In the following clip we see a free-will hubot explaining the potential of their new

algorithm.
Please pay special attention to their ability to demonstrate human-like qualities.
<clip 3>
From this fragment we can distinguish three points on which free-will hubots differ
from the normal hubots. First, they want something, they have a desire that drives them.
They have plans independent of an owner, or someone giving them direct commands. For
example, the male hubot is fascinated by the religion, he wants to go to church, maybe in
search of a deeper meaning. Second, they seem capable of (aesthetic) judgements, as we see
when one is confronted by a work of art. Third, the point I will focus on, is that they
understand ambiguities in language: They use and understand irony and sarcasm and they are
capable of lying.
It seems that they have surpassed the stubborn algorithmic procedures that the normal
hubots like Odi follow. But, with Lacan, we can question whether these free-will hubots,
or real humans for that matter, are really free from algorithmic determination.
According to Lacan, meaning is not entirely controlled by the human subject, but is
produced by an algorithm that works independently of any subjectivity.
It is this algorithm at the basis of language that can account for its ambiguity. How?
Lacan inverts the Sign of de Saussure, as discussed last week.
S
s
The Saussurean picture of the sign becomes a sort of formula. Instead of the two interrelated
parts of the sign we see in Saussure's diagram, Lacan now inverts it, putting the signifier on
top, cuts the signified off from it with a bar, and insists that the sign has no unity at all.
Instead of a unity (the closed circle around the two parts of the sign in Saussure's picture), we
have an endless differentiation: the signifier is capable of generating meaning not because it
has recourse to any signified whatsoever, but because it is now in relation with an indefinite
and potentially endless set of other signifiers within the system.
This is the algorithm that creates meaning in the symbolic order. What guarantees the
meaning of a sign is not its signified, but the relations between signifiers.
This is why Lacan puts the signified under a bar. We never reach a signified meaning
which would be just a pure concept, without reference to signifiers or to language. On
the contrary, it's the horizontal motion along the chain of signifiers, the relationships
among signifiers, which give us meaning. What do we do when we come across a word
we don't understand? We talk about it, use other words, look it up in a dictionary. This
simple algorithm, that states that a word is defined by another, creates a myriad of
possible meanings.

I think that we can make an analogy with the way Googles algorithm works. The
algorithm learns that a hot dog is not the same as a boiled puppy, only through the
relations between signifiers, it has a sense what a word is, without having a signified, a real
referent.
Language depends as much on relations between elements as an algorithm.
Because there is never a real signified that guarantees its meaning, no symbol is a
straightforward representation of the world. [circle]
This means that the ambiguites in language cannot be eleminated, every word or
sentence can have multiple meanings in different contexts. This give us the possibility of
irony and sarcasm. The point is that the possibilit for ambiguity in human language is
not of our own making, but follow from a simple algorithm that lies at the basis of
language. If there is a difference between men and machine, it is not because the first is
free of algorithmic determination through language.
meaning is the fact that the human being isnt master of this primordial primitve
language. He has been thrown into it, committed, caught up in its gears. (307)
Here man isnt master in his own house. There is something into which he integrates
himself, which through its combinations already governs. (307)
Altough a simple algorithm lies at the basis of language, where one word must be
defined by another, the results may be far from univocal.
Let me begin with a personal experience. One day, quite some time ago, in a
well known New York museum, I happened on a photograph. The portrait of a
young girl head slightly tilted, blank expression a pretty straightforward school
picture with a slight touch of awkwardness not uncommon to this category. I
wondered why these kinds of portraits often look a bit weird. Especially this one.
So I scanned the picture to try and find some details, some clues for a possible
answer. Was it the old fashioned white blouse with the weird bow tie? Or the dolllike features I could not really pinpoint, but had something to do with the
particular combination of the blouse and the black hair? Maybe it was what
caught my eye in the first place: the indifference of the face staring at me?
Perhaps. I was not quite sure. So I continued my investigation.
The card next to it gave me some additional information. I think it said: ..
Self portrait. By looking through the holes of the little childs mask, the artist
asks questions .. (Im sure there was more, but this is all I remember). When I
looked back onto the image, I realized it was not a simple straightforward
portrait, but a photograph of the artist wearing a mask based on a picture from
her childhood. I was looking at a photograph of a mask of a photograph. I
thought it was a nice idea. Knowing it was a bit more than just a old portrait, my

perception of the picture had shifted a bit. But at the same time, it hadnt made
that big a difference. After all I was looking at the same picture, only now with
some extra interestingly sounding words to think about. A bit disappointed, I
walked away. I liked the concept. But the work hadnt sparked anything in me,
nothing really aesthetically thrilling, just some light intellectual wonder.
This was soon to change. After observing some other artifacts in the
exhibition, I returned to the photograph. Alternating between the whole of the
picture and the eyes of the girl, I still wasnt too much impressed. Then I noticed
that the eyes were sunken abnormally low in the sockets. I noticed a thin grey
line on the left side of the left eye: a small shadow indicating the difference
between the mask and the artist own eyes beneath. Suddenly it hit me. I
realized that the eyes of the little girl, where actually the eyes of the artist. This
all happened, like a bees sting, very quick. As if the artist was staring right at
me, exposing me. A feeling of being caught. I was fixed on the eyes of the artist,
them staring back to me through the mask. Of course I had read this in the
description, but only now I felt the real impact. For a moment it was as if the
artist was there in person. An angry look, but scared at the same time as if she
was trapped. For a moment, she or it or whatever it was, became real. My heart
rate had sped up. But I wasnt really scared or frightened. Maybe there was
some anxiety, but at the same time there was a strong fascination. Something
drawing me closer, rather than making me run away.

When about a month ago, I read barthes punctum

"De sterkste band is dus de geloofsband. Deze band onverstijgt de domme nationalistische en
chauvinistische gevoelens, alsmede relaties die gebaseerd zijn op het bloedverwantschap."
Different fields of sense.
zwarte piet is a racist figure. yes, no.
just as power we still rely on legal conceptions of power,
Equality as a field of sens
Etnicity
Is black Pete a racist figure? He might appear as racist, buy really he is not.
Modernity displacement of metanarrativs

By alluding to history, defenders step out. Falsifying their own claim.

At this point, it seems that we must conclude that sincere criticism is impossible. In fact , post
modern tendency toward relativism. In practice however, we fare quite well . It is not that it is
impossible, but that we do not understand what we do
In this paper I will argue that criticism can be saved only if we get ridof the belief in the
existence of the world
First argue ontological limitation.
First I will argue that if critics Gabe to take serious the fact that there is no metalanguage
narratuive, totality, this implies there is no really to refer to.
sixth sense evokes uncanny. but here it is about ghost among men.
ghost among men. ghost in everyday life.
disavowel of the magical.
there must be something extra. an X. love.
augmented reality is not magic. the magical experience dissapears. 'it is not magic!'
objective illusion. we believe trough the ritual/magic act. big other exist and has effects, only
because act as if it exist. its virtual.
from critizing the distortion of a notion, to discover the distortion in the notion itself.
this is the hegelian totality.
facebook: creating false identity on top of real, authentic idenity -> authentic identity
as a (stable fixed) notion is false in itself.
augmented reality: creating a false reality (a fantasy) on top of authentic reality ->
authentic reality as a notion is false (a fantasy) in itself
the ritual: creating a false ritual on top of authentic believe -> authentic believe as a
notion is fals in itself.
the photograph: creating a false reality out of real, authentic reality -> authentic
reality as a notion is false in itself.
The photo: In it we see life in a dead object, or what is the same, death in a life object
(this is what barthes saw) [undeadness, unheimlich]
With augmented reality, we can no longer disavow the split between authentic reality
and the virtual space. we were always already in augmented reality. (~)
meaning resides in things themselves.
what is a map compared to augmented reality?

Big other as ghost. Permanent haunting. Awkwardness. Sociopaths.

Panopticon/ objevtive illusion/ homo sacer/ subject supposed to belief/ sixties romanticism/
virtual / Big Other (embodied: other people, disembodied; imagined (derrida))
Methode, Bal: [w]hile groping to define, provisionally and partly, what a particular concept
may mean, we gain insight into what it can do. It is in the groping that the valuable work lies.
(peeren)
Spook is ook onttoverd. Is voor ons niet echt, maar heeft wel effect: virtueel
Spook is juist wel echt geworden: geen magie meer. magie impliceert dat iets niet echt is,
buiten deze wereld. Esther peeren: everyday object. To live with ghosts. Panopticon.
discipline: big other.
maar veel eerder: wij hebben niet door dat we magie gebruiken. interpassivity. Peeren: useful
ghost. homo sacer.
de relatie tussen het virtuele en hetrele: fantasie structureert de werkelijkheid.
Peren: cogito. cogito is geen ghost: cogito is void, nothingness.
gothic als de onttovering van van ghost. Dan komt de ghost op het toneel. <-> panopticon.
materialiteit van spook (peeren xviii) videorecorder, fototoestel.
The invisible hand of the market. (embodied: The Markets, disembodied: the invisible hand
of the market)
het Zelf, cogito, the void! as ghost in the machine
inversion of ghost: commodity fethishim. het lijkt normaal, maar eigenlijk heel wonderlijk.

But we are not concerned here with a study of opinions, which could be undertaken only by a
statistical analysis of contemporary recoreds. If, on the other hand, one investigates sixteenthcentury knowledge at its archeological level - that is, at the level of what made it possible then the relations of macrocosm and microcosm appear as a mere surface effect. It was not
because people believed in such relations that they set about trying to hunt down all the
analogies in the world. But there was a necessity lying at the heart of their knowledge:jthey
had to find an adjustment between the infinite richiness of a resemblance introduced as a
third term between signs and their meaining, and the monotony that imposed the same patter
of resemblance upon the sign and what it signified. In an episteme in which signs and
similitudes were wrappperd around one anohter in an endless spiral, it was essential that the
relation of microcosm to macrocosm should be conceived as both the guarantee of that
knowledge and the limit of its expension. (OOT 35)

"In any given culture and at any given moment, theres is always only one episteme that
defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or
silently invested in a practice." (Order of Things 183).
We must be careful to distinghuish here betweeen two forms and two levels of investigation.
The first would be a study of opinions in order to discover who in the eighteenth century was
a physiocrat and who an antiphysiocrat; what interest were at statke; what weere the pints and
arguments of the polemic; how the struggle for power developed. The other, which takes no
account of the person involved, or their history, consist in defining the conditions on the basis
of which it was possible to conceive of both 'physiocratic' and 'utilitarian' knowledge in
interlocking and simultaneous forms. The first analysis would be the province of a doxology.
Archeology can recognize an practice ONLY the second. (218).
Foucault: "History has become the unavoidable element in our thought: in this respect,
it is probably not so very different from Classical Order" (OOT 238)
What came into being with Adam Smith, with the first philologists, with Jussieu, Vicq d'Azyr,
or Lamarc, is a minuscule but absolutely essential displacement, which toppled the whole of
Western thought: representation has lost the power to provide a foundation - with its own
being, its own deployment and its power of doubling over itself - for the links that can join its
various elements together. (259)
"Finitude, with its truth, is posited in time, and time is therofore finite. The great dream of an
end to history is the Utopia of causal systems of thought, just as the dream of the world's
beginnings was the Utopia of the classifying systems of thought" (oot 286)

specters of marx
plus d'un. lack and excess. more than one, no more one.
conditions of possibility are condition of impossiblity.
It becomes , rather, some "thing " that remains difcult to name : neither soul nor body, and
both one and the other. For it is fesh and phenomenality that give to the spirit its spectral
apparition, but which disappear right away in the apparition, in the very coming of the
revenant or the return of the specter. There is something disappeared, departed in the
apparition itself as reapparition of the departed. The spirit, the specter are not the same thing,
and we will have to sharpen this diference; but as for what they have in common, one does
not know what it is, what it is presently It is something that one does not know, precisely, and
one does not know if precisely it is , if it exists , if it responds to a name and corresponds to
an essence.
absolute gegenstoss
To feel ourselves seen by a look which it will always be impossible to cross, that is the visor
efect on the basis of which we inherit from the law Since we do not see the one who sees us,

and who makes the law, who delivers the injunction (which is, moreover, a contradictory
injunction) , since we do not see the one who orders "swear" we cannot identjfy it in all
certainty, we must fall back on its voice. The one who says "I am thy Fathers Spirit" can only
be taken at his word. An essentially blind submission to his secret, to the secret of his origin:
this is a frst obedience to the injunction. It will condition all the others. It may always be a
case of still someone else. (p. 7)
painting of curtain
difference mask and visor.
mourning: to ontologize. to know it.
An inheritance is never gathered together, it is never one with itself Its presumed unity, if
there is one, can consist only in the injunction to reafrm by choosing. "One must" means one
must flter, Sift, criticize, one must sort out several diferent possibles that inhabit the same
injunction. And inhabit it in a contradictory fashion around a secret. If the readability of a
legacy were given, natural , transparent, univocal , if it did not call for and at the same time
defy interpretation, we would never have anything to inherit from it. We would be afected by
it as by a cause-natural or genetic. One always inherits from a secret-which says "read me,
will you ever be able to do so?" The critical choice called for by any reafrmation of the
inheritance is also, like memory itself, the condition of fnitude. The infnite does not inherit, it
does not inherit (from) itself The injunction itself (it always says "choose and decide from
among what you inherit") can only be one by dividing itself tearing itself apart, difering/def
erring itself, by speaking at the same time several times-and in several voices. For example :
In Marx, and always coming from Marx, we see th ree kinds of voices gatheri ng force and
taki ng form, all th ree of which are necessary, but sepa rated and more th an opposed, as if
INJUNCTI ONS OF MARX 19 they were juxta posed . The dispa rate that holds them
together desi gnates a plural ity of dema nds to which, since Marx, everyone who speaks or
writes ca n not fa il to feel himself subjected,
unless he is to fel himsel failing in everthing. (P. 18; my emphasis) "Unless he is to feel
himself failing in everything " What does that mean? And "since Marx" ? (p. 18)
we are immersed in the world of specters. but now what? (jameson)
realization of the lost object was never lost in the first place
the
"since" marks a place and a time that doubtless precedes us, but
so as to be as much in front of us as before us . Since the future, then,
since the past as absolute future, since the non-knowledge and
the non-advent of an event, of what remains to be: to do and to
decide (which is frst of all, no doubt, the sense of the "to be or
not to be" of Hamlet-and of any inheritor who, let us say,
comes to swear before a ghost). If "since Marx" names a future
to-come as much as a past, the past of a proper name, it is
because the proper of a proper name will always remain to
come. And secret. It will remain to come not like the future
now [maintenant] of that which "holds together " the "disparate"
(and Blanchot says the impossible of a "disparate" that itself

"holds together"; it remains to be thought how a disparate could

still , itself, hold together, and if one can ever speak of the disparate
itself, selfsame, of a sameness without property) . What has been
uttered "since Marx " can only promise or remind one to main
tain together, in a speech that def ers , deferring not what it
afrms but deferring just so as to afrm, to afrm justly, so as to
have the power (a power without power) to8 afrm the coming
of the event, its fture-to-come itself. (p. 19)
In their plurality, the words of
translation organize themselves, they are not dispersed at ran
dom. They disorganize themselves as well through the very
efect of the specter, because of the Cause that is called the original
and that, like all ghosts , addresses same-Iy disparate demands,
which are more than contradictory. (p. 21)
it is the essence itself thatdestabilizes, that is never fixed. (from the point of view of the
"studium") in this way, a photograph is always 'out of joint'.
Cette epoque est deshonoree, this age is dishonored.
14
However surprising it may seem at frst glance, Gide 's reading
nevertheless agrees with the tradition of an idiom that , from
More to Tennyson, gives an apparently more ethical or poli tical
meaning to this expression. "Out of joint" would qualify the
moral decadence or corruption of the city, the dissolution or
perversion of customs . It is easy to go from disadjusted to unjust.
That is our problem: how to justify this passage from disadjust
ment (with its rather more technico-ontological value afecting
a presence) to an injustice that would no longer be ontological? (p. 22)
Hamlet moreover dearly opposes the being "out of
joint" of time to its being-right, in the right or the straight path of
that which walks upright. He even curses the fate that would
have caused him to be born to set right a time that walks
crooked. He curses the destiny that would precisely have des
tined him, Hamlet , to do justice, to put things back in order, to
put history, the world, the age, the time upright, on the right path,
so that , in conformity with the rule of its correct functioning,
it advances straight ahead [tout dri t]-and following the law
[le drit] .
ghost as the critique of ideology. live with ghosts
Because letting all the others in is impossible, this de-closing is always to come in the future
like the messiah coming or coming back (Derrida plays on the French word for the future,
l'avenir, which literally means to come, venir).We must make one more point. The
impossibility of unconditional hospitality means that any attempt to open the globe
completely is insufficient.Being insufficient, every attempt therefore requires criticism; it

must be deconstructed, as Derrida would say.But this deconstruction would be a

deconstruction that recognizes its own insufficiency.Deconstruction, to which we now turn,
never therefore results in good conscience, in the good conscience that comes with thinking
we have done enough to render justice.
the messiah without messiah is the essence without essence. the first is of the past, the
second of the future. a future essence to be constructed, to be worked.
As Derrida says, A decision that did not go through the ordeal of the undecidable
would not be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or
unfolding of a calculable process (Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, p.24).
And once the ordeal is past (if this ever happens, as Derrida says), then the decision has
again followed or given itself a rule and is no longer presently just.Justice therefore is always
to come in the future, it is never present.There is apparently no moment during which a
decision could be called presently and fully just.Either it has not a followed a rule, hence it
isunjust; or it has followed a rule, which has no foundation, which makes it againunjust; or if
it did follow a rule, it was calculated and againunjustsince it did not respect the singularity of
the case.This relentless injustice is why the ordeal of the undecidable is never past.It keeps
coming back like a phantom, which deconstructs from the inside every assurance of
presence, and thus every criteriology that would assure us of the justice of the decision
Justice remains an event yet to come. Perhaps one must always say can-be (the
French word for perhaps is peut-tre, which literally means can be) for
justice.This ability for justice aims however towards what is impossible.
Barthes , essence logic photograph. Uncanny. Same logic
Without a clear distinction between high and low art, to bring art to the public does not
amount to bring what is defined as highbrow to the people, to explain why it is art, what can
be learned from it. Far more productive is to show the art within popular culture, to show that
what people already enjoy, is imbued with something "more", which we call Art. Popular
culture is not art in itself, and it is not art just because the people like it, or because it is as
such art. To understand why something is art, one needs a minimum of reflexivity. The
public, just as the art critic before criticism, already have an intuition, the point is to bring it
out, to formulate it. To show how what they enjoy is not simply a nice sensous experience, a
biological stimulus that makes us feel good, but the aesthetic, the art that is implicit in the
cultural artifact.
With foucault, society is defined by the state (governmentality) there is no gap between state
and society, as the state defines what is society. Society is a result of the governing, regulating
and conducting of the population, administring the wealth, health and conduct of individuals.
Society emerges at the moment of the advent of governmentality.
Instinct does not refer to anything biological.
Every act of speaking is performed in an irresolvable tension between language, which
punches a hole in the real, and the production of meaning, in which we try to bridge the
gap with the real. 233 van Haute.

"Because spatio-temporal properties pertain only to appearances and not to things in themselves,
the validity of mathematics is restricted to the domain of objects of sensible intutition"
"So if leibniz and spinoza want to show how the world is in-itself by way of mathematics, this
becomes now impossible because space and time ONLY belong to the appearances (math
"schematizes sensible inuititions)
"The idea of the soul is the idea of the thinking subject as the absolutely unconditioned condition
of all its representaitons; the idea ofthe world is the idea of the totality of appearances; and the
idea of God is the dia of the unconditioned condition of all possibilities" (CP 7) [dupuy]
"By appearing to extend human cognition in this way, reason seems to offer us the hope of purely
rational - i.e., non-empirical- scinces of psychology (doctrine of the soul), cosmology (doctrine of
the world-totality), and theolog (doctrine of God" (CP 7)
"Kant said that it was his discovery of the antinomies that firs set him on the path of critique
because he found it distressing to think that human reason might actually be in conflict with
itself" (9)
Thus it seems that the
thesis of the first antinomyThe world has a beginning in time, and in space it is also
enclosed in boundariesmust be true (CPR A426/B454). However, if we assume that
the thesis is true, then there would have to exist an empty time and space in which the
world was bounded. But this too is contradictory, for there would then be no sufficient
reason why the world began when it did or existed where it did. Hence it appears that the
antithesis must be true: The world has no beginning and no bounds in space, but is
infinite with regard to both time and space (CPR A427/B455).
The second antinomy pertains to the existence or non-existence of simple parts of
composite substances (CPR A4345/B4623). According to the thesis, such parts must
exist because, otherwise, appearances would consist of nothing substantial at all. But
according to the antithesis, such simple parts cannot exist, for if they did, they would
have to be in space; but everything in space is divisible and so composite rather than
simple.
The third antinomy involves a conflict about the concept of freedom. According to the
thesis, there must be such a thing as freedom, for otherwise there would be no beginning
to causal chains in nature (CPR A4445/B4723). According to the antithesis, there
cannot be such a thing as freedom, for every event in time must be determined in
accordance with a natural law from which it follows.
Finally, the fourth antinomy both affirms and denies the existence of an absolutely
necessary being. According to the thesis, there must be such a being in the world, for if
there were not, the laws of nature would lack necessitya conclusion that would
contradict the results of the Transcendental Analytic. By contrast, the antithesis maintains
that there cannot be an absolutely necessary being, for if there were, it would lack a cause
of its existencea conclusion that seems to contradict the principle that everything that
exists in time depends upon the existence of something else (CPR A4523/B4801).
Kant characterizes the first two antinomies as mathematical in thatlike the
corresponding principles of the understanding with which they are associatedthey
pertain exclusively to the spatio-temporal character of phenomena. By contrast, the third
and fourth antinomies are dynamical in that (again like their corresponding principles)
they pertain to the existence of objects in nature.

"Though the three ideas of soul, freedom, and God have only a "regulative" role to play in
experience, they take on transcendent significance once they are considered from the moral point
of view of "practical" (as opposed to "speculative") reason - an argument that Kant develops in
his second Critique the Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1788). (CP
11)
"In the case of each antinomy, it must be shown that if objectss of the senses are assumed as
things in themselves [Hegel], no resolution of this conflict would be possible [hegel].
Cosequently if the proposition were not proved above, it could be inferred from this." These
remarks are important because nineteenth-century developments in pure and applied mathematics
encouraged Kant's successors to reject his account of the synthetic a priori character of both
mathematics and natural scince. This was the main motivation for the neo-Kantians' rejections of
both the intuition/concept dichotomoy and the transcendental ideality thesis. But the question that
Kant proleptically asks hist legatees is: Without these doctrines, how will you resolve the
antinomies?" (CP 11)
"As for ontology, Kant regarded the Transcendenatal Analytic as supplanting it: "the proud name
of an ontology, which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognitions of things in general . . .
must give wat ot the modest one of a mere analytic of the pure understanding" The neo-Kantians
interpreted this claim as Kant's way fo turnign away from metaphyisics to epistemology.

it is impossible completely to understand Marxs Capital, and especially its first chapter,
without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegels Logic. Consequently,
half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!! (Collected Works, Vol. 38, p.
180 Lenins exclamation marks).

"if Marx really articulated the notion of the symptom as it is also at work in the Freudian
field, then we must ask ourselves the Kantian question concerning the epistemological
'conditions of possibility' of such an encounter: how was it possible for Marx, in his analysis
of the world of commodities, to produce a notion which applies also to the analysis of
dreams, hysterical phenomena, and so on?" (11)
"There is a fundamental homology between the interprtative procedure of Marx and
Freud - more precisely between their analysis of commodity and of dreams."
-exchange relation, objective status of beliefs (fantasy), objective illusion of commodity (they
do not know it, but they are doing it)
"The point is to avoid the properly fetishistic fascination of the 'content' supposedly hidden
behind the form: the 'secret' to be unveiled through analysis is not the content hidden by the
form (the form of commodities, the form of dreams) but, on the contrary, the secret of this
form itself."
Metamodernism= The form of art, secret: structure of feeling/attitudes. c.f. dream :,
secret: feelings, motives etc.
"The theoretical intelligence of the form of dreams does not consist in penetrating from the
manifest content to its 'hidden kernel', to the latent dream-thoughts; it consist in the answer to

the question: why have the latent dream-thoughts assumed such a form, why were they
transposed into the form of a dream?
Why do things assume the form of a commodity? why have the latent thoughts of
society assumed such an artwork?
"it is the same with commodities: the real problem is not to penetrate to the 'hidden kernel' of
the commodity - the determination of its value by the quantity of the work consumed in its
production - but to explain why work assumed the form of the value of a commodity, why
it can affirm its social character only in the commodity-form of its product."
May seem that freud is inconsistent: the desire articulated in a dream is unconscious and
sexual. but freud's examples are not unconscious nor sexual.
"This kind of reproach is based on a fundamental theoretical error: the identification of the
unconscious desire at work in the dream with the 'latent thought' - that is , the signification of
the dream.
metamodernism: the identification of structure of feeling, with the latent thought, that
is, the signification of the artwork
"But as Freud continually emphasizes, there is nothing 'unconscious' in the 'latent dreamthought': this thought is an entirely 'normal' thought which can be articualted in the syntax of
everyday, common language; topologically, it belongs to the system of
'consciousness/preconsciousness'; the subject is usually aware of it, even excessivly so; it
harasses him all the time. . . . Under certain circumstances this though is pushed away, forced
out of the consciousness, drawn into the unconscious - that is, submitted to the laws of the
'primary process', translated into the 'language of the unconscoius.' The relationship between
the 'latent thought' and what is called the 'manifest content' of a dream - the text of the dream,
the dream in its literal phenomenality - is therefore that between some entirely 'normal',
(pre)conscious thought and its translation into the 'rebus' of the dream. The essential
constitution of dream is thus not its 'latent thought' but this work (the mechanisms of
displacement [metonymy] and condensation [metaphor], the figuration of the contents
of words or syllables) which confers on it the form of a dream. (12)
The secret, not of what it signifies, but of the form of the art.
Secondary process -> Chomsky ? : biological articulation of discreet infinity?
Constitutive antagonism/gap etc: "It is this unconscious/sexual desire which cannot be
reduced to a 'normal train of thought' because it is, form the very beginning, constitutively
repressed (Freud's Urverdrangung) [c.f. class struggle?] - because it has no 'original' in the
the 'normal' language of everyday communication [Simulacrum?], in the syntax [Chomsky?]
of the conscious/preconscious; its only place is in the mechanisms of the 'primary process'
[marx? com fetish?]. This is why we should not reduce the interpretation of dreams, or
symptoms in general, to the retranslation of the 'latent dream-thought' [structure of
feeling, irony/utopia / you show this and this, but what does it really mean?] into the
'normal', everyday common language of intersubjective communication (Habermas formula).
The structure is always triple; there are always three elements at work: the manifest dream

text, the latent dream-content or thought and the unconscious desire articulated in a dream"
(13)
Metamodernism: purple skies, gruesome political pictures with magic etc. (MANIFEST
DREAM TEXT) neoromanticism/meaning/fantasy/myth/structure of
feeling/irony/utopia (LATENT DREAM-CONTENT after first interpretation) commodity logic/cultural logic (abstraction etc.) (UNCONSCIOUS DESIRE)???????
"This desire [m-c-m'] attaches itself to the dream, it intercalates itself in the interspace
between the latent thought and the manifest text; it is therefor not 'more concealed, deeper' in
relation to the latent thought, it is decidedly more 'on the surface', consisting entirely of the
signifier's mechanism, of the treatment to which the latent thought is submitted
[postmodernism] IS IT THE STRUCTURE ITSELF? P > A ?
"At bottom, dreams are nothing other than a particualar form of thinking, made possible by
the conditions of the state of sleep. It is the dream-work which creates that form, and it alone
is the essence of dreaming - the explanation of its peculiar nature (Freud)
(METHOD) "
-First, we must break the appearance according to which a dream is nothing but a simple and
meaningless confusion [borriaud/pomo] a disorder caused by physiological processes and as
such having nothing whatsoever to do with signification. IN other words, we must
accomplisch a crucial step towards a hermeneutical approach and conceive the dream as a
meaningful phenomenon, as something transmitting a repressed message which has to be
discovered by an interpretative procedure." [this is the step metamodernism takes]
-Then, we must get rid of the fascination in this kernel of signification, in the 'hidden
meaning' of the dream - that is to say, in the content concealed behind the form of a dream and centre our attention on this form itself, on the dream-work to which the 'latent dreamthoughts' were submitted.
[not: sensibility concealed behind the form of the artwork, but center attention on the
form itself, on the "dream-work" to which the "sensibilities" were submitted. that is: it
is about the relationship between modern consciouness and their submission onto the
way art is constructed, how irony and utopia are displaced/condensed etc.
"The crucial thing to note here is that we find exactly the same articulation in two stages
with Marx, in his analyis of the 'secret of the commodity-from':
-First, we must break the appearance according to which the value of a commodity depends
on pure hazard [pomo] - on an accidental interplay between supply and demand, for example.
We must accomplish the crucial step of conceiving the hidden 'meaning' behind the
commodity-form, the signification 'expressed' by this form; we must penetrate the 'secret' of
the value of commodities:
[marx] 'The determination of the magnitude of value by labour-time [sensibility] is therefore
a secret, hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the relative values of commodities [surface
phenomena]. Its discovery, while removing all appearance of mere accidentality form the

determination of the magnitude of the values of products, yet in no way alters the mode in
which that determination takes place. [objective illusion]
-But as Marx points out, there is a certain 'yet': the unmasking of the secret is not sufficient.
Classical bourgeois economy has already discovered the 'secret' of the commodity-form; its
limit is that it is not able to disengage itself form this fascination in the secret hidden behind
the commodity-form - that its attention is captivated by labour as the true source of wealth. In
other words, classical political economy is interested only in contents concealed behind the
commodity-form, which is why it cannot explain the true secret, not the secret behind the
form but the secret of this form itself. in spite of its quite correct explanation of the 'secret of
the magnitude of value', the commodity remains for classical poltical economy a mysterious,
enigmatic thing - it is the same as with the dream: even after we have explained its hidden
meaning, its latent thought, the dream remains an enigmatic phenomenon; what is not yet
explained is simply its form, the process by means of which the hidden meaning disguised
itself in such a form.
"Why did the Marxian analysis of the commodity-form - which, prima facie, concerns a
purely economic quesiton - exert such an influence in the general field of the social sciences;
why has it fascinated generations of philosophers, sociologists, art historians, and others?
Because it offers a kind of matrix enabling us to generate all other forms of the
"fetishistic inversion': it is as if the dialectics of the commodity-form presents us with a
pure - distilled, so to speak - version of a mechanism offering us a key to the theoretical
underrstanding of phenomena which, at first sight, have nothing whatsoever to do with the
field of political economy (law, religion, and so on). (16)
the dialectics of the commodity form offers a key to the theoretical understaning of
phenomena [metamodernism/art/etc] which at first sight have nothing to do with the field
of political economy, art for example. Does this mean that there is a direct
relation/homology?
"In the commodity-form there is definitely more at stake that the commodity-form itself
[namely its LOGIC] and it was precisely this 'more' which exerted such a fascinating power
of attraction" (16).
"The formal analysis of the commodity holds the key not only to the critique of political
economy, but also to the historical explanation of the abstract conceptual mode of thinking
and of the division of the intellectual and manual labour which came into existence with it"
(Sohn-Rethel, 1978). (16)
"IN OTHER WORDS, IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE COMMODITY-FORM IT IS
POSSIBLE TO FIND THE TRANSCENDENTAL SUBJECT: THE COMMODITYFORM ARTICULATES IN ADVANCE THE ANATOMY, THE SKELETON OF THE
KANTIAN TRANSCENDENTAL SUBJECT - THAT IS, THE NETWORK OF
TRANSCENDENTAL CATEGORIES WHICH CONSITUTE THE A PRIORI FRAME
OF 'OBJECTIVE' SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE" (16) Herein lies the paradox of the
commodity-form: it - this inner-worldly, 'pathological' (in the Kantian meaning of the word)
phenomenon - offers us a key to solving the fundamental question of the theory of
knowledge: objective knowledge with universal validity - how is this possible?

"After a series of detailed analyses, Sohnt Rethel came to the following conclusion: the
apparatus of categories presupoosed, implied by the scientific procedure (that, of course of
the newtonian science of anture), the network of notions by means of which it seizes nature,
is already present in the social effectivity, already at work in the act of commdity exchange.
Before thought could arrive at pure abstraction, the abstraction was already at work in the
social effectivity of the market. (17)
BEFORE THOUGHT COULD ARRIVE AT PURE ABSTRACTION, THE
ABSTRACTION WAS ALREADY AT WORK IN THE SOCIAL EFFECTIVITY OF
THE MARKTET (17)
THE EXCHANGE OF COMMODITIES IMPLIES A DOUBLE ABSRACTION: THE
ABSTRACTION FORM THE CHANGEABLE CHARACTER OF THE
COMMODITY DURING THE ACT OF EXCHANGE AND THE ABSTRACTION
FROM THE CONCRETE, EMPIRICAL, SENSUAL, PARTICULAR CHARACTER
OF THE COMMODITY
(ini the act of exchange, the distinct, particular qualitative determination of a commodity is
not taken into account; a commoditiy is reduced to an abstract entity which - irrepsective of
its particualar nature, of its 'use-value' - posses 'the same value' as another commodity for
which it is being exchanged)
[Lukacs] "This means that formally the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie is geared to
economic consciousness. And indeed the highest degree of unconsciousness, the crassest,
form of false consciousness always manifests itself when the conscious mastery of
economic phenomena appears to be at its greatest [TODAY!]. [-------->>>>>]From the
point of view of the relation of consciousness to society this contradiction is expressed as
the irreconcilable antagonism between ideology and economic base. [<<<<--------]Its
dialectics are grounded in the irreconcilable antagonism between the (capitalist) individual,
i.e. the stereotyped individual of capitalism [the metamodern], and the natural and
inevitable process of development, i.e. the process not subject to consciousness [exchange,
real abstraction - unconscious]. [/lukacs]
"that is to say, if we look closely at the ontological status of what Sohn-Rethel calls the 'real
abstraction' [das reale Abstraktion] (that is, the act of absraction at work in the
very effective process of the exchange of commodities), the homology between its status and
that of the unconscious, this signifying chain which persist on 'another Scene', is striking: the
'real abstraction' is the unconscous of the transcendental subject, [link between subject
(void) and real abstraction (excess)] (18)
"Here we have touched a problem unsolved by Marx, that of the material character of
money: not the empirical, material stuff money is made of, but of the sublime material, of that
other 'indestructible and immutable' body which persists beyond the corruption of the body
physical - this other body of money is like the corpse of the Sadeian victim which endures all
torments and survives with ist beauty immaculate. This immaterial corporality of the 'body
within the body' gives us a precise definition of the sublime object, and it is in this sense only
that th psychoanalytic notion of money as a 'pre-phallic'. 'anal' object is acceptable - provided
that we do not forget how this postulated existence of the sublime body depends on the

symbolic order: the indestructible 'body-within-the-body' exempted from the effects of waer
and tear is alwys sustained by the guarantee of some symbolic authority[!!]
A coin has it stamped upon its body that it is to serve as a means of exchange and not as an
object of use. Its weight and metallic purity are guaranteed by the issuing authority so that, if
by the wear and tear of circualtion it has lost in weight, full replacement is provided. Its
physical matter has visibly become a mere carrier of its social function (sohn-retherl, 1978,
59)
If, then, the 'real abstraction' has nothing to do with the
"Such a misrecognition [meconnaisance] can take place in a 'relation between things' as wel
as in a 'relation between men' - Marx states this explicitly apropos of the simple form o fthe
value-expression. The commodity A can express its value only by referring itself ot another
commodity, B, which thsu beocmes its equivalent: in the value relationship, the natrual form
of the commodity B (its use-value, its positive, empirical properties) functions as a form of
value of the commodity A; in other words, the body of B becomes for A the mirror of its
value. To these reflections, Marx added the following note:
In a sort of way, it is with man as with commodities. SInce he comes into the world neither
with a looking-glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtian philsosopher, to whom 'I am I' is sufficient,
man first sees and recognizes himself in other men. Peter only establishes his won idenity as
a man by first comparing himself with Paul as being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he
stands in his Pauline personality, becomes to Petr the type of genus homo (Marx, 1974, 59).
This short note anticipates in a way the Lacanian theory of the mirror stage: only by being
reflected in another man - that is, in so far as this other man offers it an image of its unity can the ego arrive at its self-idenity; identity and alienation are thus strictly correlative.
[cynicism] "It is here, at this point, that the distinction between symptom [proletariat as
commodity e.g.] and fantasy must be introduced in order to show how the ideea that we live
in a post-ideological society proceeds a little to quickly: cynical reason, with all its ironic
detachment, leaves untouched the fundamental level of ideological fantasy, the level on
which ideology structures the social reality itself. (30).
FOUCAULT: THE UNIVERSAL IS JUST A PROPERTY OF PARTICULAR
OBJECTS WHICH REALLY EXIST, BUT WHEN WE ARE VICTIMS OF
COMMODITY FETHSISM IT APPEARS AS IF THE CONCRETE CONTENT OF A
COMMOIDITY (ITS USE-VALUE) IS AN EXPRESSION OF ITS ABSTRACT
UNIVERSSALITY (ITS EXCHANGE-VALUE) - THE ABSTRACT UNIVERSAL,
THE VALUE, APPEARS AS A REAL SUBSTANCE WHICH SUCCESSIVELY
INCARNATES ITSELF IN A SERIES OF CONCRETE OBJECTS.
FOUCAULT: THE SOUL IS RETROACTIVE ILLUSION OF DISCIPLINE
PUNISHING AN ABSTRACT UNIVERSAL (AS IF REAL/EMBODIED)
"VALUE IN ITSELF DOES NOT EXIST"
"if the place of the illusion is in the reality of doing itself, then this formula can be read
in quite another way: "they know that, in their activity, they are following an illusion,

but still they are doing it" (33) For example, they know that their idea of Freedom is
masking a particular form of exploitation, but they still continue to follow this idea of
Freedom." [Utopia? Autnomia? Metamoderna?]
ATTTACK ON : MODERN IS THE NEW (ETYMOLOGICAL)
NO META-LANGUAGE (THUS NOT META POSITION INDICATING WHERE
MODERNITY BEGINS / BUT WHEN MODERNITY BEGINS RETROACTIVELY IT
APPEARS THAT MODERNITY BEGINS?/ NO CIRCULAR...)

The two forms off etishism are thus incompatible in societies in which commodity
fetishism reigns, the 'relations between men' are rotally
defetishized, while in societies in which there is fetishism in 'relations
between men' - in pre-capitalist societies - commodity fetishism is not
yet developed, because it is 'natural' production, not production for the
market, which predominates. This fetishism in relations between men
has to be called by its proper name: what we have here are, as Marx points
out, 'relations of domination and servitude' - that is to say, precisely the
relation of Lordship and Bondage in a Hegelian sense; '7 and it is as if the
retreat of the Master in capitalism was only a diplacement as if the de
fetishization in the 'relations between men' was paid for by the emergence
of fetishism in the 'relations between things' - by commodity fetishism.
The place of f etishism has just shifted from inter-subjective relations to
relations 'between things': the crucial social relations, those of production,
are no longer immediately transparent in the form of the interpersonal relations of
domination and servitude (of the Lord and his serf s, and so on); they
disguise themelves - to use Mar's accurate formula - 'under the shape of
social relations between things, between the product of labour'.
This is why one has to look for the discovery of the symptom in the way Marx conceived
the passage from feudalism to capiralism. With the
establishment of bourgeois society, the relations of domination and servitude are represed
formally, we are apparently concerned with free
subjects whose interpersonal relations are discharged of all fetishism; the repressed truth that of the persistence of domination and servitude emerges in a symptom which subverts the ideological appearance of equality, freedom,
and so on. This symptom, the point of emergence of
the truth about social relations, is precisely the 'social relations between things' - in contrast
to feudal society, where no matter what we may think of the parts played by the dif f
erent classes of people themselves in this society, the social relations between
individuals in the perf ormance of their labour appear at all events as their own mutual
personal relations, and are not disguised under the shape of social relations between
things, between the
products of labour. '8

ironie. maar ironie is bij hegel aufgehoben. ironie is een manier om jezelf uit te leggen. dit
betekend dat jezelf uitleggen niet echt boeit. ironie en verhalen.
irony is voor weak people. it is nihilism.
The structrual homology between Kantian formalism and formal democracy is a classical
topos: in both cases, the starting point, the founding gesture, consists of an act of radical
emptying, evacuation. With Kant, what is evacuated and left empty is the locus of the
Supreme Good: every positive object destined to occupy this place is by definition
"pathological," marked by empirical contingency, which is why the moral Law must be
reduced to the pure Form bestowing on our acts the character of universality. Likewise, the
elementary operation of democracy is the evacuation of the locus of Power: every pretender
to this place is by definition a "pathological" usurper; "nobody can rule innocently," to quote
Saint-Just. And the crucial point tis that "nationalism" as a specifically modern, post-Kantian
phenomenon designates the moment when the Nation, the national Thing, usurps, fills out,
the empty place of the Thing opened up by Kant's "formalism," by his reduction of every
"pathological" content. The Kantian term for this filling-out of the void, of course, is th
fanaticism of schwarmerei: does not "nationalism" epitomize fanaticism in politics?
In this precise sense, it is the very "formalism" of Kant which, by way of its distinction
between negative and indefinite judgment, iopens up the space for the "undead" and similar
incarnations of some mosntours radical Evil. It was already the "pre-critical" Kant who used
the dreams of a ghost-seer to explain the metaphysical dream; today, one should refer to the
dream of the "undead" monsters to explain nationalism. The filling out of the empty place of
the Thing by the Nation is perhaps the paradigmatic case of the inversion which defines
radical Evil. As to this link between philosophical formalism ( the emptying of the
"pathological" content) and nationalism, Kant presents a unique point: by discerning the
emepty place of the Thing, he effectively circumscribes the space of nationalism, tye at hte
smae time proghibits us from taking the crucial step into it (this was doen later by way of the
"aesthetization" of the Kantian ethic, in Schiller, for example). In other words, the status of
nationlism is ultimately that o fthe transcendental illusion, the illusion of a direct acces to the
Thing; as such, it epitomizes the principle of fanaticism in politics. Kant remains a
"cosmopolite" precisly insofar as he was not yet ready to accept the psosiblity of "diabolical"
Evil, of Evil as an ethical attitude. This paradox of filling-out the empty place of the
Supreme Good defines the modern notion of Nation. The ambiguous and contradictory
nature of the modern nation is the same as that of vampires and other living dead: they
are wrongly perceived as "leftovers from the past"; their place is constituted by the very
break of modernity!
Against White Moderates:
"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must
confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white
moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling
block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux
Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who
prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the
presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot
agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the

timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who
constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding
from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of
ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." (Letter
From Birmingham Jail)
"Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We
merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the
open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is
covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light,
injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human
conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured." (Letter From Birmingham
Jail)
I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the "donothingism" of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. (Letter
From Birmingham Jail)
But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to
think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not
Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them
that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not
Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an
ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body
the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do
otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days
before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot
survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be selfevident, that an men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be
extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?
Will we be extremist for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? (Letter
From Birmingham Jail)
Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the
means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong
to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or
perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. (Letter From
Birmingham Jail)
"We can now understand the meaning of the question which forms the foundation of classical
philosophy: "How are synthetic jdugmentns a priori possible? How do isolated and indepent
men who take no account of one another and who recognize their own rason as the sole
judge and he highest court of appeal not only understand one another, but necessarily
understand one another? What is that minimum of shared presuppositions which must be
recognized even by two men with diametircally opposed views if they are to communicate
and to conduct a conversation (in the widest sense of the term)? What is that minimum of
community which exist in any dialogue andmakes men not independent monads but members
of a greater whole, of one community, of one world? [Habermas]

synthetic a priori judgments = is real abstraction possible?

postulation of community [zizek: belief] | not conscious, but through acts! [dupuy ->
endogenous fixed point => necessary illusion] "If from a taste for paradox he denies them
verbally, he must nevertheless presuppose their truth in his actions" (158) [cynisism]
"Kant is thus concerned with necessary agreement between men. [SUPPOSED TO
BELIEVE, ZIZEK] This passage, like all those used in the polemic against pscychologism,
signifies simply that the categories of the understanding, together with everything a priori,
are huan and intellectual factors, no biological ones. A pack of wolves or a swarm of bees
does not constitute a community. It is obvious that community requires more than fortuitous
resemblance or external harmony; the elements must be conditioned in their very existence
by the toaliry. IN synthetic a priori judgments the commnity is postualated form the outset.
The categories are, in sptie of their reification, the theoritical expression of the human spirit
and th human community. (154).
The community: "the people" and the concept of utopia also implies the "highest good
for the community of people" [Laclau]
Empty form of the subject [cogito] is a form of reification [not psychological: totally
atomized (proletarian)]
parlementocapitalism (democracy plus market = liberal democratic capitalism + irony!
[Rorty] ----> irony dwindles [is felt not to be enough] when postulation of
parlementocapitalism is in crisis) [irony is a proper option when the postulation of
community is rocktight --> Reagan/Tatcher/neoliberalism etc].....
metamodernism does describe a contemporary feeling, but cannot consitute a new era,
not even in jamesons sense as a cultural dominant (since no mentioning of reification)

explicit to implicit (ideologie mapping)

postmodernism->
onttovering ! weber scientisme/ dialectiek der verlichting.
oplossingen: new materialism, ooo, speculative realism, posthumanism.
science. scientism
arts: metamodernism, neo-romanticism, new sincerity.
politics: occupy.
love: tinder.

artisaniy, grow your own vegetables.

how to distinghuis, world does not exist.
metamodernism.
ideologie critique in the critical tradition of kant.
zwarte piet.
historical investigation will miss the point.
deconstruction primarily negative, it breaks down state, substantial i, etc. how to become
positive?
There is no reason; (braidotti citizenship)
the number of new conflicts , reveal a new consensus.
Liquid modernity may be characterized as a state in which the important oppositions which constituted the framework of early, solid modernity
have been cancelled: oppositions between creative and destructive arts,
between learning and forgetting, between forward and backward steps. The
pointer has been removed from the arrow of time; so you have an arrow, but
without a pointer.
Waarom is moraliteit volgens Hegel niet genoeg.
Eerst laten zien dat Kants begrip van moraliteit een onderscheid maakt tussen
de subjectieve behoeftebevrediging en de morele autonomie:
Dan laten zien dat als het verstandsdenken deze tegenstelling verhardt ,
autonomie kan uitlopen op willekeur en immoraliteit.
In de moraliteit gaat het om een bijzondere subjectieve wil die zelf het
algemene wil bepalen en in zijn handelen tot stand wil brengen. Zoals de
categorisch imperatief: Handel alleen volgens die maxime waarvan je
tegelijkertijd kunt willen dat ze een algemene wet zou worden
In Kants begrip van de moraliteit de bevrediging van de subjectieve behoeften
onderscheiden van het goede. Wie goed handelt, handelt op basis van de
morele wet en niet op basis van een of andere subjectieve behoefte. Moreel
handelen en handelen omwille van een behoeftebevrediging sluiten elkaar in die
zin uit. Het kan misschien toevallig zo zijn dat een goede handeling een behoefte
bevredigd, maar dit is niet altijd het geval: het is niet gegarandeerd. Soms levert

een in strikte zin goede handeling juist veel ongeluk op. Je mag bijvoorbeeld
geen zelfmoord plegen, ook niet als je ernstig ziek bent. Soms moet je met
afschuw moet doen wat de plicht gebied.
Hoewel er bij het moreel handelen op hetzelfde moment een behoefte zou
kunnen worden bevredigd, blijft het een toevallig samenvallen: Het algemene,
een goede handeling kan en mag niet door een de subjectieve interesse worden
bepaald. f je handelt op basis van een behoefte, f je handelt op basis van een
moreel principe. Het kan voorkomen dat een goede handeling gepaard gaat met
een behoefte bevrediging, maar dat is toeval. Volgens Hegel zijn subjectieve
bevrediging en moreel handelen hier nog te beperkt bemiddeld.
In het verstandsdenken blijft deze tegenstelling bestaan. Er lijkt een
onophefbare tegenstelling te bestaan tussen behoefte bevrediging en
moraliteit. Het verstand kan de fundamentele eenheid van deze tegenstelling
namelijk niet begrijpen: f je handelt op basis van een toevallige behoefte, f je
handelt op basis van een moreel principe, en alleen het laatste is goed.
Als deze tegenstelling wordt doorgedacht en verabsoluteerd, kan er
geconcludeerd worden dat een goede handeling niet direct tot welzijn in de
werkelijkheid hoeft te leiden. Als mijn principe luidt dat ik niet mag liegen, mag Ik
in geen geval liegen, ook al wordt ik gemarteld . Op het samenvallen van het
goede handelen en de subjectieve bevredigingen kunnen we namelijk alleen
hopen, maar in veel gevallen zal een goede handeling niet tot een
verwerkelijking van welzijn leiden.
Als het goede handelen op basis van morele principes niet samen gedacht kan
worden met welzijn, hoeft het goede handelen dus niet altijd direct te leiden tot
een algemeen welzijn in de werkelijkheid. Het enige waar een goede
handeling aan moet voldoen is autonomie : de subjectieve moet handelen
volgens de principes die het veralgemeniseert wil zien. Welke gevolgen dit heeft
voor de werkelijkheid is niet van belang. Het goede hoeft geen concrete,
werkelijke inhoud te hebben in de vorm van welzijn: Ik lieg nooit, zelfs niet als ik
het leven van een vriend kan besparen.
Als we dit volgens Hegel doordenken, bestaat de kans de kans dat moraliteit
geheel subjectivistisch wordt: de subjectieve wil bepaalt wat goed is en wat
niet, ongeacht of de werkelijkheid er beantwoord in de vorm van welzijn.
Uiteindelijk kan ik dus bijvoorbeeld, in naam van het goede, meehelpen aan het

ombrengen van een hele groep mensen, enkel en alleen omdat ik vind dat ik
nooit mag liegen. Hoewel dit voor ons op een kwade handeling lijkt, kan de
subjectieve wil de handeling legitimeren in naam van het goede. Het goede als
verwerkelijkt welzijn hoeft namelijk niet direct in de werkelijkheid te worden
aangetroffen. Uiteindelijk leidt dit tot willekeur en immoralisme: elke subjectieve
wil in naam van het goede doen wat hij wil. Het maakt namelijk niet uit of dit in
de werkelijkheid tot kwade gevolgen leidt, omdat moreel handelen niet direct tot
een verwerkelijkt welzijn hoeft te leiden.
Dit gebeurt er volgens Hegel in de Terreur na de Franse revolutie. Daar werd de
moraliteit als autonomie verabsoluteerd. Het handelen omwille van het goede
slaat dan om in zijn tegendeel: het kwade. In naam van het strikte navolging
van de morele wet, wordt kwaad gedaan. In de moraliteit is niet gegarandeerd
dat het subjectieve navolgen van de eigen principes het algemene niet schaadt.
De moraliteit blijkt op zich dus niet voldoende te zijn om het goede te
verwerkelijken.
De tegenstelling kan zich daarom niet handhaven. Het ware Goede kan niet
alleen het abstracte begrip van de wil als autonomie zijn, maar moet ook in de
wereld verwerkelijk worden. Kants moraalfilosofie fixeert zich volgens Hegel op
het louter morele standpunt, en maakt niet de overgang naar het zedelijke. Voor
Hegel moeten we, om te weten wat het ware goede is, het goede concreet
maken, verwerkelijken.

1.
hoe thee climate change is perceived, described in a consistent way, how terms are defined,
because real threat and facts, obscures, represses certain aspects
NHwhat can be said of being what exist before the operation?
impasse occurs in the world, desp. happed to a world. situation is multiple.
to simply start that there are multiples I'd not enough
subject is the pint in the situation that draws the consequences of the event. can emerges i'm
the gap rep pres. the process then, (fidelity), produces a truth within the situation by way of
the subject

if being is multiple, the void u is included in every consistent

for some early radical v fem.
Identify politics is a paradox: while it constitutes itself through an experience of oppression
brought about by homogenizing identities, it itself needs to assert a new identity, which will
in turn be oppressive to identities. Thus, identity politics will always fail.

Specter, Miracle, Cynicism, Utopia

time is out of joint: reawakingn of history: specter of marx. how to understand revolts?
a sign both of the past and of the future.
ghost as miracle. -> point towards future. gap in structure.
politics of prescription. affirmative.
specter is affirmative: oath, swear. not just to wait.
specter; those unaccounted for -> does not point to future
specters popping in and out of existence. (this is what the specter does, it is its definition)
specter has its origin in the future
closure/ utopia is in capitalism / fukuyama
emancipation
events: not: how it happens. but: it happens, how to recognize. to speak with ghost/specter ;
to let it speak: to tell its story of the future.
time is out of joint!
iterabiliteit
to learn to live with ghosts. everyday. does not work. you silence the ghost once again.
we do not want to learn not live with illegal immigrants. we don't want there to be illegal
immigrants! if they are ghosts, we we essentialize them.
If it-learning to live-remains to be done, it can happen only
between life and death. Neither in lif e nor in death alone. What
happens between two, and between all the "two's" one likes, such
as between lif e and death, can only maintain itsef with some ghost,
can only talk with or about some ghost [s' entretenir de quelque fantomeJ .

So it would be necessary to learn spirits. Even and especially if this,

the spectral , is not. Even and especially if this , which is neither
substance, nor essence, nor existence, is never present as such.
the ghost must pop in and out of existence.
messia
ethics
reversal: specter is the material of the future
fukuyama: evangelical: promised land. they are the true utopians.
cynisism is utopia, as liberalism is utopia. communism is realism.
true uptopia: Why this amplifcation by the media? And how is it that a dis
course of this type is sought out by those who celebrate the
triumph of liberal capitalism and its predestined alliance With
liberal democracy only in order to hide, and frst of all from
themselves , the fact that this triumph has never been so critical.
fragile, threatened, even in certain regards catastrophic, and in
sum bereaved?
beyond all living present, within that which
disjoins the living present , before the ghosts of those who are
not yet born or who are already dead, be they victims of wars ,
political or other kinds of violence, nationalist, racist, colonialist,
sexist, or other kinds of exterminations, victims of the oppres
sions of capitalis t imperialism or any of the forms of totalitarian
ism. <--- They are already DEAD
to learn to live, finally: to be an activist
moment -> however -> no soy has memory of 1966. ->nonetheless
THese movements ARE the new international
We are asked (enjoined, perhaps) to turn ourselves over to
the future, to join ourselves in this we , there where the disparate
is turned over to this singular joining , without concept or cer
tainty of determination, without knowledge, without or before
the synthetic junction of the conjunction and the disjunction.
The alliance of a rejoining without conjoined mate, without organ
ization, without party, without nation, without State, without
property (the "communism" that we will later nickname the
new International) .
Truth is always dead of some god. Truth and nihilisme. Subject.

Meta modernisme.
Polemical.
Bio politics > life/human animal/Rex extensa. death of king/god> nihilism, philosophie of
the subject.
Freud. Interpreter of signs is also a doctor, a Symptomatologist, who diagnoses the illness
afflicting the enterprising individual and the brilliant society. ranciere, 38.
Freud not to cure pathological to normal. But to show how normal is already pathological.
Same as Critique of ideology
distancing. irony.
but irony presupposes an opposite with a true identity, that what is mocked.
representation/ideology/commitment.
hipster versus geek/nerd.
posthuman, distancing, decentrement: ooo, metamodernism, biopolitics, hermeneutics of
suspicion, badious subject, lacan subject.
Lacan even goes so far as to say that there would be no being at all were it not
for the verb "to be": '"[S]peaking being' ... is a pleonasm. because there is
only being due to spking: were it not for the verb 'to be,' there would b no
being at all" (Seminar XXI, January 15, 1974).

Language -> being -> the Real

Not only can the circular movement between 0 and s(O) not be closed-it is, in addition,
founded in itself. The produc
tion of meaning does not fnd its ground in a pre-given reality that is expressed in
language. It is, rather, exclusively dependent on the articulation of the signifers among
themselves. Consequently, there is no external criterion that would allow us to
defnitively decide for one discourse as against others. How, for example , could a defnitive
judgment ever be expressed
about the trth of the stores told about our families, when it is precisely from these stories
that our families get their form? Or how could one ever fnd in reality a conclusive proof
for or against the systems of meaning by which we live, such as the geat religious and
ideological systems, when our perception and experience of reality is deterined by them in
it smallest de-tails? This also explains why Lcan speaks about the "fictional structure of
the truth" (strcture de fiction) . The "discourse of the Other"-for example , the great
religious and ideological systems-cannot simply be understood as a
reproduction (whether faithful or not) of reality, since this reality can only appear as
meaningful on the basis of this discourse. In this sense, the discourse of the Other has an
essentially performative char acter; it institutes itself what it describes. This discourse,
therefore, has only itself as its guarantee. Lcan also expresses this idea by claiming that

there is "no Other of the Other" or "that there is no metalanguage which can be spoken."
(van Haute 75)
According to Lcan, language introduces the dimension of the
tth into reality. As long as the break between object and sign is
not efected, it makes no sense to talk about the "trth"; in a world
in which there is no distance between reality and those who live
in it, the truth can never be a problem
Retro active. Derrida makes the point.
first: what is the relation between s/p. Detail etc. then why photo?
Same Barthes as me. But also difficulties. Detail etc. also I had only one time this experience.
Transcendence vs immanence positions. While I would argue it is precisely the photograph
the medium where this connection is most explicit.
1. punctum. 2. detail. 3 puncutm as detail.. painting film, painting as film. 1. fam. 2. burg. 3.
staat.
1. punctum (cannot be nothing there) 2.
1. punctum as detail. 2 no detail. 3. simultaneously a schein, and something more than reality
itself
"The greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species.
His greatest achievement was that while he seemed to draw the veil from some for the
mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the
mechanical philosophy, and he thereby restored nature's ultimate secretes to that obscurity in
which they ever did and ever will remain" (Hume)
Kant public use of reason.
Event Date: 21 November 2013
Swedenborg Hall
20-21 Bloomsbury Way,
London, WC1A 2TH
The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University
presents:
Dr Jan Voelker (Free University, Berlin) On Public Reason and Emancipation
There is no definite difference in the address public (military, citizens). There is no objective,
but only a subjective difference. It is a different public addressed by the individual. The
subjective difference is the courage to make public use of ones reason. This is also the reason
why it can become necessary to suspend this capacity and to simply obey, because the
subjective courage is not bound to any objective stance, it is possible to freely suspend your
freedom. If the capcity to think freely were bound to objective limitations, this would be
impossible, as soon as public reason were bound to an objective content or form, the discision
to eventually suspend it, could not be solely subjective any longer.

And i think again, referring to the two points of the possibility of suspending freely ones
englightend reasoning, and the deojbectivization of the public, one can even go a step further
here and to clarify the mysterious notion of courage.
it becomes possible to decouple the question of making public use of ones reason from the
question of the individual being. the point is not only to use reason in a different manner., but
is the use of reason that oversteps any particular boundary. and at first any individual
boundary. but this overstepping of any individual boundary is precisely what is done by an
individual, that is to say, the courage to make use of public ones reason is the courage of the
individual to overcome the individual boundaries.
but then the term public reveals a different meaning. it marks the inscription of an individual,
into a different body, different from the individual interest or desires etc. to make public use
of ones reason is to overcome the individual notion of ones reason, thus i would like to
propose to translate the notion of making public use of ones reason into: to make a subjective
use of ones reason.
against this, the notion of the private use of reason, is, in a certain sense, an indivdiual use of
reason, but in kant's sense this individuality is not your own, but rather the individuality of a
party or a group in society. it is the discourse with which you identify yourself. thus the
opposition beteen the public and private use of reason cannot be understood as the the
oppsoition between the individual as private and the common as public. Rather, thinking in
accordance with the rules of some particular group is to make privat use of ones reason.
thinking as an individual from a universal point of view is to make public use of ones reason.
The paradox is thus, that one participates in the universal dimension of the
public sphere precisely as a singly individual, extracted from or even opposed to ones
substantial communal identification, one is truly universal only as radacally singular, int the
interestices of the communal identities.
the inscription into the publics sphere we can also understand as the participation in the
subject, as opposed to the individual, institutional imaginary identification

Courbais, burial at Ormans is an example of an intitutional ritual where the members are
distracted, but which doest impair the procession
reactive classisme, perfection within finitude, contramodernity, discourse of the master, the
end of every hope for the infinite, postmodern: orientation to the infinite is hubris. pure
ideology is bad. False politics.
reactive romanticism: there is more! romanticism of transgression. sex drugs etc. false
infinity. apparantly against the closed harmony of classisme, but is in the end a form of
nihilisme, by destruction. bad thing to remain in finite. but close relation between
transgression and death.

finite romanticism. romanticism of the master. society of enjoyment. conservative

transgression!
and the reaction to it: police , opstelten = onacceptabel.
finally there is no real acces to the infinite.
both: impossibility to acces to infinite. there is no mediation between the dictatorship of the
money and the really something new.
modernity was infinite. end of modernity of infinite. now reaction. now we know that we
can't change the world. we must find a way without any fundamental change of the world.
there is a strong conviction of impossibility.
if there is no mediation between (our concrete life) the finite and the infinitude there is no
(real) future (fukayama) only the movement of the present.
structure of choices today.
classism: no infinite and is good
romanticism: infinte which is transgression
the choice is: one is infinite (infinite which is no transgression?)
-transcendent (a new god: modern religion, rupture)
-immanent (potency of life modern vitalisme)
one is not infinite (no question of the one, no unification, a choice for everybody)
-something divine in the world (something in the world, the secret, abandon all the
contemporary world, no money etc. return to beginning of humanity, contramodern,
destruction of modernity inside modernity, weak god, radical negation, but not a
revolutionary negation, but personal, individual, outside the big towns)
-Being is neutral (there is nothing divine in nature, the world is the world, we are a part of the
big thing, we are animals, evolutionism)
modern concept of the infinite.

Foucault claimed that his problem has always been the question of truth, of telling the truth,
the wahr-sagen - what it is to tell the truth - and the relation between "telling the truth" and
forms of reflexivity, of self upon self
I believe too much in truth not to suppose that there are different truths and different ways of speaking
the truth.

What I wanted to try to recover was something of the relation between the art of existence and true
discourse, between the beautiful existence and the true life, life in the truth, life for the truth.

1. the conflviction ways in which climate change gets described

mogelijk - niet mogelijk | onmogelijk
mogelijk - niet mogelijk | differentiaal
mogelijk - onmogelijk | dialectisch )> mogelijkheid IS niet-onmogelijk en onmogelijk IS nietmogelijk (ipv niet mogelijk)
licht - donker -> licht IS niet-donker en donker IS - nietlicht -> werkt niet! )> iets donkers
kan ook bestaan uit licht.
slaaf - meester -> de slaaf IS niet-meester en de meester is niet-slaaf )> 'iets slaafs kan ook
bestaan uit meester' betekent niks
mens - niet mens | differtiaal
Mens - onmens | dialectisch -> De mens IS niet-onmens (dubbele negatie: geen 'mensbeest' of
wilde) de onmens IS niet-mens (nonmens of onmens of 'mensbeest'ipv een steen of een stoel)
Niets is niet-nietiets.
Er is iets, namelijk niets, dat nietmaterie (nietiets) is. Niets is niet-nietiets
Niets - Iets (onbepaald) | Iets = niet-niets
Man - vrouw | man is niet vrouw, vrouw IS nietman
relatie man vrouw IS nonrelatie

relatie - nonrelatie -> De relatie IS niet-nonrelatie // de nonrelatie IS nonrelatie.

het is een nonrelatie, een onrelatie.
net zoals onmogelijk een nietmogelijheid in het licht van een mogelijkheid is.
net zoals een onmens een nietmens is in het licht van een mens
zo is een onrelatie een nietrelatie in het licht van een relatie
zo ook irrationeel een nietrationaliteit is in het licht van rationaliteit (kant).
net zoals de onmeester (slaaf) een nietmeester (zoals heef veel dingen differentieel niet de
meester zijn) in het licht is van de meester !!!!

To show if there really is acces to an infinite in a dynamic sense. acces via a painting, in a
world were being is neutral, were nature is indifferent to our satisfaction. not as a knowledge
but a possibility. from knowledge to existence. from possible knowledge of the infinite tot the
possible use of the infinite as a norm of our existence.
Begin with being. Is being the prescription of finite possibility? or is being the prescription of
the infinite as such? if the infinite is real, it must be. It is after the dialectiek of finite and
infinite.
Begin with nothingness. Descartes. I know nothing. the nothingness of knowledge is
something! i think so i am. the fact that we know nothing is by necessity a something, it
exists. this thing which is the consciousness of nothing. the same with Socrates! I only know
that i know nothing! a dialectical irony. when you begin you begin in nothing, but if it
is absolutely nothing there is no beginning. nothing has no beginning.
We alway begin in the void, nothingness. we must transform the fact that we are in
nothingness into something. Hegel says being and nothingness are the same thing. it is the
same with the infinite
begin with the infinite. the religious way. We can begin with it, because the infinite said
something to us. the fact of the bible. something external when we begin with the infinite. not
the pure beginning, but something which is outside. something transcendent. something like a
revelation. not pure knowledge. something has been written outside the beginning itself,
humanity as such.
how can we begin with nothingness: we must affirm that nothingness exists. We know that
there IS nothingness. nobody can say: nothing exist, because saying that nothing exist is to
exist! the existence of the fact that i can say that i know nothing. the affirmation of the
existence of the subject. the affirmation of the thinking of nothingness. rationalist: Socrates,
Descartes. But also the nothingness as an experience, of anxiety in Kierkegaard, Heidegger or
Sartre. the beginning in the existential form of a pure subjective experience. we experience
nothingness. anxious of our existence. we come to know nothingness. being toward death.
to affirm the subject who is in nothingness. A pure inscription of nothingness. no vivid
subjectivity. the possibility to name nothingness. smallest thing possible is the name of
nothing. this will be the beginning. T assume the possible existence of the name of nothing.
inscription of zero. The inscription of the void. The inscription, or the name, can not exactly
differ from the thing itself. The point where the name of nothing is nothing as a thing. nothing
in the form of something. dialectical ambiguity of being and nothingness. The signification,
the meaning of the word is in immediate relationship with the idea of nothing.
The beginning will be the void. there is no subject, no living experience, there is a pure trace
a pure symbol. the name for nothingness doesn matter what it is: .

Absolute beginning. Nothing determinate. Pure indetermination. The first mark, the
first thing. The said without any element, the void said. we can say that after. the
name is the being of nothingness, not a such but as represented.
there is only one void, unique. we return to the one. why? because, if they are
different, there is nothing. nothingness cannot be different. no determination at all.
we cannot find difference. one nothingness cannot have a determination which
differs ffrom the determintation of the other nothingness, because it is indeterminate.
It is a proper name, not a common name. the name of the void, is the one thing
which is the proper name of nothing.
the name of nothingness, not nothingness itself, can be an element in something
else. we can add the set with only one element, which is precicly the beginning, the
pure name. {} = the set, the multiple with only one element (the name of
nothingness). this element cannot be nothingness, but the name can be regarded as
an element of a set. this, in some sense, is the one. a set with only one element is a
realization of the one. is the thing of nothing {} is the thing of one
thing, because it is the name is one thing.
we go from nothingness to the one, by the mediation of the name of the one. But
now, we have two things. so we can have the set {,{}} , etc.
{,{} = 2
{,{},{,{}} = 3
{{},{,{}{,{},{,{}}} = 4
Our proces was only the affirmation of the name for the existence of the void. We
have not learned numbers. A number is nothing. One proper name gives us all the
numbers. All numbers are variation concerning zero. Numbers are made of
nothingness. We can continue infinitely.
Numbers are disposed between nothingness and the infinite. That is the place of the finite.
The construction of the finite is a thing for the infinite. we have the finite because of the
infinite. we have a proces without a limit. Infite is without limit. but to construct finite
numbers, we must dispose of something infinite. There is no clear opposition between finite
and the infinite. To completely understand the finite, we must have the idea of a continuation
without limit. every number +1. If all was closed, we cannot have no concept of the finite
itself. the finite must continu, and is without limit. thus the finite is without limit. The finite is
in relationship with the infinite and with nothingness. The finite is the dialectical result of the
relationship between nothingness and the infinite.
Quote
neither/nor det/freedom
Governmentality/ethics at same time.
master is constitutive. the self alone is not enough
spiritual: not only knowledge.

has to do with iranians willing to die.

And yet. Instances of a non relation. Through care of the self, relation to self
Niet vergeten te lezen: author en subject and power.
the subject is always a process of subjectivation which will eventually result from the
process.
what is an author? the subject/author is a juridical and social fantasy. -> it creates
the possibility of judging and condemning.
in the work of art, the subject does not cease to disappear. That which does not disappear
Foucault how is subject constituted? Implies two things: historical , not fixed, changable,
when techniques are at work. Not always successful Can fail. How comes subject of power
into being? No substantial subject. Constitute the self? How comes subject of ethic into
being? Not same subject!
Ontological Subject is relation, its the form of the relation (technique) that differs
You are this and this, this is true because it is knowledge.
You are n nothing if you don't take care of your self
Subject and truth. To which game of truth will one play. To which one will one relate,
constitute, become? Truth of knowledge (analytical) of discipline or spiritual truth?
what does it mean to constitute oneself?
techniques of the self CAN be co-opted by techniques of domination. Domination and
resistance: there is freedom if there is not ONLY domination; if there are self techniques.
today these self-techniques are very much "glued", or "sutured" onto techniques of
domination. but, in principle, they are separable. To de-suture the two, one needs to recreate a
distance; this is ethics.
"I think that if one wants to analyze the genealogy of the subject in Western
civilization, he has to take into account not only techniques of domination but also
techniques of the self. Let's say: he has to take into account the interaction between those
two types of techniques-techniques of domination and techniques of the self. He has to take
into account the points where the technologies of domination of individuals over one
another have recourse to processes by which the individual acts upon himself.
And conversely, he has to take into account the points where the techniques of the self
are integrated into structures of coercion or domination" (about the beginning of the
hermeneutics 203)
"There is a very long way from one to the other, and I don't want, of course, to give you
even a survey this evening. I'd like only to underline a transformation of those practices,
a transformation which took place at the beginning of the Christian era, of the Christian

period, when the ancient obligation of knowing oneself became the monastic precept
"confess, to your spiritual guide, each of your thoughts." This transformation is, I think,
of some importance in the genealogy of modern subjectivity. With this transformation
starts what we would call the hermeneutics of the self." (204)
The question then is, what does a hermeneutic of the subject today mean? what does "know
yourself" mean today? What truth is to consitute the subject?
The point is that the Christian, or Kantian, has to memorize the (universal) Law, the
foucauldian ethical subject has to memorize his Acts in order to ACTIVATE, the principles of
conduct. Its the other way around. The rules only exist in the act? !
"In the Christian confession the penitent has to memorize the law in order to discover
his own sins, but in this Stoic exercise the sage has to memorize acts in order to
reactivate the fundamental rules" (207).
"First, this examination, it's not at all a question of discovering the truth hidden in the
subject."
There is not fundamental, eternal truth to be discovered (ten commandments, categorical
imperative).
"It is rather a question of recalling the truth forgotten by the subject"
It is not an autonomous, authentic self that is forgotten because of to
much worldly (bourgeois) entanglements. Distractions can cause to forget what he should
have done, the rules of behavior (self techniques) that he had LEARNED, or acquired.
"Two, what the subject forgets is not himself, nor his nature, nor his origin, nor a
supernatural affinity. What the subject forgets is what he ought to have done, that is, a
collection of rules of conduct that he had learned" (207).
"Three, the recollection of errors committed during the day serves to measure the distance
(!) which separates what has been done from what should have been done" (207).
The question is, what should one have done? does the self technique comply with techniques
of domination? or is their a distance between domination and the self technique?
"And four, the subject who practices this examination on himself is not the operating ground
for a process more or less obscure which has to be deciphered."
Its not to find the rational ground of moral acts, its not to find the categorical imperative.
"He is the point where rules of conduct come together and register themselves in the form of
memories. He is at the same time the point of departure for actions more or less in
conformity with these rules. He constitutes, the subject constitutes, the point of
intersection between a set of memories which must be brought into the present and acts
which have to be regulated."

The subject who practices this examination on himself is the point where rules of conduct
(governing techniques: of domination and self). where techniques collide, are in conflict,
there the subject is constituted (?)= This is the subject (subjected to rules). He is, at the same
time, in the same moment the point of departure for actions that must (MORE OR LESS!)
conform wit these rules. So he is at once the constituted by conflicting rules?/he is the point
of where things come together in the form of memories, as wel as the constituting the actions
(no). The subject constitutes the point of intersection, brings into being, founds, MEMORIES
(which are brought into the present to consitute acts), and ACTS (which have to be regulate
by the memories)
The subject is the point where all kinds of (possibly conflicting) rules of conduct are
memorized. At the same time it is the point of departure of the actions. He constitutes the
point of intersection between these memories (the subject retrieves, remembers the rules)
and the acts that are to be regulated (which rules are put into practice?).
His pleasures are not the means of revealing what Christians later call concupiscensia (lust).
For him, it is a question of his own state and of adding something to the knowledge of
the moral precepts. This addition to what is already known is a force, the force which
would be able to transform pure knowledge and simple consciousness in a real way of
living. And that is what Seneca tries to do when he uses a set of persuasive arguments,
demonstrations, examples, in order not to discover a still unknown truth inside and in the
depth of Serenus's soul but in order to explain, if I may say, to which extent truth in general
is true (?). Seneca's discourse has for an objective not to add to some theoretical principle a
force of coercion coming from elsewhere but to transform them (theoretical principles?) in
a victorious force. Seneca has to give a place to truth as a force.!!
Truth is a force, which can transforms one's principles of conduct!!!! Truth is not
the principle itself (CI) or the Transcendent outside (God) that commands the principle. YES!
"Hence, I think, several consequences. First, in this game between Serenus's confession and
Seneca's [Master] consultation, truth, as you see, is not defined by a correspondence to
reality but as a force inherent to principles and which has to be developed in a discourse.
Truth is a force IN the principles.
"Two, this truth is not something which is hidden behind or under the consciousness in the
deepest and most obscure part of the soul. It is something which is before the individual as a
point of attraction, a kind of magnetic force which attracts him towards a goal"
THE QUESTION IS IN WHAT WAY IS TRUTH UNIVERSAL (GENERIC).
Three, this truth Is not obtained by an analytical exploration of what is supposed to be real
in the individual but by rhetorical explanation of what is good for anyone who wants to
approach the life of a sage [een wijze].
"Four, the confession is not oriented toward an individualization of Serenus by the
discovery of some personal characteristics but towards the constitution of a self which

could be at the same time and without any discontinuity subject of knowledge and subject
of will."
The confession is oriented towards a constitution of a self that is simultanously, WITHOUT
DISCONTINUITY, a SUBJECT of KNOWLEDGE and SUBJECT of WILL. (self that is
Both subject consituted by knowledge "neoliberal" as wel as subject of will, a subject
of principled action?)
"Five, we can see that such a practice of confession and consultation remains within the
framework of what the Greeks for a long time called the gnome. The term gnome designates
the unity of will and knowledge; it designates also a brief piece of discourse through which
truth appeared with all its force and encrusts itself in the soul of people. Then, we could
say that even as late as the first century A.D., the type of subject which is proposed as a
model and as a target in the Greek, or in the Hellenistic or Roman, philosophy, is a gnomic
self, where force of the truth is one with the form of the will."
"In this model of the gnomic self, we found several constitutive elements:
[the necessity of telling truth about oneself],
[the role of the master and the master's discourse],
[the long way that leads finally to the emergence of the self.]"
All those elements, we find them also in the Christian technologies of
the self, but with a very different organization
Today, is there a necessity of telling the truth about onself? yes: be authentic.
Is there a role for the master and the masters discourse? No: be yourself, don't let others tell
you what to do.
Is there something like the emergence of the self? Sometimes the self exist, and one should
find it. Sometime identity is to be created. be yourself means actually the opposite of
thinking who one is and to act accordingly.
"You see that the task is not to put in the light what would be the most obscure part of our
selves. The self has, on the contrary, not to be discovered but to be constituted, to be
constituted through the force of truth. This force lies in the rhetorical quality of the master's
discourse, and this rhetorical quality depends for a part on the expose of the disciple, who has
to explain how far he is in his way of living from the true principles that he knows" (210).
"And I think that this organization of the self as a target, the organization of what I call the
gnomic self, as the objective, the aim, towards which the confession and the self-examination
is oriented, is something deeply different of what we meet in the Christian technologies of the
self. In the Christian technologies of the self, the problem is to discover what is hidden inside
the self; the self is like a text or like a book that we have to decipher, and not something
which has to be constructed by the superposition, the superimposition, of the will and the
truth. This organization, this Christian organization, so different from the pagan one, is
something which is I think quite decisive for the genealogy of the modern self, and that's
the point I'll try to explain next week when we meet again" (210).
These two ensembles of obligations, those regarding the faith, the book, the dogma, and the
obligations regarding the self, the soul, the heart, are linked together. A Christian is

always supposed to be supported by the light of faith if he wants to explore himself, and,
conversely, access to the truth of the faith cannot be conceived of without the purification of
the soul.
two systems of obligation, of truth obligation - the one concerned with access to light
and the one concerned with the making of truth, the discovering of truth inside oneself
- those two systems of obligation have always maintained a relative autonomy.
Even after Luther, even in Protestantism, the secrets of the soul and the mysteries of
the faith, the self and the book, are not in Christianity enlightened by exactly the
same type of light. They demand different methods and put into operation particular
technique.
"But this exomologesis was also a way for the sinner to express his will to get free
from this world, to get rid of his own body, to destroy his own flesh, and get access to a
new spiritual life. It is the theatrical representation of the sinner as willing his own death
as a sinner. It is the dramatic manifestation of the renunciation to oneself. To justify this
exomologesis and this renunciation to oneself in manifesting the truth about oneself,
Christian fathers had recourse to several models" (214).
Such a demonstration does not therefore have as its function the establishment of the
personal identity. Rather, such a demonstration serves to mark this dramatic
demonstration of what one is: the refusal of the self, the breaking off from one's self.
The exomologesis seeks, in opposition to the Stoic techniques, to superimpose by an act
of violent rupture the truth about oneself and the renunciation of oneself. In the
ostentatious gestures of maceration, self-revelation in exomologesis is, at the same time,
self-destruction.
But these kinds of ancient practices were modified under the influence of two
fundamental elements of Christian spirituality: the principle of obedience, and the
principle of contemplation.
Obedience is a permanent relationship, and even when the monk is old, even when he
became, in his turn, a master, even then he has to keep the spirit of obedience as a
permanent sacrifice of his own will.
In the monastic life, the supreme good is not the mastership of oneself; the supreme
good in the monastic life is the contemplation of God. The obligation of the monk is
continuously to turn his thoughts to that single point which is God, and his obligation
is also to make sure that his heart, his soul, and the eye of his soul is pure enough to
see God and to receive light from him.
First, about the self-examination, the first point about the self-examination in the
monastic life is that the self-examination in this kind of Christian exercise is much
more concerned with thoughts than with actions.
Not only the passions which might make vacillate the firmness of his conduct; he has to
take in hand the images which present themselves to the spirit, the thoughts which come
to interfere with contemplation, the diverse suggestions which turn the attention of the

spirit away from its object, that means away from God. So much so that the primary
material for scrutiny and for the examination of the self is an area anterior to actions, of
course, anterior to will also, even an area anterior to the desires-a much more tenacious
material than the material the Stoic philosopher had to examine in
himself. The monk has to examine a material which the Greek fathers call (almost always
pejoratively) the logismoi, that is in Latin, cogitationes, the nearly imperceptible
movements of the thoughts, the permanent mobility of soul. That's the material which
the monk has to continuously examine in order to maintain the eye of his spirit always
directed towards the unique point which is God. But, when the monk scrutinizes his own
thoughts, what is he concerned with? Not of course with the relation between the idea
and the reality. He is not concerned with this truth relation which makes an idea wrong
or true. He is not interested in the relationship between his mind and the external
world. What he is concerned with is the nature, the quality, the substance of his
thoughts.
One must recognize, however, the importance of the question of truth with the Stoic,
but the question was presented in terms of true or false opinions favorable to forming
good or bad actions. For Cassian, the problem is not to know if there is a conformity
between the idea and the order of external things; it is a question of examining the
thought in
itself.
For instance, the idea comes to me that fasting is a good thing. The idea is certainly
true, but maybe this idea has
been suggested not by God but by Satan in order to put me in competition with other
monks, and then bad feelings about the other ones can be mixed to the project of fasting
more than I do. So, the idea is true in regard to the external world, or in regard to the
rules, but the idea is impure since from its origin it is rooted in bad sentiments.
His seniority permits him to distinguish between truth and illusion in the soul of the
person he directs.
From this, we can see (1) that verbalization in itself has an interpretive function.
Verbalization contains in itself a power of discretio.46 (2) This verbalization is not a kind
of retrospection about past acts. Verbalization, Cassian imposes to monks, this
verbalization has to be a permanent activity, as contemporaneous as possible of the stream
of thoughts. (3) This verbalization must go as deep as possible in the depth of the
thoughts. These, whatever they are, have an inapparent origin, obscure roots, secret
parts, and the role of verbalization is to excavate these origins and those secret parts.
(4) As verbalization brings to the external light the deep movement of the thought, it
leads also and by the same process the human soul from the reign of Satan to the law
of God. That means that verbalization is a way for the conversion47 (for the metanoia,
said the Greek fathers), for the conversion to develop itself and to take effect. Since
under the reign of Satan the human being was attached to himself, verbalization as a
movement toward God is a renunciation to Satan, and a renunciation to oneself.
Verbalization is a self-sacrifice. To this permanent, exhaustive, and sacrificial
verbalization of the thoughts which was obligatory for the monks in the monastic
institution, to this permanent verbalization of the thoughts, the Greek fathers gave the
name of exagoreusis.'

But it must be remarked that this verbalization, as I just told you, is also a way of
renouncing self and no longer wishing to be the subject of the will.
They are supposed to have the same goals and the same effect. So much that one can
isolate as the common element to both practices the following principle: the revelation of
the truth about oneself cannot, in those two early Christian experiences, the revelation of
the truth about oneself cannot be dissociated from the obligation to renounce oneself.
We have to sacrifice the self in order to discover the truth about ourself, and we have to
discover the truth about ourself in order to sacrifice ourself. Truth and sacrifice, the
truth about ourself and the sacrifice of ourself, are deeply and closely connected. And
we have to understand this sacrifice not only as a radical change in the way of life but as
the consequence of a formula like this: you will become the subject of the manifestation
of truth when and only when you disappear or you destroy yourself as a real body or as a
real existence.
You remember what I told you last week: the Greek technology, or the philosophical
techniques, of the self tended to produce a self which could be, which should be, the
permanent superposition in the form of memory of the subject of knowledge and the
subject of the will.
This technology of the self maintains the difference between knowledge of being,
knowledge of word, knowledge of nature, and knowledge of the self, and this
knowledge of the self takes shape in the constitution of thought as a field of
subjective data which are to be interpreted. And, the role of interpreter is assumed by
the work of a continuous verbalization of the most imperceptible movements of the
thought- that's the reason we could say that the Christian self which is correlated to this
technique is a gnosiologic self.
And the second point which seems to me important is this: you may notice in early
Christianity an oscillation between the truth-technology of the self oriented toward the
manifestation of the sinner, the manifestation of the being-what we would call the
ontological temptation of Christianity, and that is the exomologesis-and another truthtechnology oriented toward the discursive and permanent analysis of the thought-that is
the exagoreusis, and we could see there the epistemological temptation of Christianity..
And, as you know, after a lot of conflicts and fluctuation, the second form of
technology, this epistemological technology of the self, or this technology of the self
oriented toward the permanent verbalization and discovery of the most
imperceptible movements of our self, this form became victorious after centuries
and centuries, and it is nowadays dominating.
Even in these hermeneutical techniques derived from the exagoreusis the production of
truth could not be met, you remember, without a very strict condition: hermeneutics of the
self implies the sacrifice of the self. And that is, I think, the deep contradiction, or, if
you want, the great richness, of Christian technologies of the self: no truth about the self
without a sacrifice of the self.
I think that one of the great problems of Western culture has been to find the
possibility of founding the hermeneutics of the self not, as it was the case in early
Christianity, on the sacrifice of the self but, on the contrary, on a positive, on the
theoretical and practical, emergence of the self.

SO ONE REASON FOR KNOWLEDGE SUBJECT, WAS TO GIVE A POSITIVE,

THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL, SELF.
FIND POSSIBILITY OF FOUNDING A HERMENEUTICS, NOT ON SACRIFICE OF
SELF, BUT ON A POSITIVE, ON THE THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL,
EMERGENCE OF THE SELF. TO CONSTITUTE THE GROUND!, FUNDAMENT OF
SUBJECTIVITY AS THE ROOT OF A POSITIVE SELF.
That was the aim of judicial institutions, that was the aim also of medical and
psychiatric practices, that was the aim of political and philosophical theory- to
constitute the ground of the subjectivity as the root of a positive self, what we could
call the permanent anthropologism of Western thought. And I think that this
anthropologism is linked to the deep desire to substitute the positive figure of man
for the sacrifice which for Christianity was the condition for the opening of the self
as a field of indefinite interpretation.
1 During the last two centuries, the problem has been: what could be the positive
foundation for the technologies of the self that we have been developing during
centuries and centuries? But the moment, maybe, is coming for us to ask, do we need,
really, this hermeneutics of the self? !!!! Maybe the problem of the self is not to discover
what it is in its positivity, maybe the problem is not to discover a positive self or the
positive foundation of the self. Maybe our problem is now to discover that the self is
nothing else than the historical correlation of the technology built in our history. Maybe
the problem is to change those technologies. And in this case, one of the main political
problems would be nowadays, in the strict sense of the word, the politics of ourselves. !!!!
But if one is to create oneself without recourse to knowledge or universal
rles, how does your view difer from Sartrian existentialism?
A: I think that from the theoretical point of view, Sartre avoids the idea of the
self as something which is given to us , but through the moral notion of authen
ticity , he turs back to the idea that we have to b ourselves-o be truly our
true self. I think that the only acceptable practical consequence of what Sartre
has said is to link his theoretical insight to the practice of creativity-and not
of authenticity . From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think that there
is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art. [in the
sense of badiou?]
In his analyses of Baudelaire, Flaubert , etc., it is interesting to see that Sartre
refers the work of creation to a certain relation to oneself-the author to
himself-which has the form of authenticity or of inauthenticity . I would like
to say exactly the contrary: we should not have to refer the creative activity of
somebody to the kind of relation he has to himself, but should relate the kind
of relation one has to oneself to a creative activity. (rabinow interview 237) [creation of a
truth/ badiou]
the care of the self has constitutively the form of a creation of himself. there is no subjectivity
before the proces, perhaps there is no subjectivity after the process.
ethical aspect through which a subject creates something, constitutes himself. [think of the
proletariat]

by creating a work i create myself

if you write a book, the book creates you.
you can distinghuis self and relationship, but you cannot ontologically seperate them
self and the relation of the self to itself. jorg is this and this, and jorg IS.
what is the difference? one is this and other is this. no. purely existential difference.
What is aimed at as salvation is accomplished without any transcendence: "The self with
which one has the relationship is nothing other than the relationship itself'... it is in short the
immanence, or better, the ontological adequacy of the self to the
relationship." (hos 533) [death drive]
Difference between self and subject.~!!!!!!!!!
different figure of being beyond essence and existence. indifference.
think of te relation between constituting power and constituted power.
constituted power is the proces that will create the law, takes the form of a constitution. there
was a constituent subject.
what made the constituting power? oppression, and resistance.
what is the constituting self, and the constituted self?
how a power constitutes itself as constituent (and not as constituted) [think of proletariat]
FOUCAULT TRIES TO FORMULATE A SUBJECT THAT CONSTITUTES ITSELF AS
CONSTITUENT. AS A REAL SELF, AND NOT AS AN OBJECTIFIED SELF.
OTHERWISE ITS NOT AN AUTO-CONSTITUTION, BUT THE CONSTITUTION OF AN
OBJECT
WHAT CONSTITUTES A POTENCY AS A POTENCY
Subject and power : p 4' "I would like to suggest another way to go further toward a new
economy of power relations, a way that is more empirical, more directly related to out present
situation, and one that implies more relations between theory and practice. It consist in taking
the forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point. To use another
metaphor, it consist in using this resistance as a chemical catalyst so as to bring to light
power relations, locate their position, find out their point of application and the methods used.
Rather than analyzing power from the point of view of its internal rationality it consist of
analyzing power relations through the antagonism of strategies.

To sum up, the main objective of these struggles is to attack not so much such-or-such
institution of power, or group, or elite, or class, but, rather, a technique, a form of power. This
form of power that applies itself to immediate everyday life categorizes the individual, marks
him by his own individuality attaches him to his won identity, imposes a law of truth on him
that he must recognize and others have to recognize in him. It is a form of power that makes
individuals subjects. There are two meanings of the word "subjec": subject to someone else
by condtrol and dependence, and tied to his own idenity by a conscience or selfknowledge!!!. Both meanings suggest a form of power that subjugates and makes subject to.
If we dene spirituality as being the form of practices which postulate that, such as he is, the
subject is not capable of the truth, but that, such as it is, the truth can transgure and save the
subject, then we can say that the modern age of the relations between the subject and truth
begin when it is postulated that, such as he is, the subject is capable of truth, but that, such as
it is, the truth cannot save the subject. rabinow
to make or do a history of objectivation, of those elements that historians
consider as objective givens (the objectivation of objectivations, so to say); it
is that circle that I wish to follow out. rabinow.
We must free ourselves (saffranchir) from the sacralization of the social as the unique
instance of the real and stop diminishing that essential aspect of human life and human
relations, thinking. 32

whole project of german idealism is a reaction against kant's claim of

higherphysicak\metaphysical entities
A similar insight is conveyed by Nietzsches and Heideggers diagnosis of Platonism as the
ultimate origin of European nihilism. Platonisms degradation of the sensible realm (the
inessential) in favor of its underlying organizational principles (the essential) masks the
very reflective operation by which the underlying organizational principles are constituted.
As a matter of fact, they are only available to epistm in the latters desire for transcendence.
Platonism is inspired by an attempt at transcendence without reecting on the nitude of this
intention.
To say that there exist a underlying neutral structure that is desirable, beneath
the undesirable divison in the sensible (two cities) masks the operation by which the
underlying structure is constituted. They are only available to knowledge, by the desire for
unification.
The way transcendence is achieved is prescribed by the elements structure of appearance.
Appearance seems to be organized in such a manner that it betrays some underlying,
elementary reality. The elements which seem to reveal a hidden essence retro
actively generate the hidden essence. The degradation of the sensible realm (i.e. nihilism)
thus amounts to a reversal of itself: it pretends to cling to the essence of things instead of
leading a life of appearances and yet it essentially leads a life of appearances based on a
denial, namely on the denial of appearances. It therefore annihilates itself and becomes an
aggressive force of civilization in the name of the true nature of things.

perspective is not subjective. There is nothing subjective in the perspective that influence the
way I see ul qoma or beszel.
(this is why traditionalist can say "Zwarte piet might appear racist, but REALLY he is not."
it's not that they cannot see the racism, it is precisely that the unsee it. this unseeing is
conditioned by what it really is: orciny.)

there are two field of sense. what cannot be done is to totalize one of them as the true
situation. orciny would be either ul qoman or beszel (as the nationalist would like). However,
the protesters do not want to totalize their assertion (zwarte piet is a racist figure.) If zwarte
piet exist, he is either racist or non-racist.
a person of color. it is not only our perspective that defines that he's is black or not. zwarte
piet is both black and indifferent, and both exist, there is no original zwarte piet to which we
can check who is right.
to unsee blackness, you see a person is black, and you see a person is a human being. to
unsee this person's blackness.
zwarte piet is just as a an ul qoman/bezsel buidling. it is at once zwarte piet, and a racist
figure. it is not only that we have a different perspective on him, that it is just a cultural
construction, but that in reality neither a racist figure/ nor a folk-figure. The protesters unsee
the tradition, the crowd unsees racism (rob wijnberg). The difference in zwarte piet is
irreducible.
but the protesters do not unsee tradition, they see the irreconcilability of the racist figure with
the traditional figure.
breech stands for the impossibility to see at once beszel and ul-qoma, zwarte piet as a racist
figure, and a non-racist folk-figure of tradition.
breech stands for the impossility of tolerance.
"Zwarte piet might appear racist, but REALLY he is not."
It is not enough for the opposed parties to come to see what zwarte piet REALLY is, or to
come to a shared interpretation. THe only solution in this conflict is to abolish zwarte piet
altogether.
orciny, the utopian world were zwarte piet is neither folk-figure nor racist figure does not
exist. There would be no zwarte piet. The forcing of "orciny" would be for the ul qoman, or
beszel Nationalist to win: to unsee totally the other. Zwarte piet would be only a racist figure,
or purely a tradition-folk figure.
We cannot say
neither/nor: no ul qoman/no beszel; orciny (innocent piet), both: breach (folk AND Racist),
only racist, only folk: nationalist.

Rob Wijnberg / Traditionalist: beszel nationalist. (unsee racism)

Bas Heijne: unificationist (discussion)
Anti-racist protesters: orciny: zwarte piet does not exist.
Planetary bounderies.
Living in a crowded and productive world. 19 trillion economy. Ocean acidification.
Another question of interest is how long do citizens remain committed to their religious
and/or political ideologies after scientific messages are tailored to unravel unscientific beliefs
of citizens. Such research would be worthwhile for understanding the effects of ideology in
communication of other kinds of science to the public, such as pesticide exposures; DDT
effects; impacts of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs; biotechnology, nanotechnology and
other cutting edge scientific discoveries. As society at large gains more scientific
knowledge, we must find ways to disseminate that knowledge across the ideological
divides to engage citizens in matters of public policy. (Azim Zia, effect of ideology, 759)
to greater convergence in beliefs and willingness to act (Elke U. Weber)
The Consensus-Based Form involves a reasoned societal debate, focused on the full scope of technical and social
dimensions of the problem and the feasibility and desirability of multiple solutions. It is this form to which scientists
have the most to offer, playing the role of what Pielke calls the honest brokera person who can integrate scientific
knowledge with stakeholder concerns to explore alternative possible courses of action. Here, resolution is found
through a focus on its underlying elements, moving away from positions (for example, climate change is or is not
happening), and toward the underlying interests and values at play. How do we get there? Research in negotiation and
dispute resolution can offer techniques for moving
forward. http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/climate_science_as_culture_war

Understanding the psychological, sociological, and cultural reasons for variations in the
perceptions of climate change has implicationsfor the design of educational and policy
interventions that can lead to greater convergence in beliefs and willingness to act.
The problem is not that members of the public do not know enough, either about climate science or the
weight of scientific opinion, to contribute intelligently as citizens to the challenges posed by climate
change. It's that the questions posed to them by those communicating information on global warming in
the political realm have nothing to do withare not measuringwhat ordinary citizens know.

Climate change is a difficult policy problem

which requires replacing a large global energy infrastructure and requires
coordinating hundreds of nations and thousands of actors, each with their own
self-interest. Philosophy lacks the tools for analyzing this sort of problem, such
as the tools to understand the incentives, the equilibrium effects, the empirics,
the cost structures, and the wide variety of other effects of climate change
policy. Because it is ill-equipped for the task, trying use philosophy to design
climate change policy will, except by sheer happenstance, lead to bad policies.
http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/socialsciences2012/browse/inside/chapter/97802303913
69/9780230391369.0002.html?chapterDoi=9780230391369.0002#page=1

Nature and Experience in the Culture of

Delusion, David Kidner
Scriptie quotes:

ghost that is essence, essence that is ghost.

essence is haunting, essence is haunted by itself!
we have to life among the ghost.
Dialectic
Everything that belongs to a whole constitutes an obstacle to this whole insofar
as it in inlcuded in it
A = (AAp)
It is a major strength of the dialectic to grasp how the One of the unity of
contraries supports contrariness in its very being (9)
Determination, Relapse and Torsion
Great dialectical concept: Determination as unity of the scission, thinkable only
from the indexed term (10)
Unless what is new in the dialectical process is annulled in the pure relapse into
P, the place or space of placements, it is thus necessary to posit a determination
of the determination , namely A (ap(A)). (11)
This Is a process of torsion, by which force reapplies itself to that from which it
conflictually emerges.
20: no outplace
Strong and Weak difference

If, as Lacan says, the real is the impasse of formalization, as we saw when we
ran up against the limit as return, we must venture from this the point that
formalization is the im-passe of the real
We need a theory of the pass of the real, in the breach openened up by
formalization (23)
Is this, force, or torsion, and is this of the splace?
The algorithm scission-dermination-limit
The anchorage between structural and historical contradiction = the nodal point
of the question of the subject 25
Knot
Base and motor. Two contradictions, two definitions, a single object capitalism,
and as single doctrine Marxism. This would be an aproia, exept that the working
class forms a knot 25
To distinguish the one from the whole. In this gap lies the whole question of the
Subject 30
To understand the distinction between history and politicis, masses and classes,
is exactly the same thing as understanding the distinction between the Whole
and the One (43)

It is with the name force that we shall cover what overdetermines the exclusion
from any place in which the outplace lies revealed. 31
What is it that can put two heterogeneous qualities into correlation? Only their
reciprocal application as force indifferent to anything other than their own
expansion. 31
Force (the real, what resist formalization, gameplay, class struggle) is what keeps
the parts in the movement of the whole. It is the non-numerical quality of the
whole, its consistency that cannot be dissipated in the variety of the parts. Of the
whole, it engenders no longer the functioning according to the regime of the
splace the distribution of the place of the parts but the mobile consistency,
the unification in the act. The theory of force is tantamount to a theory of the

historical side of the dialectical correlation, the side of its activity-as-one

anchored in (and not, as Hegel pretends to believe, deduced from) the
correlation-in-eclipse of the system of places.
There were space provides for neither place nor lack of place, it is the Subject
(36)
Subjective and objective process (41)
However, the structural dialectic does encounter the real as obstacle, which is
the effective thought of the historical.. it includes the latter, albeit in order to
subordinate it and only when it is no longer a dialect of the whole but a
combinatory: a structuralism (54) (is this the One?)
Clinamen. The clinamen is the subject, or to be more precise, subjectivation
(59)
They make what they are, but disappearing is what gives them being. Herein
the following paradox is revealed: the essence of the vanishing term is to
disappear but it is at the same time that which exist the most = as Whole, cause
of itself Only that which is missing from a Whole can give it consistency 64
Torsion, even if the word does not belong to the common parlance of Marxism,
can be inferred from it by combining the notion of the circly and that of a leap
The torsion of the true designates a circularity without a unified plane, a
discontinuous curve. (123)
Our entire dispute with Lacan lies in the division, which he restricts, of the
process of lack from that of destruction (131)
Beginning in the 1970s, which one can mark by the primacy of the knot over the
chain dialectic above structuralism?
Destruction
Destruction is that figure of the subjects grounding in which loss not only turns
lack into a cause, but also produces consistency out of excess 140
Force jams up the mechanism of repetition. Triggers the possibility for the
destruction of its law 142
Torsion

The backdrop for all this is the understanding that, in grappling with language,
the mathematical formalism perform a desubjectivation only at the cost of
exploiting to the maximum the signifiers to which the subject is sutured
Sophocles and Aeshylus.
Materialsim with the subject
Shall we say that, for Lacan, this dialectical extremity can be found in the knot,
or to be more precise, in the tying of the knot? That is how it would seem: The
knot des not constitue conisitency, it ex-sist in the element of the cord, in the
consistent cord In this ex- sistence of the knot I see a function of juncture. 191
Remainder
Reflection serves as a metaphor of the fact that thinking and being are one and
the same thing. To this Engels adds via the asymptote that it is the same
thing expect for something, something to which the process of knowledge refers
endlessly as its remainder! 196
The same, and the remainder
We will therefore give preference to the axiom of the crossing 206 , in which
the subject does not appear; the knowing makes a knot out of a relation of
thought to the real ( within which there is adequation reflection) and the
becoming-knowable of the real, putting the two terms vias a vis one another,
from whence the limit of the first relation comes to be determined as its
condition remainder (200)
The remainder periodzies knowledge (202)
Sets and Topology???
Topology tends towards the left
Subjective process and subjectivation (277)

Nevertheless, I believe that the idea of a sociology of knowledge involves no contradiction

for although there may always exist one single objective philosophical truth, more or less
independent of space and time, possibility of acquaintance with it depends upon the social
conditions in which a thinker lives. (32)
Truth is not necessarily to be grasp by the individual intellect (why would we suppose this?)

The dead of god, and the idea that the universe does not exist are bourgeois notions
already systematized by KANT!!!!
reification is the condition for both the emergence of real abstraction AND,
simultaneously, its unintelligibility (reification, in other words, is the condition for
ideology)
retroactivity: it seems that there was once a point where atomization had not yet begun
(imaginary illusion of wholeness)
but is the possibility of freedom, abstracting from the traditional ties. No concrete
determination: $
"Rationlaism means above all freedom - more precisly , freedom in two respects: (a) freedom
with regard to all external authority and constraint, and (b) freedom with regard to our own
passions, which link us to the external world" (34).
"But rationalism also means the breaking of the bonds which existed between the individual
and the universe or the human community. For where each individual, autonomously,
independently and without anay relaiton to tother men, dicides what is true, good or beautiful,
there is no longer any room for a whole which transcends him, for the universe. The universe
and the human community then become external things, atomized and divided.(35) (!!!!)

Hermeneutics of the subject

you can see that the two things are connected: taking care of oneself in order to be able to
govern, and taking care of the self inasmuch as one has not been governed sufficiently and
properly. "Governing," "beging governed," and "taking care of the self" form a sequence, a
series, whose long and complex history extends up to the establishment of pastoral power in
the Christian church in the third and fourth centuries.
[event] Once again taking the Alcibiades as a historical landmark and as a key for the
intelligibility of all these processes, you remember that care of the self appeard in the
Alcibiades as necessary at a given moment of life and on a precise occasion. This moment
and occasion is not what is called in Greek the karos, which is the particular conjuncture, as it
were, of an event (86).
The instructio is the individual's armature for dealing with events rather than training for a
definite professional goal. So, there is this training aspect of the practice of the self in the first
and second centuries. 96
Actually, in the period I am talking about, taking care of the self was no longer, and had not
been for a long time, a recommendation restricted to certain individuals and subordinated to
a definite aim . . . Now it is said: Take care of yourself, and that's the end of it. "Take care of
yourself and that's the end of it"means that the care of the self seems to appear as a universal
principle addressed to and laid down for everyone. 111

What will determine the division betweeen the few and the many is the individual's
relationship to the self, the modality and type of his relationship to the self, the way in which
he will acutally be fashioned by himself as the object of his own care. The appeal has to be
made to everyone because only a few will really be able to take care of themselves. And you
see that we recognize here the great form of the voice addressed to all and heard only by the
very few, the great form of the universal appeal that ensures the salvation of only a few.
119/120

'Universality is always completely situated in a concrete world in space and time, and
realized in practically some short sequence of history. Its not a great and permanent
conviction. this universality is in fact realized in the very strong condition of place and time.'
how is this possibly. how something universal is somewhere inside. finally is philosophy
something of an ideology of the western world. Not at all a universal disposition of humanity
as such. Why speak of universality that creation, development and
and existence is absolutely linked to a small place and time in the general history of
humanity. if we say there is no philosophy. finally the race for philosophy is over. all we can
hold on to that is that it is of universal nature.
pure relativist = no philosophy.
to transform the problem. to explain a new conception of what is universality and what is
truth. to explain that if a truth is construct in a specific context, is not by it self an objection to
universality. not only against the particularity, but WITH the particularity. we have to propose
philosophically the idea of universality which is by necessity in relationship with a serie of
the cognate world in which that sort of truth is appeared. it is exactly Badious philosophical
problem. truth without the easy solution of pure relativism.
complete transformation of the relation between universality and particularity. First al
that exist is particularity. the truth is in a particular world.
the mathematical truth appeared in Greek for material reasons. and there is an explicit
relationship between the universality of math and the proces of
construction mathematical in Greece
explain why this sort of particular proces can have some result that are beyond the proces
itself, which can be understood from an other world an cognitive other point of view. we can
understand, and we accept the proof. how is it possible that something that is written.
immanent exception. determinable world produces something which is not reducible to the
cultural context. an exception to the law of context.
not an exception in the sense of god (christianity) or the noumenal (Kant) world or the
intelligible (Plato) world. it is a immanent exception al the proof is inside. something
immanent understood from another world. all the material of the construction of the truth is
inside. truth is situated. truth is not in another world. the truth is not god, or the idea or the CI.
Truth is a human construction. they construct truth in particular conditions. but this human

construction can be understood from another point. universality is a possibility. to be

understood from another world, not only in the world where the truth has been construct.
during long sequences nobody understood the truth. the truth was there. resurrection in
another world.
truth can be resurrected. mathematics of Archimedes was resurrected in 16th century.
Universality is a constant possibility of a resurrection of a truth. creation of truth is in science,
art etc. not philosophy. philosophy is the conception of what is truth. universality is human
creation and resurrection. history of universality. it is not general propositions. truth is the
possibility of universality. not a strict possibility but a fact. the question of what is truth is not
an abstract question. truths EXISTS. as a fact. we cannot completely understand another
cultural context, there, something can be created, which we can understand. painting in the
caves. the fact of the universality of truth. not to create, but to explain! possibility of another
world. but possibility is also a fact.
philosophy is not reducible to the context. to be not only a citizen of the world, but also of
humanity. introduce some exception to the particularity. finite - infinite. we experience it
when something happens. we have the chance to participate in the creation and resurrection
of truth! this chance exists in life itself!
brelations explicate what is. however non totailizable.
If historicism is indeed against totalization, of a one.
given that the one is not -> how do we understand some concept or behaviour? such as the
subject? ( -> we investigate not as they are in-themselves, but in their relations with others,
the larger whole, and their history.) copjec critique. their are only bodies and languages, there
is power and knowledge. historicism tends to the reduction of all of the human world to the
context , it risks precisely reinstating an founding One, which is the ultimate meaning of all
that exist. Wholism. If historicism still denies this totalizaiton, which it does, it means that it
scope is unexhaustible, there is a leftover, which is not historicizable.
Foucault was aware of this. denies historicism. ily d'un.
2. what is pre- subject?. counting of ones? counter knowledge.
real is the effect of counting.
there is something, which historicism denies, that is not historizicable, which is the void.
something escapes relation. (Foucault quote).
not all forms of being can be historiziced/linked. truths are a being that delinks.
Metamodern Reduction of postmodernity to irony is repression of the discord it
circumscribes [empty signifier]
Imaginary, symbolic, real <-> use value, exchange value, capital

[hippies/punk fundamentally REACTIVE --> back to community // now "all that was
solid has molten into air"]
westerns perspective -> expanded to whomever recognizes it.
metamarxism is simply another name for communism. [benjamin teleology theology etc]
versus new romanticism/mythology -> two types of utopia progressive/reactive -> new
idea of left and rigth
WEBER DISENCHANTMENT SPLIT SEPARATION (305)
The romantic demand for a new mythology / gadamer
His analysis of the genesis of aesthetic Erlebnis purports to explain how art first became
invested with its utopian vocation and why this was doomed to failure: "the romantic demand
for a enw mythology . . . gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new
consecration . . . his crations are expected to achive on a asmall scale the propriation of
disaster for which an unsaved world hopes. This claim has since defined the tragedy of the
artist in the world, for any fulfillment of it is always only a local one, and in fact that means it
is refuted (TM 88) / (290).
Antionomies: nonrelation (Badiou) there is no sexual relationship // dialectic of void and
excess [The Unstable Split between 0 and 1 / logic of the signifier / hierarchy / dialectics /
virtuality / real abstraction]

[Benjamnin double bind] A person may desire something in the most lively and persistent
way even though he is convicned that he cannot accomplish it or even that it is absolutly
impossible: e.g., to which that which has been done to be undone, to yearn for the more rapid
passage of a burdensome time, etc. // Benjamin's messianism involves precisely this kind of
hope for the impossible (255). The fate to which the tragic hero is condemned - and against
which he rebels in vain - differs in kind from the temporal condition of the moral agent who
retains the capacity to hope for redemtption, however impossible itm ay be (SW I 201-6)
Benjamin finds such hope not in classical tragedy - in which fate precludes this very
possibility - but in the German "mourning play" or Trauerspiel, which he describes as
"mathematically comparable to one branch of a hyperbola whose other branch lies in
infinity.
[Kant on faith] To have faith is, in effect, to believe that there are promises in nature. To
have faith that the human race is morally improving is to believe that the "final end of nature"
- the highest good for humanity- will be attained. But because a promise is not an epistemic
guarantee, to have faith is to recognize the promise of the highest as promised rather than as
given: "It is a matter of trusting the promise of the moral law; not a promise that is contained
in the moral law, but one that it put into it, and indeed on a morally adequate basis. For a final
en cannot be commanded by any law of reason without reason simultaneously promising its
attainability, even if uncertainly (CPJ 335) / (Cutrofello 223)
[ALTHUSSER] Spinoza's "theory of the difference between the imaginary and the true" was
obscured by the triumpth of Lockean empiricism, a philosophical ideology that continiues to
hold sway not only in the work of later later classical empiricist such as Berkely and Hume
but even int the workd of Leibniz, Kant, and hegel (RC 17,35). For Althusser, empiricism is

the presumption that there is an equivalence between "the true" and "the given." Knowledge
is then conceived on the model of a "mirror" relation between the knower and the knwon; to
read a phenomenon is to atten to it in the manner in which it is given (RC 19). But givenness
is an imaginary lure, as Lacan shows in his account of the meirro stage (RC 53). Such a lure
is ideological in the sense that it is prouces by something that disapperas behind it; "there can
never be a given on the fore-stage of obvioiusness, except by means of a giving ideology
which stays behind. . . . If we do not go and look behind the curtain we shall not see its act of
'giving': it disappears into the given as all workmanship does into its works" (RC 163). Thus
empriicism is an esssentialy ideological doctrince because it bars the way to a structural
analysis of that by which the given is givens (Cutrofello 180)
Mark of the Bourgeoisie : prudency. "In effect this corresponds to "the death of God," the
elimination of the despotic signifier. And yet under capitalism it is not the case that
"everything is permitted." For it is as if capitalism has sped u pthe dialectic of prohibition and
transgression to the point where both occur simultaneously in a festival that is perpetually
renewed and canceled. This reflects the fact that the capitalst machine mantains a relationship
to both the form of the despotic state and the territorial body of the earth. These manifest
themselves as internal limits of social productions, checks which prevent the
deterritorialization of desire from going far. In other words, to ensur that all social production
remains directed toward the boy of capital, the capitalist machine introduces mechanism that
keep desire-produtinfrom becoming revolutionary. (Cutrofello 194)
Double bind of Oedipalization (195). (desire for the mother, prohibited by the father etc.)
The sphere of the private, somewhat astonishingly, consists for Kant of what Althusser would
later call the repressive and the ideological state apparatuses - Kant repeatedly gives the
examples of the Church and the Army, just as Freud will do in his 'Group Psychology'. The
state apparatuses belong to the realm of the private because they are valid in a limited
sphere, and appeal to a limited public: as a clergyman, I address my parish, as a captain, I
address a certain corps, as a civil servant, I serve the state - always within a particular and
limited domain of use and validity. As a man of reason however, a universal human being - in
short, as a Man - I can freely and publicly address a universal audience, Mankind (the big
Other, in other words, since the public itself is still conceived as immature), purely on
the basis of rational arguments. Kant thus tries ere to establish as a basic mechanism of the
Enlightenment the following: that private obedience is the inner condition of the public
freedom of reasoning. To put this another way: there is a mutual limitation between power
and knowledge, and that limitation is the inner condition of universality. (Surprisingly
enough, Foucault, who was best placed to reflect upon this, stops at the very point where
Kant's text gets really intriguing!) the division power/knowledge traverses both terms: power
must admit its limit and entirely give up its jurisdiction in matters of reason, whereas
reason can be universal only by admitting limited sovereignty to a power which is itself
not grounded in reason [hierarchy] (Mladen Dolar, enlightenment, foucault lacan 48)
There is in Kant an ultimate division between Si and S2, the 'master-signifier' and the chain ofknowledge,
where the 'statute', the law, the letter on which the power is based is not reducible to its determination by
reason, by the series of S2. The law is itself not founded in sufficient reason (Dolar 50)

Human societies have always found ways to act upon themselves through some external
agency, long identified with divinity [now with the market?] What we call modern society, or

simply modernity, abandoned this conception in favor of a secular perspective in which

human beings take the place of gods (MS 2)
Humans can project themselves, go beyond themselves, as it were, in order to exert power
over themselves. metaphor: munchhausen
Dumont: transcendence of society, not as durkheim, as simple function of exteriority. "He
assigned it hierarchical form. But what is hierarchy? Far from being a succession of levels in
which a higher level includes or dominates a lower level, hierarchy, in Dumont's phrase, is an
encompassing of the contrary (MS 3)
"a linguist, for example, if he were speaking strictly, would say that the French language does
not contain a masculine gender and a feminine gender, but rather an "unmarked" and a
"marked" gender." The unmarked gender encompasses the totality subjects, regardless of
their sex. The marked gender, on the other hand, applies only to the female sex. It follows
from this that the masculine, which is the form of the unmarked gender, represents at one
level the totality and by virtue of this encomposses the feminine; whereas at another level,
that of the proper subset (a mathematician regards the set of odd integer, for example, as a
proper subset of the set of integers) and its complementary subset (the set of even integers), it
is opposed to the feminine. The coincidence of the whole and one of its proper subsets
(which, for a mathematician, implies the idea of infinity) is what permits the whole to stand
in opposition to the complementary subset. The whole, in other words, encompasses its
contrary - the part that does not coincide with the whole" (MS3)
A (A, Ap) the whole stand in oppossition to the complementary substet
"Due to a metaphorical affinity with politics that wil be explained in Meidtation 9, I will
hereinafter term state of the situation that by means of which the structure of a situation - of
any structured presentation whatsoever - is counted as one, which is to say the one of the oneeffect, or what Hegel calls the One-One" (Badiou EE 111) [does philosophy have an
ideological function]
Man vs (woman, [man = opposite in the sense of particular], x)
"politics is superior to the economy to whom public order is entrusted. But ipso facto politics
will obey the economy in matters of public order, that is, in subordinate matters." Syriza,
Bail-outs"
The present crisis is one of indistinctness, as it might be said, in the sense that it is marked by
a loss of the differences between levels that characterize hierarchy. And yet pundits and
policymakers alike have hastened to multiply differences, notwhithstanding that these reduce
ultimately to a single distinction, between the good that must be preserved and the evil that
must be eradicated, or in any case controlled, so that evil remains in the service of the good.
(7)
"Words and deed, separartly or in combination, create stories for which no single person can
claim authorship, and that sometimes end in tragedy. It is from the primordial experience of
action [exchange] acquiring autonomy in relation to the intentions of actors [use-value] that

not only the idea of the sacred, but also religion, tragic drama, and politics - so many real and
symbolic systems that serve to set limits to the capacity to act - were born" (MS 22)

That is, it generates subcultures that train the individual to be able to "switch
over" at any moment from an interaction context to purposive-rational
action habermas ideology
switch domains is modernity.
return of the repressed: modernity
end of history: reawakining of history
against constructionism
scientism
mysterious something
libidinal eager anticipation
container begrip; (capitalism/ subject-object) multiple perspectives. but rather multiple
struggels with same core.
deus ex machina and event, motivation of the device. object a.
Metamodernism as a relapse into idealism.. Meta modernism, not as simply another story.
Objective.
Materialism is infinity, void etc.
So it is that from time to time we come upon histoircal reflections which are in fact so many
party political pronouncements about the present, about the market and the so-called triumph
of capitalism, and about deregulation.
dialectic of revolution and counterrevolution
the dialectic of metaphysics and genealogy.
the dialectic of the dialectic and historicism.
public and < private: Rorty (the private becomes a greater domain), public is only suffering.
the ultimate oscillation: christ resurrection.

the right question/ to unearth the unknown knowns/ right division.

Oscil? Opposites. Collapse. Real/illusion. Mystics one (zen, fantasy).
Crisis of postmodernism. works even if you don't believe in it. Sincere irony. Ideology.
Althusser. Subject subject. Jameson cognitive mapping.
Scientism. One -> Religion on Ted.com
Awkwardness
God is death, Nietzsche. People do not know it. Sincere irony, subject sup know, Bohr.
Harmony in suspension
being towards death. -> science, scientism
metamodernist: FOUCAULT truth ethics.
method, use butler.
Power sets the limits to what a subject can be, beyond which it no longer is, or it dwells
in a domain of
suspended ontology. But power seeks to constrain the subject through the force of coercion,
and the
resistance to coercion consists in the stylization of the self at the limits of established b eing.
One of the first tasks of critique is to discern the relation between mechanisms of coercion
and
elements of knowledge. (50) Here again we seem confronted with the limits of what is
knowable, limits
which exercise a certain force without being grou nded in any necessity, limits which can
only be tread or
interrogated by risking a certain security within an available ontology:
Critique begins with the presumption of governmentalization and then with its failure to
totalize thesubject its seeks to know and to subjugate. (butler, what is critique)
metamodernism, metaxis. Foucault. -> universal, -> quote Iranian revolution, -> quote
universal rights, then butler -> quickly retracting -> fiction . then -> badiou situated created
truth -> althusser oscillation.
Kojin Karatani "History and Repitition"
dialectic falls apart and reconstitude itself.
there is truth in posthumanism, -> biogenetic -> this ask the return from dispersion to truth or
teleology. our fundamental experience of humanity is at stake. positive or negative. not the
point.

http://www.lacanonline.com/index/2013/04/the-first-great-lacanian-text-not-to-be-written-bylacan-himself-reading-millers-suture/#.UtDlDRI73Xo.facebook
http://cahiers.kingston.ac.uk/synopses/syn1.3.html
oscillation of the one and the many, singularity and multiplicity. [singularity appears as
negativity -> big bang, zizek event]
zero: duchamp toilet, shovel. proper name of nothing -> productive! the thing that is placed
inside art is not art. it is nothing, but has the name. it then explodes in productivity. similar:
foucault ceci ne past un pipe. substance is also subject.
By crossing logical discourse at its point of least resistance, that of its suture, you can see articulated the structure of the subject as
a flickering in eclipses, like the movement which opens and closes [the] number, and delivers up the lack in the form of the 1 in
order to abolish it in the successor (p.101).
oscillation makes the wave: quantum particle. [step in and quickly get out]
barthes punctum! the real etc. also a naming of nothing.

http://ethicalpolitics.org/seminars/davie1.htm
If history is a story, history has come to an end, because nobody believes in stories anymore.
Metamodernism: to tell the story as a story, as a fiction. but a fiction with truth in it.
Identity politics, from assertion of essence to dispersion.
(these are general trends, not described in the postmodern, but, for the metamodern, urgent)
zizeks reminds us time and time again the retroactive fictional status of the essence. reality is
structured like a fiction.
donkey and carrot; from explicit to implicit meta narrative. Zizek -> the real.
a working definition, just as the postmodern always was. but this is of course consistent with
the metamodern.
not a historical stage or epoch.
throwing everything on one heap -> particualirities.
fanaticisim remains the problem. zizek on belief.
modern -> documentary, postmodern -> pastiche, persiflage, satire , metamodernism ->
uncanny irony
something opposed to historicism, that is not quite modernist universalism
It is when neither a so
ciety's most general cultural orientations nor its most down-to-earth,
"pragm atic" ones suffice any longer to prov ide an adequate image of

pol itical process that ideologies begin to become cruc ial as sources of
sociopo litical meani ngs and attitudes.

Note that Ranke wrote "wie es eigentlich gewesen", rather than the more common German phrase "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist". His
[

who?]

omission of the final "ist" ("was") suggests, according to some scholars,

a less literal meaning.) Ranke went on to write that
the historian must seek the "Holy hieroglyph" that is God's hand in history, keeping an "eye for the universal" whilst taking "pleasure in
the particular".

[8]

We presuppose (1) the possibility of language: to give a name. (2) the possible to begin with
nothingness (because there is nothing in the beginning, creation ex nihilo, it is near the
absolute) (3) the possibility to put thing together.
[The desire of god: god is not completely perfect, if there does not exist something outside
this perfection. there is a limit to the perfection of god. Perfection is within limits. The
question of the relation of the finite and infinite. To have something other is fundamental. If
there is no other, then god is nothing (spinoza). The positivity of god is no complete with no
experience of negativity. First sin: negativity appears. Against the will of god.]
We have an activity, but with limited technique. To name, is a creative act. The most
important possibility.
We begin by giving a name to the void. Not a decision, it is forced. No choice. The name of
the void as the only element of a set (3th possibility) {} is singleton. This is the One. The
name of the void and the singleton of the name of the void are different. We create a
difference. Pure difference. The creation of difference as such. Fundamental difference.
The name of the void has no element: it is the name for nothingness! And the singleton (of
the name of the void) has 1 element, precisely the name of the void. This is the creation of
difference from nothingness. In nothingness there is no difference (that is the definition of
nothing). this is the difference of 0 and 1. an absolute difference. the Void and the One. You
can create, compose everything with 0 and 1 (electronic image, binary code). By repetition of
this difference.
All digital communication is a projection of this first difference. The infinite play between 0
and 1, the play of pure difference: the difference is also nothing: the minimal difference.
New operation: the succession: S (x) = {element of x + x} It is not an addition.
So first succession: S () = {} (we can only take x itself, because the void has no
elements)

The operation of succession is only the generalization of the first difference.

S () = {}
S ({}) ={ {}
There is a condition that the name of x is not an element of x. If x itself is an element of x,
when we do the element of x, we have x itself and so we have no change at all. as the x would
take all that is in x, and the name of x. If the name of x is in the element of x, when we take
the successor of x, we take x, and no more. The name is not in the element of x
We affirm that he name of something is always external to something. The name is not inside
the baby. A point of great metaphysical importance!
My name is not exactly my name. When i reduce myself to myself and my name, I am the
true successor of myself. but it is impossible. the relationship of the human subject to the
name is always a true problem. Beyond the name, we have the world. The name of a person,
puts what we have in the form of a singleton.
This is the abstract form of all that which is the creation of something by the name, and after
that, the reduction of the name itself to a singleton. The singleton is an ID document. We have
a combination of repetition (the same operation, the succession) and creation (all terms are
different terms).
We have created the difference, the difference between zero and one, the pure difference, and
also the repetition.
This is reflected in the money. Money is numerical evaluation of something. Our world is an
abstract projection of all what exist in the universe, of numbers, by the mediation of a price.
The price is the relationship between one thing and the abstract place of things. Also our
labor has a price. Human beings to have a price. A fundamental dimension of our situation.
We have a constant projection on the flat surface of numbers. On the flat surface of difference
and repitition. Maybe the world is reduced to something like that (not only the images). The
world becomes an image of itself across the money. The price of something is fundamental.
All big crisis, are crises of the price, of the money. Philosophically it is a crisis of the
relationship between concrete existence and the surface of numbers. The crisis of the
possibility to affirm that everything has a price.
A price is always finite. There is no infinite price! Money is in the realm of the finite. If
everything has a price, everything is finite. Capitalism is a philosophy that affirms that al that
exist is finite. The subject has a price: corruption. Corruption is a philosophical concept:
necessity inside our world. An inevitable consequence of the idea that everything has a price.
Projection of all that exist on the surface of the market.
To desire something infinite is a disaster, hubris. The fight against the ideas, visions etc. All
that is the symbol for the desire of the infinite. The desire for the infinite has no price, and
this subject is incorruptible. 'My price is infinite'. Philosophy: to find new means, new
subjective and intellectual means, to search in the world what is without price. The thing
without price is the idea. This is not easy, because the thing without price is, from the point of

view of the dominant world, outside the world. So to find it, we have to have a new vision of
the world itself. Everything can be reduced to a price. All is in the market.
If we affirm that everything has a price, we affirm that everything that exists finite. To search
something without a price is to find something infinite in the finite world. Then we affirm
that the world is infinite. We must return beyond the explanation of the surface of the finite.
We have to construct the realm of infinite.
The search in the finite, for something infinite. Omega: the first infinite, just after the realm
of the finite. Find the point were we must affirm that the infinite exist. not reducible to
succession and pure difference. corruption is to accept the idea that everything that exist has a
price. The possiblity of corruption is given by the affirmation that everything has a price. We
cannot negate the point: not just to deny it. We cannot escape the reality, we live in the world
were everything has a price. But we can have a subjective position that is different from just
to accept. Passive corruption is to accept as it is. The pure can be corrupted. If he accepts that
the law of the world is the price. It is the negation of Omega: .
{, 1, 2, .., n, n +1, ..}
Omega is not outside the succession.
x {=S(x)} : Non exist x which is identical with the succession of x. Omega is radically
beyond the fisrt sequence of succession. But the law of succession can be extended to omega.
S() = {, 1, 2, .., n, n +1, .. + } There is no rational objection of the successor of . , as
the first infinite, is in fact between two successions.
{, 1, 2, .., n, n +1, ..} {, +1, 2, .., n, n +1, .. + }
If we affirm the possible existence of the first infinite, , then we really open up a whole new
world, in the form of a new succession. This new world is in the infinite. is infinite, and we
cannot go back to the finite with addition.
So omega is between two worlds. When we find something without price, it is always an
opening of a new world. Romantic love, for example. infinite in the sense of the opening of a
new world. Love cannot be priced. When we find a point that is beyond the succession, it is
really the opening of a new world. And not a simple point in the (former) succession. We
have the succession of the new point itself. This is an infinite world. And at the end? we have
a new infinite point: -.
Mathematics is just the skeleton. It gives us new means to understand the true situation.
abstract of something after all is concrete.
The fundamental idea is that the difference between the finite and the infinite, but we want to
have a clear vision of the difference between different infinites. We must affirm the
possibility of a multiplicty of different infinites!!! Cardinality: small infinite, big infinite.
Atheatrical. The mask is the theater. The eyes breaks through. Break trough the dichotomy
antithetical.

To understand the puncrum and therefore the photograph. Anti.theatrical is not enough.
Face value, dogmatic. Original. Boring. Against dogmatism of beyond re thinking , new
concepts.
Ironic dogmatic
Possible Title: Mind the Gap
"However, the fundamental lesson of the 'critique of political economy' elaborated by the
mature Marx in the years after The Manifeso is that this reduction of all heavenly chimera to
brutal economic reality generates a spectrality of its own." (FA 10-20)
"This superego-paradox also allow us to throw a new light on to the functioning of today's
artistic scene. Its basic feature is not only the much-deplored commodificiation of culture (art
ojbects produced for the market), but also the less noted but perhaps even more crusial
opposite movement: the growing 'culturalization" of the market economy itself "(FA 25).
Tension between the Object and the void, the dialectic of void and excess (26).
"So we have here the structure of the Moebius strip: the subject is correlative to the object,
but in a negative way - subject and object can never 'meet'; they are in the same place, but on
the opposite sides of the Moebius strip. [Badiou/Bosteels: nonrelation]
"This means that the subject is no longer the pure Void of negativity (/S), the infinite
desire, the Void in search of the absent object, but 'falls into' the object directly, becomes
the object; and - vice versa - the object (cause of desire) is no longer
the materialization of the Void, a spectral presence that merely give body to the lack that
sustains the subject's desire, but acquires a direct positive existence and ontological
consistency. Or, to put it in the term of the minimal gap between the Object an its Place, the
Void/Clearing within which the object appears: what happens in the suicidal passage a l'acte
is not that the object falls out of its frame, so that we get only the empty frame-void (i.e., so
that 'nothing but place itself takes place'); what happens, rather is the exact opposite - the
object is still there; it is the Void-Place that disappears; its is the frame that falls into what it
frames, so that what occurs is the eclipse of the symbolic opening, the total closure of the
Real. A such, not only is the suicidal passage a l'acte not the highest expression of the death
drive; rather, it is the exact opposite of the death drive" (29). (Naturalism / Buddhism)
"For lacan, creative sublimation and the dath drive are strictly correlative: the death drive
empties the (sacred) Place, creates the Clearing, the Void, the Frame, which is then filled by
the object 'eleveted to the dignity of the Thing'"(30).
The problem is that today, in the double movement of the progressive commodification (!!) of
aesthethics and the aesthetification of the universe of commodities, a 'beautiful )aestheticallly
pleasing) ojbect is less and less able to sustain the Void of the Thing - so it is as if,
paradoxically, the only way to sustain the (Sacred) Place is to fill it up with trash, with an
excremental abject. In other words, it is todays artist who display excremental objects as
objects of art who, far from undermining the logic of sublimation, are desperately striving to

save it. And the cosnequences of the collapse of the element into the Void of the Place itslef
are potentially catastrophic: without the minimal gap between the element and its Place, there
is simply is no symbolic order. That is to say, we dwell within the symbolic order only in so
far as every presence appears against the background of its possbile absence (this is what
lacan isa iming at with his notion of the phallic signifier as thee signifier of castration: this
signifier is the 'pure ' signfier, the sginifier 'as such', at its most elementary, in so far as its
presence stands for, evokes its own possible absence/lack).
One cannot not periodize : real abstraction -> Ideology (means-> Time is out of joint! /
Punctum) (photograph: collapses with digitalization!!!!!] work of art in digitalization. !!! ->
fragile absolute 39 ] lost its aura! discuss with zizek.
"Again, the answer lies in the progressive overlapping of aesthetics (the space of sublime
beauty exempt from social exchange) and commodification (the very terrain of exchange): it
is this overlapping and its result, the draining away of the very capicity to sublimate, that
change every encountner with the Thing into a sidsruptive global catastrophte, the 'end of the
world'. (39).
Jameson [transcendetal gap / cut -> foucault in book on modernity]
Not far enough: (link to other note = metamodernism as radicalization) ". . . the problem
with Rameau's nephew is not htath his perverse negation of his dignified uncle's 'noble
consiousness' is too radical and destrucitive, but that, in its very excess, it is not radical
enough: the exxagerated perverse content which seems to explode the uncle's dignified
speech is ther to conceal the fact that, in both cases, the subjective postion of enunciation
remains the same. The more the admission is candid, incluse of openly acknoelidging the
incosnistency of one's own position, the more intimate secual, etc.,, detaisl in the today's talk
shows really tell us nothing about the subject's inner truth (maybe because there is actually
nothing to tell . . ). (46)
"Or, in Heglese: the 'oneness' of a thingis grounded not in its properties, but in the negative
synthesys of a pure 'One' which excludes (relates negatively to)!!! all psotivie properties: this
'one' which guarantees the identity of a thing does not reside int its properties sicne its
ultimalty is signifier (FA 52).
Quite different from this gap that separates the exceptional Master-Signifier from the series of
ordinary signifier is the gap that separates the endless process of symbolic differentiation
itself from the leftover that ' falls out' - the structure here is that of subdivision ad
infinitum (genus, species, genus, species) cut short by a sudden reversal. In mathematical
terms, one could say that we reach the end when the two parts of the division are no longer
two halves, parts of the previous element, when we no longer have a division between
something and another (some)thing, but a division between something an nothing or, in terms
of the logic of the signifier , a progressive diacritical division of signifiers reaches its end
when we reach a division which is no longer the one between two signifier of a signyfing
dyad, but a 'reflexive' division between the signifier as such with its absence - no longer
between S1 and S2, but between S(ignifier) as such and ($), the void, the lack of the signifier,
which 'is' the (barred) subject itself. This 'bar' which is the subject means preciselyy that ther
is no signfier that can adequately represent it. And this is wher the object comes in: whta
psychoanalysis calls the 'object' is precisely a phatasmatic 'filler' that covers up this void of
subjectivity, providing for it a semblance of being' (FA 53).

"Such attempts obfuscate the point that the repressed spectral 'virtual history' is not the 'truth'
of the official public history, but the fantasy which fills in the void of the act that brought
history about. (FA 70) [Jameson : one cannot not periodize] [Badiou: History vs historicity]
the gap again closes again.
In our societies, the realm of belief, axiomatic declaration of equality rules (constitution,
human rights), yet in the concrete world equality is subordinated by private property
(inequality).
the proper Christian uncoupling suspends not so much the explicit laws but, rather, their
implicit spectral obscene supplement.
"True, he did participate in lynchings of African-Americans, but we should not forget that he
was also a good and honest family man who went regularly to church . . . ' - instead of this,
one should read: 'True, he did do some good things, like trying to get rid of the nasty AfricanAmericans; none the less, we should not forget that he was just a common family man who
went regularly to church . . '
The key to this reversal is that in both cases we are dealing with the tension between the
publicly acknowledge and the acceptable ideological content (building highways, going to
church [being skeptical/pragmatic non-ideologically delusional]) and its obscene disavowed
underside (Holocaust, lynchings): the first, standard version of the statement acknowledges
the public content and disavows its obscene underside (while secretly endorsing it); the
second version openly dismisses the public aspect and endorses the obscene underside).
"According to lacan, however, psychoanalytic discourse is part of modern science in that it
aims at breaking this vicious cycle of all-pervasive argumentation, but not in the mode of the
quilting point: the signifier do not need such a point in order to be stabilized because they are
already, in their very functioning, not vacillating, not caught in the eternal sliding of
meaning." (FA 140).
The basic paradox of the relationship between public power and its inherent transgression is
that the subject is acutally 'in' (caught in the web of) power only and precisely in so far as he
does not fully idenitfy with it but maintains a kind of distance towards it; on the other hand,
the system (of public Law) is actuallly underiminde by unreserved identification with it" (FA
148)
[spectrality Derrida: paganism studies: ghost are everywhere]
---FTKNWTD
"The reason this inverted presentation of the "normal," everyday relationship between Law
(authority) and pleasure produces such an uncanny effect is of course that it exhibits in broad
daylight the usually concealed truth about the "normal" state of things where enjoyment is
sustained by a severe superego imperative" (FT 10).
What is concealed is that enjoyment needs superego injunction.

"such mirror-inversion cannot be reduced to the domain of the Imaginary" (FT 10)
The imaginary/symbolic are not two opposed dimensions. "the specific dimension of the
Symbolic emerges from the very imaginary mirroring: namely, from its doubling, by means
of which - as Lacan puts it succinctly - the real image is substituted by a virtual one"
()->S ->S`
() -> Beyond -> [inversion] terrestial life
normal world -> gullivers world -> shows the "invertedness of our own allegedly "normal"
world. (normal world is already inverted)
Ego ideal = "symbolic identification is identification with the ideal ("virtual") point from
which the subject looks upon himself when his own actual life appears to him as a vain and
repulsive spectacle" (FT 11)
Ideal-ego = my imaginary image (zelfbeeld)
"Lacan introduces a precise distinction between these three terms: the ideal ego stands for
the idealized self-image of the subject (the way I would like to be, I would like others to see
me); the Ego-Ideal is the agency whose gaze I try to impress with my ego image, the big
Other who watches over me and propels me to give my best, the ideal I try to follow and
actualize; and the superego is this same agency in its revengeful, sadistic, punishing, aspect
(Ego Ideal and the Superego Lacan as a viewer of Casablanca).
"That is to say, Swift, like Monty Python, belongs to the "misanthropic" lineage of English
humour based on an aversion to life as the substance of enjoyment, and the Ego-Ideal is
precisely the viewpoint assumed by the subject when he perceives his very "normal"
everyday life as something inverted [?]. This point is virtual since it figures nowhere in
reality: it differs from "actual" life as well as from its inverted caricature - that is to say, it
cannot be locted within the mirror-relationship between reality and its inverted image - as
such, it is of a strictly symbolic nature.
(one does not from the viewpoint of the inverted world back upon the normal world: the
viewpoint looks from a virtual, symbolic point, which emerges through the redoubling, at the
normal world in its invertedness [?]) [Marxxxxx ????!!!!] [Unity of opposites??]
The point from which the normal world show itself in its invertedness: "Look, the emperor
has no clothes!" is thus not enlightenment demasking of hypocrisy. "After the deed, when it is
already too late, we suddenly notice that we got more than we bargained for - that the very
community of which we were a member has disintegrated" (FT12) [dupuy?]
"The subject, by definition, cannot master the effects of his speech, since the Big Other is in
charge" (13). [thats not what i meant!]
"How do common-sense nominalism (Roman law and German law as two laws) and
speculative idealism (THE Law realizes itself in Roman law and in German law) relate? Is
the latter a simple inversion of the first, and as such the theoretical expression of the
invertedness ("alienation") of the actual social life itself, [you are idealist if you claim this,

look at the concrete world!] OR is the "topsy-turvy world" of dialectical speculation the
hidden "truth" of our very "normal", everyday, commonsensical universe? (FT 15). What is at
stake here is the very notion of "alienation" in Marx: the moment invertedness of the
"normal" state itself - the very standard by means of which we measure alienation is called
into question." (origin etc).
"This is what Lacan means when he ascertains that the subject of the signifier
is constitutively split: the speaking subject is split into the ignorance of her imaginary
experience (the narrator imagines that she is pursuing the usual light table conversation) and
the words assume within the field of the big Other, the way they affect the intersubjective
network - the "truth" of innocent prattle can well be intersubjective catastrophe. Lacan's point
is simply that these two levels never fully cohere: the gap separating them is constitutive; the
subject by definition, cannot master the effects of his speech, since the big Other is in charge
(FT 13).!!! quinoa superfoods gesprek
This limitation to the viewpoint of the narrator as cause of the catastrophe implies again the
structure of double mirroring: our view is not confined to the way her words are mirrored in
the eyes of those affected by them, but even more radically to the way the effect of her words
upo her environs - the mirroring of her words in her environs - is mirrored back in her self.
[?] Here, again, this double reflection produces a symbolic point the nature of which is
purely virtual: neither what I immediately see ("reality" itself) nor the way other see mee (the
"real" inverted image of reality) but the way I see the others seeing me.
"If we do not add this third, purely virtual viewpoint of the Ego-Ideal, then it remains totally
incomprehensible how the inverted representation of our "normal" world (e.g. satire) can act
as an ironic refusal of the invertedness that pertains to ou "normal" world itself - that is, how
the depiction of a strange world opposed to ours can give rise to the radical estrangement
from our own (13)
We cannot define the invertedness, there is no normality that offers a standard.
We could further posit that with Lacan, that status of the subject itself (the subject of the
signifier is that of just such a "virutal image": it exist only as a virtual point in the selfrelating of the signifier's dyads ({S1<->S2} $); as something that "will have been", that is
never present in reality or its "real" (actual) image (not in imaginary wholeness[self image],
also not in concrete properties ). It is always-already "past", although it never appeared "in
the past itself"; it is constituted by means of a double reflection, as the result of the way the
past's mirroring in the future is mirrored back in the present. We all remember form our youth
the sublime dialectical materialist formulas of the "subjective mirroring-reflection of the
objective reality"; all we have to do to arrive at the Lacanian notion of the subject is to
redouble the reflection: the subject designates that virtual point in which reflection itself is
reflected back into reality - in which, for example, (my perception of) the possible future
outcome of my present acts determines what i will do now [heidegger?].
What we call "subjectivity" is at its mos.t elementary this self-referential "short circuit"
which ultimately invalidates every prognosis in the intersubjective relations: the prognosis
itself, as soon as it is uttered, bears upon the predicted outscom, and it sis never able to tak
into account htis effect of its own act of enunciation. And the same goes for Hegelian
refleciton: far from being reducible to the imaginary miror-relationship between the subject

and its other, it is always redoubled in the above-described way; it implies a non-imaginary
"virtual" point. (15).
"At the level of the semiotic process, the Ego-Ideal that emerges from the double reflection
equals what Lacan called le point de capiton (the "quilting point", literary: the "upoholstery
button"
The common Marxist formula of religious consolation as compensation for - or, more
precisely, an "imaginary supplement" to - earthly miserey is based upon a dual, imaginary
relation between the earhtly below and the celestial Beyond: according to this conception, the
religious operation consist in compensating us for earthly horrors and uncertainties by the
promise of beatitude which awaits us in the other world - one has only to recall all the famous
formulas of Ludwig Feurerbach on the divine Beyond as a specular, reversed image of earthly
misery. Yet for this operation to work, a third, properly symbolic moment must intervene
which somehow "mediates" between the two opposite poles of the imaginary dyad (the
fearful earthly below versus the blissful divine Beyond): the fear of God - that is, the
horrifying reverse of the celestial Beyond itself.
Imaginary dyad (cold earthly existence - reversal - blissful beyond)
The only way effectively to cancel earthly misery is to know that behind the multitude of
earthly horrors, the infinitely more frithening horro of God's wrath must show through, so
that earthly horrors undergo a kind of "transubstantiation" and become so many
manifestations of divine anger. This is one of the ways to draw the line that divides the
Imaginary from the Symbolic: on the imaginary level, we react to earthly fears by "have
patience, eternal bliss is waiting for you in the Beyond . . ."; wheareas on the symbolic lever,
what delivers us from earthly fears is the assurance that the only thing we have to fear is God
Himself - an additional fear that retroactively cancels all the others.
_____________
|
|
(S1....S2...S3...S4...S5....) S3
"what we have here is an inversion by means of which what is effectively an immanent,
purely textual operation - the "quilting" of the heterogeneous material into a unified
ideological field - is perceived and experienced as an unfathomable, transcendent, stable
point of reference concealed behind the flow of appearances and acting as its hidden cause."
(18)
"In this precise sense, the "criticism of ideology" consist in unmasking traditional allegory as
an "optical illusion" concealing the mechanism of modern allegory: the figure of the Jew as
an allegory of Evil conceals the fact that it represents within the space of ideological
narration the pure immanence of the textual operation that "quilts" it.
The real questions, however, are: How is this purely formal inversion possible? On what does
it rely? More precisly: How is it possible that the result of a purely formal inversion acquires
enough substantiality to be perceived as a fles-and-blood personality? The psychoanalytic
answer is, of course, enjoyment - the only substance acknowledged by psychoanalysis,
according to Lacan. The "Jew" cannot be reduced to a purely formal organizational device;
the efficacy of this figure cannot be explained by reference to the textual mechanism of

"quilting"; the surplus on which this mechanism relies is the fact that we impute to the "Jew"
an impossible, unfathomable, enjoyment, allegedly stolen from us. [how does this work with
metamodernism]
money-form represents value for another money-form.
Subject=lack=place of inscription
In other words, at the beginning ther is no master-signifier, since "any signifier can assume
the role of the master-signifier if its eventual fucntion becomes to represent a subject for
another siginifier". One can ascribe to every signifier a neverending series of "equivalences",
of signifiers which represent for it the void of its place of inscription; we find ourselves in a
kind of dispersed, non-otoalized network of links, every signifier enters into a series of
particular relationships with other signifiers." The only possible way out of this impasse is
that we simply reverse the series of equivalence and ascribe to one signifier the function of
representing the subject (the place of inscirption0 for all the others (which thereby become
"all" - that is, are totalized): in this way, the proper Master-Signifier is produced.
The parallel with the articulation of the value-form from the first chapter of Capital strikes
the eye: first, in the "simple, isolated or accidental form of value", a commodity B appears as
the expression of value of a commodity A; thereupon, in the "total or expanded form of
value", equivalences are multiplied - commodity A finds its equivalents in a series of
commodities, B, C, D, E, which give expression to its value; finally, in the general form of
value", we reach the level of the "general equivalent" by simply reversing the "total or
expanded form" - it is now commodity A itself which gives expression to the value of all
other commodities, B, C, D, E . . . In Both cases, the starting point consist in a radical
contradictions (use-value and (exchange-)value of a commodity; a signifier and the voidplace of its inscription, i.e., S/$) because of which the first aspect of the contradiction (usevalue, signifier) must from the very beginning be posited as a dyad: a commodity can express
its (exchange)-value only in the use-value of another commodity; for a signifier, its place of
inscription - its possible absence ($) - can be represented only in the presence of another
signifier.
first: 1 egg = 1 bread
Second: 1 egg = 1 bread, 2 chickens, 4 cheese
General form of value / general equivalent: 1 bread = 1 egg, 2 chickens = 0.5 egg . . . etc.
(egg becomes money form)
Signifier (money) and the void place of its inscription (use-value, undefinable)
1 gold = 1 Bread = 1 gold (possible absence)
(a commodity is what represents its exchange value for another commodity?)
(a signifier is what represents the subject for another signifier / a signifier can be represented
only in the presence of another signfier)
"We can see how the One of a "pure" signifier again emerges from a movement of double
reflection: a simple inversion of the "expanded" from into the "general" form - the
"reflection-into-itself" of the reflection of the value of A into B - accomplishes the miracle of
transforming the amorphous network of particular links into a consistent field totalized by the

One's exceptional position. In other words, the One "quilts" the field of the multitude" (FT
27)
expanded form (a = b,c,d,e) general (b=a, c=a, de=a, e=a) -> reflection of A (money) into B
(commodity) => Commodity is defined by its money-value (reflection into itself)
"accomplishes the miracle of tranforming the amorphous network of paritcular links into a
consitent field totalized by the One's exceptional position. One quilts the field of the
multitude. Law defines what is crime.
"The fundamental operation of the detective story then consist in presenting the detective
himself - the one who works for the defence of the law, in the name of the law, in order to
restore the reign of the law - as the greatest adventure and law-breaker, as a person
in comparison to which it is the criminals themselves who appear like indolent petty
bourgeois, careful conservators . . . There are, of course, a great number of transgressions of
the law, crimes, adventures which break the monotony of everyday loyal and tranquil life, yet
the only true transgression, the only true adventure, the one which changes all
other adventures into bourgeois pettines, is the adventure of civilization, of the defense of the
law itself - again, as if all other crimes are exchanged against the crime that pertains to the
law itself, which accomplishes the magical trick of turning all other crimes into perfect
triteness.
And it is the same with Lacan. For him also, the greatest transgression, the most traumatic,
the most senseless thing , is law itself: the "mad" superegostistical law which inflicts
enjoyment.
Law is tranquil, certain, bore / transgression is exciting. -> detective law is exciting ->
criminals are bore . the greatest transgression is law itself / the greatest commodity is money
itself .
1) 1 transgression a = 2 transgression b (oog om oog), 2) law represents what is crime
commodities vs money -> money is the greatest commodity -> the greatest commodity form
is money itself [??????]
Law quilts the particular crimes ???
One can say that law divides itself necessarily into an "appeasing" law and a "mad" law: the
opposition between the law and its transgression repeats itself inside (in Hegelese: is
"reflected into") the law itself.
money vs commodity (money is itself the greatest commodity) the opposition
money/commodity repeats itself into money itself (we thus have money as money and as
commodity: the opp. m/c repeats in money)
Law vs transgression (law is itself greatest transgression) the opposition law/transgression
repeats itself into law itself (we have thus "appeasing" law and a "mad" law"
"Confronted with ordinary criminal transgressions, law appears as the only
true transgressions, as in Athalie where God appears, in the face of earthly fears, as the only
thing which is really to be feared. God thus divides Himself into an appeasing God, a God of

love, tranquility and grace, and a fierce, enraged God, He who provokes in man the most
terrible fear.
[confronted with ordinary commodities (as use-values), money appears as the only true
commodity (use-value): when money appears, in the face of simple commodities, as the only
thing that is truly a commodity (a true use-value). Money thus divides itself into an noncommodity (no-usevalue), money as representation of value, and as THE commodity, which
stands for "commodicacy" as such (for use value as such) (ordinary commodities do no
longer appears as simple exchangable use-values, but as an expression of money, i.e, value as
such, i.e., exchange value. [hmmm...] (absolute example?)
This turnround, this point of reversal at which the law itself appears a s the only true
transgression, corresponds exactly to what Hegel designated as the "negation of negation".
First, we have the simple opposition between the position and its negation - in our case,
between the positive, appeasing law and the multitude of its particular transgressions, crimes;
the "negation of the negation' occurs when one notices that the only tru transgresssion, the
only true negativity, is that of the law itself, which changes all the ordinary criminal
transgressions into an indolent postivity. In this precise sens, "negation of the negation"
designates "self-relating negativity": the moment when the external negative relationship
between law and crime turns into law's internal self-negation - when law appears as the sole
true transgression (FT 30-31).
Link to dupuy: "It is therefore highly significant that in her description of the adversery
Thatcher often resorted to the metaphor of an alien Monster eroding and corrupting the fabric
of "our way of life". Here, the "deconstructivist" approach would point out the fundamental
ambiguity of this "alien" element, its double status: it is simultaneously within the structure
as its subordinated, contained element (the immigrant who accepts the superiority of
the British way of life) and outside it (the threatening, cancerous foreign body). (FT 38)
This ambiguitiy forces us to revers the spontaneous ideological perception of Thatcherism: it
is not sufficient to say that Tatcherism was obsessed by the fear of the "alien" intruder
supposed to undermine our identity; what must be added is that the very identity of the
"British character" constitutes itself by reference to this intruder, not only in sense of a simple
differential opposition whereby and idenity can assert itself only via its difference to its
Other, but in a far more radical way. Our idenity is in itself always-already "truncated",
impossible, mutilated, "antagonistic", and the threatening intruder is nothing but an outsideprojection, an embodiment of our own inheren antagonism . . . From the Hegelian-Lacanian
perspective, however, a further crucial step is necessary, indicated alerady by Jacueline Rose
in her analysis of Thatcherism's appeal.
The point is not only that Tatcher's idenity itself is constitued by reference to a constitutive
OUtside; this idenity itself consist in an "impossible" coincidence of caring, law-and-order
woman with the toughest possible criminal attitude. When the critics of Tatcher drew
attention to her "darker" side (cold-blooded spirit of revenge, and so on) they unwittingly
consolildated her idenity.
"Confronted with the multitude of particular crimes, the universal Law reveals itself as the
absolute, uinversalized crime; confronted with the multitude of earthly horrors, God Himself,
teh beatitude of peace and love, reveals Himself as the absolute Horror . . . This triad, this
ternary structure in which the Universal, confronted with its particular content, redoubles into

positive and negative, encompassing and exclusive, "pacifying" and "destructive" - in other
words: in which the initial position, confronted ("mediated") with the multitude of its
particular negations, is retroactively trans-coded into pure, self-relating negativity - furnishes
the elementary matrix of the dialectical process (FT 42)
Modernity -> particular modernities (postmodernity, facism, ecologism, modernity)
Such a self-referring logical space where the universal genus encounters itself in the form of
its opposite within its own species (where,, for example, the God of Love encounters Himself
in the form of absolute Horror and destructive rage) - that is to say, where a set comes across
itself within its own elements - is based on the possibility of reducing the structure of teh set
to a limit-case: That of a set with one sole element: the element has to differ only from the
empty set, from the set which is nothing but the lack of the element itself (or from its place as
such, or from the mark of its place - which amounts to saying that it is split). !!!! The element
has to come out for the set to exist, it has to exclude itself, to except itself, to occur as
deficient or in surplus. (J.A. Miller)
Logic of the signifier: Within this logical space, the specific difference no longer functions
as the difference between the elements against the background of the neutral-universal set: it
coincides with the difference between the universal set itself and its particualr element- the
set is positioned at the same level as its elements, it operates as one of its own elements, as
the paradoxcical element which "is" the absence itself, the element-lack (that is, as one knows
from the fundamentals of set theory, each set comprises as one of its elements the empty set).
This paradox is founded in the differential character of the signifier's set: as soon as one is
dealing with a diffferential set, one has to comprise in the network of differences the
difference between an element and its own absence. In other words, one has to consider as
part of the signifier its own absence - one has to posit the existence of a signifier which
positivizes, "represents", "gives body to" the very lack of the signifier - that is to say,
coincides with the place of inscription of the signifier. This difference is in a way "selfreflecitive": the paradoxical, "impossible" yet necessary point at which the signifier differs
not only from another (positive) signifier but from the signifier as signifier.
Abstract and nugatory as they may seem, these ruminations place us at the very heart of the
Hegelian dialectics in which the universal genus has only one particular species; in which the
specific difference coincides with the difference between the genus and its species. [Dupuy]
In the beginning, one has the abstract Universal; one arrives at the Particular not by way of
complementing it with its particular counterpart but by way of apprehending how the
Universal is already in itself particular: it is not "all" - what escapes it (in so far as it is
abstract, that is to say: in so far as one obtains it through the process of abstracting common
features from as set of particular entities) is the Particular itself. Man (man, woman)
Modernism (post-modernism, facism, meta-modernism, modernism) in postmodernity:
modernity is contained (as a part) and contained (held at bay/external)
Hierarcy dupuy: (modernism is superior because in the real world, postmodernism is
superior over modernism)
"For this reason, the discord between Universal and the Particular is consitutive: their
encounter is always "missed" - the impetus of the dialetial process is precisely this
"contradiction' between the Universal ant its Particular.

"This discord between the Universal and the Particular would be "resolved" were it to attain
the repose of the fortunate encounter, when the disjunction, the division of the universal
genus into particular species, is exhaustive, when it is without remainder, yet the
disjunction/division of a signifier's set is never exhaustive, there always remains an empty
place occupied by the surplus element which is the set itself the form of its opposite - that is
the empty set" Man (man [empty set], WOman) this is how the signifying classification
differs from the usual, commonsensical one: next to "normal" species, one always comes
across a supplementary species which holds the place of the genus itself"
"This, then, is the basic paradox of the Lacanian logic of "non-all" [pas tout]: in order to
transform a collection of particular elements into a consistent totality, one has to add (or
subtract, which amounts to the same thing: to posit as an exception) a paradoxical element
which, in its very particularity, embodies the universality of the genus in the form of its
opposite. Man (man, woman)
"To recall the Marxian example of royalism: the universal genus of "royalism" is totalized
when one adds to it "republicanism" as the immediate embodiment of royalism in general, as
such - the universality of the "royalist" function presupposes the existence of "at least one"
which acts as exception. The radical consequence of it is that the split, the division, is located
on the side of the universal, not on the side of the Particular.
Royalism (orleanist, legimatist) becomes royalism when one adds to it republicanism as the
immediate embodiement of royalism in general Royalism (orleanist, legitimatis,
republicanist)
Modernism = anti-modernism modernism (conservatism, communism, relativism, antimodernism)
"That is to say, contrary to the usual notion according to which the diversity of particular
content introduces division, specific difference, into the neutral frame of the Universal, it is
the Universal itself which is constituted by way of subtracting from a set some Particular
designed to embody Universal as such: the Universal arises - in Hegelese: it is posited as
such, in its being-for-itself - in the act of radical split between the wealth of particualr
diversity and the element which, in the midst of it, "gives body" to the Universal" (44)
"Therein consist the logic of sexual differnce: the set of woman is a particular, non-totalized,
non-universal set; its multitude acquires the dimension of universality (that, precisely, of
"humankind") as soon as one excludes from it an element which thereby embodies
humankind as such: man. man, woman -> Man (woman).
"The universality of "humankind" is not (logically) prior to the sexual difference, it is posited
as such through the inscription of that difference." (44)
We don't have first modernity and then its multitude of species.
"It is a commonplace of feminist theory to quote the ambiguity of the term "man" (human
being as such, male or female; male) as a proof of the "male chauvinist" bias of our every day
language; what, however, one usually overlooks apropos of this ambiguity is the dialectical
tension between its two aspects: true, man qua male "gives body" to the universality of man

qua human being - yet it does it in the form of its opposite (as in Racines Athalie, where God
qua source of unspeakable Horro "gives body" to God qua Love and Beatitude) - in other
words, precisly in so far as it immediately embodies humankind, man qua male is radically,
consitutively, more "inhuman" than woman? (45)
modernism, as genus and species. true modernism gives body to the universality of
modernism as modernity, yet it does so in the form of its opposite. in other words, modernism
embodies immediately modernity, modernism as moderity is radically, constitutively more
non-modern than postmodernity.
Non-Hegelian Idealism as wel as materialist nominalism misrecognize the status of such a
paradoxical Difference, which is constitutive of the Universal itself and therefore cannot be
reduced to an ordinary specific difference against the neutral background of a universal
genus.!!!!!!!! this is why it differs from today's doxa.
modernity overdetermines modernity. " a determination of the Whole by one of its elements
which, according to the order of classification, should be just a subordinate part - a part of the
structure "envelops" its whole. When, in the totality of production, distribution, exchange and
consumption, Marx accords this place to production, he resorts to the Hegeliann category of
"antithetical determination" [gegensatzliche Bestimmung]: "Production predominates not
only over itself, in the antithetical determination of production, but over the other moments as
well. This antithetical determination designates the form in which the Universal comes across
itself within its particularities: production encounters itself within its species, or: production
is a species which encompasses its own genus (the totality of production, distribution,
exchange and consumption) - as in theology, where God qua Love predominates over
Himself in the antithetical detmination, i.e., qua unspeakable Horror and Rage.
The Hegelian motto "the True is the Whole" is therefore deeply misleading if one interprets it
in the sense of traditional "holism" according to which the particular content is nothing but a
passing, subordinated moment of the integral Totality; the Hegelian "holism" is, on the
contrary, of a "self-referential" kind: the Whole is always-already part of itself, comprised
within its own elemtns.
Dialectical "progress" thus had nothing whatsoever to do with the gradual ramification some
initially non-differntiated toatliy into a network of concrete determinations; its mechanism is
rather that of a Whole adding itself again and again to its own parts, as in the well-known
witticism often quoted by Lacan: "I have three brothers, Paul, Ernest and myself" - "myself"
is here exactly the "antithetical dtermination" of the "I".
THIS IS SUBJECTIVICATION
It is by way of this surplus element [production, republicanism, man, god qua horror] which
embodies the Universal in its negative form, by way of this point at which the Universal
comes across itself in its "antithetical determination", that the signifier's structure
subjectivizes itself: subject exist only within this "failed encounter" between the Universal
and the Particular - it is ultimately nothing but a name for their constitutive discord.
God as love (God as love, God as Horror) // production (production, ... , ... , ... , ) // Man
(man, woman) // Royalism (Orleanist, Legitimist, republicans) // Man as genus (man as
species, woman).

The Particular is always deficient, there is not enough of it to "fill out" the exstension of the
Universal, yet simultaneously, it comes in surplus since it adds itself to the series of particular
elements as teh One which embodies Genus itself. As soon as we abolish this short ciruit
between the Universal and the Particular, this spacing of the Moebius band where the
Universal and the Particular are located on the same surface - in other words, as soon as we
arrive at a classification where the niversal is divided into species without the apradoxcial
remainder of its "antithetical determination" - we have an "objective" structure, a structure
which does not stage the representation of the subject (46).
Did we not theryby reach the lacanian formula of the signifier? Is the "antithetical
determination" - this paradoxcical Particular which within the series of Particulars,
holds the place of, stands for, the Universal itself, not the signifier which represents the
subject for the other signifiers? As, for example,, in the Marxian example of the logic of
royalism, whereby republicanism represents royalism in general for the (other) species
of royalism? NO
"The answer is definitely negative: what such a simplistic reading fails to take into account is
the dialectic of lack and excess. The surplus Particular embodies the Universal in the form of
its opposite, it comes in excess preciely in so far as it fills out the lack of the Particlar with
regard to Universal. The surplus is thus the form of appearance of the lack; the One (the
Lacanian "plus-One") is the form of the appearance of Zero, and it is only at this point that
the formula of the signifier can legitimately be introduced: the excess, the surplus One which
fills out the lack, is the signifier which represents the subject (the void, Zero, the empty set of
the structure) [for another signifier].
"The three terms - the positive Universal (royalism as genus), the Particular (its different
species: Orleanism, Legitimism . . ) and the Exception which embodies the Universal in the
form of its opposite (republicanism as the only way to be "royalist in general") - are thus to
be supplemented by a fourth - the void itself filled out by the Exception. This void comes into
sight in the Hegelian subversion of the "principle of identity": the identity-with-itself as
expressed in tautology ("God is God", for example) is in itself the purest, absolue
contradiction, the lack of any particular determination - where one expects a specific
determination, a predicate ("God is . . . ) one obtains nothing, the abscence of determination.
Far from exhibiting a kind of self-sufficient plenitude, tautology thus opens up a void in the
Substance which is then filled out by the Exception: this void is the subject, and the
Exception represents it for all other elements of the Substance. "God is God" is therefore the
most succint way of saying "Substance is Subject": the repetition of the same adds to the
divine predicates (wisdom, goodness, omnipotence . . .) a certain "nothing", an empty place a
lack of determination which subjectivizes it - this is why only the Judaic-Christian God, the
one of the tautology "I am what I am", can be said to be subject.
--"The starting point of the dialectical process is not the plenitude of a self-sufficient substance,
idenitcal with itself, but the absolute contradiction: the pure difference is always-already the
impossible "predicate" of identity-with-itself - or, to put it in Lacanian terms, the idenity of a
signifier's mark (S) always-already reperesents the subject ($)

Royalism (orleanist, legitimist, republicanist (royalism in general), X) To be a royalist

(against leftist) is to unite orleanist and legitimatist, but this cancels royalism, in the sense
that royalism in general can only be a republicanist royalism (before the republic, one is
either orleanist or republicanist) To be a modernist (against postmodernist) is to united what
consitutes modernism, but this cancels modernism, in the sense that modernism can only be a
postmodern modernism. ???????
Modernity (conservatism, communism, fascism, socialism, post-modernism (modernism in
general), x)
Universal (man as genus) Particular (species: man, woman) exception which embodies
universal in the form of its opposite (man as inhuman - deprived of specific properties), as the
only way to be "man in general")
Universal (modernity) Particular (species: technology, individualization, progress) exception
which embodies universal in the form of its opposite (post-modernity) metaphoric (x)

----------the only way to be royal against

republicanism is to become royal in general (encompassing both species) by which is to be
republican.
Modernisms (..., ..., ..., modernism in general)
crime in general
---Law (german law, french law, las as law) the only way for law to constitute itself is to
become "crime in general" (containg all particular crimes) by which crime is law
postmodern
------Modernity (German modernity, fascist modernity, communist modernity, modernity in
general) the only way for modernity to constitute itself as modernity proper is to take the
position of "modernity in general" (containing all particular modernities) by which to be
modern is to be postmodern {?????!!!]
modernism
modernity]

post(no big stories) (we are all postmodern) [postmodernism is THE ideology of

--------modernisms [ideologies that deal with real of modern break] (fascism, communism,
liberalism, modernism, x )
capital (....,....,....,...., workingclass (capital essence in form of opposite) , (x) proletariat)
Modernism = modernism

Modernism = postmodernism (tautology)

"More precisely, instead of encountering itself, the initial moment comes across its own
absence, the set comes across itself as empty set."
Royalism comes across itself as empty set (royalism devoid of substance = royalist
republicanism)
The same proposition applies also to the relation of post-modernism to modernism: by way of
reconciliation, the negative force of modernism recognizes in the post-modernism it fights its
own essence - universalized modernism.
working class
capital (..., ...., ...., ...., capital, [x = proletariat])

reflexive determination [?]

Irony depends on other who does belief.

can we convince the big other that it does not exist.
obvious analogy with the panopticon. 'For the helmet effect, it suffices that a visor be possible
and that one play with it. Even when it is raised, in fact, its possibility continues to signify
someone, beneath the armor, can safely see without being seen or wit being identified.
Ideology functions even if it is clear that it is a lie.
When taken seriously, it comes in trouble.
big other/ geest van de vader/ uber ich (derrida p. 13)
Ironie hipster. Metamofernisme. Sincere irony. emphaty. Rorty, split. Hegel irony, not
sublation. but institutionalized irony
voor rorty: algemene en bijzonder MOETEN gescheiden. Een algemene wil bestaat niet. hij
wordt als beperkend ervaren (heyde 78)
algemeen en bijzonder zijn voor rorty niet te verbinden, omdat er geen algemeenheid is. dit
houdt verband met Rorty's verwerping van relativisme.
retroactivity -> irony is retroactive -> after instituions. same as contramodernity identifying
with holism.
kotsko: detachement from live, meaning doing, live and doing are objective spirit,
institutions.

ontology, what is ontology? what can ontology mean for cultural analysis and critical theory?
to challange this simple logic, that is prevelant in critical practice.
"The standard definition of parallax is: the apparent displacement of an object (the shift of its position against a background), caused by a change in
observational position that provides a new line of sight.The philosophical twist to be added, of course, is that the observed difference is not simply
"subjective," due to the fact that the same object which exists "out there" is seen from two different stances, or points of view. It is rather that, as
Hegel would have put it, subject and object are inherently "mediated," so that an "epistemological" shift in the subjects point of view always reflects
an "ontological" shift in the object itself."
TPV, p. 17

totalitarianism : not as we imagine it often (everything is controlled, the game is rigged) not
totality is inert / always counterforce : but the desire to control every aspect of life. but weird
kind of totalitarianism of freedom.
"On top of the multitude of perspectives, there is THE perspective, the pure perspective"
(singular : universal, by virtue of its pure particularity)
augmented/virtual reality (analysis?)
a political movement opposed to what is perceived as a postmodern inertia. websites :
metamodernism, metamoderna
regression of the insight that postmodernism laid bare: full
reification/deterritorialization/fluidity etc. etc. postmodernism is horror! [not the cosy
variant though]
"Though the terror exist only for those caught on the wrong side of Hisotry, thes comprimise3
Jameson's present audience . It is no wonder he treads lightly here 117)
the opposition does not lie between reification and social community! reification and
community are each others doubles, two side of the same coin (Lucien Goldmann 36):
(retroactively, the illusion of "community" comes into being)!! THIS is the bad totality, the
totality witouth the "third term that marks the difference between the two" (exchange value /
real abstraction )
". . . the evaluation of the social moment in which we live today is the object of an essentially
political affirmation or repudiation" (21).
The new, as in the youngest, the new without teleology. the new cannot be teleology because
if there is a predestined goal there is no space for "the new". the new is what comes
completely unexpected. (revolution)
"Indeed, the very enabling premise of the debate turns on an initial, strategic presupposition
about our social system: to grant some historic originality to a postmodernist culture is also
implicitly to affirm some radical structural difference between what is sometimes called
consumer society and earlier moments of the capitalism from which it emerged. (21)
"The various logical possibilities, however, are necessarily linked with the taking of a
position on that other issue inscribed in the very designation postmodernism itself, namely,
the evaluation of what must now be called high or classical modernism.

-temptation to search for family resamblances in high modernism, if we make an inventory.

"The architectural debates, however, the inaugural discussions of postmodernism as a style
have the merit of making the political resonance of the seemingly aesthetic issues
inescapable and allowing it to be detectable in the sometimes more coded or veiled
discussion in the other arts (22)
(ver)nederland
(R)overheid
When you see somebody killed in such a horrific way, that represents a terrorist attack,'
Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/140822/whitehouse-calls-james-foleys-execution-terrori
As Cutrofello explains, philosophy has been split between analytics and
continentals. This division has taken the form of an intuitional struggle over
who has the right to inherit the title of Philosopher. Each tradition has its own
legacy of philosophers coming before them. Both Rorty and Ricoeur have
suggested that the divide is essentially a struggle over the heritage of Immanuel
Kants philosophy: They claim that the division has its roots in a distinction that
Kant draws between two supposedly separable elements of human cognition,
namely, intuitions and concepts. (2).
For Kant, intuitions are immedeate representations of individual
objects that are somehow given to us through a faculty of receptivity. Concepts,
by contrast, are spontaneously generated forms of thought in terms of which we
cognize such objects (CPR A19/B33, A320/B376-7). According to Cutrofello, it is
this distinction is the basis whereupon all of Kants critical philosophy is built. It
ultimately gives rise to the distinction between determining judgments (this is a
cat) and reflective judgements (of art etc - how is truth disclosed aesthetically whatever it is, it is unique!). This distinction further informs the distinction
between scientific cognition and aesthetic experience. The latter are in some
way resist conceptual determination.
According to Rorty, this divsion gave rise to the debate between postivists and
romantics, as to which of the two should be accorded primacy in our sense of
ourselves and the world, and for Rorty, the analytical-continental divide is simply
an continuation of this debate.

Friedman, locates the divide in a similar origin. He locates it the

attempts made by rival schools of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century
neo-Kantians to rid themselves of the intuition/concept dichotomy.
But for cutrofello shows that kants principle motive for introducing the distinction
was to make an end to all hitherto existing philosophical controversies. Kant
himself, by insisting on the ineliminability of this dualism, Kant hoped to
bring about perpetual philosophical peace. Rorty,according to Cutrofello,
suppresses Kants underlying motives for making this distinction.
Empricist attacked Queen Metaphsyics. Locke -> back to senses/ Hume: reason
is deluded in regarding the concept of causality as one of her childeren, but it
was actully just a the bastard of the imagination,. . . impregnated by experince
(PTAFM 55). Kant wanted to show against these slandarous claims that
human understanding (!) is equipped with genuinly pure concepts
which arise from it alone, and that objects of experience are lawfully
governed by them.(6)
At the same time, as much guilte, for kant, were the dogmatic philosophers. The
Queen was to much influenced by them, and thus her rule became despotic.
Kant sees himself as a minister, a judge that can tell the Queen (Metaphysics)
what she can an cannot do (wat de rede vermag)
Just as he criticeze Locke and Hume for alleging that the pure concepts of the
understanding were derived from sensible intuitiions, so he criticizes the
rationalist philosophers Leibniz and Wolff for thinking that through the use of
concepts alone it was possible to have intellectual intuitions of object
of the understanding. (6)
Leibniz intellectualized the appearance, just as Locke totally sensitivized the
concepts of understanding (CPR A271/B327).
DISTINCTION/DIVISION/DICHOTOMY
This distinction thus lay the ground for all kinds of distinctions in Kants
philosophy. Intuition/concept gives rise to the dichotomy a priori and a
posteriori sources of cognition. Kant says that while all human experience
begins with a posterirori (i.e., emprical) sensations which provide a priori (nonempirical) forms to which the matter of sensation must confrom in order to be
apprehended by us (CPR A1-2/B1-2). The discovery of pure forms of experience

gives rise to the idea of a transcendental philosophy that will put forth a
complete system of a priori concepts of objects in general (CPR A11-12).
Most importantly, the goal of the critique is to identify the a priori concepts that
can legitimately applied to the appearances (intuition?) and to prohibit their
illegimate extension beyond the bounds of possible experience (GOD, Free Will,
etc.)

Kants discovery of the synthetic a priori character of arithmetic and geometry

enables him to characterize critique as the project of surveying all of the
different kinds of synthetic a priori judgments [legitimate speculation?] with an
eye toward determining both their conditions of possibility and their scope of
validity (7). [note: including concepts of god, soul, free will!]
Kant thinks being not as positedness but as the unpositable ground by which the
poisitble is positable, so Heidegger ultimately thinks of being not as givenness
but as that by whih the given is given (57).
Bachelard

New scientific spirit: Throughout his writings, Bachelard moves freely back and forth
between technical considerations about the ontological implications of the new physics and
metaphysical reveries about the imagery of lyric poetry. (58)
The very capacity to intuit has a HISTORY --> epistemological break althusser?

Philosophy of subject, structure and love. Truth. Universality. Objectivity.

Not the objectivity of naive realism
Geen links en rechts, mengvormen. rb
Utopien, wat leiden we mensen voor op. Hoe moeten onze kinderen geld verdienen.
rb: Het leven.... Kortere werktijden... David graeber. Bullshit job. belofte van technologie.
Utopie basis inkomen. Nieuwe taal.
rendementsdenken (statistiek)
Meer in de comfort zone van technocraten. Niet vanzelfsprekend. Kan anders. De eerste stap.
Ideen.

Collectief geproduceerd.
Consensus? Strijd.. Patenten.
promising work had been done, Fla Fla, refs. but still obstacle etc
confronted with widespread political inertia with regard to an increasingly pressing climate
crisis, a number of soles have taken up the critical notion of ideology again. often, blamer its
put on neo liberalism.
to represent us as anything less thanso interconnected is in fact to misrepresent us to
ourselves, and hence to interfere with our possibilities of self-realization, which in turn
means recognition of ones positioning within the wider systems of Nature (Buell, The
ethics and politics, 104)
Leopolds argument that the biotic communitys welfare should be the standard of right
conduct has been highly inuential
for nature: the world does not revolve, it does not revolve on anything. A reinvesting with
meaning is at work.
That is in no sense to diminish the seriousness and the signicance, here or elsewhere, of
urging ones listeners to make a concerted effort to think against anthropocentrism. Indeed,
this amounts to nothing less than a new Copernican revolution at the planetary level this
insistence that the world must no longer be thought of as revolving around us.
Reconstructive ecotheology is an even more dramatic example than green aesthetics or
green ethics. As Thomas Berry sums up the stakes and promise in his widely inuential The
Dream of the Earth: "[Humanitys] reenchantment with the earth as a living reality is
the condition for our rescue of the earth from the impending destruction that we are imposing
upon it. To carry this out effectively we must now, in a sense, reinvent the human species
within the community of life species. Our sense of reality and of value must consciously shift
from an anthropocentric to a biocentric norm of reference. (Berry 1988:21)" (Ethics and
Politics of Environmental Criticism, 107)
McFague pursues this line of thinking both aware of its epistemological tentativeness and
convinced that, whatever the Truth with a capital T,the ecocentric reorientation she
proposes can make a difference in how humans regard and comport themselves in relation to
the world.
The writing of Berry,McFague,and other ecotheologians corroborates what Jonathan Bate
eloquently says with literary aesthetics in mind: we cannot do without thought-experiments
and language-experiments which imagine a return to nature, a reintegration of the human
and the Other.The dream of deep ecology will never be realized upon the earth, but our
survival as a species may be dependent on our capacity to dream it in the work of our
imagination(Bate 2000:
378).
As political philosopher Robyn Eckersley herself an ecocentrist prudently observes of her
own
eld,although ecocentrism may be the most distinctive and philosophically radical aspect of

green political thought, to insist that this serve as its dening feature is less ecumenical
than to dene the eld as gravitating toward a general normfor protection of the ecological
integrity of the earth and its myriad organisms (Eckersley 2001:3256;cf.Eckersley 1992)
Animal biotechnology is potentially controversial given that it suggests various
ways for extending the instrumentalisation of animals precisely at a time when
the moral value of animals is being contested. 108 (Animal Genomics and
Ambivalence: A Sociology of Animal Bodies in Agricultural Biotechnology ,
RICHARD TWINE)
Biovalue: the yield of vitality produced by the biotechnological reformulation of
living processes. Biotechnology tries to gain traction in living processes, to
induce them to increase or change their productivity along specified lines,
intensify their self-producing and self-maintaining capacities...biotechnology finds
insertion points between living and nonliving systems where new and
contingent forms of vitality can be created, capitalizing on life 39
I think there is a reading of Foucault that can make a strong argument for the
agricultural animal as representing a biopolitical ideal type. But to begin with
there are two ways in which this may not be the case. First, Foucaults point was
that biopower supersedes sovereign power, but in the animal case sovereign
power is obviously very much still operative, and, second, biopower is a
technology that constructs subjectivity and its unclear that we can talk about
this in the animal case.
Nevertheless, post-war animal science especially has exerted a considerable
degree of biopower over agricultural animals for it is not merely that the animal
body must be primed to be economically productive but that the body itself must
work toward its own consumption. The genetic progress made on animal bodies
during this period together with increased availability and the decreased price of
animal products also shows how this biopower was in a sense subservient to the
overarching project of constructing healthy human bodies.

The notion of genetic progress could be taken as an annual measure of

biopower success but genetics is only a part (although increasingly so) of animal
biopolitics. Here optimization projects strike deeper due to the absence of human
norms of privacy, autonomy and justice.
Identity aantekeningen

If you think about it it boils down to the identity of that little piece of sequence.
Now my personal view is that its just a piece of DNA sequence. Whether it has, it
could be isolated from, it could have a pig gene and you want to put it into a
mouse lets say. You could go to a pig, you could take some blood, you could
isolate some DNA from that blood, you could isolate that gene from a sheep and
you could put it into the mouse. Or you could say I know that sequence, Im
going to go to a machine and Ill make that sequence and its a pig sequence and
Ill put it into a mouse. Now are they both pig genes? Theyre just a piece of DNA,
to me its just a piece of DNA(Animal Genomics and Ambivalence: A Sociology of
Animal Bodies in Agricultural Biotechnology , RICHARD TWINE, 111)

Courage to truth
However, even if the role of this other person who is indispensable
for telling the truth about oneself is uncertain or, if you like, polyvalent, even if it appears with a number of different aspects and profiles
medical, political, and pedagogicalwhich mean that it is not always
easy to grasp exactly what his role is, even so, whatever his role, status,
function, and profile may be, this other has, or rather should have a
particular kind of qualification in order to be the real and effective
partner of truth- telling about self. Courage 6
And this qualification, unlike the
confessors or spiritual directors in Christian culture, is not given by
an institution and does not refer to the possession and exercise of specific spiritual powers. Nor is it, as in modern culture, an institutional
qualification guaranteeing a psychological, psychiatric, or psychoanalytic knowledge.
The qualification required by this uncertain, rather
vague, and variable character is a practice, a certain way of speaking
which is called, precisely, parrhe sia (free- spokenness). 6.
Master with no qualification, except that it involves a practice of parrhesia.
These three elements are: forms of knowledge ( savoirs ), studied
in terms of their specific modes of veridiction; relations of power, not
studied as an emanation of a substantial and invasive power, but in
the procedures by which peoples conduct is governed; and finally the
modes of formation of the subject through practices of self. It seems to
me that by carrying out this triple theoretical shiftfrom the theme of
acquired knowledge to that of veridiction, from the theme of domination to that of governmentality, and from the theme of the individual
to that of the practices of selfwe can study the relations between

truth, power, and subject without ever reducing each of them to the
others. 2
The parrhesiast then becomes and appears as the impenitent chatterbox, someone who cannot
restrain himself or,
at any rate, someone who cannot index- link his discourse to a principle of rationality and
truth. 10
But the word parrhe sia is also employed in a positive sense, and then parrhe sia consists
in telling the truth without concealment, reserve, empty manner of speech, or rhetorical
ornament which might encode or hide it. Telling all is then: telling the truth without hiding
any part of it, without hiding it behind anything.
Parrhesia is therefore telling all, but tied to the truth: telling the whole truth, hiding
nothing of the truth, telling the truth without hiding it behind anything.
The parrhesiast gives his opinion, he says what he thinks, he personally signs, as it were,
the truth he states, he binds himself to this truth, and he is consequently bound to it and
by it.
For after all, a teacher, a grammarian or a geometer, may say something true about the
grammar or geometry they teach, a truth which they believe, which they think. And yet we
will not call this parrhe sia. We will not say that the geometer and grammarian are
parrhesiasts when they teach truths which they believe. For there to be parrhe sia, you recall
I stressed this last yearthe subject must be taking some kind of risk [in speaking] this
truth which he signs as his opinion, his thought, his belief, a risk which concerns his
relationship with the person to whom he is speaking.
For there to be parrhesia, in speaking the truth one must open up, establish, and confront the
risk of offending the other person, of irritating him, of making him angry and provoking him
to conduct which may even be extremely violent. So it is the truth subject to risk of violence.
CONSIDER MANDELA SPEECH BEFORE IMPRISONMENT.
In short, parrhesia, the act of truth, requires: first, the manifestation
of a fundamental bond between the truth spoken and the thought of
the person who spoke it; [second], a challenge to the bond between the
two interlocutors (the person who speaks the truth and the person to
whom this truth is addressed). Hence this new feature of parrhe sia: it
involves some form of courage, the minimal form of which consists in
the parrhesiast taking the risk of breaking and ending the relationship
to the other person which was precisely what made his discourse possible.
In a way, the parrhesiast always risks undermining that relationship which is the condition of
possibility of his discourse. This is very clear in parrhe sia as spiritual guidance, for
example, which can only exist if there is friendship, and where the employment of truth in

his spiritual guidance is precisely in danger of bringing into question and breaking the
relationship of friendship which made this discourse of truth possible.
Parrhe sia therefore not only puts the relationship between the person who speaks and the
person to whom he addresses the truth at risk, but it may go so far as to put the very life of
the person who speaks at risk, at least if his interlocutor has power over him and cannot bear
being told the truth.
Parrhe sia, on the other hand, involves a strong and constitutive bond between the person
speaking and what he says, and, through the
effect of the truth, of the injuries of truth, it opens up the possibility of the bond between the
person speaking and the person to whom He has spoken being broken.
Lets say, very schematically, that the rhetorician is, or at any rate may well be an effective
liar who constrains others. The parrhesiast, on the contrary, is the courageous teller of a truth
by which he puts himself and his relationship with the other at risk.
He risks the relationship he has with the person to whom he speaks. 24
TELL THE TRUTH, NOT OUT OF FRIENDSHIP, TO PRESERVERE FRIENDSHIP AT
ANY COST IS TO BE A RHETORIC. BUT OUT OF TRUTH.
The parrhesiast is not a professional. And parrhe sia is after all something other than a
technique or a skill, although it has technical aspects. Parrhe sia is not a skill; it is something
which is harder to define. It is a stance, a way of being which is akin to a virtue, a Mode of
action. Parrhe sia involves ways of acting, means brought together with a view to an end,
and in this respect it has, of course, something to do with technique, but it is also a role which
is useful, valuable, and indispensable for the city and for individuals. Parrhesia should be
regarded as a modality of truth- telling, rather than [as a] technique [like] rhetoric.
MODALITY OF TRUTH TELLING. NOT A TECHNIQUE, OR A SKILL.
PROPHET, SAGE, PROFESSOR
And finally, whereas the sage says what is, but in the form of the very being of things and of
the world, the parrhesiast
intervenes, says what is, but in terms of the singularity of individuals, situations, and
conjunctures. His specific role is not to tell of the being of nature and things 19
And in speaking the truth, far from establishing this positive bond of shared knowledge,
heritage, filiation, gratitude, or friendship, he may instead provoke the others anger,
antagonize an enemy, he may arouse the hostility of the city, or, if he is speaking the truth to a
bad and tyrannical sovereign, he may provoke vengeance and punishment. And he may go so
far as to risk his life, since he may pay with his life for the truth he has told. 25
Whereas, in the case of the technicians truth- telling, teaching ensures the survival of
knowledge, the person
who practices parrhesia risks death. The technicians and teachers truthtelling brings together

and binds; the parrhesiasts truth- telling risks hostility, war, hatred, and death. And if the
parrhesiasts truth may unite and reconcile, when it is accepted and the other person agrees to
the pact and plays the game of parrhesia, this is only after it has opened up an essential,
fundamental, and structurally necessary moment of the possibility of hatred and a rupture. !!!
25
Rather, inasmuch as he takes the risk of provoking war with others, rather than solidifying the
traditional bond, like the teacher, by [speaking] in his own name and perfectly clearly, [unlike
the] prophet who speaks in the name of someone else, [inasmuch as] finally [he tells] the
truth of what is in the singular form of individuals and situations, and not the truth of being
and the nature of things, the parrhesiast brings into play the true discourse of what the Greeks
called ethos.
Fate has a modality of veridiction which is found in prophecy. Being has a modality of
veridiction found in the sage. Tekhne
has a modality of veridiction found in the technician, the professor, the teacher, the expert.
And finally, ethos has its veridiction in the speech of the parrhesiast and the game of
parrhesia.
However, as distinct as these roles may be, and even if at certain times, and in certain
societies or civilizations, you see these four functions taken on, as it were, by very clearly
distinct institutions or characters, it is important to note that fundamentally these are not
social characters or roles. I insist on this; I would like to stress it: they are essentially modes
of veridiction. It sometimes happens, and
it will happen very often, even more often than not, that these modes of veridiction are
combined with each other, and we find them in forms of discourse, types of institutions, and
social characters which mix the modes of veridiction with each other.
But you recall: who gave him his function as parrhesiast, his mission to question people, to
take them by the sleeve and tell them: Take some care of yourself? It was the Delphic god,
the prophetic authority which returned this verdict.
We will see a philosophical truthtelling separating off, or anyway the development of a
philosophical truth- telling which will ever more insistently claim to speak of being or the
nature of things only to the extent that this truth- telling concerns, is relevant for, is able to
articulate and found a truthtelling about ethos in the form of parrhesia.
PARTICULAR COMBINATIONS OF TRUTH TELLING. PROPHET: MARX; A SPECTER
IS HAUNTING EUROPE I.E. TEACHER: EINSTEIN, SAGE: KHOMENI AYATOLLA
democracy is not the privileged site of parrhesia, but the place in which parrhesiais most
difficult to practice. 57.
It never poses the question of ethos without at the same time inquiring about the truth and the
form of access to the truth which will be able to form this ethos, and [about] the political
structures within which this ethos will be able to assert its singularity and difference.

If we can have phronesisand take good decisions, this is because we have a particular relation
to the truth which is founded ontologically in the nature of the soul. 86
What is at stake in this new form of parrhesiais the foundation of ethos as the principle on the
basis of which conduct can be defined as rational conduct in accordance with the very being
of the soul. 86
And here he names the truth. It is the truth that determines what is just and unjust. So we
should not follow the opinion of
everybody, but if we wish to be concerned about ourselves, if we want to take care of that
part of ourselves, whatever it is and avoid its destruction and corruption, what should we
follow? It is necessary to follow the truth. 105
The curing that Socrates speaks about here is part of all those activities by which one cares
for someone, takes care of him if he is ill, sees to his diet so that he does not fall ill,
prescribes the food he must eat or the exercises he must perform, and it is also part of those
activities by which one points out to him the actions he should perform and those he should
avoid, by which one helps him to discover the true opinions he should follow and the false
opinions he should guard against, it is that activity by which one nourishes him with true
discourse.
I think that Socrates death founds the courage of the truth philosophy, in the reality of Greek
thought and therefore in Western
history, as a form of veridiction which is not that of prophecy, or wisdom, or tekhne -; a form
of veridiction peculiar precisely to philosophical discourse, and the courage of which must be
exercised until death as a test of the soul which cannot take place on the political
platform.114
All this cathartics is found in the Pythagoreans and still in modern philosophy. Because the
Cartesian approach is, after all, a cathartic
approach: on what conditions will the subject be able to constitute itself as pure gaze,
independent of any private interest, and capable of universality in the possession of the
cathartic truth? But the cathartic (the subjects purification as condition of being able to be
subject
of truth) is only one aspect [of the ethics of truth]. There is another aspect which is that of the
courage of the truth: what type of resolution, what type of will, what type of not only
sacrifice but battle is one able to face in order to arrive at the truth? This struggle for the truth
is different from the purification by which one can arrive at the truth. It is no longer the
analysis of purification for the truth, but the analysis of the will to truth in its different forms,
which may be those of curiosity, battle, courage, resolution, and endurance
And under the pretext of questioning them about the teachers who can authenticate their
competence and their views, he will impose a completely different game on them, one which
is neither that of politics, of course, nor even that of technique, [but]which will be the game
of parrhesia and ethics, the game of parrhesia oriented towards the problem of ethos. First:
how does this Socratic game
emerge in the dialogue, that is to say, how is it discovered and accepted by the partners?
Second: how is this game described and defined, and in what does it consist? And third: what
authorizes Socrates to perform this role of ethical parrhesia?

