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Nietzsche and Philosophy
Demonstrates how Nietzsche initiated a new mode of philosophical thinking. First published in 1962, this landmark book is one of the first to dispute the deep-seated assumption that dialectics provides the only possible basis for radical thought.
238 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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10904 people want to read
About the author
Gilles Deleuze
262 books2,619 followersDeleuze is a key figure in poststructuralist French philosophy. Considering himself an empiricist and a vitalist, his body of work, which rests upon concepts such as multiplicity, constructivism, difference and desire, stands at a substantial remove from the main traditions of 20th century Continental thought. His thought locates him as an influential figure in present-day considerations of society, creativity and subjectivity. Notably, within his metaphysics he favored a Spinozian concept of a plane of immanence with everything a mode of one substance, and thus on the same level of existence. He argued, then, that there is no good and evil, but rather only relationships which are beneficial or harmful to the particular individuals. This ethics influences his approach to society and politics, especially as he was so politically active in struggles for rights and freedoms. Later in his career he wrote some of the more infamous texts of the period, in particular, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. These texts are collaborative works with the radical psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, and they exhibit Deleuze’s social and political commitment.
Gilles Deleuze began his career with a number of idiosyncratic yet rigorous historical studies of figures outside of the Continental tradition in vogue at the time. His first book, Empirisism and Subjectivity, is a study of Hume, interpreted by Deleuze to be a radical subjectivist. Deleuze became known for writing about other philosophers with new insights and different readings, interested as he was in liberating philosophical history from the hegemony of one perspective. He wrote on Spinoza, Nietzche, Kant, Leibniz and others, including literary authors and works, cinema, and art. Deleuze claimed that he did not write “about” art, literature, or cinema, but, rather, undertook philosophical “encounters” that led him to new concepts. As a constructivist, he was adamant that philosophers are creators, and that each reading of philosophy, or each philosophical encounter, ought to inspire new concepts. Additionally, according to Deleuze and his concepts of difference, there is no identity, and in repetition, nothing is ever the same. Rather, there is only difference: copies are something new, everything is constantly changing, and reality is a becoming, not a being.
He often collaborated with philosophers and artists as Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Guy Hocquenghem, René Schérer, Carmelo Bene, François Châtelet, Olivier Revault d'Allonnes, Jean-François Lyotard, Georges Lapassade, Kateb Yacine and many others.
Gilles Deleuze began his career with a number of idiosyncratic yet rigorous historical studies of figures outside of the Continental tradition in vogue at the time. His first book, Empirisism and Subjectivity, is a study of Hume, interpreted by Deleuze to be a radical subjectivist. Deleuze became known for writing about other philosophers with new insights and different readings, interested as he was in liberating philosophical history from the hegemony of one perspective. He wrote on Spinoza, Nietzche, Kant, Leibniz and others, including literary authors and works, cinema, and art. Deleuze claimed that he did not write “about” art, literature, or cinema, but, rather, undertook philosophical “encounters” that led him to new concepts. As a constructivist, he was adamant that philosophers are creators, and that each reading of philosophy, or each philosophical encounter, ought to inspire new concepts. Additionally, according to Deleuze and his concepts of difference, there is no identity, and in repetition, nothing is ever the same. Rather, there is only difference: copies are something new, everything is constantly changing, and reality is a becoming, not a being.
He often collaborated with philosophers and artists as Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Guy Hocquenghem, René Schérer, Carmelo Bene, François Châtelet, Olivier Revault d'Allonnes, Jean-François Lyotard, Georges Lapassade, Kateb Yacine and many others.
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April 29, 2023
Aleg pentru început acest citat la care merită să luăm aminte:
„Măreţia lui Nietzsche constă în a fi reuşit să izoleze aceste două buruieni, resentimentul şi conştiinţa încărcată. Chiar dacă n-ar prezenta decît acest aspect, filosofia lui Nietzsche tot ar fi de cea mai mare importanţă".
O excelentă analiză a „purtătorilor de cuvînt” ai lui Nietzsche: Nebunul, Zarathustra, Demonul cel Rău etc. (ca și Kierkegaard, Nietzsche și-a formulat opiniile indirect) și a bestiarului folosit de filosof (cămila, păianjenul, șarpele etc.).
Deși stilul cărții e uneori prea uscat, investigația lui Gilles Deleuze merită interesul cititorilor pasionați de gîndirea lui Nietzsche (1844 - 1900).
„Măreţia lui Nietzsche constă în a fi reuşit să izoleze aceste două buruieni, resentimentul şi conştiinţa încărcată. Chiar dacă n-ar prezenta decît acest aspect, filosofia lui Nietzsche tot ar fi de cea mai mare importanţă".
O excelentă analiză a „purtătorilor de cuvînt” ai lui Nietzsche: Nebunul, Zarathustra, Demonul cel Rău etc. (ca și Kierkegaard, Nietzsche și-a formulat opiniile indirect) și a bestiarului folosit de filosof (cămila, păianjenul, șarpele etc.).
Deși stilul cărții e uneori prea uscat, investigația lui Gilles Deleuze merită interesul cititorilor pasionați de gîndirea lui Nietzsche (1844 - 1900).
March 25, 2024
I am glad that Deleuze emphasized Nietzsche's incompatibility with dialectics, but sort of unimpressed by the book as a whole, which is basically just a summary (not critical at all), and even more in need of clarification than Nietzsche's own writings. I'm not sure that certain Nietzschean concepts (esp. the eternal return and will to power) are really concepts rather than poetic images, and when Deleuze tries to formulate these concepts with the 'precision' he thinks they intrinsically held for Nietzsche, he ends up unwittingly exposing how vague and incomprehensible the terms are if you try to make them part of a philosophical system.
For all his talk of anti-dialectics, his book seems to owe it's ordering of ideas to the straightforward Genealogy of Morals, while incorporating relevant images and the climactic ending rhetoric (the happy end of nihilism defeating itself) from the more poetically inclined Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in a perfect synthesis.
This kind of stuff in his discussion of the eternal return I found incomprehensible: 'It is not being that returns but rather the returning itself that constitutes being insofar as it is affirmed of becoming and of that which passes.' We lose all sense of what 'returning' could possibly mean in this optimistic configuration in which it miraculously precedes 'being'. I think when he writes 'the returning itself' he really means 'differing forces'. In any case, it's vague, especially considering that he prefaces this section with claims that the eternal recurrence is a very precise concept.
He doesn't manage to defend some key points in his argument about the nature of reactive forces/nihilism, and how they are ‘completed’ and turned into affirmation by Nietzsche. 'If nihilism makes the will to power known to us, then conversely, the latter teaches us that it is known to us in only one form, in the form of the negative which constitutes only one of its aspects, one of its qualities.' The final step of his argument, through which he achieves the happy ending of nihilism defeating itself, turns on the claim in this quote, but he doesn't defend it. He presents it as a theorem that he will then prove, but instead he leaps on to his next claim: 'The other side of the will to power, the unknown side, the other quality of the will to power, the unknown quality, is affirmation.' How we get from the former claim to the latter is mysterious; apparently both claims are meant to be taken as self-evident axioms. So the happy ending of nihilism's overcoming seems forced, even though the entire book builds up to it with exquisite pacing.
I think Nietzsche's concepts are ambitiously broad ('nihilism' as the law of human history, 'will to power' as the essence of being-as-becoming), which I suppose is part of their appeal, but which leaves them open to millions of inquires into their precise nature, none of which Deleuze chooses to pursue, though he claims already to have found their precise nature. So that was disappointing. Also, he's not as much fun to read as Nietzsche himself.
But of course – to quote Levar Burton – don't take my word for it!
For all his talk of anti-dialectics, his book seems to owe it's ordering of ideas to the straightforward Genealogy of Morals, while incorporating relevant images and the climactic ending rhetoric (the happy end of nihilism defeating itself) from the more poetically inclined Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in a perfect synthesis.
This kind of stuff in his discussion of the eternal return I found incomprehensible: 'It is not being that returns but rather the returning itself that constitutes being insofar as it is affirmed of becoming and of that which passes.' We lose all sense of what 'returning' could possibly mean in this optimistic configuration in which it miraculously precedes 'being'. I think when he writes 'the returning itself' he really means 'differing forces'. In any case, it's vague, especially considering that he prefaces this section with claims that the eternal recurrence is a very precise concept.
He doesn't manage to defend some key points in his argument about the nature of reactive forces/nihilism, and how they are ‘completed’ and turned into affirmation by Nietzsche. 'If nihilism makes the will to power known to us, then conversely, the latter teaches us that it is known to us in only one form, in the form of the negative which constitutes only one of its aspects, one of its qualities.' The final step of his argument, through which he achieves the happy ending of nihilism defeating itself, turns on the claim in this quote, but he doesn't defend it. He presents it as a theorem that he will then prove, but instead he leaps on to his next claim: 'The other side of the will to power, the unknown side, the other quality of the will to power, the unknown quality, is affirmation.' How we get from the former claim to the latter is mysterious; apparently both claims are meant to be taken as self-evident axioms. So the happy ending of nihilism's overcoming seems forced, even though the entire book builds up to it with exquisite pacing.
I think Nietzsche's concepts are ambitiously broad ('nihilism' as the law of human history, 'will to power' as the essence of being-as-becoming), which I suppose is part of their appeal, but which leaves them open to millions of inquires into their precise nature, none of which Deleuze chooses to pursue, though he claims already to have found their precise nature. So that was disappointing. Also, he's not as much fun to read as Nietzsche himself.
But of course – to quote Levar Burton – don't take my word for it!
June 21, 2022
از این کتاب دو ترجمهی فارسی وجود دارد؛ ترجمهی لیلا کوچکمنش و عادل مشایخی. عادل از فرانسه ترجمه کرده و لیلا از انگلیسیِ هیو تاملینسون برگردانده؛ انگلیسیای که مورد تایید خود دلوز بوده، برای آن مقدمه نوشته و برخی از عبارات را خودش پیشنهاد داده است.
هر دو ترجمهی فارسی، روان و رسا هستند؛ هرچند شاید با اغماض بتوان گفت ترجمهی لیلا (شاید به دلیل آمدنش از انگلیسی) کمی راحتخوانتر است، و نیز در معادلهای فارسی، کلمات در دسترستری (و شاید نه لزوما دقیقتر و نزدیکتر به فرانسه) را انتخاب کرده است.
ترجمهی عادل سال ۹۰ از نشر نی بیرون آمد. ترجمهی لیلا هم در سال ۹۰، از سوی نشر «رخداد نو» منتشر شد. کتاب لیلا دیگر تجدید چاپ نشد، لابد چون نشر رخداد نو نیست و نابود شد (و من هنوز دلیلش را نفهمیدهام). همچنین بیشترِ کتابهای رخداد نو را —پس از بسته شدنش— نشر نی تجدید چاپ کرده. اما از آنجا که هیچ ناشری دو ترجمه از یک کتاب را بیرون نمیدهد، عادل بر لیلا پیروز شد و کتاب لیلا به حاشیه رانده شد.
طی خواندن این دو ترجمه در کارخونه، متوجه شدیم در ترجمهی عادل مشایخی، تعدادی اشتباهات کوچک وجود دارد؛ اما عجیب این است طی این یازده سالی که کتاب دارد تجدید چاپ میشود، اصلاحی بر کتاب صورت نگرفته است. غلطهایی که همانطور که توضیح خواهم داد، هنگام خواندن، «معنیِ فارسی» میدهند، اما اگر خواننده در مفاهیم جملات دلوز عادل عمیق شود، به راحتی پی به تناقضات آنها خواهد برد و اشتباهات را پیدا میکند. پایینتر، این اشتباهات را لیست خواهم کرد؛ هرچند نشر نی باید بابت این لیست به من پول میداد!
این دقتِ خوانشی که عرض کردم، در فضای دیسکورد کارخونه برای ما مهیا شد. یافتن این اشتباهاتِ لپی/تایپی/ویرایشی (که ارتباطی با دانش عادل مشایخی --که شارح بسیار خوبی است-- ندارد) تنها با دقت بیاندازهی اعضای کارخونه ممکن شد؛ بنابراین ممنونم از فرنود، اتابک، و رویا. لیست زیر، تنها اشاره به برخی نکتههایی بود که ما پیدا کردیم و من با متن انگلیسی و فرانسه مطابقتشان دادم؛ اما احتمالا هنوز ایرادات دیگری هم وجود دارند که ناشر را ملزم به مطابقت دوبارهی ترجمه با متن اصلی میکند. ضمنا در همهی اشتباهات مشایخی، کوچکمنش کلمه را به درستی برگردانده است. ارجاعات بر اساس صفحات کتاب لیلا کوچکمنش است، هرچند محل یافتن عبارت در کتاب عادل مشایخی را هم مشخص خواهم کرد.
