4 ms·

Reading this has made me realise that I am nowhere near as literate as I think I am.

by akuro 4y ago

kubb 4y ago
To be fair, philosophy is often strong in words and weak in content.
keiferski 4y ago
I wouldn’t feel too bad; D&G are notoriously verbose and full of references to obscure topics.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  This is also presumably a translation from the original French.
csa 4y ago
It really helps a lot if you know the game of go.
bsaul 4y ago
IMHO the 1950s and 60s were the pinacle of intellectual life ( at least in france). Students were actually "fans" of philosophical figures like jean paul sartre. The trendiest place for youth wasn't a nightclub or a gym. It was the café de flore, close to "la sorbonne" university, were one could hope to see a famous writer have a coffee. Young people would spend their saturday skimming through books at "gilbert joseph" bookseller. This is simply gone forever. Whenever i see today's celebrities becoming famous via 20 seconds tiktok, or pseudo intellectuals debating over twitter, and i think about this era that was only 50 years ago, i feel like crying.
- bzhang255 4y ago
  Were you one of those youths or are you just romanticizing someone else's past (which you know nothing about) so you can criticize a contemporary youth populace (whom you know nothing about)?
  - humanizersequel 4y ago
    I am one of the "contemporary youth populace" and will second his comment.
  - bsaul 4y ago
    my parents lived that period as students, i got those stories from them. but it's nothing extraordinary, pretty much everyone knows about this period. as for youth today, i use those apps and i talk to kids in my family. Once again pretty common knowledge.
ajkjk 4y ago
The florid writing is an elitist fad; you can express the same idea in much simpler language without losing any meaning.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
  So what? Famously, Anna Karenina is about a woman who jumps in front of a train, why bother to read the other 863 pages. Anti-Oedipus [1] and especially A Thousand Plateaus [2] is about living in rarefied, futural spaces. Deleuze would be the first to be disgusted even at the faintest idea that his writing has any meaning whatsoever: you want meaning? go and live your life, don't read a book, especially not a philosophy book. In What is Philosophy? [3], Deleuze and Guattari give a very straight and simple answer: "philosophy is the art of forming, inventing and fabricating concepts"—that's it, nothing more, nothing less. Why would you hurry to admire a concept, instead of doing it repeatedly, now, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow [4]: do you also not smell a flower because its florid and anyway you could synthesize ionones [5] into a vial, why bother with the flower. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Plateaus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Plateaus [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Philosophy%3F_(Deleuze_and_Guattari_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Philosophy%3F_(Deleuze... [4] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56964/speech-tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56964/speech-tomorrow... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionone
  - fasterik 4y ago
    There's a word for that, it's called "obscurantism". Profound and true ideas can always be put in simple language. See Richard Feynman for one example. When someone uses a lot of complicated words and sentences to make a trivial point, that's a red flag for me.
    - humanizersequel 4y ago
      >Profound and true ideas can always be put in simple language. Sure, you can reduce the passage above to "Chess is a game of specific, regimented roles, whereas Go is characterized an emergent, contingent understanding of purpose" — but you lose a lot of information compressing it like that, in the same way you lose a lot of information when you tell kids that black holes work like a bowling bowl on a trampoline. Sure, neither are incorrect at a phenomenological level, but it's such a reductive understanding that you can't accurately reason about it without reintroducing the "complicated words and sentences".
karmakurtisaani 4y ago
I thought a lot of fancy words were used, but very little was said.

Reading this has made me realise that I am nowhere near as literate as I think I am.

by akuro 4y ago

Reading this has made me realise that I am nowhere near as literate as I think I am.

kubb 4y ago

To be fair, philosophy is often strong in words and weak in content.

keiferski 4y ago

I wouldn’t feel too bad; D&G are notoriously verbose and full of references to obscure topics.

TechBro8615 4y ago
This is also presumably a translation from the original French.

csa 4y ago

It really helps a lot if you know the game of go.

bsaul 4y ago

IMHO the 1950s and 60s were the pinacle of intellectual life ( at least in france). Students were actually "fans" of philosophical figures like jean paul sartre. The trendiest place for youth wasn't a nightclub or a gym. It was the café de flore, close to "la sorbonne" university, were one could hope to see a famous writer have a coffee. Young people would spend their saturday skimming through books at "gilbert joseph" bookseller. This is simply gone forever. Whenever i see today's celebrities becoming famous via 20 seconds tiktok, or pseudo intellectuals debating over twitter, and i think about this era that was only 50 years ago, i feel like crying.

bzhang255 4y ago
Were you one of those youths or are you just romanticizing someone else's past (which you know nothing about) so you can criticize a contemporary youth populace (whom you know nothing about)?
- humanizersequel 4y ago
  I am one of the "contemporary youth populace" and will second his comment.
- bsaul 4y ago
  my parents lived that period as students, i got those stories from them. but it's nothing extraordinary, pretty much everyone knows about this period. as for youth today, i use those apps and i talk to kids in my family. Once again pretty common knowledge.

ajkjk 4y ago

The florid writing is an elitist fad; you can express the same idea in much simpler language without losing any meaning.

ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
So what? Famously, Anna Karenina is about a woman who jumps in front of a train, why bother to read the other 863 pages. Anti-Oedipus [1] and especially A Thousand Plateaus [2] is about living in rarefied, futural spaces. Deleuze would be the first to be disgusted even at the faintest idea that his writing has any meaning whatsoever: you want meaning? go and live your life, don't read a book, especially not a philosophy book. In What is Philosophy? [3], Deleuze and Guattari give a very straight and simple answer: "philosophy is the art of forming, inventing and fabricating concepts"—that's it, nothing more, nothing less. Why would you hurry to admire a concept, instead of doing it repeatedly, now, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow [4]: do you also not smell a flower because its florid and anyway you could synthesize ionones [5] into a vial, why bother with the flower. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Plateaus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Plateaus [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Philosophy%3F_(Deleuze_and_Guattari_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Philosophy%3F_(Deleuze... [4] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56964/speech-tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56964/speech-tomorrow... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionone
- fasterik 4y ago
  There's a word for that, it's called "obscurantism". Profound and true ideas can always be put in simple language. See Richard Feynman for one example. When someone uses a lot of complicated words and sentences to make a trivial point, that's a red flag for me.
  - humanizersequel 4y ago
    >Profound and true ideas can always be put in simple language. Sure, you can reduce the passage above to "Chess is a game of specific, regimented roles, whereas Go is characterized an emergent, contingent understanding of purpose" — but you lose a lot of information compressing it like that, in the same way you lose a lot of information when you tell kids that black holes work like a bowling bowl on a trampoline. Sure, neither are incorrect at a phenomenological level, but it's such a reductive understanding that you can't accurately reason about it without reintroducing the "complicated words and sentences".

karmakurtisaani 4y ago

I thought a lot of fancy words were used, but very little was said.