Communicating Kant’s Free Play

by Corry Shores
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“Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or dissatisfaction without any interest. The object of such a satisfaction is called beautiful” (Critique of the Power of Judgment §5).

When an object or a representation gives us pleasure, our faculty of taste judges it as beautiful. This satisfaction derived from the beautiful cannot be one that bears personal interest in the object, because when one deems something beautiful, one presumes that the object is satisfying – and hence beautiful – for everyone (§6). Thus someone would not say, “‘This object. . .is beautiful for me.’ For he must not call it beautiful if it pleases merely him” (§7). We consider the beauty-judgment of an object to have universal validity, because we believe that no one else would think otherwise (§8).

But Kant wonders if first we feel the pleasure, then afterwards we judge the object as beautiful; or if instead, first we make the judgment before feeling the pleasure.

According to Kant, it could not be that the pleasure precedes the judgment of beauty. This judgment presupposes that it holds for all people, and thus we may communicate to others the shared satisfaction we would all have when apprehending the object. But if first we have just pleasure, then that is only valid for ourselves, and hence we would not initially have grounds to infer that the pleasure would be held by everyone else.

“Thus it is the universal capacity for the communication of the state of mind in the given representation which, as the subjective condition of the judgment of taste, must serve as its ground and have the pleasure in the object as a consequence” (§9).

Hence, although we might find the object agreeable because it pleases us subjectively, that is, aesthetically, we do not then follow-up this pleasure by judging that it holds for everyone else. Rather, an object we deem beautiful strikes us firstly as being universally pleasant, with ourselves naturally among those who would find it so. Yet,

“Nothing, however, can be universally communicated except cognition and representation so far as it belongs to cognition” (§9).

This is because only cognition is objective, while our feelings of pleasure are subjective.

So to say that something is beautiful is to say that the object would please anybody. But this pleasantness refers not to the object but to the subjective experience of cognizing the object. So when we consider such a judgment, our faculties are not at that moment encountering the beautiful pleasant object: there is no sensation, merely cognition. Thus:

“The powers of cognition that are set into play by this representation are hereby in a free play, since no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition” (§9).

If we say, “roses are beautiful,” we are not thereby having some rose as a determinate and immediate representation. Instead, our powers of representation are free to play-around in cognizing the terms of the judgment. (“Thus the state of mind in this representation must be that of a feeling of the free play of the powers of representation in a given representation for a cognition in general” (§9).) Kant continues:

“Now there belongs to a representation by which an object is given, in order for there to be cognition of it in general, imagination for the composition of the manifold of intuition, and understanding for the unity of the concept that unifies the representations” (§9).

We apprehend things in parts, in a manifold. Imagination links the parts together into a unity that will match with a single concept in the understanding.

“This state of a free play of the faculties of cognition with a representation through which an object is given must be able to be universally communicated, because cognition, as a determination of the object with which given representations (in whatever subject it may be) should agree, is the only kind of representation that is valid for everyone.”

So this free play of the imagination to bring together intuitions for the sake of conceptualizing the judgment of the beautiful object must be communicable to everyone else, because for the judgment to be universally valid, the same cognitive process must be possible for anyone else.

This free play which brings about the representation of the object which is judged universally pleasing is the grounds to derive pleasure from that representation, because communicating our states of mind “carries a pleasure with it,” a fact that is demonstrated by “the natural tendency of human beings to sociability” (§9).

But, we may only subjectively relate the judgment of something’s beauty to the experience of its beauty, “thus that subjective unity of the relation can make itself known only through sensation” (§9). The faculties of imagination and cognition must be in “unison” with the whole cogitation that considers the beautiful object, and this harmony between the faculties of cognition and the whole process of cognition produces the sensation of pleasure. So when we know that our ability to consider a beautiful object, which is performed by faculties all human share universally, and the process of considering that object are together harmonious, then we know that this process would be harmonious for everyone else (because the object is not considered subjectively and the faculties are shared universally), and thus we know that anyone else who considers this object would likewise feel the pleasure of the “well-proportioned disposition” of facultative harmony (§9).

For Deleuze, communication happens not when an experience of an object is universally valid, because communication requires difference. When we see a Francis Bacon painting, our faculties are unable to synthesize it into a representation, hence there is no universality to either the object or to the experience of it. However, the creation of this artwork required an internal and external collision of order and chaos, and it produces in the viewer such a collision when sensing it, because the viewer both tries to organize her impressions while also being unable to. Communication can only happen when there is irreducible difference and heterogeneity mixed with our universally held tendencies to homogeneously organize something that suggests order.