1. ص ۷۱ لیلا و ۴۱ انگلیسی، فصل ۲ در بخش ۲، شروع بند دوم، در مشایخی به اشتباه کنشگر آمده. صحیح آن واکنشی است. «بدون شک خصلتبندیِ نیروهای «واکنشی»، مشکلتر است.»
2. ص ۱۰۳ لیلا و ص ۶۱ انگلیسی، فصل ۲ در آخرین بندِ بخش ۱۰، کلمهی بعد از شمارهی ۲، در مشایخی به اشتباه واکنشی آمده. صحیح آن کنشی است. «نیرویی است که نیروی «کنشی» را از آنچه میتواند انجام دهد، جدا میسازد و آن را نفی میکند.»
3. ص ۱۱۲ لیلا و ۶۷ انگلیسی، فصل ۲ در بخش ۱۳، اواسط بند سوم، در مشایخی به اشتباه واکنشی آمده. صحیح آن کنشی است. «یک نیروی واکنشی، هم فرمان میبرد و هم مقاومت میکند، نیروی واکنشی دیگری نیروی «کنشی» را از آنچه میتواند انجام دهد جدا میکند.»
4. ص ۲۰۱ لیلا، فصل ۴ در بخش ۷ در خط ۱۲ بند اول، مشایخی به اشتباه داخل پرانتز را کنشگر گذاشته. صحیح آن واکنشگر است. «(جابجایی نیروهای «واکنشی» ردهای حافظه، آگاهی را فرامیگیرند.)»
5. ص ۲۱۲ لیلا، فصل ۴ در بخش ۱۰، در اوایل بند دوم، مشایخی به اشتباه «واکنشی» نوشته. صحیح آن «کینهتوزی» است. «پس «کینهتوزی» باید خود را با این شرایط تازه سازگار کند.»
6. ص ۲۳۳ لیلا، فصل ۴ در بخش ۱۵، پنج خط مانده به آخر، مشایخی به اشتباه «کنشی» نوشته. صحیح آن «واکنشی» است. «از نیروهای واکنشی چه میماند اگر، از خواست نیستی جدا شوند؟»
چند ایراد دیگر:
1. یک عدم مطابقت عجیب در فرانسه و انگلیسی به چشم میخورد. در فصل ۴ در بخش ۱۵، در آخرین پانویسی که وجود دارد، در انگلیسی (و طبعا لیلا)، «دینیار کنشی» آمده است؛ و در فرانسه (و طبعا عادل) «کشیش» خالی. در انگلیسی آمده:
The active priest.
در فرانسه فقط آمده:
Pretre.
شاید هم این اختلاف ناشی از فرانسه-نافهمیِ من باشد و مسئلهای عمیقتر این وسط نهفته باشد. خلاصه اگر کسی دلیل این اختلاف را فهمید، ممنون میشوم به من هم اطلاع دهد.
2. یک اختلاف دائمی بین لیلا و عادل، ترجمهی کلمهی acted است. مثلا در ص ۱۸۴ لیلا، فصل ۴ در بخش ۲ در اواسط بند ۳، چنین عبارتی را در لیلا داریم: «واکنش به چیزی کنششده تبدیل میشود.» در حالی که مشایخی «به عمل درآمده» ترجمه کرده. از آنجا که ریشهی active و reactive که کل کتاب دلوز بر آن استوار است (و در هر دو ترجمه به کنشی/کنشگری و واکنشی/واکنشگری ترجمه میشود)، در ترجمهی sth acted، از طرفی لیلا به ریشهی کلمه وفادارتر بوده؛ اما «کنششده» ممکن است با «کنشی» اشتباه شود، که در این صورت کلمهی عادل بسیار راهگشاتر خواهد بود (عملشده). هرچند نهایتا این اشتباه از منِ مخاطب است که کنششده را با کنشی اشتباه میگیرم.
چیزی از ترجمهی لیلا نگفتم، زیرا بر او یک نقد ترجمه نوشته شده است. اخیرا کانالی زدهام برای گردآوری نقد ترجمهها. نقد ترجمهی لیلا را میتوانید اینجا بیابید:
https://t.me/reviewsoftranslations/11
هر دو ترجمهی فارسی، روان و رسا هستند؛ هرچند شاید با اغماض بتوان گفت ترجمهی لیلا (شاید به دلیل آمدنش از انگلیسی) کمی راحتخوانتر است، و نیز در معادلهای فارسی، کلمات در دسترستری (و شاید نه لزوما دقیقتر و نزدیکتر به فرانسه) را انتخاب کرده است.
ترجمهی عادل سال ۹۰ از نشر نی بیرون آمد. ترجمهی لیلا هم در سال ۹۰، از سوی نشر «رخداد نو» منتشر شد. کتاب لیلا دیگر تجدید چاپ نشد، لابد چون نشر رخداد نو نیست و نابود شد (و من هنوز دلیلش را نفهمیدهام). همچنین بیشترِ کتابهای رخداد نو را —پس از بسته شدنش— نشر نی تجدید چاپ کرده. اما از آنجا که هیچ ناشری دو ترجمه از یک کتاب را بیرون نمیدهد، عادل بر لیلا پیروز شد و کتاب لیلا به حاشیه رانده شد.
طی خواندن این دو ترجمه در کارخونه، متوجه شدیم در ترجمهی عادل مشایخی، تعدادی اشتباهات کوچک وجود دارد؛ اما عجیب این است طی این یازده سالی که کتاب دارد تجدید چاپ میشود، اصلاحی بر کتاب صورت نگرفته است. غلطهایی که همانطور که توضیح خواهم داد، هنگام خواندن، «معنیِ فارسی» میدهند، اما اگر خواننده در مفاهیم جملات دلوز عادل عمیق شود، به راحتی پی به تناقضات آنها خواهد برد و اشتباهات را پیدا میکند. پایینتر، این اشتباهات را لیست خواهم کرد؛ هرچند نشر نی باید بابت این لیست به من پول میداد!
این دقتِ خوانشی که عرض کردم، در فضای دیسکورد کارخونه برای ما مهیا شد. یافتن این اشتباهاتِ لپی/تایپی/ویرایشی (که ارتباطی با دانش عادل مشایخی --که شارح بسیار خوبی است-- ندارد) تنها با دقت بیاندازهی اعضای کارخونه ممکن شد؛ بنابراین ممنونم از فرنود، اتابک، و رویا. لیست زیر، تنها اشاره به برخی نکتههایی بود که ما پیدا کردیم و من با متن انگلیسی و فرانسه مطابقتشان دادم؛ اما احتمالا هنوز ایرادات دیگری هم وجود دارند که ناشر را ملزم به مطابقت دوبارهی ترجمه با متن اصلی میکند. ضمنا در همهی اشتباهات مشایخی، کوچکمنش کلمه را به درستی برگردانده است. ارجاعات بر اساس صفحات کتاب لیلا کوچکمنش است، هرچند محل یافتن عبارت در کتاب عادل مشایخی را هم مشخص خواهم کرد.
1. ص ۷۱ لیلا و ۴۱ انگلیسی، فصل ۲ در بخش ۲، شروع بند دوم، در مشایخی به اشتباه کنشگر آمده. صحیح آن واکنشی است. «بدون شک خصلتبندیِ نیروهای «واکنشی»، مشکلتر است.»
2. ص ۱۰۳ لیلا و ص ۶۱ انگلیسی، فصل ۲ در آخرین بندِ بخش ۱۰، کلمهی بعد از شمارهی ۲، در مشایخی به اشتباه واکنشی آمده. صحیح آن کنشی است. «نیرویی است که نیروی «کنشی» را از آنچه میتواند انجام دهد، جدا میسازد و آن را نفی میکند.»
3. ص ۱۱۲ لیلا و ۶۷ انگلیسی، فصل ۲ در بخش ۱۳، اواسط بند سوم، در مشایخی به اشتباه واکنشی آمده. صحیح آن کنشی است. «یک نیروی واکنشی، هم فرمان میبرد و هم مقاومت میکند، نیروی واکنشی دیگری نیروی «کنشی» را از آنچه میتواند انجام دهد جدا میکند.»
4. ص ۲۰۱ لیلا، فصل ۴ در بخش ۷ در خط ۱۲ بند اول، مشایخی به اشتباه داخل پرانتز را کنشگر گذاشته. صحیح آن واکنشگر است. «(جابجایی نیروهای «واکنشی» ردهای حافظه، آگاهی را فرامیگیرند.)»
5. ص ۲۱۲ لیلا، فصل ۴ در بخش ۱۰، در اوایل بند دوم، مشایخی به اشتباه «واکنشی» نوشته. صحیح آن «کینهتوزی» است. «پس «کینهتوزی» باید خود را با این شرایط تازه سازگار کند.»
6. ص ۲۳۳ لیلا، فصل ۴ در بخش ۱۵، پنج خط مانده به آخر، مشایخی به اشتباه «کنشی» نوشته. صحیح آن «واکنشی» است. «از نیروهای واکنشی چه میماند اگر، از خواست نیستی جدا شوند؟»
چند ایراد دیگر:
1. یک عدم مطابقت عجیب در فرانسه و انگلیسی به چشم میخورد. در فصل ۴ در بخش ۱۵، در آخرین پانویسی که وجود دارد، در انگلیسی (و طبعا لیلا)، «دینیار کنشی» آمده است؛ و در فرانسه (و طبعا عادل) «کشیش» خالی. در انگلیسی آمده:
The active priest.
در فرانسه فقط آمده:
Pretre.
شاید هم این اختلاف ناشی از فرانسه-نافهمیِ من باشد و مسئلهای عمیقتر این وسط نهفته باشد. خلاصه اگر کسی دلیل این اختلاف را فهمید، ممنون میشوم به من هم اطلاع دهد.
2. یک اختلاف دائمی بین لیلا و عادل، ترجمهی کلمهی acted است. مثلا در ص ۱۸۴ لیلا، فصل ۴ در بخش ۲ در اواسط بند ۳، چنین عبارتی را در لیلا داریم: «واکنش به چیزی کنششده تبدیل میشود.» در حالی که مشایخی «به عمل درآمده» ترجمه کرده. از آنجا که ریشهی active و reactive که کل کتاب دلوز بر آن استوار است (و در هر دو ترجمه به کنشی/کنشگری و واکنشی/واکنشگری ترجمه میشود)، در ترجمهی sth acted، از طرفی لیلا به ریشهی کلمه وفادارتر بوده؛ اما «کنششده» ممکن است با «کنشی» اشتباه شود، که در این صورت کلمهی عادل بسیار راهگشاتر خواهد بود (عملشده). هرچند نهایتا این اشتباه از منِ مخاطب است که کنششده را با کنشی اشتباه میگیرم.
چیزی از ترجمهی لیلا نگفتم، زیرا بر او یک نقد ترجمه نوشته شده است. اخیرا کانالی زدهام برای گردآوری نقد ترجمهها. نقد ترجمهی لیلا را میتوانید اینجا بیابید:
https://t.me/reviewsoftranslations/11
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December 7, 2009I wouldn't call Deleuze's book a clarification of Nietzsche, but rather a purification. Nietzsche got such a bad rap that someone needed to pull out his good ideas and mine them. And Deleuze is an awfully good chap for the task. While I don't keep the saintly vision of Nietzsche that G.D. does, I really dig the reinterpretation of the will to power and the extraction of the potential for liberation that Deleuze sees in Nietzsche's texts.
