Notes on Deleuze's 'Logic of Sense' - Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Effects
We move from Lewis Carroll to the Stoics, as promised. I don't know much about the Stoics, but Deleuze seems to be giving us everything we need to know of them for his purposes.
They similarly are interested in establishing two distinct (but not independent) series - we must be careful not to consider these dualisms, as I don't read them as functioning in a distributive manner. They are thoroughly imbricated in one another, and I think it would be productive to consider them in the same way we would conceive Spinoza's doctrine of parallelism between thought and extension - two different expressions of univocal being.
The stoic distinction is between 'bodies with their tensions, physical qualities, actions and passions, and the corresponding "states of affairs"' and 'incorporeal effects' such as the pure events previously discussed.
The time of bodies and states of affairs is the the 'living present' which expresses the 'action of the agent and the passion of the patient'. From this we move towards a universal present - 'a cosmic present embraces the entire universe' insofar as the universe is composed of bodies which are causes in relation to each other.
So the obvious question is, if we take the mixture and relations of bodies and states of affairs to be causes in relation to each other, what precisely are they causes of? Where do we find their effects? Deleuze immediately takes up this question, and posits these effects as 'incorporeal entities' - 'logical or dialectical attributes' which he considers equivalent to the 'events' of the preceding series. They do not exist, but rather 'subsist or inhere' within the relations of causal bodies which produce them as 'impassive results'. again, i'm seeing this as an elaboration upon the relationship between the extensive qualities and quantities of the actual and the intensive and differential processes of the virtual in D&R. The extensive is produced out of relations between differing series that do not pass through identity and negation but rather produce such 'optical' effects as an outcome of their differenciation (throughout these notes I will retain the distinction between differentiation and differenciation employed by Paul Patton in his translation of D&R).
The time of these incorporeal effects or pure events is not the living present but the infinitive - the reasons for this I take to be obvious from the preceding series.
'Thus time must be grasped twice, in two complementary though mutually exclusive fashions'
The use of 'mutually exclusive' is interesting here. I was considering relating these two different notions of 'time' to the living present and pure past of D&R. But I don't think this 'infinitive' time is in any way equivalent to the pure past. So, I'm ditching that. Plus, those two notions in D&R are certainly not, in my reading, mutually exclusive.
Deleuze restates these two times more clearly:
1. the living present of bodies which act and are acted upon
2. the time of the infinitive, infinitely divisible into future and past and composed of the incorporeal effects which result from bodies.
(At this point, I'm wondering to what extent these 'effects' are anthropocentric, but I will hold of on considering that question until Deleuze has more thoroughly expounded his concept)
Deleuze then quotes from Emile Brehier, who I've never heard of, reconstructing Stoic thought. The quotation is quite long, but offers an example of what Deleuze is taking from the Stoics in terms of a body being cut with a knife. The relation between the first body (the knife) produces on the second the attribute of being cut. 'The attribute does not designate any real quality...it is not a being, but a way of being.' This way of being doesn't alter the nature of being but expresses a certain limit. The Stoics considered this distinct plane of events to 'frolic on the surface of being, and constitute an endless multiplicity of incorporeal beings.'
This quotation is quite dense and needs to be unpacked a little to get at how it relates to Deleuze's exposition of the same ideas. But I'll come back to this when I've seen how Deleuze uses it.
So Deleuze immediately poses the question of what precisely the Stoics mean by this distinction between 'the thickness of bodies' and 'incorporeal events which would only pay on the surface'. He returns to 'states of affairs' to specify them more clearly as mixtures of bodies which express the 'dimensions of an ensemble'. But, he says, 'what we mean by "to grow" or "to diminish" is something entirely different.' So I think we can see more clearly here what Deleuze is getting at by employing this distinction. We can express the mixture of bodies in a purely physical and corporeal sense - the body of the knife penetrates into the body of flesh, becomes mixed with it in a particular way - without actually expressing the nature of the event that takes place between the knife and the flesh - the 'cutting-being-cut' event which is not part of a lived present but moves in both directions.
So the Stoics relate causes to causes and events to events. But events do not cause other events in the same way that the causes of the bodies relate to one another. Rather, the relationship between effect and effect is 'quasi-causal'. This brings back a term used occasionally in D&R - there Deleuze attributed the bringing to resonance of different series to a 'dark percursor' or 'quasi-causal operator'. I wonder how these ideas will relate - DeLanda has them functioning in a roughly equivalent manner.
The split introduced into causation 'always refers us back to language' - indicating the relationship between logic and sense.
For the Stoics, 'the highest term...is not Being' but rather a 'Something' which subsumes both being and non-being - both the existence of the bodies and their mixtures, and the 'inherence' of the pure events as effects of these mixtures.
Platonism is hereby reversed (something which Deleuze, following Nietzsche, took to be the task of modern philosophy) - the Ideas are produced as effects on the 'surface of things' rather than producing the corporeal as copies/models or simulacra which evade ideational determination.
