Tag Archives: Deleuze

the style is the philosopher

For his part, Deleuze preferred to refer to a time that he called ‘stratigraphic.’ It is certainly important that philosophies succeed one another in time. Nevertheless, these philosophies are virtually coexistent. Every philosophy is virtually contemporary with every other, even if certain logics creep into those that preceded them, and certain concepts are reclaimed in their original form. Thus, in the present, every system of ethics rivals every other, since, in reality, all logics are in non-dialectical conflict with each other.
More precisely, according to Deleuze, any philosopher worthy of the name – that is to say, any philosopher-creator – traces out a plane within chaos. For concepts are born of thought’s confrontation with chaos. Or, in other words: concepts must be created. They are dated and signed, even if later philosophers must divert them from their original function, hijacking their components and their flows. This means that every new plane, if it is to inaugurate a truly new philosophy, even if it should have originated from an anterior plane, must distinguish itself from and find its own autonomy from the latter. But how? Most fundamentally, it is through assuming his own problematics – even if these problematics are not explicitly thematized – that the philosopher has a chance of tracing such a plane. And, on this plane, a new consistency may be given to chaos, by means of the singular creation of the arsenal of connected concepts that populate it. For Deleuze, the style is the philosopher.

Thoma Duzer – in Memorian: Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) in Collapse III

Essentie

The common notions are more biological than mathematical.
De common notions (algemene begrippen) zijn het gezichtspunt waaruit de Ethica geschreven is. De common notions vormen de overgang van de tweede naar de derde soort van kennis, we gaan voorbij het verstand en komen in het intuïtieve intellekt als systeem van essentiële waarheden of bewustzijn.

We ervaren de essentie.

relations

One may pass from one body to another, however different, simply by changing the relation between its ultimate parts. For its is only relations that change in the universe as a whole, whose parts remain the same.

Gilles Deleuze – Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza

Why Spinoza never completed the Treatise on the Intellect

We may suppose, then, that the discovery of the common notions occurs precisely at the end of the edited part of the Treatise, and at the beginning of the writing of the Ethics: in about 1661 – 1662. But why would this discovery have forced Spinoza to abandon the already-existing version of the Treatise? The explanation is that the common notions emerge at a time when they cannot fulfil their functions or develop their consequences. They are discovered too late relative to the text of the Treatise. They would have to establish a new point of departure for philosophy; but the point of departure has already ben set in geometric ideas.
They would have to determine an adequate mode of knowledge of what exists, and show how one passes from this mode of knowledge to the ultimate mode, knowledge of essences. But because the modes of knowledge have already been defined in the Treatise, there is no place left for the common notions or for the series of fixed and eternal things, which are thus shifted over to the ultimate mode of knowledge, with the knowledge of essences. In short, in order to give the common notions their place and function, it would have been necessary for Spinoza to rewrite the entire Treatise. It is not only that they invalidate the finished part, but they would have modified it. Spinoza prefers to write the Ethics form the perspective of the common notions, although it means postponing a new treatise that would have focussed on the practical problems that are merely outlined at the end of the Ethics, concerning the origin, the formation, and the series of these common notions, along with the corresponding experiment.
Deleuze – Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, p. 120 – 121

common notions

Let us consider, then, the way in which one passes from the second kind [of knowledge] to the third. In the Ethics, everything becomes clear in this regard: the second and third kind of knowledge are systems of adequate ideas, but very different from one another. Ideas of the third kind are ideas of essences, inner essences of substance constituted by the attributes, and singular essences of modes involved in the attributes; and the third kind goes from essence to essence.
Deleuze – Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, p. 117

The common notions are more biological than mathematical.
De common notions (algemene begrippen) zijn  het gezichtspunt waaruit de Ethica geschreven is. De common notions vormen de overgang van de tweede naar de derde soort van kennis, we gaan voorbij het verstand en komen in het intuïtieve intellekt als systeem van essentiële waarheden of bewustzijn.