January 17, 2026
if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com
yy/mm/dd 200620: i have read some by nz(3) some on nz(11) some by dz(6) some on dz(20), and this is definitely one of the best. this is an academic text, philosopher on philosopher, and though read intently i cannot claim to fully understand it. it is translation from french translating from german. i understand dz has been selective in what aspects of nz he investigates, focuses on, and in this review i do no more, for there is wide-ranging area covered, as delineated by the table of contents of major divisions: one: tragic, two: active and reactive, three: critique, four: ressentiment to bad conscience, five: the overman, against the dialectic...
in the tragic dz has nz create the concept of genealogy as birth of his thoughts, of 'evaluation' and 'interpretation' rather than 'fact', which can never be 'objective' but carry within buried or ignored aspects of being. genealogy is value of origins and origin of values. thus difference and distinction, everything has some quality of way either base or noble, negation or affirmation, sense that is referred to as 'will to power'- though this is not what it sounds like, it is not will as in schopenhauer that is unitary but multiple, further to which dz contends nz is not 'dialectician', not convinced of synthesis and power of the negative except as negative... at this point dz interprets the 'dice throw' and essential affirmation of chance and necessity...
in the active and reactive dz elaborates the philosophical interpretation by nz of the human being (not scientific) which is a matter of 'forces' that are 'active' and 'affirmative' or 'reactive' and 'negative', in which the 'healthy' is one in whom these forces are balanced, that the negative has its own power too, the 'will to power' is' the genealogical element of force, both differential and genetic' and if you understand this far, you have gone further than i have. yet the five given is sincere. for as i stumble along, there are more and more ideas, better expositions of nz concepts, everything from the 'becoming-reactive' of all forces to ambivalence of sense-value to how 'eternal return’ is not 'return of the same' but the act of 'return' , the doubling affirmation, of becoming, of the being of becoming...
in critique, dz follows nz's critique of Kant's critical philosophy and how nz found he simply did not go far enough, he recoiled at final implications, he invented relationship to 'supra-sensory realm' so that there was, for example, still room for god. schopenhauer went further but was hindered by his essential pessimism, pushing the 'representational' illusionism as far as old philosophy would have it but... not questioning the entire metaphysics of any 'representation'! and this is where i really like nz, when he deals with the arts...
pg 103: 'we the artists'='we the seekers after knowledge or truth'='we the inventors of new possibilities of life' for the artist ‘appearance is truth’ not simply ‘representation’...
in ressentiment and bad conscience nz shows how the 'reactive' comes to dominate the 'active', which is apparently through the priests, judaic then christian, which is where i can certainly see him mischaracterised as anti-Semitic. this is where we deal with how good and bad become inverted from healthy to moral good and evil, where 'i am good therefore you are evil' becomes 'you are evil therefore i am good', the doubled negation of the bad conscience. after his work 'genealogy of morals', in which he tries to explain his poetry in non-poetic, accessible terms, nz contends that in art 'appearance is truth' and dz has helpful little table on pg 146 which shows the 'typology' and 'topology' of 'active' and 'reactive', that is, 'master' and 'slave', and 'artist' is argued into the right upper corner, above 'noble'...
in overman and against the dialectic, dz follows nz in his aspiration not to adapt to the death of god or even man, but towards the transcendence of man, which will not be the result of 'dialectic', which nz really does not like, but through creation, transmutation, affirmation. yes dz certainly finds his 'affirmation' as theme throughout nz. to some degree this book is probably more about dz as interpreted by nz than nz by dz, but either way is fascinating. there are other monographs to read before difference and repetition, and i have been rec'd A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia before that. and it is at this point i am particularly enthused: what i had feared negative, dark, depressing philosophy of nz has turned out to be so positive! joyous, creative, laughing and dancing! i have to read more nz and dz.. there are so many books to read and so little time...
more:
The Philosophy of Nietzsche
Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy
010220:
Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction
Deleuze
What Is Philosophy?
Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts
Bergsonism
Bergson-Deleuze Encounters: Transcendental Experience and the Thought of the Virtual
Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy
Deleuze on Cinema
Beyond Good and Evil
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
Twilight of the Idols and Anti-Christ
yy/mm/dd 200620: i have read some by nz(3) some on nz(11) some by dz(6) some on dz(20), and this is definitely one of the best. this is an academic text, philosopher on philosopher, and though read intently i cannot claim to fully understand it. it is translation from french translating from german. i understand dz has been selective in what aspects of nz he investigates, focuses on, and in this review i do no more, for there is wide-ranging area covered, as delineated by the table of contents of major divisions: one: tragic, two: active and reactive, three: critique, four: ressentiment to bad conscience, five: the overman, against the dialectic...
in the tragic dz has nz create the concept of genealogy as birth of his thoughts, of 'evaluation' and 'interpretation' rather than 'fact', which can never be 'objective' but carry within buried or ignored aspects of being. genealogy is value of origins and origin of values. thus difference and distinction, everything has some quality of way either base or noble, negation or affirmation, sense that is referred to as 'will to power'- though this is not what it sounds like, it is not will as in schopenhauer that is unitary but multiple, further to which dz contends nz is not 'dialectician', not convinced of synthesis and power of the negative except as negative... at this point dz interprets the 'dice throw' and essential affirmation of chance and necessity...
in the active and reactive dz elaborates the philosophical interpretation by nz of the human being (not scientific) which is a matter of 'forces' that are 'active' and 'affirmative' or 'reactive' and 'negative', in which the 'healthy' is one in whom these forces are balanced, that the negative has its own power too, the 'will to power' is' the genealogical element of force, both differential and genetic' and if you understand this far, you have gone further than i have. yet the five given is sincere. for as i stumble along, there are more and more ideas, better expositions of nz concepts, everything from the 'becoming-reactive' of all forces to ambivalence of sense-value to how 'eternal return’ is not 'return of the same' but the act of 'return' , the doubling affirmation, of becoming, of the being of becoming...
in critique, dz follows nz's critique of Kant's critical philosophy and how nz found he simply did not go far enough, he recoiled at final implications, he invented relationship to 'supra-sensory realm' so that there was, for example, still room for god. schopenhauer went further but was hindered by his essential pessimism, pushing the 'representational' illusionism as far as old philosophy would have it but... not questioning the entire metaphysics of any 'representation'! and this is where i really like nz, when he deals with the arts...
pg 103: 'we the artists'='we the seekers after knowledge or truth'='we the inventors of new possibilities of life' for the artist ‘appearance is truth’ not simply ‘representation’...
in ressentiment and bad conscience nz shows how the 'reactive' comes to dominate the 'active', which is apparently through the priests, judaic then christian, which is where i can certainly see him mischaracterised as anti-Semitic. this is where we deal with how good and bad become inverted from healthy to moral good and evil, where 'i am good therefore you are evil' becomes 'you are evil therefore i am good', the doubled negation of the bad conscience. after his work 'genealogy of morals', in which he tries to explain his poetry in non-poetic, accessible terms, nz contends that in art 'appearance is truth' and dz has helpful little table on pg 146 which shows the 'typology' and 'topology' of 'active' and 'reactive', that is, 'master' and 'slave', and 'artist' is argued into the right upper corner, above 'noble'...
in overman and against the dialectic, dz follows nz in his aspiration not to adapt to the death of god or even man, but towards the transcendence of man, which will not be the result of 'dialectic', which nz really does not like, but through creation, transmutation, affirmation. yes dz certainly finds his 'affirmation' as theme throughout nz. to some degree this book is probably more about dz as interpreted by nz than nz by dz, but either way is fascinating. there are other monographs to read before difference and repetition, and i have been rec'd A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia before that. and it is at this point i am particularly enthused: what i had feared negative, dark, depressing philosophy of nz has turned out to be so positive! joyous, creative, laughing and dancing! i have to read more nz and dz.. there are so many books to read and so little time...
more:
The Philosophy of Nietzsche
Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy
010220:
Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction
Deleuze
What Is Philosophy?
Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts
Bergsonism
Bergson-Deleuze Encounters: Transcendental Experience and the Thought of the Virtual
Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy
Deleuze on Cinema
Beyond Good and Evil
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
Twilight of the Idols and Anti-Christ
November 15, 2018
Deleuze’s Nietzschean turn, written before Difference & Repetition and Capitalism & Schizophrenia, recasts Nietzsche's sky-high extravagances as critical philosophy. Nietzsche’s thought is “The creative element of meaning and its values”, which functions “to introduce the notions of meaning and value into philosophy.” Get used to hearing those words a lot as Deleuze imputes value as shape-shifting through the traffic of history and culture, cracking open critical philosophy and beginning again washed clean of tongue-tied Kantianism.
The book tip-toes across Nietzsche’s rejection of truth and falsity as the index for knowledge, emphasizing values, or the value of values, as the locus of thought with repetition as the criteria for legitimation. Nietzsche’s helical method for evaluation is the creative act central to thought and is, for Deleuze, a direct riposte to Kant’s inquiry into the limits of reason (and Hegel doesn’t survive the skirmish either). Kant’s internal critique of reason by way of reason surveys the limits of perception and understanding but, here, has its own hard methodological limits as it “did not know how to pose the problem of critique in terms of values”. The Kantian misfire is implicitly corrected by Nietzsche’s affirmative philosophy of life.
Values can be challenged by the critical arsenal within Nietzsche’s genealogical method which so often seems to find a value’s origin in conflict with its contemporary instantiation. This uncovering of conditionality and contingency cannot be thought without the sundry flux of multiplicity and immanence. If meaning is given an origin, then origin is given a meaning--of course, Deleuze’s Genealogy of Nietzscheanism reveals that Nietzsche was a Deleuzian all along.
Nietzsche’s views are arranged into a metaphysical grid; the wrinkles and creases in his thought are smoothed over by Deleuze’s own. He refines the logic of Nietzsche’s work in ways that the man himself may have found surprising. But an internal condition of Nietzsche’s genealogical process is that it requires replenishing in every generation; The Will to Power is distinct from the fascistic will to dominate, it is a generous and creative force eulogizing life, as opposed to the jealous domineering of tinpot overmen. The Eternal Recurrence is not a spiritualist reincarnation but a prioritizing of becoming over being, the foundation for the process ontology that Deleuze will further develop later in his career. These recapitulations are made necessary by the misuse and abuse of Nietzsche in the first half of the 20th century.
The focus on Nietzsche’s later work, especially the Genealogy of Morals, is a break from antecedent books by Klossowski, Blanchot and Bataille, as Deleuze emphasizes assortative diagrammatics of convergence and divergence, the method more than the findings from Nietzsche’s most systematic book. Very little poetry about myth and extinction; very much philosophical masonry developing a non-dialectical architecture of critique. This is fairly convincing--or at least interesting--but I always find myself thinking that the Negative will smuggle itself in through the back door of any vitalist philosophy. There must be some detrital leftovers in even in the most rigorous philosophy of life. I get that Deleuze was trying to overthrow the Hegelian fashion for the negative, but, I mean, surely you can’t affirm everything? Isn’t it possible to have a philosophy which incorporates affirmation and negativity? These dramatic sea changes between obverse primary processes are the fetish object of philosophy--overstatement followed by overcorrection. We prefer revolutions to reforms and corrections. I suppose we consider mitigating compromise to be a form of capitulating weakness. Or just less exciting than a truculent screed.
The heterogeneous valences which Nietzsche’s thought can carry are troublesome to some readers. For Bataille, Nietzsche is about chance and expenditure; for Deleuze, multiplicities and becoming. If your thought can be deployed in support of any position why did you bother to think it at all? Still, Deleuze remains one of the great pleasures of 20th century philosophy. I get something new every time I read him, even amid the delicious irony of the great anti-identity philosopher encouraging me to read other philosophers as an extension of himself.
The book tip-toes across Nietzsche’s rejection of truth and falsity as the index for knowledge, emphasizing values, or the value of values, as the locus of thought with repetition as the criteria for legitimation. Nietzsche’s helical method for evaluation is the creative act central to thought and is, for Deleuze, a direct riposte to Kant’s inquiry into the limits of reason (and Hegel doesn’t survive the skirmish either). Kant’s internal critique of reason by way of reason surveys the limits of perception and understanding but, here, has its own hard methodological limits as it “did not know how to pose the problem of critique in terms of values”. The Kantian misfire is implicitly corrected by Nietzsche’s affirmative philosophy of life.
Values can be challenged by the critical arsenal within Nietzsche’s genealogical method which so often seems to find a value’s origin in conflict with its contemporary instantiation. This uncovering of conditionality and contingency cannot be thought without the sundry flux of multiplicity and immanence. If meaning is given an origin, then origin is given a meaning--of course, Deleuze’s Genealogy of Nietzscheanism reveals that Nietzsche was a Deleuzian all along.
