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Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life
Pure Immanence collects the essays of Gilles Deleuze on a complex theme at the heart of his philosophy. In his last piece of writing, included here, Deleuze gives a simple name to this “a life.” Newly translated and gathered in one volume for the first time, the essays in Pure Immanence capture Deleuze’s persistent search throughout his philosophical work for a new and superior form of empiricism that rethinks the relation of thought to life. “I have always felt,” writes Deleuze, “that I am an empiricist, that is, a pluralist.”
Announced in his very first book on David Hume, then pursued in his early studies of Nietzsche and Bergson and in his later “clinical” essays, the issue of an “empiricist conversion” was central to Deleuze’s thinking, in particular to his aesthetics and his conception of the art of cinema. For Deleuze, such a conversion, such an empiricism, such a new art and will-to-art were, in fact, what was most needed in the new regime of communication and information-machines.
The last, seemingly minor question of “a life” is thus inseparable from Deleuze’s striking image of philosophy not as a wisdom we already possess, but as a pure immanence of what is yet to come. Pure Immanence exposes the new and urgent problems such a philosophy confronts today, one whose most difficult task, the invention of “a life,” has yet to be achieved.
Announced in his very first book on David Hume, then pursued in his early studies of Nietzsche and Bergson and in his later “clinical” essays, the issue of an “empiricist conversion” was central to Deleuze’s thinking, in particular to his aesthetics and his conception of the art of cinema. For Deleuze, such a conversion, such an empiricism, such a new art and will-to-art were, in fact, what was most needed in the new regime of communication and information-machines.
The last, seemingly minor question of “a life” is thus inseparable from Deleuze’s striking image of philosophy not as a wisdom we already possess, but as a pure immanence of what is yet to come. Pure Immanence exposes the new and urgent problems such a philosophy confronts today, one whose most difficult task, the invention of “a life,” has yet to be achieved.
104 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
Gilles Deleuze
269 books2,277 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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February 25, 2020Pure Immanence is a short, engaging, and broadly accessible little book composed of three essays: Immanence: A Life (1995); Hume (1972); Nietzsche (1965). In particular, the Nietzsche essay is fantastic. Now, the dates of these 3 discrete pieces and the connections or lack thereof between them are somewhat peculiar. Firstly, there is the obvious disparity in dates: around 30 years at the limit. Secondly, the subject matter: two monographs and a very brief essay. Finally, and more specifically now, there is something altogether confounding about the Hume essay: dated 1972, the essay is positioned around the time of the release of Deleuze's collaboration with Guattari, Anti-Oedipus; and yet, this essay bears hardly a resemblance at all to that supposedly contemporaneous work, neither in terms of content nor style. Anyhow, in these sentences I merely wish to quickly indicate the slightly strange composition of this posthumous book. Much more importantly, Deleuze is always a pleasure to read, however he is arranged.
Immanence: A Life is, by all accounts, the last piece of philosophy that Deleuze wrote. It is quite beautiful, and incredibly brief (around 5 pages). Maybe I'm being dramatic, but it has the feel of a last essay, not in the sense of a romantic last cry, nor of a premeditative declaration, but in the sense that it has as its object the most pure of philosophical concepts: 'a' life. Here Deleuze fleshes out his fascination with the indefinite article. Deleuze, throughout his works, is always searching for the a-subjective and non-personal, whether this notion be applied to life, individuality, desire, politics, and so on. One of the more surprising strides forward taken in the 20th century revolved around the notion of the subject and the birth of the individual; in short, the subjectification process. Contrary to the enlightenment ideal, where the birth of the individual constituted man's greatest liberation, his greatest achievement, in the philosophies of Deleuze, Foucault, et al., this very process was revealed to have a darker side: what if this very process represented not our emancipation and brightest freedom, but rather the birth of a new form of enslavement? What if the very constitution of the subject was in fact that which bound us to a politics of repression and subjugation more tightly than ever? What if the Yes of the subject could only be made in conjunction with an even stronger and more brutal No? It is this other form of life, ambivalent and disinterested in notions of the subject, the person, the narcissist, that Deleuze will articulate with 'a' life.
