Summary
In this study we have examined Deleuze's critique of the implicit and tacit Image of thought that emerged in the history of philosophy and that subjects the act of thinking to the postulates of good sense, common sense and recognition, thereby separating thought from its vital and genetic conditions. Calling this classic Image of thought into question, Deleuze sets out to determine the nature of thought anew and to relate it back to those elements which account for the genesis of the act of thinking in thought. He specifies the relation between thought and its conditions as ‘transcendental’, thereby making use of a concept which enjoys a long established tradition and which was first introduced by Kant to bring philosophy onto ‘the secure course of a science’ (CPR B vii) in search of truth. However the original Kantian concept of the transcendental clearly adheres to the classic Image of thought that takes recognition as its model. Given that Deleuze always maintained that ‘philosophy does not consist in knowing and is not inspired by truth’ (WP) 82/80, how can we make sense of Deleuze's appropriation of the notion of the transcendental? How can we understand his apparently paradoxical relation to Kant, whom he describes both as ‘an enemy’ and as ‘the analogue of a great explorer’ who discovered ‘the prodigious domain of the transcendental’ (DR)? 135/176
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- Conditions of ThoughtDeleuze and Transcendental Ideas, pp. 265 - 270Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013