The context of Deleuzian concepts: Ideas, expression, the virtual and the groundless ground
Dear friends,
I offer these fragmentary observations by way of comments upon Brian’s recent piece upon coalition systems. They are not intended as definite conclusions but to be suggestions from my reading of Deleuze as to the limitations of the Maimon-Deleuze encounter. Most importantly I am concerned to question the meaning of the term ‘concept’ and any potential role it has in expressing a link between Maimon and Deleuze. I would like to offer reasons for there being limits to the Maimon-Deleuze encounter and not to comment on potential links with Badiou. These sound most interesting I don’t think I know Badiou well enough to offer any views at this stage.
[1] I would argue that the idea ‘coalition system’ sounds promising if it seeks to preserve some sense of ‘irreducible difference’ between the systems involved. Deleuze’s practice the encounter does attempt to do this. I wonder where these approaches differ. Maimon was certainly a lot more polite to Kant than Deleuze is to those he attempts to encounter. Also, Maimon’s scepticism seems to distance him from the positivity of Deleuze’s encounters. For the latter a logic of affirmation meant that his conceptions of univocity could include (i.e. affirm) multiple systems of thought. He seeks affirmation in those he writes about so that this can be traced to a common and resonating ground of non-opposition and negation. Univocity and immanence seem to hinge upon a willingness to affirm a vital and productive depth (whether Spinoza’s substance, Bergson’s duree, Nietzsche’s field of forces, etc.). This impersonal ‘life’ is what seems to accommodate ‘irreducible differences’ in the movements of Deleuze’s thought.
[2] There is therefore a real sense in which Deleuze sees the univocity and the groundless ground, which he introduces in his works through the 1960s, as establishing a new terrain for thought. (Afterall, how else could Deleuze affirm Spinoza and Kant and still be an ‘engineer of difference’?) Kantian Ideas find their place within a logic of expression elaborated from the sufficient reason of Spinoza. The activity of thinking is made up of singular instances that attempt to capture, within a particular contexts, the implications and explications of these singularities in their connection with virtual formations (Ideas, intensities) of the groundless ground. Ideas become ideal and virtual structures within the expression of a Deleuzian appropriation of the Spinozan univocal Being. Maimon is crucial to this movement and I don’t dispute the potential for encounter at a certain level. In place of Spinoza’s attributes, virtual Ideas or ideal structures, which function as problems, Ideas do indeed allow actualisation of difference. The question, as I understand it, is whether a coalition system can take the link between Deleuze and Maimon further. What do Deleuze and Maimon share beyond the creative actualisation of Ideas in differential relations (something Brian interesting terms ‘rhizomatic’ and has a lot to offer to Deleuze’s project). Deleuze moved from Nietzsche in the late 1960s to other thinkers to connect with and appropriate a fuller thinking of immanence. What I would argue is that most fundamentally he moved from Nietzsche to Spinoza, not to Maimon. This does not negate Maimon’s role but suggests the limits of the encounter.
[3] The paper titled ‘The Method of Dramatisation’ shows the productivity of Deleuze’s relation to Maimon. In the questions that followed in, Deleuze was drawn to discuss the latter’s ‘the sub-representational genesis of the transcendental imagination.’ ‘A dialectic of synthesis is developed’ - we cannot discern what we produce and what the object produces (‘Desert Islands and Other Texts’ p. 115). But Deleuze makes clear that in whilst this virtual apparatus and its attendant forms of actualisation are something he and Maimon can affirm together, he must think differently also:
‘To sum things up, I don’t have the same conception of the unconscious as Leibniz or Maimon. Freud already went down that road.’ (ibid)
[4] At paragraph 2 the point is raised that Deleuze didn’t attempt to stage an encounter with Badiou. If he had then, as Brian suggests, this would have probably not been very productive. Mathematics is for Deleuze a Plateau whose concepts may connect with intensities and in these instances create concepts (insanely). But if mathematics were used in the absence of a groundless ground, one conjectures, it would become for Deleuze sterile and lifeless because it is not connected with the impersonal and intensive life that must animate concepts. Deleuze wishes to look for the connections of every actual thing with its causes. The groundless ground must cause the actual to resonate in complete determination through the two fields being bridged by common forms (attributes in Spinoza), which are virtual Ideas or ideal structures. Deleuze is keen to distinguish the virtual from the possible because in the possible there is identity in the concept. In the virtual there is pure multiplicity in the Ideas (Difference and Repetition, p. 211-212). The virtual is qualitative and formal whilst the actual is quantitative. If concepts are seen as total, Deleuze argues, thought can become dominated by good sense and common sense. He wants to keep concepts open onto the non-conceptual in order to avoid relation of opposition and negation that would form a dialectical movement. We might argue that his interest in Kant is partly fuelled by an interest in the limits of conceptualisation. He wants to think Kant without Hegel, to discuss an affirmative triad of Being, virtual and actual without being subsumed into a conceptual dialectic.
