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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.
Hi Kvond, I’ll probably be missing the point here (since I was unable to digest ALL of this essay 😉 but I was struck by this comment near the end: “In this fashion, in his foreclosure to the immanent capacities of ‘care’ in the Greek mind, [Heidegger] obscured the very third leg of the triangle, others, which would otherwise show how ‘care’ in all things, including things ‘non-human’ is actively involved in our mutual construction of the world, in degrees of ontological freedom”.
I wonder if there’s a way for a “cold vitalism” to conceive this care, or whether all ethics would ultimately dissolve into esthetics? (reading your stimulating post on Lebanese prison theater in another tab 😉
Anyway, given your trichotomic inclinations, I’ve been eager to see you write something related to Peirce. Perhaps even more than Sloterdijk, Peirce seems ignored by Speculative Realists. As an offering I’ll suggest the following:
At the level of objects, we are seduced (Baudrillard’s “The Object and Its Destiny”, in FATAL STRATEGIES 😉 while at the level of social circles we are ethically affected; but, beyond this, the cold, blanketing snow of formal reasons beckons, or it slips steathily through a crack in the door (with “the polyvalence of an incestruous semiotic power” 😉
Here we might work on what CS Peirce called “Reasoning in Security and Uberty” or his epistle of “Evolutionary Love” which recognized “three kinds of evolution (by fortuitous variation, by mechanical necessity, and by creative love)”. I think I like the Spinozist prophet Bernard Mandeville better than Peirce does, even as he recognizes that “the deeper workings of the spirit take place in their own slow way, without our connivance”. Peirce, ever a lover of neologisms, names these three modes: tychasm, anancasm, and agapasm. For an example of what agapastic expression can achieve, Peirce points to the Gothic cathedrals built by free masons.
Peace… Mark
Mark, thanks for all your comments.
I don’t have strong connections to Peirce as the direction his Realism tugs has less appeal, but I do see where you find the possible connection.
As far as cold vitalism having triangulating hopes I do see this, and wrote about it in this essay connecting Deleuze and Guattari to Davidson in the example of transgender:
https://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/23/
Davidson’s Triangulations of knowledges and Principle of Charity is where I get my notion of triangular improvements on traditional Dyads. In both principles I found strong correspondences in Spinoza’s writing. The idea that we must attribute some notion of “same” not only to human beings but also to all objects, to even make sense of the world has firm ethical consequences.
I can also see aesthetic considerations being ranked high if we speak of the aesthetic principles of Aristotle, in particular as they were incorporated by Process Theology (a brief summation: https://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/a-non-moral-theory-of-evil/). But aesthetics that are determinatively Ideal in conception, those that seek to reconcile the subject to the object in some form or fashion (even by turning the subject into an object), are by their very nature lost to the dimensionality of triangulation, the way in which objects reveal the world to use, and our place in it.
Perhaps this fourth part of an essay which speaks specifically to Nicolas de Cusa’s experiences of looking at a painting may be of interest:
https://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/the-trick-of-dogs-etiologic-affect-and-triangulation-part-iv-of-iv/
Thanks for your thoughts again.
p.s. I don’t know Mandeville, but sounds interesting.
OK, forget Peirce. I’m still trying to finish the Pascal Engel article you provided. I found it very helpful for understanding that Spinoza is not suggesting a mind/body dualism: “Spinoza holds that there is a distinction between the two attributes, thought and extension, of the unique substance, God… But this distinction is NOT a real distinction,. It is a formal one. Each attribute, thought and extension is distinct, because it has a formal reason which is distinct… To the formal distinction between attributes corresponds no division in being”.
As for the Spinozism of Dr. Bernard Mandeville, England’s first psychiatrist, see Wim Klever’s article, “Bernard Mandeville and His Spinozist Appraisal of Vices” at http://www.fogliospinoziano.it/artic20.htm
Keep up the good work! Mark
Thanks so much for the Mandeville reference. I do love Wim Klever’s brilliant capacity to make connections no one else would venture. I look forward to it.
I’m glad you are liking the Engel article. It was only a draft, and he apparently never finished it, but it is one of the best expositions of Spinoza’s fundamental point that I have read.
I found this post while searching for material pertaining to Heidegger and Orphism, particularly, the question of aletheia and the Petelia tablets (the Guthrie quote). While I appreciate your treatment of this material, esp. the close comparison of Plato, Orphic and Egyptian rite when it comes to ‘refreshing waters,’ as a critique of Heidegger’s notion of truth I think the the essay fails in its objective and needs to be rethought. It limits itself to Plato’s Sophist, where H is at his Aristotelian/Platonic best/worst, but doesn’t explore the notions of aletheia as developed in esp. the 1930’s and early 1940’s. In Parmenides lecture, for instance, Heidegger discusses passages from Plato concerning Lethe, and his reading of Holderlin involves extensive river imagery as bound up with the origin of language, poetry, as well as material concerning liquid refreshment (in this case wine, but in others water) as concealing/revealing “quickly pass me the dark cup full of fragrant light” etc. . . Heidegger’s notion of truth as aletheia cannot be gleaned from a single source, or in relation to prematurely limited number of texts, sites, or tropes, but requires synthetic appreciation of diverse texts, followed by careful attentiveness to controversies and revisions, and ending in an overall view. Seeing Heidegger on aletheia as an oeuvre (often rooted in Greek texts, often retracted, and often deriving only from Heidegger), I’d say that your engaging points re. Orphic truth offer more of a possibility for rapprochement or even vindication or extension of Heidegger on aletheia rather than negative critique. At least that’s the essay I’m presently writing, and thus heartened to find someone interested in this nexus! 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts, if only this blogpost’s “objective” were to save Heidegger from himself. Unfortunately I do not share the charitable view of Heidegger’s aims, nor foundational influences, or conclusions, and this post merely was spun out of thoughts come from discussions long past. I’m glad though that you found it at least thought provoking.
Certainly Heidegger shifted away from certain emphasis of orginary conception, in particular in his Holderlin turn, but as you say,
“…as well as material concerning liquid refreshment (in this case wine, but in others water) as concealing/revealing “quickly pass me the dark cup full of fragrant light”
He is still in the grip of the Central Clarity Consciousness, optical conception of “the question”, stemmed from a Cartesian root, via Husserl, (a root which I outline here: https://kvond.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/downunder-central-clarity-consciousness-ccc/ ). The ultimate connection to Heidegger spelled out here in a contrast to Spinoza: https://kvond.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/heideggers-hammer-the-pleasure-and-direction-of-the-whirr/
He simply does not transcend this genealogy of thought, and is on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. So while you are right, one cannot analyze an entire arc of thought from one source, I do think that one can in one early source identify determinative conceptual structures that are never left behind. I think that this frame-work can be seen in Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented interpretation of Heidegger as well, which I have spent much time on this blog criticizing (not the interpretation, but rather the entire Heideggerian position).
As long as Heidegger is talking about the hidden and revealed as an essential quality value, in fine Sophoclean fashion, he, in my view, is lost.
Now it may very well be that one can save Heidegger from Heidegger, purge from him as much as one can the “bad” Platonism so to speak, but again, I really have no desire to save him at all. In a sense, with the cloth has such a weft, its much better to throw out the cloth and start from philosophers of a different weave.
I don’t know if there has been a philosopher in all of history that so many people have tried to drag out of the waters and save, in so many ways. But as a thinker I certain can appreciate the desire for your trinity of “rapproachment, vindication or extension”. It is this kind of soteral drive that makes up much of the interesting work of philosopher. Heidegger for me simply is not that interesting.
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