Just a few months later, in his interview with Jeannette Colombel, Deleuze would reiterate all these ideas about intensive reading and the process that means to give voice to the singularities that the philosopher is aimed to uncover. In such interview, Deleuze would also remit to the disciplinary constrictions that the history of philosophy imposes to the philosopher, referring to all these singularities as non-textual values that should be considered too in regard to the work of an admired author. As he refers, this would implicate to put on scene the differences traced by him, ie, a ‘staging’ of those singularities that individuate his thought, in a way to alternate the aim of ‘history’ for a conceptual ‘theatre’ of philosophy.

“We are uncovering a world of pre-individual, impersonal singularities. They are not reducible to individuals or persons, nor to a sea without difference. These singularities are mobile, they break in, thieving and stealing away, alternating back and forth, like anarchy crowned, inhabiting a nomad space. There is a big difference between partitioning a fixed space among sedentary individuals according to boundaries or enclosures, and distributing singularities in an open space without enclosures or properties. The poet Ferlinghetti talks about the fourth person singular: it is that to which we try to give voice… Philosophers often have a difficult time with the history of philosophy; it’s horrible, it’s not easy to put behind you. Perhaps a good way of dealing with the problem is to substitute a kind of staging for it. Staging means that the written text is going to be illuminated by other values, non-textual values (at least in the ordinary sense): it is indeed possible to substitute for the history of philosophy a theatre of philosophy… Precisely, by virtue of those criteria of staging or collage, it seems admissible to extract from a philosophy considered conservative as a whole those singularities which are not really conservative: that is what I did for Bergsonism and its image of life, its image of liberty or mental illness.” (DI, 142-144).

In the same vein Deleuze takes his chance to emphasize again the love and admiration he had for Spinoza and Nietzsche, although not at all for Hegel: we can see how Deleuze implicates the reason why he never wrote a word about him: of course, he did not love nor even admired his work in any sense. But this should mean not that he did not read him intensively, on the contrary: it is because Deleuze did apply an intensive reading of Hegel that he took the decision to betray the history of philosophy by not writing a word about him, implying for him that Hegel’s work is not worth to be taken as ‘philosophy itself’:

“If you don’t admire something, if you don’t love it, you have no reason to write a word about it. Spinoza or Nietzsche are philosophers whose critical and destructive powers are without equal, but this power always springs from affirmation, from joy, from a cult of affirmation and joy, from the exigency of life against those who would mutilate and mortify it. For me, that is philosophy itself… Why not Hegel? Well, somebody has to play the role of traitor. What is philosophically incarnated in Hegel is the enterprise to “burden” life, to overwhelm it with every burden, to reconcile life with the State and religion, to inscribe death in life —the monstrous enterprise to submit life to negativity, the enterprise of resentment and unhappy consciousness. Naturally, with this dialectic of negativity and contradiction, Hegel has inspired every language of betrayal, on the right as well as on the left (theology, spiritualism, technocracy, bureaucracy, etc.)” (DI, 144).

It is interesting to see how Deleuze underlines the negativity of Hegel’s ‘singularities’ with respect to life and its affirmation, suggesting that the “language of betrayal” that his work inspires is what exceeds Hegel himself. From Deleuze’s point of view, therefore, to give voice to these negative ‘singularities’ would mean to betray making them speak, and thus in this sense he decides to not give such Hegelian language any voice, as a way to effectuate a counter-affirmation of life that would betray the history of philosophy and its disciplinary constrictions. In this specific regard, it is also interesting to note how Deleuze considers that Hegel’s work incarnates all these constrictions historically imposed to the philosopher, as part of the same “monstrous enterprise” that submits life to negativity. To this point, we can see in which specific sense the word “monstrous” would be used by Deleuze five years later, in his response to Cressole —and specifically, in his famous ‘ass fuck’ quote—.

In his ‘Letter to a harsh critic’, Deleuze explains how he sees retrospectively what he had written as a philosopher not only in regard to the history of philosophy, but also to the process he went through to liberate himself from the disciplinary constrictions that such history traditionally imposes to any philosopher, ie, the process that leaded him to write philosophy in his own name. For Deleuze, this process is intimately related to the intensive reading of the authors he admired and respected, ie, those “who challenged the rationalist tradition in history” especially Spinoza and Nietzsche. But all these ideas that Deleuze exposes and explains in his response to Cressole were not new nor a secret: five years earlier, in 1968, he referred to them in a couple of interviews following the same critical argument. In both interviews, Deleuze describes how this intensive reading means much more a philosophical love than a philosophical buggery ―where Nietzsche and Spinoza, among others, have a very special place in Deleuze’s heart―. So, if we follow the ideas he exposes with this regard in those interviews, we can see how such ideas would be deployed five years later ―even in a more affective fashion―, in his response to Cressole.

For instance, in his interview with Jean Noel Vuarnet, Deleuze affirms that this intensive reading needs to be considered as an assumption that implies new ways of thinking and writing, and that in Nietzsche this implication “presupposes a radically new conception of thought and language because sense and value, signification and evaluation ―terms that Nietzsche introduces to modern philosophy as rigorous notions, ‘the sense of what one says, and the evaluation of the one saying it’, as Deleuze indicates―, bring into play mechanisms of the unconscious” (Desert Islands, 135-136). From Deleuze’s point of view, it is with respect to these mechanisms that the philosopher always get the truth he deserves according to the sense of what he says and to the values to which he gives voice: for Deleuze, it is with respect these mechanisms that the “impersonal individuations or even pre-individual singularities” of the world should be uncovered critically by the philosopher in order to make them speak that what has not been said yet of them. Though, for Deleuze it cannot be but through the intensive reading of the work of an admired author that is possible to reach the singularities that compose and give consistency to his thought:

“First you have to know how to admire; you have to rediscover the problems he poses, his particular machinery. It is through admiration that you will come to genuine critique… You have to work your way back to those problems which an author of genius has posed, all the way back to that which he does not say in what he says, in order to extract something that still belongs to him, though you also turn it against him. You have to be inspired, visited by the geniuses you denounce… In every modernity and every novelty, you find conformity and creativity; an insipid conformity, but also “a little new music”; something in conformity with the time, but also something untimely —separating the one from the other is the task of those who know how to love, the real destroyers and creators of our day. Good destruction requires love… You have to be able to love the insignificant, to love what goes beyond persons and individuals; you have to open yourself to encounters and find a language in the singularities that exceed individuals, a language in the individuations that exceed persons” (DI, 139-140).

We can see how Deleuze is already suggesting in what sense admiration can lead to an intensive reading through which the philosopher is ‘visited’ by the ‘genius’ of the author that is conceptually treated, and that permits him to grasp the problems raised critically by such an author, ie, to elevate himself to those problems so to denounce and enrich them in a way to make them speak the singularities that compose the untimely thought of such an author. In this specific regard, Deleuze considers that the intensive reading leaded by admiration is also way to love and creation.

“This is the “truth” of Deleuze’s indirect free speech: a procedure of philosophical buggery. Deleuze even introduces variations into this topic of taking a philosopher from behind. He claims that, in his book on Nietzsche, things got turned around so that it was Nietzsche who took him from behind; Spinoza resisted being taken from behind, and so forth. However, Hegel is the absolute exception ―as if this exception is constitutive, a kind of prohibition of incest in this field of taking philosophers from behind, opening up the multitude of other philosophers available for buggery. And what if we are effectively dealing here with the prohibition of incest? This would mean that, in an unacknowledged way, Hegel is uncannily close to Deleuze. So, in short, why should we not risk the act of taking from behind Deleuze himself and engage in the practice of the Hegelian buggery of Deleuze? Therein resides the ultimate aim of the present booklet. What monster would have emerged if we were to stage the ghastly scene of the spectre of Hegel taking Deleuze from behind? How would the offspring of this immaculate conception look? Is Hegel really the one philosopher who is “unbuggerable;’ who cannot be taken from behind? What if, on the contrary, Hegel is the greatest and unique self-buggerer in the history of philosophy? What if the “dialectical method” is the one of permanent self-buggering? Sade once wrote that the ultimate sexual pleasure is for a man to penetrate himself anally (having a long and plastic enough penis that can be twisted around even when erect, so that it is possible to do it) perhaps this closed circle or self-buggery is the “truth” of the Hegelian Circle.”

