.m:2
1.3 The positive emanation of being
Let us turn now from
the aggressive moment directed against the
Hegelian
dialectic to the positive alternative which Deleuze finds in
Bergson. The terms of the alternative are
already given by the
critique:
through a positive, internal movement being must become
qualified
and concrete in its singularity and specificity. This issue
of
quality is common in both of Deleuze's periods of Bergson study,
but
since, as we noted, Deleuze's concerns move to the passage from
quality
to quantity in the second period, Bergson's alternative logic
of
being must also address the question of unity and multiplicity. We
can
begin to approach Bergson's position by trying to situate it in
traditional
ontological terms. In effect, we
do find a conception of
pure
being in Bergson: the virtual is the abstract simplicity of
being,
in itself, le souvenir pur.
However, pure, virtual being does
not
remain abstract and indifferent and neither does it enter into
relation
with what is other than itself--it becomes real and qualified
through
the internal process of differentiation: "la diff‚rence n'est
pas une
d‚termination mais, dans ce rapport essentiel avec la vie, une
diff‚renciation."
["Bergson et la diff‚rence" 93]
Being differs with
itself
immediately, internally. It does
not look outside itself for
an
other or a force of mediation because its difference rises from its
very
core, from "la force explosive interne que la vie porte en elle."
[93]
(9) This elan vital which animates
being, this vital process of
differentiation,
links the abstract essence and the real existence of
being:
"la virtualit‚ existe de telle fa‡on qu'elle se r‚alise en se
dissociant,
qu'elle est forc‚e de se dissocier pour se r‚aliser. Se
diff‚rencier,
c'est le mouvement d'une virtualit‚ qui s'actualise."
[93] Bergson sets up, then, two concepts of
being: virtual being is
pure,
transcendental being in that it is infinite, simple and abstract;
actualised
being is real being in that it is different, qualified and
limited. We have already seen how Deleuze
focuses on ontological
movement
as the locus of Bergson's originality.
The central
constructive
task of Deleuze's reading of Bergson, then, is to
elaborate
the positive movement of being between the virtual and the
actual
which supports the necessity of being and affords being both
sameness
and difference, both unity and multiplicity.
The basis of this
discussion of ontological movement relies on
Bergson's
claim of a fundamental difference between time and space,
between
duration and matter. (10) Space is
only capable of containing
differences
of degree and thus presents merely a quantitative
variation;
time contains differences of nature and thus is the true
medium
of substance. "La division se
faire entre la dur‚e, qui ®tend¯
pour
son compte … assumer ou porter toutes les diff‚rences de nature
(puisqu'elle
est dou‚e du pouvoir de varier qualitativement avec soi),
et
l'espace qui ne pr‚sente jamais que des diff‚rences de degr‚
(puisqu'il
est homog‚n‚it‚ quantitative)." [Le bergsonisme 23]
Duration
is the domain in which we can find the primary ontological
movement
because duration, which is comprised of differences of
nature,
is able to differ qualitatively with itself. Space, or
matter,
which contains only differences of degree, is the domain of
modal
movement because space cannot differ with itself, but rather
repeats. "Tout ce que Bergson dit revient
toujours … ceci: la dur‚e,
c'est
ce qui diffŠre avec soi. La
matiŠre, au contraire, ce qui ne
diffŠre
pas avec soi, ce qui se r‚pŠte." ["Bergson et la diff‚rence"
88] The ontological criteria assumed here
is differing with self,
internal
difference. Once again, the
discussion appears as a simple
transposition
of causal foundations of being: substance which is cause
of
itself (causa sui) becomes substance which differs with itself.
Indeed,
Deleuze characterizes the distinction between duration and
matter
precisely in the traditional terms of a substance-mode
relationship:
"la dur‚e est comme une nature naturante, et la matiŠre,
une
nature natur‚e." [Le bergsonisme 94]
Why is it, though, that
duration
can differ with itself and matter cannot?
The explanation
follows
from our first observations about Bergson's difference: the
discussion
of difference in Bergson is not directed toward
distinguishing
a quidditas or a state, it is not oriented toward a
location
of essence, but rather toward the identification of an
essential
movement, a process, in time. In
the second phase of
Bergson
study, Deleuze extends this distinction between the duration
and
matter to the two distinct types of multiplicity: space reveals a
multiplicity
of exteriority, a numerical multiplicity of quantitative
differentiation,
a multiplicity of order; pure duration presents an
internal
multiplicity, a heterogeneity of qualitative differentiation,
a
multiplicity of organization. [30-1]
Furthermore, Deleuze argues
not
only that the domain of duration provides a more profound
multiplicity
than space, but it also poses a more profound unity. The
modal
nature of space, in effect, does not afford it an inherent
unity. To recognize the essential nature of
being as a substantial
unity,
then, we have to think being in terms of time: "un seul Temps,
un,
universel, impersonel." [78]
Now that along with
Bergson and Deleuze we have adopted an
ontological
perspective firmly grounded in duration, we still need to
see how
the virtual and the actual communicate.
