Kant and Spinozism: Transcendental Idealism and Immanence from Jacobi to Deleuze

229 Pages·2011·0.64 MB·English

by  Beth Lord (auth.)

Kant and Spinozism
Transcendental Idealism and Immanence
from Jacobi to Deleuze
Beth Lord
Renewing Philosophy
General Editor: Gary Banham
Titles include:
Lou Agosta
EMPATHY IN THE CONTEXT OF PHILOSOPHY
Karin de Boer
ON HEGEL
The Sway of the Negative
Kyriaki Goudeli
CHALLENGES TO GERMAN IDEALISM
Schelling, Fichte and Kant
Keekok Lee
PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTIONS IN GENETICS
Deep Science and Deep Technology
Beth Lord
KANT AND SPINOZISM
Transcendental Idealism and Immanence from Jacobi to Deleuze
Vincent W. Lloyd
LAW AND TRANSCENDENCE
On the Unfi nished Project of Gillian Rose
Jill Marsden
AFTER NIETZSCHE
Jean-Paul Martinon
ON FUTURITY
Malabou, Nancy & Derrida
Simon O’Sullivan
ART ENCOUNTERS DELEUZE AND GUATTARI
Thought Beyond Representation
Peg Rawes
SPACE, GEOMETRY AND AESTHETICS
Through Kant and Towards Deleuze
Celine Surprenant
FREUD’S MASS PSYCHOLOGY
Alberto Toscano
THE THEATRE OF PRODUCTION
Philosophy and Individuation Between Kant and Deleuze
Vasiliki Tsakiri
KIERKEGAARD
Anxiety, Repetition and Contemporaneity
Philip Walsh
SKEPTICISM, MODERNITY AND CRITICAL THEORY
Martin Weatherston
HEIDEGGER’S INTERPRETATION OF KANT
Categories, Imagination and Temporality
Renewing Philosophy
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Also by Beth Lord
THE CONTINUUM COMPANION TO CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY
(co-edited with John Mullarkey, 2009)
SPINOZA’S ETHICS: An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide (2010)
Kant and Spinozism
Transcendental Idealism and Immanence
from Jacobi to Deleuze
Beth Lord
University of Dundee, UK
© Beth Lord 2011
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-55297-5
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First published 2011 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-36279-0 ISBN 978-0-230-29772-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230297722
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lord, Beth.
Kant and Spinozism : transcendental idealism and immanence from
Jacobi to Deleuze / Beth Lord.
p. cm. — (Renewing philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632–1677. 2. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804.
I. Title.
B3998.L57 2011
199'.492—dc22
2010033963
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
For my parents, Barry Lord and
Gail Dexter Lord
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Contents
List of Tables viii
Series Editor’s Preface ix
Acknowledgements xii
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
1 Jacobi’s Provocative Suggestion 20
2 Against Spinozistic Dogmatism 41
3 Herder and Spinozistic Naturalism 56
4 Critiques of Teleological Judgement 80
5 Maimon and Spinozistic Idealism 105
6 Deleuze and Spinozistic Difference 130
7 Spinozism in the Ether: Kant’s Opus Postumum 155
Conclusion 175
Notes 184
Bibliography 202
Index 210
vii
List of Tables
0.1 Outline of Spinoza’s ontology 15
4.1 The four dogmatic systems of CJ §§72–3 87
viii
Series Editor’s Preface
The presence of Spinoza in critical philosophical reflection has grown
as the years have gone by. Once thought of as a mere corrective to
Descartes, albeit still thereby confined within Cartesian thought, Spinoza
has increasingly been resorted to as the basis for a sustained challenge
to the ‘modern’ philosophical conception. This general rehabilitation
of Spinoza is, however, one that reverses in a signal way the damning
verdict passed on his philosophy during both his life-time and for over a
century afterwards. Paradoxically, Spinoza is re-discovered and prospects
for re-reading him are canvassed for the first time, in the aftermath of
the reaction to Kant’s Critical revolution. This is paradoxical in lots of
respects, not least that the rationale for resort to Spinoza in the wake
of the Critical revolution is hardly an obvious move.
In this work we have charted the move from seeing Spinoza as an
adversary to critical philosophy to an ally of it. The stages of the work
re-trace both the ways Spinoza is used and abused in the process of
response to the Critical revolution and also how Kant’s own evolving reac-
tion to ‘Spinozism’ can be understood. The first important motif of this
work is the way in which philosophers are captured within an image,
an image that freezes some elements of their thought, distorts others and
works to render comprehension of their work very difficult. This process
of formation of an image of thought is one that is, however, not entirely
static. The second motif of the work concerns how this image can be open
to change by a process of interaction between subsequent positions that
comprehend and fail to comprehend each other partly through exchange
of an image of previous thought. The possibilities of philosophical
compre hension are themselves revealed to be tied to a process of illusory
relation to positions different from both one’s own and those of the
thinker captured within an image.
Kant’s own diagnosis of philosophical illusion is one that describes
its appearance as inevitable. ‘Human reason has this peculiar fate, that
in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as
prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but
which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.’ (Avii).
What Kant does not do, until the final chapter of the Critique of Pure
Reason, is to describe a ‘history of pure reason’. When, in the last chapter
ix