Time & Affect in Sofie Meelberghs' La Voisine

by Corry Shores
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Time & Affect
in Sofie Meelberghs' La Voisine

May I highly recommend watching Belgian documentary director Sofie Meelberghs' three and a half minute documentary La Voisine, especially if you can view it projected.

http://www.nikonfilmfestival.be/nl/films/la-voisine

Here I would like to look at certain parts to further illustrate a possible 'still' interpretation for Deleuze's writings on time in cinema and to begin an inquiry into the affect of time. [We previously explored still temporality in the entry Motionless Duration in Deleuze's Bergson.]

I would first like to note a certain softness to the imagery, resulting it seems from the given lighting situation in combination with the sort of camera Meelberghs uses.

One affectual impact of the softness might be a feeling of reminiscence. We previously looked at the softness of the imagery, and the colors, in filmed musical theatre. [These are some scenes from Singing in the Rain, An American in Paris, and The Bandwagon.]

In a way, the softness itself is a form of still temporality. It on the one hand places us under an affective state of past-recollection, while at the same time it shows us imagery that is given immediately in the flow of the present. [The fuzziness of the images is a little like the dissolve techniques directors use to transition into flashback memory scenes. André Bazin observes how the blurring of the images reminds us of our own vision when we daydream. Our eyes become relaxed and immobile while our pupils dilate, causing what we see to blur out of our awareness as the softened dream images take their place. (Bazin 80)] In other places we are shown images of greater clarity, and the transitions from soft to clear are like snaps into dream-recollection and back into present awareness.

Yet even these images are somewhat softened. And notice the dreamlike imagery of the misty painting on the exterior wall.

So switching between these extra softened interior shots and the clearer exterior ones is really more like moving up and down the various levels between dreamful reflection and immediate awareness. We illustrated this before with Bergson's famous cone diagram. The more our memories expand-out before our mind's eye, the higher we are on the cone. The more we are acting automatically or even spontaneously in the moment, the closer we are to the cone's tip. This moving-diagram below correlates motion up and down the cone with the character's movement in-and-out of flashback memory expansions [from Carné's Le jour se lève. The circle diagram shows something similar, the lighting-up of particular memories that go deeper and deeper into our past].

Before looking at the softened opening for the film, I would like first to discuss some other affective components of Meelberghs' work. For example, we often have direct affective contact with the woman's face, given in close-up, nearly filling our field of vision. But our relation to her becomes yet even more intimate, because certain affective elements can seem to take us behind her eyes, as though we were experiencing the world from within her. So in the opening, for example, we just hear her voice. She tells us of the war and death she has lived through and seen with her own eyes. But because it begins without us first seeing her face, we are not initially given an affective separation between us and her. It seems more like we are inside her head, sharing her reflections. Then, when her face does appear, it is given to us with that softened look that still gives us the feeling that we are held within her own dreamful recollections of her past.

Also notice how the lettering is done with scrabble tiles. They are not evenly arranged, and they might give us the impression that they were placed by the old woman's hands, which we see later in the film. Looking down at the tiles seemingly arranged by her takes us again into her interior perspective. The tiles are from a game, which could also imply her youth, but the irregularities of the placement at the same time keep us in her present. [The clip does not place the parts in their given succession, but edits out much from the middle.]

So we are often faced with a simultaneous juxtaposition of the present and the past. In this part here she notes how life goes on, and notice also the stillness of the scene. Her whole life has been a continuous going-on. In one sense that going on is gone. But in another sense, it is documented by signs of age in her face and in the differences between her memories and the present state of things. In a way, we are all walking documentaries of time, like recording devices working in the present flow but keeping all our past time recorded in a state that is immediately present and apparent to us now.

Consider also this scene where the woman appears to be looking out her window and then sees birds fly by. Her eyes close for a moment, as if she is having a recollection. Then they open and she the birds, but all the while are sounds she might have heard during the bombings in the war. Here the sounds of the past are given contemporaneously with the present flow of bird flight. [Also, if played with a good sound system, the low frequencies of the plane sounds will rumble your room and even your body, and in this way give you a physical affective connection with the woman's experiences.]

