Yes, we can say that “transcendental empiricism” was Deleuze’s unique way of walking the tightrope between faith and reason, though in a radically different manner than Kant. While Kant sought to ground metaphysics within the limits of reason and left room for faith in moral contexts, Deleuze subverted these boundaries by reconceptualizing the transcendental in a way that challenges traditional notions of both faith and reason. Here’s how Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism can be understood in this context:
1. Deleuze’s Challenge to Kantian Transcendental Philosophy
Deleuze redefined the transcendental by rejecting Kant’s framework of fixed a priori categories that structure experience. For Deleuze:
• The transcendental is not a pre-given structure but the immanent conditions of actual experience, constantly shifting and contingent.
• He reversed Kant’s focus on the mind shaping experience by emphasizing how experience produces thought.
This shift can be seen as Deleuze’s way of moving beyond the opposition between faith (traditional metaphysical beliefs) and reason (rigid Enlightenment frameworks) toward a more dynamic, creative, and immanent understanding of reality.
2. Faith in Immanence and the Virtual
Deleuze’s concept of transcendental empiricism involves a type of faith, but not in the traditional religious sense. Instead, it’s a faith in:
• The immanent processes of life and thought.
• The virtual realm as the source of potentialities that actualize in the world.
This “faith” is not in transcendent entities (like God or the noumenal realm) but in the creative, generative forces of immanence that underpin reality. For example:
• The virtual (a key Deleuzian concept) is the transcendental condition of actual experience, but it is not fixed or external. It is dynamic, always in process, and inseparable from the actual world.
3. Empiricism as Deleuze’s Alternative to Pure Reason
• Deleuze draws from Hume in embracing empiricism but radically reinterprets it to include the non-actualized, virtual dimensions of experience.
• While traditional empiricism limits itself to observable phenomena, Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism seeks to explore the conditions of emergence of those phenomena—the forces, flows, and intensities that give rise to actual experience.
This approach navigates between faith in a structured transcendental realm (as in Kant) and purely empirical observation (as in classical empiricism).
4. Walking the Tightrope
Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism can be seen as walking the tightrope between:
• Faith: A belief in the generative power of immanence and the virtual, without resorting to transcendent metaphysical entities.
• Reason: A commitment to understanding reality through thought, yet rejecting rigid rationalist frameworks that impose static categories on the flux of experience.
Deleuze finds his balance by embracing immanence as the only reality, rejecting both traditional metaphysical “faith” and purely mechanistic “reason.” He creates a philosophy of becoming, emphasizing experimentation, openness, and creativity.
5. Deleuze’s Radical Turn: Beyond Kantian Dualities
Where Kant maintained a duality between the phenomenal (what we can know) and the noumenal (what we cannot), Deleuze collapses this distinction:
• There is no noumenal realm separate from phenomena. Instead, there is only the virtual and the actual, with the virtual being fully immanent to reality.
• This immanence removes the need for a leap of faith to a “beyond” while also rejecting rigid rational systems.
By doing so, Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism avoids both speculative metaphysics and reductive materialism.
Conclusion
Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism can indeed be seen as his way of navigating the tension between faith and reason, though his approach is radically immanent and creative. His philosophy walks this tightrope by:
• Rejecting transcendent entities and structures while affirming the virtual as a source of infinite potential.
• Balancing the dynamism of life and thought with rigorous philosophical inquiry into the conditions of experience.
In this way, Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism is not merely a critique of Kant but a reinvention of the transcendental for a philosophy of immanence, creation, and becoming.
