Let’s begin by looking at the ‘natural attitude’. In the ‘Ideas’ (class reader extracts), sections 27, 28, 29 and 30 contain the core outline of the ‘natural attitude’ (NA) that will concern us at the moment.
Before going any further let me give a ‘pre-philosophical’ definition: the NA is that attitude in which we normally stand, the way in which we go about our life, prior to all questioning of what we are doing or thinking. The NA is like the unquestioned life, as it were.
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On Wednesday this week (24th Jan) in the MA Seminar I spoke about the role of images within ‘Difference and Repetition’ (DR). They are important because the thought of difference that Deleuze is developing within DR is a ‘difference before identity’ and our thought patterns and culture are so imbued with ‘identity’ thinking that it can be strange to try and think of a primary ontological difference. The beginning of Chapter 1 of DR (Difference in itself) is ripe with a series of images, from the lightning flash, the black indeterminacy as against the white indeterminacy, as well as Goya and Odilon Redon in reference to ‘chiaroscuro’. The image here is from Odilon Redon and is called ‘The origin of vision’. In it I find something of this dark chaotic difference that is the primary ontological category and the ‘individuation’ (coming to be) of an object or organ before it’s integration into any sort of system of organisation that might constitute a ‘full identity’. The single eye and the feathered surroundings that appear like the eyelashes catch a sense of an almost fetishistic vision, one in which we catch sight of things not through a simple appearance but precisely because the thing, our interests and the relations between them constitute an individuation from out of a chaotic set of forces that is difference in itself.
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I discussed, in the seminar of the 17th, some of the difficulties we have in approaching the text Difference and repetition, not least amongst these the inherent sense of a ‘conversation being overheard’, something I think is interestingly shown in the essay ‘The method of dramatisation’ in which Deleuze presents some of the central concepts of DR to the French academy (I will be examining this essay in more depth in the Volcanic Lines seminar on Monday 22nd). There’s a lovely description of this ‘overhearing of a conversation’ contained in a quote on the following blog…philosophy.com
This notion of an ongoing conversation that Deleuze is engaged in has a number of pertinent implications. Firstly, if we simply accept that it is the case, then the identification of the various positions that are being discussed is crucially important to developing a critical understanding of Deleuze’s ideas in DR – such as the work on gens/species that we’ll be looking at with regard Aristotle. Secondly, if we question why Deleuze presents like this – aside from the ‘historical’ approach that was part of his academic-cultural background – then we might want to say that it is in part because to present, as an objective observer and assessor, philosophical arguments is always to present an object (such as a concept or argument) as fixed and clear, as identifiable for assessment. This assumes, of course, something like an ‘ideal object’ that can be identified and understood. If, as we might suggest is the case for Deleuze, a concept in fact arises from a struggle or inter-play of more than one idea, then to grasp the concept we in some sense have to re-enact the inter-play (the ‘field’) from which the concept derives. We need to contextualise it, though not historically but conceptually. In fact, even the context is not enough, we somehow have to re-animate the concept in order to find its limits and virtues, ‘what it can do’. The issue of judgement becomes less crucial than the animation of a set of problems in which the concepts make sense, precisely as ‘differences that make a difference’. It is this task that forms the ‘method of dramatisation’ in which we have to do more than merely describe (interpret) a concept from outside but where we must, instead, find the problem (situation or case, the ‘scene’, if we were to pursue the metaphor from drama), animate the characters involved in the problem (the various concepts) and then understand the inter-play between these characters in the specific scene. Through doing this we open up both an understanding of the philosophical problems a concept is responding to as well as open up a space for critical response in the form of creating other dynamics or differences from those that already exist.
So in Lecture 2 I talked about the act/content distinction and the way it’s set-up within Husserl, with a view to understanding the critical role of a thought-content for our later investigations into Husserl’s phenomenological method. These are notes from that lecture and are a quite quick and ‘formalised’ account of Husserl. In other words, the account I’m presenting is a specific version intended to guide us in our reading – it is not a detailed nor a particularly critical account. There could be some radical alternatives found in other presentations and there are a number of features – notably to do with what we might call ‘linguistic referentials’ or ‘things the words refer to’ – that I’m glossing over quite heavily here. The point of lectures like this is not to give you a full and finished account but to open up the texts for you to read yourself and develop a critical understanding of. If something I’m saying here and something you think after reading Husserl doesn’t seem to match then ask in the seminars. We will also be returning to some of the same distinctions numerous times as we fill in our understanding through the ongoing discussion of Husserl and the Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty’s development of phenomenology in their own directions.
