Two View points

 

It does I suppose often happen with philosophy. Exactly how one understand them comes down    single phrase, or word or constellation of conceptions. With Spinoza that concept is surely SIVE.

Sive means or that is. t implies equivalency, which is fine, and yet from time to time Spinoza uses it when really, according to he argument element where he perhaps could not.

So for example in 1/20, Spinoza says “God sive all his attributes’, implying at least that Gods is the same as to the of all his attributes. And yet this I not true. Elsewhere Spinoza (in letter) clearly implies Gods power is o be that which cannot b defined only in attributes so must have the power to have an infinite number of them. the secret is of course the context. Spinoza is here understanding necessity and the sense within which Attribute in giving God a unified being (that is in rendering the middle a thing precision), ensure that every middle occurs at  a place and time. The create in that unity and order. God might be into the middle of the next, and is, and as he is eternal, and yet also as he is eternal, then the or order the one the other of the attribute is also fixed. O cannot rewrite history, because the All god’s attributes, give the middle of God in a whole, in a succession, in a constant thing doing stuff.

Far  more famously is the paralleled Spinoza makes between God and nature. This occurs twice in Ethics. In the preface to book four it occurs win the context of an agreement about necessity, while in 4/4 it  in a debate about the notion of human essence. Now once gain this parallel needs caution. Spinoza repeated says that nature, understood as a single individual, is the infinite mediate mode – the element, the individual who encompasses all the weight of causes as its being. These causes therefore give it its reality – or better it is the middle of these causes-  it is what hey ultimately procure as are always producing. Nature is he movement to the next, understood for itself. As such though again at this point in this tumble understood as movement to the next, as sense one is effecting all the other, go, as the infinite catching up of things is seen. Gods is then this movement, not as finite as such (not only as it is in the ininfinte0, but in the actual moving itself. God or nature is then the naturing of nature in the flicker of eyes, and the patching of causes. It is the naturuing in the always leading to that next, and the next. And in the very specific context of the argument , the point is that he algebra of the middle draws the unity of causes not out into a define cause, or plan understood a s something top hey, so much as a giant infinite individual, who naturally inhabits these causes.

 The unity than God implies o nature, in not then the unity o the plan, or the following of a pair plan, so much the reconciliation of causes within a divine creature. This creature lives at the other end of everything the hoop or link in which perception actively imperceptions was the taking in the one things of the other – and nature does this not in difference but as itself. I is the power of that thing understand and in fact –  as a power with of course is both in the taker and the giver. The giver might cause, but the taker is there to be caused, and to respond to that cause. The holding functions of everything, the place then where perception and all things ought to meet is itself  dynamic being.

To put it another way, this god or nature does not imply that God and this infinite are simply one and the same at would be a too agonizing trap but rather that as one thinking upon causes, one needs to remember the God and nature infinite Individual at the end of everything, and God as power of the middle re caught up together. They are doing the same thing. They are not planning, not fitting in with apparent relations of cause and effect, so much as existing through the hoop up itself. this move then in the context of the essay Spinoza writes allows him to place the idea of nature, and locate exactly where the problems start with the idea of perfection (which implies a nature defined by God as mind planning, and not in the infinite middle of all things, moving).

