Tag Cloud
Achilles
Affect
Affects
affectuum imitatio
Antigone
a thousand plateaus
Augustine
Autopoiesis
Badiou
Being
Campanella
capitalism
Causation
Cause
Christiaan Huygens
Davidson
Death
Deleuze
Descartes
Epistemology
Ethics
Freud
Graham Harman
Guattari
Harman
Hegel
Heidegger
Huygens
Idea
Imagination
Immanence
Information
Johannes Hudde
Kant
Lacan
Language Game
Larval Subjects
lathe
Latour
Lenses
lens grinding
Letter 39
Letter 40
Levi Bryant
Massumi
Metaphor
Metaphysics
microscope
Negation
Nietzsche
object
Object-Oriented Philosophy
Ontology
OOP
Optics
panpsychism
Parables of the Virtual
Philosophical Investigations
Philosophy
Plato
Plotinus
Poetry
power
Rorty
Sophocles
Spinoza
Subject
Substance
Telescope
Triangulation
Truth
Van Leeuwenhoek
Vico
Wim Klever
Wittgenstein
2001: a space odyssey Achilles Alan Gabbey Antigone Antonio Negri Arne Naess Art Criticism Augustine Avatar Badiou biosemiotics Bousquet Brian Massumi Caliban Campanella Chalmers Christiaan Huygens Colerus Conjoined Semiosis Critical Theory cybernetics Dante David Graeber David Skrbina Davidson Deleuze Della Rocca Derrida Descartes Duns Scotus Epistemology Ethics Euripedes Exowelt Felix Guattari Foucault Graham Harman Greek Tragedy Guattari Heidegger Helvetica Hevelius Hockney-Falco Thesis Hume Huygens Information John Donne Kepler Kubrick L'occhiale all'occhio Latour Leibniz Letter 39 Letter to Peter Balling Literary Theory Martha Nussbaum Marx Metaphor Micrographia Milton Morality Nicola Masciandaro Nietzsche Optica Promota Ovid Painting panpsychism Parables of the Virtual Patricia Collins Philosophy Philosophy of Mind Photosynth Plato Plotinus Politics Rhetoric Rilke Robert Hooke Rorty Sappho Simulated Annealing Skepticism Slavoj Zizek Sloterdijk Specilla circularia Spinoza Spinoza's Foci St. Paul The Buttle Principle Three Varieties of Knowledge Tommaso Campanella Uncategorized Van Leeuwenhoek Vico Walter Benjamin William of Auvergne Wittgenstein Zizek zombies Zuggtmoy
Recent Comments
Dana on Conjoined Semiosis: A “N… | |
Kevin von Duuglas-It… on Conjoined Semiosis: A “N… | |
Dana on Conjoined Semiosis: A “N… | |
Prof. Brian J Ford on The 1661 Technique of “G… | |
Charles M. Saunders on As Lensmaker: A Quick Ove… | |
Kevin von Duuglas-It… on Spinoza Doubt? The Sephardim a… | |
George W. Singleton… on Spinoza Doubt? The Sephardim a… | |
Dean on The Objective truth of Ro… | |
Billy McMurtrie on A Book that Explodes All Books… | |
Kevin von Duuglas-It… on Conjoined Semiosis: A “N… |
Recent Posts
- Mark Taylor Attempts to Take Down AAAARG.org
- Mitochondrial Vertigo: The New Blog
- Amazing, Surreal Film of the Thai Protest Conflict
- Going Dark
- The Becoming-woman of Machine in Avatar
- The Difference Between a Description and an Explanation: Deficits in Latour
- Peking Opera and the Aesthetic Freedoms of Avatar
- Transcendence or Immanence: Cake-and-eat-it-too-ism
- From Affect to Mutuality, Openness to Rational Co-expression: Massumi to Spinoza
- Is the Medium the Message? Avatar’s Avatar
Blogroll
- Accursed Share
- alex-reid.net
- An und für sich
- Anodyne Lite
- Click Opera
- Critical Animal
- Dead Voles
- Deontologistics
- Ecology Without Nature
- Eliminative Culinarism
- Fido the Yak
- Grundlegung
- Immanence
- In the Middle
- Loxogonospherical Moods
- Lumpen Orientalism
- Metastable Equilibrium
- Methods of Projection
- Naught Thought
- Necessarily Eternal
- Para(s/c)ite
- Perverse Egalitarianism
- Pinocchio Theory
- Pirates and Revolutionaries
- Planomenology
- Prōlogus
- Quiet Sun
- Shaviro's Workblog
- Slawkenbergius’s Tales
- Speculative Heresy
- spinoza research network
- spinoza.blogse.nl
- Splintering Bone Ashes
- The Whim
- Utopian Realism
- Varieties of Unreligious Experience
- Velvet Howler
- Violent Signs
- Working Notes
Spinoza Primary Sources
- Ethics, Emendation, Tractatus and Letters, in Latin
- F. van den Enden website
- Hyperlinked Ethics, Emmendation, Tractatus and Letters
- Nicholas De Cusa’s “De Visione Dei”, English Translation
- Selected Letters, Elwes Translation
- Spinoza’s Complete Works, Shirley Translation
- Spinoza’s Works in Latin
- Spinozahuis
- The Life of Spinoza, by Johannes Colerus (1705)
Archive
- April 2010 (3)
- January 2010 (2)
- December 2009 (26)
- November 2009 (21)
- October 2009 (21)
- September 2009 (15)
- August 2009 (8)
- July 2009 (18)
- June 2009 (23)
- May 2009 (21)
- April 2009 (20)
- March 2009 (26)
- February 2009 (24)
- January 2009 (28)
- December 2008 (16)
- November 2008 (17)
- October 2008 (12)
- September 2008 (23)
- August 2008 (26)
- July 2008 (40)
- June 2008 (40)
- May 2008 (54)
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 there, K.