The second essay of the book focuses on David Hume. It is in Hume's subtle and nuanced philosophy that Deleuze finds the great power of empiricism. (It's worth remembering that the first book Deleuze ever wrote was on Hume, as well as that Deleuze explicitly labelled himself as an empiricist (transcendental)). Deleuze is not particularly interested in the role ascribed to empiricism by the History of Philosophy, as an epistemology based upon the subordination of reason and rationality to the senses, to perception; rather, what was revolutionary in empiricism was the subordination of the interiority, the opening to the Outside, the revolution of relations. By making belief the basis of all knowledge, Hume invites us to experiment, to experiment with 'and'. What is the relation between myself and this computer screen? what of me and another screen? what of another person with this screen? what is the relation between myself, this screen, and my headache? this room? my stress levels at work? It is no longer a question of person and computer, but person AND computer, person-computer, person-computer-headache-wage-labor-writing-philosophy? Already, we see the sense in which Deleuze will develop his notion of the assemblage in later years.
The final essay of this book, on Nietzsche, is incredible. Deleuze, in his characteristic fashion, weaves his way through a number of Nietzsche's most vital and impassioned concepts, constantly drawing out hidden or latent conclusions, displacing notions into foreign territories, and putting his philosophy 'to work'. One such concept, is perhaps Nietzsche's most well known of all: the will to power. Precisely speaking, the will to power is the will that corresponds to power, the will that belongs to power, the will of power, and the will that enacts power. It is not the property of a subject, or at least, is so only secondarily. The will to power must not be conceived as a will 'for' power, a will 'to' dominate; it is not a will for power, rather, the will is itself power; it is a composition of powers. This power itself is always multiple, a multiplicity, or, a battle of powers, each of which is itself a battle of powers, and so on, ad infinitum. Hence the entirety of life and the universe can be conceived as will to power, as a battle of powers: "this world is will to power, and nothing besides." Here Deleuze sees in the Nietzschean concept a predecessor of his own conception of desire. The will to power is a process that constructs a pure plane of immanence; it is a pure unraveling of forces, energy, flows. Indeed, it's enactment and production is much like the law of conservation of energy: "[it] does not expend itself but only transforms itself". It is "a play of forces and waves of forces"; it is precisely the desire, energy, flowing, that constitutes reality at the quantum and cosmic scales, as well as all those in between.
Affirmation also gets the Deleuzian treatment: Affirmation is itself always already multiple, that is, one does not become One without mutilations, subjugations, and brutality towards the multiple, towards life; One is always the result of negation, and affirmations can only ever be becomings, movements of multiplicities. It is only through the harshest of 'No's that we are able to say 'I'; it is only through the most ruthless and tyrannical discardings that we arrive at the subject.
Throughout this last essay, Deleuze makes use of the notions of lightness and heaviness; the heaviness of the camel, the donkey, vs the lightness of the child, the dancer. But what is lightness, and how does one live lightly? Or, to pose the question differently, what is heaviness? What is it to be this camel or donkey that Nietzsche refers to? Heaviness is something that we understand intuitively, indeed because we have much practice in this regard; O, we know quite well what it is to carry burdens. The degeneration of society, of European man, is to be defined precisely by this 'carrying', the normalisation of these burdens, our burdens. And these burdens that we carry are our established values: our morality, our virtue, even our epistemology; all of these represent a generalised becoming-sick of man, a becoming-slavish. The role of the philosopher, far from being one that challenges norms and reevaluates all values, has become quite the opposite: the philosopher is now he who justifies established values; it is he who now carries the most weight, he who burdens himself with the collective weight, the collective 'suffering that is life'. We are not very light. We are far from the dancer. And even when we dance, is it not always with that peripheral anxious gaze? Do we not feel the weight of the gaze of values upon our movements? And do we not, in turn, spread this contagion? This strange phenomenon, exemplar of sickness, whereby our only means of elevating ourselves is by putting down others; we cannot raise ourselves, we can only defile others. As Deleuze points out, the power of the weak is not to be found as a composite force, but rather, as a power to contaminate, a power of contagion: "the powers that be rely just as much on the administration of our intimate little fears and anxieties as they do on the repression of our desires." Nietzsche's most enduring concepts: ressentiment and bad conscience; the double edged sword of sickness, the two hatreds turned against life, the one pointing outward, the other inward.
