Satan at the Center and Double Rhizomes: Discussing Spheres and beyond with Peter Sloterdijk

Sloterdijk on Spheres, and a strange reading of Deleuze on the Rhizome...

http://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/satan-center-double-rhizomes-discussing-spheres-beyond-peter-sloterdijk

Bubbles review

Review of Sloterdijk's 'Bubbles' that might be of interest:

http://www.berfrois.com/2012/05/david-beer-on-peter-sloterdijk/

Closer to me than I am myself: Chapter 8

First point – Contraction

p. 575

I was interested in Sloterdijk’s exposition of Nicholas of Cusa’s ‘coincidence of opposites’ as an early modern attempt to envisage the immanent relation of Creator (God) and creature (the individual’s soul). Cusa’s argument, as illustrated in the examples given by Sloterdijk, is that all things are enveloped or enfolded (complicatio) in God, while God is manifest only as developed or unfolded (explicatio) in all the things of the world. The means by which enfolding and unfolding occur - that is, the relation between the processes of enfolding and unfolding – is that of contraction (contractio), or the delimitation of God (the divine maximum) into nature – e.g. individual perception as a contraction, a ‘branch office’ of God’s actually infinite vision (p.275). Although Cusa’s philosophy appears to gesture toward a fully immanent pantheism, Sloterdijk highlights his reaffirmation of the asymmetry and sovereign/hierarchical transcendence of the divine as absolute maximum (e.g. in the discussion of debt and the birth of entrepreneurial subjectivity – this section is actually one of many in the chapter that reminded me of Foucault’s lecture series). Nicholas of Cusa’s speculative mysticism would later be taken up (and Deleuze argues radicalised – complication and explication are absolutely equivalent) in the philosophy of Spinoza, where the Cusan ‘coincidence of opposites’, where the maximum is the minimum and vice versa, is streamlined in Spinoza into a single, univocal substance. Whilst the Cusan process of contraction into nature is, in Spinoza, the expression of modes of movement and affect.

Second point – The Monstrous

p. 629-630

I am intrigued by Heidegger and Sloterdijk’s notion of ‘inhabiting the monstrous outside’ as the defining character of ‘being-in’ of our contemporary world. The translation footnote states that Sloterdijk isn’t referring here to monster (das Unngeheure) in the conventional sense of ‘atrocious’ or ‘horrible’, but rather as something ‘immense’, ‘enormous’, or ‘unfathomable’. I have read elsewhere that Sloterdijk will return to the notion of ‘the monstrous’ in the preface to the next book of Spheres (Globes), where he describes globalisation as the geometrisation of the unmeasurable,‘geometry in the monstrous’. So the monstrous is used as a qualification within Sloterdijk’s work for a world in which the Sphere-One (the notion of being-in-God explored in this chapter) has imploded (‘God is dead’), resulting in a totality that allows neither full understanding nor total comprehension, and a situation in which smaller inferior spheres have to be produced which emulate the immunological functions of the monosphere. I am interested to see how this argument is unpacked and developed in the subsequent volumes, particularly in terms of the transference from micro- to macrospheres (the mechanisms and psycho-political risks all to briefly hinted at in this first book), as well as the concepts a spherology provides to think the architecture and communication/relation between different spheres and intimacies.

Soul Partitions and The Siren Stage: Chapters 6-7

First point – Autistic Bubbles

438-442

Building on my point last week, these pages provide some insights into what an ethics of spherology might look like. The bottom of page 439 states that the With-companion operates as a kind of membrane, or sluice, through which the metabolic exchange between subject and world takes place. Sloterdijk presents two main risks, or failures of the companion’s membrane function, here: the first in which this opening is not sufficiently porous so that it closes the subject off from the world. The discussion of the Jennifer and June Gibbons case on p. 440 is a fascinating illustration of such autistic spheres, in which the companion-other becomes too real, obsessive, impermeable, and thus seals the subject off from communication with the outside so strongly that a hermetic inner life emerges. The second risk emerges from the premature loss or absence of the companion, in which the hermetic communion becomes a security measure that shields the subject from the shock of the outside.

The becoming-autistic of bubbles thus counts among the potential danger of the dyadic communion which may become less a linking than dividing. The understanding of the ‘non-autistic’, protective-permeable bubble that enables openness, transference and communicative competence reminded me of the ethics Deleuze sees in the philosophy of Simondon, which is oriented against modes of aestheticism, or acts that cut the individual off from the pre-individual reality in which it is immersed, and instead in terms of an affirmation of ontogenesis and an augmentation of capacities to enter into relations and becomings.

Second point - Therapy

461-465

These pages are interesting as attempts to subvert Lacanian ego and object-centric accounts of neuroses – with some interesting implications for thinking therapy and care of the self. S. foregrounds melancholia over mourning in Freud’s distinction, which he understands as the subject’s response to the premature amputation of the ‘genius’ or ‘intimate nobject’. Therapy, at the bottom of page 461, would thus consist of strengthening the isolated/autistic subject’s potential for a renewed faith, a restored belief, in the possibility of mental augmentation. So for S. melancholic depression isn’t just an individualised mental problem (as in traditional psychoanalytical approaches), but rather a media problem; a function of the personal relationship with the mediating operation of the With. S. identifies three means of recalibrating the mediation system of the subject on page 462: the analyst as substitute genius in traditional psychoanalytical transference relationships; the assertion of a higher god in pastoral-theological counselling; and finally autotherapeutic self-augmentation techniques (the return of Warhol’s tape-recorder). The language of self-care is particularly interesting here, and on p.465 he remarks on the possibility of the subject ‘training itself to lose the other in such a way that its disappearance would not be followed be ego loss’. Annoyingly S. leaves this undeveloped, perhaps because this itself is a form of nobject loss as it requires a clear demarcation of the subject and the possibility of the object being lost or abandoned. Beyond the need for ‘mythological thinking and practice’, Sloterdijk is also quite hesitant on the possibilities of an incorrect or ‘bad’ repair – those assumptions, discourses, ideologies, microfascisms that influence the practice of therapy and which might further imprison the subject within autistic and destructive spheres.

