Glen,

 

With reference to your assumption-

 

“ Why is the alleged absence of ground destructive? Haven't you already smuggled in your assumed morality through its absence?

 

  My proposition is that in the concealment of truth or in its appropriation or absence there lays a potential ground for the seeds of destruction. 

For example in examining a proposition-

a+b=c

or

a-b=c

, which has nothing to do with appropriation of morality as assumed by you.

 

Now this understanding can be had as a true experience in ones own transcendental empiricism as explained by Delueze, not as an idea or abstraction or concept or ideology, but as true experience, which can be arrived at by rigorous investigation in to identities to the extent of variable differences all the way down until one grasps the being exactly the way it is and the understanding there of one arrives at is the essence of truth of the subject in question/investigation, which is a real experience not an abstraction  or idea etc.

 

"If philosophy has a positive and direct relation to things, it is only insofar as philosophy claims to grasp the thing itself, according to what it is, in its difference from everything it is not, in other words, in its internal difference."

 

As Deleuze puts it that the experience exceeds our concepts by presenting novelty, and this raw experience of difference actualizes an idea, unfettered by our prior categories, forcing us to invent new ways of thinking.

 

 

The central question that could be of interest here is the possibility or certainty of destruction as an out come. As to how this certainty can be ascertained by one and based on what assumptions and facts is something we are about to find.

 

The arrival at such a possibility per say, could be based on reasoning and examination of the factors that either in absenting or presenting certain realities.

 

Consider an example of a watch man who is on a duty in response to a standard call as to "how things are going", which is either as a curiosity of general interest in state of affairs or with a responsibility of being part of the social/collective dynamic could be responded by the watchman being "all is fine", while at the same time he ( she) might be silently( or otherwise)  engaged in burying a dead body.

 

Besides the specific nature of destruction, in any given discourse, the suppression or admittance of a proposition as "fact" or the only possible fact is the root cause of the destruction.

 

 while the discourse lacking in openness or being controlled or not being subject to verification to the complete understanding and emergence of the facts, that are openly verifiable, where each of the being that engages in the investigation can experience the true nature of the event/s in themselves presents a fertile ground for the seeds of destruction. 

 

According to Deleuze, the traditional image of thought, found in philosophers such as Aristotle, Descartes, and Husserl, misconceives of thinking as a mostly unproblematic business.

 

In common sense one can say a narrative has to have beginning middle and end( as  in new wave logos).The cyclical proposition of the beginning and end has "destruction" being innate to the very dynamics of the discourse, hence the control of it.

 

 By setting aside the assumption that thinking has a natural ability to recognize the truth, Deleuze says, we attain a "thought without image", a thought always determined by problems rather than solving them.

 

The question of how do we identify a problem and how we denote it as one?

 Based on what assumptions?

 

 "All this, however, presupposes codes or axioms which do not result by chance, but which do not have an intrinsic rationality either.

 

While it is most likely the very process of "naming" it could be dubious to begin with (as you pointed).

 

what I or one considers that a proposition is a presentation of a rational discourse, but at what point it is rational or belief system and for  the one who is to critic that either as a rational discourse or a belief system need not adhere to any sense or meaning and could possible be arbitrary to begin with.

 

It's just like theology: everything about it is quite rational if you accept sin, the Immaculate Conception, and the incarnation. Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational—not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift."

 

 Could we possible assume underneath the delirium some are reasonable and others not and for this as a  proposition to be accepted and further affirmed ( lets presume as according to Bill Harris) is a prerogative based on something inexplicable or identity that can be questioned.

Or

What emerges as an acceptable proposition is based on a common ground that can be accessed by all with out any given distinction and is subject to open enquiry, where meaning is to be made out but not pre given or privileged.

 

Let me repeat what deleuze says-

 

 By setting aside the assumption that thinking has a natural ability to recognize the truth, Deleuze says, we attain a "thought without image", a thought always determined by problems rather than solving them.

 

But can one possible buy a discourse, where a claim that one (one alone) has the natural ability to recognize truth.

 On the other hand truth does not show up as a presupposition nor as a solution as an apriori but it is born out of a rigorous examination of the problematic, which is in essence a challenge to Philosophy ( episteme) and to the( human) intelligence itself.

 

Truth may be hard to discover—it may require a life of pure theorizing, or rigorous computation, or systematic doubt—but thinking is able, at least in principle, to correctly grasp facts, forms, ideas, etc. It may be practically impossible to attain a God's-eye, neutral point of view, but that is the ideal to approximate: a disinterested pursuit that results in a determinate, fixed truth; an orderly extension of common sense.

 

While the problematic lies not only among the individuals and their moralities as products of the organization of pre-individual desires and powers, but also in the dynamics of identity and difference, more so in the very defining of the identity lies the seeds of destruction.

Traditionally, difference is seen as derivative from identity: e.g., to say that "X is different from Y" assumes some X and Y with at least relatively stable identities. To the contrary, Deleuze claims that all identities are effects of difference. Identities are not logically or metaphysically prior to difference, Deleuze argues, "given that there exist differences of nature between things of the same genus." That is, not only are no two things ever the same, the categories we use to identify individuals in the first place derive from differences. Apparent identities such as "X" are composed of endless series of differences, where "X" = "the difference between x and x'", and "x" = "the difference between...", and so forth. Difference goes all the way down.

