About Deleuze - Lecture 1 and 2_1
Topics from the lecture on the book "Difference & Repition" (Paul Patton):
Deleuze analysis how 'difference' comes down to us philosophically, as a secondary category. His engaging with the history of philosophy is an engagement seeking to show that the primary way of thinking of difference is as secondary to identities.
Structuralists defend that the 'surface identity' refers to the underlying identity that gives rise to it (ex: problem with authority comes from Oedipus complex).
Post-Structuralists (Foucault, Deleuze) agree that we have surface identities, but they deny that these identities come from some deeper essential core.
For the Post-Structuralists, our identities are not a product of some deep essence. But if our identities are not a product of some deep essence, where did they come from? How is it that these identities came to us, if they didn't come from something deep underneath?
– For Foucault – Our identities are a product of a history in which we are immersed. Who we are, is produced, created, through the 'histories' in which we find ourselves. So, if we have a problem, we should just look inside ourselves (to see what the essential core is and how it has gone wrong), but we should look just as much outside. So if we have a problem, it's not because of who we are, but of the context (narrative) we find ourselves in. So we have to adopt/develop alternative practices :D, alternative ways of seeing the world.
The alternative practice will, ultimately, challenge the identities (the identities that are currently 'on offer'). So, the 'history narrative', people are not 'essentially' normal or not. They 'get produced' as normal, through various practices, as psychotherapy...
So, Foucault tends to reject the idea of ontology as a way of accounting for our identities. So it looks like it's deep, essential and onthological, but it turns out to be (the 'ontology of the present': mentioned by Foucault).
Foucault is not interested in the brain and how it develops. He's interested in the 'history' itself of things that gives us the habits, and not in the biological matter. For Foucault, the brain might as well be a black box because he's not interested in the brain. Brain is whatever it is that can be subject to these habits.
For Foucault, if we are a product of our history, we are exposed to the outside. The outside filters into us, makes us.
Now, this leaves open a question: "Is there any other way to stop thinking of identities being the product of essence?"
Why would anybody turn to ontology if you are trying to resist the idea that our identities are not the product of some deep essence [minuto 1:10:10]? It seems the wrong place to turn. And yet, that's where Deleuze goes.
So, when we see it, when we have a good grip on the development of this Deleuzian ontology, it will present itself as a potentially compelling way to think about who we are, and who we might be. Moving past ideas of identity.
– For Deleuze – Who is a Materialist, rather than working through history (narrative), he works through ontology. What there is, is the material stuff. Deleuze's 'Difference in Repetition'.
Can we think of 'difference' not as difference between things but 'difference' on it's own, simply as difference?
Deleuze says that when we talk about 'difference', we tend to think about difference as secondary and 'identities' as primary. [1:17:00]. Can we think as 'difference', not as the difference between two identities but 'difference' on its own simply as difference? The move Deleuze is going to make is to make 'Difference' primary and 'Identity' secondary. One way to read the book, "Difference & Repetition" is as an ontology of how 'difference' gives rise to 'identities'. Identities are secondary and they are rooted in something that is not an identity, which means it could be a lot of things that it is, currently, not. Not an essence in any way we thought of.
Example: It goes back to infant brain development. The synaptic connections in infant brains, are not yet really formed, and the way it works (roughly), has a lot to do with habit. So the way it happens is that we become a product of the synaptic connections that get formed in our brain, through development. [1:22:55]
So, how shall we think about the brain? The brain is not some essential identity that gets formed through brain development. It can't be that because if it were, there could only be one way that we could develop. And there's so many different ways we can develop. So whatever the brain is, it doesn't hold any potential. The brain cannot either be as if there were a bunch of different possible "me's" in there, and that in the way my synaptic connections formed they would give me one 'me' as opposed to the other 'me'. So we can't think of the infant brain as an identity that just happens and unfolds, on the one hand, and we can't think of it as a set of possible identities, one of which gets chosen, and we cannot either think of the child's brain as a complete blank slate that could become anything, because whatever my brain develops me into, it's not going to develop me into a seagull, or a racoon... So the infants brain has to have some kind of structure but, on the other hand, the structure is not a structure of any possibilities...
