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Abstract
It has gone largely unnoticed that when Deleuze opposes the “private thinker” to the “public professor,” he is invoking the existential thought of Lev Shestov (1866–1938). The public professor defends established values and preaches submission to the demands of reason and the State; the private thinker opposes thought to reason, “idiocy” to common sense, a people to come to what exists. Private thinkers are solitary, singular and untimely, forced to think against consensus and “the crowd.” Deleuze takes from Shestov and Kierkegaard the idea that genuine thinking manifests itself in a thinking which rebels against rational necessity, a theme central to Shestov’s leading French interpreter, Benjamin Fondane (1898–1944). Although Deleuze at first (Nietzsche et la philosophie. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris,1962) expresses doubts as to whether Shestov’s critique of reason can overcome the legislative reason of Kant, or whether it is entirely free ofressentiment, I argue that Shestov and Fondane’s anti-rationalism is more radical than Deleuze sometimes admits, and show how Deleuze’s attitude toward Shestov became more unreservedly positive over the years. On the other hand, against Shestov and Fondane, I agree with Deleuze that the private thinker is in solidarity with the “strange powers” which can remake the world, and thus with “the people to come.” Nonetheless, I argue that Deleuze’s philosophy cannot form the basis of a politics of egalitarian consensus, but that “the people to come” can only be a “broken chain” of untimely and singular exceptions.
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Notes
Kierkegaard (1983, p. 186); see Fondane (1935a, p. 764); Chestov (1936, pp. 38–39). Hong and Hong’s translation uses “unprofessional thinker”: “Fortunately, my friend is not looking for clarification from any world-famous philosopher or anyprofessor publicus ordinarius; he turns to an unprofessional thinker… Job;” Kierkegaard (1983, p. 186).
See Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 221 n.2).
See Lambert (2012).
Jones and Roffe (2009) have chapters on Hume, Kant, Salomon Maimon, Hegel, Gabriel Tarde, Gilbert Simondon and others, but nothing on Shestov. Paar (2005, 2010) does not contain entries for either Shestov or “private thinkers.” Salazar-Ferrer (2008, pp. 96–97) deals briefly with Deleuze’s and Shestov’s common theme of the “private thinker” as “idiot.”.
For example, Semetsky (2003) brings Deleuze’s new image of thought within the ambit of the liberal-progressive ideal of personal growth, in principle attainable by anyone given the right opportunities.
Deleuze (1968a, pp. 74–75, 267–268;1994, pp. 52–53, 207). On the incompatibility of Deleuze’s theory of thinking with the egalitarianism of Jacques Rancière and others, see Toscano (2010). Toscano signals the importance of the figure of the “idiot,” which he relates to Dostoyevsky and Shestov, but this is not the focus of his study.
Fondane (1934, p. 547).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 6).
Fondane (1936, p. 116).
See Deleuze and Guattari (1994, pp. 41–42), on thinking on a dangerous and disreputable exercise.
Fondane (1994, p. 423).
Nietzsche (1986, p. 8); see Nietzsche (1973, pp. 121–122).
Heidegger (1979, pp. 339, 343–344, 385–386).
Fondane (1982, p. 248).
Fondane (2006) brings together Fondane’s major collections of poems (Ulysse, 1933;Titanic, 1937;L’Exode, 1965).
Cioran (1986, p. 153).
Fondane (1982, pp. 143–144, 163, 164–165).
Heidegger (1979, pp. 19–27).
Fondane (1938, p. 127).
Fondane (1935b, p. 320).
Fondane (1938, p. 83).
Fondane (1990b, pp. 67, 101–103); Chestov (1936, p. 43). See Plato,Protagoras 345 D (“even the gods must obey necessity”). Rational necessity, as logical principles which must be followed in every case, is not to be confused with Deleuze’sAnanké, which is the necessity of chance itself, “the chaosmos from which the cosmos emerges” (Deleuze,1968a, p. 257;1994, p. 199); see Deleuze (1962, p. 41;1983, p. 36).
Chestov (1932, p. 355).
Fondane (1982, p. 223).
Chestov (1933, pp. 570, 578).
Chestov (1932, p. 355).
Fondane (1982, p. 240).
Fondane (1990b, p. 101).
Fondane (1934, p. 541).
Fondane (1990b, pp. 109, 127).
Deleuze (1965, pp. 20, 23).
Fondane (1990a, p. 54).
Deleuze (1984, p. 16).
See Nietzsche (1973, p. 92): “Kant gave to understand… ‘what is worthy of respect in me is that I know how to obey—and thingsought to be no different with you!”
Fondane (1994, p. 219).
Fondane (1940b, p. 45).
Fondane (1938, p. 85).
Chestov (1932, p. 355).
Fondane (1990b, pp. 108, 129, 161).
Fondane (1982, p. 237).
Fondane (1990a, p. 52).
Fondane (1940b, p. 35).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, pp. 41–42, 54).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, pp. 59–60); see Deleuze (1968a, p. 257;1994, p. 199). The source of this idea for Deleuze, Shestov and Fondane is Kierkegaard; see Kierkegaard (1985, p. 37): “The paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow…. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.”.
Kierkegaard (1983, pp. 148–149, 212).
Fondane (1940a, p. 306).
Fondane (1940b, p. 45).
