Goldschmidt (2.1.4.1.38) Le système stoïcien et l'idée de temps, “Interprétation par les causes”, summary

 

 

by Corry Shores

 

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[The following is summary. Bracketed commentary is my own, as is any boldface. Proofreading is incomplete, which means typos are present, especially in the quotations. So consult the original text. Also, I welcome corrections to my interpretations, because I am not good enough with French or Greek to make accurate translations of the texts.]

 

 

 

Summary of

 

Victor Goldschmidt

 

Le système stoïcien et l'idée de temps

 

Deuxième partie:

Aspects temporels de la morale stoïcienne

 

A

La Connaissance

 

Chapitre IV

L’interprétation des événements

 

1

L’interprétation a l’échelle cosmique

 

2.1.4.1.38

Interprétation par les causes

 

 

 

 

Brief summary:

(2.1.4.1.38.1) When we understand why things happen, namely, for the greater good, then even troubling events become bearable. And with regard to how sometimes bad people obtain good things, we should realize that they paid some moral price for it that we should be glad we are not paying. (2.1.4.1.38.2) We can generalize this notion that whatever happens to us happens for the greater good of the whole to now further say that the same goes for animals and even all inanimate things. For the Stoics, the moral problem is how to actualize this general, natural law, and doing so is what is meant by the precept: “co-operate with Destiny.” (2.1.4.1.38.3) We will next turn to another way that providence refers us back to causality.

 

 

 

 

 

Contents

 

2.1.4.1.38.1

[Providence and Theodicy]

 

2.1.4.1.38.2

[Cooperating with Destiny by Actualizing the Greater Good of the Whole as the Stoic Moral Problem]

 

2.1.4.1.38.3

[Transition to the Next Section on Causality]

 

Bibliography

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summary

 

 

2.1.4.1.38

Providentialisme et causalité

 

 

 

2.1.4.1.38.1

[Providence and Theodicy]

 

(p.88-89: “38 Comprendre le pourquoi des choses peut …”)

 

[In sum: When we understand why things happen, namely, for the greater good, then even troubling events become bearable. And with regard to how sometimes bad people obtain good things, we should realize that they paid some moral price for it that we should be glad we are not paying.]

 

To simply understand the causal why of things (see section 2.1.4.1.37.6) can be enough to interpret them in a divination-like way] and thereby to take away from them their shocking and unbearable elements. We often witness how good things can happen to bad people and how bad things can happen to good people. This has raised the problems in philosophy of divine justice and theodicy. For, if bad people obtain good things, we should realize that they had to “sell their soul” [my words] so to speak to obtain them. They had to lose integrity for example. Thus these ill-gotten gains come at a moral price. Here is one Epictetus passage that Goldschmidt cites:

Epictetus, Discourses, Book 3, Ch.17 “On Providence”, here part:

WHEN you make any charge against Providence, consider, and you will learn that the thing has happened according to reason.—Yes, but the unjust man has the advantage.— In what?—In money.—Yes, for he is superior to you in this, that he flatters, is free from shame, and is watchful. What is the wonder? But see if he has the advantage over you in being faithful, in being modest: for you will not find it to be so; but wherein you are superior, there you will find that you have the advantage. And I once said to a man who was vexed because Philostorgus was fortunate: Would you choose to lie with Sura? May it never happen, he replied, that this day should come? Why then are you vexed, if he receives something in return for that which he sells; or how can you consider him happy who acquires those things by such means as you abominate; or what wrong does Providence, if he gives the better things to the better men? Is it not better to be modest than to be rich?—He admitted this—Why are you vexed then, man, when you possess the better thing? Remember then always and have in readiness the truth, that this is a law of nature, that the superior has an ad- vantage over the inferior in that in which he is superior; and you will never be vexed.

(Epictetus 1890, copied from Perseus)

And here is a similar text that is not cited, but quite useful here I find.

Epictetus, Enchiridion, Ch.25:

Has any man been preferred before you at a banquet, or in being saluted, or in being invited to a consultation? If these things are good, you ought to rejoice that he has obtained them: but if bad, be not grieved because you have not obtained them; and remember that you cannot, if you do not the same things in order to obtain what is not in our own power, be considered worthy of the same (equal) things. For how can a man obtain an equal share with another when he does not visit a man's doors as that other man does, when he does not attend him when he goes abroad, as the other man does; when he does not praise (flatter) him as another does? You will be unjust then and insatiable, if you do not part with the price, in return for which those things are sold, and if you wish to obtain them for nothing. Well, what is the price of lettuces? An obolus¹ perhaps. If then a man gives up the obolus, and receives the lettuces, and if you do not give up the obolus and do not obtain the lettuces, do not suppose that you receive less than he who has got the lettuces; for as he has the lettuces, so you have the obolus which you did not give. In the same way then in the other matter also you have not been invited to a man's feast, for you did not give to the host the price at which the supper is sold; but he sells it for praise (flattery), he sells it for personal attention. Give then the price, if it is for your interest, for which it is sold. But if you wish both not to give the price and to obtain the things, you are insatiable and silly. Have you nothing then in place of the supper? You have indeed, you have the not flattering of him, whom you did not choose to flatter; you have the not enduring of the man when he enters the room.

1. The sixth part of a drachma.

(Epictetus 1890, copied from Perseus)

[Here is the Goldschmidt quotation:]

38 Comprendre le pourquoi des choses peut, en effet, suffire à les interpréter et, par là, à leur enlever ce qu’elles peuvent avoir de choquant et d’insupportable. On sait que le spectacle de la répartition injuste des biens et des maux entre les bons et les méchants avait amené la spéculation | philosophique, dès ses débuts, au problème de la justice divine et de la théodicée¹. Epictète résout ce problème par un simple recours à la causalité ; il est naturel que chacun obtienne ce qu’il poursuit et qu’il reçoive « le prix de ce qu’il vend »: le philosophe, la sagesse, et le méchant, la prospérité². Ici, comme dans certains textes de Marc-Aurèle³, nous sommes très près de l’explication spinoziste des affections.

(88-89)

1. Cf. La religion de Platon, pp. 75 sqq.

2. Epictète, Diss., III, XVII; III, IX, 3-4 ; IV, VII, 36-39.

3. « Quand tu te heurtes à l’impudence de quelqu’un, demande-toi aussitôt : Se peut-il qu’il n’y ait pas d’impudents en ce monde ? – Cela ne se peut. Ne demande donc pas l’impossible. Tu as là devant toi un de ces impudents dont l’existence est nécessaire dans le monde... Quand tu reproches à un homme sa déloyauté ou son ingratitude, fais un retour sur toi-même. C’est évidemmen-ta faute, si tu as cru que cet homme, ayant ces dispositions, tiendrait sa pat role, ou encore si, en lui rendant service, tu n’entendais pas le lui rendre et en rester là, si tu n’as pas fait en sorte de retirer aussitôt de ton action même tout son fruit. » (M.-Aurèle, IX, 42, 1, 10-11). – «Celui qui n’admet pas que le méchant commette de fautes ressemble à celui qui n’admettrait pas que le figuier produise son suc dans les figues, que les marmots piaillent, que le cheval hennisse et autres nécessités de cet ordre » (XII, 16, 2). Cf. déjà Chrysippe ap. Aul.-Gell., VII, I (« Est enim genere ipso quasi fatale et consequens, ut mala ingenia peccatis et erroribus non uacent »).

(89)

 

[contents]

 

 

 

 

 

2.1.4.1.38.2

[Cooperating with Destiny by Actualizing the Greater Good of the Whole as the Stoic Moral Problem]

 

(p.89: “ Cette explication par les causes peut être généralisée …”)

 

[In sum: We can generalize this notion that whatever happens to us happens for the greater good of the whole to now further say that the same goes for animals and even all inanimate things. For the Stoics, the moral problem is how to actualize this general, natural law, and doing so is what is meant by the precept: “co-operate with Destiny.”]

 

[As we saw above in section 2.1.4.1.38.1, we can see that whatever happens to a person is part of a grander sort of divine providential goodness and justice that we cannot often discern.] We can also generalize this principle to all things in the world. The following is from Marcus-Aurelius, Meditations, Book 8, line 46:

46. Nothing can befall a man which is not a natural incident of mankind; nor to an ox, nor to a vine, nor to a stone, which is not a natural incident to these species. If, then, that alone can befall any thing, which is usual, and naturally incident to it, what cause is there for indignation? The presiding nature of the whole hath brought nothing upon you, which you cannot bear?

(Marcus Aurelius 2014: 103)

This notion of natural cause and necessity is a lot like the modern conception of natural law. It is especially so given how the singularity of the event seems to dissolve in the universality of the law. We return to this point later. For now, we observe that for the Stoics, the whole of the moral problem is a matter of the actualization, here and now, of this natural law, and this is what it means for us, as the precept goes, to co-operate with Destiny.

Cette explication par les causes peut être généralisée. « A aucun homme, il ne peut rien arriver qui ne soit un accident humain... Si donc il arrive à chaque être ce qui est conforme à ses habitudes et à sa nature, pourquoi te fâcherais-tu ? La nature universelle n’a rien pu t’apporter qui te soit insupportable⁴. » Cette explication par la cause naturelle, par la nécessité⁵, se rapproche beaucoup de la conception moderne de la loi naturelle. Elle s’en rapproche surtout en ce que la singularité de l’événement semble dissoute (plutôt qu’ « expliquée ») dans l’universalité de la loi. Nous reviendrons plus loin sur ce point. Disons, pour l’instant, que tout le problème moral, pour le stoïcisme, consiste à actualiser, hic et nunc, cette loi, et c’est là ce que signifie le précepte nous enjoignant de coopérer avec le Destin.

(89)

4. M.-Aurèle, VIII, 46.

5. Epict., Diss., IV, X, II; II, V, 27.

(89)

[contents]

 

 

 

 

2.1.4.1.38.3

[Transition to the Next Section on Causality]

 

(p.89: “Nous avons considéré, jusqu’ici, l’explication …”)

 

[In sum: We turn now to another way that providence refers us back to causality.]

 

So far we have considered the explanation of the facts that occur. As well, there is an interpretation for that facts that will occur in the future. We are now going to see yet again that the idea of providence refers us back to the idea of causality.

Nous avons considéré, jusqu’ici, l’explication des faits qui se produisent. Il y a une interprétation également pour les faits qui se produiront. Nous allons voir que, là encore, l’idée de providence nous renvoie à celle de causalité.

(89)

[contents]

 

 

 

 

            

Bibliography

 

From:

 

Goldschmidt, Victor. 1953. Le système stoïcien et l'idée de temps. Paris: Vrin.

 

 

 

Otherwise:

 

 

Epictetus. 1890. The Discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheridion and Fragments. English translation by George Long. London: George Bell and Sons.

Copied from Perseus:

http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0557.tlg001.perseus-eng1

 

Marcus Aurelius. 2014. Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Translated by Hutcheson, Francis and Moor, James. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Text copied from:

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/antoninus-the-meditations-of-the-emperor-marcus-aurelius-antoninus-2008/simple

 

[contents]

 

 

 

 

.

Somers-Hall, (1.6), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘1.6 Nietzsche (36–7/45–7, 40–2/50–2, 52–5/63–7)’, summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos and other distracting mistakes. Somers-Hall is abbreviated SH.]

Summary of

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition:
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

 

Chapter 1. Difference in Itself

1.6 Nietzsche (36–7/45–7, 40–2/50–2, 52–5/63–7)

Very brief summary:

A Nietzschean univocal view of reality would say that there are not primarily independent beings choosing to exercise power morally or immorally. Rather, there are nothing more than competing forces in flux, all exercising their power purely affirmatively, since each force is exerted to the fullest it can be. This is a univocal understanding, since all being is understood as power. And, it is based on difference and affirmation.

Brief summary:

If we understand ‘being’ as power rather than as substantiality, then we can grasp it as univocal and affirmative. Deleuze builds from Nietzsche’s notion of subjectivity being a fabrication created by the weak in order to externalize blame for their weakness. In reality there are just competing forces expressing themselves at their fullest and finding relative value in their competitions. This is a nomadic understanding of what makes up the world. It sees the world as made of pure difference, that is, exclusively of differential relations between competing forces. And it is affirmative, since these powers are understood as being as great as they can be and never arbitrarily self-limiting. They are expressions of a pure affirmative will.  A sedentary understanding would instead section off regions in this field of differential power relations and say we have substances with different moral values, depending on how they seemingly choose to dominate others. This sees one thing as being defined by the limits that separate it from other things, thus it is based on negation rather than affirmation. Also, it can only come after the more basic differential field of change and becoming.

 

Summary

[We previously examined Spinoza’s univocal understanding of being. There is one substance (being/God), but it has an infinity of intensive modal variations/determinations and an infinity of essences. SH will now look at a critical problem Deleuze finds in this, which is that it still in a sense is like Aristotle’s genus-species predicative structure and thus may have its problems of representation. For Aristotle, the genus is a predicate to the species. For example, “Man is (a type of) animal).” Also, the genus is like a substance and the species are like determinations of it. So, an animal can be more determinately a man, a dog, etc. Spinoza’s system still places modes as determinations of being, and in that sense takes this form of (predicative) judgment and thus of representational thinking. I will venture a guess at how this might look. For example maybe we could say something like: ‘this modal variation in the attribute of extension, specifically, myself, is a modal variation of being’. In that way, being still functions like a genus to which we are a predicated determination.]

