The concept of a plane of immanence is borrowed from spinoza, who used it to describe the world as an attribute to the one substance, god. From the early 1960s until his death, deleuze wrote many influential works on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. Deleuze becoming nietzsche becoming spinoza becoming. The notion of a christian plane of immanence will allow me to reconstitute the pentecostal labor of spiritual discernment in ghana as a methodic dive into divinity in terms of modes, intensities, flows, and refractions of the holy spirit. Spinoza and the best plane of immanence in the spinoza book of 1968, deleuze fashions a history of the philosophy of immanence, from the neoplatonists through to duns scotus, which culminates in spinoza. This is the empiricist conversion we have so many reasons not to believe in the human world. Plane of immanence substance god is either transcendent or immanent, as is the case in spinoza s philosophy transcendence philosophy, often considered as the opposite of immanence. Deleuze rejects the idea that life and creation are opposed to death and noncreation. Already in his hume book, empiricism and subjectivity 1953, deleuze. In the first part, i discuss the nature of spinozas radical ethics.
Immanence deleuze and philosophy identifies the original impetus and the. Uncorrected paperswallace matson 4 excellent essays on spinoza start there. Pure immanence therefore will have consequences not only for the validity of a philosophical reliance on transcendence, but simultaneously. A christian plane of immanence contrapuntal reflections on. It seeks to extract the inner consistency of deleuzes thought by returning to its source or to what, following deleuzes own vocabulary, it calls the event of that thought. Oct 02, 2009 3 the plane of immanence in deleuze plays precisely this role of the one, or the whole, insofar as everything that is is situated at some point on the plane. In his magnum opus difference and repetition, he tries to.
He argued, then, that there is no good and evil, but rather only relationships which are beneficial or harmful to the particular individuals. Feb 07, 2012 spinozas philosophy of immanence is the consequence of his rejection of the judeochristian conception of god as a transcendent creator. The entire ethics is a voyage in immanence, but immanence is the unconscious itself, and the conquest of the unconscious. Throughout deleuzes writing on the plane of immanence, he defines it as a diagram, a horizon, and also as a ground. The strength of spinozas social feelings, and his aristotelian emphasis on friendship as a necessary human good, are abundantly shown in the ethics. Immanence deleuze and philosophy identifies the original impetus and the driving force behind deleuzes philosophy as a whole and the many concepts it creates. Transcendence and immanence syracuse university dr. The immanent plane rather exists prior to the existence of subjects. Spinoza 163477 is the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers, remarked bertrand russell in the history of western philosophy. Thus, to be in the middle of spinoza is to be on this model plane, or rather to install oneself on this plane which implies a mode of living, a way of life. This ambitious study presents baruch spinoza 16321677 as the most outstanding and influential thinker of modernityand examines the question of whether he was the first secular jew.
I like the concept of a transcendental field which is prior to consciousness, and consciousness becomes a fact only when a subject is produced at the same time as its object, both being outside the. No, he is not talking about the enlightenmentan enlight enment founded on the ideas of men like copernicus, galileo, and brahe but rather a dark. Spinoza was the philosopher who knew full well that immanence was only immanent to itself and therefore that it was a plane traversed by movements of the infinite, filled with intensive ordinates. Jun 01, 2014 the deleuzian theory of ecology addresses such questions by utilizing the concepts of plane of immanence and the impersonal, which will now be addressed in order to explore how deleuze arrives at ethology, 2 which transcends humancentered ontology, through his ideas of becoming, creativity, and duration. Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation 29. One of the early thinkers of the enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions. Specifically, i want to suggest that a deleuzian politics distinguishes itself by refusing to appeal to any transcendental justification for the positions it adopts. He presents spinoza as reclaiming the thesis of univocity of being. An ethics of immanence will disavow its reference to judgments of good and evil, right and wrong, as according to a transcendent model, rule or law.