Organs Without Bodies

Inspired by the Stories from Paolino’s Tapes: Private Recordings 1985-1993, Terence Blake at his AGENT SWARM has blogged a set of interesting posts that draw an affective portrait of Paul Feyerabend [*, *, *, *, *, *, *, *]. From the start, Terence shares an excerpt from Bertold Bretch’s Three Penny Opera sung and recited by Feyerabend himself. For Terence, the image that synthesizes such excerpt contains a good part of Feyerabend’s whole philosophy:

“‘And the ones stand in darkness and the others stand in the light. We only see those who stand in the light, those who stand in the darkness you don’t see’. Feyerabend describes the scene, where you see a few people in the light, jumping around and there is a huge number of people in darkness, being born, dying, laughing and crying. This, according to Feyerabend, is humanity. Not just the elect in the light, but all the others who go unsung and unnoticed. When intellectuals talk about “humanity” they just mean other intellectuals, in the First World.”

Terence’s aim is to consider Feyerabend as a thinker who refers to the arrogance of the intellectuals that speak in the name of humanity, the ‘insatiable lumivores’ ―as Terence calls them―: ‘who pose as spokesman for an abstraction, and who cultivate their intellect (and their power) at the expense of their humanity’. Regard to this, Terence also suggests in which sense this view can be paired with Deleuze’s foucaultian remarks on the indignity of speaking for the others, and underlines how ‘sometimes the context is completely silly’:

“Sometimes it is advisable to avoid an exchange as the context forbids any real thinking and we are faced with just sad old ego talk: no real communication, no openness, caricatural binary oppositions, hectoring and bullying, oversimplification, aggressive declarations and emotions that replace the subtle and nuanced intensities of thought. One should just walk away, or at the worst smile and say ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Sometimes it can be necessary to stay put and speak up, because even if a dialogue is impossible the monologue of the self-elected is inacceptable, one must show, to others and even to one self, that alternatives exist, that other voices are possible.”

While I could not but associate all his remarks with the discussion I recently had with John Mullarkey, Terence exemplifies this regard describing how, in one occasion, Feyerabend’s admiration and respect for his friend Erwin Schroedinger leaded him to decline an invitation to participate in a TV show dedicated to the life of his friend, ‘as he did not know into what context he would be put’. With this respect, Terence also detects how Feyerabend’s affective tone considered Schroedinger as ‘someone who played the role of intercessor, as Deleuze would call it, helping him to live and to think’:

“He thus managed to select out the joyful affect of having known and being inspired by Schroedinger, without having to suffer through the sad affects of sterile intellectual discussion. However, sometimes it can be more appropriate and rewarding to accept the convocation and to turn it to one’s advantage in some way.”

Terence also exemplifies this further point, describing the occasion when Feyerbend ‘decided to break with the asymmetry’ of his first job interview ―as it could not but be ‘reinforced and recoded by the asymmetry of power’―, by speaking to his interviewers ‘on an equal footing’:

“‘At the end he said “Stop! You ask me a lot of questions, now I want to ask you some questions”…Even here in this little anecdote we can see Feyerabend’s lifelong engagement in favour of immanence, and refusal of the asymmetries of transcendence. He remarks that this act of enunciation, plus Schroedinger’s recommendation, got him the job… Feyerabend is concerned with the microphysics of power and resistance as expressed in the ordinary contexts of everyday life… We have seen declining (Bartleby’s ‘I would prefer not to’) and restoring symmetry (Feyerabend’s ‘Now I want to ask you some questions’). Another response is exemplified by Schroedinger’s action when he saw a Nazi SS harassing a Jew: ‘he went up to him and spit him in his face’. For Feyerabend, while courageous, is not to be understood solely in terms of refusing to give in to fear. More deeply he remarks that ‘Few people give such expression to their disgust’. When such disgust is felt before the intolerable, many people do not take action, but suppress their feelings or turn away. Schroedinger would ‘go forward and act on it’. Feyerabend piles up anecdotes and character traits to create an ethical and intellectual portrait of Schroedinger as more than just object of memory and of historical narrative, a field of singularities capable of moving and inspiring decades after his death. ‘What a person!’, Feyerabend exclaims.”

To this point, we can see already how the affective portrait that Terence draws of Feyerabend is showing also the ethical and intellectual (affective) portrait that Feyerabend draws of his friend Schroedinger. Terence also includes the review of other very interesting examples concerned to Feyerabend’s ideas: the meditations on metapoiesis that can be found in Dreyfus and Kelly’s All Things Shining (for Terence, ‘the problem posed by their book is an ethical one: what to do when faced with a surge of physis in us or around us?’); the opposition between the ‘confusionists and superficial intellectuals’ and the ‘deep thinkers’ (which is ‘well illustrated by the contrast that Andrew Pickering sketches between Mondrianesque and De Kooning-like approaches’) and also, the importance that Feyerabend gives to rhythm and style in Xenophanes (where ‘the style of a scientific paper today is not that of ordinary language, but a a special sort of elevated language that has been formalised so as to eradicate the imaginal dimension, what Xenophanes calls the plasmata’). But perhaps most importantly, we can see also how all these lines that Terence draws to give us an affectively portrait of Feyerabend, are also echoing with his very affective portrait of Deleuze:

“Deleuze detested schools of thought and tried to teach his students to ‘love their solitude’, to reconcile them with the necessity of being an outsider and of treating their teachers as intercessors and not models. His aim was not communication and consensus, but to impart a conceptual matter that could be worked over in many different ways. He did not want ‘immediate reactions’, where the ego asks questions and poses objections that would disappear if it had been patient enough to wait, but something deeper that came from his students’ solitude and goodness. He did not want merely intellectual reactions, but an alliance of intellect and emotion. He wanted to protect them from the impulse to imitate and to join, preferring a pedagogy of the outside. Feyerabend declares his admiration for Schroedinger: ‘he was a good guy’, that is to say that he was an outsider who would not shut up. He would not stay and keep silent in a situation where he was not in agreement, but either leave or speak out and give his opinion. He could not be prevented from acting on his opinions either.”

We have to admit that it is not but through Terence’s intensive reading of Feyerabend and Deleuze, that he can draw the lines of their affective portraits (without mentioning that he also was a Deleuze’s student for a period of time, which might be something invaluable). Within this intensive reading, Terence finds that these lines can be traced ‘by a constant pulsation between image and concept, and affect and concept’ and how this indeed means ‘knowing singularities by heart‘. Thus, with the portrayed presence of Feyerabend and Deleuze, Terence confirms us in which sense it is not but through love and admiration that this intensive reading is possible, and that with it is possible to trace the conceptual lines ―ie, to grasp the philosophical problems― posed by these authors, so to give voice and make speak the singularities that compose their untimely thought. As Deleuze says elsewhere:

“You have to be able to love the insignificant, to love what goes beyond persons and individuals, you have to open yourself to encounters and find a language in the singularities that exceeds individuals, a language in the individuation that exceeds persons”.

