A Stratigraphic Order
A recurring topic among those of us interested in (seized by) philosophy is what is philosophy. What does this “thinking about thinking” mean? In this passage from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s book, What Is Philosophy? a description of philosophy includes the concept of time dilation. Time is compressed (accelerated) or expanded, (slowed down). Time is not a simple matter of succession, of segments moving in absolute fixed relationship. The same is said of philosophy.
Philosophical time is thus a grandiose time of coexistence that does not exclude the before and after but superimposes them in stratigraphic order. It is an infinite becoming of philosophy that cross cuts its history without being confused with it. The life of philosophers, and what is most external to their work, confirms to the ordinary laws of succession; but their proper names coexist and shine either as luminous points that take us through the components of a concept once more or as the cardinal points of a stratum or layer that continually come back to us, like dead stars whose light is brighter than ever. Philosophy is becoming, not history; it is the coexistence of planes, not the succession of systems. –page 59
I have been thinking about those statements for weeks. And I am not finished.