[5] Brian writes in paragraph three that Maimon makes it possible for us to think about intuition as "an unclear ‘picture’ of a purely rational interrelation of concepts." "A consistent conceptual understanding of intuition" is suggested in paragraph four. At paragraph six there is reference to our intuition of space being seen as "a type of sketch or picture of its true rational structure." This suggests relations of resemblance. These are what Deleuze strives to escape. He makes reference to groundlessness that lacks individuation and therefore lacks all singularity. He sees this in Schelling and Schopenhauer (Difference and Repetition, p. 276). He argues that ‘their groundlessness cannot sustain difference.’ The point here is not simply that we get the movement from virtual to actual (differenciation) but also that there is movement from Being to the virtual (differentiation). This envisages that Ideas are not simply rational objects in an infinite intellect but differentiated as forms of Being (groundless ground). Otherwise, the actual cannot resonate as an expression of this groundless ground. Maimon wants to establish an infinite intellect and for it to be the sufficient reason of possible experience. The virtual-actualisation apparatus is of great interest to Deleuze since differential calculus can be affirmed by his system of expression. These seem to be the limits of the affinity. Maimon does not affirm the univocity needed at work in Deleuze. This is of course unless he has this ability and I have not recognised it. One possibility was if he had overcome his scepticism at some point and worked Spinoza into his system. Without this, I think that given the nature of Deleuze’s thought as a whole, Maimon seems to be outside its logic and its notion of Being. What if we still say that in a coalition system we can preserve the ‘irreducible difference’ between two thinkers like Maimon and Deleuze? It might be objected nevertheless that such a coalition would be too general and artificial to mean anything or affirm anything.
I offer these fragmentary observations by way of comments upon Brian’s recent piece upon coalition systems. They are not intended as definite conclusions but to be suggestions from my reading of Deleuze as to the limitations of the Maimon-Deleuze encounter. Most importantly I am concerned to question the meaning of the term ‘concept’ and any potential role it has in expressing a link between Maimon and Deleuze. I would like to offer reasons for there being limits to the Maimon-Deleuze encounter and not to comment on potential links with Badiou. These sound most interesting I don’t think I know Badiou well enough to offer any views at this stage.
[1] I would argue that the idea ‘coalition system’ sounds promising if it seeks to preserve some sense of ‘irreducible difference’ between the systems involved. Deleuze’s practice the encounter does attempt to do this. I wonder where these approaches differ. Maimon was certainly a lot more polite to Kant than Deleuze is to those he attempts to encounter. Also, Maimon’s scepticism seems to distance him from the positivity of Deleuze’s encounters. For the latter a logic of affirmation meant that his conceptions of univocity could include (i.e. affirm) multiple systems of thought. He seeks affirmation in those he writes about so that this can be traced to a common and resonating ground of non-opposition and negation. Univocity and immanence seem to hinge upon a willingness to affirm a vital and productive depth (whether Spinoza’s substance, Bergson’s duree, Nietzsche’s field of forces, etc.). This impersonal ‘life’ is what seems to accommodate ‘irreducible differences’ in the movements of Deleuze’s thought.
[2] There is therefore a real sense in which Deleuze sees the univocity and the groundless ground, which he introduces in his works through the 1960s, as establishing a new terrain for thought. (Afterall, how else could Deleuze affirm Spinoza and Kant and still be an ‘engineer of difference’?) Kantian Ideas find their place within a logic of expression elaborated from the sufficient reason of Spinoza. The activity of thinking is made up of singular instances that attempt to capture, within a particular contexts, the implications and explications of these singularities in their connection with virtual formations (Ideas, intensities) of the groundless ground. Ideas become ideal and virtual structures within the expression of a Deleuzian appropriation of the Spinozan univocal Being. Maimon is crucial to this movement and I don’t dispute the potential for encounter at a certain level. In place of Spinoza’s attributes, virtual Ideas or ideal structures, which function as problems, Ideas do indeed allow actualisation of difference. The question, as I understand it, is whether a coalition system can take the link between Deleuze and Maimon further. What do Deleuze and Maimon share beyond the creative actualisation of Ideas in differential relations (something Brian interesting terms ‘rhizomatic’ and has a lot to offer to Deleuze’s project). Deleuze moved from Nietzsche in the late 1960s to other thinkers to connect with and appropriate a fuller thinking of immanence. What I would argue is that most fundamentally he moved from Nietzsche to Spinoza, not to Maimon. This does not negate Maimon’s role but suggests the limits of the encounter.