[Addedum: Terence have just posted another entry for the series: Sympathy For The Beast: Feyerabend’s Animal Becoming]

The Anarchist Without Content has posted on his blog a largely punctual quote by Keith Ansell Pearson that illustrates the philosophical relation traced between Deleuze, Fichte and Nietzsche, all with respect to the empirical meaning of life and the experience of its event. I don’t know if The Anarchist felt motivated by the discussion I had these days with John Mullarkey regarded to Laruelle’s non-philosophy ―posted HERE at Schizosophy―, and where I bring such experience as my prime objection against false radicality in philosophy. However, his sensible quotation suits perfectly as a punctual complement for my arguments. This is a synthetic extract of the quote:

“In a short piece entitled ‘Immanence: A Life…’… Deleuze argue that the transcendental field needs to be mapped out as a ‘life’ the involves neither subject nor object but rather ‘an absolute immediate consciousness whose very activity no longer refers back to a being but ceaselessly posits itself in a life’… This, says, Deleuze, is the immanence of the late Fichte. It is the impersonal but singular life of the individuating haecceity (the ‘beatitude’ in the title of Fichte’s work). This is a germinal life since it is not positing life in a ‘simple moment’ confronting a ‘universal death’ but rather a life that is ‘everywhere’, contained ‘in all the moments’ that a ‘living subject passes through’, a life of virtualities, events, and singularities… where beatitude is related to the achievement of supersensible death ‘in life and through life…’, which speaks of the praxis of a relational self as its peculiar ‘sublime vocation’. The self-expressive life of the spiritual is one in which the universe can no longer be thought in terms of the circle ‘returning to itself, that endlessly repeating game, that monster which devours itself so as to give birth to itself again as it already way’; rather, there is ‘constant progress to greater perfection in a straight line which goes on to infinity’. This is because ‘All death is nature is birth…in dying does the augmentation of life visibility appear…It is not death which kills, but rather a more living life which, hidden behind the old life, begins and develops’… it is not, therefore, for Fichte a question of living ‘according to nature’ simply because this is not even what nature does. The only ‘law of life’ is, in Nietzsche’s almost Fichtean language, ‘self-overcoming’.”

Those who followed my discussion with John would immediately identify the implications that the quote is delineating. Whether he felt inspired or not, I want to thank The Anarchist anyhow for posting this quote with such an opportune timing. And for those who want to read more about the work of Keith Ansell Pearson, who is one of the very few well-formed Nietzschean-Deleuzians around, you can download some of his essential works, HERE.

“Laruelle’s pale fad of prefixing whatever he likes (which is also a very Badiouan practice) seems to confirm itself just as a false radicality: in this occasion, ascribing himself to a repressed Badiouism.. What should we expect from a Heideggerian that thinks he can overcome Heidegger faking Nietzsche’s epistemic break? Seems to me that, with this new book, Laruelle is prompt to be just another bureaucrat of the Badiouan text. Both too depotentialized to my taste!”

Several minutes after that, John intervened with a sarcastic comment, asking me if I have read the book already. Of course, he was kind of kidding me. I took his comment just like that, and explained him that, just as the others, I was also on my right to chant a sort of an intrigue of predestination, ala Barthes, which might not be after all difficult to recreate with respect to Badiou and Laruelle’s prefixing tendencies. I expressed John my views about how false radicality is the blinded spot of lots of institutional ‘philosophers’ who can only feed the text at any costs, ‘radically’, but without really breaking anything in epistemological terms. In response, John defended Laruelle’s non-philosophy commenting that:

“As to whether Laruelle is a radical break or not, I think the idea of using philosophy as raw material, and non representationally, may well not ‘look like’ anything radical in as much as it ‘looks like’ more philosophy. But if you look at this usage anew (revision it) as a practice that performs its theory, then it promises something quite different (ie its novelty is more of a figure-ground thing – you don’t see anything new in the image, only a new configuration of foreground and background).”

This response of John really got my attention, because while it seemed to advocate in favor of Laruelle’s non-philosophy, it was at the time also reinforcing my critical point, unexpectedly for him, so I replied to the question explaining my view:

“I really don’t think that ‘using’ philosophy in any sense would lead to a radical rupture: it is not merely a question of non-representation, it’s a question of practical sense. It is precisely the ‘use’ that the institutional philosophers/ academics do of philosophy what shall be fractured in first place as part of the epistemic break they try to apply. False radicality is a break effectuated inside the text that does not lead to anything substantial but to the conservation of the mechanisms that reproduce it inside its field of production. As I see it, to really apply an epistemic break in philosophy, to make it effective, the philosopher (with no prefixes) needs to apply such a break to his own philosophical activities, to suit it like a sombrero and to deal with its truthful consequences. This objectivification of the own philosophical practice (see Bourdieu) is what institutional philosophers lack the most, in fact, they have found their ways to impose their lack as an apology of their work, an apology that justifies it automatically in their specific field, among partners and compadres. This is a totally endemic practice for philosophy.”

Afterwards, the exchange got interrupted and did not come to a good end, admittedly, because of the intervention of Anthony Paul Smith, a close collaborator of John and also translator of Laruelle’s work, who managed himself to throw a rant about how I was not able to say anything as I had not read the text yet. I tried to explain Anthony in which sense I was sharing and supporting my viewpoint with a broader Bourdieuan criticism against false radicality, and though I was kind of sorry to see how he took it personal instead of getting the point, I concluded my intervention arguing in which sense those reactions and reluctance were sampling the ways of how institutional ‘philosophers’ understand criticism while they’re somehow trapped in the text. If you happen to have John as Facebook friend, you can read the whole debate, HERE. It was not but until John’s most recent article posted a few days ago at the London Graduate School thoughtpiece site, that the discussion I held initially with him continued with more fluidity and detail with respect to non-philosophy. John’s article is an introductory extract of his most recent book on Laruelle’s non-philosophy, at the time that it is also a sort of response to Graham Harman’s review on Laruelle’s Philosophy of Difference. It drew again all my attention to see that John was clarifying a lot of issues regards to non-philosophy, in his way to extend his critique to Harman’s fast-tracked review. In this case, the debate started because of a comment I made there at the LGS thoughpiece site, a comment that then was still left to wait for moderation [*]. Of course, I considered for the next day to see if such comment would be finally moderated, though, when i checked it out, for my surprise it was not. So I went to John’s Facebook page and noticed him about the situation:

“Dear John, I wrote a comment with some of my thoughts there, but it seems that it is still waiting for moderation. I hope there would be no problem for you if I share it here as a copy-paste, just to effectively assert and make very sure that we do can think democratically:

‘At 2:14 am on January 12, 2012, Naxos wrote:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Thanks for this, both John and Anthony I still truly think that there is no reason out of the academic frame that would give sense to the distinction between non-philosophy and philosophy. This distinction still reproduces the old scholastic categories as it gives certain predominance to philosophy as something exclusive of academic work. Out of this frame, philosophy does not support this distinction. Though, Laruelle’s take seems to be a good try, if we account John’s clarifications. Thus, this effectuated radicalism implied by Laruelle’s ‘non-philosophy’ does not go as far as it should be. Before being “a discipline that appropriates for itself the exclusive right to think at the highest levels of thought”, philosophy is the way of life that’s open to life itself as an experienced immanence: as I have referred elsewhere: philosophy is not a school-game, it is rather something vital that can only be experienced by the affirmativeness of an event that breaks with history and that exposes the philosopher to the intensities that compounds his singularities and that appear to put in risk his own sanity.’

