Idea of Pure Critique (Transversals: New Directions in Philosophy Series)

The Idea of Pure Critique

TRANSVERSALS NEW DIRECTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY SERIES EDITOR Keith Ansell Pearson, University of Warwick

CONSULTANT EDITORS Eric Alliez, Richard Beardsworth, Howard Caygill, Gary Genosko, Elisabeth Grosz, Michael Hardt, Diane Morgan, John Mullarkey, Paul Patton, Stanley Shostak, Isabelle Stengers, James Williams, David Wood. Transversals explores the most exciting collisions within contemporary thought, as philosophy encounters nature, materiality, time, technology, science, culture, politics, art and everyday life. The series aims to present work which is both theoretically innovative and challenging, while retaining a commitment to rigour and clarity and to the power and precision of thought. Philosophy in the Age of Science and Capital Gregory Dale Adamson Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy Manuel DeLanda Felix Guattari: An Aberrant Introduction Gary Genosko Political Physics: Deleuze, Derrida and the Body Politic John Protevi Abstract Sex Luciana Parisi

THE IDEA OF PURE CRITIQUE IAIN MACKENZIE

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Contents

Acknowledgements Preface Introduction

viii x xviii 1

Chapter One: Kant and the Critique of Indifference1 Indifference and the Idea of Critique Critique, Totality and Immanence The Return of Indifference

1 11 14

Chapter Two: Philosophy as Pure Critique Introduction Partial Criticism, Total Critique and Pure Critique Philosophy as Constructivism Philosophy as Pure Critique Conclusion

21 21 22 28 36 55

Chapter Three: Four Problems with Pure Critique Introduction Problem One: The Problem with Ideas Problem Two: The Problem with Creators and Mediators Problem Three: The Problem of Immanence Problem Four: The Problem of Difference Conclusion

57 57 57 65 73 79 84

Conclusion: The Idea of Pure Critique

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Afterword

97

Notes

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Index

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Acknowledgements

The idea of pure critique has emerged slowly over many years. As a result of this slow gestation, I have accrued many intellectual debts along the way. The conversations with my former colleagues in the School of Politics at Queen's University Belfast did much to set this work in motion and shape its outlines and I am particularly grateful to the incisive views on critique proffered by Shane O'Neill, Moya Lloyd, Alan Finlayson, James Martin, Vincent Geoghegan, Debbie Lisle and Robert Eccleshall. My former colleagues in the Department of Philosophy at Middlesex University greatly contributed to deepening my appreciation of the philosophical issues at stake in the idea of pure critique: Peter Osborne, Christian Kerslake, Stella Sandford, Stewart Martin and Ray Brassier all, in different ways, sharpened the ideas that guide this work. Many students at both institutions also contributed to bringing this work to fruition and I am grateful to them for their patience in responding to my stuttering attempts to articulate the idea of pure critique over the years. In particular, during the latter stages of the project both Kieran Laird and Peter Gilpin helped to focus my mind on some of the intricacies required of the idea of pure critique. My thanks also to those in the Department of Politics at the University of Glasgow who taught me to see an idea through to its conclusion: Christopher Berry, Michael Lessnoff and David Lloyd-Jones. This project would not have got off the ground had it not been for the support of Tristan Palmer and Keith Ansell Pearson. Tristan's commitment to publishing innovative work in philosophy and his patience as deadlines were missed allowed the idea of pure critique to be conceived and to grow to maturity. I am also grateful to his successor, Hywel Evans, for overseeing the final stages of this project with such care and attention to detail. Keith's support from the beginning and his constructively critical comments on the draft manuscript were invaluable in 'purifying' the idea of pure critique. I am also extremely grateful to those who read early drafts of this book: Robert Porter, Robert MacKenzie and Christian Kerslake. Their careful commentaries have

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helped to clarify the idea of pure critique in ways that I had not anticipated at the outset of the project. My warm thanks go to Diana Coole for the on-going debates about the nature of critique — debates that have proved decisive in informing the direction of this work. I am also grateful to Barbara Kennedy and Robin Durie for invites to conferences that allowed the main aspects of pure critique to be aired for the first time. For their constant love and support I am forever grateful to my parents Margaret and Angus, my brothers Christopher and Robert and my sister Angela. My own children, Kathryn and Sam, are always teaching me the critical impact of novel ways of looking at the world. My partner Anna has been my constant guide on the journey towards the idea of pure critique and without her love and commitment to creativity this project would never have been brought to life.

Some sections of this book are based on previously published material. Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to use revised versions of the following: Radical Philosophy Ltd, 'Creativity as Criticism: The Philosophical Constructivism of Deleuze and Guattari', Radical Philosophy, 86, 1997, pp. 7-18; Taylor and Francis Ltd, 'Unravelling the Knots: Poststructuralism and Other "Post-isms" ', Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 6, no. 3, 2001, pp. 331-45; Pluto Press Ltd, 'Idea, Event, Ideology' in I. MacKenzie and S. Malesevic (eds), Ideology After Poststructuralism, London, Pluto Press, 2002.

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Critique becomes pure when it becomes wholly adequate to itself. Pure critique, in becoming adequate to itself, becomes equal to the task of the critique that always accompanies the expression of critique as an idea. As such, it must always contain within itself, as the fullness of itself, the critique becoming within itself. In an age scarred by the actions of regimes in pursuit of purity it might seem odd to construct the idea of critique around the very same motif. What is to be gained by addressing ourselves to the idea of pure critique when it could plausibly be argued that purity is the very problem that critique must address? Indeed, from its beginnings in Kant's famous text, the idea of critique was set against those dogmatic advocates of pure reason who had failed to interrogate the proper limits and powers of reason before applying it in the fields of knowledge, morality, theology and human affairs. Should we not assume, therefore, that critique must be deployed in the service of constraining the desire for purity in thought and life? Rather than try to grasp concepts and events in their purity, is it not the lesson of our age that concepts and events are infinitely complex and irreducibly interconnected? Is it not the case that whenever we find people trying to reduce complexity and interconnectedness in the name of purity that we must be sharpening our critical tools and subjecting their ideas to the most rigorous critique? There are, in other words, prima facie reasons to be suspicious of the very project announced in the title of this book: the idea of pure critique. Such suspicion, however, is easily overcome. First, we must simply recall that there is nothing inherently troubling with the idea of purity. On the contrary, purity is an ideal that secures many of our most deeply felt attachments to our sense of self, our relations with others and the ebb and flow of life. Culturally, moreover, the ideal of purity has motivated many of the most innovative and challenging exercises in the arts and literature, from attempts

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to represent the purity of bonds of love to cultural artefacts that have left representation behind in the drive for pure line, colour, sound or phrasing, for example. Of course, it is for the cultural and intellectual historians to chart the complex lineage of the idea of purity in its various contexts at different historical moments. The point for now is the simple one that we must not be afraid of the idea of purity simply because of a current ideological tendency to associate it with dangerous fundamentalisms, be they philosophical, political, economic, religious, cultural or whatever. Second, it is important to be clear from the outset that the idea of purity should not, in and of itself, be set against the equally important ideas of complexity and interconnectedness. Indeed, the opposite is surely the case. For an adequate understanding of complex and interconnected phenomena to emerge one must both be clear on the purity of the elements involved in complex and interconnected systems and be able to elaborate the purity of the ideas of complexity and interconnectedness that one is deploying. Rather than being anathema to the understanding of complexity and interconnectedness, purity is surely at the core of such understanding, if such understanding is to remain adequate to the ideas themselves. This is as true of the complexities of the natural world as it is of the complex worlds created by humans and as it is of the interconnectedness between them. The idea of pure critique is not an exercise in simply removing critique from complex conceptual systems or from its deep interconnectedness with other ideas. Rather, it is the preparatory work required of an adequate understanding of how such entrenched complexity and deep interconnectedness can be most adequately comprehended. In sloughing off the commonplace associations that the idea of critique brings with it, in pursuit of an idea of pure critique, one of the key aims is to clear the way for a full and rich understanding of the manner in which the activity of critique is embedded in life; the human, the non-human and the many liminal zones of life between these idealized planes. That such a rich and full understanding is far beyond the reach of this book does not invalidate the opening gambit of such a project, namely the delimitation of the idea of pure critique. Third, it is often those who worry most about the idea of purity who draw most heavily on thinkers, artists, practitioners, activists and so on who themselves rely on explicit or implicit evocations of the same ideal, purity. Given that the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari will loom large throughout the argument that follows, their work can provide one possible example. Amongst

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their disciples it is sometimes thought that their oeuvre provides the clearest example to date of the need to avoid purity in philosophy, politics and other spheres. Is it not the case that they have shown how impoverished thought becomes and how dangerous life can be when people cut off one domain of thought or life from other domains; the psychological from the economic, the philosophical from the political, the literary from the scientific, and so on? Is it not one of the great lessons of their work that we must constantly and consistently critique those who seek to set up pure domains of inquiry? Of course, all of this is, in large measure, true of their work. Yet, only the most cursory reading of their contribution to these debates could uphold the further idea that this depends upon a critique of the idea of purity as such. Otherwise, what sense could be made of some of the keystones of their philosophical innovations, the ideas of pure difference; pure multiplicities; the pure event; pure becoming and so forth? For all that they rightly stress the deep interconnectedness of thought, life and their domains there is a (more-or-less) consistent appreciation of how such analyses can only be conducted on the basis of having first taken the trouble to examine ideas and events in their purity. Many other examples from within the work of those most often thought to be wary of the idea of purity could be given. The point is to recognize that purity is not antithetical to most of those philosophers, artists, activists and so on who have, usually despite themselves, gained a certain cultural capital from being thought of as critics of purity in all its forms. All of which should lend weight to the idea that pure critique is not a defence of the idea of purity, in and of itself. Rather, it is a defence of the idea of critique, a defence which first requires that we delimit the idea in its purity. Indeed, it is important to be clear on this: if we are to become critics of the claims to purity in thought and life that have scarred our age — forms that have cut deeply into our sense of ourselves, of each other and of our world - then we can only begin from a solid footing if we have first undertaken the task of seeing what critique itself is in its purity. If an unthinking rejection of the idea of purity causes us to neglect the idea of pure critique, leaving the terrain clear for those who wish to use the idea of purity in pursuit of the most noxious economic, cultural, social, political and philosophical regimes, then we have ceded the ground to forces within thought and life that will always escape critique. Whatever the fervour of our protests, if they are not backed up by rigorous investigation into the idea of pure critique then they will always succumb to the embrace of that to which we most object.

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Only a fully developed idea of pure critique can successfully overcome the many manifestations of the noxious desire for purity that have scarred our modern and contemporary world. What is involved in making the idea of critique pure? In order to answer this question, we must have a grasp of what is involved in developing any idea in its purity. In Kant, of course, pure reason refers to the deployment of reason without reference to experience, a deployment that allows for the systematization and unification of knowledge under its proper regulative use but which can lead to illusion if used to constitute possible objects of knowledge. Generally speaking, Kant uses the motif of purity to distinguish the transcendental conditions of knowledge from the empirical world to be known; for example, in the distinction between pure apperception, the 'I think' that accompanies every representation, and empirical apperception, the way I represent myself to myself as having certain features — blue eyes, two legs, feeling pain and so on. This use of the qualifier 'pure' to distance concepts from the impure empirical world that they represent or condition is probably the dominant connotation within the philosophical tradition: generally, the purity of thought over and above the impurity of the world. As Deleuze puts it in The Logic of Sense, 'The popular and technical images of the philosopher seem to have been set by Platonism: the philosopher is a being of ascents; he is the one who leaves the cave and rises up. The more he rises the more he is purified.' There are, however, notable exceptions. In Bergson, for example, 'pure' is most often used in conjunction with the related concepts of duration, perception, memory and recollection and it is assigned to the intuitive grasp that we have of the mobile reality of becoming against the impure analytical procedures which immobilize that reality. Purity is attained precisely by countering the traditional process of philosophical ascent. For Bergson, moreover, Kantianism remains a Platonism because it pours 'all possible experience into pre-existing moulds' and thereby falls into the trap of trying to account for the pure duration of experience by way of 'fixed concepts'. While Kant sought purity by subtracting the empirical world from its transcendental conditions, Bergson sought purity by subtracting our analytical habits from our intuitive grasp of mobile reality. In both cases, though, purity is the result of a method of subtraction: the pure is what remains after the impurities have been removed. In regard to the idea of critique, therefore, we can delimit its purity by subtracting elements

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that are not proper to the idea itself. Throughout the discussion below, this subtractive method will be deployed in a variety of contexts beginning with an interpretation of Kant's idea of critique that will see the everyday notion of criticism subtracted from an adequate approach to the idea of critique. This will be developed, in the analytic of pure critique that opens Chapter Two, by subtracting from the idea of critique pre-given conceptions of the world to be criticized, the activity of critique itself and the nature of the critic that carries out the critical gesture. Only once this three-fold subtraction is complete can pure critique be constructed. If ideas gain their purity solely through subtraction, however, a problem immediately arises: in continually subtracting elements from an idea, elements often firmly fixed in the mind as part of the idea itself, is one left with an empty idea or, at best, the bare skeletal form of an idea? Using the arithmetical image of subtraction as the sole methodological guide, indeed, might even lead one to think that the pure idea one is left with has a wholly 'negative' form. Here, the Husserlian notion of 'reduction' may be more useful. In Husserl, the 'phenomenological reduction' is a way of accessing the 'pure phenomenological field' which, when properly grasped, results in 'the perfect expansion of the genuine psychological concept of "inner experience".'7 In this example, the purity developed through reduction is said to provide the basis for the expansion of a common-sense notion. Clearly, this is also at work within Kant and Bergson, where the transcendental field and our intuitions are similarly expanded\sy virtue of subtracting or, we might say following Husserl, reducing aspects commonly associated with our approach to the world. And so it is with the idea of critique: while subtracting elements from it to make it pure one must also see the subtractive method as one which expands the idea of critique itself. As will become clear throughout the discussion, the process of 'taking away' commonly held views about critique is simultaneously a process whereby the idea of critique can expand to become full and richly textured in itself. The aim of grasping the idea of critique in its purity, therefore, means grasping it in its fullness. To say that critique becomes pure when it becomes wholly adequate to itself is to indicate the fullness that results from a method of subtraction or reduction. This formulation, however, raises one final issue with delineating an idea in its purity, an issue that can be developed by way of a brief comparison between the use of purity in this context and the role of purity in the thought of Alain Badiou. For Badiou, 'purity is the composition of an Idea such that

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it is no longer retained by any relation, an idea that grasps from being its indifference to all relation, its isolated scintillation'. While a full treatment of the complexities of this statement is beyond the remit of this work, it is clear that Badiou is also adopting a method whereby the relationality of an idea is subtracted in order to comprehend the purity of the idea. In Badiou's view, indeed, for an idea to count as pure it must be unrelated to any other idea. If adopted in this context, this criterion of purity would require that pure critique be 'composed' in such a way as to divest it of all relationality. As Hallward has succinctly pointed out, however, the task of exposing thought to its 'unrelatedness' constitutes 'both the extraordinary ambition of Badiou's philosophy, its unflinching determination, and its own peculiar difficulty the difficulty it has in describing any possible relation between truth and knowledge, any dialectic linking subject and object' such that 'Badiou's philosophy forever risks its restriction to the empty realm of prescription pure and simple'. Without deciding the matter here, the idea of purity deployed in the following discussion of critique does not assume that purity comes at the cost of 'unrelatedness'. The idea of pure critique is coined not to sever critique from its relations to other ideas but to secure a full and rich expansion of the idea so as to grasp its relations with and to other ideas with greater analytical precision. To invoke a well-known Deleuzean motif, developed in his early work on Hume, one can retain both the purity of an idea and its relatedness to other ideas if one is careful to construct the relations between ideas 'on their own terms' (an idea which is developed in the discussion of conceptual personae in Chapter Two). Moreover, as purity is the result of a method of simultaneous subtraction and expansion, the notion that the pure is that which has no relation to anything else may obscure the expansive feature of the analysis which works to explore the relations internal to that which is developed as pure, in this case critique. Just as the purity of pure critique does not rule out an analysis of its external relations to other ideas, so it does not rule out that the idea itself is composed of internal relations which make the idea full and complete in itself. To anticipate the example discussed in the opening chapter on Kant's seminal contributions to the idea of critique, pure critique contains within itself the aspect of indifference which it overcomes; if it did not then pure critique would indeed become empty prescription. An idea becomes pure in becoming subtracted from external relations that have been deemed internal to the idea itself. This is simultaneously a method

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which expands the idea itself in its purity by exposing its component parts or aspects such that external relations with other ideas can be properly constructed. Similarly, internal relations between aspects of the pure idea are the matter of expansion which give substance to the idea itself such that pure ideas are never empty or merely abstract. At stake in the idea of pure critique is the very idea of critique itself. If critique cannot be shown in its purity then we are left with the troubling conclusion that all critique is impure, by which I mean that very idea of critique could not be thought of as adequate to itself. This would entail that all critique necessarily contains an investment in that which it criticizes and therefore can never bring that which it criticizes fully to account. This is not just a problem for thought, where one might lament the old dreams of being able to surpass the history of thought itself. This is a problem for life - one might, without too much exaggeration, say that it is the problem of our lives and of life itself — in that we must be able to critique the world in which we find ourselves in its entirety, in the name of new worlds to come, if we are to give meaning to the idea of life itself. Such critique can only be founded on a pure conception of critique, one which calls forth the future by denaturalizing the past in order to crack the limit of the present and, thereby, constitute it as a liminal zone of transition. In other words, it is only through pure critique that history can become the ground that leaves itself behind in the present as the new worlds of the future take shape. Thankfully, of course, pure critique has a momentum in life wholly independent of the arguments that may reveal it; otherwise we would already be condemned to the repetition of the same. Pure critique is already, always has been and always will be life in its purity. The philosophical project is to connect the idea of pure critique with the activity of life in a manner which maintains the immanence of thought to life, and life to thought. The idea of pure critique is the first part of this project. Such speculative declarations have yet to pin down why we cannot rest content with variously impure versions of critique. In anticipation of the arguments to come it is worth bringing forward the problems with impure critique. In a nutshell, impure critique is that which is not adequate to the idea of critique itself, which amounts to saying that there is always the possibility of a reactive critique contained within one's critical project. More specifically, the critique of one's impure critique is always grounded in the

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very 'thing' that is being subjected to criticism. Impure critique, therefore, fails the first test of critique, namely that it should be comprehensive, by which is meant that it should be able to bring the whole of that which is criticized under critical investigation. The lack of a comprehensive critique brings with it a practical lack - that is, a lack of persuasiveness or effectiveness - to the extent that impure critique is always, at some level, halted by virtue of being implicated with that which is being criticized. For instance, if the critique of capital amounts to even a surreptitious recognition of the legitimacy of capital, and as such amounts to an impure critique of capital, then the legitimacy of the critical gesture itself will always fade under further scrutiny. This is the case with those 'anti-capitalists' who take this mediagenerated tag seriously, for in being simply opposed to capitalism they are already acknowledging that they share the same ground as capitalism and they will, therefore, fail to bring the whole of capitalism under critical review. Similarly, the purity of the critical gesture motivated by the ideal of communism can only be won through its disassociation with the inevitable dysfunctions of the capitalist machinery. This theme will be picked up again and developed in the Conclusion. For critique to have real utility it must be based on a pure understanding of the idea of critique itself. Without this pure understanding the activity of critique is reduced to the to-and-fro of opinions about that which is assumed as given; for example, capital and its machinations. One of the principal elements of an idea of critique, from the very beginning, is that it does not rest content with opinionated arguments about the given (as we shall see with Kant's critique of the critical exchanges between dogmatists and sceptics). The task of a pure idea of critique is to ensure that the given is never surreptitiously reintroduced into the gestures of critique. This is a more demanding task than the post-Kantian purveyors of critique usually assume. Impure critique will always fail to overcome that which is criticized by virtue of being inadequate to the idea of critique itself. Such inadequacy will always place critique within the domain of opinion and the idea of critique as intervention will be reduced to the bare repetition of that which is assumed to be given. For critique to become active in the world, for it to find its connection with the critique life enacts upon itself, it must first become pure.

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Can the nature of critical activity become adequate to the idea of critique itself? In order to approach this question, two preliminary questions must be addressed: 'What constitutes the nature of critical activity?' and 'What constitutes the idea of critique?' This book provides an answer to the latter question. As such, it is only the first part of the preparatory work that needs to be done to clear a path to the primary question that motivates the project as a whole; the second part being future investigations into the nature of critical activity. It is clear that much of the theoretical and practical activity that claims the title of criticism, or that is commonly described as critical, does not in itself meet the demands of a fully articulated idea of criticism. Whether, for example, it is the studied moralizing of the philosophers and the priests or the unreflective opinions of the politicians and 'the public', the idea of criticism is poorly served when it is confused with variously subtle and unsubtle regimes of judgement and techniques of power. It is also clear, however, that the idea of criticism itself seems to rest on inherently insecure foundations. However much one tries to shore up these shaky foundations by providing the definitive account of criticism, the possibility of further criticism, the critique of one's idea of criticism (and so on, ad infinitum), is always present. Together these two intuitions provide the framework for a genuinely political and philosophical problem; namely, how to clarify practical discourse without inducing a sense of conceptual freefall. The idea of pure critique is a response to this problem. The resources with which to articulate the idea of pure critique can be found within the work of Deleuze and Guattari. Although it is not an idea that one finds explicitly within their work, Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy, their development of an idea of pure positive difference and their use of the distinction between the virtual and the actual all provide key stepping stones in the journey towards the idea of pure

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critique. In order to make this idea explicit, however, it is important to read their work within the tradition of critical philosophy that finds its roots in Kant. This should not be taken to imply that Deleuze and Guattari's work is substantively Kantian. Rather, the aim is to reveal the thoroughly critical attitude that infuses their work by situating it in a conceptual terrain first surveyed by Kant. In particular, the Kantian revolution in critical thought brought to light that which criticism must overcome, namely indifference, and the means by which indifference will be overcome; that is, an unrelentingly immanent idea of critique. Yet, for all that Kant is the first to survey the terrain and to suggest an idea of critique adequate to this terrain, ultimately the resources do not exist within Kant's philosophical project to overcome indifference. In fact, indifference returns within Kant's conceptual architecture as the guardian of the harmonious unity of reason. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, it is possible to articulate the idea of pure critique as that which achieves immanence and, therefore, as that which realizes the Kantian project of overcoming indifference. Put like this, the idea of pure critique is intimately related to the development of a philosophy of difference. It is commonly recognized that recent European philosophy has been especially preoccupied with the idea of difference. Although we must not forget that this is a topic as old as philosophy itself,l much of the most interesting work in contemporary philosophy has assumed that questions of difference must be brought to the fore. Generally speaking, the aim of such philosophies of difference is to avoid the troubling political and philosophical effects of basing one's outlook on life on certain notions of human identity that may exclude aspects of human experience. Without going over this well-trodden terrain, it is important to note that one of the effects of the recent emphasis on difference has been a certain embarrassment about the possibility of critical interventions in the public sphere. Moreover, 'neo-Kantians' have argued strongly for the need to be wary of the conservative implications of prioritizing difference over the need for universal standards against which to judge those who transgress social norms. There is a need, therefore, to match the insights of recent philosophies of difference with a keen critical agenda true to the spirit of the idea of difference. The development of the idea of pure critique should also be read in this context, as an attempt to articulate the critical agenda often implicit within philosophies of difference. If, however, the idea of pure critique requires situating the work of Deleuze and Guattari in a Kantian milieu so as to garner the resources for a

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response to contemporary neo-Kantians critical of difference oriented philosophies, then we must be clear on exactly what it means to be Kantian today; or, more strictly speaking, what it means to be in a post-Kantian intellectual environment. Adopting a rather different terminology to that which is commonly deployed, one can say that recent post-Kantian philosophy is a rather awkward mix of both 'pro-Kantian' and 'pre-Kantian' analyses. Having undertaken the critique of impure reason for the bulk of the twentieth century — one can think of the early Frankfurt School work on the dialectic of Enlightenment, poststructuralist accounts of the disciplinary and normalizing tendencies of the social and human sciences17 and feminist readings of masculine accounts of agency,18 to name a few - current postKantian thought is either concerned with defending the basic tenets of Kant's ideas or it has brought back to life themes and sources that Kant's critical revolution was supposed to have laid firmly to rest. Pro-Kantians are especially prevalent in the mainstream of moral and political philosophy. The recent work of Habermas springs immediately to mind. For all that it grew out of the soil of Horkheimer and Adorno's early critique of Enlightenment totalitarianism, his increasing rapprochement with Rawls evident in the work on law and democracy makes one wonder if the earlier analyses into the systematically distorting effects of money and power were just detours along the journey to an admittedly nuanced defence of Kant's categorical imperative and cosmopolitanism.19 For those who saw the critique of impure reason as signifying the impurity of all reason, there has been a turn to pre-Kantian themes and sources. Of course, this renewed interest in pre-Kantianism is rather more difficult to pin down than the tendency towards pro-Kantianism. While one could scarcely talk of a pre-Kantian movement in recent European philosophy, it can not go unremarked that there is currently a trend towards a critique of Kant, and pro-Kantianism, from behind, as it were. To cite some noteworthy examples: there is Badiou's avowed Platonism; the post-secular turn in Derrida and, in a different way, in Taylor; Hardt and Negri's revival of the Roman idea of Empire; and, of course, the Spinozism and/or empiricism so evident in Deleuze. For all that each of these is much more than a simple return to pre-Kantian themes, there is nonetheless an atmosphere within much modern European philosophy conducive to contemporary interpretations of classically metaphysical, 'pre-critical' projects. Where pro-Kantians have continued, developed and rarefied the Kantian drive to differentiate, categorize and schematize the world with a 'postmetaphysical' sensibility, the

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pre-Kantians tend towards various attempts at de-differentiation, organicism and holism without obvious embarrassment at metaphysics. Even if such bold brush strokes contain but a hint of truth when it comes to a diagnosis of the current condition of post-Kantian philosophy the question remains: what does it mean to be genuinely post-Kantian today? I take it that neither pro-Kantianism nor straightforward pre-Kantianism provides an adequate answer to this question. In short, the pro-Kantians and the preKantians maintain an uneasy alliance when it comes to the emphasis they place on either defending or transgressing the limits of reason. The issues at stake, in other words, are still resolutely Kantian. I take it that genuinely postKantian philosophy must question the centrality and dominance of this Kantian focus on the limits of reason, at least in the first instance. One must be cautious though, of moving beyond Kant in a way that does not ignore or dismiss altogether the Kantian contribution to European philosophy. There is little to be gained, after all, from what one might call non-Kantianism — at least if one wants to avoid the excesses of dogmatism and scepticism that Kant interrogated so thoroughly. Rather, the task of post-Kantian philosophy, as it will be developed throughout this work, is to bring to light questions that lie dormant or underdeveloped within Kant's philosophy itself. Post-Kantian philosophy, if it is to move beyond pro- and pre-Kantianism without falling into non-Kantianism, must tackle Kant from within. As Kant conducted an immanent critique of reason, so post-Kantianism must conduct an immanent critique of Kant. The place to begin, I would suggest, is with the idea of critique itself. The idea of pure critique, therefore, is an attempt to move beyond Kant byway of a thoroughly immanent critique of Kant's critical turn in philosophy. It is in this context that I see the work of Deleuze and Guattari as genuinely post-Kantian, despite their obvious revival of, and elaboration upon, pre-Kantian themes and sources. This reading will be extended in the section on Badiou's treatment of Deleuze in his recent book, Deleuze; The Clamor of Being (see pp. 43—4). Situating the project in this way, that is by claiming that the idea of pure critique amounts to a genuinely post-Kantian reading of Deleuze and Guattari, raises an issue of fundamental importance in regard to how we treat the substance and method of their philosophical contributions. Namely, on what basis can we reconcile their affirmation of metaphysical naturalism with Kant's critical bracketing of metaphysics and his transcendental turn towards questions of justification? Does Deleuze and Guattari's affirmation of

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INTRODUCTION

naturalism amount to a mere affirmation or is it justifiable and therefore defensible against competing metaphysical views? Must Deleuze and Guattari's philosophical project be read as a variant, albeit a significant variant, on Kantian critical transcendentalism if it is to become defensible? A recent exchange in the secondary literature, between Christian Kerslake and Peter Hallward, has posed this problem in a particularly acute fashion. In rehearsing the general tenor of the debate and suggesting how it might be resolved, the claim that the idea of pure critique offers a genuinely post-Kantian reading of Kant which simultaneously locates Deleuze and Guattari's work in a post-Kantian milieu can be clarified and defended. Without going over the many subtleties of their respective positions, the debate between Hallward and Kerslake is generated by a respective 'yes' and 'no' to the following question (as formulated by Kerslake in his reply to Hallward): 'Can an affirmative philosophy of immanence be produced without passing through the fire of critique?' On Hallward's reading of Deleuze, 'it is above all the equation of thought with affirmation that Deleuze celebrates in the anti-Cartesian "naturalism" he associates with both Leibniz and Spinoza'. The celebration of naturalism and of 'the metaphysical game of creation' that flows from it, he goes on, cannot be deduced 'from anything resembling a demonstration of its logical possibility'. In contrast, Kerslake, in the essay that began the exchange and in his reply to Hallward, argues that Deleuze's philosophy can be read as a radicalization or completion of Kant's critical turn (by interpreting the treatment of 'problems' in Difference and Repetition as productive reconceptualizations of Kant's regulative Ideas) and, moreover, Deleuze's philosophy must be read in this way if it is to claim to be more than a merely 'possible, somewhat aesthetic, perspective on the world'. At stake, clearly, are fundamental questions regarding the relation of Deleuze and Guattari to Kant and the 'critical' status of their work that such a relationship or lack of relationship would imply. And yet, there is a sense in which Kerslake and Hallward, for all their insights into particular features of Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy, appear to be talking past each other. In the first instance this sense comes from a desire to agree with them both. Kerslake is clearly right to distance Deleuze and Guattari's emphasis on immanence and naturalism from naive reliance upon an act of choice or leap of faith. The attempt to ground their work in terms that would make it justifiable and therefore defensible to those who hold different views makes the appeal to their Kantian critical heritage appear

XXII

INTRODUCTION

crucial. Yet equally, Hallward's rendering of Deleuze and Guattari's unease at questions of justification, questions that have a tendency to posit a transcendent outside of the immanent transcendental field, is thoroughly in keeping with so much of their work. How can these positions be reconciled? In essence, they can be reconciled only by being dissolved, but they can only be dissolved if, first, we render the distinction between them more hard and fast. To make the distinction between the two positions we need only recognize that Kerslake is primarily concerned with questions of method whereas Hallward is primarily interested in Deleuze and Guattari's contributions to substantive questions of metaphysics. As such, we might be tempted to say that Kerslake has correctly identified the methodological presuppositions of Deleuze and Guattari's affirmation of immanence, whereas Hallward has correctly emphasized the naturalist substance of their philosophy of immanence. However, it is not quite that simple. Hallward's claim is that their substantive metaphysics precisely removes the need to have recourse to questions of method, whereas Kerslake contends that substantive metaphysical issues can not be consistently held without a secure methodological footing. Putting it like this, however, raises another possibility: namely that Deleuze and Guattari's radicalization of Kant's critical turn is one which completes the idea of critique itself (rather than simply transforming the Kantian Ideas while accepting the Kantian idea of critique, contra Kerslake) so as to make substantive metaphysics methodologically self-sufficient (rather than removing the need for methodological inquiry, contra Hallward). The development of the idea of pure critique throughout this work can be read as an extended attempt to make good this possibility. As will become clear, this will involve distancing the idea of critique developed from within the work of Deleuze and Guattari from regimes of justification but not at the cost of forsaking the possibility of a defence of the affirmation of the idea of pure critique. To reiterate, this possibility arises from the intuition that locates Deleuze and Guattari's contribution as a radicalization or completion of the idea of critique itself, rather than accepting Kant's idea of critical philosophy and then radicalizing its substantive features or refusing the critical injunctions of Kant in the name of an indefensible affirmation of substantive metaphysics. It will be argued that the deceptively simple idea that philosophy is the creation of concepts (the cornerstone of Deleuze and Guattari's What is Philosophy?} can do the required work of producing a

