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Otobe dissertation chapter 1

Chapter 1 The Problematic of Stupidity: Reading Deleuzes Image of Thought


Cowardice, cruelty, baseness, and stupidity are not simply corporeal capacities or traits of character or society; they are structures of thought as such. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

Introduction This chapter aims at formulating the problematic of stupidity. By problematic, I mean the locus and ways stupidity matters to our political livesespecially to political thinking in theory and practice. As such, a problematic constitutes a constellation of interconnected themes that does not come to the level of systematic thought. One of the fundamental problems in my attempt to tackle stupidity is the deficiency of the studies on this matter. Due to this deficiency, it is hard to see not only where the problematic lies, but also even the extent to which stupidity constitutes a problematic or whether stupidity is a problem for our politics or political thought at all. Thus it is inevitable that a vulgar question arises: is stupidity really an important topic for political theory?1 Indeed, one of the central purposes of the present study is to respond to this question through a problematization of the relationship between politics, thinking, and stupidity.2 For this task of problematization, I start by articulating the following two theses, which constitute the problematic of stupidity:

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Another reason to start this study by formulating the problematic is the elusiveness of stupidity: as Derrida suggests, stupidity lies at the field of the indeterminable and thus resists any clear conceptualization. Indeed it is tempting to define stupidity as what debunks clear conceptualization. For example, In his letter to Louis Bouihet on September 4, 1850, Flaubert gives a succinct articulation, though not conceptualization, of stupidity when he states that stupidity is the desire to conclude (1926-1930, 2:239; 1980, 128). Nonetheless, instead of formulating the concept of stupidity, I believe, it would be still possible to explore the ways and the locus in which stupidity matters as problematic. 2 For the ideas of problematic and problematization, see Introduction.
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I. Stupidity is an inherent problem of thinking; we become stupid because we think. As an internal problem, stupidity resists any attempt of demarcation. Thus it is impossible to distinguish stupid thought from other, more sophisticated kinds of thought by any pre-given standard.3 II. Not only a problem of thinking, stupidity is also an inherent problem of politics; stupidity reveals the political character of thinking. Against a conventional dichotomy between thinking and politics, which holds the former as a solitary activity and the latter as a plural one, stupidity attests to a political, i.e., plural character of thinking.4 In arguing for the above theses, I draw upon Deleuzes remarks on stupidity in Difference and Repetition, which I think stands as one of the most insightful accounts of stupidity. It is true that his remarks on the matter consist only of several paragraphs in the more than three hundred pages of Difference and Repetition, with a few more sentences found elsewhere. In his later works, such as two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophreniaworks more explicitly political and popular among political/social/cultural theoristsDeleuze no longer writes about stupidity.5 Hence, it may appear that stupidity occupies only a minor role in Deleuzes philosophy, or even !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By thinking I mean the process of thinking while I use the word thought to signify the result of the process of thinking. With this distinction, I freely translate la pense in Deleuzes texts into thinking and thought according to the context. The distinction, however, is not to clearly separate the thinking process from the articulated thought. Rather, as I emphasize later, one of my purposes in this chapter is to attain a perspective that grasps both elements as an interconnected whole. 4 By political I mean the predicate whose basic mode is plurality. This plurality is not limited to that of already fixed, given entities, whether they are individuals or groups. Plurality exceeds those fixed identities and works underneath them. I owe this notion of plurality to William Connollys idea of pluralism that acknowledges the moment of pluralization exceeding fixed identities as a kernel element constitutive of pluralism (Connolly 1995, xi-xxx). I use the word politics, on the other hand, to point to the practice held among constituencies in and around given institutional settings. 5 Deleuze touches on the topic of stupidity in two other works written before Difference and Repetition (1968): Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962) and Proust and Signs (1964). Because those two books pose nearly identical ideas to Difference and Repetition, I mainly focus on explicating Deleuze's words in Difference and Repetition. Cf. Deleuze (1983, 103-110; 2000, 5).
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that it is discarded in his mature thought. But his remarks on stupidity in Difference and Repetition are neither instances of poetic rhetoric nor marginal to his thought. Rather, they are situated at the center of his philosophical project in his magnum opus, showing the internal relationship between stupidity, philosophy and thinking.6 The phenomenon of stupidity exposes elements Deleuze critically analyzes in the entire Difference and Repetition: the emergence and abortion of representation and the emergence of thinking. Moreover, as this chapter demonstrates, his insights help us to clarify the political relevance of stupidity, even though Deleuzes primary concern in the book is philosophical.7 In the next section, I analyze Deleuzes remarks on stupidity in Difference and Repetition and formulate the problematic mentioned above. Then, in the rest of the chapter, I attempt to reveal the relevance and utility of Deleuzes insights. First, I defend my exploration against other interpretations of Deleuze and ambiguities within Deleuzes texts. This clarification will mainly illuminate the first thesis. Next, I try to defend and clarify the second thesis by comparing it with another candidate for the explanation of stupidity, that is, Arendts notion of thoughtlessness. Though it is not on stupidity as such, her observation on Eichmanns thoughtlessness shows an affinity with Deleuzes account of stupidity; both Arendt and Deleuze respectively find the distinctive characteristic of thoughtlessness and stupidity in the use of stock phrases, clichs. Then, why should I not employ Arendts notion of thoughtlessness which, developing through her theorization of one of the most disastrous political events in historytotalitalianism !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For studies that focus on the importance of stupidity for Deleuze, see Derrida (2009), Derrida (2010), Hughes (2009), and Lee (2009). 7 About the political relevance of Difference and Repetition, especially of the chapter The Image of Thought, see Marrati (2001).
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and the final solutiondeals with politics more directly? In fact, a brief comparison between Deleuze and Arendt will reveal a certain flaw in Arendts orientation toward thinkingthat is, her presupposition of the innate righteousness of thinking activity. This presupposition makes it difficult to grasp the internal problematic of thinking as an activity and thus the interrelation between thinking and politics. I do not, however, offer solutions to the problematic of stupidity thus formulated and clarified in this chapter. In fact, one of the most significant points to be made about the problematic is that we cannot solve it. As an endogeneous predicate of thinking and politics, stupidity haunts us as a permanent problem. But this does not mean that we are helpless to tackle the problematic or that we do not have to take it into account. Toward the end of the chapter, I articulate three questions that the problematic poses to our current practice and theory of politics, to which the following chapters respond without aiming to solve them.

Stupidity as a Transcendental Problem for Thinking and the Political In Difference and Repetition, the theme of stupidity appears in the third chapter, The Image of Thought. While the scope of Deleuzes remarks goes beyond the paragraphs of the third chapter, here I want to start with the context within which they appear. ! The main theme of the Image of Thought is to criticize the conventional way of philosophy for its inability to dissociate itself from presuppositions, that is, unexamined, pre-philosophical doxa. Philosophy typically tries to be free from doxa by starting without any presuppositions. In this attempt, it has been relatively successful in starting

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without what Deleuze calls objective presuppositions, those presuppositions contained in concepts employed by philosophy. For example, Descartes in Meditations denies that he starts with the pre-given concept of human being as rational animal because that conceptualization would already presuppose what rationality and animal are.8 Such presuppositions contained in concepts are called objective because they are external to the process of thinking. However, according to Deleuze, expelling objective presuppositions is not enough to truly begin philosophy. In fact, it still retains subjective presuppositions. What are subjective presuppositions? Again, in the case of Descartes Meditations, even after his denial of any pre-given concepts, his famous cogito still expresses unexamined presuppositions about the thinking activity itself. In so doing, cogito presupposes that we already know what thinking is before we begin to think. In particular, Deleuze identifies two major presuppositions. The first is the assumption of the good will in thinking, which Descartes calls good sense; since we are equipped with the good will, we can reach the same conclusions as long as we think. Good sense is of all things in the world most equally distributed (Descartes 1956, 1). The second assumption, which is even more relevant to the problem of stupidity, is that we are all endowed with the faculty of thinking; this righteous faculty for thinking leads us to the truthful conclusion. However, what assures those two assumptions? Deleuze argues that they actually express an unexamined common sense. As such, the Cartesian cogito results in reproducing doxa in its image of thought, which Deleuze calls orthodoxy, or the dogmatic image of thought.

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Descartes (1996, 17): What then did I formerly think I was? A man. But what is a man? Shall I say a rational animal? No; for then I should have to inquire what an animal is, what rationality is
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In the chapter on the Image of Thought Deleuze examines such subjective presuppositions under eight postulates, one of which is the negligence of stupidity as the negative of thought, or the exemplary failure of what thinking is supposed to do.9 In terms of our present purpose of articulating the problematic of stupidity, we do not have to delve into each of the eight postulates. But a couple of implications for stupidity are observable in the overall framework of the chapter. First, subjective presuppositions concern the internal character of thinking. More precisely, those presuppositions blanket the process of thinking with the assumption that to think constantly brings about right and unobjectionable conclusions for everybody. In fact, such an assumption is not without question, and as I argue in what follows, this presupposition makes philosophy ignore or defer the internal problem of thinking, which appears as stupidity. Second, Deleuzes description of those presuppositions as constituting the dogmatic image of thought suggests why stupidity appears as clichs. The dogmatic image of thought takes the form of everybody knows: we all know what we mean by thinking. By implicitly assuming it, the dogmatic image of thought reproduces what is already known to usthat is, opinions of peopleeven when it thinks it sets thinking free from those opinions. This is nothing but a mechanism of clichs that, as seen in the introduction, a few pioneering writers always attribute to stupidity. As the dogmatic image of thought lies in its initial reproduction of peoples opinions without knowing it, stupidity appears as clichs that we make when we speak the words of others without

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The eight postulates are: the principle of Cogitatio natura universalis; the ideal of common sense; the model of recognition; the element of representation; error as the negative of thought'; the privileged status of designation; the postulate of responses and solutions according to which truth and falsehood only begin with solutions or only qualify responses; the postulate of knowledge (Deleuze 1994, 167; 1968, 216-17).
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knowing it. Both depend on the intrusion of the voices of others in a seemingly independent and spontaneous act. Third, building from the last point, we now get a glimpse of the political character of thinking and stupidity. Deleuzes criticism reveals that our activity of thinking is not solitary but indeed immersed in opinions of people. If we define the political as a plurality of people, can we not see a political character in such intrusion of peoples doxa into cogito? Indeed, Deleuze writes we need the new power of politics in overturning the image of thought (Deleuze 1994, 137; 1968, 179). What does this new power of politics look like? I will turn to it later in this chapter and explore its potential more in later chapters. But for now, I want to focus on Deleuzes words on stupidity, moving to the analysis of the postulate of stupidity. Among the eight postulates of the image of thought, stupidity concerns the fifth, the postulate of taking error to be the sole negative of thought. As I have shown in the previous section, the orthodox and dogmatic image of thought keeps the upright character of thinking intact by presupposing that thought leads us to the right conclusion insofar as we start to think. But it does not necessarily mean that the image of thought acknowledges no negative or failure in thinking. Indeed, the failure of thought is a constant concern for philosophy. Platos Theaetetus already takes up the problem of error, which leads to an aporetic conclusion. Kant, in his transcendental dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason, deals with the internal illusion of reason and the antinomies as the culde-sac of reason. Or rather, we can see the extent to which his acknowledgment of our finite ability to think moved his entire project of critical philosophy when we read the very first sentence of Critique of Pure Reason: Human reason has the peculiar fate in

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one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason (1998a, Avii). In a sense, Kant speaks of a problematic here: speculative reason is fine within its limit but it compulsively tends to go beyond the limit. Nevertheless, according to Deleuze, these cases of the negative of thought, including Kants internal illusion, become endorsements for the image of thought by being reduced to error: error, therefore, pays homage to the 'truth' to the extent that, lacking the form of its own, it gives the form of the true to the false (Deleuze 1994, 148; 1968, 193). In errors, we miscalculate (e.g. answering three to the question of what one plus one equals) and misrecognize (e.g. saying two oclock to be three). But taking miscalculation and misrecognition to be exemplary cases of the negative of thought, the dogmatic image of thought caricatures the negative of thought and expels the problematic actuality it has. Who actually makes such simple errors? Certainly we may. But is it a paradigmatic case where we lapse into the negative of thought? In fact, error acquires a sense only once the play of thought ceases to be speculative and becomes a kind of radio quiz (Deleuze 1994, 150; 1968, 195). Errors turn thought into a radio quiz where thought is reduced to the matter of making right reasoning or right cognition. Another, but more serious problem is that those errors are taken from empirical facts of the most banal kind. In so doing, they fail to raise the transcendental question about thinking, the question quid juris whether thought is truly possible. It is true that Kant, for example, comes closest to posing the transcendental question in the beginning of his First Critique which I quoted above. Kant even goes further to analyze the

