After posting about “a year of immanence” a few days ago, it occurred to me that I could have called it “A year of living immanently.” And then I thought, What would that mean? Would it be living with one’s face to the wind, always in motion, responding to the flow of life, one’s heart beating in the cool air of open encounter? Living without calculation or manipulation?
Would it be, as Deleuze describes in “Immanence: A Life,” “a qualitative duration of consciousness without self,” “an absolute immediate consciousness whose very activity no longer refers to a being but is ceaselessly posed in a life”? Would it be living as pure poetry, art exhausted in the process of its artistry, with nothing left over and nothing to spare?
“A life is everywhere, in all the moments that a given living subject goes through and that are measured by given lived objects: an immanent life carrying with it the events or singularities that are merely actualized in subjects and objects. This indefinite life does not itself have moments, close as they may be one to another, but only between-times [mean-times, des entre-temps], between-moments. It neither takes place nor follows, but presents the immensity of the empty time where one sees the event yet to come and already happened, in the absolute of an immediate consciousness.”
“Very young children all resemble one another and have hardly any individuality; but they have singularities, a smile, a gesture, a grimace — events which are not subjective characteristics. Small children, through all their sufferings and weaknesses, are infused with an immanent life that is pure power and even bliss [beatitude].*”
*from “Immanence: a life” (I’ve combined two translations, Millet’s and Hodges/Naormina’s)
Have you read Island by Aldous Huxley? That’s where I first encountered what I now would call an Immanent philosophy. One of my favorite quotes:
“Dualism. . . Without it there can hardly be good literature. With it, there most certainly can be no good life.
“I” affirms a separate and abiding me-substance; “am” denies the fact that all existence is relationship and change. “I am.” Two tiny words, but what an enormity of untruth! The religiously-minded dualist calls homemade spirits from the vasty deep; the nondualist calls the vasty deep into his spirit or, to be more accurate, he finds that the vasty deep is already there.”
I recommend reading through the Old Raja’s Notes on What’s What. It’s a very quick read, but, I feel, densely packed with philosophical insights. Every time I read it, I find something new.
Best wishes for the New Year!
Jeremy
Adrian, quoting Deleuze:
“Very young children all resemble one another and have hardly any individuality; but they have singularities, a smile, a gesture, a grimace — events which are not subjective characteristics.”
Kvond: One wonders of blogs are best like very young children.
Thanks, Jeremy, for the nice quotes from Huxley. (One of my first blog posts, albeit a brief one, was on Huxley.) I haven’t actually read Island, though I’ve wanted to for years.
kvond – The best blogs, yes.
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