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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.
Kvond, you might be interested to know that Peter Sloterdijk poses a similar contrast between “Achillean Immanence” and “Odysseus’s Instrumentality” in his 2006 book ZORN & ZEIT. See the recent free review essays on ZORN & ZEIT at http://www.envplan.com/contents.cgi?journal=D&volume=27
Absolutely wonderful. Thank you.
Mark,
I’ve just read Klauser’s review here:
Click to access d2701re2.pdf
And did not pick of the explicit contrast of Achillean Immanence vs. Odysseusian Instrumentality, but there seems very heavy cross-weave in my interest in Achilles, and the crticism of Western values. Very much appreciated. If you run into any other reviews and such, please pass them my way.
(second try here – I hit or something and lost what I’d typed ;( Actually, neither of the two reviews of ZORN & ZEIT mentions Odysseus. Miguel de Beistegui’s review is more critical, noting: “Whereas eroticism [EROS – perhaps played by Odysseus or, better, by Dionysius ?] indicates ways towards the ‘objects’ that we lack and in the possession or proximity of which we feel fulfilled, thymotics [THYMOS – explicitly represented by Achilles] opens up ways for the human being to value what it has, what it can be, what it is, and what it wants to be”. Like De Beistegui I “wonder whether there isn’t a certain naivete in the belief that an aristocratic economy of the gift, which would replace the ordinary economy dictated by the ‘vulgar eros’, could ever abolish debt and indebtedness, and thus anger and resentment”. We probably need three musketeers: Thymos, Eros, and Pragmos (don’t know any Greek, so that last one may not be a proper name 😉
Sloterdijk’s heroic gift economy
Ah, Mark, thanks for redirecting me to de Beistegui’s review (!), it is so much more rich. I’ll certainly be putting up a post soon on the ideas raised there. Just fantastic.
Briefly I’ll say, I can see something of my Odysseus constrast of Instrumentality buried in the turn to objects as Eros lack (though am unsure how much Odysseus himself expresses such an Eros, his is a wonderlust of displacement, perhaps expressive of such a lack). But to a very great degree I find myself in ever more harmony with Sloterdijk’s appeal to the thymotic, and am formulating an answer to de Beistegui’s very significant objections. I think the point of focus comes in the very concept of the “aristeia”, the promoted brilliance of expression, instead of the Aristocratic. The heroic needs to be atomized, so to speak, perhaps something closer to an ecology of Thymos, rather than an Economy of Anger.
Wonderful ideas though presented therein.
Sorry I missed this! Great stuff, lots of thoughts, have to run to class for the day. These are just placeholders, I’ll be back –
Achilles not newer but older ideal?
objects communicating reciprocity
objects communicating hierarchy
symbolic of essential distinction
symbolic of performative distinction
symbolic of relational distinction
Douglas and Isherwood, The World of Goods
Carl, I really look foward to your views.
If you find that they’re substantive and interesting to you, post them your blog to bring more people in on the conversation; but of course alternately anything here is valued. I’ve been working on a longer post incorporating Sloterdijk’s appeal to Achilles, brought up by Mark so I believe that there a lot to work from here.
Carl: Achilles not newer but older ideal?
Kvond: Yes, older, in the sense, not a path taken by modernity, but newer in the sense that Achilles indicates how one can renew, or make new the language game of customs. An older renewance.
Carl: objects communicating reciprocity
Kvond: Not sure what you mean, but yes, the reciprocity is not the reciprocity of abstract valuation, but of direct forces applied against each other.
Carl: objects communicating hierarchy
Kvond: The way that I read this in terms of heirarchy is that if indeed there are needs of heirarchial relations, there is an abject responsibility placed upon those in power to be just in their acknowledgements. Part of this comes from the reciprocity of objects.
Carl: symbolic of essential distinction
Kvond: Unsure what you mean here. Perhaps that the heirarchial must reflect the reciprocal?
Carl: symbolic of performative distinction; symbolic of relational distinction\
Kvond: These all seem subsumed under integrity.