'Retreat within the mother' and 'The primal companion'

First point – Nobjects

p. 292-294

I found Sloterdijk/Macho’s notion of the nobject interesting as a means for thinking beyond subject/object dichotomies and the ‘object prejudice’ of psychoanalysis. Whereas the object is based on a relationship of distance (that which separates the here (I) from the not-here (not-I)), the nobject is something in which the distance between It and the subject is unthinkable and non-existent (see p. 294). S. focuses on three pre-oral, foetal examples, including the placenta, acoustic events and air. Nobjects are media or things that are productive of intimate microspheres that augment the subject in particular ways. Interesting analysis in these chapters of examples of post-natal modes of nobjectivation that suck the subject in, and create new spheres of mediation around the subject (intriguing understanding of life becoming a process of finding replacement nobjective Withs).

The concept of nobject might open interesting ways of theorising new technologies and new media (I was similarly intrigued with the notion of interfaces in the ‘Between faces’ chapter); as substitutions for the With which are productive of new resonances and relations with others (Andy Warhol’s tape recorder, p. 401) – e.g. ubiquity of facebook profiles, blogosphere, computer game avatars; examples of interfaces no longer based on an opposition of mutually exclusive entities (so not necessarily objects separated from the subject) but rather on their interpenetration (more of a life-forming, life-giving dyadic relation).

Second point – An Ethics of Spherology?

pp. 341

Raises interesting questions regarding ethics of spherology – Further discussion (particularly in the excursus on Heidegger) of the possibility of the perversion of the subject through self-destructive attachment to nobjects, and the becoming-fascist of micro/macrospheres. The question for me is what theoretical resource/facilitative rules does a spherological approach provide for evaluating the mode of existence and relationality particular spheres imply, as well as for identifying (and perhaps combatting) the emergence of fascist forms (unclear beyond the fact that a sphere should be radiative, hearty, augmenting).

Sloterdijk 'Bubbles': Between Faces & Humans in the Magic Circle

Below are my notes for the chapters Between Faces & Humans in the Magic Circle (pages 139-268) which I raised at the meeting. Please feel free to add your comments or notes, either as a response to this post or as a separate post

First point – Mirrors and Psychoanalysis

Pages 192-205

Particularly amusing and scathing critique of psychoanalysis and its theories around the concept of mirrors. In these pages Sloterdijk points out the extent to which theoretical apparatuses (spheres of knowledge) are located in the material and technical cultures of the societies in which they emerge. On p. 197 he takes aim at a foundational theory of contemporary psychoanalysis (mirror-stage and self-recognition), and exposes the discipline for what it is: a culturally specific mode of explanation.

'Even Lacan's tragically presumptuous theorem about the mirror stage's formative significance for the ego function cannot overcome its dependence on the cosmetic and ego-technical household inventory of the nineteenth century - much to the detriment of those who were taken in by this psychological mirage'

He argues that in order to prove the valence of psychoanalytic theories in any cultures other than the Western ones we would have to first demonstrate the presence of mirrors (he argues that even until the Modern age few had mirrors and they were cloaked in secrecy – for much of human history S. argues that most of the human race had not seen their own faces [I think he oversimplifies here – e.g. reflection in another’s eyes for example ‘the other thus acts as a personal mirror’ p.200 – but there is certainly something interesting to be said about how the ‘interface’ of mirror technologies opens up new modes of self-encounter – ‘they no longer require completion through the present other, but can complete themselves through themselves so to speak’ p. 20] – says something similar about writing in thought transmission]), and then the emergence of mirror-subjectivities. S. also argues that if we reread the narcissistic mirror-narrative with this intervention in mind, we actually arrive at the stark opposite of narcissism in ‘pre-reflection’ cultures: the visage in the water is not an image of the self, but of another – ‘Looking at the entire history of human faciality, one can say that humans have faces not for themselves, but for the others’ p.192. So through this example we return again to the issues of ontotopology, spherological being and technicity which are of central concern to Sloterdijk’s Spheres

Second point – Faciality

Pages 163-168

I was interested in Sloterdijk’s critique of Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of faciality, and returned to the chapter in ATP to begin to reflect on the differences and commonalities between Sloterdijk’s interfacial hothouses and D+G’s abstract machines of faciality. On page 167 Sloterdijk argues that his disagreement with D+G stems from their blindness to the protraction of the Homo Sapiens face, a universal process that takes place through a first stage of facial opening and a second stage of culturally-specific inscription. So rather than an understanding of the face in terms of ‘interfacial hothouses’ that generate insulating forms of togetherness, D+G speak in terms of white walls and abstract machines of faciality that undermine togetherness and allow for modes of domination and exclusion. D+G thus state that the ‘face is a politics’ which fulfils the role of selective response, organising the world in terms of binary and molar oppositions (man/woman, white/black, included/excluded).

