Deleuze is working in the tradition of post-Kantian idealism

Tom (Grundlegung) Says: May 24th, 2007 at 5:01 am Initially, I’m not sure how useful Davidson is in this context insofar as the dualism he is attacking is an empiricist one of conceptual scheme and intutional content that is intended to undermine a certain conception of the role of experience in judgement and knowledge-claims. This seems to be getting a different issue than the one of the relation between being and some socio-historical medium or category (history, language, etc.). The latter seems more straight-forwardly metaphysical in that it is concerned with issues such as ontology and the structuation of the world rather than the epistemological issues that Davidson seems preoccupied with. But perhaps you have in mind some way to bridge these two, or think that they collapse in to one another somehow? Tom (Grundlegung) Says: May 24th, 2007 at 5:05 am Oops… I should have refreshed before posting and lecturing you on the basics of Davidson which you set out very nicely above! My apologies, Daniel.

larvalsubjects Says: May 24th, 2007 at 5:33 am Daniel, Tom, this is all very interesting and is one of those happy convergences. One of the central themes I’m dealing with in my book on Deleuze is the opposition between concepts and intuitions. My dissertation was supervised by Andrew Cutrofello who, in turn, did his dissertation work with McDowell. Cutrofello’s central lense or interpretative frame for approaching the history of philosophy was the opposition between concepts and intuitions. In many respects, the first draft of my book was a response to the strong opposition he had drawn between these two domains (ultimately receptivity and spontaneity in Kant).

I tried to show how Deleuze is working in the tradition of post-Kantian idealism (rather than traditional empiricism as is so often claimed) vis a vis Schelling and especially Maimon, and how he formulates an account of productive intuition that undermines the distinction between epistemology and metaphysics. I would agree with Daniel that these issues extend to the social sciences as well and that this distinction has been formative of a good deal of social theory.

However, these metaphysical issues cannot even be properly formulated until the dogmas surrounding the concept/intuition couplet are “deconstructed” as a number of the epistemological problems from 17th century on (arguably as far back as Plato or a certain appropriation of Plato) are motivated by this couplet. I don’t know that I wholeheartedly endorse today what I argued in that book, but it certainly outlines the steps that have set me on my current trajectory which is deeply suspicious of those stances that privilege epistemology.