BIOS AND LOGOS, LIVE IN HAROMONY WITH TRUTH. NOT COURAGE>COURAGE

This mode of self- knowledge takes [the form]the words are in the Laches; we noted them
of the test, of examination, and also of exercise concerning the way in which one conducts
oneself. And it gives rise to a mode of truth- telling which does not mark out the site of a
possible metaphysical discourse, but a mode of truthtelling whose role and end is to give
some kind of form to this bios (this life, this existence).
So, in one case we have a mode of giving an account of oneself which leads to the
psukhe and which, in doing this, marks out the site of a possible metaphysical discourse. In
the other case, we have a giving an account of oneself, an accounting for oneself, which is
Directed towards bios sas existence, towards [a] mode of existence which is to be examined
and tested throughout its life. Why? So as to be able to give it a certain form, thanks to a
certain kind of true discourse.
In this comparison of the Alcibiadesand the Lacheswe have the point of departure of the
two great lines of development of Socratic veridiction in Western philosophy. From this first,
fundamental, and common theme of didonai logon (giving an account of oneself), a [first]
line will go to the being of the soul (the Alcibiades), and the other to forms of existence (the
Laches). One goes towards the metaphysics of the soul (Alcibiades), the other towards a
stylistics of existence (Laches). And this famous accounting for self which constitutes the
objective stubbornly pursued by Socratic parrhesiaand here is its fundamental ambiguity,
which will leave its mark in the entire history of our thoughtmay be and has been
understood as the task of having to discover and tell of the souls being, or as the task and
work which consists in giving some kind of style to existence. I think this duality of being of
the soul and style of existence signals something important for Western philosophy. 162
What I wanted to try to recover was something of the relation between the art of existence
and true discourse, between the
beautiful existence and the true life, life in the truth, life for the truth. 163
But, by placing myself at this Socratic moment of the end of the fifth century, I wanted to
recover the point at which a certain relationship is established between this no doubt archaic,
ancient, and traditional concern in Greek culture for a beautiful, striking, and memorable
existence, and the concern with truth- telling. 163
I have tried therefore to find, with Socrates, the moment when the requirement of truthtelling and the principle of the beauty of existence came together in the care of self.
Finally, and especially, with regard to the truth, the mode of life peculiar to the Cynics has
what could be called a role of test with
regard to the truth.
In short, Cynicism makes life, existence, bios, what could be called an alethurgy, a
manifestation of truth. 173
This is the kernel of Cynicism; practicing the scandal of the truth in and through ones life.

There is a Cynicism which is an integral part of the history of Western thought, existence, and
subjectivity. In the next hour I would like to evoke something of this trans- historical
Cynicism. And then, next week, we will return to what may be thought to be the historical
core of Cynicism in Antiquity.
Second, coming closer to our own time, it would also be interesting to analyze another
support of the Cynic mode of being, of Cynicism
understood as form of life in the scandal of the truth. This would no longer be found in
religious practices and institutions, but in political
practices. Here, of course, I am thinking of revolutionary movements, or at least of some of
these movements, which you know, moreover, borrowed a lot from the different, orthodox
and other forms of Christian spirituality. Cynicism, the idea of a mode of life as the irruptive,
violent, scandalous manifestation of the truth is and was part of revolutionary practice and of
the forms taken by revolutionary movements throughout the nineteenth century. Revolution
in the modern European worldthis is a fact which is known and I think we talked about it
last yearwas not just a political project; it was also a form of life. Or, more precisely, it
functioned as a principle defining a certain mode of life. And if, for convenience sake, you
want to call militantism the way in which life as revolutionary activity, or revolutionary
activity as life, was defined, described, organized, and regulated, we can say that militantism,
as revolutionary life, as life devoted wholly or partially to the Revolution, took three great
forms in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. Two in particular are known (the oldest
and the most recent), but I shall be interested in the third. [First, we find] the revolutionary
life in th
The parrhesiast does not reveal what is to his interlocutor; he discloses
or helps him to recognize what he is. 19
Butler: In asking the ethical question How ought I to treat another? I am immediately
caught up in a realm of social normativity, since the other only appears to me, only functions
as an other for me, if there is a frame within which I can see and apprehend the other in
her separateness and exteriority. So, though I might think of the ethical relation as dyadic or,
indeed, as presocial, I am caught up not only in the sphere of normativity but in the
problematic of power when I pose the ethical question in its directness and simplicity: How
ought I to treat you? If the I and the you must first come into being, and if a normative
frame is necessary for this emergence and
encounter, then norms work not only to direct my conduct but to condition the possible
emergence of an encounter between myself
and the other. 25 butler.
He understands that this order conditions the possibility of his becoming, and that a regime
of truth, in his words, constrains what will and will not constitute the truth of his self,
the truth he offers about himself, the truth by which he might be known and become
recognizably human, the account he might give of himself. 30 butler.
Giving an account is thus also a kind of showing of oneself, a showing for the purpose of
testing whether the account seems right, whether it is understandable by the other,
who receives the account through one set of norms or another. I have a relation to myself,
but I have it in the context of an address to an other. So the relation is disclosed, but it is also,

to borrow from Foucaults work on confession,published, brought into the realm of

appearance, constituted as a social manifestation. 131.
Although truth-telling is compelled to proceed according to rules of validity, Foucault also
makes clear that there are conditionsI would call them rhetoricalthat make truth-telling
possible and that must be interrogated. In this sense, the problematization of truth must take
into account the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and
knowing why we should tell the truth. These questions, which concern the limits, the
conditions, and the consequences of truth-telling as such, contain, in his words, the roots of
what we could call the critical tradition in the West (FS, 170).
The wary trust built through confrontation between parrhesiastesand audience now binds both
parties in a mutual concern for truthfulness; their deep intellectual and emotional
investments. (476 nancy Luxon)
provide a set of criteria by which individuals can assess the manner in which potential truthtellers speak, if not the actual content of their speech. (485)
Traditional social structures That had previously bound together communities were
disintegrating, whilst new ideologies came on stage
Thee prospect of definitive science paradoxically gave rise to the Ed
When Brandi used it to diagnose his time however, it was not limited physical king, but
another organizing principle
Marxist autonomous
Turn the truth (class struggle) into positive knowledge.
Ideology of discourse
Ideology of self Citigroup
Wat exact is at stake
The moment you step out, ideologues
self critique of ideology
Self reflexive principle. Instead of place, context. Historicist/particular. To see where you are
to universal.

What does it mean, ideology. Seems pertinent today. Fascist. Ecology. New solutions.
technocrats. Consumerism.
Muddled. Postmodernism, liberals, capital.
In medias res.
"It does not follow that all ideological language necessarily involves falsehood."
"The Dominant Ideology Thesis represent a valuable corectve to a left idealism whch would
overestmate the signfcance of culture and ideology for the maintenance of politcal power." 36
"By contrast with te patician gloom of the late Franurt Scool, this case accords a healty
degree of respect to the experience of te eploited: tere is no reaon to assume that teir politcal
docility signals some gullible. fullblooded adherence to the doctrines of teir superiors." 36
"Their claim that late capitalsm operates largely 'without ideology' is surely too strong; and
their summary dismissal of the dissembling. mystfcatory efects of a r ideology has an
implausible ring to it." 36
"Indeed we shall see later tat for many theorsts of ideolo, the very concept of ideology is
synonymous with the attempt to provide ratonal, techcal, 'scientc' ratonale for social
dominaton, rather than mythc, religious or metaphysical one." 37
"This case thus inert sometng of the later M's insistence on the commodity as automatcally
supplyng it own ideology it is the routne material logic of everyday life, not some body of
doctrine, set of moraliing dcourses or ideological 'superstucture', whch keeps the system tck
over." 37
"Consumerism by-pases meaning in order to engage tesub ject subly. lbidinally. at the level of
visceral response rather than
refectve conciousness." 37
a theoretical possibility for action. this is kantianism. a pace of action wich is unknowable;
noumenal world.
outplace: universality. sans papier. who has agency. not the poor. not the rich; particular
interest. universality. truth.
Lacan tekst
Truth caputo zizek event
as if logic 36 zizek soi
48 : definition how ideology critique should proceed.
this is then the fundamental paradox of the point de capiton: the 'rigid designator', which
totalizes an ideology by bringing to a halt the metonymic sliding of tis signified, is not a point

of supreme density of Meaning, a kind of Gurarantee which, by being itself excepted from
the differential interplay of elements, would serve as a stable and fixed point of reference. On
the contrary, it is the element which represents the agency of the signifier withing the fiel of
the signified. In itself it is nothing but a 'pure difference': its role is purely structural, its nture
is purely performative - its signification coincides with its own act of enunciation; in short, it
is a 'signifier without signified'.
181 solution is recognition -> symbolic mandate.

Postmodern theory. It is the theory that defined it as an age?

duchamps Fountain dates back to 1917
zizek modernism = modernism and postmodernism. is its own element
utopia, to imagine change? or romanticism? to escape to mystique!
A last preliminary word on method: what follows is not to be read as stylistic description, as
the account of one cultural style or movement among others. I have rather meant to offer a
periodising hypothesis, and that at a moment in which the very conception of historical
periodisation has come to seem most problematical indeed. I have argued elsewhere that all
isolated or discrete cultural analysis always involves a buried or repressed theory of historical
periodisation; in any case, the conception of the genealogy largely lays to rest traditional
theoretical worries about so-called linear history, theories of stages, and teleological
historiography. In the present context, however, lengthier theoretical discussion of such (very
real) issues can perhaps be replaced by a few substantive remarks
One of the concerns frequently aroused by periodising hypotheses is that these tend to
obliterate difference and to project an idea of the historical period as massive homogeneity
(bounded on either side by inexplicable chronological metamorphoses and punctuation
marks). This is, however, precisely why it seems to me essential to grasp postmodernism not
as a style but rather as a cultural dominant: a conception which allows for the presence and
coexistence of a range of very different, yet subordinate, features. [the modern is a
postmodern modern, as the anti-modern or contramodern is a modern anti-modern]
Consider, for example, the powerful alternative position that postmodernism is itself little
more than one more stage of modernism proper (if not, indeed, of the even older
romanticism); it may indeed be conceded that all the features of postmodernism I am about to
enumerate can be detected, full-blown, in this or that preceding modernism (including such
astonishing genealogical precursors as Gertrude Stein, Raymond Roussel, or Marcel
Duchamp, who may be considered outright postmodernists, avant la lettre)
Om the other hand, stay in modern category. Digi modernism. alter. Then. Return to the
modern. Kant. Communism.

ln 1976 he asserted that sexuality "exists at the point where body and
population meet.' (STP 370)
In an interview given at the same time (the end of 1978), recalling the
student strikes of March 198 in Tunisia, where he was then teaching, Foucault
again links "spirituality" to the possibility of sacrificing oneself: In today's
world, what can prompt in an individual the desire, the ability, and the
possibility for absolute sacrifice, without there being any reason to suspect in
their action the least ambition or desire for power and profit? That was what I
saw in Tunisia, the evidence of the necessity of myth, of a spirituality, the
unbearable quality of certain situations produced by capitalism, colonialism,
and neocolonialism (STP, 376)

The Shah relinquished power on 1January 1979. On 1 February I(Khomeini, in

exile since 194, made a triumphant return to lran. The execution of opponents
of the new regime by Islamic paramilitary groups began shortly after. Foucault
then became the object of severe criticism, from both rhe left and the right, for
his support for the revolution. Without wanting to enter into the polemic,t2 he
chose to respond with an article-manifesto in Le Monde of rr-lz May,,,lnutlede
se souleoer?"51 Asserting the transcendence of the uprising in relation to
any form of historical causaliry-"the man who rebels is ultimately
inexplicable'r5/r-he contrasts "the sprituality that those going to their deaths
called upon" and the "bloody government of a fundamentalist Clergys: The
uprising is that "wrenching-away that interrupts the flow of history" and
introduces "subjectivity" into it. Spirituality, a generator of insurrectional
force, is therefore inseparable from the ethical and political subjectivation on
which Foucault is then reflecting. The "subject" no longer designates simply
the subjected individual, but the singularity affirmed in resistance to powerthe "revolts of conduct" or "counter-conducts" considered in the 1978 lectures.
It is this necessary resistance ("the power that one man exerts over another is
always perilous) that also justifies the invocation of "inviolable laws and
unrestricted rights." Foucault thus opposes his "theoretical morality" to the
calculations of strategists:

( .) the straregist being the man who says, What does a particular death, a
particular cry a particular revolt matter when compared to the great necessity
of the whole, and, on the other hand, what does a general principle matter in
the particular situation in which we are living?,', well, it is immaterial to me
whether the strategist is a politician, a historian, a revolutionary a follower of
the shah or of the ayatollah; my theoretical morality is opposite to theirs. It is
"antistrategic": to be respectful when a singularity revolts, intransigent when
power violates the universal.

The problematic of "governmentality,' is set out between the political refusal of

terrorism and this praise of revolt in the name of an "antistrategic morality"

Maybe philosophy can still play a role on the side of counter-power, on

condition that, in facing power, this role no longer consists in laying down the
law of philosophy on condition that philosophy stops thinking of itself as
prophecy pedagogy, or legislation, and that it gives itself the task of
analyzing, elucidating, making visible, and thereby intensifying the struggles
that take place around power, the strategies of adversaries within relations of
power, the tactics employed, and the sources of resistance, on condition, in
short, that philosophy stops posing the question of power in terms of good
and evil, but poses it in terms of existence.

After the anatomo politics of the human body establshed in the course of the
eighteenth century, we have, at the end of that century, the emergence of
something that is no longer an anatomy-politics of the human body, but what
I would call a ,,biopolitics,, of the human species.

( . ) the theme of man, and the human sciences that analyze him as a
livingbeing, working individual, and speaking subject, should be understood on
the basis of the emergence of population as the correlate of power and the
object of knowledge. ( ) [M]an ( .) (...) it nothing other than a figure of
population.

Is it possible to place the modern state in a general technology of power that

would have assured its mutations, its development, and its functioning? Can
we talk of something like a "governmentality" that would be to the state what
techniques of segregation were to psychiatry, what techniques of discipline
were to the penal system, and what biopolitics was to medical institutions?
It is neither a question of denying the state nor of installing it in an overarching
position, but of showing that the analysis of micro-powers, far from being
limited to a precise domain defined by a sector of the scale, should be
considered "as a point of view, a method of decipherment valid for the whole
scale, whatever its size."8

The "complex organs of coordination and centralization" required for this end
are found at the level of the state. Biopolitics therefore can only be conceived
of as "bioregulation by the-state."

In Foucault, taking the question of the state into account is inseparable from
criticism of its current representations: the state as timeless abstraction, as
pole of transcendence, as instrument of class domination, or cold monster, in
his eyes, all are forms of an "over-valuation of the problem of the state" to
which he opposes the thesis that the "composite reality" of the state is no
more than "the mobile effect of a regime of multiple governmentalities."
The analytical perspective of "governmentality" is not therefore a break in
Foucault's work with regard to his earlier analysis of power, but is inserted
within the space opened up by the problem of bio-power.

The stages of this "governmentalization of the state" are the object of the nine
last lectures, through the analysis of the Christian pastorate (lectures 5 to 8, of
8, 15 and22 February, and 1 March 1978), the transition from the pastorate to
political government (lecture 9, of 8 March), to the art of government
according to raison d'Etates (end of lecture 9 to lecture 11, from 8 to 22

March), and of the two technological systems by which it is characterized: the

diplomatic-military system organized interms of the maintenance of European
equilibrium (lecture 11), and police, in the classical sense of "the set of means
necessary to bring about the growth, from within, of the forces of the state"ee
(lectures 12 and 1), of 29 March and : April).loo The final lecture ends with the
return to the problem of population, whose site of emergence Foucault can now
define betrcr, "branching off from the technology of 'police' and in correlation
with the birth of economic reflection." lot It is because the problem of
population is at the heart of criticism of the police state by political economy
that liberalism appears as the form of rationality specific to the apparatus
es (disp o s itfs) of biop olitical regu lation. This is precisely the thesis that
the 1979 lectures propose to develop.

Political economy, in fact, contains within itself the requirement of a self

limitation of governmental reason founded on knowledge of the natural
course of things, It therefore marks the irruption of a new rationality in the
art of government: governing less, out of concern for maximum effectiveness,
in accordance with the naturalness of the phenomena one is dealing with.

Foucault calls this government, which is linked to the question of truth in its
permanent effort of self-limitation, "liberalism." The object of the lectures is to
show how this liberalism constitutes the condition of intelligibility of
biopolitics:
With the emergence of political economy, with the introduction of the
limitative principle into governmental practice itself, an important substitution
is carried out, or rather a doubling, since the subjects of right over whom
political sovereignty is exercised appear themselves as a population that a
government must manage. The line of organization of a "biopolitics" finds its
point of departure here. But who does not see that this is only part of
something much larger, which [is] this new governmental reason? To study
liberalism as the general framework of biopolitics.
In the first place, in these lectures Foucault explains the link between truth
and liberal governmentaliry through an analysis of the market as a site of

veridiction, and he specifies the modalities of internal limitation that derive

from this. Thus he reveals two ways of limiting public power corresponding to
the heterogeneous conceptions of liberty: the revolutionary axiological way,
which founds sovereign power on the rights of man, and the radical, utilitarian
way which starts from governmental practice in order to define the limit of
governmental competence and the sphere of individual autonomy in terms of
utility.

They also represenr two disrinct forms of the "critique of the irrationality
peculiar to excessive government," one stressing the logic of pure competition
on the economic terrain, while framing the market through a set of state
interventions (theory of the "politics of society"), and the other seeking to
extend the rationality of the market to domains hitherto considered to be noneconomic (theory of "human capital")
Society, in fact, represents the principle in the name of which liberal
government tends to limit itself.
Society thus represents at once the set of conditions of least liberal government,
and the surface of transfer of governmental activity.
Foucault specified three things that should be understood by "government":
the new idea of a power founded on the transfer, alienation, or
representation of individual wills; the state apparatu.s (appareil d'Etat set
up in the eighteenth century; and finall a "general technique of the
government of men" that was "the other side of the juridical and political
structures of representation and the condition of the functioning and
effectiveness of these apparatuses. rttT This is a technique, the "typical
apparatus (dispositif of which consisted in the disciplinary organization
described the previous year.
At a time when states were posing the technical problem of the power to be
exercised on bodies ( . . . ), the Church was elaboratinga technique for the
government of souls, the pastoral, which was defined by the Council ofTrent
and later taken up and developed by Carlo Borromeo.t2o

In fact, in this lecture it serves as the name for the regime of power
deployed in the eighteenth century, which has the population as its target,
political economy as its major form of knowledge, and apparatuses of security
as its essential technical instrument, as well as the process that has led to
"the pre-eminence over all other types of power-sovereignty, discipline, and so
on_of the type of power that we can call 'government.';rrl28 a thus designates
a set of elements whose genesis and articulation are specific to Western
history.
The techniques of government that underpin the formation of the modern state.

"Governmentality" seeming from then on to merge with "government,"

Foucault strives to distinguish the two notions, "governmentality, defining "a
strategic field of power relations in their mobility transformability, and
reversibility ," within which the types of conduct or "conduct of conduct," that
characterize "government" are established. More exactly-for the strategic field
is no more than the actual interplay of the power relations-he shows how they
are reciprocally implicated, governmentality not constituting a structure, that
is to say "a relational invariant between (.. ) variables," but rather a "singular
generality, the variables of which, in their aleatory interactions, correspond
to conjunctures.
Governmentality is thus the rationality immanent to the micro-powers,
whatever the level of analysis being considered (parent-child relation,
individual-public power, population-medicine, and so on). If it is "an event,"
this is no longer so much as a determinate historical sequence, as in the 1978
lectures, but inasmuch as every power relation is a matter for a strategic
analysis:
A singular generality: its only reality is that of the event (vnementelle) and
its intelligibility can only make use of a strategic logic.t1

It remains to ask, what link joins together these types of unementialt in

Foucault's thought: that which is inscribed in a particular historical process

peculiar to Western societies, and that which is theoretically anchored in a

general definition of power in terms of "government."

For Foucault, the analysis of types of governmentality is inseparable

from analysis of corresponding forms of resistance, or "counterconducts." Thus, in the eighth lecture of t978 (t March) he
establishes the inventory of the main forms of counter-conduct
developed in the Middle ges in relation to the pastorate
(asceticism, communiries, mysticism, Scripture, and eschatological
beliefs [Luther]). Similarly the analysis of modern governmentality,
organized in terms of raison d'Etat, leads him, at the end of the
course, to highlight different sources of specific counter-conducts, in
the name of civil society, the population, or the nation. Being the
symptom, in every epoch, of a "crisis of governmentality," it is
important to ask what forms these counter conducts take in the
current crisis in order to define new modalities of struggle or
resistance. The reading of liberalism that Foucault proposes can only be
understood on the basis of this questioning.

The analysis of governmentality as singular generality implies that "everything

is political." This expression is traditionally given two meanlngs:
-Politics is defined by the whole sphere of stare intervention, ( .) To say that
everything is political amounts to saying that, directly or indirectly the state is
everywhere.
- Politics is defined by the omnipresence of a struggle between two adversaries
( . .. ). This other definition is that of K. Schmitt.
The theory of the comrade.
()
In short, two formulations: everything is political by the nature of things;
everything is political by the existence of adversaries.

It is a question of saying rather: nothing is political, everything can be

politicized, everything may become political. Politics is no more or less than
that which is born with resistance to governmentality, the first uprising, the
first confrontaton.!!!! Class struggle!!! Stuggle against ideology.

Archaeology is the method specific to the analysis of local discursivities, and

genealogy is the tactic which, once it has described these local discursivities,
brings into play the desubjugated knowledges that have been
released from them. That just about sums up the overall project.
So you can see that all the fragments of research, all the
interconnected and interrupted things I have been repeating so stubbornly for
four or five years now, might be regarded as elements of these genealogies,
and that I am not the only or one to have been doing this over the last fifteen
years. Far from it. question: So why not go on with such a theory of
discontinuity, when it is so pretty and probably so hard to verify? Why don't I
go on, and why don't I take a quick look at something to do with psychiatry, with
the theory of sexuality?
It's true that one could go on-and I will try to go on up to a point-were
it not, perhaps, for a certain number of changes, and changes in the
conjuncture. What I mean is that compared to the situation we had five, ten,
or even fifteen years ago, things have, perhaps, changed; perhaps the battle
no longer looks quite the same. Well, are we really still in the same
relationship of force, and does it allow us to exploit the knowledges
we have dug out of the sand, to exploit them as they stand, without
their becoming subjugated once more? What strength do they have in
themselves? And after all, once we have excavated our genealogical
fragments, once we begin to exploit them and to put in circulation, these
elements of knowledge that we have been trying to dig out of the sand, isn't
there a danger that they will be recoded, recolonized by these unitary
discourses which, having first disqualified them and having then
ignored them when they reappeared, may now be ready to reannex
them and include them in their own discourses and their own powerknowledge effects? And if we try to protect the fragments we have dug up,
don't we run the risk of building, with our own hands, a unitary discourse? That
is what we are being invited to do, that is the trap that is being set for us by all

those who say, "It's all very well, but where does it get us? Where does it lead
us? What unity does it give us?" The temptation is, up to a point, to say:
Right, let's continue, let's accumulate. After all, there is no danger
at the moment that we will be colonized. I was saying a moment ago that
these genealogical fragments might be in danger of being recoded, but we
could throw down a challenge and say, 'Just try it!" We could, for instance,
say, Look: ever since the very beginnings of antipsychiatry or of the genealogies
of psychiatric institutions-and it has been going on for a good fifteen years
now- has a single Marxist, psychoanalyst, or psychiatrist ever attempted to
redo it in their own terms or demonstrated that these genealogies were wrong,
badly elaborated, badly articulated, or ill-founded? The way things stand, the
fragments of genealogy that have been done are in fact still there,
surrounded by a wary silence. The only arguments that have been put forward
against them are-at the very best-propositions like the one We recently heard
from, I think - it was M. Juquin: "All this is very well. But the fact remains that
Soviet psychiatry is the best in the world." My answer to that is: yes, of course,
you're right. Soviet psychiatry is the best in the world. That's just what I hold
against it." The silence, or rather the caution with which unitary
theories avoid the genealogy of knowledges might therefore be one
reason for going on. One could at any rate unearth more and more
genealogical fragments, like so many traps, questions, challenges, or
whatever you want to call them. Given that we are talk-ing about a battle-the
battle knowledges are waging against the power-effects of scientific discourseit is probably overoptimistic to assume that our adversary's silence
proves that he is afraid of us. The silence of an adversary-and this is a
methodological principle or a tactical principle that must always be
kept in mind-could just as easily be a sign that he is not afraid of us at
all. And we must, I think, behave as though he really is not frightened
of us. And I am not suggesting that we give all these scattered genealogies a
continuous, solid theoretical basis-the last thing I want to do is give them,
superimpose on them, a sort of theoretical crown that would unify them-but
that we should try, in future lectures, probably beginning this year, to specify
or identify what is at stake when knowledges begin to challenge, struggle
against, and rise up against the instutition and the power- and knowledgeeffects of scientific discourse.
As you know, and as I scarcely need point out, what is at stake in all

these genealogies is this: What is this power whose irruption, force, impact,
and absurdity have become palpably obvious over the last forty years, as a
result of both the collapse of Nazism and the retreat of Stalinism? 'What is
power? Or rather-given that the question "What is power?" is obviously a
theoretical question that would provide an answer to everything, which is just
what I don't want to do- the issue is to determine what are, in their
mechanisms, effects, their relations, the various power-apparatuses that
operate at various levels of society, in such very different domains and with so
many different extensions? Roughly speaking, I think that what is at stake in
all this is this: Can the analysis of power, or the analysis of powers, be in one
way or another deduced from the economy? This is why I ask the question,
and this is what I mean by it. I certainly do not wish to erase the countless
diffeences or huge differences, but, despite and because of these
differences, it seems to me that the juridical conception and, let's say, the
liberal conception of political power-which we find in the philosophers of the
eighteenth century-do have certain things in common, as does the Marxist
conception, or at least a certain contemporary conception that passes for the
Marxist conception. Their common feature is what I will call "economism" in
the theory of power. What I mean to say is this: In the case of the classic
juridical theory of power, power is regarded as a right which can be
possessed in the way one possesses a commodity, and which can
therefore be transferred or alienated, either completely or partly,
through a juridical act or an act that founds a right-it does not matter
which, for the moment-thanks to the surrender of something or
thanks to a contract. Power is the concrete power that any individual can
hold, and which he can surrender, either as a whole or in part, so as to
constitute a power or a political sovereignty. In the body of theory to which I
am referring, the constitution of political power is therefore constituted by
this series, or is modeled on a juridical operation similar to an exchange of
contracts. There is therefore an obvious analogy, and it runs through all
these theories, between power and commodities, between power and wealth.

How to make sense of this event

This brings me to my method.

how should we proceed.

In formulating a different positron n
Let me begin with a personal experience. One day, quite some time ago, in a
well known New York museum, I happened on a photograph. The portrait of a
young girl head slightly tilted, blank expression a pretty straightforward school
picture with a slight touch of awkwardness not uncommon to this category. I
wondered why these kinds of portraits often look a bit weird. Especially this one.
So I scanned the picture to try and find some details, some clues for a possible
answer. Was it the old fashioned white blouse with the weird bow tie? Or the dolllike features I could not really pinpoint, but had something to do with the
particular combination of the blouse and the black hair? Maybe it was what
caught my eye in the first place: the indifference of the face staring at me?
Perhaps. I was not quite sure. So I continued my investigation.
The card next to it gave me some additional information. I think it said: ..
Self portrait. By looking through the holes of the little childs mask, the artist
asks questions about time, identity .. (Im sure there was more, but this is all I
remember). When I looked back onto the image, I realized it was not a simple
straightforward portrait, but a photograph of the artist wearing a mask based on
a picture from her childhood. I was looking at a photograph of a mask of a
photograph. I thought it was a nice idea. Knowing it was a bit more than just a
old portrait, my perception of the picture had shifted a bit. But at the same time,
it hadnt made that big a difference. After all I was looking at the same picture,
only now with some extra interestingly sounding words to think about in relation
with the photo. A bit disappointed, I walked away. I liked the concept, but the
work hadnt sparked anything in me, nothing really aesthetically thrilling. Just
some light intellectual wonder.
This was soon to change. After observing some other artifacts in the
exhibition, I returned to the photograph. At first, alternating between the whole
of the picture and the eyes of the girl, I still wasnt too much impressed. Then I
noticed the eyes were sunken abnormally low in the sockets. I noticed a thin
grey line on the left side of the left eye: a small shadow marking the difference
between the mask and the artist own eyes beneath. Suddenly it hit me. I
realized that the eyes of the little girl, where actually the eyes of the artist. This
all happened, like a bees sting, very quick. As if the artist was staring right at
me, exposing me. A feeling of being caught. I was fixed on the eyes of the artist,

them staring back to me through the mask. Of course I had read this in the
description, but only now I felt the real impact. For a moment it was as if the
artist was there in person. An angry look, but scared at the same time as if she
was trapped. For a moment, she or it or whatever it was, became real. My heart
rate had sped up. But I wasnt really scared or frightened by it. Maybe there was
some anxiety, but at the same time there was a strong fascination. Something
drawing me closer, rather than making me run away.
When about a month ago I read Roland Barthes Camera Lucida for the first
time, this memory immediately came back to my mind. Anyone familiar with this
work will not be surprised. Barthes distinguishes between the what he calls the
studium that what the subject or spectator perceives as the general theme of
the photograph, which Barthes denotes with terms like knowledge and civility,
politeness culture, the body of information, that what generates an
average effect and the punctum, that what both breaks or punctuates this
field, as well as pricks, wounds or bruises the particular viewers
subjectivity (Barthes 26). Whereas the studium, conditioned by social norms and
values (in regard to them my emotion requires the rational of an ethical and
political culture[ Barthes 26]), can be liked, be the object of more or less
pleasure, be interestingly talked about, can even be an object of politico-ethical
shock and indignation, the punctum is that which distorts both the (signifiers
constituting the) studium as well as the subjectivity engaged with the
photograph(26).1
I think this comes close to my own experience. Until the eyes of the artist
became real to me, I dwelled in the order of the studium. I (re)searched for
intelligible details, information and knowledge, I learned a bit and this made me
like it. But one detail disrupted my cultural undertaking, my bildung. The
moment I noticed the thin grey line, I was both subjectively stung and the my
perception as spectator of the studium (which is in the end the studium itself)
radically changed. After reading Camera Lucida, Ive been struggling with this
experience. The eyes were obviously a detail in the photograph, but at the same
time in my experience they were more, or maybe even something radically
different. It was as if I saw two pairs of eyes: the ones of the child, which could
be counted as ordinary detail of the studium, and the ones of the artist, which
would be the punctual detail. The problem is that the first can legitimately

called a detail, whereas the second detail, whatever it may be, certainly does
not fall in that same category.2
What this shows and what I think should be stressed, is that it is a lot
easier to give a positive definition the studium (or what it consist of) than it is of
the punctum. While the former can be talked about certain themes, details and
techniques, the latter appears to be a purely negative category. It is true that in
the first part of Camera Lucida Barthes talks about the punctum as a detail,
but, if we want to preserve Barthes insight, we cannot reduce the punctum to
only this ominous detail. This would, as James Elkins has pointed out, make it
part of the studium again: The punctum is used to speak about the viewers
responses that are taken to be idiosyncratic, [..] yet the by citing the punctum to
theorize such responses, historians and critics make it public again, Elkins
writes, In effect the punctum becomes an unusual example of the studium
(171). For the reader of this paper, but even for myself reflecting on it, this
detail what for me was once the instance of the punctum is just another
detail in the order of the studium. This allows for a more straightforward
structural or semiotic analysis, one that Elkins promotes. However, because this
reading would ignore the experiential or event-like nature of the punctum, it
cannot account for some of Barthes insights. On the other hand, I think we
should also try to avoid the opposite path. As Michael Fried noticed, placing al
emphasis, as is usually done, on the viewers purely subjective response to the
punctum ends up missing Barthess central thought, or, at any rate, failing to
grasp what ultimately is at stake in his central distinction (141). Fried shows
that while Barthes starts the book on with this subjective perspective, in the
second part he takes a different approach. Barthes search for the eidos, the
essence of photography, leads him to his panolopy. (barthes quote)
I take this ambiguity to be my central problem: what is the relationship
between the punctum as an experience and the punctum as detail? How
must we think of the punctum , if it designates at the same time a purely
singular affect on subjectivity, as well as a detail which is, in the end,
immanent to the studium? Is it possible to avoid on the one hand the reduction
of the punctum to a purely subjective category, and on the other prevent it from
falling back into the realm of the studium? In my view, most commentators on
Barthess distinction take one of the previously mentioned paths or are at least
drawn more to one than the other. The first, that reduces the punctum to

singular subjectivity, often leads paradoxically to a position where the (cause

of the) punctum in some way is thought as to transcend the presence of the
photograph. So, in this sense, I think it is fair to call this a position of
transcendence. This view, in one way or the other, places the punctum outside
the realm of the presence of the photo, outside the order of signs conveyed by
the studium. It is characterized by kind of a mystical language of ghosts, present
absence, absolute otherness, spectrality and so on (auteurs). Also, authors that
connect Barthes thought to Buddhism (auteurs) or read him from a theological
perspective (auteur) come close to this position.

(dat artikel) The second,

stressing the structural or semiotic dimension in Barthes work, leads to a

reduction of the punctual detail to the structural field of signifiers. Therefore I
think we can call this a position of immanence. The punctum is thought of only
as an immanent detail to the symbolic presence of the photograph . This position
holds that, although there may be a singular subjective experience, we cannot
say a lot about it, or at least it should not be the focus of analysis.

The difficulty

lies in thinking a different position which is neither of the former, nor the latter.
We may note that barthes comes often close to the first position. But I claim that
this third position, which remains to be thought, might be an implication of his
own argument that Barthes was not aware of.

Often under the banner of moving beyond Barthes. But as late of 2009 a
book appeared becose they found that they could not move beyond. Kounnen we
samen denken? I not think we should try to go along with barthes on his search
for the essence, edios and see where this would lead us. Not to start with a wish
to go to the beyond Barthes thought, but a wish to reach for its very core.

think we should try to focus on what Barthess thought has opened up, what he
did not directly saw himself. To ask ourselves with Fried, to what extent Barthes
himself was aware of the ultimate implication of his own argument (141)

To start we should where barthes starts the essence. Not easy. What is it that
makes the photograph unique. that has been. The sticking of the referent.Why is
the punctum only in a photo? and, what isessentiallythe same question, can we
think the relation between punctum and studium? Barthes says none.

can we, from barthes, extract some understanding of the event? neither
structural nor idealistic. If the truth is the referent, the former is true for film, the
second for figurative art. the photo shows that the event is both, the truth, or
essence, or punctum sticks to the structure, or surface, or studium. the real (the
referent) sticks to the representation. in the situation of an event, the structure is
overdeterminened by truth. As with the 'event of the photo' (which is a photo
with a punctum), the studium is overdetermined by the punctual 'detail', by the
real referent that has been. we are caught in the symbolic order, but, especialiy
with photography, and, futhermore, especially with unintentionaly captured
details (antitheatrical), we encounter the referent, the real. but a special kind of
referent; not the actual referent, but the retroactivly positied referent. It must
nessecarily have been, otherwise there is no photograph. this referent is only
retroactively positied. only retroactivly we can speak of the origin. this explains
the ambiguity of the relationship between the punctum-as-detail (the punctum
qua symbolic 'thing' which we can speak about) and the studium. The seemingly
reducibility of both to one another

-------------------------

Perhaps it is consistent with Barthes thought to distinguish the subject, as the political

subjected spectator belonging to the order of the studium, and subjectivity , as belonging
to the order of the negatively defined punctum .
2

This is why we should commence a detailed reading, but avoid a details reading. The

latter would inevitably end us up in the order of the studium.

3

The first position is often influenced by Derrida ("We are prey to the ghostly power of

the supplement; it is this unlocatable site that gives rise to the specter" [derrida, 41 on
barthes]),
4

Ranciere for example, reduces the punctum of the bandage to be in the end nothing

more than words. (4). This comes also to Elkins reduction of the punctum to the studium,
and back to barthes. I think the roots of the second position are to be found in
structuralism and semiotics.
5

To try to repeat an (imagined) core, can sometimes create the new. Think only of the

radically new Luther produced as a result of his return to the pure core of Christianity:
Protestantism.

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality
[will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the
present state of things. (truth)
[W]e do not attempt dogmatically to prefigure the future, but want to find the new world only
through critique of the old. Up to now the philosophers had the solution of all riddles lying in
their lectern, and the stupid uninitiated world had only to open its jaws to let the
roast partridges of absolute science fly into its mouth. the designing of the future and the
proclamation of ready- made solutions for all time is not our affair we shall confront the
world not as doctrinaires with a new principle: Here is the truth, bow down before it!
We develop new principles to the world out of its own principles. We do not say to the world:
Stop fighting; your struggle is of no account. We want to shout the true slogan of the
struggle at you. So, we can express the credo of our journal in one word: the selfclarification (critical philosophy) of the struggles and wishes of the age (MER 1315
(translation modified) / MEW, Vol. 1, 344346.)
Discipline punish , subject not substance. Ideal, technology.
Universality
if a detail that is not intended, does not prick, it is also not recognized.
How then to think of the punctum? lets go back to the photograph. Eyes emanate referent. As
if she was there. We can focus on this .
however, fried. nonetheless.
this work challenges two points; intentionality and antitheatricallity (which are not
necessarily related) artwork. an artwork about photography.
from studium to detail always intended. even uninyended details.
Return of essence
as a work of art it stages, it can give us a story of the punctum, but it is not the punctum. as a
photograph it is capable of punctum. a punctum can originate from an intentional detail.
So this was not a punctum. the notion of the punctum has to be expanded. it was the punctum,
but shows that unintentionallity and by implication antitheatricality are, even if they are often
constitutive of a punctum, not essential to the punctum.
this may seem as mierenneuken, but i think it is not. too simple reducing it to intentionality.
thetwoelementswhoseco-presenceestablished,itseemed,theparticularinterestItookinthesephotographs (p. 23)
Eyes.
"to recognize the studium is inevitably to encounter the photographers intentions."

It is true that if recognize the studium, we encouter the intentions. But this does not preclude
the possibility for a intended detail to be a punctum. After being hit by the punctum, we could
still trace it back to the the intention of the artist. Barthes only precludes the opposite path: if
werecognize the studium, we will necessarily be led to intentionality. But this does not
necessarily mean that to be hit by a punctum, isinevitabilityto encounter the photographers
intentions. The punctum could always be a intentional detail. If the details that had pricked
barthes would now be reveald as intended by the artist after all, this would not invalidad
barthes description of the details as punctum.
Fried says that the "detaill that strikes him as a punctum could not do so hat it been intended
as such by the pohotographer". this is not true.
it is true that barthes thinks that the detail is likely to be unintended. But he never claims that
this must necessarily be unintended. It is possible for an intended detail to be a punctum. :
Hence the detail which interestsme is not, or at least is not strictly, intentional, and probably
must not
be so; it occurs in the eld of the photographed thing like a supplement
that is at once inevitable and delightful [theFrenchreadsine vitableet
gracieux,whichisnotexactlythesamething;seen.35belowM.F.];it
does not necessarily attest to the photographers art (but it could be); it says only that the
photographer was there, or else, still more simply, that he could not not
photograph the partial object at the same time as the total object.
So the point is not that the detail must be unintended for a punctum to happen. Rather, it is
that a punctum can only happen if there is something that implies that that there is more than
only the studium: "that he could not not photograph the partial object at the same time as the
total object." An unintended detail is far more likely to escape the studium. Unintendeddetails
can make us aware that the does not only show what he wants to show: there is something
that the photographer could not leave out . But it is this last realizationthat breaks the
studium, and "constitutes" a punctum, and not unintentionality of a detail as such. Already if
only we recognizea detail as unintentional , as not belonging to the studium, we can
experience a break down of the studium (which is the definition the punctum). Whether some
artist would later claim to have put thisdetailthere intentionally after all, does not matter.
Intended details are captured by the studium, and they will hold the studium in place. If we
start within the studium, we are ineveitably led to the intentions.
The double eyes are probably intended. but this does not make it impossible for it to be
constitutive of a punctum. It shows that a detail that strikes as a punctum can be intended by
the photographer. The only thing Barthes claims is that, if i recognize the studium, we
inevitably encounter intentions. But it was not because i recognized the studium (because i
learned that there were double eyes), that i realized the that has been.
there is something that the photographer could not leave out.
: the eyes are of the girl, or of the artist.

So we could alter Barthes formulation by removing the double negation. From "the artist
could not not photograph the partial object at the same time as the total object" to, "the artist
could photograph the partialobjectat the same time as the total object."
intentionality does not necessarily avoid

Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap
2
1 Op een dag kwamen de hemelbewoners hun opwachting maken bij de HEER, en ook Satan
maakte bij hem zijn opwachting. 2 De HEER vroeg aan Satan: Waar kom je vandaan? Hij
antwoordde: Ik heb rondgezworven en rondgedoold op aarde. 3 De HEER vroeg aan Satan:
Heb je ook op mijn dienaar Job gelet? Zoals hij is er niemand op aarde: hij is rechtschapen
en onberispelijk, hij heeft ontzag voor God en mijdt het kwaad. Ja, hij is nog even
onberispelijk als altijd, en jij hebt mij ertoe aangezet hem zonder reden te gronde te richten.
4 Hierop zei Satan: Zijn leven is hem alles waard. Daarvoor geeft hij zijn hele bezit. 5 Maar
als u uw hand naar hem uitstrekt en zijn lichaam aantast, zal hij u ongetwijfeld in uw gezicht
vervloeken. 6 Toen zei de HEER tegen Satan: Goed, doe met hem wat je wilt, maar spaar
zijn leven. 7 Hierop vertrok Satan en overdekte Job van voetzool tot kruin met kwaadaardige
zweren. 8 Job pakte een potscherf om zich te krabben, terwijl hij in het stof en het vuil zat.
9 Zijn vrouw zei tegen hem: Waarom blijf je zo onberispelijk? Vervloek God toch en sterf.
10 Maar Job zei tegen haar: Je woorden zijn de woorden van een dwaas. Al het goede
aanvaarden we van God, zouden we dan het kwade niet aanvaarden? Ondanks alles zondigde
Job niet en sprak hij geen onvertogen woord.
11 Drie vrienden van Job, Elifaz uit Teman, Bildad uit Suach en Sofar uit Nama, hoorden
van de rampspoed die hem had getroffen, en ze besloten hem op te zoeken. Onderweg
ontmoetten ze elkaar, en samen gingen ze naar hem toe om hun medeleven te tonen en hem te
troosten. 12 Toen ze Job vanuit de verte zagen herkenden ze hem niet, en ze barstten uit in
luid geweeklaag, ze scheurden hun kleren en wierpen stof omhoog over hun hoofd. 13 Zeven
dagen en zeven nachten bleven ze naast hem op de grond zitten zonder iets tegen hem te
zeggen, want ze zagen hoe vreselijk hij leed.
Truth is always dead of some god. Truth and nihilisme. Subject.
Meta modernisme.
Polemical.

Bio politics > life/human animal/Rex extensa. death of king/god> nihilism, philosophie of
the subject.
Freud. Interpreter of signs is also a doctor, a Symptomatologist, who diagnoses the illness
afflicting the enterprising individual and the brilliant society. ranciere, 38.
Freud not to cure pathological to normal. But to show how normal is already pathological.
Same as Critique of ideology
distancing. irony.
but irony presupposes an opposite with a true identity, that what is mocked.
representation/ideology/commitment.
hipster versus geek/nerd.
posthuman, distancing, decentrement: ooo, metamodernism, biopolitics, hermeneutics of
suspicion, badious subject, lacan subject.
Lacan even goes so far as to say that there would be no being at all were it not
for the verb "to be": '"[S]peaking being' ... is a pleonasm. because there is
only being due to spking: were it not for the verb 'to be,' there would b no
being at all" (Seminar XXI, January 15, 1974).

Language -> being -> the Real

Not only can the circular movement between 0 and s(O) not be closed-it is, in addition,
founded in itself. The production of meaning does not iits ground in a pre-given reality
that is expressed in language. It is, rather, exclusively dependent on the articulation of
the signifers among themselves. Consequently, there is no external criterion that would
allow
us to defnitively decide for one discourse as against others. How, for example , could a
defnitive judgment ever be expressed about the truth of the stories told about our families,
when it is
precisely from these stories that our families get their form? Or how could one ever find
in reality a conclusive proof for or against the systems of meaning by which we live, such
as the
geat religious and ideological systems, when our perception and experience of reality is
deterined by them in it smallest de-tails? This also explains why Lacan speaks about the
"fictional
structure of the truth" (strcture de fiction) . The "discourse of the Other"-for example ,
the great religious and ideological systems-cannot simply be understood as a
reproduction
(whether faithful or not) of reality, since this reality can only appear as meaningful on the
basis of this discourse. In this sense, the discourse of the Other has an essentially
performative character; it institutes itself what it describes. [logic of self-transcendence
dupuy/ perfomatives??!! I state the future, that is yet to come!] This discourse, there fore, has

only itself as its guarantee. Lacan also expresses this idea by claiming that there is "no
Other of the Other" or "that there is no metalanguage which can be spoken."

Two orders places. Agent.

Liberaal. Emancipator . no real agent.
Sociological research will point this out. There is no sociology of the isolated individual.
so ate there really two worlds? Foucault. Effect. Butler. Space for agency.
Back to liberal?
It seems one had to choose either for liberalism, or for non emancipatory postmodern
historicism, (apart from the orthodox marxists who are still edition, believing history I'd on
their site)
The fundamental paradox of symbolic fictions is therefore that, in one and the same move,
they bring about the "loss of reality" and provide the only possible access to realty: true,
fictions are semblance which occludes reality, but if we renounce fictions, reality itself
dissolves (91)
This paradox designates the elementary dialectical structure of the symbolic order, the fact
that, as Lacan put it in his Ecrits, "speech is able to recover the debts that it engenders" - a
thesis in which one must recognize all its Hegelian connotation. The debt, the "wound,"
opened up by the symbolic order is a philosophical commonplace, at least from Hegel
onwards: with entry into the symbolic order, our immersion in the immediacy of the real is
forever lost; we are forced to assume an irreducible loss; the word entails the (symbolic)
murder of the thing, etc. In short what we are dealing with here is the negative-abstractive
power that pertains to what Hegal called Verstand (the analytical mortification-dismembering
of what organically belongs together).

Duality of the transcendental network of categories and of Things-in-themselves: transcendental categories

mold the affects which originate in noumanl things into objective reality. However, as we have already seen,
the problem lies in the radical finitude of the affects: they are never all, since the totality of affects is never
given to us [no complete world]; if this totality were to be given, we would have access to Things-inthemselves.

At this point, Hegels critique of Kantian formalism intervenes: he identifies as the site of
insufficiency not the finite nature of affects, but the abstract character of thought itself [marx,
alieanation, reification bourgeois ideology]. The very need for affects (i.e., for a
heterogeneous material to provide content to our intellect) bears witness to the fact that our
thought is abstract-formal, that it has not yet achieved the level of what Hegel calls "absolute
form." This way, the transcendental object radically changes its function: from the index of a
deficiency on the side of intuition - i.e., of the fact that our representations are forever
branded by our finitude, that the world of intuited objects is never given in its totality - it

shifts into the index of the deficiency of the very discursive form. [the notion itself is
inconsistent]
I this precise sense Hegel's "absolute idealism" is nothing but the Kantian "criticism" brought
to its utmost consequences: "there is no metalanguage": it is never possible for us to occupy
the neutral place from which we could measure the distance that separates our semblance of
knowledge from the In-itself of Truth.
We cannot know precisely what we cannot know.
In short, Hegel carries to its extreme Kant's criticism at the very point where he seems to
regress into absolute "panlogicism": by way of affirming that every tension between Notion
and reality, every relationship of the Notion to what appears as its irreducible Other
encountered in the sensible, extra-notional experience, already is an intra-notional tension,
i.e., already implies a minimal notional determination of this "otherness". (20) [Something Something other]
The most obvious example of this notional determination, of course, is the empiricist counterposition of the primary (shape) and secondary (color, taste) qualities of the perceived object:
the subject has in itself the measure which allow him to distinguish between what are merely
its "subjective impressions" and what "objectively exists." [Subject (subject, object)] Yet the
same goes for the Kantian Thing-in-itself: how does the subject arrive at it? In abstracting
from every sensible determination that pertains to the objects of experience, what remains is
the object of pure abstraction, the pure "thing-of-thought" (Gedankending). In short, our
search for a pure presupposition, unaffected by the subject's spontaneous activity [in itself],
produces an entity which is pure positedness [in-itself].
Therein consists Hegel's "idealist" wager: what appears in and to our experience as the extranotional surplus, as the "otherness" of the object irreducible to the subject's notional
framework, impenetrable to it, is always-already the fetishistic, "reified" (mis)perception of
an inconsistency of the notion to itself.
A (A, Ap) Proletariat (proletariat, working class) ?
Hegel's point is not a delirious solopism, but rather a simple insight into how we- finite,
historical subjects - forever lack any measuring-rod which would guarantee our contact with
the Thing itself.
Hegel's materialist reversal of Marx:
From this Marxian perspective, of course, the Hegelian "reconciliation" emerges as a mere
"reconciliation in the medium of thought" that leaves social reality undisturbed. Perhaps,
however, after more than a century of polemics on the Marxist "materialist reversal of
Hegel," the time has com to raise the inverse possibility of a Hegelian critique of Marx. Does
not Hegel enable us to discern, in the very foundation of the Marxian notion of the proletarian
revolution, a kind of perspective-illusion which hinges prescisly on the "closed economy" of
the dialectical reversal? It was possible for Marx to imagine "dis-alienation" as the reversal
by means of which the subject reappropriates the entire substantial content. However, such a
reversal is precisely what Hegel Precludes: in Hegel's philosophy, "reconciliation" does
not designate the moment when "substance becomes subject," when absolute subjectivity is

elevated into the productive ground of all entities, but rather the acknowledgment that the
dimension of subjectivity is inscribed in the very core of Substance in the guise of an
irreducible lack which forever prevents it from achieving full self-identity. (26)
Substance as retroactive illusion
"The problem with this seemingly obvious solution is that it leads to the "substantialization"
of the Thing: it compels us to conceive the Thing as the fullness of the In-itself and the
transcendental object as the way this fullness is present in our experience - in the guise of its
opposite, of an empty thought devoid of any intuitive content. In this perspective, the status
of the transcendental object is strictly secondary; it designates the negative way the Thing is
present in the field of our experience: as the empty thought of an underlying, inaccessible X.
And are things not homologous in the relationship between the Lacanian Thing qua substance
of jouissance and object petit a, the surplus enjoyment? Is not the Real Thing a kind of
preexisting substance "cultivated", "gentrified" by the Symbolic, and is not a the semblance
of the lost jouissance, i.e., what remains in the Symbolic of the lost Real?
It is here that the fate of our comprehension of Lacan and Kant is decided. That is to say, a
certain fundamental ambiguity pertains to the notion of the Real in Lacan: the Real designates
a substantial hard kernel that precedes and resists symbolization and, simultaneously, it
designates the left-over, which is posited or "produced" by symbolization itself. However,
what we must avoid at any price is conceiving of this lef-over as simply secondary, as if we
have first the substantial fullness of the Real and then the process of symbolizaiton which
"evacuates" jouissance, yet not entirely, leaving behind isolated remainders, islands of
enjoyments, ojbets petit a. If we succumb to this notion, we lose the paradox of the Lacanian
Real: there is no substance of enjoyment without, prior to, the surplus of enjoyment [same as
in marx, ther is no substance of exchange value (use-value) without surplus value]. The
substance is a mirage retroactively invoked by the suplus. The illusion that pertains to a qua
surplus-enjoyment is therefore the very illusion that, behind it, there is the lost substance of
jouissance. In other words, a qua semblance decieves in a Lacanian way: not because it is a
deceiful substitute of the Real, but precisely because it invokes the impression of some
substantial Real behind it; it deceives by posing as a showdow of the underlying Real.
And the same goes for Kant: what Kant fail to notice is that das Ding is a mirage invoked by
the transcendental object. Limitation precedes transcendence: all that "actually exists" is the
field of phenomena and its limitation, whereas das Ding is nothing but a phantasm which
subsequently, fills out the void of the transcendental object. (36)
LOGIC OF THE SIGNIFIER
Lacan's ultimate point in his reading of Kant is that the distinction between phenomena and
the Thing can be sustained only within the space of desire as structured by the intervention of
the signifier: it is this intervention that brings about the SPLIT separating the accessible,
symbolically structured, reality from the void of the Real, the index of the lost Thing. [!!!]
What we experience as "reality" discloses itself against the background of the lack, of the
absence of it, of the Thing, of the mythical object whose encounter would bring about full
satisfaction of the drive. [!!!] [metamodern] This lack of the Thing constitutive of "reality" is
therefore, in its fundamental dimension, not epistemological, but rather pertains to the
paradoxical logic of desire - the paradox being that this Thing is retroactively produced by the
very process of symolization, i.e., that it emerges in the very gesture of its loss [CONNECT

TO REIFICATION/MARX] In other (Hegel's) words, there is nothing - no positive

substantial entity - behind the phenomenal curtain, only the gaze whose phantasmagorias
assume the different shapes of the Thing.
Lacan is for that reason far from falling prey to a theoretically illegitimate short-circuit
between the psychoanalytical problematic of the object of knowledge, of its unkowable
character. Quite to the contrary, what he aims to do is to demonstrate precisly how this shortcircuit results from a kind of prerspective illusion which generates an illegitimate (although
structurally necessary) "substantivization" of the Thing [!!!!] The status of the Thingjouissance becomes epistemological; its unattainable character is perceived as unkowableness
the moment we "substantivize" it and assume that it ontologically precedes its loss, i.e., that
there is something to see "behind the curtain" (of the phenomena).
KANTIAN SUBLIME
The priority of limitation over transcendence also sheds a new (Hegelian) light on the
Kantian sublime: what we experience as the positive sublime content (the moral law in
ourselves, the dignity of the free will) is of a strictly secondary nature; it is something which
merely fills out the original void opened up by the breakdown of the field of represenations
[reification]. In other words, the Sublime doens not involve the breakdown of the field of
phenomena, i.e., the experience of how no phenomenon, even the mightiest one,
can appropriately express the suprasensible Idea. This notion - that, in the experience of the
Sublime, phenomena prove unfit to render the idea - results from a kind of perspectiveillusion. (37)
Subject who knows he is a replicant
This paradox of the "subject who knows he is a replicant" renders clear what the
"nonsubstantial status of the subject" amounts to: with regard to every substantial, positive
content of my being, I "am" nothing but a replicant, ie.e, the difference which makes me
"human" and not a replicant is to be discerned nowhere in "reality." (...) it is here that we
again encounter the Lacanian distinction between the subject of the enunciation and the
subject of the enunciated: every thing that I positively am, every enunciated content I can
point at and say "that's me," is not "I"; I am only the void that remains, the empty distance
toward every content. (40)
Decentred subject
What Lacan has in mind with cogito, however, is the exact opposite of this gesture of
subjectivation: the "subject" qua $ emerges not via subjectivization-narrativization, i.e., via
the "individual myth" constructed from the decentred pieces of tradition; instead, the subject
emerges at the very moment when the individual loses its support in the network of tradition;
it coincides with the void that remains after the framework of symbolic memory is
suspended.
As the importance of a Foucault, a Jacques Derrida or a Roland Barthes attests,
postmodernism is hard to conceive without continental theory, structuralism and
poststructuralism in particular. [perhaps the very idea of a postmodernism is linked to, is
modernism from the perspective of structuralism !?] Both have led us to relfect upon

culture as a corpus of codes or myths (Barthes), as a set of imaginary resolutions to real

contradictions (Claude Levi-Strauss). (X)
In light of the financialization: rehabilitate the notion of reification, link with real
abstraction and ideology
reification = not simply objectification in the sense of rigidity, it IS liquid modernity
(deterritorialization / all that is solid melts into air)
The dead of god, and the idea that the universe does not exist are bourgeois notions
already systematized by Kant
reification is the condition for both the emergence of real abstraction AND,
simultaneously, its unintelligibility (reification, in other words, is the condition for
ideology)
reification makes a problem of totality -> cognitive mapping is a way to circumvent it.
retroactivity: it "appears" that there was once a point where atomization had not yet
begun (imaginary illusion of wholeness)
ideology as culture, or ideology as extremist (islam/wilder): liberal bourgeois
(ideological ideology) -> but marxist -> real conditions of existence (cultural dominant is
linked to mode of production)
it is not necessary to locate precisly the break of modernity - we don't have to assume
the factual existence of "premodernity" , but we need to posit its existence as a
retroactive necessity, by virtue of the fact of the break. If there is a sense of a break,
there is modernity - modernity is nothing but the question how to deal with the break.
[modernism - the various means with deal with the deadlock called modernity, the
cultural logics patching up the rift of modernity- simply means: one cannot not
periodize]
postmodern theory, then, is the attempt to replace S1 with $ as the "quilting point"
(discourse of the hysteric) - yet this generates $ <> a (fantasy) [no filling in - totalization
of the inconsistency] (!!!)
the only view of totality is a rift totality (class struggle) lukacs. to see totality is not to see
wholeness, nor multitudes, but rift.
it seems that contingency and necessity are reversed -> the actual is now identified with
contingency, whilst what ought to be done coincides with a too demanding - and
therefore deemed illusory ? - necessity. <------!!!!!!
Bourgeois "historical" thought today is no longer (if it ever was) the teleological whig
theory of history (often associated with modernism), but rather the "history"
of genealogy : contingency/contingent encounters etc. no breaks, no periodization, just
an amalgam of swirving assemblages, different intesnities etc.
the task of the left is to reintroduce the CUT.

cut - not in the sense of destruction - but in the sense of a creations of actual possibilities
- as opposed to "utopia - sort of".
Where does the idea of "Man" come from? historical materialism -> conditions
(foucault) or ideology of man through cut by capital (cogito, homology imaginary, real
abstraction etc, kants antinomies [metamodernism becomes a individual centered
attitude psychologism.)
is the metamodern a classicism? classicism is finding a proper balance (no hubris)
bourgeois prudence (zizek examples) prudent hedonism / pleasure instead of desire
(foucault)
contemporary finitude -> finitude as basis for prudence, a.o.t., finitude as basis for faith,
For a theory of the modern, it does not matter if we can pinpoint an empirical point at
which one time went over into another. For all that, the ancients were, or could have
been modern. the point is modern points to the alienation (reification) that generates a
lost origin in the past, (and the possiblity to retrieve it in the future) [c.f.: imaginary
generates symbolic]. alienation thus generates a "consciousness" [pure symbolic point /
real abstraction/ $ ] of a clear cut break with the past, that process is what we call
modernity. Modernisms are the myriad ways in which this cut is dealt with. Modernist
ideologies are the ways in which this cut is repressed "healed" [so what does this entail
for postmodernity?]
perhaps modernity still sees a possiblity of retrieval in the future, whereas
postmodernity is melangolic - no future, just past. This means that the past becomes
nostalgia. Metamodernism: Nostaligia not only for the past a such, but for the future!
NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE/UTOPIA // benjamin past-future
marketing (experience economy) a kind of desperate attempt at re-enchanting the
world. object oriented ontology is a reflection of that
The fact that "something of the royal remains," that reason is fraught with a mark of
the sacred, that, in the six rationalities that dupuy decribes, the logic of the sacred is
immanent, IS THE VERY CONDITION for a hope of redemption/utopia etc. (!?)
In postmodernity the imaginary concept of NATURE is no longer viable - [from
immanent meaningfull whole - to culture/nature opposite - to total aleination// result:
either panpsychism/ooo/vibrant matter OR nihil unbound (brassier)/primary qualities
as absolute (meillasoux)] commodified/reified/"estranged" - i.e. there is no nature (as
holistic ecology)
"Ever since Plato, bourgeois consciousness has deceived itself that objective antinomies
could be mastered by steering a middle course between them, wheareas the sought-out
mean always conceals the antinomy and is torn apart by it" (Adorno Aesthetic Theory
298)

reification and ideology as a dialectic of void and excess (homology with logic of
signifier) [$ <> a] or [$ itself! / one divides into two
reification creates the outgroup as form (the empty substance-less proletarian)
Reification - topical : current fight of the academy of "rendementsdenken"
(management mindset in terms of profit-based financial efficiency)
in a sense, to recognize the importance of postmodernism, is to put oneself in the poststructuralist tradition.
In this light, a poem or picture is not necessarily privileged, and the artifat is likely to be
treated less as a work in modernist terms - unique, symbolic, visonary - than as a text in a
postmodernist sense - "already written," allegorical, contingent. With this textual model, one
postmodernist strategy becomes clear: to deconstruct modernism not in order to seal it in its
own image in order to open it, to rewrite it; to open its closed systems (like the museum) to
the "heterogenetiy of texts" (Crimp), to rewrite its universal techniques in terms of "synthetic
contradicitons" (Frampton) - in short, to challenge its master narratives with the "discourse of
others" (Owens).
"How we conceive postmodernism, then, is critical to how we represent both the present and
the past - which aspacts are stressed, which repressed. (xi)
disengage social relations <> cultural forms
"as Habermas cogently argues, the neoconservatives sever the cultural from the social, then
blame the practices of the one (modernism) for the ills of the other (modernization). With
cause and effect thus confounded, "adversary" culture is denounced even as the economic and
political status is affirmed - indeed, a new "affirmative" culture is proposed.
"Even now, of course, there are standard posisiton to take on postmodernism: one may
support postmodernism as populist and attack modernism as elitist or, conversely, support
modernism as elitist - as culture proper - and attack postmodernism as mere kitsch. Such view
reflect one thing: that postmodernism is publicly regarded (no doubt vis-a-vis postmodern
architecture) as a necessary turn toward "tradition." Briefly, then, I want to sketch an
oppositional postmodernism, the one which informs this book. In cultural politics today, a
basic opposition exist between a postmodernism which seeks to deconstruct modernism and
resist the status quo and a postmodernism which repudiates the former to celbrate the latter: a
postmodernism of resistance and a postmodernism of reaction."
crisis of traditional principles of ORDERING, task: new instruments of measurement and
integration -> "that philsophy found itself obliged to aggravete its own crisis,and to do so by
breathing a strange new life into that most (late) scholastic of therms, ontology"
Toscano Badiou Century "Bearing this constellation of terms in mind, we could venture that
the radical conservatism, as well as the vaunted revolutionism, that accompanied much
twentieth-century philosophy, can be seen to derive form the way in which
both suspend and prolonged its own crisis within the horizon of representation, understanding
that horizon as primarily , if implicitly, cultural (or social-political).

postmodernisms: all cultural logics (ideologies : progressive/regressive/liberal etc.) that

deal with a similar deadlock, that is, postmodernity (full reification) [there is no
legitimate center/ end of history: liberal democratic capitalism / rhizomatics]
"Rosalind Krauss details how the logic of modern sculpture led in the '60s to its own
deconstruction - and to the deconstruction of the modern order of the arts based on the
Enlightenment order of distinct and autonoous disciplines. Today, she argues, "sculpture"
exist as but one term in an "expanded field" of forms, all derived structurally. This, for
Krauss, constitutes the postmodernist break: art conceived in terms of structure, not medium,
oreiente to "cultural terms". (xiii)
Douglas Crimp aslo posits the existence of a break with modernism, specifically with its
defintion of the plane of representation. In the work of Robert Rauschenberg and others, the
"natural," uniform surface of modernist painting is displaced, via photgraphic procedures, by
the thoroughly cultural, textual site of the postmodernist critique (xiii)
[out-stretched, disseminated paintings]
capitalist universality, just as in badiou, is a ongoing, infinite construction that emerges from
a specific site. [deterritorialization]this is how habermas "modernity as an unfinished project"
may be read, as a badiouian truth procedure.
recentste bauman. Brecht.
1. History, question of history /periods/ modernism (latour, Habermas, beyond )
2. Metamodernism popular / manifesto /break with postmodern / metamodern [modern,
history, ideology] yet somethings missed, stepped over.
3. Evaluate argument / object
4. Ontology of the present
no reification withouth the invisible hand of the market. individual/neoliberal (reification)
and community are mutually implicated. collective is outside/third term (prol.) community is
the space of tolerance. the collective divides. [elaborate on the new university/hum. rally]
[homogenous and individualization (jameson passages)-> tivadar]
not "us here", up against "the world there" freudo-marxism: always coterminous. (tomsic
105)
Habermas "attitude" (7)
"Neoconservatism shifts onto culrual modernism the uncomfortable burdens of a more or less
succesful capitalist modernization of the economy and society. The neoconservative doctrine
blurs the relationship between the welcomed process of societal modernization on the one
hand, and the lamented cultural development on the other. The neoconservative does not

uncover the economic and soical causes for the altered attituted towards work, consumption,
achievement and leisure. Consequently, he attributes all of the following - hedonism, the lack
of social identification, the lack of obedience, narcissism, the withdrawal from status and
achievement competition -to the domain of "culture." In fact, however, culture is intervening
in the creation of all these problems in only a very indirect and mediated fashion. In the
neoconservative view, those intellectuals who still feel themsleves commited to the project of
modernity are then presented as taking the place of those unanalyzed causes" (7).
"But neoconservative doctrinces turn our attention precisely away from such societal
processes: they project the causes, which they do not bring to light, onto the plane of a
subversive culture and its advocates.
Objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their
inner logic. (cultural modernity?)
point about logic = ontological, not a method or tool to be applied (nominalism)
this concrete experience, concrete objects/commodities are the only thing that exists,
universal property is just an abstraction (nominalism) ; this is precisley our ideological selfexperience !
"This splitting off is the problem that has given rise to efforts to "negate" the culture of
expertise. But the problem won't go away: should we try to hold on to the intentions of the
Enlightenment, feeble as they may be, or should we declare the entire project of modernity a
lost cause?
"To be sure, surrealism would not have challenged the right of art to exist, if modernt art no
longer had advance da promise of happines concerning its own relationship "to the whole" of
life. For Schiller, such a promise was delivered by aesthetic intuition, but no fulfilled b it.
Schiller's Letter on the aesthetic Education of Man speaks to us of a utopia reaching byond
art itself. But by the time of Baudelaire, who repeated this promesse de bonheur via art, the
utopia of reconciliation with society had gone sour. A relation of opposites had come into
being; art had become a cirical mirror, showing the irreconcilable nature of the aesthetic and
the social worlds. (Anti-aesthetic 10)
"But all those attempts to level art and life, fiction and praxis, appearance and reality to one
plane; the attempts to remove the distinction between artifact and object of use, between
consious staging and spontaneous excitement; the attempts to declare evertything to be art
and everyone to be an artist, to retract all criteria and to equate aesthetic judgment with the
expression of subejctive experiences - all these undertakings have proved themselves to be
sort of nonsense experiments" (11)
"These experiments have served to bring back to life, and to illuminate all the more glaringly,
exactly those structures of art which they were emant to dissolve. They gave a new legitmacy,
as ends in themselves, to appearence as the medium of ficstion, to the transcendence of the
artwork over society, to the concentrated and planne dcharacter of artistic productions as well
as to the special cognitive status of judgment of taste. The radical attempt to nnegate art has
ended up ironically by giving due exactly to these categories thorugh which Enlgithmenent
aesthetic shad cicumscribed it subject domain. The surrealist waged the most extreme
warfare, but two mistakes in particualr destroyed their revolt. First, when the containsers of

an autonomously developed cultural sphere are shattered, the contents get disperse. Nothing
remains from a desubliamted meaning or a desctructure form; an emancipatoroy effect does
not follow. (11)
A reified everyday praxis can be cured only by creating unconstrained interaction of the
cognitive with the moral-practical and the aesthtic-expressive elements.
"To instrumental reason they juxtapose in Manichean fashion a principle only accesible
through evocation, be it the will to power or sovereignty, Being or Dionysiac force of the
poetical. In France this line leads from Georges Bataille via Michel Foucault to Jacques
Derrida." (14)
"I fear that the ideas of antimodernity, together with an additional touch of premodernity, are
becoming popular in the circles of alternative culture. When one observes the transformations
of consciousness within political parities in Germany, a new ideological shift (tendenzwende)
becomes visible. And this is the alliance of postmodernist with premodernists. It seems to me
that there is no party in particular that monopolizes the abuse of intellectuals and the position
of neoconservatism.
[the CONCEPT of postmodernism] Jameson
"most of the postmodernism mentioned above emerge as specific reactions against the
established forms of high modernism, against this or that dominant high modernism which
conquered the university, the museum, the art gallery network, and the foundations. (111).
"This means that ther will be as many different forms of postmodernism as there were high
modernisms in place, since the former are at least initially specific and local reactions against
those models. That obviously does not make the job of describing postmodernism as a
coherent thiing any easier, since the unity of this new impulse - if it has one - is given not
in itself but in the very modernism it seeks to displace. (luhman, foucault, dialectic etc.)
"It is not just another word for the description of a particular style. It is also, at least in
my use, a periodizing cocnept whose function is to correlate the emergence of new
formal features in culure with the emergence of a new type of social life and a new
economic order - what is often euphemistacially called modernization, postindustrial or
consumer society, the society of the media or the spectacle, or multinational capitalism.
I want here to sketch a few of the way si n which the new postmodernsim expresses the inner
truth of that newly emergent SOCIAL ORDER of late capitalism, but will have to limit the
description to only two of its siginifcant features, which I will call pastiche and
schizophrenia: they willl give us a chance to sense the specificity of the postmodernist
experience of space and time [historicist] respectively. 113
"What we have to retain from all this is rather an easthetic dilemma: because if the
experience and ideology of the unique self, an experience and ideology which informed the
stylistic practice of classical modernism, is over and done with, then it is no longer clear what
the artist and writers of the present period are supposed to be doing.
"But this means that contemporary or postmodernist art is going to be about art itself in a new
kind of way; even more, it means that one of its essential messages will involve the necessary

failure of art and the aesthetic, the failure of the new, the imprisonment in the past.
[metamodernism then, is the impossibility of the necessity of failure]
nostaliga-film (a form of pastische) "does not reinvent a picture of the past in its lived
totality; rather, by reinventing the feel and shape of characteristic art objects of an older
period (the serials), it seeks to reawaken a sense of the past associated with those objects.
as though we have become incapable of achieving aesthetic representations of our own
current experience. But if that is so, then it is a terrible indictment of consumer capitalism
itself - or at the very least, an alarming and pathological sympto of a society that has become
incapable of dealing with time and history (117).
"What we need to retain from this is the idea that psychosis, and more particularly
schizophrenia, emerges from the failure of the infant to accede fully into the realm of speech
and language" (118) [cannot enter into habermas's ideal speech community"
"The signified - maybe even the illusion or the mirage of the signified and of meaning in
general - is an effect produced by the interrelationship of material signifiers. All of this puts
us in the position of grasping schizophrenia as the breakdown of
the relationship between signifiers (real, no big other).
[periodization] "I must limit myself to the suggestion that radical breaks between periods do
not generally involve complete changes of content but rather the restructuration of a certain
number of elements already given: features that in an earlier period or system were
subordinate now become dominant, and features that had been dominant become secondary.
In this sense, everything we have described here can be found in earlier periods and most
notably within modernism proper: my point is that until the present day those things have
been secondary or minor features of modernist art, marginal rather than central, and that we
ahve something new when they become the central features of cultural production. (!) (123)
"But I can argue this more concretely by turning to the relationship between cultural
production and social life generally. The older or classical modernism was an oppositional
art; it emerged within the business society of the gilded age as scandalous and offensive to
the middle-class public - ugly, dissonant, bohemian, sexually shocking. It was something to
make fun of (when the police were not called in to seize the books or close the exhibitions):
an offense to good tast and to common sense, or, as Freud and Marcuse would have put it, a
provocative challenge to the reigning reality and performance-principles of early 20th century
middle-class society. Modernism in general did not go well with overstuffed Victorian
furniture, with Victorian moral taboos, or with the convention of polite society. This is to say
that whatever the explicit political content of the great high modernsism, the latter were
always in sosme mostly implicit ways dangerous and explosive, subversive within the
established order (124).
If the we suddenly return to the present day, we can measure th immensity of the cultural
changes that have taken place. Not only are JOyce and Picasso no longer weird and repuslive,
they have become classics and now look rather realistic to us. Meanwhile, there is very little
in either the form or the content of contemporary art that contemporary society finds
intolerable and scandalous. The most offensive forms of this art - punk rock, say or what is
called sexually explicit material - are all taken in stride by society, and they are commercially
succesful, unlike the productions of the older high modernism.

dissappeareance of a sense of history (125)

"My own conclusion here must take the form of a question about the critical value of the
newer art. There is some agreement that the older modernism functioned against its socity in
ways which are variously describe das critical, negative, contestatory, subversive, oppoitional
and the like. Can anything of the sort be affirmed about postmodernism and its social
moment? We have seen that there is a way in which postmodernism replicates or reproduces reinforces - the logic of consumer capitalism; the more significant question is whether ther is
also a way in which it resist that logic. But that is a question we must leave open.

First the historical conditions for identity politics.

Demise of traditional norms, religion, disintegration of traditional social structures, anxiety
insecurity create the desire to formulate new collective identities. But although they would
lille to present them as natural, the fact that people have to assert these identities, and defend
them, maddens them not entirely natural. Constructed essences.
Not only secularization and industrialization, but also two world wars. It is perhaps no
coincides that two waves of identity politics is located after them.
First universalist, then more particular
It is within these collective identities, which claim to be universal (which means its all
inclusive, open to all, ecru human being can Join) national or socialist f.e. (that particular
identities find themselves oppressed)
To be aware of one s identity as an oppressed identity, is already to beware that certain
ascribed identities are not fixed or natural.
iwhy historicism and nominalism are compatible
We must presuppose a subject. Empty space.
It is this certainty that Descartes is after. And in the end he find that the dividers are shifting,
and from that he concludes that he is.
Rosa parks. There's only one true politics, only one true political desire. Equality. Without
any guarantee
Symbolic is inconsistent. But it is desire that forced a change. equality, truth, force it. Never
give ground. Butler.
Welders conscious decision.

A real agency, change, of the caused/ structures of social problems. But contingency alone is
not enough. In someway Seize contingency..
1 people want to fire, 100 do not. Agency? For the people with power, unquestioned agency
is beneficent.
Its not that cannot make conscious decisions. But to choose on the bases of the symbolic will
not change it.
Formal negation off being. Nothing determine. function. negation of nothing. What is
identity. Hope of full meaning. Cause of desire.
Qa theoretical possibility for action. this is kantianism. a pace of action wich is unknowable;
noumenal world.
Of course their is reason. but can this reason, as a will, effect the natural world. Kant: we
must presuppose freedom. it is always as if we are free.
outplace: universality. sans papier. who has agency. not the poor. not the rich; particular
interest. universality. truth.
if choose structure: no agency. even butler. if we choose agency: liberalism (sum of parts) or
dualism. Kant, trancendental subject object.. With dualism we cannot be sure what counts as
agency and what as structure. determination, voluntarism.
Agency = minimal effect on structure. Out place.
sociology is good in mapping structures. there is no sociology of the individual subject.
how to formulate this: retroversive effect.
We have seen that social relations depend upon retroversive signification, which is one way
of saying that the social dimension of subjectivity is irremediably excessive. Extimate
causality names the operation that generates subjects in their social dimension - that is, the
operation that gives us social identities, properties, and relationships. In producing the social
subject, extimate causality also leaves a remainder or indeterminacy, so that every subject
bears some unspecifiable excess within the social field. Every subject is an "excessive"
subject
Jeruzalem
negative freedom; some freedom of total conditioning, structuring.
the subject is consituted by the entrance in the symbolic. the symbolic is the cause of the
subject. extimate causality.
at least it is not determined by what we think determines it. contingency.
but contingency is not agency.
kant = moebius strip

Even if some determined actions resist the structure, we wouldnt know which one. We would
not have agency. Resistance is in the structure
butler points to a theoretical possibility. opens up a space for agency. but it is not yet
theorized.
occupy, every strike, flash mob, revolution.
a space is not the problem. foucault. butler the new is not the problem. what can cause the
new, independently of the structure? what can act on the structure, indepently of it?
in the past we see determinism. but this determinism is subject to retroversive change.
exactly what determines us, is not fixed.
where does the new come from? what can cause a new chain of effects? kant reason,
noumenal world.
We are thus simultaneously both
less free and more free than we think: we are thoroughly passive, deter
mined by and dependent on the past, but we have the freedom to define
the scope of this determination, that is, to (over)determine the past which
will determine us.
Deleuze is here unexpectedly close to Kant, for whom,
though I am determined by causes, I (can) retroactively determine which
causes will determine me - we, subjects, are passively affected by patho
logical objects and motivations; but, in a reflexive way, we ourselves
have the minimal power to accept (or reject) being affected in this way.
In other words, we may retroactively determine the causes allowed to
determine us, or, at least, the mode of this linear determination.
That is to say, predestination does not mean that
our fate is sealed in an actual text existing from eternity in the divine
mind; the texture which predestines us belongs to the purely virtual
eternal past which, as such, can be retroactively rewritten by our act.
However, what about the retroactivity of a gesture which (re)constitutes
this past itself? This, perhaps, is the most succinct definition of what an
authentic act is: in our ordinary activity, we effectively just follow the
(virtual-fantasmatic) coordinates of our identity, while an act proper is
the paradox of an actual move which (retroactively) changes the very
virtual "transcendental" coordinates of its agent's being - or, in Freudian
terms, which not only changes the actuality of our world but also "moves
its underground." We have thus a kind of reflexive "folding back of the
condition onto the given it was the condition for":
12

Think about
a group of dedicated individuals fighting for the Idea of Communism:
in order to grasp their activity, we have to take into account the virtual
Idea. But this Idea is in itself sterile, has no proper causality: all causality
lies in the individuals who "express" it.
Foreword xv
is that freedom is neither grasped necessity (the vulgata from Spinoza to
Hegel and traditional Marxists) nor overlooked (ignored) necessity (the
cognitivist and brain science thesis: freedom is the "user's illusion" of
our consciousness, unaware of the bio-neuronal processes that determine
it), but a necessity which is presupposed and/as unknown/unknowable.
We know that everything is predetermined, but we do not know which
is our predetermined destiny, and it is this uncertainty which impels us
into incessant activity.The lesson to be drawn from the basic paradox of Protestantism (how
is it possible that a religion which taught predestination sustained capi
talism, the greatest explosion of human activity and freedom in history)
Foreword xvii
from the entire past, but retroactively changes this past itself.But why shouldn't we then say
that there is simply no atemporal conceptual structure, that all there is is the gradual temporal deployment? Here
we encounter the properly dialectical paradox which defines true historicity as opposed to evolutionist historicism, and which was formulated
much later, in French structuralism, as the "primacy of synchrony over
diachrony." Usually, this primacy was taken to indicate structuralism's
ultimate denial of historicity: an historical development can be reduced to
the (imperfect) temporal deployment of a pre-existing atemporal matrix
of all possible variations/combinations. This simplistic notion of the
"primacy of synchrony over diachrony" overlooks the (properly dialectical) point, made long ago by (among others) T. S. Eliot (as quoted above)
on how each truly new artistic phenomenon not only designates a break
The main implication of treating the Symbolic order as such a totality
is that, far from reducing it to a kind of transcendental a priori (a formal
network, given in advance, which limits the scope of human practice),
one should follow Lacan and focus on how gestures of symbolization are
entwined with and embedded in the process of collective practice. What
Lacan elaborates as the "twofold moment" of the symbolic function
reaches far beyond the standard theory of the performative dimension
of speech as developed in the tradition from J.L. Austin to John Searle:
"The symbolic function presents itself as a twofold movement in the
subject: man makes his own action into an object, but only to return
its foundational place to it in due time. In this equivocation, operating
at every instant, lies the whole progress of a function in which action
and knowledge alternate."20
The historical example evoked by Lacan to
clarify this "twofold movement" is indicative in its hidden references: "in
phase one, a man who works at the level of production in our society

considers himself to belong to the ranks of the proletariat; in phase two,

in the name of belonging to it, he joins in a general strike."21
while the pure past
is the transcendental condition for our acts, our acts not only create
new actual reality, they also retroactively change this very condition.
In order for socialchange to come about, something new has to enter the situation, some
thing that is not simply a function of that situation's determinates.
Does this mean that social change is impossible? Obviously not, since
social change takes place whether or not we know its causes. What it
does mean, however, is that the politics of social change is irremediably
fantasmatic.
The minimal self-difference is the dif
ference between the subject prior to subjectification (a notional entity)
and the formal function of marking out that subject for inscription in
the Symbolic - cutting it away from all other indeterminate "things"
and hollowing out the place which will cradle it. The "outline" drawn
around this subject in this way both encapsulates the subject, so that it
can be grasped as a determinate something with its own firm boundaries
and links it to the social field comprised of other subjects*.
idealism.
It is only a certain quashing of its force or
blockage in its functioning that allows us to suppose a regime of power
to be governed by a principle that cannot be absorbed by that regime.
irony en authenticiteit.
ironie = het inzicht dat narratief een fictie is.
academia titels: ironische titel, uitleg in subtitel
neppe nep, echte nep, echte echt, neppe echt.

Geen voyeur. Bewust. Niet uitkijken. Maar niet interp zoals oenen..
Dj-publ. Is interactief. Publ.-ext publ. Is interpassief
The dude abides
Sociopath. Fantasy dat sociaal regels te breken zijn. Super ego gehoorzamen.
interpassive as sociaal fenomeen

If God is dead, perm. Do both. Relatie met oenen. interactieve metaalmoeheid.

Priv, als priv breid uit.
Wat is de added value van het publiek voor mij als kijker?
Voyeuristisch waarde is minimaal. Repetitief dansen. Geen gesprekken enz.
Voyeurisme zoals bb? Ja. Maar Bij big brother geen publiek. Daar gaat het mij om. Het punt
hier is niet voy. propose a different reading. het punt is juist de totaliteit van en show incl.
Publiek.hier wel ik op focussen. er zin namelijk vergelijke bare vormen waar voyeurisme
geen rol speelt.
Bovendien: ook vormen met publiek waar voyeurisme geen rol speelt: dwdd. Niet reduceer
baar
As Badiou presents them, the major currents of contemporary philosophy (logical-analytic,
hermeneutic, and postmodern) all share, beyond a negative resistance to Plato and a suspicion
of the metaphysics of truth generally, a postitive committment to language as the vehicle of
"a plurality of meaning." All are more or less descriptive of and complicit with our
fragmented world of meanings and communications (DP, 22). Badiou's resistance to these
currents turns precisly on the question of whether there may " exist a regime of the thinkable
that is inaccessible to this total jurisdiction of language." (Hallward 16).

ontological: lack, gap, contingency, pure multiplicity etc.

epistemological: unity, conceptualization, individuation, normativity, the count, inquiry,
objectivation etc.
A Perspectivism that is objective.

1. equality is the highest principle.

2. the system cannot go on the way it functions.
3.
In the concept-object framework, what we talk about (what we describe, what our narrative
comes down to), is (in the last analysis) the object, whatever it may be. Object logically
precedes concept. If we want to talk about a concept, the concept becomes an object.
Concept and object are not ontological categories: they are different roles in the structure of a
theory. But what is the difference between theory and concept? and what is a concept if it can
become an object.

'Immigration' can be an concept, illuminating the object of 'demography'. Immigration can

also become an object, studied by the concept of demography. The former is ultimately about
understanding demography, by means of the 'tool' of immigration. The Concept is a tool in
understanding (conceptualizing) the object.
In the theory-example framework, what we talk about is the theory. Theory logically precedes
example.
Theory is not a tool in understanding examples. Theory is 'understanding in general' (not
of/about the object/example)
Theory and example do not play 'different roles' in the structure of a theory, in the sense that
they can switch structural positions in the theory. An exemple cannot become theory, theory
cannot become a example. But, at the same time, an theory is nothing without examples, and
vice versa; they cannot be seperated. Concepts and objects, on the other hand, can be
seperated. Immigration can become a concept in the study of feelings of loneliness, departing
demography. Atheory like 'Europe is flooded by a tsunami of muslims', is supported by
determinate examples. They are part of the theory, and have to be true if the theory is to hold.
In T-E, the practice is about the description of a theory, by means of an example. In C-O, the
practice is about the description of an object, by means of a concept.
An example is of a theory. An example is necessarily of a theory, otherwise it is not an
example of that theory. At the same time, a theory is about the examples: a theory explains
the examples and the examples explain the theory.
A concept is of or about an object. A concept is necessarily of or about an object: is one of the
two roles in the theory. If a concept is of a concept, the latter is structurally an object.
But an object is not of or about an concept. The object itself does not explain the concept.
The theory is about and of the example.
The example is about and of the theory.
The concept is about and of the object.
The object not about, nor of the concept.
T<> E
C<O
The theory is about the examples and the examples are of the theory.
The examples explain the theory, and the theory explains the examples.
The concept is of and about the object, but the object is not about the concept.
the concept explains the object, but the object does not explain the concept.
Concepts form theories. ccc=t
Objects are the things studied through concepts. o>ccc=t
Theory is the whole of concepts of objects. t=ccc<o
Examples are the things in light of a theory. e<>t

In C-O, it is ultimately about the object: the goal is understanding the object, through
concept. It is not about the concept, because if we were to understand the concept, it turns
into an object.
In T-E, it is about theory: the goal is understanding the theory, through the example. We can
also say: we understand the concept (theory) through the object (example). The difference
with C-O is that we can understand the concept without turning it into an object. We
understand the concept, through the object and not as object. In this way, the object had
become an example.
So, in fact, when doing cultural analysis, we it is not about a an object and its concept. But
about Theory and their examples.

Confusion (conflation, conjoin)

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1343485?
uid=3738736&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103399328783
Negative (ideology) and positive confusion (something more)
A realist account of confusion (con-fusion)
Confusion, not as mental, but as objective, or out there, real.
Positive account of confusion
Fields of sense transitions
Metatmodernism: Sincere irony
Awkwardness (social norm confusion)
The city and the city (breach, schrodingers walk)
Mockumentary / fictional documentaries (the act of killing)
Undecidebility derrida?
Parallax view/gap
Badiou event?
Undead
Ghost, specters of marx

 Kant left right confusion

Individual/society

Form/content

Metamorfonisme -> dialectical aspect of metamorfose -> implication for metamodernism.

Metamorfonism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and
relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation.
Some insects, amphibians, molluscs, crustaceans, Cnidarians,echinoderms and tunicates undergo metamorphosis, which is usually
accompanied by a change of habitat or behavior.

Point de capiton
leader
Event
Truth, and ideology is what eliminates confusion.

spirituality
Foucault stressed in relation to the Iranian Revolution that he was interested not in the
ideological cloak of religion but in the live revolts.
According to Foucault, the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1978, in its attempt to overthrow the
Shah, revealed the full force of the religious phenomena in holding the collective will,
spirituality forming the key factor in the peoples challenge to institutional power. The
Shi'ite religion in Iran, according to Foucault, brought to the Iranian people 'the promise and
guarantee of finding something that would radically change their subjectivity'. Foucault was
particularly intrigued by the new revolutionary phenomenon found in religion and the way
the 'spiritual' (a 'highly prized additional level of meaning') 'mobilises a "political will"'
How can one analyse the connection between ways of distinguishing true and false and ways
of governing oneself and others?the search for a new foundation for each of these
practices, in it self and relative to the other, the will to discover a different way of governing
oneself through a different way of dividing up true and false this is what I would call
political spiritualite.
13
Revolts belong to history. But, in a certain way, they escape from it. The impulse by which a
single individual, a group, a minority,
or an entire people says, "I mi l no longer obey," and throws the risk of their life in the face of
an authority they consider unjust

seems to me to be something irreducible. Because no authority is capable of making it utterly

impossible: Warsaw will always have its ghetto in revolt and its sewers crowded with rebels.
And because the man who rebels is finally inexplicable; it takes a wrenching-away that
interrupts the flow of history, and its long chains of reasons, for a man to be able, "really,"
(Essential works 449)
if we dene spirituality as being the form of practices which postulate that,
such as he is, the subject is not capable of the truth, but that, such as it is,
the truth can transgure and save the subject, then we can say that the modern
age of the relations between the subject and truth begin when it is postulated
that, such as he is, the subject is capable of truth, but that, such as it is, the
truth cannot save the subject (rabinow)
history of philosophy that would not be a history of philosophical doctrines, but a history of
philosophies or a history of philosophy as a form, mode and style of life, a history of the
philosophical life as a philosophical problem, but also a history of the philosophical life as a
mode of being, simultaneously, a kind of ethic and a kind of heroism.
2
Some say that the great ideologies are in the course dying. The contemporary
world, however, is burgeoining with ideas []. One has to be present at the birth
of ideas and at the explosion of their force; not in the books that pronounce
them, but in the events in which they manifest their force, and in the struggles
people wage for or against ideas. (DE III: 706-7)
Those who resist or rebel against a form of power cannot merely be content to
denounce violence or criticize an institution. Nor is it enough to cast the blame
on reason in general. What has to be questioned is the form of rationality at
stake. (DE IV: 161)
Here, Focaults interest in the Iranian revolution as an unprecedented hisotircal
event has to make room for an inquiry into the supposed spiritual or
transcendental essence of any uprising.

But are the essentialist ideas of shiism as a force, irreducibly opposed to state
power, and of a specifically Iranian-Islamic regime of truth, both heavily
dependent on Corbins work, really so at odds with Foucaults more general
notions, such as episteme and regime o truth In a 1977 interview, Foucault
suggest that each society has its regime of truth []; that is the types of
discourse which it accepts and makes function as true. 75

The concept of regime of truth, then, seems to play much the same structural
role that such notions as culture or world view play in more idealistically
inclined authors: it allows for a sweeping characterization of an entire historical
period or geographical region. As such it faces the risk of reducing singular
historical events to static and essentialist categories, a risk implicit in any
attempt at historical classification or periodization. In short, political spirituality
may be quite suggestive as a journalistic notion, but as a philosophical concept it
is deeply problematic, indeed indicative of more general problems that Foucault
faces. 76
Foucaults silence on the complex post-revolutionary power struggle and his
subsequently revertin to a universalist ethics based on immutable laws suggest a
conceptual inability to move beyond the domination-resistance dichotomy
implicit in the juridical view of power which he himself had so strongly criticized.
Seen in this light, his ignoring of historical developments in shiite Islam, and of
internal division along lines of political outlook, class, ethnicity or denomination
between those participating in the uprising, may not be an accident after all. It
points to a far more general difficulty of how to account for variation and change
in regimes of truth, or epistemes or paradigms. In other words, Foucaults
conceptualization of regimes of truth and plicitcal rationalities, and even his
strategy-oriented analysis of power relations, may still be too static and
monolithic to allow for a genuine explanation of such drastic changes as occur in
revolutionary periods, and of power struggle in absence of the effective
concentration of power in the government and state apparatus.

Among the things that characterize this rev

olutionary event, there is the fact that it has brought out and few peoples in history have had this -an absolutely
collective will . The collective will is a political myth with
which jurists and philosophers try to analyze or to justify
institutions, etc. It' s a theoretical tool: nobody has ever seen
the "collective will" and, personally, I thought that the
collective will was like God, like the soul, something one
would never encounter . I don't know whether you agree with
me, but we met, in Tehran and throughout Iran, the collective
will of a people . Well, you have to salute it, it doesn't happen
ever day.

Yet, one day, all this will become, for histor

ians, a rallying of the upper classes to a popular, left-wing
movement, etc. That will be an analytical truth. I believe it is
one of the reasons why one feels a certain unease when one
comes back from Iran and people, wanting to understand, ask
one for an analytical schema of an already constituted realit

Then, the three main points are;

Difference in political rationality underpinning classical liberalism, ordo-liberalism
and U.S. neo-liberalism.

Universalization of the entrepreneurial form. Both Ordo-Liberalism and NeoLiberalism.

What is the relation of this entrepreneurial form to techniques of the self.

For the classical liberals the problem was the excessive influence of feudal state on the
economy. How to establish sufficient free market freedoms within an existing, mainly feudal,
state. The political rationality underpinning was to define the economy as ruled by an
invisible hand. So they speak of Laissez faire. The economy is thus defined in naturalistic
terms. Classical Liberalism speaks of the free market as natural phenomenon, that works by
itself, apart from the state and should be let alone as much as possible in order for it to
flourish. The domain of the free market is distinct from the politics and legal system. Social
policy inhibits. Classical liberalism speaks of a difference between the state and the economy.
The free market is viewed naturalist, as if ruled by a natural law.
The problem that the ordo liberals faced was different from the classical liberals, namely
Facism. The accepted a certain social irrational rationality that led to facism. But contrary to
the frankfurter Schule, that viewed facism as the result of the contradictory logic inherent in
the capitalism, For the Ordo Liberals, the reason for this irrational rationality was that the free

market economy did not exist, as it was counteracted by certain social forces. There was not
enough liberalism.
The problem for the ordo liberals is thus not how to establish a free market in an already
existent state, but how a new state could be created on the basis of economic liberty. How to
redefine the economic (capitalist) rationality in order to prevent the social irrationality from
unfolding.
Quote on p. 195 the irrationalities and dysfunctionalities of capitalist society could be overcome by politico-institutional inventions, as these problems were not compellingly
innate to the logic of capitalism but of a contingent historical nature.
According to the ordo-liberals there is thus no clear distinction between state and economy.
For the Ordo Liberals The capitalism is not subject to a natural law, but is a constructed
historic institution. Classical Liberalism speaks of the free market as natural phenomenon,
that works by itself, apart from the state andt should be let alone as much as possible in order
for it to flourish. The domain of the free market is distinct from the politics and legal system.
The Ordo-liberalist saw the "capitalist system" as a contingent and historically specific
institution. A constructued social field of regulated practices .
Because capitalism is not defined naturalist, nor defined by an inherent contradictory logic,
there is also no reason to assume that monopolies will necessary develop, or that a uniform
mass society is inevitable. Both can be prevented when irrational social forces are kept in
check.
Quote on page 195. "To put it over-succinctly, the Ordo-liberals try to show that there is not
just one capitalism with its logic, its dead-ends, and its contradictions, but an economicinstitutional entity which is historically open and can be changed politically" (p. 195)

So in Ordo-Liberalism, there is a space for social policy. So what does this policy consist of.
First, it not to offset the destructive impact of liberalism, not a tool to counteract
collateral damage of liberalism (social welfare). Instead of lessening the anti-social consequences of competition, it had to block the anti-competitive mechanisms
which society can spawn, (enemies of free market, fascist, communist) Not the
economy/capitalism that spawns it, but society.
There a two forms of social policy.

First, the universalization of the entrepreneurial form, which tries to generate an

entrepreneurial forms of social relations.
Second, the re- definition of law: Massive social intervention is necessary to anchor the
entrepreneurial form at the very heart of society (p. 196)

The difference between ordo liberalism and liberalism. For the Ordo liberals there is a
difference between societies social forces (such as the enemies of free market, fascist,
communist) and economy
Foucault suggests that the key element in the Chicago Schools approach is
their consistent expansion of the economic form to apply to the social sphere, thus eliding any
difference between the economy and the social.

Whereas the Ordo-liberals in West Germany pursued the idea of governing society in the name
of the economy, the US neo-liberals attempt to re-define the social sphere as a form of the
economic domain.

Not a question how to construct a viable capitalism, just a theoretical lacunae

the problem is not an irrational social rationality, that can be held in check by providing the right
institutional framework through social policy

"Here, the economy is no longer one social domain among others with its own intrinsic
rationality, laws and instruments. Instead, the area covered by the economy embraces the
entirety of human action to the extent that this is characterized by the allocation of scant
resources for competing goals"

Analyzing human action as governend by economic rationality

"However pathological an individual may be, in the eyes of the neo-liberals he

or she is always to a certain degree also a rational being, in other words sensitive to changes in the balance of prot and loss." (199)

The neo-liberal programme seeks to create neither a disciplining nor a normalizing society ,
but instead a societycharacterized by the fact that it cultivates and optimizes differences

Classic liberalism and neo-liberalism, Foucault suggests, differ above all on

two points:
the First difference is the re-definition of the relation between the state
and the economy.

Ne o-liberalism removes the limiting, external principle and puts a regulatory and inner
principle in its place: it is the market form which serves as the organizational principle for
the state and society
The second difference stems from the basis of government.
Neo-liberalism no longer locates the rational principle for regulating and limiting the action of
government in a natural freedom that we should all respect, but instead it posits an articially
arranged liberty: in the entrepreneurial and competitive behaviour of economic-rational
individuals.

Techniques of the government/self

It aspires to construct prudent
subjects whose moral quality is based on the fact that they rationally assess the
costs and benefits of a certain act as opposed to other alternative acts.
By means of the notion of governmentality the neo-liberal agenda for the
withdrawal of the state can be deciphered as a technique for government
The crisis of Keynesianism and the reduction in forms of welfare-state intervention therefore
lead less to the state losing powers of regulation and control (in the sense of a zero-sum game)
and can instead be construed as a reorganization or restructuring of government techniques,
shifting the regulatory competence of
the state onto responsible and rational individuals

If there is no one as such, if the one is separated from the infinite, all what exist is composed
of multiplicities. Multiplicity is composed of elements: x E y. If all is multiplicity, everthing
is always an element of something. And all that exist is an element of something else. The
name of a thing is not inside the thing. -x E x (obligation of the other). Something is never an
element of the same thing.
We say that nothing exist alone. Nothing is separated from all the rest. we are always element
of something which is not reducible to our selfs. The experience of something different is
inside the principle of existence as such. To exist is always to be in relationship with
something else. No solipsisme, to be alone. We cannot be element of ourself, so we must be
element of something different. So the ontology of multiplicity is immediately of difference.
We begin by difference. And it is why to oppose identity to difference is always the
reactionary vision. reactive politics is : I'm good and the other is no good. Difference comes
before identity. There is no pure experience of identity. The axiom of true politics. So reverse
of antiquity: not first identity and then difference.
God as pure one, or pure identity is excluded from being. God must experience difference.
God is not identity of difference. but god is the name for the existence of all differences

(spinoza) god is the name for the infinite of immanent differences. Omega. The name for the
infinity of all finite differences.
E z E x E y E a -> infinity
The void belongs to something E {}, but nothing belongs to the void. is between
nothingness and something. No x belongs to -> x {x E }
The void is one, because there is no determination. x y ? We can say that two multiplicities
are different only if we find something tot the first, but does not belong to the second: x y
if z E x, z -E y. Extensionality, means that we can find the point of difference. The global
difference is always also a local difference. We can find the point were the difference is
proved.
But blue yellow, we cannot find the local difference: it is a qualitative difference. In the pure
ontology of multiplicity, for the moment, there is no qualitative difference. All difference is a
local difference, by a point of difference. There are two different differences. two different
concept of difference. First the extensional concept (x y if z E x, z -E y) extensional
difference. Qualitative difference is a global difference: the totality is different. The yellow as
such is as a whole different from blue as such.
For the Greeks, only qualitative difference is a true difference. Two persons ar not really
different because one has a big nose, and the other a small one. They are different because i.e.
there character.
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/lacans-graphs-of-sexuation-and-ooo/
In the Renaissance (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Erasmus, etc.), madness was a specific phenomenon of human spirit which
belonged to the series of prophets, possessed visionaries, those obsessed by demons, saints, comediants, etc. It was a
meaningful phenomenon with a truth of its own. Even if madmen were vilified, they were treated with awe, like messengers of
sacred horror. With Descartes, however, madness is excluded: madness, in all its varieties, comes to occupy a position that
was the former location of leprosy.
Foucaults reproach is that Descartes does not really confront madness, but avoids to think it. He EXCLUDES madness from
the domain of reason: Dreams or illusions are surmounted within the structure of truth; but madness is inadmissible for the
doubting subject In the Classical Age, Reason is thus based on the exclusion of madness: the very existence of the category
madness is historically determined, along with its opposite reason; that is, it is determined, through power relations.
When I suffer sensory illusions of perception or when I dream, I still REMAIN NORMAL AND RATIONAL, I only deceive
myself with regard to what I see. In madness, on the contrary, I myself am no longer normal, I lose my reason. So madness has
to be excluded if I am to be a rational subject.

If Kant can now express himself so distinctly, it is because as I have said, he no longer
accepts this argument. Again he demonstrates how one passes from the 'whole' to the 'ground
of the possible'. ' The derivation of all other possibility from this primordial being cannot,
strictly speaking, be regarded as a limitation of its supreme reality, and, as it were, a division
of it. For in that case the primordial being would be treated as a mere aggregate of derivative
beings; and this, as we have just shown, is impossible, although in our first rough statements
we have used such language. On the contrary, the supreme reality must condition
the possibility of all thing as their ground, not as their sum' [pure R, 492-3]. But all this is
mere dialectical illusion. For 'It is obvious that reason . . . does not presuppose
the existence of a being that corresponds to this ideal, but only the idea of such a being'. If . . .
we proceed to hypothesize it . . . In any such use of the transcendental idea we should . . .
by overstepping the limits of its purpose and validity. (82)

discussion capital, mother nature

[!!!!!!--->>>] 'Such, then, is the natural procedure of human reason. It begins by persuading
itself other existence of some necessary being [capital]. This being it apprehends as having an
existence that is unconditioned. It then looks around for the concept of that which is
independent of any condition, and finds it in that which is itself the sufficient condition of all
else, that is, in that which contains all reality [capital]. But that which is all-containing and
without limits is absolute unity, and involves the concept of a single being that is likewise the
supreme being. Accordingly, we conclude that the supreme being, as primordial ground of all
things, must exist by absolute necessity.
Kant clearly holds that the second alternative [only opinion] is the more probable and
believes that these hopes are only dreams. Nevertheless, he cannot bring himself entirely to
renounce 'hope for the future' and to eliminate it completely. 'The reader is free to jduge.; but
for my part, the reasons of the second section are sufficient to turn the scales at least so that I
remain graely undecided on hearing the many strange tales of this kind' - this, however, with
'the usual but curious reservation that i doubt each individual one,, yet give some credit to
them all, taken together.'
We can be ironic when ethical life is established.
ironie in, for and in-and-for itself
Yolo/ bucket list/ sziget/ try before you die/ duty
Reality show. Cola chicken.
Foucault and hipsters and irony
Absolute gegenstoss logic of identity: badious dialetic.
Directly identifying: rammstein
New law: internet dating.
Facebook, identity, choice, irony.
Geek vs hipster. Memes vs jokes. Yolo vs job cohen
Pretend to pretend
Ideological State Apparatus, the external ritual which materializes ideology: the subject
who maintains his dlstance towards
the ritual is unaware of the fact that the ritual already dominates him from within.
Even if it is misrecognized or simply "not taken seriously;' this big Other is
nonetheless efective-an effcacy clearly discernible in the case of the big Other as the
"subject supposed to not know;' as the agency of innocent appearance whose ignorance
should be maintained.'4
rammstein, die antwoord, gagnam style.
Irony and the Discourse of Modernity
The Critical Mythology of Irony

ironic, song by alanis morrisette.

modernity is cut/division
"Hayot tries to defeat periodizing logics by treating realism, Romanticism, and modernism as
historically portable modes rather than as fixed literary eras; however, he deines
each mode through a conspicuously embedded, unwittingly traditional chronology of the
arts."
This is the dialectic of the break and the period.
tends to become universal, no history.
"Why not acknowledge that twentieth- century
narrative fiction, too, was foundationally altered by the innovative arrangements of modernist
literary form?"
possibility in both ways - future and history. retroactive reading. to read the modern in
history is only possible after the modernist break. behind the apparent particualisation lies
universilation: the modern is now everywhere, (started already in the 6th century b.c in
China). similarly to say "we have never been modern" can only be uttered by the modern.
However, we might say that the realizatioin of being not modern, is precisely the postmodern
break (or the modern postmodern "cultural dominant" ): only after the necessary error of
modernism, we can claim to have not been modern at all. (denial)
logic of denial -> this is why we have to stress cultural dominant, instead of another period.
periodization is to often viewed in a too quick totalization of a too rigid binary.
periodization is bad (colonial, Eurocentric, ) historicizing good.
in literary studies this zero point period is 1890 - 1940. For historians 1789 - 1796. but the
break itself is precisely not a period, it cannot be pointed at. The effort to locate of the break
is already to historicize: it is not in history (as the narrative), It "does not exist" in time.
Where lies history? we have the history of the period, and the History, the event.
ontology of the event: badiou
planetarity (from -ism to -ity) govenmentality, a dispositif
from the effectivity of the idea, to historicizing the causality to the social context. End of
ideology is connected to end of history. fukuyama. problems of agency. the idea (of
communism) is linked to the reawakening of history. ideology is linked to both possibility
and impossibility.
metamodernism is the oscillation between modernism (break) and modernity (period).
"Instead, I suggest we regard modernism in its different geohistorical locations and
periods as a powerful domain within a particular modernity, not something outside
of it, caused by it, or responding belatedly to it. From this perspective, modernism
is a force effecting change as much as it intersects other domains of change. Thus, I

am suggesting that we treat modernism as the domain of creative expressivity within

modernitys dynamic of rapid change, a domain that interacts with the other arenas
of rupture such as technology, trade, migration, state formation, societal institutions,
and so forth."
structuralism and historicism are here the same: no thinking of the event, of the break, of
historicity.
isn't so called post structuralism already a return of history and the event into structuralism?
Derrida on Foucault. difference in the text of vermeulen.
woolf: human character had changed.
modernism as spectre: derrida, unhinged.
"For Neil Lazarus, this point has apparently been lost on critics who have refused
[t] o situate modernism in relation to modernity in the context of a discussion of
postcolonial literature. Lazarus attributes this scholarly resistance to the fact that while
colonialism is commonly taken as intrinsic to the socio- historical project of modernity,
modernismis not typically viewedfor all its dissidenceas featuring an
anticolonialdimension (28)" 95
modernism is a form of coloniality, franz fanon.
cultural dominant -> not a neutral term. metamodernism as ideological dimension. zizek initself for itself , in and for itself. - Hitchcock -> much more on the surface. truth is inside
ideology. Foucault. quotes on universalism and Iranian revolution, and his work on truth, are
not intelligible from both modernist, and the postmodernist perspective.
the immersion of the fictional and the real. reality is structured like a fantasy. Act of Killing,
Stories we Tell, Lynch (text vermeulen)
postmodern is ideal type -> but in the sense that absolute idealism is an inverted form of
ideology critique. S (A)
Book Nicholas Brown:
"The mere fact that European imperialism names a key moment in the spread of capitalism as
a global economic system already implies a certain baseline of universality" (2)
"capitalism as a global economic system is also predicated on an uneven development that
produces uncountable eddies and swirls in historical time, the literally unthinkable
complexity of contemporary history that thwarts any overhasty universalizing gesture" (3)
"Any attempt to discuss the latter without accounting for the process by which previously
autonomous and hegemonic traditions assumed a position of subalternity (and therefore
changed meaning absolutely) is to mythologize cultural continuity while ignoring the
violence with which all cultural traditions have been violently opened up into world history.
On the other hand, any theory of modernism that fails to take up this same historythe
always encroaching movement of capital and the connection between this movement and
colonialism, world war, and the containment of socialism, which will be thematized more

explicitly as we approach our chapter

on Wyndham Lewismisses the very reason these texts are still so powerful today. (3).
METAMODERNIST!
In any case, it is well known that attempts to produce a theory of the tradition, rather than
reconstructing an autonomous heritage, tend to construct tradition according to the more or
less commonly held norms of one critical movement or another. One could hardly do
otherwise. The point is not to imagine that one could produce a purely innocent descriptive
discourse, but to be explicit about the manner in which one is positing the contents of ones
own language. (3)
What we usually call non-Western literature is rarely the expression (like the Inkishafi) of
some other
culture, if by that we understand some other set of norms and rules that has developed along
its own internal logic; rather, it must be thought of in terms of the positions that economically,
ethnically, sexually, and geographically differentiated subjects occupy within the single
culture of global capitalism that has more or less ruthlessly subsumed what was once a
genuinely multicultural globe. All of this should be obvious, even if our entire mainstream
multicultural discourse is built around its explicit denial.
but - metamodernist, irony?
terms like truth and the subject are the unrepresentable core around which one tends to either
idealism or historicism. in this sense, truth is the Real in the lacanian sense. This is what
remains outside Foucault, it is why he remains historicist.
dispersion and condensation, metonomy and metaphor.
"These same examples of the actuality of the notion of ideology, however, also render
clear the reasons why today one hastens to renounce the notion of ideology: does not
the critique of ideology
involve a privileged place, somehow exempted from the turmoils of social life, which
enables some sub ject-agent to perceive the very hidden mechanism that regulates social
visibility and non-visibility? Is not the claim that we can accede to this place the most
obvious case of ideology? Consequently, with reference to today's state of epistemological reflection, is not the notion of ideology self-defeating? So why should we cling to
a notion with such obviously outdated epistemological implications (the relationship of
'representation' between thought and reality, etc.)?' Is not its utterly ambiguous and elusive
character in itself a sufficient reason to abandon it? 'I deology' can designate anything
from a contemplative attitude that misrecognizes its dependence on social reality to an
action-orientated set of beliefs, from the indispensable medium in which individuals live
out their relations to a social structure to false ideas which legitimate a dominant
political power. It seems to pop up precisely when we attempt to avoid it, while it fails to
appear where one would clearly expect it to dwell. When some procedure is denounced

as 'ideological par excellence', one can be sure that its inversion is no less
ideological."
"The paradox in all these cases is that the stepping out of (what we ex perience
as) ideology is the very form of our enslavement to it." (6)
"the concept of ideology must be disengaged from the 'representationalist' problematic:
ideology has nothing to do with 'illusion', with a mistaken, distorted representation of
its social content. To put it succinctly: a political
standpoint can be quite accurate ('true') as to its objective content, yet thoroughly
ideological; and , vice versa, the idea that a political standpoint gives of its social
content can prove totally wrong, yet there is absolutely nothing 'ideological' about it. (7)
"An ideology is thus not necessarily 'false': as to its positive content, it can be 'true',
quite accurate, since what really matters is not the asserted content as such but the
way this content is related to the subjective position implied by its own process
of enunciation. We are with in ideological space proper the moment this content - 'true' or
'false' (if true, so much the better for the ideological effect) - is functional with regard to
some relation of social domination ('power', 'exploitation') in an inherently non-transparent
way: the very logic of legitimizing the relation of domination must remain concealed if it
is to be effective. in other words, the starting point of the critique of ideology has the full
acknowledgement of the fact that it is easily possible to lie in the guise of truth." (8)
the real, ding an sich, virtual. oscillation between the real, that is unrepresentable and the
symbolic (the narrative). The Grand narrative asserts the real as substantial positivity.
it is the spectral appearenc that is the real. the real of the illusion itself.
what appears impossible in the current state of the situation, that is the modern impossibility
to which one oscillates, through the act it becomes possible.

Deadlock. Relativism. No critique.

Paradoxically, it is precisely the assumption of the existence of reality world that gives rise to
I wil arguev that these problems arise due to the assumption of an really existing world .
second
Goven mentality. ?

differences ?
Entrepreneur
techniques

eppur si move
nihilisme: ecosystemen vs capitalism. defusie.
notions that seem to clarify, but effectively they introduce confusion.
antinomie: guilt versus structur. agency versus structure.
ideology itself is ideological. a dialectic which one pole dominates.
"the stepping out of (what we experience as) ideology is the very form of our enslavement to
it. (Zizek 6)
"Their sincere belief and insistence that they were not working for the restoration
of Western capitalism, of course, proved to be nothing but an insubstantial illusion; we
could say, however, that precisely as such (as a thorough illusion without substance) it was
stricto sensu non-ideological: it did not 'reflect', in an inverted-ideological form, any actual
relations of power. The theoretical lesson to be drawn from this is that the concept
of ideology must be disengaged from the 'representationalist' problematic: ideology has
nothing to do with 'illusion', with a mistaken, distorted representation of its social content.
To put it succinctly: a political standpoint can be quite accurate ('true') as to its objective
content, yet thoroughly ideological; and, vice versa, the idea that a political standpoint
gives of its social content can prove totally wrong, yet there is absolutely nothing
'ideological' about it.
This is one way to conceive of the Lacanian thesis according to which truth has the structure
of a fiction: in those confused months
of the passage of 'really existing socialism' into capitalism, the fction of a 'third way' was the
onl y point at which social antagonism was not obliterated. Herein lies one of the tasks of
the 'postmodern' critique of ideology: to designate the elements within an existing social
order which - in the guise of 'fction', that is, of 'Utopian' narratives of possible but failed
alternative histories - point towards the system's antagonistic character, and thus
'estrange' us to the self-evidence of its established identity.
distinction between the concept and the phenomenon.This is the paradox. but also very much
related. to argue that to battle the phenomenon, we need the concept. like gender and racism."
When you think you're out your van be sure deep in shit. On the one hand capital. On the
other it seems we live in post ideological times. Therefore it is of importance to clear up.
what is meant by it?

Incomplete nes ad absolutation

common use: positive and pejorative and descriptive (but interchangeble with culture,
beliefsystem).
zizek: other 'mere' ideology. descriptive is too general. other two are the same, although the
first affirms its own ideology. the second usually claims that only the other is in ideology
(mere ideology), and that it is itself free form it (either it knows the truth, or focuses on what
is most useful in the present situation: proletarian position/ pragmatist/common sense).
keep in mind, work through history of concept -> how to formulate the concept today.
two apparent contradictions, switch through time. the deadlock (zizek)
1) ideology as positive (end of ideology) vs. ideology as pejorative. (full in ideology)
2) ideology as ideas/conscious (end of ideology) vs. ideology as material/false conscious or
unconsious (full in ideology/ ISA / Dominant ideology)
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/marxism/modules/jamesonideology.html
ideas/consciousness vs material
positive: idea, not in the word. -> a concept for ideology.
pejorative; in the world, unconscious, nihilisme, no outside. -> no critical concept for
ideology. reactive romanticism/ reactive classicism.
the misunderstanding of ideology is that it is supposed to rest on a dualism: truth vs.
'ideology'. If it is decided that this dualism is untenable, one either opts for truth (now we
know that ideology is false, now we can be pragmatic liberal democratic capitalists
Fukuyama)) or claims that everything is 'ideology' (no outside, world view, belief system,
relativism) both leading to the end of ideology. Generally, this is what happened the last
decades. But this shows that ideology is precisely about the tension between truth and
ideology, for otherwise, it is useless as a concept.
The concept of ideology is problematic today.
"We might risk the paradox, then, that ideology was born as a thoroughly ideological critique
of ideology."
First contradicition: on the one hand determined by enviroement, they insisted on the other
that they could rise above it, by education. who educates the educators?
to see change, but in a more fundamental way, it did not change that much. change is more in
the different ways deal with the paradox.
1 Ideologues: to change ideas, is to change society
2 Marx: ideology is precisly that: the illusion that ideas are somehow autonomous.
3 Marx 2: commodity fetishism
4 luckacs and totality: proletariat can see totality. truth lies in the whole, positive, nonpejorative. ideology is not false consciousness. but retains comm fet as critical : no

disinterested social science (vantage point) , no historical relativism.

5 Gramsci Hegemony
6 foucault poststructuralist.
7

Indeed we might claim that wherea for the early Marx and Engels, ideology is thought false
to the true situation, for Lukacs it is thought true to a false situation.
difference neoliberal subject (interestedness) and ethical subject.
subject exist in between being and dispositif (subject of a multiplicity of processes of
subjectivation= capital a prolifiration of subjectivities) something is captured, the individual?
not the subject, the subject is the result of subjectivation)
to profanenate a dispositif use.
Economic (governmentality)
First, the theory of human capital.l2 I thinl< the interest of this theory
of human capital is that it represents two processes, one that we could
call the extension of economic analysis inro a previously unexplored
domain, and second, on the basis of this, the possibility of giving a
strictly economic interpretation of a whole domain previously thought
to be non-economic. Birth of biopolitics 219
Disclosure of truth! Not discovering but unlocking a kind of closure on truth

Discipline of bodies
and government of souls thus appear as the two complementary faces of
a single process of normalization: Senellart (386)
It is a matter of asking what type of practice governmentality is,
inasmuch as it has effects of objectivation and veridiction regarding
men themselves by constituting them as subjects.' Senellart (387)
the governmenr of lr.r.lf, which falls under*o,t"^lt.tt the art of properly governing a
famil which is parr of economy;
and finall rhe ,,science of gorr.*i.rg *"11,, i. stare, which belongs to politics (Security TP
83)
Then
there is continuity in the opposite, downward direction in the sense that
when a state is governed well, fathers will know how to govern their
families, their wealth, their goods, and their property well, and individuals will also conduct themselves properly. This descending line, which
means that the good government of the state affects individual conduct
or family management, is what begins to be called "police" at this time

PARRHESIA IS UPWARD
The essentiar issue of government will be the introduction of economy Into politicar
practice. And if this is true in the sixteenth century, it is still the case in the eighteenth. 95

split economy and governing. split what is governing and what is governed.
Now we can see that in La Perrire's text the definition of government
does not refer to the territory in any way: one governs things
dispositif = arrangement
If pomp is longer, if it ever has been a thing, how do we then now make sense of or present
historical situation? Pomp of course being a historical casualty
"history is a process without a subject"

Batman: discours of the M. Objective illusion / panopticum

obvious reason, discipline, distinction.
But impotence. Detail sentence cut. hit right away. Geen straf. Secret. Some one should not
know.
Objective illusion

This implies the recognition of the fact that the field of politics is constituted - in the strong
sense of its being the principle of deployment of its forms - not by a substantial community or
by an established oder, but by th irreconcilable character of certain antagonism. Thus, it is
not an a priori decuction but its very history that would proviede us wwith thekey to the
original content of the proletarian worldview, namely another theory and another practice of
politics (Balisbar Masses Classes Ideas 118)

truth Language (badiou, hallward 16 / Philosophy of philosophy willaimson)

Die tekst feminist, verschil kennis fantasy
cultural dominant: univeralism versus particularianism. Habermas/foucault. Fraser/butler.
Cosmopolitinism/organic community. European Union/nation states.

local global : glocal. metamodernism.

liberal democratic universalism is not universal. it excludes the common man.
rigid designators/primal baptism/performative character of naming./struggle --> Laclau
introduction zizek
If multiplicity. then oppositions,
with the wearing out of these distinctions, we have a resurgence of periodization. postmodern
and the modern.
frequency of the "beyond", spatial turn, materialist turn, speculative turn.
what's critical about critical theory? fraser. has critique run out of steam?

The most influential lesson of

Marx-the one which ranges him alongside Freud and Nietzsche as
one of the great negative diagnosticians of contemporary culture and
social life-has, of course, rightly been taken to be the les.son of false
consciousness, of dass bias and ideological programming, the lesson of
th~ structural Iimits of the values and attitudes of particular social
dasses, or in other words of the constitutive relationship between the
praxis of such groups and what they conceptualize as value or desire
and project in the form of culture. jameson
the reading accoring to which universal law itself is nothing but universalized crime, crime
broought to its extreme, to the point of self-negation, whereby the difference crime/law falls
withing crimce. Law "dominates" crime when some "absolute crime" particularizes all other
crimes, converts them into "mere particular crimes" - and this gesture of universalization by
means of which an entity turns into opossitie is, of course, precisely that of point the capiton.
if foucault shows the shadowy underside of the normative, the habermasians show the
normative inherent in foucault.
Haren: facebook/ panopticon / reactive romanticism/ beer without alcohol/
problem. structure agency. immanent causation, external causation.
solution.
Foucault qoutes
This enclosed, segmented space, observed at every point, in which the
individuals are inserted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are

supervised, in which all events are recorded, in which an uninterrupted work of

writing links the centre and periphery, in which power is exercised without
division, according to a continuous hierarchical figure, in which each
individual is constantly located, examined and distributed among the living
beings, the sick and the dead - all this constitutes a compact model of the
disciplinary mechanism. (Discipline and Punisch, 197)
Against the plague, which is a mixture, discipline brings into play its power,
which is one of analysis. (Discipline and Punisch, 197)
The plague as a form, at once real and imaginary, of disorder had as its medical
and political correlative discipline. (DP, 198)
If it is true that the leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion, which to a certain
extent provided the model for and general form of the great Confinement, then
the plague gave rise to disciplinary projects. Rather than the massive, binary
divisions between one set of people and another, it called for multiple
separations, individualizing distributions, an organization in depth of surveillance
and control, an intensification and ramification of power (DP, 198)
The leper was caught up in a practice of rejection [binary], of exile-enclosure;
he was left to his doom in a mass among which it was useless to differentiate;
those sick of the plague were caught up in a meticulous tactical partitioning in
which individual differentiations were constricting effects of a power that
multiplied, articulated and subdivided itself; the great confinement on the
one hand; the correct training on the other. The leper and his separation; the
plague and its segmentations. The first is marked; the second analysed
and distributed. The exile of the leper and the arrest of the plague do not bring
with them the same political dream. The first is that of a pure community,
the second that of a disciplined society (DP, 198)
We see them coming slowly together, and it is the peculiarity of the
nineteenth century that it applied to the' space of exclusion of which the leper
was the symbolic inhabitant (beggars, vagabonds, madmen and the
disordrly formed the real population) the technique of power proper to
disciplinary partitioning. (DP, 199)
In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three
functions - to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide - it preserves only the

first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor
capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.
(200)
Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of
conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of
power.
It is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power.
Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted
distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; -in an arrangement whose internal
mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up. The
ceremonies, the rituals, the marks by which the sovereign's surplus power was
manifested are useless. There is a machinery that assures dissymmetry,
disequilibrium, difference. Consequently, it does not matter who exercises
power. Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the machine: in
the absence of the director, his family, his friends, his visitors, even his servants
(Bentham, 45). Similarly, it does not matter what motive animates him: the
curiosity of the indiscreet, the malice of a child, the thirst for knowledge of a
philosopher who wishes to visit this museum of human nature, or the
perversity of those who take pleasure in spying and punishing. The more
numerous those anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the risk
for the inmate of being surprised and the greater his anxious awareness of
being observed. The Panopticon is marvelous machine which, whatever use
one may wish to put it to, produes homogeneous effects of power.
(202)
A real subjection is born mechanically from from a fictitious relation.
he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays
both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.
The Panopticon, on the other hand, must be understood as a generalizable model
of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of
men.
Discipline may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus;
it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of

instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a

physics or an anatomy of power, a technology. (215)
The real, corporal disciplines constituted the foundation of the formal,
juridical liberties. (222)
The Disciplines should be regarded as a sort of counter-law. They have the
precise role of introducing insuperable asymmetries and excluding
reciprocities. (222)
First, because discipline creates between individuals a private link [?], which is
a relation of constraints entirely different from contractual obligation; the
acceptance of a discipline may be underwritten by contract; the way in which it
is imposed, the mechanisms it brings into play, the non-reversible [contrary to
the contract?] subordination of one group of people to another, the surplus
power that is always fixed on the same side, the inequality of position of the
different partners in relation to the common regulation, all these distinguish the
disciplinary link from the contractual link, and make it possible to distort the
contractual link systematically from the moment it has as its content a
mechanism of discipline. (223) Employer-Employee?
We know, for example, how many real procedures undermine thelegal fiction of
the work contract: workshop discipline is not theleast important. Moreover,
whereas the juridical systems define juridical subjects according to universal
norms' the disciplines characterize, classify, specialize; they distribute along a
scale, around a norm, hierarchize individuals in relation to one another and, if
necessary, disqualify and invalidate. 223
History of Sexuality
The discursive explosion of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries caused this
system centered on legitimate alliance to undergo two modifications. First, a
centrifugal movement with respect to heterosexual monogamy. Of course, the
array of practices and pleasures continued to be referred to it as their internal
standard; but it was spoken of less and less, or in any case with a growing
moderation. Efforts to find out its secrets were abandoned; nothing further
was demanded of it than to define itself from day to day' The legitimate
couple, with its regular sexuality, had a right to more discretion. It tended to
function as a norm' one that was stricter' perhaps, but quieter. (38)

Privacy as the right to violate Thou shall not commit adultery.

But he prohibition of "incests" attempted to reach its objective through, an

asymptotic decrease in the thing it condemned, whereas the control of
infantile sexuality hoped to reach it through a simultaneous propagation of its
own power and of the object on which it was brought to bear.

It proceeded

in accordance with a twofold increase extended indefinitely (42).

Educators and doctors combated children's onanism like an epidemic that
needed to be eradicated. What this actually entailed, throughout this whole
secular campaign that mobilized the adult world around the sex of children,
was using these tenuous pleasures as a prop, constituting them as secrets
(that is, forcing them into hiding so as to make possible their discovery),
tracing them back to their source, tracking them from their origins to their
effects, searching out everything that might cause them or simply enable
them to exist. (42)
The child's "vice" was not so much an enemy as a support; it may have been
designated as the evil to be eliminated, but the extraordinary effort that went
into the task that was bound to fail leads one to suspect that what was
demanded of it was to persevere, to proliferate to the limits of the visible and
the invisible, rather than to disappear for good. Always relying on this support,
power advanced, multiplied its relays and its effects, while its target expanded,
subdivided, and branched out, penetrating further into reality at the same
pace. In appearance' we are dealing with a barrier system; but in fact, all
around the child, indefinite lines of penetration were disposed.

This new persecution of the peripheral sexualities entailed an incorporation of

perversions and a new specification of individuals. As defined by the ancient
civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; teir
perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical subject of them. The
ninetheenth-century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history,
and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology,
with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology (43)

Not the exclusion of these thousand aberrant sexualities, but the

specification, the regional solidification of each one of them. The strategy
behind this dissemination was to strew reality with them and incorporate
them into the individual.
More than the old taboos, this forrn of power demanded constant, attentive,
and curious presences for its exercise; it presupposed proximities; it
proceeded through examination and insistent observation; it required an
exchange of discourses, through questions that extorted admissions, and
confidences that went beyond the questions that were asked.
There was undoubtedly an increase in effectiveness and an extension ofthe
domain controlled; but also a sensualization of power and a gain of pleasure.
It did not exclude sexuality, but included it in the body as a mode of specification
of individuals. It did not seek to avoid it; it attracted its varieties by means of
spirals in which pleasure and power reinforced one another. 47

The Deployment of Sexuality take effect, whose general design or institutional

crystalliza-tion is embodied in the state apparatus, in the formulation - of the
law, in the various social hegemonies. Power's condi-tion of possibility, or in any
case the viewpoint which permits one to understand its exercise, even in its
more "peripheral" effects, and which also makes it possible to use its mechanisms as a grid of intelligibility of the social order, must not be sought in the
primary existence of a central point, in a unique source of sovereignty from
which secondary and de- scendent forms would emanate; it is the moving
substrate of force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly
engender states of power, but the latter are always local and unstable. The
omnipresence of power: not because it has the privilege of consolidating
everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced from one
moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one
point to another. Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything,
but because it comes from everywhere. And "Power," insofar as it is
permanent, repetitious, inert, and self-reproducing, is simply the over-all
effect that emerges from all these mobilities, the concatenation that rests
on each of them and seeks in turn to arrest their move- ment. One needs to be
nominalistic, no doubt: power is not an institution, and not a structure;

neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one
attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.Hence the
objective is to analyze a certain form of knowledge regarding sex, not in terms
of repression or law, but in terms of power. But the word power is apt to
lead to a number of misunderstandings-misunderstandings with respect to its
nature, its form, and its unity.
By power, I do not mean "Power" as a group of institutions and mechanisms
that ensure the subservience of the citizens of a given state. By power, I do
not mean, either, a mode of subjugation which, in contrast to violence,
has the form of the rule. Finally, I do not have in mind a general system
of domination exerted by one group over another, a system whose effects,
through successive derivations, pervade the entire social body. The analysis,
made in terms of power, must not assume that the sovereignty of the state, the
form of the law, or the over-all unity of a domination are given at the outset;
rather, these are only the terminal forms power takes. It seems to me that
power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force
relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute
their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles and
confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which
these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system, or
on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from
one another; and lastly, as the strategies in which they

they are imbued, through and through, with calculation: there is no power
that is exercised without a series of aims and objectives. But this does not
mean that it results from the choice or decision of an individual subject; let
us not look for the headquarters that presides over its rationality; neither the
caste which governs, nor the groups which control the state apparatus, nor
those who make the most important economic decisions direct the entire
network of power that functions in a society (and makes it function); the
rationality of power is characterized by tactics that are often quite explicit at
the restricted level where they are inscribed (the local cynicism of power),
tactics which, becoming connected to one another, attracting and propagating
one another, but finding their base of support and their condition elsewhere, end
by forming comprehensive systems: the logic is perfectly clear, the aims

decipherable, and yet it is often the case that no one is there to have invented
them, and few who can be said to have formulated them: an implicit
characteristic of the great anonymous, almost unspoken strategies which
coordinate the loquacious tactics whose "inventors" or decisionmakers are
often without hypocrisy. (History of sexuality 95-87).
And after all, once we have excavated our genealogical fragments, once we
begin to ex-ploit them and to put in circulation these elements of knowledge
that we have been trying to dig out of the sand, isn't there a danger that they
will be recoded, recolonized by these unitary discourses which, having first
disqualified them and having then ignored them whenthey reappeared, may
now be ready to reannex them and include them in their own discourses and
their own power-knowledge effects? (society must be defended, 11)
to specify or identify what is at stake when knowledges begin to challenge,
struggle against, and rise up against the institution and the power- and
knowledge-effects of scientific discourse. 12
First, by "governmentality" I understand the ensemble formed by institutions,
procedures, analyses and reflections, calculations, and tactics that allow the
exercise of this very specific, albeit very complex, power that has the
population as its target, political economy as its major form of knowledge, and
apparatuses of security as its essential technical instrument. Second, by
"governmentality" I understand the tendency, the line of force, that for a long
time, and throughout the West, has constantly led towards the pre-eminence
over all other types of power-sovereignty discipline, and so on-of the type of
power that we can call "government" and which has led to the development of
a series of specific governmental apparatuses (apparels) on the one hand,
[and, on the other]+ to the development of a series of knowledges (sauoirs).
Finally by "governmentality" I think we should understand the process, or
rather, the result of the process by which the share of justice of the Middle Ages
became the adminisrrative stare in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and
was gradually governmentalized (security, territory, population, 108)

But rhe state, doubtless no more tod"y th"r, ir, . p"rr,does nor have this unity,
individuality, and rigorous functionaliry, nor,I would go so far as to sa this
importance. Afte ar, maybe the state i, o.rlya composite reality and a

mythicized abstracrion whose importance is muchless than we think. M"yb..

\Vhat is importanr for our -o".rrity, rhat is tosa for our present' is not then
rhe state's takeover (tatisanron)of sociery, ,omuch as what I would call the
,,governmentalization,, of th. ,t"r".
In today's world, what can prompt in an individual the desire, the abiliry, and
the possibility for absolute sacrifice, without there being any reason to suspect
in their action the least ambition o. desire for power and profit? That was what I
saw in Tunisia, the evidence of the necessity of myth, of a spirituarity, the
unbearable quality of certain situations produced by capitalism, colonialism,
and neocolonialism. (STP 376).

( .) the strategist being the man who says,

What does a particular death, a particular cry a particular revolt matter when
compared to the great necessity of the whole, and, on the other hand, what
does a general principle manner in the particular situation in which we are
living?,', well, it is immaterial to me whether the strategist is a politician, a
historian, a revolutionary a follower of the shah or of the ayatollah; my
theoretical morality is opposite to theirs. It is "antistrategic": to be respectful
when a singularity revolts, intransigent when power violates the universal.
(377)
The problematic of "governmentality,' is set out between the political refusal of
terrorism and this praise of revolt in the name of an "antistrategic morality.
The term gnome designates the unity of will and knowledge; it also designates
a brief piece of discourse through which truth may appear with all its force and
encrust itself in the soul of people.
Knowledge -> subjectivation
As I see it, we have to bypass or get around the problem of sovereignty = which
is central to the theory of right - and the obedience of individuals who submit to
it, and to reveal the problem of domination and subjugation instead of
sovereignty and obedience. (Society must be defended, 27)

I do not at present envisage 'going beyond' Freudianism or breaking definitively with

it, however I do want to reorient Freud's concepts and practices so as to use
them differently; I want to uproot them from their pre-structuralist ties, from a

subjectivity anchored solidly in the individual and collective past. (Three ecologies,
Guattari, 38)
alle appels zijn rood = niet alle appels zijn niet rood
alle appels zijn rood dus sommige appels zijn rood
alle appels zijn rood dus niet alle appels zijn niet rood.
niet alle appels zijn groen -> sommige zijn groen?

alle vrouwen zijn klein, dus niet alle vrouwen zijn niet klein.
Niet alle vrouwen zijn niet klein, dus niet alle vrouwen zijn (bv) groot (of middelmatig),
Niet alle vrouwen zijn (bv) groot, dus sommige zijn groot, sommige zijn klein
Alle vrouwen zijn klein = geen grote vrouwen
Niet alle vrouwen zijn niet klein = sommige zijn iets anders dan klein, sommige zijn klein
Alle materie is iets
Niet alle materie is niet iets
Niet alle materie is niet iets = sommige materie is iets anders dan iets, sommige is iets.
alles is materie
er is niets dat niet materie is
alle dingen zijn materie
alle appels zijn rood
niet (alle dingen zijn niet materie) = alle dingen zijn materie ||| [niet alle dingen] zijn [niet
materie] = sommige dingen zijn niet materie
er is niets dat niet materie is. Niets is niet materie (niet
alle samenlevingen bestaan uit individuen
niet (alle samenlevingen bestaan uit niet individien)

niets is niet materie

"The illusion on which these two stories rely, that of putting two incompatible phenomena on
the same level,is strictly analogous to what Kant called transcendental illusion, the illusion
of being able to use the same language for phenomena which are mutually untranslatable and
can be grasped only in a kind of parallax view, constantly shifting perspective between two
points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible. Thus there is no rapport between
the two levels, no shared spacealthough they are closely connected, even identical in a
way, they are, as it were, on the opposed sides of a Moebius strip. 4
The first critical move is to replace this topic of the polarity of opposites with the concept of
the inherent tension, gap, noncoincidence,
of the One itself.This book is based on a strategic politico-philosophical decision to
designate this gap which separates the One from itself with the term parallax.
97
there was never a premodernity, but something of premodernity was not overcome by
modernity.
Martin Luther King
truly new emerges trough repetition, the same means something different, because the whole
horizon has changed.
religion = modern. marten luther : back to the origin, but different. Foucault epistemes.
from the rise of the isms to the rise of the ities. governmentality. but also -> mobility. weary
for the implicit or disavowed idealism in an ity. ity is secretly an ism.
reversal first is embedded, second is more disinterested, analytical, assumes an autonomous
vantage point.
badiou bodies and languages (ities) except there are truths.
force heuristic to end, then nit neutral. Then post modern as openness. Than ity
Unseen
The real is thus the disavowed X on account of which our vision of reality is anamorphically
distorted; it is simultaneously the Thing to which direct access is not possible and the obstacle
which prevents this direct acces, the Thing which eludes your grasp and the distorting screen
which makes us miss the Thing. More precisely, the Real is ultimately the very shift of
perspective from the first standpoint to the second. 26

Metaphor of the vase.

critique as such is emancipation, is postmodern. is different from romantic enthusiasm. First
seems to remain negative, what is demanded is a positive program.
Foucault: "History has become the unavoidable element in our thought: in this respect,
it is probably not so very different from Classical Order" (OOT 238)

Post historie jameson

Cos..crtic... Analytics government.
As in all previous history, whoever emerges as victor still participates in that triumph in
which today's rulers march over the prostrate bodies of their victims. As is customary,
the spoils are borne aloft in that triumphal parade. These are generally called the cultural
heritage. The latter finds a rather distanced observer in the historical materialist. For such
cultural riches, as he surveys them, everywhere betray an origin which he cannot but
contemplate with horror. They owe their existence, not merely to the toil of the great creators
who have produced them, but equally to the anonymous forced Iabor of the latters'
contemporaries. There has never been a document of culture which was not at one and the
same time a document of barbarism. -Walter Benjamin
R. Gray
German 390/Comp. Lit. 396/Engl 363/CHID 498/Euro 490/Lit 298
"Freud and the Literary Imagination"
Lecture Notes: Freud, "The Uncanny" (1919)
I. General Structure of the Essay
A. "Uncanny" divided into three sections:
1.
1. Definition of the uncanny; definitions of the term itself; the semantic field of
the opposition of the German words heimlich and unheimlich.
2. Examination of E.T.A. Hoffmanns (1776-1822) short story "The Sandman"
(1817) and a discussion of the psychoanalytic background and general context
required for an understanding of the experience of the uncanny.
3. Deliberations on the effect of the uncanny, in particular its aesthetic
instantiation in literature and fiction.
Note the prominence of the thematic of eyes and seeing in Freud's essay: loss
of eyes as fear of castration; evil eye as manifestation of uncanny; super-ego

as double, and its function of self-observation. Freud picks up this theme from
Hoffmann's story, which also has many motifs related to eyes and seeing.
II. Definition of the Uncanny
A. Aesthetics and Psychoanalysis merged here. The uncanny is the subject of aesthetics.
Why? Because it has to do with a certain kind of feeling or sensation, with emotional
impulses. But in general aesthetics has neglected to study the uncanny, preferring to
concentrate on beauty and, generally, on more positive emotions: the attractive, the
sublime, etc. The uncanny is something fearful and frightening, and as such it has
been neglected in the history of aesthetics. But Modernism marks a turn in asesthetics
in general toward a fascination with the ugly, the grotesque: a kind of "negative"
aesthetics. Freud's essay makes a contribution to this supplement to the aesthetics of
the "beautiful" by examining what we might call the aesthetics of the "fearful," the
aesthetics of anxiety.
-- Freud will wed psychoanalytic and aesthetic modes of thought to develop his theory
of the uncanny; the theory remains incomplete if it fails to regard both of these. It is
important to keep in mind here that Freud interprets beauty in general as an "inhibited
aim": that is, as a sublimated reflection or manifestation of our erotic instincts and
impulses. See in this regard the Freud Reader, p. 193.
-- This essay provides a brilliant exampleperhaps the most stunning one in all of
Freuds worksof the intertwining of psychoanalysis with another discipline: here,
literary criticism.
-- In this essay Freud plays the part of a literary critic who tries to explain the effect of
a certain kind of literature; he is concerned with literary reception. Coherent with this
literary orientation is the fact that he begins his analysis
with philological considerations: the meaning of the word "uncanny" (unheimlich), its
etymology, history, historical development, general use, etc.
B. What is the uncanny?
-- "Uncanny," p. 195: Freud's definition = uncanny as the class of frightening things
that leads us back to what is known and familiar.
-- Freud's aim: to demonstrate psychoanalytically why this is the case.
-- Only previous study of the uncanny = that of Ernst Jentsch (1867-?), "On the
Psychology of the Uncanny" (1906): Jentschs conclusions: 1) Uncanny = fear of
the unfamiliar; 2) Uncanny = based on intellectual uncertainty.
-- Freud will take issue with both of these propositions.
-- Study of the German words, heimlich and unheimlich (canny/homey; uncanny/unhomey).
heimlich, first definition = I, a: belonging to the house; friendly; familiar; I, b: tame (as in
animals); I, c: intimate, comfortable; i.e: secure, dometic(ated), hospitable.
heimlich, second definition = concealed, secret, withheld from sight and from others;
secretive, deceitful = private.
-- Note the dialectic of these meanings, summarized on p. 200: what from the perspective of
the one who is "at home" is familiar, is to the outsider, the stranger, the very definition of the
unfamiliar, the secretive, the impenetrable.

-- The term heimlich embodies the dialectic of "privacy" and "intimacy" that is inherent in
bourgeois ideology. Therefore Freud can associate it with the "private parts," the parts of the
body that are the most "intimate" and that are simultaneously those parts subject to the most
concealment (see p. 200). However, in Freud's understanding the "heimlich" will also be
something that isconcealed from the self.
unheimlich: as the negation of heimlich, this word usually only applies to the first set of
meanings listed above:
unheimlich I = unhomey, unfamiliar, untame, uncomfortable = eerie, weird, etc.
unheimlich II (the less common variant) = unconcealed, unsecret; what is made known; what
is supposed to be kept secret but is inadvertently revealed.
-- Note the implicit connection of this notion of the unheimlich to Freuds concept of
"parapraxis," the inadvertent slip of the tongue that reveals a hidden truth. Schellings
definition (p. 199): "Unheimlich is the name for everything that ought to have remained
secret and hidden but has come to light." Unheimlich thus becomes a kind of unwilling,
mistaken self-exposure. In psychoanalytic terms, it provides a surprising and unexpected selfrevelation.
Freud concentrates on the unusual semantics of these 2 terms:
heimlich I = known, familiar; unheimlich I = unknown, unfamiliar
heimlich II = secret, unknown; unheimlich II = revealed, uncovered
For a diagram of the complex semantic dynamics and oppositions Freud associates with
these terms, click here.
The word heimlich thus has a meaning that overlaps with its opposite, unheimlich; the
semantics of this word come full circle.
-- Freud's thesis: unheimlich, the uncanny = revelation of what is private and concealed, of
what is hidden; hidden not only from others, but also from the self.
In Freudian terminology: the uncanny is the mark of the return of the repressed. (See
"Uncanny" 217)
III. E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman" and the Psychoanalytic Elements of the Uncanny.
A. Jentsch's theory of the automaton: he sees the undecidability of the inanimate/animate
opposition as one source of the uncanny. In Hoffmann's story this is embodied in the
robotic woman Olympia. Jentsch sees this as the uncanny kernel of this text.
-- Freud disagrees: he claims the source of the uncanny in this tale is the eponymous
figure of the sandman himself. The sandman as a mythic figure who tears out
children's eyes.
B. Story line of Hoffmann's "The Sandman":
1) Nathanial, the protagonist, is warned as a child about the sandman. The eerie

Coppelius comes to conduct experiments with Nathaniel's father; Nathanial sees

Coppelius and associates him with the sandman. Nathanial is discovered as he
observes Coppelius and his father conducting alchemical experiments; Coppelius
wants to burn his eyes out, but the father saves him. Nathaniel's father is later killed
by an explosion during one of Coppelius's visits.
2) As a student, Nathanial meets the optician Coppola, from whom he buys a spyglass. Nathanial falls in love with the automaton Olympia, whom he sees through this
glass. Olympia has been produced by Spalanzani (double of the father) and Coppola
(the double of Coppelius). Nathanial observes how the 2 fight over the automaton and
the eyes are pulled out of the robots head. This fight between the two "fathers"
repeats the fight that Coppelius and Nathaniel's father had over Nathaniel himself,
when he was discovered spying on their experiments. (Note the significance of the
structure of doubling in this story; we saw something similar in Kafka's "Country
Doctor").
-- Nathanial falls into a state of insanity.
3) Nathanial recovers, and he is about to marry his fiancee Clara. They ascend the
tower of the town hall and Nathaniel sees Coppelius through his spy-glass. He goes
insane again and tries to kill Clara. Her brother rescues her, but Nathanial jumps off
the tower to his death. The spy-glass is a kind of symbol for the revelation of a hidden
secret, for a tool that makes the heimlich (secret) unheimlich (unsecret). It allows
Nathanial to penetrate into the sphere of the "private," but also to gain access to the
repressed parts of his own past.
C. Freud's Interpretation:
1) Freud stresses the uncertainty of whether the events the narrator relates to us are real or
imaginary; for uncanny fiction, this ambivalence will become decisive. (This is Freud's
version of Jentsch's "intellectual uncertainty.")
2) For Freud the source of the uncanny is tied to the idea of being robbed of one's eyes. Why?
Here Freud turns to the experience of the psychoanalyst: In dreams, myths, neurotic fantasies,
etc. loss of the eyes = fear of castration. In "The Sandman" Coppelius, the "bad" father,
interferes with all love relationships. He is the powerful, castrating father who supplants
(kills) the good father who first protects Nathaniel's "eyes."
3) The uncanny thus marks the return of the familiar in the sense of our psychic economy (in
which nothing is ever lost or wholly forgotten). It is the castration complex as part of our
infantile sexuality (genital phase) that is re-invoked by the fear of loss of the eyes in this
story. What is uncanny here is thus the return of something in our psychosexual history that
has been overcome and forgotten.
-- Freud's first thesis: The uncanny arises due to the return of repressed infantile
material.
4) Other examples of this: The double (doppelganger); its source is the primary narcissism
of the child, its self-love. In early childhood this produces projections of multiple selves. By
doing this the child insures his/her immortality. But when it is encountered later in life, after
childhood narcissism has been overcome, the double invokes a sensation of the uncanny = a
return to a primitive state.
5) But Freud also relates the double to the formation of the super-ego. The super-ego projects
all the things it represses onto this primitive image of the double. Hence the double in later
life is experienced as something uncanny because it calls forth all this repressed content:
-- Alternative meanings for this form of the double: a. it represents everything that
is unacceptable to the ego, all its negative traits that have been suppressed; or b. it embodies

all those utopian dreams, wishes, hopes that are suppressed by the reality principle, by
the encounter with society. (See "Uncanny" 211-212) This aspect of Freud's theory will
become important for our interpretation of Hofmannsthal's "A Tale of the Cavalry."
WHY IS THE DOPPELGANGER THE PARADIGM OF THE UNCANNY?
-- It represents a psychic nodal point with multiple implications, meanings, sources, etc.
AMBIVALENCE: The Double Doubled
The fact that an agency of this kind [the super-ego] exists, which is able to treat the rest of
the ego like an object--the fact, that is, that man is capable of self-observation--renders it
possible to invest the old idea of a double with a new meaning and to ascribe many things
to it--above all, those things which seem to self-criticism to belong to the old surmounted
narcissism of earlier times. But it is not only this latter material, offensive as it is to the
criticism of the ego, which may be incorporated in the idea of a double. There are also all the
unfulfilled but possible futures to which we still like to cling in phantasy, all the strivings of
the ego which adverse circumstances have crushed [. . .]. The Uncanny (211-12; emphasis
added)
(This aspect of Freuds theory will become important for our interpretation of Hofmannsthals
A Tale of the Cavalry.)
Freud's general thesis: The uncanny is anything we experience in adulthood that
reminds us of earlier psychic stages, of aspects of our unconscious life, or of the
primitive experience of the human species.
a. castration
b. double
c. involuntary repetition; the compulsion to repeat (Wiederholungszwang) as a structure of the
unconscious.
d. animistic conceptions of the universe = the power of the psyche. It sees itself as stronger
than reality; e.g. telepathy, mind over matter. These are common conceptions of primitive
life.
The uncanny arises as the recurrence of something long forgotten and repressed,
something superceded in our psychic life = a reminder of our psychic past.
IV. The Uncanny in Literature, in Narrative Fiction.
A. Freud is not entirely satisfied with his own conclusion. Not everything that returns from
repression is uncanny. Return of the repressed is a necessary condition for the uncanny,
but not a sufficient one. Something else must also be at play here in order to create the
experience of the uncanny.
B. To understand this, Freud returns to the study of fiction for help.
Here we find the 2 sources of the uncanny, its relation to the psychic past, confirmed:
1) uncanny = revival of repressed infantile material = part of individual psychic reality;
2) uncanny = confirmation or return of surmounted primitive beliefs of the human species,
such as animism, etc.
C. But Freud asks why our experience of the uncanny in our real-life experiences and in
fiction are different. His answer (we know it already!) = fantasy is different from reality

because it does not undergo reality-testing.

-- Therefore, events that would be uncanny if experienced in real life are not experienced as
such in fiction. Fairy tales, for example, give many instances of uncanny events that are not
experienced by the reader as uncanny. Why? The readers adjust their sensibility to the
fictional world. (See "Uncanny" 227) In other words, since uncanny events seem "normal" in
the fairy-tale world, and we adjust our expectations to the "normal" state of this fictional
reality, we as readers do not gain a sense of the uncanny. Or, we might say: since the
characters in the fictional world of fairy tales do not see fantastic events as unusual or
uncanny, but take them as a matter of course, the reader also is not led to find these things out
of the "ordinary" (for the depicted world).
-- Fiction only creates an uncanny effect if the author makes a pretense to realism; if we as
readers believe that real, actual conditions are being narrated.
-- The experience of the uncanny in literature depends on the discrepancy between real
events and fantastic occurrences in the fictional world. The author promises truth and
verisimilitude, but thenbreaks this promise. (See "Uncanny" 227)
-- We, as readers of the fiction, must share the perspective of the character who
experiences the uncanny event in the fictional world. See "Uncanny" 229, the example of
the severed hand.
-- In Hoffmann's "The Sandman," the narrator makes us look through the spy-glass Nathaniel
buys from Coppola/Coppelius, the demon optician. (See "Uncanny" 205-206).
V. Summary of the Qualities of Uncanny Fiction
A. Focus is on one central character = the anchor character; events, people, etc. in the
fictional world only have significance in relation to this character. It forms the hub, or center
of all events.
B. External events are seen through the perspective of the anchor character and colored by his
or her psyche; they are projections of the psyche of this fictional character.
C. The text thus takes on the quality of a dream text, with manifest and latent content. The
real and the fantastic (Freud's required ambivalence) form a unity in the consciousness of the
anchor character. This lends some of the events the shimmer of the symbolic because it is
undecidable whether they are real or imagined.
D. Stylistically, uncanny fiction requires a fusion of objective and subjective narrative
styles. We commonly find a realistic frame, which reads like a report or a newspaper article,
which is suddenly ruptured by fantastic events. But this rupture is also related with the
accuracy and detail of objective narration.
E. The reader's perspective must be that of the anchor character; events must be
perceived through his/her eyes, filtered through the psyche of this character.
Only when all of these conditions are met is the experience of the uncanny transferred
from the domain of the fictional world to the receptive experience of the reader.
Last Updated: 2/24/12
fetish from king to money. from explicit to implicit

ideology from explicit to implicit.

from sacrifice yourself to products. ideology from explicit to implicit.
the explicit message is no longer the locus ideology. from content to form.
bill gates: lets help the world: implicit; don't think. tegenlicht
organic intellectuals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?client=mvgoogle&gl=NL&hl=en&v=U6wsR5ix6LQ&nomobile=1
culture and ideology bosteels.
Trans historistische moderne europese denken .
/ trans finite
relativisme is gegrond in iets absoluuts
Always something that has disappeard
Melancholy. That was never there.

identiteit, interpellation. second person.

understanding, recognition is not the answer.

irony. cynisim.
no deeper meaning. rejection of meaning.
i do not think about identity, but sometimes i am asked out of the blue. it is this that is the
interpellation, the state apparatus, not the police who calls me out.
you claiming having no identiy, is the identity. but then it is ideology, and it is! everything
becomes identity.
in house of cards, we are the big other. or are we objet a? he does not speak to us when he is
sincere, when he cynisism doesnt hold. we are there to sustain his fantasy.
It is easy to deride the tautological emptiness of this gesture, but Hegel's point lies elsewhere:
by means of its very formal character, this gesture renders possible the search for the real
ground. Formal causality qua empty gesture opens up the field of the analysis of content - As
in Marx's Capital, in which the formal subsumption of the process of
production under capital precedes, opens up the way for, the material organization of
production in accordance with the requirements of capital (i.e., first, the precapitalist material
organization of production which was simply found - individual artisans, etc. - is formally
subsumed under capital - the capitalist provides the artisan with raw materials, etc.;
then, gradually, production is materially restructured into a collective manufacturing process
directly run by capitalists (137)
--How, then, are we tot eschew this mess, this exchangeability of ground and circumstances?
Let us take another example: Renaissance, i.e., the rediscovery ("rebirth") of antiquity which
exerted a crucial influence on the break with the medieval way of life in the fifteenth century
The first, obvious explanation is that the influence of the newly discovered antique tradition
brought about the dissolution of the medieval "paradigm." Here, however, a
question immediately pops up: why did antiquity begin to exert its influence at precisely that
moment and not earlier or later? The answer that offers itself, of course, is that due to the
dissolution of medieval social links, a new zeitgeist emerged which made us responsive to
antiquity; something must have changed in "us" so that we became able to perceive antiquity
not as a pagan kingdom of sin but as the model to be adopted.
That's all very well, but we still remain locked in a vicious circle, since this new zeitgeist
itself took shape precisely through the discovery of antique texts as well as fragments of
classical architecture and sculpture. In a way, everything was already there, in the external
circumstances; the new zeitgeist formed itself through the influence of antiquity which
enabled renaissance thought to shatter the medieval changes; yet for this influence of
antiquity to be felt, the new zeitgeist must already have been active. The only way out of th
impasse is therefore the intervention, at a certain point, of a tautolocial gesture: the new
zeitgeist had to constitute itself by literally pressupposing itself in its exteriority, in its
external conditions (in antiquity). In other words, it was not sufficient for the new zeitgeist
retroactively to posit these external conditions (the antique tradition) as "its own," it hat the

(presup)pose itself as alrady present in these conditions. The return to extranal conditions (to
antiquity) had to coincide with the return to the foundation, to the "thing itself," to the
ground. (This is precisely how the Renaissance [or for that matter:
METAMODERNISM]: as the return to the Greek and Roman foundations of our Western
civilization.)
We do not thus have an inner ground the actualization of which depends on external
circumstances; the external relation of presupposing (ground presupposes conditions and vice
versa) is surpassed in a pure tautolotical gesture by means of which the thing presupposes
itself. This tautological gesture is "empty" in the precise sense that it does not contribute
anything new, it only retroactively ascertains that the thing in question is already present in
its conditions, i.e., that the totality of these conditions is actuality of the thing. Such an empry
gesture provides us with the most elementary definition of the symbolic act. [not simply as
as symbol, but in zizek/lacan sense / virtual point in immanent transcendence to
imaginary]
Here we see the fundamental paradox of "rediscovering tradition" at work in the constitution
of national identity: a nation finds its sense of self-identity by means of such a tautological
gesture, i.e., by way of discovering itself as already present in its tradition. Consequently, the
mechanism of the "rediscovery of national tradition" cannot be reduced to the "positiing of
presupppositions" in the sense of the retroactive positing of conditions as "ours" The point is
rather that, in the very act of returning to its (external) conditions, the (national) thing returns
to itself. The return to conditions is experienced as the "return to our true roots." (148)
-In this precise sense symbolic authority always, by definition, hinges on an irreducible
potentiality-possibility, on the actuality-effectivy that pertains to possibility qua possibility:
we leave behind the "raw," pre-symbolic real and enter the symbolic universe the moment
possibility acquires actuality of its own . . . The Master's potential thereat is far worse than his
actual display of power. This is what Bentham counts on in his fantasy-matrix of Panopticon:
the fact that the Other - the gaze in the central observing tower - can watch me; my radical
uncertainty as to whether I am being observed or not at any precise moment gives rise to an
anxiety far greater than that aroused by the awareness that I am actually observed. This
surplus of what is "in the posssibility more that a mere possibility" and which gets lost in its
actualization is the real qua impossible. It is precisely on account of this potential character
of his power that a Master is always, by definition, an impostor, i.e., somebody who
illegitemately occupies the place of the lack in the Other (the symbolic Order). (160)
In all three cases, the "lapse" designates the shift from subject into subjectivization: in my
capacity as knoweing subject, I "subjectivize" myself by way of recognizing myself as
"person" in the fullness of its content; in my capacity as moral subject, I "subjectivize"
myself by way of submitting myself to some substantial Supreme Good; in my capacity as
reflecting, judging subject, I "subjectivize" myself by way of idenitfyting my place in a
telological, harmonious structure of the univers. In all three cases, the logic of this lapse" is
that of an illusion which, even when its mechanism is exposed, continues to operate: I (may)
know that teleological judgments have the status of a mere subjective refelection, not of a
genuine knowledge of reality, yet nonetheless I cannot abstain from making teleolocial
observations; etc. (172)
DOUBLE BIND

In all three cases, the Kantian subject is therefore caught in a kind of double-bind: in
practical reason, it is evident that the true superego-reverse of the Kantian "Du kannst,
denn du sollst!" ("you can, because you must!") is "You must, altough you know that
you cannot, that it is not possible!" - i.e., an impossible demand which can nver be
satisfied and as such condemsn the subject totan eternal split. In teleology, on the
contrary, "you know you should not do it, yet you cannot not do it."
To put it yet another way, the "lapse" (into teleology, into the substantial notion of Supreme
Good) is an endeavor to heal the wound of the subject qua $, to fill in the gap which renders
the THing inaccessible: it reinstates the subject into the "great chain of being." And far from
acting as a stumbling block, this very double-bind served as a lever for the further
development of philosophical problematic. In other words, Kant's merit consist thus of the
very feature that is the usal target of his critics: by means of one and the same gesture, this
philosophy opens up the space (the posssiblity , the need) for a thing and makes this thing
inaccesible and/or impossible to accomplish - as if the opning is possible only at the price of
the instantneion crossing-out!!!!!!!!! <<<<<<--------- 172
POSTMODERNISM AND THE PROHIBITION OF NAMING
What the Jewish religion accomplishes is the radical evacutaion of jouissance from the divine
domain, the curcaial consqeuence of which is a kind of reflective reversal of the prohibition:
the prohibition ot name the divine sacred Real is inverted into the prohibition to fill out God's
Name with a positive bearer, with His iamge. In short, what is now prohibited, is not naming
the unnameable Real but attaching to the Name any psotivie reality: The Name must remain
empty. This reversal concerns, among other things, the very notion of democracy: as was
shown by Claude Lefort democracy implies the distinction between the emtpy symbolic locus
of power and th reality of those who, temporarily, exercise power; for democracy to function,
the locus of power must remain empty; nobody is allowed to present himself as posssing the
immediate, natural right to exercise power. (190)

Parralax con-fusion. ironie, undead, sincere ironie. Act of killing, mieville.

Zone of unknowing is anticipation.
Moron: condemn. Idiot: idealist. Imbecile:
Neither Redux, nor teleological understanding of revolts.
Logic pf the specter: pop suddenly unpredictable into "existence", where after swear an oaht .
Fidelity
what does it mean to learn to live with ghosts?
time out of joint -> miracles. -> not expected -> specter character

cynical reading: nothing happend etc. optimistic reading; possible future. emancipatory
movement must affirm this opening. but how to understand it? teleological (the next stage in
history)/ or cynical (at least we do something!)? both closed off.
derrida; cannot be closed off. possibility of the event. this is difficult, because we want to
speak of something that is unsayable. not mystic.
As in the
work of mourning, after a trauma, the conjuration has to make
sure that the dead will not come back: quick, do whatever is
needed to keep the cadaver localized, in a saf e place, decompos
ing right where it was inhumed, or even embalmed as they liked
to do in Moscow.
to localize the specter, is to reduce it to its specific cultural context (in a safe place). to reduce
communism to stalin(embalmed) and the sovjets. but the spritit inspires, cross culturally, as
we have witnessed with the worldwide uprisings. the specter pops in and out of existence. the
specter is precisly that what keeps the cultural context from closing in upon itself, however
much the state wants to do so.
66 is too negative, specter is affirmative.
Specters, Miracles, Cynicism, Utopia
cynisim is utopia. cynisms wards off ghosts. exorcising procedure.
impossible, it was so unreal! two impossibles: cynism and the affirmative. Impossible...!
time is out of joint: reawakingn of history: specter of marx. how to understand revolts?
a sign both of the past and of the future.
ghost as miracle. -> point towards future. gap in structure.
politics of prescription. affirmative.
specter is affirmative: oath, swear. not just to wait.
specter; those unaccounted for -> does not point to future
specters popping in and out of existence. (this is what the specter does, it is its definition)
specter has its origin in the future
closure/ utopia is in capitalism / fukuyama
emancipation
events: not: how it happens. but: it happens, how to recognize. to speak with ghost/specter ;
to let it speak: to tell its story of the future.

time is out of joint!

ghost of everyday is a contradiction.
iterabiliteit
to learn to live with ghosts. everyday. does not work. you silence the ghost once again.
we do not want to learn not live with illegal immigrants. we don't want there to be illegal
immigrants! if they are ghosts, we we essentialize them.
If it-learning to live-remains to be done, it can happen only
between life and death. Neither in lif e nor in death alone. What
happens between two, and between all the "two's" one likes, such
as between lif e and death, can only maintain itsef with some ghost,
can only talk with or about some ghost [s' entretenir de quelque fantomeJ .
So it would be necessary to learn spirits. Even and especially if this,
the spectral , is not. Even and especially if this , which is neither
substance, nor essence, nor existence, is never present as such.!
the ghost must pop in and out of existence.
difference mask/simulacra. visor/nonidentity.
donderdag 11. 12:00
return to the specter. listen to the specter.
messia
ethics
reversal: specter is the material of the future
fukuyama: evangelical: promised land. they are the true utopians.
cynisism is utopia, as liberalism is utopia. communism is realism.
true uptopia: Why this amplifcation by the media? And how is it that a dis
course of this type is sought out by those who celebrate the
triumph of liberal capitalism and its predestined alliance With
liberal democracy only in order to hide, and frst of all from
themselves , the fact that this triumph has never been so critical.
fragile, threatened, even in certain regards catastrophic, and in
sum bereaved?
not culturally specific.
to learn to live, finally: to be an activist

moment -> however -> no soy has memory of 1966. ->nonetheless

THese movements ARE the new international
We are asked (enjoined, perhaps) to turn ourselves over to
the future, to join ourselves in this we , there where the disparate
is turned over to this singular joining , without concept or cer
tainty of determination, without knowledge, without or before
the synthetic junction of the conjunction and the disjunction.
The alliance of a rejoining without conjoined mate, without organ
ization, without party, without nation, without State, without
property (the "communism" that we will later nickname the
new International) .
I suggest that in The Famished Road the spirit
world is not more real (except perhaps to Azaro), but as real as the everyday world,
because the two constantly feed into each other.
In this way, Freuds uncanny and Derridas specter become insuffcient models with
which to think through the ghostliness of the everyday, since they explicitly oppose
the ghost to order and routine as an unexpected, surprising fgure of disturbance, the
return of the repressed, and absolute alterity.
Let us salute suchsigns even as one remains vigilantly on guard against the
manipulations or appropriations to which these novelties can
be subjected.
project aspiring to thinkg the situated and material emergence of novelty, and the universality
by which it subtracts itself rom the old, by mean of the fundamental idea of formalization.

Prioritization of truth. Read back ad that. Problem for West ; positive conception of subject.
What circumstances allow someone to produce a truth? Who is Anke to spell the truth
The question of ethics is: can the self consritute itself, subjected to itself. Rather than being
constituted by something else? This implies that what is constituted is not an object, but a
relation of self to the self.
Conduct one own conduct
Not autonomy bu autopoeisis self creation
Two, not principes but practices. Logos and bios.
Public use of reason!

there are power relations, but think!

Parrhesia
democracy, liberal capitalism, precisely does not need truth, or has no place for truth. it is an
implicit critique of domination.
the self is a correlate of technologies . not to free the self, but to elaborate new types the
relationships to our self
And the role of the intellectual, since the sixties, has been
precisely to situate, in terms of his or her own experiences, competence, personal
choices, desire situate him or herself in such a way as to both make apparent forms
of fascism which are unfortunately not recognized, or too easily tolerated, to describe
them, to try to render them intolerable, and to define the specific form of struggle that
can be undertaken against fascism
truth is ones position. -> democratia -> who speaks the truth? -> socrates daimon -> truth is
outside.
The history of thought is the analysis of the way an unproblematic field of experience, or a
set of practices, which were accepted without question, which were familiar and "silent," out
of discussion) becomes a problem, raises discussion and debate, incites new reactions, and
induces a crisis in the previously silent behavior, habits, practices, and institutions. The
history of thought, understood in this way, is the history of the way people begin to take care
of something, of the way they become anxious about this or that-for example, about
madness, about crime, about sex, about themselves, or about truth. Ecology.
And the question which is raised in these different
exercises is oriented tOW1lrds the following problem: Are we
familiar enough with the .. rational principles? Are they sufficiently well-established in our minds to become practical rules
for our everyday behavior? And the problem of memory is at
the heart of these techniques, but in the form of an attempt to
remind ourselves of what we have done, thought, or relt so that
we may reactivate our rational principles, thus making them
as permanent and as effective as possible in our life. These
exercises are part of what we could eall an "aesthetics of the
self." For one does not have to take up a position or role
towards oneself as that of a judge pronouncing a verdict. One
can comport oneself towards oneself in the role of a technician, of a craftsman, of an artist, who from time to time stops
working, examines what he is doing, reminds himself of the
rules of his art, and compares these rules with what he has
achieved thus far.

"I will be doing the same thing

with sexuality, only going back much further: how does the
subject speak truthfully about itself, inasmuch as it is the
subject of sexual pleasure? And at what price?
G.R. According to the relation of subjects to whatever
they are, in each case, through the constitution of language or
knowledge.
It is an analysis of the relation between forms
of refexivity -a relation of self to self - and, hence, of
relations between forms of reflexivity and the discourse of
truth, forms of rationality and effects of knowledge ." (p. 30)
The first is that in studying the rationality of
dominations, I try to establish interconnections which are not
isomorphisms . Secondly, when I speak of power relations, of
the forms of rationality which can rule and regulate them, I
am not referring to Power - with a capital P - dominating
and imposing its rationality upon the totality of the social
body. In fact, there are power relations. They are multiple;
they have different forms, they can be in play in family
relations, or within an institution, or an administration - or
between a dominating and a dominated class power relations
having specific forms of rationality, forms which are common
to them, etc . It is a field of analysis and not at all a reference
to any unique instance . 38
I would like to return to this question in a
moment, because I had already begun to talk about two or
three things . The first is that in studying the rationality of
dominations, I try to establish interconnections which are not
isomorphisms . Secondly, when I speak of power relations, of
the forms of rationality which can rule and regulate them, I
am not referring to Power - with a capital P - dominating
and imposing its rationality upon the totality of the social
body. In fact, there are power relations. They are multiple;
they have different forms, they can be in play in family
relations, or within an institution, or an administration - or
between a dominating and a dominated class. power relations
having specific forms of rationality, forms which are common
to them, etc . It is a field of analysis and not at all a reference
to any unique instance . Thirdly, in studying these power
relations, I in no way construct a theory of Power. But I wish
to know how the refexivity of the subject and the discourse of
truth are linked - "How can the subject tell the truth about
itself?" - and I think that relations of power exerting
themselves upon one another constitute one of the determin
ing elements in this relation I am tring to analyze.

This is clear, for example, in the frst case I examined, that of

madness. It was indeed through a certain mode of domination
exercised by certain people upon certain other people, that the subject could undertake to
tell the truth about its madness, presented in the form of the other. !! Thus, I am far
from being
a theoretician of power. At the limit, I would say that power,
as an autonomous question, does not interest me. In many
instances, I have been led to address the question of power
only to the extent that the political analysis of power which
was offered did not seem to me to account for the finer, more
detailed phenomena I wish to evoke when I pose the question
of telling the truth about oneself. If I tell the truth about
myself, as I am now doing, it is in part that I am constituted
as a subject across a number of power relations which are
exerted over me and which I exert over others..
I am working on the history, at a given moment, of
the way reflexivity of self upon self is established, and the
discourse of truth that is linked to it .
I try to work on the history or archaeology, if you like, of the way people
hndertook to speak truthfully about madness in the 17th and
18th centuries. And I would like to bring it to light as it
':existed at the time. On the subject of criminals, for example,
"and the system of punishment established in the 18th century,
'which characterises our own penal system, I have not gone
into detail on all kinds of power exercised in the 18th century.
Instead, I have examined, in a certain number of model 18th
centur institutions, the forms of power that were exercised
and how they were put into play. So I can see no relevance
whatever in saying that power is no longer what it used to be 39.
The recent remarks of the President of the
National Assembly to the effect that we must replace the
egoist, individualist, bourgeois cultural model with a new
cultural model of solidarity and sacrifice . . . I was not very
old when Petain came to power in France, but this year I
recognized in the words of this socialist the very tones which
lulled my childhood.
FOUCAULT It has been said but you have to understand
that when I read - and I know it has been attributed to me the thesis, "Knowledge is power, " or "Power is knowledge, " I
begin to laugh, since studying their relation is precisely my
problem. If they were identical, I would not have to study
them and I would be spared a lot of fatigue as a result. The
yer fact that I pose the question of their relation proves
clearly that I do not identi them

I have tried to analyze how areas such as

madness, sexuality, and delinquency may enter into a certain
play of the truth, and also how, through this insertion of
human practice, of behavior, in the play of truth, the subject
himself is affected. That was the problem of the history of
madness, of sexuality. 48.
And if I was interested in Antiquity it was because, for a whole series of
reasons, the idea of a morality as obedience to a code of rules
is now disappearing, has already disappeared. And to this
absence of morality corresponds, must correspond, the search
for an aesthetics of existence . 49
Five years ago, in your seminar at the College de
France, we started to read Hayek and Von Mises. People
then said: Through a reflection on liberalism, Foucault is
going to give us a book on politics. Liberalism also seemed to
be a detour in order to rediscover the individual beyond the
mechanisms of power . Your opposition to the phenomeno
logical subject and the psychological subject is well known. At
that time, people began to talk about a subject of practices,
and the rereading of liberalism took place to some extent with
that in view. It will come as a surprise to nobody that people
said several times: there is no subject in Foucault' s work. The
subjects are always subjected, they are the point of application
of normative techniques and disciplines, but they are never
sovereign subjects .
FOUCAULT A distinction must be made here. In the first
place, I do indeed believe that there is no sovereign, founding
subj ect, a universal form of subj ect to be found everywhere . I
am very sceptical of this view of the subject and very hostile
to it. I believe, on the contrary, that the subject is constituted
through practices of subjection, or, in a more autonomous
way, through practices of liberation, of liberty, as in Antiquity,
on the basis, of course, of a number of rules, styles,
inventions to be found in the cultural environment.
I believe too much in truth not to suppose that there are different truths and different ways
of speaking the truth. Of course, one can't expect the government to tell the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
I do not believe we are locked in by history; to the contrary, all my work consists in showing
that history is crossed by strategic relations which consequently are mobile and can be
changed; upon the condition, of course, that the agents involved in these processes have the
political courage to change things. rabinow
he subjects constant action on himself ... the vigilant, continuous, and
completed form of the relationship to self.... The self is the agent, object, instrument, and end

of salvation.... Salvation ensures an access to the self that is inseparable from the work one
carries out on oneself within the time of ones life and in life itself. (2005: 1845) rabinow 41

Facebook. Objectivering van zelfbegrip.

Retro active. Derrida makes the point.
first: what is the relation between s/p. Detail etc. then why photo?
Same Barthes as me. But also difficulties. Detail etc. also I had only one time this experience.
Transcendence vs immanence positions. While I would argue it is precisely the photograph
the medium where this connection is most explicit.
but I think this could be misleading. First we should recall he always puts it in
quotation marks. second, at the beginning of the second part of the book begins
with a resignation of the methods used in the first.

1. punctum. 2. detail. 3 puncutm as detail.. painting film, painting as film. 1. fam. 2. burg. 3.
staat.
1. punctum (cannot be nothing there) 2.
1. punctum as detail. 2 no detail. 3. simultaneously a schein, and something more than reality
itself
barthes against foucault.

1. Meta - mod.
2. Cultural dominant/ ideology. History is moving again.
3. Jameson, further definition of pomo.
4. this thesis is about postmodern predicament. just as much as metamodern.
The solution . . . is not a return to the traditional attitude but a new founding gesture which
"beats the sophists at their own game," i.e., which surmounts the relativism of the sophists by
way of its own radicalization (TwN 4)

*is movement between

$gure and ground illustrates the slippage between these concepts in both political
and epistemological terms. It also gestures toward an answer to one of our key
questions: how do we extricate ourselves from the belief/doubt dualism that seems to
plague ecological thought? Following this aesthetic example, we can place ourselves,
critically, between these two poles, (ickering between doubt and belief, $gure and
ground, individual and collective [ecoilogy and ideology 17]

distinction : modern = totalizing, postmodern = deconstructive. poetry of abrams!

[cognitive mapping <> ideology?]
Universality masks particularity (historicism) <> Particularit mask universality
(Badiou, Zizek)
Change : [no ideology = idenity = cultural idenity = culture wars, wars of civilization] the
notion of ideology depends of ones social position - for liberals. "ideological" in liberal
sense: deluded, not pragmatic, tied to belief. neutral etc. -ideology for the left: bourgeois etc.
[Ideology after Postmodernism]
History, Identity, Agency
postmodernism: empty signifier etc. -> signifies the end of ideology (modernisms)
postmodernism is radicalization of modernism. post-postmodernism is regression. zizek
introduction FTKNWTD. it is heuristic , but simply heuristic -> it is an specific political
position implied/chosen. neutrality is the position (liberal democratic).
no truth = suffering (badiou ethics)
Historicity, Ideology, Subjectivity (these are precisly the splitting of the former!)
Truth, Ideology, Subject
1. Postmodernism: narratives, narratives, narratives. (one cannot not periodize, points to
this real)
2. Transistions: Return of the The Real (Structural Dialectics)
3. Communism: History, Identity, Agency Historicity, Ideology, Subjectivity
Bal: the third person does not exist (BO) -> but where does that leave us? (where is the third
person in kadinsky, in dushamp?, bal is renaissance scholar! = premodern regression - lyotard
-> postmodern prepares for modern)

What Rorty calls the "fundamental premise" of his philosophy is

another version of Schlesinger's call to arms : "A belief can still regulate
action, can still be thought worth dying for, among people who are quite
aware that this belief is caused by nothing deeper than contingent histori
cal circumstance" (44) metamodern*
history is to identity, what historicity/truth is to subject !

pomo definition. postmodern theory -> antifoundationalism -> difference -> death of the
subject. postmodernism is a label denied by some postmodernist (cf. butler) pejorartive (but
for some it is a political affirmation.) Definition but broader -> postmodernism as cultural
dominant, cultural logic of late capital. then postmodern theory is one of the cultural (or:
ideological) effects of the logic of late capital.
Postmodern function without definitipn, a placeholder. keep place emtpy -> end of history.
Metamodernism then appears as a recommencement of modernism and history. but it is
thought of as mediated by postmodern (return to modern is a postmodern thing). modernism
light. change/history/ideology.
Somthing happend. Caught up in its game. To deny post modern is to take a stance on
postmodernism.
Fear of the universal - class struggle
what is postmodernism? take a central term, common denominator. Difference. but perhaps
another: history.
Historical Materialism -> teleology + historicism. -> false anti-thesis What is the third term?
dialectics. 75
--------Can History be thought? Metahistory
What can be thought, and what cannot be thought. What falls outside the debate. (liberalism
vs. fundamentalism - fixedness vs mobility - essentialism vs anti-essentialism foundationalism vs anti-foundationalism). what is possible (fundamentalism future ?) and
impossible (a future without capitalism). What cannot be thought : Truth, History,
subjectivity. Subject and Truth (structural dialectic) + History (badiou).
toward a historicist teleology
----------

Identify with (what one regards as) universal (Justice - The Good - Democracy / early
national - french revolution / communism / Kultur / Universal History / Subject of Truth) ->
ideology, "abstraction of"/universalizes-> identity (politics: "We are THE people!")
Or identify with the particular (specific culture, history as nostalgia / indigenous history /
subject positions) -> identity, "concretion of" /particularizes identity . (culture) (politics: "We
are these specific people!")
ideology is the representation of universality (as identity (meaningful whole, Right) or as real
of antagonism - pure difference (Left) [rightist reaction = there is no real difference).
identity is the representation of the accumulation/enumuration/counting of of particularities
(as identity (Right) or as difference (specific difference, left [rightist reaction is = there IS a
real (essential/biological) difference)
Right: there is no political difference (class struggle), but there is cultural difference, which is
political. (badiu: strong difference vs. weak difference.
"posthistoricist" -> Benn Michaels
identity (political) is on the side of particularism, - difference (political) is on the side of
universality
identity (cultural) is on the side of universalism - difference (cultural) is on the side of
particularism.
---Anxiety (postmodern) and Superego (Modern) - > oscillation is the subject ->
Meteamodernism. What it lacks is courage and justice (the real that passes through). 90, thus
we have no subject - in the badiouian sense.
in postmodernism we have the fiction that is the effect of the impossible real. modernism tries
to portray the real that hides beneath the fiction.
bringing small fragment of truth in our present historic context. -> relate to zizeks account of
historicity as recognizing the real of antagonism -> badiou's historicity appears to be
something more. -> getting something out of the truht. not only recognizing (bosteesl 170173)
idealinguistery (ToS 193)
Metamodernism: reconstruction of meaning, imaginary. but: modernism must pushed further!
symbolic/real - nihilism+truth (nihil unbound). to deconstruct meaning even further (god is
dead!), we end up : real - truth - subject.

postmodernism is the cultural logic obtained by the completion of moderninity, that is global
capital, all is market -> nothing is outside. difference (badiou quote capital) (zizek lecture on
chakrabarty)
"Rather, what is most striking in the theory of the weakest link as developed in the concept of
overdetermination is to see, how a structure takes hold [capitalism] of the actual moment
[indian life world, how isoloated facts are literally thrown togehter to form a specific
conjuncture and, thus, how necessity, for from realizing or expressing itself in history,
actually emerges out of sheer contingency (bosteels 59)
develop a concept: saturation. supersaturation!! it is an absurdity, the point is to do it
anyway. Supersaturation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersaturation

Slide 6: The Ads & Desire

Desire is a recurrent theme in all 3 ads:
the two priests for each other. We believe in salivation.
sexual desire between nun & priest. Submit to temptation.
Desire of the pregnant nun for ice cream + sexualized pose.
- Desire for food presented as sexual desire: common theme in advertisement.
So our first reading might be: theres an Edgy juxtaposition of sex and religion +
- transfer of sexual desire to ice cream,
Goal: Profit. Create a desire for the ice cream, so that we want to buy it, even if we did not
necessarily want it, or if we did want it, to make sure we buy this particular ice cream.
This would maybe be a reading of what the pictures do do.
Slide 7: Mitchell: What Do Pictures Want?
Because of these allusions to desire, we thought we might bring mitchells text into the
analysis, where he proposes to question what pictures want, rather than do.
Can we in this way go beyond surface reading, and see the pictures not just as a propaganda
tool, but take them seriously as quasi-animate things with lacks and desires.
[next slide]
So lets Recall what Mitchell says:

I shift the question from what pictures do to what they want, from power
to desire, from the model of the dominant power to be opposed, to the
model of the subaltern to be interrogated or (better) to be invited to
speak (33).
[W]hat happens if we question pictures about their desires instead of
looking at them as vehicles of meaning or instruments of power (36).
[W]e need to ask what the picture wants in terms of lack (37).
Can we find out what these pictures want in terms of lack?
Slide 8:
So whats going on here. We have two priest who it seems are about to kiss. The text actually
says that they believe in salivation. So what would this picture lack
Because of the fact that they are priest, they are celibate. So they are not allowed to have sex,
maybe not even to feel strong sexual desires. So there is a tension with a law, and a possible
transgression.
Second, these are two men, and homosexuality is not allowed I think in the catholic church,
especially when you are a priest.
Thrid, it says, we believe in salivation , its not that they are already practicing salivation.
This ad lacks completion. There is sexual tension, but it is not quite yet acted upon. The
priests lack the kiss that they are leaning in for.
It also seems to want approval from the observer. It says, We believe in salivation, and it
wants the observer to say, Im right there with you. I also believe in salivation.
How can the observer say this? By becoming a consumer and buying ice cream.
Slide 9:
At first sight, coming from the previous analysis, this ad also appears to lack
completion (i.e. submission to temptation) nun vs priest.
The Priest is coming on to her, but the nun looks in doubt. While the text says:
submit to temptation.
Appears to lack completion (i.e. submission to temptation).
Wants submission from observer,
Slide 10:
Image of pregnant nun does not seem to lack/want anything from the observer.
(False) Antitheatricality: she seems absorbed in the ice cream, but is inclined towards
the viewer in a sexual pose.

 Unlike in the previous two images, text and image here work against each other.
Especially if we have seen the previous two images, it is nearly impossible for us to
believe in her immaculate conception, and because her pose is also sexualized. It is
only the text in this ad which defends the nun's honor, whereas the image belies it.
In the ad of the pregnant nun, the interaction between text and image is more complex
than in the other two ads. in the previous two ads, the text merely supports what the
image says; in the ad of the pregnant nun, the text which tells us that the nun's child
was "immaculately conceived" actually works against the image. the message the
text sends is the opposite of the message the image sends. Even though the image
tells us she has fallen from grace, the text asserts that she has not transgressed. Ice
cream is a safe transgression.

Slide 11:
But the figures have already submitted to their temptation. her bare leg is wrapped
around his naked torso, they are actually having sex.

Plays with clichs, stereotypes, and subverts them: Frequently, in advertisement and
the print media (Jean Kilbourne documentary), women are undressed, whereas men
are allowed to stay dressed. Here, the reverse. Nevertheless, priest could be seen as
menacing, as forcing her to have sex with him. Or the other way around -- the nun
has forced him to undress, while she remains in a position of power (i.e. clothed and
therefore unexposed). It definitely plays with all kinds of clichs and power
relations, and also subverts them.
No apparent lack (+ antitheatricality: the two figures are absorbed in each other, as in
image of the two priests). Image does not lack or want anything (beyond the
superficial call to submit and buy ice cream)

2 out 3 images do not seem to lack much of anything. And it is hard to say what they want,
beyond the obvious surface message of selling ice cream. We turned to the Rose text for a
more fruitful analysis.
Slide 12: Rose: Sexuality in the Field of Vision.
Especially this quote:
A feminism concerned with the question of looking can [] stress the particular and
limiting opposition of male and female which any image seen to be flawless is serving to hold
in place. More simply, we know that women are meant to look perfect, presenting a seamless

image to the world so that the man, in that confrontation with difference, can avoid any
apprehension of lack. (232).
You may recall that Roses text started with a picture drawn Leonardo, analyzed by freud. The
fact that the picture was androgynous, so that you couldnt quite say it was a man or a
women, a kind of an imperfect figure, lacking in pleasure, without desire, a kind of
disturbance of the visual field .
The spectator does not know where she or he stands in relationship with the picture.
So she claims this raises question about the fixed nature of sexual identities.
Slide 13: Rose & the Ads
Unlike in Leonardos drawing, which Rose says made Freud accuse him of being
unable to draw, there is nothing androgynous or imperfect in the figures in the ads.
Even though the figures in the ads are supposedly celibate characters, they are
sexualized and correspond to common beauty ideals. the women lack lack.
The women and the men look perfect. They lack nothing.
Rose actually claims that often, woman in pictures, lack lack, do not have a lack:
More simply, we know that woman are meant to look perfect, presenting a seamless
image to the world so that the man, in that confrontation with difference, can avoid
any apprehension of lack.

The women in our ads seem to lack lack (and so do the men, perhaps) So maybe in
following the method of Mitchell we actually can give a critique. That these images
in fact do not lack.
Both the men and the women in these ads look flawless. Rose would say that these
ads fall into the "limiting opposition of male and female which any image seen to be
flawless is serving to hold in place" (also, in none of the ads is there any questioning
of gender, nobody looks the slightest bit androgynous).
So because they look perfect, they reinforce the opposition between male and female,
and the women also do not evoke the castrato, the possibility that woman may lack,
which makes man "'tremble for his masculinity'". Does that mean that despite being
quite daring on the surface, the ads are actually playing it even safer than we
thought?
Slide 14:
And even though they are supposed to push boundaries and question morals, they also
toe the line of common morality: Ad of two priests is safer than heterosexual ad.

The ad of the two priests is at first sight more daring. Because it shows two men.
And because it is interracial, they have different skin colours.
But the image of the two men does not go quite as far as the heterosexual image of the
priest and the nun. The two priests are just about to touch, but even though they are
in an obviously sexual pose, they are not quite touching yet, and they are both fully
clothed. so, in a way that ad, which is already more transgressive (gay, interracial)
than the heterosexual one, is playing it quite a bit safer than the ad with the nun and
the priest. almost as though, despite the fact that all these ads are about
religious/sexual transgression, and seem to want to push boundaries, they are also
afraid of pushing the boundaries TOO far.

Slide 16: Discussion questions

Both the subject and the sodium itself are punctuated. So the subject is one determined by of
the signifier . The fantasy is broken, which gives rose to uncertainty
C bathes actually says e explicit what this condition of possibility is for the photograph and
the punctum. The punctum is the sudden realixation of the that has been/ but immediately
sticks to a detail. Manifest itself as detail. This explain nd Barthes anti thratrical.. Realization
By a detail, but not of a detail..v I think it can be any detail. it can always strike
But most likely it is an unintentional detail, because other detail s are to invested with our
studium.

Why is the punctum only in a photo? and, what isessentiallythe same question, can we think
the relation between punctum and studium? Barthes says none.
A third way where bathes was after: but not a positive term. Neither, nor I / T.
Conclusion j Camera Lucida is both a thinking of the event and an true event in photography,
where we should be loyal to.
With the child i'm not looked at. It is a face. But then suddenly she does! The face (Levinas)
vs. the gaze.
Escape, he wrote, is the need to get out of oneself, that is, to break that most radical and
unalterably binding of chains, the fact that the I [moi] is oneself [soi-mme].[11] That means
that transcendence, in Levinas's understanding of it, is continually directed toward
something other than ourselves (OE, 58). And it suggests that the deep motivation of need
is to get out of the being that we ourselves areour situation and our embodiment.

Levinas argues that we witness death only as the death of the other, but even as such it escapes
understanding as an absolute limit. Hence he will qualify it as a radical alterity; the same sort of
alterity as that which the other human being presents me.
Transcendence is the spontaneity of responsibility for another person .