[3] The paper titled ‘The Method of Dramatisation’ shows the productivity of Deleuze’s relation to Maimon. In the questions that followed in, Deleuze was drawn to discuss the latter’s ‘the sub-representational genesis of the transcendental imagination.’ ‘A dialectic of synthesis is developed’ - we cannot discern what we produce and what the object produces (‘Desert Islands and Other Texts’ p. 115). But Deleuze makes clear that in whilst this virtual apparatus and its attendant forms of actualisation are something he and Maimon can affirm together, he must think differently also:
‘To sum things up, I don’t have the same conception of the unconscious as Leibniz or Maimon. Freud already went down that road.’ (ibid)
[4] At paragraph 2 the point is raised that Deleuze didn’t attempt to stage an encounter with Badiou. If he had then, as Brian suggests, this would have probably not been very productive. Mathematics is for Deleuze a Plateau whose concepts may connect with intensities and in these instances create concepts (insanely). But if mathematics were used in the absence of a groundless ground, one conjectures, it would become for Deleuze sterile and lifeless because it is not connected with the impersonal and intensive life that must animate concepts. Deleuze wishes to look for the connections of every actual thing with its causes. The groundless ground must cause the actual to resonate in complete determination through the two fields being bridged by common forms (attributes in Spinoza), which are virtual Ideas or ideal structures. Deleuze is keen to distinguish the virtual from the possible because in the possible there is identity in the concept. In the virtual there is pure multiplicity in the Ideas (Difference and Repetition, p. 211-212). The virtual is qualitative and formal whilst the actual is quantitative. If concepts are seen as total, Deleuze argues, thought can become dominated by good sense and common sense. He wants to keep concepts open onto the non-conceptual in order to avoid relation of opposition and negation that would form a dialectical movement. We might argue that his interest in Kant is partly fuelled by an interest in the limits of conceptualisation. He wants to think Kant without Hegel, to discuss an affirmative triad of Being, virtual and actual without being subsumed into a conceptual dialectic.
[5] Brian writes in paragraph three that Maimon makes it possible for us to think about intuition as "an unclear ‘picture’ of a purely rational interrelation of concepts." "A consistent conceptual understanding of intuition" is suggested in paragraph four. At paragraph six there is reference to our intuition of space being seen as "a type of sketch or picture of its true rational structure." This suggests relations of resemblance. These are what Deleuze strives to escape. He makes reference to groundlessness that lacks individuation and therefore lacks all singularity. He sees this in Schelling and Schopenhauer (Difference and Repetition, p. 276). He argues that ‘their groundlessness cannot sustain difference.’ The point here is not simply that we get the movement from virtual to actual (differenciation) but also that there is movement from Being to the virtual (differentiation). This envisages that Ideas are not simply rational objects in an infinite intellect but differentiated as forms of Being (groundless ground). Otherwise, the actual cannot resonate as an expression of this groundless ground. Maimon wants to establish an infinite intellect and for it to be the sufficient reason of possible experience. The virtual-actualisation apparatus is of great interest to Deleuze since differential calculus can be affirmed by his system of expression. These seem to be the limits of the affinity. Maimon does not affirm the univocity needed at work in Deleuze. This is of course unless he has this ability and I have not recognised it. One possibility was if he had overcome his scepticism at some point and worked Spinoza into his system. Without this, I think that given the nature of Deleuze’s thought as a whole, Maimon seems to be outside its logic and its notion of Being. What if we still say that in a coalition system we can preserve the ‘irreducible difference’ between two thinkers like Maimon and Deleuze? It might be objected nevertheless that such a coalition would be too general and artificial to mean anything or affirm anything.
posted by edward willatt at 9:04 am
1 Comments:
Yes I agree totally with your comments posted above. You have definitly brought clarity to this relation from the perspective of Deleuze. As my own readings of Difference and Repition continue I'm coming to understand this approach. Essentially you are correct, Maimon's skepticism is usless from a Deleuzian perspective as long as it regulates our intuition as a possible 'picture' of a rational network of concepts in the infinte intellect. Having finished the introduction and half of chapter one of Difference and Repetition, I would agree that this constitutes a relation of resembelence. Hence for Maimon to be useful requires a reversal of the dependnence of the skeptical on the rational. Introducing a notion of univocity more in line with that of a pure inconsistent multiple. Hence your question 'what's the point!' when we have far more productive encounters to deal with, such as Spinoza ect rings true. I would have to say therefore that the point of interest might shift from the notion of coalitions to Maimon's understanding of axioms. A notion not only related to Badiou, but also prevalent in Deleuze in the notion of the Plane of Immanence, or Images. Anyway I shall perhaps expand on this later when I've read a bit more, but for the time being I would say I'm in agreement with you.
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