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350 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
When we say that the eternal return is not the return of the Same, or of the Similar or the Equal, we mean that it does not presuppose any identity. On the contrary, it is said of a world without identity, without resemblance or equality. It is said of a world the very ground of which is difference, in which everything rests upon disparities, upon differences of differences which reverberate to infinity (the world of intensity). - pp 241
In this sense it is not even clear that thought, in so far as it constitutes the dynamism peculiar to philosophical systems, may be related to a substantial, completed and well-constituted subject, such as the Cartestian Cogito: thought is, rather, one of those terrible movements which can be sustained only under the conditions of a larval subject
A well-known test in psychology involves a monkey who is supposed to find food in boxes of one particular color amidst others of various colors: there comes a paradoxical period during which the number of 'errors' diminishes even though the monkey does not yet posses the 'knowledge' or 'truth' of a solution in each case; propitious moment in which the philosopher-monkey opens up to truth, himself producing the true, but only to the extent that he begins to penetrate the coloured thickness of a problem.
[a] nightmare is perhaps a psychic dynamism that could be sustained neither awake nor even in dreams, but only in profound sleep, in a dreamless sleep. In this sense, it is not even clear that thought, in so far as it constitutes the dynamism peculiar to philosophical systems, may be related to a substantial, completed and well-constituted subject, such as the Cartesian Cogito: thought is, rather, one of those terrible movements which can be sustained only under the conditions of a larval subject. (151)