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internal illusion of reason appearing in antinomies of pure reason. Notwithstanding this, Kants transcendental dialectic of pure reason brings the question back to a matter of error. For he attributes internal illusion to the wrong use of a faculty. Internal illusion, for Kant, appears when, for example, reason as the faculty of ideas, and not understanding as the faculty of categories, misconceives that it can directly grasp the world. As such, internal illusion falls under the control through the correct use of faculties, whose harmonious collaboration Kant grounds in the de facto model of common sense, sensus communis.10 His retreat from the transcendental question is observable as early as the second sentence of the First Critique: reason falls into this perplexity [that it can neither avoid nor solve certain kinds of questions] through no fault of its own (Kant 1998a, A vii). Even if reason often prompts such misuse of itself, the problem of thinking is not reasons own fault. It is due to its improper use. To become dissociated from the dogmatic image of thought, we need to look for a different negative of thought that is also transcendental and hence internal to thinking as such. It is because of this need for the internal negative that Deleuze introduces stupidity: One is neither superior nor external to that from which one benefits; a tyrant institutionalizes stupidity, but he is the first servant of his own system and the first to be installed within it Cowardice, cruelty, baseness and stupidity are not simply corporeal capacities or traits of character or society; they are structures of thought as such. (Deleuze 1994, 151; 1968, 196)! ! Unlike error, stupidity stands out as a transcendental problem for thinking. Being not merely facts that can be dealt with simply as failures that can be corrected, stupidity lies inside thinking as a condition for the latter: stupidity is a structure of thought as such. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I will take up Kants notion of sensus communis and his abortion of transcendental project in detail in the third chapter.
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Stupidity is a thinking.11 Moreover, it is possible to say that there is no a priori principle to distinguish upright, correct thought from stupid thought. Deleuze suggests this, as well as implies the political relevance of stupidity when he writes: one is neither superior nor external to that from which one benefits: a tyrant institutionalizes stupidity, but he is the first servant of his own system and the first to be installed within it (1994, 151; 1968, 196).12 To use Deleuzes own word, stupidity haunts thinking (151; 196). My exploration so far has shown the first thesis of the problematic I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter: the internal relationship of stupidity to thinking. Also, Deleuzes passing reference to the relationship between tyranny and the servant suggests a political character of thinking, which would constitute the second thesis. There remain, however, several questions. If error does not suffice as the model of the negative of thinking, how can we say stupidity serves the role better? In the first place, what is stupidity? It is true that we cannot distinguish stupidity from thought with pre-given standards, but there must be some characteristic phenomenon of stupidity, which we observe when we say it is stupid. Deleuze mentions a couple of authorsReon Bloy, Charles Baudelaire, and the most important of all, Gustave Flaubertclaiming that the best [literature] was haunted by the problem of stupidity. By giving this problem all its cosmic, encyclopaedic and gnosological dimensions, such literature was able to carry it as far as the entrance to philosophy itself (!994, 151; 1968, 196). But how can we !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For this interpretation, see Derrida (2008, 49; 2010, 152). Focusing on Deleuzes reference to the tyrant, Derrida develops his investigation into btise, an interpretation that is similar to mine in explicating the political relevance of stupidity (btise) but different by emphasizing the problematic of sovereignty. While my investigation does not preclude the problematic of sovereignty, here I do not pursue the theme as such for two reasons: (1) Derridas exploration is deeply tied with the term btise, which suggests animality as well as stupidity, whereas I focus on a broader family of notions including stupidity, btise, dummheit, and orokasa () ; (2) while the problematic of sovereignty is not proper to stupidity and can be approached by way of other notions, we can tackle the problematic of politics and thinking, which I pursue in the greatest detail in this study by focusing on stupidity. Cf. Derrida (2010, especially sessions 5 and 6).
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theorize or philosophize the problem Flaubert (as well as the other two authors) takes up in his literature?13 To answer the above questions, we need to go beyond following Deleuzes words on stupidity and move to account for them, a task that requires analyzing his passing remarks in light of the broader philosophical framework of Difference and Repetition. With this analysis, we can not only discern the mechanism of stupidity in play but also make the political character of stupidity clearer. Claiming stupidity as a transcendental problem for thought, Deleuze poses a transcendental, that is, Kantian question: how is stupidity possible? His answer is: It [stupidity] is possible by virtue of the link between thought and individuation. It [the ground] is there, staring at us, but without eyes. The individual distinguishes itself from it, but it does not distinguish itself, continuing rather to cohabit with that which divorces itself from it. It is the indeterminate, but the indeterminate in so far as it continues to embrace determination, as the ground does the shoe. Stupidity is neither the ground nor the individual, but rather this relation in which individuation brings the ground to the surface without being able to give it from (this ground rises by means of the I, penetrating deeply into the possibility of thought and constituting the unrecognized in every recognition). (Deleuze 1994, 152; 1968, 197)! ! This individuality is not the Cartesian cogito and is prior to it (Deleuze 1994, 257; 1968, 331). While cogito (and its variant the thinking I in Kants philosophy) is posed as an insular actor of thinking, individuality is never free from the ground (Being), and this relation forms the locus of stupidity. Such a relational character suggests the political character of stupidity. But Deleuzes explanation above is still too obscure. What is individuality? How does it differ from cogito? Why the relationship among thinking, individuation, and the ground? We need to decipher those notions.

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As a work that explores Deleuzes insights into literature and especially into Flaubert, see Colebrooke (2007).
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The key to interpreting these notions is to be found in Deleuzes critique of cogito. As I just explained, the notion of individuation was introduced as an alternative to what Deleuze believes to be the flawed assumption of the Cartesian cogito. As is well known, Descartes introduced the insular substance of cogito as the ground of Being, as the foundation of all knowledge and the existence of the world. Isolated from the outside, cogito, the thinking I, serves as the ground, free from all doxa imposed from outside upon thinking, which itself is supposed as always right and certain. Although Descartes once introduced the idea of a deceiving God, which could betray the assumption of the innate righteousness of thinking, he quickly overcomes this possibility. Of course, his notion of cogito had been subject to a long line of criticisms before Deleuze. Kant in Critique of Pure Reason already made one of the most well-known criticisms against it, pointing out that Descartes confused the activity of thinking with the substance of cogito. According to Kant, the activity of thinking as a function is not sufficient to ground the actual existence of the subject, the thinking I (Kant 1998a, B405). Nonetheless, Kant repeated a similar reasoning to Descartess when he grounded the possibility of experience by introducing the concept of pure apperception, which takes the form of I think: The I think must be able to accompany all my representations... I call it the pure apperception... I also call its unity the transcendental unity of self-consciousness in order to designate the possibility of a priori cognition from it (Kant 1998a, B131-2, bold and italics in original). One might suggest that Kant betrayed his own criticism by making the thinking I into a unity, thereby returning to the insular substance in grounding the thinking I and Being.

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However, interestingly enough, Deleuze finds another possibility in Kants criticism and re-introduction of cogito. By displacing or, in a sense, deconstructing Kants exploration of cogito, Deleuze re-interprets it as an account of the emergence of thinking, individuation, and cogito from within their mutual relationship, the emergence of what he calls the passive synthesis. In his interpretation of Kant, Deleuze focuses on Kants reformulation of the Cartesian cogito, through which Kant not only criticizes the Cartesian proposition but also deepens it, explicating its condition. Kant is in a sense Cartesian when he says of pure apperception that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations (Kant 1998a, B131, bold in original) and grounds all representationcognition with the thinking I. The thinking I always brings all given intuition into a represented unity, and thus serves as an anchor of all possible cognition. However, Kant also argues that the Cartesian proposition, I think, therefore I exist is insufficient for this purpose of grounding. For the I think to determine the existence of myself, first, something needs to be given to construct the representation of my existencethat is, given intuitions that will be united under the thinking I. While the thinking I serves its unifying function and can determine my existence, my existence requires the object of this act of determination, an object that is not necessarily unified as such but can be the object of determination. Simply put, the thinking I [ego], as the spontaneous function for thinking, needs the material for self [moi], the passive and empirical material upon which the activity of thinking is anchored. With the need of the passive self (or at least its material), Kant introduces a split into the Cartesian cogito, the split between a thinking I and the empirical self. Whereas it

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is the I that thinks, this thinking activity is sensed only in the passive, empirical self. I as intelligence and thinking subject cognize my self as an object that is thought, insofar as I am also given to myself in intuition, only, like other phenomena, not as I am for the understanding but rather as I appear to myself (Kant 1998a, B155, bold in original). But this split cogito does not endanger the stability of singular cogito as long as the unification is smooth. For example, if the passive self is given as a lived experience with which the thinking I fits smoothly, the split will be covered up as soon as it is introduced, with this re-coupling constituting the organic, lived unity. However, this is not the case with Kant, who deals with the transcendental question that purports to articulate the possible conditions of experience (in this context, the existence of the given manifold of intuitions) and not specific experiences. For him, the existence of a self is not the matter of fact, but the object of the question: under what condition is the manifold of intuition given? Kants answer to this question is time as the form of inner sense: since our intuition is always sensible, no object can ever be given to our senses (Kant 1998a, B52). As the formal condition of internal intuition, time serves as a condition of our existence, and therefore, the central element of grounding. This is what Kant explains in the following: Just as for the cognition of an object distinct from me I also need an intuition in addition to the thinking of an object in general (in the category), through which I determine that general concept, so for the cognition of myself I also need in addition to the consciousness, or in addition to that which I think myself, an intuition of the manifold in me, through which I determine this thought; and I exist as an intelligence that is merely conscious of its faculty for combination but which, in regard to the manifold that it is to combine, is subject to a limiting condition that it calls inner sense, which can make that combination intuitable only in accordance with temporal relations that lie entirely outside of the concepts of the understanding proper, and that can therefore still cognize itself merely as it appears to itself with regard to an intuition (which is not intellectual and capable

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of being given through the understanding itself), not as it would cognize itself if its intuition were intellectual. (1998a, B158-9, bold in original) It is this introduction of time that debunks the unity of cogito, the coupling of thinking I and the self, for it deprives the thinking I of its independent spontaneity, transmitting it to the passive self that is subject to the condition of time. Deleuze writes: The consequences of this [answer by Kant that the form of time is necessary for the I think to determine my existence] are extreme: my undetermined existence can be determined only within time as the existence of a phenomenon, of a passive, receptive phenomenal subject appearing within time. As a result, the spontaneity of which I am conscious in the I think cannot be understood as the attribute of a substantial and spontaneous being, but only as the affection of a passive self which experiences its own thought its own intelligence, that by virtue of which it can say I being exercised in it and upon it but not by it. (Deleuze 1994, 86; 1968, 116, italics in original, underlining mine)! ! In the split cogito, the self feels the spontaneous thinking of the I. But the materials for the determining self are passively given only through the form of time. Now the passive self can have the representation of the spontaneous I think only as an indirect effect that stems from the thinking Is affecting upon time, through which the self is given (Kant 1998a, B155). According to Deleuze, this leads to the conclusion that the passive self represents the activity of I think but only as an experience external to the passive self. Using a phrase of Rimbaud, Deleuze articulates, I is an Other (Deleuze 1997, 2931). Furthermore, the possibility of the peaceful unification of the passive self and thinking I is no longer available with the introduction of time. Subject to the condition of time (as a formal condition), each of the two turn into a fractured I and a dissolved self (Deleuze 1994, 259; 1968, 333).14 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As Widder (2008, 92) points out, Kantians would argue against Deleuzes interpretation of the pure apperception, pointing out that it belongs to the noumenal and has nothing to do with actual conditions in the phenomenal. My point here, however, is to see how Deleuze productively develops the Kantian insight to account for his own idea of the passive synthesis.
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Simply put, the proposition of cogito, which is said to have grounded Being with the insular, autonomous, and spontaneous activity of thinking, is immersed in Otherness. As Deleuze succinctly puts it toward the end of Difference and Repetition, in the psychic system of the I-Self, the Other thus functions as a centre of enwinding, envelopment or implication. It is the representative of the individuating factors (1994, 261; 1968, 335). By finding the intrusion of the Other in cogito prior to the emergence of the latter, we can say the thinking I (that is, determination by cogito) is not able to ground (determine) the existence of Being (the undetermined), but actually the spontaneity of the former is subject to the latter. In this play between the thinking I whose assumed spontaneity is endangered and Being that actually affects on the former in its passivity, Deleuze finds the source of stupidity: Thought is the highest determination, confronting stupidity as though face to face with the indeterminate which is adequate to it (Deleuze 1994, 275; 1968, 353). It is not yet clear enough how this play of spontaneity and passivity, or its reversal, appears as stupidity. The key to finding the connection is the character of the Other that the form of time introduces to cogito, whose exploration reveals the mechanism of stupidity and helps to clarify stupidity's political character. Deleuzes exploration of the Other appears mainly at the end of the final chapter of Difference and Repetition, the part where he deals both with the emergence of representation and its abortion. As I have shown above, the intrusion of the Other in the formation of cogito means that the representation of the thinking I, contrary to the presupposition of its spontaneity and independence, contains a passive element inspired by the Other. Deleuze distinguishes this Other from an empirical other, who is not different from myself but still can be seen as another person: Theories tend to oscillate

