#colebrook

Ice formations on Sandy Brook in Colebrook, CT.

Opinion, for Deleuze, is the very inertia or failure of thinking. Opinion is a laziness opposed to the expansiveness of the philosophical concept. Deleuze and Guattari cite the example of a man who moves from his dislike for a certain type of cheese to a general claim that the cheese just 'is' offensive. It is this tendency of opinion to reduce the difference of the world to being 'just like me' that both weakens the active character of thought and reinforces the modern capitalistic prejudice that we are 'all the same' and capable of interacting in in one global market: 'In every conversation the fate of philosophy is always at stake, and many philosophical discussions do not as such go beyond discussions of cheese, including the insults and the confrontation of worldviews. The philosophy of communication is exhausted in the search for a universal liberal opinion as consensus, in which we find again the cynical perceptions and affections of the capitalist himself.' In opinion, then, we move from a particular experience and use it to form some whole that 'reduces' difference and complexity. Everyday opinions are bland and reductive generalizations. I am annoyed by the asylum seeker who lives next door, therefore all asylum seekers are lazy. I am not turned on by meaningless same-sex encounters, therefore all extra-marital relations are evil. Opinion moves from my specific likes and desires and homogenizes desire, producing a general 'subject'. A philosophical concept work against this reductive and generalizing tendency by expanding difference. It creates new ways of thinking. Take the concept of love. Opinion will reduce love to its already known forms - bourgeois marriage - and then dismiss all other forms: 'That's not love, it's perversion!' A concept in its philosophical sense moves beyond any example or model to think the very power or possibility: so 'love' would not be reducible to any given form, whether that be familial, homosexual or heterosexual. We might form a concept of love, as Deleuze did, that was as open as possible. Love is the encounter with another person that opens us up to a possible world. This concept does not take a form of love -  the couple - and then say that this is what love 'is'. The 'concept' of love as a 'possible encounter with an other as a whole new world' allows us to think of forms of love that are not yet given, that are not actual but virtual. A concept, for Deleuze, is just the power to move beyond what we know and experience to think how experience might be extended.