8 ms·
Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]
- starwin1159 3y agonice
- zvmaz 3y ago"Deleuze's work is characterized by his emphasis on difference and multiplicity, which he saw as fundamental to understanding the world. He developed a philosophy of becoming, which emphasizes the importance of change and transformation." Vacuous. Reminds me of David Stove's "What is wrong with our thoughts" [1]. [1] https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html
- tomtomistaken 3y agoCheck out all the parts available on Philosophize This!. In particular, parts 4[1] and 5[2] talk about flows and difference. [1] https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/deleuze-flows https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/deleuze-flows [2] https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/deleuze-difference https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/deleuze-difference
- gexaha 3y agoDo you consider Whitehead's philosophy also vacuous?
- dlkf 3y agoMotte (principia) and bailey (process philosophy).
- mannykannot 3y agoI'm not sure this would be entirely fair to Whitehead unless he tried to pass off the latter as being justified by the former.
- dlkf 3y agoI’m not accusing Whitehead of the fallacy, I’m talking about the parent post. Parent is suggesting that if we don’t take Deleuze seriously, we should also not take Whitehead seriously. (Despite Whitehead being a fav of the analytic crowd.) But the Deleuze comparison, to the extent that it makes any sense, only applies to the later Whitehead. We don’t have to reject the Pricipia. The obvious position is that Deleuze is not-even-wrong, process philosophy is not-even-wrong, and the principia is merely wrong (which is amazing in philosophy.)
- gexaha 3y agoyeah, sorry for not being more specific, I meant "process philosophy"
- cyber_kinetist 3y agoI have heard that Deleuze’s works highly derive from Whitehead’s process philosophy (along with influences of Bergson and Nietzsche). Which was pretty unexpected to me, since I’ve previously known Whitehead as a mathematician who tried creating a foundation of modern mathematics with Bertrand Russell (writing the book Principia Mathematica together). So I wouldn’t have expected that he’s actually one of the more foundational people behind continental philosophy, which has a (mis-understood) image of being illogical and vacuous! Anyways, should read Process and Reality someday, since my interest in panpsychism is growing… (And which might be more useful than reading Deleuze/Guattari since they’re just too cryptic)
- CiteXieAlAlyEtc 3y agothe most underrated comment on this thread; i cackled out loud, thank you. Shaviro's "Without Criteria" which discusses this connection was an absolute delight.
- bangkoksbest 3y agoThe Stove essay (in truth it's a prolonged rant) supposedly extols the virtues of empirical thinking, and you invoked it to back up the sense you had that the description of Deleuze's philosophy is vacuous... And yet... Difference and multiplicity are core to empirical data and scientific & engineering modelling. To make a measurement you assume there is a scale to measure difference. To have a variable is to assume that something can vary. To be a cause is to assume something can make a difference. To have a process is to assume a system that can change and transform. There's nothing vacuous about this.
- mrkeen 3y ago> To have a variable is to assume that something can vary. Tautology. > To be a cause is to assume something can make a difference. Tautology. > To have a process is to assume a system that can change and transform. Tautology. Vacuous is exactly how I'd describe the above. The only statement with potential depth is: > To make a measurement you assume there is a scale to measure difference. This invokes quantum mechanics a little. But if those are Deleuze's words, he's a bit late to the party. That stuff was being quantified and mathematically modelled decades before.
- beepbooptheory 3y agoThis is very strange.. Those are not what tautologies are. In order for something to be tautological, you need to be working within some formal system of proof. Proposing definitions to terms could never be tautological. I think you just want to say "I know that already!" Also, Deleuze would love this comment, precisely because of your confusion in the term. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Sense https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Sense
- bangkoksbest 3y agoTo be fair, I did intentionally write them in a style to mimic propositional logical statements (which are tautologies) but you are correct that they're not in a formal system so they can't actually be tautologies.
- asplake 3y agoMultiplicity, because relationships become important. Difference, because that drives emergence. Becoming, because when you're dealing with the emergent (eg social structures), how they come into being is essential to understanding them.
- leschak 3y agodeleuze was actually pretty well read in the natural sciences of his times, especially physics. even if you find this short snippet vacuous-sounding, he is actually one of the few philosophers whose metaphors about impenetrable parts of reality are grounded.
- keiferski 3y agoThese words have specific meanings in Deleuze’s philosophy. They aren’t that complicated. Your comment is tantamount to someone that doesn’t speak German saying “vacuous” when they come across a word like Geist. Lazy and uninformed.
- specialist 3y agoI know almost nothing about philosophy and exactly nothing about Deleuze. I do know the ancient philosophers cared a lot about change. So I assume Deleuze's notions wrt change are serious too, and not just some self-help new age crap.