"We are prey to the ghostly power of the supplement; it is this

unlocatable site that gives rise to the specter" (derrida, 41 on
barthes)
He first higlighted the absolute irreducibility of th e punctum,
what we might call the unicity of th e referential (I appeal to this
word so as not to have to choose between reference and referent:
what adheres in the photograph is perhaps less the referent itself,
in the present effectivity of its reality, than the implication in the
reference of its having-been-unique).
Kernel. Part object. Want to take psychoanal road. precisely because I think it can avoid these
traps. Or not.
Object a is experienced as the ghost, but it is not somewhere else, not transcendent, but also
not immanent.. It is our own lack. An immanent nothingness.
falling in love is not a relationship to a ghost. Not hyposthysize a ghostly world which then
has to be dealt with as an absolute other
often today it is so easy to point to the limits of the punctum,lets focus on what barthes
punctum opened up, what he did not directly saw himself.and the (pretty boring) question of
going beyond, which we find so often in todays text. but this is for me to easy. rather
collapse. isnt often the going beyond point to something inherently twisted in the fenomenon
itself? not to go beyond, but to reach for the core. because often if we try to move beyond,
because its is so vague (who knows what lies beyond?), we get lost in the mist of the
mystical. while to try to repeat an (imagined) core, often winds up with the new. think only of
the radically new as a result luthers return to the pure, core of christianity. jenseits nietzsche
and freud. other side as transcendent realm. but it is also the other side of the same coin. In
the case of Freud the beyond is the inhuman core : death drive.
so i want to go to barthes essence, what he set himself the task.
The photo: In it we see life in a dead object, or what is the same, death in a life object (this is
what barthes saw) [undeadness, unheimlich] Peter Schwenger, 395
two ways: transcendence (derrida /Buddhism/ theology / ghost / mourning / memory / time /
absence) immanence (studium, semiology, structuralism, back to early barthes)
not as ghost: ghost is other worldly. ghost who live among us is a western mediated rerturn.
real. immanent ghost: the zombie, the undead. neither dead nor alive. alive, as dead. dead
drive.

not: absent presence/present absence. Haunting images.

'Barthes, Berger, and Sontag often appeal to theological language to describe photography's
ability to cross boundariesto make the dead present, to allow viewers to "time travel" and
visitthe past, to make visible what otherwise remains invisible.' 508. this is what we would
like to avoid.
Woodward, 98. NOT: In Camera Lucida Barthes seeks to theorize subjectivity in relation to a
photograph.
nancy shawcross: h focus on time, history. gives presedent to the second part.
Matthew brower: specter/filmic punctum.
not: loss, memory, mourning. not ghosts. no transchendence or theology, no structuralism
(back to early barthes).barthes as a work of mouring. i want to challenge this view. the
punctum becomes then only a singular subjective experience. but this not all. fried.
not: memory (the virtual life of photography)
christian metz, difference film fotography, fetish.
details -> punctum -> details (my experience). but we have to recall barthes. it is not about
the details.
(tuche of the real is not the real, but the fantasy (objet a) intruding reality (symbolic) -> the
'animation' seems to be reality. so the sceptic , for a moment, doubts.
the referent is: film= immanent (immersion, loose themselves in the screen, a different
reality), painting = transcendent, photo is both. as foucault demonstrates. detail is immanent,
real is transcendent.
we may distinghuis between a full story , or short home videos, the latter coming closer to the
photograph. im not sure here. but it seems clear that it is not about the medium as such , but
the closure of a narrative world/fantasy, and an image which remains at some point 'open to
the real/ referent'. A similar point is that a moving art image. is closer to the painting.
A painting is always cut from it s referent. But it is always a representation. It shows
something, points to something outside it. A possible easthetic experience. A film is always
closed in on itself. no cut / tension between representation and referent. A world on it s own.
A life of itself. Of course there is the real things that were shot. But the film does not refer to
that reality, only to its own world, its own narrative. an illusion of a possible closure. fantasy,
ideology. even the most horrible horror movie Is safe. Painting is infinite, film finite.
so there is no (direct/immanent) connection between truth/real/referent and
representation/structure (transcendence), or there is nothing but representation/structure
(immanence).
love is an event, an encounter a tuche of the real,.

When the punctum hits, only then we become aware of the truth/essence. Then we are forced
to posit, retro actively, the referent. Here it is The eyes that remind me of it very strongly. The
truth or essence sticks onto the surface detail . Pricking through. But it is not beneath it.
The punctum is an event. A truth to which we have to be fidelity.
The first part of cl is about the punctum as detail, about immanence. the second about the
punctum as death, or transcendence. our task is to think them together.
First the eye where of the child. Then of someone else.
problem of the object: theoretical object
"it is an event that constructs for a situation of being the truth of the situation"
badiou.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPZeXfJQbQw
the punctum is random.
it is the punctum that produces the truth, that the photo is capable of. to think this truth is the
task.
A possible path would be a search for details.Search for detail is no punctum. A
detailed readin is very different from a details reading. but to study studiuam might prepare
the way for it.
White space
retroactivily you can speak of the origins. you fall in love, not by accounting the advantages.
You only agree with the argument if you believe. there are arguments for, but you must be
engaged to see the powers of these arguments. tahrir square. who expected it? all of a sudden
it was possible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxD_gEDLCPQ1:01. just like a punctum.
film are Animate images. the film reality is fantasy. this is why cartoons, and i think even
films are always in fantasy. this is also why lacan would say that reality is structured like a
fiction. it is enclosed, harmonious whole.This why diff. Film and photo. Film is animate.
Photo is tension.The fantasy is challenged. With photo, there should not be animation. the
uncanny!
vanishing mediator. from art to film, photo is a vanishing mediator between from the
analogical to the digital. but ranciere searches for an artistic essence, and this is not the
essence for barthes. and i think, that the artistic ability of the photography lies not in the
punctum. this shows that the punctum is not the same a a aesthetic experience. we do not
want to, as ranciere does, define "the specifcity of the art of photography. " ranciere.
the punctum is definitely not a tool to analyze art photography. this is the domain of the
studium.
althusser. interpellation

it is not surprizing that the structuralist reduce the punctum to a subjective experience.
'Barthes brought it down to the intimacy of the private
gaze.' 8
ranciere falls also to the side of the structure. take the "detail" back into the studium
In a certain manner, Barthes contorts the formalist modernist, who opposed the form
(artistic/pictorial) to the anecdote (empiricist/photographic). Barthes diverts the opposition by
transferring the anecdote to the studium, in order to pit it against not the artistic form, but an
experience of the unique that refutes the pretension to art as well as the platitude of
information.
with painting we can be sure the referent is in another place, it does not haunt us.
Animate/inanimate.
is the punctum the same as objet a? Unfatomsble x. Punctun
In this precise sense, the sublime object is simultaneously the surface Schein or "grimace," a
pure semblance devoid of ony substantial support, and somthing "more real than reality
itself": in its very capacity of a pure semblance, it "gives body" to a boundary which fixes the
limits of (what we expereience as) reality, i.e., it holds the place of, stands in for, what has to
be excluded, foreclosed, if "reality" is to retain its consistency.
punctun photo's are objects of love. An x that cannot be described. Studium is like. 1 + 1 is
likte or not. objet a.
Objet a is precisly the 'detail which is no detail'. A detail without substance.
that x that gives its ultimate meaning
buddhism is the fetish today. you cannot really be a fully cynical subject. there is a fetish.
objective beliefs: you can believe something that you don't know yourself that you belief.
withouth knowing that you belief it. in your acts there is a believe in bodied.
we dont believe in it, it is not real, but in our acts we believe.
the punctum is why a deconstruction of the studium does not lead us to give up the crave of
ice cream. it is a matter of love. No details would be of any help.
--from critizing the distortion of a notion, to discover the distortion in the notion itself.
this is the hegelian totality.
facebook: creating false identity on top of real, authentic idenity -> authentic identity as a
(stable fixed) notion is false in itself.
augmented reality: creating a false reality (a fantasy) on top of authentic reality -> authentic
reality as a notion is false (a fantasy) in itself

the ritual: creating a false ritual on top of authentic believe -> authentic believe as a notion is
fals in itself.
the photograph: creating a false reality out of real, authentic reality -> authentic reality as a
notion is false in itself.

It is a detail from the standpoint of the studium. from the standpoint of the punctum ->For a
moment im not sure if its 'just a detail'. with love it is the same: no idealization but a
dislodging detail!
I can predict the average viewer, because i am the average viewer (studium, culture,
symbolic). To say 'obviously', is legitimate. Here, the average viewer is not an
empiricalcategory. (average viewer is what zizek would call the moron, fully idenitfied with
the symbolic order)
This is why we cannot start with the universal (foucault, veyne). But this mean that the
universal itself is 'not whole'/ a name we give for a deadlock. We cannot say what love is in
general. but the singular is an attempt for the solution of the deadlock (of love). As with
modernity. As with punctum
whila a positive definition of the punctum cannot be given, we can be sure its not the
studium. Maybe the only thing that can be said is that it is something in the image that is not
the studium. So, following Barthes, of course we have to do a detailed reading (i dont know
what a undeatailed reading would compose of, it seems to me a tautology), But avoid doing a
details reading: this would leave us unavoidably exploring the studium.
this poses to problems. 1: can we give a positive definition of the punctum? 2: How are
punctum and studium related. For now, we can say that they are not completely reducible to
one another, as in coming from the same world or realm, but they are also not completely
seperate, as two differents realms. So there is a relation, but not a straightforward one.
can we, from barthes, extract some understanding of the event? neither structural nor
idealistic. If the truth is the referent, the former is true for film, the second for figurative art.
the photo shows that the event is both, the truth, or essence, or punctum sticks to the
structure, or surface, or studium. the real (the referent) sticks to the representation. in the
situation of an event, the structure is overdeterminened by truth. As with the 'event of the
photo' (which is a photo with a punctum), the studium is overdetermined by the punctual
'detail', by the real referent that has been. we are caught in the symbolic order, but, especialiy
with photography, and, futhermore, especially with unintentionaly captured details
(antitheatrical), we encounter the referent, the real. but a special kind of referent; not the
actual referent, but the retroactivly positied referent. It must nessecarily have been, otherwise
there is no photograph. this referent is only retroactively positied. only retroactivly we can
speak of the origin. this explains the ambiguity of the relationship between the punctum-asdetail (the punctum qua symbolic 'thing' which we can speak about) and the studium. The
seemingly reducibility of both to one another
antitheatrical: yes this is the point. no film, no painting. but it is not antitheatrical. this
necessarily remains in the realm of the theatrical, the painting. It is wants to do away with
something that is inherent in it. the point is rather that the photography goes beyond (or

better, collapses) the dichotomy between the referent en the representation. it is its essence.
the farther the antitheatrical painting goes, the more it reveals its theatrical essence.
so photography is something more than antitheatrical. fried comes into trouble with the
prevalent portraiting in recent photography. we know why.
every image is possibly antitheatrical. (the point of the images that are intentionaly shot of
unaware subjects) Only the photograph is always also, most of the time not noticed 'deep
down' between the surface of the the theatrical andantitheatrcial,atheatrical. It has a essence,
a Kernel, a that has been, a necessary referent (retroactivly neseccary)It has both the site of
the (anti)theatrical studium and the atheatrical punctum.
there is nothing to say about the object a. it is not that if we say more that we can understand.
death drive. secret mechanism. as if something automatic inhereted in everything. death is the
secret mechanism, secret machine. at the heart of the living.
It is in the end not of something is intended or not. But it is true that it s likely to be very
unintended.
The specificity of objet a in the photograph. Medium specificity.
It is not that something like the punctum cannot happen in film. But it is a different process or
logic
the photo: mask. Double gaze.
there are no clear lines between photo film painting and immanence and transcendence
The event is a transcendental category.
optimisme, dupuy vooruit lopen, wat zit er achter
performative engagement
We act as if their is objectivity. It is an illusion , and we know it, but without it we cannot
live. It is not a subjective illusion .
Vinyl is an imagined enjoyment
Commanded enjoyment. Todd mcgowan.
Death drive/ Thing .
implicit rules. sometimes the explicit rules should be violated. Officially everybody can have
his own taste, but implicitly this is not allowed.
what is the rule that is violated, wicht batman has to reimpose? Don't question authority.
politeness.

The wire and hegel: rechtsfilsofie

!!! -> For objections to lukacs see chapter 4 of Eagletons introduction to ideology

"This is why only the dialectical conception of totality can enable us to understand reality as
a social process. For only this concpetions dissolves the fetishistic forms necesarily produced
by the capitalist mode of production and enables us to see them as mere illusions which are
not les illusory for being seen to be necessary. Thes unmediated concepts, these 'laws' sprout
just as inevitably form the soil of capitalism and veil the real relations between objects. They
can all be seen as ideas necessarily held by the agents of the capitalist system of production.
Theyr are therefore, objecs of knowledge, but the object which is known through them is not
the capitalist system of production itself, but the ideology if it surling class." (14).
"Bourgeois society carried out the process fo socialising society. Capitalism destoryed both
the spation-temporal barriers betweeen different lands and teritories and also the legal
partitions between the different 'estates' (stande). In its universe ther is a formal equality for
all men; the economic relations that directly dtermined the metabolic exchange between men
and nature progressively disappear. Man becomes, in the true sense of the word, a xocial
being. Society becomes the reality for man" (19).
Relation between individual capitalist and 'his way to the market' which generates the
'invisible hand' AND the imaginary subject (ego) and his encounter of the imaginary
Other which generates "the Big Other" (symbolic point).

"Bauer and his colleagues have both an economic and ideological submisssion to
capitalism. Their capitulation comes to the surface in therii ecoomic fatalsim, in the belief
that captialsim is as immortal as the 'laws of nature'. But as genuine pette bourgeois they are
the ideological and economic appendages of capitalism. Their wish to see a capitalsim
without any 'bad sides' and without 'excrescences' means that their opposition to capitalism is
the typycally ethical opposition of the petty bourgeoisie. "
"It was left to Marx to make the concrete discovery of 'truth as the subject' and hence to
establish the unity of theory and practice" (39)
capital is subject (universal) - to oppose: not individual subject of morality , but
(badiou's) proletarian collective subject - totality/universal.
"For the recognisable background to this situation is the fact that the real barrier of
capitalist production is capital itself. And if this insight were to become conscious it would
indeed entail the self-negation of the capitalist class.
In this way the objective limits of capitalist production become the limits of the class
consciousness of the bourgeoisie. The older natural and conservative forms of domination
had left unmolested the forms of production of whole sections of the people they ruled and
therefore exerted by and large a traditional and unrevolutionary influence. Capitalism, by

contrast, is a revolutionary form par excellence. The fact that it must necessarily remain in
ignorance of the objective economic limitations of its own system expresses itself as an
internal, dialectical contradiction in its class consciousness.
When the bourgeoisie is in panic and the system is in crisis, it clings even more to its
ideology. (gramsci quote in eagleton)
This means that formally the class consciousness of the bourgeoisie is geared to economic
consciousness. And indeed the highest degree of unconsciousness, the crassest, form of false
consciousness always manifests itself when the conscious mastery of economic phenomena
appears to be at its greatest [TODAY!].
[-------->>>>>]From the point of view of the relation of consciousness to society this
contradiction is expressed as the irreconcilable antagonism between ideology and
economic base. [<<<<--------]Its dialectics are grounded in the irreconcilable antagonism
between the (capitalist) individual, i.e. the stereotyped individual of capitalism [the
metamodern], and the natural and inevitable process of development, i.e. the process not
subject to consciousness [exchange, real abstraction - unconscious].
!!! ZIZEK: That is to say, if we look closely at the ontological status of what Sohn-Rethel
calls the 'real abstraction' [das reale Abstraktion] (that is, the act of absraction at work in the
very effective process of the exchange of commodities), the homology between its status and
that of the unconscious, this signifying chain which persist on 'another Scene', is striking: the
'real abstraction' is the unconscous of the transcendental subject, [link between subject
(void) and real abstraction (excess)]
In consequence theory and practice are brought into irreconcilable opposition to each other.
But the resulting dualism is anything but stable; in fact it constantly strives to
harmonise principles that have been wrenched apart and thenceforth oscillate between
a new false synthesis and its subsequent cataclysmic disruption." (64)
THus the situation in which the bourgeoisie finds itself determines the function of its class
consciousness in its struggle to achieve control of society (65)

!!! -> For objections to lukacs see chapter 4 of Eagletons introduction to ideology
Eagleton: "What is said of these ruleers, howver, is incosnsitent: for this active notion of
ideolgoy is their case is at odds with the view that they, too, are simply victims of the
structure of ocommodity fetishim. How can the middle class govern by virtue of its unique,
unified world view when it is simply subjected along with other classes to the structure of
reifiaiton? Is the dominant ideology a matter of the bourgeoisisie, or of bourgeois society?"
(103)
Object oriented ontology = consumer society of experience (not: status or properties)
commodity reification [magic, lotr, games] / however badiou -> abstract maths -> is made
possible by capital (quote), but not infused with magic.

thinking changes -> but because thinking is symbolic -> money form brought new
symbolic permutation in the world (dialectic).
"The social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour," Marx observes
with reference to pre-capitalist societies, "appear at all events as their own personal relations,
and are not disguissed under the shape of social relations between the products of labour."
(91)
"They now appear, on the one hand, as abstract members of a species identical by definition
with tis other members and, on the other ahnd, as isoated obbjects the possseions or nonpossession of which depends on rational calculations. Only when the whole life of society is
thus fragmented into the isolated acts of commodity exchange can the 'free' worker come into
being; at the same time his fate becomse the typical fate of the whole society." (91)
"Of course, this isolation and fragmentation is only apparent. The movement of commdities
of the market, the birt of their value, in a word, the real framework of every rational
calculations is not merely subject to strict laws but also presupposes the strict ordering of all
that happens. The atomisation of the individual is, the, only the reflex in consciousness of the
fact that the 'natural laws' of captialsit production have been extended to cover every
manifestation of life in society; that - for the first time in history - the whole of society is
subjected, or tends to be subjected, to a unified economic process, and that the fate of every
member of society is determined by unified laws. (By contrast, the organic unities of precapitalist societies organised their metabolism largely in independence of each other). (92)
social relation -> how does it stabilize -> fetishism of the king -> fetishism of the
commodity.
"Marx often describes this potentiation of reification in incicive fashon. One example must
suffice here: "In interes-bearing capital, therefore, this automatic fetish, self-expanding value,
money generating money, is brought out in its pure state and in this form it no longer bears
the birth-marks of its origin. The social relation is consumated in the relation of a thing, of
money to itself. Instead of the actual transformation of money into capital, we see her only
form without content . . . . It becomes a property of money to generate value and yield
interest, much as it is an attribute of pear trees to bear pears. And the money-lender sells his
money as just such an interest-bearing thing. But that is not all. The acutallly fuctioning
cpatial, as we have see, presents itself in such alight that it seems to yield interest not as
functioning capital, but as capital in itself, as money-capital. This too, becomes distorted.
While interest is only a portion of the profit, i.e., of th surplus value, which the
functioning capitalist squeezes out of the labourere, ti sppear now, ont the contrary as though
interes were the typical product of capital, the primary matter, and profit, in the shape of
profit of enterprise, were a mere accessory and by-product of the process of reproduction.
Thus we get a fetish form of capital, and the conception of fetish capital. In m-m' we have the
meaningless form of capital, the perversion and objectification of production relations in their
highest degree, the interest-bearing form, the simple form of capital, in which it antecedes its
own process of reproductions. It is the capacity of money, or of a commodity, to expand its
own value independently of reproduction- which is a mystification of capital in its most
flagrant form. For vulgar political economy, which seeks to represent capital as an
independent source of value, of value creation, this form is naturlly averitable find, a form in
which the source of profit is no longer discirnable, and in which the reslutl of hte capitalist
process of production - divorced from the process - acquires an independent existence. (94)

the possibility of recognizing class struggle conditions (a theory of ) ideology [!!!]

"It requiris no further explanation to realise that the need to systematise and to
abandon empiricism, tradition and material dependence was the need for exact calculation.
However, this same need requires that the legal system should confront the individual events
of social existence as something permanently established and exactly defined, i.e. as a rigid
system [dupuy: endogenous fixed point] Of course, this produces an uninterrupted series of
conflicts between the uneasingly revolutionary forces of the capitalist economy and the rigid
legal system. But this only results in neew codifications; and despite these the new system is
forced to preserve the fixed, change-resistant structure of an old system. [shock
doctrine naomi klein]
CREATIVE CLASS revolutionary
ideology as culture, or ideology as extremist (islam/wilder): liberal bourgeois
(ideological ideology) -> but marxist -> real conditions of existence (cultural dominant is
linked to mode of production)
"The split between the workers's labour-power and his personlity, its metamorphosis into a
thing, an object that he sells on the market is repeated here too. But with the difference that
not every mental faculty is suppressed by mechanisation; only one faculty (or complex of
faculties) is detached from the whole personality and placed in opposition to it, becoming a
thing, a commodity. But the basic phenomenon reamins the smae even thoug both the means
by which society instills such abilities and their material and 'moral' exchange value are
fundamentally different form labour-power (not forgetting, of course, the many connecting
links and nuances" (99) [Lacan Subject!!!!]
Lacan subject : Lukacs calls the lacanian subject of lack "the reified structure of
consciousness]
Reification generates real abstractions*(necessary postulations of imaginary totalities
[i.e., the big other!!!!], i.e., money [e.g. markets] and ideology [e.g. : law = ungrounded,
fixed totality of rules and regulations] "Jew" for nazis) (process of exchange
[comparisons tending towards normality, i.e., equilibirium] generates objectifications :
in the market as well as in social life [foucault] ?)
*isolation/finitude/non-totality/non-whole -> imaginary postulation (what may i hope?)
Foucault: idea of man, temporary but: comes to the fore after reification. "man" does
not pre-exist reification! (kant: antropology)
[!!!!!---->]"But they must not be governed by a law in the sense in which 'laws' govern
individual phenomena they must not under any cirumstances be rationallly organised through
and through. This does not mean, of course, that there can be no 'law' governing the whole.
But such a 'law' would have to be the 'unconscioius' product of the activity of the different
commodity ownder acting indenepdently of one another, i.e., a law of mutually interacting
'coincidences' rather than one of truly rational organisation. Furthermore, such a law must
nog merely impose itself despite the whsches of individuals, itmay not even be fully and

adequately knowable. For the comple knowledge of the whole would vouchsafe the knower
a monopoly that would amount to the virutal abolition of the capitalist economy (102).
[dupuy] This irrationality, this - highly problematic - 'systematisation' of the whole which
diverges qualitatively and in principle from the laws regulating the parts, is more than just a
postulate, a presupposition essential to the workings of a capitalist economy. It is at the same
time the product of the capitalist division of labour. It has already been pointed out that the
division of labour disrupts every organically unified process of work an dlife and breaks it
down into its components. This enables the artificially isolated partial functions to be
pefromed in the most rational manner by 'specialist' who are specially adapted mentaly and
physically for the purpose. This has the effect of making these partial functions autonmous
and so they tend to develop throug their own momentum and in accordance with theri own
special laws independently of the other partial functions of society (or htat part of the society
to which they belong) (103).
"For the philosophoers 'creation' means only the possibility of rationally comprehending the
facts, whereas for mathematics 'creation' and the possibilit of comprehension are identical.Of
all the representativiesve of classical phislsophy it was Fichter in this midle period who saw
this problem most clearly and gav it the most satisfactory formualtion. What is at issue, he
says, is the "absolute projection of an object of the origin of which no account can be given
with the result that the space between projection and thing projected is dark and void; I
expressed it somewhat scholastically but, as I believe, very appropriately, as the projectio
per hiatum irrationalem [necessarium]. Only with this problematic does it become possible
to comprehend the parting of teh ways in modern philosophy and with it the chief stages in its
evolution. This doctrine of the irrational leaves behind it the era of philosophical 'dogmatism'
or - to put it in terms of social history - the age in which the bourgeois calss naively equated
itso own forms of thought, the forms in which it saw the world in accordance with its ow
existence in society, with reality and with existence as such. The unconditional recognition of
this problem, the renouncing of attempts to solve it lead directly to the various theories
centring on the notion of fiction [!!!]. It leads to the rejection of every 'metaphysics' (in the
sense of ontology) and also to positing as the aim of philosophy the undertanding of the
phenomena of isolated, higly specialised areas by means of abstract rational special systems,
perfectly adapted to them and without making the attempt to achieve a unified mastery of the
whole realm of the knowable.(120)
"Our aim here was to locate the point at which there appears in the thought of bourgeois
society the dobule tendency characteristic of its evolution. On the one hand, it acquires
increasing control of society as a whole and with that it loses its own qualifications for
leadership (121).
"But unable to turn this 'critical' movement in the direction of a true creation of the object - in
this case of the thinking subject - and indeed by taking the very opposite direction, this
'critical' attempt to bring the analysis of reality to its logical conclusion ends by returnign to
the same immediacy that faces the ordinary man of bourgeois society in his everyday life. It
has been conceptualized, but only immediately." (154)
"Whenenver the refusal of the subject simply to accept his empirically given existence takes
the form of an 'ought', this means that the immediately given empirical reality receives
affirmation and consecration at the hands of philosophy: it is philosophically immortalised.

"Nothing in the world of phenomena can be explained by the concept of freedom," Kant
states, "the guiding thread in that sphere must always be the mechanics of nature (161)
it seems that contingency and necessity are reversed -> the actual is now identified with
contingency, whilst what ought to be done coincides with a too demanding - and
therefore deemed illusory ? - necessity. <------!!!!!! [zizek ideology]
Bourgeois "historical" thought today is no longer (if it ever was) the teleological whig
theory of history (often associated with modernism), but rather the history of
contingency/contingent encounters. no breaks, no periodization, just an amalgam of
swirving assemblages, different intesnities etc.
Neoliberal : individual thinks himself to be the subject [active principle] of its own life.
"This is based - as we have shown - on the fact that the bourgeoisie always perceives the
subject and object of the historical process and of social reality in a double form: in terms of
his consciousness the single individual is a perceiving subject confronting the overwhelming
objective necessities imposed by society of which only minute fragments can be
comprehended. But in reality it is precisely the conscious activity of the individual that is to
be found on the object-side of the process, while the subject (the class) cannot be awakened
into consciousness and this actvity must always remain beyond the conciouness of the apparent - subject, the individual."
"For the proletariat social reality does not exist in this double form. It appears in the first
instance as the pure object of societal events. In every aspect of daily life in which the
individual worker imagines himself to be the subject of his own life he finds this to be an
illusion that is destroyed by the immddiacy of his exsitence (165)
collective
"Thus for the worker the reified character of the immediate manifestations of capitalist
society receives the most extreme definition possible. It is true: for the captialist also there is
the same doubling of personality, the same splitting up of man into an element of the
movement of commodities and an (objective and impotent) observer of that movement. But
for his consciousness it necessarily appears as an activity (albeit this activiy is objectivly an
illusion), in which effects emanate from himself. This illusion blinds him to the true state of
affairs, whereas the worker, who is denied the scope for such illusory activity, perceives the
split in his being preserved in the the brutal form of what is in its whole tendency a slavery
without limits. He is therefore forced into becoming the object of the process y which he is
turned into a commodity and reduced to mere quantity" (166)
HUMANISM ALERT
"This is the fact that whilel the process by which the worker is reified and becomes a
commoditiy dehumanises him and cripples and atrophies his 'soul' - as long as he does not
consciously rebel against it - it remains true that precisely his humanity and his soul are
not changed into commodities" (172)
"By such means a "status-consciousness" is created that is calculated to inhibit effectively the
growth of a class conciousness. Thus the purely abstract negativity in the life of the worker is

objectively the most typical maniferstation of reification, it is the constitutive type of

capitalist socialisation. (172)
"We must undertand the importance of this remoteness for the consciousnes of thos
initionatin the aciton and for it srelation tot the existing state of affairs An iti is here that the
difference between the stand points of hte bougeoisie and the proletariat are thrown shraply
into relief. In bourgeois thought these remoter factors are simply incorporated into the
rational calculation [BOURGEOIS PRUDENCE!!!!!]
"For it is only meaningful to speak of relativism where an 'absolute' is in some sense
assumed. The weakness and the half-heartedness of such 'daring thinkers' as Nietzsche or
Spengler is that their relativism only abolishes the absolute in appearance" (187) [paper
gabriel]
"It is of the essence of this idea that it should preclude a dialectical interaction with the
empiricial components of the ego and a fortiori the possibility that the intelligible ego should
recognise itself in the empirical ego. The impact of such an idea upon the empirical reality
corresponding to it produces the same riddle that we described earlier in the relationship
between 'is' and 'ought'. This discovery makes it quite clear why all such views must end in
mysticism and conceptual mythologies. Mythologies are always born where two terminal
points, or at least two stages in aa movement, have to be regarded as terminal points wihout
its being possible to discover any concrete mediation between them and the movement."
(194)
"Wheareas mythology is simply the reproduction in imagination of the problem in
its insolubility (194) METAMODERN!

3.1
"Aesthetic quarrels are unique in that they aim at consensus without our being able
to guarantee that consensus can actually be attained [ineffable]. By contrast, arguments about
what things are good always admit of consensus because the are based upon determinate
concepts, while arguments about what things are agreeable are pointless."
But perhaps quarrels about the good are just as pointless?
"To quarrel on behalf of a judgment of taste is to purport "subjective" as opposed to
"objective" universality without being able to prove that we are right (CPJ 100) Thus taste
gives rise to a dialog whose telos is agreement but whose outcome is uncertain. Kant suggest
that our capacity to make judgments of taste presuppose the existence of a sensus comunis - a
shared common sense - and that the aim of aesthetic quarreling is to cultivate such a faculty
(CPJ 173) Whether the sensus communis should be thought of as "a consittutive principle of
the possbiliry of experience or whether a yet higher principle of reason only makes it into a
regulative principle for us first to produce a common sense in ourselves for higher ends" is a
question that Kant leaves unanswered (CPJ 124). The ideal of a fully achieved sensus

communis can be thought of as the subjective analogue of the political ideal of a "general
will." (221)
General will, as God, are empty signifiers, transcendental signifieds.
"In his analytic of the sublime, Kant distinguishes the "mathematically" sublime from the
"dynamically" sublime (CPJ 131). An experience of the mathematically sublime - the
"absolutely great" - occurs when we attempt to grasp in a single intuition the
full magnitude of an object that exceed our power of aesthetic comprehension. This failure on
the part of the imagination is experienced by us as painful, particularly insofar as it bespeaks
our inability to provide reason with a sensible image that would be adequate to its idea of
the infinite" (221).
Think of descartes' chiliagon. You cannot represent it but it is possible to THINK it.
"But this failue on the part of the imagination then gives rise to a "higher" pleasure as we are
reminded of our vocation as moral agents, a vocation that makes s greater than nature itself.
Thus the very failure of the imagination is purposive for the faculty of reason which thereby
recognizes itself as what is absolutely great, a fact attested to by the circumstance that it is not
nature in its hugeness but reason in its infinite demand that does violence to the imagination"
(221)
To think of the chiliagon reminds us of the great powers of reason (mathematics) that
can think BEYOND imagination
"In the case of the dynamically sublime it is an encounter not so much with the large as with
the terrifying that prompts the subject to try to imagine the full force of nature's power.
Though this attempt again causes pain, it gives way to the pleasurable feeling of our vocation
as rational wills whose ability to resist all natural incentives transcends the power of nature."
Perhaps brute police force? or a natural disaster? This prompts us to a vocation of
reason to surpass such events.
Thus in the feeling of both the mathematical and the dynamical sublime - which may simply
be two aspects of one and the same experience - it is not nature itself but only the moral
disposition of the human mind that we experiences as sublime: "hence it is the disposition of
the mind resulting form a certain representation occupy in the reflecitve judgment, but not the
object, which is to be called sublime. (221)
The object is not sublime, but the disposition of the mind. The sublime is not "in the
thing itself"
"In contrast to the pleasure felt in the judgment of the beautiful - which attests to a
harmonizning of the imagination and the understanding - in the experince of the sublime we
feel plearue because the discord [LOGIC OF THE SIGNIFIER-Imaginary/symbolic]
between imagination and reason reminds us of our dignity as rational agents. More precisly,
the feeling of the sublime represents an easthetic response to our moral vocation, our
responsibility to realize the highest good. For this reason, Kant characterizes the feeling of
enthusiasm as sublime: "This state of mind seems to be sublime, so much so that it is
commonly maintained that witout it nothing great can be accomplished" (CPJ 154). Thus

enthusiasm is associated not only with the experience of bearing witness - as in the case of
the spectators of the French Revolution - but with the standpoint of moral agency"
Thus Kant characterizes the beautiful as the SYMBOL OF MORALITY!!!!
"Kant characterizes the beautiful as a "symbol of morality," theryby indication how taste can
play an edifying role in human experience (CPJ 225) . . . In the first Critique, Kant
characterized ideas as concepts of reason to which no intuition could be adequate. In the third
Critique, he supplements this account by acknowledging the exstence of "aesthetic ideas,"
sensible images that cryptically express indeterminate concepts"
A genius managed to exhibit an indeterminate concept in a sensible image / aesthetic ideas
express the inexpressible.
"Once again, Kant preserves the boundary separating enthusiasm from fanaticism. To
succumb to fanaticism would be to believe that it is possible to identify divine purpose in
nature from the standpoint of a determingn judgment. Such a claims would overstep the
bounds of possible experince. Although we can only make sense of natural organisms by
taking them to be designed in acocrdance with the divine interventions, we do this for mthe
standpoint of reflective jdugment alone. Thus the hints that nature provides us with retain
their merly promissory character. To hav faith is, in effect, to believe that there are promises
in nature. To have faith that the human race is morally improving is to believe that the "final
end of nature" - the highest good for humanity - will be attained. But becauuse a promise is
not an epistemic guarentee, to have faith is to recognize the promise of the highest as
promised rather than as given:
"(Kant): It is a matter of trusting the promise of teh moral law; not a promise that
is contained in the moral law, but one that I put into it, and indeed on a morally adequate
basis. For a final end cannot be commanded by any law of reason without reason
simultaneously promising its attainability, even if uncertainly."
[is this really the same "as if" as in metamodernism???]
If enthusisasm is the necesary affective complement to faith, fanaticism arises when we
believe that a promise either ahs already been fulfilled or will be fulfilled at a definite point
in time. put otherwise, whereas enthusiasm can be correlated with the right to hope,
fanaticism can be characterized as a sense of entitlement.
"Kant insistence on the merely promissory character of ideals bears on his distinction
between beauty and sublimity. [reification as condition] Both the beautiful and the sublime
attest to the division between intuitions and concepts, the one presenting an object
of intuition to which no concept is adequate, the other a concept to which no intuition is
adequate (chiliagon?). Only a being for whom intuitions and concepts are distinct - i.e., a
being incapable of intellectual intuition - can experience beauty and sublimity. Conversely,
the experiences of beauty and sublimity represent, indifferent ways, the closest we can come
to an intellectual intuition of the divine. Thus, an object strikes us as beautiful when the mere
sensible intuition of its form seems to reveal its intelligible character [Heidegger,
EREIGNES?], while an idea counts as sublime when it demands - while simultaneously
precluding - intuitive fulfillment [marxism?]. That neither experience can succeed in
overcoming the gap separating our cognitive faculties is consequence of the fact that each

lacks what the other alone could provide. In this sense, the beautiful and the sublime
beckon to each other as if longing for a union that is strictly impossible - which is to say
that there is no such thing as either sublime beauty or beautiful sublimity. Even if a natural
object could qualify as something sublime, it would be difficult - if not impossible - for a
single object to exhibit both the form requisite for natural or artifactual beauty and that
"formlessness" of "raw nature" the encounter with which prompts an experience of sublimity
(CPJ 136)" (224).
3.2 Marx
"Marx was drawn to Feurerbach's idea that what distinguishes human beings from other
animals is our "species-being," the fact that we are conscious of ourselves as individuals only
insofar as we are conscious of the species as a whole (Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844,
[estrangement/reification = a loss of totality]
"Like Hegel, Feuerbach also thought that history is the movement by which humanity
becomes alienated from itself and then overcomes its self-alienation. but Hegal had been
unable to make this diea concrete because, Like Kant, his thought was determined by the
bourgeois society to which ehbelonged. (EAPM 177) As Marx conceives it, alientation is a
function of private property, or rather, of any economic system in which the products of
human labor are appropriated by a subset, or class, of society as a whole. In such a world
humanity becomes " estranged" from itself in several interrelated ways. the worker is
estranged ffrom the product that is his or her labor produces, since this comes to exist as an
"alien power" standing over agianst it: "the object which labor produces . . . confronts it as
something alien, as a a power independent of the producer (EAPM 108)" (226).
Not simply the product that was alienated, but the, the exchange value function, the
REAL ABSTRACTION (invisible hand of the market)
Perhaps the shift from early to late marx is from manicheism to assymetry (dialectics)
"As a consequence of estrangement form the thing, the worker also suffers from "selfestrangement." [Lacanian split subject] Finally, through the division of humanity into
laborers and owners, the species as a whole becomes estranged from itself: "In estranging
from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, . . . estranged labor estranges the species from man. It
changes for him the life of the species into a means of individual life" (EAPM 112, cf. 114).
"In leaving behind the mercantile system of the feudal period, modern bourgeois society had
brought humanity to its mst extreme point of self-alienation by dividing all human beings into
two opposed classes(EAPM 100; LPW 2) ALIENATION IS EXCHANGE VALUE =
CLASS STRUGGLE = CLASSES
"Teh end result is that the captialsit do not control capital but are instead controlled by it - as
of course are the workers, since they msut sell themselves to the capitalist in order to survive.
The auntonomization of captial - closelhy connected with its acumulation in the hands of ever
fewer capitalists - manifests itself as a restless drive for ever-increasing profits. In order to
satisfy this constant need for growth, captial breaks down all local an national bounderies,
thereby bestowing upon it a certain "cosmopolitan" character: "This political economy,

consequently, displays a cosmopolitan, universal energy which overthrows every restriction

and bond so as to establisch itself instead as the sole politics, the sole universality, the sole
limit and sole bond" (EAPM 129; cf. LPW 4). Thus, unlike Kant, who saw the trend
toward cosmopolitanism as a consequence of the costs of war, Marx interprets it a sthe
inevitable consequence of the laws governing the capitalist moder of production (228).
"Marx begins with the suppositin that what is distinctive about "the capitalist mode of
production" is the commodity form (C 125).
"The mysterious character of the commodity-form consist therefore simply in the fact that the
commodity refelcts the social characteristics of men's own labour as objective characteristics
of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things" (C1645). As a result of this illusion, exchange ceases to take place as a relation between human
beings and instead assumes "the fantastic form of a relation between things." Marx refers to
this as the "fetishism of commodities" (C 165). Thus the advent of the commidty marks the
true beginnening of what Marx refferred to in the 1844 Manuscripts as the phenomenon of
estranged labor. Wheareas Feurebach thought that alienation found its primary expression in
religion, Marx locates it more precisley in the religion of commodiities, which is based on
the distinction between use-value [intuitions] and exchange value ["concepts"]. Insofar
as a commodity is a use-value, it is a sensible object with physical properties. But insofar as it
is an exchange-value it functions as if it were a supersensible object with spiritual properties:
as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcend sensousness"
(C 163; cf. 149). Thus the fetishism of commodities occurs at the precise moment when the
relationship between a thing and its value becomes inverted: instead of serving as a mere
measure of the socially neccasry labor-time that is needed to produce a thing, abstract balue
appears as a transcendent entity that manifest itself in the thing. Marx characterizes this as
the revelation of the commodities "sublime objectivity" (C 144).
"Insofar as it treats a merely regulative principle as if it were constitutive of a
transcendent object, the fetishism of commodities can be thought of as a transcendental
illusion. Kant claimed that it was a peculiarity of such illusion that even after seeing through
them, they continued to persist, seducing reason with their allure (CPR A297/B353) [real
abstraction]. Marx makes a similar point about the fetishism of commodities: "The belated
scientific discovery that the products of labour, in so far as they are values, are merly the
mataerial expressions of the human labour expended to produce them, marks an epoch in ther
history of mankind's development, but by no means banisches the semblance of objectivity
possesd by the social characteristics of labour" (232)
--------------[Insert][transcendental illusion] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/ "What
emerges in the Dialectic is a more complex story, one in which Kant seeks to disclose and
critique the transcendental ground that leads to the misapplications of thought which
characterize the specific metaphysical arguments. In developing the position that our
metaphysical propensities are grounded in the very nature of human reason, Kant (in the
Introduction to the Dialectic) characterizes reason as a capacity for syllogistic reasoning. This
logical function of reason resides in the formal activity of subsuming propositions under ever
more general principles in order to systematize, unify, and bring to completion the
knowledge given through the real use of the understanding (A306/B363-A308/B365). Kant
thus characterizes this activity as one which seeks conditions for every condition. It is

therefore central to this Kantian conception of reason that it is preoccupied with the
unconditioned.
he demand for the unconditioned, in turn, is essentially a demand for ultimate explanation,
and links up with the rational prescription to secure systematic unity and completeness of
knowledge. Reason, in short, is in the business of ultimately accounting for all things [world
qua world gabriel]. As Kant formulates this interest of reason in the first Critique, it is
characterized by the logical maxim or precept thus: Find for the conditioned knowledge
given through the understanding the unconditioned whereby its unity is brought to
completion (A308/B364). It is central to Kant's Dialectic that this requirement for
systematic unity and completeness of knowledge is inherent in the very nature of our reason.
Controversially, he does not take it that this demand for the unconditioned is something
we can dismiss, nor does he take the interests we have in metaphysics to be merely
products of misguided enthusiasm."
----------------------"Here Marx implicitly reiterates his critique of Hegel and Feuerbach, both of whom thought
that alienation could be overcome by understanding it. In fact, the fetishim of commodities
can be effectively overcome only when the institution of private property [law protecting
pp / prohibiting "theft"] is abolished: "The veil is not removed from the countenance of the
social life-process, i.e. the process of material production, until it becomes production by
freely associeted men, and stands under their conscious and planned control" (C 173).
"The fact that the fetishim of commodities can be overcome show that it is not so much a
transcendental illusion as one that is historically generated. Indeed, the illusion consisit in
thinking that the commodity-form is itself a transcendental condtion of the possiblity of
experience in general rather than being a condition for the posssiblity of bourgeois experience
{!!!} - ie., that there is no other way of organzinzing the economic production and exchange
apart from the commdity-production.
3.3 Lukacs
"Man becomes transcendentally homeless whenever "life" is cut off from "essence," that is,
whenever the individual subject experiences itself as alienated from the world. In this
historical constellation, the novel has a unique role to play, for unlike other forms of
literature, it has the alienated subject seeking reconciliation with the world as it protagonist.
Unfortunately, so great is the rift within human experience in the age of absolute sinfulness
that even the novel proves unable to heal it. Lukacs concludes with a wistful hope for a new
form of art that might succeed where the novel fails, acknowledging that such a hope may be
futile (TOTN 153)
"In order to indicate the specificity of the novel form, Lukacs situates it with repect to earlier
forms of literature from which it is distinct. Lying at the basis of his typology is a
fundamental distinction between "integrated" and "problematic" civilazations. An integrated
civilzation, such as he imagence ancient Greece to have been, is one in whic life and essence
are not distinct, that is, in which human beings live their lives within a world which they
regard as inherently meaningful (!!) (236)

Thus the main problem faced by lukacs is wheter it is possbile for the novel to straddle
these two extremes, to reconcile the opposition between abstract idealism and the
romanticism of disillutionment (237)
"Humanism, the fundamental attitude of this type of work, demands a balance between
activity and contemplation, between wanting to mould the world and being purely receptive
towards it" (TOTN 135).
More precisly, the novel is sitll torn between the extremes of abstract idealism and the
romanticism of disillusionment, attesting to the impossibility of redemption from the age of
absolute sinfulness.
today however, we find the opposition CONCRETE PARTICULARISM (cannot impose
will / relativism / postmodernism) VS ROMANTICISM OF MEANING (reconstruction
of utopian meaningfulness).
"Kant indicates that it is impossbile to regard the world as fully rational. But rather than
recognize this as af eatur of th particular character of bourgeois society he instead treats it as
an unchanging transcendental condition of possible human in general [ABSTRACTION]
Thus, far from resolving the antinomies of bourgeois thought, Kant succumbs to them, as can
be seen in the sharp dichotmoy that separates the firt Critique from the second, that is, the
account of nature as a law-governed realm in which all human actions are heternomous from
the ideal of a kingdom of ends (HACC 41). Despite the fact that the categorical imperative
bids us to change the world by regarding ourselves as legislators in nature, it remains a
merely abstract and utopian principle, paradoxically affirming the very world it would
supposedly have us transform. This can be seen in the fact that Kant regards the categories of
experience as fixed transcendental limits rather than as the expression of bourgeois social
[thus kant needs to be historicized]
Hegel makes a decisive advance beyond Kant by recognizing the historical and dialectical
character of both the Kantian forms of thought and the Kantian conception of the moral law,
thereby passing from the point of mere "conditions of possibility" to (genetic) conditions of
actuality (HACC 110). 242
Lukacs ideology of man: "In such accounts it is shown, on the one hand, that it is not possible
to be human in bourgeois society, and, an the other hand, that man as he exist is opposed
without mediation - or what amounts to the same thing, through the mediations of
metaphysics and myth - to this non-existence of the human (whether this is thought of as
something in the past, future or merely an imperative) (HACC 190)
This account enables Lukacs to reconceive the role of art in human experience. Schiller
claimed that man is fully human "only when he plays" (HACC). However, as long as
this principle is conceived from the standpoint of bourgeois subjectivy, it poses an
insoluble dilemma:
Either the world must be aestheticised, which is an evasion of the real problem and is
just another way to annihilate "action." [METAMODERNISM!!!!!!] Or esle, the
aesthetic principle must be elevated into the principle by which objective reality is
shaped: but that would be to mythologize the discovery of intuitive understanding
[SPINOZISM, JANET BENNET]

"This is the opposition that Lukacs had earlier detected between abstract idealism and the
romanticism of disillusionment (242, see below!)
is the metamodern a classicism? classicism is finding a proper balance (no hubris)
bourgeois prudence (zizek examples) prudent hedonism / pleasure instead of desire
(foucault)
3.4 Benjamin
Thus the messianic promise of redemption is to be understood not in terms of a linear model
of time according to which future reconciliation of humanity would be the goal toward which
history is progressing. Benjamin regards the linear march of time as an unremitting disaster
form which a messiah alone could redeem us. To regard either the present or the past form
the point of view of mere historiography would be to find only occasion for despair
[Kant], so that it would be impossible to answer Kant's question, "Is the human race
constantly progressing?," in the affirmative. But historical materialism offers another way
of thinking abuot time, no as a linear sequence of nows but as a constellation of moment
any one of which is capable of being "blasted" out of its historical context and charged
with the task of redemption. So conceived, historical materialism is not only a way of
thinking about the course of history; it is a way of salvaging the past so as to interrupt and
overturn the linear progression of homogeneous time" (251)
In constrast to "mythical" experience, which seeks an empirical determination of the divine,
religious experience repects the indeterminability of the ideal by protesting against "graven
images"
TRAGEDY, CLASSIC
"Empathy with the commodity is probably empathy with exchange value in itself" (258)
"The fettered man listens to a concert, as immobilized as audience later, and his enthusiastic
call for liberation goas unheard as applaus (DOE 27)." Art preserves the memeory of the cost
of enlightenment, but only insofar as aesthetic contemplation remains disinterested - just as,
according to Freud, dreams require the motor paralysis of sleep to enable otherwise repressed
desires to express themselves (IOD 607). Bourgeois works of art use the pretext of their
uselessness to protest against domination. As such, they are both subversive and guilty of
complicity at the same time. IN the confines of the theater, the dream of utopia does not
change the world. Outside, order reasserts itself. (261)
3.6 Adorno
"But like Marx and Lukacs, they regard all of Kant's dualisms as symptoms of
divisons that he is unable to resolve. Chief among these is the rift between sensuous nature
and human rationality- i.e., between intuitions and concepts. Indeed, Horkheimer and Adorno
go so far as to suggest that the fundamental task of philosophy is to "close" the "chasm"
between the two. Unfortunately, philosophy has been unable to succeed in this regard, and in
fact it has "usually . . . sided with the tendency to which it owes its name" (DOE 13) In other
words, philosophers have typically "resolved" the opposition by subordination sensibility to
the hegemony of the concept. Because they regard rationality itself equivalent to domination,

Horkheimer and Adorno characterize the Kantian schematism (and presumably the typic of
pure practical judgment as well) as a mechanism of control.
If determining judgments function as instruments of domination, reflective judgments sustain
the possibility of critique. Just as aesthetic reflection resist schematization, so the culture
industry imposes it by substituting mere commodities for genuine works of art (DOE 65). The
subordination of sensuous intuitions to concepts is the flip side of the deferral of sensual
pleasure for the sake of self-preservation. Through sublimation, works of art attest to the
"mutilated" character of cultural pleasures by representing "fulfillment in its brokenness"
(DOE 111). In other words, precisely by sustaining the gap between mere sensuous
gratification and aesthetic stisfaction - i.e., the gap that Kant detects in the difference between
the agreeable and the beautiful- works of art protest against reason's repression of the
inclination - ie.e, against the gap that should not exist between the agreeable and the
(instrumental) good.
Aura is not paranormal. Aura = the manifestation of the ideal of the philosophical
problem
"Art responds to its degradation by resisting commodification, and it does this by refusing to
be either agreeable or beautiful. In his posthumously published Aesthetic Theory Adorno
argues that art needs to preserve its aura precisely so as to avoid commodification: "Aura is
not only - as Benjamin claimed - the here and now of the artwork, it is whatever goes beyond
its factual givennes, its content; one cannot abolish it and still want art" (AT 45) [PUNCTUM
BARTHES]
"Though the third Critique seeks to articulate the conditions under which humanity can feel
"at home" in nature, it is ultimately predicated on the very division between nature and
reason.
In postmodernity the imaginary concept of NATURE is no longer viable - [from
immanent meaningfull whole - to culture nature opposite - to total aleination// result:
panpsychism/ooo/ or nihil unbound (brassier)/primary qualities as absolute
(meillasoux)] commodified/reified/"estranged" - i.e. there is no nature (as holistic
ecology)
"It is in the song of the Sirens - not in the bourgeois subject's guilty voice of reason - that
something like the categorical iimperative originates. Thus the work or art is that in sensible
nature which by conjuring the semblance of a reconcilitation between nature and reason
(whether positively or negatively), attests to the condition of their mutual alienation, thereby
calling for their actual reconciliation. That call is a demand whose ultimate telos lies not in
the repression of the inclinations but in their free, uncoerced sublimation. In a sense, the work
of art always says one and the same thing: so act that you use the nature in humanity as an
end in itself, not merely as a means. But works of art are not merely sensible representations
of intelligble speech. If they were, they would remain objects to be subsumed under concepts
rather than objects to be responded to mimetically. This is one reason why Adorno objects to
didactic works of art whose protest against domination takes place exclusively at the level of
content. The fact that intuitions without concepts are dumb - a point that underlies the critique
of Husserl's conception of categorial intuition that Adorno presens in against epistemology poses a problem for art, whose task is to give expression to the inarticulable, to speak on
behalf of that in sensible nature which is incapable of speech."

"If the split between sensibility and intelligibility is a consequence of social alienttion, art
cannot have recourse to a symbolism that would effectively smooth over social antagonisms.
Instead of appealing to art's symbolism, Adorno invokes its "enigmaticalness." Every genuine
work of art is an enigma in that it harbors a meaning which cannot be fully disclosed. It
is precisely art's enigmaticalness that enable it to fulfill the tasks of experessing the
inexpressible - but at the price of simultaneously failing to fulfill this task. (265)
"Were it possible to translate into speech, sublime art's version of the categorical imperative
would be something like, "Resist commodity fetishism." But works of art neither judge nor
communicate. They themselves resist, and therein lies their autonomy (though this too must
be compromised by art's heteronomous response to social conditions).
"Ever since Plato, philosophy has taken cognizance of this condition, but it has done so by
siding with the interest of somination (DOE. Every philosophy that engages in the task of
covering up this social wound is ideological. Thus the intuition/concept dualism is a symptom
of a profound social antagonism, one that cannot be eliminated through vague attempts
mediation. What remains fals in Hegelian dialectis is its presumption to resovle antinomies
which at present must be endured; "Ever since Plato, bourgeois consciousness has
deceived itself that objective antinomies could be mastered by steering a middle course
between them, wheareas the sought-out mean always conceals the antinomy and is torn
apart by it" (AT 298)
"Any art that fails to register its won impossibility today is a priori condemned to being a
mere commodity, an obscene sacrifice to barbaric "taste," a term that acquires an exclusively
pejorative connotation in Adorno's later work since he associates it with bourgeois aesthetics.
To the extent that art can still exist, it is the site of the world's hope; but to the extent that it is
no longer entitled to exist, it register the world's depair. In his account of the sublime, Kant
called attention to a certain kind of "double bind" affecting the imagination. On the on the
one hand, the imagination is obliged to provide a sensible image of an idea of reason; yet at
the same time it must not provide such an image, thereby respecting the unpresentability of
such ideas" 266 [Metamodern oscillation]
Dialectics of void and excess?

Every kind of struggle is local

Emancipation in seminar
Indisciplinary (there is no disciplinary-relation)
Everything is politics, against distribution/ reification (identity-difference IS reification
What does research mean?
Counter affirmation
-----

Academia is constructed largely as a Metaphor of society (neoliberal = neoliberal academi)

You can never emancipate an institution
Not: institution or not
Start with equalty
creation: Capacity, ability, possibility
Theology, utopia? No. (concept of elsewhere)
Occupation is another place. Disturbing the (normal) distribution of the sensible
creation of capacity
Addressing the much-researched medicalization of politics that goes hand-inhand with the
bilogical racism that permeated the Nazi movement at all levels, Espostio writes, "It is as if
medical power and political-juridical power are mutually superimposed over each other
through alternating points that are ultimately destined to completely overlap: this is the claim
that life is supreme, which provokes its absolute subordination to politics."
[Hierarchy dupuy: (wealth) use value is supreme, which provokes its absolute
subordination to exchange value.
He then adds, "The concentration and later the extermination camps constitute the most
symptomatic figure of such a chiamsus" (140). But if the goal of the camps ws, ultimately, to
secure the immunizing enclosure of the German national body upon itself while also
enclosing each individual body upon its own biological consitution, it could do so only by, as
it were, spiriting into the soma a kind of soul-substance, creating something like a SURPLUS
of immanence within immanence. What we encounter here is an extreme version of what I
am calling "the People's Two Bodies"
In the period he studies - primarily from the High Middle Ages to the late Renaissance Kantorowicz shows that this complex set of linkages was largely, if often unstably, secured
by the peculiear doctrine that the roryal personage had two bodies, one natural and subject to
the fate of all mortal flesh and one supernatural, whose representational or official
corporeality gave quasi-devine legitimacy, presence, and enduring substance to governmental
authority - to Hereschaft - across the succession of generations. Put somwhat differently,
what Kantorowicz apparently discovered was that if the king was to function as the general
equivalent of subjects in his realm - and theyre by help to sustain the realm in its symboic
efficicency as a locus of subject-formation - his being had to undergo, as if by ssome
necessity in the logic of symbolic authority, a kind of doubling or "germination" resulting in
the production of the abstract physiological fiction of a subliime, quasi-agelic body, a body of
immortal flesh that ws thereby seen to enjoy both jridical and medical immunity, to stand
above the laws of men and the laws of perishable nature. THis view achieves its fullest
formualtion in the writiings of English jurists of the sixteenth century. There one reads, for
example, the following:

For the King has in him two Bodies, viz., a Body natrual, and a Body politic. His Body
natural . . . is a Body mortal, subject to all Infermities that come by Nature or Accident to the
Imbecility of INfancy or old Age, and to the like Defects that happen to the natural Bodies of
other People. But his Body politic is a Body that cannot be seen or ahndled, consisting of
Policy and Government, and constituted for the Direction of the People, and the Mangement
of public weal,, and this Body is utterly void of Infancy, and old Age, and other natural
Defects and Imbecilities, which the Body natural is subject to, and for this Cause, what the
King does in his Body politic, cannot be invalidated or frustrated by any Disability in his
natural Body. (34-35)

Footnote 32: Husserl's perception has now been grounded on a historically materialist basis
by a remarkable book by Alfred Sohn-Rethel, intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of
Epistemology. This work lays the philosophical basis for a theory of scientific abstraction in
muc the smae way tha Lukacs History and Class Consciousness does for a theory of
reification; its findings are here presupposed throughout. (127)
Vrijheid en categorische imperatief veronderstellen elkaar wederzijds. Daarom erkent Kant
dat de mogelijkheidsvoorwaarde van de categorische imperatief uiteindelijk niet volledig
inzichterlijk gemaakt kan worden. Door de categorische imperatief is de mens zich ervan
bewust meer te zijn dan een zinuiglijk wezen en te behoren tot een adner orde dan de
zintuigleijke wereld. Deze verhevenheid bevestigt zijn waarde die boven elke prijs uitgaat,
maar dit "Meer' kent hij niet (462)
In Kritik der praktische vernunft, maar niet in fundering trekt Kant conclusies ten aanzien van
de twee andere elementen van de traditionele metafysica, de ziel en God. Dat is een gevolg
van Kants leerstuk van het hoogste goede.
[reificatie verandert deze begrippen fundamenteel - premodern: hoogste goede is hier,
modern: hoogste goede moet worden bewerktstelligd, dus: geschiedenis]
Zoals gezegd is Kants ethiek niet-eudaimonistisch: het gaat om deugd, niet om geluk. Toch is
het streven naar geluk een onlosmakelijk onderdeel van de menselijke natuur. Het is dus met
spijt dat de ervaring ons leert dat het de deugdzame vaak slecht en de immorele vaak goed
vergaat. Wij ervaren het als onredelijk dat een moreel persoon het geluk niet krijgt dat hij
verdient. Op grond van die discrepantie vormt zich de idee vanhet hoogste goed, waarin de
mate van geluk en de mate van moraliteit met elkaar overeenstemmen. Ofschoon we er alsdus
niet aan ontkomen het hoogste goede als de vereniging van moraliteit en geluk voor te stellen,
zien we tegelijk dat eht hoogste goede niet door onzelf tot stand gebracht kan worden.
Daarom noopt deze idee ons volgens Kant tot het aanvaarden van twee zogenaamde
postulaten [imaginary!] van de zuivere praktische rede, de onsterfelijkheid van de ziel
[identity] en god [Big Other].
De ziel : subject as stable identity. God: Big other. Dus: S - A. Psychoanalyis/kant:
subject: $. Big other does not exist. Dus: ($)(A)
Het ene postulaat heeft betrekking op de deugd als de meest volledige afstemming van de
individuale wilsbepaling op de morele wet. Deze deugdzaamheid kan door de mens alleen

bereikt worden door een oneindige voorgang naar die volmaaktheid. Een dergelijke
voortgang veronderstelt op haar beurt de voortdurende existentie van de mens die we de
onsterfelijkheid van de ziel noemen [ethics]. Het andere postulaat heeft betrekking op de
almacht en de alwetendheid [big other] die nodig is om geluk aan de mens toe te delen in
overeenstemming met zijn morilteit. Die macht moet alwetend zijn om zich in de
gelukwaardigheid van de mens neit te vergissen, en almachtig om steeds de gepaste mate van
geluk toe te delen. Een dergelijke macht kan uitsluitend aan God worden toegeschreven. (32)
In zekere zin worden de traditionele 'objecten' van de traditionle metafysica door Kants
praktische rede gered. Toch vormen vrijheid, de ziel of God niet het FUNDAMENT van de
ethiek. ZIj zijn er slechts door geimpliceerd. Deze geldigheid van de categorische imperatief
wordt door Kant niet afgeleid uit de autorieit van de goddelijke wetgever. De grondslag van
de ethiek is enkel te vinden in het bewustzijn van de morele wet (respect for the law) die voor
ons, endige wezens, als een imperatief verschijnt.

"Want dat zo'n filosofie moet bestaan, is vanzelf duidelijk uit de gewone idee van de plicht en
van de zedelijke wetten. Iedereen moet toegeven dat een wet, wil zij moreel gelden, dat wil
zeggen: als grond van een verplichting, met absolute noddzaak gepaard moet gaan; dat het
gebod 'gij zult niet liegen' geenszins louter voor mensen geldt, andere redelijke wezens
daarentegen zich daarnaar niet zouden moeten voegen, en evenzo voor alle andere eigelijke
zedenwetten; dat dus de grond van de verplichting niet gezocht moet worden in de natuur van
de mens [locke, hume, hobbes, natural law] of in de omstandigheden van de wereld waarin
hij geplaatst is, maar a priori enkel in begrippen van de zuivere rede; en dat elk ander
voorschrift dat op principes van de loutere ervaring gebaseerd is - zelfs een in zeker opzicht
algemeen voorschrift, wanner het maar in de geringste mate, wellicht slechts in eeen
beweegreden, op empirsche gronden berust-, welisaar een praktische regel genoemd dkan
worden, nooit echter een morele wet. (389)
Newton: postulation of Real - pure reason
Binnen het geheel van de praktische kennis onderscheiden zich de morele wtten tezamen met
hun principes aldus niet alleen wezenlijk van alle overige kennis waarin iets empirisch
aanwezig is, maar alle moraalfilosofie berust geheel en al op haar zuiver gedeelte (389).
Dus moet zij (metafysica) als eerste komen [in tegenstelling to empirisme - in
overeenstemming met newton]; en zonder haar kan er helemaal geen moraalfilosofie
bestaan. (390). [alienation/reification/etc]
Benjamin: on language in general, on human language in particular. Marx: THE Law
realizes itself in French law and German law. Exchange value realizes itself in this
commodity and that commodity.
"Wanneer men de bedoeling heeft tot dit bewijs te geraken, is het van het grootste gewicht de
volgende waarschuwing ter harte te nemen: men moet het vooral niet in zich laten opkomen
de realiteit van dit principe te willen afleiden uit een
bijzonder eigenschap van de menselijke natuur. Want plicht moet praktisch-onvoorwaardelijk

noodzakelijkheid van de handeling zijn. Hij moet dus voor alle redelijke wezens (slechts op
hen kan een imperatief van toepassing zijn) gelden en uitsluitend om die reden ook voor elke
menselijk wil een wet zijn.
Limits of knowing:
Hier zien wij nu dat de filosofie op een werkelijk hachelijk standpunt is gesteld dat
onwrikbaar behoort te zijn, hoewel er noch in de hemel, noch op aarde iets is waaraan dat
standpunt kan worden opgehangen of waardoor het kan worden gestut. (GOD
same sentence but mere modern. 2 "the great masses no longer believe." Thus detachment,
not yet clear what ideology can take over, wether back to old. What are symptoms? precisely
the newly emerging ideologies: the very fact of their profusion/ proliferation point the
breakdown - even if the old order still had force they more have to be more and more
defended, risking to be changed in the process.
Let us now try to elucidate an essential point on which Lukacs and Girard are in fundamental
disagreement. As the story of a degraded search for authetnic values in an inauthentic world,
the novel is necessarily both a biography and a social chronicle. A particularly important fact
is that the situation of the writer in relation to the world he has created is, in the novel,
different from the situation in relation to the world of any other literary form. This particulars
situations, Girard calls humour; Luckacs calls it irony. Both agree that the novelist must
supersede the consciuosness of his heroes and that this supersession (humour or irony) is
aesthetically constitutive of fictional creation. But they diverge as to the natrue of this
superssesion and, on theis point, it is the position of Lukacs that seems to me to be acceptable
and not that of girard.
"In short, all these analyses concern the relation between certain elements of the content of
fictional literature and the existence of a social reality that they reflect almost without
transposition or by means of a more or less transparant transposition. But the first problem
that a sociology of the novel should have confronted is that of the relation between the novel
form itself and the structure of the social environment in which it developed, that is to say,
between the novel as a literary genre and individualistic modern society. (6)
"The novel form seems to me, in effect, to be the transposisiton on the literary plane of
everyday life in the individualistic society created by market production. There is a rigorous
homology between the literary form of the novel, as I have defined it with the help of Lukacs
and Girard, and the everyday relation between man and commoditities in general, and by
extension between men and other men, in a market society (7)
"Soft tissue (gels and aerosols, muscle and nerve) regined supreme until 5000 miliion yers
ago. At that point, some of the glomerations of fleshy matter-energy that made up life
underwent a sudden mineralization, and a new material for cosntructing living creatures
emerged: bone. It is almost as if the mineral world that had served as a substratum for the
emergence of biological creatures was reasserting itelsf.
"the fear is that in failing to affirm human uniqueness, such views authorize the treament of
people as mere things; in other words, that a strong distinction between subjects and objects
is needed to prevent the insturmentalization of humans. Yes, such critics continue, objects
posses a certain power of action (as when bacteria or phamaceuticals enact hostile or

symbiotic projects inside the human body), and yes, some subject-on-subject objectifications
are permissible (as when persons consent to use and be used as a means to sexual
pleasure ???!!), but tht ontological divide between persons and things must remain lest one
have no moral grounds for privileging man over germ or for condemning pernicious forms of
human-on-human instrmentalization (as when powerful humans exploit illegal, poor, young,
or otherwise weaker). 12
How can the vital materialist respond to this important concern? Firs, by acknowledging that
the framework of subject versus object has indeed at times worked to prevent or ameliorate
human suffering and to promote human happiness or well-being.
[there are some pragmatic gains]
Second, by nothing that its success come at the price of an instrumentalizaiton of nonhuman
nature that can itself be unethical and can itself undermine long-term human interest. [but
there are some ethical losses inherent to it]
Third, by pointing out that the Kantian imperative to treat humanity always as end -in-itself
and never merely as a means doe not have a stellar record os succes in preventing human
suffering or promoting human well-being: it is important to raise the question of its acutal,
historical efficacy in order to open up space for forms of ethical practice that do not rely upon
the image of an intrinscially hierarchical order of things.
[not always successful in promoting human happiness /pleasure v. pain? bentham
utilitarianism?
Here the materialist speaks of promoting healthy and enabling instrumentalizations
[WHAT?/fascism?], rather than of treating people as ends-in-themselves, because to face up
to the compound nature of the human self is to find it difficult even to make sense of the
notion of a single end-in-itself. What instead appears is a swarm of competing ends being
pursued simultaneously in each individual, some of which are healthy to the whole, some of
which are not. Here the vital materialist, taking a cue from NIetzsche's and Spinoza's ethics,
favors physiological over moral descriptors because she fears that moralism can itself become
a source of unnecessary human suffering [The fuck, this IS fascism]
We are now in a better position to name that other way to promote human health and
happiness: to raise the status of the materiality of which we are composed. Each human is a
heterogeneous compound of wonderfully vibrant, dangerously vibrant, matter.
All bodies become more thatn mere objects, as the thing-powers of resistance and protean
agency are brought into sharper relief. Vital materialism would thus set up a kind of safety net
for those humans who are now, in a world where Kantian morality is the standard [?],
routinely made to suffer because thay do not conform to a particualr (Euro-American,
bourgeois, theocentrc, or other) model of personhood. The ethical aim becomes to distribute
value mre generously, to bodies as such, Such a newfound attentivness to matter and its
pwoers will not solve the problem of human exploitation or oppression, but it can inspire a
greater sense of the extent to which all bodies are kin in the sense of inextricably enmeshed in
a dens network of relations [hitler and the jews] And in a knotted world of vibrant matter, to
harm one section of the web may very well be to harm oneself. Such an enlightened or
expanded notion of self-interest is good for humans. As I will argue furhter in chapter 8, a

vital materialism does not reject self-interest as a motivation for ethical behavior, though it
does seek to cultivate a broader definition of self an interest.

The distinctive feature of a man of sovereign art lies in his refusal to regard himself
What was specific to Francisco analysis, is that it is precisely not limited to the question of
the locus of juridical soeveregnty
and yet, the sense in which gramsxi
Cruciaal to gr analysis was precisely that the interregnum, of his time was not limited to a
crisis on th level of juridical sovereignty alone. What is specific to not only the legal
framework, but also the authority of the beliefs, principles and practices that used to
legitimate the old order.
Irony: parody of itself
Basic formula of Seinfeld: "What's the deal with x. I mean: come on!"
irony: caricature of yourself
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/20/britain-criminally-stupid-raceimmigration?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
Great Awakening 18 century
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/grawaken.htm

But this unforeseeable return of narrative as the narrative of the end of narratives, this return
to hisory in the midst of the prognosis of the demise of historical telos, suggest a second
feature of postmodernism theory which requires attention, namely, the way in which virtually
any observation about the present can be mobilized in the very search for the present itselfl
and pressed into the service AS A SYMPTOM and an index of the deeper logic of the
postmodern, which imperceptibly turns into its own theory and the theory of itself. Howe
could it be otherwise where there no longer exist any such deeper logic for the surface to
manifiest and where the symptom has become its own disease (and vice versa no doubt)?
However, as will be demonstrated later on, the decision as to whether one face a break
or a continuity whether the present is to be seen as a historical originality or as the
simple prolongation of more of the same under different sheeps clothing is not an

empiricallly jusitifiable or philosophically arguable one, since it is itself the inaugural

narrative act that grounds perceptions and interpretation of the events narrated. XIII

Ethnicity,
Technology
Transformation : no more bodily punishment pain. Two processes: dissapearance of
punisment as a spectacle.
"Punishment hand gruadully ceased to be a spectacle" (9).
"Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of the penal process. This has
several consequence: it leaves the domain of more or less everyday perception and enters that
of abstract consciousness [abstaction!]; its effectiveness is seen as resulting form its
inevitability [?], not from its visible intensity; it is the certainty of being punished [Law will
be enforced] and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that must discourage
crime; the exemplary mechanics of punishment changes its mechanism." (9).
From imaginary to symbolic
"As a result, justice no longer takes public responsibility for the violence that is bound up
with its practice."
Violence is no longer public
"If it too strikes, if it too kills, it is not as a glorification of its strength [as with the king], but
as an element of itself that it is obliged to tolerate, that it finds difficult to account for" (9)
The law = law / universal crime
"The apportioining of blame is redistributed: in punisment as-spectacle a confused horror
spread from the scaffold; it enveloped both executioner and condemned; and, although it was
ready to invert the shame inflicted on the victem into pity or glory, it often turned the legal
violence of the executioner into shame.
Executioner was IMPLICATED
"Now the scandal and the light are to be distributed differently; it is the conviciton itself [the
sentence] that marks the offender with the unequivocally negative sign: the publicity has
shifted to the trial, and to the sentence; the execution itself is like an additional shame that
justice is ashamed to impose on the condemned man; so it keeps its distance from the act,
tending always to entrust it to others, under the seal of secrecy" (10).
"But the punishment-body relation is not the same as it was in the torture during public
executions. The body now serves as an instrument or intermediary: if one intervenes upon it
to imprison it, or to make it work [biopolitics], it is in order to deprive the individual of a
liberty that is regarded both as a right and as property [abstraction:]

"The modern rituals of execution attest to this double process: the disappearance of the
spectacle and the elimination of pain" (11)
"The guillotine takes life almost without touching the body, just as prison deprives of liberty
or a fine reduces wealth. It is intended to apply the law not so much to a real body capable of
feeling pain as to a juridical subject, the possessor, among other rights, of the right to exist.
It had to have the abstraction of the law itself" (13)
"Only the reading of the sentence on the scaffold announced the crime - and that crime must
be faceless (13-14)

"One has only to point out so many precautions to realize tha capital punishment remains
fundamentally, even today, a spectacle that must actually be forbidden" (15)
a prohibition of an impossibility
"There remains, therefore, a trace of 'torture' [prisoners must suffer more pain than normal
man] in the modern mechanism of criminal justice - a trace that has not been entirely
overcome, but which is enveloped, increasingly, by the non-corporeal nature of the penal
system (15).
"If the penalty in its most severe forms no longer addresses itself to the body, on what does it
lay hold? The answer of the theoreticians - those who, about 1760, opened up a new period
that is not yet at an end - is simple, almost obvious. It seems to be contained in the question
itself: since it is no longer the body, it must be the soul" (15).
"On the other hand, 'crime', hte object with which penal practice is concerned, has profoundly
altered: the quality, the nature, in a sense the substance of which the punishable element is
made, rather than its formal definition" (17).
"And the sentence that condemns or acquits is not simply a judgement of guilt, a legal
decision that lays down punishment; it bears within it an assessment of normality and a
technical prescription for a possible normalization. Today the judge - magistrate or juror certainly does more than 'judge'. (20-21)
Brings in the issue of 'normality' c.f. systems theory [luhmann dupuy]
"the whole machinery that has been developing for years around the implementation of
sentences, and their adjustment to individuals, creates a proliferation of the authorities of
judicial decision-making and extendt it powers of decision well beyond the sentence." (21)
Power (of decision making/ of judgment) becomes more dispersed
"What, then, is the role of the psychiatrist in penal matters? He is not an expert in
responsibility, but and adviser on punishment; (22)

"But what is odd about modern criminal justice is that, although it has taken on so many
extra-juridical elements, it has done so not in order to be able to define them juridically and
gruadlually to integrate them into the actual power to punish: on the contrary, it has done so
in order to make them function within the penal operation as non-juridical elements; in order
to stop this operation being simply a legal punishment; in order to exculpate the judge from
being purely and simply he who punishes 'Of Course, we pass sentence, but this sentence is
not in direct relation to the crime. it is quite clear that for us it functions as a way of treating a
criminal. We punish, but this is a way of saying that we wish to obtain a cure.'(22).
the sentence functions as a treatment, a cure -> to restore normality
Biopolitics / autoimmunity / system-normality
"today, criminal justice functions and justifies itself only by this perpetual reference to
something other that itself, by this unceasing reinscription in non-juridical systems. Its fate is
to be redefined by knowledge (22).
"But we can surely accept the general proposition that, in our societies, the systems of
punishment are to be situated in a certain 'political economy' of the body: even if they do not
make use of the violent or bloody punishment, even when they use 'lenient' methods
involving confinement or crrection, it is always the body that is at issue - the body and its
forces, their utility and their docility, their distribution and theri submission. [reproduction
of productive force althusser] It is certainly legitimate to write a history of punishment
against the background of moral ideas or legal structures, But can one write such a history
against the backround of a history of bodies, when such systems of punishment claim to have
only the secret souls of criminals as their objectiv?" (25)
"But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate
hold upon it' they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform
ceremonies, to emit signs. This political investment of the body is bound up, in accordance
with complex reciprocal relations, with its economic us; it is largely as a force of production
that the body is invested with relations of power and domination; but on the other hand,
its constitution as labour power is possible only if it is caught up in a system of subjection (in
which need is also a political instrument meticulously prepared, calculated and used); the
body becomes a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body." (2526)
"This subjection is not only obtained by the instruments of violence or ideology; it can also
be direct, physical, pitting force against force, bearing on material elements, and yet without
involving violence' it may be calculated, organized, technically thought out; it may be subtle,
make use neither of weapons nor of terror and yet remain of a physical order. That is to say,
there may be a 'knowledge' of the body that is not exactly the science of its functioning, and a
master of its forces that is more than the ability to conquer them: this knowledge and this
mastery constitute what might be called the political technology of the body." (26)
"In short this power is exercised rather than posseses; it is not the 'privilege', acquired or
preserved, f the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions - an effect that
is manifested and sometimes extended by the position of those who are dominated" (27).

"If the surplus power possed by the king gives rise to the duplication of his body,has not the
surplus power exercised on the subjected body of the condmened man given rise to another
duplication? [!] [santner] That of a 'non-corporal', a 'soul', as Mably called it. The history of
this 'mircro-physics' of the punitve power would then be a geneolgy or an element in a
genealogy of the modern 'soul'. Rather than seeing this soul as the reactivated remnants of an
ideology, one would see it as the present correlative of a certain technology of power over the
body" (29)
Soul is not a left-over of an old ideoloyg [for foucault: imposed thought], but a correlative to
a certain technology of power over the body. Power of the body simultaneously produces the
idea of the soul. [c.f. reification / lacan modern subject ] the soul, as we know it, is a modern
idea, not the same as the soul "before" modern techniques of power." (29)
[real abstraction] "It would be wrong to say that the soul is an illusion, or an ideological
effect. On the contrary, it exsits, it has a reality, it is produced permanently aroun, on, within
the body by the functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished - and, in a more
general way, on those one supervises, trains and corrects, over madmen, children at home an
at school, the colonized, over those who are struck at a machine and supervised for the rest of
their lives. This is the historical reality of this soul, which, unlike the soul represented by
christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to punishment, but is born rather out of
methods of punishment, supervision and constraint" (29).
"this real, non-corporal soul is not not a subjstance; it is the element in which are articulated
the effects of a certain type of power and the reference of a certain type of knowledge, the
machinery by which the power relation give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge, and
knowlege extends and reinforces the effects of this power" (29).
"on this reality-reference, various concepts, various concepts have been constructed and
domains of analysis carved out: psyche, subjectivy, personality, consciousness, etc; [real
abstraction is an effect of power relations] on it have been built scientific techniques and
discourses, and the moral claims of humanism" (30).
"But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge,
philosophical reflection or technical intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the
illusion of the theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already
himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and
brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the master that power exercises over the
body. The soul is the effect and the instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of
the body" (30).

But this unforeseeable return of narrative as the narrative of the end of narratives, this return
to history in the midst of the prognosis of the demise of historical telos, suggest a second
feature of postmodernism theory which requires attention, namely, the way in which virtually
any observation about the present can be mobilized in the very search for the present itself
and pressed into the service as a symptom and an index of the deeper logic of the
postmodern, which imperceptibly turns into its own theory and the theory of itself. Howe

could it be otherwise where there no longer exist any such deeper logic for the surface to
manifest and where the symptom has become its own disease (and vice versa no doubt)?
However, as will be demonstrated later on, the decision as to whether one face a break
or a continuity whether the present is to be seen as a historical originality or as the
simple prolongation of more of the same under different sheeps clothing is not an
empiricallly jusitifiable or philosophically arguable one, since it is itself the inaugural
narrative act that grounds perceptions and interpretation of the events narrated. XIII
CUT / MODERNITY / $ <> a

"The list might be extended indefinitely; but does it imply any more fundamental change or
beak than the periodic style and fashion changes determined by an older high-modernist
imperative of stylistic innovation?" (2)
in other words: a break is more fundamental than just the more "superficial"
imperative of innovation (modernims is full of the new, but on a deeper level is similar).
[class struggle] "Nor should the break in question be thought of as a purely cultural affair:
indeed, theories of the postmodern - whether celebratory or couched in the language of
moral revulsion and denunciation - bear a strong family resemblance to all those more
ambitious sociological generalization which, at much the same time, bring us the news of the
arrival and inauguration of a whole new type of society, most famously baptized
"postindustrial society." {!>} Such theories have the obvious ideological mission of
demonstrating, to their own relief, that the new social formation in question no longer obeys
the laws of classical capitalism, namely the primacy of industrial production and the
omnipresence of class struggle" (3).
"Every position on postmodernism in culture -whether apologia or stigmatization - is also at
one and the same time, and necessarily, an implicitly or explicityly political stance on the
nature of multinational capitalism." (3)
Yet this is the point at which I must remind the reader of the obvious; namely, that this whole
global, yet American, postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a
whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world: in
this sense, as throughout class history, the underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and
terror. The first point to be made about the conception of peridization in dominance,
therefore, is that even if all constitutive featurs of postmodernism were identical with and
coterminous to those of an older modernism - a position I feel to be demonstrably erroneous
but which only an even lengthier analysis of modernism proper could dispel - the two
phenomena would still remain utterly distinct in their meaning and social function,
owing to the very different positioning of postmodernism in the economic system of late
capital and, beyond that, to the transformation of the very sphere of culture in the
contemporary society" (5)

even if all constitutive features (reification etc) are the same as modernism, MO/POMO
are still DISTINCT in their MEANING and SOCIAL FUNCTION , because the
positioning of culture (flat) in the economic system (total reification).
[multiple styles]"If the ideas of a ruling class were once the dominant (or hegemonic)
ideology of bourgeois society, the advanced capitalist countries today are now a field of
stylistic and discursive heterogeneity without a norm. Faceless masters continue to inflect the
economic strategies which constrain our exsitence, but they no longer need to impose their
speech (or are henceforth unable to); and the postliteracy of the late capitlist world reflects
not only the absence of any great collective project but also the unavailability of the older
national language itself" (17)
[ideology] "Rather, i want to suggest that our faulty representations of some immense
communicational and computer netwerok are themseleves but a distorted figuration of
something even deeper, namely, the whole world system of a present-day multinationl
capitlaism. The technology of contemporary society is therefore mesmerizing and fascinatiing
not so much in its own right but beause it seems to fofer some privileged representationl
shorthand for grasping a network of power and control even more difficult for our minds and
imaginations to grasp: the whole new decentrered global network of the third stage of capital
itself " (38)
"to think the impossible totaltiy of the contemporary world system. It is in terms of that
enormous and threatening, yet only dimly perceivable, otehr reality of economic and social
institutions that, in my opinion, the postmodern sublime can alone be adequately theorized.
(38)
[style] "The conception of postmodernism outlined here is a historical rather than a merely
stylistic one. I cannot stress too greatly the radical distinction between a view for which the
postmodern is one (optional) style among many others available and one which seeks to grasp
it as the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism: the two approaches in fact generate
two very different ways of conceptualizing the phenomenon as a whole: on the one hand,
moral judgments (about which it is indifferent whether they are positive or negative), and, on
the other, a genuinly dialectical attempt to think our present time in History" (46).
"But in that case it is only consequent to reject moralizing condemnations of th epostmodern
and of its essential triviality when juxstaposed against the Utopian "high seriousness" of the
great modernisms: judgements one finds on both the Left and the Radical Right." (46)
[cognitive mapping] "Nor should it be too hastily assumed that his model - while ti
clearlyraises very central issues of representation as such - is in any way easily vitiated by the
conventional poststructural critiques of the "ideology of representation" or mimesis. The
cognitive map is not exactly mimetic in that older sense; indeed, the theoretical issues it poses
allow us to renew the analysis of representation on a hihger and much more complex level"
(51).
"There is, for one thing, a most interesting convergence between the empirical problems
studied by Lynch in terms of city space and the great Althusserian (and Lacanian) redefinition
of ideology as 'the representation of the subject's Imaginary relationship to his or her
Real conditions of existence.' Surely this is exactly what the cognitive map is called upon to
do in the narrower framework of daily life in the physical city: to enable a situaitonl

represtantion ofn the par to fht eindiviudal subjec ti tot htat ovast er and properly
unrepresentably totality [<!!!] which is the ensemble of society's structures as a whole"
cognitive mapping is the (impossible) view of totality in post-modernism [as opposed to
totality in lukacs] KIJK OOK: p 52 en vergelijk lucien goldmann en kant (totality).

Tortures is a technique. It is regulated. It is measured, quantitative

"Furthermore, torture forms part of a ritual. It is an element in the liturgy of punishment and
meets two demands It must mark the victim: it is iintended, either by the scar it leaves on the
body, or by the spectacle that accompanies it, to brand the victim with infamy; even if its
function is to 'purge' the crime, torture does not recononcile; it traces around or, rahter, on the
very body of the condemned man signs that must not be effaced; in any case men will
remember public exhibition, the pillory, torture and pain duly observed. And from the point
of view of the law [!] that imposes it, public torture and execution must be spectacular, it
must be seen by all almost as its triumph. The very excess of the violence employed is one of
the elements of its glory: the fact that the guilty man should moan and cry out under the
blows is not a shameful side- effect, it is the very ceremonial justice being expressed in all its
force [another sign] Hence no boutnt those tortures that take place even after death: corpses
burnt, ashes thrown to the winds, bodies dragged on hurdles and exhibited at the roeadside.
Justice pursues the obdy beyond all possible pain.(34).
production of pain (34)

on what basis out can speak of a break with postmodern.

what terms are presupposed, not clear.
abstraction, full abstraction (simulacrum) wanning of affect. pure difference. irony self
parody.
substance is void, pure abstraction (proletariat badiou)
something that modern science already knea: substance is void. but void is not nothing, it its
pure relation. therefore badiou ontology, and ooo trip sides of same coin
the name is exterior. modernity is not the severity of substance and the name. the name itself
has become substance (which is void). (or: exhange value has become use value). one divides
into two / logic of the signifier. master signifier.

I.i

Rorty and Friedman: division analytical/continental = struggle over kants legacy, instigated
by his division between intuitions and concepts.
intuitions are immediate representations of individual objects
concepts are spontaneously generated forms of thought in terms of which we cognize such
objects.
Determining judgement subsumes an object of intutiion under a pre-given concept of the
understanding (this is a cat)
reflective judgment: calls attention to out inability tos busume the orm of an anomalous
object under any concept that we posess. (this is unique!) (sublime)
Scientific cognition
Aesthetics
positivists: scientific culture
romantics: (idealism / textualism) literary culture
Abandoning the dichotomy (Rorty)
today: abandoning the dichotomy = choice: [see rorty p 2 / intr contin phil / jane bennett]
(new realism) or (jameson/zizek/badiou althusser) real abstraction.
Friedman: divide between analytic and continental = caused by attempts to eliminate
distinciton
I.2
metaphysics is battlefield of endless controversies. Restore queen to the throne - > a court of
justice.
on the one hand: empiricist (openness/relativist) on the other hand dogmatist (despotic: being
qua being)
Kant wants to say what the Queen (metaphisics) can and cannot do) "what de rede vermag"
Kant: intuitions and concepts are completely different kinds of representations. concepts are
actually intuitions with lesser vividness (verkalkt; empiricists) / intuitions are actually
confused concepts (not yet clarified; dogmatists)
there are a posteriori sources of cognition (empirical) and their are a priori (non-empirical)
forms to which the matter of sensation must conform "cat".
But then there are also PURE FORMS OF EXPERIENCE, which gives rise to the idea of a
"transcendental philosophy" that will put forth a complete "system" of "a priori concepts of
objects in general" The question is: which are legitimate and which step over the bounds of
possible experience (god etc)
A priori: analytic and synthetic

"Because synthetic judgments can only be confirmed by appealing to an intuition of some

sort (a third term), it is tempting to conclude that they are all a posteriori, that they can be
known to be be true only on the basis of empirical experience.
Because spatio-termporal properties pertain only to appearances and not to things int
themselves, the validity of mathematics is restricted to the domain of objects of sensible
intuition.
categories derive their meaining only through their reference to spatio-temporal conditions of
possible experience (so through appearances in space and time, which are pure sensibility - )
a body is extended, possibly falls, caused by .... -> can only have meaning in space-time, that
is, if there is appearence. (cannot pertain to god, the soul etc.)
each of the pure concepts (quantity, quality, relation, modality) has a transcendental schema
{---|---} by which the faculty of imagination relates that concept through an act of synthesis,
to a "time-determination" of a particular sort. e.g.: to the category of substance there
corresponds the schema of : the persistence in real time" to the category
of causality "succession of the manifold insofar as it is subject to a rule"
logical function, no sense.
"insofar as appearances are subjet to categorial determination, Kant calls them "phenomena,"
the empirial study of which is reserved for the natural sciences. In order to mark the gap
separating phenomena from things in themselves he introduces the wholly negative concept
of "noumena," a term that derives from the Greek word nous, which is often translated as
"mind" or "understanding".
So long as the use of the categories is restricted to the "immanent" conditions of possible
experience (and so barred from any "transcendent" employment), the understanding remains
within its proper sphere of jurisdiction. But over and above the faculty of understanding we
possess a faculty of reason which actively bids the understanding to transgress its limits. In
the "transcendental Dialectic," Kant seeks to explain both why it is that reason does this, and
why the synthetic a priori judgments to which it gives rise inevitably lead to "illusion" and
not to truth.
abstraction is caused by commodity fetishism / Necessary illusion (that the world is a
totality with a functioning society / symbolic fiction).
O'neill: "the form of independence that counts for Kantian autonomy is not the independence
of the individual 'legislator' but rather the independence of the principle 'legislated' from
whatever desires, decisions, powers, or conventions may be current among one or another
group. (147)
tegencultuur hipster is niet politiek, geen "outsider" alternative....
authentiek

Ernesto Laclau opens by making the obvious point that Lacan has been a source of "diffuse
inspiration feeding differentiated intellectual currents." In France mainly clinical. In AngloSaxon countries the clinical aspect more directly cultural theory (Juliet Mitchell, Jacueline
Rose).
old school (Mannoni, Leclaire, Safouan) emphasize the Symbolic in the psychoanalytical
process (Lacan's 1950s). "This approach is largely based on Lacan's writing in the 1950s, the
era of high structuralism, in which the Imaginary register is presented as a series of variants
that must be referred to a stable symbolic matrix (c.f. chess metaphor).
new school (Silvestre, Grosrichard, J-A Miller) "has attempted to formalize Lacanian theory,
pointing out the distinction between the different stages of his teaching, and placing ann
accent on the theoretical importance of the last stage, iin which a central role is granted to the
notion of the Real as that which resist symbolization" (x).
Then there is hermeneutics (Manfred Frank) and Marxist psychoanalysis (Althusser).
For Slovenian school: Lacanian categories have been used in reflection which is
essentially philosophical and political. (not directly cultural or clinical). "two main features
characterize this school. The first is its insistent reference to the ideological-political field: its
description and theorization of the fundamental mechanism of ideology (identification, the
role of the master signifier, ideological fantasy); its attempts to define the specificity of
'totalitarianism' and its different variants (Stalinism, fascism). and to outline the main
characteristic of radical democratic struggles in Eastern European societies.
"The Lacanian notion of the point de caiton is conceived as the fundamental ideological
operation; 'fantasy' becomes an imaginary scenario concealing the fundamental split or
'antagonism' around which the social field is structured; 'identification' is seen as the process
through which the ideolgoical field is constituted; enjoyment, or jouissance enables us to
understand the logic of exclusion operating in discourses such as racism (xi)
Then this is connected with German Idealism (Kant Hegel, Schelling) but also with other
philosophers (descartes).
"The interest of the Slovenian theoreticians in the problems of a radical democracy and their
efforts to link the Lacanian Real to what in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy Chantal Mouffe
and I have called the 'constitutive character of antagonisms', have created the possibility
for fruitful intellectual exchange (xii)
For Laclau two key points in the book are:
(1) Act of naming "Nevertheless, I would like to draw attention to two key points in the text,
given their productiveness in terms of political analysis. The first refers to th use which is
mande of Saul Kripke's anti-descriptivism in political analysis. The dispute between
descriptivists and anti-descriptivists revolves around the question of the way in which names
refer to objects. According ot the descriptivist, the link is the result of the meaning of a name
- that is to say, each name ivolves a cluster of descriptive features and refers to those objects
in the real world displaying those features. For the anti-descriptivists, on the other hand, the
name refers to the object by means of what they call a 'primal baptism' in which the name
continues to refer to that object even if all the descriptive features of the object at the time of

its baptism have dissapeared. Like myself, Zizek sides iwth the anti-descriptivists. But he
also introduces a variant into the argument which is of crucial importance:
The central problem for any anti-descriptivist approach is to determine what it is in the
object, beyond its descriptive features, that constitutes its identity - that is to say, what it is
that constitutes the objective correlative of the 'rigid designator'. On this point, Zizek presents
the following argument: 'What is overlooked, at least in the standard version of antidescriptivism, is that this guaranteeing of the identity of an object in all counterfactual
situations, that is, through a change of all its descriptive features, is the retroactive effect
of naming itself: it is the name itself, the signifier, which supports the identity of the
object. That "surplus" in the object which stays the same in all possible worlds is
"something in it more than itself", that is to say the Lacanian objet petit a: we search in
vain for it in positive reality because it has not positive consistency, that is, because it is
just a postiviation of a void - of a discontinuity opened in reality by the ermergence of
the signifier."

--Metonymy-|
|
Thing
({name}, {property x}, {property y},{...})
"things not enumerated on this list"
|
|
---------------Metaphor----------------

{....} = void,

Metaphor (Webster): "a word or phrase for one thing that is used to refer to another
thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar"
Metonymy (Webster): "figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing
for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is
associated / part of the thing stands for the whole, i.e,
the name stands for the totality (or: identity)
{...} <---------> Name

leftover/excess + gap = object petit a

Now this argument is crucial. For if the unity of the object is the retroactive effect of naming
itself, then naming is not just the pure nominalistic game of attributing an emtpy name to a
preconsitued subject. It is the discursive construction of the object itself. The consequences of
this argumetn for at theory of thegemony or poltics are easy to see. If the descriptivist
approach were correct, then the meaning of the name and thus the descriptive features of the
objects would be given beoferhand, thus discouting the possbility of any discursive
hegemonic variation that could open the space for a political consturciton of social idenitites.
But if the process of naming of objects amounts to the very act of their constitution, then their
descriptive features will be fundamentally unstable and open to all kinds of hegemonic
rearticulations. The essentially performative character of naming is the precondition for all
hegemony and politics. (xiv)
(2) Substance-subject relationship. "The reduction of subject to substance is the central
proposition of Spinoza's philospohy and this has been adopted as a banner by such Marxist

currents as Althusseriansim ('history is a process without subject'). All radical objectivism can
only be afferimed by means of this reduction. It is important that this essentialism of the
substance has usually been presented as the only alternative to the essentialism of the subject,
which would affirm the fullness and positivity of the latter (remember how the Cartesian
cogito grants the unmodified category of substance to the subject itself). But zizek's
reintroduction of the category of the subject depreives it of all substantiality: 'If the essence
is not in itself split [COMMODITY SPLIT], if - in the movement of extreme alienation - it
does not perceive itself as an alien Entity, then the very difference essence/appearance
cannot establish itself. This self-fissure of the essence means that the essence is "subject"
and not only "substance": to put things in a simplified way, "substance" is the essence
insofar as it refelects iteslf in the world of appearance, in phenomenal objectivity, and
"subject" is the substance insofar as it is itself split and experience itself as some alien,
positively given Entity. In a paradoxical way, we could say that subject is precisely the
substance insofar as it expereinces itself as substance (i.e., as some alien, given external
positive Entity, existing in itself); "subject" is nothing but the name for this inner
distance of the "substance" towards itself, the name for this empty place from which the
substance can perceive itself as something aleien.' (XV)

Main sponsor: KPNG

There is no history in metamodernism. history=break=capital=politics

to speak about history, or to speak about modernity = one must be able to convinginly argue
some sort of break, what such a break could consist in, what it would mean for their to be a
postmodern break with the modern for jameson. Then to see where we are today, what is the
condition of possibility of the metamodern discourse, where it fits in.
the terms are such that we get confused account of modernism and postmodernism.
what this means for irony and utopia
to argue against spinozism and "naive" or radical historicism.

zizek: a formal break is not immediately a total break on the level of content. (c.f. Jameson).
cultural dominant / this is the difference between modern and postmodern
modernity -> infinite
history, identity, agency - historicity, ideology, subject.
ontology of the present, the subject is implicated -> rehearse the history of modernity
In democracy "the People"/"The Nation" does not exist. (postmodern = capital/parlementary
democracy (sublime object 148)
post-structuralism (zizek/habermas 153) "As Habermas has already pointed out, in poststructuralism we have a kind of universalized aestheticization whereby 'truth' itself is finally
reduced to one of the style effects of the discursive articulation.
at the end, point to possible investigation that could follow. (investigate metamodern art
in own terms)
Irony: "the logic of insulting an adversary always involves imitating one of his/her features"
157
irony: pure repitition (die antwoord, rammstein)
"In this sense, we may say that the status of freedom itself is real. The usual
'(post-)structuralist' approach would be to denounce 'freedom' as an imaginary experience
resting on misrecognition, on a blindness to the structural causality which determines the
activity of subjects [FOUCAULT]. But on the basis of Lacan's teaching int he seventies, we
can approach freedom from another perspective: freedom, 'free choice', as the realimpossible." (165). (is money such a real impossible? it denotes something that does not exist
(abstract value).
"What notion o f the subject is compatible with this paradoxical character of the Real? The
basic feature of the Lacanian subject is, of course, its alienation in the signfier: as soon as the
subject is caught in the radically external signifying network he is mortified, dismembered,
divided.
the point is not that derrida caused it with his ideas, or that postmodern art caused it
(abscence of essence). The marxist point is that material development comes first. (c.f.
Hal foster: habermas -> turn around postmodernism and modernity.
"The significance of these at first sight purely speculative ruminations for the psychoanalytic
theory of ideology cannot be overestimated. What is the 'empty gesture' by means of which
the brute, senseless reality is assumed, accepted as our own work [reality is out there/
capital / nature / invisible hand], if not the most elementary ideological operation, the
symbolization of the Real, its transformation into a meaningful totality, its inscription into the
Big Other? We can literally say that this 'empty gesture' posits the big Other, makes it exist:
the purely formal conversion which constitutes theis gesture is simply the conversion of the
pre-symbolic Real into the symbolized reality - into the Real caught in the web of the

signifier's network. In other words, through this 'empty gesture' the

subject presupposes the existence of the big Other.
distinghuis fanaticism and enthusiam (Clewis Kantian sublime)
modern irony (authentic life) as opposition to seriousness of bourgeois life, enlightenment
etc. (of the retrievement of essence) S1 (Master)
postmodern irony as repetition (anauthentic) not opposed to something (fake retrieval
of essence) but simply marking the irreducibility of the gap.
THE BOUNDRY is real (nature/culture)

Nature-culture (nature -culture), {})

the future is evacuated

NOT: modern is the "new" , what it is not etc etc.....
What is involved here is the conceptualization of the field of immediate
coincidence between production and ethics, structure and superstructure,
between the revolution of labour process and the revolution of sentiments,
between technology and emotional tonality, between material development
and culture. By confining ourselves narrowly to this dichotomy, however, we
fatally renew the metaphysical split between lower and higher, animal and
rational, body and soul and it makes little difference if we boast of our
pretensions to historical materialism. If we fail to perceive the points of identity between
labour practices and modes of life, we will comprehend nothing
of the changes taking place in present-day production and misunderstand a
great deal about the forms of contemporary culture
Modernism -> deal with trauma (truth) (that world does not exist) (kant: practical
reason/ regulative idea) -> romantics: aesthetics can get back absolute. (xxxiii)
History!!!!!!! postmodernism: a time which is incapable of thinking historicallly -> history is
moving beyond its proclaimed endt (MM)
The most offensive forms of this art - punk
rock, say, or what is called sexually explicit material - are all
taken in its stride by society, and they are commercially successful, unlike the productions of
the older high modernism. But
this means that even if contemporary art has all the same formal
features as the older modernism, it has still shifted its position
fundamentally within our culture.
produce a concept (of postmodernism) - reference to Althusser!!!!!!!!!!
modern: against commodification, searching for absolute etc.

In place of the temptation

either to denounce the complacencies of postmodernism as
some final symptom of decadence or to salute the new forms as
the harbingers of a new technological and technocratic utopia,
it seems more appropriate to assess the new cultural production
within the working hypothesis of a general modification of
culture itself with the social restructuring of late capitalism as a
system.7
mademoiselles (picasso)
What is meant, in the
specifically architectural context, is that where the now more
classical lilgh-modernist space of a Corbusier or a Wright sought
to differehtiate itself radically from the fallen city fabric in
which it appeared - its forms thus dependent on an act of
radical disjunction from its spatial context (the great pilotis
dramatizing separation from the ground and safeguarding the
Novum of the new space) - postmodernist buildings, on the
contrary, celebrate their insertion into the heterogeneous fabric
of the commercial strip and the motel and fast-food landscape
of the postsuperhighway American city. (cultural writings 30).
arti: void = absolute (no substance).
the IN-ITSELF is the ultimate abstraction of our mind!
marx hegel: commoditiy is hegelian dialecitc
irony simply doesn't work like it did before (even if it was al the same, it would be different).
posmodern is not irony, postmodern irony is already desubstantialized. (jameson)
MODE OF PRODUCTION
Ernest Mandel's book Late Capitalism changed all that, and for the first time theorized a third
stage of capitalism from a usably Marxian perspective.2 This is
what made my own thoughts on 'postmodernism' possible,
which are therefore to be understood as an attempt to theorize
the specific logic of the cultural production of that third stage,
and not as yet another disembodied culture critique or diagnosis
of the spirit of the age. (35)
the present perspective, which consistently
affirms the identity of postmodernism with capitalism itself in
its latest systemic mutation
it would certainly lead us to
the intensified sense that ours is a time of nominalism in a
variety of senses (from culture to philosophical thought).
conditions of possibility, historical, of irony and utopia.
I am here, however, essentially concerned with the conditions
of possibility of the concept of a 'mode of production', that is
to say, the characteristics of the historical and social situation
which make it possible to articulate and formulate such a
concept in the first place. I will suggest, in a general way, that
thinking this particular new thought (or combining older
thoughts in this new way) presupposes a particular kind of
'uneven' development, such that distinct and co-existing modes

of production are registered together in the lifeworld of the

thinker in question
Beiser: historicity
If the postmodern moment, as
the cultural logic of an enlarged third stage of classical capitalism, is in many ways a purer and
more homogeneous expression
of this last, from which many of the hitherto surviving enclaves
of socio-economic difference have been effaced (by way of their
colonization and absorption by the commodity form), then it
makes sense to suggest that the waning of our sense of history,
and more particularly our resistance to globalizing or totalizing
concepts like that of the mode of production itself, are a
function of precisely that universalization of capitalism.
Where
everything is henceforth systemic the very notion of a system
seems to lose its reason for being
Featherstone, for example, thinks that 'postmodernism' on my
use is a specifically cultural category:11 it is not, and was rather
for better and for worse designed to name a 'mode of production' in which cultural production finds
a specific functional
44
M A R X I S M AND P O S T M O D E R N I S M

place, and whose symptomatology is in my work mainly drawn

from culture (this is no doubt the source of the confusion).
The modern still had something
to do with the arrogance of city people over the provincials,
whether this was a provinciality of peasants, other and colonized cultures, or simply the
precapitalist past itself: that deeper
satisfaction of being absolument moderne is dissipated when
modern technologies are everywhere, there are no longer any
provinces, and even the past comes to seem like an alternative
world, rather than an imperfect, primitive stage of this one.
belief: utopia (substance) /// we no longer believe (no substance) = utopia inscribed in
reality itself. not utopia as a differnt future than capitalism
irony is against real statures, no longer possible: pastiche (jjiskefet)
race/enlightenment (first substantial then "i don't see it, everybody is equal!")

it its my conviction that any genuine critical theory must make an attempt to grasp something
of the present sociopolitical situation in which it is commenced. in order not to become on the
one hand an arm chair philosophy, and on the other, it must have a sense of what is going on,
and the carrots ways in which it is reflected upon.
would it not be possible to discover if we would look deeper, beyond the surface phenomena
of the modern and postmodern, perhaps even the premodern to find the same structure of
feeling?
why has the disjunction utopia and irony become a central problem?, what made this
possible, what is its condition of possibility? and does it, in the unfoldment of modernity
change, can we really speak of a change to postmodernism and why? and can we, if there is a
break with the modern, on what basis whether or not out is intelligible to speak of a break
with the postmodern. what makes the discourse of meta possible..

Since their argument is based on the uniqueness of a certain stet of sensibilities, the existence
of such sensibilities before the advent of metamorphism would endanger it
because if one assumes a cultural work to be an effect of sensibility then one would probably
be able to explain how
1

[Niet vergeten: tussenkopjes, aliena]

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in
this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
Writing in the late 1920s and early 30s, Antonio Gramsci famously characterized the sociopolitical situation in which he found himself as an interregnum. Traditionally, this term
designated the time-span between the death of a king and the installment of his successor, an
often chaotic period in which the absence of a sovereign threatened the stability of the body
politic. Gramsci, however, by using it to diagnose his own time, imbued the concept with a
new meaning, making it applicable not only to feudal inconvenience, but also to more
modern situations in which an existing social, political or cultural hegemony starts losing its
grip, while a new order is still in the process of assembling, not (yet) able to take hold. In
Gramscis analysis, the interregnum of his time consisted in the fact that the populations of
Western Europe had become detached from their traditional ideologies, and no longer
believe[d] what they used to believe previously (Prison Notebooks 276).
According to Gramsci, in the long run, this could potentially lead to a widespread
scepticism . . . with regard to all theories and general formulae (276); nonetheless, a series of
new ideologies new utopian narratives about the possibility of an alternative social order
had started to gain some traction. None of them, however, was yet able enough to assert its
dominance over the others and take over hegemony. On the one hand because they were still
in the assembly stage (they could not yet attract mass appeal), on the other hand because
many of the old power structures were still largely in place, anxiously held onto and defended
by those depended upon them, more and more by coercive force alone . . . preventing the
new ideologies from imposing themselves (276). Thus Gramscis metaphor: although the
beliefs and practices crucial for the cohesion of the old order were losing their purchase, an

altogether new hegemony, based on a different set of principles, could not yet come into
being.
And yet, the very emergence of a variety of new ideas about the possibility of an
different kind of social organization suggested that the old order had begun began to give
some ground.[grip loosen] Some of the morbid symptoms, then, of which Gramsci speaks
signs that that resulted from of and pointed back to the moribund state of the extant social
order were precisely these newly forming ideas and ideologies themselves.
Our social-political situation today is not the same as the one in which Gramsci wrote.
It would be too tendentious to suggest right of the bat that the contemporary historical
conjuncture in which we find ourselves can be characterized as another interregnum in the
Gramscian sense. 1 Besides the problem that the new ideologies of which Gramsci spoke
were probably in many ways different from those today, certainly in their appearance (e.g.
fascism, communism, anarchism, social democracy, the old conservative imperialisms), we2
would also [not have sufficiently clarified] simply presupposed the meaning of the difficult
and ambiguous concept of ideology which is crucial to Gramscis own understanding of the
interregnum (and which, furthermore, is itself , both as concept and as object, subject to
historical change). [The problem of developing a contemporary notion of ideology will be
addressed later on.]
What we can note, however, is that, apart from the cynicism and scepticism with
which we have become familiar by now (toward the present situation as well as the
possibility of the new), we have seen, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, a great variety
of new social and political movements the Gezi Park protests, Occupy, Indignados,
Podemos, Syriza, the Arab spring, the Umbrella revolution, student protests (often promoting
decentralization and direct democracy), the anarchic rebellions in Ferguson, Baltimore, Paris,
London, new forms rightwing populism across Europe, people advocating significant reforms
to the welfare state in order to save it (e.g., Basic Income), various kinds of green/ecology
movements, etc. making themselves visible and heard. (We might add to this list: groups
pushing for an even purer form of free-market capitalism, often by coercive force alone
(e.g., TTIP)). They have perhaps not always proposed a clear and concrete idea for an
alternative social order, but certainly have questioned many of the beliefs and practices of the
extant social-political order generally perceived as supporting, if not augmenting the
processes that led the todays crisis. Such critiques have of course always existed, but what is

significant, as Gramsci knew, is the apparent growing potential of such critiques to appeal to
and to be carried by the great masses (instead of being limited to a small circle of
academics and activists).
Furthermore, the intensification and the growing significance of such politics has
engendered a myriad of reflections, narratives and theories that grapple in differing ways with
what is happening, how it is best to be understood, what it may say of our contemporary
socio-political situation, what it might point to, etc. (have we entered a new phase in history?
is postmodernism dying? is globalisation its cause? is capitalism on the way out? Can more
authoritarian forms of capitalism hold the market in check? is Marxism to be revived? to
what extent are we allowed to imagine a different future, an attainable utopia perhaps? Isnt
there something potentially totalitarian in this? is right wing populism a fascism? is left-wing
radicalism a terrorism? What is the nature of todays militant fundamentalisms? Can we still
speak of ideology? perhaps it is time for more vitalist theories of politics and the multitude?
Can direct democracy protect us from the tyranny of leadership? Has occupy invented a new
form of political organization? must ecological thought inform us more in matters of
politics?).
In such a situation, the ways in which the social and the political is articulated and
conceptualized, even if it remains unacknowledged, are of course never entirely neutral; they
are political interventions in their own right. The aforementioned questions and their answers
often result from and feed back into the movements. It is a political matter, in other words, in
what way a problem is presented and what sort of question this implies. That social uproar
has a profound political dimension may be rather obvious, but it is also important to stress
that the (not quite so distinct) level of theoretical reflection is no less political. Such efforts
are themselves integral part of the (politicized) circumstances they try to grasp.
One way to give an account of the contemporary situation, which is the task of the
present inquiry, is then, not to first formulate another abstract formula to be tested through the
enumeration of examples, but to start with the analysis of a concrete discursive (political)
intervention to examine how it defines and problematizes the situation and what this
implicates. [piece about immanent critique?3] [what can be done, what should be done, what
is to be done / ontology of the present (who are we, what is our own era? (foucault what is
enlightenment?)), mapping prescribes action [etc.] It is in this context and from this

perspective that I will consider one such attempt that has gained some traction over the last
years: meta-modernism.
As an intervention in the context that I have sketched, the discourse or theory (or
narrative, if you like) of metamodernism timotheus vermeulen and robin van den akker - is
interesting for a couple of reasons. First, not only is it an attempt to diagnose todays
historical situation, [ it also starts this investigation from the intuition] that something of the
old has given way. Vermeulen and Van den Akker start with the claim that (what they
define as) postmodernism is dead by now; Metamodernism, then, is their name for that
what has emerged in its wake, and what a theory of the metamodern sets out to understand.
Second, although Vermeulen and Van den Akker have mainly stressed its analytical and
descriptive use, some have taken up the idea of metamodernism as explicitly political: not
long after its first conception a number of artist started to identify with a metamodernism as a
movement (opposing postmodernism), which resulted in several metamodernist manifestos
(ref!). [Metamodern society is created through the political and cultural adventure, an
adventure that requires passionate participation.]
Third, according to Timotheus Vermeulen and Van Den Akker as well as many artists,
one of the crucial elements that allows one to differentiate metamodernism from
postmodernism is that the question of the possibility of imagining some sort of utopia
(although consciously taking into account all its problematic connotations) has become
important again for the former, while it is thought to have been largely abandoned by the
latter. Finally, by emphasising these points the (historical) break, manifesto based politics
and the rethinking of the question of utopia together, off course, with its very name,
metamodernism puts on the agenda the question modernity: what it is, how it developed and
in what way its various conceptions inform culture/politics today. (which is not insignificant,
never been modern, Latour). [maybe rewrite paragraph/ not sure if convincing]
The tasks then is then first to examine more closely through what terms and on what
basis metamodernist authors approach their object, as well as how this object is constructed.
How, for example, are theorist and activist of the metamodern able to propose a break with
the postmodern? How do they define postmodernism, and in what way to they argue that their
conception of metamodernism significantly different? In what way are concepts as irony and
utopia described that they claim be significant for metamodernist discourse?. Gramsci

[Metamodernism]
If metamodernism can be said to have an inaugural text, it is no doubt Vermeulen and Van
den Akkers Notes on Metamodernism (2010). Starting off with an enumeration of trends
Obamas yes, we can change election campaign, planners and architects with engaged
visions of environmentally friendly greenprints, artistic trends termed New Sincerity and
Neo Romanticism Vermeulen and Van den Akkers suggest that these are not isolated
phenomena, but indicative of the general cultural shift (to be found, in other words, in art as
well as politics, city planning etc.) that has already taken place: the postmodern years of
plenty, pastiche, and parataxis are over (2). This suggestion has already been put forward, as
the authors acknowledge, by a number of academics, critics and commentators.
In fact, Vermeulen and Van den Akkers piece is partly a reply to renowned scholar of
postmodernism Linda Hutcheon, who, after suggesting that the postmodern moment has
passed, called for the construction of a new heuristic label in order to better understand the
cultural dynamics that have allegedly emerged in its wake (165-6). Metamodernism is not the
first response to this challenge: Gilles Lipovestksy proposed the hypermodern, denoting a
time where the meaninglessness of life generates both hedonist ecstasy and existential
anguish (ref); Robert Samuels, observing that our epoch witnesses a new combination
between technological automation and human autonomy of our time, has suggested the
automodernism (ref) 4; Alain Kirby put forward the digimodern, arguing that we have
entered an era where digital media rule our lives (ref); and finally, as Vermeulen and Van den
Akker note, many critics still hold on to the syntactically correct but semantically
meaningless term post-postmodernism (Notes 3).
Vermeulen and Van den Akkers main critique on these alternatives is that they
radicalize the postmodern rather than restructure it (Notes 3). According to Vermeulen and
Van den Akker, they select and examine certain excesses linked to late capitalism, liberal
democracy and information and communications technologies rather than specific
departures from the postmodern condition; they focus on cultural and (inter) textual
hybridity, coincidentality, consumer (enabled) identities, hedonism, and generally speaking
a focus on spatiality rather than temporality (3). In isolation, these last phenomena
(hybridity, coincidentality etc., terms which are left undefined in their text) are thus, for
Vermeulen and Van den Akker, typical markers of postmodernism, and to concentrate on
them too much, however useful they are for understanding recent developments (3), would

be to miss in what way contemporary cultural practices actually differ from those
postmodern.
[relocate]V&V are here in danger of confirmation bias, or begging the question, as
they first assume a break with the postmodern, and thus a new cultural condition, and then
actively search for examples for this new condition, which would then prove their initial
assumption. In other words, the conclusion they will drawn from their proof that there
postmodern has given way to something different was already presupposed. V&V could
object, however, that their hypothesis of the break is not plucked of thin air and simply
asserted, but forced upon them by empirical phenomena that have challenged the categories
of the postmodern. Yet, if, as they themselves acknowledge, a number of authors are no less
capable to explain contemporary culture in terms of (a radicalization of) the postmodern, how
would they legitimizes their own perspective? V&V must either argue that the alternative
explanations are unable to see what they do which is I think the path they take or they
have to claim that it is only their own assertion, i.e., their engaged decision based on a series
of implicit reasons or affects (political for instance), that starts off their investigation into
what they onstruct as the metamodern (metamodernism then would be, at least in the first
instance, that is, before it establishes itself as a theory, an affective rejection of what
postmodernism is thought to stand for; apathetic irony for instance). Such a circularity may
not be entirely problematic, or even unavoidable any engaged intervention will have some
prescriptive (political) principle that allows one to see things in a certain way but should be
at least acknowledged.
Closer to the position Vermeulen and Van den Akker will defend is Nicolas
Bourriauds altermodernism which the authors understand as a synthesis between
modernism and post-colonialism (3). They understand Borriaud to claim that the expansion
of the developed world to a global scale has led to a heterochrony of globalized societies
with various degrees of modernity and a worldwide archipelago without a center; to globally
intersecting temporalities and historically interrelated geographies (3). In other words, in
todays geopolitical world there exists no longer a modern(ist) center (i.e., old Europe) and
a backward, not-yet-modern periphery, but a myriad of societies that can no longer be ordered
in a clear hierarchal way, a series of semi-autonomous islands which, although they have a
global outreach and thus intersect with each other, move in varying speeds (therefore:
heterochrony) and alter between different types of modernity.

In Vermeulen and van den Akker interpretation, this means that we can neither
characterize our current modernity (3) any longer through the gaze of the universal white
male gaze (the figure who allegedly defined the old modernism), nor simply by its
postmodern rejection (as todays no-longer-peripheral societies have developed their own
alternative modernisms). For Bourriaud, as Vermeulen and Van den Akker interpret him, the
altermodernist artist is no longer tied to the old Eurocentric type modernity, nor to the endless
task of its deconstruction, and thus can rediscover, re-envision and recreate the world anew:
The altermodernist (artist) is a homo viator, liberated from (an obsession with) his/her
origins, free to travel and explore, perceiving anew the global landscape and the terra
incognita of history (Notes on Metamodernism 3). Although this may sound rather
postmodern, for Vermeulen and Van den Akker, what distinguishes altermodernism from
other attempts to name todays modernity is that it recognizes a return of certain modernist
features (for them, an emphasis on creation rather than deconstruction, for example) in
contemporary cultural discourse [(Bourriaud sometimes defines altermodernism as a
reloading process of modernism, but this return is only possible in, and through its
synthesis with, the post-colonial condition (here understood as a geopolitical world without a
center). (ref wiki)). ]
Yet, for Vermeulen and Van den Akker, Bourriauds altermodernism, although they
admire its evocations, will not do either. Here, in its opposition to Altermodernism we arrive
at what will be the crux of the metamodernist argument (in negative form so to speak):
according to Vermeulen and Van den Akker, Bourriauds thesis confuses epistemology with
ontology (4). (Although I think some immediate objections to Vermeulen and Van den
Akkers use of the concepts of ontology and epistemology can be given, in this text, I will
examine them on V&V own terms as much as possible). What they mean is that although
Bourriaud offers a fine description of how the culture has changed, he mistakes this mere
description of a series of cultural expressions for their explanation: Bourriaud perceives that
the form and function of the arts have changed, but he cannot understand how and why they
have changed (4).
For Vermeulen and Van den Akker, a proper explanation must be sought, not in the
surface phenomena that Bourriaud describes, but in the structure of feeling (4) the
ontological principle that underlies and produces them (here the authors mention for the first
time Raymond Williams concept of a structure of feeling, which will play an important part

in the argument). Bourriaud goes astray because he mixes them up: for Bourriaud
heterochronicity, archipelagraphy, and nomadism are not merely expressions of a structure of
feeling; they become the structures of feeling themselves ( 4).5 Contrary to Bourriaud,
Vermeulen and Van den Akker will separate the multiplicity of cultural expressions (the ones
that Bourriaud describes: hetochronicity, archipelagraphy and nomadism) from its underlying
(i.e., ontological) structure (of feeling) from which these expressions ultimately derive (to
which they are secondary), in order to explain contemporary culture. According to the
authors, it is because Bourriaud does not take this path that he remains largely in the dark:
indeed, it is because he mistakes a multiplicity of forms for a plurality of structures, that his
conception of altermodernism as expressed in the irregularity of the exhibition and the
inconsistency of his writing is all over the shop, never becomes wholly comprehensible
let alone convincing (4).
For Vermeulen and Van den Akker, it seems, Bourriauds altermodernism is still too
postmodern: it dwells in a sea of irregular and inconsistent multitudes, refusing to see any
kind of unity. In a typical postmodern gesture, Bourriaud conflates a multiplicity of outward
symptoms with the thing itself (i.e., with what ultimately is). For Vermeulen and Van den
Akker, he thus remains too simulacral (4), avoiding any real distinction between surface
symptoms and underlying ontological principle: Bourriaud perceives, say, seven types of
fireworks, in seven kinds of disguises: one is red, one yellow, one blue, one is circular, one
angular, and so on. But he cannot see that they are all produced by the same tension: an
oscillation between metals, sulfurs, and potassium nitrates. We will call this tension,
oscillating between and beyond the electropositive nitrates of the modern and the
electronegative metals of the postmodern, metamodern (4). 6
At this point we can draw some preliminary conclusions. First, for Vermeulen and Van
den Akker, to explain contemporary culture is to have a genuine theory that departs from the
postmodern, and this means that all too easy references to familiar postmodern tropes must be
avoided. A true post-postmodernism, worthy of the name, thus, in order to constitute itself
as a distinctive discourse capable of capturing contemporary culture, needs to position itself
directly against those all too well-known postmodernist features/allusions (according to
Vermeulen and Van den Akker, this is what the alternatives, in different ways, renege). This
means that metamodernims is not, and cannot be, a merely descriptive theory, as it constitutes
itself comes into being at least partly, if not entirely, by taking a stance against what it

does not want to be, what it wants to avoid at all cost to be: another theory of the postmodern.
The metamodern/postmodern dichotomy, from the metamodernist perspective, is thus based
on an either/or decision.
This brings us to the second point. Although they do not explicitly deal with this
question, Vermeulen and Van den Akker seem to purport that empirical data in themselves
force them to construct a new theory. Yet, as they themselves acknowledge, the still-toopostmodern discourses they criticize are often as capable, and certainly as confident as
Vermeulen and Van den Akker in explaining contemporary culture. New empirical
phenomena may have come to the stage in the last years, but this does not mean that they
cannot be explained in what they regard as typically postmodern categories as well. Thus, I
think Vermeulen and Van den Akker cannot deny that for them these new phenomena only
become recognizable as distinctively metamodernist after their inaugural gesture. The very
declaration that postmodernism is dead (as Linda Hutcheon wrote: lets just say it: its over
(ref)), in other words, is no less constitutive for the newly emerged field to present itself,
[than the new empirical data]. [insert critique from above]
Third, what is interesting is that the very distinctiveness of their approach depends on
its act of prescription: that in order to understand contemporary culture (for Vermeulen and
Van den Akker: in order to understand it as metamodernist) one must venture a two level
interrogation, i.e., one must distinguish between surface phenomena and an underlying
structure of feeling (which generates the first). This distinction, however, seems to be a rather
modern one, as I will argue below (to argue for their collapse seems, on the other hand, to be
or to have been one of the central characteristics of postmodernist theory: there is no clear
cut divide between high and low culture, base and superstructure, human and nonhuman,
essence and appearance, truth and fiction; all we are left with are the appearances, one giant
simulacrum). This is not necessarily inconsistent with Vermeulen and Van den Akkers
approach, however, since temporarily taking such a modern position is, as we shall see,
typical for what they see as metamodernist discourse. The ontological investigation that
Vermeulen and Van den Akkers seem to set out, can in light of their own theory be regarded
as such a modern moment in a metamodernist oscillation (that is, ontology understood in its
modern sense as explaining a complex multitude of surface phenomena with reference to an
underlying foundational principle). ]

[oscillation/structure of feeling/ ontology]

As we have seen, according to the standards they themselves have set up, Vermeulen and Van
den Akker will have to articulate what they regard as a contemporary ontology [(echoing
perhaps Fredric Jamesons insistence on doing an ontology of the present)], which they
understand as laying bare the underlying metamodernist structure of feeling. 7 This is what
according to Vermeulen and Van den Akker makes their argument distinctive from those of
other theorist of the post-postmodern: it is precisely what the others have missed, and why
they are not able explain in what precise sense the post-postmodern (i.e., the metamodern)
differs from the postmodern (why most theories of the post-postmodern in effect only
radicalize the latter).Since they have at this point only asserted that this structure of feeling
consist of an oscillation between the modern and the postmodern, they will have to
further define these terms.
There is a problem however. As Vermeulen and Van den Akker acknowledge, it has
become somewhat of a common place to claim that there is no such thing as the
postmodern: after all, the postmodern is merely the catchphrase for a multiplicity of
contradictory tendencies, the buzzword for a plurality of incoherent sensibilities (4). But
according to Vermeulen and Van den Akker, postmodernist do have something in common,
namely their opposition to the modern to utopism, to (linear) progress, to grand
narratives, to Reason, to functionalism(4). What they mean with the postmodern, then, is a
structure of feeling consisting of a set of sensibilities that are defined in opposition to the
modern. They summarize these sensibilities under the heading irony, (encompassing
nihilism, sarcasm, and the distrust and deconstruction of grand narratives, the singular and the
truth)(4).8 The modern, by contrast, is defined as that to which the postmodern is opposed,
which they summarize under label enthusiasm, (encompassing everything from utopism to
the unconditional belief in Reason)(4).
Vermeulen and Van den Akkers claim then is that the postmodern structure of feeling
(irony), which opposed and replaced the hegemony of an earlier modernist one (enthusiasm),
is today no longer dominant in contemporary cultural production. Vermeulen and Van den
Akker notice that todays cultural works and practices show more and more a desire for a
return to a certain modern utopian enthusiasm. Yet, at the same time, Vermeulen and Van den
Akker point out, they have not forgone completely on the postmodern ironic consciousness
of their risk. Thus, current cultural strategies can also not be explained as a straightforward

return to the modern. According to Vermeulen and Van den Akker, what is particular to the
contemporary structure of feeling why it differs from its modern and postmodern
counterparts is that it is not either ironic or enthusiastic. Aware the perceived naiveties of
both, but also not ready (or perhaps not able) to forgo on them totally, the metamodernist
structure of feeling oscillates between them.
The concept of oscillation, then, is an attempt by Vermeulen and Van den Akker to
describe how contemporary cultural agents, CEOs and politicians, architects, and artists
alike (5), try to bring together the perceived advantages and drawbacks of both.9 Oscillation
thus seems to denote strategy that tries to balance between the perceived dangers of, on the
one hand, a fully committed modernist stance (imagined as entirely enthusiastic, utopist etc.)
and on the other hand, a fully committed postmodernist attitude (imagined as completely
ironic, detached, apathetic). What is important for Vermeulen and Van den Akker, however, is
that this oscillation should not be conceived as simply such a balancing act, as the desire to
construct a kind of discreet third position. What they want to emphasize is that this oscillatory
movement, the constant going back and forth between the modern and the postmodern, never
comes to a halt: each time the metamodern enthusiasm swings toward fanaticism, gravity
pulls it back toward irony; the moment its irony sways toward apathy, gravity pulls it back
toward enthusiasm (7). It is this practice of going back and forth that According to
Vermeulen and Van den Akker is specific to the metamodern, which creates a set of surface
effects that can longer be categorized as either modern or postmodern. For them, their
ontology (their investigation into the Being of culture) shows that metamodernism does differ
from metamodernism, and thus can be considered as a break, as they differ in their
ontological makeup, in their being : they are distinguishable structures of feeling in that each
produce a specific and ultimately distinct set of surfaces effects. Even if on the surface they
may appear the same, on a deeper, ontological level, they are different.
This ontology, furthermore, is for Vermeulen and Van den Akker correlated to a
specific epistemology of the metamodern (which is important, as their main critique on
Bourriaud was that he confused epistemology with ontology they thus need to be able to
distinguish the two). As Vermeulen and Van den Akker write, epistemologically, the modern
and the postmodern are linked to Hegels positive idealism (5). They conclude this from
what they conceive as the modern and postmodern epistemological attitudes towards history
(i.e., the theory of what we can know about history). Where modern epistemology, according
to Vermeulen and Van den Akker, approaches history as knowable (with a clearly discernible

Telos), postmodernism epistemology asserts that this is impossible since it does not exist it
thus relate negatively to the (modernist) Hegelian thesis (5).
The metamodernist epistemological attitude again oscillates between these two: The
current, metamodern discourse also acknowledges that historys purpose will never be
fulfilled because it does not exist. Critically, however, it nevertheless takes toward it as if it
does exist (5). This then leads Vermeulen and Van den Akker to identify the metamodernist
epistemology as Kantian: Kants philosophy of history after all, can also be most
appropriately summarized as as-if thinking (5). For Vermeulen and Van den Akker the
Kantian as if attitude is typically metamodernist, since it brings together in a single gesture a
modern belief in a Telos with its postmodern complication.
While the metamodernist acknowledge, like the postmodernist, that the telos of
history cannot be known, like Kant, they still insist on the need to act as if it could be known
(in order to avoid what they regard as a postmodern inertia): Metamodernism moves for the
sake of moving, attempts in spite of its inevitable failure; it seeks forever for a truth that it
never expects to find (5). For them, this counts as epistemology, since it has to do with how
metamodernist discourse relates to what can be known (here exemplified by what can be
known of history). Metamodernist epistemology thus oscillates between what Vermeulen and
Van den Akker regard as modern and postmodern theories of knowing (simplified as
objectivism vs. skepticism): inspired by a modern naivet yet informed by postmodern
skepticism, the metamodern discourse consciously commits itself to an impossible
possibility (5).
This is why Vermeulen and Van den Akker choose meta as the prefix for their
modernism. For them, this oscillatory dynamic of contemporary cultural, specific to its
ontology (structure of feeling between the modern and the postmodern) and its epistemology
(as if thinking) can be most appropriately described by the metaphor of metaxis (6). On
the one hand, The Greek word metaxis translates as between. On the other hand, and for
Vermeulen and Van den Akker probably more important, it has a history as a name for a
specific description of an existential attitude. In this tradition, the concept of metaxis,
according to Vermeulen and Van den Akker, has been associated with the experience of
existence and consciousness (6). This again point to the importance of emphasising the
attitudes, awareness, experiences i.e., the specific structure of feeling as the distinctive
mark of the metamodern.

Here Vermeulen and Van den Akker take cue from Eric Voeglin, who describes this
existential attitude as follows:
Existence has the structure of the In Between, of the Platonic metaxy, and if anything is
constant in the history of mankind it is the language of tension between life and death,
immortality and mortality, perfection and imperfection, time and timelessness, between order
and disorder, truth and untruth, sense and senselessness of existence; between amor Dei and
amor sui, lme ouverte and lame close; . . . (ref)
For Vermeulen and Van den Akker this description perfectly fits the metamodern structure of
feeling: For Voegelin thus, metaxis intends the extent to which we are at once both here and
there and nowhere. Metaxis, they argue, designates this tension between mans finite
existence (the here), and the infinite, unlimited reality to which she finds herself opposed
(the there), and as a result is neither exactly here nor there (and thus nowhere). This
paradox is precisely what constitutes the metamodern sensibility : the metamodern is
constituted by the tension, no, the double-bind, of a modern desire for sense and a
postmodern doubt about the sense of it all. The metamodern oscillates between the modern
desire for an ultimate sense (the infinite desire to find meaning beyond itself in god, in art,
in history, in reason) and the postmodern doubt prompted by mans awareness of her finite
existence. What makes Vermeulen and Van den Akker use distinctive, then, is to claim that
this tension is not eternal but emerges in a particular historical situation: for our purposes,
we intend the concept not as a metaphor for an existential experience that is general to the
condition humaine, but as a metaphor for a cultural sensibility that is particular to the
metamodern discourse (6).
After having laid bare this metamodernist structure of feeling, Vermeulen and Van
den Akker proceed look closer to recent trends and tendencies in contemporary aesthetics .
They find a series of surface phenomena that they claim express it. Raoul Eshelmans recent
theory of performatism, which he defines as the willful self-deceit to believe in or identify
with, or solve something in spite of itself; Jerry Saltz observation of what he sees as new
approaches to art-making, young artist [that] see the distinction between earnestness and
detachment as artificial; they grasp that they can be ironic and sincere at the same time, and
they are making art from this compound-complex state of mind (ref); curator Simon Sheik
claim that contemporary art examines horizons of possibility and impossibility, suggesting
that in the field of art, it is the horizon as an empty signifier, an ideal to strive towards,

and a vector of possibility that unites . . . and gives . . . direction.(ref); Gallary Tanja
Wagner description of contemporary art: the works convey enthusiasm as well as irony.
They play with hope and melancholy, oscillate between knowledge and naivety, empathy and
apathy, wholeness and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity, . . . looking for a truth without
expecting to find it (ref).
But, according to Vermeulen and Van den Akker, this inventory of metamodernist
trends is far from complete: others have recognized movements as diverse as Remodernism,
Reconstructivism, Renewalism, the New Sincerity, The New Weird Generation, Stuckism,
Freak Folk, and so on. The list, indeed, of trends and movements surpassing, or attempting to
surpass, the postmodern is inexhaustive (7). [Vermeulen and Van den Akker, mainly seem to
see in these trends, after decades of deconstruction, a desire to bring back meaning to art and
politics (i.e., they seem to closely identify creation or reconstruction of meaning with modern
enthusiasm, as well as modern utopism ).]Vermeulen and Van den Akkers central claim,
however, is that, although the very plurality of trends may exemplify a postmodern
multiplicity, they all result from a historically specific structure of feeling, defined as an
oscillation between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony (7).
The appeal of Vermeulen and Van den Akkers account is I think twofold. First, they
try to bring order into a situation in which at first sight might appear as a chaotic proliferation
of unrelated cultural trends. They see that a genuine explanation of [/to bring some clarity in]
such a situation requires a method that in one way or another moves beyond the sheer
enumeration of immediately apparent phenomena. Vermeulen and Van den Akker approach,
by trying to explain contemporary culture with reference to a single underlying principle,
ostensibly offer a deeper understanding of the present conjuncture. Second, to focuses on
structures of feeling, defined in terms of sensibilities, attitudes, and existential
comportments toward irony and enthusiasm, makes it possible for individuals to relate their
own personal experience to its descriptions of todays culture at large. The reader may
somehow emphasize with the account in that, indeed, contemporary life is rife with such
contradictions, of, on the one hand in the light of the threefold threat of the credit crunch,
a collapsed center, and climate change (5) the desire to imagine the possibility of an
alternative future, to come into action, commit oneself and do something (to be enthusiastic),
while, on the other hand, the realization of its impossibility, the fact that the problems are too
complex for a finite individual to grasp and to tackle, and that a naive enthusiastic belief in

the possibility of different world usually end with unhappiness and despair; and yet, one still
feels one cannot remain completely idle (to remain postmodern, ironic).
In one of their more informal interviews, Vermeulen and Van den Akker touched
upon/played with this sentiment, directly addressing their listeners personal experience:
So we cannot do that anymore: we cannot be that pure as the modernist avant-garde. we
cannot be that naive or that enthusiast as the modernist masters were. But still we want to do
so, so there you see that you have this weird situation where you want to move forward, you
are optimistic, you try to achieve something, but you do not have the vernacular anymore,
you do not have the discourse anymore, you do not have the utopian horizons anymore . . .
this is very much there, this double bind (youtube).
Vermeulen and Van den Akker thus point to an important sentiment in which many CEOs
and politicians, architects, and artists alike would be able to recognize themselves.
Yet, it is precisely this focus on sensibilities and attitudes in order to argue for the
uniqueness of contemporary culture that is at the same time the weakest point of their
approach. According to Vermeulen and Van den Akker, as we have seen, metamodern culture
can be shown to differ from its modern and postmodern counterparts, by pointing out its
distinct underlying structure of feeling. 10 It does strike one ass odd, however, that for
Vermeulen and Van den Akker the historic specificity of this structure of feeling is most
appropriately (6) described by a metaphor of metaxis a metaphor that has a long history in
describing an supposedly a-historic existential experience already found in Plato. Voeglins
account of this existential experience this constant [in] the history of mankind (ref)
does indeed come very close to Vermeulen and Van den Akker account of the metamodern (in
fact, this is why they see it as a fitting metaphor in the first place). This raises the suspicion
that the oscillatory sensibilities and attitudes they describe with the use of this metaphor,
which they see as particular to the metamodern, have actually existed before its emergence. If
metaxis so appropriately describes contemporary culture productions, how could they be sure
that it is not an effect of the same a-historic existential experience of oscillation as described
by Voeglin? And if that is the case, should we not investigate whether such sensibilities and
attitudes can perhaps underlie postmodern, modern or even premodern cultural expressions as
well?

Could we not argue, for example, that a typical postmodern ironic critique of a
modernist pretention, is at the same time and by the very same gesture, a passionate rejection
of the modern, expressing at the same time an enthusiastic sensibility that urged its expresser
to take this ironic stance in the first place? For all its alleged utopist ideals, could typically
Modernists works not be explained in terms as taking at very same time an ironic attitude
towards to the institutionalized, tradition-bound art of the academies of the time? We could
perhaps go further back: what kind of structure of feeling would the nineteenth century
German Romantics express, for whom irony was important in rejecting the pretences of
enlightenment reason, but as well as a guide in searching for a higher truth beyond the latters
scope (ref). Such an attitude seems close to what Vermeulen and Van den Akker regard as the
metamodernist structure of feeling that supposedly has only recently come into being. The
same holds for Ann Mellor characterization of the English romantics: a writer is a romantic
ironist if and when his or her work commits itself enthusiastically both in content and form to
a hovering or unresolved debate between a world of merely man-made being and a world of
ontological becoming, 11 a sentence that would fit well in Vermeulen and Van den Akkers
account of the metamodern.12 Finally, from what kind of cultural sensibilities and attitudes
would Kants as-if thinking be an effect a thinking that Vermeulen and Van den Akker
regard as constituting the very epistemology of the metamodern structure of feeling? Again,
how can Vermeulen and Van den Akker be sure that they have not exposed an a-historic
condition humaine that lies not only at the root of contemporary culture, but also of cultural
forms that precede it?
In a later article Vermeulen and Van den Akker have argued that the metamodern
should be regard as a cultural dominant in Fredric Jamesons sense (ref). IN Jamesons
usage, a cultural dominant designate an a-subjective cultural logic of capital, while such
references to the logic of capital never feature in Vermeulen and Van den Akker account.
Vermeulen and Van den Akker use it, however, to argue that metamodern cultural sensibilities
could have precede the metamodern. They claim that they could have existed, but that they
were isolated instances, not yet dominant (Utopia 1). For instance, in modernism, there could
have existed some local cultural sensiblities that are indeed exlusively ironic, or perhaps even
already ocillatory (e.g., Kant). However, for Vermeulen and Van den Akker, culture at large
was primarily a result of a enthusiastic structure of feeling, and thus its ages cultural
dominant. It is questionable whether this will refute the objections we have just given.

First, already on empirical level this seem hard to believe that all of modern culture
was primarily driven by an uniquely enthusiastic sensibility. Second, there may also be a
conceptual problem. If typical modernist or postmodernist cultural expressions, that is to say,
phenomena that Vermeulen and Van den Akker themselves regard as either enthusiastic or
ironic, can as well be explained as also resulting from an oscillatory sensibility, perhaps irony
and enthusiasm imply each other to such an extent that they cannot so easily be seperated in
the first place. Perhaps an ironic expression cannot but contain an element of enthusiasm and
vice versa (perhaps every passionate ironic refusal betrays an element of enthusiasm, and
every enthusiastic, forward moving spirit cannot but contain some ironic commentary of the
what it wants to leave behind). If this is the case, the claim (or perhaps mythical belief in
retrospect) that there ones was a cultural dominant that was entirely enthusiastic would not
be intelligible, since cultural sensibilities could be reduce to resulting from either ironic or
enthusiastic structures of feeling in the first place.
It is possible that Vermeulen and Van den Akkers have not been aware of this
problem, precisely because their argument cannot escape a certain circularity. As we have
seen, they begin their account with the assertion that contemporary culture constitutes a break
with the postmodern (i.e., that it is historically unique). They then proceed to expose the
sensibilities that underlie it. But since they have already assumed contemporary culture to be
historically unique, they cannot but regard the sensibilities they uncover in their analysis as
being particular to this culture. This means that for Vermeulen and Van den Akker such
sensibilities cannot be at the root of modern and postmodern culture as well. Yet they still
need to define these, since contemporary culture, in order for it to constitute a break, must
somewhere have departed from. They thus have no choice but to conclude that the
postmodern actually constitute a different structure of feeling, which they then reduce to
irony, because the experience metaxis cannot but appear to them as specific to todays
culture, which, for them is definitely not postmodern. If we then object that there are
examples of the oscillatory that precede the metamodern, it will not impress them, since they
would claim that these were proto-metamodernist, that were certainly present, but not yet
dominant. But there is no way that it would challenge their assumption that the metamodern
results from a unique structure of feeling, since their whole account is precipitated on it.
Vermeulen and Van den Akkers argument ultimately rest on the possibility of reducing
modern and postmodern culture as a result of either an enthusiastic or an ironic sensibility . If
such reductions cannot be made if, in other words, we can find both elements, as well as the

oscillation between them, in what are commonly regarded as typically modern and
postmodern cultural expressions it would certainly undermine Vermeulen and Van den
Akkers central aim, that is to argue for a historical break between the postmodern and the
metamodern on the basis of the specifcity of its structure of feeling. The sensibilities and
attitudes they claim to have exposed in their cultural ontology would not be specific to
metamodernism.
[Second, since they describe contemporary culture with metaphor that has also been
used to describes an existential human experience, it is not surprising that many of would
recognize ourselves in their descriptions of it. If the modern and postmodern structures of
feeling are then taken to be exlusively either enthusiastic or ironic, they could easily mistake
confuse an existential experience for an altogether new cultural sensibility. ]
Since there is no reason why modern and postmodern culture cannot as well be
explained as resulting from a sensibility that oscillates between irony and enthusiasm, there is
no reason to assume that Vermeulen and Van den Akkers expose a genuine historical shift in
culture, despite their assertions that it does. If fact, on their account, we cannot even really be
sure whether exist a real difference between the modern and postmodern, or for that matter
any break at all. There thus seems to be a fundamental problem with Vermeulen and Van den
Akkers approach, that is, to argue for a metamodern break with the postmodern on the basis
of a shift in cultural sensibilities and attitudes. History, it seems, cannot be convincingly
narrated with reference to shifts in underlying structures of feeling at least not in the way
Vermeulen and Van den Akker conceive them. The reason for this, it seems, is that the
method through which Vermeulen and Van den Akker try to prove their claim is constructed
in such a way that, with it, one can explain any type of culture in any way it wants. Of course,
if one first reduces the modern to a structure of feeling that is exclusively enthusiatic, a
modernist work could easily be explained a being precisely that. But one could just as well
claim that the its structure of feeling is in fact exclusively ironic, and then explain its cultural
expression accordingly (as exposing a nihilistic sensibility, a sarcastic attitude that seeks to
oppose and deconstruct traditional bourgeois culture, for instance). Or, if one wants to argue
against the existence of history, one could simply regard all culture as resulting from the same
a-historic existential experience and explain it in that way. [In fact, Vermeulen and Van den
Akker never make clear why we should even think in terms of different types of modernism
in the first lace]

We should be careful, however, no to conclude too hastily that this means that the
metamodern does not exist. What we have shown, however, is that Vermeulen and Van den
Akkers account of it fails on its fundamental claim, that is, that contemporary culture
constitutes a historical break that can be narrated in terms of the specificity of the sensibilities
and attitudes that underlie its production. (At this point, its not clear in what way cultural
history could better be approached; why, for instance, should it be narrated in terms of
modernism, postmodernism? why should we even bother with it in the first place?) Still
metamodernism does exist, if not as genuine historical period, then certainly as a (political,
oppositional) discourse: it has already been taken up by number of artist and theorist to such
an extent that the metamodern discourse cannot be dismissed as only a chimera of a few
academic eccentrics; it informs the actions and thoughts of those who regard themselves as
metamodernist, which of course has real consequences. Such manifestos aspire to practice
the oscillation [expand + ref]. Postmodernism may of course be receding as the trope or
discourse (as opposed to postmodernism as a genuine historical period) with which most
artist identify artist may very well want to identify with a discourse that rejects what they
imagine to be the shortcomings of postmodernism (an emphasis of apathetic irony, for
instance). Their account does not have missed the mark completely. As we have noted earlier,
they probably point to important sentiment. Of course, many of their observations for
instance, that the problem of the relationship between enthusiasm and irony is again an
important topic of contest in contemporary culture may still be correct. Perhaps Vermeulen
and Van den Akker are also right in claiming that for many artist, CEOs, academics, and
politicians, enthusiasm and irony are not as mutually exclusive than they imagine that their
postmodern and modern counterparts took them to be. Vermeulen and Van den Akker do
show that contemporary culture appears to be concerned with its relationship toward both
irony (encompassing nihilism, sarcasm, and the distrust and deconstruction of grand
narratives, the singular and the truth) and enthusiasm (encompassing everything from
utopism to the unconditional belief in Reason).
But they cannot explain why. Why do contemporary cultural actors show a desire to
oscillates between irony and enthusiasm? Why do contemporary artist imagine modernism as
being too utopist and postmodernism as too ironic, and feel that they have to oscillate
between these poles? Why does culture appear to us as being informed by either irony and
enthusiasm, or an oscillation between both. Why have we come to understand modern culture
in terms of irony and enthusiasm in the first place? Vermeulen and Van den Akker cannot

answer these questions, because for them, ironic and enthusiastic are sensibilities that
precisely explain why culture takes a certain form.
They give no account of why such sensibilities are constitutive of culture in the first place.

But they cannot explain why

- where it goes wrong.

-circular
-sensibility
-a-historic -> individualist/ cannot be used for historical arguement /modern
postmodern.
- but are they? why can culture be explained by and irony enthusiasm? why is this
oscillation now appealing? yet avoid: because we feel that way. why utopia / psychologism.

Yet, without assumption that contemporary culture breaks with the postmodern,

- their focus on sensibilites is not able to explain whether contemporary culture breaks with
postmodernism in the first place.
- they assume a break in order to prove it
- the cannot explain why cultural forms appear to be informed as an oscillation between irony
and enthusiasm, because this they take to explain it
-

How come that such oscillations can also found in cultural expression that are usually
considered to be modern and postmodern?

Why does it seem

Vermeulen and Van den Akker only assert that they do.

culture can be explained in terms of enthusiasm and irony in the first place?

For Vermeulen and Van den Akker it results from the underlying structure of feeling.

The fact that they do does not in any way explain it.

comes from, because, in Vermeulen and Van den Akkers account, it precisely what would
explain contemporary culture.

In Vermeulen and Van den Akkers account, such sensibilities are precisely what explain
contemporary culture.

They cannot explain why, however, since Vermeulen and Van den Akker take this to be what
explains it.

, because it is precisely the sensibility of oscillation is what for them explains

But they do not explain why

contemporary culture

But they cannot really maintain that this is result of a fundamental (i.e., ontological) .

. But it cannot be explained with reference to a sensibility that is defined as an osillating

between enthusiasm and irony. Contrary to aim,

Why we come to irony and enthusiasm in the first place.

The argue that it has shifted

explain these shifts in terms of a fundamental break in the cultural sensibility that underlies
them cannot but beg the question.

(modernism is an effect of a structure of feeling that is exlusively enthusiastic

One of their main claims, that a certain figure of utopia is in contemporary culture may of
course be indeed the case.

This does not mean, however, contemporary culture

VV attempto to interpret the contemporary situation, leaves us with some questions.

the question of utopia and irony why problems. why appeal, why irony and utopia. why does
utopia come back. are they really the same? If they appear to change over time, why?
[rewrite]

Of course, many of their observations may still be correct for instance, that a certain figure
of utopia is in contemporary culture.

Yet on Vermeulen and Van den Akkers account we do not really come to know why.

We have no clear idea why contemporary situation appears to be different.

Why does contemporary culture seem to be explained by explained with reference to the
concept of irony and utopia?
Why do irony and utopia seem seem to be so central in understanding of modern culture as a
whole.

However, if can both be explained as resulting from an oscillation between irony and
enthusiasm,
What we do know, is that focussing on a change in structures of feelings as defined as a
cultural sensibilities does not.

If all modern culture in some way or another is based on a desire to move beyond the
giveness of the present, to which both the irony and enthusiasm it espouses seem to be linked,
the engaged rejection of what it does no longer want to be, could of course spring a structure
of feeling that is similar to the modern, postmodern and metamodern.

Metamodernism differs from postmodernism, because metamodernism

metamodernism constitutes a different structure of feeling, because metamodernist culture

differs from postmodernism
metamodernis culture differs

One assumes

Vermeulen and Van den Akker thus cannot live up to their own method

metamodern constitutes

informing modern as wel as postmodern culture, constitutes an altogether new structure of

feeling.

Cultural expressions could just as well be a result of the a-historic existential experience that
Voeglin describes. But it is also clear that, one would think that such oscillatory sensibilities
they expose in contemporary culture consitute an altogether new structure of feeling.
ould easily mistake a transhistorical cul
If post
Of course,
If one reduces postmodern culture to a structure of feeling that is exclusively ironic, however,
one could easily mistake contemporary culture as an altogether altogether new
cultural dominatn

This poses an important danger for what Vermeulen and Van den Akker regard as their task,
that is, to argue for a metamodern break with the postmodern. If postmodern and modern
cultural expressions can as well be explained by the very same practices of oscillation
Vermeulen and Van den Akker ascribe to the metamodern, this would surely undermine their
claim that the practice of oscillation between is particular what sets contemporary culture
historically apart
the historical historical specificity of the metamodern on the basis of the uniquness of its
structure of feeling.

Finally, for Vermeulen and Van den Akker regard Kants as-if thinking is a typical example of
a metamodern oscillatory practice.

,
Kant as-if thinking

Yet,

s as-if thinking that for Vermeulen and Van den Akker serves as a typical example of a
metamodern osciallatory practice,.

why then is it Kant as-if thinking that serves as it very epistemology.

How is it possible that Kants as-if thinking servers as the very epistemology of the
metamodern.
a philsopher often regarded as quintessentially modern,

If this is indeed the case, this would surely undermine their claim that epiphenomenal
changes in culture are to be explained as a result of a historical shift in the structure of feeling
that produces it.

Why, for instance, must the postmodern according to Vermeulen and Van den Akker bet
explained as resulting from an underlying structure of feeling that is exclusively ironic?

his partly explains why

If sensiblities, they must

Here we again encounter another instance of the problematic circularity that haunts
Vermeulen and Van den Akkers whole account

.they intend the concept of metaxis as a metaphor to describe historically specific cultural
sensibility,

It is questionable, however, whether one could simply intend this concept as a metaphor for a
set of historically specific sensibilities and attitudes, in order to argue that it is

rather than this would refute the objection.

This would undermine Vermeulen and Van den Akkers aim.

This, however, begs the question.

Vermeulen and Van den Akker acknowledge that the metaphor of metaxis has been used to
describe an a-historic existential experience. Their purpose, however, is to argue that the
sensibilities and attitudes this metaphor describe are in fact historically specific. In order to
this, argue that the sensiblities and attitudes that the metaphor of metaxis describe are
historically specific, Vermeulen and Van den Akker simply intend that the sensiblities and
attitudes that the metaphor of metaxis describe are historically specific

, that is, to argue for the historical specificity of the sensibilities and attitudes that are best
described by the metaphor of metaxis. How do Vermeulen and Van den Akker circumvent this
challenge? For their purpose of arguing the historical specificity of these sensibilities and
attitudes, they

they simply assert that they do not intend the metaphor of metaxis to describe a sensibility
that is an a-historic existential experience, but to
They describe this To achieve this end, to prove that the metamodernist structure of feeling is
indeed historically specific they

If the purpose is to show the historical specificity of a certain sensiblitiy, one cannot simply
assert that from now on, this concept that used to describe an a-historical In order to prove
the historical specificity of a certain sensibility, on simply assert
If th

The. In order to prove a metamodern break with the postmodern, they appropriate a concept
that has been used to denote an a-historic existential experience, but simply assert that, for
them, it denotes a historical specific structure of feeling.

This is important, since Vermeulen and Van den Akker use the metaphor with the purpose
to argue for a historical break.

This allows them to reduces

with the goal of proving this structure of feeling (this sensibility oscillating between irony
and enthusiasm) is indeed historically specific.

But still, to simply assert that sensibilities and attitudes they expose are historically unique,
however, does not prove that they are.

Still, to simply assert that the question remains how they can be sure that the sensibilities and
attitudes they describe this cultural sensibility is not somehow related to the a-historic
existential experience of metaxis. Vermeulen

The problem, however, is that they do this the specific purpose of arguing a historical break.

. If we object the same types of sensibilities and attitudes (osillating between irony and
enthusiasm) in postmodern and modern culture, Vermeulen and Van den Akker could argue
that

Of course, if one reduces the modern to be exclusively enthusiastic and the postmodern to be
exclusively ironic, one could easily mistake a transhistorical sensibility to be

ould also be the case that they have excavated a condition humain, but mistake as

Of course, if one imagines the modern to be exclusively enthusiastic and the postmodern to
be exclusively ironic, one could easily mistake

Vermeulen and Van den Akkers w descriptions of the metamodern sensibilities and attitudes
different from Eric Voeglins descriptions of the experience of metaxis.

This is also why Vermeulen and Van den Akker must reduce the modern and postmodern
structures of feeling to be either enthusiastic or ironic.
In other words, their argument holds only if the experience of metaxis does not inform

their argument only holds if the experience of metaxis does not inform postmodern or modern
culture.

If one reduces the postmodern structure of feeling to be exlusively ironic, one could easily
mistake a

rather signifies a historical specific phenomenon in order to prove that it is indeed a

historically specific phenomenon

The metamodern is historically unique because we take for their purposes, they intend it to be
unique

Vermeulen and Van den Akker might say that the metamodern oscillates between the modern
and postmodern, and thus can only come into being , but since they define these as consisting
Again the circularity doordrenkt that their account
Yet perhaps this precisely the problem: their argument only holds if the experience of metaxis
does not inform postmodern or modern culture.
they must reduce
How can Vermeulen and Van den Akker be sure that their description of the metamodern are

actually have informed cultural production before its historical emergence.

Distinctiveness of the metamodern structure of feeling depends on a the specificity of a set of

sensibilities and attitudes,
It is not clear in the sensibilities and attitudes Vermeulen and Van den Akker describe and
which they sometimes ascribe them to individual agents (CEOs, poilticians, etc.) are

This raises at least the suspicion the oscillatory sensibilities and attitudes they are not specific
to the metamodern, as they actually predate its emergence.
that the oscillatory sensibilities and attitudes they metamodern, actually predate its
emergence.

A first difficulty is that in order to explain the historically specificicty metamodern sensibility,
they take up the concept of metaxis, which, as they acknowledge, has a long history in
describing an existential experience already noted by Plato.
This raises the question whether Vermeulen and Van den Akkers descriptions of the
metamodern structure of feeling really differ from Eric Voeglins descriptions of the
supposedly a-historic existential experiences.

the sensibilities and attitudes Vermeulen and Van den Akker describe are really particular to
the metamodern,
that for Vermaulen and Van den Akker are particular to the metamodern,

How can they be sure that they have not identified an a-historic condition humaine, a
fundamental, universal structure of feeling, perhaps, that all humans, across all times share?
The question remains, however, why these sensibilities and attitudes which for Vermeulen
and Van den Akker are , are so
Vermeulen and Van den Akker define this structure of feeling in terms of sensibilities and
attitudes,

But this does not proof that the sensibilities and attitudes that Vermeulen and Van den Akker
describe are no

This, however, does not in any way proof that the sensibilities and attitudes that Vermeulen
and Van den Akker describe are of a entirely different nature than the (supposedly) ahistorical existential experiences described by Voeglin.

For their purposes, that is, to expose a historical shift in culture, they use a metaphor that has
been used to describe a

that existed before the advent of this sensibility.

to describe

As we know, one of these purposes is to expose a historical shift in culture.

Their aim is to show that

Vermeulen and Van den Akker intend metaxis not as a metaphor for a-historical human
experience, since they have
but for a historically specific sensibility, with the aim of arguing that

Yet, since Vermeulen and Van den Akker define the metamodern metaxis in terms of
(individual) sensibilities and attitudes,

it remains unclear why the experiences of the metamodern can really be said to differ from
the existential experiences that the metaphor of metaxis used to describe.

The question remains, however, why a metaphor that has been used (even before the advent
of the metamodern) to describe a supposedly universal a-historic existential experience
[subject is universal], can now use a description of a sensibility that is historically specific.
a sensibility, in other words, that only a recently has come into being.

But this does not make clear why the metamodern cultural sensibility really differs from the
existential experiences recorded prior to the advent of metamodernism,

This seems rather odd, however. One of their main purposes, as we know, is to expose a
historical shift in culture. In order to achieve this aim,
Thus, they intend to use the concept of metaxis, not as a metaphor pointing toward a general
a-historic existential experience, but as a metaphor describing a structure of feeling that is
historically specific, In order to argue that the metaphor of metaxis describes a sensibility
that historically specific

In order achieve this aim, that is, to show show that the metaphor of metaxis describes a
sensibility that historically specific (which is their main aim), they i
Vermeulen and van den Akker simply intend the metaphor of metaxis as pointing to a
structure of feeling that is historically specific.

, In other words, Vermeulen and Van den Akker argue that metaxis points to a structure of
feeling that is historically specific, because they intend it as being historically specific.

is achieved by intending that however, with the aim of showing that the structure of feeling
to which the metaphor of metaxis points is historically specific.

. In order to achive this aim they assert that, for them, metaxis does not denote an a-historic
existential experience general to the human condition as such, but a historically specific
structure of feeling.
This certainly challenges the historical specificity of contemporary of the structure of feeling,

One of the main purposes is, as we know, to argue for a recent historical shift in culture. It is
unclear why a metaphor that has been used describe an existential experience long before the

Yet one can question whether one could argue for such a shift by using metaphor that has
been used to describe a p

But it does seem rather odd to argue for this historical shift by taking a metaphor that has
been used to noted long before the metamodern structure of feeling became dominant, by
asserting that o
it seem rather odd to argue for this shift by taking a metaphor that has been used to describe
a existential experience long before the metamodern structure of feeling became dominant

One of Vermeulen and Van den Akkers purposes is, as we know, is to expose a historical
shift in culture.

One of these puroposes is, as we know, to expose a historical shift in culture. It seems rather
odd, however, explain this historical shift with
But it seems rather odd that they use a metaphor that, simply assert that for them it does not
denote this experience, then explain the specificity of contemporary culture , and finally
claim that they have exposed a historical shift.
But it seems rather odd that in order to achieve this aim, they

If this experience of metaxis does indeed pre-dates the metamodern structure of feeling, why
then would it not be possible to explain postmodern, modern or even premodern cultural
expression as resulting from the similar oscillatory practices? Kant

Witouth such the possiblity of such a reduction, it becomes hard to argue that the structure of
feeling This would certainly undermine Vermeulen and Akkers central aim, that is,

: They cannot convincingly argue that metamodernism constitutes a genuine historical break
with the postmodern
If modern and postmodern culture cannot be reduced to expression of either an enthusiastic
or an ironic structure of feeling, but have elements of both, this would surely undermine
Vermeulen main goal, that is, to argue a metamodern break with the postmodern.
, they must argue why the metaxis specific to metamodernism differs from the instances of
metaxis that pre-date the metamodern.

Kant

why has the disjunction utopia and irony become a central problem?, what made this
possible, what is its condition of possibility? and does it, in the unfoldment of modernity
change, can we really speak of a change to postmodernism and why? and can we, if there is a
break with the modern, on what basis whether or not out is intelligible to speak of a break
with the postmodern. what makes the discourse of meta possible..

In order to convincingly argue that metamodernism constitutes a genuine historical break

with the postmodern, they must argue why the metaxis specific to metamodernism differs
from the instances of metaxis that pre-date the metamodern.
In other words, do Vermeulen and Van den Akker really expose a fundamental (i.e.,
ontological) historical shift,
if there exist quite some evidence for the claim that the metamodernist structure of feeling is
not so unique

Vermeulen and Van den Akker cannot argue that recognition such experiences are exclusive
to metamodernism, since they themselves acknowledge that the debate about metaxis is one
of the longest running and most intriguing in the history of philosophy (6). But

If a structure of feeling has to do with such existential sensiblities, attitudes and

comportments, how would the metamodern sensiblity differ from the postmodern, modern,
and if premodern (Plato), if the metaphor of oscillation is closely related to the metaphor of
metaxis

In what sense, in other words, is the metamodern structure of feeling historically particular

They would object, however, that the metaphor should not be taken as an a-historical
constant.

Yet it is never explained why this metaphor should not also apply to the postmodern and
metamodern

Only if one reduces postmodernism to being merely ironic and deconstructive, one could
mistake a eternal condition humane (i dont think it is btw) is an altogether new cultural
dominant.

Similarly,

Kants as-if thinking

individual subject creates an illusion in which it, against all odds, legitimately beliefs.

[perhaps piece about political manifestos].

Yet this focus on the metamodern sensibilities is at the same time the weakest aspect
of their approach [reframe/rewrite].

This doesnt work! They do not really explain why this is now hip in culture, and in what
sense this would constitute a historical break with premodern, modern, or postmodern
which was what they set out to do.....

we have to first have a better idea of what modernity/modernism and postmodernism can
denote. This is important in the light of those who want to get rid of it
(o.o.o./deleuze/spinozist). Modernity=capital=history=politics.
Question of Materialism! this is a discussion in the contemporary debate concerning
materialsim

---critique : Metamodernism can only be unique if it can reduce postmodernism to Irony.

Only if one reduces postmodernism to being merely ironic and deconstructive, one could
mistake a eternal condition humane (i dont think it is btw) is an altogether new cultural
dominant. But this paradox is dealt with in postmodernism as well (double bind etc).

I will discuss another article from 2014 by V&V in which they try to tackle this problem of
historicity with Jameson concept of a cultural dominant, but again they see it in terms of
(bourgeois) sensibilities, and again avoid talking about capital/ideology etc.
critique: Vermeulen and Van den Akker see themselves in marxist tradition. Use concepts as
structure of feeling (williams) and Cultural dominant (jameson) in order to explain
new modernism. But in williams sense, structure of feeling has to do with classes, and is
closely related to ideology, (emergent and residual forms have to do with different classes,
not only with particular bourgeois sensibilities) V&V do no mention this once. Same with
cultural dominant in Jamesons sense.
Critique: V&V use Kant as if : same paradox (finitude/infitude) Kants practical
philosophy of as if has been criticized by marxist tradition as individualistic-atomistic, i.e,
reified thought. c.f. Lucacs on reification: antinomies of bourgeois thought. Lucienne
Goldmann. Althusser also speaks of bourgeois subject precisely as homo economicus,
psychologicus.
For example Adorno: "Ever since Plato, bourgeois consciousness has deceived itself that
objective antinomies could be mastered by steering a middle course between them
(Adorno Aesthetic Theory 298)
Bourgeois prudence: steering a middle way. zizek : today we want the Thing without
dangerous substance (coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, Utopia without
commitment/disaster). Metaphor of Negotiation. Consensus politics.
What is important for a (marxist) materialism is not to suppose a individuated,
autonomous subject and his or her sensibilities, but to begin with material/social
conditions (capitalism)
More weaknesesses:
- metaphor of oscillation doesnt seem to work with both neither logic a pendulum swings,
it is never at two places at the same time
- they reify postmodernism and modernism as fixed poles .

- Metamodernism describes primarily attempts to bring back meaning in the world,

reconstruct, creation of myth -> Magic realism, NeoRomanticism, Conservatism, Escapism?
Think of: burning man festival, game of thrones, lord of the rings, harry potter etc.
- they do not have a theory of the modern and postmodern, they describe how postmodernism
and modernism are imagined by metamodernist, then take this shift in attitude as constituting
a fundamental break.
by emphasisng in their way that history is moving again, they precisely obfuscates History
(capital H/ class struggle/ modes of production etc.)
-------(method) Literature [in this case: metamodernism] is to be subjected to symptomatic
analysis, a mode of interpretation that reveals (1) the specific ways in which they deny or
repress History, and (2) what, once brought up out of the nether darkness into the light of
rational scrutiny, the History thus denied or repressed looks like (Dowling on Jameson)

(quick sketch main idea 2nd part): Postmodernism is a sytematic change in

capitalism (Jameson). commodification or reification has become total. there is
no longer a peasant or tradition society besides it. thus a loss of historicty, there
is no longer a sense of past and future. There is history, but no historicity.
Historicism (contextualism) without redemption. the notion of telos or progress
has been put into irrevocable doubt. (telos was god, then it was, with kant the
regulative idea of god, then perhaps marxist idea of communism). (And the idea
of god is a transcendental illusion, reason keeps on getting at it, even if it can be
shown to be falls). But at the same time, that objective illusion, that is the
commodity form, or exchange value, more and more rules over our lives. It is an
objective theology - god is not a necessary implication of the ruse of reason,
which may or may not be dispelled through enlightenment critique god (or the
community) acts in the world in the form of money, holding the body politic
together. We thus do not have to believe in some master signifier (god, the
nation, the subject), the master signifier works even if we dont believe in it. The
post-modern interregnum, then, is a consquence of the uncertainty regarding our
god: the Market, the capitalist processes of exchange. This creates a panic in
the antroplogical sense. It is not simply that I as an indiviudal am uncertain
about my own well-being (though this is part of it) it is much more located in the
fact that the transcendental guarentee of the body politic (the market) does not
deliver what we hoped could expect from it.
Ideology covers up class antagonism. class antagonism consist not in
the mere fact that we have divergent beliefs and conviction on what consittutes

a good life. Class Antagonism is a result for the very emergence of the
commodity exchanges. But class antagonism, as an real abstraction, cannot be
represented as such. Ideology, as habermas describes it, can only come into
being after the process of modernity has deterritorialized traditional communities
they have become out of joint. No longer direct coincidence between the
lifeworld and the world as such. All ideas that strive for a consistent community
even if, and perhaps precisely when it is a striving back toward the old times,
obfuscates the constitutive class antagonism i.e., the rule of the money form that characterizes modernity. liberalism is the hope that fantacism can be
avoided. By stressing the infinite probing (based on Kants idea of taste) it tries
deflect the totalitarian temptation of affirming and realizing a determinate
conception of the good life directly (e.g., Stalinism, Nazism)
But there is a clear differnce betwen modern and postmodern ideology.
In the first, where there is still the idea of a transcendent substance, ideology
directly interpellates one as a believer, as with religion. However, the logic of
Late Capital, i.e, Full reification, or postmodernism, or society of the spectacle ideology is no longer a personal belief or conviction. the totalitarian temptation is
already objectively realized in the market. Postmodern democratic Liberalism
and market are therefore two sides of the same coin. There is no need for a
notion of progress or telos, this notion is objectivied in the market process (our
goal is to keep the economy growing, so that profits can be made). Irony is
therefore no longer the same, or has no longer the same function as in
modernism. It has an ideological function. (End of master narratives?)
utopia as a spatial matter, rather than one of time, is occupy. here and
now. A pure present as badiou calls it.
Modernism is still a quest for substance, truth outside commodity
relation (c.f. jameson transcend the commodity) but the substance is definitely
voided with duchamp. substance is void. substance always was a retroactive
illusion. There is a cut, but this cut is irrevocable, it is not possible to dispel it. cut
a void. S1 = $. Logic of the signifier.
The question of the relation between the social relations and the
cultural .
The new value placed on the transitory, the elusive and the
ephemeral, the very celebration of dynamism, discloses a longing for an
undefiled, immaculate and stable present (5)
nostalgia is desire for the past to which you know you cannot go back.
whereas modern conservative ideology would search for a past that could be
realized in the future.
Modernity revolts against the normalizing functions of tradition;
modernity lives on the experience of rebelling against all that is normative (5)
This revolt is one way to neutralize the standards of both morality
(Kant) and utility (Bentham).

(Short statements on concept of reification):

In light of the financialization: rehabilitate the notion of reification, link with real
abstraction and ideology
reification = not simply objectification in the sense of rigidity, it IS liquid modernity
(deterritorialization / all that is solid melts into air)
The dead of god, and the idea that the universe does not exist are bourgeois notions
already systematized by Kant
reification is the condition for both the emergence of real abstraction AND,
simultaneously, its unintelligibility (reification, in other words, is the condition for
ideology)
reification makes a problem of totality -> cognitive mapping is a way to circumvent it.
retroactivity: it "appears" that there was once a point where atomization had not yet
begun (imaginary illusion of wholeness)
ideology as culture, or ideology as extremist (islam/wilder): liberal bourgeois
(ideological ideology) -> but marxist -> real conditions of existence (cultural dominant is
linked to mode of production)
it is not necessary to locate precisly the break of modernity - we don't have to assume
the factual existence of "premodernity" , but we need to posit its existence as a
retroactive necessity, by virtue of the fact of the break. If there is a sense of a break,
there is modernity - and modernism is nothing but the question how to deal with this
sense the break (this break could also be denied (deleuzianism), but as such, deals with
it). [modernism - the various means with deal with the deadlock called modernity, the
cultural logics patching up the rift of modernity- simply means: one cannot not
periodize]
postmodern theory, then, is the attempt to replace S1 with $ as the "quilting point"
(discourse of the hysteric) - yet this generates $ <> a (fantasy) [no filling in/totalization
of the inconsistency - nomadism] (!!!)

the only proper view of totality is not a "totalized" harmonious whole, but a
asymmetrically rift whole (i.e., class struggle/badiou) lukacs: to see totality is not to see
wholeness, nor multitudes, but rift.
!!! -> For objections to lukacs see chapter 4 of Eagletons introduction to ideology
traditionally the actual was seen as governed by laws (necessity), while possibility - as
the space of political action - was seen as freedom (contingency). It seems that today
contingency and necessity are reversed -> the actual is now identified with contingency,
whilst what ought to be done coincides with a too demanding - and therefore deemed
illusory ? - necessity. <------!!!!!!
Bourgeois "historical" thought today is no longer (if it ever was) the teleological whig
theory of history (often associated with modernism), but rather the "history"
of genealogy : contingency/contingent encounters etc. no breaks, no periodization, just
an amalgam of swirving assemblages, different intesnities etc.
the task of the left is to reintroduce the cut (also in history).
cut - not in the sense of destruction - but in the sense of a creations
of actual possibilities - as opposed to "utopia - sort of".
Where does the idea of "Man" come from? historical materialism -> conditions
(foucault) or ideology of man through cut by capital (cogito, homology imaginary, real
abstraction etc, kants antinomies [metamodernism becomes a individual centered
attitude psychologism (narcissim?).
is the metamodern a classicism? classicism is finding a proper balance (no hubris)
bourgeois prudence (zizek examples) prudent hedonism / pleasure instead of desire
(foucault)
"Ever since Plato, bourgeois consciousness has deceived itself that objective antinomies
could be mastered by steering a middle course between them, wheareas the sought-out
mean always conceals the antinomy and is torn apart by it" (Adorno Aesthetic
Theory 298)
contemporary finitude -> finitude as basis for prudence (towards individual selfperfection), a.o.t., finitude as basis for faith (towards collective perfection),

For a theory of the modern, it does not matter if we can pinpoint an empirical point at
which one time went over into another. For all that, the ancients were, or could have
been modern. the point is modern points to the alienation (reification) that generates a
lost origin in the past, (and the possiblity to retrieve it in the future) [c.f.: imaginary
generates symbolic]. alienation thus generates a "consciousness" [pure symbolic point /
real abstraction/ $ ] of a clear cut break with the past, that process is what we call
modernity. Modernisms are the myriad ways in which this cut is dealt with. Modernist
ideologies are the ways in which this cut is repressed "healed" [so what does this entail
for postmodernity?]
perhaps modernity still sees a possiblity of retrieval in the future, whereas
postmodernity is melangolic - no future, just past. This means that the past becomes
nostalgia. Metamodernism: Nostaligia not only for the past as such, but for a past
possibility of a imagining a (different) future! (jameson)
NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE/UTOPIA // benjamin past-future
marketing (experience economy) a kind of desperate attempt at re-enchanting the
world. object oriented ontology is a expression of that
It is certainly somewhat ironic, that, at a moment where the concept of reification seems
to be buried deep in the dustbins of history, we also see a rising popularity of so-called
"object oriented philosophies."
The fact that "something of the royal remains," that reason is fraught with a mark of
the sacred, that, in the six rationalities that dupuy decribes, the logic of the sacred is
immanent, IS THE VERY CONDITION for a hope of redemption/utopia etc. (!?)
In postmodernity the imaginary concept of NATURE is no longer viable - [from
immanent meaningfull whole - to culture/nature opposite - to total aleination// result:
either panpsychism/object oriented ontologhy (o.o.o.)/vibrant matter OR nihil unbound
(brassier)/primary qualities as absolute (meillasoux)] commodified/reified/"estranged"
- i.e. there is no nature (as holistic ecology)
reification and ideology as a dialectic of void and excess (homology with logic of
signifier) [$ <> a] or [$ itself! / one divides into two

reification creates the outgroup (proletariat partes extra partes, ranciere), but as a
pure form (the empty substance-less proletarian)
Reification - topical : current fight of the academy of "rendementsdenken"
(management mindset in terms of profit-based financial efficiency)
History, identity, agency / Historicity, ideology, subject
reificaiton/ ideology are in a sense similar to terms as rationalization and
culture/identity/worldview, but differ in the crucial sense that they avoid the suspicion
of a disinterested, objective, scientistic vantage point, as well as a radical relativist
position, but affirm directly the engaged, practico-revolutionary attitude of the
theory/text.
Duchamp as the Height of modernism: empty point elevated into dignity (as with
money, as with the King, as with God, as with the Nation).

cultural dominant, (there is residue of modernism/ structure of feeling, (no totality). but
postmodernism is also a cultural logic of late capital. Utopia\enthusiasm etc is still there but
acquires a radically different meaning.
reification: is the process by which it becomes possible to regard something as having an
abstract essence (a self-sustained unity, something beyond empirical reality), which
nontetheless exist and has real consequences (real abstraction money, subject). Ideology is
what covers up this wound. the idea of an attainable utopia is conditioned by it. this is the
same as with foucault soul/ subject., discuss foucault discpline and punish and subject and
power. Liberalism is one way of dealing with the wound, which appears reasonable and
pragmatic, but only because it by denying its schismatic force, accepts the real abstraction of
commodity exchange, purporting a class interest. Postmodernims obtains when this abstract
essences is all that is left, and when the abstract essence inverts back into the thing itself
(money = value) there is no longer thought to be a symmetric relation between signifier
and signified al we have are abstractions of abstractions with no hard reality behind it
(copies of copies, simulacrum). (no substantial utopia, search for the absolute) Jameson
theorizes this in part under the rubric of the waning of affect. Metamoderinsm is somehow

a return to affect, but it is not the same/older affect that precipitated modernism. Object
oriented ontology is typically metamodern.
we see this also in the british tradition of social contract.
full reification: there is no natuer (timothy morton)
its not that important to located the break in a definite point in time (athenian economy), what
is important is the existence of the break, or cut that conditions a particular society.
Modernism is still a quest for substance, truth outside commodity relation (c.f. jameson
transcend the commodity) but the substance is definitely voided with duchamp. substance
is void. substance always was a retroactive illusion. There is a cut, but this cut is irrevocable,
it is not possible to dispel it. cut a void. S1 = $. Logic of the signifier.
The new value placed on the transitory, the elusive and the ephemeral, the very celebration
of dynamism, discloses a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable present (5)
Nostalgia is desire for the past to which you know you cannot go back (there is no
substantive past). whereas modern conservative ideology would search for a past that could
be realized in the future.
The marxist or materialist point is that this logic is not a spontaneous invention of a cognizing
subject, but first emerges in is embodied in - a particular mode of production. universality
thus is not a-historic, but emerges in a particular historical situation does has this function.
(against nominalism). morevoer the abstraction is real in the sense that it cannot be simply
dispelled.
today a theory of full reification is even more convicning, as market mechanism are invading
spheres hitherto considered outside the market exchange (education, the state, healthcare). the
abstract essence is more and more the value form itself: what makes something valuable is its
social use, but its social use is primarliy counted in monetary value. There is of course
always a use value, or quality, but it is always subordinated to quantity. privitazatino of the
general intellect.
postmodernism: the hegemony of the economic order hollows out the legal (ideological)
subject (the difference between universal subject of right (to vote) and self interest individual
on the market. Subjects are in the first instance interpellated as utilitarians, not as subjects

with rights (to be punishible).thus utopia is consumerist (starbucks) on the one hand, and
experience publicity (imagination / new meaning / imagination) on the other.
but this economic logic is ideology, in that it does not follow the actual neoliberal models.
quantity and quality.
God didn't die, he was transformed into money - An interview with Giorgio Agamben - Peppe
Sav https://libcom.org/library/god-didnt-die-he-was-transformed-money-interview-giorgioagamben-peppe-sav%C3%A0
But the more reification
capital is now regarded as immutable, while nature is contingent, tipping points.
sublime objectivity
the present inquiry
But how to approach. not: directly formulate principle but start in medias res discourse that is
dealing with these issues.
we no longer speak of left and right, maybe we should abandon capital etc
you cannot formulate difference in a neutral way, and this is antagonism.
social relations had mainly appeared as between man, but now appear as relations between
things, but they objectively appear as such. (zizek fetish)
Any ontology of the present needs to be an ideological analysis as well as a
phenomenological description; and as an approach to the cultural lgoic of a mode of
production, or even of one of its stages such as our moment of postmodernity, late
capitalism, globalizations, is it needs to be historical as well (and historically and
economically comparatist).

jameson: to say that there is a postmodern break is to give import to the superstructure, its
relative autonomy and its causality (culture).pre-mo (pre-capital) -> mo (capital/culture1)>pomo (full capital/culture2) to say there is only modernity and its intensification (capital) is
determining then there is only one break (premodern -> modern.)

corruption is a consequence of the global projection of all that exist on the surface of the
market (on the surface of money) (Badiou singleton of the void). It is also an affirmation of
the radical finitude of the world (subject, what we do, etc) if all that exist has a price, all is
finite. And this is the key of the return of classicism (if it is the affirmation of finitude of
human life). To desire something infinite is a disaster, is hubris it is the true content of the
contemporary fight against finally ideas (great ideas, commitments) all that is a symbol of the
desire of the infinite, and this desire cannot have a price. (a work of art nowadays, has a price,
the work of wes anderson has a price the maagdenhuis bezetting does not have a price
(though it will be immediately projected onto the market in the form of a Cost 500.000). Not
a judgement, it is by necessity a world of corruption. To find something outside, infinite, but
not substance (as in modernism).

NATURE / ESSENCE / Social darwinism: modernity is consituted by divide nature/culture

[latour] there is an essence/ (reification: abstract essence).
What about the distinction BASE (essence) and SUPERSTRUCTURE (epiphenomenon)
is modern because: still something to grasp that is stable.

From Here onwards, the notes become even more

unorganized.
----Boyle is not simply creating a scientific discourse while Hobbes is doing the same thing for
politics; Boyle is creating a political discourse from which politics is to be excluded, while
Hobbes is imagining a scientific politics from which experimental science has to be excluded.
In other words, they are inventing our modern world, a world in which the representation of
things through the intemediary of the laboratory is forever dissociated from the representation
of citizens through the intermediary of the social contract. So it is not at all by oversight that
political philosophers have ignored Hobbes science, while historiance of science have
ignored Boyles positions on the politics of science. All of them had to see double from
Hobbes and Boyles day on, and not establish direct relations between the repereentation of

nonhumans and the representation of humans, between the artificiality of facts an the
artividicality of the Body Politic. The word representation is the same, but the controversy
between Hobbes and Boyle renders any likenes between the wto sensen of hte word
unthinkable. Today, now that we are no longer entirely modern, these two senses are moving
closer together again. (WHNBM 27)
difference between analytic and continental philosophy: analytic: is scientific naturalism
possible? continental: is transcendence possible (utopia) (WHNBM 28)
Bruno Latour describes modern reification process!!!!! (in WHNBM)
nature culture divide is modernism
pragmatic utopia (decentralization of the university, full commitment to decentralization, but
not with goal of its complete realization, but as a strategic attempt to curb on centralized
powers.
instead of talking about practicing mediation when he asserts an essential relation between
two or more levels of the social structure, then, let us say that he is transcoding , showing that
the differences between them are intelligible only against the background of an assumed
idenitity. To use this terminology, we might transcode the differences between apples,
pears, and oranges in the name of fruit as the category against which those differences must
always be defined. For Marxism, of course, the category thus silently assumed will be society
and the historical process viewed as a totality
The extreme form of this divorce between labor and value is capitlism, which retains labor
as the hidden essence of economic value (it is still the work that goes into tranforming raw
materials into useful products that is the absolute source of value) but which presents itself to
both workers and capitalists in an utterly different light (for in a market economy use value is
totally hidden from sight, and it is the visible workings of the market the price tag on the
new car in the showroom that provide the only measure of value that people are now able to
recognize). This is the sense in which people living under capitalism inhabit a world that is
not only false but false for reasons built right into the way the system operates. Althusers
contribution was to emphasize that this process of self-occultation or self-estrangement (the
systematic estrangement of use value from market value) was not simply a by-product of the
market economy but one of the primary ways capitalism perpetuates itself. This insight lies at
the heart of Althussers theory of ideology, which he views as having an intimate relation to

the way economic systems in general and capitalism in particular work to conceal their
essential operations hwile presenting to those who inhabit them an illusory appearance of
things. Ideology in Althussers account is simply the way this same process of self-ocultation
occurs at the level of collective consciousness or thought, not illusion merely but necessary
illusion produced by the operations of the system itself. Thus ideology, in Althussers famous
formulation, expresses not the relation between men and their real conditions of existence but
the way men live the relation between themselves and their real conditions of existence. So
ideology, far from being false consciouness merely, expresses its own kind of truth.
This is the view of ideology that is in the immediate background of Jamesons
brilliant discurssion of literary works, and what allows him to accept it as properly Marxist
as something, even, already implicit in Marxs notion of commodity fetishism is the more
complex way in which Althusser embraces historical necessity. For it is not simply that
religion, philosophy, art, and the rest now have their own truth as being the ways men
collectively thinkg their relation to such transpersonal realities as society and history, but
that they posess this truth inevitably. For according to Althusser, no social system could
reproduce itself without ideology, and what is always true about ideology is the way it
exprsses collective mind within the limits imposed by historical situation. Ideology is not just
mystification (that is, somethinig that obscures the real realitons of things in the world) but
essential mystification: one could not imagine a human society without it.
Here we have the theoretical justification for Jamesons practice as a literary critic,
which will conceive of literature as being ideological in just this sense, as expressing the wa
men live their relation to their real conditions of existence, and which wil lthus look beyond
its stratetiegs of contaiment to its roots in History and Necessity. (Dowling 82-83)

as opposed to grunge and cynism in music, was the 88 summer of love in house music.
with metamodern, we get a kind of pre-modern a-historic utopia (unattainable bliss, land of
milk and honey). As if: a-historical, not enforceable utopia, striving.
there is certainly not an utopia in the modernist sense today. end of the world, end of
capitalism.
postmodernism becomes harder and harder to sustain?

must we despair or may we still hope? (strategy of containment: both)

antinomies of bourgeois thought
postmodernism: an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how
to think historically in the first place.
"Once again, Kant preserves the boundary separating enthusiasm from fanaticism. To
succumb to fanaticism would be to believe that it is possible to identify divine purpose in
nature from the standpoint of a determingn judgment. Such a claims would overstep the
bounds of possible experince. Although we can only make sense of natural organisms by
taking them to be designed in acocrdance with the divine interventions, we do this for mthe
standpoint of reflective jdugment alone. Thus the hints that nature provides us with retain
their merly promissory character. To hav faith is, in effect, to believe that there are promises
in nature. To have faith that the human race is morally improving is to believe that the "final
end of nature" - the highest good for humanity - will be attained. But becauuse a promise is
not an epistemic guarentee, to have faith is to recognize the promise of the highest as
promised rather than as given:
"(Kant): It is a matter of trusting the promise of the moral law; not a promise that is contained
in the moral law, but one that I put into it, and indeed on a morally adequate basis. For a final
end cannot be commanded by any law of reason without reason simultaneously promising its
attainability, even if uncertainly."
[is this really the same "as if" as in metamodernism???]
political unconscious (jameson) is antagonism (exhange value, classes) As we shall see,
Freuds central importance for jameson derives from his insight that interpretation is
indispensable in any situation where a latent meaning lies hidden behind what is open or
expressed or manifest, and that this in turn is always the case when a primal and eternally
repressed source of energey (for Freud the individual unconscious, for Jameson the collective
or political unconscious) exist in a troubled and antagonistic relation to those overt
structures (for Freud the mechanism of the conscious, for Jameson cultural and ideology
viewed as whole) that exist to hold the repressed at bay or manage its threatening
eruptions (Dowling 36).