Nietzsche’s views are arranged into a metaphysical grid; the wrinkles and creases in his thought are smoothed over by Deleuze’s own. He refines the logic of Nietzsche’s work in ways that the man himself may have found surprising. But an internal condition of Nietzsche’s genealogical process is that it requires replenishing in every generation; The Will to Power is distinct from the fascistic will to dominate, it is a generous and creative force eulogizing life, as opposed to the jealous domineering of tinpot overmen. The Eternal Recurrence is not a spiritualist reincarnation but a prioritizing of becoming over being, the foundation for the process ontology that Deleuze will further develop later in his career. These recapitulations are made necessary by the misuse and abuse of Nietzsche in the first half of the 20th century.
The focus on Nietzsche’s later work, especially the Genealogy of Morals, is a break from antecedent books by Klossowski, Blanchot and Bataille, as Deleuze emphasizes assortative diagrammatics of convergence and divergence, the method more than the findings from Nietzsche’s most systematic book. Very little poetry about myth and extinction; very much philosophical masonry developing a non-dialectical architecture of critique. This is fairly convincing--or at least interesting--but I always find myself thinking that the Negative will smuggle itself in through the back door of any vitalist philosophy. There must be some detrital leftovers in even in the most rigorous philosophy of life. I get that Deleuze was trying to overthrow the Hegelian fashion for the negative, but, I mean, surely you can’t affirm everything? Isn’t it possible to have a philosophy which incorporates affirmation and negativity? These dramatic sea changes between obverse primary processes are the fetish object of philosophy--overstatement followed by overcorrection. We prefer revolutions to reforms and corrections. I suppose we consider mitigating compromise to be a form of capitulating weakness. Or just less exciting than a truculent screed.
The heterogeneous valences which Nietzsche’s thought can carry are troublesome to some readers. For Bataille, Nietzsche is about chance and expenditure; for Deleuze, multiplicities and becoming. If your thought can be deployed in support of any position why did you bother to think it at all? Still, Deleuze remains one of the great pleasures of 20th century philosophy. I get something new every time I read him, even amid the delicious irony of the great anti-identity philosopher encouraging me to read other philosophers as an extension of himself.
March 17, 2016
Deleuze's admiration of Nietzsche is evident with this book. He systematizes Nietzsche's thoughts, pushing Nietzsche's conclusions in ways are interesting and compelling, but seem to be in line with Nietzsche's criticism of society and human conduct. Nietzsche remains fairly amorphous here as Nietzsche has always been pushed in various ways (by Nazis, and so on).
I read this book over ten years ago, and have returned to it now and then. Deleuze's thoughts on force are particularly interesting and have been invigorating for me. In particular is concept of active and reactive can be found in his earlier work Difference and Repetition. In this sense, this book is more about Deleuze than Nietzsche.
This is a pretty analytical reading of Nietzsche one that brings a great deal of coherency towards Nietzsche as a critic and philosopher... although Nietzsche use of myth and character still remains evident; threatening to undo Deleuze's reading simply because of Nietzsche's intense ambiguity at times.
I read this book over ten years ago, and have returned to it now and then. Deleuze's thoughts on force are particularly interesting and have been invigorating for me. In particular is concept of active and reactive can be found in his earlier work Difference and Repetition. In this sense, this book is more about Deleuze than Nietzsche.
This is a pretty analytical reading of Nietzsche one that brings a great deal of coherency towards Nietzsche as a critic and philosopher... although Nietzsche use of myth and character still remains evident; threatening to undo Deleuze's reading simply because of Nietzsche's intense ambiguity at times.
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October 27, 2016هنگامی که کسی می پرسد: فلسفه به چه کار می آید؟ پاسخ باید ستیزه جویانه باشد، چرا که پرسش کنایه دار و نیش دار است. فلسفه نه به دولت خدمت می کند و نه به کلیسا، فلسفه به خدمتِ هیچ قوه ی مستقری در نمی آید. کار فلسفه ناراحت کردن است. فلسفه ای که هیچ کس را ناراحت نکند و به هیچ کس ضدیت نورزد فلسفه نیست.
کار قلسفه آزردنِ حماقت است، فلسفه حماقت را به چیزی شرم آور تبدیل می کند. فلسفه کاربردی ندارد جز افشاکردنِ پستی های اندیشه در تمامی اشکالش.
آیا جز فلسفه رشته ای هست که به نقد تمامیِ راز آمیزگری ها، هر خاستگاه و هدفی که داشته باشد، همت گمارد؟
کار قلسفه آزردنِ حماقت است، فلسفه حماقت را به چیزی شرم آور تبدیل می کند. فلسفه کاربردی ندارد جز افشاکردنِ پستی های اندیشه در تمامی اشکالش.
آیا جز فلسفه رشته ای هست که به نقد تمامیِ راز آمیزگری ها، هر خاستگاه و هدفی که داشته باشد، همت گمارد؟
April 11, 2016
This is one of Deleuze's earliest published works. In this radically creative interpretation of Nietzsche, Deleuze is, I think, using Nietzsche's oeuvre as the phenomenon through which to express his own fledgling philosophy. This is not, therefore, a book “about” Nietzsche's work in the sense of an explication, but rather an attempt at a wholly original statement that “possesses” Nietzsche's works, those writings that bear his trace. I will thus refer to this work's “protagonist”, the “Nietzsche” that Deleuze claims to explicate, not as Nietzsche but as Deleuze's Nietzsche (DN henceforth).
Deleuze defines Nietzsche's philosophical project as an attempt to define a thought that is wholly affirmational, one that negates nothing. Deleuze contrasts what he formulates as Nietzsche's mission to Hegelian dialectics, in which otherness is gradually but inevitably subsumed to the same (thesis+antithesis=synthesis). Hegelian synthesis is seen by Deleuze, then, as the negation of difference as such. DN seeks to affirm everything in its own difference.
DN defines a phenomenon as the sign or symptom of the force(s) which express themselves through it. Every phenomenon, according to DN, has as many senses as it does forces acting upon it. The relation between one force and another DN calls a “will to power” and, at other times a “body”. (Deleuze's uses of the two terms seem to me to be more or less interchangeable.) Active forces are that which, in the “natural” state of things (a reoccurring, though I think problematic, starting point for Deleuze), are dominant- are obeyed by other forces within the order of a “natural, healthy” body. Such forces are responsible for the creative aspects of being, of imposing forms in relation to concrete conditions.
Reactive forces are “naturally”subservient within a “healthy” body. Reactive forces are in charge of the administrative aspects of life- the regulative accommodations that make life sustainable. Reactive forces are not naturally weaker than affirmative forces. Rather, reactive forces are separated from their own ability to create. They can only assert themselves by limiting the affirmational power of other forces. The hierarchy of forces determines the historical outlook and destiny of a will.
“Consciousness”, be it that of a healthy or unhealthy will to power, is always that of a greater force by a lesser force that has been seized or incorporated by the stronger. Weaker forces, which are naturally reactive, are, for DN, necessary for the life of the body, but they can only know themselves in relation to a stronger, more creative force which is always outside consciousness. Consciousness, then, can be described as the limitation imposed on active force by reactive force in the former's ability to affirm. The more reactive force manages to limit active force, the less ability a will has to affirm anything beyond itself.
(I want to add at this point that many followers of Deleuze, indeed Deleuze himself, fancied him the philosopher of his generation that broke finally and fully with Hegel and Marx. But Delueze's notions of will as a relations of forces sounds to me quite a bit like those of Althusser's “totality of contradiction.” I am certainly not saying that Deleuze was in any sense a Marxist, but that he was, like so many French philosophers of his generation still in the intellectual shadow of Althusser, and thus, indirectly, of Maoist thought.)
One can say, then, that a will, a body be it individual or societal, is not a being, but rather a becoming, a series of forces or points acting upon one another, a shifting constellation of powers. “Being”, however, is not an invalid concept. Becoming must itself have a form of being and this, DN defines as “return.” That force which returns as part of something else, that becomes, that alone is being. DN defines the eternal return as the process of critiquing forces. Forces that are found to be reactive are not selected for return, only active, affirmational forces may be reborn, may continue to become. This selective process of critique is itself an affirmation, for in destroying the reactive forces it creates a new combination of forces.
Reactive forces are, in the process of the eternal return, directed against themselves. (Self-destruction is the only affirmational act, according to DN, of which reactive forces are capable.) The eternal return, the ultimate affirmation that reproduces multiplicity, is also the purest nihilism, nihilism at its limit. (This sounded to me dangerously close to negation of negation.)
So, if this is how “healthy” bodies “naturally” evolve, then why is every society not in a constant state of creative (re)becoming? Looking around, this does not seem to be the case. Indeed, bodies, natural or societal, seem to generally try to resist change. For DN, it is the exception to the rule that a body is, in fact, healthy, and this has led to a society that is anything but in accord with “nature.”
One of Deleuze's earliest critiques of psychoanalysis comes in “Nietzsche and Philosophy” in the form of Deleuze's championing of forgetting. To forget, for Deleuze, is to create, indeed it is to select a memory for return or destruction and to oversee the reproduction of the multiplicity that is the self. In insisting on recovering memory, in Freudianism's struggle against what it deems “repression” or “denial” psychoanalysis is trying to stop the process of critique and return. It is trying to keep the subject where it has already been (in the past). In this way, psychoanalysis acts like many other training techniques of a sick society. (More on this later.)
The will that cannot forget cannot create. It can only obsess over that (the past) which it cannot act on and transform. This leads to what DN calls “resentment,” the fear of difference, that which DN defines as being, and the insistence that everything be identical. It seems that what we have come to know as society was created by and for such unfortunates. The resentful posit that since the strong and creative will could choose not to unleash its power, then the weak and reactive must also have the option of unleashing their power, but simply choose not to do so out of virtue. Through this myth and/or fallacy, resentment has thus seduced the active will against itself. It has made the creative will yearn for virtue, and build for the resentful all that we know as society and its identifying representations.
In a passage strikingly reminiscent of both Foucault and Althusser, Deleuze describes the process by which society selects traits and trains its subjects through punishment, or what society refers to as “justice.” Society bestows memory, and therefor resentment, in its creation, consciousness, through language, the tool that will allow consciousness to carry the past into the future. This consciousness is what society deems the “free individual”.
The resentful, who insist on identity, must think themselves absolutely right. They insist on a “truth” that is on their side. Deleuze defines truth as the unit of reactive thought. He throws all the sciences and humanities into this category of identifying representations, saying that they are always deployed to affirm the truth subscribed to by the powers that be. A truly affirmational thought, says DN, will have nothing of truth. (This broadside against the sciences and humanities strikes me as one of Deleuze's clumsiest moves in this book. Has not scientific discovery destroyed entire regimes of “truth”? Was Galileo not a creator and destroyer?)
DN identifies three stages of historical nihilism. The first is negative, or religious nihilism. In the history of philosophy, this impulse goes back at least as far back as Socrates and his spawn, Platonic Idealism. Idealism places the “truth” of phenomenon outside of the world. Life and the world are posited as the inferior imitation of Truth/ Divinity. Classical philosophy thus denies its own creativity. It claims that the “Ideal” it invents is outside of it, waiting to be reached and uncovered by its practitioners. The classical impulse to redeem life by subsuming it to the Ideal found an even purer manifestation in Christianity in which human being is redeemable only through self-destruction in the name of the Ideal- the loving, forgiving Father. The formerly cruel God of the Old Testament manages to put humanity into His debt through the Crucifixion. Humanity is obliged towards negative nihilism.
To be a Christian, then, is to think that one has already killed God. This leads one to another form of nihilism, the reactive. Kantian critique is imagined by modernity to be a rejection of faith in favor of reason. But, DN argues, Kant only anoints humanity as the interrogator of claims to knowledge, morality and truth. Kant does not critique knowledge, morality and truth as concepts. Indeed, he assumes their validity as such. Kant thus asks reason to judge (absolve?) itself and makes docility the “choice” of “reasonable men”. Kant places the moralistic mediator inside the individual but, DN asks, does that make subjectivity any less subjugating? If God is dead this was only so the nihilistic tradition of culture could take on the more dangerous, insidious form of rationalistic progress.
The ultimate form of nihilism DN defines as the passive. Here, humanity takes the place of an already dead God. The philosophical incarnation of passive nihilism is Hegel. Difference is ultimately subsumed into synthesis, and humanity is all that remains, living in its own values like a slug subsisting in its own excretions.
