So @non_philosophy being the beautiful person they are, looked over my essay arguing that Socrates 1.) Had epilepsy and 2.) His epilepsy birthed the Socratic Method (You could say his epilepsy was his midwife helping him give birth to his idea of the philosopher.) 1/n

When he looked it over, @non_philosophy corrected me about my characterizing Socrates as an ascetic, who never partook in physical pleasures, citing that he did in fact drink in The Symposium, but was so drunk on Philosophy he was unaffected. My mistaken understanding of...2/n

the Socratic temperament is important, because in actuality while Socrates is concerned with the heavens, with contemplation, he doesn't fully abstain from the physical world. Rather, one does Philosophy to be unaffected by it when one engages in it. 3/n

A crucial distinction, especially when one thinks about governing the polis. So then I got to thinking about the strict binary of Philosophy as being between Socrates and Nietzsche. One does Philosophy to be unaffected by wine, the other drinks wine to do Philosophy. 4/n

But then, in thinking about Deleuze and even slightly about Laruelle, the latter who notes that Philosophy always operates from the outset on some presupposed binary, that erecting this conflict between the theoretic man and the affirmative man is erroneous. 5/n

The bolder question is, how do we play with these images of thought? The philosopher who thinks to drink and the philosopher who thinks to simulate one who drinks? I imagine a Nietzschean Socratic, a monstrosity. A philosopher who drinks so as to be an ascetic of dualism say. 6/n

I think of Deleuze, who challenges us to affirm illness. He was able to affirm his tuberculosis because he hated traveling, and so tuberculosis gave him the power of non-travel. So too, what powers are to be found in the negative, in asceticism? Can the negative affirm life? 7/n

I imagine a philosopher who drinks merrily, feasts heartily, and is quite the hedonist learning what a body can do in the laboratory of the bedroom, being an ascetic of dogma, of binary, of essentialism and as a consequence, is an ascetic of imperialism, phobias, war, etc. 8/n

The theoretic subject need not dwell in Heaven. We overcome Earth so as to make new relations, new assemblages, etc. We overcome Earth to bring Heaven here, not a static paradise but an affirmative vitalist soil of becoming. That's my pseud-intellectual rant. 9/9