Perhaps there is a map after all.
It was a moment in purgatory, when Leibniz, after a space of many years met Spinoza again. They rowed a they normally did, with cordial loathing. At one point Leibniz stated:
“ This will not do. For you were is the complexity of affects. For me the problem was always very clear. Each affect is built up across from a cloud of other affects, which splinter into the mind and are then gone. Each feeling therefore, even as it stodgily asserts itself, is caught up in a maze of other different feelings, which straddle past and future. Each action is therefore big in the future, and carries pasts with it. Each feelings is always giving birth to another.”
“ But isnt’ this a cheat. I mean for two reasons. Firstly you have smuggles into your theory what should be proves, and merely used subterfuge to make that seem clever. I mean here that talk of the minutest of particles – where is the value of that? And…
“ No – this is not a goo dcriticism – although I suppose I might expect, even after all these years. The calculous does not work as smallest particle, but rather the vanishing point of the small. It is the point where, as one approaches a division by zero, one steps out of the physical world and into the metaphysical. The force which operates is therefore not a part of extension was you understood it. Hence the affect is always not a part of extension. It is a cardinal point for me, that the same set of movements might be doing really rather different things – things at only emerge across time: that is across the weight of memory.
Notice, also a real dynamics is involved in this process . The same memory might do radically different things, as it swims into the mind again and again. The same affect. No – what I am saying, the power of my explanation is that no affect is ever the same! I am not you. I do not present a lexicon byt a politics of thinking …
“ as ever you see your own path clearer than you see mine, or anyone elses. I am not sure that I do not agree with you on this last point. Affects certainly are all unique, a unique as cicumstance. As for this argument based on mathemtics, it seemsto me rather likely that your willingness to step outside the domain of extension – and into what ,the domain of time?, is a little over zealous.
I am not now or never a mathematican. Never claimed to be. But it was always a cardinal maxim with me that matter needed at its mot fundamental, or as I called it its infinite level, but understood in two ways. One the one hand matter was a force to move others (or resist movement): Hence matter needed to be defined as reciprocal influence. Each block of matter, changed every other point in the universe. It was an urgency to changing (or resisting change).On the other hand, there was matter, understood as it existed, as a ting, then it was lost in a maze of causes, to which it was endlessly bound. Matter was therefore always a thing external. It was either that element changing everything else, or that whose existence could only be defined by the changes of everything else.
Your calculos clearly wishes to combine these two moves – or better order them. You wish to create a theory which always matter in itself to be a force for change, and to be so even if that in itself sees matter as an infinitely small limit. The second dimension of maths one then pulls into extension (it is your only understanding of extension.
Now I never really claimed o be able to follow the maths here 9and so stopped writing on physics. But it does strike me that irrespective of whether my appeal to the infinitely is justified, your argument that the infinitely small takes one beyond all assignable space, is problematic. Why does his have to be the case? Why not merely re-configure space to allow for this force?
You jump therefore with great glee, o where you want to be anyway the world of the spirit, and do not consider with dues speed other possibles.
But this jump is then vital to the micro-parallelism you are foistering on affects at this point. One can only think of a parallelism of the soul and the body, of affect and force, if the latter was a metaphysical element always: the force of the mind a and the force of the body become one and the same type of force. It as exactly this parallelism I doubted, and you will not, in spite of your pretenses find it in my writing”
Oh: I Quote more or less accurately The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things or God’s infinite power for acting is the same as his infinite power for thinking. Pretty Clear, I think. Or again, in justnthe same way as the thoughts, the affections of the body or images of things are ordered and connected to the body: What is this but parallelism!”
” We have thought this tighter before again and again, in life and death. I am making a clear distinction here. The first proposition relates to God as he is infinite. For God as he is expressed in the two infinite modes, as is your language force and extension, the parallelism is exac and complete. The power of the idea of God (which is created in the domain of thought, and yet looks to he domain of extension, again following your terminology)god graps all of this creation.
And yet I am so very very careful here. The power by which god’s grasps himself, is tied to what occurs in each of his finite modes. Here the argument is complete. The power to perceive is itself one an unique (it follows on from thought).It pervades what is. And yet what that power is in each individual which perceives, that is what it s to them, and how it expresses their essence, is also peculiarly
;’there is absolutely no divine mind threefore, although there is a single power for making ideas: that is the way that this idea is expressed in each mode (and therefore formally0 is unique to the mode, with what it does, the ideas is shared, and a product of God. This to streams, the attribute and the objective way of knowing meet up in the infinite. But I told you all this as a young man, and you did not like it hen.