Despite the fact that Spinoza represents an advance over the work of Scotus, Deleuze claims that for Spinoza, ‘substance must be said itself of the modes and only of the modes. Such a condition can be satisfied only at the price of a more general categorical reversal according to which being is said of becoming, identity of that which is different, the one of the multiple, etc.’ (DR 40/50). Deleuze’s point is that the relation of modes to being is still structured like the terms of a judgement. The modes are said of being, in the same way that we might say of a man that he is rational, and so we still understand being as if it were a subject, even if we know that in reality it is singular rather than one, and thus different in kind from the object of a judgement.
(SH 38)

[While Spinoza (and similarly Scotus) provided an intensive understanding of difference, he still in a sense places being (God/substance) as the highest term in the hierarchy. So we turn now to Nietzsche.] “In order to overcome this limitation, we need somehow to replace our account of | being as the highest term in our hierarchy with difference, whilst retaining the insights given by the intensive understanding of difference; it is Nietzsche, Deleuze claims, who provides the means to do this” (SH 38-39). Although SH will return to Nietzsche later, he will in the following locate two parts of Nietzsche's writings that Deleuze bases his argument on: 1) section 13 of Essay I of Genealogy of Morals, “where Deleuze sees Nietzsche as opposing the subject–property view of reality,” and 2) aphorism 341 of the Gay Science “where Nietzsche presents the eternal return.” For Deleuze, Nietzsche’s eternal return is a univocal principle (SH 39).

In section 13 of Essay I of Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche contrasts “two basic attitudes towards the world, that of the lamb and the bird of prey” (SH 39). The lamb is weak, and it views its predator birds as evil, since they gain dominance and advantage over the lambs. Whatever is opposite to the birds, that is, whatever is more like the lambs, would then be good in the eyes of the lambs. Their values then are not based on some intrinsic value to the birds’ traits and behaviors, but rather based on whatever is superior in power and more threatening to them. Consider instead good and evil from the perspective of the birds. The predator birds do not in this relation see any threats or superior powers. So there is no evil here. And in fact, the lambs are delicious to them. So lambs are not evil but rather good. [I am not sure if this next point is inferable from the prior ones we just made, but the next idea we move to in the Nietzsche quotation is that there are no subjects or actors. This is a mistake we make by using language (and its conceptual structures, like subject-predicate) to understand how events transpire.  For example, we see lightning and its flash. We conceptualize it (in certain Western languages) in a formulation like, “The lightning flashed.” This grammatical structure leads us to conceptualize the lighting as distinct from its flash, as if there is an actor that may choose one action or another. In reality there are just competitions of power operating according to quantities of force (drive, will, action). Perhaps in the case of lighting, we do not have a subject, lighting. Rather we have a competition of positive and negative charges, and as a result of that struggle of force quantities, there is the event of lightning-flash. But I am not sure if I am picturing this properly, since in this illustration, we seem to have two distinct actors, namely, the competing forces or ‘charges’. At any rate, the relevance here is that in reality there is an amoral situation. The powerful force prevails over the less powerful. But both are reciprocally determined in their mutual conflict, so more basically there is just force-differentiation. Language misleads us to misunderstand the situation. We think that there is a dominating party acting immorally upon a dominated party. We hold a supposed subject responsible for the immoral act. But really as we said there is no blame to be given and no subject who could receive blame anyway. Another idea here is that the more powerful side of the conflicts does not really have a choice to be less powerful. This may be because again there is no such actor who might have that option, or perhaps it is because the weak cannot help but be weak and similarly the strong cannot help but to be strong.]

Nietzsche presents a contrast between two basic attitudes towards the world, that of the lamb and the bird of prey [the following up to citation is quotation of Nietzsche Genealogy of Morals]:

There is nothing strange about the fact that lambs bear a grudge towards large birds of prey: but that is no reason to blame the large birds of prey for carrying off the little lambs. And if the lambs say to each other, ‘These birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey and most like its opposite, a lamb, – is good, isn’t he?’, then there is no reason to raise objections to this setting-up of an ideal beyond the fact that the birds of prey will view it somewhat derisively, and will perhaps say: ‘We don’t bear any grudge at all towards these good lambs, in fact we love them, nothing is tastier than a tender lamb’ . . . A quantum of force is just such a quantum of drive, will, action, in fact it is nothing but this driving, willing and acting, and only the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason petrified within it), which construes and misconstrues all actions as conditional upon an agency, a ‘subject’, can make it appear otherwise . . . no wonder, then, if the entrenched, secretly smouldering emotions of revenge and hatred put this belief to their own use and, in fact, do not defend any belief more passionately than that the strong are free to be weak, and the birds of prey are free to be lambs: – in this way, they gain the right to make the birds of prey responsible for being birds of prey. (Nietzsche 2006a: §13)

Nietzsche is here presenting an argument which combines moral and ontological aspects. The natural state of affairs is that of the bird of prey, who exercises his strength, and sees itself as good. The lamb, however, sees the bird of prey as evil, and therefore sees itself as good. The symmetry between these two positions is misleading, however, and each rests on fundamentally different ways of seeing the world. For the bird of prey, its action is simply an expression of its strength, or, in more Nietzschean terms, we might say that the bird of prey itself is an | expression of strength: ‘It is just as absurd to ask strength not to express itself as strength . . . as it is to ask weakness to express itself as strength’ (Nietzsche 2006a: §13).
(SH 39-40)

[The next paragraph continues ideas made in our prior bracketed commentary regarding grammar and subjectivity.]

The lamb’s reaction is a moral reaction, and one that is made possible by an illusion fostered by grammar: it posits a subject who is responsible for exercising its strength. Nietzsche gives the further example of lightning. When we say that ‘lightning strikes’, we are forced by the structure of language to posit a distinction between a subject (‘lightning’) and an act (‘striking’). Now we might recognise in this case that in fact there is nothing other to the lightning than its striking itself – there is no hidden subject behind the act – but language opens up a way of thinking of the world in terms of agents and actions. Once the lamb understands the bird of prey as an agent acting, he can posit the (illusory) possibility of the agent withholding this action. Thus, the bird of prey, once it is seen as a subject, becomes culpable for what it does.
(SH 40)

SH will now use this distinction [I think, between a subject-structured understanding of events and a force-conflict understanding] to explain Deleuze’s other distinction between sedentary and nomadic distributions. A distribution is a way “of thinking about what something is essentially, or more generally, what kinds of things the world is composed of” (SH 40). [Perhaps it is considered a ‘distribution’ because it is concerned with how compositional parts are arranged.] Our attention in the following will be working for a while on sedentary distributions, regarding which Deleuze writes, “‘A distribution of this type proceeds by fixed and proportional determinations which may be assimilated to “properties” or limited territories within representation’ (DR 36/45)” (SH 40). We are here reminded of Aristotle’s system of division which differentiates things on the basis of clear defining limits that define what is special and proper to each thing. In the above bird/lamb illustration, the lamb would be working with sedentary distributions, since it regards itself and the birds as different actors with distinct traits that have very different moral values (40).

