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Ode to Man
Tho’ many are the terrors,
not one more terrible than man goes.
This one beyond the grizzled sea
in winter storming to the south
He crosses, all-engulfed,
cutting through, up from under swells.
& of the gods She the Eldest, Earth
un-withering, un-toiling, is worn down,
As the Twisting Plough’s year
into Twisting Plough’s year,
Through the breeding of horse, he turns.
& the lighthearted race of birds
all-snaring he drives them
& savage beasts, their clan, & of the sea,
marine in kind
With tightly-wound meshes spun
from all-seeing is Man.
Yet too, he masters by means of pastoral
beast, mountain-trodding,
The unruly-maned horse holding fast,
‘round the neck yoked,
& the mountain’s
ceaseless bull.
& the voice & wind-fast thought
& the passion for civic ways
He has taught, so from crag’s poor court
from under the ether’s hard-tossed arrows
To flee, this all-crossing one. Blocked, he comes
upon nothing so fated.
From Hades alone escape he’ll not bring.
Tho’ from sickness impossible
Flight he has pondered.
A skilled one, devising of arts beyond hope,
Holding at times an evil,
But then to the noble he crawls,
honoring the laws of the Earth, &
Of gods the oath so just,
high-citied.
Citiless is the one who with the un-beautiful
dwells, boldly in grace.
Never for me a hearth-mate
may he have been, never equal in mind
He who offers this.
Ode to Man
A BwO is made in such a way that it can be occupied, populated only by intensities. Only intensities pass and circulate. Still, the BwO is not a scene, a place, or even a support upon which something comes to pass. It has nothing to do with phantasy, there is nothing to interpret. The BwO causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space, nor is it in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree—to the degree corresponding to
the intensities produced. It is nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0; but there is nothing negative about that zero, there are no negative or opposite intensities. Matter equals energy. Production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at zero. That is why we treat the BwO as the full egg before the extension of the organism and the organization of the organs, before the formation of the strata; as the intense egg defined by axes and vectors, gradients and thresholds, by dynamic tendencies involving energy transformation and kinematic movements involving group displacement, by migrations: all independent
of accessory forms because the organs appear and function here only as pure intensities. The organ changes when it crosses a threshold, when it
changes gradient. "No organ is constant as regards either function or position, . . . sex organs sprout anywhere,... rectums open, defecate and close, . . . the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments." The tantric egg. After all, is not Spinoza's Ethics the great book of the BwO?
Ode to Man
But human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power of shaping to our use those things which are without us. Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist. For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield absolute acquiescence to anything, save to that which is true: wherefore, in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the endeavour of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole.
This is a belated comment on one your earlier posts, so apologies for posting it here.
I think Deleuze and Guattari’s reference to latitude and ethics of the body and then crediting Spinoza is mostly a decisive and deliberate philosophical decision from their part, but not a historically accurate one. It seems Deleuze has been completely aware of scholastic works on defining the body according to the question of latitude (i.e. the ratio between the body’s intensive and extensive vectors, necessary and contingent activities). Among footnotes in ATP, there is a reference to Oresme’s influential work on latitude of forms which examines two scholastically popular topics of his time, namely, ratios and latitudes. The notorious chapter in Difference and Repetition — Ideas and the Synthesis of Difference — is tractable to the medieval pre-history of Differential Calculus with figures such as Llull, Oresme, Henry of Hesse and Merton calculators. Bruno and Spinoza only come after a long tradition of pre-differential thinkers which have already discovered the significance of latitude, deformity and ratio (matheme-oriented concepts) in regard to theology, cosmology and above all ontology (bodies and beings). I believe the reason Deleuze attributes the discovery of the differential definition of body to Spinoza is that Spinoza for the first time consolidates the pre-history of differential calculus in the context of a universal ethics. And it is Deleuze who once again resurrects the mathemes within Spinoza’s ethics and continues them within the esoteric history of calculus (with Kant and Schelling as recurring figures) to ATP in terms of his own cosmo-ethical project.
Anyway, this is an excellent and original blog.
I like all these comments. Yet, two things…the first is that Deleuze and Guattari certainly would not deny having their own cosmo-ethical project. Metaphysics (and there are all kinds of metaphysics, including a metaphysics of materialism), always, I think they would argue, is a cosmo-ethical project. What makes it “your own” or not is simply a question of power. Secondly, I don’t know what constitutes “historical accuracy” in this context. Does it simply mean that your (or another’s) “cosmo-ethical” project is somehow more accurate than theirs?
>>> the first is that Deleuze and Guattari certainly would not deny having their own cosmo-ethical project
Definitely! IMO, one of the most outstanding DG’s project is that they openly consider their philosophy as cosmo-ethics. And yes I agree that there is no metaphysics without cosmo-ethics.
The question of historical accuracy was meant to be a hint at philosophical-scientific sources of defining body in terms of latitude, not authenticity or credibility. It seems by crediting Spinoza as a philosopher who offers the first consolidated proto-differential definition of body, DG (and especially Deleuze) give both a cosmic and an ethical edge to the achievements of scholastic philosophers such as Oresme and Bradwardine who define bodies through mathematic concepts such as ratio and latitude. For this reason, it is not the question of preference of one over another but to host certain medieval thinkers and projects in Spinoza’s consistently cosmic and ethical project, finding them an abode which they could never find during their own time. In this sense, the project of Deleuze and Gauttari is ‘even’ traceable to a certain strain of scholastic philosophers and mathematicians whose thoughts constitute resources of Spinoza’s grand ethical project. Although these medieval projects seem scattered and distant in regard to each other but as DG realized they all share a meticulously ethical approach to the universe in a way that Deleuze explicated in DR and then with Guattari in ATP.
That’s why I initially said ‘decisive’: it is decisive because it hammers a new edge for the philosophical project of mathesis universalis (whose precursors are medieval thinkers) and that is a Spinozist edge i.e. ethics as the cosmic.
r:”The question of historical accuracy was meant to be a hint at philosophical-scientific sources of defining body in terms of latitude, not authenticity or credibility.”
Absolutely excellent. I completely misread the intent of your point, and I certainly agree with all that you say here. In terms of Spinoza, something of this is accomplished in Deleuze’s use of Duns Scotus’ “formal distinction” to explain that nature of the distinction of the Attributes from Substance. In this way a conception scholastically used to describe the unity, yet distinctness of the Trinity, is applied di-conceptally (Davidson?), if not infinitely, to explain our descriptions of the world. I have seen this appropriation of Scotus critiqued, but I think that such a critique is not fully appreciate the recovery (and redemption) of Schlasticism that Spinoza (and Deleuze and/or DG was attempting.
r: “That’s why I initially said ‘decisive’: it is decisive because it hammers a new edge for the philosophical project of mathesis universalis (whose precursors are medieval thinkers) and that is a Spinozist edge i.e. ethics as the cosmic.”
I am less interested in the mathesis part of the project than you may be, but I do agree with some enthusiasm that by making a mathesis an affectus, this is a very significant step, and key to understanding both the humanity and the post-humanity of “learning”.
I have yet to write upon it, but late Renaissance thinker Tommaso Campanella, stands just in this chain, between Spinoza and Scholasticism, filling in the historical link that DG, (or just plain Deleuze, I am unsure) want to forge.
p.s. thank you for the good words about the blog.