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21844
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The history of philosophy is an agent of power: how can you think if you haven't read the great names? [Deleuze]
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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.
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From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
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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.
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21839
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When I meet objections I just move on; they never contribute anything [Deleuze]
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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.
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From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
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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.
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21842
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Don't assess ideas for truth or justice; look for another idea, and establish a relationship with it [Deleuze]
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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.
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From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
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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.
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21850
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Dualisms can be undone from within, by tracing connections, and drawing them to a new path [Deleuze]
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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.
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From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II)
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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.
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21843
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People consist of many undetermined lines, some rigid, some supple, some 'lines of flight' [Deleuze]
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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.
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From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
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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).
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21848
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Some lines (of flight) are becomings which escape the system [Deleuze]
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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.
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From:
Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II)
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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.
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12759
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There are atoms of substance, but no atoms of bulk or extension [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
Although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk [moles], that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) [1698], §11)
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A reaction:
Leibniz has a constant battle for the rest of his career to explain what these 'atoms of substance' are, since they have location but no extension, they are self-sufficient yet generate force, and are non-physical but interact with matter.
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12718
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Secondary matter is active and complete; primary matter is passive and incomplete [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
I understand matter as either secondary or primary. Secondary matter is, indeed, a complete substance, but it is not merely passive; primary matter is merely passive, but it is not a complete substance. So we must add a soul or form...
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) [1698], §12), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
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A reaction:
It sounds as if primary matter is redundant, but Garber suggests that secondary matter is just the combination of primary matter with form.
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11854
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If there is some trace of God in things, that would explain their natural force [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
If the law of God does indeed leave some vestige of him expressed in things...then it must be granted that there is a certain efficacy residing in things, a form or force such as we usually designate by the name of nature, from which the phenomena follow.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) [1698], §06)
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A reaction:
I wouldn't rate this as a very promising theory of powers, but it seems to me important that Leibniz recognises the innate power in things as needing explanation. If you remove divine power, you are left with unexplained intrinsic powers.
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12758
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It is plausible to think substances contain the same immanent force seen in our free will [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
If we attribute an inherent force to our mind, a force acting immanently, then nothing forbids us to suppose that the same force would be found in other souls or forms, or, if you prefer, in the nature of substances.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) [1698], §10)
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A reaction:
This is the kind of bizarre idea that you are driven to, once you start thinking that God must have a will outside nature, and then that we have the same thing. Why shouldn't such a thing pop up all over the place? Only Leibniz spots the slippery slope.
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19408
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To say that nature or the one universal substance is God is a pernicious doctrine [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
To say that nature itself or the substance of all things is God is a pernicious doctrine, recently introduced into the world or renewed by a subtle or profane author.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) [1698], 8)
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A reaction:
The dastardly profane author is, of course, Spinoza, whom Leibniz had met in 1676. The doctrine may be pernicious to religious orthodoxy, but to me it is rather baffling, since in my understanding nature and God have almost nothing in common.
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