Transcript
Claire Parnet"H" is "History of Philosophy." It is usually said that in your works, the first phase is devoted to the history of philosophy. In 1952, you write a study on David Hume, followed by works on Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson, Spinoza. Someone who didn't know you and took you for an annotator would be very surprised by Logic of Sense and Difference and Repetition, and of course, by Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. From these, it would seem that there is a Mr. Hyde hidden within a Dr. Jekyll. And when everyone was explicating Marx, you dove into Nietzsche, and when everyone felt they had to read Reich, you were reading Spinoza, with the famous question, "what can a body do?" Today, in 1988, you return to Leibniz. So what did you enjoy and still enjoy in the history of philosophy?
It's a complicated matter because this history of philosophy encompasses philosophy itself. I assume that a lot of people think of philosophy as being something quite abstract and a bit for specialists. But I believe strongly that philosophy has nothing to do with specialists, it's not a specialization, or is so only in the way that music or painting is. So necessarily, I try to pose the problem differently. So when people think that philosophy is abstract, the history of philosophy is abstract in the second degree since it does not even consist of talking about abstract ideas, but of forming abstract ideas about abstract ideas. But there is another way. . . For me, the history of philosophy has always been something else. Here I return to painting. I think of the discussions, in the letters from Van Gogh, one finds the discussions about portraiture or landscapes: am I going to do portraits? I have to return to portraits. . . They attach great importance to that, in their conversations, in their letters. Portrait or landscape, it's not the same, it's not the same problem. For me, the history of philosophy is, as in painting, a kind of art of the portrait. One creates the philosopher's portrait, but a philosophical portrait of a philosopher. I would say just as well a "spiritist" portait, that is, a mental or spiritual portrait, it's a spiritual portrait, such that it's an activity that belongs fully within philosophy itself, just as portraiture belongs to painting. So suddenly, by the very fact that I refer to painters, I am making some progress. If I return to painters like Van Gogh or Gauguin, it's because something in their work has an enormous effect on me, the kind of immense respect or even fear and panic, not merely respect, that they evince when faced with color, when faced with engaging with color. It is particularly enjoyable that the two painters that I invoke, and limiting myself to them, are among the greatest colorists ever. But if we refer to the history of their works, they undertake the use of color only with great fearful hesitation, they were frightened. Throughout the beginning of their careers, they used earthen colors, not at all striking. . . Why? Not because they don't have any interest, but because they did not yet dare to engage with color. What could be more moving than this? It's as if, literally, they did not yet judge themselves worthy of color, not yet able to engage with color and really do painting. It took them years and years before daring to engage with color. Once they feel that they are able to engage with color, well, then, it results in the works that everyone knows. When you see the point that they reach, one has to reflect on this immense respect, this immense slowness to undertake that work. Something like color for a painter is something that can take him/her into madness, into insanity, thus it is something quite difficult, taking years to dare to come close to it. So, it's not at all that I am particularly modest, but it strikes me as being quite shocking, it would be shocking if there were philosophers who simply said, "Hey, I'm going into philosophy now, going to do my own philosophy, yes, I have my philosophy." These are statements made by the dimwitted- doing one's philosophy-because philosophy is like color. So, before entering into philosophy, one has to take so many, so many precautions, I would say, before conquering the "philosophical color" -and the philosophical color is the concept. Before knowing how to invent concepts or to succeed in doing so, an enormous amount of work is necessary. I believe that the history of philosophy is this slow modesty, taking a long time doing portraits, one has to do portraits. It's as if a novelist were to tell us, "well, I write novels, but you know, I never read them in order never to compromise my inspiration. Dostoyevsky, nope, don't know him." I've heard young novelists make such frightening statements. . . which comes down to saying, I don't need to work. So, given that whatever one does, you have to work for a long time before engaging with something, the history of philosophy has this role that is not only preparatory, it succeeds quite well by itself. It is the art of portraiture in so far as it allows one to reach toward something. At this point, all this is becoming a bit mysterious. . . We need to be more precise, you have to force me to be more precise, I don't know, by some other little question because. . . Or else, I can continue like this. What happens when one does the history of philosophy? Do you have something else to ask me about this?
