If you’ve read their other works, it shouldn’t surprise how Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari conclude their final book, ‘What Is Philosophy?’. For them (201), most people are conformists. Why? Well, because life is easier that way. People are happy to repeat what others have said, over and over again, instead of trying to come up with something of their own. Now to be fair, it’s hard to blame people for that. They’ve been taught and incentivized to think that way, so it’s hardly surprising that they think that way.
Part of this is that thinking is difficult in the first place, as they (201) also point out. Coming up with ideas is hard. You don’t simply will an idea, like sitting in a chair, concentrating, and then, voila, it’s there. You need something to spark that idea. In their (201) words:
“We receive sudden jolts that beat like arteries.”
Then there’s the difficulty of grasping that idea and making it stick. Sometimes it’s like hmmm, what if, and then you are like, wait, but, hmmm, and it’s gone. Again, in their (201) words:
“We constantly lose our ideas.”
So, in summary, not only is it difficult to come up with anything new, a brand-new idea, but also to hold on to it long enough for you to formulate it properly, so that it makes sense, not only for you, but also for others. Oh, and it is frustrating. It’s similar to a tip of the tongue phenomenon, but it’s not that you can’t recall something, but rather that you fail to express it in the first place. It’s like a how to put it phenomenon. Then the conditions in which it hit you are gone and you are frustrate by that because you failed to put into words.
In contrast, just working with what you know, namely what you been taught, is way, way easier. It’s also way, way more comforting. You don’t have those fleeting moments and the frustration that follow if you cannot make sense of it in time. I think they (201) express this quite well:
“That is why we want to hang on to fixed opinions so much.”
Indeed. Thinking is difficult and rather frustrating. It’s just way, way easier not to think, to repeat what others have told you. For them (201), we rely on ready made ideas that are held in place, in relation to one another, through three rules: resemblance, contiguity and causality. They don’t explain these in this context, but, in short, resemblance is how this is understood as not its own thing, but as bearing resemblance to something else, contiguity is how this is understood as extending to this or that extent, whatever it may be, but not extending beyond it as that’s already something else, and causality is how this leads to that. The main thing here is that your thought is thus protected from “producing winged horse and dragons breathing fire”, as they (201-202) put it.
They (202) extend this from ideas to things, by which they mean thinking and the world that we live in. Anyway, to summarize the point they (202) make here, the order of ideas works the same way as the order of things, systematically, that is to say as a system, so that the way we make sense of sensations is not irregular. To riff on their (202) example, we are deeply troubled by cases where our expectations are not met: something light is supposed to be light, not heavy, and something has some color is supposed to have that color and not some other color. Simply put, we make sense of the present in terms of the past, as they (202) point out. It bothers us if the present cannot be made sense of in terms of the past and we’d rather not change our view of the world, what they (202) refer to here as an opinion of it.
I’ve explained this in previous essays as well, but, in short, here it’s worth noting that opinion refers to doxa (δόξα), as mentioned by them (79) elsewhere. It could also be translated as belief, like how orthodoxy has to do with true belief and heterodoxy has to do with a plurality of beliefs that challenge orthodoxy, as a dictionary, such as the Oxford English Dictionary will likely tell you (OED, s.v. “doxa”, n.):
“Opinion or belief; spec. the body of established or unquestioned attitudes or beliefs held generally within a particular society, community, group, etc.”
What’s also worth emphasizing here is that doxa is not just any opinion, just any belief, but a common or a popular opinion or belief. This is also how Pierre Bourdieu (164) defines it in the ‘Outline of a Theory of Practice’ as a belief that has been turned into truth, which then creates people’s sense of limits and fixes their sense of reality. What’s crucial here is that doxa is not the same as truth, but it is constituted as if were one and the same thing, as he (164) points out. In other words, we like to think that words correspond to things, even though they don’t.
This clarification should help you understand why Deleuze and Guattari (202) reckon that those opinions act as an umbrella and how that functions like a firmament that shields people from what’s beyond it. That’s what Bourdieu (164) means by sense of limits. That umbrella is like a dome, a firmament. That’s also what defines people’s sense of reality, as Bourdieu (164) would put it.
