendental limit is also the condition for the

faculty. Deleuze emphasizes this point by saying that difficulty is not a de facto state of

affairs but a de jure structure of thought, and here we can think of stupidity and difficulty

together (DR 147). Stupidity is not merely making an error since error is merely

empirical. We recall from chapter 1, above, that Deleuze criticizes philosophers such as

Plato, Descartes, and Kant who, he claims, presume that the nature of thought is to think

or that we (we who possess the capacity for thought) tend naturally to think. In contrast,

Deleuze argues that the natural state is not thinking, which is why thought only occurs

when it is forced to occur. The real problem facing thought is how to engender thought,

how to bring it into existence, and stupidity has to do with this. We note here that all

experience begins contingently, for Deleuze, not because of the nature of the subject.

The relation of thought and the subject with what is external to it is what is important.

Thought cannot remain closed off within itself. Although its disturbance is violent it is

only this disturbance that can lead to thinking.

It becomes important to inquire with Deleuze: who is it that thinks? It cannot be the

one who is satisfied and has good will. This person is merely complacent. Only the one

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filled with ill will and who is unable to recognize what everyone else recognizes will

think. Since thought does not occur naturally, it is not moved of its own accord. The

problem is to induce thought. Deleuze uses an example from Proust to answer the

question of who thinks. It is the jealous man under the pressure of his lover’s lies who is

forced to search for truth. This person searches for truth because he is forced to search.

There is a dissatisfaction or uneasiness that accompanies all thinking.

Deleuze uses the term “learning” to indicate what goes on for the subject when a new

system of experience is opened up. “Learning is the appropriate name for the subjective

acts carried out when one is confronted with the objecticity [sic] of a problem (Idea),

whereas knowledge designates only the generality of concepts or the calm possession of a

rule enabling solutions” (DR 164). Deleuze uses the term “objecticity” indicate that

problem is not subjective, but not simply objective either because it does not occur

independently of a subject. He argues that there can no be method for learning (that is to

say, no method in the Cartesian sense of determining, a priori, how reason should be

used in order to achieve knowledge. We cannot predict what encounters will lead

someone to learn. The only training is a kind of violent training, for which Deleuze

reserves the term “culture.” He also frequently says that the real model for learning is

apprenticeship. “An apprentice is someone who constitutes and occupies practical or

speculative problems as such” (DR 164). If we return to the example of swimming,

Deleuze says that we only learn by bringing together the distinctive points of our body

with that of the water to form a problematic field. Thus learning is not merely a cognitive

act but requires an engagement with the elements of something else. Deleuze also says

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that the apprenticeship is really to signs.59 For example, someone who wants to become a

craftsman of wood must become sensitive to the signs given off by the wood: how it

responds when cut with the grain or against it; the difference in sound when healthy

wood is cut as opposed to unhealthy wood, etc. However, we can examine the period of

time during which the constitution of a system takes place. This is a strange period of

time. Deleuze describes a paradoxical point that can occur during this period of time in

which the constitution of the system is taking place. As an example, Deleuze uses a well-

known test in psychology involving a monkey who is supposed to find food in boxes of

one color amidst boxes of various colors. “There comes a paradoxical period during

which the number of ‘errors’ diminishes even though the monkey does not yet possess

‘knowledge’ or ‘truth’ of a solution in each case” (DR 164). In the example above,

which is simplistic to be sure, the organizing principle is that there is a connection

between the color of the boxes and food. The monkey does not at first grasp that color is

a meaningful and relevant factor. During the constitution of a system, there are not yet

individual, empirical cases—in this example, the empirical cases are individual boxes

defined by their color and whether there is food or not. The organizing principle

determines the distinct possibilities that can occur in the system. In a sense the subject

can only experience fleeting sensations during the period in which the system is being

constituted.

In Proust & Signs, Deleuze takes up the phenomenon of wasted time. “We never

know how someone learns; but whatever the way, it is by the intermediary of signs, by

wasting time, and not by the assimilation of some objective content” (PS 22). When one

59 Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs: The Complete Text, translated by Richard Howard (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). Hereafter cited as PS followed by the page number.

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is learning something, like differential calculus or a language or philosophy, she may

have a period of time in which nothing appears to be occurring. It may seem that

learning is, in fact, not taking place. Deleuze’s interpretation is that this period of time is,

in fact, extremely important. This is the period of time before the system has opened up.

We can imagine that during this period the subject is struggling and things are not

“making sense.” The subject does not yet grasp the Idea-problem that provides the

context for any fact she has “learned.” This is a critical time since the Idea might not be

synthesized at all. Moreover, the length of this period of time cannot be predicted and

will vary from person to person. Deleuze describes the experience of teachers and how

the more serious problem with which students struggle is not making false or erroneous

judgments or statements but making nonsensical statements, mistaking banalities for

profundities, and posing problems badly. They are unable to distinguish the important

from the unimportant. These important points are the virtual events of a particular field,

for example the boiling point of a liquid (as opposed to the other ordinary points of

increasing temperature) or the point at which y approaches infinity (as opposed to the

ordinary points where x and y are mostly in a linear relation). The students have not yet

synthesized the Idea-problem and the system has not yet opened up. This can be

characterized as wasted time because it seems there is no movement forward. It appears

to be a time in which nothing is happening, that is to say, nothing productive. The new

system of experience can only open up through the engagement of the subject with an

other. Signs will be given off in this engagement but it cannot be predicted when and

which sign will lead to the synthesis of an Idea and, thereby, the opening up of the

system.

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In a sense the subject is not present when a new system of experience is opened up.

“‘Learning’ always takes place in and through the unconscious, thereby establishing the

bond of a profound complicity between nature and mind” (DR 165). We can think of the

unconscious for Deleuze as the space where subjectivity will occur. We can also think of

the unconscious as the space in which the new system of experience opens up. (We must

be careful with the use of the word “space,” however, since a system opens up a space

that the empirical cases mark out, as we said earlier.) For this reason, a new system

cannot be opened up simply by learning some objective content, which can only be done

consciously. We could think here of someone who is an expert woodworker or an expert

swimmer. These two people might characterize their work as occurring “instinctively”

and without conscious decision on their part. For Deleuze, this is evidence that learning

truly occurs through the unconscious and that even knowledge is not abstract and

disconnected but occurs only within the engagement of the subject and the constituted

field. Knowledge only appears to be disconnected from the engagement because it is the

result. The subject cannot use the concepts it already possesses to learn this new system

since these concepts are not relevant. No concept it possesses could truly be applicable in

a field that is new. A system of experience can only open up insofar as the subject is

opened up as well. If we consider the monkey again, its paradoxical period must be an

unconscious one. We can associate the usage of concepts and recognition by means of

concepts with the conscious and, in a parallel way, associate what goes on prior to the

production of concepts with the unconscious. Thus, the subject, insofar as it is conscious,

will experience objects as always already ordered within the system. In other words, the

subject cannot point to some kind of progressive development of the system. The

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conscious subject arrives “late” on the scene, so to speak. It is clear that the subject

cannot simply make the choice to synthesize an Idea and open up a new system of

experience if, by choice, we mean conscious choice. Hence, for Deleuze encounters can

only occur by chance.

To be clear, a new system of experience may or may not open up upon the appearance

of a sign. If it does it occurs as the transcendental reorganization of experience. This

takes place through transcendental differentiation, spelled with a “t,” along the line of the

tension that was brought to the forefront by the sign. Transcendental differentiation

occurs in two manners. The first is a single disruption of the field of experience, which

does not happen gradually but all at once like a flash of lightning. To give an illustration,

the Idea of color introduces a single difference: that between what is colored and what is

indifferent to color. The second aspect of transcendental differentiation is the plurality

implied by the first, and is the differentiation of the elements relevant to that plurality.

Moreover, through their articulation, the elements are also brought into relation. For

Deleuze, color is not a concept as it is for Kant, since red, blue, and green cannot be

understood as types of colors but only as dimensions of color itself, or the way in which

color is a pluralization. The difference between what is colored and what is not remains,

and the pluralization of color occurs only within what is colored. By means of

transcendental differentiation, experience will become organized according to the

differences that erupt within it. The transcendental Idea includes the elements of the

difference and their relation. The elements of an Idea can also come into relation such

that intensive differences are formed. Transcendental differentiation, then, is the

development or occurrence of the Idea. Neither an Idea nor the intensive differences that

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may arise from it occurs empirically but instead opens up the systematic field of

empirical inquiry. In other words, the Idea leads to the production of a system consisting

of empirical cases. Thus transcendental differentiation cannot be known.

Deleuze places a premium on the activity of thinking since thinking is truly creative.

The question now is, what is thinking for him? It is not simply an application of a

concept that one already possesses. I have already said that that is merely recognition.

Nor is it the “assimilation of some objective content” (PS 22). Earlier I said that the

distinction between truth and meaning is important for Deleuze. We can say here that

thinking for Deleuze is not simply grasping truth, but, rather grasping the principle on

which meaning depends. To think is to grasp a problem or Idea, that is to say, to

synthesize a transcendental difference into a problem, and to grasp the meaning that

arises from the problem-Idea. The great thinkers are those who are sensitive enough to

see a difference that others do not, and who are able to synthesize it into a system.

Deleuze also associates thinking with posing questions because there is a connection

between problems and questions, he claims. There are certain questions that express the

Idea-problem but, in contrast to Plato, for example, these are never questions of essence.

In fact he claims that they are questions of the inessential. These questions can be asked

only by tracing back from cases to the pattern that accounts for their differences. The

questions would make it possible to grasp what brings certain empirical cases together.

Thus, to think is to be able to pose questions and to be able to distinguish the important

and interesting questions from those which are not. “More than anyone, however, Kant

wanted to apply the test of truth and falsehood to problems and questions” (DR 161). We

see that Deleuze believes that the ability to examine and judge problems, and not merely

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propositions, must be made the distinguishing feature of philosophy—something he

claims Kant attempted but was unable to do. We have seen that Deleuze contrasts error

with stupidity. For him, stupidity is a transcendental problem in that it is inherent to the

structure of thought itself. On the other hand, error occurs merely at the level of

recognition. Stupidity is the inability to see a relevant difference. It does not entail

making errors, but, rather, mistakes uninteresting problems for interesting or important

ones. It is to receive a sign and to be unable to grasp its significance and, thus, to be

unable to open up a system of experience. However, since stupidity is a structure of

thought, it has a positive sense too. When thought is taken to its transcendental limit, one

is unable to think, to see things meaningfully according to the concepts of the given

framework. Only at this point can something new be thought. Thus stupidity is a

necessary point—the point at which thinking can really begin. It therefore occupies an

ambivalent position for Deleuze.

