35 ideas
7990 | Serene wisdom is freedom from ties, and indifference to fortune [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: Who everywhere is free from all ties, who neither rejoices nor sorrows if fortune is good or is ill, his is a serene wisdom. | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.57) | |
A reaction: This is very similar to the 'apatheia' of the Stoics, though they are always more committed to rationality. This is quite a good strategy when times are hard, but as a general rule it offers a bogus state of 'wisdom' which is really half way to death. |
21852 | Nomads are the basis of history, and yet almost unknowable [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: There is no history from the viewpoint of nomads, although everything passes through them, to the point that they are like the noumena or the unknowable of history. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.107) | |
A reaction: Nomads have the same place in society that indeterminate 'stuff' has in an object-orientated metaphysics. Deleuze seems to be romanticising nomads the way the late Victorians romanticised gypsies. |
21844 | The history of philosophy is an agent of power: how can you think if you haven't read the great names? [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: The history of philosophy has always been the agent of power in philosophy, and even in thought. It has played the oppressor's role: how can you think without having read Plato, Descartes, Kant and Heidegger. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
A reaction: I find it hard to relate to this French 1960s obsession with everybody being oppressed in every conceivable way, so that 'liberation' is the only value that matters. If you ask why liberty is needed, you seem to have missed the point. |
21849 | Thought should be thrown like a stone from a war-machine [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: Thought should be thrown like a stone by a war-machine. …Isn't this what Nietzsche does with an aphorism? | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II) | |
A reaction: It sounds as if philosophy should consist of nothing but aphorisms. |
21845 | Philosophy aims to become the official language, supporting orthodoxy and the state [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: Philosophy is shot through with the project of becoming the official language of a Pure State. The exercise of thought thus conforms to the goals of the real State, to the dominant meanings and to the requirements of the established order. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
A reaction: [He cites Nietzsche's 'Schopenhauer as Educator' as the source of this] Is Karl Marx included in this generalisation, or Diogenes of Sinope? Is conservative philosophy thereby invalidated? |
21839 | When I meet objections I just move on; they never contribute anything [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: Not reflection, and objections are even worse. Every time someone puts an objection to me, I want to say: 'OK, OK, let's get on to something else'. Objections have never contributed anything. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
A reaction: I know it is heresy in analytic philosophy, but I love this! In analytic seminars you can barely complete your first sentence before someone interrupts. It's like road range - the philosophical mind state is always poised to attack, attack. |
21841 | We must create new words, and treat them as normal, and as if designating real things. [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: Let us create extraordinary words, on condition that they be put to the most ordinary use and that the entity they designate be made to exist in the same way as the most common object. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
A reaction: This sounds like the attitude of someone creating a computer game. A language game! The idea is to create concepts with which to 'palpitate' our conceptual scheme, in order to reveal it, and thus put it within our power. |
21901 | 'Difference' refers to that which eludes capture [Deleuze, by May] |
Full Idea: 'Difference' is a term which Deleuze uses to refer to that which eludes capture. | |
From: report of Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 3.03 | |
A reaction: Presumably its ancestor is Kant's noumenon. This is one of his concepts used to 'palpate' our ossified conceptual scheme. |
7989 | Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: Seek salvation in the wisdom of reason. | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.49) | |
A reaction: Quotations like this can usually be counterbalanced in eastern philosophy by wild irrationality, but they certainly felt to tug of reason. Only the Dhaoists seem really opposed to reason (e.g. Idea 7289). |
21842 | Don't assess ideas for truth or justice; look for another idea, and establish a relationship with it [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: You should not try to find whether an idea is just or correct. You should look for a completely different idea, elsewhere, in another area, so that something passes between the two which is neither in one nor the other. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
A reaction: Neither relativism nor dialectic. Sounds like just having fun with ideas, but a commentator tells me it is a strategy for liberating our thought, following an agenda created by Nietzsche. |
21850 | Dualisms can be undone from within, by tracing connections, and drawing them to a new path [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: It is always possible to undo dualisms from the inside, by tracing the line of flight which passes between the two terms or the two sets …and which draws both into a non-parallel evolution. At least this does not belong to the dialectic. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II) | |
A reaction: Deleuze disliked Hegel's version of the dialectic. Not clear what he means here, but he is evidently groping for an alternative account of the reasoning process, which is interesting. Deleuze hates rigid dualisms. |
21838 | Before we seek solutions, it is important to invent problems [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: The art of constructing a problem is very important: you invent a problem, a problem-position, before finding a solution. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