Yet what is Marxist criticism, in more specific terms, to do with Paradise Lost and Rasselas
and Ulysses? Jameson's answer is that these, and literature generally, are to be subjected to
symptomatic analysis, a mode of interpretation that reveals ( 1 ) the specific ways in which
they deny or repress History, and (2) what, once brought up out of the nether darkness into
the light of rational scrutiny, the History thus denied or repressed looks like (Dowling)
Here is where Jameson's symptomatic analysis of non-Marxist approaches assumes a crucial
importance to his own theory and practice, for it allows him to demonstrate that such analysis
extends well beyond the obviously "ideological" to the most basic categories of conventional
thought. On one level, symptomatic analysis is able to show that critical approaches usually
assumed to be in competition with one another-the Freudian, formalist, archetypal, etc.-share
at the deep level an identical set of assumptions; on another, it is able to suggest that they do
so because on that level they deny History in an identical way. (Dowling 90-91)
metamodern, ooo....
Thus, for instance, he is able to show that the Althusserian account of a "mode of
production," which has usually been) taken to give a purely structural account of social
systems-that is, to describe feudalism, capitalism, etc., as structures of social relations-is
unintelligible, like a lyric poem, except when conceived as part of a larger history: not only
does a mode of production project a "story" stretching out to either side of it, but this story is
written right into its form as a. structure or system of relations (97)
This is Jamesons way of saying: reality is structured like a fiction

What is important for materialism is not to suppose a individuated, autonomous

subject, but to begin with material conditions.
(some notes about causality / does commodity fetishism causes directly abstract thought,
real abstraction homology, analogy etc.?) to reveal in a series of different field the same
logic. homology, analogies, a logic that behaves different in different fields. A postmodern
causality. (structural causality?)

full abstraction = symptom is itself the malady (jameson introduction). Thinking about x,
thinking x. difference between there is a substantial world behind fragmented appearence,
and appreances as fragmented are what is, substantiallyI.
cognitive mapping, thinking totality in a fragmented world, totality cannot be closed/whole.
Perhaps, badious ontology is an example of thinking a totality (im not sure though)
postmodern no teleology -> signs from the future (benjamin)
The crucial feature of an immanent analysis of the relatioinship between mind and world,
that is (this is the other feature of Hegels system that wil lconcern us), is that for all its
metaphysical idealism it compels one to view human cultures and their hisotry as part of a
total process; this is why political institutions and workds of art and social customs so often
appear as the varied expression of a single inner essence, and why it seems intelligble or
coherent to speak of such entities as a people or a nation of an age. [or a subject or
a soul in foucault the sentence is the locus of punishment] [Volk, The People (french
revolution) Sensis communis, etc, can appear against the dual process of reification and
real abstraction (ideology is the move to take it as substance, factual etc. thus
obfuscating the antagonism refication/class struggle that is constitutive of it
[constitutive distortion Laclau/ empty signifier] Earlier thinkers, notably Herder, had
worked through an organic vision of human cultures, but it was Hegel who grounded this
vision in the notion of the Spirit working itself out through all the concrete manifestation of
the world [for marx, the value form = spirit working itself out trhough all the concrete
manifestation of the world], and thus almost in spite of himself invented a concrete idea of
human history that was to detach itself from Hegelian idealism and lead an influential life of
its own. (47)
Hence individuals are abstract with respect to the subjects which they always already are.
This proposition might seem paradoxical.
That an individual is always-already a subject, even before he is born, is nevertheless
the plain reality, accessible to everyone and not a paradox at all. Freud shows that individuals
are always abstract with respect to the subjects they always-already are, simply by noting
the ideological ritual that surrounds the expectation of a birth, that happy event. Everyone
knows how much and in what way an unborn child is expected. Which amounts to saying,
very prosaically, if we agree to drop the sentiments, i.e. the forms of family ideology

(paternal/maternal conjugal/fraternal) in which the unborn child is expected: it is certain in

advance that it will bear its Fathers Name, and will therefore have an identity and be
irreplaceable. Before its birth, the child is therefore always-already a subject, appointed as a
subject in and by the specific familial ideological configuration in which it is expected once
it has been conceived. I hardly need add that this familial ideological configuration is, in its
uniqueness, highly structured, and that it is in this implacable and more or less pathological
(presupposing that any meaning can be assigned to that term) structure that the former subject
to-be will have to find its place, i.e. become the sexual subject (boy or girl) which it
already is in advance. It is clear that this ideological constraint and pre-appointment, and all
the rituals of rearing and then education in the family, have some relationship with what
Freud studied in the forms of the pre-genital and genital stages of sexuality, i.e. in the grip
of what Freud registered by its effects as being the unconscious. But let us leave this point,
too, on one side (Althusser ISA)
we should note that all this procedure to set up Christian religious subjects is dominated by
a strange phenomenon: the fact that there can only be such a multitude of possible religious
subjects on the absolute condition that there is a Unique, Absolute, Other Subject, i.e. God
(althusser ISA) c.f. hobbes leviathan.
We observe that the structure of all ideology, interpellating individuals as subjects in the
name of a Unique and Absolute Subject is speculary, i.e. a mirror-structure, and doubly
speculary: this mirror duplication is constitutive of ideology and ensures its functioning
(Althusser ISA) c.f. Zizek FTKNWTD
What I am here calling succesive social systems is, of course, what in both traditional and
contemporary Marxism is called the mode of production that is, any social system
(including its laws custioms, myths, etc.) viewed as an articulation of underlying economic or
property relation. The concept of the mode of production is one of the most earestly debated
issutes in contempoarary Marxism, and as we shall see a certain view of the issue is central to
Jamesons won thinking, but htis is not the place to rehearse hte erms of that debate. The
crucial point for us is that Marxs notion of modes of production gave to the economic in
general a specific and powerful role in determining the shape of the social totality, that is
described in unmistakable terms the way in which the economic level was to determine the
course of human history as a whole. (47) The invariant feature of every mode of

production . . . is the particular social arrangement through which unpaid surplus labor is
pumped out of the direct producers by those who own or control the means of production.
The subsequent history of European philosophy inherits from Plato not his solution to the
problem of the lost transcendental home, but the problem itself, which in Kant manifest itself
in the seemingly unbridgeable gulf separating the exigency of a pure moreal ought from the
contingency of the empirical world (TOTN 36)
"Like Hegel, Feuerbach also thought that history is the movement by which humanity
becomes alienated from itself and then overcomes its self-alienation. but Hegal had been
unable to make this diea concrete because, Like Kant, his thought was determined by the
bourgeois society to which ehbelonged. (EAPM 177) As Marx conceives it, alientation is a
function of private property, or rather, of any economic system in which the products of
human labor are appropriated by a subset, or class, of society as a whole. In such a world
humanity becomes " estranged" from itself in several interrelated ways. the worker is
estranged ffrom the product that is his or her labor produces, since this comes to exist as an
"alien power" standing over agianst it: "the object which labor produces . . . confronts it as
something alien, as a a power independent of the producer (EAPM 108)" (226).
"Teh end result is that the captialsit do not control capital but are instead controlled by it - as
of course are the workers, since they msut sell themselves to the capitalist in order to survive.
The auntonomization of captial - closelhy connected with its acumulation in the hands of ever
fewer capitalists - manifests itself as a restless drive for ever-increasing profits. In order to
satisfy this constant need for growth, captial breaks down all local an national bounderies,
thereby bestowing upon it a certain "cosmopolitan" character: "This political economy,
consequently, displays a cosmopolitan, universal energy which overthrows every restriction
and bond so as to establisch itself instead as the sole politics, the sole universality, the sole
limit and sole bond" (EAPM 129; cf. LPW 4). Thus, unlike Kant, who saw the trend toward
cosmopolitanism as a consequence of the costs of war, Marx interprets it a sthe inevitable
consequence of the laws governing the capitalist moder of production (228). [badiou quote
on the merit of capital]
Structure of feeling (the long revolution, williams, is a concept of linkage). utopia revamped
as space of meaning, irony as distance. (metamodern) It tries desparetely to cling on to
meaning, but without the dangerous substance.

the name for modernity today is globalization. David Harvey: to find the essential in the
fleeting. abstraction beyond fragmentation. abstraction and fragmentation are two sides of the
same coin, but not the same (in other words reification and real abstraction belong together.
why the need for art to represent society in such a way? why can it not just depict it?
Modernism, in short, took on multiple perspectivism and relativism as its epistemology for
revealing what it still took to be the true nature of a unified, though complex, underlying
reality (Harvey The Condition of Postmodernity 30)
make point about teleology! (c.f. jameson)
problem of fanaticism / kant
make point about modernism or modernization can also be an ideology (alternate
modernities for example in jameson) obfuscating antagonism, break, class struggle etc.
At one level, then, the nineteenth century was the age of modernity precisely because a
considerable number of thinkers, statesmen, and scientist who dominated the ordering of
society believed it to be so. It was also a modern age because poorer and subordinated people
around the world thought that they could improve their status and life-changes by adopting
badges of this mythical modernity, whether these were fob wathcehs, umbrellas, or new
religious texts. This statement does not imply that people before the ninetheent century had
never perceived epochal changes in human history. They had done so, but in general they
explained and described these changes in two ways which did not imply the same type of step
forward in secular human affairs essential to the idea of the moern. These earlier
commentators generally understood changes in human society as renovations. The scholars
of teh Renaissance Europe, for instance, believed that the perfect learning of classical
antiquity was being restored even while they were changing the way people undertood
history and diffusin their ideas in the novel medium of print. Equally, Chinese scholars of the
eigteenth century believed that the pious and learned world of earlier reigns was being
restored under the aegis of the transcendent rule of the contemporary Qing dynaty, even
though the scale of that dynastys rule was much greater that that of earlier monarchies.
A second way in which people had thought about major changes in human history was
the millenarian mode. In this sensibility, people believed that in some way the supernatural or
the heavenly had leaked into human history, bringing a new age of godliness or virtue or

prophecy. This again differed from the idea of a secular shift toward modernity which
obsessed many thinkers and statesmen after about 1760. These two earlier styles of thought
persisted inot the nineteenth century, tincturing the idea of the modern. Indeed, one of the
most intriguing aspects of the period is the way in which these sensibilities al lbonded
together. So, for instance, scientific, modernist Marxism still had a whiff about it of the idea
of the restoration of Paradise on earth. Equally, resolutely millenarian leaderships with oldstyle ideologies, such as those of the mid-century Taiping rebels in China, tried to get hold of
gunboats and telegraph lines, as symbosl of modernity as much as because they were
practical tools. The aspiration to modernity was indeed something novel. (Bayly, Modern
World, 11).
[In modernity, S1 becomes contingent, changeable, historical, but the search for the ultimate
substantial S1, for instance national substance, continues (in feudal times, S1 simply IS,
substantially as in Qing dynasty )]
High modernism is thus credited with the destruction of the fabric of the traditional city and
its older neighborhood culture (by way of the radical disjunction of the new Utopian highmodernist building form its surrounding context)m while the prophetic elitism and
authoritarianism of the modern movement are remorselessly identified in the imperious
gesture of the charismatic Master (Jameson Pomo 2).
It is way better to refer to Jamesons book as/what Jameson is after is a analysis of the
cultural logic of late capitalism
Every position on postmodernism in culture whether apologia or stigmatization is also at
one and the same time, and necessarily, an implicitly or explicitly political stance on the
nature of multinational capitalism today (3).
history, historical materialism: A last preliminary word on method: what follows is not to
be read as tylistic description, as the account of one cultural style or movement among others.
I have rather meatn to offer a periodizing hypothesis, and that at a moment in which the very
conception of historical periodization has come to seem most problematical indeed (3) It is
safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to thinkg the present historically
in ana age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place (ix)
The first point to be made about the conception of periodization in dominance, therefore, is
that even if all the constitutive fueatures of postmodernism were identical with and

coterminous to those of an older modernism a position i feel to be demonstrably erroneous

but which only an even lenghtier analysis of modernism proper coudl dispel the two
phenomena woud still remain utterly distinct in their meaning and social function, owing to
the very different positioning of post-modernism in the economic system of late capital and,
beyond that, to the transformation of the very sphere of culture in contemporary society
[culture is not a seperate domain- devolop: modern status of culture (latour)]
[cognitive mapping and cultural dominant [= thinking systematically without totalizing
in the modern sense] are attempts to think a postmodern totality]
masculine feminine sexuality. Early Wittgenstein: exception, Late Wittgenstein: non-all. from
modern to postmodern.
3 levels: 1) exception to every universality. every universality has an element that, while
formally belonging to this universality, sticks out, doesnt fit. officers, maids,
chimneysweepers. 2) everything is an exception.
This sobriety expressed responsibility and self-discipline, as opposed to the luxurious
complexity of the dress of males of the old aristocracy and the contemporary women. It went
along with the abandonment of practices like dueling and riotous feasting. It is important that
this change was registered not only in the adoption of explicitly Western dress, but aslo in the
growth of analogous uniformities within non-Western or hybrid forms of dress. (Bayly,
MW, 13)
Conversely, in some pars of the world, especially the Pacific and Africa, settlers and colonial
administrators had deliberately set out to mark the inferior racial and civil status of non-white
populations by insisting that they retained indigenous dress. British civil servants in
Nyasaland objected to Africans wearing shoes, for instance. But such legal impositions
themselves disregarded the resourcefulness of older dress customs and imposed their own
type of servile uniformity (15).
And what about womans dresses? also non-uniform, plurality of culture, locus of perserving
old culture etc etc. (!) Womans clothes remained ornamental and impractical. In the
Muslim world, the Islamic burkah, the full body covering of Muslim woman, was growing in
popularity. Often wrongly regarded in todays West as a mark of medieval obscurantism, the
burkah was actually a modern dress that allowed woman to come out of the seclusion of their
homes and participate to a limited degree in public and commercial affairs. Even in this

insistence on tradition, therefore, one glimplses the mark of growing global convergence.
(15) (counter-history easily become a invention of tradition of the Other)
uniformity and respectability belong together. Uniformity of dress denoted an outward
display of the uniformity of bureaucratic procedures and an inward mark of trustworthiness
and repectability. (17)
something in reality functions or is structured like a fiction. (not a fiction on top of reality, but
immanent to reality) to show reality but make us experience it as a fiction (frame, cinema
etc.) same redoubling perhaps?
real abstraction: (reality IS , but it is structured as a fiction commodity fetishism)
Westerners lampooned natives who mimicked them.
to suggest a break with the postmodern.
homo economicus/ homo psychologicus humanism / classical times / bourgeois prudence.
- today: abandoning the dichotomy (as if!) [see rorty p 2 / intr contin phil / jane bennett] (new
realism) or (jameson/zizek/badiou althusser) real abstraction.
sustain the dichotomy/ double bind
The concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a play based on a fundamental
ground, a play constituted on the basis of a fundamental immobility and a reassuring
certitude, which itself is beyond the reach of play. And on the basis of the certitude anxiety
can be mastered a historywhose origin may always be reawakened or whose end may
always be anticipated in the form of presence. (p. 279) Postmodern/Today: on the basis of
the incertitude (irony) anxiety can be mastered.
modernity is simultaneously the loss of mastery, and the frenetic attempt to find somewhere
the possibility to regain it (not the certainty that mastery will be obtained). (chomsky :
newton, the old philosophy of mechanics) there may be some who dreamt about it. but: Adam
smith is NOT an attempt to master nature. but self-organisation (let it be! laissez faire!), Kant:
morality never certain. Newton: openness. Newtonian world view is not mechanistic.
Double bind is the postmodern condition!
Telos in pragmatics is temporary. there is no teleology .

- taxes: state creation through taxes, ideological interpellation implication

-ojbective belief / real abstraction / normative
why this appears as such, and whether we can speak of a break.
exposes the modern antinomies between utopia and irony. But can we speak of a real break,
or is it just another emphasis. (and is this precautious utopia not a reflection of /instrumental
for the status quo)
accept the terms but expand on them, and then come back to metamodernism. (what is irony
today, what is utopia today, what is their oscillation, what is their condition of possiblity)
Postmodernism, postmodern consciousness, may then amount to not much more than
theorizing its own condition of possibility. metamodernism is not only the mere indexation
of attitudes, but will also consist in theorizing its own condition of possibility.
abstraction, full abstraction (simulacrum) waning of affect. pure difference. irony self parody.
seinfeld / jiskefet /ramstein, die antwoord etc. pure repitition of everyday trivialities. (as
opposed to irony as undermining authority). AND: hipster (ironic beard example picture).
sublime is always precarious and can every moment falls to shit, and shit can become
sublime.
metamodern is assemblage, eclecticism, bricolage (hipster) . . . but now also in ethics :
http://metamoderna.org/oh-harris-oh-chomsky?lang=en
the relation void and supplement is not differential (white non-white) this relation of a thing
and its excess (which covers up the void) is not differential. This tension between a thing and
the void in its core, a void that has to be supplement with object a.
a non-bourgeois is proletarian, but a non-proletarian is non-bourgeois (proletariat abolishes
itself)
1 is never simply 1 but 1 + x (one divides into two) a name is never just a combinatoir of the
properties of the thing. name is the name for the thing that is missed, the gap.
If there is something I am, it is clear that I am not a nominalist. What I want to say is that
my starting point is not that the name is something like a nameplate which attaches itself just
like that onto the real. One has to choose: if one is a nominalist, one has to renounce

completely dialectical materialism. So that all in all I evidently reject the nominalist tradition
which is effectively the only danger of idealism which can arise in a discourse like mine. The
point is not to be a realist in the sense in which one was a realist in medieval times, in the
sense of the realism of the universals. The point is to emphasise that our discourse, our
scientific discourse can only find the real insofar as it depends on the function of the
semblant. The articulation, and I mean the algebraic articulation of the semblant, and its
effects, this is the only apparatus which enable us to designate what is real. What is real is
what opens up a hole in this semblant, in this articulated semblant, which is the scientific
discourse. (Lacan seminar 17 )
substance is void, pure abstraction (proletariat badiou)
something that modern science already knea: substance is void. but void is not nothing, it its
pure difference. therefore badiou ontology, and ooo trip sides of same coin
the name is exterior. modernity is not the severity of substance and the name. the name itself
has become substance (which is void). (or: exhange value has become use value). one divides
into two / logic of the signifier. master signifier.
is see no option but to begin from the beginning again.
price = relation between a thing an the abstract place of numbers. (as objectivized subject
foucault state count badiou)
possiblity of the pathological determination of everything by prices.
the term is used quite loosely (modernity) . But the supreme act of nomination at least gives
us the idea of periodization, which can then only be disavowed. However, there is a sense in
which postmodernism has trumped thinking historically. Modernity is perhaps best not taken
as period or stage, but a metaphysical condition one that only becomes available in a
particular historical situation, that is, a particular mode of production the moment the
trauma becomes too unbearable and needs resolving. But perhaps this would do away with
the meaning of the term, though again, this is the point. (Athens, etc.)
corruption belongs to our world, since it is an inevitable consequence of the idea that
everyting has a price (capitalism is a philosophy of finitude therefore: infinite demand /
equality)

corruption is a consequence of the global projection of all that exist on the surface of the
market (on the surface of money) (Badiou singleton of the void). It is also an affirmation of
the radical finitude of the world (subject, what we do, etc) if all that exist has a price, all is
finite. And this is the key of the return of classicism (if it is the affirmation of finitude of
human life). To desire something infinite is a disaster, is hubris it is the true content of the
contemporary fight against finally ideas (great ideas, commitments) all that is a symbol of the
desire of the infinite, and this desire cannot have a price. (a work of art nowadays, has a price,
the work of wes anderson has a price the maagdenhuis bezetting does not have a price
(though it will be immediately projected onto the market in the form of a Cost 500.000). Not
a judgement, it is by necessity a world of corruption. To find something outside, infinite, but
not substance (as in modernism).

cultural dominant, (there is residue of modernism/ structure of feeling, (no totality). but
postmodernism is also a cultural logic of late capital. Utopia\enthusiasm etc is still there but
acquires a radically different meaning.
reification: is the process by which it becomes possible to regard something as having an
abstract essence (a self-sustained unity, something beyond empirical reality), which
nontetheless exist and has real consequences (real abstraction money, subject). Ideology is
what covers up this wound. the idea of an attainable utopia is conditioned by it. this is the
same as with foucault soul/ subject., discuss foucault discpline and punish and subject and
power. Liberalism is one way of dealing with the wound, which appears reasonable and
pragmatic, but only because it by denying its schismatic force, accepts the real abstraction of
commodity exchange, purporting a class interest. Postmodernims obtains when this abstract
essences is all that is left, and when the abstract essence inverts back into the thing itself
(money = value) there is no longer thought to be a symmetric relation between signifier
and signified al we have are abstractions of abstractions with no hard reality behind it
(copies of copies, simulacrum). (no substantial utopia, search for the absolute) Jameson
theorizes this in part under the rubric of the waning of affect. Metamoderinsm is somehow
a return to affect, but it is not the same/older affect that precipitated modernism. Object
oriented ontology is typically metamodern.
we see this also in the british tradition of social contract.

full reification: there is no natuer (timothy morton)

its not that important to located the break in a definite point in time (athenian economy), what
is important is the existence of the break, or cut that conditions a particular society.
Modernism is still a quest for substance, truth outside commodity relation (c.f. jameson
transcend the commodity) but the substance is definitely voided with duchamp. substance
is void. substance always was a retroactive illusion. There is a cut, but this cut is irrevocable,
it is not possible to dispel it. cut a void. S1 = $. Logic of the signifier.
The new value placed on the transitory, the elusive and the ephemeral, the very celebration
of dynamism, discloses a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable present (5)
Nostalgia is desire for the past to which you know you cannot go back (there is no
substantive past). whereas modern conservative ideology would search for a past that could
be realized in the future.
The marxist or materialist point is that this logic is not a spontaneous invention of a cognizing
subject, but first emerges in is embodied in - a particular mode of production. universality
thus is not a-historic, but emerges in a particular historical situation does has this function.
(against nominalism). morevoer the abstraction is real in the sense that it cannot be simply
dispelled.
today a theory of full reification is even more convicning, as market mechanism are invading
spheres hitherto considered outside the market exchange (education, the state, healthcare). the
abstract essence is more and more the value form itself: what makes something valuable is its
social use, but its social use is primarliy counted in monetary value. There is of course
always a use value, or quality, but it is always subordinated to quantity. privitazatino of the
general intellect.
postmodernism: the hegemony of the economic order hollows out the legal (ideological)
subject (the difference between universal subject of right (to vote) and self interest individual
on the market. Subjects are in the first instance interpellated as utilitarians, not as subjects
with rights (to be punishible).thus utopia is consumerist (starbucks) on the one hand, and
experience publicity (imagination / new meaning / imagination) on the other.
but this economic logic is ideology, in that it does not follow the actual neoliberal models.

quantity and quality.

God didn't die, he was transformed into money - An interview with Giorgio Agamben - Peppe
Sav https://libcom.org/library/god-didnt-die-he-was-transformed-money-interview-giorgioagamben-peppe-sav%C3%A0
But the more reification
capital is now regarded as immutable, while nature is contingent, tipping points.
sublime objectivity
the present inquiry
But how to approach. not: directly formulate principle but start in medias res discourse that is
dealing with these issues.
we no longer speak of left and right, maybe we should abandon capital etc
you cannot formulate difference in a neutral way, and this is antagonism.
social relations had mainly appeared as between man, but now appear as relations between
things, but they objectively appear as such. (zizek fetish)
Any ontology of the present needs to be an ideological analysis as well as a
phenomenological description; and as an approach to the cultural lgoic of a mode of
production, or even of one of its stages such as our moment of postmodernity, late
capitalism, globalizations, is it needs to be historical as well (and historically and
economically comparatist).

To what extent metamodernism is moralistic (it tries to avoid it but...)

no longer authority, family, school, bosses, here the left won, but at the prcie of even more
direct capitalist domination.
Picking up a concept from Frederic Jameson, who used it to conceptualized a postmodern
break with the modern, the meta-modern would be an new cultural dominant that has
ousted a by now

with the concept of a new cultural dominant

meta: intervention, diagnosis, manifesto/movement, has a theory of the old, framed in
terms of utopia, question of modernity.
- it this context meta modernism. thingies.
- method. (jameson, structure of feeling point to underlyign structure etc etc. [point of
dencouncing etc p 50 51]
- GO!
culture is used instead of ideology by relativist liberals (culture is good and non-political/
ideology becomes pejorative-deluded extremist [isis])
- war of absolute ideas (mass armies )
not general principle. symptom
immanent critique
market capitalism (19th century) -> nationalist/imperialist capitalism-> social welfare
capitalism -> market capitalism(21th century).

the very fact that today the question of utopia is again cautiously put on the agenda, can be
taken as so many sign that the existing social order less and less able to convince its
legitimacy.
Critical theory
politcal is stake
it is in this context that i want to consider metamodernism [/come back to gramci/jameson on
historical symptom later on]
[what staat er op het spel?] try to give an account = political
not say its ideology, but see what makes it possible?
there are different ways to approach it.

theories to grapple with such changes, to describe what they are and to what they point or for
that matter claim that nothing essentially has changed, [bruno latour],) way it is described. in
which the new ideologies are cooked up from the material provided by the movements and
feedback into them. concrete example: maagdenhuis: utopia, imagination (films apocalyps,
but also class struggle), different way of thinking.
where to start : not with general principles, but with analysing one of the morbid symptoms.
to see what we can say over the dying body.
the question of what it would mean to pose again the question of utopia, in todays situations
method. signs , but does not say anything about what is changing, or what is its cause. no
choice ->

even if no one believed things are moving, the presupposition of ignorant others of whom we
we think that they think that things have started moving, may cause spur us into action to
prevent the ignorant others doing stupid things out of their idea that things are moving,
effectively causing the situation which consist only of non-believers to move {?!} . , even
no one doesnt believe
make imperative to make sense of the present (ontology of the present) is it
postmodernism? is it capital? is it communism?

[In a different but perhaps related domain that of contemporary (continental)

philosophy and critical theory in recent years similar signs have popped up pointing to an
older hegemony losing grip: various new materialisms (in both a mathematical and a
vitalist guise, the latter often as an attempt to deal with the threat of ecological degradation),
new ways of doing ontology, Marxist revivals of the dialectic, even a new speculative realism
that does not hesitate to call itself a movement, implying the polemical, even political
nature of the debates. Yet, there seems to exist a shared concern that perhaps more familiar
theories have exhausted their critical potential, often deemed too idealist: of language,
structure, representation, epistemology, the transcendental (subject), etc., that are thought to
have dominated of second half of the 20th century). materialism vs idealism.]

then there are ways to give meaning, which are bound up with the movements itself:
rewakening or the end of the end of history, death of postmodernism, new sincerity, loss of
judeo-christian values, fundamentalism/nationalism, globalisation, multitude, return to
modernisms, question of utopia,

. For example the attempts to articulate a combination of a new materialism and a new way of
doing ontology (attempts to move beyond t.)
symptoms deeper logic etc.
One can say that such a diverse field of ideas.
[perhaps it is too soon to claim that the great masses have become detached from their form
ideologies]
historical symptoms anomalies that point that a relatively stable situation (at least in its
general perception) has been tipped off balance. : but not clear
simply a postmodern multiplicity of posisiton.
big other: source of every signification. [i.e., capital]
historical symptom
irony: caricature of yourself

But this unforeseeable return of narrative as the narrative of the end of narratives, this return
to history in the midst of the prognosis of the demise of historical telos, suggest a second
feature of postmodernism theory which requires attention, namely, the way in which virtually
any observation about the present can be mobilized in the very search for the present itself
and pressed into the service as a symptom and an index of the deeper logic of the
postmodern, which imperceptibly turns into its own theory and the theory of itself. How
could it be otherwise where there no longer exist any such deeper logic for the surface to
manifest and where the symptom has become its own disease (and vice versa no doubt)?

However, as will be demonstrated later on, the decision as to whether one face a break
or a continuity whether the present is to be seen as a historical originality or as the
simple prolongation of more of the same under different sheeps clothing is not an
empiricallly jusitifiable or philosophically arguable one, since it is itself the inaugural
narrative act that grounds perceptions and interpretation of the events narrated. XIII
CUT / MODERNITY / $ <> a
attempt to clarify the socio-political situation of his time. in the Marxist traditions not
sufficiently clarified a
we13 have pressuposed

pressupposed terms etc. but wary of sign hypothesis that something is dying withouth
havein to agree directly on what excactly, nor on its cause.

not to go directly to what is dying, nor its cause. morbid symptom -> to diagnose the
patient.
what is dying and what does it mean?
But it certainly somewhat ironic, that, at a moment where the concept of reification seems to
be buried deep in the dustbins of history, we also see a rising popularity of so-called "object
oriented philosophies."
What are the social conditions (in de marxist sense) that make metamodernist parlance
possible?
What is history? What is ideology? (ideology IS modern/habermas)
-problem: metamodernism (kant / utopia / oscillation / sensis communis / aesthetics)
- social conditions: theory of reification (alienation, rationalization/contract theory, real
abstraction, hierarchy)
-reification and ideology: (ideology obfuscates real abstraction / homology with
psychoanalysis (symbolic as real abstraction)

reificaiton and prosopopoeia: markets reacted thus, mother nature is angry (make it legal)
reification: relation between men, appears as a relation between things.
two types of metaphysical thinking (i.e., ideology - lukacs)- (1) objective in-itself:
commodity fetishism embodied in actions; (2) subjective: neoliberal vs. community,
authoritarian vs self organisation (association /communism i.e., badiou/karatani)
self-organisation is basically instrumental, a clearing the ground within the existing
organisation, creating a possibility, a capacity, for a new order to emerge - but it cannot be the
same as this new order.
"Developing alternatives here and now, now that has been the great innovation of the
movements from the 1960s including the women's movement, that we want change now; but
that's not an alternative to systemic change in the future, it's a preparation for that systemic
change." Hilary Wainwright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbSSCptTJwQ
>The irresistible rise of self-organization< "As signaled by its simultaneous rise in
different sectors, self-organization has developed into a paradigmatic concept that both
explains and prescribes how societies, and also cities, function."
metamodernism presupposes a psychological individual.
reification IS NOT ideology - ideology is a result of reificaiton.
gabriel, youtube: hegel: we start with institutions. first symbolic, then retroactively imaginary
subject (!)
there's no point of talking about a subject and its relation to the society outside of a theory of
reification.
the more reification (alienation globalisation) is totalized/realized, the more it seems that we
are no longer governed by it [the less we are able to recognize it], and thus as if we were
outside of ideology. Modern awareness of political ideology (or: modernism, the cultural
logic of emerging capitalism) is conditioned, it seems, on (the fantasy of) incomplete
reification : still experienced a gap between the market and something outside (either local
tradition or universal citizenship (or both: nation state). the hegemony of the economic sphere
appears as the absence of ideology. In other words, in postmodernism, economy is the
hegemonic ideology (c.f. markets, speculation, trust, big other, dupuy etc etc!) (neoliberal:

but crashing down). And It is this hegemony that becomes unstable in a severe crisis as the
one we are witnessing today
We are all inter-connected not by language, not by religion, not by "rights," not even by the
internet -- we are all interconnected by money. A hundred-dollar-bill will get people to give
you goods and services in Hong Kong, Jakarta, Mexico City and Tierra del Fuego. It is
money -- this is true global power. "Humanity" as a integrated whole has only happened
through systemic capitalism, while capital itself is only accumulated dollars that can be sold
at interest. Dollars which are "in fact" only paper, paper that has value that actually increases
over time as it holds our "interest." And of course, why shouldn't we worship money, as it
truly rules our world with no intent, no purpose, no plan, no meaning but our own desire for
more. How could such a world go wrong. And if money is "in fact" paper, if money really
only works in terms of our own collective idealization (the process by which we continue to
turn value into cold hard cash, turn that cold cash into stocks and bonds, and trade those
stocks and bonds through electronic impulses organized through super-computers) that this
paper has value, then Marx is the German Idealist who sees how the "spirit of humanity" has
truly manifested itself in, and rules facelessly and silently, our everyday life. Marx was the
person to tell the world how it really works. And he was the person to tell us how it could go
wrong, and does go wrong, and will go wrong. No wonder so many people hate Marx -- he
reveals the implications of our own precious desire, systemized and empowered as a system
that destroys its own immanent foundation and its own history -- earth itself..
community is ideology
the marxist solution to the kantian (or hobbesian) paradox is the theory of commodity
fetishism, or reification. abstraction (universal law) is first material, then, retroactively - after
the objective process is well under way - a pre-reified, society before abstraction existence
can be posited (pre-legal, the state of nature, pre-modern society).
authoritarianism (china) as a new order!
liberal/fundamental, but new opposition: state authoritarianism v.s. self-organisation morbid
symptoms.
community Naomi klein -> alienation
Kant clearly

Gramsci, however,
infused the concept of interregnum with a new meaning, embracing wider spectrum
of the socio-political-legal order, while simultaneously reaching deeper into the
socio-cultural condition.

This term used to designate a time of uncertainty between the death of a king and the
instalment of his successor.
real abstraction is the common border between philosphy and political economy
. For Gramsci however,
financialization: options/futures
barthes: punctum = real abstraction / pure past
god is dead, god is unconscious.
toscano [badious century] pre II-war philosophy crisis attempt to unify/capture/stabilize
(phenomenology/logical positivism/lukacs marxism).
humanism-human rights/individual-neoliberal, therapeutic, spiritual hedonism, proper
measure, classical, pagan universe. [badiou?] --> disavowal of the rule of the real abstractions
/ disavowal of belief - belief through the other. HumanCapital - atomization.
Hmanism is thought to be the last master signifier that had to be destroyed. After that: flat
ontologies, rhizomes , multitude etc, deterritorialization. [but zizek: it disavows. this is what
badiou does not see.]
The term interregnum was originally used to denote a time-lag separating the death
of one royal sovereign from the enthronement of the successor.
count of the count: hallward zizek ideology [real abstraction]
- kings
- social political / breakdown of ideology / stabilizer / master signifier.

- avoid causes, morbid symptoms as index of breakdown.

- Here bauman/tester agree: today a time of interregnum. kings -> traditional ideologies ->
neoliberalism as dominant ideology (the end of the end of ideology)
- cognitive mapping, necessity of an ontology of the present.
- yet political heuristic/impartial - irreducibly political / not too hastily create in abstract a
new theory, but to start from some of its symptoms (totality).
morbid symptom: not necessarily pejorative: symptom/ sign that the something is dying!
--one popular : metamodernism. what is dying? postmodernism.
wat staat er op het spel?: political intervention / ideological struggle - ontology of the present.

--AS IF : JOHAN HARTLE TEXT ON AESTHETICS

[spontaneity is now utopian (what used to be called ironic-qua-subversive is too
utopian), discipline is ironic (what used to be discipline-qua authority is now ironic
(?)]
Universalism - relativism {oscillation} ---> [misses the THIRD TERM: STRUGGLE,
or :POLITCS]
--yet for gramsci it point to broader social economic conditions.
Writing in the 1930s,

: The crisis consist precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in
this interregnuma a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. (Bauman 50, Tester -)

Recently, Zygmunt Bauman, commenting on the European crisis, recently characterized the
situaion as a interregnum coined famously by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci,
decribing a time in which the old is already dead or dying, but the new cannot (yet) be born.
introduced a metaphor of climbing up to a yet unmapped and un-reached mountain pass. But
as you try to reach that pass far up, you can only guess what sort of sight will open to you
once (if) you finally arrive there.
Sovereignty is nowadays, so to speak, unanchored and free-floating.
He attached it to the extraordinary situations in which the extant legal frame of social order
loses its grip and can hold no longer, whereas a new frame, made to the measure of newly
emerged conditions responsible for making the old frame useless, is still at the designing
stage, has not yet been fully assembled, or is not strong enough to be put in its place.
Hence it is the disposition of the mind resulting from a certain representation occupying the
reflective judgment, but not the object, which is to be called sublime (CPJ 134)
this representation results from, but at the same time covers up the reflective judgment
(which is caused by gap/real/class struggle, or: reification - the situation is confused, unclear ,
what is it? is it this, is it that? which leads to reflective judgement). The representation thus
occupies the reflective judgement, but not the object, which is to be called sublime.
Gabriel: the mountain has become constituted, in the domain of truth apt thought, as
something which is independent of that domain. this is exactly what you grasp when you
grasp the fact that there is a mountain in front of you: you grasp which is independent of
being grasped, but you grasp it.
Kierkegaard saw the human being as a synthesis between finity and infinity, reminding us
that what is at stake in this synthesis is inevitably faith. In commodity exchange, the
equivalent religious moment appears as credit. Credit, the treaty of presuming that a
commodity can be sold in advance, is an institutionalization of postponing the critical
moment of selling a commodity. And the commodity economy, constructed as it is upon
credit, inevitably nurtures crisis.
This autonomy should nevertheless be understood in distinction from the sense of historical
materialisms doctrine that state and nation assume superstructure in relationship with
economic base; they are relatively autonomous to, though determined by, it. First of all, as I

have suggested, the very notion that the capitalist economy is base or infrastructure is itself
questionable. As I have tried to elucidate in the book, the world organized by money and
credit is rather one of illusion, with a peculiarly religious nature. Saying this from the
opposite view, even though state and nation are composed by communal illusion, precisely
like capitalism, they inevitably exist thanks to their necessary grounds. Simply put, they are
founded on exchanges that are different from the commodity exchange. So it is that no matter
how many times one stresses their nature of being imagined communities,5 it is impossible
to dissolve them. As young Marx pointed out vis--vis another bind: To abolish religion as
the illusory happiness of the people is to demand the real happiness. The demand to give up
illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which
needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale
of tears, the halo of which is religion.6 The same can be said of state and nation. (Karatani)
----Jameson: However, as will be demonstrated later on, the decision as to whether
one faces a break or a continuity wheter the present is to be seen as a
historical originality or as the simple prolongation of more of the same under
different sheeps clothing is not an empirically justifiable or philosophically
arguable one, since it is itself the inaugural narrative act that grounds perception
and interpretation of the events to be narrated. So, the fact that one is forced to
choose between break or continuity this becomes a necessity after the modern
break is already at work, and defines how the events that one encounters are
narrated. (so we can have a historicist one, or a more spinozist one (as in new
materialism or object oriented ontology). But, with the latter, the act itself
disavows the choice as if there were no real choice. Does Jameson goes as far?
In what follows but for pragmatic reasons I will disclose at the proper time I
have pretended to believe that the postmodern is as unusual as it thinks it is,
and that it consitutes a cultural and experiential break worth exploring in greater
detail. (xiii)

Supreme act of nomination: postmodernism (this means that one must consider
it historical).

The Fundamental ideological task of the new concept, however, must remain
that of coordinating new forms of practice and social and mental habits (this is
finally what I take Williams to have in mind by the notion of a structure of
feeling) with the new forms of economic production and organization thrown up
by the modification of capitalism the new global division of labor in recent
years. It is a relatively small and local version of what I elswhere tried to
generealize as cultural revolutions on the scale of the mode of production
itself.

But just as (for Weber) new inner-directed and more ascetic religious values
gradually produced new people capable of thriving in the delayed gratification
of the emergent modern labor process, so also the postmodern is to be seen
as the production of postmodern people capable of functioning in a very peculiar
socioeconomic world indeed, one whose structure and objective features and
requirements if we had a proper account of them would constitute the
situation to which postmodernism [as the ideology] is a response [a kind of
answer to a deadlock] and would give us something a little more decisive than
mere postmodern theory.

One could object that such clear cut distinctions cannot really be made, by arguing, for
example, that plurality is always in excess over identity (that there exist multiple modernities
and postmodernities, that sometimes intermingle and overlap, and that all have their own
particular characteristics which cannot be reduced to either of the binaries). Some of so-called
postmodernist theory is perhaps to some extent an attempt to articulate this insight. However,
one can question as well whether such oppositional discourses as modernism,
postmodernism and metamodernism, can really avoid this tendency toward some sort of
totalizing of that to which it is opposed, and on which its identity partly depends.

That for Vermeulen and Van den Akker this oscillation or between (6) is fundamental, is
further supported by their claim that it is the ontology of the metamodern (this, for them, is
synonymous with its structure of feeling). Moreover, it is what makes their argument
distinctive from those of other theorist of the post-postmodern: it is precisely what the others
according to Vermeulen and Van den Akker, have missed, and why they are not able explain
in what sense the post-postmodern (i.e., the metamodern) differs from the postmodern (why
they in effect only radicalize the latter). This implies, of course, that for Vermeulen and Van
den Akker, the metamodern ontology is different from their modern and postmodern
counterparts. While they do not expand on this in the text, I think it Vermeulen and Van den
Akker think of modern ontology as a structure of feeling that has a (utopian) totalizing

tendency (which results in the assumption of Being and Existence as absolute, as univocal)
and postmodern ontology as a structure of feeling which embodies the rejection of this view.
As the metamodern ontology, again, is not the third option, but the very oscillation itself
between the modern and postmodern poles, which, ontologically, is at one and the same time
totalizing and non-totalizing.

[maybe drop, since complicates perhaps unnecessarily.. and it is also not really dealt
with extensively in the text... ->] [///] Vermeulen and Van den Akker also suggest that it
perhaps better to conceive of a multitude of poles, between which the metamodern oscillates
(6). This is a rather surprising move, since Vermeulen and Van den Akker, in their criticism of
Bourriaud, had emphasized the metamodern as a structure of feeling, which, through
limited number of elements, produced a multitude of surface effects; now, suddenly, they
speak of a pendulum alternating between innumerable poles (6) . This does not have to be a
problem, however, since the fundamental operation they want to bring to the fore is the
oscillation, the swinging of the pendulum. Oscillation implies a movement that is always
caught between opposites. This does not mean, however, that these opposites are themselves
univocal. The metamodern is conceived as a quirky alternation, not between the modern
and the postmodern (not as fixed identities), but a multitude of modern and postmodern
sensibilities, between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and
melancholy, between naivet and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality,
totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity (6-7). The metaphor of a multiplicity of
poles, in other words, does not mean, or so would Vermeulen and Van den Akker claim, a
return to a position emphasizing postmodern culture as a plurality of incoherent sensibilities,
since, through metaphor of polarity, we also retain the modern idea of fundamental binary.
Perhaps this shows the importance of the concept of oscillation, for Vermeulen and Van den
Akker: with it, they can assert the possibility of coinciding actuality of both a (modern)
binary with its postmodern complication.
The oscillation of which Vermeulen and Van den Akker speak, seems to occur between these
two clearly distinguishable poles, each defined in opposition to the other (Such an opposition
of poles, of course, appears to be contained in the very concept of oscillation). It is thus the
very process of oscillation between modernism and postmodernism that constitute them as
poles (and thus, in a way, preserves both), yet, at the same time, it is the this very oscillation
that prevents them from fully crystallizing. Both poles (i.e., the definitions of modernism and
postmodernism) thus indeed appear as clearly distinguishable, but at the same do not really

exist (such definitions never refer to fully constituted objects out there). They are thus a
kind of ideal types that come into existence only trough practices of oscillation; at the same
time, it is precisely this constant oscillation that prevents them to become entirely fixed and
rigid.

Thus in advanced capitalism, because of changes in the social character of labour,, in the
social character of communications, and in the social character of decision-making, the
dominant culture reaches much further thatn ever before in capitalist society into hitherto
reserved or resigned areas of experience and practice and menaing. (Williams 125-126).
What is defensible as a procedure in conscious history, where on certain assumptions many
actions can be definitively taken as having ended, is habitually projected, not only into the
always moving substance of the past, but into contemporary life, in which relationships,
institutions and formations in which we are still actively involved are converted, by this
procedural mode, into formed wholes rather than forming and formative processes. Analysis
is then centred on relations between these produced institutions, formations, and experiences,
so that now, as in that produced past, only the fixed explicit forms exist, and living presences
is always, by definition receding [reification] (128).
The relations between this quality and the other specifying historical marks of changing
institutions, formations, and beliefs, and beyond these the changing social and economic
relations between and within classes, are again an open question: that is to say, a set of
specific historical questions. The methodological consequence of such a definition, however,
is that the specific qualitative chagnes are not assubmed to be epiphenomena of changed
institutions, formations, and beliefs, or merely secondary evidence of changed social and
economic raltions between and within classes. [it is an attempt to deal with superstructure
base dichotemy]. At the same time they are from the beginning taken as social experience,
rather than as personal experience or as teh merely superficial or incidental small change
of society. They are social in two ways that distinghuis them from reduced senses of the
social as the institutional and the formal: first, in that they are changes of presence (while
they are being lived this is obvious; when they have been lived it is stil their substantial

characteristic): second, in that altough they are emergent or pre-emergent, they do not have to
await definition, classification, or rationalization before they exert palpable pressures and set
effective limits on experiennces and on action.

backup

-------------------------

Recently, Zygmunt Bauman, following Keith Tester, took up the notion as well (49.) In

Baumans analysis, the contemporary interregnum consist in the fact that the territorial
nation-state, until recently the prime locus of sovereignty, has lost much of its former
powers: sovereignty today which Bauman defines as the right to decide the laws as
well as the exceptions of their application, along with the power to render both decisions
binding and effective (50) is no longer tied exclusively to the nation-state. Rather, it is,
as Bauman writes, unanchored and free floating . . . scattered between a multiplicity of
centres and, for that reason, eminently questionable and open to contest (50). In
Baumans perspective, then, the interregnum today consist mainly the fact that juridical
power is more and more dispersed among competing supranational agents among
which multinational finance, industrial and trade companies battling for control over
the interregnum, like the one of his time, was precisely not limited to a crisis on the level
of juridical sovereignty. For Gramsci, as important, if not more so, was the crisis on the
level of everyday beliefs and practices that used to legitimate and tie together the social
order (c.f. Prison Notebooks 276).
2

[Explain the use of We instead of I]

3
4

Citation: Samuels, Robert. Auto-Modernity after Postmodernism: Autonomy and

Automation in Culture, Technology, and Education." Digital Youth, Innovation, and the
Unexpected. Edited by Tara McPherson. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
219240. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262633598.219
5

(this attack does seems a bit unfair, however, since the concept does not feature in Bourriauds description

6
7
8

[drop]
jos de mul

9
10

[alt]It does strike one as odd, however, that in order to explain this historically specificicty metamodern

sensibility, they take up the concept of metaxis, which, as they acknowledge, has a long history in describing an
a supposedly a-historic existential experience, already noted by Plato.[/]

11

Mellor, A. K., English romantic irony, Harvard University Press, 1980, pp. 4, 187

12

Vermeulen and Van den Akkers would object that this is not the sense in which they

want to use the metaphor. For our purposes, they write, we intend the concept not as
a metaphor for an existential experience that is general to the condition humaine, but as
a metaphor for a cultural sensibility that is particular to the metamodern discourse (6).
This again seems rather odd. One of their main purposes is, as we have seen, is to argue
for the historical uniqueness of the metamodern structure of feeling. Vermeulen and Van
den Akker thus seem to claim here that in order to achieve this aim, to show that the
concept of metaxis describes a historically specific sensibility rather than an a-historic
existential experience, they simply intend that it does. In order to argue that the
oscillatory sensibilities to which the concept of metaxis refers are indeed particular to the
metamodern, they simply assert that, for them, the concept only refers to sensibilities
that are particular to the metamodern (i.e., sensibilities that should be regarded as
particular to metamodern discourse).
13

We use we instead of I.

empty, universal subject, no contact with absolute

abstractions of the intellect

Social Media / Internet

July 29, 2015. Created by XMind

The Overwhelming and bewildering concatenation of events experienced by its makers and
its victims became a 'thing' - and with its own name: The French Revolution. Like a vast
shapeless rock worn to a rounded boulder by countless drops of water, the experience was
shaped by millions of printed words into a 'concept' on the printed page, and, in due course,
into a model. Why 'it' broke out, what 'it' aimed for, why 'it' succeeded or failed, became

subjects for endless polemics on the part of friends and foes: but of its 'it-ness', as it were, no
one ever after had much doubt" (81)
Aangezien studenten en docenten zijn opgeroepen vragen te stellen en suggesties te doen,
verwachten wij dat de vragen die in deze brief zijn verwoord naar tevredenheid beantwoord
zullen worden en stellen wij concreet voor in de kosten van Bureau Communicatie te snijden,
vooral met betrekking tot woordvoerders. Wij willen onze bestuurders capabel genoeg achten
om n van hun primaire taken, namelijk het communiceren van hun beleid aan de
academische gemeenschap, zelf op zich te nemen.
Wij de academisch gemeenschap zullen ons op alle mogelijke manieren blijven inspannen
de kwaliteit van ons Onderwijs en Onderzoek te waarborgen en te behoeden voor destructieve
bezuinigingsmaatregelen.

Hegel And Haiti

August 10, 2015. Created by XMind

Fez was made in austria.

burka was response to new public sphere.
"a distinct legal profession had emerged in most colonial territories, in the Chinese treaty
ports, and in Japan, where, a century earlier, legal argument had been conducted by religious
functionaries or varieties of articulate middlemen employed individually by families. Medical
systems had been written down and formalized. Even traditional forms of Asian, North
African, and Middle Eastern medical practice had their own academies and certified
practitioners. The world was increasingly governed by sets of discrete, though interrelated
expertise." (21)

peasants, merchants, landowners, aristocrats (29).

Gunpowder empires.
Such broad "family resemblances" between many of the political regimes of Eurasia and
northern and western Africa certainly need to be born in mind. This is because these polities
contrasted so sharply with the world of bounded nation-states and demarcated colonial
provinces which was to be dominant a little over 100 years later. The most recent body of
scholarship, however, has tended to stress the differences between the old regimes. Within the
agrarian empires, and even in the commercially buoyant regions of western Europe, there
was a great variety of political and ideological forms, many of which were to be
suppressed or to begin to become more uniform over the next century. Italy and Germany, for
instance, two of the next century's new nations, displayed a degree of cultural [art? habits?]
and linguistic unity but were fragmented into a plethora of kingdoms, grand duchies, papal
states, and, in the German case, attenuated imperial jurisdiction. (30)."
hydraulic societies: "the provision of water required the centralization of power" (31).
"Yet these examples only serve to reinforce the general rule. This was that the old imperial
centers and bureaucracies intervened in the workin o society and the economy only in
particular cases and in quite specific geographical areas. It was not the case that the old
states were uniformly "weak," more that they husbanded their moral and physical authority
for specific tasks." (31).
Throughout the world, for instance, the majority of irrigation systems and roads were
probably maintained by local communities or magnates. Where complex bundles of royal
privileges and powers had come into existence, there was often a tendency for them to be
broken up, becoming part of the patrimony of some other prince or noble. Kings and
emperors often found it lucrative and convenient to "farm out" their rights to the highest
bidder in order to raise money. Even in fiscally centralized France, the state widely handed

out to revenue contractors in "farms" and to big magnates in privileges what it squeezed out
of the restive peasantry. Here and elswhere in Europe, it was often grievances against the
extra impost levied by such financial entrepreneurs, rather than royal taxation itself, which
lay at the root of rural revolts. In the Spanish New World, successive attempts by the crown
to centralize power were stubbornly resisted by local governors and mayors who made
money not so much through the free market, as by forced sales of goods and teh
requistioning of labor from the Inidan peasantry. Not surprisingly, "tyrannical abuse," as
the Spanish officials termed it, sparked off numerous local rebellions. (31).
"Ideological power within the old states was as segmented and complex as political power,
and often intertwined with it. Far from being straighforwardly a "Buddhist," "Confucian," or
even "Daoist" realm, the Empire of China was a cosmic spirit empire.
"All these features of the global "old order" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
emphasize the significance of the transformation which was to occur by the early twentieth
century. The ideas of the state, the nation, the "ethnic minority," science, and the
professions emerged out of, or were the be imposed, on the more shifting, ideologically
complex, yet economically simple world which preceded it. (36)
{State (org.), Nation (comm.), Ethnicity (biol.)} ----> all unifying, "counts as one" types
of organization (but a certain abstraction pertains to it, a.o.t. king. c.f. "the kings two
bodies)
"in some ways, the most advanced form of economic specialization and the long-distance
deployment of capital were the slave plantations of southern North America and the
Caribbean. The violence and cruelty of the slave trade and of the exploitation of slaves cannot
obscure the fact that this was a flexible, financially sophisticated, consumer-oriented,
technologically innovative form of human beastliness" (41).
"Three general principles underlay archaic globalization: first, universalizing kingship;
secondly, the expansive urge of cosmic religion; and thirdly, humoral or moral
understandings of bodily health. These forces created some underlying patterns in the global
exchange of ideas, personnel, and commodities. (42)
The idea of Universal Kingship (Alexander the Great inspired perhaps): drives dynasties over
vast distances in search of honor (and kingship tokens).
"In the eighteenth century, for example, much of China's overseas trade was designed to
capture life-enhancing products and tokens of kingship. It was as medicines that tea, then
tobacco, and finally opium entered China. Each of these commodities became, first, tokens of
leisure and then, in the nineteenth century, items of pathological mass consumption. To some
degreee, this was also true for western Europe and the Atlantic world." (44)
"Archaic globalization worked, then, in several different and mutually reinforcing ways. At
the breadest elvel, there was the ideology and imagined community of the Old World
constructed by universal kingship and cosmic religion. In the intermediate register lay the
uneven patterns of diasporic trading, military, and specialist communitities generated by these
values. These were the links that scattered Armenian merchants from the kingdom of
Hungary to the South china seas. Finally, in the register of bodily practice, the human being
constructed global linkages through acts of bio-moral transformation of substances and goods

[foucault]. The logic of such consumption was strategically to consume diversity. THis
pattern of collecting charismatic goods and substances [S1, status symbol, phallus] differed
significantly form the market-driven uniformity of today's world." (44).
"Proto-capitalist globalization developed by filling out and becoming parasitic on, perhaps
"cannibalizing," to use Appadurai's phrase again, the earlier links created by archaic
globalization. For instance, the capture of slaves, once a strategy in the building of the archaic
great household in Africa and the Ottoman world, became a brutal proto-capitalist industry."
(44)
"In the register of bodily practice and personal deportment, the transformation was
particularly slow. In europe and outside, the trading companies carefully maintained the
cultural and bio-moral repute of what were originally charismatic products, substances which
were thouht to alter both a person's body and spirit. So, tobacco was seen, and still is seen, as
a stimulant to mental capacity. Aristocratic and burgher taste preserved the rituals of
sociability and the aura of rareness surrounding what were now industrial goods, as far as
production was concerned." (45).
[Millennialism]
"These connections of ideas, faith, and material acquisitiveness operated to give form and
structure to the old world order as it began to change more rapidly under the influence of
Atlantic trade an the great world empires. Yet ideological movments, as much as sharp
changes in material life, could also spread conflict and uncertainty [liquid modernity, empty
subject, reification]. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, developing an idea of Jean Aubin, showed how
sixteenth-century Christians and Muslims had been affected by currents of millenarian
thought which could be used to justify political expansion, war, and conflict. Christians had
been unsettled by the coming of the first millennnium-and-a-half since Christ's birth. The
expectations of Muslims had been roused by the millenium of the Prophet's message which
came a few decades later. The ripples of these respective anxieties and aspirations flowed
together into what Subrahmanyam calls a "millenarian conjuncture." This is of relevance to
the present book. For in the same way, Buddhist, Muslim, and Sikh millennial
aspirations, flowing strongly after about 1720, were to act on, and interact with, the
secular millenarianism which flowed from the French Revolution. This time, however,
states and empires were both larger in scale and more embattled than they had been in the
sixteenth century. The resulting political maelstrom surged on through the generations after
1780" (47).

DEFINITION of 'Industrialization' The process in which a society or country (or world)

transforms itself from a primarily agricultural society into one based on the manufacturing of
goods and services.
Much more impact: great domestication (1650, more nutrition, more population,
population spread -> more food etc., pioneers) and industrious revolution (more and
more manufacturing, conditioned by interconnection).
Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by
everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts.

Industrious revolution: "This meant using family labor more efficiently by buying in goods
and services from outside the household. Families acquired new "packages" [breakfast] of
consumer items which worked on each other to produce yet larger gains in productivity and
social satisfactions. For instance, the consumption of coffee and, later tea went along with the
purchase of sugar, fine breads, and easily replaceable plates off which to eat these items. The
resulting package - let us call it "breakfast" - gave people a higher calorific intake, a new time
discipline, and a new patter for sociability and emulation in the househould." 51
"These micro-level changes contributed a new dynamic to the expension of commerce.
Merchant capitalist in many societies quickly became aware of potential markets and new
producers and began to link them together in new patterns of world trade. This happened
before significant industrialization took place in Europe. It is striking, too, that some of the
key consumables in the industrious revolutions of Europe and the Americas were
tropical products: tobacco, coffee, sugar, and tea [addictives]. The corollary of this,
however, is that Europeans and their American colonists were the greatest beneficiaries of
this networking. Chinese, Arab, and African merchants certainly prospered. Yet by far the
greatest "value added" was grabbed by Europeans. (52)
"What was distinctive about the western European example was not always, therefore, the
existence of strong, determined states or even inhereted, if still fluis, patriotic identities. What
was striking was the convergence of these forms with economic dynamism [!], well-honed
weapons of war making, and fierce rivalries between medium-sized polities. Europe's
temporary and qualified "exceptionalism" was to be found not in one factor, but in an
unpredictable accumulation of many characteristic seen separately in other parts of the world.
For instance, it is significant that one area of Asia where precolonial identities were quite
sharp was mainland Souteast Asia, where conflict betweeen middle-sized kingdoms had an
ancient history . . . One element, however, is missing if we concentrate only on economic
contingencies, patriotic identities, and state power. That is the texture of
society [!], developing fast in eighteenth-century Europe and North-America, which allowed
individuals to congregate, debate, and adjust their institutions and, ultimately, to make them
more effective tools for accumelating money, power, and knowledge. [i.e., civil society, or
public sphere] The idea of the Public and Public Opinion.
Wahabi's
These movements, therefore, were not simply products of the "Western impact." They
represented a response to global change as profound as the rise of nationalism and the
centralized state in Europe, and one which may yet outlast them" (77).
Historians have gruadually become aware of the extent to which many small technical
advances in the European world associated with the Industrial Revolution were originally
drawn from non-European exemplars.
Sikhs
of
All these movements were otherworldly in the sense that they pointed people towards
spiritual slavation. But all of them also offered solution to political and socials problem of the
age. They show Asians grappling with their own forms of modernity no less vigorously than
the freemasons adn philosophes of western Eurasia.

"These examples, which ahve com to light in the historical writing of the last 20 years,
illustrate the fact that the cultures of the non-Western world were responding to global
political and economic changes throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Behind Confucian "revivals" of knowledge or Islamic "doctrinal controversies" we can
discern rulers and Intellectuals attempting to grapple with the problems of organizing society
and human experience. All this helps to explain the complexity and the richness of nonEuropean thought in the nineteenth century. It was never simply derivative of Western norms,
but was heavily inflected with creative versions of multiple traditions. Western ideas and
techniques, especially in areas such as timekeeping and warefare, were no doubt already
becoming more influential across the world. Knowledge systems had alswyas been
interactive, as, for instance, when Chinese leteratie came into contact with the ideas of
Aristotle through the good offices of the Jesuits. But Eruopean ideas wer taken up and used
by indigenous rulers and intellectuals who wer already attempting to forge intellectual tools
with wich to grapple with their own "early modernities." (79).
"These people were all struggling to create their own modernity by critiquing the disposition
of political power." [answers to a new deadlock, fantasy] the first revolutions which were
designed to resolve these intolerable conflicts are discussed in the next and subsequent
chapters. They came at different times. In the Arabian lands, they came in the 1740's. In
France and across much of Europe and the Americas, 1776 and 1789 were key dates. In
Britain, it was 1832; in Japan, the Meiji restoration of 1868 achieved a similar revamping of
the old order. Colonial nationalisms in the 1880s in Indian and China, along with a great
variety of movements of religious reform, sought the same ends. (81)
"The relative time lag in innovation had some longer-term and more general reasons. First,
Europeans were more generally more mobilized for warfare and mor ruthless in prosecuting
it . . . - [geographical determinism] in Europe, intense competition within a relatively small
area forced states to spend more in technical developments for warfare and to make sure that
their weapons matched those of their enemies.
More efficient systems of payment and taxation emerged to deal with the endemic wars of
Europe. In some ways, Asia's relative peace in the seventeenth century was its undoing (81).
"It was the overall structure guaranteeing the reproduction of capital which prove to be
a European advantage, less than specific features of merchant practice, the organization
of cities, or the entrepreneurial ability of peasants" (82) !!!!!!!!
Revolution of 1789 WAS NOT BECAUSE INDUSTRIALIZATION HAD KICKED
IN!!!! (82)
"Between 1780 and 1820, however, Europe's lead in warfare and conquest was given a
further great boost, which is discussed in the new chapter. Instead, it was because the
attempts of Europeans and their American colonists to solve these global problems of uneven
wealth and entitlement brought new and dangerous actors onto the world stage: the
revolutionary state and its bitter conservative enemies.
Badiou: tradition - modernity

"The clear enunciation of the principle of "No taxation without representation" and of the
"rights of man" had an extraordinary impact. After a century or more of philosophical
discussion, the content of these "rights" may not itself appear shocking. What was remarkable
was that these rights were held to be "self-evident" and freestanding: no king, no divine
authority, no imperial interest, no superiority of race or creed could nullify them." (87)
"The era's best-known English-speaking liberal philospher, John Stuart Mill, felt as a child
that "the most transcendent glory" he could achieve would be as a French revolutionary in
British garb: "a Girondist in an English Convention." Simon Bolivar and other liberators of
Latin America from Spanish rule pondered the lessons of the French Revolution. In Calcutta
in the 1840s, the first generation of young English-educated Bengalis read Tom Paine's
Rights of Man and derided the authority and caste prejudices of their elders. Asians and
Africans quickly began to argue that human rights stood prior to any "civilizing mission" that
their white rules might announce" (87) Many Asians, Africans, and South Americans,
however, received and transformed these dangerous new doctrines in situations
already riven by conflict between ideologies with a global reach [!!!!!!!]
Quite localized movements of resistance couuld now acces and use universalistic ideas of
godliness and deploy them against the world empires.
"early in th eighteenth century, for instance, the Sikhs of North India announced a revolution
of dharma, or righteousness, which put them at odds with Mughal power.
"Shortly afterwards, in central Arabia, Wahhabi Muslims purist hailed a new age of spiritual
struggle for the pure, antique Islam which threatened the religouis and political
establishments of the Ottomans, Cairo, and the African emirates. (87)
challanges to the "mandate of heaven"
Philip Kuhn has shown how a scare about "sorcerers" nearly got out of control in this decade,
because the emperor did not have enough power at the local level to clamp down on dissident
monks, sectarian leaders, and bandits. (90)
Nadir Shah
Sapping the legitimacy of the state: from France to China.
"the uncompromising doctrines of popular sovereignty, fed by radical intellectuals distant
from the process of government, flooded in to fill a vacuum whre no authority existed.
Because royal, noble, and religious rituals had been so utterly tarnished, wholly new ones
drawn from classical or millenarian sources had to be invented, as Lynn Hunt showed in the
1980s."
"The existence of the "national debt" was taken as evidence that Britons were joined in an
unbreakable social contract, not evidence of aristocratic debauchery and libertinism." (102).

"popular culture, beliefs, and representations of politics give us an important middle stage in
a "model" of revolution, standing between social tension and radical political breakdown.
They acted as a kind of conceptual "accelerator," which brought fundamental political and
social conflicts to the point of chaos." [interregnum!! ideology !!!]
"Kuhn reveals a Chinese popular culture of apocalyptic rumor, always alert to the
appearance of withcraft or malign spirits. Wandering monks spread the ideologies of
millenarian Buddhism: the idea that salvation might come soon, and on earth [communism],
and that earthly powers were about to vanish away. This helped to erode the legitimacy of the
Confucian shcolar-gentry, especially in frontier areas, much in the same way as libelous
books corroded the nobility the Church and the court in France. (103).

"The Qing were now themselves losing their grip on the Mandate of Heaven [S1]"
"In Latin American, the new rulers faced difficulties in legitimating their rule and suppressing
the Amerindian and poor Creole revolts which had accompanied independence. In the first
years, they often somewhat bizarrely claimed descent from the ancient Aztec and Inca
monarchies which had preceded the Spanish Crown." (142)
Police: paramilitary bureaucratic agent of surveillance
"It was, however, the periods of reaction after the 1930 and 1848 revolutions which saw the
most significant upward step in power and effectiveness of both civilian and secret police."
(revolutionary gendarmerie)
"All this shows the governments of the early nineteenth century attepting to enforce control
over justice and violence within their own territories and to map and control dissidence.
(146)
One reason for these periodic panics was the continued physical inability of authorities to
control enough of society's resources or its educated personnel to effect closer control.
"This age of flux and hiatus thus drew to an end in a series of gathering conflicts with their
epicenters respectively in Europe, South and East Asia, and North America. The degree of
turbulence was impressive. Its cumulative character ahs been forgotten in those European
histories which still tend to see the nineteenth century as an age of relative stability between
the cataclysms of 1789 and 1917. The year 1848 in Europe witnessed an upsurge in
revolutionary activity and rebellion which stands comparison with the events of the French
and Russian revolutions, even if it was ultimatley rolled back. The ideologicalg consequences
of 1848 in the early enunciation of a class-based revolutionary socialism were momentous,
even if the ensuing wars were less destructive. Yet, at a global lever, the loss of life an
property was massive. The Taiping Rebellion in China and the Indian Rebellion, which broke
out in the following decade, were among the most destructive civil wars in history. The
American Civil War, one decade later again, saw the destruction of a long lived culture and
economic system and sent economic schock waves across the globe, affecting most of the
cash-crop-producing regions discussed at the start of this chapter. Its ideolgoical
repercussions were yet greater, even if only subtly registered. (147).

"The Taiping Rebellion began in late 1851, when a religious mystic declared a new religion
which mixed Christian themes with Buddhist millenarian aspiration to creat a new order on
earth. The Taipings, or followers of the "Heavenly Way," attracted support from substantial
numbers of peasants, immigrants, and dissident gentry in the Canton province. In its early
days they redistributed land, emancipated women, and probulgated themes of community
which wome later commentators interpreted as a kind of indigenous socialism (!!!!!!)
"Many Company officials believed that the preservation of Indian kings, landholders, and
priestly supremacies would help buy the acquiescence of Indian people. After 1848, however,
a new generation of British rulers became impatient with the petty politics and pertinacious
financial endependence of the Indian states.
"As in the case of Persia, the Chinese Empire, and Java, religious differences and patriotic
self-assertion played an important part in allt he major rebellions we are considering."
"Despite widespread sympathy for the southern Confederacy in conservative circles in
Europe, this did not become a world war, because neither Britain nor France had a direct
interest in intervention." (161)
"Economic change now seemed to demand the cration of larger, unified nation-states. More
educated and self-aware middle classes craved the psychological protection that such states
were believed to afford." (163)
"The 1848 revolutions in Europe, the Chartist movement in Britain, the Fenian upsurges in
Ireland, and the abolitionist tide in the United States expressed similar ideologies. At one
level, they all concerned the right of the individual as a citizen" (164) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"localism remains formative: people would have understood these events in terms of the
social and mythical geographies of their district or country."
With the European movements of the 1840s, we also glimplse the assertion of the rights of
many groups from the margins: unskilled laborers, early feminists, religious sectarians, and
socialist anarchist. The "war between the states" briefly opened the door to the agency of
African-Americans as runaways from slave plantations and as soldiers in Union Armies.
"Historians must also examine the moral and material connections between these, and that
these emerge strongly when a global perspective is adopted. Consider some of the leaders of
the 1850s ruptures. The chief prophet of the Taiping Rebellion had been educated in a
Christian mission school. Nana Sahib, the Indian rebel of Kanpur in India, had been taught to
read English and French novels by his British tutors. Both these men hoped that France or the
United States would intervene in their conflicts. The major leaders of the European popular
movements of 1848, and the contemporary proponents of home rule in the settler colonies,
inherited, a picture of the woorld in which the French Revolution and the Declaration of the
Rights of Man were fundamental events. Both sides in the American Civil War used the
Declaration of Independence as a universal charter of human rights. Contrast this with the
past. It had been different 60 years before, at the start of the first age of global imeprialism.
Then, in the 1780s, the Mughal emperor, Shah Alam, and General george Washington had, in
their very different ways, confronted the global reach of British power and searche for a
counterpoise in France and Spain. Yet their understandings of the world were wholly
different. Then there was little enough to link the Chinese idea of the Middle Kingdom, the

Mughal concept of Timurid charisma, and the ideologoy of old Whig republicanism as it had
flourished in North America. By the 1840s and 1850s, the leaders and perhaps even some of
the more important followers of the great dissidence which swept the world had a clearer
understanding of the global hegemonies which confronted them. (166).
Rebellion did profoundly affect structures of power and economic exploitation across the
world. The Paris crowds of 1789-93 and 1848 did sweep away old autocracies. The slave
rebels of the Carribean between 1815 and 1831 terminally weakened the plantation system.
The peasant rebels in Russia in the 1770s and India in the 1850s did erreparably demage
existin systems of exploitation. Yet, in general, they were effective only where these
instititions had already been severely corroded by the sustained criticism and subversion of
elite activist and the "middling sort" of people. There were as many urban revolts and peasant
or slave uprisings which had no effect, or even strengthened the status quo, in cases where the
institutions of government were not already compromised by elite attack. (166)
"In the case of Britain, once seen as "the first industrial nation," Peter Cain and Anthony
Hopkins use the phrase "gentlemanly capitalism" to argue that the dominant feature in both
the country's domestic and its imperial economy was financial services, banking, and the
stock exchange, rather than industrial production."
In recent years scholars have become more skeptical about the political impact of
industrialiation and urbanization, too. Earlier chapters have noted that where socialist and
even conseervative historians once saw the industrial worker as in the vanguard of political
change, modern historians have argued that the rebellions of 1848 and the Paris Commune
were really casued by disposessed, old-style artisans [yes, but their acts revealed a different
nature (universal] In accounts of the Russian Revolution of 1905, peasants and soldiers,
rather than industrial workers, now hold center stage. In the case of Russia, and India, many
historians working sicne the 1970s have insisted that the tiny nineteenth-cenury industrial
working classes were really made up of "peasants in disguise," rather than a true urban
proletariat; their mentalities were resolutely preindustrial and agragian."
By 1750, British agricultur and mining were already highly commercialized and drawn
together into a national market.
By 1885, the USA accounted for 30 percent of world industrial production, much the same as
Britain's share. As in the British case, industrialization reflected the investment of capital by
succesful Atlantic trading merchants and landowners in mechanized production through a
flexible capital market.
"Economic historians now quite commonly argue that it was not absolutely necessary for
industrial societies to go through a period of conentration in huge factories. There were, as we
have seen, examples of dispersed artisan industries, such as the Lyon and Japanese silkweaving industries, becoming modernized without intense industrial concentration in modern
factories. This was more about the perceived need to discipline labor than about productivity
as such. If this is so, then here again the distinction between "backward" African, Asian, and
southern European artisan production and "advanced" northern European and American
factory production begins to look a bit threadbare. The vast disparities in world living
standards which were apparent by the end of the nineteenth century may have been more
about external regimes of money and military power than about relative technical progress.

The industrial life-style was as much about the desire of the wealthy to control the poor as
about economic efficiency in its own right." (183)
Historians, therefore, have come to argue that mass factory production was not really an
essential "stage" in the development of human society.
"This book argues that real and rapid changes did occur, especially in the last 10 to 20
years of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. Up to this point,
different systems of hierarchy and localism, many of them surviving in a modified form from
the old regimes, showed a striking capacity to accommodate these changes.
"Manila and Batavia, respectivley the Spanish annd Dutch centers of Southeast Asia, emerged
as new hybrid cities. Locally based European naval power forced or attracted local merchants
to trade in these ports. Within a generation from 1770 to 1800, Calcutta, Madras, and
Bombay all overtook in size even the largest of the centers of inland political power in South
Asia. Their merchant princes constructed palaces and reinvented a new style of public
Hindu worship and a form of hybrid aristocratic display. It was these bhadralog, or
gentry, like their contemporaries in Liverpool, Cork, and Boston, who made the first
circumspect demands for indigenous political rerpesentation of a moders sort. They also
demanded that the colonial power and the missionaries leave their religious practices
strictly alone." (187)
"These cities saw a reformulation of social and economic life not quite as profound as that
glimpsed by those socialist and sociologist who saw only alienation and anomie, but
profound nevertheless. Family structures changed with urbanization, though this argument
was overdone in the past. In many parts of the world, the large extended families of the past
broke down into smaller unites, but people still retained connections iwth their rural kin for
reasons of security and marriage." (188)
"Recent work has tended once again to the pessimistic view, that life spans, nutrition, and
health declined somewhat in the first stages of industrialization, even if people had acces to a
greater variety of goods.
[racism an segregations !!!!! also a global phenomenon] Jews, Blacks, Indians,
Aborigionals, all excluded groups.
"Just as formal legal emancipation did not improve the position of poor Jews in European
towns, the few city-dwelling blacks in the United States found themselves excluded from
urban services, jobs, and even white churches. By the 1880s and 1890s, abrief period when
intteracial democracy appeard to be on the cards had given way to a system of discrimination
much subtler than that of slavery. Here, as in South Africa, the vociferious white lover-middle
and working class acted in concert with urban elites to create informal systems of segregation
by race in the expanding cities. Vagrancy laws were used to criminalize, imprison, and
segragate blacks in the mining towns of South Africa, Aborigines in Australia, urban Maori in
New Zealand, and American Indians through the New World. In fact, the 1880s and 1890s
seem to have been a period when racial awareness and segregation on the grounds of race
became more obstrusive in almost all societies. Clearly, elite ideologies of race war and
eugenics were important here, but it was because these ideas could be applied as a set of
practices in rapidly growing cities that they became so prevalent. Since the appelad not only

to the middle classes, but to suspicioius an embattled white workes protecting their own
livelihoods, they were enacted into law an political programs." (190)
"Recent work has developed more subtle explanations of the nature of working-class politics.
Labor historians now tend to argue that the degree of working-class activity in different
centers across the world was determined much more by the particular form of industry and by
urban living conditions, than by any general features of "consciousness," whether workingclass, ethnic, or peasant. The rash of strikes which arrived with the new century was mor a
product of cycles in the world economy, [?] which cause employers to try to squeeze down
wages at a time of rising prices, than of any general social change, let alone a lurch toward
revolution. Just as nationalism was a consequence, more than a cause, of European wars, so
working-class consciousness was a consequence of turmoil and rvolution, rather than its
cause."
"But what was mainly happening was that relatively well-off workers wre trying to secure for
themselves some of the benefits of rapid economic expansion which occurred once the
depression of the 1870s and 1880s had ended.
"The Russian Revolution of 1905 was not primarily a workers' revolution, or even a peasant
revolution. Instead, the prevailing crisis of relations between state and society in the Russian
towns had encouraged workers to express their long-term grievances about working
conditions and security of employment in undercapitalized and primitve industries." (192193) [refute! this vulgar historicism !!!!]
[Department stores -> women -> shopping + women today]
"during all the years that have elapsed since the commencement of modern progress, the
African race has filled a very humbleand subordinate part in the work of human
civilization . . . [but] there is a peculiar work for them to accomplisch both in the land ofo
their bondage and the land of their fathers. I would rather be a member of this race than a
Greek in the time of Alexander, a Roman in the Augustan period, or an Anglo-Saxon in the
nineteenth century" (216).\
"Here, race and the idea of progress come together with the idea of Christian redemption to
create the beginnings of a sense of shared nationality."

Today, is the day of my conversion. I was a coward, I admit, I accept. But no more! Never
again! From now on, in any situation, I will do everything in my power to act courageously,
with bravura - not for the eyes of others, but for myself as universal mankind.
To respond to the political waste scape in which we find ourselves with the far Lefts
traditional nostalgia, its bromides, its mindfulness, its hunkering down, its combinination of
myopia and hyperactivity, its insistence that #therearemassiveopportunitiesfortheleftinallthis,
would be worse than inadequate: it would be a dereliction. A bleaker perspective is necessary.
Hope must be abandoned before it can be salvaged.

But as capitalism plumbs depths, the Left spirals into unprecedented crisis. As radicals we
must face our own failures. It is not enough simply to point to vignettes of previous hope-in(far-worse-)suffering the Warsaw Ghetto, the Spanish Civil War, Apartheid and Baathist
prison cells and the like and call for comrades to toughen up. Toughness is not the point,
though plenty of that is, and will be, required. The martyrs invoked by such comparisons had
the vision of a better world etched on their prison walls. They felt, even if for reasons of
world-historic error, that they were moving with some meaningful tide, and there were
thousands around them who thought likewise.
There is not a single individual on the Anglophone far Left who can say the same and be
considered sane.
"There's always a possibility for the coward to not be cowardly any more any more and for
the hero to stop being heroic."
"The ideas of economist and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they
are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Practical men who believe
themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some
defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy
from some academic scribbler of a few years back." (Keynes) Les non-dupes errent
"For instance, very subtle difference of language and culture between different forms of
North African were elaborated by the French into the idea that recent Arab invaders were set
against supposedly indigenous Berbers, or Kabyles, the latter being much closer in
civilization to the people of European Mediterranean. This distinction did not prevent Berbers
from revolting against the French, which they did as late as 1912. But it did tend to set
Berber politics and societgy moving in a subtly different direction from those of their Arab
neighbors and coreligionists. Similarly, the British authorities in the Malay states often found
it prudent to treat the incoming Chinese tin miners and rubber tappers rather differently from
the Malay Muslim smallholders." (222)
"There were paralles in India. Here complex histories of difference separated Hindus,
Muslims, and Sikhs. Yet the difference was very subtle, Muslims having adjusted to centuries
of relationships with surrounding Hindus, while Sikhs continued to operate to some degree
within norms and cosmologies derived from acommon Inidan religious past. As in other
colonial territories, British rulers found it easier to rule a continent divided into religious and
racial blocks. The legal system, the census, and the emerging "science" of anthropology
recognized and to some degree enhanced these differences. In the late nineteenth century,
however, leaders within these commnities also insisted on difference on their own account."
"These attitudes reflected the spread of the idea among the indigenous intelligentisia that
religions and races were real, substantial entities, and that they needed men to speak up for
them."
Archaic links of religion, economy, and bodily practice also continued to underpin the new
international order [as if the new order is laid on top of it][formal precedes real subsumption]
of the nineteenth century in the economic sphere. Classic Marxist and liberal theories of
economic change have emphasized the rationality of expanding captialsim. On this theory,

the aim of Western expansion was to seize recousrce and subordinate labor. This is true in
great measure. As we have seen, in the early nineteenth century much of the globe became a
vast agricutlrual hinterland for western Europe. This occurred before mass industrialization,
even in Britain. Still, many features of older global economic links persisted and remainde
formative in these new systems. Archaic glottalization had been partly driven by the desire to
acquire the exotic, to collect rarities, and to transform one's moral status and substance." That
desire dit not abate in the nineteenth century. (pilgrimae)
"The ideological landscape of the modern international world was seen as a dialogue or
concert of equal political entities which claimed uniform rights. Equally, the universalizing
tendency inherent in newely diffused theories of individual and group rights began to create
networks beyond the nation-state. These consituted a kind of embryonic international civil
society."
"Internationalization on the level of the body." (differencing/differentiation)

By the late nineteenth century, most regimes throughout the world were attempting to control
closely defined territories by means of uniform administrative [passport, birth registration,
consultatie centrum] , legal [rights for specific citizens], and educational structures
[schools, and their curriculum / normalization]. They wished to mark out with maps and
surveys [statistics] the extent of their resources an tax and utilize them in a coherent way
[managerial/technocracy]. Earlier states had sometimes been intrusive and demanding, but
only in specific areas of life, and only at certain places and times. By contrast, the modern
state aspired to a monopolistic claim on its subjects loyalties [totalization]. Modernizing
states were jealous of trans-territorial affiliation, whether of religion, ethnic connection, or
old dynastic connection, which had characterized the old order. They attempted to abolish the
rights or, sometimes, the disabilities of special categories of subjects who claimed superior
status or alternatively were condemned to inferior status, under law or government [security,
territory, population]. [Foucault question: who or what is this state you are talking off?]
These changes involved a growing uniformity in that the stae become more cohesive. The old
distinction between the king's establishment and recourses and the government tended to be
abolished. The state became located in a particular place, rather than moving around
wherever the king went. Court factions became political parties, attempting to seize the levers
of government rather than the king's favor. Yet the stat also became more functionally
complex, with different departments and expertises separated off within it. (248).
[idea that inspires] Yet, in addition to being a military and financial steamroller, the state
was also an idea. It represented an aspiration for complete power and territorial sovereignty,
whether in the name of "the people" or "the nation," or despite them. The state as a concept
had a life of its own which cannot simply be reduced to class interest or military exigencies.
From Victorian British empirebuilder to tthe modernizing military leaders of Ecuador and
peru, the idea of "civilization" emboidied the ideas about aordered, technological society and
the perfectibility of the human individual. These ideas appealed to conservatives, liberals,
radicals, and socialist alike, though in very different ways.

[Shock Doctrine] Governments were also teased into expansion by the explosion of local
disputes which they alone could mediate, or by the demand for services which they alone
could supply. (eg. demand of farmers, businesses for railroads in US, demand for tariffs).
The real turning point was the period 1850-1870. Now, the modern state benefited from rapid
industrialization, new armaments, and an aggressive edge honed by fear of revolution and the
fire of nationalism. [Bismarck, Second French Emprie, Britishe Colonial state, moved in
higher gear, fortified by a new scientific and professional culture.]
"some historians and social theoriest, following Michel Foucault, now speak of
governmentality in preference to state regulation. Ohters, especially anthropologist, go
further, arguing that for many people even in the contemporary world, the state is not so
much a hard fact as an idea. The state is "out there," and its mythical power can be magicked
into existence and appropriated by anyone from a gang boss to the leader of a charasimatic
religious movement." [hegel?]
"The paradox of the state was this: it always stood above classes, local powers, and factions,
yet it could always be penetrated and appropriated by them."
"It could widely deploy more men, more authority, more resources, and more destructive
power against its own citizens and against other states than it had done earlier" It had, in
many areas, though not all, gained a more effective control of reserves of manpower and
money. It was able to deploy new symbols to enforce its authority, and it had created larger
and more efficient bureaucracies, archives, and survey departments to aid it in these tasks.
Above all, the state was now regarded as an embodiment of the nation, and the nation or
race was assumed to be the key actor on the world stage." [ACTOR/IMAGINARY
PERSON!!] Ironically, of course, the argument was a circular one, for states had as often
created nations as vice versa.
"The point is partly that the power of the state, still so unformed in the eighteenth century,
was greatly enhanced by the development of new military recources [tax, men, steel, oil, coal,
railroads] and techniques [discipline, new equipment, education, health etc.]
"By 1880, even in those areas where the state had receded, withdrawn, or faltered in the
earlier decades, the notion that the government should provide for the welfare of its subjects
was becoming widely accepted. (273) [Bismarck] [communist conspiracy] [battle of
allegience working class]

The global relevance of European thought, then, was something I took for granted. Nor did I
question the need for universalistic thinking. It was never, for instance, an aim of this book to
pluralize reason, as a serious reviewer suggested in a somewhat mistakenI use this word
with respectreading of the project. As my chapter on Marx will show, I argued not
against the idea of universals as such but emphasized that the universal was a highly
unstable figure, a necessary placeholder in our attempt to think through questions of
modernity. We glimpsed its outlines only as and when a particular usurped its place. Yet
nothing concrete and particular could ever be the universal itself, for intertwined with the
sound-value of a word like right or democracy were concept-images that, while (roughly)
translatable from one place to another, also contained elements that defied translation. Such
defiance of translation was, of course, part of the everyday process of translation. Once put
into prose, a universal concept carries within it traces of what Gadamer would call
prejudicenot a conscious bias but a sign that we think out of particular accretion of
histories that are not always transparent to us. To provincialize Europe was then to know how
universalistic thought was always and already modified by particular histories, whether or not
we could excavate such pasts fully.

I wanted to see how these problems of constitution could be resolved within a historical
framework, instead of referring them back to a constituent object (madness, criminality, or
whatever). But this historical contextualization needed to be something more than the simple
relativization of the phenomenological subject. I don't believe the problem can be solved by
historicizing the subject as posited by the phenomenologists, fabricating a subject
that evolves through the course of history. One has to dispense with the constituent subject, to
get rid of the subject itself, that's to say, to arrive at an analysis that can account for the
constitution of the subject within a historical framework. And this is what I would
call genealogy, that is, a form of history that can account for the constitution of knowledges,
discourses, domains of objects, and so on, without having to make reference to a subject that
is either transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness
throughout the course of history.

In 1862, in one of
the earliest detailed accounts of liberalism, James Fitzjames Stephen
pinpointed the connection:
"As generally used . . . liberal and liberalism . . . denote in politics, and
to some extent in literature and philosophy, the party which wishes to
alter existing institutions with the view of increasing popular power. In
short, they are not greatly remote in meaning from the words
democracy and democratic. (James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberalism,
Cornhill Magazine V (1862): 7273. See also Leonard Hobhouse,
Democracy and Reaction (London: Unwin, 1904), 166)

It is both striking and symptomatic that in Britain, so often seen as

the incubator of liberalism, Locke was not widely regarded as a liberallet
alone a paradigmatic oneuntil nearly a century after liberalism emerged
as an explicit political doctrine. Several generations of self-identified
liberals somehow failed to recognise him as one of their own
His moral and political philosophy may well be viewed as the summation
of the best thought of the seventeenth century. Though he added few
ideas of his own
and developed the old ideas he took from others, he is rather the ripe
fulfilment of the past than the herald of the future. The author concluded
that (696) Lockes theory of political society is decidedly weak and
offered little to contemporary political theory. Locke spoke from and about
a lost world."
" [Lock] . . . was in its day extremely popular, and its practical effects
were no doubt great, as it furnished people with the best and most
accessible popular justification for the Revolution of 1688. It would be
difficult, however, to find a better illustration of the fact that we have
travelled a very long road since Lockes
time, and have carried the metaphysical principles of which he perceived certain aspects, to
consequences which have made his political speculations appear altogether superannuated
and bygone."
Widespread scepticism about the quality and relevance of Lockean political thought was
fortified by the historicist comparative method, which did so much to shape scholarship
during the late nineteenth century. Its proponents, the most influential of whom was Henry
Maine, challenged deductive models of politics and sought to root the origins and
development of customs, language, social structures, and legal forms, in long-term historicalevolutionary processes.
Given Lockes tarnished reputation at the time what are we to make of his current status as
the ur-liberal? One possible answer is that it is based on a mistakethat Locke simply wasnt
a liberal.78 Another response is to insist that we have now corrected the error of earlier
thinkers who failed to recognise Lockes liberalism. In other words, he had either always
been a liberal or he was never one. Both positions are defensible: it is possible to extract
conflicting meanings from Lockes work. But I suggest an alternative answer: Locke became
a liberal during the twentieth century. As part of a process of retrojection his body of work
or at least some stylised arguments stripped from itwas posthumously conscripted to an
expansive new conception of the liberal tradition.
The Lockean narrative was consolidated in Britain and the United States between the 1930s
and the 1950s, as liberalism was reconfigured as the ideological other of totalitarian
ideologies, left and right.
The narrative was cemented in the more complacent post-war intellectual milieu as scholars
from across the political spectrum, and from assorted academic
disciplines, converged on this new all-encompassing narrative, even as they proffered
radically different explanations and normative evaluations of it. Strauss, Laski, Macpherson,
Hartz, and Wolin, among others, helped to fabricate the new ideological structure. Though

rarely acknowledged or analysed, the transformation of liberalism did not go completely

unnoticed. In a lecture delivered in 1960, Eric Voegelin observed that in the course of
the last 30 years the image of what liberalism is has changed completely.81 Wittingly or not,
we are the heirs of this ideological labour.
Helping to construct a mythopoeic narrative of the West as simultaneously ancient and
modern, free and strong, they were the most widely taught history courses after the Second
World War.119 While claims about the intellectual coherence, historical continuity, and
ethicopolitical superiority of the West stretched back at least as far as the eighteenth
century, it was only in the mid-twentieth century that this potent civilisational narrative came
to be routinely classified as liberal. The victorious spread of liberalism and the rise of the
West came to be seen as one and the same thing.
The nature of liberalism has been a core concern in political theory since its emergence as an
academic specialism in the early twentieth century. I havecriticised some prominent
approaches to interpreting liberalism, introduced some methodological tools for thinking
about the proliferation of liberal languages, and sketched an explanatory account of shifts in
the meaning of liberalism in the Anglo-American world. The analysis has implications for
both political theorists and historians. Above all, it suggests the need to be alert to the
historical contingency and variability of our theoretical vocabularies and the power dynamics
of tradition-construction. It also calls into question the general utility of liberalism as a
category of political analysis. Current debates about the nature of liberalismin and beyond
political theoryare often distorted because of the ahistorical [! ->
historicism] understanding of liberal ideology that they invoke. Conducted in a discursive
echo-chamber, they are often marked by a symptomatic form of collective amnesia, a
problematic erasure of the political and intellectual dynamics that generated much of what is
now articulated as scholarly common sense. This essay is intended as a modest contribution
to the work of historical recovery. As Stephen wrote in 1862, the words liberal and
liberalism, like all other such phrases, derive a great part of their significance from the time
they were invented. The history of liberalism, though, is a history of constant reinvention.
The most sweeping of these occurred in the middle of the twentieth century, when liberalism
was increasingly figured as the dominant ideology of the Westits origins retrojected back
into the early modern era, it came to denote virtually all non-totalitarian forms of politics as
well as a partisan political perspective within societies. This was partly a consequence of the
delegitimation of political extremes, partly a result of the vicissitudes of domestic political
strife, and partly a result of political and conceptual labour performed in the developing
human sciences. Karl Popper once referred toThe Open Society and Its Enemies as his war
effort, a contribution to the fight against totalitarianism. The consolidation of Lockean
liberalism was a grander, more all-encompassing variation on the same theme.
The Kings Two Bodies.
absolutist view: (Jean Bodin): "What makes a city or state? It is not the walls and not the
subject that make the city or state, but the union of the people in submission to a single
sovereign as head of state."
populist view: the sovereign power is possessed by the body!
contract tradition: power belonged to (individual people) but was transferred to the sovereign.
(hobbes)

Hobbes is against absolutist and populist view. attack on the populist view of the state (that
there is a populance that hold the sovereginty that was taken by the knig): BECAUSE
THERE WAS NO SOCIETY BEFORE THE (ABSOLUTIST) STATE. (c.f. zizek hegel
absoluter gegenstoss) The natrual condition of mankind is not a social condition............. it is
an anti-social condition. There is no such thing as the body of the people (because there is no
original body of the people [pseudo-marx])
There is no lawful authority unless you consent to it!!! COVENANT / CONTRACT , you
have to consent, before you become a subject!!!!! (ALthusser)
WE MAKE IT! (adam smith!) sovereign is a authorized official/representative (not on your
behalf, but in your name) i am the author of his actions, i am responsible to what the one i
made an author (the one i have authorized) says and does. (AAAAAAAAHHHH).
Commonwealth, or state. (dupuy) thus: (nothing/confused multitude of wills) --> (common
authorization of one person, i.e., king) --> (king, who is the representative of the
commonwealth) = (King + Body Politic). (However: Althusser/Badiou/Foucault:
Representation [authorization] induces individuals/subjects)
the state is a person by fiction. But nevertheless this fictional person is the sovereign. [!!!!!!]
[reality is structured like a fantasy] the sovereing (king) is the representative of a fictional
person) (represents the imaginary relation to the real conditions of existence.
King's three bodies. King has to look after the person (general will) (skinner: hobbes fictional
theory IS hegels theory of the state)
attacked by bentham
"Indeed, ideas not dissimilar to European traditions of civic republicanism existed in many
world societies. Anthropologists, for example, have shown how precolonial Africans used
ideologies of good kingship to justify the overthrow of wicked and ineffectual rulers" (288).
John Peel has demonstrated this particularly effectively in the case of the West African
Yoruba, a people who recorded their struggles to maintain a harmonious society and wise
kingship throug bardic myths whichs stressed the role of the honorable householder (fascist).
Wise counsel, care for the toiler, and the desire to be ruled by virtuous patriarchs were, quite
understandably, the social goods sought by intellectuals in alll agragrian and early
commercial societies before industrialization. In contrast, what was percieved as corruption,
although it was understood differently in the various traditions, seems to have been a cause
for dissent and even revolt almost universally [compare with skinner/Hobbes, abstract person,
i don't think this is modern civic republicanism]
if not historical/specific: why humans do this universally. if historical, what is difference
between this and other.
In Hindu and even Muslim India, by contrast, the elite and popular understandings of
corruption took on a more immediate, bodily sense through the notions of purity and
pollution [biopolitics? willem schinkel]

"Aristotle even came late to China, through Jesuit interpreters in the seventeenth century.
Chinese literati moved quickly to translate and disseminate it. Robert Wardy has shown how,
far from being misunderstood or distorted on the procrustean bed of conceptual and linguistic
difference, renderein it into Chinese sometimese, actually expressed the sense of the Greek
original more effectively. It was in the nineteenth century, though, that Chinese reformers
began to cite Aristotle's Ethics and Politics more widely. (289).
"That said, it is important not to go to the other extreme by underestimating the novelty of
certain emergin features of European intellectual life in the seventeenth and eighteent
centuries. The notion of generalizable individual rights and the emphasis of the "hidden
hand" of the market in this Western tradition seems indeed to presage something strikingly
new.
"Generally, too, outside western Europe, benign change was still envisaged as an attempt to
return to a golden age of the past, even where great virtuosity was employed to smuggle in
innovation under this rubric. In parts of western Europe, by contrast, public men brazenly
trumpeted the virtues of the future and of a complete rupture with the past." (292)
"In his book on the British Enlightenment, Roy Porter has highlighted the conviction of
Locke, Hume, and their followers that they were ushereing mankind into a new and glorious
age of reason, which made all earlier thought redundant. When radicals in Bengal adopted the
notion of "society," [!] [benedict anderson] a dispassionate communityy of interacting
interests, they also adopted the same linguistic and conceptual shift that their European
exemplarx had pioneerd between Machiavelli and Vico. The word samaj, which meant
"assembly" or "gathering," took in this striking new sense."
"The ideas of liberalism, nationalism, secularism and the self-determination of peoples were
closely connected, in that they all presupposed the action of autonomous individuals singly or
in groups."
"In a very different context, Ignacio Altamirano (1834-93), the Mexican Indian radical, urged
his countrymen to "love the patria and consecrate themselves to science," singling out the
ideals of the French Revolution as a permanent goal for Mexico. As early as 1795, some
French-speaking Ottomans had been alerted to the ideas of th revolution by the Gazette
francaise de Constantinople . By 1837, Sadik Rifat Pasha, an Ottoman ambassador to Vienna,
was writing about the relationship between "liberty" and classical Islamic notions of justice.
The works of John Stuart Mill became a bible for Latin American liberals in the 1850s and
1860s. In Brazil, the abolitionist Joaquin Nabuca stated: "I am an English liberal . . . in the
Brazilian parliament." The meiji reformers of the 1870s secured copies of the life of George
Washington. Low-cste western Indian reformers of the 1850s read Hume, Voltaire, Tom
Paine, and Gibbon. Munshi Abdullah, the first modern writer of the Malay world, drew on
Western liberal themes and Muslim notions of enlightenment when he attacked the
ingonoarnce and corruption of the Malay rajas in the 1820s.
"None of these ideas was more important than the liberal thinkers' scepticism about the
embodied hierarchy of priests, nobles, and kings, and, in particular, their hostility to the
control by these authorities of the land and the labor of the peasantry." Ironically, though, in
the course of their attack on embodied hierarchies, these thinkers and their political disciples
thought in therms of a new sort of hierarchy. This was a hierarchy of races and cultures

distinghuished by their degree of inlightenment, the perfection of their commerce, and the
freedom of their markets in land and labour." (296)
"The usual result of these ideological and practical tussles was a pact between the liberal
bureaucrats of the state and the smarter of the local power-holders. The landowners were
trying to maximize profits by turning themselves into big local agro-businesses or efficient
tax-collectors. This happened to Prussian junkers, Mexican haciendados, and Javanese
regenten [zizek orleanists]. Entrepreneurial landed interests like this needed the governments
to put in roads, railways, and canals for them. Equally, the administrators needed the support
of the big landowners, provided they could be persuaded to reform sufficiently to head off
peasant revolt and the hostitlity of the urban dwellers. In many cases, the result was that
agrarian reform was often desultory. So, for instance, Spanish liberals and moderate Catholic
critics of the establishment deplored the poverty of the peasants on great estates in the south
of the peninsula and the drift of vagrants to the towns or to the Americas. Yet nothing much
was done by the Spanish government until 1907, when weak land legislation was passed
which provided a little capital for resettlement and half-hearted measures of protection for
tenants against landlords. Here, as in Central and South America or southern Italy, conditions
on the estates hardly improved over the course of the nineteenth century."

Raja Ram Mohun Roy "What was most remarkable about Roy, however, was his
dispassionate concern for other peoples around the world. He wrote with feeling of the cause
of the Italian and Spanish revolutionaries of the 1810s and of the the Irish. All peoples, he
believed, should have local forms of political representation which were appropriate to their
characters. At the apex of their international influence, non of the vaunted "great thinkers" of
the Western intellectual tradition, by contrast, were entirely able to rid themselves of the
assumption of Western racial superiority or to think creatively beyond the bounds of the
European world. (294)
Ignacio Altamirano
Garibaldi
Sadik Rifat Pasha
Munshi Abdullah

- Internationale betekenis in de strikte betekenis = internationale geldigheid.

- Slechts enkele grondtrekken. Wat? theorie en tactiek. Lessen trekken.
Lenin betoogt dat de Russische Revolutie Internationale betekenis heeft. Lenin bedoelt dat de
grondtrekken van de theorie en tactiek die revolutie in Rusland mogelijk maakte, ook van
toepassing op de (pre)revolutionaire situaties in andere landen. Men kan volgen Lenin dus
leren van de bolsjewieten: hij verwerpt het argument dat de bolsjewitische theorie en tactiek
alleen geldigheid hebben in het "achterlijke" Rusland. Misschien niet

alle bolsjevistische tactiek en theorie, maar toch wel haar grondtrekken hebben waarde tot
over de russiche grenzen.
De vraag is nu: wat kunnen we leren van de bolsjewitische revolutie?

1. Bolsjewiki aan de macht dankzij discipline

2. Dictatuur is noodzakelijk
3. Mogelijk door discipline. Maar: aantal (extra) voorwaarden maakte die discipline mogelijk
4. Begrijpen: verstaan van het gehele process
5. Abstracte principes van de Discipline (klas. bw.+ toew./sam. smlt. massa's/juisth. tactiek +
zelf. overt. massa's)
6. Maar Concrete, specifieke situatie Rusland
7. Lijden, Ervaring, Juiste Theorie
8. langdurige stormachtige situatie
Volgens Lenin zijn er een aantal voorwaarden die ten grondslag liggen aan het succes van de
bolsjewiki. Een van de voornaamste voorwaarden voor de overwinning op de bourgeoisie is
volgens Lenin: "onvoorwaardelijke centralisatie en strengste discipline." [Maar deze
voorwaarde kan alleen/op zich tot van alles leiden, ook tot fascisme?] Lenin maakt duidelijk
dat deze onvoorwaardelijke centralisatie en strengste discipline alleen mogelijk was, omdat
ook aan een aantal andere voorwaarden was voldaan.
Zijdelings, maar daarom niet onbelangrijk, benadrukt Lenin dat het bolsjewisme sinds 1903
bestaat, en dat: "Alleen de geschiedenis van het bolsjewisme gedurende de gehele tijd van
zijn bestaan kan op bevredigende wijze verklaren, waardoor het in staat is geweest de voor de
overwinning van het proletariaat noodzakelijke ijzeren discipline tot stand te brengen en die
onder de moeilijkste omstandigheden te handhaven." (9)
Men moet dus het politieke process in zijn geheel analyseren om een afdoende verklaring te
vinden voor het succes van de bolsjewiki.
Dan stelt Lenin de vraag: "waardoor wordt de discipline van de revolutionaire partij van het
proletariaat gehandhaafd? Waardoor wordt ze gecontroleerd, waardoor versterkt?" (9).
Dit zijn dus eigenlijk drie vragen in een. Lenin vraagt hier hoe de onvoorwaardelijke
discipline, dat wil zeggen de voornaamste voorwaarde voor het slagen van de revolutie - (1)
gehandhaafd, (2) gecontroleerd, en (3) versterkt wordt. Als we dit verbinden met lenin's
nadruk op het proces, dan zien we dat het lenin niet alleen gaat om de discipline op een
specifiek moment (een protest, een actie, bv. bungehuis bezetting van een week), maar hoe de
discpline door de tijd heen gehandhaafd, gecontroleerd, en versterkt wordt.
1. Waardoor wordt de discipline van de revolutionaire partij van het proletariaat
gehandhaafd?

"Door het klassenbewustzijn van de proletarische voorhoede en door haar toewijding aan de
revolutie, door haar uithoudingsvermogen, haar zelfopoffering, haar heldendom.
Het handhaven van de discpline (nogmaals, dit is zo belangrijk omdat de discipline de
belangrijkste voorwaarde is voor het slagen van de revolutie. Het eerste onderdeel dat Lenin
van de discipline bespreekt is hoe ze wordt gehandhaafd) alleen mogelijk met: (a)
Klassenbewustzijn van de voorhoede [belangrijke vraag: wat betekent dit? als mens bewust
zijn van het feit je lid bent van een klasse? of misschien: bewustzijn van het feit dat er
klassen zijn, dat de samenleving en haar productiewijze noodzakelijk een klasseverdeling met
zich mee brengt?] (b) De toewijding van de voorhoede aan de revolutie (commitment/niet
buigen/d.w.z.: vasthouden aan de implicaties van het klassenbewustzijn)
Dus, toewijding aan de revolutie zonder klassenbewustzijn is ontoereikend [anarchisme =
anarchisten kunnen misschien een strenge discipline hebben, maar zonder klassenbewustzijn
zal ze deze discipline niet kunnen handhaven. vgl. maagdenhuis]. Maar klassenbewustzijn
hebben, zonder een commitment tot de revolutie is net zo goed ontoereikend (zonder de
implicaties ervan door te denken en tot stand te brengen). Discipline, opnieuw, zal niet
gehandhaafd kunnen worden [delen van de kleine burgerij en arbeidersklasse kunnen
bijvoorbeeld wel hun klassenbewustzijn in een eenmalig protest laten zien, maar zonder
commitment tot de revolutie zal de discipline wegebben. Voor de handhaving van de
discipline is zowel klassenbewustzijn als toewijding nodig.
2. Waardoor wordt de discipline van de revolutionaire partij van het proletariaat
gecontroleerd?
"Door haar vermogen zich met de meest brede massa's van het werkende volk, allereerst met
de proletarische, maar ook met de niet-proletarische werkende massa's te verbinden,
toenadering met hen tot stand te brengen, ja zelfs, zo men wil, tot op zekere hoogte met hen
samen te smelten."
De discipline word gecontroleerd, [in de engelse vertaling: "tested," ik neem gecontroleerd
dus in de zin van: getoetst worden], door haar vermogen zich met de massa's samen te
smelten. De discpline wordt dus getoetst (is er werkelijke sprake van discipline, ja of nee?)
op basis van de mate waarin ze in staat is zich met de massa's te binden/mengen. Is dit niet
het geval, dwz is er alleen sprake van klassenbewustzijn en toewijding, maar geen werkelijke
toenadering tot de groots mogelijke massa, dan is discipline loos/nog niet werkelijk
verwezenlijkt.
3. Waardoor wordt de discipline van de revolutionaire partij van het proletariaat versterkt?
"Door de juistheid van de politieke leiding, die door deze voorhoede wordt gerealiseerd, door
de juistheid van haar politieke strategie en tactiek, onder de voorwaarde, dat de brede massa's
zich door eigen ervaring van deze juistheid laat overtuigen.
De discipline van de revolutionaire partij wordt door klassenbewustzijn
en toewijding gehandhaafd, en door samensmelten getoetst. Maar zonder de juistheid van de
politieke strategie en tactiek blijft ze zwak. Echter, deze juistheid versterkt de discipline
alln als de brede massa's door eigen ervaring zich ervan laten overtuigen.

De bolsjewiki konden hun strenge discipline dus alleen verwezenlijken [Lenin stelt discipline
voor als een proces en een handeling] met
- Klassenbewustzijn en toewijding, waardoor de discipline kon worden gehandhaafd
- Samensmelten met massa's, op basis waarvan de discipline werd getoetst
- Juistheid van de strategie en tactiek, waarvan de massa's zich door eigen ervaring laten
overtuigen, dankzij welke ze werd versterkt.
"Zonder deze voorwaarden worden de pogingen om discipline te scheppen onvermijdelijk
een fiktie, een frase een farce."
Deze "grondtrekken". de abstracte principes van de discipline zijn volgens Lenin, zo lijkt het,
ook geldig zijn in andere landen dan Rusland.
[De discipline van de IS voldoet momenteel aan voorwaarde 1 en 2. voorwaarde 3 is echter
onzeker. Zijn we er zeker van dat de IS op dit moment de juiste strategie en tactiek heeft? wat
haar strategie en taktiek eigenlijk? en is er sprake van een massa die zich er door eigen
ervaring van kan laten overtuigen? hoe ziet dit er vandaag de dag uit?
"Deze voorwaarden kunnen echter aan de andere kant niet ineens ontstaan. Ze worden slechts
door moeizame arbeid, door harde ervaring tot stand gebracht, hetgeen
word vergemakkelijkt door de juiste revolutionair theorie, die op haar beurt geen dogma is,
maar slechts in nauwe samenhang met de praktijk van een werkeljike massabeweging en een
werkelijk revolutionaire beweging definitief vorm aanneemt."
Hebben we de juiste revolutionaire theorie? zijn we daar zeker van? is ze in nauwe
samenhang met de praktijk van een werkelijke massabeweging een een werkelijk
revolutionaire beweging gevormd? Nee!
BOVENDIEN:
Als het bolsjewisme in de jaren 1917-1920 onder ongelooflijk moeilijke omstandigheden de
strengste centralisatie en een ijzeneren discipline wist the scheppen en met goed gevolg wist
toe te passen, dan is de oorzaak daarvan heel eenvoudig gelegen in een reeks historische
bijzonderheden.
- Juiste theorie (marxisme: is onze marxistische theorie nog steeds up-to-date?, hebben we er
voldoende grip op)*
- Door lijden eigen gemaakt, door een halve eeuw van ongehoorde kwellingen en offers
(misschien.. maar niet van hetzelfde soort)
- Rusland beschikte over zulk een overvloed aan internationale verbindingen, over een zo
voortreffelijke kennis van alle vormen en theorien van de revolutionaire beweging van de
wereld als geen ander land op de aardbol bezat. (verre van!)
- praktische geschiedenis van vijftien jaar. rijkdom aan ervaring (niet in zelfde mate).
*it is impossible completely to understand Marxs Capital, and especially its first chapter,
without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegels Logic. Consequently,
half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!! (Collected Works, Vol. 38, p.
180 Lenins exclamation marks).

"Want geen ander land had in die 15 jaren ook maar bij benadering zoveel doorgemaakt op
het gebied van revolutionair ervaring, van snelle en veelvuldige verandering van de
verschillende vormen der beweging . . . In geen ander land was in een zo korte spanne tijds
zulk een rijkdom aan vormen, schakeringen en methoden van de strijd van alle klassen der
moderne maatschappij geconcentreerd geweest, en wel van een strijd die als gevolg van de
achterlijkheid van het land en van het zware juk van het tsarisme bijzonder snel rijp werd en
zich bijzonder begerig en met succes het passende 'laatste woord' van de Amerikaanse en
Europese politieke ervaringen eigen maakte."

"Want de gehele taak van de communisten is juist daarin gelegen, dat zij de achterlijken
weten te overtuigen, onder hen weten te werken en zich niet door bedachte, kinderachtige
'linkse' leuzen van hen afzonderen." (46)

1. To study the government of men insofar as it appears as the exercise of political

sovereigny (quita non movere)
2. to study not how governors really governed in practice, but the "level of reflection in
and on the practice of government," the "art of government,"] the study of "the
rationalization of governmental practice in the exercise of sovereignty."
[practice/speculation]
3. Method: genealogy, not take as already given the object of study (universals as,
subject, sovereignty, state, the people, civil society). "not to question a univ. but to
say "let's suppose universals do not exist.
4. Last year: Raison d'Etat, something called the state (ca 1500), plays the role of both a
given - since one only governs a state that is already there, one only governs within
the framework of the state - but also at the same time an object to be constructed.
5. State no longer salvation/ father-child relationship. the state is no household, church,
or empire. ($1). state is separated out as specific and autonomous. specificity and
plurality.
6. first, economy: Mercantilism: not only economic doctrine: but a "form of
government." monetary acc. / incr. population / permanent competition with other
states. 2nd. Police. 3rd. permanent diplomacy. against imper.
7. Mercantilism, police state, European balance: concrete body of this new art of
government (raison d'etat). State is not a cold monster: it is the correlative of a
particular way of governing!
8. Foreign policy has a limited objective.

9. External self-limitation, internal unlimited -> police state has a set of objectives that
could be described as unlimited. not only groups, also individuals can become
objectives of government. "There is no limit to the objectives of government when it
is a question of managing a public power that has to regulate the behavior of
subjects."
10.

"So, "government" in the strict sense, but also "art," "art of government" in the strict sense,
since by "art of government" I did not mean the way in which governors really governed.
I have not studied and do not want to study the development of real governmental practice
by determining the particular situations it deals with, the problems raised,
the tactics chosen, the instruments employed, forged, or remodeled, and so forth. I wanted to
study the art of governing, that is to say, the reasoned way of governing best and; at the
same time, reflection on the best
possibleway of governing [idealtypes/norms] .
That is to say, I have tried to grasp the level of reflection in the practice of government and on
the practice of government. In a sense, I wanted to study government's consciousness of
itself, if you like, although I don't like the term "self-awareness (consdence de soi)" and will
not use it, because I would rather say that I have tried, and
would like to try again this year to grasp the way in which this practice that consists in
governing was conceptualized both within and outside government, and anyway as close
as possible to governmental practice.
I would like to try to determine the way in which the domain of the practice of government,
with its different objects, general roles, and overall objectives, was established so as to
govern in the best possible way. In short, we could call this the study of the rationalization
of governmental practice in the exercise of political sovereignty. (2)
-----------------------"So what I would like to deploy here is exactly the opposite of historicism: not, then,
questioning universals by using history as a critical method, but starting from the decision
that universals do not exist, asking what kind of history we can do. [perhaps this in a sense
comes close to Hegels method in the phenomenology]" (3)
"Let's suppose that madness does not exist. If we suppose that id does not exist, then what can
history make of these different events and practices which are apparently organized around
something that is supposed to be madness?.
"Let's suppose that the state does not exist. If we suppose that it does not exist, then
what can history make of these different events and practices which are apparently
organized around something that is supposed to be the state?" [cybernetics!!!!]

"You recall that last year I tried to study one of those important episodes in the history of
government. Roughly, this episode was that of the organization of what was called at the
time raison d'Etat, in an infinitely stronger, stricter, more rigorous, and also fuller sense than
was later given to this notion."
"I tried to locate the emergence of a particular type of rationality [lacan: game of even and
odd] in governmental practice, a type of rationality that would enable the way of governing
to be modeled on something called the state.
A rationality that allows the way of governing to be modeled, not on the king/god/religion,
but on something called the state [the people, the sovereign, the kings two bodies,, nation,
modernity].
[the state], which in relation to this govermnetal practice, to this calculation of governmental
practice, plays the role both of a given - since one only governs a state that is already there,
on onle governs within the framework of a state - but also, at the same time, as an objective
to be constructed"
the state [or for that matter: the people] is a kind of ideal type, a "universal" that "plays the
role" of something given [as if it existed]. But also, at the same time, it is an objective that is
to be created. [
"The state is at once that which exist, but which does not yet exist enough." (hegel zizek
hobbes skinner) Raison d'Etat is precisely a practice, or rather the raitonalization of a
practice, which places itself between a state presented as given and a state presented as
having to be constructed and built.
raison detat a the rationalization of a practice, is not a rationalization of a state that is simply
given (since its task is partly to bring it in to being), nor simply a rationalization, a kind of
project, of the idea that that the state should be build (since its being is at the same time
pressupposed).
The art of government must therefore fix its rules and rationalize its way of doing things by
taking as its objective the bringing into being what the state should be. What governement
has to do must be identified with what the state should be (4). Governmental ratio is what will
enable a given state to arrive at its maximum being in a considered, reasoned, and calculated
way. (?)
Government must do - what the state should be. Governement actions (what it has to do) is
what the state should be. ?
What is it to govern? To govern according to the principle of raison d'Etat is to arrange things
so that the state becomes sturdy and permanent, so that it becomes wealthy, and so that it
becomes strong in the face of everything that may destroy it.
Rationality of mercantilism:
"Mercantilism is not an economic doctrine; it is something much more than and very different
from an economic doctrine. It is a particular organization of production and
commercial circuits according to the princple that: first, the state must enrich itself through

monetary accumulation; second, it must strengthen itself by increasing population; and third,
it must exist and maintain itself in a state of permanent competition with foreign powers. The
second way for government according to raison d'Etat to organize and embody itself in
a practice is internal management, that is to say, what at the time was called police, or the
unlimited regulation of the country according to the model of a tight-knit urban
organization. Finally, third, is the development of a permanent army along with a permanent
diplomacy: the organization, if you like, of a permanent military-diplomatic apparatus with
the objective of keeping the plurality of states free from imperial absorption in such a way
that an equilibrium can be established between them without the production of imperial types
of unification across Europe." [totality/ mercantilist state is taken as given and objective
to be achieved]
"The state is not a cold monster; it is the correlative of a particular way of governing." (6)
That is to say a particular way of governing, which involves a "universal" an "ideal type"
(taken as given, and as objective to be realized), "the state," to which this particular way of
governing is correlated.
"First of all, I think there is a distinctive feature of this art of government organized in terms
of raison
d'Etat, which is important for understanding what comes after. This is that in its foreign
policy, let's say in its relations with other states, the state, or rather government according to
raison d'Etat, has a limited objective [no universal aspirations!, aot medieval times ->
body of the church] in comparison with the ultimate horizon, the project and desire of
most sovereigns and governments in the Middle Ages to occupy the imperial position with
regard to other states so that one will have a decisive role both in history and in the
theophany.
Raison d'Etat, on the other hand, accepts that every state has its interests and consequently
has to defend these interests, and to defend them absolutely, but the state's objective must not
be that of returning to the unifying position of a total and global empire at the end of time. It
must not dream that one day it will be the empire of the last day. [machiavell->bismarck]
Each state must limit its objectives, ensure its independence, and ensure that its forces are
such that it will never be in an inferior position with respect to the set of other countries, or to
its neighbors, or to the strongest of all the other countries (there are different theories of
European balance at this time, but that's not important here).
In any case, this external self-limitation is the distinctive feature of raison d'Etat as it
manifests itself in the formation of the military-diplomatic apparatuses of the seventeenth
century. From the Treaty of Westphalia to the Seven Years War, or to the revolutionary wars
that introduce a completely different dimension, military-diplomatic policy is organized by
reference to the principle of the state's self-limitation, to the principle of the necessary and
sufficient competition between different states." (6).
[Birth of biopolitics->] On the other hand, what is entailed by what we will now call internal
policy, by the police state? Well, it entails precisely an objective or set of objectives that
could be described as unlimited, [!] since for those who govern in the police state it is not
only a matter of taking into account and taking charge of the activity of groups and orders,
that is to say, of different types of individuals with their particular status, but also of taking

charge of activity at the most detailed, individual level. [biopolitics, taking charge of
activity at the most detailed, individual level]
All the great seventeenth and eighteenth century treatises of police that collate and try to
systematize the different regulations are in agreement on this and say explicitly: The object of
police is almost infinite. That is to say, when it is a question of an independent power facing
other powers, government according to raison d'Etat has limited objectives. But there is no
limit to the objectives of government when it is a question of managing public power that
has to regulate the behavior of subjects.
Competition between states is precisely the hinge connecting these limited and unlimited
objectives [SELF DEFENSE NIETZSCHE], because it is precisely so as to be able to enter
into competition with other states, that is to say, maintain an always uneven, competitive
equilibrium with other states, that government [has to regulate the life of] its subjects, to
regulate their economic activity, their production, the price [at which] they sell goods and the
price at which they buy them, and so on [ ... ]. The correlative of this limitation of the
international objective of government according to raison d'Etat, of this limitation in
international relations, is the absence
of a limit in the exercise of government in the police state. (7) [Inflection/autoimmunity]
The second remark I would like to make about the functioning of raison d'Etat in the
seventeenth century and at the start of the eighteenth century is that while there is no limit to
the internal objectives of government according to raison d'Etat, or of the police state, this
does not mean that there are no compensating mechanisms, or rather a number of positions
that form the basis for trying to establish a boundary or frontier to the unlimited objective
prescribed to the police state by raison d'Etat. [protests, religion, laws etc.] There were, of
course, a number of ways in which theology was called upon to fix limits to raison d'Etat, but
what I would like to emphasize is another principle of limitation at this time, and this is law.
The growth of royal power was also based on judicial institutions. It was as the keystone of a
state of justice, of a system of justice [ISA, alth.], doubled by a military system [RSA], that
the king gradually reduced the complex interplay of feudal powers.
Throughout the Middle Ages, judicial practice was a multiplier of royal power. Now when
this new governmental rationality develops in the sixteenth century, and especially from the
start of the seventeenth century, law provides_the basis for any one who wants to limit in one
way or another this indefinite extension of raison d'Etat that is becoming embodied in a
police state.
Legal theory and judicial institutions no longer serve as the multiplier, but rather as
the subtractor of royal power.
The law constituted by these fundamental laws thus appeared to be outside raison d'Etat and a
principle of its limitation.
[the law is opposed to, outside, a limit on, the raison d'etat (full policing of the
population).
Legal theory and judicial institutions no longer serve as the multiplier, but rather as
the subtractor of royal power. Thus, from the sixteenth century and throughout the

seventeenth' century we see the development of a series of problems, polemics, and battles
around, for example, fundamental laws of the realm, that jurists argue, against raison d'Etat,
cannot be called into question by governmental practice or raison d'Etat [natural law etc,
god given rights]. These fundamental laws exist, as it were, before the state, since they are
constitutive of the state, and so, some jurists say, the king, however absolute his power, must
not tamper with them. [circularity problem] [again:] the law constituted by these
fundamental laws thus appeared to be outside raison d'Etat and a principle of its limitation.
laws protect one against the power of the state.
-natural law, inalienable rights
-contract theory: "a contract where individuals enter into to constitute [elect] a sovereign
(Hobbes). it contains clauses to which he must abide, since it is precisely on completion of
this contract, and the clauses formulated in it, that the sovereign becomes sovereign.
In fact, law and the judicial institution intrinsic to the development or royal power now
become, as it were, external and excessive in relation to government exercised according to
raison d'Etat.
It is not surprising that all these problems of law are always formulated, in the first
place at least, by those opposed to the new system of raison d'Etat. In France, for example, it
is members of the parlements, protestants, and the nobility who take up the historicaljuridical aspect. In England it is the
bourgeoisie against the absolute monarchy of the Stuarts, and religious dissidents from the
start of the seventeenth century. In short, the opposition always makes a legal objection to
raison d'Etat and consequently uses
juridical reflection, legal rules, and legal authority against it.
In a word, let's say that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries public law
is oppositional,* although it is true that some theorists favorable towards royal power took up
the problem and tried to integrate questions of law; legal questioning, within raison d'Etat and
its justification.
[keyquote] Anyway, I think we should keep it in mind that even if it is true that raison
d'Etat formulated and manifested as the police state, embodied in the police state, has
unlimited objectives, it is also the case that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there
are constant attempts to limit raison d'Etat, and the principle or reason of this limitation is
found in juridical reason. But you can see that it is an external limitation. Moreover, the
jurists are
fully aware that their question of law is extrinsic to raison d'Etat insofar as this is precisely
that which exceeds the legal domain. [law that is external to legal domain / ethics vs.
morals]
External legal limits to the state, to raison d'Etat, means first of all that the limits one tries to
impose on raisond'Etat.are those that come from God, or those which were laid down once
and for all at the origin, or those
which were formulated in the distant past of history. Saying that they are extrinsic to raison
d'Etat also means that they function in a purely restrictive, dramatic way, [why not
prescriptive?] since basically the law will only object to raison d'Etat when the latter crosses
these legal limits at which point the law will be able to define the government as illegitimate,

to argue against its encroachments, and if necessary to release subjects from their duty of
obedience.
I would now like. to place myself around the middle of the eighteenth century-with the
qualification that will talk
about in a moment-when Walpole said: "quieta non movere" ("let sleeping dogs lie"). l think
it is around this time that we are forced to note an important transformation that in a general
way will be a characteristic feature of what could be called modem governmental reason. In
what does this transformation consist? Well, in a word, it consists in establishing a principle
of limitation that will no longer be extrinsic to the art of government, as was law in the
seventeenth century, [but] intrinsic to it: an internal regulation of governmental rationality.
What is this internal regulation in abstract and general terms? How can it be understood
before any precise and concrete historical form? What can an internal imitation of
governmental rationality be?
[cybernetics]
[inflection! les mots et les choses]
In the first place, it will be a de facto regulation, a de facto limitation. That is to say, it will
not be a legal limitation.
At any rate, to say that it is a de facto limitation means that if the government happens to
push aside this limitation and go beyond the bounds laid down for it, it will not thereby be
illegitimate, it will not have abandoned its own essence as it were, and it will not be deprived
of its basic rights. To say that there is a de facto limitation of governmental practice means
that a government that ignores this limitation will not be an illegitimate, usurping
government, but simply a clumsy, inadequate government that does not do the proper thing.
Internal regulation means thatthere really is a limitation that is general while being de facto,
that is to say, that, whatever happens, follows a relatlvely uniform line in terms of principles
valid at all times and in all circumstances. The problem is precisely one of defining this
general and de facto limit that government will have to impose on itself. [c.f.
entrepreneural self, government of the self]
No, the principle of this limitation is not to be sought in what is external to government, but
in what is internal to governmental practice; that is to say, in the objectives of government.
And this limitation will then appear as one of the means, and maybe the fundamental means,
of attaining precisely these objectives, [maakbare samenleving/ teleology of the modern
(scriptie)] To attain these objectives it may be necessary to limit governmental action.
Governmental reason does not have to respect these limits because they are limits laid down
once and for all somewhere outside, before, or around the state. Not at all. Governmental
reason will have to respect these inasmuch as it can calculate them on its own account in
terms of its objectives and [the] best means of achieving them.
Fourth, this de facto, general limitation, which is effectuated in terms of governmental
practice itself, will establish, of course, a division between what must be done and what it is
advisable not to do. It will mark out the limit of a governmental action, but this will not be
drawn in the subjects, the individuals-subjects directed by government. That is

to say, one will not try to determine a division within subjects between one part that is subject
to governmental action, and another that is definitively, once and for all, reserved for
freedom. In other words, this governmental reason does not divide subjects between an
absolutely reserved dimension of freedom and another dimension of submission which is
either consented to or imposed.
The governmental practice will itself establish a distinction (division) between what to
do and what not to do. (it will establish its limit). But this limit IS NOT the "free part"
of the subject!
This governmental reason does not divide subjects into a free, guaranteed part, and a
unfree, subjected part (consented or imposed/repression).
In fact, the division is not made within individuals, men, or subjects, but in the very domain
of governmental practice, or rather within governmental practice itself, between
the operations that can be carried out and those that cannot, between what to do and the
means to use on the one hand, and what not to do on the other. The problem, therefore, is not:
Where are the basic rights, and how do they separate the domain of fundamental freedom
from the domain of possible governmentality?
The dividing line is established between two sets of things that Bentham listed in one of his
most important texts (to which I will try to return}9 the division between the agenda and
the non-agenda, between what to do and what not to do.
Fifth, this limitation is therefore a de facto, general limitation, a limitationin terms of the
objectives of government that does not divide the subjects but the things to be done, and it is
not those who govern who,
in complete sovereignty and full reason, will decide on this internal limitation. Inasmuch as
the government of men is a practice which is not imposed by those who govern on those who
are governed, but a practice that fixes the definition and respective positions of the governed
and governors facing each other and in relation to each other, "internal regulation" means that
this limitation is not exactly imposed by either one side or the other, or at any rate not
globally, definitively, and totally, but by, I would say, transaction [relations of power], in the
very broad sense of the word, that is to say, "action between," that is to say, by a series of
conflicts, agreements, discussions, and reciprocal concessions: all episodes whose effect is
finally to establish a de facto, general, rational division between what
is to be done and what is not to be done in the practice of governing. (12)
[conflicts, agreements, discussion, debate, concession -> ideal of the state (establisment
of a de facto, rational division between what is to be done/pursued and not in the
practice of governing)]
Before giving this abstract description, I said that this fundamental transformation in the
relations between law and governmental practice, this emergence of an internallimitation of
governmental reason could be located roughly around the middle of the eighteenth century.
What permitted its emergence? How did it come about? Obviously, we should
take into account an entire, comprehensive transformation (I will come back to this, at least
partially; afterwards); but today I would just like to indicate the intellectual instrument, the

form of calculation and rationality that made possible the self-limitation of governmental
reason as a de facto, general self-regulation which is intrinsic to the operations of
government and can be the object of indefinite transactions. Well, once again, the intellectual
instrument, the type of calculation or form of rationality that made possible the self-limitation
of governmental reason was not the law. What is it, starting nom the middle of the
eighteenth century? Obviously, it is political economy. [ADAM SMITH!!]
First, unlikesixteenth and seventeenth century juridical thought, political economy was not
developed
outside raison d'Etat [Important! -> Skinner]. It was not developed against raison d'Etat and
in order to limit it, at least not in the first place. Rather, it was formed within the very
framework of the objectives set for the art of government by raison d'Etat, for what
objectives did political economy set itself? Well, it set itself the objective of the state's
enrichment. Its objective was the simultaneous, correlative, and suitably adjusted growth of
population on the one hand, and means of subsistence on the other.
Political economy offered to ensure suitable, adjusted, and always favorable competition
between states. It proposed precisely the maintenance of an equilibrium [!] between states
such that competition can take place. That is to say, it took up exactly the objectives of raison
-d'Etat and the police state that mercantilism and the European balance had tried to realize.
So, to start with, political economy lodges itself within the governmental reason of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and to that extent is not in the kind of external position
occupied by juridical thought.
SUBJECTs BECOME INTERNAL (not: rogue state vs. free subjects, but the interest of free
subjects constitute the goals of the state) <?
Second, political economy does not put itself forward as an external objection to raison d'Etat
and its political autonomy since-and this will be an historically important point-the first
political consequence of the first economic reflection to exist in the history of European
thought is precisely a consequence which goes completely against what the jurists [c.f.
discipline and punish] were after and concludes that total despotism is necessary. The first
political economy was, of course, that of the physiocrats, and you know that from the very
start of their economic analysis the physiocrats-I will come back to this - concluded that
political power must be a power without external limitation,nwithout external counterbalance,
and without any bounds other than those arising from itself, and this is what they called
despotism.
Third, on what does political economy reflect, what does it analyze? It is not something like
prior rights inscribed in human nature or in the history of a given society. Political economy
reflects on governmental practices themselves, and it does not question them to determine
whether or not they are legitimate in terms of right. It considers them in terms of their effects
rather than their origins, not by asking, for example, what authorizes a sovereign to raise
taxes, but by asking, quite simply: What will happen if, at a given moment, we raise a tax on
a particular category of persons
or a particular category of goods?
What matters is not whether or not this is legitimate-in terms of law; but what its effects are
and whether they are

negative. It is then that the tax in question will be said to be illegitimate Or, at any rate, to
have no raison d'ette. The economic question is always to be posed within the field of
governmental practice, not in terms of what may found it by right; but in terms-of its effects:
What are the real effects of the exercise of govemmentality? - Not: What original-rights can
found this governmentality? This is the third reason why political economy, in its reflection
and its new rationality, was able to find a place, if you like, within the governmental practice
and reason established in the previous epoch. (Birth of Biopolitics 15)
The fourth reason is that, in responding to this type of question, political economy revealed
the existence of phenomena, processes, and regularities that necessarily occur as a result of
intelligible mechanisms. [cybernetics] These intelligible and necessary mechanisms may, of
course, be impeded by the practices of some forms of governmentality. They may be
impeded, jammed, or obscured, but they cannot be avoided and it will not be possible to
suspend them totally and definitively. In any case, they will force a reappraisal of
governmental practice. In other words, political economy does not discover natural rights that
exist prior to the exercise of governmentality; it discovers a certain naturalness specific to the
practice of government itself. The objects of governmental action have a specific nature.
There is a nature specific to this governmental action itself and this is what political economy
will study. The notion* of nature will thus be transformed with the appearance of political
economy. For political economy, nature is not an original and reserved region on which
the exercise of power should not impinge, on pain of being illegitimate.
Nature is something that runs under, through, and in the exercise of govemm_ell't;tiity.
It is, if you like, its indisp~nsable hypodermis. It is the other face of something whose visible
face, visible for the governors, is
their own action. Their action has an underside, or rather, it has another face,and th~
oth~rfuc;;e of governmentality! its specific necessity, is precisely what political economy
studies. It is not background, but a permanent correlative. [again!] Thus,. the
fcoTl011'lstes explain, themovement of population to where wages are highest, for
example, is a law of nature; it is a law of nature that customs duty protecting the high price of
the means of subsistence will inevitably entail something like dearth.
In other words, there will be either success or failure; success or failure, rather than
legitimacy or illegitimacy, now
become the criteria of governmental action. So, success replaces [legitimacy].* We touch
here on the whole problem of utilitarian philosophy, which we will have to talk about. You
can see how utilitarian philosophywill be able to plug direg;ly into these new problems of
governmentality.
And the greatest evil of government, what makes it a bad government, is not that the prince is
wicked, but that he is ignorant [the left doesnt know how to run the economy!]. [will to
know/knowledge and power etc] In short, through political economy there is the
simultaneous entry into the art of government of, first, the possibility of self-limitation, that
is, of governmental action limiting itself by reference to the nature of what it does and of that
on which it is brought to bear, [and second, the question of truth].* The possibility
of limitation and the question of truth are both introduced into governmental reason
through political economy.

[classical balance, not too little not too much, prudence, homeostasis, harmonious
balance] So, with political economy we enter an age whose principle could be
this: A government is never sufficiently aware that it always risks governing too much, or, a
government never knows too well how to govern just enough. The principle of
maximum/minimum replaces the notion of equitable equilibrium, of 'equitable justice" that
previously organized the prince's wisdom. [?] With this question of self-limitation by the
principle of truth, I think political economy introduced a formidable wedge into the
unlimited presumption of the police state. This is evidently a crucial moment since it
[political economy] establishes, in its most important features, not of course the reign of
truth in politics, but a particular regime of truth which is a characteristic feature of what
could be called the age of politics and the basic apparatus of which is in fact still the
same today.
When I say regime of truth I do not mean that at this moment politics or the art of
government finally becomes rational. I do not mean that at this moment a sort of
epistemological threshold is reached on the basis of which the art of government could
become scientific. I mean that the moment I am presently trying to indicate is marked by the
articulation of a particular type of discourse and a set of practices, a discourse that, on the one
hand, constitutes these practices as a set bound together by an intelligible connection and, on
the other hand, legislates and can legislate on these practices in terms of true and false.(18)
[that italian guy at the conference]
[Method: universal/particular/cybernetics]
The question here is the same as the question I addressed with regard to madness, disease,
delinquency, and sexuality. In all of these cases, it is not a question of showing how these
objects were for a long time hidden before finally being discovered, nor of showing how all
these objects are only wicked illusions or ideological products to be dispelled
-in the [light]* of reason finally having reached its zenith. It was a matter of showing by what
conjunctions a whole set of practices-from the moment they become coordinated with a
regime of truth-was able to make what does not exist (madness, disease, delinquency,
sexuality, etcetera), nonetheless become something, something however that continues not to
exist. [<- hmmmm difficulty here!]
That is to say, what I would like to show is not how an error-when I say that which does not
exist becomes something, this does not mean showing how it was possible for an error to be
constructed- or how an illusion could be born, but how a particular regime of truth, and
therefore not an error, makes something that does not exist able to become something. It is
not an illusion since it is precisely a set of practices, real practices, which established it and
thus imperiously marks it out in reality..
The point of all these investigations concerning madness, disease, delinquency, sexuality, and
what I am talking about now, is to show how the coupling of a set of practices and a
regime of truth form an apparatus (dispositif) of knowledge-power that effectively

marks out in reality that which does not exist and legitimately submits it to the
division between true and false.
[HALLOO DIT IS HET!! the coupling of a set of practices ---> truth/ideal
type/norm/etc TOGETHER form an dispositif/apparatus, of knowledge-power [?] that
effectively marks out in reality that which does not exist! {empty signifier} {S1/Master
Signifier} and legitimatly submits it to the division between true and false {a true state,
a good citizen, a reasonable subject, a true sex}] SAME AS WITH LACAN/ZIZEK.
In the things I am presently concerned with, the moment when that which does not exist is
inscribed in reality, and when that which does not exist comes under a legitimate regime of
the true and false, marks the birth ofthis dissymmetrical bipolarity of politics and the
economy. Politics and the economy are not things that exist, or errors, or illusions,
or ideologies. They are things that do not exist and yet which are inscribed in reality and fall
under a regime of truth dividing the true and the false.
biopolitics -> POPULATION (JUST AS IN BIOLOGY)

"The general framework for the seminar wil be penality in nineteenth century France. The
precise point of the analysis will be the insertion of a discourse claiming scientific status
(medicine, psyhiatry, psychopathology, sociology) within a system - the penal system - which
previously was entirely prescriptive . . . So the point of the analysis will be this insertion; the
privileged material will be psychiatric expertise in penal matters and, finally, the aim of the
research will be to identify the function and assess the effect of a discourse of truth in the
discourse of law" (2)
I would
like to play: it will involve seeing whether the will to truth exercises a
role of exclusion in relation to discourseto some extent, and I mean
only to some extentanalogous to the possible role played by the contrast between madness
and reason, or by the system of prohibitions. In
other words, it will involve seeing whether the will to truth is not as
profoundly historical as any other system of exclusion; whether it is not
as arbitrary in its roots as they are; whether it is not as modifiable as
they are in the course of history; whether like them it is not dependent
upon and constantly reactivated by a whole institutional network; and
whether it does not form a system of constraint which is exercised not
only on other discourses, but on a whole series of other practices. In
short, it is a matter of seeing what real struggles and relations of domination are involved in
the will to truth. [hegemony/struggle/war]
Rector magnificus Dymph van den Boom, die uiteindelijk achter het katheder plaatsnam voor
haar openingsrede zei: Een blokkade is onacceptabel. We zijn niet tegen vrijheid van
meningsuiting, maar dat kan niet op deze manier.

Hoofdgast Geoffrey Boulton, emeritus-hoogleraar geologie aan de University of Edinburgh,

hield een mooie toespraak, al was het voor een halflege Aula. Hij leek het op te nemen voor
de demonstranten. Ik heb zelf aan twee kanten van de barricaden gestaan. Als student in de
jaren zestig en nu weer. Je kunt deze demonstranten wegzetten als stijfkoppige domoren,
maar je kunt ook blij zijn met de diepe betrokkenheid van deze jonge mensen.
Op de eerste dag van het nieuwe collegejaar verzuchtten verschillende aanwezigen in de Aula
er nu al geen zijn meer in te hebben. We beginnen weer van voren af aan, liet een decaan
weten. Een collega-decaan: Dit collegejaar begint niet goed. Weer een ander: Om hoeveel
demonstranten gaat het nu eigenlijk?. Een medewerker: De UvA wordt gegijzeld door een
clubje van dertig studenten. Weer een ander: Dit is geen feestelijke opening, genodigden
zijn belet om naar binnen te gaan. Dit voelt niet als democratie..
Wel waarschuwde ze voor misplaatst heimwee naar vroeger tijden. We mustnt go back in
time and cling onto nostalgia. We need to go forward, to the university of the 21st century.
"It is precisely because we talk about the game of even and odd and also of Newton in this
seminar that the techniques of psychoanalysis has a chance of not failling into despari, not to
say disrepute." (295)
[Algorithm] "Well, in the course of this game of even and odd, we wanted to remind
ourselves, us analyst, htat noting happens by chance, and also that something might come out
of it which might pertain to chance at its purest." (295)
A definite system, with definite rules, can create consequences that are pure chance
(chaos theory/algorithm)
"The result was amazing. In this audience of analysts, we encountered genuine indignation at
the thought that, as someone told me, I wanted to eliminate chance. In fact, the person who
told me this was someone with staunch determinist convictions. And that is what was
really frightening. This person was right - there is a close relation between the existence of
chance and the basis of determinism." [determinism is a reaction to chance?]
"Let us think about chance for a bit. What do we mean when we say something happens by
chance. We may mean one of two things, which may be very different - either that there is no
intention, or that there is a law. [we say, "it happened by chance", when we think there we
had no control over the consequence of our action, that what happened was not
what was intended; on the other hand, to say that some happened by chance, means that
it deviates from a norm/law/"the usual run of things" [?] - but i dont think this is
correct - I think lacan means here that there IS a law that "produces" chance, perhaps
the law of chance - wait, maybe it is the following: if i play a game of heads or tails, the
coin will fall on heads 50% of the time, and this "happens by chance"
(Kansberekening), that is, the law of chance gives us a precise prediction]
Now the very idea of determinism is that law is without intention [think Kant, think
Darwin]. That is indeed why the determinist theory always seeks to find out how something
which is constituted in the real, and which functions according to a law, is engendered,
starting off with something that is originally undifferentiated - chance as the absence of
intention.

Determinism means no intention - if there is no intention than determinism happens by

chance [if there is no god that intended the world, the world has come into being by
pure chance].
"To be sure, nothing happens without a cause, determinism tells us, but it is a cause without
an intention."
"This question opens up that of discovering the nature of that determinism which we analyst
take to be at the very root of our technique. We try to gt the subject to make available to us,
without any intention, his thoughts, as we say, his comments, his discourse, in other words
that he should intentionally get as close as possible to chance. What is the determinism here
sought after in a an intention of chance? it is on this point that cybernetics can throw some
light for us.
To understand what cybernetics is about, one must look for its origin in the theme, so crucial
for us, of the signification of chance. [foucault/contingency]. The past of cybernetics consist
in nothing more than the rationalized formation [Foucault: study of the rationalization of
governmental practice in the exercise of political sovereignty.] of what we will call, to
contrast them to the exact sciences, the conjectural sciences. [the sciences of contingency]
"Conjectural sciences, this, I think, is the real name which should from now on be given to a
specific group of scineces which are normally designated by the term human sciences. Not
that I think that this is an improper term to use, since, in truth, human action is involved in
any conjuncture. But I think it is too vague, too bound up with all kinds of confused echoes
from pseudo-initiatory sciences which can only lower its tension and level. We can only gain
by rendering our definition of the sciences of conjecture more rigorous and more specific."
(296)
Conjecture: an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete
information. synonyms: speculation, guesswork, surmise, fancy, presumption, assumption,
theory, postulation, supposition;
Conjectureal siences, as opposed to the exact sciences: are the exact sciences concerned with
the real?
The real is that what remains in its place, "something one always finds in the same place,
whether or not one has been there. . . The exact sciences are very closely tied to this function
of the real" (297).
PREMODERN: "Man thought that there were places which endured, but he also thought that
his action was concerned with the preservation of this order. For a long time man had the idea
that his rites, his ceremonies - the emperor opening the furrow of spring, the dances of spring,
guaranteeing the fertility of nature - his ordered and significant actions - action in the real
sense, that of speech - were indispensable to sustaining things in their place. He didn't think
that the real would vanish if he didn't participate in this ordered manner, but he thought that
the real would be disturbed. He did not pretend to lay down the law, he pretended to be
indispensable to the permanence of the law. An important definition, for in truth it entirely
safeguard the rigour of the existence of the real."

"The limit was crossed when man realised that his rites, his dance and his invocations didn't
really have anything to do with the order of things. Was he right or wrong? We haven't the
faintest idea. But what is certain is that we no longer have the old conviction. From that point
on, the perspective of the exact science was born.
"Everything which up until then had been the science of numbers becomes a combinatory
science. The more or less confused, accidental traversal of the world of symbols is organised
around the correlation of absence and presence. And the search for the laws of presence and
absence will tend towards the establishing of the binary order which leads to what we call
cybernetics."
"And it is not for nothing that game theory is concerned with all the function of our economic
life, the theory of coalitions, of monopolies, the theory of war. Yes, war itself, considered in
its aspect as game, detached from anythign which might be real. It is not for nothing that the
same word designates such diverse fields as wel as the game of chance. Now in the first
games I mentioned, what is involved is a relation of intersubjective coordination. Does man
make a call on something, does he look for something in the game of chance - and also in the
calculation he consecrates to it - whose semantic homophony shows that it must have some
relation with intersubjectivity, even though in the game of chance it seems to have been
eliminated? Here we come very close to the central question with which I began, namely what is the chance of the unconscious, which in some way lies behind man?" [invisible
hand / of the market; theory of mind].
It seems to have to do with a relation of intersubjective coordination [market/camel
example/unc.] But this is not all, something lies beyond the mere sum of individual
subject actions.
"I've told you how the entire movement of the theory converges on a binary symbol, on the
fact that anything can be written in terms of 0 and 1. What else is needed before what we call
cybernetics can appear in the world. It has to function in the real, independently of any
subjectivity. This science of empty places, of encounters in and of themselves has to be
combined, has to be totalised an has to start functioning all by itself."
"But in the end, the symbols always stayed where they were intended to be placed. Stuck in
this real, one might think that they were just its landmark. What's new is having permitted
them to fly with their own wings. And this has come about thanks to a simple, commonplace
apparatus, which anyone can use, an apparatus where all you need is to turn the handle, a
door. (zero and one, binary opposition,)
Please give this a thought - a door isn't entirely real. To take it for such would result in the
strange misunderstandings. If you observe a door, and you deduce from that it produces
draughts, you'd take it under your arm to the desert to cool you down.
"In its nature, the door belongs to the symbolic order, and it opens up either on to the real, or
the imaginary, we don't know quite which, but it is either one or the other. There is an
asymmetry between the opening and the closing - if the opening of the door controls acces,
when closed, it closes the circuit. The door is a real symbol, the symbol par excellence, that
symbol in which man's passing, through the cross it sketches, intersecting acces and closure,
can always be recognized.

"Through cybernetics, the symbol is embodied in an apparatus - with which it is not to be

confused, the apparatus being just its support. And it is embodied in it in a literally transsubjective way {!!!!!!!!!!}"
"the true meaning of the contribution of cybernetics, and in particular the notion of the
message"
"In cybernetics, the notion of the message has nothing in common with what we usually call a
message, which always has a meaning. THe cybernetic message is a sequence of signs. And a
sequence of signs always comes down to a series of 0s and 1s.
"In other words, within this perspective, syntax exist before semantics. Cybernetics is a
sience of syntax, and it is in a good position to help us perceive that the exact sciences do
nothing other than tie the real to syntax. So what is semantics, that is to say concrete
languages, those we deal iwht, with their ambiguities their emotional content, their human
meaning? are we going to say that semantics is peopled, furnished with the desire of men.
What is certain is that it is us who introduce meaning.
"At this point we come upon a precious fact reealed to us by cybernetics - there is something
int he symbolic fuciton of human discourse that cannot be eliminated, and that is the role of
the imaginary.
"It is therefore not entirely rigorous to say that it is human desire which, all by itself,
introduces meaning into htis primitive language. The proof of that is that nothing unexpected
comes out of the machine. That is to say, not so much what interests us, but what we
predicted. It stops just wher we have determind that it would stop, and tha's where a certain
result can be read. [As with our own stories, fantasies about ourselves and society] (305)

Why does the IS remain Small.

-Image
-Millenials
they do good work but:
- Het is een allegaartje

- Ze zijn the autoritair

DNU: Today the entrance of the aula, where the opening of the academic year would take
place, was blocked by students and teachers. You wonder; what is this? And why is there a
human blockade in front of this event? Starting last academic year, action groups have been
protesting in favour of democracy and transparency at the University of Amsterdam and
outside of it. This movement drew a lot of attention to itself and won its first victories after a
lot of demonstrations, occupations and other actions. The President of the Board of Directors
had to leave, for example, and two commissions are being set up to research the finances of
the UvA and give binding advice about its future governance structure. Because of grass roots
pressure the Board of Directors says it wants to keep focusing on reforming the UvA. In the
announcement of the opening this academic year the UvA states The question is not if the
university of the 21st century will be reformed. Rather, the question is by whom and
how. The guest list of todays event, which is stuffed with big names of managers, shows that
the directors think they already know the answer. We absolutely do not agree with them. The
New University sees the roles of managers and directors at the university as unnecessary and
undesirable. The new academic year shouldnt begin with an incestuous networking-event for
which average students, teachers and other workers dont even receive an invitation.
A first step should be a full stop of the like knows like appointment of directors and the
implementation of direct democracy at the university. But that isnt happening. Even though
the commissions havent even started working yet, the Supervisory Board started a procedure
to choose new members of the CvB and thereby completely disregarding the fact that the
results of the commissions were supposed to play a leading role in choosing new members of
the CvB. This shows that a proper reformation of the university will never come from those
that want to retain their positions of power. The reformation that the 21st century asks for can
only be formulated by consultation of students, teachers and of other staff. We blocked the
aula today because directors and managers do not fit in this image and because we dont want
the managers to be able to keep coopting our resistance. The blockade quickly confirmed that
change will not come from the board. While, the keynote speaker, Geoffrey Boulton, praised
our protest and offered a part of his timeslot the board ordered the security personnel to
intervene violently. After being denied to contribute a poem about the Maagdenhuis
occupation, even the Central Student Council was denied access to the event by security. The
managers were also not too keen on sharing their champagne: students were welcome at the
drinks afterwards. With this action we hope to be giving a clear answer to whos university
this is and who will actually change it. Return the university and society to students and
workers!

"De UvA moet weer decorum krijgen. Ik ben zelf geboren en getogen aan de UvA, ben een
UvA-man in hart en nieren, maar waarom moet hier altijd het beeld hangen dat het aan de
UvA een zootje is en dat de UvA daarom zo leuk is? Dat willen we niet meer. Een beetje een
zootje kan best, maar dit hoeft toch niet ten koste te gaan van de instelling of haar mensen?
Dat is met dergelijke acties wel het geval."

"Alle acties hebben de UvA tot een nog complexere organisatie gemaakt. Ik merk dat aan
gesprekken die ik of mijn collega-bestuurders voeren met Nederlandse Organisatie voor
Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), de Koninklijke Akademie voor Wetenschappen
(KNAW) of de VU. NWO wil bijvoorbeeld een grote investering doen op Science Park.
Daarvoor wil men samenwerken met andere universiteiten, waaronder de UvA. Maar NWO
vraagt ons op zon moment wel wat de handtekening van een UvA-bestuurder nog waard is."
Kunnen andere en rijkere faculteiten niet de tekorten van bijvoorbeeld
geesteswetenschappen voor hun rekening nemen?
Dat gebeurt al. Decaan Han van Dissel van de economiefaculteit betaalt een deel van de
rekening, maar ergens moet er een grens zitten aan de solidariteit. Stel dat we de bezuiniging
bij geesteswetenschappen zouden laten lopen, dan zegt de rest van de UvA: Als je maar
genoeg lawaai maakt, dan wordt er wel geluisterd. Dat kan gewoon niet.
"We should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects"
(Foucault, two lectures)
Judith Butler pointed out that the Foucaultian "body" as the site of resistance is none other
than the Freudian "psyche": paradoxically, "body" is Foucault's name for the psychic
apparatus insofar as it resists the soul's domination. That is to say, when, in his well-known
definition of the soul as the "prison of the body," Foucault turns around the standard PlatonicChristian definition of the body as the "prison of the soul," what he calls "body" is not simply
the biological body, but is effectively already caught into some kind of pre-subjective psychic
apparatus. [6] Consequently, don't we encounter in Kant a secret homologous inversion, only
in the opposite direction, of the relationship between body and soul: what Kant calls
"immortality of the soul" is effectively the immortality of the other, ethereal, "undead" body?
(zizek kant sade)
"My proble is essentially the definition of the implicit systems in which we find ourselves
prisoners; what I would like to grasp is the system of limits and exclusion which we practice
without knowing it; I would like to make the cultural unconscious apparent." Foucault Rituals of exclusion
Implicit systems in which we find ourselves prisoners [unconsious lacan]. systems of limits
and exclusion which we practice without knowing [pressuppostions of daily life]
cultural unconscious.
"The claim that a discourse "forms" the body is no simple one, and from the start we must
distinghuis how such "forming" is not the same as "causing" or "determining," still less is it a
notion that bodies are somehow made of discourse pure and simple." (84)
Foucault suggests that the prisoner is not regulated by an exterior relation of power, whereby
an institution takes a pregiven individual as the target of its subordinating aims. On the
contrary, the individual is formed or, rather, formulated through his discursively constituted
"identity" as prisoner. Subjections is, literally, the making of a subject, the principle of
regulation according to which a subject is formulated or produced. (84)

Such subjection is a kind of power that not only unilateraly acts on a given individual as a
form of domination, but also activates or forms the subject. [rituals of prison life, etc.]
Hence, subjection is neither simply the domination of a subject nor its production, but
designates a certain kind of restriction in production . . .
[not POWER --dominates---> pregiven individual, nor POWER --creates/puts
together---> subject. but subjection is: a limit/restriction/[some ideal] is constituted, a
restriction (one is not allowed to do as one pleases) IN production (production produces
by way of the restriction inherent in production) ---> /
cybernetics/feedback/homeostasis.
. . . a restriction without which the production of the subject cannot take place, a restriction
through which that production takes place. (84).

"My proble is essentially the definition of the implicit systems in which we find ourselves
prisoners; what I would like to grasp is the system of limits and exclusion which we practice
without knowing it; I would like to make the cultural unconscious apparent."
Wat willen we met de demonstratie
Open brief
"wij willen vrijheid." (dictator brood)
Gottfried Leibnitz (1714)

Monadology
Source: Monadology (1714). Etext at
http://www.uh.edu/~gbrown/philosophers/leibniz/ and Duncan's
Philosophical Works of Leibnitz version, both used. Complete.

1. The monad, of which we will speak here, is nothing else than a simple substance, which
goes to make up compounds; by simple, we mean without parts.
1. La Monade, dont nous parlons ici, nest autre chose quune substance simple, qui entre
dans les composs ; simple, cest--dire sans parties.

. 1. Die Monaden / [Funote] wovon wir allhier reden werden / sind nichts anders als
einfache Substanzen / woraus die zusammen gesetzten Dinge oder composita bestehen. Unter
dem Wort / einfach / verstehet man dasjenige / welches keine Teile hat.
- Leibniz starts with the monad. His first principle. Smallest possible thing. A substance
[Aristotle], whereof composita are made. composites are made of parts, the smallest
parts has itself not parts [badiou set theory].
---------

2. There must be simple substances because there are compound substances; for the
compound is nothing else than a collection or aggregatum of simple substances.
2. Et il faut quil y ait des substances simples, puisquil y a des composs ; car le compos
nest autre chose quun amas ou aggregatum des simples.
. 2. Es mssen dergleichen einfache Substanzen sein, weil composita vorhanden sind; denn
das Zusammengesetzte ist nichts anders als eine Menge oder ein Aggregat von einfachen
Substanzen.
- Because there are compound substances, there MUST BE simple substances (monads),
the compound is nothing that a collection of simples. Such simples
-----------------

3. Now, where there are no constituent parts there is possible neither extension, nor form, nor
divisibility. These monads are the true atoms of nature, and, in a word, the elements of things.
3. Or l o il ny a point de parties, il ny a ni tendue ni figure, ni divisibilit possible ; et ces
Monades sont les vritables atomes de la nature, et en un mot les lments des choses.
. 3. Wo nun keine Teile vorhanden sind / daselbst kann auch weder eine Ausdehnung in die
Lnge / Breite und Tiefe / noch eine Figur / noch eine Zerteilung mglich sein. Und diese
Monaden sind die wahrhaften Atomi der Natur und mit einem Worte / die Elemente derer
Dinge.
- if there are no Parts, Teile, then there is lengt, width, depth, no figures, and no division
[mathematics]. they are the true elements/atoms of things.
-----------

4. Their dissolution, therefore, is not to be feared and there is no way conceivable by which a
simple substance can perish through natural means.
4. II ny a aussi point de dissolution craindre, et il ny a aucune manire concevable par
laquelle une substance simple puisse prir naturellement.

. 4. Gleichergestalt ist auch bei denenselben keine dissolution zu befrchten; noch weniger
kann man sich eine Manier gedenken / nach welcher eine einfache Substanz natrlicher
Weise untergehen knnte.
- because there is no lengt, with, depht, no figures, and no division -> they cannot perish
(only compounds can perish - by division, composition etc).
--------------

5. For the same reason there is no way conceivable Eeby which a simple substance might,
through natural means, come into existence, since it can not be formed by composition.
5. Par la mme raison il ny en a aucune [=geen] par laquelle une substance simple puisse
commencer naturellement, puisquelle ne saurait tre forme par composition.
. 5. Um eben dieser Ursache willen kann man keine Art und Weise begreifen / wie eine
einfache Substanz natrlicher Weise einen Anfang nehmen knne; weil sie durch die
Zusammensetzung oder Composition nicht kann hervorgebracht werden.
- because there are no parts, there is no lwdfd, and because there is no lwdfd, we cannot
think of a way in which a simple (a monad) can come into existence by natural means
(i.e., composition of smaller parts, reproduction, evolution, entropy, composites come
into being by adding/subtracting simpler parts).
------------

6. We may say then, that the existence of monads can begin or end only all at once, that is to
say, the monad can begin only through creation and end only through annihilation.
Compounds, however, begin or end by parts.
6. Ainsi on peut dire que les Monades ne sauraient commencer ni finir que tout dun coup ;
cest--dire elles ne sauraient commencer que par cration et finir que par annihilation, au
lieu que ce qui est compos commence ou finit par parties.
. 6. Man kann also sagen / da die Monaden nicht anders anfangen oder aufhren knnen zu
sein was sie sind / als auf einmal oder in einem Augenblick / das ist / sie knnen nicht
entstehen als durch die Schpfung / und nicht untergehen als durch die vllige Zernichtung /
da hingegen dasjenige / welches aus andern Dingen zusammen gesetzet ist / vermge der
Teile einen Anfang oder Ende nimmt / wornach dieselben entweder zusammen gesetzet oder
von einander getrennet worden.
- the existence of monads can begin or end all at once [big bang] -> can only begin and
perish through creation and annihilation (ex nihilo). compounds -> entropy
------------

7. There is also no way of explaining how a monad can be altered or changed in its inner
being by any other created thing, since there is no possibility of transposition within it, nor
can we conceive of any internal movement which can be produced, directed, increased or
diminished within it, such as can take place in the case of compounds where a change can
occur among the parts. The monads have no windows through which anything may come in
or go out. The Attributes cannot detach themselves or go forth from the substances, as could
sensible species of the Schoolmen. In the same way neither substance nor attribute can enter
from without into a monad.
7. II ny a pas moyen aussi dexpliquer comment une Monade puisse tre altre ou change
dans son intrieur par quelque autre crature, puisquon ny saurait rien transposer, ni
concevoir en elle aucun mouvement interne qui puisse tre excit, dirig, augment ou
diminu l-dedans, comme cela se peut dans les composs ou il y a du changement entre les
parties. Les Monades nont point de fentres par lesquelles quelque chose y puisse entrer ou
sortir. Les accidents ne sauraient se dtacher ni se promener hors des substances comme
faisaient autrefois les espces sensibles des scolastiques. Ainsi, ni substance ni accident ne
peut entrer de dehors dans une Monade.
. 7. Es ist auch kein Mittel vorhanden / wodurch man zuerklren vermgend wre / wie eine
Monade in ihrem innerlichen Wesen durch eine andere Kreatur knnte alterieret oder
verndert werden; weil man in derselben nichts versetzen / noch einige innerliche Bewegung
begreifen kann / welche darinnen erreget / dirigieret / vermehret oder vermindert werden
knnte; gleichwie sich dieses in denen zusammengesetzten Dingen gedenken lt / allwo
unter denen Teilen eine Vernderung vorgehet. Die Monaden haben keine ffnungen /
wodurch etwas in dieselben hineintreten oder aus ihnen herausgehen knnte. Die Accidentia
knnen sich von denen Substanzen nicht absondern / noch aus denenselben heraus weichen /
dergleichen in vorigen Zeiten die Species sensibiles nach der Meinung der Scholastiker tun
konnten. Dahero ist weder eine Substanz / noch ein Accidens vermgend / von auen in eine
Monade hinein zutreten.
what are accidentia/accidents/attributes? qualities? qualities of the monad cannot be
seperated off of it. they are no detachable parts. the monad and its qualities are not a
compound. no substance, and no quality can "enter into" another monad. what is the
difference between monad and substance?

--------8. Still monads need to have some qualities, otherwise they would not even be existences.
And if simple substances did not differ at all in their qualities, there would be no means of
perceiving any change in things. Whatever is in a compound can come into it only through its
simple elements and the monads, if they were without qualities (since they do not differ at all
in quantity) would be indistinguishable one from another. For instance, if we imagine a
plenum or completely filled space, where each part receives only the equivalent of its own
previous motion, one state of things would not be distinguishable from another.

8. Cependant il faut que les Monades aient quelques qualits autrement ce ne serait pas mme
des tres. Et si les substances simples ne diffraient point par leurs qualits, il ny aurait point
de moyen de sapercevoir daucun changement dans les choses, puisque ce qui est dans le
compos ne peut venir que des ingrdients simples, et les Monades tant sans qualits
seraient indistinguables lune de lautre, puisque aussi bien elles ne diffrent point en
quantit ; et, par consquent, le plein tant suppos, chaque lieu ne recevrait toujours dans le
mouvement que lquivalent de ce quil avait, et un tat des choses serait indiscernable de
lautre.
. 8. Unterdessen mssen die Monaden gewisse Eigenschaften haben / denn sie sonst keine
Entia oder wrklichen Dinge wren. Und wenn die einfachen Substanzen in Ansehung ihrer
Eigenschaften nicht von einander unterschieden wren, so wrde kein Mittel vorhanden sein /
wodurch man in denen Dingen einige Vernderung wahrnehmen knnte; weil dasjenige /
welches in einem composito ist und vorgehet / nirgends anders als von denen in ihnen
befindlichen simplicibus herkommen kann; und wenn die Monaden keine Eigenschaften
htten / so wrde eine von der andern nicht unterschieden sein / zumal da man auch der
Gre oder Quantitt nach keinen Unterscheid unter ihnen antrifft; und folglich / wenn man
den mit andern Dingen angeflleten Raum supponieret / wrde ein jeder Ort bei entstehender
Bewegung allezeit nur ein aequivalent vor dasjenige / was er bereits gehabt und in sich
gefasset hat / bekommen; und solchergestalt wrde man keinen Zustand der Dinge von einem
andern Zustande derselben unterscheiden knnen.
-monads have qualities/properties because otherwise they could not exist, otherwise they
were not true things (otherwise they were all the same? since they do not differ in
quantity). If they had not had these properties, they could not be distinguished. But
these qualities/properties ARE NOT other parts (for it would be a compound).
-----------------

9. Each monad, indeed, must be different from every other monad. For there are never in
nature two beings which are exactly alike, and in which it is not possible to find a difference
either internal or based on an intrinsic property.
9. Il faut mme que chaque Monade soit diffrente de chaque autre ; car il ny a jamais dans
la nature deux tres qui soient parfaitement lun comme lautre, et o il ne soit possible de
trouver une diffrence interne ou fonde sur une dnomination intrinsque.
. 9. Es mu aber auch ein Unterscheid sein / den eine jedwede Monade von einer andern hat.
Denn es gibt niemals in der Natur zwei Dinge / deren eines vollkommen so beschaffen wre /
wie das andere / und allwo es nicht mglich wre / einen innerlichen Unterscheid / oder einen
solchen / welcher sich auf einen innerlichen Vorzug oder Herrschaft (dominatio) grndet /
zufinden.
- Every monad must be different from every other monad. two things cannot be alike.
----------

10. I assume it as admitted that every created being, and consequently the created monad, is
subject to change, and indeed that this change is continuous in each.
10. Je prends aussi pour accord que tout tre cr est sujet au changement, et par consquent
la Monade cre aussi, et mme que ce changement est continuel dans chacune.
. 10. Ich nehme auch / als etwas unstreitiges an / da ein jedwedes erschaffenes Wesen und
folglich auch die erschaffene Monade der Vernderung unterwrfig sei; ja da sotane
Vernderung in einer jeden auf eine unverrckte und ununterbrochene Weise fort daure.
- every created being, incl. monads, are subject change, always.
-------------

11. It follows from what has just been said, that the natural changes of the monad come from
an internal principle, because an external cause can have no influence on its inner being.
11. Il sensuit de ce que nous venons de dire, que les changements naturels des Monades
viennent dun principe interne ; puisquune cause externe ne saurait influer dans son
intrieur.
. 11. Es folget aus dem bereits beigebrachten Satze / da die natrlichen Vernderungen
derer Monaden von einem innerlichen Principio herrhren; weil eine uerliche Causa in ihr
Innerliches keinen Einflu haben kann. Und man kann berhaupt sagen / da die Kraft (vis)
nichts anders sei / als eben das Principium der Vernderungen.
- natural (?) changes of the monads come from an inner principle. [think also of god.
god is also a monad]
-------------

12. Now besides this principle of change there must also be in the monad a variety which
changes. This variety constitutes, so to speak, the specific nature and the variety of the simple
substances.
12. Mais, il faut aussi, quoutre le principe du changement il y ait un dtail de ce qui change,
qui fasse pour ainsi dire la spcification et la varit des substances simples.
. 12. Es mu aber auch auer diesem Grunde / woraus die Vernderungen erfolgen / noch
etwas mehreres / welches von einander unterschieden ist und sich verndert / in einer Monade
angetroffen werden / wodurch / so zu reden / die verschiedene und mannichfaltige Arten der
einfachen Substanzen entstehen.
- there must be a something IN a monad, that is changing, and from which the different
and multiple types of simple substances arise/entstehen/are made/come into being/are
constitutes. God is a monad, but God changes. Something in the monad changes (but it
is not a matter of adding and subtracting).
--------------

13. This variety must involve a multiplicity in the unity or in that which is simple. For since
every natural change takes place by degrees, there must be something which changes and
something which remains unchanged, and consequently there must be in the simple substance
a plurality of conditions and relations, even though it has no parts.
13. Ce dtail doit envelopper une multitude dans lunit ou dans le simple ; car tout
changement naturel se faisant par degrs, quelque chose change et quelque chose reste, et par
consquent il faut que dans la substance simple il y ait une pluralit daffections et de
rapports, quoiquil ny ait point de parties.
. 13. Dieses detail mu vieles in einem oder in dem einfachen in sich fassen. Denn da alle
natrliche Vernderung nach gewissen Graden geschiehet / so wird etwas verndert und
etwas bleibet brig; und folglich mssen viele Eigenschaften und Relationen in einer Monade
vorhanden sein / obgleich dieselbe gar keine Teile an sich hat.
This detail, (?) this "extra," this principle, has to have a multitude in unity, een veelheid
in een enkelheid zijn. multiplicity in unity, or in that what is is simple. But it cannot be a
multiplicity of compound parts. change implies: something which changes and
something which remains the same. There thus must be a multitude of properties and
relation WITHIN a monad, but which are NOT PARTS.
This is an important, but difficult concept: a multiplicity within a unity which is not a
unity composed of parts. Leibniz calls it perception. why?
------14. The passing condition which involves and represents a multiplicity in the unity, or in the
simple substance, is nothing else than what is called perception. This should be carefully
distinguished from apperception or consciousness, as will appear in what follows. In this
matter the Cartesians have fallen into a serious error, in that they deny the existence of those
perceptions of which we are not conscious. It is this also which has led them to believe that
spirits alone are monads and that there are no souls of animals or other entelechies
[soul/aristotle], and it has led them to make the common confusion between a protracted
period of unconsciousness and actual death. They have thus adopted the Scholastic error that
souls can exist entirely separated from bodies, and have even confirmed ill-balanced minds in
the belief that souls are mortal.
14. Ltat passager qui enveloppe et reprsente une multitude dans lunit ou dans la
substance simple nest autre chose que ce quon appelle la Perception, quon doit distinguer
de laperception ou de la conscience, comme il paratra dans la suite ; et cest en quoi les
cartsiens ont fort manqu, ayant compt pour rien les perceptions dont on ne saperoit pas.
Cest aussi ce qui les a fait croire que les seuls esprits taient des Monades, et quil ny avait
point dmes des btes ou dautres entlchies et quils ont confondu avec le vulgaire un long
tourdissement avec une mort la rigueur, ce qui les a fait encore donner dans le prjug
scolastique des mes entirement spares et a mme confirm les esprits mal tourns dans
lopinion de la mortalit des mes.

. 14. Der vernderliche Zustand / welcher eine Vielheit in dem einem oder in dem einfachen
in sich fasset und vorstellet / ist nichts anders als dasjenige / welches man die Empfindung
oder Perception nennet / die man von der Apperception oder von dem Bewut sein wohl
unterscheiden mu / wie solches aus dem folgenden erhellen wird. Und hierinnen haben die
Cartesianer sehr verfehlet / wann sie die Perceptiones oder Empfindungen / derer man sich
nicht bewut ist und welche man nicht wahrnimmet / vor nichts gehalten haben. Dieses hat
sie auch bewogen / zu glauben / da die Spiritus oder Geister alleine unter die Zahl der
Monaden gehreten / und da gar keine Seelen der unvernnftigen Tiere / oder andere
entelechiae wren; um eben dieser Ursache willen ist es geschehen / da sie einen Zustand /
da man lange sinnlos und ohne einzige Empfindung lieget / mit dem Tode / wenn er im
genauen Verstande genommen wird / nach der Meinung des gemeinen Haufens verwirret
haben / und ebenfalls in das Scholastische Vorurtheil von denen vllig Krper-losen Seelen
geraten sind / berdieses auch hierdurch die verkehrten und belgesetzten Gemter in der
Meinung bestrket haben / als wenn die Seelen sterblich wren.
- A passing condition (?), the variable state, the state in which a multiplicity/multitude in
a one/unity/simple is represented - the state that represents a multiplicity in a unity is
called perception/sensation. (god, humans, animals perhaps?). IT IS NOT
APPERCEPTION/consciousness.
Descartes seperates the two (multiplicity [extenstion] and the one [soul]). (?)
why exactly di?d the cartesians think that the soul was seperated from the body?
because multiplicity and unity were thought to be separate? what is the cartesian error
------------------15. The action of the internal principle which brings about the change or the passing from one
perception to another may be called appetition. It is true that the desire (l'appetit) is not
always able to attain to the whole of the perception which it strives for, but it always attains a
portion of it and reaches new perceptions.
15. Laction du principe interne, qui fait le changement ou le passage dune perception une
autre, peut tre appele Apptition : il est vrai que lapptit ne saurait toujours parvenir
entirement toute la perception o il tend, mais il en obtient toujours quelque chose, et
parvient des perceptions nouvelles.
. 15. Und die action oder die Ttigkeit des innerlichen principii, welches die Vernderung
oder den Fortgang von einer Perception zur andern verursachet / kann appetition oder die
Begierde genennet werden. Es kann zwar der appetit zu einer jedweden perception, wornach
er strebet / nicht allezeit vllig gelangen; er erhlt oder gewinnet aber doch allezeit etwas
davon / und gelanget zu gewissen neuen Perceptionen.
15. de aktivi streven
- Desire, appetition, appetite, love, striving, drive, conatus?, tendency, inclination,
impulse, begierde, drang, hunkering, hartstocht?. this is called the ACTION of the
internal principle. SO god also desires. is this [appetite] what causes change?
----------------

16. We, ourselves, experience a multiplicity in a simple substance, when we find that the
most trifling thought of which we are conscious involves a variety in the object. Therefore all
those who acknowledge that the soul is a simple substance ought to grant this multiplicity in
the monad, and Monsieur Bayle should have found no difficulty in it, as he has done in his
Dictionary, article Rorarius.
16. Nous exprimentons en nous-mmes une multitude dans la substance simple, lorsque
nous trouvons que la moindre pense dont nous nous apercevons, enveloppe une varit dans
lobjet. Ainsi, tous ceux qui reconnaissent que lme est une substance simple, doivent
reconnatre cette multitude dans la Monade ; et M. Bayle ne devait point y trouver de
difficult comme il a fait dans son Dictionnaire, article RORARIUS.
. 16. Die Erfahrung lehret uns selbst / da vielerlei Dinge in der einfachen Substanz an
getroffen werden / wenn wir befinden / da die geringste Gedanke / dessen wir uns bewut
sind / eine Mannichfaltigkeit in der Sache / welche darinnen vorgestellet und gleichsam
abgeschildert wird / in sich fasse. Dahero alle diejenigen / welche bekennen / da die Seele
eine einfache Substanz sei / auch diese Vielheit oder Mannigfaltigkeit in denen einfachen
Substanzen zugestehen mssen; wie dann Herr Bayle nicht Ursache hatte / hierinnen eine
Schwierigkeit zu finden / dergleichen er in seinem Dictionario unter dem Articul, Rorarius,
getan hat.
- we are a monad, that is, a multiplicity in unity. Der geringste Gedanke dessen wir uns
bewust sind, hat eine Mannigfaltigkeit in der Sache welche darinnen vorgestellet und
gleichsam abgeschildert wird in sich fasse. The most trifling Thought of which we are
conscious, has a a multiplicity in the thing/object , a multiplicity which is represented in
the thing, a representation, in turn, which is contained within the ting [?]
-----------------------

17. It must be confessed, however, that perception, and that which depends upon it, are
inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is to say, by figures and motions. Supposing that
there were a machine whose structure produced thought, sensation, and perception, we could
conceive of it as increased in size with the same proportions until one was able to enter into
its interior, as he would into a mill. Now, on going into it he would find only pieces working
upon one another, but never would he find anything to explain perception.
because it is veelheid in enkelvoud?
It is accordingly in the simple substance, and not in the compound nor in a machine that the
perception is to be sought. Furthermore, there is nothing besides perceptions and their
changes to be found in the simple substance. And it is in these alone that all the internal
activities of the simple substance can consist.
17. On est oblige dailleurs de confesser que la Perception, et ce qui en dpend, est
inexplicable par des raisons mcaniques, cest--dire par les figures et par les mouvements ;
et, feignant quil y ait une machine dont la structure fasse penser, sentir, avoir perception, on
pourra la concevoir agrandie en conservant les mmes proportions, en sorte quon y puisse

entrer comme dans un moulin. Et cela pos on ne trouvera, en le visitant au dedans, que des
pices qui se poussent les unes les autres, et jamais de quoi expliquer une perception. Ainsi,
cest dans la substance simple et non dans le compos ou dans la machine quil la faut
chercher. Aussi ny a-t-il que cela quon puisse trouver dans la substance simple, cest--dire
les perceptions et leurs changements. Cest en cela seul aussi que peuvent consister toutes les
actions internes des substances simples.
. 17. Man ist auerdem gentiget zu bekennen da die perception und dasjenige / was von
ihr dependieret / auf mechanische Weise / das ist / durch die Figuren und durch die
Bewegungen / nicht knne erklret werden. Und erdichteten Falls / da eine Machine wre /
aus deren Structur gewisse Gedanken / Empfindungen / Perceptionen erwchsen; so wird
man dieselbe denkende Machine sich concipieren knnen / als wenn sie ins groe nach
einerlei darinnen beobachteter Proportion gebracht worden sei / dergestalt da man in
dieselbe / wie in eine Mhle / zugehen vermgend wre. Wenn man nun dieses setzet / so
wird man bei ihrer innerlichen Besichtigung nichts als gewisse Stcke / deren eines an das
andere stosset / niemals aber etwas antreffen / woraus man eine Perception oder Empfindung
erklren knnte. Dahero mu man die Perception in der einfachen Substanz / und keines
weges in dem Composito oder in der Machine suchen. Man kann auch in denen einfachen
Substanzen nichts als dieses / nmlich die Empfindungen und ihre Vernderungen finden.
Auch hierinnen alleine knnen alle die innerlichen Actiones derer Monaden bestehen.
- perception must be sought in the simple substance. it is not a function or effect of
mechanics! perception cannot be explained trough hwdfd/extension. There is
NOTHING BESIDES perceptions and their changes to be found in the simple
substance.
- perception is not spatial (thing ----> representation ----> perceptor/empty container)
- the internal actions (desire/conatus/etc) of the simple substance can consist only in the
perceptions and changes. ?
--------------------

18. All simple substances or created monads may be called entelechies, because they have in
themselves a certain perfection. There is in them a sufficiency which makes them the source
of their internal activities, and renders them, so to speak, incorporeal Automatons.
18. On pourrait donner le nom dentlchies toutes les substances simples ou Monades
cres, car elles ont en elles une certaine perfection ( ), il y a une
suffisance ( ) qui les rend sources de leurs actions internes et pour ainsi dire des
automates incorporels.
. 18. Es knnten alle diese einfache Substanzen oder erschaffene Monaden / Entelechiae,
genennet werden. Denn sie besitzen eine gewisse Vollkommenheit in sich / (
) sie haben eine Suffisance, () oder dasjenige / was sie zur Vollziehung ihrer
Wrkungen ntig haben / und welches verursachet / da sie die Quelle ihrer innerlichen
Actionen und / so zu reden / unkrperliche automata sind.
----------------------------

19. If we wish to designate as soul everything which has perceptions and desires [internal
actions] in the general sense that I have just explained, all simple substances or created
monads could be called souls. But since feeling is something more than a mere perception I
think that the general name of monad or entelechy should suffice for simple substances which
have only perception, while we may reserve the term Soul for those whose perception is more
distinct and is accompanied by memory.
19. Si nous voulons appeler me tout ce qui a perceptions et apptits dans le sens gnral que
je viens dexpliquer, toutes les substances simples ou Monades cres pourraient tre
appeles mes ; mais, comme le sentiment est quelque chose de plus quune simple
perception, je consens que le nom gnral de Monades et dentlchies suffise aux substances
simples qui nauront que cela, et quon appelle mes seulement celles dont la perception est
plus distincte et accompagne de mmoire.
. 19. Wenn wir alles dasjenige / welches Perception und Appetit hat / nach dem jetzterklrten
allgemeinen Verstande eine Seele nennen wollen; so knnen alle einfache Substanzen oder
erschaffene Monaden Seelen genennet werden; gleichwie aber das sentiment oder der
Gedanke etwas mehr als eine bloe perception ist; so bin ich darinnen bereinstimmig / da
der allgemeine Name / (Monaden und Entelechiae) fr die einfachen Substanzen /welche nur
alleine die Empfindung haben / zureichend sei: und da man nur denenjenigen / deren
perception viel distincter oder deutlicher und mit Gedchtnis verknpft ist / den Namen /
Seele / beilege.
- entelechy is perception. perception plus desire is soul. soul is perception plus memory.
--------------------20. We experience in ourselves a state where we remember nothing and where we have no
distinct perception, as in periods of fainting, or when we are overcome by a profound,
dreamless sleep. In such a state the soul does not sensibly differ at all from a simple monad.
As this state, however, is not permanent and the soul can recover from it, the soul is
something more.
20. Car nous exprimentons en nous-mmes un tat o nous ne nous souvenons de rien et
navons aucune perception distingue, comme lorsque nous tombons en dfaillance ou quand
nous sommes accabls dun profond sommeil sans aucun songe. Dans cet tat lme ne
diffre point sensiblement dune simple Monade ; mais comme cet tat nest point durable et
quelle sen tire, elle est quelque chose de plus.
20. Denn wir nehmen durch die Erfahrung bei uns selbst einen Zustand wahr / worinnen wir
uns keiner Sache erinnern und da wir gar keine deutliche perception oder Vorstellung haben /
welches z. e. geschiehet / wenn wir in eine Ohnmacht sinken oder in einen sehr tiefen Schlaf
verfallen / darbei wir aber keinen Traum verspren. Bei diesen Umstnden findet man
zwischen der Seele und einer bloen Monade keinen merklichen Unterscheid; weil aber
dieser Zustand nicht fortdaurend ist und die Seele sich aus demselben wieder herausziehet /
so ist sie etwas mehr als eine bloe Monade.
in an interview, Bergman calls this death.
------------------------

21. Nevertheless it does not follow at all that the simple substance is in such a state without
perception. This is so because of the reasons given above; for it cannot perish, nor on the
other hand would it exist without some affection and the affection is nothing else than its
perception. When, however, there are a great number of weak perceptions where nothing
stands out distinctively, we are stunned; as when one turns around and around in the same
direction, a dizziness comes on, which makes him swoon and makes him able to distinguish
nothing. Among animals, death can occasion this state for quite a period.
21. Et il ne sensuit point qualors la substance simple soit sans aucune perception. Cela ne se
peut pas mme, par les raisons susdites ; car elle ne saurait prir, elle ne saurait aussi subsister
sans quelque affection, qui nest autre chose que sa perception ; mais quand il y a une grande
multitude de petites perceptions o il ny a rien de distingu, on est tourdi ; comme quand on
tourne continuellement dun mme sens plusieurs fois de suite, o il vient un vertige qui nous
peut faire vanouir et qui ne nous laisse rien distinguer. Et la mort peut donner cet tat pour
un temps aux animaux.
21. Es folget aber hieraus keines weges / da die einfache Substanz alsdenn ohne die
geringste perception sei. Dieses kann auch vermge der angefhrten Ursachen nicht anders
sein / denn sie weder vllig untergehen / noch in ihrem Wesen verbleiben kann / da nicht
auch zugleich eine gewisse Vernderung / welche nichts anders als ihre perception ist / in ihr
vorgehen sollte: wann aber eine groe Menge von kleinen Empfindungen / worunter man
keine von der andern unterscheiden kann /zusammen kommt; so wird man Sinn- und
Empfindungs-los / wie es dann geschiehet / da / wenn man sich vielmal hinter einander ohne
Absetzen herumdrehet / uns ein Schwindel berfllt / welcher verursachen kann / da uns die
Sinnen verschwinden und da wir nichts von einander distinguieren knnen. Und der Tod
kann die Tiere auf eine Zeitlang in einen solchen Zustand versetzen.
-------------------------------------------

22. Every present state of a simple substance is a natural consequence of its preceding state,
in such a way that its present is big with its future.
22. Et comme tout prsent tat dune substance simple est naturellement une suite de son tat
prcdent, tellement que le prsent y est gros de lavenir.
. 22/23. Und gleichwie ein jeder gegenwrtiger Zustand einer einfachen Substanz
natrlicher Weise eine Folge aus ihrem vorhergehenden Zustande ist / dergestalt da das
Gegenwrtige ein Inbegriff des knftigen ist; so mu man folglich / weil man nach der
berwindung eines dergleichen verwirrten und Sinn-losen Zustandes seine Empfindungen
und perceptionen wiederum wahrnimmet / dergleichen schon unmittelbar vorher gehabt
haben / ob man sich gleich derselben nicht bewut ist. Denn eine perception kann natrlicher
Weise nur aus einer andern perception entspringen / gleichwie eine Bewegung natrlicher
Weise nur aus einer andern Bewegung erwachsen kann.
-virtual (deleuze). present stat. het tegenwoordige heeft een begrip van het toekomstige
(want het huidige komt voort uit het voorgaande, en dus het toekomstige uit het heden.

-----------------------------------------------

23. Therefore, since on awakening after a period of unconsciousness we become conscious of

our perceptions, we must, without having been conscious of them, have had perceptions
immediately before; for one perception can come in a natural way only from another
perception, just as a motion can come in a natural way only from a motion.
23. Donc puisque, rveill de ltourdissement, on saperoit de ses perceptions, il faut bien
quon en ait eu immdiatement auparavant, quoiquon ne sen soit point aperu ; car une
perception ne saurait venir naturellement que dune autre perception, comme un mouvement
ne peut venir naturellement que dun mouvement.
. 22/23. Und gleichwie ein jeder gegenwrtiger Zustand einer einfachen Substanz
natrlicher Weise eine Folge aus ihrem vorhergehenden Zustande ist / dergestalt da das
Gegenwrtige ein Inbegriff des knftigen ist; so mu man folglich / weil man nach der
berwindung eines dergleichen verwirrten und Sinn-losen Zustandes seine Empfindungen
und perceptionen wiederum wahrnimmet / dergleichen schon unmittelbar vorher gehabt
haben / ob man sich gleich derselben nicht bewut ist. Denn eine perception kann natrlicher
Weise nur aus einer andern perception entspringen / gleichwie eine Bewegung natrlicher
Weise nur aus einer andern Bewegung erwachsen kann.
-------------------------------24. It is evident from this that if we were to have nothing distinctive, or so to speak
prominent., and of a higher flavour in our perceptions, we should be in a continual state of
stupor. This is the condition of monads which are wholly bare.
24. Lon voit par l que si nous navions rien de distingu, et pour ainsi dire de relev et dun
plus haut got dans nos perceptions, nous serions toujours dans ltourdissement. Et cest
ltat des Monades toutes nues.
. 23. Hieraus ersiehet man / da / wenn wir in unsern Empfindungen nichts von einander
unterscheiden und nichts finden knnen / welches / so zu reden / vor dem andern erhaben und
von einem hhern got wre / wir allezeit in dem Verwirrungsvollen Zustande sein wrden /
als worinnen sich die ganz bloen Monaden befinden.
-----------------25. We see that nature has given to animals heightened perception's, having provided them
with organs which collect numerous rays of light or numerous waves of air and thus make
them more effective in their combination. Something similar to this takes place in the case of
smell, in that of taste and of touch, and perhaps in many other senses which are unknown to
us. I shall have occasion very soon to explain how that which occurs in the soul represents
that which goes on in the sense organs.
25. Aussi voyons-nous que la nature a donn des perceptions releves aux animaux, par les
soins quelle a pris de leur fournir des organes qui ramassent plusieurs rayons de lumire ou
plusieurs ondulations de lair pour les faire avoir plus defficace par leur union. II y a quelque

chose dapprochant dans lodeur, dans le got et dans lattouchement, et peut-tre dans
quantit dautres sens qui nous sont inconnus. Et jexpliquerai tantt comment ce qui se passe
dans lme reprsente ce qui se fait dans les organes.
. 25. Wir nehmen auch wahr / da die Natur denen Tieren dergleichen perceptiones
gegeben / darunter eine vor der andern erhaben und kenntlich ist / und zwar vermge der
Sorgfalt / so sie erwiesen / da sie ihnen solche organa beigeleget hat / welche viele Strahlen
des Lichtes oder viele undulationes der Luft zusammen fassen / um sie dadurch in den Stand
zu setzen / da sie durch die Vereinigung der Strahlen und der undulationen einen desto
strkern und lebhaftern Eindruck von denen uerlichen in der Welt sich befindenden Dingen
empfangen mgen. Es ist auch etwas gleichfrmiges in dem Geruch / in dem Geschmack / in
dem Gefhle und vielleicht in vielen andern Sinnen / so uns bis dato unbekannt sind; und ich
werde bald erklren / wie dasjenige / so in der Seele vorgehet / dasjenige vorstellet / welches
sich in denen Gliedmaen der Sinnen eruget.
----------------26. The memory furnishes a sort of consecutiveness which imitates reason but is to be
distinguished from it. We see that animals when they have the perception of something which
they notice and. of which they have had a similar previous perception, are led by the
representation of their memory to expect that which was associated in the preceding
perception, and they come to have feelings like those which they had before. For instance, if
a stick be shown to a dog, he remembers the pain which it has caused him and he whines or
runs away.
26. La mmoire fournit une espce de conscution aux mes, qui imite la raison, mais qui en
doit tre distingue. Cest que nous voyons que les animaux ayant la perception de quelque
chose qui les frappe, et dont ils ont eu perception semblable auparavant, sattendent, par la
reprsentation de leur mmoire, ce qui y a t joint dans cette perception prcdente, et sont
ports des sentiments semblables ceux quils avaient pris alors. Par exemple, quand on
montre le bton aux chiens, ils se souviennent de la douleur quil leur a cause et crient et
fuient.
. 26. Das Gedchtnis gibt denen Seelen eine speciem consecutionis, das ist / einiges
Vermgen / sich den Erfolg der Dinge auf einander vorzustellen. Hierinnen ahmet das
Gedchtnis der Vernunft nach / welche aber von demselben mu unterschieden werden. Wir
erfahren / da die Tiere / bei vorfallender perception von einer Sache / die ihnen in die Sinne
fllt / und wovon sie vordeme bereits dergleichen Empfindung schon gehabt haben / kraft der
Vorstellung ihrer Memorie dasjenige erwarten / welches mit dieser vorhergehenden
perception ist verknpfet gewesen / und zugleich auf solche Vorstellungen geraten / welche
denen zu anderer Zeit gehabten sentimens hnlich sind. Wenn man z. e. denen Hunden den
Stock zeiget / so erinnern sie sich des Schmerzens / den sie hiervon vordem empfunden /
worauf sie zu schreien oder die Flucht zunehmen pflegen.
memory give a kind of con
-----------

-----------------------

27. The vividness of the picture, which comes to him or moves him, is derived either from the
magnitude or from the number of the previous perceptions. For, oftentimes, a strong
impression brings about, all at once, the same effect as a long-continued habit or as a great
many reiterated, moderate perceptions.
27. Et limagination forte qui les frappe et meut, vient ou de la grandeur ou de la multitude
des perceptions prcdentes ; car souvent une impression forte fait tout dun coup leffet
dune longue habitude ou de beaucoup de perceptions mdiocres ritres.
. 27. Und die heftige Einbildung oder imagination, welche in sie so lebhaftig wrket und sie
in eine Bewegung bringet / erwchset entweder aus der Strke oder Gre / oder aus der
Menge der vorhergehenden Empfindungen. Denn eine starke impression tut fters auf einmal
eben so viele Wrkung / als eine lange Gewohnheit oder viele mittelmige / anbei aber
oftmals wiederholte Empfindungen zu tun vermgend sind.
HABIT, Hume
-------------------

28. Men act in like manner as animals, in so far as the sequence of their perceptions is
determined only by the law of memory, resembling the empirical physicians who practice
simply, without any theory, and we are empiricists in three-fourths of our actions. For
instance, when we expect that there will be daylight tomorrow, we do so empirically, because
it has always happened so up to the present time. It is only the astronomer who uses his
reason in making such an affirmation.
28. Les hommes agissent comme les btes, en tant que les conscutions de leurs perceptions
ne se font que par le principe de la mmoire, ressemblant aux mdecins empiriques qui ont
une simple pratique sans thorie, et nous ne sommes quempiriques dans les trois quarts de
nos actions. Par exemple, quand on sattend quil y aura jour demain, on agit en empirique,
parce que cela sest toujours fait ainsi jusquici. II ny a que lastronome qui le juge par
raison.
. 28. Die Menschen agieren wie die ohne Vernunft lebende Tiere / in so weit ihre
perceptionen blo vermge des principii des Gedchtnisses auf einander erfolgen und sie sich
in ihren actionen darnach richten / wie die empirischen Medici, welche eine bloe praxin
ohne theorie haben; wie wir dann in drei vierteilen unserer Verrichtungen uns auf empirische
Art auffhren. Auf dergleichen Art geschiehet es / da wann man erwartet / da es morgen
Tag sein werde / man hierinnen empirisch handelt; weil dieses allezeit bishero so eingetroffen
hat. Es verfhret diesfalls keiner nach der Vernunft als ein Sternkundiger.
---------------

29. But the knowledge of eternal and necessary truths is that which distinguishes us from
mere animals and gives us reason and the sciences, thus raising us to a knowledge of
ourselves and of God. This is what is called in us the Rational Soul or the Mind.

