Cut

The Cut

In the following I present some considerations concerning existence and personal identity. The aim is to think what cannot be thought – the Cut that is at the heart of every being, that cuts it from itself and others, and for itself and others.[1]

I occasionally make some references to common-knowledge science, but the argument itself is philosophical, not scientific. It is a science fiction or fictive science, if you wish.

1. First consideration. Physics

1.1. Contraction

Physics shows that the world is not infinitely divisible into mathematical points and moments, but that there is a minimum length, time and energy, the „Planck units” that cannot be divided lest it breaches the principle of indeterminacy. That is, physical entities are not mathematical points, but have always a certain extension and duration, they are spread out in space-time, they contract and interpenetrate a certain portion of space and time: not in the sense that there would be a preliminary something that they would contract, but on the contrary, by this contraction they generate space and time. What is primordial, is the difference between these two levels: what is retroactively formed as the background of pure being or pure force and its contraction into an individual (I use the term “individual” in a very broad sense: ‘any entity with some spatio-temporal cohesion’).

In order there to be something, it has to present some contraction of space and time, and to express some energy. For, if the world was a collection of infinitely divisible points and moments, there would be nothing at all, and no action or influence, because they presuppose a certain extension in time and space. Leibniz’ idea is still valid: if there are no real or „metaphysical” points or monads, then there would be nothing.[2]

With the contraction of an entity, by the same token a distinction is made between one entity and another: we have several electrons, and we have different kinds of those entities: there are electrons, quarks, photons etc. So, a numerical and a qualitative difference arise at the same time.

1.2. Unfolding and cohesion

From physics we know that there are two kinds of particles: fermions and bosons. The former obey the Pauli exclusion principle according to which two or more identical fermions cannot simultaneously occupy the same quantum state within a quantum system. That is why two electrons on the same orbital must have opposite spin, and if there are already two electrons on an orbital, the next one must occupy another orbital, on the same or on the next energy level. The same principle is the reason why protons or neutrons in an atomic nucleus are ordered one next to another (and forming „shells”). This is the principle of juxtaposition and the reason why, in general, there is an extended universe.

Bosons, on the other hand, do not obey the Pauli exclusion principle, and any number of them can occupy the same quantum state, so that they can interpenetrate each other. Gauge bosons (photon, gluon, W and Z boson) are force carriers and as such they represent the principle of interaction: attraction (e.g. strong force, opposite electric charges), repulsion (e.g. electric charges with the same sign) or transformation (e.g. from proton to neutron or vice versa through the weak force). This is the reason why, in general, the universe interacts, sticks together and parts ways.

So, while an elementary particle itself is the result of a contraction (as discussed in the previous section), here we see that this development moves in two directions: formation of entities and interactions between them. This means also that space and time are folded out, so that things can be distinguished as being next to one another and after one another; although at the elementary level it is still very confused and interpenetrating, it becomes clearer with the formation of more complex entities (molecules, living beings) and bigger things (stars, galaxies; although in some places new spatiotemporal singularities may form, like the black holes). With the complexification of entities where layers of organization are added (nucleus, atom, molecule, cell, multicellular organism, central nerve system, language and tools), their interactions also become more diverse, and space-time more specified.

1.3. The Cut

We said that what is primordial, is the existence of two levels: what is reatroactively constituted as pure being or force, and its contractions. We said also that these contractions simultaneously create another distinction: between one and another entity (numerical plurality) and between different kinds of entities (qualitative plurality). So, the Cut that produces the universe, constituting pure being and contraction, at the same time makes a cut that separates them, and also separates different individuals (and connects them).

2. Second consideration. Self-relation

2.1. Self and other

Consciousness in the broadest sense is self-relation, an immediate presence over a stretch of space and time, or “surview” (survol), using Raymond Ruyer’s term.[3] It does not characterize only humans, but all living beings and even simpler entities, including the simplest entities, elementary particles (we may call it proto-consciousness to distinguish it from the human form of it, but we should not forget that there are several very different forms of those proto-consciousnesses).

The universe is not just a continuous and amorphous mass, but there are discrete entities with a certain form and a certain capacity for action. For example, a carbon atom has a certain configuration. For it to change, a certain amount of force is needed for its electrons to enter an excited state, by a quantic leap, or an event must happen in its nucleus that changes its makeup, for instance changing a neutron into proton or vice versa. Self-relation is what maintains a certain from through a stretch of space and time (even if in the Planck timescale).

