'Only he who is silent will amount to anything.... He who knows how to keep silent discovers an alphabet that has just as many letters as the ordinary one; thus he can express everything in his jargon, and no sigh is so deep that he that she does not have the laughter that corresponds to it in his jargon, and no request so obtrusive that he does not have the witticism to fulfill the demand.' - S. Kierkegaard, Repetition, 186
It is silence, Kierkegaard tell us, that is the key to life, the only way we will 'ever amount to everything.' But this silence is not total absence, a place full of it's own language, a language all it's own, a place that, like speech, possesses the building blocks of language, all the while escaping spoken language's grasp. Silence is the limit of total lack (of speech) on the one hand, and the presence of another kind of linguistic space, which is anterior from spoken language. There is, on the one hand, no similarity between them, they are the absence of the other, and on the other hand, they are coded like one another; that which so makes them different codes them along the same lines. Two things similar in absolute difference.
Beyond the paradox that asks, How silent is silence?, one also gathers from Kierkegaard the idea that one 'keeps silent,' holds silence, makes silence part of the self, assumes it with purposeful resignation. But it is a silence that one holds, one grabs the reigns and pulls them tight with content. But this content is not apathy; no, this content is the existential listening, the assumption of the self, the bracketing of the without in favor of the language that comes from within, or comes from silence, the language of silence.
Heidegger, even, in Being and Time, still chases this limit inward, in the 'calling' of the Da-sein from the 'They-self' towards the 'self.' Kierkegaard might set the limit for Heidegger, which even Heidegger is unable to push through, but complicates quite a bit. Heidegger combines the 'with' ('being-in-the-world') with the 'in[side]' to from the 'within,' though he retains this trip inward, where spoken language is the language of the outside, of the world. Kierkegaard and Heidegger, thus, are rather close on this. Where Kiekegaard wonders after the self with-in in his 'psychology,' wondering what is written (the 'alphabet') beneath, Heidegger attempts to write about the 'Being' (Da-sein) that is beneath all outside showing. Writing is thus conceived as both that which is other than speech, though writing is still conceived in relation to speech, as it's absence, it's silence.
Just some thoughts, of course a nod to Derrida. More soon.
Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling/Repetition. Trans: Hong, Howard V. and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Foucault, Security Politics
'Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?' - Michel Foucualt, Discipline and Punish, 228
Living in Jerusalem, one lives with the stress of 'security' constantly, albeit, in some ways, for good reason. But security can never be taken as a blanket necessity, as a necessity without question. Americans are learning the perils of this, the slippery slope of security where the question of safety slides into broad, frontal authoritarian control. Not the nuanced ones that Foucault spent so much time on, but publicly advocated measures granting the government near complete access, at any time, to those it rules over. Domestic/international communications surveillance and access to financial records, all in the name of protection against an enemy who, despite their apparent hatred for 'us,' lives among us and could do anything to us at any time. The only way to 'protect our freedom' is to curb it. But these are oft made arguments, I'm interested in one a little more difficult.
There is a coffee shop on campus that I often frequent, which sits inside the actual school parameter. The parameter, much in response to a suicide bombing in the international school a few years ago, is completely sealed off; the only access to the campus is through certain checkpoint-style guard stations. In order to enter the building, unless otherwise waved past, one must have their bag(s) checked and go through a metal detector, after showing student ID. Thus, if the security guards had performed their job to the greatest detail, the campus should be completely secured. A complex of complete knowledge, complete security, a site without worry of the 'enemy.' But checking everyone to that length is impossible, or the lines would go on forever, so on sight derivations from this principle of complete security are made in an effort to make the whole process work in greater haste. This is understandable, but the definitions that are made are very different. Everyone else over Palestinians, students known from before over new students, sometimes even women over men. Some of this, indeed, stems from experience. Many here would remind me that intruders come here to only do the 'evil' deed, that Israelis would not bomb an Israeli institution and that the only people who have done the suicide bombing are usually men, if not Palestinian. But the generally applied rule, as then a marker, incorporated into the general coding of security regulation, is of interest.
