In a previous post I attempted to work through Deleuze’s thesis that stupidity is a transcendental structure of thought, an illusion internal to thought, similar to Kant’s transcendental illusions produced in and through reason. In intervening days I’ve continued thinking about this, trying to think more specifically about what challenges thought, making it so difficult to think. It seems to me that this question is not only vital to the more remote concerns of philosophy such as those belonging to metaphysics and epistemology, but also to concrete issues in politics and ethics. Once again it is necessary to emphasize that stupidity, if it is a sort of transcendental illusion, would not be a cognitive failing resulting from poor development or inadequate neurology. Neurologically, one could be quite intelligent and still be embroiled in stupidity. On the other hand, I don’t particularly like the word “stupidity”, though I confess that I gravitate towards this word as I see so much of it in the world about me. I suppose that says something about the structure of my desire. Hopefully no one will cleverly lay me bare in terms of Hegel’s logic of the beautiful soul.
In his magnificent Commentary to Hegel’s Science of Logic, David Gray Carlson writes,
…the Understanding– what passes as ‘common sense’ –is, at first, oblivious to the mediateness of concepts. “The understanding determines and holds the determination fixed.” Accordingly, the unmediated… becomes a self-identical entity… because the immediacy of the concept is taken as the whole truth of it. The understanding therefore “abstracts” a part and calls it the whole. Abstraction “means to select from the concrete object for our subjective purposes this or that mark without thereby detracting from the worth and status of the many other features left out of account.” (20)
It will be recalled that for Deleuze stupidity was to be thought as an inability to conceive and pose problems, or draw distinctions. Stupidity is a certain way of tarrying with identity. As always it is worthwhile to remember that Deleuze uses the term “problem” in an idiosyncratic way. For Deleuze a problem-multiplicity-Idea is not a negativity or absence of solution, but instead the ontological ground of individuation or the field out of which an entity is individuated. Although Deleuze would strongly object to this language, problems mediate solutions (entities) and give them their sense. Darwin, for instance, discovered this during his journey on the Beagle with regard to finches and other species.
When Hegel speaks of immediacy, abstraction, and self-identity, he seems to refer to something similar with regard to the understanding. Take the following passage from Hegel’s famous article “Who Thinks Abstractly?“. There Hegel writes,
I have only to adduce examples for my proposition: everybody will grant that they confirm it. A murderer is led to the place of execution. For the common populace he is nothing but a murderer. Ladies perhaps remark that he is a strong, handsome, interesting man. The populace finds this remark terrible: What? A murderer handsome? How can one think so wickedly and call a murderer handsome; no doubt, you yourselves are something not much better! This is the corruption of morals that is prevalent in the upper classes, a priest may add, knowing the bottom of things and human hearts.
One who knows men traces the development of the criminal’s mind: he finds in his history, in his education, a bad family relationship between his father and mother, some tremendous harshness after this human being had done some minor wrong, so he became embittered against the social order — a first reaction to this that in effect expelled him and henceforth did not make it possible for him to preserve himself except through crime. — There may be people who will say when they hear such things: he wants to excuse this murderer! After all I remember how in my youth I heard a mayor lament that writers of books were going too far and sought to extirpate Christianity and righteousness altogether; somebody had written a defense of suicide; terrible, really too terrible! — Further questions revealed that The Sufferings of Werther [by Goethe, 1774] were meant.
This is abstract thinking: to see nothing in the murderer except the abstract fact that he is a murderer, and to annul all other human essence in him with this simple quality.
For Hegel, the criminal is here treated in terms of immediacy, and consequently as self-identical. The criminal is reduced to his status as a criminal and this property is treated as an intrinsic property of what he is. For instance, we can imagine a neuropsychologist studying the brain or DNA of the executed criminal, searching for that elusive property that determines his identity. Indeed, millions of dollars are spent every year for precisely such research projects. Additionally, this relation to the criminal is “abstract” in the sense that it reduces the being of the criminal to a single property– “criminality” –relating to him as if her were devoid of other properties. This, according to Hegel, is the work of the understanding.