There is another instance when we get the impression of passed time laid upon the immediate present, but it is presented in a slightly different way. Consider this scene of the woman looking out her window and seeing the traffic motion. It begins fast and ends slow, perhaps in the middle going normal speed. [Also note the beautiful character of the top border. This is the result of the camera Meelberghs used. But it might also give us the impression that it is not from a camera, but is rather something in the field of the old woman's vision, as if it were a part of her window frame.]

Is there a phenomenon of time here? Is it to be found in the sped-motion or in the normal or slow motion? Or might not time appear to us most profoundly in the transitions between the speeds? Right as the transition from fast to normal occurs, we still retain the impression of fast motion, all while immediately viewing it in normal speed. This can on the one hand make us feel a lot of past action having taken place, while simultaneously on the other hand, we feel this past held and documented in recorded form in the present. Affectively speaking, our bodies still retain a feeling of fast motion while at the same time feeling normal motion. See for yourself if this collision of speeds in our bodies can make time, normally unnoticed, become an immediately given phenomenon.

The questions I would like to open up on the basis of this film are: What is the affect of time? How does time feel? In what manner does our immediate experience of time affect us? Here I would first like to look at the complexity of her facial expressions. In one expression they seem to express both extraordinary joy but pain as well.

During this scene, she seems to be reciting something in Italian, perhaps something she learned in her childhood, but remains documented in her current memory. Is there something painful about feeling time pass, but also something joyful?

In the climactic scene we have both the recollective dreamlike flower image and as well a close-up shot of her hands, both affecting us with the sensations of the past given in presence. She speaks of getting older as time continues drifting by. Yet she explains that she looks out her window and sees the beautiful trees, plants and flowers, and feels fortunate and content with her life.

The passing of time can be seen as a loss, as time gone by. But past time does not subtract from the present, and in fact is found fully expressed in the present in a virtual form. And what is immediately given in the present is so much that is beautiful. So just as past and present are paradoxically juxtaposed simultaneously, so too is a paradox of temporal affect, of pain and joy, mixed perfectly and beautifully, as expressed in the woman's face.



Meelberghs, Sofie. La Voisine. 2010.
http://www.nikonfilmfestival.be/nl/films/la-voisine

Bazin, André. Le cinéma français de la Libération à la Nouvelle Vague (1945-1958). Ed. Jean Narboni. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 1998.

Deleuze Cinema Update: Character Contortions. Tod Browning. The Blackbird

by Corry Shores
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There is a new Deleuze Cinema Project entry. Click on the title below.

Character Contortions
Tod Browning
The Blackbird

Stan Brakhage, Entry Directory

by Corry Shores
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[Crop from portrait of Stan Brakhage (inspired by Friedl Kubelka's photo of the artist). Pencil on paper by Phong Bui. Thanks Pip Chodorov at The Brooklyn Rail]




Stan Brakhage, Deleuze, & Aesthetics

Carroll's Games of Chance, Bacon's Controlled Chance, Pollock's "F__ing" Chance Operations, Cage's "Hazard of the Dice" & Brakhage's Colored Chaos

Deleuze and Rhythm: Klee's Grey Point (Graupunkt), Messiaen's and Bacon's Rhythmic Figures, Maldiney, Boulez, Brakhage, and Golden Ratio

Stan Brakhage, Deleuze, & Phenomenology

Cézanne and the Phenomenon: Painting Divergences in Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze

Figure and Phenomena: Deleuze’s Anti-Gestaltist Perceptions

Naive Infinity: Original Perception in Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze



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Stoic Logic and Semantics / Stoicism, Entry Directory

by Corry Shores
 
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Stoic Logic and Semantics / Stoicism

 Émile Bréhier

Émile Bréhier, entry directory 

Benson Mates' Stoic Logic

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Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria, entry directory

Goldschmidt. Victor Goldschmidt

Victor Goldschmidt, entry directory

Luhtala. Anneli Luhtala  

Anneli Luhtala, entry directory

Onians. Richard Broxton Onians
[See for Aion and Chronos]

Richard Broxton Onians, entry directory 

Sambursky. Samuel Sambursky

Samuel Sambursky, entry directory

Other Stoic topics

Zeno's Paradoxes of Infinite Divisibility, with Aristotle's, Spinoza's, & Leibniz' commentary, and Stoic & Deleuze's Infinitely-Divisible Present