29. Mais la connaissance des vrits ncessaires et ternelles est ce qui nous distingue des
simples animaux et nous fait avoir la Raison et les sciences, en nous levant la connaissance
de nous-mmes et de Dieu. Et cest ce quon appelle en nous me raisonnable ou esprit.
. 29. Die Einsicht aber derer schlechterdings notwendigen und ewigen Wahrheiten ist
dasjenige / welches uns von denen bloen Tieren unterscheidet und verursachet / da wir die
Vernunft und die Wissenschaften haben / indem sie uns zu der Erkenntnis GOttes und unserer
selbst fhret und erhebet. Und eben dieses ist es / welches man in uns Vernnftige Seele oder
Geist nennet.
------------30. It is also through the knowledge of necessary truths and through abstractions from them
that we come to perform Reflective Acts, which cause us to think of what is called the I, and
to decide that this or that is within us. it is thus, that in thinking upon ourselves we think of
being, of substance, of the simple and compound, of a material thing and of God himself,
conceiving that what is limited in us is in him without limits. These reflective acts furnish the
principal objects of our reasonings.
30. Cest aussi par la connaissance des vrits ncessaires et par leurs abstractions que nous
sommes levs aux actes rflexifs, qui nous font penser ce qui sappelle moi, et considrer
que ceci ou cela est en nous, et cest ainsi quen pensant nous, nous pensons ltre, la
substance, au simple ou au compos, limmatriel et Dieu mme, en concevant que ce qui
est born en nous, est en lui sans bornes. Et ces actes rflexifs fournissent les objets
principaux de nos raisonnements.
. 30. Eben durch die Erkenntnis der notwendigen Wahrheiten und durch ihre abstractionen
werden wir zu denen actibus reflexivis oder zu dem Nachdenken erhhet / wodurch wir in
Stand gesetzet werden / an dasjenige / welches man das Ich selbst nennet / zugedenken und
zu betrachten / da dieses oder jenes in uns ist: dahero geschiehet es / da / wenn wir an uns
gedenken / wir auch von dem Ente, von der Substanz / von dem Einfachen und von dem
zusammengesetzten / von dem unmateriellen und von GOTT selbsten Gedanken haben /
indem wir concipieren / da dasjenige / welches in uns umschrnket ist / in ihme ohne einzige
Umschrnkung angetroffen werde; und diese reflectiven Actus oder diese Krfte
nachzusinnen geben uns die Haupt-Objekte von unseren Vernunft-Schlssen an die Hand.
------------31. Our reasoning is based upon two great principles: first, that of contradiction, by means of
which we decide that to be false which involves contradiction and that to be true which
contradicts or is opposed to the false.
31. Nos raisonnements sont fonds sur deux grands principes, celui de la contradiction, en
vertu duquel nous jugeons faux ce qui en enveloppe, et vrai ce qui est oppose ou
contradictoire au faux.
. 30. Unsere Schlsse grnden sich auf zwei groe Haupt-Wahrheiten / worunter die eine
das Principium contradictionis oder der Satz des Widerspruchs ist / vermge dessen wir
urteilen / da dasjenige / welches etwas widersprechendes in sich fasset / falsch / hingegen
aber wahr sei / welches dem falschen gerade zuwider laufet oder entgegengesetzet ist.

a =/ non-a. wet van de non-contradictie

-----------------------

32. And second, the principle of sufficient reason, in virtue of which we believe that no fact
can be real or existing and no statement true unless it has a sufficient reason why it should be
thus and not otherwise. Most frequently, however, these reasons cannot be known by us.
32. Et celui de la raison suffisante, en vertu duquel nous considrons quaucun fait ne saurait
se trouver vrai ou existant, aucune nonciation vritable, sans quil y ait une raison suffisante
pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement, quoique ces raisons le plus souvent ne puissent
point nous tre connues.
. 31. Die andere Haupt-Wahrheit ist der Satz des zureichenden Grundes oder das Principium
rationis sufficientis, durch Hlfe dessen wir betrachten / da keine Begebenheit wahrhaftig
und wrklich vorhanden / kein Satz echt oder der Wahrheit gem sein kann, wo nicht ein
zureichender Grund sei / warum das Factum oder der Satz sich vielmehr so und nicht anders
verhalte; ob gleich diese Grnde uns sehr fters ganz und gar unbekannt sein knnen.
-------------------

33. There are also two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. The truths of
reasoning are necessary, and their opposite is impossible. Those of fact, however, are
contingent, and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, the reason can be found
by analysis in resolving it into simpler ideas and into simpler truths until we reach those
which are primary.
33. II y a aussi deux sortes de vrits, celles de raisonnement et celles de fait. Les vrits de
raisonnement sont ncessaires et leur oppos impossible, et celles de fait sont contingentes et
leur oppos est possible. Quand une vrit est ncessaire, on en peut trouver la raison par
lanalyse, la rsolvant en ides et en vrits plus simples, jusqu ce quon vienne aux
primitives.
. 32. Wann eine Wahrheit notwendig ist / so kann man hiervon die Raison durch die
Analysin finden / indem man sie in die allersimpelsten Ideen und Wahrheiten zergliederet /
bis man auf die allerersten Grund-Wahrheiten gelanget.
-------------

34. It is thus that with mathematicians the speculative theorems and the practical canons are
reduced by analysis to definitions, axioms, and postulates.
34. Cest ainsi que chez les mathmaticiens les thormes de spculation et les canons de
pratique sont rduits par lanalyse aux dfinitions, axiomes et demandes.

. 33. Dahero werden bei denen Mathematicis die Lehr-Stze / welche auf der bloen
Betrachtung des Verstandes beruhen und die praktischen Reguln nach der Analytischen
Methode in Definitiones, Axiomata, und Postulata zergliedert.
----------------

35. There are finally simple ideas of which no definition can be given. There are also the
axioms and postulates or, in a word, the primary principles which cannot be proved and,
indeed, have no need of proof. These are identical propositions whose opposites involve
express contradictions.
35. Et il y a enfin des ides simples dont on ne saurait donner la dfinition ; il y a aussi des
axiomes et demandes ou en un mot des principes primitifs, qui ne sauraient tre prouvs et
nen ont point besoin aussi, et ce sont les nonciations identiques, dont loppos contient une
contradiction expresse.
. 34. Es gibt endlich simpele Idee / wovon man keine Definition geben kann; und
gleichergestalt findet man Axiomata und Postulata, oder mit einem Worte / gewisse principia
primitiva oder Stamm- Wahrheiten / wovon man keinen Beweis geben kann / man auch
desselben nicht vonnten hat; und dieses sind die Identischen Stze.
------------------------

36. But there must be also a sufficient reason for contingent truths or truths of fact; that is to
say, for the sequence of the things which extend throughout the universe of created beings,
where the analysis into more particular reasons can be continued into greater detail without
limit because of the immense variety of the things in nature and because of the infinite
division of bodies. There is an infinity of figures and of movements, present and past, which
enter into the efficient cause of my present writing, and in its final cause there are an infinity
of slight tendencies and dispositions of my soul, present and past.
36. Mais la raison suffisante se doit aussi trouver dans les vrits contingentes ou de fait,
cest--dire dans la suite des choses rpandues par lunivers des cratures, o la rsolution en
raisons particulires pourrait aller un dtail sans bornes, cause de la varit immense des
choses de la nature et de la division des corps linfini. Il y a une infinit de figures et de
mouvements prsents et passs qui entrent dans la cause efficiente de mon criture prsente,
et il y a une infinit de petites inclinations et dispositions de mon me prsentes et passes
qui entrent dans la cause finale.
. 35. Man mu aber auch die Zulnglichkeit der Raison in denjenigen Wahrheiten / welche
auf zuflligen Umstnden oder auf gewissen Begebenheiten beruhen / das ist / in der Suite
oder in dem Zusammenhange derjenigen Dinge antreffen / welche sich in dem allgemeinen
Umfang der Geschpfe befinden / allwo die Zergliederung [ontleding] derer besonderen
Raisons so weit zurcke laufen kann / da man in derselben kein Ende und keine Schranken
wahrnimmet / weil die Mannigfaltigkeit der Dinge in der Natur unermelich und die
Zerteilung der Krper unendlich ist. Es sind unendliche Figuren und Bewegungen / wenn ich
so wohl die gegenwrtigen als vergangenen zusammen nehmen soll / welche sich in die
causam efficientem oder in die wrkende Ursache meiner vorhabenden Schrift vermischen

und ihren Einflu haben. Es gibt auch unendlich viele kleine Triebe und Neigungen meiner
Seele / welche so wohl gegenwrtig als vergangen sind / und welche in der Final-Ursache
dieses meines Aufsatzes zusammen laufen.
------------------------

37. And as all this detail again involves other and more detailed contingencies, each of which
again has need of a similar analysis in order to find its explanation, no real advance has been
made. Therefore, the sufficient or ultimate reason must needs be outside of the sequence or
series of these details of contingencies, however infinite they may be.
37. Et comme tout ce dtail nenveloppe que dautres contingents antrieurs ou plus dtaills,
dont chacun a encore besoin dune analyse semblable pour en rendre raison, on nen est pas
plus avanc, et il faut que la raison suffisante ou dernire soit hors de la suite ou sries de ce
dtail des contingences, quelque infini quil pourrait tre.
. 36. Und gleichwie diese ganze Zergliederung [ontlediging] nur andere zufllige Dinge in
sich fasset / welche vorhergehen oder sich noch mehr zergliedern lassen / und wovon eine
jede einer gleichmigen Analytic vonnten hat / wenn man von derselben Raison geben
will; so ist man in dieser Zergliederung noch nicht viel weiter / vielweniger gar zu Ende
gekommen. Es mu vielmehr die zulngliche oder allerletzte Raison auer der Suite oder
auer dem Zusammenhange dieser unter sich verschiedenen zuflligen Dinge / ihre
Zergliederung mag nun so unendlich fortgehen / wie sie immer wolle / befindlich sein

----------------38. It is thus that the ultimate reason for things must be a necessary substance, in which the
detail of the changes shall be present merely potentially, as in the fountainhead, and this
substance we call God.
38. Thus the final reason of things must be in a necessary substance, in which the
variety of particular changes exists only eminently, as in its source; and this
substance we call God. (Theod. 7.)
38. Et cest ainsi que la dernire raison des choses doit tre dans une substance ncessaire,
dans laquelle le dtail des changements ne soit quminemment, comme dans la source, et
cest ce que nous appelons Dieu.
. 37. Dahero mu die allerletzte Raison derer Dinge in einer schlechterdings notwendigen
Substanz verborgen sein / in welcher der Inbegriff so vieler unendlicher Vernderungen nur in
gradu eminenti, als in seiner Quelle liegen mu. Diese Substanz nennen wir Gott.
-------------------39. Now, since this substance is a sufficient reason for all the above mentioned details
(/varieties of particulars), which are linked together throughout, there is but one God, and
this God is sufficient.

39. Now as this substance is a sufficient reason of all this variety of particulars,
which are also connected together throughout; there is only one God, and this God is
sufficient.
39. Or, cette substance tant une raison suffisante de tout ce dtail lequel aussi est li partout,
il ny a quun Dieu, et ce Dieu suffit.
. 38. Da nun diese Substanz eine zureichende Raison ist von diesem ganzen Umfange /
worinnen die unendlich mannichfaltigen Dinge mit einander ohne Ausnahme und auf das
genaueste verknpfet sind; so ist nur ein einziger GOtt / und dieses Gttliche Wesen ist zu
allen diesen Dingen zureichend.
----------------------40. We may hold that the supreme substance, which is unique, universal and necessary with
nothing independent outside of it, which is further a pure sequence of possible being, must be
incapable of limitation and must contain as much reality as possible.
40. We may also hold that this supreme substance, which is unique, universal and
necessary, nothing outside of it being independent of it,- this substance, which is a
pure sequence of possible being, must be illimitable and must contain as much
reality as is possible.
40. On peut juger aussi que cette substance suprme, qui est unique, universelle et ncessaire,
nayant rien hors delle qui en soit indpendant, et tant une suite simple de ltre possible,
doit tre incapable de limites et contenir tout autant de ralits quil est possible.
. 39. Man kann auch urteilen / da / weil diese allerhchste / einzige / allgemeine und ewige
Substanz nichts auer sich hat / welches von ihr nicht dependieren sollte /und ber dieses
eine simpele Suite derer mglichen Dinge ist / da / sage ich / sotane Substanz auf alle Weise
unumschrnket sein und alle Realitten, so nur immer mglich sind / in sich fassen msse.
----------41. Whence it follows that God is absolutely perfect, perfection being understood as the
magnitude of positive reality in the strict sense, when the limitations or the bounds of those
things which have them are removed. There where there are no limits, that is to say, in God,
perfection is absolutely infinite.
41. Do il sensuit que Dieu est absolument parfait ; la perfection ntant autre chose que la
grandeur de la ralit positive prise prcisment, en mettant part les limites ou bornes dans
les choses qui en ont. Et l o il ny a point de bornes, cest--dire en Dieu, la perfection est
absolument infinie.
. 40. Woraus dann folget / da GOtt schlechterdings vollkommen sei; indem die
Vollkommenheit nichts anders als die Gre der positiven Realitt ist / wenn solche im
genauen Verstande genommen wird; in so weit man die Schranken / worinnen sich die andern
Dinge auer GOtt befinden / bei Seite setzet. Wo nun gar keine Schranken sind / wie wir
solches in Gott befinden /daselbst mu die Vollkommenheit schlechterdings unendlich sein.
----------------

42. It follows also that created things derive their perfections through the influence of God,
but their imperfections come from their own natures, which cannot exist without limits. It is
in this latter that they are distinguished from God. An example of this original imperfection of
created things is to be found in the natural inertia of bodies.
42. Il sensuit aussi que les cratures ont leurs perfections de linfluence de Dieu, mais
quelles ont leurs imperfections de leur nature propre, incapable dtre sans bornes, car cest
en cela quelles sont distingues de Dieu. Cette imperfection originale des cratures se
remarque dans linertie naturelle des corps.
. 41. Es folget auch / da die Geschpfe ihre Vollkommenheit von dem Einflu Gottes haben
/ und da hingegen ihre Unvollkommenheiten von ihrer eigenen Natur / welche nicht
unumschrnket sein kann / herstammen. Denn eben hierinnen bestehet der Unterscheid /
welcher zwischen GOtt und den Kreaturen ist.
------------------43. It is true, furthermore, that in God is found not only the source of existences, but also that
of essences, in so far as they are real. In other words, he is the source of whatever there is real
in the possible. This is because the Understanding of God is in the region of eternal truths or
of the ideas upon which they depend, and because without him there would be nothing real in
the possibilities of things, and not only would nothing be existent, nothing would be even
possible.
43. It is farther true that in God there is not only the source of existences but also
that of essences, in so far as they are real, that is to say, the source of what is real in
the possible. For the understanding of God is the region of eternal truths or of the
ideas on which they depend, and without Him there would be nothing real in the
possibilities of things, and not only would there be nothing in existence, but nothing
would even be possible. (Theod. 20.)
43. Il est vrai aussi quen Dieu est non seulement la source des existences, mais encore celle
des essences, en tant que relles ou de ce quil y a de rel dans la possibilit : cest parce que
lentendement de Dieu est la rgion des vrits ternelles ou des ides dont elles dpendent,
et que sans lui il ny aurait rien de rel dans les possibilits, et non seulement rien dexistant,
mais encore rien de possible.
. 42. Es ist aber auch wahr / da in GOtt nicht alleine die Quelle der Existenzen / sondern
auch der Ursprung derer Wesen / in so weit sie reell sind / oder der Brunnquell desjenigen /
welches in denen Mglichkeiten reell ist / verborgen sei; weil nmlich der Verstand Gottes
der unumschrnkte Umfang derer ewigen Wahrheiten oder derer Ideen ist / von welchen sie
dependieren / ber dieses auch ohne ihm nichts reelles in denen Mglichkeiten / und nicht
alleine nichts wrkliches oder existierendes / sondern auch nichts mgliches sein wrde.
--------------------------------44. For it must needs be that if there is a reality in essences or in possibilities or indeed in the
eternal 'truths, this reality is based upon something existent and actual, and, consequently, in

the existence of the necessary Being in whom essence includes existence or in whom
possibility is sufficient to produce actuality.
44. For if there is a reality in essences or possibilities, or rather in eternal truths, this
reality must needs be founded in something existing and actual, and consequently in
the existence of the necessary Being, in whom essence involves existence, or in
whom to be possible is to be actual. (Theod. 184-189, 335.)
44. Car il faut bien que sil y a une ralit dans les essences ou possibilits, ou bien dans les
vrits ternelles, cette ralit soit fonde en quelque chose dexistant et dactuel, et par
consquent dans lexistence de ltre ncessaire, dans lequel lessence renferme lexistence
ou dans lequel il suffit dtre possible pour tre actuel.
. 43. Denn es ist notwendig / da / wenn eine Realitt in denen Wesen oder Mglichkeiten /
oder auch in denen ewigen Wahrheiten angetroffen wird / diese Realitt in etwas / welches
wrklich vorhanden ist / und folglich in der Existenz des notwendigen Wesens gegrndet sei /
in welchem das Wesen die Wrklichkeit oder Existenz in sich fasset / oder in welchem es
genung ist / da eine Sache mglich sei / wenn sie wrklich soll hervor gebracht werden.
----------------------------45. Therefore God alone (or the Necessary Being) has this prerogative that if he be possible
he must necessarily exist, and, as nothing is able to prevent the possibility of that which
involves no bounds, no negation and consequently, no contradiction, this alone is sufficient to
establish a priori his existence. We have, therefore, proved his existence through the reality
of eternal truths. But a little while ago we also proved it a posteriori, because contingent
beings exist which can have their ultimate and sufficient reason only in the necessary being
which, in turn, has the reason for existence in itself.
45. Thus God alone (or the necessary Being) has this prerogative that He must
necessarily exist, if He is possible. And as nothing can interfere with the possibility of
that which involves no limits, no negation and consequently no contradiction, this
[His possibility] is sufficient of itself to make known the existence of God a priori. We
have thus proved it, through the reality of eternal truths. But a little while ago we
proved it also a posteriori, since there exist contingent beings, which can have their
final or sufficient reason only in the necessary Being, which has the reason of its
existence in itself.
45. Ainsi Dieu seul (ou ltre ncessaire) a ce privilge quil faut quil existe, sil est
possible. Et comme rien ne peut empcher la possibilit de ce qui nenferme aucune borne,
aucune ngation, et par consquent aucune contradiction, cela seul suffit pour connatre
lexistence de Dieu a priori. Nous lavons prouv aussi par la ralit des vrits ternelles.
Mais nous venons de la prouver aussi a posteriori, puisque des tres contingents existent,
lesquels ne sauraient avoir leur raison dernire ou suffisante que dans ltre ncessaire, qui a
la raison de son existence en lui-mme.
. 44. Also hat alleine GOtt oder das schlechterdings notwendige Wesen dieses Vorrecht / da
etwas / wenn es mglich ist / wrklich an das Licht hervor treten msse: Und gleichwie
nichts die Mglichkeit desjenigen / welches keine Schranken hat / keine Negation und
folglich keine Kontradiktion in sich fasset / verhindern kann; so ist dieses alleine zureichend

die Existenz und Wrklichkeit Gottes a priori zu erkennen / wie wir dann dieselbe auch aus
der Realitt der ewigen Wahrheiten erwiesen haben.
. 45. Hiervon kommen wir aber auf den Beweistum / wodurch sotane Existenz a posteriori
kann behauptet werden; weil wir wahrnehmen / da gewisse zufllige Dinge vorhanden sind /
welche ihren Haupt-Grund oder ihre zulngliche Raison nirgends anders als in dem
notwendigen und selbst-stndigen Wesen / so den Grund seiner Existenz in sich selbst
verborgen hat haben knnen.
-------------------------

46. Yet we must not think that the eternal truths being dependent upon God are therefore
arbitrary and depend upon his will, as Descartes seems to have held, and after him M. Poiret.
This is the case only with contingent truths which depend upon fitness or the choice of the
greatest good; necessarily truths on the other hand depend solely upon his understanding and
are the inner objects of it.
COMMON GOOD / CONTINGENT TRUTH!
46. We must not, however, imagine, as some do, that eternal truths, being
dependent on God, are arbitrary and depend on His will, as Descartes, and
afterwards M. Poiret, appear to have held. That is true only of contingent truths, of
which the principle is fitness [convenance] or choice of the best, whereas necessary
truths depend solely on His understanding and are its inner object. (Theod. 180-184,
185, 335, 351, 380.)
46. Cependant il ne faut point simaginer, avec quelques-uns, que les vrits ternelles, tant
dpendantes de Dieu, sont arbitraires et dpendent de sa volont, comme Descartes parat
lavoir pris, et puis M. Poiret. Cela nest vritable que des vrits contingentes dont le
principe est la convenance ou le choix du meilleur, au lieu que les vrits ncessaires
dpendent uniquement de son entendement et en sont lobjet interne.
. 46. Unterdessen mu man sich mit einigen nicht einbilden / da die ewigen Wahrheiten /
welche von GOtt dependieren / von seinem Willkr herkmen oder seinem Willen
unterwrfig wren / welche Meinung Cartesius und nach ihm Herr Poiret zu haben scheinet.
Dieses hat nur bei denen zuflligen Wahrheiten statt; dahingegen die schlechterdings
notwendigen Wahrheiten einzig und allein von seinem Verstande dependieren.
Contigent trug
------------------------

47. God alone is the ultimate unity or the original simple substance, of which all created or
derivative monads are the products, and arise, so to speak, through the continual outflashings
(fulgurations) of the divinity from moment to moment, limited by the receptivity of the
creature to whom limitation is an essential.

47. Thus God alone is the primary unity or original simple substance, of which all
created or derivative Monads are products and have their birth, so to speak, through
continual fulgurations of the Divinity from moment to moment, limited by the
receptivity of the created being, of whose essence it is to have limits. (Theod. 382391, 398, 395.)
47. Ainsi, Dieu seul est lunit primitive ou la substance simple originaire, dont toutes les
Monades cres ou drivatives sont des productions, et naissent, pour ainsi dire, par des
fulgurations continuelles de la Divinit de moment moment, bornes par la rceptivit de la
crature laquelle il est essentiel dtre limite.
-----------------------------48. In God are present: power, which is the source of everything; knowledge, which contains
the details of the ideas; and, finally, will, which changes or produces things in accordance
with the principle of the greatest good. To these correspond in the created monad, the subject
or basis, the faculty of perception, and the faculty of appetition. In God these attributes are
absolutely infinite or perfect, while in the created monads or in the entelechies
(perfectihabies, as Hermolaus Barbarus translates this word), they are imitations approaching
him in proportion to the perfection.
48. In God there is Power, which is the source of all, also Knowledge, whose content
is the variety of the ideas, and finally Will, which makes changes or products
according to the principle of the best. (Theod. 7, 149, 150.) These characteristics
correspond to what in the created Monads forms the ground or basis, to the faculty
of Perception and to the faculty of Appetition. But in God these attributes are
absolutely infinite or perfect; and in the created Monads or the Entelechies (or
perfectihabiae, as Hermolaus Barbarus translated the word) there are only imitations
of these attributes, according to the degree of perfection of the Monad. (Theod. 87.)
48. II y a en Dieu la Puissance, qui est la source de tout, puis la Connaissance, qui contient le
dtail des ides, et enfin la Volont, qui fait les changements ou productions selon le principe
du meilleur. Et cest ce qui rpond ce qui, dans les Monades cres, fait le sujet ou la base,
la facult perceptive et la facult apptitive. Mais en Dieu ces attributs sont absolument
infinis ou parfaits, et dans les Monades cres ou dans les Entlchies (ou perfectihabies,
comme Hermolas Barbarus traduisait ce mot) ce nen sont que des imitations mesure quil
y a de la perfection.
. 48. Es ist in GOtt die Macht / welche die Quelle von allem ist; hernach die Erkenntnis /
welche den vlligen Zusammenhang der Ideen in sich fasset; und endlich der Wille / welcher
die Vernderungen oder die Schpfungs-Werke nach denen Regeln der allerbesten und
ausbndigsten Ordnung hervorbringet.
. 49. Hierauf beruhet dasjenige / welches mit demjenigen berein kommet / so bei denen
erschaffenen monadibus das Fundament ausmachet und in facultate perceptiva et facultate
appetitiva bestehet. In Gott aber sind diese Eigenschaften schlechterdings unendlich und
vollkommen und in denen erschaffenen Monaden oder in denen Entelechiis (oder
Perfectihabiis, wie Hermolaus Barbarus dieses Wort bersetzte /) findet man nur eine
Nachahmung nach Proportion und nach dem Grad der Vollkommenheit / die sie besitzen.

--------------------49. A created thing is said to act outwardly in so far as it has perfection, and to be acted upon
by another in so far as it is imperfect. Thus action is attributed to the monad in so far as it has
distinct perceptions, and passion or passivity is attributed in so far as it has confused
perceptions.
49. La crature est dite agir au dehors en tant quelle a de la perfection, et ptir dune autre en
tant quelle est imparfaite. Ainsi lon attribue laction la Monade en tant quelle a des
perceptions distinctes et la passion en tant quelle en a de confuses.
. 50. Von denen Geschpfen saget man / da sie auer sich wrken / in so weit sie eine
gewisse Vollkommenheit haben / und da sie von einem andern Dinge etwas leiden / in so
weit sie unvollkommen sind. Also leget man der Monade die Action oder die Wrkung bei /
in so weit sie distincte oder deutliche Empfindungen hat / und die Passion oder die
Leidenschaft / in so weit die Perceptionen verwirret oder undeutlich sind.
-------------------50. One created thing is more perfect than another when we find in the first that which gives
an a priori reason for what occurs in the second. This why we say that one acts upon the
other.
50. Et une crature est plus parfaite quune autre en ce quon trouve en elle ce qui sert
rendre raison a priori de ce qui se passe dans lautre, et cest par l quon dit quelle agit sur
lautre.
. 51. Und eine Kreatur ist vollkommener als eine andere / in so weit man in ihr etwas
wahrnimmt / woraus man von demjenigen / welches in einer andern Sache vorgehet / a priori
Raison zugeben vermgend ist; und hierdurch saget man / da sie in eine andere Kreatur
wrke.
--------------------

51. In the case of simple substances, the influence which one monad has upon another is
only ideal. It can have its effect only through the mediation of God, in so far as in the ideas of
God each monad can rightly demand that God, in regulating the others from the beginning of
things, should have regarded it also. For since one created monad cannot have a physical
influence upon the inner being of another, it is only through the primal regulation that one can
have dependence upon another.
51. Mais dans les substances simples, ce nest quune influence idale dune monade sur
lautre, qui ne peut avoir son effet que par lintervention de Dieu, en tant que dans les ides
de Dieu une monade demande avec raison que Dieu en rglant les autres ds le
commencement des choses, ait regard elle. Car puisquune monade cre ne saurait avoir

une influence physique sur lintrieur de lautre, ce nest que par ce moyen que lune peut
avoir de la dpendance de lautre.
. 52. In denen simplen Substanzen aber ist nur ein ideeller Einflu einer Monade in die
andere / welcher nur durch die darzwischen kommende Beitretung Gottes seinen Effect tut /
in so weit eine Monade in denen Gttlichen Ideen mit Raison fordert / da Gott bei
anfnglicher Einrichtung derer Dinge sie in Betrachtung ziehe. Denn weil eine erschaffene
Monade keinen physikalischen Einflu in das Innere einer andern Monade haben kann; so ist
kein anderes Mittel als dieses vorhanden / warum eine von der andern eine Dependenz haben
kann.
-GOD as Big Other (lacan/zizek). ther is no real connection between subjects, but their
interrelation is mediated by an imagined (ideal) big other
-------------

52. It is thus that among created things action and passivity are reciprocal. For God, in
comparing two simple substances, finds in each one reasons obliging him to adapt the other
to it; and consequently what is active in certain respects is passive from another point of
view, active in so far as what we distinctly know in it serves to give a reason for what occurs
in another, and passive in so far as the reason for what occurs in it is found in what is
distinctly known in another.
52. Et cest par l quentre les cratures les actions et passions sont mutuelles. Car Dieu,
comparant deux substances simples, trouve en chacune des raisons qui lobligent y
accommoder lautre, et par consquent ce qui est actif certains gards, est passif suivant un
autre point de considration : actif en tant que ce quon connat distinctement en lui sert
rendre raison de ce qui se passe dans un autre, et passif en tant que la raison de ce qui se
passe en lui se trouve dans ce qui se connat distinctement dans un autre.
. 53. Dahero geschiehet es / da unter denen Geschpfen die Wrkungen und die
Leidenschaften mit einander abwechseln. Denn GOtt findet bei Vergleichung zweier
Monaden in einer jeden gewisse Bewegungs-Grnde / welche ihn veranlassen / eine andere
nach derselben zu accommodieren; und folglich kann dasjenige / welches bei einseitiger
Betrachtung wrkend ist / leidend sein / wenn es auf einer andern Seite angesehen und
erwogen wird; wrkend / in so weit dasjenige / welches man an einer Sache deutlich erkennet
/ darzu dienet / da man von demjenigen / welches in einem andern Dinge vorgehet / Raison
geben kann; und leidend / in so weit die Raison von demjenigen / welches in ihr sich eruget /
in demjenigen sich befindet / welches man distinct und deutlich in einer andern erkennet.
- Foucault power relations
-------------------53. Now as there are an infinity of possible universes in the ideas of God, and but one of
them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason' for the choice of God which determines him
to select one rather than another.
because of contigency (truths of fact)

53. Or, comme il y a une infinit dunivers possibles dans les ides de Dieu, et quil nen peut
exister quun seul, il faut quil y ait une raison suffisante du choix de Dieu qui le dtermine
lun plutt qu lautre.
. 54. Gleichwie nun in denen Ideen Gottes unendlich viele mgliche Welt-Gebude sich
vorstellen und abschildern / und nur eines davon existieren kann; so mu von der getroffenen
Wahl Gottes eine zulngliche Raison angetroffen werden / welche ihn mehr zu der
Hervorbringung des einen als zur sichtbaren Darstellung des andern determiniert hat.
--------------------------54. And this reason is to be found only in the fitness or in the degree of perfection which
these worlds possess, each possible thing having the right to claim existence in proportion to
the perfection which it involves.
54. Et cette raison ne peut se trouver que dans la convenance, dans les degrs de perfection
que ces mondes contiennent, chaque possible ayant droit de prtendre lexistence mesure
de la perfection quil enveloppe.
. 55. Und dieser Bewegungs-Grund kann sich nur in denen verschiedenen Graden der
Vollkommenheit / welche sotane Welt-Gebude in sich fassen / befinden; allermaen ein
jedwedes mgliches Ding das Recht hat / nach dem Ma der Vollkommenheit / so es in sich
begreifet / die Existenz zu fordern.
--------------------------55. This is the cause for the existence of the greatest good; namely, that the wisdom of God
permits him to know it, his goodness causes him to choose it, and his power enables him to
produce it.
55. Et cest ce qui est la cause de lexistence du meilleur que la sagesse fait connatre Dieu,
que sa bont le fait choisir, et que sa puissance le fait produire.
. 56. Warum aber die allerbeste und ausbndigste Ordnung existieret / davon findet man den
Grund in seiner Weisheit / welche ihn dieselbe hat erkennen lassen; in seiner Gte / welche
ihn zur Erwhlung derselben bewogen hat / und in seiner Macht / wodurch er vermgend
gewesen / solche aus dem Unsichtbaren an das Licht zu stellen.
--------------------

56. Now this interconnection, relationship, or this adaptation of all things to each particular
one, and of each one to all the rest, brings it about that every simple substance has relations
which express all the others and that it is consequently a perpetual living mirror of the
universe.
56. Or cette liaison ou cet accommodement de toutes les choses cres chacune, et de
chacune toutes les autres, fait que chaque substance simple a des rapports qui expriment
toutes les autres, et quelle est par consquent un miroir vivant perptuel de lunivers.

. 57. Da er nun alle erschaffene Dinge nach einem jedweden / und ein jedwedes nach allen
andern eingerichtet und verfasset hat / solches verursachet / da eine jede einfache Substanz
gewisse Relationen hat / durch welche alle die anderen Substanzen ausgedrucket und
abgebildet werden / und da sie folglich ein bestndiger lebendiger Spiegel des ganzen
groen Welt-Gebudes sei.
---------------------57. And as the same city regarded from different sides appears entirely different, and is, as it
were multiplied respectively, so, because of the infinite number of simple substances, there
are a similar infinite number of universes which are, nevertheless, only the aspects of a single
one as seen from the special point of view of each monad.
57. Et comme une mme ville regarde de diffrents cts parat tout autre et est comme
multiplie perspectivement, il arrive de mme que par la multitude infinie des substances
simples, il y a comme autant de diffrents univers qui ne sont pourtant que les perspectives
dun seul selon les diffrents points de vue de chaque monade.
. 58. Und gleichwie eine einzige Stadt / wann sie aus verschiedenen Gegenden angesehen
wird / ganz anders erscheinet / und gleichsam auf perspectivische Art verndert und
vervielfltiget wird; so geschiehet es auch / da durch die unendliche Menge der einfachen
Substanzen gleichsam eben so viele verschiedene Welt-Gebude zu sein scheinen / welche
doch nur so viele perspectivische Abrisse einer einzigen Welt sind / wornach sie von einer
jedweden Monade aus verschiedenen Stnden und Gegenden betrachtet und abgeschildert
wird.
------------------------------

58. Through this means has been obtained the greatest possible variety, together with the
greatest order that may be; that is to say, through this means has been obtained the greatest
possible perfection.
58. Et cest le moyen dobtenir autant de varit quil est possible, mais avec le plus grand
ordre qui se puisse, cest--dire cest le moyen dobtenir autant de perfection quil se peut.
. 59. Und dieses ist das Mittel / mit einer Welt so viele Mannigfaltigkeit und
Vernderungen / als nur immer mglich sind / zuerhalten / welches aber mit der allerhchsten
Ordnung / so nur kann gedacht werden / geschiehet; das ist / dieses ist das Mittel / eben so
viel Vollkommenheit / als nur mglich ist / bei der Erschaffung einer einzigen Welt zu
erreichen.
orde + variety
-------------------

59. This hypothesis, moreover, which I venture to call demonstrated, is the only one which
fittingly gives proper prominence to the greatness of God. M. Bayle recognised this when in
his dictionary (article Rorarius) he raised objections to it; indeed, he was inclined to believe
that I attributed too much to God, and more than it is possible to attribute to him: But he was
unable to bring forward any reason why this universal harmony which causes every substance
to express exactly all others through the relation which it has with them is impossible.
59. Aussi nest-ce que cette hypothse, que jose dire dmontre, qui relve comme il faut la
grandeur de Dieu ; cest ce que M. Bayle reconnut lorsque dans son Dictionnaire, article
Rorarius, il y fit des objections o mme il fut tent de croire que je donnais trop Dieu, et
plus quil nest possible. Mais il ne put allguer aucune raison pourquoi cette harmonie
universelle, qui fait que toute substance exprime exactement toutes les autres par les rapports
quelle y a, ft impossible.
. 60. Es ist auch keine andere Hypothesis als diese / (von welcher ich mich unterstehe zu
sagen / da sie demonstrativisch oder auf unumstliche Grnde gebauet sei /) welche die
Hoheit und Majestt Gottes nach Wrden erhebet; wie dann Herr Bayle dieses selbst
gestunde / da er in seinem Dictionnaire (unter dem Artikul / Rorarius,) wieder dieselbe
gewisse Einwrfe machte / allwo er auch zu glauben veranlasset wurde / da ich GOtt
allzuviel und mehr / als mglich wre / beilegte. Er kunte aber keinen Beweis-Grund
anfhren / warum diese Harmonie und Zusammenstimmung unmglich wre / welche
verursachet / da eine jedwede Substanz alle die brigen vermge der Relationen, so sie mit
ihnen hat / auf eine exacte Art ausdrucket und abschildert.
deze harmony die ervoor zorgt dat elke substantie precies alle uitdrukt door haar relaties,
-----------------------

60. Besides, in what has just been said can be seen the a priori reasons why things cannot be
otherwise than they are. It is because God, in ordering the whole, has had regard to every part
and in particular to each monad; and since the monad is by its very nature representative,
nothing can limit it to represent merely a part of things. It is nevertheless true that this
representation is, as regards the details of the whole universe, only a confused representation,
and is distinct only as regards a small part of them, that is to say, as regards those things
which are nearest or greatest in relation to each monad. If the representation were distinct as
to the details of the entire Universe, each monad would be a Deity. It is not in the object
represented that the monads are limited, but in the modifications of their knowledge of the
object. In a confused way they reach out to infinity or to the whole, but are limited and
differentiated in the degree of their distinct perceptions.
60. On voit dailleurs dans ce que je viens de rapporter, les raisons a priori pourquoi les
choses ne sauraient aller autrement : parce que Dieu, en rglant le tout, a eu gard chaque
partie, et particulirement chaque monade, dont la nature tant reprsentative, rien ne la
saurait borner ne reprsenter quune partie des choses ; quoiquil soit vrai que cette
reprsentation nest que confuse dans le dtail de tout lunivers et ne peut tre distincte que
dans une petite partie des choses, cest--dire dans celles qui sont ou les plus prochaines ou
les plus grandes par rapport chacune des monades ; autrement chaque monade serait une
divinit. Ce nest pas dans lobjet, mais dans la modification de la connaissance de lobjet

que les monades sont bornes. Elles vont toutes confusment linfini, au tout, mais elles
sont limites et distingues par les degrs des perceptions distinctes.
. 61. Uberdieses ersiehet man aus demjenigen welches ich aus denen a priori hergeleiteten
Beweis-Grnden bereits beigebracht habe / warum die Dinge nicht anders sein knnen. Weil
GOtt bei verfassung des ganzen Welt-Baues einen jeden Teil desselben und insonderheit eine
jede Monade / deren Natur repraesentativisch oder so beschaffen ist / da sie die Dinge in der
Welt abzuschildern fhig ist / in Betrachtung gezogen hat; so ist nichts vermgend / die
Monade dergestalt einzuschrnken / da sie nur einen Teil von denen existierenden Dingen
abschildern sollte; ob es gleich an dem ist / da diese Abschilderung in der Zergliederung des
ganzen Welt-Gebudes nur undeutlich oder verwirret und keineswegs deutlich oder distinct
sein kann / als nur in einem kleinen Teile derer Dinge / das ist / in denenjenigen / welche in
Absicht auf eine jedwede von denen Monaden entweder die nchsten / oder die allergrten
sind; allermaen sonst eine jede Monade eine Gottheit sein mte. Da die Monaden ihre
gewisse Schranken haben / solches kommet nicht von dem Objekt / sondern von der
Modification der Erkenntnis des Objekts her. Die Monaden streben alle auf eine undeutliche
Art nach dem unendlichen / sie sind aber nach den Graden der deutlichen Empfindungen oder
Perzeptionen eingeschrnket und von einander unterschieden.
---------------------

61. In this respect compounds are like simple substances, for all space is filled up; therefore,
all matter is connected. And in a plenum or filled space every movement has an effect upon
bodies in proportion to this distance, so that not only is every body affected by those which
are in contact with it and responds in some way to whatever happens to them, but also by
means of them the body responds to, those bodies adjoining them, and their
intercommunication reaches to any distance whatsoever. Consequently every body responds
to all that happens in the universe, so that h e who saw all could read in each one what is
happening everywhere, and even what has happened and what will happen. He can discover
in the present what is distant both as regards space and as regards time; "all things conspire"
as Hippocrates said. A soul can, however, read in itself only what is there represented
distinctly. It cannot all at once open up all its folds, because they extend to infinity.
61. Et les composs symbolisent en cela avec les simples. Car comme tout est plein, ce qui
rend toute la matire lie, et comme dans le plein tout mouvement fait quelque effet sur les
corps distants mesure de la distance, de sorte que chaque corps est affect non seulement
par ceux qui le touchent, et se ressent en quelque faon de tout ce qui leur arrive, mais aussi
par leur moyen se ressent de ceux qui touchent les premiers dont il est touch
immdiatement : il sensuit que cette communication va quelque distance que ce soit. Et par
consquent tout corps se ressent de tout ce qui se fait dans lunivers, tellement que celui qui
voit tout, pourrait lire dans chacun ce qui se fait partout, et mme ce qui sest fait ou se fera,
en remarquant dans le prsent ce qui est loign tant selon les temps que selon les lieux :
, disait Hippocrate. Mais une me ne peut lire en elle-mme que ce qui y est
reprsent distinctement ; elle ne saurait dvelopper tout dun coup ses replis, car ils vont
linfini.
. 62. Und die zusammengesetzten Dinge symbolisieren hierinnen mit denen simpeln
Substanzen. Denn gleichwie der ganze Raum angefllet ist / und folglich alle Materie an
einander hanget / ber dieses auch in dem angeflleten Raume eine jedwede Bewegung ihre

Wrkung in die entlegenen Krper nach Proportion der Weite dergestalt tut / da ein jeder
Krper nicht alleine von denjenigen / welche ihn berhren / afficieret wird / und dasjenige
was ihnen widerfhret / auf gewisse Art empfindet; sondern auch vermittelst derselben auch
auf gewisse Manier diejenigen fhlet / welche an die ersten Krper / wovon er unmittelbar
berhret wird / stoen; so folget daraus / da diese Kommunikation auf eine jede Distanz / sie
sei beschaffen wie sie wolle / sich erstrecke. Und folglich fhlen alle Krper dasjenige alles /
was in dem ganzen Welt-Gebude vorgehet / dergestalt da derjenige / welcher alles siehet /
in einem jedweden alle Vernderungen und Begebenheiten der Welt / und nicht alleine die
gegenwrtigen sondern auch die vergangenen und knftigen wrde lesen knnen; indem er in
dem gegenwrtigen dasjenige / welches so wohl der Zeit als denen Orten nach entfernet ist /
wahrnimmet. Hippocrates sagte: , alles stimmet mit einander berein; alleine
eine Seele kann in ihr selbst nur dasjenige lesen / was in ihr deutlich und erkenntlich
vorgestellet und abgebildet wird; sie kann nicht alles / was in ihr in einander gewickelt und
zusammen gezogen ist / auf einmal auseinander setzen / allermaen dasselbe unendlich
fortgehet.
------------------------

62. Thus although each created monad represents the whole universe, it represents more
distinctly the body which specially pertains to it and of which it constitutes the entelechy.
And as this body expresses all the universe through the interconnection of all matter in the
plenum, the soul also represents the whole universe in representing this body, which belongs
to it in a particular way.
62. Ainsi quoique chaque monade cre reprsente tout lunivers, elle reprsente plus
distinctement le corps qui lui est affect particulirement et dont elle fait lEntlchie : et
comme ce corps exprime tout lunivers par la connexion de toute la matire dans le plein,
lme reprsente aussi tout lunivers en reprsentant ce corps qui lui appartient dune manire
particulire.
. 63. Obgleich also eine jedwede erschaffene Monade das ganze Welt-Gebude abschildert;
so repraesentieret sie doch viel deutlicher denjenigen Krper / von welchem sie insbesondere
afficieret wird / und dessen entelechia sie ist. Und gleich wie dieser Krper das ganze WeltGebude vermge der Verknpfung aller in dem angeflleten Raume befindlichen Materie
ausdrucket; so schildert auch die Seele das ganze Welt-Gebude ab / indem sie diesen
Krper / welcher ihr auf eine so besondere Manier zugehret / abschildert.
-------------------63. The body belonging to a monad, which is its entelechy or soul, constitutes together with
the entelechy what may be called a rising being, and with a soul what is called an animal.
Now this body of a living being or of an animal is always organic, because every monad is a
mirror of the universe is regulated with perfect order there must needs be order also in what
represents it, that is to say in the perceptions of the soul and consequently in the body through
which the, universe is represented in the soul.
63. Le corps appartenant une Monade qui en est lEntlchie ou lme, constitue avec
lentlchie ce quon peut appeler un vivant, et avec lme ce quon appelle un animal. Or, ce
corps dun vivant ou dun animal est toujours organique ; car toute monade tant un miroir de
lunivers sa mode, et lunivers tant rgl dans un ordre parfait, il faut quil y ait aussi un

ordre dans le reprsentant, cest--dire dans les perceptions de lme, et par consquent dans
le corps, suivant lequel lunivers y est reprsent.
. 64. Der Krper welcher einer Monade beigeleget ist / und dessen Entelechie oder Seele sie
ausmachet / constituieret mit der Entelechie dasjenige / welches man ein lebendiges Wesen
nennen kann / und mit der Seele dasjenige / welches man ein Tier nennet.
. 65. Nun ist aber dieser Krper eines lebendigen Wesens oder eines Tieres allezeit
organisch; denn da eine jede Monade nach ihrer Art ein Spiegel des ganzen Welt-Gebudes
ist / berdieses auch die Welt nach einer vollkommenen und ausbndigen Ordnung verfasset
ist; so mu auch eine Ordnung in demjenigen sein / welches dasselbe abschildert / das ist / es
mu eine Ordnung in denen Perceptionen der Seele und folglich in dem Krper sein / nach
welchem das Welt-Gebude in derselben vorgestellet und ausgedrucket ist.
-------------

64. Therefore every organic body of a living being is a kind of divine machine or natural
automaton, infinitely surpassing all artificial automatons. Because a machine constructed by
man's skill is not a machine in each of its parts; for instance, the teeth of a brass wheel have
parts or bits which to us are not artificial products and contain nothing in themselves to show
the use to which the wheel was destined in the machine. The machines of nature, however,
that is to say, living bodies, are still machines in their smallest parts ad infinitum. Such is the
difference between nature and art, that is to say, between divine art and ours.
64. Ainsi, chaque corps organique dun vivant est une espce de machine divine ou un
automate naturel qui surpasse infiniment tous les automates artificiels. Parce quune machine
faite par lart de lhomme nest pas machine dans chacune de ses parties ; par exemple la dent
dune roue de laiton a des parties ou fragments qui ne sont plus quelque chose dartificiel et
nont plus rien qui marque de la machine par rapport lusage o la roue tait destine. Mais
les machines de la nature, cest--dire les corps vivants, sont encore machines dans leurs
moindres parties jusqu linfini. Cest ce qui fait la diffrence entre la nature et lart, cest-dire entre lart divin et le ntre.
. 66. Dahero ein jedweder organischer Krper eines lebendigen Wesens eine Art von denen
Gttlichen Machinen oder natrlichen automatibus ist / welche alle knstliche Automata
unendlich bersteiget; allermaen eine durch menschliche Kunst verfertigte Machine in allen
ihren Teilen mechanisch ist. Zum Exempel: die Zhne an einem eisernen Rade haben gewisse
Teile oder Stcke / welche in Ansehung unserer nicht weiter etwas knstliches sind / und
nichts mehr in sich fassen / welches in Absicht auf den Gebrauch / worzu das Rad bestimmt
ist / etwas mechanisches anzeiget. Alleine die Machinen der Natur / das ist / die lebendigen
Krper sind auch unendlich fort gewisse Machinen in ihren geringsten Teilgen. Wodurch der
Unterscheid / welcher zwischen der Natur und der Kunst / das ist / zwischen denen
Gttlichen und Menschlichen Kunst-Werken ist / bestimmt wird.
-------------------------

65. The author of nature has been able to employ this divine and infinitely marvellous
artifice, because each portion of matter is not only, as the ancients recognised, infinitely

divisible, but also because it is really divided without end, every part into other parts, each
one of which has its own proper motion. Otherwise it would be impossible for each portion of
matter to express all the universe.
65. Et lauteur de la nature a pu pratiquer cet artifice divin et infiniment merveilleux, parce
que chaque portion de la matire nest pas seulement divisible linfini, comme les anciens
ont reconnu, mais encore sous-divise actuellement sans fin, chaque partie en parties, dont
chacune a quelque mouvement propre ; autrement il serait impossible que chaque portion de
la matire pt exprimer lunivers.
. 67. Und der Urheber der Natur hat dieses gttliche und unendliche Wunder in sich
fassende Kunst-Stcke ausben knnen / weil eine jedwede Portion der Materie nicht alleine
unendlicher Weise teilbar ist / wie solches die Alten erkannt haben / sondern auch ein
jedweder Teil wrklich ohne Ende in andere Teile / deren jeder eine eigene Bewegung hat /
wieder aufs neue eingeteilet ist; denn es sonst unmglich wre / da eine jede Portion von der
Materie das ganze Welt-Gebude ausdrucken knnte.
---------------

66. Whence we see that there is a world of created things, of living beings, of animals, of
entelechies, of souls, in the minutest particle of matter.
66. Par o lon voit quil y a un monde de cratures, de vivants, danimaux, dentlchies,
dmes dans la moindre partie de la matire.
. 68. Woraus man ersiehet / da in der geringsten Portion der Materie eine Welt von
Geschpfen / von lebendigen Wesen / von Tieren und Seelen befindlich sein msse.
----------------

67. Every portion of matter may be conceived as like a garden full of plants and like a pond
full of fish. But every branch of a plant, every member of an animal, and every drop of the
fluids within it, is also such a garden or such a pond.
67. Chaque portion de la matire peut tre conue comme un jardin plein de plantes et
comme un tang plein de poissons. Mais chaque rameau de la plante, chaque membre de
lanimal, chaque goutte de ses humeurs est encore un tel jardin ou un tel tang.
. 69. Eine jedwede Portion der Materie kann als ein Garten voller Pflanzen und Bume und
als ein Teich voller Fische concipieret werden. Alleine ein jeder Ast von einem Baume / ein
jedwedes Glied von einem Tiere / ein jedweder Tropfen von seinen humoribus ist ebener
maen dergleichen Garten oder ein solcher Teich.
-----------68. And although the ground and air which lies between the plants of the garden, and the
water which is between the fish in the pond, are not themselves plants or fish, yet they
nevertheless contain these, usually so small however as to be imperceptible to us.

68. Et quoique la terre et lair intercepts entre les plantes du jardin, ou leau intercepte entre
les poissons de ltang, ne soit point plante ni poisson, ils en contiennent pourtant encore,
mais le plus souvent dune subtilit nous imperceptible.
. 70. Und obgleich die zwischen die Pflanzen eines Gartens tretende Erde und Luft / oder
das zwischen denen Fischen eines Teiches befindliche Wasser / weder Pflanze noch Fisch ist /
so fasset doch sotane Erde / Luft und Wasser ebener maen dergleichen Kreaturen in sich /
welche aber sehr fters von einer unkenntlichen und unvermerklichen Subtilitt sind.
--------------------69. There is, therefore, nothing uncultivated, or sterile or dead in the universe, no chaos, no
confusion, save in appearance; somewhat as a pond would appear at a distance when we
could see in it a confused movement, and so to speak, a swarming of the fish, without
however discerning the fish themselves.
69. Ainsi il ny a rien dinculte, de strile, de mort dans lunivers, point de chaos, point de
confusion quen apparence ; peu prs comme il en paratrait dans un tang une distance
dans laquelle on verrait un mouvement confus et un grouillement pour ainsi dire de poissons
de ltang sans discerner les poissons mmes.
. 71. Also ist nichts unangebauetes / nichts des / nichts unfruchtbares / nichts todes in dem
ganzen Welt-Gebude; es ist darinnen kein wster Klumpen / keine Verwirrung als nur dem
uerlichen Scheine nach. Es hat hiermit bei nahe eben die Bewandtnis / als wie uns ein
Teich vorkommen wrde / wenn wir ihn nach einer gewissen Distanz betrachteten / nach
welcher man eine undeutliche und verwirrte Bewegung und / so zu reden / ein unordentliches
Wimmeln derer Teich-Fische erblicken wrde / ohne da man die Fische selbst von einander
zu unterscheiden vermgend wre.
----------------leger, is geen monade. Een molen is een samenstelling.
als een molen een molen wil zijn, moet alles op zijn plek blijven.
hard onderscheidt natuur en fictieve. materiaal.
materialiteit.

70. It is evident, then, that every living body has a dominating entelechy, which in animals is
the soul. The parts, however, of this living body are full of other living beings, plants and
animals, which in turn have each one its entelechy or dominating soul.
70. On voit par l que chaque corps vivant a une entlchie dominante qui est lme dans
lanimal ; mais les membres de ce corps vivant sont pleins dautres vivants, plantes, animaux,
dont chacun a encore son entlchie ou son me dominante.
. 72. Man ersiehet hieraus / da ein jedweder lebendiger Krper mit einer gewissen und die
Oberhand in demselben habenden Entelechie begabt sei / welche die Seele in dem Tiere ist;

die Gliedmaen aber von diesem lebendigen Krper sind voller anderer lebendigen
Geschpfe / voller Pflanzen / voller Tiere / wovon ein jedwedes ebenermaen seine
Entelechie oder herrschende Seele hat.
------------------------

71. This does not mean, as some who have misunderstood my thought have imagined, that
each soul has a quantity or portion of matter appropriated to it or attached to itself for ever,
and that it consequently owns other inferior living beings destined to serve it always; because
all bodies are in a state of perpetual flux like rivers, and the parts are continually entering in
or passing out.
71. Mais il ne faut point simaginer avec quelques-uns qui avaient mal pris ma pense, que
chaque me a une masse ou portion de la matire propre ou affecte elle pour toujours, et
quelle possde par consquent dautres vivants infrieurs destins toujours son service. Car
tous les corps sont dans un flux perptuel comme des rivires, et des parties y entrent et en
sortent continuellement.
. 73. Man mu sich aber mit einigen / welche meine Gedanken bel gefasset haben / nicht
einbilden / da eine jedwede Seele eine gewisse Massam oder Portion von der Materie /
welche ihr allezeit eigentmlich und so zu reden anklebend wre / an sich habe und da sie
folglich andere geringere und zu ihrem bestndigen Dienste gewidmete lebendige Dinge
besitze. Denn alle Krper sind / wie Strme / in einem stetigen Ab- und Zuflusse / allwo ohne
Unterla gewisse Teile hineinflieen / gewisse aber heraus treten.
----------------------------

72. The soul, therefore, changes its body only gradually and by degrees, so that it is never
deprived all at once of all its organs. There is frequently a metamorphosis in animals, but
never metempsychosis or a transmigration of souls. Neither are there souls wholly separate
from bodies, nor bodiless spirits. God alone is without body.
72. Ainsi lme ne change de corps que peu peu et par degrs, de sorte quelle nest jamais
dpouille tout dun coup de tous ses organes, et il y a souvent mtamorphose dans les
animaux, mais jamais mtempsychose ni transmigration des mes : il ny a pas non plus
dmes tout fait spares ni de Gnies sans corps. Dieu seul en est dtach entirement.
. 74. Also verndert die Seele ihren Krper nur nach und nach und stufenweise / dergestalt
da sie niemals auf einmal aller ihrer organorum entblet und beraubet wird; wie dann
fters in denen Tieren eine Metamorphosis oder Vernderung der Forme / niemals aber weder
eine Metempsychosis noch transmigration der Seelen vorgehet / noch weniger auch Seelen
angetroffen werden / welche von aller Materie durchgngig abgesondert wren.
-----------------------73. This is also why there is never absolute generation or perfect death in the strict sense,
consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call generation is
development and growth, and what we call death is envelopment and diminution.

73. Cest ce qui fait aussi quil ny a jamais ni gnration entire, ni mort parfaite prise la
rigueur, consistant dans la sparation de lme. Et ce que nous appelons Gnrations sont des
dveloppements et des accroissements, comme ce que nous appelons Morts sont des
enveloppements et diminutions.
. 75. Eben dieses verursacht auch / da niemals eine vllige Generation, noch ein
vollkommener Tod / wann beides genau genommen wird / in der Natur vorgehen knne. Und
dasjenige was wir die Zeugung zu nennen pflegen / ist nichts anders als eine Evolution
[Funote] und ein Wachstum; gleichwie hingegen dasjenige / welches man den Tod heiet /
eine gewisse Art der Involution [Funote] und der Abnahme oder Verminderung ist.
----------------

74. Philosophers have been much perplexed in accounting for the origin of forms,
entelechies, or souls. Today, however, when it has been learned through careful investigations
made in plant, insect and animal life, that the organic bodies of nature are never the product
of chaos or putrefaction, but always come from seeds in which there was without doubt some
preformation, it has been decided that not only is the organic body already present before
conception, but also a soul in this body, in a word, the animal itself; and it has been decided
that, by means of conception the animal is merely made ready for a great transformation, so
as to become an animal of another sort. We can see cases somewhat similar outside of
generation when grubs become flies and caterpillars butterflies.
74. Les philosophes ont t fort embarrasss sur lorigine des formes, Entlchies ou mes ;
mais aujourdhui, lorsquon sest aperu par des recherches exactes, faites sur les plantes, les
insectes et les animaux, que les corps organiques de la nature ne sont jamais produits dun
chaos ou dune putrfaction, mais toujours par des semences, dans lesquelles il y avait sans
doute quelque prformation, on a jug que non seulement le corps organique y tait dj
avant la conception, mais encore une me dans ce corps, et, en un mot, lanimal mme, et que
par le moyen de la conception cet animal a t seulement dispos une grande transformation
pour devenir un animal dune autre espce. On voit mme quelque chose dapprochant hors
de la gnration, comme lorsque les vers deviennent mouches et que les chenilles deviennent
papillons.
. 76. Die Weltweisen sind in der Untersuchung der formarum, der Entelechien oder Seelen
sehr verwirret worden; da man aber heutiges Tages durch sorgfltige und genaue
Nachforschung / so man ber die Pflanzen / Insecten und Tiere angestellet / wahr genommen
hat / da diese organische Krper der Natur niemals aus einem wsten und umgeformten
Klumpen / oder aus einer Fulnis / sondern allezeit aus gewissen Samen / in welchem ohne
Zweifel die Formen der Pflanzen / der Tiere / der Insecten vorhero bereits verborgen liegen /
hervorgebracht und gezeuget wrden; so hat man geurteilet / da nicht alleine der organische
Krper schon vor der Conception darinnen wre / sondern auch eine Seele in diesem Krper
und mit einem Worte / das Animal selbst angetroffen werde; und da vermittelst der
Conception dieses Tier zu einer groen transformation nur sei geschickt gemacht worden /
um dadurch ein Tier von einer andern Art zu werden. Man verspret auch auer der
Generation etwas gleichfrmiges / als wenn zum Exempel aus denen Wrmern gewisse
Fliegen / und aus denen Raupen Schmetterlinge hervorkommen.
-------------------------

75. These little animals, some of which by conception become large animals' may be called
spermatic. Those among them which remain in their species, that is to say, the greater part,
are born, multiply, and are destroyed, like the larger animals. There are only a few chosen
ones which come out upon a greater stage.
75. Les animaux, dont quelques-uns sont levs au degr des plus grands animaux par le
moyen de la conception, peuvent tre appels spermatiques ; mais ceux dentre eux qui
demeurent dans leur espce, cest--dire la plupart, naissent, se multiplient et sont dtruits
comme les grands animaux, et il ny a quun petit nombre dlus qui passe un plus grand
thtre.
. 77. Die Tiere / worunter einige zu dem Grad der grten Tiere durch das Mittel der
Conception elevieret werden / kann man spermatische nennen. Aus denenjenigen aber /
welche in ihrer Art oder Gattung verbleiben / sind einige / die geboren werden / sich
vervielfltigen und wieder verfallen wie die groen Tiere; und es gibt nur eine kleine Anzahl
von denjenigen / welche zu Folge einer gewissen Absonderung oder Wahl auf einen weit
grern Schau-Platz treten.
------------76. This, however, is only half the truth. I believe, therefore, that if the animal never actually
commences by natural means, no more does it by natural means come to an end. Not only is
there no generation, but also there is no entire destruction or absolute death. These
reasonings, carried on a posteriori and drawn from experience, accord perfectly with the
principles which I have above deduced a priori.
76. Mais ce ntait que la moiti de la vrit : jai donc jug que si lanimal ne commence
jamais naturellement, il ne finit pas naturellement non plus ; et que non seulement il ny aura
point de gnration, mais encore point de destruction entire ni mort prise la rigueur. Et ces
raisonnements faits a posteriori et tirs des expriences, saccordent parfaitement avec mes
principes dduits a priori comme ci-dessus.
. 78. Dieses aber wre nur die Hlfte von der Wahrheit / welche wir allhier zu befestigen
suchen: dahero habe ich geurteilet / da wenn die Tiere niemals natrlicher Weise ihren
Anfang nehmen / sie auch ebener maen niemals natrlicher Weise ihr Ende nehmen; und
da nicht alleine keine Generation, sondern auch weder eine vllige Destruction, noch ein
Tod sein knne / wenn er im genauen Verstande genommen wird. Und diese VernunftSchlsse / welche a posteriori gemacht und aus denen Erfahrungen hergeleitet werden /
stimmen mit meinen oben beigebrachten und a priori behaupteten Grund-Wahrheiten
vollkommen berein.
------------------

77. Therefore we may say that not only the soul (the mirror of the indestructible universe) is
indestructible, but also the animal itself is, although its mechanism is frequently destroyed in
parts and although it puts off and takes on organic coatings.
77. Ainsi on peut dire que non seulement lme, miroir dun univers indestructible, est
indestructible, mais encore lanimal mme, quoique sa machine prisse souvent en partie et
quitte ou prenne des dpouilles organiques.
. 79. Also kann man sagen / da nicht alleine die Seele / welche ein Spiegel des
unverderblichen und unzuzernichtenden Welt-Gebudes ist / ebenfalls dem Untergange nicht
unterwrfig sei / sondern da auch das Tier selbst diese Eigenschaft habe / obgleich seine
Machine sich fters zerteilet / verfllet und untergehet; und ob es gleich gewisse organische
Kleider entweder ableget oder wieder an sich nimmet.
--------------------78. These principles have furnished me the means of explaining on natural grounds the union,
or rather the conformity between the soul and the organic body. The soul follows its own
laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws. They are fitted to each other in virtue of the
preestablished harmony between all substances since they are all representations of one and
the same universe.
78. Ces principes mont donn moyen dexpliquer naturellement lunion ou bien la
conformit de lme et du corps organique. Lme suit ses propres lois et le corps aussi les
siennes, et ils se rencontrent en vertu de lharmonie prtablie entre toutes les substances,
puisquelles sont toutes des reprsentations dun mme univers.
. 80. Diese Principia haben mir das Mittel an die Hand gegeben / wodurch man die
Vereinigung oder bereinstimmung der Seele mit dem Krper natrlicher Weise erklren
kann. Die Seele folget ihren eigenen Gesetzen / und der Krper ebener gestalt denen
seinigen; und beide treffen zusammen kraft der Harmonie / welche unter allen Substanzen
voraus festgestellet ist / allermaen sie durchgngig gewisse Abrisse von einerlei WeltGebude sind.
-----------79. Souls act in accordance with the laws of final causes through their desires, ends and
means. Bodies act in accordance with the laws of efficient causes or of motion. The two
realms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, are in harmony, each with the other.
79. Les mes agissent selon les lois des causes finales par apptitions, fins et moyens. Les
corps agissent selon les lois des causes efficientes ou des mouvements. Et les deux rgnes,
celui des causes efficientes et celui des causes finales, sont harmoniques entre eux.
. 81. Die Seelen wrken nach denen Gesetzen der Final-Ursachen vermge der Begierden /
Absichten und derer hierauf abzielenden Mittel. Die Krper verrichten ihre Wrkung nach
denen Gesetzen der causarum efficientium oder der Bewegungen. Und die zwei Reiche / in
deren einem die wrkenden Ursachen / in dem andern die Final-Ursachen beobachtet
werden / sind unter sich harmonisch.

-compatibalism/occasionalism
------------------------------80. Descartes saw that souls cannot at all impart force to bodies, because there is always the
same quantity of force in matter. Yet he thought that the soul could change the direction of
bodies. This was, however, because at that time the law of nature which affirms also that
conservation of the same total direction in the motion of matter was not known. If he had
known that law, he would have fallen upon my system of preestablished harmony.
80. Descartes a reconnu que les mes ne peuvent point donner de la force aux corps parce
quil y a toujours la mme quantit de force dans la matire. Cependant il a cru que lme
pouvait changer la direction des corps. Mais cest parce quon na point su de son temps la loi
de la nature qui porte encore la conservation de la mme direction totale dans la matire. Sil
lavait remarque, il serait tomb dans mon Systme de lHarmonie prtablie.
. 82. Cartesius hat erkannt / da die Seelen denen Krpern keine Kraft mitteilen knnten /
weil allezeit einerlei Quantitt der Kraft in der Materie vorhanden wre. Unterdessen hat er
geglaubet / da die Seele die Direktion oder Stellung der Krper verndern knnte; solches
aber ist um dewillen geschehen / weil man zu seiner Zeit das Gesetz der Natur / welches mit
sich bringet / da auch einerlei Direktion in der ganzen Materie erhalten wird / noch nicht
eingesehen hat. Wann er dieses Gesetze wahrgenommen htte / so wrde er auf mein Systema
harmoniae praestabilitae geraten sein.
-------------------

81. According to this system bodies act as if (to suppose the impossible) there were no souls
at all, and souls act as if there were no bodies, and yet both body and soul act as if the one
were influencing the other.
81. Ce systme fait que les corps agissent comme si, par impossible, il ny avait point dmes,
et que les mes agissent comme sil ny avait point de corps, et que tous deux agissent
comme si lun influait sur lautre.
. 83. Vermge dieses Systematis geschiehet es / da die Krper eben so wrken / als wenn
(gesetzten unmglichen Falls) gar keine Seelen wren / und da die Seelen ihre Wrkungen
verrichten / als wenn gar kein Krper vorhanden wre / und da beide auf solche Art agieren
als wenn das eine einen Einflu in das andere ausbete.
---------------------

82. Although I find that essentially the same thing is true of all living things and animals,
which we have just said (namely, that animals and souls begin from the very commencement
of the world and that they no more come to an end than does the world) nevertheless, rational
animals have this peculiarity, that their little spermatic animals, as long as they remain such,
have only ordinary or sensuous souls, but those of them which are, so to speak, elected, attain
by actual conception to human nature, and their sensuous souls are raised to the rank of
reason and to the prerogative of spirits.

82. Quant aux Esprits ou mes raisonnables, quoique je trouve quil y a dans le fond la
mme chose dans tous les vivants et animaux, comme nous venons de dire (savoir que
lAnimal et lme ne commencent quavec le monde et ne finissent pas non plus que le
monde), il y a pourtant cela de particulier dans les animaux raisonnables, que leurs petits
Animaux spermatiques, tant quils ne sont que cela, ont seulement des mes ordinaires ou
sensitives, mais ds que ceux qui sont lus, pour ainsi dire, parviennent par une actuelle
conception la nature humaine, leurs mes sensitives sont leves au degr de la raison et
la prrogative des esprits.
. 84. Was die Geister oder vernnftigen Seelen anbetrifft / ob ich gleich befinde / da bereits
beigebrachter maen bei allen mit einem Leben begabten Dingen und animalibus dem
Grunde nach einerlei angetroffen werde / nmlich / da die Animalia und die Seelen weder
einen Anfang als mit der Welt / noch ein Ende als mit derselben haben knnen; so ist doch
dieses als etwas besonderes in denen vernnftigen animalibus wahrzunehmen / da ihre
kleinen animalia spermatica, in so weit sie nichts anders als dieses sind / nur ordinaire oder
sensitive Seelen haben; und da hingegen von ihnen diejenigen / welche / so zu reden / hierzu
erwhlet sind / durch eine wirkliche Conception zu der Menschlichen Natur gelangen / indem
ihre sensitive Seelen zu dem Grad der Vernunft und zu dem Vorzuge der Geister erhaben
werden.
-------------------------

83. Among the differences that there are between ordinary souls and spirits, some of which I
have already instanced, there is also this, that while souls in general are living mirrors or
images of the universe of created things, spirits are also images of the Deity himself or of the
author of nature. They are capable of knowing the system of the universe, and of imitating
some features of it by means of artificial models, each spirit being like a small divinity in its
own sphere.
83. Entre autres diffrences quil y a entre les mes ordinaires et les Esprits, dont jai dj
marqu une partie, il y a encore celle-ci, que les mes en gnral sont des miroirs vivants ou
images de lunivers des cratures, mais que les esprits sont encore images de la Divinit
mme, ou de lauteur mme de la nature, capables de connatre le systme de lunivers et
den imiter quelque chose par des chantillons architectoniques, chaque esprit tant comme
une petite divinit dans son dpartement.
. 85. Unter andern Arten des Unterscheids / welche sich zwischen denen ordinairen Seelen
und denen Geistern befinden / und wovon ich bereits einen Teil angemerket habe / ist doch
dieser merkliche Unterscheid zu beobachten / da die Seelen berhaupt lebendige Spiegel
oder Abbildungen des ganzen Umfangs der Kreaturen oder des Welt-Gebudes sein; hingegen
da die Geister auch berdem gewisse portraits der Gottheit selbst oder des Urhebers der
Natur sind / welche die Fhigkeit haben / den Bau der groen Welt zu erkennen und
denselben durch die nach der Bau-Kunst eingerichtete und aufgefhrte Muster einiger maen
zu imitieren; indem ein jedweder Geist in seinem Bezirk gleichsam eine kleine Gottheit ist.
----------------

84. Therefore, spirits are able to enter into a sort of social relationship with God, and with
respect to them he is not only what an inventor is to his machine (as in his relation to the
other created things), but he is also what a prince is to his subjects, and even what a father is
to his children.
84. Cest ce qui fait que les Esprits sont capables dentrer dans une Manire de Socit avec
Dieu, et quil est leur gard, non seulement ce quun inventeur est sa Machine (comme
Dieu lest par rapport aux autres cratures), mais encore ce quun prince est ses sujets et
mme un pre ses enfants.
. 86. Hierdurch geschiehet es / da die Geister geschickt sind / mit GOtt in eine gewisse Art
der Societt zu treten / und da er in Ansehung ihrer nicht alleine dasjenige / wovor ein
Erfinder in Absicht auf seine Machine gehalten wird / dergleichen GOtt in Betrachtung aller
Geschpfe ist; sondern auch dasjenige ist / was ein Prinz in Relation auf seine Untertanen /
und was ein Vater in regard seiner Kinder ist sein mu.
King - Subject, Prince - Subject!
-------------------85. Whence it is easy to conclude that the totality of all spirits must compose the city of God,
that is to say, the most perfect state that is possible under the most perfect monarch.
85. Do il est ais de conclure que lassemblage de tous les esprits doit composer la cit de
Dieu, cest--dire le plus parfait tat qui soit possible sous le plus parfait des monarques.
. 87. Woraus man auch leichtlich schlieen kann da aus der vlligen Zusammennehmung
aller Geister die Stadt Gottes / das ist der allervollkommenste und allerausbndigste Staat
welcher nur unter dem allervollkommensten Monarchen mglich ist / bestehen und
erwachsen msse.
Kant, koninkrijk der doelen
-----------------------

86. This city of God, this truly universal monarchy, is a moral world within the natural world.
It is what is noblest and most divine among the works of God. And in it consists in reality the
glory of God, because he would have no glory were not his greatness and goodness known
and wondered at by spirits. It is also in relation to this divine city that God properly has
goodness. His wisdom and his power are shown everywhere.
86. Cette Cit de Dieu, cette monarchie vritablement universelle est un Monde Moral dans le
Monde Naturel, et ce quil y a de plus lev et de plus divin dans les ouvrages de Dieu et
cest en lui que consiste vritablement la gloire de Dieu, puisquil ny en aurait point, si sa
grandeur et sa bont ntaient pas connues et admires par les esprits ; cest aussi par rapport
cette cit divine, quil a proprement de la Bont, au lieu que sa sagesse et sa puissance se
montrent partout.

. 88. Diese Stadt Gottes / diese Monarchie / welche in der Tat allgemein ist / ist eine
moralische Welt in der natrlichen Welt. Sie ist unter denen Werken Gottes dasjenige / welche
die Hoheit und die Gottheit am meisten ausdrucket. In ihr bestehet die wahre Ehre des
Schpfers; weil die Ehre nicht kann statt finden / wenn seine Gre und seine Gte von
denen Geistern nicht erkannt und bewundert wrde. Es ist auch diese Stadt Gottes dasjenige /
woraus man seine Gte eigentlich erkennen kann; da hingegen seine Weisheit und seine
Macht sich berall zu Tage legen.
---------------------------

87. As we established above that there is a perfect harmony between the two natural realms of
efficient and final causes, it will be in place here to point out another harmony which appears
between the physical realm of nature and the moral realm of grace, that is to say, between
God considered as the architect of the mechanism of the world and God considered as the
monarch of the divine city of spirits.
87. Comme nous avons tabli ci-dessus une Harmonie parfaite entre deux rgnes naturels,
lun des causes Efficientes, lautre des Finales, nous devons remarquer ici encore une autre
harmonie entre le rgne Physique de la Nature et le rgne Moral de la Grce, cest--dire,
entre Dieu considr comme Architecte de la Machine de lunivers, et Dieu considr comme
monarque de la Cit divine des Esprits.
. 89. Gleichwie wir oben unter denen natrlichen Reichen / deren eines sich auf die causas
efficientes, das andere auf die causas finales sttzet / eine Harmonie dargetan haben; so
mssen wir allhier auch eine andere Harmonie unter dem Physikalischen Reiche der Natur
und unter dem moralischen Reiche der Gnade anmerken / das ist / in so weit Gott als ein
Erbauer der ganzen Welt-Machine betrachtet / und in so weit er als ein Monarche der
Gttlichen Stadt der Geister angesehen wird.
--------------------------

88. This harmony brings it about that things progress of themselves toward grace along
natural lines, and that this earth, for example, must be destroyed and restored by natural
means at those times when the proper government of spirits demands it, for chastisement in
the one case and for a reward in the other.
88. Cette Harmonie fait que les choses conduisent la Grce par les voies mmes de la
Nature, et que ce globe, par exemple, doit tre dtruit et rpar par les voies naturelles dans
les moments que le demande le gouvernement des Esprits pour le chtiment des uns et la
rcompense des autres.
. 90. Aus dieser Harmonie erfolget / da die Dinge durch die Wege der Natur selbst zur
Gnade fhren / und da / zum Exempel / diese Erd-Kugel in dem Augenblick / da solches die

ber die Geister sich erstreckende Regierung erfordert / so wohl zu ihrer Bestrafung als
Belohnung mte destruieret und wieder hergestellet werden.
----------------

89. We can say also that God, the Architect, satisfies in all respects God the Law Giver, that
therefore sins will bring their own penalty with them through the order of nature, and because
of the very structure of things, mechanical though it is. And in the same way the good actions
will attain their rewards in mechanical way through their relation to bodies, although this
cannot and ought not always to take place without delay.
89. On peut dire encore que Dieu comme architecte contente en tout Dieu comme lgislateur,
et quainsi les pchs doivent porter leur peine avec eux par lordre de la nature, et en vertu
mme de la structure mcanique des choses, et que de mme les belles actions sattireront
leurs rcompenses par des voies machinales par rapport aux corps, quoique cela ne puisse et
ne doive pas arriver toujours sur-le-champ.
. 91. Man kann auch sagen / da Gott als ein Erbauer und Verfasser der Welt / sich als einem
Gesetzgeber und Regenten ein vlliges Gngen tue / und da also die Laster nach der
Ordnung der Natur und vermge der mechanischen Struktur der Dinge ihre Strafen auf dem
Rcken mit sich fhren; da auch die guten actionen ihre Belohnung auf mechanische Manier
in Absicht auf den Krper sich zuziehen; obgleich beides nicht allezeit also fort darauf weder
geschehen kann noch mu.
----------------

90. Finally, under this perfect government, there will be no good action unrewarded and no
evil action unpunished; everything must turn out for the well-being of the good; that is to say,
of those who are not disaffected in this great state, who, after having done their duty, trust in
Providence and who love and imitate, as is meet, the Author of all Good, delighting in the
contemplation of his perfections according to the nature of that genuine, pure love which
finds pleasure in the happiness of those who are loved. It is for this reason that wise and
virtuous persons work in behalf of everything which seems conformable to presumptive or
antecedent will of God, and are, nevertheless, content with what God actually brings to pass
through his secret, consequent and determining will, recognising that if we were able to
understand sufficiently well the order of the universe, we should find that it surpasses all the
desires of the wisest of us, and that it is impossible to render it better than it is, not only for
all in general, but also for each one of us in particular, provided that we have the proper
attachment for the author of all, not only as the Architect and the efficient cause of our being,
but also as our Lord and the Final Cause, who ought to be the whole goal of our will, and
who alone can make us happy.
90. Enfin, sous ce gouvernement parfait, il ny aura point de bonne action sans rcompense,
point de mauvaise sans chtiment, et tout doit russir au bien des bons, cest--dire de ceux
qui ne sont point des mcontents dans ce grand tat, qui se fient la Providence aprs avoir

fait leur devoir, et qui aiment et imitent comme il faut lAuteur de tout bien, se plaisant dans
la considration de ses perfections suivant la nature du pur amour vritable, qui fait prendre
plaisir la flicit de ce quon aime. Cest ce qui fait travailler les personnes sages et
vertueuses tout ce qui parat conforme la volont divine prsomptive ou antcdente, et se
contenter cependant de ce que Dieu fait arriver effectivement par sa volont secrte,
consquente et dcisive, en reconnaissant, que si nous pouvions entendre assez lordre de
lunivers, nous trouverions quil surpasse tous les souhaits des plus sages, et quil est
impossible de le rendre meilleur quil est, non seulement pour le tout en gnral, mais encore
pour nous-mmes en particulier, si nous sommes attachs comme il faut lAuteur du tout,
non seulement comme lArchitecte et la cause efficiente de notre tre, mais encore comme
notre Matre et la cause finale qui doit faire tout le but de notre volont, et peut seul faire
notre bonheur.
. 92. Es wird endlich unter dieser vollkommenen Regierung keine gute Tat unvergolten / und
keine bse unbestraft bleiben / und alles mu zum Besten der Frommen ausschlagen / das ist /
derjenigen / welche in diesem groen Staat nicht unter die Anzahl der Mivergngten
gehren / sich nach ihrer beobachteten Schuldigkeit auf die Gttliche Vorsorge verlassen und
den Urheber alles Guten gebhrender maen lieben und nachahmen; indem sie in der
Betrachtung seiner Vollkommenheiten ihre Lust haben und zwar nach der Natur der
wahrhaftig reinen Liebe / wodurch man bewogen wird / da man aus der Glckseligkeit
desjenigen / den man liebet / seine Vergngung schpfet. Dieses treibet die weisen und
tugendhaften Personen an / da sie nach allem demjenigen streben und arbeiten welches dem
vorhergehenden oder praesumtiven Willen Gottes [Funote] gem zu sein scheinet / und da
sie sich unterdessen mit demjenigen begngen / was ihnen GOtt vermge seines geheimen
Schlu-Willens [Funote] wrklich widerfahren lt; indem sie gar wohl erkennen / da /
wenn wir die Ordnung der Welt zur Gnge verstehen knnten / wir befinden wrden / da
dieselbe alles Wnschen / alles Verlangen der weisesten bersteige und da es unmglich
sei / da dieselbe besser sein knne / so wohl in Ansehung des ganzen Welt-Gebudes / als
auch in Betrachtung auf uns insonderheit / so ferne wir uns an den Urheber aller Dinge halten
/ nicht alleine in so weit er der Erbauer der Welt und die wrkende Ursache unsers Wesens ist
/ sondern auch in so weit er unser Ober-Herr und die Final-Ursache ist / worauf unser Wille
einzig und alleine abzwecken sollen und auer dem unsere Glckseligkeit nicht befrdert
werden kann.

Further Reading:
Biography | Newton | Spinoza
Philosophy Archive @ marxists.org
"Postmodernims, then, is bes seen as a symptom." (6) aot jameson: mode of production.
Modernism: material abstraction.
"Only, I contend, classical historical materialism, reinforced by an account of language and
thought that is naturalistic as well as communicative, can provide a secure basis for the
defence of the 'radicalized Enlightenment' to which Habermas is commited." (7)

". . . I engage with the social theory of postmodernity, not simply in the shape of the idea of
postindustrial society, which is fairly easy to dismiss, but in the more cogent attempts by
Marxist or marxisants such as Frederic Jameson [sic], Scott Lash and John Urry to claim that
a new 'multinational' or 'disorganized' phase of capitalism underlies the supposed emergence
of Postmodern art. I argue that the changes these writers detect are, when not greatly
exaggerated, either the consequences of much longer-term trends or specific ot the particular,
and highly unstable economic conjuncture of the 1980s. Consideration of this conjuncture
then leads naturally to a discussion of the roots of postmodernism itself, which I argue are to
be found int he combination of the disillusioned aftermath of 1968 throughout the Western
world and the opportunities for an 'overconsumptionist' lifestyle offerd upper white-collar
strata by capitalism in the Reagan-Thatcher era." (7)

[1.1 1.2] opposition modern-postmodern is not absolute, not two separate stages of
history (e.g., commitment v.s. irony, stability vs. disorganization) I agree
"The absence of successful socialist revolution is a contingent historical fact" (9)
[??????????]
"Postmodernity by contrast is merely a theoretical construct, of interest primarily as a
symptom of the current mood of the Western intelligentsia (hence the quotation marks) (9)
"It is, therefore, difficult to be persuaded by Linda Hutcheon's claim that 'postmodernism
goes beyond self-reflexivity to situate discourse in a broader context."
"Hutcheon's argument is one among a number of manoeuvres used to deal with the
embarrasing fact that both the definitions given and the examples cited of Postmodern art
place it most plausibly as a continuation of and not a break from the fin-desciecle Mondernist revolution." (15) Hutcheon talks of '[t]he obscurity and hermeticism of
modernism", while even Andreas Huyssen (who is usually above ssuchs things) tells us that
'the most significant trends within postmodernism have challenged modernism's relentless
hostitlity to mass culture.'
[1.3] immanent tendency of modernity
"But the idea of a total break with tradition 'is, rather, a manner of forgetting or repressing the
past. That's to say of repeating it. Not overcoming it." [zizek/ repitition]
"modern aesthetics is an aesthetic of the sublime, thought not a nostalgic one. [!!]. It allows
the unpresentable to be put forward only as the missing contents; but the form, because of its
recognizable consistency, continues to offer to the reader or viewer matter for solace or
pleasure . . The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the
unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the
consensus of a good taste [sensis communis] which would make it possible to share
collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations,
not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable."
end of teleology (no beyond! to strive for)

"Postmodern art therefore differs from Modernism in the attitude it takes up towards our
inability to experience the world as a coherent and harmonious whole. Modernism reacts to
'the immensen panorama of futility and anarchy that is contemporary history' by looking back
nostalgically to a time before our sense of totality was lost, as Eliot does when he claims that
in the Methaphysical poets of the senteenth century there was 'a direct senuous apprehension
of thought, or a recreation of thought into feeling', which disappeared after the 'discociation
of sensibility' already evident in Milton and Dryden."
"The main thrust of Lyotard's argument, however, involves the claim that Postmodernism is a
tendency within Modernism characterized by its refusal to mourn, and indeed its willingness
to celebrate our inability to experience reality as an ordered and integrated totality."
"The paradox is that the deeper one probes beyond even fragmentary inner consciousness into
the unconscious, the more one threatens to crack the subject open, and to confront the
external forces which traverse and constitute the ego." [unconcious is out there, material]
"The significance of the resulting changes in the mode of reception was for Benjamin
political."
"This is true even of the Dadaists, who were not the apolitical jokers depicted by the
postmodernists eager to appropriate them. The Berlin group in particular emerged in a
context defined by the First World War., The Russian Revolution of October 1917 and the
German Revolution of November 1918. " (23)
"Habermas highlights the contradiciton which Nietzsche and Heidegger, as well as their
successors - notably Foucault and Derrida - face in using the tools of rationality philosophical argument an dhsitorical analysis - in order to carry out the critique of reason as
such." NO, critique is immanent to reason!.

La modernit, cest le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moiti de lart, dont lautre

moiti est lternel et limmuable.

Modernity is the transitory, fugitive, contingent, is but one half of art, of which the
other half is the eternal and immutable."

eternal IN the transitory (LEIBNIZ)

"De l'hrosme de la vie moderne," [badiou modernity]

Een van de laatste geschriften was de Monadologie, die weer als discussitekst voor een
coreespondent was bedoeld. Uit al deze werken blijkt dat Leibniz wel over een eigen
metafysisch systeem beschikte, maar dat het juist betreffende de verhouding van geest en
materie niet sluitend was, zodat hij telkens na enkel jaren zijn terminologie trachtte te
verfijnen. (14)
verhouding tussen geest en materie was telkens niet sluitend! centraal probleem.
intuities van de rede (2+2=4) - noodzakelijke en algemene (universele) inzichten, als
tegenover de ervaring als betrouwbare bron van WARE kennis en wetenschap.
(tautologie).
De nieuwe natuurkunde was een model voor rationalisten (2+2=4), (f=ma) , had de
onhoudbaarheid van aristoteles (natuurfilosofie, essenties, doeloorzaken). abstractie,
formalisme etc.
voor aristoteles: Jorg heeft een essentie en een doeloorzaak (teleology). steen heeft
essentie (wat deze steen tot deze steen maakt?) en doeloorzaak. Maar voor nieuwe
natuurkunde kan de natuur beschreven worden in termen van wiskundige formules
(functies) geen harde kern/essentie, maar b.v. f=ma
Maar leibniz trekt het wat terug naar scholastiek (en zet daarmee een stap verder)
Leibniz als hervorme van de rationalistische hervorming (descartes). tussen modernen
en scholastiek. ?
"De onderzoeker wil niet langer volgens aristotelisch model, het wezen en het doel van een
ding noemen om hieruit verandering en beweging ervan af te leiden. [het is de essentie van
de geit om melk te geven?] Nee, hij zoekt een wiskundige formule die de wetmatigheid van
bewegingen aangeeft, en hij toets de formule door metingen. (f=ma).
Doet leibniz dit ook? hij formuleert een wiskundige wet (ondeelbaarheid monade) en
toets de formule door metingen (niet echt toch?)
"Het boek van het universum is geschreven in de taal van de wiskunde, dus de wereld is allen
te begrijpen met behulp van formules en meetkundige figure. Het bestaan van God is en de
scheppingsorde is hiervoor niet onontbeerlijk.
aanval op scholastiek. Descartes: geen naief beroep op god! BANG
Waar scholastiek begint met revelatie/het bestaan van god en de schepping, begint
descartes daar niet. twijfel, -> fundament -> dan god.
substantie is best een vreemd begrip. het is leeg en tegelijkertijd zo "vol"
Denkende/twijfelende activiteit is onbetwijfelbaar. = substantie: zelfstandig, onstoffelijk (dus
niet vergankelijk) bewustzijn.
substanties zijn altijd leeg.

Volgende stap: inhouden van het denken. De inhouden zijn waar, maar komen ze overeen met
iets in de werkelijkheid (?). bewijs voor werkelijkheids waarde: primaire idee van god
(apriori)
Nu gaat Descartes de ideen over de fysische werkelijkheid onderzoeken. Het wezen of de
essentie van de dingen verschijnt in onze ideen (x, y, z, -->, t+1).
essentie of substantie van rex extensa is wiskundig (x,y,z,t). "leeg" symbolisch maar
fundamenteel.
leeg en vol
Onveranderlijke essenties (wiskundig) dringen zich a priori aan ons op (i.e., GOD, driehoek),
en ons denken erover is even objective als dat over meetkundige wetten, zonder dat er iets
concreets in d werkelijkheid aan hoeft te be antwoorden.
of: de staat?, subject? ziel? [Raison d'Etat, something called the state (ca 1500), plays the role
of both a given - since one only governs a state that is already there, one only governs within
the framework of the state - but also at the same time an object to be constructed. Foucault]
Hobbes, -> tot stand komen vd staat. e pluribus unem. Skinner attempts to demonstrate that,
as with sovereignty, the concept of the state escapes definition. By considering various rival
answers to the question of whose actions count as authentic expressions of the sovereignty of
the state, Skinner traces a genealogy of the modern state up to our own times. He describes
the argumentative context in which Thomas Hobbes arrived at his highly influential view that
the power of the state is that of a fictional person, distinct from both rulers and ruled, and
then follows the fortunes of this conception by studying how it was subsequently pitched
against rival understandings of the state.
Descartes -> mechanisme. Nog geen kinetische energie (f=ma)
[...]
[...]
[...]
"Uitgangspunt voor Leibniz is onze materiele werkelijkheid, die onmiskenbaar bestaat uit
samengestelde dingen. Hij interpreteert deze samenstellingen als oneindig deelbaar in altijd
kleiner partjes, waarvoor hij een bevestiging vindt in het toenmalig microscopisch onderzoek.
De dingen bezitten dus geen fundament in zichzelf en daarom moeten ze wel beursten op
andersoortige ondeelbaar grootheden, de monaden. (37).

zuiver geestelijk (want ondeelbaar) [individu?]. een, onvergankelijk en zelfstandig =

substantie. Elk ding is een opeenhoping van monaden. ?????? onwankel fundament: monade.
een soort substantie: de geestelijke.
monaden hebben geen vensters. god kan niet op hen ingrijpen. "Bij Leibniz ontwikkelt d
emonade zich geheel zelfstandig vanaf haar ontstaan.

"Elke monade bezit een rijke structuur van eigenschappen of accidenten. Deze structuur kent
in elke monade een eigenheid door de unieke combinatie van eigenschappen [maar geen dit
zijn geen delen] en door de geheel eigen volgorde van ontplooiing ervan."
elke mondade is daarom uniek.
Zodoende kan Leibniz vaststellen, dat idere monade uniek is, waarmee hij afwijkt van het
scholastieke substantiebegrip. Want in de scholastiek geldt de substantie als het wezen van
een gehele soort en wordt individualiteit slechts veroorzaakt door materie. (door parts)
"De structuur van de monade kan vergeleken worden met de lange reeksen letters die in de
ars combinatoria de kenmerken van elk ding symboliseren. (?)
middenweg tussen volutarisme (descartes) en emanatieleer (spinoza)
"in de scheppingsleer van Leibniz is formeel amper sprake van determinisme, omdat hij
meent dat God in volle vrijheid uit alle mogelijke werelden kan kiezen, zodat de uiteindelijk
geschapen wereld contingent is. God zou op z'n hoogst aan een morele noodzaak
onderworpen zijn: zijn goedheid dwingt Hem de este wereld te kiezen. Leibniz verwijt
Spinoza, dat deze geen plaats geeft aan Gods verstand en wil [!], [hobbes imaginary fictional
person of the state]; zelf slaagt hij er met zijn scheppingsconstructie in om verstand en wil
met Gods macht te combineren in overeenstemming met de christelijke dogmatiek. Toch
ontging ook zijn tijdgenoten niet de verwantschap met spinoza en met de neoplatoonse
scheppingsleer. (32)
"Bij LEibniz is God als het ware de dirigent van een orkest waarvan de musici elkaar niet
kunnen zien; maar de partijen van het muziekwerk zijn zo gecomponeerd, dat de muziek
onder zijn directie harmonisch klinkt. (33)
Leibniz introduceert GODS GOEDHEID.
Materiele dingen zijn geen concrete subsanties met uitgebreidheid en beweging, maar
verschijnselen met kracht. Tegenover Descartes, Spinoza en Malebranche ontkent Leibniz
dan ook dat wij een duidelijke en heldere idee van uitgebreide dingen zouden bezitten;
integendeel, onzo omgang ermee is subjectief, en de maateenheden van ruimte en tijd zijn
relatief, het zijn ONZE ordeningsbeginselen.
"Welnu, zoals alles in de materiele werkelijkheid elkaar beinvloedt, zo hangen ook alle
monaden op een geestelijke wijze samen. Dat wil zeggen, ze drukken alles op een of andere
wijze uit. (40).
structuralisme, differentie. every term is negative of all the others.
[In sociology, anthropology and linguistics, structuralism is the theory that elements of
human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching
system or structure. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans
do, think, perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn,
structuralism is "the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through

their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the
surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract culture"]
"geestelijke invloed is het vermogen van een monade om in zichzelf duidelijk te zien wat er
in een andere monade gebeurt; de ene heet dan actief of oorzaak ten opzichte van de ander, de
passieve.'
Dus dit mechanisme sluit elk materialisme uit . . Het mechanicisme krijgt bij Leiniz zelfs
sterk het karakter van een organiscisme, waarin de materiele wereld als een immens
organisme van telkens weer deelbare organisme wordt opgevat.
Mensbeeld:
"De eerste bijzonderheid van de mens is de uniciteit van geest en lichaam samen . . . De
mens-in-aanleg bestaat vanaf de schpeping als 'zaddiertje', maar heeft in die toestand niet
meer dan een dierlijke ziel. Pas bij de bevruchting verheft God deze ziel tot geest.
"Het tweede kenmerk van de mens is de rede, waardoor hij tot ongewone dingen in staat is.
De rede is namelijk behalve vermogen tot reflectie ook opslagplaats van de ingeoren ideeen.
Met de leer van de ingeboren ideeen sluit Leibniz direct aan bij Descartes en indirect by de
scholastiek aan. Maar tegenover descartes stelt Leibniz dat deze ideeen slechts virtueel
aanwezig zijn en om concrete ontvouwing vragen. In 30 somt hij de belangrijkste ingeboren
ideen op: het ik, het izjn, de substantie, het samengestelde en god.
Door deze direct beschikbaar te achten in het menselijk verstand, neemt Leibniz duidelijk
duidelijk stelling tegen empiristen als Locke: alleen verstandelijke refelectie levert inzichten
op, en waarneming kan ze hoogsten bevestigen.
poneert de beginslen van tegenspraka en van voldoende grond.
"Terwijl Descartes beweer dat God ook deze denkbeginselen in vrijheid geschapen had en ze
nog anders had kunne maken, meent leibniz dat god eraan onderworpen is en dat ze in alle
mogelijke wereld geldig zijn!!!!
Voldoende grond beginsel (axioma): Alle feiten of uitspraken moeten terug te voeren zijn op
verklarende factoren, en wel zo ver terug dat er uiteindelijke axioma's te voorschijn komen.
Logisch geizen betkent het, dat in een uitspraak de predikaten of eigenschappen van een
subject terug te voeren moeten zijn op identieke uitspraken, waarin subject en predikaat
onmiskenbaar samenvallen.
Mensen beschikken door hun kennis van de noodzakelijke waarheden ook over inzicht in het
goede en in de wil van God. Aan deze morele kennis beantwoordt hun eigen vrije wil,
waarmee ze Gods wil kunnen volbrengen en zo het beste van de wereld kunne maken. Want
de morele orde is weer in harmonie met de fysische orde, waardoor het goed handelen
materieel beloond en slecht handelen gestraft wordt, ook in fysisch opzicht (46)
Naar aanleiding van deze overtuiging ontstaan natuurlijk kritische vragen naar de vrijheid van
de mens. Bij de schpping heeft God immers het hele universum voorbeschikt en zodeonde
ook het handelen van ieder mens bepaald. De wil van de mens is gedetermineerd, zo moet

Leibniz erkennen, want voor elke handeling bestaat een fysische en een geestelijke voldoende
grond.
Toch kan de filosoof vrijheid aanwijzne, hoewel hij er in de monadologie nauwelijks op
ingaat, tenzij indirect in de slotparagrafen. Menselijke vrijheid brzit drie aspecten, namelijk
de pontaniteit van onze wil om ons al of niet in te passen in de voorbeschikte harmonie,
volgens de redelijke afwegin, het bewuste kiezen met behulp vna de beste morele
argumenten, en ten slotte het verrichten van contingente handelingen.
Geen enkel mens kan de hele werkelijkheid overzien, dus voor ons zijn alle handelingen
contingent [kant opaciteit]. Maar met onze beperkte inzichten moeten we Gods wetten
uitvoeren, opdat we aldus onzo voorbestembde weg zullen gaan en de beste wereld mee in
stand houden. [predestinatie]

But the economic class struggle during the present crisis has nowhere been sustained on a
sufficient scale or assumed the offensive form required to break with the pattern
of fragmentation and defeat that has defined the condition of the workers movement since
the 1980s. Explaining why this is so is the most important single task facing revolutionary
Marxists today, as I elaborate below.
Confronted with the tremendous shock of the outbreak of the First World War and the
collapse of the Second International, Lenin withdrew into the library to read Hegel and Carl
von Clausewitz, ignoring his comrades protests. Lenins instinct was sound. Getting the
proper measure of the situation requires careful analysis that does not respect inherited
orthodoxies. This article cant offer this analysis, but it can identify and offer some reflections
on three of the main issues.
Reflecting on the ideological impact of the crisis, Benjamin Kunkel writes: In any genuine
renaissance of Marxist thought and culture it will probably be decisive that capitalism has
forfeited the allegiance of many people who are today under thirty.54 !!!!!!!!!!
Sociaal democratisch -> neoliberal policiy (not reformist)
alle pogingen wereld via de kap. staat te verandern zijn mislukt, omdat de controle op de staat
via verkiezingen miniem is, maar de controle via lobby en economische druk enorm.
allende vertrouwde niet op de massale strijd van de arbeiders en boeren. (wel op staat en
leger)
--Rijksdag confronteert, opdat deze als automatische jaknikker de kosten van deze
buitenparlementaire politiek zal bestrijden
Parlementsmoeheid. Rijksdag is lege huls, ja knikker.

Het is een historisch begrijpelijke, ja zelfs noodzakelijke illusie van de bourgeoisie eenbourgeoisie die strijdt om de macht en deze zelfs al heeft bereikt - dat hun parlement het
centrale punt van het sociale leven zou zijn en de drijfkracht van dewereldgeschiedenis.

Het is namelijk het tweeledige effect van de internationale en de binnenlandseontwikkeling

dat leidt tot het verval van het burgerlijke parlement - en nergens kan metdit effect beter
bestuderen dan in het lot van de Duitse Rijksdag. Het is boven alles desteeds machtigere
wereldpolitiek van het laatste decennium, die het geheleeconomische en sociale leven van de
kapitalistische landen in een kolk vanonafzienbare, niet te controleren internationale
invloeden meesleurt, waarin deburgerlijke parlementen als balken op een stormachtige zee
heen en weer dobberen.
Internationale krachten (globalisering) zijn groter dan het wat een nationaal parlement
kan behappen.
Het is namelijk het tweeledige effect van de internationale en de binnenlandseontwikkeling
dat leidt tot het verval van het burgerlijke parlement - en nergens kan metdit effect beter
bestuderen dan in het lot van de Duitse Rijksdag. Het is boven alles desteeds machtigere
wereldpolitiek van het laatste decennium, die het geheleeconomische en sociale leven van de
kapitalistische landen in een kolk vanonafzienbare, niet te controleren internationale
invloeden meesleurt, waarin deburgerlijke parlementen als balken op een stormachtige zee
heen en weer dobberen.
Burgelijk feodale compromis

Het is namelijk het tweeledige effect van de internationale en de binnenlandseontwikkeling

dat leidt tot het verval van het burgerlijke parlement - en nergens kan metdit effect beter
bestuderen dan in het lot van de Duitse Rijksdag. Het is boven alles desteeds machtigere
wereldpolitiek van het laatste decennium, die het geheleeconomische en sociale leven van de
kapitalistische landen in een kolk vanonafzienbare, niet te controleren internationale
invloeden meesleurt, waarin deburgerlijke parlementen als balken op een stormachtige zee
heen en weer dobberen.
Het is namelijk het tweeledige effect van de internationale en de binnenlandseontwikkeling
dat leidt tot het verval van het burgerlijke parlement - en nergens kan metdit effect beter
bestuderen dan in het lot van de Duitse Rijksdag. Het is boven alles desteeds machtigere
wereldpolitiek van het laatste decennium, die het geheleeconomische en sociale leven van de
kapitalistische landen in een kolk vanonafzienbare, niet te controleren internationale
invloeden meesleurt, waarin deburgerlijke parlementen als balken op een stormachtige zee
heen en weer dobberen.
Dat zijn dus de schone vruchten van de actie van Jaurs om het parlementarisme teredden:
een toenemende afkeer bij het volk voor elk soort van parlementaire actie, eneen neiging tot
het anarchisme: het grootste rele gevaar voor het parlement en voorhet bestaan van de
gehele republiek.
Tegenover de reactionaire meerderheid wint de sociaaldemocratie het gemakkelijk,omdat zij
de enige consequente en betrouwbare representant is van het algemeenbelang en van de
algemene vooruitgang op alle gebieden van het openbare leven.
In het laatste nummer van Sozialistische Monatshefte schrijft een van de
Italiaanseleiders van de opportunisten, Bissolati, in een artikel over de Italiaanse
verkiezingeno.a. de volgende zin: Naar mijn mening is het een bewijs van de

achterlijkheid van hetpolitieke leven, dat de strijd van de respectievelijke partijen nog
steeds gaat overprincipile kwesties. In plaats daarvan zou men moeten strijden om
de vragen die van werkelijk actueel belang zijn en daarbij deze grondprincipes tot
uitdrukking laten komen. Uiteraard doet deze typische redenatie van een opportunist
de waarheidgeweld aan. Juist met de ontwikkeling en het sterker worden van de
sociaaldemocratiewordt het steeds noodzakelijker, dat zij met name in het parlement
zich niet begraaft invraagstukken van de dag en uitsluitend oppositie bedrijft, maar
dat zij in plaats hiervan haar fundamentele beginselen krachtig onderstreept: de
strijd voor de machtsovername van het proletariaat, die zal leiden tot de
socialistische omwenteling.
-----------------

Hebben we hier te maken met een eventerechte en doelmatige manier om de zaak van het
proletariaat te dienen, alsbijvoorbeeld het geval is bij het werk in het parlement of de
gemeenteraad? Of is dedeelname van socialisten aan burgerlijke regeringen soms een
uitzonderingsgeval, datonder bepaalde voorwaarden toelaatbaar en noodzakelijk is, en onder
andereomstandigheden verwerpelijk en schadelijk
Terwijl dit geval op deze manier met deopportunistische theorie klopt, komt ze niet minder
overeen met de opportunistischepraktijk. Omdat het bereiken van dichtbijliggende, tastbare
resultaten, langs welke wegdat ook gebeurt, het leidsnoer van deze praktijk vormt, moet het
aantreden van eensocialist in de burgerlijke regering voor de praktische politici ook een
succes vanonschatbare waarde lijken. Wat kan een socialistische minister welniet allemaal
aankleine verbeteringen, verlichtingen en allerlei soorten sociaal lapwerk doorvoeren!
Terwijl dit geval op deze manier met deopportunistische theorie klopt, komt ze niet minder
overeen met de opportunistischepraktijk. Omdat het bereiken van dichtbijliggende, tastbare
resultaten, langs welke wegdat ook gebeurt, het leidsnoer van deze praktijk vormt, moet het
aantreden van eensocialist in de burgerlijke regering voor de praktische politici ook een
succes vanonschatbare waarde lijken. Wat kan een socialistische minister welniet allemaal
aankleine verbeteringen, verlichtingen en allerlei soorten sociaal lapwerk doorvoeren!
Namelijk, dat het bij de sociaaldemocratische strijd niet in de eerste plaats om het wat,maar
om het hoe gaat. Als de sociaaldemocratische vertegenwoordigers in dewetgevende lichamen
proberen sociale hervormingen door te voeren, hebben ze devolledige mogelijkheid om door
hun gelijktijdige oppositie tegen de burgerlijke wetgevingen de burgerlijke regering in haar
geheel - wat bijvoorbeeld heel zichtbaar naar vorenkomt in de afwijzing van de begroting ook hun strijd voor burgerlijke hervormingen eenprincipieel socialistisch karakter te geven,
het karakter van de proletarischeklassenstrijd. Een sociaaldemocraat daarentegen, die
dezelfde sociale hervormingenals lid van de regering nastreeft, dus terwijl hij gelijktijdig de
burgerlijke staat in zijngeheel actief ondersteunt, reduceert zijn socialisme in de praktijk in
het beste geval totburgerlijke democratie of burgerlijke arbeiderspolitiek.
Er kunnen zeker momenten zijn in de ontwikkeling, of eigenlijk de ondergang van
dekapitalistische maatschappij, waarop het voor de vertegenwoordigers van hetproletariaat

nog niet mogelijk is om volledig de macht te grijpen, maar hun deelnameaan de burgerlijke
regering noodzakelijk blijkt. Dit is het geval als de vrijheid van hetland of de democratische
verworvenheden zoals de republiek in het geding zijn, terwijlde burgerlijke regering zelf al te
gecompromitteerd en te gedesorganiseerd is om zichop de steun van het volk te beroepen
zonder de hulp van de vertegenwoordigers van dearbeiders. In zon geval mogen de
vertegenwoordigers van de werkende massa zichnatuurlijk niet op basis van een star
vasthouden aan abstracte principes aan deverdediging van de gemeenschappelijke zaak
onttrekken.
-----------

- wat is reformisme?
- wat is reformisme hier en nu?
- hoe moeten we met reformisme omgaan?
tientalllen algemene stakingen, bewegende arbeidersklasse. hoop op syriza.
- waarom is er geen syriza in Nederland. waarom is IS kritisch op syriza.
- socialistische arbeiders partij (?) nodig?
------------26 februari Syriza, het kan anders! tini cox. hoop schreef geschiedenis.
deal met trojka. 63% against, verraad? against austerity? de bestaande deal.
revolutionaire arbeiders partij? anarchisme ultralinks.
reformisme verraad. Beter reformisme (maar ze hebben ook redenen om te kiezen voor
reformisme?)....
revolutionair alternatief? what is dat?
------------reformisme het geloof dat we met geleidelijke veranderingen, (via het BURGERLIJKE
PARLEMENT) communistische wereld kunnen verwezelijken. (eerlijkere wereld). revolutie
-> wat is revolutie?
revolutie is ook geleidelijk process / hervormers. SPD. praktijk, wat is revolutie?
ineenstortings theorie, kapitalisme gaat ten onder, crises. oorlogen, imperialisme. historische
fase.
aanpassingtheorie, langzaamaan steeds minder crises. krediet, ondernemersorg.

niet noodzakelijk, socialisme moreel appel, binnen kapitalisme.

socialisme volgt uit kapitaal.
we moeten het vervangen? vakbondsbewustzijn/ vs. revolutionair bewustzijn. via het
parlement, focus op parlement/ parlement als spreekbuis van de massa -> massa als
spreekbuis van de massa. parlementaire meerderheid, aan het hoofd van de staat, binnen het
systeem veranderingen doorvoeren.
staten en kapitalisme zijn afhankelijk van elkaar. staat is afhankelijk van belasting, (leger,
politie). Kapitalisten afhankelijk van staat (infrastructuur). De staat, de staat.
------wat is de staat? de staat verdedigd de kapitalistische belangen.

barrett boyd
3 kranten 5,70
en proef abo afschrijven
ema il
we have averted an even bigger crises. Europe a concept still in the making.
we did our job
structural impediments, no flexible markets
A lot depend on contries
it is the fault of the system!
daarnaast ben ik verder gegaan met digitale muziek productie. klantenservice.

Giorgio Agamben"Europa muss

kollabieren"
Giorgio Agamben zhlt als Philosoph zu den groen europischen Provokateuren. Ein
Austausch ber den Ausnahmezustand des Kontinents und die Frage, was wir tun mssen, um
nicht mit ihm unterzugehen. Interview: Iris Radisch

DIE ZEIT: Man hat Ihnen oft bel genommen, dass Sie Europa als eine rein konomische
Vereinigung kritisiert haben. Inzwischen sieht es so aus, als htten Sie recht behalten: In der
Griechenlandkrise war ausschlielich von Geld die Rede. Wie beurteilen Sie das griechische
Drama, wird Europa in zwei Hlften gerissen?
Giorgio Agamben: Ein Europa, wie ich es mir wnsche, kann es erst geben, wenn das real
existierende "Europa" kollabiert ist. Deshalb knnte Griechenland auch wenn es von seinen
politischen Fhrern bitter enttuscht worden ist eine ganz entscheidende Rolle spielen. Sie
haben von Spaltung gesprochen: Doch wrde Griechenland die Europische Union
tatschlich verlassen, wre das wahre Europa in Athen, nicht in Brssel, wo was die
Mehrheit der Europer nicht zu wissen scheint jede Entscheidung von Kommissionen
getroffen wird, die zur Hlfte aus Vertretern der Groindustrie des betreffenden
Wirtschaftszweigs bestehen. Zunchst gilt es, der Lge entgegenzutreten, dieser Vertrag
zwischen Staaten, den man als Verfassung [*grondwet] ausgibt, sei das einzig denkbare
Europa, diese ideen- und zukunftslose institutionalisierte Lobby, die sich der dstersten aller
Religionen, der Religion des Geldes, blind verschrieben hat, sei die rechtmige Erbin des
europischen Geistes.
ZEIT: Hat es fr Sie eine symbolische Bedeutung, dass die Krise ausgerechnet von Athen
ausgeht? Heidegger htte vermutlich gesagt, dass in Athen ein "abendlndischer Weg" zu
Ende geht. Welche tiefere Bedeutung steckt hinter der Krise des Geldes?
Giorgio Agamben
Der italienische Denker ist einer der meistdiskutierten Philosophen unserer Zeit. Er ist sehr
ffentlichkeitsscheu und lsst sich nur selten zu einem Interview bewegen. Das Gesprch, das
wir hier abdrucken, ist das Ergebnis eines langen schriftlichen Gedankenaustausches, der mit
dem Ausbruch der jngsten Griechenlandkrise begann und sich den ganzen Sommer ber
hinzog.
Bekannt wurde der 1942 in Rom geborene Philosoph vor allem mit seinem Homo sacerProjekt, zu dem unter anderem seine Studien ber den Ausnahmezustand und Was von
Auschwitz bleibt gehren. Der Abschlussband dieser bedeutenden Serie des politischen
Philosophierens, Der Gebrauch der Krper, ist in Italien gerade erschienen.
Agamben: Dass die Bedeutung der Krise den wirtschaftlichen Rahmen sprengt, ist nicht zu
bersehen. Wenn wir sie auf ihren wirtschaftlichen Aspekt reduzieren, laufen wir Gefahr, das

Wesentliche zu verpassen. Denn die eigentliche Frage lautet: Was verbirgt sich hinter der
globalen Herrschaft des konomischen Paradigmas? Was sind die tieferen Grnde fr die
Verdrngung des Politischen durch die konomie? Wir haben es mit einem Problem zu tun,
das jenseits der Partikularinteressen der Kapitaleigner und Banker einen entscheidenden
Moment nicht nur der Geschichte Europas, sondern auch der menschlichen Gattung als
solcher markiert. Die Schwche der marxistischen Tradition besteht ja gerade darin, bei einer
konomischen Analyse stehen geblieben zu sein. Die Geschichtsmchte Politik, Religion,
Kunst und Philosophie , die die Geschicke des Abendlandes gelenkt haben, sind sptestens
seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg nicht mehr imstande, die Vlker Europas fr bestimmte Ziele zu
mobilisieren. Ja, der Begriff "Volk" selbst hat seine Bedeutung verloren, und die
Bevlkerungen, die an seine Stelle getreten sind, haben nicht die geringste Absicht, eine wie
auch immer geartete historische Aufgabe zu bernehmen und das ist vielleicht auch gut so,
wenn man an die Aufgaben denkt, die den Vlkern im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert zugedacht
waren.
Das ist der Kontext, in dem die gegenwrtige Vorherrschaft des konomischen steht. In
Ermangelung historischer Aufgaben ist das biologische Leben zum letzten politischen
Auftrag des Abendlands erklrt worden. Es zeigt sich also, dass die Herrschaft des
konomischen Paradigmas mit dem einhergeht, was man seit Foucault fr gewhnlich
Biopolitik nennt: die Besorgung des Lebens als eminent politische Aufgabe. Doch das Leben
als solches ist ein leerer Oberbegriff, der, wie Ivan Illich [!] gezeigt hat, sowohl eine
Samenzelle [*zaadcel] als auch eine Person, einen Hund oder eine Biene, einen Embryo oder
eine Zelle bezeichnen kann. Deshalb fhrt die konomie entweder nirgendwohin oder, wie
die Geschichte der Totalitarismen des 20. Jahrhunderts und die derzeit herrschende Ideologie
des unbegrenzten Wirtschaftswachstums zeigen, zur Zerstrung [*destruction] des Lebens,
dessen sie sich angenommen hat.
[leven is een leeg begrip, maar als leeg begrip HET object (of subject?) van de economie.
Daarom leidt de economie letterlijk NERGENS toe (dwz. omdat het de economie om het
besturen van het leven, wat een inhoudsloosbegrip is. (besturen/cybernetics/governing/
(kuberntiks, good at steering, good pilot), from (kubern, I steer, drive,
guide, act as a pilot), possibly based on 1830s French cyberntique "the art of governing." )
ZEIT: Wenn es stimmt, dass die konomie zu nichts fhrt und auch zu nichts nutze ist,
msste man dann nicht die Denkrichtung vollstndig umdrehen und sich fragen, inwiefern die
Wirtschaftskrise auf eine geistige und metaphysische Krise zurckgeht, zumindest auf eine
Krise der europischen Kultur?
Dieser Artikel stammt aus der ZEIT Nr. 35 vom 27.08.2015. | Die aktuelle ZEIT knnen Sie
am Kiosk oder hier erwerben.
Agamben: Ich habe nicht gesagt, dass die konomie zu nichts nutze ist. Ganz im Gegenteil:
Sie ist absolut ntzlich, reiner Dienst, bloe Ntzlichkeit. [Foucault quote Anke] Mit ihr tritt
das menschliche Leben in die Sphre der Gebrauchsgegenstnde und Werkzeuge ein. Im
Verbund mit der Technik hat sie den Sklaven, das "lebendige Werkzeug" der Antike, ersetzt.
Worauf ich hinauswill, ist, dass die konomie als solche weder wissen noch entscheiden
kann, wozu sie dienen soll.

-----------------------De economie kan zelf niet beslissen waartoe het dient.

"Third, on what does political economy reflect, what does it analyze? It is not something like
prior rights inscribed in human nature or in the history of a given society. Political economy
reflects on governmental practices themselves, and it does not question them to determine
whether or not they are legitimate in terms of right. It considers them in terms of their effects
rather than their origins, not by asking, for example, what authorizes a sovereign to raise
taxes, but by asking, quite simply: What will happen if, at a given moment, we raise a tax on
a particular category of persons or a particular category of goods? [blose nutzlichkeit]
What matters is not whether or not this is legitimate in terms of law; but what its effects are
and whether they are negative. It is then that the tax in question will be said to be illegitimate
Or, at any rate, to have no raison d'etre. The economic question is always to be posed within
the field of governmental practice, not in terms of what may found it by right; but in terms-of
its effects: What are the real effects of the exercise of govemmentality? - Not: What originalrights can found this governmentality? This is the third reason why political economy, in its
reflection and its new rationality, was able to find a place, if you like, within the
governmental practice and reason established in the previous epoch." (Birth of Biopolitics 15)
--------------------------Genauso verhlt es sich mit der Krise, von der so viel gesprochen wird. Ich erinnere nicht
zum ersten Mal daran, dass das griechische Wort crisis "Urteil" oder "Entscheidung"
bedeutet. In der medizinischen Tradition bezeichnet es den Moment, in dem der Arzt
entscheiden muss, ob der Kranke am Leben bleiben oder sterben wird, in der theologischen
den des Jngsten Gerichts. Heute beschliet die alltglich und unabsehbar gewordene Krise
lediglich ihr eigenes Fortbestehen, die Vertagung jeder endgltigen Entscheidung. Es ist, als
ob der Knecht, der Herr geworden ist, nicht wsste, wozu er dienen knnte, wenn nicht zur
grenzenlosen Vermehrung des Dienstes und der Knechtschaft. Es ist die paradoxe Situation
eines Werkzeugs, das sich dazu entscheiden muss, wozu es dienen soll, und sich dazu
entscheidet, sich selbst zu dienen.
Walter Benjamin, der vom Kapitalismus als Religion sprach, wusste bereits, dass in diesem
unbedingten [unconditional] "Dienst" etwas Religises liegt. Im Namen ebendieses
pseudoreligisen Dienstes will man, wie gerade in Griechenland, den Menschen
vorschreiben, wie sie zu leben haben. Insofern kann man davon sprechen, dass die Krise
keine blo konomische ist. Die Bedeutung der Philosophie ich ziehe dieses Wort dem der
Metaphysik vor besteht darin, sich mit der Menschwerdung des Menschen
auseinanderzusetzen. [Hannah Arend] Die Anthropogenese, die Menschwerdung des Tieres,
hat sich nicht in grauer Vorzeit ein fr alle Mal vollzogen; sie ist ein Ereignis, das unablssig
geschieht, ein nicht abgeschlossener Prozess, in dem sich entscheidet, ob der Mensch
menschlich wird oder nicht menschlich bleibt beziehungsweise wieder wird [Kant, project of
peace]. Das Denken ist zunchst Erinnerung an dieses Ereignis [of humantiy], seine
Wiederholung. Es geht ihm um die Humanitt oder Inhumanitt des Menschen, also
etwas, von dem sich konomen und Finanzexperten gar keine Vorstellung machen.
[1.] De monade is niets anders dan een enkelvoudige substantie, waaruit alle samengestelde dingen bestaan. Het enkelvoudige is dat
wat geen delen heeft. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan de lege set {}. Ze is waarlijk enkelvoudig, daar ze geen delen heeft. Ik kan me goed
voorstellen dat getallen, maar ook driehoeken, zijn samengesteld uit zulke "enkelvoudigen." De kardinale getallen bijvoorbeeld, zijn
volgens de set theorie successors van de lege set:

0=
1 = {}
2= {{}}
Met een binair systeem, met alleen O/I, of zelfs een alleen de inscriptie (en de daarbij gempliceerde afwezigheid van een inscriptie)
kun je oneindig veel verschillende samengestelde dingen samenstellen.
De vraag is echter of ook ik als mens, samengesteld uit zulke lege enkelvoudigheden. volgens mij zijn enkelvoudige substanties niet
perse "leeg." of wel?
[2.] Dat er monaden zijn, is niet simpelweg een axioma of bewering uit het niets. Volgens de Leibmaster moeten er wel zulke
enkelvoudigen bestaan omdat er samengestelden "vorhanden sind". Een samengesteld ding kan namelijk niet bestaan zonder haar
delen. Het samengestelde, zegt uns Leiby, is niets anders dan een collection of aggregaat van enkelvoudige substanties. het getal 5 is
bijvoorbeeld: {{{{}}}}}.
Maar alsnog vraag ik mij af of de leibfunker zoiets bedoelt. Want ik kan mij moeilijk voorstellen dat mijn lichaam slechts bestaat uit
een optelsom van enkelvoudige substanties (i.e., monaden). Hoewel: tegelijk ben ik een fenotyp van een genotype, en dat genotype
is slechts een serie van informatie, dat gereduceerd kan worden tot een set van binaire posities. CTAG / DNA. toch lijk ik nog wat
extra nodig te hebben. Ik kan de human genome opschrijven/kopieren/digitaliseren maar deze informatie opzich geeft me/maakt me
nog geen mens.
Het eerste belangrijke probleem is dus: hoe kan iets dat geen delen heeft, met ander dingen samenkomen die ook geen delen
hebben, tot iets komen dat wel delen heeft. Dat is duidelijk bij wiskunde: driehoek. Maar hoe een mens? dit zou betekenen
dat wat we zien - middels perceptie - geen substantie heeft in de zin van : harde materie, (atomen) maar, een gevolg is van
punten zonder delen. Dus denk: videospel. polygonen op polygonen. Maar er lijkt nog iets meer te zijn, namelijk qualiteit.
[3.] Volgens L to E, to the I - B - nizzo, Als er geen delen zijn (vorhanden, il y a), dan is er geen extensie (x,y,z,t), geen driehoeken
enzo. De enkelvoudige dingen waaruit de extensie bestaat , zijn dus echt de elementaire deeltjes, de fundamentele atomen van de
natuur. (je kan kan niet zeggen dat ze de kleinste deeltjes zijn, want het begrip klein verondersteld een zekere omvang/extensie.)
Er zijn delen, want er zijn samengestelde dingen. Dus de "dingen" die alle dingen tot dingen kan maken, de enkelvoudige
substanties, zijn dus werkelijk de elemente derer dinge (de elementen van die dingen). Dat zijn de monaden.
[4.] De monaden kunnen niet ontbinden! want ze zijn niet samengesteld. ze kunnen dus niet op natuurlijke wijze ten onder gaan. Het
princpe van entropy bijvoorbeeld geldt niet voor de monaden. Een menselijk lichaam valt bij dood op natuurlijke wijze uitelkaar en
zal nooit meer dat menselijke lichaam kunnen terugworden. Haar delen kunnen opgaan in nieuwe samengestelden (planten etc.)
{}

{}

{}

is er eigenlijk wel ruimte in leibniz? (ja, maar niet absoluut)

[5.] Omdat monaden niet uit delen bestaan, zijn ze niet uitgebreid, en omdat ze niet uitgebreid zijn kunnen we haar
"creatie"/ontstaan op natuurlijke wijze niet denken. Een monade komt niet, zoals een menselijk lichaam, tot bestaan door een
cumulatie/contractie van delen (hart, nieren, cellen, atomen). Ze kan niet hervogebracht werden door compositie of deling (zoals
tafels en stoelen etc etc.) Als ze tot bestaan komt, wordt ze gecreeerd.
Een monade komt niet tot bestaan door een optelsom. Zoals een molen bv.
[6.] men kan dus zeggen dat de monaden niet anders ontstaan/beginnen of eindigen, als door schepping. schepping/creatie,
plotseling. Dus niet cumulatief. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan taal. als de menselijke taal onstaat is ze direct oneindig, het is niet een
optelsom van woorden, waar steeds nieuwe aan worden toegevoegd. denk ook aan het tellen als ik het concept 1 heb, heb ik het
concept 1 + 1, en dus 2, en dat tot oneindig. Als het ik door heb hoe tellen werkt, heb ik in 1 klap/ plotseling het begrip
oneindigheid. getallen worden dus niet stuk voor stuk opnieuw gecreeerd, maar in een keer, in een creatie schepping. Denk ook aan:
- you don't reach infinity by addition
- Wanneer de wiskunde word geschapen is ze totaal
- when a structure comes into being it is immediately total
- Language/wiskunde is as such is not cumulative.

[7.]. er is geen middel voorhanden om te verklaren ho een monade door een ander creatie (dan wel een enkelvoudige substantie/ dan
wel een samengestelde?, of ding/zijnde/samengestelde veranderd zou kunnen worden, op ingewerkt zou kunne worden, kan laten
bewegen.
Omdat we op geen manier kunnen voorstellen hoe zulks te werk gaat, aangenzien monaden ondeelbaar zijn, geen extensie hebben.
Dus hebben ze geen vensters.

Samengestelden (een mens), verandert door het verandering van de samenstelling. het heeft geen "innerlijk," niet zoals een mens
''''''''''''
'
'
'
<-----------------------'
'
''''' ''''
Het is dus in die zin niet mechanistisch, denk ik [?]. tussen de monade is een puur verschil? een pure difference. er is geen relatie
tussen de monaden, ze zijn niet aan elkaar gelinkt in die zin dat ze op elkaar inwerken. Ze hebben geen opening waardoor iets
"naarbinnen" of "naar buiten" zou kunnen gaan. ze zijn immers niet uitgebreid, ze hebben geen extentie. geen ruimte. het zijn geen
containers met eigenschappen/accidentalia (present in, said of categorien).
Punnten die een driehoek opmaken, of de lege set waarmee we grotere getallen maken, zijn zelf niet opgebouwd uit delen en zijn
dus enkelvoudig, dwz. niet uitgebreid, niet ruimtelijk. Maar ze hebben ook geen accidentalia, ze zijn puur formeel. en hier is er
misschien een verschil tussen pure wiskunde, en de monadologie van Leibniz. of hebben punten en lege sets (empty signifier) ze
wel accidentalia?
de mondade is symbolic + imaginary!
Vraag: wat zijn de accidenten/attributes, en wat zijn ze van monaden als ze niet eraan vast geplakt worden?

leegroep: monaden zijn niets dan percepties. maar perceptie is veelheid in enkelvoudigheid gevat/gerepresenteerd. (zonder
uitgebreidheid/optelsom

Derrida [signature, sign, play] the center of the structure, is een monade de center of "structurality of the structure"? is de lege
betekenaar de monade van de structuur, en is de structuur de qualiteit/eigenschap van de lege betekenaar?
Dit terzijde. Volgens Leib kunnen de accidentia niet van de substanties afzonderen! ze zijn tegelijk gegeven en onafscheidelijk,
in tegenstelling tot wat de scholastici het voorstelden. een accident komt niet (van buiten) op of in of aan de monade, ze is er niet
aan vastgeplakt, gestickerd, gelijmd, samengesteld. Net zo goed kan een monade, een enkelvoudige substantie niet als accident van
een ander monade optreden.
vraag: is er een verschil tussen substantie en monade? omdat leib zegt: Daher ist weder eine Substanz / noch ein Accidens
vermgend / von auen in eine Monade hinein zutreten.
monae is einfache substanz, geestelijke substantieel.
--------"Nevertheless, the center also closes off the freeplay it opens up and makes possible. Qua center, it is the point at which the
substitution of contents, elements, or terms is no longer possible. At the center, the permutation or the transformation of elements
(which may of course be structures enclosed within a structure) is forbidden. At least this permutation has always remained
interdicted (I use this word deliberately). Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted
that very thing within a structure which governs the structure, while escaping structurality. This is why classical thought concerning
structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it."
ev
The center is at the center of the totality, and yet, since the centergng to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its
center elsewhere. The center is not the center. The concept of centered structure -- although it represents coherence itself, the
condition of the episteme as philosophy or science -- is contradictorily coherent. And, as always, coherence in contradiction
expresses the force of a desire [apatite/leibniz].
The concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a freeplay based on a fundamental ground, a freeplay which is constituted
upon a fundamental immobility and a reassuring certitude, which is itself beyond the reach of the freeplay. With this certitude
anxiety can be mastered, for anxiety is invariably the result of a certain mode of being implicated in the game, of being caught by

the game, of being as it were from the very beginning at stake in the game. From the basis of what we therefore call the center (and
which, because it can be either inside or outside, is as readily called the origin as the end, as readily arch as telos), the repetitions,
the substitutions. the transformations, and the permutations are always taken from a history of meaning [sens] -- that is, a history,
period -- whose origin may always be revealed or whose end may always be anticipated in the form of presence. This is why one
could perhaps say that the movement of any archeology, like that of any eschatology, is an accomplice of this reduction of the
structuralality of structure and always attempts to conceive of structure from the basis of a full presence which is out of play.
If this is so, the whole history of the concept of structure, before the rupture I spoke of, must be thought of as a series of
substitutions of center for center, as a linked chain of determinations of the center. Successively, and in a regulated fashion, the
center receives different forms or names. The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors
and metonymies. Its matrix -- if you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being so elliptical in order to bring me more
quickly to my principal theme -- is the determination of being as presence in all the senses of this word. It would be possible to
show that all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the I center have always designated the constant of a presence -eidos, arche, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) aletheia [truth], transcendentality, consciousness, or
conscience, God, man, and so forth.
The event I called a rupture, the disruption alluded to at the beginning of this paper, would presumably have come about when the
structurality of structure had to begin to be thought, that is to say, repeated, and this is why I said that this disruption was repetition
in all of the senses of this word. From then on it became necessary to think the law which governed, as it were, the desire for the
center in the constitution of structure and the process of signification prescribing its displacements and its substitutions for this law
of the central presence -- but a central presence which was never itself, which has always already been transported outside itself in
its surrogate. The surrogate does not substitute itself for anything which has somehow pre-existed it. From then on it was probably
necessary to begin to think that there was no center, that the center could not be thought in the form of a beingpresent, that the center
had no natural locus, that it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of non-locus in which an infinite number of signsubstitutions came into play. This moment was that in which language invaded the universal problematic; that in which, in the
absence of a center or origin, everything became discourse -- provided we can agree on this word -- that is to say, when everything
became a system where the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of
differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the interplay of signification ad infinitum.
---------

OVERGANG VAN DE KWANTITEIT NAAR DE KWALITEIT! [ 1-7 -> 8 ]

[8.] Zo lijkt het alsof de monaden geen kwaliteiten kunnen bezitten. immers, kwaliteiten zijn volgens de scholastische traditie aan,
in of op substanties geplakt. (subject + predicaat). Maar volgen leibniz moeten monaden toch kwaliteiten bezitten, ook al zijn het
geen opplakbare kwaliteiten. Want anders konden ze niet bestaan, waren ze geen zijnden. geen werkelijke dingen. en als de
enkelvoudige substanties (monaden) niet in hun eigenschappen/kwaliteiten zouden verschillen, zouden er geen middel zijn waarmee
men een vereanderin in de dingen zou kunnen waarnemen [?].
Leibniz introduceert hier het interieur van de monade. Dit begrijp ik nog steeds niet, waar haalt ie het vandaan dat een
monade een interieur heeft? Nou, omdat (vgl. paragraaf 8) ze wel qualiteiten moeten hebben, anders zoudens ze niet bestaan

Dus: er zijn mondaden, en die maken samengestelden op, maar met alleen quantiteit kun je bestaan niet verklaren. Ook: als
ze niet in hun kwaliteiten onderscheiden waren, dan was er geen middel om verandering te zien, (en dat zien we!) Als er geen
kwaliteit was, was er alleen binair systeem, pure informatie 010100101010101010101010101011010111110101010101.

In de geometrie je kunt een punt van een ander punt onderscheiden door ze op een andere plek in de ruimte te zetten. Je
veronderstelt dan een absolute ruimte. Veronderstel je geen absolute ruimte, dan is een punt alleen definieerbaar door zijn
relatie tot alle andere punten (relativiteit).
inderdaad, in de lege set {} kunnen we geen verandering waarnemen, omdat er geen enkel middel is om een verandering waar te
nemen. ze heeft namelijk geen kwaliteit.
Als al het samengestelde bestaat uit enkelvoudigheden, maar deze enkelvoudigheden geen eigenschappn/kwaliteiten zouden hebben,
dan kon niets van het andere onderscheiden zijn, te meer nog omdat men deze enkelvoudigheden geen ruimtelijkheid bezitten en
dus niet verschillen in quantiteit. Dit betekent dat, als we bijvoorbeeld een met andere dingen gevulde ruimte voorstellen, een "vol
zijn" voorstellen (een plenum?), een volledig gevulde ruimte.
elke plaats nog steeds in beweging is dat het equivalent van wat hij zou ontvangen, en een stand van zaken zou niet te
onderscheiden van de andere zijn. (no "play" in derrida's sense)
Geen staat van de dingen zou van een ander staat van de dingen te onderscheiden zijn als de monaden geen kwaliteiten zouden
bezitten. (een groot infinitum van leegheid).
Maar deze eigenschappen zijn dus geen delen, want dan waren monaden weer samengestelden.

Als enkelvoudige substanties niet verschilden in kwaliteit, dan zou er (ook in de samengestelde dingen) geen verandering waar te
nemen zijn.
als DNA niet verschilde in qualiteit {ctaggtccctagatcgg}, alleen in quantiteit, {aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa} dan zou er geen
verandering waar te nemen zijn. (verschil IS kwaliteit) [deleuze?]
verschil is kwaliteit? 0000000 vs. 0101011011?
er is geen verschil in kwantiteit. alleen als de delen kwalitatief verschillen!
Een posities binne binair syteem verschillen van elkaar tenminste in een opzicht in kwaliteit. O/I. O is kwalitatief verschillend van
I. Anders was er niets dan {IIIIIIII} of {OOOOOOOO}. check information video veretasium.
[9.] in andere woorden: elke monade moet van elke andere monade onderscheiden zijn. Dit omdat in er in de natuur geen twee
dingen excact hetzelfde zijn, en in welke het nooit mogelijk is om een interne verschil op basis van een intrinsiek denominatie
vinden. (er is altijd een innerlijke voorkeur of regel te vinden [/ eidos,

arche, telos, energeia, ousia (essence,

existence, substance, subject) aletheia [truth], transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience,
God, man, and so forth.]
Er is verschil tussen dingen. Maar alles is monaden, dus het verschil zit m niet in de samengestelden. Als alle monaden hetzelfde
zouden zijn, en er is geen absolute ruimte waardoor we ze van elkaar zouden kunnen onderscheiden, dan zouden we ook geen
verschil kunnen maken. Er zijn in de natuur geen precies dezelfde dingen. punt A verschilt van punt B in de driehoek, maar de
punten zelf zijn gelijk. Maar hoe verschilt punt A van punt B als er geen absolute ruimte is verondersteld? Punt A is niets anders dan
Alles wat Punt a Niet is (punt B en C, en Lijn AB etc.)
Dus we kunnen Jan van Klaas en Pieter onderscheiden, niet omdat jan een hart heeft, maar omdat jan een innerlijk principe heeft dat
verschil van klaas, nl, zijn Janheid. [???]
[10.] Elk geschapen wezen is aan verandering onderhevig, en deze verandering is ononderbroken. Jan is altijd aan het veranderen.
De taal verandert, de wiskunde verandert, de staat verandert.
Dingen veranderen (neem een digitaal filmpje op youtube, bestaande uit code {001011100...})
Elke geschapen wezen (compounds), en bij gevolg! de geschapen monade, is aan verandering onderhevig/onderworpen.
Als Een driehoek in beweging,veranderd, elk punt dan is ook elk punt aan verandering onderhevig. Leibniz neemt aan dat die
verandering niet stopt (dan zou niets van het andere te onderscheiden zijn, een vol plenum.

[11.] De verandering van een monade komt door een intern principe (interne wetmatigheid).
Het is dus niet zo dat een punt op een bewegende driehoek beweegt doordat een ander punt beweegt (alsof die beweging primair is,
en de volgende veroozaakt). Het beweegt, punt. Er is verandering, punt. De beweging van de punt in de driehoek komt door het
eigen interne principe van beweging. Wat is dit interne principe?

[sociale ontologie] De staat verandert niet door iets externs. de staat beweegt dmv een intern principe, een principe dat de staat
constitueert. [Raison d'Etat, something called the state (ca 1500), plays the role of both a given - since one only governs a state that
is already there, one only governs within the framework of the state - but also at the same time an object to be constructed]

autonomie!

intern principe/norm/ state is constituted by itself. zelfde met jan. Janheid is het interne principe van jan, Jan verondersteld deze
janheid, maar constitueert zelf het ding (jan) dat moet worden vormgegeven als janheid. [??]

[12.] Maar er moet ook, naast dit grondprincipe (dt er beweging is, de staat als constituting ) van verandering, nog iets meer zijn
dat veranderd (dtgene dat verandert, de staat als constituted). Jan is het principe van verandering, maar ook datgene wat
veranderd. Leibmaster noemt het een detail.
Er is een verschil tussen [principle of change/Grunde der veranderung] en something more [a detail, element, ding, iets nietalgemenes, etwas besonderes, iets bijzonders, iets particuliers].

[13.] deze bijzonderheid moet in zich vatten: een veelheid in enkelvoudigheid. Dit detail moet een veelheid in eenheid in zich
vatten. Een ding waar veelheid in een eenheid zit. [in een staat bv, of in een mens als persoon, and what about capital?]. een
multipliciteit in eenheid. [de staat is een veelheid in eenheid, e pluribus unem] / multiplicityin the unity, or in that which is
simple/ondeelbaar/individu (Jan, Nederland, etc.).
wat onderheving is aan de bewegende driehoek is de punt, maar de beweging komt is niet van buiten aangedreven. de bijzonderheid
die de punt is, (wil het nota bene een opzich bestaande bijzonderheid kunnen zijn) moet, omdat er verandering is (het interne
principe van verandering) de veelheid in zich vatten (de veranderingen die alle andere punten zijn).
Dit is omdat de monade aan verandering onderhevig is. en omdat verandering gradueel is, moet er iets zijn dat verandert en iets dat
anders is dan dat wat verandert, dat wat aan verandering ontschiet [?]. dx/dy.
Daarom moeten er een veelvoud aan relaties en eigenschappen zijn in de monade, terwijl ze geen delen heeft, niet
opgebouwd is uit delen!

singularity.
principe van verandering: ER IS NOU EENMAAL VERANDERING, PUNT.
Oke oke oke oke oke..... wat verandert er dan?
er is een "detail" (particularity) dat verandert, en dat voor de specificiteit en de varieteit van den enkelvoudig substanties zorgt.
Overgang naar de PERCEPTIE
[14.] de veranderlijke staat welke de veelheid in eenheid of enkelvoudighed in zich vat, en voorstelt [de staat, e pluribus unem, het
zelf, het levende wezen/inside vs. outside / leven] is niets ander dan wat men sensatie of perceptie noemt. Dit is NIET bewustzijn of
apperceptie. De fout van de cartesianen was dat ze de sensatie of perceptie waar men zich niet van bewust is voor niets heeft
aangenomen.
Deze particulariteit/singulariteit moet een multipliciteit in de eenheid in zich vatten. [Denk: algorithm, denk strange attractor]
zielen zijn niet gescheiden van lichamen. het staatshoofd (als fictief persoon) is niet gescheiden van de staat. het zelf [eenheid[ niet
van het lichaam [veelheid].
Deze paragraaf lijkt doorslaggevend. multipliciteit IN eenheid/enkelvoudigheid, en daarmee is leibniz anders dan het cartesianisme,
die veelheid en eenheid scheidt.
bewustzijn is niet iets anders dan perceptie. naief: ik kan mijn eigen perceptie ook niet anders voorstellen als veelheid in in eenheid.
Het is geen mechaniek (neurowetenschap). Wat verandert in mijn perceptie is veelheid, maar het is niet een mechaniek dat op me
inwerkt (dat is de neurologische kant). de verandering die ik waarneem is van mij, het gebeurd in mij (als perceptie.)
Normaal zou je denken, er zijn dingen buiten me. die dingen veroorzaken een perceptie. maar dat is mechaniek. er is iets extra's
nodig, het gaat erom dat in perceptie niet alleen een veelheden zijn die op elkaar inwerken, maar dat een veranderlijke veelheid in
eenheid samenkomt, tegelijkertijd.
Dus punt A van de driehoek heeft perceptie in de zin dat in zich de veelheid van de andere punten in zich vat. (want er is geen
absolute ruimte, Punt A is niet punt B omdat ze ergens anders verblijft, ze is Punt A omdat ze niet Punt B en C is, of eigenlijk,
omdat ze het punt is waar Alle punten die niet Punt A zijn samenkomen.

De veranderlijke toestand/staat, dat is perceptie. het is een veranderlijke toestand waar in het enkelvoudige de veelheid is
gerepresenteerd. (algemene wil).
Het subject (een punt in een gemeenschap) is zo dus het punt waar alle andere subjecten in zijn gerepresenteerd. Interne principe is
ook het objectieve principe.

[15.] de actie van het interne principe [dt er beweging is] die de verandering of voortgang veroorzaak van de ene naar de andere
perceptie (staat van veelheid in eenheid) veroorzaakt, kan de appetijt of de hunkering genoemd worden. it cannot attain the a
total/whole of the perception which it strives. maar wel een deel, en verktijgt nieuwe percepties.
- tegelijk wel en niet afhankelijk van elkaar. zelfstandig. Streven: niet zozeer tekort, maar drang naar maximale helderheid.
de actie van het interne principe, (de noodzaleijkheid van de regel "er is verandering"), de actie van dit principe, de
tatigkeit/werkzaamheid/werkoorzaak? die de voortgang van de ene naar de ander perceptie veroorzaakt, kan appetijt of streven
worden genoemd. (drift streeft nergens naar anders dan het voortzetten van de drift, desire without an object)
een appetijt streeft naar het geheel van perceptie. (denk: de wereld als geheel begrijpen). Hoewel het streven niet altijd dit geheel ka
bereiken, het bereikt altijd een deel en bereikt nieuwe percepties (een nieuwe toestand van veelheid in eenheid).
Dit streven/conoatus is de actie van het interne principe van verandering. philosophy: heldere ideeen: objecten van ervaring ->
wiskunde, -> god. Streven naar god.
[16.] Onze ervaring leert ons zelf, dat veelheid in enkelvoud aangetroffen word, wanneer we ons bewust worden dat in de geringste
gedachte veelheid in de zaak in zich vat, een veelheid die welke daarin voorgesteld wordt en tegelijkertijd afgeschilderd word.
we are a monad, that is, a multiplicity in unity. Der geringste Gedanke dessen wir uns bewust sind, hat eine Mannigfaltigkeit
in der Sache welche darinnen vorgestellet und gleichsam abgeschildert wird in sich fasse. The most trifling Thought of which
we are conscious, has a a multiplicity in the thing/object , a multiplicity which is represented in the thing, a representation,
in turn, which is contained within the ting [?]
[17.] maar perceptie is dus niet uit te leggen door middel van mechanisme oorzaken (door figuren en bewegingen niet verklaard kan
worden). Stel de perceptie is een molen. Als we erin zouden gaan zouden we alleen radaren zien die op andere tandwielen inwerken,
we zouden er nooit perceptie in kunnen zien/ mee kunnen uitleggen.
perceptie is veelheid in eenheid. De perceptie moet in de enkelvoudige substantie zoeken, nooit in het samengestelde zoeken.
Denk aan "the hard problem." congnitive neurobiologist zoeken consciousness/perception in het brein. maar dit is een
samengestelde. het punt van perceptie is precies een enkelheid die in veelheid in zich vat/representeerd. Maar dit altijd in de zin dat
de enkelheid deze veelheid in zich vat, tout court, niet dat er twee dingen of een veelvoud aan dingen samensmelten.
- perception must be sought in the simple substance. it is not a function or effect of mechanics! perception cannot be
explained trough hwdfd/extension. There is NOTHING BESIDES perceptions and their changes to be found in the simple
substance.

effieciente werkoorzaken. doel-oorzaken, naar voren gezet. innerlijk princip (doeloorzaak) in plaats van buitenaf
- perception is not spatial (thing ----> representation ----> perceptor/empty container)
verandering heeft een intern principe, zelfbeweging. autonomy
- the internal actions (desire/conatus/etc) of the simple substance can consist only in the perceptions and changes. ?

veranderen en waarnemen.

We moeten bekenne dat de perceptie en datgene wat er van afhang [? alles?], niet op mechanische (door figuren en hun beweging
f=ma) wijze te verklaren is.

Je vind perceptie (veelvoud in enkelheid) eenvoudigweg niet in de mechanic (samengestelden werkend op samengestelden). Men
moet het zoeken in de eenvoudige substantie. Er kan dan ook niets dan precies dit worden aangetroffen in de enkelvoudige
substantie: de sensatie en haar veranderingen. En hierin alleen kan de innerlijke actie (de actie van het interne principe, d.i., de actie
van de noodzakelijke wet: "er is verandering").

[18.] de enkelvoudige substantie kan entelechie (ziel) worden genoemd, omdat ze een perfectie bezitten, een zelfstandigheid. Haar
acties komen van haar interne principe [staat, het staatshoofd, jan]
perfectie, want zelfstandig. verandering, dus zelfstandig (intern) principe van verandering. dus entelechie.
[19.] monaden met geheugen noemt leibniz ziel. (we kunnen niet alles ziel noemen, maar wel alles entelechie (perceptie plus
hunkering, dat is, verandering door intern principe (doeloorzaak, ipv werkoorzaak, verlangen/drift ipv physiche causaliteit. )
hoe verklaar je verandering?: (1) mechanische causaliteit (werkoorzaak) (2) verlangen/desire (doeloorzaak) (3)
drift/conatus? ;

- entelechy is perception. perception plus desire is soul. soul is perception plus memory.
great chain of being/ aristoteles.

[20.] er is een verschil tussen ziel (met bewustzijn) en simpele monade. Het verschil blijkt uit onze ervaring van diepe slaap, of
flauwvallen, onbewust zijn.
[21.] een monade bestaat alleen als er affectie is, en affectie is niets dan zijn perceptie (veelheid in enkelheid is affectie, niet
causaal!). Dus ook de enkelvoudige substantie is niet als we onbewustzijn zonder perceptie.
perceptie is er altijd, ze kan niet vergaan. er is niet eerst geen, dan wel perceptie.
[22.] elke huidige/tegenwoordige staat van een enkelvoudige substantie is een natuurlijk (?) gevolg van zijn voorgaande staat [die
staat is gedetermineerd, maar niet causaal]. In zo een manier dat de huidge staat is zwanger van de toekomst [de toekomst van de
enkelvoudige substantie ligt er al in de enkelvoudige substantie besloten]
[23.] Dus, als we wakker worden na ene periode van onbewustzijn (slaap) en we worden ons bewust van onze percepties, moeten
we ZONDER DAT WE ER VAN BEWUST WAREN, percepties hebben gehad die er aan voorafgingen. Want deze perceptie kan
alleen maar tot zichzelf zijn gekomen vanuit een andere perceptie, net zoal een beweging van een andere beweging komt.
[24.] zonder dat we zulke hoger smaken in onzere sensatie/perceptie hebben, zouden we in een staat van stomheid verkeren (zoals
stenen)
[25.] dieren hebben een verhoogde perceptie. smaak, reuk, andere sensaties.
[26.] De herinnering geeft de ziel een opeenvolgendheid (door tijd?), zoals de rede dat doet, maar toch net anders.
Denk conditioned response/pavlov.
[27.] het heftigheid/vividness van het beeld of de verbeelding dat de monade beweegt, d.i. zijn perceptie, komt van een grootheid of
veelheid van eerdere percepties. Een sterke verbeelding kan, hetzelfde teweg brengen als een HABIT, een lange gewoonte, or vele
middelmatige verbeeldingen.
OVERGANG NAAR DE REDE
[28.] verhouding empirie, rationaliteit. dieren empirie.
[Badiou's human animal]

De mens gedragen zich als de zonder rede (rede in haar speculatieve gebruik/ vernunft) in zo ver dat de sequentie van de percepties
bepaald is door de wet/principe van het geheugen, zoals de empirische medici, die een loutere praktijk zonder theorie hebben
(!!!!!!!!!!)
We zijn 3/4 empiristen (hume). Bijvoorbeel, wanneer we verwachten dat de zon op komt morgen, doen we dat empirische/geheugen
technisch (custom, habit), omdat het alijd zo is gegaan. Slechts de astronoom (newton) gebruikt ook daadwerkelijk REDE
(speculatie!!! f=ma), eerst hypothese (speculatie, en dan test)->(net als capital => eerst speculatie, dan verwerkelijking). F=MA.
[29.] De kennis van eeuwige en noodzakelijke waarheden (dmv speculatie/rede, overstijging, transcendentie) is wat ons doet
verschillen van de dieren en geeft ons de wetenschap (EN Kaptiaal!, EN, SOCIETY, vgl. Searl: institutions), en dus verheft het ons
tot een kennis van onzelf, en van GOD (rijk der doelen)
bewustzijn, ziel hebben, is dankzij de rede. dit is redelijke ziel of GEEST (aristoteles/HEGEL!!)
[30.] Het is door het kennen van de noodzakelijke waarheden en zijn abstracties (denk, taal is oneindig, totaal, in een klap gegeven,
wiskunde 1+1=2, f=ma) dat ons reflexieve daden geeft, ofwel tot nadenken dwingt. Dit is wat we het "Ik" noemen, and ons doen
beslissen dat dit IK in ons is (inside outside, finite - infinite). [interpr. Als we het oneindige kunnen denken, komen we tot de
conclusie dat datgene wat het oneindige denkt zelf niet oneindig is. enzo komen we tot het ik].
we kunnen denken: zijn, substantie, eenheid, veelheid, samengesteldheid, eindigheid en oneindigheid.
En deze reflexieve daden vormen de belangrijkste objecten van onze redeneringen. (wat is reflexief hier?) op zichzelf betrokken?
niet op de zaak?

handeling, die reflexivie is, het denken, is object van de redenering. het denken als object van het denken (reflexie).

Eeuwige waarheden zijn niet OUT THERE en komen dan via een venster bij ons binnen (empiristen) ze zijn in ons gevat (de wereld
is in elke monade gespiegeld), maar onze huidige toestand hoeft deze meer volledige perceptie nog niet te hebben bereikt, maar ons
(natuurlijk) streven uiteindelijk deze meer volkmaakte perceptie bereiken, (want ook al ligt deze perceptie in de toekomst, ze ligt al
in ons besloten)

[31.] ONZE syllogisme/redeneren/speculatie is gebaseerd op twee wetten: principe van non-contradictie.

de wetten van het denken.eenheid, veelheid, substantie.
[32.] principe van voldoende grond: geen feit/gegeven kan waar zijn en werkelijk voorhanden, en geen zin/statement kan waar zijn
als er niet een voldoende reden/grond is waarom het zo is en niet anders. (toch hoeven deze redenen ons niet bekend te zijn). Dus
deze computer is er om een reden, ook al ken ik die reden niet.
[33.] twee soorten waarheid: reasoning and fact. eerste zijn noodzakelijk, en het tegengestelde is onmogelijk. die van de feiten zijn
contingent, hun tegenovergestelde is mogelijk.
[De tweede geeft blijk van een zekere contingentie.]
De eerste zijn contingent, hun tegenovergestelde is mogeljik (er zit een aap op mijn hoofd)
De twee zijn noodzakelijk, de reden kan gevonden worden door analyse -> alle vrijgezellen zijn ongetrouwd. of (axiomatisch
systeem: laat x y zijn bla bla)
[34.] in de wiskunde, the speculatieve bewijzen en de praktische canons kunnen uiteindelijk gereduceerd worden tot axioma's,
definities en postulaten.
[35.] dan zijn er nog de simpele ideen (zoals de monaden), identiteits uitspraken (a=a)
[36.] Maar er moet ook voldoende grond zijn voor contingente waarheiden of feiten. belangrijk! als er een aap op mijn hoofd zit,
dan moet er een reden zijn dat er een aap op mijn hoofd zit, en als er geen aap op mijn hoofd zit, dan moet er een reden zijn waarom
er geen aap op mijn hoofd zit (?)
omdat de dingen zo oneindig deelbaar zijn. Er zijn oneindig aantal figuren en bewegingen, huidig en vergaan, die ten grondslag
liggne aan de werkoorzaak van mijn huidige schrijven. en ook een oneindigheid aan tendensen en disposities van mijn ziel gaan in
de doeloorzaak ervan. waarom ik het schrijf, met welk doel. dus doel + werkoorzaak.

oneindigheid aan redenen, oneindigheid aan detail (vgl. elke monade is een detail!)
OVERGANG NAAR GOD
[37.] onbewogen beweger, causa sui.
en al dit detail (al deze monaden, interne wetmatigheid/principes van beweging), alles heeft invloed op alles, en daarom moet de
uiteindelijke afdoende grond/reden buiten de serie van details (= innerlijke principes van verandering in de enkelvoudige
substanties, of wel monaden) liggen, hoe oneindig ze ook zijn!
Totalizing move of Leibniz. THe ONE!
[38.] de ultieme reden, the laatste grond, moet dus een noodzakelijke substantie zijn, in welke de details (de innerlijke principes van
verandering in de enkelvoudige substanties) van de verandering louter in de hoogste graad aanwezig is, zoals in een bron (pure
potentie?). dat is God {???}
[39.] Omdat deze substantie een voldoende reden is voor a de varieteit (verandering) van de specififieke (enkevloudige substanties),
die ze ook verbind doorkruisen/doorheen het al/allen met allen, is er slechts 1 god, en deze goed is afdoende.
[40.] Het moet alle werkelijkheid in zich vatten. [ONE]
[41.] Dus God is absolutely perfect, perfecte verstaan als de grootheid van de positieve werkelijkheid in de strikte zin, ZONDER
LIMITATIES (oneindig ipv gelimiteerd absoluut). perfectie is absolutly infinite. [perfectie is niet finite, like with the greeks]
[42.] Wat volgt is dat de geschapen dingen hun perfectie verkrijgen door de INVLOED van god, maar hun imperfecties van hun
eigen natuur komen, die niet kunnen bestaan ZONDER limiet. DAAROM ZIJN ZE FOKKING ANDERS DAN GOD (ONEINDIG)
FUKKING IDENTITIES ZIJN IMPERFECT JAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJA BADIOUUUUUUUU! niet omdat "er nog wat bij moet"
maar omdat "er iets moet worden weggelaten, afgesloten van iets" (inclusion exlusion, normal/abnormal etc etc.!!!!!)
[43.] Wat ook waar is,, is dat God niet alleen de bron is van bestaan (being), maar ook van essenties (mogelijkheid, teleology,
cybernetics). Mens, goed mens, mogelijkheid, essentie = norm, regel, intern principe, interne wetmatigheid van verandering richting
de doeloorzaak (bij foucault: cultureel)
[44.] Necessary Being in who essence includes existence, to be possible is to be actual.
[45.] Daarom bestaat alleen god noodzakelijk.
"that wou knows no bounds, no negation, and consequently no contradiction" dit is wat mogelijk maakt/ slechts dit is
voldeonde voor een apriori bestaan te kennen (we hebben zijn bestaan dus bewezen door de werkelijkheid van de eeuwige
waarheden. Maar we hebben m ook a posteriori bewezen, omdat contingente wezens bestaan die hun ultieme grond en voldoende
reden allen in de noodzakelijke wezen vinden, die, op zijn beurt, de reden van bestaan in zichzelf heeft.
[46.] contingent truths depend on the will of god: best possible world. [contingent truth / could be otherwise -> change /
(think state foucault)<> teleology/cybernetics <> conjunctural sciences (Lacan)]
Yet we must not think that the eternal truths being dependent upon God are therefore arbitrary and depend upon his will
[like society], as Descartes seems to have held, and after him M. Poiret. This is the case only with contingent truths which
depend upon fitness or the choice of the greatest good [like society]; necessarily truths on the other hand depend solely upon
his understanding and are the inner objects of it.

[47.] God is de primary/primitieve enkelvoudigheid, of de orginele/oorspronkelijke enkelvoudige substantie (ondeelbaar?), waar alle
geschapen of DERIVATEN/DERIVATIVES, afgeleiden monaden producten zijn, door continue bliksemactie van de goddelijkehid
van moment tot moment, beperkt door de receptiviteit van het geschapen wezen, wiens essentie het is om beperkt te zijn.
Primair waartoe, ultieme orderner! [!], net als: staat/ideology/meester betekenaar

De staat ordent alle schakels om zich heen tot een geheel, een intern principe van verandering.
De staat alleen is de primary ordenende idealiteit, whaar alle subjecten afgeleiden zijn alsook producten, door de continue werking
van de machtsrelaties die de idealiteit van de staat tot wie de subjecten zich betrekken (panopticon).

[48.] God is oneindig, (in macht, kennis en wil), in de created monads zijn deze beperkt (god is een niet gecreeerde monade).
[49.] van een geschapen ding wordt gezegd dat ze naar buiten handeled voorzover het perfectie heeft, en dat het zich laat leiden,
waarOP wordt gehandeld, word behandeld, voorzover het imperfect is. Actie wordt aan een monade toegekent inzo ver het heldere
en onderscheiden percepties heeft, en passie of passiviteit voor zover het verwarde percepties heeft.
Actie: socialisme, communistisch idee (heldere onderscheiden percepties), passie of passiviteit als het verward is (ideology)
[50.] De ene geschapen ding is perfecter dan de ander wanneer we zien dat de eerste aprior redenen geeft voor wat er gebeeurt in de
tweede. [zoals de staat ten opzichte van de mens, en de mens tenopzichte van zijn organen]

[51.] In het geval van de enkelvoudige substanties, the invloed [!!!] die de ene monade op de andere uitoefend is slechts IDEAL. het
kan zijn effect hebben alleen door de mediate van GOD.
Maar het is ideaal het kan alleen door de mediatie van GOD. de symbolische orde [laws, customs, regulation] is ideeal, het kan
alleen effect hebben door de mediatie van de Big Other. conjunctural/norm/etc.
meervoudige substanties: mechaniek?
PRIMAL REGULATION
God as Big Other (lacan Zizek).
[52.] from the point of view of god, action and passivity are reciprocal. (everyone is equal) Power relations Foucault
[53.] omdat in het Idee God een oneindigheid van mogelijke universems zijn, moet er een goede grond zijn, een voldoende,
toereikende grond, voor de keuze van god.
[54.] Deze rede can alleen gevonden worden in de mate van perfectie , die deze werelden hebben, omdat elk mogelijk ding het recht
heeft om te apsireren/ te kiezen voor de perfectie, daar het bestaan van perfectie er bij hem in de kiem aanwezig is (door god
geschapen: mogelijk).
[55.] De goedheid God's doet hem kiezen voor de beste mogelijke wereld.
[56.] Elke eenvoudige substantie heeft connecties of aanpassing met/tot elke andere eenvoudige substantie. This means that every
one expresses all the others. [zoals subjecten, via de mediatie van de Grote Ander / De Staat connecties hebben met en zich
aanpassen aan alle andere subjecten]
[57.] En zoals een en dezelfde stad van verschiellende kanten/zijden gezien, heel anders is en (wat het zelfde is) perspectivisch dus
veelvoudig toeschijnt. Daarom zijn er ook, als gevolg van een oneindig aantal envoudige substanties, vnvensoveel verschillende
Universums gegeven, die niettemin alleen de perspectieven zijn van de verschillende monaden.
[58.] Op deze manier is er bij de grootsmogelijke ordening zoveel verscheidenheit als mogelijk te krijgen, wat betekend, er is net
zoveel volkomenheid als er maar verlangen kan worden.

[59.]
[60.]
[61.] het gehele universum is in een simpele monade gerperesenteerd, maar een lager monade kan alleen dat represteneren dat er
helder en onderscheiden is voorgesteld, het kan niet in een keer alles ontvouwen dat er in opgevorgens is, omdat dat het in
complexiteit oneindig is.
[62.] Daarom stelt de monade, howel het het hele universum in zich vat, meer bepaald / helderder en duidelijke het lichaam wat in
het bijzonder voor het bestemt is en van wiens lichaam het deel uitmaakt. en omdat dit lichaam het gezamelijke universum door de
samenhang van alle materie in zich uitdrukt, stelt de ziel ook het hele universum in dit lichaam voor, ????
[63.] Het lichaam, dat tot een moande behoort, die zijn entelechie of ziel is, constituteerd samen met de entelechie dat, wat men een
levend wezen noemen kan, en samen met de ziel, wat men een dier noemen kan. Dit lichaam is altijd organisch, want, elke monade ,

op zijn eigen manier, is een spiegel van het universum, and omdat het universum is een volmaakte orde bezit, moet men ook een
ordening zijn in dat wat het voorsteld/representeerd [hegel].
[64.] Zo is elke organisch lichaam van een leven wezen een soort goddelijke maschine of een natuurlijke automaat. . . want een door
de mens gemaakte maschiene zijn de kleinere delen geen machinies. De machines van de natuur daarentegen, namelijk, levende
wezens, zijn nog steeds machienes in hun kleinste delen. Dit maakt het verschil tussen de natuur en kunst, dat wil zeggen, tussen de
goddelijke kunst en onze kunst
[65.]
[66.]
[67.] oneindigheid, fractions
[68.]
[69.] Niets is dood in het universum. geen chaos, geen confusion.
[70.] Dus men weet dat elke levende lichaam een dominante entelechie bezit, die bij het dier de ziel is, maar de leden(maten) van dit
levende wezens zitten vol met andere levende wezens (cellen), en elke heeft een dominante entelechie of ziel
[71.] Maar wat het niet is, is dat elke ziel een massa of een materiedeeltje bezit, die van hemzelf is of tot hem toebehoort voor altijd,
en dat het consequently ander lagere levende wezens bezit, die in dienst zijn van de dominante. Want all lichamen zijn vergelijkbaar
met een rivier, en delen treden continu in en uit.
[72.] de ziel veranderd zijn lichaam slechts geleidelijke en gradueel, zodat het nooit in een keer van als zijn organen is beroofd. er is
metamorphose, geen metapsychose or transmigration of souls; nor are there souls entirely seperate from bodies. Only god is without
body.
[73.] in stricte zin is er dan ook nooit een volledige geboorte [neuenstehung] of volledige dood, in de zin van een separatie ziel van
lichaam. wat we geboorte noemen zijn ontwikkelingen en groei, en wat we dood noemen zijn inbindingen en verminderining.
[74.]
[75.]
[76.] v
[77.] Vergelijk met darwin.
[78.] pre-established harmony
[79.] doel-oorzaak en werkoorzaak zijn in harmonie met elkaar. Zielen handelen door de wetten van de doeloorzaken door apetijt
(richitng een doel). Lichamen handelen door werkoorzaak of beweging. Ze zijn in harmonie met elkaar.
OVERGANG NAAR ETHIEK
[80.]
[81.]
[82.]
[83.]
[84.] KANT! RIJK DER DOELEN.
[85.]
[86.]

[87.] Physics and Grace. God as Architect and god Considered as Monarch (goal/teleology)
[88.] Grace
[89.]
[90.]
dominate mmonade als organisatorisch principe, gedomineerd door een monade in harmonie, organiseerd andere monaden.
monaden kunnen elkaar organiseren als het ware.
4. oktober 2 uur.

Lectures by Gilles Deleuze

On Leibniz
We are going to be involved for a short while in a series on Leibniz. My goal is very simple:
for those who don't know him at all, I want to present this author and to have you love him, to
incite in you a sort of desire to read his works.
To begin reading Leibniz, there is an incomparable working instrument. It is the life work, a
very modest work, but a very profound one. It is by a lady, Madame Prenant, who had long
ago published selected excerpts by Leibniz. Usually a collection of excerpts is of doubtful
value, but this one is a work of art, for a very simple reason: Leibniz had writing techniques
which no doubt were rather frequent during his era (beginning 18th century), but that he
pushed to an extraordinary extent. Of course, like all philosophers, he wrote huge books. But
one might almost be tempted to say that these huge books did not constitute the essential part
of his works, since what was essential was in the correspondence and in quite tiny memoirs.
Leibniz's great texts often ran 4 or 5, 10 pages, or were in letters. He wrote to some extent in
all languages and in some ways was the first great German philosopher. He constitutes the
arrival in Europe of German philosophy. His influence was immediate on the German
Romantic philosophers in the 19th century, then continues particularly with Nietzsche.
Leibniz is a philosopher who best helps us understand a possible answer to this question:
what is philosophy? What does a philosopher do? What does philosophy grapple with?
If you think that definitions like search for the true or search for wisdom are not adequate, is
there a philosophical activity? I want to say very quickly how I recognize a philosopher in his
activity. One can only confront these activities as a function of what they create and of their
mode of creation. One must ask, what does a woodworker create? What does a musician
create? For me, a philosopher is someone who creates concepts. This implies many things:
that the concept is something to be created, that the concept is the product of a creation.
[this is quite a thing. normally, one would presume that concepts are what already exist,
and that the task of the philosopher is to grasp them, explicate them.]
I see no possibility of defining science if one does not indicate something that is created by
and in science. And, it happens that what is created by and in science, I'm not completely sure

what it is, but not concepts properly speaking. The concept of creation has been much more
linked to art than to science or to philosophy. What does a painter create? He creates lines and
colors. That suggests that lines and colors are not givens, but are the product of a creation.
What is given, quite possibly, one could always call a flow. It's flows that are given, and
creation consists in dividing , organizing, connecting flows in such a way that a creation
is drawn or made around certain singularities extracted from flows.
A concept is not at all something that is a given. Moreover, a concept is not the same thing as
thought: one can very well think without concepts, and everyone who does not do philosophy
still thinks, I believe, but does not think through concepts.
If you accept the idea of a concept as the product of an activity or an original creation.
I would say that the concept is a system of singularities appropriated from a thought flow. A
philosopher is someone who invents concepts. Is he an intellectual? No, in my opinion. For a
concept as system of singularities appropriated from a thought flow... Imagine the universal
thought flow as a kind of interior monologue, the interior monologue of everyone who thinks.
Philosophy arises with the action that consists of creating concepts. For me, there are as many
creations in the invention of a concept as in the creation by a great painter or musician. One
can also conceive of a continuous acoustic flow (perhaps that is only an idea, but it matters
little if this idea is justified) that traverses the world and that even encompasses silence. A
musician is someone who appropriates something from this flow: notes? Aggregates of notes?
No? What will we call the new sound from a musician? You sense then that it is not simply a
question of the system of notes.
It's the same thing for a philosopher, it is simply a question of creating concepts rather than
sounds. It is not a question of defining philosophy by some sort of search for the truth, for a
very simple reason: this is that truth is always subordinate to the system of concepts at
one's disposal. What is the importance of philosophers for non-philosophers? It is that
although non-philosophers don't know it, or pretend not to be interested, whether they like it
or not they think through concepts which have proper names.
I recognize the name of Kant not in his life, but in a certain type of concept signed Kant.
Henceforth, one can very well conceive of being the disciple of a philosopher. If you are
situated so that you say that such and such a philosopher signed the concepts for which you
feel a need, then you become Kantian, Leibnizian, etc.
It is quite necessary that two great philosophers not agree with each other to the extent that
each creates a system of concepts that serves as his point of reference. Thus that is not all to
be judged. One can very well only be a disciple locally, only on one point or another,
philosophy is detachable. You can be a disciple of a philosopher to the extent that you
consider that you personally need this type of [concept]. Concepts are spiritual signatures, but
that does not mean it's in one's head because concepts are also ways of living. And this is not
through choice or reflections, the philosopher reflects no more than does the painter or
musician. Activities are defined by a creative activity and not by a reflexive dimension.
Henceforth, what does it mean to say: to need this or that concept? In some ways, I tell
myself that concepts are such living things, that they really are things with four paws, that
move, really. It's like a color, like a sound. Concepts really are so living that they are not

unrelated to something that would, however, appear the furthest from the concept, notably the
scream .
In some ways, the philosopher is not someone who sings, but someone who screams. Each
time that you need to scream, I think that you are not far from a kind of call of philosophy.
What would it mean for the concept to be a kind of scream or a kind of form of scream?
That's what it means to need a concept, to have something to scream! We must find the
concept of that scream. One can scream thousands of things. Imagine something that
screams: "Well really, all that must have some kind of reason to be." It's a very simple
scream. In my definition, the concept is the form of the scream, we immediately see a series
of philosophers who would say, "yes, yes"! These are philosophers of passion, of pathos,
distinct from philosophers of logos. For example, Kierkegaard based his entire philosophy on
fundamental screams.
But Leibniz is from the great rationalist tradition. Imagine Leibniz, there is something
frightening there. He is the philosopher of order, even more, of order and policing, in every
sense of the word "policing." In the first sense of the word especially, that is, regulated
organization of the city. He only thinks in terms of order. But very oddly in this taste for order
and to establish this order, he yields to the most insane concept creation that we have ever
witnessed in philosophy. Disheveled concepts, the most exuberant concepts, the most
disordered, the most complex in order to justify what is. Each thing must have a reason. In
fact, there are two kinds of philosopher, if you accept the definition by which philosophy is
the activity consisting of creating concepts. But there are perhaps two poles: there are those
who engage in a very sober creation of concepts; they create concepts on the level of a
particular singularity well distinguished from another, and I dream finally of a kind of
quantification of philosophers in which they would be quantified according to the number of
concepts they have signed or invented. If I say: Descartes! That's the type of philosopher with
a very sober concept creation. The history of the cogito, historically one can always find an
entire tradition, precursors, but there is nonetheless something signed Descartes in the cogito
concept, notably (a proposition can express a concept) the proposition: "I think therefore I
am," a veritable new concept. It's the discovery of subjectivity, of thinking subjectivity. It's
signed Descartes.
Of course, we could always look in St. Augustine's works, to see if it wasn't already in
preparation. There is certainly a history of concepts, but it's signed Descartes. Haven't we
made rather quick work of Descartes though? We could assign to him five or six concepts, an
enormous feat to have invented six concepts, but it's a very sober creation. And then there are
exasperated philosophers. For them, each concept covers an aggregate of singularities, and
then they always need to have other, always other concepts. One witnesses a mad creation of
concepts. The typical example is Leibniz. He never finished creating something new.
That's all I wanted to explain.
He is the first philosopher to reflect on the power of the German language as a concept, as
German being an eminently conceptual language, and it's not by chance that it can also be a
great language of the scream. Multiple activities, he attends to all, a very great
mathematician, great physics scholar, very good jurist, many political activities, always in the
service of order. He does not stop, he is very shady . There is a Leibniz-Spinoza visit (he who
was the anti-Leibniz): Leibniz has him read manuscripts, and one imagines Spinoza very

exasperated, wondering what this guy wants. Following that when Spinoza was attacked,
Leibniz said that he never went to see him, he said it was to monitor him... Abominable,
Leibniz is abominable. His dates: 1646-1716. It's a long life, straddling plenty of things.
Finally he had a kind of diabolical humor. I'd say that his system is rather like a pyramid.
Leibniz's great system has several levels. None of these levels is false, these levels symbolize
each other, and Leibniz is the first great philosopher to conceive of activity and thought as a
vast symbolization.
Thus, all these levels symbolize, but they are all more or less close to what we could
provisionally call the absolute. And that belongs to his very body of work. Depending on
Leibniz's correspondent or on the public to which he addressed himself, he presented his
whole system at a particular level. Imagine that his system is made of levels more or less
contracted or more or less relaxed; in order to explain something to someone, he goes to
situate himself on a particular level of his system. Let us assume that the someone in question
was suspected by Leibniz of having a mediocre intelligence: very well, he is delighted, he
situates himself on one of the lowest levels of his system, and if he addresses someone of
higher intelligence, he jumps to a higher level. As these levels belong implicitly to Leibniz's
own texts, that creates a great problem of commentary. It's complicated because, in my
opinion, one can never rely on a Leibniz text if one has not first discerned the system level to
which this text corresponds.
For example, there are texts in which Leibniz explains what, according to him, is the union of
soul and body, right, and it's to one particular correspondent or another; to another
correspondent, he will explain that there is no problem in the union of soul and body since the
real problem is that of the relation of souls to one another. The two things are not at all
contradictory, it's two levels of the system. The result is that if one does not evaluate the level
of a Leibniz text, then one will get the impression that he constantly contradicts himself,
when in fact, he does not contradict himself at all.
Leibniz is a very difficult philosopher. I would like to give titles to each part of what I have to
propose to you. The principal #1 I would call "a funny thought" . Why do I call it "a funny
thought"?, Well, because among Leibniz's texts, there is a small one that Leibniz himself calls
"funny thought." Thus I am authorized by the author himself. Leibniz dreamed a lot, he has a
whole science-fiction side that is absolutely amazing, all the time he imagined institutions. In
this little "funny thought" text, he imagined a very disturbing institution that would be as
follows: an academy of games would be necessary. In that era, as well with Pascal, certain
other mathematicians, and Leibniz himself, there developed a great theory of games and
probabilities. Leibniz is one of the great founders of game theory. He was impassioned by
mathematical game problems, he must have been quite a games player himself. He imagined
this academy of games as necessarily being at once - why at once? Because depending on the
point of view in which one is situated to see this institution, or to participate in it - this would
be at once a section of the academy of sciences, a zoological and botanical garden, a
universal exposition, a casino where one gambled, and an enterprise of police control. That's
not bad. He called that "a funny thought."
Assume that I'm telling you a story. This story consists in taking up one of the central points
of Leibniz's philosophy, and I tell it to you as if it were the description of another world, and
there I also number the principal propositions that go into forming a funny thought.

a) The thought flow, eternally, brings with it a famous principle that has a very special
characteristic because it is one of the only principles about which one can be certain, and at
the same time one can not see at all what it offers to us. It is certain, but it is empty. This
famous principle is the principle of identity. The principle of identity has a classical formula,
A is A. That is certain. If I say blue is blue or God [is] God, I am not saying with this that
God exists, in a sense I am in certainty. Only there it is, do I think something when I say A is
A, or am I not thinking? Let us nonetheless try to say what results from this principle of
identity. It is presented in the form of a reciprocal proposition. A is A means: subject A, verb
to be, A attribute or predicate. There is a reciprocity of subject and predicate. Blue is blue, a
triangle is a triangle, these are empty and certain propositions. Is that all? An identical
proposition is a proposition such that the attribute or the predicate is the same as the subject
and reciprocates with the subject. There is a second case just a bit more complex, notably that
the principle of identity can determine propositions which are not simply reciprocal
propositions. There is no longer simply reciprocity of the predicate with the subject and
subject with the predicate. Suppose that I say: "The triangle has tree sides," this is not the
same thing as saying, "The triangle has three angles." "The triangle has three angles" is an
identical proposition because it is reciprocal. "The triangle has three sides" is a little different,
it is not reciprocal. There is no identity of subject and predicate. In fact, "three sides" is not
the same thing as "three angles". And nonetheless, there is a supposed logical necessity. This
logical necessity is that you cannot conceptualize three angles composing a single figure
without this figure also having three sides. There is no reciprocity, but there is inclusion.
Three sides are included in the triangle. Inherence or inclusion.
Likewise, if I say that matter is matter, matter and matter is an identical proposition in the
form of a reciprocal proposition. The subject is identical to the predicate. If I say that matter
is in extension <tendue>, this is again an identical proposition because I cannot think of the
concept matter without already introducing extension. Extension is in matter. This is all the
more a reciprocal proposition since, inversely, perhaps I really can think of extension without
anything filling it in, that is, without matter. This is therefore not a reciprocal proposition, but
it is a proposition of inclusion; when I say "matter is in extension," this is an identical
proposition by inclusion.
I would say therefore that there are two kinds of identical propositions: there are reciprocal
propositions in which the subject and predicate are one and the same, and propositions of
inherence or inclusion in which the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject. If I
say "this page has a front side and a back side," OK, let's leave that, I withdraw my example.
If I am looking for a more interesting statement of the identity principle, I would say in
Leibnizian fashion that the identity principle is stated as follows: every analytical proposition
is true.
What does analytical mean? According to the example we have just seen, an analytical
proposition is one in which either the predicate or the attribute is identical with the subject,
for example, "the triangle is triangular," reciprocal proposition, or proposition of inclusion
such as "the triangle has three sides." The predicate is contained in the subject to the point
that when you have conceived of the subject, the predicate was already there. It suffices
therefore to have an analysis in order to find the predicate in the subject. Up to this point,

Leibniz as original thinker has yet to emerge.

b) Leibniz emerges. He arises in the form of this very bizarre scream . I am going to give it a
more complex expression than I did earlier. Everything that we're saying is not philosophy,
but pre-philosophy. This is the terrain on which a very prodigious philosophy will be built.
Leibniz arrives and says: OK, the identity principle gives us a certain model. Why a certain
model? In its very statement <nonc>, an analytical proposition is true, if you attribute to a
subject something that constitutes a unity with the subject itself, or that is mixed up with or is
already contained in the subject. You risk nothing in being wrong. Thus, every analytical
proposition is true.
Leibniz's stroke of pre-philosophical genius is to say: Let's consider reciprocity! Something
absolutely new and nonetheless very simple starts there, since this had to be thought through.
And what does it mean to say, "it had to be thought through"? It means that one had to have
need of that, that had to relate to something quite urgent for him. What is the reciprocity of
the identity principle in its complex statement, "every analytical proposition is true"?
Reciprocity poses many more problems. Leibniz emerges and says: every true proposition is
analytical.
If it is true that the identity principle gives us a model of truth, why are we stumped by the
following difficulty, notably: it is true, it doesn't make us think anything. The identity
principle will force us to think something; it is going to be reversed, turned around. You will
tell me that turning A is A around yields A is A. Yes and no. That yields A is A in the formal
formulation which prevents the reversal of the principle. But in the philosophical formulation,
which still amounts to exactly the same thing, "every analytical proposition is a true
proposition", if you reverse the principle: "every true proposition is necessarily analytical,"
what does that mean? Each time that you formulate a true proposition, it must be analytical
(and this is where there is the scream!), whether you want it or not, that is, it is reducible to a
proposition of attribution or of predication, and not only is it reducible to a judgment of
predication or attribution (the sky is blue), but it is analytical, that is the predicate is either
reciprocal with the subject or contained in the concept of the subject? Does that go without
saying? He throws himself into a strange undertaking , and it is not from preference that he
says that, rather he needs it. But he undertakes an impossible task, in fact he needs some
entirely crazy concepts in order to reach this task that he is in the process of giving himself. If
every analytical proposition is true, every true proposition certainly must be analytical. It
does not go without saying at all that every judgment is reducible to a judgment of
attribution. It's not going to be easy to show. He throws himself into a combinatory analysis,
as he himself says, that is fantastic.
Why doesn't it go without saying? "The box of matches is on the table," I'd say that this is a
judgment, you know? "On the table" is a spatial determination. I could say that the matchbox
is "here." "Here," what's that? I'd say that it's a judgment of localization. Again I repeat very
simple things, but they always have been fundamental problems of logic. It's only to suggest
that in appearance, all judgments do not have as form predication or attribution. When I say,
"the sky is blue," I have a subject, sky, and an attribute, blue. When I say "the sky is up there"
or "I am here," is "here" - spatial localization - assimilable to a predicate? Can I formally link
the judgment "I am here" to a judgment of the kind "I am blond"? It's not certain that spatial

localization is a quality. And "2+2=4" is a judgment that we ordinarily call a relational

judgment. Or if I say, "Pierre is smaller than Paul," this is a relation between two terms,
Pierre and Paul. No doubt I orient this relation upon Pierre: if I say "Pierre is smaller than
Paul," I can say "Paul is larger than Pierre." Where is the subject, where is the predicate? That
is exactly the problem that has disturbed philosophy since its beginnings; ever since there was
logic they have wondered to what extent the judgment of attribution could be considered as
the universal form of any possible judgment, or rather one case of judgment among others.
Can I treat "smaller than Paul" like an attribute of Pierre? It's not certain, not at all obvious.
Perhaps we have to distinguish very different types of judgment from each other, notably:
relational judgment, judgment of spatio-temporal localization, judgment of attribution, and
still many more: judgment of existence. If I say "God exists," can I formally translate it into
the form of "God is existent," existent being an attribute? Can I say that "God exists" is a
judgment of the same form as "God is all-powerful"? Undoubtedly not, since I can only say
"God is all-powerful" by adding "yes, if he exists". Does God exist? Is existence an attribute?
Not certain.
So you see that by proposing the idea that every true proposition must be in one way or
another an analytical proposition, that is identical, Leibniz already gives himself a very hard
task; he commits himself to showing in what way all propositions can be linked to the
judgment of attribution, notably propositions that state relations, that state existences, that
state localizations, and that, at the outside, exist, are in relation with, can be translated as the
equivalent of the attribute of the subject.
In your mind there must arise the idea of an infinite task.
Let us assume that Leibniz reached it: what world is going to emerge from it? What very
bizarre world? What kind of world is it in which I can say "every true proposition is
analytical"? You recall certainly that ANALYTICAL is a proposition in which the predicate is
identical to the subject or else is included in the subject. That kind of world is going to be
pretty strange.
What is the reciprocity of the identity principle? The identity principle is thus any true
proposition is analytical; not the reverse, any analytical proposition is true. Leibniz said that
another principle is necessary, reciprocity: every true proposition is necessarily analytical. He
will give to it a very beautiful name: the principle of sufficient reason. Why sufficient reason?
Why does he believe himself fully immersed in his very own scream? EVERYTHING MUST
SURELY HAVE A REASON. The principle of sufficient reason can be expressed as follows:
whatever happens to a subject, be it determinations of space and time, of relation, event,
whatever happens to a subject, what happens, that is what one says of it with truth, everything
that is said of a subject must be contained in the notion of the subject.
Everything that happens to a subject must already be contained in the notion of the subject.
The notion of "notion" is going to be essential. It is necessary for "blue" to be contained in
the notion of sky. Why is this the principle of sufficient reason ? Because if it is this way,
each thing with a reason, reason is precisely the notion itself in so far as it contains all that
happens to the corresponding subject . Henceforth everything has a reason.
Reason = the notion of the subject in so far as this notion contains everything said with truth
about this subject. That is the principle of sufficient reason which is therefore justly the
reciprocal of the identity principle. Rather than looking for abstract justifications I wonder

what bizarre world is going to be born from all that? A world with very strange colors if I
return to my metaphor of painting. A painting signed Leibniz. Every true proposition must be
analytical or still more, everything that you say with truth about a subject must be contained
in the notion of the subject. You sense that this is getting crazy, he's got a lifetime of work
ahead of him.
What does "notion" mean? It's signed Leibniz. Just as there is a Hegelian conception of the
concept, there is a Leibnizian conception of the concept.
c) Again, my problem is what world is going to emerge, and in this sub-category c), I would
like to begin to show that, from this point, Leibniz is going to create truly hallucinatory
concepts. It's truly a hallucinatory world. If you want to think about relations between
philosophy and madness, for example, there are some very weak pages by Freud on the
intimate relation of metaphysics with delirium . One can only grasp the positivity of these
relations through a theory of the concept, and the direction that I would like to take would be
the relationship of the concept with the scream. I would like to make you feel this presence of
a kind of conceptual madness in Leibniz's universe as we are going to see it be born. It is a
gentle violence, let yourself go. It is not a question of arguing. Understand the stupidity of
objections.
I will add a parenthesis to complicate things. You know that there is a philosopher following
Leibniz who said that truth is one of synthetic judgments. He is opposed to Leibniz. OK!
How does that concern us? It's Kant. This is not to say that they do not agree with each other.
When I say that, I credit Kant with a new concept which is synthetic judgment. This concept
had to be invented, and it was Kant who did so. To say that philosophers contradict one
another is a feeble formula, it's like saying that Velasquez did not agree with Giotto, right! It's
not even true, it's nonsensical.
Every true proposition must be analytical, that is such that it attributes something to a subject
and that the attribute must be contained in the notion of the subject. Let us consider an
example. I do not wonder if it is true, I wonder what it means. Let us take an example of a
true proposition. A true proposition can be an elementary one concerning an event that took
place. Let's take Leibniz's own example: "CAESAR CROSSED THE RUBICON". It's a
proposition. It is true or we have strong reasons to assume it's true. Another proposition:
"ADAM SINNED".
There is a highly true proposition. What do you mean by that? You see that all these
propositions chosen by Leibniz as fundamental examples are event-ual propositions , so he
does not give himself an easy task. He is going to tell us this: since this proposition is true, it
is necessary, whether you want it or not, that the predicate "crossed the Rubicon," if the
proposition is true, but it is true, this predicate must be contained in the notion of Caesar. Not
in Caesar himself, but in the notion of Caesar. The notion of the subject contains everything
that happens to a subject, that is, everything that is said about the subject with truth. In
"Adam sinned," sin at a particular moment belongs to the notion of Adam. Crossing the
Rubicon belongs to the notion of Caesar. I would say that here, Leibniz proposes one of his
greatest concepts, the concept of inherence. Everything that is said with truth about
something is inherent in the notion of this something.
This is the first aspect or development of sufficient reason.

d) When we say that, we can no longer stop. When one has started into the domain of the
concept, one cannot stop. In the domain of screams, there is a famous scream from Aristotle.
The great Aristotle -- who, let us note, exerted an extremely strong influence on Leibniz -- at
one point proposed in the Metaphysics a very beautiful formula: it is indeed necessary to stop
(anankstenai). This is a great scream. This is the philosopher in front of the chasm of the
interconnection of concepts. Leibniz could care less, he does not stop. Why? If you refer to
proposition c): everything that you attribute to a subject must be contained in the notion of
this subject. But what you attribute with truth to any subject whatsoever in the world, if were
it Caesar, it is sufficient for you to attribute to it a single thing with truth in order for you to
notice with fright that, from that moment on, you are forced to cram into the notion of the
subject not only the thing that you attribute to it with truth, but the totality of the world. Why?
By virtue of a well-known principle that is not at all the same as that of sufficient reason. This
is the simple principle of causality. For in the end, the causality principle stretches to infinity,
that's it's very characteristic. And this is a very special infinite since, in fact, it stretches to the
indefinite . Specifically, the causality principle states that everything has a cause, which is
very different from every thing has a reason. But the cause is a thing, and in its turn, it has a
cause, etc. etc. I can do the same thing, notably that every cause has an effect and this effect
is in its turn the cause of effects. This is therefore an indefinite series of causes and effects.
What difference is there between sufficient reason and cause? We understand very well.
Cause is never sufficient. One must say that the causality principle poses a necessary cause,
but never a sufficient one. We must distinguish between necessary cause and sufficient
reason. What distinguishes them evidently is that the cause of a thing is always something
else. The cause of A is B, the cause of B is C, etc..... An indefinite series of causes. Sufficient
reason is not at all something other than the thing. The sufficient reason of a thing is the
notion of the thing. Thus, sufficient reason expresses the relation of the thing with its own
notion whereas cause expresses the relations of the thing with something else. It's limpid.
e) If you say that a particular event is encompassed in the notion of Caesar, "crossing the
Rubicon" is encompassed in the notion of Caesar . You can't stop yourself in which sense?
From cause to cause and effect to effect, it's at that moment the totality of the world that must
be encompassed in the notion of a particular subject. That becomes very odd, there's the
world passing by inside each subject, or each notion of subject. In fact, crossing the Rubicon
has a cause, this cause itself has multiple causes, from cause to cause, into cause from cause
and into cause from cause of cause. It's the whole series of the world that passes there, at least
the antecedent series. And moreover, crossing the Rubicon has effects. If I limit myself to the
largest ones: commencement of a Roman empire. The Roman empire in its turn has effects,
we follow directly from the Roman empire. From cause to cause and effect to effect, you
cannot say a particular event is encompassed in the notion of a particular subject without
saying that, henceforth, the entire world is encompassed in the notion of a particular subject.
There is indeed a trans-historical characteristic of philosophy. What does it mean to be
Leibnizian in 1980? They exist, or at least it's possible that they exist.
If you said, conforming to the principle of sufficient reason, that what happens to a particular
subject, and which personally concerns it, then what you attribute it with truth, having blue

eyes, crossing the Rubicon, etc. ... belongs to the notion of the subject, that is encompassed in
this notion of the subject; you cannot stop, one must say that this subject contains the whole
world. It is no longer the concept of inherence or inclusion, it's the concept of expression
which, in Leibniz's work, is a fantastic concept. Leibniz expresses himself in this form: the
notion of the subject expresses the totality of the world.
His own "crossing the Rubicon" stretches to infinity backward and forward by the double
play of causes and effects. But then, it is time to speak for ourselves, little matter what
happens to us and the importance of what happens to us. We must say that it is each notion of
subject that contains or expresses the totality of the world. That is, each of you, me, expresses
or contains the totality of the world. Just like Caesar, no more, no less. That gets complicated,
why? A great danger: if each individual notion, if each notion of the subject expresses the
totality of the world, that means that there is only a single subject, a universal subject, and the
you, me, Caesar, would only be appearances of this universal subject. It would be quite
possible to say: there would be a single subject that would express the world.
Why couldn't Leibniz say that? He had no choice. It would mean repudiating himself. All that
he had done before that with the principle of sufficient reason would then make what sense?
In my opinion, this was the first great reconciliation of the concept and the individual.
Leibniz was in the process of constructing a concept of the concept such that the concept and
the individual were finally becoming adequate to one another. Why?
That the concept might extend into the individual, why is this new? Never had anyone dared
that. The concept, what is it? It is defined by the order of generality. There is a concept when
there is a representation which is applied to several things. But identifying the concept and
the individual with each other, never had that been done. Never had a voice reverberated in
the domain of thought to say that the concept and the individual were the same thing.
What had always been distinguished was an order of the concept that referred to a generality
and an order of the individual that referred to a singularity. Even more, it was always
considered as going without saying that the individual as such was not comprehensible via
the concept.
It was always understood that the proper name was not a concept. Indeed, "dog" is certainly a
concept, but "Fido" is not a concept. There is certainly a dogness about all dogs, as certain
logicians say in a splendid language, but there is no Fido-ness about all Fidos. Leibniz is the
first to say that concepts are proper names, that is, that concepts are individual notions.
There is a concept of the individual as such. Thus you see that Leibniz cannot fall back on the
proposition since every true proposition is analytical, the world is thus contained in a single
and same subject which would be a universal subject. He cannot since his principle of
sufficient reason implied that what was contained in a subject -- thus what was true, what was
attributable to a subject -- was contained in a subject as an individual subject. Thus he cannot
give himself a kind of universal mind. He has to remain fixed on the singularity, on the
individual as such. And in fact, this will be one of the truly original points for Leibniz, the
perpetual formula in his works: substance (no difference between substance and subject for
him) is individual.
It's the substance Caesar, it's the substance you, the substance me, etc. ... The urgent question
in my sub-category d) since he forbids himself from invoking a universal mind in which the
world will be included ... other philosophers will invoke a universal mind. There is even a

very short text by Leibniz entitled "Considerations on universal mind," in which he goes on
to show in what way there is indeed a universal mind, God, but that does not prevent
substance from being individual. Thus irreducibility of individual substances.
Since each substance expresses the world, or rather each substantial notion, each notion of a
subject, since each one expresses the world, you express the world, for all times. We notice
that, in fact, he has a lifetime of work because he faces the objection that's made to him
immediately: but then, what about freedom? If everything that happens to Caesar is
encompassed in the individual notion of Caesar, if the entire world is encompassed in the
universal notion of Caesar, then Caesar crossing the Rubicon only acts to unroll --odd word,
devolvere, which comes up all the time in Leibniz's works -- or explicate (the same thing),
that is to say, literally to unfold , like you unfold a rug. It's the same thing: explicate, unfold,
unroll. Thus crossing the Rubicon as event only acts to unroll something that was
encompassed for all times in the notion of Caesar. You see that it's quite a real problem.
Caesar crossed the Rubicon in a particular year, but even were he crossing the Rubicon in a
particular year, it was encompassed for all time in his individual notion. Thus, where is this
individual notion? It is eternal. There is an eternal truth of dated events. But then, how about
freedom? Everyone jumps on him. Freedom is very dangerous under a Christian regime. So
Leibniz will write a little work, "On freedom," in which he explains what freedom is.
Freedom is going to be a pretty funny thing for him.
But leave that aside for the moment.
What distinguishes one subject from another? That, we can't leave aside for the moment,
unless our flow were to be cut off. What is going to distinguish you from Caesar since just
like him, you express the totality of the world, present, past, and future? It's odd, this concept
of Expression. That's where he proposes a very rich notion.
f) What distinguishes an individual substance from another is not very difficult. In some way,
it has to be irreducible.
Each one, each subject, for each individual notion, each notion of subject has to encompass
this totality of the world, express this total world, but from a certain point of view. And there
begins a perspectivist philosophy. And it's not inconsiderable. You will tell me: what is more
banal than the expression "a point of view"? If philosophy means creating concepts, what
does create concepts mean? Generally speaking, these are banal formulae. Great philosophers
each have banal formulae that they wink at. A wink from a philosopher is, at the outside limit,
taking a banal formula and having a ball , you have no idea what I'm going to put inside it. To
create a theory of point of view, what does that imply? Could that be done at any time at all?
Is it by chance that it's Leibniz who created the first great theory at a particular moment? At
the moment in which the same Leibniz created a particularly fruitful chapter in geometry,
called projective geometry. Is it by chance that it's out of an era in which are elaborated, in
architecture as in painting, all sorts of techniques of perspective? We retain simply these two
domains that symbolize that: architecture-painting and perspective in painting on one hand,
and on the other hand, projective geometry. Understand what Leibniz wants to develop from
them. He is going to say that each individual notion expresses the totality of the world, yes,
but from a certain point of view.
What does that mean? Of so little import is it, banally, pre-philosophically, that it is

henceforth as equally impossible for him to stop. That commits him to showing that what
constitutes the individual notion as individual is point of view. And that therefore point of
view is deeper that whosoever places himself there.
At the basis of each individual notion, it will indeed be necessary for there to be a point of
view that defines the individual notion. If you prefer, the subject is second in relation to the
point of view. And after all, to say that is not a piece of cake, it's not inconsiderable. He
established a philosophy that will find its name in the works of another philosopher who
stretches out his hand to Leibniz across the centuries, to wit Nietzsche. Nietzsche will say:
my philosophy is a perspectivism. You understand that it becomes idiotic or banal to whine
about whether perspectivism consists in saying that everything is relative to the subject; or
simply that everything is relative. Everyone says it, it belongs to propositions that hurt no one
since it is meaningless. So long as I take the formula as signifying everything depends on the
subject, that means nothing, I caused, as one says ...
. . . What makes me = me is a point of view on the world. Leibniz cannot stop. He has to go
all the way to a theory of point of view such that the subject is constituted by the point of
view and not the point of view constituted by the subject. Fully into the nineteenth century,
when Henry James renews the techniques of the novel through a perspectivism, through a
mobilization of points of view, there too in James's works, it's not points of view that are
explained by the subjects, it's the opposite, subjects that are explained through points of view.
An analysis of points of view as sufficient reason of subjects, that's the sufficient reason of
the subject. The individual notion is the point of view under which the individual expresses
the world. It's beautiful and it's even poetic. James has sufficient techniques in order for there
to be no subject; what becomes one subject or another is the one who is determined to be in a
particular point of view. It's the point of view that explains the subject and not the opposite.
For Leibniz, every individual substance is like an entire world and like a mirror of God or of
the whole universe that each substance expresses in its own way: kind of like an entire city is
diversely represented depending on the different situations of the one who looks at it. Thus,
the universe is seemingly multiplied as many times as there are substances, and the glory of
God is redoubled equally by as many completely different representations of his/her/its . He
speaks like a cardinal. One can even say that every substance bears in some ways the
characteristic of infinite wisdom and of all of God's power, and limits as much as it is able to.
In all this, I maintain that the new concept of point of view is deeper than the concept of
individual and individual substance. It is point of view which will define essence. Individual
essence. One must believe that to each individual notion corresponds a point of view. But that
gets complicated because this point of view would be in effect from birth to death for an
individual. What would define us is a certain point of view on the world. I said that Nietzsche
will rediscover this idea. He didn't like him , but that's what he took from him. The theory of
point of view is an idea from the Renaissance. The Cardinal de Cuse , a very great
Renaissance philosopher, referred to portraiture changing according to point of view. From
the era of Italian fascism, one notices a very odd portrait almost everywhere: face on, it
represented Mussolini, from the right side it represented his son-in-law, and if one stood to
the left, it represented the king.
The analysis of points of view in mathematics -- and it's again Leibniz who caused this

chapter of mathematics to make considerable progress under the name of analysis situs --,
and it is evident that it is connected to projective geometry. There is a kind of essentiality, of
objectity of the subject, and the objectity is the point of view. Concretely were everyone to
express the world in his own point of view, what does that mean? Leibniz did not retreat from
the strangest concepts. I can no longer say "from his own point of view." If I said "from his
own point of view," I would make the point of view depend on a preceding subject , but it's
the opposite. But what determines this point of view? Leibniz : understand, each of us
expresses the totality of the world, only he expresses it in an obscure and confused way.
Obscurely and confused means what in Leibniz's vocabulary? That means that the totality of
the world is really in the individual, but in the form of minute perception. Minute perceptions.
Is it by chance that Leibniz is one of the inventors of differential calculus? These are
infinitely tiny perceptions, in other words, unconscious perceptions. I express everyone, but
obscurely, confusedly, like a clamor.
Later we will see why this is linked to differential calculus, but notice that the minute
perceptions of the unconscious are like differentials of consciousness, it's minute perceptions
without consciousness. For conscious perceptions, Leibniz uses another word: apperception.
Apperception, to perceive , is conscious perception, and minute perception is the differential
of consciousness which is not given in consciousness. All individuals express the totality of
the world obscurely and confusedly. So what distinguishes a point of view from another point
of view? On the other hand, there is a small portion of the world that I express clearly and
distinctly, and each subject, each individual has his/her own portion, but in what sense? In
this very precise sense that this portion of the world that I express clearly and distinctly, all
other subjects express it as well, but confusedly and obscurely.
What defines my point of view is like a kind of projector that, in the buzz of the obscure and
confused world, keeps a limited zone of clear and distinct expression. However stupid you
may be, however insignificant we all may be, we have our own little thing, even the pure
vermin has its little world: it does not express much clearly and distinctly, but it has its little
portion. Beckett's characters are individuals: everything is confused, an uproar , they
understand nothing, they are in tatters ; there is the great uproar of the world. However
pathetic they may be in their garbage can, they have their very own little zone. What the great
Molloy calls "my properties." He no longer moves, he has his little hook and, in a strip of one
meter, with his hook, he grabs things, his properties. It's a clear and distinct zone that he
expresses. We are all the same. But our zone is more or less sizable, and even then it's not
certain, but it is never the same. What is it that determines the point of view? It's the
proportion of the region of the world expressed clearly and distinctly by an individual in
relation to the totality of the world expressed obscurely and confusedly. That's what point of
view is.
Leibniz has a metaphor that he likes: you are near the sea and you listen to waves. You listen
to the sea and you hear the sound of a wave. I hear the sound of a wave, that is, I have an
apperception: I distinguish a wave. And Leibniz says: you would not hear the wave if you did
not have a minute unconscious perception of the sound of each drop of water that slides over
and through another, and that makes up the object of minute perceptions. There is the roaring
of all the drops of water, and you have your little zone of clarity, you clearly and distinctly
grasp one partial result from this infinity of drops, from this infinity of roaring, and from it,

you make your own little world, your own property.