I am currently considering that this comment of mine has not been published there due to ‘technical difficulties’ and not due to a childish censorship of who might ever be in charge of moderation ―that would be pretty ironic, if you can imagine.”

As it can be read, my intention with the original comment was to give a sign to John and Anthony that I was attentive to John’s clarifications on non-philosophy but still, in the same tone and with the same critical point of view showed in the precedent exchange, that I was not quite yet convinced about Laruelle’s prefixed distinctions. As it can be read, I also felt the need to underline in which sense it is life what shall be taken as prime in the definition of philosophy, in the more empirical sense, and in contraposition to the definition distinguished by ‘standard philosophy’. Half an hour later John responded to my comment:

“I’m sure that there’s an innocent reason for the delay. You make an interesting point, and I would agree that the distinction Laruelle makes between non-philosophy and philosophy can sometimes appear a little two ‘spatial’ (rather than reductive), and I believe – as I say in the book – that it should be temporalized, ie, seen as momentary. That is why I place the emphasis on non-philosophy’s mutating nature (its inessential or indefinite essence): what might count as philosophy, and so what might count as non-philosophy, is always moving. Though some might regard this as Bergsonising Laruelle too much, I think that it is the best means by which to render immanent any transcendentalist tendencies within his work – by bringing it down to earth and closer (in some respects) to what is ‘popularly’ understood as ‘non-philosophy’. But might I ask you: when you say that philosophy ‘is rather something vital that can only be experienced by the affirmativeness of an event that breaks with history and that exposes the philosopher to the intensities that compounds his singularities and that appear to put in risk his own sanity’ – is that a definition? Does the use of ‘only’ here not act to exclude other conceptions/experiences of philosophy – or are those simply wrong? (I’m sure you can see where I’m heading with this question…).”

I responded to him as follows:

“I do get where you question is heading, and the answer is no, the word ‘only’ in my sentence (yes, it can be read as a definition of philosophy that might be provisional as well) is not performing any exclusion of other conceptualizations, experiences or definitions of it, it is rather implying a condition to understand philosophy from the preponderance of life itself, which is as it should be. Philosophy can be written, philosophy can be taught, philosophy can be thought, though, none of these really mean much without philosophy being lived and experienced ‘first hand’. Philosophy is, before anything, something that happens in life. The fact that my definition is preponderating life as an experienced immanence is not simply rhetoric or aestheticism: it is quite literal that philosophy would let us experiment life very empirically as the immanence that it is, and everyone that lives is able to experiment its event, if it happens to happen (not that it can happen to anyone, though). It would only be an act of exclusion for those who have not stepped out of the academic frame, for those that conceive philosophy from within this frame and that are modeled and subjected by this frame. To understand in which sense it is not exclusive, it is needed to effectuate some epistemic ruptures with respect our own selves, not only announcing them in a text, but effectuating them in flesh so to detach ourselves from the historical weight implied by the academic frame.”

On his part, a few hours later John responded:

“Point taken – though I would think of the ‘academic frame’ as a porous membrane, that, at various moments, can let pass through what is on one side to the other. In fact, Laruelle too can talk about the ‘lived’ and ‘experience’ as touchstones (though in neither case without reliance on Life/vitalism or empiricism respectively – not that I think you may be so relying). Another is the human, or ‘Man-in-person’. But when you realise that none of these are actually defined or ‘given’, but are only hypothesised as identical with the Real, ‘in-the-last’-instance’, it becomes evident that they too need the non-philosphical treatment, i.e., that we should think of the non-human and non-lived as an amplification of the normal set of definitions for the lived and the human. This isn’t a mere relativism or historicism but a pluralism/democratisation, even of what one might mean by ‘us’.”

It was cool to see how John responded to me in such an attentive way and that somehow he was finding certain retroactive lines with respect my intervention. At the time, I was also recognizing in which sense John’s measured clarifications were truly shedding some light to some of the ideas and terms posed by Laruelle. It was very interesting to see how John was very keen to make the debate more productive despite we were clearly walking different paths and treating with very different terminology. So, I thought it was a good idea to be more receptive with some of the assertions he was sharing, and to elaborate a bit more my critical objections in that specific regard:

“I also see your point and I do understand your suggestion that Laruelle’s non-philosophy seems to be an advance against the idea that treats life and experience as identical with the Real. For this matter, I guess I need to reread Laruelle’s Summary and his Identity and Event, at least, so to retake again his view according with the differences that you have delineated regard to his terminology. Though, it is still this terminology what I find too mild, and from the Nietzschean perspective, at least for a Nietzschean like me, it is also a bit annoying. For instance, I don’t see in which sense the event that means the epistemic break implied by non-philosophy is effectively rupturing with philosophy. How is the status if this effectuation, if non-philosophy is still pampering the terms used by philosophy and even, if it lets philosophy to sign its value by defect, accepting the implied prefix? I can imagine that non-philosophy is a term that would still imply all these transformations of philosophy with respect to life, experience, the event, and of course, immanence. That’s is cool, though it is still too mild for my taste as somehow it means that the epistemic break is only announced as part of the philosophical text, no quite effectuated, not quite affirmed. This is what makes very uncomfortable for me to read his stuff: my impression is that his writing is not reaching ‘non-philosophy people’ like me after all, so to speak, thus this can only mean that non-philosophy is not just on the service of philosophy ―without any real break―, but also it is conceived to please it, feeding its academic enclosure. Maybe we have to admit that the effectuation of this break shall not be remitted exclusively to the philosophical text and to what can be said from it, but to the own life of the philosopher, and this is how, to my mind, non-philosophy could imply instead a fruitful and rich re-conceptualization of such terminology: a re-conceptualization that would affirm each time such effectuation.

In Nietzschean terms, Laruelle is not going that far, and for this matter, we cannot be too mild, and even, we cannot be too radical. The epistemic break is up to be effectuated by the philosopher regard to his own life, so to detach himself from standard philosophy and to avoid any reproduction of its terminology. It just annoying to think that, while life is all affirmation, its philosophical ‘discipline’ would be signed negatively in terms of ‘non’, though, you have interestingly demarked a difference between non philosophy and anti-philosophy, that should be considered. The philosopher needs to effectuate the epistemic break for his own sake as he cannot be but subjected by standard philosophy, though, it is not enough to just recognize and take conscience of his subjection: the philosopher has to induce the event that would effectuate the break and would detach any subjection from his body: this is what I like to call a self-happened philosopher. And a self-happened philosopher would need a lot of philosophical courage to retrieve life its philosophical predominance, so to make worth the break and to affirm it against standard philosophy’s negative prefixed designation.”

I also thanked John for allowing me to vent my untempered point of view despite my limited English, and I shared him how I was prefiguring all these matters by myself in terms of a post-Deleuzian/ post-nihilistic affirmation that I like to call ‘schizosophy’. The next day, John responded with an extensive comment, expressing how he was feeling that the exchange was heading to an end, and how he wanted to emphasize and to make some final points:

“Firstly, non-philosophy, or non-standard philosophy, is emphatically not a mere negation of philosophy. It is the affirmation of (non philosophical) thought, ie, of thought existing in an indefinite number of ways, philosophical and ‘non-philosophical’ (in the colloquial sense of those terms) – what it denies is only that (the highest) thinking is exclusive to philosophy (or any one other discipline, for that matter): thought is non-exclusive, or democratic. As a Nietzschean, you’ll understand that affirmation MAY be reducible to the negation of a negation (Nietzsche’s so called moral and epistemological nihilism), but only indirectly. You may ask – why then does Laruelle make this point ‘through philosophy’, so to speak? This is because he believes that philosophy is the anti-democratic thought par excellence, one that contaminates other forms of thinking when they ‘get into’ philosophy – ie, the ‘shadow philosophers’ (as he calls them) in ‘Theory’. Much better, he thinks, for them/us to see what they/we do as original thinking, not illustrated or applied Deleuzian, Heideggerian, Badiouian thought etc. So, there is no such thing as ‘applied’ (‘Laruellean’) non-philosophy – non-philosophical thought is already ‘applied’. The applied is already the ‘pure’ theory. The pure is the applied. Hence, his book on ‘non-photography’ (which I’d recommend you read), is ALREADY a book ‘on’ non-philosophy without any regional sub-status (application, illustration, etc). Hence, the two (Non Philosophy and Non Photography) are Really identified with each other such that the one adds nothing to the other (as application, as illustration). Non Philosophy = Non Photography (but also) = Non Newtonian Physics = Non Mandelbrotian Fractal Geometry etc.

