How Can We Avoid a Theological Vision?
by Beth Metcalf
Deleuze says (Logic of Sense 179-80),
“Philosophy merges with ontology, but ontology merges with
the univocity of Being (analogy has always been a theological
vision, not a philosophical one, adapted to the forms of God, the
world, and the self)…..The univocity of Being merges with
the positive use of the disjunctive synthesis which is the
highest affirmation. It is the eternal return
itself….” Therefore the question, ‘How can
we avoid the analogical transcendence of a theological
vision?’ becomes the question, ‘How can we reach the
ontological immanence of univocal being with its positive use of
the disjunctive synthesis?’ The Kantian
‘transcendental’ ushered in the speculative death of
God. God, from then on, can merely preside over the
disjunctive synthesis. However, Deleuze argues that
Kant’s ‘God’ did not reach the positive use of the
disjunctive synthesis and therefore is still a theological
vision.
Deleuze says (Difference & Repetition
85-6) that the Cartesian Cogito draws a direct relation between
the determination (I think) and the undetermined (I am). However,
Kant discovered that determination must first find the form of
the determinable before the undetermined can be determined.
Kant’s form of the determinable is the empty form of time.
To the ‘I think’ and the ‘I am’ is added the
passive self (the form of the determinable in time) interiorizing
difference between being and thought.
Therefore, Kant’s transcendental
initiative was the introduction of a pure empty form without
empirical content. This entailed the speculative death of
God, the fractured ‘I’, and the passive self. However,
Deleuze (DR 87) argues that Kant did not follow through on his
initiative. Even in the speculative domain the fracture of
the ‘I’ is filled*. There can be no death
of God until Self is dissolved. (DR 136) Kant still
preserved the nature of thought in a unity of Self and an accord
of the faculties. Kant merely substituted ‘I
think’ for the infinite God. God is not dead as long
as ‘I’ still has an identity it owes to its resemblance
to the divine. Therefore, although Kant’s
transcendental philosophy introduced the pure empty form of time
that entailed the death of God, the fracture I, and the passive
self; Kant aborted this initiative, saving the world of
representation. The fracture is filled* by a new
kind of identity and a receptivity of a passive self without
power of synthesis. Kant’s passive self assumes
sensations already formed while relating them to a priori forms
of space and time. Kant’s transcendental is still
traced from the empirical.
According to Kant (DR168-70) reason is a
faculty of Ideas. Ideas are regulative problems that have
‘legitimate use’ only as related to categories of the
understanding. Problematic Ideas are undetermined in regard
to their object, determinable regarding objects of experience,
and an ideal of infinite determination regarding concepts of the
understanding. Ideas are differentials of thought that
swarm in the fracture split by the form of time. The Ideas
are internal unity of the undetermined, determinable, and
determination. However, Kant did not fulfill his initiative
because he still saw the ideal of determination only in relation
to the categories. In being restricted by the categories,
his Critique still has too much empiricism (it does not
fill* the empty form) in contrast to the dogmatism of the
post-Kantians (who fill* the empty form). Kant’s
empty form of time is still too corporeal. It does not
reach the incorporeal differential Ideas of the empty form of
time (Aion) that fills without filling*.
(LoS 64) “This is the secret of the
event: it exists on the line of the Aion, and yet it does not
fill it. How could an incorporeal fill up the incorporeal
or the impenetrable fill up the impenetrable? Only bodies
penetrate each other, only Chronos is filled up with state of
affairs and the movements of the objects that it measures. But
being an empty and unfolded form of time, the Aion subdivides ad
infinitum that which haunts it without ever inhabiting it --- the
Event for all events.”
Therefore, Deleuze resumes the Kantian
initiative with a new empty form of time (Aion) that is no longer
cardinal, but ordinal (pure static order of before-after). The
synthesis is static order because time is no longer subordinate
to movement. The Self becomes equal to the unequal in
itself.
Deleuze tells us (LoS 294-5) that Kant
discovers a link between ideas and syllogisms. Kant
initially defined reason by way of concepts of the understanding.
Given a concept, reason looks for another concept which, in its
totality, conditions the first concept to its object. But
when reason is applied to the categories, there is a problem.
