9 ideas
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 13083 | The essence is the necessary properties, and the concept includes what is contingent [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Of the essence of a particular thing is what pertains to it necessarily and perpetually; of the concept of an individual thing on the other hand is what pertains to it contingently or per accidens. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Human Freedom and Divine choice [1690], Grua 383), quoted by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 3.3.1 | |
| A reaction: This arbitrates on the apparent conflict between his remarks in Idea 13077 and Idea 10382. There seems to be a distinction between the 'concept' of a thing, and the 'complete concept', the latter including the contingent properties. |
| 5049 | Intelligent pleasure is the perception of beauty, order and perfection [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: An intelligent being's pleasure is simply the perception of beauty, order and perfection. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Résumé of Metaphysics [1697], §18) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz seems to have inherited this from the Greeks, especially Pythagoras and Plato. Buried in Leibniz's remark I see the Christian fear of physical pleasure. He should have got out more. Must an intelligent being always be intelligent? |
| 5048 | Perfection is simply quantity of reality [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Perfection is simply quantity of reality. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Résumé of Metaphysics [1697], §11) | |
| A reaction: An interesting claim, but totally beyond my personal comprehension. I presume he inherited 'quantity of reality' from Plato, e.g. as you move up the Line from shadows to Forms you increase the degree of reality. I see 'real' as all-or-nothing. |
| 5050 | Evil serves a greater good, and pain is necessary for higher pleasure [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Evils themselves serve a greater good, and the fact that pains are found in minds is necessary if they are to reach greater pleasures. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Résumé of Metaphysics [1697], §23) | |
| A reaction: How much pain is needed to qualify for the 'greater pleasures'? Some people receive an awful lot. I am not sure exactly how an evil can 'serve' a greater good. Is he recommending evil? |