This self-relation is not self-contained (although it might tend towards self-containment, an “autism”, like neutrinos), but involves a relation to an other. The locus of consciousness is not so much “inside” itself, but on its border: on its limit between inside and outside and on the limit of remaining and changing. The self-relation or proto-consciousness is a feeling that is related to some perceptions or capacities to being influenced by others, and, in turn, its own capacities to influence others: being affected and affecting. The consciousness is already outside itself, self-transcending, being-in-others, being-among-others, being-together-with-others. For example, my subjectivity is inextricably intermingled with other people, beings, things and surroundings. I am not only „inside me”, but also already in other people, in social ideas and movements, in landscapes, in pets and plants and rocks. As Heidegger says, a Dasein is already being-with-others (Mitsein) and being-in-the-world (in-der-Welt-sein), or as Merleau-Ponty puts it, a being-for-self (pour-soi) is already a being-for-other (pour autrui). 

A consciousness is also inherently at least two-layered, it has a focus and a background. Indeed, the main feat of the consciousness can be seen not so much in “being conscious of” this or that thing, but rather in the ability to push everything else on the background, to forget everything else, so that something can be focused upon. This can be seen in our psychological consciousness, but it can be inferred to be the case already in much simpler entities. When an entity interacts with another, this “other” becomes a focus for it, delineating itself on the background of everything else.

2.2. Assemblies

Certain “others” can become related to oneself in such a manner that they collectively give rise to a feeling and consciousness of the whole group, e.g. in a multicellular organism.[4] This assembly can have its own emergent interests, its own foci for consciousness with a respective background. In complex individuals a series of “sub-“ or “infraconsciousnesses” are formed. For example, if we take humans to be determined by language and culture, there are other layers in human consciousness: biological, chemical, physical, i.e. the levels of organs, cells, molecules, atoms, nuclei, protons-neutrons, elementary particles. A psychoanalytic subconscious[5] is perhaps partially related to the biological level of organization, but in any case there are much more, and much more radical, more radically “suppressed” sub- or infraconsciousnesses.

On higher levels of organization, where individuals have more kinds of meaningful interaction with others, the two distinctions: self and other, and levels of “forgetting” become more obvious. First, the “background” becomes “darker” and the focus more vivid, and finally even acquires a certain independence, so that it can to an extent be detached from the background, and be treated on its own. We, humans, can thematically treat that object over there, and even my consciousness of that object there; I can separate it from the network of world’s connections and pay attention to it as it is in itself, and also pay attention to the ways it appears to me. This has come about due to language and culture that give a lever to pry it loose from its surroundings. A “cup” can become manipulatable on its own. Tools and language give completely novel liberties for manipulating things. Correlatively the background grows “darker”, oblivion of being thicker. I am very far removed from the forces that make up my body and mind. They are called for only insofar as they interest my cultural and linguistic being.

Also the second distinction, between self and other becomes clearer. A “self” becomes more delimited and autonomous. I am able for a large variety of interactions with others and my surrounding, I can choose between the ways, dimensions and modalities of interaction, or refrain from it. I am aware that I have been born and that I shall die, so that I have temporally clear borders. Also, I can investigate the others for themselves in their being, and come to a clearer understanding of their pertinent articulations (or “veins”), not only as I am aware of them, but as I may presume they take themselves and how things appear to them. I know that my friend has a different feeling towards authorship, and in relation to this topic I can adjust my utterances and behaviour, being perhaps less dismissive towards this topic, and being able in a way to inhabit his world that is articulated somewhat differently.