If their way of explaining this in reference to an umbrella doesn’t work for you, replace it with a bubble. We like to stay in a bubble and don’t like it when people burst our bubble. It’s fascinating really. When that bubble is burst, it’s not like people didn’t know there was something beyond the bubble, that world is, in fact, much, much more chaotic and complex than how it all is in our bubbles.
In line with Bourdieu (164), Deleuze and Guattari (79) want us to avoid thinking in terms of doxa, because it’s really about turning an opinion into truth. Oh, and as you might already guessed it, they (79) do reckon that Plato is to blame for this as it is his approach to truth:
“The philosophical problem thus consists in finding, in each case, the instance that is able to gauge a truth value of opposable opinions, either by selecting some as more wise than others or by fixing their respective share of the truth.”
Okay, before blaming Plato for this, they (79) actually blame Socrates for it:
“Such was always the meaning of what is called dialectic and that reduces philosophy to interminable discussion.”
It’s, of course, debatable whether they blame Socrates for it as much of what we know of Socrates is presented to us through the works of Plato, which is why it’s probably more like Plato’s fault than Socrates’ fault (although, I don’t know, nor do I care really). Anyway, what matters is that Plato they (79) do identify this with Plato:
“This can be seen in Plato, where universals of contemplation are supposed to gauge the respective value of rival opinions so as to raise them to the level of knowledge.”
That’s Plato for you, alright, always presupposing that he is right and others are wrong, as I’ve covered this in a previous essay. It’s seems to be unimaginable to him that he isn’t somehow special. If you want my take, it’s not that he thinks he is special, he just says so, so that he can then claim that he knows what’s what whereas others don’t. Why? Well, because, if successful, you don’t have to let the others speak. That way you eliminate your rivals, pre-emptively, as I’ve pointed out before.
While they (79-80) recognize that others have continued this tradition, in modified forms, some better, some worse, they reckon that dialectics is undermined by how it’s based on doxa, that commonly held opinion or belief, culminating in the search of Urdoxa, which is some, supposedly, higher, transcendent or universal opinion or belief. To be more specific, they (80) state that:
“The dialectic claims to discover a specifically philosophical discursiveness, but it can only do this by linking opinions together. It has indeed gone beyond opinion toward knowledge, but opinion breaks through and continues to break through. Even with the resources of an Urdoxa, philosophy remains a doxography.”
They (80) also don’t like how it becomes like a cult of personality, how what matters is reducible to reverence to whatever someone important, you know, like Plato, who treats thinking in terms of a school. In other words, one is expected to take their word, because they are great masters, even though, come on, that’s pretty daft. In their (80) words:
“[O]ne learns what each [person] thought without knowing why [that person] thought it … and that … solutions are reviewed without ever determining what the problem is … since the problem is only copied from the propositions that serve as its answer.”
So, firstly, there’s that reverence and, secondly, taking things for granted. That’s Plato’s secret sauce. He’s the man. He knows what’s what. He gives you answers, yes, but he simply takes for granted that there’s this problem and then we get to the answer, step by step, while anyone else he encounters never questions the premise.
To be clear, they (80) aren’t objecting to ideas or, as they prefer to call them, concepts, nor to treating them as solutions to problems, as that’s exactly what they do in their own works, but rather to taking any of it for granted. In other words, ideas are invented as solutions to problems. Okay. Fine. But problems are inventions and by this I don’t mean that people make up problems, even though they often do that, but rather that something is a problem inasmuch it is understood as such. Something isn’t inherently a problem. In short, something is only a problem inasmuch it is constituted as such, to this and/or that person, as they (80-81) point out. Similarly, something is only a solution inasmuch it solves a problem, to this and/or that person, as also noted by them (80-81).
To give you an example, the one they (81) use, ask yourself what is knowledge? Is it something that is gradually discovered, like piece by piece, like finding the pieces of a puzzle? Or is it something that produced? Well, their (81) answer to all that is that it all depends. But what does it depend on? Their (81) answer is to that is that it depends on the image of thought in question, by which they mean the way we think, and the conceptual persona in question, by which they mean the person that best exemplifies the image of thought. To be clear, a conceptual persona is not an actual person, someone who exists in the physical world, as they (3) point out. Instead, a conceptual persona exists as “a presence that is intrinsic to thought” as this “living category”, this “transcendental live reality”, as they (3) go on to add.
