(The first part of the text figures also in a previous post)
Matterialism and spiritwoalism
The orthography “matterialism” is meant to stress that,
first, it is not a question of materialism as opposed to
spiritualism, a reduction of first-person experience and interactions
with second persons to third-person events, e.g. my experience of
myself and of my relation to my friend as reduced to certain events
in my nervous system, especially brain, and to some other physical,
chemical and biological events, e.g. that my friend is a material
object from which visual, acoustic and tactile impulses reach my
body, are registered and transferred to the brain as a CPU that would
process that physico-chemical information, and produce a certain
output, e.g. certain behavior towards my friend (for instance, we
shake hands, I register a usual friendly expression on his face, and
I try to produce also a friendly expression, and perhaps utter some
accompanying words, like “To have friends arrive from afar—is
this not a joy?”). Second, it is not about matter as opposed to
form, a passive material substance upon which a certain form is
impressed like an amphora is made of clay.
Instead, matterialism is about materials as having their inherent
articulations, tendencies and capacities. And it does not reduce the
first- and second-person experience to third-person givens: materials
themselves have a certain self-relation, and certain ways of
interacting with others as well. A material can be taken in an
extremely broad sense: not only substances like wood or iron or water
or air, but also the whole environment and any being or thing in it
may be treated as the material for the present action. The whole
context of my activity is a material for it.
The orthography of “spiritwoalism” is also meant to
capture certain ideas that keep it distinct from another notion,
spiritualism. First, it is not a denial or suppression of matter or
materials; on the contrary, it finds its expression only through
certain materials, and with their help. Second, spirit is often
considered as something unitary, undifferentiated, identical with
itself. The “two” in the term “spiritwoalism” stresses the
fact that my consciousness of myself is inseparable from my
consciousness of some other (person, thing, event, environment). It
applies not only to humans, but can be stated generally: a
self-relation is necessarily also an other-relation. The “two”
does not indicate that the participants have to be necessarily two
and only two, but the relation between two is meant to be taken as a
synecdoche (“part for the whole”) for any relation “between”,
and the focus should be on the betweenness rather than on the
actualized terms between which it takes place. The “two” also
refers to the matterialism as a counterpart of a spiritwoalism.
A matterialism naturally unfolds itself into a spiritwoalism, and
spiritwoalism is always also a matterialism.
Multitude
One important philosophical consequence of matterialism and
spiritwoalism is the ontological role of the multitude. The
multitude is an independent ontological category, it is not
just an aggregate of „monads“ (Leibniz) or „primary beings“
(Ruyer). When things are generated in the Big Bang, it is not a “Big
Bang begets one, one begets two, two begets three” (to paraphrase
Laozi §42), but there is right away a multitude, a pullulation of
larval entities. And all major leaps in complexity (including the
birth of life or of humans) take place in a multitude, a “primordial
soup”, a society. Although the societies in which humans evolved
may have been a handful of bands of a couple of dozen individuals,
the society represents a distinct level of organization and behavior.
In a multitude there are emergent behaviors that can not be reduced
to a single individual or even a pair of them. It is in a multitude
that matter (physical, chemical, biological, social) displays its
singularities. For example, a multitude of H2O molecules display two
singularities, one phase transition between solid and liquid and
another between liquid and gaseous around 0 and 100 degrees Celsius
at sea level on Earth. Furthermore, its liquid state, water, displays
distinct modes of internal movement: heat
transmission, convection cells, turbulence. These
singularities emerge from a multitude, in a context where a multitude
of entities or processes constrain each other; where their
interactions start to flow in some veins that characterizes a new
kind of entity or process.
Raymond Ruyer distinguished between primary and secondary beings1
so that primary beings are characterized by a true form that they
they "surview" (survol) and to some extent maintain
(electron, proton, atom, molecule, cell, living being); and secondary
beings are simply aggregates of primary beings and their form is
simply a result of contiguity-interactions (de proche en proche)
and statistical rules (soap bubble, planet, society viewed through
statistics, etc.). They have no form of their own, but their form is
produced simply by the activities of primary beings that it contains
- the resultant behavior may well have regularities and constants,
but ontologically it would all be derivative, based on and resulting
from the primary beings and their activities.
Manuel DeLanda, with a Deleuzian inspiration, gives much higher
ontological status to the multitudes - that are not simply individual
entities, nor simple statistical outcomes. It is not simply
individual with interiority, nor an external aggregate.
It would be a misconception to reduce the multitude (or all
multitudes) to the interactions of "primary beings". The
singularities of a multitude are embodied by that multitude itself.