2.3. Self-cut

From the preceding we can infer that what is primordial, is the cut that differentiates between the consciousness of the self and that of the other, a cut that at the same time makes the distinction between the background and focus of a consciousness. Initially, these two aspects are not clear-cut; they become clearer in more complex individuals. But we may construct a “line of fact” (to use a bergsonian term[6]) and postulate this cut to be there at the very beginning, and that, in fact, this is what “beginning” means. A self (with its corresponding others) is never “born” in the course of evolution (perhaps with humans, perhaps with life), but it has been there from the very beginning. There is a “self” of an elementary particle, an “other” for it, as well as a focus and background for its (proto-)consciousness. Of course, every evolutionary new level of complexity creates something radically new also in respect to self- and other-relation. But it emerges from selves and others that are already there. Of course, “I” am not bound to specific quarks and electrons (in the course of my life I change most of my cells, so practically none of the quarks composing my body at birth is with me now), but it is built upon matter and forces that involve quarks and electrons (among others). Life is an moving raft that drifts upon chemical and physical ocean.

3. Third consideration. Temporality

3.1. Duration

For there to be time and space, time and space cannot be mere collection of moments or points. There has to be a certain “contraction” of time and space (we related this to the Planck scale in the first section). These contractions must have something to do with each other; otherwise they would never form any entities and universe as we know it in its spatiotemporal being would never have risen. This “having to do” means, in the case of time, that one moment somehow influences the next one, prolongs itself into it. The minimum amount of time cannot be a self-contained abstract moment, but it already transcends itself.

In this way duration is formed, even if in the beginning it is minimal, with evanescent difference between duration itself and what endures, between a “being” of an entity and its “doing” (this difference becomes bigger when there are more diverse capacities for action). But even in this minimal form, duration means a certain “retention” and “protention”. An atom in its being is a doing, being ahead of itself and also retaining itself; it keeps a certain form which is to some extent resilient to external influences. This “keeping its form” means that the entity has a certain self-relation (cf. previous section), which also means a certain relation with its immediate past and imminent future, even if a very small one. In case of living beings we can see it more clearly: they are more vigorously ordered in time (than mere molecules or atoms), with a certain genetic heritage, immediate past and certain requirements or “pretentions” (a word used by Deleuze in DR) for the future: it wants food and sex, wants to avoid predators and dangerous substances etc. Thus, a duration requires a “contemplative soul” (another expression of Deleuze) that surviews its enduring present with its pretensions and retentions. This is the “first synthesis” of time, that of “living present” (see Deleuze, “Difference and Repetition”, Ch. 2), because although this present extends both to past and future, the stress in this aspect of time is on the present. And this present takes place simultaneously on two levels: the contracting “contemplating soul”, and the contemplated or contracted. This is how duration is formed: for another moment to appear as new or “another”, it has to be brought together with the previous moment, the previous moment has to be retained, and it is thanks to this connection and on the background of it that a new moment appears as “new”.

3.2. Pure past

This “having to do” with other time-moments is valid for all moments; every moment embodies a duration that reaches back to the Big Bang. Perhaps a neutrino exists in the eternal presence of the Big Bang, but at least we as living beings do not experience the Big Bang in our present. It has passed away. But how does a present pass? The crux of Bergson’s and Deleuze’s analysis of this temporal aspect stresses that if a present would have to “wait” before it can be past, it would never pass. So, time is always already divided into two: the present as present and present as past, projected onto the whole of the past. Bergson calls the latter “recollection of the present” (souvenir du présent), which seems to be contradictory, because recollection seems by definition to concern something that has passed. But in fact, is not so much a recollection, as the present in relation to the past; normally we do not need this “double” of the present”, but in some cases it may actualize in the psychological consciousness, and this is how Bergson explains the phenomenon of déjà-vu, a phenomenon where we are in a present situation that we know for sure we have never experienced before, and yet have the feeling that “it has been before”. This occurs, explains Bergson, when our “attention to life” slackens a bit, that is, when our attention to our present tasks for action becomes weaker, so that for a moment we do not suppress the “recollection of the present”, but let it to actualize, so that we have simultaneously the present and its “double” on the background of the past, a “recollection of the present”. In normal conditions it does not happen, because it is in the vital interests of the organism to pay attention to what is to come, and not to what has been already, or more precisely, it will usually reactualize from the past only things that are useful for its present activity. But the recollection of the present is the most unnecessary thing, so it is normally not actualized, but is suppressed (a suppression that takes place on the level of organization itself, not in regard to “lower” levels discussed in section 2).

As the autonomy of simpler entities is minor and hence also the choice for different courses of action is smaller (a carbon atom cannot choose whether to react with another atom, when it can do it and when the conditions are suitable), so that the difference of virtual and actual activity is not so considerable, and no suppression of the past in view of the present activity is necessary.

