/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21442196]

Deleuze: profound thinker or an obscurantist?

[Anonymous No.21442261]

>>21442196
Give one profound thought of Deleuze's, in clear language of course.

[Anonymous No.21442313]

>>21442261
Yeah it’s a bunch of half baked freudianism and prodigious copes about fascism capitalism and schizophrenia

[Anonymous No.21442328]

>>21442261
While I cant think of any off the top of my head as a Deleuze enthusiast. He made good criticisms of capitalism

[Anonymous No.21442363]

Read Deconstructing Postmodernist Nietzscheanism: Deleuze and Foucault by Jan Rehmann to find out

[Anonymous No.21442370]

>>21442328
>He made good criticisms of capitalism
He was literally a neoliberal
He and foucault shilled and voted for neoliberal parties thinking it's a better form of capitalism than the welfare state model

[Anonymous No.21442381]

>>21442261
It's sometimes useful to think of things in terms of little machines that connect together.

[Anonymous No.21443407]

>Difference in itself expresses a metaphysical principle more fundamental and applicable than identity.
Or
>Repetition in displacement is the pure creative process of difference, responsible for many of the genetic tendencies we observe in nature.
Or my personal favorite:
>The double articulation of Form and Content as modes of expression pertains to both language (phonemes and meanings) as well as perceived aspects of nature, including the organization of molecules, proteins, rock strata, etc. and can be seen as reflections of each other.
Or another fun one
>The conception of desire as lack supposes an ideal anti-object within the subject which correlates to something un-experienced, un-possessed, yet held as distinct without the possibility of being so. (Their alternative is that desire is primarily productive. I don’t yet understand the nuances of this alternative view so I can’t explain it here).

You may argue whether these are profound or not. I would argue that, as expressions of general principles nestled within the absolute encyclopedia of examples D&G typically provide in their works, they have merit as destabilizing and original concepts of merit. I may have butchered some of them but that is just my haphazard and still cursory reading of their works.

I think it’s possible to say Deleuze is profound and obscurantic (with reason). Part of the entire point of his philosophical project is providing a new model of thought, known as the rhizome, which conceived of thinking/enacts thinking as a matrix of connections/differences (he’s probably more particular about terminology), in which conceptual “roots” (such as platonic forms) or general arborescent models of thought are negated in favor of free floating unities made by analyzing differences and similarities. Everything is connected and very few hierarchies or unilateral thought progressions are established. This is perhaps his most profound and interesting concept of all. I find it a somewhat optimistic and original way of thinking which sheds light on familiar topics in interesting ways. Deleuze’s philosophy has many positive/constructive elements which I feel separates it from certain French postmodernists in significant ways.

[Anonymous No.21443413]

>>21443407
This was meant as a response to: >>21442261

[Anonymous No.21443704]

>>21442196
becoming-imperceptible

[Anonymous No.21443719]

>>21443407
deleusionals be like: consooming is good actually

[Anonymous No.21443739]

>>21443407
I always felt it's a grasping formulation of cybernetics/information theory, without the latter's standards of precision of course.

[Anonymous No.21443756]

>>21443407
>>Difference in itself expresses a metaphysical principle more fundamental and applicable than identity.
This isn't profound. It is is cleared up in Plato's Sophist, for example. Identity and difference are not more fundamental than one or the other, they are actually on equal footing as far as universality goes.
>>The conception of desire as lack supposes an ideal anti-object within the subject which correlates to something un-experienced, un-possessed, yet held as distinct without the possibility of being so.
This is simply acknowledging the difference between potency and act, something already established prior to and during the medieval period. Potency is not an "anti-object" though (except so far as it is opposed to act), but in any case this question touches on the analogies of being which is fully explored by earlier Scholastic and Muslim thinkers (who, contrary to popular belief, write with the most succinct clarity possible, given the nature of the question).
>>The double articulation of Form and Content as modes of expression pertains to both language (phonemes and meanings) as well as perceived aspects of nature, including the organization of molecules, proteins, rock strata, etc. and can be seen as reflections of each other.
This is again recapitulating the already-established notion of essence and substance.

While personally I don't think Deleuze is as obscurantist as some claim (there are some who are far worse), much of this is derivative and rephrased, and probably also made a bit less understandable and open than it could be.