XXIII

INTRODUCTION

methodologically self-sustaining and therefore defensible affirmation of the metaphysical naturalism required of the idea of pure critique. Anticipating the more detailed discussions to follow, it will be argued that their constructivist account of philosophy both displaces the Kantian turn towards justification (as any particular philosophical system is only ever justified by reference to the novel concepts already affirmed within the system itself) and embraces a defence of their own constructivist account of philosophy against its idealist, non-naturalist, competitors (by providing an immanent standard which other metaphysical positions must meet in order to qualify both as philosophy in general and as 'good' philosophy in particular). The extent to which this claim can be made good is the extent to which the claim that Deleuze and Guattari's work can serve both to inhabit and to develop a genuinely post- Kantian milieu can also be made good. For all the importance of these broad interpretive contextualizations in terms of situating the following inquiry within a range of contemporary debates, the idea of pure critique itself is not primarily an interpretive device. Ideas, as ideas, will always be subject to a variety of interpretations, but in themselves, precisely because they are that which is to be interpreted, they supersede the regimes of interpretation brought to bear upon them. Constructing the idea of pure critique from the ashes of interpretive struggles regarding the idea of critique itself has but one aim: overcoming indifference. Indifference in itself cannot be overcome by interpretation; rather, as will be argued throughout, it must be overcome by the thorough, on-going construction of difference. This is not to be thought of as the impotent multiplication of different interpretations but as the potent construction of difference in itself, the implications of which will be shown to have far-reaching consequences for our common-sense understanding, interpretation, of criticism. The idea of pure critique is a task for thought in the world rather than an interpretation by thought of the world. The task is to overcome indifference. To overcome indifference requires an idea of critique that is wholly adequate to itself, that roots out all vestiges of indifference from within itself. The idea of pure critique has this task as its raison d'etre. The book is constructed of three chapters. In the first chapter, the idea of critique as developed by Kant is examined and then found wanting on its own terms. Where Kant correctly identifies 'indifference' as the product

XXIV

INTRODUCTION

of failed attempts to ground metaphysics on pure reason, he also correctly identifies 'indifference' as the first moment in the development of an idea of critique that decisively shifts 'critical philosophy' from the terrain of opinions about the given. Critique, with Kant, becomes a critique of criticism. The problem bequeathed by this Kantian innovation is derived from his own failure to root out indifference. As argued in section three of Chapter One, indifference returns as the guardian of assumptions regarding the unity of reason as a given residing beyond critique. Kant's 'Copernican revolution' may have shifted the grounds of critical inquiry but the problem he identifies in 'pre-criticaT philosophy is simply played out again on these new grounds themselves. The philosophical problem bequeathed by this reading of Kant is thus: how can we construct the critique of indifference without securing indifference within the idea of critique itself? Chapter Two approaches this problem by first exploring a differentiated idea of critique. Three modes of criticism are distinguished: partial criticism, total critique and pure critique. The purpose of this section is to clarify some of the elements that must be present within the idea of critique for critique to avoid the return of indifference within itself; that is, for critique to become pure. It will be argued that the idea of pure critique requires unlocking critique from a justificatory regime that refers to the given while retaining the conceptual basis of the idea of critique as an intervention in the given. In other words, the abstract analytic of pure critique sets the general criteria which must be met in fleshing out the idea of pure critique itself. In section two of Chapter Two, Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy is presented with a view to showing that it meets these fundamental criteria. The relationships they establish between concept construction, the plane of immanence and conceptual personae provide a convincing and defensible account of how the discipline of philosophy may be said to avoid problematic assumptions about the given without falling into quietism or disengagement with the world. Indeed, and as argued in section three, rather than think of their constructivist account of philosophy as the framework within which one could ground the idea of pure critique, it is more appropriate to conceive of their account of philosophy as pure critique. Chapter Three investigates four problems bequeathed by the idea of philosophy as pure critique — or more simply, the idea of pure critique developed in Chapter Two. Each of these problems amounts to a lingering concern .that pure critique must assume certain 'givens', thereby raising the

XXV

INTRODUCTION

spectre of a safe haven for indifference within the idea itself. The potential 'givens' are: the ideality of the idea of pure critique; the role of the critic as creator and the mediator as creator; pure critique as conditioned by historical givens; and pure critique as dependent upon an idea of difference that is subordinate to the logic of identity. The first two are addressed directly as problems whereas the last two are problems that reside within the idea of pure critique as a philosophy of immanence and as a philosophy of difference. The excision of these givens is crucial to the project of being able to locate critique in its purity. It also serves to clarify what is at stake in the idea of pure critique and ward off some of the more obvious critical responses to it. The Conclusion, after recapping the momentum of the argument, reveals how the idea of pure critique can be said to fulfil the critique of indifference so clearly identified by Kant and yet beyond resolution within Kant's thought itself. This is shown by addressing, in brief, the main counter-critique that pure critique may be said to engender; namely, that it amounts to a form of appeasement with the machinations of contemporary capitalism. The Afterword sounds a note of modesty in regard to the idea of pure critique by recalling the preparatory nature of this work and by briefly outlining the ways in which this idea must be developed if a fully articulated response to the philosophical-political problem announced at the beginning of this introduction is to be forthcoming: can the nature of critical activity become adequate to the idea of critique itself?

XXVI

CHAPTER ONE

Kant and the Critique of Indifference

Our age is the age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds of exemption from the examination of this tribunal. But, if they are exempted, they become the subjects of just suspicion, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination. (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason?1

INDIFFERENCE AND THE IDEA OF CRITIQUE The Kantian revolution in critical thought rises from the ashes of dogmatism and scepticism but the oxygen that gives it life is a reaction to indijferentism. It is important to be clear on this point. In Kant, dogmatism is the application of'pure reason without previous criticism of its own powers'. The rival of dogmatism is scepticism, described by Kant as 'that which makes short work with the whole science of metaphysics'. Where the dogmatist begins with assumptions that are put beyond question, the sceptic questions all assumptions with a view to never really beginning the task of metaphysics at all. The dogmatist approaches the world with a view to the despotic rule of all that is surveyed. The sceptic approaches the world with a hatred of settled habitation and an anarchical drive to destroy all attempts to impose rules on the world. On the face of it, then, it would seem that dogmatism and scepticism are two wholly distinct ways of engaging with the world. Yet, the great insight of Kant is to see dogmatism and scepticism as founded on the same terrain, a terrain that shuns self-examination in favour of 'baseless assumptions and pretensions'. In this sense, dogmatists and sceptics express the same image of what it means to think. For both, thinking is reduced to the battle between claim and counter-claim without resort to an analysis of the presuppositions of their claims. As Kant makes clear in Chapter One, section two of the 'Transcendental Doctrine of Method' in the Critique of Pure Reason, both

i

THE IDEA OF PURE CRITIQUE

dogmatism and scepticism are based upon investigations into 'facfa' rather than upon inquiries into the limits and powers of reason itself. As such, dogmatism and scepticism are only superficially opposed to each other because fundamentally the two battalions wage war against each other with the sole aim of laying claim to the same soil beneath their feet; the world of facts. From this perspective, we may say that dogmatism includes scepticism within it, and vice-versa. In this sense, therefore, they are true rivals; each dependent on the other, each propping up the other. It would be mistaken to view Kant's idea of critique as occupying the same terrain as dogmatism and scepticism. Rather, the Kantian revolution in critical thought is so radical precisely because it ignores the fruitless debate between proponents of dogmatism and scepticism. Strictly speaking, Kant is not engaged in a critique of either approach.35 Rather, he constructs a terrain of inquiry adequate to the idea of critique itself. He does so by articulating the idea of criticism against the idea of indifference, not against dogmatism and scepticism. When philosophical inquiry has nothing to offer other than dogmatic despotism or sceptical anarchy it would seem that all that remains is simply to shrug our shoulders in the face of imponderable metaphysical conundrums. At this point, dogmatism and scepticism give way to indifference. However, that this attitude of indifference arises from the conflict between dogmatism and scepticism should not mislead our understanding of the rupture in thought being articulated here by Kant. Indifference is certainly related to the marshalling of claim and counter-claim but it is not constitutive of that conflict in itself - after all, it would be foolish to say that dogmatists are indifferent to sceptics or vice-versa, when each draws their existence from the other. It is only as the conflict becomes exhausted, tired and worn out that indifference emerges. For all that it is the product of exhaustion with metaphysics, it is interesting to note that indifference is made manifest for Kant in the guise of popular philosophy. In the Preface to the First Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, we are told that indifferentists are prone to 'disguise themselves by the assumption of a popular style'. By the time of the second edition he talks of those who profess 'that loquacious shallowness which arrogates to itself the name of popularity' and those that transform intellectual 'labour into sport, certainty into opinion, and philosophy into philodoxy'. It would appear that indifference is not an attribute of the silent; rather it is found precisely where silence has been deposed by the clamour of popular debate. For all that

2

KANT AND THE CRITIQUE OF INDIFFERENCE

one can detect an air of elitism in such remarks there is no doubt that Kant has clearly perceived the modus operandi of indifference. Indifference is not a private affair; rather, it is the transformation of metaphysical complexities into what we might now call the Sunday supplement version of philosophy — all style and labels with no real substance and subtlety. In the reign of indifference, when metaphysics becomes a slave to popularity, critique has found its true rival and it is, therefore, at its most necessary. In Kant, this necessity takes three forms. First, Kant declares that criticism must meet the claims of indifference on the grounds that indifference is plainly at odds with the interests of humanity. For all that the form of the debate between dogmatism and scepticism (the form of unreflective claim and counter-claim) has engendered indifference, the issues at stake in those debates cannot in themselves be a matter of indifference. The indifferentist is called to account for not recognizing that the very foundations of our knowledge about the world 'cannot be indifferent to humanity'. This claim, however, is only made in passing. This must be the case because it is a claim that is dogmatic in its form. Instead of interrogating the presuppositions of this claim Kant simply marshals the rhetoric of dogmatism to the service of opening up a new terrain for the idea of critique. The second, and more telling, reason why the criticism of indifference is necessary is derived from an internal critique of the logic of indifference itself. No amount of silky rhetoric proclaiming the poverty of philosophy can hide the fact that the indifferentists cannot avoid philosophical presuppositions. As Kant says, 'however much they may try to disguise themselves by the assumption of a popular style and by changes in the language of the schools, [the indifferentists] unavoidably fall into metaphysical declarations and propositions, which they profess to regard with so much contempt'. 8 This straightforward performative contradiction is the point at which critique must assert its claim to be the true rival to indifference. But before elaborating on this point, there is a third necessity that we should mention, drawn not from the opening of the Critique of Pure Reason, but from Kant's essay on Enlightenment. In this essay we find that the surest sign of public indifference is a naive and uncritical obedience to those who order our public life and control our private beliefs. In a scathing attack on the 'laziness and cowardice' of those we can recognize as the indifferentists from the Critique of Pure Reason, he lampoons their attitude to life as follows: 'If I have a book that understands for me, a spiritual advisor who has a conscience for me, a

3

THE IDEA OF PURE C R I T I Q U E

doctor who decides a regimen for me, and so forth, I need not trouble myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay; others will undertake the irksome business for me.' ° We can say with Kant, therefore, that indifference to philosophical problems is one of the key sources of unthinking apathy in social and political life. As a result, the critic must always be alert to the social and political consequences of a general indifference to metaphysics. As Diana Coole puts it, for Kant 'challenges to indefensible metaphysics and to arbitrary power structures are complimentary processes that define an enlightened age'. The need for an idea of critique adequate to the task of meeting and confounding indifference, therefore, is also the need for a reflective and mature civil society upon which to found enlightened apparatuses of government. The rise of metaphysical indifference in philosophy and the rise of unthinking obedience in social and political life are two sides of the same coin. Before going on it is worth pausing over a discussion in the Critique of Pure Reason that would seem to contradict this account of the central role of indifference. One could elaborate the idea of critique with reference to Chapter One, section two of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method' and in doing so construct a developmental picture of criticism as that which emerges from the failings of dogmatism and scepticism. There is certainly plenty of textual evidence to support the idea that this was Kant's own view. Scepticism is presented by Kant as a 'useful' polemical device to call into question dogmatic assertions of fact: 'All unsuccessful dogmatical attempts of reason arefacta, which it is always useful to submit to the censure of the sceptic'. 2 By the end of this section, we are told that 'the sceptical procedure in philosophy', while not presenting any solutions to the problems of reason, does nonetheless form 'an excellent exercise for its powers, awakening its circumspection, and indicating the means whereby it may most fully establish its claims to its legitimate possessions'. 3 It is tempting to read Kant's idea of critique, therefore, as developing out of scepticism which itself must be seen purely as a reaction to dogmatism. From the usefulness of sceptical attacks on dogmatic assertions one can prepare reason for the task of thinking about itself rather than simply thinking about facta. In the context of this discussion, that would seem to negate the emphasis on indifference and therefore refute the claim that Kant's idea of critique rests upon a prior survey of a terrain beyond that which is occupied by the dogmatist and the sceptic. However, this picture of the emergence of critical philosophy cannot in itself sustain the idea of critique.

4

KANT AND THE CRITIQUE OF INDIFFERENCE

The problem is that Kant fails to account for the link between scepticism and critical philosophy in a satisfactory way. Kant admits that there is a qualitative leap from the sceptical destruction of dogmatic claims to the critical construction of the limits and powers of reason; the leap from investigations of the facta of reason to inquiries into the nature and grounds of reason itself. But how can one conceive of such a leap? Famously, the analogy with the Copernican revolution in science is deployed by Kant to account for this transformation in thought. Where once we thought of the earth as the stable centre of the universe with the stars revolving around it, Copernicus took the leap of trying to explain celestial movements on the assumption that the earth was moving and the stars were at rest. It is in terms of just such an imaginative leap that Kant sees the transition from debates about objects of reason to investigations into the scope of reason itself; from dogmatism and scepticism to critical philosophy. However, this analogy with the Copernican thought-experiment obscures rather than clarifies the development of critical philosophy by over-emphasizing the idea of a leap of the imagination to the detriment of an understanding of the conditions that give rise to the idea of critique itself. Just as one needs to interrogate the precise nature of the Copernican revolution in science in order to understand the truly radical nature of the shift in thought that it produced, so one needs to be sure that we understand Kant's idea of critique in terms that allow for a thorough investigation into the relation between the new critical philosophy and that which it surpasses. This can only be achieved if one dwells on the relationship between pre-critical and critical philosophy in a way that gives substance to the leap of imagination at work while also retaining the connection between the different modes of inquiry. In other words, it is important to traverse the terrain between dogmatism/scepticism and critique. There is evidence, already mentioned, in the Critique of Pure Reason to support the claim that understanding the role of indifference is crucial to this task. As I shall show, the account of the relationship between pre-critical and critical philosophy given in the Preface to the First Edition and elsewhere situates the idea of indifference as both the last moment of an exhausted metaphysics and the 'source of, or at least the prelude to, the recreation and reinstallation of a science' founded on the new idea of critique. The idea of indifference helps us to stake out the ground in-between the old and the new philosophies. While it constitutes a link between them it is nonetheless a link that also allows us to understand the rupture in thought between the two modes of philosophical

S

THE IDEA OF PURE C R I T I Q U E

inquiry. As such, one can say that indifference functions liminally rather than synthetically. The first task of demonstrating the liminal function of the idea of indifference, though, is some terminological clarification. So far, the terms criticism and critique have been used without establishing a technical distinction between them. Having sketched out the Kantian revolution in critical thought, as that which side-steps the terrain of dogmatism and scepticism and which occupies the new terrain of indifference, it is important to disentangle the elision of these terms and become more precise in the way they are used. From this point on, criticism will denote the unreflective to-and-fro of claim and counter-claim, such that we talk of dogmatists being critical of sceptics and vice-versa. The idea of critique will denote a mode of inquiry aimed at overcoming indifference. The relationship between criticism and critique, therefore, is indirect by virtue of being constituted through the idea of indifference. Indifference begins with the exhaustion of criticism and out of indifference, as we shall see, comes the idea of critique. Whenever criticism and critique are confused, whenever the rule of claim and counter-claim is directly related to the overcoming of indifference, the return of indifference is inevitable. In section three of this chapter we shall see how Kant ultimately falls into this trap. The founding moment in the purification of critique is the subtraction of criticism. The subtraction of criticism from the idea of critique amounts to the simultaneous expansion of critique as that which must overcome the effect of criticism, indifference. Pure critique becomes wholly adequate to itself if and only if all vestiges of criticism are subtracted from it such that the consequence of criticism, indifference, is irretrievably rooted out from the idea itself. Returning to the performative contradiction at the heart of indifferentism it is possible to put more flesh on the bones of the idea of critique, particularly the relationship between critique and indifference, as understood by Kant. For Kant, indifference is the true rival to critique by virtue of being internal to the idea of critique itself. As he makes clear, the identification of indifference is the first moment in a process of reaching the heights of reflection demanded by critique. In discussing the lack of a secure foundation that seems to haunt all areas of cognition other than mathematics and the physical sciences he says that, 'in the absence of this security, indifference,

6

KANT AND THE CRITIQUE OF INDIFFERENCE

doubt, and finally, severe criticism are ... signs of a habit of thorough thought'. Indifference, in other words, signifies recognition of the pointlessness of criticism, of the fruitless exchange of claim and counter-claim, in the search for a secure foundation for all areas of cognition. Critique, we can now say, begins with an attitude of exhaustion and exasperation towards criticism. But that critique begins with this attitude of indifference only reinforces the idea that critique must overcome indifference in order to reach its end. This must be the case because of the impossibility of consistently maintaining an attitude of indifference to life. The wellspring of critique is located here, in the performative contradiction involved in trying to articulate a position of consistent indifference. However, if indifference opens up a space between the pre-critical and critical philosophies we must still be careful not to rush too quickly to a fully articulated definition of critique. As Kant suggests, while the recognition of a performative contradiction may prepare the ground for the idea of critique there are other dimensions to this liminal space that must also be considered. From the recognition of indifference as one sign of a 'habit of thorough thought' there is still the need to dwell on indifference with an attitude of doubt. Without a doubting attitude the recognition of the performative contradiction at the heart of indifferentism would result simply in intellectual paralysis. Doubt is necessary to the genesis of critique because it engenders further reflection on the sources of contradiction within indifferentism. To doubt that contradiction expresses what it means to think is to bring thought that step closer to critique. This reference to doubt clearly indicates Kant's Cartesian lineage. Yet, given the context in which it appears, Kant's rejection of Descartes' method can also be discerned. The Cartesian method of doubting everything is not sufficient when it comes to establishing critique because it generates a dogmatic tautology as the basis of knowledge. Descartes assumed that the doubting subject secured the thinking subject as the foundation upon which knowledge could be established. Yet, as Kant makes clear, 'I think therefore I am' is tautological because 'I think' already presupposes that 'I am'. 7 On its own the activity of doubting cannot be said to constitute the idea of critique because it utilizes the tools of scepticism to further the cause of dogmatism, namely the pursuit of the presuppositionless basis of knowledge. While one must doubt that contradiction is the essence of thought, doubt itself must not be taken to be the essence of thought because that would be to replace contradiction with tautology. To be clear, then,

7

THE IDEA OF PURE C R I T I Q U E

doubt is not critique itself, rather, it is a necessary precursor to clearing the ground for critique. Furthermore, it is a precursor only when one has recognized the contradiction inherent in trying to maintain an attitude of consistent indifference. The traversing of the new terrain of critique, therefore, moves from the recognition of indifference to the attitude of doubt that results from dissatisfaction with the idea that thought is essentially contradictory. Doubt itself must be transcended because tautology is no surer foundation for critique than contradiction. Yet, the realization of critique itself is still incomplete. How does Kant suggest that we move beyond doubt to the idea of critique? As mentioned above, the final sign of a 'habit of thorough thought' for Kant is that of'severe criticism'. In the first instance, this reminds us that Kant viewed the relentless critical approach of the sceptic as a step in the direction of critique. But in this context, it is important to see that the sceptical criticism of dogmatic assertions must reach beyond the dogmatic appeal to scepticism itself: scepticism must not become another form of dogmatism via the idea of doubt. Again, we are reminded of the need to transcend the critical to-and-fro of dogmatic and sceptical claims about the facta of reason. If the terrain of criticism is to be transformed to facilitate the idea of critique then there must be something more than dogmatic scepticism at work. In other words, there is the need to understand how moving beyond doubt creates a space for the arrival of critique via the idea of severe criticism, without reading this as an appeal to the 'utility' of scepticism, as it appears later in the Critique of Pure Reason. Indeed, the idea of 'severe criticism' in the Preface to the First Edition anticipates Kant's distinction between the sceptical method which 'aims at certainty' and the 'thoroughly distinct' idea of scepticism, 'the principle of a technical and scientific ignorance'. 8 Where scepticism is the production of a disabling doubt by virtue of it becoming dogmatic, the sceptical method is a mode of severe criticism aimed at transcending the dogmatic appeal to doubt. The motif of severity is crucial here. Arguably, at least, to be a severe critic is to doubt that even doubt can serve as the basis for knowledge. The severity of the criticism involved at this moment in the development of critique resides in the two-sided nature of the criticism of doubt. On the one hand, doubt is always doubt about some thing, some facta of reason that inevitably functions as a dogmatic basis of our cognition of the world. In order to move beyond doubt, therefore, Kant develops a philosophical method that does not presuppose that one is already thinking about some thing. After doubting

8

KANT AND THE CRITIQUE OF INDIFFERENCE

that contradiction can serve as the basis for knowledge, critical philosophy must move beyond the tautological implications of dogmatically grounding knowledge upon doubt itself. On the other hand, Kant recognizes that critical philosophy can only proceed on the assumption that what we can legitimately know about the world is conditioned by, rather than separate from, the world itself. The dualism developed from the Cartesian method of doubt inevitably leads to the perils of'problematical idealism', 'which declares the existence of objects in space outside of us to be ... doubtful and indemonstrable'. As the 'Refutation of Idealism' makes clear, Descartes' cogito can only think itself on the basis of assuming 'a thing outside me',50 where this notion of 'thing' is distinguished from a dogmatic facta by virtue of being a noumenal object in the negative sense. The construction of a positive account of how the world and thought are related, and what can and can not be known on the basis of that relationship, is the construction of the idea of critique. This brings us to the rather familiar view that Kant's critical revolution in philosophy is an attack on the shared assumptions of dualism and idealism - the shared notion that the world and how it appears to us are distinct and irreconcilable - in the name of a transcendental idealism that presupposes an empirical realism. On its own, though, this account of the critical project does not realize the idea of critique in its entirety because this constructive agenda amounts only to a formal precondition of the idea of critique. This formal precondition must be filled out; it must be given some substance, in order for it to become fully realized as critique. How is it filled out? For Kant, the answer is obvious: It is, in fact, a call to reason, again to undertake the most laborious of all tasks — that of self-examination, and to establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-grounded claims, while it pronounces against all baseless assumptions and pretensions, not in an arbitrary manner, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws. This tribunal is nothing less than the Critique of Pure Reason. The formal precondition of constructing an account of how the world and its appearances are related is given substance in the analysis of the timeless features of reason itself. Critique is a call to reason: that is, a call to reason about reason. Yet for all that this is the explicit and commonly acknowledged substance of the idea of critique (Kant calls it 'the matter of our critical inquiry' ), it

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THE IDEA OF PURE C R I T I Q U E

does not in itself serve to clarify the aim, or end, of critique. For Kant, this clarification is necessary because the end of critique must be part of the idea of critique itself. The question of the end of critique, however, is not explicitly dealt with until the closing sections of the text and it is only really given prominence by the time of the Preface to the Second Edition, published the year before the appearance of the Critique of Practical Reason. In the Preface to the Second Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant informs us that the insight critical philosophy brings into the 'two-fold sense in which things may be taken' (as appearances and as things in themselves) will 'above all... confer an inestimable benefit on morality and religion'. As such, the end of critique is a practical end; the critique of pure reason can clear the way for rooting out illusions in our moral and religious life. However, this is a rather different task than that we have reconstructed from the Preface to the First Edition, where the aim of overcoming indifference is prioritized. Simply, it is by no means obvious that there is a necessary connection between overcoming the indifference that results from exhaustion with metaphysics and the aim of bringing clarity to moral and theological issues. Or, rather, it is the manner in which Kant negotiates the relationship between these two tasks of the new critical approach to philosophy as necessary that must be investigated. The investigation must begin by bringing to the surface a number of questions occluded within the text itself. For example: is there a tension between the two tasks of critique in Kant, the initial task of overcoming indifference and the final task of clearing the ground for a better understanding of moral and theological issues? Does the moral-theological purpose of critique condition the matter of critique such that we may be legitimately suspicious that the end itself constitutes a site of indifference within critique that is beyond critique? Even if we grant, with Kant, the political consequences of a generalized indifference to metaphysics, does the critique of such consequences necessitate that we conceive of critique as having a moral and theological purpose? In general, is it possible to hold that critique has a purpose without also holding that the purpose itself is externally generated? If the purpose is external to critique, is it beyond the rigours of critique? Can the end of critique be internal, or immanent, to the matter of critique itself? Is it possible to isolate an idea of critique that constitutes the matter of critique as its end? Can the end of critique be conceptualized as always open to critique itself without plunging into conceptual free-fall? Can the practical end of critique be an end that is internal to the idea of critique itself?

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KANT AND THE CRITIQUE OF INDIFFERENCE

These questions are the signposts one finds strewn within the Kantian construction of critique, signposts to routes obscured by Kant's own travels into critical philosophy, that nonetheless point toward the as yet distant idea of pure critique. As such, the very possibility of inquiring into an idea of pure critique, an idea of critique that does not subordinate critique itself to a purpose beyond critique, arises from questions generated within Kant's framing of his critical project. The claim that needs to be defended in order to pursue this line of inquiry is this: while Kant accurately surveyed the terrain constitutive of a new approach to critical philosophy he occluded (or, at best, elided) the tension between the idea of critique as the overcoming of indifference and the idea of critique constituted 'above all' by a moraltheological purpose. Put more simply; if it can be shown that while Kant inaugurated the idea of critique he ultimately transformed it back into an idea of criticism by subordinating it to an externally generated 'purpose', then we must follow those discarded signposts that lead the way to the idea of pure critique.

CRITIQUE, TOTALITY AND IMMANENCE For Kant, once critique is realized as reason's auto-critique, indifference is surpassed totally and immanently. Only once these general features are examined in more detail can the questions posed to Kant's idea of critique be articulated with greater precision such that the tension within his idea of critique can be exposed more acutely. As Kant understood, the criticism of indifference must be total. There must be no facet of thought or life that remains beyond the reach of critique. If there are any exemptions to the rigours of critique then these will become 'the subjects of just suspicion'. The suspicion, of course, is that such exemptions will shelter indifference, allowing it to flourish again in the future. Certainly there are many whose interests demand that indifference is not only sheltered but also kept safe and nurtured during harshly critical times. The critic must not bow to such interests. If the reach of critique is to be total then it must be deployed without regard for whatever comforts are associated with a life of indifference. Not even the 'sacredness of religion' or 'the authority of legislation' can claim such exemptions, according to Kant. If the critique of indifference is manifest as a call to reason, then both religious and political authority must

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be subject to the rigours of reason. That this is the case does not mean, however, that pure reason is capable of pronouncing on the nature and essence of God, for example. As Kant makes clear, the tribunal of pure reason is not the place to make such pronouncements. Reason, he says, is not an 'indefinitely extended plane'. Rather, it should be thought of as a sphere and 'beyond the sphere of experience there are no objects which it can know'. The nature of God is outside of this sphere and thus not the subject of an inquiry into pure reason. Nonetheless, those who transgress the circumference of this sphere by rationalizing their claims about the nature of God (believers and nonbelievers alike) can be held to account for applying reason in a domain where it cannot properly reside. A similar tactic is used in the area of legislation. Reason has a role in shaping the right forms of social and political organization but it is impotent as regards questions of the good life. There are a number of important sources for this distinction between the right and the good but the essay, 'On the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice', provides one of the clearest statements of Kant's distinction: But the concept of an external right as such precedes entirely from the concept of freedom in the external relation of people to one another and has nothing at all to do with the end that all of them naturally have (their aim of happiness) and with the prescribing of means for attaining it; hence too the latter absolutely must not intrude in the laws of the former as their determining ground. 7 For all that we have moved from the sphere of religion to that of legislation, the idea that reason sits in judgement over all that comes within the sphere of experience is retained. Indeed, all that tries to intrude from the outside must be put back in its rightful place. This distinction has, of course, been central to contemporary neo-Kantian political theory as articulated by, among others, Rawls and Habermas. In general, though, the totality of critique is articulated as the rational interrogation of all that falls within the domain of experience. For Kant, the totality of critique must be matched by the immanence of critique. Given that critique is manifest as a call to reason, as the rational interrogation of what we may legitimately claim to know, there is a need to subject the features of rational interrogation itself to critique if totality is to be maintained. This demands an immanent critique of reason by reason.

