Deleuze and immanence

[Random]

We crash fifteen supersonic tanks through the gates of paradise.

keep your hands off those virgins, they're for islamic martyrs!

 

[phildwyer]

i don't suppose he was a great fan of you either

Why do you say that? There's nothing in my work he'd have had a problem with.

 

[Pickman's model]

Why do you say that? There's nothing in my work he'd have had a problem with.

but much in your personality

 

[rorymac]

Hello TPH forum!

I was recently recommended to read Delueze and Guatarri by someone, and my first exploration over Wiki has drawn me to the concept in the title - immanence.

Now, I think I get it, and if it's what I think I get I like it as an idea...altho I recognise that many here will probably demolish it as a piece of postmodern nonsense with no element of actualité, and that ultimately it's merely idealiam dressed up in dense language, but anyway...

So...Immanance states that there is only one plane of existence (so negating Platonic forms, Hegelian concept of the spirit), and no transcendent reality (heading off Kant), that such concepts are false because they seek to place reality in a stasis, whereas it actually is an existance of permanent flux and change.

So taking it in a practical sense, it strikes me as a development of Nietsche's ideas, but removed from the (somewhat childish) idea of the ubermensch - that one must look to what is around you at the time, rather than any laws, rules or morals, when making choices. Or, as I like to call it, context dependent morality.

Or have I just missed it's point completely...or is it bollocks, philosophically speaking. What appeals to me about it is the rejection of dualism, transcendence and pattern fixing that I think a lot of philosophy seems to have...I like the idea of the single plane of existance on constant flux...

Anyhoo, thoughts? Ideas? Insults??

Toilet !

 

[Jonti]

They got a chapter to themselves in Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's "Intellectual Impostures".

 

[Jonti]

... Immanence states that there is only one plane of existence (so negating Platonic forms, Hegelian concept of the spirit), and no transcendent reality (heading off Kant), that such concepts are false because they seek to place reality in a stasis, whereas it actually is an existence of permanent flux and change.

Yeah, that's right. It asserts a univocal ontology. Deep stuff, for surely the world has at least subjects and objects, and these are ontologically distinct. Trouble being, if you accept that, the two pieces just never seem to fit back together again

Deleuze reckoned "Kant made the field of consciousness immanent to a transcendental subject, thereby reintroducing an element of identity that is transcendent (that is, external) to the field itself, and reserving all power of synthesis (that is, identity-formation) in the field to the activity of the always already unified and transcendent subject."

Well, that's no good, is it? One still needs an answer to Hume's question “How is the subject (human nature) constituted within the given?”

Also, Kant was seen as presuming the existence of knowledge and morality as “facts” and then seeking their conditions of possibility in the transcendental.

For Deleuze and Guattari, the Real is reality itself in its process of self-making, and it is difference that constitutes the genetic and productive principle. I would prefer to say, the Real is emergent in reality itself in its process of self-making, and it is interpretation that constitutes the genetic and productive principle.

The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy has a good read on this.

 

[Jonti]

conjecture

The macroscopic world, our mundane reality, is emergent in the universe as a whole in its process of self-making, and it is difference that constitutes the genetic and productive principle. The difference is new information coming into play in the world. When we interpret something, say light of a particular wavelength, we create something novel; our sensation of colour.

Instead of a world ruled by Laplace's demon, we inhabit a world where the new continuously comes into play. The subject, a conscious body, is constituted within the world by an integration of the novel.

In other words, it is an integration of the difference, the genetic and productive principle, which constitutes the subject in the world.