If we return to the explanation of how experience occurs for the subject, we have said

that a new system of experience opens up through transcendental differentiation. Once

the system has opened up, the system itself is produced through the actualization or

explication of the Idea. Deleuze refers to this process as differenciation, spelled with a

“c.” Both logically and ontologically, transcendental differentiation (with a “t”) must

occur prior to differenciation (with a “c”). However, in regard to the order in which they

are experienced, they may seem practically indistinguishable. The Idea introduces an

inequality, which allows a system to be opened up. The creation of the system is like the

creation of a surface on which the inequality is stabilized or dispelled, while continuing

to exist underneath. The systematic field is experience as it is empirically found to be

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ordered according to the aspect brought to the forefront as the Idea. The transcendental

Idea forms a system of meaning and the empirical field expends itself through the

articulation of empirical differences, which are the incarnation of meaning. Therefore

empirical differences are different in kind from the transcendental difference and

articulate it on a new level. To return to our example of the Idea of color, we see objects

everywhere, each having one definite color, but nowhere do we see the event of

indifferent white separating itself out into the plurality of colors. In other words, we see

objects as already having color because our empirical experience is already

systematically ordered according to color. Empirical cases are only constituted as such

because of their relation to the system that provides them with meaning, and are united

through their relation to the Idea. Even though empirical cases express meaning, they can

never fully consume or exhaust it. In other words, the Idea qua meaning and source of

meaning remains distinct from what incarnates meaning. In fact it is essential that the

inequality of the Idea continues to exist since it is must continue to provide the force or

compulsion for each empirical case. A different example would be straight and curly

hair. We can note their virtual characteristics. These would be the result of the physico-

chemical composition, such as various proteins. The empirical characteristic of curly hair

is the result of particular chemical bonds that occur. That particular chemical bond is

always present as a possibility when those particular physico-chemical compounds occur.

In addition, the empirical characteristic of curly hair does not consume the virtual

characteristic. In fact that particular chemical bond must continue to be present—

otherwise the hair would become straight. The Idea continues to exist underneath, even

while empirical cases populate the surface.

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Once the system has been produced it can be developed and explored. Concepts occur

at this empirical level of the organization of experience, for they express the kinds of

empirical cases that occur and indicate their relation to the systematic field. Empirical

objects can be investigated and known on the basis of concepts.60 As with Kant, here,

too, empirical cases are the objects of recognition. Once there is a system there can occur

individuals that have a kind of coherence even if they are not fully understood. A system

allows for certain distinctions to occur, which demarcate individuals. For example, a

socio-political system can open up the space for certain political positions, even if they

have yet to be understood. Positions like x and y and the alliance between the

Evangelical Christians and the neo-conservatives are only possible within the system of

liberal democracy as it occurs in the United States in the twenty-first century, and are

meaningless outside of that system. In addition, the subjects of the system can interact

with the system. Those who are working within the system are not simply producing the

empirical cases that belong to the system, nor are these cases producing themselves. For

example, once the system of Newtonian space and time was opened up, it was developed

to its limit. Scientists work within that system, developing all of its implications. In a

way, this can appear to be the most productive stage since the principles of the system are

just carried forth and taken as far as they can be taken. However, it is really the opening

up of a system that is the creative moment for Deleuze.

The subject can, again, return to the mode of recognition. However, even though we

can speak of a system of experience that has already been developed, it does not mean the

60 In What is Philosophy? Deleuze famously describes philosophy as the creation of concepts, and this might seem incongruous with what I have said above. However, insofar as a new concept is created, it occurs within a new plane or system. Thus, a concept can be a point at which a new plane intersects with a previous. Creation, then, must still be understood primarily as the occurrence of a new plane or system.

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subject cannot still interrogate the problem-Idea and, in this way, revitalize the creative

moment. “Hence that form of writing which is nothing but the question ‘what is

writing?’, or that sensibility which is nothing but the question what is it to sense?’, or that

thought which asks ‘what does it mean to think?’. These give rise to the greatest

monotonies and the greatest weaknesses or a new-found common sense in the absence of

the genius of the Idea, but also to the most powerful ‘repetitions’, the most prodigious

inventions in the para-sense when the Idea emerges in all its violence” (DR 195). Thus

the true literary geniuses, for example, continue to ask the question ‘what is writing?’ in

creative ways, repeating in a creative way. There is no answer, that is to say, empirical

response or solution, that can complete the question once and for all, since the problem

always continues to rumble underneath. In contrast to the geniuses, the banal writers are

always stuck in the mode of recognition, only able to see things in the framework that is

already given. We can, again, relate this to the problem of stupidity. It is a kind of

stupidity to only see things in the mode of recognition and to fail to repeat the problem in

a profound way. However, we are prone to stupidity and to continue in the mode of

recognition out of a kind of inertia.

CONCLUSION

I have shown in his chapter how Deleuze accounts for the production of a system of

experience. Kant’s account of the possibility of empirical or individual cases was no

longer adequate after the limit of a system of experience had been transformed by

Deleuze. He argued that it was necessary to show how a system arises, which required

showing how the individual cases arise as well. The key is that there is a progressive

development of a system and the individual cases that belong to it. We saw in chapter 1

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that Deleuze criticizes Kant because he cannot show how intuition could come into

relation with the categories of the understanding. Since intuition makes possible the

spatiotemporality of objects and, hence, their individuality, this is essentially the problem

of whether the empirical cases can be said to belong necessarily to the system of

experience. In other words, Kant could not explain why the conditioned (the empirical

cases) agrees with the conditions for knowledge (the categories). However, Deleuze

avoids this problem by showing that empirical or individual cases are progressively

produced as the system develops. The opening up of a system occurs only as part of a

movement that leads to fully developed individuals. It is no longer a matter of

accounting for how we can know a set of empirical cases since there are no empirical

cases apart from the system to which they belong.

As we have seen, Deleuze uses the notion of intensity to explain how we go from the

Idea to the production of individuals. For Deleuze, intensity is a kind of difference in that

it is a kind of relation. With this notion, then, he furthers develop his idea that all identity

is secondary and arises from difference. Identity does not occur as a mediator in any

way. Not only does a system open up through difference (that is to say, transcendental

difference), but its development also occurs through a system of differences. The

individual has a kind of stability or identity, yet is still open to engagement with other

systems and, thus, to transformation. For Deleuze, only where there is difference can

creation and transformation occur, while identity denotes what is essentially settled,

predictable, and established. Thus anything with self-identity only occurs as the result of

the movement of difference. In a sense, then, identity is dead. However, the

transformative power of difference continues to exist within things. As a result, every

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individual is open to and can interact with everything else. Thus Deleuze’s world is one

in which a creative and transformative power exists within everything, underneath the

surface and, thus, creativity can occur within any situation and from any individual.

Hitherto I have been developing Deleuze’s metaphysical account of the opening up of

a system and the production of individuals within that system. However, all of this

occurs for a subject. It is essential to return to this perspective, for only the subject is

capable of thinking and doing philosophy. The subject cannot experience the opening up

of a system and the organization of experience that leads to discrete individuals or objects

and to the concepts by which they are known. Instead, it undergoes experiences of

distortion as a system is opened up and becomes organized. The subject can only

experience and know what has stability and an identity. It can only think and, hence,

grasp an Idea in retrospect. Thinking for Deleuze is a movement backward. Once the

system has been produced, experience occurs in essentially the same way as it does for

Kant: experience occurs as recognition. For Kant, of course, recognition is the exemplary

kind of experience, in regard to speculative knowledge. On the other hand, for Deleuze

the experience of recognition is the least interesting, being simply the end result of a

creative process. Indeed, the speculative areas of human experience, such as science,

must be regarded as creative processes in Deleuze, akin to art in many ways and not

merely the discovery of truth.

As I have said, the subject for Deleuze occurs within the opening up and production of

a system. Thus it does not initiate this creative process but takes part in it. We need to

examine what it means to say that there is no subject prior to the opening of a system. In

addition, the opening up of a system is a harrowing experience for the subject, and we

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need to see why this is the case. I said above that the subject cannot simply choose to

open up a new system. For Deleuze, free choice occurs secondarily, a point that will

need to be developed further in the next chapter. In sum, we have yet to understand the

way in which the subject participates in the opening and production of a system of

experience. This is the subject of chapter 4.

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CHAPTER 4

THE SUBJECT AND TIME

INTRODUCTION

In chapters 2 and 3 I have shown what experience is for Deleuze: experience occurs only

insofar as a new system of experience opens up. As long as there is no new system of

experience, the subject merely continues to recognize objects according to the framework

already known to it. For Kant, in contrast, anything new in experience must already be

accounted for within the subject’s framework. As I have said above, Deleuze claims that

real novelty is therefore not possible for Kant. A system can only be new if the subject is

transformed in and through the institution of the new system. Thus Deleuze’s account of

experience requires a subject that is open rather than closed off. In other words, his

account of experience cannot simply begin with the identity of the subject since the self-

identical subject, on which Kant’s account of experience was grounded, could not

withstand experience. In this chapter I will show how the subject is constituted (or

transformed) in the opening up of the system of experience, for Deleuze. In addition, the

subject must have some sort of identity, even if it is open, and this identity must be

shown to arise secondarily to its transformation or becoming.

We have already briefly examined the openness of the subject in Deleuze. In chapter

3, I said that for Deleuze, no subject can be completely closed off since every subject has

a zone of indetermination. It is from within this zone that new conditions of experience

can arise. In Kant, essentially, the subject is closed off because while it can come into

relation with objects (or individuals) that are external to it, this relation can only occur so

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long as it is consistent with the framework the subject possesses. In this chapter I will

show how the subject is opened up when a new system of experience arises.

Our development of Deleuze’s conception of the subject requires an explanation of the

relation between the subject and the object or, in other words, how the subject can know

objects. The Copernican-like revolution of the critical philosophy, that is to say, the

internal relation of subject and object, was possible for Kant only because he conceived

of the subject as passively receiving what is given to it in intuition. In other words, Kant

accounts for the internal relation by focusing entirely on the subject. For Deleuze, too, the

relation of subject and object is a necessary one. However, he argues for it in a different

way. He argues that the subject is produced along with the objects that it can know. He

sees himself as radicalizing the passivity of the subject that he finds in Kant. This

chapter will show the way in which the subject is passive for Deleuze, and how this

allows him to argue that the relation of the subject and object is necessary and internal. I

introduce the terms “capacity” and “interest” into Deleuze’s account of the subject.61 I

use the notion of “interest” to explain how the subject can be predisposed to the opening

up of a new system of experience, while I use “capacity” to explain how the subject

becomes capable of receiving objects that are given to it and, thus, to come into relation

with these objects. In going into further detail on Deleuze’s conception of the subject, we

will show the subject’s relation to its world and how this interaction is no longer what it

is in Kant.

61 I am giving an emphasis to the term “capacity” that is not found in Deleuze. Deleuze seems to use “capacity” in a negative sense only. I remain true to the way in which Deleuze uses the term, but I extend its use because it allows me to describe a particular aspect of the subject. The term “interest” is one Deleuze does not use, but that I am introducing. It seems to me Deleuze’s account requires an explanation of how a subject is predisposed to new encounters with other individuals, and thus to the opening of a new system of experience. I am using the term “interest” in order to do provide such an explanation.