Bergson's discussion
is very
strong in analyzing the unfolding of the virtual in the
actual--what
Deleuze calls the process of differentiation or
actualisation. In this regard, Bergson is a
philosopher of the
emanation
of being, and the Platonic resonances are very strong. This
is
precisely the context in which Deleuze notes the Platonic passage
very
dear to Bergson in which he which compares the philosopher to the
good
cook, "qui d‚coupe selon les articulations naturelles."
["Bergson"
295] Recognizing the contour of
pure being in the real
differences
of nature is the task of the philosopher, because the
process
of differentiation is the basic movement of life. Elan vital
is
presented in exactly these terms: "Il s'agit toujours d'une
virtualit‚
en train de s'actualiser, d'une simplicit‚ en train de se
diff‚rencier,
d'une totalit‚ en train de se diviser: c'est l'essence
de la
vie, de proc‚der ®par dissociation et d‚doublement¯, par
®dichotomie¯."
[Le bergsonisme 96] Pure being--as
virtuality,
simplicity,
totality--emanates or actualises through a process of
differentiation,
a process which marks or cuts along the lines of the
differences
of nature. This is how
differentiation addresses the
ontological
criteria of quality and quantity: virtual being, as unity,
unfolds
and reveals its real multiple differences. However, we should
be
careful not to exaggerate the similarities to Platonism. There are
at
least two aspects which distinguish Deleuze's description of
Bergsonian
actualisation from Platonic emanation.
Firstly, Deleuze
claims
that the actualisation of "le Tout virtuel" is not a
degradation
of being--it is not the limitation or copying of the ideal
in the
real--but instead Bergson's actualisation is the positive
production
of the actuality and multiplicity of the world: "il suffit
de
replacer les termes actuels dans le mouvement qui les produit, de
les
rapporter … la virtualit‚ qui s'actualise en eux, pour voir que la
diff‚renciation
n'est jamais une n‚gation, mais une cr‚ation, et que
la
diff‚rence n'est jamais n‚gative mais essentiellement positive et
cr‚ative."
[105] Secondly, as we have seen
above, Deleuze argues
that
Bergson's ontological movement relies on an absolutely immanent,
efficient
production of being driven by "la force explosive interne
que la
vie porte en elle"; therefore, there is no room for Platonic
finalism
as a force of order. In this
context, then, we can
understand
Bergson's ontological movement as creative emanation of
being
free from the order of the Platonic Ideal. [110-1]
However, as Deleuze
makes very clear, if we are to understand
Bergson's
emanation of being correctly, we should not conceive it as a
differentiation
in space but an "actualisation" in time. (Note that
here
the discussion relies heavily on the primary French meaning of
"actuel"
as meaning contemporary.) This is
where Bergson's theory of
memory
comes into play. In the past
Bergson finds pure being--
"souvenir
pur, virtuel, impassible, inactif, en soi." [Le bersonisme
69] The creative movement from the past
unity to the present
multiplicity
is the process of actualisation.
Situating Bergson's
emanation
of being in time allows Deleuze to demonstrate the force of
his
terminology, which reveals the important difference between
Bergson's
and other conceptions of ontological movement. This
discussion
is presented through an enigmatic constellation of terms
which
constitute a very complex argument.
The general goal of this
discussion
is to offer an adequate critique of the notion of the
possible. Deleuze asserts that it is essential
that we conceive of
the
Bergsonian emanation of being, differentiation, as a relationship
between
the virtual and the actual, rather than as a relationship
between
the possible and the real. (11)
After setting up these two
couples
(virtual-actual and possible-real), Deleuze proceeds to note
that
the transcendental term of each couple relates positively to the
immanent
term of the opposite couple. The
possible is never real,
even
though it may be actual; however, while the virtual may not
actual,
it is nonetheless real. In other
words, there are several
contemporary
(actual) possibilities of which some may be realized in
the
future; in contrast, virtualities are always real (in the past, in
memory)
and may become actualised in the present.
Deleuze invokes
Proust
for a definition of the states of virtuality: "r‚els sans ˆtre
actuels,
id‚aux sans ˆtre abstraits." [99]
The essential point here
is that
the virtual is real and the possible is not: this is Deleuze's
basis
for asserting that the movement of being must be understood in
terms
of the virtual-actual relationship rather than the possible-real
relationship. To understand this evaluation we need
once again to
refer
to the causal arguments of Scholastic ontology. A fundamental
principle
of causality which we had occasion to invoke above is that
an
effect can not have more reality than its cause. The ontological
movement
from the virtual to the actual is consistent with this
principle
since the virtual is just as real as the actual. Movement
from
the possible to the real, however, is clearly a violation of this
principle
and on this basis must be rejected.
We should note that,
even
though Deleuze makes no explicit reference to the Scholastics
here,
the mode of explanation and the very terms of the discussion are
thoroughly
Scholastic. Virtual is the
Scholastic term to describe the
ideal
or transcendental; the virtual Scholastic God is not in any way
abstract
or possible, it is the Ens realissimum, the most real being.
Finally,
actualisation is the Scholastic means of describing the
familiar
Aristotelian passage from the virtual into act. (12) In this
context,
Bergson's usage becomes even more interesting: Bergson's
"actualisation"
maintains the Aristotelian meaning and adds to it the
temporal
dimension suggested by the Modern French usage. In Bergson,
the
passage from virtuality to act takes place only in duration.
