An axiom: Enjoyment is the primary form of being in the world. It is our currency, our investment in the world. Enjoyment is inescapable; investment is necessary. Let us say that enjoyment is the necessary and inescapable motivation for all human behaviour. We only do things because we find enjoyment in them. When we laugh, kill, write, eat, wallow in depression, smoke, exercise, rape, make love, steal, read, starve ourselves, protest, capitulate, worship, hate Republicans or create spreadsheets, we do so because of an unconscious investment of enjoyment in some element of the situation.
This enjoyment is necessary. Yet it is not directly encountered in any given act; what we encounter is the pleasure of reading or the misery of starvation. Enjoyment is always mediated through other affects.
A second axiom: While enjoyment itself is necessary, any given object of enjoyment is absolutely contingent. Because we are invested in some situations and objects and not others, enjoyment requires a correlate: boredom. Boredom is the absence of enjoyment. While enjoyment constitutes our point of view, our focus on an object, boredom constitutes our peripheral vision.
Enjoyment is the unconscious avatar of necessity, because at any given moment it appears impossible to change our investments. Boredom, on the other hand, is the unconscious avatar of contingency because it stands as a constant reminder that our point of view and investments are changeable. Objects of enjoyment are wholly fungible.
Yet, enjoyment and boredom are not absolutely symmetrical. While enjoyment constitutes our point of view and is framed by boredom, they are not simply correlates. Boredom is different from enjoyment in two ways: one quantitative, the other qualitative.
Quantitatively, it is easy to see how we are uninvested in and therefore bored by the greater part of the world. We enjoy elements of a situation, often and sadly enough the minimum number of elements required in order to maintain the situation. The rest sinks beneath our vision. Objects of enjoyment are a drop in the ocean of unnoticed objects.
Qualitatively, if we accept the idea that contingency is the proper name of being, then non-investment is not only the condition of enjoyment, it also completely undermines it. The world does not maintain an a priori ratio between contingency and necessity; contingency must be the a priori truth, while necessity is an a posteriori fiction.
In Part 2, Zizek's essay "Is It Still Possible to be a Hegelian Today?"
Showing posts with label Ethology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethology. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Poles Within Philosophy - A Manifesto of Sorts
I have an irresistible need to justify this addition of a new blog to the already vast collection of philosophy blogs. If I name the anxiety, does that mean I get a pass on the rather personal nature of what I'm about to write? Probably not, but the anxiety is bound up with the reasons for the creation of the blog, so it might as well be reflected on. Hopefully I will be able to demonstrate that there is a certain joy traveling hand-in-hand with said anxiety.
There are four poles that I find myself torn between. The tradition grinds against the creation of novel concepts, and personal ethics seem to conflict with the impersonal nature of coherent, productive concepts.
The first pairing is attached to one of the great conflicts in academia. The western philosophical tradition is massive, and carries extraordinary authority for good reason. If one is to engage with philosophy, there is no doubt one must carry with them a keen knowledge of the tradition. Exactly how does one go about producing the new without any knowledge of the old? One at least requires knowledge of what the problems are and how others have worked on them. Without this knowledge, one risks solipsism, a complete inability to engage others in dialogue. The other risk is banal repetition, a simple recreation of the wheel. What the tradition finally stands for is established excellence. Brilliant minds have produced brilliant works, and we must never cease measuring ourselves against them.
What must be resisted here is tradition-as-police. Sooner or later, one must speak in their own name - one cannot simply genuflect before greatness and consider this philosophy. What this finally means is that one must be willing to risk mediocrity - what else could it mean? We have to risk the (however justified or unjustified) disapproving stare of the patricians. This disapproving stare can take many forms: "You have misread X," "You haven't even read X," "Your concept has been done before, and done better." Surely these are far more withering criticisms than "you have contradicted yourself." Contradictions are bugs that can be stamped out; the risk that one is mediocre and perhaps displays a complete lack of talent are greater anxieties, at least for myself. But if philosophy is finally a praxis of creating concepts, I can't just linger around admiring the tradition.