Back to the coffee shop. The coffee shop sits inside the parameter, which is supposed to be entirely secure, and outside the shop sits a guard. One has to ask, if this place is so secure, what is he doing here? One would be correct to point out the laws or extra tax burdens for shops that do not have these guards, but it seems a bit peculiar regardless. Some may charge I am extrapolating, making a huge deal out of nothing, but it is a chance I am willing to take.
The guard, in my mind, shows the manners in which the 'secure' zone must be further secured. The guard, in some ways, increases that surveillance, furthering the abilities of the 'gaze' to penetrate the movements, directions and actions of the individuals involved. This is the guard's intent and purpose. No one doubts that. But the good or 'reasonable' aspects of these security measures cannot be separated from their 'power effect(s)' (as Foucault would call them), where the ultimate goal is complete knowledge, complete control, complete oversight. Moral judgments do not detract from the possibility that such measures of our 'safety' carry power effects of domination and oversight. The organization of people along gradients between 'most likely' and 'least likely' of enemies of our security cannot be removed from the attempts to establish 'security.' The scandal is not that it occurs, but that it occurs without question. Even peeking at the subject, of a darker side of security, is met with much understandable resistance; many people are baffled that such a question would be raised at all. But it such claims cannot distract from the fact that such a 'good' set of measures inherits a goal that is authoritarian if not totalitarian. The real question about such measures of security are not their necessity, but our uncritical defense of them. We might ask with great purpose what ways we contribute to our own control. Morality or necessity should certainly have a voice, but we need institute them only with the watchful eye of their limits, goals and other applications in the panoply of social practices. As Foucault reminded us, quoted above, to be outside of an extreme does not rule out the possibility of living in whole groups of relations modeled after the extreme.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Trans: Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1995.
Living in Jerusalem, one lives with the stress of 'security' constantly, albeit, in some ways, for good reason. But security can never be taken as a blanket necessity, as a necessity without question. Americans are learning the perils of this, the slippery slope of security where the question of safety slides into broad, frontal authoritarian control. Not the nuanced ones that Foucault spent so much time on, but publicly advocated measures granting the government near complete access, at any time, to those it rules over. Domestic/international communications surveillance and access to financial records, all in the name of protection against an enemy who, despite their apparent hatred for 'us,' lives among us and could do anything to us at any time. The only way to 'protect our freedom' is to curb it. But these are oft made arguments, I'm interested in one a little more difficult.
There is a coffee shop on campus that I often frequent, which sits inside the actual school parameter. The parameter, much in response to a suicide bombing in the international school a few years ago, is completely sealed off; the only access to the campus is through certain checkpoint-style guard stations. In order to enter the building, unless otherwise waved past, one must have their bag(s) checked and go through a metal detector, after showing student ID. Thus, if the security guards had performed their job to the greatest detail, the campus should be completely secured. A complex of complete knowledge, complete security, a site without worry of the 'enemy.' But checking everyone to that length is impossible, or the lines would go on forever, so on sight derivations from this principle of complete security are made in an effort to make the whole process work in greater haste. This is understandable, but the definitions that are made are very different. Everyone else over Palestinians, students known from before over new students, sometimes even women over men. Some of this, indeed, stems from experience. Many here would remind me that intruders come here to only do the 'evil' deed, that Israelis would not bomb an Israeli institution and that the only people who have done the suicide bombing are usually men, if not Palestinian. But the generally applied rule, as then a marker, incorporated into the general coding of security regulation, is of interest.
Back to the coffee shop. The coffee shop sits inside the parameter, which is supposed to be entirely secure, and outside the shop sits a guard. One has to ask, if this place is so secure, what is he doing here? One would be correct to point out the laws or extra tax burdens for shops that do not have these guards, but it seems a bit peculiar regardless. Some may charge I am extrapolating, making a huge deal out of nothing, but it is a chance I am willing to take.