Immanence: A Life is, by all accounts, the last piece of philosophy that Deleuze wrote. It is quite beautiful, and incredibly brief (around 5 pages). Maybe I'm being dramatic, but it has the feel of a last essay, not in the sense of a romantic last cry, nor of a premeditative declaration, but in the sense that it has as its object the most pure of philosophical concepts: 'a' life. Here Deleuze fleshes out his fascination with the indefinite article. Deleuze, throughout his works, is always searching for the a-subjective and non-personal, whether this notion be applied to life, individuality, desire, politics, and so on. One of the more surprising strides forward taken in the 20th century revolved around the notion of the subject and the birth of the individual; in short, the subjectification process. Contrary to the enlightenment ideal, where the birth of the individual constituted man's greatest liberation, his greatest achievement, in the philosophies of Deleuze, Foucault, et al., this very process was revealed to have a darker side: what if this very process represented not our emancipation and brightest freedom, but rather the birth of a new form of enslavement? What if the very constitution of the subject was in fact that which bound us to a politics of repression and subjugation more tightly than ever? What if the Yes of the subject could only be made in conjunction with an even stronger and more brutal No? It is this other form of life, ambivalent and disinterested in notions of the subject, the person, the narcissist, that Deleuze will articulate with 'a' life.
The second essay of the book focuses on David Hume. It is in Hume's subtle and nuanced philosophy that Deleuze finds the great power of empiricism. (It's worth remembering that the first book Deleuze ever wrote was on Hume, as well as that Deleuze explicitly labelled himself as an empiricist (transcendental)). Deleuze is not particularly interested in the role ascribed to empiricism by the History of Philosophy, as an epistemology based upon the subordination of reason and rationality to the senses, to perception; rather, what was revolutionary in empiricism was the subordination of the interiority, the opening to the Outside, the revolution of relations. By making belief the basis of all knowledge, Hume invites us to experiment, to experiment with 'and'. What is the relation between myself and this computer screen? what of me and another screen? what of another person with this screen? what is the relation between myself, this screen, and my headache? this room? my stress levels at work? It is no longer a question of person and computer, but person AND computer, person-computer, person-computer-headache-wage-labor-writing-philosophy? Already, we see the sense in which Deleuze will develop his notion of the assemblage in later years.
The final essay of this book, on Nietzsche, is incredible. Deleuze, in his characteristic fashion, weaves his way through a number of Nietzsche's most vital and impassioned concepts, constantly drawing out hidden or latent conclusions, displacing notions into foreign territories, and putting his philosophy 'to work'. One such concept, is perhaps Nietzsche's most well known of all: the will to power. Precisely speaking, the will to power is the will that corresponds to power, the will that belongs to power, the will of power, and the will that enacts power. It is not the property of a subject, or at least, is so only secondarily. The will to power must not be conceived as a will 'for' power, a will 'to' dominate; it is not a will for power, rather, the will is itself power; it is a composition of powers. This power itself is always multiple, a multiplicity, or, a battle of powers, each of which is itself a battle of powers, and so on, ad infinitum. Hence the entirety of life and the universe can be conceived as will to power, as a battle of powers: "this world is will to power, and nothing besides." Here Deleuze sees in the Nietzschean concept a predecessor of his own conception of desire. The will to power is a process that constructs a pure plane of immanence; it is a pure unraveling of forces, energy, flows. Indeed, it's enactment and production is much like the law of conservation of energy: "[it] does not expend itself but only transforms itself". It is "a play of forces and waves of forces"; it is precisely the desire, energy, flowing, that constitutes reality at the quantum and cosmic scales, as well as all those in between.
