NOTES ON
Deleuze, G. (2005) Pure Immanence.
Essays on A Life, Anne Boyman (Trans) New
York: Zone Books.
Dave Harris
Rajchman, J. Introduction
Deleuze was an empiricist not a metaphysician or
mystic, but it was an empiricism of
multiplicities, with the philosopher 'as an
experimentalist and diagnostician' (8). It
was a transcendental empiricism, used to critique
Kant and phenomenology. Life is an
empiricist concept itself, replacing the usual
notions of the self, running according to 'a logic
of impersonal individuation… Singularities
rather than particularities'. It can never
be specified completely. It is virtual, and
we can grasp this sometimes by contemplating death
and its effects.
Classical definitions of empiricism talk about
atomistic sensations which need to be generalized
through abstraction, but Deleuze's empiricism
emerges from Hume. Life itself synthesises
the sensible, and it is the sensations rather than
individual sense data which are important.
However, there is no agreed way to unify the
sensations. Art offers one option to
synthesise sensations in a way that breaks with
common sense and the role of the individual.
They deploy affect and percept to depict
'something singular yet impersonal in our bodies
and brains' (10). In order to grasp artistic
syntheses, we have to agree to dissolve the ego
[abandon purely subjective syntheses? As in the book on
Proust?] and this comes out in the work on
cinema, an 'other act of thinking, this other
empiricism'.
We can understand the syntheses in terms of the
logic of multiplicity, which is prior to the usual
ways of thinking that relate the subject and the
object, or the subject and the predicate.
'It is a logic of an AND prior and irreducible to
the IS of predications… A constructivist
logic of unfinished series rather than a calculus
of distinct, accountable collections… Its
sense is inseparable from play, artifice, fiction'
(11). We can relate to these sensations
experimentally. Deleuze relies on Hume,
Bergson and William James to critique Husserl as
master, transcendental subjectivism? Big theme in
Difference and
Repetition] [and Fregian logic].
It is difficult to conceive of a plane of
immanence without a kind of radical empiricism
[and vice versa?]. The normal categories
like the subject are simply habitual practices,
including '"the habit of saying I"'. Deleuze
admires Hume for recognizing this against Locke
and the concept of the self as a form of ownership
and identity. Hume by contrast saw this sort
of self as an illusion and rediscovered the
inhuman in the human self. This was used
against the notion of a transcendental ego and
apriori materialism. For Hume, selves were
actually inconsistent clusters produced by chance
and indifference as in a collection of haecceities
-- ATP Plateau
10]. Understanding how life produced
these clusters would lead us to immanence, and the
idea of a life as a potential or virtuality.
The real is always indeterminate and
emergent. Actual people display
characteristics of a life [a strange bit with the
idea of bodies as such as singularities, and even
the Freudian unconscious as a singularity
producing particular complexes which affect
individuals].
We need to try to describe social life in such a
way as to repeal singularities not
individualities, the common impersonal
elements. Dickens's story [Our Mutual
Friend] shows how people realize their
common connections with the hero by reevaluating
his life as he lies dying [and then reducing their
understanding to normal as he recovers].
Hume's social thought is also insightful,
replacing the idea of the social contract between
isolated subjects to a notion of '" attunement" of
the passions prior to the identities of reason'
(15). Society becomes an experimental way of
identifying what we have in common to 'prior to
both possessive individuals and traditional social
wholes', so that even private property can be seen
as a mere convention.
This sort of shared experience is ever present,
always likely to start up in the middle of
relations. In modern artworks, differences
emerge in their own right (Difference and Repetition)
and the challenge is to discover new forms of
experimental syntheses [then a lot of stuff about
Nietzsche and Ariadne -- see Essays.
The idea seems to be that Ariadne breaks with
conventional femininity and subjectivity and
somehow becomes affirmative as a result—in
Nietzsche's hands this leads to 'an empiricist way
out of the impasses of nihilism' (16)—see Hardt's discussion].
The kind of radical doubt of nihilism is also
found in Hume who challenges Cartesian certainties
by suggesting they might be useful fictions—so the
question then becomes one of asking whether they
are essential to life, or deliver some obvious
benefit. Apparently, Nietzsche adds a
positive role for chance here, and suggests that
we also need to believe in a plane of chance and
indifference which represent the potentials of
life. Nihilists can no longer believe in
this state. Apparently, Ariadne gets to the
level of understanding that affirmation is not
about certainty or probabilities, but rather 'It
is to say yes to what the singular yet impersonal
in living; and for that one must believe in the
world and not in the fictions of god or the
self'(18).
