The problem is how to affirm existence instead of negating and even blaming it. Last time we outlined a practical way to approach the existential aspect of this question by taking a detour through the four noble truths of Buddhism. The Buddha suggests the path towards positivity starts when we stop craving for existence to be any different than it is. But just how is it? The Buddha doesn't answer this question for us; he was famously uninterested in metaphysical questions. Nietzsche, on the other hand, certainly was interested in metaphysics, and Deleuze spends subsection 10-12 (pp. 22-29) trying to describe an existence we can unreservedly affirm 'as it is'. This would amount to an existence that is innocent, that isn't seen as a punishment or something we need to take revenge on.
In fact the question is not: is blameworthy existence responsible or not? But is existence blameworthy . . . or innocent? At this point Dionysus has found his multiple truth: innocence, the innocence of plurality, the innocence of becoming and of all that is. (NP, 22)
We actually already have an idea of what an innocent existence would look like. It's the world of forces and difference that Deleuze introduced us to right from the beginning. Force is innocent. It does what it does because it has a "natural aggression". Though we saw that force is neither atomic nor material, it has the same type of innocence we often ascribe to natural law -- it just does what it must. Forces push. We also saw that a force capable of dominating an object (ultimately another force) possess or appropriates it and gives it a sense. In this context, the problem of existence becomes a question of what force is capable of giving a sense, a meaning, to existence as a whole. So, the question becomes, what existing force is capable of giving all of existence the meaning of innocence? Deleuze characterizes Nietzsche's response as immediately paradoxical -- only a force strong enough to affirm that there is no such thing as 'existence as a whole' is capable of affirming all of it.
What does "innocence" mean? When Nietzsche denounces our deplorable mania for accusing, for seeking out those responsible outside, or even inside, ourselves, he bases this critique on five grounds. The first of these is that "nothing exists outside of the whole". But the last and deepest is that "there is no whole": "It is necessary to disperse the universe, to lose respect for the whole" (VP III 489). Innocence is the truth of multiplicity. (NP, 22)
A force that could sum up or judge all of existence as a totality can only be one that comes from outside existence. All the forces within existence are finite and relative. They never exist by themselves or in-themselves. As we've seen, 'a' force is already multiple because it requires a power differential between a dominant and a submissive side. It is what it does, which is push on an object. Only a fictitious force, like God, could dominate all of existence at once and provide it a meaning once and for all. The innocent, almost mechanical, working of force is the precise opposite of some sort of divine plan that governs the universe from beyond. This suggests that there's a difference between affirming 'existence as a whole', which is a fictitious unit, and affirming all of existence by affirming every 'part' of it. "Innocence is the truth of multiplicity," means that existence becomes innocent when the force dominating it is able to affirm that it is merely a part of an existence that necessarily has many other parts. It's clear that this creates a completely paradoxical relationship between the part and the whole, as well as between the power and powerlessness of the force capable of affirming the innocence of existence. But then, there's no way to avoid paradox when dealing with a non-dual philosophy, which as we'll see shortly is what this theory amounts to.
First though, Deleuze spends some time using the idea that our force is so often incapable of affirming existence to provide another perspective on the root cause of the Greek or Christian (or Buddhist, depending how you interpret it) accusation of existence. The result is a kind of psychology of force. It's only when our own force fails in its attempt to make sense of existence, and we decide that no mortal force could be capable of affirming its senseless chaos and suffering, that we invent a force outside of and separate from existence which does not act in it. This move creates the image of an all-powerful will whose force actually refrains from doing anything within existence. But of course, that image is merely a form of wish fulfillment on the part of our failed force. We project an image of God in order to preserve our own sense of power in the face of suffering our failure to see the meaning of existence. We imagine ourselves in the image of God: all-powerful, but refusing to act. Thus we insert a 'moral gap' into the action of force, separating what it can do from what it should do. As if we would ever dream of taking your bullshit money! We rebrand our lack of power as ascetic renunciation.
Whatever does not let itself be interpreted by a force nor evaluated by a will calls out for another will capable of evaluating it, another force capable of interpreting it. But we prefer to save the interpretation which corresponds to our forces and to deny the thing which does not correspond to our interpretation. We create grotesque representations of force and will, we separate force from what it can do, setting it up in ourselves as "worthy" because it holds back from what it cannot do, but as "blameworthy" in the thing where it manifests precisely the force that it has. We split the will in two, inventing a neutral subject endowed with free will to which we give the capacity to act and refrain from action (GM 113). (NP, 23)
While it's somewhat of a tangent, I think this sheds a lot of light on the very Christian notion of "free will". We invent the concept of a mysterious interior will that differs from what we actually do. Under which circumstances is this a useful invention? Only when: 1) we can't make sense of what is going on with someone (or with ourselves), and 2) we nevertheless want to punish someone (including ourself) even though we don't know why they did what they did. Not completely understanding how the world of force functions is an eternal human problem. When the Greeks faced it, they essentially punted and invoked a confusing overdetermined interplay of human and divine wills with Fate. And if someone did something you didn't like, you tried to take revenge on him then and there for his actions, and didn't worry much that maybe it wasn't ultimately his fault. Christianity though, as the "religion of love and forgiveness", has to invent a clear conception of free will ... in order to be able to find you guilty and punish you ... even for your intentions! Even today, the only reason most people want to believe in free will is so that they feel okay about punishing others. Without the obfuscation of free will, we would have to spend time figuring out why bad things happen, and so be forced to admit our nearly complete ignorance in this regard. The concept of Free Will is just an elaborate short cut to its ultimate aim -- righteous and justified revenge. You can only blame people who are 'free'. We besmirch the innocence of existence because we are sore losers, or as Deleuze puts it, bad players.
