New Spirits – Reading Deleuze in India
Consciousness exists only in connection with other consciousness
Texts that critically bid farewell to patterns of thought, habits, illusions, and cultural assumptions.
In the Kena Upanischade it is described how the Self as such does not exist. Who sees in seeing, who hears in hearing? This cannot be answered. In the Christian tradition, a Self was constructed for this. I see, I hear, cogito ergo sum, imago ergo sum… What is that supposed to be, this cogito (I think), this imago (I imagine)? That I which establishes identity, bears responsibility, acts and interacts. It seems clear that thinking, when it is conscious…
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Many partnerships around me are undergoing a stress test at the moment. The word midlife crisis often comes up. A stupid word, I think, since it suggests that life, individual life, has a crisis. This perspective unsettles me. Why should life have a crisis? It seems rather that partnerships are being called into question. A breaking out, a drive for freedom, self-realization, wanting to make up for something. This too is a notion that unsettles. Was the past wrong? That…
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Today I heard a quotation from Sri Aurobindo. He said, in essence, that each of us has several I’s. That was clear to me. For decades, my experience has been that the different aspects of a personality are many, and that the idea of a subjective identity is a construction. I always regarded the principles of construction as ideological, serving the logic of passports, individual responsibility, and the administration of justice, but also of guilt and atonement, the idea of…
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Some time ago, I spoke with a friend about taking leave of many ideas. I told her that—quite unscientifically—I visit my memories and think about why I no longer find certain ideas interesting, that these are often ideas I engaged with during my studies. Great ideas! From Kant and Hegel, etc. She was quite taken with my account and asked whether I was writing it down. I said: why? I am taking leave, after all. She was disappointed. Did she…
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