Each individual notion has its point of view, that is from this point of view, it extracts from
the aggregate of the world that it expresses a determined portion of clear and distinct
expression. Given two individuals, you have two cases: either their zones do not
communicate in the least, and create no symbols with one another -- there aren't merely direct
communications, one can conceive of there being analogies -- and in that moment, they have
nothing to say to each other; or it's like two circles that overlap: there is a little common zone,
there we can do something together. Leibniz thus can say quite forcefully that no two
individual substances have the same point of view or exactly the same clear and distinct zone
of expression. And finally, Leibniz's stroke of genius: what will define the clear and distinct
zone of expression that I have? I express the totality of the world, but I only express clearly
and distinctly a reduced portion of it, a finite portion. What I express clearly and distinctly,
Leibniz tells us, is what relates to my body. We will see what this body means, but what I
express clearly and distinctly is that which affects my body.
Thus I obviously do not express clearly and distinctly the passage of the Rubicon, since that
concerned Caesar's body. There is something that concerns my body and that only I express
clearly and distinctly, in relation to this buzz that covers the entire universe.
f) In this story of the city, there is a problem. OK, there are different points of view. These
points of view preexist the subject who is placed there, good. In this event, the secret of point
of view is mathematical, geometrical, and not psychological. It's at the least psychogeometrical. Leibniz is a man of notions, not a man of psychology. But everything urges me
to say that the city exists outside points of view. But in my story of expressed world, in the
way we started off, the world has no existence outside the point of view that expresses it; the
world does not exist in itself. The world is uniquely the common expressed of all individual
substances, but the expressed does not exist outside that which expresses it. The world does
not exist in itself, the world is uniquely the expressed. The entire world is contained in each
individual notion, but it exists only in this inclusion. It has no existence outside. It's in this
sense that Leibniz will be, and not incorrectly, on the side of the idealists: there is no world in
itself, the world exists only in the individual substances that express it. It's the common
expressed of all individual substances. It's the expressed of all individual substances, but the
expressed does not exist outside the substances that express it. It's a real problem!
What distinguishes these substances is that they all express the same world, but they don't
express the same clear and distinct portion. It's like chess. The world does not exist. It's the
complication of the concept of expression. Which is going to provide this final difficulty. Still
it is necessary that all individual notions express the same world. So it's curious -- it's curious
because by virtue of the principle of identity that permits us to determine what is
contradictory, that is, what is impossible, it's A is not A. It's contradictory: example: the
squared circle. A squared circle is a circle that is not a circle. So starting from the principle of
identity, I can have a criterion of contradiction. According to Leibniz, I can demonstrate that
2 + 2 cannot make 5, I can demonstrate that a circle cannot be squared. Whereas, on the level
of sufficient reason, it's much more complicated, why? Because Adam the non-sinner, Caesar
not crossing the Rubicon, is not like the squared circle. Adam the non-sinner is not
contradictory. Understand how he's going to try to save freedom, once he has placed himself
in a bad situation for saving it. This is not at all impossible: Caesar could have not crossed the

Rubicon, whereas a circle cannot be squared; here, there is no freedom.

So, again he's stuck, again Leibniz has to find another concept and, of all his crazy concepts,
this will undoubtedly be the craziest. Adam could have not sinned, so in other words, the
truths governed by the principle of sufficient reason are not the same type as the truths
governed by the principle of identity, why? Because the truths governed by the principle of
identity are such that their contradictory status is impossible, whereas the truths governed by
the principle of sufficient reason have a contradictory status that is possible: Adam the nonsinner is possible.
It's even all that distinguishes, according to Leibniz, the truths called truths of essence and
those called truths of existence. The truths of existence are such that their contradictory status
is possible. How is Leibniz going to get out of this final difficulty? How is he going to be
able to maintain at once that all that Adam did is contained forever in his individual notion,
and nonetheless Adam the non-sinner was possible. He seems stuck, it's delicious because
from this perspective, philosophers are somewhat like cats, it's when they are stuck that they
get loose, or they're like fish, the concept becoming fish. He is going to tell us the following:
that Adam the non-sinner is perfectly possible, like Caesar not having crossed the Rubicon,
all that is possible, but it did not happen because, if it is possible in itself, it's incompossible.
That's when he created the very strange logical concept of incompossibility. On the level of
existences, it is not enough for a thing to be possible in order to exist, one must also know
with what it is compossible. So Adam the non-sinner, though possible in himself, is
incompossible with the world that exists. Adam could have not sinned, yes, but provided that
there were another world. You see that the inclusion of the world in the individual notion, and
the fact that something else is possible, he suddenly reconciles the notion of compossibility,
Adam the non-sinner belongs to another world. Adam the non-sinner could have been
possible, but this world was not chosen. It is incompossible with the existing world. It is only
compossible with other possible worlds that have not passed into existence.
Why is it that world which passed into existence? Leibniz explains what is, for him, the
creation of worlds by God, and we see well how this is a theory of games: God, in his
understanding , conceives an infinity of possible worlds, only these possible worlds are not
compossible with each other, and necessarily so since it's God who chooses the best. He
chooses the best of possible worlds. And it happens that the best of possible worlds implies
Adam as sinner. Why? That's going to be awful . What is interesting logically is the creation
of a proper concept of compossiblity to designate a more limited logical sphere than that of
logical possibility. In order to exist, it is not enough for something to be possible, this thing
must also be compossible with others that constitute the real world. In a famous formula from
the Monadology, Leibniz says that individual notions have neither doors nor windows. That
arrives to correct the metaphor of the city. No doors or windows means that there is no
opening. Why? Because there is no exterior. The world that individual notions express is
interior, it is included in individual notions. Individual notions have no doors or windows,
everything is included in each one, and yet there is a world common to all individual notions:
for what each individual notion includes, to wit the totality of the world, the notion includes it
necessarily as a form in which what it expresses is compossible with what the others express.
It's a marvel. It's a world in which there is no direct communication between subjects.
Between Caesar and you, between you and me, there is no direct communication, and as we'd

say today, each individual notion is programmed in such a way that what it expresses forms a
common world with what the other expresses. It's one of the last concepts from Leibniz: preestablished harmony. Pre-established, it's absolutely a programmed harmony. It's the idea of
the spiritual automaton, and at the same time, it's the grand age of automatons at this end of
the seventeenth century.
Each individual notion is like a spiritual automaton, that is what it expresses is interior to it,
it's without doors or windows; it is programmed in such a way that what it expresses is in
compossibility with what the other expresses.
What I have done today was solely a description of the world of Leibniz, and even so, only
one part of this world. Thus, the following notions have been successively laid out: sufficient
reason, inherence and inclusion, expression or point of view, incompossibility.

The last time, as we agreed, we had begun a series of studies on Leibniz that should be
conceived as an introduction to a reading, yours, of Leibniz.
To introduce a numerical clarification, I relied on numbering the paragraphs so that
everything did not get mixed up.
The last time, our first paragraph was a kind of presentation of Leibniz's principal concepts.
As background to all this, there was a corresponding problem for Leibniz, but obviously
much more general, to wit: what precisely does it mean to do philosophy. Starting from a
very simple notion: to do philosophy is to create concepts, just as doing painting is to create
lines and colors. Doing philosophy is creating concepts because concepts are not something
that pre-exists, not something that is given ready made. In this sense, we must define
philosophy through an activity of creation: creation of concepts. This definition seemed
perfectly suitable for Leibniz who, precisely, in an apparently fundamentally rationalist
philosophy, is engaged in a kind of exuberant creation of unusual concepts of which there are
few such examples in the history of philosophy.
If concepts are the object of a creation, then one must say that these concepts are signed.
There is a signature, not that the signature establishes a link between the concept and the
philosopher who created it. Rather the concepts themselves are signatures. The entire first
paragraph caused a certain number of properly Leibnizian concepts to emerge. The two
principal ones that we discerned were inclusion and compossibility. There are all kinds of
things that are included in certain things, or enveloped in certain things. Inclusion,
envelopment. Then, the completely different, very bizarre concept of compossibility: there
are things which are possible in themselves, but that are not compossible with another.
Today, I would like to give a title to this second paragraph, this second inquiry on Leibniz:
Substance, World, and Continuity.
The purpose of this second paragraph is to analyze more precisely these two major concepts
of Leibniz: Inclusion and Compossibility.
At the point where we ended the last time, we found ourselves faced with two problems: the
first is that of inclusion. In what sense? We saw that if a proposition were true, it was
necessary in one way or another that the predicate or attribute be contained or included -- not
in the subject --, but in the notion of the subject. If a proposition is true, the predicate must be
included in the notion of the subject. Lets allow ourselves the freedom to accept that and, as

Leibniz says, if Adam sinned, the sin had to be contained or included in the individual notion
of Adam. Everything that happens, everything that can be attributed, everything that is
predicated about a subject must be contained in the notion of the subject. This is a philosophy
of predication. Faced with such a strange proposition, if one accepts this kind of Leibnizian
gamble, one finds oneself immediately faced with problems. Specifically if any given event
that concerns a specific individual notion, for example, Adam, or Caesar -- Caesar crossed the
Rubicon, it is necessary that crossing the Rubicon be included in the individual notion of
Caesar -- great, O.K., we are quite ready to support Leibniz. But if we say that, we cannot
stop: if a single thing is contained in the individual notion of Caesar, like "crossing the
Rubicon," then it is quite necessary that, from effect to cause and from cause to effect, the
totality of the world be contained in this individual notion. Indeed, crossing the Rubicon itself
has a cause that must also be contained in the individual notion, etc. etc. to infinity, both
ascending and descending. At that point, the entire Roman empire -- which, grosso modo,
results from the crossing of the Rubicon as well as all the consequences of the Roman empire
-- in one way or another, all of this must be included in the individual notion of Caesar such
that every individual notion will be inflated by the totality of the world that it expresses. It
expresses the totality of the world. There we see the proposition becoming stranger and
stranger.
There are always delicious moments in the history of philosophy, and one of the most
delicious of these came at the far extreme of reason -- that is, when rationalism, pushed all
the way to the end of its consequences, engendered and coincided with a kind of delirium that
was a delirium of madness. At that moment, we witness this kind of procession, a parade, in
which the same thing that is rational pushed to the far end of reason is also delirium, but
delirium of the purest madness.
Thus, if it is true that the predicate is included in the notion of the subject, each individual
notion must express the totality of the world, and the totality of the world must be included in
each notion.
We saw that this led Leibniz to an extraordinary theory that is the first great theory in
philosophy of perspective or point of view since each individual notion will be said to
express and contain the world. Yes, but from a certain point of view which is deeper, notably
it is subjectivity that refers to the notion of point of view and not the notion of point of view
that refers to subjectivity. This is going to have many consequences in philosophy, starting
with the echo that this would have for Nietzsche in the creation of a perspectivist philosophy.
The first problem is this: in saying that the predicate is contained in the subject, we assume
that this brought up all sorts of difficulties, specifically: can relations be reduced to
predicates, can events be considered as predicates? But let us accept that. We can find Leibniz
wrong only starting from an aggregate of conceptual coordinates from Leibniz's. A true
proposition is one for which the attribute is contained in the subject; we see quite well what
that can mean on the level of truths of essences. Truths of essences, be they metaphysical
truths (concerning God), or else mathematical truths. If I say 2+2=4, there is quite a bit to
discuss about that, but I immediately understand what Leibniz meant, always independently
of the question of whether he is right or wrong; we already have enough trouble knowing
what someone is saying that if, on top of that, we wonder if he is right, then there is no end to
it. 2+2=4 is an analytical proposition. I remind you that an analytical proposition is a

proposition for which the predicate is contained in the subject or in the notion of the subject,
specifically it is an identical proposition or is reducible to the identical. Identity of the
predicate with the subject. Indeed, Leibniz tells us: I can demonstrate through a series of
finite procedures, a finite number of operational procedures, I can demonstrate that 4, by
virtue of its definition, and 2+2, by virtue of their definition, are identical. Can I really
demonstrate it, and in what way? Obviously I do not pose the problem of how. We understand
generally what that means: the predicate is encompassed in the subject, that means that,
through a group of operations, I can demonstrate the identity of one and the other. Leibniz
selects an example in a little text called "On Freedom." He proceeds to demonstrate that
every number divisible by twelve is by this fact divisible by six. Every duodecimal number is
sextuple .
Notice that in the logistics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, you will again find
proofs of this type that, notably, made Russell famous. Leibniz's proof is very convincing: he
first demonstrates that every number divisible by twelve is identical to those divisible by two,
multiplied by two, multiplied by three. It's not difficult. On the other hand, he proves that the
number divisible by six is equal to that divisible by two multiplied by three.
By that, what did he reveal?
He revealed an inclusion since two multiplied by three is contained in two multiplied by two
multiplied by three.
It's an example that helps us understand on the level of mathematical truths that we can say
that the corresponding proposition is analytical or identical. That is, the predicate is contained
in the subject. That means, strictly speaking, that I can make into an aggregate, into a series
of determinate operations, a finite series of determinate operations -- I insist on that -- I can
demonstrate the identity of the predicate with the subject, or I can cause an inclusion of the
predicate in the subject to emerge. And that boils down to the same thing. I can display this
inclusion, I can show it. Either I can demonstrate the identity or I can show the inclusion.
He showed the inclusion when he showed, for example... -- a pure identity would have been:
any number divisible by twelve is divisible by twelve -- but with that, we reach another case
of truth of essence: any number divisible by twelve is divisible by six, this time he does not
stop at showing an identity, he shows an inclusion resulting from finite operations, quite
determinate.
That's what truths of essence are. I can say that inclusion of the predicate in the subject is
proven by analysis and that this analysis responds to the condition of being finite, that is, it
only includes a limited number of quite determinate operations.
But when I say that Adam sinned, or that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, what is that? That no
longer refers to a truth of essence, it's specifically dated, Caesar crossed the Rubicon here and
now, with reference to existence, since Caesar crossed the Rubicon only if it existed. 2+2=4
occurs in all time and in all places. Thus, there are grounds to distinguish truths of essence
from truths of existence.
The truth of the proposition "Caesar crossed the Rubicon" is not the same type as 2+2=4. And
yet, by virtue of the principles we saw the last time, no less for truths of existence than for
truths of essence, the predicate must be in the subject and included in the notion of the
subject; included therefore for all eternity in the notion of the subject, including for all
eternity that Adam will sin in a particular place at a particular time. This is a truth of

existence.
No less than for truths of essence, for truths of existence, the predicate must be contained in
the subject. Granted, but no less, that does not mean in the same way. And in fact, and this is
our problem, what initial great difference is there between truth of essence and truth of
existence? We sense it immediately. For the truths of existence, Leibniz tells us that even
there, the predicate is contained in the subject. The "sinner" must be contained in the
individual notion of Adam, just look: if the sinner is contained in the individual notion of
Adam, it's the entire world that is contained in the individual notion of Adam, if we follow
the causes back and if we track down the effects, as it's the entire world, you understand, that
the proposition "Adam sinned" must be an analytical proposition, only in that case, the
analysis is infinite. The analysis extends to infinity.
What could that even mean? It seems to mean this: in order to demonstrate the identity of
"sinner" and "Adam," or the identity of "who crossed the Rubicon" and "Caesar," this time an
infinite series of operations is required. It goes without saying that we aren't capable of that,
or it appears that we aren't. Are we capable of making an analysis to infinity? Leibniz is quite
formal: [no], you, us, men, are not able to do so. Thus, in order to situate ourselves in the
domain of truths of existence, we have to wait for the experience. So why does he present this
whole story about analytical truths? He adds: yes, but infinite analysis, on the other hand, not
only is possible, but created in the understanding of God.
Does it suit us that God, he who is without limits, he who is infinite, can undertake infinite
analysis? We're happy, we're happy for him, but at first glance, we wonder what Leibniz is
talking about. I emphasize only that our initial difficulty is: what is infinite analysis? Any
proposition is analytical, only there is an entire domain of our propositions that refers to an
infinite analysis. We are hopeful: if Leibniz is one of the great creators of differential calculus
or of infinitesimal analysis, undoubtedly this is in mathematics, and he always distinguished
philosophical truths and mathematical truths, and so it's not a question for us of mixing up
everything. But it's impossible to think that, when he discovers a certain idea of infinite
analysis in metaphysics, that there aren't certain echoes in relation to a certain type of
calculus that he himself invented, notably the calculus of infinitesimal analysis.
So there is my initial difficulty: when analysis extends to infinity, what type or what is the
mode of inclusion of the predicate in the subject? In what way is "sinner" contained in the
notion of Adam, once it is stated that the identity of sinner and Adam can appear only in an
infinite analysis?
What does infinite analysis mean, then, when it seems that there is analysis only under
conditions of a well-determined finitude?
That's a tough problem.
Second problem. I just exposed already a first difference between truths of
essence and truths of existence. In truths of essence, the analysis is fi
e, in truths of existence, the analysis is infinite. That is not the only one, for there
is a second difference: according to Leibniz, a truth of essence is such that its
contradictory is impossible, that is, it is impossible for 2 and 2 not to make 4.
Why? For the simple reason that I can prove the identity of 4 and of 2+2 through
a series of finite procedures. Thus 2+2=5 can be proven to be contradictory and
impossible. Adam non sinner, Adam who might not have sinned, I therefore seize the

contradictory of sinner. It's possible. The proof is that, following the great criterion of
classical logic -- and from this perspective Leibniz remains within classical logic -- I can
think nothing when I say 2+2=5, I cannot think the impossible, no more than I think whatever
it might be according to this logic when I say squared circle. But I can very well think of an
Adam who might not have sinned.Truths of existence are called contingent truths.
Caesar could have not crossed the Rubicon. Leibniz's answer is admirable:
certainly, Adam could have not sinned, Caesar could have not crossed the
Rubicon. Only here it is: this was not compossible with the existing world. An
Adam non sinner enveloped another world. This world was possible in itself, a
world in which the first man might not have sinned is a logically possible world,
only it is not compossible with our world. That is, God chose a world such that
Adam sinned. Adam non sinner implied another world, this world was possible,
but it was not compossible with ours.

Why did God choose this world? Leibniz goes on to explain it. Understand that at this level,
the notion of compossibility becomes very strange: what is going to make me say that two
things are compossible and that two other things are incompossible? Adam non sinner
belongs to another world than ours, but suddenly Caesar might not have crossed the Rubicon
either, that would have been another possible world. What is this very unusual relation of
compossibility? Understand that perhaps this is the same question as what is infinite analysis,
but it does not have the same outline. So we can draw a dream out of it, we can have this
dream on several levels. You dream, and a kind of wizard is there who makes you enter a
palace; this palace... it's the dream of Apollodorus told by Leibniz. Apollodorus is going to
see a goddess, and this goddess leads him into the palace, and this palace is composed of
several palaces. Leibniz loved that, boxes containing boxes. He explained, in a text that we
will examine, he explained that in the water, there are many fish and that in the fish, there is
water, and in the water of these fish, there are fish of fish. It's infinite analysis. The image of
the labyrinth hounds him. He never stops talking about the labyrinth of continuity. This
palace is in the form of a pyramid. Then, I look closer and, in the highest section of my
pyramid, closest to the point, I see a character who is doing something. Right underneath, I
see the same character who is doing something else in another location. Again underneath the
same character is there in another situation, as if all sorts of theatrical productions were
playing simultaneously, completely different, in each of the palaces, with characters that have
common segments. It's a huge book by Leibniz called Theodicy , specifically divine justice.
You understand, what he means is that at each level is a possible world. God chose to bring
into existence the extreme world closest to the point of the pyramid. How was he guided in
making that choice? We shall see, we must not hurry since this will be a tough problem, what
the criteria are for God's choice. But once we've said that he chose a particular world, this
world implicated Adam sinner; in another world, obviously all that is simultaneous, these are
variants, one can conceive of something else, and each time, it's a world. Each of them is
possible. They are incompossible with one another, only one can pass into existence. And all
of them attempt with all their strength to pass into existence. The vision that Leibniz proposes
of the creation of the world by God becomes very stimulating. There are all these worlds that
are in God's understanding, and each of which on its own presses forward pretending to pass
from the possible into the existent. They have a weight of reality, as a function of their

essences. As a function of the essences they contain, they tend to pass into existence. And this
is not possible for they are not compossible with each other: existence is like a dam. A single
combination will pass through. Which one? You already sense Leibniz's splendid response: it
will be the best one!
And not the best one by virtue of a moral theory, but by virtue of a theory of games. And it's
not by chance that Leibniz is one of the founders of statistics and of the calculus of games.
And all that will get more complicated...
What is this relation of compossibility? I just want to point out that a famous author today is
Leibnizian. What does it mean to be Leibnizian today? I think that means two things, one not
very interesting and one very interesting. The last time, I said that the concept is in a special
relationship with the scream. There is an uninteresting way to be Leibnizian or to be
Spinozist today, by job necessity, people working on an author, but there is another way to
make use of a philosopher, one that is non-professional. These are people who are able not to
be philosophers. What I find amazing in philosophy is when a non-philosopher discovers a
kind of familiarity that I can no longer call conceptual, but immediately seizes upon a
familiarity between his very own screams and the concepts of the philosopher. I think of
Nietzsche, he had read Spinoza early on and, in this letter, he had just re-read him, and he
exclaims: I can't get over it! I can't get over it! I have never had a relation with a philosopher
like the one I have had with Spinoza. And that interests me all the more when it's from nonphilosophers. When the British novelist Lawrence expresses in a few words the way Spinoza
upset him completely. Thank God he did not become a philosopher over that. What did he
grasp, what does that mean? When Kleist stumbles across Kant, he literally can't get over it.
What is this kind of communication? Spinoza shook up many uncultivated readers ... Borges
and Leibniz. Borges is an extremely knowledgeable author who read widely. He is always
talking about two things: the book that does not exist...
...he really likes detective stories, Borges. In Ficciones, there is a short story, "The Garden of
Forking Paths." As I summarize the story, keep in mind the famous dream of the Theodicy.
"The Garden of Forking Paths," what is it? It's the infinite book, the world of
compossibilities. The idea of the Chinese philosopher being involved with the labyrinth is an
idea of Leibniz's contemporaries, appearing in mid-17th century. There is a famous text by
Malebranche that is a discussion with the Chinese philosopher, with some very odd things in
it. Leibniz is fascinated by the Orient, and he often cites Confucius. Borges made a kind of
copy that conformed to Leibniz's thought with an essential difference: for Leibniz, all the
different worlds that might encompass an Adam sinning in a particular way, an Adam sinning
in some other way, or an Adam not sinning at all, he excludes all this infinity of worlds from
each other, they are incompossible with each other, such that he conserves a very classical
principle of disjunction: it's either this world or some other one. Whereas Borges places all
these incompossible series in the same world, allowing a multiplication of effects. Leibniz
would never have allowed incompossibles to belong to a single world. Why? I only state our
two difficulties: the first is, what is an infinite analysis? and second, what is this relationship
of incompossibility? The labyrinth of infinite analysis and the labyrinth of compossibility.
Most commentators on Leibniz, to my knowledge, try in the long run to situate
compossibility in a simple principle of contradiction. They conclude that there would be a

contradiction between Adam non sinner and our world. But, Leibniz's letter already appears
to us such that this would not be possible.
It's not possible since Adam non sinner is not contradictory in itself and the relation of
compossibility is absolutely irreducible to the simple relation of logical possibility.
So trying to discover a simple logical contradiction would be once again to situate truths of
existence within truths of essence. Henceforth it's going to be very difficult to define
compossibility.
Still remaining within this paragraph on substance, the world, and continuity, I would like to
ask the question, what is infinite analysis? I ask you to remain extremely patient. We have to
be wary of Leibniz's texts because they are always adapted to the correspondents within
given audiences, and if I again take up his dream, I must change it, and a variant of the
dream, even within the same world, would result in levels of clarity or obscurity such that the
world might be presented from one point of view or another. So that for Leibniz's texts, we
have to know to whom he addresses them in order to be able to judge them.
Here is a first kind of text by Leibniz in which he tells us that, in any proposition, the
predicate is contained in the subject. Only it is contained either in act -- actually -- or
virtually. The predicate is contained in the subject, but this inclusion, this inherence is either
actual or virtual. We would like to say that that seems fine. Let us agree that in a proposition
of existence of the type Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the inclusion is only virtual, specifically
crossing the Rubicon is contained in the notion of Caesar, but is only virtually contained.
Second kind of text: the infinite analysis in which sinner is contained in the notion of Adam is
an indefinite analysis, that is, I can move back from sinner to another term, then to another
term, etc... Exactly as if sinner = 1/2+1/4+1/8, etc., to infinity. This would result in a certain
status: I would say that infinite analysis is virtual analysis, an analysis that goes toward the
indefinite. There are texts by Leibniz saying that, notably in "The discourse on metaphysics,"
but in "The discourse on metaphysics," Leibniz presents and proposes the totality of his
system for use by people with little philosophical background. I choose another text that
seems to contradict the first; in a more scholarly text, "On Freedom," Leibniz uses the word
"virtual," but quite strangely he does not use this word with reference to truths of existence,
but to truths of essence.
This text suffices already for me to say that it is not possible for the distinction truths of
essence/truths of existence be reduced to saying that in truths of existence, inclusion would
only be virtual, since virtual inclusion is a case of truths of essence. In fact, you recall that
truths of essence refer to two cases: the pure and simple identity in which we demonstrate the
identity of the predicate and the subject, and the discovery of an inclusion of the type every
number divisible by 12 is divisible by 6, (I demonstrate the inclusion following a finite
operation), and it is for the latter case that Leibniz says: I have discovered a virtual identity.
Thus it is not enough to say that infinite analysis is virtual.
Can we say that this is an indefinite analysis? No, because an indefinite analysis would be the
same as saying that it's an analysis that is infinite only through my lack of knowledge, that is,
I cannot reach the end of it. Henceforth, God with his understanding would reach the end. Is
that it? No, it's not possible for Leibniz to mean that because the indefinite never existed in
his thinking. We have here notions that are incompatible, anachronistic. Indefinite is not one
of Leibniz's gimmicks . What is the indefinite, rigorously defined? What differences are there

between indefinite and infinite?

The indefinite is the fact that I must always pass from one term to another term, always,
without stopping, but without the following term at which I arrive pre-existing. It is my own
procedure that consists in causing to exist. If I say 1=1/4+1/8, etc...., we must not believe that
this "etc." pre-exists, it's my procedure that makes it appear each time, that is, the indefinite
exists in a procedure through which I never stop pushing back the limit that I confront.
Nothing pre-exists. It's Kant who will be the first philosopher to give a status to the
indefinite, and this status will be precisely that the indefinite refers to an aggregate that is not
separable from the successive synthesis that runs through it. That is, the terms of the
indefinite series do not pre-exist the synthesis that goes from one term to another.
Leibniz does not know that. Moreover, the indefinite appears to him to be purely
conventional or symbolic; why? There is an author who said quite well what creates the
family resemblance of philosophers of the 17th century, it was Merleau-Ponty. He wrote a
small text on so-called classical philosophers of the seventeenth century, and he tried to
characterize them in a lively way, and said that what is so incredible in these philosophers is
an innocent way of thinking starting from and as a function of the infinite. That's what the
classical century is. This is much more intelligent than to tell us that it's an era in which
philosophy is still confused with theology. That's stupid. One must say that if philosophy is
still confused with theology in the 17th century, it's precisely because philosophy is not
separable at that time from an innocent way of thinking as a function of infinity.
What differences are there between the infinite and the indefinite? It's this: the indefinite is
virtual; in fact, the following term does not exist prior to my procedure having constituted it.
What does that mean? The infinite is actual, there is no infinite except in act . So there can be
all sorts of infinites. Think of Pascal. It's a century that will not stop distinguishing orders of
infinities, and the thought of orders of infinity is fundamental throughout the 17th century. It
will fall back on our heads, this thought, at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries precisely
with the theory of so-called infinite aggregates. With infinite aggregates, we rediscover
something that worked at the basis of classical philosophy, notably the distinction of orders of
infinities: this obviously includes Pascal, Spinoza with the famous letter on infinity, and
Leibniz who would subordinate an entire mathematical apparatus to the analysis of the
infinite and orders of infinities. Specifically, in what sense can we say that an order of
infinities is greater than another, what is an infinite that is greater than another infinite, etc...?
An innocent way of thinking starting from the infinite, but not at all in a confused way since
all sorts of distinctions are introduced.
In the case of truths of existence, Leibniz's analysis is obviously infinite. It is not indefinite.
Thus, when he uses the words virtual, etc..., there is a formal text that supports this
interpretation that I am trying to sketch, it's a text taken from "On Freedom" in which Leibniz
says exactly this: "When it is a matter of analyzing the inclusion of the predicate sinner in the
individual notion Adam, God certainly sees, not the end of the resolution, but the end that
does not take place." Thus, in other words, even for God there is no end to this analysis. So,
you will tell me that it's indefinite even for God? No, it's not indefinite since all the terms of
the analysis are given. If it were indefinite, all the terms would not be given, they would be
given little by little. They would not be given in a pre-existing manner. In other words, in an
infinite analysis, we reach what result: you have a passage of infinitely small elements one to

another, the infinity of infinitely small elements being given. Of such an infinity, we will say
that it is actual since the totality of infinitely small elements is given. You will say to me that
we can then reach the end! No, by its nature, you cannot reach the end since it's an infinite
aggregate. The totality of elements is given, and you pass from one element to another, and
thus you have an infinite aggregate of infinitely small elements. You pass from one element
to another: you perform an infinite analysis, that is, an analysis without end, neither for you
nor for God.
What do you see if you perform this analysis? Let us assume that there is only God that can
do it, you make yourself the indefinite because your understanding is limited, but as for God,
he makes infinity. He does not see the end of the analysis since there is no end of the analysis,
but he performs the analysis. Furthermore, all the elements of the analysis are given to him in
an actual infinity. So that means that sinner is connected to Adam. Sinner is an element, it is
connected to the individual notion of Adam by an infinity of other elements actually given.
Fine, it's the entire existing world, specifically all this whole compossible world that has
passed into existence. We are getting at something quite profound here. When I perform the
analysis, I pass from what to what? I pass from Adam sinner to Eve temptress, from Eve
temptress to the evil Serpent, to the apple. It's an infinite analysis, and it's this infinite
analysis that shows the inclusion of sinner in the individual notion Adam. What does that
mean, the infinitely small element? Why is sin an infinitely small element? Why is the apple
an infinitely small element? Why is crossing the Rubicon an infinitely small element? You
understand what that means? There are no infinitely small elements, so an infinitely small
elements means obviously, we don't need to say it, it means an infinitely small relation
between two elements. It is a question of relations, not a question of elements. In other words,
an infinitely small relation between elements, what can that be? What have we achieved in
saying that it is not a question of infinitely small elements, but of infinitely small relations
between two elements? And you understand that if I speak to someone who has no idea of
differential calculus, you can tell him it's infinitely small elements. Leibniz was right. If it's
someone who has a very vague knowledge, he has to understand that these are infinitely
small relations between finite elements. If it's someone who is very knowledgeable in
differential calculus, I can perhaps tell him something else.
Infinite analysis that goes on to demonstrate the inclusion of the predicate in the subject at the
level of truths of existence, does not proceed by the demonstration of an identity, even a
virtual one. It's not that. But Leibniz, in another drawer, has another formula to give you:
identity governs truths of essence, but not truths of existence; all the time he says the
opposite, but that has no importance. Ask yourself to whom he says it. So what is it? What
interests him at the level of truths of existence is not identity of the predicate and the subject,
it's rather that one passes from one predicate to another, from one to another, and again on
from one to another, etc.... from the point of view of an infinite analysis, that is, from the
maximum of continuity.
In other words, it's identity that governs truths of essence, but it's continuity that governs
truths of existence. And what is a world? A world is defined by its continuity. What separates
two incompossible worlds? It's the fact that there is discontinuity between the two worlds.
What defines a compossible world? It's the compossibility of which it is capable. What
defines the best of worlds? It's the most continuous world. The criterion of God's choice will

be continuity. Of all the worlds incompossible with each other and possible in themselves,
God will cause to pass into existence the one that realizes the maximum of continuity.
Why is Adam's sin included in the world that has the maximum of continuity? We have to
believe that Adam's sin is a formidable connection, that it's a connection that assures
continuities of series. There is a direct connection between Adam's sin and the Incarnation
and the Redemption by Christ. There is continuity. There are something like series that are
going to begin to fit into each other across the differences of time and space. In other words,
in the case of truths of essence, I demonstrated an identity in which I revealed an inclusion; in
the case of truths of existence, I am going to witness a continuity assured by the infinitely
small relations between two elements. Two elements will be in continuity when I will be able
to assign an infinitely small relation between these two elements.
I have passed from the idea of infinitely small element to the infinitely small relation between
two elements, that's not enough. A greater effort is required. Since there are two elements,
there is a difference between the two elements: between Adam's sin and the temptation of
Eve, there is a difference, only what is the formula of the continuity? We will be able to
define continuity as the act of a difference in so far as it tends to disappear. Continuity is an
evanescent difference.
What does it mean that there is continuity between the seduction of Even and Adam's sin? It's
that the difference between the two is a difference that tends to disappear. I would say
therefore that truths of essence are governed by the principle of identity, truths are governed
by the law of continuity, or evanescent differences, and that comes down to the same.
Thus between sinner and Adam you will never be able to demonstrate a logical identity, but
you will be able to demonstrate -- and the word demonstration will change meaning --, you
will be able to demonstrate a continuity, that is, one or several evanescent differences.
An infinite analysis is an analysis of the continuous operating through evanescent differences.
That refers to a certain symbolic, a symbolic of differential calculus or of infinitesimal
analysis. But it's at the same time that Newton and Leibniz develop differential calculus. And
the interpretation of differential calculus by the evanescent categories is Leibniz's very own.
In Newton's works, whereas both of them really invent it at the same time, the logical and
theoretical armature is very different in Leibniz's works and Newton's, and the theme of the
differential conceived as evanescent difference is proper to Leibniz. Moreover, he relies on it
greatly, and there is a great polemic between Newtonians and Leibniz. Our story becomes
more precise: what is this evanescent difference? . Differential equations today are
fundamental. There is no physics without a differential equation. Mathematically, today,
differential calculus has purged itself of any consideration of the infinite; the kind of
axiomatic status of differential calculus in which it is absolutely no longer a question of the
infinite dates from the end of the 19th century. But if we place ourselves at the time of
Leibniz, put yourself in the place of a mathematician: what is he going to do when he finds
himself faced with the magnitude and quantities of different powers, equations whose
variables are to different powers, equations of the ax2+y type? You have a quantity to the
second power and a quantity to the first power. How does one compare? You all know the
story of non-commensurable quantities. Then, in the 17th century, the quantities of different
powers received a neighboring term, incomparable quantities. The whole theory of equations
collides in the 17th century with this problem that is a fundamental one, even in the simplest

algebra; what is differential calculus for? Differential calculus allows you to proceed directly
to compare quantities raised to different powers. Moreover, it is used only for that.
Differential calculus finds its level of application when you are faced with incomparables,
that is, faced with quantities raised to different powers. Why? In ax2+y, let us assume that by
various means, you extract dx and dy. What is that? We will define it verbally, conventionally,
we will say that dx or dy is the infinitely small quantity assumed to be added or subtracted
from x or from y. Now there is an invention! The infinitely small quantity... that is, it's the
smallest variation of the quantity considered. It is unassignable by convention. Thus dx=0 in
x, is the smallest quantity by which x can vary, so it equals zero. dy = 0 in relation to y. The
notion of evanescent difference is beginning to take shape. It's a variation or a difference, dx
or dy; it is smaller than any given or givable quantity. It's a mathematical symbol. In a sense,
it's crazy, in a sense it's operational. For what? Here is what is formidable in the symbolism of
differential calculus: dx=0 in relation to x, the smallest different, the smallest increase of
which the quantity x or the unassignable quantity y might be capable, it's infinitely small. The
miracle dy/dx is not equal to zero, and furthermore: dy/dx has a perfectly expressible finite
quantity.
These are relative , uniquely relative. dx is nothing in relation to y, dy is nothing in relation to
y, but then dy/dx is something.
A stupefying, admirable, and great mathematical discovery.
It's something because in an example such as ax2-by+c, you have two powers in which you
have incomparable quantities: y2 and x. If you consider the differential relation, it is not zero,
it is determined, it is determinable.
The relation dy/dx gives you the means to compare two incomparable quantities that were
raised to different powers since it operates a depotentialization of quantities. So it gives you a
direct means to confront incomparable quantities raised to different powers. From that
moment on, all mathematics, all algebra, all physics will be inscribed in the symbolism of
differential calculus... It's the relation between dx and dy that made possible this kind of copenetration of physical reality and mathematical calculus.
There is a small note of three pages called "Justification of the calculus of infinitesimals by
the calculus of ordinary algebra." With that you will understand everything. Leibniz tries to
explain that in a certain way, differential calculus already functioned before being discovered,
and that it couldn't occur otherwise, even at the level of the most ordinary algebra.
.
x is not equal to y, neither in one case, nor another, since it would be contrary to the very
givens of the construction of the problem. To the extent that, for this case, you can write x/y =
c/e, c and e are zeros.
Like he says in his language, these are nothings, but they are not absolute nothings, that are
nothings respectively.
Specifically, these are nothings but ones which conserve the relational difference. Thus c does
not become equal to e since it remains proportional to x and x is not equal to y.
This is a justification of the old differential calculus, and the interest of this text is that it's a
justification through the easiest or most ordinary algebra. This justification puts nothing into
question about the specificity of differential calculus.
I read this very beautiful text:

"Thus, in the present case, there will be x-c=x. Let us assume that this case is included under
the general rule, and nonetheless c and e will not at all be absolute nothings since they
together maintain the reason of CX to XY, or that which is between the entire sine or radius
and between the tangent that corresponds to the angle in c. We have assumed this angle
always to remain the same. For if c, C and e were absolutely nothings in this calculus reduced
to the case of coincidence of points c, e and a, as one nothing has the same value as the other,
then c and e would be equal and the equations or analogy x/y = c/e would make x/y = 0/0 = 1.
That is, we would have x=y which would be totally absurd."
"So we find in algebraic calculus the traces of the transcendent calculus of differences (i.e.
differential calculus), and its same singularities that some scholars have fretted about, and
even algebraic calculus could not do without it if it must conserve its advantages of which
one of the most considerable is the generality that it must maintain so that it can encompass
all cases."
It's exactly in this way that I can consider that rest is an infinitely small movement, or that the
circle is the limit of an infinite series of polygons the sides of which increase to infinity. What
is there to compare in all these examples? We have to consider the case in which there is a
single triangle as the extreme case of two similar triangles opposed at the vertex. What
Leibniz demonstrated in this text is how and in what circumstances a triangle can be
considered as the extreme case of two similar triangles opposed at the vertex. There you
sense that we are perhaps in the process of giving to "virtual" the sense that we were looking
for. I could say that in the case of my second figure in which there is only one triangle, the
other triangle is there, but it is only there virtually. It's there virtually since a contains
virtually e and c distinct from a. Why do e and c remain distinct from a when they no longer
exist? e and c remain distinct from a when they no longer exist because they intervene in a
relation with it, continue to exist when the terms have vanished. It's in this way that rest will
be considered as a special case of movement, specifically an infinitely small movement. In
my second figure, xy, I would say it's not at all the triangle CEA, it's not at all the case that
the triangle has disappeared in the common sense of the word, but we have to say both that it
has become unassignable, and however that it is perfectly determined since in this case, c=0,
e=0, but c/e is not equal to zero.
c/e is a perfectly determined relation equal to x/y.
Thus it is determinable and determined, but it is unassignable. Likewise, rest is a perfectly
determined movement, but it's an unassignable movement. Likewise, the circle is an
unassignable polygon, yet perfectly determined.
You see what virtual means. Virtual no longer means at all the indefinite, and there all
Leibniz's texts can be revived. He undertook a diabolical operation: he took the word virtual,
without saying anything -- it's his right -- he gave it a new meaning, completely rigorous, but
without saying anything. He will only say it in other texts: that no longer meant going toward
the indefinite; rather, that meant unassignable, yet also determined.
It's a conception of the virtual that is both quite new and very rigorous. Yet the technique and
concepts were required so that this rather mysterious expression might acquire a meaning at
the beginning: unassignable, yet determined. It's unassignable since c became equal to zero,
and since e became equal to zero. And yet it's completely determined since c/e, specifically
0/0 is not equal to zero, nor to 1, it's equal to x/y.

Moreover, he really had a professor-like genius. He succeeded in explaining to someone who

never did anything but elementary algebra what differential calculus is. He assumed no a
priori notion of differential calculus.
The idea that there is a continuity in the world -- it seems that there are too many
commentators on Leibniz who make more theological pronouncements than Leibniz requires:
they are content to say that infinite analysis is in God's understanding, and it is true according
to the letter of his texts. But with differential calculus, it happens that we have the artifice not
to make ourselves equal to God's understanding, that's impossible of course, but differential
calculus gives us an artifice so that we can operate a well-founded approximation of what
happens in God's understanding so that we can approach it thanks to this symbolism of
differential calculus, since after all, God also operates by the symbolic, not the same way,
certainly. Thus this approximation of continuity is such that the maximum of continuity is
assured when a case is given, the extreme case or contrary can be considered from a certain
point of view as included in the case first defined.
You define the movement, it matters little, you define the polygon, it matters little, you
consider the extreme case or the contrary: rest, the circle is stripped of any angle. Continuity
is the institution of the path following which the extrinsic case -- rest contrary to movement,
the circle contrary to the polygon -- can be considered as included in the notion of the
intrinsic case.
There is continuity when the extrinsic case can be considered as included in the notion of the
intrinsic case.
Leibniz just showed why. You find the formula of predication: the predicate is included in the
subject.
Understand well. I call general, intrinsic case the concept of movement that encompasses all
movements. In relation to this first case, I call extrinsic case rest or the circle in relation to all
the polygons, or the unique triangle in relation to all the triangles combined. I undertake to
construct a concept that implies all the differential symbolism, a concept that both
corresponds to the general intrinsic case and which still includes the extrinsic case. If I
succeed in that, I can say that in all truth, rest is an infinitely small movement, just as I say
that my unique triangle is the opposition of two similar triangles opposed at the vertex,
simply, by which one of the two triangles has become unassignable. At that moment, there is
continuity from the polygon to the circle, there is continuity from rest to movement, there is
continuity from two similar triangles opposed at the vertex to a single triangle.
In the mid-19th century, a very great mathematician named Poncelet will produce projective
geometry in its most modern sense, it is completely Leibnizian. Projective geometry is
entirely based on what Poncelet called a completely simple axiom of continuity: if you take
an arc of a circle cut at two points by a right angle, if you cause the right angle to recede,
there is a moment in which it leaves the circle, no longer touching it at any point. Poncelet's
axiom of continuity claims the possibility of treating the case of the tangent as an extreme
case, specifically it's not that one of the points has disappeared, both points are still there, but
virtual. When they all leave, it's not that the two points have disappeared, they are still there,
but both are virtual. This is the axiom of continuity that precisely allows any system of
projection, any so-called projective system. Mathematics will keep that integrally, it's a
formidable technique.

There is something desperately comical in all that, but that will not bother Leibniz at all.
There again, commentators are very odd. From the start, we sink into a domain in which it's a
question of showing that the truths of existence are not the same thing as truths of essence or
mathematical truths. To show it, either it's with very general propositions full of genius in
Leibniz's works, but that leave us like that, God's understanding, infinite analysis, and then
what does that amount to? And finally when it's a question of showing in what way truths of
existence are reducible to mathematical truths, when it's a question of showing it concretely,
all that is convincing in what Leibniz says is mathematical. It's funny, no?
A professional objector would say to Leibniz: you announce to us, you talk to us of the
irreducibility of truths of existence, and you can define this irreducibility concretely only by
using purely mathematical notions. What would Leibniz answer? In all sorts of texts, people
have always had me say that differential calculus designated a reality. I never said that,
Leibniz answers, differential calculus is a well-founded convention. Leibniz relies
enormously on differential calculus being only a symbolic system, and not sketching out a
reality, but designating a way of treating reality. What is this well-founded convention? It's
not in relation to reality that it's a convention, but in relation to mathematics. That's the
misinterpretation not to make. Differential calculus is symbolism, but in relation to
mathematical reality, not at all in relation to real reality. It's in relation to mathematical reality
that the system of differential calculus is a fiction. He also used the expression "well founded
fiction." Its a well-founded fiction in relation to the mathematical reality. In other words,
differential calculus mobilizes concepts that cannot be justified from the point of view of
classical algebra, or from the point of view of arithmetic. It's obvious. Quantities that are not
nothing and that equal zero, it's arithmetical nonsense, it has neither arithmetic reality, nor
algebraic reality. It's a fiction. So, in my opinion, it does not mean at all that differential
calculus does not designate anything real, it means that differential calculus is irreducible to
mathematical reality. It's therefore a fiction in this sense, but precisely in so far as it's a
fiction, it can cause us to think of existence.
In other words, differential calculus is a kind of union of mathematics and the existent,
specifically it's the symbolic of the existent.
It's because it's a well-founded fiction in relation to mathematical truth that it is henceforth a
basic and real means of exploration of the reality of existence.
You see therefore what the words "evanescent" and "evanescent difference" mean. It's when
the relation continues when the terms of the relation have disappeared. The relation c/e when
C and E have disappeared, that is, coincide with A. You have therefore constructed a
continuity through differential calculus.
Leibniz becomes much stronger in order to tell us: understand that in God's understanding,
between the predicate sinner and the notion of Adam, well, there is continuity. There is a
continuity by evanescent difference to the point that when he created the world, God was
only doing calculus . And what a calculus! Obviously not an arithmetical calculus.
He will oscillate on this topic between two explanations. Therefore God created the world by
calculating . God calculates, the world is created.
The idea of God as player can be found everywhere. We can always say that God created the
world by playing, but everyone has said that. It's not very interesting. There is a text by
Heraclitus in which it is a question of the player child who really constituted the world. He

plays, at what? What do the Greeks and Greek children play? Different translations yield
different games. But Leibniz would not say that, when he gives his explanation of games, he
has two explanations. In problems of tiling , astride architectural and mathematical problems,
a surface being given, with what figure is one to fill it completely? A more complicated
problem: if you take a rectangular surface and you want to tile it with circles, you do not fill it
completely. With squares, do you fill it completely? That depends on the measurement. With
rectangles? Equal or unequal? Then, if you suppose two figures, which of them combine to
fill a space completely? If you want to tile with circles, with which other figure will you fill
in the empty spaces? Or you agree not to fill everything; you see that it's quite connected to
the problem of continuity. If you decide not to fill it all, in what cases and with which figures
and which combination of different figures will you succeed in filling the maximum
possible? That puts incommensurables into play, and puts incomparables into play. Leibniz
has a passion for tiling.
When Leibniz says that God causes to exist and chooses the best of all possible worlds, we
have seen, one gets ahead of Leibniz before he has spoken. The best of all possible worlds
was the crisis of Leibnizianism, that was the generalized anti-Leibnizianism of the 18th
century. They could not stand the story of the best of all possible worlds.
Voltaire was right, these worlds had a philosophical requirement that obviously was not
fulfilled by Leibniz, notably from the political point of view. So, he could not forgive
Leibniz. But if one casts oneself into a pious approach, what does Leibniz mean by the
statement that the world that exists is the best of possible worlds? Something very simple:
since there are several worlds possible, only they are not compossible with each other, God
chooses the best and the best is not the one in which suffering is the least. Rationalist
optimism is at the same time an infinite cruelty, it's not at all a world in which no one suffers,
it's the world that realizes the maximum of circles.
If I dare use a non-human metaphor, it's obvious that the circle suffers when it is no more
than an affection of the polygon. When rest is no more than an affection of movement,
imagine the suffering of rest. Simply it's the best of worlds because it realizes the maximum
of continuity. Other worlds were possible, but they would have realized less continuity. This
world is the most beautiful, the most harmonious, uniquely under the weight of this pitiless
phrase: because it effectuates the most continuity possible. So if that occurs at the price of
your flesh and blood, it matters little. As God is not only just, that is, pursuing the maximum
of continuity, but as he is at the same time quite stylish, he wants to vary the world. So God
hides this continuity. He poses a segment that should be in continuity with that other segment
that he places elsewhere to hide his tracks.
We run no risk of making sense of this. This world is created at our expense. So, obviously
the 18th century does not receive Leibniz's story very favorably. You see henceforth the
problem of tiling: the best of worlds will be the one in which figures and forms will fill the
maximum of space time while leaving the least emptiness.
Second explanation by Leibniz, and there he is even stronger: the chess game. Such that
between Heraclitus's phrase that alludes to a Greek game and Leibniz's allusion to chess,
there is all the difference that there is between the two games at the same moment in which
the common formula "God plays" could make us believe that it's a kind of beatitude. How
does Leibniz conceive of chess: the chess board is a space, the pieces are notions. What is the

best move in chess, or the best combination of moves? The best move or combination of
moves is the one that results in a determinate number of pieces with determinate values
holding or occupying the maximum space. The total space being contained on the chess
board. One must place ones pawns in such a way that they command the maximum space.
Why are these only metaphors? Here as well there is a kind of principle of continuity: the
maximum of continuity. What does not work just as well in the metaphor of chess as in the
metaphor of tiling? In both cases, you have reference to a receptacle. The two things are
presented as if the possible worlds were competing to be embodied in a determinate
receptacle. In the case of tiling, it's the surface to be tiled; in the case of chess, it's the chess
board. But in the conditions of the creation of the world, there is no a priori receptacle.
We have to say, therefore, that the world that passes into existence is the one that realizes in
itself the maximum of continuity, that is, which contains the greatest quantity of reality or of
essence. I cannot speak of existence since there will come into existence the world that
contains not the greatest quantity of existence, but the greatest quantity of essence from the
point of view of continuity. Continuity is, in fact, precisely the means of containing the
maximum quantity of reality.
Now that's a very beautiful vision, as philosophy.
In this paragraph, I have answered the question: what is infinite analysis. I have not yet
answered the question: what is compossibility. That's it.

Today we must look at some amusing and recreational, but also quite delicate, things.
Answer to a question on differential calculus: It seems to me that one cannot say that at the
end of the seventeenth century and in the eighteenth century, there were people for whom
differential calculus is something artificial and others for whom it represents something real.
We cannot say that because the division is not there. Leibniz never stopped saying that
differential calculus is pure artifice, that its a symbolic system. So, on this point, everyone is
in strict agreement. Where the disagreement begins is in understanding what a symbolic
system is, but as for the irreducibility of differential signs to any mathematical reality, that is
to say to geometrical, arithmetical and algebraic reality, everyone agrees. A difference arises
when some people think that, henceforth, differential calculus is only a convention, a rather
suspect one, and others think that its artificial character in relation to mathematical reality, on
the contrary, allows it to be adequate to certain aspects of physical reality. Leibniz never
thought that his infinitesimal analysis, his differential calculus, as he conceived them sufficed
to exhaust the domain of the infinite such as he, Leibniz, conceived it. For example, calculus.
There is what Leibniz calls calculus of the minimum and of the maximum which does not at
all depend on differential calculus. So differential calculus corresponds to a certain order of
infinity. If it is true that a qualitative infinity cannot be grasped by differential calculus,
Leibniz is, on the other hand, so conscious of it that he initiates other modes of calculus
relative to other orders of infinity. What eliminated this direction of the qualitative infinity, or
even simply of actual infinity tout court, Leibniz wasnt the one who blocked it off. What
blocked this direction was the Kantian revolution. This was what imposed a certain
conception of the indefinite and directed the most absolute critique of actual infinity. We owe
that to Kant and not to Leibniz.

In geometry, from the Greeks to the seventeenth century, you have two kinds of problems:
those in which its a question of finding so-called straight lines and so-called rectilinear
surfaces. Classical geometry and algebra were sufficient. You have problems and you get the
necessary equations; its Euclidean geometry. Already with the Greeks, then in the Middle
Ages of course, geometry will not cease to confront a type of problem of another sort: its
when one must find and determine curves and curvilinear surfaces. Where all geometries are
in agreement is in the fact that classical methods of geometry and algebra no longer sufficed.
The Greeks already had to invent a special method called the method by exhaustion. It
allowed them to determine curves and curvilinear surfaces in so far as it gave equations of
variable degrees, to the infinite limit, an infinity of various degrees in the equation. These are
the problems that are going to make necessary and inspire the discovery of differential
calculus and the way in which differential calculus takes up where the old method by
exhaustion left off. If you already connect a mathematical symbolism to a theory, if you dont
connect it to the problem for which it is created, then you can no longer understand anything.
Differential calculus has sense only if you place yourself before an equation in which the
terms are raised to different powers. If you dont have that, then its non-sensical to speak of
differential calculus. Its very much about considering the theory that corresponds to a
symbolism, but you must also completely consider the practice. In my opinion, as well, one
cant understand anything about infinitesimal analysis if one does not see that all physical
equations are by nature differential equations. A physical phenomenon can only be studied ?
and Leibniz will be very firm: Descartes only had geometry and algebra, and what Descartes
himself had invented under the name of analytical geometry, but however far he went in that
invention, it gave him at most the means to grasp figures and movement of a rectilinear kind;
but with the aggregate of natural phenomena being after all phenomena of the curvilinear
type, that doesnt work at all. Descartes remained stuck on figures and movement. Leibniz
will translate: its the same thing to say that nature proceeds in a curvilinear manner, or to say
that beyond figures and movement, there is something that is the domain of forces. And on
the very level of the laws of movement, Leibniz is going to change everything, thanks
precisely to differential calculus. He will say that what is conserved is not MV, not mass and
velocity, but MV2. The only difference in the formula is the extension of V to the second
power. This is made possible by differential calculus because differential calculus allows the
comparison of powers and of rejects . Descartes did not have the technical means to say
MV2. >From the point of view of the language of geometry and of arithmetic and algebra,
MV2 is pure and simple non-sense.
With what we know in science today, we can always explain that what is conserved is MV2
without appealing to any infinitesimal analysis. That happens in high school texts, but to
prove it, and for the formula to make any sense, an entire apparatus of differential calculus is
required.
< Intervention by Comptesse.>
Gilles: Differential calculus and the axiomatic certainly have a point of encounter, but this is
one of perfect exclusion. Historically, the rigorous status of differential calculus arises quite
belatedly. What does that mean? It means that everything that is convention is expelled from

differential calculus. And, even for Leibniz, what is artifice? Its an entire set of things: the
idea of a becoming, the idea of a limit of becoming, the idea of a tendency to approach the
limit, all these are considered by mathematicians to be absolutely metaphysical notions. The
idea that there is a quantitative becoming, the idea of the limit of this becoming, the idea that
an infinity of small quantities tends toward the limit, all these are considered as absolutely
impure notions, thus as really non-axiomatic or non-axiomitizable. Thus, from the start,
whether in Leibnizs work or in Newtons and the work of his successors, the idea of
differential calculus is inseparable and not separated from a set of notions judged not to be
rigorous or scientific. They themselves are quite prepared to recognize it. It happens that at
the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth century, differential calculus or
infinitesimal analysis would receive a rigorously scientific status, but at what price? We hunt
for any reference to the idea of infinity; we hunt for any reference to the idea of limit, we
hunt for any reference to the idea of tendency toward the limit. Who does that? An
interpretation and a rather strange status of calculus will be given because it stops operating
with ordinary quantities, and its interpretation will be purely ordinal. Henceforth, that
becomes a mode of exploring the finite, the finite as such. Its a great mathematician,
Weierstrass, who did that, but it came rather late. So, he creates an axiomatic of calculus, but
at what price? He transformed it completely. Today, when we do differential calculus, there is
no reference to the notions of infinity, of limit and of tendency toward the limit. There is a
static interpretation. There is no longer any dynamism in differential calculus, but a static and
ordinal interpretation of calculus. One must read Vuillemins book, La philosophie de
lalgbre [Paris: PUF, 1960, 1962].
This fact is very important for us because it must certainly show us that the differential
relations ? Yes, but even before the axiomatization, all mathematicians agreed in saying that
differential calculus interpreted as a method for exploring the infinite was an impure
convention. Leibniz was the first to say that, but still in that case, one would have to know
what the symbolic value was then. Axiomatic relations and differential relations, well no.
They were in opposition.
Infinity has completely changed meaning, nature, and, finally, is completely expelled. A
differential relation of the type dy/dx is such that one extracts it from x and y.
At the same time, dy is nothing in relation to y, its an infinitely small quantity; dx is nothing
in relation to x, its an infinitely small quantity in relation to x.
On the other hand, dy/dx is something else.
But its something completely different from y/x.
For example, if y/x designates a curve, dy/dx designates a tangent.
And whats more, its not just any tangent.
I would say therefore that the differential relation is such that it signifies nothing concrete in
relation to what its derived from, that is, in relation to x and to y, but it signifies something
else concrete [autre chose de concret], and that is how it assures [the] passage to limits. It
assures something else concrete, namely a z.
Its exactly as if I said that differential calculus is completely abstract in relation to a
determination of the type a/b. But on the other hand, it determines a C. Whereas the
axiomatic relation is completely formal from all points of view, if it is formal in relation to a
and b, it does not determine a c that would be concrete for it. So it doesnt assure a passage at

all. This would be the whole classical opposition between genesis and structure. The
axiomatic is really the structure common to a plurality of domains.
Last time, we were considering my second topic heading, which dealt with Substance, World,
and Compossibility.
In the first past, I tried to state what Leibniz called infinite analysis. The answer was this:
infinite analysis fulfills the following condition: it appears to the extent that continuity and
tiny differences or vanishing differences are substituted for identity.
Its when we proceed by continuity and vanishing differences that analysis becomes properly
infinite analysis. Then I arrive at the second aspect of the question. There would be infinite
analysis and there would be material for infinite analysis when I find myself faced with a
domain that is no longer directly governed by the identical, by identity, but a domain that is
governed by continuity and vanishing differences. We reach a relatively clear answer. Hence
the second aspect of the problem: what is compossibility? What does it mean for two things
to be compossible or non compossible? Yet again, Leibniz tells us that Adam non-sinner is
possible in itself, but not compossible with the existing world. So he maintains a relation of
compossibility that he invents, and you sense that its entirely linked to the idea of infinite
analysis.
The problem is that the incompossible is not the same thing as the contradictory. Its
complicated. Adam non-sinner is incompossible with the existing world, another world would
have been necessary. If we say that, I only see three possible solutions for trying to
characterize the notion of incompossibility.
First solution: well say that one way or another, incompossibility has to imply a kind of
logical contradiction. A contradiction would have to exist between Adam non-sinner and the
existing world. Yet we could only bring out this contradiction at infinity; it would be an
infinite contradiction. Whereas there is a finite contradiction between circle and square, there
is only an infinite contradiction between Adam non-sinner and the world. Certain texts by
Leibniz move in this direction. But yet again, we know that we have to be careful about the
levels of Leibnizs texts. In fact, everything we said previously implied that compossibility
and incompossibility are truly an original relation, irreducible to identity and contradiction.
Contradictory identity.
Furthermore, we saw that infinite analysis, in accordance with our first part, was not an
analysis that discovered the identical as a result of an infinite series of steps. The whole of
our results the last time was that, far from discovering the identical at the end of a series, at
the limit of an infinite series of steps, far from proceeding in this way, infinite analysis
substituted the point of view of continuity for that of identity. Thus, its another domain than
the identity/contradiction domain.
Another solution that I will state rapidly because certain of Leibnizs texts suggest it as well:
its that the matter is beyond our understanding because our understanding is finite, and
hence, compossibility would be an original relation, but we could not know what its roots are.
Leibniz brings a new domain to us. There is not only the possible, the necessary and the real.
There is the compossible and the incompossible. He was attempting to cover an entire region
of being.
Here is the hypothesis that Id like to suggest: Leibniz is a busy man, he writes in all
directions, all over the place, he does not publish at all or very little during his life. Leibniz

has all the material, all the details to give a relatively precise answer to this problem.
Necessarily so since hes the one who invented it, so its him who has the solution. So what
happened for him not to have put all of it together? I think that what will provide an answer
to this problem, at once about infinite analysis and about compossibility, is a very curious
theory that Leibniz was no doubt the first to introduce into philosophy, that we could call the
theory of singularities.
In Leibnizs work, the theory of singularities is scattered, its everywhere. One even risks
reading pages by Leibniz without seeing that one is fully in the midst of it, thats how discreet
he is.
The theory of singularities appears to me to have two poles for Leibniz, and one would have
to say that its a mathematical-psychological theory. And our work today is: what is a
singularity on the mathematical level, and what does Leibniz create through that? Is it true
that he creates the first great theory of singularities in mathematics? Second question: what is
the Leibnizian theory of psychological singularities?
And the last question: to what extent does the mathematical-psychological theory of
singularities, as sketched out by Leibniz, help us answer the question: what is the
incompossible, and thus the question what is infinite analysis?
What is this mathematical notion of singularity? Why did it arrive [tomb?]? Its often like that
in philosophy: there is something that emerges at one moment and will be abandoned. Thats
the case of a theory that was more than outlined by Leibniz, and then nothing came
afterwards, the theory was unlucky, without follow-up. Wouldnt it be interesting if we were
to return to it?
I am still divided about two things in philosophy: the idea that it does not require a special
kind of knowledge, that really, in this sense, anyone is open to philosophy, and at the same
time, that one can do philosophy only if one is sensitive to a certain terminology of
philosophy, and that you can always create the terminology, but you cannot create it by doing
just anything. You must know what terms like these are: categories, concept, idea, a priori, a
posteriori, exactly like one cannot do mathematics if one does not know what a, b, xy,
variables, constants, equation are. There is a minimum. So you have to attach some
importance to those points.
The singular has always existed in a certain logical vocabulary. "Singular" designates what is
not difference, and at the same time, in relation to "universal." There is another pair of
notions, its "particular" that is said with reference to "general." So the singular and the
universal are in relation with each other; the particular and the general are in relation. What is
a judgment of singularity? Its not the same thing as a judgment called particular, nor the
same thing as a judgment called general. I am only saying, formally, "singular" was thought,
in classical logic, with reference to "universal." And that does not necessarily exhaust a
notion: when mathematicians use the expression "singularity," with what do they place it into
relation? One must be guided by words. There is a philosophical etymology, or even a
philosophical philology. "Singular" in mathematics is distinct from or opposed to "regular."
The singular is what is outside the rule.
There is another pair of notions used by mathematicians, "remarkable" and "ordinary."
Mathematicians tell us that there are remarkable singularities and singularities that arent
remarkable. But for us, out of convenience, Leibniz does not yet make this distinction

between the non-remarkable singular and the remarkable singular. Leibniz uses "singular,"
"remarkable," and "notable" as equivalents, such that when you find the word "notable" in
Leibniz, tell yourself that necessarily theres a wink, that it does not at all mean "wellknown"; he enlarges the word with an unusual meaning. When he talks about a notable
perception, tell yourself that he is in the process of saying something. What interest does this
have for us? Its that mathematics already represents a turning point in relation to logic. The
mathematical use of the concept "singularity" orients singularity in relation to the ordinary or
the regular, and no longer in relation to the universal. We are invited to distinguish what is
singular and what is ordinary or regular. What interest does this have for us? Suppose
someone says: philosophy isnt doing too well because the theory of truth in thought has
always been wrong. Above all, weve always asked what in thought was true, what was false.
But you know, in thought, its not the true and the false that count, its the singular and the
ordinary. What is singular, what is remarkable, what is ordinary in a thought? Or what is
ordinary? I think of Kierkegaard, much later, who would say that philosophy has always
ignored the importance of a category, that of the interesting! While it is perhaps not true that
philosophy ignored it, there is at least a philosophical-mathematical concept of singularity
that perhaps has something interesting to tell us about the concept "interesting."
This great mathematical discovery is that singularity is no longer thought in relation to the
universal, but is thought rather in relation to the ordinary or to the regular. The singular is
what exceeds the ordinary and the regular. And saying that already takes us a great distance
since saying it indicates that, henceforth, we wish to make singularity into a philosophical
concept, even if it means finding reasons to do so in a favorable domain, namely
mathematics. And in which case does mathematics speak to us of the singular and the
ordinary? The answer is simple: concerning certain points plotted on a curve. Not necessarily
on a curve, but occasionally, or more generally concerning a figure. A figure can be said quite
naturally to include singular points and others that are regular or ordinary. Why a figure?
Because a figure is something determined! So the singular and the ordinary would belong to
the determination, and indeed, that would be interesting! You see that by dint of saying
nothing and marking time, we make a lot of progress. Why not define determination in
general, by saying that its a combination of singular and ordinary, and all determination
would be like that? Perhaps? I take a very simple figure: a square. Your very legitimate
requirement would be to ask me: what are the singular points of a square? There are four
singular points in a square, the four vertices a, b, c, d. We are going to define singularity, but
we remain with examples, and we are making a childish inquiry, we are talking mathematics,
but we dont know a word of it. We only know that a square has four sides, so there are four
singular points that are the extremes. The points are markers, precisely that a straight line is
finished/finite [finie], and that another begins, with a different orientation, at 90 degrees.
What will the ordinary points be? This will be the infinity of points that compose each side of
the square; but the four extremities will be called singular points.
Question: how many singular points do you give to a cube? I see your vexed
amazement! There are eight singular points in a cube. That is what we call
singular points in the most elementary geometry: points that mark the extremity
of a straight line. You sense that this is only a start. I would therefore oppose
singular points and ordinary points. A curve, a rectilinear figure perhaps, can I

say of them that singular points are necessarily the extremes ? Maybe not, but
let us assume that at first sight, I can say something like that. For a curve, its
ruined. Lets take the simplest example: an arc of a circle, concave or convex, as
you wish. Underneath, I make a second arc, convex if the other is concave,
concave if the other is convex. The two meet one another at a point. Underneath
I trace a straight line that, in accordance with the order of things, I call the
ordinate. I trace the ordinate. I draw a line perpendicular to the ordinate. Its
Leibnizs example, in a text with the exqu
te title, "Tantanem analogicum", a tiny little work seven pages long written in
Latin, which means "analogical essays." Segment ab thus has two characteristics: its

the only segment raised from the ordinate to be unique. Each of the others has, as Leibniz
says, a double, its little twin. In fact, xy has its mirror, its image in xy, and you can get
closer through vanishing differences of ab, there is only ab that remains unique, without twin.
Second point: ab can also be considered a maximum or a minimum, maximum in
relation to one of the arcs of the circle, minimum in relation to the other. Ouf,
youve understood it all. Id say that AB is a singularity.
I have introduced the example of the simplest curve: an arc of a circle. Its a bit
more complicated: what I showed was that a singular point is not necessarily
connected, is not limited to the *extremum*. It can very well be in the middle,
and in that case, it is in the middle. And its either a minimum or a maximum, or
both at once. Hence the importance of a calculus that Leibniz will contribute to
extending quite far, that he will call calculus of maxima and of minima. And still
today, this calculus has an immense importance, for example, in phenomena of
symmetry, in physical and optical phenomena. I would say therefore that my
point a is a singular point; all the others are ordinary or regular. They are
ordinary and regular in two ways: first, they are below the maximum and above
the minimum, and second, they exist doubly. Thus, we can clarify somewhat this
notion of ordinary. Its another case; its a singularity of another case.

Another attempt: take a complex curve. What will we call its singularities? The singularities
of a complex curve, in simplest terms, are neighboring points of which ? and you know that
the notion of neighborhood, in mathematics, which is very different from contiguity, is a key
notion in the whole domain of topology, and its the notion of singularity that is able to help
us understand what neighborhood is. Thus, in the neighborhood of a singularity, something
changes: the curve grows, or it decreases. These points of growth or decrease, I will call them
singularities. The ordinary one is the series, that which is between two singularities, going
from the neighborhood of one singularity to anothers neighborhood, of ordinary or regular
character.
We grasp some of these relations, some very strange nuptials: isnt "classical" philosophys
fate relatively linked, and inversely, to geometry, arithmetic, and classical algebra, that is, to
rectilinear figures? You will tell me that rectilinear figures already include singular points,
OK, but once I discovered and constructed the mathematical notion of singularity, I can say
that it was already there in the simplest rectilinear figures. Never would the simplest
rectilinear figures have given me a consistent occasion, a real necessity to construct the
notion of singularity. Its simply on the level of complex curves that this becomes necessary.
Once I found it on the level of complex curves, now there, yes, I back up and can say: ah, it

was already an arc of a circle, it was already in a simple figure like the rectilinear square, but
before you couldnt.
Intervention: xxx [missing from transcript].
Gilles groans: Too bad [Piti?] My God He caught me. You know, speaking is a fragile
thing. Too bad ah, too bad Ill let you talk for an hour when you want, but not now
Too bad, oh l? l? Its the blank in memory [trou].
I will read to you a small, late text by Poincar? that deals extensively with the theory of
singularities that will be developed during the entire eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
There are two kinds of undertaking by Poincar?, logical and philosophical projects, and
mathematical ones. He is above all a mathematician. There is an essay by Poincar? on
differential equations. I am reading a part of it on kinds of singular points in a curve referring
to a function or to a differential equation. He tells us that there are four kinds of singular
points: first, crests , which are points through which two curves defined by the equation pass,
and only two. Here, the differential equation is such that, in the neighborhood of this point,
the equation is going to define and going to cause two curves and only two to pass. The
second type of singularity: knots, in which an infinity of curves defined by the equation come
to intersect. The third type of singularity: foci , around which these curves turn while drawing
closer to them in the form of a spiral. Finally, the fourth type of singularity: centers, around
which curves appear in the form of a closed circle. And Poincar? explains in the sequel to the
essay that, according to him, one great merit of mathematics is to have pushed the theory of
singularities into relationship with the theory of functions or of differential equations.
Why do I quote this example from Poincar?? You could find equivalent notions in Leibnizs
works. Here a very curious terrain appears, with crests, foci, centers, truly like a kind of
astrology of mathematical geography. You see that we went from the simplest to the most
complex: on the level of a simple square, of a rectilinear figure, singularities were extremum;
on the level of a simple curve, you have singularities that are even easier to determine, for
which the principle of determination was easy. The singularity was the unique case that had
no twin, or else was the case in which the maximum and minimum were identified. There you
have more complex singularities when you move into more complex curves. Therefore its as
if the domain of singularities is infinite, strictly speaking. What is the formula going to be?
As long as you are dealing with problems considered as rectilinear, that is, in which its a
question of determining right angles or rectilinear surfaces, you dont need differential
calculus. You need differential calculus when you find yourself faced with the task of
determining curves and curvilinear surfaces. What does that mean? In what way is the
singularity linked to differential calculus? Its that the singular point is the point in the
neighborhood of which the differential relation dy/dx changes its sign . For example: vertex,
relative vertex of a curve before it descends, so you will say that the differential relation
changes its sign. It changes its sign at this spot, but to what extent? To the extent that it
becomes equal; in the neighborhood of this point, it becomes equal to zero or to infinity. Its
the theme of the minimum and of the maximum that you again find there. All this together
consists in saying: look at the kind of relationship between singular and ordinary, such that
you are going to define the singular as a function of curvilinear problems in relation to

differential calculus, and in this tension or opposition between singular point and ordinary
point, or singular point and regular point. This is what mathematicians provide us with as
basic material, and yet again if it is true that in the simplest cases, the singular is the
extremity, in other simple cases, its the maximum or the minimum or even both at once.
Singularities there develop more and more complex relations on the level of more and more
complex curves.
I hold onto the following formula: a singularity is a distinct or determined point on a curve,
its a point in the neighborhood of which the differential relation changes its sign, and the
singular points characteristic is to extend [prolonger] itself into the whole series of ordinary
points that depend on it all the way to the neighborhood of subsequent singularities. So I
maintain that the theory of singularities is inseparable from a theory or an activity of
extension .
Wouldnt these be elements for a possible definition of continuity? Id say that continuity or
the continuous is the extension of a remarkable point onto an ordinary series all the way into
the neighborhood of the subsequent singularity. With this, Im very pleased because at last, I
have an initial hypothetical definition of what the continuous is. Its all the more bizarre
since, in order to reach this definition of the continuous, I used what apparently introduces a
discontinuity, notably a singularity in which something changes. And rather than being the
opposite, its the discontinuity that provides me with this approximate definition. Leibniz tells
us that we all know that we have perceptions, that for example, I see red, I hear the sea. These
are perceptions; moreover, we should reserve a special word for them because they are
conscious. Its perception endowed with consciousness, that is, perception perceived as such
by an "I" , we call it apperception, as a-perceiving. For, indeed, its perception that I perceive.
Leibniz tells us that consequently there really have to be unconscious perceptions that we
dont perceive. These are called minute perceptions, that is, unconscious perception. Why is
this necessary? Why necessary? Leibniz gives us two reasons: its that our a-perceptions, our
conscious perceptions are always global. What we perceive is always a whole. What we grasp
through conscious perception is relative totalities. And it is really necessary that parts exist
since there is a whole. Thats a line of reasoning that Leibniz constantly follows: there has to
be something simple if there is something composite , he builds this into a grand principle;
and it doesnt go without saying, do you understand what he means? He means that there is
no indefinite, and that goes so little without saying that it implies the actual infinite. There
has to be something simple since there is something composite. There are people who will
think that everything is composite to infinity, and they will be partisans of the indefinite, but
for other reasons, Leibniz thinks that the infinite is actual. Thus, there has to be something .
Henceforth, since we perceive the global noise of the sea when we are seated on the beach,
we have to have minute perceptions of each wave, as he says in summary form, and
moreover, of each drop of water. Why? Its a kind of logical requirement, and we shall see
what he means.
He pursues the same reasoning on the level of the whole and the parts yet again as well, not
by invoking a principle of totality, but a principle of causality: what we perceive is always an
effect, so there have to be causes. These causes themselves have to be perceived, otherwise
the effect would not be perceived. In this case, the tiny drops are no longer the parts that
make up the wave, nor the waves the parts that make up the sea, but they intervene as causes

that produce an effect. You will tell me that there is no great difference here, but let me point
out simply that in all of Leibnizs texts, there are always two distinct arguments that he is
perpetually trying to make coexist: an argument based on causality and an argument based on
parts. Cause-effect relationship and part-whole relationship. So this is how our conscious
perceptions bathe in a flow of unconscious minute perceptions.
On the one hand, this has to be so logically, in accordance with the principles and their
requirement, but the great moments occur when experience comes to confirm the requirement
of great principles. When the very beautiful coincidence of principles and experience occurs,
philosophy knows its moment of happiness, even if its personally the misfortune of the
philosopher. And at that moment, the philosopher says: everything is fine, as it should be. So
it is necessary for experience to show me that under certain conditions of disorganization in
my consciousness, minute perceptions force open the door of my consciousness and invade
me. When my consciousness relaxes, I am thus invaded by minute perceptions that do not
become for all that conscious perceptions. They do not become apperceptions since I am
invaded in my consciousness when my consciousness is disorganized. At that moment, a flow
of minute unconscious perceptions invades me. Its not that these minute perceptions stop
being unconscious, but its me who ceases being conscious. But I live them, there is an
unconscious lived experience . I do not represent them, I do not perceive them, but they are
there, they swarm in these cases. I receive a huge blow on the head: dizziness is an example
that recurs constantly in Leibnizs work. I get dizzy, I faint, and a flow of minute unconscious
perceptions arrives: a buzz in my head. Rousseau knew Leibniz, he will undergo the cruel
experience of fainting after having received a huge blow, and he relates his recovery and the
swarming of minute perceptions. Its a very famous text by Rousseau in the Reveries of a
Solitary Stroller , which is the return to consciousness.
Lets look for thought experiences: we dont even need to pursue this thought experience, we
know its like that, so through thought, we look for the kind of experience that corresponds to
the principle: fainting. Leibniz goes much further and says: wouldnt that be death? This will
pose problems for theology. Death would be the state of a living person who would not cease
living. Death would be catalepsy, straight out of Edgar Poe, one is simply reduced to minute
perceptions.
And yet again, its not that they invade my consciousness, but its my consciousness that is
extended, that loses all of its own power, that becomes diluted because it loses selfconsciousness, but very strangely it becomes an infinitely minute consciousness of minute
unconscious perceptions. This would be death. In other words, death is nothing other than an
envelopment, perceptions cease being developed into conscious perceptions, they are
enveloped in an infinity of minute perceptions. Or yet again, he says, sleep without dreaming
in which there are lots of minute perceptions.
Do we have to say that only about perception? No. And there, once again, appears Leibnizs
genius. There is a psychology with Leibnizs name on it, which was one of the first theories
of the unconscious. I have already said almost enough about it for you to understand the
extent to which its a conception of the unconscious that has absolutely nothing to do with
Freuds which is to say how much innovation one finds in Freud: its obviously not the
hypothesis of an unconscious that has been proposed by numerous authors, but its the way in
which Freud conceived the unconscious. And, in the lineage from Freud some very strange

phenomena will be found, returning to a Leibnizian conception, but I will talk about that later.
But understand that he simply cannot say that about perception since, according to Leibniz,
the soul has two fundamental faculties: conscious apperception which is therefore composed
of minute unconscious perceptions, and what he calls "appetition", appetite, desire. And we
are composed of desires and perceptions. Moreover, appetition is conscious appetite. If global
perceptions are made up of an infinity of minute perceptions, appetitions or gross appetites
are made up of an infinity of minute appetitions. You see that appetitions are vectors
corresponding to minute perceptions, and that becomes a very strange unconscious. The drop
of sea water to which the droplet corresponds, to which a minute appetition corresponds for
someone who is thirsty. And when I say, "my God, Im thirsty, Im thirsty," what do I do? I
grossly express a global outcome of thousands of minute perceptions working within me, and
thousands of minute appetitions that crisscross me. What does that mean?
In the beginning of the twentieth century, a great Spanish biologist fell into oblivion; his
name was Turro. He wrote a book entitled in French: The Origins of Knowledge (1914), and
this book is extraordinary. Turro said that when we say "I am hungry" ? his background was
entirely in biology -- and we might say that its Leibniz who has awakened-- and Turro said
that when one says, "I am hungry," its really a global outcome, what he called a global
sensation. He uses his concepts: global hunger and minute specific hungers. He said that
hunger as a global phenomenon is a statistical effect. Of what is hunger composed as a global
substance? Of thousands of minute hungers: salt hunger, protein substance hunger, grease
hunger, mineral salts hunger, etc. . . . When I say, "Im hungry," I am literally undertaking,
says Turro, the integral or the integration of these thousands of minute specific hungers. The
minute differentials are differentials of conscious perception; conscious perception is the
integration of minute perceptions. Fine. You see that the thousand minute appetitions are the
thousand specific hungers. And Turro continues since there is still something strange on the
animal level: how does an animal know what it has to have? The animal sees sensible
qualities , it leaps forward and eats it, they all eat minute qualities. The cow eats green, not
grass, although it does not eat just any green since it recognizes the grass green and only eats
grass green. The carnivore does not eat proteins, it eats something it saw, without seeing the
proteins. The problem of instinct on the simplest level is: how does one explain that animals
eat more or less anything that suits them? In fact, animals eat during a meal the quantity of
fat, of salt, of proteins necessary for the balance of their internal milieu. And their internal
milieu is what? Its the milieu of all the minute perceptions and minute appetitions.
What a strange communication between consciousness and the unconscious. Each species
eats more or less what it needs, except for tragic or comic errors that enemies of instinct
always invoke: cats, for example, who go eat precisely what will poison them, but quite
rarely. Thats what the problem of instinct is.
This Leibnizian psychology invokes minute appetitions that invest minute perceptions; the
minute appetition makes the psychic investment of the minute perception, and what world
does that create? We never cease passing from one minute perception to another, even
without knowing it. Our consciousness remains there at global perceptions and gross
appetites, "I am hungry," but when I say "I am hungry," there are all sorts of passages,
metamorphoses. My minute salt hunger that passes into another hunger, a minute protein
hunger; a minute protein hunger that passes into a minute fat hunger, or everything mixed up,

quite heterogeneously. What causes children to be dirt eaters? By what miracle do they eat
dirt when they need the vitamin that the earth contains? It has to be instinct! These are
monsters! But God even made monsters in harmony.
So what is the status of psychic unconscious life? It happened that Leibniz encountered
Lockes thought, and Locke had written a book called An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. Leibniz had been very interested in Locke, especially when he discovered
that Locke was wrong in everything. Leibniz had fun preparing a huge book that he called
New Essays on Human Understanding in which, chapter by chapter, he showed that Locke
was an idiot . He was wrong, but it was a great critique. And then he didnt publish it. He had
a very honest moral reaction, because Locke had died in the meantime. His huge book was
completely finished, and he put it aside, he sent it to some friends. I mention all this because
Locke, in his best pages, constructs a concept for which I will use the English word,
"uneasiness." To summarize, its unease , a state of unease. And Locke tries to explain that its
the great principle of psychic life. You see that its very interesting because this removes us
from the banalities about the search for pleasure or for happiness. Overall, Locke says that
its quite possible to seek ones pleasure, ones happiness, perhaps its possible, but thats not
all; there is a kind of anxiety for a living person. This anxiety is not distress . He proposes the
psychological concept of anxiety. One is neither thirsting for pleasure, nor for happiness, nor
distressed; he seems to feel that we are, above all, anxious. We cant sit still. And Leibniz, in
a wonderful text, says that we can always try to translate this concept, but that finally, its
very difficult to translate. This word works well in English, and an Englishman immediately
sees what it is. For us, wed say that someone is nervous. You see how he borrows it from
Locke and how he is going to transform it: this unease of the living, what is it? Its not at all
the unhappiness of the living. Rather, its when he is immobile, when he has his conscious
perception well framed, it all swarms: minute perceptions and minute appetitions invest the
fluid minute perceptions, fluid perceptions and fluid appetites ceaselessly move, and thats it.
So, if there is a God, and Leibniz is persuaded that God exists, this uneasiness is so little a
kind of unhappiness that it is just the same as the tendency to develop the maximum
perception. And the development of the maximum perception will define a kind of psychic
continuity. We again find the theme of continuity, that is, an indefinite progress of
consciousness.
How is unhappiness possible? There can always be unfortunate encounters. Its like when a
stone is likely to fall: it is likely to fall along a path that is the right path , for example, and
then it can meet a rock that crumbles it or splits it apart. Its really an accident connected to
the law of the greatest slope. That doesnt prevent the law of the greatest slope from being the
best. We can see what he means.
So there is an unconscious defined by minute perceptions, and minute perceptions are at once
infinitely small perceptions and the differentials of conscious perception. And minute
appetites are at once unconscious appetites and differentials of conscious appetition. There is
a genesis of psychic life starting from differentials of consciousness.
Following from this, the Leibnizian unconscious is the set of differentials of consciousness.
Its the infinite totality of differentials of consciousness. There is a genesis of consciousness.
The idea of differentials of consciousness is fundamental. The drop of water and the appetite
for the drop of water, specific minute hungers, the world of fainting. All of that makes for a

very funny world.

I am going to open a very quick parenthesis. That unconscious has a very long history in
philosophy. Overall, we can say that in fact, its the discovery and the theorizing of a properly
differential unconscious. You see that this unconscious has many links to infinitesimal
analysis, and thats why I said a psycho-mathematical domain. Just as there are differentials
for a curve, there are differentials for consciousness. The two domains, the psychic domain
and the mathematical domain, project symbols . If I look for the lineage, its Leibniz who
proposed this great idea, the first great theory of this differential unconscious, and from there
it never stopped. There is a very long tradition of this differential conception of the
unconscious based on minute perceptions and minute appetitions. It culminates in a very
great author who, strangely, has always been poorly understood in France, a German postRomantic named Fechner. Hes a disciple of Leibniz who developed the conception of
differential unconscious.
What was Freuds contribution? Certainly not the unconscious, which already had a strong
theoretical tradition. Its not that, for Freud, there were no unconscious perceptions, [but]
there were also unconscious desires. You recall that for Freud, there is the idea that
representation can be unconscious, and in another sense, affect also can be unconscious. That
corresponds to perception and appetition. But Freuds innovation is that he conceived the
unconscious ? and here, I am saying something very elementary to underscore a huge
difference -- he conceived the unconscious in a conflictual or oppositional relationship with
consciousness, and not in a differential relationship. This is completely different from
conceiving an unconscious that expresses differentials of consciousness or conceiving an
unconscious that expresses a force that is opposed to consciousness and that enters into
conflict with it. In other words, for Leibniz, there is a relationship between consciousness and
the unconscious, a relation of difference to vanishing differences, whereas for Freud, there is
a relation of opposition of forces. I could say that the unconscious attracts representations, it
tears them from consciousness, and its really two antagonistic forces. I could say that,
philosophically, Freud depends on Kant and Hegel, thats obvious. The ones who explicitly
oriented the unconscious in the direction of a conflict of will, and no longer of differential of
perception, were from the school of Schopenhauer that Freud knew very well and that
descended from Kant. So we must safeguard Freuds originality, except that in fact, he
received his preparation in certain philosophies of the unconscious, but certainly not in the
Leibnizian strain.
Thus our conscious perception is composed of an infinity of minute perceptions. Our
conscious appetite is composed of an infinity of minute appetites. Leibniz is in the process of
preparing a strange operation, and were we not to restrain ourselves, we might want to protest
immediately. We could say to him, fine, perception has causes, for example, my perception of
green, or of any color, that implies all sorts of physical vibrations. And these physical
vibrations are not themselves perceived. Even though there might be an infinity of elementary
causes in a conscious perception, by what right does Leibniz conclude from this that these
elementary causes are themselves objects of infinitely minute perceptions? Why? And what
does he mean when he says that our conscious perception is composed of an infinity of
minute perceptions, exactly like perception of the sound of the sea is composed of the
perception of every drop of water?

If you look at his texts closely, its very odd because these texts say two different things, one
of which is manifestly expressed by simplification and the other expresses Leibnizs true
thought. There are two headings: some are under the Part-Whole heading, and in that case, it
means that conscious perception is always one of a whole, this perception of a whole
assuming not only infinitely minute parts, but assuming that these infinitely small parts are
perceived. Hence the formula: conscious perception is made of minute perceptions, and I say
that, in this case, "is made of" is the same as "to be composed of." Leibniz expresses himself
in this way quite often. I select a text: "Otherwise we would not sense the whole at all". . . if
there were none of these minute perceptions, we would have no consciousness at all. The
organs of sense operate a totalization of minute perceptions. The eye is what totalizes an
infinity of minute vibrations, and henceforth composes with these minute vibrations a global
quality that I call green, or that I call red, etc. . . . The text is clear, its a question of the
Whole-Parts relationship. When Leibniz wants to move rapidly, he has every interest in
speaking like that, but when he really wants to explain things, he says something else, he says
that conscious perception is derived from minute perceptions. Its not the same thing, "is
composed of" and "is derived from". In one case, you have the Whole-Parts relationship, in
the other, you have a relationship of a completely different nature. What different nature? The
relation of derivation, what we call a derivative. That also brings us back to infinitesimal
calculus: conscious perception derives from the infinity of minute perceptions. At that point, I
would no longer say that the organs of sense totalize. Notice that the mathematical notion of
integral links the two: the integral is what derives from and is also what operates an
integration, a kind of totalization, but its a very special totalization, not a totalization through
additions. We can say without risk of error that although Leibniz doesnt indicate it, its even
the second texts that have the final word. When Leibniz tells us that conscious perception is
composed of minute perceptions, this is not his true thinking. On the contrary, his true
thinking is that conscious perception derives from minute perceptions. What does "derive
from" mean?
Here is another of Leibnizs texts: "Perception of light or of color that we perceive, that is,
conscious perception ? is composed of a quantity of minute perceptions that we do not
perceive, and a noise that we do not perceive, and a noise that we do perceive but to which
we give no attention becomes a-perceptible, i.e. passes into the state of conscious perception,
through a minute addition or augmentation."
We no longer pass minute perceptions into conscious perception via totalization as the first
version of the text suggested; we pass minute perceptions into global conscious perception
via a minute addition. We thought we understood, and suddenly, we no longer understand a
thing. A minute addition is the addition of a minute perception; so we pass minute perceptions
into global conscious perception via a minute perception? We tell ourselves that this isnt
right. Suddenly, we tend to fall back on the other version of the text, at least that was more
clear. More clear, but insufficient. Sufficient texts are sufficient, but we no longer understand
anything in them. A wonderful situation, except if we chance to encounter an adjoining text in
which Leibniz tells us: "We must consider that we think a quantity of things all at once. But
we pay attention only to thoughts that are the most distinct . . ."
For what is "remarkable" must be composed of parts that are not remarkable ? there, Leibniz
is in the process of mixing up everything, but on purpose. We who are no longer innocent can

situate the word "remarkable," and we know that each time that he uses "notable",
"remarkable", "distinct", its in a very technical sense, and at the same time, he creates a
muddle everywhere. For the idea that there is something clear and distinct, since Descartes,
was an idea that circulated all over. Leibniz slides in his little "distinct" , the most distinct
thoughts. Understand "the distinct," "the remarkable," "the singular." So what does that
mean? We pass from minute unconscious perception to global conscious perception through a
minute addition. So obviously, this is not just any minute addition. This is neither another
conscious perception, nor one more minute unconscious perception. So what does it mean? It
means that your minute perceptions form a series of ordinaries, a series called regular: all the
minute drops of water, elementary perceptions, infinitesimal perceptions. How do you pass
into the global perception of the sound of the sea?
First answer: via globalization-totalization. Commentators answer: Fine, its easy to say. One
would never thinking of raising an objection. You have to like an author just enough to know
that hes not mistaken, that he speaks this way in order to proceed quickly.
Second answer: I pass via a minute addition. This cannot be the addition of a minute ordinary
or regular perception, nor can it be the addition of a conscious perception since at that point,
consciousness would be presupposed. The answer is that I reach a neighborhood of a
remarkable point, so I do not operate a totalization, but rather a singularization. Its when the
series of minute perceived drops of water approaches or enters into the neighborhood of a
singular point, a remarkable point, that perception becomes conscious.
Its a completely different vision because at that moment, a great part of the objections made
to the idea of a differential unconscious falls away. What does that mean? Here appear the
texts by Leibniz that seem the most complete. From the start, we have dragged along the idea
that with minute elements, its a manner of speaking because what is differential are not
elements, not dx in relation to an x, because dx in relation to an x is nothing. What is
differential is not a dy in relation to a y because dy in relation to a y is nothing.
What is differential is dy/dx, this is the relation.
Thats what is at work in the infinitely minute.
You recall that on the level of singular points, the differential relation changes its sign. You
recall that on the level of singular points, the differential relation changes its sign. Leibniz is
in the process of impregnating Freud without knowing it. On the level of the singularity of
increases or decreases, the differential relation changes it sign, that is, the sign is inverted. In
this case of perception, which is the differential relation? Why is it that these are not
elements, but indeed relations? What determines a relation is precisely a relationship between
physical elements and my body. So you have dy and dx. Its the relation of physical excitation
to my biological body. You understand that on this level, we can no longer speak exactly of
minute perceptions. We will speak of the differential relation between physical excitation and
the physical state by assimilating it frankly to dy/dx, it matters little. And perception becomes
conscious when the differential relation corresponds to a singularity, that is, changes its sign.
For example, when excitation gets sufficiently closer.
Its the molecule of water closest to my body that is going to define the minute increase
through which the infinity of minute perceptions becomes conscious perception. Its no
longer a relation of parts at all, its a relation of derivation. Its the differential relation
between that which excites and my biological body that is going to permit the definition of

the singularitys neighborhood. Notice in which sense Leibniz could say that inversions of
signs, that is, passages from consciousness to the unconscious and from the unconscious to
consciousness, the inversions of signs refer to a differential unconscious and not to an
unconscious of opposition.
When I alluded to Freuds posterity, in Jung, for example, there is an entire Leibnizian side,
and what he reintroduces, to Freuds greatest anger, and its in this that Freud judges that Jung
absolutely betrayed psychoanalysis, is an unconscious of the differential type. And he owes
that to the tradition of German Romanticism which is closely linked also to the unconscious
of Leibniz.
So we pass from minute perceptions to unconscious perception via addition of something
notable, that is, when the series of ordinaries reaches the neighborhood of the following
singularity, such that psychic life, just like the mathematical curve, will be subject to a law
which is that of the composition of the continuous.
There is composition of the continuous since the continuous is a product: the product of the
act by which a singularity is extended into the neighborhood of another singularity. And that
this works not only upon the universe of the mathematical symbol, but also upon the universe
of perception, of consciousness, and of the unconscious.
From this point onward, we have but one question: what are the compossible and
incompossible? These derive directly from the former. We possess the formula for
compossibility. I return to my example of the square with its four singularities. You take a
singularity, its a point; you take it as the center of a circle. Which circle? All the way into the
neighborhood of the other singularity. In other words, in the square abcd, you take *a* as
center of a circle that stops or whose periphery is in the neighborhood of singularity *b*. You
do the same thing with *b*: you trace a circle that stops in the neighborhood of the
singularity *a* and you trace another circle that stops in the neighborhood of singularity *c*.
These circles intersect. You go on like that constructing, from one singularity to the next,
what you will be able to call a continuity. The simplest case of a continuity is a straight line,
but there is also precisely a continuity of non-straight lines. With your system of circles that
intersect, you will say that there is continuity when the values of two ordinary series, those of
*a* to *b*, those of *b* to *a*, coincide. When there is a coincidence of values of two
ordinary series encompassed in the two circles, you have a continuity. Thus you can construct
a continuity made from continuity. You can construct a continuity of continuity, for example,
the square. If the series of ordinaries that derive from singularities diverge, then you have a
discontinuity. You will say that a world is constituted by a continuity of continuity. Its the
composition of the continuous. A discontinuity is defined when the series of ordinaries or
regulars that derive from two points diverge. Third definition: the existing world is the best?
Why? Because its the world that assures the maximum of continuity. Fourth definition: what
is the compossible? An set of composed continuities. Final definition: what is the
incompossible? When the series diverge, when you can no longer compose the continuity of
this world with the continuity of this other world. Divergence in the series of ordinaries that
depend on singularities: at that moment, it can no longer belong to the same world.
You have a law of composition of the continuous that is psycho-mathematical. Why isnt that
evident? Why is all this exploration of the unconscious necessary? Because, yet again, God is
perverse. Gods perversity lies in having chosen the world that implicates the maximum of

continuity, in composing the chosen world in this form, only by dispersing the continuities
since these are continuities of continuities. God dispersed them. What does that mean? It
seems, says Leibniz, that there are discontinuities in our world, leaps, ruptures. Using an
admirable term, he says that it seems that there are musical descents . But in fact, there are
none. To some among us, it seems that there is a gap between man and animal, a rupture. This
is necessary because God, with extreme malice, conceived the world to be chosen in the form
of the maximum of continuity, so there are all sorts of intermediary degrees between animal
and man, but God held back from making these visible to us. If the need arose, God placed
them on other planets of our world. Why? Because finally, it was good, it was good for us to
be able to believe in the excellence of our domination of nature. If we had seen all the
transitions between the worst animal and us, we would have been less vain, so this vanity is
still quite good because it allows man to establish his power over nature. Finally its not a
perversity of God, but that God did not stop breaking continuities that God had constructed in
order to introduce variety in the chosen world, in order to hide the whole system of minute
differences, of vanishing differences. So God proposed to our organs of sense and to our
stupid thinking, presented on the contrary a very divided world . We spend our time saying
that animals have no soul (Descartes), or else that they do not speak. But not at all: there are
all sorts of transitions, all sorts of minute definitions. In this, we grasp a specific relation that
is compossibility or incompossibility. I would say yet again that compossibility is when series
of ordinaries converge, series of regular points that derive from two singularities and when
their values coincide, otherwise there is discontinuity. In one case, you have the definition of
compossibility, in the other case, the definition of incompossibility.
Why did God choose this world rather than another, when another was possible? Leibnizs
answer becomes splendid: its because it is the world that mathematically implicates the
maximum of continuity, and its uniquely in this sense that it is the best of all possible worlds.
A concept is always something very complex. We can situate todays meeting under the sign
of the concept of singularity. And the concept of singularity has all sorts of languages that
intersect within it. A concept is always necessarily polyvocal. You can grasp the concept of
singularity only through a minimum of mathematical apparatus: singular points in opposition
to ordinary or regular points, on the level of thought experiences of a psychological type:
what is dizziness, what is a murmur, what is a hum , etc. And on the level of philosophy, in
Leibnizs case, the construction of this relation of compossibility. Its not a mathematical
philosophy, no more than mathematics becomes philosophy, but in a philosophical concept,
there are all sorts of different orders that necessarily symbolize. It has a philosophical
heading, it has a mathematical heading, and it has a heading for thought experience. And its
true of all concepts. It was a great day for philosophy when someone brought this odd couple
to general attention, and thats what I call a creation in philosophy. When Leibniz proposed
this topic, the singular, there precisely is the act of creation; when Leibniz tells us that there is
no reason for you simply to oppose the singular to the universal. Its much more interesting if
you listen to what mathematicians say, who for their own reasons think of "singular" not in
relation to "universal," but in relation to "ordinary" or "regular." Leibniz isnt doing
mathematics at that point. I would say that his inspiration is mathematical, and he goes on to
create a philosophical theory, notably a whole conception of truth that is radically new since
its going to consist in saying: dont pay too much attention to the matter of true and false,

dont ask in your thinking what is true and what is false, because what is true and what is
false in your thinking always results from something that is much deeper.
What counts in thinking are the remarkable points and the ordinary points. Both are
necessary: if you only have singular points in thinking, you have no method of extension , its
worthless; if you have only ordinary points, its in your interest to think something else. And
the more you believe yourself [to be] remarkable (special), the less you think of remarkable
points. In other words, the thought of the singular is the most modest thought in the world.
Its there that the thinker necessarily becomes modest, because the thinker is the extension
onto the series of ordinaries, and thought itself explodes in the element of singularity, and the
element of singularity is the concept.

The last time, we ended with the question: what is compossibility and what is
incompossibility? What are these two relationships, the relationship of compossibility and
incompossibility? How do we define them?
We saw that these questions created all kinds of problems and led us necessarily to the
exercise, however cursory, of infinitesimal analysis. Today, I would like to create a third
major rubric that would consist in showing the extent to which Leibniz organizes in a new
way and even creates some genuine principles. Creating principles is not a fashionable task of
late. This third major introductory chapter for a possible reading of Leibniz is one I will call:
Deduction of principles, precisely because principles are objects of a special kind of
deduction, a philosophical deduction, which does not go without saying.
There is such a rich abundance of principles in Leibniz's work. He constantly invokes
principles while giving them, when necessary, names that did not previously exist. In order to
situate oneself within his principles, one has to discover the progression [cheminement] of
Leibnizian deduction.
The first principle that Leibniz creates with a rapid justification is the principle of identity. It
is the minimum, the very least that he provides. What is the principle of identity? Every
principle is a reason. A is A. A thing, it's a thing, that is what a thing is. I have already made
some progress. A thing is what it is is better than A is A. Why? Because it shows what is the
region governed by the principle of identity. If the principle of identity can be expressed in
the form: a thing is what it is, this is because identity consists in manifesting the proper
identity between the thing and what the thing is.
If identity governs the relationship between the thing and what the thing is, namely what
thing is identical to the thing, and the thing is identical to what it is, I can say: what is the
thing? What the thing is, everyone has called it the essence of the thing. I would say that the
principle of identity is the rule of essences or, what comes down to the same thing, the rule of
the possible. In fact, the impossible is contradictory. The possible is the identical so that, to
the extent that the principle of identity is a reason, a ratio, then which ratio? It is the ratio of
essence or, as the Latins used to say, or the Middle Age terminology long before: ratio
essendi. I choose that as a typical example because I think that it is very difficult to do
philosophy if you do not have a kind of terminological certainty. Never tell yourself that you

can do without it, but also never tell yourself that it is difficult to acquire. It is exactly the
same as scales on the piano. If you do not know rather precisely the rigour of concepts, that
is, the sense of major notions, then it is very difficult. One has to approach that like an
exercise. It is normal for philosophers to have their own scales, it is their mental piano. One
must change the tune of the categories. The history of philosophy can only be created by
philosophers, yet alas, it has fallen into the hands of philosophy professors, and that's not
good because they have turned philosophy into examination material and not material for
study, or for scales.
Each time that I speak of a principle according to Lebiniz, I am going to give it two
formulations: a vulgar formulation and a scholarly one. This is a beautiful procedure on the
level of principles, the necessary relation between pre-philosophy and philosophy, this
relationship of exteriority in which philosophy needs a pre-philosophy. The vulgar
formulation of the principle of identity: the thing is what the thing is, the identity of the thing
and of its essence. You see that, in the vulgar formulation, there are lots of things already
implied.
The scholarly formulation of the principle of identity: every analytical proposition is true.
What is an analytical proposition? It is a proposition in which the predicate and the subject
are identical. An analytical proposition is true, A is A, is true. By going into the detail of
Leibniz's formulae, one can even complete the scholarly formulation: every analytical
proposition is true in two cases: either by reciprocity or by inclusion.
An example of a proposition of reciprocity: the triangle has three angles. Having three angles
is what the triangle is. Second case: inclusion: the triangle has three sides. In fact, a closed
figure having three angles envelopes, includes, implies having three sides.
We will say that analytical propositions of reciprocity are objects of intuition, and we will say
that analytical propositions of inclusion are objects of demonstration.
Therefore, the principle of identity, the rule of essences, or of the possible, ratio essendi: what
question does it answer? What cry does the principle of identity answer? The pathetic cry that
constantly appears in Leibniz's works, corresponding to the principle of identity, why is there
something rather than nothing? It is the cry of the ratio essendi, of the reason for being
[raison d'tre]. If there were no identity, no identity conceived as identity of the thing and
what the thing is, then there would be nothing.
Second principle: principle of sufficient reason.
This refers us back to the whole domain that we located as being the domain of existences.
The ratio corresponding to the principle of sufficient reason is no longer the ratio essendi, the
reason of essences or the reason for being, it is now the ratio existendi, the reason for
existing. It is no longer the question: why something rather than nothing, since the principle
of identity assured us that there was something, namely the identical. It is no longer: why
something rather than nothing, but rather it is why this rather than that? What would its
vulgar formulation be? We saw that every thing has a reason. Indeed, every thing must have a
reason. What would the scholarly formulation be? You see that we apparently are completely

outside the principle of identity. Why? Because the principle of identity concerns the identity
of the thing and what it is, but it does not state whether the thing exists. The fact that the thing
exists or does not exist is completely different from what it is. I can always define what a
thing is independently of the question of knowing if it exists or not. For example, I know that
the unicorn does not exist, but I can state what a unicorn is. Thus, a principle is indeed
necessary that makes us think of the existent [lexistant]. So just how does a principle, that
appears to us as vague as "everything has a reason," make us think of the existent? It is
precisely the scholarly formulation that will explain it to us. We find this scholarly
formulation in Leibniz's works in the following statement: every predication (predication
means the activity of judgment that attributes something to a subject; when I say "the sky is
blue," I attribute blue to sky, and I operate a predication), every predication has a basis
[fondement] in the nature of things. It is the ratio existendi.
Let us try to understand better how every predication has a basis in the nature of things. This
means: everything said about a thing, the entirety of what is said about a thing, is the
predication concerning this thing. Everything said about a thing is encompassed, contained,
included in the notion of the thing. This is the principle of sufficient reason. You see that the
formula which appeared innocent a short while ago - every predication has a basis in the
nature of things, taking it literally - becomes much stranger: everything said about a thing
must be encompassed, contained, included in the notion of the thing. So, what is everything
said about a thing? First, it is the essence. In fact, the essence is said about the thing. Only
one finds at that level that there would be no difference between sufficient reason and
identity. And this is normal since sufficient reason includes all the properties [tout l'acquis] of
the principle of identity, but is going to add something to it: what is said about a thing is not
only the essence of the thing, it is the entirety of the affections, of the events that refer or
belong to the thing.
Thus, not only will the essence be contained in the notion of the thing, but the slightest of
events, of affections concerning the thing as well, that is, what is attributed truthfully to the
thing is going to be contained in the notion of the thing.
We have seen this: crossing the Rubicon, whether one likes it or not, must be contained in the
notion of Caesar. Events, affections of the type "loving" and "hating" must be contained in
the notion of that subject feeling these affections.
In other words, each individual notion -- and the existent is precisely the object, the correlate
of an individual notion -- each individual notion expresses the world. That is what the
principle of sufficient reason is.
"Everything has a reason" means that everything that happens to something must be
contained forever in the individual notion of the thing.
The definitive formulation of the principle of sufficient reason is quite simple: every true
proposition is analytical, every true proposition, for example, every proposition that consists
in attributing to something an event that really occurred and that concerns the something. So
if it is indeed true, the event must be encompassed in the notion of the thing.
What is this domain? It is the domain of infinite analysis whereas, on the contrary, at the level

of the principle of identity, we were only dealing with finite analyses. There will be an
infinite analytical relationship between the event and the individual notion that encompasses
the event. In short, the principle of sufficient reason is the reciprocal of the principle of
identity. Only, what has occurred in the reciprocal? The reciprocal has taken over a radically
new domain, the domain of existences. It was sufficient merely to reciprocate, to reverse the
formula of identity in order to obtain the formula of sufficient reason; it was enough to
reciprocate the formula of identity that concerns essences in order to obtain a new principle,
the principle of sufficient reason concerning existences. You will tell me that this was not
complicated. Yet it was enormously complicated, so why? The reciprocal, this reciprocation
was only possible if one were able to extend the analysis to infinity. So the notion, the
concept of infinite analysis is an absolutely original notion. Does that consist in saying that
this takes place uniquely in the understanding [l'entendement] of God, which is infinite?
Certainly not. This implies an entire technique, the technique of differential analysis or
infinitesimal calculus.
Third principle: is it true that the reciprocal of the reciprocal would yield the first? It is not
certain. Everything depends, there are so many viewpoints. Let us try to vary the formulation
of the principle of sufficient reason. For sufficient reason, I left things off by saying that
everything that happens to a thing must be encompassed, included in the notion of the thing,
which implies infinite analysis. In other words, for everything that happens or for every thing
there is a concept. I insisted earlier that what matters is not at all a way for Leibniz to recover
a famous principle. On the contrary, he does not want that at all; this would be the principle
of causality. When Leibniz says that everything has a reason, that does not at all mean that
everything has a cause. Saying everything has a cause signifies A refers to B, B refers to C,
etc. ... Everything has a reason means that one must account for reason in causality itself,
namely that everything has a reason means that the relationship that A maintains with B must
be encompassed in one way or another in the notion of A. Just like the relationship that B
maintains with C must be encompassed one way or another in the notion of B. Thus, the
principle of sufficient reason goes beyond the principle of causality. It is in this sense that the
principle of causality states only the necessary cause, but not the sufficient reason. Causes are
only necessities that themselves refer to and presuppose sufficient reasons.
Thus, I can state the principle of sufficient reason in the following way: for every thing there
is a concept that takes account both of the thing and of its relations with other things,
including its causes and its effects.
For every thing, there is a concept, and that does not go without saying. Lots of people will
think that not having a concept is the peculiarity [le propre] of existence. For every thing
there is a concept, so what would the reciprocal be? Understand that the reciprocal does not at
all have the same meaning. In Aristotle's work, there is a treatise of ancient logic that deals
solely with the table of opposites. What is the contradictory, the contrary, the subaltern, etc. ...
You cannot say the contradictory when it is the contrary, you cannot just say anything. Here I
use the word reciprocal without specifying. When I say for every thing there is a concept (yet
again, this is not at all certain), assume that you grant me that. There I cannot escape the
reciprocal. What is the reciprocal ?

For a theory of the concept, we would have to start again from the bird song [chant
doiseaux]. The great difference between cries and songs. The cries of alarm, of hunger, and
then the bird songs. And we can explain acoustically what the difference is between cries and
songs. In the same way, on the level of thought, there are cries of thought and songs of
thought [chants de pense]. How to distinguish these cries and these songs? One cannot
understand how a philosophy as song or a philosophical song develops if one does not refer it
to coordinates that are kinds of cries, continuous cries. These cries and songs are complex. If
I return to music, the example that I recall again and again is the two great operas of [Alban]
Berg; there are two great death cries, the cry of Marie and the cry of Lulu. [TN: cf. "N as in
Neurology" in LAbcdaire de Gilles Deleuze] When one dies, one does not sing, and yet
there is someone who sings around death, the mourner. The one who loses the loved one
sings. Or cries, I do not know. In Wozzeck, it is a si-, it is a siren. When you put sirens into
music, you are placing a cry there. It is strange. And the two cries are not the same type, even
acoustically: there is a cry that flits upward and there is a cry that skims along the earth. And
then there is the song [chant]. Lulus great woman friend sings death. It is fantastic. It is
signed Berg. I would say that the signature of a great philosopher is the same. When a
philosopher is great, although he writes very abstract pages, these are abstract only because
you did not know how to locate the moment in which he cries. There is a cry underneath, a
cry that is horrible.
Let us return to the song of sufficient reason. Everything has a reason is a song. It is a
melody, we could harmonize. A harmony of concepts. But underneath there would be
rhythmic cries: no, no, no. I return to my sung formulation of the principle of sufficient
reason. One can sing off key in philosophy. People who sing off key in philosophy know it
very well, but it [philosophy] is completely dead. They can talk interminably. The song of
sufficient reason: for every thing there is a concept. What is the reciprocal ? In music, one
would speak of retrograde series. Let us look for the reciprocal of "every thing has a
concept." The reciprocal is: for every concept there is one thing alone.
Why is this the reciprocal of "for every thing a concept"? Suppose that a concept had two
things that corresponded to it. There is a thing that has no concept and, in that case, sufficient
reason is screwed [foutue]. I cannot say "for every thing a concept". As soon as I have said
"for every thing a concept," I have necessarily said that a concept had necessarily one thing
alone, since if a concept has two things, there is something that has no concept, and therefore
already I could no longer say "for every thing a concept." Thus, the true reciprocal of the
principle of sufficient reason in Leibniz will be stated like this: for every concept, one thing
alone. It is a reciprocal in a very funny sense. But in this case of reciprocation, sufficient
reason and the other principle, notably "for every thing, a concept" and "for every concept,
one thing alone," I cannot say one without saying the other. Reciprocation is absolutely
necessary. If I do not recognize the second, I destroy the first.
When I said that sufficient reason was the reciprocal of the principle of identity, it was not in
the same sense since, if you recall the statement [nonc] of the principle of identity

namely, every true proposition is analytical, there is in this no necessity. I can say that every
analytical proposition is true without necessarily preventing any true proposition from being
analytical. I could very well say that there are true propositions that are something other than
analytical. Thus, when Leibniz created his reciprocation of identity, he made a master stroke
because he had the means to make this master stroke, that is, he let out a cry. He had himself
created an entire method of infinite analysis. Otherwise, he could not have done so.
Whereas in the case of the passage from sufficient reason to the third principle that I have not
yet baptized, there reciprocation is absolutely necessary. It had to be discovered. What does it
mean that for every concept there is a thing and only one thing? Here it gets strange, you
have to understand. It means that there are no two absolutely identical things, or every
difference is conceptual in the last instance. If you have two things, there must be two
concepts, otherwise there would not be two things. Does that mean that there are no two
absolutely identical things as far as the concept goes? It means that there are no two identical
drops of water, no two identical leaves. In this, Leibniz is perfect, he gets delirious with this
principle. He says that obviously you, you believe that two drops of water are identical, but
this is because you do not go far enough in your analysis. They cannot have the same
concept. Here this is very odd because all of classical logic tends rather to tell us that the
concept, by its very nature, encompasses an infinite plurality of things.
The concept of drops of water is applicable to all drops of water. Leibniz says, of course, if
you have blocked off analysis of the concept at a certain point, at a finite moment. But if you
push the analysis forward, there will be a moment in which the concepts are no longer the
same. This is why the ewe recognizes its lamb, one of Leibniz's examples: how does the ewe
recognize its little lamb? They [Eux] think it is via the concept. A little lamb does not have
the same concept as the same individual concept, it is in this manner that the concept extends
to the individual, another little lamb. What is this principle? There is but a single thing; there
is necessarily one thing per concept and only one. Leibniz names it the principle of
indiscernibles. We can state it this way: there is one thing and only one thing per concept, or
every difference is conceptual in the final instance.
There is only conceptual difference. In other words, if you assign a difference between two
things, there is necessarily a difference in the concept. Leibniz names this the principle of
indiscernibles. And if I make it correspond to a ratio, what is this? You sense correctly that it
consists in saying that we only gain knowledge through the concept. In other words, the
principle of indiscernibles seems to me to correspond to the third ratio, the ratio as ratio
cognoscendi, the reason as reason for knowing [raison de connaitre].
Let us look at the consequences of such a principle. If this principle of indiscernibles were
true, namely that every difference is conceptual, there would be no difference except the
conceptual. Here Leibniz asks us to accept something that is quite huge. Let us proceed in
order: what other kind of difference is there other than conceptual? We see it immediately:
there are numerical differences. For example, I say a drop of water, two drops, three drops. I
distinguish the drops by the number alone [solo numero, that Deleuze translates as par le

nombre seulement]. I count the elements of a set [ensemble], one two three four, I neglect
their individuality, I distinguish them by the number. This constitutes a first type of very
classic distinction, the numerical distinction. Second type of distinction: I say "take this
chair"; some obliging person takes a chair, and I say, "not that one, but this one." This time, it
is a spatio-temporal distinction of the here-now type. The thing that is here at a particular
moment, and this other thing that is there at a particular moment. Finally, there are
distinctions of figure and of movement: roof that has three angles, or something else. I would
say that these are distinctions by extension and movement. Extension and movement.
Understand that this commits Leibniz to a strange undertaking, merely with his principle of
indiscernibles. He has to show that all these types of non-conceptual distinctions - and in fact,
all of these distinctions are non-conceptual since two things can be distinguished by the
number even though they have the same concept. You focus on the concept of a drop of
water, and you say: first drop, second drop. It is the same concept. There is the first and there
is the second. There is one that is here, and another that is there. There is one that goes fast,
and another that goes slowly. We have now nearly completed the set of non-conceptual
distinctions.
Leibniz arrives and calmly tells us, no no. These are pure appearances, that is,
these are only provisional ways of expressing a difference of another nature, and
this difference is always conceptual. If there are two drops of water, they do not
have the same concept. What of any great import does this mean? It is very
important in problems of individuation. It is very well known, for example, that
Descartes tells us that bodies are distinguished from one another by figure and
by movement. Lots of thinkers have appreciated that. Notice that in the
Cartesian formula, what is conserved in movement (mv) (the product of mass
times movement) depends strictly on a vision of the world in which bodies are
distinguished by the figure and movement. What does Leibniz commit himself to
when he tells us no? It is absolutely necessary that to all these non-conceptual
differences the
correspond conceptual differences; they only cause it to be imperfectly
translated. All non-conceptual differences only cause a basic conceptual
difference to be imperfectly translated. Leibniz commits himself to a task of
physics. He has to find a reason for which a body is either in a particular number,
or in a particular here and now, or has a particular figure and a particular v elocity.

He will translate that quite well in his critique of Descartes when he says that velocity is a
pure relative. Descartes was wrong, he took something that was purely relative for a
principle. It is therefore necessary that figure and movement be surpassed [se dpassent]
toward something deeper. This means something quite enormous for philosophy in the
seventeenth century.
Specifically, that there is no extended substance or that extension [l'tendue]
cannot be a substance. That extension is a pure phenomenon. That it refers to
something deeper. That there is no concept of extension, that the concept is of
another nature. It is therefore necessary that figure and movement find their

reason in something deeper. Henceforth, extension has no sufficiency. It is not by

chance that this is precisely what makes a new physics, he completely recreates
the physics of forces. He opposes force, on one hand, to figure and extension, on
the other, figure and extension being only manifestations of force. It is force that
is the true concept. There is no concept of extension because the true concept is
force.
Force is the reason of figure and movement in extension.
Hence the importance of this operation that appeared purely technical when he
said that what is conserved in movement is not mv, but mv2. Squaring velocity is
the translation of the concept of force, which is to say that everything changes. It
is physics that corresponds to the principle of indiscernibles. There are no two
similar or identical forces, and forces are the true concepts that must take
account of or justify everything that is figure or movement in extension.

Force is not a movement, it is the reason for movement. Hence the complete renewal of the
physics of forces, and also of geometry, of kinematics [la cinmatique]. Everything passes
through this, merely by the squaring of velocity. MV2 is a formula of forces, not a formula of
movement. You see that this is essential.
To sum up generally, I can also say that figure and movement must move forward toward
force. Number must move forward toward the concept. Space and time must also move
forward toward the concept.
But this is how a fourth principle develops quite slowly, one that Leibniz names the law of
continuity. Why did he say law? That is a problem. When Leibniz speaks of continuity that he
considers to be a fundamental principle and one of his very own great discoveries, he no
longer uses the term "principle," but uses the term "law." We have to explain that. If I look for
a vulgar formulation of the law of continuity, it is quite simple: nature does not make a jump
[la nature ne fait pas de saut]. There is no discontinuity. But there are two scholarly
formulations. If two causes get as close as one would like, to the point of only differing by a
difference decreasing to infinity, the effects must differ in like manner. I immediately say
what Leibniz is thinking about because he has it in for Descartes so much. What are we told
in the laws of the communication of movement? Here are two cases: two bodies of the same
mass and velocity meet each other; one of the two bodies has a greater mass or a greater
velocity, so it carries off the other. Leibniz says that this cannot be. Why? You have two states
of the cause. First state of the cause: two bodies of the same mass and velocity. Second state
of the cause: two bodies of different masses. Leibniz says that you can cause difference to
decrease to infinity, you can act so these two states approach one another in the causes. And
we are told that the two effects are completely different: in one case, there is a repulsion
[rebondissement] of the two bodies, in the other case, the second body is dragged off by the
first, in the direction of the first. There is a discontinuity in the effect whereas one can
conceive of a continuity in the causes. It is in a continuous manner that we can pass from
different masses to equal masses. Thus, it is not possible for there to be discontinuity in the
facts/acts [faits] if there is possible continuity in the cause. That leads him again into a whole,
very important physical study of movement that will be centered on the substitution of a

physics of forces for a physics of movement. I was citing this to refresh our memory. But the
other scholarly formulation of the same principle, and you will understand that it is the same
thing as the preceding one: in a given case, the concept of the case ends in the opposite case.
This is the pure statement of continuity. Example: a given case is movement, the concept of
movement ends in the opposite case, that is in rest. Rest is infinitely small movement. This is
what we saw from the infinitesimal principle of continuity. Or I might say that the last
possible scholarly formulation of continuity is: a given singularity extends itself [se prolonge]
into a whole series of ordinaries all the way to the neighborhood of the following singularity.
This time it is the law of the composition of the continuous. We worked on that the last time.
But right when we thought we had finished there arises a very important problem. Something
impels me to say that, between principle three and principle four, there is a contradiction, that
is between the principle of indiscernibles and the principle of continuity, there is a
contradiction. First question: in what way is there a contradiction? Second question: the fact
is that Leibniz never considered there to be the slightest contradiction. Here we are in that
situation of liking and profoundly admiring a philosopher, yet of being disturbed because
some texts seem contradictory to us, and he did not even see what we might tell him. Where
would the contradiction be if there was one? I return to the principle of indiscernibles, every
difference is conceptual, there are no two things having the same concept. At the limit I might
say that to every thing corresponds a determined difference, not only determined but
assignable in the concept. The difference is not only determined or determinable, it is
assignable in the very concept. There are no two drops of water having the same concept, that
is the difference one, two must be encompassed in the concept. It must be assigned in the
concept. Thus every difference is an assignable difference in the concept. What does the
principle of continuity tell us? It tells us that things proceed by vanishing differences
[diffrences vanouissantes], infinitely small differences, that is unassignable differences.
That gets really awful. Can one say that every thing proceeds by unassignable difference and
say at the same time that every difference is assigned and must be assigned in the concept?
Ah! Doesn't Leibniz contradict himself? We can move forward a small bit by looking at the
ratio of the principle of continuity since I found a ratio for each of the first three principles.
Identity is the reason of essence or ratio essendi, sufficient reason is the reason of existence or
the ratio existendi, the indiscernibles are the reason for knowing or the ratio cognoscendi, and
the principle of continuity is the ratio fiendi, that is, the reason for becoming. Things become
through continuity. Movement becomes rest, rest becomes movement, etc. The polygon
becomes a circle by muliplying its sides, etc. This is a very different reason for becoming
from the reasons of being or of existing. The ratio fiendi needed a principle, and it is the
principle of continuity.
How do we reconcile continuity and indiscernibles? Moreover, we have to show that the way
in which we will reconcile them must take account of this at the same time: that Leibniz was
right to see no contradiction at all between them. In this we have the experience of thought. I
return to the proposition: each individual notion expresses the whole world. Adam expresses
the world, Caesar expresses the world, each of you expresses the world. This formula is very
strange. Concepts in philosophy are not a single word. A great philosophical concept is a

complex, a proposition, or a prepositional function. One would have to do exercises in

philosophical grammar. Philosophical grammar would consist of this: with a given concept,
find the verb. If you have not found the verb, you have not rendered the verb dynamic, you
cannot live it. The concept is always subject to a movement, a movement of thought. A single
thing counts: movement. When you do philosophy, you are looking only at movement, only it
is a particular kind of movement, the movement of thought. What is the verb? Sometimes the
philosopher states it explicitly, sometimes he does not state it. Is Leibniz going to state it? In
each individual notion that expresses the world, there is a verb, this is expressing. But what
does that mean? It means two things at once, as if two movements coexisted.
Leibniz tells us at the same time: God does not create Adam the sinner, but creates the world
in which Adam sinned. God does not create Caesar crossing the Rubicon, but creates the
world in which Caesar crosses the Rubicon. Thus, what God creates is the world and not the
individual notions that express the world. Second proposition by Leibniz: the world exists
only in the individual notions that express it. If you privilege one individual notion over the
other . . . If you accept that, what results is like two readings or two complementary and
simultaneous ways of understanding, but two understandings of what? You can consider the
world, but yet again the world does not exist in itself, it exists only in the notions that express
it. But you can make this abstraction, you consider the world. How do you consider it? You
consider it as a complex curve. A complex curve has singular points and ordinary points. A
singular point extends itself into the ordinary points that depend on it all the way to the
neighborhood of another singularity, etc. etc. . . . and you compose the curve in a continuous
manner like that, by extending singularities into series of ordinaries. For Leibniz, that is what
the world is. The continuous world is the distribution of singularities and regularities, or
singularities and ordinaries that constitute precisely the set chosen by God, that is the set that
unites the maximum of continuity. If you remain in this vision, the world is governed by the
law of continuity since continuity is precisely this composition of singulars insofar as they
extend into the series of ordinaries that depend on them. You have your world that is literally
laid out [dploy] in the form of a curve in which singularities and regularities are distributed.
This is the first point of view that is completely subject to the law of continuity.
Only here we are, this world does not exist in itself, it exists only in the individual notions
that express this world. That means that an individual notion, a monad, that each one
encompasses a small determined number of singularities. It encloses a small number of
singularities. It is the small number of singularities. You recall that individual notions or
monads are points of view on the world. It is not the subject that explains [explique] the point
of view, it is the point of view that explains the subject. Hence the need to ask oneself, what
is this point of view? A point of view is defined by this: a small number of singularities drawn
from the curve of the world. This is what is at the basis of an individual notion. What makes
the difference between you and me is that you are, on this kind of fictional curve, you are
constructed around such and such singularities, and me around such and such singularities.
And what you call individuality is a complex of singularities insofar as they form a point of
view. There are two states of the world. It has a developed state . . .

I would like to finish these meetings on Leibniz by presenting the problem that I wanted to
consider. I return to this question that I asked from the start, specifically: what does this
image mean that good sense often creates about philosophy, what does this image mean that
good sense sometimes produces about philosophy, like a kind of locus of discussion in which
philosophers are fundamentally not in agreement? A kind of philosophical atmosphere in
which people dispute, fight among themselves, whereas at least in science, they know what
they are talking about. We are told as well that all philosophers say the same thing, they all
agree or all hold opposite views. Its in relation to Leibniz that I would like to select some
very precise examples. What does it mean that two philosophies do not agree? Polemics, like
a certain state of things that traverses certain disciplines, I do not find that there are more
polemics in philosophy than there are in science or in art. What is a philosopher who critiques
another philosopher? What is the function of critique? Leibniz offers us this example: what
does the opposition between Kant and Leibniz mean, once we have said that it was a
fundamental opposition in the history of philosophy? What does it mean for Kant to
undertake a critique of Leibniz? I would like to number what I want to tell you. An initial
task: to localize the oppositions. There are two fundamental oppositions from the point of
view of knowledge. They function like thesis and antithesis. When we manage to trace the
great philosophical oppositions, on the level of the concepts used by one philosopher or
another, we also have to evaluate their relations to these oppositions. They [the oppositions]
are not of equal value. Perhaps one does happen to have greater weight than another, to be
more decisive. If you fail to organize the oppositions, I think that you are no longer able to
understand what the subject is in a polemic.
First opposition between Leibniz and Kant, from the point of view of knowledge. I will let
Leibniz speak. A Leibnizian proposition: all propositions are analytical, and knowledge can
proceed only by analytical propositions. You recall that we call analytical proposition a
proposition in which one of the two terms of the proposition is contained in the concept of the
other. Its a philosophical formula. We can already sense that there is no point in arguing at
this level. Why? Because there is already something implied, specifically that there is a
certain model of knowledge. What is presupposed, but in science as well, there are also
presuppositions; what is presupposed is a certain ideal of knowledge, specifically knowing is
discovering what is included in the concept. Its a definition of knowledge. We are pleased to
have a definition of knowledge, but why this one rather that something else?
From the other side, Kant arises and says: there are synthetic propositions. You see what a
synthetic proposition is: its a proposition in which one of the terms is not contained in the
concept of the other. Is this a cry? Is this a proposition? Against Leibniz, he says, no; he
says that there are synthetic propositions and that knowledge exists only through synthetic
propositions. The opposition seems perfect. At this point, a thousand questions assail me:
What would that mean to argue, to argue about who is right, who is right about what? Is this
provable, are we in the domain of decidable propositions? I say simply that the Kantian
definition must interest you because, if you consider it closely, it also implies a certain
conception of knowledge, and it happens that this conception of knowledge is very different
from Leibnizs. When one says that knowledge proceeds only through synthetic propositions,

that is, a proposition such that one of its terms is not contained in the concept of the other,
there is therefore a synthesis between the two terms. Someone who says this can no longer
base knowledge on the Leibnizian conception.
He will tell us, on the contrary, that to know is not at all to discover what is included in a
concept, that knowledge necessarily means leaving behind one concept in order to affirm
something else. We call synthesis the act through which one leaves a concept behind in
order to attribute to it or to affirm something else. In other words, to know is always to go
beyond the concept. Knowing is to go beyond [connatre cest dpasser]. Understand all that
is in play here. In the first conception, to know is to have a concept and discover what is
contained in the concept. I would say about that knowledge that it is based on a particular
model which is one of passion or of perception. To know is finally to perceive something, to
know is to apprehend, a passive model of knowledge, even if many activities depend on it. In
the other case, to the contrary, it means leaving the concept behind in order to affirm
something, and is a model of the knowledge-act [un modle de la connaissance acte].
I return to my two propositions. Let us suppose that we are referees. We find ourselves faced
with these two propositions, and we say: what do I choose? First when I say: is it decidable?
What would that mean? It could mean that its a question of fact. One has to find the facts
that allow one to say that one or the other is right. Obviously, its not that. Philosophical
propositions, to some extent, arent justifiable on the basis of a verification of facts. That is
why philosophy has always distinguished two questions, and Kant especially will take this
distinction up again. This distinction was formulated in Latin: quid facti, what is derived from
fact [qu'en est-il du fait], and quid juris, what is derived from principle [qu'en est-il du droit].
And if philosophy is concerned with principle, it is precisely because it poses questions that
are called de jure questions [questions de droit]. What does it mean that my two paradoxical
propositions, Leibnizs and Kants, are not justifiable on the basis of a factual response? It
means that in fact, there is no problem because all the time we encounter phenomena that are
synthetic phenomena. Indeed, in my simplest judgments, I pass my time operating syntheses.
I say, for example, that this straight line is white.
It is quite obvious that with this, I am affirming about a straight line something that is not
contained in the concept of straight line. Why? Every straight line is not white. That this
straight line is white is obviously an encounter in experience; I could not have made such a
statement beforehand. I therefore encounter in experience straight lines that are white. Its a
synthesis, and we call this kind of synthesis *a posteriori*, that is, given in experience. Thus,
there are syntheses of fact, but that does not resolve the problem. Why? For a very simple
reason: this straight line [that] is white does not constitute knowledge. Its a protocol of
experience. Knowledge is something other than tracing protocols of experience.
When does one know? One knows when a proposition appeals to a principle [se rclame dun
droit]. What defines a propositions principle is the universal and the necessary. When I say
that a straight line is the shortest path from one point to another, I maintain a proposition in
principle (une proposition de droit). Why? Because I dont need to measure each straight line
to know that, if its straight, its the shortest path. Every straight line, beforehand, a priori,
that is, independently of experience, is the shortest path from one point to another, otherwise

it would not be a straight line. Thus, I would say that the proposition a straight line is the
shortest path constitutes indeed a proposition of knowledge. I do not await experience to
discover that a straight line is the shortest path; to the contrary, I determine the experience
since the shortest path from one point to another is my way of tracing a straight line
experientially. Any straight line is necessarily the shortest path from one point to another.
This is a proposition of knowledge and not a protocol proposition. Let us take this
proposition, its an a priori proposition. In this, are we going to be able finally to pose the
question of separation between Leibniz and Kant, specifically is it an analytical proposition
or is it a synthetic proposition?
Kant says something very simple: its necessarily, a priori, a synthetic proposition. Why?
Because when you say that the straight line is the shortest path from one point to another, you
are leaving behind the concept straight line. Isnt it the content in a straight line to be the
shortest path from one point to another? It goes without saying that Leibniz would say that it
is the content in straight line. Kant says no, the concept straight line, according to the
Euclidian definition is: line ex aequo in all of its points. You wont draw from this the
shortest path between one point and another. You have to leave the concept behind to affirm
something else about it. Were not convinced. Why does Kant say that? Kant would answer, I
suppose, that the shortest path to another is a concept that implies a comparison, the
comparison of the shortest line with other lines that are either broken lines or curvilinear
lines, that is, curves. I cannot say that the straight line is the shortest path from one point to
another without implying a comparison, the relation of the straight line to curved lines. For
Kant this suffices to say that a synthesis lies therein; you are forced to leave the straight
line concept in order to reach the curved line concept, and its in the relation of straight
lines to curved lines that you say the straight line is the shortest path from one point to
another. . . Its a synthesis, thus knowledge is a synthetic operation. Would Leibniz be
disturbed by that? No, he would say that obviously you have to keep in mind the curved
line concept when you say that the straight line is the shortest path from one point to
another, but Leibniz is the creator of a differential calculus through which the straight line is
going to be considered as the limit of curves. There is a process to the limit. Hence Leibnizs
theme: its an analytical relation, only its an infinite analysis. The straight line is the limit of
the curve, just as rest is the limit of movement. Does this advance us? So either one can no
longer resolve this, or they mean the same thing. [If] they say the same thing, what would this
be? It would mean that what Leibniz calls infinite analysis is the same thing as what Kant
calls finite synthesis. Henceforth, its only a question of words. In this perspective, at that
point, we would say that they agree in order to establish a difference in nature, one of them
between finite analysis and infinite analysis, the other between analysis and synthesis. It
comes down to the same thing: what Leibniz calls infinite analysis, Kant will call finite
synthesis.
You see the good sense idea that, simultaneously, a philosophical dispute is inextricable since
we cannot decide who is right, and at the same time, knowing who is right is without any
importance since they both say the same thing. Good sense can conclude just as well: the
only good philosophy is me. Tragic situation. Because if good sense achieves the goals of

philosophy, better than philosophy itself does it, then there is no reason to wear yourself out
doing philosophy. So?
Lets look for a kind of bifurcation since this first great opposition between Leibniz and Kant,
even if it now seems obvious too us, isnt this because, in fact, this opposition moves well
beyond itself toward a deeper opposition, and if we dont see the deeper opposition, we can
understand nothing. What would this second, deeper opposition be?
We saw that there was a great Leibnizian proposition, called the principle of indiscernibles,
notably that any difference, in the final instance, is conceptual. Any difference is in the
concept. If two things differ, they cannot simply differ by number, by figure, by movement,
but rather their concept must not be the same. Every difference is conceptual. See how this
proposition is truly the presupposition of Leibnizs preceding proposition. If he is right on
this point, if every difference is conceptual, it is quite obvious that its by analyzing concepts
that we know, since knowing is knowing through differences. Thus, if every difference, in the
final instance, is conceptual, the analysis of the concept will make us know the difference,
and will therefore cause us quite simply to know. We see into which quite advanced
mathematical task this drew Leibniz, [a task] which consisted in showing the differences
between figures, the differences between numbers, referring to differences in the concepts.
Ok, what is Kants proposition in opposition to the second Leibnizian proposition? Here
again, this is going to be pretty odd [un drle de truc]. Kant maintains a very strange
proposition: if you look closely at the world presented to you, you will see that it is composed
of two sorts of irreducible determinations: you have conceptual determinations that always
correspond to what a thing is, I can even say that a concept is the representation of what the
thing is. You have determinations of this sort, for example, the lion is an animal that roars;
thats a conceptual determination. And then you have another kind of determination
altogether. Kant proposes his great thing [son grand truc]: he says that its no longer
conceptual determinations, but spatio-temporal determinations. What are these spatiotemporal determinations? Its the fact that the thing is here and now, that it is to the right or to
the left, that it occupies one kind of space or another, that it describes a space, that it lasts a
certain time. And so, however far you push the analysis of concepts, you will never arrive at
this domain of spatio-temporal determinations by analyzing concepts. Although you might
push your analysis of the concept to infinity, you will never find a determination in the
concept that takes this into account for you: that this thing is on the right or on the left.
What does he mean? He selects examples for himself that initially seem very convincing.
Consider two hands. Everyone knows that two hands dont have exactly the same traits, nor
the same distribution of pores. In fact, there are no two hands that are identical. And this is a
point for Leibniz: if there are two things, they must differ through the concept, its his
principle of indiscernibles.
Kant says that, in fact, it is indeed possible, but thats not important. He says that its without
interest. Discussions never pass through the true and the false, they pass through: does it have
any interest whatsoever, or is it a platitude? A madman is not a question of fact, hes also a
question quid juris. Its not someone who says things that are false. There are loads of
mathematicians who completely invent absolutely crazy theories. Why are they crazy?
Because they are false or contradictory? No, they are determined by the fact that they

manipulate an enormous conceptual and mathematical apparatus [appareillage], for example,

for propositions stripped of all interest.
Kant would dare to tell Leibniz that what you are saying about the two hands with their
different skin features [diffrences de pores] has no interest since you can conceive quid juris,
in principle but not in fact, you can conceive of two hands belonging to the same person,
having exactly the same distribution of pores, the same outline of traits. This is not logically
contradictory, even if it does not exist in fact. But, says Kant, there is something nonetheless
that is very odd: however far you push your analysis, these two hands are identical, but
admire the fact that they cannot be superposed. You have your two absolutely identical hands,
you cut them in order to have a radical degree of mobility. You cannot cause them to
coincide; you cannot superpose them. Why? You cannot superpose them, says Kant, because
there is a right and a left. They can be absolutely identical in everything else, there is still one
that is the right hand and the other the left hand. That means that there is a spatial
determination irreducible to the order of the concept. The concept of your two hands can be
strictly identical, however far you push the analysis, there will still be one of them that is my
right hand and one that is my left hand. You cannot cause them to be superposed. Under what
condition can you cause two figures to be superposed? On the condition of having access to a
dimension supplementary to that of the figures . . . Its because there is a third dimension of
space that you can cause two flat figures to be superposed. You could cause two volumes to
be superposed if you have access to a fourth dimension. There is an irreducibility in the order
of space. The same thing holds for time: there is an irreducibility in the order of time. Thus,
however far you push the analysis of conceptual differences, an order of difference will
always remain outside of the concepts and the conceptual differences. This will be spatiotemporal differences.
Does Kant again gain the stronger position? Lets go back to the straight line. [Regarding] the
idea of synthesis, we are going to recognize that it was not a matter of mere words for
Leibniz. If we stopped at the analysis-synthesis difference, we didnt have the means of
finding [more]. We are in the process of discovering the extent to which this is something
more than a matter of words. Kant is saying: as far as you go in your analysis, you will have
an irreducible order of time and space, irreducible to the order of the concept. In other words,
space and time are not concepts. There are two sorts of determinations: determinations of
concepts and spatio-temporal determinations. What does Kant mean when he says that the
straight line is the shortest path from one point to another, that its a synthetic proposition?
What he means is this: [the] straight line is indeed a conceptual determination, but the
shortest path from one point to another is not a conceptual determination, but a spatiotemporal determination. The two are irreducible. You will never be able to deduce one from
the other. There is a synthesis between them.
And what is knowing? Knowing is creating the synthesis of conceptual determinations and
spatio-temporal determinations. And so he is in the process of tearing space and time from the
concept, from the logical concept. Is it by chance that he himself will name this operation
Aesthetics? Even on the most vulgar level of aesthetics, the best known word the theory of
art --, wont this liberation of space and time in relation to logical concepts be the basis of any
discipline called aesthetics?

You see now how it is that, at this second level, Kant would define synthesis. He would say
that synthesis is the act through which I leave behind all concepts in order to affirm
something irreducible to concepts. Knowing is creating a synthesis because it necessarily
means leaving behind all concepts in order to affirm something extra-conceptual in it. The
straight line, concept, I leave it behind, its the shortest path from one point to another, a
spatio-temporal, extra-conceptual determination. What is the difference between this second
Kantian proposition and the first? Just admire the progress Kant made. Kants first definition
when he was saying that knowing means operating through synthesis this is issuing
synthetic propositions, Kants first proposition amounted to this: knowing means leaving
behind a concept in order to affirm about it something that was not contained in it. But at this
level, I could not know if he was right. Leibniz arrived and said that, in the name of an
infinite analysis, what I affirm about a concept will always be contained in the concept. A
second, deeper level: Kant no longer tells us that knowing means leaving a concept behind in
order to affirm something that would be like another concept. Rather [he says that] knowing
means leaving one concept in order to leave behind all concepts, and to affirm something
about it that is irreducible to the order of the concept in general. This is a much more
interesting proposition.
Yet again, they react [on rebondit]. Is this decidable? One of them tells us that every
difference is conceptual in the last instance, and therefore you can affirm nothing about a
concept that might go outside the order of the concept in general; the other one tells us that
there are two kinds of differences, conceptual differences and spatio-temporal differences
such that knowing necessarily means leaving behind the concept in order to affirm something
about it that is irreducible to all concepts in general, specifically something that concerns
space and time.
At this point, we realize that we havent left all that behind because we realize that Kant,
quietly and he wasnt obligated to say it, even since he could say it a hundred pages later
Kant can only maintain the proposition he just suggested about the irreducibility of spatiotemporal determinations in relation to conceptual determination, he can only affirm this
irreducibility because he dealt a master stroke [coup de force]. For his proposition to make
sense, he had to change radically the traditional definition of space and time. I hope that you
are becoming more sensitive [to this]. He gives a completely innovative determination of
space and time. What does that mean?
We arrive at a third level of the Kant-Leibniz opposition. This opposition is stripped of any
interest if we do not see that the Leibnizian propositions and the Kantian propositions are
distributed in two completely different space-times. In other words, its not even the same
space-time about which Leibniz said: all of these determinations of space and time are
reducible to conceptual determinations; and this other one about which Kant told us that the
determinations [of space-time] are absolutely irreducible to the order of the concept. This is
what we have to show in a simple way; take note that this is a moment in which thought reels.
For a very, very long time, space was defined as, to some extent, the order of coexistences, or
the order of simultaneities. And time was defined as the order of successions. So, is it by
chance that Leibniz is the one who pushes this very ancient conception to its limit, all the way
to a kind of absolute formulation? Leibniz adds and states it formally: space is the order of

possible coexistences and time is the order of possible successions. By adding possible,
why does he push this to the absolute? Because it refers to his theory of compossibility and of
the world. Thus, he captures in this way the old conception of space and time, and he uses it
for his own system. At first glance, that seems rather good. In fact, its always delicate when
someone tells me: define space, define time; if I dont say by reflex that space is the order of
successions and space is the order of coexistences, at least thats something [cest quand
mme un petit quelque chose]. What bothers Kant can be found in his most beautiful pages.
He says: but not at all. Kant says that this just wont do, he says that, on the one hand, I
cannot define space as the order of coexistences, on the other hand, I cannot define time as
the order of successions. Why? Because coexistences, after all, belong to time. Coexistence
means, literally, at the same time. In other words, its a modality of time. Time is a form in
which occur not only that which succeeds something, but also that which is at the same time.
In other words, coexistence or simultaneity is a modality of time. At some far distant date
when there will be a famous theory called the theory of simultaneity, of which one of the
fundamental aspects will be to think simultaneity in terms of time, I dont at all say that Kant
invented relativity, but that such a formula, particularly what we already found
comprehensible in it, would not have had this comprehensible element if Kant hadnt been
there centuries before. Kant is the first one to tell us that simultaneity does not belong to
space, but belongs to time.
This is already a revolution in the order of concepts. In other words, Kant will say that time
has three modalities: what lasts through it is called permanence; what follows after something
else within it is called succession; and what coexists within it is called simultaneity of
coexistence. I cannot define time through the order of successions since succession is only a
modality of time, and I have no reason to privilege this modality over the others. And another
conclusion at the same time: I cannot define space through the order of coexistences since
coexistence does not belong to space. If Kant had maintained the classical definition of time
and space, order of coexistences and of successions, he couldnt have, or at least there
wouldnt have been any interest in doing so, he couldnt have criticized Leibniz since if I
define space through the order of coexistences and time through the order of successions, it
goes without saying, whereas space and time refer in the last instance to that which follows
something else and to that which coexists, that is, to something that one can enunciate within
the order of the concept. There is no longer any difference between spatio-temporal
differences and conceptual differences. In fact, the order of successions receives its raison
dtre from that which follows, the order of coexistences receives it raison dtre from that
which coexists. At that point, its conceptual difference that is the last word, on all
differences. Kant couldnt break with classical concepts, pushed to the absolute by Leibniz, if
he didnt propose to us another conception of space and time. This conception is the most
unusual and the most familiar. What is space? Space is a form. That means that its not a
substance and that it does not refer to substances. When I say that space is the order of
possible coexistences, the order of possible coexistences is clarified in the last instance by
things that coexist. In other words, the spatial order must find its reason in the order of things
that fill space. When Kant says that space is a form, that is, is not a substance, that means that
it does not refer to things that fill it. Its a form, and how must we define it? He tells us that

its the form of exteriority. Its the form through which everything that is exterior to us
reaches us, OK, but thats not all it is; its also the form through which everything that is
exterior to itself occurs. In this, he can again jump back into tradition. Tradition had always
defined space as partes extra partes, one part of space is exterior to another part. But here we
find that Kant takes what was only a characteristic of space in order to make it the essence of
space. Space is the form of exteriority, that is the form through which what is exterior to us
reaches us, and through which what remains exterior to itself occurs. If there were no space,
there would be no exteriority.
Lets jump to time. Kant is going to provide the symmetrical definition, he hits us with time
as form of interiority. What does that mean? First, that time is the form of that which happens
to us as interior, interior to ourselves. But it does not mean only that. Things are in time,
which implies that they have an interiority. Time is the way in which the thing is interior to
itself.
If we jump and if we make some connections [rapprochements], much later there will be
philosophies of time, and much later time will become the principal problem of philosophy.
For a long time, things were not like that. If you take classical philosophy, certainly there are
philosophies greatly interested in the problem of time, and they appeared unusual. Why are
the so-called unforgettable pages on time by Saint Augustine always shown to us? The
principal problem of classical philosophy is the problem of extension [tendue], and notably
what the relation is between thought and extension, once it is said that thought is not part of
extension.
And it is well known that so-called classical philosophy attaches a great importance to the
corresponding problem, the union of thought and extension, in the particular relation of the
union of soul and body. It is therefore the relation of thought to that which appears most
opaque to thought, specifically extension [ltendue]. In some ways, some people find the
source of modern philosophy in a kind of change of problematic, in which thought
commences to confront time and no longer extension. The problem of the relationship
between thought and time has never ceased to cause difficulties for philosophy, as if the real
thing that philosophy confronted was the form of time and not the form of space. Kant
created this kind of revolution: he ripped space and time from the order of the concept
because he gave two absolutely new determinations of space and time: the form of exteriority
and the form of interiority. Leibniz is the end of the seventeenth century, start of the
eighteenth, while Kant is the eighteenth century. There is not much time between them. So
what happened? We must see how everything intervenes: scientific mutations, so-called
Newtonian science, political events. We cannot accept that when there was such a change in
the order of concepts that nothing happened in the social order. Among other things, the
French revolution occurred. Whether it implied another space-time, we dont know.
Mutations occurred in daily life. Let us say that the order of philosophical concepts expressed
it [the revolution] in its own way, even if [this order] comes beforehand.
Yet again, we have started from an initial Leibniz-Kant opposition, and we have said that it is
undecidable. I cannot decide between the proposition every proposition is analytical, and
the other proposition in which knowledge proceeds by synthetic propositions. We had to step

back. First step back, I have again two antithetical propositions: every determination is
conceptual in the last instance, and the Kantian proposition: there are spatio-temporal
determinations that are irreducible to the order of the concept. We had to step back again in
order to discover a kind of presupposition, notably [that] the Leibniz-Kant opposition is valid
only to the extent that we consider that space and time are not at all defined in the same way.
Its odd, this idea that space is that which opens us to an outside; never would someone from
the Classical period have said that. It is already an existential relationship with space. Space
is the form of what comes to us from outside.
If, for example, I look for the relationship between poetry and philosophy, what does that
imply? It implies an open space. If you define space as a milieu of exteriority, it is an open
space, not an enclosed space [espace boucl]. Leibnizian space is an enclosed space, the order
of coexistences. Kants form is a form that open us up, opens us to an x, it is the form of
eruptions. It is already a Romantic space. It is an aesthetic space since it is emancipated from
the logical order of the concept. It is a Romantic space because it is the space of overflows. It
is the space of the open [louvert]. And when you see in works of certain philosophers who
came much later, like Heidegger, a kind of grand song on the theme of the open, you will see
that Heidegger calls on Rilke who himself owes this notion of the Open to German
Romanticism. You will better understand why Heidegger feels the need to write a book about
Kant. He will deeply valorize the theme of the Open. At the same time, poets are inventing it
as a rhythmic value or aesthetic value. At the same time, researchers are inventing it as a
scientific species.
At this point of my thinking about it, it is very difficult to say who is right and who is wrong.
One might like to say that Kant corresponds better to us, goes better with our way of being in
space, space as my form of opening. Can we say that Leibniz has been left behind? It is not
that simple.
A fourth point. It is perhaps at the farthest extreme of what is new that, in philosophy, occurs
what we call the return to [le retour ]. After all, it is never up to an author to push himself as
far as he can. It is not Kant who is going as far as is possible for Kant; there will always be
post-Kantians who are the great philosophers of German Romanticism. They are the ones
who, having pushed Kant as far as possible, experience this strange thing: making a return to
Leibniz. [end of the tape] ... I am looking for the deep changes that Kantian philosophy was
to bring about both in relation to so-called Classical philosophy and in relation to the
philosophy of Leibniz. We have seen a first change concerning space-time. There is a second
change, this time concerning the concept of the phenomenon. You are going to see why one
results from the other. For quite a long time, the phenomenon was opposed to what, and what
did it mean? Very often phenomenon is translated as appearance, appearances. And
appearances, lets say that it is the sensible [le sensible]. The sensible appearance. And
appearance is distinguished from what? It forms a doublet, a couple with the correlative of
essence. Appearance is opposed to essence. And Platonism will develop a duality of
appearance and essence, sensible appearances and intelligible essences. A famous conception
results from this: the conception of two worlds. Are there two worlds, the sensible world and
the intelligible world? Are we prisoners, through our senses and through our bodies, of a

world of appearances? Kant uses the word phenomenon, and the reader gets the impression
that when he [the reader] tries to situate the old notion of appearances under the Kantian
word, it doesnt work. Isnt there going to be as important a revolution as for time and space,
on the level of the phenomenon? When Kant uses the word phenomenon, he loads it with a
much more violent meaning: it is not appearance that separates us from essence, it is
apparition, that which appears insofar as it appears. The phenomenon in Kants work is not
appearance, but apparition. Apparition is the manifestation of that which appears insofar as it
appears. Why is it immediately linked to the preceding revolution? Because when I say that
what appears insofar as it appears, what does the insofar [en tant que] mean? It means that
that which appears does so necessarily in space and time. This is immediately united to the
preceding theses. Phenomenon means: that which appears in space and in time. It no longer
means sensible appearance, it means spatio-temporal apparition. What reveals the extent to
which this is not the same thing? If I look for the doublet with which apparition is in relation.
We have seen that appearance is related to essence, to the point that there are perhaps two
worlds, the world of appearances and the world of essences. But apparition is related to what?
Apparition is in relation to condition. Something that appears, appears under conditions that
are the conditions of its apparition. Conditions are the making-appear of apparition. These are
the conditions according to which what appears, appears. Apparition refers to the conditions
of the apparition, just as appearance refers to essence. Others will say that apparition refers to
meaning [sens]. The doublet is: apparition and meaning of the apparition. Phenomenon is no
longer thought as an appearance in relation to its essence, but as an apparition in relation to
its condition or its meaning. Yet another thunderclap: there is no longer only one world
constituted by that which appears and the meaning of that which appears. What appears no
longer refers to essences that would be behind the appearance; that which appears refers to
conditions that condition the apparition of what appears. Essence yields to meaning. The
concept is no longer the essence of the thing, it is the meaning of the apparition. Understand
that this is an entirely new concept in philosophy from which will unfold philosophys
determination under the name of a new discipline, that of phenomenology. Phenomenology
will be the discipline that considers phenomena as apparitions, referring to conditions or to a
meaning, instead of considering them as appearances referring to essences. Phenomenology
will take as much meaning as you want, but it will at least have this unity, specifically its first
great moment will be with Kant who pretends to undertake a phenomenology, precisely
because he changes the concept of the phenomenon, making it the object of a phenomenology
instead of the object of a discipline of appearances. The first great moment in which
phenomenology will be developed as an autonomous discipline will be in Hegels famous
text, Phenomenology of Spirit. And the word is very peculiar. The Phenomenology of Spirit
being precisely the great book that announces the disappearance of the two worlds, there is no
more than a single world. Hegels formula is: behind the curtain, there is nothing to see.
Philosophically that means that the phenomenon is not a mere appearance behind which an
essence is located; the phenomenon is an apparition that refers to the conditions of its
apparition. There is but one single world. That is the moment when philosophy breaks its
final links to theology. Phenomenologys second moment will be the one in which Husserl
renews phenomenology through a theory of apparition and meaning. He will invent a form of
logic proper to phenomenology. Things are obviously more complex than that.

I will offer you an extremely simple schema. Kant is the one who broke with the simple
opposition between appearance and essence in order to establish a correlation [between] the
apparition and conditions of apparition, or apparition-meaning [apparition-sens]. But
separating oneself from something is very difficult. Kant preserves something from the
former opposition. In Kant, there is a strange thing, the distinction between the phenomenon
and the thing in itself. Phenomenon-thing in itself, for Kant, preserves something from the
former apparition. But the really innovative aspect of Kant is the conversion of another set of
notions, apparition-conditions of the apparition. And the thing in itself is not at all a condition
of apparition, but something completely different. And a second correction is this: from Plato
to Leibniz, we were not simply told that there are appearances and essences. Moreover,
already with Plato there appears a very curious notion that he calls well-founded appearance,
that is, essence is hidden from us, but in some ways, appearance expresses it as well. The
relation between appearance and essence is a very complex one that Leibniz will try to push
in a very strange direction, specifically: he will create from it a theory of symbolization. The
Leibnizian theory of symbolization quite singularly prepares the Kantian revolution. The
phenomenon symbolizes with essence. This relation of symbolization is no longer that of
appearance with essence.
I am trying to continue: there occurs a new disturbance at the level of the conception of the
phenomenon. You will see just how it immediately links up with the disturbance of spacetime. Finally there is a fundamental disturbance at the level of subjectivity.
There again its a strange story. When does this notion of subjectivity take off? Leibniz
pushes the presuppositions of classical philosophy as far as he can, down the paths of genius
and delirium. From a perspective like that of Leibniz, one really has very little choice. These
are philosophies of creation. What does a philosophy of creation mean? These are
philosophies that have maintained a certain alliance with theology, to the point that even
atheists, if indeed they are that, will pass by way of God. Obviously, that does not take place
on the level of the word. As a result of this alliance that they have with theology, they pass by
way of God to some extent. That is, their point of view is fundamentally creationist. And
even philosophers who do something other than creationism, that is, who are not interested or
who replace the concept of creation with something else, they fight against creation according
to the concept of creation. In all cases, the point that they start from is infinity. Philosophers
have an innocent way of thinking starting from infinity, and they give themselves to infinity.
There was infinity everywhere, in God and in the world. That let them undertake things like
infinitesimal analysis. An innocent way of thinking starting from infinity means a world of
creation. They could go quite far, but not all the way. Subjectivity. To move in this direction,
a completely different aggregate was necessary. Why couldnt they go all the way toward a
discovery of subjectivity? Still they went very far.
Descartes invents his own concept, the famous I think, therefore I am, notably the
discovery of subjectivity or the thinking subject. The discovery that thought refers to a
subject. A Greek would not even have understood what was being said with the idea of a
thinking subject. Leibniz will not forget it, for there is a Leibnizian subjectivity. And

generally we define modern philosophy with the discovery of subjectivity. They could not go
all the way through this discovery of subjectivity for a very simple reason: however far they
might go in their explorations, this subjectivity can only be posited as created, precisely
because they have an innocent way of thinking starting from infinity.
The thinking subject, insofar as the finite subject can be thought of as created, created by
God. Thought referring to the subject can only be thought as created: what does that mean? It
means that the thinking subject is substance, is a thing. Res. It is not an extended thing, as
Descartes says its a thinking thing. It is an unextended thing, but it is a thing, a substance,
and it has the status of created things, it is a created thing, a created substance. Does that
block them? You will tell me that its not difficult, they had only to put the thinking subject in
the place of God, no interest in exchanging places. In that event, one has to speak of an
infinite thinking subject in relation to which finite thinking subjects would themselves be
created substances. Nothing would be gained. Thus, their strength, specifically this innocent
way of thinking according to infinity, leads them to the threshold of subjectivity and prevents
them from crossing through.
What does Kants rupture with Descartes consist in? What is the difference between the
Kantian cogito and the Cartesian cogito? For Kant, the thinking subject is not a substance, not
determined as a thinking thing. It is going to be pure form, form of the apparition of
everything that appears. In other words, it is the condition of apparition of all that appears in
space and in time. Yet another thunderclap. Kant undertakes to find a new relation of thought
with space and time.
Pure form, empty form, there Kant becomes splendid. He goes so far as to say of the I think
that it is the poorest thought. Only, it is the condition of any thought about any one thing. I
think is the condition of all thought about any one thing that appears in space and in time,
but itself is an empty form that conditions every apparition. That becomes a severe world, a
desert world. The desert grows. What has disappeared is the world inhabited by the divine,
the infinite, and it became the world of men. What disappeared is the problem of creation,
replaced by an completely different problem that will be the problem of Romanticism,
specifically the problem of founding [fondement]. The problem of founding or of foundation
[fondation]. Now there arises a clever thought, puritanical, desert-like, that wonders, once its
admitted that the world exists and that it appears, how to found it?
The question of creation has been rejected, but now the problem of founding arrives. If there
is really a philosopher who spoke the discourse of God, it was Leibniz. Now the model
philosopher has become the hero, the founding hero. He is the one who founds within an
existing world, not the one who creates the world. What is foundational [fondateur] is that
which conditions the condition of what appears in space and in time. Everything is linked
there. A change in the notion of space-time, a change in the notion of the subject. The
thinking subject as pure form will only be the act of founding the world such as it appears and
knowledge of the world such as it appears. This is an entirely new undertaking.
A year ago, I tried to distinguish the Classical artist from the Romantic artist. The Classical
and the Baroque are two poles of the same enterprise. I was saying that the Classical artist is
one who organized milieus and who, to some extent, is in the situation of God, this is

creation. The Classical artist never stops undertaking creation anew, by organizing milieus,
and never ceases to pass from one milieu to another. He passes from water to earth, he
separates the earth and the waters, exactly Gods task in creation. He poses a kind of
challenge to God: they are going to do just as much, and that is what the Classical artist is.
The Romantic at first glance would be less crazy; his problem is that of founding. It is no
longer the problem of the world, but one of the earth. It is no longer the problem of milieu,
but one of territory. To leave ones territory in order to find the center of the earth, thats what
founding is. The Romantic artist renounced creating because there is a much more heroic
task, and this heroic task is foundation. It is no longer creation and milieu; its: I am leaving
my territory. Empedocles. The founding is in the bottomless [Le fondement est dans le sans
fond]. All post-Kantian philosophy from Schelling on will arise around this kind of abundant
concept or the bottom, the fundament founding, the bottomless. That is always what the lied
is, the tracing of a territory haunted by the hero, and the hero leaves, departs for the center of
the earth, he deserts. The song of the earth. Mahler. The opposition maintained between the
tune about the territory and the song of the earth.
The musical doublet territory-earth corresponds exactly to what in philosophy is the
phenomenon apparition and the condition of apparition. Why do they abandon the point of
view of creation?
Why is the hero not someone who creates, but someone who founds, and why isnt it the final
word? If there were a moment in which Western thought was a bit tired of taking itself for
God and of thinking in terms of creation, the seed must be here. Does the image of heroic
thought suit us still? All that is finished. Understand the enormous importance of this
substitution of the form of the ego [forme du moi] by the thinking subject. The thinking
substance was still the point of view of God, its a finite substance, but created according to
the infinite, created by God.
Whereas when Kant tells us that the thinking subject is not a thing, he well understands a
created thing, a form that conditions the apparition of all that appears in space and in time,
that is, it is the form of founding. What is he in the process of doing? He institutes the finite
ego [le moi fini] as first principle.
Doing that is frightening. Kants history depends greatly on the reform. The finite ego is the
true founding. Thus the first principle becomes finitude. For the Classics, finitude is a
consequence, the limitation of something infinite. The created world is finite, the Classics tell
us, because it is limited. The finite ego founds the world and knowledge of the world because
the finite ego is itself the constitutive founding of what appears. In other words, it is finitude
that is the founding of the world. The relations of the infinite to the finite shift completely.
The finite will no longer be a limitation of the infinite; rather, the infinite will be an
overcoming [dpassement] of the finite. Moreover, it is a property of the finite to surpass and
go beyond itself. The notion of self-overcoming [auto-dpassement] begins to be developed
in philosophy. It will traverse all of Hegel and will reach into Nietzsche. The infinite is no
longer separable from an act of overcoming finitude because only finitude can overcome
itself. Everything called dialectic and the operation of the infinite to be transformed therein,
the infinite becoming and become the act through which finitude overcomes itself by
constituting or by founding the world. In that way, the infinite is subordinated to the act of the

finite. What results from this? Fichte has an exemplary page for the Kantian polemic with
Leibniz. Here is what Fichte tells us: I can say A is A, but this is only a hypothetical
proposition. Why? Because it presupposes if there is A. If A is, A is A, but if there is
nothing, A is not A. This is very interesting because he is in the act of overthrowing the
principle of identity. He says that the principle of identity is a hypothetical rule. Hence he
launches his great theme: to overcome hypothetical judgment to go toward what he calls
thetic judgment (le jugement thtique]. To go beyond hypothesis toward thesis. Why is it
that A is A, if A does exist because finally the proposition A is A is not at all a final principle
or a first principle? It refers to something deeper, specifically that one must say that A is A
because it is thought. Specifically, what founds the identity of things that are thought is the
identity of the thinking subject. Moreover, the identity of the thinking subject is the identity
of the finite ego. Thus the first principle is not that A is A, but that ego equals ego. German
philosophy will encumber its books with the magic formula: ego equals ego. Why is this
formula so bizarre? It is a synthetic identity because ego equals ego marks the identity of the
ego that thinks itself as the condition of all that appears in space and in time, and [illegible]
that appears in space and in time itself. In this there is a synthesis that is the synthesis of
finitude, notably the thinking subject, primary ego, form of all that appears in space and time,
must also appear in space and in time, that is ego equals ego. Hence the synthetic identity of
the finite ego replaces the infinite analytic identity of God.
I will finish with two things: what could it mean to be Leibnizian today? Its that Kant
absolutely created a kind of radically new conceptual aggregate. These are completely new
philosophical conceptual coordinates. But in the case of these new coordinates, Kant in one
sense renews everything, but there are all sorts of things that are not elucidated in what he
proposes. An example: what exact relation is there between the condition of the phenomenon
itself insofar as it appears?
I will review: The thinking ego, the finite ego, conditions, founds the phenomenal apparition.
The phenomenon appears in space and in time. How is this possible? What does this relation
of conditioning mean? In other words, the I think is a form of knowledge that conditions
the apparition of all that appears.
How is this possible, what is the relation between the conditioned and the condition? The
condition is the form of I think. Kant is quite annoyed. He says that this is a fact of reason,
he who had so demanded that the question be elevated to the state quid juris, now he invokes
what he himself call a factum: the finite ego is so constituted that what appears for it, what
appears to it, conforms to the conditions of the apparition such that its very own thought
determines it. Kant will say that this agreement of the conditioned and the condition can only
be explained by a harmony of our faculties, specifically our passive sensibility and our active
thought. What Kant does is pathetic; he is in the process of sneaking God in behind our
backs. What guarantees this harmony? He will say it himself: the idea of God.
What will the post-Kantians do? They are philosophers who say above all that Kant is
inspired [genial], but still, we cannot remain in an exterior relation of the condition and
conditioned because if we remain in this relation of fact, specifically that there is a harmony
between the conditioned and the condition and thats that, then we are obliged to resuscitate
God as a guarantee of harmony.

Kant still remains in a viewpoint which is that of exterior conditioning, yet he

does not reach a true viewpoint of genesis. It would require showing how
conditions of apparition are at the same time genetic elements of what appears.
What is necessary to show that? One has to take seriously one of the Kantian
revolutions that Kant left aside, notably that the infinite is truly the act of finitude
insofar as it overcomes itself. Kant had left that aside because he was content
with a reduction of the infinite t
he indefinite.

To return to a strong conception of the infinite, but in the manner of the Classics, one has to
show that the infinite is an infinite in the strong sense, but as such, it is the act of finitude
insofar as it overcomes itself, and in so doing, it constitutes the world of apparitions. This is
to substitute the viewpoint of genesis for the viewpoint of the condition. Moreover, doing that
means returning to Leibniz, but on bases other than Leibnizs. All the elements to create a
genesis such as the post-Kantians demand it, all the elements are virtually in Leibniz. The
idea of a differential of consciousness, at that point the I think of consciousness must
bathe in an unconscious, and there must be an unconscious of thought as such.
The Classics would have said that there is only God who goes beyond thought.
Kant would say that there is thought as a form of the finite ego. In this, one must
almost summon an unconscious to thought that would contain the differentials of
what appears in thought. In other words, which performs the genesis of the
conditioned as a function of the condition. That will be Fichtes great task, taken
up again by Hegel on other bases.

You see henceforth that at the limit, they can rediscover all of Leibniz. And us? A lot has
taken place. So I define philosophy as an activity that consists in creating concepts. To create
concepts is as creative as art. But like all things, the creation of concepts occurs in
correspondence with other modes of creation. In which sense [do] we need concepts? Its a
material existence, and concepts are spiritual animals [btes spirituelles). How do these kinds
of appeals to concepts occur? The old concepts will serve, provided that they are taken up
within new conceptual coordinates. There is a philosophical sensibility which is the art of
evaluating the consistency of an aggregate of concepts. Does it work? How does it function?
Philosophy does not have a history separate from the rest. Nothing, never is anyone overcome
[dpass]. We are never left behind in what we create. We are always left behind in what we
do not create, by definition. What happened in our contemporary philosophy? I believe that
the philosopher ceased taking himself for a founding hero, in the Romantic manner. What
was fundamental in what we can call, generally, our modernity, was this kind of bankruptcy
of Romanticism in our estimation. Hlderlin and Novalis no longer work for us and only
work for us within the framework of new coordinates. We are finished taking ourselves for
heroes. The model of the philosopher and artist is no longer God at all insofar as he [or she]
proposes to create the equivalent of a world. This is no longer the hero insofar as he [or she]
proposes to found a world, for it has become something else. There is a small text by Paul
Klee in which he tries to say how he sees his own difference even from earlier painters. One
can no longer go towards the motif. There is a kind of continuous flow, and this flow has
twists and turns. Then the flow no longer passes in that direction. The coordinates of painting
have changed.
Leibniz is infinite analysis, Kant is the grand synthesis of finitude. Assuming that today we
are in the age of the synthesizer, that is something else entirely.

Erosion of non-trade barriers regulation and standards [examples], otherwise there would not
be a trade agreement.
80 percent: non-trade barriers.
Inside the trade agreement, there is something called a bilateral investment treaty. Very
important.
That kind of trade agreement they have been trying and have been put forward since the
world trade organization 1996. And there have been always attempts to lower tariffs, various
versions. Always been one problem! that is: how do you force a nation to stick to it. And
more imporantly: how do you force a nation to stick to it if every 4 years the goverment
changes.
people would sign up, but then a new goverment would kick em out.
[china model? authoritarian!]
That model doesn't work (WTO)
(companies) we want a way to force nation to stick to the lowering of tariffs or the opening
op markets, no matter what changes of government (democracy/sovereignty)
NAFTA: what happened in nafta, if we put a bilateral investment treaty inside the trade
agreement it can solve the problems. It is a small piece of international law that is quite
obscure.
If a foreign company invest in your company, but then a (new) government, the company can
sue the government.
(1986, first use of treaty)
2011: 450 cases -> corporations used these bilateral investment treaties. There are now over
3000 cases. Basically the entire world is being tied down by these little bilateral investment
treaties.
How do they do it. It's not a diplomatic agreement.
Is a piece of internationl law. It is not the province of your elected representative/official. it is
the province of international lawyers.
what are they. There are only 4 part to them
1. you may not nationalize or expropriate a foreign corporation's business
2. you must treat them equally to your home grown company
3. you must treat fairy and equitably
4. if there is a dispute, between a foreign corporation and your government, you must accept
that the dispute is settled by arbitration.

This thing makes trade agreements enforcable for the first time.
[1.] stel amerika investeert in africa, bouwt een bedrijf, government expropriates.
(expropriation is expanded: the expropriation of the companies future profits) example
germany: Moratorium on nuclear power stations (democracy: public debate). But Vatenfall
said: we were expecting to make profits from these nuclear power. They took it to arbitrition!
where is sovereignty.
Here's something called inhouse defense quaterly.
2010: what do Bilateral investment treaties do? [you can make money!] "A bilateral
investment treaty requires the host government to behave in a manner consistent with
legitimate expectations of the foreign investor; to maintain the stability of the legal
and business environment in place at the time of an investment, conditions the foreign
investor would have relied upon when making a investment decision."
The government can't change its mind about something. whatever the regulation or the
standards, at the time that the foreign company decided to invest, if the goverment has the
audacity to change something, that would be the expropriation of future profits.
If the law was you can have 400 parts per billion of emission, and a new government changes
this, the company can sue the government for the loss of expected profits.
This can be done!, there is in this sense no intervention on national sovereignty. But the
government must now pay the losses of the company. Well: the company can take the gov to
arbitration
"tax itself can be an expropriation, when it does not fall in bound with internationally
recognized tax policies and practices."
So if a politician wants a big tax on companies, companies lawyers can claim that it is not in
accord with "internationally recognized tax policies and practices." because the lawyers
would say: we looked around the world, and normally this company will be taxed 12%
instead of 60%.
THis part of sovereignty is already lost [zygmunt bauman]
insert? interregnum?
[2.] NHS, BBC get tax breaks, subsidies etc.
It doesn't say : thou shalt privatize. However, if you like privatising, the TTIP will give you a
pair of pliers that makes it irresistible. you cannot no longer decide.
you can't have public subsidized thing.

Alberto Alemanno
Welcome to Understanding Europe: Why It Matters and What It Can Offer You! Youre
joining thousands of learners currently enrolled in the course. I'm excited to have you in the
class and look forward to your contributions to the learning community.
"What is europe
-" outside europe: food culture history
-Based in europe: bureaucratic monster, running a hopeless currency, run by
unknown officials and politicicans which sucks away power of countries, and boost a record
number of unemployment."
Scienticst don't know it: only a part. metahphor of the blind men and the elephant."
(implied is that Europe is bigger and complexer than any of the partial views can grasp.)
"what do you think the Eu is? a state, a federation of states, a super-state,, an association of
states? (what is a state?)"
Those of you how said superstate are both right and wrong: "the EU, as such is not a state.
We could say that it has its own territory, the territory is defined by the 28 member states and
also a population of the member states." [foucault: security] "But, the eu government is a
mixed one, being made by representatives of all the member states, and some directly elected
parliamentarians. And of course the degree of sovereignty the European Union can exercise
depends very much on the field of action. The Eu is rather an association of states which was
created on the basis of an international organization and set of treaties, and where all the
states are equal and enjoy the same rights."

"Het project van Europese integratie gaat lijnrecht in tegen de belangen van werkende
mensen. Het gebrek aan democratie is daarom geen weeffout, maar 'standard practice'. Het
Griekse OXI komt na het Nederlandse NEE en Franse NON in 2006. Beiden werden
genegeerd door de Europese elite. Toen de Ieren in 2007 het waagden om tegen het
Lissabonverdrag te stemmen, konden ze een jaar later over precies hetzelfde onderwerp
stemmen. Onder gigantische druk vanuit het bedrijfsleven en de Europese elite werd toen de
juiste keuze gemaakt."

Forced choice.
"Het ondemocratische karakter van de Eurozone wordt goed duidelijk uit de woorden van de
voorzitter van de Europese Commissie, Jean-Claude Juncker. In een openhartig interview in
1999 stelde hij over Europese besluitvorming: 'Wij besluiten iets, lanceren het en wachten
een tijdje af, of er iets gebeurt. Als er dan geen geschreeuw of opstanden uitbreken, omdat de
meesten totaal niet begrijpen wat er besloten werd, dan gaan we door stap voor stap, tot er
geen weg terug meer is.'"
"De capitulatie van de leiding van Syriza betekent niet het einde van het Griekse verzet tegen
de bezuinigingen, maar enkel dat we een nieuwe fase ingaan. Syriza kon alleen zo snel
groeien op basis van de ongekende politisering van de Griekse bevolking als geheel door 36
algemene stakingen en talloze demonstraties. Deze ervaring is niet weg. Het referendum
waarin een overweldigende meerderheid OXI zei tegen de bezuinigingen - ondanks
tegengestelde signalen van de leiding van Syriza - betekenden een verdere politieke
bewustwording."

"the certainties that decades of conditioning had led us to acknowlege were, all of a sudden,
gone, along with around $40 trillion of equity globally, $14 trillion of houshold wealth in the
US alone, 700,000 US jobs every month, countless repossessed homes everywhere . . . The
list is almost as long as the numbers on it are unfathomable" (1)
40 trillion dollar of equity vanished
collective aporia
"the collective aporia was intensified by the response of governments that had hitherto clung
tenaciously to fiscal conservatism as perhaps the twentieth century's last surviving mass
ideology: they began to pour trillions of dollars, euros, yen, etc. into a financial system that
had, until a few months before, been on a huge roll, accumalating fabulous profits and
provocatively professing to have found the pot of gold at the end of some globalized
rainbow.And when that response proved too feeble, our presidents and prime ministers,
men and women with impeccable anti-statist, neoliberal credentials, embarked upon a spree
of nationalizing banks, insurance companies and car manufacturers that put even Lenins
post 1917 exploits to shame" (2)
Adding to the general aporia, the high and mighty let it be known that they, too, were at a loss
to grasp realitys new twists.
"Thus we entered a state of tangible, shared aporia. Anxious disbelief replaced intellectual
indolence. The figures in authority seemed bereft of authority. Policy was, evidently, being
made on the hoof. Almost immediately, a puzzled public trained its antennae in every
possible direction, desperately seeking explanations for the causes and nature of what had just
hit it."

Six explanations for why it happened

1. "Principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people...to understand
the risks to the system as a whole'"
2. Regulatory capture
3. Irrepressible greed
4. Cultural Origins
5. Toxic Theory/wrong theory
6. Systemic failure
l. Principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people...to
understand the risks to the system as a whole'"
Letter to the queen: "The gist of their response was that, while they had their finger on the
pulse an their eye on the data, they had made two related diagnostic mistakes: the error of
extrapolation and the (rather more sinister) error of falling prey their own rhetoric" (4).
[financial experts claimed that they knew the data, but made a diagnostic mistake: the
error of extrapolation (_ _ _ > . . . .) and falling prey to their own rethoric (of claiming
that a new world had dawned)]
BUT:
Everyone could see that the numbers were running riot. In the United States, the financial
sector's debt had shot up from an already sizeable 22 percent of national income (Gross
Domestic Product or GDP) in 1981 to 117 per cent in the summer of 2008. IN the meantime,
American households saw their debt share of national income rise from 66 per cent in 1997 to
100 per cent ten years later. Put together, aggregate US debt in 2008 exceeded 350 per cent of
GDP, when in 1980 it had stood at an already inflated 160 per cent. (4)
US (financial sector) from 22 percent of national income to 117.
As for Britain, the City of London (the financial sector in which British society had put
most of its eggs, following the rapid deindustrialization of the early 1980s) suported a
collective debt almost two and a half times Britains's GDP, while, in addition, British families
owed a sum greater than one annual GDP.
----------So, if an accumuation of inordinate debt infused more risk the world could bear, how come
no one saw the crash coming?
The British Academys answer grudgingly confessed to the combined sins of smug rhetoric
and linear extrapolation. Together, these sins fed into the self-congratulatory conviction
that a paradigm shift had occurred, enabling the world of finance to create unlimited,
benign, riskless debt.

smug rehtoric = mathematized rhetoric, lulled authorities and academics into a false belief
that financial innovation had engineerd risk out of the system; that the new instruments
allowed a new form of debt with the properties of quicksilver. Once loans were originated,
they were then sliced up into tiny pieces, blended together in packages that contained
different degrees of risk, and sold all over the globe. By thus spreading financial risk, so the
rethoric went, no singel agent faced any significant danger that they would be hurt if some
debtors went bust. [voc shared risk]
It was a New Age faith in the financial sectors powers to create riskless risk, which
culminated in the
belief that the planet could now sustain debts (and bets made on the back of these debts)
that were many multiples of actual, global income. [SPECULATION, transcendence
etc.]
The 2001 new economy bubble was, in fact, worse than the sub-prime mortgage equivalent
that burst six years later.
According to the British Academys explanation (which, it must be said, is widely shared),
the Crash of 2008 happened
because by then - and unbeknownst to the armies of hypersmart men and women whose job
was to have known better - the risks that had been assumed to be riskless had become
anything but. Banks like the Royal Bank of Scotland, which employed 4,000 risk managers,
ended up consumed by a black hole of risk gone sour. The world, in this reading, paid the
price for believing its own rhetoric and for assuming that the future would be no
different from the very recent past. Thinking that it had successfully diffused risk, our
financialized world created so much that it was consumed by it.

2. Regulatory capture
Markets determine the price of lemons. And they do so with minimal institutional input, since
buyers know a good lemon
when they are sold one. The same cannot be said of bonds or, even worse, of synthetic
financial instruments. Buyers cannot taste the produce, squeeze it to test for ripeness, or
smell its aroma. They rely on {external, institutional information} and on {well-defined
rules} that are designed and policed by dispassionate, incorruptible authorities. This was
the role, supposedly, of the credit rating agencies and of the states regulatory
bodies. Undoubtedly, both types of institution were found not just wanting but culpable.
--------When, for instance, a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) - a paper asset combining a
multitude of slices of many different types of debt - carried a triple-A rating and offered a
return 1 per cent above that of US Treasury Bills, the significance was twofold: the buyer
could feel confident that the purchase was not a dud and, if the buyer was a bank, it could
treat that piece of paper as indistinguishable from (and not an iota riskier than) the real money
with which it had been bought.

