7 ms·

Deleuze 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 ago
He 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 ago
  the 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 ago
  Deleuze 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
    [flagged]
- smokel 3y ago
  Many contemporary artists are good at associative thought but pretty bad at rational thought. Several popular French philosophers say a lot, so there will always be some interesting hook for people to catch on. The rational thinker will get annoyed, because the drivel is unfounded. The artist will feel inspired and enlightened. (Source: have formal education in both mathematics and fine arts.)
  - 2devnull 3y ago
    The influence of French cinema may be a factor too I would guess.
  - nathias 3y ago
    this is more of a problem of the US reception of Deleuze via literary studies not philosophy, Deleuze is a very serious and rational thinker, but without context, it's senseless (which people use for posturing)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - smokel 3y ago
      Hm, I should not have used the word "drivel", that may have been a bit too harsh. A thing with Deleuze is that I still see very little value in some of his ideas. The idea of a "rhizome" for instance (which might be related to Latour's "actor-network theory") seems rather trivial to me. This may well be because I grew up in a time when these ideas were already fairly mainstream, but I find it highly unlikely that people before Deleuze only thought in black and white. A hurdle that I may once have to cross is that I should not read these philosophers for their original thought, but more for their critique on contemporary society. The latter seems rather pointless, because it costs me almost no effort to superficially critique contemporary society myself :)
      - nathias 3y ago
        most of it is an attempt to escape Hegelianism/Marxism/psychoanalysis, but his earlier works (Difference and Repetition, Logic Of Sense) are much better in terms of accessibility, to me his best are books on other philosophers, on Kant, Spinoza, Leibniz. The late stages of philosophers' works are often quite wacky.
zupatol 3y ago
I read a few pages of thousand plateaus and I didn't get the impression he really wanted the reader to make sense of it. It's full of quotations of works you would certainly know if you had enough culture. It feels like an violent attempt to humiliate the reader into submission. Apparently the english version came out with a lot of footnotes to provide context. This probably betrays the spirit of the original. I'll try to listen to the podcast though, maybe some civilized people did manage to find something valuable in his writing.
- nathias 3y ago
  Continental philosophy has some starting points, but some authors will be completely incomprehensible without reading most of the classical works. It's written for philosophers. If you haven't read at least Kant and Hegel, Heidegger and know what psychoanalysis and structuralism are about you have no basis of understanding for it.
  - zupatol 3y ago
    Haven't read all of that, but it strikes me that some of these authors like Freud and Levi-Strauss are perfectly understandable without much background. Haven't tried Kant but other authors consider him very methodic and logical, about the opposite of Deuleuze, and he's a big inspiration for the very readable Schopenhauer. Maybe Hegel and Heidegger are where things get complicated.
    - namarie 3y ago
      Do try Kant; being "methodic and logical" in no way implies being easy to read!
    - nathias 3y ago
      Freud and Levi-Strauss were scientists/academics who influenced philosophy, but not philosophers. Philosophy has a lot of dependencies, this is why every so often a fork is needed to 'restart' but it never works and dependencies start piling up again.
  - 3y ago
profeatur 3y ago
+1. Even if many of the mid-twentieth century French philosophers were incomprehensible and self-contradictory, they certainly provided a lot of useful raw material for more grounded thinkers like De Landa.
mrkeen 3y ago
What was something he said that made sense?

dr_dshiv 3y ago

He 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 ago
the 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 ago
Deleuze 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
  [flagged]
smokel 3y ago
Many contemporary artists are good at associative thought but pretty bad at rational thought. Several popular French philosophers say a lot, so there will always be some interesting hook for people to catch on. The rational thinker will get annoyed, because the drivel is unfounded. The artist will feel inspired and enlightened. (Source: have formal education in both mathematics and fine arts.)
- 2devnull 3y ago
  The influence of French cinema may be a factor too I would guess.
- nathias 3y ago
  this is more of a problem of the US reception of Deleuze via literary studies not philosophy, Deleuze is a very serious and rational thinker, but without context, it's senseless (which people use for posturing)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - smokel 3y ago
    Hm, I should not have used the word "drivel", that may have been a bit too harsh. A thing with Deleuze is that I still see very little value in some of his ideas. The idea of a "rhizome" for instance (which might be related to Latour's "actor-network theory") seems rather trivial to me. This may well be because I grew up in a time when these ideas were already fairly mainstream, but I find it highly unlikely that people before Deleuze only thought in black and white. A hurdle that I may once have to cross is that I should not read these philosophers for their original thought, but more for their critique on contemporary society. The latter seems rather pointless, because it costs me almost no effort to superficially critique contemporary society myself :)
    - nathias 3y ago
      most of it is an attempt to escape Hegelianism/Marxism/psychoanalysis, but his earlier works (Difference and Repetition, Logic Of Sense) are much better in terms of accessibility, to me his best are books on other philosophers, on Kant, Spinoza, Leibniz. The late stages of philosophers' works are often quite wacky.

zupatol 3y ago

I read a few pages of thousand plateaus and I didn't get the impression he really wanted the reader to make sense of it. It's full of quotations of works you would certainly know if you had enough culture. It feels like an violent attempt to humiliate the reader into submission. Apparently the english version came out with a lot of footnotes to provide context. This probably betrays the spirit of the original. I'll try to listen to the podcast though, maybe some civilized people did manage to find something valuable in his writing.

nathias 3y ago
Continental philosophy has some starting points, but some authors will be completely incomprehensible without reading most of the classical works. It's written for philosophers. If you haven't read at least Kant and Hegel, Heidegger and know what psychoanalysis and structuralism are about you have no basis of understanding for it.
- zupatol 3y ago
  Haven't read all of that, but it strikes me that some of these authors like Freud and Levi-Strauss are perfectly understandable without much background. Haven't tried Kant but other authors consider him very methodic and logical, about the opposite of Deuleuze, and he's a big inspiration for the very readable Schopenhauer. Maybe Hegel and Heidegger are where things get complicated.
  - namarie 3y ago
    Do try Kant; being "methodic and logical" in no way implies being easy to read!
  - nathias 3y ago
    Freud and Levi-Strauss were scientists/academics who influenced philosophy, but not philosophers. Philosophy has a lot of dependencies, this is why every so often a fork is needed to 'restart' but it never works and dependencies start piling up again.
- 3y ago

profeatur 3y ago

+1. Even if many of the mid-twentieth century French philosophers were incomprehensible and self-contradictory, they certainly provided a lot of useful raw material for more grounded thinkers like De Landa.

mrkeen 3y ago

What was something he said that made sense?