Classical and modern images of thought

Possible point of departure for a history of Western thought's turning against itself

Deleuze speaks about classical philosophy as being trapped by a ‘dogmatic image of thought’, a certain unconscious assemblage of presupposition about what thought is, what it ought to do, and what it can possibly do. Most importantly, this ‘dogmatic’ or ‘classical’ image of thought is characterized by the belief that thought has a natural affinity with the truth. By essence, thought is affiliated with the truth, capable of attaining it. And, the goal of thought is the attainment of this truth. It might well be that we are not presently searching for the truth, and presently ignorant of it, but by essence, thought moves towards the truth. Due to certain circumstances, a man might be more interested in using thought to lie, or due to a bad education, he might be living in error. But, by essence, truth, always. We just have to remember, Platonism says. Or we just have to rid our minds of all the prejudices we got from education, Cartesianism says. 

De facto, we might be living in error, but de jure, thought has a natural affinity with the truth. This is what the classical image of thought assumes, according to Deleuze. Against it, using Nietzsche, Deleuze claims that by essence, thought has nothing to do with the truth. Not only by fact, because we are living like idiots and distracted by all sorts of ulterior motives, but by essence. What is natural to man is not some connection to the truth, or a desire to know, but total confusion, and motives that have nothing to do with knowledge. Aristotle’s claim that all men desire by nature to know, it might seem true, but in truth, this is only the superficial product of an entirely different desire. Who desires to know? He who wants to have a career as a professor? He who is suspicious his wife is seeing someone? There are motives that have nothing to do with truth, that ignite our desire for knowledge. And only in a second movement, do we retroactively project our drift for knowledge onto the entirety of what thought is and means. And so, the question is not: how to return to the truth, how to fulfil our natural desire to know. It is: how to change our natures to such a degree that we come to desire the truth. The desire for truth is a particular desire, characteristic of a certain type of life. It does not arise in us “naturally”, no, a violent paideia is needed. On this point, someone like Plato would not disagree. But, classical philosophy always frames this paideia as a method of returning a man to what he already was by essence or nature. For Deleuze, there is nothing to return to.  

As always, the question is: what life? What life is not connected to the truth, what life is not interested in the truth? It is the common life, life in decline. And the argument can be made that all life, if it is not actively striving to ennoble itself, is in decline. Or should we say that a life being hyper-fixated on the truth, is already a symptom of decline?

The possible mistake in philosophies such as Deleuze is projecting the failings of man onto the essence of Man as such. And eventually, this way of thinking becomes terribly dangerous when it posits these failings as the ideal. It seems to, at first, say merely that the classical image of thought is the result of some deeper processes. That the natural desire for truth for example, is the result of a certain genesis. But eventually, it can’t help but posit its new findings as ideals. You can’t go beyond judgement. 

As the prime example of this classical image of thought, Deleuze points to Descartes. The 17th century philosopher who said that common sense is common to all, and that everyone can agree on at least one thing: “I think, I am.” For Deleuze this philosophy is ludicrous, because it assumes once again this pre-supposition of the dogmatic image of thought: that thought has a natural affinity for the truth, that thought, by nature, can know what the essence of thinking is, and the essence of being. Deleuze calls it a subjective presupposition. If I would say: “Man is a rational animal”, this presupposes that I know what rational means, and what animal means, and so on. But when Descartes says: “I think, I am.” He doesn’t think it necessary to presuppose objective knowledge of ‘being’ or ‘thinking’, because by the mere fact that we are thinking and being ourselves, we intuitively know what thinking and being is. By grace of our own nature, we know what thinking and being is. It doesn’t presuppose anything, except for our own subjective intuition or feeling, this feeling that we know what thinking is because we are thinking. Man is essentially connected to the truth, even if this truth is only of Being and Thought. Furthermore, for Descartes, our very existence is the mark of truth or certainty. The truth is natural to us, because our nature is truth.  

Such is the natural affinity to truth that Descartes proclaims. By essence, we know truth. Problem is, as Descartes see it, all sorts of things have led us away from this simple realization of our natural affinity to the truth. Living as we do, our bodies have become diseased, and education has filled our minds with all sorts of presuppositions, thereby clouding our natural reason. All of this has made it so that we are no longer connected to our own intuitive knowledge of what thought or being is. But, by nature, we do have this intuitive knowledge, and so the philosophical practice consists in bringing man back to a state of being in which his intuition can guide him every step of the way, to guide man back to his own natural light. 