The second proposition you quoted is a different argument. Here I would have you notice what I am not saying. Do not say everything in the body is the same as everything in the mind, but the affects of the mind are one and the same as the affects of the body, and are connected to the mind. To pitch the parallel therefore within the body, and within the mind. They are parallel as things are happening in each and for each. More interesting I would have you not that this order, this connection is essentially left hanging the objective essence of the mind lies in having an idea of the body (and its formal essence it his thought as a mode). The min is therefore located firmly within the body, and does not grasp directly the nature of that body itself (nor can it). In contrast the body has a unity which is given in God across very man conflicting ideas. The point of union is therefore in a domain which thought itself dos not directly grasp: that is were it has no formal presence at all – in the body (and its order and connection).
The mind is therefore in posting parallelism forced beyond itself (and it can only understand itself, by cross the entire domain of the inifinte modes, to reach an idea of the body in itself).
But you chose not tounderstand any of this.
On the contrary it seems to me you wish o pitch your domain of affects, on the level the body itself is mad (or as close as you can to it). One of your souls therefore unwinds its own body (although the body itself has its own reality beyond that unwinding). The Soul explains the body, and what happens in the latter what changes it opens the mind up to, and makes possible, are already the secret property of the soul itself.
For me this is a natural product of ignoring the difference between he body as affect (physical and mental, formal and objective, although ) and the creation of the body itself: You want the two in a single throw, while I am content to allow the throw not to be in the same place.”
“ Now for me you are saying here two really rather different things. On the one hand I accept that if it were not for the Monads the world would indeed be composed of a shifting series or domains of forces. Each force would always be altering the other moment by moment. And yet this change would not I think need to be thought of it terms of your infinities, The differences are more profound that than implies. They would have no existence in the world of matter, which is recreated moment by moments: They would indeed be the forces, the creators which run across moment, and can only be understood in this running. The problem then at this point is to understand the nature and kind of these blind forces.
However these forces are clearly tied up to another problem. It was contain in the account you gave here, and before that perception was in its own domain. It was caught up in a world of its own. I accepted this point. But it always felt to me very possible that this domain must be greater than the domain of the created mind, and this for the simplest of reasons. I can suppose a world in which there exists other creations: A moon made of green cheese a life form on Saturn. These world were possible. The world of perception must therefore be a subset of these possible worlds. Moreover as these possible worlds relate to the ‘mind alone as it exists without the body’ it follows that one needs to think the kind of reality that can contain in a world beyond matter these extra dimensions of thought”
But I allow these dimension. One can understand objectively the essence of many things. One can imagine from that understand the essence of many more. This exists in the real physical world of our mind; That is n the world of affects which bind us into a mind and body (whose link remains unfocussed, as said). Why do you need to give it any other reality than this?’
‘ Because the problem is bound up tow hat you never like – to the problem of freedom. Each world or at least very many of them could have existed if fate had thrown differently. One needs tthree point to explain this could. One needs a medium is which the could is given and occluded: that agency is the passage of thoughts, - that is the changes face of time in that monad (the present laden with past, and pregnant with future); An agency which is alone capable of ridding this medium, and using it to make a choice (without which the entire element of difference would be meaningless). This agency is then the monad. Finally one needs a reason beyond the chooser for that choice (for each chooser will chose only what seems good for it). That is a reason why the medium and the agency come together in the first place, and why that coming creates a single world. That is one needs a divine mind.
Now such a kind is at least possible to think, as given the power of objective thought, one can extend his thought in itself, beyond the world, andi magine a mind that runs beyond the mere formal reality of what is.”
I would of course deny this possibility absolutely. It can have no more reality than a moon made of green cheese, or a life on saturn’
“ I might have at one time agreed with you, but certainly do not now. The point about these two caveats to your weary tales of the infinite is that they meet at the same basic point (none of your misplaced focus yet you see). That is they meet at a point in which or rather from which time itself is unwound. They meet in its unwinding. The one looks to a place beyond time, a place of possibility, the other looks to the world created within time. My entire thought is based on understanding the differences and similarities of this fact.
The full implication of this viewpoint you take us to beyond eternity to understand. Le me point out rather an implication. I set up a disjunction of my own between body and mind. The Mind which is linked to the soul is the true citizens of forces, and therefore a citizens of a world beyond mere physics, and yet the bodies not lack a unity of itself own. On the country the bodies unity is something which is endlessly create by the constituent parts that make it up. It will appear to ac an automaton moving in its own fashion, while all the while the reality of that fashion is being unwound by a single dominant monad.
And yet there is here clearly difference. The body itself might appear to move it it own way, and might appear therefore to be predetermined, and yet that determining is always seen after the event. Up until the soul, the monad chooses to unwind itself and make a choice the body could in acting contain very many moves: the same movements (that is all the movement leading p to a resolution) could therefore always be a part in another universe, in another series of choices the body could be making. The kind of cheap determinism which you at least appear mot of the time to have indulged in, is therefore itself an illusion. Materiality can ground no such determinism, and therefore one cannot make the argument you see to make from causes, to effect it.’