 In that second use, in 4/4, the same kind of loop is made –  here against the phrase is God or Nature – and yet there is now a bit of  difference . What is at stake is the individual, which is fine. But more than that what is at stake in the sense  the individual as moment on moment acts. That is how they are building in themselves a  middle for themselves – how they are creating in all that turgid  streams of living a thing series of lives to call their own. The argument is then that it is in this stream, in this building that God is. That is tat god is guaranteeing as the middle, that whatever is built according to essential, divine rules, as a part in thinks will be in this domain. God in therefore their in the building feeling, and there are world are built. But this being is then grounded, not in the body as such s a unity (which nature does not care about), or in anything to do with predestination, it is another God is their in his capacity o be creating all things. That is he is there in his appeal always to the next (understood as a causes) and in his creating of nature as that which contains all. He is therefore thereof e as nature is in these acts looping up elements. This move into nature, n away form the body, haves then two further effects Firstly it founds humanities ethical live not on abstract forms, so much as the absolutely infinite middle of existing I matter as a punch in the middle of creating a life- this is where I am in nature and do I the one move – I is not then in the fixing of my form full stop: they merely define the sense I can a separate life, and not the sense I am existing moment on moment, But also just as importantly the appeal to nature includes in effect humanities consciousness in this move Consciousness, with it appeal to the whole of a humanities existence as the idea of for idea  - is always something that moves beyond a specific series of consequences. It is defined then in the taking o the present affect and interrelating them across a live. I is therefore as a idea peculiarly moral, that is it is peculiarly worried about how an effect will be to the rest of me, and thought the rest of me it does not have pain or pleasure but Good or evil therefore). It understanding beyond a moment As I am conscious therefore I   assume a unity of something (call it thought) upon the diverse middle of my perceiving. I want or demand a unity.

 This unity then has a complex reality to Spinal. O the one hand of course it is nonsense I is not real, it has no power, and its claim to planning is wrong.

 And eyed yet that move beyond the movement by movement at the moment, to a unity which is busy containing is not utterly daffy, it is after al lithe move that nature e also makes, but makes practically. If you like it is am abstract and perception account of an actual and immediate effect, in nature. My consciousness  reflects an entire nature (which includes init my body by proxy, and all that might happen to it),and is not utterly worthless. The trouble is that I cannot here feel worth. Or worse ( as Spinoza as  immediately goes on to prove) I confuse it with myself, it therefore  assume that somehow my consciousness and the world are giving in the same flickering eye, and through the same moments. we therefore is the power of the pun. A Power in the constellation god or nature, Spinoza does has bet to remind us of.

The loop of god and nature is then according to this reading a partial construction. And yet there is really nothing complain this argument,  is merely a to, I personally use in constructing a Spinoza. If you do not, you loose sight of what is important t to him I feel, the difference of god and the difference to us as a part of that God.

 If you do not then a critical difference between God and mind is for lost (the fact that I am not always perceiving as God, although I am always a part of his perceptions). It also looses that wonderful series of parallel moves one can merrily read into Spinoza, a series ht looks for difference between mutual understanding, and common notions and affects. They need not be the same, as long as God follows certain rules for their construction.

 In their place you have quiet a different viewpoint, you have the god of Deleuze.

 

Deluze starts with a wonderful phrase quite possibly derived from Leibniz but applied to Spinoza God is the infinite capacity for affection. This capacity is then something felt n the absolute in

God (infinite things I infinite ways0, and in the finite for individuals. Reality is then given not in thing, so much as the ability to take up and use or counterpoint point things. Reality is a series of negotiated responses to a world, a constant interplay of affection. Nature itself (as distinct from god0 in the infinite capacity as it is understood as drawn out on that infinite individual. I is the infinite capacity of Nature as God, to  be and to be affected through time. I differs then from Gods in the sense that God is the prehistory the rues, the setting for this affection.

 

God is the rules, the initial moves, at set up the game (the before of the individuals and the ultimate end point of he game – the before and after on an act of perceiving or existing. The rules ht are set in the attribute of an insensitive qualities one, and the embodiment of that in nature and the giving go a feature.

 All of which is fine in away. It has one great advantage of the other account mentioned above, an one clear slippage beyond Spinoza ( a leakage that does not in the history of philosophy really mtter0. the advantage is that it automatically puns or better keeping the punning of ideas and thing in God. That I in the previous essay the difficult of the difference between things and perception was dwelt upon, and Spinoza supplied with an answer drawn from his text to the problem, On did need that explication, a s what mattered was not the different difference between God and man, so much as the difference itself between ideas and the actualities, a difference that actively gave both God and man The perceptions, the capacities to be affected, revelled then in their unity, as a idea or emerging idea, a unity that embraced difference, or better complied a new difference is an intensity embrace. Te being affect, become then given in a n intense power, that was affected, and that was as such open to the would, between limits To pick up another and to be were one and the same

But in another way, the only way minds can directly understand the shifts of space and time were through relations of motion and rest, The world becomes then a perceptual moment or stir of things, a series of changes and shifting upon a single looped axis.