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mistakenly and ceaselessly from a pole at which the other is reduced to the status of object to a pole at which it assumes the status of subject (Deleuze 1994, 260; 1968, 334). Under such a notion of other as subject/object, the difference between myself (as subject) and other (as object) becomes subject to the larger assumption of the equality of subject and object. Simply put, such an other is nothing but another cogito. Rather, the Other is not a person, but the a priori Other (Deleuze 1994, 260; 1968, 334). So far, such characterization of Otherness, the Other as something beyond objectivity, and prior to the formulation of I think, as pure alterity is not necessarily distinctive to Deleuze. In fact, the sub- or beyond-representational status of otherness forms a central concern for contemporary philosophy, especially among so-called poststructuralist thought. What makes Deleuzes notion of otherness distinct from those of other contemporary thinkers, however, is the observation that Deleuzean otherness comes into play not only in its absolute and singular alterity but also in its anonymity, or as ourselves in general. With this difference, the Deleuzean orientation helps us to clarify the political character of deep plurality which is thus distinguished from the ethical character suggested by the unilateral and asymmetrical relationship between two components. To see this, I need to return to the second chapter of Difference and Repetition, Repetition for Itself, where Deleuze displaces the Kantian re-formulation of cogito and leans toward a moment of the passive synthesis. As I wrote above, the moment that introduces otherness into cogito is time as Kants formal condition of the passive Self. By bringing time as determinable form of Self, Kant attempts to preserve his version of cogito, pure apperception, but, according to Deleuze, only at the expense of turning the thinking I into the Other. Deleuze calls the

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Kantian formal time that achieves (and fails) this synthesis of cogito as the third synthesis of time, the synthesis of future, which achieves (and again, fails) the entire syntheses of temporality with the other two temporalities, the present and the past, that is the passive synthesis.15 Here I cannot delve into Deleuzes account of the three syntheses, but it would suffice for my present purpose of exploring the characteristic of Deleuzean otherness to point out the two characteristics of the third synthesis. First, this time concerns the future because, as Kant writes in Critique of Pure Reason, time as the formal condition of the passive self, of inner sense, is what enables time to pass. Second, this time is devoid of any content and thus of experience. Because this time serves as a transcendental condition, it has nothing to do with content, free from any empirical, lived time (1998a, A30-36/B46-53). With those two characteristics, the Kantian notion of the future deprives cogito of its attachment to the empirical, lived world. Kantian time achieves the synthesis of temporality, but in a way that prohibits the seamless unification between the thinking I and the empirical self. It returns the divided cogito into unity, but as an impossible unity: the order of time has broken the circle of the Same and arranged time in a series only in order to re-form a circle of the Other at the end of the series (Deleuze 1994, 91; 1968, 122). Deleuze overlaps this aborted synthesis of temporality (and cogito) with his interpretation of the Nietzschean eternal return. But this eternal return neither repeats the identical unity nor presents the pure alterity of otherness (for if it did, any synthesis would be impossible) but repeats nameless others: As Klossowski says, it is the secret coherence which establishes itself only by excluding my own coherence, my own identity, the identity of the self, the world and God. It allows only the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For a detailed account of the structure of the three moments of passive synthesis in the chapter Repetition for Itself of Difference and Repetition, see Hughes (2001, 86-126); Widder (2008, ch. 8).
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plebian to return, the man without a name (Deleuze 1994, 90-1; 1968, 122, italics mine). This other is beyond representation, but it is beyond representation not in the way in which, say, God is. Rather, we cannot represent the other because it is the nameless plebian: the other is everybody. As I have repeatedly emphasized, in the representation of I think, thinking of the I is indeed the thinking of others. Moreover, now it becomes clear that such thinking of others is the thinking of everybody. Such de-possession of thought into the nameless other, into everybody, is the mechanism Flaubert observed in his writings on stupidity. Deleuze counts Flauberts writing as the best literature haunted by the problem of stupidity. For Flaubert, stupidity appears in the arena of communication as clichs. For example, in his Bouvard and Pcuchet, two figures keep accumulating stock phrases they absorb from books. This accumulation culminates in Flauberts Dictionary of Received Ideas, which he planned to insert in Bouvard and Pcuchet as their writing. This dictionary, which the author called the historical glorification of everything generally approved, is composed entirely of clichs. However, those words in the dictionary are clichs not simply by being generally accepted. They are clichs because people as individuals, as independent thinking Is, utter them as if they are the expressions of their own independent opinions or thoughts. Flaubert in his letter to Louise Colet on December 17 of 1852 explains the purpose of the Dictionary to be the following: I think that the whole thing would be a formidable lead shot [plomb]. There would not be a single word invented by me in the book. If properly done, anyone who read it would never dare open his mouth again, for fear of spontaneously uttering one of its pronouncements (1926-30, 3:67; 1980, 176, italics in original). Put in other words, the words of the dictionary function as the illumination of

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stupidity because those words show that we become prey to stupidity at the very moment when we regard ourselves as spontaneous and independent thinkers. So far, I have tried to show stupiditys internal relation with thinking by following the reformulations of the Cartesian cogito by Kant and Deleuze. Deleuze sees Flauberts Bouvard and Pcuchet as the outcome of the Discourse on Method (1994, 276; 1968, 353). Cartesian cogito, unable to grasp the individual, the real actor of thinking, comes to represent the thought of others while it presupposes that representation as its own spontaneous projection. But since cogito represents its (assumed) thinking on the empirical ground, the Otherness within it also needs to appear in its empirical representation, at the cost of losing its status as pure alterity, which is otherwise beyond representation. This fundamental failure of cogitos spontaneous grounding and the inevitable intrusion of otherness leads to our seemingly spontaneous and independent thought through a series of clichs. Now, let me turn to the second thesis that I mentioned in the introduction, the problematic about the political character of stupidity. The key to this problematic is the Deleuzean notion of the Other. As I explained above, Deleuzean otherness is unique in seeing otherness in its nobody-ness as everybody-ness, while his contemporaries tend to take otherness as pure alterity. For example, for Levinas, the paradigmatic case of our relationship to the Other is the Book of Job, where otherness is evinced as the gods fundamental unintelligibility. The Levinasian notion of otherness, regardless of its asymmetrical character, offers great resources for our ethical orientation, but less for our political orientation. For such pure alterity of the Other cannot be multiplied. By taking otherness as everybody-ness, however anonymous it is, Deleuze offers a different way to

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account for the multiplicity of otherness. Now the relationship between myself and the Other is that between myself and multiplicity, which is better seen as a political relationship than as an ethical one. Therefore, stupidity, by revealing the intrusion of the Other as everybody, is a problem not only for thinking but also for politics.16 This point will be explored later by comparison with Arendt.

Beyond the Image of Thought? So far, I have tried to account for Deleuzes short paragraphs on stupidity in the Image of Thought chapter. My interpretation of them has exposed the two theses on stupidity that I anticipated in the beginning: (1) stupidity is an internal problem of thinking; and (2) stupidity is a problem not only for thinking, but also for politics. Moreover, intrusion of otherness in the thinking I reveals the fundamentally political element in thinking activity. Thus the two modes of human activitythinking and politicsare connected by stupidity as their hinge. For stupidity, appearing as clichs, is possible by virtue of thinking and the intrusion of the Other in the very incipience of the former. However, my interpretation so far still leaves several uncertainties concerning those theses as well as Deleuzes texts. First, if stupidity constitutes an internal problem for politics, is it possible to solve the problem? Simply put, can we do away with stupidity? In the previous sections, I repeatedly emphasized the ineluctable character of stupidity, showing stupidity to be an enduring problem. Yet my account so far does not !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For example, Deleuze writes about the world of on (people, they) as the following: The world of one or they is a world of impersonal individuations and pre-individual singularities; a world which cannot be assimilated to everyday banality but one in which resonates the true nature of that profound and that groundlessness which surrounds representation, and from which simulacra emerge (1994, 277; 1968, 355, italics in original).
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eradicate such a question or attempt to solve the problem of dissociating thinking from stupidity. This question also comes out of ambiguities contained in Deleuzes texts themselves, both inside and outside Difference and Repetition. In fact, my reading of Deleuze, in emphasizing the ineluctable quality of stupidity and the role (however negative it is) of cogito in thinking, seems to deviate from prevalent, not so say hegemonic, readings, which more or less articulate Deleuzes purpose in the Image of Thought chapter and Difference and Repetition to be the pursuit of thinking without imagerepresentation. If we could attain thinking without the image, we would do away with stupidity as its component. Also, as the second uncertainty, another but similar kind of reading may try to underestimate the importance of stupidity for Deleuzes philosophy, pointing out that the theme disappears in his later writings, and that it appears only in passing in Difference and Repetition. This line of reading emphasizes, instead of stupidity, the importance of the notion of idiocy, which, already appearing in Difference and Repetition, becomes a key notion in his later book co-authored with Guattari, What is Philosophy? Does this shift in focus suggest a certain flaw in Deleuzes orientation toward stupidity that would be fixed by replacing it with a notion of idiocy, which hovers outside the dogmatic image of thought while stupidity is embedded within it? This question about the difference between stupidity and idiocy leads to a third question, a question about the meaning of stupidity, or to be more precise, about the meaning of posing the question of stupidity. My focus on the ineluctable and enduring character of stupidity anticipates a pessimistic vision of human thinking: thinking, incessantly haunted by stupidity, seems unlikely to reveal anything, much less certainty or truth. If such is the destiny of human thinking, should we accept skepticism with resignation? Are there any

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positive moments in thinking? Or, put in other words: what is the point of taking stupidity seriously? In this section, I respond to those three questions by clarifying the corresponding ambiguities in Deleuzes texts. The first question concerns the extent to which stupidity and the image of thought haunt our thinking. If stupidity (and the image of thought) is an internal problem for political theory, is there any possibility that we can do away with the problem? In other words, is there any new mode of thinking that is free from stupidity? That question draws its plausibility from two ambiguities in the chapter on the Image of Thought: one concerns the status of the image of thought in general; and the other concerns the relationship between stupidity and thinking. Let me start with the status of the image of thought. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze articulates the main object of his criticism. The image of thought, with its unexamined presuppositions, makes philosophy unable to truly initiate thinking. As such, does his criticism rather imply that we cannot think as long as we are under the tutelage of the image of thought? Does the philosophical system Deleuze conceives in Difference and Repetition evince an entirely new thinking, thinking without the image? In fact, Deleuzes orientation may look toward this direction, when he pursues an encounter with radical novelty in thought, calling for the new power of politics that will overturn the image of thought (1994, 137; 1968, 179, italics mine). Moreover, using the metaphor of painting, Deleuze even concludes: The theory of thought is like painting: it needs that revolution which took art from representation to abstraction. This is the aim of a theory of thought without image (1994, 276; 1968, 354, italics mine). Given this blunt manifestation, it would be reasonable that many current

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interpretations of Deleuze follow this direction when they claim that his philosophy is the search for new thinking without image, thinking without representation. Now, if our thinking can be truly free from the image of thought, thinking would be also be free from stupidity. For, as I have shown in the previous section, stupidity appears under the mode of thinking that takes the formulation of cogito or the thinking I. It is true that Deleuze writes that stupidity is possible by virtue of the link between thought and individuation (1994, 151; 1968, 197). And individuation is different from cogito, because individuation is what proceeds to cogito (Deleuze 1994, 257; 1968, 331). Nonetheless, it is through cogito, or rather, fissures within it (fractured I and dissolved self) that stupidity appears. Thus, if Deleuze offers an alternative to the image of thought of which the subject of representation is cogito, such thinking would necessarily do away with stupidity altogether. If so, however, this direction would contradict the first thesis, the problematic that finds stupidity to be an internal problem for thinking. In fact, some of Deleuzes remarks on stupidity seem to resonate with the above direction, to suggest that stupidity lies outside the true thinking, external to the thought without image. For example, Deleuze speaks of the negligence of stupidity in the image of thought, in conventional philosophy, as an obstacle to thinking: The subject of Cartesian Cogito does not think: it only has the possibility of thinking, and remains stupid at the heart of that possibility (1994, 276; 1968, 353-54, italics mine). Does he not suggest here that stupidity does not think? He seems to suggest so when he writes stupidity is evidence of an inability to constitute, comprehend, or determine a problem as such (1994, 159; 1968, 207). Is stupidity for Deleuze the zero degree of thinking? If so, does it mean stupidity is a problem of others, for those who are entrapped in the cave

