Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]

philosophizethis.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 89 posts

Re: Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]

#21

Post by zupatol »

nathias wrote: post #6

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.

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.

Re: Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]

#22

Post by mrkeen »

bangkoksbest wrote: post #10
zvmaz wrote: post #3

"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

The 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…

> 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.

Re: Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]

#23

Post by beepbooptheory »

mrkeen wrote: post #22
bangkoksbest wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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…

> 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 mechan…

This 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

Re: Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]

#24

Post by shortrounddev2 »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #12
nathias wrote: post #6

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.

He is very popular in the arts, but I don’t understand why. It’s vaguely platonic (which I like) but obtuse (like kant).

[flagged]

Re: Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]

#25

Post by smokel »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #12
nathias wrote: post #6

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.

He is very popular in the arts, but I don’t understand why. It’s vaguely platonic (which I like) but obtuse (like kant).

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.)

Re: Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]

#27

Post by bangkoksbest »

mrkeen wrote: post #22
bangkoksbest wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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…

> 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 mechan…

Of course they're tautologies in a logic sense, and I deliberately wrote them that way (whether they are pejorative tautologies is not really a material point.) They're statements about the methods for empirical thinking, the statements were not supposed to have empirical content themselves.

Re: Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]

#29

Post by profeatur »

nathias wrote: post #6

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.

+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.

Re: Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]

#30

Post by gchamonlive »

11235813213455 wrote: post #4

As 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

Well... 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.

Post reply on HN