Félix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography

what it was ... That point of non-style where one can finally say,

‘What is it I have been doing all my life?’ had not been reached.

There are times when old age produces not eternal youth but a sov-

ereign freedom, a pure necessity in which one enjoys a moment of

grace between life and death, and in which all the parts of the

machine come together to send into the future a feature that cuts

across all ages. (What Is Philosophy?, 1–2, emphasis in the original)

In this point (of non-style) it becomes possible to hang over the

abyss and define philosophy in relation to the abyss. ‘Philosophy is

the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts’ (What Is Philo-

sophy?, 2). The essential centre of philosophical activity is inventing

concepts; but then what are concepts?

The concept is an incorporeal, even though it is incarnated or effec-

tuated in bodies. But, in fact, it is not mixed up with the state of

affairs in which it is effectuated. It does not have spatiotemporal

coordinates, only intensive ordinates. It has no energy, only intens-

ities; it is anenergetic (energy is not intensity but rather the way in

which the latter is deployed and nullified in an extensive state of

affairs). The concept speaks the event, not the essence or the thing

• pure Event, a hecceity, an entity: the event of the Other or of the
  face ... The concept is defined by the inseparability of a finite number
  of heterogeneous components traversed by a point of absolute survey at
  infinite speed.(What Is Philosophy?, 21, emphasis in the original)

This is why the philosopher has no real desire to argue or debate.

Philosophers despise the confrontation of ideas, thoroughly avoiding it

(and in this, they differ from the swarm of pastry vendors crowding

journalistic, televisual and cultural debates). Because there is nothing

to debate or argue about when one discusses philosophy. It is not a

question of comparing concept to concept, of seeing what is true, how

adequate this or that concept might be, and so forth. It is a question of

initiating a plane of immanence, of constructing a new perspective, of

opening a gap in the blindness of common vision, precisely of con-

structing bridges over the abyss. And it is a question of walking across

these bridges accompanied by whoever shares the intensity that allowed

it to be constructed.

The philosopher is the concept’s friend; he is potentiality of the con-

cept. That is, philosophy is not a simple art of forming, inventing, or

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