As for the second pair, it is entirely native to philosophy. The title of this blog's shout-out to Spinoza is an attempt to capture it. Philosophy has long had a twin vocation - learning to die and/or live, and the establishment of intellectual norms (if not the actual production of knowledge). I think there is a tension here because I have the suspicion that Nietzsche is correct when he says every philosophy springs from a moral seed. It seems like there are two questions to be asked of any philosophy - one, what desire inhabits it? And two, is it true? The disappearance of the question of truth is an endlessly complex one, but we cannot forget that it is fairly new so far as the tradition is concerned.
When one creates a concept, it is entirely an ethical matter, ie an expression of human or inhuman desire? Or can we actually claim that philosophical concepts have an ability to hit upon the real? Here, I consider Spinoza's work to be exemplary - it is both an ethics and an ontology (marked by the coldly calculative nature of geometry). This is the sort of tradition I would like to find myself in.
So, these are the four coordinates I find myself thinking in. The will to risk mediocrity while measuring myself against greatness, and the attempt to create coldly impersonal concepts fused with ethical concerns. In practice, this will shake out into roughly four kinds of posts. Some posts will be a sort of apprenticeship - my attempts to figure out what the hell people like Badiou are saying. In other words, plain old commentary. Others will be explorations of concepts I personally favor. Ethology posts will be attempts to explore the desire inhabiting concepts, and finally, ethics posts will be where the rubber hits the road - the yolk of the egg.
There are four poles that I find myself torn between. The tradition grinds against the creation of novel concepts, and personal ethics seem to conflict with the impersonal nature of coherent, productive concepts.
The first pairing is attached to one of the great conflicts in academia. The western philosophical tradition is massive, and carries extraordinary authority for good reason. If one is to engage with philosophy, there is no doubt one must carry with them a keen knowledge of the tradition. Exactly how does one go about producing the new without any knowledge of the old? One at least requires knowledge of what the problems are and how others have worked on them. Without this knowledge, one risks solipsism, a complete inability to engage others in dialogue. The other risk is banal repetition, a simple recreation of the wheel. What the tradition finally stands for is established excellence. Brilliant minds have produced brilliant works, and we must never cease measuring ourselves against them.
What must be resisted here is tradition-as-police. Sooner or later, one must speak in their own name - one cannot simply genuflect before greatness and consider this philosophy. What this finally means is that one must be willing to risk mediocrity - what else could it mean? We have to risk the (however justified or unjustified) disapproving stare of the patricians. This disapproving stare can take many forms: "You have misread X," "You haven't even read X," "Your concept has been done before, and done better." Surely these are far more withering criticisms than "you have contradicted yourself." Contradictions are bugs that can be stamped out; the risk that one is mediocre and perhaps displays a complete lack of talent are greater anxieties, at least for myself. But if philosophy is finally a praxis of creating concepts, I can't just linger around admiring the tradition.
As for the second pair, it is entirely native to philosophy. The title of this blog's shout-out to Spinoza is an attempt to capture it. Philosophy has long had a twin vocation - learning to die and/or live, and the establishment of intellectual norms (if not the actual production of knowledge). I think there is a tension here because I have the suspicion that Nietzsche is correct when he says every philosophy springs from a moral seed. It seems like there are two questions to be asked of any philosophy - one, what desire inhabits it? And two, is it true? The disappearance of the question of truth is an endlessly complex one, but we cannot forget that it is fairly new so far as the tradition is concerned.
When one creates a concept, it is entirely an ethical matter, ie an expression of human or inhuman desire? Or can we actually claim that philosophical concepts have an ability to hit upon the real? Here, I consider Spinoza's work to be exemplary - it is both an ethics and an ontology (marked by the coldly calculative nature of geometry). This is the sort of tradition I would like to find myself in.
So, these are the four coordinates I find myself thinking in. The will to risk mediocrity while measuring myself against greatness, and the attempt to create coldly impersonal concepts fused with ethical concerns. In practice, this will shake out into roughly four kinds of posts. Some posts will be a sort of apprenticeship - my attempts to figure out what the hell people like Badiou are saying. In other words, plain old commentary. Others will be explorations of concepts I personally favor. Ethology posts will be attempts to explore the desire inhabiting concepts, and finally, ethics posts will be where the rubber hits the road - the yolk of the egg.
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