Well burrowed, old mole!

Essays on Philosophy

Category: Deleuze

Laclau Notes Session 3

Review of the History of Rhetoric in Relation to Philosophy

1. The Ancients-Form and Matter     

     For the Greeks, what is sayable of an object is universal, but we must ask, what is the “it” which receives the predications?  For the Greeks all predicables are universals; they make up the form or the rational and knowable part of the entity of the object.  The “it,” the irrational and unknowable individuation that remains when you take away all predicables, is called matter. The Greek thought of the universe as a scale.  At the bottom was the unnameable primary matter hyle.  The first principle of organization was the mineral world where form was imprinted on this primary matter.  The mineral world was as matter to the vegetable world, the vegetable to the animal, the animal world to man, and on top the Gods were pure form and stood as matter in relation to nothing.  

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The Problem of Postmodernism

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In his essay, “Twilight of the Machines” John Zerzan speaks the truth about the “postmodern” age.  He is not a scholar in the bourgeois university,  as many other critics are, which means he does not have to jump through the hoops of academic convention; he may speak the radical truth. Zerzan speaks as a philosopher and a revolutionary, breaking radically with the “Washington Consensus” of market totalitarian society. 

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Ethics Practice Becoming

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     Aristotle said that Ethics is not like other forms of knowing.  It cannot tell us what is ethical, for this decision must be made on a case by case basis by the individual, but it can look into the means by which one can become ethical. He gives us a very impressive explanation of how one comes to be virtuous; it is through doing virtuous things that one acquires a virtue, so, if I want to be brave, I should do brave deeds then I shall become a brave person. Aristotle calls this type of knowing practical science, this is not the same as theoretical science because it cannot specify details at the same granularity. 

     It is interesting to consider the relation of means and ends in this schema of virtue acquisition; it seems that the Platonic idea of Virtue as its own end is here faced with the idea of Virtue as its own means.  In both of these schemas it can be said that virtue is not a means to any other end, but these two different ways of disagreeing with that idea have very different implications.  Ethics only studies the means of virtue, how one becomes virtuous, it does not tell us what is virtuous in detail.  For Aristotle ethics is not a metaphysical thing, it is inseparable from politics; for Plato, Ethics is metaphysical and is related to the idea rather than the act. 

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Notes on Deleuze ‘The Image of Thought’

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Preliminaries

*Critique requires close attention to the distribution of the empirical/transcendental-de facto/de jure–fact/principle–accident/essence in theoretical systems.

*Dogmatic/Moral/Orthodox image of thought exists as a set of postulates–propositional themes which remain implicit and are understood pre-philosophically

*A Philosophy without presuppositions (‘thought without image’) is the philosophy which undertakes a radical critique of the postulates/the image of thought as non-philosophical. Image is non-philosophical because philosophy is supposed to break with the doxa. 

*”The form of recognition has never sanctioned anything but the recognizable and the recognized; form will never inspire anything but conformities”

*This is an idealization of orthodoxy–instead of a break with the doxa this is a rationalization that universalizes them–a break with the doxic content but retention of the form.

*We will “remain slaves so long as we do not control the problems themselves, so long as we do not possess a right to the problems, to a participation in and management of the problems”

Where philosophy begins–problem of presupposition, problem of beginning

Philosophy≠Science–science has only objective presuppositions eliminable with axiomatic rigor; philosophy has objective and subjective presuppositions.

Philosophical Trick–reject objective presuppositions on condition of assuming subjective ones

Objective Presupposition Subjective Presupposition
Explicit Implicit
In Concepts In Opinions (Doxa)
Public Private
Pre-conceptual/ Non-conceptual knowledge–‘Everybody knows…’

Eudoxus vs. Epistemon–Simpleton and pedant, both have presuppositions, Philosophy sides with Eudoxus and his subjective presuppositions. But philosophy ignores…

Underground Man/Untimely/Idiot–person who does not share the implicit presupposition–the only one without prejudices.

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