What is most interesting about the Deleuzian practice of critique is that it is not a matter of moving beyond the presuppositions encapsulated by the dogmatic Image of thought, but of affirming them in their danger. Presuppositions cannot be eliminated, even though they subject one to conformity and rob one of one's power of thinking newness. Deleuze's solution is to subject our presuppositions to a critique that does not try to avoid them but to affirm them, to evaluate them according to the immanent conditions of their genesis, and create new forms of relationship to them. Such an affirmation is transformative in so far as it is recursively activated through the faculties’ movement ‘beyond’ their limits. Though one cannot get definitively beyond the limits imposed by the subjective presuppositions of the dogmatic Image of thought, those limits can be affirmed by evaluating them as the grid through which ones sees the world. This affirmation can then reveal something about the world at the level of how social forces work through subjects. The ‘education of the senses’ described by Deleuze as paideia is informed by this destructive affirmation of presuppositions rather than by a theory of human nature, of the Good, or of practical reason.

Kant's Hidden Moralism

As was shown previously, on Deleuze's reading, Kant's position is that culture prepares humans to experience the sublime in order that they may produce morality. One implication of this reading is that culture is not only necessary for one's individual experience of the sublime – it is also necessary for the readiness with which anyone can expect their judgement concerning the sublime to be accepted by others. As culture increases, aesthetic common sense about the sublime becomes established. The feeling of the sublime is a subjective presupposition – ‘which, however, we believe ourselves to be justified in demanding of everyone’ (CJ §29) – that leads to the acknowledgment that there is an a priori principle of moral feeling within human beings. On Deleuze's reading of Kant, cultivation involves the development of what Kant alternately calls ‘moral ideas’ or ‘moral feeling’. Even though moral feeling must be developed through culture, the a priori principle of moral feeling is the ground for the necessity of the assent individuals expect from other people concerning their own judgement on the sublime.