 

But in an assumption that X is oppositional or not the same as in the identity with reference to Y has a conflicting position where a discourse of meaning and truth becomes relativistic not objective, as Deleuze observes the differences go all the way down. So in examining to the approximation of indivisibility, one can aspire to a common ground that the experience of truth has its foundations in reality not in the perceptional illusion of ones proposition, which is out there for objective verification like any work of art or philosophical proposition.

 

To confront reality honestly, Deleuze claims, we must grasp beings exactly as they are, and concepts of identity (forms, categories, resemblances, unities of apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain difference in itself. "If philosophy has a positive and direct relation to things, it is only insofar as philosophy claims to grasp the thing itself, according to what it is, in its difference from everything it is not, in other words, in its internal difference."

 

The internal difference can only be negotiated in the transcendental empiricism, under a reasonable discourse of openness, where all identities are subject to same standards of examination and confrontation, where true and prevailing nature of identities either that have rational ground or masked identities is something that concerns philosophy and arts as a disciplines of human enquiry.

 

Like Kant and Bergson, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the subject. Therefore he concludes that pure difference is non-spatio-temporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "the virtual".

 

While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble Plato's forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they [the conditions] form is identical to its object." A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.

 

The difference that is perceived is nothing but the universal human condition, that if Identity and difference are not an abstraction but are experiential and real, given all the set of conditions that are applied to all human identities.

 

 In satisfying all the notions that are pertaining to a group or specific set of identity, which are applicable to rest, irrespective identity ( likeness) or differentiation, based on derivable commonality of human experience beyond the confrontational dynamics of this and that, or an attempt to subject the identities to reductionism is nothing but the defeat of reason itself, which in turn gives a ground to what is being absent or omitted as a possible reality to emerge, which in contradiction might prove to be destructive to the earlier notions of truth and its definitions and the resultant experiences.

 

On the other hand with in the given human condition  the nature and justification (moral or other) is present and provided for with in the very legitimization of earlier discourses and  identities, except that what is viewed here as destructive is nothing but dying to the old notion of understanding and experiences and living it in new light as life experience .On the other hand as far as the value such as ethical or moral is concerned the necessary justification is irrelevant as the legitimacy of the new discourse is grounded in the prevalence of the deceased or humanity itself.

 

What is being achieved here is break from the earlier tradition, giving way to the new which might rise forth as being destructive/creative, is in essence a challenge to intelligence itself in the very nature of its definition and evolution and in being able to figure out the possibilities but also discovering of new realities as creative, aesthetic and philosophical.

 

 Exc Like Kant and Bergson, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the subject. Therefore he concludes that pure difference is non-spatio-temporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "the virtual".

 

While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble Plato's forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they [the conditions] form is identical to its object." A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.

 

 When the being in question breaks away from the subjective ground and confronts (In a Deleuzian sense violently with a potential for destruction), the new and emerging realities and in perceiving them as potential possibilities rather than as being “confrontational in the traditional sense”, one gains distinctive ground and perceptional insight, which offers an objective ground for understanding of reality in the most creative way that is possible.

 

For Deleuze, there is no one substance, only an always-differentiating process, an origami cosmos, always folding, unfolding, refolding. Deleuze summarizes this ontology in the paradoxical formula "pluralism = monism.

 

Where in, the disciplines in question and specializations of investigation are nothing but complimentary to each other in essence rather than having a primacy of one over the other, which have their own way of harmonizing the discourse by way of interplay.

 

To affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, we must overturn established identities and so become all that we can become—though we cannot know what that is in advance.

 

The pinnacle of Deleuzean practice, then, is creativity. "Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?"

 

 

If a particular discipline or view makes a claim to primacy, it is not on the basis of any arbitrary notion of superiority but its harmonizing effect and empathy to the human understanding and more so because it rejects to judge. In that it puts itself in the hands of the subject as to its meaningfulness rather than any claim to primacy. So is truth, because of its positive and direct relation the subject in its experience, which logically excludes the very question of morality either as good or bad, simply because the truth as an experience directly puts itself in the understanding of the being, where the need to judge becomes absent as the being and experience are harmonized with immense creative possibilities.

 

Regards,

Indra karan.

Boston.

 

 


From: Glen Fuller <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2008 4:29:59 AM
Subject: Re: critic of Deleuze as one sees.............

"where there is no probable ground for truth to exist or function in the first place, hence the outcome is destructive"

Why is the alleged absence of ground destructive? Haven't you already smuggled in your assumed morality through its absence?

Coming to terms with how Deleuze addresses the problem of truth will help you with your critique, I think.

In _The Fold_ an oft quoted line is regarding truth, which I shall have to paraphrase as I am away from my books, "It is not a question of the variation of truth, but the truth of variation." Besides being in the annoying 'not [this], but [that]' form favoured at least in english translations of many of Deleuze's work, this is probably one of my favourite lines.

One of the problems that so-called identity theorists have with comprehending Deleuze's works is the a priori character of identity assumed in their work. Think of it this way, we are not in a community because we share common traits that express some sort of essence, which can be represented in various ways and which forms the basis of the distribution of material resources in mechanisms of power. Maybe there are other people (not) *like* me out there (who knows!?!?). I suggest we are a community because, for example, we have all developed capacities and coping mechanisms for processing the sometimes wayward and sometimes challenging contingency released when the singular Bill Harris posts to the list. Each time a Bill Harris post is distributed 'the list' is (re)produced 'informaterially' (to coin a neologism) and it is also differentialy repeated as the event of 'the list', and various responses are effected anew which further effects further iterations, etc.

ciao,
glen.


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