Pure
Immanence: Essays on A Life, is a posthumous compilation of three essays by
philosopher, logician and former Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Paris VIII, Gilles Deleuze. Two of the essays, “Hume” and “Nietzsche,” originally
appeared in French in 1972 and 1965 respectively, but “Immanence: A Life”, the
lead essay and Deleuze’s last written work, was first published not far from
the time of his death in 1995. While all three essays in this collection have been
previously published in French, this recent translation by Anne Boyman connects
Deleuze’s earlier work on the history of philosophy, specifically on Hume and
Nietzsche, with later developments in his project of transcendental empiricism.

John Rajchman, author of The Deleuze Connections, and co-editor with Cornel West of Post-analytic Philosophy, writes an
eloquent introduction which provides a horizon for the essays to be situated
and informed by the more extensive work on Hume, Nietzsche and the topic of
empiricism, developed in Deleuze’s other writings. Rajchman’s writing style
compliments the collection well, creating a flow that is especially important
considering the introduction is twice the length of Deleuze’s first essay and
nearly equal in length to the second. The book itself is only a scant hundred
pages. The introduction addresses Deleuze’s enlistment of Hume and Nietzsche for
his own search for a “superior empiricism,” and his project to “rethink the
relation of thought to life” (19). Thus we realize that in Hume and Nietzsche,
Deleuze found precursors who altered the philosophical landscape in ways that
made his own project possible.

This said, the introduction does
not well address one essential facet of Deleuze’s corpus, namely the relation
of his work on Hume and Nietzsche to a larger string of studies on other prominent
philosophers. Although this is not necessarily a shortcoming of Rajchman’s
piece considering the selective presentation of the Hume and Nietzsche essays
in this text, those who find Deleuze’s work, especially his later experimental
style, unnecessarily nebulous, and those who are quick to dismiss him as a
trendy writer with little to contribute to philosophy, may have benefited from
a better account of Deleuze’s interpretation of these other philosophers.

A more extensive introduction to
Deleuze’s larger interests in the history of philosophy might have accompanied
a rationale for the editor’s selection of the Hume and Nietzsche essays for
this collection. While the three essays collectively establish Deleuze’s empiricist
canon, running counter to the traditions of idealism and rationalism, the
motivation for the selection of these essays is left unclear. He has written on
and appropriated for his project, not just the thought of Hume and Nietzsche,
but also that of Spinoza, Leibniz, Bergson and Marx, but
none of this work is well represented in this collection. Moreover, it
has been contended that Deleuze actually chose to abandon Hume after an early
preoccupation with his work. In this light, the placement of the Hume essay
alongside the very last essay written by Deleuze, might best explained with reference
to some enduring and profound importance, in spite of Deleuze’s later affiliation
with other important historical figures.

The short essay on Hume is gracefully
written, concise, and without much sacrifice of clarity. Deleuze gives the same
reading of Hume as that found in his recently translated book-length
publication, Empiricism and Subjectivity.
He reads Hume as a philosopher whose epistemology served the practical concerns
of politics, culture and morality. He recognizes a duality in Hume, between his
atomism, a theory of simple impressions, and his associationism, the logic by
which simple impressions are connected. He fixates on this duality in Hume’s
philosophy, where relations are posited as independent of the ideas they
conjoin. These external relations are not a
priori but contingent on principles of human nature conditioned through
habit and custom, not subject to the atomistic terms involved. The passions,
for Hume, restrict the attention of the mind to particular ideas, and direct
the relationships forged between these ideas. The project of extending the
scope of passions beyond partial sympathy, to a more encompassing judicial,
moral and political sentiment, requires the amplification of passions by
imagination. This amplification should be manifest in institutional artifices,
where encompassing passions can be reinforced through sanctions, rewards and
custom. By uncovering this interplay of passions, relations and the habituation
of other principles of human nature, Deleuze shows that Hume has undermined the
traditional foundation for the ideas of metaphysics (Self, World, and God). His
modern skepticism substitutes belief for knowledge and illusion for error. This
essay is handy but not a substitute for Deleuze’s more comprehensive text on
Hume.

The essay on Nietzshe in this
volume also resembles a longer study, Nietzsche
and Philosophy, but the length and strength of exposition of “Nietzsche”,
the essay, are substantial enough for it to stand well on its own. Deleuze
brings together various strands of Nietzsche’s life and thought, exposing its surprisingly
systematic character. Deleuze is most captivated by the unification of life and
thought in Nietzsche’s philosophy, something forgotten since the pre-Socratics.
While clarifying common misinterpretations, Deleuze highlights the relation of
thought to life in Nietzsche’s philosophy.