Sound, Speech, and Statement in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VII, §57, and in Deleuze's Logic of Sense (Logique du Sens)

Ancient Chaos: Ch 2.1 of Mainzer, Thinking in Complexity: The Computational Dynamics of Matter, Mind, and Mankind

Stoic Theory of Mixtures in Sellars’ Stoicism

Antonin Artaud, Entry Directory

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Artaud & Deleuze

Deleuze's Language Disorders: Speaking Schizophrenically – Writing Nonsensically

The Marriage of Sound and Sense: Language Born in Stuttered Script (Deleuze's 'He Stuttered,' 'Bégaya-t-il')

Clausewitz, Entry Directory

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On War

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[Labels continuation for entry: Speaking Schizophrenically – Writing Nonsensically]

by Corry Shores
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This entry continues the list of labels for the entry: Speaking Schizophrenically – Writing Nonsensically

[Labels continuation for entry: Deleuze’s Dance, III. Wonders of Phenomena: The Infinite Grace of Bergson and Kleist; or the Nietzschean Dance of ...]

by Corry Shores
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This entry continues the list of labels for the entry: Deleuze’s Dance, III. Wonders of Phenomena: The Infinite Grace of Bergson and Kleist; or the Nietzschean Dance of Deleuzean Dice

Søren Kierkegaard, Entry Directory

by Corry Shores
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[Thanks Kate at Today Favorite]

Fear and Trembling

Fear and Trembling, Entry Directory

Descartes References in Kiekegaard's Fear and Trembling Preface



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Kate
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This City of Gold: The Importance of Wealth-Seeking (Chrematistics) for the Flourishing of Cities, in Aristotle's Politics, Book 7, Part 6

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. The text is reproduced at the end.]

This City of Gold:
The Importance of Wealth-Seeking (Chrematistics)
for the Flourishing of Cities
Summary of
Aristotle
Politics
Book 7
Part 6
Paragraph 1

What does our own city's wealth acquisition got to do with us, its citizens?

Perhaps we have lived in a city when it saw bad times, and at another point, when it saw better times (or perhaps we moved between cities, noticing the disparity in their economic life). Although we might have enjoyed life just as well in both cases, was there not a lighter more carefree spirit in cities that are economically thriving? Did we not when times were good go out on wild nights on the town ("We'll burn up the town!" we hear Chaplin's friend declare in City Lights)?

Drunk party scene with well-to-do crowd in Chaplin's City Lights
"We'll burn up the town!"

It seems understandable that many people would want their city to be succeeding well economically. One way this is possible is through increased trade. And a harbor allows enormous amounts of goods to pass to and from our cities. So cities with access to the sea can have an economic advantage over those which do not. And we might be led to believe that the economic prosperity harbors bring, the continual capitalistic increase of wealth to our city, is a good thing generally speaking for its citizens.

Brief summary

A city should have access to the sea both for strategic military defense and also for economic advantages. This access will allow a city to continually acquire wealth through export, rather than just lose wealth through mere import of needed goods.

Points Relative to Deleuze

[forthcoming]

Aristotle
Politics
Book 7
Part 6
Paragraph 1

It is best that a city be connected with the sea. This provides greater safety and access to needed goods. The military is better capable of defense if it may attack both by land and sea, using one front in support of the other. And a port greatly facilitates trade with other cities. What is interesting here is the unilateral view Aristotle takes regarding this trade. Recall from Aristotle's Politics, Book 1 how it is more natural (and less 'perverted') to conduct non-chrematistic exchange (exchanging not for profit but for the use-value of the good, like buying a shoe so to wear it rather than to sell it to someone else at a profit), and recall from Marx's Kapital how such exchanges are commodity-money-commodity (C-M-C) rather than the chrematistic money-commodity-money (M-C-M) cycles, in other words, exchanges meant to obtain the use of the good rather than make capitalistic profit from it. So we would think that for Aristotle that he would favor a view that would say each city's market has the natural role of equal exchanges to supply, in a non-profiteering way, other city's with their needs while satisfying its own. But what he says here suggests a profit-making or chrematistic perspective.