To further clarify what they mean by such conceptual personae, they use philosophers as examples. For them (3-4), Plato’s conceptual persona is friend, if not lover, not of other people but of ideas, forms or essences, or, more broadly speaking, that of wisdom. That’s the etymology of the word philosopher, someone who loves wisdom, as acknowledge by them (4).
It may seem strange that there’s this friend who isn’t a friend of others, but of wisdom. Why? Well, it’s, how to put it, self-congratulatory. There’s this claim to wisdom, which makes the friend really the claimant to it, as they (4) point out. But what about others, those who we’d typically consider friends? They are also claimants, but for the friend, who is also the claimant, they are rivals, as noted by them (4).
To be clear, they (5) are also friends of concepts as that’s what philosophy is for them. In their (5) view, philosophers create concepts, so, indeed, they are their friends:
“Because the concept must be created, in refers back to the philosopher as the one who has it potentially, or who its the power and competence.”
That said, this doesn’t mean that they equate themselves with Plato. No, no. They are not claiming to have access to concepts, as in like knowing the truth. They (5) are very clear about this:
“Concepts are not waiting for us ready-made, like heavenly bodies. There is no heaven for concepts. They must be invented, fabricated, or rather created and would be nothing without their creator’s signature.”
So, yes, as philosophers, they are friends of concepts, but, for them, friendship is not reducible to being a friend of concepts. While you may consider others as your rivals, in the sense that they work on the same things, sure, but that rivalry fair and square. No shenanigans.
You can find Deleuze address this issue specifically in ‘To Have Done with Judgment’, as included in ‘Essays Critical and Clinical’. Plato’s friendship with concepts is what Deleuze (127) refers to as a matter judgment. His and Guattari’s way of thinking about friendship is not a matter of judgment, but a matter of combat, to use the term he (132) uses in that essay. To summarize the main point here, you can still rival others, just as they can rival you, and that’s actually a good thing. That’s combat for you. The strongest wins. No judges. No referees. No third-party arbiters. That does sound violent, if not brutal, and, in a way, it is. That said, to rival others, to fight against them, you must first fight yourself, to come to terms with yourself, or, as he (132) explains it, to engage in combat-against, you must first engage in combat-between.
Now, of course, Deleuze isn’t talking about physical violence. He’s talking about life in general. So, to reiterate a crucial point here, in his and Guattari’s view, clashing views are resolved through rivalry and not through the elimination of rivalry. Think of this in terms of a parliament. There are different views and the strongest will prevail. It’s not a matter of who’s right and who’s wrong, really, no matter how you try to make it come across as such. There’s no judge or judges, no referee or referees, who, after taking all views into consideration, choose the right course of action.
That’s Plato’s dream though. He is all about judgment. He’s exactly that claimant that Deleuze and Guattari (4) refer to, that person who claims to be the friend of wisdom, i.e., to know the truth, and then proceeds to do his best to make sure that anyone who thinks otherwise, anyone who might challenge him, i.e., the other claimants, his rivals, are not allowed to speak in the parliament or are kept outside of it.
Why does Plato do that then? Well, because he is clever. You have to give him that. He’s clever all right. He is well aware that in combat it’s the strongest that wins. He knows that while he might win, it’s not guaranteed. That’s why. It’s just convenient work that way, to rig the game, so that, in the end, you’ll always win, as opposed to just playing the game.
There are, of course, many conceptual personae. I’ll give you some examples. To stay on Plato, they (63) note that Socrates is his main conceptual persona. Now, Socrates is, of course, also the same as the friend, as it is Socrates who goes on and on about this and/or that, while never really engaging with the others. Linked to this, they (83) note that, for Friedrich Nietzsche, there’s the conceptual persona of the priest that is tied to the concept of bad faith, as well as to an image of thought that is haunted by nihilism. Nietzsche’s (64) main conceptual persona was, however, the Antichrist, Dionysus, or Zarathustra, which is very much the exact opposite of the priest.
