Essays on Deleuze

by Daniel Smith

  For Deleuze, the moral Law in Kant is simply “the juridical form assumed by the infinite debt” (AO 215). Rather than submitting this system of judgment to a true critique, Kant erected “a fantastic subjective tribunal” that placed both the priest and the slave within the subject (ECC 126). It is the same person who now becomes both priest and believer, legislator and subject, judge and judged. In the name of practical reason, “reason” itself is made to represent our slavery and subjection as something superior that makes us reasonable beings. “The more you obey, the more you will become master, for you will only be obeying pure reason, in other words … yourself” (TP 376). Nowhere is this strategy made clearer than in the trajectory of the transcendent Ideas (Soul, World, God) in Kant's work. In the first Critique, Kant had denounced any transcendent use of the syntheses as illegitimate and illusory, relegating the Ideas to the “horizon” of the field immanent to the subject. But one by one, they are each resurrected in the second Critique and given a practical determination. “Freedom,” as the “fact” of morality, implies the cosmological Idea of a supra-sensible world, independent of any sensible condition; in turn, the abyss that separates the noumenal Law and the phenomenal world requires the intermediary of an intelligible author of sensible Nature or a “moral cause of the world” (the theological Idea of a supreme being) and can only be bridged through the “postulate” of an infinite progress. Acquittal can only be hoped for, not in the here and now, but from the point of view of a progress that continues to infinity in an ever more exacting conformity to the Law. Since this path exceeds the limits of our life, it requires the psychological Idea of the immortality of the soul (the debtor must survive if the debt is to be infinite). This indefinite prolongation leads less to a paradise above than to a hell here below. It does not bestow immortality but condemns us to a “slow death,” leaving us no other juridical alternatives than those proposed by Kafka: either an “apparent acquittal” or an “unlimited postponement.” Or rather, Deleuze argues, it is not that judgment is deferred, put off until tomorrow, repressed to infinity; on the contrary, it is this very act of deferring, of carrying things to infinity, of making the debt infinite, that renders judgment possible. The condition of judgment is this relation between existence and infinity in the order of time, and “the one who maintains himself in this relation is given the power to judge and to be judged.” The moral Law is thus a system of judgment that “condemns us to a servitude without end and annuls any liberatory process” (ECC 127–8).

  The distinction between transcendence and immanence is not an absolute one, however, for even the illusions of transcendence can serve “to recharge the plane of immanence with immanence itself” (WP 73). The Christian tradition, for example, contains an important line of inspiration that can be traced from Pascal to Kierkegaard. What was at stake in Pascal's celebrated wager, as Deleuze interprets it, was not the existence or non-existence of a transcendent God but rather the immanent modes of existence of those who must choose between his existence or non-existence. A complex typology results: there are the devout, the guardians of order, for whom there is no question of choosing; the skeptics, who do not know how or are unable to choose; creatures of evil, whose initial choice places them in a situation where they can no longer repeat their choice, like Goethe's Mephistopheles; and finally, the person of belief or grace, the “knight of faith” who, conscious of choice, makes an “authentic” choice that is capable of being repeated in a steadfast spiritual determination.14 Kierkegaard drew out the necessary consequences of this line of thought, showing that choice covers as great an area as thought itself. It is a question no longer of the existence of a transcendent God but of the immanent possibilities of those who “choose” to believe. None the less, Pascal's “gambler” (he who throws the dice) and Kierkegaard's “knight of faith” (he who makes the leap) remain men of faith; though the existence of God is not put into play in the wager, it is the perspective presupposed by it, the standpoint according to which one wins or loses. One still seeks to encounter a transcendence within the heart of immanence. This is why Deleuze argues that the comparisons often made between Nietzsche, on the one hand, and Kierkegaard and Pascal (or Lev Chestov and Charles Péguy), on the other, are only valid up to a certain point. As Nietzsche wrote, “‘Without the Christian faith,’ Pascal thought, ‘you, no less than nature and history, will become for yourselves un monstre et un chaos’: This prophecy we have fulfilled.”15

  THREE QUESTIONS OF IMMANENCE

  For Deleuze, Nietzsche's “method of dramatization” entails both an inversion and a completion of Kant's critical project: it completes the project by finding a truly immanent principle of critique, but it also inverts Kant's philosophy by eliminating from it all vestiges of transcendence. Kant inaugurated the modern attempt to save transcendence by treating the plane of immanence as a field of consciousness; immanence was made immanent to a pure consciousness, a transcendental subject that actively synthesizes the field of experience. Much of Deleuze's career can therefore be seen as a profound critique not only of Kant's conception of the moral law, but equally of the Kantian subject that serves as its foundation. His first book, Empiricism and Subjectivity (1953), already informed by a rigorously post-Kantian viewpoint, argued that the essential question of Hume's empiricism was not “How is experience given to a subject?” but rather, “How is the subject constituted within the given?” (ES 87). In Difference and Repetition (1968) the Humean response—that the subject (human nature) is a derivative of the principles of association—was transformed into a “transcendental empiricism”: the subject is no longer a transcendental instance that actively synthesizes experience, but is constituted within a plane of immanence by syntheses that are themselves passive.16 But it will be Spinoza, even more than Nietzsche, who provides Deleuze with the resources to effect his “transmutation,” grounding ethics in the notion of immanent “modes of existence” rather than through an appeal to a transcendental “subject.” We can briefly sketch out the nature of an immanent ethics by posing three questions concerning modes of existence:

  1. How is a mode of existence determined?

  2. How are modes of existence to be evaluated?

  3. What are the conditions for the creation of new modes of existence?

  These questions are derived from the three moments of what Deleuze calls the ethical question in his analysis of Spinoza's Ethics, though we shall apply them here in a more general sense.17 Together they serve to mark out, in a summary fashion, the problems and tasks posed by the “system of affects” that Deleuze would have replace the “system of judgment.”

  1. How is a mode of existence determined? Both Nietzsche and Spinoza take the body as their model for the analysis of modes of existence. “Essential: to start from the body and employ it as a guide.”18 In the Ethics, Spinoza defines the body primarily in terms of two fundamental axes. On the one hand, a body is defined, extensively or kinetically, by a complex set of relations under which a multiplicity of parts is subsumed, which affect each other to infinity. On the other hand, a body is also defined, intensively or dynamically, by a certain degree of power: that is, by a certain capacity to affect or be affected by other bodies. On the first axis, I have knowledge of my body solely through its “affections” (affectio), which indicate the state of my body at a given moment in so far as it is submitted to the action of another body; sometimes, for instance, the two affected relations will combine to form a new composite relation (as when I ingest food), and sometimes one body will decompose the other, destroying the cohesion of one of its constituent parts (as when poison breaks down the blood). On the second axis, I have knowledge of my body through the “affects” (affectus) of which is capable: that is, through the manner in which my affections augment or diminish my power. I experience joy or pleasure when a body encounters mine and enters into composition with it, augmenting my power (food nourishes me); and sadness or pain when, on the contrary, another body threatens my coherence and d
iminishes my power (poison sickens me)—or at the limit, destroys me. Joy and sadness are passages, becomings, risings and fallings of my power, which pass from one state to another and are in constant variation.

  It is this conception of the body that forms the basis for Spinoza's classification of modes of existence. A mode cannot be classified by the abstract notions of genus and species, as in Aristotelian biology (an arborescent schema of classification), but must rather be classified by its capacity to affect and to be affected: that is, by the affections of which it is “capable” (a rhizomatic schema).19 When we define humans as “featherless bipeds” or “rational animals,” for instance, we rely on nominal definitions that simply select out certain affects or traits at the expense of others. We arrive at a real definition of a mode of existence only when we define it in terms of its power or capacity to be affected—a capacity that is not a simply logical possibility but is necessarily actualized at every moment. For a given being, what is it affected by in the world? What leaves it unaffected? What does it react to positively or negatively? What are its nutrients and poisons? How can it take other beings into its world? What affects threaten its cohesion, diminishing it power, or even destroying it? What can its body do? We can know nothing about the power of a mode until we know what its affects are, how its body can (or cannot) enter into composition with the affects of other bodies.20 In this manner, we can arrive at a classification of immanent “types” of modes of existence that are more or less general. (From this viewpoint, there are more differences between a racehorse and a workhorse, for instance, than between a workhorse and an ox: a workhorse does not have the same capacity to be affected as a racehorse, but rather has affects in common with the ox.) Whereas the theological doctrine of infinite debt determined the relation of the immortal soul with a system of judgments, Spinoza's ethics attempts to determine the finite relations of an existing body with the forces that affect it (ECC 128).

  This, then, is the first feature of an immanent ethics: it replaces the notion of the transcendental subject with immanent modes of existence that are determined by their degrees of power and relations of affectivity. In his later works, Foucault suggested replacing the term “subject” with the term “subjectivation.” Just as there is no “pure” Reason or rationality par excellence, he argued, but a plurality of heterogeneous processes of rationalization (of the kind analyzed by Alexandre Koyré, Gaston Bachelard, and Georges Canguilhem in the field of epistemology, Max Weber in sociology, and François Châtelet in philosophy), so there is no universal or transcendental Subject that could function as a basis for a universal ethics, but only variable and extraordinarily diverse processes of subjectivation (PV 14–17). The first positive ethical task would be to analyze the processes of subjectivation (passive syntheses) by which modes of existence are determined. It was this task that Foucault set for himself in the reformulated volumes of The History of Sexuality (in which sexuality forms only one aspect of these processes), where he analyzed the historical formations of subjectivation in the Greek, Roman, and Christian periods—modes of existence which could be said to have been summarily codified in the formulas, “Know yourself!” (Greek), “Master yourself!” (Roman), and “Deny yourself!” (Christian).21