We also note that in this Aristotelian sedentary conception, limits serve to define what makes one thing what it is and what makes something else not that thing but rather something different entirely. This notion of delimiting then makes us conceptualize notions spatially, as if one could occupy one part of conceptual space and have a limit, outside of which it does not belong but in where other concepts do [think for example of Venn diagrams]. It also involves a concept of negation [since we understand each concept in terms of how it is not the others, and vice versa]. [This conception also would have us judge the degree to which an actual instance fits with its proper concept. Perhaps for example we might characterize something as more typical or exemplary of its class.] “Finally, it provides ‘a hierarchy which measures beings according to their limits, and according to their proximity or distance from a principle’ (DR 36/46); in other words, according to how closely a being conforms with its essence or is a degenerate instance of it” (SH 41). This means that the sedentary distribution regards the world on the basis of opposition and negation.

A sedentary distribution therefore is a way of ordering the world that is hierarchical, and proceeds by the delimitation of the world according to oppositional determinations. The notion of difference is grounded in negation and operates according to a spatial metaphor.
(41)

The Aristotelian system regarded difference as being a matter of ‘this and not that’. Yet we saw how for Scotus and Spinoza we may regard difference not as difference in kind but rather as intensive qualitative variation, that is, having more or less a degree. We are not in these cases working with “a spatial conception of organisation” (41). Thus “Deleuze introduces the univocal conception of being in order to explain those features of the world which escaped something like an Aristotelian conception of the world” (41). [I do not completely grasp the next quotation about Oedipus. Perhaps it is similar to the idea we examined before that for Scotus, there is just an intensive difference between God’s infinite being and our own finite being, but still we make a difference-in-kind distinction between the two. Or we might also think that the difference between ice and water is quantitatively (and intensively) a small change, but qualitatively it is a complete difference in kind.]

Deleuze introduces the univocal conception of being in order to explain those features of the world which escaped something like an Aristotelian conception of the world. The nomadic distribution is intimately connected to this univocal conception: ‘Oedipus’ chorus cries: “which demon has leapt further than the highest leap?” The leap here bears witness to the unsettling difficulties that nomadic distributions introduce into the sedentary structures of representation’ (DR 37/46).
(SH 41)

[The next part is a bit confusing for me. My impression is that it is a reference to Deleuze’s Spinozistic notions of ‘what a body can do’, limit, and perfection. In this talk here Deleuze discusses the difference between spatialized limit and the limit of power or action. There is more discussion of ‘what can a body do’ here, and also in this and this talk. And see again especially Deleuze’s commentary on Spinoza’s correspondence with Blyenbergh regarding the perfection of essence and modal expression. It seems in the quoted Deleuze passage that instead of limit being understood spatially, we are to understand it more as a limit of action or power, a limit of what one body can do. One main idea in the Blyenbergh correspondence is that everything is doing everything that it can do in any given moment. If it seems to be weak, that is because it finds itself in a certain relation of forces, including the competing forces within it and also including the competing forces between itself and other external competing forces, in which it is expressing the fullest power it is able to have in that moment. Deleuze gives the example of meditating in the dark, and someone turns on the light suddenly. The person loses power, since the light dazzles them and makes them lose meditative concentration. The person is still functioning at their optimum even when blinded, but just under these circumstances the optimum is relatively lower than before. If however the person were looking for their glasses in the dark, and someone gradually turns up the light so they can better see them, then their power is increased relatively given that situation. These fluctuations in power are not however fluctuations in perfection. All is equally perfect in a sense, since everything is operating at its maximum (and also, from the perspective of substance itself, nothing is being subtracted from it even though its modal parts are varying in power in relation to one another). It is perhaps for this reason that Deleuze says in the quote to follow that “the smallest becomes equivalent to the largest”, in that all are equally affirmative of the power they have in any given situation. The point SH seems to be making here is that we do not think of the world as being made up of things that choose whether or not to exercise their power but rather we have competing forces in a world of fluctuating changes. SH’s further points become slightly more difficult for me to grasp. The next point is that for Deleuze, negation results from affirmation. To get to this point, perhaps we first recognize that the substance-property based ontology which fixes subjects who perform actions and express properties is based on negation, since it depends on definitional limits. But if we follow Deleuze’s Nietzschean-Spinozism, we would say that more primarily there are competitions of forces, whose limits are not spatially substantial but are rather intensive degrees of moreness or lessness. This is purely affirmative, since everything expresses its power in complete fullness, given the affective circumstances of their situation. Then secondly, on account of feelings of powerlessness, we externalize blame to subjectivities we fabricate in this indeterminate field of forces. (I still cannot make my account consistent regarding how it is that  we can have entities which place blame on other entities they fabricate but supposedly there never were any entities to begin with). So first the world in its basis is affirmative (in that there is will to express power in fullness each moment) and composed of pure difference (in the form of differential relations between competing forces). Only secondly and on a less fundamental level do negations arise in the form of fabricated or conceptualized limits between supposed agents wrongly understood to be making moral choices of whether or not to artificially limit their own power.]

If a sedentary distribution is fundamentally tied to an understanding of the world in terms of subjects and properties, how are we to understand this notion of a nomadic distribution? The key point is Deleuze’s claim that everything goes to the limit of what it can do. He elaborates on this as follows [the following up to citation is quotation of Deleuze]:

Here limit [peras] no longer refers to what maintains a thing under a law, nor what delimits or separates it from other things. On the contrary, it refers to that on the basis of which it is deployed and deploys all of its power; hubris ceases to | be simply condemnable and the smallest becomes equivalent to the largest once it is not separated from what it can do. (DR 37/46)

When we separate the bird of prey from its action, or lightning from its striking, we institute the two moments of an ontology of judgement: the subject and the property. This moment of separation of something from what it can do is what gives us the Aristotelian idea of a world of fixed things. If something is not separated from what it can do, then instead of an ontology of being, we have an ontology of forces, or becoming. There are not static points from which movement originates, but rather just movement itself. We can tie together a number of results at this stage. Just as Scotus shows that analogy can only operate within a prior univocal framework, Nietzsche shows that the point of view of the lamb is derivative of that of the bird of prey. Deleuze similarly argues that ‘negation results from affirmation: this means that negation arises in the wake of affirmation or beside it, but only as the shadow of the more profound genetic element – of that power or “will” which engenders the affirmation and the difference in affirmation’ (DR 55/67). Difference is therefore primary in this scheme. This leads us to the last aspect of Deleuze’s discussion of univocity: how are we to conceive of a univocal conception of becoming?
(SH 41-42)

 

 

 

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

DR:
[Deleuze] Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994/London: Continuum, 2004.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (2006a), On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, (0.4), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘0.4 Kierkegaard (5–9/5–10)’, summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own.]

