Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 22:54:33 +0100
From: Lowe Laclau <lowe.laclau-AT-gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [AUT] Re: AUT: My New Signature: Portrait of a young artist as aleftist


On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 13:12:32 +0100, Harald Beyer-Arnesen
<haraldba-AT-online.no> wrote:
>        determinatio negatio est -- determination is negation
> 
>        Also sprach the Christ of philosophers, Baruch
>        de Spinoza in a letter to Jarig Jelles, the Hague.
>        June 2, 1674

In Sp's philosophy all attributes are really distinct
(not really determined). No attribute is defined in relation to
another (they are absolute or infinite). Where determination
(negation) comes in is in finite modes: as what defines the define the
essence and existence of finite modes. But... and here is the problem,
Sp says that this is only true abstractly.

He says first of essence that each finite mode is merely a degree of
power, and as such each degree signifies not a limit or opposition but
rather an intrinstic distinction within an infinite set of differences
which all have a common cause.

And of determination, since you don't have a partitioned Being, but an
infinity of parts of the self-same cause, each "external" relation
that comes to determine an existence is never an externality of
"lack", but variable qualifications that interact differently with
different types of compounds (as in Chemistry). Negation then is not
at all used in the sense that Kant would use it. One quality acts as a
negative to another, but only with respect to the differences in the
natures of these qualities (which are equally affirmative in and of
themselves). Only the relation itself can be said to be possessive of
something "negative"... not any essence or existence in an of
themselves, and thus not Being. Spinoza says quite clearly in The
Ethics that negation is a creation of the mind. Nothingness is never
included in the nature of something in his metaphysics.

>        It is precisly because in the phrase, "to affirm a
> difference," a difference is actively asserted,  implicating
> a *social relation*, that it becomes so clear that a
> negation is also implicated....  That is,  if you have not first
> dissolved all substantial differences into thin air, which I at
> this point presume was an irrationality at the roots of Don
> Gilles Qioxote's heroic battles against the neccesity
> of *the negative* (under whatever name) to at all grasp
> the world in its its concrete diversity, and to (re)affirm
> life beyond a passing moment.

So the assumption you have here that all substantial differences need
be erased for negation to disappear is not true from a Spinozan
metaphysics. Your quote of him in this sense then is not quite
appropriate. In relating this to Deleuze I'm not sure what you're
saying insofar as you are talking about things that pre-Deleuzian,
"affirmation" for example (Nietzsche), that have no problem with
"negation". It is simply not a Kantian or Hegelian one. Negation is
taken out of ones conception of the universe, and placed back in ones
minds were it originates.

> As for the concrete phrase referred to, my original point might
> become clearer if contextualised a bit, for instance to:
> Affirm a difference by organising a gay parade through small-
> town 'moral majority' community. Those marches in Northern-
> Ireland also comes to mind.
>        If one were to pose affirmation in purely positive terms
> (to the degree it can at all be done without slipping into nothing-
> ness) it is the word *difference* that would have to go. What
> then is affirmed is simply oneself, life, ... differences becoming
> simple facts of life, however complex.

Well this is the type of definition that is at issue. Why would
"difference" have to go in pure positive terms? Difference is of
itself affirmative of something, it is positive (it lacks nothing...
it is but another of the names of Being). This distinction is not at
all arbitrary as well. As Nietzsche went to show, an entire morality
accompanies this type of definition. As your example of gay pride
would easily verify if for example, one took the Amsterdam or Cologne
(Koln) gay pride and put it in Marakesh, Jakarta, or Mobile, Alabama
(US) the slave morality of the masses would have a blast *negating*
the difference (lacking nothing) of those positively expressing their
essence (using this word in the Spinozan sense) but whom they see as
negating the law of the Lord.

Lowe


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