Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Necessary Existents', 'Reflections on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas' and 'A Conversation: what is it? What is it for?'

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17 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 1. History of Philosophy
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.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy
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.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / a. Philosophy as worldly
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?
1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 7. Limitations of Analysis
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.
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy
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.
2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic
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.
2. Reason / D. Definition / 1. Definitions
19426 'Nominal' definitions just list distinguishing characteristics [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: A 'nominal' definition is nothing more than an enumeration of the sufficient distinguishing characteristics.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Reflections on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas [1684], p.284)
     A reaction: Not wholly clear. Are these actual distinguishing characteristics, or potential ones? Could DNA be part of a human's nominal definition (for an unidentified corpse, perhaps).
5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 2. Aporiai
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.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / i. Deflating being
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.
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 1. Knowledge
19424 Knowledge needs clarity, distinctness, and adequacy, and it should be intuitive [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Knowledge is either obscure or clear; clear ideas are either indistinct or distinct; distinct ideas are either adequate or inadequate, symbolic or intuitive; perfect knowledge is that which is both adequate and intuitive.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Reflections on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas [1684], p.283)
     A reaction: This is Leibniz's expansion of Descartes's idea that knowledge rests on 'clear and distinct conceptions'. The ultimate target seems to be close to an Aristotelian 'real definition', which is comprehensive and precise. Does 'intuitive' mean coherent?
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / d. Location of mind
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.
16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 1. Self as Indeterminate
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).
18. Thought / C. Content / 2. Ideas
19427 True ideas represent what is possible; false ideas represent contradictions [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: An idea is true if what it represents is possible; false if the representation contains a contradiction.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Reflections on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas [1684], p.287)
     A reaction: Odd in the analytic tradition to talk of a single idea or concept (rather than a proposition or utterance) as being 'true'. But there is clearly a notion of valid or legitimate or useful concepts here. Hilbert said true just meant non-contradictory.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 3. Concrete Propositions
19216 Propositions (such as 'that dog is barking') only exist if their items exist [Williamson]
     Full Idea: A proposition about an item exists only if that item exists... how could something be the proposition that that dog is barking in circumstances in which that dog does not exist?
     From: Timothy Williamson (Necessary Existents [2002], p.240), quoted by Trenton Merricks - Propositions
     A reaction: This is a view of propositions I can't make sense of. If I'm under an illusion that there is a dog barking nearby, when there isn't one, can I not say 'that dog is barking'? If I haven't expressed a proposition, what have I done?
25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 2. Freedom of belief
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.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 2. Types of cause
19425 In the schools the Four Causes are just lumped together in a very obscure way [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: In the schools the four causes are lumped together as material, formal, efficient, and final causes, but they have no clear definitions, and I would call such a judgment 'obscure'.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Reflections on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas [1684], p.283)
     A reaction: He picks this to illustrate what he means by 'obscure', so he must feel strongly about it. Elsewhere Leibniz embraces efficient and final causes, but says little of the other two. This immediately become clearer as the Four Modes of Explanation.