So, indeed all the past is present, every creature has the whole of the past as its temporal “basis”, on the background of which it illuminates its present. And this whole of the past admits different levels of contraction or expansion: the maximum of expansion involves the whole of cosmic memory; the minimum is my character in the present moment, where all my past is involved, but not distinguished.[7]

In Deleuze’s presentation this second synthesis of time is called that of “pure past”, since this pure past, the whole of past is the basis of time and duration. I would like to complement it with the corresponding level of “pure future”, since all the synthesis involves also “another plane” in terms of future, on the basis of which it is formed. Similarly to the pure past, it is not “ahead” or “in the future”, but contemporaneous to the present, that forms the basis of an “anticipation cone”, the tip of which is the present. The present would never come without this “other plane” of the pure future.

3.3. Temporal Cut

Now, the synthesis of time takes place in a living present that has two levels, the contracting and contracted, and this living present itself is formed on the basis of a pure past and pure future. But this would still not explain the fact of transformation in the temporal flow itself. What is the ontological foundation of the attention to life that directs us towards our futural goals and presses back the past? There is a cut at the heart of temporal synthesis, that is neither present (first synthesis) nor past or future (second synthesis)[8], but an Instant[9] or an Eyeblink, Øieblikket (Danish), Augenblick (German), Silmapilk (Estonian). This cut is neither temporal nor eternal; it is a pure differentiation at the heart of time, that produces all temporal and enduring entities and also their eventual orderings into eternal ideas or laws. This is in itself the difference between the two levels of the first synthesis (the first synthesis “in the negative”, so to say), as well as between the present and the pure past or future. So, this third aspect of time is the first synthesis in reverse, its difference. The Eyeblink is this a-temporal differentiation or the principle transformation that cuts beings into what they are, for their space and time.

4. Fourth consideration. Space.

4.1. Contraction-extension

Similar considerations can be made concerning space. As we said in the first section, the first contractions result in a stretch of space in the scale of Planck units. Due to this a distinction is made between, on the one hand, what retroactively is constituted as pure being, ungraspable in itself, and, on the one hand, a contraction in a larval subject. By the same token, distinction appears with other centres of contraction, a distinction maintained by Pauli exclusion principle that juxtaposes fermions, and by forces that intermediate interactions between fermions.

A spatial being is the individual’s power to stretch beyond itself. So, on the one hand, there is the individual’s “inner space”, a certain portion of space surviewed by that individual, and on the other hand, more importantly, it is turned towards its exterior, the others. A synthesis is made with certain parcels of exteriority that define its Umwelt. An individual always and inevitably chooses some parts of the surroundings that “have to do” with it. Of course, initially and for the most part, it has nothing to do with a “voluntary” choice, but is determined by the type of body the individual has: if you are a carbon, you react with oxygen, but not with xenon. Yet, it is not completely foreign to the topic of autonomy and freedom, because the very fact that the influences of the universe do not continue uniformly, but that they change and are selected in function of the body and its capacities, means that there is a transformation, a withholding, that after much complexification can give rise to what we consider freedom in human beings. Because the very first requirement for freedom is that there is a certain obviation somewhere, and if there are enough of these obviations, i.e. if the capacities, on the part of the individual, for different kinds of affecting and being affected become diverse enough, it is less compelled by any single of them and ultimately can temporarily suspend all of them, and to “stop and reflect (zhiguan 止觀)”, the outcome of which can be very different from an automatic reflex motion. Someone offends you, but you may think: “to be insulted is no disgrace” (as taught by Yin Wen and Song Xing, see “Zhuangzi”, Ch. 33), and find other strategies for dealing with the situation than just offending back.

Space is thus never completely isotropic, but there are differences in directions in it, even for very simple individuals.

4.2. Pure extension

So, there is a contraction or synthesis of space. The self-relation of an individual transcends itself and includes the “other” in itself. All the individuals are linked in this way and an extending, reaching, stretching of one individual in space takes place on the background of the whole of space, all of the stretchings of other individuals. There is a pure extension, not in the sense of an impassible 3D metric, but as the extendings of beings. This is the background for the extendings and directions of an individual.