Actuality as constant change, and reality as also intensity unions to  affected by that change within it, then become Spinoza central message

At which point of course deleuze  hits the double barrier of his Spinoza appears (well he simply dies) it but an importance one  body Deleuze does not want (and that is different to 4/4 for reasons mentioned above). And again Spinoza also places a slightly different emphasis upon God, and the element which transcends differences directly (for reason mentioned in that other essay).. Deleuze of course does not want either of these two elements, and he can brush them quiet aside. Al the more so as what he does want, that difference is in Spinoza, it is in the difference between perceiving and being (a difference deleuze brilliantly identifies and then adopts). The power of perceiving and the power o being need not be the same. Between the two a real difference lies.

 

And yet, of course there is a limit of a direction to this difference. These two are no doubt different, deleuze will then go on today but that’s does not mean that one ought not to think of those elements whose existence ought to be as that difference. That is two are as the difference between the two These element this thing in itself is then the event. The event is that in which a  difference id directly inscribed, with which can only be understood as that which makes a different to and for another. That in which difference is naturally lodged The perceiving I have of the world (my capacity for affecyiong0 and the realities that hen flow of these differences, as relate to a point actually beyond all reality as such, beyond nature  (or God or substance as such). the elements are beyond the orbit or their giving, they rather embrace as their reality all difference they produce. Deleuze if then making real use of the pun in God of the difference that pun in not drawn out as an infinite exchange a  union given in the do head understood as it is real. On the contrary the nothing of reality implied here (that into is infinite is rejected), what is kept though is the upon itself, the difference God’s absolute infinity embrace, this difference is though now given a finite badge and sent off to wage a rather different series of wars and conflicts.

 

 The trouble Spinoza would have with this I suspect is two fold Firstly in a sense it replaces one problem with another,. Go as absolute infinity was his answer form a trap Deleuze seems a bit too happy to fall into. That is the trap of understanding what is within a human as somehow special Spinoza assists that human are not that special. They might effect things, and make a difference and yet does everything else, and god has not directly chosen humans for events or sanctioned events as such. I the contrary what I perceive as real in me matters only  it falls upon me, and altering my body b=gives itself a reality. Now this is a reality I share within other things like my body. This saying vies me and them a power, ands loped into something genuinely differently, it is looped into eh difference of having a body, . It does not though allow one as Leibniz did to claim that h ac of perceiving has some kind of axis to some privilege element of the inverse full stop. That is t events, that on then might or might not play a special part in Idealize of course is at pains o ensure the events are greater than their realization. They do not then need to include humanity at all. And the point remains that this perceiving or better sharing within them we are directly grasping something real about the universe. The really matter and our perceiving really matter It gives us in part what it claims to do, an accurate account of something beyond (even is that account is partial and problematic).

 

 This then leads to the second reservation Spinoza would surely have. The problem that Deleuze's account within big and little powers or capacities to be affected, in effect arranges reality in a series that  it is all caught up in the same difference. That effect perception has upon us to providing a unity ( a unity in consciousness that nature supports of  a degree) then becomes that norm, Everything is caught up in the same axis the same kind of time. Everything is given together of a single plan of nature, and as  a series of responses. We are all in this together, and in the same thing together.

The unity of the nature, the unity of being in a nature becomes something to transpose as an infinite God upon all things, all dimension f being. I becomes then a real element of unity (or at least something univocal).