Deleuze admits that to believe in the world like
this is now difficult (in What is Philosophy).
It is possible to see this emerging in the essays
in this book—the first one is in fact one of the
later ones and these reveal brevity to the point
of aphorism. This also reflects Deleuze's
anxiety about preserving philosophy in the face of
more commercial kinds of communication.
Overall, this collection can be seen as a kind of
testament, and he did have a particular time of
difficulty for philosophy, needing to deny
universalism. Some of the universalism that
had to be denied was emerging from contemporary
neuroscience in the form of artificial
intelligence, and Deleuze wished to argue that we
should see instead of the brain as '"a relatively
undifferentiated matter"' (20), which could
respond to the new connections introduced by
thinking and art. Philosophy was still to be
put at the service of pure immanence.
Deleuze, G chapter one Immanence: A Life
The transcendental field does not refer to
conventional objects or subjects. Instead it
is 'a pure stream of a-subjective consciousness, a
pre-reflexive impersonal consciousness, or
qualitative duration of consciousness without a
self' (25). Transcendental empiricism,
however relates to 'everything that makes up the
world of the subject and the object'. This
is not just a matter of sensation [or sense data],
which is only an interruption to the flow of
absolute consciousness. Sensations are
linked to each other through becoming 'an increase
or decrease in power (virtual quantity)'.
The transcendental field is not a matter of
immediate consciousness. Consciousness
requires a subject to have been produced 'at the
same time as its object'(26). Before that,
consciousness 'traverses the transcendental field
at an infinite speed' and cannot be expressed.
We only speak of the transcendental as it is known
to consciousness. Normally, we would think
of it as 'a pure plane of immanence', not grasped
by subjects or objects. Absolute immanence
does not depend on objects or subjects. It
is a mistake to see any subject or object as
somehow universal, something to which immanence is
attributed: that only 'redoubles the empirical'
(27). We should not see immanence as some
superior unity of objects, or as a subject. Pure
immanence is 'A LIFE, and nothing else' the
immanent is itself a life, life is absolute
immanence, 'complete power, complete bliss', not
dependent on any beings, where immanence is
'ceaselessly posed'.
Dickens has described this, in the scene where a
rogue is reinterpreted as having a life, something
'soft and sweet penetrating him'(28), but this is
perceived only in the moment between life and
death, where 'an impersonal and yet singular
life… releases a pure event freed from the
accidents of internal and external life, that is,
from the subjectivity and objectivity of what
happens'. This shows us 'a haecceity no
longer of individuation but of singularization'
(29) [tricky -- a special haecceity, singular or
remarkable, not normal etc, a turning
point?] only the subjects that incarnate
life makes it good or bad, and this becomes far
less relevant. However, life itself is everywhere
'carrying with it the events or singularities that
are merely actualized in subject and objects'
(29). We glimpse infinite or empty
time.
Actual lives also have accidents, but
singularities and events are grouped in a
different way, 'entirely different from how
individuals connect' (30) [followed by strange
romantic stuff about small children who have
singularities without individuality, 'a smile, a
gesture, a funny face' and how they are 'infused
with an immanent life'].
What seems indefinite and indeterminate is
actually a sign that we are tangling with
'determination by immanence', not ordinary
empirical determination. The indeterminate
singular One is not something transcendent, but
the immanent itself, and thus 'an index of a
multiplicity'. A life [as opposed to any specific
actual life] is made up of 'virtualities, events,
singularities'(31). The virtual has to be
understood as 'something engaged in a process of
actualization', which may involve an object and a
subject. There are nonactualised or
indefinite events, but these are to be seen
positively, not as lacking anything. [then a
strange bit about virtual wounds, which are not
the same as the actualized ones, so we can say 'My
wound existed before me'—as some novelist does
{probably a Stoic notion originally? -- see Bogue on surfaces
etc} quoted in Logic
of Sense, I think] I think the
argument is that the plane of immanence already
contains wounds, so to speak.] These are
immanent potentials are not the same as the
possible forms 'that actualize them and transform
them into something transcendent' (32).
[Fairly clear and straightforward, except for the
quite unnecessary mystifications, quite often
involving an allusion to works of fiction that we
are just assumed to know about, or to his own
earlier work. One interesting note on
Husserl says he makes the same distinction between
a transcendent world outside of consciousness,
although consciousness is the only way to
constitute it].
