Fido the Yak

"Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about" (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, No. 203).

"The way up and the way down is one and the same" (Heraclitus, DK 60).

When we follow a path do we follow an image of the path or do we feel the path directly without any mediation of the imagination? I mean our everyday experience of following a path. Although we are able to immediately feel something that could be called a path, provisionally, awareness of such immediate feelings tends to be extraordinary. We can cultivate divergence from the image of the path, just as we, in most cases without clear awareness, cultivate a convergence upon the image of the path. In either case perhaps we walk a path our imagination has laid out for us. (Yes, we can speak of not walking a path as irrealization of a(nother) path, as well as as an irrealization of walking a path, i.e. the path allows itself to be not-walked, or irreally walked, in multiple ways. Walking is a labyrinth of paths....) In a real and vibrant sense we walk in our imagination. Is this walking in our imagination a parallel walking, a walking that walks alongside actual walking? (Does such a parallelism–representation as such–only appear as an artefact of philosophical reflection, whereas in the raw walking and walking in our imagination are one?) Is this walking in our imagination what should be meant by saying "walking"? Or is it something else entirely? You tell me.

I'm of the opinion that mostly our abilities, the bulk of our abilities, are dormant. We don't feel the need to break paths, so we don't. Is sleep an ability? Should we be able to sleep our way into the breaking of a path? How else? What would lack of preparation have to do with breaking paths? Quick. Extemporize extemporization.

When we're following a path are we making good use of our imagination? Do we imagine in accordance with an image of the imagination? We should feel exhilarated by our imagination. Could it really be imagination itself that would keep us from feeling exhilarated by our imaginative exercises? Sometimes I realize that all my images are dull. That sucks.

"The way up and the way down is one and the same."

"Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about."

Labels: habit, Heraclitus, imagination, improvisation, labyrinths, spontaneity, wandering, Wittgenstein

posted by Fido the Yak at 1:13 PM. 2 comments

Is there such a thing as a bad hexis? If not then hexis should no longer be translated as "habit" or even as "disposition." In the Theatetus, maybe the loveliest work of ancient Greek thought, Socrates uses the word hexis in two parts of the dialogue. In the second instance (197b) he says hexis means something like holding, as in holding knowledge immediately as opposed to owning knowledge and keeping it tucked away, like pigeons or the like in an aviary in fact. The first time he says hexis (153b) he means something like being in shape. He asks whether the bodily hexis is destroyed by idleness and preserved by exercise. And he asks about the hexis of the soul, whether the soul is preserved through learning and practice and whether through idleness it forgets what it has learned and learns nothing. The concept here is like a hold or fastness or even constitution in one of its senses, which is a translation one encounters, although one can speak of a sickly constitution; I'm not sure one could speak of a sickly hexis. Assuming I'm correct, and there are yet a few reasons to think I might not be, I sort of admire the Greeks for not imagining a bad hexis or an ugly hexis.

Labels: beauty, habit, hexis, Socrates

posted by Fido the Yak at 9:22 AM. 2 comments

Deleuze (Empiricism and Subjectivity, p. 63) gives us the following quote from Hume's Treatise on Human Nature (Part III, Section VII): "We advance, rather than retard our existence." This is a thought to keep in mind as we explore Deleuze's discussion of habit in the third chapter of Empiricism and Subjectivity, "The Power of Imagination in Ethics and Knowledge." A couple of preliminary considerations are in order. Firstly, I will not be taking a strong stand here against the existence of repetition, but rather I will argue against a preemptive belief that we know what repetition is or that we know how to talk about it. Secondly, it will be necessary to return to the this topic at a later date, for example in relation to the habitus according to Bourdieu and also according to Deleuze's later work. And thirdly, since we are dealing with an early work of a philosopher whose thinking on the problem of repetition became even more embryonic (and also rhizomic) in later works, we should acknowledge that Deleuze felt that only some of the thoughts expressed in this early work were worth pursuing, and in any case we are not dealing with his last word on the topic.

In Difference and Repetition, if you will recall, Deleuze says that repetition is imaginary, or to be exact, "repetition is itself in essence imaginary, since the imagination here alone here forms the 'moment' of the vis repetitiva from the point of view of constitution: it makes that which it contracts appear as elements or cases of repetition" (p. 76, my emphasis). Though Deleuze's thinking here on the problem of habit has been elaborated (involving contraction through passive synthesis), his concern with its relation to the imaginary picks up on a theme from his study of Hume. The imaginary is not to be confused with the unreal or the untrue. Deleuze says that "culture is a false experience, but it is also a true experiment" (Empiricism and Subjectivity, p. 62). This is a key to interpreting his thinking about habit.

