Clarifications on ‘Ungrounding’
Posted: April 17th, 2020 | Author: buenravov | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on Clarifications on ‘Ungrounding’1. The human being pursuing natural ends.
2. It pursues his ends obliquely. It makes use of means.
3. What makes such a detour possible? It is that at the same time and elsewhere the ends of nature reverberate in the imagination. They transform into original human values or ends. It is precisely they who present themselves as infinite tasks, but who in themselves are not to be realized. They are to be undergone. They determined a kind of action: the ceremony and the ritual. These are what permit the indirect realization of the ends of nature. The human being is already a grounder. We answer the question: what is grounding for?
4. These original ends of the human being are not yet those of reason. Reason as supreme end could only present itself to the extent that the infinite tasks themselves become things to be realized ((Deleuze, ‘What is Grounding?’, p. 18.)).
As long as we, human beings in general, pursue natural ends, there’s no immediate differentiation between those who rule and those who don’t. It occurs—as I’ve said in Ungrounding—when the natural ends get replaced by or (mutated in) unnatural ends. I’ve already tried to determine both why and how this specific natural ends convert into unnatural ones. Moreover, I’ve tried to explain that those ends are imposed on us and presented not just as natural in themselves, but also as infinite. However, those who presently rule, the bourgeoisie, pursues this ends obliquely—by using the workers as theirs means. But for this to happen, this unnatural and manifested as an infinite end must be internalized by all of us. In Deleuze’s language—they must reverberate in our imagination. They must act as original human values. Resisting the market became a leading light for mankind. The ceremony and the ritual of working, producing and consuming, permit the (in)direct realisation of those unnatural ends.
In order to radically transform this devastating situation into one which embodies the original ends of reason, those unnatural ends must be replaced or ungrounded. The ceremonial and ritual acts that reproduce the system’s flow must be terminated. But for this to happen we need an active, historically conscious and collective subject. Marx was the first to understand this. One might say, therefore, that the infinite task of the proletariat must be to reground the natural ends by ungrounding the unnatural ones. After that, would come the time for the natural ends to turn into ends of reason.
Thus if the goal of philosophy is (following Deleuze’s concept of immanence) “to find a way to realise the infinite in this world” ((Christian Kerslake, Grounding Deleuze)), then the goal of the proletariat is to realise the infinite wellbeing of all.
