From: "Jon Rubin" <j_rubin-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: God help us, back to tropes
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 02:33:29 PST


7On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Michael Rooney wrote:

> This highlights just how far you are from
> ordinary usage.  An "ethical act" typically
> denotes some act fulfilling a moral rule,
> as opposed to an "unethical act" (e.g.,
> murder) which does not.  By comparison, your
> global use of "the ethical" is a peasoup in
> which all acts are spotty.  But then, you
> like it that way: it means you never have to
> get off your high horse.

A funny conception of ethics, Michael, particularly from somebody who’s 
read Spinoza. Not that I’d wish to compare TMB to Spinoza obviously, 
though I think TMB might. Though "non-violence" whatever it might 
supposedly actually be (and yes I have read TMB’s posts) sounds more 
like will-to-nothingness than Spinoza’s pure positivity where all bad is 
perspectival (not sure if that is the appropriate word) and evil 
superstition. 
Jon.


"In other words there are two types of actions: actions in which the 
decomposition comes about as if in consequence and not in principle, 
because the principle is a composition - and this has value only for my 
point of view, because from the point of view of nature everything is 
composition and it’s for that reason that God knows neither evil nor the 
bad - and inversely there are actions which directly decompose and imply 
compositions only indirectly. This, then, is the criterion of the good 
and the bad and it’s with this that it’s necessary to live."
DELEUZE - Session on Spinoza     13/01/81
Translated by Timothy S. Murphy




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