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That paragraph certainly is hard to read. Sounds like something a high school student with a thesaurus might produce.

fish_fan 9y ago
Yea, but it's a decent pitch for the experience. LSD is sensual.
danharaj 9y ago
Deleuze is certainly hard to read, much of that is on purpose. It's better in the original French though. I started reading him recently myself.
thanatropism 9y ago
A lot of those terms read evocative, but are actually technical terms in Deleuze's philosophy (and that of his predecessors). Deleuze is hard to understand because joining his world takes work. He's very precise. I don't even know why Deleuze is being connected to Foucault here. Those two helped market each other and had one political project in common (something re: abuse of power in prisons; but even Sartre was involved in this cause celèbre). But Foucault was a globe-trotter pleasure-seeker who got AIDS in the saunas of San Francisco and supported the Ayatollah's revolution. Deleuze on the other hand came from an ultra-conservative catholic background, was married only once to the mom of his kids, hated travel and probably never left France, and by all accounts was a great dad and husband. Whenever Deleuze writes about drugs in extension, he preaches prudence -- it's a particular example in the wider concept framework of deterritorialization and the "body without organs". Hardcore masochists (yes, there's quite some sexual moralism in Deleuze) and drug addicts are those who do it too much, without the proper prudence and understanding.
- jancsika 9y ago
  > Deleuze is hard to understand because joining his world takes work. He's very precise. That's a tautology-- "Deleuze is hard to understand" is a restatement of "joining his world takes work." The question is-- why does it take so much work?
  - rhizome 9y ago
    It's similar to the old saying, "Unix is user-friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are."
  - thanatropism 9y ago
    Philosophy is difficult because it tries not to rely on common knowledge and common sense. So it's difficult to access.
    - jancsika 9y ago
      That's not a necessary property of philosophical writing, as evidenced by the writing of Hume, Locke, Descartes, Peter Singer, and many others.
      - thanatropism 9y ago
        Sometimes it's easier to fill in the blanks with commonsense ideas, yes. Much philosophy is deliberately obscure precisely to avoid that. Deleuze (or Leibniz, Nietzsche, Heidegger...) are not out to persuade you of any particularly easily-digestible position. Their whole project is to make you think. Thinking is not comfortable, I know.
        jancsika 9y ago
        > Deleuze (or Leibniz, Nietzsche, Heidegger...) are not out to persuade you of any particularly easily-digestible position. I'm not asking about the writing of Neitzshe, Heidegger, nor Leibniz. There was a claim that Deleuze's writing is difficult, which I assume to have meant on top of the normal difficulties of working out the cogency of philosophical arguments. Otherwise the response would have been "philosophy is difficult," rather than referring specifically to "Deleuze's world."
        thanatropism 9y ago
        Well, Deleuze uses words that sound exciting and already have commonsense language connotations (rhizomes! lines of flight! war machines!). This has the effect of attracting intellectually curious persons but also putting some intellectually mature people off. Then, Deleuze is misused a lot. But so is quantum theory.

Yea, but it's a decent pitch for the experience. LSD is sensual.

Deleuze is certainly hard to read, much of that is on purpose. It's better in the original French though. I started reading him recently myself.

thanatropism 9y ago

A lot of those terms read evocative, but are actually technical terms in Deleuze's philosophy (and that of his predecessors). Deleuze is hard to understand because joining his world takes work. He's very precise. I don't even know why Deleuze is being connected to Foucault here. Those two helped market each other and had one political project in common (something re: abuse of power in prisons; but even Sartre was involved in this cause celèbre). But Foucault was a globe-trotter pleasure-seeker who got AIDS in the saunas of San Francisco and supported the Ayatollah's revolution. Deleuze on the other hand came from an ultra-conservative catholic background, was married only once to the mom of his kids, hated travel and probably never left France, and by all accounts was a great dad and husband. Whenever Deleuze writes about drugs in extension, he preaches prudence -- it's a particular example in the wider concept framework of deterritorialization and the "body without organs". Hardcore masochists (yes, there's quite some sexual moralism in Deleuze) and drug addicts are those who do it too much, without the proper prudence and understanding.

jancsika 9y ago
> Deleuze is hard to understand because joining his world takes work. He's very precise. That's a tautology-- "Deleuze is hard to understand" is a restatement of "joining his world takes work." The question is-- why does it take so much work?
- rhizome 9y ago
  It's similar to the old saying, "Unix is user-friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are."
- thanatropism 9y ago
  Philosophy is difficult because it tries not to rely on common knowledge and common sense. So it's difficult to access.
  - jancsika 9y ago
    That's not a necessary property of philosophical writing, as evidenced by the writing of Hume, Locke, Descartes, Peter Singer, and many others.
    - thanatropism 9y ago
      Sometimes it's easier to fill in the blanks with commonsense ideas, yes. Much philosophy is deliberately obscure precisely to avoid that. Deleuze (or Leibniz, Nietzsche, Heidegger...) are not out to persuade you of any particularly easily-digestible position. Their whole project is to make you think. Thinking is not comfortable, I know.
      - jancsika 9y ago
        > Deleuze (or Leibniz, Nietzsche, Heidegger...) are not out to persuade you of any particularly easily-digestible position. I'm not asking about the writing of Neitzshe, Heidegger, nor Leibniz. There was a claim that Deleuze's writing is difficult, which I assume to have meant on top of the normal difficulties of working out the cogency of philosophical arguments. Otherwise the response would have been "philosophy is difficult," rather than referring specifically to "Deleuze's world."
        thanatropism 9y ago
        Well, Deleuze uses words that sound exciting and already have commonsense language connotations (rhizomes! lines of flight! war machines!). This has the effect of attracting intellectually curious persons but also putting some intellectually mature people off. Then, Deleuze is misused a lot. But so is quantum theory.