With Descartes, or pretty much any other philosopher, the classical image of thought says: “return to your essence, return to what you are by nature.” This is always the form that philosophical paideia takes.   

For Deleuze, Descartes’ resorting to subjective presuppositions, some natural truths on which we can all agree by nature (even if de facto we are distanced from our nature), doesn’t go far enough. In truth, one cannot proclaim any truth as given by the nature of thought itself. Nothing is ever found, everything is created. This is Deleuze’s ‘constructivism’. If a proof is given of cogito, it is not found by looking at the ‘nature of things’, it is created by a very particular life, —René Descartes. Furthermore, even Descartes admits that not everyone can recognize the validity of his proof, that not everyone can intuit the certainty of ‘I think, I am.’ So, what is there of thought having a natural affinity to the truth, if most thinkers do not?  

And, the desire to seek for such truths is not given by nature, as Aristotle claimed when he said all men desire to know. No, most people are entirely uninterested in seeking absolute certainty. In fact, the radical search for certainty that Descartes undertook, it is quite an abnormality. By nature, man is not interested in such things. Instead, it requires a very specific type of individual to undertake something as a “search for truth by means of the natural light”, and in doing so revolutionize philosophy. All sorts of strange things have to happen to a man before this type of desire can arise.    

Deleuze says he wants to write an actual genesis of experience and thought, instead of merely postulating the abstract pre-requisites for any possible experience whatsoever, as was Kant’s critical project. What he wants is a philosophy that can explain the genesis of certain types of lives and how these types lead to certain types of experience, and to certain types of philosophy. 

It is this idea, which he takes entirely from Nietzsche, which is one of the only interesting aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy. He tries to draw out the implications of Nietzsche’s question —“what life?”— for a transcendental philosophy. What type of life leads to what type of thought. What life is required to birth the desire for the truth, and what type of life is required to think itself in affinity with the truth? And, the question in which Deleuze is most interested: what type of life is required to birth a new idea, what type of thought is required for thought to be actually creative? 

Now, for Deleuze, of course, he is not interested in some “Truth”, somewhere out there, waiting for us to grasp it. He is interested in these various genealogies of truths. He is interested in the breeding of a type of life that is capable of creating new ideas, of proclaiming new ‘truths’. It is 20th century post-structuralist philosophy after all. 

So there are these pre-suppositions of classical philosophy, which he seeks to undo by offering the genealogical point of view. One of them: thought naturally desires the truth. Aristotles’: “all men desire by nature to know.” In truth, Deleuze says, man doesn’t care for truth, only certain types of men are constituted in such a way that this strange desire for knowledge appears in them.  

When this happens, —that thought takes on this desire for truth—, classical philosophy would speak of a remembering. Deleuze on the other hand speaks of a veritable creation. Descartes would say that with the discovery of the certainty of cogito, he is merely re-establishing the certainty of something which was already there. He didn’t know that thought was certain, but it was, he just had to realize what already was. Similarly with Platonism, dialectics helps us draw out some truth which is already present deep within us, we just have to remember. And this process of remembering is called philosophy. 

Deleuze thinks he knows philosophers better than they know themselves, and for him this cogito is something actually created by Descartes, that didn’t exist before him. It is a truth signed with the name René Descartes. 

As a matter of fact, man is not interested in the truth. But, he can get interested. In which case, classical philosophy would say the man is doing nothing more than re-activating his true nature which was already there but hidden. Deleuze would say that there is no such original nature, and the true nature of things is the one we find ourselves in: ignorant, and with no desire to escape our ignorance through the attainment of knowledge. One can see it as a quite dark vision of human nature. And when a man does escape from his terrible condition, there is no ‘re-discovery of his true nature’, but an actual change in the man, his new mode of being is actually new, in the full sense, never seen before, with no precedent. 

Deleuze wants to think the possibility of something truly new emerging. This classical image of thought, Deleuze says it is characterized by ‘recognition.’ For the classical image of thought, to know is to recognize. With Descartes as our example, the proof of the cogito, one recognizes the certainty of what was already the case. And so Deleuze wants to break with this, because for him, the classical image of thought made thought out to be conservative by nature, thereby making it impossible to actually think something new. For what do we recognize? We can only recognize what we already know, and so thought becomes incapable of discovery, doomed to repeat itself for ever and ever, never able to create a new idea. 