So to put it on ontological terms, what is the 'Being' of this thing (this infant brain)? Deleuze's answer is that it's a 'field of difference'.
The "Field of Difference" – [1:36:11] is structured, on the one hand, because if it weren't it could become anything. But it's not structured with any identities, on the other hand, because there are no identities there waiting to come out. So, not a blank slate, not an identity, not a set of potentialities, but something that could be many different things through its exposure to experience (the Foucault side of it...). And, to be noticed about this 'Field of Difference', is that we don't know all of what it can be. Because it's the ways in which it habituates itself, the different things to which it's exposed, the way it takes up those things that it's exposed to, will make it what it is.
Because it's a human brain and because it's a 'field of difference', the identity that gets formed is not the only identity that it might form, not the only identity it might have formed, but it's also not the only identity it might have formed once it gets formed, because people re-habituate themselves. They change their synaptic connections and they become somebody else. They change!
So the 'field of difference' just doesn't go away! It's there within the identity.
And, interesting enough, this thought resonates with cognitive science.
So how do we think about this field of difference and how does it give rise to identities? [1:42:11]
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Repitition [1:42:11]: Things do repeat. Everything repeats... But what repeats is not identity. What repeats, for Deleuze, what keeps coming back, is 'difference'. There is always something ahead of us that repeats, that we find in our future, but it's not the same thing over and over again (like Nietzsche's eternal return). Deleuze's repetition is the 'eternal return of difference'. The 'same thing' that returns is difference. So, as we move through the future, as we move through our world, towards the future, what we are faced with, what keeps coming back to face us, are not simply identities but, in fact, that field of difference. Which means that whatever anything is, it could also be something else and we can't be sure of it can possibly be.
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| [1:51:16] Start by reading from page 50 and read to the end of the chapter (Nietzsche). Skip the note on Heiddeger's philosophy of difference (page 64). Structure of the reading: Aristotle - Hegel - Nietzsche - Plato |
How has difference come down to us philosophically?
– 'Difference' is secondary to 'identity', for Aristotle. For Aristotle, 'identity' is primary.
– For Hegel, 'difference' is secondary to 'identity'.
– Nietzsche is the thinker for whom 'difference' becomes primary.
– As for Plato: oddly enough, after we read Nietzsche, we can see Plato as opening the door to overturning his own philosophy, but we can only see that after having seen Nietzsche.
• Aristotle:
Aristotle's thought is a thought of categories. [2:07:07] For him we have 3 'identity' categories: Genera, Species, and Individuals
Genera identity examples: colours, animals...
Species identity examples: black, white, horse, whale (black is the 'species' of the 'genera' colour; whale is the 'species' of the 'genera' animal)
Individuals identity examples: a white horse, a black whale.
– So, 'this white horse', is a member of a 'species' which is a member of a 'genera'.
[2:08:57] - For Aristotle, difference lies between different 'genera', between different 'species', and between 'different individuals'. In order to have 'difference' you must have 'identities' first. What is primary for Aristotle are the categories themselves. Difference emerges as distinctions within various categories. There's no such thing as difference itself, and difference doesn't generate identity. First we have identities, and difference happens between them.
• Hegel:
Thesis - Antithesis - Synthesis -> dialectic
[2:11:44] Of all of the 'philosophical enemies' Deleuze had, he considered Hegel the one who was his greatest enemy. Hegel's notion of 'dialectic' was what Deleuze criticised the most. Hegel sees himself as working by means of difference. He sees things as unfolding by means of diference. But he still has difference subordinated to identity. That is why 'difference' is opposition.
