Immanence
From Capitalism and Schizophrenia
This concept sets Deleuze apart from the many philosophers of the Western tradition who took this world as separate from a more perfect reality, whether that be a world of perfect forms of which our world is only a representation, or a celestial beyond where the creator awaits a portion of his creations whom he deems worthy to live in his presence. Spinoza postulated that if this world is separate from God, then God was not infinite. Therefore, in order to preserve the infinite nature of God, this world must necessarily be God. Everything is one substance, God. Immanence is traditionally contrasted with transcendence in Western philosophy- a transcendent God is separate or beyond this world, whereas an immanent God is present to varying degrees, depending on which philosopher's text you would consult, in the minds of man, or of select men, in His son, or in other places in the world.
ATP is in a sense an attempt to think the world as immanent, but without debilitating the concept by defining it (negatively) against what it is not, i.e. transcendence. What transcendence assures is that there is a static reality beyond the moving reality of which we are witness. The transcendent reality is thought of as the Truth of existence. It might be our task, according to someone who believes in a transcendent reality, to decipher clues provided by this less-than-perfect world, which is always changing, to find out about the Truer reality. We interpret this world in order to attempt to establish what lies on the other side.
How do D&G then attempt to think immanence without doing what I have just done in the preceding paragraph, which is to set up the concept of transcendence against which one can define immanence? Instead of defining immanence as 'that which is not transcendent' or 'that which is here, as opposed to there', D&G use different modes of human knowledge (geology, biology, etc) to imagine how it is that transcendent concepts were invented. What is it about this immanent reality that led us to dream up another reality separate from it? What is it about this reality that led us to think up categories and concepts such as inside vs. outside, which allow us to sort the different entities as they appear to us into groups, and then forget that these are mental tools, which do not adequately reflect the infinite varieties of the creatures of the world? By using geological concepts such as stratification, and biological concepts such as the molecular vs the molar, D&G explain the presence of concepts which imply a static nature of reality (such as transcendence) using geological & biological phenomena which occur in this immanent world, and in doing so, turn the tables on those philosophers who explain immanence using the foundation of transcendence: they explain transcendence as a product of this immanent reality, and in so doing, in a way, transcend transcendence as a foundational concept. Ex: There are geological forces of stratification which slowly solidify the diversity of materials found on our planet into layers, forming and organizing the chaos of material flows into neat planes of space which distinguish themselves from one another. These forces of stratification are at work when we "human beings" (human becomings? übermensch becomings?) imagine that we inhabit our own interior space which is separate from the outside world, in other words, that we are not an assemblage of multiplicities which is constantly emitting particles which enter and transform other multiplicities, and which is constantly swallowing up particles from other multiplicities, which in turn change us: If one particle of a multiplicity changes its position, the essence of that multiplicity changes. Nothing is ever static, everything is flowing, even the geological formations - they are only flowing at a different speed. If we lived for millions of years, with what we would currently perceive to be a thousand years as a millisecond, we might see the structures of stone and rock we now see as solid unchanging matter the way we currently see the oceans. Everything is here, even the causes of our mistaken beliefs in a transcencent locus of Truth. Everything is contained within this flow of matter & energy where we live & become.