Moreover, it is necessary that they should import from abroad what is not found in their own country, and that they should export what they have in excess; for a city ought to be a market, not indeed for others, but for herself. (Aristotle, Politics, 1327)

It seems the idea here is that a city should not merely be a marketplace that just imports what it needs from other cities. It should also sell-off its excess goods for a wealth-enhancing profit. So it is not just a market that buys other cities' goods, but also one that sells its own to them, presumably for the sake of wealth acquisition, which will help the city thrive.


From Benjamin Jowett's English translation at Adelaide:

Aristotle
Politics
Book 7
Part 6

Whether a communication with the sea is beneficial to a well-ordered state or not is a question which has often been asked. It is argued that the introduction of strangers brought up under other laws, and the increase of population, will be adverse to good order; the increase arises from their using the sea and having a crowd of merchants coming and going, and is inimical to good government. Apart from these considerations, it would be undoubtedly better, both with a view to safety and to the provision of necessaries, that the city and territory should be connected with the sea; the defenders of a country, if they are to maintain themselves against an enemy, should be easily relieved both by land and by sea; and even if they are not able to attack by sea and land at once, they will have less difficulty in doing mischief to their assailants on one element, if they themselves can use both. Moreover, it is necessary that they should import from abroad what is not found in their own country, and that they should export what they have in excess; for a city ought to be a market, not indeed for others, but for herself.

Those who make themselves a market for the world only do so for the sake of revenue, and if a state ought not to desire profit of this kind it ought not to have such an emporium. Nowadays we often see in countries and cities dockyards and harbors very conveniently placed outside the city, but not too far off; and they are kept in dependence by walls and similar fortifications. Cities thus situated manifestly reap the benefit of intercourse with their ports; and any harm which is likely to accrue may be easily guarded against by the laws, which will pronounce and determine who may hold communication with one another, and who may not.

There can be no doubt that the possession of a moderate naval force is advantageous to a city; the city should be formidable not only to its own citizens but to some of its neighbors, or, if necessary, able to assist them by sea as well as by land. The proper number or magnitude of this naval force is relative to the character of the state; for if her function is to take a leading part in politics, her naval power should be commensurate with the scale of her enterprises. The population of the state need not be much increased, since there is no necessity that the sailors should be citizens: the marines who have the control and command will be freemen, and belong also to the infantry; and wherever there is a dense population of Perioeci and husbandmen, there will always be sailors more than enough. Of this we see instances at the present day. The city of Heraclea, for example, although small in comparison with many others, can man a considerable fleet. Such are our conclusions respecting the territory of the state, its harbors, its towns, its relations to the sea, and its maritime power.

Online Text:
Aristotle. Politics. Transl. Benjamin Jowett. ebooks@Adelaide. 2007
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/a8po/index.html


PDFs at Archive.org

Original Greek
Aristotelous ta Politika. The politics of Aristotle. With English notes by Richard Congreve (1855)
http://www.archive.org/details/aristoteloustapo00arisuoft

English Translation
Aristotle's Politics (1926)
http://www.archive.org/details/aristotlespoliti1926aris

Intensity and the Set in Clifford Duffy's "Set theory"

review of Duffy's work, by Corry Shores
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Intensity and the Set in Clifford Duffy's "Set theory"

What does set theory have to do with poetry? Consider Clifford Duffy's work, "Set theory" at The Fictions of Deleuze and Guattari: A Fictional Poetic Biography: Clifford Duffy.

http://fictionsofdeleuzeandguattari.blogspot.com/2011/07/set-theory.html

The body of the entry is completely contracted between the title and closing, as if squashed down to a thin sliver.

But Duffy is a poet of intensity, and that includes intensity in the sense of intension.

