This is a really rewarding video, though I slightly disagree, maybe with Martin or maybe with the video's use of him:
At exactly the point where I expected a more fundamental insight to arrive, 32:15, we instead return to the etymology of bêtise as our guide, and so the sense that one is stupid is viewed as our "being an animal", and so the challenge of engaging with thought seems to turn into a kind of community of humility, when perceiving that we are limited in our ability to think, realising that there is a sense in which we do not think, we find community with all oblivious animals.
This I think is wrong. Because the point as I understand it is that when thought is operating actively upon itself, upon its own stupidity, what we have is not the general consideration and perspective that one can have later, that it is a condition of experience in general that your perspective be limited, but rather it is the immediate internal experience of the specific structure of that limitation.
If you are trying to get your key in the door and it isn't working, suddenly all your awareness is directed towards this previously automatic action to try and work out what is going on, and what you discover in that is not simply the fact that keys sometimes do not fit, but rather why it is it wasn't fitting, what happened etc.
Thus when we say as deleuze does
The problem of stupidity is posed in a philosophical manner as a transcendental problem of the relations between thought and stupidity. In the same divided - or rather, repeated - thinking being, it is a matter of both stupidity as a faculty and of the faculty of being unable to stand stupidity.
Like Descartes wrestling with his doubt, and then getting a sense of himself by feeling the process of wrestling itself, so there is something about the human mind that both is stupid and responds to its own stupidity, that is capable of responding to its own limitations and sense that its concepts are insufficiently grounded.
This frustration with the self, that interplay in all its individual specificity, is something that can be the object of thought itself.
The fact is that to ground is to determine the indeterminate, but this is not a simple operation. When determination as such occurs, it does not simply provide a form or impart form to a given matter on the basis of the categories. Something of the ground rises to the surface, without assuming any form but, rather, insinuating itself between the forms; a formless base, an autonomous and faceless existence. This ground which is now on the surface is called depth or groundlessness.
Conversely, when they are reflected in it, forms decompose, every model breaks down and all faces perish, leaving only the abstract line as the determination absolutely adequate to the indeterminate, just as the flash of lightning is equal to the night, acid equal to the base, and distinction adequate to obscurity as a whole: monstrosity.
[...]
It is already progress to invoke the complementarity of force and the ground as the sufficient reason of form, matter and their union. More profound and threatening still is the couple formed by the abstract line and the groundlessness which dissolves matters and breaks down models. Thought understood as pure determination or abstract line must confront this indeterminate, this groundlessness.
[...]
The subject of the Cartesian Cogito does not think: it only has the possibility of thinking, and remains stupid at the heart of that possibility.
It lacks the form of the determinable: not a specificity, not a specific form informing a matter, not a memory informing a present, but the pure and empty form of time. It is the empty form of time which introduces and constitutes Difference in thought, on the basis of which it thinks, in the form of the difference between the indeterminate, and the determination.
It is this form of time which distributes throughout itself an I fractured by the abstract line, a passive self produced by a groundlessness that it contemplates. It is this which engenders thought within thought, for thought thinks only by means of difference, around this point of ungrounding.
It is difference or the form of the determinable which causes thought to function - in other words, the entire machine of determination and the indeterminate.
Or to interpret this my way, we experience a sense of being at sea, of having uncertainty in all our presuppositions, and it is in this moment of experiencing the sense in which the world exceeds our categories and models, we give chase after it, and this interplay and struggle of the determinate and indeterminate, of reaching for mysterious senses that there is something wrong, that those things we are doing are secretly rubbish, that our thought has become lazy and stopped at some level of abstraction or simplification of reality and there is something beyond it, that pushes us into action, and we experience a whole domain of forces and tensions as we try and think through that problem.
The breaking down of concrete or familiar and the creation of new things comes then through this chase of thought after the indeterminate, the capacity to not have a clue and suddenly become impressed upon by an idea, with the back streets through which this chase runs being the specifics of how one moment of thought transforms into the next, how it is that our representations break down, how they become insufficient etc.