Claire ParnetNo, well, the usefulness of the history of philosophy for you, we see it clearly, you just explained it. But the usefulness of history of philosophy for people in general, since you don't know. . . since you say that you do not want to talk about the specialization of philosophy, that philosophy also is destined for non-philosophers.
This is very simple. You can only understand what philosophy is-that is, the extent to which it is no more an abstract thing than a painting or a musical work- it's not at all abstract, and one can understand that only through the history of philosophy, provided that one conceives of it, it seems to me, if I dare put it this way, provided that one conceives of it in the proper manner. What might that be? One thing is certain to me: a philosopher is not someone who contemplates or even reflects. A philosopher is someone who creates, simply that he creates a very special kind of thing. He creates concepts. Concepts don't exist ready-made, they are not located in the sky, they are not stars that one gazes at in the sky. You have to create, fabricate concepts. So there are a thousand questions, here we are almost lost since so many questions emerge: Why is it useful? Why create concepts, and what is that exactly, a concept? But let's drop this for the moment, let's drop this. I mean. . . Let's take an example: if I write a book about Plato, people know well that Plato created a concept that did not exist before him, translated generally as "Idea," with a capital I. And what he calls an Idea is not at all what other philosophers call an idea. It's truly a Platonic concept to the point that if someone uses this concept in a manner similar to this term, then people tend to say, "This is a Platonic philosopher." But I mean, concretely, what does this mean? One should always ask oneself what doing philosophy means. . . If not, one just shouldn't do philosophy. One should really ask, what is it? as if it were a dog, what is an idea? A dog, I can define what an idea is, for Plato. So, here, I am already doing history of philosophy. I try to explain this to people, you don't need a professor, it seems to me, you can readily understand. . . I think that what he calls an Idea is a thing that wouldn't be something else, that is, that would only be what it is... Now, here, that seems abstract, as I was saying earlier, one mustn't be abstract. A thing that's only what it is, that's abstract. But no, no, no, let's choose an example that is not found in Plato: a mother, a mom, this is a mother, but she is not only a mother. . . I mean, she is, for example, a wife, and she is herself a daughter of a mother. Let us imagine a mother who might only be a mother. . . It matters little if such a thing exists or not. . . For example, is the Virgin Mary, whom Plato didn't know, is she a mother and only mother? No matter if it exists or not, a mother that would be nothing other than mother, who would not be in her own turn the daughter of another mother, it's this that we then have to call "mother Idea," i.e. a thing that is only what it is. This is what Plato meant more or less when he said only justice is just, because only justice is nothing other than just. And for me, that becomes quite simple. An Idea. . . of course, Plato doesn't stop there, but his departure point is, let us imagine particular entities that are only what they are, we call them "ldeas." So he created a veritable concept, this concept did not exist before, the Idea of the thing as pure. . . It's purity that defines the Idea. But this still remains abstract, and why is that? If we proceed to read through Plato, that's how everything becomes concrete. Plato doesn't proceed haphazardly, he didn't create this concept of Idea by chance. He found himself in a given situation: that whatever happens, in a very concrete situation, whatever happens, or whatever might be a given therein, there are rivals. That is, there are people who say: for this thing, I'm the best example of it. For example, Plato gave a definition of the politician, and he says, that is, with an initial definition, that the politician is the pastor of men, who takes care of people. As a result, lots of people step forward to say, "if that's the case, then I am the politician, I am the pastor of men"- the merchant can say that, the shepherd who nourishes, the doctor who heals-can all say, "I am the true pastor of men." In other words, there are rivals. So, with that, things start to appear a bit more concrete. I maintain thata philosopher creates concepts, for example, the Idea, the thing in so far as it is pure. The reader doesn't understand immediately why or what it's about, or why one would need to create such a concept. If he/she continues and reflects on the reading, he/she understands the following reason: there are all sorts of rivals who present themselves as claimants for things, and that the problem for Plato is not at all, what is the Idea? That way, things would just remain abstract. Rather, it's how to select the claimants, how to discover among them which one is the valid one. It's the Idea, that is, the thing in a pure state, that will permit this selection, that will select the claimant who is closest to it. This allows us to move forward a bit since I would say, every concept, e.g. the Idea, refers to a problem. . . In this case, the problem is how to select the claimants. If you do philosophy abstractly, you do not even see the problem, but if one reaches this problem... One might wonder why the problem isn't stated