Secondly, you talk about ‘terminology’ that is too mild. Indeed, the question of theoretical expression is crucial here, but not only in terms of terminology’, but practice. And this, I think, is the hardest thing to get, or see, about non-philosophy. Non-philosophy is a system of hypotheses or axioms, but it is also – and here is where it is especially difficult – a performance/ performative, a stance, or ‘posture’ that performs these axioms. The first axiom is, ‘that the Real is One’, so nothing is outside it. In other words, the axiom is that there is One/Real, and it is ‘in-different’ to what call themselves ‘representations’ of its entirety/essence. This is because they are parts of the One, not other, second things, representing it. Now one can think of this as another philosophical idea of essence (think of Spinoza’s one substance, univocity etc), but the difference is that non-philosophy performs or ‘mimes’ the idea through the act of doing non-philosophy (deflating exclusionary thoughts, amplifying democratic thinking), and not as a fixed conception/ representation/thesis. Non-philosophy is a verb, an activity: non philosophising… Hence, it always must mutate, or actually is mutation/expansion in thought (in terminology, yes, but also in mode of expression, in discipline, etc).

BTW, as a Nietzschean/ post-Deleuzian, you might like to look at Laruelle’s Philosophies of Difference book, which deals with both (as well as Heidegger/ Derrida). Finally, then, may I ask you what do you think of Nietzsche, as a philosopher who can no longer be framed outside the canon, surely (he is on every curriculum after all these days)? Do not claims such as that, when doing ‘philosophy… how much one feels, lies beneath oneself’, are precisely what academics love to hear and be – precisely the kind of exclusive claim over the ‘highest thoughts’ that we need to disavow?”

It was clear that John way summarizing some of the introductory ideas that he included in the article posted at LGS thoughtpiece site, and detailing some other implications contained in his new book. But when I went back to the site to check out and reread some of notions posed by him in such article, what was then my surprise to see that my original comment was not yet published and still awaiting for moderation [*]. Still, at the moment it was important to correspond all the attention that John was giving to me by showing him some gratitude for the warm and yet critical exchange and for being unselfishly open to it, by writing an extensive and elaborated reply that, on my part, would also be drawing some final and definitive objections:

“I did catch that the aim of non-philosophy is up to deny the highest thought as something exclusive to ‘standard philosophy’. But I do think that such highest thought does exist, and while it is not exclusive to standard philosophy, it is, in fact as a fact, something exclusive of life and its event. This may be the very first consideration: it is life itself the highest level of thinking, and when this level is experienced, when the philosopher takes life as the ‘object’ of his thought, life can only break him apart. There is no philosophy that would tolerate the higher thought of life, when life presents itself naked to the philosophers experience, its absoluteness can only irrupt his existence. This is the event that brings the philosopher to live immanence and that makes him a self-happened philosopher. Though, it is risky and nothing warranties it to happen. Considering the fact of this event, empirically speaking: is not the idea that affirms thought as non exclusive, non democratic, still a bit moot? Is the highest thought ―that we cannot but admit that it is exclusive to life itself―, accessible for anyone? Maybe it should be, but at what empirical cost? In every case, the empirical cost of thought is the experience of its event: empirically speaking thought is not easy to grasp, thought itself is not given by default and it needs the body of the philosopher to be detached itself from history. If we can think about something it is because we have already detached the meaning of it that remained historically sedimented in our body-experience. How is non-philosophy confronting this very empirical fact of life with respect its highest thought, the thought of immanence?

Taking this empirical point into account, can we suspect that non philosophy is still considering thought euphemistically, misleading this fact of life that irrupts with the philosopher existence? Let me bring here another way to put this. I know that you are familiar with Gregory Bateson’s cybernetics of experience. For instance, we can see how he improves his deutero-learning perspective by adding a third level of experience (I’m referring concretely to his article ‘The Logical Categories of Learning and Communication’, which he arranged for the publication of his Steps, integrating this third level to his theory). We need to underline in which sense Bateson emphasizes the empirical consequences of this higher level of thought as irruptive experience. What ever this third level might mean in terms of ‘logical types’, we see how Bateson underlines in which sense this level implies an epistemology of life (within his system, an ecology of the mind), an epistemology that though its terms would still be erratic. Nonetheless, Bateson also suggests that it worth to aim the experience of this third level despite that we just could be erratic about its terms, in the sense that it would definitely orient us to a ‘more correct’ a ‘better’ epistemology to understand life (and its ecology). With this regard, I wonder how far does non-philosophy go with respect this very empirical conceptualization of a higher thought? How democratic this non-standard thought is, while it is not but accessible through an irruptive experience, through an induced event in existence, that would lead us to experiment our own singularities, that would lead us to have a vis a vis relation with the immanence of life? How thought can possible be democratic, if it is hard to reach empirically, as we have to experiment with our existence just to grasp it, almost? This aim of non-philosophy that denies the highest thought as exclusive to standard philosophy means a good intention, has definitely its effects on the text, but only as an announcement. Is it enough to acknowledge and to take conscience of all these implications, so to effectuate the event that means the epistemic break needed to reach thought democratically, in a more empirical way? My hunch is that it is not, though, I admit that I still owe to non-philosophy a lot of reading to assert this accusation with more consistency.

As far as I am understanding, non-philosophy is the name of a certain event inside philosophy: non-philosophy would negate philosophy’s negation (or aim for exclusiveness), thus that would affirm the event of thought, democratically, out of such predominance. But this event inside philosophy seems to be just simulating (textually) the epistemic break that leads to think and live (empirically) the immanence of life. What should be epistemologically affirmed (negating the negation) is the effectuation of the event in experience, not in the text. While non-philosophy affirms this event inside the text, does it deny it in terms of experience? These are just like the questions that strike me each time I try to deal with non-philosophy… Regard to the question about Nietzsche that you asked me: I think Nietzsche decided to incarnate this highest level of thinking life, in this sense, he raised himself as a thinker, much in the sense of a legislator. He did not step back towards this epistemology of life, he stepped forward it and took the bull by the horns, even though he knew that any words would be erratic (hence all his histrionism). This is the kind of step we should really take, intensively, and bravely.”

At the end of this comment I showed John how interested I was to know his diagnosis of my philosophical condition, as it exposes and develops what I had referred also as the condition to experience the immanence of life. I felt that John was still being kind of discrete about my assertions, so I told him that if he feels like finding something worth to say about, I would be very pleased to hear it. I explained him how I do recognize that being retroactive and to have different opinions was very important for me to establish some differentiations with respect to my own work. I also asked him to notice that my original comment was still awaiting moderation in the LGS thoughtpiece site [*], and I did show him my discomfort and annoyment about this ironic situation. I think maybe John got a bit overwhelmed not only by the extension of my last comment but also by the questions and objections posed in it, because some hours later, he replied briefly as follows:

“Given the increasing lengthiness of our exchanges, I’ll reply in a private message so that we don’t clog up others walls.”

