"if you think childlike, you'll stay young. If you keep your energy going, and do everything with a little flair, you're gunna stay young. But most people do things without energy, and they atrophy their mind as well as their body. you have to think young, you have to laugh a lot, and you have to have good feelings for everyone in the world, because if you don't, it's going to come inside, your own poison, and it's over" Jerry Lewis "I don’t believe in the irreversibility of situations" Deleuze
As long as time remains on its hinges, it is subordinated to extensive movement [....] This characteristic of ancient philosophy has often been emphasized: the subordination of time to the circular movement of the world as the turning Door [....] [...] Time no doubt tends to free itself when the movement it measures itself becomes increasingly aberrant or derived [dérivé], marked by material, meteorological, and terrestrial contingencies; but this is a downward tendency that still depends on the adventures of movement. [Footnote 3: "Eric Alliez, in Capital Times: Tales from the Conquest of Time, trans. George van den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), has analyzed, in ancient thought, this tendency toward the emancipation of time when movement ceases to be circular: for instance, in the "chrematism" and time as a monetary movement in Aristotle."] (Deleuze 1997: 27bc; c.d; 187bc)Deleuze in fact wrote the forward to this book, and we quote from two different translations.
Tant que le temps reste dans ses gonds, il est subordonné au mouvement extensif [….] On a souvent souligné ce caractère de la philosophie antique : la subordination du temps au mouvement circulaire du monde comme Porte tournante. […] Sans doute y a-t-il une tendance du temps à s’émanciper, quand le mouvement qu’il mesure est lui-même de plus en plus aberrant, dérivé, marqué de contingences matérielles météorologiques et terrestres ; mais c’est une tendance vers le bas, qui dépend encore des aventures du mouvement. [Note 2. Eric Alliez a analysé, dans la pensée antique, cette tendance à l’émancipation du temps quand le mouvement cesse d’être circulaire : par exemple la « chrématistique » et le temps du mouvement monétaire chez Aristote (Les temps capitaux, Cerf).] (Deleuze 1993: 40bc; c.d)
One might say that thought can only grasp time through several speeds [....] (Deleuze 2006: 372a)
It might be said that thought can grasp time only through a number of strides [....] (Deleuze 1996: xi/bc)
[...] on dirait que la pensée ne peut saisir le temps qu’à travers plusieurs allures (Deleuze 1991: 7b)
An aberrant time may be undone to become more rectilinear, independent, abstracted from other speeds, and sometimes it may trip or fall. (2006: 373a)
At the limit, an aberrant time undoes itself, becoming more and more linear, autonomous, abstracted from other strides, and sometimes falling and tripping. (1996: xii/a)
A la limite, un temps aberrant se défera pour devenir de plus en plus rectiligne, autonome, abstrait des autres allures et parfois chutant et trébuchant. (1991: 7d)
One would say that time falls ideally, like light in a way (intensive quantity or zero distance from the moment) [....] (2006: 373bc)
It could be said that time falls, a little the way light does, with an idealized fall (the intensive quantity or distance from the moment zero) [....] (1996: xii/b)
On dira du temps qu’il tombe, un peu comme la lumière, d’une chute idéelle (quantité intensive ou distance de l’instant à zéro) [….] (1991: 8ab)
Kantian time as [...] like a line that one can only see at first in fleeting bits and pieces revealing itself at the end. The pure line of time becomes independent.... Time shrugged off its dependency on any extensive movements [....] (2006: 374a)We will look more closely at how Alliez' explanation of Aristotle's chrematism portrays a sort of unhinged, intensive, straightened time.