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition.
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

 

 

0 Introduction: Repetition and Difference

0.4 Kierkegaard (5–9/5–10)

Summary

Brief summary:

Kierkegaard presents a notion of repetition in moral life which does not fit the idea of a universal law. Kant says that Abraham should not have assented to God’s request to kill his only son Isaac, since doing so goes against the categorical imperative. Kierkegaard thinks that there is an absolute (God) which is of a higher moral authority than the ethical universal. Repetition in moral life, for Kierkegaard, is not obeying the same law over and over, but rather obeying an absolute whose commands are not homogeneous or self-consistent. What is notable in this conception of repetition is that it is not the reiteration of the same action but rather each time behaving differently in a different situation.

 

 

Summary

“Deleuze claims that there are three thinkers who ‘oppose repetition to all forms of generality’: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Peguy (DR 5/6)” (SH 11). SH will treat Nietzsche’s eternal return later and for now focus mainly on “Kierkegaard’s alternative to generality” (11). Deleuze is concerned mostly with Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. Recall that here Kierkegaard tells the story of God testing Abraham’s obedience by commanding him to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Abraham was willing to do so, but God spares Isaac and allows a ram to be sacrificed instead (12). While Kant thinks that Abraham should not have attempted to kill his son, as this goes against the categorical imperative, Kierkegaard thinks that Abraham has a faith so strong that it overrides such ethical laws.

For Kant, the fact that the commandment to commit murder contravenes the categorical imperative means that it could not have been a commandment given by God, and hence Abraham acted immorally in being willing to fulfil it” (12).

[In Kant, the universal is the absolute. But in Kierkegaard, there is an absolute, God, that has a higher authority than the universal.]

The position that Kierkegaard puts forward in Fear and Trembling is rather that the incommensurability of Abraham’s actions with the moral law shows that Abraham’s faith is higher than any ethical considerations [the following sentence quotes Kierkegaard]:

The paradox of faith, then, is this: that the single individual is higher than the universal, that the single individual – to recall a distinction in dogmatics rather rare these days – determines his relation to the universal by his relation to the absolute, not his relation to the absolute by his relation to the universal. (Kierkegaard 1983: 70)

What ultimately justifies Abraham’s actions is a direct relationship with God that is incomprehensible from the point of view of universal law. This is a relationship that necessarily falls outside of the sphere of generality and law.
(12, quoting: Kierkegaard, Søren (1983), Fear and Trembling/Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press.)

[I do not find the following point regarding Job to be clear enough for me to summarize. I cannot grasp what about Job’s story is repetition. Is Kierkegaard saying that the reiteration of punishments is repetition, and Bildad argues that by letting them come repeatedly, that they will come to be exhausted? Is the thunderstorm the end of the reiterations, but in Deleuze’s interpretation, somehow a repetition?  I will quote it so you can interpret it properly for yourself.]

Kierkegaard makes clear the relation of this moment of faith to repetition in Repetition, this time with a discussion of Job. Job is also tested by God, who allows him to suffer misfortunes to prove to the devil that Job’s faith is not a consequence of God’s protection of him from misfortune. In this case, Job’s restoration is equated with repetition in a way that mirrors the return of Isaac to Abraham [the following paragraph quotes Kierkegaard]:

So there is a repetition, after all. When does it occur? Well, that is hard to say in any human language. When did it occur for Job? When every thinkable human certainty and probability were impossible. Bit by bit he loses everything, and hope thereby gradually vanishes, inasmuch as actuality, far from being placated, rather lodges stronger and stronger allegations against him. From the point of view of immediacy, everything is lost. His friends, especially Bildad, know but one way out, that by submitting to the punishment he may dare to hope for a repetition to the point of overflowing. Job will not have it. With that the knot and the entanglement are tightened and can be untied only by a thunderstorm. (Kierkegaard 1983: 212–13)

Repetition, therefore, is this moment that falls outside of the categories of reason (the thunderstorm introduced by Kierkegaard). It is not a physi-| cal repetition (the Bible tells us Job gets back twice what he lost, putting the repetition outside of the sphere of quantitative identity). Rather than being based on universality, as it is for Kant, for Kierkegaard (and for Deleuze) it is based on singularity.
(12-13, quoting Kierkegaard, same text)

Deleuze then summarizes the philosophies of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Peguy in terms of repetition, giving “four criteria for a philosophy of repetition” (13).

1. Make repetition something new by connecting it with a test that will affirm one’s freedom even in the face of moral and natural law demanding otherwise.

2. Oppose repetition to the law of nature.

3. Oppose repetition to moral law.

4. Oppose repetition to the generalities of habit and to the particularities of memory (13).

[The criteria seem to continue from the above discussion, except for the memory part. Here perhaps memory ties the present too often to the past, and redundantly so, by means of association.] Deleuze will ultimately reject Kierkegaard’s notion of repetition since it is based on the relationship between a subject and object and for that reason is tied too much to the physical and moral worlds [in where we make these distinctions, but which do not hold when we think more of pure difference itself.] “Nonetheless, Kierkegaard prefigures Deleuze in seeing the need for a radical rethinking of the nature of repetition.” (14).

 

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

Kierkegaard, Søren (1983), Fear and Trembling/Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Somers-Hall, (0.3), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘0.3 Kant’s Moral Law (3–5/4–5)’, summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own.]

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition.
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

 

 

0 Introduction: Repetition and Difference

0.3 Kant’s Moral Law (3–5/4–5)

Brief summary:

It might seem that moral laws which tell us to do the same thing in the same situations are instances of real repetition. But they are really just the application of the mechanistic operation of natural laws into our moral life, and thus they are generalities like scientific laws rather than real repetitions.

 

 

Summary

Previously we saw how repetition is not f0und in the laws of nature (found through scientific experimentation). Now we see if it repetition can be found in the moral realm (9). Deleuze works here with Kant, who distinguished natural and rational law (9). Consider if all our actions were mechanically determined. Then we would not be morally responsible for our actions, as we would not have chosen them. In Kant’s ethics, we need instead to be free autonomous beings in order to be moral agents (9). [We might say that there is something irrational about acting mechanistically. There is no deliberate thought involved. In order to conduct moral actions, one needs to be using one’s rational faculties in order to reason about situations and decide on the basis of that reasoning rather than on the basis of mechanical reactions.]