They similarly are interested in establishing two distinct (but not independent) series - we must be careful not to consider these dualisms, as I don't read them as functioning in a distributive manner. They are thoroughly imbricated in one another, and I think it would be productive to consider them in the same way we would conceive Spinoza's doctrine of parallelism between thought and extension - two different expressions of univocal being.
The stoic distinction is between 'bodies with their tensions, physical qualities, actions and passions, and the corresponding "states of affairs"' and 'incorporeal effects' such as the pure events previously discussed.
The time of bodies and states of affairs is the the 'living present' which expresses the 'action of the agent and the passion of the patient'. From this we move towards a universal present - 'a cosmic present embraces the entire universe' insofar as the universe is composed of bodies which are causes in relation to each other.
So the obvious question is, if we take the mixture and relations of bodies and states of affairs to be causes in relation to each other, what precisely are they causes of? Where do we find their effects? Deleuze immediately takes up this question, and posits these effects as 'incorporeal entities' - 'logical or dialectical attributes' which he considers equivalent to the 'events' of the preceding series. They do not exist, but rather 'subsist or inhere' within the relations of causal bodies which produce them as 'impassive results'. again, i'm seeing this as an elaboration upon the relationship between the extensive qualities and quantities of the actual and the intensive and differential processes of the virtual in D&R. The extensive is produced out of relations between differing series that do not pass through identity and negation but rather produce such 'optical' effects as an outcome of their differenciation (throughout these notes I will retain the distinction between differentiation and differenciation employed by Paul Patton in his translation of D&R).
The time of these incorporeal effects or pure events is not the living present but the infinitive - the reasons for this I take to be obvious from the preceding series.
'Thus time must be grasped twice, in two complementary though mutually exclusive fashions'
The use of 'mutually exclusive' is interesting here. I was considering relating these two different notions of 'time' to the living present and pure past of D&R. But I don't think this 'infinitive' time is in any way equivalent to the pure past. So, I'm ditching that. Plus, those two notions in D&R are certainly not, in my reading, mutually exclusive.
Deleuze restates these two times more clearly:
1. the living present of bodies which act and are acted upon
2. the time of the infinitive, infinitely divisible into future and past and composed of the incorporeal effects which result from bodies.
(At this point, I'm wondering to what extent these 'effects' are anthropocentric, but I will hold of on considering that question until Deleuze has more thoroughly expounded his concept)
Deleuze then quotes from Emile Brehier, who I've never heard of, reconstructing Stoic thought. The quotation is quite long, but offers an example of what Deleuze is taking from the Stoics in terms of a body being cut with a knife. The relation between the first body (the knife) produces on the second the attribute of being cut. 'The attribute does not designate any real quality...it is not a being, but a way of being.' This way of being doesn't alter the nature of being but expresses a certain limit. The Stoics considered this distinct plane of events to 'frolic on the surface of being, and constitute an endless multiplicity of incorporeal beings.'
This quotation is quite dense and needs to be unpacked a little to get at how it relates to Deleuze's exposition of the same ideas. But I'll come back to this when I've seen how Deleuze uses it.
So Deleuze immediately poses the question of what precisely the Stoics mean by this distinction between 'the thickness of bodies' and 'incorporeal events which would only pay on the surface'. He returns to 'states of affairs' to specify them more clearly as mixtures of bodies which express the 'dimensions of an ensemble'. But, he says, 'what we mean by "to grow" or "to diminish" is something entirely different.' So I think we can see more clearly here what Deleuze is getting at by employing this distinction. We can express the mixture of bodies in a purely physical and corporeal sense - the body of the knife penetrates into the body of flesh, becomes mixed with it in a particular way - without actually expressing the nature of the event that takes place between the knife and the flesh - the 'cutting-being-cut' event which is not part of a lived present but moves in both directions.
So the Stoics relate causes to causes and events to events. But events do not cause other events in the same way that the causes of the bodies relate to one another. Rather, the relationship between effect and effect is 'quasi-causal'. This brings back a term used occasionally in D&R - there Deleuze attributed the bringing to resonance of different series to a 'dark percursor' or 'quasi-causal operator'. I wonder how these ideas will relate - DeLanda has them functioning in a roughly equivalent manner.
The split introduced into causation 'always refers us back to language' - indicating the relationship between logic and sense.
For the Stoics, 'the highest term...is not Being' but rather a 'Something' which subsumes both being and non-being - both the existence of the bodies and their mixtures, and the 'inherence' of the pure events as effects of these mixtures.
Platonism is hereby reversed (something which Deleuze, following Nietzsche, took to be the task of modern philosophy) - the Ideas are produced as effects on the 'surface of things' rather than producing the corporeal as copies/models or simulacra which evade ideational determination.