I found this to be an interesting post. It bears on something that we all deal with in one way or another. I wonder if you might respond to some thoughts on Socratic irony, maybe explain how this bears on your, “Enough with philosophy, this is what I think!” comment.
According to my understanding, the Socratic method means developing ideas with someone in conversation from a foundation of that person’s preexisting beliefs. I don’t know if this is the original meaning, but it certainly is one of Socrates’s methods of engaging in philosophy. The difference between this and the sort of candor that one might enjoy over a beer, however, is that Socrates was often being ironic. In Greek, as you may know, irony is a sort of self-deprecating dissembling whereby the one being ironic passes himself off as less clever than he really is. Of course, in order to be successfully ironic, one has to be extremely clever. (Possibly one doesn’t want to be wholly successful at dissembling–that is how our term for irony gets connected to condescension.) Socrates was that clever, which means that even when he seemed candid he might not have been authentically so.
I bring this up in order to raise the question, why is subtlety the default-setting of philosophy? It seems to me that Socrates used irony predominantly for the benefit of his interlocutor (or of the audience observing him and his interlocutor)–so that this person followed a path to knowledge or right opinion that was suitable to his nature or ethos. Socrates, however, only spoke publicly about philosophy at his trial, so his example doesn’t supply a ready answer to my question.
Plato and certain other philosophers WRITE with multiple types of audience in mind–what one finds in the writing depends largely on how deeply one looks. The purpose of writing in this way seems to mirror the purpose I ascribe to Socrates’s irony.
Then there are philosopher’s like Hegel and Heidegger who do great violence against language. I don’t know why Hegel did that, but Heidegger believed this was necessary in order to combat the influence of a philosophical tradition embedded in the very language in which he wrote.
When I read some philosophers, however, the reason behind the subtlety is lost on me. Quite frankly, I wonder at times whether some of them purposely obfuscate their beliefs or points of contention in order to seem cleverer than they really are. (If Hegel had only written certain parts of the Phenomenology of Spirit I would be tempted to throw him in that camp; but there is something to his writing.) Now, I have certainly benefited from reading Davidson, but I don’t understand why he wasn’t straightforward when he could have been, as your quote seems to indicate. Perhaps you can help me to understand this.
–S.
S,
I love these thoughts because they trace the outline of genuine (or at least genuinely motivated) subtelty, and seemingly self-serving subtlety in philosophy, perhaps a dichtomy hard to maintain. It makes me recall what Nietzsche said of poets, “they muddy the waters so that others think them deep” (if I remember correctly).
Of course one could say that subtlety is necessary because the differences being explored resist obvious (or habitual) parsing. We have all been deluded by culture onto believing certain things which simnply are not true, or simply serve others without us realizing it. And then there is the kind of subtlety that Wittgenstein advised, when he compared a real, clarifying philosopher to a botanist who was patient enough to look closely where we only saw a bunch of grass and scrubs, to see a great variety of plants whose differences his eye grew naturally to attend to.
But honestly, I think philosophers, in particularly those who start schools of thought, invent a language of terms and an whole newish framework, do so as kind of perverse poets.. They often harken back to archic roots so as to ground their thoughts in some past, while designing a language maze that is as much used to decenter the reader/acolyte, as to discipline him/her in a different way of thinking. As I meanted recently, there is a kind of inculcation of vision in philosophy. When you soak yourself in the terminology and program of a philosopher/philosophy, you start to see through it, you take it into your body (whether you want to or not). The distinctions it makes start to pervade your vision of the world, and you see the connections everywhere, in things, in the behaviors of people, etc. Is this a good thing? I”m not sure. But it certainly is a creative thing. Hegel tortures us so that we will becomes Hegelians. Foucault, so that we become Foucaultians. And Wittgenstein (with his oracular simplicity) so that we become Wittgensteinians, Spinoza (with his dry, rote stacking) so that we become Spinozists.
