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1. Empiricism and the Search for the Conditions of Real Experience
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Empiricism and the Search for the Conditions of Real Experience Two Critical Problems of Transcendental Empiricism Two very specific critical questions animate Deleuze’s thought. On the one hand, Deleuze endorses the Cartesian project of breaking with all presuppositions as the precondition of philosophy. So long as philosophy remains within the orbit of unspoken and unjustified presuppositions, it proves unable to ground itself or to explain why one position ought to be preferred over another. In such cases, philosophy remains within the space of public sentiment, common sense, and culturally relative sensibility. As Deleuze puts it: Where to begin in philosophy has always—rightly—been regarded as a very delicate problem, for beginning means eliminating all presuppositions . However, whereas in science one is confronted by objective presuppositions which axiomatic rigor can eliminate, presuppositions in philosophy are as much subjective as objective. (DR 129) So long as these presuppositions remain, philosophy is unable to truly begin insofar as it remains within the constellation of unspoken assumptions and ungrounded presuppositions. As I will discuss in greater detail later, these presuppositions are the result of what Deleuze refers to as the “Other-structure” which, in part, presides over the individuation of human individuals. The Other-structure is the condition under which we are produced as social subjects. As a result, the conditions of a philosophy which would be without any kind of presuppositions appear all the more clearly: instead of being supported by the moral Image of thought, it would take as its point of departure a radical critique of this Image and the “postulates” it implies. It would find its difference or true beginning, not in an agreement with the prephilosophical Image, but in a rigorous struggle against this Image, which it would denounce as non-philosophical. (DR 132) 15 1 16 D i f f e r e n c e a n d g i v e n n e s s If there is a problem with the pre-philosophical Image of thought, it is that it remains merely conventional while nonetheless universalizing its presuppositions. Such an Image of thought fails to recognize that it is itself a point of view and therefore contingent or non-universal. In other words, the Image of thought is a matter of prejudice and a blindness to prejudice. By “conventional” I do not mean here that the Image of thought is conservative and based on the status quo. While Deleuze will, of course, make this claim, such a criticism fails to get at what is fundamentally at stake so long as we are not given necessary and sufficient reasons for rejecting the adequacy of the conventional or at least calling it into question. There is no inherent or a priori reason why being unconventional should be preferred to being conventional. Rather, by “conventional” I mean a set of conventions, practices, or beliefs resulting from a history and arising within a particular culture such that they are themselves arbitrary. The pre-philosophical Image of thought makes a claim to knowledge, while nonetheless being unable to ground this claim to knowledge. It illegitimately universalizes its own contingent perspective without determining the conditions under which this perspective is possible and the limits to which it is subject. The problem here is not that we have conventions and live within a socialized and historicized space of experience. It is unlikely that it is possible to live outside of such conventions, nor, I think, would it be desirable to do so. In this connection, there is a sort of bad faith or misrecognition at work in some formulations of multiculturalism as an ethical stance rather than as a factual state of affairs. Naive enunciations of multiculturalist politics assert that we ought to be tolerant of other cultural practices and avoid imposing our own views on them. While tolerance is certainly an admirable practice, the problem with this position is that it fails to recognize that the claim that we ought to be tolerant is itself a claim that transcends various cultural practices and which is asserted as normatively binding on all cultural practices. On the other hand, this universal ethical stance arises from a very specific cultural context, namely, the Western philosophical tradition. In this respect, it is impossible to consistently hold multiculturalist tolerance as a binding ethical ideal without simultaneously asserting a necessary form of cultural universalism and intolerance. Consequently, far from being a variant of cultural relativism, multiculturalism is in fact a form of universalism that...