Immanent evaluation

Immanent evaluation is a philosophical concept used by Gilles Deleuze in Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), opposed to transcendent judgment.

Friedrich Nietzsche had argued, in On the Genealogy of Morals, that moral philosophy was nihilist in its judgment of the world based on transcendent values: life was rejected by such philosophy, which Arthur Schopenhauer pushed to its extreme meaning, to the profit of non-existent other worlds. Deleuze would start from this argumentation, linking it with Antonin Artaud's Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu ("To finish with god's judgment"—the absence of capitals is purposeful).

Immanent evaluation, as opposed to transcendent judgment, evaluates forces according to two Nietzschean categories: active and reactive. Apart from Nietzsche, a similar example of immanent evaluation can be found in Benedict Spinoza's anomaly (Antonio Negri), where affects constitutes the only form of evaluation.

References

• Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962)