 

And yet Spinoza’s essential divine paradox runs absolutely against this move, and of god reasons  reduced the middle, the sense of being caught up, to one sense of being caught up. I levels it out as a series, and marked difference king. We are in another, and that other is fixed; the problems[ions would have is that either the one as then triumphed over the middle or else (and more realistically) the difference one finds is always that of perception, and therefore after the event – it has a unity then and but the model for that unity is valueless o better aposteri and not productive. Or perhaps if Spinoza was feeling kinder he might say the unity was given then only in nature as it is an absolute infinity (hence the importance of 4/4 in Deleuze's account), as such it is a unity in a difference that obvious must triumph, as it is the final point of reality. From the ore strident version of their viewpoint, events are important to Deleuze because they mask this fact That is the open but as that which is perception could have been different, given other considerations, and so could be in any fixed nitres. Thy then define the axis or the place in which nature can change. They therefore take what would otherwise by only fixed its fixing in cause, and make it something else. But Spinoza would perhaps say, then that hi is merely caused out caused, in then re-invented elsewhere. That is it is invented to either deliberately be a lack of God after a God has been defined which Spinoza actually would deny (the God of Nature) or else as they were for Leibniz an alternative reading of Goes infinite mind and capacity to be affect. That is event one into their own after one has accepted a point Spinoza does not. namely that nature gives the reality of a univocal difference as I would be in God  a difference then that the as Spinoza knows demands to exclude this giving, as it must always be different). Spinoza b contrast would rather stick with middle (or a least my Spinoza does….) and define a God that is actually capable of having many middles, many different sense of being caught within.

Or t put it another way Deluze perceptions the middle as middle (and so as unreconcilled to one take o reality) after ensuring that the middle of Spinoza is defined in nature, and so inadequate and too big. This then allows him to jump to events as that middle, Spinoza though does not make the first move, He simply has another account of the middle as pure elements as  God, one that might include events, but is never centred on them, so much as one the creative should spin from them understood in themselves and across all things (and given in the infinite immediate modes).

 This many is then guaranteed in that 4/4 quote. Essence can do what they like, within the rule that hey are, an god is there, and will ensure that nature is their We then are free within ourselves, and within our natures, and genuinely free, to make those nature or at least elements of them as we choice (and not care a fig for difference or its giving in the continuity of time)..

These other difference then will include the mechanics of consciousness. Conscious demands rather a lot of been as it creates an awareness of a whole that is intuitive and direct. I know I m complete and fret about it creates then the ideas of Good and evil, which cannot be followed but must rather be the objects of a production. That is one most produce the good in one can sensible moves in the mind. God and evil become then lodestars to move towards. A many of being within the mind understood it is under the light of certain elements, More than this the paradox do the conscious on evil – or falling always, a conscious or thought that cannot in God in any other way, is clearly problematic. God is not conscious of pain, which is lose and yet and only of the evil, the sense that one in thinking a thing must strive against it to element it. Or again and form another angle good s clearly not that simple either. To find good, and pall up with it properly is to open a mind to the cooperation of a universe in that being good, and the problem one faces when other elements are adversely effected by that very cooperation. One is the caught up in a nested series of realities, a complex interchange of being within the middle of things, and sliding takes on one own nature (human as moral or ethical, or animal or divine etc). Or again to be in a body which is mad of the same stuffs as other bodies is to be an enigma, one will have feeling within ones that are not quite ones own. They are not what one might be or could be. They are ether point one becomes another. It is therefore to manage these feelings or affects, to understand then and the sense they ensure one is never simply there, but always a part in others and a part of other even as one is. That is those intensities as such are already not in simply what they appear to be, even as they have limits and are affected  even as they move and are themselves…

O again it is to have common nations, in which there is a direct understanding of this sharing and being shared, an understanding that is as it is shared, known and is genuinely creative and powerful What I am thereof becomes growing in the might I am with or use or thought or include others as another within me. Or again the nature  doubling up of the mind in consciousness imposes other senses one is, other resources to what one is….

In short humanity is a welter of different takes on being in the middle ,and different declamation of what one is in, and how that being within might be fed into others. The within here is far from simple….

And yet this itself imposes a new problem How can one understand what it is within? It clearly cannot be space or temporal as such as it needs to allow for other within. Where can I then a s a finite thing find it/ Only in God – in which I immediately become a  deleuzian (and good thing too), or can I find it else where, in me?

If so where?