DN's only hope is that nihilist society will reach a level of such negative extremity that it will seek to negate itself and thereby partake in the critique that all of society has been founded to avoid. Having killed God and then taken God's place, human consciousness will then seek (DN hopes) to kill itself. DN's term for this will to transcendence of the nihilistic will is the “Overman”. The only path towards the Overman is an affirmational philosophy. For consciousness, being itself reactive, can not know the truly affirmational. But philosophical thought can imagine an affirmational critique/ destruction of consciousness-as-it-is.
The resulting affirmational thought would not oppose reactive thought, which is to say the entire history of philosophy and society. Affirmational thought would differ from reactive thought, just as, indeed, it would differ from itself. For affirmation of being is being itself, which is to say difference.
I don't necessarily buy into Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche. For one thing, while “On the Geneology of Morals” is a fine and disciplined work of philosophy, I don't think one can defend the claim that Nietzsche was as ruthlessly systematic a thinker as Deleuze wants to imagine him as having been. Also, I think Nietzsche viewed language as more liberatory, but perhaps less all-powerful than did Deleuze. For the latter, language and the bad memory it represents, is the bedrock of society. For Nietzsche, I think, language and philosophy were a means to reinvention and rebellion, but were not the absolute bedrock of anything. The physical body and its gestations remains an important site for Nietzsche whereas for Deleuze, for all of his talk of bodies, the body seems not even solid, but just points to be shifted by the greater powers of social discourse.
This is still a helluva book though. Regardless of its relationship to anyone's understanding of Nietzsche, it remains a vital entry point into Deleuze's exceptionally provocative if (I think) sometimes philosophically problematic body of work.
Deleuze defines Nietzsche's philosophical project as an attempt to define a thought that is wholly affirmational, one that negates nothing. Deleuze contrasts what he formulates as Nietzsche's mission to Hegelian dialectics, in which otherness is gradually but inevitably subsumed to the same (thesis+antithesis=synthesis). Hegelian synthesis is seen by Deleuze, then, as the negation of difference as such. DN seeks to affirm everything in its own difference.
DN defines a phenomenon as the sign or symptom of the force(s) which express themselves through it. Every phenomenon, according to DN, has as many senses as it does forces acting upon it. The relation between one force and another DN calls a “will to power” and, at other times a “body”. (Deleuze's uses of the two terms seem to me to be more or less interchangeable.) Active forces are that which, in the “natural” state of things (a reoccurring, though I think problematic, starting point for Deleuze), are dominant- are obeyed by other forces within the order of a “natural, healthy” body. Such forces are responsible for the creative aspects of being, of imposing forms in relation to concrete conditions.
Reactive forces are “naturally”subservient within a “healthy” body. Reactive forces are in charge of the administrative aspects of life- the regulative accommodations that make life sustainable. Reactive forces are not naturally weaker than affirmative forces. Rather, reactive forces are separated from their own ability to create. They can only assert themselves by limiting the affirmational power of other forces. The hierarchy of forces determines the historical outlook and destiny of a will.
“Consciousness”, be it that of a healthy or unhealthy will to power, is always that of a greater force by a lesser force that has been seized or incorporated by the stronger. Weaker forces, which are naturally reactive, are, for DN, necessary for the life of the body, but they can only know themselves in relation to a stronger, more creative force which is always outside consciousness. Consciousness, then, can be described as the limitation imposed on active force by reactive force in the former's ability to affirm. The more reactive force manages to limit active force, the less ability a will has to affirm anything beyond itself.
(I want to add at this point that many followers of Deleuze, indeed Deleuze himself, fancied him the philosopher of his generation that broke finally and fully with Hegel and Marx. But Delueze's notions of will as a relations of forces sounds to me quite a bit like those of Althusser's “totality of contradiction.” I am certainly not saying that Deleuze was in any sense a Marxist, but that he was, like so many French philosophers of his generation still in the intellectual shadow of Althusser, and thus, indirectly, of Maoist thought.)
One can say, then, that a will, a body be it individual or societal, is not a being, but rather a becoming, a series of forces or points acting upon one another, a shifting constellation of powers. “Being”, however, is not an invalid concept. Becoming must itself have a form of being and this, DN defines as “return.” That force which returns as part of something else, that becomes, that alone is being. DN defines the eternal return as the process of critiquing forces. Forces that are found to be reactive are not selected for return, only active, affirmational forces may be reborn, may continue to become. This selective process of critique is itself an affirmation, for in destroying the reactive forces it creates a new combination of forces.
Reactive forces are, in the process of the eternal return, directed against themselves. (Self-destruction is the only affirmational act, according to DN, of which reactive forces are capable.) The eternal return, the ultimate affirmation that reproduces multiplicity, is also the purest nihilism, nihilism at its limit. (This sounded to me dangerously close to negation of negation.)
So, if this is how “healthy” bodies “naturally” evolve, then why is every society not in a constant state of creative (re)becoming? Looking around, this does not seem to be the case. Indeed, bodies, natural or societal, seem to generally try to resist change. For DN, it is the exception to the rule that a body is, in fact, healthy, and this has led to a society that is anything but in accord with “nature.”
One of Deleuze's earliest critiques of psychoanalysis comes in “Nietzsche and Philosophy” in the form of Deleuze's championing of forgetting. To forget, for Deleuze, is to create, indeed it is to select a memory for return or destruction and to oversee the reproduction of the multiplicity that is the self. In insisting on recovering memory, in Freudianism's struggle against what it deems “repression” or “denial” psychoanalysis is trying to stop the process of critique and return. It is trying to keep the subject where it has already been (in the past). In this way, psychoanalysis acts like many other training techniques of a sick society. (More on this later.)
The will that cannot forget cannot create. It can only obsess over that (the past) which it cannot act on and transform. This leads to what DN calls “resentment,” the fear of difference, that which DN defines as being, and the insistence that everything be identical. It seems that what we have come to know as society was created by and for such unfortunates. The resentful posit that since the strong and creative will could choose not to unleash its power, then the weak and reactive must also have the option of unleashing their power, but simply choose not to do so out of virtue. Through this myth and/or fallacy, resentment has thus seduced the active will against itself. It has made the creative will yearn for virtue, and build for the resentful all that we know as society and its identifying representations.
In a passage strikingly reminiscent of both Foucault and Althusser, Deleuze describes the process by which society selects traits and trains its subjects through punishment, or what society refers to as “justice.” Society bestows memory, and therefor resentment, in its creation, consciousness, through language, the tool that will allow consciousness to carry the past into the future. This consciousness is what society deems the “free individual”.
The resentful, who insist on identity, must think themselves absolutely right. They insist on a “truth” that is on their side. Deleuze defines truth as the unit of reactive thought. He throws all the sciences and humanities into this category of identifying representations, saying that they are always deployed to affirm the truth subscribed to by the powers that be. A truly affirmational thought, says DN, will have nothing of truth. (This broadside against the sciences and humanities strikes me as one of Deleuze's clumsiest moves in this book. Has not scientific discovery destroyed entire regimes of “truth”? Was Galileo not a creator and destroyer?)
DN identifies three stages of historical nihilism. The first is negative, or religious nihilism. In the history of philosophy, this impulse goes back at least as far back as Socrates and his spawn, Platonic Idealism. Idealism places the “truth” of phenomenon outside of the world. Life and the world are posited as the inferior imitation of Truth/ Divinity. Classical philosophy thus denies its own creativity. It claims that the “Ideal” it invents is outside of it, waiting to be reached and uncovered by its practitioners. The classical impulse to redeem life by subsuming it to the Ideal found an even purer manifestation in Christianity in which human being is redeemable only through self-destruction in the name of the Ideal- the loving, forgiving Father. The formerly cruel God of the Old Testament manages to put humanity into His debt through the Crucifixion. Humanity is obliged towards negative nihilism.
To be a Christian, then, is to think that one has already killed God. This leads one to another form of nihilism, the reactive. Kantian critique is imagined by modernity to be a rejection of faith in favor of reason. But, DN argues, Kant only anoints humanity as the interrogator of claims to knowledge, morality and truth. Kant does not critique knowledge, morality and truth as concepts. Indeed, he assumes their validity as such. Kant thus asks reason to judge (absolve?) itself and makes docility the “choice” of “reasonable men”. Kant places the moralistic mediator inside the individual but, DN asks, does that make subjectivity any less subjugating? If God is dead this was only so the nihilistic tradition of culture could take on the more dangerous, insidious form of rationalistic progress.
The ultimate form of nihilism DN defines as the passive. Here, humanity takes the place of an already dead God. The philosophical incarnation of passive nihilism is Hegel. Difference is ultimately subsumed into synthesis, and humanity is all that remains, living in its own values like a slug subsisting in its own excretions.
DN's only hope is that nihilist society will reach a level of such negative extremity that it will seek to negate itself and thereby partake in the critique that all of society has been founded to avoid. Having killed God and then taken God's place, human consciousness will then seek (DN hopes) to kill itself. DN's term for this will to transcendence of the nihilistic will is the “Overman”. The only path towards the Overman is an affirmational philosophy. For consciousness, being itself reactive, can not know the truly affirmational. But philosophical thought can imagine an affirmational critique/ destruction of consciousness-as-it-is.
The resulting affirmational thought would not oppose reactive thought, which is to say the entire history of philosophy and society. Affirmational thought would differ from reactive thought, just as, indeed, it would differ from itself. For affirmation of being is being itself, which is to say difference.
I don't necessarily buy into Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche. For one thing, while “On the Geneology of Morals” is a fine and disciplined work of philosophy, I don't think one can defend the claim that Nietzsche was as ruthlessly systematic a thinker as Deleuze wants to imagine him as having been. Also, I think Nietzsche viewed language as more liberatory, but perhaps less all-powerful than did Deleuze. For the latter, language and the bad memory it represents, is the bedrock of society. For Nietzsche, I think, language and philosophy were a means to reinvention and rebellion, but were not the absolute bedrock of anything. The physical body and its gestations remains an important site for Nietzsche whereas for Deleuze, for all of his talk of bodies, the body seems not even solid, but just points to be shifted by the greater powers of social discourse.
This is still a helluva book though. Regardless of its relationship to anyone's understanding of Nietzsche, it remains a vital entry point into Deleuze's exceptionally provocative if (I think) sometimes philosophically problematic body of work.
September 5, 2018
Read in conjunction with the Kant book and before Difference and Repetition. This is where we first see “flows” but here they are called “forces”. One also sees glimpses of other later Deleuzian concepts such as the image of thought and his conception of the Eternal Return, as well as Deleuze’s general anti-Hegelianism. As with all the monographs, this more about Deleuze than the given subject.
July 21, 2022
نیچه و فلسفه ژیل دلوز
مسیر نسبتا طولانی ای تا خواندن این کتاب طی کردم که حالا بنظرم میرسد می توانست کوتاه تر باشد. چرا که مثل همیشه و طیق انتظار اینجا نیچه نیست که سخن می گوید، دلوزی نیچه ای شده است که حرف می زند، گرچه دلوز گفت در این کتاب شدن شان مضاعف بوده، نیچه دلوزی و دلوز نیچه ای شده، تصور صحنه ی آمیزش این دو دشوار است، پیچش های مفهومی عجیب غریبی را به صحنه می آورد. بنابراین علاوه بر پیش زمینه ای از نیچه، از دلوز هم باید چیزهایی دانست، از برگسونیسم اش هم اندکی. چون 20 صفحه از ان را خوانده بودم و اینجا به دردم خورد. بهتر از همه، گوش دادن به اندک ویس های موجود عادل مشایخی در تلگرام است. در یک ساعت مقدمه ی خوبی برای ورو به این کتاب می چیند و شما را عاشق طریقه «نقد» در این کتاب می کند
اولین چیزی که باید توجه ما را جلب کند ترجمه ی درست حسابی عادل مشایخی است. در خواندن کتابی چنین ژرف، کمی ضعف ترجمه لازم است تا عطایش را به لقایش ببخشی و پرتش کنی یک طرف. البته خود مشایخی درمتنی که در اینترنت قابل دسترسی بود چیزهایی در مورد معیار موفق بودن ترجمه گفته بود که سطح را از روان و خوانا بودن خیلی بالاتر می برد.