The guard, in my mind, shows the manners in which the 'secure' zone must be further secured. The guard, in some ways, increases that surveillance, furthering the abilities of the 'gaze' to penetrate the movements, directions and actions of the individuals involved. This is the guard's intent and purpose. No one doubts that. But the good or 'reasonable' aspects of these security measures cannot be separated from their 'power effect(s)' (as Foucault would call them), where the ultimate goal is complete knowledge, complete control, complete oversight. Moral judgments do not detract from the possibility that such measures of our 'safety' carry power effects of domination and oversight. The organization of people along gradients between 'most likely' and 'least likely' of enemies of our security cannot be removed from the attempts to establish 'security.' The scandal is not that it occurs, but that it occurs without question. Even peeking at the subject, of a darker side of security, is met with much understandable resistance; many people are baffled that such a question would be raised at all. But it such claims cannot distract from the fact that such a 'good' set of measures inherits a goal that is authoritarian if not totalitarian. The real question about such measures of security are not their necessity, but our uncritical defense of them. We might ask with great purpose what ways we contribute to our own control. Morality or necessity should certainly have a voice, but we need institute them only with the watchful eye of their limits, goals and other applications in the panoply of social practices. As Foucault reminded us, quoted above, to be outside of an extreme does not rule out the possibility of living in whole groups of relations modeled after the extreme.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Trans: Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1995.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Heidegger, difference
'The order of Heidegger's thought is, however, regularly disoriented by an oblique movement which inscribes truth in the process of propriation. Although this process is as if magnetized by a valuation or an ineradicable preference for the proper-ty (propre), it all the more surely leads to this proper-ty's (propre) abyssal structure. In such a structure, which is a non-fundamental one, at once superficial and bottomless, still and always "flat," the proper-ty (propre) is literally sunk. Even as it is carried away of itself by its desire, it founders there in the waters of this its own desire, unencounterable - of itself. It passes into the other.' - Jacques Derrida, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles
Anyone who has had the misfortune lately of asking me what book I'm reading knows how I've been pouring over Heidegger's Basic Problems of Phenomenology, which are his lectures in 1927 on Being and Time. Throughout, as I'm now at the second part of the lectures which focus on time and temporality, I keep going back to this Derrida quote. Yes, yes, I can hear Reiman yelling at me, but Derrida has a way of bringing the smallest, evasive parts of Heidegger's complicated attempt at a fundamental ontology. Here, in his book on Nietzsche, Derrida hits at what, at least as I've found in Heidegger, is the (in)determinate nature of Da-sein. The way in which Da-sein is under all its ontic showing(s), bottomless yet determinably present underneath.
I've yet to do Heidegger's 'later work,' but even from Being and Time and his lectures, one has to wonder at the question of difference in fundamental ontology. Da-sein as being-in-the-world, presumably with other Da-sein(s). In Heidegger's attempt to abandon metaphysics, one has to ask the question of how there can be a fundamental being of humans without a metaphysics (Derrida targets this in his 'Note on a Note' essay in Margins). I need to read more Heidegger (which I'm delighted at the possibility of) before I can further comment, but I've been thinking about this in many Cure-listening nights wandering in East Jerusalem.
Derrida, Jacques. Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles. Trans: Barbara Harlow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
Anyone who has had the misfortune lately of asking me what book I'm reading knows how I've been pouring over Heidegger's Basic Problems of Phenomenology, which are his lectures in 1927 on Being and Time. Throughout, as I'm now at the second part of the lectures which focus on time and temporality, I keep going back to this Derrida quote. Yes, yes, I can hear Reiman yelling at me, but Derrida has a way of bringing the smallest, evasive parts of Heidegger's complicated attempt at a fundamental ontology. Here, in his book on Nietzsche, Derrida hits at what, at least as I've found in Heidegger, is the (in)determinate nature of Da-sein. The way in which Da-sein is under all its ontic showing(s), bottomless yet determinably present underneath.
I've yet to do Heidegger's 'later work,' but even from Being and Time and his lectures, one has to wonder at the question of difference in fundamental ontology. Da-sein as being-in-the-world, presumably with other Da-sein(s). In Heidegger's attempt to abandon metaphysics, one has to ask the question of how there can be a fundamental being of humans without a metaphysics (Derrida targets this in his 'Note on a Note' essay in Margins). I need to read more Heidegger (which I'm delighted at the possibility of) before I can further comment, but I've been thinking about this in many Cure-listening nights wandering in East Jerusalem.