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The essential element of this immanent critique is the interrogation of reason purely on its own terms, without recourse to a critique of reason from the perspective of experience. The rational interrogation of reason becomes for Kant the crowning moment of rational interrogation of the sphere of experience. In other words, critique can only proceed if reason is put on trial before reason itself in pursuit of its own eternal and unchangeable laws. Only on this basis could critique root out indifference within reason itself and, therefore, achieve totality. Once again, the founding role of indifference is crucial in this regard. For a thoroughly total critique to emerge, that which critique has as its target, the indifference it must overcome, must be immanent to the domain of reason itself. The immanent sources of indifference that Kant locates within reason are the transcendental illusions, those unconditioned ideas of soul/self, world and God that are deemed to be constitutive of real objects. For all that reason has a purely logical function, its function in exploring the conditionality of syllogisms, it is nonetheless driven to postulate its own peculiar objects, the transcendental illusions, which become the source of indifference that critique must expose in the deployment of pure reason. The immanence of reason's critique of reason itself is maintained, therefore, by giving it the task of rooting out the illusory products of its own activity. It is important to reiterate, therefore, that indifference is the first moment of the realization of critique. But indifference is only finally overcome, for Kant, in the culminating moment of critique; that is, as the utter indifference of pre-critical rationalism to the transcendental illusions that organize its own understanding of criticism is fully exposed. For Kant, the totality and the immanence of critique are realized as the critique of indifference. The to-and-fro of criticism that sustains the debate between dogmatists and sceptics is outside of the qualitatively different mode of thinking that we have labelled critique. Critique is not aimed at transcending criticism but that which criticism leaves in its wake, the legacy of indifference manifest as popular philosophy. The construction of the idea of critique, therefore, is the construction of a terrain of inquiry qualitatively different from the terrain that sustains criticism. In this way, Kant not only surpasses criticism completely: he also constitutes the possibility of a thoroughly immanent critique of indifference on the basis of the tribunal of reason. So, both drawing on and extrapolating from Kant, the idea of criticism is transformed into the idea of critique; critique is that which has indifference as

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its true rival; this rival is located within critique itself; indifference can only be overcome by an idea of critique that challenges indifference totally and immanently. The unquestionable importance of Kant can be found in this fundamental survey of the terrain of critique. But as noted in regard to the tension between the matter and the end of critique, we can now also see a tension between the totality and the immanence of critique. The immanence Kant assigns to the idea of critique is immanent to the limited totality he derives from the idea of critique as reasoning about reason. Given this, it is appropriate to ask if a mode of critique that claims dominion over a limited sphere can be said to be wholly immanent. The immanence of critique may be put in jeopardy, in other words, by virtue of the limited totality that it is immanent to. In general terms, Deleuze and Guattari have diagnosed this problem as follows: 'whenever immanence is interpreted as immanent "to" something a confusion of plane and concept results, so that the concept becomes a transcendent universal and the plane becomes an attribute in the concept. When misunderstood in this way, the plane of immanence revives the transcendent again.' While the terminology of plane and concept will be explored in the next chapter, the principal idea is that immanence can only avoid becoming transcendent if it remains wholly immanent to itself. By making the immanence of critique immanent to the auto-critique of reason (itself constrained by the sphere of experience), the possibility of a wholly immanent idea of critique is curtailed. Reason becomes the transcendent that conditions the immanence of critique, such that critique becomes subordinated to the demands of reason. The questions formulated at the end of the last section can now be more precisely formulated as one fundamental question: can the matter of critique achieve totality while the idea of critique is immanent to a purpose, an end, which trancends critique itself? In the following section we shall explore in more detail how the relation between totality and immanence reflects on the tension between the matter and the end of critique. This will pave the way for a discussion that moves beyond Kantian constraints on critique into the domain of pure critique in the next chapter.

THE RETURN OF INDIFFERENCE The goal of a total and immanent critique of indifference is unrealized in Kant because of his failure to root out indifference. This can be viewed most clearly in Kant's advice to those reasonable critics faced with the fervour of

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the faithful and the faithless. It was noted already that Kant is at pains to keep the borders of the sphere of pure reason thoroughly intact against the claims of theologians who wish to push reason into the domain of religious speculation and of atheists who wish to use reason to denounce the existence of a Supreme Being. While developing the idea that we leave questions about the nature or existence of God at the door of our entry into pure reason, Kant urges that we meet the claims of the theologian and the atheist with 'a calm indifference'.59 On the face of it, this would seem to be thoroughly consistent with the parameters that Kant established around the immanent critique of pure reason. Yet, it also points to a problem with Kant's idea of critique. The problem is this; while Kant places all within the domain of reason under intense scrutiny so as to root out indifference, he is forced to defend the domain itself, the circumference of the sphere of reason, by deploying indifference. Indifference has not been transcended and destroyed, rather, it has been pushed from the centre to the margins. Moving indifference to the margins, however, does not relegate it to the wastelands of thought. Rather, indifference becomes the guardian of reason, that which secures the domain of reason against incursion from the outside. But why is this problematic? Surely Kant could respond to this charge by simply reiterating the idea that one cannot deploy reason in the domain of theology and anti-theology without overstepping the bounds of reason itself. All that remains, therefore, is an attitude of calm indifference to questions regarding the nature and existence of God. The problem for Kant, though, is that such indifference functions as criticism, a criticism of both the theologian and the atheist, but not as critique. The attitude of indifference to such fundamental issues functions as criticism rather than critique precisely because it is not detached from the logic of claim and counter-claim that forms the debate between the theologian and the atheist. To say that we cannot know whether or not God exists is a position that is itself ultimately based on a claim about the true nature of the world, a claim that is stated rather than interrogated through critique. There is, of course, a subtle and important difference in the way that Kant constructs his version of the dogmatic and sceptical appeal to 'facta of reason'. Where the pre-critical philosophers appeal to certain objects as the basis of reason, Kant objectifies reason itself. This must be the case given the nature of his defence of indifference as the guardian of the sphere of pure reason. Elaborating the need for calm indifference, Kant is forced to appeal to the fact that 'there is no antithetic of pure reason'. For

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this to function as critique, the indifference of the critic would have to be transcended into a thorough-going interrogation of the presuppositions of this indifference in order to reach a total and immanent critique of treating reason as a fact without antithesis. Yet, this possibility is curtailed precisely because Kant is categorical in limiting the sphere of pure reason. The effect is that Kant enters the debate about the existence or not of God with a disputable claim about the nature of pure reason itself, one which both theologians and atheists may indeed find antithetical to their own accounts. Although the fact of God's existence or not is held in suspension, the critical debate is simply shifted on to a new site within the same terrain, a site defined by the way Kant treats the facticity of reason itself. The effect is criticism rather than critique because Kant has presupposed the natural harmony of reason as a fact beyond reasonable interrogation. Two options present themselves: either the domain of pure reason is extended or critique is constructed in such a way as to facilitate the interrogation of areas outside of the domain of pure reason. Both options are plainly denied by Kant; pure reason must know its bounds, it is not 'an indefinitely extended plane', and the matter of critique must be thought of as a 'call to reason'. Indeed, the transformation of indifference from that which critique must overcome to that which guards the sphere of pure reason itself is rooted in both the limited idea of totality as a sphere and the notion that immanence requires a critique of reason by reason. While Kant may have identified the true rival of critique he has failed to overcome this rival by virtue of his failure to construct 'the matter of critique' in a manner adequate to the task. Far from being overcome, indifference is elevated into the role of guardian at the borders of pure reason. This might seem an unimportant consequence of the delimitation of pure reason. There are two reasons why we must not let such an idea hold sway. First, Kant is involved in contradiction as a result of this return of indifference. Most obviously, the claim that 'our age is the age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected' is revealed as purely rhetorical for Kant. As is clear, there are many areas of life that fall outside of the domain of critique and the role of the critic in these areas is that of the allegedly detached observer who in reality partakes of the debate in as unreflective a form as the dogmatist or sceptic. What becomes clear is that critique is not marshalled against everything; rather it is marshalled so as to ensure that pure reason reaches a 'state of permanent repose'. The aim of critique is not the rigorous interrogation

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of all our assumptions but the protection of reason from intruders who might call reason itself to account. As the return of indifference makes clear, this means that critique is put to the service of the interests of the reasonable and the reasonable are claimed to be the only ones capable of critique. Curtailing critique in this way makes critique the servant of reason and therefore limits the possibility of a total and thoroughly immanent critique of reason itself. As Deleuze claims, Kant failed to find a method adequate to the task of bringing reason to trial before itself: Kant concludes that critique must be a critique of reason by reason itself. Is this not the Kantian contradiction, making reason both the tribunal and the accused; constituting it as judge and plaintiff, judging and judged? Kant lacked a method which permitted reason to be judged from the inside without giving it the task of being its own judge. The outcome is that reason remains, at least partially, beyond the reach of criticism. A truly total critique of reason does not materialize and we must assume, therefore, that the interests of the purveyors of indifference are never fully brought to account. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that the reign of indifference has entered a new golden age precisely because it finds its strongest support yet in the current milieu of 'reasonableness': a milieu that furthers compromise rather than critique. The social and political consequences of the return of indifference in Kant constitute the second set of reasons for being wary of limiting critique in this way. In the assertion of the primordial role of right in relation to the good as regards matters of legislation, Kant formalizes the calm indifference that he urges on theological matters in the context of the coercive power of law. It is law that must become indifferent to ends and seek only to secure the rights of people to pursue their chosen ends. Given that indifference in theology acts as a critical intervention in theological debates, and not as a critique of the presuppositions of that intervention, we may expect that the same is true in the sphere of legislation. Indeed, as communitarian critics of neo-Kantianism in political theory have argued, the alleged indifference of the law to questions of the good life surreptitiously reinforces a liberal conception of the good life, based on contentious claims about the nature of our social bonds. As Taylor has argued, for example, the neo-Kantian ideal of law based on a system of rights already presupposes the good of those rights as a shared

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source from which we may draw. The right is not indifferent to the good, rather, the good of a liberal system of rights is protected from other claims to the good by the presupposition of the indifference of rights. From the perspective of the idea of critique, there is a failure to critique the presuppositions upon which law as a system of rights itself rests. The idea that even the authority of legislation must be held to account within the age of criticism, therefore, is not followed through by Kant. The idea of a total critique is impoverished for the sake of protecting ends that are ultimately presupposed rather than derived from the method of critique. Bringing these two problems together we can say that the return of indifference resides ultimately in the problematic assertions Kant makes regarding the link between pure and practical reason. Pure reason, as we saw, has as its end the practical aim of preparing the way for clearing up moral and theological disputes. Yet, as Kant makes clear in the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason, one can only guarantee that pure reason is practically oriented by assuming that which could not be known within the framework of pure reason, namely the idea of freedom. While the scope of pure reason does not admit of knowledge of the idea of freedom, the nature of practical reason must proceed on the basis of an assumption about the objective reality of freedom. This assumption is then used to retroactively establish freedom as 'the keystone of the whole structure of a system of pure reason'. Kant recognizes that this argumentative tactic is rather contentious and he tries to rationalize the manoeuvre as follows: Lest anyone suppose that he finds an inconsistency when I now call freedom the condition of the moral law and afterwards, in the treatise, maintain that the moral law is the condition under which we can first become aware of freedom, I want only to remark that whereas freedom is indeed the ratio essendi of the moral law, the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. For, had not the moral law already been distinctly thought in our reason, we should never consider ourselves justified in assuming such a thing as freedom (even though it is not self-contradictory). But were there no freedom, the moral law would not be encountered at all in ourselves. It is clear that the argument only works if one takes the existence of the moral law as a given. But this is really only a subset of the larger claim found in Kant, mentioned above, that reason has no antithesis. We have said already

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that this is an assumption about the matter of critique that would need to be subjected to the rigours of critique if Kant were to maintain consistency. To the extent that the discussion of freedom and the moral law brings the relationship between the matter of critique and the end of critique into focus, we find that the problem is doubled. Assuming that reason cannot be in contradiction with itself, Kant appeals to the moral—theological end of critique to retroactively justify the harmony of pure and practical reason. In general, therefore, Kant deploys the practical end of pure reason to assume the unity of what he calls pure practical reason. This argument is only plausible, however, on the already assumed unity of reason, an assumption that takes the form of a dogmatic fact of reason, in this case the fact that reason itself must be unified and by virtue of being unified be beyond critique. Indifference returns within pure (and) practical reason as the guarantor of the unity of reason and the claim, reconstructed from Kant's work, that critique must begin with indifference and yet end indifference cannot be supported. Kant's overtly rationalist understanding of the matter of critique and his objectification of the end of critique as the unity of pure and practical reason serves to transform but not remove indifference. Indeed, indifference to the problematic assumptions regarding the matter and end of critique becomes that which is used to secure the fact that Kant dogmatically assumes, namely the harmonious unity of reason. In Kant, therefore, critique is subordinate to the ends of criticism — the ultimately unreflective claim that reason must be without antithesis - rather than a mode of thought that transforms what it means to be critical. One might object that this is a perfectly reasonable assumption for Kant to make and that the onus is on those who question this assumption to prove the disharmonious nature of reason. This would, however, miss the point of the discussion. It is enough to show that Kant takes as given that the matter of critique must be the tribunal of reason and that he assumes the end of critique to be found in the moral law for us to question how such facts about critique are justified. Given, as we have shown, that both assumptions rest on the prior assumption of a primordial unity of pure and practical reason and this assumption is only justified by the dubious claims that pure reason clears the way for practical reason and that practical reason reveals the unity of both pure and practical reason, then the whole architecture of critique is shown to have a circular logic of the kind Kant criticized so rigorously in the dogmatists and the sceptics.

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In Kant, reason transcends critique such that both the totality and immanence of critique itself are unrealizable. The purity of the idea of critique can only be realized upon subtracting all transcendent elements from its immanent construction and only a purely immanent idea of critique can genuinely overcome the totality of indifference. As such, and as we shall see below, pure critique achieves a 'totality' that even total critique, an idea of critique that rests on a transcendent idea of totality, cannot reach in itself. One of the central tasks of the idea of pure critique must be to pursue the critique of indifference to its utmost. This cannot be achieved by limiting the totality of critique to the domain of reason, or by retroactively justifying the end of critique by assuming the existence of the moral law. Critique must establish and sustain itself on a terrain that is independent from the terrain of reason and morality if it is to become pure. But how can such a negative precondition become filled out to provide a positive conception of the idea of pure critique? Answering this question is the task of the next chapter.

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CHAPTER TWO

Philosophy as Pure Critique

INTRODUCTION Pure critique is qualitatively distinct from partial criticism and total critique. Partial criticism always contains an investment in the criticized, total critique delimits a totality that transcends critique and both, thereby, rely upon justificatory strategies that condition the idea of critique itself such that the justificatory bedrock is beyond critique. Indifference resides wherever critique cannot reach. The Kantian contribution to the idea of critique derives from the construction of a mode of interrogation aimed at overcoming the public indifference generated by endless criticism. It is a contribution that has set the standard for all critical theory; if one's criticisms harbour indifference in any form whatsoever then one has failed the test of critique. As discussed in the last chapter, it was a test that Kant's own understanding of the matter and end of critique could not pass. The task for post-Kantians, those who acknowledge the validity of the test set by Kant, is to find a way to avoid his failure. An idea of critique that passed the test of obliterating indifference from within itself would properly be called an idea of pure critique; an idea of critique worthy of the idea itself. Having used Kant to set up the idea of pure critique it is important at this stage in the argument not to become embroiled in the history of the idea of critique. It might be tempting to engage with the grand vista of post-Kantian philosophy with a view to judging the ideas of those who claimed to have passed the test set by Kant. While such an engagement would be worthy of pursuit in itself, it would do little to bring the idea of pure critique any closer. It is methodologically wrong-headed to survey the tradition looking for pure critique, while what is needed is an analytic of pure critique itself before any such investigation could take place. The discussion of Kant has

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simply set the agenda for this analytic of pure critique by providing its guiding principles. In this chapter I shall construct the idea of pure critique with a view to fleshing out the guiding principles derived from Kant. First, there is a differentiated idea of critique, one that develops the negative definition of the previous chapter by providing criteria that must be met if the idea of critique is to become pure. In section two, the constructivist account of philosophy outlined by Deleuze and Guattari is revealed as that which defines philosophy in a way that meets the criteria for pure critique. In section three, it is argued that we should conceive of Deleuze and Guattari's account of philosophy as pure critique. By the end of the chapter, therefore, we are able to articulate pure critique positively and fully, for the first time.

PARTIAL CRITICISM, TOTAL CRITIQUE AND PURE CRITIQUE Indifference will remain embedded in the act of criticism as long as there is a part of that which is under critical scrutiny which is not actually criticized or criticizable. For example, a partial criticism of democracy is always couched in terms of more democracy, or deeper democracy, or substantive democracy, or radical democracy or some other form of democracy. Where parts of the idea of democracy are criticized the idea of democracy itself remains intact. The partiality expressed, therefore, is a partiality to the idea of democracy. The justificatory background of such partial criticism is clearly the whole that gives meaning to the part being criticized. Partial critics of democracy may disagree about what the idea of democracy actually means vis-a-vis, for example, the demands of citizenship, but the idea of democracy itself acts as a shared background against which to justify the alternative renderings. It is only by virtue of occupying the same general terrain as that which is criticized that partial critics can claim to be justified in their criticism. This partiality to the idea of democracy places the idea of democracy itself beyond criticism and, to the extent that it does this, indifference to key critical questions will always remain. It should be clear, then, that partial criticisms never amount to even the pretence of critique, remaining firmly embedded in the to-andfro of claim and counter-claim without calling the presuppositions of their criticisms to account. This does not imply that we simply give up on debates constituted by partial modes of criticism, for partial criticism has a key role to play in all walks of life. Rather, the implication is simply that partial

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criticisms cannot be what we have in mind when we talk of critique, as Kant knew so well. But if we exceed such partiality and bring the totality of the whole under critical review, do we fare any better in generating a critique of indifference? A total critique of democracy is one that criticizes the very idea of democracy itself, as a whole. This mode of critical inquiry is worthy of the name critique to the extent that it questions the indifference that is constitutive of partial criticisms. In this respect a total critique of democracy must locate the outside of democracy in order to put the whole of democracy into view. Strictly speaking, therefore, a total critique of democracy does not even start with an inquiry into democracy, as that would be to cede too much conceptual ground from the beginning to this most magnetic concept. Rather, total critique must begin elsewhere, from the outside of democracy, beyond the obvious attractive pull it exerts over the field of politics. The total critic, therefore, refuses to occupy the terrain of the whole that gives meaning to the part being criticized so as to put the whole - democracy, for example - under total and not just partial scrutiny. But even in this case, the critique will still be implicated in that which is being criticized if it remains situated within the total terrain of which the idea of democracy is a part. For example, if one critiques democracy from an oligarchical perspective one may achieve a total critique but only at the expense of a deeper partiality. As democracy and oligarchy are different answers to the same question — what is the best form of government? - they ultimately occupy the same terrain of thought, in this case an explicitly normative terrain in political philosophy. The upshot is that oligarchy is defined against democracy, and vice-versa, such that neither amounts to a radical break with the other. In such cases, critique may be total in a particular sense but it retains partiality by virtue of a second-order relationship to that which is being criticized. Where the critique tends toward totality the justificatory terrain is different from that which grounds partial criticism, but ultimately indifference remains the outcome. The totality that is invoked, in other words, remains partial to the extent that it is a totality shared by the critique and the criticized, such that the totality is always implicitly deployed as a common justificatory foundation. Once again, therefore, criticism that invokes a mode of total critique will always leave certain critical questions beyond the reach of criticism itself. It is this reservoir of assumptions beyond total critique that harbours whatever the critic remains indifferent to; assumptions that Kant tells us must be the 'subjects of just

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suspicion'. Total critique displaces indifference but does not remove it, as we saw in the previous chapter on Kant, and as such it does not live up to the idea of critique itself. Generalizing this account we can say that the difference between partial and total criticism is a matter of degree: the degree to which the critic and that which is criticized dwell on the same conceptual terrain. This has an intriguing consequence: if criticism is a matter of degree then it should not be thought of as either justified or unjustified criticism. Admittedly, the idea that criticism is not circumscribed by justification is counter-intuitive but what we often take to be criticisms - the loud opinions of other citizens, the studied moralizing of philosophers - are not, when properly understood, criticisms at all. Although the phrase 'unjustified criticism' is a common part of our vocabulary, what is usually meant by this expression is the idea that someone is just giving us his or her own opinion of events. In this sense, 'unjustified criticism' might be better described as 'unwanted opinion'. Similarly the common idea of 'justified criticism', upon interrogation, could be more aptly re-described as the opinions of others that we are willing to take on board. Of course, theorists of many different hues want to make a stronger set of claims: criticism is justified by reference to it being, for example, true, reasonable, morally correct, ethically astute, in accord with tradition, or whatever. Criticism is unjustified, therefore, by the absence of whatever benchmark is deemed the most appropriate by each philosophical position. In this sense, it is said that criticism may be acknowledged but unjustified or not acknowledged but justified. But this clarification, in defence of the centrality of justification to the idea of criticism, amounts to a form of sophistry. Upon investigation, we can see that understood in this way partial criticism and total critique are only justified by reference to implicit acknowledgement of the terrain of critical inquiry itself. Acknowledged but unjustified criticism and unacknowledged but justified criticism amount to the same thing; critical encounters where the shared terrain of critical inquiry has not been explicitly articulated. Rather than seeing such critical encounters as a sign of criticism with bite ('my criticisms are justified even if you refuse to acknowledge them', for example) they should be seen as a sign of critical encounters where the real issues at stake have been put to one side by the participants. It is precisely in such critical encounters that indifference is allowed to flourish, because it goes unacknowledged.

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In order to move beyond total criticism towards the idea of pure critique, with a view to purging our critical interventions of lingering indifference, we must outline an account of critique that does not subordinate it to a regime of justification. If critique is made to justify itself by reference to anything other than itself, that which holds court over it must be beyond critique: regimes of justification are tools in the service of criticism but they are anathema to the idea of critique. Pure critique cannot, therefore, be a tool in the service of justification. Rather, every justification must be subject to critique such that no justification stands beyond critique. But if the project of pure critique is understood solely from such a negative perspective - as the destroyer of justifications - then it fares no better than the idea of total critique. This is the case because the idea of critique itself becomes that which must not be criticized, leading to a contradiction that can only provide shelter for the purveyors of indifference. To avoid this lurch into contradiction, pure critique must be reconfigured as a project that is not solely a destructive (and ultimately self-destructive) venture. In order to achieve this one must reorient thought onto consideration of what pure critique is, rather than simply saying that it is not criticism based on assumptions shared with the criticized. Initially, though, this involves demarcating a series of criteria that will provide the guidelines within which a more positive articulation of pure critique can be achieved. The first point to note is that whereas the difference between partial criticism and total critique was one of degree, that which differentiates partial criticism and total critique from pure critique is a difference in kind. The partial critic and the total critic differ only insofar as they explicitly or implicitly appeal to different levels of shared assumptions with that which they criticize; either the particular idea under review or the totality of the terrain upon which intimately related ideas are situated. The pure critic places all such appeals to a shared background under investigation so as to critique all attempts at justification (as this is the only way of overcoming indifference). In this sense pure critique differs in kind from the other modes of critical activity by virtue of not being located within a regime of justification, at either the particular (typically explicit) or the total (typically implicit) level of shared assumptions. A partial criticism becomes total when it shifts from assuming a particular justifactory framework to the assumption of a general terrain which serves as a shared foundation for the criticism. A total critique

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becomes 'pure' when even this general second-order relation to that which is being criticized is overcome. While this constitutes the elemental criteria for a definition of pure critique, it remains both negative and obscure unless we spell out what is required of the idea of critique itself once the idea of justification has been subtracted from it. One of the most surreptitious forms of shared justificatory framework within the idea of critique, one that is therefore likely to harbour indifference, is a shared definition of critique itself. If, for the sake of argument, our pure critic of democracy constructs a critique that does not rely on the shared general terrain of normative political philosophy, it is possible that she will nonetheless revert to the position of being a total critic by virtue of sharing a definition of critique with the advocates of normative political philosophy. For example, there may be shared assumptions at work regarding the relationship between critical theory and political practice (say, that the critic must first conceptualize a critical position and then apply this to that which is under critical review). In this case the shared assumptions may be thinly constituted but they are nonetheless constitutive of a shared territory of inquiry that would legitimate this being described as a reversion to total critique from a position of (supposed) purity. The potential purity of critique is relinquished, in other words, when a given totality is delimited as a transcendent element conditioning the immanence of critique such that the totality itself is beyond critique. It is important to clarify, therefore, that one of the principal components of subtracting justificatory frameworks from partial criticism and total critique in order to conceive of pure critique is the task of adumbrating an idea of critique that is not itself shared with the criticized. One of the particular criteria that the idea of pure critique must meet, therefore, is the suspension of a shared notion of what it means to be critical. Where the analytic of pure critique provides us with the view that critique must take place without reference to a justificatory framework shared with the criticized, this must be further clarified as an idea of critique that does not assume that we all share or must share a common definition of critique itself. The idea of pure critique, therefore, is that which problematizes even the idea of critique itself. This may appear to push the idea of pure critique to the limits of comprehensibility, but before the construction of comprehension from out of these ashes of analysis can begin in earnest, we must push credulity even further. There is still a sense in which pure critique may be said to share a common

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ground with that which is under critical scrutiny, namely as regards the idea of the critic that carries out critical activity. If, for the sake of argument, our pure critic problematizes both the grounds upon which the critique and the criticized reside and the idea of critique itself, she may still be assuming a common ground vis-a-vis the nature of the critic. Our supposed pure critic of democracy may construct a terrain beyond normative political philosophy while also constructing an idea of criticism beyond the normative, while still clinging to the view that the critic is, for example, always an individual human being possessed of certain critical faculties. Such residual commonality would amount to a reinstitution of a shared justificatory framework, thereby steering the hope of a pure critique of democracy towards the rocks of total critique. In such cases the safe haven for indifference is to be found in the idea of the critic. For pure critique to become truly pure the idea of the critic must also be problematized so thoroughly that it cannot serve the function of harbouring indifference. Again, this is a particular example of the general idea that pure critique must do away with justification to become pure. Critique avoids partiality by subtracting criticism from within itself, it avoids a transcendent totality by not submitting to regimes of justification. Critique becomes pure, that is adequate to the idea of critique itself, only on the condition that it has priority over justification. The priority of critique over justification can only be sustained if all the natural aspects of critique itself (the nature of critique, the nature of the criticized, the nature of the critic) are thoroughly denaturalized. Pure critique, therefore, must always contain within itself, as the fullness of itself, the critique becoming within itself. It may appear that we have entered into the conceptual free-fall that would lead to critical paralysis. Is it possible to articulate critique in such a pure fashion without the return of indifference through the surreptitious reliance on shared justificatory frameworks? Is it possible to define the idea of pure critique positively? If it is to be possible then we must be able to articulate the idea of pure critique as that which avoids assuming a) a given, or shared, terrain that concepts are said to occupy, b) a given, or shared, idea of what is involved in the activity of critique, and c) a given, or shared, account of the critic. This amounts to saying that the idea of pure critique must not assume a) a common 'world' that critique 'intervenes in', b) a common 'concept' of critical intervention, and c) a common 'agent' of critical intervention.

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In other words, the very ideas of 'world', 'concept' and 'agent' must be rethought in the process of outlining the idea of pure critique. Clearly, what is at stake alludes to the very grounds of philosophical activity itself. If we can outline an account of philosophy that carries out this rethinking then we shall have gone a long way towards providing the positive account of pure critique required by both the reading of Kant in the previous chapter and the analytic of pure critique just discussed. All of the elements required of this rethinking of the nature of philosophy can be found in the constructivist account of philosophy outlined by Deleuze and Guattari. This is expressed most clearly in their last work together, What is Philosophy?, although it arguably informed all their previous work together and as solo authors. Their account of the relationship between concepts, planes of immanence and conceptual personae is the first proper step on the way to a positive articulation of the idea of pure critique such that we can say that it amounts to presenting philosophy as pure critique, a claim that will be expanded upon in section three below.

PHILOSOPHY AS CONSTRUCTIVISM Deleuze and Guattari give a deceptively simple answer to the question, 'What is philosophy?': 'philosophy', they say, 'is the discipline that involves creating concepts'. 6 At first glance this definition is hardly contentious. Its critical impact, though, is clear from the conceptions of philosophy that it excludes; namely, philosophy as 'contemplation, reflection and communication'. Philosophy as contemplation, Deleuze and Guattari call 'objective idealism' and it is clear that they have Plato in mind as the founder of this approach. For Plato, philosophy was the contemplation of 'Ideas'. In The Republic, for example, Plato is able to equate justice in the individual with justice in the community because the 'Idea of Justice' resides in neither the individual nor the community but in a separate realm of pure 'Ideas'; in the bright world outside the cave. Philosophy as reflection, Deleuze and Guattari call 'subjective idealism' and here they have both Descartes and Kant in mind. In Cartesian philosophy the doubting subject cannot be sure of the objective status of 'Ideas'; Platonism, whether right or wrong, must be bracketed out of the equation. Yet, in the act of doubting, Descartes rediscovers the 'Idea', only now it resides within the subject as the 'I think'; the famous Cartesian 'cogito'. Although Kant called into question the Cartesian 'cogito', the approach of

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reflecting upon an agent's self-knowledge was maintained (the transcendental categories replacing the activity of doubting). Philosophy, on this account, is reflection upon the subject's implicit knowledge of thought (in Descartes) or thought, space and time (in Kant). According to this approach, 'objectivity will ... assume a certainty of knowledge rather than presuppose a truth recognised as pre-existing, or already there'. 8 Philosophy as communication, Deleuze and Guattari call 'intersubjective idealism', a philosophical moment whose beginnings they associate with phenomenology, in particular the work of Husserl. Husserl's project was to reintroduce the Kantian subject to the phenomenal world, not in order to renounce transcendence but to put the transcendental subject on the solid empirical ground of 'actual experience'. As Deleuze and Guattari explain, the subject's transcendence via such experience has a triple root: 'the subject constitutes first of all a sensory world filled with objects, then an intersubjective world filled by the other, and finally a common ideal world'. ' The transcendent 'Idea', on this account, is neither a pre-existing object, nor a presupposition of subjective reflection, but a consequence of intersubjective interaction. Philosophical activity becomes indistinguishable from the 'communication' (broadly defined) that takes place between subjects. That Deleuze and Guattari take these differing accounts of philosophical activity to be variants of'idealism' already suggests the tenor of their critique. Contemplation, reflection or communication, they argue, cannot be definitive of philosophical activity because the concepts 'contemplation', 'reflection' and 'communication' must first and foremost be created. What they say of Plato in this context applies equally to Descartes, Kant and Husserl; 'Plato teaches the opposite of what he does: he creates concepts but needs to set them up as representing the uncreated that precedes them.' Deleuze and Guattari are not suggesting that human beings do not 'contemplate, reflect or communicate', nor that philosophy should not concern itself with these actions, only that it is a mistake to equate these actions with philosophical activity itself. Philosophy, they say, becomes 'idealism' when it forgets this distinction. Surely treating philosophy as a form of constructivism, as the creation of concepts, is also susceptible to the charge of idealism? Is 'creation' not a concept, and a distinct activity, as surely as contemplation, reflection and communication? One response would be: if creation is a concept, as a concept it must first and foremost be created, thus retaining the idea of philosophy as the creation of concepts. Does this help? To pursue this line is to ground

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philosophy in a representation of the 'uncreated of creation', precisely the kind of argument that engenders the philosophical idealism Deleuze and Guattari hope to avoid. Besides, to equate philosophy with creation and leave the matter at that would be to neglect the fact that other disciplines, such as science and art, are equally creative. To give substance to the idea that philosophy is the creation of concepts, and thereby meet the charge of idealism, one must look more carefully at what is being created: the concept. For Deleuze and Guattari, every concept is multiple. There is no concept with only one component - the Cartesian 'cogito', for example, involves the concepts of'doubting', 'thinking' and 'being'. Neither is there a concept that has infinite components - even 'so-called universals as ultimate concepts must escape the chaos by circumscribing a universe that explains them'. The concept, therefore, is 'a finite multiplicity', 'defined by the sum of its components', the component parts being other concepts. Why can there not be any singular or universal concepts? For Deleuze and Guattari, such concepts are impossible because every concept has a 'history' and a 'becoming'. Every concept has a history to the extent that it has passed through previous constellations of concepts and been accorded different roles within the same constellation. Every concept has a becoming to the extent that it forms a junction with other concepts within the same or adjacent field of problems. Given this, there can be no singular concepts to the extent that every concept implicates other concepts and no universal concepts to the extent that no one concept could survey all possible concepts. Why does every concept have a history and a becoming? For Deleuze and Guattari, it is not so much that concepts are embroiled within changing 'social and historical contexts', though of course they are, rather it is because every concept has an 'atemporal' and 'acontextual' feature at its core. As well as 'surveying' its conceptual field, every concept inaugurates what Deleuze and Guattari call the 'plane of immanence' of the concept. The plane of immanence is 'neither a concept nor the concept of all concepts'. It is, rather, a preconceptual field presupposed within the concept; 'not in the way that one concept may refer to others but in the way that concepts themselves refer to nonconceptual understanding'. What is this 'nonconceptual understanding'? Ultimately, Deleuze and Guattari argue, it is 'the image thought gives itself of what it means to think'.7 They give the following examples: 'in Descartes [the plane of immanence] is a matter of a subjective understanding implicitly presupposed by the "I think" as first concept; in Plato it

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is the virtual image of an already-thought that doubles every actual concept'. The plane of immanence is inaugurated within the concept (that which is created) and yet it is clearly distinct from the concept (as it is that which expresses the uncreated; that which thought — to put it colloquially — 'just does'). In this sense, there is always an expression of the nonconceptual, internal to, and yet 'outside', the concept. This complex relation is characterized by Deleuze and Guattari as follows: 'concepts are events, but the plane is the horizon of events, the reservoir or reserve of purely conceptual events'. We may say, for example, that 'the present happens' because there is a 'pastbecoming-future horizon' presupposed by the idea of the present. Without a presupposed limitless expanse of time we could not talk of the present. In the same way, without the presupposed plane of immanence, concepts would never 'happen'. Moreover, as the present would never change without the existence of an 'eternal horizon' presupposed within it, without the institution of the plane — that which thought 'just does' — concepts would never change. The fact that concepts institute this 'unthinkable' plane at their core engenders the movement of concepts; their history and becoming. Two important consequences follow from this discussion. First, the initial claim — that treating philosophy as 'contemplation, reflection or communication' leads philosophers to confuse the concepts they create with the activity of creation — can be redeployed in a more precise way. Having explored the nature of the concept, the problem of 'idealism' is less a matter of confusing concept and creativity than a matter of confusing the concept with the presupposed plane of immanence. In 'idealist' approaches, the prephilosophical plane of immanence is always made immanent to the privileged concept (contemplation, reflection or communication). As such, the privileged concept is considered co-extensive with the plane of immanence, rendering both the concept and the plane transcendental — simply, 'contemplation', 'reflection' and 'communication' are privileged as that which thought 'just does'. Philosophy is contemplation in Plato, for example, because the alreadythought object of contemplation extends across the plane of immanence inaugurated by the concept 'contemplation'. In other words, both the object of contemplation and the activity of contemplation are always already bound together in the transcendent 'Idea of Contemplation'. Philosophy gives rise to transcendence whenever it confuses the concept it creates with the plane of immanence instituted by the concept; or, putting it another way, whenever it confuses the image it creates of what it is to think with thought itself.