Affirmation also gets the Deleuzian treatment: Affirmation is itself always already multiple, that is, one does not become One without mutilations, subjugations, and brutality towards the multiple, towards life; One is always the result of negation, and affirmations can only ever be becomings, movements of multiplicities. It is only through the harshest of 'No's that we are able to say 'I'; it is only through the most ruthless and tyrannical discardings that we arrive at the subject.
Throughout this last essay, Deleuze makes use of the notions of lightness and heaviness; the heaviness of the camel, the donkey, vs the lightness of the child, the dancer. But what is lightness, and how does one live lightly? Or, to pose the question differently, what is heaviness? What is it to be this camel or donkey that Nietzsche refers to? Heaviness is something that we understand intuitively, indeed because we have much practice in this regard; O, we know quite well what it is to carry burdens. The degeneration of society, of European man, is to be defined precisely by this 'carrying', the normalisation of these burdens, our burdens. And these burdens that we carry are our established values: our morality, our virtue, even our epistemology; all of these represent a generalised becoming-sick of man, a becoming-slavish. The role of the philosopher, far from being one that challenges norms and reevaluates all values, has become quite the opposite: the philosopher is now he who justifies established values; it is he who now carries the most weight, he who burdens himself with the collective weight, the collective 'suffering that is life'. We are not very light. We are far from the dancer. And even when we dance, is it not always with that peripheral anxious gaze? Do we not feel the weight of the gaze of values upon our movements? And do we not, in turn, spread this contagion? This strange phenomenon, exemplar of sickness, whereby our only means of elevating ourselves is by putting down others; we cannot raise ourselves, we can only defile others. As Deleuze points out, the power of the weak is not to be found as a composite force, but rather, as a power to contaminate, a power of contagion: "the powers that be rely just as much on the administration of our intimate little fears and anxieties as they do on the repression of our desires." Nietzsche's most enduring concepts: ressentiment and bad conscience; the double edged sword of sickness, the two hatreds turned against life, the one pointing outward, the other inward.
March 27, 2021
I didn't get a ton out of the essays titled "Immanence: a Life" or "Hume", but the Nietzsche essay is incredible and a very helpful interpretation for my own reading of Nietzsche. Deleuze's clarifications on Nietzsche's concept of the eternal return are very useful, more so than his book "Nietzsche and Philosophy" and "Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle" by Klossowski.
September 14, 2021
i read this for my thesis but still, i wont be like rik, will actually write something because i am a human being with thoughts, not just an algorithmic machine of intake and sigh-like exhalations.
Deleuze was a madman. led the charge against all rationalist-based philosophy that assumes humans are separate from and can make sense of the world in any totalizing way. This book plays on his ideas of multiplicity and an immanence of life made up of all multiplicities. Basically he turns philosophy from analyszing things and their meanings to analyzing what is in between things ie their relations, and using the principles of those relations as maps to trace things into new spheres and "becomings". honestly i dont even fully get it and I spent like 5 minutes on each sentence with a fidget spinner in my left hand to help me focus and a rock in my right hand to bash my head when I felt stupid. But in the end, I def took away something, and the idea of immanence, or a virtual plane where all that exists rests as nonexistent but not unreal, is a cool concept. Also worth noting that deleuze jumped from a window like a year after writing this, so maybe the idea isnt that safe to ponder after all
4 stars cuz i feel mildly smarter but also definitely humbled at my own dumbness after reading it.
