Book Reviews

Christian Kerslake (2009) Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy:

From Kant to Deleuze, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
In What is Philosophy? Deleuze and Guattari define philosophy as
the creation of concepts on a plane of immanence. Yet the more
they expound on what the plane of immanence is, claiming that it is
the absolute ground or prephilosophical presupposition of philosophy,
the more abstruse it becomes. Aptly, they write: We head for the
horizon, on the plane of immanence, and we return with bloodshot
eyes (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 41). Immanence is consistently present
and problematic in Deleuzes work, and Christian Kerslake speculates
that perhaps it is the problem inspiring [Deleuzes] work (2). What is
implied is that determining what Deleuze means by immanence is the
key to understanding his philosophical project. This is the difficult task
assumed by Kerslake in Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy: From
Kant to Deleuze.
Kerslake begins by offering a preliminary definition of immanence:
formally, a philosophy is immanent if it does not appeal to any terms
or relations outside of itself; ontologically, it means that thought is
adequate to the expression of being (2). Polemically, Kerslake positions
himself against recent studies that have presented Deleuze as a noncritical metaphysician, and he asserts that the books aim is to emphasise,
unequivocally, that Deleuze is the latest flowering of the post-Kantian
tradition (5). Although he offers this work as a sourcebook of ideas and
arguments (vii), there is a very clear unifying and coherent argument:
it is only within a Kantian and post-Kantian context that Deleuzes
struggle with the problem of immanence can be properly understood. He
identifies immanence with the post-Kantian idea of immanent critique:
that is, a critique in which reason criticises itself and thereby accounts
for its own method and genesis. The problem of immanence is therefore
formulated as the problem of metacritique.
Deleuze Studies 7.1 (2013): 153156
Edinburgh University Press
www.euppublishing.com/dls

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However, it is a gross simplification to reduce a book to its polemical
edge, and Kerslakes aim is far more complex and captivating. To
understand Deleuzes reading of Kant, Kerslake does not primarily
engage with Deleuzes explicit treatment of Kant and the German
idealists, nor does he situate Deleuzes post-Kantianism against Hegels.
Instead, he carries out what he describes as a re-excavation of Kants
critical philosophy to show how Deleuze repeats the first convulsions of
the critical project (10). Accordingly, three of the books four chapters
are a studied dissection of the origins of Kants critical philosophy,
paying close attention to the tensions and problems guiding Kants
formulation; the fourth chapter shows how Deleuze responds to these
problems.
In an extended Introduction, Kerslake grounds his arguments on
Deleuzes lectures series Quest-ce que fonder?, which were delivered
in 1956. What is so advantageous about these lectures is that Deleuze
engages directly with methodological issues of critique and the problem
of self-grounding in philosophy; more significantly, Kerslake argues:
Everything in Difference and Repetition is present in nuce in What
is Grounding?, and just needs unfolding (21). This is an interesting
speculation, though it rather raises the question of why Deleuze took
over a decade to simply unfold it. Kerslake claims further that Deleuzes
style in the lectures appears to be a hitherto unknown dialect of
Heideggerese; but that may be due to the state of the lecture notes
(43, n. 18). What is of some concern is that this acknowledgement is
the only note of caution Kerslake sounds regarding the credibility of the
notes, for these lecture notes are not Deleuzes own but were made by a
student, and their accuracy has not been determined.
The rest of the book elaborates at great length the arguments that
Deleuze, in these lectures, traversed with lightning speed (9). Chapter 1
establishes a consistency in Kants pre-critical and critical writings with
regard to his awareness of metacritical issues. Kerslake identifies three
historical stages in Kants struggle to define systematically the relation
between critique and metaphysics as he attempts to develop his critical
project in terms of the relation between critique and teleology. Chapter 1
ends with two sections on Deleuze: the first on Deleuzes reading of
the relation between the three critiques in Kants Critical Philosophy;
the second on the development of his transcendental empiricism,
which Kerslake identifies as being rooted in the third stage of Kants
struggle. Chapter 2 expands on the assertion of consistency established
in chapter 1 by locating the origins of critical philosophy in Kants
pre-critical writings (a term Kerslake dislikes) in dogmatic metaphysics.

Review 155
In a close and interesting reading of the history of the ontological
argument, Kerslake pursues the relation between the logical and the real
as it is developed through Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant, and details the
critical turn in Kants philosophy as it arises in response to Leibnizs
rationalism.
Kants break from Leibnizianism is developed further in chapter 3,
which explores Kants theory of cognition. In his pre-critical writings,
Kant engages with the problematic notion of the object, which Kant
refers to as object = x, and which is to have significant consequences
as it is retained in his critical writings. Kerslakes argument centres on
the Transcendental Deduction in the first edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason; he argues that this Deduction is only fully appreciated in the
light of Kants work on Ideas in the Transcendental Dialectic, which he
persuasively argues has the features of a transcendental deduction. He
argues that the deductions in the Analytic should be understood as being
subordinated to this third deduction, and it is the internal connection
between all three that gives the Critique its consistency as a whole.
But why is immanence the very vertigo of philosophy? (2). Kerslake
addresses this question in the fourth and final chapter. Two different
meanings of immanence are identified in Deleuzes thought: the first
conception of immanence is that which is explored through most
of the book and concerns the systematic and metacritical problem
of self-grounding; the second conception, which appears in Deleuzes
later works, is that of a prephilosophical and pre-reflexive thought.
The task of this chapter is to determine whether or not these two
conceptions can be reconciled, thus demonstrating a consistency in
Deleuzes thought. Kerslake achieves this by identifying three vertigos
in the notion of immanence: the first is the vertigo encountered in any
instance of ungrounding, which is necessarily included in self-grounding;
the second, with which the book is largely concerned, is the attempt to
attain metacritical consistency; but it is the third that is the specifically
Deleuzian one, where the question is asked what living in a plan (or in
English, plane) of immanence would in any case be like (265).
Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy is an ambitious work
and the breadth of Kerslakes analysis is very impressive. Although he
traverses in slow motion the ground covered in the 1956 lectures,
his project might have benefited by moving at an even slower pace
that shifted more weight onto the context within which his often
dense arguments are expounded. Kerslake assumes a lot of the reader,
including a solid understanding of a wide range of texts, some of
which are lesser known; although each chapter is equipped with

156 Review
extensive footnotes that help elaborate ideas, further explication and
clarification would have made his insights more accessible. That said,
this is an invaluable contribution to a growing body of literature
on Deleuzes post-Kantianism, and these are insights worth pursuing
further. Presumably, the reason Kerslake describes this as a sourcebook
of ideas is because, although he has analysed the historical roots of
Deleuzes post-Kantianism, its value will ultimately be borne out by
future works that complement the project Kerslake has carried out
here by examining how these historical roots are played out in each of
Deleuzes texts. This, too, would be a very worthwhile project.
Simon Scott
Warwick University
DOI: 10.3366/dls.2013.0097

Reference
Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari (1994) What is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh
Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, London: Verso.