Spinoza’s Expressions Extended to Three

by Corry Shores
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“This third expression is quantitative. And, like quantity itself, it has two forms: intensive in the essences of modes, and extensive when the modes pass into existence.” (Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza 186a)

"Cette troisième expression est quantitative. Aussi aura-t-elle deux formes, comme la quantité elle-même: intensive dans les essences des modes, extensive quand les modes passent à l'existence." (Spinoza et le problème de l’expression 168d)

According to Deleuze, there are three expressions of substance. The first expression is substance’s immanent self-expressing its infinite attributes in itself. Because each attribute expresses a different essence or nature of substance, this level of expression is qualitative or formal.

Attributes are the ways that substance can be conceived. But it is not until the second self-expression, when substance expresses itself in the idea of God, that substance expresses itself to itself. The Divine Notion is the idea of infinite substance, and as an idea it is both an explication and implication:

Ideas are modes, but the idea of God is a mode in a special sense. As the idea of the infinite substance, it is the idea of the infinite eternal entirety. It is an idea whose meaning-extension contains the ideas of everything else, hence it has an infinite extensional meaning. And although ideas are modifications in the realm of Thought – which some modes, such as ourselves, can think at any moment – the idea is of the infinite eternal entirety of substance. Hence it implies not only just all parallel modes of any one given modification of substance, it also implies all modifications whatever whenever, because it is the idea of the eternal underlying substance of all modification. But although it has an infinite meaning-extension, it is still an idea, so the idea itself does not explicate all modes in the attributes other than Thought, although it implies or implicates them by paralleling them.

The idea of God is no different from substance itself, because this idea immanently expresses substance’s own unique infinite essence. Thus objectively it is equal to substance: they are the same object. But as a proto-modification, it is formally different, because it is an immanent product of substance. In other words, there is a qualitative difference between substance and God, but there is no numerical difference; they are one and the same.

In the third expression, substance re-expresses itself when attributes express themselves into modes which are immanent to substance. In this expression, God produces his infinity of immanent parts so he may understand his own infinite nature.

“God’s power expresses or explicates itself modally, but only in and through such quantitative differentiation.” "La Puissance de Dieu s'exprime ou s'explique modalement, mais seulement par et dans cette différenciation quantitative." (183c/166d). What makes-up each mode are the power relations it bears to other modes. Modes are affections, degrees of affectedness, within the one substance, and are hence quantitative. This quantitative expression has two forms, intensive and extensive. The modes’ essences are intensive quantities, because each modification is a product of forces of varying degrees of potency, hence the essence of each mode is a quantitative outcome of this interaction of intensive force-powers. The products of these outcomes are modes passing into existence. In both the attributes of Extension and of Thought we speak of extension. In the realm of extended space, we observe the way intensive power relations result in the extensive forms of bodies; physics demonstrates resulting body-forms after a collision of competing forces. In the realm of ideas we regard an idea as having a body of denotations, some extending more broadly than others, with that extension being determined through a conceptual creative-analysis performed consciously or unconsciously under the pressures of intensive conceptual forces.

“Modes are expressive precisely insofar as they imply the same qualitative forms that constitute the essence of substance.” (Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza 186a)

"Les modes soient précisément expressifs en tant qu'ils impliquent les mêmes formes qualitatives que celles qui constituent l'essence de la substance." (Spinoza et le problème de l’expression 169a)

When intensities pass into extensities, all the infinity of attributes are parallely modified. Each attributal mode expresses the essence of substance, which is infinity, by implying all the parallel modifications in the infinity of other attributes.

From:

Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza et le problème de l'expression. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1968.

Deleuze, Gilles. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. Trans. Martin Joughin. New York: Zone Books, 1990.

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Spinoza's Proof for an Infinity of Attributes of One Substance

by Corry Shores
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From Ethics Book I

I.Def.3 “By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself : in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.”

I.Def.4 “By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.”

I.Def.5 “By mode, I mean the modifications of substance, or that which exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself.”

I.5 “There cannot exist in the universe two or more substances having the same nature or attribute.”

If there were several distinct substances, we could only distinguish them by means of a difference in their attributes or in their modes.

If each substance were different because it possessed a unique attribute that the other substances lacked, then to each substance there would belong at least one distinguishing unique attribute.