What is at stake for
Deleuze in this enigmatic group of terms--in
rejecting
the possible and advocating "actualisation" over
"realisation"--is
the very nature of the emanation of being and the
principle
which directs it. Deleuze
elaborates this evaluation by
adding
a further constellation of terms.
The process of realisation
is
guided by two rules: resemblance and limitation. On the contrary,
the
process of actualisation is guided by difference and creation.
Deleuze
explains that, from the first point of view, the real is
thought
to be in the image of (thus to resemble) the possible which
it
realizes--"il a seulement l'existence ou la r‚alit‚ en plus, ce
qu'on
traduit en disant que, du point de vue du concept, il n'y a pas
de diff‚rence
entre le possible et le r‚el." [Le bergsonisme 99,
emphasis
mine] Furthermore, since all the
possibilities cannot be
realized,
since the realm of the possible is greater than the realm of
the
real, there must be a process of limitation which determines the
possibilities
which "pass" into reality.
Thus, Deleuze finds a sort
of
preformism in the couple possibility-reality, in that all of
reality
is already given or determined in the possible: reality pre-
exists
itself in the "pseudo-actuality" of the possible and only
emanates
through a limitation guided by resemblances. [100-1]
Therefore,
since there is no difference between the possible and the
real
(from the point of view of the concept), since the image of
reality
is already given in the possible, the passage of realisation
cannot
be a creation. On the contrary, in
order for the virtual
become
actual, it must create its own terms of actualisation. "La
raison
en est simple: tandis que le r‚el est … l'image et … la
ressemblance
du possible qu'il r‚alise, l'actuel au contraire, ne
ressemble
pas … la virtualit‚ qu'il incarne." [100] The difference
between
the virtual and the actual is what requires that the process
of
actualisation be a creation. With
no preformed order to dictate
its
form, the process of the actualisation of being must be a creative
evolution,
an original production of the multiplicity of actual being
through
differentiation. We can partially
understand this complex
discussion
as a critique of the movement of the formal cause
(possible-real)
and an affirmation of that of the efficient cause
(virtual-actual). The stakes of the discussion appear
more clearly,
though,
if we pose the issue in terms of the principle which
determines
the coherence of being, as a critique of order and an
affirmation
of organization. Above we cited a
distinction which
Deleuze
makes between the "multiplicity of order" and the
"multiplicity
of organization". [31] The
realisation of the possible
clearly
gives rise to a multiplicity of order, a static multiplicity,
because
all of real being is pre-given or pre-determined in the
"pseudo-actuality"
of the possible. The actualisation
of the virtual,
in the
other hand, presents a dynamic multiplicity in which the
process
of differentiation creates the original arrangement or
coherence
of actual being: this is the multiplicity of organization.
The
multiplicity of order is "determinate" in that it is preformed and
static;
the multiplicity of organization is "indeterminate" in that it
is creative
and original--organization is always "impr‚visible". (13)
We have shown that
Deleuze presents the Bergsonian actualisation
of
being as a dynamic and original emanation, as a creative evolution
free
from the ordering restraints of both Platonic finalism (final
cause)
and the realisation of the possible (formal cause). However,
this
formulation begs the important question, which has been inherent
in the
discussion all along: free from any determined order or
preformism,
what constitutes the creative mechanism in Bergsonian
being
which is capable of continually forming a new, original being, a
new
plane of composition? This is
precisely the point on which one
could
mount an Hegelian counter-offensive.
If we return to Hegel's
critique
of Spinoza we can recognize a pressure which also applies to
Bergson's
position. Hegel finally
characterizes Spinoza's positive
movement
of being as an unrecuperative emanationism: "in the oriental
conception
of emanation the absolute is the light which illumines
itself. Only it not only illumines itself but
also emanates. Its
emanations
are distancings from its undimmed clarity; the successive
productions
are less perfect than the preceding ones from which they
arise. The process of emanation is taken only
as a happening, the
becoming
only as a progressive loss. Thus
being increasingly obscures
itself
and night, the negative, is the final term of the series, which
does
not return to the primal light." [Science of Logic 538-9]
Clearly
it is true that Bergson's movement, like that of Spinoza, does
lack
the "reflection-into-self" which Hegel identifies as the missing
element
here; however, as we have seen Bergson insists that
"successive
productions" are not "less perfect", the movement is not a
"progressive
loss", but rather the differentiation constituted by elan
vital
is a creative process which produces new equally perfect
articulations. Bergson might very well respond in
Spinozian fashion
that
actuality is perfection. However,
the Hegelian attack serves as
a
pressure to back up this claim with an immanent creative mechanism.
Hegel
recognizes that a positive ontological movement can account for
the
becoming of being (as emanation), but he asks how can it account
for the
being of becoming? Furthermore,
Hegel's analogy between
physics
and politics returns as a serious political challenge. Along
with
the ancient atomists, Deleuze and Bergson refuse the preformism
of the
multiplicity in the unity, they refuse the order of the State,
and
insist instead on the originality and freedom of the multiplicity
of
organization. From an Hegelian
perspective, this is just as mad as
trying
to base a State on the individual wills of its citizens. The
attack
on order (of finalism, of the possible, of the dialectic)
creates
both the space for and also the need for an organizational
dynamic:
the organization of the actual, the organization of the
multiplicity. Responding to this is the final task
posed in Deleuze's
reading
of Bergson.