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The notion of time is significant for Kant’s subject. In this chapter I will also show

how Deleuze criticizes Kant’s conception of time, and how his own conception develops

as a result of this criticism. In brief, for Kant experience is possible because it always is

the subject’s experience. Every representation of the subject must become part of the

inner state of the subject. Any change in the subject or in the experience of the subject is

brought about by conditions internal to the subject. This condition is time. As a result,

the subject can only know itself in time, and its identity is continually being forged in

time. Deleuze takes his cue from Kant and the discussion of time is as important for

understanding the identity of the subject in Deleuze as it is in Kant. However, the

subject’s relation to itself becomes transformed, just as the conception of time does. This

chapter will therefore show how the subject’s relation to itself is negotiated by Deleuze.

In addition, he must be understood as providing an account of the constitution of time,

whose existence Kant simply presumes. In Deleuze’s view, time and its passage are

produced spontaneously and passively by means of three syntheses, described in the

second chapter of Difference and Repetition, which is titled “Repetition for Itself.” The

first synthesis is the synthesis of the living present. The second is the synthesis of

memory or pure past. The third is the synthesis of the pure or empty form of time.

Deleuze places the greatest emphasis on the third synthesis. In the first and second

syntheses the ordinary subject maintains its identity. It is in the third synthesis that we

get the transformation of the subject. I will show how the subject undergoes this

transformation and why this transformation is essentially a temporal event for Deleuze.

Furthermore, for Deleuze the opening up of experience is also temporal. In other words,

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the third synthesis of time also gives us the opening up of a new system of experience.

Thus time comes to be independent of the subject in Deleuze.

1. DELEUZE'S CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN SUBJECT

Deleuze argues, once again, that there are philosophical problems with Kant’s

conception of the subject. Kant’s account of experience rests on his notion of the

transcendental subject. The pure forms of intuition and the categories are mapped onto

the transcendental subject. The transcendental subject, then, is the condition of

experience and, of course, also the condition of empirical subjectivity. The

transcendental subject belongs to no one in particular and, instead, conditions every

empirical subject. In the end the ultimate condition of experience is the unity of

apperception, which makes synthesis possible. The subject’s experience occurs as

synthesis insofar as every judgment made by the subject’s faculty of understanding is a

synthesis. Deleuze’s criticism is that Kant simply presupposed the unity of the

transcendental subject as the condition of experience, without giving an account of it.

This gives us another way in which Kant had not taken the critical philosophy far enough

in Deleuze’s view. Kant did not bring the unity of the subject into question. Thus

Deleuze views himself as rectifying this problem and taking the project of the critical

philosophy to its logical conclusion in regard to the subject. In addition, since Kant

simply presupposes the unity of the subject, the subject never truly changes. In contrast,

because the subject in Deleuze does not function as the ultimate condition of experience,

as the transcendental unity of apperception does in Kant, its relation to experience differs.

The subject genuinely changes and is transformed.

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In addition, Deleuze attends to the necessity of new experiences being integrated with

the subject, such that experience always occurs as my experience. This, too, is made

possible by the transcendental unity of apperception in Kant. The integration of the

subject occurs continually through inner intuition in that the subject is given to itself in

the form of time. Kant points to a paradox that arises from this: I cannot experience

myself as I am, only as I appear to myself. Insofar as the subject synthesizes experience,

it is active. However, insofar as the subject must receive something in intuition, it is

passive. The subject is both active and passive, and there is a question as to how these

come together. The subject cannot know itself insofar as it is active but only insofar as it

is given passively to itself in time. Deleuze focuses on this paradox, developing and

interpreting it in a novel way for his own project. His account of the integration of new

experience with the subject will differ markedly from Kant’s. Deleuze nonetheless

thought that Kant’s account of the subject was an innovation over that of Descartes. The

relation of Kant to Descartes is useful for highlighting the evolution of the conception of

the subject in going from rationalism to the critical philosophy. I will therefore begin

with Deleuze’s interpretation of Descartes.

2. THE CARTESIAN SUBJECT

Descartes provides a certain conception of the subject in order to explain experience.

Every act of thought (that is to say, every act of perception, imagination, doubt, etc.) must

be accompanied by self-consciousness. For him, self-consciousness always occurs along

with consciousness. Thus self-consciousness holds our experience together because it

occurs in every moment of experience. In each act of thinking I am also aware that I am

the one thinking. In fact, according to the Meditations, self-consciousness is the most

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certain thing we can know and thereby grounds the certainty of the rest of our knowledge.

For Descartes, self-consciousness occurs as an act, just like the act of perception, for

example. This is important in several ways.

First, there is no element of passivity in the subject for Descartes. We must actively

seek meaning because objects are not meaningful for us (in contrast to Kant, for whom

objects, simply insofar as they are objects, are meaningful). Second, change, or the

experience of something new, is brought about by what is external to the subject and to

experience (rather than in terms of conditions internal to experience, as for Kant). With

Descartes, change is registered as what is different in relation to or by comparison with

what is out there: or the essence of the thing apart from the subject. It does not first have

to be synthesized by the subject, which is to say, although it must be brought together

with what was the case previously, this only occurs secondarily. This takes us to the third

point: there is a gap between the subject and what is external to it. This idea of a gap will

be important in comparison to Kant, and equally takes us into a consideration of time.

Time in Descartes is understood as occurring or flowing externally to the subject.

Experience occurs from moment to moment. The subject occurs in time like an object.

Time is the measure of movement. As we have said, for Descartes, in thinking something

the subject also thereby thinks itself. We can conclude from this that the subject’s

relation to itself is one of immediacy and is not temporal. In other words, for Descartes, I

am fully present to myself. The formula ‘I think, therefore I am’ means that in the act of

being conscious of myself I know myself as I truly am. There is no aspect of myself to

which I do not have access. I fully enact what I am. In this sense, the gap is not within

the subject, but, rather, between the subject and what is external to it. The subject is a

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substance like any other (although, of course, it is thinking substance, not extended

substance).

For Descartes, then, I have an experience of the I with every thought I have, since the

I accompanies every thought. According to Kant, Descartes treated self-consciousness (or

the I) as an object of experience because it occurs within experience like any other object.

Descartes claimed he was describing what kind of object the subject is (it is a thinking

thing), whereas Kant says that we can only know that I am, not what I am. As a result,

Kant considered Descartes’ notion of self-consciousness to be merely empirical self-

consciousness.

3. THE KANTIAN SUBJECT

In Kant experience only occurs in the way it does because of the structure of the

subject. Anything that occurs in experience can be understood in terms of its conditions,

which belong to the transcendental structure of the subject. Thus, with Kant, the notion

of the subject is transformed. The subject is not a substance but the form of experience.

It is not a thing like other objects in experience but the condition of experience. Deleuze

finds it significant that there is an element of passivity in the subject in Kant. Experience

occurs in such a way that whatever appears in space and time is given to the empirical

subject as already meaningful. The term “already” is important here because it indicates

that the empirical subject is passive in relation to the structuring of experience. Whatever

the empirical subject encounters, it is as though the structuring of experience has already

occurred for it. Things are meaningful for us. In other words, it is not that there is a

meaningful world, simply in an objective sense, but that there is a meaningful world for

the subject as subject. The subject is divided between activity and passivity. The

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empirical subject can only passively receive what is given in space and time. In order to

know anything, there must be some content given in the form of space and time. Insofar

as experience is already organized for it, the subject is the empirical subject.

For Kant, time and space do not belong to objects but are, instead, forms of experience

and transcendentally subjective. Space is the form in which we intuit what is in external

relation to us, while time is the form in which we intuit what is given internally, that is to

say, the form in which our own representations are given to us. However, time is actually

the more universal form of intuition. “But since all representations, whether they have

for their objects outer things or not, belong, in themselves, as determinations of the mind,

to our inner state; and since this inner state stands under the formal condition of inner

intuition, and so belongs to time, time is an a priori condition of all appearances

whatsoever” (CPR A34/B50). In other words, in order for an object to be known to us,

its representation must become part of our inner state. In this way, every representation

will occur for the subject as a modification in the inner state, and can only be given in

time. The issue of time necessarily arises here because the subject can only represent

itself to itself in time. Kant lays out three syntheses of time to explain how

representations are brought into temporal relation. In the first, apprehension, a perception

is grasped in an instant. The second, reproduction, recreates former perceptions so that

they occur as a succession. Finally, in recognition, all of those perceptions are gathered

into a single representation. For Kant, each of these syntheses occurs in different

faculties: intuition, the imagination, and the understanding. These syntheses are used to

explain how we can have temporal representations. In other words, we can see how

something extended in space becomes a temporal representation for the subject. All

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representations necessarily appear in time and stand in time-relations. As a result of this,

the subject can itself be determined in time.

The subject is also active because it unifies or synthesizes what is given to it by means

of the categories of the understanding. The source of this activity is the transcendental

unity of apperception or transcendental self-consciousness. Kant talks about self-

consciousness in two ways. We have moments in which we experience the act of self-

reflection. Kant calls this empirical self-consciousness since it occurs in experience (that

is to say, in time). However, what is more significant is transcendental self-

consciousness. In the Transcendental Deduction (B) Kant lays out the argument that there

must be a transcendental unity of apperception or pure self-consciousness that is the

ground of the unity of the subject. This pure apperception generates the representation ‘I

think,’ which is capable of accompanying all other representations. Apperception is an

act of pure spontaneity. All representations can be seen as belonging to a single self-

consciousness because they are accompanied by the representation ‘I think.’ Experience

is only possible if it is continually unified and taken as belonging to a unified self.

Transcendental self-consciousness binds our experience together and unites it. Thus

transcendental apperception must be atemporal and pure unity since time occurs as

diversity. It is a condition of experience, and therefore cannot be an object of experience.

Kant argues that Descartes only considered self-consciousness in the empirical sense and

used this notion to unify our experience.

Because the subject is both active and passive in Kant we speak of it in two ways, as

transcendental and empirical subject, or as I and self. Deleuze’s discussions of Kant

frequently use the French Je and moi in this way, to connote the active and passive

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aspects of the subject. He argues that the subject in Kant is divided within itself. Kant

himself notes that its self-relation is a paradoxical one in §24 of Transcendental

Deduction (B): “This is a suitable place for explaining the paradox which must have been

obvious to everyone in our exposition of the form of inner sense (§6): namely, that this

sense represents to consciousness even our own selves only as we appear to ourselves,

not as we are in ourselves. For we intuit ourselves only as we are inwardly affected, and

this would seem to be contradictory, since we should then have to be in a passive relation

[of active affection] to ourselves” (CPR B153). The empirical subject cannot know itself

as active and atemporal, that is to say, as transcendental subject, because this activity

cannot be given to it in time. The subject can only know itself as phenomenon or

appearance. On this point Deleuze says that the passive, empirical subject can only

represent the activity of the transcendental subject rather than enact it, and that it lives it

like an other within itself (DR 87). The subject appears to itself as passive. The point is

that the subject’s relation to itself cannot be one of immediacy as it is in Descartes. In

other words, in Descartes, this relation is instantaneous, so to speak, or, more precisely,

outside of time. On the other hand, in Kant, the subject is divided from itself in time.