Alas, we are bad players. Innocence is the game of existence, of force and of will. Existence affirmed and appreciated, force not separated, the will not divided in two - this is the first approximation to innocence. (NP, 23)
Existence is affirmed when we see it, win or lose, as an innocent game, as the play of force and of will. Delezue illustrates this new characterization of the world of force by connecting it to Nietzsche's reading of Heraclitus. Heraclitus, as the first philosopher of becoming, is an obvious precursor to Nietzsche. Here though, Deleuze draws out a number of other parallels, with the ultimate goal of showing that Nietzsche's innocent existence is like the game of chance that Heraclitus describes in this fragment: "Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's."
Heraclitus is the one for whom life is radically innocent and just. He understands existence on the basis of an instinct of play. He makes existence an aesthetic phenomenon rather than a moral or religious one. (NP, 23)
For Heraclitus, existence exactly as it 'is' is already just. It doesn't need to be judged or redeemed but simply appreciated, valued, as a work of art -- aesthetically. This turns existence into a peculiar game where the style of play matters more than winning or losing (which I think is what Deleuze is trying to convey by calling it an "instinct" for play). Heraclitus' idea of existence as innocent play is opposed to Anaximander's idea of it as guilty work. These two represent the metaphysical version of the existential opposition we drew between a Nietzschean affirmation of existence and its Christian negation. Anaximander gives us the original version of the metaphysical Fall myth -- Being is crucified on a cross of Becoming. The blameless unity of the One falls into the sin and suffering of the Many.
[Anaximader] said "Beings must pay penance and be judged for their injustices, in accordance with the ordinance of time" (cf. PTG 4 p. 45). This means; 1) that becoming is an injustice (adikia) and the plurality of things that come into existence is a sum of injustices; 2) that things struggle between themselves and mutually expiate their injustice by thephtora; 3) that things all derive from an original being ("Apeiron") which falls into becoming, into plurality, into a blameworthy act of generation, the injustice of which it redeems eternally by destroying them ("Theodicy") (PTG). (NP, 20)
Heraclitus, by contrast, is a non-dualist -- this existence is just as it should be, and there is no other, better, existence behind this one. Instead of affirming only being and negating becoming, he, "... made an affirmation of becoming". This deceptively simple slogan, however, conceals not only a reversal of Anaximander's primacy of being over becoming, but a complete abandonment of its dualistic and oppositional logic.
We have to reflect for a long time to understand what it means to make an affirmation of becoming. In the first place it is doubtless to say that there is only becoming. No doubt it is also to affirm becoming. But we also affirm the being of becoming, we say that becoming affirms being or that being is affirmed in becoming. Heraclitus has two thoughts which are like ciphers: according to one there is no being, everything is becoming; according to the other, being is the being of becoming as such. (NP, 23)
The being of becoming (or "affirming being in becoming") is the metaphysical version of the paradox we encountered in discussing a force that could affirm all of existence. The problem is that if we simply say there is only becoming, we end up denying being. This just swaps the position of being and becoming and inverts the dualistic scheme. Our experience of being turns into a mere illusion if we take becoming to be the sole nature of reality. In this way we would become guilty of hypostatizing reality when we should see only the non-reality of becoming. But the whole point is to leave behind this schema and not negate anything. At its deepest, "to make an affirmation of becoming" is literally to make becoming into an affirmation of being, of its 'opposite'. There's no clearer statement of non-duality than this -- there's no opposition, there's no negation, there's only affirmation, which affirms even its opposite.
For there is no being beyond becoming, nothing beyond multiplicity; neither multiplicity nor becoming are appearances or illusions. But neither are there multiple or eternal realities which would be, in turn, like essences beyond appearance. (NP, 23)
Affirming the being of becoming is such a paradoxical idea that I need to pause here and flesh it out some more. I think a similar paradox is at the core of the Mahayana concept of emptiness. As I've heard Taft say many times, "emptiness doesn't mean that it isn't there". Seeing the emptiness of phenomena doesn't make them go away. What we're after in emptiness is not the negation of a perceived reality and not a condemnation of it as mere illusion. Our goal is only to see that the phenomena is constructed, fabricated, dependently originated, and not something that exists essentially, in-itself and on its own. Emptiness means that there are no essences. In fact, at its core, emptiness itself is empty, and instead of being experienced as some vacuity, converts into the overflowing fullness of experience -- beautiful display.
