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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15584
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I say the manifestation of Being needs humans, and humans only exist as reflected in Being [Heidegger]
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Full Idea:
The fundamental thought of my thinking is precisely that Being, or the manifestation of Being, needs human beings and that, vice versa, human beings are only human beings if they are standing in the manifestation of Being.
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From:
Martin Heidegger (Martin Heidegger in conversation [1969], p.82), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 5 'Signs'
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A reaction:
I don't think I understand the second half of this, but I sense some sort of intuition that the consciousness of humans 'enlarges' Being, or bestows an identity on it, or some such thing.
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18431
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Internal relations combine some tropes into a nucleus, which bears the non-essential tropes [Simons, by Edwards]
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Full Idea:
Simons's 'nuclear' option blends features of the substratum and bundle theories. First we have tropes collected by virtue of their internal relations, forming the essential kernel or nucleus. This nucleus then bears the non-essential tropes.
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From:
report of Peter Simons (Particulars in Particular Clothing [1994], p.567) by Douglas Edwards - Properties 3.5
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A reaction:
[compression of Edwards's summary] This strikes me as being a remarkably good theory. I am not sure of the ontological status of properties, such that they can (unaided) combine to make part of an object. What binds the non-essentials?
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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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