- 11235813213455 3y agoAs a teenager, I was enjoying Sciences classes, but not Philisophy at all at that time, I was really lagging behind in maturity, of course now 20 years later it's different. I don't think Philisophy is something you can only learn, I think you need enough life experience, maturity, wisdom so distance and time
- earthboundkid 3y agoAlso with a lot of the French philosophers, there’s an assumption that you’ve already had a standard Sorbonne education, and now you’re ready for a revisionist interpretation of some fundamental questions in the standard model, but if you’re just coming to it as an American undergrad, you’re missing a lot of the context, so the revision makes no sense.
- gchamonlive 3y agoWell... Simone Weil very early in life already had a strong concept of what philosophy was and how she would like to tackle it. She had a genius of her own and is not fair to compair the average person interested in philosophy to her. However I think we can trace somehow a parallel between the lack of general interest in those areas of humanity in early life and the utilitarian nature of kindergarten and highschool. That is, not enjoying philosophy early in life speaks more about how outdated our education system is in general and less about philosophy itself. We are just not practicing philosophy in school.
- hprotagonist 3y ago> I don't think Philisophy is something you can only learn, I think you need enough life experience, maturity, wisdom so distance and time ha ha only serious: the real philosophy is the one we found along the way
- nathias 3y agoDeleuze is one of the best thinkers of the last century, but he requires a lot of reading before what he's saying can make any sense.
- dr_dshiv 3y agoHe is very popular in the arts, but I don’t understand why. It’s vaguely platonic (which I like) but obtuse (like kant).
- pas 3y agothe only thing I know about him (them, with Guattari), is that they went all-in to post-modern stuff with regards to the individual and society, and a lot of artists are simply find that relatable. (only the non-conformist can survive in this capitalist wasteland of ever increasing economic efficiency, etc.. etc..) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus with the subtitle "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" ... and in the second part "A Thousand Plateaus" they discuss a lot of artists > obtuse who isn't? but seriously, first-hand reading of philosophy seems like a big no-no, almost all of it is derivative and it's very hard to present it in an efficient way (just the exposition/background/context required for [comprehending] thought experiments is usually a few dense pages, etc.) or possibly my past encounters were very unfortunate, and it'd be great to hear some suggestions!
- nonrandomstring 3y agoDeleuze shows up in film and sound design, maybe music a bit. I get why; process, change, emergence, diversity... all have a deep bearing on these arts. Personally find it useful for understanding media in a theoretical way. But what practising artists can really use from Deleuze, I am unsure.
- shortrounddev2 3y ago[flagged]
- plastic_enjoyer 3y ago
- mistersquid 3y agoPerhaps a small point, maybe irrelevant, but the Stephen West's pronunciation of Gilles Deleuze and (Jacques) Derrida in the first 2 minutes are not in step with how philosophers pronounce these names. Such idiosyncratic pronunciations suggest West may not understand the target discourse community, let alone be acknowledged informative by the same.
- asplake 3y agoI have been introduced to Deleuze, but oh my, he is really hard work, even secondhand. If interested in assemblage theory, start with DeLanda.
- bronikowski 3y agoPhilosophize This is a very beginner friendly podcast. I'd gladly recommend it to anyone with even cursory interest. Then you go to History of Philosophy without Any Gaps. ;)
- jamesrcole 3y agoOr if they're looking for written content, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a great resource. It has articles on lots of philosophical topics, and they're fairly accessible https://plato.stanford.edu/ https://plato.stanford.edu/
- pas 3y agoExcuse my spamminess (and for hijacking the current top comment), but I would like to recommend the innocent looking episode 162 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-43zh_za_eQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-43zh_za_eQ The Creation of Meaning - The Denial of Death ( transcript https://www.philosophizethis.org/transcript/episode-162-transcript https://www.philosophizethis.org/transcript/episode-162-tran... ) "The Denial of Death is a 1973 book by American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker which discusses the psychological and philosophical implications of ..." clickbait! well, no, not clickbait, but death, but maybe it's the same thing? listen and you'll find out :)
- shortrounddev2 3y agoOne of the greatest charlatans of postmodernism
- lxbxc 3y agoAlso one of the most important figures in film criticism [shrug emoji]
- abyssin 3y agoFor those interested in reading a great book exposing Deleuze and others like him, I recommend Fashionable Nonsense by Sokal & Bricmont.
- hackandthink 3y agoIn think Sokal is right. The postmodern academic left is a phenomenon of decay and is not helpful for traditional left-wing goals such as social justice. On the other hand, I think Deleuze has a deep understanding of philosophy and, to some extent, mathematics. Deleuze always tries to make a transition from traditional theories to his extreme conception of difference and repetition. It's crazy, but it has a certain genius.
