by Daniel Smith
ESSAY 9
Ethics
The Place of Ethics in Deleuze's Philosophy: Three Questions of Immanence
M
ichel Foucault, in his preface to the first volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia (and revealingly, with apologies to its authors), wrote that “Anti-Oedipus is a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time” (AO xiii). Foucault's comment was clearly meant to be provocative. It is true that France does not have a strong tradition of “moral philosophy”; the concerns of the discipline, it has been suggested, were largely taken up in France by the various human sciences such as psychology and sociology.1 Yet Anti-Oedipus was itself a work known primarily as a critique of psychoanalysis, and it bore little resemblance to what usually passes, in academic circles, for moral philosophy. For Foucault to insist that it was a book of ethics was tantamount to forcing his readers, at the very least, to regard the notion of “ethics” in a new manner. At the time Foucault wrote his preface, in 1977, he was himself, we now know, in the process of recasting the entire History of Sexuality project around precisely this reformulation of “the ethical question.”2 What was the basis of this reconceptualization of ethics that Foucault recognized in Deleuze's philosophy, and which he later explored, in his own manner, in his last works?
Deleuze nowhere explicitly attempts to put forward what could be called an “ethical theory” of his own. Yet he has always identified Spinoza and Nietzsche as his two primary philosophical precursors, and wrote important monographs on each of them.3 These two thinkers, in Deleuze's work, constitute a kind of “minor” tradition of ethical thought. What they have in common is an attempt to rethink ethics (and philosophy as a whole) from a purely immanent point of view. In several interviews given after the publication of Foucault in 1986, Deleuze attempted to characterize this immanent conception of ethics by offering his own version of the distinction between “ethics” and “morality,” which has often been drawn to distinguish modes of reflection that place greater emphasis, respectively, on the good or virtuous life (such as Aristotle or Stoicism) or on the moral law (such as Kantianism). He uses the term “morality” to define, in very general terms, any set of “constraining” rules, such as a moral code, that consists in judging actions and intentions by relating them to universal or transcendent values (“this is good, that is evil”).4 What he calls “ethics” is, on the contrary, a set of “facilitative” (facultative) rules that evaluate what we do, say, and think according to the immanent mode of existence that it implies. One says or does this, thinks or feels that: what mode of existence does it imply? “We always have the beliefs, feelings, and thoughts we deserve,” writes Deleuze, “given our way of being or our style of life.”5 The term “mode of existence” is not a psychological notion, but an ontological one. Spinoza and Nietzsche argued, each in their own way, that there are things one cannot do or think, or say or feel, except for the condition of being weak, base, or enslaved, unless one harbors a vengeance or ressentiment against life (Nietzsche), unless one remains the slave of passive affections (Spinoza); and there are other things one cannot do or think except on the condition of being strong, noble, or free, unless one affirms life or attains active affections. Deleuze calls this the method of “dramatization”: actions and propositions are interpreted as so many sets of symptoms that express or “dramatize” the mode of existence of the speaker. “What is the mode of existence of the person who utters a given proposition?” asks Nietzsche. “What mode of existence is needed in order to be able to utter it?”6 Rather than judging actions and thoughts by appealing to transcendent or universal values, one evaluates them by determining the mode of existence that serves as their principle. A pluralistic method of explanation by immanent modes of existence is in this way made to replace the recourse to transcendent values; an immanent ethical difference (noble / base) is substituted for the transcendent moral opposition (Good / Evil).