As hinted in the section above, when the capacities for affecting and being affected become diverse and rich enough, there emerges the capacity for an individual to refrain from actualizing any particular course of action and just “stop and reflect”. This way it can be “nowhere”, its “now-here” is transformed into “no-where”. It is defined negatively, in relation to places and actions that are suspended and refrained from, but there is a positivity in this mode of existence. The individual thus comes into contact with its extending, stretching, reaching capacity itself (and the corresponding reachings of other things towards it). This is space or extension turned toward itself, a spatial relationality itself.

4.3. Spatial cut

As in previous cases, we see that what is primordial in case of space is the cut that differentiates between what is constituted as the pure being or force, and a spatial contraction, as well as between one contraction and another. A cut that makes an individual to transcend its location and stretch “elsewhere”, by virtue of which no individual is identical with its “location” (like it is not identical with its “moment”).

5. Fifth consideration. Self-cultivation

Let me bring two stories from „Zhuangzi’s” 6. chapter „The Great Ancestral Teacher”. The first story runs like this:

„I’m making progress,“ said Yan Hui.

„What do you mean?“ asked Confucius.

„I have forgotten rites and music.“

„Not bad, but you still haven’t got it.“

Yan Hui saw Confucius again on another day and said, „I’m making progress.“

„What do you mean?“

„I have forgotten humaneness and righteousness.“

„Not bad, but you still haven’t got it.“

Yan Hui saw Confucius again on another day and said, „I’m making progress.“

„What do you mean?“

„I sit and forget.“

„What do you mean, ‘sit and forget’?“ Confucius asked with surprise.

 „I slough off my limbs and trunk,“ said Yan Hui, „dim my intelligence, depart from my form, leave knowledge behind, and become integrated with the Great Interpenetration. This is what I mean by ‘sit and forget’.“

„If you are integrated,“ said Confucius, „then you have no preferences. If you are transformed, then you have no more constants. It’s you who is really the worthy one! Please permit me to follow after you.“ (Mair 1994: 63-64, translation modified)

顏回曰：「回益矣。」仲尼曰：「何謂也？」曰：「回忘仁義矣。」曰：「可矣，猶未也。」他日復見，曰：「回益矣。」曰：「何謂也？」曰：「回忘禮樂矣。」曰：「可矣，猶未也。」他日復見，曰：「回益矣。」曰：「何謂也？」曰：「回坐忘矣。」仲尼蹴然曰：「何謂坐忘？」顏回曰：「墮肢體，黜聰明，離形去知，同於大通[10]，此謂坐忘。」仲尼曰：「同則無好也，化則無常也。而果其賢乎！丘也請從 而後也。」(6/19/89-93)

At the end of the story, Yan Hui cuts off his limbs and trunk – not in a literal sense, but in the sense that he identifies himself with the ontological cut that produces (among others) his limbs and trunk. In order to arrive at this, a thorough “stopping” and “forgetting” was needed. To “sit and forget” refers to a Daoist meditation technique used until today. While sitting and stopping, one can merge with the whole universe, extend one’s consciousness to all beings, interpenetrate with all beings, forming “one rhizomatic body with them”, as is often repeated by several philosophers, most notably Song Neo-Confucians (仁者以天地萬物為一體). In this way the Cut can be discovered, that creates and destroys me, things, world. It can be seen from the second story in the same chapter:

Sir Sacrifice, Sir Chariot, Sir Plow and Sir Come were all four talking together. „Whoever can take nonbeing as his head, life as his spine, and death as his buttocks, whoever knows the oneness of life and death, of existence and nonexistence, we shall be his friends.“ The four men looked at each other and smiled. Since there was no discord in their hearts, they became friends with each other.

Before long, Sir Chariot fell ill. When Sir Sacrifice went to call on him, Sir Chariot said, „Great is the Creator of Things! She’s making me all crookedy like this!“ His back was all hunched up. On top were his five dorsal inductories. His chin was buried in his bellybutton. His shoulders were higher than the crown of his head. His neck bones pointed toward the sky. His vital yin yang breaths were all out of kilter. Yet his mind was at ease, as though nothing were amiss. He hobbled over to a well and looked at his reflection in the water. „Alas!“ he said. „The Creator of Things is making me all crookedy like this!“

„Do you resent it?“ asked Sir Sacrifice.