This was somehow unexpected for me, because it apparently meant that John was willing to continue our exchange even in a more extended way. I thought that he was having in mind a huge and detailed response to my critics, but that was not plenty the case. For those who follow John at Facebook, this is the link to the discussion. So, the next day, ie, yesterday, he sent me a private message showing me some aperture and expressing some enthusiasm about my last response. I am not quoting what we exchanged privately, but he did take his chance to say things more straight and direct: John showed me that he was not agreeing with some of my terms and with the idea that there is indeed a highest thought that is exclusive only to life and its event, and that for him such disagreement was definitive. He also explained to me in which sense non-philosophy is not an event inside standard philosophy, as I was implying just to be more empathic, but an event in other subjects when seen as philosophical or thoughtful. It was a surprise for me to see that, after all, John was reducing all into a question of ‘we taking postures and bunkering into our respective positions’. I realized then that the exchange was reduced to a deaf dialogue: the main empirical objection that I stressed all the way through the debate was simply not weighted by him, and my objection regard to the event implied by non-philosophy, which for me is not effectuated in fact but only announced in the text, was simply ignored. I noticed that John was not able to deal with the conversation anymore, and that it was clear that he was willing to finalize our communication, showing me that he was not very interested after all, as it seemed in first place, about what I was positing as an empirical condition to deal with the event of life.

The fact that John wanted to make our exchange more private was a move that obligated me to be honest about what was happening and regards to what I was feeling, because right after reading John’s message and before sending him any response, I went back again to the LGS thoughtpiece site, to see if my original comment was finally published: and of course, it was not [*]. Being that so, and despite that the exchange was somehow fruitful and enjoyable, I felt compelled to be straight with him and to expose my feelings with a lot frankness: in my response, I told John in which sense I was feeling dismissed and truly pissed off about the fact that my original comment remained censored at the LGS thoughtpiece site: with this regard, I asked him to understand in which sense all the exchange was founded from an unjust and not very democratic act of censorship, so that I was not willing to continue any further until such situation would get cleared. I openly expressed in which sense I was making him responsible of such situation, directly or indirectly, because after all, he was the author of the article. I also expressed him my will to post the entire exchange here in my blog, not only to share it to my readers but also to denounce in public a case of censorship that was highly ironic. John did reply to this, saying that he was not involved with such situation, and that it was rather LGS’s webmaster the one who was responsible for the delay. I replied to him saying in which sense such negligence was for me pretty hard to believe, and that anyhow he just let this to happen at the end of the day. I told him that, as the issue in question was precisely if we can or cannot think democratically, I could only think this situation just as another example of how democratic thinking is not quite easy to effectuate and to put in practice, but pretty easy just to announce from teeth out, in the realm of text. After that, John did not reply anything to me, and, until now, which seems to be obvious, my original comment at the LGS thoughtpiece site remains plainly unpublished [*]. I truly lament that the discussion neither came to a good end in this occasion, but still, the question remains open as well, can we think democratically?

[Updated: 16.01.2012. 11:53pm]:
One and a half hours later after posting this blog-entry: they have just finally published my original comment at the LGS thoughtpiece site [*]. It’s nice to see how fast things can move with the right stimulus. Voilá !

Thus, subjected to celebrate this impossibility as the capitalist system dictates, most people find that Christmas is not just a collective fetish to show off annually their good individual wishes, but also allows them to make of their celebration the perfect excuse to justify a way of being that they do believe to have the rest of the year. Christmas thus functions as an affective axiom of modern productivity: by defect, its celebration allows people to keep on embracing all their selfishness, to give a sense of non-interchangeability to all their belongings, and to set up an identity useful to the system for the rest of the year. In that amalgam, Christmas functions as an ideological ballast which subjectivity prevents the collectivity to imagine other ways of sharing and socializing. Yet it is precisely in such faculty that it can be found a new ontological policy that would be capable to re-signify relations between people and potentialize the collective desire far beyond from any annual celebration. But to make every day of the year a perpetual Christmas, it is desirable that this ontology of imagination would involve a molecular liberation of desire. That revolution is therefore my wish for you all: far from any materiality and without being otherwise, since the only wish that’s worth is the collective desire of making this world change. Such wish is what I share now through the Lennonian proposal that brings Imagine…

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

“By ‘God’ I understand: a thing that is absolutely infinite, i.e. a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.”

Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics is an unsurpassed philosophical work because it applies a pure rationalism. Demonstrated in geometrical order, the Ethics is undoubtedly the most influential philosophical work of the past 350 years. For this reason, Spinoza is the grandfather of modernity: his thought was able to determine decisively the work of philosophers of the stature of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Deleuze, among many others. The whole Spinozian philosophy is held in the causa sui, the cause of itself, that is God. That’s why it is historically acknowledged as pantheistic, as it affirms that understanding is formed by the same substance with which the world is formed. Thus, there is only one substance for all attributes, and that substance is the divine substance. In Spinoza, however, the image of man and the world is not only measured with eternity, but it is configured in the same plane, ie, in the plane of nature. For Spinoza, human actions are affected by the laws of nature and the cosmos: there is one nature for all bodies just as there is only one nature for all individuals. This nature is itself an individual consisting of infinite attributes, and has the ability to vary in infinite ways. Thus, in Spinoza, nature is a common plan that is immanent to its own substance.

Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam on November 24, 1632 and dies a victim of tuberculosis, in The Hague on February 21, 1677. Spinoza lived only 45 years, but his life was a flash of intensity. In 1656 he was accused of heresy by the orthodox Jewish community and expelled from the synagogue. He would live on the outskirts of the city over the next 5 years, and would move on to Rinjnsburg in 1661, to Voorbureng in 1663, and La Hague in 1664. To prevent his thought to be restricted, Spinoza rejects the chair of philosophy offered by the University of Heidelberg in 1673. Also, Spinoza despises the share of a pension that the French king Louis XIV disposed for him. Besides of being in life a man of philosophy, Spinoza also had a particular office: it was a lens grinder. According to Deleuze, it is precise to contemplate all together the more geometrical method of the Ethics, the profession of polishing lenses, and Spinoza`s life:

“For Spinoza is one of the vivants-voyants. He expresses this precisely when he says that demonstrations are “the eyes of the mind.” He is referring to the third eye, which enables one to see life beyond all false appearances, passions, and deaths. The virtues-humility, poverty, chastity, frugality-are required for this kind of vision, no longer as virtues that mutilate life, but as powers that penetrate it and become one with it. Spinoza did not believe in hope or even in courage; he believed only in joy, and in vision. He let others live, provided that others let him live. He wanted only to inspire, to waken, to reveal. The purpose of demonstration functioning as the third eye is not to command or even to convince, but only to shape the glass or polish the lens for this inspired free vision.”

Spinoza
by Jorge Luis Borges

The Jew’s hands, translucent in the dusk,
polish the lenses time and again.
The dying afternoon is fear, is
cold, and all afternoons are the same.

The hands and the hyacinth-blue air
that whitens at the Ghetto edges
do not quite exist for this silent
man who conjures up a clear labyrinth—
undisturbed by fame, that reflection
of dreams in the dream of another
mirror, nor by maidens’ timid love.

Free of metaphor and myth, he grinds
a stubborn crystal: the infinite
map of the One who is all His stars.