What is it that makes recognition possible? In most simple terms, a subject. I can’t recognize something, without there being an ‘I’ to recognize. And this will be Deleuze’s reasoning for doing away with the notion of a subject altogether. Not so much that, like a David Hume or contemporary scientism, he thinks there is no ‘I’ to be observed, but that he sees the ‘I’ or subject of which philosophy has always spoken as nothing but a pre-supposition required by this ‘classical way of thinking.’ The notion of a subject is intimately tied to this way of thinking. It is what makes this way of thinking possible, and this way of thinking necessarily leads to the positing of this subject. Deleuze is not interested in the facts, or in what is, “is there a self or not?”, he is only interested in different ways of thinking, different ways of living, and how some ways of thinking lead to the positing and recognition of certain concepts, and others do not. He is critical of ways of thinking that work with a ‘self’, and so he does away with it, because he does not see the validity of the way of thinking that needs a self. He sees the self of philosophy as nothing but a limiting concept, that prevents thought from truly thinking in new and creative ways.  

It is on this point perhaps that I disagree most strongly, you cannot put the self away as merely a pre-supposition like any other that can be done away with. Nor is the self merely a concept. This is total mental masturbation, a person thinking it can think itself away.

If one wants to make a distinction between ‘old’ or ‘classical’ and ‘new’ ways of thinking, I think a reading of this aspect of Deleuze’s thought can be valuable. To understand what happened to thought in the past century. In Deleuze’s case, it is an entire overturning of classical thought and its ends. Away with any principle that carries any semblance of identity into thought, and towards difference and the ‘new’. From recognition to creation. It is the dream of this new way of thinking that fuels much of today’s “theory.” Out with the old, in with the new. 

But, Deleuze’s classical image of thought, one should not understand it as something historically situated. It is not that at some point, with the Greeks or whatever, people thought in this way, and then throughout the ages we kept doing so, and now Deleuze wants to start a revolution and bring in an entirely new way of thinking. It is an a-historical distinction, all be it there are periods in time when certain modes of thought are more prevalent than others. And, of course, the classical image of thought has always been dominant for Deleuze. But, at certain points, with certain philosophers, Deleuze sees this ‘thought without an image’ break through. This is his extremely vague term for a thought that isn’t held down by a ‘self’, a thought that doesn’t recognize what was already known but creates new ideas, that doesn’t think in terms of identity but in terms of difference.

I think Deleuze’s characterization of classical thought is largely correct, and so is his characterization of a different way of thinking. What you should realize however, is that this ‘classical image of thought’, it is the way of thinking that emerges when a thinker is in good health. Truly, that’s what it is. And this ‘thought without an image’ that Deleuze seeks, and which he thinks is what is needed for true creation, it is the thought of a sick and disturbed organism. Deleuze does not question this; the model for the new way of thinking he gives is always schizophrenia. And when we look at the thinkers, writers, and artists that inspire him and in which he sees this different way of thinking, we see a lineage of sickness, alcoholism, and addiction. Franz Kafka, Malcolm Lowry, David Hume, Antonin Artaud, Francis Bacon (the painter), and yes, Nietzsche. Deleuze does not hide this whatsoever, but he believes very much in the value of riding on the edge of health, dipping into mental and bodily disorder, out of the belief that this is where the real interesting ideas are hiding. You have to open up the cracks a bit, he says. Maybe not too far, or you’ll risk total destruction. But just a little bit, so something new can come in and disturb your rigid way of thinking. Normality, health, all very boring for Deleuze. Life, when in good health, it is stifling, boring, and prevents new possibilities of thought and life from emerging. Of course, looking over the edge might be valuable at times. Deleuze plays with this idea that a little bit of madness and disease is needed for health. The perfectly sane organism, it is stifling, conservative in the worst sense, and it prevents life from living in new ways. But there are different considerations here: how? To what degree? Where does one take one’s model? And most importantly, what life is looking over the edge? 

Deleuze will say that thought, at its heights, does not consist in recognition, but in being forced to think something which one does not recognize. Like the ‘wonder’ of which ancient philosophy speaks. We are confronted with something which we have never seen before, a new fact of experience, a new book perhaps, a war, a pandemic, some event that we can’t seem to understand with our present mental models. And so we are forced to think in a new way, to accommodate for this new event. And so thought, it is not a passive recognition, but the result of something activating thought from the outside, breaking in, forcing us to think. This is a cool idea, I think. But of course this can go too far, and Descartes is right that focussing on this aspect of thought —wonder—, can go too far. Sure, you wonder at new things, and this puts you on the path of learning and thinking. But then you have to integrate. And it sounds very cool to spend your time thinking about ‘the new’, constantly being schocked into wonder, but in the end you become a journalist and nothing else. Scrolling through Twitter all day would be the heights of philosophy. Although, to be honest, it probably is these days. The contemplation of what is eternal and ever-same, Deleuze wants to rid philosophy of this, he doesn’t believe in such things. But what is interesting with him is that he doesn’t say: “there is nothing in the world that stays the same, so you can’t contemplate ‘Being’ or some other eternal reality”; he says, “the idea of some eternal Being or other reality stems from a certain way of thinking, the way of thinking of a boring and all too rigid organism.” Always the perspective of actual genesis.