In constrast to the work of the understanding, dialectical and speculative reason unfolds the mediations that are involved in the notion. In the case of the criminal, these “mediations” refer to a history, a genesis, involving family, education, the social order, and so on. Indeed, this is the secret of Hegel’s various dialectics: Each time one begins with something taken as immediate and self-sufficient, and then it is unfolded to that point where the mediations and otherness are found necessarily dwelling within it. All of these ideas are familiar to anyone who has worked with the various social sciences, so I am almost embarrassed to repeat them. However, what is interesting here is the way in which Hegel emphasizes how these mediations conceal and erase themselves in the determinate being. Moreover, it is striking that as various forms of dialectical thought have risen into prominence in the last two centuries– often forms of dialectical thought much at odds with Hegel such as Deleuze’s ontology –the push-back has been to erase mediation altogether. The political and ethical stakes of mediacy are obvious. They certainly don’t favor a particular orientation. At any rate, Deleuze and Guattari put the illusion of the immediate nicely in Anti-Oedipus:
Let us remember once again one of Marx’s caveats: we cannot tell from the mere taste of wheat who grew it; the product gives us no hint as to the system and the relations of production. The product appears to be all the more specific, incredibly specific and readily describable, the more closely the theoretician relates it to ideal forms of causation, comprehension, or expression, rather than to the real process of production on which it depends. (AO, 24)
The task of dialectical thought, then, is to reveal how these mediations are at work in immediacy or how immediacy is mediated, or yet again how the immediate contains the other within it. As Carlson so nicely puts it, “Dialectical Reason merely expresses what was previously hidden” (29). I purposely leave the details of this task vague and open as it will differ from field to field, so we will have to develop, as it were, tools on the ground and must see the very process of producing these tools as a result of the way in which our own immediacy is mediated. That is, it must not be forgotten that the actor and observer is herself a part of this process.
There is a sort of transcendental illusion at the heart of experience itself that invites relating to the world in a particular way at the level of praxis which is borne of the detachment of “immediacy” from its mediations. This can be seen at the level of therapy where a psychological disorder is seen as a part of the self-identity of the suffering patient, such that the social and family context are ignored. It can be seen in the way certain questions are posed in the field of genetics, where the interactive relation of organisms to the environment are ignored. It can be seen in a series of presuppositions revolving around the war on terror, where it is assumed that terrorists are simple things that can be simply eradicated, thereby ignoring the social field out of which terrorists emerge or are individuated. It can be seen in United States education reform policies, where it is assumed that teachers are broken and the problem can simply be solved through more extensive training and testing, thereby ignoring shifts in the social world. Examples could be multiplied. In all these instances immediacy and self-identity are privileged, subtracting mediation from the thought of the thing.
Stupidity would thus be something that perpetually haunts thought and practice as we are perpetually presented with the world as a series of immediacies. In a luminous passage from Matter and Memory, Bergson writes,
…if my body is an object capable of exercising a genuine and therefore a new action upon the surrounding objects, it must occupy a privileged position in regard to them. As a rule, any image influences other images in a manner which is determined, and even calculable, through what are called the laws of nature. As it has not to choose, so neither has it any need to explore the region round about it, nor to try its hand at several merely eventual actions. The necessary action will take place automatically, when its hour strikes. But I have supposed that the office of the image which I call my body was to exercise on other images a real influence, and, consequently, to decide which step to take among several which are materially possible. And since these steps are probably suggested to it by the greater or lesser advantage which it can derive from the surrounding images, these images must display in some way, upon the aspects which they present to my body, the profit which my body can get from them. In fact, I note that the size, shape, even the color, of external objects is modified as my body approaches or recedes from them; that the strength of an odor, the intensity of a sound, increases or diminishes with distance; finally, that this very distance represents, above all, the measure in which surrounding bodies are insured, in some way, against the immediate action of my body. To the degree that my horizon widens, the images which surround me seem to be painted upon a more uniform background and become to me more indifferent. The more I narrow this horizon, the more the objects which it circumscribes space themselves out distinctly according to the greater or lesser ease with which my body can touch and move them. They send back, then, to my body, as would a mirror, its eventual influence; they take rank in an order corresponding to the growing or decreasing powers of my body. The objects which surround my body reflect its possible action upon them. (20-21)
I’ve always had a certain fondness for Bergson’s theory of the perception-image. For Bergson, perception is possible action. Put more forcefully, I perceive that which is within my power to act upon. Bergson refers to it as “virtual action”. Consequently, Bergson speaks of increasing and decreasing powers of my body. My perception is a coordination between the action of the body and the world that gives itself to that body, as if in a reflected mirror. Here, of course, Bergson discovers in his own way the thesis of the identity of subject and object developed by Hegel in the Phenomenology.
