I was inspired into this discussion (which is currently under review for publication) by a post in the sandbox re: whether or not, in the year 1990, Obama was a potential president. I wrote a brief bit there against the language of potentiality and possibility. Deleuze squirmed around at the back of my mind. I figured I’d dedicate a whole post to the thoughts that thread set off in me, thoughts surrounding the Deleuzian virtual. As I said, what follows is part of a larger paper I have set for publication. So I’ll tab the post (which, I hope, will keep it from coming up in google searches and the like). Hopefully, the moderators of this site will oblige me in deleting the thread when I do get the paper published.
[tab]Removed. The paper is due for publication. If you’d like to have a look at what I’ve written, PM me. Sorry.[/tab]
In any case, I hope that was enough to motivate some productive discussion on the nature of possibility, potentiality, and the ontological status of things that seem to exist before being actual (like Obama’s potential to be president before becoming so).
Kind? I’d expect nothing of the sort. Engaging? ideally. Challenging, stimulating, productive? I sincerely hope. But kind? This isn’t a knitting circle.
I quickly read it. I only know of Deleuze from what I’ve read from D63, which wasn’t much, but it always sounds like a rehashing of Sartre and never seems to quite meet his level. Anyway, it’s not bad, assuming you didn’t spend too much time on it. Your welcome to inquire in detail or begin a specific relate topic of discussion, maybe we can get somewhere.
Also, let me clarify something to you. The internet makes publication easy. In fact your essay was published the second you clicked submit. I know, I know what you mean. – So perhaps I do have one initial question for you, what do you hope to be accomplished as a result of those it was published for, reading it? You could use that example as a virtual; people standing around with ink stains on their fingers reading your words off of poor dead trees, perhaps smoking cigars and sipping brandy. The potential for them to like it and the possibility for no one but you and them to care either way.
I thought this was the beginning of a topic of discussion. In any case, what do you make of my critique of possibility as an empty concept? What do you make of my critique of potentiality as what I’ve called “monotonous disposition”? What do you make of my understanding of virtuality as a relational field resolved in the exercise of a capacity? I take it there’s a lot there.
Well, here I’m a bit of a pragmatist: my publications aren’t so much for the people who might read them as they are for me. I’m not sure how academically savvy you might be, but it’s pretty common knowledge that to get anywhere at all, you have to build a pretty impressive C.V., which means an impressive list of publications, a good number of conference presentations, scholarships, and so on. So, what I hope to accomplish is academic success, a good professorial position, a book contract, and so on, so that I can continue to philosophize and write from a position of relative stability. Is that satisfactory?
Well, while I’m nowhere near conceded enough to think that many people are going to care about my stuff, I’m not all that cynical either. I’ve written on painting in the past, and inspired an art show dedicated to the phenomenology I developed in that paper. It was interesting to attend. And Deleuze himself changed the shape of French thinking, inspired whole schools of architecture, progressive geography, radical politics, and so on. So, yes, chances are no one’s going to care. But, there’s always the hope that someone might, and, like I said, beyond that, publications are conditions for the possibility of academic success. So, whether or not anyone really ends up caring, one must publish or perish, as they say.
Capacity, virtuality, potentiality, and possibility seem to be key concepts. Without any specific understanding of what Deulize thinks about them, it is safe to say one can apply a general framework of his methodology to such concepts, empty or not.
Empty or virtual may or may not be further differently understood, since differance as a key concept may be established for Deleauze by repeated occurrence.
So conceptually, the possibility will increase with more number of repetitions, making the notion of Obama's reelection more real and less empty and virtual.
What was the political atmosphere which gave rise to oft repeated political voices which tend to reverberate in the minds of constituencies? This may be gathered from raw data.
The differance lies in obama's presentation or lack of, a platform, which in his case was based on a paradigm of social justice patterned after ex prez woodrow wilson? Did such platforms if any help him in the short run, but unnerved his con stituancy in the long run? Did it further divide and confuse or bring the program into more focus? These are ongoing questions, and Deleauze's ontology may underline the long term effects, and these in turn may validate some of Deleauze's ideas vis a vi, where it is going.
I think even though we are midway into the second term, it is still too close to call.
You can critique whatever you want, but if the idea your critiquing is so inept, then your critique is hardly worth comment. I’m not familiar with all that you refer to in your essay, I read it quickly to see if anything stands out, I already implied that what stands out is that it’s related to Deleuze’s poor rehashing of Sartre. Your not going to find experts on Deleuze easily here, though obviously D63’s working on it, but he won’t come here, you must go to his “Delueze Studies” thread. But, you’re taking the stance in that essay that the reader must be familiar with all the obscure authors you mention, so it stands to reason that you show some familiarity with Sartre.
Now if you don’t want to address the relation of Sartre to the essay then please give me one specific item that most interests you to comment on.
I’ve been told I’m savvy in all things, but then I’m not sure the tellers were all that savvy themselves, so take from that what you want.
I’ve found in my wanderings that I can get anywhere in the continental US and Canada with my feet, and in some occasions with my unmatched swimming abilities.
No, but I’ll allow it.
You could always snake your way into a corrupt business, and then retire early and spend your time doing complex crossword puzzles. But, where would the prestige be?? Of course, those who succeed as [i]for-hire philosophers /i have done so because from the onset they had the potential to maneuver through bureaucratic and political land minds. Those with the highest potential to be a quality philosopher, probably don’t have the ‘cognitive’ space left over for the lap-dog aspects the new or aspiring for-hires must go through. Of course what you do speaks to what your potential was, if you abandoned your most impractical quest for this type of gainful employment and begin to truly philosophize and then became very good at it, then I believe we could say that quality philosophizing was always your potential.