The two aspects of the subject do, indeed, come into relation to form a single subject

through the synthesizing activity of the I and because the changing inner state of the

empirical subject is the content of that synthesis. However, in Kant this relation is

delayed or is temporal. Kant has Descartes in mind when he says that we can only know

that we are, not what we are (CPR B157). In other words, we can form a concept of

ourselves but no content can be given to us through intuition. We cannot be fully present

to ourselves.

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This point is critical for Deleuze: that the subject in Kant is divided from itself but is

yet one subject. “Time signifies a fault or fracture in the I and a passivity in the self, and

the correlation between the passive self and the fractured I constitutes the discovery of

the transcendental, the element of the Copernican Revolution” (DR 86). Since the

subject must passively intuit what is given, the subject’s experience becomes

circumscribed by its own activity. The correlation between the subject’s passivity and

activity ensures its necessary relation with its objects of knowledge. It gives the subject’s

knowledge necessity. The world as it appears passively to the empirical subject will

necessarily be organized. Deleuze also speaks of this correlation as a kind of identity,

more specifically as a synthetic identity rather than an analytic identity. “Specifically,

what founds the identity of things that are though is the identity of the thinking

subject…Thus the first principle is not that A is A, but that ego equals ego…It is a

synthetic identity because ego equals ego marks the identity of the ego that thinks itself

as the condition of all that appears in space and time, and the ego that appears in space

and time itself” (Seminar on Leibniz, 20/05/1980, 12). Deleuze claims that it is Kant’s

conception of the subject’s relation to itself, the fact that it is not immediate but occurs as

a gap, that allows Kant to argue that the object must submit to the subject, that the faculty

of knowledge in the subject is legislative. In this way, the relation of subject and object

is a necessary one. In Deleuze, too, the relation is a necessary one, but he accounts for it

in another way.

We have said that in Descartes there is a gap between the subject and what is external

to it. In Kant the gap becomes interiorized within the subject because any change that the

subject experiences will not be in relation to some kind of essence of the object (to the

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thing-in-itself), but, rather, in relation to the categories by which the subject organizes

experience. In Kant change can only occur by way of the subject’s relation to itself.

Change is brought about by conditions internal to the subject because something must be

given to the subject in the forms of space and time. Since these forms belong to the

subject, a new experience is really a change in the subject. Any change or any new

experience occurs as the subject’s relation to itself because the conditions by which

something is given is internal to the subject (the receptivity of the subject) and the

condition by which it is synthesized and experienced (the activity of the I) is also internal.

We could equally say that the gap is between what is unsynthesized and what is

synthesized: the subject insofar as it is constituting what is given as something new, the

transcendental subject, and the one seeing it as change, the empirical subject. Something

must simply be given to the subject before it can be synthesized by the subject. The two

moments are both internal to the subject. Since change can only occur as the subject’s

relation to itself, in the subject knowing itself there is a gap or delay in the subject.

Deleuze therefore says that, with Kant, time becomes internal to the subject. The

subject experiences things as always already organized and, therefore, the ordering of

experience occurs outside of time. In other words, the unity of transcendental self-

consciousness and the categories occur outside of time. However, since these are

transcendental conditions, it is not some time in the past that experience was organized.

In fact, we can distinguish between past, present, and future only because experience is

already organized according to those categories. Deleuze says that our experience occurs

in splitting into past, present, and future, but the I is constantly carrying out a synthesis of

time. “‘Form of interiority’ means not only that time is internal to us, but that our

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interiority constantly divides us from ourselves, splits us in two: a splitting in two which

never runs its course, since time has no end” (KCP ix). However, since the

transcendental conditions in Kant are a priori, that is to say, are prior to experience, they

remain “before” experience in an absolute way. For Deleuze, this will become more

ambiguous. Therefore, even though Deleuze expresses his appreciation in Kant’s

Critical Philosophy for the notion that time is internal to the subject, he does not think

Kant goes far enough.

As we have seen, in Kant change can only occur as the subject’s relation to itself and,

for this reason, there is a gap or delay in the subject. However, in the end Deleuze will

argue that in fact there can be no genuine change or new experience for Kant since

nothing that is beyond the parameters of the categories can be given to the subject. For

this reason, the gap in the Kantian subject cannot be a true gap. To be sure, the

transcendental I of apperception and the empirical subject occur as separate moments.

However, since transcendental conditions correspond exactly with the empirical for Kant,

the subject’s relation to itself or, in other words, the identity of the subject always

remains the same. Whenever experience occurs what is given simply aligns itself with or

merely falls under these conditions since these conditions are simply presupposed as the

structure of the subject. Kant limits in advance what can be given to the subject. There is

no possibility for anything to be given that falls outside of the parameters of those

conditions. The subject, insofar as it is the subject, is self-identical and organizes the

world in only one particular way.

Deleuze finds the discovery of passivity important but will take it further. In Kant, of

course, we are organizing our own experience–it is simply that we cannot know ourselves

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insofar as we are organizing it. It appears to the subject that something else is the source

of the organization. In other words, it is only the empirical subject that is passive, not the

transcendental subject. Deleuze will argue, in contrast, that the subject is not organizing

experience at all. In other words, he criticizes Kant for making the synthetic activity of

the unity of apperception the ground of experience. Deleuze’s point is that this unity

must be presupposed in order for Kant’s account of experience to function. His own

account explains how unity and activity arise from an original passivity. For him, there is

no need for an original unity in order for synthesis to occur.

4. THE SUBJECT IN DELEUZE

Deleuze’s project, like Kant’s, is concerned with the idea of transcendental

conditioning. As I showed in chapter 3, Deleuze transforms the notion of the

transcendental into the virtual. The reason for this is that the conditions of experience,

for Deleuze, are a priori but not outside of experience. They cannot be experienced

because they always occur in the state of being covered over. He argues for

transcendental or virtual events that belong to no one subject or object in particular. In

this way, his transcendental events parallel Kant’s transcendental subject, which belongs

to no particular empirical subject. Like Kant’s transcendental subject, the virtual events

are outside of time. However, Deleuze argues that the conditions of experience do not

belong to the subject either, as they do in Kant. Thus there is no transcendental subject in

Deleuze. Instead, the conditions of experience give rise to both the object and the

subject. (In Kant the conditions of experience give rise to the object only.) This leads

Deleuze to the interesting conclusion that the conditions have a kind of independent

existence. Only in this way can Deleuze avoid attributing the conditions to the subject.

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For Deleuze, the unity of the subject occurs secondarily in that it arises from a more

fundamental movement. This can be illustrated by comparison with the boiling point of

water. The boiling point is a virtual event or condition for all individual things that are

physical. It is fully real and is always a defining characteristic whether a particular pot of

water is taken to its boiling point or not. This virtual event becomes actualized when the

pot of water is heated to the appropriate degree. A virtual condition or event only

becomes actual insofar as a particular individual undergoes that event. These virtual

events, then, occur prior to any actual individual: they are prior in the same way that

transcendental conditions are prior to the empirical, in Kant. To return to the human

subject, for Deleuze, the point at which one breaks down in tears, the point at which one

is surprised, the point at which one feels unsure of herself, and so on are virtual events

that are prior to any actual human individual, and they are fully real even when they have

not been actualized.

In chapter 3 we said that the opening up of experience begins only with the sign. The

sign can only be sensed, so it occurs within empirical experience for the subject. The

sign is only properly grasped insofar as it is not recognized. The fact that the subject

cannot recognize the sign, that is to say, cannot subsume what it senses under already

existing concepts, indicates that the transcendental and empirical are not in

correspondence. At this point, new conditions of experience arise. There is no subject in

regard to those particular conditions. In other words, the subject is ruptured or opened up

at the point where the new conditions arise. A subject is constituted only where there is

an organization of experience, where experience occurs, and, in this way, the subject

occurs only in its relation to a particular system of experience. What we consider to be

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the human subject in the ordinary sense occurs in relation to a number of systems or

planes of experience. Therefore its experience can be transformed in a number of ways.

Regardless of the direction in which experience occurs, the subject is genuinely

transformed. To be clear, the subject is not transformed in relation to the systems that are

unaffected (or minimally affected) by the new conditions.

As we said earlier, the subject is not genuinely transformed in Kant, so the subject

maintains its identity. Kant explains that the subject’s relation to itself occurs through

time. Since the subject is transformed in Deleuze, the subject’s relation to itself becomes

more complex. This relation must constantly be negotiated since transcendental

conditions do not always correspond to the empirical. The subject’s relation to itself is

always in the process of occurring and is never complete. Since the subject is never

identical to itself, Deleuze says the subject is always fractured. Transcendental

conditions are outside of time, yet a subject’s experience is always temporal. The

subject’s relation to itself is vitally important because the subject must be able to have

new experiences that can then be said to belong to the subject. I will discuss Deleuze’s

conception of time and its relation to the subject in section 6 below. Since he criticizes

Kant for explaining the subject’s relation to itself by the transcendental unity of

apperception, he must account for it in another way. In the end all unity for Deleuze

arises passively. In what follows, I discuss the passivity of Deleuze’s subject and how

unity is secondary to a more fundamental difference that it arises from.

5. THE PASSIVITY OF THE DELEUZIAN SUBJECT

Deleuze is interested in the idea of passivity in Kant’s notion of the empirical subject.

Unlike Kant, for him it is not simply that the subject does not know itself insofar as it

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organizes experience, but that it does not in fact organize experience at all. The reason is

that the conditions of experience do not belong to the subject. As a result, Deleuze sees

himself as taking the idea of passivity beyond that in Kant. The subject can only be active

in relation to a field of experience once the latter has been opened up for it, so the subject

as agent is grounded in passivity. Deleuze therefore attempts to account for how the

subject is passively constituted in the opening up of experience. For him, the subject is

not divided between passivity and activity. In other words, the play between passivity

and activity does not occur within the subject as it does in Kant. Instead, this play occurs

between the subject and what is external to it. The subject is opened up in and through

that play.

To understand Deleuze’s view on the passivity of the subject it is important to note

that he distinguishes between passivity and receptivity. In fact Deleuze criticizes Kant

for defining the empirical subject or passive subject by its receptivity. “On the contrary,

we have seen that receptivity, understood as a capacity for experiencing affections, was

only a consequence, and that the passive self was more profoundly constituted by a

synthesis which is itself passive (contemplation-contraction). The possibility of receiving

sensations or impressions follows from this” (DR 87).62 “Contemplation” and

“contraction” are used synonymously with “synthesis” here. Deleuze’s point is that we

must explain what makes receptivity possible, which Kant did not do, and that it cannot

simply be presumed. Deleuze argues that it is passive synthesis that makes receptivity

possible. The problem with Kant’s account, he says, is that Kant interpreted passivity as

62 Deleuze uses “capacity” in a negative sense only, in order to say that we cannot begin by presuming the subject has a capacity for receiving sensation, for example, but must first explain how that capacity arises. Thus, I extend the use of the term. Since the subject must be able to receive the objects that belong to any particular system, there must a new capacity in the subject that is opened up when a new system is opened up for the subject.

