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

it, Kant argues, the most that thinking demonstrates is that there is in fact thinking. In this sense,
Kant undermines the idea that for thinking demonstrates the existence of the Cogito.
Kant does not so much undermine thinking. In a sense, the entire Critique of Pure Reason
is a meditation on the possibility of thinking. Instead, Kant undermines the Cogito. Is it not the
case that one enters a labyrinth as soon as one attempts to find a self that underlies the various
faculties in the Critique of Pure Reason? In the first part of this essay I too interpret the
transcendental subject exclusively in terms of the multiplicity of faculties. But Kant’s point is not
merely negative. That Kant undermines the Cogito also means that he undermines something
else. That he undermines the Cogito does not mean that he undermines thought as such. He is
quite clear that there is thought. His point is merely that such a thought does not demonstrate the
Cogito. Therefore that Kant undermines the Cogito means that he undermines a particular kind
of thought, a particular image of thought, namely the thought that the Cogito thinks, that is the
thought that thinks in terms of the identity of the concept. In this sense, Deleuze paradoxically
claims that Kant undermines thought as the conceptual synthesis. (This is a paradoxical claim
because it seems that for Kant thought just is the conceptual synthesis). In any case, this negative
point allows for a positive one. Deleuze argues that when Kant suggests that there is thought
without the Cogito, he suggests that there is thought outside of the identity of the concept, in
other words, that thought can be something other than the conceptual synthesis. Thus Deleuze
argues that “when determination as such occurs, it does not simply provide a form or impart
form to a given matter on the basis of the categories” (DR 275). What kind of thought is this
thought outside of the identity of the concept? And who if not the Cogito thinks this thought that
is not the conceptual synthesis?
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