Categories are already attributed to all objects of
possible experience. Therefore Kant discovered that reason
must invent the ‘Idea’ that can condition a category of
relation to all objects of possible experience. The idea of
‘Self’ is a substance that conjoins phenomena in a
transcendental unity of apperception. The Self conditions
the attribution of the category of substance to the phenomena of
inner concepts and outer perceptions in the categorical syllogism
(synthesis of conjunction). The idea of the
‘World’ conditions the attribution of the category of
causality to connect all possible phenomena in the hypothetical
syllogism (synthesis of connection). The idea of
‘God’ conditions the attribution of the category of
community in the disjunctive syllogism. Therefore, God is
reduced to the totality of all possible relations of divergence
(synthesis of the disjunction). This is the
‘either…or’ of the exclusive and limiting use.
It is the totality of all that is thought to be possible, and is
thus disjoined from everything else which is to be excluded.
Therefore according to Kant, Ideas are regulative problems that
have ‘legitimate use’ only as related to categories of
the understanding. However, according to Deleuze and
Guattari, Kant’s use is a negative and limitative
‘illegitimate use’ of the disjunctive synthesis.
Deleuze asks (LoS 174-5) what conditions
make disjunction a true synthesis instead of merely an
illegitimate use of analysis. Ordinarily (Kant is an
example), disjunction has never been a real synthesis. It
has always been merely a regulative analysis subordinate to a
prior concept of convergent series thought to be possible. The
disjunctive syllogism is merely the totality of possible
convergence from which all divergence had to be excluded. The
conjunctive synthesis excludes divergence and is merely regulated
by a connective synthesis under prior conditions of causal
continuity. However, Deleuze tells us that the legitimate
uses of the syntheses turn this path around. Now,
disjunction is a real synthesis that includes every ramification
of all partial objects, and because the conjunction of all
partial objects of intensive-disparate difference coordinates all
heterogeneous and divergent flows, the conjunctive synthesis
affirms all divergence which has already connected all series in
multiplicities of continuities. Connections already
contract multiplicities of divergent flows which are all
ontologically singular. However, this all depends upon our
definition of ‘partial objects’. As long as we
remain chained to a structuralist concept of partial objects and
the illegitimate uses of the syntheses, we are still chained to a
theological vision. We do not reach univocal being that
Deleuze’s says (DR35) is the only ontological proposition of
immanence.
Therefore, until we lose the God-Man
structure of the three syntheses in their illegitimate uses, we
are still pious. To lose this structure is to reach the
desiring machines that ask “How does the unconscious
work?” rather than “What does it mean or
represent?” We must reach an unconscious that is (Anti-Oedipus
109) “…material rather than ideological; schizophrenic
rather than symbolic; machinic rather than structural…”
Therefore, if disjunction is to be a real
synthesis, it must include every divergence in the ramification
of all partial objects, even those which are thought to be
impossible from the point of view of a prior concept. We
will never reach the legitimate uses of the syntheses as long as
we cling to the structuralist conception of ‘partial
object’. The partial object must not be conceived as
already individuated.
Deleuze and Guattari say (AO 326-7),
“The organs-partial objects and the body without organs are
at bottom one and the same thing, one and the same multiplicity
that must be conceived as such by schizoanalysis. Partial
objects are the direct powers of the body without organs, and the
body without organs, the raw material of the partial objects.
The body without organs is the matter that always fills space to
given degrees of intensity, and the partial objects are these
degrees, these intensive parts that produce the real in space
starting from matter as intensity = 0. The body without
organs is the immanent substance in the most Spinozist sense of
the word; and the partial objects are like its ultimate
attributes, which belong to it precisely insofar as they are
really distinct and cannot on this account exclude or oppose one
another….”
Deleuze and Guattari tell us (AO 43-4) that
the body without organs is produced as a whole. However,
this whole is not unified or totalized by its parts. Melanie
Klein, who discovered partial objects, still missed their
machinic production because of her idealist bias. She still
relates partial objects to an original unifying whole or to a
totalizing whole that is yet to come. Deleuze and Guattari
(AO 46) say that partial objects are not representations. They
are intensive parts of desiring machines. The structuralist
concept of partial objects, in all their variability, still
maintains the unity of a whole. However, desiring machines
and partial objects do not represent a unified whole. They
are the machinic production of all legitimate uses of the
syntheses. Multiplicities of uses never maintain conceptual
identity. Partial objects must reach pre-individual
singularity. (AO 60) When the partial objects enter
relations of connection, disjunction, and conjunction on the body
without organs, everything opens in affirmative legitimate use.
With the legitimate uses of partial objects there is no
castrating lack. There is no negative limitation or
exclusion. (AO 324-5) In contrast to Melanie
Klein’s structuralist definition of partial objects, Deleuze
and Guattari see partial objects as never referring to a lost
unity or a future totality. Every organism and extensive
structure is dislodged. All is dispersion and real
distinction.