Let’s begin then by recalling the elements Husserl draws from Franz Brentano. (Here I am drawing on an account given in the book Husserl by David Bell, Routledge 1990 – for further reading you are welcome to turn here, in particular to the first section of Bell’s book ‘Prolegomenon’).
Remember, Husserl’s two big influences are the foundations of mathematics (what makes it secure and certain as a form of knowledge) and the newly forming science of psychology. Brentano, then, is part of the psychological legacy within Husserl. Brentano argued that:
Phenomenology begins with the work of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). His project develops out of an attempt to understand the basis of mathematics as well as an engagement with the (at that time) newly formed science of psychology. Philosophically, however, it can be seen as a critical point in the development of philosophy. From Descartes onwards, modern philosophy was dominated by something we can refer to as the ‘Epistemological Project’. As its name suggests, this placed the emphasis of philosophy on discovering the forms of knowledge (epistemology – theory of knowledge), but it did this with certain commonly agreed preconceptions. The ‘Epistemological Project’ refers to the attempt to discover the forms of knowledge by searching for two key things:
Descartes ‘cogito’, for example, is proposed as an answer to the epistemological problem because Descartes thinks he has discovered the foundation of all knowledge in the certainty of the ‘cogito ergo sum’. The method of doubt reveals that the concern is with certainty in that it rejects anything that can be doubted precisely because it can be doubted. It was not, however, simply the rationalists who were part of the ‘Epistemological Project’ – the empiricists, from Hume onwards, were also constrained by similar concerns even though their attempt to resolve the problems of knowledge used radically different methods.
Both rationalists and empiricists are located inside the ‘Epistemological Project’ through their concept of ‘the given’ (ie; something that is ‘given to us’ rather than ‘created by us’ and thus liable to distortion by opinion). Something is needed, goes the argument, that can be taken as the ‘absolutely given’ and thus the starting point for building up our knowledge. This ‘given’ is to be found, the rationalists and empiricists think, by examining subjective appearances – in other words, by examining that which is given to the subject.
Following the reading of Alain Badiou’s ‘Clamour of being’ that we undertook as the first task of the Volcanic Lines – deleuzian research group at Greenwich University, I recently re-read Alberto Toscano’s interesting review of Badiou ‘Clamour’ and his ‘Manifesto’. This piece dates back to 2000 when it appeared in the Warwick University journal ‘Pli’. It concludes with a set of four tasks, which Toscano frames in terms of the responses Deleuzians might need to make to Badiou, tasks that still seem to me very resonant and which perhaps might frame the key moments of an attempt to think through Deleuze. Part of the resonance, no doubt, results from the fact that the first two of these tasks are ones that I intuitively agree with and which I think I took up, somewhat unconsciously, within my doctoral thesis. They have continued to maintain their presence as the main focus of my reserach. The fascinating point, for me at least, comes in the third point however.
Recently I have turned to begin thinking the ‘political’ in relation to Deleuze and this was, at least in part, the subject of a presentation I gave to the conference on Deleuze we held at Greenwich last July. There I began to try and think a concept of the ‘human bomb’ that derived from a kind of struggle to use a Deleuzian method to articulate contemporary political actions. The paper provoked a quite hostile response from some attending, which was gratifying to a degree, but did become blocked in some ways through an underlying difficulty, that of thinking an action, in some sense, ‘beyond justification’, that is, an action that appears both ‘beyond justification’ in ‘good sense’ (unjustified) and the tension with an action that is ‘beyond justification’ in the ‘common sense’ (unthinkable). There seemed to be something missing, some ground or preliminary set of arguments that would be needed before such a task could take place and my intuition now, resonant with Toscano’s tasks, is that this preliminary work needs to take place in the realm of the ontology, that is, specifically, in terms of the ‘link between univocity and ethology’. Crudely speaking – or rather, speaking in another register – this feels at the moment like it would be something like articulating a position akin to the ‘compatabilists’ in the debate on free will, or the possibility of a naturalistic philosophy of mind (these being very rough indications of possible comparisons).
Toscano’s four tasks for Deleuzians are:
(Pli 9 (2000), 220-38)
This is nothing more than some reading notes – primarily for the students of my Heidegger class at Greenwich University, though they may be of interest to others. They’re not intended to be a thorough interpretation, nor to engage with secondary literature, but were the basis of my lecture given on December 12th. The class had been requested to do a section analysis of this passage and these notes constitute, in effect, the basis of my own. Discussion is of course welcome provided these caveats are understood.