1.4 The being of becoming and organization
of the actual
The question of
creative organization, though, poses a serious
problem
and, finally, this is the point on which Bergson's thought
seems
to prove insufficient for Deleuze.
The need for actual
organization
obviously becomes much more important as Deleuze moves to
his
second phase of Bergson study, as he shifts focus from the issue
of
quality to the passage between quality and quantity. In our
analysis
up to this point we have seen that Bergson is very effective
in
describing the emanative movement from a unity to a multiplicity,
the
process of differentiation or actualisation, but now we discover a
need
for a complementary organizational movement in the opposite
direction,
from a multiplicity to a unity.
Unfortunately, this
organizational
movement is nearly absent in Bergson's thought. There
are,
nonetheless, several points at which Deleuze's reading suggests
that we
might find an answer to this need in Bergson. Our first
example
seems to suggest a convergent movement of the actual: "Le r‚el
n'est
pas seulement ce qui se d‚coupe suivant des articulations
naturelles
ou des diff‚rences de nature, il est aussi ce qui se
recoupe,
suivant de voies convergent vers un mˆme point id‚al ou
virtuel."
[Le bergsonisme 21] What exactly
is this process of
"recoupement"
which relates the actual multiplicity to a virtual
unity? Deleuze does not treat this point
extensively. It seems,
however,
that in order to make sense of this passage we cannot read
"recoupement"
as a creative process which organizes a new virtual
point
of unity, but rather merely as a process which traces back the
lines
of the natural articulations to the original point of departure.
"Recoupement"
is a Bergsonian way of expressing the Scholastic
principle
that being is univocal: we can verify that being is said in
the
same way of everything that is because all of reality can be
traced
back along convergent lanes to one unique virtual point. This
theory
of univocity opposes a theory of the analogy of being. What is
important
for us here is that while univocity implies a general
equality
and commonality of being, it does so only on the virtual
plane.
(14) What we are in need of here,
however, is a means of
communication
between the two planes. This
passage suggests, and
indeed
we often find in Bergson's work, that the unity only appears on
the
plane of the virtual. What the
system demands at this point, on
the
contrary, is a mechanism for the organization of the actual
multiplicity.
We find a similar
example in Bergson's two movements of memory:
the
"m‚moire-souvenir" which dilates or enlarges in an inclusive
movement
toward the past and the "m‚moire-contraction" which
concentrates
toward the future as a process of particularization. [Le
bergsonisme
46] In other words, looking
backwards we see the
universal
(m‚moire-souvenir) and looking forwards we see the
individual
(m‚moire-contraction). What would
be necessary for the
creative
organization of the actual, on the contrary, would be an
enlarging,
inclusive movement oriented toward the future capable of
producing
a new unity. However, Bergson is insistent on the temporal
directions
of the movements. The unity of the
virtual resides only in
the
past and we can never really move backwards toward that point:
"nous
n'allons pas du pr‚sent au pass‚, de la perception au souvenir,
mais du
pass‚ au pr‚sent, du souvenir … la perception." [60] In these
terms,
the organization of the actual would have to be a movement from
perception
to a new "souvenir", which would be a future memory (a sort
of
future anterior in the grammatical sense) as a common point of real
organization.
Deleuze does his best
to seriously address the question of
organization
and socialization in the final pages of Le bergsonisme.
[111-9] In many of his major works (in his
studies of both Nietzsche
and
Spinoza, for example), Deleuze presents in the final pages his
most
dense and elusive argument which points the way toward future
research. In this final section of Le bergsonisme,
Deleuze tries to
explain
the human capacity for creativity, the capability to take
control
of the process of differentiation or actualisation and to go
beyond
the "plan" of nature: "l'homme ... est capable de brouiller les
plans,
de d‚passer son propre plan comme sa propre condition, pour
exprimer
enfin la Nature naturante." [112]
The explanation of this
human
freedom and creativity, though, is not immediately obvious.
Certainly,
society is formed on the basis of human intelligence, but
Deleuze
note that there is not a direct movement between intelligence
and
society. Instead, society is more
directly a result of
"irrational
factors": Deleuze identifies "instinct virtuel" and "la
fonction
fabulatrice" as the forces which lead to the creation of
obligations
and of gods. These forces,
however, cannot account for
the
human powers of creativity. (15)
For a solution, we have to go
back to
analyze the gap which exists between human intelligence and
socialization. "Qu'est-ce qui vient s'ins‚rer
dans l'‚cart
intelligence-soci‚t‚
...? Nous ne pouvons pas r‚pondre:
c'est
l'intuition."
