Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy?: A Critical Introduction and Guide

263 Pages·2016·18.312 MB·English

by  Jeffrey A. Bell

Deleuze and Guattari 's
What is Philosophy?
For my students
And for the opportunity ta learn they continue ta provide
... and ...
For Elizabeth, with love
Deleuze and Guattari 's
What is Philosophy?
A Critical Introduction
and Guide
JEFFREY A. BELL
EDINBURGH
University Press
BM0697002
©Jeffrey A. Bell, 2016
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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The right ofJ effrey A. Bell to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
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2003 (SI No. 2L198).
Contents
Acknowledgmen ts vi
In troduction 1
1. What is a Concept? 27
2. Why Philosophy? 60
3. How to Become a Philosopher 93
4. Putting Philosophy in its Place 123
5. Philosophy and Science 158
6. Philosophy and Logic 187
7. Philosophy and Art 214
Conclusion 238
Bibliography 248
Index 255
Acknowledgments
1 am grateful to Southeastern Louisiana University's College of
Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, and especially Dean Karen
-Fontenot, for having rewarded me with a Distinguished Teaching
Professorship that allowed for greater opportunities to work on this
book. Southeastern Louisiana University also supported this book
through multiple Research and Travel Grants that allowed me to
attend conferences and present this work while it was still in pro
gress. 1 am also grateful for the generous invitations 1 have received
to present this work, especially to Craig Lundy, Ian Buchanan, Paul
Patton, James Williams, Hanping Chiu, and Tatsuya Higaki. At
these events 1 received invaluable feedback on various early versions
of the chapters in this book. 1 am also thankful for the many con
versations 1 have had with scholars at other conferences and events
- Henry Somers-Hall, Brent Adkins, Dan Smith, Claire Colebrook,
Eugene Holland, Steven Shaviro,Joe Hughes, Eric Schliesser - and
most notably to John Protevi for his friendship and support. And
finally 1 am thankful for my students, and for the pressing ques
tions they ask that have forced me to find the clearest way possible
to express the thoughts and problelTIs that occupy the pages of this
book.
1 am grateful as weIl for the support of Edinburgh University
Press, especially to Carol Macdonald for her careful guidance and
unwavering support. The anonymous reader of this book provided
helpful comments, comments 1 incorporated and which have made
this book better than it would have been otherwise. And of course
1 am grateful to my wife, Elizabeth, and to my daughters, Leah and
Rebecca, for their continuing patience and support.
VI
Introduction
Deleuze and Guattari's VVhat is Philosophy? is a meditation on a life
well live d, and as such their book is to be placed in a long philo
sophical tradition. For Deleuze and Guattari, the value associated
with living life well is to be found in the nature of life itself rather
tha n in sorne purpose or end for which this life rnight be lived.
Aristotle can serve as our guide here, and especially Aristotle's
daim that a lite welllived, a self-sufficient life, as Aristotle puts Ît,
"is complete without any qualification [and] is that which is chosen
always for its own sake and never for the sake of something else."l
The standard for how to live well is thus not to be found in some
thing outside life, in sorne standard that transcends the nature of
life itself. Without a standard to apply to our particular lives and
the determinate situations within which we find ourselves, what
becomes necessary in order to live life weIl is that we develop a tas te
for what works; or, as Aristotle puts it, one is to live IHe with an "eye
on the mean and working towards it," rnuch as the "good artists do
their work" by attempting to create artworks where "nothing can be
subtracted from or added to them."2 Since there is no transcendent
standard to predetermine how an artist is to go about keeping "an
eye on the mean," the problem for Aristotle, and for Deleuze and
Guattari, as we will see, is to understand the nature of a life weIl
lived without calling upon standards that transcend life. A life well
lived is thus much like an irnprovisational work - it is to be played,
and played well' but without a score that tells one precisely what or
how it is to be played. Determining how, what, when, where, and in
what circumstances a lite is to be lived and lived well is the problem
that motivates Aristotle's discussions in his Nichomachean Ethics, and
1
Deleuze and Guattari's What is Philosophy?
it is the problern that motivates Deleuze and Guattari's efforts to
understand the nature of philosophy.
There is also an important, though perhaps surprising, conver
gence between Deleuze and Guattari's VVhat is Philosophy? and the
overarching concerns one finds in Bertrand Russell's 7he Problems
of Philosophy. In line with the Aristotelian daim that the value of a
life weIl lived is not to be found in anything other than the nature
of life itself, so too for Russell the value of philosophy is not to be
judged relative to any practical ends or goals philosophy rnay help
to bring about. Russell is quite forthright on this point when he
argues that a full appreciation of the value of philosophy requires
that we "first free our rninds from the prejudices of what are
wrongly called 'practical' rnen."3 For the "'practical' man," Russell
admits, it may be nearly irnpossible to convince him that "the study
of philosophy is not a waste of time," and it is the practical needs of
reducing "poverty and disease" that far outweigh the "goods of the
mind [wherein] the value of philosophy is to be found."4 In other
-words, unless philosophy is able to address problems and issues
unrelated to the nature ofphilosophy itself - reducing "poverty and
disease," for instance - then philosophy is of little use according to
the "'practical' man." It is only when such practical problems have
been solved, so the practical, goals-oriented person argues, that we
can then begin to turn towards the benefits philosophy might have
to offer. Yet even here philosophy is at a dear disadvantage, Russell
notes, for although philosophy strives to attain knowledge, the
effort is negligible for while "a mathematician, a mineralogist, a his
torian, or any other man of learning" can go on at length detailing
"what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science,"