Kantian time [...] as a line discovered at the end and of which a furtive segment here and there is at first only glimpsed. The pure line of time has become autonomous... Time has shaken off its dependency on all extensive movement [....] (1996: xiii/d)
[...] le temps kantien [...] comme une ligne qui se découvre à la fin et dont on n'avait d'abord aperçu que tel ou tel segment furtif. La pure ligne du temps devenu autonome... Le temps a secoué sa dépendance à l'égard de tout mouvement extensif [....] (1991: 8d)
Alliez notes how for Aristotle, there is something unnatural about wealth-acquisition. Normal acquisition for our needs in household management is something that comes naturally [just like how a bird brings worms home to nesting young]. But endlessly acquiring surplus wealth for its own sake is not something that comes naturally but rather involves some learned and perfected craft (techne). (1996: 4a / 1991: 32b)What about the system of this practice for the Aristotle of the Politics, for the Philosopher grappling with the "chrematistic" subversion of a mercantile economy that detaches wealth from property, wrenches money from its mediating condition, withdraws exchange from the law of equivalence to derive a profit from it - that substitutes interest for the social unit of need, the natural referent of the monetary sign? (Alliez 1996: 3cd)
Qu’en est-il du système de cette pratique pour l’Aristote de la Politique, pour le Philosophe aux prises avec la subversion « chrématistique » d’une économie mercantile qui détache la richesse de la propriété, arrache la monnaie de sa condition de médiation, soustrait l’échange à la loi de l’équivalence pour en tirer profit – qui substitue l’intérêt à l’unité sociale du besoin, référent naturel du signe monétaire ? (Alliez 1991: 31bc)
As opposed to barter, monetary circulation splits the immediate identity of these two acts by introducing the antithesis of selling and buying, which appear as mutually indifferent, separate in space and time. The linkage C-M-C should really be written C-M/M-C. "And for future exchange [huper de tes mellouses allages]," writes Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, "if we do not need a thing now [ei nun meden deitai], we shall have it if ever we do need it [ean deethei] - money is as it were our surety [egguetes]." (1996: 6d)As we learned, the basis of M-C-M exchanges was that the intention of the process is to make profit, that is, for the second M to be of a greater quantity of monetary value than the initially invested first M, which was signified as M-C-M'. We also learned in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics that money is a unitary measure of need or demand. A greater need or demand for a commodity is a factor that can increase its monetary worth. Consider two pairs of shoes, each requiring the same value of materials and labor to produce. If one has practical or stylistic features that are greater in demand (and if the supply is equal), the more desired or needed shoes will have a greater monetary value.
A la différence du troc, la circulation monétaire scinde l'identité immédiate de ces deux actes en y introduisant l'antithèse de la vente et de l'achat, qui se présentent comme réciproquement indifférents, séparés dans l'espace et le temps. L'enchaînement M-A-M doit en réalité être écrit M-A/A-M. « Pour les échanges à venir (huper de tes mellouses allages), écrit Aristote dans l'Éthique à Nicomaque, la monnaie nous sert en quelque sorte de garant (egguetes), et, si aucun besoin ne se fait sentir maintenant (ei nun meden deitai), nous l'aurons à notre disposition en cas de besoin (ean deethei). » (1991: 35c)
It is as if money had never been a mere means of exchange, as if its function as "common measure" was legitimating in advance, behind the formal equality of the terms made commensurable, the inscription of an infinite debt turning virtually every exchange into a means of monetary production and appropriation and all money into money "with interest," into time-money, and turning all wealth that escapes its natural place, the oikos, into "progressive value, money that is forever burgeoning and growing, and, as such, capital." From there, every "economic exchange is turned into a "chrematistic" exchange. (1996: 8a.b)Now let's recall Hölderlin's concept of caesura from his analysis of the Sophocles' tragedies, which he says have something like a variation in their pace. There will be a transition point where the rhythm alters. This functions as a “counter-rhythmic rupture” (gegenrhythmische Unterbrechung), which he calls the caesura (Cäsur). (Hölderlin, 102a; V,196). Consider Oedipus Rex. Do you remember how it feels, as far as its pacing is concerned? Do you not recall a gradual building up, and then at the end, things falling apart rapidly? Gradually we learn about the curse, and slowly it becomes less and less deniable that Oedipus is the cause. When Oedipus comes to terms with this fact, he blinds himself and is exiled from Thebes, while Jocasta, his wife and mother, hangs herself. So