این کتاب در سال 1962 منتشر شده اما درون مایه هایش با تفاوت و تکرار 1968 پیوستگی بسیار دارد. با توجه به انچه من فهمیدم، فصل اول کتاب پر از انتولوژی بود. شاید هنر و قوت خوانش دلوز همین باشد که مفاهیم نیچه را هستی شناختی می خواند. بجای اینکه او را اخرین متافیزیسین بدانیم بهتر است دقیقا در مسیری که هایدگر خودش ریل گذاری کرده لوکوموتیو هستی شناسی ای نیچه ای را به کار اندازیم. اینجا دیگر بازگشت جادوان و خواست توان مفاهیمی پیش پا افتاده نخواهند بود، با تیپا تفاسیر عامه از خواست توان و میل به قدرت و بازگشت جاودان همچون اخلاقی اگزیستانسیالیستی برای زندگی خوب را بیرون خواهیم کرد. البته این فصل اول احتمالا بقدری به کل پروژه ی هستی شناسی دلوز مرتبط می شود که همه اش را نفهمیدم. خواندم، کلمات را دیدم و حتی معنایشان را می دانستم، اما نفهمیدم. دلوز برای من اینطور بوده تا کنون. بیشک سزاست که این کتاب بارها خوانده شود. بارها.
فصل دوم و سوم را بهتر فهمیدم. در برخی لحظات خواندن کتاب بی اختیار می گفتم: فاک،عجب شاهکاری است.
دلوز دارد نیچه را توضیح می دهد، از آری گویی و نه گویی و مفاهیم دیگر می گوید و تو را پیش می برد، و در یک آن متوجه می شوی دارید با مشت بر دهان هگل می کوبید! و چه کوبیدنی. تازه می فهمم شدیدترین حملات علیه هگل در کتاب نیچه و فلسفه یعنی چه! یادم می اید وقتی خدایگان و بنده را می خواندم خیلی در کتم نمی رفت حرف هایش. اخر چرا باید برده می بود که در نهایت امکانی پیش رویش می بود؟ که خدایگان را موجودی بدبخت نشان میداد. میگفتم اصلا چرا باید جنگید ان هم برای بازشناسی؟ واقعا در کتم نمی رفت و حالا می فهمم چرا و این نشانه ی خوبی است
در فصول 4 و 5 میرود روی تبار شناسی اخلاق و قطعا بهتر است این کتاب را خوانده باشیم. برخلاف فصول پیش تر که بنظر من عمدتا دارد کار ناتمام نیچه را ادامه میدهد و حتی بگذارید بگویم حرف در دهانش می گذارد، گرچه حرفهایی که با سایر حرف های نیچه بخواند. نشان به ان نشان که بسیاری از نقل قول ها از خواست توان است. در این دو فصل اما یک روایت استادانه از کینه توزی، وجدان معذب و نیهیلیسم می دهد. شرح و بسطی خواندنی. ازین فصول هم بسیار خوشم امد و بصیرت افزا بود برایم. باز تحت گاید دلوز بر دهان هگل مشت زدیم، خط دیالکتیک را تا ماکس اشتینر ادامه دادیم و واقعا دیدیم چقدر راست می گوید این دلوز ناخن دراز. دیالکتیک همین است، امر منفی همین قدر مزخرف و هیچ انگارانه است. بدبختی از همین جا ناشی می شود، سنت مارکسیستی را همین ها به گند کشیده اند، اگر خوب بنگریم. در پایان کتاب باز به درون مایه های اول کتاب بازمیگردد که هنوز هم فهمشان برایم دشوار بود.
سه ضمیمه هم به پایان افزوده شده که دوتای اخری بنظرم خوبند. ضمیمه 2 فهم مرا ارتقا داد و ضمیمه 3 را که خود مشایخی نوشته مدتی پیش خواندم و نشانم داد باید اول اسپینوزا را بخوانم و بعد دوباره ضمیمه را
خلاصه بجای تفاسیری از نیچه که آگاهی ما را ناخشنود می کنند بروید این کتاب را بخوانید، تا با توانی غیر معمول شارژ شوید، تا مثل من چند روزی منقلب باشید، تا شاید رستگار شوید.
مسیر نسبتا طولانی ای تا خواندن این کتاب طی کردم که حالا بنظرم میرسد می توانست کوتاه تر باشد. چرا که مثل همیشه و طیق انتظار اینجا نیچه نیست که سخن می گوید، دلوزی نیچه ای شده است که حرف می زند، گرچه دلوز گفت در این کتاب شدن شان مضاعف بوده، نیچه دلوزی و دلوز نیچه ای شده، تصور صحنه ی آمیزش این دو دشوار است، پیچش های مفهومی عجیب غریبی را به صحنه می آورد. بنابراین علاوه بر پیش زمینه ای از نیچه، از دلوز هم باید چیزهایی دانست، از برگسونیسم اش هم اندکی. چون 20 صفحه از ان را خوانده بودم و اینجا به دردم خورد. بهتر از همه، گوش دادن به اندک ویس های موجود عادل مشایخی در تلگرام است. در یک ساعت مقدمه ی خوبی برای ورو به این کتاب می چیند و شما را عاشق طریقه «نقد» در این کتاب می کند
اولین چیزی که باید توجه ما را جلب کند ترجمه ی درست حسابی عادل مشایخی است. در خواندن کتابی چنین ژرف، کمی ضعف ترجمه لازم است تا عطایش را به لقایش ببخشی و پرتش کنی یک طرف. البته خود مشایخی درمتنی که در اینترنت قابل دسترسی بود چیزهایی در مورد معیار موفق بودن ترجمه گفته بود که سطح را از روان و خوانا بودن خیلی بالاتر می برد.
این کتاب در سال 1962 منتشر شده اما درون مایه هایش با تفاوت و تکرار 1968 پیوستگی بسیار دارد. با توجه به انچه من فهمیدم، فصل اول کتاب پر از انتولوژی بود. شاید هنر و قوت خوانش دلوز همین باشد که مفاهیم نیچه را هستی شناختی می خواند. بجای اینکه او را اخرین متافیزیسین بدانیم بهتر است دقیقا در مسیری که هایدگر خودش ریل گذاری کرده لوکوموتیو هستی شناسی ای نیچه ای را به کار اندازیم. اینجا دیگر بازگشت جادوان و خواست توان مفاهیمی پیش پا افتاده نخواهند بود، با تیپا تفاسیر عامه از خواست توان و میل به قدرت و بازگشت جاودان همچون اخلاقی اگزیستانسیالیستی برای زندگی خوب را بیرون خواهیم کرد. البته این فصل اول احتمالا بقدری به کل پروژه ی هستی شناسی دلوز مرتبط می شود که همه اش را نفهمیدم. خواندم، کلمات را دیدم و حتی معنایشان را می دانستم، اما نفهمیدم. دلوز برای من اینطور بوده تا کنون. بیشک سزاست که این کتاب بارها خوانده شود. بارها.
فصل دوم و سوم را بهتر فهمیدم. در برخی لحظات خواندن کتاب بی اختیار می گفتم: فاک،عجب شاهکاری است.
دلوز دارد نیچه را توضیح می دهد، از آری گویی و نه گویی و مفاهیم دیگر می گوید و تو را پیش می برد، و در یک آن متوجه می شوی دارید با مشت بر دهان هگل می کوبید! و چه کوبیدنی. تازه می فهمم شدیدترین حملات علیه هگل در کتاب نیچه و فلسفه یعنی چه! یادم می اید وقتی خدایگان و بنده را می خواندم خیلی در کتم نمی رفت حرف هایش. اخر چرا باید برده می بود که در نهایت امکانی پیش رویش می بود؟ که خدایگان را موجودی بدبخت نشان میداد. میگفتم اصلا چرا باید جنگید ان هم برای بازشناسی؟ واقعا در کتم نمی رفت و حالا می فهمم چرا و این نشانه ی خوبی است
در فصول 4 و 5 میرود روی تبار شناسی اخلاق و قطعا بهتر است این کتاب را خوانده باشیم. برخلاف فصول پیش تر که بنظر من عمدتا دارد کار ناتمام نیچه را ادامه میدهد و حتی بگذارید بگویم حرف در دهانش می گذارد، گرچه حرفهایی که با سایر حرف های نیچه بخواند. نشان به ان نشان که بسیاری از نقل قول ها از خواست توان است. در این دو فصل اما یک روایت استادانه از کینه توزی، وجدان معذب و نیهیلیسم می دهد. شرح و بسطی خواندنی. ازین فصول هم بسیار خوشم امد و بصیرت افزا بود برایم. باز تحت گاید دلوز بر دهان هگل مشت زدیم، خط دیالکتیک را تا ماکس اشتینر ادامه دادیم و واقعا دیدیم چقدر راست می گوید این دلوز ناخن دراز. دیالکتیک همین است، امر منفی همین قدر مزخرف و هیچ انگارانه است. بدبختی از همین جا ناشی می شود، سنت مارکسیستی را همین ها به گند کشیده اند، اگر خوب بنگریم. در پایان کتاب باز به درون مایه های اول کتاب بازمیگردد که هنوز هم فهمشان برایم دشوار بود.
سه ضمیمه هم به پایان افزوده شده که دوتای اخری بنظرم خوبند. ضمیمه 2 فهم مرا ارتقا داد و ضمیمه 3 را که خود مشایخی نوشته مدتی پیش خواندم و نشانم داد باید اول اسپینوزا را بخوانم و بعد دوباره ضمیمه را
خلاصه بجای تفاسیری از نیچه که آگاهی ما را ناخشنود می کنند بروید این کتاب را بخوانید، تا با توانی غیر معمول شارژ شوید، تا مثل من چند روزی منقلب باشید، تا شاید رستگار شوید.
June 10, 2017
Deleuze powerfully interprets some of Nietzsche's concepts, but does something much more than giving a new coat of paint to the eternal return.
His approach is both crystal clear, explaining Nietzsche's difficult and allusive passages within a step-by-step analysis of his core ideas, and it is also murky, playing with the uncertainties of affirmation and negation in the process of muddying things you thought you know about Nietzsche. Deleuze treats Nietzsche seriously as a philosopher and situates him alongside Heraclitus or Hegel with all the precision of a scholastic metaphysician; but he also identifies what animates Nietzsche, questions of how to live and affirm one's own existence, all whilst side-stepping (overcoming?) Existential despair over meaning and suffering. And like many of his works written in other voices, Deleuze, by exploring another philosopher's thought, discovers what he thinks; he does not regurgitate Nietzsche, he interacts with him and creates a new sense for him.
"Secondary" philosophy of the first rate.
His approach is both crystal clear, explaining Nietzsche's difficult and allusive passages within a step-by-step analysis of his core ideas, and it is also murky, playing with the uncertainties of affirmation and negation in the process of muddying things you thought you know about Nietzsche. Deleuze treats Nietzsche seriously as a philosopher and situates him alongside Heraclitus or Hegel with all the precision of a scholastic metaphysician; but he also identifies what animates Nietzsche, questions of how to live and affirm one's own existence, all whilst side-stepping (overcoming?) Existential despair over meaning and suffering. And like many of his works written in other voices, Deleuze, by exploring another philosopher's thought, discovers what he thinks; he does not regurgitate Nietzsche, he interacts with him and creates a new sense for him.
"Secondary" philosophy of the first rate.
July 2, 2021
One of those rare books (rarest of all among works of philosophy) that makes you feel physically lighter while reading it. Deleuze can be inscrutable; admire what makes sense and discard what doesn't. Just don't be afraid to think hard -- Deleuze and Nietzsche both loved to challenge sloppy thinking.
Nietzsche was not a systematic thinker, and when Deleuze insinuates that he was, just remember that he's trying to seduce you into his own system. Luckily Nietzsche's "maxims and missiles" and Deleuze's more structured metaphysics work beautifully together, a magnificent dance. This is not a project of truth-finding, moralizing, or boundary-setting, but of pure liberation, life, joy, difference, and creation, all against the sad passions and resentment of the priest, the tyrant, and the Last Man. Deleuze's attitude makes him one of the very, very few who are fit to write even a small work of "secondary literature" on Nietzsche. You'll come out of this with a new view on the purpose of philosophy and the possibilities of thought.
Nietzsche was not a systematic thinker, and when Deleuze insinuates that he was, just remember that he's trying to seduce you into his own system. Luckily Nietzsche's "maxims and missiles" and Deleuze's more structured metaphysics work beautifully together, a magnificent dance. This is not a project of truth-finding, moralizing, or boundary-setting, but of pure liberation, life, joy, difference, and creation, all against the sad passions and resentment of the priest, the tyrant, and the Last Man. Deleuze's attitude makes him one of the very, very few who are fit to write even a small work of "secondary literature" on Nietzsche. You'll come out of this with a new view on the purpose of philosophy and the possibilities of thought.