We may perhaps concede to Ruyer and say with him that, for example,
an electron, a proton, an atom, a molecul, a cell, a human are all in
the same line as rather strongly individuated entities, but it does
not mean that the more complex entities or processes would grow out
of the more simple ones, that they would be kind of "extensions"
of the simpler ones; the descriptive similarity does not entail any
genetic similarity. The complex structures are always formed from a
multitude: a quark-gluon plasma, primordial soup of organic matter,
etc. Although the interactions between ruyerian primary beings are
important for the complexification as the proximate or effective
cause, but they do not explain it; it is explained by veins of a
multitude, by the constraints that emerge in a multitude, as a distal
or formal cause. What those veins do is to distribute the energy of
being in a more nuanced, differentiated way, and in higher temporal
and spatial scales. So that, in a Deaconian sense, a new kind of work
can be done.
Intensities
The matterial interactions are intensive, both in the
colloquial sense of energetic (versus merely contemplative,
indifferent), and in the technical sense of involving intensive
properties of things and the body. Intensive properties are those
that cannot be divided in a simple manner like extensive properties2:
for instance, if you divide a certain volume of water of a certain
temperature into half, you get two volumes half the previous size
(extensive property), but of the same temperature (intensive
property). Initially the whole interaction with materials: with
things, beings and environments is intensive, and stable persisting
identities are only gradually attributed to them (and simultaneously
a more stable sense of self is formed), to which quantitative and
metric properties can be attributed. This tendency is carried to the
end at school, where in the lessons of mathematics and physics all
things are learnt to be homogenized and treated in quantitative and
metric terms; and at the same time a more distanced and external
stance is taken also to one's own body and subjectivity: one learns
that one's body is made up of the same substances and elements as
other things, and in the lessons of anatomy one studies the layout of
body as a juxtaposition of organs and tissues, as a „res extensa“,
extended thing with extensive properties.
Whereas intensive is thus dragged towards the actual and juxtaposing
- and for some purposes it is useful, so that it can be subjected to
mathematical calculations -, it should correspondingly be taken (why
not also at school?) further also from the other end, towards „more“
interpenetrating, towards the virtual differential relations and
singularities from which the intensities are developed and unfolded.
How can this be done?
This can be performed by another, different effort of thinking. There
are larval subjects in all of the intensities. For example, the
intensive property of temperature (or pressure) in the water results
from the collisions between water molecules; but a water molecule is
an entity that manages to maintain its form (two hydrogen atoms
around the oxigen atom) and that enters into contact with other water
molecules (especially via hydrogen bonds, that add to the bonds
between a single oxigen and hydrogens, making the connectivity inside
the water stronger). It surviews its form and offers a certain
resistance to attempts to change it: and that is the reason why
changes on the microscopic level are never continuous, but quantic: a
larval subject has contracted space-time in a certain form and by
this very contraction maintains it, even if in very short spatial and
temporal scale (but not smaller than the order of Planck units). This
manifests the first forms of self-relation.
Those entities are not self-enclosed, but always interact with some
others: already with itself as an other in the sense that they
endure, which means that they re-create themselves, tending to the
next moment and over some space: their being is not punctual and
momentaneous, but they contract some space-time, which means that
they are already also elsewhere, elsetimes, and hence
something else. Being a self always also enails being
other-than-self. There is a cut inside every being that
simultaneously creates a certain space-time, a contraction of points
and moments, and also by the same act transcends it to other spaces
and times. This is the foundation of our common space and time.
And by the same act, the entity is towards other entities, so that a
self-relation is intrinsically also other-relation. There cannot be a
self without an other, or a consciousness without a subconscious; the
most primordial about these things being the very cut that separates
them. From this separation, from a multitude a new kind of system may
emerge, with its own veins or constraints and its own energy or work
that it is able to extract.
Entities/processes can form assemblies, like quark-processes in a
nucleon or nucleon-processes in a nucleus or electron- and
nucleus-processes in an atom, atom-processes in a molecule or
molecule-processes (chemical reactions) in a cell. They can form more
or less individuated assemblies: a ball, a stone, a river, a dog, a
human.
Self-cultivation. Common notions
Materials surround us
always. Already in the womb we explore our surroundings. Even in the
very beginning, as a fertilized egg, we use certain materials in
order to build our body. And when we are born, we gradually start to
explore the world we are in. We feel mother and other persons and
perhaps animals, occasionally we encounter parts of our own body,
when we agitate our hands and they pass our visual field, of when
they touch each other, we learn to grab things and bring them to the
mouth, we taste, touch, watch, listen them. They present a certain
texture and structure, certain affordances (where to grab); they
react to our behavior in a certain way, they let themselves be
affected by us in a certain way, and affect us back in a certain way.
In a sense, a child is already a scientist, actively manipulating the
things in her surroundings in order to observe their reactions.
There is the material of things or stuff; then there is the material
of the environment like ground or air; and there is the material that
exhibits sponatneity like other people, animals, insects, also plants
(in slower time-scales). The distinction between beings and things is
initially not clear, since inanimate things also may behave
unexpectedly and they exhibit a resistance and their own
articulations and logic that is never completely under my dominion,
and it is not so unjustified if a child says that „the table hit
me“. The table, by being in a position to encounter child's body,
and by presenting its resistance to it, in a sense also „behaves“.