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In general, if philosophy treats the plane of immanence as immanent to a concept, then it creates its own 'illusions of transcendence' (in both concept and plane). Deleuze and Guattari summarize their position as follows: 'whenever immanence is interpreted as immanent "to" something a confusion of plane and concept results, so that the concept becomes a transcendent universal and the plane becomes an attribute in the concept'. A second important consequence of the distinction between concept and plane is that it helps us to see why philosophical constructivism does not fall prey to the charge of idealism; or now more correctly, the charge of attributing immanence 'to' something. For constructivism to escape the charge of idealism, the concept 'creation' must be shown to institute a plane that is immanent only to itself. Recalling that the plane of immanence is 'the image that thought gives itself of what it means to think', the question becomes: 'what is the image of thought that treats thought as immanent only to itself?' We already know what thought cannot be according to Deleuze and Guattari: an object for contemplation, a subject of reflection, or an intersubjective act of communication. But what is left? Given their critique of these 'idealist' accounts, thought must be devoid of both subjects and objects. Yet, if there are no subjects or objects in thought, thought must be viewed as an impersonal field of thought. If this is the case, there must also be no boundaries to thought, as boundaries would reinstate the plane as immanent to whatever constituted the boundary. What this suggests is that thought must be viewed as 'pure movement', where movement is taken to be 'infinite movement or movement of the infinite'. As Deleuze and Guattari put it: 'thought constitutes a simple "possibility" of thinking without yet defining a thinker capable of it and able to say "I" '. The 'absolute' plane of immanence, the plane which is immanent only to itself, is the pure movement constitutive of the possibility of thought. For Deleuze and Guattari, this is not 'thought-as-the-unconscious', irrespective of whether or not the unconscious is deemed to be an attribute of persons or an attribute of a structural field, as 'the unconscious' resides firmly within the realm of the conceptual. Nor is this 'thought-as-consciousness'. As already noted, Deleuze and Guattari refute the idea of thought as populated by subjects (or objects), yet even if thought is deemed to be wholly co-extensive with consciousness, this still requires a conception of thought as 'immanent-to-consciousness'. The failure of this (Hegelian) approach, for Deleuze and Guattari, is that it gets things the wrong way round; 'immanence

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is not immanent to consciousness', rather consciousness is immanent to immanence.8 Taking one further example, the plane of immanence is not 'thought-as-reason', irrespective of whether reason is attributed to reflecting subjects or the structural features of linguistic exchange, as reason is a concept as straightforwardly as all the other examples (contemplation, reflection, communication, the unconscious and so on). Moreover, reason could not be the presupposed plane instituted by constructivism as creativity takes on many forms; rational, for sure, but also delirious, dream-like, intuitive, drug-induced and the like. Philosophers do not (always) 'reason concepts into existence', they create concepts and subsequently reason about them. As Nietzsche put it, 'what happens at bottom is that a prejudice, a notion, an "inspiration", generally a desire of the heart sifted and made abstract, is defended by them with reasons sought after the event'. In general, argue Deleuze and Guattari, we must accept that all attempts to define thought conceptually, ' thought-as-x', will ultimately fail because all concepts must first be created. Yet, if all concepts are created, then thought itself must be 'conceptless'. The image of thought inaugurated by constructivism, therefore, is one of a 'conceptless plane'. As such, the concept 'creation' is distinct from the 'conceptless' image of thought it institutes. In other words, constructivism is that which maintains the distinction between concept and plane. The confusion of concept and plane, as noted earlier, was the source of 'idealist' approaches to philosophy. Philosophy as the creation of concepts maintains the distinction between concept and plane, and to this extent, may be said to avoid the charge of 'idealism'. Constructivism is that which institutes an image of thought, a plane of immanence, which treats thought as immanent only to itself; that is, thought as an impersonal field of thought. This is equivalent to treating thought as a field of pure movement constitutive of the possibility of thought. For Deleuze and Guattari, therefore, thought is not the object or 'aim' of philosophy, rather, thought is the nonphilosophical of philosophy; the nonphilosophical that is inaugurated within every act of philosophy. We are now in a position to appreciate what Deleuze and Guattari understand by 'good philosophy'. 'Good philosophy', they suggest, is that which is the most philosophical. The most philosophical approach to philosophy, however, is that which institutes the most nonphilosophical plane of

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immanence, that which manages to maintain the distinction between concept and plane.87 Of course, every philosophy confuses the concept and the plane, constructivism included, by virtue of the fact that a 'perfect' or 'ideal' philosophy is literally 'unthinkable' (therefore, Deleuze and Guattari are only too aware that 'the plane of immanence' is, of course, a concept). But 'good' philosophy is that which tries to grasp the plane as immanent only to itself. 'The supreme act of philosophy', they say, is 'not so much to think THE plane of immanence as to show that it is there, unthought in every plane, and to think it in this way as the outside and inside of thought, as the not-external outside and the not-internal inside - that which cannot be thought and yet must be thought'. 'Good' philosophy is that which, on the one hand, continuously tracks down transcendence wherever it appears and, on the other hand, restores immanence to the nonphilosophical (that which philosophy seeks to conceptualize which is, ultimately, that which thought 'just does'). As it stands, this image of thought as pure movement may be said to 'idealize' the question of being; that is, confuse the 'mental' concept of creation with the 'physical' plane of being. Deleuze and Guattari solve this problem by claiming that 'movement is not the image of thought without being also the substance of being'. There is, then, a 'vitalist ontology' immanent to philosophical constructivism rather than a rejection, in the manner of much postmodern thought, of ontology per se. Without this ontology, Deleuze and Guattari's depiction of philosophy would indeed be a variant of the 'idealist' approaches discussed earlier — the plane of 'being' would be constituted as 'outside' and, correlatively, the plane of immanence as immanent to thought. With a vitalist ontology, an ontology of movement as the substance of being, the charge of idealism could not be more misplaced. In short, idealism is avoided because the concept 'creation' inaugurates an image of thought as pure movement which retains its immanence by virtue of a vitalist ontology of movement as the substance of being. What exactly is the relation between concept and plane? We know that the concept and the plane are intimately connected to each other, and yet wholly distinct. For this to be the case, that which is between the concept and the plane must be 'external' to both. The relation itself, in other words, must be understood on its own terms; it must have its own logic. This idea shows the strong connection Deleuze and Guattari have with a certain kind of empiricism. Deleuze credited Hume with being the first to treat 'the relation' seriously: 'he created the first great logic of relations, showing in it that all

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relations (not only "matters of fact" but also relations among ideas) are external to their terms'. This is not the empiricism so typical of first-year philosophy classes, where it is taught as a theory of 'atomism' or 'individualism'. A 'pluralist' or 'radical' empiricism is a theory of 'associationism' where between 'x and y' is 'and', not an abstract, eternal or universal 'x-ness', 'y-ness' or 'z-ness'. The relation, 'and', is constituted as external to the terms 'x' and 'y'. What constitutes this external relation between concept and plane? In its most general sense, it is 'a point of view'. When a concept is created it institutes a plane of immanence, but since no concept can encompass THE plane of immanence, philosophy always simultaneously invents a 'point of view' which 'brings to life' the concept and the plane. In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari characterize this 'point of view' as the 'conceptual persona' of a philosophy. Their choice of phrase is revealing. The 'point of view' is neither a concept nor a plane but that which 'personalizes' the absolutely impersonal plane by circumscribing a relative position on that plane. The conceptual persona, in other words, constitutes the impersonal field as a 'perspective' which then 'activates', or 'insists upon' the creation of concepts. It may be tempting to associate the conceptual persona that brings philosophy to life with the life of the philosopher. For Deleuze and Guattari, though, this would be a mistake; 'the conceptual persona is not the philosopher's representative but, rather, the reverse: the philosopher is the envelope of his principal conceptual persona and of all the other subjects of his philosophy. Conceptual personae are the philosopher's "heteronyms", and the philosopher's name is the simple pseudonym of his personae.' Once again, the Nietzschean heritage is evident: 'a philosopher: a man who constantly experiences, sees, hears, suspects, hopes, dreams extraordinary things; who is struck by his own thoughts as if from without, as if from above and below'. While the conceptual persona, in its most general sense, is a point of view construed as external to both the concept and the plane, we can think of it in more particular ways. In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari talk of the conceptual persona as the 'territory' mapped out across the plane within the concept. Such territories may be geographical or national, as when one talks about the perspective 'Italian philosophy' brings to a set of problems; or, they may also be 'normative', 'cultural', 'ideological', 'historical', 'institutional', 'global' and so on. When such territories become 'sedimented' in thought, as in the examples just given, we may talk of the formation of

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philosophical knowledge. Viewing philosophical knowledge in this way gives rise to a greater concern with the 'territory' upon which knowledge stakes a claim — 'how does perspective function to create knowledge?' - instead of the conditions which may 'guarantee' knowledge - 'what kind of knowledge transcends perspective?'.

PHILOSOPHY AS PURE CRITIQUE The aim of reconstructing the basic features of Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy is to show that it provides the resources with which to articulate the idea of pure critique as qualitatively distinct from the ideas of partial criticism and total critique. We can recall that the problem was this: how to articulate an idea of critique that didn't presuppose indifference to certain key critical questions within the act of critique itself. What the analytic of criticism and critique revealed, though, was that this requirement can only be met by subtracting the idea of justification from the idea of critique itself. Specifically, this raised three criteria that have to be met in order for critique to become pure. First, the idea of pure critique must be defined in a way that avoids the partiality created by either assuming a particular conceptual or a more general territorial justificatory framework. Second, there was the added dimension of finding an idea of critique that did not reify the idea of critique itself and thereby create a reservoir for indifference within the critical act. Finally, it was noted that pure critique must not assume a predetermined understanding of what it is to be a critic, an idea that would similarly shelter indifference from the critique itself. Pure critique, in sum, must be constituted in such a way as to avoid unquestioned assumptions about the world (that which is under critical review), the concept (the idea of critique itself), and the 'critical agent' (that which 'carries out' the critique). Recalling these criteria it is possible to see why the work of Deleuze and Guattari on the constructivist nature of philosophy is so central. The idea of philosophy as the creation of concepts which institute a plane of immanence brought to life by the perspective of a conceptual persona provides all the elements that we require in order to meet the challenge of fulfilling the criteria laid out in the analytical discussion of the first section of this chapter. In showing this to be the case, the idea of pure critique can be defined as qualitatively distinct from partial criticism and total critique while also

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presenting it in a form that is amenable to the kind of positive definition that the analytic itself could not provide. Indeed, it is not just that Deleuze and Guattari's constructivism provides the framework for a definition of pure critique, rather their account of philosophy will be shown to be co-extensive with pure critique itself: philosophy as pure critique. It is important to spell out the connections more explicitly. In the first instance we can do this by examining whether or not Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist approach to philosophy meets the general requirement of an idea of critique: that of facing up to the challenge of indifference. Second, we can examine the extent to which their account of philosophy meets the general requirement of pure critique: that of subtracting regimes of justification which harbour indifference. Third, it is important to make the conceptual links between the terminology of philosophical constructivism and the language of pure critique, so as to show their interdependency to be one of mutual presupposition to the point of identity. Last, we shall draw out some of the implications of this identification with a view to setting the scene for the next chapter. To what extent, then, does philosophy as the creation of concepts meet the challenge of indifference? On one level this is an odd question to ask of What is Philosophy?. There is no sustained discussion of indifference, nor even a discussion of difference (a concept that was a long-standing concern of Deleuze's work in particular). That said, it is not an exaggeration to say that the whole of the text is forged out of a diagnosis of the current climate of thought that bears remarkable similarities to Kant's diagnosis of his own time as an epoch of indifference. As Kant recognized that indifference emerged within philosophy as the product of the unreflective use of philosophy in pitting claim against counter claim, so Deleuze and Guattari see that the very core of philosophy, the concept, has become a tool in the service of the communication industries; 'computer science, marketing, design and advertising'. For these authors, separated by two centuries, the problem is the same: that which is proper to philosophical inquiry has been hijacked by rivals. The solution to the problem is to reclaim the heartland of philosophy with the aim of exposing the barrenness of the appropriation of philosophy for the sake of sterile arguments and selling products. In both cases, philosophy as a form of strategy is to be replaced by the idea that philosophy is a form of inquiry that must gain its legitimacy solely on its own terms.

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Of course, this comparison does no more than hint at the real depths of the connection between Kant's critical project and Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy. While this comparison remains external to the real innovations both of the work of Kant and those of Deleuze and Guattari, we can get a better picture of the shared concern with indifference by thinking of it from a more internal perspective. In both projects, the reason why philosophy has been appropriated by its rivals for strategic purposes resides within philosophy's misunderstanding of itself. It is precisely because philosophy has failed to understand itself in a mode proper to philosophy itself that it has created the possibility of its misuse. The indifference to philosophy that characterizes both Kant's epoch and that of Deleuze and Guattari's is the result of indifference residing within philosophy. The real source of indifference, therefore, is to be found in those accounts of philosophy that secure a role for indifference within philosophy itself. For Kant, as noted in Chapter One, this is the result of a failure to interrogate the nature of reason using the court of reason itself. For Deleuze and Guattari, as noted in the preceding section, this is the result of a failure to recognize that concepts are first and foremost creations rather than representations of the uncreated. The substantive distinction between these two responses is obvious enough, but we must not let it obscure the formal similarity to be found at the level of the problems facing philosophy. Nonetheless, for all that this formal similarity speaks of an internal connection between Kant's critical project and the constructivism of Deleuze and Guattari, it does not establish the link in the latter's work between the idea of critique and the overcoming of indifference. What is more, the difficulties involved in making this link seem insurmountable in the face of an almost complete absence of the idea of critique within What is Philosophy?. The task of constructing philosophy (as a constructivism) as pure critique would seem to flounder on this basic lack of a connection between philosophy as the creation of concepts and the project of critique. Even if we grant the formal similarity of the project effacing up to indifference generated by the appropriation of philosophy by its non-philosophical rivals by way of an interrogation of how philosophy generates indifference within itself, this would appear to be only one side of the equation. Two related questions emerge: 'what do we make of the almost complete absence of critique in Deleuze and Guattari's text?' and 'how should we understand the debt or not that Deleuze and Guattari incur in relation to the critical project inaugurated by Kant?'.

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In response to the first of these questions we must note that the 'almost complete absence of the idea of critique' in What is Philosophy? is not a complete absence. There are some infrequent but telling moments when the idea appears, though these moments are not amenable to straightforward interpretation, nor necessarily congruent with each other. The first appearance of an idea of critique is during the discussion in the Introduction regarding philosophy and its contemporary rivals in the communication industries. As already noted, Deleuze and Guattari are pitting their account of philosophy against the 'shameful moment' when 'all the disciplines of communication seized hold of the word concept itself and said "This is our concern, we are the creative ones, we are the ideas men! We are the friends of the concept, we put it in our computers" '. They add, 'Philosophy has not remained unaffected by this general movement that replaced Critique with sales promotion.' There is clearly a relation at work here between the idea of philosophy and that of'Critique', a relation suggestive of a lament aimed at reminding the reader of the inherently critical function of philosophy as against the strategic function of philosophy as a tool in the service of contemporary capitalism. That said, it is hardly a relationship that forges a connection between Deleuze and Guattari's constructivism and the Kantian idea of critique as the overcoming of indifference. Indeed, the capitalization of the word 'Critique' presents it as a school, or moment, within philosophy that is not coextensive with philosophy itself. This reading is supported by the fact that the sentence constructs a relation of externality between philosophy and Critique, such that philosophy has been affected by the replacement of Critique with sales promotion, rather than being transformed in itself as a result of this process. Another passing reference to the relationship between philosophy and critique at first sight seems equally unlikely to provide a link between Deleuze and Guattari's constructivism and Kant's critical project. In discussing Kant's relationship to Descartes they say: 'The fact that Kant "criticizes" Descartes means only that he sets up a plane and constructs a problem that could not be occupied or completed by the Cartesian cogito.' It is not the details of this claim that are important; that is, whether or not they are right in their assessment of the relation between Kant and Descartes. Rather, the importance resides in the inroads it gives us to the internal relationship between philosophical constructivism and critique. In particular, it is interesting to note that the quotation marks around 'criticizes' point to two interpretive

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possibilities. First, and surely this is the interpretation that is most in line with the tenor of the text, Deleuze and Guattari are claiming that philosophy is not to be confused with criticism, or critique, at least not as commonly conceived. In particular, the history of philosophy should not be seen as the progression of ideas through critique toward the possibility at least, if not the actuality, of an adequate representation of the world through philosophical investigation. There is, in other words, a challenge to the idea that philosophy is a progressive discipline, where the ideas of one philosopher are incorporated and criticized by the next in line with a general accumulation of philosophical knowledge and refinement of philosophical argumentation.98 This reading would seem to be supported by the following quote from Deleuze in conversation (although this conversation was three years before the publication of What is Philosophy? it is clear that it is the time that he and Guattari were working on producing that text): 'On the question of progress in philosophy, you have to say the sort of thing that Robbe-Grillet says about the novel: there's no point at all doing philosophy the way Plato did, not because we've superseded Plato but because you can't supersede Plato.' However, we must be careful of leaping from this to the claim that Deleuze and Guattari see philosophy as distinct from critique as there is a second interpretation of the initial quote regarding Kant's relationship to Descartes that is already implied within this first reading. Accepting that Kant created concepts that could not be thought within the ambit of Cartesian philosophy, we may say that Kant's relationship to Descartes is not criticism as it is usually understood. We may say that what is being highlighted by the quotation marks around 'criticizes' is an implicit distinction between common conceptions of criticism and a new alternative understanding of what is involved in one philosopher 'criticizing' another. If we remove the 'historicist' and 'progressivist' baggage that comes with the traditional conception of criticism we could plausibly say that Deleuze and Guattari are implying that Kant 'criticizes' Descartes precisely because he constructs a series of conceptual relations that could not be housed within the Cartesian system. On this reading, the activity of criticism properly understood is not that which involves exposing lacunae or inconsistencies, but that which completely surpasses that which is criticized by virtue of building a whole new house of concepts. Indeed, it would make sense at this point to introduce the distinction between criticism and critique that was developed in relation to Kant. We could say that those who merely criticize are the

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philosopher's interpreters and disciples - those who work on the fine-tuning of the philosopher's system - whereas those who critique a philosopher's work are themselves true philosophers by Deleuze and Guattari's definition; that is, they are creators of concepts. It would make sense to say, therefore, that Kant does not merely 'criticize' Descartes, while maintaining that he does nonetheless construct a profound critique of Cartesianism. This is clearly a reading against the grain of this particular moment in the text, but it is nonetheless supported by two other mentions of criticism in the text. First, and during an invective against philosophy as 'discussion', Deleuze and Guattari say that: To criticize is only to establish that a concept vanishes when it is thrust into a new milieu, losing some of its components, or acquiring others that transform it. But those who criticize without creating, those who are content to defend the vanished concept without being able to give it the forces it needs to return to life, are the plague of philosophy.: Second, and at the end of their discussion of conceptual personae, Deleuze and Guattari claim that: Criticism implies new concepts (of the thing criticized) just as much as the most positive creation . . . Nothing positive is done, nothing at all, in the domains of either criticism or history, when we are content to brandish ready-made old concepts like skeletons intended to intimidate any creation, without seeing that the ancient philosophers from whom we borrow them were already doing what we would like to prevent modern philosophers from doing: they were creating their concepts, and they were not happy just to clean and scrape bones like the critic and historian of our time. 101 In both cases, there is, at the very least, an implicit distinction between criticism as the uncreative practice of refining and defending a philosopher's claims and philosophy as the practice of creating new concepts, where this account of philosophy becomes commensurate with the notion of critique, as the attempt to overcome indifference to assumptions within that which is being criticized by creating new concepts (which inaugurate a plane of immanence by 'calling forth' conceptual personae). While the criticism/critique

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distinction is not explicitly formulated in their work, it is nonetheless operative. Indeed, the explicit formulation of that which resides implicitly within a philosophical project is precisely what Deleuze refers to when talking of how to do philosophy as the creation of concepts in regard to doing the history of philosophy: 'The history of philosophy, rather than repeating what a philosopher says, has to say what he must have taken for granted, what he didn't say but is nonetheless present in what he did say.' In this case, there is an idea of critique as the creation of concepts implicit in the apparently tangential remarks on criticism throughout the text; an idea of critique, that is, which is manifestly different from the idea of criticism and which can be said, therefore, to be an idea of critique aimed at overcoming the indifference that would result from mere criticism of a philosopher's conceptual system from a position assuming that system as a shared point of reference. Before moving on to the second question in regard to formulating Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy as in keeping with the tenor of the idea of critique developed through Kant and the analytic in the first section of this chapter, the parenthetical remark in the first sentence of the last quote cannot go unremarked. It is clearly misleading of Deleuze and Guattari to suggest that philosophy creates different concepts that refer to the same thing, given that their constructivism explicitly rules out such straightforward representationalism. It would be more correct, from a constructivist perspective, to say that philosophy posits that which it criticizes by way of'the most positive creation'; that is, the criticized must be constructed in the construction of the critique if it is to avoid becoming a site of indifference and if critique is to become pure. Without such a view, a view of the rhizomatic connection of philosophy to the world and vice-versa,103 philosophical constructivism would become thoroughly idealist by virtue of its representational assumption. As we shall also see in later sections, Deleuze and Guattari do not always maintain a consistently constructivist language, a consistent language of pure critique, such that some of their formulations imply the very indifference that constructivism can be said to overcome. All of which may be said to be stretching the interpretation too far when we may get more interpretive mileage out of assuming that Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy is resolutely a-critical; that is, resolutely unconcerned with developing a relation of immanence between critique and philosophy in order to overcome indifference within philosophy and misappropriations of philosophy in other walks of life. As noted in the

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Introduction, there is much in Deleuze and Guattari's work that would suggest reading it as concerned with pre-critical sources: a strong ontological orientation coupled with a complete lack of embarrassment in regard to questions of metaphysics (which amounts to the same thing). This line has been developed most persuasively by a contemporary of Deleuze and Guattari's, Alain Badiou, in his book Deleuze: The Clamour of Being. It is worth turning to a brief examination of the main theme of Badiou's reading so as to answer the second question raised above: 'how should we understand the debt or not that Deleuze and Guattari incur in relation to the critical project inaugurated by Kant?' Badiou's book is one of the most interesting recent developments in Deleuze scholarship. Without doubt it is a timely reminder of the need to untie Deleuze's philosophical project from the rather dense theoretical knots associated with what we may loosely call postmodern philosophy. Central to this task is a reinvigoration of the ontological commitment at the heart of Deleuze's work in place of an unthinking submersion of this commitment under a sea of slogans about 'philosophy without foundations', 'the end of philosophical grand narratives' or even 'the end of philosophy itself. Instead of Deleuze the deterritorializer of desire, Badiou presents Deleuze the philosopher of 'a renewed concept of the one' and, at this level, one can hardly refute the importance of his analysis. What is more problematic, however, is Badiou's rendering of Deleuze's ontological commitment as an 'involuntary Platonism'. Badiou's investigation of the central concepts that make up the Deleuzean universe is steered by his conviction that, despite Deleuze's efforts to 'overcome Platonism', he remained an anti-Platonist - trapped, therefore, in the Platonic world searching for the one idea of Being that would serve to express all of the modalities of Being. While the details of Badiou's critique offer a revealing, subtle and nuanced picture of Deleuzean philosophy — and, therefore, demand the kind of rejoinder that it is simply not possible to give at this juncture - I would like to comment on the general tenor of Badiou's interpretation with a view to elucidating the idea that Deleuze (and Guattari) can be read firmly within a post-Kantian domain, where post-Kantian means accepting the problem of the relationship between critique and indifference bequeathed by Kant. The emphasis that Badiou gives to Deleuze's approach to Plato gives the misleading impression that Deleuze and Guattari were pre-critical

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philosophers, by which I mean that Deleuze and Guattari are presented in a manner which ignores the Kantian revolution in critical philosophy. This impression of Badiou's interpretation is bolstered by the very few and scattered remarks throughout the book which distance Deleuze's work from Kantian and neo-Kantian philosophy. Of course, the omission of Kantian themes is justified by Badiou from no less a source than Deleuze himself: Badiou mentions that during their correspondence 'the epithet "neoKantian" was the crushing accusation that Deleuze most often tried to pin on me'. With this in mind, it would seem entirely legitimate to make statements of the kind we find earlier in the text: 'Deleuze's philosophy is in no way a critical philosophy' and 'we can state that Deleuze's philosophy, like my own ... is resolutely classical', where 'classicism' is defined as 'any philosophy that does not submit to the critical injunctions of Kant'.1 While it would be interpretive violence of the highest order to argue that Deleuze was substantively Kantian or neo-Kantian, this should not blind us to the post-Kantian nature of his philosophical project. It is in this sense that Nietzsche, for Deleuze, is the post-Kantian par excellence: 'Nietzsche's relation to Kant is like Marx's to Hegel: Nietzsche stands critique on its feet'; 'Nietzsche ... thinks that he has found the only possible principle of total critique in what he calls his "perspectivism" '; and finally, 'philosophy is at its most active as critique'.1 Without rehearsing the arguments of Nietzsche and Philosophy, and without dragging the discussion into an unsustainable trade in quotes from this or other works, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Deleuze on his own and with Guattari did indeed view his and their philosophical project in the light of a general post-Kantian critical milieu; while maintaining, nonetheless, a critical distance from Kant on so many levels. To dismiss or downplay the critical dimension of the thought of Deleuze and Guattari is to virtually eradicate the idea that their work constitutes a critical intervention in the world. Situating their work within the terrain of critical philosophy serves to remind us of this dimension, a reminder that situates the 'renewed concept of the one' within the critical analysis of contemporary global capitalism and its myriad cultural formations expressed throughout Deleuze and Guattari's writings (both their individual and their collective works). How close are we to showing that Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy can be said to constitute a project that recognizes the problem of indifference and internalizes that problem in the account of

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philosophy that it inaugurates? It is clear that the evidence in support of a direct link between the Kantian problematic and their constructivism is largely circumstantial. This should not surprise us, of course, as the presence of any more direct forms of evidence would inevitably implicate Deleuze and Guattari in the problems that beset Kant's idea of critique. The task, after all, is to construct rather than merely reiterate a sense of connection between the critical philosophy of Kant and the constructivist account of philosophy in Deleuze and Guattari. Nonetheless, it should be clear that the grounds exist for continuing to develop the idea of philosophy as pure critique. The next step is to turn to the second of the basic questions that need to be addressed within this section: to what extent does the constructivist account of philosophy meet the general requirement of pure critique — that of subtracting regimes of justification which harbour indifference? In this regard, the project of What is Philosophy? seems to meet the requirement of pure critique rather straightforwardly. It was noted above that for critique to become pure it must not be a tool in the service of justification, as that which justified critique would always stand above critique itself such that the justificatory dimension would be beyond the reach of critique and, therefore, it would serve to harbour indifference. In their constructivist account of philosophy, Deleuze and Guattari are equally concerned, though they never put it like this, with delimiting a pure conception of philosophy. A pure conception of philosophy is one which does not posit an extraneous element that conditions philosophical activity as such, one that would stand beyond the reach of philosophical inquiry itself. This is a perfectly adequate way of expressing their critique of idealism in philosophy; the critique of philosophies that posit an uncreated moment of contemplation, reflection or communication 'outside' philosophy itself. Philosophy as the creation of concepts expresses no such extraneous element and as such does not require justification by appeal to anything outside of itself. That said, we must take care when handling this movement beyond justification, both to avoid confusion and to clarify what is at stake in the relationship between pure philosophy (and pure critique) and questions of justification. The confusion could emerge with regard to the role of the nonphilosophical in Deleuze and Guattari's constructivism. It was noted above that the plane of immanence inaugurated by a concept constitutes the nonphilosophical within philosophy; the image that thought gives itself of what it means to think. Is it not the case that this nonphilosophical dimension

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constitutes a domain of justification within constructivism? On the contrary, the plane of immanence is that which emerges from within the creation of concepts, rather than that which precedes and predetermines that creativity itself. Plainly, philosophy itself is not justified by reference to it coming into an accord with that which thought 'just does' in reality. The plane of immanence inaugurated by the creation of concepts cannot be justified against the reality of thought because concept creation is constitutive of the different activities of thought itself. That thought is capable of contemplation, reflection and communication is not in doubt. What Deleuze and Guattari dispute, in their search for a philosophical understanding of philosophy itself, is that these modes of thought are preconceptual and therefore prephilosophical. Moreover, and as noted above, the idea of creation itself as that which thought just does is only sustainable on account of inaugurating a plane of immanence which is conceptless; that is, a plane of immanence in which the idea that the 'reality of thought is creativity' is itself ruled out. As we shall see in the next chapter when faced with the problem of creators and the need to address the problem of mediators, this pushes philosophical constructivism as pure critique to a thoroughly radicalized understanding of the critic. If pure philosophical constructivism has no place for justificatory regimes that serve to legitimate philosophy itself, this does not mean that justification has no place within philosophy. The justificatory question should not be, 'how do we justify philosophy?' but 'how is justification deployed within philosophy?' Clearly, justification is intimately connected to the activity of judgement and judgement is an important feature of philosophical discourse. But judgement only ever occurs within philosophy after concepts have been created which facilitate the judgement. That Kant passed judgement on Descartes' philosophical endeavours is not in dispute, for example, but it should be equally beyond dispute that such judgements could only be formulated on account of conceptual innovations which inaugurated an image of what it means to think that transformed the Cartesian image of thought. Judgements and their justifications are only a part of philosophical discourse, they do not define philosophy in its purity. So far, then, we have established that Deleuze and Guattari's project in What is Philosophy? can be read as commensurate with the Kantian idea of critique as the overcoming of indifference within philosophy and that their account of philosophy meets the general requirement of pure critique as that mode of critique that severs the link with regimes of justification. The next