While his philosophical legacy permits us to get rid of the idea of God and of the weightiness of its transcendence ―through the understanding of immanence―, we can say with Deleuze, that this is the greatest affirmation of life ever effectuated by a philosopher. But if this understanding implies an aperture that would let us experiment immanence and establish an immanent relation with life in a more empirical way, it is because such idea is already ‘drained’ from our body. While such idea is meaningfully embodied and historically sedimented, it is needed to be dissolved because its form means in fact a cyst of spiritual slavery and bad conscience, as Nietzsche would denounce later. Though, immanence affectively mediates the love and comprehension that a body can experience of life and its infinite Nature: Spinoza’s Ethics aims to retrieve this affirmativeness to the body, to retrieve it like an effectuation of all the understanding that the body is capable of, ie, an effectuation leaded by the understanding of its own immanent relation with life.

An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? is a text in which Kant himself would make extensive the advantages that Enlightenment offered him to address the defining features of his present. Originally this response was published in 1784 by a German newspaper called Berlinische Monatsschrift, which used to launch unanswerable questions to the general public. Of course, these responses could only be given by the great intellectuals of the time. But while today there are many reasons to consider Kant’s response as actual, perhaps the main reason is that Kant leaves away the arrogance of explaining the finality of historical processes and raises the philosophical question of the present as the one which concerns to pure actuality. Certainly we can say that reading this response nowadays has no waste as it somehow has not gone out of fashion after two centuries. But it is to note that this is not only given by the very issue it addresses, but also largely by the scriptural way through which Kant put aside his arrogance. Regarding to all this, we see that the shadow or the light of those times is still reaching our days, so we also get the echoes of this text that is written by Kant but that with no doubts is quite Anti-Kantian as well.

This unsuspected Kantian Frenchification would be detected two hundred years later by Michel Foucault in his text also entitled “What is Enlightenment? ‘”. In such text Foucault refers to Kant’s response, and assures us that if the Berlinische Monatsschrift would still exist and would launch the question “What is modern philosophy?”, the answer would be that modern philosophy is the one that is still attempting to answer the question “What is Enlightenment?” so recklessly launched two centuries ago. Foucault does not intend at all to consider Kant’s little text as if it would be constituting an appropriate response to Enlightenment, on the contrary, in his article he argues that the importance of this response lies rather in that it extends the question to us, in a way to recognize it as a starting point that outlines what shall be called the ‘attitude of modernity’. Thus, Foucault considers that today we have many reasons to convince us that the historical event of the Enlightenment has not made us “mature adults”, but has imposed a critical ontology of ourselves, which necessarily must be conceived as an ethos in which the critique of what we are is also an analysis of how to frank the limits established by history. For this and many other reasons, it’s a good idea to triangulate Kant’s response with the article that Foucault dedicates to the question, in order to remember that the event of the Enlightenment cannot simply be savored from the German comfort of Kantian sofa, but must be lived as an unfinished adventure that makes us become each time more and more French.

“Regardless of whether their alternative, affirmative conception of desire is plausible, it seems to have lost none of its poignancy. If we read Deleuze and Guattari’s critical project –as I think we should– as developing the Nietzschean project of a radical secularization of our conceptual schemata; and, if we acknowledge the theological character of this ‘painful deficit’-conception of desire, then those of us concerned to free ourselves from the debilitating aspects of our theological conceptual heritage can perhaps find some interesting resources in Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Is there another way to think about desire – another way to desire – which wouldn’t be bogged down by guilt and suffering, but which would be a positive power and a creative, experimental force?

At the end of his post Dave includes a nota bene meant to clarify his concern, and there he discretely links to a post published in Schizosphy:

“1. To suggest that Deleuze and Guattari’s critique of desire is motivated by secularism is perhaps to get matters the wrong way round: their radical secularism is a consequence of their critique of desire, not vice versa. After all, as is made clear in this quotation from Deleuze highlighted over at Schizosophy, there are good and bad atheisms for Deleuze, insofar as there are active and reactive atheisms.
2. ‘Secularism’ might seem not quite the right word to describe Deleuze and Guattari’s opposition to religiosity, given the importance they place on quasi-esoteric transcendental experience (under the influence of Bataille’s ‘atheistic mysticism’ and the anti-psychiatry movement’s focus on the liberating, transformative effects of ‘altered states’) – an aspect of their work which has been emphasised by Nick Land and, more recently, Christian Kerslake. ‘Secularism’ has connotations of a rationalistic, humanistic or programmatic atheism which aren’t appropriate in this context, then. Nonetheless, I prefer ‘secularism’ to ‘atheism’, as the latter risks connoting an essential opposition to theism which Deleuze and Guattari would deem reactive.”

I actually agree with everything Dave says, except for the idea that Deleuze and Guattari were much influenced by Bataille. [Obviously Bataille was an important philosophical figure for them, and one of the firsts contemporary philosophers who systematically spoke about ‘transgression’ and ‘limit experiences’ etcetera. But Bataille proximity to Hegel and his failed intention to reconcile Hegelian dialectic with Nietzsche’s affirmation of life, cannot but be the basic reason of why Bataille is dismissed as a direct influence in Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalytical project]. On his part, in second place, Terence Blake has recently blogged an interesting thought-provoking post at Agent Swarm, where he raises a set of intensive interrogations regards to the idea of God in Spinoza and the consequences of thinking and affirming immanence:

“Is a pluralist or an epistemological anarchist reading of Spinoza possible? Feyerabend criticizes Spinoza for his epistemological and ontological arrogance in situating other human beings at a lower level of existence. The very privileging of conceptual understanding over the imagination, according to Feyerabend, conserves an element of transcendence in the form despite its being denied in the content. The notion of God employed by Spinoza is a bloodless, de-vitalised abstraction that Feyerabend compares unfavorably with Newton’s more personal, and more fecund, conception of God. Does immanence lead to a scientistic reliance on a univocal knowledge of causes and effects and an over-valorisation of intellectual at the expense of affective intensities? Or can its eliminative thrust be turned against its own mythological self-entrapments? Naxos begins to answer these questions [and] proposes a reading of Spinoza in which the word “God” can be eliminated as our understanding of immanence affirms itself.”

It’s great to know that the philosophical blogosphere is still alive and still offers the opportunity to have this kind of direct and indirect exchanges. It’s never too late while we can. My salutes to Dave and Terence .

“Yesteryear, under the comical of his memorable adventures, Felix the Cat was represented in a similar situation to which we have described here. He runs at full speed. Suddenly, he realizes, and the spectators along with him, that there is no ground: just a moment ago he left the edge of the cliff where he was walking. It is until the moment he realizes, that he then falls into the void. Perhaps in this representation is possible to evoke the problem and the perception of which Foucault’s book is a testimony…”

Michel de Certeau
Histoire et psychanalyse entre science et fiction
Editions Gallimard. 1987. (Rev.ed. 2002)

And it is beautiful, as a friend said: “I have lived the dose of the absurd, the absurd that instantly became something reasonable.” It is the mere moment of madness what is proper of being mad. Madness is an experience that brands us and gives us the suspicion of how to plot our own horizon. It is in effect like a puzzle, but what it is solved is oneself: not the ‘I’, but the singularity that we are (the one we are). The way to solve it is by breaking the structures of what we think we are, and then madness comes for us as a mild delirium, because we see then that we are different. But with madness we also see that those who want to be always the same ―the grays, who do not feel able to be special, who have given their singularity to the mass― do not stand the idea that the human being is capable of uniqueness and difference. It is the own common sense that prevents us from our madness and prevent us to discover that ourselves are already half-crazy, half-unstitched. And yes, we affirm as many have done: madness is the force that pushes us to act: madness is this ‘unravelling’ meant to climb up the horizon of our life as high as we can ―madness as horizontal ascension―. This intense living is that what counts: it is not worth to live a hundred years if the kite is still firmly anchored to our own embracements: life is not worth living if we fear the release of our own sanity.

