In the previous chapter, we identified the principle of Deleuzian philosophy as transcendental empiricism. Underlying this vision was the perspective of ‘genesis’. For any given thing Deleuze chances to encounter, he will sketch its genesis, he will study it through its genesis. Correspondingly, this means that for all things, their present state of being must be grasped as a post-genetic result; in this way all things, depending on the conditions and the process of their genesis, are capable of undergoing change. If one's justification for something is along the lines of ‘it is impossible to think otherwise’, or ‘we cannot but assume such a thing’, one can count on Deleuze to give voice to his frustrations.

Deleuze thought extremely highly of the transcendental programme inaugurated by Kant. At the same time, he pointed out that there was a problem that Kant and his followers, in carrying through this programme, had imperceptibly left behind. This is of course the problem of genesis. In the hands of Kant, transcendental philosophy had come to assume a determinate subject through the concept of ‘transcendental apperception’, whose function it was to guarantee the unity of the various faculties. Kant never paused to ask about the genesis of this subject, let alone of the faculties themselves.

It was in the philosophy of Hume, preceding that of Kant, that Deleuze discovered this genetic perspective. The textbooks of phi-losophy never tire of reminding us that Humean philosophy was superseded by the Kantian. For Deleuze, however, such a summary assessment must remain blind to the problematic aspects of the latter and the possibilities latent in the former. There exists in Hume a thorough desire to understand genesis, penetrated as it is through and through by the question: ‘how does the mind become a subject?’ This is precisely the question that Kantianism has forgotten.

For Deleuze, the essence of transcendental empiricism lies in the imperative not to ‘break it off when we please’ (MCC, 114/98). And yet, Kant's version of transcendental philosophy falls into arrested development at a certain point, in fear of the God-knows-what that lies beyond. Against this, Deleuze summons the ghosts of empiricism to aid him in completing the transcendental project.