He reminds us that the Will to Power
does not mean the will to dominate. However, a more precise phrasing might have
stated that the Will to Power should not be conflated
with the will to dominate, although it can manifest as such.  The passing of time is marked by the
confluence of multiple social, psychological, biological and historical forces.
The dynamic created in combining this plurality of forces is what Nietzshe
calls the Will; Nietzsche’s Will to Power is not the Will of a unified
autonomous subject, but rather the confluence of forces at the heart of an
actor. Psychological masks bring cohesiveness to these forces. The Will to Power
either affirms or negates, depending on the active or reactive character of the
forces involved. Nietzsche claims that History is the triumph of reactive
forces. The reader might want to refer to Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, in which he describes this triumph in culture,
morality and philosophy by illustrating the progressive stages of degeneration
and nihilism in the West. The genealogical method, uncovering the forces responsible
for culture, is accomplished through interpretation of a phenomena’s meaning
and further evaluation of the value this meaning holds. For Nietzsche, the
ideals of knowledge and discovery of truth are two philosophical tools that result
from degeneration and nihilism in the history of philosophy. Philosophy’s monumental
historical categories, the Self, the World, God, Causality etc. are likewise
for Nietzsche a consequence of the nihilistic degeneration and triumph of
reactive forces responsible for Western philosophy since Socrates’ distinction
between the sensible world and the ‘higher values’. Deleuze claims that the degeneration
of philosophy has rendered the typical philosopher a submissive ‘public
professor’ who carries the burden of values accepted by the state, religion and
culture, instead of critiquing and creating values.

Deleuze also dispels the
misconception that the most powerful in a social regime are also the strongest.
Nietzsche’s diagnosis of western culture shows precisely how weak, reactive
forces have dominated throughout history. In fact, as long as one strives for
domination, one is implicitly accepting of established values. Not only is
domination by the weak manifest in Christianity’s glorification of the meek and
oppressed, and in philosophy’s degradation of life and glorification of
transcendental metaphysical values, but it is also rampant in the political
sphere. In a passage that is reminiscent of the Nazis predicament, Deleuze reminds
us that it is only the reactive Will to Power of the weak that is aligned with a
desire for wealth, money, honors, power; a corrupt will that yields to
established values.

Deleuze claims that the elusive
concept of the Eternal Return is not the ancient doctrine of cycle and return
of the same, borrowed from the Greeks, Hindus or Babylonians. As he describes
it, Nietzsche’s eternal return is an ethical principle where one is encouraged
to affirm the fragmentary imminent world of flux through a selective willing
and affirmation of active forces, and a negation of reactive forces. Deleuze
identifies the distinction between the cyclical and selective interpretations
of this ethical principle in the two Zarathustras visited by the Eternal
Return, the sick Zarathustra and the almost well convalescent Zarathustra. I
would recommend to the reader particularly interested in understanding
Deleuze’s reading of the Eternal Return, and its affinity with Deleuze’s
thought, that they refer to his Difference
and Repetition.

Finally, the opening segment of
this essay on Nietzsche is devoted to a study of Nietzsche’s life, various
stages of his health, and their reflection in his work. Deleuze argues, in well
written even touching prose that Nietzsche’s last works, including his last
letters, should not be considered excessive, nor be disqualified by his madness.
He claims that Nietzsche’s work was produced through an interplay between his
progressive sickness and periods of health. “The overall paralysis” Deleuze
notes as Nietzsche’s final retreat into madness and sickness, “marks the moment
when illness exits from the work, interrupts it, and makes its continuation
impossible. Nietzsche’s last letters testify to this extreme moment, thus they
still belong to his work; they are a part of it.” (64) Nietzsche’s career ends
when he is no longer able to use illness for gaining a perspective on health. A
highlight of this essay is Deleuze’s clarification of the six stages of
nihilism and of the productive moment which comes in the completion of these
six stages and motivates the great transmutation of values.

“Immanence: A Life”, the first
essay in this collection, is best understood in the context of Deleuze’s other
work. The style is more experimental than its companion pieces. His terminology
is opaque, without a context of reference. In this essay, Deleuze explains aspects
of ‘A Life’, the substratum beneath and prior to those artifices which are the common
focus of Modern philosophy: sensation, consciousness and subjectivity. Deleuze
replaces sensation, a category of simple empiricism which necessitates “a break
in the flow of absolute consciousness”, with a stream-like qualitative duration
of consciousness, better described as a passage, or becoming from one to
another. He replaces the Modern conception of consciousness, where the
transcendent subject is produced simultaneously with a transcendent object,
with a consciousness coextensive and cotemporaneous with a pure plane of
immanent experience. In this pure plane of immanence, the construction of the
subject, complete with all the components of an individual life, gives way to a
more primal and impersonal ‘singularity’, present in the neutrality of ‘A Life’.    

For the enthusiast, this edition is
a novelty item, a handsome completion to a collection of Deleuze’s bound works.
The essay, “Immanence: A Life,” shouldn’t stand on its own, as it is most meaningful
in the light of a larger philosophy that is established over the course of
Deleuze’s life. Deleuze’s readings of both Hume and Nietzsche are more comprehensively
covered in other works, and anyone with interest in Deleuze scholarship would
do well to refer to these. For those with some background in philosophy, but
little experience with Deleuze in particular, the book offers a glimpse into
some seminal themes of his work. This book is worth purchasing for the
Nietzsche essay alone, and the Hume essay isn’t bad either. For philosophers
who are looking to judge Deleuze’s argument, they’d best look elsewhere, as
“Immanence: A Life” is merely a description of some culminating points in his
long career and at best provides a taste of a larger project.

 

©
2002 Jennifer Matey

                                                                                                                

Jennifer Matey is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook. 
She holds a Masters degree from that institution.

Categories: Philosophical