the philosopher, by contrast, "will, if he is candid, have to confess
that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been
achieved by other sciences." In the realm of knowledge, therefore,
philosophy is also found lacking. It is no wonder, then, that philoso
phy is shunned as an impractical, useless enterprise.5
There is an important lesson to be drawn from Russell's obser
vation, Deleuze and Guattari will argue, though it is not the one
Russell draws. For Russell, the value of philosophy lies precisely in
the uncertainty brought about by' "philosophic contemplation," an
uncertainty that frees us from the "narrow and personal aims" of
the "instinctive man [who] is shut up within the cil-de of his private
interests" and perpetually at odds with "a great and powerful world
which must, sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins."6 Since
philosophie contemplation Vlews the world impartially, it do es
2
Introduction
not "divide the universe into two hostile camps - friends and foes,
helpful and hostile, good and bad,"7 and as a result philosophy is
entirely useless and impractical when perceived from the perspec
tive of our partial, private interests. For Deleuze and Gua ttari ,
however, "To say that the greatness of philosophy lies precisely
in its not having any use is a frivolous answer that not even young
people find arnusing any more" (WP 9/QP14).8 Their reasoning
for this is that while Russell, on the one hand, is right to argue that
philosophy is not to be confused with the sciences to the extent that
the sciences produce a "definite body of truths," Russell nonethe
less concludes that there is a greater use for philosophy insofar as
it is related to "the greatness of the objects which it contemplates."g
In other words, philosophy is held in abeyance to already existent
objects, albeit "great" objects, that undermine the limited and limit
ing perspectives that characterize one's private interests. It is this
view that Deleuze and Guattari will challenge.
For Deleuze and Guattari, however, philosophy is not a form
of contemplation, even a contemplation of great objects. They are
quite blunt on this point: "We can at least see what philosophy is
not: it is not contemplation, reflection, or communication" (WP 61
QP Il). The reason for this is that what is presupposed by the nature
of contemplation, reflection, and communication is the object that is
contemplated, reflected upon, or communicated, whereas philoso
phy, Deleuze and Guattari argue, does not presuppose any already
existent objects. As we will see throughout this book, Deleuze and
Guattari adhere to a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
(henceforth, PSR). For Deleuze and Guattari there must be a
reason that accounts for and explains the objects of contemplation,
reflection, and communication. As Deleuze and Guattari put it,
"The first principle ofphilosophy is that Universals explain nothing
but must themselves be eXplained" (WP 7/QP 12). Russell's calI for
philosophy to free us from our practical, useful interests by way of
contemplating "great" objects (Universals) does not account for
the nature of philosophy, for the nature of these "great" objects are
themselves in need of an explanation, and it is here that the PSR
becomes especially relevant. Given the importance of the PSR for
the reading of Deleuze and Gua ttari' s VVhat is Philosophy? tha twill be
offered here, let us clarify precisely the sense in which Deleuze, and
Deleuze and Guattari, can accurately be said to adopt this principle.
As traditionally understood, the PSR asserts that everything has
a cause or reason, and hence everything is intelligible and explica
ble in terms of its cause or reason. The PSR can be traced first to
3
Deleuze and Guattari 's "Vhat is Philosophy?
Spinoza. In his early text on Descartes, Spinoza argues that "Nothing
exists ofwhich it cannot be asked, what is the cause, orreason, why it
exists."lO And in his Ethics Spinoza again argues that "For each thing
there must be assigned a cause, or reason, as much for its existence
as for its nonexistence."l1 As Michael Della Rocca argues, Spinoza's
relentless adherence to the PSR leads Spinoza to affirm the intelligi
bility of everything.12 Leibniz will also adopt the PSR, and he will do
so explicitly in a number of places. In his Monadology, for instance,
Leibniz argues that the reasoning that guides his philosophy
is based upon two great principles: first, that of Contradiction ... And
second, the principle ofSufficientReason, in virtue ofwhich 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.13
For those familiar with the work of Deleuze, it may seem unten
able to saddle him with the PSR. There is good reason for this
skepticism, for it is Deleuze, after aIl, who daims that in Difference
-and Repetition he is developing a philosophy of difference that sets
out to understand difference in itself rather than a difference that
is mediated by or subordinate to determinate identities and facts.14
For Spinoza and Leibniz, however, it appears that the PSR entails
affirming the view that for every determinate fact or thing there
must be a determinate cause or reason why the fact or thing is the
way it is rather th an otherwise. In short, rather th an embrace a phi
losophy of difference as Deleuze sets out to do, it appears Spinoza
and Leibniz attempt to account not for difference in itself but for
the intelligibility of determinate facts, and it is in the pursuit of this
project that the PSR has a critical role to play.
We should take seriously, however, Deleuze's commitment to
continuing to work within the tradition of Spinoza and Leibniz.
As he wrote two books on Spinoza and another on Leibniz, we
should not be surprised to find that Deleuze adopts a number of
the moves that Spinoza and Leibniz made. Does this indude adopt
ing their adherence to the PSR? 1 would argue that indeed it does,
but with two important qualifications. First, for Deleuze it is criti
cal to recognize that Spinoza's and Leibniz's turn to the PSR was,
according to Deleuze, motivated first and foremost by their move
against Descartes. As Deleuze puts it in his first book on Spinoza,
Spinoza and Leibniz were part of the "Anticartesian reaction," and
this reaction is throughout, Deleuze adds, "a search for sufficient
reasons: a sufficient reason for infinite perfection, a sufficient
reason for darity and distinctness, and a sufficient reason, indeed,
4