[Anonymous No.21443799]

>>21442196
Give one profound thought of Deleuze's, in clear language of course.

[Anonymous No.21444250]

>>21442196
Profound obscurantist.

[Anonymous No.21444739]

>>21443756
>This isn't profound. It is is cleared up in Plato's Sophist, for example. Identity and difference are not more fundamental than one or the other, they are actually on equal footing as far as universality goes.
But that’s missing the point. The part of the originality of Difference and Repetition is Deleuze’s attempt to think Difference-in-itself, not reliant on or subordinate to identity.
> This is simply acknowledging the difference between potency and act, something already established prior to and during the medieval period. Potency is not an "anti-object" though (except so far as it is opposed to act), but in any case this question touches on the analogies of being which is fully explored by earlier Scholastic and Muslim thinkers (who, contrary to popular belief, write with the most succinct clarity possible, given the nature of the question).
It’s not “acknowledging the difference”, it’s saying that there cannot be “potency” as traditionally described in preceding systems, most notably Freudian psychology.
> This is again recapitulating the already-established notion of essence and substance.
“It is clear that the distinction between the two articulations is not between substances and forms. Substances are nothing other than formed matters. Forms imply a code, modes of coding and decoding […] but each articulation has a code and a territoriality; therefore each possesses both form and substance.”

Their philosophy is highly referential. There are key differences though.

[Anonymous No.21444848]

>>21442196
>profound thinker or an obscurantist?
As a Deleuzian scholar myself I will give the most lame answer: a bit of the two. He is indeed a profound thinker, but his profundity is totally accesible. And he is indeed an obscurantist, but mostly because he had to engage with problems that are darkened by how ill-constructed philosophical concepts have always been. If you start from the Anglo-Idea that no universal (concept) is made about a concret universal phenomenon, but that all universals are historical-empirically constructed, then you will get most of Deleuze solo-work. If he was in need to invent concepts that seem weird, it was not only for he liked to do that, but also because most philosophical concepts are often used in equivocal ways. He tried to go to the far-macrocosmic and to the far-microcosmic to find the points in which traditional conceptions were transformed; and he did. Difference & Repetition, for example, is really a post-kantian book, but an empiricist take over the internal contradictions of transcendental idealism.

I know I've not said anything about Deleuze's concepts, but about the context of Deleuze's work; but I know this may be useful for people who have read Deleuze, but not so much as to understand why it all always seem to go so clear and from one point to the other it goes pitch-black.

[Anonymous No.21444948]

>>21443756
Potency is not lack is not desire is not potency

[Ada1BathWater No.21444963]

what about nigga?

[Anonymous No.21445020]

>>21444848
Would you classify Deleuze as a successor to Anglo-empiricism, distinct from ‘analytic philosophy’ which itself has a German origin?

[Anonymous No.21445098]

>>21442196
he's good. not great, but good.
>>21442261
um... well... i like his concept of molar, oedipal libidinal investitures vs molecular, schizoid libidinal investitures (even though we live in a society), "i as the habit of the i," ehm there was another one but i forget.

[Anonymous No.21445107]

>>21442261
>>21445098
other good ones: philosophy as the creation of concepts; ideas as virtual multiplicities. the rhizome, of course. "art is the only thing that resists death." lots of good thoughts, just nothing terribly original

[Anonymous No.21445117]

>>21445020
Not him so I don't have an answer exact answer to your question, but he certainly seems more familiar with English language philosophy than his contemporaries, particularly James and Russell.

[Anonymous No.21445123]

>>21445020
I wouldn't say that. Deleuze's was a pretty ambitious man, even if not greedy, and all he did ---prior to his work with Guattari--- was in the line to construct a sui-generis practical theory that could conect hand-by-hand with Nietzschean vitalism. I think that, if Deleuze wanted to continue a prior philosophy, it was most likely that of Nietzsche. Spinoza granted Deleuze the ground for a practical philosophy that could be as open as Nietzscheanism demands, but also as structural as the Critique of Idealist representation requires (Plato; Kant). And it is solely in the ground of the Critique of Kantianism that non-Spinozist rationalists and anglo-empiricists are of use for Deleuze.