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Gilles Deleuze – What is Philosophy? [audio]

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

#61

There'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)

A friend of mine was a reseller for them! Fond memories !

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

#62
post #37
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

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]

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

#63
Deleuze 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-asse...

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

#64
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those interested in reading a great book exposing Deleuze and others like him, I recommend Fashionable Nonsense by Sokal & Bricmont.

I 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

This post may also be of interest to people: 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

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

#65

There'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)

szepanski 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/ [2] https://shop.laika-verlag.de/search?search=szepanksi [3] https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-93151-3 [4] https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wg-EOZVGC2EpSZR7k_Eqbg

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

#66
post #37
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

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)

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 :)

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

#67
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider Whitehead's philosophy also vacuous?

I 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 foun…

You're mixing up two Whiteheads

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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 foun…

You're mixing up two Whiteheads

No

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

#70
I 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.

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