This immanent conception of an “ethics without morality,” however, has not fared well in the history of philosophy. Few philosophers have been more maligned and ridiculed than Spinoza and Nietzsche. They were condemned, by both their contemporaries and their successors, not only for being atheists, but also, even worse, for being “immoralists.”7 A potent danger was sensed to be lurking in the Ethics and the Genealogy of Morals: without transcendence, without universals, one will fall into the dark night of chaos, reduced to a pure “subjectivism” or “relativism.” A philosophy of immanence, it is argued, far from resolving the question of justification, seems to shift the problem on to an irresolvable terrain. It seems unable to put forth normative criteria by which certain modes of existence can be judged as acceptable and others condemned as reprehensible, and winds up espousing a kind of moral nihilism in which all “differences” are affirmed in their turn. Deleuze himself, in a late essay, states the problem in this way: “What disturbed us was that in renouncing judgment we had the impression of depriving ourselves of any means assessing the differences between existing beings, between modes of existence, as if everything were now of equal value” (ECC 134). Nietzsche, for instance, famously criticized morality for having been derived from a reactive or base mode of existence. But by what “right,” according to what criteria, is a noble or active mode of existence “better” or “worth more” than a base one? Put succinctly: How can one evaluate modes of existence using criteria that are immanent to the mode itself without thereby abandoning any basis for comparative evaluation?
It is this problem that lies at the heart of an ethics of immanence, and Deleuze's response to it is a rigorous one. A mode of existence can be evaluated, apart from transcendental or universal values, by the purely immanent criteria of its power or capacity (puissance): that is, by the manner in which it actively deploys its power by going to the limit of what it can do (or on the contrary, by the manner in which it is cut off from its power to act and is reduced to powerlessness). Deleuze expresses this in various formulas throughout his work: modes of existence are evaluated “according to their tenor in ‘possibilities,’ in freedom, in creativity” (TRM 343–4); by “the manner in which the existing being (existant) is filled with (s'emplit de) immanence” (ECC 137); the ethical task entails “an amplification, an intensification, an elevation of power, an increase in dimensions, a gain in distinction” (FLB 73); “there are never any criteria other than the tenor of existence, the intensification of life” (WP 74). Modes of existence, in other words, must be evaluated according to the purely intensive criteria of their power and their capacity to affect and be affected. From afar, the meaning of this principle seems obscure, and has at times been subject to naive caricatures (for instance, that it simply valorizes “powerful” modes of existence, “superhuman” individuals who capriciously exert their power and will upon others). To explore the nature of Deleuze's immanent ethics, I would first like to analyze the complex relations it maintains with Kantianism; and then to examine, in summary fashion, some of the problems and positive tasks it poses, taking our cue primarily from Spinoza.
KANT AND IMMANENT ETHICS
Somewhat surprisingly, Deleuze presents this immanent conception of ethics not, as one might perhaps expect, as a rejection of Kantianism but, on the contrary, as its fulfillment. Kant's genius, in Deleuze's interpretation, was precisely to have conceived of a purely immanent critique of reason, a critique that did not seek, within reason, errors that come from an external cause (the body, the senses, the passions) but illusions that arise from within reason itself through the illegitimate (transcendent) use of the syntheses of consciousness. Yet the post-Kantian philosophers, from Salomon Maimon to Hermann Cohen, argued that Kant himself was unable to realize this project of immanent critique fully because he lacked a method that would allow reason to be critiqued internally without giving it the task of being its own judge. Kant's project was a critique of reason by reason itself; reason is both the judge and the judged, the tribunal and the accused. He therefore
saw critique as a force that should be brought to bear on all claims to knowledge and morality—but not on knowledge and morality themselves, which were considered to be the “natural interests” of reason and thus were never placed in question. What Kant condemned was simply those illegitimate employments (illusions) through which reason, in its natural state, confuses those interests and allows these domains to impinge on one another.