Derrida, Jacques. Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles. Trans: Barbara Harlow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Spinoza, Heidegger and Deleuze
Upon finishing Deleuze's book on Spinoza, I admit some defeat on my early reading of the book. Thus a few remarks.
It struck me, in my reading, that Deleuze was trying to draw Heidegger out of Spinoza. Not fully, but enough to distance Spinoza from strictly Cartesian projects. Deleuze certainly has a point that essentia and existentia are placed in parallel, where '[b]y virtue of the cause of itself, the existence of substance is involved in essence, so that essence is an absolutely infinite power of existing. Between essence and existence, then, there is only a distinction of reason, insofar as one distinguishes the thing affirmed from its affirmation' (67). As Deleuze states two pages before, in his commentary on Spinoza's treatment of "Essence," '[t]he attributes are so many forces of existence and acting, while essence is an absolutely infinite power of existing and acting' (65). Deleuze is correct, I think, to put a Heideggerian spin on this and to suggest that these work in tandem, but nonetheless Spinoza does maintain the Cartesian hierarchy between essentia and existentia. Deleuze points out, implicitly, a way in which Heidegger might be Spinozist when he notes that '[e]ach attribute "expresses" a certain essence' (51), in that attributes of a substance are recieved by a subject to further show the essence of that substance. The ways in which the substance is recieved though its attributes, its 'affirmation,' is in existence, by which its essence is recieved. But it is the essence that is shown in existence, stemming from Descartes, which is opposed to Heidegger's inversion of this in Sind und Zeit. To Spinoza's credit, while he does retain this Cartesian heirarchy, he does put essence and existence in tandem, where each relies on the other. Further, this is done without dialectics. To me, this one of the key points of interest in Spinoza, and where the Nietzschean reading is defended best. I read Deleuze with a bit of a smile, as much as I respect him and think he has a solid reading, he nonetheless reads a certain Heideggerian-Marxian edge into Spinoza (words like 'production,' in the way that Deleuze is writing about them, I don't see in Spinoza), and thus the reading might be a bit strong. Though, with the suggestion of 'becoming,' 'threshold' and 'possibility' as key to Spinoza's text, I do not think Deleuze is very far off, though one is maybe getting more Deleuze here than Spinoza.
Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans: Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Light Books, 1988.
It struck me, in my reading, that Deleuze was trying to draw Heidegger out of Spinoza. Not fully, but enough to distance Spinoza from strictly Cartesian projects. Deleuze certainly has a point that essentia and existentia are placed in parallel, where '[b]y virtue of the cause of itself, the existence of substance is involved in essence, so that essence is an absolutely infinite power of existing. Between essence and existence, then, there is only a distinction of reason, insofar as one distinguishes the thing affirmed from its affirmation' (67). As Deleuze states two pages before, in his commentary on Spinoza's treatment of "Essence," '[t]he attributes are so many forces of existence and acting, while essence is an absolutely infinite power of existing and acting' (65). Deleuze is correct, I think, to put a Heideggerian spin on this and to suggest that these work in tandem, but nonetheless Spinoza does maintain the Cartesian hierarchy between essentia and existentia. Deleuze points out, implicitly, a way in which Heidegger might be Spinozist when he notes that '[e]ach attribute "expresses" a certain essence' (51), in that attributes of a substance are recieved by a subject to further show the essence of that substance. The ways in which the substance is recieved though its attributes, its 'affirmation,' is in existence, by which its essence is recieved. But it is the essence that is shown in existence, stemming from Descartes, which is opposed to Heidegger's inversion of this in Sind und Zeit. To Spinoza's credit, while he does retain this Cartesian heirarchy, he does put essence and existence in tandem, where each relies on the other. Further, this is done without dialectics. To me, this one of the key points of interest in Spinoza, and where the Nietzschean reading is defended best. I read Deleuze with a bit of a smile, as much as I respect him and think he has a solid reading, he nonetheless reads a certain Heideggerian-Marxian edge into Spinoza (words like 'production,' in the way that Deleuze is writing about them, I don't see in Spinoza), and thus the reading might be a bit strong. Though, with the suggestion of 'becoming,' 'threshold' and 'possibility' as key to Spinoza's text, I do not think Deleuze is very far off, though one is maybe getting more Deleuze here than Spinoza.
Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans: Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Light Books, 1988.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Spinoza, Deleuze and the question of difference
Since I last posted I've finished Derrida's Spurs/Eperons (which is amazing, I could barely sleep afterward) and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling (which I loved as well, though I was puzzled at Kierkegaard's confrontation with ethics, wondering why he never strictly draws a line between ethics and morality, though his analysis of faith-as-limit in metaphysics is beautiful).
Though it may seem a divergence from the general investigations here, I would, we could say, differ from such a judgment, at least outright. Many ways in which we think are partner as well to a 'fascist operational schema' (if one dares to be so assertive), and thus deserve some attention. It may seem rambling incoherently, but I'd like to flush out various things in a general build up. I would, quite humbly, liken such an approach to Nietzsche's seemingly chaotic use of aporias, which build together for a general critique.
This time, the problem(s) of difference consumes much of my current reading. I've been mulling over the quote of Derrida's posted last time, and I think he's on to something; namely, we cannot do without what we denounce, we are often implicated in their crimes, we use their tools and work in a framework at least somewhat in common with those we denounce. The problem of difference is loud and clear in Spinoza's Ethics and his reflections on the all-encompassing nature of God, sameness/difference and presence. I have, in the past day or so, been moving through Gilles Deleuze's book on Spinoza, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Deleuze is always a curious character for me, as I admire him deeply, in the way that he is brushed off or passed over. His closeness, and many times complentary pursuits, to Foucault and Derrida, is well-noted, though often underappreciated (in my mind) and he's classed to a secondary position to the two of them, though I can't help but wondering on the influence he had on both Foucault and Derrida in their respective work (Foucault, to his credit, loved to drop Deleuze when he could, while Derrida does only sparingly).
As far I've read, Deleuze's book on Spinoza is further indicator of his brilliance. While he isn't of the sweeping gestures that Foucault was so talented in articulating nor the intimacy of Derrida, he has such a sharp eye that he canot be ignored. Deleuze is correct point out, in my mind, that Spinoza neglects the strictly 'negative,' but in 'the reproach that Hegl will make to Spinoza, that he ignored the negative and its power, lies the glory and innocence of Spinoza, his own discovery' (13). While one can say that Deleuze takes certain liberties with Spinoza (an introduction of Marx and Nietzsche), I think he is right on in this. Obviously, both Marx and Nietzsche have not been born yet, but the ways in which Spinoza concieves God-as-infinite and substance have a certain bearing on their similarities to the discourses of both Marx and Nietzsche. Much of structural determinism (the latest apostle named Slavoj Zizek) seeks to arrest time, to take control of movement and flucuation, to determine the truth(s) of a system that exists prior to time, positing a 'totality' that is supposed to be all-encompassing. Spinoza, and Deleuze seems so far in agreement, in my reading, rests slightly opposed to this deterministic view. There is a notion of gradient and threshold, of becoming and existence (granted, Spinoza maintains the Cartesian hierarchy that Heidegger will come to critique), gives Spinoza a bit of an edge of the Aristotelian determinism, as Spinoza sees God within everything, where God is infinite. There are certain problems, granted, with naming the infinite, of defining something which has so limit, but it also enables Spinoza to put his system up for flucuation, giving it a more liquid nature. Substance, and the greater knowledge thereof, found as coming closer to God, suggests a gradient of movement, but God being infinite and in all things, there is always a greater movement towards God and the full threshold is never reached. One sees elements of this in Foucault's discussions of power/resistance and Derrida's writings on the impossibilities of full deconstruction.