In Anti-Oedipus Chapter 2, Deleuze
and Guattari describe two uses of each of the three syntheses.
First, the connective synthesis has a global and specific
illegitimate use, or a partial and nonspecific legitimate use.
With the Oedipal misuse, the connections of desiring production
seem to be relations between already individuated people. The
legitimate use reaches a pre-individual domain.
Then, the second disjunctive synthesis has a
negative restrictive, exclusive, illegitimate use; or it has a
legitimate affirmative, nonrestrictive, inclusive legitimate use.
The legitimate use merges with univocity of Being which is the
highest affirmation of the eternal return. Klossowski (LoS
Klossowski or Bodies-Language) contrasts God of the former
illegitimate use with an antichrist of the latter legitimate use.
But these two uses are without any negative oppositional relation
between them which would merely reestablish an illegitimate
disjunction.
Then, the third conjunctive synthesis has a
segregative and biunivocal illegitimate use; or it has a nomadic
and polyvocal legitimate use. The former has a structure of
Oedipal triangulation and lack. The latter use dissolves the
subject with a nomadism that passes through intensive thresholds
of affective states on the body without organs.
Every partial object presupposes the
continuity of a flow. Every flow presupposes the
fragmentation of a partial object. That is the legitimate
use of the first synthesis of connection. When the flows of
two partial objects overlap, at least partially, the overlapping
parts become indiscernible and exchange functions. Then,
where they no longer overlap, they have the relation of included
disjunction – a new legitimate use of the disjunctive
synthesis. The third legitimate use of the synthesis of
conjunction is the permutation of partial objects that emit
overlapping flows. (AO 326-7) The partial objects on the
body without organs are never related in an exclusive
disjunction. Organs-partial objects on the body without
organs are only opposed to an organism. Everything opens in
a new legitimate univocal use of the syntheses. Everything
divides but into itself.
Therefore, the new uses of the syntheses
never maintain a theological structure of identity, unity, or
totality. Yet today, even though we may think we no longer
are chained to a theological vision, we may still be ruled by its
structural assumptions.
Deleuze says (LoS 281), “….One no
longer needs to believe in God. We seek rather the
“structure,” that is, the form which may be filled with
beliefs, but the structure has no need to be filled in order to
be called “theological.” Theology is now the
science of nonexisting entities, the manner in which these
entities – divine or anti-divine, Christ or Antichrist
– animate language and make for it this glorious body which
is divided into disjunctions.”
But how can we avoid the theological vision
if it is merely in an oppositional relation with anti-theism?
A negative opposition theism/atheism is still a theological
disjunction. (LoS 280-301) Deleuze uses Klossowski to
illustrate the ‘order of the Antichrist’ in contrast to
the divine order. The death of God, destruction of the
world, and the dissolved self is often taken to be the atheistic
revolution. However, Deleuze questions if this is the
critical turning point as marked by Kant. As long as a
finite self is taken as the substantial unity of the body, God is
still the guarantor of a theological vision. Klossowski
overturns Kant’s Critique of Reason. It is the
Antichrist, not God, who is master of the disjunctive synthesis
in its legitimate use. It is this anti-God that opens the
disjunctive syllogism to all partial objects in an infinity of
disjunctive permutations, dissolving identity of Self. There
is no longer the theological condition as totality of self,
world, and God. There is no longer negative and exclusive
disjunction of castrating lack. There is difference,
divergence, and decentering that includes all disjunctive
ramifications while still keeping them as disjunctions.
Therefore, if we are to avoid a theological
vision, we must avoid the illegitimate uses of the syntheses.
We must escape the God-Man structure. We must reach
univocal being. The world of disparate intensities,
pre-individual, impersonal singularities, and partial objects on
the body without organs is the world of univocal ontology that
escapes the theological vision. Inclusive disjunction
becomes the object of affirmation. The subject is
pre-individual singularity of a dissolved self. This
communicates with all other singularities (as partial objects)
without ceasing to form disjunctive relations, and without
distributing them into sedentary negative exclusions. The
eternal return is not said of Same (there is no identity).
The Same is said of that which differs in itself
(disparate intensity). Univocal Being is said of beings
which are not univocal. Univocal Being has always been the
only ontological proposition. It is only the theological
vision of the negative and exclusive use of disjunction that is
excluded by the eternal return that affirms all divergence.
*See my article, ‘The Old and the New
Structure’ for a discussion of the two accidents of the old
structure that fill or do not fill (but can never fill without
filling) the empty form.