Deleuze and the Genetic Evolution of Kantian Critique

This Deep Dive examines a text that explores how the philosopher Gilles Deleuze spent his career reimagining and transforming Kantian transcendental philosophy. Rather than simply rejecting the past, Deleuze utilized a "minor" tradition of thinkers like Hume, Nietzsche, and Bergson to strip the transcendental field of its traditional reliance on the Self, God, and the World. This project shifts focus from the conditions of possible experience to a genetic method that accounts for the production of real experience through difference and singularities. The author illustrates this by mapping Deleuze's major works onto the classic Kantian divisions of dialectics, aesthetics, analytics, ethics, and politics. Ultimately, the sources present Deleuze’s system as a heterogenesis, where philosophy functions as a creative act of fabricating concepts to address ontological problems. Through this lens, Deleuze's entire trajectory is seen as a rigorous effort to complete and invert the critical project begun by Kant.