In this connection it could be said that the question of the relation between the immediate and the mediate takes on a special urgency. For the question of what is given as immediate is a question of that upon which one can act or that which one can affect and be affected by. As such, the question of overcoming stupidity is also, not surprisingly, a question of acting well… Which has little or nothing to do with being well behaved.
Larval Subjects . 
March 9, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Fascinating stuff, Sinthome. I have a question pertaining to “the question of overcoming stupidity is also, not surprisingly, a question of acting well…” I think I’ve heard versions of this claim repeatedly from Deleuze scholars: that desire has to be educated; I heard Michael Hardt say once that “love” (his version of cohesion-in-difference of political groups with similar aims but different interests) has to be “trained” but he couldn’t say how that happens though he made it clear it doesn’t involve a third-party “trainer.” Nor can I imagine that Deleuze would claim that there must be an educator of desire, and when it comes to acting well to overcome stupidity I take it that doesn’t involve an instructor laying out a blueprint for proper action. So what is this process of acting (and I suppose perceiving) well, and how does one know when one is doing it? Sorry if this is an obtuse question, but it seems to be a commonplace claim that doesn’t often bear examination.
March 9, 2007 at 11:23 pm
This isn’t an obtuse question at all. I take it that when Deleuze speaks about the education of desire, he is simply talking about the formation of desire, syntheses, that are produced in and through engagement with the world. Syntheses must be made and unmade. The important point to remember with Deleuze is that whenever he speaks of education and pedagogy he’s speaking of individuation or processes by which a problem is posed and an entity, organization, or form of life emerges. Consequently, to speak of education in love is to speak of the way in which lovers individuate their (non)relation to one another as the singular space of an encounter that is markedly different from other social relations. A couple of posts linked to in this particular post speak to these issues of individuation and pedagogy.
N.Pepperell and I have been discussing the issue of critical subjectivity for a long time now, attempting to thematize how something like a critical subjectivity emerges within situations. I take it that you’re asking something similar with regard to stupidity. The question would be roughly something like “how does a subject begin to ‘tarry with the negative’ or cease viewing the world in terms of abstract immediacy?” I don’t think there’s any particular rule or method that can guide us here. From a dialectical perspective, immediacy necessarily contains contradictions that push in the direction of critique. However, while that’s a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient condition.
Lately I’ve been toying about more embedded models for how this takes place, revolving around subjects that undergo a particular encounter that then promotes exploration of mediation. This is not as dramatic as it sounds. Something has to disrupt the ordinary flow of experience, to undermine expectations, for this work to be initiated. In this regard, the “sensibility is educated” (usually in ways that it does not like). For instance, a dictator comes to power and daily life is suddenly various fraught. In the psychoanalytic setting it is always very important to pay careful attention to the event(s) that precipitate the entry of a person into analysis. What is it that leads a person to suspect that some annoyance is a symptom, that it might have a broader significance? What was missing from its place that led to this entry into analysis? This encounter leads the person to begin exploring the various “mediations” of their life and interpersonal relationship… Mediations that were previously ignored or invisible.
