Changing concepts

Creation of Concepts

For Rawls: Indeterminate “ideas” (such as the rights of individual) inform the creation of “concepts” (such as Justice and Original Position), which allow for systematic “conceptions”; principles for deciding which concepts are arbitrary.

With Rawl’s constructivism, the content of the concept (for example Justice) is procedurally constructed not from historically loaded ideas, but as the outcome of a dialogue between ideas. This is definitely not the same as Deleuze.

Deleuze does not see the creation of concepts (i.e. Philosophy) as the result of a conversation. In “What is Philosophy” Deleuze describes a “horror” of discussions within Philosophy. This is his account of a ‘rhizome-book’ of movement in concepts (in Patton’s paper above).

Deleuze sees distinct concepts, but something “passes between them”. So internal consistency, but “exo-consistency” between changes. Source of mobility through these connections. ”Relations to concepts provide pathways to others”. This is linked to the plane of immanence, and the (changing) image of thought; searching for different image of thought. An account of “Becoming Just” contour configuration, constellation.

Patton sees the mobility provided by Deleuze as a useful awareness, thinks it is apparent that the creation of Justice is exemplary of Deleuze’s concept creation: Justice (Rawls) is a mobile concept (Deleuze). Conception of Justice becomes historical as “incremental conceptions”. ”Subject to assumption that firmly held convictions change”. Patton examines how Rawls was Looking at Justice as primary social concept, but focussed on Stability, as he wanted to say the Just was more stable. Through the forces between concepts, the one effected the other.

Conceptual personae

From What is Philosophy, by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari:

“The conceptual persona is not the philosopher’s representative but, rather, the reverse: the philosopher is only the envelope of his principal conceptual persona and of all the other personae who are the intercessors, the real subjects of his philosophy. Conceptual personae are the philosdopher’s “heteronyms,” and the philosopher’s name is the simple pseudonym of his personae.”

For Rawls; Rational, Citizens, and Reasonable.
For Deleuze: ”Friend of concept” (Nietzsche, Blanchot), set up to measure forces outside of philosophy . Future transformations. Becoming.

from http://blog.neonascent.net/

Experience of the non-present

Our present experience of time has to do with something that is not present, or one could say, is present in the form of non-presence – like a ghost or a spectre.

Derrida speaks of “the experience of the non-present”. Phrased in the shakespearian terms used in Spectres of Marx, time is always out of joint. There is no presence that is not involved with the future and the past, the air is always full of ghosts. This of course holds for every point in time. Time is always already out of joint, not present to itself. The concept of “Messianicity” tries to formulate this out-of-joint structure.In his text Marx & Sons, Derrida tries to clarify why this Messianicity is “without” Messianism, and he names two conditions that this conception should exclude. It should exclude (firstly) the memory of a determinate historical revelation, whether Jewish or Jewish-Christian, and (secondly) it should exclude a determinate Messiah-figure.

Thus, the messianic for Derrida names a universal structure of experience, a structure, he says at one point, that functions as a quasi-transcendental ground for all particular Messianisms. Let me read to you a passage from Marx & Sons:“The figures of Messianism would have to be (…) deconstructed as ‘religious’, ideological, or fetischistic formations, whereas Messianicity without Messianism remains, for its part, undeconstructible, like justice. It remains undeconstructible because the movement of any deconstruction presupposes it.

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Unresolved contradiction

The original essence of tragedy consists in the fact that within such a conflict each of the opposed sides, if taken by itself, has justification ...

In this way, an unresolved contradiction is set up. However justified the tragic character and his aim, however necessary the tragic collision, the third thing required is the tragic resolution of this conflict. By this means eternal justice is exercised on individuals and their aims in the sense that it restores the substance and unity of ethical life with the downfall of the character who has disturbed the peace.

Although the characters have a purpose which is valid in itself, they can carry it out in tragedy only by pursuing it one-sidedly and so contradicting and infringing someone else's purpose.

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