Identifies immanence as the original impetus and the driving force behind deleuzes philosophy. The plane of immanence is metaphysically consistent with spinozas single. Jun 01, 2014 spinoza was the philosopher who knew full well that immanence was only immanent to itself and therefore that it was a plane traversed by movements of the infinite, filled with intensive ordinates. This post is for the first three books of the republic. A lifein order to best understand it, it is important to. Nevertheless, in what follows, i want to show that spinozas central view propounded in the ethics, the view that god. Spinoza showed, drew up, and thought the best plane of immanence that is, the purest, the one that does not hand itself over to the transcendent or restore any transcendent deleuze and guattari 1994, 60. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. The plane is clearly not a program, design, end or means. In spinoza and the problem of expression 1968, deleuze presents the notion of immanence as rooted in neoplatonic conceptions of the metaphysical oneall, and as waiting for spinoza to liberate it from the transcendence implied in traditional conceptions of emanation. It does so because the alignment of god with nature, expressed in the doctrine deus sive natura, points to an ontology of connections and crossings rather than. He also reaffirms in 1991 that it is spinoza who sets out the best plane of immanence.
Immanence, derived from the latin in manere to remain within refers to philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence, which hold that some divine being or essence manifests in and through all aspects of the material world. Eps 11 deleuzes reading of spinoza has clear and profound relations with all that he wrote after 1968, especially the two volumes of capitalism and schizophrenia. It seeks to extract the inner consistency of deleuzes thought by returning to itssource or to what, following deleuzes own vocabulary, it calls theevent of that thought. Deleuzes central project is to invent new images of thought to put in place of the classical system of representation of theoretical thought. His most popular books were the two volumes of capitalism and schizophrenia.
With this perspective and a range of theories from thinkers such as spinoza, nancy, haraway and braidotti as the groundwork, a new positive concept of the animal, operating on the plane of immanence, is sketched out, compelling a reappraisal of the relationships between body and thought, ethics and politics, or life and death. The plane of immanence is a concept put forth in the writings of french philosopher gilles deleuze. That is, ethology is different from the composition between relationships or characteristics. Immanence deleuze and philosophy edinburgh university. In these books, socrates is conversing with polemarchus, thrasymachus, glaucon and more people over justice versus injustice, good versus bad, how one seems good or bad or just or unjust, the. It makes abundantly clear how close deleuzes thought is to that of spinoza how the thought of spinoza flows not through deleuzes mind, but through his heart. From deleuzes description, spinoza s ethics as ethology relies on the fact that it is an immanent plane, which aims at analyzing the relationship between speed and slowness of things as well as their features influenced and impacted. The seclusion of spinozas life was necessitated by intense labour and intellectual discipline, and his frugality expressed independence of spirit rather than meanness or selfconcern. The marrano of reason and the adventures of immanence. Deleuze, gilles internet encyclopedia of philosophy. Popular spinoza books showing 150 of 186 ethics paperback by.
Plane of immanence is a founding concept in the metaphysics or ontology of french philosopher gilles deleuze. Reader immanence immanence in deleuze can the entire. Deleuze characterized his own work as a philosophy of immanence, arguing that. Yirmiyahu yovel shows how spinoza grounded a philosophical revolution in a radically new principlethe philosophy of immanence, or the idea that this world is all there is.