clearly by a philosopher since it certainly exists in his work, we find it, it's there, it smacks you in the face in some ways. And it's because one can't do everything at once. The philosopher's task is already that of exposing the concepts that she/he's in the process of creating, so she/he can't expose the problems on top of that, or at least one can discover these problems only through the concepts being created. If you haven't found the problem to which a concept corresponds, everything stays abstract. If you've found the problem, everything becomes concrete. That's why in Plato, there are constantly these claimants, these rivals. So I can add-suddenly this [topic] is taking a turn, it goes without saying-why does this occur in the Greek city, and why is it Plato who invents this problem? You see, the problem is how to select claimants, and the concept- that's what philosophy is, the problem and the concept- the concept is the Idea that is supposed to provide the means of selecting the claimants, however that would occur, it matters little. But why did this problem and this concept take form in the Greek milieu? It begins with the Greeks because it's a typically Greek problem, of the democratic, Greek city. Even if Plato did not accept the democratic character of the city, it's a problem of the democratic city. For it's in the democratic city that, for example, a magistracy is an object of pretension. . . There are claimants, I pose my candidacy for a particular function. In an imperial formation, as they exist in the Greek era, there are functionaries named by the emperor, there is not at all this rivalry. The Athenian city is this rivalry of claimants, it was already there with Ulysses, the suitors for Penelope, there is an entire milieu of Greek problems. It's a civilization in which the confrontation of rivals constantly appears: that's why they invented gymnastics, they invent Olympic games, they invent- they are litigious, no one is as litigious as a Greek- they invent legal procedures, it's the same thing, legal proceedings. . . they are claimants. You understand? And in philosophy, there are claimants as well. . . Plato's struggle against the Sophists. He believed that the Sophists were claimants for something to which they had no right. What would define the right or the non-right of a claimant? That's also a problem that's very. . . And all this is as amusing as a novel. We know that there are great novels in which claimants confront each other before the tribunal. It's something different, but in philosophy, there are two things at once: the creation of a concept, and the creation of a concept always occurs as a function of a problem. If one has not found the problem, one cannot understand philosophy, philosophy remains abstract. I take another example. . . people usually don't see to what problem that corresponds, they don't see problems, because problems usually are a bit hidden, somewhat stated but somewhat hidden, and to engage in the history of philosophy is to restore these problems and, through this, to discover what's innovative in these concepts. Whereas bad history of philosophy links up concepts as if they appeared to go without saying, as if they weren't created, so there tends to be total ignorance about the problems to which. . . I take a final example quickly. . . So here's a second example that's totally different for the sake of diversity. Much later, there arrives a philosopher called Leibniz who creates and invents an extraordinary concept to which he gives the name, monad. He chooses a technical, complicated name, monad. And in fact, there is always something a bit crazy in a concept. . . this mother who would only be mother, in the other case, a pure idea. . . there is something there that's a bit crazy. Leibniz's monad designated a subject, somebody, you or me, in so far as he/she expresses the totality of the world, and in expressing the totality of the world, he/she only expresses clearly a tiny region of the world, one's territory-we've already spoken about territory- one's territory, or what Leibniz calls his "department." So a subjective unity that expresses the entire world, but that only clearly expresses a region, a "department" of the world- this is what he called a monad. It's a concept, Leibniz created it, this concept did not exist before him. But, one might ask, "Why did he create it? It's quite lovely, but why say that rather than something else?" One has to find the problem. And it's not that he hides the problem. . . If you don't look a bit, you won't find it. That's the charm of reading philosophy, as charming or amusing as reading a good book, or looking at paintings. It's amazing. What do you discover when you read him? Indeed, he didn't create the "monad" for the pleasure of it. There is another reason: Leibniz poses a problem, which is what? Specifically that everything in the world only exists as folded. That's why I wrote a book on Leibniz called The Fold. He saw the world as an aggregate of things folded within each other. Let's step back a bit: why did he see the world like this? What is happening? Just as for Plato earlier, perhaps the answer is: at that period, what. . . Were things being folded more than they are now? Well, we don't have the time. What counts is this idea of a world that is folded, but everything is the fold of a fold, you can never reach something that is completely unfolded. And matter is constituted by folds overlapping back onto it, and things of the mind, perceptions, feelings, are folded into