Then there’s René Descartes, to whom they (61-62) link the conceptual persona of the idiot and the related concept of Cogito, as well the image of thought that precedes them, the one in which it is taken for granted that “[e]veryone can think; everyone wants the truth.” They (62-63) also credit Fyodor Dostoyevsky for flipping the idiot on its head, so that the conceptual persona is still an idiot, as much as it is previously, but for the exact opposite reason, not for taking things for granted, but for not taking anything for granted, so that you move from fundamental certainty to fundamental doubt.
To be clear, conceptual personae are not characters, like literary characters, albeit they are similar in some respect, as the two (63) point out. For example, the character of Socrates is really just Plato and whatever Socrates says, Plato’s views, is presented in a positive light, whereas his interlocutors and what they say, view’s opposing Plato’s views, are presented in a negative light, as explained by them (63). A conceptual persona, here Socrates, is, however, more than that, as noted by them (63). It’s like the driving force behind that, the who one ties in the image of thought, here that of Platonism, and the concept of the Platonic form, idea or essence. So, the conceptual persona of Plato’s Socrates deals with not only Plato’s views, what his philosophy supports, but also his opponents’ views, what his philosophy is rejects, but, of course, from the point of view of Plato, as they (63) point out.
They (64) also clarify that conceptual personae does not represent their creators, the philosophers, but rather the other way around. In other words, it is the creator who is marked by these conceptual personae. More simply put, they are one and the same thing, heteronyms or pseudonyms, which is why they (64) reckon that the aforementioned big names might as well have signed their works using the names of their personae: Descartes as the idiot, Nietzsche as the Antichrist, Dionysus or Zarathustra and Plato as the friend, the priest, or Socrates.
Each person can also have multiple conceptual personae, not just one conceptual persona, even though usually one of them is them is much more prominent than others. This is why they (64) state that the way that these conceptual personae come together in a person is idiosyncratic. In their view, they (64-65) speak through people, so that people, as individuals, are rather collective assemblages of enunciation, so that, in the end, what we keep saying, like all the time, the ‘I’, is nothing but a third person, by which they mean someone else who speaks through us.
To clarify that idiosyncrasy, we need to go back to the positive and negative characters. So, in summary, there are the conceptual personae who are presented in a positive light, and then ones that are presented in a negative light, what they (65) also call the sympathetic and the antipathetic conceptual personae. This simply means that someone like Socrates is a sympathetic conceptual persona for Plato, but an antipathetic conceptual persona for Nietzsche, as acknowledged by them (65). To be clear, Nietzsche wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense if his work didn’t also include the views he opposed.
To go back to the start, no, not that of the book, but that of this essay, which deals with the end of the book, not its beginning, the two turn their attention to science (which, to be clear, is largely presented as natural science). They (207) differentiate between sciences and pseudosciences. The former accounts for change, whereas the latter does not as they rely on “an entire logic of the recognition of form”, by which they (207) mean that the latter is, in fact, a kind of Platonism as there’s this belief that science uncovers how things truly are, you know like Plato’s fixed forms, ideas or essences, and not just how we think they are.
To expand on the former, i.e., on their conception of science, they (117) note elsewhere that science deals with functions or, rather, with functives. Just in case you are wondering, unless I’m entirely mistaken, they borrow these terms from Louis Hjelmslev’s work, which I’ve discussed in previous essays.
To make more sense of the terms, they (118) point out that science needs to account for chaos, what we could also just call change. That is not, however, to be understood as change from one state to another state, like going from A to B, or C, or the like. Similarly, chaos is not an absence or nothingness, as emphasized by them (118). Instead, what they (118) refer to as chaos is a virtual something, but not actual something. It “contain[s] all possible particles and draw[s] out all” that is potential, all the “possible forms, which spring up only to disappear immediately, without consistency or reference, without consequence. To be clear, what they (118) refer to here as possible is, rather, potential, in the sense that something virtual does not pertain to existing possible forms, nor to non-existing possible forms, like in a list from A to Z, but to infinite possible forms that only appear inasmuch as they appear, without any insistence of distinct, pre-existing, eternal forms, of which are present while others are not present, for whatever reasons. In other words, for them (118), “[c]haos is an infinite speed of birth and disappearance.”