[115] The intuition is that same
"force explosive
interne
que la vie porte en elle" which we noted earlier as the
positive
dynamic of being. Here, however,
this notion is filled out
more clearly. More precisely, Deleuze adds soon
after, what fills
this
gap between intelligence and sociability is the origin of
intuition,
which is creative emotion. [116]
This original production
of
sociability through creative emotion leads us back to Bergson's
plane
of unity in memory, but this time it is a new memory. "Et
qu'est-ce
que cette ‚motion cr‚atrice, sinon pr‚cis‚ment une M‚moire
cosmique,
qui actualise … la fois tous les niveaux, qui libŠre l'homme
du plan
ou du niveau qui lui est propre, pour en faire un cr‚ateur,
ad‚quat
… tout le mouvement de la cr‚ation?" [117] With the cosmic
Memory,
Deleuze has arrived at a mystical Bergsonian sociability
available
to the "ƒmes privil‚gi‚es" [117] which is capable of tracing
the
design of an open society, a society of creators. The incarnation
of the
cosmic Memory "saute d'une ƒme … une autre, ®de loin au loin¯,
traversant
des d‚serts clos." [117-8]
What we have here sounds
distinctly
like a weak echo of the voice of Zarathustra on the
mountain
tops: creative pathos, productive emotion, a community of
active
creators who go beyond the plane of nature and man. (16)
However,
suggestive as this brief explanation of a Bergsonian social
theory
might be, it remains in this final section obscure and
undeveloped. Furthermore, the rest of Deleuze's work
on Bergson does
not
serve to support this theory. In
effect, we have to refer to
Deleuze's
Nietzsche to give these claims real coherence and a sound
foundation.
(17)
This final section of
Le bergsonisme is the most notable positive
argument
in the second phase of Bergson study which does not appear in
the
first, and it perfectly corresponds to the shift from the
problematic
of quality to that of the passage from quality to quantity
which
we noted in the attack on Hegel.
This two-fold shift between
the two
Bergson studies shows clearly one aspect of the movement which
takes
place in Deleuze's "trou de huit ans": in effect, Deleuze feels
the
pressure to bring the ontological to the social and the ethical.
In Le
bergsonisme Deleuze succeeds in addressing this pressure to an
extent. More importantly, however, this
reorientation announces the
need
for and the advent of Nietzsche in Deleuze's thought. Nietzsche
gives
Deleuze the means to explore the real being of becoming and the
positive
organization of the actual multiplicity.
Furthermore, by
shifting
the terrain from the plane of logic to that of values,
Nietzsche
allows Deleuze to translate the positive ontology he has
developed
through the study of Bergson toward a positive ethics.
Remark:
Deleuze and interpretation
Before turning to
Nietzsche, let us take a moment to consider two
critiques
of Deleuze's reading of Bergson which will help us clarify
the
characteristics Deleuze's interpretative strategy. At the outset
of our
essay, we noted that the peculiarities of Deleuze's work
require
that we keep a series of methodological principles in mind.
One
aspect which makes Deleuze's work so unusual is that he brings to
each of
his philosophical studies a very specific question which
focuses
and defines his vision. In the
case of the Bergson studies,
we have
found that Deleuze is principally concerned with developing an
adequate
critique of the negative ontological movement of the
dialectic
and elaborating an alternative logic of the positive,
creative
movement of being. The selection
involved in Deleuze's
narrow
focus is what seems to confuse some of his readers and to
irritate
others: the critiques of Gillian Rose ("The New Bergsonism")
Madeleine
Barth‚lemy-Madaule ("Lire Bergson") offer us two examples of
this
problem. In these critiques we can
discern two methods of
reading
Deleuze which lead to interpretative difficulties: first, by
failing
to recognize Deleuze's selectivism, these authors conflate
Deleuze's
positions with those of the philosophers he addresses and
secondly,
by ignoring the evolution of Deleuze's thought, they confuse
the
different projects which guide his various works. In addition,
the
diversity of perspective between these two critics will serve to
illustrate
the slippage which results from the gap between the
Anglophone
and the French traditions of Bergson interpretation.
Throughout "The
New Bergsonism", Rose reads Bergson's work and
Deleuze's
as if they constituted a perfect continuum. She concludes
her
brief discussion of Le bergsonisme with an ambiguous attribution
which
illustrates this confusion very clearly: "On Deleuze's reading
Bergson
produces a Naturphilosophie which culminates at the point when
‚lan
vital 'becomes conscious of itself' in the memory of 'man'."
[Rose
101] To back this claim she cites
the final page of Le
bergsonisme
[119] which supports the second half of her sentence in
part
but not the first. Not only does
Deleuze not mention
Naturphilosophie
in this passage, but he has spent the previous pages
[111-9]
arguing that Bergson shows how we can go beyond the plan of
nature
and create a new human nature, beyond man. Here Deleuze is
drawing
principally on Bergson's late work Les deux sources de la
morale
et de la religion (1932). Rose
derives the idea of
Naturphilosophie
not from Deleuze but from Bergson's earliest work,
Essai
sur les donn‚es imm‚diates de la conscience (1889), which she
reads
as consistent with the work of Comte. [98] (Therefore, to add
to the
confusion, we have a completely ahistorical reading of Bergson
which
fails to distinguish between his early and late works.) The
central
point here, though, is not whether or not Bergson's thought
constitutes
a Naturphilosophie -- it seems to me, in fact, that it
could
be very profitable to pose the question of natural law in terms
of
Bergsonian creation -- rather the central point is that this aspect
does
form a part of Deleuze's project, that it is not what Deleuze
takes
of Bergson. It is interesting that
it is precisely these same
pages
of Le bergsonisme which create the greatest irritation for
Barth‚lemy-Madaule,
a French Bergson specialist. Her
reaction,
however,
comes from a very different perspective from that of Rose,
since
she is grounded in the French spiritual reading of Bergson
rather
than the anglosaxon positivist reading.