April 6, 2018
Provide details about Nietzsche philosophy and helps to understand how he views the world.
August 30, 2020
Very inciteful summary of Nietzsche's core thoughts written in an oddly accessible way, for Deleuze at least.
January 17, 2023
Deleuze is a difficult thinker to recommend to most people. Analytical philosophers are bound to find his writing style foreign and impenetrable. Even among continental philosophers, Deleuze ranks high among the most incomprehensible, together with (late) Derrida and Baudrillard. His apologists (among whom I count myself) can rightfully point to the creativity, originality, and daring of his conceptual apparatus as mitigating factors. I do not think they fully excuse his persistent unwillingness to provide clear definitions and logical arguments. But there is a hypnotic, propulsive, and inspiring quality to his writing that helps to explain why so many artists, political theorists, sociologists, and philosophers like his work.
However, there is also ANOTHER side to Deleuze. In some books, his indomitable creative spirit is married to a (relatively!) rigorous and analytical methodology. This is the case with Nietzsche and Philosophy, which I would rank high among all his works. It is clear that Deleuze knew and loved his Nietzsche. Despite many unclear passages and poetic licenses (especially towards the end), this book is much more readable than his later hallucinatory, "schizoanalytic" work with Guattari, such as Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia and A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. With regard to his contributions to philosophy, I think Deleuze should be best appreciated as a creative and deep commentator on the subversive classics of Western philosophy: Spinoza, Nietzsche, Hume, Bergson, etc... His own vitalism, or "transcendental empiricism," cannot be understood without a thorough knowledge of these thinkers. Through his fluid integration of the insights of these thinkers into his own conceptual apparatus, Deleuze has managed to create something deeply original (and occasionally crazy!) but also something deeply rooted in the philosophical canon. Reading Nietzsche and Philosophy, one of his early works (before Difference and Repetition), one can clearly see the influence of Nietzschean concepts and themes creeping into what later becomes Deleuzeanism.
What does he do with Nietzsche? He explains how his concepts, such as the Will to Power, the Eternal Return, the Overman, Action, Joy, and Affirmation, are interlinked into a coherent philosophy of life. He also explains how these concepts may run counter to, and undermine, the "reactive" philosophies of Christianity, Kantianism, Hegelianism, Utilitarianism, etc. According to Nietzsche and Deleuze, what matters most is a certain attitude or comportment towards life that judges and evaluates things according to their contribution to master morality vs. slave morality ("higness" vs. "baseness"). Deleuze's attempts at systematizing Nietzschean concepts and aphorism do not always work, since Nietzsche was a playful trickster who often contradicted himself. However, for the most part, Deleuze creates a coherent picture of a Nietzschean philosophy of affirmation that owes as much to the interpreter as to the source material - which is perfectly in line with the Nietzschean claim that there are no facts, only interpretations. And while I think Deleuze's poetic interpretation of Zarathustra in the latter third of the book veers too far into purely subjective interpretation (unconstrained "perspectivism"), he mostly manages to hold it all together under a suggestive and coherent narrative structure. My major gripe, however, is that Deleuze gives Nietzsche a few too many free passes when the latter is being obscure, unfair, pedantic, or self-contradictory (which happens a lot). Deleuze seems afraid to criticize his master's teachings. It is a great irony that Deleuze's approach to Nietzsche can be surprisingly, well, "slavish." It seems hard to develop a master morality without embracing a new master, but a philosopher should be wary of clinging too many hopes onto anyone - even Nietzsche.
While there are echoes of the later, impenetrable Deleuze in this book, I think it mostly succeeds in 1) summarizing and systematizing Nietzsche in an exciting, coherent, and enticing fashion, and 2) summarizing and systematizing Deleuze's OWN philosophical system (in its early form). While Nietzsche scholars will undoubtedly find much that is idiosyncratic or unsupportable in his readings of Nietzsche, the most important thing is that his interpretation COMES ALIVE. This coming-alive - or resurrection - of Nietzsche motivates a fascinating new philosophy. I hope that Deleuze scholarship becomes more popular in analytical circles, since there is a lot that is fascinating in his (flawed) embrace of the Nietzschean task of creative transformation.
However, there is also ANOTHER side to Deleuze. In some books, his indomitable creative spirit is married to a (relatively!) rigorous and analytical methodology. This is the case with Nietzsche and Philosophy, which I would rank high among all his works. It is clear that Deleuze knew and loved his Nietzsche. Despite many unclear passages and poetic licenses (especially towards the end), this book is much more readable than his later hallucinatory, "schizoanalytic" work with Guattari, such as Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia and A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. With regard to his contributions to philosophy, I think Deleuze should be best appreciated as a creative and deep commentator on the subversive classics of Western philosophy: Spinoza, Nietzsche, Hume, Bergson, etc... His own vitalism, or "transcendental empiricism," cannot be understood without a thorough knowledge of these thinkers. Through his fluid integration of the insights of these thinkers into his own conceptual apparatus, Deleuze has managed to create something deeply original (and occasionally crazy!) but also something deeply rooted in the philosophical canon. Reading Nietzsche and Philosophy, one of his early works (before Difference and Repetition), one can clearly see the influence of Nietzschean concepts and themes creeping into what later becomes Deleuzeanism.
What does he do with Nietzsche? He explains how his concepts, such as the Will to Power, the Eternal Return, the Overman, Action, Joy, and Affirmation, are interlinked into a coherent philosophy of life. He also explains how these concepts may run counter to, and undermine, the "reactive" philosophies of Christianity, Kantianism, Hegelianism, Utilitarianism, etc. According to Nietzsche and Deleuze, what matters most is a certain attitude or comportment towards life that judges and evaluates things according to their contribution to master morality vs. slave morality ("higness" vs. "baseness"). Deleuze's attempts at systematizing Nietzschean concepts and aphorism do not always work, since Nietzsche was a playful trickster who often contradicted himself. However, for the most part, Deleuze creates a coherent picture of a Nietzschean philosophy of affirmation that owes as much to the interpreter as to the source material - which is perfectly in line with the Nietzschean claim that there are no facts, only interpretations. And while I think Deleuze's poetic interpretation of Zarathustra in the latter third of the book veers too far into purely subjective interpretation (unconstrained "perspectivism"), he mostly manages to hold it all together under a suggestive and coherent narrative structure. My major gripe, however, is that Deleuze gives Nietzsche a few too many free passes when the latter is being obscure, unfair, pedantic, or self-contradictory (which happens a lot). Deleuze seems afraid to criticize his master's teachings. It is a great irony that Deleuze's approach to Nietzsche can be surprisingly, well, "slavish." It seems hard to develop a master morality without embracing a new master, but a philosopher should be wary of clinging too many hopes onto anyone - even Nietzsche.
While there are echoes of the later, impenetrable Deleuze in this book, I think it mostly succeeds in 1) summarizing and systematizing Nietzsche in an exciting, coherent, and enticing fashion, and 2) summarizing and systematizing Deleuze's OWN philosophical system (in its early form). While Nietzsche scholars will undoubtedly find much that is idiosyncratic or unsupportable in his readings of Nietzsche, the most important thing is that his interpretation COMES ALIVE. This coming-alive - or resurrection - of Nietzsche motivates a fascinating new philosophy. I hope that Deleuze scholarship becomes more popular in analytical circles, since there is a lot that is fascinating in his (flawed) embrace of the Nietzschean task of creative transformation.
October 11, 2021
Es quizá, hasta ahora, la pieza más espectacular que he leido de filosofia en mi vida. Una de esas obras, que más allá del contenido ( fascinante, este uno o no de acuerdo), su forma constituye una nueva manera de pensar, reflexionar para uno. En definitiva de hacer filosofía.
Se encuentra uno ante algo distinto y magnifico. Pese a los monentos arduos, complejos, difíciles, de no comprensión; poco a poco en forma de espiral uno va desengranando un puzzle donde las piezas encajan.
Por supuesto en una primera lectura el puzzle es incompleto.
Se encuentra uno ante algo distinto y magnifico. Pese a los monentos arduos, complejos, difíciles, de no comprensión; poco a poco en forma de espiral uno va desengranando un puzzle donde las piezas encajan.
Por supuesto en una primera lectura el puzzle es incompleto.
June 3, 2008
Wanted to strangle Deleuze at least 30 times during this book. But it's an inspired and sedulous reading of Nietzsche. If only I could believe what Deleuze believes. How big can one human beings balls be in order to revolutionize human existence? On to Difference and Repetition I go.
July 6, 2022
A pretty exhaustive look at Nietzsche’s works. You really see the connections between Deleuze’s own transcendental empiricism and the Nietzsches philosophy of activity, reactivity, affirmation, etc.
June 22, 2015
Deleuze's thinking of difference is a way through philosophy to get outside of philosophy. It always amazes me how Deleuze can utilize another thinker's concepts in such a way that twists their thought into something new; but a newness that grows forth from the original thought.
Having read Difference & Repetition before this, it was interesting to see how so many of Deleuze's own concepts spring from within his studies of other philosophers.
While I don't completely agree with his interpretation of Nietzsche, this book is very useful in expanding one's ways of thinking through Nietzsche. I especially enjoyed the affirmation of affirmation, and its explicit use in being set in opposition to Hegel's negation of negation. Classic Deleuze.
If you like Nietzsche or Deleuze then you can't go wrong. An interesting work of philosophy for certain.
Having read Difference & Repetition before this, it was interesting to see how so many of Deleuze's own concepts spring from within his studies of other philosophers.
While I don't completely agree with his interpretation of Nietzsche, this book is very useful in expanding one's ways of thinking through Nietzsche. I especially enjoyed the affirmation of affirmation, and its explicit use in being set in opposition to Hegel's negation of negation. Classic Deleuze.
If you like Nietzsche or Deleuze then you can't go wrong. An interesting work of philosophy for certain.
February 18, 2021
نمیدونم بد ترجمه شده یا چی ولی این کتاب آدمو به شدت گیج میکنه. اصولا اگه خود آثار نیچه رو عمیق و منسجم خونده باشید هیچ احتیاجی برای درک بیشتر فلسفه نیچه به این کتاب ندارید چون این اثر فقط ذهنتون رو با تحلیل های پیچیده و غیر ضروری خسته میکنه، تحلیل هایی که بیشتر به فیزیک و ریاضیات شباهت داره تا فلسفه. پیشنهاد میکنم اگه علاقه دارید تفسیر از نیچه بخونید سراغ کتاب "در هزارتوی نیچه" اثر الن وایت برید.
November 14, 2019
It is difficult to tell whose genius is driving the other's. Nietzsche crafts the hammer, and swings it with all his might at nihilism, in all its forms, from Ressentiment to the dialectic. But Deleuze performs surgery with it.
September 24, 2021
کتاب پرباری که با تحقیقات بسیار و قلمی پخته نوشته شده است. پر است از اطلاعات مفصل و منظم. تنها اشکال آن، پوشش ندادن کل فلسفهی نیچه است که من آن را مشکل نمیدانم. ژیل دلوز، صرفا بخشهایی که میتوانسته بهخوبی توضیح دهد را انتخاب کرده و در این کتاب به شرحشان پرداخته.
August 13, 2024
Existence is itself an aesthetic phenomenon. Life’s radically innocent and just. Never have I ever thought someone could actually persuade my resentful conscience that life does not need a justification to be lived.
September 17, 2023
Very short booklet, with the idiosyncratic view of the author on Nietzsche. Deleuze has quite a reputation, but this didn't add much I'm afraid.