However, at points in the chapter Sloterdijk also hints, in line with D+G, at the exclusive effects of living between faces. On pages 183-185, for example, Sloterdijk points to interfacial spheres as spaces where punishment and obedience may flourish (Roman Empire) as well as act as spaces of exclusion (obscurity of the feminine face in art).

Also… the emergence of new technical interfaces (monitors, cameras, assessment forms) that replaces protraction with detraction and abstraction that emphasise the inhuman and extra-human aspects of the human face and which propagate probe-heads, allow escape from facial machines (p. 189, Deleuze’s Cinema books)

Gilles Deleuze's 'L'Abecedaire'

Hey all,

Thought this DVD might be of interest to the group:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gilles-Deleuze-Semiotext-Foreign-Agents/dp/1584351012/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=INX5KVSAO9RV9&colid=AI5ZH8E9HRDU

Blurb below:

Although Gilles Deleuze never wanted a film to be made about him, he agreed to Claire Parnet’s proposal to film a series of conversations in which each letter of the alphabet would evoke a word: From A (as in Animal) to Z (as in Zigzag). These DVDs, elegantly transtlated and subtitled in English, make these conversations available for English-speaking audiences for the first time.

In dialogue with Parnet (a journalist and former student of Deleuze), the philosopher exhibited the modest and thrilling transparency that his seminal works (such as Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus) reveal. The sessions were taped when Deleuze was already terminally ill; he and Parnet agreed that the film would not be shown publicly until after his death. The awareness of mortalityfloats through the dialogues, making them not just intellectually stimulating but also emotionally engaging. Because Parnet knew Deleuze so well, she was able to draw him out--as no one else had--to what might be the 1001st plateau: a place of brilliance, rigor, and charm.

In "A as in Animal," for example, Deleuze vents his hatred of pets: "A bark," he declares, "really seems to me the stupidest cry." Instead, he praises the tick: ". . . in a nature teeming with life, [the tick] extracts three things": light, smell, and touch. This, he claims, in a sense is philosophy. "And that is your life’s dream?" Parnet wryly asks. "That's what constitutes a world," he replies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ZWwLKHQnU

Part Nine: What is Noble? (Was ist Vornehm?)

小心

What follows are personal reflections on some of the main ideas and themes that I picked up from a reading of the last chapter of Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’: What is Noble? It is, of course, by no means exhaustive. Following previous entries, $ refers to the section number (standard across translations and editions) and the number to the page ref in my Kaufmann, 1992, Modern Library Edition.

1/Aristocratic Radicalism and the Will to Power

The final chapter opens with clear statements of Nietzsche’s ‘aristocratic radicalism’: “Every enhancement of the type ‘man’”, Nietzsche declares, “has been the work of an aristocratic society … that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man, and that needs slavery in some sense or other” ($257/391). Nietzsche also praises the “noble barbarian castes” who “hurled themselves upon weaker … more peaceful races” ($257/391) and argues that society “must not exist for society’s sake” but instead as the scaffolding “on which a choice type of being is able to raise itself to its highest task and to a higher state of being” ($258/392). We must be clear that Nietzsche is not arguing for a return to the values of a ‘barbaric primitive culture’ (Carlisle, 2003). He admires not so much the cruelty and violence of the ‘masters’, but the affirmative, creative origins of their values; and he is critical of the reactive nature of ‘slave’ morality which rests on a corrupt foundation of ressentiment. This is extended in section 259 through a discussion of the will to power as the law of being throughout the organic stratum (“life simply is will to power” p. 393). The will to power is understood as the differential and genetic element of relations of force to force (Deleuze, 2001). The concept of force is, by nature, victorious (overpowering, appropriating) because the relation of force to force, understood conceptually, is one of domination: when two forces are related one is dominant and the other is dominated. Nietzsche thus understands “the slowly arising democratic order of things” ($261/399) and the demand for equality in nineteenth century Europe as the triumph of reactive forces – where the weak have conquered, where the strong are separated from what they can do, where the slave who has not stopped being a slave prevails over the master who has stopped being one (Deleuze, 2006). Here nihilism triumphs and the will to power becomes a “will to the denial of life, a principle of disintegration and decay” ($259/393). Will to negation.

2/ Master Morality and Slave Morality

Section 260 introduces and distinguishes between ‘master’ and ‘slave’ morality (Nietzsche would clarify and develop this analysis a year later in Genealogy of Morals). Immediately, however, Nietzsche makes it clear that these two types are often combined within one culture, and “even in the same human being, within a single soul” ($260/394). This helps to explain why moralities, often assumed to be rational and coherent, usually turn out to be riven with tensions, hypocrisies and contradictions. In ‘noble’ societies, the masters will dominate the slaves, and so what is good and valuable will be determined by the “noble type of man” ($260/395). Taking pride in their strengths and talents, the noble human is thus a creator of values and new principles of evaluation (Deleuze, 2001). Unable to take revenge on their oppressors by means of force, the slaves label the aggressive, arrogant ethic of their masters as ‘evil’, and preach values such as humility, meekness and pity ($260/397). In effect, this ‘slave morality’ makes a virtue out of necessity, turning weakness into moral virtue and expecting everyone to conform to it. According to Nietzsche, the ethical teachings of Judaic law and Christian love spring from the thirst for vengeance exercised by the weak upon the strong ($219): from “the weight of negative premises, the spirit of strength, the power of ressentiment” (Deleuze, 2006: 114). Nietzsche argues that it is through the slave revolt in morality that the famous opposition of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is born ($260/397): ethical determination, that of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (understood in a vitalist sense of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’), gives way to moral judgement. The good of ethics has become the evil of morality, the bad has become the good of morality. Life is thus judged according to values that are said to be superior to life: “these pious values are opposed to life, condemn it, lead it to nothingness; they promise salvation only to the most reactive, the weakest, the sickest forms of life” (Deleuze, 2001: 78).