Spinoza also opens the question of difference and strays from dialectical determinations, instead examining multitudes of substance that are common, have sameness we could say, in their 'attributes' but possess difference in essence. As Deleuze notes, the 'attributes are distinct in reality: no attribute needs another, or anything pertaining to another, in order to be conceived. Hence they express substantial qualities that are absolutely simple' (51-52). While these are 'distinct in reality,' Spinoza places them in contingency, a relational infinity, that suggests some deference. Differance (accent on the a, I can't find it on my computer), perhaps. Spinoza's usage of contigency is, for me, one of the most notable things about the Ethics.
In the previous discussion of Foucault, we examined, albeit briefly, 'Panopticism,' which posits a similar 'infinity' conceived in a sphere of 'wholeness,' though this wholeness is impossible to strictly posit or name. Foucault complicates Spinoza's claim that attributes can be 'distinct' but Foucault's implicit emphasis on agents and agency (one needs a multitude of people to make the Panopticon work after all) retains a bit of this Spinozist framework.
Up to critique and possible misreading, but these have been points of interest recently.
Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans: Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988.
Though it may seem a divergence from the general investigations here, I would, we could say, differ from such a judgment, at least outright. Many ways in which we think are partner as well to a 'fascist operational schema' (if one dares to be so assertive), and thus deserve some attention. It may seem rambling incoherently, but I'd like to flush out various things in a general build up. I would, quite humbly, liken such an approach to Nietzsche's seemingly chaotic use of aporias, which build together for a general critique.
This time, the problem(s) of difference consumes much of my current reading. I've been mulling over the quote of Derrida's posted last time, and I think he's on to something; namely, we cannot do without what we denounce, we are often implicated in their crimes, we use their tools and work in a framework at least somewhat in common with those we denounce. The problem of difference is loud and clear in Spinoza's Ethics and his reflections on the all-encompassing nature of God, sameness/difference and presence. I have, in the past day or so, been moving through Gilles Deleuze's book on Spinoza, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Deleuze is always a curious character for me, as I admire him deeply, in the way that he is brushed off or passed over. His closeness, and many times complentary pursuits, to Foucault and Derrida, is well-noted, though often underappreciated (in my mind) and he's classed to a secondary position to the two of them, though I can't help but wondering on the influence he had on both Foucault and Derrida in their respective work (Foucault, to his credit, loved to drop Deleuze when he could, while Derrida does only sparingly).
As far I've read, Deleuze's book on Spinoza is further indicator of his brilliance. While he isn't of the sweeping gestures that Foucault was so talented in articulating nor the intimacy of Derrida, he has such a sharp eye that he canot be ignored. Deleuze is correct point out, in my mind, that Spinoza neglects the strictly 'negative,' but in 'the reproach that Hegl will make to Spinoza, that he ignored the negative and its power, lies the glory and innocence of Spinoza, his own discovery' (13). While one can say that Deleuze takes certain liberties with Spinoza (an introduction of Marx and Nietzsche), I think he is right on in this. Obviously, both Marx and Nietzsche have not been born yet, but the ways in which Spinoza concieves God-as-infinite and substance have a certain bearing on their similarities to the discourses of both Marx and Nietzsche. Much of structural determinism (the latest apostle named Slavoj Zizek) seeks to arrest time, to take control of movement and flucuation, to determine the truth(s) of a system that exists prior to time, positing a 'totality' that is supposed to be all-encompassing. Spinoza, and Deleuze seems so far in agreement, in my reading, rests slightly opposed to this deterministic view. There is a notion of gradient and threshold, of becoming and existence (granted, Spinoza maintains the Cartesian hierarchy that Heidegger will come to critique), gives Spinoza a bit of an edge of the Aristotelian determinism, as Spinoza sees God within everything, where God is infinite. There are certain problems, granted, with naming the infinite, of defining something which has so limit, but it also enables Spinoza to put his system up for flucuation, giving it a more liquid nature. Substance, and the greater knowledge thereof, found as coming closer to God, suggests a gradient of movement, but God being infinite and in all things, there is always a greater movement towards God and the full threshold is never reached. One sees elements of this in Foucault's discussions of power/resistance and Derrida's writings on the impossibilities of full deconstruction.
