PHILOSOPHICAL CRESTING
As you write in your uplifting post, Yusef,
Yes, affirming life, creating concepts, riding the crest, that's the aim of philosophy. Let's ride the Deleuzian waves of fluidity, delve onto the immanence of organic life, and roll with the punches of static blows.
The paradigm is shifting. In Deleuze’s “Pourparlez 1973-1990” he describes his own (often failed) attempts at creating and treating text as a STREAM, and not as a code.
In other words: reading and creating are exercises in intensities. As he writes in “Spokesmen”, taking his analogy from the world of sports (Olympian and Greek) which was characterized by effort and resistance from a fixed point, as in running, discus and javelin throwing, and shot putting, the new forms of sports today like surfing, paragliding and windsurfing are about riding on an already existing wave.
Philosophy now is how to be incorporated into the movement which is performed by a wave or an ascending stream of air – whereby you “enter” a movement rather than being the starting point of an effort.
However, philosophy still returns to the “fixed” values and to the concept of the intellectual as the guardian of eternal values. As soon as philosophy finds itself in a vacant period it takes refuge in the reflection “on” something like the eternal or the historical. If it can not create movement or ride it, philosophy starts impotently reflecting.
Let's not fall into that trap.
How we can create our subjectivation? you ask.
Do we need subjectivation?
Or am I flirting with the enemy that I can't live without?
posted by Orla Schantz at 6:24 PM
4 Comments:
If you are flirting with it and you can't live without it, why call it an enemy?
Actually, my romantic history disqualifies me from asking such a question.
Anyway, you really add an artistic touch to our page, Orla. How beautiful those colors look against the black of our "enlightenment" dungeon.
If you are flirting with it and you can't live without it, why call it an enemy?
You're absolutely right, Yusef.
I guess I was washed away by the cresting wave of paradox :-)
But I think we should address the Deleuzian call to create rather than to reflect. In other words getting out of our "enlightenment" dungeon.
One way out is also to move aesthetics to the forefront. My interest in philosophy has always primarily been the aesthetic attraction to new ideas.
Would this be a suitable topic for you? Or are you more into the ethics of philosophy?
Thanks for our conversation, anyway.
All the best,
Orla
The way I see it, I am completely in accord with you when you ask that we address the Deleuzian call to create. I merely counterpose this question to you: how? If it were unambiguous what repression was, that it was in opposition to creativity, that I could be creative by shrugging it off, that in addressing repression I am being "reflective", while you, in approaching philosophy through an aesthetic attraction to new ideas are being creative, there would be no problem going forward. However, as I see it all of this is completely 100% terra incognito -- for even our contemporary artists, poets, and writers, all the old answers appear in danger of failing, and the worst thing would be for "thought" to have it in mind that this is settled...
As you write, Yusef,
However, as I see it all of this is completely 100% terra incognito -- for even our contemporary artists, poets, and writers, all the old answers appear in danger of failing, and the worst thing would be for "thought" to have it in mind that this is settled...
I agree. And you shouldn't take my "aesthetic attraction to new ideas" as a call to fly like a thoughtless Peter Pan.
We need to hunker down, to hit the wall, to confront the creative side of repression, as we have been trying to work with.
I still think this is a worthy project.
Maybe I'm just breaking down open doors (that's not really the English idiom - is it?) But you know what I mean.
But I also want to bring back the joy of philosophy, and I am often reminded of Nietzsche’s great comment (from The Gay Science)
Taking Things Seriously.
The intellect is for most people an awkward, obscure and creaking machine, which is difficult to set in motion: they call it “taking a thing seriously” when they work with this machine and want to think well-oh, how burdensome must good thinking be to them!
That delightful animal, man, seems to lose his good humor whenever he thinks well; he becomes SERIOUS!
And “where there is laughing and gaiety, thinking cannot be worth anything:”- so speaks the prejudice of this serious animal against all “Joyful Wisdom.”
-Well, then! Let us show that it is A prejudice!
Concept creation is indeed 100% terra incognito (and frightening, too), but let's take a few cautious steps.
Orla
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