Matt Lee

What I want to do in this paper is focus on the way in which Deleuze might be said to 'level the levels' of the Kantian philosophy. The levels which Deleuze levels are found in the distinction between the transcendentally ideal and the empirically real. Just what is at stake in these terms? If Kant's move is to insist on the sensible, we might almost want to say that it is an insistence on a matter that matters which underlies this distinction of levels. 'Almost', because we have yet to understand matter or what it is 'to matter', for anything to be, as Deleuze suggests, a 'difference that makes a difference'. If, however, we were to allow that what underlies Kant's necessary insistence on the empirically real is an anti-rationalist move, a move against a 'pure thought' and in favour of a muddy, dirty thought in which the mixing up, the synthesis of concept and intuition, was the central guiding thread, then the way in which this synthesis is produced would be of crucial importance. This 'way it is produced' can be examined, at least in part, by focusing on the concept of determinability. [Introductory excerpt from the chapter].

In the wake of much previous work on Gilles Deleuze's relations to other thinkers (including Bergson, Spinoza and Leibniz), his relation to Kant is now of great and active interest and a thriving area of research. In the context of the wider debate between 'naturalism' and 'transcendental philosophy', the implicit dispute between Deleuze's 'transcendental empiricism' and Kant's 'transcendental idealism' is of prime philosophical concern. Bringing together the work of international experts from both Deleuze scholarship and Kant scholarship, Thinking Between Deleuze and Kant addresses explicitly the varied and various connections between these two great European philosophers, providing key material for understanding the central philosophical problems in the wider 'naturalism/ transcendental philosophy' debate. The book reflects an area of great current interest in Deleuze Studies and initiates an ongoing interest in Deleuze within Kant scholarship. The contributors are Mick Bowles, Levi R. Bryant, Patricia Farrell, Christian Kerslake, Matt Lee, Michael J. Olson, Henry Somers-Hall and Edward Willatt.