Abstract

In this commentary I respond to the claims of Dimitris Vardoulakis that, following a mistake of Heidegger in his translation of Aristotle and the apparent loss of phronêsis, post-war continental philosophy has abandoned instrumental rationality and the calculation of utility, instead valorizing an ‘action without ends’ and instituting a ‘new Kantianism’ in its ethics, politics, and ontology. I do so by presenting the thought of Gilles Deleuze as one identified in this tradition who fails to be characterized by Vardoulakis’s claims, and whose concepts already address these concerns. I first demonstrate how Deleuze’s ontology, as presented in Difference and Repetition, avoids relying on or constructing a meaningful, ontological outside, and so Vardoulakis’s characterization of a new Kantianism. And secondly, I respond to Vardoulakis’s critique of continental ethics by presenting the ethical notions in both The Logic of Sense and Capitalism and Schizophrenia as stemming from distinct ethical heritages (the former building on that of the Stoics, the latter primarily that of Spinoza), as well as both providing immanent direction to our actions, providing what can be read as the revisable, calculable reasoning Vardoulakis associates with phronêsis. In this way I show that his category of the ‘ineffectual’ cannot apply to all post-war continental philosophy as Vardoulakis so claims.