Deleuze was a madman. led the charge against all rationalist-based philosophy that assumes humans are separate from and can make sense of the world in any totalizing way. This book plays on his ideas of multiplicity and an immanence of life made up of all multiplicities. Basically he turns philosophy from analyszing things and their meanings to analyzing what is in between things ie their relations, and using the principles of those relations as maps to trace things into new spheres and "becomings". honestly i dont even fully get it and I spent like 5 minutes on each sentence with a fidget spinner in my left hand to help me focus and a rock in my right hand to bash my head when I felt stupid. But in the end, I def took away something, and the idea of immanence, or a virtual plane where all that exists rests as nonexistent but not unreal, is a cool concept. Also worth noting that deleuze jumped from a window like a year after writing this, so maybe the idea isnt that safe to ponder after all
4 stars cuz i feel mildly smarter but also definitely humbled at my own dumbness after reading it.
August 24, 2024
240814: this is deleuze. clear, concise, capacious, complex. this is exactly what I want in continental /postmodern/ deconstructed philosophy. he calls it 'superior empiricism'. he incorporates many (western) thinkers, some expectations with whose work the reader is already familiar. series of four essays, first written last, then his particular interceptions of deleuzean themes in Hume and Nietzsche. of the latter, I was very impressed with the bestiary of his thoughts, with his characterisation of Ariadne, Theseus, Zarathustra. pleased to recognise 1) possible meaning to title Mygale 2) remembrance of my own original conception (age 16) of SFF ideas of Gateworld 'Dion' as in Dionysius...
April 1, 2017
Deleuze’s last publication, apparently. Introduction argues that Deleuze pushed forward a new sort of empiricism, “neither hermeneutic nor Fregean” (7). His “transcendental empiricism had been Deleuze’s way out of the difficulties introduced by Kant and continued the phenomenological search for an Urdoxa” (8). Deleuze’s concepts of ‘life’ and ‘immanence’ are deployed as against the old Lockean concept of ‘the self,’ which had included “consciousness, memory, and personal identity” (id.); Deleuze is rather interested in a “logic of impersonal individuation” (id.). This is a “logic of multiplicity that is neither dialectical nor transcendental” (10). His “plane of immanence requires a kind of ‘radical empiricism’” (11) that is not from Frege or Husserl. Contrary to the transcendental ego, author adopts “Hume’s humorous picture of the self as incorrigible illusion [of] how our lives ever acquire the consistency of an enduring self, given that it is born of ‘delirium, chance, indifference’” (13). Deleuze further regards Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion to be “the only genuine dialogue in the history of philosophy” (17), wherein one finds the argument that “God as well as the self [are] regarded as a fiction required by our nature” (id.).
The first essay concerns “a transcendental field,” “a pure stream of a-subjective consciousness, a pre-reflexive impersonal consciousness, a qualitative duration of consciousness without a self” (25). Am kinda scratching my head here, but it’s “a haecceity no longer of individuation but of singularization” (29). Am all for arguments against individuation, but this perhaps ain’t really one of those?
The second essay, ostensibly about Hume, probably should be read with author’s earlier pamphlet on humean empiricism (I haven’t got to that one yet, so, yaknow). Empiricism is “the reverse of rationalism,” “a critique of innateness, of the a priori”—“But empiricism has always harbored other secrets” (35). Hume’s empiricism is a “science fiction avant la letter,” as it happens (id.). A consideration of the old, somewhat silly ontological ‘problem’ of relations leads to the conclusion that “Hume will devote [cf. Agamben’s reading of devotio] himself to a concerted destruction of the three great terminal ideas of metaphysics: the Self, the World, and God” (39). Nice sentiment that the human mind, left alone, “has the capacity to move from one idea to another, but it does so at random, in a delirium that runs throughout the universe, creating fire dragons, winged horses, and monstrous giants” (41). Against these, we deploy the “constant rules” of “laws of passage, of transition, of inference” (id.). Hume gives to Kant the notion that “we are not threatened by error, rather and much worse, we bathe in delirium [NB: this must be a key figure]” (43). He attributes to Hume the development of “modern skepticism,” which is based on “the status of relations [ugh] and their exteriority” (44) and has three principles: “making belief the basis of knowledge,” “denouncing illegitimate beliefs” as those that defy probabilism, and establishing “beliefs in the Self, the World, and God” “as the horizon of all possible legitimate beliefs” (id.).