3/ Suffering and the Mask of Illness

Skipping forward a few sections, in 270 Nietzsche introduces the theme of suffering and its relation to noble life, arguing that “profound suffering makes noble; it separates” ($270/410). “By virtue of his suffering he knows more than the cleverest and wisest could possibly know, and that he knows his way and has once been ‘at home’ in many distant terrifying world of which ‘you know nothing’” ($270/410). This is interesting in relation to Nietzsche’s own health and illness. In his illness, Nietzsche saw a point of view on health; and in health, a point of view on illness. As Deleuze writes, “illness is not a motive for a thinking subject, not is it an object for thought: it constitutes, rather, a secret intersubjectivity at the heart of a single individual” (p.58). Illness as an evaluation of health, health as an evaluation of illness: such is the ‘reversal’ the ‘shift in perspective’ that Nietzsche saw as the crux of his method and his calling for a transmutation of values (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo). As long as Nietzsche could practice the art of shifting perspectives, from health to illness and back, he enjoyed, sick as he may have been, the ‘great health’ that made his work possible. We thus return to the importance and virtue of the mask. Illness is thus understood as a mask that conceals and expresses other kinds of forces – forces of life, forces of thought. However, and as Nietzsche’s final years testify, masks can become paralysing, no longer shifting and communicating, merging into a death-life rigidity. The overall paralysis marks the moment when illness exits from the work, interrupts it, and makes its continuation impossible (Deleuze, 2001: 64).

“Recreation? Recreation? You are inquisitive! What are you saying! But give me please”

“What? What? Say it!”

“Another mask! A second mask!” ($278/414).

4/ The Force of Laughter, The Shock of Thought

Skipping forward again, this time to section 294 where we have an interesting section on laughter as an attitude toward the world, toward life, and toward oneself. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche (1992) writes that “laughter means: to rejoice at another’s expense [schadenfroh sein], but with a good conscience” ($200). For Nietzsche, laughter becomes less a physical phenomenon than a symbol of joyous affirmation of life: it is not a consolation for our weakness (ala Hobbes) but an expression of joy, a sign of our power (Hardt and Negri, 2009: 382-383).

I also particularly like sections 292 and 296 which are beautifully written accounts of thought. In $292, for example, Nietzsche describes ‘the philosopher’ who is constantly struck by lightning bolts of thought; “who is perhaps himself a storm pregnant with new lightnings; a fatal human being around whom there are constant rumblings and growlings, crevices and uncanny doings” ($292/420). For me, this has clear resonances with Deleuze’s (2004) perspective on thought in Difference and Repetition, where he writes that subject does not choose to think, but is instead forced to think through the shock and contingency of an encounter (p.176). Thought is thus recast as a creative and ontogenetic force that pulses through and deterritorialises actual bodies. In $296, Nietzsche argues that this thinking is not contained in the designations, manifestations and significations of language as owned by the subject. These are only partial expressions of it: pale reflections of its flash (Massumi, 2002). The “colours” that we scholars, writers, “mandarins with Chinese brushes” give to our (re)presentations of the event of thought are thus “always only storms that are passing, exhausted, and feelings that are autumnal and yellow!” ($296/426-427; See also Dewsbury, 2010: 158).

“We immortalise what cannot live and fly much longer – only weary and mellow things! And it is only your afternoon, you, my written and painted thought, for which alone I have colours, many colours perhaps, many motley caresses and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds: but nobody will guess from that how you looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and wonders of my solitude, you my old beloved – wicked thoughts” ($296/427)

References

Carlisle, C. (2003) Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil: ‘Why insist on the truth?’ Richmond Journal of Philosophy. 4

Deleuze, G. (2001) Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life. New York: Zone Books

Deleuze, G. (2004) Difference and Repetition. London: Continuum

Deleuze, G. (2006) Nietzsche and Philosophy. London: Continuum

Dewsbury, J-D. (2010) Language and the event: the unthought of appearing worlds. In B. Anderson and P. Harrison (Eds.) Taking-Place: Non-Representational Theories and Geography

Hardt, M., and Negri, A. (2009) Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Massumi, B. (2002) Like a thought. In B. Massumi (Ed.) A Shock to Thought: Expression after Deleuze and Guattari.

Nietzsche, F. (1992) Basic Writings of Nietzsche. New York: The Modern Library

Beyond Good and Evil - Chapter Eight: Peoples and Fatherlands

Note: references given in brackets refer to the paragraph numbers, rather than page numbers, as between us we appear to have quite a broad collection of translations / editions.