We ervaren de essentie.

two faces of the will to power

It is by the will to power that a force commands, but is also by the will to power that a force obeys. To these two types or qualities of forces there correspond two faces, two qualia, of the will to power, which are ultimate and fluent, deeper than the forces that derive from theme, for the will to power makes it that active forces affirm, and affirm their difference: in them affirmation is first, and negation is never but a consequence, a sort of surplus of pleasure. What characterizes reactive forces, on the other hand, is their opposition to what they are not, their tendency to limit the other:  in theme, negation comes first; through negation, they arrive at a semblance of affirmation. Affirmation and negation are thus  the qualia of the will to power, just as action and reaction are the qualities of forces. And just as interpretation finds the principles of meaning in forces, evaluation finds the principles of values in the will to power. Given the preceding terminological precisions, we can avoid reducing Nietzsche’s thought to a simple dualism, for, as we shall seen affirmation is itself essentially multiple and pluralist, whereas negation is always one, or heavily monist.
Yet history presents us with a most peculiar phenomenon: the reactive forces triumph; negation wins the will to power! This is the case not only in the history of man, but in the history of life and the earth. at least on the face it inhabited by man. Everywhere we see the victory of No over Yes, of reaction over action. Life becomes adaptive and regulative, reduced to its secondary forms; we no longer understand what it means to act. Even the forces of the earth become exhausted on this desolate face. Nietzsche calls this joint victory of reactive forces an the will to negate “nihilism” – or the triumph of the slaves.

– Gilles Deleuze, Pure immanence, chapter 3 Nietzsche, p 74/75 –

What is the creative act?

Deze tekst staat in de bundel Two regimes of madness. De eerste keer dat ik het las vond ik het helder en dacht dit moet ik delen. Ik vond de tekst op Youtube.

Ik herlas de tekst om te lezen waarom ik hem wilde delen en deze keer herkende ik dat niet, kwam de tekst mij anders over. Vandaag spreekt het stuk over kunst als verzet, ‘Every act of resistance is not a work of art, even though, in a certain way, it is. Every work of art is not an act of resistance, and yet, in a certain way, it is.‘
Waarom is het een daad van verzet? Omdat het een virtualiteit laat zien die de zogenaamde werkelijkheid ter discussie stelt? Omdat verbeelding een vrijheid opeist?
Ik kom de laatste tijd steeds de opmerking tegen, o.a. bij Rosi Bratidotti in Posthuman Knowledge, dat de ratrace naar de ondergang alleen door kunst afgewend kan worden. Hoe dat is niet duidelijk. Zeker niet in de huidige vorm, waarin beeldende kunst zich toont als hebbedingetjes voor de rijksten. Eerder vind ik het in literatuur, zoals in The Freedom Artist van Ben Okri, maar kunnen mensen dit nog lezen, komt het nog binnen? Hoe brengen we kunst weer onder de aandacht, hoe delen we het, hoe verwelkomen we kijkers?

‘There is no work of art that does not call on a people who does not yet exist.‘

Affirmative Critical Theory

ja er zijn genoeg redenen om somber te zijn en een negatieve visie te hebben. Maar als je daaraan toegeeft, er in meegaat, ben je slachtoffer, slaaf. Van je eigen emoties en van (rechtse) anti-intellectualistische tendensen in de maatschappij(en). In navolging van Spinoza en Deleuze moeten we samen met Braidotti nieuwe (vlucht)wegen denken.
Niet het neo-primitivisme van Badou en Zizek maar een affirmatief kritisch denken. En dat denken delen.

fictie

‘Ik lees geen romans/literatuur meer, ik lees non-fictie, wetenschappelijke boeken’ Ik hoor dit regelmatig. Als ik ‘Verschil en herhaling’ van Deleuze les besef ik hoe belangrijke literatuur is. Dat goede literatuur de (enige) manier is om het leven te onderzoeken, te beschrijven. Dat het een levende, menselijke vorm van kennis- en inzichtvorming is.
Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Deleuze, het is een denken, en filosofie die zich met literatuur verbonden weet. Ze leunt er tegen aan en ondersteunt het.
-05-02-2019-