<snip>
Deleuze does say somewhere that the only true ontology is that of Duns
Scotus. [DF]
<snip>
Indeed. 'There has only ever been one ontological proposition: Being is
univocal. There has only ever been one ontology, that of Duns Scotus, which
gave being a single voice. ...' (*Difference and Repetition*)
Deleuze starts with Scotus, who (he says) situates be-ing 'on this side of
the intersection between the universal and the singular'. (Actually '...on
this side' does worry me just a little, but I assume that all that is meant
here is that be-ing lies '_within_ the *intersection*', in set theoretical
terms; ie that it is part of the *mereological product* of these two.) He
then applauds Spinoza for making being identical with a *substance* that is
'unique, universal and infinite'. That is, Spinoza not only keeps the faith
with univocity (unlike Descartes) but also makes an important conceptual
leap in that whereas the Cartesian categories of quality and quantity make
incisions into the ontological substrate, Spinoza's attributes and modes are
aspectual, and that is the vital point: with Spinoza, 'being ... becomes
expressive'.
<snip>
But if the concept of univocity derives from Aquinas & Scotus and applied to
the debatable application of the same predicates to both God & creatures,
how can it be used in modern terms by philosophers who are presumably not
too concerned about what characteristics we might attribute to the
presumptive Divine Being? [MJW]
<snip>
My God shaped (w)hole wasn't entirely in jest, since (at least in this
context) the business of S, D and B is metaphysics.
To put it very glibly, for Scotus what makes being univocal is the business
of predication: as in a version of 'naive' set theory *being* is that area
within the cordon thrown round God which overlaps part of the area within
any local cordons thrown round Man; for Aquinas, however, God _is_ or _is
on_ the cordon, in which case univocity isn't really the point. (There's a
slight whiff of Aquinas sometimes when Agamben discusses sovereignty using a
similar sort of boundary. But that's another story.)
However, even though God is indeed the object of enquiry for Duns Scotus,
you can substitute another or different placeholders (having a different
object in view) and the _nature_ of those enquiries need not alter all that
much. This is the position when Deleuze highlights the expressivity of
Spinoza's *being*, for example: the focus has become how we divide reality.
And when Badiou uses *diagonalisation* or *forcing* he is presumably also
addressing division but building upon more advanced forms of set theory in
order to consider the consequences of uncountability (in the case of
*diagonalisation*) or consistency (in the case of *forcing*). But this is
Dominic's terrain....
CW
_______________________________________________
'Listen people, I don't know how you expect to ever stop the
war if you can't sing any better than that'
- Country Joe McDonald, Woodstock 1969
|