The imagination is not cold but impassioned. The passions are reflected in the imagination, and at the same time, the imagination extends the passions. The imagination is affected. It "reflects affection, and affection resounds inside the mind" (p. 59). This is the basis of a complex effect, a "reflection on a previous reflection" that we can identify with culture (pp.60-61). Deleuze asks, "what is the simple relation between the imagination and the passions which will permit the latter to develop inside the former a complex effect" (p. 63)? He answers his own question:

The modes of association give the ideas possible reciprocal relations, while the qualities of the passions give the relations a direction and a sense; they attribute them with a reality, a univocal movement, and hence with a first term. The self, for example, is the object of pride and humility in virture of a natural and original property which confers a tendency or a disposition upon the imagination. The idea, or rather the impression of the self, focuses the mind.

(p. 63, Deleuze's emphasis, my bold)

Is habit primarily confered? Is repetition? Does the advancement of existence occur naturally, or do we advance it by practice, or by the bestowal of disposition mediated by properties? Does existence advance by repetition? Let's look further at what Deleuze has to say.

"[A]ssociation links ideas in the imagination; the passions give a sense to these relations, and thus they provide the imagination with a tendency" (p. 63). So does Deleuze mean that the ultimate source of habit the passions as reflected in the imagination, and not the imagination itself? Perhaps not, since habit, in the form of culture, has to do with a complex effect, a reflection upon a reflection. However, culture is only one manifestation of habit. We may also have to deal with a natural habit, in which case it may be that Deleuze is saying that the passions are the source of habits, of tendencies and dispositions. And yet, he has already said that we are dealing qualities of the passions, or a natural and original property. What is the source of a quality?

Deleuze says, "the imagination follows the tendency which the passions give it; the relation that they suggest, by becoming univocal, has been made real. It is a simple component part, a circumstance of the passions" (pp. 63-64). Now we can talk about tendency in two senses, an original sense that pertains to the passions, and a secondary sense that pertains to the imagination which follows the passions.

[W]e must designate every determined degree of habit as a probability, without forgetting that probability presupposes habit as a principle. This presupposition is based on the fact that each degree of habit is, in relation to an object, the mere presumption of the existence of another object, like the one which habitually accompanies the first object. The paradox of habit is that it is formed by degrees and also that is a principle of human nature.

(p. 66, Deleuze's emphasis, my bold)

So Deleuze is saying here that habit is based on a presumption of likeness. This would be markedly different from his later work if he let it stand at that. However, he doesn't let it stand. Not exactly. He says:

[H]abit is a principle different from experience, although it also presupposes it. As a matter of fact, the habit I adopt will never by itself explain the fact that I adopt a habit; a repetition will never by itself form a progression. Experience causes us to observe particular conjunctions. Its essence is the repetition of similar cases.

(p. 67, Deleuze's emphasis, my bold)

So far, so problematical. The essence of experience is repetition on the basis of likeness, a presumption that things exist in likewise fashion? Once again, Deleuze says:

Repetition by itself does not constitute progression, nor does it form anything. The repetition of similar cases does not move us forward, since the only difference between the first case and the second case is that the second case comes after the first, without displaying a new idea.

(p. 67, my emphasis)

(I mean to underline Deleuze's idealism here, an interpretation which many scholars vehemently reject.) It would seem that we cannot link repetition to existence directly. However, there may still be another way of conceptualizing repetition even in this early work. Deleuze says, "habit is experience, insofar as it produces the idea of an object by means of the imagination and not by means of the understanding. Repetition becomes a progression, or even a production, when we no longer see it in relation to the objects repeated, because, if we do, it changes, discovers and produces nothing" (p. 68). So might there be a kind of repetition that becomes a progression, a repetition in step with the advancement of existence? In Difference and Repetition this kind of repetition is to be found in the eternal return, an idea I cannot fully embrace. But let's pause here on this notion of a bifurcation of repetition, the one branch leading to repetition of the like which can never be a progression, the other branch not being in relation to repeated objects. Does this second form of repetition deserve the name "repetition"? Or rather, are we beginning to see a problem of repetition, even a possibility that it might not exist?

Deleuze says that "habit can feign or evoke a false experience" (p. 69). It can create "phantoms of belief" like language(p. 70). More strongly, he says that "[h]abit is a principle which cannot invoke experience without falsifying it, or without, at the same time, invoking fictitious repetitions" (p 71). Are we justified in asking whether there any other kind of repetitions besides fictitious repetititions? Finally, Deleuze says that "habit is not, in itself and by itself, confined to the reptition of cases observed within experience, since other repetitions can form it equally well" (p. 72).