- standfest 3y agoI am not a big fan of the Sokal Hoax and the follow ups. They made cheap money out of obvious misinterpretations, and did much more harm than anything else. While Chomsky, maybe from a US perspective, found some value, I am more with Derrida who analysed it as what it was: sad. I recommend his perspective https://philpapers.org/rec/DERPM https://philpapers.org/rec/DERPM
- steveklabnik 3y agoThis post may also be of interest to people: http://byfat.xxx/chomsky http://byfat.xxx/chomsky And it's not like other fields don't have their own Sokal Hoax either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_affair
- samirillian 3y agoOne may not like Deleuze's system, but I don't think it's fair to call him a charlatan. His work on other philosophers (e.g. Leibniz) is highly regarded, he provided valuable counterpoints to Freud, and Badiou accused him of being a secret platonist, which I think most hn-posters would appreciate. His one-off observations alone should be enough to grant him the benefit of the doubt. If you don't recognize sparks of brilliance in his lectures and conversations, well! See the abecediary, or his lecture on cinema as the creative act, or any of his readings of past philosophers.
- hackandthink 3y agoIf you want to have an idea of what Deleuze's philosophy is all about: (Differential Ontology) https://iep.utm.edu/differential-ontology/ https://iep.utm.edu/differential-ontology/
- oglop 3y agoI loved a book he wrote. Oeduous and capitalists or something. Anyway, it was wordy and I think he was struggling to find words but it was a great read and helped me construct some useful models for myself when speaking to people across varying domains of science. Just gotta jump to their ribosome or whatever the hell and use their language to transfer data fast. I could see an analyst mind reading this and having a mental break down though and then coming on hacker news to try and offer some quick wit to gain reputation about “wow, how wordy. Must be a charlatan”. Could be. Could be good stuff here. No need to lecture me btw. I literally won’t care.
- dirtyhippiefree 3y agoI’m surprised nobody has mentioned Philosophy Talk on NPR. Hosted by two Stanford professors. “Known as ‘the program that questions everything—except your intelligence’ Philosophy Talk challenges listeners to question their assumptions and to think about things in new ways.“ https://www.philosophytalk.org/ https://www.philosophytalk.org/
- Cockbrand 3y agoThere's a quite influential electronic music label called Mille Plateaux [0], named after Deleuze's work. Label founder Achim Szepanski often quoted Deleuze in interviews and liner notes. I found that somewhat pretentious b/c I could hardly grasp any of that. Still, Mille Plateaux released quite a few absolutely timeless classics. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mille_Plateaux_(record_label) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mille_Plateaux_(record_label)
- wiz21c 3y agoA friend of mine was a reseller for them! Fond memories !
- mstep 3y agoszepanski reactivated the label some years ago. new releases can be found on bandcamp [1]. from 2014 onwards he also wrote several books on financial capital and marx based on laruelle, deleuze and lately especially baudrillard [2]. last year he published a "new theory of financial capital" [3], that also got published in china [4]. [1] https://forceincmilleplateaux.bandcamp.com/ https://forceincmilleplateaux.bandcamp.com/ [2] https://shop.laika-verlag.de/search?search=szepanksi https://shop.laika-verlag.de/search?search=szepanksi [3] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-93151-3 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-93151-3 [4] https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wg-EOZVGC2EpSZR7k_Eqbg https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wg-EOZVGC2EpSZR7k_Eqbg
- steveklabnik 3y agoDeleuze is my favorite philosopher. Eleven years ago I wrote a few blog posts trying to apply his concepts to programming. Haven't read them in a very long time, dunno if they hold up, but if anyone is interested: https://steveklabnik.com/writing/deleuze-for-developers-assemblages https://steveklabnik.com/writing/deleuze-for-developers-asse...
- voldacar 3y agoMost of this seems neither true nor false, but meaningless in the Carnapian sense.
- fiforpg 3y agoI like what Bertrand Russell had to say to that very question, in one of Unpopular essays (quoting approximately from memory): Philosophy is science in the circumstances of insufficient knowledge. That is, given insufficient data it may still be beneficial to ponder possible future directions of research, contemplate lines of attack on long-standing questions, or even determine beforehand how these big questions should be posed. All of these circumscientific activities and thinking together constitute philosophy.
- d-lisp 3y agoThis is why the product of philosophy cannot be valuable compared to a random opinion outside of the context of a system. Nevertheless the activity of speculating about the possible paths a system (such as science) can take regarding a specific problem is of great importance, that's probably what Russel meant by this text.
- AussieWog93 3y agoTo me, philosophy is the art of finding the most low-stakes, ungrounded problems on Earth, so you can argue about the solution ad nauseam until eventually someone who doesn't care about philosophy stumbles across the solution by mistake.
- jackstraw14 3y agowhat's an example of something argued successfully/unsuccessfully in your definition?
- curation 3y agoPhilosophy is accurately describing an antagonism instead of asking questions which just further mystify the antagonism allowing it to continue, unabated. This is the time for philosophers.