Kant’s essential claim is that if we are to be autonomous, that is, self-legislating, then, given that we are rational creatures, self-legislation must involve giving ourselves rational laws to govern our conduct. Furthermore, in order that these laws be purely rational, they should not contain any empirical content whatsoever. That is, the principles of morals must be purely formal principles. So Kant appears to create a sharp distinction between two realms, and two kinds of laws. On the one hand, empirical laws, which deal with determinate content, and on the other hand, moral laws, which are purely rational and formal.
(9)

We then wonder if in the rational do we find true repetition? (9)

[Any time we contradict ourselves, we are not being rational (you might think). As such, our rational moral behavior would be guided by laws which do not lead to contradictions.]

Kant proposes that if there is to be a formal criterion, it has to be based on the notion of rational consistency. The only way that we can provide a determination as to what we should do in a given circumstance is negatively. If the act can be performed without contradiction, | then it is a moral act. He formulates the key criterion, the categorical imperative, as follows [the following italicized sentence is quotation of Kant]:

Act only in accordance with a maxim through which you can at the same time will that it be a universal law. (Kant 1998: 31)

The central idea behind Kant’s account is therefore that if we can understand an action as hypothetically governed by a maxim that everyone held to without it producing a contradiction, then that action is a moral action.
(9-10, quoting: Kant, Immanuel (1998), Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)

One example is that it would not be moral to promise to repay borrowed money while having the intention of not paying it back. For, if everyone did this, no one would believe such a promise in the first place. [The following is from the Kant text:

2) Another finds himself urged by need to borrow money. He well knows that he will not be able to repay it but sees also that nothing will be lent him unless he promises firmly to repay it within a determinate time. He would like to make such a promise, but he still has enough conscience to ask himself: is it not forbidden and contrary to duty to help oneself out of need in such a way? Supposing that he still decided to do so, his maxim of action would go as follows: when I believe myself to be in need of money I shall borrow money and promise to repay it, even though I know that this will never happen. Now this principle of self-love or personal advantage is perhaps quite consistent with my whole future welfare, but the question now is whether it is right. I therefore turn the demand of self-love into a universal law and put the question as follows: how would it be if my maxim became a universal law? I then see at once that it could never hold as a universal law of nature and be consistent with itself, but must necessarily contradict itself. For, the universality of a law that everyone, when he believes himself to be in need, could promise whatever he pleases with the intention of not keeping it would make the promise and the end one might have in it itself impossible, since no one would believe what was promised him but would laugh at all such expressions as vain pretenses.
(Kant, 32)

]

This seems to be repetition. To universalize the action into a law would appear to mean to suppose it is repeatable.

If an action could become a universal law, that is, if it could be repeated, then it is a moral act. In this sense, repetition is not just something that is present within the moral realm, but is even the test or criterion by which we determine if something belongs to the moral realm.
(SH 10)

We then wonder if Kant provides “an account of repetition as strict universality?” (10).

[Notice a tension here. Natural law is supposedly a generality which applies in all cases. Autonomous rational thinking supposedly is not bound to such mechanistic repetition. However, to be moral for Kant, we need to strip away our autonomy and blindly obey a law of behavior as if we were robotically programmed.]

Deleuze presents the following antinomy in Difference and Repetition [the following quotes DR]:

Conscience, however, suffers from the following ambiguity: it can be conceived only by supposing the moral law to be external, superior and indifferent to the natural law; but the application of the moral law can be conceived only by restoring to conscience itself the image and the model of the law of nature. (DR 4/5)
(SH 10)

Somers-Hall quotes from Deleuze’s Kant’s Critical Philosophy where Deleuze explains that supersensible nature (rational moral law) can only be understood by analogy with sensible nature (natural law). (10-11)

While we may posit the existence of the free moral realm, we lack any way of conceiving of it, since it differs in kind from the world we find around us. Thus, if we are to represent it to ourselves, we have to rely on an analogy with the world we find around us.
(11)

[So we do not find real repetition in moral law, because our understanding of it is contaminated with natural law, which we saw was generality and not repetition.] Deleuze also thinks that Kant’s notion of duty is modeled on habit. [Since habit is also mechanical in the sense of determinism and natural law, then] as such, duty as habit is concerned more with similarities by ignoring the differences between events (equalization). (11)

Citations from:
 

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or otherwise from:

Kant, Immanuel (1998), Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eternal Affirmation, in Nietzsche, Will to Power, §55

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. The original translation is placed at the end.]

Eternal Affirmation

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Will to Power

§ 55

(June 10, 1887)

Some people believe in God early in their lives. Later they develop critical thinking abilities. Then they find too many inconsistencies for their beliefs to hold together. In this way, some lose faith in a moral order guaranteed by God.

But often such people do more than just lose belief. They feel betrayed. There was once a source of meaning. Now there is nothing. They become nihilists.

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme positions of the opposite kind. Thus the belief in the absolute immorality of nature, in aim- and meaninglessness, is the psychologically necessary affect once the belief in God and an essentially moral order becomes untenable. (Nietzsche, Will to Power, Kaufman transl. 35a)

They come to realize that to see the world as morally ordered by God is to hold an interpretation. But because it was the ultimate interpretation, now all existence seems to have no meaning or purpose.

One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain. (Nietzsche, Will to Power, Kaufman transl. 35a)

Une interprétation entre autres a fait naufrage, mais comme elle passait pour être la seule interprétation possible, il semble que l'existence n'ait plus de sens, que tout soit vain. (VP III 8, Bianquis transl. 12c)

One interpretation among others was shipwrecked, but as it passed for the only possible interpretation it seems that existence no longer has meaning, that everything is in vain (Hugh Tomlinson transl. in Deleuze, Nietzsche & Philosophy. 23bc)

*

Nietzsche will still need to demonstrate that our current culture of nihilism results from this feeling of life being all in vain.

These nihilists were betrayed by their old values. They realized that they were the products of arbitrary interpretations. Since all values will result from arbitrary interpretations, none seem legitimate. So they mistrust all values. They see that they are helpless but also see no solution. There seems to be no way to value existence.

*

This life we live seems meaningless. Would it not be terrible to double it, and live it a second time? What about infinite times? Would that mean eternal meaninglessness? Nietzsche has us consider this "most terrible" idea.

existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: "the eternal recurrence." This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the "meaningless"), eternally!

Nietzsche elsewhere has shown that Western science leads to this "Buddhistic" notion of eternal "reincarnation" and the seeming valuelessness of existence.

