Deleuze, Kant, and the Theory of Immanent Ideas

One of Deleuze's primary aims in Difference and Repetition is to present a new theory of Ideas (dialectics) in which Ideas are conceived of as both immanent and differential. What I would like to examine in this essay is the relation between Deleuze's theory of Ideas and the theme of immanence, particularly with regard to the theory of Ideas found in Kant's three critiques.In using the term "Idea," Deleuze is not referring to the common-sense use of the term, or the use to which empiricists like Hume or Locke put it, for whom the word "idea" refers primarily to mental representations. Rather, Deleuze is referring to the concept of the Idea that was first proposed by Plato, and then modified by Kant and Hegel. Plato, Kant, and Hegel are the three great figures in the history of the theory of Ideas, for whom Ideas are as much ontological as epistemological. Deleuze's name can now be added to that list, perhaps, since he has modified the theory of Ideas in a profound and essential manner.

I will focus on Deleuze's relation to Kant rather than Plato or Hegel, since Deleuze tends to index his own theory of Ideas primarily on Kant. There are two reasons for this. On the one hand, Deleuze's critique of Plato's theory of Ideas largely functions as a propaedeutic to his reading of Kant. For Deleuze, Plato created the concept of the Idea in order to provide a criterion to distinguish or "select" between things and their simulacra—for instance, between Socrates (the true philosopher) and the sophists (the simulacral counterfeits). Deleuze criticizes Plato for assigning Ideas a transcendent status, and he thus takes up Plato's project anew in order to rejuvenate it; Ideas, he argues, must be made immanent, and therefore differential.