„No, why should I resent it? Supposing that my left arm were transformed into a chicken, I would consequently go looking for a rooster that could call out the hours of the night. Supposing that my right arm were transformed into a crossbow, I would consequently go looking for an owl to roast. Supposing that my buttocks were transformed into wheels and my spirit into a horse, I would consequently mount upon them. What need would ,I have for any other conveyance?

„Furthermore, what we attain is due to timeliness and what we lose is the result of compliance. If we repose in timeliness and dwell in compliance, sorrow and joy cannot affect us. This is what the ancients called `emancipation: Those who are unable to win release for themselves are bound by things. Furthermore, long has it been that things do not win out against heaven. So why should I resent it?“

Before long, Sir Come fell ill. Gasping and on the verge of death, he was surrounded by his wife and children who were weeping. Sir Plow, who went to call on him, said to his family, „Shush! Go away! Do not disturb transformation!“ Then, leaning against the door, he spoke to Sir Come: „Great is the Transforming Creator! What next will he make of you? Where will he send you? Will he turn you into a rat’s liver? Will he turn you into a bug’s leg?“

„The relationship of parents to a child,“ said Sir Come, „is such that he simply follows their commands, no matter which direction they may point him. The relationship of yin and yang to a man is no less important than that of parents to a child. If they urge me to die and I resist, that is my ill-temper. What fault of theirs is it? The Great Clod burdens me with form, toils me through life, eases me in old age, rests me in death. Thus, that which makes my life good is also that which makes my death good. Now, the Great Smelter casts his metal. If the metal were to jump up and say, ‘You must make me into Excalibur!’ the Great Smelter would certainly think that it was inauspicious metal. Now if I, who have chanced to take on human form, were to say, ‘Man! I must remain a man!’ the Great Transforming Creator would certainly think that I am an inauspicious man. Now, once I accept heaven and earth as the Great Forge, and the Transforming Creator as the Great Smelter, I’m willing to go wherever they send me.”

Soundly he slept,

Suddenly he awoke.[11] (Mair 1994: 57-59).

子祀、子輿、子犁、子來四人相與語曰：「孰能以無為首，以生為脊，以死為尻，孰知生死存亡之一體者，吾與之友矣。」四人相視而笑，莫逆於心，遂相與為友。俄而子輿有病，子祀往問之。曰：「偉哉！夫造物者，將以予為此拘拘也！曲僂發背，上有五管，頤隱於齊，肩高於頂，句贅指天。」陰陽之氣有沴，其心閒而無事，跰足而鑑於井，曰：「嗟乎！夫造物者，又將以予為此拘拘也！」子祀曰：「汝惡之乎？」曰：「亡，予何惡！浸假而化予之左臂以為雞，予因以求時夜；浸假而化予之右臂以為彈，予因以求鴞炙；浸假而化予之尻以為輪，以神為馬，予因以乘之，豈更駕哉！且夫得者時也，失者順也，安時而處順，哀樂不能入也。此古之所謂縣解也，而不能自解者，物有結之。且夫物不勝天久矣，吾又何惡焉？」俄而子來有病，喘喘然將死，其妻子環而泣之。子犁往問之曰：「叱！避！無怛化！」倚其戶與之語曰：「偉哉造物！又將奚以汝為？將奚以汝適？以汝為鼠肝乎？以汝為蟲臂乎？」子來曰：「父母於子，東西南北，唯命之從。陰陽於人，不翅於父母，彼近吾死而我不聽，我則悍矣，彼何罪焉！夫大塊載我以形，勞我以生，佚我以老，息我以死。故善吾生者，乃所以善吾死也。今之大冶鑄金，金踊躍曰『我且必為鏌鋣』，大冶必以為不祥之金。今一犯人之形，而曰『人耳人耳』，夫造化者必以為不祥之人。今一以天地為大鑪，以造化為大冶，惡乎往而不可哉！成然寐，蘧然覺。」

It is common to identify oneself with what one has or what one is. I am a man, Estonian, philosopher etc. Yet these things are not what I “really” am, but the products of my individuation process. They are signs of symptoms of my being, but not my being itself, since being is not a thing and it cannot be gauged in itself. I “am” always already beyond what I am and what I have. My being is transcendent in relation to actualities. It is the instantaneous  transformation of the actuality.