Immanence, meaning existing or remaining within generally offers a relative opposition to transcendence, that which is beyond or outside. Does transcendence mean the search for a world beyond this one or is there some sense in which there is a transcendence of or in this world which is not a transcendence beyond the world. Scholars and dabblers in philosophy will appreciate this brief posthumous collection of gilles deleuzes writings, pure immanence. This plane of immanence or consistency is a plan, but not in the sense of a mental design, a project, a program. Baruch spinoza shelved 24 times as spinoza avg rating 4. All 5 entries tagged plane of immanence, philosophy. Immanence here is not a condition distributed among preexisting subjects denied any access to the transcendent. Following deleuze and guattaris notion that philosophy is a discipline of creating concepts, this book traces how the concept of the animal was created in the history of. In what follows, i want to argue that on this point, as on many others, deleuze is nietzsches heir insofar as deleuze wants to remain within what he calls the plane of immanence. As a result of hisontological flattening of everything onto an absolutely infinite substance that comprehends all things as its modeshe substituted a veritable plane of immanence for the hierarchical causal sequence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, pantheistic, pandeistic, or panentheistic faiths to suggest that the spiritual world permeates the mundane. As i have said elsewhere, the plane of immanence is deleuzes reworking of spinozas notion of substance. The deleuzian theory of ecology addresses such questions by utilizing the concepts of plane of immanence and the impersonal, which will now be addressed in order to explore how deleuze arrives at ethology, 2 which transcends humancentered ontology, through his ideas of becoming, creativity, and duration. The plane of immanence is metaphysically consistent with spinozas single substance god or nature in the sense that immanence is not immanent to substance but rather that immanence is substance, that is, immanent to itself.
Notably, within his metaphysics he favored a spinozian concept of a plane of immanence with everything a mode of one substance, and thus on the same level of existence. It is a medium for the interaction of concepts and ideas, and it is an infinite, formless and fractal field. Deleuzes published writings, immanence is repeatedly contrasted with the philosophies of transcendence, and the philosophers deleuze frequently returns to scotus, spinoza, nietzsche, leibniz, and hume each offers, as deleuze understands them, important contributions to the philosophy of immanence. Pure immanence therefore will have consequences not only for the validity of a philosophical reliance on transcendence, but. Immanence, transindividuality and the free multitude. Indeed, a radical immanence like spinozas seems very much at odds with a privileging of the human whether we understand this privileging in existentialistic or rationalistic terms. The plane of immanence is metaphysically consistent with spinoza s single substance god or nature in the sense that immanence is not immanent to substance but rather that immanence is substance, that is, immanent to itself.
From deleuzes description, spinozas ethics as ethology relies on the fact that it is an immanent plane, which aims at analyzing the relationship between speed and slowness of things as well as their features influenced and impacted. Immanence, meaning existing or remaining within generally offers a relative opposition to transcendence, a divine or empirical beyond constituting the basic divided line of metaphysics or experience which haunted philosophy for so long. Following deleuze and guattaris notion that philosophy is a discipline of creating concepts, this book traces how the concept of the animal was created in the history of philosophy through. A numberone bestseller in israel, spinoza and other heretics is made up of two volumesthe marrano of reason and the adventures of immanence. Deleuze conceived of philosophy as the production of concepts, and he characterized himself as a pure metaphysician. It is usually applied in monotheistic, pantheistic, or panentheistic faiths to suggest that the spiritual world permeates the nonspiritual, and often. But not only is the ethics for deleuze the creation of a plane of immanence, it is the.
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. This article is a reconstruction of spinozas materialist ontology using deleuzes philosophy, towards a revolutionary ethics of desire. A christian plane of immanence contrapuntal reflections. Spinoza, they write, is the only philosopher never to have compromised with transcendence and to have hunted it down everywhere he discovered that freedom exists only within immanence 48. In these books, socrates is conversing with polemarchus, thrasymachus, glaucon and more people over justice versus injustice, good versus bad, how one seems good or bad or just or unjust, the souls satisfaction in learning arts etc. Gilles deleuze january 18, 1925november 4, 1995 was one of the most influential and prolific french philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. That is why spinoza calls out to us in the way he does. Immanence in the shadows of transcendence by worth hawes yirmiyahu yovel characterizes spinoza as standing at the heart of an enlightenment in human understanding and consciousness. This book reexamines the concept of the animal on the plane of immanence, as opposed to the traditional viewpoint founded on the plane of transcendence. A philosophy of immanence fredrika spindler it may be that believing in this world, this life, becomes our most difficult task, or the task of a mode of existence still to be discovered on our plane of immanence today. A numberone bestseller in israel, spinoza and other heretics is made up of two volumes. In univocity, as deleuze reads spinoza, the single sense of being frees a. Plane of immanence wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.