Barth‚lemy-Madaule's
principle
objection, then, is that Deleuze tries to read Les deux
sources
as a Nietzschean and anti-humanist text when in fact it
demonstrates
the profoundly religious character of Bergson's thought:
"le
®d‚passement de la condition humaine¯, qui est en effect la
vocation
de la philosophie, pour Bergson, ne peut pas ˆtre formul‚ en
termes
d'®inhumain¯ et de ®surhumain¯." [86] "En tout ‚tat de cause,
la
principale conclusion que nous tirerions de cette interpr‚tation,
c'est
que Bergson n'est pas Nietzsche." [120] Barth‚lemy-Madaule is a
very
careful reader of Bergson and, to a certain extent, one has to
accept
her criticism. Bergson is indeed
not Nietzsche: for our
purposes,
Deleuze's (perhaps strained and unsuccessful) effort to
bring
the two together indicates the important effect which the period
of
Nietzsche study has had on his thought and the need to move beyond
the
Bergsonian framework. The principal
issue at stake in the
conflict
with Barth‚lemy-Maudaule, however, is how one interprets a
philosopher. Barth‚lemy-Madaule is reacting
primarily against
Deleuze's
principle of selection: "interpr‚ter une doctrine suppose
que, de
tous les termes de l'ensemble, il a ‚t‚ rendu raison. Or il
ne me
semble pas que ce soit le cas ici.
Je contesterai que l'‚tude
de M.
Deleuze puisse ˆtre intitul‚e le Bergsonisme." [120] The first
type of
problem in reading Deleuze, then, results from a failure to
recognize
or accept Deleuze's selectivism and, thus, from a confusion
of his
use of sources.
The second type of
problem results from a misreading of
Deleuze's
projects, from a failure to recognize Deleuze's evolution.
This
problem arises principally in Rose's critique. It is certainly
very
strange that when Rose seeks to study Deleuze's relation to
juridicism
she would choose to read Le bergsonisme -- any of his other
studies
in the history of philosophy (on Kant, Hume, Nietzsche or
Spinoza)
would have been more adequate to her task. As we have seen,
Deleuze's
investigation of Bergson is focused primarily on ontological
issues
and, although it flirts with the question of ethics, it gives
no
solid grounds for a discussion of law.
With this in mind, then, it
should
come as no surprise that Rose has difficulty writing directly
about
Deleuze's Bergson. In fact, she
dedicates less than two of the
twenty-one
pages to Le bergsonisme [99-100]: these are prefaced by a
reading
of Bergson's Essai sur les donn‚es imm‚diates de la conscience
in
relation to Comte and positivism and followed by a reading of
sections
of Deleuze's Diff‚rence et r‚p‚tition combined with small
additions
from Nietzsche and Duns Scotus. Rose repeatedly refers to
the
intent of Deleuze's new Bergsonism as the attempt to found an
"ontological
injustice". [99, 104, 108]
She substantiates this claim
with a
quote from a section of Diff‚rence et r‚p‚tition in which
Deleuze
is discussing the univocity of being in Duns Scotus, Nietzsche
and
Spinoza: "Univocal Being is both nomadic distribution and crowned
anarchy."
[99, Rose's translation] The
problem here is quite simple:
in the
cited passage, Deleuze is neither dealing with Bergson nor with
justice. I have argued that in Deleuze's
treatment of Bergson we can
find
the suggestion of a concept of univocal being, but that does not
mean
that we can transfer the Duns Scotus-Spinoza-Nietzsche nexus
directly
to Bergson: this is a simple methodological issue. More
importantly,
though, this passage reveals the inadequacy of Rose's
entire
argument. It is absurd to read the
statement that univocal
being
is "crowned anarchy" as a directly political statement, or even
as a statement
about justice: such a claim attempts to collapse a
complex
development from ontology to politics and to assume that such
a
development admits only one solution.
(This is apparently how Rose
can
come to the point of attributing Scotus' ethics to Deleuze [107]--
with
the belief, one must assume, that there can only be one ethics
which
corresponds to a univocal conception of being.) At the most,
univocity
gives us an intuition of politics through its implication of
an
ontological equality and participation: this equality is what
"crowns"
the anarchy of being in Deleuze's account. [Diff‚rence et
r‚p‚tition
55]. I would maintain, however,
that in order to bring
this
intuition to a veritable conception of justice in Deleuze's
thought,
to move in effect from ontology to politics, we need to pass
at
least through two more important phases.
First, we must look at
the
conception of efficient power (force internal to its
manifestation)
developed in the study of Nietzsche because this founds
an
attack on law and juridicism. (18)
Second, we must turn to the
study
of Spinoza for its investigation of common notions, of socially
constitutive
practice and of right so that Deleuze can elaborate a
positive
alternative to law. Jus versus lex:
this a much more
adequate
formulation of Deleuze's position against legalism and
juridicism.