We conclude a cosmological eternal recurrence if we follow mechanistic (and thermodynamic) principles, and take up these three assumptions:

a) Time extends infinitely to the past and to the future. [We cannot scientifically explain a beginning without defying the principle of sufficient reason: any positing of an absolute beginning calls for some cause, which itself requires a cause, and so on. Hence there must be either an infinite regress of causally determined events or of chance-decided events. If there is no first determining cause, then there is no first determined cause, and thus no second determined cause. Hence all the way through the series leading up to now, nothing is determined. Thus,...]

b) All events are decided [at least in part] by chance. [This is the only way to conceive time in the scientific way as lacking beginning or end as we saw above. For otherwise, there would be infinitely regressive determinism, which is absurd. There is no chain of determination if it was never initiated. Hence nothing is determined. The only way it could be initiated is if there is an uncaused cause, which is unscientific.]

c) Events involve struggles between forces. Only by positing a God-like entity could there be some way for more force to be added to the net total of energy in the cosmos. From the standpoint of modern western scientific thinking, there could be no such deity constantly feeding the cosmos with more force. So that leaves two other options. Either the net amount of forces stays the same for all eternity, or it diminishes. Lord Kelvin recognized that the principle of entropy would say that the all the cosmos' energy will eventually dissipate. This is why he posits the God-like principle that continues to replenish the cosmos with more energy. But this is not a scientific explanation, we noted. But then it cannot be that the cosmos loses energy. For if there has been infinite time before now, it would have lost all its power already, no matter how slow the dissipation, and no matter how great the total cosmic energy. Thus there is always the same net amount of force. Then how do we explain all the change around us? Nietzsche says that the distributions of force throughout the world are uneven and ever-changing. At any one moment, there will be so much competing forces in one place, and more or less in other places.

The third important assumption is that the number of possible distributions of forces is finite. Nietzsche holds that forces come in different discrete values or "quanta."

Now, if we adopt these scientific and mechanistic principles, we will still conclude that there is an eternal recurrence of the same event. There are only so many possible different distributions of forces. Eventually all the possibilities will become exhausted, and the chance presents itself for the world to begin a new cycle. In the next world, things will probably be different. But this world will end. A new one will follow it. Eventually by chance, the same world-sequence happening now will repeat again in precisely the same way. So we will live again as ourselves and live exactly the same life, some time in the distant future.

So we see why the eternal recurrence is "the most scientific of all possible hypotheses." Nietzsche is probably not espousing the recurrence as a scientific theory. Rather, he is showing that the modernist assumptions that drive scientific progress will result in this conclusion. Hence our current nihilism. Recall that infinite time preceding us implies that the world never reached a stasis point where all the changing ended. And if it never happen already despite an infinite number of chances to do so, it never will happen in the future. So there is no end to the world. Thus there is no end or purpose to existence.

*

Now, if we believed that the world itself is endowed with a divine principle, in a pantheistic sense, then we would believe there is always some guiding purpose. So because the idea of the eternal return denies an end, it would seem to be antithetical to pantheism. If a god guided the world, that would thereby establish some principle end, and our acting in accordance with it would be considered moral. But maybe there could be a pantheistic god who is beyond good and evil, that is to say, who does not uphold every moment to some status beyond it, as though certain moments are closer or further away from the way things should be, or will someday finally be. Each moment in this world would be equal to the rest. Spinoza held such a non-moralistic pantheism. Every moment has the same logical necessity, and there is no beginning or end. The whole world is god, but the world is always affirmative. For, it is never deficient in any way at all. It eternally expresses its infinity, so each moment is as infinite as the rest.

*

Now if all moments are equally necessary and affirmational, that means every moment of our lives is necessary and affirmative. If we realized this idea, we would always feel the pleasure of triumph at every moment, seeing that everything no matter what is infinitely good and valuable.

*

Those who realize their inferiority fall into despair. People no matter how powerless might still feel power over nature. But they will never stop feeling powerless to other men. Hence "it is the experience of being powerless against men, not against nature, that generates the most desperate embitterment against existence." But their diminished status does not mean that their will to power ceases to express itself. They just express it differently. So to protect themselves from this despair, they use morality to check their oppressor's power.

Morality consequently taught men to hate and despise most profoundly what is the basic character trait of those who rule: their will to power.

So the weaker feel morally superior to the stronger. But they attained that feeling by expressing their will to power resentfully through moral law. So really they do not stand on higher moral ground. If they realized this, they would return to their state of despair, seeing that despite their expressions of will to power, they are still limited by those more powerful than them.

*

In fact, they would learn that they are morally inferior. For, if life is will to power, then the only thing that has value in life is the "degree of power". We are morally obligated, in a sense, to obtain power.

Those with less power sheltered themselves from feeling enslaved by positing that everyone has a soul. This gives them an infinite and eternal, moral and metaphysical value that places them "in an order that did not agree with the worldly order of rank and power: it taught resignation, meekness, etc."

*

If the weak did not have this metaphysical comfort, they would die from self-destruction. We see this self-destructive tendency expressed in many ways, for example: “self-vivisection, poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, above all the instinctive need for actions that turn the powerful into mortal enemies." This self-destructive instinct is based on a much deeper will for nothingness.

*

So those who lose morality are driven to self-destruction. But again, this is an expression of will to power. Hence they act out against the powerful so that their superiors will punish them. By this means, they compel the powerful to be their "hangman." This is comparable to Buddhism in a sense. While a Buddhist says 'No' to doing, the European version does 'No,' that is, he acts contrary to his superiors.

*

We see then that nihilism is at least a step up from God, morality, and resignation. For, 1) shedding moral values indicates that one is not so desperate as to depend on them, and 2) knowing the reality of the situation gives one more power.

The feeling that morality has been overcome presupposes a fair degree of spiritual culture, and this in turn that one is relatively well off.

People are even better off if they go further than shed morality and also become skeptical of all philosophy, on account of the "spiritual weariness" resulting from "the long fight of philosophical opinions." Buddha taught an eternal return-like reincarnation. At the same time in the West, there emerged scholarly presuppositions that lead as well to the principle of eternal recurrence. Consider for example the concept of causality. As we saw above, this implies an infinite regress and progress, and hence also an eternal return of the same.

*

Normally we consider how people are politically underprivileged. Nietzsche wonders how they might be psychologically underprivileged. Those who are unhealthy react badly to the idea of the eternal recurrence.

they will experience the belief in the eternal recurrence as a curse, struck by which one no longer shrinks from any action; not to be extinguished passively but to extinguish everything that is so aim- and meaningless, although this is a mere convulsion, a blind rage at the insight that everything has been for eternities — even this moment of nihilism and lust for destruction.