A word can have a meaning in the sense of a referent in a set. So 'chair' refers to the set of all chairs. This meaning ranges over the set, extending into it, and the set itself is an extensive list. Here we are understanding meaning in extensional terms. Even if there is only one item in the set, it still can be thought as extending into that item. So the word 'Oedipus' extends into one item in the set, Oedipus himself. And we commit no crime against meaning to say "Oedipus is Oedipus". He was the son of Jocasta, so we are also safe to say "Oedipus is the son of Jocasta." Now recall how Oedipus accidentally married his mother. So we are also right to say, "Oedipus is the husband of Jocasta". In all three cases, 'Oedipus', 'son of Jocasta', and 'husband of Jocasta' extend into the one item in the set. So should we not be able to safely say, "The son of Jocasta is the husband of Jocasta"? Extensionally speaking, this is the same as saying "Oedipus is Oedipus". But doesn't something feel different between "Oedipus is Oedipus" and "The son of Jocasta is the husband of Jocasta"? In both cases, they extend into the same meaning. But they do not seem to intend into the same meaning. They each want to say something different. So there is an essential level of meaning which cannot be explicit in the extensional sense. It remains implicit in the intensional sense. It is an intensity because it is like an implicit force of meaning. It wants to say something, but this is more like a direction of meaning, a little like how a ball spinning on a rope always wants to fly off in a straight line, but instead continually moves circularly. When we compare "Oedipus is Oedipus" and "The son of Jocasta is the husband of Jocasta", we might not be able to explicate the difference between their possible interpretations, but we can feel that each one wants to head-off in a different direction in how we receive their meanings.

If when reading Duffy we do not decipher an explicit meaning, do we really feel at a loss? Does he not communicate on an implicit and intensive level, for example, through direct affections and implicit bifurcations?

There is no text extending in his 'Set theory' piece. I would not even say it is an 'empty set', because Duffy is perfectly capable of using html script to create blank space in his posts. Intensional meaning is not a matter of an empty set; it is a contraction of the set into something infinitely narrow, extensionally speaking, but infinitely deep intensionally speaking. Perhaps a set theoretical sort of look at Duffy's works would be concerned with the contractions to points of non-extensional intensity, like his double comma innovation. We see

o ,, n

in his 'remand'. What we might ask is, in what way does the double comma place affective action on the rest of the text in such a way as to disrupt the extensions of the words around it, to shake them up and create new diagonal connections and ruptures between the words on the page? And in what manner is it an intensity that rips into the text and tries to make it twist and turn in new directions of development and potential interpretation? How does it act like a 'diagram' in the sense of serving mechanically to point out divergent paths for exploring the text? An intensional diagram does not 'map' onto a set of referenced objects; rather, it maps in the active sense of laying out the territories for meaning-paths. In a way, it is a 'dark precursor' that like branching lightning flashes out all the ways meaning can explode and fly out in lines of escape to new domains of meaning.

To explore this concept of a pre-explicative sign, consider if we feel pain in our back for example. It is perfectly valid to interpret that as a sign that we misused our bodies, perhaps from over or under use. Or, we could also interpret it as a sign that better care is in order. Both are equally valid interpretations. Pain can be a source of vitality, especially if it motivates our survival responses to take up healthier behavior. The pain is an affective sign that in its immediacy is only intensive in its meaning. It cannot be denied as an affection, and it cannot be denied it is meaningful, but it can be questioned as to what it means, or we might otherwise say, how its intensities may be creatively explicated. Perhaps that's something interesting about this. We might think of the intensional intensity of the back pain to be a sort of pulsation of virtual interpretations. One of the ways I think Duffy's works succeed is with the richness of the virtuality of his meaning, and I think this has a lot to do with how the intensities, we might say the differentials, bounce forces throughout the work and continue shaking up its meanings. His continually differing combinatorics in cărbune [reviewed here] place parts of the text in continuously altering differential relations of co-appearance. Marvel at the mechanics at the original location; but here if I may is just a little piece of the highly innovative and ingenious poetry machine that Duffy built. It is really something from the future of writing.

exhalation

SmiLe SmILe SmiLE
____________________________
Bridging lip over sea b air this song
dance|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

bridging

inspiration




inspiratie

[The above is a gear or two from Clifford Duffy's cărbune. See it there!]

They are the same parts, but never the same relations, and hence never the same intensional implications. What we have are continuous variations of intensive implicit intensionality, a drama of meaning-forces. A good work of literature we can read and reread, and each time get something new from it. This could be because it has nodes of intensity, like highly moving and dramatic scenes, which affect us profoundly, but in ways we are never fully able to grasp, yet each time we are able to say a little more about it. Also, other parts of the story we might not first appreciate, but on further readings find very intense. These scenes are not empty sets. They are set intensities. They are the intensive combustion engines that keep ejecting forces into the extension-sets of meaning to further fill them and shake-up their contents.