But then, they are differentiated according to the ways that each substance lacks some attribute another one has; in other words, they would have to be co-defined. Yet, a substance is conceived by itself, and thus it cannot be that there are different substances differing only in attributes.

Then substances would have to be distinguished according to their modes.

We know that substances are prior to modes; for, modes are in substance and conceived through them, but substances are conceived in themselves, hence substances must be prior to modes.

But this means that modes are not involved in defining a thing’s essence, hence they cannot be used to distinguish substances.

But, if substances can be distinguished neither by attribute nor by mode, then there is no means to differentiate substances, hence there is but one substance.

I.10. "Each particular attribute of the one substance must be conceived through itself."

Attributes are what the intellect grasps as an essence of substance. But substances must be conceived by themselves, and hence one of its essences must as well, for if instead it required that one essence be conceived in terms of another, then it would no longer be an essence of a self-conceivable substance.

I.8. “Every substance is necessarily infinite.”

A substance would be either finite or infinite. But if it is finite, it would be limited by another substance of the same nature or attribute, but we know that there cannot be multiple substances of the same attribute.

I.9 “The more reality or being a thing has, the greater the number of its attributes (Def. iv.).”

There more being something has, the greater its nature, hence the greater its number of attributes.

I.Schol.10 Infinite attributes express one substance.

Substance, as infinite, would have an infinity of essence, hence infinite attributes.

And thus:

I.11 "God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists."

Spinoza. Ethics. Transl. Elwes. available online at:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/spinoza/benedict/ethics/index.html

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The Positivity of Spinoza’s Semiology

by Corry Shores
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According to Deleuze, Spinoza opposes signs to expressions. Of signs there are three sorts: indicative, imperative, and revelatory. Indicative signs enable us to infer something from a modification in our body, for example, we may see a book on the table as an indication of a state of affairs. But as modes, we are finite, so we never see the whole picture of causation. Thus, ideas drawn from such indications are not adequate, because they cannot fully explain their cause. Imperative signs cause us to consider the laws of nature as moral laws: pity might naturally result from seeing suffering, and so we might consider it a moral law to have pity, when instead it is irrational and hence unethical. Revelatory signs, as inherently mysterious and obscure, do little more than cultivate an inexpressible and confused knowledge of God, rather than a rational adequate sort.

In these cases, signs are representational, which implies a negativity or an inherent absence: the referent is not the sign itself, but is missing from it. However, expression is immanent and univocal. What is implicit in an explication is not absent, it is fully there, fully expressed, only it is expressed complicatively: it is expressed both implicitly and explicitly. This is the “positive content” of expression that Spinoza brings-out by contrast with signs.

(Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza 181-182. Spinoza et le problème de l’expression 164-165)

Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza et le problème de l'expression. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1968.

Deleuze, Gilles. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. Trans. Martin Joughin. New York: Zone Books, 1990.

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Creative Analysis

by Corry Shores
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In section 5 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche speaks of philosophers’ dishonesty in believing that they arrive at their conclusions through “cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic,” when instead “at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of ‘inspiration.’” We might consider such a hunch as the intuition used to propose and critique necessary and sufficient conditions in conceptual analysis. In other words, we may precisely determine a concept’s significance first by drawing a tentative definition out from our intuition, and further using our intuitive insights to detect the accuracy of our proposed definition and its refinements.

But this “inspiration” is more than an “intuition” for Nietzsche. It is “most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract,” something perhaps more fitting to “the mystics of every rank.” In conceptual analysis, we presume that the concept is already analytically pure, but merely implicit, needing only proper explication to bring it to light. Yet perhaps the intuition or inspiration used for this purpose is more creative and arbitrary than it appears. And if not necessarily, so should it be. For, if the task of philosophers is the creation of concepts, and not merely their exposition, then something more need be expressed than mere definitions. Perhaps a true philosophical concept is one whose significance and development is pushed-and-pulled in many individually viable – but mutually incompatible – directions at once: a confused but explicit concept, one whose implicit intensity is so great that no amount of explicit definitional extension can exhaust its possibilities for unfolding.

The Birth of Tragic Eloquence

by Corry Shores
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According to Nietzsche, Euripides introduced Socratic rationalism into his unconventional prologues. Unlike Aeschylus and Sophocles who subtly weaved backstory into the beginnings of their tragedies so to create a tragic effect through suspense, Euripides had a trustable character from the drama initially tell the entire story from start to finish.