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mere receptivity without synthesis (DR 87). In other words, Deleuze is arguing that

receptivity presupposes synthesis. To receive what is given in space and time, for

example, Deleuze argues that there must first be a synthesis of time and of space.

However, Kant argued that all synthesis occurred actively, while only receptivity could

be passive. Deleuze’s point is that synthesis occurs passively first of all. Passive

syntheses are transcendental, to use Kantian language, or, in other words, are sub-

representative (DR 84). They are the conditions of representation. If we consider space

and time, only once these have been synthesized for the subject can something be given

in space and time—an object occupying a certain amount of space and occurring at a

particular time. There are also active syntheses for Deleuze, for which the subject is the

agent. For example, we might actively remember something from our past. However,

these active syntheses are always grounded in passive ones and occur only at the

empirical level or the level of representation. We can actively recall something only

because the past and memory has already been passively synthesized for us.

When passive synthesis occurs, a field of experience is opened up in the subject. This

is a new “capacity” of the subject. A capacity can therefore be understood as that which

corresponds in the subject to a system or plane of experience. This is not a term Deleuze

uses often, but it seems important to me for articulating this issue. “The passive self is

not defined simply by receptivity – that is, by means of the capacity to experience

sensations – but by virtue of the contractile contemplation which constitutes the organism

itself before it constitutes the sensations” (DR 78). Although Deleuze is using the term

capacity in a critical sense, we can see that the capacity must be produced first, before

any sensations belonging to that capacity can be received. The self or subject is the

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capacity or synthesis or contraction. As we said above, the subject is constituted

passively. In other words, the subject of a particular system of experience is constituted

by the opening up of the system, and it is the subject in terms of a particular capacity.

Deleuze uses the example of sight. The eye deals with the problem of light. Through the

eye the entire system of sight occurs as a capacity for a larger subject, like an animal or

human. Only after the capacity for sight has been constituted can we receive sensations

within it or, in other words, only then can we see things.

We can develop this notion of capacity by examining Kant in a positive way. To

recall, we said that Deleuze takes the notion of passivity from Kant, so we may examine

what Deleuze thought Kant accomplished with the notion. Kant argued that we cannot

know anything in itself but only how it affects us. The subject is necessarily passive

insofar as an object affects it. Deleuze retains the idea that we can only know how

something affects us. (In Descartes, since there is no distinction between what something

is in itself and how it affects or appears to the subject, there is no element of passivity.)

We can be active and can know something only insofar as something is given that is

knowable–we must consider how it appears for us or, in other words, the conditions

under which the object appears. These conditions delimit an area or field. However, this

area or field only occurs in relation to the passivity of the subject. Deleuze’s point is that

the subject can only be active in relation to this field that was first constituted passively.

In other words, the determinations we actively make about objects have relevance in this

field only insofar as a sphere has been circumscribed. Outside of their framework

determinations are meaningless (and, for this reason, cannot occur outside of their

framework). Therefore a capacity occurs only in relation to the passivity of the subject.

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The way in which the subject is passive indicates the field in which it has a capacity. It

also indicates the kind of object that arises in the field.

In the end, Kant grounds knowledge in the synthetic activity of transcendental

apperception, which unifies the system or capacity, to use Deleuze’s term. Being able to

actively make determinations about objects is therefore grounded in transcendental

apperception. For Kant, unity must precede any synthesis, for synthesis is not possible

without prior unity. As we have said, Deleuze rethinks the notion of synthesis so that it

occurs passively first of all, rather than actively, as in Kant. No prior unity is needed for

synthesis since synthesis occurs spontaneously. It is a kind of self-gathering. For

Deleuze, then, the activity of the subject is grounded in passivity in that it is a

consequence of a more fundamental passive synthesis. This allows Deleuze to argue that

unity is not the ultimate condition of experience and of the subject, but, rather, unity

arises from difference or, in other words, from the movement of synthesizing. I have

shown how a capacity arises passively for Deleuze, without unity as its condition. As we

said above, the constitution of a capacity is the constitution of a subject. In addition,

Deleuze extends this so that there are multiple capacities and systems of experience. The

reason he prefers the term “plane” to “system” is precisely because they are open in the

sense that they intersect and can therefore interact with each other. In contrast, the

system in Kant is closed. This means, of course, that for Deleuze there are subjects

occurring within subjects. In fact, Deleuze says that wherever there is a contraction there

is a subject, albeit a larval subject. He would say that the human being consists of many

subjects even though there is mostly a single one that overarches these.

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What really defines an individual (whether it is an animal, an inanimate object, or a

human) is the way in which it can be affected, or what it can be sensitive to, and what its

capacities are. Without a particular capacity, it remains indifferent to things in that

particular regard. Therefore a new capacity is a new way of responding or interacting

with things external to it, of interacting with the world. A new kind of difference

becomes important and the capacity is the ability to synthesize it and to exploit it, to use

the difference for oneself (or synthesize it with oneself, which, in any case, is always

implied by the idea of synthesis). Only if the difference is synthesized can it be opened

up as a system. In other words, the difference has to become important for a subject, who

is compelled to respond because its previous responses were inadequate. Things come to

a critical point for the subject such that the difference needs to be synthesized. In this

sense, this particular system or world belongs to the subject or, more accurately, its

synthesis as a world is the subject. “The self does not undergo modification, it is itself a

modification – this term designating precisely the difference drawn” (DR 79). The

object, which forcibly encounters the subject, is the occasion for the new kind of

difference of the world to present itself. This encounter forces the subject to become

sensitive to external things in its world in a new way. An object, which is by definition at

a stable point, hides its virtual characteristics or differences around which it is organized.

When the object is destabilized its virtual characteristics come to the forefront. However,

it can only be destabilized when it comes into relation with something else. The object

gives off signs which arise from the virtual differences that are part of it, and these signs

force us to respond. We can even learn about the virtual differences through our

confrontation with an object. In any case, a transformation results from the

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confrontation. The transformation is always relational, occurring between two poles or

elements: first, the capacity that is opened up for the subject and, second, the difference

that comes to be synthesized into a system. For example, a human is not affected by the

same range of sound as a dog is. Since humans are incapable of responding to that

particular range of sound, that range is unimportant, in a certain sense, for humans. In

other words, humans do not “inhabit” the same world as dogs in regard to sound. In

addition, subjects produce organs of particular modifications or capacities: ears, eyes,

nose. A self is the drawing of many differences. A new system is opened up when a new

way of being sensitive or a new capacity is produced. The subject inhabits that world by

developing a complex range of responses. For example, visual art is a way of inhabiting

the world of sight, for the human subject, while music is a way of inhabiting the world of

sound. However, human speech is another way of inhabiting the world of sound.

I have said in earlier chapters that for Deleuze we only think when we are forced to

think, that is to say, when we encounter another individual, whether that individual is a

person or an inanimate object, which forces us to think. However, we must be able to

explain what makes it possible for the subject to even be open to such an encounter.

Such an explanation is not given by Deleuze, but the one I offer here is consistent with

Deleuze’s theory of experience. Obviously the subject must be able to be sensitive in

certain ways, otherwise it would not even register the encounter with the other. A

capacity and a system of experience are only opened up in relation to an interest of the

subject. “Interest” is not a term Deleuze uses, but it seems to me to express this issue

well. The interest provides the means by which an Idea is selected. We only go into a

situation or an encounter with another out of a need or interest (not out of disinterested

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inquiry or a pure love of knowledge). In other words, the subject must have something at

stake or something to gain from the encounter. This interest, of course, arises from a

system of experience that is already in place for the subject. To be clear, an interest does

not occur consciously. The subject’s interest arises through virtual points within an

already existing system. The term “interest” reflects the fact that every individual is able

to encounter another via openings or fractures within an already existing system that is

part of that individual’s constitution. (We must recall that a new system can only be

opened up when two or more elements come into relation.) We can consider the example

of swimming. We only learn to swim, Deleuze says, when we are forced to engage with

the water (DR 23, 165). We do not learn by watching the movements of the instructor

while standing on the sand without getting in the water. The system of swimming is only

possible because a human being has certain physical characteristics or virtual points (a

certain mass to area ratio which allows for buoyancy, spatial arrangement of arms and

legs, etc.) that make it possible for a person to engage with water. These characteristics

are insignificant until the occasion arises in which we must come into relation with

something with which we can become engaged. In addition, we only come to know

which characteristics are relevant retrospectively, when they come into relation with the

virtual points of the other element (water, in our example). We must recall that an Idea

for Deleuze is a problem around which a system of experience becomes organized. The

Idea of swimming, therefore, includes the relevant virtual characteristics of water and of

what is necessary for a particular individual to be a swimmer. Interest, then, simply

refers to the virtual characteristics that are available to come into play when one entity

encounters another. Even though the new system can only arise in relation to previously

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existing systems, it occurs as something genuinely new. We cannot know in advance

which characteristics or virtual points will become important. In fact we cannot even

recognize something as a virtual point until the individual to which it belongs comes into

relation with another individual.

We can now note how the notions of interest and capacity relate to the notion of

perspective discussed above in chapter 3. An individual arises only insofar as it has a

perspective on a particular system. Perspective indicates the way in which the world is

available to the subject. In other words, there is a world only in relation to an interest or

perspective, and there is no world that simply exists independently of that. The interest

or point of view arises only by selection, which is partial in principle. What is important

to note here is that a subject’s perspective arises passively.

Since a capacity occurs only in relation to the way in which the subject is passive, a

plane of experience or an organized system only occurs in relation to a subject’s

constitution and the way in which it is structured. Its particular capacity (or capacities)

allows the subject to know a particular kind of object. It is the subject’s passivity that

ensures that the relation between it and the object is a necessary one. A particular kind of

object can be known in a particular way because only that kind of object can appear

within that particular framework. This parallels Kant’s idea of the necessary submission

of object to subject. For Kant, we can only know objects of possible experience. There

is only a single framework, which forms all of possible experience. On the other hand,

Deleuze extends this idea so that the relation of the objects of a particular plane of

experience with the subject of that plane is a necessary one. This holds true of each plane

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or system of experience. As we said before, the relation between the planes is not an

additive one.

I said in chapter 1 that Deleuze admired the Kantian critical philosophy for its

legislative quality. Since Deleuze claims that he is retaining this quality in his own work,

we must see how philosophy is legislative for Deleuze. In fact, his conception of

philosophy must be able to overcome the problem that the critical philosophy faced: that

of falling under the sway of a totalizing force, which was reason in this case. Deleuze

might argue that we can only know what we are capable of knowing. If, indeed, we are

capable of knowing something (a particular object, for example), the system of

experience to which that object belongs will have already opened up for us. If the system

to which the object belongs has not opened up, we are not capable of knowing that object.