[derivatives. i will pay you 100 dollars, irrespective of future market price, if the price goes
up, i take the profit, if the price goes down i take the loss. contract obliges the buyer and the
seller to sell and buy at a future fixed price]
[equity is assets (money) minus liabilities]
This pretence helped banks to attain breathtaking profits for two reasons.
1 If they held on to their newly acquired GDO - and remember, the authorities accepted that a
triple-A rated
GDO was as good as dollar bills of the same face value - the banks did not even have to
include it in their capitalization
computations.
This meant that they could use with impunity their own clients deposits to buy the triple-A
rated GDOs without compromising their ability to make new loans to other clients and other
banks. So long as they could charge higher interest rates than they paid, buying triple-A rated
GDOs enhanced the banks profitability without limiting their loan-making capacity.
The GDOs were, in effect, instruments for bending the very rules designed to save the
banking system from itself.
2 An alternative to keeping the GDOs in the bank vaults was to pawn them off to a central
bank (e.g. the Fed) as collateral for loans, which the banks could then use as they wished: to
lend to clients, to other banks, or to buy even more GDOs for themselves. The crucial detail
here is that the loans secured from the central bank by pawning the triple-A rated GDO bore
the pitiful interest rates charged by the central bank. Then, when the GDO matured, at an
interest rate of l per cent above what the central bank was charging, the banks kept the
difference.
The combination of these two factors meant that the issuers of GDOs had good cause:
(a) to issue as many of them as they physically could;
(b) to borrow as much money as possible to buy other issuers
GDOs; and
(c) to keep vast quantities of such paper assets on their books.
Alas, this was an open invitation to print ones own money! No wonder Warren Buffet took
one look at the fabled GDOs and described them as WMDs (weapons of mass destruction).
The incentives were incendiary: the more the financial institutions borrowed in order to buy
the triple-A rated GDOs, the more money they made. The dream of an ATM in ones living
room had come true, at least for the private financial institutions and the people running
them.
" The bankers paid the credit rating agencies to extend triple-A status to the GDOs that they
issued; the regulating authorities (including the central bank) accepted these ratings as
kosher; and the up-and-coming young men and women who had secured a badly paid job
with one of the regulating authorities soon began to plan a career move to Lehman Brothers
or Moodys. Overseeing all of them was a host of treasury secretaries and finance ministers

who had either already served for years at Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, etc. or were hoping
to join that magic circle after leaving politics" (8).
"In an environment that reverberated with the popping of champagne corks . . . it would take
a heroic - a reckless - disposition to sound the alarm bells, to ask the awkward questions, to
cast doubt on the pretence that triple-A rated GDOs carried zero risk" (8)
It would not have been easy to doubt a system's sustainability if everyone is making
huge sums of money.
3. Irrepressible greed
For a few decades, beginning with President Roosevelts post-1932 attempts to regulate the
banks, the Leviathan solution became widely accepted: the state could and should play its
Hobbesian role in regulating greed and bringing it into some balance with propriety.
The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 is possibly the most often quoted example of that regulatory
effort. (10)
Greenspan truly doubted that any state institution, including the Fed, could rein in human
nature and effectively restrain greed without, at the same time, killing off creativity,
innovation and, ultimately, growth. His belief led him to adopt a simple recipe, which shaped
the world for a good nineteen years: since nothing disciplines human greed like the
unyielding masters of supply and demand, let the markets function as they will, but with the
state remaining ready and willing to step in to clean up the mess when the inevitable disaster
strikes. Like a liberal parent who lets his children get into all sorts of mischief, he expected
trouble but thought it better to remain on the sidelines, always ready to step in, clean up after
a boisterous party, or tend to the wounds and the broken limbs. (11)
Indeed, Greenspans model of the world, which he himself renounced, is still alive, well and
making a comeback. Aided and abetted by a resurgent Wall Street bent on derailing any
serious post-2008 attempt to regulate its behaviour, the view that human nature cannot be
restrained without simultaneously jeopardizing our liberty and our long-term prosperity is
back. (11)
Just as in a simple optical parallax, where all perspectives are equally plausible depending on
ones standpoint, here, too, each of the explanations listed above illuminates important
aspects of what happened in 2008. And yet they leave us dissatisfied, with a nagging feeling
that we are missing something important; that, while we have glimpsed many crucial
manifestations of the Crash, its quintessence still escapes us. Why did it happen, really? And
how could legions of keenly motivated, technically hyper-skilled market observers miss it? If
it was not greed and profligacy, loose morals and even looser regulation that caused the Crash
and the ensuing Crisis, what was it? If the Marxists expectation that capitalisms internal
contradictions will always strike back is too simple an explanation for the events leading
to 2008, what is the missing link there?
My figurative answer is: the Crash of 2008 was what happened when a beast I call the Global
M inotaur was critically wounded. While it ruled the planet, its iron fist was pitiless, its
reign callous. Nevertheless, so long as it remained in rude health, it kept the global economy
in a state of balanced disequilibrium. It offered a degree of stability. But when it fell prey to

the inevitable, collapsing into a comatose state in 2008, it plunged the world into a simmering
crisis. Until we find ways to live without the beast, radical uncertainty, protracted stagnation
and a revival of heightened insecurity will be the order of the day.
[derivatives. i will pay you 100 dollars, irrespective of future market price, if the price goes
up, i take the profit, if the price goes down i take the loss. contract obliges the buyer and the
seller to sell and buy at a future fixed price]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uTeOEBIcpw
What is the purpose of a derivative? what is it?
A derivative is a contract who's value is derived from an underlying asset.
This asset can be a share, a commodity, a share, it could even be the weather.
a contract who's value is defined/determined/ by an underlying asset is a derivative.
so if the value of an underlying asset changes, it goes up or down, the value of the
CONTRACT wil go up or down, (not necessarily a positive relation) / a contract between two
parties, who's value is derived from an underlying asset.
Let's take gold. 100 euro per gram.
I want to go into a contract with you, you sell me gold at 100 euro. I will pay you whatever is
the difference of price of gold in two weeks from the price it is today if it is above 100 euro.
If gold is trading at 120 e per 10 grams in two weeks, i will pay you 20 euro. However, you
tell me, if gold is trading below 100 euro, you are going to pay whatever it is the value below
100 euro. If gold is trading at 80 per gram, you pay me 20 euro.
What we have essentially done here is that we have entered into a contract. A contract which
is gonna exchange a certain amount of money based on the price of gold in two weeks.
This is a derivative contract. The value of this contract, the value for your perspective can
either be plus or minus 20 euro, based on/depended on/derived on the value of gold.
Why would you enter in such a weird contract??!!
Suppose there you are a farmer, and you produce wheat. however, you will produce wheat in
3 months. suppose that today, the price of wheat is 2 euro/kg. Now let us suppose as a farmer,
you have a cost of production 1,5/kg.
However you can only make this profit in three months. but things happen in three months.
we could either trade at 1,6/kg or 2,4/kg. Therefore, the profit you will be making will
changes. SO THERE IS AN UNCERTAINTY, THERE IS A RISK.
Now let's look at it from another perspective. I am a flower producer. now as a flouer
producer, the flower producer has to buy the wheat from the farmer, (2e/kg). let's suppose his

cost of of production is 0,5e/kg. than his total cost of production is 2,5e/kg, and if his selling
price is 3,0e/kg.
This is then if the price of wheat in 3 months is 2 euro/kg. bu the price can be 2,4e/kg and his
cost of production will be at 2,9/kg, therefore he will only make 0,1e/kg profit. However, if
price of wheat will go down to 1,6e/kg his production cost will go down and he will make
0,9e/kg of profit.
Also uncertainty. risk. 0,9 <> 0,1 e/kg. But the risk are exactly opposite!!!
the derivative contract is set up to eliminate this risk (so the idea is that you can eliminate
risk/ a riskless risk).
so the farmer is now obligated to sell for example for 2e/kg (even if market price is at
2,4e/kg, or 1,6e/kg). The flour producer is obligate to buy for 2e/kg (irrespective of market
prices). both thus lock their profits at 0,5/kg.
Derivatives is to eliminate, reduce, or transfer risk!
a contract that you may have, that you didn't realize, but IS a derivative contract: car
insurance!
you as a car owner, pay a premium to insurance company, and the insurance company
promises to give you protection of your car (insurance gonna pay you back, you get
protection)/
This is a contract who's value is derived from an underlying asset (the car). what you do is
you transfer risk to insurance company. So basically you entering a contract, but you are not
getting anything, not a car, not good or a service etc; what you get is you only a promise.
your buying a protection by promise.
The value of the premium is depended on: the asset (car) , fixed amount of time. (you get a 5
year on fixed price, you pay more). The probability of accident, interest rates.
Derivatives are contracts who's value is derived from an underlying asset.
10 jaar vast is denk ik ook een derivaat.

A security is a tradable financial asset. It is commonly used to mean any form of financial
instrument, but the legal definition of a "security" varies by legal and regulatory jurisdiction.
In the USA, a security is a tradable financial asset of any kind.[1] Securities are broadly
categorized into:

debt securities, (e.g., banknotes, bonds and debentures) [papieren geld, staatsobligatie

equity securities, (e.g., common stocks)

derivatives, (e.g., forwards, futures, options and swaps).

The company or other entity issuing the security is called the issuer. A country's regulatory
structure determines what qualifies as a security. For example, private investment pools may
have some features of securities, but they may not be registered or regulated as such if they
meet various restrictions.
Een hedgefonds of hefboomfonds is een beleggingsfonds dat open is voor een beperkt aantal
investeerders en dat door de financile autoriteiten wordt toegestaan om een groter aantal
strategien toe te passen dan een gewoon beleggingsfonds. In het algemeen wordt een
"performance fee" betaald aan de beheerder. Ieder hedgefonds heeft zijn eigen
investeringsstrategie.
A hedge fund is an investment vehicle and a business structure that pools capital from a
number of investors and invests in securities and other instruments.[1] It is administered by a
professional management firm, and often structured as a limited partnership, limited liability
company, or similar vehicle.[2][3] Hedge funds are generally distinct from mutual funds as their
use of leverage is not capped by regulators and distinct from private equity funds as the
majority of hedge funds invest in relatively liquid assets.[4][5]
Leverage: borrowing money to invest (hefboom) (difference in percentage) bet on commodities, currencies, bet on indexes, bet on interest rates, bet on
derivatives.

capital -> time!

The act of trading in an asset, or conducting a financial transaction, that has a significant risk
of losing most or all of the initial outlay, in expectation of a substantial gain. With
speculation, the risk of loss is more than offset by the possibility of a huge gain; otherwise,
there would be very little motivation to speculate. While it is often confused with gambling,
the key difference is that speculation is generally tantamount to taking a calculated risk and is
not dependent on pure chance, whereas gambling depends on totally random outcomes or
chance.
Shorter time? as opposed to investment?
Classicism
The question of infinity. The question of the infinite, or the question of the relationship
between finite and infinte, or between finitude and infinity.

The french philosopher Descartes, has written that the infinite was clearer than the finite! For
Descartes, the question of the infinite is not very difficult. For the Descartes the difficult
question is the finite.
If the the question of the finite is simple, the infinite becomes difficult. Still, its difficult.
This question is first a very imporatant question today, when we must have a clear idea of the
relationship the finite and the infinite today, for ourselves. but in some sense as a vital
question. A vital question of our concrete life. And naturally i try to explain to you a CLEAR
concept of the inifinite, maybe a difficult concept, but a clear concept. (just as descartes).
Why is the question of the inifity, of the concept of the infinite, infinity, so important today.
You know, the question of the infinite is often linked to religion. It is common to say: we are
finite, mortal beings, and the question of the infinite is a transcendent question/ infinite is
beyond. But we must transform this vision. we are in close relationship to the infinite. and not
only to the infinite of religious/theological nature (mysticism). But there exist a question of
the infinite, which is really a fundamental question of our understanding of the world as it is,
and our understanding of OUR PROPER LIFE (ethics).
it is a concrete question. but we must propose a proof of this point of view.
All across history of theologhy/philosphy this question is difficult question. with many
possibilities, contradictions, and many CONSEQUENCES too. So we start historically. with
a historcial vision of the problem.
Historcally we have three sequences, three moments of the question of the infinite (in any
case of the western world; in our intellectual world). We have three answers: but they are
VERY different. But there is a proper historical movement. First proof of the difficulty of the
question.
1. Antiquity (the Greek and the Roman vision). Birth of philosophy and Christianity.
2. Christian Age, 5th to 15th (until modern physics)
3. Modern world, 16th to today
We can determine these three sequences from the point of view of the conception of the
infinite. and from the point of view of the question of the relationship between finitude and
infinity .
1. Antiquity
in the first sequence the concept of infinity is purely a NEGATIVE one (great importance). as
it is in our languae (IN-finite, ~finite, a-peiron).
Peiron = limit.
Infinte in the classic sense is: that what is without limit. But for the greek culture, all what
really exist has a limit. In the greek culture, to exist is to have a limit. and your existence in
some sense is the existence of a limit. because your existence is the existence or your

differnce with something else. your real existence is always the existence of the difference
(aristotle). but we cannot have a clear concept of difference without any/having a clear
concept of a limit. so between to exist and to have a limit there is a close relationship:
practically a form of identity.
If somethign has no limits at all, it is really that the thing does not really exist. The perfection
is precisly to be in it excact and proper limit. perfection is not - in the greek culture - at all
infinite. on the contrary, the perfection is always something which is exactly in its proper
harmony. perfection is something Excactly in conformity with its proper idea [!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ernee vs. jorg]
there is really a form of identity between the concept of perfection and the concept of limit.
And what is unlimited cannot be perfect. what is perfection is precisly to realize your
excactly your limit. a conception of existence is also a conception of harmony, to be in
harmony with the concept itself. haromony with its proper limit.
Limit -> difference -> existence -> harmony -> perfection (all these notion are in the same
framework).
And so there is something negative in the vision of what is witouth limit, because what is
without limit is also withouth harmony, without perfection, without difference and finally
without TRUE EXISTENCE (MOST IMPORTANT POINT).
In the greek world, gods are finite, but not infinite. they are immortal, but that is not for the
Greeks infinity. But immortality and infinity are different. we are finite not only because
there is the death, not only because our existence comes to an end. we are finite intrinsically.
we are finite during our life. we are not finite only at the point death. The same holds for the
gods, they are finite just like us, but inside their finitude they are immortal.
the relationship between mortal (and to be exposed to death), and to be finite is not greek, it is
christian.. so the greek gods/paganism are inside a finite idea of perfection. they are perfect in
some sense. a perfection inside the true limit of existence. (jealousy, sex, etc.)
we are finite, being is finite, and the cosmos/world is finite. THe cosmos is something like a
good totality / harmony / perfection (leibniz). its not perfect because it is infinite. it is a
closed world. Magnificent totality. The world is something like a work of art, of aesthetic
perfection. we have a clear comparison between the creation of the world, and the creation of
the sculpture. so the world is inside its limit too. this perfection is of aesthetic nature (not of
sublime, great transcendent infinity).
very important consequene: the definition of what is bad -> to go beyond our limits. to go
beyond yoru proper limit. to be a-peiron. to be outside your limit. to go beyond your proper
limit is an excess, -> hubris. (to go beyond limits).
something NOT AT ALL romantic: (if we define romanticism precisely by the idea to go
beyond the limit, to do something, to create something what is beyond the limit). a positive
conception of the infinity.
definition of classical vision: callsical vision of a work of art (perfection) but also what is a
good life, what is a true life; the classical vision is that the perfection of life/creation is to do

what you can do inside your limitation. INSIDE a fundamental limitation. Finally the
question of the finite , and the rel of inf./fin/ is the center of the classical conception. This is
why it is so important.
When we are thinking that the perfection of life, work of art, intellectual life, politics, is the
perfect realization of the limit, we ARE in a classical conception! [today!!!!
we can do all inside the fundamental limitation of the economy. we can do
democracy/politics/art/love within a limitation that is more fundamental than something else.
And so it is a form of the contemporary world and not of the greek world, to say that in some
sense there is a fundamental limitation inside which we must do with what we can do.
Not: oke we must go beyond! the limitation: we cannot go beyond the necessity. (the
economic constraint). We are some sense in a classical world. not to go beyond, but accept
the limit, and [possibility impossibility zizek. what is really infinite must be outside the world
(universe?).
If something infinite exist, it is outside this world. but our life as such is inside the limits.
(christian + classic -> third sequence?)
We are not at all in a completely new world (tradition). it is a locale speed (iphone) in the
global situation (end of the world). if all that is good is inside the limit, we return to the
classic vision. (who determines the limit -> state, identity, foucault etc. division/discipline etc
etc.).
to go beyond our proper limit is an excess. and hubris is the bad subjectivity
(FOUCAULT!!!!) outside its limits!!! and the artistic form is therefore tragedy. the creation
of the tragedy. the theater is always an analysis of the world. THIS is why it is so important to
have a relationship between theater and philosophy.
Every tragedy is a narrative of hubris. the man who goes beyond the limit. and who is
punished by this fact. so tragedy is also a vision of the relationship between finite and
infinite. we MUST stay in our limits and all will be good. if we go beyond our limits,
precisely we have a tragedy. the tragedy is by itself the movement of hubris. and so tragedy in
the greek sense of the world is a lesson, is a lesson of finitude. by something like a counter
example. the catastrohpic consequence of hubris. and hubris in some sense is a subjective
vision of the infinite. it is to go beyond. to organize an infinite power of the king. to think that
the power of the king is infinite and if you have something like that you have something like
tragedy. a negetive vision of the infinite.
The question here is, if we are thinking that we must stay in our limit. we must abandon every
notion of the absolute (truth) somthing that is not relative, something that is true
(identity/idfference ---> infintie). this is not the case, because there is a greek conception of
the absolute , but it is NOT infinite!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At the center of the greek vsiion we havty teh notion of a finte perfeciton. absolute idea or
absolute existence it must nbe something finite (plato) not something a peiron (justice, etc et.)
and so the great charactyerisiqu of the absolute for the greek is not something infinte, but
something that I call the ONE. realization of the one, but not infinity.

THe idea of the good has been interpreted as the abstract name for the transcendence of god.
labday, pure perfection as something which exist under the name of god. but there is no
relation ship between absolute and infinity!!
the idea of the goo (the god of aristotle) is perfect, but this perfection is precisly a complete
realization of their pure being. there is no differnce between there being and their
existence [Leibniz]. that they realize as something which exist, the PURE notion of
themselves. There is no difference between the idea of their limits, and the perfect existnece
of this limits, it is a complete realziation of the limitation itself. why are we not perfect?
because we have not yet realized this identity/unity between existence and pure idea(l), pure
pefection in pure limit.
There is always something which is not the complete realization of what we can do. Human
being are finite in two different senses. first we are finite , since all what exist is finite. but we
are also finite, because we are not perfect. we are before our limits. we do not manage to
realize our limits. government, art of government, cybernetique.
relationship between existence and being (!).
in the Greek conception, existence and being, are inside their proper limits. So the infinite is
outside. infinite is the movement of excess, attempt to beyond limit, it is a tragedy. But:
existence can realize completely the possiblity of our true being or sometime cannot. and the
absolute is only the complete realzation of by existence of the real of being as such. the
perfection is always inside the existence itself to realize what we can realize inside our proper
limits. Its the second sense of finite. we are finite not only because our existence AS our
being is inside our limits. it also because we are not perfect. [||existence|||
>.......possibility.....}Limit. without complete perfection, without complete realization of our
possibilities. which are preescribe by our being inside our temporal development of our
existence.
Two possible defintion of what is BAD. Hubris, is bad, and lack, or insufficiency to realize
our limits. It is a human condition, can be describe between the excess (after the limit) and
the lack (before the limit).
[||existence|||>.......possibility.....}Limit{<<<Hubris>>>>}]
Lack
Excess
and the perfection of the ONE, what is named the ONE, you know the signification of the one
is that between existence and being we have the one. The same thing, the same across what
the perfection of being exist. {?] not only as a possiblity, but as a realization. we are in a state
of nonperfection.
[today] We have personal possibilities, and perfection is to realize our personal possibilities,
to do what we can do and desire (realize your potential). to realize ourselves as individuals it
is a greek conception too. That finally our existence is a good one if we realize our
possiblities of our being (foucault) what is a good life? it is not to change the world. its to
create something which is appropriate to our personal being. There is something greaak
inside this vision. There is the constraint of being, which prescribes possibilities, and inside
existence the realization of possibilities which are prescribe by our being, our situation, our
culture, our body.

But maybe the question is not in realizing possibilties, but to create possibilities. Maybe our
destiny is not to be inside the possibilities that are proscribed by situaion. but to find new
possibilities.
example: in the political field, artistic field, science, love, the very destiny of our existence is
NOT to be inside the limitation of possibilities. we have posssibilites, and the good life is to
the best possibilities. i realize myself. But what is myself. myself is defined by my
possibilties (to be a hipster, to be a entrepreneur, to be what ever you like as prescribe). so
they are here. But the vital question is perhaps to find other possibilities. THis is why is so
important to prescribe possiblity, because the possibilities are defined in fact in a material
way, the possibility is defined by the market (of things, but also of JOBS, PROFESSIONS).
what is possible is proscribed by the market (jobs, life, existence).
a closed definition of possibility. finally what exist must be on the market. the market of
things, the market of life, the market of mates.
But if you go beyond the possibility we go beyond the possibilities/limit. and so it will be
viewed as hubris!. Maybe the necessity is to accept hubris. IS is trying to create a new
possibility (yes we can!/podemos). We do not create the possiblities on the market, the
freemarket creates itself the possibilities.
the question betwene the one (idenitty) and infinity (beyond)
The existence must realize a closed framework of possibilities. Being proscribes possiblities,
and existence is the realization of a part of this possibilities. perfection (good life) is the
realization of something like a big part of positive possibilities. complete perfection is the
realization of all parts of possibilites. And perfection is the situation where existence and
being are practically the same thing.
In god, you cannot distinghuis betwen existence and being. so the one is really the name of
god. God is the one. the realzation of the one, the sort of being where existence is by itself the
complete realzation of being. and there is no necessity that this definition implies that god is
infinite. God is the one, first. as the complete unity of being and existence.
So we can say that today, the vision is that today we must become all some small gods. We
are all small gods (monads). God is the same thing but with big possibility. it s the idea of
every individual is like a small god, that is , a complete realizaton of its proper possibilities.
individualist vision. vision of the individual as a closed god of its proper existence. There is
no reeal differnce between being and existence. a mortal god.
It is why, in this conception we must inscribe death, only as one of our possibilities. to die as
best as possible (obligation to die around 100 years, the goal is equality of death, a life with
all its proper possibilities). if really the NORM of existence is to realize the possibilities of
our personal/individual being, is also the case of death, so death must be one of our
possibilities and so you have to right to say, i must die not before something else.
It is a tragedy when someone dies before its proper possibilities could have been realized.

The idea, that there is no realtionship between infinity and the one. Classical conception,
perfection without infinity. dinve perfection, withouh infinity. God is not infinite, but is
perfect in aristotle. there is the beginning One - Infitiy. an the beginning is a separation. clear
in artistic creation: fo the ideal of greek the artistic creation is not to create is not to create
something new. not a new idea of the world. not beyond the limit (beyond the academic
limit). complete realization. to create a work of art which is an image of the one. the one, if
the one is the complete harmony of existence and being. the paradigme is greek sculpture.
where the human body is presented, is exposed as the closed perfection in itself. the human
body is the image of the true life. the image of the body of the complete realization of the
idea of the body. it is not at all to find a new way for the creation of a new possibility.
more genereally: what is thinking. thinking in general in the greek culture. to think is also to
go from multiplicity to unity, under the law of the one. when we go from multiplicity to
unity, you clarify the limits, and by thinking: conceptual clarification of limits (fokking
philosophers like ziggy en tijmen sometimes). thinking/creation/love/politics, they are all in
the direction of the one.
the classical conceptino is that THE FINITE IS THE NORM!!!!!!!! infinity by contrast is
UNFORM NOFORM, NOTHING, NOT EXISTING ETC ETC.
the perfection of life is the realization of closed or finite possibilities [butler/foucault etc
ect.]perfection is a complete identity between existence and being, accross the realzation of
poss. (art pol love science).
the ultimate law of what exist. is the one. separated from the infinite. the point is that creation
is the same thing as realization (of a given/closed possibility?). but when creaiton is always a
realization, it is in fact a position concerning the relationship between finite and infinite.
THIS IS THE POINT.
If we understand all forms of creation as realization of existent possibilites, you are also
saying that the NORM is the finite. That creation is something inside finitude.
the strength is to propose an objective vision of possibilities. because prescirbe by being,
objectively, we can know them, and after that we can realize them, but in an objective field,
which is the objective field of being as prescribing possibility. what i can do I KNOW,
because all possibilitie have an objective nature (IQ TEST, etc etc.) creation is dependend on
knowledge (of possibility) which is the same of the knowledge of being (Quince). THIS IS
THE STRNGT
THe weakness is that in some sense we have not creation at all! we only have realization. we
have not the possibility to create possibilities. if we want to escape this classical vision we
must accept that something can be created which does not exist at all. which has no being at
all for the moment. something outside the finitude of being. outside the limitation.
in some sense outside knowledge. we cannot really have a knowledge of nothingness, an
experience but not a knowledge (a definition) when we go beyond the classical vision, what
is really important is not what exist, but what does not exist, what is in some sense beyond
the limits. And creative subjectivity must accept hubris. [so intuitve and almost obvious!]
this has been introduced by the second sequence.

Christianity
We can define the second sequence as the fusion between the One and the infinite. Under the
name of GOD. God is the name during all this sequence fo that sort of transcendent fusion of
the one and of the infinite (Paul, christianity, equality is not idenity, but infinity). If there is a
fusion between the one and the infinite, (GOD) we have also a fusion of the idea of th
einfinte and the classical idea of perfection. the classical idea of perfection is a complete
idenity between existence and being (Leibniz). if under the name of the one, if the one is the
name of that sort of perfection (complete idenity) if the realzation of being (of potentialities)
by existence, if it is the same as the infinite, (Leibniz) we have that sort of perfection but at
an infinite level. At the level of god, we have the complete realization of being as a form of
existence (leibniz best of possible words).
Its being itself, which is infinite. The being of god is infinite. So the existence of God, is the
existence of an infinite being, so the existence of infinite possibility (LEIBNIZ). And so the
very concept of god is that for god, there is no distinction between the possible and the real at
the infinite level. there is infinte level, but all these infinte poss exist (SPINOZA/LEIBNIZ).
The second sequence is also somethiing of the first sequence. as the defintion of perfection as
the complete identity between being and existence. But if being is infinite, we have some
consequence.
Because there is infinite number of possibilites. God is the realzation of something infinite. so
all that exist is on the dependcy of GOD (S/L). there cannot be something outside the infinite
possibilities. So we have the COMPLETELY NEW IDEA THAT GOD CREATES THE
WORLD. and finally creates all that exists.
All that exist are realzations of the being of god in some sense. As infinite being of
possibility. so it the second great genealogy of the second sequence, which is the idea of a
GOD which is first is also the one, and after that is the god that also creates all that exists. We
dont have this idea in the greek world. It is an idea of Judaism. Jewish origin.
and we can say that the second sequence is abstractly the fusion of the one with the infinite.
But historically, it is the creation of a fusion between something greek and something jewish
(the birth of the western world).
Becase of the fact that if the infinite is in relationship with being, the perfection of the one is
the realization , not only of some possibilites, by infinite possibilities. and so infinite
possibility is really the conception of possibilities without limit (a-peiron). but possiblities
without limit means, that all possibilitie is inside the being of god. god creates all that exist,
and all that can exist. (perfectly consistent.)
Under the name of god. we have during this sequence the incorporation of the infinte to the
one, so complete change because the perfection is not at all to be INSIDE the limit, but
REALLY you have NO LIMIT (a-peiron). This is the fundamental change. If the one is the
same thing asl the infinte, we have infinite possibility, the realizaton of possibility is without
limit, and so we have the absolute potency of god (freud, Lacan Master father superego)
without limit and without hubris. (because if you have no limit, you cannot go beyond the
limit: God). New GOD.

Fundamentally the ONE changes of nature. there is something of a fundemental change of the
definition of the on. certainly it is always the perfection in the sense of complete realization
of being in existence. BUt there is someting new: in Judaism, god is not only one, but there is
only one god (monotheism). and so ONE is a quality of god, god is the one in the greek
sense, but there is only one god. in another sense of the word one. once god is immanantly by itself - the one, but there is also one god in the numerical sense : there is no other god. so
we can say that god is the one, but also there is one god, and so finally god is the only one.
the One One. the only one. it is twice one (HEGEL).
And it is why GOd progressivly is separated of the world. Greek gods, exist inside the
world!!!! [greeks: gods inside the world, love human females]. in the world, only 1 world and
inside the world there are gods (paganism). Not the case of new god, why?, because precisey
we must affirm because of the infinite that the new god created the world, so he cannot have
created the world without having created the world. outside the world -> transcendent god.
But the new problem is what is the relationship between god and the world!!!!!!!!!!!!
If god is the realization of the infinite in the form of the one. (probably the abstract definition
of the new god). God is outside, the creation. and the world itself is finite (leibniz, spinoza).
because is precisely the creation of the infinite as such. so the world is the realm of finitude
(kant, Kierkegaard, Heidy), and god is the realm of infinity. at the end. vision of great
monotheism of our world (J/C/I). so that is the situation, a new situation, in the second
sequence the question of infinity becomes finally the relation between god and the world.
God as the true realm of the infinite, the realm of infinite, and human beings in the world as
realization of something which is in finitude.
why is this problem very difficult? because there is no [longer] a common measure (as with
the greeks), there is no common measure. in the classical vision we have not this problem,
because infinite is an abstraction. the perfection is inside finitude, the norm of life is inside
finitude (limit, what to do with ones life to be perfect). but in the second sequence, when we
have a fusion between the one and the infinite, we have the multiplicity of finitude, and there
is no common measure. so there is pure transcendence of god, and in some sense with regard
to god we are like NOTHING.
Because the relationship between the finite and infinite is without common measure, and so
finally it is like the relationship between being and nothingness (Hegel, Sartre). Great
difficulty. Fundamental difficulty of thinking, of philosphy during ALL the second sequence.
How to understand the relationship between the infinity of god and the finitude of the
creature. If there is no common measure between the infinte and the finite. why is not
completely indifferent (we are nothing right? in comparison to him). And so the most
important question can be named the question of mediation. mediation between the finite and
the infinite. what is the the third term between the transcendence of god and the finitude of
the world. which is a mediation of the two. the possiblity of a creation of a possible common
measure between the two.
And this is a new question!
in the realm of finitude we have no sort of question, because we only have the problem of
realization of the possiblity of being. example: if god is infinite we cannot know all the

imposssiblities, because possibilities are within the infinity of god. so god, can naturally
realize the possibility, but we cannot know (miracles) logical necessity. perfectly rational.
if we have a fusion between the one and the infinite. we have an infinite possiblity
concerning the possiblity of god. Miracle. realization by god of a new possibility that we
cannot understand. sometimes it is said that miracle is something irrational. but no. it is only
something irrational from the point of view of finitude. Miracle is the existence of miracle is
purely rational possiblity. if the transcendence of god is outside the realm of finitiude,
certainly god can create new possibilities, and so it is rational that we can have miracles.
Pascal insist on this point. purely rational from the point of view of the existence of god.
Complete absence of miricals would be imposssible (limitation of the potency of God). And
so it would be the proof of the falsity of the fusion of the one andthe infinity of being. miracle
is the first form of mediation of one with infinity. in our world without any explanation that
can come of this world. so miracle is in some sense a rational proof of something trancendent,
something outside the LAW of the world.
And it is why pascal says, concerning the rational critique of miricals. that they are irrational,
the rationality is on the side of miracles. if we have somehting of the fusion of the one and the
infinite. it is something of the meidation, finitude, and infinitude. and the proof is that we
cannot understand the complete world, is the rational prove that god exists. if we can show
miracle: exception of rule of what exist. an acces, a new mediation in the direction of the
existence of the new god. The god which realizes the fusion between the one and the infinite
(LEIBNIZ).
the pardigme of the mediaion however, is the figure of christ. the great invention of
christianism. is precisly a mediation between the finite and the infinite. the first attempt to
compose the real existence, the historical existence of a mediation. as you know jesus IS god.
but is god inside the finite form of human existence?
jesus is god inside the form of human existence, in finitude (suffering and death). so the christ
as such is a common measure between infinte and finite. the seuqence of the progressive
fusion of the one and the infinite. we have with christ a common measure, which is
simultaniously infinite and finite (dialectiek).
Thus the second sequence is christian, not because of the domination of christian church, but
more abstract/philsophical level: solution to the problem. a possibility of a mediation.
complete fusion between the two in the pure subjectivity,, in subjectivity christ (if you
become like chirst in the body of christ you can become infinite). it was really a proposition
of a new vision of all the construction of human destiny. and it is certainly why there has
been a real succes of this proposition as it is in some sense a rational supposition.succes is not
arbitrary. It is a miracle by itself (mangod).
If there is a common measure, it must be from the point of view of god ( thus it is a miracle).
if we would have understand, it would have been in the world. it is a miracle. but is to say
that the christ is a miracle is not a true objection against this vision. it is not a rational
objection. OF COURSE its a miracle, because it is a creation of god which is infinte inside
the world which is finite. is a miracle for us. but not by itself a miracle. what is rational is
precisly that it is a miracle. witouth a face. we have to see this sequence from the point of
view of its strenght.

to propose a human subjectivity that by itself is a common measure. this common measure
between infinte and finite is also a common measure between the one and the multiple. if the
multiple is the finite existence. it is also a common measure between true being and
nothingness (sartre) of human beings. and the attempt to find a mediation between being and
nothingness. precisely the goal of ALL the second sequence. because the christ by itself is a
medation absolute and existence near notingness (suffering, death). And we can name all that
the dialectical thinking.
I think that on the philosophical level the second sequence is the creation of dialectics.
dialectics which is finally the thinking of mediaton (between two contradictory terms, very
ordinary). in some sense christianism is the invention of dialectical thinking.
two contradictory terms, the mediation, and the movment towards the result - which is the
fourth term (hegel has four terms). after all the christ is not only the third term; we have the
action of the christ, the movement of the christ. the action of the third term is a kind of
displacement of the first two terms. in the life of christ and death of christ we have something
of the infinite that goes inside the finite (spirit). because the christ is something like that.
finally he is not on the one hand finite and on the other hand infinite. it something of the
movement by which infinite goes itself inside the finite. and this movement, which is the
dialectical movement, is something of the result of the process. not reducible to 1 2 3. but we
have 1 2 3, but we have and the movement by which the third term displaces the two first in a
new manner. that is why, after the christ, the world is not the same. there is a change. because
there has been a common measure between god and human beings. a name of all that is that
human being are saved/ saved of their finitude. they have a new acces to the pure ifinity of
god, by the sacrifice of christ. it is a vicotry of the spirit, not a defeat
all that is really the creation of dialectical thinking. and after that we have the return of the 4
terms. God, Jesus and the salvation of humanity. Father, Son, humanity -> Spirit. [infinite,
mediation, finite -> movement]
In hegel we have many form so of the rithms of dialctical thinking. but the genearl
framework is one of abstraction, nature, and absolute.] -> [Being as such, natural/historical
existence, absolute which is simultaneously abstract and universal and natural and concrete]
concrete universality.
we have first the closed perfection of antiqueity. with Sculpture and tragedy. and we have
after that the mediation of christianity, which gives us the absolute idea of dialectical
thinking. and the important ponit is that inside dialectical thinking we have the possibility to
go beyond the limit. why? because we have an acces to the real of infinty, we are not
absolutely closed inside or finitude. there is a possible access. first by christ, but then it
becomes a philosophical idea, not only a religious idea. a metaphyscial idea. the idea of the
possibility of a human being to open an acces (heidegger) to the infinty of absolute /
possibilities (romanticism). figure of the christ has been the first attempt. but then we have
the philsophical emancipation (althusser en die ander , epestemolgische breuk). and not
closed in the finitude. Romanticisme. we can organize an acces of something outside the
world inside the world , we can create a new christ, a new mediation. in the form of poetry, in
the form of history, political revolution (french). which is like a descent of infinity inside the
finitude. so romanticism is the final result of the sequence.

It is the reverse of the classical vision: we can create new possibilities in the form of a new
acces to the infinite. i think that if sculpture and tragedy were typically classical. we can say
that poetry and music are appropriate to the second sequence!!!!!!!!!1111.
the point of romantic poetry is the idea that we can create NEW possibilities. we cannot only
use the language, but inside the language by poetic means , create new possibility, the
language can be forced to say something that was before impossible to say. poetry is the
possiblity to say what is impossible to say. when you create the possibility of something
impossible, you create a new possibility. because in the law of the world there is a clear
distinction between possibility and impossible. Same in music. we can create a sensible world
that is absolutely new. art+philosophy.
most imporatant point is taht we can we find something like this in politics also. The idea that
we can create a new possibility (romantic), a new acces to infinity. the idea that we can go
beyond the law of the hierarchical world, the economical world, we can do all that by a real
collective cration of something new. not by patient, transformation (parlement) we can do
that by a real creation. we can create a new humanity. a new representation of humanity by
itself. (nineteenth century). Great romantic century. we can find the idea that the collectivity,
being together can in historical becoming something as new as a new poem. this is really the
idea. there is something artistic/aesthetic in this vision. the idea that the historical action can
be and must be on the same level of artistic creation, for the collectivity and by the means of
collectivity, a new collective world. which is something like an historical political work of
art. a work of politics. it is not at all the realization of a new possibility. its not the idea we
can something do better (capitalism with a human face). the idea that we can go in action
from a completely different idea of what is human being as such. the idea of new human
beings, transformation of world = transformation of subjectivities.
infinite and finite? if there is posssibilty of true creation of a new world, it is not by the
creation of an objective possibility. its by the creation from nothingness.but can be and must
be created by thinking and action. its not the consequence of the old world, but is the birht of
a new world, with new laws of the world.
with poetry/music/revolutionary thinking we have a new conception of infinty and finite
withouth the necessity of religious framework. there is no obligation of the religious
framework. in the beginning it is like that. something of this is ifirst inside religion, but later
outside (marx). but there is finally a completely new vision the relationship between finite
condition of action the finite world and the infinite. and the mediation is new possibilities, the
creation not only of a new real but of a new possibility, which was not percieved, not
existenct before : new possibility (modernity). something which was not there before.
something like thinking, action, decision, organisation, movement and so on.
and there is also something like a mediation, a mediation between the old world and the new
world, and this mediation is something like event, which happen without any predictability
(miracle)/possibility to calculate. so it is possible to say that inside the romanticism, which
comes before the classical vision, we have by necessity something near a miracle.
it is like a rational miracle too, because it is also a mediation between the law of the old
world, and the possibility of the new possibility, a new subjective possibility. the opening of
new possibility, new differences. miracle, not because it is irrational, but because it is a

mediation between law of world and new possiblity. maybe it will end up into nothing. for
example christianity has failed. french revolution has failed. limited consequences. a new
sudden possibility of something that was objectively impossible. nobody was thinking that
the complete change of the situation in egypt was possible. it was a very strong situation.
mubarak was a big chief.
after that, the historian can fill it in. but in the true life, in the present, it is not a consequence.
one day, there is something like that. it is the rationality of the becoming of a new possbility,
not the determinanation of the situaton as such.
completely new articulation between all our terms. we have much mor something like that:
[classic]

existence (finite) ....||....and being (a-peiron)

\
/
[romantic]
Event as mediation
--> interruptiono of the laws of the finite
(like christ) [spal]
we exctract from the impossible itself something of a new possible.
we can do something with our being, something what we cannot imagine. (we can do
something which we cannot do) we can do something which was impossible for us to do. a
new feeling concerning a new work of art. we experience in our proper life that something is
possible which was not possible. this is the birth of a new subject. a new relationship between
existence and being. (subject, like the body of christ, [body foucault/ psyche butler / subject
zizek] the mediation between existence (what i was) and being (the possibility of the
new[salvation/ new subjectivity / love]).
opening of new possibility of our life (revelation of a potentiality of our subjectivy, which
was obscure/impossible)
there something terrible when we find a new acces to the infinite. possibility of an individual
to become a subject. and that was totally absent of the classical vision, were the good is to
realize our subjectivity.
realization becomes creation.

03/10/2015
http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/het-asielspook-waart-door-het-land~a4155105/
"Asielzoekers, je kunt ze koesteren en tegelijkertijd doodsbang voor ze zijn. Neem de reactie
van een vrouw op Facebook, toen de uitgeprocedeerde Angolese Mrcia (18) en Glucio (13)
begin september tch een verblijfsvergunning kregen. 'Gelukkig maar, dit zijn nette
Nederlandse kinderen. Het is toch te gek voor woorden dat deze kids terug moeten en wij
asielzoekers binnenlaten.'
Wat is er feitelijk bekend over criminaliteit en asielzoekers? Misdaad onder asielzoekers
wordt overschat, blijkt uit wetenschappelijk onderzoek. De Rotterdamse hoogleraar
sociologie Godfried Engbersen koppelde in 2008 registers met informatie over asielmigranten
aan gegevens over verdachten. Criminaliteit ontstaat vooral doordat mensen soms maandenof zelfs jarenlang in afwachting van hun procedure zijn en niet aan hun nieuwe leven kunnen
beginnen, bijvoorbeeld met werk. Als een asielzoeker sneller duidelijkheid krijgt of hij al dan
niet mag blijven, blijkt de kans dat hij betrokken raakt bij criminele activiteiten veel kleiner.
De criminaliteit die voorkomt onder asielzoekers is vooral kruimelwerk, zo bleek uit een
onderzoek van Willem de Haan, emeritus hoogleraar strafrecht en criminologie aan de VU in
Amsterdam, uit 2002. Hij bestudeerde een Gronings azc met asielzoekers van allerlei
nationaliteiten, ook Syrirs. Van de incidenten buiten het centrum betrof bijna driekwart
(winkel)diefstal. Geweld buiten de asielzoekerscentra doet zich slechts zelden voor en vrijwel

uitsluitend als reactie bij betrapping op zwartrijden of na winkeldiefstal van alledaagse

levensbehoeften als tandpasta, zeep en onderbroeken.
Volgens de Duitse mensenrechtenexpert Max Klingenberg moeten we af 'van het idee dat
vluchtelingen allemaal mensenrechtenactivisten zijn', zei hij donderdag in de Volkskrant.
'Ideen die vluchtelingen hebben veranderen niet zodra zij de grens met Europa oversteken.'
wie op Facebook vaak op berichten klikt die negatief zijn over asielzoekers, krijgt
automatisch meer van hetzelfde aangeboden.
'In de publieke opinie gaat medeleven hand in hand met onbehagen', zegt publicist en
massapsycholoog Jaap van Ginneken. 'Goh, wat zielig die peuter n shit, ze komen over de
snelweg aangemarcheerd. Het mededogen voor Mrcia en Glucio zegt niets over het
algemene beeld. Positieve emoties worden opgehangen aan individuele gevallen. Zodra het
over tienduizenden mensen gaat, voelt het anders. Je kunt de situatie zielig vinden n
beangstigend.'
Van Ginneken: 'Nu zegt bondskanselier Merkel: het hindert niet, komt u maar, we vangen u
op. Dan denken veel mensen toch: ja hoor eens even, waar houdt dit op? Ik merk dat die
vraag mij ook bekruipt.'
19/09/2015
http://www.nu.nl/politiek/4129093/komst-vluchtelingen-vereist-modernisering-vandemocratie.html

Medezeggenschap
Volgens de SCP-baas hebben bedrijven de medezeggenschap in veel gevallen beter geregeld
dan de politiek. "Als we iedereen erbij willen betrekken, moet het democratische proces dat
al meer dan 150 jaar oud is echt gemoderniseerd worden."
Hij pleit voor betere manieren om burgers inspraak te geven. "Inspraakrondes in de
gemeenteraad zijn waarschijnlijk niet toegankelijk genoeg", aldus Putters. "We moeten op
zoek naar methodes die voor iedereen begrijpelijk zijn: dat kan heel goed via internet,
burgerconferenties of inspraak via loting."
----------http://www.nu.nl/buitenland/4129125/vluchtelingen-duitsland-krijgen-mogelijkzorgverzekering.html#slide-4
Het bestuur van de regeringspartij CDU/CSU heeft zich in september uitgesproken tegen een
zorgpas voor vluchtelingen. Volgens de partij zorgt dat ervoor dat er meer mensen naar
Duitsland komen.
-----------------

http://www.nu.nl/buitenland/4129075/juncker-wil-kroatie-helpen-met-enorme-stroomvluchtelingen.html
De voorzitter van de Europese Commissie, Jean-Claude Juncker, heeft Kroati "technische en
logistieke hulp" aangeboden voor het omgaan met de enorme stroom vluchtelingen waar het
land mee te maken heeft.
---http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/29/donald-tusk-defends-european-valuesunited-nations
Hoewel zijn methoden veranderden, bleef zijn centrale axioma ongewijzigd: 'dans hoeft niet
te verwijzen, het gaat om de beweging zelf die de betekenis draagt en overdraagt.'
(Erasmusprijs 2000).
I want to discusse the structure of the contemporary world from four different points of view.
First, from a dialectical point of view, that is the thinking of contradictions, fundamental or
principle contradiction, and also, it is the same thing, in the subjective point of view (not only
in the objective structure fo the world, onthe political level economy). What is today the most
important conflict in the concerning ideas, visions of the world, ideology and so on.
Second, from an historical point of view, maybe principally our relationship to the recent
past. sequence second wold war, cold war.
Third, from a militant point of view. our experience of the contemporary world must be in
some sense divide. on the one hand we have the succes of the capitalist system. after the idea
that capitalism is the only way to organize development/production. Also china, is now
integratied. Only ONE World. ALso we have important mass movements, arab sprin, occupy,
but also occupy the street (ferguson) unity of all people. Syria, Lybia, popular riots in suburbs
paris, london. many many revols of workers in china, bangladesh. The world is not absolutely
reduced to the form of unity of global capialism.
Fourth point, from a prospective point of view, what is our future. it is always are risk to
speak of the future. future cannot be predicted or calculated, it happens. globalized world is
the future, can maybe happen in a good way.
First point. What are the dialectical vision of our world today, even if this world is in some
sense a unified world, under the law of capitalism. In some sense all is in the paper. (New
Communist Politics).
the most important point in the paper is that the contemporary world is the result of the
interplay between two fundamental contradictions. cannot be rduced to one contradiction.
During cold war: we can have conviction that the world is divided between two (capitalism
vs. socialism). West and East. Cold war was the name of the contradiction between these two
worlds. Today we have One world, but we have two fundamental contradictions
so it is a world with another complexity. one of this contradiction is the ideological but
fundamental opposition concerning the economic and political action. It is a subjective
opposition. not objective (state v state, state v. economy). On the one hand: dominant

conception of freedom: individual freedom (politics/democractic) but also freedom of

enterprise, freedom to have property without limits (economy). The affirmation is that the
only way is democratic constituion, freedom of opinions, multiplicity of parties, with finally
professional politicians. We find different forms , but the fundamental frame is clear.

In contrast, corporate giants have

another option in the face of lower demand: rather than reduce
prices, they can choose to cut production massively, so much
so that prices hardly move.
"The twin deficits of the US economy thus operated for decades like a giant vacuum cleaner, absorbing other peoples surplus goods
and capital" (22)
"Powered by Americas twin deficits, the worlds leading
surplus economies (e.g. Germany, Japan and, later, China) kept churning out goods that Americans gobbled up" (23)
money (debt) -> pays for goods (germay produces goods to earn money) -> which is invested in america -> which creates debt in
america -> the debt that pays for the goods.
almost 70 per cent of goods made in germany, japan, china flows back to wall street.
"and what did Wall street do with them? It instantly turned these capital inflows into direct investments, shares, new financia
insturments, new and old forms of loans and, last but not least, a 'nice little earner' for the bankers themselves." (23)
socialized production of surplus/socialized agricultural production (social: rules of living together).
Spanish, Dutch, British and Portuguese traders began to exchange British wool for Chinese silk, silk for Japanese swords, swords
for Indian spices, and spices for much more wool than they had started with. Thus, these goods established themselves as
commodities and, eventually, as global currencies (27).
in one market and sold them at a high price in some remote market. Tragically, the trade in commodities was soon to be augmented
by another kind of trade - the trade in slaves, whose heart-wrenching unpaid labour was to generate more of these global
commodities (e.g. cotton in the Americas). At some stage landowners in Britain joined this lucrative global trading network in the
only way they could: they produced wool, the global commodity that the British Isles could deliver at the time. To do so, however,
they expelled most of the peasants from their ancestral lands (to make room for sheep) and built great fences to stop them from
returning - the enclosures.
At a single stroke, land and labour had become commodities: each acre of land acquired a rental price that depended
on the global price of the wool that one acre could generate in a season.
The rise of commodification, which also led to the flourishing offinance, coincided with a subtler, more powerful, form of consent.
And here lies a delicious paradox: consent grew more powerful the more economic life was financialized. And as finance grew in
importance, the more prone our societies became to economic crises. Hence the interesting observation that modern societies
tend to produce both more consent and more violent crises.
Why is this? Under feudalism, surplus production and its distribution was a fairly transparent affair. After having piled up the very
corn that they had produced, the peasants would watch the sheriff depart with the masters share of a resource he had had no hand in
producing. Put simply, distribution happened after the harvest was in. Who got what chunk of it depended on visible power and
customs that everyone understood quite well.

But when the market extended its reign into the fields and the workshops, things changed drastically. A veil of
obfuscation descended upon the emerging commercial societies, resulting in both new forms of consent and crises (i.e. misfortunes
of a purely economic variety).
What was it exactly that made the difference? Why were market societies more prone to economic meltdowns? The main
difference occurred when, some centuries before, both land and labour stopped being mere productive inputs. They were,
instead, transformed into commodities (traded in specialist markets at
free-floating prices[!]).
At that point a great inversion occurred: distribution no longer came after production. Increasingly, it preceded it. Put
simply, the labourers were paid wages in advance of the harvest. By whom? By their employers, of course. By people
who no longer commanded labour, but instead hired it. By people who, come the nineteenth century, came to be known as
capitalists.
[speculation!!!!!!!]
Thus finance acquired a mythical new role as a pillar of industry, a lubricant of economic activity, and a contributor to societys
surplus production (31).
Unlike the landed gentry, the new capitalist employers, not all of them rich, went to bed every night and woke up every
morning with an all-pervasive anxiety: would the crop allow them to pay their debts to the landlord and the banker?
Would something be left over for their own families after the produce was sold? Would the weather be kind? Would customers
buy their wares? In short, they took risks. And these risks blurred everyones vision regarding the role of social power in
determining the distribution of the surplus between the employer, the landowner, the banker and the worker.
[risk society, speculation, reflexivity (modernity/capital), debt/guilt]
Whereas the feudal lord understood that he was extracting part of a surplus produced by others, thanks to his political and military
might, the anxious capitalist naturally felt that his sleepless nights were a genuine input into the surplus, and that any profit was his
just reward for all that angst and for the manner in which he orchestrated production.
But as the Age of Capital progressed, finance became entrenched both in practice and in established ideology.
In this brilliantly challenging world, which encompasses both nineteenth-century Manchester and twenty-firstcentury Shenzhen, Condorcets secret appears as an impossible riddle.
The exercise of social power retreats behind multiple veils that no amount of rational thinking may penetrate easily.
Employer and worker, moneylender and artisan, destitute peasant and dumbfounded local dignitary - they are all stunned
by the pace of change. Each feels like a powerless plaything of forces beyond their control or understanding.
The Crash of 2008 also left our world floating in a pool of bewilderment. Its roots are to be found at the dawn of industrial, market
societies. Our current aporia is a variant of the puzzlement engendered by the simultaneous progression of commodification,
financialization, and the crises these processes inevitably occasion.
[shumpeter] Successful corporations grow big; then they grow complacent (in ways Ibn Khaldun would have recognized), are
usurped by hungry, innovative upstarts, and subsequently fail. While their death causes much pain, the dinosaurs extinction gives
rise to new, more vibrant species of enterprise. In this sense, crises play a crucial, redemptive role in the story of capitalist
development.
Richard Goodwin (1913-96) was a Cambridge economist who summed up Marxs view as follows:
Capitalism is ruled by two parallel dynamics.
The first dynamic determines the wage share (total wages
as a share of national income): as employment increases
above a certain threshold, say E , labour becomes scarce,
workers bargaining power rises, and therefore so does the
wage share.
The second dynamic determines employment growth:
as the wage share surpasses another threshold (FT), so
employment suffers.

Note that this cycle was produced without saying anything about money and finance. When finance is added to the mix, the
cycle becomes more volatile and a new, unprecedented, systemic risk appears on the horizon: the risk of a catastrophic fall
(as opposed to a gradual recessionary decline), followed by
a stubborn, long-lasting, depression.
Crisis is: Redemption. New Beginning.
In this sense, periodic crises, rather than avoidable accidents, constitute natural plunges into some abyss and help history along its
path.
So what makes a Crisis different from run-of-the-mill crises? A radical inability to act as its own medicine is the answer. Or, put
slightly differently, the lack of anything redemptive about it.
The key to this is finances immense capacity to inflate risk.
This is precisely what caused, at least in part, the Crashes of 1929 and 2008: new financial instruments had fuelled speedy growth
and had made wild investments seem safer than ever before. Until the accident that we had to
have happened.
[S1] Edison epitomized the new entrepreneur at the heart of a brand-new phase in the development of market societies: an inventor
who innovated in order to create monopoly power for himself - not so much for the riches that it provided, but for its own sake; for
the sheer glory and the sheer power of it all. (38)
Men like Edison, Westinghouse and Ford were part of the avant-garde of a new era, in which innovations produced
new sectors and companies that resembled corporate mini-states.
[monopoly] In contrast, corporate giants have another option in the face of lower demand: rather than reduce prices, they can
choose to cut production massively, so much so that prices hardly move.
Indeed, his administration tried to do what every shopkeeper does in lean times: tighten the belt. The only problem was
that 1929 was not just another crisis. It was a capital-G variant, during which market faith, belt tightening and money fetishism are
ruinous.
The rationale behind the Gold Standard was simple: if governments were allowed to print money at will, they would not be able to
resist the temptation to do so.

"The Crash of 1929 taught us an important lesson that we seem to have forgotten: the capitalist machine is infested with
two gremlins. They render it unstable and prone to crises - and every now and then a capital-C Crisis. What are the two gremlins?
Money and labour. Both are, seemingly, commodities not dissimilar to cheese and hammers. When one borrows money to buy a
house, one suffers a cost (known as interest) and pays a price (the interest rate). Similarly, hiring labour requires the payment of a
fee, not unlike the hiring of an electricity generator. But then come the differences" (45)
Money and labour
When chief executive officers (CEOs) ponder a large-scale investment in some new plant or product line, they spend sleepless
nights trying desperately to peer into the future. To see what? To see whether there will be sufficient demand for their final product.
(derivative example, risk elimination)
[important! moeten liegen] Thus CEOs are caught in the prophecy paradox: if each foretells good times, then good times will
come and their optimistic
forecasts will be confirmed. But if they prophesy bad times, then bad times will ensue, thus validating the original
pessimism. Prophecy, therefore, becomes self-fulfilling, and this means that corporate magnates cannot base their decisions either
on some scientific analysis of the markets or on rational trains of thought.
niet: Ze LIEGEN! maar: ze moeten noodzakelijk liegen.
-------------Tom, Dick and Harriet are invited to play a simple game. They are seated in different rooms, isolated from one another. Each is
given $100 and the option either of keeping it or of putting it in a joint kitty. The rules are simple: they must contribute either the
whole $ioo to the kitty or nothing. In the end, if there is $300 in the kitty, that sum is multiplied by ten and the resulting amount is
divided equally. Conversely, if the kitty contains less than $300, the whole amount is lost and each player leaves with whatever
money they have left (i.e. nothing if they contributed their $100 to the kitty or $100 if they did not contribute). The best scenario is

that each puts $100 into the kitty, the total is multiplied by ten to yield $3,000, and Tom, Dick and Harriet walk away with $1,000
each. But will they contribute $100 each? Let us tap into Harriets thoughts just before she reaches her decision: If I think that both
Tom and Dick will contribute their $100 each to the kitty, then of course it makes perfect sense for me to contribute my $100 as
well. But if one of them fails to do so, then I shouldnt hand over my $100, because $100 is better than nothing!
So, for Harriet to decide to contribute her $100, she must think:
(a) that Tom will predict that both she and Dick will contribute; and
(b) that Dick will predict that both she and Tom will contribute.
Optimism prevails when each expects everyone else to contribute their $100, while pessimism means the opposite. It turns out
that the best strategy depends on ones estimation of the degree of optimism among ones co-players. This game offers an example
of what philosophers refer to as an infinite regress - a situation where it is impossible to work out what to do rationally. Even if
Tom, Dick and Harriet were hyperrational, and respected each others intelligence to the full, they would still not know what
to do. It is the stuff of true human drama played out on a stage where the prophecy paradox makes safe prediction impossible.
-------------------John Maynard Keynes famous description of investment decisions as a realm where we devote our intelligences
to anticipating what average opinion expects average opinion to be
"Unfortunately, the future is unknowable. The only thing business folk know for sure is that demand is never strong for long at a
time of falling wages and interest rates. The result is an interesting, albeit tragic, conundrum: at a time of recession, when there is
a mounting glut of labour and uninvested savings, a reduction in wages and interest rates does not help. In fact, it deepens the
recession" (49).
The more successful corporations are at replacing human labour with magnificent machines, and at disciplining human labour
to perform with machine-like efficiency, the lower the value that our societies will be producing. They may churn out
huge quantities of goods and shiny artefacts that we all crave. But the value of this avalanche of goodies will be tending to zero, just
as the machine economy in The M atrix is a value-free zone, despite the vast output of its mechanized workforce.
The process resembles a subterranean, almost ironic, conspiracy between the paradox of success and the prophecy paradox: growth
and wealth creation require the utilization of machinery, the development of new technologies and the intensification of labour
productivity. Market societies flourish when commodification, financialization and technological innovation are on the rise. The
more streamlined and mechanized production gets, the lower the human contribution to its existence becomes and the cheaper it
gets. But then the more output that is squeezed from a given amount of human creative input,
the less the per-unit value of the output. If mobile phones and all sorts of other gadgets are getting cheaper, it is because
their production is increasingly being automated, involving next to no human labour. Thus profit margins decline. When they
fall below a certain threshold, the first bankruptcies occur. Like gentle snowflakes at first, their steady fall finally triggers an
avalanche. The Crisis then starts. Once it has society in its iron grip, the gremlins in the system (the labour and money
markets) refuse to let it escape before humanity has paid a huge price in the form of a wasted generation.
In addition, the ghost of human free labour haunts market societies by generating a wicked dynamic, which tries, for the sake
of profitability, to mechanize human activity, only to find that the more it succeeds the less valuable are the products produced.
They planned for the most far-reaching socio-economic engineering human history has ever seen. I call it the Global Plan.
--As the combined costs of the Vietnam War and the Great Society began to mount, the government was forced to generate mountains
of US government debt.
What they failed to add was that the whole point of the Global Plan was that it should revolve around a surplus-generating United
States. When America turned into a deficit nation, the Global Plan could not avoid going into a vicious tailspin.
In August 1971, the French government decided to make a very public statement of its annoyance over US policy: President
Georges Pompidou ordered a destroyer to sail to New Jersey to redeem US dollars for gold held at Fort Knox, as was his right
under Bretton Woods! A few days later, the British government of Edward Heath issued a similar request (though
without employing the Royal Navy), demanding gold equivalent to $3 billion held by the Bank of England. Poor, luckless
Pompidou and Heath: they had rushed in where angels fear to tread! President Nixon was absolutely livid. Four days later, on
15 August 1971, he announced the effective end of Bretton Woods: the dollar would no longer be convertible to gold. Thus,
the Global Plan unravelled.

Meanwhile, within two years of Nixons bold August 1971 move, the dollar had lost 30 per
cent of its value against the

Deutschmark and 20 per cent against the yen and the franc. Oil producers suddenly found that
their black gold, when denominated in yellow gold, was worth a fraction of what it used to be
[?]. Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which
regulated the price of oil through agreed cutbacks on aggregate oil output, were soon
clamouring for coordinated action (i.e. reductions in production) to boost the black
liquids gold value.
The conventional wisdom about what caused the 1970s stagflation is that the OPEC countries
pushed the dollar price of oil sky high against the will of the United States. It is an
explanation that runs counter to logic and evidence.
Indeed, the Saudis have consistently claimed that Henry Kissinger, keener to manage the flow
of petrodollars to America than to prevent the rise in energy prices, was encouraging them all
the way to push the price of oil up by a factor of between two and four.4 So long as oil
sales were denominated in dollars, the US administration had no
quarrel with the oil price increases (97)
Recalling that the new aim was to find ways of financing the US twin deficits without cutting
US government spending, or increasing taxes, or reducing US world dominance,
American policy makers understood that they had a simple task: to entice the rest of the
world to finance the USAs deficits. (98).
It appointed Paul Volcker as Fed chairman, with instructions to deal decisively with inflation.
His first move was to push average interest rates to 11 per cent. In June 1981, Volcker raised
interest rates to a lofty 20 per cent, and then again to 21.5 per cent. While his brutal
monetary policy did tame inflation (pushing it down from 13.5 per cent in 1981 to 3.2 per
cent two years later), its harmful effects on employment and capital accumulation were
profound, both domestically and internationally.
Nevertheless, the two prerequisites had been met even before Ronald Reagan settled
in properly at the White House.
A new phase thus began. The United States could now run an increasing trade deficit with
impunity, while the new Reagan administration could also finance its hugely expanded
defence budget and its gigantic tax cuts for the richest Americans. The 1980s ideology of
supply-side economics, the fabled trickle-down effect, the reckless tax cuts, the dominance of
greed as a form of virtue, etc. - all these were just manifestations of Americas
new exorbitant privilege: the opportunity to expand its twin deficits almost without limit,
courtesy of the capital inflows from the rest of the world. American hegemony had taken a
new turn. Thereign of the Global Minotaur had dawned.
It is tempting to look at the market as an impartial arbiter... But balancing the requirements of
a stable international system against the desirability of retaining freedom of action for
national policy, a number of countries, including the US, opted for the latter... And as if this
were not sufficiently loud and clear, Volcker added: C[A] controlled disintegration in the
world economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980s (my emphasis).
"So, when interest rates soared, as part of Volckers strategic disintegration in the world
economy, communist regimes in Warsaw, Bucharest and Belgrade began to feel the pinch.
Once they realized their grave dependency on the capitalist enemy, they gave their all to
repay the debts as quickly as possible, imposing particularly harsh austerity measures on their

own workforces.6 The result was mass discontent, major unrest and the first stirrings of
organized opposition, e.g. the Polish trades union Solidarity, which was soon to spearhead a
chain of events leading to the first collapse of a communist regime" (108).
In the meantime, and for similar reasons, the Third World debt crisis erupted. The IMF
happily offered to lend money to
governments for the purposes of repaying the Western banks, but at an exorbitant price: the
dismantling of much of their public sector (including schools and clinics), the shrinking
of the newly founded state institutions, and the wholesale transfer of valuable public assets
(e.g. water boards, telecommunications, etc.) to Western companies.
It is not at all an exaggeration to suggest that the Third World debt crisis was the
colonized worlds second historic disaster (after the brutal experience of colonization and the
associated slave trade). In fact, it was a disaster from which most Third World countries have
never quite recovered.
These destabilizing moves, which threatened to undermine the international order, were
counterbalanced by the Minotaurs most intriguing aspect: the fact that it worked just like a
GSRM - a weird, most peculiar, terribly unruly GSRM; but a GSRM nonetheless. In fact, it
worked in precisely the opposite way to how the original GSRM had worked under the
Global Plan. Under the Global Plans GSRM, the United States was the surplus-amassing
country with the good sense to recycle part of its surpluses to Western Europe and Japan, thus
creating demand for its own exports, but also for the exports of its protgs (Germany and
Japan primarily). In sharp contrast, the Global Minotaur worked in reverse: America absorbed
other peoples surplus capital, which it then recycled by buying in their exports.

was on the same wavelength, convinced that they lived in an age of some Great Moderation.
Depressingly few seemed willing to notice that the reality was quite the opposite. For under
the facade of temperance, the world economys natural balance was being ravaged by a
terrifying Global Minotaur, whose very presence few were willing to acknowledge.
Unable to come to terms with their Minotaur envy, the elites pretended there was no beast in
the room. Their pretence was so powerful that they hypnotized themselves into believing
that, yes, it was possible for everyone (Europe, Japan, China, India, etc.) to achieve the same
success as the United States had (since the mid-1970s), simply by adopting the American
model. As if in a bid to provide yet another testimony to the human capacity for wishful
thinking, hordes of otherwise bright people lulled themselves into a remarkable fantasy: that
it was possible for a ll major capitalist centres around the world to attract, at once, a massive
net flow of capital (in the region of $3-5 billion dollars per working day, which was the sum
that the Global Minotaur had managed during its golden years); that it was feasible for a
ll major capitalist centres not only to breed their own Minitaurs but also to cajole the rest of
the world into nourishing them.
Meanwhile, the Global Minotaur was hollowing out the American economy at the same time
as it was strengthening its bottom line. To this purpose, it benefited from the enthusiastic and
loyal services of a series of handmaidens. Wall Street was, naturally, the most obedient. But
there were others: corporations like Walmart were creating a new business model that added
to the rivers of cash, while politicians and economists were providing the institutional and

scientific cover that made the whole enterprise appear legitimate, even enlightened. In this
chapter I focus on these handmaidens. (115).
Box 5.1
Who were the handmaidens? The ringleader of the handmaidens was none other than Wall
Street. Its first reaction to the Minotaurs capital flows was a takeover and merger frenzy that
resulted from the sudden cash inflow both from
foreign sources and domestic profits. New financial instruments, mostly hedging devices,
soon began to play an influential role. Beyond Wall Street, a second handmaiden emerged in
every state and every city: the ubiquitous Walmart, ushering in a new type of conglomerate
that showed the rest of corporate America novel ways of squeezing both labour costs and
small-scale suppliers. Back in Washington (and in other centres of political power), a third
handmaiden appeared: the ideology and politics of trickledown - the idea that the best way
to benefit the poor is by piling up new riches on the doorstep of the super-rich. This
particularly ugly handmaiden would have lacked all credibility had it not been for a fourth,
pseudo-scientific handmaiden - toxic economic theory. In everyday parlance, this came to be
known as supply-side economics, but in the great economics departments it functioned as an
all-conquering mathematized superstition. Its models, however irrelevant they might have
been as depictions of capitalism as it really existed, provided the inspiration for the
mathematical formulae that allowed Wall Street to do two things: first, to argue that the
finance sector should be liberated from all regulation, and, secondly, to latch on to the real
estate sector. Indeed, the toxic derivatives based on sub-prime mortgages (those weapons
of mass financial destruction that brought us the Crash of 2008) would never have been
possible without the toxic economics that started life in the best universities, at around
the same time as the Minotaur was being born.
Alas, from 1980 onwards, prudence was for wimps. The Minotaur was generating capital
inflows that in turn guaranteed
a rising tide in Wall Street that submerged any remaining last islets of caution.
Pay notice to: Vulgar materialsit explanation. ("experience of the modern," humanism)
"to be modern is to find ourselves in an environtment that promise sus adventure , power, joy,
growth, tranfosmtaion of the ourselves and the world - and, at the smae time, that threatens
to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are" (31).
"there seem to me good reasons for abandoning the problematic of modernization. In the first
place, drawing the contrast between traditional and modern society leads only too easily to an
ahistorical paradoy of th range, diversity and complexity of social formation prior to the
Industrial revolution."
1) "Weber's strong historical sense, deployed to great effect in his discussion of different
forms of domination in Economy and Society, was undemrined by an epistemology which
made a virtue of stylization and caricature [ideal types] and by his preoccupation with the
problem of rationalization"(35).
Secondly, the theory of rationalization itself, particularly once banalized in the form of
Parsons' 'pattern-variables', involves an idealist theory of social change, in which alterations
in belief underly historical transformations. Technological change tends to be thought of as

the materialization of theoretical discoveries, social conflict as the consequence of 'strains'

produced by some disequilibirium within th prevailing value-system. [yes but why is this a
bad thing, and why is this idealist in the first place]
Can ideas not change the world? (communism)
Finally, the theory of modernization in the functionalist and evolutionist form which Parsons
gave it, is implicitly teleological, treating the most 'developed' existing society, the United
States, as the goal towards which, not simply its counterparts elsewhere in the Western bloc,
but also the 'less developed' societies of the Third World will increasingly tend.
WHAT IS TELEOLOGY!!!!! aristotle kant etc.
[historical materialism]
Historical materialism, which analysis the phenomena with which Weber, Parsons and
Habermas are concerned primariliy under the concept of the capitalist mode of production,
offers in my view a superior theoretical perspective to the problematic of modernization.
Thus, in the first place, the concept of mode of production [lukacs, jameson, althusser,
zizek, overdetermination etc etc] , a specific combination of productive forces (labourpower, means of production) and of production relations (relatioins of effective control over
the productive forces), permits careful discrimination between different kinds of social
formation, including those - the slave, feudal and tributary modes of production - which
precede the development of capitalism . . . Secondly, the Marxist theory of social change is
materialsit, according explanatory primacy to the structural contradicitons which develop
between the forces and relations of production and to the class struggle which emerges from
exploitive production relations. (36) Thirdly, historical materialism is a non-teleological
theory of social evolution: not only does it deny that capitalism is the final stage of historical
development, but communism, the classless society which Marx believed would be the
outcome of socialist revolution, is not the inevitable consequence of the contradicitons of
capitalism, since an alternative exists, what Marx called 'the mutal ruination of the
contending classes', Rosa Luxembur 'barbarism.' (36)
Forces of production, relations of production
It is as an explanation of the changes preoccupying modernization theoriests that historical
materialism claims our attention. The defining charactereistics of capitalists relations of
production - the transformation of labour-power into a commodity and the control of
the means of production by competing capitals - are responsible for a tendency for the
productive forces to develop rapidly. Competing capitals seek to undercut their rivals by
introducing cost-cutting technolocial innovations, while the subjection of workers to the
labour-market allows capitalists to develop systematic incentives designed to enhance labour
productivity.
"the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the insturments of
production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of
society' (Marx) (but not in the sense of: totally new harmonious relations)
"the great civilizing influence of capital; its production of a stage of society in comparison to
which all earlier ones appear as mere local developments of humanity and as nature-idolatry.

For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for mankind, purely a matter of utility;
ceases to be recognized as a power for itself [nihilism, death of the one, death of God]; and
the theoretical discorvery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate
it under human needs, whether as an object of human consumption or as a means of
production. In accord with this tendency, capital drives beyond national barriers and
prejudices as much as beyond nature worship, as wel as all traditional, confined,
complacend encrusted statisfactions of present needs, and reproductions of old ways of
life. [TODAY!] (Marx Grundrisse 38)
"in bourgeois economics - and in the epoch of production to which it corresponds - this
complete working-out of the human content [$] appears as a complete emptying out, this
universal objectification as total alienation [$], and the tearing down of all limited, one-sided
aims as sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end
[capital/production]. (marx Grundrisse 38)
"This is why the childish world of antiquity appears on one side as loftier. On the other side,
it really is loftier in all matters where closed shapes, forms and given limits are sought for. It
is satisfaction from a limited standpoint; while the modern gives no satisfaction; or, where it
appears satisfied with itself, its is vulgar." (Marx Callinicos. 38)
"It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to that original fullness as it is to believe that with this
complete emptiness history has come to a standstill. The bourgeois viewpoint has never
advanced beyond this antithesis between itself and this romantic viewpoint, and therefore the
latter will accompany it as legitimate antithesis up to its blessed end. (Grundrisse)
[THIS IS CALLINICOS' POINT:]
"One of the most interesting ideas Marx develops in these passage is that the liberal defence
and the Romantic critique of capitalism are complementary and correlative perspectives, each
partial and unilateral, the one merely celbrating the development of the productive forces
under capitalism, the other denouncing the 'complete emptiness' of bourgois society in the
name of a lost, and indeed fictional 'original fullness.' [bachelor scriptie geschiedenis]. [but
is this really romanticism/ c.f. badiou; romanticism as the infinite, but with the one?] .
[is postmodernism a romanticism?]
[this seems like a load of crap:]
[hmmmm..._>] Marx is able to transcend [? higher vantage point?] both perspectives because
he focuses on the contradiction between the expansioni of human productive powers which
capitalism makes possible and the 'limited bourgeois form' in which this expansion takes
place, resting as it does upon the exploitation of wage-labour and an anarchic process of
competitive accumulation. ??
This contradiciton gives rise to chronic ecnomic crises signalling the need to replace
capitalism with a communist society in which the fulfillment of human needs made possible
by the prior development of the productive forces is finally realized. [retroactive
illusion] Marx can see beyond both liberal and Romantic viewpoints [does he attend
truth/objectivisme?] because he is oriented on capitalism's 'blessed end' [teleology!!!], the
revolutionary outcome of the contradictory process of development whose climax is the

'constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions,

everlasting and uncertainty' of the 'bourgeois epoch'.
Arno Mayer: "It would take two World Wars and the Holocaust . . . to finally dislodge the
feudal and aristocratic presumption from Europe's civil and political societies." (mayer
Persistence of the old regime)
"Let us note for the present that the classical Marxist tradition of Lenin, Luxemberg,
Hilferding and Bukharin, continued (in this resepect at least) by Hobsbawn, by contrast
locates the origins of the "thirty Years War' in the increasingly serious contradictions of finde-sciecle capitalism, and in particular in the growing concentration of economic power,
most notalby in rising industiral economies such as Germany and the US, in the hands of
large corporations, the connected tendency of not simply banking and industrial capital but
also the state and private capital to fuse into a single national complex of interests, and the
consequent transformation of market competition between firms into military rivalries among
the Great Powers. (43)
For callinicos, modernism was a result of the contradiction between aristocracy and bourgoise
(vienna, for example, around the turn of the century, but also paris.)
"a thoroughly bourgeois society even before its relatively gradual but massive
industrialization, Britain by the late ninetheent century did not offer the shapr contrast
between old and new provided by the comparatively sudden onset of industrial capitialism in
genuinly ancien regime orders such as Prussia, Russia, and Austria-Hungary (but what about
france/paris and belgium?).
Far from being exceptional, Vienna at the turn of the century highlighted in intensified form
the constellation of elements which contributed to the emergence of Modernism. It was the
capital of Musil's Kakania - of the baroquely constructed kaiserlich un konglich Dual
Monarchy of Franz Joseph, the most absurd of all the ancien regimes; but it was also - unlike
London and Paris, but like Berlin and St Petersburg - a great manufacturing centre, among
whose population of 2,000,000 there were 375,000 industrial workers. The resulting social
tensions were exacerbated by the polyglot character of Vienna's inhabitants who where drawn
from all the subjects peoples of the empire - Germans, Czechs, Poles, Jews, Magyars, Croats,
Serbs, Slovenes, Rumanians, Italians. By the 1890s the mass movements thrown up by these
changes - Christian democracy, Pan-Germanism, Slavic nationalism, social democracy threatenend to upend the liberal constitutional regime established after Austria's defeat by
Prussia in 1866.
"in the context of the crisis of the liberal bourgeoisie"
[2.3] The rise and fall of the avant-garde
Apology for modernism, modernism as inherently subversive of social order.
T"he romantic withdraws from reality [yes but which/who's reality?] . . .He ironically avoids
the constraints of objectivity and guards himself against being committed to anything. The
reservation of all infinite possibilities lies in irony." (48)
- playfulness / beautiful soul etc. / Rorty

- individualism
"the meaning of life is sought no more in the realm of public life, politics, and work
[universalism]; instead, it has migrated into the world of consumption and private life.' The
'unending day-dreams' of Modernism 'owe their very existence to the bored and blind
indifference of our public life.' Modernism's unbelievable range of political choices can be
explained only by its basic political indifference
[public space is receeding! (how is the problem formulated? privacy, publicity ->implies
whole bourgeois conception)]
Modernism tends to involve precisely the knid of aesthetic withdrawal from reality.
adoption of an aesthetic relation to reality and treatment of arts as a refuge, does not
imply that Modernist art never express political commitments (51).
autonomy, own rules, cybernetics, norm, foucault etc. "The art institution is a product of
bourgeois society."
"Not only is the work of art liberated from its previous subordination to cultic ritual and its
production transsformed from a collaborative, artisanal into an individual practice [classic
historical materialist move] - changes already under way under the absolute monarchies - but
its mode of reception becomes indidivudal, as opposed to the collective concumption of the
mediaevel congregation or early-modern court. However, in the course of the neneteenth
century, as bourgeois domination is consolidated, the autonomous status of the 'art institution'
is refelected in the content of the works themselves. Themes such as that central to the Realist
novel as 'the relationship between individual and society' are 'overshadowed by the everincreasing concentration the makers of art bring to the medium itself [individualsim?]. This
tendency reaches its climax in fin-de-sciecle Aestehticism, 'where art becomes the content of
life.'
[again this stupid historical materialism] "It is plausible to follow Moretti in relating the
emergence of Modernism to the transformation of nineteenth-century urban life analysed,
among others, by Richart Sennett, as a rsult of which individuals' primary emotional
investment came to be in the private sphere of personal relations, while the public sphere
withered into, at best, a means of self-expression, changes inseperable from the progressive
penetration of social relations by the market on which Benjamin laid such stress." 53)
"Is not the general tendency to this analysis similar to Lukacs's celebrated denunciation of
Modernism as 'aesthetically appealing, but decadent?' Modernism, he argues, is merely a late
varient of Naturalism, whose replacement of Realism was a consequence of the
transformation of neneteeth-century bourgeoisie from a revolutionary into a reactionary class.
No
"the fact that Modernism shares with Romanticism 'subjectified occasionalism." Brecht's
polemic against the extreme formalism which led Lukacs to deny merit to any work not
conforming to a hypostatized model derived from ninetheenth-century Realism retains all
force today. [yes but what why????? look into: brecht!]

[more bullshit:]
"modernism therefore prepared the way for the avant garde. It took over a conception of art
first developed by classical German Idealism and central to Romanticism, in which aesthetic
experience represents a higher form of consciousness [??] than the merely discursive
understanding provided by scientific knowledge. Ar thus conceived is a refusal of the meansend rationality of the bougeois everyday, a tetreat from a social world pervaded by
commodity fetishism. [WAY to simple!]
"They thus opened the door to a conception of art as continuous with and participating in rather than a refuge from - a social world whose fusion with aesthetic practices would be
central to its transformation."
"The signiticance of Russian Constructivism is that is shows that the radicalization of
Modernism into avant garde was not simply the working through of a logic intrinsic to finde-sciecle Aestheticism; it depended upon political conditions, and in particualr on the
October Revolution, which made concrete the vision of a social transformation through
which art and life coudl be re-united."
"Art and people msut for an entity. Art shall no longer be a luxury for the few, but should be
enjoyed and experienced by the broad masses." (57)

land of the free home of the brave, -> everybody loves it.
personal and social responsibility. legislative activity: grown nation. representatives -> called
to preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens.

1. The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents
itself as an immense
accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.
capitalist mode of production -> life presents itself as a immens accumulation of spectacles. I
think debord means that there , or hints at, is the idea that we no longer "believe" in the
existence of a stable signified (or that we have any real recourse to the signified, or that the
idea of a transcendental signified is inconsistent (derrida). But this is a result of the capitalist
mode of production becoming total. (but i wonder what the significance is of the thing that is
"directly lived." If this is the opposite of representation, it is perhaps not somethign like the
"signified."

2. Images [as opposed to truth/signified] detached from every aspect of life merge into a
common stream, and the former unity of life [the one/god etc] is lost forever. Apprehended in
a partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object
of contemplation [the world = the image of the world = object of contemplationi
[heidegger]. The tendency toward the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest
expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle
in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such, the autonomous movement
of non-life.
Image is detached from life, (but what does it detached from? was there first a unity of life
and image?) in a common stream, (01001101110 -> infinity/multiplicity) no longer unity.
reality is apprehended in a partial way (finitude? spinoza?) reality unfolds in a new generality
(the generic badiou?) as a pseudo world apart. Reality is fragmented, partial , and this implies
a different generality than the ONE, but rather the generec. the world in general, then,
becomes a pseudo world, (because world is always linked to one), solely as an object of
contemplation (in the life world, it no longer exist: i must work via the market etc./precariat).
YES:
Therefore: the tendens naar de specialisatie van beelden-van-de-wereld vidn zijn hoogste
expressie in de werel van het autonome beeld (de wetenschappelijke visie op de wereld
bijvoorbeeld), waar misleiding zichzelf misleid [denk: paper over laclau etc.]: het is een
misleiding, die zichzelf misleid door zich niet als misleiding te zien.
autonomous movement: capital? The spectacle in its generality [the totalization of the
commodity form, capital, matheme zizek] is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such, nonlife [death drive zizek]
3. The spectacle appears at once as society itself [market/neoliberal society -> job market,
neoliberal university, flex jobs, dating agencies] as a part of society and as means of
unification. [overdetermination: deel staat voor het geheel capital -> the world of capital].
metonomy. deel staat voor het geheel. vgl. zizek ftknwtd]. As a part of society, it is that
sector where all attention, all consciousness, converges [everyone becomes a little capitalist.
vgl. foucault]. Being isolated - and precisely for that reason - this sector is the locus of
illusion and false consciousness; the unity it imposes is merely the official language of
generalized separation. [it is the locus of illusion and false consciousness, by being isolated
- a sector , and the reason is that it is being isolated, de eenheid die het oplegd (dat alles
capital is) is niet meer dan de sociaal geaccpeteerde vanzelfsprekendheden, de taal van een
veralgemeniseerde verwijdering/separatie]
spectacle verschijnt als de samenleving (opinions, subjectivism, liberal democracy, no truth)
en als een deel van de samenleving (als de markt), en als een unificatiemiddel (there is no
alternative). Maar het lijkt of debord wil zeggen dat er nog mr is, dan slechts dit deel dat
illusionair wordt opgevat als het geheel/eenheid (TINA).
4. The spectacle is not a collection of images [leibniz]; rather, it is a social relationship
between people that is mediated by images.
commodity fetishism.
5. The spectacle is not a

source: http://salvage.zone/in-print/against-the-anthropocene/

Antroposcene:
1 science ( abstract, naturalistic materialism, )->politics (collective actioin) ->ideology
(harmonious, all together)
1.1. center: natural idea of humanity (unified conception of man as natural, where we are all
the same, fossil fuel burners). as opposed to historical vison of man (contradictory). human
enterprise/project (teleology).
1.2. Technological bias -> technological determinism: 'early humans -> fossil fuel' (no
capital, as if naturally)
2. linear historical time without contradictions. -> whig view of history. endless story of
human progress
3. therefore: neutral/no politics/no antagonism or contradiction. natural development of
human species.
4. 4 problems human-natural/techbias/whig history/no-politics: specific solution
4. mode of presentation of problem determines the range and quality of the possible solutions.
5. Capitoloscene [history/contradictions etc.]
[i.e. other formulation of the problem, which leads to other result (that is, also fight cultural
fix/oppression)
Sketching out the theoretical basis of a Marxist approach to the same phenomena to which
the Anthropocene itself refers may help to make the political stakes [missed by ^] and
hence the possible political solutions somewhat clearer. Jason W. Moores suggestion that
we replace the Anthropocene with the term Capitalocene the age of capital, which
would of course begin with the dawn of capitalism itself is a very useful corrective, not
only because it puts capitalism as an economic and social system at the heart of its theory, but
also because it forces us to find a middle way between humanist [Cartesian divide] and
post-human thought [no subject?]
Capitoloscene:
1. anthroposcene -> capitoloscene
2. theory of value beyond the purely economic, non-paid work: women, nature, colonies.
3. abstract social labour time -> abstract social natur: 'The family of processes through which
capitalists and state-machineries map, identify, quantify, measure, and code human and extrahuman natures in service to capital accumulation. [think oil] [potential earnings such as oil,
cost-cuttuing such as house work/zzp'ers]

4.
1. Anthropocene: geologist use it -> new geological epoch, (after holoceen). humanity must
be seen as a geological force in its own right. scientist: end of the eighteenth century and the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution (steam engine/fossil fuels) stratigraphic signals
(lithological, geochemical, paleobiological traces) - measured by geologis, present or looking
back from future [gaze big other]
2. In scientific discourse: Antrophoscene is relatively harmles (neutral?). Problem/danger ->
when geologist become political: -> [ideology/master signifier/zizek/big other]. calling for
collective ecological intervention (masking by way of science the class aspect).
2.1 there exist a spontaneous ideology of the scientists. with an implicit philosophy of
history.
2.1.1. specific type of abstract, naturalistic materialism
2.1.2. Marx: "The weaknesses of the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism
which excludes the historical process, are immediately evident from the abstract and
ideological conceptions expressed by its spokesmen whenever they venture beyond the
bounds of their own speciality."
2.2. Venturing beyond, and the incoherent discourse [? how in what way] which inspires it
[ideology], that I oppose.
3. Heart of Anthroposcene is Anthropos or Human. BUT WHAT IS the human? [althusser
antihumanism]. no clear definition is ever given. still refers to: The human enterprise. [but
what kind of category would it be? maybe it is a kind of force/assemblage or actant].
3.1.a. it presupposes a naive concept of humanity, united by nature [really?, maybe if it
becomes ideology/political]
3.1.b. as oppossed to historical conception of humanity [c.f. callinicos: subject as a result of
relations of productions] as internally differentiated [class struggle] and constantly
developing via internal contradictions. [which are?]
3.2. human enterprise : as if it is an abstract corporation in which 'we're all in this together'
[obfuscating class struggle]
3.2.1. thus belying the reality of class struggle, exploitation and oppression [in what way?]
4. The dating of the Antroposcence tot the Idustrial revolution - steam engine - points to
technological bias [naomi klein, extractivist mindset].
4.1. technological determinism.
4.1.1.a the notion that the technological is the motor of history
4.1.1.b as opposed to marxist understanding of historical development through class struggle.
4.2. Antroposcene (W.More) rather a result of capitalist civilization after 1450, with its
audacious strategeies of global conquest, endless commodification, and relentless
rationalization.
4.2.1. This marked a turning point in the history of man's relation to nature. Greater than
argricult, or cities.
4.2.1.(i). [so not through technology, but through lifting out of man from nature through
market relation (sohn-rethel)]
4.3. So: inherent to Anthroposcne disc. is historic. caus. which is purely mechanical.
4.3.1. It cannotexplain social and relational modes of historical causation (althusser, marx,
structural causality)
4.4. technology is not primary/primordial force, what is not mentioned is:

4.4.a. it is bound up with social relation (capitalist mode of production)

4.4.b. it is used as weapon in class war . technology can serve either of the two "sides"
4.(c). Marx: "it would be possible to write a hole history of the inventions since 1839 for the
sole purpose of providing capital with weapons against working-class revolt," is unthinkable
within such a purview.
4.(c). THUS: for the Antroposcen technology is not political. (it is neutral)
5. Anthroposcene can only think the past in its proleptic trajectory towards our present
[teleology] (literary criticism)
5.1.(i). as if history/society could not have gone somewhere else.
5.2.1. literary criticism: "its specific narrative mode translates the time of initiative and praxis
into the time of pur physical necessity. [really? i don't think so]
5.2.2. it can only explain our present as part of the empty, homogenenous time of linear
succesion, which increasingly contracts as ecological catastrophe approaches [?]
6. Whig history: endless story (!) of human progress and enlightenment (noo: antrophoscene
is catastrophe right?)
6.1.a. "migrations to cities usualy brings with it rising expectations and eventually rising
incomes, which in turn brings an increase in consumption."
6.1.b."the onset of Great Acceleration [scientists' name for the period of increased 'human'
activity following WWII] may well have been delayed by a half-century or so, interrupted by
two world wars and the Great Depression.
[Cr.] yes but a marxist view would as well be able to argue some kind of accelerations
which has a kind of necessity (globalization as acceleration of global capitalist mode of
production).
6.2. first sentence: blind to the history of mass urban poverty, gentrification and acumulation
by disposseion., [yes but why not linear, at least in some sense?]. a mere blip. [yes but isn't
this our situation???]
6.2. second obfuscates WOII
7. Finally: LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE, of the four preceding problems [lookup/]: the
majority of the solutions proposed by scientist are technical. (mass climate and geoengineering projects). and managerial in nature - often coushed in the language of
'governance systems' - rather than political [what would it mean to be political?]
7.1 this is because they never pose the antroposcene as a political problem in the first place.
7.1.(i). Kim Stanley Robinson's recent claim that 'Justice has become a survival technology"
is practically unthinkable within the presuppositions of the scientific representations of the
Anthroposcene.
7.1.1. " Just as they cannot see technology as a political force, so they cannot see politics as a
material force. Indeed, they have a problematic conception of materiality as such."
8.(C). "Thus, we can see quite clearly that the mode of presentation of a particular problem
will to a large extent determine the range and quality of the possible solutions one is able
to develop. Sketching out the theoretical basis of a Marxist approach to the same phenomena
to which the Anthropocene itself refers may help to make the political stakes and hence the
possible political solutions somewhat clearer. Jason W. Moores suggestion that we replace
the Anthropocene with the term Capitalocene the age of capital, which would of course
begin with the dawn of capitalism itself is a very useful corrective, not only because it puts
capitalism as an economic and social system at the heart of its theory, but also because it
forces us to find a middle way between humanist and post-human thought."

But they are waging class struggle, but are not aware of it. [cunning of reason].

Capitoloscene and World-Ecology

9. World-ecology, Moore: "framework of historical interpretation" . . . " that dialectically

unifies capital, power and nature'.
9.1.1. (Nancy Fraser) Expanded conception of captialism, one which goes beyond the purely
economic [???]
9.1.2. for Moore: 'a civilization that is co-produced by humans and the rest of nature' [???]
actants?
9.1.c. Thus: overcoming cartesian divide, between man and nature. [what does cartesian
divide signify?]
10. How? central to Moore's world-ecology is his reconceptualization of Marxist value
theory.
10.1. " [w]hile Marxist political economy has taken value to be an economic phenomenon
with systemic implications, I argue that value-relations are a systemic phenomenon with a
pivotal economic moment." [/cannot be reduced to paid work alone... does marx do this?]
[C] yes but, isn't marxist concept of value also systemic? what does economy mean
here? isn't there a "cartesian divide" in the sense of capitalism that has a (subjective)
activity transcendent to nature in the old sense?
10.2. Marx: abstract social labour - socially necessary labour time. : zone of exploitation.
hidden abode of comm. prod. (classical labour theory of value).
10.3. Moore: there is a relation to another zone: the zone of appropriatioin.
10.3.1 this refers to all those realms of human and extra-human 'unpaid work'; women's
domestic labour or social reproduction, colonial exprop. of natural resource. [i.e., there is
'work' in oil].
10.3.2. Capitalism cannot be reduced to the realm of paid work alone
10.3.2.1. since without constant appropriation of unpaid work - human and extra-human - it
could not expand and perpetuate
If we take the nexus paid/unpaid work as our premise implicitly suggested by ecological
and feminist scholars the implications are significant. Capitalism and value relations cannot
be reduced to a relation between the owners of capital and the possessors of labor-power. To
repeat: the historical condition of socially necessary labor-time is socially necessary unpaid
work. This observation opens a vista on capitalism as a contradictory unity of production and
reproduction that crosses the Cartesian boundary [nature/society]. [as if marx sticks to
such a boundry. and I take issue with calling it Cartesian.... nature/society is not a
cartesian boundry.]
The crucial divide is between the zone of paid work (the exploitation of commodified laborpower) and the zone of unpaid work (the reproduction of life) [althusser, marx himself].

This contradictory unity works by creating a relatively narrow sphere of commodity

production within which labor-power can be said to yield either rising or falling productivity
This narrow sphere, premised on the exploitation of labor-power within commodity
production, operates in relation to a much more expansive sphere of appropriation, through
which the diversity of natures free gifts including the reproduction of life from the family
to the biosphere may be taken up into commodity production, but not fully capitalized.
(Moore, Jason The Capitoloscene)
10.4. There are two fundamental contradictionsn which structure capitalism as a civilzation:
that between capital and labour, and that between the zone of exploitation (commodity
production) and the zone of appropriation. [primitive accumulation// David Harvey
summarized Karl Marx's description of it: primitive accumulation "entailed taking land, say,
enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then
releasing the land into the privatized mainstream of capital accumulation".].
1. two contraditions which structure capitalism as civilization. Captial <> Labour / Zone
of Exploitation (comm. prod.) and zone of appropriation (unpaid?)
11. not only abstract social labour -> also abstract social nature.
11.1. 'The family of processes through which capitalists and state-machineries map, identify,
quantify, measure, and code human and extra-human natures in service to capital
accumulation. [think oil]
11.1.1 It is those sets of activities and methods that seek out and make amenable to capital
realms of unpaid work which, following Maria Mies, he summarizes as women, nature and
colonies.'
11.1.1.1 Cultural fix: .[It comprises those] social and cultural matters involving the
reproduction of class identities and relations over time-lengths greater than a single turnover
cycle [of capital], which are intrinsic, not superficial, to the [accumulation] of capital.
11.1.1.1.1. The cultural fix thus seems to refer to all those hegemonic and ideological
processes which legitimate the long-term reproduction of the social relations of production.
[althusser/foucault]
11.C. Moore summarizes the distinction between abstract social nature and the cultural fix
thus: If cultural fixes naturalize capitalisms punctuated transitions in the relations of power,
capital, and nature, abstract social natures make those transitions possible
PROBLEM

12. There is a problem

12.1. the distinction between abstract social nature and the cultural fix works only so long as
it is provisional
12.2. however: ther is a danger that the distinciton will be rendered into discrete categories.
12.2.1.1. this means: there is a danger of returning to the very dualism that world-ecology
seeks to avoid.
[Cr.] NO! why? abstract social nature is already "culture." There is no culture/nature
dualism!

12.2.1.1.1. this is because: treating mapping and rationalization processes as 'scientific,' and
ideological legitimation [? what is legitimation?, cultural fix?] as 'cultural,' may prove
insuffieciently relational. [.....?.....]
12.2.1.1.1.C. This is the problem: retaining the distinction prevent Moore from takin the step
that would finally aloow us to overcome the binary of man and nature at the level of theory
[?].
12.3. [where does the problem come from?] the problem originates in the specific aims and
focus of the world-ecology framework itself.
12.3.1 [how come?] More is primarily concerned with the different configurational weights
that come into play during both the transition from one accumulation regime to the next and
the 'normal' operation of those accumulation regimes in the period of their consolidation and
boom.
12.3.2. But by equating those cyclical periods of transition and stabilization with abstract
social nature and the cultural fix repectively, he is in danger of overlooking the extent to
which each of these processes is dialectically constituted by the other [what does this mean?
and doesn't it imply a break?] - and hence the way in which both processes are present in
both periods of transition and consolidation of world-ecological regimes, albeit in shifting
relations of dominance.
[Cr.] No! the distinction is movement/development/[finance]/specualation and
fix/nature/necessity. Abstract social nature is mapping, quantify exta human nature
[potential earnings such as oil, cost-cuttuing such as house work/zzp'ers] VERSUS
cultural fix, which is concerned with idenities [nation/slave/race/sex/position/place/class
etc.] abstract economic, vs, naturalized traditions.
12.C. Thus, one possible development of Moores work would be to argue that culture is a
constitutive moment of abstract social nature, and vice versa, and hence, more broadly, that
it is the dialectical interrelation of abstract social nature and culture which is a constitutive
moment of the value relation. [isnt this marx' point?]
13..examples
14. Example: slave is both abstract nature and cultural fix.
15.1. Thus, if, as Marxist-feminism has made clear, womens unpaid labour has been historically vital to the functioning of
capitalism, then we must conclude from such examples that culture is not only a force of ideological legitimation, but is itself a
materially constitutive moment in the value relation.
15.2. The ideological attacks on women were precisely about controlling them and making their unpaid work appropriable by
capital. ????
[Cr.]. yes but, i think capitalism can as well use women in the workforce.
Thus, whilst abstract social nature and cultural fix can be analytically separated, in practice they always go together.
15.3.
abstract social nature: the family of processes through which capitalists and state-machineries map, identify, quantify, measure,
and code human and extra-human natures in service to capital accumulation 17. [abtraction/ finance, profit, future return] But isn't it already the same thing: abstract
social nature and cultural fix?.

16. Thus, whilst abstract social nature and cultural fix can be analytically separated, in
practice they always go together. The political upshot of all this is quite dramatic, since, at the
extreme, it means that the battle against the capitalist production of climate change must be
waged at several levels simultaneously: of course, we must attack self-evidently ecological
phenomena such as new oil pipelines, deforestation, fracking, and such like, but and this is
crucial we must also attack those elements of capitalist civilization which appear to have no
immediate relation to ecology, but which are in fact internal conditions of its possibility:
violence against women both literal and symbolic, the structural obscurity of domestic labour,
institutional racism, and so on. For, at its outer limit, ecological struggle is nothing but the
struggle for universal emancipation. In this light, it then becomes clear why worldecology is potentially politically relevant: it unifies these struggles at the level of theory.

I wish to end on a more polemical note. In an otherwise thought-provoking and sophisticated 2008 article on the Anthropocene, the historian Dipesh
Chakrabarty wrote that global warming will ultimately affect rich and poor alike: Unlike in the crises of capitalism, he says, there are no lifeboats
here for the rich and the privileged24. Consequently, he suggests that we should understand humanity, not as a Hegelian universal arising dialectically
out of the movement of history, or a universal of capital brought forth by the present crisis, but rather as a negative universal that arises from a
shared sense of a catastrophe25. Chakrabartys argument must be categorically rejected for two reasons. Firstly, it is an example of the genre that we
might call survivalist reasoning: that type of reasoning which places human survival in the abstract and at all costs above all other political
commitments. I argue, however, that if Marxism for Althusser was a theoretical anti-humanism, then it should also be seen as a theoretical antisurvivalism. There is no commitment more vital than the overthrow of capitalism, and paradoxically if there is even to be any hope of human
survival in the abstract, it will come about only through the struggle against capital.

Secondly, Chakrabartys argument is also an example of the genre we might call catastrophism: that type of reasoning which sacrifices all determinate
negations in the face of the one abstract negation of a general doom. Marxism, however, must also be a theoretical anti-catastrophism. Its ultimate
horizon is not the impending doom of ecological catastrophe and human extinction: it is the capitalist mode of production and its dismantlement. Martin
Luther, when asked what he would do if the world were to end tomorrow, replied that he would plant a tree; the Marxist should reply: we will call for a
general strike. I jest, of course, but it is only by fostering such indifference to catastrophe that we can ever hope to avert it.

- Jeremy Corbyn is critized as a phenomenon because he is too left wing to be elected prime
minister
- they are wrong
common sense: J.C. is unelectable. Because he was rejected in 1983 (thatcher). Youth are
ignorant, do not know history. Labour will be obliterated. Politcal suicicede. apocalypse [pay
attention to rethoric], everythign will end, there is no alternative just as 1983 [no future!!!
compare with badiou/nihilism/no acces to infinite/punk is a reflection of ruling
ideology].
in 1983, tatcher won because of Falklands war, not of left wing labour.

Limehouse Declaration: In this document the so-called 'Gang of Four' signalled their intent
to leave the Labour Party and form a Council for Social Democracy, as they felt the party
had been taken over by the left-wing members.[2] This Council became the basis for the
British Social Democratic Party (SDP) [Yellow in chart].

Tory boost was not because labour was anti-war.

"Those of us who lived through the turmoil of the '80s know every line of [Corbyn's] script.
These are policies from the past that were rejected not because they were too principled, but
because a majority of the British people thought they didn't work. "the thing i learned . . . is
that wars make prime ministers popular."
Thathcers popularity went up with the war
It is no exaggeration to say that the outcome of the Falklands War transformed the British
political scene . . The socalled Falklands factor was real enough. I could feel the impact of
the victory wherever I went.
"so here's a surprising result: the high-water mark for the Labour left - the point by which it
had apparently rendered the party "completely unelectable"- was the October 1980 pary
conference. At that time, amid a press onslaught against Benn, Labour's poll lead was a
massive 50 percent to the Tories' 36 percent.

3.1 Nietzsche as precursor of modernism, grounded in post-unification germany,

postmodernism

"Religious life, state and society as well as science, moraity and art are transformed into so
many embodiments of the principle of subjectivity." But he conceives subjectivity as 'a
structure of self-relation' identitical not with finited individual persons but with the Absolute
whose self-development underlies human history: modernity is the age where the Absolute
attains self-consciousness through the agency of finite subjects." (63)
As habermas puts it. 'as absolute knowledge, reason assumes a form so overwhelming that it
not only solves the problem of a self-reassurance of modernity, but solves it too well.' The
conscious human action that is the stuff of history becomes, by virtue of the ruse of reason,
the means by which, independently of the intentions of actors, the Absolute achieves its ends.
(too simple).
Callinicos conception of Nietzsche:! The principle Nietzschean theses invoked in
contemporary discussion are perhaps the following:
1. The individual subject, far from being the self-certain foundation of modernity, is a
fiction, a historically contingent construct beneath whose apparent unity throbs a welter of
conflicting unconscious drives;
2. The plural nature of the self is merely one instance of the inherently multiple and
heterogeneous character of reality itself: running through the whole of nature, including the
human world, is what Nietzsche called the 'will to power', the disposition of different powercentres to engage in a perpetual struggle for domination whose outcomes alter both the
relationships fundamentally constitutive of reality and the identities of the parties to those
relationships;
3. The will to power is operative within human history: political and military struggles, social
and economic transformations, moral and aesthetic revolutions - all are comprehensible only
in the context of the unending conflicts from which successive forms of domination arise [c.f.
hegemony, laclau]
4. Nor is thought itself exempt from this struggle: modern scienctific rationality is a
particularly succesful variant of the will to power, its urge to dominate nature originating in
Plato's claim that thought can uncover the inner structure of an antecendently existing, and
indeed unchanging reality; the only attitude appropriate to the seething heterogeneatiy of the
actual world is perspectivism, which recognizes every thought as an interpretaion, valid only
only within a conceptual framework the grounds for whose acceptance lie not in any
supposed correspondence with reality, but in the purpose, construable ultimately in terms of
the will to power, which it serves.
Nietzsche is the precursor of modernism: upgrading the transitory, in the celebration of the
dynamic, in the glorification of the current and new, there is expressed an aesthetically
motivated time-consciousness and a longing for an unspoiled, inward presence (habermas).
[cf. cutrofello]
bring style into center of his own thougth, artistic models for understanding the world. the
grand style: art, reality, truth, life. (Alexander Nehemas)
[Note: Callinicos reduces modernism, (and postmodernism?) to a superficial [!]
understanding of nietzsche:]

"Conceiving the world as a work of art contributes to 1) the idea that it is inherently plural, a
view which in turn supports the claim that an indefinite number of mutually inconsistent
perspectives offering equally valid interpretations of its nature . . . das Gleitende, the
unstable, mobile, indeterminate,, so important for Modernism is obvious. 2) notion of selfcreation modern, man tries to invent himself/baudelaire" to become those we are [c.f. freud,
lacan, cybernetics, foucault about the state in birth of biopol].
Nietzsche: "the last German for whom i feel reverence . . . What he aspired to was
totality; . . . he disciplined himself to a whole, he created himself."
"Nietzsche's overall stance is perhaps best understood as a variant of Romantic
anticapitalism, which is defined by Robert Sayre and Michael Lowy as 'opposition to
capitalism in the name of precapitalist values.' [YES!, but not: foucault/derrida/deleuze
etc. etc., and also not Nietzsche i think., and certainly not modernism.]
aristocratic [badiou: art]
"It is not hard, in the light of the analysis sketched out in the previous chapter, to understand
how such a system of ideas, in any respects a philosophical articulation of the main themes of
Modernism, shoudl have emerged during Grunderzeit, the period after German unification in
1871 when Junkerdom and industrial capitalism fused in a peculiarly complacent,
authoritarian and materalistic mould [reductive, simplistic, functionalistic, deterministi] I
consider in the following section why these ideas should have enjoyed such a revival in
postwar France."
3.2
Rorty: to treat science and philosophy as literary genres.
"Foucault/Ideology/dispositif: 'a thoroughly hetorgeneous ensemble consisiting of discourses,
institutions, architectural forms, tegulatory decisisons, laws, administrative measures,
scientific statements, philososphical, moral and philantropic propsitions - in short, the said
and the unsaid.'
"textualism, however, denies us the possibilitiy of ever escaping the discursive. 'Il n'y a pas de
hors-texte,' as derrida famously put it.
"It seems as if the effort to deny the subject its self-certain unity and dislodge it from the
throne on which Descartes had placed it required a self-consciously difficult style, which
relied as much on indirection and allusion as it did on explicit assertion and consecutive
arguement.
[stupid HM] It is tempting to generalize from this observation, and to argue that the
experience of uneven and combined development in postwar France - of rapid
industrialization within a contested, increasingly authoritarian political freamework, in a
society where the existence of a mass communist Party helped both tot legitimize Marxism
amogn the intelligentisia and, by its blind Stalisnism, to encourage more critical forms of
thought - encouraged the survivial of a Modernist sensibility, of which Godard's filrms were
the most imporatant artistic expression, but which also informed, in the ways outlined, the
ideas of a generation of philosophers most of whom began writing in the two decades after

1945. But even if we breadly accept this argument, there remain other considerations,
concerend with the internal development of French thought, which need to be taken into
accout
3.3 APORIA 1: Rationality (not sure if argued properly, not clear why rationality is
aporia, perhaps the reference to mysticism...]
"Rather than simply repeat what these two admirable books say [the philosophical discourse
of modernity; logis of disintegrations], or what I have myself said elsewhere, I concentrate
in the remainder of this chapter on the main aporias of poststructuralism, the flaws in this
body of thought which expose defects intrinsic to tis very constructions. The three principal
weaknesses concern rationality, resistance and the subject (73). [!]
'Derrida's response to this collapse of Husserl's philosophical project is not, like that of
Adorno or Merleau-Ponty, to move "downstream" towards an account of subjectivitiy as
emerging from and entwined with the natural and social world, but rather to move
"upstream", in a quest for the ground of transcendental consciousness.' [?] The subject is
subordinated to the endless play of difference, but his mmove takes us not into, but beyond,
history [as opposed to subject constituting through relations of production/HM]
Difference is indeed an inadequate concept for characterizing the process of significaiton.
Derrida offers various terms - (trace, archewriting, differance) - to emphasizize that it is
impossible to escape from the metaphysics of presence [???]:
This neologism is what Lewis Carroll would call a 'portmanteau word'. It combines the
meanings of the two words 'to differ' and 'to defer'. It affirms, first, the presence and
absence, and secondly, a presence always deferred (into the future or past) but
nevertheless constantly invoked. Presence is as intrinsic is as intrinsic to difference as
absence as
absence.
"The play constitutive of signification thus necessarily involves both the disruption of
presence, which is always part of a chain of substitutions which transcend it, and the
reference to presence, but a presence which can never fully be achieved but is constantly
deffered. Differance is thus 'the obliterated origin of abscence and presence.' Differance can
only be conceptualized by means of a language which necessarily, by virtue of the nature of
differance itself, involves the metaphysics of presence: differance, since it is ontologically
prior [split comes first! one divides into two!] to both presence and abscence, is therfore
unknowable. From this contradiction springs the practice of deconstruction which involves
contesting the metaphysics of presence on its own terrain - a terrain from which there is any
case no escape. ( 75)
"Nevertheless, what the work alluded to above shows is that the rejection of atomism does
not, on the face of it, require the abandonment of the concept of reference: indeed, Davidson's
theory of meaning combines holism and realism. There is more than one way out of the myth
of the given. [yes but at the price of AUTHORITARIANISM OF THE
COMMUNITY!!!! c.f. hegel/pippin/mcdowell!
interesting, reread, look further into.
3.4 Aporia: Resistance

General dilemma: Habermas argues that the radicalization of the Enlightenment involves
Ideologiekritik, which seeks to demonstrate how theoretical discourses secrete, and are
shaped by socio-political interests.
"with this kind of critique enlightenment becomes reflective for the first time; it is performed
with reprect to its own products - theories. Yet the drama of enlightenment attains secondorder reflectiveness. Then doubt reaches out to include reason, whose standards ideology
critique had found already given in bourgeois ideals and has simply thaken their word.
Dialectic of Enlightenment takes this step - it renders critique independent even in relation to
its own foundations" (Habermas).
performative contradiction: "if they do not want tot renounce the effect of a final unmasking
and still want to continue with critique, they will have to leave at least one rational
criterion intact for their explanation of the corruption of all rational criteria. In the face of
this paradox, self-referential critique loses its orientation.'
"subject-centred reason can be convicted of being authoriatarian in nature only by having
recourse to its own tools (81).
Callinicos: "This pradox arises in Derrida's case thanks to a radically anti-realistic philosophy
of language which denies us the possibility of knowing a reality independent of discourse."
(REALLY??) This anti-realism compels him, as we have seen, to question the possibility of
giving an account of the relationship between forms of discourse and social practices,
whether the latter sustain or challenge existing relation of domination. By contrast, the
'worldly' poststructuralism of Foucault and Deleuze attaches central importanse to this
relationship.
"No causal priority can be assigned as it is by Marxism, to the economic base. Moreover,
power is productive: it doe snot operate by repressing individuals, circumscribing their
activity, but rather by constituting them - Foucault's main example is the 'disciplinary
institutions such as the prison which emerged in the early neneteenth century. Finally, power
necessarily evokes resistance, albeit as fragmentary and decentralized.
"Whatever the undeniable splendours of many passages in Deleuze's writings, as a corupus
they suggest mainly that the only escape from Foucault's dilemmas lies in adopting a
modernizded variant of Nietzsche's ontology of the iwll to power.
The rethoric of difference Patton espouses serves to conceal that the Foucauldian conception
of an apparatus of power-knowledge is as much a theory of totality as Marx's (85) [YES!}
"Patton's defence of Foucault and Deleuze does, however, highlight the political sources of
their ideas - the post-1968 rejection by many left intellectuals of any perspective of global
social tranformation, a reaction to dashed revolutionary hopes and to the rise of the 'new
social movements' (feminists, gays, ecologists, black nationalists, etc.). Patton argues that the
experience of these moevement shows that 'change in existing social relation does not have to
be mediated by the totality. The condtiions that sustain opression can be altered piecemal.'"
(85)

"This political judgement sums up the evolution of man of the generation of 1968 in the
course of the 1970s - from revolutionary groupuscule to single-issue campaigns and then to
social democracy, a process which took an especially concentrated form in France bacause of
the sudden and traumatic collapse of the French Communist Party under the impact of
Francois Mietterand's revived Socialist Party.
"The denunciation of Marxism as teh philosophy of the Gulag by the ex-Maoist nouveaux
philosophes in 1976-7 was an event of no intellectual significance but of some political
moment, since it marked the transition of the French intelligentsia - marxisant for a
generation - into the ranks of social democracy and neo-liberalism [really!?].
READ ZIZEK!
(Lyotard) "wage a war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the
difference and save the honour of the name."
"Central to the poststructuralist demarche was the demotion of the subject from constitutive
to constituted status. (87) "Foucault: The individual is not a pregiven entitity which is seized
on by the exercise f power. The individual, with his idenity and characteristics, is the product
of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities [badiou], movements, desires,
forces. [grid]
Foucault: "Power is exercized only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are fee. By
this we mean individual or collective sujbects who are faced with a field of possibilities in
which several ways of behaving, several reactoins, and diverse comportments may be
realized."
"There are other constrains, shared by all or many individuals. For one thing, the abilities
particular to human beings as a species - which the anti-humanism of '68 tought'allowed it to
ignore - set limits to the scope of 'self-creation.' [essentialism/species/nature]
"Nietzsche argue that t will be the strong and domineering natures that enjoy their finest
gaiety in the self-discipine involved in accepting 'the constraints of a single taste', while t is
the weak characters without power over themselves that hate the constraint of style.' As
Nehemas points out, 'Nietzsche doe snot consider that every agent has a self.' Foucault, more
democratic, asks why veryonge's life couldn't become a work of art? [pure ideology, crude
materialism of Callinicos ->] The answer, of course, is that most people's lives are still
(contrary to the theories of 'post-capitalism'discussed in chapter 5) shaped by their lack of
acces to productive resourses and their consequent need to seel their labour-power in order to
live. To invinte a hospital porter in Birmingham, a car-worker in Sao Paolo, a social security
clerk in Chicago, or a street child in Bombay to make a work of art of their lifes is an insult
[NO!] - unless linked to precisely the kind of strategy for global social change, which, as we
say in the the previous section, postructuralism rejects.
To understand why such ideas should have been so readily received in the 1980s we must
examine the social and political context of their reception. This I do in chapter 5. But let us
first consider the thought of post-structuralism's greatest critic.

http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/5597/Economie/article/detail/4149930/2015/09/25/Rijken-mogenniet-klagen-in-Nederland.dhtml
[25-9-2015] "Rijken mogen graag klagen over de belastingdruk in Nederland. Maar per saldo
zijn vermogenden in Nederland het beste af van alle EU burgers. Om toch voldoende geld
binnen te halen is de belasting op arbeid en consumptie juist hoog. En dat heeft nadelige
gevolgen voor de economie, stelt het Centraal Plan Bureau (CPB), de rekenmeesters van het
kabinet."
townhall debate
public
10 question
- transformation not through established politics.
- medezeggenschap on our side
- let's go ape shit
yes but, we are to weak. no mobilization.
we cannot rely on legal methods.
there is no idea how to abide legal.
we want public decision making
- weird institution, rvt.
- med. zeg. pushen.
- don't focus on cvb elections
- decentralization, democratization, infidel
- complex of ideologies /diversity of tactics.
- who's democracy!? racism, ethnocentrism
- elitist, working class
- action week
-plurality argument
- divide and conquer
- unity. not dismissing other tactics

- each other's narratives

- anything is possible (creation of possibilities)
- revolution is contextual (petition can be revolutionary)
- no big ideological, debates, no semantics
- background doesn't matter
- dnu guides the practice/formal.
- From weber to habermas
- Habermas imporatant philsopher of the left. Why is Callinicos interested? "devastating and
uncharacteristically vivid critique of the tradition stemming from Nietzsche and Heidegger
and currently represented by the two strands of poststructuralist thought."
- rejection of modernity. old conservatives, neoconservatives, young conservatives.
"recapitulate the basic experience of experience of aesthetic modernity. [reactive
romanticism / young conservatives ] . They claim as their own the revelation of a decentred
subjectivity [can this be thought without becoming a conservative? butler, foucault,
zizek, badiou?], emancipated from the imperatives of work and usefulness, and with this
experience they step outside the modern world [yes, this is reactive romanticism]. On the
basisi of modernistic attitudes they justify an irreconcilable antimodernism. They remove into
the sphere of the far-away and the archaic the spontaneous powers of imagination, selfexperience and emotion [consumer/cultural capitalism]. To reason they juxtapose in
Manichean fashion a principle only accessible through evocation, be it the will to power or
sovereignity, Being and Dionysiac force of the poetical."
[postmodernism as ideology]
"The idea that poststructuralism should be seen as akin to conservative nostalgia for an
idealized pre-capitalist organic order [is this callinicos central idea? follows directly after
above quote. this is not what habermas is saying though . . ]
[classic critique] Norris:
"Norris: As the idea gains around that all theory is a species of sublimated narrative, so
doubts emerge about the very possibility of knowledge as distinct from the various forms of
narrative gratification. Theory presupposes critical distance between its own categories and
those of naturalized mythology or commonsense systems of assumptions. [intra-ideological
critique, but this take is to epistemological, knowledge is knoweledge, vfacts are facts, nut
facts get caught in narrative structures]. Simply to collapse that distance - as Lyotard does - is
to argue away the very grounds of rational critique."
"collapsing the distinction"

"Norris: The 'postmodern condition'- as Lyotard interprets it - thus seems to share the
essential characteristics of all conservative ideology, from Burke to the current New Right. It
rests, that is to say, on the idea that prejudice is so deeply built into our traditions of thought
that no amount of rational criticism can hope to dislodge it [YES!]. Any serious thinking
about cutlure and society will have to acknoledge the fact that such enquiries have meaning
only within the context of a certain informing tradition. (94)
'Postmodernism' is NOT about SIMPLY collapsing the distance. Maybe in its ideological
form, yes...
"Callinicos: poststructuralism denies that theory can detach itself from the immediate context
of meanings and purposes in which it is formulated. Consequently any critique of exisitng
conditions cannot base itself on general principles, but must proceed allusively, as Derrida
does when he appeals to the 'unnameable.' [YES BADIOU< THE LIMIT POINT or THE
PROLETARIAT].
[crude historical materialism]
Liveral democracy seemed to be under threat both from extreme left - the terrorists of the Red
Army Fraction - and extreme right, whose dmeands for greater repression gained
respectability thanks in part to the revival of conservative thought. At the same time, the rise
of new social movements such as the Greens seemed to offer a challange to modern industrial
civilization itsefl:
Habermas: My real motive in beginning the book in 1977 was to understand how the critique
of reification, the critique of rationalizaiton, could be reformulated in such a way that would
offer a theortical explanation of the crumbling of the walfare-state compromise and the
potential for a critique in new movements, without surrendering hte project of mdoernity or
descending into post- or anti-modernism, 'tough'new conservatism or 'wild' young
conservativism [c.f. badiou reactive romanticism/reactive classicism]
[what Habermas tries to do is to salvage some kind of archimedian point, some kind of
undistorted rationality which be the foundation or starting point of a genuine critique. He
wants to uphold the distance between rationality and ideology. But not in the old, totalizing
master-discourse way (This is the truth! these are the facts!), but in a new, procedural way,
always unfinished, infinite deliberation]
[perhaps the goal of a presupposition-less deliberation is been pursuit in a gathering of
equals. The limit then, is class struggle. there is no all encompassing free-deliberation.
only in a political sequence, comrades can very quickly gain mutual understanding,
working together, discussing rationally (but only as a possibility of course). There is no
possiblity to come to an agreement between antagonist, (i.e., this would mean
compromise etc.]
A critical defence of modernity, on that emphasizes its incompletness, its failure to realize its
potentia [teleology /rationality etc]
habermas/adorno.. Is Adorno in "performative contradiction"?

'he remains true to the idea that there is no cure for the wounds of enlightenment other than
the radicalized enlightenment itself" [this seems idealistic, to put enlightenment as the first or
primary cause]
Habermas thus proposes that we replace a monologic with a dialogic conception of
subjectivity and rationality.
Habermas "he Utopian perspective of reconciliation and freedom is ingraned in the
conditions for the communicative sociation of individuals; it is built ito the linguistic
mechanism of the reproduction of the species." [kant, rijk der doelen, lucien goldmann]
instruemental reason is subordinated moment.
system vs lifeworld (phenomenology).
- Weber: modernization as the differentiation of autonomous subsystems [teleology, eidos]
market state regulated by instrumental rationality.
[this trope always returns, is it true?] The monologic conception of subjectivity central to
Western thought since Descartes necessarily involves an instrumental conception of
rationality: the world is presented to the subject thus conceived as a means to tis own ends,
and therefore reason is constituted within the framework of a means-ends relationship shaped
by the subject's urge to dominate an environment that is essentially alien and external to it.
Cal: "This scission between formalist metaethics and substantive political philsophy
indicates, in my view, that any defensible theory of reationlity cannot be purely procedural
but must incorporate a factual account of human beings [?] and their place in the world [?].
This claim is, indeed, a corollaryof the rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction. If the
clarification of meanings cannot be diverced from empirical enquiry into the structure of the
world, then philosophy must be seen as continuous with rather than an a priori foundation of
the scineces. Habermas in principle eschews 'First Philosophy', but by conceiving rationality
as essentially procedural, threatens to rehabilitate a founding role for philosophy, albeit a
rather etherial version of philosophy. [noooo....]
The difficulty with the naturalistic epistemology [this is it!] which I have counterposed to
Habermas's is, of course, that by setting raationality in the context of human beings in their
natural and social environment it seems to threaten to dissolve it into that contet, a danger
which i shall try to ilustrate - and dissolve - by considering the question of truth. [!!! this is
Callinicos' position]
"The flaw in all such theories is that a sentence may be warrently assertible, not merely in
terms of the current state of knoledge, but also in terms of whatever conensus arises from
discussion in an ideal speech situation uncontaminated by inequalities of power, and still be
false. It is quite possible for not simply our best contemporary theories, but also for those
accepted by the kind of ideal consensus which Habermas projects as the telos of speech, to be
wrong. one of the great merits of the classical theory, whre truth is a matter of the state of the
world, not of whatever we might agree, even in the best circumstances, is that it allows for
this possibility.

"Now both
Instead of nostalgically hanging on the exhausted forms of Modernism, Jameson suggests, we
should be exploring the critical potential inherent in Postmodernism. He is, in fact, rather
parsimonious about illustrating the subversive possibilities of new forms, but this is not
where the main difficulty lies. Ity is, rather, methodological [?????]
Jameson is the most distinghuised contemporary practitioner of Hegelian Marxism. For him
Marxism is distinghuised above all by 'an imperative to totalize', to conceptualize the various
fragments of social life as aspects of a comprehensive and integrated set of relationships. The
difference betweeen Jameson and Lukacs, whose History and Class Consciousness is the
most important attempt to identify the Marxist method with the concept of totality, is twofold.
First, Jameson conceives the social totality not as an entity that can in any sense be directly
experienced but as 'an absent cause, . . . inaccessible to us except in textual form'.
Jameson: final horizon. 'This negative and methodological status [as opposed to
epistemological or ontological] of the concept of "totality" means that 'Marxism subsubes
other interpretive modes of systems', making use of poststructuralism, for example. as
Jameson himself does . . . but at the same itme pressing them beyond their limits,
incorporating them within a broader totalization.
"Jameson is also right to higlighThe trouble is that Jameson's tendency to reduce the diversity
of social life to exemlars of a single essence runs the risk of giving totalization - or rather
Marxist totalization - which, unlike poststructuralism, is explicit in its attempt to relate
different practices as part of the same whole - a bad name." [??? -> this is not wat J is doeing,
nothing to do with essences]
"There is in fact no inconsistency between scientific analysis and the ethical appraisal of a
social phenomenon [?], and by suggesting otherwise Jameson is Likely to merely encourage
the ascription to him of a Hegelian teleology in whih progress is woven into the texture of
history.
(page 136 - all Callinicos' objections here have been proven wrong, empirically. The
poststructuralist have pointed to tendencies that have become a reality)
"The role of the state has grown substantially since the early 1970s; state policies have
become increasingly decisive on the international front, not more futile. Governments have
become more and more involved in active management of monetary policity and interest
rates in order to condition exchangerate flucturations and short term capital flows. They have
become actually and potentially decisive in bargaining over production and investment
agreements. And, small consolation though it may be, in ann era of increasing monetarist
conservatism, everyone including transnational corporations has become incresingly
dependent upon co-ordinated state intervention for restructruing and resolution of the
underlying dynamics of crisis." [c.f. wolfgang streeck]
"Two developments seem to me decisive. The first is what Mike Davis describes as 'the
emergence of a new, embryonic regime of accumulation that might be called
overconsumptionism', by which he means 'an increasing political subsidizaiton of a sub-

bourgeois [middle class homeonwers], mass layer of mangers, professionals, new

entrepreneurs and rentiers'. Davies argues that American capitalism experiences in the 1970s
and 1980s both the crisis of the old Fordist regime of accumulation based on the articulation
of semi-automatic and working class consumptio and a redistribution of wealth and income in
favour, not simply of capital, but of an increasingly assertive new middle class."
"The result is a 'split-level economy', involving ' as Business Weeks notes, a more sharply
bifurcated consumer market structure, . . . with the masses of the working poor huddled round
their K-Marts and Taiwanese imports at one end, while at the other there is a (relatively) "vast
market for luxury products and services, from travel and designer clothers, to posh
restaurants, home computers and fancy sports cars".
"The discourse of postmodernism is best seen as the product of a socially mobile
intellignetsia in a climate dominated by the retreat of the Western labour movement and the
'overconsumptionist' dynamic of capitalsim in the Reagan-Tatcher era. From this perspective
the term 'postmoern' would seem to be a floating signifier by means of which this
intelligentisia has sought to articulate its political disillusionment and its aspiration to a
consumption-oriented lifestyle. The difficulties involved in identifying a referent for this term
are therefore beside the point, since talk about postmodernism turns out to be less about the
world the expression of a particular generations's sense of an ending' (171).
nothing new: trotsky etc: 171
"There nothing new about such trahison des clercs. One striking case in point is the brilliant
group of American intellecturals won to the Trotskyist movement in the 1930s and 1940s, but
who mostly backslid disillusioned into liberalism during the Cold War and often into-neoconservatism in the 1970s. Similar stories could be told about every period in which radicals
have found themselves isolated politically since Restoration times. In this book I have sought
to analyse the pathology of this latest 'experience of defeat', and in partiucalr the attempt to
explain it in terms of a postmodern age to which the Enlightenment project - even when
radicalized by Marxism - is irrelevant. This attempt fails, as I have tried to show, wheter as
philosophy, aesthetics and social theory. Postmodernism must be understood largely as a
response to failure of the great upturn of 1968-76 to fulfill the revolutionaory hopes it raised.
[yes but, maybe this is an important lesson]. During this upturn themes which had been
marginalized for half a century enjoyed a brief revival - not simply the idea of socialist
revolution, conceived as a democratic irruption from below rather than the imposition of
change from above, whether by a social democratic administration or a Stalinist party, but
also the avant-garde project of overcoming the separation of art and life.
These aspirations have once again been largely sidelined. But to believe that this will
permanently rmeain the case supposes that there will be no more explosions in the advanced
countries comparable to 1968 and after. The fragile and unstable character of the 1980s'
pathological propserity suggest otherwise. World capitalism has not escaped from the period
of crises which began in the early 1970s, nor has it somehow magically abolished the
working class: on the contrary, the 1980s were marked by the rise of new labour movements
based on proletariats created by recent industrialization - solidarnosc in Poland, the Workers's
Party in Brazil, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the new South Korean labour
movement. The project of 'radicalized Enlightenment' first outlined by Marx, for whom the
contradictions of modernity could be resolved only by socialist revolution, still awaits
realization. (171).

lekker weertje, rust gevend. iedereen hebt er zin in. jeugdloon demo. energie!
kameroen , vrijhandel, geen democratie. kolonialisme. leeggebloed. gigantische
multinationals. ttip. wurggreep.
strijdvaardig. willen wat doen. workshops. onderdeel van groter geheel. washington. verzet
groeit. 4 miljoen. positief. sociaal, media.
uitbreiden. wethouder laurens ivens.
gemeenteraad spreekt zich. zwak. ik wens jullie? succes.
ewald engelen, niet alles, ook sociaal media. alleen nog in naam democratie. corpocratie. laat
u niet in slaap sussen. referendum. nee tegen ttip!
cita melkvee houders . voedsel. breed. verschillende belangen. hormonen, cchloor kippen.
waar het echt om gaat, ewald engelen. spreek buis.
eerlijk voedsel.
fnv arbeidsomstandigheden. we are all migrants.,
vele landen. niet alleen voor onszelf.
milieudefensie. markrutte. pluimen. isds.
niet gedeeld belang, gaat iedereen aan. fundamenteel democratie. niet een coalitie.
monster verdrag. winsten grote bedrijven. meega stallen.
ik wel geen hormoon vlees op mijn bord. regelgeving.,"aan welke wet ik moet
gehoorzamen."
handel is al prima geregeld. niet in de uitverkoop.
greenpeace. historische strijd: in welke wereld willen wij leven. macht van de multinationals.
cab.
piraten partij.
dieren welzijn. ttp. ceta. actie verwachten.
nu kiezen van kwaliteit. verenigd.
milieu ,

geen verdrag, wurgcontract.

positieve sfeer. publiek steunt. niet heel divers, veel wit
bezet blokkeer. kies voor transparant.
we zijn er nog niet. verzet werkt. isds. dood en begraven. referendum. ceta. ttip. democratie.
fnv. milieuorg.
steeds meer komt naar buiten. vrijschrift. verzet in de steden. antittip comits.
mensen teleurgesteld.
jong en united. antikapitaliatisch. veel partijen vertegenwoordig. breekt met occoppy.
organisatie.
makkelijk krant verkopen. hoe verder. referendum. leeft. sfeer goed.
weinig echt contacten. leuzen steden opgepikt.
breed. hoe nu verder. vluchtelingen. internationaal. tpp ceta.
anekdotisch
voor sommigen, is ttip vla vla
zon ,
kiem.
studenten, yong end united
wat het maagden huis leerde: echte democratie bestaat slechts / komt slechts tot bestaan in het
gevecht tegen de krachten die het proberen te ondermijnen.
This movie... Gohan's performance was appalling, like, he should be able to destroy Frieza's
entire army by himself without breaking a sweat. Also why the fuck did he turn SSJ? He
doesn't need to ffs - his potential was unlocked, meaning he can access those powers without
wasting energy to transform (remember the Boo saga, don't start arguing if you haven't been
paying attention). Also why would Vegeta in Blue-haired Saiyan God be slow enough to
allow Frieza to destroy the planet. So many things I found frustrating and just... wrong.
hUhuterug/ herstel, daarom democratie.
resoneerde meer toen...
publieke instelling
vroeger was het beter/traditie

klagen n bezetting als ritueel.

academische gemeenschap
niet aan woordvoerder doen is ontregelend
toneelstuk ?!?
uiting van onvrede...
solidariteit gevoel
juiste balans..
we gaan het er over hebben, we hebben geprobeerd een discussie te starten
Het vonnis in mijn rechtszaak tegen de UvA volgt over uiterlijk twee weken. Mijn stemming
na de zitting:
Mijn slotrede:
Edelachtbare heer, lieve vrienden, geachte opponenten,
Het doet mij groot verdriet dat ik vandaag tegen de Universiteit van Amsterdam moet
procederen. De universiteit die ik haat...de universiteit die ik liefheb...de universiteit waar ik
mijn levenlang mee verbonden ben: als student, als promovendus en als docent; de
universiteit ook waar mijn voorouders als hoogleraar en als rectores magnifici aan verbonden
waren; de beste universiteit van Nederland.
Tijdens deze zitting ben ik als een halsstarrig persoon afgeschilderd. "Valkhoff wil dit niet en
hij wil dat niet". Ik zou graag mijn halsstarrigheid willen toelichten. Ik heb mijn handelen
laten leiden door het belang van de academische vorming van de individuele student; en door
het belang van de universiteit als zetel van de wetenschap.
In de afgelopen twintig jaar zijn de academische vorming van het individu en de academische
wetenschap steeds verder uitgehold. Het is nauwelijks meer mogelijk studenten als
individuen met hun eigen wensen, behoeften en belangen te benaderen en hen op maat
gesneden onderwijs aan te bieden. De academische wetenschap is ten prooi gevallen aan het
rendementsregime van bureaucratische managers en verworden tot een legbatterij.
Al in een vroeg stadium heb ik mij ingezet voor een duidelijke visie op het academische
onderwijs en gestreden tegen het rendementsdenken. Mijn inzet en mijn strijd zijn mij door
mijn collega's en leidinggevenden niet in dank afgenomen. Er is sprake van het bekende
verhaal van de boodschapper die de boodschap wordt verweten.
Mijn stijgende onvrede en verzet mondden uit in mijn deelname aan de bezettingen van het
Bunge- en het Maagdenhuis. Uiteindelijk heeft mijn werkgever mij en 50 van de meest
fantastische, gengageerde en intelligente studenten met bruut politiegeweld overvallen. Nu
probeert het bestuur van de universiteit om mij monddood te maken: door mij van mijn

onderwijstaken te ontheffen; door mij de toegang tot colleges en werkgroepen te verbieden;

door mij in mediationtrajecten met geheimhoudingsplicht te manipuleren; door mij te bevelen
alles na te laten wat de gerede gang van het onderwijs zou kunnen verstoren nota bene
terwijl ik werk aan de vorming van twee commissies die juist tot taak hebben de gerede gang
van het onderwijs tot nu toe te verstoren!
Tijdens deze zitting is veelvuldig gesproken over pestgedrag jegens mij. Met gekromde tenen
heb ik toegeluisterd. Ik wil met klem benadrukken dat ik me zelden zo vrij heb gevoeld als
het moment dat de politie mij in een cel opsloot; ik heb me zelden zo sterk gevoeld als nu dat
de universiteit mij monddood probeert te maken; ik heb me zelden zo strijdlustig gevoeld als
nu in het gezelschap van deze fantastische generatie van studenten, de generatie van 2015.
Meelijwekkend vind ik eerder de in principe eerbare collega's die in woord, maar nooit in
daad mijn ideen delen; die zich vervuld van angst door bureaucratische managers laten
manipuleren; die hun plichten jegens de wetenschap en het ideaal van academische vrijheid
schaamteloos verzaken.
Ik wil ten slotte benadrukken dat ik deze strijd niet alleen voor mezelf voer. In dat geval zou
ik misschien geneigd zijn om in te gaan op exitregelingen met een financile afkoopsom.
Edelachtbare, ik beschouw mijn strijd als een bredere strijd: een strijd voor het ideaal van
academische vrijheid; voor een betere universiteit; voor de belangen van deze generatie van
2015 die mijn generatie zo schandalig in de steek heeft gelaten. Ik beschouw mijn strijd ook
als een onderdeel van een nog bredere maatschappelijke strijd tegen de verderflijke gevolgen
van het rendementsdenken: in de nutsbedrijven, in het onderwijs, de gezondheidszorg, de
landbouw, de rechterlijke macht en zelfs bij de politie.
Edelachtbare, vrienden en opponenten: deze strijd staak ik niet.
[cartesian argument!] Cartesian reductionism: atomism? [is this the case? to me it seems
that descartes is more of a mathematical materialist => reread descartes]
Think leibniz:
1. there is a natural set of units or parts of which any whole system is made
2. These units are homogenous within themselves . . . .
3. . . . the parts exist in isolation and come together to make wholes. The parts have intrinsic
properties, which they possess in isolation and which they lend to the whole...
4. Causes are separate from effects, causes being properties of subjects, and effect the
properties of objects. While causes may respond to information coming from effects (socalled "feedback loops") [foucault, important in biology], there is no ambiguity about which
is causing subject and which is caused object.
When this DOES NOT APPLY to reality. -> rationalism [occams razor, "mind is just an
illusion"] and Mysticism [there are things that are beyond us -, supernatural speculation,
Swedenborg]
[Lukacs arguement]
postivism, rationalism and mysticicm are all partial one-sided mehtods of looking "the failure
of each engenders the rise of the others" (4). antinomies of bourgeois thought.

modern dialect as a response to these contradictions [yes, Hegel on Kant].

totality, change, contradiction.
Totality: "insistence that the various seemingly separate elements of which the world is
composed are in fact related to one another." (5) [just as foucault does, in fact. but totality
is a concept that has become suspiscious, in democratic materialism]
production = social act / market = social institution [btw: sociology IS ABOUT totality ->
weber, marx,durkheim,] / poverty and crime, history, the social, cannot be understood
seperately, but only as part of totality [does totality involve teleology? c.f. leibniz "dominant
monade"].
"in a dialectical system, the entire nature of the part is deterined by its relationships with the
other parts and so with the whole. The part makes the whole [particular] end the whole
makes the parts [universal]."
"In this analysis, it is not just the case that the whole is more than the sum of the parts but
also that the parts become more than they are individually by being part of a whole"
[ Levins and Lewontin qtd in Reese:] "The whole, thus, is not simply the object of interaction
of the parts but is the subject of action on the parts." (leibniz)
but static
Change: but: cause and effect, description.
contradiction: "The defect of all such approaches is that they leave the ultimate cause of
events outside the events they describe. The cause is external to the system. A dialectical
approach seeks to find the cause of change within the system." [c.f. structural causality
Althusser]
Central claim: "if change is internally generated, it must be a result of a contradiction, of
instability and development as inherent properties of the system itself" (7) [c.f. structural
causality Althusser]/
Contradiction is thus the form of the explaination how one type of class society succeeds
another, of how the conflict between the classes that compose the system leads to the
negation of the system itself and the emergence of a new socity. [it is logical necessity/
coolen] "It is only the form of an explanation, because the explanation itself will depend on
the concrete, empirical conditiions that obtain in each society (7).
Definition: "This then is the general form of the dialectic: it is an internally contradictory
totality in a constant process of change."
The principle of contradiction is a barrier to reductionism, where linear notions of causality
are not, because two elements that are in contradiction cannot be dissolved into one another
but only overcome by the creation of a synthesis that is not reducible to either of
its constituent elements/ (the third term: Badiou) [mens is er, is er niet meer, leven].

"a dialectical approach is radically opposed to any form of reductionism because it

presupposes the parts and the whole are not reducible to each other. The parts and the whole
mutually condition, or mediate, each other.
three laws of the dialectic [engels?]
The "three laws" are: the unity of opposites, the transformation of quantity and into quality,
and the negation of negation. These are useful reminders of forms in which dialectical
contradiction someitmes work themselves out. howerver: These three laws are not, even in
Hegel, the only way in which dialectical development can take place. They cannot be
understood without the broader definition of the dialectic discussed above. They are not, as
Marx and Engels were quick to insist, a subsitute for the difficult, empirical task of tracing
the development of real contradicitons, not a suprahistorical master key whose only
advantage is to turn up when no real historical knowledge is abailable. But, treated carefully,
they are useful devlopments in dialectical understanding.
Unity of opposites
"The unity of opposites is simply a way of describing contradiciton. In Levin's and
Lewontin's example, cited above, individual and society, the parts and the whole, are
examined as unity of opposites. The most obvious example from Marx is the relationship
between capitalists and workers. They are, by definition, the opposite poles of one capitalist
system - thsoe who onw and control the means of production and those who do not and are
therefore obliged to work for a wage. The one could not exist without the other. The conflict
between them is the internal contradiction that animates capitalist society" (9)
The tranformation of quantity into quality
"The tranformation of quanitity into quality refers to the process by which gradual changes in
the balance between opposed elements suddenly results in a rapid and complete change in the
nature of the situation. [EVENT? not really.. no real break]. Hegel used the example of a man
who succesively pluks single hairs from his head. At first no qualitative hange takes place.
But eventually the man becomes bald - quatitave change has resulted in a qualitative change
in his condition. Marx made the point that if workers in one workplace strike against their
employer for a reduction in the working day, the strike has the quality of an economic
dispute. If more workplaces join the strike, if it becomes a general striek, if the workers
demand a change in the law governing the length of the working day, then a qualitatively
different movement, a political movement, has arisen" (9)
The negation of the negation
The negation of the negation points oure attention to the way in hwich new and distinct
situations arise form contradictory cirucmstances in such a way that aspects of the old
circumstnaces appear, transformed, as part of the new conditions. It is an essential reminder
that the future will always contain elements form the past, but only in ways quite disticnt
form their previous form [zizek? differs? you bet...]
Marx thoery of alienation

"Marx's theory of alienation is an equally important part of the dialectic, although it is not
always seen in this context. Alienation is fundamental to the marxist dialectic because it
involves an account of how a subject arises that is able to resolve consciously
the contradiction thrown up by social development. As part of this account,, the theory of
aliantion explaince why in both science and working-class consciousness the world appears
different from its real structure. The theory goes on to explain how and under what
circumstances it is possible to move from the surface appearance of society to an appreciation
of its underlying nature. Alienation is therefore bound to Marx's dialectic of subject and
object and to his dealectic of esence and appearance. [hmmmm....]

ENLIGHTENMENT
[abstraction/newton/reification/marketforce/newdiscoveries/leibniz/critique on religion
etc etc]
Materialsim: Bacon, Hobbes... [hobbes, foucault, skinner etc etc]
John locke -> social contract theory. Lock rejects innate ideas -> empiricism
Materialist arguments abound -> althusser every mat -> ideal etc.
"the sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death which has no inner
significance or filling . . . it is thus the coldest and meanest of all deaths, with no more
significance than cutting off the head of a cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water.
reinform, fascisme. vicky.

wij denken dat zijn badiou daarentegen wel degelijk

wij denken dat
niet vreemd dat met argus ogen wordt nemen. maar we denken dat het betwist op een
misverstand, virtueel.
radicaal emancipator , status quo.veel parallellen. misschien dezelfde problemen: hoe verder
in kapitaal / ideologie et is geen alternatief.
Today is climax from period 75-08

"the crisis weighing capitalism down at the beginning of the twenty-first century - a crisis of
its economy as well as its politics - can be understood only as the climax of a devlopment
which began in the mid-1970s and which the crisis theories [frankfurter shule] of that time
were the first attempts to interpret. "(1)
- sequence 45-75 {reconstruction, rising expectations '68} 75-08
{reaganomics/tatcher/neoliberal}
Bretton Woods collapse:
-end of postwar reconstruction; breakdown of the international monetary system. "which had
been nothing less than a political world order for postwar capitalism [!], and the return of
crisis-like disturbances and interruptions of economic activity as steps in capitalist
development.
Debt state as resolution:
- But the subsequent development of these, including their apparent resolution [debt
state/consolidation state], eluded its theoretical grasp.
Legitimation crisis theory, overlooking capital as actor:
"One problem seems to have been that it essentially took over the characterization of the
'golden years' of postwar capitalism as a period of joint technocratic management by
governments and large corporations, based upon and suited for the maintenance of stable
growth and the eventual elimination of systemic crisis tendencies. What appeard critical to
them was not the technical governability of modern capitalism but its social and cultural
legitimation [habermas/foucault]. Underestimating capital as a political actor and a strategic
social force, while at the same time overestimating the capacity of government policy to plan
an to act, they thus replaced economic theory with theories of the state and democracy; the
penalty they paid was to forgo a key part of Marx's legacy." [Habermas, Honneth] [zizek talk]
Frankfurter schule unprepared for three main developments [reversal, acceptance, no
eye for nature of crises]:
- reversal to 'self-regulated markets', revive the dynamic of capitalist accumulation through
deregulation, privitization and market expansion.
- cultural acceptance of market-driven ways of life., (woman demand for alienated wage
labor)
- the economic crisis remained overlooked to legitmation theory. (surplus population)
---------------------------"I would like to propose a historical narrative of capitalist development since the 1970s
that links what I consider the revolt of capital against the postwar mixed economy with
the broad popularity of expanding labour and consumer goods markets after the end of
the short 1970s, and with the sequence of economic crisis phenomena from then until
today (which has com te a head in a triple crisi of banking, public finances and ecnomic
growth)."(4)
-revolt of profit-dependent class. [nice term btw]
- against the "multiple constraints that post-1945 capitalism had had to endure
- in order to become politically accaptable again under the conditions of system competition.

explained by: government policies that BOUGHT TIME for the exisiting economics and
social order."this they acieved by generating mass allegiance to the neoliberal social
project dressed up as consumption project, first through inflation of the money supply,
then through an accumeulation of public debt, and finally throug lavish credit to private
households - something the theory of late capitalism could never have imagined." (4)
legitimation crisis among capital, in the shape of accumulation crises. "these could be
overcome only by continued economic liberalization and immunization of policy against
pressure from below, so as to win back the confidence of 'the markets' in the system"(4).
"solution called for a progressive emancipation of the capitalist economy from democratic
intervention . . . insulation of the economy from mass democracy.
TTIP
From keynes to neo-Hayek.
splitting of capital from democracy:
"My conclusion will be that, unlike the 1970s, we may now really be near the end of the
postwar political-ecnomic formation - an end which, albeit in a different way, was foretold
and even wished for in the crisis theories of 'late capitalism.' What i feel sure about is that the
clock is ticking for democracy as we have come to know it, as it is about to be sterilized as
redistributive mass democracy and reduced to a combination of the rule of law and public
entertaiment [brood en spelen]. This splitting of democracy from capitalismm through the
splitting of the economy from democracy - a process of de-democratization of capitalism
through the de-economicaiton of democracy- has come a long way since the crisis of 2008, in
Europe just as elsewhere" (5)
-revolt of capital against the mixed economy with the broad popularity of expanding labour
and consumer goods markets
possible legitmation of authoritarian capital:
"institutionalized expectations in a transformed democracy under neoliberalism to make do
with the justice of the market are evidently by no means incompatible with capitalism. But,
despite all the efforts at re-education [ideological offensive], diffuse expectation of social
justice still present in sections of the population may resist channeling into laissez-faire
market democracy and even provide an impetus for anarchistic protest movements.
protest-movement?
It is not clear, though, that protests of that kind are a threat to the capitalist 'two-thirds society'
looming on the horizon or to global 'plutonomy' (note: The citibank research department
devloped this as a positive concept, to dispel fears amon the select customer of the bank's
private banking department that their future prosperity would depend, as in the Keynesian
world, on the material welfare of the broad masses.) various techniques for managing an
abandoned underclass [c.f basic income] , devloped and tested in the United States, appear
thoroughly exportable also to Europe.

"More critical [than capitalism being abandoned by protest] could be the question of whether,
if monetary doping with its potentially dangerous side effects has to be abandoned at some
point, other growth drugs will be available to keep capital accumulation under way in the
rich countries of the world. On this we can only SPECULATE."
Unpresedented coincidence of crises [banking, fiscal (i.e., government finance), real
economy]
Banking:
- too much credit given, and unexpectedly large part turned bad (not able to repay)
- banks no longer lent to each other
- run on the bank
- regulatory agency -> increas capital reserves -> cut back lending
- states take over bad loans, unlimited deposit protection and recapitalized banks.
- austronomical amounts, AND states were already burden with large debts.
- but may be more expensive if banks were to drag each other down
-"Here too, though - and this is the core of the problem - no more than guesses are possible
Fiscal:
- budget deficits and rising levels of government debt, go back to 70's
- borrowing to save finance industry (recapitalization of financial institutions and acquisition
of worthless debt)
- borrowing to save real economy (trough fiscal stimuli / [government investment?])
- higher cost of odl an new debt
- TO REGAIN 'CONFIDENCE' OF 'THE MARKETS' -> harsh austerity measures [???]
"It is even debatable whether austerity reduces the debt burden, since it not only fails to
promote growth but probably has a negative impact on it. And growth is at least aas important
as balanced budgets in lowering the national debt" (9).
Real economy:
- high unemployment and stagnation
- difficult to obtain loans
- risk averse
- governments curb expenditure
- ECONOMIC STAGNATION THUS REINFORCES THE FISCAL CRISIS AND, VIA
RESULTING DEFAULTS, THE CRISIS OF THE BANKING SECTOR
These three are closely interlinked:
- first with the second through money [banking/fiscal who prints the money?]
- first with the third through credit [banks give credit to businesses]
-second with the third through government spending and reveneu [taxes, social security]
- they vary, depends on country, but they are there [consolidation state?]
- and countries are connected
"Whatever governments do to solve a problem sooner or later produces another; that which
ends one crisis makes the others worse; for every hydra head that is lopped off, two more
grown in its place. Too many things have to be tackled at once; short-term fixes get in the
way of long-term solutions; long-terms solutions are not even attempted because short-term
problems take priority; holes keep appearing that can be plugged only by making new whloes

elsewhere. Never since the Second World War have the governments of the capitalist
West looked so clueless; never behind the facades of equanimity and tried
political craftsmanship have there been so many indications of blind panic" (10).
---------------------------------------Frankfurter schule crisis theory failed partly. why?
- Banks and finance markets do not feature in neo-Marxist crisis theory 1968 FFS
- no one foresaw financialization of modern capital.
- also not of cycles, limits to growth, underconsumption etc [Badiou incl.]
- wanted to mark distance to economic determinism (soviet orthodoxy)
- but more important: idea of prosperity machine (keynes as the key)
- no horizon of pauparizaiton of working class
- mixed economy
- steuerungsoptimismus
- capital - communism meet halfway
- the economy as mechanism [zizek] replaced capital as class
- technology and science as ideology [heidegger] occupied a space earlier reserved for power
and interest
"In contemporary theories, the economy as mechanism replaced capital as class;
'technology and science as ideology' occupied a space previously reserved for power and
interests" (13).
- theories of state control (no laissez faire) [adorno/hh]
- primacy of politics of primacy of economic "under non-socialist conditins" [facism, state
socialism, new deal]
- thus: crisis of democracy, rather than crisis of capitalism
" The capitalist line of fracture, however, was no longer its economy but its polity and
society: located in the field of democracy rather than the economy, of labour rahter than
capital, of social integration rather than system integration." Rather than the production of
surplus-value - its 'contradictions', it was thought, had become controlable - the problem was
the legitimacy of capitalism as a social system; not whether capital, converted into the
economy of the society, would be able to keep society supplied, but whether what it was able
to supply would be enough to make its recipients continue playing the game." Thus for the
crisi theories of the 1960s and 1970s, the impending crisis of captialism was one not of
production but of legitimation" (15). [maslow piramid]
- commodification would be increasingly recognized [opposite is the case]
- demands for democratizaion of all areas of life
- consciouness of students and workers
"Markets, capital and capitalists hardly figure, however, and democratic theory and
communication theory took the place of political economy." (16)
BUT: capital - in the shape of organizations [business], its organizers [managers] and its
owners [shareholders] - was rather the one that refused to ally to welfare state.

"Actually, of course, it was not the masses that refused allegiance to postwar capitalism and
thereby put an end to it, but rather capital in the shape of its organizations, its organizers and
its owners" (16).
[bachelor scriptie]
"Whereas the struggle against 'consumption terror' still had some resonance among students
in 1968, the great majority of the generation that had fought the marketization of life under
capitalism actively took part in the unprecedented wave of consumerism and commercialism
that began shrotly afterwards (see streeck, citizens as Custumors). Markets for goods such as
cars, clothing, cosmetics, food and consumer electronics, and for services such as body care,
tourism or entertainment, expanded with a dynamism never seen before and became the
foremost engines of capitalist growth. Ever faster process and product innovations, made
possible by the rapid spread of micro-electronics, shortenend the life-cycle of more and more
consumer goods and allowed them to be geared to ever more narrowly defined groups of
customers. At the same time, the money economy tirelessly conquered new spheres of social
existence that had previously been reserves of unpaid activity, opneingn them up for the
production and absorption of surplus-value. One example among many was sport, which in
the 1980s became a global industry worth billions of dollars."[invasion of the life world]
- wage-labour
- wage dependence
- woman into the labour force
- woman allies of employers seeking labour market deregulation
- [adorno] Sense of well being in alienation [woman that want to work as cassiers AND have
children].
"to be a housewife is today a stigma, and colloquially the word 'work' has become
synonymous with full-time emplyment PAID MARKET RATES.
- neo protestantism
- compatibility of job and family
- integration of aims profit extraction with personal identification [life]
- end of crisis of wage labour ??
- end of achievement principle
- new spirit of capitalism - spaces of creativity
"Neo Protestantism, whose adherents are proud of their lives of constant exhaustion minutely
structured around 'the compatibility of job and family,' and the human capital capitalism of
self-commodificaiton in contemporary labour markets, with its internalization of returns-toeducation calculations in the life plans of whole generations, apparently have put an end to
the 'crisis of wage-labour' and of the achievement principle [car, house etc.], as has the 'new
spirit of capitalism' [boltanski] which, by drawing on newly created spaces of creativity and
autonomy at the workplace, has deepened corporate integration and served as a vehicle
for personal identification with the aims of profit extraction. (18)
Reification
THIS IS THE POINT!!! People have remained loyal, even become MORE loyal,
CAPITAL BAILS

- crisis theory could not forsee, since it took it as mechanism, not politics.
- apparatus, rather than agency
- means of production, rather than a class
- class struggle importance [there are profit-dependent classes that are the dominant class]
- but: capital proved a player instead of a plaything, a predator instead of a working animal
- with an urgent need to break free from the cage-like institutional framework of the post1945 'social market economy."
- history since 70s -> capital escape from the system of social regulation.
"Its beginning was marked, in and around 1968, by a series of worker revolts that confronted
employers in the mature industrial societies with a new generation of workers who took for
granted the growth-rates and social advances of postwar reconstruction and the political
promises of the founding years of democratic capitalism. These promises capitalism was
neither able nor willing to fulfill forever."
- capitalist elites [class] and political alllies looked for ways to extricate from obligations
- new product strategies
"Frankfurt crisis theory was not prepared for this: for a state which, to rid itself of social
expectations it could no longer satisfy, deregulated and liberalized the capitalism it was
supposed to place in the service of society; and for a captialism which found its politically
organized freedom from crises too constrictive" (20).
"Liberalization, as control technology, [foucault] relief of government from social
responsibilities and liberation of capital at the same time, in fact progressed only slowly,
especially so long as memories of 1968 remained alive, and was accompanied by numerous
political and economic disruptions, until it reached its highest point so far in the present crisis
of public finances and the world financial system."
THREE ACTORS IN LEGITMATION CRISIS (INSTEAD OF TWO): NOT ONLY
The STATE and the CITIZENS, But ALSO CAPITAL
- new theory of class struggle
"Expectations in relation to which the political-economic system must legitimate itself [we
want secure lives if this is to continue!] exist not only among the population but also on the
side of capital-as-actor (no longer just as machinery) - or, more precisely, among the profitdependent owners and managers of capital." [we want profits if this is to continue!]
- their expectations (!) [note: instead of interest, belangen]
- capital-dependent population [renteniers, super rich]
- profit-dependent population [entrepeneurs, managers]
- wage-dependent population [wage earners]
- only if the profit dependent population is satisfied, can the capital dependents be too
- but it is not the case that if the capital-dependents are satisfied, and only then, the profitdependents can be too. [they do not need to be happy: for example in the mixed economy of
1970s]

"Contrary to neo-Marxist theories, a legitimation crisis may therefore also grow out of
discontent on the part off ' capital' with democracy [LOUK!] and its associated obligations hence without a progressive, system-transending evolution of the demands of society on
economic and social life, such as many though to lie ahead in the 1970s."
a legitimation crisis theory that starts with capital
- firms and their owners and manager as advantage seeking profit maximizers
- not prosperity machines
- not bureacratic functionaries
- capital appears as self-willed self-interested collective actor.
- strategic
- capable of communication
- only to a limited extent predictable
- an actor that may be dissatisfied
- Capital interests [interest rates] result from income dependence on returns on invested
capital
- capital income is residual income that owners or managers of capital obtain by seeking to
maximize the yield from the invested capital at their disposal
- wage dependent dispose of labour power
- not capital
- supply labour to capital owner as contract-price
- price is indepedenten of the profit that may or may not be earned.
- thus: profit-dependent interests stant face to face with the interest of the wage-dpedent
class analysis, capital as actor.
"Both growth and full employment depend on the willingness of capital owners to invest, and
that in turn depends on their aspirations for an 'adequate' rate of return, as well as on their
general assesment of the security and stability of the capitalist oder. (22)
- growth and empl. can occur if capital is happy, confident and willing to invest.
- Absence of crises means capitals is content,
- crises signal discontent
- what owners and managers demand is volatile
- "investors may become more modest if they have no alternatives, or more demanding if
their profits no longer seem enough in comparison with what they can obtain elsewhere" (23).
- they may "lose confidence"
"Economic crises in capitalism result from crises of confidence on the part of capital; they are
not technical disturbances but legitimiation crises of a special kind. Low growth and
unemployment are results of "investment strikes' on the part o fowners who could invest their
capitals but refuse to do so because they lack the necessary confidence.
- capital -> the capital of society -> private -> owners can choose
- no obligation to invest
- stimulating means -> equlibrium between profit expectations and demands, and wage and
employment expectations and demands of wage earners -

- "a compromise that captial has to find sfficiently reasonable for it to keep engagin in the
generation of prosperity."
- BUT THIS CAN FAIL
- if it fails -> felt as disturbance in 'the [political] economy'
- Further legitimation crisis -> on the part of wage dependents [fascism] [what about
unemployed btw?]
- technical -> growth + full employment is needed!
- No new demands, only fulfilment of old ones [conservative SP/Wilders]
"In other words, capitalism presupposes a social contract in which the legitimate mutual
expectations of capital and labour, of profit dependents and wage-dependants, are more or
less explicitly enshrined as a formal or informal economic constitution. Contrary to what
economic theory and ideology would have us to believe, capitalism is not a state of nature but
a historical social order in need of institutionalization and legitimation: its concrete forms
change with time and place and are in principle both susceptible to renegotiation and in
danger of breaking down" (24).
-capital is social contract -> can break down
"In the 1970s, what the literature described as the political-economic postwar settlement of
democratic capitalsim - a social compact on the foudnations of a re-established capitalsim in
a new form - began to unravel. After 1945, capitalism had found itself on the defensive
worldwide; in all the countries of the emergent Western bloc, it had to make efforts to extand
and renew its social franchise, in the face of a working class strengthened by war and the
rivalry between two systems" (24).
- renew social franchise after 1945, began to unravel in 1970
"This could be achieved only through sizable concessions that Keynesian theory had already
envisaged and paved the way for: in the medium term, government intervention in the
business cycle, and state planning to provide for growth, full employment,
social redistribution and ever greater protection from the unpredictability of markets; in the
long term, a gradual departure from capitalism in a world of permanently low interest rates
and profit margins" (24).
- profit dependents had to lay low
" Only under these conditions, in the service of politically defined social purposes, could a
profit-oriented economic regime, after the end of the war economy, be rebuilt within a stable
liberal democracy immune from fascist regression and Stalinist temptations; only then was it
politically feasible to restore full property rights and managerial authority.
"Observance of the 'peace formula,' as it was called in the theoretical discussion in Frankfurt,
was negotiated and supervised by an interventionist state commited to disciplining the market
for planning and redistribution, a state which , on pain of losing its legitimacy, had to make
sure that the social contract underlying the new capitalism was in fact kept."
This political-economic peace settlement began to crumble in the 1970s
- weakening of growth [panic!]

- governments: new techniques

- workers insisted more cofindently on what had been agreed
- why play along?
- revolution of rising expectatioins ->
- capital could only deliver by declining profits (what it does not want)
Michal Kalecki -> asked employers why object keynes if constant growth. answer: permanent
full employment brought the danger that workers would become over-demanding once they
had forgotten the insecurity and deprivation associated with unemployment.
wildcat strike of 1968 -> result of rising expectations
"To employers and governments under democratic capitalism, the global wave of wildcat
strikes in 1968 and 1969 appeared to be the result of a long period of crisis-free growth and
secure full employment that had fuelled excessive expectations on the part of a labour force
spoiled by affluence and the welfare state." (26).
- employers -> workers are spoiled!
- workers -> this is our democratic right!
- from then on expectation were very far apart.
- democracy in crisis
- 1970s more and more strikes -> capital less room to manoeuvre
- capital response: withdraw from social contract preperations
- overcoming its passivity
- restoring capcity for action
- [neoliberalism as ideology]
Revokement of key things in 1980s, such as:
- politically guaranteed full employment
- collective society-wide wage formation negotiated with free trade unions
- worker participation at workplace and enterprise level
- state control of key industries [NS, Nuon, PTT]
- broad public sector with secure employment as model for private sector
- universal social rights protected from competition
- tax policies kept inequality within tight limits
- government cyclical and industrial policies to secure steady growth
"In 1979, the year of the 'second oil crisis,' more or less aggressive policies to curb trade
unions were introduced in all the Western democracies" (28).
gradual yet decisisve reforms of labour markets and social security
- flexibilization
- activation ???? -> participation society
- fundamental revision of postwar welfare state
- defended with reference to expension of markets beyond national frontiers
- "globalization"
- erosion of rights to job security

- author. of low pay empl.

- accept. of high struct empl.
- privatization of public services
- cutback public employment
- elemination of trade unions w.r.t. wage formation
"at the end, over and above national differences and specificities, stood a 'lean' and
'modernized' welfare state increasingly geared to 'recommodification,' whose 'employmentfriendliness' and lower costs had been bought by lowering the minimum subsistence level
guaranteed as a social right" (29).
Not only labour markets deregularized: also markets for goods, services and capital:
- govern. hoped this would mean faster growth
- relieve them of political responsibilities
- employers invoked expansion of markets and sharper comp.
- to justify degrading of wages and work conditions
- widening of wage diff.
- capital markets -> transformed into markets for corporate control
- sharehodler value -> supreme maxim of good management
- Scandinatvia-> private ed.
- economic inequality
- handing welfare over to the market
In rich countries of the West, the long turn to neoliberlism encountered remarkably
weak resistance
- one reason: structural unemployment
- conversion of sellers' markets into customers markets
- burgeoning arts of marketing [bleg..]
- both ^ enusred ever wider loyalty for the commercialization of social life
- and -> stabilized the motivation for work and performance
- new forms of employment and work org.
- knowledge society
- co-opted the self-fulfilment project
- [SELF-FULFILMENT - (demand of 68) - WAS MARKETIZED
- support of women
- and young - flexible modern life (against tradition) -> mirrored in employment cond.
"They certainly did not have to fear that their nightmare of a gold wathc after fiftyyears in the
same company would ever come true" (31).
- politicians and employers -> obscure distinction between freely chosen and forced mobility
- obscured distinction between self-employed and precarious work
- giving notice <-> giving the sack
- young were taught: meritocratic. labour is sports match
"Whereas in the 1940s Polanyi had seen a human need for stable social relations as the
Archimedean point for a fightback against the liberal project, the cultural tolerance of market

uncertainty grew against all expectations in the last two decades of the twentieth century"
(31).
BUYING TIME
- But the neolib. rev. did not succeed without political assistance.
- slowing growth +
- growing wage militancy +
- expanding goverment social policy +
--> = crisis
- problem was solved:
- not by more demands/revolution
- but by "a monetary policy that accommodated wage rises in excess of productivity growth,
resulting in high global rates of inflation, especially in the second half of the 1970s" (32).
- strike wave 1968
--> inflationary monetary policy of the 1970s safeguarded social peace in rapidly developing
consumer society
- COMPENSATING GROWTH and ENSURING CONTUNIATION OF FULL
EMPLOYMENT by wat of inflation
- a TEMPORARY repair of the neocapitalist peace formula
"The trick was to defuse the emergent distribution conflict between labour and capital by
introducing additional resources, even if these existed only as money and not, or not yet, in
reality" (33).
- money illusion
- magic of modern fiat money
- boost for consumerism
- but faded
- stagflation
- recession, unemployment
- oil crisis 80s
STRIKES BECOME INEFFECTIVE
"Governments that sought social peace by means of inflation, introducing not yet existing
resources into the capitalist distributional conflict, were able to draw on the magic of modern
'fiat money' the amount of which, politics commanding public power, may increase ad
libitum" (34).
"With the onset of staglfation - of stagnation despirte accelerating inflation - in the second
half of the 1970s, however, the replacement of real with nominal growth lost its charm;
central banks under the leadership of the Federal Reserve, resorted to drastic stabilization
measures, including in the American case interest rates above 20 percent that soon brought an
end to inflation that has lasted to the present day" (34).
- deflation
- recession
- continual unemployment
- postwar legitimation problem

- temptation to relievee it by conjuring money from nowhere (fiat money)

- development -> today
"The monetary stabilization of the world economy in the early 1980s was a tour de force that
came with a high political risk; it could be undertaken only by governments, such as those of
Reagan and Tatcher, that were willing to trade mass unemployment for the restoration of
'sound money' and to crush the expected social resistance at whatever cost" (34).
- crush expected social resistance at whatever cost
- deflation
- lasting unemployment
- neoliberal labour-market reforms
- decline in union organization
- strike weapon unusable
STRIKES BECOME INEFFECTIVE
- no longer strikes
"In fact, the deflation of capitalist national economies, backed up with lasting unemployment
and neoliberal labour-market reforms, brought about a worldwide decline in union
organization that made strike weapon virtually unusable in distributional conflicts; the
incidence of strikes fell towards zero nearly everywhere and has remained there ever since,.
At the same time, the gap separating the promises of capitalism and the expectation of
its clientele from what ever more powerful markets were willing to deliver not only persited
but tended to grow wider; once again, under changed conditions and with new instruments, it
had to be politically bridged, however, provisionally. This was the beginning of the public
debt era." (34).
The beginning of the public debt area
"Like inflation, public debt enables a government to commit financial resources to the
calming of social conflicts, resources which in reality are not yet available, in the sense that
citizens still have to generate them and the state has to acquire that money through tax. Now,
however, it is not the government printing shop but the private credit system that fills the
hole, by supplying in advance the tax revenue that will have to be raised, or not raised, at a
future date" (36).
"IN the early 1980s, demands on social security systems increased, especially as a result of
high unemployment and because benefits promised in previous decades in return for wage
restraint were coming due" (36).
- not all social security could be revoked at once
- end of inflation curbed devaluation of public debt
- public debt rose
"Since tax increases would have been as politically risky as faster eriosion of the social state,
governments turned to debt as a way out."

- liberalization of financial markets

- allowed banks to create credit faster
- cover state's growing borrowing requirement
"Even this could ensure only temporary peace for capitalism."
- 1990 : governements worry about debt
- creditors: doubts about the ability of government to repay debt.
- social spending cuts [because gov has to repay DEBT! omg....]
- IMF, OECD
" But even two decades after capitalism broke loose from its postwar casing, its further
development still required legitimation through provision of additional, conflict-dampening
resources - only now what was politically necessary could ideally be matched with what was
desirable from a neoliberal point of view. "
Budgetary Consolidation! -> Private Debts!
- causes depressed demand
- private income losses
- dangerous to system legitimacy
- Answer: capital market liberalization -> rapid increase in private debt.
- privitized keynesianism
"Privatized Keynesianism replaces government debt with private debt, as a mechanism for
expanding the resource inventory in the national eocnomy." (38)
- third and last variant -> purchasing power -> anticipated to meet the unfulfilled promises of
late postwar capitalism
- state limits itself to regulatory policies -> enabling private households to supplement their
income from work and benefits by taking debt at their own risk.
- Sweden -> houshold debts ^
New theory -> shake off responsibility
- political ideas -> new theory
- "replacement public with private debt -> capital markets self-regulating"
- "do not require government intervention"
- borrowing as a means to privatize public services
- state shake off responsibility for growth and security
- (always suspect in eyes of capital)
- transfer back to the market (growth and sec)
- neoliberal reform conclusion
Hope proved illusory: Crisis
- Triple crisis
- breakdown of dept pyramid
- which consited of promises of growth
- capitalism has for some time now no longer been able to deliver

- at least to mass of population

"With this, neoliberal reform, too, has reached a point of crisi. After years of privatization and
derugulation, the possible collapse of the international banking system in 2008 compelled
public authorities to re-enter the economic fray, wrecking all the gains in budgetary
consolidation they had achieved at high political risk" (40).
"Since 2008, governments have had little or no idea how to clear away the debris of the
financial crisis and recreate some kind of order - a task that certainly cannot be privatized."
"In the measures taken by governments and central banks to save the private banking system,
the distinction between public and private money has become increasingly irrelevant, and
finally, with the takeover of bad loans, it became clear how seamlessly the one passed into the
other. Today it is virtually impossible to tell where the state ends and the market begins, and
wheter governments have been nationalizing banks, or banks have been privatizing the state."
(40).

hujonge studenten
nussbaum: commercile mens. doelmatigheid vraag eerst, moralisme.
academische.gemeenschap is de vraag. vorming van gemeenschap. brede bachelors, vrije
inzichten.
onverwachte echo.
wat het publieke is... wat gemeenschap is. status quo . politiek neoliberalisme. mechaniek van
de huidige macht. alternatieve vorming.
spelde prik, anti egalitair, anti modern. conceptuele habitat. zichtbaar, expressie.
alomtegenwoordig. empire. netwerk v instituties. tina. privatisering. publiek bezit. burgers ,

consument. disciplinering. ego. rendementsnorm.

politieke economie. geen tegenspelers. col. uit ideologie n ongenoegen. verbinding.
materile analyse. emancipatie weg.
disciplinering, dociel subjecten.
politiek! geen techniek. afbrak van gelijkheid...
de belasting betaler.. ??
rendement objectief, cijfers.
macht: sturing. diapositief.
continue evalu.
onmiddellijke waarde. tucht vd markt.
zelf ! waarde maken.
publiek onderwijs onmogelijk..
moderniteit, publiek , staat die niet! priv is. universiteit.
vermogende elite (filosofie etc.) geen emancipatie. burgerlijke ook!, emancipatie... publieke ,
gemeentelijke universiteit. mobiliteit. participatie. publiek goed.
onteigening. einde van burgerlijke emancipatie! nieuwe vorm van midden emancipatie...

These ties concatenate both upstream and downstream, across

the generations both backward and forward in time. Great
philosophers have more pupils and grandpupils who are relatively
successful than lesser philosophers do; intellectual success propagates
forward but also backwardhaving pupils who do important work is part
of what gets an individual a long-term historical reputation as having had
very important ideas. This last point seems counterintuitive; presumably
the future cannot cause the past; what happens after one's death cannot
determine what a thinker will do while he or she is alive. Here again we
need to make a gestalt switch. The individual is not determining what the
network does, but rather vice versa; it is the action of the entire network
across generations that determines how much attention is paid to the
ideas that are formulated at any particular point in it. And given that ideas
are always multi-sided symbols that are
linked to other symbols both by chains of grammatical exposition and by
connotation and nuance, ideas become reinterpreted in different contexts.
Thus the "importance" of a particular thinker's formulations is not

established until following generations of intellectuals have done their

work on them. This is not an argument that canonical reputations are
merely constructed, irrespective of what the merits of those ideas actually
were; it is an argument that the merit of those ideas is not contained in
themselves, in some platonic sphere outside of history, but is created by
the entire network as it works with ideas that are constantly being
decomposed and reintegrated in varying combinations. That image of a
few lonely isolated minds, rising like mountain peaks above their mere
worldly compatriots, is understandable enough as a Durkheimian emblem
that the intellectual community makes out of those whom it puts in its
focus of collective attention. As sociologists, we should be looking not
through the lens of the myths, but at the larger structure that produced
those myths, which is to say the formulation and long-term flow of ideas in
networks. (Collings 190-19)
Again we find a pattern that might tempt us to teleology, the future
determining the past. Breaking the individualistic gestalt, we can say that
the group makes its career together, their interaction promoting the
intellectual creativity of all.
Anonymous [neo-anarchism]:
Praktische tips:
1: Het maakt niet uit of je een masker op hebt of niet, zorg dat je anoniem bent.
2: Anonymous is een idee en dus geen groep. We hebben geen groepsmening of
groepssymbolen. Het idee van anonimiteit is een mensenrecht. Iedereen kan anoniem worden
en anonymous is iedereen. [Badiou?]
3: Gebruik geen geweld. Met agressiviteit en geweld geef je de macht het excuus om ons te
arresteren of dwars te zitten. In Nederland ligt het geweldsmonopolie bij de staat.
4: Spreek niet namens ons allemaal. Spreek namens jezelf. Anonymous is een idee en
anonymous heeft zelf geen mening. Het idee van anonymous beschermt jou en versterkt jou.
5: Respecteer elkaars anonimiteit. Behandel elkaar niet verschillend. Er zijn geen leiders en
deze mars is van iedereen.
6: Laat je niet voor een karretje spannen van andere groepen die aanwezig zullen zijn.
Politieke partijen en lobby groepen zullen hun kans grijpen te doen alsof zij achter ons staan
en wij achter hen. Dit klopt niet. Anonymous is iedereen en politieke partijen en groepen
vertegenwoordigen nooit iedereen. Laat de corrupten je niet leiden maar wees je eigen leider.
Jij bent zelf de verandering.
7: Ik zou willen vragen aan mensen of ze zelf cameras willen meenemen. Het is belangrijk
dat we goede beelden verzamelen van de mars die we vervolgens in toekomstige videos
kunnen verwerken. Hiermee zorgen we dat de volgende Million Mask March nog groter
wordt.

"It should be clear therefore that there is politics when there is a

disagreement about what is politics, when the boundary separating the
political from the social or the public from the domestic is put into question.
Politics is a way of re-partitioning the political from the non-political. This is why
it generally occurs out of place, in a place which was not supposed to be
political.
[what is democracy? cvb <> actiegroepen]

Definities
1. Onder een oorzaak van zichzelf versta ik een zaak, waarvan het wezen het bestaan insluit,
met andere woorden iets waarvan de natuur zich alleen als bestaand laat denken"
1. Onder 'zijns zelfs oorzaak' versta ik datgene, waarvan het wezen het bestaan insluit,
ofwel datgene, waarvan de aard niet anders kan worden gedacht als bestaande."
[Dat er iets is. Dat er zijn is. Er is substantie want als er geen substantie is dan is er niks.
Het laat zich niet als niet-bestaand denken.]
Oorzaak van zichzelf: wezen dat bestaan insluit.
Uitgebreidheid kan niet worden gedacht als niet bestaand. Denk hier aan Descartes' wax
voorbeeld. of wel? want uitgebreidheid kan wel worden gedacht als niet bestaand (denk aan
descartes hyperbolische twijfel). Denk aan Bishop Berkeley.

2. Men noemt iets binnen zijn categorie eindig wat door iets anders van diezelfde natuur kan
worden begrensd. Een lichaam wordt bijvoorbeeld eindig genoemd, omdat wij ons altijd een
ander, groter lichaam kunnen denken." o -> 0. "Op deze wijze wordt een gedachte door een
andere gedachte begrensd." [het gaat hier dus om gedachten: we kunnen altijd een groter
lichaam denken, daarom zijn gedachte lichamen eindig.] Een lichaam wordt echter niet door
een gedachte begrensd en een gedachte niet door een lichaam.
Iet is Binnen de categorie lichaam, is iets van dezelfde natuur [lichaam] dat een ander
lichaam kan begrenzen. Maar uitgebreid an sich beperkt de uitgebreidheid niet.
3. Onder een substantie versta ik iets wat in zichzelf is en door zichzelf wordt begrepen [IN
zichzelf IS, heeft niet iets anders nodig bv de groene tafel. Daarnaast het wordt door zichzelf
BEGREPEN, niet door iets anders, bv ik heb een begrip van god] dat wil zeggen een zaak
waarvan het begrip [bv God] niet het begrip van iets anders nodig heeft [bv God kunnen wij
alleen begrijpen met deze en deze kenmerken] op grond waarvan het gevormd moet worden.

4. Onder een attribuut versta ik een zaak die het verstand kent als iets wat het wezen van een
substantie vormt.
4. Onder 'attribuut' versta ik datgene, wat het verstand opvat als uitmakende het wezen
van een substantie.
[uitgebreide substantie, denkende substantie, het verstand kent die als het wezen van
de substantie (maar het is niet perse de substantie als zaak wat in zichzelf is en door
zichzelf wordt begrepen]
5. Onder een modus/bestaanswijze versta ik de aandoeningen van een substantie, met andere
woorden een zaak die bestaat in iets anders, waardoor men haar ook begrijpt. [groen als
groen, itt. groen als IN de tafel]
5.

Onder 'bestaanswijzen' versta ik de openbaringen van een substantie, ofwel datgene

wat in iets anders bestaat, door bemiddeling waarvan het ook wordt begrepen.

hoe zit het met attribuut? is een attribuut een modus van de substantie? en is een
attribuut onderscheiden van andere modi dmv de definitie dat het en modus is die het
verstand opvat als uitmakende het wezen van de substantie vormt?
6. Onder God versta ik een volstrekt oneindig [!] zijnde, dat wil zeggen een substantie die uit
oneindige attributen bestaat, waarvan ieder een eeuwige en oneindige wezen tot uitdrukking
brengt [groen? of uitgebreidheid/denkende].
pure definitie dus.
Identificatie van oneindig met n
Uitleg: "Het gaat om volstrekt en niet binnen zijn categorie oneindig, want van iets wat louter
binnen zijn categorie oneindig is, kunnen wij oneindige attributen ontkennen. [groen? kan
niet begrensd worden door groen..... maar heeft geen oneindige attributen] Tot het wezen van
iets wat volstrekt oneindig is, behoort echter alles wat het wezen tot uitdrukking brengt en
geen ontkenning inhoudt.
7. Men noemt 'vrij' iets wat alleen krachtens de noodzaak van zijn eigen natuur bestaat en dat
alleen door zichzelf tot handelen aangezet wordt [autonomie, MAAR als prime mover van de
causaliteit]. Noodzakelijk, of liever 'gedwongen' noemt men iets wat door een andere zaak tot
een welbepaalde wijze van bestaan en handelen wordt aangezet. [causaliteit].
8. Onder 'eeuwigheid' versta ik het bestaan wanneer men zich dit denkt als iets wat
noodzakelijk volgt uit de definitie van een eeuwige zaak. [geen tijd! just: being, pure being -]
1 [Z] 2 [E] 3 [S] 4 [A] 5 [M] 6 [G] 7 [V]
Axioma's
1. Al wat is, is in zichzelf of in iets anders

[groen ALS groen, groen IN de tafel]

2. Datgene, wat niet door bemiddeling van iets anders kan worden begrepen, moet uit
zichzelf begrijpbaar zijn.
[God = God / S1 Lacan]
3. Uit een gegeven, oorzaak vloeit noodzakelijk een bepaald gevolg voort en omgekeerd:
zonder een bepaalde oorzaak kan het gevolg onmogelijk optreden.
[er is ALTIJD een oorzaak, voor een gevolg. Is dit gelijk aan Leibniz "voldoende
grond" argument?]
4. De kennis van een gevolg hang af van de kennis van de oorzaak en sluit die in
[Ik ken de beker, door mijn kennis van de oorzaken die tot de beker leidden. het
ding is niets anders dan zijn oorza(a)k(en). De naam verhuld dat het ding (het
gevolg), niets meer is dan zijn oorzaken]
5. Dingen, welke niets met elkaar gemeen hebben, kunnen ook niet uit elkaar worden
verklaard, ofwel: het begrip van het ene sluit het bbegrip van het andere niet in.
[Descartes? res extensa, res cogito]
6. Een ware voorstelling moet met het door haar voorgestelde overeenkomen.
[ik denk aan god als oneindig, dit is waar als het zo is]
7. Wanneer een zaak zich als niet bestaand laat denken, sluit het wezen niet het bestaan in.
[Alleen Zijn (of God0 -> wezen -> bestaant. Materialiteit/res extensa/uitgebreidheid
(een zaak dat wordt gekend als het wezen v.e. substantie) Kan WEL als niet bestaand
worden gedacht. vgl. Bisschop Berkely
Stellingen
Stelling 1 : een substantie gaat van nature vooraf aan haar aandoeningen.
Dit VOLGT uit defnities [HOE DAN?]
3. Onder een substantie versta ik iets wat in zichzelf is en door zichzelf wordt begrepen dat
wil zeggen een zaak waarvan het begrip niet het begrip van iets anders nodig heeft op grond
waarvan het gevormd moet worden.
5. Onder een modus versta ik de aandoeningen van een substantie, met andere woorden een
zaak die bestaat in iets anders, waardoor men haar ook begrijpt.
[Men begrijpt de aandoeningen van een substantie door dat men het begrijpt als een zaak dat
in iets anders bestaat. Een substantie is iets wat in zichzelf is en door zichzelf begrepen
wordt. een aandoening kan niet vooraf gaan aan een substantie, want ze wordt begrepen als
iets wat IN iets anders is. substantie kan wel voorafgaan, want wordt begrepen door niets dat
buiten de substantie ligt.]
Stelling 2 : Twee substanties met verschillende attributen hebben niets met elkaar
gemeen
volgt uit definitie 3. [HOE DAN?]
Iedere substantie moet in zichzelf bestaan en door zichzelf worden begrepen. maw. het begrip
[res extensa] van de ene substantie [zijn qua materie] sluit niet het begrip [res cogitans] van
het de andere in [zijn qua denken].

Stel er zijn twee substanties. De ene substantie heeft het attribuut 'uitgebreidheid,' de andere
substantie heeft niet hetzelfde attribuut 'uitgebreidheid' maar het attribuut 'denken.' Dan
hebben deze substanties NIETS met elkaar gemeen. Want beide substanties moeten in
zichzelf bestaan [0 0], het begrip van het ene [uitgebreidheid] sluit het begrip van het andere
niet in [denken]. Ik kan begrijpen van uitgebreidheid wat ik wil, ik kom niet uit op het
denken. Het zijn twee perspectieven. Loopt vooruit op Kant.
Stelling 3 : Wanneer zaken niets met elkaar gemeen hebben, kan de ene niet de oorzaak
van de andere zijn
Want: indien zij niets volgens axioma 5 [dit is dus krachtens een axioma: zaken die niets met
elkaar gemeen hebben, kunnen ook niet uit elkaar begrepen worden [denken, en materie] het
begrip van het ene sluit het andere niet in.] ook niet uit elkaar verklaard en kan volgens
axioma 4 [de kennis van een gevolg (materie) hangt af van de kennis vd oorzaak (denken),
maar ze hebben niets met elkaar gemeen, dus volgens 5 en 4 kan:] de ene dus niet de oorzaak
van de andere zijn
Stelling 4 : Twee of meer verschillende dingen zijn van elkaar onderscheiden f door een
verschil in attributen van substanties f door een verschil in openbaringen van die
substanties.
Want: al wat is, is in zichzelf of in iets anders (ax. 1 [f S1 f AM], dat wil zeggen (volgens
def. 3 [S1] en 5 [AM->S1].): buiten het verstand zijn er alleen substanties en hun
aandoeningen. Buiten het verstand kunnen dingen zich alleen door substanties, of, wat
hetzelfde is (volgens def 4 [A]), door de attributen en aandoeningen daarvan, onderscheiden.
Dingen kunnen zich alleen van elkaar onderscheiden door OF S1 (substanties) OF AM
onderscheiden worden. Of we zeggen er is denkende en uitgebreide substantie. of we zeggen,
er is substantie x met attribuut 'uitgebreidheid' en 'denken' of substantie x met aandoening y
en z.
Stelling 5 : In de werkelijkheid kunnen er niet twee of meer substanties met dezelfde
aard ofwel met hetzelfde attribuut bestaan
Bewijs: Indien er een aantal verschillend substantie zou bestaan, moeten zij zich van elkaar
onderscheiden, f door een verschil in attributen f door een verschil in aandoeningen
(volgens de voorg. stel.)"
[stel er is uitgebreide en denkende substantie. dan moeten zij van elkaar onderscheiden zijn niet door het feit dat het beide substanties zijn, maar bv door een verschil in attribuut - dwz.
een zaak die het verstand kent als het wezen van die substantie (uitg. denk.): dwz doordat de
attributen verschillen , kunnen we (volgens descartes) zeggen dat er twee substanties zijn. Of
ze zijn van elkaar onderscheiden dmv hun aandoening - dwz er is iets dat we kennen als IN
een substantie, bv het denken in de substantie 1 en uitgebreidheid als In substantie 2.
"Indien zij zich slechts door een verschil in attributen onderscheiden, dan erkent men dus dat
[elke] substantie [slechts 1] attribuut kan [hebben]." [dus elke substantie heeft slecht 1
attribuut]
[stel dat we de substanties 'uitgebreidheid' en 'denken' alleen kunnen onderscheiden dmv de
attributen (een zaak wat het verstand kent als het wezen van die substantie), namelijk

"denken"en "uitgebreidheid". Dan kunnen we dus zeggen dat er slechts 1, en niet 2,

substanties met een en hetzelfde attribuut kan bestaan: dwz de ene substantie is uitgebreid, de
andere denken.]
"Maar indien de substanties zich op grond van een verschil in aandoeningen onderscheiden,
dan laat de ene substantie zich niet als onderscheiden van een andere substantie
denken, wanneer men de aandoeningen buiten beschouwing laat en haar als zodanig, dat wil
zeggen (volgens def. 3 [S] en 4 [A]) naar waarheid schouwt [op zich!].
[want een aandoening is In een substantie. 2 aandoeningen kunnen in 1 substantie zijn. Als
we de aandoening buiten beschouwing laten, en de substantie als op zich denken (als wezen,
volgens 4 [A], dan is er slechts 1 substantie.
"want (volgens stel. 1) de substantie gaat van nature aan haar aandoeningen vooraf. Dat wil
zeggen (volgens de voorg. stel.):er kan niet een aantal substanties bestaan, maar slechts n
enkele.
Dus: in de werkelijkheid kunnen er niet twee of meer substanties met dezelfde aard ofwel
hetzelfde attribuut bestaan. (uitgebreid1, uitgebreidheid2, denkende substantie 1, denkende
substantie 2).
Stelling 6 : Een substantie kan niet door een andere substantie worden voortgebracht
Want: er zijn in de werkelijkheid geen twee substanties met hetzelfde attribuut (denkede
substatantie 1, denkende substantie 2) (zoals we net zagen), dwz. (volgens stel. 2) substanties
die iets met elkaar gemeen hebben (twee substanties met hetzelfde attribuut hebben iets met
elkaar gemeen "denken," maar dat kan dus niet). De ene kan dus niet de oorzaak van de
andere zijn (de ene uitgebreide substantie -> de andere, of de ene denkende substantie -> de
andere), maw, door haar worden voortgebracht.
Bovendien: als de ene door de ander zou worden voortgebracht dan hangt de laatse af van de
eerste, en is ze geen substantie.
Stelling 7: Te bestaan [ en werkelijk, echt bestaan => oneindig bestaan / want eindig
bestaan is gedeeltelijke ontkenning] behoort to de natuur van een substantie.
Omdat een substantie niet door een andere substantie kan worden voortgebracht, moet zij
oorzaak van zichzelf zijn. Dit betekent volgens def. 1 dat haar wezen noodzakelijk het
bestaan insluit, -> bestaan behoort tot haar natuur. oorzaak van zichzelf = wezen sluit bestaan
in. God = God. Zijn = Zijn.
Stelling 8 : Elke substantie is noodzakelijk oneindig
Stel: er bestaat slechts een enkele substantie met 1 attribuut (volgens stelling 5)[ maw. er zijn
twee substanties met hetzelfde attribuut], en het behoord tot haar aard te bestaan (s. 7) zij
moet dus van nature of eindig of oneindig bestaan. [maw ze moet bestaan, en dat kan zowel
eindig of oneindig]. Weln, niet eindig, want dan zou zij moeten worden begrensd door een
andere substantie met dezelfde natuur, die ook noodzakelijk moet bestaant (volgens 7). Dan
zouden er 2 substanties bestaan met het zelfde attribuut, wat niet kan (st. 5). Dus oneindig.

"Aangezien 'eindig zijn' in feite een gedeeltelijke ontkenning en 'oneindig zijn' een
onvoorwaardelijke bevestiging is van het bestaan van een natuur [affirmation of being] ->
infinity], voglt dus alleen al uit stelling 7 dat elke substantie oneindig moet zijn
Stelling 9 : Hoe meer werkelijkheid of zijn een ding heeft, hoe meer attributen komen er
aan toe
Volgt uit def 4 [A]. Een zaak dat het verstand kent als het wezen van een substantie (het
attribuut valt niet gelijk met de substantie)
Stelling 10: Elk attribuut van een substantie moet door middel van zichzelf worden
begrepen
Want: attribuut is een zaak [denkende substantie, uitgebreide substantie], die het verstand
kent als iets wat het wezen van een substantie vormt (4 [A]). Het moet daarom (volgens 3 [S]
door zichzelf worden begrepen. STFU.
Commentaar: Hieruit volgt dat, ook al laten twee attributen zich als reeel onderscheiden
denken [mens, paard, denkende substantie, uitgebreide substantie], dat wil zeggen de ene
zonder hulp van de ander, wij daaruit toch niet kunnen afleiden dat zij twee ZIJNDEN of
twee verschillende substanties vormen.
Het behoort immers to de natuur van een substantie dat al haar attributen door zichzelf
worden begrepen, aangezien alle attributen die zij heeft steeds tegelijk in haar aanwezig zijn
en het ene niet door het andere kan worden voortgebracht. Ieder brengt de werkelijkheid of
het zijn van de substantie tot uitdrukking.
Stelling 11 : God, met andere woorden een substantie die uit oneindige attributen
bestaat waarvan iedere een eeuwig en oneindig wezen tot uitdrukking brengt, bestaat
noodzakelijk
Stelling 12 : Geen attribuut van een substantie, waaruit volgt dat de substantie deelbaar
is, laat zich werkelijk denken.
Stelling 13 : Een volstrekt oneindige substantie is ondeelbaar
Bijkomende stelling : Hieruit volgt dat geen enkele substantie en dus ook geen enkele
lichamelijke substantie, als zodanig, deelbaar is.
[deelbaar in sterke, ontologische zin. Je kan water delen, maar deel je dan "het water"
in twee substantieel verschillende dingen, het een "het water" en het andere?. Water is
dus niet deelbaar]
Stelling 14 : Buiten God kan er geen substantie bestaan of worden gedacht.
Stelling 15 : Alles wat is, is in God, en niets kan zonder God bestaan of worden gedacht
commentaar: De delen worden dan slechts modaal en niet reeel onderscheiden.
Waar nu evenwel in de Natuur geen ledig kan bestaan, waar alle delen zodanig moeten
samenwerken dat er geen ledig worde gevormd, volt hieruit ook dat deze delen niet werkelijk

kunnen worden gescheiden, dat wil zeggen dat de lichamelijke substantie, voorzover zij
substantie is, niet kan worden verdeeld. Indien nu toch iemand vroeg, waarom wij dan van
nature zo geneigd zijn een grootheid te verdelen, zo zou ik hem antwoorden dat een grootheid
door ons op twee wijzen wordt opgevat, te weten abstract, of als een substantie, hetgeen
uitsluitend door de Rede geschiedt. [onvolmaaktheid?]. Indien wij dus letten op een
grootheid zoals zij zich voordoet in onze voorstelling, hetgeen dikwijls en het gemakkelijskt
door ons wordt gedaan, zal zij eindig, deelbaar en uit delen samengesteld worden bevonden;
indien wij haar echter beschouwen zoals zij in ons vertand is en haar opvatten als een
substantie, wat zeer moeilijk is, dan zal zij - gelijk wij reeds voldoende aantoonden- oneindig,
enig en ondeelbaar worden bevonden.