According to [Euripides], the effect of tragedy never resided in epic suspense, in a teasing uncertainty as to what was going to happen next. It resided, rather, in those great scenes of lyrical rhetoric in which the passion and dialectic of the protagonist reached heights of eloquence. (Birth of Tragedy section 12)

And it is not a qualitative distinction of eloquence, but a quantitative one: the tragic results not from an eloquence belonging to a tragic genre, but from an intensely heightened pure eloquence.

Spinoza's Ontological Argument

by Corry Shores
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From Ethics Book I:

Prop. XI. God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists.

Proof.-If this be denied, conceive, if possible, that God does not exist : then his essence does not involve existence. But this (Prop. vii.) is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists.

For Reducio:

1. God does not exist, in other words, his essence does not involve existence (because: if god did not exist, then we cannot include in our definition of god that he exists, for it is not of his essence to exist, and definitions articulate the essence of a thing).

2. from Prop vii: Existence belongs to the nature of substances.

3. from Def vi: VI. By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite-that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality

4. But, [as a substance] God exists. (Hypothetical Syllogism for classes: If A is included in B, and B in C, then A is included in C. God is a substance. All substances have existence, thus God has existence). Contra 1, hence:

5. God exists, Q.E.D

Spinoza. Ethics. Transl. Elwes. available online at:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/spinoza/benedict/ethics/index.html

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Complicated Expression

by Corry Shores
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“Expression itself no longer emanates, no longer resembles anything.” (Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza 180c)

“L’expression elle-même cesse d’émaner, comme de ressembler.” (Spinoza et le problème de l’expression 164a)

The facts or states of affairs we encounter in reality neither emanate-from nor resemble some source, like God or substance (both synonymous in Spinoza). For Deleuze, Spinoza’s most penetrating insight into this pure immanence is the complication of expression: its being both explication and implication. There is only one substance, and it is infinite: it expresses itself in an infinity of attributes, which are the essences of the substance, that is, the ways it can be conceived. We have access to two, Thought and Extension. But we do not have access to more, because we are finite modes that result from modifications of substance, which are expressed variously according to the unique nature of each different attribute. So we have access both to “books” in our surounding extensive space and to the idea “books” in our thinking. Moreover, we ourselves are products of such modifications, which is why we are finite modes without access to all the infinity of other attributes.

In such modifications, substance becomes explicit: the book becomes an explicit and available thought or object. But because such modes are finite, they (and we) do not have access to all other explications in the infinity of attributes. So we may hold the book or think it, but we cannot experience it in the way it is explicitly expressed in the other attributes. However, we know that there must be other such attributes (Ethics I.11), so we know that when we experience these explications, there is as well an infinity of other explications, implicit in the ones we have access-to. It is in this way that substance expresses itself both by explicating and by implicating itself in its modifications.

“All things are present to God, who complicates them. God is present to all things, which explicate and implicate him.” (175a)

“Toutes choses sont présentes à Dieu qui les complique, Dieu est présent à toutes choses qui l’expliquent et l’impliquent.” (159a)

So the modes explicate and implicate God (substance), and God expresses himself in the modifications by complicating them, that is, by expressing himself implicitly and explicitly in them.

Modes do not emanate from substance, because they are nothing other than it, they are its self-expressions. And modes do not resemble substance, because substance never self-divided so to express itself. Its modifications are immanent to it. There is no source and offspring, but rather just one substance made-up of its own modal self-expressions.

In the case of a diagrammed artwork, its aesthetic analogy is not one of resemblance. The chaotic interferences that distorted the original figuration on the canvass did not cause something to emanate from that original form, because what scrambled it was not inherent to it; rather, it was a collision remaining such. The isomorphic one-to-one relation between the original form and the resulting aesthetic analogy does not maintain the original relations. Yet, chaos needed to encounter the original form so that there would be extensive space for the intensive forces to intersect. This way both implicated intensive forces and explicated extensive lines can become complicated together. The diagram is an infusion of implicit intensive forces into the extensive explicit space, which opens up the work’s evolution (développement) by enhancing its involution (enveloppement, enfolding).

Thus the artwork’s aesthetic analogy does not resemble some forebear or source; rather, the aesthetic analogy is the fact, the state of affairs, the self-expression of the singular substantial eternal and infinite reality.

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From

Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza et le problème de l'expression. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1968.

Deleuze, Gilles. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. Trans. Martin Joughin. New York: Zone Books, 1990.