Virtuality (philosophy)

Last updated

Virtuality is a concept with a long history in philosophy, its most notable recent version being that developed by French thinker Gilles Deleuze. [1]

Contents

Overview

Deleuze used the term virtual to refer to an aspect of reality that is ideal, but nonetheless real. An example of this is the meaning, or sense, of a proposition that is not a material aspect of that proposition (whether written or spoken) but is nonetheless an attribute of that proposition. [2] In Bergsonism, Deleuze writes that "virtual" is not opposed to "real" but opposed to "actual", whereas "real" is opposed to "possible". [3] Deleuze identifies the virtual, considered as a continuous multiplicity, with Bergson's "duration": "it is the virtual insofar as it is actualized, in the course of being actualized, it is inseparable from the movement of its actualization." [4]

Deleuze argues that Henri Bergson developed "the notion of the virtual to its highest degree" and that he based his entire philosophy on it. [5] Both Henri Bergson, and Deleuze himself build their conception of the virtual in reference to a quotation in which writer Marcel Proust defines a virtuality, memory as "real but not actual, ideal but not abstract". [ citation needed ]

Reception

Another core meaning has been elicited by Denis Berthier, in his 2004 book Méditations sur le réel et le virtuel [6] ("Meditations on the real and the virtual"), based on uses in science (virtual image), technology (virtual world), and etymology (derivation from virtue—Latin virtus [7] ). At the same ontological level as "the possible" (i.e. ideally-possible) abstractions, representations, or imagined "fictions", the actually-real "material", or the actually-possible "probable", the "virtual" is "ideal-real". It is what is not real, but displays the full qualities of the real—in a plainly actual (i.e., not potential)—way. The prototypical case is a reflection in a mirror: it is already there, whether or not one can see it; it is not waiting for any kind of actualization. This definition allows one to understand that real effects may be issued from a virtual object, so that our perception of it and our whole relation to it, are fully real, even if it is not. This explains how virtual reality can be used to cure phobias.

Brian Massumi shows the political implications of this. According to Massumi in Parables for the Virtual, [8] the virtual is something "inaccessible to the senses" and can be felt in its effects. His definition goes on to explain virtuality through the use of a topological figure, in which stills of all of the steps in its transformation superposed would create a virtual image. Its virtuality lies in its inability to be seen or properly diagramed, yet can be figured in the imagination.

However, note that the writers above all use terms such as "possible", "potential" and "real" in different ways and relate the virtual to these other terms differently. Deleuze regards the opposite of the virtual as the actual. Rob Shields argues that the opposite of the virtual is the material for there are other actualities such as a probability (e.g., "risks" are actual dangers that have not yet materialized but there is a "probability" that they will). [9] Among Deleuzians, Alexander Bard & Jan Söderqvist even argue (in agreement with Quentin Meillassoux) in Process and Event that virtuality must be separated from potentiality, and consequently suggest the potential of the current as the link between the virtual of the future and the actual of the past.

See also

Notes

    Related Research Articles

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Félix Guattari</span> French psychoanalyst (1930–1992)

    Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næss, and is best known for his literary and philosophical collaborations with Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of their theoretical work Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Gilles Deleuze</span> French philosopher (1925–1995)

    Gilles Louis René Deleuze was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), both co-written with psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. His metaphysical treatise Difference and Repetition (1968) is considered by many scholars to be his magnum opus.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Bergson</span> French philosopher (1859–1941)

    Henri-Louis Bergson was a French philosopher who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the Second World War, but also after 1966 when Gilles Deleuze published Le Bergsonisme. Bergson is known for his arguments that processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.

    Schizoanalysis is a set of theories and techniques developed by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, first expounded in their book Anti-Oedipus (1972) and continued in their follow-up work, A Thousand Plateaus (1980).

    <i>A Thousand Plateaus</i> 1980 book by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

    A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative work Capitalism and Schizophrenia. While the first volume, Anti-Oedipus (1972), was a critique of contemporary uses of psychoanalysis and Marxism, A Thousand Plateaus was developed as an experimental work of philosophy covering a far wider range of topics, serving as a "positive exercise" in what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as rhizomatic thought.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Gilbert Simondon</span> 20th century French philosopher

    Gilbert Simondon was a French philosopher best known for his theory of individuation and his work on the field of philosophy of technology. Simondon's work is characterized by his philosophical approach on information theory, communication studies, technology and the natural sciences. Although largely overlooked in his lifetime, the advent of the Information Age has collaborated to a reappraisal and increased interest in Simondon's books, with him being seen as someone who has precisely predicted and described the social effects and paradigms technical objects and technology itself have offered in the 21st century.

