Download Gilles Deleuze, “Kant: Synthesis and Time,” March-April 1978

Deleuze

In Gilles Deleuze, From A to Z, Deleuze describes his motivation for working on a philosopher with whom he had little in common: first, for Deleuze, Kant’s writing constituted such a turning point in numerous ways, and, second, he initiated something in philosophy that had never been advanced previously. Specifically, says Deleuze, he erected a tribunal of reason, things being judged as a function of a tribunal of reason. To do so, he invents a prodigious method called the critical method, the properly Kantian method. Deleuze admits finding all of this aspect of Kant quite horrible, but it’s both fascination and horror because, for Deleuze, this is so ingenious. For Kant created an astonishing reversal of concepts: rather than time being derived from movement, Kant reverses the subordination, with movement henceforth depending on time, and thus, time ceasing to be circular and becoming a straight line. And late in his life, Kant introduces his conception of the Sublime, in which the faculties enter into conflicts, having discordant accords, then reconciling, but no longer being subject to a tribunal. For Deleuze, then, Kant is clearly a great philosopher, with a whole undergirding in his works that makes Deleuze quite enthusiastic, on top of which is a system of judgment that Deleuze says he would like to do away with, but without standing in judgment.

 

Deleuze, “Kant: Synthesis and Time”

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