At the Request of Noah-- Book Abstract and Table of Contents

The Transcendental Empiricism of Gilles Deleuze: Between Representation

Aesthetics

In this book I seek to unfold the significance and implications of Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism. Where many interpretations of Deleuze’s metaphysics treat his transcendental empiricism as a variant of sense-data empiricism based on the primacy of the given, I instead argue that Deleuze’s position is a hyper-rationalism that seeks to determine the conditions under which the given is produced or the conditions of real experience. Consequently, Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism represents a substantial departure from classical empiricism in that it does not treat the given as epistemically primitive, but instead seeks to determine how it is produced. Thus, the empiricist dimension is to be situated in terms of how the given is produced and what conditions allow for the production of the given. It is for this reason that Deleuze philosophy remains a transcendental.

If Deleuze’s position is better conceived as a hyper-rationalism, then this is because he discovers intelligibility in the given itself. For Deleuze the sufficient reason of the given is to be found in the differentials of being that preside over the genesis of the given. Since these differentials are intelligible, rational structures governed by rule-like processes, Deleuze is able to collapse the oppositions between the sensible and the intelligible and passivity and activity that has governed the manner in which metaphysical problems have unfolded throughout the history of philosophy.

In this way Deleuze is also able to collapse the implicit distinction between finitude and infinitude, and show how the finite differs only in degree, not kind, from the infinite. If this distinction collapses, then this is because the ability to create objects (givens) through thinking them is no longer understood as belonging solely to divine, infinite beings such as God, but is a property shared in degree by finite creatures as well. As such, Deleuze’s thought marks a heroic attempt to depart from the reigning philosophical alternatives of phenomenology, logical analysis, pragmatism, post-modernism and post-structuralism, all of which evolved as responses to Kant, by undermining the central premises of finitude and the passive receptivity of intuition upon which they are based.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

INTRODUCTION 6

1. EMPIRICISM AND THE SEARCH FOR THE CONDITIONS OF 23

REAL EXPERIENCE

1.1 Two Critical Problems of Transcendental Empiricism 23

1.2 Difference, Diversity and Empiricism 32

1.3 External Difference and Transcendental Philosophy 37

1.4 Between Conditioning and Genesis 41

1.5 Between Chaos and Individuation: The Forced Vel of 48

Representational Philosophy

1.6 Variations of Difference: The Topological Essences of Intuition 58

2. BERGSONIAN INTUITION AND INTERNAL DIFFERENCE 67

2.1 Internal Difference 67

2.2 Bergsonian Intuition 70

2.3 Internal Difference and the Intensive Multiplicity of Duration 73

2.4 Intensive and Extensive Multiplicities 78

2.5 Conditions of Real Experience 81

2.6 Topological Essences and Singular Styles of Being 85

3. TRANSCENDENTAL EMPIRICISM: THE IMAGE OF THOUGHT 97

AND THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE ENCOUNTER

3.1 Deleuze Contra Bergson 97

3.2 The Image of Thought 105

4. FIRST MOMENT OF THE ENCOUNTER: THE SENTIENDUM 120

4.1 Imperceptible Encounters 120

4.2 The Sentiendum, or That Which Can Only Be Sensed 123

4.3 Deleuzian Faculties and the Joints of Being 126

4.4 Signs of the Transcendental 128

5. SECOND MOMENT OF THE ENCOUNTER: THE MEMORANDIUM 133

5.1 The Ontological Structure of Problems and the Encounter 133

5.2 Ontological Memory: The Being of the Past 135

5.3 Memory and the Passage of the Present 140

5.4 The Virtual Causality of Structure 145

5.5 The First Paradox of Memory: Contemporaneity 147

5.6 The Second Paradox of Memory: Coexistence 151

5.7 The Third Paradox of Memory: The Pre-Existence of the Past 156

5.8 The Fourth Paradox of Memory: The Co-Existence of the Past 157

with Itself

5.9 Freedom and Destiny 162

5.9.1 The Force of Memory 170

6. THIRD MOMEMENT OF THE ENCOUNTER: THE COGITANDUM 175

6.1 The Explication of Problems 175

6.2 The Moral Image of Thought 181

6.3 The Being of Thought: Essence 186

6.4 Difference: The Transcendental Condition of the Diverse Given 190

6.5 Essence and the Metaphysical Structure of Point of View 196

6.6 Problems and the Dialectical Illusions of Being 203

6.7 Kant and the Being of Problems 206

6.8 The Insistence of Problems 212

6.9 Structural Essences 218

7. OVERCOMING SPECULATIVE DOGMATISM: TIME AND THE 227

TRANSCENDENTAL FIELD

7.1 The Threat of Dogmatic Schwärmerei 227

7.2 The Kantian Split Subject 231

7.3 Towards a Third Copernican Revolution 235

7.4 Time Out of Joint 239

7.5 The Becoming-Identical of the Different: The Event of Time 245

and the Subject of Difference

7.6 Beyond the Subject: Deleuze’s Hyper-Critical Turn 251

7.7 The Limits of Recognition 254

7.8 The Genetic Conditions of Experience: The Three Moments of 256

Ideas

7.9 Chance and Necessity: The Eternal Return 262

7.9.1 Beyond Individuation and Chaos: The Singular 267

7.9.2. The Transcendental Field and Deleuze’s Speculative Turn 270

7.9.3 Individuation and the Being of Singularity 277

8. INDIVIDUATION: THE GENESIS OF EXTENSITIES AND THE 282

STRUCTURE-OTHER

8.1 Three Problems Pertaining to the Process of Actualization 286

8.2 Indi-Different/ciation and the Genesis of Extensities 286

8.3 The Principle of Sufficient Reason: Indi-Different/ciation 290

8.4 The Static Time of Actualization 298

8.5 The Time of Sufficient Reason 300

8.6 The Spatialization of Intensive Time 302

8.7 The Intensive Factors of Actualization 303

8.8 Implication and Explication 307

8.9 Depth and Extensity 312

8.9.1 Depth and the Image of Thought 314

8.9.2 The Genesis of Individuals and Persons 315

8.9.3 The Moral Ground of the Image of Thought 323

CONCLUSION 335

REFERENCE MATTER 340