Table Of ContentConditions of Thought:
Deleuze and Transcendental Ideas
Plateaus - New Directions in Deleuze Studies
‘It.'s not ~ mat~er ?f bringing all sorts of things together under a single concept
but rather of relating each concept to variables rhat explain its mutations.'
Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations
SerÍes Editors
Ian Buchanan, Cardiff University
Claire Colebrook, Penn State University
Editorial Advisory Board
Keirh Ansell Pearson
Ronald Bogue
Constantin V. Boundas
Rosi Braidotti
Eugene Holland
Gregg Lambert
Dorothea Olkowski
Paul Patton
Daniel Smith
James Williams
Titles available in the series
Dorothea Olkowski，丁bβ U川，lh
CοFηztÌJ刀1βωFηztalPh刀i川losotρ)hyy
Christian Kerslake, Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy: From Kant to
Delωze
Jean-Clet Martin, Variations: The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, translated by
Constantin V. Boundas and Susan Dyrkton
Simone Bignall, Postcolonial Agency: Critique and COllstructìvism
如1iguel de Beistegui, Immanence: Deleuze and Philosophy
Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Badiou and Deleuze Read Lìterature
Ronald Bogue, Deleuzian Fabulatio1Z and the Scars of Hìstory
Sean Bowden, The Priority o{ Events: Deleuze's Logic of Sense
Craig Lundy, History and Becoming: Deleuze's Philosophy of Creativìty
Aidan Tynan, Deleuze's Literary Clinic: Critìcism and the Polìtics of Symptoms
丁homas Nail, Returning to Revolution: Deleuze Guattari and Zapatismo
François Zourabichvili, Deleuze: A Philosophy of the Event with The
Vocabulary o{ Deleuze edited by Gregg Lambert and Daniel W. Smith,
translated by Kieran Aarons
Frida Beckman, Between Desire and Pleasure: A Deleuzian Theory of Sexuality
Nadine Boljlωvac， Untimely A/卢， cts: Gilles Deleuze and an Ethics of Cinema
Daniela Voss, Conditio1ZS o{ Thought: Deleuze and Transcendental 1d eas
Forthcoming volumes:
LeRon Shults, Icolloclastic Theology: Gilles Deleuze and the Secretioll
。{Atheism
Janae Sholtz, The Inventi011 of a People: Art and the Political ùz Hèidegger
and Delωlze
Visit the Plateaus website at www.euppublishing.com/series/plat
CONDI丁IONS OF 丁HOUGH丁;
DELEUZEAND
τRANSCENDENTALIDEAS
05王三〉
Daniela Voss
B岛宜。639751
<D DanieIa Voss, 2013
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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the Copyrighr, Designs ancl Patents Act 1988.
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Abbreviations vii
Introduction 1
1 丁he Dogmatic Image of Thought 18
2 丁he Demand for Transcendental Genetic Conditions 74
3 ldeas as Problen1s 142
4 Time and the Split Subject 210
Conclusion 265
Bibliography 271
lndex 281
Acknowledgements
This book is the product of several years work which would have
been impossible without the generous support and advice of all those
who assisted me to bring this endeavour to completion.
1 especially owe rny heartfelt thanks to Paul Patton who was
always there for me to discuss problems and ideas and who encour
aged me to overcome difficulties that 1 encountered over the course
of this project. Thanks to him 1 also had the opportunity to pursue
part of my research in the School of l-Iistory and Philosophy at the
UNSW in Sydney. The many kindnesses and friendship 1 experienced
there throughout the duration of my stay leaves me with an in1rnense
debt of gratitude to rnany people too numerous to mention them all.
1 am also very grateful to Gunter Gebauer from the Free University
of Berlin for his ongoing encouragement and enthusiasm for this
project. Furthermore, 1 would like to thank 111y friends and fellow
scholars Si1110n Duff)气 Craig Lundy and Nick Midgley who have
helped improve this work through their pertinent comments, critical
questions and linguistic advice. My friend Elke deserves a special
mention for providing the cover image for this book.
My great thanks are due to Carol Macdonald and the team at
Edinburgh University Press for their professional way of dealing
with all inquiries and working with me throughout the publication
process. My experience of publishing with EUP has been a very
pleasant one.
Finally, and above all, 1 would like to thank n1y family for theÌr
loving support and encouragement over all these years.
Parts of Chapter 2 were published 挝、!laimon and Deleuze: The
Viewpoint of Internal GenesÌs and the Concept of Differentials' in
Parrhesìa, No. 11 (2011), pp. 62-74. Furthennore, son1e materials of
Cha pter 1 and 3 飞i\Till appear in 'Deleuze's Rethinking of the Notion
of Sense' ar叫‘Deleuze's Third Synthesis of Tirne' in Deleuze Studiω
(2013).1 would like to express rny gratitude for the pern1ission of the
editors of these journals to reprint this 111aterial.
Vl
Abbreviations
The bibliography contains details of the editions and translations
used for each text.
