What is Grounding
1.1 Natural ends and infinite tasks
What is Grounding
Deleuze
1.1 Natural ends and infinite tasks
“On the one hand, the human being can realize natural ends,”
—> We can realize natural ends. When we’re hungry we can eat. If we’re thirsty we can drink.
“but at the same time, does it not produce something in itself by virtue of being human?”
—> In having these ends and satisfying them does it not produce something different by the sheer fact that we are human?
“It transforms the natural ends.”
—>This meeting of ends transforms them by virtue of us being human.
“What is the function of a ceremony and of a ritual? It is distinct from a natural end.”
—>By virtue of being human and meeting ends, say hunger, we transform it into ceremony. In this case something like supper.
“Take a social group [like] the family in its ceremonial aspect. It acts strangely. It wrests determinations from nature to create the events of history: eating, loving, sleeping, and dying.”
—> The institution of family transforms eating (dinner, supper, whatever), loving (monogamous), sleeping (the father sleeps with the mother, the child alone), and dying (funerary rites) into ceremony or ritual.
“The function of the family is the sharing of food, sexuality, sleep, and death. Death is a determination of nature.”
—> I believe that family itself might be a turning of natural ends into a ritual or ceremony. By “Death is a determination of nature” I believe he is saying that in death Nature makes itself known and understandable.
“The family makes it a historical event by collecting it in memory. This ritual activity must be called ceremony.”
—> The family wrests it from nature thereby making it history by committing it to memory? Thereby committing something to memory removes it from nature. This makes sense because what is in memory no longer exists in nature, in actuality. This ritual, and those listed before it transforms it into ceremony. As ritual and ceremony are not natural.
“Similarly, sexuality becomes a spiritual event, for example under the form of consent.”
—> I’m guessing that here he means that consent raises it to spiritual through the institution of marriage. However this could be a misreading. It could also mean that in a state of nature, there is no consent.
“Nature is raised to the level of history through the ceremony. It is at the same time that the human being transforms and that it realizes natural ends by indirect means.”
—> Through human ritual and ceremony, nature is transformed. If nature is left to its own devices such things would never come about. Think about cavemen or animals, is there such a thing as marriage? Take the natural end of sexual gratification, it is achieved through indirect means by the institution of marriage.
“Thus human behavior has three poles: natural ends are natural ends which are being transformed, but natural ends subsist in themselves, outside the ceremony.”
—> One pole is natural ends in the process of transforming into ceremony. This means that human biological needs are always on their way to ceremony. Which on reflection seems quite true (food and shelter for example). At the same time, though, natural ends are not sated by pure ceremony itself. Otherwise, we could sate hunger by eating supper with empty plates.
“This is how the human being realizes them. But if the human being does not realize natural ends, this does mean that they do not exist.”
—> Human beings must realize natural ends. If a need is unmet then this means that they are not natural. Since the natural end thrusts itself upon humanity. Or possibly that in becoming ceremony they are never permanently realized? (They become a repetition).
“They do not lend themselves to realization, because the transformation of natural ends into cultural ends renders them infinite. This must be taken literally. The dead whom we love are an inexhaustible task for us.”
—> In transforming natural ends into ceremony they become infinite, not meant to be sated once and for all. We love those close to us who have passed on and this love is not an end meant to be sated.
“It matters little if we distance ourselves from that. It remains no less infinite. Saying ‘I love you’ instead of saying ‘I desire you’ is to propose an infinite task.”
—> This is similar to the above statement. To say ‘I love you’ transforms a statement of affection into one that carries us into the future. ‘Til death do us part’ instead of ‘until I’m sated or get tired of you.’
“Thus this does not present itself as something to realize. But what is it for?”
—> To my mind, it provides a sense of certainty that survives the whims of sexual desire. Though I imagine Deleuze has something else in mind.
“People will say these tasks are only thought or felt. If, then, mythology is the imaginary, it is because infinite tasks are not to be realized. Mythology presents us this state of infinite tasks which ask us for something else than their realization.”
—> Unlike purely natural ends in mythology, these ends become infinite. In mythology, virtues are meant to be a lifelong activity, never to be realized. Wisdom in the character of Socrates is meant to be on such infinite task. Socrates through inquiry seeks to understand the gods and their intentions. Wisdom, though, is never attained, it is sought after eternally through practice of the dialectic. There is no satisfactory answer, the point is the ritual, the dialectical conversation.
“The gods spend their time drinking a drink reserved exclusively for them. We find the sense [of this] in trying to live a symbol. The immortal gods spend their time drinking.”
—> The gods are never sated, they continuously drink never sated. An infinite task.
“There are initially two groups of superhumans who struggle to become gods. At stake in the struggle is the drink which renders immortal. So the gods are immortal because they drink. It is the transformation of the natural end, drinking, into an infinite task.”
—> In this passage, Deleuze tells us that there is a group of demihumans who want to become gods, and to do so they struggle to have a drink that renders immortality. If I’m not mistaken the demihumans have confused the act of drinking with that of immortality. This makes it seem as though the gods attain their immortality by drinking a certain drink, not the act of drinking itself. In either case, the act of drinking has transformed into an infinite task.
“If the gods would stop drinking, they would no longer be immortal. The purpose which infinite tasks serve is that only they allow the human being to realize natural ends in a way that will no longer simply be direct.”
—> Well, that immediately answers my previous question. Deleuze in fact states that if the gods stopped drinking they would cease to be immortal. Does this mean that if one is engaged in an infinite task then one is granted immortality? Regardless of said activity? The partaking of the infinite task of the gods allows the humans to participate in the task without the direct access to the infinite, e.g. immortality. The natural ends allow the finite human to have a taste of the infinite.
“The cynic must be taken at his word. What allows for the trap? The detour that the cynic sees. It is precisely that the cynic denies the transformation of natural ends into infinite ends.”
—> The cynic (exemplified by Diogenes of Sinope) refuses to take part in natural ends. Take for instance this anecdote between him and Plato:
“My good Diogenes, if you knew how to pay court to Dionysius, you wouldn't have to wash vegetables.” “And,” replied Diogenes, “If you knew how to wash vegetables, you wouldn't have to pay court to Dionysius.” (Credit Google. This anecdote is all over the internet.”
—> Diogenes refuses to participate in infinite ends (in this case paying court as it is never meant to be satisfied once and for all), choosing instead to strictly live on what he can obtain freely (cabbage) and refusing to allow the practice to transform into infinite ends.
“But natural ends are not yet ends of reason. They are values, sentiments which are felt and lived. Then what will we have to call reason? If, for their part, natural ends present themselves for realization, this time it will be infinite tasks which demand to be realized.”
—> By separating ends and reason we have a foreshadowing of what will come to preoccupy Deleuze in Empiricism and Subjectivity. Natural ends are felt, and how could they not be? Here we have him separating those things meant for realization (natural ends) with the infinite task of reason (the Socratic search via dialectic for example.)
“They will become the proper end of reason. This is what happens when thought commits itself to realizing itself.”
—> Reason becomes reason proper when the end becomes realizing itself.
“So now there are four terms: Indirect means, Natural ends, Felt cultural ends, and Cultural ends of reason. What then is the infinite task of realization?”
—> Indirect means, this is the meeting of natural ends through a cultural intermediary (the court Diogenes refuses to partake in), the natural ends themselves, natural ends in transformation into felt ends, and the ends through which are pursued through reason (cultural).
“