Thus total critique turns into a politics of compromise: even before the battle the spheres of influence have already been shared out. Three ideals are distinguished: What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for? Limits are drawn to each one, misuses and trespasses are denounced, but the uncritical character of each ideal remains at the heart of Kantianism like the worm in the fruit: true knowledge, true morality, and true religion. What Kant still calls—in his own terms—a fact: the fact of morality, the fact of knowledge.8
In his landmark book Nietzsche and Philosophy, Deleuze argues that it was Nietzsche who was finally able to fulfill the aims of the critical project precisely because he brought the critique to bear not merely on false claims to knowledge and morality but on truth itself: that is, on true morality and true knowledge. “We need a critique of moral values,” writes Nietzsche in The Genealogy of Morals; “the value of these values must first be called into question.” And again: “The will to truth requires a critique—let us thus define our own task—the value of truth must for once be experimentally called into question.”9 Nietzsche was not content to discover transcendental principles that would constitute the condition of possibility for the “facts” of reason (the “fact” of knowledge, the “fact” of morality); rather he was intent on discovering immanent principles that were truly genetic and productive, that would give an account of the genesis of knowledge and morality. What he called “genealogy” was a method that traced the origin of knowledge and morality to differential modes of existence that serve as their principle. As Deleuze writes,
The problem of critique is that of the value of values [knowledge, morality], of the evaluation from which their value arises, thus the problem of their creation. Evaluation is defined as the differential element of corresponding values, an element which is both critical and creative. Evaluations, in essence, are not values but ways of being, modes of existence of those who judge and evaluate, serving as principles for the values on the basis of which they judge. (NP 1)
Deleuze's analysis of Kant's theory of the moral law is consequently worth examining in some detail here, since in effect it submits Kantianism itself to the critical reversal set in motion by Nietzsche. Deleuze suggests that, just as the Critique of Pure Reason effected a Copernican revolution by making the objects of knowledge revolve around the subject, so the Critique of Practical Reason effected an equally important revolution by making the Good revolve around the Law. He thereby inverted the relation that had prevailed since antiquity, and seemed in a position to invert what Nietzsche called “the ascetic ideal.” But what actually takes place in the second Critique? In Plato, laws were a secondary or derived power, subordinate to the Good; if humans knew the Good, and how to conform to it, they would not need laws. From the point of view of principles, laws are only a “second resort,” an imitation of the Good given to humans when the true politics is lacking. And from the point of view of consequences, the righteous person, in obeying the laws of his or her country, can none the less be said to be acting for the “Best,” even though he or she retains the freedom to think of the Good and for the sake of the Good. Kant, in Deleuze's reading, effectively reversed this classical conception of the Law, as much from the point of view of the principles upon which the Law rests as the consequences it entails.10
1. From the point of view of principles, laws are no longer seen to find their foundation in a higher principle from which they would derive their authority. Instead, the Law is made into a first principle, a pure form of universality that has neither object nor content (since a content would imply a Good of which the Law would be the imitation …). It does not tell us what we must do; it does not present itself as a comparative or psychological universal (“Do unto others …”). Rather, it provides a subjective rule, a logical test, that we must obey no matter what our action: every action whose maxim can be thought without contradiction as universal, and whose motive has no other object than this maxim, will be a moral action or at least consistent with morality. Lying, for example, cannot be thought as a universal, because it at least implies people who believe the lie and who, in believing it, are not lying. In Kant, the Law becomes stripped of all content, its imperative being merely a categorical one. The Law does not tell us which object the will must pursue to be good but simply what form it must take to be moral. “It does not tell us what we must do, it simply tells us ‘You must!’, leaving us to deduce from it the Good, that is, the objects of this pure imperative” (ECC 32).
