The naivete of thought: The 'critique' of phenomenology in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze

Edmund Husserl's phenomenological project is motivated by, first, the overcoming of "philosophical naivete" (empiricism, whereby the world is self-evidentially existing) to attain ultimate grounds for scientific knowledge and, secondly, the need to reformulate what Kant calls the "transcendental" (the conditions for experience) by demanding that the conditions themselves be an experience. The two aims are mutually reflective of one another, according to Husserl. Still, Gilles Deleuze, on the one hand, believes that the phenomenological reformulation of the transcendental is not radical enough; while, on the other hand, he rejects the depreciatory connotation given to "naivete." Therefore, the thesis of my dissertation is that Deleuze's distancing from phenomenology requires his reformulating empiricism as the means for gaining access to the "transcendental" not as merely a condition for possible experience but rather as a real experience. On this account Deleuze's empiricism, contrary to Husserl, achieves the immediate experiencing of the transcendental, but only at the expense of rejecting consciousness or subjectivity as the grounds for understanding our being in the world. And so Deleuze's self-described "naivete of thought" makes sense only if one clarifies how this defines his kind of transcendental empiricism.