Passions before Passivity, Actions after Self-Certainty Binding the Philosophy and Neuroscience of Affects Andrew BEVAN March 2019 Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University for the award of Doctor of Philosophy. ABSTRACT This thesis examines the turn to affect in both philosophy and neurobiology beginning in the 1990s. Both fields shared themes of a return to emotional aspects of the body; a rapprochement between natural sciences and humanities; and rethinking of causality, intentionality, identity and temporality. Yet the field remains contentiously divided. Disputes arise mainly from differences in understanding of key terms (notably between affect and emotion) and the place of the intentional subject within expanded, flattened conceptions of agency, causality and the animate/inanimate, differences ultimately between implications in and overcomings of past metaphysics of coupled opposites and the philosophy of the subject. Implication because conceptions of affect have been historically dominated by the active and passive understood as a doing and being done to; affects then become quantitative, external impositions disrupting purely self-present subjects requiring philosophies of defence that privilege sameness over difference. Whereas overcomings posit a pure activity or passivity, simultaneities of active and passive, or a non-temporal ‘before’ prior to activity/passivity. This thesis explores the alternative possibility that ‘active/passive’ never really translated the Greek ποιεῖν/πάσχειν that is its root and root of affect as translation of πάθος. The thesis is in two parts: in philosophy, I uncover a broader sense of πάσχειν as bindings of implicit differences prior to any explicit separation of agent and patient. Meanwhile, in contemporary neuroscience, action is being redefined through ‘prediction processing’ theories where error as the difference between world and an organism’s implicit models of that world motivates action. Affective neurobiology then describes this radical contingency of expectation and actuality in specifically affective terms as the organism in its self-difference. I conclude by binding the radical transformations in active and passive each turn effects to understand affect still as a pairing of active/passive but where these terms signify not an oppositional agent acting on patient, but as the binding of contingent, implicit differences with their making explicit through the affections of error in the organism’s necessary difference and togetherness with world. Page 3 of 240 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I gratefully acknowledge the Arts and Humanities Research Council and TECHNE consortium for their three-year full-time sponsorship as well as financial assistance with research expenses. I would like to thank the staff and students at CRMEP, the Freud reading group at Birkbeck and Greek Language classes at City Lit. Thank you also to Maria Dada, Shelley Hewerdine, Vicky Skea and Emily Young for comments and proof-readings. I particularly thank Luce Irigaray who changed the direction of my research during her seminar and many subsequent discussions. For supervision, I thank Howard Caygill and also for opening me to the possibility of studying non-Western philosophy. And finally, to Catherine Malabou for her support and encouragement and for affirming the necessity of engaging with the life sciences of today. I would like to dedicate this thesis to the memory of my sister, Liz, who died in my first year of research, 2015. Page 5 of 240 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................................................ 9 COMMON THEMES IN THE AFFECTIVE TURN ........................................................................................................................... 10 AIM, METHOD, STRUCTURE ........................................................................................................................................................ 14 I PHILOSOPHY ............................................................................................................................................................. 19 1 THE AFFECT OF THE TURN TO AFFECT ......................................................................................................... 21 1990S THEORISM: POST-STRUCTURALISM, ANTI-ESSENTIALISM ...................................................................................... 21 TWO VECTORS OF AFFECT THEORY: SEDGWICK AND FRANK, MASSUMI ............................................................................ 27 DEVELOPMENT OF AFFECT THEORY .......................................................................................................................................... 34 CRITIQUES ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 38 OVERCOMING, IMPLICATING OR NEGLECTING PAST METAPHYSICS?................................................................................... 42 2 THE AFFECT OF AUTO-AFFECTION: DERRIDA, DELEUZE, IRIGARAY, HEIDEGGER ........................ 45 ORIGINS OF AUTO-AFFECTION ................................................................................................................................................... 46 DERRIDA: AUTO-HETERO-AFFECTION ..................................................................................................................................... 47 DELEUZE’S SPINOZA: ONTOLOGICAL AFFECTS ........................................................................................................................ 53 IRIGARAY: MASCULINE AND FEMININE AUTO-AFFECTION ................................................................................................... 58 A NEGLECT OF THE BIOLOGICAL BODY? ................................................................................................................................... 64 ROOTS OF AFFECT......................................................................................................................................................................... 65 3 AFFECT FOR ΠΑΘΟΣ – LATIN TRANSLATION OF GREEK THOUGHT .................................................... 67 SEMANTICS OF ΠΑΘΟΣ / ΠΑΣΧΕΙΝ .............................................................................................................................................. 67 TRANSLATION OF ΠΑΘΟΣ: AFFECT, PERTURBATION, PASSION ............................................................................................ 74 FROM AFFECTS, PERTURBATIONS AND PASSIONS TO EMOTION .......................................................................................... 82 OTHER TERMS: PERCEPTION, SENSATION, TOUCH, FEELING ............................................................................................... 85 HAS A SENSE OF ΠΑΘΟΣ BEEN LOST? ....................................................................................................................................... 90 4 ΠΑΘΟΣ BEFORE ‘PASSIVITY’ .............................................................................................................................. 93 NOUNS: ΠΕΝΘΟΣ, ΠΑΘΟΣ, ΠΑΘΗΜΑ ........................................................................................................................................... 94 ΠΑΘΟΣ AS GRAMMATICAL VOICE: MIDDLE OR PASSIVE? ......................................................................................................... 97 ROOT VERB: ΠΑΣΧΕΙΝ ................................................................................................................................................................ 103 PROTO-INDO EUROPEAN ROOTS OF ΠΆΣΧΕΙΝ: BINDING ...................................................................................................... 109 PASSIONS BEFORE PASSIVITY: BINDINGS OF IMPLICIT DIFFERENCES ................................................................................. 114 II NEUROSCIENCE ................................................................................................................................................... 117 5 ANCIENT NEUROLOGY: MEDICINE AND PHILOSOPHY .......................................................................... 119 THE BRAIN AND NEURON IN ANCIENT GREECE...................................................................................................................... 120 HIPPOCRATES’S SEPARATION OF PHILOSOPHY AND MEDICINE ............................................................................................ 122 Page 7 of 240 GALEN’S RECONCILIATION ......................................................................................................................................................... 125 GALEN’S CRITICISM OF THE STOICS .......................................................................................................................................... 130 SEPARATION OR UNIFICATION: WHAT REMAINS THE SAME ................................................................................................. 133 6 19TH CENTURY NEUROSCIENCE ................................................................................................................... 137 CEREBROSPINAL AXIS DISPLACES CENTRALITY OF THE BRAIN ...........................................................................................