the soul. It's precisely because perceptions, feelings, ideas are folded into a soul that [Leibniz] constructed this concept of a soul that expresses the entire world, that is, in which he discovers the entire world to be folded. One almost wants to ask, What is a bad philosopher, or a great philosopher? The bad one creates no concepts, is someone who uses ready-made ideas. So he puts forth opinions then and does not do philosophy. . . He says, 'There, that's what I think." Well, We know many like that, still today they have always been around. Opinions. . . Well, he does not invent concepts, and he poses-in the true sense of the word-he poses no problems. So, to do history of philosophy is this long apprenticeship in which one learns, or one is truly an apprentice in this double domain, the constitution of problems and the creation of concepts. And there is no. . . What is it that kills, what makes it possible for thought to be idiotic, dimwitted, etc.? Some people talk, but we never know what problems they're talking about. Not only do they create no concepts while busy spouting opinions, but moreover, we don't know what problems they're talking about. I mean, at most, one knows the questions, but if I say, Does God exist? That doesn't pose any problem. Does God exist? I haven't stated the problem, What is the problem? Why do I ask that question? What is the problem behind that? So, people are quite ready to ask the question: ah, do I believe in God or don't I? Well, everyone could care less who believes in God or who doesn't. What counts is why he says that, that is, to what problem asking that question corresponds and what concept he is going to fabricate, what God concept he is going to fabricate. If you have neither a concept nor a problem, you remain in stupidity, that's it, you aren't doing philosophy. All this is to express the extent to which philosophy is amusing. So that's what doing history of philosophy is -to discover. . . It's not all that different from what you do when you find yourself in front of a great painting or listening to a musical work.
Claire ParnetPrecisely, returning to Gauguin and Van Gogh since you evoked their quaking and hesitation from fear before taking on color, what happened to you when you passed from history of philosophy to doing your own philosophy?
This is what happened: no doubt, the history of philosophy gave me the chance to learn things, I mean, I felt more capable of moving toward what color is in philosophy, that is. . . But why does this come up at all, I mean, why does philosophy not cease to exist, why do we still have philosophy today? Because there is always an occasion to create concepts. So, today this notion of creation of concepts is taken over by the media, publicity; they say you can create concepts, with computers, an entire language stolen from philosophy for "communication," one has to be "creative," "create concepts," but what they call "concepts," what they call "to create," is truly comic, there's no need to insist on it. That still remains philosophy's task. There is still a place today. . . I never was affected by people who proclaim the death of philosophy, getting beyond philosophy, it's philosophers who say such complicated things as that. All that never affected me or concerned me because I tell myself, ok, what could all that mean? As long as there's a need to create concepts, there will be philosophy since that's the definition of philosophy, creating concepts, not expecting them to be ready- made-we have to create them, and we create them as a function of problems. Well, problems evolve, so there is still a place. . . Certainly, one can be Platonist, one can be Leibnizian, today even, in 1989, one can be Kantian. What does that mean exactly? It means that one judges that certain problems-not all, no doubt -posed by Plato remain valid provided one makes certain transformations, and then, one is Platonist since one still has use for Platonist concepts. If we pose problems of a completely different nature. . . in my opinion, there is not a single example among the great philosophers of one who does not have something to say about the great problems we face today. But doing philosophy is creating new concepts as a function of problems that arise today. The final aspect of this extremely lengthy question would obviously be, ok, but what is the evolution of problems, what guarantees it? I could always say historical, social forces, sure, fine, but there is something deeper. It's all very mysterious, and we don't have time to pursue it, but I believe in a kind of becoming of thought, evolution of thought that results not only in no longer posing the same problems, but also they are no longer posed in the same way. A problem can be posed in several successive ways, and that has an urgent appeal, like a huge gust of wind, a call for the necessity always to create and re-create new concepts. So history of philosophy cannot be reduced to sociological influence, or to another influence. . . There is an entire becoming of thought, something very mysterious that we would have to succeed in defining, but that causes us perhaps no longer to think in the same way as a hundred years ago. So, ok, I think of new thought processes, of ellipses of thought. Thought has its history, there is a history of pure thought, so that's what history of philosophy is for me. It has always had only one function, in my opinion, philosophy, so there's no need to get beyond it, as it has its function. So, yes, did you want to say something?