“Unlike their arch-enemy General Freud, Deleuze and Guattari do not merely speculate about whether or not civilization is pathological. They assume it is, building their “schizosophy” on the foundation of madness. For them, it is not a question of one being mad; it is a question of intensities, of the degree to which one is mad. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. ‘Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough’ (Anti-Oedipus 131). Not a breakthrough to a transcendental self, but possibly to a new subject-position or a different state of desiring-production.”

Despite that this literary definition sounds too elemental, it’s nice to see how it does provide a prelusive wink of that what gives schizosophy its specificity.

“I. By that which is self-caused I mean that whose essence involves existence; or that whose nature can be conceived only as existing.
II. A thing is said to be finite in its own kind [in suo genere finita] when it can be limited by another thing of the same nature. For example, a body is said to be finite because we can always conceive of another body greater than it. So, too, a thought is limited by another thought. But body is not limited by thought, nor thought by body.
III. By substance I mean that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; that is, that the conception of which does not require the conception of another thing from which it has to be formed.
IV. By attribute I mean that which the intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence.
V. By mode I mean the affections of substance, that is, that which is in something else and is conceived through something else.
VI. By God I mean an absolutely infinite being, that is, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence.”

As we can read, in the definition I Spinoza departures from the causa sui to explain the infinite nature of ‘God’ as something essentially existing and which formality results an existence in itself. Thus, the essence of this nature enlarges itself infinitely in its own existence to involve any other. But it is interesting to note that, just as the causa sui describes a horizon of life which formalizes all existence, Spinoza also uses this definition to establish a plane of understanding that formalizes his system. That is why in this definition we already have the deployment of two planes: a vital-infinity where all existences take their form and a conceptual-finitude where such existences make themselves substantially understood. Hence in the definition II, the understanding of the infinite nature extends to finite things that are part of nature. In this second definition Spinoza involves a series of existential surfaces which finitude remains relative to every existing thing: infinitude unfolds its understanding in multiple overlapping planes according to their genre, and of which things can only be restricted to each other, and de-fined in relation to its own finite nature and not by the finitude of any other genre. Here it is no coincidence how Spinoza took as examples the body and the thought as genres of finitude that do not limit one to each other. The infinite nature is understandable then by the existential surfaces that are able to conceive it from their own genre.

Also the further definitions III, IV, V describe that these surfaces are conceivable one with respect to another, as they are relative to the properties of infinite nature. Spinoza defines these properties from the conceptual relationship that composes them: a single Nature for all bodies (property of the substance), a single Nature for all individuals (property of the attributes), a single Nature that is itself an individual capable to vary from an infinitude of ways (property of the modes). In this definition we see that Spinoza conceives the definitions that are relative to the properties of ‘God’ according to one Nature: the infinite nature. However, it is just in the definition VI that the formalization of this Nature conceptualizes its infinity with the idea of ‘God’. This can only indicate that the definition of ‘God’ is a necessary formality within Spinoza’s philosophical system, because both their nature and their properties have already been expressed in the precedent definitions while they have opened themselves to the understanding of the infinite Nature. It seems that in this sixth definition Spinoza makes of the word ‘God’ an artifice that formalizes his own system.

1. Deleuze being post-Deleuze would have to admit that his whole philosophy cannot be but part of the whole schizoanalytical project traced by him even before meeting Guattari. This is the first epistemological stand to take regards to Deleuze’s work. Schizoanalysis cannot be taken simply in terms of what is written in the text, but as a whole project that means also a deleuzian philosophical investigation about life and its event. The idea Deleuze had about this project was successfully fulfilled, in a way that he achieved what he had in mind and what he was aiming to do before his encounter with Guattari. The schizoanalytical project was part of Deleuze’s plan of life, meaning with this his philosophy and his life.
2. We cannot ignore the prominence of the event in Deleuze’s philosophy nor deny it as a prime concept that not only involves the whole schizoanalytical project, but also that is intimately related with the schizoanalytical ‘model’. This is the second epistemological stand to be taken regards to his work. It is needed to stress in which sense this prominence means an empirical orientation that accomplishes a broader ‘epistemology’ that means the experience of life itself and that introduces it as a ‘plan of immanence’. It ‘s needed to say, though, that in terms of the post-Deleuze effect, the prominence of the event in Deleuze is absolute: we should not consider it only as an effectuation of God’s death as a self-inducted ego-death that means life, but as an effectuation of death itself ―considering his suicide―. In the case of Deleuze, the double implication of the event is successfully effectuated.
3. Regards to all this, we also have to assume the prominence of the event by our own experience. This is the third epistemological stand to be taken regards to Deleuze’s work. How could our ego-death not mean an epistemological break that would introduce our experience to the understanding of life? After all, Deleuze’s vitalism is conditioned by an active nihilism: above all academic euphemisms, there is no way to experience ‘life’ and to reach an absolute deterritorialization that would lead to its ‘paradigmatic’ understanding, no way to grasp immanence, without inducing the event through self experimentation ―though, self experimentation neither guarantees such event to happen―. The event of absolute deterritorialization would always be what models the whole schizoanalytical project.

It is precisely in terms of a schizosophy that should be assumed all these epistemological implications with respect to the event that means life: 1) a schizosophy would integrate the whole of Deleuze’s philosophy as part of the schizoanalytical project; 2) would take into account the prominence of the event as part of a genealogy of its ‘model’; 3) and would assume the experience that means the event of life as something to be experimented by our own philosophical means, though nothing actually guarantees it to happen.

A philosophical understanding of ‘God’ is precisely provided by Spinoza since the very first paragraph of his book: while he presents this definition as rational propositions, axioms, demonstrations, principles, descriptions, etcetera, that would lead to the understanding of ‘God’, this understanding would lead to ‘God’’s self-existence as causa sui, cause of itself, and of everything that exists within him: existences that would lead to his substance, attributes, modes, etcetera. Every existence is ordinated and planned with respect to this infinite cause that means ‘God’, and Spinoza offers the axiomatic elements of comprehension to understand this infinite by thinking in ‘God’’s expressions, by concluding things about ‘God’ and its nature ―and even to intoxicate ourselves with this understanding―. Spinoza’s philosophy is known as an absolute rationalism because he offers a rational understanding of the infinite through the idea of ‘God’. This means to put god at the same level of us: for Spinoza the substance that composes knowledge ―the matter of ‘understanding’―, is the same that composes the universe: an immanence that means no transcendence, no heaven, no ‘God’. While this definition of ‘God’ means a sort of machinery that would lead to its own understanding, while we ‘get’ and ‘embody’ this understanding, we do not conclude only that ‘God’ is the greatest of Nature itself, but also that this ‘understanding’ would drain the signification of the word, and would drain ‘him’ and his ‘transcendence’ from our body experience ―as the result of experiencing this ‘understanding’―. It can be said that Spinoza leaves this as an option, but it’s clear that he is deploying a philosophy of immanence where formerly the only transcendent element that remains in his system is ‘God’ ―but just because he needed it as a prime substantial axiom for his system, that can be dropped in consequence―. If we get rid of the word of ‘God’ as the result of this ethical and philosophical understanding of the infinite ―and through Spinoza’s axiomatic system―, we also get rid of its idea from our body, and what remains is the planification and ordination of every existence with respect to the implied ‘understanding’ of infinite and its multiple horizons of events. We just got rid of the word, of the idea, we drained it from our experience, from our body, and what remains is what is intensively created: where all existing forms individuate themselves as bodies that compose themselves substantially as part of the very plane of life.