.m:1
Notes
1 - Hegel is apparently quoting here
from Letter 50 from Spinoza to
Jarig
Jelles. The original reads
"Quia ergo figura non aliud, qu…m
determinatio,
& determinatio negatio est; non poterit, ut dictum,
aliud
quid, qu…m negatio, esse."
That Hegel changes the quotation to
simplify
it for his purposes is not a serious issue; however, in his
interpretation
he completely distorts its Spinozian meaning. For an
extensive
analysis of Hegel's misreading of Spinoza's "negativism",
see P.
Macherey, Hegel ou Spinoza, pp. 141 ff.
2 - The work of the Scholastics (from
Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus to
William
Ockham and much later Francisco Suarez) give central
ontological
importance to causality and the productivity of being.
What I
find most important in relation to Deleuze's work is the
Scholastic
mode of ontological reasoning and the criteria they
establish
for being. The power, necessity,
perfection, reality and
univocity
of being are all established through causal arguments; the
divine
essence is a productive capacity--it exists as the first cause,
the
efficient cause of every thing. (Ockham adds that God is not only
the
efficient but also the immediate cause of every thing.) As
Etienne
Gilson explains in relation to Duns Scotus, at the foundation
of
Scholastic ontology are the complementary properties of being, "la
®causalit‚¯
et la ®productibilit‚¯, ou aptitudes … produire et … ˆtre
produit."
[La philosophie au Moyen Age 595]
In the course of these
ontological
discussions, the Scholastics take meticulous care in
elaborating
and observing the principles of causality. Some of these
principles
will prove especially useful in our discussion: a) an
effect
cannot have more perfection or reality than its cause; b) a
thing
cannot be the necessary cause of something outside itself.
Finally,
while the efficient cause is primary in proofs of the
existence
of God, the Scholastics in general maintain the four genres
of
cause inherited from Aristotle (material, formal, efficient and
final)
as real causes, even though they change the meaning of the
genres
significantly. For a detailed
analysis of the genres of cause
see
Francisco Suarez, Disputaci¢nes metaf¡sicos, Disputaci¢n XII,
Secci¢n
III.
3 - It should come as no surprise, of
course, that we find
Scholastic
resonances in Deleuze's study of Bergson, given both
Deleuze's
interest in the Scholastics (particularly Duns Scotus) and
Bergson's
extensive knowledge of Aristotle.
Bergson wrote his Latin
thesis
on the concept of place in Aristotle.
4 - In Spinoza we find two important
modifications of this
Scholastic
relationship between being and causality: a) God is not an
uncaused
first cause, but cause of itself, causa sui; b) only
efficient
causes are accepted as real causes.
Spinoza inherits the
first
change from Descartes, and Etienne Gilson explains clearly how
this
modification of Scholastic doctrine is not so much a departure as
a
refinement of Scholastic reasoning serving to intensify the close
relationship
between causality and real being.
"Si tout a une cause,
Dieu a
une cause; si Dieu n'a pas de cause, on ne peut pas dire que
tout
ait une cause, et l'on ne saurait, par cons‚quent, prouver
l'existence
de Dieu par le principe de causalit‚.
C'est pourquoi la
preuve
cart‚sienne, au lieu d'ˆtre la preuve d'une cause premiŠre qui
n'a pas
de cause, est la preuve d'une cause premiŠre qui est cause de
soi-mˆme;
au Dieu acte pur de la scolastique se substitue le Dieu
causa
sui que va recueiller Spinoza." [Discours de la m‚thode 327]
The
second modification which we find in Spinoza, the rejection of the
formal
and final causes, is directed against Descartes. See Ethics
1P34-36
and 1Appendix.
5 - Duns Scotus defines a basic
division between causae per se which
are
essentially ordered and causae per accidens which are accidentally
ordered. See Philosophical Writings, p. 40.
6 - Deleuze's discussion implicitly
sets up a fundamental division
in the
philosophical tradition, which appears historically as a
progressively
more radical antagonism between Platonism and
Aristotelianism. On one side, Hegel inherits the errors
of Platonic
ontology
and exaggerates them, taking them to their extreme. On the
other
side, the Scholastics and Bergson continually perfect the
Aristotelian
logic of being. The rough outline
of the history of
philosophy
suggested here, then, has one axis from Plato to Hegel and
another
axis oriented in an altogether different direction from
Aristotle
to the Scholastics to Bergson.
7 - It may seem at this point that the
real antagonism between
Bergson
and Hegel resides not so much in the claims for the states of
being
(determinateness and difference), but in the processes which
purport
to achieve them (determination and differentiation). This
line of
reasoning could lead us to say that Bergson is adopting
Hegel's
ends but critiquing his means.
However, this attempt to
distinguish
process from achieved state is a distortion of both Hegel
and
Deleuze. As we noted above, in
Hegel the state of determinateness
is not
only founded by a process of negation, but it is constituted by
the
continual movement of this dynamic.