there is a rush at the end. His moment of realization is the caesura, the counter-rhythmic rupture in the speeds of dramatic development. On the one hand, we might say that the beginning and the end do not 'rhyme', because the speeds are different. But they do not rhyme for another reason too. Normally in Greek tragedies we would expect the tragic character to die at the end, as a sort of justice. Consider first Aeschylus' Agamemnon. For the structure, we imagine the movement of a planet in the heavens. All the other stars make perfect circles, returning to where they were a year prior. The planets in a way veer off from these circular patterns and they make their own path through the sky. However, they eventually return to where they once were. This regularity and constancy is like the limitations the gods place on mortals. Agamemnon is the king, and to kill him is a moral and legal transgression. His wife Clytemnestra commits this transgression by murdering her husband to avenge him for having killing their daughter. It is not until after a long delay that their son Orestes returns to take vengeance on the death of his father by killing his mother. So like the planet that is continuously broken out of the circular paths of the stars, but nonetheless eventually returns to where it once was, the development of Greek tragedies normally involves a transgression that after a delay finds resolution, even though that resolving action will itself be an act of transgression (a murder), keeping the deviant cycles in motion. However, in the Oedipus tale, the tragic character does not die. So his story does not develop like how a planet returns to where it once was. He is rather more like a planet let loose from its orbit, left wandering, as Oedipus does in Oedipus at Colonus. So in this sense the end does not rhyme with the beginning, because the vengeance cycle is broken, and the story does not begin and end with a crime of some sort.
Comme si, donc, l'argent n'avait jamais été un simple moyen d'échange, comme si sa fonction de « commune mesure » légitimait par avance, derrière l'égalité formelle des termes rendus commensurables, l'inscription | d'une dette infinie faisant virtuellement de tout échange un moyen de production et d'appropriation monétaires, de toute monnaie une monnaie « à intérêt », une monnaie-temps, de toute richesse échappant à son lieu naturel, l'oikos, une « valeur progressive, argent toujours bourgeonnant, poussant et comme tel capital »... De là à faire de tout échange « économique » un échange « chrématistique »... (1991: 37-38)
Interest is the effect of a disproportion establishing inequality in terms of a caesura by which the permanence of money no longer coincides with the social presence of need, or with the immanence of an end with each act of exchange, but with the différance of a power (and not of a consuming) obliged to ignore the "concrete time" of presence in order to drain the surplus formed by each sequence of chrematistic exchange. (1996: 10b)So in a way, there is a break in the current flow that in the same stroke places the future into the present, "a future that is banking on the current value / un futur s'escomptant en valeur actuelle". (1996: 12bc / 1991: 43bc)
Effet d'une démesure qui établit l'inégalité en fonction d'une césure d'après laquelle a permanence de la monnaie ne coïncide plus avec la présence sociale du besoin, avec l'immanence de la fin à chaque acte d'échange, mais avec la différance d'un pouvoir (et on d'une consommation) qui se doit d'ignorer le « temps concret » de la présence pour drainer le surplus formé en chaque séquence de l'échange chrématistique. (1991: 40c)
designates finally that depoliticizing (de-realizing) anticipation that can derive profit from exchange because it is inscribed above and before the monetary equivalence it develops, on the tangent of the space of comparison and on the curve of appropriation that it keeps inextricably enveloped. (1996: 13bc, emphasis mine)Chrematistics is an aberration of the cyclical return of commodity value. It produces time not only as an empty form, as the form of an undetermined future given in a hollowed-out present, but it also produces time as a straight line, as the line of intention or intensity for that bought-temporality to try to extend further (to have a longer period of ensured sustained satisfaction). Time, then, comes out of its circular joint and becomes linear, by means of an empty form of time that is as well a cut in time.
Money is [....] Nothing but the all-powerfulness of exponentiality. (1996: 13d, emphasis mine)
désigne au final cette anticipation dépolitisante (dé-réalisante) qui peut tirer profit de l'échange parce qu'elle s'inscrit en amont de l'équivalence monétaire qu'elle développe, à la tangente de l'espace de comparaison et de la courbe d'appropriation qu'elle tient inextricablement enveloppés. (1991: 44cd, emphasis mine)
La monnaie n'est [....] Rien que la toute-puissance de l'exponentiation. (1991: 45b, emphasis mine)
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