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of the image of thought, and not for ourselves, for the real philosophers who attain thought without image? Given this statement about stupidity as non-thinking, it would look reasonable that a widespread image of Deleuze holds him to be a thinker of anti-representation, seeking direct experience without mediation, or of vitalism that liberates the life force from the obstacle of philosophical representation, both of which deny any subject of representation, whether it might be cogito or the thinking I.17 Moreover, Deleuze himself looks to support this widespread image when he draws upon the notion of idiocy as a positive alternative to a negative non-thinking of stupidity. Idiocy may look similar to stupidity in that both are opposed to upright thinking and good will. However, the ways in which they are respectively opposed to upright thinking and good will are different. Whereas stupidity appears as a reproduction of shared opinions, that is, of clichs, idiocy refers to the lack of such sharing. The philosopher takes the side of the idiot as though of a man without presuppositions (Deleuze 1994, 130; 1968, 170). The representative figures of stupidity are Bouvard and Pcuchet; for idiocy they are Prince Myshkin and the nameless narrator from underground in Dostoyevskys work. Or, while Deleuze does not mention him in relation to idiocy, we can add Bartleby to the list of idiots. Idiots cannot agree on what is shared in society, thus unable to even utter clichs.18 With this inability, the idiot possesses the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This characterization of Deleuzes thought is rather an image, which is not pursued by many Deleuze studies but still shared by many readers beyond the narrow scholarship on Deleuze. For a study pursuing this way, see Manuel de Landas characteriziation of Deleuzes project as philosophical realism (de Landa 2002). See also Tuscano (2010). 18 Deleuze explores idiocy and clichs (formulae) of Bartleby in his essay Bartleby; or, the Formula. It is true that Bartleby speaks one clich:I would prefer not to But his clich is radically different from those in Bouvard and Pcuchet. While the latter two repeat words of others, Bartleby, as Deleuze observes, makes clichs (Deleuze 1997, 68-90). This difference between Bartleby and Bouvard and Pcuchet, between idiocy and stupidity helps to clarify my exploration from another approach that is prevalent in the
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potentiality to truly initiate thinking without image. Free from shared assumptions and thus from representation, idiocy rather shows a potentiality of thinking, the power of initiating new thinking beyond the image of thought. While stupidity remains stupid within the image of thought, idiocy, hovering above the dogmatic image, seems to show the true power of overturning that image. If it is true that stupidity appears as mere non-thinking and the idiot as a true thinker, such an interpretation would contradict the second thesis concerning the political character of stupidity and thinking, as well as the first thesis about the co-existence of stupidity and thinking. For such a reading poses true thinking of idiocy beyond the realm of shared plurality: the idiot is a solitary thinkerthe classical figure of philosopher. Then the purpose of Deleuzes remarks on stupidity, of The Image of Thought chapter, and probably the entire book of Difference and Repetition would preclude the realm of plurality and politics as that of non-thinking, repeating the orientation frequently observed in philosophy since Socrates death. It would not be without reason, then, that most of the readings that seek the political dimension of Deleuzes philosophy turn to his later works with Guattari, especially the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, which introduce explicitly political notions such as the rhizome, nomadism, the state apparatus and the war machine. More crucial to our current concern is that the theme of stupidity fades away in these two volumes. Deleuzes departure from the theme, in fact, may appear related with his turn to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
current scholarship in continental political theory, that is, Agambens exploration which is organized around the problem of sovereignty. Referring to Deleuzes essay on Bartleby, Agamben pushes Deleuzes insights further, toward his own idea of potentiality. According to Agamben, Bartleby attests to the absolute potentiality of thought, which is the supreme object of philosophy. Such positive evaluation of absolute potentiality seems to be resonant with Agambens emphasis on zo! as the pre-sovereign life. In contrast, what Bouvard and Pcuchet attest to, and thus problematize, is not such potentiality vis--vis sovereignty, but a certain dissonance in represented thought. I will return to this point in the conclusion.

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more explicit political themes. As we have observed, stupidity makes its appearance due to necessary fissures in cogito. Thus stupidity is possible as far as we inevitably draw upon the assumption of cogito as the subject of presentation, the assumption of the dogmatic image of thought; if we can do away with the image of thought and representation, we will be free from stupidity altogether. And such total disavowal of representation seems to take place under his assumed political turn. While, as I argue, Difference and Repetition remains, in a sense, reserved in its attempt to think difference in itself independently of the forms of representation (1994, xix; 1968, 1-2) since it maintains that representationhowever flawedemerges, his work with Guattari looks less ambiguous in its attempt to grasp difference in itself, which is now called multiplicity. This shift in philosophical orientation, with an apparently political tone in Capitalism and Schizophrenia, leads a reader interested in Deleuzes political aspects such as Brian Massumi to juxtapose representation (in his word, representational thinking) with the state philosophy, the mode of thinking that subjugates people (or the multitude) under state, with the purpose of breaking the two altogether with nomad thought which takes us beyond the narrow sphere of philosophy (Massumi 1987). Thus it may look as if the theme of stupidity fades away once Deleuze leaves the narrow, even state-centered realm of philosophy and becomes a true political thinker. In fact, the connection between philosophy and politics for Deleuze is not so simple. A Thousand Plateaus, for example, does not simply call for pure deterritorialization and a direct grasp of multiplicity. The authors are keen to pay attention to moments countering de-territorialization, such as re-territorialization, codification, and so on. Moreover, even after Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze returns to the central

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importance of philosophy in What is Philosophy? The book, seen to have been written more by Deleuze than Guattari (Dosse 2007), explores the same theme of The Image of Thought written about more than twenty years before: what thinking should be like. Moreover, What is Philosophy? repeats several motifs originally appearing in The Image of Thought, exploring presuppositions in philosophy, stupidity, and idiocy. But it now deals with them in a slightly different tone. Now stupidity occupies a smaller role and gives way to more positive characteristics attributed to idiocy. Whereas stupidity finds its expression in clichs, idiocy, now clearly stated as the predicate of philosopher, exercises its positive role in breaking from accepted clichs: the idiot, the one who wants to think for himself and is a persona who can change and take on another meaning (Deleuze and Guattari 1994,70). Also, the dogmatic image of thought in Difference and Repetition gives way to more affirmative images of thought, or planes of immanence which refer to each philosophical system. Thus it is a privilege of philosophy that, standing above the realm of doxa, repudiating clichs, brings about a new image of thought. In the end, does not every great philosopher lay out a new plane of immanence, introduce a new substance of being and draw up a new image of thought, so that there could not be two great philosophers on the same plane? (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, 51). Because of such a prominent role given to the philosopher-idiot, authors like Alain Badiou see in Deleuze the figure of a classical, or even Platonic philosopher, an image entirely opposed to that of Massumis. According to Badiou, Deleuzes project is far from anti-foundational or anti-philosophical, but essentially a return to classical ontology of the One, of which the paradigmatic case remains Plato. Not only is Deleuzes philosophy to be understood as a thinking of ground, but it is, of all the

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contemporary configurations, the one that most obstinately reaffirms that the thought of the multiple demands that Being be rigorously determined as One (Badiou 1999, 45). Badiou further argues that despite Deleuzes disavowal of the conventional dichotomy between one and many in A Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 4) and his recurrent criticism against Plato, his call for the virtual and multiplicity is not so different from Platos call for the Idea. Moreover, this classical character in Deleuzes philosophy goes beyond the narrow character of ontology to its ethical dimension and to political-social functions. In requiring thinking to think oneness, the univocity of Being, thinking for Deleuze is aristocratic, because the highest purpose of thinking lies in thinking the supreme oneness of Being (whatever its name is) that is distributed hierarchically among beings. Thus Deleuzes project, being purely philosophical, does not have a necessary connection with any political positions according to Badiou: It is one of the signs of Deleuzes greatness that, in spite of his success, he was unable to be incorporated into the major blocks of opinion that organize the petty parliamentary life of the profession (Badiou 1999, 96). While Deleuze's readers try to connect his philosophy with democratic political movements, it has nothing to do with Deleuzes philosophical system. Rather, Badiou claims, Deleuze remains purely philosophical in his work and stays aloof from any attempt to find political implications in his philosophy with his keen awareness of the classical danger faced by philosophersthe corruption of the youth (Badiou 1999, 97). Badious reading, however, has the same implication as that of Massumi for our current attempt to find the political character of stupidity. If Deleuzes project is to think the virtual in its oneness, stupidity would remain a pure negative of thinking, that is, non-

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thinking. Moreoverand this is the second possible rejoinder to my argument developed in the previous sectionthis pure negativity would mean that stupidity has nothing to do with a positive (or actual) event of thinking. Unlike idiocy, which can initiate (philosophical) thinking, stupidity remains inside the realm of daily life, of doxa. Therefore, what results from such a classical manner of philosophy of oneness seems to be a thorough devaluation of our daily thinking.19 Here in this chapter, I neither try to solve all of these ambiguities in Deleuzes texts nor squarely respond to these interpretations. Instead of giving an interpretation to the entire uvre of Deleuze, giving a definite statement as to the extent to which Deleuzes later works are political, or assessing the validity of each of its interpretations, I want to focus on Difference and Reptitionnamely on the notion of stupidity. I deal with ambiguities and interpretations insofar as they concern that focus. Let me summarize what is at stake in the ambiguities of Deleuzes texts and interpretations. First, about the internal relation between thinking and stupidity, Deleuzes text sometimes locates stupidity outside the realm of thinking, as non-thinking. This possibility renders readings by Massumi and Badiou more plausible. For while presenting different interpretations concerning the political implications of Deleuze's texts, both concur that Deleuzes philosophy aims at going beyond representation and the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A similar line of criticism is posed concerning Deleuzes attack on the assumption that the capacity for thinking is equally distributed to everyone, the assumption exemplified in Descartess statement in Discourse on Method that Good sense is of all things in the world most equally distributed. For example, Tuscano (2010) regards this attack to be an anti-democratic attitude for, he argues, this denial leads to privileging philosophers thinking. But such criticism seems hasty to me. It is one thing to attack the prephilosophical assumption about the capacity for thinking, but denying the capacity of people for thinking is another. The point of Deleuzes denial is to show how philosophy has been leaving one of the most problematical elements in thinking untouched, not to claim that philosophy has the capacity for thinking. Moreover, I regard Deleuzes criticism as implying a certain egalitarianism. Contrary to the Cartesian equality in our capacity for thought, Deleuzes egalitarianism is based on the impossibility of giving hierarchy in our thinking capacity: stupidity equally troubles philosophers and the people, the sophisticated and the vulgar.
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world of beings, toward, for Massumi, non-representation and, for Badiou, toward the oneness of Being. Such an orientation is not compatible with my interpretation of stupidity. Mine sees representation as a flawed but inevitable condition. Second, concerning the political character of stupidity, whereas Badiou and Massumi starkly differ on the political implications of Deleuzes philosophy, they share a certain presumption about what the political implications of philosophy mean. Both mean by political implication only a specific normative political orientation: while Massumi finds an anarchic political project in Deleuzes criticism against state philosophy, Badiou identifies a hierarchical character of thinking in Deleuze and denies its political implications for the lack of any necessary linkage between Deleuzes philosophy and any political position. Third, as a consequence of the previous two, such interpretations taken by Massumi and Badiou would not find any importance in stupidity. Different from nomadic thought or philosophy of oneness, stupidity would, for Massumi and Badiou, lack a relation to a positive mode of thinking, staying as the degree-zero of thinking at best. How can I counteract those readings that marginalize the role of stupidity? I have already attempted to show the internal relationship between thinking and stupidity in the previous sectionthe relation whose crucial moment resides in the argument that thinking cannot but appear as representation, however flawed it is, through cogito.20 Thus in the following, I want to defend the problematic through a different path: by exploring differences between Deleuze and Heidegger, whose orientation toward !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My reading, as we saw in the review of current Deleuze scholarship, might sound an unorthodox one. However, textual evidence supports it. For example, Deleuze writes that selves must be presupposed as a condition of passive organic syntheses, already playing the role of mute witness (1994, 258; 1968, 333). Surely his emphasis is on the need to go beyond or below the form of cogito. But we should be equally attentive to his realization that we still need cogito, or a certain form of subjectivity. Bryant (2008) and, in a more nuanced manner, Hughes (2010) emphasize that Deleuzes philosophy is not simply a philosophy of anti-representation.
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thinking and the lack of thinking in What is Called Thinking? has an influence on Deleuzes Image of Thought chapter and thus makes Deleuzes philosophy susceptible to the criticisms posed by Badiou. Heideggers influence over Deleuze is apparent throughout Difference and Repetition. Deleuze himself is unequivocal about his indebtedness when he mentions Heideggers philosophy of difference as one of the contemporary accounts that helped to prepare his book. Moreover, as I will point out later, the Image of Thought chapter can be seen as Deleuzes version of What is Called Thinking?. At the same time, Heideggers influence contributes to making Difference and Repetition appear as if it is privileging one kind of thinkingthe thinking of Beingover others, moving beyond representation, and having nothing to do with the political. Badiou, for example, refers to Heideggers influence, which he rightly claims is greater than generally accepted, as evidence of the quintessential philosophical character of Deleuze. In solely focusing on the oneness of Being as the object of thinking, not on multiple beings in society, Deleuzes philosophy, Badiou claims, is a loyal successor to Heidegger: The question posed by Deleuze is the question of Being. From beginning to end, and under the constraint of innumerable and fortuitous cases, his work is concerned with thinking thought (its act, its movement) on the basis of an ontological precomprehension of Being as One (Badiou 1999, 20). According to Badiou, Deleuze is indeed more thoroughgoing than Heidegger on this point when Deleuze criticizes the residual phenomenological element in Heidegger. While for Heidegger thinking needs to start with pre-ontological understandings revolving around beings, Deleuze seeks to sever the internal linkage between beings and Being (Badiou, 1999, 21-26). For Deleuze, the thinking of Being is disconnected from