Claire ParnetYes, how does a problem evolve through time?
That must. . . I don't know, that must vary. . .
Claire ParnetSince thought evolves. . .
It probably varies according to each case. I choose. . . Here again, another example will have to suffice: back in the seventeenth century, for most of the great philosophers, what was their negative concern? Their negative concern was preventing error. It was a matter of warding off the dangers of error. In other words, the negative of thought is that the mind might err, to prevent the mind from erring, how to avoid falling into error. Then there was a long, gradual slide, and in the eighteenth century, a different problem is born. It might appear to be the same, but it is not at all the same: no longer denouncing error, but denouncing illusions, the idea that the mind falls into and even is surrounded by illusions, and furthermore could even produce them itself, not only falling into error, but it might produce illusions. So this is the whole movement in the eighteenth century, of the eighteenth century philosophers, the denunciation of superstition, etc. So, while it might appear to be somewhat similar to the seventeenth century, in fact something completely new is being born. One might say that that it's due to social causes, but there is also a secret history of thought that would be a passionate subject to pursue. The question is no longer how to avoid falling into error, but how to succeed in dissipating the illusions by which the mind is surrounded. Then, in the nineteenth century-I am deliberately stating things in an extremely simple and rudimentary way-so in the nineteenth century, what happens? It's as if things have slid farther, it does not explode completely, rather it's more and more how to avoid. . . illusion? No, it's not that the mind. . . it's that men, as spiritual creatures, never stop saying inanities, which is not the same thing as illusion, it's not falling into illusion: how to ward off bêtise, inanities? That appears clearly in [work by] people on the border of philosophy: Flaubert is at the border of philosophy and the problem of the bêtise, Baudelaire and the problem of the bêtise, all that is no longer the same thing as illusion, etc. And there again, one can say it's connected to social evolution, for example, the evolution of the bourgeoisie in the 19th century that turned the problem of the bêtise into an urgent problem. Fine, but there is also something deeper in this evolution, in this kind of history of problems that thought confronts, and every time one poses a problem, there are new concepts that appear such that, if we understand the history of philosophy this way- creation of concepts, constitution of problems, problems being more or less hidden, so we have to discover them- we see that philosophy has strictly nothing to do with the true or the false. Looking for the truth means nothing. If it is a question of creating concepts, what does that mean? Creating concepts and constituting problems are not a question of truth or falsehood, it's a matter of meaning. . . A problem, well, there has to be a meaning. . . There are problems that have no sense, yes? There are problems that make sense, so doing philosophy is to constitute problems that make sense and create concepts that cause us to advance toward the understanding and solution of problems.
Claire ParnetI would like to return to two questions that concern you particularly. . .
Uh, well, it seemed to me that I had very well. . . Yes? Yes?
Claire ParnetWhen you once again undertook doing history of philosophy with Leibniz last year, was it in the same way as you did 20 years earlier, that is, before you had produced your own philosophy? Was it in the same way?
