Hieroglyph and Heterogenesis: On Deleuze’s Question of Thinking
Date Issued
2007
Date
2007
Author(s)
Ho, Bao-Shen
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
This thesis studies Deleuze’s question of thinking. Firstly, I attempt to demonstrate that, for Deleuze, thinking is a mode of man’s Being-in-the-world, the essence of which consists in the hieroglyphic experience where body, language and thinking are entirely heterogeneous to one another. Secondly, I shall point out that, by stylizing the concept of hieroglyphic experience, thinking turns from a mode of man’s being into an active creation of man’s new being. Insofar as the latter is borne from something entirely other through thinking, thinking is precisely heterogenesis, namely a creation that always creates the different.
In this thesis, both a historical and a systematic analysis are adopted as method. In order to provide a referential context for Deleuze’s question of thinking, I discuss firstly Heidegger’s question of thinking in the second chapter. For Heidegger, thinking is a mode of Dasein’s Being, the essence of which consists in the intentional experience where language is innately directed to body. On the other hand, since Dasein’s Being means the process of Dasein’s concrete action, thinking is also a continuous creation of intentional experience in a more profound sense. Summarily, then, Heidegger’s thinking is both the mode of man’s Being-in-the-world and the creation of it.
In the third chapter, I try to interpret Deleuze’s own concept of man’s being in the world through his critique of Heidegger. According to his critique, the intentional experience presupposes the innateness of thought, and therefore cannot account for how a new way of thinking is borne from learning and experiment. For Deleuze, this is possible only if body enacts the heterogeneous relation among language, thinking and itself, so that no innate relation among them holds at all. A Being-in-the-world that revolves around the body and consists in such a heterogeneous relation is what I call a hieroglyphic experience.
The next chapter then sets out to explicate Deleuze’s question of thinking through this concept of hieroglyphic experience. What Difference and Repetition calls “thought without image” is precisely thinking as a mode of hieroglyphic experience. However, since Difference and Repetition treats the body in a rather abstract manner, thought without image is far from a real creation. It is not until A Thousand Plateaus that body is treated both as the real and the active agent, so that thinking finally turns into the heterogenesis of an abstract life hitherto unknown to the corporeality of hieroglyphic experience.
Finally, I try to re-examine Deleuze’s question of thinking from both a synchronic and a diachronic viewpoint. Synchronically, just like Heidegger’s question of thinking, Deleuze’s own question of thinking undergoes a metamorphosis from the concept of Being-in-the-world to the creation of it. However, since this concept of Being-in-the-world is modeled after a particular experience, it is necessarily a reductive interpretation of the fundamental complexity of the world. As a consequence, the creation of thinking borne from such Being-in-the-world is not radical enough to create the new. I then shift to the diachronic viewpoint to investigate in what such complexity might consist. Diachronically, Deleuze’s question of thinking is based on his concept of hieroglyphic experience, which is a radical critique of Heidegger’s concept of intentional experience. But precisely because Deleuze privileges body with the absolute power to enact the heterogeneous relation, he overlooks the already presupposed complexity among body, language and thinking. I suggest that perhaps the free inter-relation and interaction among body, language and thinking might provide a clue to experience, understand and create such complexity.
Subjects
在世存有
身體
語言
思考
異象
異生
Being-in-the-world
body
language
thinking
hieroglyph
heterogenesis
Type
thesis
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