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those about beings. Whether or not Badiou is right in maintaining a more Heideggerian Deleuze than Heidegger himself, it is no doubt that such a figure of the philosopher who concerns himself solely with Being stems from the image of Heidegger. Heidegger, in What is Called Thinking?, states that thinking involves listening to the call of Being. Such a listening seems to reduce the assertive mode of thinking to a mere passive reception. According to Heidegger, our modern image of thought that centers on logic, aiming at the grasp of logical relations among represented beings (that is, concepts), remains far from true thinking. In fact, for Heidegger, under this confusion between thinking and representation, we do not yet think. Heidegger opposes this image of thinking as a responsive activity, as a thankfulness to the call of Being. Thinking in its authentic form appears as a pure activity vis--vis Being under this Heideggerian formula. It is true that Heidegger does not simply oppose the true thinking of Being against representational thinking or non-thinking. In fact he cautiously maintains that Being is always guarded by beings that we represent; Heidegger does not simply argue for our direct grasp of Being. Rather, to the philosopher of oblivion, Being never becomes transparent. Thinking always arrives in a certain passivity (e.g. as thanks, gift, recollection), that is, as a response to the call of Being made available at that time. More importantly, our non-thinkingthe fact that we do not yet thinkis not simply a negative state for Heidegger. On the contrary, the fact that we do not yet think is the food for thought that needs to be thought and that drives out assertive thinking. Here we see Heideggers thesis concerning the ambiguity of truth: the truth appears, on the one hand, as the unconcealment of Being while, on the other hand, Being needs to be preserved in the concealment of beings. Nevertheless, thinking for Heidegger is still

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directed toward the unconcealment of Being insofar as the negative fact of our nonthinking makes us realize that we are still not thinking. In fact, according to Heidegger, modern thought, in its self-understanding centered on the spontaneity of reason and representation, shutters our way toward the true thinking and thus toward Being (Heidegger 2004, 210-11). Thus it seems that we have two kinds of non-thinking: one as a preservation of Being in its unconcealment; the other as a pure non-thinking as the degree-zero of thinking, appearing as our modern poverty of thinking. Not only is Heidegger's thinking detached from representation, it is also anti-political in that the unconcealment of Being arrives outside the realm of our ordinary human intercourse.21 The realm of people, of das Man, has a positive impact on our thinking only insofar as it calls for the need to transcend itself. What Heideggers thinking calls for is the receptive quiet thinking of the solitary philosopher, which is based on a lingering dichotomy between authentic and inauthentic thinking. When we turn our eyes to Deleuzes Image of Thought chapter, Heideggers influence is obvious. As Heidegger insists that we do not yet think, Deleuze counters that the dogmatic image of thought has been preventing our thinking from truly initiating itself. The two also concur when regarding representation as the main source of misunderstandings about and obstacles for thinking. Moreover, Deleuze makes his debt to Heidegger evident when he refers to the phrase the fact we do not yet think in discussing stupidity (Deleuze 1994, 153; 1968, 198). Thus it might seem reasonable to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here I do not discuss Heideggers own political thought, his commitment to National Socialism, or the possibility of Heideggerian political theory. However, one characteristic I want to note is that Heideggers politics, if there is such a thing, would belong to the classical Platonic tradition in privileging philosophical nous and a certain form of community, regardless of the great distance between Plato and Heidegger. In seeing in Heidegger the classic philosophicaland thus not politico-theoreticalattitude, I concur with Arendts view in her essay, Heidegger the Fox (Arendt 1994, 361-2).
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assume that Deleuze shares with Heidegger not only the orientation to the question of thinking but also its flawthe flaw of privileging the philosophical mode of thinking above others marked as non-thinking. Badiou diagnoses this problem in Deleuze when he criticizes Deleuzes idea of a disjunctive synthesis, the distinction between Being and beings (Badiou 1999, 22). If we accept this distinction, Badious line of argument will claim, thinking qua philosophy has nothing to do with beings in the world of thoughtlessness.22 Therefore, Badiou would argue not only against the first thesis on the internal relationship between thinking and stupidity, but also against the second thesis concerning the political character of thinking. However, we need to be attentive to the differences between Deleuze and Heidegger as well as the similarities. In fact, Deleuzes displacement of the fact that we do not yet think with stupidity, I argue, reflects his displacement of Heideggers dichotomy between authentic, philosophical thinking and inauthentic non-thinking. Deleuzes reference to Heideggers What is Called Thinking? appears at the very end of the paragraphs dealing with the problem of stupidity: the transcendent element which can only be thought (the fact that we do not yet think or What is stupidity?) (1994, 153; 1968, 198). A straightforward reading of this quote seems to make stupidity !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
To put it more precisely, Deleuze for Badiou prioritizes Being and thus disconnects the realms of Being and beings further than Heidegger: The real reason for the disparity between Deleuze and Heidegger, within their shared conviction that philosophy rests solely on the question of Being, is the following: for Deleuze, Heidegger does not uphold the fundamental thesis of Being as One up to its very end. He does not uphold this because he does not assume the consequences of the univocity of Being. Heidegger continuously evokes the maxim of Aristotle: 'Being is said in various senses,' in various categories. It is impossible for Deleuze to consent to this 'various'(Badiou 1999, 23, italics in original). While Heidegger sees the authentic connection between Being and beings in certain mitsein, Deleuze, Badiou claims, repudiates any such connection and puts solely the virtualBeing for Deleuzeas the object of philosophy. As I argue throughout this chapter, however, it is misleading to take Deluzes philosophical project in Difference and Repetition solely as the search for the virtual. It is true that Deleuze offers a kind of monism, but Badiou has overlooked the protean character of Deleuzes monism, its capacity to morph its many modes of capacities. Equally important is Deleuzes account of how thinking needs to appear as representation, however much flawed the representation is.
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appear as just another name for the fact that we do not yet think. Yet there is another possibility: the conjunction or replaces Heideggerian non-thinking, the fact that we do not yet think with what is stupidity? If, as I have argued, stupidity is internal to thinking (and if Deleuze avoids the above-mentioned pitfall of the Heideggerian orientation), this latter interpretation appears more plausible. Deleuzes assessment of the contributions and risks of Heideggers philosophy in one of the longest notes in Difference and Repetition supports this latter reading. In the note, while acknowledging Heideggers significant contribution to the philosophy of difference, Deleuze expresses his concern about the slippery use of the negative in Heidegger: It can nevertheless be asked whether Heidegger did not himself encourage the misunderstandings, by his conception of Nothing as well as by his manner of striking through. Being instead of parenthesising the (non) of non-Being (1994, 66; 1968, 91). If Heidegger posits the negative of Being by the word non, a hierarchical dichotomy between the world of Being and that of nothingness results. Such externalization of the negative is of the same kind that I pointed out in Heideggers orientation toward non-thinking, the annihilation of the realm of das Man. A productive path to avoid this danger is, according to Deleuze, to interpret Heideggers non as difference, especially as the ontological difference between Being and beings. His proposal shows that Deleuze, while proposing to think difference in itself independent of the form of representation, neither leaves the world of beings nor completely does away with the world of representation. Thinking needs to become other than representation, but it does so by way of represented thinking and the fissured cogito. Deleuze makes this point clear in the quote above when he states this unthought has become the necessary empirical form, in which, in the fractured I

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(Bouvard and Pcuchet), thought at last thinks the cogitandum; in other words, the transcendent element which can only be thought(153; 198, italics in original, underline mine). Fissures in thinking cogito and stupidity in representation evinces the disparity that debunks representation beneath it, the transcendental element which can only be thought (153; 198). If difference is non-representable and non-knowable, it can only be thought as the element with effects on the world that nonetheless is not available to direct presentation within it. From this point, the positive momentthe second point I mentioned in the beginning of the sectionin stupidity becomes clear as well. For Heidegger, the fact that we do not yet think is the greatest food for thought, the moment that initiates thinking. By the same token, stupidity, as the negative of thinking, attests to the non-represented movement of disparities and by virtue of it initiates thinking. This, however, does not mean that stupidity is outside thinking (as is the case with Heideggers the fact that we do not yet think). Rather, as an internal problem that resists specification and dissolution, stupidity in thinking is what keeps thinking as an activity in motion. This difference from Heidegger is also observable when Deleuze states that stupidity forces us to think. Recall that Heidegger equates thinking with thanks: for him, the fact that we do not yet think gives us the food for thinking, but only to the extent it drives us to attain the thanks for Being. For Deleuze, stupidity does not only give us the food for thought but serves as a violence: Thought is primarily trespass and violence, the enemy, and nothing presupposes philosophy: everything begins with misophy (Deleuze 1994, 139; 1968, 181-82). Stupidity, as a stupor, forces us to think without letting our thought leave the world of people, on, das Man.

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Stupidity and Thoughtlessness: Deleuze and Arendt on Political Relevance of Thinking In the last section, I attempted to clear up ambiguities in and around Deleuzes texts by repudiating some interpretations and criticisms against him, especially those concerning the first thesis about the endogenous relation between thinking and stupidity. The central issues at stake among those ambiguities and criticisms involve the internal relationship between stupidity and thinkingthat is, the degree to which stupidity haunts our thinking. By refuting such readings that interpret Deleuzes purpose to be solely concerned with Being or the overcoming of representation, I have shown the characteristics and thus importance of the notion of stupidity that traverses the realms both of Being and beings, or sub-representation and representation. Stupidity is not the problem of others (of beings, of das Man, of representation, and so on), nor is it external to thinking and philosophy. It is our problem. This endogeneity of stupidity helps to clarify another problematic that the previous sections touched on but did not fully address: the political character of stupidity. In the course of examining interpretations of Deleuze, we have seen opposing views concerning the political relevance of his philosophy. On the one hand, readers concerned with its political utility, such as Massumi, see Deleuzes so-called anti-representational philosophical project itself as a political project against the state while, on the other hand, readers like Badiou posit the exclusively philosophical concern of Deleuze and regard its connection with radical political movements to be merely arbitrary. I have already shown that those two views are philosophically misleading in ignoring the account Difference