They (118) contrast the way chaos is approached in philosophy and science. For the former, they (118) state that:
“[P]hilosophy wants to know how to retain infinite speeds while gaining consistency, by giving the virtual a consistency specific to it. The philosophical sieve, as plane of immanence that cuts through the chaos, selects infinite movements of thought and is filled with concepts formed like consistent particles going as fast as thought.”
For the latter, they (118) state that:
“Science approaches chaos in a completely different, almost opposite way: it relinquishes the infinite, infinite speed, in order to gain a reference able to actualize the virtual.”
In other words, the former is interested in the virtual, whereas the latter is interested in the actual or, rather the actualization of the virtual as the actual. Moreover, the former operates on the plane of consistency, siding with the virtual, i.e., chaos, whereas the latter operates on the plane of reference, siding with the actual, as noted by them (118). It is then the actualization that happens through functions, as they (118) point out. This does not, however, mean that philosophy deals exclusively with the virtual, nor that science deals exclusively with the actual, as otherwise the former would lack all reference, having form, whatsoever, and the latter would be simply static, lacking that formation of the form, if you will.
What does science do then? Well, for them, it’s all about slowing down the process, to a temporary halt, so that we can make sense of the actualization of the virtual through the actual. In their (118) words:
“In the case of science it is like a freeze-frame. It is a fantastic slowing down, and it is by slowing down that matter, as well as the scientific thought able to penetrate it with propositions, is actualized.”
This leads to their (118) definition of functions:
“A function is a Slow-motion.”
So, the point here is that science focuses on those actual instances, in hope of understanding how they’ve actualized. It’s like how did this become this, and not that, while being aware this is, in fact, this only for the time being.
To do what it does, to operate on the plane of reference, science needs to set a limit, which, in turn, can be understood as forming the constant as the limit is that cannot be exceeded, as noted by them (118). That results in designating a constant-limit, as they (119) call it. Everything actual is thus viewed as finite and subject to that constant, that limit, as they (119) go on to elaborate. It all must also operate within a system of coordinates, so that this has these coordinates, that that has these other coordinates, and their relationship is then based on those coordinates, as stated by them (119). This means that there’s an internal limit, an endoreference, and an external limit, an exoreference, as they (119) point out.
So, to account for functions again, they are what connect one thing to another thing, this actualized thing with another actualized thing, as noted by the two (119). This is where numbers become important, in the sense that you have one and another, which is another one, of course, as discussed by them (119).
This also leads us to functives, which they (118) exemplify with that limit and the variables formed within that limit. The functives are then whatever are connected by the functions, as explained by Hjelmslev (35-36) in his ‘Prolegomena to a Theory of Language.
The reference, as in that reference in the plane of reference, is the “relationship between the values of the variable or … with the limit”, as mentioned by them (118). Here it’s worth noting that they are not stating references as this and/or that, but rather as in reference to … which is why it’s a relationship and not a thing.
What’s the problem with science then? Isn’t this all good? Well, yes, it’s all good for them, if you define it the way they do. But the problem is that it’s not that often defined in this way. They (119) explain that slightly differently:
“Science is haunted not by its own unity but by the plane of reference constituted by all the limits or borders through which it confronts chaos. It is these borders that give the plane its references. As for the system of coordinates, they populate or fill out the plane of reference itself.”
In other words, the problem is that science mistakes the plane of reference and what it contains, as defined through a system of coordinates, for reality. In short, it mistakes a way of understanding reality with reality itself. This then leads to thinking of reality in terms of limits and constants, even though they’ve been put into place only for the sake of convenience. They (125) summarize this problem quite neatly:
“Finally, the relationship of science with philosophy is less of a problem than that of its even more passionate relationship with religion, as can be seen in all the attempts at scientific uniformization and universalization in the search for a single law, a single force, or a single interaction.”
Agreed. That said, this doesn’t mean that science is doomed, as they (125) go on to point out:
“But what constantly reaffirms the opposition of science to all religion and, at the same time, happily makes the unification of science impossible is the substitution of reference for all transcendence.”
Indeed, science does manage to undermine itself, like all the time, which is, ironically, what keeps it from turning into religion. Now, to be clear, science is a lot like religion, inasmuch it aspires to be like one, and much of it does aspire to be like one when it proclaims to uncover the truth and provide knowledge of the truth. So, yeah, it’s more like it can and does function like a religion, but, strictly speaking, it isn’t. Anyway, think of the paradigm shifts. They point to us that it’s not that we get to that truth and knowledge, but rather that we produce truth and knowledge, which is that plane of reference, according to the limits and constants that are set by us, for that plane of reference, until it’s swapped for another plane of reference, as they (125) go on to add:
“It is the functional correspondence of the paradigm with a system of reference that, by determining an exclusively scientific way in which the figure must be constructed, seen, and read through functives, prohibits any infinite religious utilization of the figure.”
They (128-129) further comment on this, how this works, through the counterpart of conceptual personae, the partial observers. To be clear, they (129-130) call these observers partial not because their knowledge of the world is limited, nor because their observation is marked by opinion or belief, but because the paradigm, i.e., that plane of reference, in question makes the partial. In their (130) words:
“[A] well-defined observer extracts everything that it can, everything that can be extracted in the corresponding system. In short, the role of a partial observer is to perceive and to experience, although these perceptions and affections are not those of [the observer], in the currently accepted sense, but belong to the things studied.”
In terms of philosophy, as understood by them, it is the image of thought, the way we think or, rather, the way we’ve come to think, that makes us partial.
How is this connected to landscape and/or discourse then? Well, you need a certain image of thought for landscape to be a thing or, for it to be a thing in the way it is these days, as this visual thing. If we follow Deleuze and Guattari’s views on this, science is not to be blamed for that. It’s not even a thing in science, at least not in natural sciences, so I can’t even blame them for that. It’s more of a side product, really. If you want me to blame someone, well, I’m more than happy to blame Plato.
Scientists, the ones aspiring to objectivity through, supposedly, impartial observation, do, however, tend to miss the point. If I investigate a certain landscape and some event that is tied to it, there is no objectivity, nor subjecitivity to it. Why? Well, because all observers are partial observers. So, a there’s rather a collective view that prevails, as largely defined by the various discourses that speak through us. That’s why it is impossible to provide an objective account, but it would equally be impossible to provide a subjective account. It is therefore always a partial account, if you will, and not because the account is ignorant, lacking in knowledge, nor because it is whimsical, decided there and then, but because we are always constrained by our sense of limits, that sense of reality that Bourdieu (164) mentions.
It is also difficult to explain this to people, thanks to that sense of limits, that sense of reality, what we could also refer to as doxa. People think you’ve lost your marbles when you tell them that they see the world in a certain way, which isn’t a way that they’ve chosen, but rather a way that they’ve been inoculated with, and when you add to that how problematic that way of making sense of the world really is.
This compounds with how difficult it is to change how people think, to move from one image of thought to another or, to put it another, to reconsitute that plane of immanence. If only it were a matter that’s solvable at the plane of reference. That would make things a lot easier. But it’s not. It’s not enough to indicate to people that it’s all about the linear perspective and how it has this history.
I’ve tried to explain this, how landscape works, the way Deleuze and Guattari explain it, together and/or on their own, to people, at times avoiding using the terms they use, to see if that helps, but it just, well, almost never gets across. It’s like they can get it, kind of, only to forget about it almost immediately, which means that they really don’t get it. Oh, and I’m not blaming them, really. It is extremely difficult to change the way they think, from like ground up, you know, in terms of that plane of immanence, but that’s the thing, that’s exactly why landscape matters, why it functions the way it functions and no one does anything about it.
References
- Bourdieu, P. ([1972] 1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice (R. Nice, Trans.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
- Deleuze, G. ([1993] 1998). To Have Done with Judgment (M. A. Greco, Trans.). In G. Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical (D. W. Smith and M. A. Greco, Trans.) (pp. 126–135). London, United Kingdom: Verso.
- Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari ([1980] 1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
- Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari ([1991] 1994). What Is Philosophy? (H. Tomlinson and G. Burchell, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
- Hjelmslev, L. ([1943] 1953). Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (F. J. Whitfield). Baltimore, MD: Waverly Press.
- Oxford English Dictionary Online (n. d.). Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.