Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Deleuze’s solidary architectonic can't be studied in isolation by decoupling it from the fundament

[The growing interest in Deleuze has undoubtedly revitalized many aspects of philosophy that were neglected by mainstream Continental philosophy. The most exciting of which may be the resurgent interest in metaphysics on the level of those systems in the early 20th Centurty that built upon and challenged the scientific understanding of reality (I’m thinking, of course, of Bergson, James, and Whitehead)... Continental philosophy of religion is largely inseparable from Continental philosophy more generally as it begins in recognizing that modern reason has been constructed through a critique of religious thought and practice. The Kantian project then brought pure reason under the critical reflection “in order to make room for faith” before then finding a place for religion within the limits of this reconstructed critical reason itself. Skipping ahead to Kierkegaard’s philosophy we can see that his influential philosophy of truth as subjectivity bound critical reason to the life of the individual. To learn the truth one had to practice and live through reason embodied in a particular mood towards reality. This Kantian and Kierkegaardian spirit, though perhaps not the word, continued in Europe under the auspices of Husserlian phenomenology.
Most primary and secondary work in Continental philosophy of religion are within the phenomenological tradition, either through Marion’s explicitly Catholic and theological mode or in Derrida’s secular deconstruction of religion...This is where Deleuze’s philosophy enters the contemporary scene like a breath of fresh air.
Believing in this World: Towards a Philosophy of Religion after Deleuze I
from An und für sich by Anthony Paul Smith]
The Blaise Pascal quote, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing" erects an unnecessary partition that unfortunately lingers till this day. Sri Aurobindo affirms that the physical, the vital, and the mental are all different grades of the same constituting stuff called, consciousness. In fact, its further possibilities extend into the realm of the supramental. Hence, there is no reason to be suspicious of reason, or being wary of matter.
In this context, we need to see Deleuze’s delving into the heart of the matter or for that matter his later explorations into the vital along with Guattari as no less religious. The delusional belief that his solidary architectonic can be studied in isolation by decoupling it from the fundament as well as the transcendent is nothing but intransigent vanity. [TNM]

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