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 Wittgenstein2001: 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
Day One of Bullshit!… on Cookery, Cuisine and the Truth… | |
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… |
Recent Posts
- Mitochondrial Vertigo: The New Blog
- 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
- Massumi’s Cognitive Doubling, Spinoza’s Numerical Affectivity
- Two Vectors of Avatar’s Cinematic Achievement: Affect and Space Interface
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 (1)
- 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.
I will listen to that. Funny, I wrote an essay entitled ‘Subjectless Subjectivities’ on Ruyer and D/G’s use thereof – it is available on the web.
Paul, I’m pretty sure that I have read it, not knowing it was you. The title rings in my ear, governing no doubt my word choice for the title of this thread. If I recall correctly (vaguely) I felt that the essay just didn’t go far enough, I really wanted you to push harder (probably in a Spinozist bent) but I really liked the notions. I would have to look at it again, it has been over a year I think. Because of this though I would be very interested in what you think of Williams’s paper. I truly enjoyed it.
btw, did you delete that kkk post?
I put the post back into draft mode. Once 80 people had seen it all the interested parties no doubt had received its message. Frankly Levi is so inane politically, emotionally, it felt cruel to force him to look at his own words and how foolish he is when he gets on what he thinks is a high horse. I felt once the point was made, why make it a permanent part of the record? But I am unsure of this. The guys habitual appeal to Nazism and the KKK is a bit insulting on several levels.
It was an immature piece. I was amazed to read Ruyer after seeing d/g refer to him in WIP (and The Fold). It was the concept of absolute survey that got me. It is, in fact. very close to D.E. Harding’s ‘On Having No Head: Zen and the rediscovery of the obvious.’ I met him once about 20yrs ago in Sydney.
Now I am writing a modified version for a collection of essays on neglected philosophers around the theme of ‘possession’.
Of course, absolute survey is a form of ‘self-possession’, as Ruyer notes, which is ‘persevering in its own essence.
This unmediated self-possession is Ruyer’s single great insight which is also that of the Argentine/German tradition of biology….There is no ‘gap’ – contrary to some modern traditions…’antepredicative apprehension’ – or something like that.
Cool. I really look forward to your modified version, when it is ready. Sounds great.
‘The objects are part of the subject.’
Well, I only have a couple of weeks…’If you want something done, ask someone in a hurry’ (Anon).
“Nor does any “gap” yawn between a mind and her contents: the relationship between the subject and her objects (or mental contents, or noemata) is not one of observation, that might be conceived as mediated.
On the contrary, this relationship is not only gnoseological. Far from being constituted by observation, the physical and ontic relationship between the subject and her objects (or mental contents, or noemata) – what the phrase “what objects (or mental contents, or noemata) are for their subject” actually means – is that the objects are part of the subject, those parts differentiated in the subject’s reality throughout her life under regularities that allowed the evolutionary use of the eclosion of existentialities.” (M. Szirko).
Sounds quite in consonance with Spinoza’s denial of the separate Will, and Wittgenstein’s thought that speaking of mental objects is an abuse of the language game of ostenstion.
I look foward to it.
I do refer to W in the orig. Tractatus 5.632-5.6331
‘And nothing “in the visual field” allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye…for the form of the visual field is surely not like this….”
We could apparently trace this immediacy back to Galenus’ immediacy of the brain organ
As opposed to:
“..the centrencephalic theory [which] presents the brain cortex as if it had evolved, like the other sense organs, to form impressions then conveyed by brain fibers down to the sensorium. This sensorium (scilicet: commune) is localized by the centrencephalic theory of mindfulness in the “sensory ganglia,” held as the sole indwelling of mind in nature, where a mind takes the impressions from the remote, cortical sense organs…”(Szirko).
“The centrencephalic theory assumes that noeseis in nature are contemplative.
Contemplativeness (or epiphenomenality) allows for the disengagement of noeseis from their gnoseologically apprehended contents, and anatomical spatiality is alleged as a pretext to deepen this Platonic cut.
Mental contents are supposed to be brought, to “their” accidental noeseis, as non-mental and already differentiated by peripheral “sense organs” without any participation, in their differentiation, of the activity of their future noeseis; less even of any semovience of these noeseis or of any sedimentation of its previous operations.
It does not matter that this disengaging gap had been put there, between the center of the encephalon and its peripheries, or that it used the Hesiodic chasm amid earth and heaven, or the Platonic difference between the helmsman and any a ship he accidentally steers, or any other secession (linguistic root *sec-, *sacr-) or mediative discontinuity.” (Szirko)
“Semovience is perspicuous (or, to use a Nietzschean phrase : the will provides its own certainty).”:
Footnote:
“The source of the possibility of expressing this fact, encountered by natural sciences, in Nietzsches’s terms (or, by the way, in Spinoza’s terms) is simply Nietzsche’s inseparateness and indivisibility of will and intellect, always “in each other’s pocket.”
Ironically, Spinoza’s and Nietzsche’s proper recognition of such a natural fact brought about the denunciation of those thinkers by their contemporaries, who did not notice that this recognition creates factual untenabilities only if “to be” is deemed purely distinctional, “truth uninformed by love,” that is to say, a mere predication that sets for reality its existence along with an immutable destiny; a more recently case in point of this argument affected the Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri’s recognition on the unity of sentient intelligence, tending volition, and affecting sentiments.
Of course this recognition was illustratively disbalanced, in both Nietzsche and Spinoza, by their ontological bias (aimed at coping with one of the problems put forward by intellectualism, which pretended that intellect knows the lógos and consequently no will undividable of intellection could be wicked); their ontological bias situated the actuality of the positing will (Wille or conatus) as more fundamental than that of its gnoseological apprehension of itself in both its putting and what it puts or selects to be. E.g., aphorism 588 of “Der Wille zur Macht,” of the years 1883-1886: «The question of values is more fundamental than the question of certainty: the latter becomes serious only by presupposing that the value question has already been satisfied.».
Once beingness is recognized – beingness taking actuality for Spinoza and Nietzsche only in the sense provided by conatus or Will to Power – it also becomes clear that it acquires certainty from its own truth about itself – finding what it does, enacts, and posits.
Around the same age (of 44 and 46 years) both Spinoza and Nietzsche stopped prematurely their explorations, leaving dangling and untouched the other, indeed the main, problem put forward by intellectualism, namely the factually decidable yet culturally obscured issue of a pivotal and all-pervading necessity that, for the said lógos to be able to beget any reality, depends on the mentioned, fact-contradicting “being” being a mere distinctional predication.”(Szirko).
Excuse me, I’m writing notes to myself on your comments page! I probably won’t have time to get to any of that. But the history is remarkable – and probably largely unknown by the ‘masters of suspicion.’
I like that footnote very much, and I can see perhaps how value is more fundamental than certainty in Nietzsche, but I am unsure of that being the case in Spinoza. In Spinoza valuations are modes of certainty, directions of certainty.
But glad to have your notes here.
As to Wittgenstein, it is really his post-Tractatus break with the picture theory of language that I was thinking about, where the notion that success of ostension in the world gives us to think that the mental things in the head are of the kind that in some way we can (mentally) point to them, thus are “objects”.
Pingback: Heine: Spinoza Does not Deny God, but Always Humanity « Frames /sing