3.27.2022<Technolalia> focuses on Philosophy, Culture, and Tech and how those three categories interact. The content stems from original pieces to curated links and the occasional podcast. You can now read <Technolalia> Newsletter in the new Substack app for iPhone.
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Thanks for being a subscriber to <Technolalia> Newsletter. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading lately:
Notes on Deleuze and Spinoza
I want to start this with a disclaimer, which might be off putting for some and a bit of a “cop-out.” I don’t intend to give a clear or honest rendition of Spinoza’s work; you can read the primary sources. I also want to warn that ultimately my Spinoza may be of the same cloth as Deleuze’s, and that is for a good reason, Deleuze is a significant influence on those who have influenced my thinking.
Everyone can have a distinct and Idiosyncratic reading/interpretation of a thinker. Saying “Cute’s Spinoza” is just a way of externalizing my reading to share and hopefully contribute to anyone interested in Spinoza. This is primarily due to the amount of love the thinker gets/is lately in my timeline.
As Gilles Deleuze puts it, Spinoza “is the Prince of Philosophy.” Loved in a Romanticised way by the German Idealists, regarded as being a man “intoxicated by God," We already see that there is no real definitive way to read Spinoza. However, being one of the earliest figures in the rise of “modern” rationalism, one would think that because the “Ethics” was written in a rigorous Euclidean method, this would be the primary reason why Spinoza is remembered for his Ethics and Affect theory.
“Spinoza (1632–77) is the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers. Intellectually, some others have surpassed him, but ethically he is supreme. ”
-Russell, Bertrand, “History of Western Philosophy.”
There is an ephemeral dichotomy in how Spinoza tends to be understood. There’s either an emphasis on Spinozas Rationalism, primarily from the TTP going after Religious Paradigms. Or a focus in pointing out that what is vital about Spinoza is the deep understanding of the Affects. Something, a la Mark Fisher where affectivity is to be used to push towards a radical politics, not only understanding how affects in terms of sorrow (deflatiatory consciousness) and how it can be used to create a Horizon of possibility but how Joy (consciousness-raising) can be bootstrapped to instantiate new lines of flight and radical political movements.
What makes Spinoza a radical thinker and what even Deleuze and company tend to find compelling is the fusion already found immanently in his work. Spinoza uses this rigorous and rational method of understanding to unfold the passions, ultimately starting with Modes as empirical observations and deducing the totality of being (Substance). There is no reason to emphasize one aspect of Spinoza’s thought and Romanticize it, not only because Spinoza’s writing can tend to run a bit dry, but in the moments that he is incredibly sober and meticulous about the passions, about affects, this is coming from a systematic and cold analysis that could be likened to Kant’s Critical Philosophy.
“By emotion, I mean the modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modifications.
If we can be the adequate cause of any of these modifications, I then call the emotion an activity, otherwise I call it a passion, or state wherein the mind is passive.” (III, D3)
Spinoza opens up the possibility for Radical possibility (of course not directly as Spinoza’s Deterministic Philosophy does not allow for “what could otherwise be”). However, we are still tasked with understanding “what can be understood.”
“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding because to understand is to be free.” - Spinoza.
Suppose we step into Spinoza’s worldview momentarily. In that case, we are no longer bound by what he calls superstition or tradition, trying to reason how many angels can fit on the head of a nail, but instead, we can work towards an understanding of reality where we can learn how the world “is.” This is where Spinoza is at his most Promethean; Reason can help us reach an understanding which radically liberates us, which in turn creates an affect that can dramatically shift our worldview,
“By Joy … I shall understand that passion by which the Mind passes to a greater perfection” (III, p11s).
Reason is then not something subordinate to the affects, nor should the affects be subordinate to reason. On the contrary, reason increases our understanding, increasing our “power” and our Joy. Under a Deleuzian register, we widen the possibility for affirmation. Moving away from being and into becoming, we can affirm the vitalist mantra of “no one knows what a body can do.”
Being as an ontological expression of Substance. This expressionism is coded into existence and allows for true metaphysical anarchism. I’ve said this before, but Deleuze and Guattari’s ATP is Spinozas Ethics taking seriously and to its ultimate conclusion. The Aesthetics of existence is how reality is coded territorialized to an authentic body of ethics.
~Links~
“Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth — look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.”
-Soren Kierkegaard
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-C.N.