Similarly, Bergson's
difference
does not refer to a static quidditas, but to a continuous
movement
in time. Both Hegel and Bergson
present philosophies of time
in
which no effective distinction can be made between state and
process.
9 - We will come back to this
"force explosive interne que la vie
porte
en elle" below because this notion is unclear at this point, and
while
Deleuze's often calls on the Bergsonian intuition in this same
context,
that concept is not very clearly explained either. We should
note at
this point, however, that this obscure notion constitutes a
central
point in Bergson's system, as the dynamic of the articulation
of
being. It is precisely at this
point that Nietzschean will to
power
and Spinozian conatus come into play in the later studies.
10 - Hegel notes that in etymological
terms determinate being
[Dasein]
means being-there, being in a certain place; but, Hegel
continues,
the idea of space here is irrelevant. [Science of Logic
110] It is tempting to give significance to
the German etymology and
explain
Deleuze's usage on this basis: determinate being or Dasein
relates
to space and marks differences of degree while the
"indeterminate"
being of differentiation relates to time and marks
differences
of nature. However, as we have
already seen, Deleuze
credits
the Dasein of the dialectic with neither differences of nature
nor
differences of degree; Dasein remains an abstraction.
11 - This critique of the possible
exists already in Deleuze's
early
period of Bergson study, although at this point he only makes a
distinction
between the possible and the virtual, not between the real
and the
actual. ["Bergson" 288-9]
The complete formulation comes in
the
second Bergson period and it is repeated in exactly the same terms
in
"La m‚thode de dramatisation" [78-9] and in Diff‚rence et
r‚p‚tition
[269-76]. The critique of the
possible is directed towards
Descartes
and takes a slightly different form in Spinoza et le
problŠme
de l'expression [24-5, 31-2, 107-11].
We will return to
these
passages below.
12 - My point is not that Deleuze has
necessary derived his argument
from
the Scholastics. We can equally
well trace the Scholastic
resonances
to Bergson--after all, Bergson did write his thesis on
Aristotle
in Latin. I mean simply to show
that we can understand this
point in
Deleuze's argument more clearly when we keep in mind the
Scholastic
arguments or ones with similar concerns.
13 - Here we can finally make sense of
Bergson's use of
"determinate"
and "indeterminate".
Posed in an Hegelian context they
have a
completely different meaning. Yet
the gap between these two
terminological
registers reveals a serious issue which has not been
adequately
treated. In one sense, Deleuze's
being must be
"determinate"
in that being is necessary, qualified, singular and
actual. In the other sense, however, Deleuze's
being must be
"indeterminate"
in that being is contingent and creative: some of
Deleuze's
most cherished terms (impr‚visible, intempestif, ‚v‚nement)
insist
on this point. We will have to
return to this issue later in
our
reading.
14 - The role of the formal distinction
in Duns Scotus is to
mediate
the unity and multiplicity, the universal and the individual
on two
separate planes. See Gilson, La
philosophie au Moyen Age, pp.
599 ff. Deleuze will use the conception of the
real distinction in
Spinoza
to critique the formal distinction of Duns Scotus in his work
on
Spinoza, pp. 54-6.
15 - At this point Deleuze finds in
Bergsonian "fabulation" only an
explanation
of obligation and the negation of human creativity. In
some of
his later works, particularly the books on cinema, he
reinterprets
"fabulation" in a more positive light. In fact, in a
recent
interview with Toni Negri, Deleuze suggests that we should go
back this
Bergsonian concept to develop a notion of social
constitution:
"L'utopie n'est pas un bon concept: il y a plut“t une
'fabulation'
commune au peuple et … l'art. Il
faudrait reprendre la
notion
bergsonienne de fabulation pour lui donner un sens politique."
[manuscript,
p. 7]
16 - The other resonance here is to
Leibniz: these leaps from one
isolated
soul to another evokes the communication among monads. See
Le pli.
17 - It is precisely this final section
of Le bergsonisme which
irritated
the French Bergson community. In
the remark below we will
consider
the review of Madeleine Barth‚lemy-Madaule in Les ‚tudes
bergsoniennes
in which she focuses on this section and objects,
"Bergson
n'est pas Nietzsche." [120]
One might well ask of my
reconstructed
evolution of Deleuze's thought, why does Le bersonisme
not
fully incorporate the Nietzschean themes and go beyond them. A
response
would have to agree with Barth‚lemy-Madaule that Bergson is
not
Nietzsche; even though Deleuze interpretive strategy involves a
high
degree of selectivism, he will never stretch a doctrine to
conform
to another.
18 - A central passage in this regard
is Deleuze's description of
Callicles'
attack on law in relation to Nietzsche.
"Everything that
separates
a force from what it can do he calls law.
Law, in this
sense,
expresses the triumph of the weak over the strong. Nietzsche
adds:
the triumph of reaction over action.
Indeed, everything which
separates
a forces is reactive as is the state of a force separated
from
what it can do. Every force which
goes to the limit of its power
is, on
the contrary, active. It is not a
law that every force goes to
the
limit, it is even the opposite of a law." [Nietzsche and
Philosophy
58-9] This is how Nietzsche's
conception of power can be
read as
a powerful anti-juridicism. We
will return to this passage
below.