Chapter eight of Beyond Good and Evil sees Nietzsche address the topic of nationalism, in relation to what he refers to as an emergent 'European Spirit'. Nietzsche opens the chapter with a nostalgic encounter with Wagner's Meistersinger overture, describing its "certain German massiveness and abundance of soul" (240). There is, it seems, something undeniably 'German', in Wagner's composition; in Nietzsche's own words, this is something "multifarious, unformed, and inexhaustible" (240) that is typical to the German tradition. However, moving into 241, such practices of 'hearty fatherland-ism' are portrayed in less favourable light, perhaps as more of an arbitrary fancy rooted to the past? The reader is introduced to a population of 'Good Europeans' - a group that Nietzsche appears to align himself with. Even these Good Europeans, Nietzsche argues, are liable from time to time to indulge in the kinds of 'fatherland-ism' made manifest in the previous encounter with Wagner - "hours flooded through with feelings for the nation, patriotic anguish, and all sorts of other archaic emotional convulsions" (241). Whilst such nostalgia for the nation might be unavoidable, Nietzsche emphasises the need for a quicker digestion and metabolism of these indulgences, as he puts it; we should avoid getting caught-up or 'lumbered' with the "atavistic attacks of fatherland-ism and attachment to the soil" (241). In these opening sections, Nietzsche appears to be opening-up a problem space by re-contextualising national identity in relation to the possibilities of a European future.

Moving into 242, Nietzsche's re-orientation towards 'Europe' touches upon the theme of environmental determinism - choppy waters for geographers, perhaps! According to the narrative, Europe was witnessing the gradual emergence of a more nomadic human. Interestingly, Nietzsche stresses the importance of physical - i.e. bodily - changes, supposedly as nomadic movements encourage a more adaptive human, "having a maximum of adaptive skills and powers" (242). As was mentioned in Friday's reading group, we might want to question such a reading of Darwinian evolution. For me, it does seem to be flavoured with a heavy dose of Lamarckism, in that it suggests an environmentally-determined evolution taking place over the course of centuries. On the other hand, perhaps this is less a question of environment, but instead of racial-mixing? Either way, I think the important point to take from Nietzsche's argument is that, in his own words, "this process probably ends with results that were least anticipated by its naive sponsors and apologists, the apostles of 'modern ideas'" (242). Thus, the intentions of democratic sponsors will always be exceeded by the physical inter-minglings of bodies and environments. Do we detect a hint of vitalism here?

The main body of chapter eight goes on to explore what Nietzsche sees as the strengths and shortcomings of various nationalities, placing each within the context of a European 'becoming'. Indeed, no 'nation' is immune to Nietzsche's onslaught of terse criticism. Populated by 'multifarious' souls, the youthful German nation escapes definition in its "maze of passageways" (244). In fact, Nietzsche portrays this uncertainty as a brilliant discovery for German philosophy - "the German himself is not, he is becoming, he 'is developing'" (244). However, the 'inner tightrope dance' of the German soul is also its weakness through its "boorish indifference to taste", and its inability to 'digest' the events that befall it. It seems, therefore, that these weaknesses are in opposition to the advent of the 'Good European'. According to Nietzsche, then, German music "was threatened by its greatest danger: to cease being the voice of Europe's soul and to deteriorate inter mere fatherland-ism" (245). Sections 246 and 247 address German literature, and its supposed lack of tempo, musicality, colour - in short, artistic creativity / expression. Personally, I think these two sections are among my all-time favourites, as we get glimpses of Nietzsche-as-writer, as an experimental sculptor of language. The approach is, in places, explicitly performative, at least in my translation: "How resentfully we face the slowly circling swamp of sounds without resonance, of rhythms without dance that Germans call a 'book'" (246). It would be interesting to do a bit of digging here regarding the translation, and whether or not such a translation retains the sibilance - indeed the resonances - of the German. For Nietzsche, the Germans' lack of linguistic musicality stems stems from a forgetting of the physicality of language, particularly the natural rhythms and colourations that emerge through the act of oration. Provocatively as ever, Nietzsche thus declares the greatest German masterpiece to be "the masterpiece of its greatest preacher: The Bible has ben the best German book so far" (247).

Moving on into 251, Nietzsche addresses the Jewish people, viewing the contemporary 'anti-Jewish' sentiment as "little becloudings of the German spirit and conscience" (251). Whilst bordering somewhat uncomfortably upon essentialism (e.g. German stomachs and German blood have found it difficult to deal with influxes of 'Jew'), Nietzsche positions himself in opposition to the anti-Semites. For Nietzsche, the Jews are a strong race, more than capable of ruling over Europe. This, however, is not the Jewish objective, and Nietzsche seems keen to propose an intermingling of Jewish and German races, as part of the coming 'European Problem' of "breeding a new caste to rule over Europe" (143).

What might the English contribute to the coming Europe? Not a lot, it seems, for to be English is by definition to be mediocre: "they are not a philosophical race, these Englishmen" (252). Worse still for Nietzsche, the English exhibit a 'boorish solemnity', their will-to-creativity shackled by the "Christian gesture and prayer and the singing of psalms" (252). At worst, "a penitent's spasm really may be the relative highest 'human' achievement that it can aspire to" (252). But perhaps, Nietzsche offers, dry Englishness is more suited to the creation of 'common facts', a la Charles Darwin (!). For Nietzsche, common facts are not enough; "in the end they have to more than to merely perceive, and that is to be something new" (253). In a defence of the English, and in light of STS, might we instead argue that Darwin's common facts required a creativity - and perhaps a personal transformation - par excellence?

