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October 1, 2004
In chapter two of his Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle entitled, 'The Origin of the Semiotic of Impulses', Klossowski says that Nietzsche's view is that the conscious life of the individual is subordinated to fluctuations of intensities of the impulses. On this interpretation there is the 'conscious' agent and the so-called 'unconscious' activity of impulses in relation to this agent --for it is the agent that is 'unconscious' of this 'subterranean' activity'.
What then is the relationship between the two?
Klossowski asks whether this relationship is different or the same as Freud's iceberg understanding of the relationship between consciouness and unconscious: ie., consciousness is but an iceberg in the sea of the unconsciousness.
Freud himself claimed to have been in important respects anticipated, though not influenced, by Nietzsche. He said he was surprised when first reading Nietzsche how much he fitted with his own discoveries. I've always understood Nietzsche in relation to Freud---a proto-Freud. Trevor, from what I can remember, does not.
Let us seen what Klossowski does with this issue. What I will do in this post is unpack the relationships as outlined in the text. He says:
"Inasmuch as exteriority is installed in the agent by the code of everyday signs, it is only on the basis of this code that the agent can make declarations or state opinions, think or not think, remain silent or break the silence. The agent thinks only as a product of this code."
The Stoic self-government of the soul make a distinction between the public world with its gender, class and status and its external goods and of wealth, honour and privilege on the one hand; and on the other, the private world or the virtues as states of the soul, and inner activity. All the ethical attention of their self-governance therapy is focused on the internal doings of the heart (the passions).
Klossowski goes on to say that:
"Now such a thinking agent exists only because of the greater or lesser resistance of the impulsive forces --which constitue the agent as a (corporeal) unity with respect to the code of everyday signs..Where does the ebbing flow of the intensity [of the impulsive forces] go?It overflows the fixity of signs and continues on, as it were, in their intervals: each interval(thus each silence)belongs(outside the linkage of signs) to the fluctuations of an impulsive intensity. Is this the 'unconscious'?
Klossowski answers this by asking another question:'What then is it that requires even the most lucid agent to remain unconscious of what is going on within itself'?
We are unconscious of the conflict of impulses going on inside us, in terms of fear, resentment, rage and emotional suffering resulting from living a damaged life. Hence the need for Stoic tonics, the transvaluation of all values or psychonalytic therapy to help us live a better kind of life.
Klossowski takes aim at this classical reading, as he sees Nietzsche to be engaged in destroying the foundations of morality:
"Nietzsche pursues his inquiry in order to make himself finally admit that there is neither subject, nor object, nor will, nor aim, nor meaning ---not only at the origin but for now and always."
What we are left with is bodies flows events with a flickering memory maintained by the designations of the everyday codes which intervene in accordance with changing impulses and upon which they impose their own linkages. As Klossowski puts it : we are possesed, abandoned, possessed again and suprised by the system of signs and by the flow of bodily impulses. It is the latter that confronts and invades us and outside of it we are little--depending on whether we appeal to the everyday codes; within the system of bodily impluses we know nothing.
The impression gleaned from this is that we are our bodily impulses.
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