Chapter two Hume
In the standard history of philosophy, empiricism
is seen as the opposite of rationalism, stressing
the senses and the sensible as a critique of
innateness. But there are other themes,
revealed in Hume. It can read like a science
fiction description of a world which is
recognizably ours nonetheless [Deleuze's writing
gets close to this as well, no doubt
deliberately]. In Hume, theory becomes a
matter of enquiry, a practice, related to this
fictive world, 'a study of the conditions of
legitimacy of practices in this empirical world'
(36). [And then the bit that people like Olsson
like: 'The result is a great conversion of theory
to practice' (36). Not half as radical as it
sounds in my view—in the first place it's
describing Hume, albeit in that indirect free
discourse that makes it hard to know if Deleuze
would agree or not; in the second place, it's
still about theoretical practice, systematic
inquiry, something different, I still think from
the exploratory play of kids. The context is
suggesting that we don't just gain knowledge by
letting sense data impinge on us, and nor do we
get it by trying to dig out innate categories of
reason? The 'practice' is the practice of radical
empirical inquiry?] . The term
associationism is not naive empiricism, but
something unusual and unexpected [examples of the
questions Hume asked are not very helpful—'to what
extent can we become owners of the seas? Why
is the ground more important than the surface in a
juridical system, whereas in painting, the paint
is more important than the canvas?'. I think
the answer is that these questions reveal that
ideas are associated in arbitrary practice, 'in a
casuistry of relations'].
This means that 'relations are external to their
terms' (37), not reducible to some rationalist
attempt to find categories and deeper relations,
something already internal, an inherent quality of
size or whatever. Classic empiricism
attempted to explain the origin of these internal
relations by referring to the impact of the
sensible on the mind. However Hume wanted to
argue that this just shows the limits of the usual
[conscious? habitual?] conceptions of sensory
impressions. We have to understand
that the senses give us impressions of two
kinds—'of terms and...of relations' (38).
This extends the usual notion of the empiricist
world, which becomes 'a world of exteriority',
where even thought is related to the outside,
where 'terms are veritable atoms and relations
veritable external passages'. Apparently,
this leads to one of Deleuze's favourite
arguments, that we should replace 'is' with 'and',
since the former depends on some grasp of internal
relations. Instead, we have 'a harlequin
world of multicoloured patterns and non
totalizable fragments where communication takes
place through external relations'. Hume
argues first that ideas refer to 'punctual minima
producing time and space', and then that relations
are established externally between these
terms. This helps him develop 'an autonomous
logic of relations, discovering a 'conjunctive
world of atoms and relations', apparently the
forerunner of modern logic.
Relations link impressions or ideas of something
given to something which is not given, as when we
think of something similar. This relation
cannot be explained by conventional reason, but
arises from 'so-called principles of association,
contiguity, resemblance, and causality' (39), and
humour [in the Greek sense?]. Hume wanted to
describe these elements as constituting a human
nature, some more common human way of passing from
one idea to another. This has practical
consequences. In the case of causality, I
have to move from something given to something
that has never been given, 'that isn't even
givable in experience' (40) [something that
happened before I lived, or something that will
happen necessarily or always. Causality
means I must infer and believe [in modern
conceptions, because I am guided by theory].
Hume calls the process [of inference] fusion in
the imagination, or habit. I can even
produce a calculus of probability according to the
degrees of belief I hold. These imaginative
fusions combine with experience [although it can
look as if experience alone provides me with my
beliefs?].
Human minds might move from one idea to another at
random, 'in a delirium' (41), creating all sorts
of monstrous beings. However, human nature
imposes rules, 'laws of passage, of transition, of
inference'. Nevertheless, the same
principles can still generate imaginative fictions
and fantasies. Forging causal chains can be
seen as a kind of fantasy, for example 'by
conflating the accidental and the essential or by
using the properties of language… To
substitute for the repetition of similar cases
actually observed' (42). This is how
'education, superstition, eloquence, and poetry'
have their effects, going beyond experience, and
leaving behind nature as some kind of
regulator. Humour is rendering the
traditional concept of error as a form of delirium
or illusion, making beliefs not true or false but
legitimate or illegitimate.
However, in some cases such fantasies can be
corrected, even in causality, where probability
corrects 'delirious extrapolations' (43).
However, some fantasies are incorrigible,
interwoven with legitimate beliefs. In
particular, we seem to need fiction and a delirium
in order to maintain an identity of the self,
including fictional notions of causality.
