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

form of object which reflects the subjective identity...” (DR 133). That the faculty of the
understanding unifies all the other faculties such that the concept subsumes the representations of
the other faculties means that the object that the subject confronts is identical to its own concept.
In other words, the identity of the object just is the identity of the subject. This confrontation of
the Cogito and the object is what Kant calls cognition. However, since such cognition takes the
form of the concept that the Cogito itself imposes and which is the very source of the identity
between itself and the object, such cognition is recognition. “Recognition may be defined by the
harmonious exercise of all the faculties upon a supposed same object: the same object may be
seen, touched, remembered, imagined or conceived” (DR 133). In this sense, cognition is like
cognizing again what has already been somehow known. It is inevitable that one here recognize a
Platonic influence. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant writes that “for Plato ideas are
archetypes of the things themselves, and not, in the manner of the categories, merely keys to
possible experiences” (CPR B370/A314). Still, Kant claims, “it is by no means unusual, upon
comparing the thoughts which an author has expressed in regard to his subject, whether in
ordinary conversation or in writing, to find that we understand him better than he has understood
himself” (CPR B370/A314). Deleuze argues that for Kant Plato’s ideas are concepts. This is why
Deleuze talks about the concepts in terms of identity. The concept is not identical to something
else. Instead, it is identical to itself in the sense that it is stable, unified, simple, and eternal, in
the broadest sense, in the sense that it is intelligible. “The ‘sameness’ of the Platonic Idea which
serves as model and is guaranteed by the Good gives way to the identity of an originary concept
grounded in a thinking subject” (DR 265-6). It is in relation to this account of cognition as
recognition that Deleuze wants to say something original.
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