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step is to bring the terminology of pure critique and Deleuze and Guattari's constructivism into line with a view to establishing the identity between philosophy and pure critique; to establish, in other words, philosophy as pure critique. Pure critique is a constructivism. The criticized, the critic and the idea of critique itself must all be constructed within the critique if it is to fulfil the criteria of overcoming indifference such that it becomes pure. The pure critique of indifference is the construction of difference in this expanded sense. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy, we can say that critique without partiality must be creative. Generally speaking, it is only in the creation of an alternative to that which is being criticized that the territorial relationships that render critics complicit in that which they criticize are avoided. From the perspective of the concept, if one wants to be a pure critic of democracy, then the task is to construct a conceptual alternative to democracy rather than an alternative concept of democracy. One could say that Marx's construction of communism functioned in this way: the idea of democracy was criticized by first constructing the alternative of communism such that the question of communism's democratic credentials becomes moot. Equally, though, it is clear that discussions of communism often amount to claiming that communism is the true version or telos of democracy, such that the conceptual alternative may still be said to reside on the same general democratic and normative terrain. This reminds us that the pure critique of democracy must be explicit about the creation of a new terrain of inquiry as well as the creation of a new concept on the same terrain as that which is being criticized. But drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's account of philosophy we can see that each creation of a new concept already presupposes the inauguration of a plane immanent to the concept. In this way we may distinguish the democratic appropriation of the communist alternative, for example, from the plane immanent to communism itself. One might say, to continue the example, that the terrain of rights and duties has been transformed into a terrain defined by production and questions of human alienation. The problem is that philosophy often stops at the level of the concept and the plane. In seeking to map out new territories for thought, philosophers often cease the activity of critique by assuming that their own particular

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account of the plane immanent to the concept is adequate to THE plane of immanence itself. If we follow Deleuze and Guattari in saying that the plane instituted by the concept one constructs as a critical alternative cannot coincide with THE plane of immanence, that which is immanent only to itself, then pure critique must take the role of the conceptual persona seriously. Recalling that the conceptual persona is that which resides between concept and plane, it is precisely this idea of perspective or territory that serves to problematize the relationship between one's conceptual innovations and that which is assumed by such innovations. This is truly the point at which the constructivist account of philosophy becomes pure critique because it problematizes its own conditionality. Maintaining the distance between concept and plane by viewing the critique itself as a territory of that which is immanent only to itself means that the creation of alternatives does not surreptitiously reintroduce assumptions shared with that which is being critiqued. The territorial relationships that mark out the nature of partial and total criticism are avoided through the activity of staking out a territory immanent to the concept and the plane that is created: this is not a different territory on a plane shared by that which is criticized but a territory specific to the new plane inaugurated by the conceptual alternative one has created. Philosophy as pure critique is the construction of alternatives in this full sense: creating concepts which stake out a plane immanent to the concept that is irreducible to the concept one has created by virtue of a perspectival relationship between concept and plane. Critique becomes pure, in other words, by not assuming as given the concept of critique that one is deploying, the 'world' that one is criticizing, and 'the critic' that constructs the concepts in the first place. Clarification of this identification of Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy with the idea of pure critique is certainly required. The main aim of the next chapter is to face head-on certain problems that emerge from within this moment of identification. In preparation for this discussion, however, it is useful to address some prima facie objections to this idea of philosophy as pure critique, objections that all circle around the lingering suspicion that identifying philosophy as pure critique in this way does not adequately account for the nature of critical activity outside the academies. So first of all we need to face this objection in its generality: namely, that the idea of philosophy as pure critique may be all very well for philosophers thinking about how they criticize each other, but it does little to

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account for the activity of criticism in the world. The ethereal nature of academic philosophy may sanction conceptual innovation for its own sake, but criticism of forces within the world rather than of other philosophers surely demands more than the creation of conceptual alternatives; in particular it would seem to require that we first and foremost challenge that which oppresses us. This demand is cached out as the idea that critique is always a process of determination and of negation before it is a process of construction. The assumption is that the critic must first determine that which exists, then negate its existence through criticism and only then engage in the production of an alternative to that which has been critiqued: 'Know your enemy! Resist your enemy! Create a society of friends!' From the perspective of pure critique, however, the first two steps of this process make the third impossible; at least they make it impossible if one is conceiving of the 'new society of friends' as something radically different from that which one is criticizing. In determining and negating (we may bring the two elements together under the idea of'resisting'), the critic has already become implicated in the assumptions of the criticized, such that the critic will always remain indifferent to elements within the criticized that the critic hoped to critique. These elements beyond the reach of critique will always infect the creative process with the diseases of the 'old society'. As regards pure critique, the more apt slogan is simply, 'Create!' To resist is to be against something, to be against something is to assume that 'thing' as given, to assume some 'thing' as given within the act of critique is to harbour indifference within the critique and, therefore, to secure the impurity of one's critique in a way that will always sustain the possibility of a justified critique of one's own critique. The result is a critical impasse rather than a revolutionary creation of the new society. A true revolution is only possible on the basis of a critique that prioritizes creation over resistance, on the basis of pure critique. Simply stating the difference in approach between critique-as-resistance and critique-as-creation, however, will hardly suffice to rid pure critique of the image that it is a form of critical game played by philosophers amongst themselves. What is required in order for pure critique to eschew any reliance on determinate negation as its modus operandi is a development of the positive features of critical practice that pure critique brings forth. The test is to show how a rejection of determinate negation as the core of critique does not mean that pure critique is condemned to a form of indeterminate critique. Although there will be more to say on this in the next chapter, we can begin

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by examining the implications of pure critique in three ways (broadly corresponding to the nature of pure critique vis-a-vis the concept, the plane and the persona). First, pure critique is not a form of academic quietism. Second, pure critique is always practically oriented. Third, pure critique is always 'brought to life' by a. pragmatic assessment of the present milieu. After expanding upon each of these features, the next chapter will dwell in more detail on some problems associated with each of these clarifications, after an initial response to the problematic relationship between ideas and concepts at the very heart of the idea of pure critique. The first clarification draws directly upon the previous discussion. One of the claims derived from constructivism is that it is not possible to be genuinely critical of a particular concept (or set of concepts) unless one first creates a concept (or set of concepts) as an alternative. Critique is primarily a creative act. Interesting and challenging critique, Habermas's version of critical theory for example, always arises from the creation of a new terrain of thought. In itself this is hardly something that Habermas, or other conceptual innovators, would deny or worry about. The more challenging claim is that one can transform critique mtopure critique by fully articulating the ramifications of the constructivism that underpins one's own conceptual innovation. Recalling the arguments discussed above, this demands that one must keep the concept, the plane of immanence and the conceptual persona as distanced and distinct as possible. Taking the previous example, the problem with Habermas's critical theory, from a constructivist perspective, is that it blurs the critical concepts it creates (say, discourse ethics) with the plane of immanence it institutes (the lifeworld of undistorted communicative encounters) because the conceptual persona that 'brings it to life' embodies the properties of both (the perspective of the rational and moral interlocutor is thereby privileged over other perspectives). As a result, Habermas's idea of criticism does not avoid transcendentalism to the extent that it confuses the perspective it brings to thought with that which thought 'just does'. Following Deleuze and Guattari, critique is always creative but pure critique is always constructivist; that is, it maintains a position of immanence by recognizing the constructedness of its own perspective. As noted, a legitimate response to this picture of pure critique is that it seems to reduce critique to the academic activity of 'out-creating' one's theoretical rivals, rather than giving it a role in actually calling to account 'realworld' institutions and norms. Using Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist

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account of philosophy as the embodiment of pure critique may appear to have side-lined the rhizomatic engagement of their earlier texts for a philosophy that seeks a role independent from the world in which it operates.l1 If this is the case, then the idea of pure critique inspired by constructivism would seem to be emasculated by a lack of practical bite. Such criticisms, while understandable in view of Deleuze and Guattari's complex reworking of the philosophical tradition, do not stand up to much scrutiny. The whole thrust of What is Philosophy? is the critique of those who seek to halt the creation of concepts in all walks of life. For example, constructivism is readily equipped with the necessary conceptual armoury to critique a fascist way of life. The fascist is clearly a practitioner of a singularly 'bad' kind of political philosophy - because fascism endows certain conceptions of race, nationality and so on with a highly transcendental quality - and can be coherently undermined as a mode of philosophical idealism using the tools of philosophy as pure critique. Less dramatically, pure critique is equally equipped with the means to critique homophobia, sexism, ageism, commercialism and many other 'pathologies of modernity', on the same grounds. In What is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari save some of their bitterest attacks for the ways in which concepts have been harnessed to the service of sales promotion: 'an absolute disaster for thought whatever its benefits might be, of course, from the viewpoint of universal capitalism'. In short, wherever and whenever concepts are used in 'the social and political world' (though this phrase itself is not beyond scrutiny, as we shall see) there is the possibility of a constructivist intervention, of a pure critique. Far from creating a hierarchical role for 'academic' critics, pure critique does not distinguish between the use of concepts in an 'academic' context and the use of concepts in an 'everyday' social context. There is nothing to stop the purveyor of pure critique from pronouncing on the use of concepts in all realms of life and urging upon people the 'good' use of concepts. There is no link, in other words, between pure critique and quietism. This idea can be expressed in a slightly different form. The practical nature of pure critique is not only about 'professional' philosophers pronouncing upon the conceptual matters of everyday life. In attempting to salvage philosophy from the ravages of modern capitalism, Deleuze and Guattari are not defending academic 'ivory towers' as the only haven of critical thought. Quite the reverse, they are defending 'good' philosophy (as that which engages in the creation of concepts and which maintains their created

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status) wherever it appears. Such conceptual innovation, they recognize, is often stultified by the disciplinary constraints imposed by the academy. As they put it in the Introduction to What is Philosophy?, 'the philosopher is the concept's friend' whether she is in the academy or not. This implies a 'levelling' of philosophy where everybody who constructs concepts is a philosopher and, therefore, may also be a 'good' philosopher: 'so long as there is a time and a place for creating concepts, the operation that undertakes this will be called philosophy, or will be indistinguishable from philosophy even if it is called something else'. An example of a 'good' philosopher in a non-academic context would be the nomads who, in refusing the sedentary thought of the state, create new ways of living, new concepts. Equally though, the nomadic lifestyle itself may become sedimented into a regime of thought that could be just as stultifying as the state-thought it sought initially to oppose, but which it now resembles (the injunction, 'We must all be nomads!' is an example of state-thought to the extent that it circumscribes the creation of concepts). For Deleuze and Guattari, therefore, one must always approach concept creation pragmatically, not dogmatically. Pure critique is always aware of its context and always ready to be on the move. This leads on to the third clarification of pure critique, namely that it involves a pragmatic approach to the present. Given that pure critique recognizes its own perspectival character, it must always be aware of the perspective-dependent nature of the forms of critical knowledge it generates and must,, therefore, use as its 'starting point' its embeddedness within a given perspective. We can explore what this entails vis-a-vis the normative dimension of social criticism through a pure critique of the debates surrounding 'the right and the good'. From the perspective of pure critique, the neo-Kantian concern with the priority of the right over the good emerges from a legitimate suspicion of traditional moral ontologies. Both the pure critic and the neo-Kantian can agree that there are very real dangers in affirming conceptions of the good over the right - in particular, the danger that marginal groups in society will be (at least) under-represented, or (at worst) actively excluded. To favour any particular 'comprehensive doctrine' - no matter how thin - is indeed an untenable position in light of the 'reasonable differences' over the legitimacy of such doctrines that characterize modern societies. However, pure critique retains a strong sense of sympathy with the communitarian critique of neoKantianism. The idea that neo-Kantianism invokes an impoverished sense of

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what it means to be a human agent; the idea that neo-Kantianism does not address the 'background understandings' that generate moral decisions; the idea that neo-Kantianism has insufficiently interrogated 'the good'; all of these must strike the pure critic as serious problems for neo-Kantianism. Pure critics and communitarians alike remain unconvinced that neo-Kantianism can realize the task it sets itself - the rational justification of moral norms that do not give priority to one particular version of the 'good-life'. Where neo-Kantianism accuses the communitarians of being wedded to oldfashioned ontologies and untenable teleologies, the communitarians accuse the neo-Kantians of surreptitiously advocating 'a comprehensive doctrine' of their own (without admitting it). From the perspective of pure critique it is possible to agree with both, though on grounds that neither would accept. As argued above, the pure critic is not suspicious of ontology tout court, though she is suspicious of the kind of troubling moral ontologies found in many communitarian accounts; Taylor's realist meta-ethics, for example, imbues the plane of immanence with a moral dimension that circumscribes the plane as immanent to conceptions of 'the good'. Nor is pure critique suspicious of practical reason tout court. In the neo-Kantian affirmation of a 'critical society' that actively encourages difference to flourish, there is a 'critical ethic' that is very dear to pure critique. However, as Hardt has put it, 'the principal fault of the Kantian critique is that of transcendental philosophy itself... Kant's discovery of a domain beyond the sensible is the creation of a region outside the bounds of the critique that effectively functions as a refuge against critical forces, as a limitation on critical powers.' For the pure critic, it is not a matter of prioritizing either the right or the good in all cases, rather it is a matter of prioritizing that which will allow critique, that is, creative activity, to flourish. In any particular case this may require prioritizing either the right or the good, but in general it is a matter of conviction for the constructivist that it would be impossible to cover all possible cases with either approach (given the perspectival nature of philosophical knowledge). There is no problem for the pure critic in pragmatically supporting the cause of practical reason in, say, a community where the dominance of one particular world-view is stultifying creative thought. Nor is there any problem for the pure critic in pragmatically supporting the cause of deeply embedded social goods where these are being quashed by the demands of political correctness. Pure critique is neither for the right nor for the good, but is aware of how the right and the good may be mobilized in any

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particular situation in the service of creative alternatives to dominant modes of thought. Equally, therefore, the pure critic is aware that talking in terms of the right and the good may itself suppress the potential for creative thought. If this is the case, then the pure critic will look elsewhere for an opening that will allow critique to develop. Indeed, if we accept Deleuze and Guattari's account of the disempowering pervasiveness of normative discourses in modern Western societies, then we would expect to have to look elsewhere. Contrary to the picture painted by Land, however, the pragmatic use of normative discourses may well be the most effective way of initiating a critical environment. In short, the pure critic is neither a neo-Kantian nor a communitarian (though she may occasionally have the same objective as one or other or both) but is first and foremost a conceptual innovator who pragmatically pursues her innovations to see what potential they have (in the language of^l Thousand Plateaus, the nomad philosopher follows the 'lines of flight' and charts the dangers along these lines). Pure critique is the toolbox out of which any number of useful conceptual tools (some well known, others not) may emerge to enable a critical perspective on the present milieu. As Foucault found out in his genealogies, changing one's topic of inquiry required changing theoretical tools to enable a critical perspective to emerge. Above all, while the constructivist is unflinching when it comes to defining what counts as critique, she is thoroughly pragmatic when it comes to defining that which engenders the possibility of pure critique. Is it not this pragmatism, this intellectual rummaging through the bags of others, that leads to the charge of normative confusion? If we take normative confusion to be the surreptitious use of norms whilst claiming a nonnormative approach, then this criticism is misplaced. Having clarified the nature of pure critique we can now see that the charge of normative confusion itself confuses different analytical levels within the idea of pure critique. The conceptual relationship between critique and creativity is based on a series of ontological presuppositions regarding the nature of thought (as discussed above) and entails a non-normative account of what it means to engage in critique. At this level, the level of what the concept 'pure critique' institutes as a plane of immanence (that which critical thought 'just does'), there is no concession to a normative approach. It is imperative, therefore, that conceptual innovation is not thought of as a 'good' in itself. Constructivism asserts that all pure critique is first and foremost creative and this has no bearing on whether or not that which is created is 'a good thing'.

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Evaluation, as the act of judging novel concepts or ways of life against a preestablished moral framework, is not an act of critique. If by normative confusion we mean the use of different critical tools, including normative ones, in different situations then the criticism is appropriate but hardly damaging. For the constructivist, it is wholly appropriate to be 'confused' on this level given that the ontological account of pure critique implies a perspectival and therefore pragmatic practice of critique (given the impossibility of creating an idea of critique that is wholly co-extensive with the plane that it institutes). The practical engagement of the pure critic, therefore, consists in both an analysis of the present milieu and, on the basis of this analysis, a pragmatic appropriation of the means by which thought may become creative within that milieu. Such practical engagement is distinct from the ontological status of pure critique in a manner directly analogous to the distinction between the concept-plane conjunction and the conceptual persona; the logic of practice must be understood on its own terms. For the pure critic, therefore, the confusion arises when one perspective, the normative, is posited as the representative of a multitude of critical possibilities. Pure critique is immanent, practical and pragmatic. It has a wide remit, a horizontalizing analytical thrust, yet no normative imperative which says, 'we ought to strive towards a radically horizontal society' (whatever that could mean, other than a complete dissolution of the social). If the pure critic were found to be proselytizing in favour of this or any other moral imperative, then she certainly would be in a state of conceptual and normative confusion. However, there is nothing inherent in the idea of pure critique that entails this position.

CONCLUSION The previous chapter established that Kant failed to eliminate indifference from within his critical philosophy and thereby failed the test of critique that he had set himself. This provided the bare bones of the idea of pure critique: an idea of critique that is adequate to itself. In other words, pure critique is an idea of critique that does not reinstate indifference within itself. The opening section of the chapter developed this point from the perspective of a general analytic of criticism and critique. The upshot of this discussion was that pure critique to be adequate to the idea of critique and to oust all residues of indifference from within itself must be a mode of critique that

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does not subordinate itself to regimes of justification. In particular, critique becomes pure by not justifying itself against predetermined conceptions of the criticized, the nature of critique and the critic. This raised the stakes of the discussion by virtue of calling forth a conception of philosophy itself that could articulate the relationship between 'world', 'concept' and 'philosopher' without presupposing any of these as given. The constructivist account of philosophy outlined by Deleuze and Guattari was shown to be just such an account of philosophy. In the third section, the links between the idea of pure critique and philosophical constructivism were established (as firmly as possible, given the obvious dissonances between the Kantian and the DeleuzoGuattarian projects) with a view to fleshing out the negative features of pure critique identified in Chapter One and the first section of this chapter. To this end, pure critique can be said to be identical with philosophy (as the creation of concepts). The closing discussions took on board the possibility that identifying philosophy as pure critique in this way could be said to constitute a very academic, ivory tower definition of the activity of critique. In response, however, it was shown that such a view of philosophy as pure critique rests on a number of misconceptions regarding the idea of philosophy as outlined by Deleuze and Guattari. Once these misconceptions are dealt with, pure critique can be shown to avoid academic quietism, to be practically oriented and pragmatically grounded in the present. That said, there are a number of key assumptions at work that need to be brought to the surface if the idea itself is to become a worthy response to the test set by Kant. The next chapter addresses these assumptions by formulating problems that demand clarification of the idea of pure critique.

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CHAPTER THREE

Four Problems with Pure Critique

INTRODUCTION It might seem odd to structure a chapter aimed at clarifying the idea of pure critique around the notion of problems. This strategy has a number of different purposes, though, that warrant the approach. First, highlighting certain problems is a useful way of making the assumptions guiding the idea of pure critique accessible. Second, by responding to problems one can anticipate some of the critical remarks that are likely to flow from an engagement with the idea of pure critique. Third, and most importantly, the idea of pure critique is inherently problematic and it is important to show how this is a necessary constitutive dimension, rather than a disabling feature of the idea itself. It is this superficially paradoxical claim that will be the point of departure by way of an examination of the potential difficulties involved in using the term 'idea' in relation to pure critique.

PROBLEM ONE: THE PROBLEM WITH IDEAS As an idea, pure critique is essentially problematic. It is essentially problematic, however, because it is an idea. Ideas and problems are co-extensive: the idea of pure critique is co-extensive with the problem of forming an idea of critique adequate to the task of being equal to the critique becoming within itself. There are two different senses in which the idea of pure critique is potentially problematic. In fact, these two different senses are intimately related: but it is as well to begin by separating them out for the sake of clarity. First, by using Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy as the means by which a positive definition of pure critique was achieved, there may be said to be an elision at work between their use of 'the concept' and the phrase which provides the title and guiding thread of this book, namely the idea of pure

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critique. Is there a worrying obfuscation between these two terms that hides a more fundamental problem? Second, we may say that the more fundamental problem that this interpretive slippage hides is as follows: in talking of the idea of pure critique as an idea of critique worthy of the idea itself there may seem to be an attempt to fix the notion of pure critique in a hard and fast manner in a way that the more cautious notion of 'philosophy as the creation of concepts' does not. By talking of the idea, are we surreptitiously evading the constructed nature of the concept of pure critique itself, positing it as uncreated in a way that would violate the general requirement of pure critique; namely, that it precisely avoids argumentative regimes that rely on an uncreated dimension to justify the manoeuvres being made? Surely the point of Deleuze and Guattari's constructivism is precisely not to define philosophy as the realm of ideas, where ideas may be said to have residues of the Platonic Idea as an object to be contemplated beyond the heterogeneity of the actual world? Does it make sense to talk of an idea of pure critique when the very notion of idea itself may be said to harbour certain given assumptions about the nature of critique (and philosophy in general), assumptions that would become the safe-haven for indifference and thereby violate the project of critique? Minimally, the first of these problems is a problem of interpretation. As such, it is important to specify the legitimacy of using the notion of idea in a Deleuzo-Guattarian context and then to specify the use that is being made of the notion 'idea' in the context of the development of pure critique. As regards the legitimate deployment of this term within a constructivist context, the response to the problem is rather straightforward. Indeed, it follows the same lines as the discussion of 'purity' in the Preface. There is nothing inherently anti-Deleuzo-Gauttarian in using the terminology of ideas; to think this would be to ignore the productive use the notion of idea has in their work, in a variety of different contexts. One example from Deleuze should suffice to make the general point. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze engages in a discussion of difference that 'demands its own Idea' in contrast to those philosophers of difference - he mentions in this text Aristotle, Leibniz and Hegel - who are content to think of difference 'as already mediated by a representation'. What is crucial, of course, is that Deleuze does not merely assume a certain notion of idea: rather, he uses the terminology of Ideas to specify exactly what an idea of difference requires, thereby differentiating an idea of difference from other notions of the Idea (say, Platonic and dialectical). To some extent, in the English translation, this distinction


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between classical conceptions of the Idea and Deleuze's own development of an idea of difference is signalled by the lack of capitalization. That said, such terminological devices are purely secondary to the actual task of making the distinction; one cannot bring a new concept into existence by a process of capitalization or decapitalization. All of which reminds us that the content of the Idea is not a given in philosophy, rather it is a content that needs to be constructed with each use that is made of it, a project that we shall turn to in a moment. Generally speaking, it is peculiarly uncritical to simply see a term like idea and assume that it brings a certain baggage with it; the point is to understand its use in a particular context rather than override that context with generalized assumptions about its deployment. In What is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari do indeed maintain a distance between Ideas (used in an almost exclusively Platonic sense) and concepts — such that they characterize 'the Ideas as philosophical concepts', as constructions rather than as objective givens of thought. But, on the basis of the discussion in Difference and Repetition and on grounds internal to the notion of philosophy as the creation of concepts, there is nothing inherently problematic in using the term idea in relation to pure critique so as long as it is constructed in a manner which does not violate the basic premise of pure critique itself; that is, as a mode of critique beyond regimes of justification. The task, which we shall now embark upon, is to outline that construction as fully as possible so as to avoid this confusion. What is the relation between ideas and concepts that is being assumed in the idea of pure critique as identified with philosophy as the creation of concepts? Initially, the assumption can be spelled out quite quickly. The term idea is being used to denote the way in which the concept, plane of immanence and the conceptual persona are related to each other. To talk of the concept of pure critique could obscure those other dimensions, dimensions that are absolutely crucial in maintaining philosophy as pure critique beyond regimes of justification. Of course, at one level, this is an unnecessary terminological addition to philosophical constructivism, on the grounds that the creation of concepts when properly understood already implies those other dimensions and a relation between them that evades justifying philosophy against anything other than its own creativity. That said, the notion of idea can help to keep in view the key issue, that each of these three dimensions of philosophical constructivism must be perpetually distanced from each other so as to avoid one dimension assuming a justificatory role over and above the other

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dimensions. This assumes that we must have an idea of the idea that is being used in philosophy as pure critique, and this must be made explicit - so as to avoid the tendency of thinking about the idea in the idea of pure critique as corrosive of pure critique itself. What is required at this point, therefore, is a discussion of ideas in general. When one inquires about the nature of ideas one immediately faces a problem; how can one have an idea of ideas? But the problematic nature of such an inquiry gives the clue to how it can be overcome. Ideas have a mutually constitutive relation to problems, precisely because of the problem of finding an idea of ideas. We can understand the nature of ideas, therefore, by understanding how they relate to problems (whatever the problem, although ultimately the essential problem is always one of relating ideas to themselves). An investigation of ideas, then, requires an investigation of how ideas are generated in response to problems and how problems are generated in response to ideas. Of course, this is no straightforward matter. The history of philosophy is littered with attempts to cast this relationship between ideas and problems in the toughest metal, so as to avoid the corrosive powers of trying to generate an idea of ideas. Five such attempts - those that are the most dominant and the most revealing as regards the task in hand - will be outlined below. In each case the relationship between ideas and problems will be associated with a conceptual persona proper to the relationship that illuminates the nature of philosophical activity implicit within the account. In addition, the problem of the political will be used as a way of indicating the nature of the idea at work in each account, an example which also serves to remind us of what is at stake vis-a-vis the idea of pure critique as more than academic quietism. The five conceptions of the relationship between ideas and problems: 1. The problem is a poorly comprehended idea. On this account of the relationship between problems and ideas, we might say that the problem of the political is a result of a failure to comprehend fully the nature of the political. The task of the philosopher in this instance is to reveal the true nature of politics such that, for example, politics is thought to be essentially the pursuit of justice. The philosopher, in other words, has a certain artistic role in that she helps us to comprehend the object, in this case 'polities', for what it really is. The persona associated with this conception of the relationship between ideas and problems is the artist.

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2. The problem circumscribes the idea. On this account, there is not a failure of comprehension but a failure to state the problem correctly. One should not assume, therefore, that there is a nature of the political to be revealed. Instead, it is assumed that one can state the problem of the political in such a way that the boundaries of what might count as the political are properly demarcated. This leaves the nature of the political in a state of suspension and shifts the interrogative focus on to an analysis of the problem itself. The philosopher's role in this case is less that of the artist and more that of the artisan who helps to craft whatever idea we have of the political into a form appropriate to the problem of the political. The artisan, we might say, is less concerned with the nature of justice than with the right way to deal with competing conceptions of the nature of justice (or in a more contemporary vein, much recent political philosophy has come to define justice as that which mediates between competing conceptions of the good). Both of these approaches assume that there is a timelessness about the relationship between problems and ideas. This is problematic to the extent that one takes as given the changing nature of problems, such that, for example, the political is thought to be a different problem at different historical moments (and, we must add, in different contexts). This gives rise to a strategy of making the problem of the political itself problematic. This strategy typically takes two forms, one which salvages the idea's relation to the problem and one which sets the idea adrift from the logic of the problem: 3. The problem is made problematic so as to pursue the logic of changing ideas. On this account the problem of the political can only be stated correctly if it is seen to be a problem that changes over time. In other words, there is no one way to circumscribe the political as a problem but a series of different ways which are then placed in relation to each other. The relationship between the idea and the problem is salvaged to the extent that one has an idea of the ways in which problems change. The philosopher in this case is not the artisan who crafts our idea of the political into an appropriate form but an architect who builds the different conceptions of the political problem into a larger theoretical system, that is, one who harmonizes the competing problems of the political into an idea of how the political may reveal itself by virtue of being placed in relation to other problems. 4. Problems and ideas are incommensurate. On this account, the historicity, and contextuality, of problems is seen to rupture any connection they

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might be said to have with ideas. The problem of the political, for instance, has no architectural resolution and this lack of resolution functions as the condition of the political itself. The political is defined by its very problematic quality and the world of ideas about the political is thought to be the very definition of the a-political. Typically this account of the relationship is used to undermine all the previous accounts by dissolving them into variants of the first conception (that problems are poorly comprehended ideas). It nonetheless resonates with this very strategy to the extent that it depends upon an idea of the political as essentially problematic. One might say, therefore, that the philosopher in this instance, in trying so hard to distance herself from her role as artist, ends up playing the role of artiste; where the artiste is the mock artist, the one that assumes the garb of the artist in an attempt to lay bare the pretensions of the artist. In summary, on the side of the idea we have the Platonic (1) drive to comprehend the ideal essence of problems and the dialectical drive (3) to unravel the idea in time through problems. On the side of the problem we have the modern, typically Kantian (2), drive to circumscribe the idea and the postmodern (4) drive to unhook the world of ideas from the world of problems. At this point one might be tempted to say that the logic of the relationship between problems and ideas has been exhausted. As such we may feel in the position of having to choose one of these options as that which provides the clue to the meaning of'the idea' in the idea of pure critique. However, before giving way to this temptation it is worth inquiring further into the nature of this exhaustion. The solutions given to the relationship between problems and ideas are only ever partial solutions because they are predetermined by the way in which one constructs the relationship in the first place. On the side of the idea, both Platonic and dialectical conceptions assume that the idea itself is a given that predetermines the problem in relation to the given nature of ideas. On the side of the problem, the reverse is the case; both Kantian and postmodern conceptions assume the given-ness of the problematic field of inquiry in a way which predetermines the nature of the idea. In both cases the relationship established between problem and idea is only ever partial because it rests on a given content that structures and predetermines the relationship itself. Neither the idea nor the problem are properly constituted as internally related to each other because of the need to invoke an external determination of that

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relationship. In the language of Deleuze and Guattari, the relationship that is created between idea and problem is ultimately one of identity because there is an uncreated presupposed within it. The result is that the relationship collapses and the idea and the problem are revealed as different aspects of the primordial unity of the uncreated that inhabits them. Indeed, because of this, it is often thought that philosophy hits rock bottom and the analytical spade is forced to turn back on itself. The theoretical exhaustion arises, therefore, as a result of pursuing either the impossible resolution of the essentially problematic or the impossible problematization of the essentially ideal. It is tempting to think, therefore, that one should make one's metaphysical choice and get on with the business of philosophy from whatever ground one has chosen. But, to the extent that this strategy is itself a resolution, one which is conditioned by a certain view of philosophy's relationship to the metaphysical (of the problem to the idea), the exhaustion that accompanies the initial conundrums will never be overcome. Perhaps this is why so much of contemporary philosophy lacks vitality; every intake of air serves to remind it of the exhausted state of its lungs. Translating this into the realm of the political, it is sometimes said that one must plant one's feet in ideological soil in order to even enter the political arena. In other words, it is the very pursuit of an idea of the political in response to that which is perceived as the problem that generates the need for the concept of ideology or, putting it more strongly, the impossibility of escaping the ideological. This is problematic, however, to the extent that it treats the problem of the political as already given in the idea of the ideological: a relationship that can be played out in any of the four ways already outlined. At this point the metaphysical circles in which we are caught seem to take a distinctively vicious turn. And, for all that an increasing number of social and political theorists are trying to construct a 'polities' out of these disabling conundrums - witness the growing interest in 'the decision' as the formative moment of politics — a more promising route can be taken by following through another way of conceiving the relationship between problems and ideas. This leads to the fifth option. 5. Problems and ideas are co-extensive. We can say that on this account the problem of the political is that which expresses the idea of politics but that the idea of politics can only ever be expressed as a problem. The role of the philosopher on this account is two-fold. On the one hand, the philosopher

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must reveal the partiality that will always haunt any attempt to resolve the relationship between problems and ideas. One can make the same point by saying that the task of the philosopher is to unmask the artist, artisan, architect and artiste in order to expose the prejudicial gaze that the mask is there to hide. On the other hand, the philosopher must turn this negative critique into a positive affirmation by conceiving the problem as an idea. Here, one might say that the philosopher idealizes the problem to the extent that she recognizes the need to adopt a philosophical persona or mask. This seemingly contradictory gesture will flounder on the very same rocks as the other approaches ifone particular persona is idealized in competition with the others; that is, it will not escape the charge of predetermination - that one conceptualizes the relationship between ideas and problems only by determining that relationship prior to one's 'solution' of it - if it is seen to give priority to a partial determination of philosophical activity (if under the masks of the other conceptualizations one is said to find the true face of philosophy). Therefore, we should think of the philosopher on this account as the one who constantly restages the relationship between problems and ideas without privileging any particular version of that relationship. The persona appropriate to this account is that of the person who adopts personas, the actor. In other words, the philosopher must 'act out' the resolution between problem and idea each time the relationship is 'staged' anew. Or, turning this passive construction into a more active one, it is through the various 'actingsout' that the very nature of the relationship is staged each time. There is reason to believe that this is the least promising of all the options discussed so far. First, it may be said to dissolve the very distinction under scrutiny, the distinction between problems and ideas. Second, it appears to have compounded this by ignoring the conceptual benefits of historicizing the relationship between problems and ideas. Both of these criticisms, however, miss the point. First, the claim that ideas and problems are co-extensive does not dissolve the distinction between the terms, rather it makes the nature of that distinction relative to the event through which the distinction is 'acted out' or 'staged'. Political events, one might say, create a certain relationship between the problem and the idea of the political, such that they cannot be made subject to a predetermined sense of what constitutes the political in the first place. Second, the historicity of the relationship is to be found in the changing nature of events, rather than in a predetermined sense

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of what makes events change.129 The theatre of political events, one might say, is governed by the time of the 'eternal present', so long as one thinks of the present as that which lacks 'plenitude' and the eternal as that which lacks 'unity'. So the claim that ideas and problems co-exist does not imply that the relationship does not change: on the contrary, it raises the possibility of real change; that is, change freed from a predetermined logic of change. While recognizing that there is much more that could be said about the relationship between problems and ideas, it is important to address how this survey of that relationship helps to unpack 'the idea of pure critique'. In using this phrase, the term idea relates to the co-extensive relationship between ideas and problems just discussed. That is, the idea of pure critique takes the problem of pure critique — how to find an idea of critique adequate to itself — and idealizes it. Each problematic field that pure critique intervenes in is treated as an idealization of that field, rather than as a given problem outside of the idea itself. In conjunction, the idea of pure critique itself is defined as essentially problematic because every time the idea is raised it must be constructed differently. The idea of pure critique is never simply applied to a problematic field; it constitutes the field of problems proper to the idea itself whenever it is deployed. Critique becomes pure when a concept is created that institutes a plane immanent to itself from a position external to, and yet given by, concept and plane; which is to say, that pure critique constitutes the problem that it intervenes in from the position of a critic that is external to both (but which is only possible to define in terms of that relationship). The ideality of the idea of pure critique expresses these relationships of constitution, externality and mutuality.