However, within each particular sphere or plane, the subject is the legislator in that the

subject gives the laws by which things can be known. Of course we are not legislators in

that we consciously issue laws, but neither are we subject to laws beyond ourselves, like

that of Nature or of God. In other words, there is no abstract God’s-eye point of view

from which to judge which objects can be known. In fact, there is no view that does not

occur from within a particular system. Here again, we should recall that every subject is

a perspective, for Deleuze. It is our ability to grasp the capacity and system within which

we know objects that allows us to critically evaluate the capacity itself, and not merely

the object. It is in this sense that we can understand not only truth (whether we grasp the

objects correctly) but meaning as well, which is the ground of truth (the capacity or

system itself). Provided that it can grasp the conditions or structure of the system of

which it is the subject, the subject is master of the system in which it occurs. To be sure,

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the subject is not master in the sense that it determines what objects can occur. However,

it is the subject’s constitution or structure that legislates. As a result, the subject can then

also know what makes its determinations meaningful rather than resorting to the idea of

an all-powerful being to justify or guarantee its determinations.

6. THE DELEUZIAN SUBJECT AND TIME

There is an essential relation between the subject and time. We have said that Kant

claims that the subject comes into relation with itself only in the form of time. Thus the

issue of time arises because it allows Kant to account for the self-identity of the subject.

However, the key is that for Kant the unity of the I is the ground of the subject’s identity,

whereas Deleuze argues that we can only begin with the multiplicity of experience.

Deleuze must then show how the subject (the I) arises from this. For Kant, it is a

condition of experience that the experience belongs to the subject or, in other words, is

mine. In contrast, for Deleuze, experience occurs first and then afterward it becomes

mine. There is a temporal aspect to Deleuze’s account in regard to what occurs first and

what occurs afterward. Just as Kant explained the subject’s relation to itself (its identity)

in terms of time, Deleuze too believes this can only be explained in terms of time.

However, time is not subjective for Deleuze. He explains this by saying that experience

itself occurs in the form of time. When the subject comes into relation with itself or, in

other words, becomes identical with itself, it means that a particular system of experience

has been produced and that the subject of that system has been produced. As a result, the

discussion of time is relevant both to the discussion of a system of experience and to the

discussion of the subject of that system.

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For Deleuze, new conditions of experience arise only when the subject comes into

relation with something external to it. Change cannot come from within the subject

alone. This is in contrast with Kant, for whom the conditions of experience belong to the

transcendental subject. Thus change could only arise from within the subject. In

addition, there could be no new conditions of experience for Kant. For Deleuze, in the

event of the opening up of a system of experience, the new conditions of experience

produce both the system and the subject of that system. In this sense, then, the conditions

are also internal to the new subject that has been produced. A new system can only open

up because there is a fracture or gap in the subject. This gap is constituted between the

time when the subject grasps the sign that exceeds its empirical experience—at this point,

the subject is ruptured—and the time when the new system of experience has been

produced and the subject can recognize discrete objects with this system. The subject

must come into relation with itself, and this can only occur in the form of time—the

relation of what went on before the new conditions arose and after the new system was

produced. The subject is in relation with itself precisely at the point at which the new

system of experience has been completely produced. In this way, the subject is the

drawing of a difference, the difference between the way in which experience was ordered

before and how it is ordered after.

We can now examine how Deleuze gives his account of time in terms of three

syntheses. In order to understand the first synthesis, we must see that each system of

experience has its own order of empirical time. The objects or cases that belong to that

system occur in that empirical order of time. In other words, objects can only be said to

be past, present, or future in relation to one another within the context of a particular

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system of experience. The subject that belongs to that system and that thinks empirically

also functions according to that empirical order of time. The present moment of

empirical time for a system and for the subject of that system is the same and is

constituted in the first synthesis of time.

The second synthesis of time explains why empirical time might appear to have no

beginning. Once a system of experience has been produced, it appears to have always

already been in place. This temporal characteristic, “always already”, is due to the

second synthesis of time. For example, once the system of color has been produced, it

appears that objects have always already been distinguishable by color. The second

synthesis of time provides the pure or absolute past. The system of color does not have a

beginning in the sense that an empirical event like a battle has a beginning. Instead, it

has a beginning in the sense that it is the institution of an empirical order of time in which

there is a passage of empirical time.

However, the empirical order of any system of experience has a beginning, according

to Deleuze. The empirical order of time is instituted through transcendental time. It is

this transcendental time that Deleuze explains as the third synthesis of time. The third

synthesis gives us the difference between the time before a particular system of

experience opened up and the time after it has opened up. The new system has its own

empirical flow of time. As I have said previously, Deleuze argues that genuine change

only occurs in the opening up of a new system of experience. When we examine this in

terms of time, we can see that change only occurs in the form of time. Thus the third

synthesis of time gives us the form in which a new system opens up. In other words, it

accounts for the production of the subject of a new order of experience and hence a new

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order of empirical time. I will now give a more developed account of each of the three

syntheses of time.

Deleuze says that the account of time must begin with the synthesis of the present

because it is the foundation of time. “It is not that the present is a dimension of time: the

present alone exists” (DR 76). Deleuze’s first synthesis of time is essentially taken from

Hume’s argument that the connection of elements in space and time is due to the

association of ideas. I rely on Keith Faulkner’s explanation of the first and second

synthesis.63 According to Deleuze: “A succession of instants does not constitute time any

more than it causes it to disappear; it indicates only its constantly aborted moment of

birth. Time is constituted only in the originary synthesis which operates on the repetition

of instants” (DR 71). Deleuze’s point here is that we have learned from Hume that the

relation between instants or elements is not internal and necessary to the elements

themselves, but only emerges afterwards from their association by the mind. Therefore

the passage of instants does not by itself give us the passage of time. The first instant

must be retained and the second instant must occur in relation to the first, thereby

producing a change in relation to the first. Insofar as the first instant is retained, there

must be a mind or subject in which the change is produced, or which draws a difference.

Deleuze also calls this first synthesis the synthesis of “habit” because it gives rise to the

expectation that what is to come, the future, will be like what we have already

63 In his book Deleuze and the Three Syntheses of Time (New York: Peter Lang Publishing. 2006) Keith Faulkner argues that Deleuze’s account of the three syntheses must be understood first of all as an attempt to rethink Kant’s three syntheses, apprehension, reproduction, and recognition. Kant uses these syntheses to show how we can have temporal representations. In Kant these syntheses occur as the activity of two faculties, the imagination and understanding. Faulkner argues that Deleuze offers his alternative of syntheses that occur passively. Faulkner proposes that we must understand Deleuze’s account primarily through the use he makes of Freud and, therefore, gives a reading of Deleuze’s account of time by working through the concepts Deleuze takes from Freud and the ways in which he makes use of them.

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experienced. In other words, this synthesis explains what, essentially, habit, on which we

rely so much in ordinary life, is. We can also think of the close connection between

recognition and habit. Objects must simply be recognized as the “same” in order to have

a habitual relation with them. According to Faulkner, when we contract a habit, we go

beyond the given.64 When we see something happen over and over–for example, the

rising of the sun, we transcend what is given by expecting the future occurrence. We

expect the sun to rise tomorrow. It is the anticipation as such that is the futural

dimension, and what is anticipated is that this case, or contraction, will continue (DR 72).

In addition, the mind can postulate a continuous pattern of risings through time. As

Faulkner explains, this must be considered a second order impression, which goes beyond

sensation. The duration of time we experience is because of these second order

impressions.65 Therefore not only is the living present constituted by the first synthesis,

but the past and future are also constituted as two asymmetrical dimensions of that

present. “To it [the present] belong both the past and the future: the past in so far as the

preceding instants are retained in the contraction; the future because its expectation is

anticipated in this same contraction” (DR 70-71). It is here, in the empirical present, that

we find the empirical subject, the subject of recognition. In Kantian language we can say

that the first synthesis gives us the present moment in the empirical sense, or the

connection of actual cases. It gives us the continuity of the actual or empirical. Deleuze

goes on to argue that the first synthesis cannot stand alone and requires something else to

ground it.

64 Ibid., p. 10. 65 Ibid., p. 10.

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He turns to Bergson for his account of the second synthesis of time, which he also

calls the synthesis of the pure past or of memory. Bergson’s criticism of Hume was that

the association of ideas is unable to account for memory. Our experience does not occur

only as present but also as the relation of past and present. (It must be kept in mind that

when Deleuze uses the term “past” in relation to the second synthesis, he means it in a

transcendental sense. He sometimes uses the term “pure past” to emphasize that he is not

using the term “past” in the ordinary sense.) A need in the present calls forth memory.

Faulkner emphasizes Bergson’s statement that “it is from the present that the appeal to

which memory responds comes, and it is from the sensory-motor elements of present

action that a memory borrows the warmth which gives it life.”66 We always evaluate our

present experience in light of our memory. According to Faulkner, the encounter with

the sign, with the sensation that we do not recognize, makes the second synthesis of time

conspicuous. In such an encounter, something present is unrecognizable because it fails

to resemble the past. The encounter forces us to do something, to think and act, and

thereby results in the modification of both the past and the present. Not only can the

present be modified based on the past, or memory, but memory can be modified or

reinterpreted based on the present as well. The past must have a flexible nature since it

changes. Memories must be able to be created and recreated. Therefore the encounter

with the sign is possible only because the past as a whole must coexist with the present.

“Whereas the passive synthesis of habit constitutes the living present in time and makes

the past and the future two asymmetrical elements of that present, the passive synthesis of

memory constitutes the pure past in time, and makes the former and the present present

(thus the present in reproduction and the future in reflection) two asymmetrical elements 66 Ibid., p. 11.

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of this past as such” (DR 81). By former present Deleuze means the past, of course, or

the present moment that is no longer present, while the present present is the present

moment that is still the present (and has not yet become past). Deleuze’s point is that the

second synthesis occurs as the negotiation of the past and present. “The transcendental

passive synthesis bears upon this pure past from the triple point of view of

contemporaneity, coexistence and pre-existence” (DR 82). Briefly, Deleuze’s argument

is that each present moment must be contemporaneous with the past it was. In addition,

all of the past must coexist with the new present. Finally, the pure element of the past in

general must pre-exist the passing present (DR 81-2). In his account of the second

synthesis of time, Deleuze is concerned to develop in some detail exactly how the

relation between past and present occurs. However, I am only concerned here with the

general point that the second synthesis gives us not only the pure past but also the

conjoining of elements from different dimensions, past and present.