“ I actually of course agree with far more than you might be comfortable with here. I differ many in this. For me that is no separate world of difference, distinct from actual creation. It follows all the discourse on freedom, must include elements of reality, I mean real reality as well. To be free is to use reality to re-negotiate what ones body it. This re-negotiate always open to he creature of the affect, and is what I can reason (which I give of course a physical, and not a metaphysical origin to freedom – although not a physics I find in our works). My position on causality is more complex. To perceive another is for me to be found up in a causal change, as I allow that other to exist as something separate from myself ( I say as much towards the end of the first book of ethics). That is as I have an idea of another, I am bound up in a series of causes (which is the same in all versions of substance). And yet this is not to say that as those perception exist in me as an affect that I am simply bound up in them. what I do with that perception or even how I rework it, given that I also am through it, and in it is utterly my on concern – or at least should be. On the contrary I write a lot about how one can even before one is free include extra dimensions of causation, extra element a body is also doing in being altered this way, into the cause, and therefore make it different.’
‘ But these dimensions surely appeal to a world beyond what is real. To another world
Only if that world is determined in a sense and albeit virtually to exist according to he laws of perception (that is causality). Your entire argument rests upon the weary tale, you attribute to me. That is the story which claims that the only possibility for a real old is one bound a stale order of causes; once it is accepted (and I do not simply contest this fact) this world is not enough, you argue your alternative is proofed: I exist as a stole pigeon in this argument. The philosopher who you argue, would have been unanswerable save for the single fatal error that ‘I’ needed to be assume a world of predetermination. To dismiss this world is then at once to dismiss my thought, but also (as you present yourself as the only alternative to that thought), to necessarily imply yours.
I of course reject each and every on of your moves. I make no claims to being the only philosophy (merely the correct one). On cannot therefore reduce all philosophy to the countering of my argument however might be flattered by this move). Nor do I reduce the world to a simple set of causes, merely argue that objective thought as it perceives others necessarily involves such a chain as its formal reality. This says nothing them about the human essence were the forma and objective essence (and powers) are given in one (which was the point of the earlier citation). Finally I utterly reject the idea that merely rejecting a world of causes means you are right. I for on in my on thought have a clear alternative position to this move, and other might also. Merely t dismiss a world of materiality causality is a proof ab absurdam, and no positive proof at all. It ought therefore only be used to make a negative, no a positive case. Nor can I think what proof might be able to demonstrate a necessary connection between the two strands of time you bind together in the Monad. You of course present a proof in defining a divinity capable of straddlng these two world, and allowing the one to reject another. Which is fine as far as it does. But merely to divine what could full a divide is not of course to proof that divide needs filling. Maybe, as I would argue he world are not directly related here, on the level of perception, and therefore no infinite mind needs to concocted to explain the link.
But this is all things we have talked of bore, and will no doubt talk of again, and again, with no less agreement than we did before.
O now suggest hat we talk of practical mater. We started, so we will end wit affects. Take me again through your theory of affects, and there re-creation.
“ The most important thing about an affect is that it is constantly changing in its nature and theme. Anger has other angers enmeshes within it, and is far from stable. When one is gripped by stubborn affects the game is therefore one of patients, one waits, and waits for a flicker one sees other affects emerge, be they hilarity or love or whatever, one then seeks to develop these affects, and so destroy anger or rather replace it to the dust from which it came.
Or again to run a mind takes such care, as you yourself noted well, One must then encourage certian affects such that they might habour in them other ways of thinking, when one is assailed by contrary thought: that is one must habour those affects which allow one the maximim range of feelings. Here of course I accept we agree (which does me pleasure, for I always said you were the moralist of men). You claim the mind must have certain principles, I agree and add and certain affect to, which lie around awaiting the chance to make a mind free- or better wait to give the mind when it needs it more and more option.
Or again the mind is like a republic, full of shifting alliance If one cobbles together ones affects aright then one swing the balance of ones mind away from certain choices and towards other. Humans can never be condmend for what they feel, merely for their inability to attempt to move beyond those feelings an find others- for surely those others always exist (with each other of course ushering in a new world of its own). “
“ up to this point I agree we agree. But I am unsure now, hat makes the choice here, I suppose you will say it is the will/”
“What other name can there be for it?”
‘ And the will is apart from the affects, in every case?”
“How else is it free?”
‘ Bye being in an affect of its own, an affect which is present as action in other positive affects, but absence in negative one. An affect whose role it is then to reason from within what it.
