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At the Edges of Thought

At the Edges of Thought: Deleuze and Post-Kantian Philosophy, edited by Craig Lundy and Daniela Voss and published in 2015 by Edinburgh University Press, is a collection of fifteen essays that explore the intricate relationship between the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and the post-Kantian philosophical tradition. The book situates Deleuze’s work within the context of thinkers such as Maimon, Kleist, Hölderlin, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, and Lyotard, illuminating how Deleuze both engages with and transcends his predecessors. Organized into three parts—Part I: Deleuze, Kant, and Maimon; Part II: Deleuze, Romanticism, and Idealism; and Part III: Deleuzian Lines of Post-Kantian Thought—the collection is roughly historical but focuses on key concepts like Deleuze’s “transcendental empiricism,” which rejects Kant’s a priori categories and emphasizes the genetic creation of concepts and objects from empirical experience. Essays delve into specific encounters, such as Daniel W. Smith’s analysis of Deleuze’s critique of Kant’s transcendental idealism, arguing that Deleuze replaces Kant’s hypothetical reasoning with a synthetic method that accounts for the genesis of thought and reality. Other contributions, like Daniela Voss’s exploration of Maimon’s influence, highlight Deleuze’s adoption of differential concepts and intensive magnitude, while Beth Lord examines Deleuze’s engagement with Kant’s Critique of Judgment to reframe aesthetics. The book also addresses Deleuze’s political philosophy, as in Nathan Widder’s essay on the “war machine” and its relation to state philosophy, and aesthetic dimensions, such as Gregory Flaxman’s study of Deleuze’s connection to Antonioni’s cinema through a Kantian lineage. Contributors, including Anne Sauvagnargues, Sean Bowden, and Alistair Welchman, underscore Deleuze’s transformation of post-Kantian themes like difference, time, and agency, showing how he pushes philosophy toward innovative horizons. Praised for its rigorous scholarship and fresh readings, the collection is noted for its focus on Maimon’s underappreciated influence and its broad engagement with epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and politics. Available in hardcover, paperback, and digital formats, it has a 5.0/5 rating from limited Amazon reviews, reflecting its appeal to scholars of Deleuze and continental philosophy, though its dense, specialized content may challenge general readers.

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