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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: “when one studies him one sees him constantly pointing outward to the border of cognition.”
Thanks for another wonderful post. I’ve been thinking a lot about this sentence, and what it says about people searching for a feeling of wholeness, that seems on the outside of cognition, but in daily life, the outlying/split off segment that speaks via our cathexis, physical pain, neurosis, fear, dread, and all manner of limb-loosening things. So we often have to go through fire to expand our being back to where it once was. I recently read the statement “God is pressure.” But I thought she was cake walk! No tea cup love.
Yes, the limb-loosener is a good reference here. Wittgenstein’s latter-day campaign seemed to be: the answer isn’t found in connecting this little bit (meaning) in here, to that little bit out there (referenced), but in looking to the composite whole, the “game” of it. Spinoza was something of the same. The only reason you can connect yourself in the world is because it already is connected.
I like the reference to cathexis. The projection and emcampment of affects into things outside of us (imagination) is an important, perhaps THE important tool in world-building. It loosens us, so to speak. But it is about aesthetically building something, a song perhaps, out of that loosening. And I like “God is pressure”. I often had the feeling that for Spinoza God/Substance was the grinding form on the lathe, and we are something like the glass blank. We are pleasureably/painfully ground towards a perfection (or we can be), perhaps.
It reminds me of the Italian proverb, “God doesn’t make it colder than the clothes you have”
Thanks for this. I had also read the review, via Notre Dame’s nifty service, and being a big fan of the *that*, facticity, whatever, actually paid attention and read the lecture on ethics too, hence incorporated into the latest revolution of the Vita Nuova sonnetto commentary.
Cf. Rilke’s ‘There is another world and it is the same as this one’
Cheers,
Nicola
Thanks Nicola. I am currently reading the Lecture on Ethics. I am wondering how much of the lecture survives the radical break from the Tractatus, as Wittgenstein uses the “characteristic features” of the family resemblance to open the essay. Hope to post on it when I finish it.
Cheers in return
Interesting and beautiful post, kvond.
Thanks. Much appreciated.
Kvond: “I often had the feeling that for Spinoza God/Substance was the grinding form on the lathe, and we are something like the glass blank.”
Before I ever came across your work I was already thinking of God as a lathe, or truth as a lathe, but the lathe didn’t grind lenses, it ground the dross off gems so the light could get in and the color witnessed. The facets were important to me, because of all the bends the world and its creatures have that speak of paradox and complexity. Someone’s a jerk but they help you, abrasive but they could show you what you’ve hidden from yourself, etc. In this model, the irritant is diamond grit and pressure. As you once said, there is no negative (but I think you meant it differently.)
I very much enjoy visiting your blog to see what else I can learn from this metaphor and its variations, even if I have trouble following everything you write.
Your comments towards lathe work and jewels makes very good sense here. I actually have had the loosely held intution that Spinoza learned his glass grinding technique from the diamond polishers of his Amsterdam ghetto, reasoning that this is where the unique technical knowledge of how to polish glass to a very high level may have come.
I wrote about it some here:
https://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/spinoza-and-diamond-polishing/
This is more than historical fact search, for if indeed this is where Spinoza developed his technique, his very conception of the lens and the technology may have reflected something of the gem/light thinking that you speak of, where God works as grinding lathe to create the geometry that lets the light in, so to speak. There is no clear evidence for this, but it is suggestive.
Please check out these references by a “philosopher” whose work begins where Wittgenstein got stuck.
That is he climbed up the entire ladder, and then jumped off of it, or rather out-shined it all.
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon/truth-life.aspx
http://www.kneeoflistening.com
What is intuition in TLP (Wittgenstein) and Ethica (Espinoza)?
Good question.
Vásquez Rocca, Adolfo, “El Concepto de Filosofía y la Noción de Problema en Wittgenstein”,
En NÓMADAS 13 | Enero-Junio.2006. Revista Crítica de Ciencias Sociales y Jurídicas.
UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID.
http://www.ucm.es/info/nomadas/13/avrocca.html
Re-editado en LÉXICOS, – Nº 8, Revista de Cultura y Ciencia, UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DE VENEZUELA.
En Web http://lexicos.free.fr/Revista/numero8articulo5.htm