If my analogy is useful, the being of becoming should be something akin to empty arisings. In other words, it's our everyday perceptions of the world, treated not as illusions, but as a manifestations of a becoming which affirms itself so completely that it transforms into its 'opposite'. An emptiness which becomes all phenomena. We might say that becoming produces being in the same way that emptiness fabricates phenomena, though this formulation risks misunderstanding both becoming and emptiness as substantive entities, rather than something more like the process of affirmation. In both cases, the important things to grasp is that the identity of whatever phenomenon we're looking at is constructed through its relation to other phenomena whose identity is constructed in a similar fashion. Instead of a solid, reified thing that is in-itself, we discover a sort of hall of mirrors or infinite regress where any unity we grasp dissolves into the multiplicity of emptiness or becoming. Multiplicity and process are the key things to remember in order to escape the dualistic logic that blames existence because affirmation occupies the intersection of those two concepts. Becoming and emptiness are the many that are productive or affirmative of the one. Or conversely, if we choose to think of becoming or emptiness as 'one', it is a one that can only be by affirming itself in the many. Since this is a non-dual perspective, the question of which side we should call 'one' and which 'many' isn't a coherent one; the important point is that there are two inseparable but asymmetric terms. Not-two, but not-one either.
Multiplicity is the inseparable manifestation, essential transformation and constant symptom of unity. Multiplicity is the affirmation of unity; becoming is the affirmation of being. The affirmation of becoming is itself being, the affirmation of multiplicity is itself one. Multiple affirmation is the way in which the one affirms itself. "The one is the many, unity is multiplicity." And indeed, how would multiplicity come forth from unity and how would it continue to come forth from it after an eternity of time if unity was not actually affirmed in multiplicity? (NP, 24)
This obscure mystical formula we all seek -- PLURALISM = MONISM -- is what Deleuze considers the driving force behind the Eternal Return. Returning is the action of an unlimited becoming, one that doesn't stop transforming until it goes so far that it comes back to itself (so to speak). Or, alternatively, we might think of the way that Return redoubles something as creating a sort of 'opposition' between a thing and itself. Is this the real thing or its repeated simulacrum? And if the identity of this repetition requires a transit through an unlimited becoming, then we discover that all this transformation is both necessary to and somehow already packed into that identity. ER deconstructs the logic of the model and the copy and dissolves identity into a sea of difference that nevertheless reproduces that identity again and again. For every thing to become everything (or vice-versa) its fixed identity must be lost.
Heraclitus is obscure because he leads us to the threshold of the obscure: what is the being of becoming? What is the being inseparable from that which is becoming? Return is the being of that which becomes. Return is the being of becoming itself, the being which is affirmed in becoming. The eternal return as law of becoming, as justice and as being. (NP, 24)
If being is produced by becoming, or is becoming's unlimited affirmation of itself, or becoming's own return, then all of the things that are (all of existence) are nothing but affirmation. It's not that they affirm themselves, but that they only exist as affirmation. What 'comes back' in the Return is everything, though it comes back emptied of any negation, of any idea that it should be different than it 'is'. This image of existence is nothing but the play and execution of forces, each of which innocently does what it must given its relative power. This whole hierarchy of forces together is necessary for the full interpretation of any of the forces. In fact, since it doesn't exist in-itself, 'a' force is only differentiated or articulated via its role in this hierarchy. An affirmation which brings everything back to its proper place is a sort of cosmic justice that operates continually from within rather than judging once and for all from without.
It follows that existence is not responsible or even blameworthy. Heraclitus went as far as proclaiming "the struggle of the many is pure justice itself! In fact the one is the many!" (PTG 6 p. 57). (NP, 24)
Perhaps this view of the identity and difference of forces can finally throw some light on the paradox we started with. What force is capable of giving a meaning to all of existence? The temptation is to search for a force so large that we imagine it dominating everything. But in fact, every force, no matter how small, insofar as it is differentiated from a continuum or field of forces, requires and thus repeats the entire field that gave rise to it. The cosmos returns in a grain of sand. We could say that existence has no (global, transcendent) meaning, but that it doesn't need one either, because every force which is affirmed is capable of providing it with a (local, immanent) meaning. Life as a whole is justified by every individual moment we can live affirmatively.
Finally, Deleuze returns to apply this same fractal logic to the idea of existence as an innocent game.
Affirming becoming and affirming the being of becoming are the two moments of a game which are compounded with a third term, the player, the artist or the child.
The being of becoming, the eternal return, is the second moment of the game, but also the third term, identical to the two moments and valid for the whole. For the eternal return is the distinct return of the outward movement, the distinct contemplation of the action, but also the return of the outward movement itself and the return of the action; at once moment and cycle of time. (NP, 24)
Next time we'll explore at more length this image of the game and it's moments. In the current context, it just seems meant to illustrate that innocence requires a recursive structure where the whole is reflected in each part. Or perhaps it would be better to say where every part is reflected in each one until both whole and part are turned into identical infinite series. The game requires two asymmetric moments. But the fact that these repeat one another implies a third moment that realizes, or affirms, this identity. Maybe not-two doesn't mean one, but three -- the symbol of multiplicity.
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