Animism, according to which any thing may be reanimated, has
its justification.
We explore what is outside, and simultaneously train our body and
mind. Together with a more nuanced understanding of things,
materials, beings, environments, we obtain a more nuanced command of
our body. A toy with which the child plays, works in both directions,
it reveals further articulations and capacities of itself, and at the
same time it brings out articulations and capacities of the body that
plays with it. With the growing experience of materials and its own
body, the child starts to form virtual models of the reality. This
capacity is enhanced by the acquisition of language, that then
becomes yet another material for exploration for the child.
So, dealing with materials and environments is already a
self-cultivation. A material,
has its own consistency or internal energy and veins, it manifests a
certain opposition, presents surprises, has its own articulations,
its own ways of affecting and being affected. Materials lure us,
challenge us, force us out of a simple being-in-ourselves. In the
process of interaction with materials we learn how to proceed, how to
behave, how to move, where to direct our attention etc. We learn how
our body and mind fits (or does not fit) the material. In Spinozian
terms, we form „common notions“ with it, a "second
kind of knowledge", beyond mere chance encounters that are a
"first kind of knowledge".
The question is not, how to be „rational“ and free from the
deceptions and contingencies of the body. The question is, how to
melt up the actualized forms, both bodily and mental, and how to move
towards the virtual. The formation of common
notions means to learn to interpenetrate with the material,
i.e. to form an assamblage with it. When we form more and more
common notions, we learn how to interpenetrate with more materials:
things, beings, environments, processes, and to do it in more varied
conditions. So, in this matterialistic self-cultivation my spirit is
in "two", between the two, it is a spiritwoalism.
This brings about a leap, that Spinoza calls third kind of knowledge
or an intellectual love of God. It is becoming-equal with the unequal
itself, identifying oneself with the Difference, integrating with the
Cut that cuts through all identities and integrities. It is a leap
from the intensive to the virtual, where all the things, beings,
environments etc. perplicate each other. Having one part of it, you
have all of it, implicitly. Then in your field of individuation are
involved all the other fields of individuation.
Heterotopy, heterochrony, heterosubjectivity. Singular-universal vs
particular-general
With complexification, the spatial and temporal scales widen. With
humans, it potentially reaches the maximum: we can, in principle,
grasp the whole of the universe, i.e. the maximum of heterotopy,
as well as the birth and possible end (by heat death, Big Crunch or
otherwise) of it, i.e. the maximum of heterochrony. We can go
to the limit of space and time. We can think of the „whole“ of
being (although, of course, it creates a paradox, because this
thought should be not contained in that whole, which means that the
whole is not a whole, and we would need a new thought to think this
greater whole, but again, this thought would not be included in the
new whole, and so on to infinity). or, better, our existence takes
place on the background of this whole, which we can in a certain
sense intend, even if paradoxically or asymptotically.
We can, in principle, also grasp a complete Otherness (religions
tend to reterritorialize it into a supreme Being, a God, World
Spirit, or other, with dire consequences; this onto-theology is the
supreme veneration of a being, making a theology around a being or an
idea, thus discarding, suppressing, destroying the Otherness).
From matterialistic spiritwoalism, I can discover the Cut that cuts
the maximum of time, space and alterity. I exist in relation to the
maximum of other-timeness, other-spaceness and otherness.
By the same token, everything becomes singular. When we
come back from this maximum of alterity to the here and now, then
these things, beings, persons, environments, materials that we
encounter, they acquire an enhanced meaning, they become singular
(and not just exemplars of a general type). The least important
(taking into consideration the immensity of the universe) can be also
the most important (as these singular things here in this unique
situation). This does not deny the validity of general notions and
ideas, for instance, the scientific formulas and categories, but it
includes it into a more comprehensive worldview, into the uniqueness
of the situation. General ideas may give us good, reliable and useful
hints there, but they are not sufficient, they are not precise enough
for philosophical purposes. Beyond the everyday logic of particular
and general there is the logic of singular and universal.
Hence, spiritwoalism
does not so much aim to destroy religions or spiritualities, as to
demythologize them. There are no fixed or predetermined points for
self-cultivation or "spiritual excercises", but anything
can give material for it. The small arts described in Zhuangzi
(carpenter, butcher, cicada-catcher, etc.) give a brilliant example
of it. And the self-cultivation proceeds in these cases from the
materials and the practitioner's body themselves, from their
interaction. It does require some effort, practice, and
concentration, but they are not prescribed from outside of the
system, and it defyies all pre-established hierarchies. Yet, through
this practice, it is possible to somehow get closer to the most
external exteriority there is, i.e. to the cut itself, that
cuts me from the other, my consciousness from my subconscious, one
bodily organization level from another.
1
There's nothing wrong with that distinction; it comes at the very
beginning of his book and heuristically it is still a very good
starting point. Only that this must be refined later.
2Cf.
Wikipedia, where material's properties are said to be intensive in
the sense of „a physical
property that does not depend on the amount of the material.“
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