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and Repetition gives to the emergence of (flawed) representation. What is also noteworthy is that in politics, too, Massumi and Badiou share one assumption: the assumption that the political relevance of philosophy is to be tested solely according to the extent to which philosophy offers the ground for specific political agendas or attitudes. In holding such a reductionist view that judges political relevance for its applicability, their seemingly opposing positions converge. I do not deny that Deleuzes philosophy can serve to deepen our political sensibility. Indeed, my study is devoted to explicate the positive political contributions of the problematic of stupidity, part of which I briefly suggested at the end of the previous section. But such positive elements appear not simply through the explication of a certain political agenda from philosophy and by virtue of its applicability.23 Moreover, the political relevance of one philosophical system can be of great value when it helps us to clarify the very relationship between politics and philosophy, and/or between politics and thinking. It is regarding such relationships that Deleuzes exploration of stupidity is illuminative. If, as I have shown, stupidity is based on the intrusion of others as its transcendental moment, it attests to the plurality in thinking. And because the political finds its predicate in plurality, Deleuze, by taking up stupidity as an internal problem of thinking, offers a clue as to how to re-configure the relationship between politics and thinking. When we turn to the history of Western philosophy, we see that it has been a common attitude to separate politics and thinking, or !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Patton (2010) explicates the affinity of Deleuzean philosophy and Rawlsian normative political theory. While his work helps us to eradicate the prevalent assumption about the impossibility of a normative political philosophy of Deleuze, my approach is different from his in two respects. First, Pattons project is more concerned with Deleuzes later works with Guattari. Moreover, as the second difference, I want to focus more on what kind of modification Deleuzes criticism of the image of thought requires of our conceptions of normative political theory, than in enriching the latter with the ideas of the former. For a different kind of interpretation that take Deleuzes writings as challenges to conventional political theory, see Widder (2012) and Mackenzie and Porter (2012). I turn to reflecting on Deleuzes challenge to political theory in the conclusion, where I present Deleuzean political theorizing as a method of dramatization.
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especially politics and philosophy. Within this divide, both sidespolitics and philosophycriticize each other. To see such antagonism, we only need to recall Platos case. For Plato the philosopher, politics, especially under democracy, is so susceptible to degeneration and vice because of the multiplicity of politics that he believes that a philosopher-king should govern. For people, citizens, and politicians, on the other hand, the solitary life of philosophy appears so distanced from their lives that philosophy appears to be absurd and irrelevant. Again, it is Plato who showed the incompetence of philosophy through his political endeavor at Syracuse.24 Nonetheless, it would be misleading to sever philosophy and politics, solitude and plurality, and to hold them in antagonism. Rather, stupidity shows their mutual intrusion by revealing the plural dimension in thinking.25 In addressing the problem of stupidity in the relation between thinking and politics, however, we encounter an alternative notion, better known in political theory, that deals with a similar problematic: Hannah Arendts notion of thoughtlessness and the related investigation into the relationship among politics, philosophy, and thinking. Although Arendt distinguishes her notion of thoughtlessness from stupidity, her observation of the phenomenon and orientation shows an interesting similarity with my exploration of Deleuzes notion. Why, then, do I not follow the Arendtian path and employ the notion of thoughtlessness that she trod with more explicitly political concerns !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It needs to be noted, however, that a common understanding of the ancient Greeks held stupidity as an inability to participate in politics: For the ancient Greeks, stupidity cannot be seen as belonging to the domain of the political (Ronell 2002, 40). In the next chapter I will examine in more detail the historical changes in the ways stupidity matters to politics. 25 Jean-Luc Nancy makes this point clear when he states, after quoting Deleuzes words on stupidity, Individual stupidity is itself communal. The communal as it is vulgar (profound vulgarity), dull, stupid. Partition of stupidity: what arrives when the meaning itself of partition (of community) is found absent (Nancy 1988, 18). His reference to Deleuze is noteworthy, for there he employs Deleuzes words on stupidity in arguing for his central idea of communality (la communaut), the common predicate of the political and philosophical. For his idea of communality, see Nancy (1999).
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instead of Deleuzes philosophical attempt? Both Deleuze and Arendt find the crucial characteristics of stupidity and thoughtlessness respectively in similar phenomena: stock phrases and clichs. For Arendt, it was Adolf Eichmanns recurrent employment of stock phrases that led her to come up with her idea of thoughtlessness. His use of clichs went so far as to become grotesque when, before his own execution, he said a stock phrase for his own funeral oratory, even though it was he himself who was going to be executed (Arendt 2006, 252). According to Arendt, Eichmanns dependence upon stock phrase showed his inability to speak his own words and thus his inability to think. Instead of thinking the reality of world in which he himself was embedded, he shied away from it and found his safeguard in the world of stock phrases. Eichmann says Officialese (Amtssprache) is my only language. But for Arendt, The point here is,officialese became his language because he was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a clich The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such. (Arendt 2006, 48-49)! ! As for stupidity, my exploration so far has emphasized the use of clichs as a distinguishing phenomenon of stupidity. This similarity makes a comparison between Deleuze and Arendt to be pertinent. As another, more important reason to make the comparison necessary, both problems of stupidity and thoughtlessness open the space for reconsideration of the relationship between politics and thinking. As for Arendt, Eichmanns thoughtlessness and the banality of evil led her to consider the meaning of vita contemplativa (from which she distinguishes vita activa, the mode of action to which politics properly

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belongs) for politics, the question she addresses in her essay Thinking and Moral Consideration and more extensively in her posthumous work on thinking and judgment. For Deleuze, the connection is less clear, though as I have shown, the moment of plurality in his notion of stupidity attests to its political implications. Indeed, Arendt focuses on the plurality in thinking in her exploration of the political character of thinking; in the first volume of Life of the Mind, she identifies the ethico-political moment of thinking with its differentiating effect that brings about consciousness qua conscience, that is, the state of two-in-one in thought (Arendt 1977, 179-93). By comparing Deleuze and Arendt, therefore, we may get a clearer picture of the political character in the Deleuzean notion of stupidity as well as the advantage of employing the notion of stupidity rather than the Arendtian notion of thoughtlessness. Of course, there are differences as well as similarities between the two notions. Before proceeding to compare them by focusing on the relationship between politics and thinking, I want to look at the differences between stupidity and thoughtlessness. One apparent difference is concerning the choice of the words: stupidity and thoughtlessness. This is not a mere difference of words, for Arendt explicitly denies describing Eichmann as stupid. According to her, Eichmanns characteristic was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think (Arendt 2003, 159). The reason comes from Kants definition of stupidity in his lecture notes on logic, where he ascribes stupidity to a wicked heart. The problem with Eichmann is that he does not show a wicked heart. Thus Arendt concludes: Inability to think is not stupidity; it can be found in highly intelligent people, and wickedness is hardly its cause, if only because thoughtlessness as well as stupidity are much more frequent phenomena than wickedness. (Arendt 2003,

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164) Thus the comparison gives rise to these questions: Is Eichmann stupid in Deleuzean sense of the word? Do Bouvard and Pcuchet commit the same flaw as Eichmann? Such questions may sound absurd given the scale and magnitude of the crime Eichmann committed and acted within, that is, totalitarianism and the Final Solution. But the context in which Arendt forges the idea of thoughtlessness as distinguished from stupidity makes the question necessary. Against those immediate questions, however, it is still possible to refute or bypass them. First, the stupidity Arendt rejects is different from that which Deleuze addresses. Deleuzean stupidity is not a problem of a wicked heart but of thinking itself. As such, it is as common as thoughtlessness. Indeed, Kant himself gives a different definition of stupidity (Dummheit) elsewhere, which I take up in the third chapter. Second, we do not necessarily have to solve the question of whether or not Eichmann the actual figure is stupid in the Deleuzean sense. It is well known that Arendts Eichmann is more of the product of her own theorization, a characterization woven into her equally original account of totalitarianism, more than the historical reality of Eichmann and totalitarianism.26 As far as we are concerned in determining the stupidity of Eichmann, the point becomes whether we accept Arendts account of totalitarianism, a task that requires another full-length study. In this study, I want to leave this question open and instead focus on a narrower comparison: the relationship between politics and thinking. As I mentioned before, what is crucial for Arendt in her encounter with Eichmanns thoughtlessness is that it leads her to examine the relationship between politics and thinking, vita activa and vita contemplativa, the relationship she once !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
About the debates concerning the historical accuracy of Arendts reflection on Eichmann and totalitarianism, as well as the meaning of those two works in Arendts entire edifice of political thought, I am deeply indebted to Morikawas conclusive study (Morikawa 2010).
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constructed with seemingly more emphasis on the former: The question that imposed itself was, could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining and reflecting upon whatever happens to come pass, regardless of specific content and quite independent of results, could this activity be of such a nature that it 'conditions' men against evildoing? (Arendt 2003, 160). For Arendt, thinking cannot be identified or dealt with on the same level with other activities that constitute vita activa, because thinking is a solitary activity held in the absence of others, the activity whose process never appears in the world of phenomena, while action has a plurality of actors in the world of appearance as its condition. Not only is it held in solitude, thinking, with its thorough examination, tends to destroy common sense and any accepted rule of behavior. According to Arendt, thinking as such does society little good, much less than the thirst for knowledge, which uses thinking as an instrument for other purposes. It does not create values; it will not find out, once and for all, what 'the good' is; it does not confirm but, rather, dissolves accepted rules of conduct. And it has no political relevance unless special emergencies arise (Arendt 1977, 192). Despite its unproductive or even destructive character, thinking is not without political relevance, as Arendt points out cautiously at the end of the above quote. The political relevance of thinking is to be found in the plurality it brings about; thinking has a differentiating function, making the two-in-one in the thinking mind. Thinking brings difference into the thinking mind, turning it into a split state of mind. While this plurality remains within ones mind and cannot be identified with plurality of actors in the world of appearance, it brings about consciousness as conscience (Arendt calls attention to how both are set in the same word in some languages, such as French). As Arendt points out,

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this plurality of conscience in the thinking ego is rather an obstacle for action, because it is concerned with oneself more than with the world, as a citizen is supposed to do (Arendt 1977, 182). However, Arendt suggests that the political relevance of thinking may be found in Socratess prescription that we need to examine our actions to maintain harmony between the two-in-one, that it would be better for me that my lyre or a chorus I directed should be out of tune and loud with discord, and that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself and contradict me (Arendt 1977, 181). Caring to not contradict oneself gives voice to one's conscience and protects him or her from thoughtlessness in boundary situations, where accepted values and morals of conduct fall apart. Arendts view on the political relevance of thinking is both resonant and dissonant with the Deleuzean orientation. On the one hand, both find a moment of plurality in the activity of thinking. If, as Arendt finds it, we can see political relevance in this plurality, we might see the political moment in Deleuzean stupidity more clearly. On the other hand, the Arendtian orientation marks a stark difference with the Deleuzean one on two points. First, Arendt says that thinking, once initiated, tends to go against or even destroys peoples common sense. It is this destructive character of thinking that Arendt thinks makes thinking politically irrelevant except during a time of emergency. As Villa (2001, chapter 5) points out, Arendt on many occasions is more inclined toward relying upon peoples common sense. Deleuze converges with Arendt in saying that thinking is essentially in antagonism with common sense. However, for Deleuze, the problem is rather that thinking is too susceptible to common sense to initiate itself. As we have seen, one of the main components of the image of thought is common sense. Also, as the

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second point of dissonance, Arendt distinguishes thinking from philosophy and finds political relevance only in the former, whereas Deleuze is concerned with philosophy when he addresses the question of thinking in The Image of Thought chapter. It is not that Arendt disavows philosophy for its meaninglessness, or that philosophy for Deleuze means the same to him and Arendt. On the contrary, Arendt is sensitive to the due role given to philosophy. She simply maintains that philosophy is different from politics, while Deleuze is critical of the way philosophy has been conducted. Nonetheless, the comparison with Arendt poses a question in regard to the extent to which Deleuzes project becomes political. Or, rather, does Arendts orientation toward philosophy make it a better candidate than the Deleuzean one in exploring the relationship between thinking and politics? We need to assess the relationships between thinking and politics, and between philosophy and politics in Deleuze and Arendt. About the relationship between thinking and politics, as we have seen, Arendts reserved acknowledgement of the political relevance of thinking shows the tension between her caution against the destructive character of thinking on the one hand and her reliance on common sense on the other. Thinking itself is a fruitless activity in that it is unlikely to produce a definite conclusion. Thus thinking sets obstacles to action. Moreover, thinking works against the common sense of people, shaking the ground that human beings rely upon in conducting their ordinary lives. The problem with the destructive character of thinking is that it makes us susceptible to the false conclusion that everything is possible. It is due to this false reasoning that Socratess students such as Alcibiades drew from the teacher a cynical doctrine that If we cannot define what piety is, let us be impiousa conclusion that appeared to be perhaps even the greatest

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danger of this dangerous and profitless enterprise of thinking (Arendt 1977, 175-76). Whereas Arendt regards this destructive tendency as a central problem of thinking for politics, Deleuze finds one of the greatest failures of the dogmatic image of thought in the entrapment of thinking within common sense. For Deleuze, it is rather the presupposition of common sense embedded in thought that prevents us from truly initiating thinking. Therefore, it may appear that Arendt is more attentive to the risk and danger in thinking, and more reserved about its political potency. However, the situation is more complex. While Arendt finds a threat to politics in the unproductive and even destructive character of thinking, she argues that thinking is politically relevant in the boundary case, saving us at least from one evil thoughtlessness. In other words, Arendt maintains that we remain thoughtful and free from evil in so far as we keep on thinking. The underlying assumption is that thinking as such is not problematical, not vulnerable to thoughtlessness or stupidity. In reconstructing Arendts orientation toward thinking, Julia Kristeva points out Arendts reliance on humanity, in human potentiality for upright thinking and language: Even if human beings can go mad, as our century has so cruelly shown to be true, the humanity in which Arendt, despite everything, put her faith, or at least all her confidence, cannot go mad and must not go mad. Therein lies the transcendenceand the limits of Arendts thought (Kristeva 1999, 238). Let me articulate this point more by looking at the account Arendt gives of Eichmanns use of stock phrases. For Arendt, thinking is always available as human potentiality in nonproblematical way, even though sometimes we do not think. Her conviction is what lies beneath the difference between thoughtlessness as the lack of thinking and stupidity as an

