The Ethics of Kant's Practice: Or Deleuze's Repetition of Kant

Abstract

I suppose that the term ‘knowledge’ can refer to various kinds of activities. In this thesis I study only one of them. I am interested in the kind of knowledge that cannot be separated from its object. In other words, I am interested in knowledge that is at the same time the object that it knows. I take ethics to be this kind of knowledge. This thesis is a study of certain works by Immanuel Kant and Gilles Deleuze. It argues that for these two thinkers what there is just is what is known in this sense. In other words, what there is just is what should be. In Kant the thing in itself is an ethical concept that we know through actualization. In Deleuze difference in itself is an ethical concept that we know through repetition.