Money is Time. Summary of Selection from Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 5, Part 5

by Corry Shores
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Money is Time
Summary of Selection from:
Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics
Book 5
Part 5

What does money as time got to do with you?

For better or worse, we are part of an economic system that uses currency as a way to exchange things which are not equal. It is not reasonable to expect our employers to pay us in groceries, automobiles, mp3 players, and so on. Instead, we use money to mediate the values between incomparable things, like our labor and the goods and services we need. But this can also help us relax in way. If we have money in the bank, then we can wait to buy the groceries when we are hungry. We do not have to buy everything on payday. So money in the bank is also like buying time. It is like a store of power to make any-purchase-whatever, when the right time comes. When we work on the clock, we can feel how time is money. But then when we have money on payday, we can feel how money is time, the time to enjoy life while our immediate needs are being satisfied, knowing that when new needs arise in the future, we will be ready with the money to take care of them.

Brief Summary

Money allows us to exchange goods which are difficult to compare, like when someone who produces houses would like to get shoes from someone who makes shoes. Proportional values can be mediated by means of currency. But also, having money means knowing we can wait until the future to buy what we need, unlike in bartering where the sale and purchase happen in the same act. This in a way gives money a temporal power and meaning. It can represent the time that is bought until the future purchase is made.

Points relative to Deleuze

[Forthcoming]

Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics
Book 5
Part 5

The goods, services and skills of farmers, house-builders, shoe-makers, and doctors are not all equally comparable. [And even then, there are variations in quality between builders, for example.] In order for exchanges to be fair and proportional, money is needed to mediate the various values of exchangeable goods and services.

all things that are exchanged must be somehow comparable. It is for this end that money has been introduced, and it becomes in a sense an intermediate; for it measures all things, and therefore the excess and the defect-how many shoes are equal to a house or to a given amount of food. The number of shoes exchanged for a house (or for a given amount of food) must therefore correspond to the ratio of builder to shoemaker.

Money represents units of demand for the exchangeable good or service. One benefit of money is that if we do not need something now, we know that because we have the money, when later we have the need, we buy what will satisfy us then.

That demand holds things together as a single unit is shown by the fact that when men do not need one another, i.e. when neither needs the other or one does not need the other, they do not exchange, as we do when some one wants what one has oneself, e.g. when people permit the exportation of corn in exchange for wine. This equation therefore must be established. And for the future exchange-that if we do not need a thing now we shall have it if ever we do need it-money is as it were our surety; for it must be possible for us to get what we want by bringing the money.

What we will note here is the introduction of temporality into exchange. Money not only mediates goods with unequal values, it also mediates the time between the sale which brought the money in the first place and the future purchase when the needed good is acquired. In barter, the sale and purchase happen in one act. But money splits the two actions apart temporally. Money in a way does not just 'mean' some quantity of power to obtain goods or services in demand. It also in a sense 'means' the ability to maintain this power over time, postponing the purchase for a future date.


From the W.D. Ross translation at the The Internet Classics Archive:

Aristotle
Nichomachean Ethics
Book 5
Part 5

Some think that reciprocity is without qualification just, as the Pythagoreans said; for they defined justice without qualification as reciprocity. Now 'reciprocity' fits neither distributive nor rectificatory justice-yet people want even the justice of Rhadamanthus to mean this:

Should a man suffer what he did, right justice would be done -for in many cases reciprocity and rectificatory justice are not in accord; e.g. (1) if an official has inflicted a wound, he should not be wounded in return, and if some one has wounded an official, he ought not to be wounded only but punished in addition. Further (2) there is a great difference between a voluntary and an involuntary act. But in associations for exchange this sort of justice does hold men together-reciprocity in accordance with a proportion and not on the basis of precisely equal return. For it is by proportionate requital that the city holds together. Men seek to return either evil for evil-and if they cana not do so, think their position mere slavery-or good for good-and if they cannot do so there is no exchange, but it is by exchange that they hold together. This is why they give a prominent place to the temple of the Graces-to promote the requital of services; for this is characteristic of grace-we should serve in return one who has shown grace to us, and should another time take the initiative in showing it.