These cannot be corrected, but instead lead to
other fictions. Hume wants to apply this to
conventional religion but also 'natural religion'
(44). There is a humorous [sic—this is clearly
connected to all the stuff about the difference
between humour and irony in Logic of Sense?]
skepticism. It's a different kind of
skepticism because it's based on relations and
their exteriority instead of appearances and
errors of sense.
The first step is to ensure that belief is the
basis of knowledge [Deleuze has a strange comment
here—'in other words, in naturalizing belief
(positivism)'(44). Does this mean that the
role of belief becomes unquestioned?]. The
second step is to distinguish between illegitimate
beliefs that don't obey rules, and ones that do
and therefore produce knowledge [the latter are
correctable, or to use the philosophical term
corrigible]. In the final step, however,
illegitimate beliefs turn out to be the basis or
the 'horizon' of all possible beliefs—we have to
believe in the Self, the World, and God.
However, this inquiry into knowledge is only one
thing. Hume also wants to introduce the
notion of passions, as providing the sense to the
principles of association—'affective circumstances
guide the associations of ideas…
[And]… The relations themselves are given a
meaning, or direction, an irreversibility, an
exclusivity as a result of the passions'
(45). Passion is also a constituent of human
nature. However, it works differently from
the principles of association. Those require
the mind to go beyond the given, while passions
restrict the range of the mind, and fixate on
particular ideas and objects. Passions
produce partiality, which is more threatening to
society than egotism, which is fairly easily
restrained. This is the problem with
contract theories of society, which talk about a
limit of natural rights as a form of restricting
egotism. For Hume, the problem is to go
beyond partiality and limited sympathy to more
extended generosity [altruism], and the problem is
to create institutions that helped develop
that. This is a more positive model of
institutions, and puts the relation between human
nature and artifice in the centre.
We need to go beyond the partiality of human
nature. Minds need to react to passions by
preserving them but extending them beyond their
natural limits. Aesthetic and moral
sentiments do this, by incorporating passions into
the imagination [in this sense, I think of
rationalising or theorising,maybe sublimating
them? them]. This liberates them from
their partial context and even transforms them, by
connecting them with new kinds of beliefs—the
development of culture. However, there is a
problem that the new passions may be 'less vivid
than the present ones', and may also become
unfocused. Hume suggests that social
sanctions and the exercise of power through reward
and punishment may help to restore 'vividness or
belief' (49). Sanctions need not just be
exercised by the state, but can operate
through custom and taste. The point however
is developing credibility. The solution to
the other problem is that passions can be
regulated by the principles of association when
they are extended—'aesthetic sentiments' for
example. In another example, 'the passion of
possession discovers in the principle of
association the means to determine the general
rules that constitute the factors of property or
the world of law' (50) [a kind of early moral
functionalism?]. Thus we can decide between
different cases where people are claiming to only
something exclusively [the difference seems to
turn on whether labour is involved in gaining the
property in the first place?]. As with the
earlier baffling questions, however, it seems
there is an irreducible element of 'casuistry of
relations that works out the details' (51), hence
the need to study actual practice.
Chapter three Nietzsche
[I just cannot get on with Nietzsche. I know
why he writes in bizarre aphoristic and
allegorical ways—because he wants to break with
conventional thinking and writing— but I just find
the efforts are not worth it in the end. No
doubt that is because I cannot investigate the
horizons of meaning introduced by discussions of
Ariadne and Theseus because I do not know the
original myths [see my later
comment on Deleuze on the Ariadne myth. I
managed to get something out of Deleuze's book on Nietzsche too
-- which depends on a heavily selective reading in
my view] ]. On the other hand, most
commentaries seem to have to translate this stuff
into more conventional terms as well—so why didn't
the Polish/German professor write in a more
transparent way in the first place? Talk
about up himself!]
Nietzsche [Zarathustra?]
begins with three metamorphoses, spirit to camel,
camel to lion, and lion to child. The camel
is a beast of burden carrying the weight of
established values, the lion destroys all
established values, and the child 'represents play
and a new beginning'(53). We are to
understand Nietzsche's own work as going through
similar stages.
[A brief life history ensues, no doubt because
Deleuze has argued elsewhere, maybe in Logic of Sense,
that Nietzsche is the best example of showing how
life is connected with thought, covering
Nietzsche's early career as a philologist, the
friendship with young Wagner, Nietzsche's
attraction to Wagner's wife, who was also
nicknamed Ariadne, developing 'an affective
structure that he had already sensed was his' (55)
--sounds very sinister to me. As a professor
at Basle, he became a Swiss citizen and rethought
his German nationalism and his Christianity.