A reaction: I get the impression that Deleuze prefers problems to solutions, so the activity of exploring the problem is all that really matters. Sceptics accuse philosophers of inventing pseudo-problems. We must first know why 'problematising' is good. |
21908 | Ontology can be continual creation, not to know being, but to probe the unknowable [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: Ontology can be an ontology of difference ....where what is there is not the same old things but a process of continual creation, an ontology that does not seek to reduce being to the knowable, but widens thought to palpate the unknowable. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]), quoted by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 5.05 | |
A reaction: I'm inclined to think that the first duty of ontology is to face up to the knowable. I'm not sure that probing the unknowable, with no success or prospect of it, is a good way to spend a life. Probing ('palpating') can sometimes discover things. |
21902 | 'Being' is univocal, but its subject matter is actually 'difference' [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: Being is said in a single and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of which it is said differs: it is said of difference itself. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968], p.36), quoted by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 3.03 | |
A reaction: This is an attempt to express the Heraclitean view of reality, as process, movement, multiplicity - something which always eludes our attempts to pin it down. |
21899 | There is no being beyond becoming [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: There is no being beyond becoming, nothing beyond multiplicity. ...Becoming is the affirmation of being. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (Nietzsche and Philosophy [1962], p.23), quoted by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 2.09 | |
A reaction: This places Deleuze in what I think of as the Heraclitus tradition. Parmenides does Being, Heraclitus does Becoming, Aristotle does Beings. |
21903 | Ontology does not tell what there is; it is just a strange adventure [Deleuze, by May] |
Full Idea: In Deleuze's hands ontology is not a matter of telling us what there is, but of taking us on strange adventures. | |
From: report of Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 3.03 | |
A reaction: Presumably you only indulge in the strange adventure because you have no idea how to specify what there is. This sounds like the essence of post-modernism, in which life is just a game. |
21904 | Being is a problem to be engaged, not solved, and needs a new mode of thinking [Deleuze, by May] |
Full Idea: In Deleuze, Being is not a puzzle to be solved but a problem to be engaged. It is to be engaged by a thought that moves as comfortably among problems as it does among solutions, as fluidly among differences as it does among identities. | |
From: report of Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 4.01 | |
A reaction: This sounds like what I've always known as 'negative capability' (thanks to Keats). Is philosophy just a hobby, like playing darts? It seems that the aim of the process is 'liberation', about which I would like to know more. |
21847 | Before Being there is politics [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: Before Being there is politics. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
A reaction: [He says he is quoting Felix Guattari] I can only think that this is a very Marxist view - that politics permeates and dictates everything. This seems to tell me that I am forever controlled by something so deep and vast that I can never understand it. |
21907 | We don't want another new set of categories; we want a variety of flexible categories [Deleuze, by May] |
Full Idea: For Deleuze, the task is not one of replacing a single set of categories with another set. It is one of being able to create and move among various sets of categories, and even to cross between them. | |
From: report of Gilles Deleuze (The Actual and the Virtual [1977]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 4.05 | |
A reaction: This sounds fun, but I'm not clear why we need this anarchic mix of categories. The motto of Deleuze seems to be 'at all costs, keep moving'. He loved the idea of nomads. Is Rimbaud our role model? The influence of Foucault is obvious. |
7996 | I am all the beauty and goodness of things, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: I am the beauty of all things beautiful; ...I am the goodness of those who are good, says Krishna. | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.36) | |
A reaction: Another attempt to annexe everything which is admirable to the nature of God. This sounds strikingly Platonic (c.f. Idea 7992, which seems Aristotelian). One scholar dates the text to 150 BCE. I think there is influence, one way or the other. |
20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
Full Idea: There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles. | |
From: report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro' | |
A reaction: I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture? |
21840 | A meeting of man and animal can be deterritorialization (like a wasp with an orchid) [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: The wasp becomes part of the orchid's reproductive apparatus at the same time as the orchid becomes the sexual organ of the wasp. …There are becomings where a man and an animal only meet on the trajectory of a common but asymmetrical deterritorialization. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
A reaction: [second bit compressed] The point here is to illustrate 'deterritorialization', a term which Deleuze got from Guattari. It seems to be where the margins of your being become unclear. Recall the externalist, anti-individualist view of mind. |
7995 | In all living beings I am the light of consciousness, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: In all living beings I am the light of consciousness, says Krishna. | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.22) | |
A reaction: Everything grand seems to be claimed for God at this stage of culture, but I am not sure how coherent this view is, unless this is pantheism. In what sense could we possibly be Krishna, when none of us (except Arjuna) is aware of it? |