So some want to see the meaninglessness of the world be destroyed, to purify it by eliminating it. To do so requires destruction. And destruction means pitting forces against each other. Such unhealthy people hierarchize men according to strength. Those with similar levels of strength and opposite minds are assigned 'common tasks,' so that they 'perish of each other.' Then, at all levels of society, the stronger become recognized as commanders, and the weaker as the servants.

*

Those who would survive in such an order are the ones who accept and affirm themselves and as well the chance necessities of life:

those who do not require any extreme articles of faith; those who not only concede but love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense; those who can think of man with a considerable reduction of his value without becoming small and weak on that account: those richest in health who are equal to most misfortunes and therefore not so afraid of misfortunes — human beings who are sure of their power and represent the attained strength of humanity with conscious pride. (emphasis mine)

*

Nietzsche ends by wondering how such an affirmative person would consider the eternal recurrence. It seems to me that the very idea would amplify their joy and power.

Original text, obtained gratefully from the Athenaeum Reading Room:

55 (June 10, 1887)31

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme positions of the opposite kind. Thus the belief in the absolute immorality of nature, in aim- and meaninglessness, is the psychologically necessary affect once the belief in God and an essentially moral order becomes untenable. Nihilism appears at that point, not that the displeasure at existence has become greater than before but because one has come to mistrust any "meaning" in suffering, indeed in existence. One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain.

That this "in vain" constitutes the character of present-day nihilism remains to be shown. The mistrust of our previous valuations grows until it becomes the question: "Are not all 'values' lures that draw out the comedy without bringing it closer to a solution?" Duration "in vain," without end or aim, is the most paralyzing idea, particularly when one understands that one is being fooled and yet lacks the power not to be fooled.

Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: "the eternal recurrence." This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the "meaningless"), eternally!

The European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and strength compels this belief. It is the most scientific of all possible hypotheses. We deny end goals: if existence had one it would have to have been reached.

So one understands that an antithesis to pantheism is attempted here: for "everything perfect, divine, eternal" also compels a faith in the "eternal recurrence." Question: does morality make impossible *is pantheistic affirmation of all things, too? At bottom, it is only the moral god that has been overcome. Does it make sense to conceive a god "beyond good and evil"? Would a pantheism in this sense be possible? Can we remove the idea of a goal from the process and then affirm the process in spite of this?-This would be the case if something were attained at every moment within this process--and always the same. Spinoza reached such an affirmative position in so far as every moment has a logical necessity, and with his basic instinct, which was logical, he felt a sense of triumph that the world should be constituted that way.

But his case is only a single case. Every basic character trait that is encountered at the bottom of every event, that finds expression in every event, would have to lead every individual who experienced it as his own basic character trait to welcome every moment of universal existence with a sense of triumph. The crucial point would be that one experienced this basic character trait in oneself as good, valuable--with pleasure.

It was morality that protected life against despair and the leap into nothing, among men and classes who were violated and oppressed by men: for it is the experience of being powerless against men, not against nature, that generates the most desperate embitterment against existence. Morality treated the violent despots, the doers of violence, the "masters" in general as the enemies against whom the common man must be protected, which means first of all encouraged and strengthened. Morality consequently taught men to hate and despise most profoundly what is the basic character trait of those who rule: their will to power. To abolish, deny, and dissolve this morality--that would mean looking at the best-hated drive with an opposite feeling and valuation. If the suffering and oppressed lost the faith that they have the right to despise the will to power, they would enter the phase of hopeless despair. This would be the case if this trait were essential to life and it could be shown that even in this will to morality this very "will to power" were hidden, and even this hatred and contempt were still a will to power. The oppressed would come to see that they were on the same plain with the oppressors, without prerogative, without higher rank.

Rather the opposite! There is nothing to life that has value, except the degree of power-assuming that life itself is the will to power. Morality guarded the underprivileged against nihilism by assigning to each an infinite value, a metaphysical value, and by placing each in an order that did not agree with the worldly order of rank and power: it taught resignation, meekness, etc. Supposipg that the faith in this morality would perish, then the underprivileged would no longer have their comfort--and they would perish.

This perishing takes the form of self-destruction--the instinctive selection of that which must destroy. Symptoms of this selfdestruction of the underprivileged: self-vivisection, poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, above all the instinctive need for actions that turn the powerful into mortal enemies (as it were, one breeds one's own hangmen); the will to destruction as the will of a still deeper instinct, the instinct of self-destruction, the will for nothingness.

Nihilism as a symptom that the underprivileged have no comfort left; that they destroy in order to be destroyed; that without morality they no longer have any reason to "resign themselves" --that they place themselves on the plain of the opposite principle and also want power by compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. This is the European form of Buddhism--saying No after all existence has lost its "meaning."

It is not that "distress" has grown: on the contrary. "God, morality, resignation," were remedies on terribly low rungs of misery: active nihilism appears in relatively much more favorable conditions. The feeling that morality has been overcome presupposes a fair degree of spiritual culture, and this in turn that one is relatively well off. A certain spiritual weariness that, owing to the long fight of philosophical opinions, has reached the most hopeless skepticism regarding all philosophy, is another sign of the by no means low position of these nihilists. Consider the situation in which the Buddha appeared. The doctrine of the eternal recurrence would have scholarly presuppositions (as did the Buddha's doctrine; e. g., the concept of causality, etc.).

*

What does "underprivileged" mean? Above all, physiologically--no longer politically. The unhealthiest kind of man in Europe (in all classes) furnishes the soil for this nihilism: they will experience the belief in the eternal recurrence as a curse, struck by which one no longer shrinks from any action; not to be extinguished passively but to extinguish everything that is so aim- and meaningless, although this is a mere convulsion, a blind rage at the insight that everything has been for eternities--even this moment of nihilism and lust for destruction.--It is the value of such a crisis that it purlfies, that it pushes together related elements to perish of each other, that it assigns common tasks to men who have opposite ways of thinking--and it also brings to light the weaker and less secure among them and thus promotes an order of rank according to strength, from the point of view of health: those who command are recognized as those who command, those who obey as those who obey. Of course, outside every existing social order.

*

Who will prove to be the strongest in the course of this? The most moderate; those who do not require any extreme articles of faith; those who not only concede but love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense; those who can think of man with a considerable reduction of his value without becoming small and weak on that account: those richest in health who are equal to most misfortunes and therefore not so afraid of misfortunes--human beings who are sure of their power and represent the attained strength of humanity with conscious pride.

*

How would such a human being even think of the eternal recurrence?

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. Transl Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1967.

Text reproduction obtained gratefully from:

http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/nietzsche_wtp01.htm

Many other hard-to-find online texts also available at the Athenaeum Reading Room.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. La Volonté de puissance, II. Transl. G. Bianquis. Paris: Gallimard, 1938

Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche & Philosophy. Transl. Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.