Spinoza also opens the question of difference and strays from dialectical determinations, instead examining multitudes of substance that are common, have sameness we could say, in their 'attributes' but possess difference in essence. As Deleuze notes, the 'attributes are distinct in reality: no attribute needs another, or anything pertaining to another, in order to be conceived. Hence they express substantial qualities that are absolutely simple' (51-52). While these are 'distinct in reality,' Spinoza places them in contingency, a relational infinity, that suggests some deference. Differance (accent on the a, I can't find it on my computer), perhaps. Spinoza's usage of contigency is, for me, one of the most notable things about the Ethics.
In the previous discussion of Foucault, we examined, albeit briefly, 'Panopticism,' which posits a similar 'infinity' conceived in a sphere of 'wholeness,' though this wholeness is impossible to strictly posit or name. Foucault complicates Spinoza's claim that attributes can be 'distinct' but Foucault's implicit emphasis on agents and agency (one needs a multitude of people to make the Panopticon work after all) retains a bit of this Spinozist framework.
Up to critique and possible misreading, but these have been points of interest recently.
Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans: Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
'Wherefore it is certain that those, who cry out the loudest against the misuse of honor and the vanity of the world, are those who most greedily covet it. This is not peculiar to the ambitious, but is common to all who are ill-used by fortune, and who are infirm in spirit. For a poor man also, who is miserly, will talk incessantly of the misuse of wealth and of the vices of the rich; whereby he merely torments himself, and shows the world that he is intolerant, not only of his own poverty, but also of other people's riches' - The Ethics, 260
This quote was given last time, but worth a re-quoting, a re-orientation to the top of this post. On first reading, this seems of a ferocity that would expect from Nietzsche and it seems but a bit out of place in Spinoza. But the power of his critique here cannot be underestimated, especially from where I am writing, and is due further critical attention. What is most praise-worthy, for this extended exercise and here as well, is the manner in which Spinoza comments on the angry, seething and internally violent nature of social interaction. Spinoza, here, in a manner reminscent of psychoanalysis, seems to be suggesting a racism that is underneath, a seething that hates others in engaging with one's own perceived shortcomings.
There are two ways, I think, of reading this passage: one from psychoanalysis, the other in Nietzsche. For the former, one could argue, the subject is always covering in fear of engaging with the Real, or the behaviors that are wrong, which the subject acts itself. The subject hates others who embody that which it embodies, to cover or avoid the Real of the traumatic realization of their own actions. I'm not thoroughly convinced by this reading, but it's a possibility and sheds some intereting views. A Nietzschean reading is interesting to, though it would be a jump (and a huge misreading) to say that Nietzsche and Spinoza are on the page about most things; Nietzsche mocks much of what Spinoza advocates (God, control, measure, a subject, etc.). But Spinoza, in this passage, seems to suggest as to the operative hatred in defining oneself, where the subject is caught in something reminiscent of Slave Morality. The subject loathes that which it perceives close it because it sees others in possession of that which it desires. The subject defines its morality based what benefits it and doesn't benefit it, without ever making an effort to examine its own internal hatred. There's something to be said about these similarities.
One other thing jumped at me in reading this passage, in that it reminded me of a passage from Derrida's book on Heidegger's relation to Nazism, Of Spirit. Derrida writes:
'Because one cannot demarcate oneself from biologism, from naturalism, from racism in its genetic form, one cannot be opposed to them except by reinscribing spirit in an oppositional determination, by once again making it a unilaterality of subjectivity, even if in its voluntarist form. The constraint of this program remains very strong, it reigns over the majority of discourses which, today and for a long time to come, state their opposition to racism, to totalitarianism, to nazism, to fascism, etc., and do this in the name of spirit, and even of the freedom of (the) spirit, in the name of an axomatic - for example, that of democracy or "human rights" - which, directly or not, comes back to the metaphysics of subjectivity' (40).