Now proportionate return is secured by cross-conjunction. Let A be a builder, B a shoemaker, C a house, D a shoe. The builder, then, must get from the shoemaker the latter's work, and must himself give him in return his own. If, then, first there is proportionate equality of goods, and then reciprocal action takes place, the result we mention will be effected. If not, the bargain is not equal, and does not hold; for there is nothing to prevent the work of the one being better than that of the other; they must therefore be equated. (And this is true of the other arts also; for they would have been destroyed if what the patient suffered had not been just what the agent did, and of the same amount and kind.) For it is not two doctors that associate for exchange, but a doctor and a farmer, or in general people who are different and unequal; but these must be equated. This is why all things that are exchanged must be somehow comparable. It is for this end that money has been introduced, and it becomes in a sense an intermediate; for it measures all things, and therefore the excess and the defect-how many shoes are equal to a house or to a given amount of food. The number of shoes exchanged for a house (or for a given amount of food) must therefore correspond to the ratio of builder to shoemaker. For if this be not so, there will be no exchange and no intercourse. And this proportion will not be effected unless the goods are somehow equal. All goods must therefore be measured by some one thing, as we said before. Now this unit is in truth demand, which holds all things together (for if men did not need one another's goods at all, or did not need them equally, there would be either no exchange or not the same exchange); but money has become by convention a sort of representative of demand; and this is why it has the name 'money' (nomisma)-because it exists not by nature but by law (nomos) and it is in our power to change it and make it useless. There will, then, be reciprocity when the terms have been equated so that as farmer is to shoemaker, the amount of the shoemaker's work is to that of the farmer's work for which it exchanges. But we must not bring them into a figure of proportion when they have already exchanged (otherwise one extreme will have both excesses), but when they still have their own goods. Thus they are equals and associates just because this equality can be effected in their case. Let A be a farmer, C food, B a shoemaker, D his product equated to C. If it had not been possible for reciprocity to be thus effected, there would have been no association of the parties. That demand holds things together as a single unit is shown by the fact that when men do not need one another, i.e. when neither needs the other or one does not need the other, they do not exchange, as we do when some one wants what one has oneself, e.g. when people permit the exportation of corn in exchange for wine. This equation therefore must be established. And for the future exchange-that if we do not need a thing now we shall have it if ever we do need it-money is as it were our surety; for it must be possible for us to get what we want by bringing the money. Now the same thing happens to money itself as to goods-it is not always worth the same; yet it tends to be steadier. This is why all goods must have a price set on them; for then there will always be exchange, and if so, association of man with man. Money, then, acting as a measure, makes goods commensurate and equates them; for neither would there have been association if there were not exchange, nor exchange if there were not equality, nor equality if there were not commensurability. Now in truth it is impossible that things differing so much should become commensurate, but with reference to demand they may become so sufficiently. There must, then, be a unit, and that fixed by agreement (for which reason it is called money); for it is this that makes all things commensurate, since all things are measured by money. Let A be a house, B ten minae, C a bed. A is half of B, if the house is worth five minae or equal to them; the bed, C, is a tenth of B; it is plain, then, how many beds are equal to a house, viz. five. That exchange took place thus before there was money is plain; for it makes no difference whether it is five beds that exchange for a house, or the money value of five beds.

We have now defined the unjust and the just. These having been marked off from each other, it is plain that just action is intermediate between acting unjustly and being unjustly treated; for the one is to have too much and the other to have too little. Justice is a kind of mean, but not in the same way as the other virtues, but because it relates to an intermediate amount, while injustice relates to the extremes. And justice is that in virtue of which the just man is said to be a doer, by choice, of that which is just, and one who will distribute either between himself and another or between two others not so as to give more of what is desirable to himself and less to his neighbour (and conversely with what is harmful), but so as to give what is equal in accordance with proportion; and similarly in distributing between two other persons. Injustice on the other hand is similarly related to the unjust, which is excess and defect, contrary to proportion, of the useful or hurtful. For which reason injustice is excess and defect, viz. because it is productive of excess and defect-in one's own case excess of what is in its own nature useful and defect of what is hurtful, while in the case of others it is as a whole like what it is in one's own case, but proportion may be violated in either direction. In the unjust act to have too little is to be unjustly treated; to have too much is to act unjustly.

Let this be taken as our account of the nature of justice and injustice, and similarly of the just and the unjust in general.


Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics, Book V.
W.D. Ross translation online at:
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.5.v.html

Posthumanism / Transhumanism, Entry Directory

by Corry Shores
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Andy Clark

 

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Article Summary, Nick Bostrom & Anders Sandberg
"Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap"

Entry Directory for Nick Bostrom & Anders Sandberg: Whole Brain Emulation (WBE) (Mental Uploading / Mental Downloading)

Article Summary, Nick Bostrom's
"Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up"

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Article Summary, Fabrice Jotterand's
"Beyond Therapy and Enhancement: The Alteration of Human Nature"

Jotterand. Beyond Therapy and Enhancement, summary

Article Summary, Dieter Birnbacher's
"Posthumanity, Transhumanism and Human Nature"

Birnbacher, "Posthumanity, Transhumanism and Human Nature," summary

Article Summary, Leon Kass'
"Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection"

Leon Kass, "Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection," summary

Article Summary, Kurt Bayertz'
"Human Nature: How Normative Might It Be?"

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Article Summary, Ludwig Siep's
"Normative Aspects of the Human Body"

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Article Summary, David Heyd's
"Human Nature: An Oxymoron?"

 

Entry Directory, "Human Nature: An Oxymoron?" Heyd

Article Summary, William Bainbridge's
"Converging Technologies and Human Destiny"

Bainbridge, Converging Technologies and Human Destiny

Article Summary, George Khushf's
"The Ethics of NBIC Convergence"

Khushf, The Ethics of NBIC Convergence

Article Summary and Deleuzean Commentary, Andy Clark's
"Re-Inventing Ourselves: The Plasticity of Embodiment, Sensing, and Mind"

Andy Clark's Cyborgs and Deleuze's Restructive Element

Summaries from Katherine Hayles'
How We Became Posthuman:
Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics

Becoming-Computer, Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics

Everybody has No Body, Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics

From Corry Shores' Writings on Posthumanism

Misbehaving Machines: The Emulated Brains of Transhumanist Dreams

Deleuze and Posthumanism Paper, Entry Directory, "Do Posthumanists Dream of Pixelated Sheep? Mental Uploading under Deleuzean Critique"

Entry Directory, Bostrom and Sandberg's Brain Emulation, Examined and Critiqued

Conference Version of Do Posthumanists Dream of Pixilated Sheep? Bostrom & Sandberg's Brain Emulation, Examined and Critiqued

Extended Mind Hypothesis

Clark & Chalmer’s Extended Mind, Summary

Andy Clark. Natural-Born Cyborgs. Ch2 Pt1 ‘Heavy Metal’

Menary’s ‘Introduction [to The Extended Mind]: The Extended Mind in Focus’

Andy Clark's "Re-Inventing Ourselves: The Plasticity of Embodiment, Sensing, and Mind"

 
Andy Clark. ‘Momento’s Revenge: The Extended Mind, Extended’, summary

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Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind, entry directory

Frederick B. Mills “A Phenomenological Approach to Psychoprosthetics”, summary

Some (mostly) Recent Scientific Developments in Brain Machine Interface (for Robotic Prosthesis), Neuroplasticity, Neurocomputation, and Whole Brain Emulation

[Labels continuation for entry: Deleuze's Analog and Digital Communication; Isomorphism; and Aesthetic Analogy. Part 5 of Deleuze Posthumanism Paper"]

by Corry Shores
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This entry continues the list of labels for the entry: Deleuze's Analog and Digital Communication; Isomorphism; and Aesthetic Analogy. Part 5 of Deleuze Posthumanism Paper, "Do Posthumanists Dream...?"

Making Your Hands Become Different

by Scott Wollschleger

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Carl Czerny
1791 – 1857

Individuality is difference.

The expression of a self emerges from the power which is difference itself.

Individuation is created through a process of differentiation.
Individuation is differentiation.

What makes a difference?

Czerny - a machine composer.

His question to us is, "How do I continually differentiate the music?”. The technique itself has to become different throughout. It does this by remaining the “same” in one sense while changing in another. One sense will say, " Yes, this again". Yet, the other sense will force our hand to change its relationship to the keyboard, as if to say, “No, this must be different now”.

Technique is developed through the increase of connective differences communicating throughout the living hand and body. Czerny helps our hands become different from themselves.