With their promotion of 'art for art's sake', the French are painted in a more favourable light. Nietzsche also appears fond of a 'psychological sensitivity' characteristic of the French, and their ability to offer a "tolerably successful synthesis of North and South" (254). Most importantly, however, is the French propensity "to understand and accommodate those rare and rarely satisfied people who are too expansive to find their satisfaction in any kind of fatherland-ism" (254). Presumably, Nietzsche might place his own way of life within this rarer type. From a less cynical perspective, however, this is clearly a critique of a rigid identity welded to tradition and the past, and perhaps instead a call to imagine a Europe of fluid identities to come.

Nietzsche finishes the chapter by arguing that, contrary to the superficially divisive nature of contemporary politics, "Europe wants to be one" (256). There is, it seems, some kind of will-to-Europe, a trans-individual drive that should not be denied, "experimentally anticipating the European of the future" (256). This drive manifests itself, according to Nietzsche, through "abundant, impetuous art", and is ushered into existence by those "ruled by literature", who are often "writers themselves, in fact, poets, intermediaries and interminglers of the arts and the senses" (256). These 'good Europeans, it seems, are united in their modes of 'seeking' - "fanatics of expression at all costs". In my reading, there is something stubbornly egotistical in the heroism of Nietzsche's new Europeans, "nearly destroying themselves by their work". That being said, I can't help but turn the question back upon my self; what am I presenting, expressing, creating? And, perhaps, what are my own 'fatherlands' and 'hours of indulging' that obscure new opportunities? Ignorant of the destination, an 'experimental anticipation' is necessarily an act of creation.

BGE Preface/Part I & II - Bristol Friday 21st October

Well, eighteen of us met in the rather distracting hubbub of Hawthorn’s front room – and what follows is my partial resume of the discussion points we had over the two hours, spliced with a mixture of some of the angles I picked up on, and then some  themes we started to think about pursuing and thus returning to over the next four weeks. ($ refs to the entry whatever your translation and edition/the number to the page ref in my Hollingdale, 1973, Penguin Classic edition).

PREFACE

Supposing truth to be a woman (31)

We spent a fair ten minutes mulling over N’s provocative opening (surely his point?) – the humour more or less agreed upon, we read this as an allegorical definition of philosophy’s dogmatism when faltering in front of characteristics akin to those ascribed to woman, as inscrutable and seductive etc. as untruth: a pithy example then that short circuits. Not woman then as an object but nor woman perhaps  as C21st feminist theories might inscribe, i.e. as instigating a radically different set of frames of reference outside philosophy’s current tradition (perhaps, as the spirit/style of N might well be precisely this) [Derrida’s response to the question:’ If you had a choice, which philosopher would you have liked to have been your mother?” (Derrida Documentary – Dick/Kofman: chapter 15 of DVD].

Not being ungrateful to the dogmatist’s error: this started our discussion on the question of the system or metaphysics in N’s thought: this was contentious and disputed but it does point to the style at work: the error, in any case, revealing an agonistic creativity (we return to this below). 

PART ONE: ON THE PREJUDICES OF PHILOSOPHERS

What really is it in us that wants 'the truth'? ($1/33)

Discussed the idea that this challenges the dogmatism of metaphysical certainty, why 'we' - philosophy hitherto, and perhaps us still (note N directs much to us now - easy to be seduced by his writings and laugh with him when the humour is directed at you (see $) - seek/will truth. Two things struck us here it seems: (1) not to deny truth and its role in its 'regulatory importance' but that untruths fulfill this function too: hence the oft quoted 'The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding ... without granting as true the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a continual falsification of the world by means of numbers, mankind could not live ...To recognize untruth as a condition of life'  ($4: 35-6); (2) also noted the destabilization of the subject of willing the truth here - what is it that is in us that thinks, that thinks as desires, seeks out truth? Are we sure this doesn't come from outside our sense of atomistic individual thought blasting that apart too (even from within us/this is addressed of course in $19)? And further, that actually the selection of truth as traditionally conceived is value laden: philosophers are all actors and their convictions at some point appear on the scene (their conceptual personae - i.e. at once disparaging but also constructive for N. The Satyr Greek plays - 'The ass came along, beautiful and strong': I noted Maria F's ass earrings worn for the occasion, smart bunny!) So, no absolute truths as not ones for philosophers to discover, rather, and here N questions the honesty of philosophers (in his humourous put downs of Kant and Spinoza (something that we discuss again over Part III), this ambiguous appreciation and mockery of these philosophers - achieved quite a bit as a hermit etc!) to actually sort of valorize the prejudices in the title. 