PROBLEM TWO: THE PROBLEM WITH CREATORS AND MEDIATORS For all that the preceding elaboration of the idea of pure critique requires that the nature of the critic must not be constituted as a predetermined given situated outside of the construction of the critique itself, there may be a lingering suspicion that either certain unwarranted assumptions are being made in regard to the nature of the critic or that one ought to make certain assumptions about the critic (assumptions that would then bring the whole project of developing an idea of pure critique into question). The use of

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Deleuze and Guattari's term 'conceptual personae', it may be said, confuses rather than clarifies the idea of the critic within the idea of pure critique. In this section, this problem will be discussed around two related problems: the problem of critics as creators and the problem of critics as mediators. While it will become clear that there is no room for the idea of critic as creator, it will also become clear that the problem of mediators (as surreptitious creators) can be resolved by an adequate conception of mediators, one which divests mediators of the common-sense view of mediation. For all that we can construct Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy as an account of pure critique, we should not assume that the pure critic is a philosopher, at least not as traditionally defined. It is clear from What is Philosophy? that the philosopher is the creator of concepts but, as I have argued above, it is also clear that most who call themselves philosophers are not conceptual innovators. Deleuze and Guattari's constructivism is not a defence of'philosophers' — people paid to do philosophy - but of philosophy. In keeping with a strong current of post-Kantian critical theory, Deleuze and Guattari see philosophy as an activity co-extensive with activity in the world itself. Wherever that activity takes the form of conceptual innovation, philosophy occurs. What is crucial in thinking through such conceptual innovation in and of the world is that we conceive of conceptual innovation as a certain form of actual innovation in the world and vice-versa, to the point where the opposition itself crumbles. This may well be in the rooms of the academies but it may also be 'outside the acadamies', in 'the world' itself and of'the world' itself. So, their conception of the philosopher, a conception we have now transmuted into an image of the critic, is not that of the person who pronounces from on high to the masses below. In itself, this is nothing new. The point is that this conjunction of philosophy with the world bequeathed to post-Kantian philosophy a special problem regarding the nature of the critic. If the criticism of the world is coming in some sense from the world itself, how can we conceive of the role of the critic? Does the philosopher-critic in some sense represent the world's critique of itself? Is the philosopher-critic the harbinger of the world's autocritique? Is the role of the philosopher-critic that of bringing to consciousness the unconscious forces that must engage in the activity of criticism? Of course, there are many other options. From the perspective of pure critique, we must ask this: if pure critique demands making a difference in the sense of constructing whole-scale alternatives to the conceptual and actual

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frameworks within which we reside, then who or what is 'the maker of differences'? This question generates the problem of 'creators', the problem that paves the way for the problem of mediators. The 'problem of creators' is this: if we limit the idea of making a difference, of conceptual/actual innovation, by reference to the idea of a pre-given creator then we will create an impurity at the heart of critique. Specifically, the idea of the creator of difference, putting flesh on the bones of the pure critic, will always establish the critic as beyond the reach of critique itself. The result is that the purity of pure critique is threatened by the over-bearing incursion of one's assumed idea of what it means to be a critic. Recalling the general Kantian terrain that brings to life the idea of pure critique, the idea of the creator-critic would inevitably generate a safe-haven for indifference within the idea of pure critique itself. The task of fulfilling the Kantian project of overcoming indifference would inevitably fail. The only way out of this problem is to assume that pure critique must not be saddled with a pre-conceptual understanding of the critic as creator. So not only must pure critique do without a predetermined idea of that which is to be criticized, it must also do without the idea of the critic, at least in the sense of the critic as creator. Moreover, given the Deleuzo-Guattarian context that I've used to outline the idea of pure critique, it is worth dwelling on how this issue manifests itself in their work. Just as Badiou is surely right to disassociate Deleuze (and Guattari's) approach from those who espouse a naive deterritorialization of desire, we must add to this the idea that we should disassociate Deleuze and Guattari's work from the view that the various personas they deploy to inhabit the role of critic - the nomad, the schizophrenic and so forth - are in and of themselves the creators of difference. For example, it is tempting to put the nomad in the role of the proletariat, or some other agent of critical transformation, when reading Deleuze and Guattari. The problem is that it is then relatively easy to show how actual nomads are in fact deeply uncritical of the world around them; the interpretive aim of such a reading being, of course, to reveal a crucial flaw at the heart of Deleuze and Guattari's work. As a critique of the idea of pure critique, however, this is woefully inadequate. Deleuze's most insightful response to this very charge comes in his 'Letter to a Harsh Critic', a response to Michel Cressole's Deleuze (1973).1 T Reacting to the claim that he capitalizes on the experiences of 'gays, drugusers, alcoholics, masochists, lunatics and so on', he says: 'the question's

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nothing to do with the character of this or that exclusive group, it's to do with the transversal relations that ensure that any effects produced in some particular way (through homosexuality, drugs and so on) can always be produced by other means' The critical personas in Deleuze and Guattari must not be rendered as pre-conceptual 'givens' residing within their idea of critique. As we shall see, they must not be thought of as creators but as mediators. Before moving on to the problem of mediators, however, there is one more reading of Deleuze and Guattari that needs to be mentioned vis-a-vis the idea of pure critique. While most commentators now accept that the critical personas deployed by Deleuze and Guattari should not be read as preconceptual sources of critical creativity, there is still a tendency to smuggle a creator into the idea of pure critique, thus rendering it impure. This is done whenever we see a hint of the personification of life, or lines of flight, or becoming; a personification that renders these forces themselves as the critic within Deleuze and Guattari's work. The flip-side of this tendency is a source of concern for Hardt and Negri in Empire. After praising Deleuze and Guattari for 'a properly poststructuralist understanding of biopower that renews materialist thought and grounds itself solidly in the question of the production of social being', they go on to chastize Deleuze and Guattari on the grounds that they 'seem to be able to conceive positively only the tendencies toward continuous movement and absolute flows, and thus in their thought, too, the creative elements and the radical ontology of the production of the social remain insubstantial and impotent'.1 In contrast to those who accuse Deleuze and Guattari of reifying the persona they deploy in the service of criticism, these two related criticisms seem much closer to the mark. Deleuze and Guattari, on numerous occasions, do indeed seem either to personify life to the point of surreptitiously reintroducing a pre-conceptual creator into their idea of critique, or to de-personify the critic to the point of creating a sense of vacuity within their critical endeavours. For all that I would suggest that Deleuze and Guattari often lapse into these problematic conceptions of the critic, I would equally suggest that there are a number of different ways of utilizing their ideas to counter these misconceptions. As noted already, the arguments relating to conceptual personae in What is Philosophy? can be said to serve the function of warding off these concerns. But with a view to clarifying what is at stake in that discussion, it is worth examining the following quote from Deleuze, one that I think is central to the task of understanding Deleuze and Guattari's contribution to

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the idea of pure critique. He says, 'Mediators are fundamental. Creation's all about mediators. Without them nothing happens.' The claim that we can use to go beyond the troubling presentations of the critic in their work is now this: the critic is not the creator of differences, nor is the critic the creative power of life itself, rather the critic is the mediator of life's creative power1 and the differences it creates. But does this really help? Are we not tempted to ask, 'who are the mediators?' We may well be tempted but it is a temptation that we must resist (by first creating the problem differently). If we pose the question of mediators in this way then we will generate an answer that will take for granted the regression of the idea of a mediator to the idea of a creator. The problem of mediators, then, is how to avoid this slide from mediator to creator; a slide that, if allowed to happen, would entirely jeopardize the idea of pure critique by creating a safe-haven for indifference within the idea itself. The first response to this problem is to change the nature of the questions that we ask about mediators. Instead of trying to locate and fix who the mediators are, we can ask: 'what is the function of mediators?' and, 'what are the conditions necessary for the emergence of mediators?' Let me say, immediately, that changing the nature of the questions does not in itself avoid the problem of mediators becoming surreptitious creators. Even in these questions there is always the possibility of a regressive slide from mediator to creator. Nonetheless, we can make some progress with the idea of mediators, and hence with the idea of pure critique, if we ask these questions first (while always being aware of the problem lurking behind them). Turning to the function of mediators we must first admit a possible confusion, a confusion that resides in the terminological proximity of the ideas of mediators and mediations. This possible confusion comes to the fore if we ask this question regarding their function, 'do mediators mediate?' It is a question that must be answered with a resounding yes and no! The ambiguity rests on two key aspects: first, the meaning of mediation and second, the nature of that which is mediated (though this is really only a product of the first aspect). If we wish to retain the purity required of pure critique then we must answer 'no' to the idea that mediators are those who mediate in the sense of reconciling forces that are already actual in the world. For example, if we think of mediators as those who facilitate mediation of the opposition between Nationalism and Unionism in the context of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland - Senator George Mitchell, or EU development

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monies, and so on - then the mediator is robbed of the power to transform the very terms of the debate itself beyond those set by the participants themselves. The idea of the mediator-critic, in this sense, is already curtailed by the conceptual-actual architecture of the criticized. As already noted this would generate impurity within the core of pure critique and indifference would flourish (as, arguably, has been the outcome of the Peace Process —which is not to comment on whether or not the Peace Process is a good thing!). However, we should answer 'yes' to the question 'do mediators mediate?' if we think of the mediation in a different way, both by giving it a different sense and by reconsidering the nature of that which is mediated. Anticipating the discussion of the next two problems, mediators mediate in the sense of acting as transistors (rather than reconcilers) between the virtual forces of creativity and the construction of actually existing entities. Mediators mediate the forces of becoming and being (not just, it should be said, unidirectionally from virtual processes of becoming to the presence of beings but also from actual being to virtual becoming) by transferring one into the other. In this way we avoid thinking of mediators as those forces that reconcile actual oppositions and thereby we avoid presupposing that the actual is a preconceptual given beyond the reach of pure critique. The mediator as transistor is that which serves to facilitate the creation of actual alternatives to that which is already actual. Whereas the mediation-as-reconciliation of Nationalism and Unionism by Mitchell and others that proved so central to the peace process in Northern Ireland reifies those identities as timeless features of life in Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement itself, as indicative of that process of reconciliation, unleashed a series of mediators-as-transistors into the politics of Northern Ireland. Mediators, that is, in the sense of being situated between the virtual forces of becoming that affect life in Northern Ireland and the construction of actually existing alternatives to the explicit binarism that pervades the logic of the Good Friday Agreement. Speaking colloquially, mediators are always forced to take the third option when faced with the all-pervasive documents that demand identification in terms of 'Catholic/Nationalist', 'Protestant/Unionist' or 'Other'. But putting it more correctly, it is not that the mediators are the self-identifying 'others', rather the mediators are the forces and processes whereby the virtual possibility of always becoming-other is transformed into actually existing otherness. The non-sectarian aspects of some of the rave-culture that resides within

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Northern Ireland may serve this function (though I say this without committing the idea of pure critique to the claim that raves are a good thing!). Whatever the obvious pitfalls of this example, and there are many, it is suggestive of the possibility that mediators can act as transistors rather than as reconcilers and that the nature of that which is mediated can be given in terms of processes of actualization (and de-actualization) rather than in the terms of an assumed actuality that contains within it the possibility of reconciliation. But two issues immediately present themselves as problematic in this sketch of the function of mediators. First, there is the existential ambiguity of mediators or the problem of the return of creators. Second, there is a reliance on the logic of opposition that may harbour suspicions that there is a necessary but problematic binarism retained within the idea of mediators that would jeopardize the purity of pure critique. A brief response to both of these issues will pave the way for the next section on the problem of immanence. On the first problem: if mediators exist in-between becoming and being, if they belong to neither life itself in the sense of a virtual process of difference and its repetition nor to life itself in the sense of the various beings that emerge from such virtual processes, then do mediators exist, in any sense of the term? Moreover, if they do not exist, then the whole exercise would seem in vain; pure critique would be without substance. However, if they do exist then the mediators must surely become creators with all the problems that would entail for the idea of pure critique. The resolution of this dichotomous logic lies in a distinction that may seem rather scholastic, namely the distinction between difference in and of itself and the making of differences. The distinction is this: difference in and of itself, or pure difference, remains in a position of virtuality to the actual world of differently constituted beings (a world where pure difference is always already constrained by a logic of identity, albeit an unstable logic by virtue of all beings being in the process of becoming). The making of difference, or differences, is the process whereby pure difference is actualized into the world. In short, once a difference is made the logic of pure difference is surpassed by the logic of identity-indifference. The mediators are the processes whereby one logic is transformed into the other, or where one mode of life is transformed into the other. In this sense mediators-as-transistors are always transitory by virtue of being processes that belong to specific transformations of the virtual and actual domains (remembering the bi-directional nature of these transformations). To the point where this is at least a plausible option, we can say that the idea of

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mediators need not necessarily dissolve into the idea of creators. That said, it seems equally plausible that mediators can be said to 'exist', where their existence is situated in-between being and becoming as the very process of transformation between these 'ideal' states. We should say that mediators transist, rather than exist. The second problem was a potentially problematic reliance on binary logic to explain the nature of mediators. This is the problem that reminds us of the second question that was preferred instead of'who are the mediators?', namely, 'what are the conditions necessary for the emergence of mediators?' Indeed, a response to this problem is really an answer to that question. It is interesting to note, indeed, that in the discussion of mediators Deleuze says, 'we have to see creation as tracing a path between impossibles'. Later on in the same passage Deleuze says this: 'A creator who isn't grabbed around the throat by a set of impossibilities is no creator. A creator's someone who creates their own impossibilities, and thereby creates possibilities.' The point, from the perspective of pure critique and the mediators of pure critique, is the stress on impossibilities. A quick reading of these sentences might suggest that the mediator-critic must locate impossibilities in the world before the activities of critique can take-off. Such basic realism and representationalism are discounted by the stress on the construction of impossibilities. However, there is a dangerous interpretation of the text that is included within its phrasing. Upon reading this couple of sentences we might legitimately conclude that the mediator-critic must create impossibilities as the necessary precondition of a critical intervention. This is dangerous in the sense that it might suggest actively foreclosing possibilities for being in the world in the name of an alternative to come designated solely by the critic — being hyper-capitalist to foster the presupposed revolution that the impossible logic of capitalism will bring into being, for example. From the perspective of pure critique, if the construction of impossibilities is read in this way, as the completion or bringing to fruition of impossibilities already latent within the world, then, once again, the criticized would infect the purity of critique to the point of rendering it complicit with a generalized indifference to the world. If we think of it rather differently, as the construction of impossibilities that are not deemed to be already latent in the world, then, to put it simply, Deleuze should have put it the other way round. The creator's creations - or, more correctly, the transitory processes that make a difference - must be prior to the construction of the impossibilities that they are said to surpass. It is only by virtue of

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having made a difference that the impossibilities come into view precisely by virtue of being created in the process of having made a difference. The judgement upon impossibilities is always secondary to the creation of an alternative to those impossibilities; that is, it is always secondary to critique. Paradoxically, I would claim that it is the construction of impossibilities that indicates that the conditions for the emergence of mediators have already been met. It is the retroactive construction of impossibilities that reveals to us the existence - or, more correctly, the transistence - of mediators. Pure critique realizes the idea of critique as creativity. For critique to remain pure, though, the idea of a pre-given creator must be subtracted from within the idea of creativity. Creativity is a function of mediators that act as transistors between becoming and being, mediating the transformation of one into the other. As such, mediators have no definable existence, rather they transist in the transformations they bring about. The pure critic does not exist; the pure critic transists. Putting it like this points us towards another problem. If pure critique does not emerge from conditions of impossibility, let alone from the idea of a creator of differences, then it would appear that the drive to depersonalize the critic to the extent required of the idea of mediators as transistors leads to the uncomfortable impression that the creation of difference required by the idea of pure critique is a version of creation ex nihilo. Of course, if this were the case, if creation did come from nothing, then the idea of creativity itself would become the uncriticizable bedrock of the idea of pure critique, such that indifference would reside within creativity itself. At stake is nothing less than the immanence of pure critique. How can pure critique avoid a surreptitious reliance on given conditions and simultaneously avoid reliance upon the idea of creativity ex nihilol

PROBLEM THREE: THE PROBLEM OF IMMANENCE Undoubtedly, the journey from Kant to the idea of pure critique has involved jettisoning Kant along the way. One potential effect of this manoeuvre is that pure critique may be said to have lost its immanence. Whatever post-Kantians think of the Kantian legacy, one element that most believe must be retained at all cost is the illumination of a mode of criticism that remains immanent to

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that which is under critical scrutiny. Perhaps the idea of pure critique as the creation of alternatives (in the widest possible sense of this phrase) cuts the cord that links the critical gesture to that which is being criticized, thereby reinstating a pre-critical philosophy of the old-order that sacrifices critical engagement for conceptual rigour. Drawing again on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, however, we can see why this is not the case. The criticism gains its force from the impression that pure critique must be an act of creation ex nihilo, a creation without history. This is an unsustainable view of creation, the argument continues, because creation is always bounded by the historical circumstances from within which it emerges. However, it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that it is precisely this dubious dichotomy that is the target of much of the philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari. For Deleuze and Guattari, the idea of creation ex nihilo and its double - that creation is only ever the novel assemblage of already historically-constituted elements — both render creativity impotent in that both rely on positing a transcendent identity prior to the creative act. As regards creation ex nihilo there is the positing of an absolute void between the world and its creations, such that the creative event itself has a transcendent reality beyond the conditions of history, whereas the 'historical' account of creativity assumes the already given completion of history, timeless and unchanging, such that history itself is thought to transcend its unfolding. Between the ahistorical void and historical determinism Deleuze and Guattari conceive of creativity as that which remains historical (contra ahistorical conceptions) but also that which maintains the openness of the future (contra determinist accounts). In conversation with Negri, Deleuze puts it like this: 'Without history the experimentation would remain indeterminate, lacking any initial conditions, but experimentation isn't historical ... Becoming isn't part of history; history amounts only the set of preconditions, however recent, that one leaves behind in order to "become", that is, to create something new.' 7 The question is this: can this notion of experimentation as conditioned by history but not a part of history avoid positing a transcendent reality and thereby meet the test of immanence? In many respects this question was answered decisively in the discussion of Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy under the auspices of their critique of idealism in philosophy. However, reframing this issue with regard to history and creativity is an important feature of developing the claims embedded within the

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idea of philosophy as pure critique. In particular, it provides a timely reminder that pure critique, in avoiding all presuppositions of given-ness, does not collapse into scholastic thought experiments, creations without substance, but rather that it is an idea wholly in tune with an immanent critique of 'the given'. The key to understanding this difference between history and becoming is found in the way Deleuze and Guattari reconfigure the idea of reality with its attendant possibilities into Bergson's notion of a virtual with its attendant forms of actualization. Recognizing that Bergson's account of virtuality is developed in regard to a series of problems bequeathed by evolutionary theory, we can nevertheless utilize this distinction with regard to history and novelty. It may be said that history provides the real bedrock beneath the creation of alternatives such that there is only a number of possible creative alternatives to the present. In this way, pure critique would be said to be circumscribed by the given-ness of history and the real, such that the language of creativity masks the reality of creativity; namely that creativity rests upon a pre-given set of possible alternatives that are conditioned by the (historically given) real. The problem with this understanding of creativity is that it is self-contradictory. If the real is given as that which has occurred in the past, then the possible is that which merely confirms the real as a given totality. In short, there would be no possibility of true novelty or creativity, as these would be reduced to mere repetitions of the same reality that is already assumed as historically given for all time. The idea of possibility is rendered inert or redundant in face of the unfolding of an already constituted real. All that remains of possibility is a pseudo-possibility that has been 'arbitrarily extracted from the real like a sterile double'.138 In this way, there is no genuine account of how anything emerges as new within history itself and the conclusion that must be drawn is that this very idea of history is empty by virtue of being unable to account for the creative and novel transformations that make history what it is. As Deleuze, following Bergson, puts it: 'we no longer understand anything either of the mechanism of difference or of the mechanism of creation.' So, the general problem of immanence becomes the problem of accounting for the reality of the conditions that history bequeaths to the present, the conditions that give a determinate shape to the process of experimentation that fosters novelty, without relying on the idea of possibility. In order to account for the real in another way, in a way that allows for history to be the

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history of transformations and creations, we must move beyond the possible as the opposite of the real to see the real (that which is given by history) as the actualization of the virtual. Of course, we need to show why this must be the case. The argument rests on three key manoeuvres. First, history is a series of transformations and creations and as such these transformations must be situated within history so that history is conceptualized in a way that gives history its historicity. The transformations within history are the 'actuals' that make history what it is, i.e. a series of changes over time. Second, given that history cannot be adequately thought as the variations of possibility inherent within a total history where everything is always already given in history, the series of transformations that make history what it is, the actual occurrence of novelty within history, must occur as divisions from within history itself. That is, novelty in history is not the addition of already composed elements in different ways but a process of actualization, a process within history that is not given by the actual elements themselves. Processes of actualization within history create new elements that are only subsequently 'added together' to form narratives of historical development. Third, the actualization of actual history implies a domain within history itself that is actualized; that is, it implies a non-actual domain. This domain is called the virtual. In general, then, the actual-virtual couple as opposed to the real-possible couple is derived from the need to accord history its full creative power, as to do otherwise is to rob history of its historicity, of its meaning as history. But what is the nature of the virtual domain? We can approach this question by asking why the virtual is not the totality of history as already given, in the manner of history as understood in terms of the real-possible couple. If the virtual were understood in this way then there would be no true actualizations, the real of history itself would merely be the repetition of that which is already actual. The virtual is a domain that fosters actualization rather than a domain of actuals. But this implies that we understand the actual elements of history in a way that is different from the realities of history that imply simple pseudo-possibilities. If an actual occurrence in history is solely the result of a process of actualization, then the process itself must subsist or inhere within the actual; it is only actual, after all, by virtue of a process that makes it so. In this way we can say both that the domain of actuals is history but that actuals in and of themselves are always to be understood as processes of actualization, processes that may sediment to give the impression of being fixed in history or processes that may dissipate

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such that the actual 'becomes' virtual once more. Actual history, therefore, is never simply given for all time; it is a process of actualization and deactualization (or virtualization); history changes as the present changes, as each (de-)actualization changes the nature of the virtual domain implied by the need for a genuine account of historical creation. But if the virtual is not composed of actuals then what is it composed of? In short, we must assume, to give history its true historicity, that the virtual is composed of differences rather than actuals. But this may lead us astray, if we think of the differences that inhabit the virtual as actual differences, in the manner of actual differences that compose history. So, we should think of the differences of the virtual in a way that retains their reality but does not confuse this reality with the 'reality' of actuals given in history. What it means to think of difference in this way is explored in the next section. Before embarking on that discussion, however, it is worth dwelling on whether or not this helps us meet the problem of immanence vis-a-vis the idea of pure critique. Holding the problem of difference in suspension for a moment, then, how does this notion of history as the actualization of virtual difference aid our grasp of the relationship between experimentation, novelty or creation and history? Recalling the quote from Deleuze mentioned above, we can say that the creation of alternatives always occurs in relation to the actuals of history but that it is also always a process of making virtual difference itself actual (a process, we noted in the previous section, that is the result of'mediators as transistors' rather than as creators). That which mediators mediate, therefore, are the processes of actualization and de-actualization that occur within history between that which is actually given and the virtual differences that must be assumed if the actuals of history can be said to bestow history with its historicity as a series of transformations and novel occurrences. Pure critique is, therefore, conceptual innovation as the construction of whole-scale alternatives to that which is being criticized from a position that is nonetheless immanent to the criticized by virtue of being the actualization of differences 'within' the domain of the criticized itself. In what sense is 'within' used in his context? We must be clear that within is not within that which is actual in history, if we mean by that the actual as the real given in history. Rather, pure critique occupies a place within the criticized to the extent that it is within the processes of (de-) actualization that make the criticized actual. The general Kantian formula - that critique must remain immanent to the criticized - is both retained and radically

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transformed by the re-orientation of the real-possible couple into the actualvirtual couple. The idea of pure critique will lose its purity if the criticized resides within it as necessary and given: precisely, beyond the reach of critique. Purity is retained if and only if the criticized is constructed in the construction of critique itself. Pure critique always creates that which it criticizes; the criticized is created simultaneously with the alternative to the criticized. Both critique and criticized are created by the mediators that transform virtual pure difference into actually different modes of existence (and vice versa). If this seems rather abstract then the following example may help. The pure critique of democracy requires constructing an alternative to democracy that does situate itself on the terrain of democratic politics so as to avoid the indifference that results from being unable to place all the elements of democratic politics under critical interrogation. It would be a mistake to assume, however, that pure critique has nothing to say regarding the constitution of modern democratic politics. On the contrary, pure critique sees the democratic form as historically constituted and, on this basis, sees its historical actuality in terms of both the processes of actualization that continually remake and reinstate the democratic order and the processes of de-actualization that continually threaten to undermine and destabilize it. By not situating itself on the terrain of democratic politics, pure critique does not simply ignore these processes of constitution and de-constitution in the name of an indeterminate creation of alternatives, rather it embarks on an immanent critique of democracy by embodying the constructive processes that inhere within the democratic form. This can only be achieved by assuming that democracy is not an historical given and by assuming that it is conditioned by forces that have no trace of this democratic form in themselves; assumptions that must be made if democracy is to be given its due as an actually existing social and political formation. In this way, pure critique embodies the dynamic processes of actualization, the mediators as transistors, in order to show the outside of democracy that resides within itself. Thinking differently about democracy is, therefore, bringing to actualization the differences within democracy itself to create a mode of existence that differs from already actual democratic modes. The implications of this position vis-a-vis the theory/practice relationship, the categories of the social and the political and the idea of normative

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critique are drawn out in the Conclusion to this chapter. Furthermore, all of this rests upon an as yet unelaborated idea of difference. The next section contains the required elaboration.