Stelling 16 : Uit de noodzakelijke goddelijke natuur moet oneindig veel op oneindig veel
wijzen volgen, dat wil zeggen alles wat een oneindig verstand [!] kan bevatten
B 1 : Hieruit volgt dat God de werkoorzaak van alle dingen die oneindig verstand
kan bevatten
B 2 : Hieruit volgt 2. dat God een wezenlijke en niet een accidentele oorzaak is.
B 3: Hieruit volgt 3. dat God een volstrekt eerste oorzaak is.
Stelling 17 : God handelt uitsluitend krachtens de wetten van zijn eigen natuur en door
niemand gedwongen
B 1 : Hiruit volgt 1. dat er geen enkele inwendige of uitwendige oorzaak is die God
tot handelen aanzet, behalve de volmaaktheid van zijn natuur
B 2 : Er volg 2. dat alleen God een vrije oorzaak is. God is immers de enige die
krachtens de noodzakelijkheid van zijn eigen natuur bestaat.
Stelling 18 : God is de in zich blijvende en niet de overgaande oorzaak van alle dingen
Stelling 19 : God, met andere woorden, alle attributen van God, zijn eeuwig.
Stelling 20 : Het bestaan en het wezen van god zijn een en hetzelfde
Denken IS god, en Uitgebreidheid IS god.
B1 : Hieruit volgt 1. dat Gods bestaan, net als zijn wezen een eeuwige waarheid is.
Een waar idee moet met het object overeen komen
B2 : Er volgt 2. dat God - met andere woorden, alle attributen van God onveranderlijk is, want als zij, wat hun bestaan betreft, zouden veranderen, zouden zij
ook wat hun wezen betreft veranderen, dat wil zeggen - zoals evident is - van waar
onwaar worden. Dit is onzinnig.
Stelling 21 : Alles wat uit de absolute aard van een attribuut van God volgt, moet altijd
en oneindig hebben bestaan, met andere woorden door dit attribuut eeuwig en oneindig
zijn.
Stelling 25 : God is niet alleen de werkoorzaak van het bestaan van de dingen, maar ook
van hun wezen

Want dat wezen is (uitgebreidheid/denken) en daar is god het onderliggende van. 2. want bij
ontkenning is god niet de oorzaak van het wezen. dan zou het wezen van de dingen zonder
god kunnen worden gedacht i.e., op zichzelf.
Bijkomende stelling: De bijzondere dingen zijn alleen aandoeningen van Gods
attributen, met andere woorden modi die de attribututen van God op een welpaalde
wijze doen kennen. Het bewijst volgt uit stelling 15 en definitie 15.
Stelling 26 : Een ding dat gedwongen wordt om iets te bewerkstelligen, wordt hiertoe
noodzakelijk gedwongen door God, en een ding dat niet door God is aangezet, kan
zichzelf niet tot werken aanzetten [er is maar een zelfoorzaak -> determinism]
Stelling 27 : Een ding dat God aanzet om iets te bewerkstelligen, kan zichzelf niet
werkingsloos maken.
Stelling 28 : Elk individueel of eindig ding met een beperkt bestaan, kan alleen door een
oorzaak die ook eindig is en een begrensd bestaan heeft, tot bestaan of werken worden
aangezet. Deze oorzaak kan op haar beurt alleen tot bestaan en werken worden
aangezet door een andere eindige oorzaak die ook een beperkt bestaan heeft en tot
bestaan en werken aangezet wordt, en zo tot in het oneindige [!]
HET GAAT NOOIT OM TRANSITIEVE, MAAR OM IMMANENTE
CAUSALITEIT!!!!!
Denk hierbij aan een lichaam, met organen, met cellen, met atomen etc etc etc. [emanatie?]
Elk bijzonder ding, of elk ding dat eindig is en een beperkt [afhankelijk] bestaan heeft, kan
niet bestaan, noch tot werking worden genoodzaakt, tenzij het tot bestaan en werking wordt
genoodzaakt door een ander ding, hetwelk eveneens eindig is en een afhankelijk bestaan
heeft.
Denk hierbij aan een lichaam, met organen, met cellen, met atomen etc etc etc.
Stelling 29 [latijnversie] : In de werkelijkheid is niets contingent, maar de noodzakelijke
goddelijke aard zet alles aan om op een welomschreven manier te bestaan en te werken.
[van suchtelen] In de wereld van de dingen bestaat niets toevallig, maar alles wordt
krachtens de noodwendigheid van de goddelijke aard genoodzaakt op bepaalde wijze te
bestaan en te werken.
Naturende natuur: wezen. Genatuurde natuur: dingen.
Stelling 30: Het verstand, hetzij eindig [mens] of oneindig [god] in zijn werking [! werking!
process!], kan slechts de attributen van God en de bestaanswijzen van God bevatten en niets
anders. [niet de lichamen als lichamen?]
- een ware voorstelling moet met het door haar voorgestelde overeenkomen [coherente
gedachte, clair et distinct], wat objectief in het verstand aanwezig is moet ook noodzakelijk in
de natuur bestaan.

- er zijn slechts twee kenbare attributen

- die zijn wat het verstand kent en niets anders.
Stelling 31: een werkend verstand, het zij eindig of oneindig, hoort tot de genatuurde
natuur
- evenals wil, liefde, begeerte
- onder verstand verstaan we niet het absolute denken
- maar een bepaalde vorm van denken
- werke verschilt van liefde, begeerte
- dus wel uit het [IN iets anders] absolute denken moet worden begrepen
- zonder attribuut niet denkbaar
- niet opzichzelf begrijpbaar
- dus genatuurde natuur!
Stelling 32: Men kan de wil geen vrije oorzaak noemen, maar alleen een noodzakelijke
[IDEOLOGIE!!!!!!]
- de wil is een BEPAALDE vorm van denken
- evenals het verstand
- een willing kan niet bestaan zonder een andere oorzaak [het hangt ergens van af tot het
oneindige] -> > >.....
- ook al oneindig: hangt af van god
- hangt nl. af van het absolute denken [attribuut] [wordt gevormd IN het denken, is daardoor
beperkt!----> Structuralisme]
- hij kan dus geen vrije oorzaak worden genoemd, hij is altijd afhankelijk van Het Denken (x
+ x en daarom y / logica etc. etc.)
toegift: God werk niet krachten vrijheid van wil
- wil en verstand in zelfde verhouding tot gods aard als beweging en rust
- en volkomen als alle andere natuurlijke dingen, die door God op bepaalde wijze
tot bestaan en werken worden genoodaakt.
- [beweging en rust zijn BEPAALDE vormen van uitgebreidheid]
Net als TAAL: "En ofschoon uit wil en verstand, eenmaal gegeven, oneindig veel voortvloeit,
kan men daarom toch evenin zeggen dat God handelt uit vrijheid van wil, als dat men wegens
al wat uit bewegin en rust voortkomt (en dat is immers eveneens oneindig veel) zou kunnen
zeggen dat hij handelt uit vrijheid van beweging of rust. Derhalve behoort de wil niet eer tot
de aard van God dan de overige natuurlijke dingen, maar staat hij tot deze in dezelfde
verhouding als beweging en rust en al het overige waarvan wij aantoonden dat het ui de
noodwendigheid van de goddelijke aard voortvloeit en door deze op bepaalde wijze to
bestaan en werken wordt genoodzaakt."
Stelling 33: De dingen hadden door God op geen andere wijze, noch in ander orde,
kunnen worden voortgebracht, dan zij inderdaad zijn voortbegracht.
Stelling 34: Gods macht is zijn wezen zelf
Stelling 35: Al wat wij als in Gods macht liggende beschouwen, moet noodzakelijk
bestaan. Immers al wat in Gods macht light, moet zodanig in zijn wezen vervat zijn dat
eht er met noodwendigheid uit voortvloiet en derhalve moet het noodzakelijk bestaan

Setlling 36: Er bestaat niets uit welks aard niet een of ander werking voortvloeit
AAnhangsel: ik doe iets met een doel. maar dat doel is al bepaald, omschreven door het
denken [of de samenleving en haar regels: dwz, ideologie]
alsof je zomaar een vrij doel kan kiezen.
"gradual process in which - post democracy - is emerging as an intutional system incapable of
correction of the outcomes of market mechanism as a source of inequality.
less easy to find a solution if you see how this process is so engrained
"markets tend to be created by governments as a side effect of military operations."
"first period of virtual money -> coinage is invented around 600 bc, karl jaspers -> axial age
-> all major schools both of philosophy and world religion crop up in a relatively short period
of time. If you extend it from 600 bc to 600 ad it start happening in exactly in the places
where they invent coinage.
-Uiteenzetten wat noodzakelijk uit het wezen van God (het Eeuwig en oneindig zijnde) moet voortvloeien
- Niet ALLES uiteenzetten
- want er zijn oneindig veel dingen die voortvloeien
- Dus slecht datgene wat ONS als een handleiding kan zijn to de kennis van de menselijk Geest en diens hoogste
Gelukzaligheid
Definities
- 1. Lichaam: bestaanswijze, die Gods wezen, voor zover hij als Uitgebreidheid wordt beschouwd, op ZEKERE
BEPAALDE wijze uitdrukt
Is niet zomaar iets. Het drukt Gods wezen uit, op zekere bepaalde wijze
- 2. Wezen: tot het wezen van een of andere zaak [god, mens, plant, steen, gedachte?], behoort DAT waarmee de
zaak NOODWENDIG gesteld is [het moet zo zijn, en niet anders: een mens moet dit zijn, anders is het geen mens. een
uitgebreidheid ding kan niet bestaan zonder dat ze uitgebreid is] en zonder hetwelk die zaak [steen is geen steen zonder
uitgebreid te zijn], en omgekeerd, wat zonder die zaak [steen is zonder steen te zijn geen steen?], bestaanbaar noch denkbaar
is.
- 3. Voorstelling: een waarneming/conceptie, van de Geest, die de Geest vormt doordat hij een denkend iets is.
- Geen PERceptie
- want: gewaarwording duidt aan: dat de geest iets door een voorwerp ondergaat [vw.]----> [g]
- waarnemeing/conceptie = EIGEN handeling
- 4. Adequate voorstelling: voorstelling die - voorzover zij op zichzelf, zonder betrekking tot haar voorwerp wordt
beschouwd - alle onafhankelijke eigenschappen of kenmerken van een ware voorstelling heeft [men stelt een boom voor, hij
is adequaat als het ook echt een boom voorsteld (en niet of de voorstelling overeenkomt met iets externs).
-onafhankelijk! want: niet: adequatio rei et intellectus
- 5. Duur : onbegrensde voortzetting van bestaan [dat er iets is, eeuwig]
- 6. Werkelijkheid = Volmaaktheid
- 7. Bijzondere dingen: dingen die eindig zijn en een beperkt bestaan hebben
- [?] Wanneer verscheidene enkel dingen zodanig samenwerken dat zij alle samen oorzaak [organen] zijn van een
uitwerking/*expressie? [mens]
- dan: 1 enkel ding

Axioma's

1.

Het wezen van de mens sluit geen noodwendig bestaan in [wezen is niet bestaan / essence is not existence

2.

De mens denkt

3.

Vormen [wijzen, soorten] van denken, zoals liefde/begeerte [zielsaandoeningen, zielsmodi, zielsbestaanswizjen]
kunnen niet bestaan tenzij in dezelfde enkeling een voorstelling [conceptie van de geest] bestaat van de zaak die
wordt bemind [de man, vrouw, toetje]. Een voorstelling KAN WEL bestaan zonder dat zulk een andere vorm van
denken gegeven is [gegeven?]. Liefde is intentioneel. Liefde bestaat niet OP ZICH. Men kan een toetje voorstellen
zonder "dat de andere vorm van denken gegeven is."

4.

Wij worden gewaar. Een voorwerp/lichaam kan op velerlei wijzen een inwerking ondergaan

5.

Wij kunnen geen bijzondere dingen waarnemen noch gewaarworden, dan OF lichamen/voorwerpen OF vormen
van denken

Stelling 1.
Het Denken [an sich] is een attribuut [een zaak dat het verstand opvat als uitmakende het wezen]
bijzondere gedachten - deze of gene - zijn modi/bestaanswijzen/bijzondere dingen/
God MOET WEL een attribuut bezitten, waarvan het begrip in alle afzonderlijke gedachten ligt opgesloten en door bemiddeling waarvan zijzelf kunnen worden begrepen
[door bemiddeling van het attribuut [denken/ratio, uitgebreidheid] kunnen de afzonderlijke gedachten worden
begrepen - dat kan omdat in alle afzonderlijke
gedachten het begrip van het attribuut [denken/ratio] ligt opgesloten]
DUS: is het DENKEN/RATIO n van de oneindig vele attributen van GOD. DUS: GOD IS IETS DENKENDS
En bepaalde denk vormen VLOEIEN VOORT uit God als eeuwig en oneindig zijnde. Het begrip van het attribuut (datgene
wat het verstand kent als uitmakende het wezen van een substantie) light opgelsoten in elk bijzonder, bepaald ding. Via het
bijzonder ding begrijpen wij het attribuut. En zij kunnen zelf worden begrepen door middel van het attribuut.
Stelling 2.
De Uitgebreidheid is een attribuut van God, ofwel GOD IS IETS UITGEBREIDS
Stelling 3.
Er bestaat in God noodzakelijk zowel een voorstelling van zijn eigen wezen, als van alles wat met noodwendigheid uit dit
wezen voortvloeit.
[oneindig verondersteld delen, niet? oneindig vele eindige (?) dingen. Nee: oneindig en 1 zijn aan elkaar gelijkgesteld. vgl.
Stelling 15 afdeling 1]
God kan alles denken, maar alles wat hij denkt, moet ook nootwendig bestaan.
De meeste mensen denken dat God machtig is omdat hij een vrije wil heeft TEN OPZICHTE VAN all wat bestaat: [God]
-====> [Als wat bestaat]. Daarom denkt
men dat alles toevallig/contingent gebeurt [?/ -> want god kan alles te verwoesten (dus het had anders kunnen zijn:
contingentie). [VERGELEKEN MET: MACHT
VAN KONING : S1, S/A etc]
MAAR: wij hebben aangetoond dat: GOD HANDELT MET DEZELFDE NOODWENDIGHEID, WAARMEE HIJ
ZICHZELF BEGRIJPT [is dat nog een handelen?]
Gods macht = gods werkdadig wezen
Handelen = oneindig werkdadig zijn
Stelling 4.
Gods voorstelling, waaruit ondeindig veel op oneindig vele wijzen voortvloeit, kan slechts enig zijn
[identificatie van het EEN met ONEINDIG]

Stelling 5.
Het werkelijke zijn/wezen? van de voorstellingen heeft God tot oorzaak alleen voorzover hij als denkend iets wordt
beschouwd en niet voorzover hij zich in enig ander attribuut openbaart. Dat wil dus zeggen: de voorstellingen van Gods
attributen, zowel als die van de bijzondere dingen, hebben niet het voorgestelde of de waargenomen dingen tot werkende
oorzaak, maar god zelf voozover hij een denkend iets is.
God IS een denkend ding. God heeft geen voorstelling van zichzelf, hij heeft niet een voorwerp van zijn voorstelling.
[Hegel/Zizek/Lacan?]
Een voorstelling heeft god tot oorzaak, niet voorzover hij uitgebreid is, maar voorzover hij denken is.
Stelling 6.
De bestaanswijzen [gedachten, lichamen] van elk attribuut [denken, uitgebreidheid] hebben God tot oorzaak alleen
voorzover hij wordt beschouwd als zich openbarende in DAT attribuut welks bestaanswijzen [gedachten, begeerten,
lichamen] zij zijn en niet voorzover hij als zich openbarende in enig ander attribuut kan worden beschouwd.
- Elk attribuut wordt op zichzelf begrepen
- bestaanswijzen ven elk attribuut het begrip van hun EIGEN attribuut veronderstellen
- niet van de ander
- Zij hebben god tot oorzaak, ALLEEN voorzover hij wordt beschouwd onder dat attribuut welks bestaanswijze zij zijn en
- niet voorzover hij onder enig ander attribuut kan worden beschouwd.
Een gedachte heeft god niet tot oorzaak inzover god als uitgebreid kan worden beschouwd?
-Dus niet: eerst voorstellen, dan zijn [theologie/scheppingsidee]. of eerst zijn dan voorstellen [modern wetenschap,
representatie]
Stelling 7.
De orde en het verband van de voorstellingen zijn dezelfde als de orde en het verband van de dingen [wat redelijk is is
werkelijk, en vice versa]
bewijs (?): volgt uit Ax6d1 (een ware voorstelling moet met het door haar voorgestelde overeenkomen) want: de
voorstelling van elk veroorzaakt ding [dingen
en gedachten?] hangt af van de kennis van de oorzaak waarvan het een uitvloeisel is.
"Een in werkelijkheid bestaande cirkel bijv. en de voorstelling van die bestaande cirkel, die eveneens in God is, zijn
n en dezelfde zaak, die zich in twee
verschillende attributen openbaar" (69).
"Derhalve, of wij de Natuur onder het attribuut van de Uitgebreidheid, onder dat van het Denken, dan wel onder enig
ander attribuut beschouwen, steeds zullen
wij n en dezelfde orde, n en hetzelfde oozakelijk verband vinden, d.w.z. dezelfde zaken op elkaar zien volgen.
Stelling 8.
De voorstellingen van afzonderlijke dingen of (anders gezegd) bestaanswijzen, welke niet feitelijk bestaan, moeten in de
oneindige voorstellling van God evenzo zijn
begrepen als het werkelijke wezen van die afzonderlijke dingen of bestaanswijzen besloten ligt in Gods attributen.
DUUR. Dingen bestaan feitelijk als zij een duur hebben. [voorbeeld cirkel]
dingen bestaan voorzover ze in definities besloten liggen. maar dingen bestaan ook feitelijk door hun duur. vb: (+)
Stelling 9.
De voorstelling van een bijzonder, feitelijk bestaand ding, heeft God tot oorzaak niet voorzover hij oneindig is, maar
voorzover hij wordt beschouwd als hebbende
een voorstelling van een ander feitelijk bestaand ding, van hetwelk God eveneens oorzaak is voorzover hij een
voorstelling heeft van een derde ding, en zo tot in het
oneindig.

??
Niet voorzover absolute denken [Hegel!], maar voorzover hij wordt beschouwd als zich openbarende in een BEPAALDE
denkwijze/denkwijziging.
Stelling 10
Het zijn van een substantie behoort niet tot het wezen van de mens.
De mens wordt gevormd door BEPAALDE wijzigingen van Gods attributen (denken, uitgebreidheid)
overgang: hoe de fout meerder substantie te denken, terwijl alles uit god voortvloeit???
Stelling 11
De eerste openbaring van het werkelijk bestaan van de menselijke Geest is niets anders dan de voorstelling van een
werkelijk bestaand bijzonder iets.
De voorstelling is de eerste openbaring van de menselijke geest.
"Derhalve is de eerste openbaring van het werkelijk bestaan van de menselijke Geest de voorstelling van een werkelijk
bestaand, bijzonder iets."

mens ontwaakt en ziet bijzondere dingen, niet substantie Gods. De eerste openbaring van het
WERKELIJKE bestaan van de MENSELIJKE GEEST is de voorstelling van ene bijzonder
iets.
- menselijke geest: god heeft DEZE OF GENE voorstelling
Stelling 12
Al wat in het voorwerp van de voorstelling die de menselijke Geest uitmaakt geschiedt, moet door de menselijke Geest
worden waargenomen, ofwel van dit alles
bestaat in de Geest noodzakelijk een voorstelling. [alles wat wordt voorgesteld wordt ook echt voorgesteld, je kan niet iets
voorstellen zonder het waar te nemen]
-Als voorstelling = [lichaam], dan: niets in dit v/lichaam gebeuren dat niet door de geest wordt waargenomen.
- Het lichaam dat in de voorstelling is, is altijd in de voorstelling en niets zal de voorstelling ontschieten

Stelling 13
Het voorwerp van de voorstelling die de menselijke Geest uitmaakt is het Lichaam, ofwel een zekere werkelijk bestaande
vorm van Uitgebreidheid, en niets anders.
als het een voorstelling van iets anders was, zou dat wat wordt voorgesteld niet in god bestaan [het moet wel in het
lichaam bestaan want het lichaam is een van
de expressies van het wezen van God].
[leibniz?]
"WEl merk ik in het algemeen nog op dat, naarmate enig Lichaam geschikter dan andere is om velerlei tegelijk te doen of
te ondergaan, ook zijn geest geschikter
dan andere zal zijn om velerlei teglijk in zich op te nemen; en dat hoe meer de verrichtingen van enig lichaam van dit
lichaam alleen afhangen en hoe minder andere
lichamen tot zijn verrichtingen meewerken, heo beter ook zijn geest in staat zal zijn helder te begrijpen.
voorstellingen van lichamen zouden, als ze geen voorstellingen van uitgebreidheid zijn, voorstellingen zijn van dingen die
niet in god bestaan
"Van ieder ding toch bestaat noodzakelijk bij God een voorstelling, van welke God de oorzaak is op dezelfde wijze als hij
oorzaak is van de voorstelling van het menselijk Lichaam, zodat al wat wij hebben gezegd over de voorstelling van het
menselijk Lichaam, noodzakelijk eveneens voor de voorstelling van elk ander ding moeten gelden" (77).

OVERGANG NAAR DE LICHAMELIJKHEID VOORZOVER HET IS VOORGESTELD (?) De aard van de

lichamen
meest eenvoudige lichamen:
Axioma's:

1.

Alle lichamen bewegen zich of zijn in rust

2.

Een lichaam beweegt zich nu eens langzamer dan weer sneller

1.

De lichamen verschillen van elkaar ten opzichte van rust en beweging, snelheid en traagheid, niet echter
in substantie [beweging-

2.

Alle lichamen komen in sommige opzichten overeen [expressie van zelfde attribuut]

3.

Een lichaam, dat in beweging of rust is, moet in beweging of rust zijn gebracht door een ander lichaam
[causaliteit?], dat eveneens tot beweging of rust werd genoodzaakt door een ander, en dit wederom door
een ander, en zo tot in het oneindige.

Axioma's

1.

Alle bestaanswijzen [toestanden], waarin enig lichaam door een ander lichaam wordt gebracht, zijn het gevolg
zowel van de aard van het gewijzigde, zodat EEN en hetzelfde lichaam op verschillende wijzen kan worden
bewogen al naar gelang van de verschillende aard van de er op inwerkende lichamen, en omgekeerd kunnen
verschillende lichamen door een en hetzelfde lichaam op verschillende wijzen in beweging worden gebracht.

2.

Wanneer een bewegend lichaam botst tegen een ander, dat in rust is en dat het niet kan verplaatsen, wordt het
teruggekaatst en zet het zijn beweging voort, waarbij de hoek, welke de richting van de teruggekaatste beweging
maakt met het oppervlak van het rustend lichaam waartegen het stuit, gelijk is aan de hoek welke de richting van
de invallende beweging maakt met ditzelfde vlak.

Overgang naar Samengestelde lichamen

Definitie: Wanneer een aantal lichamen van dezelfde of van verschillende grootte, door ander zodanig worden samen
gehouden dat zij dicht aaneensluiten, of wanneer zij met dezelfde ofmet verschillende snelheden zodanig bewegen, dat zij
hun bewegingen volgens een of andere bepaalde wijze aan elkaar meedelen, dan zullen wij deze lichamen onderling
'verenigd' noemen en zeggen dat zij allen samen n lichaam ofwel enkelding [individu] vormen, dat door dit verband van
andere lichamen onderscheiden is.
Verenigd. E pluribus Unum. Veelvoud in enkelvoud.
Axioma's:

3.

Hoe groter of hoe kleiner de oppervlakten zijn, waarmee de delen van een individu of samengesteld lichaam
elkaar raken, hoe moeilijker of hoe gemakkelijker zij er toe kunnen worden gedwongen van plaats te veranderen
en hoe moeilijker of hoe gemakkelijker het bijgevolg zla zijn dit indivividu een andere gedaant te doen aannemen.
Vandaar dat ik lichamen wier delen eklaar over groten oppervlakken 'hard', zulke, wier delen elkaar over kleine
oppervlakken raken, 'week'en zulke tenslotte, wier delen onderling bewegelijk zijn, 'vloeibaar' noem.

1.

[lemma 4] Indien van een individu of lichaam dat uit verscheidene lichamen is samengesteld, zich
sommige van die samenstellende lichamen afscheiden en tegelijkertijd even zoveel andere van dezelfde

aard hun plaats innemen, zal dit individu zijn aard als tevoren behouden en generlei veranderin van
karakter ondergaan [HOE DAN ZONDER MONDADEEEE???!!!: karakter......]

1.

"datgene echter wat het eigenaardig van een individu uitmaakt, wordt bepaald door het
verband van de samenstellende lichamen. Dit verband blijft echter behouden en derhalve
behoudt ook het individu, zowel in substantie als zijn wijze van bestaan, zijn aard als tevoren
[?] [leibniz! help!]

2.

[lemma 5] Indien de delen die een individu samenstellen, groter of kleiner worden, op zulk een wijze
evenwel dat alle ten opzichte van elkaar in dezelfde verhouding van rust en beweging blijven als te
voren, zal dit individu ook zijn aard als tevoren behouden en generlei verandering van karakter
ondergaan

3.

[Lemma 6] Indien zekere lichamen, welke een individu vormen, worden gedwongen de bepaalde
richting van hun beweging te veranderen, evenwel zodanig dat zij hun bewegingen kunnen voortzetten
en onderling op dezelfde wijze als te voren aan elkaar kunnen meedelen, zal dit individu zijn aard
behouden en generlei verandering van karakter ondergaan

4.

[lemma 7] een aldus samengesteld individu behoudt bovendien zijn aard [wezen?] hetzij het zich in deze
of gene richting beweegt, zolang slechts ieder deel zijn beweging behoudt en haar, zoals tevoren, aan de
andere delen meedeelt.

Het gaat spinoza nu om het MENSELIJK lichaam, en zijn verhouding tot de voorstelling/geest. Dus gaan we nu verder met.
Postulaten:

1.

Het menselijk Lichaam bestaat uit tal van enkeldingen (van verschillende aard), elk waarvan op zijn beurt uiterst
samengesteld is [oneindig?].

2.

Van de enkeldingen, waaruit het menselijk Lichaam is samengesteld, zijn sommige vloeibaar, andere week en weer
andere tenslotte hard.

3.

De enkeldingen die het mensleijk Lichaam samenstellen en bijgevolg het menselijk Lichaam zelf, ondervinden op
tal van wijzen inwerking van voorwerpen er buiten

4.

Het menselijk Lichaam heeft, om te blijven bestaan, tal van andere voorwerpen nodig, waardoor het als het ware
voortduren wordt herboren [Leibkneip]

5.

Wanneer een vloeibaar deel van het menselijk Lichaam door een uitwendig voorwerp wordt genoodzaakt,
herhaaldelijk met een ander week gedeelte in aanraking te komen, wijzigt het het oppervlak van dt laatse en drukt
het er als het ware zekere sporen van het uitwendige, er tegen aanbotsende voorwerp in af.

6.

Het menselijk Lichaam kan uitwendige voorwerpen op tal van wijzen in beweging brengen en op tal van wijzen op
hen inwerken

Stelling 14.
[???] De menselijjke Geest is in staat zeer veel in zich op te nemen, en hij is daartoe des te geschikter, naarmate zijn
Lichaam op meer wijzen inwerkingen kan
ondergaan.
[kasplantjes?] alles wat we ons van ons lichaam voorstellen, is ook lichamelijk?
Stelling 15.

De voorstelling welke het werkelijke zijn van de menselijke Geest uitmaakt, is niet eenvoudig, maar uit tal van
voorstellingen samengesteld
[voorstellingen zijn samengesteld!]
Stelling 16. [!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
De voorstelling van iedere wijze waarop het menselijk Lichaam inwerking van uitwendige voorwerpen ondergaat, moet
de aard van het menselijk Lichaam zelf en
tevens de aard van het uitwendige voorwerp in zich sluiten.
toegift 2: Ten tweede volgt eruit dat de voorstellingen, die wij van uitwendige voorwerpen hebben, meer de
toestand van ons eigen lichaam dan de aard van die uitwendige voorwerpen weergeven.
Stelling 17.
Indien het menselijk Lichaam in werking ondervindt op een wijze die de aard van enig uitwendig voorwerp in zich sluit,
beschouwt de menselijke Geest ditzelfde
uitwendige voorwerp als werkelijk bestaande, of wel aanwezig, tot dat het Lichaam een indruk ontvangt, die het bestaan
of de aanwezigheid van het bedoelde voorwerp uitsluit.
"Bovendien begrijpen wij thans duidelijk wat het verschil is tussen de voorstelling van bijvoobeeld Petrus, die het wezen
van Petrus'eigen geest uitmaakt en tussen de voorstelling van dienzelfden Petrus die bij een ander mens, zeg Paulus, bestaat.
De eerste toch openbaart onmiddelijk het wezen van het lichaam van Petrus zelf en sluit slechts zolang als Petrus zelf
bestaat, het bestaan in zich; terwijl de laatste meer de toestand van Paulus' lichaam danwel Petrus' aard doet kennen, zodat
dan ook Paulus' geest, zolang die toestand van zijn lichaam voortduurt, Petrus als aanwezig kan beschouwen, ook al bestaat
deze niet meer.
IMAGE/ IMAGINARY / BEELDEN ETC
"Wij zullen voortaan, om ons aan het spraakgebruik te houden, die indrukken van het menselijk Lichaam, waarvan de
voorstellingen ons uitwendige voorwerpen als aanwezig doen zien, 'beelden' van de dingen noemen, hoewel zij eigenlijk niet
de gedaante van de dingen zelf weergeven. En wanneer de Geest de voorwerpen op deze wijze beschouwt zullen wij zeggen
dat hij ze zich verbeeldt. Ik zou hier nu, om alvast aan te duiden wat dwaling is, willen doen opmerken dat de verbeeldingen
van de Geest op zichzelf beschouwd generlei dwaling bevatten, ofwel dat de Geest neit dwaalt omdat hij zich iets verbeeldt,
doch allen voorzover hem daarbij de voorstelling ontbreekt welke het bestaan van de dingen als aanwezig verbeeldt,
tegelijkertijd wist dat deze dingen niet werkelijk bestonden, dan zou hij zulk een verbeeldingskracht terecht als een deugd en
niet als een gebrek beschouwen, vooral indien deze verbeeldingskracht alleen van zijn eigen aard afhing, d.w.z. indien deze
verbeeldingskracht van de Geest een vrij vermogen was.
Stelling 18.
Indien het menselijk Lichaam eenmaal van twee of meer voorwerpen telijk inwerking onderging, zal de Geest, wanneer
hij zich later een van die voorwerpen
verbeeldt, zich ook terstond het andere herinneren.
- Herinnering: zekere aaneenschakeling van voorstellingen die de aard van dingen, die buiten het menselijk lichaam
bestaan in zich sluiten, welke aaneenschakeling
in de Geest beantwoordt aan de orde en aaneenschakeling van de van de inwerkingen op het menselijk Lichaam.
- signifier/signified: "Zo komt bijvoorbeeld een Romein door de gedacte aan de klank 'pomus' [appel] dadelijk op die van
een vrucht, welke generlei gelijkenis heeft
met die geartikuleerde klank en er niets anders mee gemeen heeft dan dat het lichaam van die man herhaaldelijk van
beide inwerking onderging. D.w.z. dat die man
dikwijls het woord appel hoorde terwijl hij de vrucht zelf voor zich zag. En zo komt elk van de ene gedachte op de
andere, al naar gelang ieders gewoonte de beelden van de
dingen in zijn lichaam heeft gerangschikt.
Stelling 19.
De menselijke geest kent het eigen menselijk Lichaam niet [maar neemt het wel waar] en weet niet anders van zijn
bestaan, dan alleen door de voorstellingen van de inwerking die het Lichaam ondergaat.
- Menselijke Geest is zelf een voorstelling of kennis van het menselijk lichaam (in god)
- ofwel: aangezien het menselijk lichaam tal van andere voorwerpen behoeft, waaruit het voortdurend word herboren;
en aangezien de orde en aaneenschakeling van

de voorstellingen dezelfde is als die van de oorzaken, zal deze voorstelling in God bestaan voorzover hij wordt
beschouwd als vervuld van de voorstellingen van tal van
bijzondere dingen. [menselijke lichaam is een van de voorstellingen IN God]
- God heeft dus een voorstelling van het menselijk Lichaam, voorzover hij vervuld is van tal van andere voorstellingen
en niet voorzover hij het wezen van de menselijke
Geest uitmaakt. [God heeft een voorstelling van menselijk lichaam, niet omdat hij het wezen van de menselijke
geest uitmaakt - niet omdat hij de menselijke geest is
kent hij het lichaam, maar omdat het lichaam in god is (?)]. God kent het menselijk lichaam niet, voorzover hij het
wezen vd menselijke geest uitmaakt: denken.]
- D.w.z. de menselijke geest [in god] kent het eigen menselijk Lichaam niet.
- Maar: de voorstellingen der inwerkingen op het menselijk lichaam bestaan wel in God voorzover hij het wezen van
de menselijke Geest uitmaakt,
- ofwel de Geest neemt deze inwerkingen waar.
- bijgevolg: neemt hij het menselijk lichaam waar
- namelijk zo: zoals het werkelijk bestaat en slechts zover dus neemt de menselijke Geest het eigen Lichaam waar.
Stelling 20.
ook van de menselijke Geest bestaat in God een voorstelling of wel kennis, die op dezelfde wijze uit God voortvloeit en
met hem in verband staat als de voorstelling of kennis
van het menselijk lichaam.
- Het denken [ook van de mens] bestaat in god's [voorstelling]
- deze voorstelling bestaat in god, niet voorzover hij oneindig is [absoluut denken] [{{infinity}}]
- maar SLECHTS voorzover hij vervuld is van voorstellingen van bijzondere dingen [x,q,y,z,.... ,... ,...]
- maar Uxy=Dxy
- Dus Menselijk lichaam = Voorstelling menselijk lichaam [in god]
Stelling 21.
Deze voorstelling omtrent de Geest [in God] is op dezelfde wijze met de Geest verenigd als de Geest zelf verenigd is met
het Lichaam.
- "Daar hebben wij immers aangetoond, dat de voorstelling van het Lichaam en het Lichaam zelf, d.w.z. de Geest en
het Lichaam, n en hetzelfde enkelding zijn, dat nu
eens wordt beschouwd als openbaring van het attribuut Denken, dan weer als openbaring van dat van de
Uitgebreidheid.""
- Inderdaad toch is de voorstelling omtrent de Geest, d.w.z., de voorstelling van een voorstelling, niets anders dan een
vorm van voorstelling, voorzover zij als
openbaring van Denken zonder enige betrekking tot een voorwerp wordt opgevat
Stelling 22.
De menselijke Geest neemt niet allen de inwerkingen op het Lichaam, maar ook de voorstellingen van die inwerkingen
waar.???
- De geest kan een voorstelling van een voorstelling hebben ad infinitum
- God neemt niet alleen inwerkingen van het Lichaam waar [in de geest] maar ook de [menselijke] voorstellingen
daarvan.
Stelling 23.
De geest kent zichzelf niet dan voorzover hij de voorstellingen van de inwerkingen op het Lichaam waarneemt.
- De kennis omtrent de voorstellingen van het menselijk lichaam bestaat in de Geest zelf; derhalve kent ook de
menselijke Geest zichzelf slechts in zover
Stelling 24.
De menselijke Geest bezit geen adaequate kennis van de delen, die het menselijk Lichaam samenstellen.
- een oorgaan is niet onderdeel van het wezen van het lichaam, alleen voorzover het samenwerkt met andere [niet
voorzover zij kunnen worden beschouwd als
enkeldingen zonder verband met het menselijk lichaam
- orgaan is ook orgaan op zich (eigen karakter)
- in god kennis van alle onderdelen van onderdelen
- God oneindig, niet alleen menselijk lichaam
- Menselijke geest geen adequate kennis van de [oneindige] delen die het menselijk lichaam samenstellen

Stelling 25.
De voorstelling van welke inwerking op het menselijk Lichaam ook, sluit geen adequate kennis van het inwerkende
voorwerp in zich.
- *voorwerp -> menselijk lichaam [voorstelling] grijpt het wezen voorzover het op een bepaalde wijze op het
menselijk lichaam inwerkt [relatief, niet op zich]
- die kennis bestaat in god
- net zoal in god kennis bestaat van vorowerp dat aan voorewerp vooraf gaat [voorwerp - > voorwerp -> menselijk
lichaam]
- in god geen adequate kennis VOORZOVER het een voorstelling v inwerking op menselijke geest is [ofwel
*voorwerp -> menselijk [voorstelling]
- Dus grijpt naast, dus inadequaat kennis van voorwerp op zich
Stelling 26
De menselijke Geest neemt geen uitwendig voorwerp als werkelijk bestaand waar, dan alleen door bemiddeling van de
voorstellingen van de inwerkingen op het eigen
lichaam.
- De MG kent niets behalve dan de voorstellingen van de in werkingen op het eigen lichaam
- MG zal deze waarnemen (conceptie)
Stelling 27
De voorstelling van welke inwerking op het menselijk Lichaam ook, sluit geen adaequate kennis van het menselijk
Lichaam zelf in zich.
- ..
Stelling 28
De voorstellingen van de inwerkingen op het menselijk Lichaam zijn, voorzover zij slechts bestaan in de menselijke
geest, niet helder en duidelijk, maar verward
- voorstelling v.d inwerk. sluit zowel aard van uitwend. vw. als die van het mensl. lichaam zelf. [idee van aard van
voorwerp, en van aard van toestand]
- inwerkingen zijn wijzigingen, waarvan de delen van het Menselijk L. en bijgevolg het Hele Lichaam invloed
ondervinden.
- Maar: kennis v. UV. , evenmin van de delen die het menselijk lichaam samenstellen: niet in god, vorozover hij wordt
bechouwd zich als die andere voorstellingen te
openbaren.
- Dus: het zijn voorstellingen van inwerkingen, als gevolgtrekkingen zonder premissen
Opmerking: ??? voorstelling van voorstelling zijn ook verward
Stelling 29:
De voorstelling van een voorstelling van welke inwerking op het menselijk Lichaam ook, sluit geen adequate kennis van
de menselijke geest in zich.

1.

voorstelling sluit geen adequate kennis VAN LICHAAM ZELF in

2.

drukt zijn wezen niet op adequate wijze uit [dat kan het alleen zelf, als uitgebreidheid ?]

3.

stemt niet adequaat met de aard vd geest overeen.

"Hieruit volgt dat de menselijke Geest, zo dikwijls hij de dingen waarneemt, gelijk zij zich in de algemene orde van
de Natuur voordoen, noch van zichzelf, noch van zijn Lichaam, noch van de uitwendige voorwerpen, een adequate kennis
bezit, doch slechts een verwarde en gebrekkige. De geest kent zichzelf immers niet dan voorzover hij de voorstellingen
otrent de inwerking op het menselijk lichaam waarneemt. Zijn eigen lichaam echter kan hij niet anders waarnemen dan
door middel van diezelfde voorstellingen van inwerkingen,, waardoor hij ook (en uitsluitend) uitwendige voorwerpen
waarneemt.
HOE DAN Ware voorstellling?

Stelling 30:
Wij kunnen omtrent de duur van ons Lichaam geen andere dan slechts uiterst inadequate kennis bezitten.
[het lijkt al snel of dingen oneindige, duurzame, eeuwige essenties bezitten] [of: wij kunnen niet goed weten hoe
duurzaam de dingen werklijk zijn?]
Stelling 31:
Wij kunnen omtrent de duur van de bijzonder dingen die buiten ons bestaan, geen andere dan slechts uiterst inadequate
kennis bezitten.
-we kunnen niet weten hoe lang dingen bestaan, wanneer ze vergaan etc. maar dit betekent niet per se:
contingentie/toeval etc.
"Hieruit volgt,, dat alle bijzondere zaken toevallig [gebeurlijk] en vergankelijk zijn. Immers wij kunnen generlei adequate
kennis omtrent hun duur bezitten en dat juist is het wat wij onder toevalligheid [gebeurlijkheid] en vergankelijkheid
[mogelijkheid van verval] van de dingen hebben te verstaan. Want behalve in deze zin bestaat er nergens iets toevalligs."
[gebrek aan kennis: toeval/voorspoed]
Stelling 32:
Alle voorstellingen zijn waar voorzover zij tot God worden teruggebracht.
-Voorstellingen zijn waar, maar kunnen inadequaat zijn?
????
Stelling 33:????
Er is in voorstellingen niets positiefs, waarom zij vals konden worden genoemd.
- voorstellingen gaan niet over de lichamen zelf?
stelling 34:
Elke voorstelling, die in ons absoluut, ofwel adequaat en volmaakt is, is waar.
stelling 35:
Valsheid bestaat in een gemis van kennis dat inadequate ofwel gebrekkige en verwarde voorstellingen kenmerkt
"De mensen dan bedriegen zich indien zij wanen vrij te zijn. Deze mening berust alleen hierop, dat zij zich wel bewust zijn
van hun handelingen, doch onwetend omtrent de oorzaken door welke deze worden bepaald. Hun voorstelling van vrijheid is
dus deze: dat zij geen oorzaak voor hun handelingen kennen. Immers wanneer zij zeggen, dat de mesnelijke handelingen van
de wil afhangen, spreken zij woorden waarbij zij generlei voorstelling hebben. Niemand weet immers wat die wil is en op
welke wijze hij het Lichaam in beweging zou brengen, terwijl wie anders denken en zetels en woonplaatsen voor de ziel
verzinnen, slechts spot of afschuw plegen te verwekken."
"want al erkennen wij later dat zij meer dan 6000 aardmiddellijnen van ons verwijderd is, wij blijven ons neittemin steeds
verbeelden dat zij dichterbij is."
Stelling 36: Inadequate en verwarde voorstellingen voglen elkaar met dezelfde noodzakelijkheid als adequate, ofwel heldere
en duidelijke voorstellingen.
OVERGANG??? naar wat adequaat gekend kan worden
stelling 37
Datgene wat aan alles gemeen is en wat evenzeer in een deel als in eht geheel voorkomt, maakt van geen enkel bijzonder
ding het wezen uit.
Stelling 38

Datgene wat aan alles gemeen is en wat evenzeer in een deel als in eht geheel voorkomt, kan niet anders dan adequaat
worden gekend.
stelling 39
Ook van datgene wat eigen en gemeen is aan het menselijk lichaam en aan zekere uitwendige voorwerpen, die op het
menselijk Lichaam plegen in te werken, en wat
evenzeer in hun delen als in het geheel voorkomt, zal de voorstelling in de Geest adequaat zijn.
Stelling 40
Alle voorstellingen die in de Geest volgen uit voorstellingen die in de Geest adequaat zijn, zijn eveneens adequaat
- Logica?
[!!!!!!!! zijn ding iets, essentie, trancendentaal ---->>> Monade?????]
"Om echter niets weg te laten van wat men noodzakelijk moet weten zal ik nog in het kort de oorzaken er aan toevoegen,
waaruit de zogenoemde transcendentale begrippen, als Zijn, Ding, Iets, zijn ontstaan [S1, normative, foucault, state,
cybernetics]. Deze uitdrukking zijn namelijk het gevolg van het feit, dat het menselijk Lichaam, omdat het begrensd is
[eindig], slechts in staat is om een bepaald aantal beelden* gelijktijdig duidelijk in zich te vormen; wordt dit aantal
overschreven dan beginnen de beelden verward te worden. En wordt het aantal beelden dat het Lichaam in staat is
gelijktijdig te vormen, en zo dat het ze duidelijk onderscheidt, verre overschreden, dan verwarren zij zich onderling geheel
en al. Waar dit zo is, blijkt uit het Toegift van st 17 en uit st. 18 van dit deel, dat de menselijke Geest zich zoveel voorwerpen
gelijktijdig duidelijk kan voorstellen als er in zijn Lichaam gelijktijdig beelden kunnen worden gevormd. Wanneer echter de
beelden in het menselijk Lichaam geheel en al verward raken, zal ook de Geest zich die voorwerpen verward en zonder
duidelijk onderscheid voorstellen en ze als het ware onder n kenmerk [begrip] samenvattend zoald bijv. onder het 'Zijn',
'Ding' enz. [zizek: metaphor metonym, name as placeholder, point de capiton] Men kan dit ook afleiden uit het feit dat
beelden [voorstellingen] niet steeds even krachtig zijn en uit meer soortgelijke oorzaken, die ik hier echter niet behoef uiteen
te zetten omdat wij voor het doel dat wij beogen er slechts een behoeven te overwegen. Alle toch komen hierop neer, dat
deze uitdrukkingen voorstellingen aanduiden, die in de hoogste mate verward zijn.
Een dergelijke oorsprong hebben die begrippen, welke men algemene [universele] begrippen noemt, zoals Mens, Paard,
Hond, enz. In het menselijk Lichaam worden namelijk zoveel beelden van bijv. mensen gelijktijdig gevormd, dat zij het
voorstellingsvermogen wel niet geheel en al, maar toch in zoverre te boven gaan, dat de Geest zich hun kleine verschillen
(zoals ekls kleur, groote en.) en hun bepaald aantal niet kan verbeelden, maar zich slechts datgene duidelijk voorstelt, waarin
allen, voorzover zij op het Lichaam inwerken, overeenkomen. Want van dit overeenkomende [gemeenschappelijke] kreeg de
Geest door elk beeld afzonderlijk reeds de sterkste indruk. Dit gemeenschappelijke nu drukt men uit door het begrip 'Mens',
en deze benaming geeft men aan het oneindig aantal individuen, omdat men zich, zoals wij reeds zeiden, hun bepaald aantal
niet kan voorstellen [metonym -> een deel als geheel]. Hierbij moet evenwel worden opgemerkt dat deze begrippen niet door
allen op dezelfde wijze wroden gevormd, maar dat zij voor elk verschillen naar gelang datgene, wat het meest op zijn
Lichaam heeft ingewerkt en wat de Geest zich daarom het gemakkelijkst voorstelt of herinnert. Zo zullen bij. lieden, die
herhaaldelijk met bewondering de menselijke gestalte hebben gade geslagen, onder het begrip 'mens' verstaan: een dier van
opgerichte houding. ZIj daarentegen, die gewoon waren op iets anders te letten, zullen weer een ander algemeen dier dat kan
lachen, of een tweevoetig dier zonder veren, of een redelijk dier. En zo zal elkeen zich omtrent alle overige dingen algemene
beelden vormen naar gelang van de toestand van zijn eigen lichaam [!!!]. Het is daarom ook niet te verwonderen, dat er
onder de wijsgeren, die de natuurlijke dingen uitsluitend door hun beelden [hun zintuigelijk voorstellingen] wilden
verklaren, zoveel verschillen van mening zijn gerezen"(104).
Subjectivism, pluralism, opinion, disagreement -> liberalism
Uit al het hierboven gezegde blijkt duidelijk, dat wij velerlei waarnemen en dat wij algemen begrippen vormen:
1^0. uit bijzonder dingen, die door de zintuigen gebrekkig, verward en ongeordend aan het verstand worden voorgesteld.
Ik ben daarom gewoon dergelijke waarnemingen te
noemen: kenis, berustend op vage ervaring.
2^0. uit tekens [LACAN! SIGNIFIER!!!], bijv. doordat wij ons bij het horen of lezen van sommige woorde de dingen
herinneren en ons voorstellingen van hen vormen,
gelijkende op die waarin de dingen zelf werden verbeeld. (zie de Opmerking bij St. 18 v. d. D.) In het vervolg zal ik
deze beide wijzen om de dingen te beschouwen
noemen: kennis van de eerste soort, mening ofwel verbeelding
3^0. ten slotte uit het feit dat wij algemeen erkende begrippen en juiste voorstellingen van de eigenschappen der dingen
bezitten (zie toegift st. 38. toegift st. 39. en st 40
v.d.D.) Hier zal ik spreken van Rede en kennis van de tweede soort.

Behalve deze twee soorten kennis bestaat er, gelijk ik in het volgende zal aantonen, nog een derde, welke ik het 'intuitive
weten' zal noemen. Deze soort van kennis schrijdt voort van de adequate voorstelling van het werkelijke wezen van zekere
attributen van God to de adequate kennis van het wezen van de dingen. voorbeeld:
Laten er bijv. drie getallen zijn gegeven, waarbij een vierde moet worden gezocht, dat zich verhoudt tot het derde als het
twee tot het eerste. Kooplieden [!!!] zullen niet aarzelen het tweede met het derde te vermenigvuldigen en het product door
het eerste te delen, hetzij omdat zij datgene wat zij van hun meester zonder enig bewijs hebben geleerd nog neit vergaten,
hetzij omdat zij het zelf bij de eenvoudigste getallen hebben ondervonden, hetzij op grond van het bewijs van Stelling 19
Boek VII van Euclides, d.w.z. op grond van de algemene eigenschap van de evenredigen.
Stelling 41
De kennis van de eerste soort is de enige oorzaak van valsheid, die van de tweede en derde soort is echter noodzakelijk
waar.
Stelling 42
Niet de kennis van de eerste, maar die van de tweede en derde soort leren ons waarheid van valsheid onderscheiden!!!!
Stelling 43.
Wie een ware voorstellling heeft, weet tevens dat hij een ware voorstelling heeft en kan aan de waarheid ervan niet meer
twijfelen
Hoe komt het dat mensen valse voorstelling hebben [how is representation possible?] hoe kan iemand met zekerheid
weten dat hij voorstellingen heeft, die met het door hen voorgestelde overeenkomen?
Een ware voorstelling is zelf het crituerium van waarheid of valsheid. Niet iets transcendents...... zoals het idee van het
goede.
Stelling 44.
Het ligt niet in de aard van de Rede de dingen als toevallig, echter wel ze als noodzakelijk te beschouwen.
- Rede : dingen op zich/noodzakelijk
- Verbeelding: toevallig
- Dat de Geest zich de dingen, ook al bestaan zij niet, toch steeds als aanwezig voorstelt, zolang er zich geen
oorzaken voordoen, die hun aanwezigheid buiten sluiten.
Ernee denkt iets, tot dat er haar iets wordt opgeworpen
"Onderstellen wij nu eens een knaap, die gisteren 's morgens Petrus, 's middags Paulus en 's avonds Simeon, ieder voor het
eerst, heeft gezien en die nu hedenmorgen wederom Petrus zag. Uit stelling 18 van dit Deel is het duidelijk dat hij, zodra hij
het morgenlicht waarneemt, zich zal voorstellen dat de zon hetzelfde gedeelte van de hemel zal doorlopen als de vorige dag.
m.a.w. dat hij zich de gehele dag zal voorstellen en tevens met de morgen Petrus, met de middag Paulus en met de avond
Simeon. D.w.z dat hij zich het bestaan van Paulus en Simeon zal verbeelden in betrekking tot de toekomstige tijd.
Omgekeerd zal hij, wanneer hij 's avonds Simeon ziet, zich Paulus en Petrus voorstellen in het verleden, doordat hij zich hen
gelijktijdig met een reeds vervlogen tijd voorstelt. En dit des te regelmatiger naarmate hij hen vaker in deze zelfde volgorde
heeft gezien. Gebeurt het nu echter eens, dat hij op een avond Jacobus ziet inplaats van Simeon, dan zal hij zich de volgende
morgen, bij het denken an de avond, nu eens Simeon, dan weer Jacobus voorstellen, niet echter beiden tegelijk. Zijn
verbeelding zal dus weifelen en zich met de komende avond nu deze dan weer gene voorstellen; d.w.z. hij zal de toekomst
van geen van beiden als zker, doch van elk van hen als 'toevallig' [mogelijk] beschouwen. En deze onzekerheid van de
verbeelding zal dezelfde zijn als het de voorstelling van dingen betreft die wij op dezelfde wijze in betrekking tot the
verleden of heden beschouwen. Bijgevolg zullen wij ons de dingen, zowel ten opzichte van het heden, als ten opzichte van
het verleden of van de toekomst, als toevallig kunnen voorstellen."
Toegift [sub specie aeterneatis] Het ligt in de aard van de Rede, de dingen in een of ander opzicht te beschouwen uit het
gezichtspunt van de eeuwigheid [vantage point etc.]
Stelling 45:
Elke voorstelling van elk voorwerp of bijzonder, werkelijk bestaand ding, sluit Gods eewige en oneindige wezen
noodzakelijk in zich.

Stelling 46:
De kennis van het eeuwige en oneindige wezen van God, die in iedere voorstelling ligt opgesloten, is adequaat en
volmaakt.
stelling 47:
De menselijke Geest bezit adequate kennis omtrent het eeuwige en oneindige wezen van God
"Voor ik evenwel verder ga is het hier de plaat op te merken, dat ik onder 'Wil' versta het vermogen om te bevestigen of te
ontkennen, NIET ECHTER DE BEGEERTE. Het vermogen, zeg ik, waardoor de Geest bevestigt of ontkent wat waar of vals
is, doch niet de begeerte waardoor de Geest naar de dingen streeft of zich ervan afwendt. Maar nu wij hebben aangetoond dat
deze vermogens algemene begrippen zijn, die zich niet onderscheiden van de bijzonder [voorstellingen] waaruit wij ze
vormen, hebben wij thans te onderzoeken of die willingen zelf wel iets anders zijn dan voorstellingen van de dingen zelf. Er
zal dus, zeg ik, moeten worden onderzocht of er in de Geest nog een andere bevestiging of ontkenning bestaat dan die welke
een voorstelling, voorzover zij alleen voorstelling is, reeds in zich sluit. Mens zie hierover de volgende Stelling, evenals
definitie III van dit Deel, opdat men hier niet denke aan afbeeldingen. Immers onder voorstellingen versta ik niet beelden
zoals zij op de achtergrond van het oog, of zo men wil, midden in de hersenen worden gevormd maar begrippen van het
denken."
Stelling 49:
Er bestaat in de Geest generlei willing, of bevestiging en ontkenning, buiten die welke in de voorstelling, voorzover zij
voorstelling is, ligt opgesloten.
"maar ik ontken dat de wil izch verder zou uitstrekken dan de waarneming [perceptie]*, of het vermogen om de dingen op te
vatten [concipieren/concept-deleuze]. Evenmin zie ik in waarom het vermogen om te willen eerder onbegrensd zou zijn dan
het vermogen om waar te nemen.

-1632
-prominent merchant
-Protuguese-Jewish
-Recent immigrants
-conversos -> return to religion of ancestors.

Het was mijn bedoeling er alles in op te nemen wat ik voordat ik met het schrijven ervan
begon dacht te weten over het wezen van de stoffelijke dingen. [alles opschrijven, lijstje
maken, van de feiten en gedachten]
Maar zoals kunstschilders, aangezien ze in een vlak schilderij niet alle kanten van een ding
kunnen afbeelden, slechts n van de belangrijskste uitkiezen en daarop alle licht laten vallen
en, alle andere kanten in de scaduw latend [kunstreferentie], deze slechts laten zien voor
zover ze zichtbaar zijn; zo besloot ook ik, bang dat ik niet alles kon zeggen wat ik dacht, om
alleen uitvoerig in te gaan op het licht; [alles wat echt duidelijk is]
vervolgens daaraan iets toe te voegen over de zon en de vaste sterrren, omdat deze bijna de
enige bron van zijn; [plato grot etc. dingen in het licht en het licht zelf]

over de hemelen omdat ze het overbrengen; over de planeten, de kometen en de aarde, omdat
ze het weerkaatsen; in het bijzonder over alle aardse lichamen omdat ze of gekleurd of
doorschijnend, of lichtgeven zijn; en tenslotte over de mens die van dat alles de toeschouwer
is. [clair et distinct]
"Voetius, algemeen gezien als boegbeeld van de calvinistische (en 'precieze') orthodoxie, had
talloze redenen om zich aan de fiosofie van Descartes te ergeren. Ten eerste brak Descartes
met de filosofie van Aristoteles (die Voetius niet kon missen voor zijn theologie), hij
propageerde volgens hem de twijfel en daarmee het scepticisme; en hij verving de
traditionele, maar volgens Voetius overtuigende, bewijzen van het bestaan van God door
andere, die dat zijns inziens allerminst waren."
Hobbes/Gassendi: kritisch over Descartes poging de wetenschap op de metafysica te
funderen.
"[Descartes] nam zich voor om een complete uiteenzetting van zijn filosofie te geven door
middel van een confrontatie met de traditionele filosofie. Het resultaat zou bestaan in een
drievoudige presentatie: 1) de traditionele opvatting; 2) Descartes' eigen opvatting; 3) een
verklaring van wat er mis is met de traditionele opvatting." ---> Principia
"Het resultaat was een werk dat in 1649 gepubliceerd werd: 'De hartstochten van de ziel' (les
passions de l'ame). Descartes ontwikkelt er een theorie van de emoties die gebaseerd is op het
idee dat een emotie de waarneming is van een lichamelijk proces (vooral gelokaliseerd in de
bloedsomloop), waarop we geen rechtstreekse invloed kunnen uitoefenen. De enige manier
om onze hartstocht die we willen bedwingen een andere te stellen die daarmee in strijd is een tamelijk deterministische theorie die van grote betekenis zou zijn voor Spinoza."
Methode:
- mens kan waar van onwaar onderscheiden
- maar: via een weg, plan van aanpak.
- universele methode
- universele mathesis (foucault)
- diometriek, regenboog, licht etc
"In alle gevallen, ook in het geval van de regenboog, gaat het om de reductie van een
complex en op het eerste gezicht onbegrijpelijk verschijnsel tot iets dat makkleijk is te
overzien, te manipulern en te bestuderen" [reductie = abstractie]
[badiou: concept du model]
"Ook in het Discours worden 'modellen' gebruikt, dat wil zeggen, situaties of voorwerpen die
bedacht worden teneinde een proces aanschouwelijk en begrijpelijk te maken:
Om dat alles nog wat meer in de schaduw te laten en een grotere vrijheid te hebben om mijn
oordeel te geven zonder verplicht te zijn de meningen van geleerden te volgen dan wel te
weerleggen, besloot ik verder de wereld die wij kennen aan hun geredetwist over te laten en
allen te spreken over wat er in een nieuwe wereld zou gebeuren, als God thans, ergens, in een
denkbeeldige ruimte, genoeg materie zou schappen om er een te maken, en de verschillende
delen ervan willekeurig en zonder enig plan zou gewegen waardoor hij die tot een chaos zou

maken, zo volledig als alleen dichters die kunnen bedenken. Vervolgens zou hij niets anders
doen dan de natuur zijn gewone bijstand te verlenen en haar volgens de wetten der natuur zijn
en zonder me op enig ander principe te baseren dan dat van de volmaaktheden Gods
probeerde ik al die wetten te bewijzen waaraan men zou kunnen twijfelen en om aan te tonen
dat ze zodanig zijn dat zelfs als God meer dan wereld geschapen had, er geen een kan zijn
waarin ze niet waargenomen worden. Daarna liet ik zien hoe het grootste deel van de stof van
deze chaos op grond van dze wetten een zekere ordening aaneemt waardoor ze op ons heelal
gaat lijken; hoe intussen enkele delen een aarde vormen en enkele ander planeten en kometen
en nog weer andere een zon en vaste sterren. [..] Ik voegde er van alles aan toe betreffende de
substantie, de plaats, de bewegingen en alles andere eigenschappen van hemelen en van
sterren, zoveel dat het me voldoende scheen om te laten zien dat alles wat wij van onze eigen
wereld kennen precies moest, of althans kon, voorkomen in die werlke door mij beschreven
was.
"Wat het model bewijst is dus dat de belangrijkste aspecten van de wereld met behulp
van niet meer dan twee 'heldere en wel onderscheiden' begrippen te verklaren zijn"
(17).
"Maar tegelijk komt er in het Discours een ander element naar voren dat, zonder dat het echt
afwezig was, daarmee tot op zeker hoogte in strijd is. Descartes vindt het niet langer
voldoende dat we een model bedenken; we moeten ook de zekerheid hebben dat de
werkelijkheid met het model overeenkomt, met andere woorden dat de wereld een
mathematische signatuur heeft."

"Het gezond verstand is het best verdeelde goed ter wereld, al was het maar omdat iedereen
er zoveel van denkt te hebben dat zelfs wie men anders het moeilijkst tevreden stelt, er
doogaans niet meer van willen hebben dan ze al bezitten. En het is niet waarschijnlijk dat
iedereen zich daarin vergist; veeleer blijkt daaruit dat het vermogen om goed te oordelen en
waar van onwaar te onderscheiden (en dat is precies wat men bedeolt als men het woord
'gezond verstand' of 'rede' gebruikt) van nature gelijk is in alle mensen; en derhalve dat alle
meningsverschil niet voorkomt uit het feit dat de een redelijker zou zijn dan de ander, maar
enkel dat onze gedachten niet gelijk verlopen en dat wij niet aan dezelfde dingen aandacht
besteden" (37 [boom]).
- goed verstand: gaat er om om het goed te gebruiken [is niet zomaar goed, is een process,
een doen {in het licht van het goede? plato?}]
- langzaam lopen -> rechte weg volgen [socialisten: consequenties, trouw, doorgaan tot
confrontatie met kapitaal: wat] [wetenschap in duitse zin]
- snel = verwijderen van weg

"wat mijzelf aangaat heb ik nooit de pretentie gehad een beter verstand te hebben dan
anderen. Zelfs heb ik vaak verlangd even snel van inzicht te zijn, even helder en scherp van
voorstelling, even sterk en paraat van geheugen te zijn als sommige anderen."
- volmaakt verstand? [specifieke kwaliteiten]
"Van de rede zelf - [onders. mens dier] - zou ik zeggen dat ze in haar geheel in ieder
aanwezig is, en liever de mening van de meeste filosofen volgen volgens welke men slechts
van meer en minder kan spreken voor zover het gaat om accidenten [eigenschappen
{bourgeoi phil: porperty, but why not accident ?}, maar niet om de vorm of de natuur van de
individuen behorend to eenzelfde soort" (38)
- wel vanaf jong op juiste pad
"Het is dus niet mijn bedoeling om hier de methode te dicteren die iedereen moet volgen
om goed te redeneren, maar enkel om te laten zien hoe ik zelf geredeneerd heb" [!!!]
"Dit evenwel is niet meer dan een geschedenis, of zo men wel, een fabel, waarin men,
naast voorbeelden die men kan volgen, wellicht ook veel vindt dat men beter kan negeren.
Zodat sommigen er, naar ik hoop, iets aan zullen hebben; niemand zal het schaden en allen
zullen mij dankbaar zijn voor mijn openhartigheid.' (39)
- na traditionele studie dat kennis beloofde: opgezadeld met twijfels
- geen wetenschap die aan verwachting voldeed
- Niettemen waardeerde ik de oefeningen waarmee men zich o pschol bezighoudt.
"Het is goed om iets te weten over de zeden en gewoonten van andere volkeren om daardoor
beter te oordelen over die van ons en zo te voorkomen dat we alles wat anders is dan bij ons
belachelijk en doem vinden, zoals mensen doen die nooit verder gekeken hebben dan hun
neus lang is. Maar als men te veel reist, wordt men op den duur een vreemdeling in eigen
land; en als men te nieuwsgierig is naar wat in vroeger tijd gebeurde, blijft men onwtend van
de praktijk van vandaag" (40).
- geschiedenis is narrative/fabel etc [kan niet alles opschrijven]
- verliezen in romanridders
- welsperkendheid, poezie mooi maar
"Een goede redenering, zo meende ik, en een rijpe overweging, met als resultaat een heldere
en begrijpelijke gedachte, zijn dorogaans voldoende om iemand te voertuigen, zelfs als men
plat spreekt en nooit retorica gehad heeft."
- wiskunde
- evident en zeker
- geen besef van nut
- werktuigkunde misschien
- theologie.. mwa
- filosofie -> kan aan alles twijfelen
- andere wetenschappen: gebaseerd op zwakke fundering van filosofie [aristoteles]
"Nog altijd dank ik God dat ik niet genoodzaakt was om van de wetenschap mijn beroep te
maken en er mijn geld mee te verdienen. En hoewel ik geen cynicus ben en niet wil doen

alsof roem en aanzien voor mij niets betekenen, zijn ze me niet genoeg waard om met valse
papieren verworven te worden."
"Dat alles is de reden waarom ik, zodra de leeftijd mij toestond om mij aan het gezag van
mijn leermeesters te onttrekken, alle geleerdheid liet varen." [against tradition]
[PRAKTIJK!!!] En met het voornemen om naar geen andere wetenschap te zoeken dan die
welke zich ofwel in mijzelf ofwel in het grote boek der wereld liet vinden, gebruikte ik de
rest van mijn jeugd om te reizen, om hoven en legers te zien, om met mensen van
verschillende aard en stand om te gaan, om dingen te ervaren en mijzelf en het loto te
beproeven; en bij alles wat ik zou meemaken mij af te vragen wat ik ervan kon leren. Want
het leek mij dat er meer kans op waarheid was in de gedachten die iedereen zich vormt over
datgene dat hem aangaat en waarbij de straf van een fout oordeel bestaat in het mislukken dan
in die van een geleerde in zijn kabinet over abstracte zaken zonder enig effect, die voor
hemzelf geen ander gevolg hebben dan dat het zijn ijdelheid streelt iets te bedenken dat ver
van het gezond verstand afstaat, al was het maar omdat hij meer vernuft en meer listigheid
heeft moeten gebruiken om anderen van zijn gelijk te overtuigen. En nog altijd was het mijn
enige wens om waar van onwaar te leren onderscheiden teneinde te weten wat ik moest doen
en in zekerheid verder te leven.
Ik geef toe dat ik, zolang ik mij beperkte tot het waarnemen van de gewoontes van anderen,
nauwelijks meer zekerheid kreeg en dat ik daarin even grote verschillen aantrof als eerde in
de meningen der filosofen. De belangrijkste les was wel dat de ervaring dat dingen die ons
buitensporig en belachelijk voorkomen, nietttmen doo rhele volksstammen algemeen
goedgedeurd en geaccepteerd worden, mij leerde om niet al te vast te geloven in de
zekerheden die mij door gewoonte en voorbeeld eigen waren geworden. En zo wist ik mij
langzamerhand te ontdoen van de vele misvattingen die ons natuurlijk licht kunnen
verduisteren en ons het vermogen ontnemen om de stem van de rede te beluisteren. Maar
nadat ik enkele jaren aan deze studie van het boek der werled besteed had, en getracht had
enige ervaring op te doen, nam ik op zekree dag het besluit om ook bij mijzelf te rade te gaan,
en al wat in mij was te benutten om de weg te zoeken die ik hat te gaan. En dat, geloof ik,
lukte me veel beter dan wanneer noch mijn land, noch mijn boeken ooit in de steek had
gelaten. [kill you babies, against tradition, fixation]

- oorlog
- hij was op zichzelf

- idee: iets uit verschillende stukken samengesteld en door verschillende mensen gemaakt is
vaak minder volmaakt dan iets waarn er slechte een gewerkt heeft.
- gebouwen architect
- steden vs strak aangelegd
- voortbouwen op verscheidenheid van anderen is moeilijk.
constitutionalisme] " Op dezelfde manier stelde ik me voor dat volkeren die zich van halve
wilden langzamerhand tot een beschaafd nveau ontwikkeld hebben, en hun wetgeving hebben
aangepast naarmate misdaad en meningsverschil dat nodig maakten, nooit zo goed bestuurd
kunnen worden als een volk dat zich vanaf het eerste moment dat ze samenkwamen
onderworpen heeft aan de constitutie van een wijze wegever
- sparta was goed; door een persoon bedacht, in dienst van een doel. [communisme = generic
+ specific.. universal IS subjective]
- alle meningen bij elkaar, is niet beter dan de redenering van gezond verstand van een
persoon
- we zijn gecorrumpeerd door de meningen die we meekregen met onze opvoeding
- soms moet een gebouw opnieuw gebouwd worden omdat de fundament niet goed zijn
- alle meningen kunnen in principe opzij, om vervolgens opnieuw te beginnen.
"Dat soort logge lichamen herstelt men niet licht als ze eenmaal ter aarde liggen, en men
houdt ze zelfs al niet meer tegen als ze dreigen vallen - doorgaans met vreselijk resultaat. Nog
daargelaten dat, als er al van alles aan mankeert (wat niet bewezen is en waarin ze in elk
geval niet de enige zijn), dan is dat door het gebruik ongetwijfeld dragelijker geworden; ja,
zelfs id op die manier een aantal van die fouten verdwenen of bebeterd op een manier die
door overleg niet mogelijk is.En uiteindelijk zijn hun gebreken bijna altijd beter te verdragen
dan verandering - zoals een grote weg die zich tussen de bergen door slingert, doordat
iedereen ze volgt, langzamerhand zo vlak en zo goed begaanbaar wordt dat men er altijd beter
aan doet ze te volgen en niet een rechte lijn te volgen, wat het nodig zou maken om over
rotsen te klimmen en in ravijnen af te dalen" (46).
"ik ben het dan ook oneeneens met die ontevreden en onrustige figuren die, hoewel door
geboorte noch rang tot enige bemoienis met de publieke zaak geroepen, nochtans
voortdurend bezig zijn, als is het maar in gedachten, met nieuwe hervorming. [!!!]
- logica, meetkunde en algebra als hulpzaam bij pad/plan/methode
"Maar bij nader onderzoek realiseerde ik mij wel dat, wat de logica aangaat, syllogisme en de
meeste andere regels eerder dienen om aan anderen uit te leggen wat men weet of zelfs, zoals
de lullische kunst, zonder verstand te praten over wat men niet weet dan om nieuwe kennis te
vergaren. [logica zonder verstand! gaat alle kanten uit]
- Voordelen van alle drie combineren : methode
- vier regels:
- 1. Nooit iets voor war aan nemen waarvan ik niet zelf de waarheid op evidente wijze
inzag, dat wil zeggen, zorgvuldig te vermijden om overhaast of vooringenomen te
oordelen, en in mijn oordeel niets te betrekken dan wat zich zo helder en zo
welonderscheiden aan mijn geest voordeed dat ik er niet meer aan kon twijfelen
- 2. elk te onderzoeken probleem eerst [!] in zoveel stukken te verdelen als mogelijk

- 3. gedachten in bepaalde orde te doen verlopen. van eenvoudig naar ingewikkeld

[spinoza, leibniz] en de orde te vooronderstellen
- 4. sytematiek. overzicht: niets te vergeten
[rationalisme/idealisme] "Die lange reeksen van argumenten, alle even eenvoudig als
gemakkelijk, die meetkundigen gebruiken om tot hun moeilijkste bewijzen te komen, hadden
mij op het idee gebracht dat alles wat een mens maar kan kennen, op dezelfde wijze met
elkaar samenhangt, en dat er, zolang men maar niets voor waar aanneemt dat het niet is, en
altijd de juiste orde respecteerd waarin het een uit het ander wordt afgeleid, niet zo ver van
ons verwijderd is dat we het nooit zouden bereiken, of zo verborgen dat we het nooit konden
ontdekken" (50)
[abstractie?] "Mij realiserend dat wat al deze wetenschappen, ondanks het feit dat hun
objecten verschillend zijn, met elkaar gemeen hebben is dat ze van hun object slechts de
verschillende relaties en verhoudingen bestuderen, meende ik dat men beter deze
verhoudingen in het algemeen kon onderzoeken, en alleen dan een object te
veronderstellen als mij dat de kennis van die verhoudingen zou vergemakkelijken,
echter zonder ze daartoe te beperken - immers ik moest die kennis daarna kunnen toepassen
op iets anders." Relationisme, ipv objectivisme [essentialisme]
- wat waar is is waar (2+2=4)
"Bovendien voelde ik dat ik door deze methode te oefenen meer en meer de gewoonte kreeg
de dingen helder en welonderscheiden te denken en dat ik, omdat ik niet aan de een of andere
inhoud gebonden was, de verwwachting mocht hebben haar met evenveel succes kon
toepassen op andere wetenschappen dan de algebra.

- om succes te hebben: leefregels

Eerste:
- gehoorzamen aan wetten van mijn land.
- die van de meest verstandigen volgen
- act van geloof komt voor de kennis van geloof
- verschillende opvattingen? de meest gematigde
-geen excessen
Tweede: - Standvastigheid
- dwaler in bos [rousseau????]
- ook als onzeker. niet te snel terugkomen
Derde: - niet het lot maar mijzelf bedwingen en mijn verlangens te veranderen
- niet de loop der dingen beinvloeden
- alleen ons denken is volledig in onze macht
- spinoza
- streven naar fantasie is ijdel [psychoanalyse lacan]
Tenslotte: - "niet dat ik wilde doen als de sceptici, die slechts twijfelen om te twijfelen en
een eeuweige besluiteloosheid voorwenden;
- integendeel, mijn eneige bedoeling was om zekerheid te verkrijgen en onder
drijfzand en modder rots en leem terug te vinden
- streven naar ware kennis

i am finite, i have an idea of infinity. so there is god.

- ik denk dus ik ben
- uitgangspunt van MIJN filosofie
- de ziel is gemakkelijker te kennen dan het lichaam
- kennis is volmaakter dan twijfel
- hoe kan ik denken aan iets dat volmaakter is dan mijzelf?
- alles buiten mijzelf, daarin was niets dat suprieur aan mijn eigen wezen
- Maar: gaat niet op m.b.t. het idee van een wezen dat volmaakter is dan ikzelf.
- onmogleijk om zon idee volkomen uit het niets te ontlenen\
- er bestaat een volmaakter wezen waar ik afhankelijk van ben
"want als men de redenering van zo-even doorvoert, behoef ik, om God te kennen (althans
voor zover mij dat is toegestaan), van alles waarvan ik in mij een voorstelling aantref slechts
na te gaan of het een volmaaktheid is of niet, en ik zou er zeker van zijn dat niets wat in enig
opzicht onvolmaakt is, in hem is, maar al het andere wel. Zo begreep ik bijvoorbeel ddat
twijfel, onstandvastigheid, droefheid en dergelijke niet aan God kunnen worden toegeschreen,
aangezien ik zelf maar al te graag daarvan bevrijd ben. Verder had ik ideeen van zintuigelijk
waarneembare en lichamelijke dingen- want hoewel ik aannam dat ik droomde en dat alles
wat ik zag of mij verbeelde onwaar is, kon ik niet ontkennen dat de voorstellingen van die
dingen wel deglijk in mijn gedachte zijn. Omdat ik echter reeds duidelijk had ingezien dat het
denkend wezen onderscheiden is van het lichamelijk ewezen, daarbij tevens overwegend dat
elk samngesteld zijn duidt op afhankelijkheid en dat afhankelijkheid een tekort is, redeneerde
ik dat het voor God geen volmaaktheid kon zijn om uit twee verschillende naturen te zijn
samengesteld en dus dat hij dat dan ook niet is; maar anderzijds dat, als er lichamen of
denkende wezen of andere niet geheel volmaakte wezens bestaan deze voor hun bestaan
afhankelijk moeten zijn van zijn macht, en wel zo dat ze zonder hem geen moment kunnen
bestaan" (63).

Bitterness about the question between party [conscious bit/part] and class [economic/analytic
category?].
- bureaucrat,
- substitutionist
- elitist
- autocrat
but: easily confused. [clear and distinct]
however: important
- bolsheviks and mensheviks split over organisation
- plekanov + Lenin, vs Trotsky and Luxembourg
trotsky against lenin. in reply to levi's contention that the mass of worker of Europe and
America understood the need for a party. Trotsky says is more complex:

- "Trotsky: both the Social Democrats and Bolsheviks refer to the need for a party."
-But they mean different things.
- Aggrevated by Stalinism
- Stalinims took over boslhevism. it was taken over for purposes quite opposed to those who
formulated it.
"Yet too often those who have continued in the revolutionary tradition opposed to both
Stalinism and Social Democracy have not taken Trotsky's points in 1920 seriously. They have
often relied on "experience" to prove the need for a party, although the experience is that
of Stalin-ism and Social Democracy."
Argument: most of the discussion even in revolutionary circles is, as a consequence,
discussion for or against basically Stalinist or Social-Democratic conceptions of organisation.
It will be held that the sort of organisational vies developed implicitly in the writings and
actions of Lenin are radically different to both these conceptions.
False contradiction! Stalinism vs Social Democracy as party.
the social democratic view of the relation of party and class
- not challenged before 1914
- party central role in development towards socialism
- contious/gradual/smooth growth of the working class organisation
- and consciousness under capitalism [legitimation crisis theory WOLFGANG STREECK .
until 1970s]
- even if kautsky [no gradual -> comm]
- needed: continually to extend organisational strength + electoral following
- essential for transition
- party as basis for new state.
- seen as inevitable corollary of the tendencies of capitalism
Kautsky evolutionism:
Forever greater grows the number of proletarians, more gigantic the army of superfluous
labourers, and sharper the opposition between exploiters and exploited [2], [did not
happen] crises naturally occur on an increasing scale [true] [3], the majority of people
sink ever deeper into want and misery [4], the intervals of prosperity become ever shorter;
the length of the crises ever longer. [5] This drives greater numbers of workers into
instinctive opposition to the existing order. [NO!] [6] Social Democracy, basing itself upon
independent scientific investigation by bourgeois thinkers [7], exists to raise the workers to
the level where they have a clear insight into social laws. [8] Such a movement
springing out of class antagonisms ... cannot meet with anything more than temporary
defeats, and must ultimately win. [9] Revolutions are not made at will ... They come with
inevitable necessity. The central mechanisms involved in this development is that of
parliamentary elections (although even Kautsky played with the idea of the General Strike in
the period immediately after 1905-6). [10] We have no reason to believe that armed
insurrection ... will play a central role nowadays. [11] Rather, it (parliament) is the most
powerful lever that can be used to raise the proletariat out of its economic, social and
moral degradation. [12] The uses of this by the working class makes parliamentarianism
begin to change its character. It ceases to be a mere tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie. [13]

In the long run such activities must lead to the organisation of the working class and to a
situation where the socialist party has the majority and will form the government. ... (The
Labour Party) must have for its purpose the conquest of the government in the interests of the
class it represents. Economic development will lead naturally to the accomplishment of this
purpose. [14]
- Kautskyism basis for soicalist action
- 40 years prior to WOI
- [maybe also 50s/60s?]
"Not only did this perspective lay the basis for most socialist action throughout western
Europe in the 40 years prior to the First World War, it also went virtually unchallenged
theoretically, at least from the Left. Lenin's astonishment at the SPD's support for the war is
well known."
- Even rosa luxembourg,
- not rejected foundations of Kautskysm
"Not so often understood, however, is the fact that even Left critics of Kautsky, such as Rosa
Luxemburg, had not rejected the foundations of the theory of the relation of the party to the
class and of the development of class consciousness implied. Their criticisms of Kautskyism
tended to remain within the overall theoretical ground provided by Kautskyism."
CENTRAL TO SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC IDEA
- party represents the class
- Outside of the party the worker has no consciousness
- pathological fear of workers without consciouness [YES, i fear this too]
- it thus had to be the party that takes power
- unions: no substitute for paliamentary action

THE REVOLUTIONARY LEFT AND SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC THEORIES

- one does not understand discussion of organisation (prior 1917)
- without understanding that this Social Dem view of party was nowhere challenged
- even Rosa Luxembourg
- not merely theoretical fault
- the paris commune was the only experience
- failed
- soviets did not really work
- 1905 : only embryonic
- Trotsky did not see soviets
- only in february revolution soviet > central in Lenin's writings
"The revolutionary left never fully accepted Kautsky's position of seeing the party as the
direct forrunner of the workers' state. Luxemburg's writings, for instance, recognise the
conservatism of the party and the need for the masses to go beyond and outside it from a very
early stage. But there is never an explicit rejection of the Social-Democratic position."
- not spontaneaist

- there is a need for a party

- not fatalist
- there is no way of waiting for rev.
- yet; continual equivocation in Luxemburg's writings on the role of the party
- leading role should not be too great
- prudent position of SD
- centralism = conservatism in inherent in such an organ (i.e., the Central Commitee).
"The present tactical policy of the German Social Democracy has won universal esteem
because it is supple as well as firm. This is a sign of the fine adaptation of our party to the
conditions of a parliamentary regime ... However, the very perfection of this adaptation is
already closing vaster horizons to our party."
- does not explain increasing sclerosis and ritualism
- let alone way of fighting
- conscious idnividualist and groups cannot resist this trend
- such inertia is due, to a large degree to the fact that it is inconvenient to define, within the
vacuum of abstract hypotheses, the lines and form of non-existent political situations.
- bureaucratization is inevitable
- that is: it is not a PARTICULAR form of organisation and conscious direction, but
organisation and conscious direction as such that limit the possibilities for the "self-conscious
movement of the majority in the interst of the majority.
Luxemburg: "the unconscious comes before the conscious. The logic of history comes before
the subjective logic of the human beings who participate in the historic process. The tendency
is for the directing organs of the socialist party to play a conservative role."
- Harmann: correct
"There is a correct and important element in this argument: the tendency for certain sorts of
organisations to be unable (or unwilling) to respond to a rapidly changing situation."
[conservatism: absolutation of the tradition]
- But: luxemburg, having made the diagnosis
-> no attempt to locate source
-> only in epistemological generalities
-> or looks for organisation remedies
"thre is a strong fatalism in her hope that the "unconscious" will be able to correct the
"conscious'. Despite her superb sensitivity to the peculiar tempo of development of the mass
movement - particularly in The Mass Strike - she shies away from trying to work out a clear
conception of the sort of political organistion that can harness such spontaneious
developments.
- luxemburg argued for the mensheviks
- parrales between luxemburg and trotsky up to 1917
- very aware of bureaucratic ritualism

[permanent revolution (trotsky, Mao etc]

Again his revolutionary spirit leads him to distrust all centralised organisation. Lenins
conception of the party can, according to Trotsky in 1904, only lead to the situation in which:
The organisation of the Party substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the Central
Committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally the dictator substitutes himself
for the Central Committee. [28]
But for Trotsky the real problems of working-class power can only be solved,
by way of systematic struggle between ... many trends inside socialism, trends which will
inevitably emerge as soon as the proletarian dictatorship poses tens and hundreds of new ...
problems. No strong domineering organisation will be able to suppress these trends and
controversies ...
- Trosky fears organisational rigidity
- but leads him to support party frightened of spontaneity
- if org. => bureaucaracy and inertia
- Lux and Trotsky were right about the need to limit asp. to centralism and cohesion among
rev.
- must accept consequences however: is fatalism [??????]
- since individuals and groups can struggle among WC for their ideas
- and these ideas can be important to give confidence [IS do not however]
- they can never build the organisation capable of giving them effectiveness and cohesion in
action
- comparable to those who implicitly accept present ideologies.
- to do so would is inevitably to limit the self-activity to the masses.
- to limit the unconscious that precede the conscious
- the result must be to wait for the spontaneous developments among the masses
"In the meantime one might as well put up with the organizations that exist at present, even if
one disagrees with them politically, as being the best possible, as being the maximum present
expression of the spontaneous development of the masses."
?????
LENIN AND GRAMSCI ON THE PARTY AND THE CLASS
"in the writings of Lenin there is an ever-present implicit recognition of the problems that
worry Luemburg and Trotsky so much. But there is not the same fatalistic succumbing to
them. Ther is an increasing recognition that it is not organisation as such, but praticular forms
and aspects of organisation that give rise to these [IS? psychoanalytic community?]."
-1917 gave acute expr. to the faults of old forms of org.
- now: radically new conception
but a renovation smothered by:
- DESTRUCTIONof russian working class [!]
- COLLAPSE of meaningful SOVIET [real workers councils] system [!]
- Rise of stalinism.

"Lenin's view of what the party is and how it should function in relation to the class and its
institutions, was no sooner defined as against older socialist-democratic conceptions with any
clarity than it was again obscured by a new Stalinist ideology."
FIRST [of dialectic]: the masses make history
- given further coherent theoretical form by Gramsci
- two intertwined and complementary conceptions, which seem contradictory, commonly
usually ignored:
- 1. continual stress on the possibilities of sudden transformation of working-class
consciousness [maagdenhuis]
- unecpected upsurge that characterises working-class self-activity
- deep-rooted instincts in the working class that lead it to begin to reject habits of
deference ans subservience.
LENIN QUOTES supporting FIRST
In the history of revolutions there come to light contradictions that have ripened for decades
and centuries. Life becomes unusually eventful. The masses, which have always stood in the
shade and therefore have often been despised by superficial observers, enter the political
arena as active combatants ... These masses are making heroic efforts to rise to the occasion
and cope with the gigantic tasks of world significance imposed upon them by history; and
however great individual defeats may be, however shattering to us the rivers of blood and the
thousands of victims, nothing will ever compare in importance with this direct training that
the masses and the classes receive in the course of the revolutionary struggle itself. [31]
... We are able to appreciate the importance of the slow, steady and often imperceptible work
of political education which Social Democrats have always conducted and always will
conduct. But we must not allow what in the present circumstances would be still more
dangerous a lack of faith in the powers of the people. We must remember what a
tremendous educational and organisational power the revolution has, when mighty historical
events force the man in the street out of his remote garret or basement corner, and make a
citizen of him. Months of revolution sometimes educate citizens more quickly and fully than
decades of political stagnation. [32]
The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social Democratic. [33]
The special condition of the proletariat in capitalistic society leads to a striving of workers for
socialism; a union of them with the Socialist Party bursts forth with a spontaneous force in
the very early stages of the movement. [34]
Even in the worst months after the outbreak of war in 1914 he could write:
The objective war-created situation ... is inevitably engendering revolutionary sentiments; it
is tempering and enlightening all the finest and most class-conscious proletarians. A sudden
change in the mood of the masses is not only possible, but is becoming more and more
probable ... [35]

In 1917 this faith in the masses leads him in April and in August-September into conflict with
his own party:
Lenin said more than once that the masses are to the Left of the party. He knew the
party was to the Left of its own upper layer of old Bolsheviks. [36]
In relation to the Democratic Conference he can write:
We must draw the masses into the discussion of this question. Class-conscious workers must
take the matter into their own hands, organise the discussion and exert pressure on those at
the top.

SECOND [of the dialectic]

- the stress on the role of theory and of the party as the bearer of this.
- without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary practice
- cursing the failure of the party to respond to the radicalization of the masses!!!
"It is always a vanguard organization, membership of which requires a dedication not to be
found in most workers."
- This seems contradiction:
- only party can imbue the class with a consciousness
- vs. class being more to the left than the party [YES!!!!]
- arguement: the level of consciousness in the working class is never uniform
- some more advanced than others [see maagdenhuis]
- merely delight in spontaneous transformation is accept uncritically every change [day after
zizek]
- these reflect backwardness AS WELL AS its forward movement
- its SITUATION [in bourgeois society] AS WELL AS its POTENTIALITY for further
development so as to make revolution
"Workers are not automatons without ideas. If they are not won over to a socialist wolrd view
by the intervention of conscious revolutionairies, they wil locntinue to accept the bourgeois
ideology of existing society. This is all the more likely because it is an ideology that flavours
all aspects of life at present and is perpetuated by all media."
- still have to argue
"To forget the distinction between the vanguard and the whole of the masses gravitating
towards it, to forget the vanguards's constant duty of raising ever-wider sections to its own
advanced level, means simply to deceive oneself, to shut one's eyes to the immensity of our
taks, and to narrow down these tasks.
[SUBJECTIVE PROBLEM BADIOU]

Use fewer platitudes about the development of the independent activity of the workers the
workers display no end of independent revolutionary activity which you do not notice! but
see to it rather that you do not demoralise undeveloped workers by your own tailism.
There are two sorts of independent activity. There is the independent activity of a proletariat
that possesses revolutionary initiative, and there is the independent activity of a proletariat
that is undeveloped and held in leading strings ... There are Social Democrats to this day who
contemplate with reverence the second kind of activity, who believe they can evade a direct
reply to pressing questions of the day by repeating the word class over and over again.
- stop talking about what the class as a whole can achieve, and start talk
- start talking about how we as part of its development are going to act
[gramsci quotes]
- two theoretical [!] consciousnesses.
- one implicit in actions [comm. fetish?],
- actions that unites him with colleague. -> in the practial transformation of reality
- and one superficially explicit or verbal which he inherted from the past and which he
accepts without criticism.

We can almost say that he has two theoretical consciousnesses (or one contradictory
consciousness), one implicit in his actions, which unites him with all his colleagues in the
practical transformation of reality, and one superficially explicit or verbal which he has
inherited from the past and which he accepts without criticism ... (This division can reach the
point) where the contradiction within his consciousness will not permit any action, any
decision, any choice, and produces a state of moral and political passivity. [HERE WE
ARE!]
If practical forces released at a certain historical point are to be) effective and expansive (it is
necessary to) construct on a determined practice a theory that, coinciding with and being
identified with the decisive elements of the same practice, accelerates the historical process in
act, makes the practice more homogeneous, coherent, more efficacious in all its elements ...
Discipline means acceptance of the need to relate individual experience to the total theory
and practice of the party.
Badiou:
It takes the masses existing consciousness and returns it to them in a purified form like
Maos from the masses, to the masses, also known as the mass line.
A revolution becomes an Event at the point where people see themselves as subjects of the
revolution, rather than members of any particular group. The general will of the revolution is
subtracted from particular wills, and not mediated by them. A critic might see this as a kind of
alienation from substantive being. Badiou sees it as a release from existing categories which
are inherent to the dominant order.

micthell silber , radicalization in the west. the blueprint for survaillence

There is an interpretation of islam. that has gone widespread. cut and paste.
when you surveille. an entire community. 600.000 cannot be surveilled by a group of 24
detectives.
jon berger
- doing political ecology
- cannot seperate politics and ecology
- too late?
- no: concepts are not thourougly reexamined
- based on traditional ways of thinknig: oikos, phusis, polis, logos
- not yet begun: not yet conceptual work [philosophy, another example of postmodern
retotaltity]
"Political ecologists have supposed that they could dispense with this conceptual work,
without noticing that the notions of nature and politics had been developed over centuries in
such a way as to make any juxtaposition, any synthesis, any combination of the two terms
impossible" (3).
-Quintessential Latour move
- posthumanism, new materialism: gotten beyond. yes but beyond what.
"And, even more seriously, they have claimed, in the enthusiasm of an ecumenical vision, to
have gotten beyond the old distinction between humans and things, subjects of law and
objects of sciencewithout observing that these entities had been shaped, profiled, and
sculpted in such a way that they had gradually become incompatible" (3).
- rahter than proclaiming them obsolute
- P.E. must rather slow down and think [zizek]
- not cutting the gordian knot, but shaking it in different ways
"Where global thinking is concerned, [totality!!!] they have come up with nothing better
than a nature already composed, already totalized, already instituted to neutralize politics.
To think in truly global fashion, they needed to begin by discovering the institutions
thanks to which globalism is constructed one step at a time [hegel/marx]. And nature, as
we shall see, could hardly lend itself any less effectively to the process" (3).
scientific production [first speedbump]
- first obstacle
- classcial PE does away with nature in its links with society
- yet!: nature becomes knowable through science (through networks of instruments)
- professions, protocols, disciplines, [methodology]
- data bases
- intermediary [key concept: mediation] of learned society
- eco-logy is an logos [no direct acces, but via logos]
- science, learned community as a third party between society and nature

- but PE has try to short circuit [LO! western technology is so bad bla bla bla]
"And yet, too often, the ecological movements have sought to short-circuit this third party,
precisely in order to accelerate their militant progress. For them, science remains a mirror
of the world, to the extent that one can almost always, in their literature, take the terms
nature and science to be synonyms.1 My hypothesis is, on the contrary, that the enigma
of scientific production must be repositioned at the very core of political ecology. This may
well slow down the acquisition of the certainties that were supposed to serve as leverage in
the political struggle, but between nature and society we shall include this third term
[badiou ToS, third term, dialectics], whose role will turn out to be crucial" (4).
nature
- second speed bump
- there is no nature
- political ecology has nothing to do with nature.
"Every time we seek to mix scientific facts with aesthetic, political, economic, and moral
values, we find ourselves in a quandary. If we concede too much to facts, the human element
in its entirety tilts into objectivity, becomes a countable and calculable thing, a bottom line in
terms of energy, one species among others. If we concede too much to values, all of nature
tilts into the uncertainty of myth, into poetry or romanticism; everything becomes soul and
spirit. If we mix facts and values, we go from bad to worse, for we are depriving ourselves of
both autonomous knowledge and independent morality [has critique run out of steam]. We
shall never know, for example, whether the apocalyptic predictions with which the
militant ecologists threaten us mask the power scientists hold over politicians or the
domination politicians exercise over poor scientists."
politics
- third obstacle
- difficult to place them
- left [progressive?], right [conservative]?
- beyond [technology], before [wisdom]
"My hypothesis is that the ecology movements have sought to position themselves on the
political chessboard without redrawing its squares, without redefining the rules of the game,
without redesigning the pawns" (5).
"Nothing in fact proves that the division of labor between human politics and the science of
things, between the requirements of freedom and the powers of necessity, can be used as such
in order to harbor political ecology. It may even be necessary to hypothesize that the political
freedom of humans has never been defined except in order to constrain it by applying the
laws of natural necessity. If this proved to be the case, democracy would have been made
impotent by design. Human beings are born free; everywhere they are in chains; the
social contract claims to emancipate them; political ecology alone can do this, but political
ecology itself cannot expect to be saved by free men and women. Obliged to redefine politics
and science, freedom and necessity, the human and the inhuman, in order to find a niche for
itself, political ecology has lost heart along the way. It thought it could rely on nature to
hasten the advent of democracy. Today it lacks both. The task must be taken up again from a
different angle, by a longer and
more perilous detour" (6). [????}

ask a naive question:

- central question:
"In this book, the point is simply to raise a familiar question once again for myself, and
perhaps for myself alone: What do nature, science, and politics have to do with one
another? " (6)
- admire politics, admire science
- not subject the one to the other

- to redefine politics and ecology!!!!

- no prophetic tone
- common sense of reflection
- not a tabularasa theory
- a better description of what is already a practice
- urgencies of action prevented something
- the reversal of sciences
"The only service I can render political ecology is to offer it an alternative interpretation of
itself, a different common sense, so that it can try to determine whether it finds itself in a
more comfortable position or not" (7).

CHAPTER ONE
- rid ourselve of the notion of nature
- by contributions of sociology of the sciences
- then contributions of ecology movements
- then those of comparative antrhopology
- "political ecology . . . cannot hold on to nature"
CHAPTER TWO
- exchacne of propterties humans/nonhumans
- under the name of the collective: succesor to political institutions [based on nature vs.
society/culture divide]
- facts and values
CHAPTER THREE
"This new collective will allow us to proceed in Chapter 3 to the transformation of the
venerable distinction between facts and values; we shall replace it with a new separation of
powers* that will offer us more satisfactory moral guarantees."

"The distinction between two new assembliesthe first of which will ask, How many are
we? and the second, Can we live together?will serve political ecology as its
Constitution." [???]
CHAPTER FOUR
- new institutions
CHAPTER FIVE
- Nature, singular, culture plural
Conclusion
- LEVIATHAN!!!!!!!!
Finally, in the conclusion, I shall address questions about the type of Leviathan that allows
political ecology to leave the state of nature. In view of the spectacle that has been embraced
throughout, readers will perhaps forgive me the aridity of the route.

Why political ecology has to let go of nature

- political ecology: beings underepresented in classical politics
- challenge solidity link: political ecology <> nature
- has to let go of nature
- chief obstacle
- paradox in appearance
- bring togehter three disinct findings [interdisciplinary]
- postulates (taken for granted)
- fruits: public life
- sociology of science
- distinguish sciences from Science [ideology, big other etc etc]
- discours on Sience no relation to practices of sciences
- analogy Nature, --> sciences do not need such a unification
"In the first section, in fact, I am going to define Science* as the politicization of the sciences
[ideology] through epistemology in order to render ordinary political life impotent through
the threat of an incontestable nature" (10). [depoliticization by politicization]
- we have to disentangle SCIENCE [ideology]
- contrary to good sense [normative/cultural imperative]
"But if the single word Science already combines the imbroglio of politics, nature, and
knowledge that we must learn to disentangle, it is clear that we cannot set out on our journey
without removing the threat that Science has always brought to bear as much on the exercise
of politics as on the practices of scientific researchers"

[normative concept/foucault/althusser/dupuy]
THE PROBLEM: SCIENCE DOUBLE RUPTURE
Can we get out?
- nothing is as concise as a myth
- plato and the cave: science and society
"The Philosopher, and later the Scientist, have to free themselves of the tyranny of the social
dimension, public life, politics, subjective feelings, popular agitationin short, from the
dark Caveif they want to accede to truth" (10).
- acces to truth
- truth not made by human hands
- no possible continuity
- Science versus social world [common ideas]
- certain idea of science and a certain idea of the social world as antagonist (i.e. foil)
- also get back and show incontestible findings [kal reading of plato differs] --> ignorant mob
"The allegory of the Cave makes it possible to create in one fell swoop a certain idea of
Science and a certain idea of the social world that will serve as a foil for Science. But the
myth also proposes a second shift: the Scientist, once equipped with laws not made by human
hands that he has just contemplated because he has succeeded in freeing himself from the
prison of the social world, can go back into the Cave so as to bring order to it with
incontestable findings that will silence the endless chatter of the ignorant mob" (10)
- no continuity between objective law and logoreahe of the mob (interminable disputes)
- why so inexhaustibly effective?
- neither of these two shifts [go out, go back in] prevents the emergence of its exact contrary
[?]
- contraries combined in one and the same heroic figure
- philsopher scientist: lawgiver and saviour
- scientist go back and forth
- open to him alone [?]
"In him and through him, the tyranny of the social world is miraculously interrupted when he
leaves, so that he will be able to contemplate the objective world at last; and it is likewise
interrupted when he returns, so that like a latter-day Moses he will be able to substitute the
legislation of scientific laws, which are not open to question, for the tyranny of ignorance.
Without this double interruption there can be no Science, no epistemology, no paralyzed
politics, no Western conception of public life" (11) [YES!]
- in the original myth [it is not a myth!]
- [very contrary to zizek and badiou
"In twenty-five centuries, however, one thing has not changed in the slightest: the double
rupture, which the form of the allegory, endlessly repeated, manages to maintain as radically

as ever. Such is the obstacle that we shall have to remove if we want to change the very
terms by which public life is defined" (11-12).
NOOOOO!!!!
- you must hold on to the idea that science breaks absolutely with common chatter
- breaks absolutely, not relatively with beings as they are
- division between ontological [being as being] and epistemological [beings in a world]
- [ontological difference / heidegger/foucault etc]
- you must maintain
- otherwise no possiblity of certainty that science is supposed to give as opposed to chatter
" Why? Because, without it, there would be no more reservoir of incontrovertible certainties
[??] that could be brought in to put an end to the incessant chatter of obscurantism and
ignorance@ (12)
- no disntiction betwen true and false
- one could no longer break free of social determinants [zizek, badiou]
- no longer pacifying the public [?], always thr. by civil war [spinoza]
- [true] nature would not be separate from our ideas
- public life would implode, since no transcendence
- but: scientist pass with ease, fluency etc, so no rupture!
- yeah but thats relativism
- you give a social explanation
- immoralist!
If you point out politely that the very ease with which scientists pass from the social world to
the world of external realities, the facility they demonstrate through this business of
importing and exporting scientific laws, the fluency of the discourse in which they
convert human and objective elements, prove clearly enough that there is no rupture between
the two worlds and that they are dealing rather with a seamless cloth, you will be accused of
relativism; you will be told that you are trying to give Science a social explanation; your
unfortunate tendencies toward immoralism will be denounced; you may be asked publicly if
you believe in the reality of the external world or not, or whether you are ready to jump out a
fifteenth-story window because you think that the laws of gravity, too, are socially
constructed! (12)
- THIS IS SOPHISTRY
- we have to be able to deflect it
- it comes up with the question of nature
- however > fact: there is no way out of this trap > [if you construct the problem thus, you
cannot get out]
- why so powerful?
- classical epistemology concerns this gap
- does not describe the sciences
- epistemology police, polices the gap
- religious reason, butrressing its necessity

" For the idea of a double rupture to have resisted all contradictory evidence [???] over the
centuries, there must be a powerful reason buttressing its necessity. This reason can only be
politicalor religious" (13) [YES!]
- why cave allogory today?
- Constitution [of science and politics]
- organizes public life into two houses- 1 society/chains
- 2 truth/outside
"What is the use of the allegory of the Cave today? It allows a Constitution* that organizes
public life into two houses. The first is the obscure room depicted by Plato, in which ignorant
people find themselves in chains, unable to look directly at one another, communicating only
via fictions projected on a sort of movie screen; the second is located outside, in a world
made up not of humans but of nonhumans, indifferent to our quarrels, our ignorances, and the
limits of our representations and fictions" (13-14).
- genuis of the model: only few people [aristocrat a.o.t badiou-> universal]
- not a question of opposing shadows to real word
- but of REDISTRUBTING powers, by inventing a certain def. of science...
[foucault/sociology solution/
"Despite the fascination exercised by Ideas (even upon those who claim to be denouncing
the idealism of the Platonic solution), it is not at all a question of opposing the shadow world
to the real world, but of redistributing powers by inventing both a certain definition of
Science and a certain definition of politics. Appearances notwithstanding, idealism is not
what is at issue here. The myth of the Cave makes it possible to render all
democracy impossible by neutralizing it; that is its only trump card" (14).
- constitution of political epistemology
- how are powers distributed?
- first house: totality of speaking human beings [culture/society]
- agreeing by convention
- the second house: real objects, define what exist, but have no speech
- chattering of fictions vs silence of reality
- this depends on those [aristocrats] ho can move in between
- IT RESTS ENTIRELY ON THE POWER GIVEN TO THOSE WHO CAN MOVE BACK
AND FORTh
"The subtlety of this organization rests entirely on the power given to those who can move
back and forth between the houses The small number of handpicked experts, for their part,
presumably have the ability to speak (since they are humans), the ability to tell the truth
(since they escape the social world, thanks to the asceticism of knowledge), and, finally, the
ability to bring order to the assembly of humans by keeping its members quiet (since the
experts can return to the lower house in order to reform the slaves who lie chained in the
room). In short, these few elect, as they themselves see it, are endowed with the most
fabulous political capacity ever invented: They can make the mute world speak, tell the truth
without being challenged, put an end to the interminable arguments through an incontestable
form of authority that would stem from
things themselves" (14).

- and yet: no evidence, not plausible... [.. :( ....]

Even if we were to grant this first series of absurdities, how could we imagine that Scientists
and only Scientists could accede to inaccessible things themselves? [but everbody becomes a
scientist if he tries?]. More outrageous still, by what miracle would mute things suddenly
become capable of speaking? [mute things? what are you talking about? isnt this a straw
man? who is saying that mute objects can be made to speak?] By what fourth or fifth
conjuring trick would real things, once granted speech through the mouths of philosopherkings, have the unheard-of property of becoming immediately unchallengeable and of
shutting up the other humans? [well if you show that a fact is a fac, much of previous chatter
is muted...] How can we imagine that these nonhuman objects can be mobilized to solve the
problems of the prisoners, whereas the human condition has already been defined by a break
with all reality?
No, there is no question about it: we cannot pass this fairy tale off as a political
philosophy like any otherand even less as superior to all others. [????]
.... allright maybe latour argues against some kind of anglophone scientific
fundamentalism???
"Those who have politicized the sciences* in order to make political life impossible even find
themselves in a position to accuse youyou!of polluting the purity of the sciences by
introducing base social considerations. Those who have split public life into Science and
society through a sophism are going to accuse you of sophistry! You will die of hunger or
suffocation before you have gnawed through the bars of the prison in which you freely locked
yourself up" (16).
- it is a myth that we are in a cave??? [maybe as constructed by political epistemology]
"Since Enlightenment can blind us only if (political) epistemology makes us go down into the
Cave in the first place, there exists a much simpler means than Platos to get out of the Cave:
we need not climb down into it to begin with!" ????
- we will be accused of saying that science is a mere social construction
- this is the trap
- simultaenously study the idea of Science and of Society
- cannot be a sociology of sciences
- it would undermine Science
-epistemological questions are tied to the organization social body [marxism etc]
- against the epistemology police one must do politics, not epistemology
- By discarding the allegory of the Cave, we have made considerable progress
- for we now know how to avoid the trap of the politicization of the sciences.
- the question is: what are the consequence for political philosphy?
- How can we conceive of a democracy that does not live under the constant threat of help
that would come from Science?
- What would the public life of those who refuse to go into the Cave look like?

- What form would the sciences take if they were freed from the obligation to be of political
service to Science?
- What properties would nature have if it no longer had the capacity to suspend public
discussion?
"Such are the questions that we can begin to raise once we have left the Cave en masse, at the
end of a session of (political) epistemology that we notice retrospectively has never been
anything but a distraction on the road that ought to have led us to political philosophy. Just as
we have distinguished Science from the sciences, we are going to contrast power politics*,
inherited from the Cave, with politics*, conceived as the progressive composition of the
common world" (18).
[typical liberal]
If political ecology poses a problem, it is not because it finally introduces nature into political
preoccupations that had earlier been too exclusively oriented toward humans, it is because it
continues, alas, to use nature to abort politics. For the cold, gray nature of the ancient
(political) epistemologists, the ecologists have simply substituted a greener, warmer nature.
For the rest, these two natures dictate moral conduct in the place of ethics: apolitical,
they decide on policy in place of politics.11
-why take interest in political ecology?
- practice
- pratice (militant-ecology) and theory (philsophy of ecology/naturpolitik)
- the green movements have touched upon the heart of the modern constitution
- however:
"Now, through a strategic oddity that is the object of this chapter, under the pretext of
protecting nature, the ecology movements have also retained the conception of nature that
makes their political struggle hopeless" (19).
- nature is made to eviscerate politics
- one cannot claim to retain it when one does politics of nature [which is what militant
ecologist do]
- a divide between practice and theory
- practice of ecological crises
- never presented as crisis of "nature"
- crisis of OBJECTIVITY
- new objects [climate] - procuded collectively - do not fit the two house politics [natureculture]
- fuzzy/tangled objects
"As soon as we begin to turn our attention toward the practice of ecological crises, we notice
at once that they are never presented in the form of crises of nature. They appear rather as
crises of objectivity, as if the new objects that we produce collectively have not managed to
fit into the Procrustean bed of two-house politics, as if the smooth objects of tradition were
henceforth contrasted with fuzzy or tangled objects that the militant movements disperse in
their wake" (20).

- the crisis bears on ALL objects [wtf are objects?]

- not just those to which the label natural is conferred
1. Political ecology claims to speak about nature, but it actually speaks of countless
imbroglios that always presuppose human participation.
2. It claims to protect nature and shelter it from mankind, but in every case this amounts to
including humans increasingly, bringing them in more and more often, in a finer, more
intimate fashion and with a still more invasive scientific apparatus.
3. It claims to defend nature for natures sakeand not as a substitute for human egotism
but in every instance, the mission it has assigned itself is carried out by humans and is
justified by the wellbeing, the pleasure, or the good conscience of a small number of carefully
selected humansusually American, male, rich, educated, and white.
4. It claims to think in terms of Systems known through the Laws of Science, but whenever it
proposes to include everything in a higher cause, it finds itself drawn into a scientific
controversy in which the experts are incapable of reaching agreement.
5. It claims to seek its scientific models in hierarchies governed by ordered cybernetic loops,
but it always puts forward surprising, heterarchic assemblages whose reaction times and
scales always take by surprise those who think they are speaking of Natures fragility orits
solidity, its vastness or its smallness.
6. Political ecology claims to speak of the Whole, but it succeeds in upsetting opinion and
modifying power relations only by focusing on
places, biotopes, situations, or particular eventstwo whales imprisoned on the ice, a
hundred elephants in Amboseli, thirty plane trees
on the Place du Tertre in Montmartre.
7. It claims to be increasing in power and to embody the political power of the future, but it is
reduced everywhere to a tiny portion of electoral strap-hangers. Even in countries where it is
a little more powerful, it contributes only a supporting force.
Let us now go back over the list and take as strengths what at first
appeared to be weaknesses:
1. Political ecology does not speak about nature and has never sought to do so. It has to do
with associations of beings that take complicated formsrules, apparatuses, consumers,
institutions, mores, calves, cows, pigs, broodsand that it is completely superfluous to
include in an inhuman and ahistorical nature. Nature is not in question in ecology: on the
contrary, ecology dissolves natures contours and redistributes its agents.
2. Political ecology does not seek to protect nature and has never sought to do so. On the
contrary, it seeks to take charge, in an even
more complete and mixed fashion, of an even greater diversity of entities and destinies. If
modernism claimed to be detached from the constraints of the world, ecology for its part gets
attached to everything.
3. Political ecology has never claimed to serve nature for natures own good, for it is
absolutely incapable of defining the common good of a dehumanized nature. It does much
better than defend nature (either for its own sake or for the good of future humans). It
suspends our certainties concerning the sovereign good of humans and things, ends
and means.
4. Political ecology does not know what an Ecologico-Political System is and does not
proceed thanks to a complex Science whose model and means would moreover entirely
escape poor thinking, searching humanity. This is its great virtue. It does not know what does
or does not constitute a system. It does not know what is connected to what.

The scientific controversies in which it gets embroiled are precisely what distinguish it from
all the other scientifico-political movements of the past. It is the only movement that can
benefit from a different politics of science.
5. Neither cybernetics nor hierarchies make it possible to understand the unbalanced, chaotic,
Darwinian, sometimes local and sometimes global, sometimes rapid and sometimes slow
agents that it brings to light through a multitude of original experimental arrangements, all of
which taken together fortunately do not constitute a secure Science.
6. Political ecology is incapable of integrating the entire set of its localized and particular
actions into an overall hierarchical program,
and it has never sought to do so. This ignorance of the totality is precisely what saves it,
because it can never array little humans and great
ozone layers, or little elephants and medium-sized ostriches, in a single hierarchy. The
smallest can become the largest. It was the stone
rejected by the builders that became the keystone (Matt. 21:42).
7. Political ecology has fortunately remained marginal up to now, for
it has not yet grasped either its own politics or its own ecology. It
thinks it is speaking of Nature, System, a hierarchical Totality, a world
without man, an assured Science, and it is precisely these overly ordered pronouncements
that marginalize it, whereas the isolated pronouncements of its practice would perhaps allow
it finally to attain
political maturity, if we managed to grasp their meaning.

other type of objects

- distinghuis.
- matters of fact -> risk free objects
- 4 essential characteristics
- clear bounderies,
- 1. well defined essence, well recognized bounderies
- belonged to the world of things
- persistent, stubborn
- laws of causality, efficacity, profitablity, truth
- 2. what produced them, technicians machinces, became invisible once consituted / marketed
[reification hegel/marx]
- impact on something else, another universe: social factors, political context
- like a meteor
- consequences had no effect on the initial definition of the object
- belonged to a world of history (inside it)
- matters of fact are matters of fact
- asbestos example
"Yet like weeds in a French garden, other objects with more extravagant forms are beginning
to blur the landscape by superimposing their own branchings on those of modernist
objects.20
- matters of concern

- best way to see ecological crisis: in addition to smooth objects: matters of concern [like
asbestos]
- no clear bounderies
- no well defined essences
- no sharp seperation between it and environment
- tangeled beings, rhizomes, networks
- producers no longer invisible
- embarrased, complicated, implicated
- intergral part of their definition [hegel, who thinks abstractly?]
- no other univers, no impact properly speaking
- connection, tentacles, pseudopods
"To deal with them, we do not have the social or political world on one side and the world of
objectivity and profitability on the other. Finally, and this may be the strangest thing of all,
they can no longer be detached from the unexpected consequences that they may trigger in
the very long run, very far away, in an incommensurable world. On the contrary,
everyone paradoxically expects the unexpected consequences that they will not fail to
produceconsequences that properly belong to them, for which they accept responsibility,
from which they draw lessons, according to a quite visible process of apprenticeship that
rebounds onto their definition and that unfolds in the same universe as they do" (24).
[reflexive modernity, coolen]
- prions -> mad cow decease
- growth of political ecology
- can be traced back to the multiplication of these new [?] beings
- blend existence with classical objects
"It seems to me that this difference between risk-free matters of fact and risky matters of
concern is much more telling than the
impossible distinction between the crises that call nature into question and those that call
society into question" (24).
- the progressive transformation of all matters of facts into disputed states of affair
- matters of fact cannot be naturalized
- classical political ecology is ignorand of actors
- there is no longer any "nature'
" if nature is what makes it possible to recapitulate the hierarchy of beings in a single
ordered series, political ecology is always manifested, in practice, by the destruction of the
idea of nature" (25).[as in nature as opposed to culture etc.]
"After the death of God and the death of man, nature, too, had to give up the ghost" (26).
[such concepts {master signifiers} tend to DEPOLITICIZE]
- deep ecology is not political ecology
"By claiming to free us from anthropocentrism, political ecology thrusts us back into the
Cave, since it belongs entirely to the classic definition of politics rendered powerless by

nature, a conception from which political ecology, at least in its practice, is just beginning to
pull us away" (26).
- if pol ec thinks it needs to protect nature
- it is too modernist
- back in the cave
- false opposition deep ecology [humans as objects] and freedom theorists [you reduce
humans to objects!]
We see the confusion into which we are plunged if we mistake political ecologys theory for
practice: the opponents of deep or superficial ecology reproach it most often with conflating
humans with nature
and thus forgetting that humanity is defined precisely by its removal
from the constraints of nature, from what is given, from simple
causality, from pure immediacy, from the prereflexive.30 They basically accuse ecology
of reducing humans to objects and thus seeking
to make us walk on all fours, as Voltaire said ironically about Rousseau. It is because we are
free subjects forever irreducible to the constraints of nature, they say, that we deserve to be
called human beings.
- intrinsically political quality of the natural order
- notion of collective
- concept of nature implies:
- a being is classified by its belonging to a certain domain of reality, and it is classified in a
unified hierarchy extending from the largest being to the smallest.
- instead of two distinct arenas
- in which one tries to totalize
- then to choose
- pol ec.: singel collect [multiplicity without one]
- single arena of the collective
" but then how does it appear? How can it justify the use of the singular nature in general?
Why does it not present itself as multiplicity? Why does it put off measuring itself against
politics and thus letting us see quite clearly that we are dealing with two powers that can be
criticized in a single thrust? Because of a fabulous invention that political ecology has already
dismantled in practice but cannot dismantle in theory without a slow and painful
supplementary effort. Because of the distinction between facts and values that we shall have
to sort out in Chapter 3" (30).

1. siences vs Sience
2. political ecology vs Naturpolitik
3. historical mediation/social construction

- human sciences
- no direct acces
- no nature in general
- social constructiion of nature? no really
- different cultural attitudes to nature
- greek, maya 19th century
- different natures
- reflect political developments
"To take one example in a thousand, we are all familiar with the ravages of social Darwinism,
which borrowed its metaphors from politics, projected them onto nature itself, and then
reimported them into politics in order to add the seal of an irrefragable natural order to the
domination of the wealthy" (33).
- every epistemological question is also unmistakably a political question
- However: project would collapse if this were true
- retaining two-house politics
"The idea that nature does not exist, since it is a matter of social construction, only
reinforces the division between the Cave and the Heaven of Ideas by superimposing
this division onto the one that distinguishes the human sciences from the natural sciences"
(33).
- but one implies that nature itself does not change a bit (atoms etc)
- multiculturalism <> mononaturalism
- because: changing ideas do not change matter! i mean, come on!
- do you speak of things in themselves, or systematic symbolic representation of things (are
you still in the gutter of the cave -> zizek)
- perhaps possible: speak of natures in themselves
- does it have any meaning?
"But how can anyone speak of nature itself? This would seem to have no meaning. And yet it
is exactly what I mean to say. When we add the discoveries made by militant ecology to the
discovery made by political epistemology, we can detach nature into several of these
ingredients, without falling necessarily into the representations that humans make of it. The
belief that there are only two positions, realism and idealism, nature and society, is in effect
the essential source of the power that is symbolized by the myth of the Cave and that political
ecology must now secularize" (34).
- detache Science from sciences
- make visible the apparatuses
- add instruments and actants
- we no longer speak of Nature
"As soon as we add to dinosaurs their paleontologists, to particles their accelerators, to
ecosystems their monitoring instruments, to energy systems their standards and the
hypothesis on the basis of which calculations are made, to the ozone holes their
meteorologists and their chemists, we have already ceased entirely to speak of nature;

instead, we are speaking of what is produced, constructed, decided, defined, in a learned City
whose ecology is almost as complex as that of the world it is coming to know" (35).
- social construction of the sciences?
- epistemolgoical relativism?
- NO
- emphasise mediation of science
- make visible the distinction between presence of non humans and political work that
collects them in Nature
- to do this: change the notion of the social
- social world as prison (cave myth)
- social world as association (new notion)

- left: absolute cleavage

- tripple mystery
- 1. despite cleavage: break free achieve objectivity
- 2. render mute things assimilable to human language
- 3. and then coming back to earth and shape it according to ideals
- right: collective in the process of expanding [unfolding of the absolute]
- properties are not assured
- we do not need a conversion to search for nonhumans
- small transformations [no event?]
- objective externality: but not definitive
- non humans can be: mobilized, recruited, socialized, domesticated
- no great drama of rupture
- objects do not cancel out deliberations [as in the cave]
- they are open to processes
- no resolution -> complication

- entirely describable sets

- no brutal ruptre
- no incontestable transcendence
"In place of the three mysteries of the left-hand version, we find in the right-hand version
three entirely describable operational sets, none of which presents a brutal rupture, and, even
more important, none of which simplifies the collectives work of collection by resorting
decisively to an incontestable transcendence" (38).
- epistemologie police, Science has acces to nature, rupture [breach city and the city]
- by appealing to E.R> two elements that are separate were confused on purpose
- multiplicity of new beings
- interruption of all discussion by unified external reality
- this short circuits "work proper to politics" thanks to a nonpolitical supplement called
Science [master signifier/ discourse of the master]
- already unified by Nature
"In the appeal to external reality, two elements that are now clearly separate were deliberately
confused: on the one hand, the multiplicity of the new beings for which room must be made
from now on so that we can live in common; on the other hand, the interruption of all
discussion by recourse to a brutally and prematurely unified external reality. Such recourse is
effective only because it short-circuits the work proper to politics, thanks to a nonpolitical
supplement called Science* that is supposed to have already unified all beings under
the auspices of an illegally convoked assembly called nature" (39).
"In the lefthand schema, one could not appeal to the reality of the external world without
leaving the social world or silencing it; in the right-hand schema, one can appeal to the
external worlds, but the multiplicity that is being mobilized in this way does not bring
definitive resolution to any of the essential questions of the collective. In place of the social
world as prison that sociology has inherited without ever inquiring into its original flaws,
there appears another sense of the social, closer to the etymology of the term, as association
and collection. On the left in Figure 1.1, Science was part of the solution to the political
problem that it was also rendering insoluble by the continual threat of disqualification
hanging over the human assemblies; on the right, the sciences are part of the solution only
because they are part of the problem as well. (39).
- mediation of scientific discplines
- work of scienties shown
- slide toward human [relativism]
- however: the notion of the collective prevents this
- move toward a different position
- twisted and turned
- show mediation: we start from nature
- not toward human element
- but toward the multiplicity of nature, REDISTRIBUTED by the sciences [distributor of
places -> Badiou, ToS]
- pluriverse, as the term that marks the distinction between E.R (pluriverse) and Political
work of unification (science, "the world" Gabriel)

"By making the mediation of the sciences visible, we can start from nature, not in order to
move toward the human element, butby making a ninety-degree turnto
move toward the multiplicity of nature, redistributed by the sciencessomething that might
be called the pluriverse* to mark the distinction between the notion of external reality and the
properly political work of unification" (40).
- P.E. allied to science studies
- new branching
- not going back and forth between nature and human (realism and constructivism -> gabriel)
- we go from multiplicity ["nature"] that no collective ["society"] yet collects
- to the collective ["society"] that was gathering that multiple ["nature"] under the names
Politics <> Nature
"In other words, political ecology allied to science studies traces a new branching on the map:
instead of going back and forth between nature and the human, between realism and
constructivism, we can now go from the multiplicity that no collective yet collects, the
pluriverse, to the collective which up to now was gathering that multiplicity under the
combined names of politics and nature" (40).
- political ecology manages at last to pry apart multiplicity and what collects multiplicity in a
single unified whole
"from now on, instead of opposing reality and representation, we will oppose the
representation of multiplicity and the unification, through due process, of this multiplicity"
BADIOU, FOUCAULT, TYPICAL MOVE. COUNT OF THE COUNT.
OBJECTIFICATION. REIFICATION. MASTER SIGNFIER. POINT DE CAPITON
ETC. ETC.
And thus: represtentation
"We shall no longer speak of representation of nature, designating by that term the
categories of human understanding, while, on the other hand, nature in the singular remains
even more remote. And yet we shall retain the crucial word representation, but we shall
make it play again, explicitly, its ancient political role. If there are no more representations of
nature in the sense of the two-house politics we have criticized, it will still be necessary to
represent the associations of humans and nonhumans through an explicit procedure, in order
to decide what collects them and what unifies them in one future common world" (41).
- goal: built more fruitful research paths {!!!!!!}
- take the drama out
- because it has definitively secularized the dual political question [dupuy: mark of the
sacred]
- loyalty to nature, loyalty to society
another central question:
"What would the entities we have called nonhumans* look like if they were not wearing the
uniform of matters of fact marching in step in the conquest of subjectivities? What would

humans look like if they no longer wore the uniform of partisans bravely resisting the tyranny
of objectivity?" [yes yes yes.... mesh, network, relations]
- we need to have acces to the multiplicity of associations of humans and non-humans
- that the collective is precisely charged with collecting
- new conceptual institutions [habit/culture/insitutation/normalization/discipline]
- anthropology of non-Western cultures
- popular ecology : noble savage
- however: non western culture have never been ineterested in nature
- its not a category for them
- they never found a use for it
- "deep ecology means shallow anthropology"
- comparative anthroplogy: not exoticism
- to extricate westerenes from exoticism they have imposed on themselves
- -> entirely politicized nature [no exosticism, purity etc.]
- other cultures have never lived in nature
- nature - as concept of western antropol. - was too politicized for them -> i.e. noble savage as
racism
"Let us quickly go back over the path that made it possible to transform this very particular
politics of nature. The first reflex was to view primitives as children of nature, something
intermediate between animals, humans, and Westerners. This move was not friendly
toward animals, savages, or Westerners, the latter never having lived in nature in any form.
The second, more agreeable stage entailed a judgment that natives, while as different from
nature as whites, nevertheless lived in harmony with nature, respecting and protecting it.
This hypothesis did not hold up under the scrutiny of ethnology, prehistory, or ecology; these
disciplines rapidly produced multiple examples of pitiless destruction of ecosystems, massive
disharmony, countless instances of disequilibrium, even fierce hatred for the environment. In
fact, under the name of harmony, the anthropologists gradually noticed that they should not
look for particularly sympathetic relationships with nature, but for the presence of a
categorization, a classification, an ordering of beings that did not seem to make any
sharp distinction between things and people. The difference no longer lay in
the savages not treating nature well, but rather in their not treating it at all"
- ANOTHER TYPE OF CATEGORIZATIOIN, CLASSIFICATION, ORDERING OF
BEINGS [foucault, ontology]
- correspondence between the order of nature and the social order [hegel]
- nothing happen in the order of the world that does not happen to humans, and vice versa.
- no classific. of animals/plants that cannot be observed in social order
- but: abolition of differnce of no interest for savages
- rather: the savages were unconcerned by the distinction.
- no combining or getting beyond [the cave]
- they marshal together things we keep separate
- there are only nature-cultues (or collectives)
- we westerners are odd
- we think we had to separate things and persons on the other [kant, hegel, morality, law ->
what about capital {as cause of abstract person}]
- CUT, MODERN BREAK [here i do not yet agree with Latour]

- trap of exoticism, orientalism, occidentalism

By joining the recent discoveries of comparative anthropology with those of political
ecology and the sociology of the sciences, we should be able to get along entirely without the
two symmetrical exoticisms: the one that makes Westerners believe that they are detached
from nature because they have forgotten the lessons of other cultures and live in a world of
pure, efficient, profitable, and objective things; and the one that made other cultures believe
that they had lived too long in the fusion between the natural order and the social order, and
that they needed finally, in order to accede to modernity, to take into account the nature of
things as they are. (46) [third option? zizek?]
- everything depends on the way we are goin to characterize this work of collection
- what is politics
- progressive composition of a common world [?]
"As a result, if we define politics*, as I have done, not as the conquest of power inside the
Cave alone, but as the progressive composition of a common world* to share, we notice that
the division between primary and secondary qualities has already done the bulk of the
political work" (47).
- primary quality: we are the same
"There remains what divides us, the secondary qualities, but this is not an essential division,
because their inaccessible essences are located elsewhere, in the form of primary
qualities that are, moreover, invisible." [equality is a primary quality]
- early antrop took universal nature as given, therefore paid much attention to multiplicity of
cultures
- collect many diversities
- detach themselvs from a common backround
- two unstable solutions to the problem of unity
- mononaturalism and multiculturalsim
- monoculturalsim: constructing a common world: one nature, multiplicity of cultures
[solutions to the problem of one vs many -> leibniz]
- multiculturalism: everybody defines themselves, no common measure
- no unified nature
- no common world
- invisible common world, vs.. an inessential visibile world
- world without value, essential because of nature, vs a world of values, worthless because
contingent
"The solution of mononaturalism stabilizes nature at the risk of emptying the notion of
culture of all substance and reducing it to mere representations; the solution of
multiculturalism stabilizes the notion of culture at the risk of endangering the universality of
nature and reducing it to an illusion. And it is this cockeyed arrangement that passes for good
sense! To get the experimentation with a common world (which has been prematurely shut
down by these two calamitous solutions) started up again, we shall have to avoid both the
notion of culture and the notion of nature" (48)

- no nature vs culture
dupuy
- A comparison will enable us to provide a better understanding of the instability into which
we must not be afraid to enter in order to restore full meaning to what could be called politics
without nature. Before feminism, the word man had the character of an unmarked category,
while woman was marked. By saying man, one designated the totality of thinking beings
without even thinking about it; by saying woman, one marked the female as apart from
thinking beings. No Westerner today would take the word man to be
unmarked. Male/female, man/woman, he/she: these terms have slowly taken the place
of what was formerly self-evident. The two labels are both marked, coded, embodied. Neither
can claim any longer to designate effortlessly and incontestably the universal on the basis of
which
the other remained an other eternally apart. Thanks to the immense work of the feminists,
we now have access to conceptual institutions that allow us to mark the difference not
between man and woman but between, on the one hand, the former pair made up of man, an
unmarked category, and woman, a single marked category, and on the
other hand the new and infinitely more problematic pair made up of the two equally marked
categories of man and woman. We can foresee without difficulty that the same thing will very
soon hold true for the categories of nature and culture. For the moment, nature still has the
resonance that man had twenty or forty years ago, as the unchallengeable, blinding,
universal category against the background of which culture stands out clearly and
distinctly, eternally particular. Nature is thus an unmarked category, while culture is
marked. Now, however, through a movement just as vast in scope, political ecology proposes
to do for nature what feminism undertook to do and is still undertaking to do for man: wipe
out the ancient self-evidence with which it was taken a bit too hastily as if it were all there is.
(49) [idealist: not so easy -> material weight of the unmarked category of man]
- Central Question: What collective can we convoke, now that we no longer have two
houses, only one of which acknowledged its political character?
As for the question Must we have a politics that is oriented toward humans or one that also
takes nature into account? we now know that this is a false dichotomy, since, at least in the
Western version of public life, the laws of nature and thos of humans have always coexisted,
each under threat from the other.
Objects are not innocent inhabitants of the world: the object was the nonhuman plus
the polemic of nature imparting a lesson to the politics of subjects. Once freed from this
polemic, from this bifurcation of nature, nonhumans are
going to occupy an entirely different position.

- politics gathers everything together

- politics: entire set of tasks that allow the progressive composition of a common world
- scientist have done this
- kingly power/natrual right

- unity of nature, pluriverse of cultures

- two equally illicit assemblies
- Science -> defined common world without recourse to due process
- Culture -> lacked the reality of the things, had to settle for power relations
- first: no politics, second politics, but mere social constructin
- battle
- third estate, the collective, sufferd
- deprived of scientific and political competence
- how to draw up Constitution?
- that allows common world through due process?
- republic
- res publica, public thing
- thing, emerges as a scandal at the heart of an assembly that carries on a discussion requiring
a judgment brought in common
- not premodern anthropomorphism
- indifference of nature is anthropomorphism
"Indeed, appearances notwithstanding, the famous indifference of the cosmos to human
passions offers the oddest of anthropomorphisms, since it claims to giveform to humans,
while silencing them through the incontestable power of objectivity devoid of all passion!"
(54).
- innovation: third estate
= nature no longer paralyze progressive composition of the common world
- convoking the collective
- "collecting" multiplicity of associations of humans and nonhumans
- no primary/secondary
- hidden in the form of double problem of representation
- epistemology: seeking to now on what condition an exact representation of external reality
is pos.
- political philosphy seeking to on on what condition a representative can represent his
fellows faithfully.
- what in common?
- we must be cautious! facts and value (Bertrand Russel)
- not mix being with ought
"It is by the absence of mixing, we are told, that we have always recognized, and continue to
recognize, the virtue of a moral philosophy. History, during all this time, full of sound and
fury, fortunately took on the responsibility of doing just the opposite: mixing natures and
politics in all possible forms, and over the last several decades finally imposing the necessity
of an explicit political epistemology* in place of the old epistemology police" (55).
- Galileo [truth] badiou?
- Kyoto
- why does it matter? nature turns
"No, politicians and scientists, industrialists and militants found themselves on the benches of
the same assembly without being able to count any longer on the ancient advantages of
salvation from the outside by Science, or to murmur with a shrug of the shoulders: What do

these arguments matter to us? The Earth will keep on turning without us, whatever we may
say! We have gone from two houses to a single collective. Politics has to get back to work
without the transcendence of nature: here is the historical phenomenon that we are forcing
ourselves to comprehend" (56).
- get beyond divide?
- why not convocation as unification
- conjuction of ecoloy and politics, things and people
- new constitution
- cannot be simply adding nature and society together
"This paradox has been noted often: the concern for the environment* begins at the moment
when there is no more environment, no zone of reality in which we could casually rid
ourselves of the consequences of human political, industrial, and economic life" (58).
- foil
- resource
- public dumping ground
- internalize the environment
- not another world
"As human politics notices that it no longer has any reserve or dumping ground, what we
begin to see clearly is not
that we must at last concern ourselves seriously with nature as such, but, on the contrary, that
we can no longer leave the entire set of nonhumans captive under the exclusive auspices of
nature as such" (58).
- collective
- singular
- not the same type of unity as "nature"
- also not reconciliation
- collective -> the work of collecting into a whole
- cloaca maxima
- sewage system
- hard labor necessary for the progressive an public composition of the future unity
- reactivation of a problem
- problem of progressive composition of the common world
- collective -> no longer two major poles of attraction
- unity vs multiplicity
- "The collective signifies "everything but not two separated." [negative]
- how to recruit an assembly [assembly/collective -> political overtones]
"I shall try to define the equipment of citizens, as it were, who are called to sit in a single
assembly, whereas they had always before, to extend the metaphor, lived in a society of
Orders known as the Nobility, the Clergy, and the Third Estate: I am convinced that when
these two houses are brought together, the effects for the future Republic will be the same as
those produced when, in Versailles, in 1789, the Third Estate, the Nobility, and the Clergy
refused to sit separately and to vote by Order" (60).

"Will we have to go so far as to give nonhumans voting rights? I need only invoke this sort of
difficulty to bring a dreadful specter into view: the obligation to engage in metaphysics, that
is, to define in turn how the pluriverse is furnished and with what properties the members of
the Republic must be endowed. I then fall into a painful contradiction: it is as if I had to
define a metaphysics common to humans and nonhumans, whereas I have rejected the naturesociety distinction precisely because it imposed a particular metaphysics without due process,
a metaphysics of nature*, to choose a deliberately paradoxical expression. If, as so many
ecological thinkers have invited us to do, we have to extricate ourselves from traditional
metaphysics in order to embrace a different, less dualistic, more generous, warmer
metaphysics, we shall never manage to draft the new Constitution, for any metaphysics has
the disagreeable characteristic of leading to interminable disputes.
- new constitituion [new metaphysics?]
- composition of common world -> to be achieved after new Consituttion has been drafted
- bootstrapping
- define a vital minimum
- no battle
- civility
"Fortunately, I do not need to erect one metaphysics to challenge another and thereby prolong
the interminable quarrel over the foundations of the universe! To reopen public discussion
about the distribution of the primary and secondary qualities, we have simply to move from a
warlike version of public life to a civil version. Political ecology does not bear at once on
things and people. Indeed, what does bear mean? What does at once mean And
things? And people? All these little words reach us on the move, trained, equipped, ready
to go up to the front in past battles that are no longer our own. In order to have them work for
us, we have to convert them, as it is said in the weapons industry when an entire sector of
military production is to be shifted to civilian purposes" (61).
- subject-object
"Whereas the subject-object opposition had the goal of prohibiting any exchange of
properties, the human-nonhuman pairing makes such an exchange not only desirable but
necessary" (61).
First division
- pairing makes possible: freedom, speech, real existence
- exchange of properties
- composition of commonworld
- no longer given
- has to be the object of a debate
- define the collective as an assembly of beings capable of speaking
- can nature talk?
- humans also: speech impedimenta
- discussion
- matters of concern, rather than matters of fact

"It would thus be wrong to see people who do not discuss because they demonstrate
scientistsas opposed to people who discuss without ever being able to reach agreement on
the basis of a definitive demonstrationpoliticians."
- capacity for speech that is intermediary between
- i am speaking
- the facts are speaking
- art of persuasion
- are of demonstration
- --> spokesperson
- [authorize/representative/hobbes/skinner]
- speak in the name of another
- another speaks through me (facts speak for themselves)
- translation
- betrayal
- falsification
- invention
- synthesis,
- transposition
"In short, with the notion of spokesperson, we are designating not the transparency of the
speech in question, but the entire gamut running from complete doubt (I may be a
spokesperson, but I am speaking in my own name and not in the name of those I represent) to
total confidence (when I speak, it is really those I represent who speak through my mouth)."
(64)
"he lab coats are the spokespersons of the nonhumans, and, as is the case with all
spokespersons, we have to entertain serious but not definitive doubts about their capacity to
speak in the name of those they represent.
- speech is no longer a specifically human property, or at least humans are no longer its sole
masters.
- but only humans speak!
- Each discipline can define itself as a complex mechanism for giving worlds the capacity to
write or to speak, as a general way of making mute entities literate.
"Let us remember that nonhumans are not in themselves objects, and still less are they
matters of fact. They first appear as matters of concern, as new entities that provoke
perplexity and thus speech in those who gather around them, discuss them, and argue over
them. Such is the form in which, in the previous chapter, we recognized external reality, once
it had been liberated from the obligation imposed on objects to silence humans" (66).
- [objects/e.r. don't silence humans, but provoke them to speak]
- who speaks?
- thanks to equipment
- not the scientist
- not simply her subjective prejudices
- the thing itself
- fact speaks for themselves
- no speaking literally

- not without intermediaries

- not without investigation
- faboulously complex speech prothesis.
"We shall say, then, that lab coats have invented speech prostheses that allow nonhumans to
participate in the discussions of humans, when humans become perplexed about the
participation of new entities in collective life" (67).
- metamorphosisi
- speech impediment
- simple translation
- thing become [kierkegaard hegel]
"Whereas the myth of the Cave obliged us to undergo a miraculous conversion, what is
at stake here is only a simple translation, thanks to which things become, in the laboratory,
by means of instruments, relevant to what we say about
them. Instead of an absolute distinction, imposed by Science, between epistemological
questions and social representations, we find in the sciences, on the contrary, a highly intense
fusion of two forms of speech that were previously foreign to one another."
- things become, IN THE LABORATORY, by means of instruments, RELAVANT --> to what
we say about them
I have simply recalled what ought to be taken as self-evident from now on: between the
speaking subject of the political tradition and the mute things of the epistemological tradition,
there always was a third term, [hegel] indisputable speech, a previously invisible form of
political and scientific life that made it possible sometimes to transform mute things into
speaking facts, and sometimes to make speaking subjects mute by requiring them to bow
down before nondiscussable matters of fact.
- speaking to human about nonhumans with their particpation
- new myth
- new institution to make it fruitful
- a phenonenon that precedes the distribution of forms of speech
- which is called a Constitution
- there always was a third term in the old model: indisputable speech (fact speak for
themselves)
- nondiscussible facts
Democracy can only be conceived if it can freely traverse the nowdismantled border between
science and politics, in order to add a series of new voices to the discussion, voices that have
been inaudible up to now, although their clamor pretended to override all debate: the voices
of nonhumans.
- new voices in the democracy
- half of public life is found in the lab
- speech does not only belong to humans
-

"I seek simply to emphasize once again that there are not two problems, one on the side of
scientific representation and the other on the side of political representation, but a single
problem: How can we go about getting those in whose name we speak to speak for
themselves? By refusing to collaborate, political philosophy and the philosophy of the
sciences had deprived us of any opportunity to understand this question. Political ecology is
determining clearly for the first time the problem that we are going to have to solve. It
belongs neither to politics nor to epistemology nor to a blend of the two: it is situated
elsewhere, at three removes.
Second division
- association of humans and non-humans
- humans and nonhumans have speech prothesis in common!! [lacan, symbolic precedes
imaginary]
- watching a game, we turn towards objects, not subjects!!! [a player is not a subject]
- [note to self: subject is a legal/ethical category [ not a category of "consciousness' that
makes people different from things]
- [ SUBJECT IS NOT AN EMPIRICAL CATEGORY! --> RATHER: TRANSCENDENTAL
{kant} --> LEGAL/SYMBOLIC {post kant, transcendental in another way!}
- subjects vs object
- do not belong to the pluriverse whose expirimental metaphysics we need to reconstruct
To put it still another way, subjects and objects do not belong to the pluriverse whose
experimental metaphysics we need to reconstruct: subject and object are the names given
to forms of representative assemblies, so that they can never bring themselves together in the
same space and proceed together to take the same solemn oath. I am not responsible for
thrusting these notions into the political discussion. They are already there; they have always
been there.
Here is the turning point where we are going to grasp the enormous difference between the
civil war of the subject-object opposition and the civil collaboration between the humannonhuman pair. Just as the notion of speech, in the preceding section, designated not
someone who was speaking about a mute thing, but an impediment, a difficulty, a gamut of
possible positions, a profound uncertainty, so too the human-nonhuman pair does not refer us
to a distribution of the beings of the pluriverse, but to an uncertainty, to a profound doubt
about the nature of action, to a whole gamut of positions regarding the trials that make it
possible to define an actor*.
- free will vs causality
- a thing does not act
- two powerless assemblies
- get rid of tiresome subject object polemics
- actor
- member of an assosciation
-a member that modifies other actors
- through a series of trials
- a list of trials that can be listed to some protocol
- an epirimental protocol that is

"Let us suppose now that someone comes to find you with an association of humans and
nonhumans, an association whose exact composition is not yet known to anyone, but about
which a series of trials makes it possible to say that its members act, that is, quite simply,
that they modify other actors through a series of trials that can be listed thanks to some
experimental protocol. This is the minimal, secular, nonpolemical definition of an actor.
- to get rid of antropomorphism: actants
- in a civil way
- association of humans
- speech prothesis are visible (no indisputible things)
- add candidates for action
- not subtract
- banality of making the list longer
"I maintain that this quite innocent notion of a shorter or longer list of elementary actions
suffices to redistribute the cards between humans and nonhumans, and to disengage this pair
from the perpetual battle carried on noisily by objects and subjects, the former seeking
to come together under the banner of nature and the latter wanting to regroup in society. The
notion of a longer or shorter list has, above all, the signal advantage of banality. It leads a
modest, common, civil life, far from the great outbursts of the interminable cold war carried
on between objects and subjectsand the even more interminable war carried out against all
the others by those who claim to be getting beyond the object-subject opposition"
- reduce either/or
- objects and subjects can never associate with one another; humans and nonhumans can.
- nonhumans -> no longer objects
- no longer fixed etc
- then we can grand them status of actors [as if acting is the opposite of being mute/still etc]
- association
"I want simply to find out what equipment has to be available to populations in order for
them to assemble into a viable collective, instead of separating into two illicit assemblies that
render each other mutually powerless and prohibit the exercise of public life. "
- exchange of properties
-why no credit your opponent with the properties you hold dearest
- already done with "speech" and "social actor"
- no reason to reserve them to humans
- can we credit humans with reality
We are thus going to associate the notion of external reality with surprises and events,
rather than with the simple being-there of the warrior tradition, the stubborn presence of
matters of fact*.
- humans are not defined by freedom or necessity
-only thing: emerge in suprising fashion
- another thing on the list of beings
- foundation: surprising-

The list of nonhumans that participate in the action is expanding, the list of humans who
participate in their reception likewise. We no longer have to defend the subject against
reification, or to defend the object against social construction. Things no longer threaten
subjects. Social construction no longer weakens objects.
For readers to be fully convinced, it seems to me, they need only take seriously the label
actor* that was introduced in the preceding section. Actors are defined above all as
obstacles, scandals, as what suspends mastery, as what gets in the way of domination, as
what interrupts the closure and the composition of the collective.
- h and nh : troublemakers
- recalcitrant
- give up nature
- not because of reality
- not because of its unity
- but because of the "short-circuits that it authorizes"
- when used to bring about this unity [ideology]
- at least: without due process [law term]
- with no discussion
- outside politics
- when something external intervenes to call the unity of the common world (like nature)
- breaching "state of law"
- extending this term now to the sciences [exchange of properties]
- problem
- how to obtain (1) reality, (2) the externality, (3) and the unity of nature according to due
process
"The only question for us thus becomes the following: How can we obtain the reality, the
externality, and the unity of nature according to due process" (91).
- PE was lacing in respect for procedures [habermas?]
- despite moral claims
- like in: there exist external reality >> therefore shut up!
- illogical
- rather there are realities, to be internalized and unified, so
- have to discuss
- new propositions as inhabitants of extended collective
- common sense requirement -> no exceptions to procedures
- myth of the cave could separate two houses
- drramas
- abandoning is catastrophe?
- defined at the outset
- constitutive of science
- most pol ec, does not seek to change pol phil or epistm.
- doesnt break really

Political ecologists have been content to give a coat of apple-green paint to the gray of the
primary qualities*. Neither Plato nor Descartes nor Marx would have dared to go that far
toward emptying public life of its proper forms of discussion, to short-circuit them by the
incontestable viewpoint of the very nature of things in themselves, whose obligations are no
longer only causal but also moral and political. It has become the disreputable job of
ecological thinkers, especially those among them who claim to have broken radically
with the Western outlook, with capitalism, with anthropocentrism, to bring this
culmination of modernism to fruition! (93)
- ecological crises bring about innovation in opl philosophy
- more than theoriticians (primacy of practice, materialism)
- different way of going about
- old: once and for all
- metaphysics
- abandoning secondary to opinion and belief
"The old Constitution claimed to unify the common world once and for all,
without discussion and without due process, by a metaphysics of nature* that defined the
primary qualities, meanwhile abandoning the secondary qualities alone to the plurality of
beliefs" (93).
- arbitrage between disputable and indisputable
- on the contrary:
- to compose common world
- to escape from mulitplicty fo interest and beliefs
- consist in NOT DIVIDING up at the outset and without due process
-what is common and what is private,
- what is objective and subjective
"The Constitution that we seek to draw up affirms, on the contrary, that the only way
to compose a common world, and thus to escape later on from a multiplicity of interests and a
plurality of beliefs, consists precisely in not dividing up at the outset and without due process
what is common and what is private, what is objective and what is subjective" (93)
- earlier: moral question was seperated from physical and epistm.
- now: questio brought together
"Whereas the moral question of the common good was separated from the physical and
epistemological question of the common world*, we maintain, on the contrary, that these
questions must be brought together so that the question of the good common world, of the
best of possible worlds, of the cosmos, can be raised again from scratch" (93).
- two constitution that cant stand each other
- both speak in name of reason
- first: FACTS MUST BE DISTINGUISHED FROM VALUES
- we cannot let us to confuse them
- then we are irrational
- no longer put end to multiplicity of opinions > vantage point
- new: by confusing Science with sciences

- by confusing prison of the social world with politics

- refusing
"by refusing to take the question of the common good and that of the common world, values
and facts, as a single, identical goal, one takes the terrible responsibility of prematurely
interrupting the composition of the collective, the historic experimentation of reason" (94)
[Hegel?]
- old regime: opposition rational and irrational > in order to make reason triumph
- Latour: abstaining from making a distinction between the rational and irrational
"It is clearly difficult to imagine a more pronounced contrast: whereas the Old Regime needs
to set up an opposition between the rational and the irrational in order to make reason
triumph, I claim that we can achieve this end by abstaining from making a distinction
between the rational and the irrational, by rejecting the distinction as a drug that paralyzes
politics. I gladly recognize, however, that the irrational does exist: the whole framework of
the old Constitution is completely unreasonable" (94).
COLLECTIVE [KEY TERM!!!]
- collective
- does not mean ONE
- All but not two
- By the term, Latour: designates a set procedures for exploring and gradually collecting the
potential [!] unification [Badiou, truth procedure]
- safeguard to "going beyond" and superorganism -> not to rush toward unity
- no dualsim, no monism
- End of Ch. two: no more than Meltingpot. nonhum hum. going to form propositions.
- STILL HAVE TO DESCRIBE the forms that the debate MUST take in order to sort out
these prop.
- no longer unified by anything
- certainly not nature
- we stil have to divide the collectiv
- discovering the "right" differntiating principle {!!!!!}
- allowing us to avoid procedural shortcuts
- of old separation
Disadvantages Concepts Fact Value
- tempting
- modesty
- innocence
- scientist define facts,
- the rest is to politicians and moralist to define
- comfortable
- dogmatic sleep
- why difficult to declare worth
- question:

"For what reason would it be more difficult to declare what things are worth than to declare
what they are?" (95).
- discover another differntiating
- a successor
- first examine the common use of notions
- setting up a list [this is the method! described earlier]
- what is wrong with "fact"?
- obliges to omit the work required [context/mediation]
- facts are limited to final stage [yes! i always found this bullshit]
- facts are matters of concern
- do not conceal researchers
- laboratory
- insturments
- polemics
- conditions that make possible to ARTICULATE propositions
Key passage:
"Now, if facts are fabricated, if facts are made, as they are said to be, they pass through
many other stages, which the historians, sociologists, psychologists, and economists of the
sciences have struggled to inventory and categorize. Apart from the recognized matters of
fact, we now know how to identify a whole gamut of stages where facts are uncertain, warm,
cold, light, heavy, hard, supple, matters of concern that are defined precisely because they do
not conceal the researchers who are in the process of fabricating them, the laboratories
necessary for their production, the instruments that ensure their validation, the sometimes
heated polemics to which they give risein short, everything that makes it possible to
articulate propositions" (96).
-term fact obscures immense dervisity
- term of fixation [objectivation/foucault etc]
- effaces sketsches, prototypes, trials, rejects, waste products
- totality!!!!! [HEGEL ---> TOTALITY]
"As a result, the use of the term fact without further precautions to designate one of the
territories outlined by the frontier between facts and values completely obscures the immense
diversity of scientific activity and obliges all facts, in every stage of their production, to
become fixed, as if they had already reached their definitive state. This freeze makes it
necessary to use the same words to designate a multitude of sketches, prototypes, trials,
rejects, and waste
products, for want of a term that makes it possible to diversify the gamut, rather as if we
called all the successive stages of an assembly line cars, without noticing that the word
designates sometimes isolated doors, sometimes a chassis, sometimes miles of electrical
wire, sometimes headlights" (96).
- highlight the PROCESS of fabrication
- make possible to record succesive stage and variations
- matters of concern!

"No matter what term we choose later on to replace fact, it will have to highlight the
process of fabrication, a process that alone makes it possible to record the successive stages
as well as the variations in quality or finishing touches that depend on it; it will have to
encompass matters of concern* as well as matters of fact" (96).
- notion of fact has another defect
- obfuscates work of theory
- necessary for coherence of data [the work]
- theory vs raw data (x)
- isolated fact is meaningless [totality hegel -> wie denkt abstract]
- if one does not now of which theory it is an example [paradigma]
- prototype
- expression
- one has to: form, model, order, define
- SHAPING, summed up by the word THEORY or PARADIGM
Other side of border
- value has disadvantages
- defined [negatively] against facts
- to mark territory
- values always come to late
- facts are there, whether you like it or not!
"It is impossible to delimit the second domain before stablizizing the first: that of the facts,
the evidence, the indisputable data of Science" (97).
- only then can values come in
- priorities and desires [kant: practice comes first though]
- first cloning
- then ethical question
- values fluctate in ralation to pr. facts
- scales are not wheighed equally
- values cannot be alone
- judge without facts
"They take at face value the role of humble drudge, zealous servant, unbiased technician
played by those who limit themselves to simple matters of fact and who offer themthe
moraliststhe gratifying task of master and decision-maker. Science proposes, morality
disposes, they say by common agreement, patting themselves on the back, scientists and
moralists alike, the former with false modesty and the latter with false pride" (98).
- appeal to universal and general values
- search for a foundationi
- ethical principles
- respect for procedures
- without facts
- unable to make descision

- moralist agree, seek legit in another land

- abandoning objective morality
- we want to connect the question of the common world with the question of the common
good
"By accepting the value-fact distinction, moralists agree to seek their own legitimacy very far
from the scene of the facts, in another land, that of the universal or formal foundations of
ethics. In so doing, they risk abandoning all objective morality, whereas we, on the
contrary, must connect the question of the common world to the question of the common
good" (98).
- how can we arrange propositions
- in order of importance (goal of values)
- if we not capable of knowing the HABITS of propositions
- we need a concept to replace value
- but we need to include a function
- that wil allow moralist to come closer to matters of concern
- not to distance themselves to go in search of foundations [relativism]
- increased familiarity
- today: facts are not to be reconsidered
- once and for all to reality [really?]
- to include into the world of facts -> values
- reality of what is -> gradually -> comes to include > what one would like to see in existence
- surreptitiously confused
- even when officially distinct
- without common organzation discoverability
"This paradox should no longer astonish us: far from clarifying the question, the fact-value
distinction is going to be
come more and more opaque, by making it impossible to untangle what is from what ought to
be" (99).
- one ends up with a bad common world
- kakosmos
- new concept
- anticipate a control procedur
- to avoid countless little incidents of cheating
- not to confuse definition of possibility with what is desirable [capitalism/socialism]
- the notion of fact does not describe the production of knowledge
- neglects intermediate stages and shaping of theory
- no better that the notion of value allows us to understand morality
- takes up its functions after the facts have been defined
- only principles that are as impotent as universal
- retain this dichotmoy?
- abandon it?
- first: grasp its usefulness
- greates power: split between ideology and Science

- those who tract the ideological influence on the dicsiplince (biology etc
- major uses of the distinction (??)
- need it to prevent little cheatings
- axiological preference
- "immunology <-> war metaphors!" we would denounce frauds (smugglers??) [?????]
- to conceal debatablevalues under the umbrella of matters of fact
- "political party <-> population genetics"
- denounces smugglers from other side
- [who does this??, i always found this stupid]
"By seeking to make a clear distinction between Science and ideology, the old Constitution
sought to rectify the continually patrolled border, while avoiding two types of frauds: the one
in which values are used in secret, to interrupt discussions of facts (the Lyssenko affair
remains the classic model); and the one coming from the opposite direction, in which matters
of fact are surreptitiously used to impose preferences that the user does not dare admit or
discuss frankly (scientific racism is the most typical and best-studied example)" (100).
- Both hide behind their opposite
- This is the task:
"It appears truly difficult to do without an arrangement that makes it possible to protect the
autonomy of Science and the independence of moral judgments simultaneously" (100).
- Difference between science and ideology
- purity and pollution [???????]
- patrol the border
"The allegory of the Cave obviously does not aim to separate the two houses for good
otherwise, facts would be mute and values would be impotentbut to transform the
distinction into an impossible task that must always be started from scratch and that will turn
attention away from all the others. If he ever managed to finish his task, Sisyphus would not
be any further advanced" (101).
- still: one cannot abandon an indispensable distinction under te pretext that the task in
question would be insurmountable: Does not morlity pride itself, after all, on maintaining its
demands against all the contrary testimony of reality [YES!]
- Latour: impracticable and deleterious
- combine fact and values?
- nature vs moral society? criminals?
- relativism
- not all to easily to be dismissed
- one more clause (legal term)
- purpose of partition?
- principle function: to make incomprehensible the fabrication of what must be.
- deny history? [lukacs, reification]
- to deny the progressive composition of the good common world, of the cosmos
- power of nature over what ought to be

- no border means: no science/ideology, stop fighting smugglers [??? biopolitics?? no! -->
paradigm!]
- we should do at least AS WELL, however
- credibility of our politics of nature is at stake
- Quality control, future facts future values (new menaing to words
- SCHENGEN????
- dispensing with a dichtomy
- we cannot get rid just as easily of the requirements
- requirements attached to this dichotomy
- and this metaphysics
- reasons thought to be necesaary (but only contingent)
- Do not propose to abandon
- but to lodge them elsewhere
- different opposition
- [see what is the real contradiction]
- in a different opposition between concepts
- better protected there.
THE POWER TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT AND THE POWER TO PUT IN ORDER
- how to abandon
- while preserving the kernel of truth it seems to conaint
- that is: requirement of a distinction!!
- that keeps the collective from combining all propositions in the dark (in which all sheeps are
black)
- [Cut/scisscion]
- unpack and repack fact-value
- three sections
- solution: untying the two packets, fact and value
- liberate the contradictory requirements that were unduly combined
- not easy
- new basis for common sense
- The two contradictory Requirements Captured in the Notion of a fact
- envelops two different requirements
- proposition emerge in discussion,
- wel defined essence indisputable of these propositions
- matter of concern (recalcitrant, troubling)
- importance and uncertainty of discussing
- vs. no longer discussing
- Fact refers to ability of an enitity to force the discussion to deviate
- to trouble the order of discourse
- to interfere with habit
- disturb the definition of the pluriverse
- signal the existence of surprising actors
- intervene
- modify [discourse]

- unanticipated events
- modify the list of mediators that made up the habits of the collective [actors of all sorts
human nonhuman
- recalicitrannce is not objective or certainty, or indisputable
- agitates, troubles, complicates
- provokes speech, may arouse controversy
- external reality, means two things:
- 1) complication
- 2) unification
- facts: initially present themselves in the first form
- lab, research, uncertainty, experiment, trial
- proposition propose their candidacy [legal/political term] for the common existence
- subjected to trials [legal term]
- perplexing those who discuss
- stubborness
"When we say: The facts are there, whether we like it or not, it is not a matter of pounding
on the table to avoid social constructivism, but of pointing out something much more
ordinary, less warlike, less definitive: we are trying to make sure that our interlocutors, by
limiting in advance the list of states of the world, do not hide the risks that put our wellregulated existences [habit] in danger. Let us formulate this first requirement in the form of a
categorical imperative: Thou shalt not simplify the number of propositions to be taken into
ccount in the discussion." (104)
- not end of discusison, but start
- candidacy recognized
- state of natures
- black boxex
- paradigma
- facts are facts
- they have become INSTITUTED [Hegel?]
[Interesting............]
- stop challenging
- normal/usual/habitual
- essence! [self-transcendence? dupuy? baron von munchausen]
"When we insist on the solidity of the facts, we require our interlocutors to stop challangeing
the states of things that now have clear bounderies, precise definitions, thresholds, fixed
habits, in short, essences."
- Once proposition have been instituted, thou shalt no longer debate their legitimate presence
within collective life.
[HEGEL??/???]
- packet of facts [immanent critique]
- under a singel wrapper it concealed two entirely different operations

- discussion starter
- discussion stopper [absolute idea self mediation circulairit]
- perplexity as well as certainty
- disputable as well as indisputable
- obligation to do research, and to stop
- multply vs harmony
- fact: weakest and the strongest
The Two Contradictory Requirements Captured in the Notion of Value
- undo ties of the concept of value
- what we mean: discussion about values has to continue, even if we have facts?
- what we men: ought to be, to add to what is?
- what essential necessity are we struggling so confusedly to express
- values: all other proposition
- proposition not taken into account
- not been consulted
- right to be heard
- extension! number of parties and stakeholders is extened by a debate of values
- but stil; ethics!
- idignation
- forgotten, ommitted
- to appeal to values is to formulate a requirement of prior consultation
- secret, publicly -> compose Republic
- some voices missing
requirement of consultation?
"Thou shalt ensure that the number of voices that participate in the articulation of proposition
has not been arbitrarily short-circuited"
- imperative of organization
- kernel of truth
- badly wrapped
- resembles the first on on perplexity
- even though tradition placed them in different camps
- first Science, second Values
- bot concer the issue of NUMBER
- first: quantity of beings that propose candidacy
- second: importance of quality of those are to be seated, on the jury that will accept or reject
those beings
- other requirement.
- requirement of consultation, no exhaustion of content of this packet
- concept of value is also not homologous
- to stop would only mean: to limiting value to the simple requirement of maintaining forms
without concern for their content, procedure without substance [KANT!]
-

"There is something else here that is translated by the ever-renewed insistence on what has
to be done, what one ought to be, something about the right order of priorities.
This preoccupation is never well understood, because it is never heard detached from the one
that precedes it, nor joined to the second categorical imperative, with which it nevertheless
fits very well."
- another preoccupation
- never heard deatched from the one that precedes it
- nor joined to the second categorical imperative.
- no distance from matters of concern.
- different question of the same proposition
- candidates for entry into the common existence
- are they compatible with those which already form oou currently defined common world
- how to line up in order of importance
- form inhabitale common world?
- to disturb it?
- come together? or recombination of old arrangements?
- HIERARCHY [dupuy] among new entities and the old
- axiology
- moral aptitude has always been recognized therein
- save the child? save the mother?
- save the economy? save the earth?
fourth and last requirement:
Thou shalt discuss the compatibility of the new propositions with those which are already
instituted, in such a way as to maintain them all in the same common world that will give
them their legitimate rank.
"Contrary to what the presence of this requirement in the slot reserved for values may
suggest, it is with the second (which belonged, however, to the packet of facts), that of
institution*, that it is most appropriately grouped. In order to define assured essences*, we
must, before the discussion ends, be quite sure that the entities that are candidates for
the establishment of the collective find their rank and place among those which are already
established" (108).
- taking into account
- putting into order
- new grouping
- possible for Two new powers to emerge
- answer to the questions:
- 1) "How many are we?"
- 2) "Can we live together?"

THe Collective's Two Powers of Representation

- How many new propositions must we take into account in order to articulate a single
common world in a coherent way?
- first power
- two essential guarantees
- 1. number of candidates not be reduced
- requirement of external reality
- 2. number of those hwich participate in this porcess of perplexing must not iself be limited
too quickly
- broad consultation
- reliable witnesses, assured opinions, credible spokespersons
- investigation [badiou]
- provocation (production of voices)
- requirement of relevance, all relevent voices have been convoked
What order must be found for the common world formed by the set of new and old
propistions?
- second power
- power to put into order
- two esential guarentees

- 1. no new entity can be accepted in common world without concern for its compatibility
with those who have a place
- it is forbidden, to banish all the secondary quality by an ultimatem[????]
- explicit work of hierarchization
- to take into account mulitplying the novelty of beings
- requirement of publicity in the ranking of entities
- 2. Second, requirement of insitution
- discussion must not be reopened
- otherwise a discussion without end
- one could never know what was common, self evident
- requirement of closure

[notion of network dissolves the notion of domains {gabriel}, "yes yes but we are doing
Science"]
power [prions] is imposed on the whole collective
- laboraties
- investigate
- consumers
- veterinarians
- journalists
- critical: not to bring to an end
- by assigning stable facts to common world of external nature
- and the opinions to the social word
- not reintroduce facts and values
- no need to mix up everything
- the new separation of powers going to manifest its relevance
- collective undergo operation
- this operation would be illicit in the power to take into account
- but:
- full meaning in power to order
- the SAME hetroclite
- now grip of second power [stabilization/institutionalization]

- bring an end to the agitation

- but not in the old way
- important: not fact and value
- necessitate distibuting the indisputable and disputable aribitrarily
ask different question
- Can we live with these controversial candidates for existence, these prions? [??]
- 3. requirement of publicity of hierarchy ->
- all catlefarming be modified?
- the entire meat distribution
- no longer an ethical question
- question of relative importance
- no ready made answer
- collective must take responsibility
- cannot homogenize
- power of arranging
- not fact value
- come to terms with diversity
- adjustments and negotiations [neoliberal/market form]
- no escape to matters of fact
- no help from the outside
- (shen the solutioin is eventually found (as seem to be the case for the eight thousand French
automibile deaths)
- will be stabilized
- bonafide members [?]
- no longer subject to discussioni
- prion will have an essenence with fixed boundaries
- causalities and repsonsibilities
- will be apportioned cause attribution
- causality <> accusations
- prion becomes natural
- natural = habit/institition/routine based, full fleged members of the collective
- not lost sight of demand of reality, relevance, publicity and closure
- only the self-evident fact and value distinction is missing
- only the idisputable externality of a prion has alway already been there
- from perplexity to insitution (would have been short-circuited by fact value)
- facileness, arbitrariness, --> no due process [legal term]

Nature is on the side of INSTITUTION

- bicameralsim.
- two houses, differen characteristics
- ninety degree shift
- altered functioning of this difference [fact, value]

- first, distinction between facts and value was absolute and impossible
- since: refused to be constured as a sepration of powers
- claimed to be inscribed in the nature of things
- ontology vs politics and representations [!!!!]
- Second difference: nothing absolute
- nothing impossible either
-two complementary requirements of collective life
- how many of you are there to take into account
- are you able to form a good common life?
- no border police [???]
- discussion about common world not interrupted by the discussion about the candidates for
existence
- and: that discussion of the new entities not be constantly suspended on the pretext that one
does not yet know to what commmon world they beling
"The fact that these two questions must be carefully distinguished does not prove that a
border police, similar to the one that patrolled the old border between Science and ideology in
vain, has to be put in place. It is enough simply that the discussion about the common world
not be constantly interrupted by the discussion about the candidates for existence, and that
discussion of the new entities not be constantly suspended on the pretext that one does not yet
know to what common world they belong. Instead of an impossible frontier between two
badly composed universes, it is rather a matter of imagining a shuttle between two arenas,
between the two houses of a single expanding collective. The administrators in charge of this
separation of powers (whose own powers we shall discover in Chapter 5) will surely
have to be vigilant, but they will not have the impossible task of being customs officers and
smugglers at the same time" (116).
VERIFYING THAT THE ESSENTIAL GUARANTEES HAVE BEEN MAINTAINED

what was the set of specifications?

- first clause
- the wiork of fabrication of facts not reduce to last stage
- natural history [institutional nature/history]
- totality
"Instead of defining the facts by the suspension of all controversy, all uncertainty, all
discussion, we can now define them, on the contrary, through the quality of a procedure that
involves any new entity in a series of successive arenas" (116).
- installing controversies at the heart of collecitve activity
- not worry about debate
- new entities: lively discussion
- fact -> not into account -> shaping formating ordering deducing
- Theory

- rather: institutions -> does more justice to the whole set of mechanism for attributing shape
and distrubting causalities through which a new entity becomes a legitmate and recognized
member of public life
- theory is to limiting
- limits the number of AGENTS responsible for the regrouping and stabilization of facts
"Instruments, bodies, laws, habits, language, forms of life, calculations, models, metrology,
everything can contribute to
the progressive socialization and naturalization of entities, without any need to distinguish in
this list between what might belong to the old universe of the sciences and what seems to
depend on the old domain of the political" (118).
- do justice to the work of shaping and stabilizing
- abandoned the notion of social representation
- not able to do justice to instition
- ARTICULATION
- connect quality of relaity to the quantity of work supplied
- not: plurivers <> ideas of humans
- when entity becomes as state of the world
- not in appearance, in spite of inst.
- but FOR REAL and thanks to the insitution
"When an entity becomes a state of the world, this does not happen in appearance and in spite
of the institutions that support it, but for real and thanks to the institutions. This solution,
impossible before the development of the sociology of the sciences and political ecology, has
become the key to our effort at elucidation.
- bring back variations and diffusion
We are thus going to be able to bring back into the collective all the variations in degree in
the production and progressive diffusion of a certainty that the fact-value distinction managed
only to crush into a single opposition between knowledge and ignorance" (118).
third clause?
- shift the normative requirement from foundations to the details of the deployment of matters
of concer
- modify the role of the moralist (as much as scientis, politician, adminstartor, citizen)
fourth clause
- only just. for fact-value -> to prvent double smuggling
- we have to do at least as well
"By abandoning the fact-value distinction, we committed ourselves to do at least as well as it
had done, placing ourselves in the same situation as the European Union, for which the
abandonment of national frontiers must not have the effect of reducing territorial security"
(119). [????]
- little trouble doing better
- no short circuiting
- four imperatives

- require that we not bring end to perplexity too abruplgy,

- not unduly accelerate the consusltiaton
- not forget to look for the compatibility with established propostiions
- not register new states of the world without an explicity motivation
- cannot yet show that it is batter than science and ideology [this I find important]
- wait
- fift item of the set of specification is easier to fulfil, more difficult tot prove
- defence of autonomy os science
- publicity of morality
- protected against interference
- incapalble of satisfying that ondition
- SCIENCE WARS
- accustomed
- the more we interfere with the production of facts,
-the more objective they become,
-the more normative requirements gets mixed up with matters of concern,
- the more it will gain in quality of judgement
"Still, we can guarantee that there are indeed two powers that must definitely not be mixed:
the power to take into account the number of entities and voices, on the one hand, and the
will of these entities and voices to form a common
world, on the other hand. Something essential would be lost if the work of taking into
account* were shortened, trampled on, or encroached upon by the work of putting in order*,
and if the work of putting in order were begun anew, interrupted, or called back into question
by the work of taking into account" (120).
- essential function
- shelter it elshwhere
- new bicameralism
- no purity
- th shuttle required by this new bicameralism between the two haouses
- that must at once counterbalanc- coordinate with each other
- without getting mixed up in each others affairs
- "this task will be at the heart of the constiutiaonl work of political ecology" (120).
- recall
- extraordinary confusion
- that facts and values ends up in practice
[objectivity/nature/facts is/are not on the side of the absolute/truth!!] [badiou/heidegger
etc.]
- relativism?
- confusion of fact and value?
- incoherence of the Old Regime
- never managed to achieve this distinction
- even though it struggle tirelesly [popper?]
- without wanting to succes > realization woud deprive good common world

- in this confusion, everybody lososes

- scientist: no means to move from perplexity to hierarchy [either absolutely certain, or
controversy]
- moralist: arrange entities in order of importance, but deprived of knowledge
- politician: has to decide, he is told, but who is not given acces to the research
- he has the people
- like the ancient chorus: the people is supposed to punctuate with
- its low voice
- its lamentations
- its wise proverbs
- the agitation of those who claim to be consulting, educating, representing, conducting,
measuring, satisfying
- if the public knows: informing, divulging, poularizing, vulgarizing
- public is not asked to be perplexed
- told about inst. purpose is to lock the public in the prison
- of own social representations
"No, there is no question about it, every unprejudiced mind that casts a glance on this
profound confusion that is called societys debates over science and technology can only
conclude as I have: it must be possible to do a bit better than this! Provided, nevertheless, that
to the four requirements we have just developed a dynamic is added that allows them to be
better understood" (121).
- why distinction
- because guarentee certain transcendence [stability] over immanence of public life
"Indeed, if people are so fond of this distinction, which is as awkward as it is absolute, it is
because it seems at
least to guarantee a certain transcendence over the redoubtable immanence of public life"
(121)
- without the transcendence of nature
- indifferent to passions
- without transcendence of moral law
- indifferent to objections of reality
- witouth transcendence of the sovereign
- always capable of decding
- there seem to be no further recourse against the arbitrariness of public life, no court of
appeals
Without the transcendence of nature, which is indifferent to human passions, without the
transcendence of moral law, which is indifferent to the objections of reality, and without
the transcendence of the Sovereign, which is always capable of deciding, there seems to be
no further recourse against the arbitrariness of public life, no court of appeals" (121).
I shall succeed in restoring the confidence of my readers, deprived of the distinction between
facts and values, only if I can make them see for themselves, at the end of this chapter, that
for political ecology there is another transcendence, another externality, which owes

nothing either to nature or to moral principles or to the arbitrariness of the

Sovereign.28
- another exteriority
- not grandiose
- not formidable
- as three courts of appeal to which the old Consititution had entrusted the task of saving
public life
- but: easy to find
- provided: we extend the work of the colllective a bit

- replace the difference common world vs common good

- with stopping and continuing the movment of the progressive composition of the good
common world
- exploration
- explaining succesive phases
- start engine
- every new proposition
- goes throug hte four compartments
- responding to essential requirments
- induces perplexity in those who are gather to discuss it and set up the trials
- demands to be taken into account by all those whose habits it is going to modify
- succesful?

- able to insert itself in the states of the world ONLY proided it finds a place in a heirarchy
that PRECEDES it
- if it earns legitimate right to existence,
- becomes an institutions, that is an ESSENCE
- indisputable nature
- but cannot be stopped!
- collective still has an outside
"If the old Constitution required a constant classification of the provisional results of history
in the two opposite compartments of ontology or politics, the same is not true of the new
Constitution"
- fact were always already there
-the old C. registerd continious [!] variation
- only as a succession of serreptitious revolutions in the composition ofhte ocmmon world
- Nature changed metaphysics without anyone's ever understanding why
- since it was supposed to remain anteorior to metaphysics
- not true of new C.
- following in detail degrees what is and what ought
[AGAMBEN VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=T4MjMj4S4B8&index=1&list=FLzQ35Xh2uMjW6AxMvPKLbgA]
acheology of commandment
"The same is not true of the new Constitution, which has precisely the goal of following in
detail the intermediary degrees between what is and what ought to be, registering all
the successive stages of what I have called an experimental metaphysics*. The old system
allowed shortcuts and acceleration, but it did not understand dynamics, whereas ours, which
aims at slowing things down and fosters a great respect for procedures, does allow an
understanding of movement and process" (123).
- we do not know what the criteria are for poposition
- only: proposition cannot be arrange in two sets constituted withouot due process
- first constituting a certain number of essence
- eliminated other propositions, no room
- (no longer a premature totalization)
- excluded entities, exteriorized externalized
- collective decision to to take into account
- INSIGNIFICANT
- moral
"Even if this may appear shocking at first glance, no moral principle is superior to the
procedure of progressive composition of the common world: for the time being, the rapid use
of cars is worth much more in France than eight thousand innocent lives per year. About
this choice, there is nothing we can say, yet" (124).
- gradient
- interior of collective and exterior
- dumping ground (excrement)

- collective producing the distinctin

- [no prior distinction]
- nothing proves that externalized
- will remain outside [proletariat???]
- going to put the collective in danger [sans papiers???]
- when sensitive
- feedback loop!!!!! [cybernetic etc etc foucault -> collective institutions et etc!]
- come knocking back on the door
- new negotiations
- new definition of the outside
- outside is not fixed [part of the collective / partes extra partes]
- succesion of stage
- all of our req. are imperative
"All our requirements have the form of an imperative. In other words, they all involve the
question of what ought to be done. It is impossible to begin to ask the moral question after the
states of the world have been defined. The question of what ought to be, as we can see now, is
not a moment in the process; rather, it is coextensive with the entire processwhence the
imposture there would be in seeking to limit oneself to one stage or another" (138).
[AGAMBEN]
"If one wished at all costs to maintain the distinction between what is and what ought to be,
one could say that it is a matter of traversing the whole set of stages twice, by asking two
distinct questions of the same propositions, subject to each of the four requirements: What
discussion procedure must be followed? What is the provisional result of the discussion?
Behind the false distinction between facts and values was hidden an essential question about
the quality of the procedure to be followed and about the outline of its trajectory, a question
now liberated from the confused quarrel that (political) epistemology sustained with ethics"
(126).
- due process
- representation
- nothing against dichotomies
- acceleration and representation
- normative role
- draw indignation and legal and moral standing
- "represent rather than short-circuit"
"As I see it, there is a reserve of morality here that is much more inexhaustible and much
more discriminating than the vain indignation whose goal was to prevent the contamination
of values by facts or of facts by values.
- obtain reality, externality, and the unity of nature through due process
- modify definition of externality
- social world is not the collective.
- first is radically differend

- second is provisional and produced by explicit procedure of exteriorization

- when we look outside, we see a whole still to be composed, made up of excluded entities
(humans and nonhumans)
- some we decided are not interesting
- some / appellants demand to be part of republic [sans papier, tar sands]
"There is nothing left of the old metaphysics of nature, nothing left of the old allegory of
the Cave, although everything that matters to public life remains: realitythe nonhumans
and their cohorts; externalityproduced according to the rules and no longer surreptitiously;
unitythe progressive unity of the collective in the process of exploration; to which it
suffices to add the procedures for discussion that we must now make explicit" (127).
Where does external nature now lie? It is right here: carefully naturalized, that is, socialized
right inside the expanding collective. It is time to house it finally in a civil way by building it
a definitive dwelling place and offering it not the simple slogan of the early democracies
No taxation without representationbut a riskier and more ambitious maximNo
reality without representation!

- metaphysics
- bad reputation
- speculative
- arm chair philosophy
- but we would not understand pol. eco.
- no speculation: we already know how world is furnished
- nature -> common to all
- second nature -> particular culture
- common good? bulk of work already done
- all left to do is to bring order into opinions/beliefs viewpoints
- [totalization]
- does not touch the essential
- not touch the very essence of things
- matters of fact
- separate
- separating the question of the common world
- from common good
- to cling to the most politicized metaphysics: metaphysics of NATURE
- NATURPOLITIK
- ecological crisis
- not underminded it
- rather tried to save modernist nature
- more important role in short circuiting

- desparate
- quenching the fire of democracy
- humilating humans
- through truth of nature
- gulf between theory and militant practice
- slenderlness of ecology to philosophy of politics and scince
- political novelty of ecology: consititional crisi of all objectivity
- contradiction between practice of ecological or publich healt crises and
- the lesson that theorists wrongly claimed to be drawing from them (back to nature)
- reject old constitution
"I am not proposing to replace a well-organized system with a quirky one, but to substitute
two houses put together according to due process for the two illegitimate houses of the old
Constitution" (129)
- eliminating the easy solution offered by nature
- new difficulties
- complicated procedure for learning how to proactice experimental metaphysics!!!
- rationality - irrationality
- question of the good common world
- bears NOT ONLY on representation that humans make of the world
- and that it does not bear on the essence of the phenomena
- more science is more agreement
- apolitical politics of public life
- hardly likely that anyone can unify disparate groups
- atoms and cristians
- decide about the common world in which they live
- political ecology!
- going back to odl metaphysics of nature, or practicing experimental metaphysics
- follow the way the problem of the apportionment between the common world and private
worlds can again open up
- (supposedly solved by nature/culture)
- skills
- never registered before due to binary thinking
THE THIRD NATURE AND THE QUARREL BETWEEN THE TWO "ECO" SCIENCES"
- habitat/home/dwelling
- oikos
- ecology
- habitat science
- ecology nature external -> home/patriarchy <- polis/liberty
- ecosystem
- antropomorphism
- modernism basic defect
- global ecosystem

- totality
- Gaia
- economy
- ecology
- nomos to short circuit the polis
- third nature
- ecopoliticians
- Darwinian appearances
- replace relation of progressive composition of the common world
- law of the jungle governing a nature deprived of all political life
It serves as springboard inside rather than outside te collective
- economics
- nomos and logos belong to the polis
- do not serve as shortcuts for damaging state of law
- bears on humans and nonhumans
- producers
- consumers
- goods
- internalize its calculations
- waants to establish hierarchy of solution
- discover the optimum in allocation of resources
- auonomy and freedom
- produce an exterior
- (elements provisionally thrown out of equations/calculations)
- elements by its own terms externalized
- modernist discipline
- rational calculation
- automatically zeoring in
- best of all poss worlds, were it not for the state
Nature, is a particular function of politics reduced to a rump parliament
- a certain way of constructing the relaiton between
- necessity and freedom
- multiplicity and unity
- a hidden procedure of apportioning speech and authrority
- dividing up facts and values
- self-regulating markets [cybernetics, normative foucault etc]
- do without government
- relation of collective
- similar to predetors and prey in ecosystems
- power relations
- power is the power of inevitable necessity [TINA]
- ideal is : no govenrment
"The three natures combined will stifle the collective for good. The laws of the nature
[physics] that is cold and gray, the moral requirements of the nature that is warm and green

[morality], the harsh necessities of the nature that is red in tooth and claw put an end to all
discourse in advance: politicians may have the last word, but they have nothing more to say"
- THE WORD SAVE
One would think that the modernist Constitution had been made especially for
economics. [materialist reversal: economy at the base of modernity] If you say that this
discipline is scientific and must therefore describe in detail the complicated attachments of
things and people, according to the requirement of perplexity*, it will reply that it does not
have time to be descriptive, because it has to move on very quickly to the normative
judgment that is indispensable to its vocation. If you acquiesce, albeit in some
astonishment at this casual tone, you will be surprised to see that, in order to produce the
optimum, economics does not burden itself with any consultation*, and its work of
negotiation is limited to the calculus alone. The requirements of relevance* and of publicity*
do not seem to concern it either. If you become indignant at this cavalier attitude, economics
will signal you to be quiet: Shh! Im calculating . . . and will claim not to need either to
consult or to negotiate, because it is a Science and because, if it defines what must be, it does
so in the name of its laws cast in bronze, as indisputable as those of nature. If you point out
politely that it is difficult to be counted as a science before devoting a great deal of time to the
requirements of description, before plunging into controversies, before deploying instruments
that are as fragile as they are costly, it will reply that it prescribes what must be done; and if
you object once again, losing all patience, that economics does not respect values because it
has jumped over all the requirements of prescription, it will retort scornfully that it only
describes facts, without concerning itself with values! By allowing the discipline of
economics to unfold, one thus keeps the collective, by the cleverest of schemes, from having
to produce any description in the name of prescription, and from having to hold any public
debate in the name of simple description.
With political economics, the impossible task of distinguishing between facts and values,
which we have compared to the labors of Sisyphus, becomes so effective that it makes it
possible to get both scientists and politicians all mixed up: one can no longer appeal to
human values over and against raw facts, but at the same time one cannot do without the
absolute distinction between facts and values! In the end, the common habitat will be
calculated, they say, and no longer composed. The bronze laws of economics will have
eliminated ecopolitics. The collective, emptied of its substance, will no longer know how to
come together.
- liberate sciences from Science
- liberate politics from prison of social world [opinions]
- possible to liberate [save] econmics from its failure to dissimulate the search for values
under already-established facts and the search for facts under already-calculated values, by
making it undergo in its turn the little transformation
- ideology pur sang
- two powers of representation
- how many are we?
- can we live together?
- how does economy subject itself
- economics as discipline

- economy as as activity
- progressive economization of relations
- the economizers performed the collective
- stablizing relation between humans and nonhumans
- not: agents of economic calc
- consturction of centers for calculation and profit centers
- those who turn to them can produce in fact on paper calc.
- in order to coordinate actions
- extirpated econmics from heads and world
- reduce specific and undertain procedures
- sometime convey agreement, coordination AND production of EXTERNALITIES
- pol economy stops competing with pol. ecology
- economization: one of the professio indispensable to function of the collective
- gray, green, red
- one of the ways to spare the coll. the prog. comp of the good com. world
CONTRIBUTION OF THE PROFESSIONS TO THE PROCEDURES OF THE HOUSES
- define equipment, insturments, skills, and knowledg
- experimental metaphysics
- decide collectibely on its habitat, oikos, familiar dewlling
- old corporations that the old Consittution moblizid
- contribute entire set of function of public life
- 1. perplexity
- 2. consultation
- 3. hierarchy
- 4. institution
- add two skills
- maintenance of separation or shuttle
- power take into account and power to put in order (5)
scenarization of the collective in a unified whole (6)
- what to expect of sciences
- deliverd from Science
- share in all functions
- share in same function with own specific capabilities
- instruments/laborities
- prostheses of immese complexity
- make the world speak, write, hold forth
- inventing the displacement of point of view
- indespensible to public life
- new beings: change point of view

- intermediaries
- relativism -> relationism
- common basket -> skills
- record and listen to propositions
- contribute to work of consultation
- controversy and exp. testing
- speech impedimenta
- reliable witnesses
- making speak
- putting in order of importance
- moralist?
- another skill
- imagining the possibilities
- innovations and compromises
- essences without fixed bounderies
- taking into account -> putting into order [the new powers]
- defending autonomy
- does not simply attest to their habitual corporatism
"This is to forget that researchers devote much of their time to defending their autonomy.
Now, this combat does not simply attest to their habitual corporatism. The capacity to ask
ones own questions without being intimidated by any good sense, however few people may
understand them and however little importance may be attributed to the stakes, is a form of
self-defense that is indispensable to the maintenance of an uncrossable barrier between the

requirements of the first house and the wholly contrary ones of the second. One must not
forbid oneself to take a new being into account on the pretext that it does not appear on the
current list of members of the collective" (140).
- demand for autonomy (not budgets, knowledge, recognition
- no need to stay in place commanded by criticism
We have done the inverse: far from criticizing the sciences, one must on the contrary respect
the diversity of their skills, allow the variety of their qualities to be developed, their indefinite
contributions to the composition of the common world to unfold. There is no need, either, to
imagine a metascience that would be more complex, warmer, more human, more
dialectical, and that would allow us to surpass the narrow rationalism of the established
sciences.

POLITICIANS
- politicians
- same functions
- other skills
- add a certain sense of danger
- multitude of excl. entities
- attempt to form an us [equality]
- collaborating with scientis
- scientist -> construct controversies -> referee

- politicians -> form concerned parties

- construction of agents that can say yes or no
- production of voices
- artificial ingenious research / exploration
- consultation
- basic job: to create voices that protest
- principal competence, is to compromise [?????????]
We must learn to respect these collaborations in the search for the best combination: deprived
of the marvelous help of a world beyond, this is our only chance to obtain the best of all
possible worlds.
- speed
- we must hurry
- lets decide
- politicians can make enemies
- decisveness
- cut to the chase
- divide the collective into friends and enemies [decision / cut / binary logic]
- without it, no fulfillment of requirement of closure
- one would want to satisfy everyone
- collective could no longer learn
- one must not unify the work of the collective too rapidly
- without composing it ahead of time
- out of wateritgh compartments
- State of law
- drawing on a different resource than scientist
- classic distinction between
- deliberation
- descisscion [de - scission]
- the precinct of freedom (inquire, speak, consult)
- where necessity is forged (institutes, hierarchies, schooses, concludes, eliminates
- collective is a movement
- will have to be started all over again every single day
- no stabilization
- naturalization
- rather: construction/composition [art! -> work of art]
"Have we mixed up the sciences with politics? On the contrary, now that the scientists and
the politicians are collaborating on the same tasks, we finally understand their profound
difference, the one the old Constitution never made it possible to bring out, because it was
hopelessly buried in an impossible distinction between the truth of things and the will of
humansas if it were easier to say what entities are than what they want. Politicians and
scientists all work on the same propositions*, the same chains of humans and nonhumans. All
endeavor to represent them as faithfully as possible. Must we say that scientists do not
adulterate what they say, unlike politicians, who supposedly practice the art of lying and

dissimulation, as if the former had to convince and the latter to persuade? No, because both
callings delight in the art of transformations, the former to obtain reliable information on the
basis of the continual work of instruments, and the latter to obtain the unheard-of
metamorphosis of enraged or stifled voices into a single voice. Must we admit that they all
have the same job? That is not true either, because the meaning of the word fidelity differs
profoundly for the two types of skill: scientists have to maintain the distance between the
propositions that they load into language and what they say about them, so that these two
things will not be confused, whereas politicians have precisely to confuse them
by continually modifying the definition of the subjects who say we are, we want. The
former are guardians of the them, the latter masters of the us. " (148).
ECONOMISTS
- self reflexive discipline
- but it does not designate any self- regulated phenomena
- allows the "public" to see itself, to conceive itself, to constitute itself as a public. [dupuy
self-transcendens
Instead of defending its virtues by imagining a metaphysics, an anthropology, and
a psychology entirely invented to serve its own utopia, as was done in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, perhaps in the twenty-first century we may finally recognize from its
account books that economics has the unique capacity to give a common language to hose
whose task is precisely to discover the best of the common worlds.
MORALISTS
- simple consequence of disappearance of the otion of external nature
- inanimism dissapears
- moralist go looking for excluded
- facilitate their reentry and accelerate
[ economy is theory of totality with easy exclusions ]
- without moralist we risk only seeing the collective from within