Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Letter-Preface by Gilles Deleuze
- Preambles
- First Variation: Ethics and Aesthetics
- 1 Battlefield
- 2 Transcendental Empiricism
- 3 Nomadology
- Second Variation: Three Poetic Formulas for Nomadic Distribution
- Third Variation: Multiplicities
- Fourth Variation: Malcolm Lowry, or, the Manifesto of Things
- Postscript to the Anglo-American Edition: What is a Multiplicity?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Battlefield
from First Variation: Ethics and Aesthetics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Letter-Preface by Gilles Deleuze
- Preambles
- First Variation: Ethics and Aesthetics
- 1 Battlefield
- 2 Transcendental Empiricism
- 3 Nomadology
- Second Variation: Three Poetic Formulas for Nomadic Distribution
- Third Variation: Multiplicities
- Fourth Variation: Malcolm Lowry, or, the Manifesto of Things
- Postscript to the Anglo-American Edition: What is a Multiplicity?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Having reached the end of the transcendental analytic, Kant returns one last time to the familiar course in order to pin down its articulations in a cursory manner and with the help of a metaphor. Kant's use of metaphors is precise enough to allow us to bring their trajectory into relief. We know that Kant never flatters himself for the literary quality of his writing; he explicitly prefers the precision of demonstration and the clarity of concepts. His main objective is not to seduce the reader with a lofty style. Kant does not aspire to please, except through his conceptual rigour. And transcendental philosophy, even as it attempts to enunciate the mechanism of reflective judgement, willingly prevents itself from giving in and being invaded by the free play of a discordant accord, or by a mode of exposition that the understanding would no longer seek to determine. Nevertheless, there is metaphor in Kant. We could even say that Kant, on many occasions, immerses himself in an allegorical construction that brings to light a secret, anachronic character that contrasts with the often barren appearance of the most hackneyed formulae of the critical edifice. Indeed, we witness the birth of a desert island that Deleuze revisits in 1950, in a text bearing the same title (Deleuze 2004). In this early text, Deleuze stages the creative character of desire on this desert island. The separation and isolation of those who were shipwrecked mobilize the power to repeat, with a choice of difference – the now displaced conditions of life on the mainland.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- VariationsThe Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, pp. 3 - 15Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2010