Read in connection with the Spinoza quote above, one notices that Spinoza renders the problem as caused by 'infirm spirit.' I'll leave that for now.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. Trans: Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Spinoza, Benedict. The Ethics. Trans: R.H.M. Elwes. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1989.
This quote was given last time, but worth a re-quoting, a re-orientation to the top of this post. On first reading, this seems of a ferocity that would expect from Nietzsche and it seems but a bit out of place in Spinoza. But the power of his critique here cannot be underestimated, especially from where I am writing, and is due further critical attention. What is most praise-worthy, for this extended exercise and here as well, is the manner in which Spinoza comments on the angry, seething and internally violent nature of social interaction. Spinoza, here, in a manner reminscent of psychoanalysis, seems to be suggesting a racism that is underneath, a seething that hates others in engaging with one's own perceived shortcomings.
There are two ways, I think, of reading this passage: one from psychoanalysis, the other in Nietzsche. For the former, one could argue, the subject is always covering in fear of engaging with the Real, or the behaviors that are wrong, which the subject acts itself. The subject hates others who embody that which it embodies, to cover or avoid the Real of the traumatic realization of their own actions. I'm not thoroughly convinced by this reading, but it's a possibility and sheds some intereting views. A Nietzschean reading is interesting to, though it would be a jump (and a huge misreading) to say that Nietzsche and Spinoza are on the page about most things; Nietzsche mocks much of what Spinoza advocates (God, control, measure, a subject, etc.). But Spinoza, in this passage, seems to suggest as to the operative hatred in defining oneself, where the subject is caught in something reminiscent of Slave Morality. The subject loathes that which it perceives close it because it sees others in possession of that which it desires. The subject defines its morality based what benefits it and doesn't benefit it, without ever making an effort to examine its own internal hatred. There's something to be said about these similarities.
One other thing jumped at me in reading this passage, in that it reminded me of a passage from Derrida's book on Heidegger's relation to Nazism, Of Spirit. Derrida writes:
'Because one cannot demarcate oneself from biologism, from naturalism, from racism in its genetic form, one cannot be opposed to them except by reinscribing spirit in an oppositional determination, by once again making it a unilaterality of subjectivity, even if in its voluntarist form. The constraint of this program remains very strong, it reigns over the majority of discourses which, today and for a long time to come, state their opposition to racism, to totalitarianism, to nazism, to fascism, etc., and do this in the name of spirit, and even of the freedom of (the) spirit, in the name of an axomatic - for example, that of democracy or "human rights" - which, directly or not, comes back to the metaphysics of subjectivity' (40).
Read in connection with the Spinoza quote above, one notices that Spinoza renders the problem as caused by 'infirm spirit.' I'll leave that for now.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. Trans: Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Spinoza, Benedict. The Ethics. Trans: R.H.M. Elwes. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1989.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Spinoza
Must of the recent time has been spent finishing Spinoza's 'Ethics' and moving through Derrida's 'Spurs,' but a quote from Spinoza which is due a great deal of attention:
'Wherefore it is certain that those, who cry out the loudest against the misuse of honor and the vanity of the world, are those who most greedily covet it. This is not peculiar to the ambitious, but is common to all who are ill-used by fortune, and who are infirm in spirit. For a poor man also, who is miserly, will talk incessantly of the misuse of wealth and of the vices of the rich; whereby he merely torments himself, and shows the world that he is intolerant, not only of his own poverty, but also of other people's riches' - The Ethics, 260
Much reflection on this to come.
Spinoza, Benedict. The Ethics. Trans: R.H.M. Elwes. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1989.
'Wherefore it is certain that those, who cry out the loudest against the misuse of honor and the vanity of the world, are those who most greedily covet it. This is not peculiar to the ambitious, but is common to all who are ill-used by fortune, and who are infirm in spirit. For a poor man also, who is miserly, will talk incessantly of the misuse of wealth and of the vices of the rich; whereby he merely torments himself, and shows the world that he is intolerant, not only of his own poverty, but also of other people's riches' - The Ethics, 260
Much reflection on this to come.
Spinoza, Benedict. The Ethics. Trans: R.H.M. Elwes. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1989.
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