No, certainly not, certainly not because before, I used the history of philosophy as a knd of indispensable apprenticeship where I was looking for the concepts of others, that is, of great philosophers, and the problems they answered to. Whereas, in the book on Leibniz- and there's nothing vain in what I am about to say- I mixed in problems from the 20th century, that might be my own problems, with those posed by Leibniz, given that I am persuaded of the actuality of philosophers. If you prefer, what does it mean to create like a great philosopher would? Creating like him is not necessarily to be his disciple. To create like him means to carry on with his task, to create concepts in relation to what he created, and pose problems in relation to and in evolution with what he created. By working on Leibniz, I was more in this path, whereas in the first books on the history of philosophy, I was in the "pre-color" stage.
Claire ParnetAnd you stated about your work on Spinoza, and we could apply it to Nietzsche, that you focused therein on the rather hidden area and accursed area of philosophy. What did you mean?
That, well, perhaps we will have a chance to return to this. For me. . . We may be able to return to this. For me, this hidden area means those thinkers who rejected all transcendence. So rejecting all transcendence, we would have to define this, and perhaps we will have a chance to return to transcendence. It refers to those authors who reject all universals, that is, the idea of concepts having universal values, and all transcendence, that is, any agency that goes beyond the earth and men.
Claire ParnetTo return to something you said earlier. . .
They are authors of immanence.
Claire ParnetYour books on Nietzsche or on Spinoza are landmarks, that is, you are known for your books on Spinoza and Nietzsche, yet one cannot say that you are a Nietzschean or a Spinozan, like one could call someone a Platonist or a Nietzschean. You passed through all that, even when you used them during your apprenticeship, and you were already Deleuzian. One cannot say that you are Spinozan.
You have given me an enormous compliment, that is, if it's true, that makes me very happy. . .
Claire ParnetAnd did you feel. . .?
What I always hoped for, I think indeed that, whether my work was good or bad, and I knew I could fail, but I think that I always was trying to pose problems for my own purposes, and to create concepts for my own purposes. Almost, at the limit, I would have wanted a kind of quantification of philosophy. That is, each philosopher would be attributed a kind of magic number corresponding to the number of concepts he really created, referring to problems, etc. -so there would be these magic numbers, well, Descartes, Hegel, Leibniz. I find that an interesting idea. So, obviously, I don't dare place myself there, but perhaps I would have had a small magic number, specifically for having created concepts as a function of problems. Simply, I tell myself, my point of honor is that, whatever the kind of concept I tried to create, I can state what problem the concept corresponded to. Otherwise, it would have all been empty chatter.
Claire ParnetAnd to finish with the final question, but I absolutely want to ask it. . . It's a bit. . . aggressive. . . At the time when-around the period of 1968, even before-when everyone, everyone was explicating Marx, everyone was reading Reich, wasn't it a rather provocative act to turn toward Nietzsche, who was really suspected of fascism in those years, and to talk about Spinoza and the body, when everyone was making us sick talking about Reich? Didn't the history of philosophy serve a bit as a dare. . . a bit of provocation for you?
No, but this is entirely connected to what we have been discussing all along, it's nearly the same question because what I was looking for, even what I was looking for with Félix, was this kind of truly immanent dimension of the unconscious. When, for example, all of psychoanalysis is entirely full of transcendental elements-the law, the father, the mother-all that, whereas a field of immanence that would allow me to define the unconscious, that was the domain perhaps in which Spinoza could go the farthest, along the path where no one had ever been, and perhaps where Nietzsche could also go the farthest that anyone had gone. So it seems it was not so much provocation, but it was because Spinoza and Nietzsche form in philosophy perhaps the greatest liberation of thought, almost in the sense of an explosive, and perhaps the most unusual concepts, because their problems were somewhat accursed problems, that people did not dare pose, certainly at Spinoza's time, but even during Nietzsche's. . . Problems that people did not dare consider, what people call "burning problems". . .
Claire ParnetWell we can go on since you don't want to answer further.
Eh. . .? . . . So are we at "K" ?
Claire ParnetNo, we are at "l".