What Zhuangzi proposes in this story is to identify oneself not with the products of one’s individuation or transformation process, but with that transformation itself. It is more “internal” to myself than any interiority[12], because it is the very machine that produces also my interiority, and I can retroactively only glean something of it from its signs, symptoms and products, but I can never grasp it in itself – it is in principle ungraspable, because this grasping itself is carried by my being and escapes my grasping; and if I try to grasp the being of my grasping, then this is also carried by my being, and I never attain my being – although on the other hand it is more near and more “known” to me than anything else, because it is, after all, my being. The nearest is the farthest, and vice versa.

And this self-difference is what is common to me and to all other beings. Only our differentiation and transformation is what we truly have in common. In this we “ramble” (you 游/遊) together.

6. Aspects of consideration

As mentioned in the beginning, I tried to speak about what cannot be spoken about. The method involved was to trace the most basic synthesis: of individuals, their self/other-relation, of time, space and self-cultivation, and proceed, in the first step, from a primordial synthesis to a certain whole that is on the background of those synthesis. And then, as a second step, to show that this whole is based on a cut[13], that was what the first synthesis already worked upon; that the primordial two levels and aspects are already the result of an ontological cut that slices beings from each other and themselves, and also for each other and themselves. A pure transformation at the heart of every individual. And, in the last section, we showed on the basis of Zhuangzi, that there can even be a self-cultivation based on the recognition of this philosophy: to “identify” not with what one has or what one is, but to identify with the transformation, heterogenesis itself – that, of course, works on the basis on the factual and actual structures, articulations and tendencies of the individual, but is not reducible to them. One’s body and mind are neither important nor unimportant, but a vehicle of transformation, a Very Great vehicle where all the universe rides.

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[1] Some of those arguments have been explored more thoroughly in my book „Vägi“ („Potency“), published in Estonian (Tallinn: Tallinn University Press, 2015).

[2] Leibniz, in the wake of the invention of microscope and the discovery of cells in living organisms supposed this division to be infinite, but a finite divisibility could be compatible with his philosophy.

[3] This concept of Raymond Ruyer (and appropriated by Deleuze in some places) denotes the immediate presence of a „true form“ in its realm: hence I „surview“ my body and my perceptual field; when I want to move my hand, I do not have to travel from my head to the hand, but I simply move it; similarly my perceptual field is not just a heap of disjointed pieces, but I grasp it as a whole (and the distinctions I make are rather in function or on the background of this whole).

[4] Like Spinoza says in his description about body: if certain parts maintain a constant relation of movement and being still, it can be considered one body (see lemma 5, after E2p13).

[5] I purposefully use ‘subconscious’ instead of ‘unconscious’, because this term has persisted in the common language also for phenomena with a psychoanalytic flavour; the spatial metaphor can be used in describing the levels of complexity (although of course each level creates new dimensions and new ways of interaction, and are not just a ‘higher’ level like in a pyramid); also ‘unconscious’, in the common language, means the lack of consciousness in the sense of a coma, dreamless sleep, knock-out etc., which is not the sense intended here.

[6] In „Consciousness and Life“, in his Mind-energy.

[7] The “memory of the present” cannot be considered as the most contracted form of my memory, because it concerns not the memory in itself, but its actualization, a strange reflection from the “memory cone”.

[8] Here I depart from Deleuze; for him the it is the third synthesis of time that is “futural”.

[9] Cf. Manuel DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, Boomsbury, 2002, p. 122.

[10] On the example of „Huainanzi” ch 12, where the same story appears, many interpreters emend大通  to 化通 . In my citation I follow the received version.

[11] The Zhuangzi is a complicated text and there are several textual issues here, but they need not concern us here, and I preferred to take just one translation (by Victor Mair), without modifying it.

[12] For an interiority more internal that the „interiority“ or the empirical self (and a corresponding exteriority that is more external than the „exteriority“ or my Umwelt), see Mart Kangur, Pide (in Estonian), MA thesis, Estonian Institute of Humanities, 2004.

[13] This is also one of the central topics in Kangur’s Pide, op. cit.