From: "saphi.regnauld" <saphi.regnauld-AT-wanadoo.fr>
Subject: Re: Les Larmes de Nietzsche published by Flammarion
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 18:45:33 +0200


Bonjour a tou(s)tes

Thank you for your mails

 I shall try to answer the questions you asked:

Why do I think this book  (The tears of Nietsche, or Deleuze and  music)is
philosophy?

 Deleuze writes that philosophy is "creating concepts" (What is Philosophy).
A "simple" description of this may be found in Foucault's book "L'
Hermeneutique du Sujet, (Cours au College de France, 1981-1982)" published
in 2001 by Gallimard (ISBN 2 02 030800 2). Philosophy is not the technique
to say what is right and what is wrong, but the technique to say why
something may be right or wrong. and once you know it (how to sort the right
from the wrong) philosophy is the technique that asks you "why don't you
change your mind?" "Why do you not think an other way?". The exact french
sentence is " au lieu de legitimer ce qu'on sait deja, entreprendre de
savoir comment et jusqu'ou il serait possible de penser autrement" (page
490)

I you follow Deleuze's idea of a concept and Foucault's idea of "thinking an
other way", then you have a philosophy which has nothing to deal with what
you are or what you know but with what you are not yet and what you do not
know yet. This is why I think philosophy has nothing to do with narcisism :
what you have been is not what you may be in the future, unless you are
strictly forced by genetics to behave like a limpet or a mussel, which spend
its entire life stuck on the same sea-stack...
For the same reason I think philosophy has nothing in common with any search
for "identity". being tomorrow what you have been yesterday (your "identity"
infers some idea of unchanging being) is the exact opposite of philosophy,
which is first, and basically, a question, an open possibility for ideas to
change. And the first idea that should change is the concept of "being" as
Difference and Repetition (and Badiou's book also)  shows it clearly.

The Pinhas book deals with many topics, but , as it tries to mix Nietzsche's
Devenir and Deleuze's planes (of organisation and of immanence) it asks a
very philosophical question : I'll write it in french : "seul le devenir est
authentiquement problematique c'est à dire qu'il pose les conditions d'une
nouvelle sorte de jugement par dela tout jugement..." (page 84) In english
it is something like "only changing sets  a true questionning, i.e.
addresses the conditions for a new type of statement, far beyond  any former
statement".

 From here I may try to answer your questions about the body without organs
: I stongly believe that the BwO is not (not in any way) a physical approach
of what an actual body should be (or was in a mother's belly) . It is a pure
tool (a conceptual tool as in Spinoza's "traite de l'entendement") which is
forged to destroy the concept of Oedipus. Nothing is wrong with organs. But
the freudian (and lacanian oedipus ) is -partly based on the fact that your
mind  (unconscious.... or not)  is influenced (at least) by the symbolic
code you use with your organs, when you walk, you talk, you do whatever
organs allow you to do. To destroy Oedipus right from the conceptual basis
it relies on, you have to set a concept of a human being which doesn't give
any possibility for social codes to act on your unconscient or psyche, or
mind.  That is why BwO was, as a concept, created by Deleuze and Guattari is
not a " physical fact".

 As human beings living in a social environnement, hopefully we do have (and
enjoy) organs.that is day to day life, not philosophy. In philosophy, (as
described before), as a concept of "being", a human needs a body which shall
never be used by any oedipus-connected theory (and Deleuze says that "l'etre
se dit en un seul et meme sens de tout ce qui differe", Mille Plateaux, page
311, french edition) . The BwO is the concept of a human "being" (l'etre)
which will not care about you being man, woman, gay, jew, marxist or
whatsoever....One (one single and unique concept) being (etre) is said of
everything which is not alike (gays or not...).

A bit complicated probably. I am sorry for my english, it would be easier
for me to write in french. I just want to say that deleuze is a philosopher,
not a moralist, and therefore doesn't care about organs , but about
concepts. That is why his suicide (which is just the killing of organs) is
not a philosophical issue.  For direct relations between organs, suicide and
philosophy, see Socrate, Alcibiade and Plato...

 amicalement Herve.