Deleuze
AO Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (vol. 1)
ATP A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
(vol. 2)
B Bergsonism
CC Essays Critical and Clinical
C1T Cinema 2: The Time-1mage
D Dialogues
D1 Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953-1974)
D R Difference and Repetition
ES Empiricism and Subjectivity: A刀 Essay on Hume's Theory of
Human Nature
F Foucault
FL B The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque
KCP Kant's Critical Philοsophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties
LK 1 Lecture Course on Kant held at Vincennes, 14 March
1978
LK 11 Lecture Course on Kant held at Vincennes, 21 March
1978
LS The Logic of Sense
N Negotiations 1972-1990
NP Nietzsche and Philosophy
P S Proust and Signs
WP What Is Philosophy?
Note on the citatiοns: The order in which the page numbers are
referenced is as follows: the first page number refers to the English
translation, the second当 italicised， number to the French original.
Vll
CONDITIONS OF THOUGHT: DELEUZE AND TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS
Kant
CJ Critique of the Power ofJ u々me11t
CPR Critique of Pure Reaso11
Note 011 the citatio11s: Page references to CPR are to the original
German editions: A (from 1781) and B (frorn 1787).
Vlll
1日troduction
This project on a Deleuzian transcendental philosophy is born out of
a feeling of astonishment. On the one hand, the theme of the tran
scendental runs through many of Deleuze's works, in particular those
published between 1962 and 1968. On the other hand, the spirit of
Deleuze's philosophical thought seems so very different from that
of Kantian transcendental philosophy: Deleuze does not bother to
seek a justification or ground for the possibility of experience and its
objects. He does not put together a table of categories当 nor does he
give any transcendental deduction of a priori conditions. Moreover,
in Deleuze, there is certainly no transcendental subject, which would
have the task of representing the world according to a priori condi
tions. So why should he label his own philosophy of the 1960s a
transcendental empiricism (cf. DR 144/187 and 56/79 80)? ln what
…
way, if at all, is his philosophy transcendental?
Our approach to this problem has been guided by the intuition
that the key had to be found in Deleuze's critique of the so-called
dognlatic lmage of thought, a critique that appears in almost every
book from this early period and that makes up the central part of
Difference and Repetition. The first thing to be noted is that Deleuze
understands philosophy fundamentally as critique, and in Nietzsche
and Philosophy he explicitly demands a rethinking and radicalisation
of Kant's critical project.1 The Kantian critique sought to describe
and ultimately prevent the illusions of reason that are to be found on
the ‘battle正eld' of metaphysics and to lead thought back to its proper
use.2 By comparison, Deleuze also finds that Western philosophical
thought has fallen prey to illusion当 but for Deleuze it is the ‘illusions
of representation' (DR 270/346) that must be subjected to critique.
Thought has been subordinated to sonle proper image of itself that
ties it to a logic of representation. Kant's critical philosophy sought
to overcome the traditional nletaphysical divide between the essences
of things or ldeas and their mere appearance. For instance, he
criticised Plato for the enthusiasm that led hinl to pass ‘beyond the
concepts of experience to ideas当 which seemed to hÌln explicable only
1
CONDITIONS OF THOUGHT: DELEUZE AND TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS
by means of an intellectual comrrlUnion with the origin of all things'. 3
Kant argued against Plato that necessity and universal truth, which
seem to pertain to the essence of things, actually have their ground in
our own reason and its ldeas. A critical use of reason would abstain
from any attelnpt at direct cOlnmunity with an intelligible world and
focus instead on οur world, which is given under the condition of
transcendental concepts. But this means that for Kant our world is
always a represented world, that is not an in1mediate presence but
a world given within a conceptual schen1e or structure that provides
the limit to knowledge. Now, Deleuze certainly agrees with Kant on
the need to overcome the metaphysical dualisn1 between the essences
of things and their appearance but he rejects Kant's representational
ist solution to the problem. Deleuze radicalises Kantian critique by
bringing it to bear on the logic of representation itself. In his view,
the idea of a representationallogic is still too 吁oundationalist'， since
it presupposes an a priori given ground that shapes our thinking.
For Deleuze, a radical critique must lead to a liberation of thought
from the fetters of representation; this means to render thought
ungrounded.
Although both Kant and Deleuze are cOlnmitted to philoso
‘
phy understood as critique and the uncovering and warding off
of illusion, there thus remains a stark contrast between the two:
while Kantian transcendental philosophy airrls to provide an a
priori ground, Deleuze precipitates transcendental philosophy into
a 'groundlessness' (sans-fond) or ‘universal ungrounding' (universel
e斤Condement) (DR 911123). Deleuze dissolves the representational
don1ain into a sub翻representational play of intensities or pure dif
ferences. While Kant locates the ground of our represented world
in universal reason or the transcendental subject, Deleuze adn1its
no transcendental subject that would represent the world but seeks
a point of view beyond representation, 由tha瓜t is an a.唰-嗣-嗣唰.仑ss仑su问bJeα正ctive an
uncωonscious transcendental 虽eld. While Kant's transcendental prin
ciples are defined as a priori conditions that subordinate thought to
a priori judgernents, Deleuze, by contrast, seeks a transcendental
principle that explains the genesis of the act of thought in thought.
Given these fundan1en
2