Notes from pages 190-199, Heidegger; Introduction to metaphysics, trans. Fried and Polt, Yale Nota Bene 2000
1) The first move (or, better, position) – that there is a disjunction between phusis and logos, a disjunction that is stated here but the grounds of which would be found elsewhere in the text – for example, pp186-7 and the connection that is drawn there between logos and the Being of the human being/Being (that is, both the way in which we are as well as the individual beings that we are). The claim locates the beginning of a ‘movement’ in the history of Being. At the beginning of the disjunction between logos and phusis, logos is not set against Being, it does not “step up” as a court of justice. Logos initially has no power of determination or judgement when it comes to understanding Being, it cannot – or does not – judge what Being is. We cannot – at the inception of the understanding of Being – simply judge what has Being through using language (that is, we cannot decide what exists, what is real or what is true simply within and through language – although these terms such as ‘real’, ‘exists’ and true’, whilst more easily appealing to a ‘common sense’, hide within themselves a lot of presuppositions). However, one aspect of language – reason, logic, the ‘logy, the ‘science of…’ – begins to assert itself, begins to assert its’ right to judge Being and eventually reinterprets phusis, a reinterpretation we now live within – for example, the opposition between the physical and the psychical arises as a result of the reinterpretation of Being and is not a universal but a specific historical moment in the history of Being. The process of reinterpretation is, in effect, the history of Being and is the movement that is being examined within ITM.
I was reading through Miguel de Beistegui’s ‘Truth and Genesis’ today and noticed this argument, at the beginning of the third section on Deleuze;
Metaphysics is characterised by its emphasis on substance. Modern science, essentially from the development of Quantum theory, has implicitly dumped this Aristotelian ontology in favour of one that is an ‘energetics’. Mathematics is the access route to this ontology. Implicitly, therefore, the ‘new ontology’, of which Deleuze is an instance according to de Beistegui, derives from mathematical insight.
As those who were at the Badiou / Clamour of being reading group will no doubt recognise, this is quite close to the thesis in ‘Being and Event’ that mathematics is ontology.
Now, first of all this is a reconstruction of an argument, not a reading of a text and so I’m not putting this forward as an account of de Beistegui, merely locating the line of argument. I wanted to do so because it struck me today that this emphasis on substance and embrace of mathematics is still highly susceptible to the Heideggerian critique of metaphysics.
For Heidegger, it is not substance ontology istelf that is the problem. Rather, the distortion in substance ontology derives from the emphasis placed on presence (ousia) and this in turn derives from the rise to dominance of a certain attitude of logos, in effect the ‘scientific’ attitude, whereby logos becomes the archetypal ‘…logy’ of Being. Originarily, Heidegger argues (in ITM), logos and phusis are entwined intimately as an unconcealment of Being. Language and the physical are both ways in which we come across Being and are, as it were, co-dependent, neither having any priority. With the end of the originary moment of thought it is logos that rises to the surface and through the concept of ‘idea’ begins to establish itself as the court of determination, claiming the capacity to know Being and determine what has and what hasn’t got a claim to Being.
If, then, the argument is that mathematics is the route of access to Being, in effect this claim would need to respond to Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics since it appears initially that it falls inside that which Heidegger critiqued (whether it be Badiou or de Beistegui’s Deleuze). A ‘scientific’ or mathematical Deleuze (or Badiou) will still be susceptible to a straight-forward Heideggerian rebuttal. In fact, any philosophy still claiming to be doing onto-logy would be susceptible to this Heideggerian critique on the basis of the fact that this critque aims precisely at the …logy aspect of the argument, its sense of possessing ‘right knowledge’ or being a ‘science of Being’.
Anyway, just a thought…
(If you want to comment, please do so over at the Volcanic Lines discussion blog where this was posted)
I’ve been off ill for a couple of weeks, bad enough to have to cancel last weeks set of lectures (apologies to students but unavoidable I’m afraid), though during that time there was of course the usual ongoing work which I’m now catching up on. Amongst the things that need doing is passing on news of the new Kierkegaard Philosophy Carnival which should be of interest for my ‘existentialism and phenomenology’ (EP) students. I have a post in the carnival, one where I discuss ‘the work of faith’ – something I focussed on in one of my lectures and which I find quite a fascinating theme within Kierkegaards’ existential.
razorsmile :: philosophy//magic //revolution 