University of Dundee DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY On the Function of Ground in Deleuze’s Philosophy Or An Introduction to Pathogenesis McGinness, John Neil Award date: 2013 Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 01. Oct. 2021 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY On the Function of Ground in Deleuze’s Philosophy Or An Introduction to Pathogenesis John Neil McGinness 2013 University of Dundee Conditions for Use and Duplication Copyright of this work belongs to the author unless otherwise identified in the body of the thesis. It is permitted to use and duplicate this work only for personal and non-commercial research, study or criticism/review. You must obtain prior written consent from the author for any other use. Any quotation from this thesis must be acknowledged using the normal academic conventions. It is not permitted to supply the whole or part of this thesis to any other person or to post the same on any website or other online location without the prior written consent of the author. Contact the Discovery team ([email protected]) with any queries about the use or acknowledgement of this work. On the Function of Ground in Deleuze’s Philosophy Or An Introduction to Pathogenesis John Neil McGinness Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. University of Dundee April 2013 i Contents Declaration v Abstract vi Abbreviations vii Preface ix Introduction Ground, function and pathogenesis 1 Aims of the thesis 1 ‚What is grounding?‛ 4 Method and system 8 Ground and function 13 Pathogenesis 16 The historical aspect 22 Organisation of the thesis 27 1 The function of ground 31 Beginning with Plato 31 Plato’s grounding 33 Plato’s function 40 Platonism and its problems 43 Plato’s mechanisms 48 Question-problem complex and the dyad 51 Repetition and ratio 56 Selection and logos 61 ii Ungrounding and the unequal 64 The simulacrum 72 Conclusion: Pathogenesis as field 75 2 The function of ground 77 A modern reversal of Platonism 77 Kant’s Copernican Revolution 80 Nietzsche and philosophy 83 Nietzsche’s ontology 87 The function in itself 90 Functioning 94 Pathogenesis and disease 98 Pathos 101 Genesis 104 Pathogenesis and immanence 107 3 Pathogenesis 110 Mechanisms of pathogenesis 110 A sketch of the actual/virtual dyad 114 Pathogenetic analysis 120 Hume and the first plane 125 A ‘second’ grounding of the plane 129 Bergson and the second plane 131 Nietzsche and the third plane 139 Questions unanswered 147 4 Pathogenesis 149 Deleuze and grounding 149 iii Kant and ground 152 The transcendental 154 The genetic 159 Internal genesis and the problem 163 The circle and the transcendental 169 The third 171 Pathogenesis and the singularity 173 Diagnosis, genealogy and pathogenesis 176 5 Pathogenesis and Deleuze scholarship 182 Three waves 182 Function and dysfunction 184 The universal 186 First wave: Badiou 190 Life as function of a universal 193 Responses to Badiou and other first wave readings 196 Second wave 203 Williams 205 Bryant 210 Meillassoux 216 Third wave as final wave 222 Conclusion Methodology and Metaphysics 228 Function and ground 228 Pathogenetic understanding 231 Future research 234 Glossary 237 Bibliography 246 iv Declaration I, John Neil McGinness, hereby declare that this thesis is my own work and effort and that it has not been submitted anywhere for any award. Where other sources of information have been used, they have been acknowledged. Signature: ………………………………………. Date: ……………………………………………. v Abstract This thesis introduces pathogenesis as methodology for a vitalist metaphysics, where life is understood as emerging and developing through functioning and grounding. This methodology is defined in an analysis of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, whose work is used as central resource alongside the work of historical figures – Plato, Hume, Kant, Bergson and Nietzsche – and contemporary writings on Deleuze as secondary resources. The analysis proceeds by problematising the related concepts of function and ground in relation to Deleuze’s vitalist philosophy and in relation to the supplementary material indicated. vi List of abbreviations Gilles Deleuze WG ‚What is Grounding?‛ tr. Christian Kerslake (please see fn. 7 in the introduction). DR Difference and Repetition, tr. Paul Patton (London: Continuum, 2004). LS The Logic of Sense, ed. Constantin V. Boundas, tr. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale (London: The Athlone Press, 1990). DI Desert Islands and Other Texts, ed. David Lapoujade, tr. Michael Taormina (London: MIT Press, 2004). LB The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, tr. Tom Conley (London: The Athlone Press, 1993). EP Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, tr. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990). EC Essays Critical and Clinical, tr. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco (London: Verso, 1998). NP Nietzsche and Philosophy, tr. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). F Foucault, tr. Seán Hand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988). ES Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature, tr. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991). B Bergsonism, tr. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone Books, 1991). N Negotiations, tr. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). CM Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, tr. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (London: The Athlone Press, 1983). vii Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari AO Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, tr. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1972). TP A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, tr. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1987). WP What is Philosophy?, tr. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). viii Preface This thesis draws the conceptual frame for the inauguration of a new disciplinary field within philosophy, one for which, it is argued, Deleuze supplies the principal material, if not a road map. The field is pathogenesis. Pathogenesis introduces a number of new terms into philosophy that work to demarcate it as a field. Some of these terms - for example, ‘ground’ and ‘unequal’ – appear often in Deleuze’s work and their meaning in this thesis is close to their meaning there. ‘Pathogenesis’ and ‘cleave’ are new. Some of the terms, such as ‘function’, ‘dyad’ and ‘border’ are in between; they appear in Deleuze’s philosophy but they are either not fully conceptualised, or conceptualised, but with a meaning that diverges in one way or another from the meaning attributed to them in this thesis. For the reader’s convenience, and for conceptual clarity and consistency, a glossary of the most important concepts is given at the back. It will be useful to glance at these definitions whenever one of the terms appears in the text. When we think it will be particularly useful to refer to the glossary we will indicate this by putting the relevant term in parentheses; for example, (cf. Cleave). These definitions are preliminary. They give an idea of what the term means, but its full significance, or rather, a much fuller significance, will be arrived at only by reading the text. ix Introduction Ground, function and pathogenesis Aims of the thesis This thesis has two different aims, which dovetail. It aims to examine and explore the function of ground in Deleuze’s vitalist philosophy and it aims to introduce pathogenesis as methodology of a vitalist metaphysics using the materials that Deleuze provides in his work. All three concepts – function, ground and pathogenesis – have to be understood within the context of the approach of this thesis, which is to focus on Deleuze’s critique et clinique project. This is when metaphysical categories are established with respect to real conditions of experience and activity (critical and clinical) and where this activity is understood as the clinical and critical functioning of non-organic life.1 Ground is linked with the first half and function to the second half. Pathogenesis is constructed by combining these two halves through an element that is common to each of them. This is ‘a life’. A life is critical and clinical; a life grounds and functions. Immanence, a central problem that Deleuze responds to throughout his work, is ‘a life’. 1 See Daniel W. Smith’s article, ‚’A life of Pure Immanence’: Deleuze's ‘Critique et Clinique’ Project‛, in Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Critical tr. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997) (Hereafter cited as EC) for an excellent treatment of this project. As Smith points out here, ‘although he first announced the idea for this book during a 1988 interview, it is clear that Deleuze had conceived of the "critique et clinique" project early on in his career and pursued it in various forms throughout his published work.’ (p. ii) For the interview Smith refers to, see Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, tr. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 142. Hereafter cited as N. 1 We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and nothing else. It is not immanence to life, but the immanent that is in nothing is itself a life.2 The pathogenesis of something is the life of that thing; how it functions and grounds with respect to its life.