I take it that something not unlike this occurs at the level of the social and political as well. There must be some sort of rupture or break where things aren’t working as they once did. A rupture or break can be many things. It can be a disaster. It can be the appearance of a particular person (the rude guest, the rabble rouser). It can be an encounter with another people. It can be a sudden invention or prosperity. There has to be something, however, that highlights that which was before invisible or something that was before so obvious that it couldn’t be seen. For instance, I don’t see the glasses on my face, but see through them. What are the conditions for the possibility of seeing the glasses on my face? When do I become aware of them? Increasingly I’m coming to feel that it’s necessary to avoid one size fits all answers to questions like those of critical subjectivity. Rather, critique should be thought more along the lines of Levi-Strauss’s bricolage, where the bricoleur works with the materials available and doesn’t follow a set or pre-defined body of rules. This isn’t out of any particular hostility to rules– some here like to poke fun at me for my love of mathematics –rather it has to do with the nature of individuation. If processes of actualization are indeed creative solutions to specific problems within being, then critique as well must result from a process of individuation that cannot be universally generalized. Not a very satisfying answer… Which is part of the reason I continue to scribble away here.
March 10, 2007 at 12:25 am
I think this is very important:
Increasingly I’m coming to feel that it’s necessary to avoid one size fits all answers to questions like those of critical subjectivity. Rather, critique should be thought more along the lines of Levi-Strauss’s bricolage, where the bricoleur works with the materials available and doesn’t follow a set or pre-defined body of rules. This isn’t out of any particular hostility to rules– some here like to poke fun at me for my love of mathematics –rather it has to do with the nature of individuation. If processes of actualization are indeed creative solutions to specific problems within being, then critique as well must result from a process of individuation that cannot be universally generalized.
This will probably sound contradictory to most of what I write, but I believe that you’re right about this… So either I’m completely incoherent (which is always an active possibility with me…), or there might be a useful distinction to be made between types of analysis that we direct to more contingent situations, and a type of analysis that might grasp certain very specific – I don’t have the right word here, so apologies for this – “structural” dimensions that fall out of our collective practice in very specific situations.
There’s a tendency to think of theoretical systems as things that are built up from more concrete to more abstract formulations, as though what an abstraction is, is a kind of conceptual generalisation from our experience of what are, at base, concrete and particular things. If this were true, it might be plausible to suggest that you could have one theory – or one type of theoretical approach – that then sort of zooms in and out of social life to capture phenomena that unfold at different levels. I’m not convinced that this is a productive notion of abstraction – or at least, I’m not convinced that this is the only possible way of understanding what an abstraction might be, and how we might arrive at one. And I think this might have implications for your sense of critique as bricolage. (Please note that I’m not suggesting you don’t already know this – I’m just thinking out loud…)
I’ve occasionally gestured at the notion of a “real abstraction” – at the notion that it might seem plausible to us to think abstractly in certain specific ways (which then sometimes may come – as I think they might have in Adorno’s work – to be confused with something like “conceptual thought”), because dimensions of our collective practice actually possess those qualitative attributes in terms of which we have come to understand the concept of “abstraction”. So, that apparently universalising forms of subjectivity, for example – forms of subjectivity that (even if they happen to acknowledge their own historical specificity on one level) don’t incorporate explicit historical markers into their own categories – forms of subjectivity that, in terms of how thet express and articulate themselves, would seem to apply equally to any context and any time – might actually be forms of subjectivity primed by the experience of a very specific historical context in which social practice has an actual real world indifference to various “marked” forms of explicitly recognised social institutions or human communities. I know this is very, very compressed – I haven’t yet figured out how to write about this in a very useful way…