But, I don’t want to leave you with advice you’d never take, you’ve obviously been at this long enough to have too much momentum. But, you deviated coming here to ilp, where for-hire philosophers are rare, and that’s applaudable, but the question to ask yourself is how far you can deviate while still keeping true enough to your coarse; how rogue can you go!
Yes, you can’t make people care who don’t want to care and don’t have the ability to know what you want them to care about, but then rather than spending your life trading essays with other for-hires you can write philosophical works for which those that do care will change the coarse of their actions in ways that the care-less can’t avoid caring about.
This is wonderful, the grounds for enclosed prestige are already upon you.
Surely, and I assure you that my interests, too, never waned during my non-attendance.
If it was about degressive geography or even better progressive geology, then people would be lined up around the block.
It’s been several hours since I published on the internet, I hope I get this one off in time… cllliiccckk.
You’ve mentioned Sartre in connection with Deleuze a few times now, at least that I’ve seen. From where does your interest in Sartre come? The absolute freedom of consciousness turns me off, personally, as does the abyss separating self from other, the necessarily antagonistic relation that one has to have with the other. Sartre’s so much juvenile existentialism. Which is nice, for a time. But one must move on. Plus, there’s nothing there that isn’t formulated more precisely in Heidegger.
That’s good. All I expected was for you to see something among the many issues I discussed.
I sent in an application the department of interests asking for an interest and after six to twelve months they pulled out his name.
Actually, and here I’m being sincere, as a poor day laborer I was bored. So I started going to the library and reading many different subjects. Most books were far to easy for me, so when I happened to randomly pull Being and Nothingness of the shelf and glance through it I decided to give it a try.
I’m actually partial to it, viewtopic.php?f=1&t=184893, but that I would be and you wouldn’t is to be expected, but let’s move on to your criticisms of his work.
That would turn me off too, if it was true.
And how much time would that be?
Would that they could but yet you have nothing more insightful to say on the subjects of potential and possibility than he did and apparently neither did Deleuze.
Your sarcasm is kind of tiring. In any case: let’s talk Sartre, if Deleuze doesn’t tickle you the way the older Frenchman does. Is it not so that, for Sartre, possibilities are an irreducibly conscious affair? I live my possibilities as those things to which I might orient myself in acting. I take up the project of my life, and in so doing, actualize a possible that prefigured it in the conscious deliberation of all that I might become. I become a painter, and onto the mountain in front of me I project a landscape worth rendering artistic. I become a climber, and onto the mountain I project an obstacle to be overcome. The mountain itself is indifferent. And, when it does change, physically, it is only because things are happening along deterministic lines. There is no possibility other than what happens of necessity in the world of Sartre’s “brute existents.” The absolute freedom of conscious choice is constructed on the back of the totalizing determinization of the physical world. It is conscious that nihiliates, and, in so doing, introduces freedom into the world. Deleuze, then, would disagree on both fronts. Or do I have that hideous old Frenchman wrong? Set me straight, so that we may discuss the concept of possibility alongside the thinker of your choice.
In a way; the future is, for there to be possibilities one must possibilize.
My first reaction is to say yes, so I’ll leave it at that for now.
Once again, I’ll say yes for now.
Yes.
One might as well think that. If one wanted to scientifically define reality as having an actual large degree of randomness instead, it wouldn’t make any difference as far as Sartre’s philosophy is concerned. One doesn’t even need concern themselves with the predictability of events beyond what related knowledge he has or can obtain.
As I said there’s no possibility unless one possibilizes something. The word “necessity” also has no place regarding “brute existents” – which isn’t to say that brute existence aren’t or that they must bend to the will of one’s consciousness, but that what they are is irrelevant outside of what one posits himself as knowing of them.
Perhaps I don’t entirely understand what you mean or are implying. Our absolute freedom of conscious choice has nothing necessarily to do with determinism and only regards the physical word in such ways as we have already posited as knowing. In other words, it seems the opposite of what you say is true. If “on the back” you meant parallel to the physical world, if by “physical world” you were more or less referring to undifferentiated being and you changed your statement to:
“The absolute freedom of conscious choice is constructed on the back of the physical world.”
Then I would be inclined to agree.
Yes.
I was just speaking to early Sartre ('45 at the latest). So on the first front I await clarification to know if you have him wrong or right, on the second you obviously have him right, and I assume disagree. So what would nihilate being if not consciousness?
As far as I got to understand this seeming ambiguity, stuart, is that being for Sartre is the In itslef.
There is It, the in It self, and the for it's self. For Sartre, this is a unity, and it is undifferentiated. The other view is that thesere is no unity, and the difference is primordial. Hjence the nihilization for sartre is different.
The in itself for Sartre is unity of consciousness which nihilises nothingness, foe Deluze it is the opposite nothingness is different. It is not a unity.
How is the unity itself undifferentiated? Isn’t this how it works; there is undifferentiated being or being-in-itself, being-for-itself is thrown into the world and differentiates being into objects?
It seems to me what’s primordial has never been subject to nihilation, does Heidegger even use the word nihilate?
Undifferentiated being is the transcendental consciousness which is a unity of the parts Deluze Differentiates . Sartre,'s consciousness is an anomalies from which knowledge works on (I may use modern psychological language) causing projected/introjected objects to gain knowledge.
Deluze probably is using modern psychology and that’s why I am warranted (like lacan) to speak in those terms.
The consciousness is then given in terms of difference or what it is not. The perceived is perceived consciousness nihilizes its self its a difference ，
Funny. Stuart, that such a seemingly slight change in the way ontology is basically described, can make such monumental difference!
I really find ot difficult to think in terms other than, but I realize the need to confront the fact, that in. Order to communicate with others on levels that make sense, I need to lighten up. However, like I conveyed to d63, about my long terms project to come to some kind of resolution, I can not abandon the depths, at the same time improve skills of communication, in terms of other than.