2. From the point of view of consequences, it is no longer possible to say that the righteous man obeys the Law for the sake of the Best. Since it is valid by virtue of its form alone and its content remains undetermined, the Law is not part of the domain of the understanding. The Law is not known and can never be known precisely because there is nothing in it to “know.” We come across the Law only through its action, through a purely practical determination that is opposed to any speculative or theoretical proposition. The Law defines a realm of transgression where one breaks the Law without ever knowing what it is. It is this realm, Deleuze suggests, whose mechanisms were described with frightening detail by Kafka in The Trial: the Law acts and expresses itself through its sentence, and one can learn of this sentence only through its application in a punishment (K 44–45). Consequently, the person who tries to obey the moral imperative of the Law no longer becomes or even feels righteous; on the contrary, the Law makes one feel guilty, necessarily guilty, guilty in advance, and the more strict one's obedience, the greater one's guilt. Freud, in his analysis of the superego, uncovered the secret of this paradox of conscience: if duty presupposes a renunciation of our interests and desires, the moral Law will inevitably exert itself all the more strongly and rigorously, the deeper our renunciation. The Law thereby makes itself all the more severe to the degree that we observe it with exactitude.11 And even guilt and punishment will not give us a final knowledge of our faults; the Law remains in a state of indeterminacy equaled only by the extreme specificity of the punishment. It never acquits us, no more of our virtues than of our faults.
Deleuze, in short, defines the Kantian moral Law in terms of two paradoxical poles: formal transcendence, from the point of view of principles; and a priori guilt, from the point of view of consequences. The modern critique of Kant's moral philosophy has tended to take as its point of departure these two poles. In his 1967 study entitled Masochism, for instance, in which this analysis of the Law first appeared, Deleuze argued that Sade and Masoch presented two “perverse” modes of existence that had as their aim the subversion of the moral Law: either by a new revolt that aims at a higher sovereign principle beyond the Law, an ironic principle that would no longer be the Good but rather the Idea of Evil or primary nature (Sade's institutional model of anarchy); or else by a humorous submission that eludes the imperative of the Law by turning punishment into a condition that makes possible the forbidden pleasure (Masoch's contractual model).12 Deleuze's analyses in Masochism, in turn, can be read as a non-theistic version of Kierkegaard's analysis of the “suspension of the ethical”: Job contests the Law in an ironic manner, “refusing all secondhand explanations, dismissing the general in order to attain the most singular as a principle, as a universal”; whereas Abraham submits to the Law humoristically, “but in this submission he recovers the singularity of the only son that the Law has commanded him to sacrifice” (DR 5–8). But these critiques, important as they are, only expose the paradoxes of the Kantian Law, its limits, pointing either to a “leap” beyond the Law into the religious or to a “transgression” of the Law through perv
ersion.
Nietzsche's method of dramatization, by contrast, provides an immanent critique, not of the paradoxes but of the very principles of the moral Law. Who is it that says, “You must!”? It is the priest, and the categorical imperative expressed the purely formal aspect of the will to judge. Who is it that is always already guilty? It is the slave, laden with a responsibility-guilt of which he can never acquit himself. When Nietzsche laid out the three primary psychological categories of the slave in the Genealogy of Morals, he also marked out the evolution of the triumph of “morality,” the genealogical origins of the moral Law: ressentiment (“It's your fault … ,” moment of projective accusation and recrimination); the bad conscience (“It's my fault … ,” moment of introjection; fault is internalized, turned back against oneself; one becomes guilty); and finally the ascetic ideal (moment of sublimation, triumph of reactive forces; life is “judged” in the name of values superior to life). At the same time, he also showed how the slave found its necessary correlate in the priest (“I want to judge, I must judge … ”), who gives this guilt form, who exploits it to establish his power, who invents a new form of power as a power of judgment.13 Morality, in this sense, constitutes what Deleuze calls a “system of judgment.” Nietzsche famously identified the condition of judgment in “the consciousness of having a debt toward the divinity.” It is the debtor–creditor relation, he argued, that lies at the origin of the ethico-moral realm; promises were given, commitments made to the future, and the “justice of the laws” existed to make one responsible for one's debts, “to create a memory for the future.” The system of judgment appeared precisely when this debt was rendered infinite and therefore unpayable (Christianity); we were no longer indebted to another party but to the divine, to whom we have an infinite debt of which we can never acquit ourselves. “Debt becomes the relation of a debtor who will never finish paying to a creditor who will never finish using up interest on the debt” (NP 142).