He became increasingly solitary, and The Birth of Tragedy
{his best book in my view} was initially poorly
received, which made him think he was
untimely. He eventually broke with Wagner
and his increasing fame and interest in spectacle
{and sentimentality}. He gave up teaching as
a result of ill health, and tried to put a brave
face on this by claiming it had liberated
him. He wandered Europe on a pension.
In 1878 (Human, All Too Human), he
began the critique of values and finally split
with Wagner who had become pious and
nationalistic. His illness deepened (sounds
very nasty).]
Deleuze is not arguing that illness or madness
inspired Nietzsche, who did not see suffering as
helpful in developing philosophy. Nor did he
think of his illness as having physical
effects. Instead, he tried to argue
initially that illness gave you an insight into
health, enabling an evaluation of health, just as
health evaluates illness. This sort of
reversal of perspective was seen 'as the crux of
his method and his calling for a transmutation of
values' (58). However, Deleuze argues that
this is not really a reciprocal insight—you can
see illness as a sign of some greater health until
it overwhelms you— when Nietzsche went mad, 'he
could no longer in his health make his sickness a
point of view of health' (59). [fucks his
method then?]
Nietzsche did not believe in a unified self, and
adopted a series of masks— first health then
suffering as a mask for genius. He saw
different selves as expressing forces of life and
thought, and even adopted vicarious selves in
people like Wagner. He tried to see
his final madness as a mask, but Deleuze
insists that it was the end of playfulness, 'a
death - like rigidity' (59). However,
Nietzsche saw a need to be masked in order to do
philosophy, and Deleuze thinks even the huge
moustache was a mask.
Nietzsche pursued the project of total criticism
after 1878, but in a spirit of 'exaltation', or
'enthusiasm' as if evaluation had brought about a
change in meaning. In this [manic?] mood,
'he had the overwhelming revelation of the eternal
return' (60) which emerged as a theme in Zarathustra.
Criticism now led to a transmutation of values, an
affirmation. There were however bouts of
anxiety and frustration, including unreciprocated
love and the proposal where he was really
'pursuing a dream: with himself as Dionysus, he
would receive Ariadne with Theseus's approval'
(61) [the lady was living with Paul Rée at the
time]. Deleuze sees this as needing the
approval of a pliable father figure. It led
to a ménage a trois but with a chaperone.
They were forever quarrelling and reconciling, and
Nietzsche's sister finally broke it up.
[Typically, Nietzsche saw it all in terms of
people who could not accept his philosophy, the
resentment of the weak and all that]
Elisabeth, his sister, finally married a Wagnerian
and anti Semite. Deleuze says that Nietzsche
had no time for racism. Cycles of depression
and euphoria developed further. In 1888 he
wrote ,Twilight... The Wagner Case, The
AntiChrist, Ecce
Homo, as 'a last momentum before the
final collapse' (63). There is a new violence and
humour, [and a great deal of self
aggrandisement]. His letters got stranger
and stranger, and he was eventually committed back
in Basle. Syphilis was suspected, which
might have been based on a confession. He
eventually was looked after privately and died in
1900 in Weimar. Deleuze thinks a
single diagnosis is probably misleading, and the
final collapse shows that even Nietzsche could not
cope with illness by shifting perspectives.
Elisabeth was the one who tried to preserve his
work and link it with national socialism—no doubt
Nietzsche would have seen this is a final revenge
of the weak in the form of 'the abusive family
member' (65).
The philosophy introduced the aphorism and poetry
in order to develop 'a new image of the thinker
and of thought'. The point was to replace
the discovery of truth with interpretation and
evaluation: 'interpretation establishes the
"meaning" of a phenomenon, which is always
fragmentary and incomplete; evaluation determines
the hierarchical "value" of the meanings and
totalizes the fragments without diminishing or
eliminating their plurality' (65). Aphorism
both interprets and offers material to be
interpreted, poetry both evaluates and must be
evaluated. Interpreting means seeing
phenomena as symptoms, evaluators create
perspectives. The philosopher of the future
does both and is therefore 'in one word,
legislator' (66). This is the preSocratic
conception, and Nietzsche proposed to explore
ancient world and landscapes in order to
rediscover something forgotten, 'the unity of life
and thought' (66). 'Modes of life inspire
ways of thinking; modes of thinking create ways of
living. Life activates thought, and thought
in turn affirms life'. We can only grasp
this through instances, including those in the
life of Nietzsche [the different relations to
illness or madness]. In modern times, we
tend to specialise 'between mediocre lives and mad
thinkers' (67), but the proper unity needs to be
rediscovered.
