Thomas > Thomas's Quotes

“To every perspective or point of view there must correspond an autonomous work with its own self-sufficient sense: what matters is the divergence of series, the decentering of circles, 'monstrosity'. The totality of circles and series is thus a formless ungrounded chaos which has no law other than its own repetition, its own reproduction in the development of that which diverges and decenters.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“I have discovered for myself that the human and animal past, indeed the whole primal age and past of all sentient being continues in me to invent, to love, to hate, and to infer. I suddenly woke up in the midst of this dream, but only to the consciousness that I am
dreaming and that I must go on dreaming lest I perish—as a somnambulist must go on dreaming lest he fall. What is
"appearance" for me now? Certainly not the opposite of some essence: what could I say about any essence except to name the attributes of its appearance! Certainly not a dead mask that one could place on an unknown x or remove from it!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom: or The Gay Science

“But this pure difference, which constitutes the self-presence of the living present, reintroduces into it originarily all the impurity that we had believed we were able to exclude from it. The living present arises on the basis of its non-self-identity, and on the basis of the retentional trace. It is always already a trace. This trace is unthinkable if we start from the simplicity of a present whose life would be interior to itself. The self of the living present is originarily a trace. The trace is not an attribute about which we could say that the self of the living present "is originarily" the trace. It is necessary to think originary-being from the trace and not the trace from originary-being. This archi-writing is at work in the origin of sense.”
― Jacques Derrida

“The reproduction of the Same is not a motor of bodily movements. We know that even the simplest imitation involves a difference between inside and outside. Moreover, imitation plays only a secondary and regulatory role in the acquisition of a behaviour: it permits the correction of movements being made, but not their instigation. Learning takes place not in the relation between a representation and an action (reproduction of the Same) but in the relation between a sign and a response (encounter with the Other). Signs involve heterogeneity in at least three ways: first, in the object which bears or emits them, and is necessarily on a different level, as though there were two orders of size or disparate realities between which the sign flashes; secondly, in themselves, since a sign envelops another 'object' within the limits of the object which bears it, and incarnates a natural or spiritual power (an Idea); finally, in the response they elicit, since the movement of the response does not 'resemble' that of the sign. The movement of the swimmer does not resemble that of the wave, in particular, the movements of the swimming instructor which we reproduce on the sand bear no relation to the movements of the wave, which we learn to deal with only by grasping the former in practice as signs. That is why it is so difficult to say how someone learns: there is an innate or acquired practical familiarity with signs, which means that there is something amorous - but also something fatal - about all education. We learn nothing from those who say: 'Do as I do'. Our only teachers are those who tell us to 'do with me', and are able to emit signs to be developed in heterogeneity rather than propose gestures for us to reproduce. In other words, there is no ideo-motivity, only sensory-motivity. When a body combines some of its own distinctive points with those of a wave, it espouses the principle of a repetition which is no longer that of the Same, but involves the Other - involves difference, from one wave and one gesture to another, and carries that difference through the repetitive space thereby constituted. To learn is indeed to constitute this space of an encounter with signs, in which the distinctive points renew themselves in each other, and repetition takes shape while disguising itself.”
― Gilles Deleuze

“If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“Although Husserl, above, apparently wanted
to stress the reflective, reproductive, repetitive nature of expression, its Abbilden,
thereby neutralizing, in return, its effects, and its marks, its power to deform
or refract, that is, its Einbilden, now, on the other hand, he stresses an essential
displacement of expression that will forever prevent it from reissuing the stratum
of sense (Sinn): and this difference is nothing less than the difference of the
concept.”
― Jacques Derrida

“Similarly, not all Life is confined to the organic strata: rather, the organism is that which life sets against itself in order to limit itself, and there is a life all the more intense, all the more powerful for being anorganic. There are also nonhuman Becomings of human beings that overspill the anthropomorphic strata in all directions.”
― Gilles Deleuze

“When Dasein directs itself towards something and grasps it, it does not
somehow first get out of an inner sphere in which it has been proximally
encapsulated, but its primary kind of Being is such that it is always
'outside' alongside entities which it encounters and which belong to a
world already discovered. Nor is any inner sphere abandoned when
Dasein dwells alongside the entity to be known, and determines its character;
but even in this 'Being-outside' alongside the object, Dasein is still
'inside', if we understand this in the correct sense; that is to say, it is itself
'inside' as a Being-in-the-world which knows. And furthermore, the
perceiving of what is known is not a process of returning with one's booty
to the 'cabinet' of consciousness after one has gone out and grasped it;
even in perceiving, retaining, and preserving, the Dasein which knows
remains outside, and it does so as Dasein.”
― Martin Heidegger

“We can clearly see that there is no biunivocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multidimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously. A machinic assemblage, through its diverse components, extracts its consistency by crossing ontological thresholds, non-linear thresholds of irreversibility, ontological and phylogenetic thresholds, creative thresholds of heterogenesis and autopoiesis.”
― Félix Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethicoaesthetic Paradigm

“Justification by experience comes to an end. If it did not, it would not be justification.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“The intellect cannot criticize itself, simply because it cannot be compared with other species of intellect and because its capacity to know would be revealed only in the presence of "true reality," i.e., because in order to criticize the intellect we should have to be a higher being with "absolute knowledge." This presupposes that, distinct from every perspective kind of outlook or sensual-spiritual appropriation, something exists, an "in itself."- But the psychological derivation of the belief in things forbids us to speak of ''things-in-themselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

“If the world had a goal, it must have been reached. If there were for it some unintended final state, this also must have been reached. If it were in any way capable of a pausing and becoming fixed, of "being," if in the whole course of its becoming it possessed even for a moment this capability of "being," then all becoming would long since have come to an end, along with all thinking, all "spirit." The fact of "spirit" as a form of becoming proves that the world has no goal, no final state, and is incapable of being.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche