"In Rhetorique de la Drogue" Derrida speculates that the whole question of drugs is essentially a « praxis », or better still, an « art » of the testing of limits: of body and text, of sign and sense…in short, the limits of subjectivity/world are put into question or deconstructed (not destroyed)…the same goes for philosophical thought, which is about having limits and transgressing those arbitrary established limits. No matter which philosopher one reads, the philosophy in question will invariably start from a primordial limit, whilst, at the same time, displacing other limits by reconfiguring them elsewhere…anchors of finitude in the infinity of thought…
Since the substrate, or limit, of thought is psycho-chemical (and not ontological, rational, or eidetic, the three Hs of philosophy will have to go down the hole, or drop some K…) one needs to physically effect the abstract of thinking, to think anything at all: thought is a physical manifestation like any other “object” in the world…the radical altering of the abstract of thought is the unchained abruption and (temporary) dissolution of self and world: the praxis of fire that Heraclites stole from the gods, and Plato, unfortunately, recaptured for man…
Think about the “psychological” effects of drugs transposed to the abstract of thought. This would include the following abstract becomings, twisting and shattering the realm of thought: visual, auditory, tacit, olfactory, gustatory distortions and kinaesthetic perceptions, infinite differential changes of/in durations (time and space interchanging rhythmic folds) instantaneous changes in the rate of mental contents; body image changes, objective hallucinations, immense and heightened awareness of colour, abrupt and frequent affects and spiralling speeds...etc…if all this could be completely transposed to the abstract of thought, we all would be Gods, or at least, Dionysus would heed our calls…for Rimbaud’s “rational disorder of the senses” is, as Deleuze pointed out, not too far from the free “disorder” of the mind’s faculties in Kant’s Critique of Judgement….as Deleuze said, philosophy, as opposed to art, is still awaiting its abstract revolution…let us pray...for good, dutiful and beautiful chemistry...