PROBLEM FOUR: THE PROBLEM OF DIFFERENCE As indicated, the problem of difference is an extension of the problem of immanence. The immanence of pure critique resides in revealing the constitution of the given as always already in a process of (de-) actualization and in so doing adopting a perspective immanent to the process itself, rather than adopting a perspective predetermined by the presumed identity of the 'given'. But, for the process of (de-)actualization to be a genuinely creative process, for history to be given its due as a series of novel occurrences, the process itself must be understood as distinct from the presumed identity of the given. For example, the actualization of democracy as a historical formation presupposes a process of construction that cannot in itself have 'begun' with democratic forces and forms and, therefore, the non-democratic forces and forms out of which democracy was born must continually inhabit democracy as the outside internal to democracy itself (the outside that continually deactualizes democracy from within). Such processual perspectivism relies upon positing a domain that is itself without actually given identities; this is the domain of the virtual. A domain without actually given identities is impossible to conceive unless it is a domain 'populated' purely by differences. In this way we get to the most basic problem of pure critique: how to think of difference without presupposing an already given identity. This places pure critique firmly within the critical agenda that flows from Hegel's radical historicization of historical phenomena. The task is to muster this historical mode of criticism without surreptitiously reintroducing identity into the historical domain, an identity that would transform the processes of actualization that make up history into merely possible developments from within an already assumed reality of history. Difference must be understood as being without identity for this immanence to be maintained and for pure critique to avoid the contradictory ideas of an indeterminate creation ex nihilo or a determined 'pseudo-novelty' that is already contained within the historically given. In short: what is difference in itself? I shall briefly outline four approaches to difference which survey the main attempts to answer this question, showing how only one of those, the empirical, can adequately

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provide an account of difference that could be adequate to the difference required of the virtual. 1. Dialectical difference. The dialectician locates the creation and movement of difference within the logic of negation. The idea that every attempt to affirm the existence of things contains within it a moment of negation is said to give birth to difference. From this there emerges the subsequent idea that the existence of negativity must include within itself \ moment of negation, the famous 'negation of the negation'. It is this negation of the negation that is said to imbue relations of difference with the dynamism that really underlines the openness of history. Or, putting it another way, the logic of negation accounts for the processes of change and becoming that engender the perspective necessary for a critical interrogation of actual historical structures. 2. Anti-dialectical difference. The anti-dialectician constructs relations of difference in terms of negation, initially in a manner similar to the dialectician. The truth of negation on this account, though, is that it is beyond the recuperative reach of further negation. From this perspective the logic of negation and its correlate 'the negation of the negation' is transformed into a logic of denial that refutes the affirmative moment of dialectical recovery because there is always an excessive 'no' beyond its reach. It is this logic of pure denial that is said to contain the true essence of difference. Indeed, anti-dialectical conceptions of negation ultimately result in a nihilistic attitude to life that conceives actual differential relations as permanently teetering on the edge of an unstructured abyss. The movement that is engendered into these relations is the movement towards destruction, death and pure nothingness. 3. Aporetical difference. On this account, actual historical differences neither affirm the negation of the negation nor invoke the excessive logic of pure negation. Rather, it is precisely the non-recuperative oscillation between these two extremes that is said to generate the real mode of differentiation. Indeed, it is the very movement between dialecticism and anti-dialecticism that is said to be constitutive of either possibility. The constitutive role played by this mode of differentiation, therefore, must itself be subject to the demands of difference as it depends upon the very existence of the dialectical/ anti-dialectical opposition. So the difference that underpins all actual historical development is said to be two-fold. On the one hand, it is to be

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understood as the aporia between affirmation and negation while, on the other hand, it is the aporia between being constituted by this difference and being that which constitutes this difference in the first place. On this account, actual differences are liberated from their historicist shackles by the self-reflexive process of deconstructing any attempt to affirm the existence, or presence, of necessary connections within the actual itself. 4. Empirical difference. For the empiricist, in contrast to the dialectician, it is the movement of difference itself which gives rise to the possibility of negation. In other words, difference is conceptualized in terms of positive processes of differentiation which make no reference to a constitutive moment of negation. Moreover, where the dialectician conceptualizes the movement of difference by way of the logic of negation or external differentiation, the empiricist accounts for the movement of difference by way of a logic of affirmation or internal differentiation. Negation, on this model, arises as a result of the partial affirmation of positive difference; it is the 'no' that emerges if you don't keep saying 'yes'. The construction of the negative, therefore, is permanently circumscribed by the processes which constructed it in the first place (those of positive differentiation). The dynamic implicit within actual historical differences is explained by the allegedly more profound dynamic of pure differential construction. It is only the empiricist conception of difference that critically surmounts the historicist tendency to recuperate difference within the realm of actual historical identities. To this extent, we may say that it is a conception of difference proper to the remit of the virtual as demanded by the idea of pure critique. It may not be clear why this is the case. While many, though by no means all, would recognize that the recuperative tendency within historicism stems from a more-or-less latent dialecticism that occludes the emergence of genuine differences — the dialectical movement of history implies the given totality of history such that genuine historical novelty is ruled out - it is less well established that the anti-dialectical and the aporetical conceptions of difference do not move significantly beyond dialecticism. Ultimately, though, they are still bound by the parameters of dialectical logic itself. The case against antidialecticism has been made most succinctly by Butler: 'References to a "break with" Hegel are almost always impossible, if only because Hegel has made the very notion of "breaking with" into the central tenet of his dialectic.' In particular, the attempt to derive a pure negativity from the logic of

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dialecticism will always fail because it will inevitably give rise to the negation of the negation that propels Hegel's dialectical logic. Anti-dialecticism, therefore, suffers from the same recuperative tendency as dialectics; that is, the presentation of difference is ultimately represented as a moment of a 'larger' or 'deeper' identity. It may be less clear why an aporetical conception of difference does not advance difference beyond dialecticism but, in essence, the problem is the same as with anti-dialecticism. Anti-dialecticism aims to halt the dialectical process at the moment of the initial negation, whereas aporeticism aims to halt the dialectical process at the 'point' before 'the negation of the negation' becomes an affirmation of identity. But, if difference is conceived aporetically (such that any attempt to affirm the existence, or presence, of necessary connections within the domain of the historically actual is deconstructed), then the necessary existence of that domain itself is, paradoxically, affirmed through this negation of historical relations (themselves constituted negatively). To this extent, neither the anti-dialectic nor the aporetic conceptions of difference actually manage to halt the dialectical process they try so hard to undermine, thereby repeating the tendency within dialectics to establish actual identities within the differential realm of the virtual; the realm from which actuality is constituted. The consequence of this is that difference is always subordinated to identity such that if difference is the real motor of historical change then these conceptions of difference will never fully embed change into actually given historical identities, however they are conceived. It is not possible, in short, to give full expression to the internal momentum of differentiation that could enable a genuinely historical perspective on actually given history to emerge. To what extent can an empirical conception of difference meet this challenge? The task is to retain the insight that history is constituted by processes of differentiation while (1) recognizing the need to imbue differential relations with the capacity for change and (2) not sublimating historical change within dialectical accounts of change. So, (a) can an empirical conception of difference account for historical change and (b) can it escape the recuperative clutches of dialectics? The answer to the first of these questions depends on the answer one gives to the second question. If we assume that we must be able to understand difference in itself, as opposed to difference as a surrogate of the dialectical recuperation of an already given actual identity, in order to imbue history with an historicity adequate to historical change, and if we assume that an empiricist account of difference can be said to be truly

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non-dialectical, then one can conclude that empiricist difference can provide the required internal dynamic within history. Of course, there may be other non-dialectical accounts of difference that could equally provide the historical momentum missing from historicist analyses. Yet, despite the fact that an empiricist conception of difference has a number of other designations, there are no other non-dialectical conceptions of difference currently articulated within contemporary philosophy. The best account that we can give, in other words, is that which establishes the non-contradictory nature of a virtual domain populated by empirical differences. What remains, therefore, is to argue the case for the non-dialectical nature of empiricist conceptions of difference. This is one way of putting the task that lies at the heart of Deleuze's book, Difference and Repetition. While the argument is complex and nuanced, the basic point is that Deleuze views difference as emanating from repetition rather than negativity. Deleuze accepts that 'mechanical' or bare repetition is not the site of difference, rather that such repetition within the actual is only possible because of a more complex repetition that underlies it: one can say, as Deleuze does, that actual resemblance is not the same as repetition. Whereas resemblance depends upon already given terms of reference (the identity of the symbolic field with itself, for example), repetition lets loose differentials (which are, in essence, problems without pre-given answers) which constitute new terms of reference (thereby occupying a position beyond established symbolic identities). The non-dialectical nature of repetition emerges from the fact that differentials create new identities whereas dialectical approaches are always looking to identify difference within the already given domain of the actual. Positive differentiation is the result of processes of repetition where that which is repeated is the inherently problematic identity of the actual (inherently problematic because always in the process of becoming identifiable and nonidentifiable). Or, in other words, the virtual domain of positive differentiation repeats the production of new forms of life that will always problematize thinking based on trying to identify life by way of hypostatizing one or all of its already given forms. Rather than arguing from an inescapable and general negativity that haunts every affirmative gesture, the empiricist views each affirmation of identity as that which gives rise to its own specific sense of negation, thereby construing negativity as the consequence rather than the cause of difference. In this way, the empiricist side-steps dialectical logic and opens the way for an account of difference that retains the priority of

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difference over identity and in doing so, it is assumed, maintains the reality of virtual differences that make up history without stifling those differences under the dialectical prioritization of actual identity over difference in itself. Difference in itself is that which gives history its historicity, where historicity is the capacity for genuinely novel and creative identities to emerge. Pure critique is the construction of difference. This construction is always partial if difference is viewed as a surrogate of identity; if difference is thought to be the opposition between actually given identities. For this construction to become pure, difference must be that which differs in itself by repeating the difference within itself. Critique becomes pure by embodying the repetition of differences within itself in the creation of new modes of existence.

CONCLUSION There is little doubt that the idea of pure critique has an alarmingly Utopian feel to it, one that would seem to rob critical theory of whatever gains it has made since Marx declared that the point of philosophy is to change the world. For all that Deleuze and Guattari's work is suffused with political intent (we can recall that Deleuze described Anti-Oedipus as 'from beginning to end a book of political philosophy'),1 many commentators, both critics and supporters alike, have noted the relative absence of a clearly articulated political philosophy that would guide, even in some minimal sense, critical engagements with the social and political world. Certainly, one can respond along the lines that the whole point of Deleuze and Guattari's philosophical project is not to provide a template for political action, one which would circumscribe and limit the fluctuating assemblages of desire their work is supposed to liberate. But if we go too far with this view of their work we run into two problems. There is a tendency either to use this kind of approach to detach Deleuze and Guattari's work from any form of critical engagement, producing an interpretation of their work in the same mode as Badiou's precritical reading; or, there is a tendency to over-emphasize the desire to liberate desire such that one is faced with a political philosophy of the most traditionally normative and thereby normalizing kind. In developing the idea of pure critique from within their work, Deleuze and Guattari's political theory must be seen to tread a line between the detached indifference of the apathetic and the aggressive indifference of the moralizers.

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Three reminders of what is involved in the idea of pure critique can illuminate what is at stake in treading this line. First, and extrapolating from Deleuze and Foucault's discussion in 'Intellectuals and Power', it is important to note that the idea of 'pure critique' should not be seen as a theoretical grounding of practical political action. The construction of alternative worldviews is not the sole preserve of distanced intellectuals who then inform the masses of their potential. Indeed, the view from the ivory tower is notoriously conservative rather than creative. Neither is pure critique the practical soil from which theoretical analyses grows. Indeed, radicals who opt out of society by experimenting with alternative lifestyles are notoriously hampered by their preoccupation with the social forces and institutions that they are criticizing. The problem is that both of these attempts to relate pure critique to practical social resistance assume justificatory strategies that give rise to partial critique. Pure critique is found wherever there is the construction of a whole new way of being in the world, an innovation that may emerge from within the academy or within any part of the social and political world. Creation, as noted above, cannot be limited by the idea of a pre-given creator (the intellectual, the radical, the masses, the proletariat, the individual): if it is constrained in this way then one is faced with a limit to creativity that would render it ultimately uncreative and partial. The pure critic is neither activist nor intellectual but mediator; a mediator who acts as a transistor between theory and practice. Second, a critical philosophy that has pure critique as its aim must do away with the founding categories of'the social' and/or 'the political'. Why? Because the 'the social' and/or 'the political' themselves must be open to critique if one is to avoid these features of the critique becoming new expressions of a hidden creator. But, for example, what does it mean to do away with 'the social' in immanently oriented critical philosophy? There are, broadly speaking, two responses to this question current in the literature. On the one hand, there are those social theorists inspired by Hegel and Lacan (Zizek, Laclau, Mouffe and Butler spring to mind), who in truth adopt a rather Kantian attitude to doing social theory without 'the social'. At least, they are Kantian in this respect: the social is viewed in much the same way as Kant viewed the domain of the noumena. The social is ultimately unknowable in itself, on account of its fractured and open-ended nature, and this unknowability conditions the limits of our knowledge of the social. All that we can know about the social, it is argued, is that it is the limit of our knowledge. The

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problem is that this brand of neo-Kantianism falls into the very traps associated with Kant's own account of noumena (where the claim that we cannot know the world of 'the thing in itself already depends on a claim about the nature of'the thing in itself that we, allegedly, cannot know). Simply put, basing one's arguments on our lack of knowledge of the social implies a certain kind of knowledge of the social in the first place. Such an account of how to do social theory without the social will always render critique partial in that it will be partial to whatever view of the social is embedded within the claim that we cannot know the social. Pure critique must find another method of doing social theory without the social. This method must avoid basing its critical activities on straightforward claims to know the social while also avoiding the claim that we do not know the social. In the work of Deleuze and Guattari we find a method that claims to avoid both approaches. For Deleuze and Guattari, the social can be known (in contrast to the neo-Kantian tendencies of the Hegelian-Lacanians); not in terms of what it is, but rather in terms of what it is becoming. But how can a social theory of this kind avoid making straightforward claims about the nature of the social? How can we know what the social may become without assuming certain claims about what it is? In short, the answer is to be continually critical of gestures within one's social theory that implicitly treat the social as a reservoir of'indifference'. But following on from the previous discussions this critique can only be fully achieved if one develops a creative approach to one's 'social theorizing'. In this way one can match theoretical creativity with what the social may become to the point where the two are indistinguishable. The admittedly rather daunting social-theoretical lexicon of Deleuze and Guattari is just this: an attempt to express the virtual domain of differences embedded within the social, rather than an attempt to capture the essence of the social, by way of creating those differences within their work (and, one could add, thereby letting these possibilities loose 'in the social'). Critical work of this kind makes philosophy a form of pure critique, where philosophy is understood as the immanent production of the actual from a perspective of the virtual constitution of the actual, rather than a judgement on the actual from the perspective of an assumed actuality. Third, from the perspective of pure critique critical philosophy must unshackle itself from normative political theory if it is to remain critical.

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Of course, the most common objection to a non-normative approach to the political is that it leaves a gaping hole where an answer to the questions 'why resist?' or 'why create?' should be. Without a normative framework through which to filter conceptual innovation, one is apparently sanctioning all kinds of creativity including the most noxious, fascist kinds. There is much that could be said on this issue of course, building on the idea developed at the end of Chapter Two that pure critique is well equipped with criteria internal to itself that decisively ward off this danger. In general, though, the claim is now this: if the aim of social theory is the pure critique of indifference, then there must be no normative constraints placed upon it, as these will always render critique partial (partial, that is, in the sense that normative theory must always leave certain values - depending on the particular version beyond the reach of criticism). If the aim of social theory is to protect certain interests - the human interest in autonomy, for example — then it is important to realize that social theory of this kind does not match the idea of pure critique and, therefore, theorists with such interests in mind should declare their partiality fully. If the claim is made that social theory cannot be anything but the defence of certain interests, then the broader claim that critique is always, of necessity, impure must be defended. If this is the claim being defended then social theorists must recognize that their diagnoses and judgements are no better, or no worse, than the diagnoses and judgements that form the domain of public opinion. If, however, the aim of critique is to overcome the reign of indifference, then critique must not be shackled with a normative idea of difference that always relates difference back to a pre-given, uncriticizable, identity. Pure critique, as the creation of difference, always precedes normative judgement because that which is judged, the criticized, is always created in the critique itself. That judgements flow from pure critique is not in dispute, of course. But if the critique is to be adequate to the idea of critique itself, if critique is to become pure, then the judgements must be secondary to the critique itself: judgement is not critique, critique is prior to judgement. But in being prior to judgement, we should not think of critique as the ground of judgement, a ground included within the idea of judgement itself; rather, critique stops when judgement begins. Deleuze expresses the failings of judgement as follows: ... is it not rather judgement that presupposes pre-existing criteria (higher values), criteria that pre-exist for all time (to the infinity of time), so that it

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CONCLUSION

The Idea of Pure Critique

Intellectual, social and political indifference flourishes where critical activity remains partial; this is the great lesson of Kant's critical philosophy. The idea of critique is aimed at overcoming partiality and, therefore, at overcoming indifference. The first task of delimiting the idea of critique is to create a terrain whereby what we usually understand by 'criticism' can be revealed for what it is: the to-and-fro of opinions. Critique is not criticism; it is precisely that which calls criticism to account as opinion. But subtracting the idea of criticism from that of critique is only the first step in the journey towards an idea of pure critique. Critique, if it is to become pure, must also sever its links with reason, and with any sense of a moral-theological purpose (indeed, any purpose at all, as we shall see below). Kant inaugurated the idea of critique, but he could not conceive of critique in its purity because of his refusal to call into question his own dogmatic assumptions about the unity and purpose of reason. Pursuing the idea of pure critique, however, requires more than simply taking the idea of critique out of its Kantian environment. Pure critique must sever its links with any overarching justificatory regime. If it does not, then that which justifies the practice of critique will itself be beyond the reach of critique such that it will infect critique with an impure investment in certain interests used as the baseline against which to judge other interests. Implicit in severing critique from justification, therefore, is the task of severing critique from judgement. Moreover, this general requirement gives rise to three specific criteria for attaining the idea of pure critique. First, pure critique must avoid taking that which is criticized as given. Second, pure critique must avoid simply assuming what it is to be critical: that is, that the content of critique itself can be taken as given. Third, pure critique must avoid reliance upon a predetermined idea of the critic. It is only by meeting these requirements that critique can avoid justificatory and judgemental regimes and thereby become pure.

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Of course, in subtracting what many would see as the core features of an idea of critique in order to pursue a pure critique of indifference, two issues present themselves: first, how to specify the idea of pure critique at all without infusing it with the very indifference it is supposed to overcome; second, how to specify an idea of pure critique that is more than a mere academic rendering of this crucial social and political concept. Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy was deployed throughout the discussions above to meet both these issues head-on. On the one hand, their critique of idealist understandings of the nature of philosophy provided an expanded and substantial account of philosophical activity that can be said to have eradicated indifference from within itself. That is, their constructivism provided a substantial specification of philosophy as pure critique. On the other hand, we extrapolated from their constructivism to show how philosophy as pure critique does not fall prey to the charge that it is a form of academic quietism. Indeed, it is those who cling to the wreckage of idealism in critical philosophy who will inevitably remain quietly uncritical of whatever assumptions guide their claims to be fostering philosophical positions with critical bite and, at best, the remainder of their critical endeavours will be irredeemably partial to those assumptions. It is only by deploying critique in its purity that the idea of critique can become fully adequate to itself; that is, it is only through a pure idea of critique that the usual diet of academic quietism can be transformed into creative revolutionary activity. Indifference, the product of philosophies and ways of life based on opinionated ideas of the given, is overcome by 'making a difference'. Making a difference, however, is a far more demanding task than such a simple slogan would suggest. To make a difference is to overcome indifference, but this requires deploying critique in all its purity, by allowing no room whatsoever for indifference in the critical gesture itself. Chapter Three addressed four principal objections to the construction of the idea of pure critique. First, the notion that the idea of pure critique contained a safe haven for indifference by virtue of being an idea was discussed. This objection was met by arguing the case for the essentially problematic nature of ideas and the essentially ideal nature of problems, such that ideas and problems are co-extensive. The coextensive nature of problems and ideas, it was argued, displaces any residues of Platonism, dialecticism, modernism and postmodernism by conceiving the problem that the idea of pure critique 'responds to' as constituted within the idea itself, and the idea itself as constituted by this problematic

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relation. This discussion gave rise to a further problem, the problem of conceiving the creation of difference in a way that avoided the twin poles of historical determinism and creation ex nihilo. At stake in this section was the status of the creator of difference; an idea that had to be removed from within the idea of pure critique to retain its purity, and replaced with the idea of the mediator (where the mediator mediated the processes of actualization and de-actualization constitutive of being and becoming rather than mediated between already existing 'beings' or actual states of affairs). As the third section made clear, however, this idea of mediators as the 'makers of difference' could only be sustained by embracing the notion that history itself is composed of genuinely novel occurrences or events, which in themselves could only be conceptualized as genuinely novel in terms that implied transforming the realpossible couple into the virtual-actual couple (a Bergsonian transformation central to Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist understanding of philosophy). The constitutive powers of the mediators that mediate the virtualactual couple, however, required that the virtual itself was composed of pure difference, difference that repeats itself without constraining that repetition within the logic of identity. Section Four, therefore, outlined four different conceptions of difference; three varieties of dialecticism that all subsumed difference within a logic of identity and a conception of empirical difference that maintained the idea of difference as difference in itself. The result of addressing these four fundamental issues raised by the idea of pure critique was to clarify exactly what is at stake in the construction of an idea of critique that is adequate to the idea itself; namely, the idea of pure critique as that which fulfils the task of 'making a difference' without reintroducing indifference within itself. The idea of pure critique pro blematizes all attempts to justify critique within itself such that the problematization itself becomes the idea. Pure critique, as the thorough-going construction of difference, similarly problematizes the idea of the critic by displacing the critic-as-creator of difference and situating pure critique as the activity of mediators that constitute the being of becoming and the becoming of being. The idea of pure critique is also the critique of the givenness of the criticized, but it nonetheless remains immanent to that which is criticized by positioning itself as the processes within the criticized that mediate the creation of whole-scale alternatives to the actual state of affairs in which we find ourselves. In this way, pure critique transforms the pure differences that

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reside within differently constituted historical formations into the activity of 'making a difference'. The idea of pure critique demands that critique is always a creative act 'before' it is a negation of the criticized. Of it all, it is enough to unravel the complexities of this equation: critique = creativity. Two meta-criticisms present themselves when faced with the idea of pure critique. First, in demarcating the idea of critique in its purity are we necessarily led to the potentially troubling conclusion that this idea puts an end to critical discourse on the idea of critique itself? Second, is it not the case that the idea of critique as creativity subsumes the idea of critique itself within the machinations of contemporary capitalism, and the apparently tireless capacity it has for producing novelty? It will become clear, however, that answering the first criticism sets the scene for a response to the second criticism. While it is a claim that some may find troubling, the idea of pure critique does, in one sense, put an end to critical discourse on critique. Quite simply, if critique is to be pure, that is, if it is to meet the challenge of eradicating indifference from within itself, then it must be creative, it must subtract all overarching regimes of justification and judgement from within itself to unleash critique as the construction of an idea of critique that posits a criticized and a critical agent in the one gesture of 'creating an alternative', or 'making a difference'. Obviously, there are numerous partial criticisms and impure critiques that could be made of the idea of pure critique; criticisms and critiques that would begin with some assumptions regarding the necessity, naturalness, or 'given-ness' of a substantive rendering of one or other or all of the elements of the idea of critique. However, the partial criticism of pure critique will always implode before any impact can be made on the idea of pure critique itself; it will implode on account of the questionable assumptions residing within itself that can always be brought to the fore and critiqued. Is it not possible, though, to construct a pure critique of the idea of pure critique? As the formulation itself makes clear, however, this is precisely what is contained within the idea of pure critique itself: embracing the critique becoming within itself is a condition of critique becoming pure. Pure critique is pure precisely by virtue of being equal to the task of meeting the critique becoming within itself; the pure critique of critique as creativity is further creativity as critique, which is pure critique itself. In this sense, therefore, the idea of pure critique puts an end to the project of critique inaugurated by Kant; pure critique roots out indifference such that nothing

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can stand beyond critique, including the idea itself, and thereby it meets the challenge of putting the idea of critique itself beyond 'just suspicion'. That said, it is important to recall that the idea of pure critique is essentially problematic. As a problem, the idea of pure critique is only ever actualized through events, where events can be provisionally defined as inherently singular creations. The idea of pure critique, therefore, can only ever be expressed as a singular event and, in this sense, the idea of pure critique cannot be said to have put an end to critique itself: rather, the event of pure critique is always repeated but repeated differently each time. In this sense, the idea of pure critique internally generates the infinite return of the beginning of critique. Putting an end to the critical discourse on critique is only the precursor to establishing the beginning of critique as an idea, an idea which returns in the eternal return of events. It may be thought that this stress on pure critique as creativity situates critique within the operations of contemporary capitalism, to the extent that capitalism itself is said to embody the production of novelty in itself and for itself. To put this as a question: is it possible to articulate a pure critique of capitalism?1 9 For the critique of capitalism to become pure, we must first question the assumption guiding the question: namely that capitalism, as the criticized, has as its nature the production of novelty. If the critique proceeds on this assumption, then it will become a trade in opinions regarding the real nature of capitalism. The critique, therefore, would be irredeemably partial to the claim regarding the reality of capitalism, a claim that would invoke in itself another partial critique of the critique itself. Nothing is to be gained, in terms of engendering pure critique, from such critical exchanges. A pure critique of capitalism begins by assuming that there is nothing given or natural about capitalism itself — neither as a timeless feature of human relations based on innate selfishness nor as a necessary outcome of supra-historical processes — that is, that there is nothing in capitalism beyond critique. Capitalism can be said to exist, but only as an event, as an actual formation of virtual processes of differentiation which account for its genesis. On this basis, a basis that gives capitalism its due as a novel historical formation, the pure critique of capitalism would amount to the construction of a different mode of existence by embracing the forces within capitalism itself that function to mediate its internal differentiation and its composition as an actually given identity. Of course, there is a danger concomitant to assuming the naturalness of capitalism itself, namely assuming that the forces within capitalism that

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mediate its internal critique are themselves given in some sense; the proletariat in Marx, for example. Pure critique cannot proceed on the basis of assuming a given notion of the critic of capitalism, rather capitalism, like all events, creates its own critics within itself continuously and differently. That such critics become recuperated within the operations of capitalism itself is not in question but (a) this does not negate the critical moment in itself (rather it confirms it as a critical moment that must be recuperated by the becoming of capitalism itself) and (b) new critics will always emerge from within the event of recuperation that constitutes capitalist becoming. Is this not the moment when capitalism and pure critique seem to become indistinguishable? It would be if the becoming of capitalism was deemed to result simply in new forms of capitalism. But the claim is significantly different: the continuous creation of capitalism results in the simultaneous creation of non-capitalist modes of existence. Capitalism produces its own critics; strictly speaking, though, these are not critics of capitalism (anti-capitalists) but critics who embody a non-capitalist way of life. Capitalism, as a historically actual identity, always contains non-capitalist formations (formations which mutate as capitalism mutates in trying to recuperate the non-capitalist forces within itself) as virtual to its historical actuality. Non-capitalism is internal to capitalism and pure critique can only retain its purity by treating the critics that capitalism creates within itself as creations, as events, such that any critique that treats any particular critic of capitalism (any particular noncapitalist mode of life engendered by capitalism itself) as the sole critical agency capable of the critique of capitalism will inevitably engender partiality within itself by justifying the critique of capitalism in terms that transform the critics of capitalism into forces that transcend capitalism. These transcendent forces would then condition the critique of capitalism as immanent to the forces themselves, creating the justificatory bedrock that would harbour indifference to the critique of the critique of capitalism itself. But if the possibility of a pure critique of capitalism depends upon denaturalizing the criticized (capitalism) and the critic (say, the proletariat, or new social movements), these features are only ever secondary to the difference between pure critique as a form of creativity and capitalism as a form of creativity. In other words, the idea of creativity as the substance of the idea of pure critique is, as we have seen throughout the previous discussions, dependent upon subtracting creativity from a purpose external to the creative moment itself (a purpose that would be beyond the reach of critique). The

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identification of capitalism and pure critique implied in the meta-critique of pure critique would require an account of capitalism that divested its production of goods, subjectivities and ways of life of all purpose. If this identification is made, then pure critique and capitalism do indeed become synonymous. But this condition can be met only if the criticized itself, the event of capitalism, is rendered wholly meaningless. This is the case because capitalism as an event has a purpose; for example, the extraction of profit from labour. The purpose of capitalism is what defines capitalism as an event, as a novel occurrence within history that is not determined by history. Admittedly this may seem like a sleight of hand, one that incorporates the criticized, capitalism, with natural features beyond critique. However, in the context of this discussion the point is not to define the purpose of capitalism as such (any such definition must be worked out only on the basis of a thoroughly immanent critique of the capitalist event itself), but to simply claim that as an event, like all events that occur in history, it can be defined at least in part by virtue of having a purpose. In general, all the events that constitute history actualize a purpose within themselves. This is not to claim that there is some underlying purpose to all the events of history, but that each event creates a purpose immanent to the actual form they bring about. As such, if the ongoing event of capitalism has a purpose (for example, the extraction of profit from labour that engenders capitalism's apparently tireless creativity) while not being governed by a purpose (for example, the overcoming of class antagonism as the real motor of history that 'explains' why the event of capitalism took place), then the pure critique of capitalism is immanent to the event of the construction of capitalism itself, not the purpose it issues forth. The pure critique of capitalism that capitalism inaugurates within itself as non-capitalist modes of existence is the repetition of the event in general from within the particular event that resulted, for example, in the purposeful extraction of profit from labour — the event of capitalism. The idea of pure critique as an event constituting new modes of existence is wholly purposeless, whatever the purposes inherent within the modes that are brought to life. As such the pure critique of capitalism is possible because there is a fundamental difference between the idea of pure critique as an event in itself and the operations of capitalism as an event defined by a purpose. The idea of pure critique does not coincide with the operations of capitalism because the creativity it idealizes is immanent only to itself rather than immanent to any particular purpose that the creation of alternatives brings forth.

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Once again, though, as the idea of pure critique is pushed to its limits by these two meta-critiques the defence of pure critique relies upon claims regarding the 'nature' of events. Indeed, the idea of pure critique cannot be fully enriched without a subsequent discussion of the idea of pure critique as an event; or more simply, the event of pure critique. This is the subject of the next part of the research project announced in the Introduction; namely, an investigation into 'the nature of critical activity'. As stated in the Introduction, though, the inquiry into the event of pure critique is itself only a step on the journey towards a fully articulated response to the guiding question: 'can the nature of critical activity become adequate to the idea of critique itself?' Nonetheless, the gains made on the journey so far are significant, as all the ideal features of pure critique have been revealed and, as such, the benchmarks have been set for the future investigations. Moreover, the idea of pure critique presents itself, even in this ideal form, as a challenge to all those who claim the idea of critique for themselves: does the idea of critique that motivates the critical work that fills the pages of academic journals and that fills the streets of the world meet the demands of the idea itself — in particular, the demand of overcoming indifference? If indifference remains, then critique will always contain impurities that will render critique partial, if indifference is overcome then critique becomes pure.

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Afterword

The delimitation of the idea of pure critique - what it is not and what it must be - is fundamentally a preparatory task for further investigations into the nature of critical activity under the aegis of pure critique. In particular, two tasks present themselves as necessary for further investigation. First, the idea of pure critique must be shown to be effective as an idea; that is, it must be developed in ways that allow for the idea of pure critique to become an event. Having discussed in this text what is required of critique for it to become pure, there is still the task of outlining how pure critique can become an event in and of thought and the world without it sacrificing its purity. This issue has been raised at key points within the text - from Deleuze and Guattari's claim that 'concepts are events' through the discussion of the co-extensive nature of ideas and problems and again in relation to the two meta-critiques dealt with in the Conclusion, to name a few - and it is clear that the idea of pure critique as an event, or the event of pure critique, must be fully articulated if these pointers beyond the idea of pure critique itself are not to become a safe haven for indifference. Second, the task of articulating the event of pure critique raises the problem of how the idea and the event of pure critique are related. This task will be carried out under the title of the ideology of pure critique, where the word 'ideology' expresses the complex conjunction of ideas and events. Only the ideology of pure critique will finally provide an answer to the guiding question of this research: can the nature of critical activity become adequate to the idea of critique itself? It is tempting to rush to a provisional answer to this question upon the construction of the idea of pure critique, but the lesson of this current work is that only the patient interrogation of each step of the journey toward an answer will avoid the return of indifference.

