gilles deleuze: a philosophy of immanenceimmanence from consciousness and the subject to a transcendental
subjectivity, thereby transposing transcendence within immanence^21
itself. For Deleuze, then, it is clear that even, or perhaps in particular,
with phenomenology, as if responding to the compelling call of a nec-
essary (and always desired) Beyond, one of the deepest concerns appears
to be precisely the overcoming of immanence once and for all, even in
one of the most meticulous attempts to institute a critique of tran-
scendent, mystificatory values. Whether the Deleuzean critique of
phenomenology here is fully valid remains, naturally, an open ques-
tion, recently and most fruitfully discussed by several commentators,
among others Alain Beaulieu whose Gilles Deleuze et la phénoménologie^22
contributes largely to the question, in this specific case by carefully
distinguishing the various levels of immanence at stake in Husserl’s
work. If most studies devoted to this particular relation agree that
there remains in phenomenology a call for transcendence, thus estab-
lishing a relation to religious thought, the question still remains con-
cerning Deleuze’s own claim concerning pure immanence. This is a
more worthwhile discussion than the rather pointless debate concern-
ing whether Deleuze in fact inscribes himself in the phenomenological
tradition (for instance, as an atheist phenomenologist,^23 a title which
Deleuze himself would probably have interpreted as based on a strong
desire for annectation) or if he is “guilty” of the transcendence he
himself rejects; important because it points to the problem immanent
to philosophy itself, that is, how immanence reterritorializes itself in
transcendence not only by taste, but perhaps by necessity. One could of
course point to the fact that the very use of terms such as “absolute,”
“pure,” and “unthinkable,” pertaining to Deleuze’s notion of the
plane of immanence, inscribes immanence itself within a certain frame
of value that is claimed by all transcendent discourses — an unavoid-
able compromise of philosophy with God, as Philip Goodchild point-
proposes a lengthy discussion on the subject of Husserl’s idea of the conscience
and the transcendental field in Logic of Sense, series 14–16.
- The formulation being Husserl’s own, cf. Hua III, 138.. The formulation being Husserl’s own, cf. Hua III, 138.
- Alain Beaulieu, Gilles Deleuze et la phénoménologie, Mons: Sils-Maria, 2004.
- Cf. Beaulieu, 67, and R. Tejada, Deleuze face à la phénoménologie (1), Paris, Les
papiers du collège international de philosophie, nr. 41, February 1998, 68.