Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 08:02:18 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael Rooney <rooney-AT-tiger.cc.oxy.edu>
Subject: RE: relations (external/internal)



In the midst of a lengthy ramble,
on Tue, 12 Jan 1999, Greg J. Seigworth wrote:

> All of this might go some
> distance toward discovering that perhaps Michael Rooney isn't entirely
> correct in his assertion that Deleuze has no interest at all in mysticism
> (though granted again, it is a mysticism of a fairly particular/peculiar
> sort [Spinoza's Latin stuttered in an off-kilter Hebrew]: or we might
> decide to call it what Foucault did -- 'incorporeal materialism') beyond
> the non-rule proving exception of the conclusion of _Bergsonism_ 

Without being defensive about it, I would point
out that I did mention (about the concluding pages
of Bergsonism) that: 

>>>> This passage seems to
>>>> me a clear prefiguration of the category of the
>>>> percept in QPh? (or the Third Kind of Knowledge
>>>> in the Spinoza works) 

And I would re-emphasize that this third kind of
knowledge is generally characterized as the domain,
not of mysticism, but of art. 

As for Spinoza himself, book V of the Ethics and
the beatitude found therein is as severe and non-
mystical as anything else he wrote.  The love of
God there is a property of the entire cosmos.  
While it certainly may have mystical resonance,
I suspect that Spinoza would hesitate to align
it with the mystical traditions that he disdained.


Cordially,

M.