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internal problem of thinking. Her reliance on the human capacity for language is apparent when she writes of, for example, Eichmanns accumulation of the language rule under the Nazis regimewhere euphemisms such as special treatment, evacuation, and final solution are used instead of saying evacuation, killing and extermination (Arendt 2006, 85). Arendt states, The net effect of this language system was not to keep these people ignorant of what they were doing, but to prevent them from equating it with their old, normal knowledge of murder and lies. Eichmanns great susceptibility to catch words and stock phrases, combined with his incapacity for ordinary speech, made him, of course, an ideal subject for language rule. (Arendt, 2006, 86) Eichmanns dependence on stock phrase made him an ideal instrument of the totalitarian strategy of replacing the reality of a worldpluralitywith sheer ideology that, in explaining everything only by dissociating the object from reality, deprived people of the freedom inherent in mans capacity to think (Arendt 1976, 470). This means, however, that ordinary language is not clich, that human thinking is external to thoughtlessness. Therefore, Arendt's and Deleuze's respective images of the negative of thinking for are rather different in character. While, as I mentioned above, both notions find their paradigmatic expressions in the use of clichs and stock phrases, the ways such expressions come about are different. About Eichmanns use of stock phrase, Arendt states, Cliches, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, the claim on our thinking (Arendt 2003, 160). By protecting us from reality, stock phrases save us from thinking by ourselves, enabling the total absence of thinking. By total absence of thinking Arendt does not mean that Eichmann is insane

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or lacks rationality. Indeed, what strikes her is his sanityEichmann showed a capability or even competence in handling instrumental matters within a given framework of language, value, and rationality. One activity he never engaged, however, was to think about the framework itself. On the other hand, in Deleuzean stupidity, clich is an effect or result of thinking. As we saw in the previous sections, Deleuzes point is that thinking is most likely to appear as clichs when others intrude into it. Even though their observed phenomena are similar, the respective mechanisms that bring about clichs are different: thoughtlessness helps us not to think by conforming to stock phrases; stupidity shows the trace of thinking in clichs. Simply put, thoughtlessness stands outside thinking, while stupidity haunts thinking from within. More importantly, from this difference in their understandings on the negatives of thinking, there emerges a deeper difference in plurality. For Arendt, thinking itself is upright and brings about consciousness qua conscience, even if thoughtlessness is a perennial danger and consciousness rarely appears politically relevant. For Deleuze, on the other hand, thinking itself is a problematical activity; thinking requires a degree of stupidity and could also be swallowed by it. Arendts assumption of the upright character of thinking, therefore, is a bit closer to the image of thought Deleuze criticizes. While the Arendtian orientation leads us to see the political relevance of thinking, what lies embedded in acknowledgement of the political relevance of thinking is a traditional assumption that divides politics as the realm of multitude and thinking as the realm of solitary and upright activity. With this point, I do not conclude whether Arendt finally sides with thinking or actionwith Socrates or

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Pericles.27 I emphasize, rather, that the Arendtian orientation toward thinking leads to the assumption about the inherent uprightness and righteousness of thinking and thus leads to the antagonism between thinking and politics. I do not claim, however, that thinking and politics are the same thing. Without dissolving the distinction, I want to examine more closely how a Deleuzean orientation reconfigures the political character of thinking. As I formulated as the second thesis, the inherent plurality which prompts thinking into stupidity attests to the political character of thinking. Here, the two differences between Deleuze and Arendt help us to articulate the political character in thinking more clearly. The first of them is Deleuzes inclusion of representation in thinking. One characteristic of Arendts orientation is that she rigorously distinguishes thinking from its expression, representation. Her dissociation of thinking from representation is not without reason; she wants to focus on thinking as an activity, against a prevalent misunderstanding to identify thinking with cognition, doctrine, and truth. Does her distinction, however, lead to a certain assumption that ties thinking, in its assumed solitary character, to purity? A Deleuzean orientation, by contrast, introduces plurality into thinking more thoroughly by including representation as an element which limits but nonetheless accompanies thinking, and acknowledging plurality both on the level of representation and the sub-representative process. Deleuze concurs with Arendt in distinguishing thinking from doctrine and cognition. He also denies that representation can bring thinking to full articulation. Nonetheless, he acknowledges representation as a

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About this antagonism in Arendts thought, see Villa (1999, ch. 7, 9). He also tries to loosen this antagonism in Villa (2001), where he develops his own idea of Socratic citizenship. While I share his concern for the antagonism between thinking and politics, I think the antagonism should be displaced rather than loosened once we have another, more convincing conceptualization of thinking.
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necessary moment, which engenders clichs by virtue of the intrusion of otherness as people, das Man or on. Thus, as the second difference, we find that the plurality and otherness are of different characters for Deleuze and Arendt. Otherness in thinking for Deleuze is not the two-in-one as in Arendts Socratic thinking. Nor is it the plurality of unique individuals that Arendt discovers in the realm of public actors. Rather, otherness for Deleuze appears as the monotonous voice of anonymous people. It appears as congealment. Arendt would denounce such a monotonous world as evidence of thoughtlessness. Contrastingly, the Deleuzean orientation offers us another perspectiveto see such monotonous, nameless otherness as an element in thinkingand thus a clue to discover the active world of difference in thinking. The otherness on the level of representation is not independent of the thinking process but an effect of the intrusion of otherness on the sub-representative level of passive synthesis, in which cogito, or the thinking I, emerges and fails to achieve its unity. As we have seen in the first section, the former is the empirical form of the latter. Thus, Deleuze opens up a way to trace the active generation of thinking from monotonous representation without disavowing the latter. This is why he notes in the beginning of Difference and Repetition that: Modern life is such that, confronted with the most mechanical, the most stereotypical repetitions, inside and outside ourselves, we endlessly extract from them little differences, variations and modifications. Conversely, secret, disguised and hidden repetitions, animated by the perpetual displacement of a difference, restore bare, mechanical and stereotypical repetitions, within and without us. (1994 xix; 1968, 2, underlining mine) Moreover, the latter moment of Deleuzean pluralityplurality in sub-representative emergence of thinkingis different from Arendt as well. While for Arendt the plurality in thinking process is the dissolution of the thinking I into two-in-one, for Deleuze

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individuality emerges out of the ground, whose process of individuation is impersonal (Deleuze 1994, xxi; 1968, 4). This difference is pertinent in assessing the political element in their respective orientations. For one reason that Arendt is reserved in attributing full political relevance to Socratic thinking is that the plurality there is not same as the one in public sphere. The two-in-one is rather an extension of oneself than the plurality of unique actors. The ideal mode of Socratic two-in-one is harmony, as maintained in friendship. But harmonious friendship is not the principle to govern political plurality in its mode of agonistic contestation. Moreover, plurality in the twoin-one risks turning the two into another self, effacing the plurality (Arendt 1977, 189). Plurality for Deleuze, on the other hand, is not harmonious but rather the permanent intrusion of otherness, which finally extends to a monotonous plurality on the level of representation. With the problematic character inherent in thinking and with a different understanding of plurality, the political character for Deleuze thus changes its meaning from Arendt into a fundamental predicate of thinking. I started this section by pointing out that the political character of thinking should not be limited to the normative utility for specific political agendas. Arendts exploration of the political relevance of thinking, it is true, opens up a different approach by asking the political meaning of thinking without making it into a manual for politics. Nevertheless, Arendts exploration remains concerned with the positive contribution of thinking for politics. Her normative concern is clear when she states the question that drove her to examine the relationship between thinking and politics: Is our inability to judge, to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly, dependent upon our faculty of thought? Do the inability to think and a disastrous

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failure of what we commonly call conscience coincide? (Arendt 2003, 160). It may look natural, as a political theorist, to focus on the positive effect of thinking in taking up the relation between thinking and politics, for what she finds in Eichmann is the opposite of such a positive relation, and her focus itself does not necessarily exclude the possibility of other effects. But her focus becomes problematic when she externalizes thoughtlessness from thinking and holds thinking in its upright, righteous character. In fact, we cannot pose the same question if we follow Deleuze in regarding thinking itself as problematic. For Deleuze, thinking is political. But it never means that thinking contributes to politics positively whenever the former is called upon. The significant contribution of Deleuzes exploration of stupidity to the relationship between thinking and politics lies in challenging the long-standing antagonism between the two. Against the conventional distinction between thinking as a solitary activity and politics as that of the multitude, the Deleuzean notion of problematical thinking reveals that both thinking and politics contain plurality as their ontological condition. This common condition of politics and thinking, of course, does not mean that the two are the same thing. Such a claim would be absurd. They are different modes in their respective activities. Nor do I claim thinking, or philosophy as its quintessential form, should be oriented to serve politics. Rather, the political character of thinking debunks attempts to guide thinking for political agendas or to govern politics by philosophy because of the lack of pre-given yardstick to distinguish upright, righteous thinking from stupidity. My statement concerning the common foundation of thinking and politics makes no prescription for politics and thinking.

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Then, what is the use of this insight? If both politics and thinking are plural activities, what does this common predicate reveal to us? Moreover, if we cannot clearly separate thinking from stupidity, what can we draw from thinking? Finally, what is the role of philosophy? These questions are too big to settle in this chapter. Here I want to briefly show available approaches to these questions and leave them for further investigation in the following chapters. First, about the advantage resulting from the common predicate of plurality for thinking and politics, it does not help us directly to conceive of a productive political agenda, but it helps us to reexamine the role of thinking in what would otherwise look like mere thoughtlessness. As we have seen, the notion of thoughtlessness assumes clichs as the lack of thinking. The underlying idea is that such a phenomenon is the result of conformism (see, for example, Villa 2001, 253). Roughly put, this perspective sees the history leading to totalitarianism, to Eichmanns thoughtlessness, as a process through which people gave up or lost their thinking capability and came to rely on indoctrinated values from the outside. Deleuzes notion of thoughtlessness contests such a simplified narrative by tracing vestiges of thinking in monotonous clichs. From the reexamination of thinking suggested above comes a clue to the second question concerning the positive moment that the Deleuzean orientation brings. The problematical character of thinking, that is, the impossibility of an a priori standard to distinguish upright, righteous thinking from stupidity, dissolves any attempt to establish a manual for thinking, whether it is teleological guidance or procedural conditions. Thus assessing the relationship between thinking and politics in a way to make the former serve the latter as normative guidance will appear contentious. Nonetheless, the

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Deleuzean exploration of stupidity can reveal a positive element in thinking, the moment that is not necessarily fully subsumed under a normative manual of thinking. At the end of the previous section, we identified a positive moment of stupidity as a shock that can trigger and vivify another line of thinking. Though there is no a priori assurance that newly generated thinking becomes free from stupidity, thinking would not continue without problematical thinking, the chiasm between thinking and stupidity within themselves.28 We can probably regard the re-examination of thinking that I suggested above as a part of such a continuous activity of thinking which is disrupted by stupidity but nevertheless continues by this very disruption. Finally, my investigation into the relationship between thinking and politics leads to the question about the status of philosophy: what can we expect from philosophy vis-vis the problematical and political character of thinking? The question first appeared in the last section, when I argued against Badiou and Massumi. Massumi holds Deleuzes philosophy (in A Thousand Plateaus) to be a normative political philosophy against the state, while Badiou maintains that Deleuzes project is essentially philosophical, concerned solely with the ontology of Being and has nothing to do with politics. A comparison with Arendt makes this question an acute one, because one of the central characteristics in her exploration of the relationship between thinking and politics is a distinction between thinking and philosophy. According to Arendt, philosophy is antithetical to politics not only because the former rarely belongs to the political activity of thinking, but also because truth, the highest purpose of philosophy, has a coercive !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Inspired by recent insights of neuroscience, William Connolly argues that thinking is a complex, layered activity, with each layer contributing something to an ensemble of dissonant relays and feedback loops between numerous centers (Connolly 2002, 10, italics mine). What stupidity reveals, I argue, is the moment of such dissonant jolts within thinking.
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character: truth, whether it be philosophical, factual, or scientific, comes with compulsion and needs no agreement for it appears to be true. Therefore, when applied to politics, truth has a despotic character that annihilates the space of doxa, or plural opinions essential for politics (Arendt 1993, 241). It is because of this despotic character that Arendt, in addressing the political relevance of thinking, cautiously distinguishes Socratic thinking from the philosophical doctrine of Socrates (or of Plato) no more than from Platos vision of philosopher-king. This is also why Arendt claims that she is not a philosopher but a political theorist (Arendt 1976, 3; 1994, 1-2). When we turn our eyes to Deleuze, his orientation contrasts that of Arendts: Difference and Repetition does not only address political questions in passing but also defends the role of philosophy against doxa (see Marrati 2001). However critical he is of the image of thought under which traditional philosophy has been conducted, his criticism is not against philosophy itself, but against the failure to dissociate philosophy from doxa. Indeed, in its relentless defense of philosophy against doxa and common sense, Deleuzes project is one of the most adamant among contemporary philosophers. However, if we accept Arendts caution against the despotism of truth, does Deleuzes criticism of the image of thought appear antithetical to politics? And if we cannot attain an a priori, universal standard to distinguish thinking from stupidity, epist!m! from doxa, how is it possible to achieve philosophy which is not doxa? To this question of the status of philosophy, we need to notice, first, that Deleuze is by no means the heir of a Platonic despotism of truth, despite his deep commitment to the role of philosophy. The object of philosophy for Deleuze is not to leap into the Platonic world of Ideas: Ideas for Deleuze are not the form to ground reality, but rather