For Hegel, history does not procede in a linear fashion (step by step by step). It procedes dialectically. The notion of the dialectic in Hegel's hands takes on a certain form which it had not had before:
––– You start with a specific situation, and that situation generates its own opposition. So situations are internally unstable and generate their own opposition. So then there is a conflict that has to be resolved, and it's resolved into a new situation. That new situation will have its own instabilities.
So, in Hegel there is the 'thesis' (the situation). To understand the dialectic we can use the [simple] analogy of stereoscopic vision: two different eyes (two identities) capture two different images that merge into one other final image (the new 'thesis' is the 'synthesis' and the synthesis becomes the new thesis). In Hegel's thought, the negative is primary: – what gets the movement going between identities is opposition.
Examples of dialectics:
1) Relationships develop dialectically.
2) Marx, who was a dialectical thinker. For Marx the economic situation is one that is always in tension: owners vs workers. History, for Marx, is driven by conflict between classes, and if you get rid of the notion of classes, if you end up having a single class, then there isn't going to be this eternal tension. So we will have reached an 'eternal synthesis'. And this is what Marx means by 'the end of History'. So, through the 'dialectic' we do have a movement of differences, but they work by opposition or by negativity. Each movement is a negation of the earlier one (according to Hegel).
Deleuze wants to point out that identities don't have to come from other single identities.
– Can there be a thought of the 'negative' which makes the negative secondary rather than primary?
– Why would one want a thought that makes the
• Nietzsche:
[2:29:42] For Nietzsche there are two forms of negation: one is the Hegelian one, and the other is a form where negation is not primary, but secondary. For Nietzsche there are two types of forces: Active forces and reactive forces. Active forces are not in conflict with the reactive forces. Only reactive forces are in conflict with active forces.
– An active force is a force of creation. It does what it does. It follows its own path.
– A reactive force works by stopping an active force. It reacts to an active force.
The primary way as to think of difference is as secondary to identity.
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Deleuze ontology: Ontology is a matter of relations without positive terms. 'Being' is relations without positive terms.
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Personal change [1:39:37]
People often think that personal change comes from epiphanies. Like, you have this moment, and everything becomes clear. Suddenly the scales fall from your eyes, you see the 'truth', and now you're somebody else. And what studies of folks have shown is that personal change almost never happens like that. Why not? Well, think of how brains develop. They develop through habituation os synaptic connections. So, to become something other than you were is, often, not a matter of realising something in a moment but, rather, habituating yourself. Getting the habit. People change by trying things out, experimenting, etc, etc.
... to be continued...
The Psychiatrist
Notas:
Ontology: the study of what there is (physical... mental... God...). And, what 'Being' is.
Idealists: There is only mental stuff.
One of the qualities of matter, is that it is convertible into energy. But energy is just mass in another state, so it's just more material... Matter has a lot more qualities than we may think.
Utilitarianism: that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness...[or] to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.It has been applied to social welfare economics, the crisis of global poverty, the ethics of raising animals for food and the importance of avoiding existential risks to humanity. [Jeremy Bentham]
Insight Therapy: a type of psychotherapy in which the therapist helps their patient understand how their feelings, beliefs, actions, and events from the past are influencing their current mindset.
More stuff:
The Harder problem of Consciousness: here
A causalidade em Deleuze: diferença interna e produção de si: aqui
Holographic ontology: holographic ontology highlights a strong quantum characteristic of complexity, uncertainty, and indeterminacy about global life. Instead of a teleological process of homogenization, holographic transition is more multifaceted and dynamic. [...] As global challenges loom, transnational interconnectedness deepens, and a myriad of issues interact in unpredictable ways, it is now time to take the worlds’ holographic existence more seriously.
here
Saussure: “in language there are only differences without positive terms”. Language is a huge contradiction and without these contradictions or differences language would cease to exist. Here
Definition and the Epistemology of Natural Kinds in Aristotle: here
Hegelian Dialectics For Dummies: here
