Reading Wittgenstein write “all explanation must disappear, and description alone takes its place” reminds me of aphorism 112 in Nietzsche’s Gay Science, which itself reads as if Wittgenstein himself wrote it.
Yes and Fisher called Bergsonism the ideology of capitalism, Zizek says Deleuzianism is the ideology of capitalism, Adorno says Hegelianism is the ideology of capitalism, and now Nietzscheanism is the ideology of capitalism. I think this is a moronic argumentative point
Y'all heard this line about Spinozism being the ideology of Late Capitalism? Toscano notes that this could be amended to DeLanda and Cybernetics as well. Curious statement. Zizek-Badiou "Deleuzians are just advanced capitalists" kind of accusation. Todd McGowan says this often...
if i could just be good at chess, learn another language or two, understand maths and science, read the entirety of world history and write some poems i think i’ll be fine
Nietzsche is for Freudians who don’t like Freud, Schelling is for Hegelians who don’t like Hegel, Lacan is for Heideggerians who don’t like Heidegger, Adorno is for Lukácsians who don’t like Lukács, Aristotle is for Marxists who don’t like Marx,
French interpretations of Nietzsche:
Nietzsche: return of the same!
Deleuze: return of difference!
Nietzsche: guilt is bad!
Bataille: guilt is good!
Nietzsche: asceticism is bad!
Foucault: asceticism is good!
Reading about how Althusser and Foucault thought it was too difficult to grade Derrida’s master’s dissertation is what I needed today — “either an F or an A+”
“Kant was a critic of Reason” is the new “Marx was pro Capital”. This is what happens when the only primary reading you’ve done is the title and fill in the rest with hearsay.
One of the big disservices done to the likes of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud is undermining or outright disavowing their commitment to *empirical* and experimental thinking, or their obsession with science.
An interviewer confronted Derrida with how difficult to read his books are, to which Derrida replied: the responsibility has to be shared, "the reading has to do its work and the work has to make its reader."
I've been thinking about starting a reading group on Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, a book that is solitary, short, and brutish. It would be weekly meetings for about 10 weeks. I'll provide some further details soon, just trying to see if theres any interest.
What annoys me about online Marxists is how they engage the history of ideas as a sum of readymade propositions one accepts and adopts. But this is not how you engage with a thinker imo. Look not for answers but the problems they raise.
‘The Christian, who believes he has killed his sensuality, is deceiving himself: it lives on in an uncanny vampire [unheimliche vampyrische] form and torments him in repulsive disguises.’ Nietzsche
Gramsci’s famous motto ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’ was taken from Romain Rolland who had taken it from Jacob Burckhardt’s description of the Greeks — which Nietzsche read to his friends in Sorrento 1876.
Reading this. Mitchell and Rose do such a good job minimising jargon that I think to myself “hey, this Lacan fella ain’t so bad.” I’m not totally swayed however!
Rereading this. It’s an exciting and worthy challenge to Freudian psychoanalysis but I do think it misses the mark in some instances. Would like to know if anyone has critically responded to it
Fichte’s essay titles are undefeated:
“A Crystal Clear Report to the General Public Concerning the Actual Essence of the Newest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand”
Freud — ‘It would be a mistake to suppose that a science consists entirely of strictly proved theses. Only a disposition with a passion for authority will raise such a demand, someone with a craving to replace their religious catechism by another [i.e. science].’
Funny that the English word “dwell” does a much better job than Heidegger’s use of the German word “Wohnen” for describing the fact of being-in-the-world and of thinking.
You can extend Freud’s diagnosis of psychobabble to apply to philosophy (theorybabble). The real lesson is that muddled jargon is a symptom of the *pleasure of thinking* itself expressed by word-play + overdetermined vocabulary. Work-through the enjoyment of your own speech!
Which Philosopher Are You Quiz
Do you think God is dead?
Do you think the world is all and that is the case?
Do you think esse est percipi?
Do you like rhizomes?
The Romans knew that wit is a prophetic faculty; they called it nose
— F. Schlegel
If all things turned to smoke, the nose would distinguish them
— Heraclitus
My genius is in my nostrils
— Nietzsche
Marx: "The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint... etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour—your capital. 1/2
Reading Lukács. Adorno would agree that literature ‘reflects’ social life, but views modernist lit from a negative or symptomatic pov, i.e., that Kafka and Baudelaire can still say something profound and true about social life without having to agree with them ideologically.
My fav criticism of Descartes' "I think" is still Nietzsche's, who says something like: you are a thing which thinking passes through, nothing says the thoughts we have are, strictly speaking, ours
If ‘Zizekianism’ exists it would have existed by now, but it doesn’t. Derrida was just as popular and in his own lifetime there were wannabe deconstructionists
Being forced to read an entire book in one week just to spend a single session discussing it is ridiculous to me. If a book is worth being read in full, then it’s worth discussing it over many weeks.
Žižek will be better received a decade or so after he dies, unsurprisingly. Makes me wonder when the first biography of him will be written and who will write it.
I don’t read much poetry, but I wondered today whether there are examples of poems that reference or even quote other poems? That seems quite neat to me
If I’m reading this correctly, Heidegger makes the incredible claim that his view on the self-estrangement of humanity from the truth of Being is closer to Marxism than are either Sartre or Husserl close to Marxism.
My article “Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Crisis of Piety” is finally published.
It frames Nietzsche’s understanding of nihilism as a response to the pantheist controversy and the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.
This is a good example of the arbitrariness of ‘analytic phil’. The problem of the ‘meaning of life’ is not one puzzle among others but forms how we think/solve puzzles as such. Not wanting to answer the puzzle of life requires limiting oneself to what can/ought be thought
am i crazy to think that it’s ok to just do analytic philosophy bc you like to solve puzzles. why do we all need to answer questions about the meaning of life
It’s not whether ‘Aufheben’ can mean both abolish and preserve but whether, as Marx understood it, social contradictions can be finally dissolved. What you want is a McGowan-type Lacanian–Hegelianism where contradiction is both constitutive and necessary for social life
“I am busy reading Hegel’s Logic again, a truly astonishing work, which speaks to me today in every one of its parts.”
From Adorno’s letter to Benjamin
I mean seriously, what is the philosophical/political upshot of their wanting to retain a commitment to Marx/ism even if they themselves simply don’t want to admit they disagree with his project
A copy of Heidegger’s lecture “Was is das—die Philosophie” given in 1955 in Cerisy-la-Salle. Hosted by Jean Beaufret and attended by the likes of René Char, Deleuze. Lacan. Kostas Axelos also acted as interpreter.