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problems to which there is no solution (Deleuze 1994, 168; 1968, 219). Also, Deleuze does not pursue the unconcealment of Being as Heidegger defines truth. As I have shown in the previous section, Deleuzes transcendental empiricism departs from Heidegger in its focus on the relationship between beings and Being rather than retreating to the world of Being. In other words, the purpose of Deleuzes philosophical project in Difference and Repetition is to explicate the condition of real experience, the emergence of beings as events. Therefore, Deleuzes idea of philosophy does not necessarily result in the despotism of truth. Second, about the status of philosophy vis--vis the risk of stupidity, it is important to see that Deleuze calls for the modesty of philosophy in dealing with stupidity: Philosophy could have taken up the problem with its own means and with the necessary modesty, by considering the fact that stupidity is never that of others but the object of a properly transcendental question: how is stupidity (not error) possible? (1994, 151; 1968, 197). So far in this chapter, I have followed the path this properly transcendental question leads to. Now let me review our exploration in terms of the manner in which Deleuze pursued this question. What is the necessary modesty of philosophy with which to deal with the problem of stupidity? The Deleuzean orientation is modest in acknowledging the inevitability of the image of thought. As I have emphasized, the struggle against the image of thought does not mean to do away with image, representation, clichs, people (das Man, on) and stupidity. Rather, Deleuzes philosophy seeks to locate the emergence of thinking below the world of representation by way of the latter. In other words, Deleuzes modest philosophy is devoted to illuminating the truthfulness (of the emergence of thinking, of event) of doxa.

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Concluding Remarks Throughout the chapter, I formulated, defended, and clarified the problematic of stupidity that I identified in the beginning. To repeat, the first thesis of the problematic is the endogeneity of stupidity within thinking, and the second is the political character of stupidity. Those two theses show the relevance and necessity of the study of stupidity in political theory. It is necessary because stupidity is an ineluctable condition and problem for thinking, which we cannot simply dismiss as the unnecessary negative accompanying representation. It helps us to see the entangled relationship between thinking and politics. While it remains of secondary importance for my purpose, my interpretation of Difference and Repetition in this chapter modifies the current Deleuze scholarship. Specifically, my interpretation emphasizes two characteristics that have not received due attention. The first is the necessity of representation for thinking. Difference and Representation, it is true, is a book that criticizes the image of thought and representation. But the criticism does not always equate to a call for abolishing it or replacing it with something else. Rather, Difference and Repetition offers one of the most systematic criticisms of representation in showing both why thinking leads to representation and why representation is insufficient. In doing so, it opens up a way to approach the real emergence of experience. Second is the distinctive quality Deleuze gives to his notion of the other. Given the privileged role attributed to otherness among so-called poststructuralist thought to emphasize the otherness, Deleuzes other may seem to constitute one small branch of the general trend. Moreover, the notion of other occupies a smaller space in his writings than those of his contemporaries such as Derrida

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and Levinas. However, Deleuzes other in Difference and Reptition can neither be dismissed nor equated with the Derridean or Levinasian notion of otherness.29 While otherness for those contemporary authors tends to be a pure and singular alterity, Deleuzes other is, in a sense, plural, of which the representative model is nameless people, das Man, on. Combined together, those two characteristics help us to approach Difference and Repetition in terms of political philosophy, an approach which has rarely been taken in the Deleuze scholarship.30 With its attention to the emergence of representation, it avoids retreating into the philosophy of the oneness of Being, and by taking the moment of other as that of plurality, it delivers both an ethical and a political relation. The two theses, however, gave rise to three questions not yet fully engaged. (1) What does the political character of thinking reveal to us? If we are mistaken in opposing thinking and politics, what kind of perspective does the predicate of plurality specifically bring to us? (2) What we can expect of thinking? If we cannot separate thinking from stupidity, what can we draw from our thinking? (3) What is the role of philosophy? Especially, what is left for political philosophy or theory vis--vis the problematical and political thinking?

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Indeed, the functional, though not semantic, equivalent of Derridean or Levinasian otherness in Deleuzes philosophical system may be the notion of minority, which Deleuze develops in A Thousand Plateaus. 30 While many point out the importance of Deleuzes earlier works for his later, more political works with Guattari, few scholars try to explicate a political philosophy of Difference and Repetition itself. For example, in one of the most conclusive studies on the political philosophy of Deleuze, Patton (2000) mostly focuses on the work with Guattari. While he does not fail to emphasize the importance of Deleuzes earlier works, Difference and Repetition serves to illuminate his lasting philosophical concerns leading up to What is Philosophy, and his yet-full-fledged political philosophy of power and force is attributed to Nietzsche and Philosophy. As one of the few studies to articulate the political philosophy of Difference and Repetition, see Marrati (2001), which focuses on the idea of minority.
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The subsequent chapters are formulated to clarify and respond to those questions through diverse materials. The next chapter, dealing with the thinking of citizenship under democracy, responds to the first question by identifying democracy as one locus that highlights the common predicate of politics and thinking. By exploring the mechanism where the thinking of citizens leads to clichs, I show the problem of modern democracy is not reducible to thoughtless conformism. Rather, modern democracy underlines the problematic of stupidity. The third chapter addresses, in addition to the first question, the third question about the status of philosophy by examining the theory of political judgment. Posed as a model of political thinking by Arendt, the Kantian theory of judgment receives attention as a candidate of democratic political philosophy which does not subsume the opinions of citizens under the Platonic despotism of truth (Arendt 1982, 22-33). While sharing the same concern, I will argue that the Kantian theory of political judgment cannot fulfill the Arendtian purpose because of the endogeneity of stupidity within thinking. This endogeneity, rather, suggests the need to modify the image of political theory. While the second and third chapters situate these problems more clearly in historical and theoretical context, the fourth and fifth chapters will respond to those questions. The fourth chapter illuminates the positive element of stupidity by taking up the works of Hideo Kobayashi, a literary critic in Japan who pursued a way to write criticism without holding objects of criticism to be lower, stupid writings. By doing so, the chapter will suggest a mode of criticism that acknowledges the problematic of stupidity. Finally, the fifth chapter responds to the third question, exploring the role of a political theory that is, using Deleuzes words, modest enough to pay due attention to the problem of stupidity while holding to its own means.!!

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De Landa, Manuel. 2002. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. London: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1984. Kants Critical Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1990. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Constantin V. Boundas. New York: Columbia University Press. Originally published as La logique du sens (Paris: Minuit, 1969). Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press. Originally published as Diffrence et rptition (Paris: PUF, 1968). Deleuze, Gilles. 1997. Essays Critical and Clinical. Translated by Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 2000. Proust and Signs. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles. 2003. Cours Vincennes : synthse et temps - 14/03/1978, last modified August 14, 2003, accessed February 12, 2013, http://www.webdeleuze.com/pdf/fr/Kant/140378.zip. Deleuze, Gilles. 2004. Desert Islands: and Other Texts, 19531974. Translated by Christopher Bush et al. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Originally published as Mille plateaux: Capitalisme et schizophrnie (Paris: Minuit, 1980). Deleuze, Gilles and Flix Guattari. 1994. What is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1994. Force de loi. Paris: Galile. Derrida, Jacques. 1998. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatori Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 2008. The Transcendental Stupidity (Btise) of Man and The Becoming-Animal According to Deleuze. In Deleuze, Derrida, Psychoanalysis, edited by Gabriel Shwab, 35-60. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Derrida, Jacques. 2009. The Beast and the Sovereign, volume 1. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Descarts, Ren. 1956. Discourse on Method. Translated by Laurence Lafleur. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Descartes, Ren. 1996. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by John Cottingham. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dosse, Franois. 2007. Gilles Deleuze et Flix Guattari: Biographie Croise. Paris: La Decourverte. Flaubert, Gustave. 1926-1930. Correspondance. 13 vols. Paris: Edition Conard. Flaubert, Gustave. 1954. Dictionary of Accepted Ideas. Translated by Jacques Barzun. New York: A New Directions Book. Flaubert, Gustave. 1982-83. Flaubert: uvre Compltes. 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard. Flaubert, Gustave. 1980. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857. Edited and Translated by Francis Steegmuller. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Flaubert, Gustave. 1882. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1857-1880. Edited and Translated by Francis Steegmuller. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1994. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage. Foucault, Michel. 1997. Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault. In Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, edited by Paul Rabinow, translated by Robert Hurley et al., 111-19. New York: Penguin. Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collge de France 1977-1978. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador. Foucault, Michel. 2008. Introduction to Kants Anthropology. Translated by Roberto Nigro and Kate Briggs. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1990. Kant and The Problem of Metaphysics. Translated by Richard Taft. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, Martin. 2004. What is Called Thinking? Translated by J. Glenn Gray. New York: Perennial.

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Hinske, Norbert. 1980. Kant als Herausforderung an die Gegenward. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber. Hughes, Joe. 2009. Deleuzes Difference and Repetition. London: Continuum. Kant, Immanuel. 1992. The Jsche Logic. In Lectures on Logic, translated and edited by J. Michael Young, 517-640. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1996b. The End of All Things. In Religion and Rational Theology, translated and edited by Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni, 217-32. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1997. Lectures on Metaphysics. Edited and Translated by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1998a. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and Edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1998b. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Kant, Immanuel. 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kant, Immanuel. 2009. Kritik der Urteilkraft. Hamburg: Felix Meiner. Kerslake, Christian. 2002. The Vertigo of Philosophy: Deleuze and the Problem of Immanence. Radical Philosophy 113 (May/June): 10-23. Kerslake, Christian. 2009. Immanence and the Vertigo of Philosophy: From Kant to Deleuze. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kristeva, Julia. 2001. Hannah Arendt. Translated by Ross Guberman. New York: Columbia University Press. Lee, Matt. 2009. Levelling the Levels. In Thinking between Deleuze and Kant, edited by Edward Willatt and Matt Lee, 49-66. London: Continuum. Mackenzie, Iain. 2004. The Idea of Pure Critique. London: Continuum. Mackenzie, Iain and Robert Porter. 2011a. Dramatization as Method in Political Theory. Contemporary Political Theory 10 (4): 482-501. Mackenzie, Iain and Robert Porter. 2012b. Dramatizing the Political: Deleuze and Guattari. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Marrati, Paola. 2001. Against the Doxa: Politics of Immanence and BecomingMinoritarian. In Micropolitics of Media Culture, edited by Patricia Pisters, 205-20. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. Massumi, Brian. 1987. Translators Forward: Pleasures of Philosophy. In Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, ivxv. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Musil, Robert. 1990. On Stupidity. In Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses, translated by Burton Pike and David S. Luft, 268-86. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Musil, Robert. 1995. The Man without Qualities. Translated by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike. London: Picador. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 1988. Fragments de la btise. Le temps de la rflexion 9: 13-27. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 1999. La communaut dsuvre, 3rd ed. Paris: Christian Bourgois Editour. Patton, Paul. 2001. Deleuze and the Political. London: Routledge. Patton, Paul. 2010. Deleuzean Concepts: Philosophy, Colonization, Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Pippin, Robert. 2005. The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath. New York: Cambridge University Press. Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Ronell, Avital. 2002. Stupidity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Toscano, Alberto. 2010. Everybody Thinks: Deleuze, Descartes, and Rationalism. Radical Philosophy 162 (July/August): 8-17. Villa, Dana. 1999. Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Villa, Dana. 2001. Socratic Citizenship. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Widder, Nathan. 2008. Reflections on Time and Politics. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. !

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