Abstract

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 (maybe more importantly) what it is 'to matter', for anything to be, as Deleuze suggests (following Bateson), 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 (not anti-rational) 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 (mind and matter), 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]