Caveat: Crossing the Plane of Immanence

I'm re-reading snippets of A Thousand Plateaus (by Deleuze and Guattari).  It's always been one of the most difficult yet absolutely central pieces of philosophy in my library.  It's crucial to my efforts at re-evaluating (and re-valuing) Cervantes' Persiles.

One of my guiding philosophical quotes is from Deleuze (on Spinoza):  "Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation."  This sounds difficult, but it's not, really.  What it is saying is nothing more than:  if you think positive thoughts, these develop and coexist with "ethical" (guilt-free) happiness.  Or, as I might paraphrase it:  guiltlessness implies optimism, and vice versa.

And speaking of ethics.  An anonymous author of the English-language wikipedia writes:  "An ethics of immanence will disavow its reference to judgments of good and evil, right and wrong, as according to a transcendent model, rule or law. Rather the diversity of living things and particularity of events will demand the abstract methods of immanent evaluation (ethics) and immanent experimentation (creativity). These twin concepts will become the basis of a lived Deleuzian ethic."

Hmm… "a lived Deleuzian ethic."  Guidelines for Deleuzional behavior?  Let's try it.

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