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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Klossowski, Nietzsche & sick bodies « Previous | |Next »
November 8, 2004

In earlier posts on the second chapter of Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, entitled, 'The Origin of the Semiotic of Impulses', I've mentioned how out of sorts I am with his interpretation of Nietzsche. I've drawn attention to his biographical approach, the dualism of bodily impulses versus the everyday coded consciousness, and the wilful ignoring of the process of evaulation.

Let's face it, I'm not a sympathetic reader of Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle. I am much more at home with Heidegger's interpretation, and I find reading the rest of the book an intellectual chore which I keep on putting off.

Here is a sympathetic reader----Joanne Faulkner from La Trobe University Melbourne. Her interpretation of Klossowski's reading of Nietzsche makes much more sense of Klossowski's than I have done, or could do. Joanne's reading emphases the relationship between language and its fabrication of the body, highlights the importance of Nietzsche as a philosopher of the body, and the way that Nietzsche places his life at risk for the sake of his experimentation with his writings, and the significance of Nietzsche's sick body for the doctrine of eternal recurrence.

Towards the end of chapter 2 Klossowski writes:


"We cannot renounce language, nor our intentions, nor our willing; but we could evaluate this willing and these intentions in a different manner than we have hitherto evaluated them---namely, as subject to the 'law' of the vicious Circle.

Joanne allows us to make sense of passages such as these with her insight that "the body invents language in order to deceive us about itself." I never saw this.

I understood that language and bodily impulse were in opposition and I had understood that willing and intention were linguistic fictions of the everyday codes of language that shaped consciousness. I thought that it was language deceiving us because it did not, nor could, grasp the chaotic warring bodily impulses.

Nor did I give much attention to the significance of Nietzsche's sick body for his philosophy. I understood that his need to maintain cheerfulness in the midst of sickness, wounds that needed to heal, convalesence and his thinking of growing strong through a revaluation of values and the sounding out of idols. I had interpreted this along the lines of Nietzsche working in the tradition of the classical Greek's medical conception of philosophy as a healing of what makes us sick.

But I couldn't really connect with Klossowski's insights into the way that Nietzsche's experience of his sick body linked to his understanding of his organic metaphysics. Joanne highlights this aspect of Kossowski's interpretation: through his sickness Nietzsche observes his body at war with itself and break down into its component parts. As his body broke down so did Nietzsche's consciousness and personality (sense of self) shaped by culture and society. Nietzsche sides with his body.

Joanne also highlights Klossowski's understanding of the way that Nietzsche connected his sickness and philosophy: sickness leads to a convalesence where the body husbands its energies and creates conditions for change and growth. Presumably this leads to will to power.

The limitations of Klossowski's approach remain--the literary institution's indifference to the philosophical tradition. So Nietzsche's engagement with a Darwinian and physicalist metaphysics is ignored. Yet Nietzsche engaged with these traditions as well as the experience of his sick body.

Still, with Joanne's text to converse with I can start reading chapter 3 of Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:26 PM | | Comments (8)
Comments

Comments

Perhaps I should tell Jo that she is being discussed here:))

Ali,
I got sick of studying an idiosyncratic text in isolation.

Reminded me of academe where you have a room, some texts and a computer; where you struggle all day trying to make sense of difficult concepts, and you try to express your ideas with little feedback.

It was the lack of feedback in a liberla academy that says it nurtures intellectual conversations that got me. The spin of the liberal academy is that it keeps alive the Socratic conversation in a collegial environment.

Maybe it has all changed in the last decade or so, and La Trobe actually is a bustling centre of free flowing philosophical conversatisons. I certainly hope it is, otherwise there is not much hope for our universities resisting the market pressure on them to become business corporations.

I did email Joanne about people contributing to philosophical conversation, though I did not mention I was discussing her paper.

Gary,

I guess academia is still the same, except for people have less time than before, as competition becomes more intense and the academics' main concern becomes just survival. However Australia and specially places like La Trobe are less crazy as people have not yet become that frantic with hyperactivity in their life in comparison with some other places.

La Trobe is really a place to be, specially our small friendly philosophy department. We are a close knit community where everybody sees and talks to everybody else on a daily basis.

Feedback on the internet is another issue. One might think that it would be easy to get feedback with a global audience at hand, however it is not always true, as there is so much to choose from, everything seems to be lost in an overwhelming flow of information.

I supected that La Trobe may have been like that.

You are very fortunate. That sort of community is something very precious. My experiences were just the opposite at Flinders.

I think that the online stuff has to be built up from the bottom up.It is not just doing the philosophising communally thing. It is more about creating a questioning radical philosophical culture that deals with things/issues/conflicts that are not being addressed or discussed but should be.

The idea would be to have an online community like you have at La Trobe but different.

That is about has far as I've got.

What that means is a diversity of philosophical voices online--engaged in some sort of conversation that people can drop in on and contribute to if they feel like it.

It is sort of like creating the equivalent of a film culture.

Hi,

I am that person; stuck in a tiny room with some texts, a computer and a deadline lurking nearby. Trying to express my thoughts on Klossowski, the line towards Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (body becomes machine), via A Thousand Plateaus (war machine as external) and back to Nietsches external-thoughts (the bodily thoughts). I can not even begin to express how unbelievable f*** I am. Too few days, too few pages, too few insights.

But this was not what I intended to write. No. You were seeking a global audience, and I'm studying at the University of Bergen, Norway. Perhaps a taste of the globalness of the internet.

Hi Rolf,
You are most welcome to use this weblog to express those throughts either as comments or posts. If the latter let me know and I will set you up as an author.

Those are difficult texts you mention and it is very difficult to understand them, let alone work out something interesting and original to say about them.

Most of my energy goes in trying to figure what the texts are saying. I consider myself fortunate that I do not have a deadline to meet.

I do hope that you have a supportive academic environment, which is able to nurture the difficult process of trying to express your thoughts on paper in a coherent fashion.

The people at La Trobe sound very lucky.

Gary,

You state you are more at home with Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche, but said interpretation is very suspect, if not dubious, while Klossowski's is far more insightful and lucid. I think you should struggle to read the entire book before making any judgment or criticism of it. How can one understand a book without having read it in toto?

Heidegger posits that Nietzsche is a metaphysician, the last, and this in itself is a basic misreading and highly problematic. His analysis of N's philosophy is based primarily on the posthumously published notes, commonly known as The Will to Power, but since republished under a different title by Oxford Press (Unpublished Notes and Fragments), for it is not a 'book' or finished work. He ignores nearly all of N's published works, and claims that the real, or 'true' philosophy is in these unpublished notes. Further analyses are based on letters, which are but circumstantial reflections, and even more dubious material on which to base a judgment or find suitable claims. I think a reassessment needs be made of Heidegger's interpretation. . .

Respectfully,
Rainer

Rainer,
fair enough. Good points.

Truth to tell, I struggle with both Heidegger's and Klossowski's interpretations of Nietzsche. I have spend more time with Heidegger than Klossowski, and so I am more familar with the approach--a lecture course within the philosophical tradition.

All that I would say in my defence about my odd way of reading is that Klossowski's text strikes me as a number of essays collected together in a book.

Anyhow, Joanne is a much better guide as can seen from this wonderful post.

As for your judgement that "a reassessment needs be made of Heidegger's interpretation". . .of course. Otherwise its dogmatism.

But I thought that the French poststructuralists had done just that? Joanne has done a reassessment here.