But I also believe that these linguistic acrobatics for the writer also serve to express the genuine twists and turns of the soul that they experienced when breaking through to a (conceptual) discovery. These are the labyrinthian footfalls (or some approximation of them) that the soul contorted itself. The muscular tension for instance in Foucault to me is practically a confession of the eros of mind to me. The text performs its spirit. And with Analytic logic parsings, we get something of the stillness, the quieting of mind, the near-malnurished austerity of humble devotion to small differences, that trains the eye to what can come to feel “real value”.
And I do agree that there is a purposive obfuscation, a sense in which the school of philosophy is building a jargon fence to keep the world out, much as in law or medicine, both to heighten the percieved value of what they guard, giving it an esoteric aura, but also to create indicators to the followers themselves. To be able to use the technique of vocabulary and sometimes staid question framing becomes the sign that “he/she” is one of the guild, like secret handshakes that can be made out in the open, and few can understand.
I can’t answer much on the figure of Socrates’s irony because frankly the man bores me. Come down to us largely through Plato’s heavily staged arguments I have great difficulty seeing through to the “man”, (his purpose, his motivations, even his techniques). Looking at Socrates in this way is a bit like watching an Oliver Stone blockbuster on the figure of Washington. His irony ultimately comes down to being the irony of Plato himself, perhaps a distance he can only subtly take to his own work. But I do have a feeling that Socrates when he discussed things in person was not quite so didactically detached (for the benefit of his interlocator), not quite so much a Lacanian therapist. Or at least, I want to believe that the power of his effect on others was in that they percieved that he too was looking for the answers, and valued what others believed they believed. If there was a sense that he wanted whomever he was talking to to recall deep knowledge, it may have been that he wanted them to recall it together, in the way that we do when we discuss a past memory with friends…”Remember when….” At least this is the Socrates that I want to think of, perhaps being overly influenced by his turn to the music/poetry near the end of his life.
So we get back down to“Enough with philosophy, this is what I think!”. Sadly I’ve run into two kinds of experiences with this. Firstly, because I educated myself in philosophy principly through books, and having mental conversations and debates with the author’s through their texts, sometimes with great satisfaction, when I have met actual “philosophers” (no heavy weights, but minor ones, either through emailed discussion or philosophy professors in person), I was struck by just how mundane their minds seemed, in fluidity. When you take away all the jargon and frameworking, they just seemed like ordinary folks, and very few of them even sparkled with intellect. I don’t know what your experiences have been, but for instance professors of philosophy often appear intellectual brittle, locked into their small fiefdom of conceptions that they have mastered, (and thus will defend to the death). When you engage a text, you can take the text beyond where the author even knew it would go. There seems to be more “sky” in a text.
But this is not always so, occasionally to come to someone who does sparkle, whose interest in knowing and finding out is incendiary. I certainly though do not particularly find these kinds of people in the feild of philosophy, in fact given the academic pathways one has to follow to engage in that profession, it somes seems that there are even fewer of these kinds there. (Many of those inspired kinds should have become writers or poets, one feels.) Be that as it may, I wish philosophy was much more an occasion for discussion. Paper-giving and peer critique strikes me as incredibly sterile and filled with petty intellectual muscle flexing. I’d much rather talk about things with people, and see what they think, even hear how they feel about the things they read and contemplate. Perhaps that is the beauty of blog-philosophy.
It is interesting that you found Davidson obfusticating, for he is in my book one of the more clear, most jargon-free writers of philosophy. But you are right, it seems that even he wanted to prevaricate on the issue of animal minds. Perhaps he wanted to tread lightly there because he wanted to have both the criteria for denying “animal minds,” but also to not have the difficulty of needing to explain all the border examples that seemed to defy such a categorical distinction. I think that Davidson becomes more clear when you realize that he is focusing on a very particular question, one question at a time. He is a kind of jig-saw puzzle worker, who wants to address himself quietly. Now, he picks his questions with care, with the hopes that in answering them they will have great reverberation, but he specifically attempts to refrain from making a grand claim outside, beyond his question/answer. This can be frustrating, because at times he seems to be talking about nothing important at all, and then at others to be taking in the whole of the history of philosophy. This is the case I believe in the question of animal minds. This is a very precise, definition-ridden, almost banal question/answer, and also something that can send a rift through the foundations of any ontology.
I don’t know if I have answered any of your questions, but these are the thoughts that come to my mind.