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

81–89 of 89 posts

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

#81

Post by dash2 »

bangkoksbest wrote: post #76
dash2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure Deleuze never said anything about difference, multiplicity, variables, or process that has proved useful to a scientist or engineer, but I'd be very interested to be proved wrong.

I'm an engineer and I find some of his stuff useful, particularly when it comes to thinking through how to think about how to use large p, small n data. But I also don't have a strong reactionary anger to Deleuze's penchant for writing in an obscurant quasi-post-modern literary style, and I get that many do. In any case, it's not like similar ideas are not also worked through in less cryptic ways in contemporary phil…

That's interesting. Could you give a specific example?

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

#82

Post by dlkf »

mannykannot wrote: post #34
dlkf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motte (principia) and bailey (process philosophy).

I'm not sure this would be entirely fair to Whitehead unless he tried to pass off the latter as being justified by the former.

I’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.)

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

#83

Post by d-lisp »

fiforpg wrote: post #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 shou…

This 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.

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

#84

Post by steveklabnik »

zupatol wrote: post #21
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 t…

So a thousand plateaus is great but also very weird, by design. One of their goals is to reject the very structure of a book. One of the forwards by the English translator elaborates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35459054

Honestly I think his forward is one of the better simple examples of the big ideas of the book.

But anyway.

Deleuze’s own work and his work with Guattari are very different. The series of books he wrote on other philosophers, and his own thesis, have a much more straightforward style. In my understanding they are often considered unorthodox readings of the source material (in particularly Nietzsche) but that is on purpose. You may find that stuff more interesting than the more adventurous stuff.

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

#85

Post by shortrounddev2 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #64
standfest wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't like to side with Chomsky, but he's right. The French postmodernists invented a nonsense language primarily to sell books. Postmodernism is the last dying gasps of a branch of philosophy which has found itself increasingly irrelevant since its main thinkers turned out to be utterly wrong about every single political position they held dearest

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

#86

Post by steveklabnik »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #85
steveklabnik wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't like to side with Chomsky, but he's right. The French postmodernists invented a nonsense language primarily to sell books. Postmodernism is the last dying gasps of a branch of philosophy which has found itself increasingly irrelevant since its main thinkers turned out to be utterly wrong about every single political position they held dearest

I think there is a significant difference between “I don’t think they were right,” which is a real, meaningful criticism, and “this is impenetrable nonsense,” which is a surface level criticism.

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

#87

Post by shortrounddev2 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #86
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like to side with Chomsky, but he's right. The French postmodernists invented a nonsense language primarily to sell books. Postmodernism is the last dying gasps of a branch of philosophy which has found itself increasingly irrelevant since its main thinkers turned out to be utterly wrong about every single political position they held dearest

I think there is a significant difference between “I don’t think they were right,” which is a real, meaningful criticism, and “this is impenetrable nonsense,” which is a surface level criticism.

It's impossible to disagree with substance if there is no substance. If the point is to sound smart without saying anything at all. Postmodernism (especially french postmodernism) is a scam designed to sell books to pretentious undergrads

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

#88

Post by gexaha »

dlkf wrote: post #82
mannykannot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this would be entirely fair to Whitehead unless he tried to pass off the latter as being justified by the former.

I’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 i…

yeah, sorry for not being more specific, I meant "process philosophy"

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

#89

Post by mistersquid »

Perhaps 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.

Post reply on HN