Do we have here a notion of repetition that is so utterly divorced from existence and from experience (or rather, tied to such an idealized vision of experience) that nothing can be salvaged from it? Or do we accept a broadening of our understanding of the imagination, and also the promise of a repetition that has not yet earned its name? Well, I'm not sure what to make of Deleuze's reading of Hume. I am withholding judgement on the question of repetition.

Labels: Deleuze, habit, Hume, passions, repetition

posted by Fido the Yak at 8:42 AM. 28 comments

The equivalence between showing itself and giving itself is not a mere opinion according to Marion, but a "theoretical necessity" (p. 119). However, there is something that may be said to be given without appearing which Marion is not thinking at this point: the I. If one were to accept whole hog the argument in Reduction and Givenness that nothingness, which may stand in for the nonbeing of the I, appears in the existential mood of profound boredom, would this nullify the argument that I is given without appearing? In my mind this is far from settled.

Following Husserl ("Individual Being of every sort is, quite universally speaking, 'contingent' [zulfällig]," Ideas, § 2, translation modified by Marion's translator, Kosky), Marion elaborates three modes of the contigency of the phenomenon. Is is possible that the I appears in any of these modalities? First it will be useful to clarify what Marion means by contingency. He says:

Before meaning the mere opposite of the necessary, contingent says what touches me, what reaches me and therefore arrives to me (according to the Latin) or (according to the German) what "falls like that," therefore "falls upon me from above." The phenomenon appears to the degree to which first it goes, pushes, and extends as far as me (it becomes contiguous with me; it enters into contact with me) so as to then affect me (act on me, modify me). No phenomenon can appear without coming upon me, arriving to me, affecting me as an event that modifies my field (of vision, of knowledge, of life, it matters little here).

(Being Given, p. 125)

It seems that I (at least as me) will have to be a necessity rather than a contingency, notwithstanding Marion's objections to this kind of argument. Nevertheless, I will review Marion's three modes of contingency to see whether the I might be able to slip in as a contingency. Of the three modes of contingency, Marion says, "These three characteristics (arriving, for the known and subsistent object; coming upon me, for manipulable equipment; imposing itself on me, for habitual phenomena) define, schematically at least, the contingency of what appears insofar as it touches me" (p. 130). It's possible, I think, for the I to appear in any of these modes, but at the same time the I must already be there, as far as me, so to speak. It must be first given.

Still, might the I be essentially given in any of these modes of contingency? Of the three, the mode that pertains to habitual phenomena seems like the most interesting possibility. This can't really be consistent with Marion's analysis. Speaking of habitual phenomena, phenomena that impose themsleves upon me, Marion says:

These phenomena... share one exceptional property: I no longer remain simply outside them, as if faced with what is an object to me, at the distance of intentionality and manipulation; rather, they happen to me or arrive over me like what successively shelters me, embraces me, and distracts me–in short, imposes on me. I can enter and yield to them or withdraw and exit them; but in all cases I must inhabit them or (what amounts to the same thing) be exiled. On principle, I must habituate myself to them. I call these phenomena habitual phenomena. Habit does not mean that they function longer than the others (some of them are signalled by their brevity and incessant changing), but essentially that we must habituate ourselves to them. Habituating ourselves to them sometimes implies taking the time to accustom ourselves to them (thus renouncing having ourselves make them) and always finding the right attitude, the correct disposition, the hexis or the habitus that helps resist them, behave in relation to them, use them, eventually understand them.

(p. 130, emphasis Marion's)

If the I is not something already given prior to its being able to be given as phenomenon, is it then not precisely something that we come to inhabit (or, alternatively, come to be exiled from)? To be clear, this is not the reading Marion suggests. (I will keep you posted on how he finally comes to talk about the givenness of the I.) It's problematical because it's hard to think how the I could happen to me without my having already been there to begin with. The other alternative, however, is to admit that the I is not given as a phenomenon, and therefore Marion is incorrect to claim that giving itself and showing itself are equivalent. It's difficult, therefore, not to read Marion against Marion on this point.

Update. Marion does come out and say, following Husserl, that "Only the consciousness-region of the I makes an exception to contingency" (pp. 137-138). It must be concluded therefore, without doubt, that in Marion's analysis the I neither shows itself nor gives itself. Yet Marion will ask, "What would become of the subject if he were determined only according to givenness?" (p. 188). Hmm.

Labels: egology, habit, Marion, phenomenology

posted by Fido the Yak at 1:42 PM. 1 comments

Here's a dilemma. Trigg says "the dynamic stasis that conceived silence presupposed the act of remembrance bewteen what is now and what was then" (The Aesthetics of Decay, p. 21). He later says, "the disruption of memory derives from the imprint of silence upon consciousness, already determined by violence" (p. 28). A bit of clarification will help to dissolve the apparent contradiction, but it will come with the danger of exposing a deeper dilemma.