  This task is inevitably tied to the analysis of social formations, or what Deleuze terms an “assemblage” (agencement), and Foucault an “apparatus” (dispositif). Ethics is necessarily linked to political economy. But political philosophy is not necessarily tied to the political form of the State. Modern German philosophy, notably in Kant and Hegel, invented the fiction of a State that was universal in principle, defined as the rational organization of a community of free-thinking individuals submitted to the universality of a principle (the Law), in relation to which the particularity of States was merely an accident of fact, marking their imperfection or perversity.22 The State and reason were in this way made to enter into a curious exchange: realized reason was identified with the de jure State, and the State was identified as the becoming of reason.23

  But just as there is no universal subject, neither is there a universal State. The critique of the subject in Deleuze is necessarily linked to a critique of the State apparatus, and of modes of thought that wed the question of politics (and therefore ethics) to the destiny of the State. Since processes of subjectivation always take place within concrete social assemblages, one of the aims of the Capitalism and Schizophrenia project, as its title indicates, was to elaborate a general typology of various social assemblages and their corresponding processes of subjectivation. The theoretical core of the book is derived from the theory of synthesis put forward by Kant in the first critique (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive), which Deleuze and Guattari reformulate into a theory of passive syntheses (connective, convergent, arithmetic, disjunctive).24 The result is a typology of four basic types of social assemblages:

  1. so-called “primitive” societies (and their modern equivalents), which effect syntheses of connection in segmented codes and territories, according to supple lines of filiation and alliance, and have specific mechanisms that ward off the formation of a centralized State

  2. State apparatuses, which effect syntheses of convergence, forcing local codes to converge on a single center according to various mechanisms of capture or overcoding

  3. nomadic war machines, which effect an arithmetic synthesis capable of occupying and distributing themselves over a smooth space, and are by nature external to the State; and finally

  4. capitalism, which effects a disjunctive synthesis between labor and capital, and effectively decodes the codes and overcodings of previous formations.25

  None of these formations exists in a pure form; each type simply seeks to mark out the consistency of a concept, and is valid only to the degree that it provides a critical tool for analyzing concrete assemblages and modes of existence, which are by definition mixed states requiring a “micro-analysis” of the syntheses and lines they actualize (N 86). The State is one social type among others, with its own history, its own complex relations with other social formations, and its own processes of capture, unification, and totalization. Modes of existence, as degrees of power, are determined by their affects: that is, by the lines of synthesis of the concrete social assemblage in which they exist. “The pursuits we call by various names,” write Deleuze and Guattari, “schizoanalysis, micropolitics, pragmatism, diagrammatics, rhizomatics, cartography—have no other object than the study of these lines … to study their dangers, to mark their mixtures as well as their distinctions.”26

  2. How is a mode of existence evaluated? The first ethical question concerning the determination of modes leads directly into the second question: How does one evaluate modes of existence thus determined? This, one might say, is the ethical task properly speaking, and it is here that Deleuze (and Foucault) have come under criticism, even from sympathetic readers, for their apparent inability (or refusal) to put forward normative criteria of judgment, leading critics to caricature the political consequences of such a philosophy as everything from an “infantile leftism” to “neo-conservative.”27 What does it mean to evaluate modes of existence according to purely immanent criteria?

  If modes of existence are defined as a degree of power (the capacity to affect and to be affected), then they can be evaluated in terms of the manner in which they come into possession of their power. From the viewpoint of an ethology of humans, Spinoza distinguishes between two types of affections: passive affections, which originate outside the individual and separate it from its power of acting; and active affections, which are explained by the nature of the affected individual and allow it to come into possession of its power. To the degree that a body's power of being affected is filled by passive affections, this power itself is presented as a power of being acted upon; conversely, to the degree that a body manages to fill (at least partially) its power of being affected by active affections, this capacity will be presented as a power of acting. For a given individ
ual, its capacity to affect and be affected (its degree of power) remains constant and is constantly filled, under continuously variable conditions, by a series of affects and affections, while the power of acting and the power of being acted upon vary greatly, in inverse ratio to one another. But in fact this opposition between passive and active affections is purely abstract, for only the power of acting is, strictly speaking, real, positive, and affirmative. Our power of being acted on is simply a limitation on our power of acting, and merely expresses the degree to which we are separated from what we “can do.”28

  It is this distinction that allows Spinoza to introduce an “ethical difference” between various types of modes of existence. In Spinoza, an individual will be considered “bad” (or servile, or weak, or foolish) who remains cut off from its power of acting, who remains in a state of slavery or impotence; conversely, a mode of existence will be called “good” (or free, or rational, or strong) that exercises its capacity for being affected in such a way that its power of acting increases, to the point where it produces active affections and adequate ideas. For Deleuze, this is the point of convergence that unites Nietzsche and Spinoza. It is never a matter of judging degrees of power quantitatively; the smallest degree of power is equivalent to the largest degree once it is not separated from what it can do. It is rather a question of knowing whether a mode of existence, however small or great, can deploy its power, increasing its power of acting to the point where it goes to the limit of what it “can do” (DR 41). Modes are no longer “judged” in terms of their degree of proximity to or distance from an external principle, but are “evaluated” in terms of the manner by which they “occupy” their existence: the intensity of their power, their “tenor” of life.29