November 11, 2021
Deleuze is toxic - I hate spending time with him and he is full of bullshit but I keep crawling back for more wanting him to fuck me up again. >:(
September 8, 2022
nu stiu cat as fi reusit sa rezonez cu Nietzsche daca nu erau cartile lui Deleuze, ii multumesc pentru grindsetul pe care mi l-a oferit
May 28, 2023
هناك بعض « تعقيد مُبالغ فيه » المصطلحات التقنيه مع بداية الكتاب مزعجه وغامضه و منفصله ولكن مع التأني والتكرار تنقشع الضبابيه وتتَّضح المعالم الأساسية للفكرة ويبدأ المعنى العام يتماسك، بل يصبح الكلام في عموم الكتاب واضحًا. نصيحه للقراء : أحذر فكلما حاولت استِيعاب العناوين الصعبه او النصوص التي لم يعتاد عليها عقلك ولم يألفها تسجن ذهنك بطريقة لا واعية فيه، قراءه التراجمْ « و اي كتب اخرى و الحوارات الجانبيّة» ان وجدت تحفز العقل وتحرره من قيوده وتخطي قصوره. دولوز رائع وفيلسوف بالمعنى الأكاديمي للكَلمه يكتب بأسلوب شعري جزل بالغ الفصاحة, عباراتهُ أنيقه، الكلمات رشيقه ترقص من الخفه كما لو انه تلميذ ديونيسوس وهو كذلك، بإختصار : غني عن التعريف و المديح من قارئ متواضع. ولكن دعنا من المحبه و الإطراء.. بل بالأحرىٰ فاليسمح لي في ان أوغل في عشقه، ومن الحب ما نقد! خلال قرأتي للقراءة لاحظت ان دولوز لم يقرأهُ بطريقة نقديه واقتصرْ على القراءه التأويلية والتفسيرية قد يكون للتبشيع والتشويه الذي تعرض لهما الفيلسوف نيتشة دورًا في ذلك، ولكن لماذا لا نقيّمه، نقرأ، نزن النص النيتشوي بحياد.؟ ان السؤال الأساسي الذي لم يطرح من قبل وهو ; لماذا نيتشه مُفتَتْ بين ‹ دولوزي, هيدغري, هتلري, فوضوي, مسيحي, مسلم.؟!
لم يتعامل دولوز( و كُل القراء_ بل حتى نيتشه ذاته ) بجديه مع مقولة « موت الله » وما يترتب عنها من آثار فنيتشه من ألفهُ الى ياءهُ يؤصل للحق والخير و النزاهة كمفاهيم طارئه و قيم جرى التعاقد عليها تأَريخيًّا كثقافة عابره وبالأمكان تجديدها وإلغاءها وليس على الإنسان الأسمى او النبيل من حرج وبناءً على هذه المقدمه النتيجة ستكون هي {ضياع البوصله} ولا يمكن التميز بين إرادة القوه الهوبزيّة والنيتشويّة او بين القيم الارتكاسيّة الاضطغانيه والفاعله الخلاقه بين الروح الثقيل والاله الراقص عندما ينتزع الأضطغان، الحقد من العلو الصفة الأخلاقيّة الترانسدتالية. فالوقائع السايكلوجية التي لا تستقبح ولا تستحسن الا بعد ان تمر من قناة اخلاقيّة معينه سواءً كانت ترانستداليّة'متعالية او امبريقيّة' ارضيه. خذ مثلا [هانبيال] من الناحية السايكلوجيّة « القائمه على أَخلاقياتنا الترانسدتاليّة او التقليدية'الثقافية » شخص مريض و سادي ولكن المُعتَل وفقا لأخلاقه الخاصه و علم نفسه الخاص يعتبر نفسه سوي وصالح.
لا ما يقول نيتشه عن نفسه «مهذب الى درجة عدم الصراع» او ما رأيه بالنازية او كرهه واحتقاره لمعادي السامية والعنصرية « لا تعاشروا احد يكون متورطا في مسألة السلالات السخيفه هذه» الأهم هو : ما رأي نيتشة في الأسس التي تستند عليها فلسفته الأخلاقيّة و ماهو مترتب عن ذلك ؟! فمع غياب العلو لا يمكن أن تقام أخلاق موضوعيّة فإذا تبنينا الأخلاق الكلاسيكيّة وبطريقه مخاتله ما يعرف ب«اخلاق اللا أخلاقي» فإن مقولة «موت الله» تصبح بلا أدنى قيمه. فليس التفكك سببه الأساسي تنوع ملكة التأَويل لدى القراء بل الالتباس الذي وقع فية نيتشه ومره أخرى نيتشه ذاته يقول في الشذرة ٢٦٨ لكتاب « ما وراء الخير والشر» : ان العمل والفعل لا يدل على السلوك النبيل او يميزه ولا الحاجة إلى النبل بل {الإيمان}.؟! القواسم المُشتَركه بين كل من كانط و نيتشة وماركس وسبينوزا كلاهما أَخرجوا الله من الأبواب ويدخلونه من شباك- الأخلاق.
لم يتعامل دولوز( و كُل القراء_ بل حتى نيتشه ذاته ) بجديه مع مقولة « موت الله » وما يترتب عنها من آثار فنيتشه من ألفهُ الى ياءهُ يؤصل للحق والخير و النزاهة كمفاهيم طارئه و قيم جرى التعاقد عليها تأَريخيًّا كثقافة عابره وبالأمكان تجديدها وإلغاءها وليس على الإنسان الأسمى او النبيل من حرج وبناءً على هذه المقدمه النتيجة ستكون هي {ضياع البوصله} ولا يمكن التميز بين إرادة القوه الهوبزيّة والنيتشويّة او بين القيم الارتكاسيّة الاضطغانيه والفاعله الخلاقه بين الروح الثقيل والاله الراقص عندما ينتزع الأضطغان، الحقد من العلو الصفة الأخلاقيّة الترانسدتالية. فالوقائع السايكلوجية التي لا تستقبح ولا تستحسن الا بعد ان تمر من قناة اخلاقيّة معينه سواءً كانت ترانستداليّة'متعالية او امبريقيّة' ارضيه. خذ مثلا [هانبيال] من الناحية السايكلوجيّة « القائمه على أَخلاقياتنا الترانسدتاليّة او التقليدية'الثقافية » شخص مريض و سادي ولكن المُعتَل وفقا لأخلاقه الخاصه و علم نفسه الخاص يعتبر نفسه سوي وصالح.
لا ما يقول نيتشه عن نفسه «مهذب الى درجة عدم الصراع» او ما رأيه بالنازية او كرهه واحتقاره لمعادي السامية والعنصرية « لا تعاشروا احد يكون متورطا في مسألة السلالات السخيفه هذه» الأهم هو : ما رأي نيتشة في الأسس التي تستند عليها فلسفته الأخلاقيّة و ماهو مترتب عن ذلك ؟! فمع غياب العلو لا يمكن أن تقام أخلاق موضوعيّة فإذا تبنينا الأخلاق الكلاسيكيّة وبطريقه مخاتله ما يعرف ب«اخلاق اللا أخلاقي» فإن مقولة «موت الله» تصبح بلا أدنى قيمه. فليس التفكك سببه الأساسي تنوع ملكة التأَويل لدى القراء بل الالتباس الذي وقع فية نيتشه ومره أخرى نيتشه ذاته يقول في الشذرة ٢٦٨ لكتاب « ما وراء الخير والشر» : ان العمل والفعل لا يدل على السلوك النبيل او يميزه ولا الحاجة إلى النبل بل {الإيمان}.؟! القواسم المُشتَركه بين كل من كانط و نيتشة وماركس وسبينوزا كلاهما أَخرجوا الله من الأبواب ويدخلونه من شباك- الأخلاق.
October 2, 2022
Desenvolvi uma relação esquisita com esse livro.
Gosto muito da leitura que Deleuze faz de Nietzsche, especialmente como ele lê os temas da Genealogia da Moral. A minha questão é sobre a polêmica antidialética de Nietzsche e como Deleuze a expõe: por vezes fica muito nebuloso o ponto que Deleuze quer chegar e por vezes a destruição ativa/afirmação da afirmação/negação tornada vontade de potência afirmativa soa demasiado dialética. Eu gosto muito do argumento do Čeika sobre uma certa dialética na forma como Nietzsche pensa o Übermensch, apesar de entender os problemas de afirmar isso. Mas Deleuze quando vai tratar da questão da afirmação e da negação passa muito perto da dialética pra pouco depois afirmar que são coisas totalmente diferentes. No último capítulo do livro, ele argumenta muito bem a favor disso, mas sinto que há uma certa caricatura do hegelianismo que por vezes não dá conta do problema. Queria muito uma interação mais direta com a Dialética Negativa de Adorno, que me parece possuir afinidades e diferenças marcantes com a forma como Deleuze lê Nietzsche e Hegel.
Honestamente, não sei. Sou frontalmente deleuziano em certo sentido, é o pensador que mais me influencia e Capitalismo e Esquizofrenia é fundamental pro meu pensamento, além de diversos outros livros do Deleuze que já li e que me orientam bastante. E acho o argumento muito bom. Mas a pulguinha do Hegel fica na minha orelha o tempo todo lendo esse livro. Parece um castelo de cartas muito bem montado mas que tem risco de cair. Sei lá, não sei. Tô ranting já. No fundo, é o meu já velho problema Hegel e Espinosa. O Nietzsche dá uma sacudida no problema, e se há um Nietzsche a se defender, é o Nietzsche deleuziano. Mas não fiquei totalmente vendido. Me deu novas ferramentas, mas novos parafusos pra apertar ou afrouxar.
Gosto muito da leitura que Deleuze faz de Nietzsche, especialmente como ele lê os temas da Genealogia da Moral. A minha questão é sobre a polêmica antidialética de Nietzsche e como Deleuze a expõe: por vezes fica muito nebuloso o ponto que Deleuze quer chegar e por vezes a destruição ativa/afirmação da afirmação/negação tornada vontade de potência afirmativa soa demasiado dialética. Eu gosto muito do argumento do Čeika sobre uma certa dialética na forma como Nietzsche pensa o Übermensch, apesar de entender os problemas de afirmar isso. Mas Deleuze quando vai tratar da questão da afirmação e da negação passa muito perto da dialética pra pouco depois afirmar que são coisas totalmente diferentes. No último capítulo do livro, ele argumenta muito bem a favor disso, mas sinto que há uma certa caricatura do hegelianismo que por vezes não dá conta do problema. Queria muito uma interação mais direta com a Dialética Negativa de Adorno, que me parece possuir afinidades e diferenças marcantes com a forma como Deleuze lê Nietzsche e Hegel.
Honestamente, não sei. Sou frontalmente deleuziano em certo sentido, é o pensador que mais me influencia e Capitalismo e Esquizofrenia é fundamental pro meu pensamento, além de diversos outros livros do Deleuze que já li e que me orientam bastante. E acho o argumento muito bom. Mas a pulguinha do Hegel fica na minha orelha o tempo todo lendo esse livro. Parece um castelo de cartas muito bem montado mas que tem risco de cair. Sei lá, não sei. Tô ranting já. No fundo, é o meu já velho problema Hegel e Espinosa. O Nietzsche dá uma sacudida no problema, e se há um Nietzsche a se defender, é o Nietzsche deleuziano. Mas não fiquei totalmente vendido. Me deu novas ferramentas, mas novos parafusos pra apertar ou afrouxar.
August 2, 2011
Brilliant exegesis of Nietzsche by an equally profound thinker!
The book revealed to me a whole lot more Nietzsche than I could have ever imagined. Moreover, Deleuze clarifies a lot of what Nietzsche means - especially the very complex idea of the eternal return.
I think that this was one of the more readable Deleuzean texts but that one mustn't read this book without having read some Nietzsche... at least "The Birth of Tragedy" since it was Nietzsche's most understandable books considering it was his first book.
Ideas that Deleuze really analyzes to the utmost capabilities are the eternal return; Nietzsche's idea of force and sense instead of absolute essence; the nobility of the question "Who is the one that....?" instead of "What is the essence of...?"; the intricacy of time; affirmation and negation; and plenty more.
An incredibly rich text that shall be leant on for years to come as I continue to read Nietzsche!
The book revealed to me a whole lot more Nietzsche than I could have ever imagined. Moreover, Deleuze clarifies a lot of what Nietzsche means - especially the very complex idea of the eternal return.
I think that this was one of the more readable Deleuzean texts but that one mustn't read this book without having read some Nietzsche... at least "The Birth of Tragedy" since it was Nietzsche's most understandable books considering it was his first book.
Ideas that Deleuze really analyzes to the utmost capabilities are the eternal return; Nietzsche's idea of force and sense instead of absolute essence; the nobility of the question "Who is the one that....?" instead of "What is the essence of...?"; the intricacy of time; affirmation and negation; and plenty more.
An incredibly rich text that shall be leant on for years to come as I continue to read Nietzsche!
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