21843 | People consist of many undetermined lines, some rigid, some supple, some 'lines of flight' [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: Things, people, are made up of varied lines, and they do not necessarily know which line they are on or where they should make the line which they are tracing pass; there is a whole geography in people, with rigid lines, supple lines, lines of flight etc. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
A reaction: An example of Deleuze creating a novel concept, in order to generate a liberating way of seeing our lives. His big focus is on 'lines of flight' (which, I think, are less restrained by local culture than the others). |
7999 | All actions come from: body, lower self, perception, means of action, or Fate [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: Whatever a man does, good or bad, in thought, word or deed, has these five sources of action: the body, the lower 'I am', the means of perception, the means of action, and Fate. | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 18.14/15) | |
A reaction: The 'means of action' will presumably take care of anything we haven't thought of! Nothing quite matches the idea of 'the will' here. A twitch from the first, eating from the second, a startled jump from the third, struck by lightning from the fifth. |
7991 | Hate and lust have their roots in man's lower nature [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: Hate and lust for things of nature have their roots in man's lower nature. | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 3.34) | |
A reaction: It seems outmoded now (since Freud) to label parts of human nature as 'higher' and 'lower'. I would defend the distinction, but it is not self-evident. The basis of morality is good citizenship, and parts of our nature are detrimental to that. |
21853 | We are currently extending capitalism to the whole of society [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: What characterises our situation is ….the extension of capitalism to the whole social body. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.110) | |
A reaction: This is driven by the naïve people who think all problems can be solved by market forces, and that to everything that goes bankrupt we should just say 'good riddance'. |
21848 | Some lines (of flight) are becomings which escape the system [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: There are lines which do not amount to the path of a point, which break free from structure - lines of flight, becomings, without future or past, without memory, which resist the binary machine. …The rhizome is all this. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II) | |
A reaction: The binary machine enforces simplistic either/or choices. I assume the 'lines' are to replace the Self, with something much more indeterminate, active and changing. |
21851 | The State requires self-preservation, but the war-machine desires destruction [Deleuze] |
Full Idea: There will always be a tension between the State apparatus with its requirement for self-preservation, and the war-machine in its undertaking to destroy the State, to destroy the subjects of the State, and even to destroy itself. | |
From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.106) | |
A reaction: This seems to fit WWI quite well, but the desire of the war-machine to destroy the State which pays for it sounds unlikely. Nevertheless war is appalling for the state, but it is the whole point of the war-machine, which gets restless. |
7988 | There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in a just war [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: There is no greater good for a warrior than to fight in righteous war. | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 2.31) | |
A reaction: What worries me now is not the urging to fight, as long as a good cause can be found, but the idea that someone should see his social role as 'warrior'. The modern 'soldier' is ready to fight, but a traditional 'warrior' is obliged to fight. |
7992 | The visible forms of nature are earth, water, fire, air, ether; mind, reason, and the sense of 'I' [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: The visible forms of nature are eight: earth, water, fire, air, ether; the mind, reason, and the sense of 'I'. | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 7.4) | |
A reaction: Presumably there is an implication that there are also invisible forms. The Bhuddists launched an attack on 'I' as one of the categories. The first five appear to be Aristotle's, which must be of scholarly (and chronological) interest. |
7994 | Everything, including the gods, comes from me, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: All the gods come from me, says Krishna. ...I am the one source of all | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 10.2/8) | |
A reaction: This seems very close to monotheism, and sounds very similar to the position that Zeus seems to occupy in later Greek religion, where he is shading off into a supreme and spiritual entity. |
7993 | Brahman is supreme, Atman his spirit in man, and Karma is the force of creation [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: Brahman is supreme, the Eternal. Atman is his Spirit in man. Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life. | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 8.3) | |
A reaction: I can't help wondering how they know all this stuff, but then I'm just a typical product of my culture. We seem to have a trinity here. Who's in charge? Is Atman just a servant? Is Karma totally under the control of Brahman? |
7997 | Only by love can men see me, know me, and come to me, says Krishna [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: Only by love can men see me, and know me, and come unto me, says Krishna | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 11.54) | |
A reaction: There seems to be a paradox here, as it is unclear how you can love Krishna, if you have not already seen him in some way. This is another paradox of fideism - that faith cannot possibly be the first step in a religion, as faith needs a target. |
7998 | The three gates of hell are lust, anger and greed [Anon (Bhag)] |
Full Idea: Three are the gates of this hell, the death of the soul: the gate of lust, the gate of wrath, and the gate of greed. Let a man shun the three. | |
From: Anon (Bhag) (The Bhagavad Gita [c.500 BCE], 16.21) | |
A reaction: Anyone who wishes to procreate, champion justice, and make a living, has to pursue all three. Wisdom consists of pursuing the three appropriately, not in shunning them. How did this bizarre puritanism ever come to grip the human race? |