We recall that the synthesis of the present is grounded in the second synthesis. The

reason is that every habitual response or action must have once been an encounter with

something unrecognizable. However, in ordinary, everyday experience we do recognize

sensations and our present does resemble the past. Therefore it can seem as though

experience only occurs in the present, with no relation to the past. It is for this reason

that the living present seems to stand on its own in Deleuze’s analysis of the first

synthesis. Considered from the perspective of the second synthesis, however, Deleuze

says that the present occurs as a result of the contraction of the pure past at a certain level

(DR 83). Thus the first synthesis, the constitution of the present, becomes reinterpreted

through the second synthesis. From this perspective, the synthesis of the present occurs

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as the surface effect of the second synthesis. “The criminal and saint play out the same

past but at different levels” (DR 83). In this quote the criminal and saint are figures of

the living present. The point is that each plays out the same Idea-problem, or system of

experience, in different ways. We could take the example of the economic Idea-problem

of capitalism, in which there are many figures, such as the capitalist mogul and the

person who deliberately chooses to not be materialistic. They may appear to be very

different types but they can only arise from and inhabit the same economic situation with

its constituent elements and relations. Their difference lies in the level at which the

system in which they occur is contracted. The Idea-problems serves as the pure past, and

each figure of the living present continues the whole life, but at a different level. They

play out the same story, the story of capitalism. The Idea-problem of capitalism, or

system of capitalism, is contemporaneous with, coexists, and preexists each type of figure

that occurs in capitalism.

The second synthesis can, in a sense, be understood as giving us the relationship

between the transcendental and empirical, which occurs as the temporalizing relation

between pure past and living present. The transcendental conditions, or Idea-problem,

occurs as the pure past in relation to the present. It is helpful here to use the term virtual

instead of transcendental because what we have seen from the analysis above on the pure

past is that there is a relation between the virtual and actual that is not there between

empirical and transcendental. The actual and virtual have a continuous and ongoing

relation, whereas the empirical and transcendental do not. In other words, each actual

instance (living present) always has a virtual dimension (pure past), which is its

condition. Another way to understand this is that the first synthesis gives us the actual or

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empirical reality, which has its own sense of continuity, the second gives us the relation

of the actual and virtual, and the third gives us the virtual itself.

The third synthesis of time, which gives us the pure and empty form of time, shows

Deleuze’s view that Bergson’s account requires something more. With his account of the

third synthesis, Deleuze must be understood as surpassing Bergson. His point is that the

second synthesis requires a further grounding and the third synthesis serves to provide

this. It can be understood as giving us the virtual itself, what Deleuze sometimes calls the

“first.” The third synthesis is the key to understanding time as the form of experience

because it is the ultimate ground of the first and second syntheses. The third synthesis

occurs as the caesura, or the break, and the two unequal halves are the “before” and

“after.” This is a synthesis precisely because they are not brought together into a

seamless whole, but, rather, are held together as distinct from each other. The break or

caesura is the form in which all experience occurs. In other words, the break gives rise to

experience. The living present (the first synthesis of time) and pure past (the second

synthesis) are reinterpreted through the third synthesis of time.

This means that the arising of the sign and of new conditions occurs within empirical

experience as a disruption of it. Time is the form in which experience occurs. The

disruption or break that occurs in empirical experience is a temporal disruption, and

Deleuze calls it the “caesura.” In Kant, we said, the transcendental conditions occur

outside of time or are atemporal. They are not themselves past, but rather past, present,

and future are opened up only in relation to them. In Deleuze this becomes more

complex. For him, transcendental conditions are outside of time in relation to the field of

experience that they open up. They exist on their own plane, which is atemporal, yet they

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exist within experience. This is a key difference from Kant, for whom transcendental

conditions are atemporal in the sense that they do not exist within experience. This,

among other reasons, is why Deleuze replaces the idea of transcendental with that of

virtual. If we return to examples used earlier, conditions like the boiling and freezing

points of a physical material are fully real, but so long as the material is not taken to those

points such that they are actualized, these virtual conditions continue to exist in a way

that is atemporal. However, new conditions can arise within experience and within the

empirical flow of time. At the moment they occur they disrupt the flow of ordinary,

empirical time and disrupt the subject. In other words, since they enter into ordinary

empirical experience, conditions for Deleuze are more than simply atemporal in the sense

that they are for Kant. Time itself is opened up anew. In regard to the new system that

the conditions open up, the empirical flow of time can only occur insofar as time is

opened up, that is to say, only in terms of a particular system of experience. In other

words, empirical time must always be constituted in relation to a particular system of

experience. While it is true that for Kant past, present, and future only occur in relation

to the subject, they occur once and for all. For Kant, time is simply given as the form of

intuition. Faulkner points out that Kant does not explain how time opens up or is

constituted, but that Deleuze must be understood to be addressing this lack.67 The

consequence of this difference between them is that while, in Kant, time moves into the

subject (time becomes subjective, albeit transcendentally subjective), in Deleuze, in

contrast, time itself becomes the subject. The pure form of time, or the caesura, produces

both a system of experience and the subject of that system.

67 Ibid., p. 3.

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Deleuze must be therefore understood as providing a new formulation of time. He

argues that traditionally time has been understood as simply the measure of movement.

“Time itself unfolds (that is, apparently ceases to be a circle) instead of things unfolding

within it. It ceases to be cardinal and becomes ordinal, a pure order of time” (DR 88).

His point is that traditionally philosophy only considered time in the empirical sense.

Empirical time is indeed cardinal in that it simply measures change or movement.

Empirical time serves merely to measure some content, in the sense that we say, for

example, that events occur in time. In contrast, however, when experience is opened up

as temporal disruption, then time is ordinal. This is a more fundamental notion of time

and, in this sense, time is the form of change itself. In its more fundamental sense, time

does not merely mark the change or coming-into-being of other things. (Fundamentally,

all change is coming-into-existence.) Instead, time is the form by which all change

occurs. Deleuze says the caesura is the static form of time. It must be static since “the

form of change does not change” (DR 89). Since the caesura is a disruption or a break, it

can be described as having two unequal sides, alternatively called past and future and

“before” and “after”. However, these are not to be understood as empirical

determinations, since only an object can occur empirically before or after something else

in a system of experience that has already been constituted. The caesura brings about the

division of the “before” and the “after” and, in doing so, it draws them together. The

caesura can also be described as an “event”, because the opening up of experience is an

event. Again, “event” is to be understood in a transcendental sense rather than an

empirical one. The caesura occurs only as the institution of a fundamental inequality or

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when things come out of balance. The selecting of virtual conditions, or an Idea, can

only occur as difference or inequality.

If we consider the subject in relation to the opening up of experience, it is helpful to

note that Deleuze describes this event of disruption as “a unique and tremendous event,”

which he says is like the exploding of the sun, throwing oneself in a volcano, or killing

God or the father (DR 89). The transcendental event opens up a new world such that

things are not meaningful in the way that they were. We can examine the three

components of the caesura, the “before,” the moment of the caesura or, in other words,

the present, and the “after.” The first component, the “before” can be understood as the

moment before transcendental conditioning occurs. “In effect, there is always a time at

which the imagined act is supposed ‘too big for me’” (DR 89). It precedes the event. In

one sense, the “before” is the agent of the event because new conditions can only arise

from appropriate circumstances. Deleuze uses the figures of Oedipus and Hamlet to

characterize the agent. Thus, in the “before,” Deleuze says that Oedipus and Hamlet

experience the act they are about to carry out as too big for them. At the point of the

caesura (and really, there is no “before” until there is a caesura since these are part of the

caesura and do not occur according to empirical time), which Deleuze also calls the

metamorphosis, there is a becoming-equal to the act and a doubling of the self.

In contrast to what we said above, in another sense, the “before” is not the agent of the

event, and the true agent only arises as the “present” or the moment of the caesura. The

“present” is the one who kills God or the father. The agent in this sense only occurs as a

double because the agent occurs as a sort of alignment. There was no agent “before”

because the subject was unequal to the act (or, rather, it was the subject of the previous

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system of experience from which these new conditions arose). In other words, the seeds

of the opening up of experience are not contained in what comes before because it is

genuinely new. The “present” only happens as an abrupt shift in experience or a

realignment of experience. There is an abrupt reorganization of experience. In pointing

to a doubling Deleuze is attempting to capture that point at which the shift occurs. From

an empirical perspective, from the perspective of empirical knowledge, we can only say

that what is there before the shift is not what is there after. At the moment of the present,

however, the subject becomes equal to the event. There is a kind of doubling because the

subject of the “before” is the empirical subject and is not constitutive of the new system

of experience. The subject of the new system will itself be constituted. The “after” or

the future is the other side that occurs in relation to the caesura. “As for the third time in

which the future appears, this signifies that the event and the act possess a secret

coherence which excludes that of the self; that they turn back against the self which has

become their equal and smash it to pieces, as though the bearer of the new world were

carried away and dispersed by the shock of the multiplicity to which it gives birth” (DR

89-90). The one who is destroyed is the agent of the act. “What the self has become

equal to is the unequal itself” (DR 91). The one that leads up to the opening up of

experience cannot retain its identity. In this way, the self is transformed by the event and

is no longer the same subject. This is why Deleuze says that it is as though an other acts

through me.

Deleuze describes the subject that is left in the end as the “plebian” or “the man

without a name” (DR 90, 91). The reason is that when the subject is transformed it is

necessarily transformed out of its identification with the group of subjects for whom the

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world was structured in the way that it was up to that point. In principle the transformed

subject is nameless in relation to what had become the ordinary way of thinking or of

organizing the world. The transformed subject falls outside of any category that had

organized the world. The subject is outside of that world and the group of subjects who

belong to that world. It has no place in it and no role to play in it. It should be

emphasized that at the moment the caesura occurs there is no subject of experience since

the agent of experience is not a subject. The subject only passively undergoes

experience. Therefore the subject can never grasp the opening up of experience. Instead,

it can only grasp the conditions of experience, and even this retrospectively, not during

their occurrence. However, as a result of the transcendental event, a new field of inquiry

is established.

With the production of the new system of experience, the temporality of that system is

also instituted. Thus each system has its own empirical or ordinary time. In chapter 3, I

showed how a system of experience is produced through individuation. In a sense the

individuals that belong to any particular system of experience have their own temporality,

as each system has its own temporality. Thus the individuals of the system have a time

characteristic to them. For example, the time of an insect is different from the time of an

oak tree. This includes how quickly each develops, what is old age for each, etc. Thus in

this last stage we have once again a subject who thinks empirically and recognizes

objects, but now in accordance with the new order of experience and according to the

temporality of this system. What also returns in this stage is the promise that there will

be temporal disruption again and that experience will thereby occur once again.

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CONCLUSION

In this chapter I have shown how Deleuze accounts for the subject. Since the notion

of experience is transformed in going from Kant to Deleuze, the notion of the subject is

necessarily transformed as well. I have shown that experience for Deleuze occurs in the

opening up of a systematic field. In Kant the subject is perfectly aligned with the system

of knowledge in that the conditions of this system belong to the subject. In Kant the

system of knowledge is absolutely comprehensive and totalizing of what can be

experienced, as is the Kantian subject. The result is that the Kantian subject cannot

withstand experience in Deleuze’s sense. No new system of experience could open up

for the Kantian subject. The key difference is that the subject in Deleuze is open and can

be transformed, while the Kantian subject is grounded in unity. The Deleuzian subject

can, indeed, register it when something beyond a particular system comes into relation

with it. In this way, the subject in Deleuze is able to experience something genuinely

new.