Conscious thinking must still be counted among the instinctive activities ($3/35) A thought comes when 'it' wants, not when 'I' want it ($17/47)

A big theme for me here so I am going to strand together several threads connecting: affect to will to power, competing wills-drives organic but not atomistic that extend and critique distributed agency (Latour isn't Nietzschean enough?)/habit and plasticity/Speculative Realism (sure, all my convictions at the mo!). (1) The time at which Nietzsche is writing, not so much in terms of society and politics, but in terms of science - physiology. Why and how was N turning to this field of science? So perhaps my favourite quote of Part 1: Physiologists should think again before postulating the drive to self-preservation as the cardinal drive in an organic being [theories now of plastic deformation/auto-immunization?] A living being desires above all to vent its strength - life as such is will to power - : self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it - In short, here as everywhere, beware of superfluous teleological principles ($13/44) $15 is a rich perplexing argument addressing both phenomenology (phenomena in the sense of idealist philosophy) and SR (the external world is not the work of our organs) - i.e. sure our sense organs are phenomena too, so objects as well as subjects of the world, but N hints at going further than this through physiology. How? In his critique of 'immediate certainties' - now here we first briefly discussed pragmatism (mainly James) and then in more detail that $16 sets up $19 as the crux of Part 1. Thus: the philosopher must question: That it is I who think, that it has something at all which thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of an entity thought of as a cause, that an 'I' exists, finally that what is designated by thinking has already been determined - that I know what thinking is ($16/46) Using this to question why we (scientists/philosophers/in general) think in terms of cause and effect? Then to $19 and the will to power - feelings and thinking as will/will as the affect of command: of what? Of wills/forces against wills/forces. The punchline that comes: for our body is only a social structure composed of many souls - thus making sense of the idea that in will it both commands and obeys. It is only when we/it overcomes some obstacle that through the resultant effort that it appears - and we associate ourselves with the success, centered on the 'I'; but not if we now realize we are not atomistic but rather a collection of under-wills as well etc. And this illusion, untruth of the 'I' is the common philosophy of grammar - similar grammatical functions steal the interpretation always already. Of course it is here that we see the scale of N's project (also $54/81); and its antihumanism (forwards to Part III - the death of God is the death of 'man'; also $101; Foucault, OT - to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness by one's own hair - N thus eschewing 'causa sui' and the myth that we can be the masters of knowledge etc). Also here: N's relation to the science (and that of physiology) - he doesn't valorize it alone because the project here is not to discover but to invent ($12/44) - i.e. invention draws in other experiences, expressionisms, encounters etc (OK, my prejudice for GD is immanent!)

Big questions we skipped over here - the question of freedom. We did discuss the notion of the myth of unfree will as well as that of free will: the question remains though: what do we think of the beat of strong and weak wills? This relates back to the indifference of nature: To live - is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is living not valuating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? ($9/39). How do we proceed with this? And how do we read N? Well, something I have been musing on: his method - he says after the first exposition of his will to power in BGE it is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable: it is with precisely this charm that it entices subtler minds ($18/47 - and I am appealing here, haha!!) And before that on the innate prejudices of philosophers, that what they lack is the courage of the conscience ($5/36) to admit their prejudices; and this is the method, this courage, if carried out, that will be the means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion ($4/36)

Ok so here I start folding PART TWO: THE FREE SPIRIT but continue on about N's method

What customary value-sentiments are resisted? He has given thus some of the logics - antithetical thinking/cause and effect/ a priori judgements - and rejigged them in much the same style and provocation as the opening sentence of the preface. Specifically, he is targeting Descartes, Hegel and Kant - immediate knowledge ($16/46), synthetic judgements etc. So he starts Part II with his method: the will to knowledge on the basis of a far more powerful will, the will to non-knowledge, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its antithesis but - as its refinement! ($24/55) And then: It is commanded by the conscience of method. Not to assume several kinds of causality so long as the experiment of getting along with one has not been taken to its ultimate limits ( - to the point of nonsense, if I may say so) ($36/67) - THUS: N's method, and the courage behind the provocations of his thought here, is the singular pursuit of the 'will to power' and his constant questioning of it so as not to fall down as its martyr (does that prevent if from being a metaphysical move?) It is almost then that the following sections in The Free Spirits acknowledges the  'vulgarity' and 'difficulty' of it: but then, like the power of censorship in society (a good ill given it spotlights the current 'unnacceptable' - being told something is unnacceptable usually makes me laugh)), it does this to set N' stage to distinguish the 'levellers' from the 'attempters [loved eloquent and tirelessly scribbling slaves of the democratic taste and its 'modern ideas' ($44/72)] - and thus the distinction, again, perhaps?, 'unpalatable', between plant 'man' and herd animal. 

Well that is it for now - will probably add in a few additions over the week when/if I get the time: these would include, the affect in will/the ethics in N's method - the allusions to desiring a different world and overturning the existing one. The themes we had - why masks so prevalent? - why psychology a lure, and queen of the sciences? - is will to power then the metaphysical statement of N? - more to be said on the times in which N wrote, politically, socially, scientifically, and also personally.

P.S. [Derrida’ response to the question mentioned earlier: ‘it is impossible for me to have any philosopher as a mother’].

As a first time blogger (!) I am not exactly sure what will be useful, but am putting up my rather descriptive notes on part one of the reading (I must admit I’m only now starting the second part and this is already way lengthier than intended so will just proffer this for now). If my interpretations are too far off, don’t hesitate to correct me – as we learn from the preface, we women are not weighed down by the burdens of truth!... Bracketed numbers refer to passages in the Hollingdale translation...