By "disruption of memory" Trigg means the disruption of "historic consciousness" by what Proust calls the "involuntary memory." He also speaks, following Bergson, of the disruption of the equilibrium between "habit memory" and "spontanenous recollection," a disruption of "everyday consciousness" that the spontaneous recollection engenders (pp. 22-23). At this point we could say that the act of rememberance presupposed by the dynamic stasis that conceived silence is a matter of habit memory, but I'm not sure it's that easy.

Trigg says, "The experience of consciousness is founded in [the] act of selective rememberance. In experiencing my context, I do so with orientation to the memories that have preceded me" (p. 22). If experience is esemplastically "my experience," it is so because of memory. And yet, Trigg writes that in his analyis of "memory as haunted," the unity of historic consciousness is no longer certain. "In its place, an awareness of the fragmented, incomplete and ruined structure of consciousness materializes" (p. 29). Again, we could say that habit memory renders experience esemplastic while spontaneous recollection leads to fragmentation. However, Trigg does not explicitly make this equation, and even if he did, there is the question of why these two types of memory should represent gradients of a single faculty. So finally, how is it possible that my experience could be uncanny, and yet how could it be otherwise? How do we allow for silences?

Labels: Bergson, experience, habit, memory, Trigg, Unheimlichkeit

posted by Fido the Yak at 10:39 AM. 1 comments

Henry's phenomenological body is both spontaneity and habit: spontaneity insofar as it is absolute subjectivity, and habit insofar as is it a power of repetition. It is also memory, but memory of a peculiar kind: "it is because the body is memory, a memory, it is true, where the idea of the past does not yet arise, that it can also be a memory which remembers the past by making it the theme of its thought. The original memory of our body is habit, our body is, as we have said, the totality of our habits" (Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, p. 101). For Henry, habit means the "real and concrete being of the ontological possibility." He says, "With regard to the world, it is the terminus of all our habits, and it is in this sense that we are truly its inhabitants. To inhabit, to frequent the world, such is the fact of human reality" (p. 96). (NB: I think "terminus" here has a specifically Biranian meaning.)

To frequent the world. Hmm. Here's a thesis that may clarify exacly where Henry is coming from: "Things are never present to the body in an experience which would bear within it the characteristic of having to be unique; rather they are always given to us as something which we will see again" (pp. 95-96). Always? That seems a little iffy. It does seem, though, to be the nature of the habitual.

One consequence of Henry's radical present, the realm of pure possibility, is that the faculty of assuefaction, to use Grassi's language, does not appear to be a problem for him. Habit is only ontological possibility, and the question of the acquisition of habits is neither here nor there.

Labels: body, Grassi, habit, Henry, Maine de Biran, memory, phenomenology

posted by Fido the Yak at 10:56 AM. 0 comments

Under the heading "Thought tends to personal form" William James offers the following insight (from Principles of Psychology: Chapter IX, The Stream of Thought):

The universal conscious fact is not "feelings and thoughts exist," but "I think" and "I feel." No psychology, at any rate, can question the existence of personal selves. The worst a psychology can do is so to interpret the nature of these selves as to rob them of their worth.

By personal selves, James means "organized selves with a memory, habits, and sense of their own identity" To Dylan Trigg's question, Does the cogito remember?, I would add, "Is the cogito a creature of habit?" This seems to have been my obsession lately, but it's not bringing me any closer to understanding the connection between frequency and thinking.

Another tack then: Does the cogito have rhythm? More simply there's the question of whether the cogito has a pulse. But I don't think it's that simple. I don't have reason to believe that thinking is any less complex than elementary forms of musicality. If I say the cogito has rhythm, I mean that it has an on again, off again relation to pulse, that it builds on pulse. And the pulse is what? The cycle of day and night, the beat of the heart, the pulsative function of the unconscious, repetition.... Any experienced duration becomes rhythmicized by the cogito, including, perhaps primarily, its own durations.

Can we separate the experiential from what thought accomplishes on its own, or is this question of how exactly thinking recurs necessarily a question of the experience of thinking?

Am I afraid of thinking? Afraid to allow for what its recurrence might mean? What would it be like to have a completely tychistic personality? Or to be a person completely open to the event of thinking at each and every moment? I have a sense of myself as sensible, as a person who sleeps at night and during the day thinks about things now and then. I also have memories of thinking as lucubration, as manic, intense and incessant. If thought could go on without a person attached to it, would it ever want to rest? Would it be afraid to? These are questions of personality.

Labels: cogito, experience, habit, James, pulsative function, rhythm

posted by Fido the Yak at 8:40 PM. 0 comments