Fondane (1990b, p. 172).
Fondane (1933, pp. 628–630; 1984, p. 247).
Fondane (1982, p. 246).
Fondane (1935b, p. 315).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 62).
Fondane (1935b, p. 315).
Fondane (1938, pp. 16–17, 23).
Fondane (1990b, p. 140).
Fondane (1990b, pp. 97–98).
Fondane (1990b, p. 180).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 41).
Fondane (1934, pp. 536–537).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 41).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 45).
Fondane (1937, p. 388).
Chestov (1933, p. 582).
Fondane (1938, p. 69).
Dostoyevsky (1955, pp. 72, 113, 115, 299, 309, 324.).
Dostoyevsky (1955, p. 327). Note the appreciation of Myshkin by Aglaya: “You’re more honest than any of them, better, kinder, cleverer than any of them!”
Dostoyevsky (1955, p. 442).
Fondane (1990b, p. 150).
Fondane (1935a, p. 766).
Chestov (1935, p. 757).
Fondane (1994, pp. 432, 214).
Fondane (1990b, pp. 71–72, 129, 149).
Fondane (1938, p. 69).
Fondane (1937, pp. 396–397).
Fondane (1990b, pp. 149–50).
Kierkegaard (1983, pp. 197–212).
Deleuze (2000, pp. 16, 30, 94–95, 97, 101).
Deleuze (2001, 139).
Chestov (1935, pp. 756, 761).
Fondane (1937, p. 399).
See Deleuze and Guattari (1994, pp. 171–172) on freeing life from imprisonment through creative fabulation and Deleuze and Guattari (1986, pp. 4, 7–8, 13, 33–36, 41 and passim)on (a) life’s search for a “way out;” see also Deleuze (1962, pp. 116–117;1983, pp. 102–103) on “the power of the false” as producing a new truth of artists.
Chestov (1935, p. 759).
Fondane (1934, p. 548).
Fondane (1937, pp. 406, 413–414).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 376).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 556 n. 42.).
Fondane (1934, p. 543).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 375).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 63). There is a double reference here: to Shestov, who is quoting the nineteenth-century Russian critic Vassarion Belinksy’s “secret letter” to his friends, which reads as follows: “Even if I were able to arrive at the highest degree on the ladder of culture, I should not cease to demand that you account for all the victims of the conditions of life and history, for all the victims of chance, superstition, the Inquisition of Philip II, etc.” See Shestov (1978, p. 3).; Chestov (1936, pp. 14–15).
Fondane (1990b, pp. 168–169).
Fondane (1990b, p. 172).
Fondane (1982, p. 246).
Deleuze (2004a, p. 78).
Fondane (1940b, p. 52).
Fondane (1990b, p. 166).
Deleuze (1995, p. 133).
Deleuze (1965, pp. 6–7).
Fondane (1937, p. 384).
Fondane (1990b, p. 149).
Fondane (1990b, p. 165).
Fondane (1994, p. 68).
Deleuze (2004a, p. 78).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 377).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 59).
Deleuze (1988c, 119).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, pp. 108–109).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 107).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987, pp. 374–380).
Deleuze and Guattari (1986, p.17).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 377).
Fondane (1937, p. 387).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 376).
Deleuze (1988a, p. 111).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 377).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 110).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 109).
See Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 107): “Human rights under capitalism are subordinate to property rights… Rights save neither men nor a philosophy that is reterritorialized on the democratic state. Human rights will not make us bless capitalism.” This critique holds even for social democracies. See Deleuze (1995, pp. 172–173).
Deleuze (1997, p. 4).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 112).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 108).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 110).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 111).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 110). Patton, to his credit, cites all those texts by Deleuze and Guattari which oppose minoritarian becomings to majorities and philosophy to opinion. His effort to bring about a rapprochement of sorts between Deleuze and Rawls is all the more puzzling for it. A full discussion of Patton’s arguments is beyond the scope of this paper.
Ronald Bogue (2011, p. 90). See also Menge (2003, pp. 45–57;2006, pp. 266–268); cited Patton (2008, p. 186) on the play of conflicting opinions producing “solidarity and consensus regarding what is to be done here and now.” Patton also repeatedly refers to a democratic consensus concerning rights which is inextricably tied to opinion and reflected in social and political institutions (2008, pp. 184–187, 191–193).
Fondane (1935a, p. 770).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987, pp. 105–106, 469–470).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 378).
See Boundas (2006, pp. 416–417), who attempts to reconcile Deleuze’s aristocratism with a universal brotherhood to come.
Fondane (1935a, pp. 768–769).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 41).
Deleuze and Parnet (1987, pp. 68–69).
Deleuze and Guattari (1994), p. 63.
Fondane (1936, p. 211).
Deleuze and Parnet (1987, p. 65).
See Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 93): “there is no good reason but contingent reason.”
Fondane (1936, pp. 17–18, 35, 59–60).
Fondane (1936, p. 37).
Deleuze (2004a, p. 138).
Kierkegaard (1983, p. 149).
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Department of Philosophy, History and Politics, Thompson Rivers University, 900 McGill Road, Kamloops, BC, V2C 0C8, Canada
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Baugh, B. Private thinkers, untimely thoughts: Deleuze, Shestov and Fondane.Cont Philos Rev48, 313–339 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-015-9332-6
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