As I see it, Part One serves as Nietzsche’s demonstration of an evaluative approach to truth, which asks, not ‘what is (the) truth?’ or even ‘what is the origin of the will to truth?’ but ‘what is the value of this will?’ – asked first in a general sense and then directed towards a method of diagnosing the values behind the will to truth and the impoverished psychology of those posing their unquestioning questions. Challenging the faith in antithetical values upon which dogmatic philosophy rests (eg. the idea that truth and falsity or illusion are opposed), Niet. invokes instead, as if to call into being, a ‘new species of philosopher’ bold enough to diagnose the necessary falsities of man and to recognise untruth as a condition of life. In passage 5 he gives the first indication of the meaning of the book’s title (a philosophy that ventures to recognise untruth as a condition of life ‘places itself, by that act alone, beyond good and evil’).

Continuing in his role as diagnostician of values, Niet. makes the claim that philosophy thus far has been a kind of ‘involuntary and unconscious memoir’ (6): beyond the drive to knowledge and the post-hoc rationalisations philosophers make (cf. Kant’s categorical imperative and Spinoza’s mathematics, which display the reactivity of a timid and vulnerable psychology) a moral drive can be discerned...as he puts it, in the order of the ranking of the drives, the philosopher’s morality is decisive. As a little detour, I was very pleased to see N’s brief mention of the indifference of nature (9) – something I’m especially interested in at the moment. For Nietzsche, this is really a lead into his statement of distaste for those who impose upon nature their own meagre moral ideals (as is the case in the Stoic’s (disavowed) imposition of his own self-tyranny over nature). This is the first of his short polemics against various classes of philosophical prejudice...

I have to say I struggled a bit with passage 10 – he sets out by denouncing as nihilists those who, as a matter of conscience, prefer certainty to the uncertainties and ‘beautiful possibilities’ of appearance... he then talks about those ‘stronger, livelier thinkers who are still thirsty for life’, suggesting that, while their critique of modern realism may well be motivated by nostalgia (by an attempt to recover from the vagueries of bodies and appearances the immortality of soul) they are nonetheless right to want to escape from the poverty of realism ... is he talking about Romanticism here? Next target is Kant... and Nietzsche makes it clear that ridicule is a more apt response than moral indignation to the widely accepted fiction of the faculty of synthetic judgment... he insists on the importance of inquiring into the necessity of such a fiction – again, I was a bit lost by his bit on the ‘noble idlers’, as charming as that slanderous term may be... Any thoughts on what/ who is he talking about here would be welcome!

Well, this is getting very lengthy, so I’ll try to speed up and make it a bit more general... After taking a brief stab at those who erroneously believe that self-preservation (as opposed to the will to power) is the dominant instinct in man, the ‘eternal, popular sensualism’ of physics, materialist atomism (though not necessarily the ‘soul hypothesis’ per se), the treatment of the organs as causal phenomena, the immediate certainty of the ‘I think’ and the dominant doctrine of the will are, in turn, rejected as mere exaggerations of popular prejudices. Throughout this little group of critiques, running from passage 12 through to 20 we get a sense of Nietzsche’s irritation with the confusion of event and interpretation, which lies at the heart of many of the philosophical prejudices he is outlining.

I was especially interested in some of the areas he explores in relation to the problem of the will. It is no surprise to find the word ‘affect’ following from his description of will in relation to a ‘plurality of sensations’, the sensations of the condition we leave and to which we go and of the transitions themselves, their accompanying ‘muscular sensations’ that tie will to habit, etc.... Here Niet. provides a very nice analogy to explain the erroneous confusion that seems to be constitutive of the will : like the ruling class that identifies itself with the successes of the commonwealth, the will identifies itself as cause of the successful executive agents. In some ways, this section acts as a demonstration of his earlier claims that a philosophy that is beyond good and evil will recognise untruth as a condition of life – the logic of cause and effect are deemed conventional fictions only mistakenly treated as material things (leading, in this case, to the erroneous positing of an opposition between free and unfree will).

In the course of his exploration of how it is that the will derives an appearance of power (freedom) from its constitutive confusion of will with action as such, Nietzsche comes up with what is one of the most provocative statements in Part One for me : ‘...for our body is only a social structure composed of many souls’ (19). In fact, I’m going to leave it there and if this use of the word soul spiked anyone else’s curiosity, I’d be interested to hear/ think more about it!

Maria

Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil - prelude to a philosophy of the future (1886)

Towards a whole cartful of beautiful possibilities ... to recognize untruth as a condition of life

 So we begin this week with reading Beyond Good & Evil. The schedule is as follows:

Friday 21st October - 'Preface', 'Part One: On the Prejudices of Philosophers' & 'Part Two: The Free Spirit'

Friday 28th October - 'Part Three: The Religious Nature', 'Part Four: Maxims and Interlude' & 'Part Five: On the Natural History of Morals'

Friday 4th November - 'Part Six: We Scholars', 'Part Severn: Our Virtues'.

Friday 11th November - 'Part Eight: Peoples and Fatherlands', 'Part Nine: What is Noble?' & 'From High Mountains: Epode'.

The ideas in terms of the blog: each week one of us from the meetings in Bristol will blog a resume of the key points of discussion over the subsequent weekend. Additionally, please blog in precursive thoughts ahead of the meetings on that week's readings as new posts and comment on the posted resumes and other precursive thoughts as you see fit.

... if your ship has been driven into these seas, very well! Now clench your teeth! Keep your eyes open! Keep a firm hand on the helm! - We sail straight over morality and past it, we flatten, we crush perhaps what is left of our morality by venturing to voyage thither - but what do we matter!