The problem is that philosophy is a force that can
only appear in a masked form. Life first
imitates matter, and early philosophy had to
disguise itself beneath the mask of the priest [to
harness what seemed like natural forces].
Philosophy was always precarious and risked
solitude. Later developments took this mask
as fixed, and philosophy began to judge life,
against higher values, restricting life,
introducing negation instead of affirmation.
Radical critique of all values, leading to new
values of life was abandoned, and the philosopher
became 'the preserver of accepted values… a
metaphysician… a "public professor"'
(69). Claiming to adhere to the requirements
of truth and reason ignores the fact that
underneath there are unreasonable forces—'the
state, religion, all the current values'.
Philosophers just list 'all the reasons man gives
himself to obey… It is a truth that harms no
one'[with an interesting remark about how pure
science need worry nobody]. Philosophers
carry burdens, the higher values. 'All that
remains then is an illusion of critique'.
Socrates started all this by inventing metaphysics
and judging life against the higher values.
Kant does not 'question the idea of knowing…
The claims of morality' (70). Dialectics
argues that everything returns to Spirit, even
self consciousness or generic man. Nothing
can be rejected, but everything must be
recuperated—we did not kill God but put man in his
place 'and kept the most important thing, which is
the place' (71). Human beings now carry the
burden of the higher values. The only
alternative is to accept the real as it is, 'but
this "real as it is" is precisely what the higher
values have made of reality'. Even
existentialism enjoyed carrying.
Nietzsche is aware of the problems of killing God,
and says, in one of his writings [Zarathustra?]
, that 'the murderer of God is "the ugliest of
men"' (72), that is that human beings become ugly
and they take on the burden formerly carried by
god. The whole history of philosophy, and of
a 'becoming in general' is one of
degeneration. True philosophy must always be
untimely.
Interpretation uncovers a relation of forces in
which some act and others react. The forces
of conquest and subjugation are 'primary', and
this leads to a qualitative judgment about their
essence [active or reactive?]—hence the universal
will to power. And an ethical qualification
of course, since this will to power does not mean
wanting to dominate—this would only make it depend
on established values. The will to power in
Nietzsche is a matter of creating and giving,
something that is inherent in will itself.
The notion helps us analyse the forces at
work. The concept is meant to be 'a mobile,
aerial, pluralist element' (74). Affirmation
is first, and negation is only a consequence
[curiously 'a sort of surplus of pleasure'].
Reactive forces are only ever negative and
limiting, posing as affirmative. Overall,
'affirmation is itself essentially multiple and
pluralist, whereas negation is always one, or
heavily monist'.
However, history shows us that the reactive forces
triumph. Life becomes adaptive, and
eventually exhausted. This is what Nietzsche
calls nihilism, and it should be understood by
some general psychology [there seems to be an
implied connection with natural entropy, or
decadence]. This triumph of reaction is to be
explained not just as an additive matter, but
rather an attack on the strong, the isolation of
the strong, the contagion of weakness—and this is
degeneration. Nietzsche saw this is
happening in natural selection as well, so it is
'a becoming - sick of all life' (76). [Then
the usual weasel that says he's not talking about
real slaves]—slaves can come to power but they do
not cease to be a slave. 'What is at stake
is a qualitative typology: a question of baseness
and nobility' (76). Our current masters are
triumphant slaves—another reason why Nietzsche
would not really have supported the Nazis.
When this happens, the will to power ceases to be
a will to creation and means just simply wanting
to dominate, which is 'precisely that of the
slave; it is the way in which the slave or the
impotent conceives of power, the idea he has of it
and that he applies when he triumphs' (77).
His evaluations are petty. Hence Nietzsche's
saying that '" We must always protect the strong
from the weak"'.
Nietzsche specified the stages which lead to
nihilism, 'the great discoveries of Nietzschean
psychology'. First [in Genealogy of
Morals?] comes resentment, blaming
other people, which gets generalised into opposing
everything that's active. Action becomes
shameful. Then develops bad conscience,
where people introject reactive forces and blame
themselves, become guilty, and this can be
contagious in 'reactive communities' (78).