But the point I’m gesturing at is that we might exist in a context that does tend to generate certain “rules” (or, I would tend to say, certain patterns or regularities of practice) – and theorising these elements of our context might, then, require a theoretical approach that seeks to articulate what those regularities might be: the form of subjectivity that would grasp a rule-like object, would have to take certain rule-like characteristics into itself. However: (1) “theory” as such (or “rational” thought as such, or similar) need not be reduced to the specific form of theory that might be required to grasp a particular theoretical object; (2) even with reference to our own context, I strongly suspect that one of the most interesting tensions – which then a critical theory would need to grasp – lies between the reproduction of certain regularities and drives toward diversification within the same overarching context. In my view, it would therefore be somewhat unlikely that a theory could properly be critical without recognising the non-patterned, non-generalisable dimensions of the context it is seeking to grasp – and I say this, again, not as some general corrective point about theorisation as such, but as a specific point about the strange qualitative attributes of the social world we have created; and (3) one implication of this approach is the potential – the likelihood – of the dissolution of a particular qualitative approach to theorisation, as a result of the successful political contestation of the context of which the theory was the creature…
But this kind of programmatic writing probably isn’t all that useful to the question under discussion… Sorry – just thought I’d toss out a few thoughts, while also reinforcing your more general point, by saying that I agree that theoretisation is often approached in such a way that I think it overreaches, trying to see patterns and regularities where contingency – or, probably more accurately, very very ephemeral and fragile kinds of patterns – holds sway. At the same time, there can be some risk in focussing too exclusively on how we can intervene in fragile situational patterns exclusively – as important as I also think these are – if there is also some dimension of our context that expresses a larger and more historically robust pattern – which can then also exert a kind of gravitational pull on more situational contexts, but which can go unnoticed if we don’t have a theory supple enough to recognise the potential distinction… Apologies if this is too opaque…
March 10, 2007 at 2:29 am
Actually, that’s a very satisfying answer. I suspected that acting well would have to do with (experimentally / aleatorically?)forming syntheses. And the way you’re thinking about the production of critical consciousness resonates with some pet ideas I’ve got about absurdist theater (watching a Beckett play isn’t exactly adjusting to life under a dictator but I’ll take your word for it that the encounter doesn’t have to be “dramatic”). So, cheers!
March 10, 2007 at 3:07 am
Dr. Sinthome,
We wrote a post illustrating your theme here but I am not going to link up to you, securing more clicks and therefore more celebrity and prestige for the Larval Subjects, until you update our address on the blogroll; for now I have given all the credit to Ken Rufo.
Sincerely,
the Cultural Parody Center
March 11, 2007 at 1:08 am
[…] I want to write at the moment – some fantastic ideas raised over at Larval Subjects, as Sinthome continues to reflect on how we can make normative judgments about particular forms of thought, within an immanent and […]
March 11, 2007 at 2:35 pm
cool post, sinthome, and also the earlier one you reference on stupidity and the problematic. i like foucault’s comments on Stupidity in theatricum philosophicum. there seems to be a certain kind of link to phantasm in LoS, that is, through the distribution of contingency and the affective relations of various orders of contingency. The symbolic (virtual)structurations of knowledge/language seem to be tools for dealing with (a ‘relating to’ in different social ways) different types of contingency in a problematic field. here also I am drawing on deleuze’s definition (paraphrasing from LoS) of singularities as problematic because of their indetermination.
as a sidenote you need to make another anouncement on your old blog because according to bloglines there are still 20-odd subscribers and only 8 to this one. i didn’t realise you’d finally swapped over!!!!
March 11, 2007 at 11:25 pm
[…] the recent post “Immediacy, Mediation, and Stupidity”, Sinthome develops an earlier set of reflections that seek to understand something about the […]
March 12, 2007 at 12:40 am
re: second half of your post:
as always in hegel, there is, however, also the need to account for the significance of labor (or the practical implementation in regards to potentially unequal situations of power) as a mediating force within a process of individuation. the question that can extend this is then one of the implementation, such as the fact that the only way the terms “stupid,” “moron,” or “idiot” have historically come to signify within the US context is as a result of a development of adaptations of french eugenics procedures that have in a very foucauldian way via processes of disciplinary categorization ended in the creation of the SATs–u of chi press recently published great book on this–will provide author and title once i can remember. sorry for being so stupic.
March 14, 2007 at 3:10 am
[…] Brief Note on Immediacy Responding to my post on mediation and stupidity, N.Pepperell of Rough Theory writes, I think the reason for my sort of […]