stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

subject is already within that which she conditions, namely, the abilities, and specifically in
practice, desire. Therefore, when you begin your story about the transcendental and how the
subject is immanent to the transcendental and how that immanence really is experimentation, like
Deleuze does, then you are really back to Kant's ethics. Perhaps, here one might say that actually
you are also back to Spinoza’s Ethics. Perhaps. However, here I would say that, as I have already
emphasized, I think that in Difference and Repetition (and The Logic of Sense) Deleuze does talk
in terms of subjectivity that experiments whereas if we rely on Spinoza we risk doing away with
subjectivity altogether and falling into experimentation as such. (On the side note, I do not think
that such an ethics is possible or at least not in this historical moment).
I want to situate this project. There are many commentators who recognize that Kant
exerts an important influence on Deleuze. For example, in “Deleuze, Kant and the Question of
Metacritique” Christian Kerslake argues that Difference and Repetition is the continuation of the
project that Kant initiates in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kerslake continues this project in his
Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy: From Kant to Deleuze. However, Kerslake does not
think, like I do, that Deleuze continues Kant’s ethics. In fact, in Immanence and the Vertigo of
Philosophy he argues that Kant’s ethical project is untenable (Kerslake 60-3). In a sense, this
approach to the relationship between Kant and Deleuze has received a widespread acceptance.
Thus, for example, the editors of Thinking Between Deleuze and Kant: A Strange Encounter
Edward Willatt and Matt Lee think that they can examine the relationship between Kant and
Deleuze by restricting themselves to Kant’s theoretical philosophy. This is why the essays in this
collection consider only Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Willatt and Lee 1). An important figure
there is a danger that we will not only return to the Cogito but to an infinite Cogito, to Geist or Spirit, in other words,
to a more extreme example of the kind of transcendent subjectivity that Deleuze criticizes. (A good discussion of
Maimon’s thought can be found in Frederick C. Beiser’s The Fate of Reason).
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