Then there is asceticism as a kind of sublimation,
denying the power of life as a will to
nothingness, claiming to subscribe to pious values
instead, as a route to salvation. In this
final reversal, 'slaves are called masters; the
weak are called strong; baseness is called
nobility'(78-9). Nobility is wrongly seen
asd a matter of carrying burdens. Apparently
the stages can be seen first in Judaism and then
Christianity, which had already been contaminated
by Greek philosophy. The fourth stage
involves the death of god, initially seen as
competing views about what god is, especially in
Christianity and the Trinity, the effects of the
Reformation and so on. [Protestantism in
particular is to be blamed for men wanting to
replace god?]. However, nihilism
continues. All that happens is that divine
higher values are replaced by 'all too human
values' (80)—secular morality, and notions of
progress and utility. Human beings now
burden themselves, inheriting a nihilistic
reality, 'the residue of reactive forces and the
will to nothingness' (81). Nietzsche refers
to the "higher men", who believe they are active,
but who work with the products of nihilism—every
affirmation reproduces negation, 'the Yes of the
donkey' [to everything, to what exists now].
In the fifth stage, we arrive at the 'last man and
the man who wants to die'. Establish values
still persists even though they have been
modified, and real creation is just as
difficult. However, Nietzsche recounts a
drama in the unconscious which ensues 'when
reactive forces claim to do without a"will"'at all
(82). The world gets more and more devoid of
values. The last man agrees that it's best
to fade away, but this can be seen ironically as a
form of activity, a will to die. And this is
where transmutation is possible at last.
Affirmation can finally triumph in the will to
power, in a new aggressivity and critique of all
values—'the Yes of Zarathustra' (83). This
can only happen when nihilism runs its full
course.
What does Zarathustra affirm? It cannot be
the existing forms that we see around us on the
surface of the earth. It must be a
reaffirmation of multiplicity and becoming, or
something that will never be fully absorbed into
being and categorised [apparently, becoming and
multiplicity are seen as guilty in nihilism, hence
the unhappiness of conventional philosophy, or
rather conventional thought, its discontent and
anguish]. 'In the affirmation of the
multiple lies the practical joy of the diverse'
(84), leading to a new joyful philosophy.
The negative is demystified [not seen as natural,
the only possible form?]. Becoming and
multiplicity are affirmations, and to affirm them
is to affirm affirmation itself—'the doubling, the
divine couple Dionysus and Ariadne' (85).
[This leads Nietzsche to reconsider the figure of
Dionysus, rather than developing anything like a
politics—what a Dick]. The dionysian emerges
as the proper opposite of the crucified.
Apparently, Ariadne is required to affirm
Dionysus, as in the double affirmation.
We have to reconsider what Being and the One might
mean, to relate them to multiplicity and becoming,
not to see them as opposites. The
affirmation of multiplicity and becoming takes the
form of the affirmation of 'the necessity of
chance' in Nietzsche (86), since apparently,
Dionysus is a player. If you affirm a chance
and fragmentation, you lead to 'the
necessary number, which brings back the throw of
the dice', the eternal return, not a return of the
same, of course 'for the same does not preexist
the diverse', except in nihilist categories.
The diverse and the multiple is what comes back,
the original form of the same—'only coming back is
the same in what becomes' (87) [I still think this
is a bunch of mystifying shit, only important
because Deleuze wants to deny all forms of normal
repetition, reproduction and the like. When
do these mystical throws of the dice take
place? Every generation? Should we see
radical social changes, like the development of
capitalism, as some kind of mystical throw of the
dice?].
Nietzsche's conception of the eternal return is
not the same as the ancient conceptions, despite
the allusions to Zoroaster. The eternal
return is not just a normal cycle, but is
selective. This has developed a new kind of
independent morality, where if I want something, I
should also want its eternal return [to
distinguish vulgar from noble wants?]: we should
want something only once, and this will somehow
dignify our wants by making them active and
affirmative [so it would not exclude Nazi
wants?]. The selection also extends to
being—'only what can be affirmed comes back, only
joy returns' (89). Negation can not be too
since it is expelled, luckily 'because Being is
affirmed of becoming, it expels all that that
contradicts affirmation, all the forms of nihilism
and of reaction: bad conscience, resentment…
we will see them only once' (89). [I'm
finding it hard to take all this pomposity, and I
thought of one of the characters in Allo Allo
as everyone is to listen carefully to what she
says because she 'will say this only once' -- I
make more considered criticism of this emphasis on
the eternal return and the work is does to rescue
Nietzsche's rants about the values of the strong
etc in comments on Deleuze's book].