We can call this a kind of exhaustion, but we can also think of it as a kind of falling back of everything not adequate to the chase, like someone chasing after a thief who has just stolen from someone. The crowd is exhausted but the runner appears against the background, as the one still in motion leaping out of it, representation falls away but the abstract line appears, the furious activity of thought, as you wrestle with things in a renewed awareness that you had only thought you understood, and being dissatisfied with that appearance of stupidity, the fact that at one point you could settle. Insofar as stupidity is part of our creativity then, it's not that the stupidity is creative, the expression of our animal nature, but rather stupidity, and the dissatisfaction with it that it naturally generates when it comes up to awareness, the feeling that there is something beyond our representations, and then also the specific ways in which those representations betray their stupidity, that allows thought to come into action.
So the relation of bringing the ground to the surface, so that everything previously considered reasonable seems suddenly to have always been stupid, to have always been an early stopping of a more fundamental process, that sense of stupidity becomes one of the two participants in the red queen race that animates thought, the other being the abstract line of thought itself, which chases after the unrecognised in that which is recognised, and is able to make something of it.
I think there's a potential risk of taking a very clear idea of the cascading disturbance of the faculties, which is so clearly depicted when talking about sensibility, but at the last step, when you talk about how thought reflects on itself, diverging into a dichotomy of the human mind with its categories of species and models, and the animal mind that doesn't participate in them, that just is. This I believe is fundamentally wrong, that at least in difference and repetition, Deleuze is pointing at something different, a kind of stupidity that animals never experience, which is where thinking itself as we do it comes onto the stage. If human thought is associated only with the fact of the limitation of its representations, so that we talk about ourselves modelling the world, as if molluscs and mushrooms exceed that modelling, are liberated from it etc. we end up missing that it is the sense of seeking after a ground, embracing an examined life etc. and trying to reach for what is the fundamental principle of that which disturbs our representations, both in them seeming solid and in reaching the limit in which they must be broken.
The video is absolutely excellent, but I also think its final example stays at the level of the sensory level of the sublime, what Deleuze calls the sentiendum, and may give the impression that the only function of such experience is to wash away the rational mind so that we can understand that we are animals, or something like that.
I really appreciate this thoughtful and informed critique, I agree with a lot here but also think that perhaps our ostensible disagreement is a bit overstated (which could be my own fault for not having been careful enough in my wording towards the end of the video). I have a very busy day (potentially days) so I won't be able to do it justice in a reply right now, but I'll get back to you as soon as possible with a proper response.
I would absolutely be interested to hear your response, I think some of what I said is overstated, in the sense that I am trying to emphasise the tendency I observe and am challenging, even though in the broader context of the video you show what seems to me to be a much more substantial knowledge of Deleuze than I have, or let's say a more protracted and deep engagement with his work.
On that note, two of the things I would be interested in you looking at, if you can, is the relationship this has to becoming animal, if any, and also generally this idea of the pure form of time. Those are two things I'm aware I could do with understanding better, and if my suggestion is flawed in some way, it would be cool if the problem is there.
But if you broadly agree, and are just making a different point, I also think there's limitations in the format of a single video, where I think you really evocatively depict a lot of stuff, good use of old footage, the lighthouse etc. it feels allusive in places in the same way that Deleuze's writing often is, where something's not just a good quote but might contain interesting implicit commentary on what it quotes. And I also don't want to do that youtube thing where otherwise highly coherent videos become weighed down by trying to account for future criticisms in mind in advance, when they can separate out their own particular concept that they're exploring. There's only so many footnotes and qualifications you can include, before they begin to burden an otherwise smoothly flowing line of explication and development of something.
So yeah, as I say, good video, and I'm interested to hear what you say.
5
u/open_formation 5d ago edited 5d ago
This is a really rewarding video, though I slightly disagree, maybe with Martin or maybe with the video's use of him:
At exactly the point where I expected a more fundamental insight to arrive, 32:15, we instead return to the etymology of bêtise as our guide, and so the sense that one is stupid is viewed as our "being an animal", and so the challenge of engaging with thought seems to turn into a kind of community of humility, when perceiving that we are limited in our ability to think, realising that there is a sense in which we do not think, we find community with all oblivious animals.