    <i>Anti-Oedipus</i> 1972 book by Deleuze and Guattari

    Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first volume of their collaborative work Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the second being A Thousand Plateaus (1980).

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Massumi</span> Canadian philosopher and social theorist

    Brian Massumi is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist. Massumi's research spans the fields of art, architecture, cultural studies, political theory and philosophy. His work explores the intersection between power, perception, and creativity to develop an approach to thought and social action bridging the aesthetic and political domains. He is a retired professor in the Communications Department of the Université de Montréal.

    <i>Difference and Repetition</i> 1968 book by Gilles Deleuze

    Difference and Repetition is a 1968 book by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Originally published in France, it was translated into English by Paul Patton in 1994.

    In critical theory, deterritorialization is the process by which a social relation, called a territory, has its current organization and context altered, mutated or destroyed. The components then constitute a new territory, which is the process of reterritorialization.

    Affect is a concept, used in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza and elaborated by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, that places emphasis on bodily or embodied experience. The word affect takes on a different meaning in psychology and other fields.

    Minority is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their books Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1975), A Thousand Plateaus (1980), and elsewhere. In these texts, they criticize the concept of "majority". For Deleuze and Guattari, "becoming-minor(itarian)" is primarily an ethical action, one of the becomings one is affected by when avoiding "becoming-fascist". They argued further that the concept of a "people", when invoked by subordinate groups or those aligned with them, always refers to a minority, whatever its numerical power might be.

    Desiring-production is a term coined by the French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their book Anti-Oedipus (1972).

    Plane of immanence is a founding concept in the metaphysics or ontology of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

    <i>The Archaeology of Knowledge</i> 1969 book by Michel Foucault

    The Archaeology of Knowledge by Michel Foucault is a treatise about the methodology and historiography of the systems of thought (epistemes) and of knowledge which follow rules that operate beneath the consciousness of the subject individuals, and which define a conceptual system of possibility that determines the boundaries of language and thought used in a given time and domain. The archaeology of knowledge is the analytical method that Foucault used in Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1961), The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (1963), and The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966).

    A line of flight or a line of escape is a concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their work Capitalism and Schizophrenia. It describes one out of three lines forming what Deleuze and Guattari call assemblages, and serves as a factor in an assemblage that ultimately allows it to change and adapt to said changes, which can be associated with new sociological, political and psychological factors. Translator Brian Massumi notes that in French, "Fuite covers not only the act of fleeing or eluding but also flowing, leaking, and disappearing into the distance. It has no relation to flying."

    <i>Cinema 1: The Movement Image</i> 1983 book by Gilles Deleuze

    Cinema 1: The Movement Image (1983) is the first of two books on cinema by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, the second being Cinema 2: The Time Image (1985). Together Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 have become known as the Cinema books, the two volumes both complementary and interdependent. In these books the author combines philosophy and cinema, explaining in the preface to the French edition of Cinema 1 that "[t]his study is not a history of cinema. It is a taxonomy, an attempt at the classifications of images and signs"; and that the "first volume has to content itself with […] only one part of the classification". To make this division between the movement-image and the time-image Deleuze draws upon the work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson's theory of matter (movement) and mind (time).

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonard Lawlor</span> American philosopher

    Leonard "Len" Lawlor is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Continental philosophy.

    <span class="mw-page-title-main">Signified and signifier</span> Concepts in linguistics

    In semiotics, signified and signifier are the two main components of a sign, where signified is what the sign represents or refers to, known as the "plane of content", and signifier which is the "plane of expression" or the observable aspects of the sign itself. The idea was first proposed in the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the two founders of semiotics.

    Keith Ansell-Pearson is a British philosopher specialising in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at Warwick University.

    References

    1. ↑ Daniel Smith; John Protevi (14 February 2018). "Gilles Deleuze". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 24 August 2021.
    2. ↑ Pearson, K. Ansell (1999). Germinal Life. The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze. London and New York: Routledge.
    3. ↑ Deleuze (1966, 96-98).
    4. ↑ Deleuze (1966, 42-43, 81) and Deleuze (2002a, 44).
    5. ↑ Deleuze (1966, 43).
    6. ↑ Berthier, Denis (June 2004). Méditations sur le réel et le virtuel. L'Harmattan. ISBN   2-7475-6640-4.
    7. ↑ "Online Etymology Dictionary".
    8. ↑ Brian., Massumi (2002). Parables for the virtual : movement, affect, sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN   0822328828. OCLC   48557573.
    9. ↑ Shields, Rob The Virtual Routledge 2003.

    Sources

    This page is based on this Wikipedia article
    Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
    Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.