From: mjmascp-AT-ozemail.com.au
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 13:33:12 +1000 (EST)
Subject: Re: zerozoid


re t22006:
>Hellllp.....

This response got kind of long - and a short response is I think to have a
look at Kant's _Prolegomena to all future metaphysics_ which is a short
book written precisely to explain what the point of the CPR and critical
project in general is.

>Where exactly in the C of PR, and why, and how, is Kant
>talking about "levels of intensity" (of our "intuition"?...this is in the
>context of space/time as "pure form of intuition"?), and of the "fall to
>zero" of "superior levels"?

The sections in the CPR which Deleuze seems to be referring to are (are you
ready?) Book II of the First Division of The Transcendental Doctrine of
Elements, which is called the Analytic of Principles, and within this
(which forms the bulk of this Book II), Section 3 ("Systematic
Representation of all the Synthetic Principles of Pure Understanding"),
which covers the Axioms of Intuition, Anticipations of Perception and
Analogies of Experience. In the usual pagination (which transcends
different editions) this is around A158 - A219.

As for the why and how of all this, which I suspect would lead into asking
why and how Kant full stop, I doubt there's a simple or single answer, but
in relation to your breakdown of the question:

>(This is more psychology, as against
>epistemology? But isn't Kant first and foremost a logician and episte-
>mologist rather than a psychologist? I have the same problem with Deleuze
>sometimes, where to locate him with regard to such categories, or perhaps
>it's better to just get rid of all such categories/distinctions?)

Certainly for Kant none of this is psychology, but nor does Kant consider
himself first and foremost a logician or an epistemologist. If Kant is not
doing psychology when he speaks of "perception", "intuition",
"understanding" etc., it is because he is not talking about these as
empirical facts or domains of the world or experience, he is not engaging
in a description, observation or analysis of these qua empirical phenomena.
The discipline which does this is psychology and Kant is not denying that
this is a discipline or that these things do not exist as things in the
world, simply that the task of analysing, observing, describing them has
nothing to do with the problem of philosophy (Kant *himself* elsewhere
writes psychology, as well as anthropology, political science etc., but
these, as empirical disciplines, form separate projects to the critiques.)
He is addressing them as dimensions of thought, as necessary conditions of
thought, i.e. as transcendental.

Ok so you have to buy the distinction between the empirical and the
transcendental, which I'm not going to get into here, but I do think that
if it is hard to think of these terms as about philosophy rather than
psychology it is for the good reason that prior to Kant issues to do with
perception, space and time etc were more or less to do with wordly ie
empirical problems that inhibited or complicated true thought which was by
rights independent of how it appeared, when, where etc. Kant's whole
argument is that these things are not just wordly empirical problems i.e.
not just psychological problems, but truly philosophical problems - Deleuze
discusses this nicely in his first seminar on Kant (which should be just
about to appear in English on the Deleuze Web site) when he talks about the
transition from the classical notion of "appearance" (implying an
opposition to truth) to the Kantian notion of "apparition" (implying an
essential relation to conditions).

What is undoubtable is that these categories and distinctions *are* of
first and foremost importance to Kant, to the point of obsessiveness, which
is clear just from that example of navigating through the table of
contents. In some ways Kant's whole starting point is that philosophy prior
to him is a complete mess and rightly a laughing stock in comparison to the
demonstrable success of science precisely because nobody has paid enough
attention to categories and distinctions, including and perhaps especially
the kind of ones you refer to. But that gets back to the _Prolegomena_,
which I really recommend as a better starting point than any part of the
CPR.

- Melissa