Although Deleuze maintains certain aspects of the Kantian subject, he is forced to

reinterpret them. It continues to be true for Deleuze that experience can only occur for a

subject. In other words, experience only occurs insofar as there is a subject of experience

or, in other words, a subject that belongs to that system of experience. However, while

for Kant the transcendental subject is the condition of experience, so that experience is

possible only for a subject, for Deleuze there is no transcendental subject. In a sense,

then, there is only an empirical subject. The subject is produced along with a system of

experience, and so belongs to that particular system of experience. In this way, Deleuze

is able to account for the production of the subject, an account he found lacking in Kant.

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As shown in chapter 1, Deleuze finds the idea of the internal relation of subject and

object to be the great discovery of the critical philosophy. This relation remains central

to his own account even while it is transformed. The internal relation of subject and

object occurs because both the subject and the objects that belong to a particular system

of experience are produced together.

This chapter has also shown how Deleuze’s account of the subject requires a thinking

of time. Deleuze’s conception of time is equally developed in response to Kant’s notion

of time. Since experience can only occur insofar as it is my experience, the self-identity

of the subject is essential to the account of experience. For Kant, the subject’s self-

identity is possible only in time since the subject can only be given to itself in time.

Deleuze believes Kant’s notion of time is revolutionary in that time becomes internal to

the subject. However, Deleuze further revolutionizes the notion of time insofar as time

comes to be the true agent of experience. Deleuze argues that there are two kinds of time:

ordinary, empirical time, which is the time we measure with a clock and a more

fundamental sort of time. The ordinary kind of time marks change within a particular

system of experience and must be produced, just as the system itself must be produced.

In fact the opening up of a system is only possible because experience can be temporally

differentiated. For Deleuze, the human subject and every other kind of subject merely

undergoes experience. A new system of experience is opened up for a subject only

because the subject becomes aligned with the temporal disruption that occurs in

experience. These temporal relations have a necessary relation to the subject. Thus these

temporal relations do not have an existence independent of the subject (as the empiricist

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might argue). However, they are not subjective, in the sense that an idealist would argue.

Instead, they are produced along with the subject.

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CONCLUSION

The central significance of Deleuze’s philosophy lies in his articulation of a post-critical

metaphysics. This dissertation has clarified his project for a wider audience than Deleuze

currently has by situating this metaphysics in relation to his conception of experience and

showing that the latter is developed in and through a criticism and transformation of

Kant’s notion of experience. I have shown that Deleuze’s critical relation to Kant does

not simply make an epistemological claim regarding the possibility of objects of

experience. It makes a metaphysical claim regarding the conditions for the reality of

objects: the transcendental structures of experience as such. Deleuze’s philosophy aims

to show why things are what they are. His treatment of this question presents a post-

critical metaphysics that he calls the “sphere of immanence.” Thus Deleuze’s

metaphysics is not simply a return to metaphysics as it was conceived prior to Kant.

Since I have argued at length how Deleuze transforms Kant’s transcendental philosophy,

I will conclude with a review of the outcome of this transformation: the import of

Deleuze’s philosophy itself.

I have drawn out the sphere of immanence by articulating Deleuze’s alteration of

Kant’s notion of the transcendental. Deleuze takes up the project of transcendental

conditioning because his project is to find the conditions for the real things. Unlike Kant,

Deleuze is not inquiring after the conditions for possible objects. In addition to this

difference from Kant, since the conditions arise from and occur within experience for

Deleuze, they cannot properly be said to be transcendental in the way that Kant uses the

term. To capture these differences from Kant’s notion of transcendental, Deleuze devises

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the notion of the virtual. The transcendental, or virtual, structures of experience are the

structures for the being or reality of objects.

In articulating this sphere of immanence, Deleuze also surpasses the distinction

between the phenomenal and the noumenal in Kant. When Kant claims that there are no

objects independent of the subject, this refers only to objects of knowledge. There are

also noumena, for Kant, which cannot be known but must be presumed to exist. In

contrast, for Deleuze, there are no existing objects that are independent of their relation to

the subject. In other words, when something achieves the coherence that would make it

an object, it can in principle be known and is thus in relation with a subject. Thus there

can be no noumena for Deleuze. The phenomenal is now all-encompassing. Everything

belongs to the sphere of immanence.

In addition, Deleuze transforms Kant’s notion of the transcendent. For Kant, God,

soul, and world cannot be objects of knowledge since they cannot come into relation with

the subject. However, the term transcendent comes to have only an epistemological

sense for Deleuze, not a metaphysical sense. There is nothing transcendent, in the

metaphysical sense, for Deleuze, for there is nothing outside the sphere of immanence.

“Transcendent” then refers to concepts that Deleuze argues are illegitimate. Thus, God,

soul and world are all illegitimate concepts, in this sense, for Deleuze because they would

occur outside the sphere of immanence. Deleuze also excludes as transcendent the

subject and object, in the way that these terms are traditionally used, because these

concepts imply an identity that precedes change. Ordinarily, they refer to the elements

that form the foundation of experience: Experience is said to occur in the relation of

subject and object. According to this view, if subject and object do change, this change is

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considered secondary to the identity they possess. Deleuze considers this kind of identity

to be a fiction. He does use the terms subject and object, but for him subject and object

arise from more primary elements, and cannot be the foundational elements of

experience. As a result, the subject and object can never be closed off to change: in other

words, change or becoming is primary, while stability and identity arise secondarily.

Experience does not occur in the relation of subject and object but in the relation between

transcendental or virtual events. Virtual events are thus the foundation of experience.

The sphere of immanence is entirely a sphere of becoming and change. Only what is

immanent is real and only what is immanent can be known. What is transcendent must

be relegated to the realm of fiction, according to Deleuze.

We have found, therefore, that the subject of metaphysics is virtual events. For

Deleuze, metaphysics is the study of these events and of the way in which they give rise

to all things—to the objects we encounter in our everyday experience, and to human

persons. I will return briefly to the relation of virtual events to the human person below.

As regards the subject of metaphysics, it is virtual events that make up the transcendental

structure of experience. This dissertation has shown virtual events to be the critical

events that characterize a particular object in regard to the ways in which it can change

and be transformed. These events serve to explain in the most adequate way what

something is and why it is what it is. To be clear, Deleuze considers virtual events to be

real. Virtual events do not exist in time and space but, instead, they serve to account for

objects that occur in space and time. We can conceive of but cannot know or experience

virtual events, given that they are the condition of what we know.

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As we have said, Deleuze’s post-critical metaphysics, the sphere of immanence, is a

sphere of becoming. This is because it is grounded in a conception of difference.

Difference is the foundation of all that is real, not a notion that grounds becoming apart

from it. It must be understood primarily as becoming. To use Kantian language, this is

transcendental difference not empirical difference. It is not the difference between two

entities whose identities are prior to their relation, but, rather, it is the movement of

becoming other. In addition, difference in this sense cannot be experienced since it is the

condition of what we experience. Transcendental difference takes the form of virtual

events, which are not entities but “slices” of becoming. In this way, even something

stable has becoming as its foundation in the form of virtual events. In Deleuze’s

conception the thing is always, in principle, open to change and transformation. His

metaphysics is therefore a dynamic one in which movement and becoming are the

conditions of everything that is seemingly static and unchanging. For these reasons, we

may call his post-critical metaphysics a metaphysics of difference.

An important implication of a conception of metaphysics in which difference is more

fundamental than identity is that it is consistent with pluralities of human identity. To

understand what it means to be human requires us to understand the structure of

becoming that forms the foundation of the human. A person comes to have a particular

identity only when a system of experience has opened up for her. Therefore her identity

occurs only in relation to a particular system. In addition, every person can be

transformed so that they can take up and inhabit new identities. Thus the identity of a

person is not something fixed and static. This does not mean, however, that someone can

take up a new identity within the same system—for example, become a black woman

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when she was a Hispanic woman within the system of racial identity. Instead, she can

find that she plays a role or takes on a new identity in a new system, which would occur

for her alongside the role of a black woman. The identity of being a black woman would

remain unchanged for this woman, so long as the system of racial identity continues to

subsist. For Deleuze, what is fundamental to every person is the power to be

transformed. Although this dissertation has not concerned itself with the question of

personal identity, it is Deleuze’s metaphysics of difference that has significant

implications in the ethical and political sphere.

The overall aim of this dissertation has been to show that Deleuze offers a new

conception of thinking. He adopts from Kant the idea that philosophy has a critical task.

When Deleuze finds that Kant fails to conceive of philosophy as truly critical, he rectifies

the problem. In Deleuze thinking is not something we naturally do. Rather, it is our

inertia that is natural. In other words, most of the time, people are not thinking,

according to Deleuze, but just recognizing what is around them. When our relationship

to objects, institutions, people, etc. is to simply recognize them, we only understand them

according to the framework of meaning that is already in place. With this kind of mental

cognition we merely register how things happen to be. Thus, the act of recognition occurs

out of inertia, and thinking occurs only when we are forced to come out of our inertia.

Deleuze’s view is that the act of thinking is profoundly creative and not merely the

continuation, clarification, or support of the framework by which we make sense of the

world. In this way he re-conceives what it is to do philosophy. The philosopher does not

think in accordance with the framework by which the world is organized, but, rather,

against established presuppositions. In this sense, philosophy, as Deleuze says, serves no

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established power.68 Some person or institution maintains its influence and power so

long as the current arrangement of people, wealth, resources, etc. remains as it is. For

Deleuze, the work of philosophy is always to think against the time in which one lives, to

think against the prejudices that have become established in that time. Thus philosophy’s

task is to be sensitive to new systems of experience that can be opened up. In addition,

philosophy is creative because it creates new concepts or, in other words, tries to think

that which falls outside of established values by means of concepts.

To conclude, this study of Deleuze’s transformation of Kant has not only shown the

relation of one twentieth-century philosopher to the major European philosopher crossing

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It has shown how Deleuze raises questions on

the reality of objects, on what relation our thought has with these objects, and on the

question of the role of philosophy, which are relevant to every time period. It has been

my purpose to show that Deleuze has revitalized these questions and opened up new

directions in our inquiry into them.

68 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), p. 106.

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VITA

Graduate School Southern Illinois University

Anupa Batra Date of Birth: February 24, 1973 1215 Seneca St., Apt. 201, Seattle, Washington 98101 batraan@yahoo.com Bradley University Bachelor of Science, Biology-Premed, May 1994 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Master of Education, Eduction, July 1996 Boston College Master of Arts, Philosophy, May 1999 Special Honors and Awards: Pass with Distinction, Master’s Comprehensive Exam, Boston College, 1998 Morris Doctoral Fellowship, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 1999-2002 Graduate Assistantship, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 2002-2004 Dissertation Title:

Experience, Time, and the Subject: Deleuze’s Transformation of Kant’s Critical Philosophy

Major Professor: Dr. Sara Beardsworth