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Notes

1

2

3 4

5 6 7

8

9

10

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason [1st edn, 1781; 2nd edn, 1787], trans. J. M. D. Meiklejohn, revised and expanded by Vassilis Politis, London: Everyman, 1993. Page references will refer to this edition and translation but, as is standard in Kant scholarship, they will be accompanied by references to the A (1781) and B (1787) editions of the text in round brackets after the page number. In addition, it will prove useful on occasion to cross reference this translation with those by Norman Kemp Smith (2nd edn, London: Macmillan, 1933) and Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 'Appendix to Transcendental Dialectic: The Regulative Employment of the Ideas of Pure Reason', pp. 433-48, (A640/ B668-A667/B695). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 99, (B 132). Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense [1969], trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, Constantin Boundas (ed.), New York: Columbia University Press, 1990, p. 127. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory [5th edn, 1908], trans. N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer, New York: Zone Books, 1988, p. 183, for example. Henri Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics [1903], trans. T. E. Hulme, Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 1999, pp. 59 and 51, respectively. Edmund Husserl, 'Phenomenology', Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 17, 1929, reprinted in R. Kearney and M. Rainwater (eds) The Continental Philosophy Reader, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 15-22, quote from p. 18. Alain Badiou, Conditions, Paris: Seuil, 1992, quoted in Peter Hallward, Badiou: A Subject to Truth, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003, p. xxxii. For Hallward, 'Badiou's affirmation of the pure can serve as the guiding thread for an interpretation of his work as a whole' (p. xxxii). Hallward, Badiou, p. xxxiii. Hallward helpfully picks up this theme in the Conclusion and draws our attention to Badiou's recent admission of 'logical relation' into his philosophy (p. 320). Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume's Theory of Human Nature, trans. C. Boundas, Columbia University Press: New York, 1991. A neat

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11 12

13

14

15

16 17 18

synopsis of the themes central to Deleuze's encounter with Hume, including a discussion of how Deleuze interprets the maxim 'relations are external to their terms', can be found in Deleuze, 'Hume', trans. A. Boyman, in Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life, New York: Zone Books, 2001, pp. 35-52. A full encounter between the Deleuze- and Guattari-inspired idea of pure critique and the philosophy of Badiou will form part of the projected second volume on pure critique, provisionally titled The Event of Pure Critique. It is here that an engagement with Badiou's innovative approach to the subtractive method and the resulting idea of purity will take place. See the Afterword in this volume for a schematic of the projected future volumes. The schematic outlines of the project as a whole can be found in the Afterword to this volume. Philosophers, priests, politicians and the public, though by no means the only people to do a disservice to the idea of critique, are the main sources of the impurities in critique that 'we moderns' take for granted in our common sense understanding of the idea. Equally, of course, each persona contains within it a minor trait that generations of critical theorists have exploited to harness the productive powers of the idea of critique itself: liberation theology, the powers of democratic critique and so on. In the discussion that follows the emphasis will be on unlocking the critical potential of the idea of philosophy, philosophy as pure critique. Although the idea of pure critique is deeply indebted to the work of Deleuze and Guattari, as solo authors and as collaborators, this book is not intended as a systematic or comprehensive introduction to their ideas. It would not be appropriate, therefore, to list a complete set of references to their work at the outset for fear that this would give a misleading impression of the aim of this book. The texts by Deleuze and/or Guattari that I shall use to develop the idea of pure critique will be duly referenced as required. A recent and particularly useful reminder of the long lineage of the idea of difference can be found in Nathan Widder, Genealogies of Difference, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. The essays in Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987, provide the benchmark for such a view. For example, Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment [1947], trans. John Gumming, London: Verso, 1979. For example, Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison [1975], trans. Alan Sheridan, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977. For example, Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex [1949], trans. H. M. Parshley, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972.

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19

20 21 22 23 24

25 26

27 28 29 30 31

For instance, Jiirgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy [1992], trans. William Rehg, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. While acknowledging their differences, the rapprochement between Rawls and Habermas, centred on a shared Kantianism, was established in their exchange in the Journal of Philosophy, 92, (1995): Habermas, 'Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls's Political Liberalism', pp. 109-31 and John Rawls, 'Reply to Habermas', pp. 132-80. For example, Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil [1998], trans. Peter Hallward, London: Verso, 2001, especially pp. 119-20. For example, Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion, Gil Anidjar (ed.), London: Routledge, 2001. Charles Taylor, A Catholic Modernity?, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. For example, Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity, 1991 and Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza [1968], trans. Martin Joughin, New York: Zone Books, 1992. Alain Badiou, Deleuze: The Clamour of Being [1997], trans. Louise Burchill, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. The debate took place in the journal Radical Philosophy: Christian Kerslake, 'The Vertigo of Philosophy: Deleuze and the Problem of Immanence', Radical Philosophy, no. 113, May/June 2002, pp. 10-23; Peter Hallward, 'To have done with justification: A Reply to Christian Kerslake', Radical Philosophy, no. 114, July/August 2002, pp. 29-31; Christian Kerslake, 'Copernican Deleuzianism: A Justification', Radical Philosophy, no. 114, July/August 2002, pp. 32-3. Kerslake, 'Copernican Deleuzianism', p. 32. Hallward, 'To have done with justification', p. 30. Hallward, 'To have done with justification', p. 31. Kerslake, 'Copernican Deleuzianism', p. 33. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 4-5, note 1 (Axi). This crucial passage is translated slightly differently by Kemp Smith as, 'Our age is, in especial degree, the age of criticism, and to criticism everything must submit. Religion through its sanctity, and the law-giving through its majesty, may seek to exempt themselves from it. But they then awaken just suspicion, and cannot claim the sincere respect which reason accords only to that which has been able to sustain the test of free and open examination.' (p. 9) and by Guyer and Wood as, 'Our age is the genuine age of criticism, to which everything must submit. Religion through its holiness and legislation through its majesty commonly seek to exempt themselves from it. But in this way they excite just suspicion against themselves,

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32 33 34

35

36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43

44

and cannot lay claim to that unfeigned respect that reason grants only to that which has been able to withstand its free and public examination.' (pp. 100-1). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 24 (Bxxxv). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 24 (Bxxxvi). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 483-99 (A738/B766-A769/B797). For example, 'This is the period of criticism, in which we do not examine thefacta of reason, but reason itself... and thus we determine not merely the empirical and ever-shifting bounds of our knowledge, but its necessary and eternal limits', p. 495 (A761/B789). This claim and that of the previous sentence may seem overly exaggerated given that vast tracts of the Critique of Pure Reason are aimed at exposing the erroneous assumptions of many of Kant's predecessors. But the claim is sustainable on the basis that the critique of other philosophical positions is carried out on the basis of establishing the idea of critique itself independently from the strictures of either dogmatism or scepticism. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 4 (Ax). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 24 (Bxxxv—Bxxxvii). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 4 (Ax). Kant, 'An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?' [1784], in Mary J. Gregor (ed) Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 17-22. Kant, 'What is Enlightenment?', p. 17. Diana Coole, Negativity and Politics: Dionysus and dialectics from Kant to poststructuralism, London: Routledge, 2000, p. 14. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 496 (A764/B 792). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 499 (A769/B797). This sense of the relationship between 'the sceptical procedure in philosophy' and critique is even more acutely presented in the Kemp Smith and Guyer and Wood translations where the sceptical procedure is presented, respectively, as that which 'prepares the way' (p. 612) or as simply 'preparatory' (p. 658) for critique. As will become clear, though, the fundamental issue at stake here is not one of translation. Without necessarily adhering to either position, the work of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerband (amongst others) has shown how careful attention to the detail of the Copernican revolution in science reveals a complex mixture of forces at work, a mixture that is poorly served if it is reduced to an imaginative leap by a single individual. See, for example: Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution, New York: Random House, 1959 and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd Edition), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996; Paul Feyerband, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, London: New Left Books, 1975.

101

NOTES

45

46

47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57

58 59

60 61

62

In making this distinction, of course, the argument departs from the terminology of Kant. Yet, for all that the distinction is derived from Kant. This gesture, a gesture that departs from Kant from a position immanent to Kant's ideas, is the first instance of entering the genuinely post-Kantian milieu that was discussed in the Introduction. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 4, note 1 (Axi). In the discussion that follows I take the three-fold development of critique implicit in this claim seriously, so as to outline a genuinely liminal space between pre-critical and critical philosophy. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 280 (A 355): 'the Cartesian inference "cogito, ergo sum' is in fact a tautology since the cogito (sum cogitans) directly asserts existence'. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 316 (A 424/B 451). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 194 (A226/B 274). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 195 (B 275-276). Kant, Critique of 'Pure Reason, p. 211 (B307). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 5 (Axi). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 6 (Axiv). Kant, Critique of Practical Reason [1788], in Mary J. Gregor (ed) Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 133271. The implication is that Kant developed the priority of the practical end of pure reason in the course of preparing for the publication of the second critique. Although clearly present in the closing sections of the first edition, the change of emphasis is marked given the centrality of the end of pure reason as it appears in the Preface to the Second Edition. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 21 (Bxxxi), my italics. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 495-6 (A762/B790). Kant, 'On the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice' in Gregor (ed) Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 290. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy? [1991], trans. Graham Burchill and Hugh Tomlinson, London: Verso, 1994, pp. 44-5. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 485 (A743/B 771). Kemp Smith translates the phrase as 'tranquil indifference' (p. 596) whereas Guyer and Wood translate it as 'tranquility and indifference' (p. 645). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 486 (A743/B 771). Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 486 (A743/B 771). Kemp Smith translates this phrase as 'peace and quiet possession' (p. 596) while Guyer and Wood translate it as 'peace and tranquil possession' (p. 645). Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy [1962], London: Athlone Press, 1983, p. 91. The debt to Deleuze's Nietzschean-inspired critique of Kant's

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understanding of the critical project in my own discussion should be clear. In Neitzsche and Philosophy, Deleuze constructs a sustained critique of Kant in terms that pit the legislative nature of Kantian critique against the creative nature of Nietzschean critique: critique as the creation of value rather than the legitimation of established values. Moreover, Deleuze sees this transformation of the Kantian idea of critique as a way of side-stepping the 'whole Kantian inheritance' including Hegel and Feuerbach. Both Kantian critique and its dialectical progeny Deleuze argues are 'exhausted by compromise: it never makes us overcome the reactive forces which are expressed in man, self-consciousness, reason, morality and religion. It even has the opposite effect — it turns these forces into something a little more "our own" ' (p. 89). For Deleuze, the Nietzschean idea of creative critique amounts to putting critique back on its feet, after the Kantian inversion that inspired the dead end of dialectical critique. The idea of pure critique is a similar attempt to radicalize the Kantian critical project in a way that avoids the traps of dialectics. However, for all that there is a clear debt to Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche's critique of Kant, it should also be clear that the terms of my own reading of Kant's critical failings are quite distinct from those of Deleuze and Nietzsche. In particular, the emphasis placed on Kantian critique as a critique of indifference and the idea that indifference returns within the Kantian critical apparatus is not taken account of by Deleuze or Nietzsche. This means that the renewed idea of critique that flows from a radicalization of the Kantian critical project takes a different course. First, as the discussion in the opening section of the next chapter will make clear, I argue that the emphasis on overcoming indifference means that we must distinguish total critique from pure critique: a distinction implied in Deleuze's account but not addressed specifically (Deleuze refers to Nietzsche's completion of the Kantian idea of total critique but the nature of this completion, I will argue, is better served by differentiating between total critique and pure critique). Second, pure critique does not appeal to the creation of values as such, but rather to the creation of differences which may or may not be Values' or have value attached to them. Clarification of this point, a point which only becomes clear when one sees critique as the critique of indifference, reduces the possibility of confusion regarding the thoroughly non-normative basis of the idea of pure critique. Third, there is no need to demarcate the idea of pure critique as relying upon the Nietzschean idea of the will to power, even though that is clearly one of the main sources for the Deleuzean (and Deleuzo—Guattarian) ideas that I do use to demarcate the idea of pure critique. That said, the notion of the eternal return of the will to power will prove structurally important in the discussion to follow; or more correctly, the manner in which Deleuze and Guattari adopt this motif in their constructivist account of philosophy will prove crucial.

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The structural importance of this idea is that it allows the priority of creation/ affirmation over destruction/negation to be defended against those critics who view the critical gesture as grounded in a logic of negativity. In anticipation, it is worth quoting Deleuze on Nietzsche at length: 'Why should affirmation be better than negation? We will see that the solution can only be given by the eternal return: what is better and better absolutely is that which returns, that which can bear returning, that which wills its return. The test of eternal return will not let reactive forces subsist, any more than it will let the power of denying subsist. The eternal return transmutes the negative' (p. 88). 63 See, for example, Taylor's discussion of Kant and Kantian moral philosophy in his Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 79-90. 64 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 139. 65 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 140. 66 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 5. See also p. 7 where they define philosophy as the discipline which generates 'knowledge through pure concepts'. 67 Plato, The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974, p. 117. 68 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 27. 69 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 142. 70 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 29. 71 Approximately half of What is Philosophy? is dedicated to discussing the relationship between philosophy, science and art. Deleuze summarized the relationship between these different disciplines as follows: 'There is no order of priority among these disciplines. Each is creative. The true object of science is to create functions, the true object of art is to create sensory aggregates and the object of philosophy is to create concepts.', Negotiations: 1972—1990, trans. Martin Joughin, Columbia University Press, New York, 1995, p. 123. 72 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 15. 73 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 35. 74 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 40. 75 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 37. This formulation resonates strongly with Deleuze's discussion of 'the image of thought' in Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. An insightful discussion of the plane of immanence can be found in Philip Goodchild, Gilles Deleuze and the Question of Philosophy?, Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1996. 76 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, pp. 40—1. 77 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 36. For Deleuze and Guattari the idea of the concept as an event distinguishes their approach to philosophy from

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78 79 80

81 82

all forms of representationalism in philosophy, here categorized as forms of idealism. Concepts are not created to better represent the world 'as it is', the world as viewed by the subject, or the dialectical interplay between the world and the subject. Rather, the event that constitutes the creation of concepts is an event 'in the world', a change to the world that is surveyed by the concept itself. Concepts posit the 'object' they survey, but the 'object' is the event of conceptual construction: concepts can survey the change they bring about in the world because they constitute that change themselves. Generally speaking, for Deleuze and Guattari, there are no 'things' only events and the language we use to represent 'things' is itself founded on events (rather than subjects or structures, for example). See, for example, the discussions in The Logic of Sense that culminate in the claim that it is 'the Event which communicates the univocity of being to language' (p. 248: though it must be noted that the notion of 'communication between events' is not to be confused with the idealist conception of philosophy as communication). The danger of reading this non-representationalist understanding of the concept in thoroughly idealist terms is obvious. That this danger can and indeed must be avoided if one is do justice to the idea of philosophy as the creation of concepts is discussed in the remainder of this chapter and in the first section of Chapter Three. However, a full appreciation of the ontological nature of the event as the ground of both the world and the concepts we deploy to refer to the world is a task for the inquiry into the nature of critical activity; the projected next volume of this research project. Once the idea of pure critique has been clarified, the event of pure critique can itself be clarified so that a full understanding of how critical activity may become adequate to the idea of critique itself can be reached, an understanding that would amount to an ideology of pure critique. The 'contextualization' of concepts within, say, 'ideological structures', is a secondary, though nonetheless important, feature. Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, pp. 44-5. Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 37. The logic of this Bergsonian argument is necessarily truncated. For further detail see Deleuze's Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, New York: Zone Books, 1991. Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, pp. 54-5. While I have emphasized the Bergsonian heritage to the plane of immanence, this is by no means the only source from which Deleuze and Guattari draw. Different expressions of the same idea can be traced through a variety of Deleuze's (and Guattari's) works. In Difference and Repetition, the plane of immanence is a realm of pure positive differentiation. In his books on Spinoza, Deleuze uses the concept of substance to express the same idea. In his works with Guattari, the plane of immanence appears as the realm of productive desire and rhizomes.

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83

Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. R. Hurley, M. Seem and H. Lane, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983; Deleuze and Parnet, 'Dead Psychoanalysis: Analyse' in Dialogues, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam, London: Athlone Press, 1987. 84 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 49. 85 See Michel Foucault, 'Theatrum Philosophicum', Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. Donald Bouchard and Sherry Simon, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 190-1. 86 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973, p. 18. 87 At this point it is worth recalling the discussion in the Introduction regarding the possibility of defending Deleuze and Guattari's affirmation of metaphysical naturalism without recourse to a regime of justification derived from Kantian critical philosophy (the debate between Kerslake and Hallward referred to above). Having outlined Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of philosophy, we can now say that it provides an immanent standard which other metaphysical positions must meet in order to qualify both as philosophy in general and as 'good' philosophy in particular. For an activity to qualify as philosophy it requires the creation of concepts, for the creation of concepts to qualify as good philosophy it must recognize its own creative impetus in the full, or as fully as possible. In contrast to Kerslake, this means that there is no method that can justify a philosophical position, only a philosophical position that inaugurates its own methodological standards. In contrast to Hallward, however, the affirmation of philosophical constructivism, and the metaphysical naturalism coextensive with it, can be defended against its rivals on the basis of criteria derived from within philosophical constructivism itself. It is only on the basis of a prior creation of concepts that philosophy can engage in questions of justification, but the construction of concepts itself provides the criteria for differentiating between modes of philosophical inquiry that fully recognize their own creative moment or do not: in the latter case, philosophy becomes idealism. 88 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, pp. 59-60. For Deleuze and Guattari, Spinoza has come closest to thinking about thought without imposing an image of thought onto the activity of thinking; that is, of thinking the plane of immanence. Rather provocatively, they call him the 'prince' or the 'Christ' of philosophers. For Deleuze's engagement with Spinoza see Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin, New York: Zone Books, 1992; Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley, San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988. 89 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 38. Of course, Deleuze and Guattari must treat the 'substance of being' with some caution. It would be misleading to think of this claim as a claim about the essential 'thinghood' of

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being, rather the unity of thought and being is found in the ontology of the event: see note 77, pp. 104-5. 90 This should not be confused with nineteenth-century conceptions of vitalism which posit the existence of a vital fluid or force which brings dead matter to (organic) life. Such substantivist vitalism, where a non-mechanistic source of life is sought, is quite distinct from the kind of differential vitalism espoused by Deleuze and Guattari, which introduces change into the very mechanics of life. 91 Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity, p.x. 92 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, Chapter 3. 93 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 64. 94 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 198. 95 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 69. In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, London: Athlone Press, 1987, Deleuze and Guattari talk of territories in terms of their 'de-' and 're-' territorializing functions so as to maintain an immanent conception of the constitution of territory. In a similar way, the conceptual persona should be thought of as the ongoing process of making and remaking a point of view, such that no point of view is accorded a fixed transcendental status. 96 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 10. 97 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 32. 98 For Deleuze and Guattari's critique of historicist understandings of philosophy, particularly those of Hegel and Heidegger, see the 'Geophilosophy' chapter in What is Philosophy?. For example: 'Hegel and Heidegger remain historicists inasmuch as they posit history as a form of interiority in which the concept necessarily develops or unveils its destiny. The necessity rests on the abstraction of the historical element rendered circular. The unforeseeable creation of concepts is thus poorly understood,' p. 95. 99 Deleuze, 'On Philosophy' in Negotiations, p. 148. 100 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 28. 101 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 83. 102 Deleuze, 'On Philosophy', p. 136. 103 See, for example, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 11 where Deleuze and Guattari express the rhizomatic relationship between the book and the world (between philosophical concepts and the thing, we might say): 'The same applies to the book and the world: contrary to a deeply rooted belief, the book is not an image of the world. It forms a rhizome with the world, there is an aparallel evolution of the book and the world; the book assures the deterritorialization of the world, but the world effects a reterritorialization of the book, which in turn deterritorializes itself in the world (if it is capable, if it can).'

107

NOTES

104

105 106 107 108

109 110

111 112 113 114 115 116 117

118 119 120

121

122

For an excellent and more substantive engagement with Badiou's interpretation, one which questions his understanding of Deleuze's avowed univocity, see Nathan Widder, 'The Rights of Simulacra: Deleuze and the Univocity of Being', Continental Philosophy Review, vol. 35, no. 4, 2001. Badiou, Deleuze, p. 100. Badiou, Deleuze, pp.20 and 45, respectively. Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, pp.89, 90 and 106, respectively. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990, is a good source of the many novel concepts that Habermas invokes in his version of critical theory. It is not within the remit of this discussion to undertake a fully worked-out constructivist critique of Habermas's critical theory. James Williams, 'An Affirmation of Independence: What is Philosophy? by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari', Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 26, 1995, pp. 326-31; see p. 331. Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 12. Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 5. Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 9. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 351-423. Strictly speaking, given Deleuze and Guattari's definition of the nomad, upon uttering such a phrase the nomad would cease to be a nomad. See, 'Micropolitics and Segmentarity' in A Thousand Plateaus for an excellent discussion of the pragmatic nature of political practice. Care must be taken with the related notions of 'pragmatic assessment' and 'embeddedness'. The potential problem is that of sanctioning a given context which critique inhabits such that the delimitation of the context itself would become the transcendent element beyond critique. However, this problem can be avoided. See the discussion of history and becoming in the third section of Chapter Three. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self, especially Chapter 1. Hardt, Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy, p. 29. See Nick Land, 'Making it with Death: Remarks on Thanatos and DesiringProduction', Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 24, 1994, p. 75, where he states 'nothing could be more politically disastrous than the launching of a moral crusade against Nazism'. The image of the toolbox comes from 'Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze', Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, p. 208. Foucault, Introduction, The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality Volume Two, trans. Robert Hurley, London: Penguin Books, 1985.

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123

124

If the act of evaluation involves the prior creation of new concepts, new ways of life, then strictly speaking it is an act of critique followed by an evaluation in the sense just described. At best, and as I've just discussed, evaluation may enable critique to emerge if it amounts to a creative evaluation. This is the implication of Hallward's position; 'Gilles Deleuze and the Redemption from Interest', Radical Philosophy, 81, 1997, pp. 6-21. Hallward characterizes Deleuze's philosophy as one that enjoins us to dissolve all that is Given and embrace the Real (the plane of immanence). This is a greatly mistaken reading of the critical implications of Deleuze and Guattari's constructivist account of philosophy. Deleuze invokes the Real in order to show how we may create new ways of living, not so that life should be dissolved into one redemptive univocal realm. Hallward misses this dimension because he does not adequately conceptualize the nature of the relation in Deleuze and Guattari's work (the conceptual persona) and he fails, therefore, to keep a critical distance between the Given and the Real (the concept and the plane). He turns Deleuze into an 'idealist' despite claiming to recognize that Deleuze is a materialist, and he does this because he does not understand the meaning of 'idealism' in Deleuze's work.

125

Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 27.

126 127

Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, p. 9. This brief discussion of the relationship between problems, ideas, ideology and the ideological is a hint of what is to come in the third part of this research project; the part concerned with the ideology of pure critique. See the Afterword for a schematic outline of how this fits with the present work: in particular, that it is a constellation of inquiry that must be approached only after a

130

prior discussion of events, of the event of pure critique. S. Critchley, Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity: Derrida, Levinas and Contemporary French Thought (London: Verso, 1999) and E. Laclau, 'The Death and Resurrection of the Theory of Ideology', Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 201-20. Once again, and at the risk of frustrating the reader, recourse has to be made to aspects of the investigation that will be made more explicit in subsequent works; in this case, on the nature of events and the event of pure critique. Foucault, 'Theatrum Philosophicum', in D. F. Bouchard (ed.) Language,

131

New York: Cornell University Press, 1977, p. 175. Deleuze, 'Letter to a Harsh Critic' in Negotiations: 1972-1990 [1990], New

128

129

Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault,

York: Columbia University Press, 1995, pp. 3-12. 132

Deleuze, 'Letter to a Harsh Critic, p. 11 (italics in original). This is not to devalue 'homosexuality or drug-taking' as if they were somehow incapable of

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133 134 135

136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145

creating conceptual differences which in themselves would transform our world. Indeed, Deleuze is claiming that they have functioned in precisely this way. The claim is that it is not only through practices of homosexuality or drug-taking that such critical effects can be produced. In this context, the point is that the idea of the critic is not confined to the critic-as-homosexual or the critic-as-drug-taker. The effects produced by such critics can be produced in a multiplicity of different ways, a multiplicity that must not be constrained by aligning the effects produced with the agents that may produce them in any given context. Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 28. Deleuze, Negotiations, p. 125. This gnomic phrase, 'life's creative power', is simply a catch-all term for the many different ways that Deleuze and Guattari characterize the ways in which 'life' is always 'on the move', 'becoming', following 'lines of flight' and so on. At this point in the discussion the aim is to distance the idea of the pure critic from the tendency to personify these movements as 'the critic' of pure critique (a tendency that would reintroduce a given into pure critique and thereby create a safe-haven for indifference). In the following sections of this chapter, the nature of 'life's creative power' is explored, at least to the extent that is required for the clarification of the idea of pure critique, through reference to the virtualactual couple and the need for an empirical conception of difference to account for the virtuality of the virtual. For a thorough-going discussion of Deleuze's (and Guattari's) understanding of life, see Keith Ansell Pearson, Germinal Life: The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze, London: Routledge, 1999. Deleuze, Negotiations, p. 133. Deleuze, Negotiations, pp. 170-1. Deleuze, Bergsonism, p. 98. Deleuze, Bergsonism, p. 98. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1989. J. Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies, London: Pluto Press, 1983. Derrida, Margins — Of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. J. Butler, Subjects of Desire, New York: Columbia University Press, 1987, p. 184. In Nietzsche and Philosophy, Deleuze puts the case against dialectical conceptions of difference like this: 'Opposition can be the law of the relation between abstract products, but difference is the only principle of genesis or production; a

I 10

NOTES

146 147

148

149

principle which itself produces opposition as mere appearance', p. 157. Deleuze's case for the genetic powers of pure difference over dialectical conceptualizations of difference as opposition is most thoroughly sustained in Difference and Repetition. Deleuze, Negotiations, p. 170. Foucault and Deleuze, 'Intellectuals and Power: A Conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze' [1972] in Bouchard (ed) Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 205-17. Deleuze, 'To Have Done with Judgement', in Essays Critical and Clinical [1993], trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 126-35. The form of the question is important and it should be stressed that what follows is not a pure critique of capitalism but a discussion of the possibility of a pure critique of capitalism. A pure critique of capitalism, in the terms of this research project, would involve a whole scale investigation into the idea of capitalism, the event of capitalism and the ideology of capitalism.

iii

Index

critical activity, nature of xviii, xxvi, 96-7 critical philosophy 5, 9-10, 44-5, 55,

Adorno, Theodore xx aporeticism 80-2 Aristotle 58 atheism 15-16 Badiou, Alain

85,90

xiv-xv, xx-xxi, 43-4,

67, 84 Bergson, Henri xiii-xiv, 75, 91 Butler, J. 81,85 capital, critique of xvii capitalism xxvi, 39, 44, 51, 72, 92-5 Cartesian philosophy 7, 9, 28 civil society 4 communism 47 communitarianism 52-4 complexity, idea of xi concepts 30—1 creation of xxv, 33-42, 45-7, 50, 56, 59, 66 in relation to ideas 59 conceptual personae xxv, 28, 35-6, 41, 48-51, 55, 59-60, 66, 68 consciousness 32-3 constructivism xviii, xxiv—xxv, 28—9, 32-9, 42-58, 66, 74, 90 Coole, Diana 4 Copernican revolution xxv, 5 creativity 73-5, 92-4 creators, problem of 67 Cressole, Michel 67

i i2

criticism, definition of 6 critique as assistance 49 as creativity 49, 73, 92-3 definition of 6-7, 26 purpose of 10-11 Deleuze, Gilles

xi, xiii, xv, xviii—xxv,

14, 17, 22, 25, 28-51, 54-9, 63, 66-9, 72-7, 83-91, 97 democracy 22-3, 26-7, 47, 78-9 Derrida, Jacques xx Descartes, Rene 7, 9, 28-30, 39-41, 46; see also Cartesian philosophy dialecticism 80-1 difference, philosophy of xix-xx,

79-84, 91 dogmatism 1-9, 13, 15, 19 doubt 7-8, 28-9 empiricism 34-5, 81-3, 91 experimentation 74 fascism 51, 87 Foucault, Michel 54, 85 Frankfurt School xx freedom 18-19

INDEX

God existence of 15-16 nature of 12-13 good, conceptions of 52-4 'good philosophy' 33-4, 51-2 Guattari, Felix xi, xviii-xxv, 14, 22, 25, 28-51, 54-9, 63, 66-9, 74_5, 84, 86, 90-1, 97

Habermas, Jtirgen xx, 12, 50 Hallward, Peter xxii-xxiii, xv Hardt, Michael xx, 53, 68 Hegel, G. W. F. 32, 44, 58, 79-82,

Lacan, Jacques 85-6 Land, Nick 54 legislation 12, 17-18 Leibniz, Gottfried xxii, 58 Marx, Karl 44, 47, 84, 93-4 mediation and mediators 66-73, 78, 85, 88, 91 function of 69 meta-ethics 53 Mitchell, George 69-70 moral law and moral norms 18-20,

53-5

85-6 history and historicity 75—84, 91 Horkheimer, Max xx Hume, David 34 Husserl, Edmund xiv, 29

naturalism xxi—xxiv negation 80-3 Negri, Antonio xx, 68, 74 neo-Kantianism xix-xx, 12, 17, 44,

51, 53, 86 idealism 9, 28-34, 45, 74, 90 ideas, problem of 57—73 ideology 63, 97 immanence xxiii, 11—17, 20, 26, 32-3, 42, 48, 73-9, 91, 95 impure critique xvi-xvii, 87, 92 indifference xix, xxiv—xxvi, 1—20

passim, 21-7, 36-9, 42-5, 55, 58, 67-72, 87-92, 96-7 interconnectedness xi intersubjective idealism 29

justificatory frameworks 45-6

24—7, 36—7,

Kant, Immanuel x, xiii-xxvi passim, 1-23, 28-9, 37-46, 55, 73, 77, 85-6, 89, 92 Kerslake, Christian

xxii-xxiii

Nietzsche, Friedrich 33, 35, 44 nomads 52, 67 normative confusion 54—5 Northern Ireland 69-71 noumena 86 objective idealism otherness 70

28

partial criticism 22—6, 36 perspectivism 44 phenomenology 29 philosophical knowledge 35—6 philosophy academic 48-52, 56 definition of 28-9 functions of xvi, 39 image of xiii most philosophical approach to 33-4

113

INDEX

rights, system of 17-18 Robbe-Grillet, Alain 40

philosophy (continued} nature of 40-1 as pure critique 36-56, 86, 90 plane of immanence xxv, 28-36, 41, 45-50, 53-5, 59 Plato 28-31, 40, 43 Platonism xiii, xx, 43, 58-9, 62 political action 60-1, 64, 84-5 post-Kantianism xx—xxiv, 21, 43—4,

66,73 postmodernism 43, 62 pragmatism 54-5 problematical idealism 9 problems in relation to ideas 62-5 pure positive difference xviii purity, idea of x-xv, 45, 67, 73, 78, 92 Rawls, John xx, 12 reality, idea of 75 reason 12-20, 33, 38 pure and practical 18-19 reduction, notion of xiv

scepticism 1-8, 13, 15, 19 'severe criticism' 8 shared assumptions 25—6 social theory 85-7 Spinoza, Baruch xxii subjective idealism 28 subtractive method xiii-xv, 6, 26-7, 37 Taylor, Charles xx, 17, 53 thought 32-4, 46, 54 totality 11-20 passim, 21-7, 36 transcendence 14, 31, 34, 53 illusions of 32 unconscious, the

32

virtual domain xviii, 76—9, 83—4, 91 vitalist cosmology 34

114