More Deleuze

In his celebrated analysis of the piece of wax, Descartes is not at all looking for that which was dwelling in the wax–this problem is not even formulated in this text; rather, he shows how the I, manifest in the Cogito, grounds the judgment of denotation by which the wax is identified. (LOS 14)

Thus states Deleuze in the “Third Series of the Proposition” in The Logic of Sense. We are still talking about the role of language in philosophical reality here. The first question that comes to my mind is: What does Deleuze mean by denotation? First, we have the “proposition.” An example of a famous proposition is ”the cat is on the mat.” Denotation is a relation. Individuated external states of affairs and propositions must be related in some way. The cat’s being on the mat must be able to be said somehow. Second, we have words and and particular representational “images.” Some words function differently than others. Indexicals like “it, that, this, etc” function at an intuitive level when it comes to denotation. ‘The denotating intuition is then expressed by the form: “it is that,” or “it is not that”‘ (LOS 12). What is important to note here is that the indexicals in the intuition are empty; the actual state of affairs is what is full. The gap must be bridged. But is there really a gap? Hold that thought. At this stage it is right to assert that propositions can be either true or false. Do the states of affairs (in all their gritty material existences) truely or falsely ”match-up” with the words that are used to describe the images of those states of affairs in a representational sense?

We are now in search of a higher ground. Does this come as a surprise? Well, we might as well just get it out in the open. We’re dealing with full blown subjectivity here. We are at the crossroads between the proposition and whoever or whatever expresses it. Deleuze calls this relation of the proposition “manifestation.” ‘[M]anifesters, beginning with the “I,” constitute the domain of the personal, which functions as the principle of all possible denotation’ (LOS 13). As long as you exist as inferred by the act of your thinking, there is the possibility that you could be right or wrong, have a true belief or have an illusion, about some proposition’s own standing in the world. Cogito grounds that ‘judgment of denotation’ (LOS 14).

“Incorporeal” Entities

Thanks to those who participated in yesterday’s poll.

Today I want to talk about the surface, that which opposes depth. This follows from Deleuze’s “Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Effects” in The Logic of Sense. Most of this material is dependent on Deleuze’s report of Stoic thought. On the one hand, ‘only bodies exist in space, and only the present exists in time’ (LOS 4). What does this mean? In this context, what counts as a body? According to Deleuze’s interpretation of the Stoics, bodies are linked to “states of affairs” and thoroughgoining causality. Bodies “exist” on one level of “reality.” They mix, act, are acted upon. What does ‘all bodies are causes–causes in relation to each other and for each other’ mean? (LOS4) There is a fundamental unity there, bodies, space, present, time. No body is an effect? Well. Right. Bodies in this sense would seem somewhat atomic. Yes there is a “primordial Fire,” but this is the source of the ultimate unity or Destiny. (I am far from an expert in Stoic metaphysics, so I am taking Deleuze’s word for it, which perhaps there is a possibility that I could be distorting.) Imagine an otherwise empty container with some type of gas in it. The atomic particles (bodies) that make up the gas, insofar as they are in motion, act as causes for each other’s activities. ‘There are no causes and effects among bodies’ (LOS 4). The bodies simply ARE (Of course they are not simply “frozen” in space and time.) They move and mix and such in an open space and enduring present. They may affect each other, but one is not an effect of another. 

We now come to incorporeal entities or, in other words, events. It would seem to me that these entities are what is manifest in opposition to what lies beneath the surface, in the depths. The depths being primordial unity where routine or even strange and completely unique mixings of bodies occur. The primordial unity would be the realm of ‘bodies with their tensions, physical qualities, actions, passions, and corresponding “states of affairs”‘ (LOS 4). What is manifest is the surface. But are the depths not in some sense the surface as well? Is the opposition not somewhat artificial? What were the Stoics thinking? Perhaps we could think of it as the difference between three-dimensional and two-dimensional. Being in three dimensions is seriously ”where and when it is at.” The two-dimensional ’plane of facts, which frolic on the surface of being, and constitute an endless multiplicity of incorporeal beings’ is simply the manifestation of events (LOS 5). The superficial difference between the two ways of conceiving dimensionality is that of the rugged versus the flat. Things occur or situations become in the innermost recesses of the rugged at no time other than now. The flat is the surface upon which words slide over and along this strange brew to give some sort of sense of meaning to the “states of affairs” of bodies. Before the end of this post, a word on paradox:

Everything happens at the boundary between things and propositions. Chrysippus taught: “If you say something, it passes through your lips; so if you say “chariot,” a chariot passes through your lips.” Here is a use of paradox the only equivalents of which are to be found in Zen Buddhism on the one hand and in English or American nonsense on the other. In one case, that which is most profound is the immediate, in the other, the immediate is found in language. Paradox appears as a dismissal of depth, a display of events at the surface, and a deployment of language along this limit. Humor is the art of the surface, which is opposed to the old irony, the art of depths and heights. (LOS 8-9)

Pure Becoming

The subject suggests that the discussion will be of an ontological nature. What does “pure becoming” mean? It is paradoxical. Deleuze suggests that there is a sense in which two opposite things, on the same ontological level (e.g., a becoming today and a becoming tomorrow), occur at the same time. This is to say that the two oppsite things which occur at the same time are at the same temporal level. The things or senses are determinate in themselves, but at the same time they happen concurrently due to what  is termed as pure becoming. This is what makes it a paradox.  As Deleuze says, “This is the simultaneity of a becoming whose characteristic is to elude the present” (LOS 1). The holding power of the present is precisely what is at stake here. “Good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direction (sens); but paradox is the affirmation of both senses or directions at the same time” (LOS 1). Deleuze suggests that Plato institutes a dualism here in order to tame the wild horse. Thus we have the world of nouns. A “chair” is no longer even this happening whose existence can at least be pointed at. (It seems to me that Hegel makes a somewhat similar move which acknowledges this phenomenon in the very first section of the Phenomenology of Spirit.) The pure immediacy of becoming must already be mediated in order for communication to even occur at all. A pure becoming, in order to be controlled, must be taken as a specific determinate instance of a fixed something, i.e., of a thing. Hardcore becoming has the quality of not being pidgeon-holed so easily (or at all). Two senses, determinate yet dynamic, trump common sense.

“The paradox of this pure becoming with its capacity to elude the present, is the paradox of infinite identity (the infinite identity of both directions or senses at the same time–of future and past, of the day before and the day after, of more and less, of two much and not enough, of active and passive, and of cause and effect). It is language which fixes the limits (the moment, for example, at which the excess begins), but it is language as well which transcends the limits and restores them to the infinite equivalence of an unlimited becoming. . . Paradox is initially that which destroys good sense as the only direction, but it is also that which destroys common sense as the assignation of fixed identities” (LOS 2-3).

 

Work Cited

Deleuze, G. The Logic of Sense. trans. Lester, M., Stivale, C., ed. Boundas, C. (Colombia University Press: New York, 1990.)