So, balance, which Deleuze does not have. Also, if a weak type of life is always bombarded with new experiences and facts to integrate, it can’t bear it. And the result is not some fascinating universe of possibility, but a very low energetic state, burnt out, sterile. Something to keep in mind. 

In Deleuze’s universe, this classical way of thinking which takes its model in the contemplation/recognition of what is, and not in the creation of something new, is like a lower level thinking. First, you think some major problem you are wondering about, and you are forced to come up with new concepts to think these new problems, and then after a while, when you are too old to be capable of wonder, you resort to repeating and contemplating what you already know. This is Deleuze’s way of looking at it. Is he right? I think low level types of thinking have many forms, and one of them is excessive wonder, excessive focus on the new. But Deleuze is always interested in thinking the problems that stand before thought right now in the present moment, and to be able to think these problems. Now, the world is totally fucked, and perhaps he is right in that it takes a thought that is totally fucked up to think it.

And so indeed, Deleuze’s new way of thinking has seen quite a revolution. Not because of him or any other philosopher, but because humanity as a whole is totally fucked up. And when the individual degrades, he soon loses a sense of self, an ‘I’, he soon loses common sense, and he soon even loses the ability to recognize truth when he stands before it. And soon, he is only ever interested in the ‘news of today.’ 

I think Deleuze’s philosophy, (small part of it really), can serve as a great model for interpreting what is happening to thought and life today, how it is becoming so disfigured, how it is literally turning against itself. How all this talk of progress and potential and the new has led to the most stifling atmosphere. Deleuze literally describes it, he says: this is what thought looks like when in good health, and this is what I want it to look like —a little crazy, a little bit more adventurous. But well, in the end, adventure turns into misery. The necessary challenging of our rigid mental models turns into an attack on ourselves. 

Thought leaves itself, as is its nature to do, but seeing what this departure leads to, it is forced to return to itself. Will it? I don’t know, many changes taking place today are irreversible, or at least will take many generations to set straight.

I have this idea where I list all of the principles of the classical image of thought Deleuze mentions, and all the new values he puts in its place. And I can explain how these classical principles are result of organism in good health, and the *new values* are what happens when organism is degrading. Like a sort of typology of thought. One could attempt to do this in a really precise way. And so when some contemporary philosophy person goes on about this new way of thinking, talking in convoluted post-modern terms about ‘difference’, ‘the Other’, or ‘becoming’, you can say: ah I recognize this way of thinking, this is way of thinking attributed to this type of hormonal imbalance or something. One example is ‘common sense’, important notion for philosophy, and also for daily life. We all know intuitively what it means of course, and I won’t bother now to try and explain it. But a huge part of Deleuze’s philosophy is an attack on this notion, against common sense. Now maybe you also know that in people suffering from schizophrenia, one of the things they become incapable of is common sense. This is just one vague example. But you get the idea. Then again, I don’t know if I want to spend time on this. I am so done with this type of post-modern philosophy, it hurts my brain. I just want to lift weights and read Descartes and Plato. But it follows me around. And perhaps it is valuable, for my own understanding, and perhaps for others, to explain in more precise terms how much of contemporary ‘continental philosophy’ is just the way of thinking of a life in decline. I don’t think many people are doing this, at least not that I know of. 

To be clear; this new way of thinking, I mean this way of thinking that hates everything that has to do with identity and the self, and that praises difference and ‘the other’. This way of thinking that thinks ‘everything is possible’, and that everything is permitted. This way of thinking that rails against nature, while it can’t shut up about saving the ‘climate.’ You get the idea. 

And so you can really write this sort of transcendental history of thought. By which I mean, a history of how people’s ways of thinking have changed. Not how people have come to think different ideas, not at all. But the manner of life and thought that leads to certain ideas. The questioning that is philosophy, from Descartes’ confidence, to the underground man’s nihilism. It could be part of a history of Western thought’s turning against itself.