The difference here is no trivial one. The affect is caught up, in the entire mechanics of freedom of the soul. It is no simple phenomena, as it involves elements which when taken another way are from free, and yet have the smear of freedom in them. Take consciousness. Consciousness is usually bound up in the mind and determined to ac one way rather than another: there are in the mind as I understand it many different forms of being conscious as many as their affects. And yet at the same time these consciousness will (at quite another level) as the mind itself remains in the body, b also one and the same consciousness, and will be so as the mind forms adequate ideas. moreover such adequate ideas will not be simply absence in even the blackest of nights. Nothing the mind does will be without an adequately understood idea, that is an action. Consciousness is therefore even and it is caught up in a unique construction, communicating, albeit covertly (and in a ay utterly pulled towards another0 with other forms of consciousness, other places – a communication it does in the name of freedom.
Gor me therefore the reuctino of will was the first move towards a freedom.’
“Once again I think I differ more in terminology than design. I mean I too argue consciousness emerges from perceptions and desires. It is therefore a unique construction, and will be communicating with other dimensions of itself, and in that communication freedom lies.
“ clear difference. This communication for you a caught up in time (all that stuff about pregnancy, and the burden of the past). Moreover the will itself, in that it can will other times, remains itself distinct from the interlinking which run across the mind. They must do, or else the mind in your formula would not be free. Will or rather hat which ill might then expand or contract as knows and feels more or less (and do so really as it is a conscious mind) and yet it does so in itself, and not because it itself it a part of a freedom which is the same for all humans which straddles each think that it is. When consciousness looks beyond itself, in your formula, it looks to other selves that it might be (Adam is genuinely not the same Adam is he sins earlier or latter or not at all). Unless you allow for this the entire jump into freedom and time would he lost. Your consciousness is therefore always open to, and communicating with other consciousness which it will never be, and cannot be; It is always caught up in the vice of other world.’
‘ Save of course it is not, because God would not as I wrote before after our first set of conversation would not allow that. A reason for choice must be found to round not just morality but also as I prove much latter, materiality.”
“ Or else the entire dilemma needs to be avoided which is what I attempt to do, as I have just said, and said many times before. Moreover it appears to me that we differ in another deep way. For you affects differ though cause external to themselves. A joyous thought contains also pain, and the pain might unwind itself, anf the friendship end.’
“true enough, we all have had experience of it”
‘”we have indeed but that does not mean for me the pin was already simply their await unwinding. On the contrary I think it is necessary to present a real map of affects. That is to trace and chart exactly were and why an affect is positive, and how a things which is so very positive in itself is also negative elsewhere (or restrictive). Hate is concealed in friendship, not because little particles of hate are also there (although I accept that this in itself is the case), but for more tangible reasons. To love is to make demands on another time. I is to lock them into relation, when others are always open, always possible. Moreover however power the positive nature of this love is (and indeed almost because it is powerful, and therefore more things depend upon it) this cloud o inadequate ideas will be present- ideas that can easily take what is precious and make it foul. It is this ambivalence in joy (which runs deep) which is the normal experience of the world, and which must be articulated and explained, and not lost in a metaphysics of choice (which does no one any good, if the consequences of that choice can never be known).
In short one must suspect affects as they are in the mind. One must real them not as something one simply is, but rather almost gist, which one has invited into the mind, and which might well be asked to leave if they overstay their welcome. Moreover it is this aspect of guesthood tht I think matters most given that there will be a dimension of affects that is never truly mine. As my body is constructed in a similar manner to other bodies, their changes are to a degree also my own changes. I can very easily catch myself up in the being of their affects, and I must choose which to accept and with to reject.
Where for you the world is full of sealed vessels, or room without windows, which are open only on their own experience of time ( which opens them a chink, and makes you nervous, or not at all, and keeps you smiling); the world for me is rather full of sieves and colanders, which leak reality in a every point.”
“perception is reality. And therefore I accept this”
“ Not the reality I mean. I mean genuine shared experiences: Changing in me, as they change in you . or again, m sieve is a double one where yours is one way. You sieve removes elements from an absolute- infinity of possibles (and according to the gross arrangements of the body) Mine does that but also in do in myriad leaks what I is to others, who in part take it up, and do so both as difference but also in differing respond adequately to what the original leaky sieve was.
These leak needs to be understood in two sense. Firstly in creates very directly the universe of the affect. That is, elements which leak cross similar modes, binding them pin action which are never their own. One must therefore very really treat affects as a guests, for often that is precisely what they are: The belonging of another.
Secondly it might be the case that one can own these affects in a different sense. The separate individuals might come together, through their shared affects to form unions. Such unions will moreover be directly participated in by the individuals involved within it, and so is distinct from those union of very many bodies whose unity is only given in a whole removed from the parts, and removed from formal existence (which is the import of the all important nineteenth proposition of book 2 of my ethics). One is caught up in the act of creating not an individuals, but rather though another oneself. This is where freedom starts.
But as I am determined for once to have the last word, and as I think this last point should perplex you for any aeons, I Vanish’
The Avatar, went, leaving Leibniz to disgruntily mutter.