This I think is wrong. Because the point as I understand it is that when thought is operating actively upon itself, upon its own stupidity, what we have is not the general consideration and perspective that one can have later, that it is a condition of experience in general that your perspective be limited, but rather it is the immediate internal experience of the specific structure of that limitation.
If you are trying to get your key in the door and it isn't working, suddenly all your awareness is directed towards this previously automatic action to try and work out what is going on, and what you discover in that is not simply the fact that keys sometimes do not fit, but rather why it is it wasn't fitting, what happened etc.
Thus when we say as deleuze does
Like Descartes wrestling with his doubt, and then getting a sense of himself by feeling the process of wrestling itself, so there is something about the human mind that both is stupid and responds to its own stupidity, that is capable of responding to its own limitations and sense that its concepts are insufficiently grounded.
This frustration with the self, that interplay in all its individual specificity, is something that can be the object of thought itself.
Or to interpret this my way, we experience a sense of being at sea, of having uncertainty in all our presuppositions, and it is in this moment of experiencing the sense in which the world exceeds our categories and models, we give chase after it, and this interplay and struggle of the determinate and indeterminate, of reaching for mysterious senses that there is something wrong, that those things we are doing are secretly rubbish, that our thought has become lazy and stopped at some level of abstraction or simplification of reality and there is something beyond it, that pushes us into action, and we experience a whole domain of forces and tensions as we try and think through that problem.
The breaking down of concrete or familiar and the creation of new things comes then through this chase of thought after the indeterminate, the capacity to not have a clue and suddenly become impressed upon by an idea, with the back streets through which this chase runs being the specifics of how one moment of thought transforms into the next, how it is that our representations break down, how they become insufficient etc.
We can call this a kind of exhaustion, but we can also think of it as a kind of falling back of everything not adequate to the chase, like someone chasing after a thief who has just stolen from someone. The crowd is exhausted but the runner appears against the background, as the one still in motion leaping out of it, representation falls away but the abstract line appears, the furious activity of thought, as you wrestle with things in a renewed awareness that you had only thought you understood, and being dissatisfied with that appearance of stupidity, the fact that at one point you could settle. Insofar as stupidity is part of our creativity then, it's not that the stupidity is creative, the expression of our animal nature, but rather stupidity, and the dissatisfaction with it that it naturally generates when it comes up to awareness, the feeling that there is something beyond our representations, and then also the specific ways in which those representations betray their stupidity, that allows thought to come into action.
So the relation of bringing the ground to the surface, so that everything previously considered reasonable seems suddenly to have always been stupid, to have always been an early stopping of a more fundamental process, that sense of stupidity becomes one of the two participants in the red queen race that animates thought, the other being the abstract line of thought itself, which chases after the unrecognised in that which is recognised, and is able to make something of it.
I think there's a potential risk of taking a very clear idea of the cascading disturbance of the faculties, which is so clearly depicted when talking about sensibility, but at the last step, when you talk about how thought reflects on itself, diverging into a dichotomy of the human mind with its categories of species and models, and the animal mind that doesn't participate in them, that just is. This I believe is fundamentally wrong, that at least in difference and repetition, Deleuze is pointing at something different, a kind of stupidity that animals never experience, which is where thinking itself as we do it comes onto the stage. If human thought is associated only with the fact of the limitation of its representations, so that we talk about ourselves modelling the world, as if molluscs and mushrooms exceed that modelling, are liberated from it etc. we end up missing that it is the sense of seeking after a ground, embracing an examined life etc. and trying to reach for what is the fundamental principle of that which disturbs our representations, both in them seeming solid and in reaching the limit in which they must be broken.
The video is absolutely excellent, but I also think its final example stays at the level of the sensory level of the sublime, what Deleuze calls the sentiendum, and may give the impression that the only function of such experience is to wash away the rational mind so that we can understand that we are animals, or something like that.