However, Nietzsche also sees the eternal return in
some of the texts as a' cycle where everything
comes back'. This is only as a result of his
dramatisation, however, and the two accounts might
have been reconciled by a third to complete the
progression, but Nietzsche had died before he
could write it. We are given clues in that
the simple return of everything is the thought of
a sick Zarathustra, sickened by the thought that
seems too banal, too certain, a formula
[nauseating for a philosopher]. When
Zarathustra is convalescing, however, he sees a
new joyful conception, that the eternal return is
not just 'a natural assumption for the use of
animals or a sad moral punishment for the use of
men' (90). It involves selective being which
will guarantee that only affirmation returns.
This leads to the concept of the Overman, someone
who is no longer beaten by nihilism, but someone
who gathers 'all that can be affirmed', can
perceive 'the superior form of what is, the figure
that represent selective Being'. The Overman
is produced by man, but goes beyond—'he is the
fruit of Dionysus and Ariadne' (92), and all this
is described by Zarathustra.
It is important that we do not misinterpret
Nietzsche: the will to power does not mean wanting
to dominate; the strong are not necessarily the
most powerful in a social regime; the eternal
return is not an old idea or a banal one;
Nietzsche's last works are still insightful, not
excessive or mad.
Dictionary of the Main Characters in
Nietzsche's Work [more allegorical shit,
dignified by being called a typology!]
Eagle and serpent are Zarathustra's
animals, representing the eternal return as a ring
(coiled serpent) but in an animal way as a natural
assumption. Thus they can only offer a
refrain. The uncoiled serpent 'represents
what is intolerable and impossible in the eternal
return'. Donkey and camel are beasts
of burden in nihilism. Donkeys say yes or
no, but their no is produced by resentment, and
the yes is a false yes as above, involving
carrying the weight of human values. The
long ears of the donkey are meant to be seen as a
contrast to the 'small, round labyrinthine ears of
Dionysus and Ariadne' (94). The spider
or tarantula is the spirit of resentment and
revenge, and its venom represent contagion.
'It preaches equality (that everyone become like
it!)'. Ariadne loved Theseus
when she held the thread, that is in a spider like
resentful way, and this connection limits her
femininity. Theseus is the higher man,
wanting to bear burdens. Dionysus helps
Ariadne become truly affirmative. They give
birth to the Overman. The buffoon,
monkey, dwarf or demon is the caricature of
Zarathustra, representing the risk of betrayal of
the doctrine—he overcomes by being carried, the
bad implication of the Overman. Christ,
St. Paul or the Buddha represent the bad
conscience produced by nihilism, and the break
with Judaism simply universalizes the condemnation
of life and sin, at least according to St.
Paul. There might be another Christ who is
kind and joyful, but who actively wants to die,
representing the last man, permitting a final
transmutation, represented as a synthesis of
Dionysus and Christ—'"Dionysus-Crucified"'
(96). Dionysus appears in different
guises. The Higher Men want to
replace divine values with human values, and thus
represent 'the becoming of culture, or the attempt
to put man in the place of God'. However
they use the same principles of evaluation which
belong to nihilism. The subtypes include the
Last Pope, who believes god is dead, but is
not free,
living on his memories; the Two Kings, who
want to 'create free men and through the most
violent and restrictive means' (97); the Ugliest
of Men, 'who killed god, for he could no
longer tolerate his pity' (97). He now
experiences bad conscience and feels the pity of
the rabble. The Man with the Leech
who wants to replace divine values with scientific
knowledge, 'the exact knowledge of the smallest
thing' (98) without worrying about first
causes. The Voluntary Beggar has
given up on knowledge and seeks happiness, among
the rabble—but 'human happiness can only be found
among cows'[!]. The Sorcerer, the
man of bad conscience playing roles to incite pity
or guilt: 'it wants to shame everything that is
alive'(99). The Wandering Shadow,
the failed promise of culture to free and liberate
men after god—the shadow disappears in the lights
that illuminates Zarathustra. The
Soothsayer [anyone else reminded of the
Tarot in all this?] who announces the last man,
but fails to see what lies beyond.
Zarathustra and the Lion, the prophet of
Dionysus. It could be that his radical
critique is still a No, but not the normal
negation, as Zarathustra 'fully participates in
dionysian affirmation' (100). Nevertheless,
he acts only to create the conditions in which man
can liberate himself.
back to Deleuze page,thank
God
|
|