The third essay is on Nietzsche, and should also be read in conjunction with dude’s earlier text on same (and which text, again, I have not read). Noting that Nietzsche shed the burdens of “a certain nationalism and a certain sympathy for Bismarck” by 1870 (55), Deleuze argues that “the abandonment of old beliefs did not assume the form of a crisis,” which is kinda a cool way to read an intellectual transformation. Some time spent in analysis of Nietzsche’s ill health: “Illness is not a motive for a thinking subject, nor is it an object for thought: it constitutes, rather, a secret intersubjectivity at the heart of a single individual” (58). Nietzsche credited with replacing “the ideal of knowledge, the discovery of truth, with interpretation and evaluation” (65). Some agambenian interest in how “modes of life inspire ways of thinking; modes of thinking create ways of living” (66)—i.e., the plotinian eidos zoe. Something about philosophy and degeneration (68 ff). Asks, curiously, “did we kill God when we put man in his place and kept the most important thing, which is the place?” (71). (“In his work, there are at least fifteen [!!!!] versions of the death of God, all of them very beautiful” (72).) Something thereafter regarding slaves, nihilism, degeneracy again (74 ff). Nietzsche’s ‘psychological discoveries’ inhere in resentment, bad conscience, the ascetic ideal, the death of God, the ultimate man (77 ff). A reading of the eternal return (87 ff). Interpretations to avoid: that the will to power means a desire to dominate; that the most powerful in society is ‘the strong’; that the doctrine of the eternal return is an ancient cyclic mysticism; and that his final works are simply crazed (92).
Recommended for readers who dethrone the interiority of is, persons who think that the problem of governance is a matter of credibility rather than representation, and the killers of god, those ugliest of men.
The first essay concerns “a transcendental field,” “a pure stream of a-subjective consciousness, a pre-reflexive impersonal consciousness, a qualitative duration of consciousness without a self” (25). Am kinda scratching my head here, but it’s “a haecceity no longer of individuation but of singularization” (29). Am all for arguments against individuation, but this perhaps ain’t really one of those?
The second essay, ostensibly about Hume, probably should be read with author’s earlier pamphlet on humean empiricism (I haven’t got to that one yet, so, yaknow). Empiricism is “the reverse of rationalism,” “a critique of innateness, of the a priori”—“But empiricism has always harbored other secrets” (35). Hume’s empiricism is a “science fiction avant la letter,” as it happens (id.). A consideration of the old, somewhat silly ontological ‘problem’ of relations leads to the conclusion that “Hume will devote [cf. Agamben’s reading of devotio] himself to a concerted destruction of the three great terminal ideas of metaphysics: the Self, the World, and God” (39). Nice sentiment that the human mind, left alone, “has the capacity to move from one idea to another, but it does so at random, in a delirium that runs throughout the universe, creating fire dragons, winged horses, and monstrous giants” (41). Against these, we deploy the “constant rules” of “laws of passage, of transition, of inference” (id.). Hume gives to Kant the notion that “we are not threatened by error, rather and much worse, we bathe in delirium [NB: this must be a key figure]” (43). He attributes to Hume the development of “modern skepticism,” which is based on “the status of relations [ugh] and their exteriority” (44) and has three principles: “making belief the basis of knowledge,” “denouncing illegitimate beliefs” as those that defy probabilism, and establishing “beliefs in the Self, the World, and God” “as the horizon of all possible legitimate beliefs” (id.).
The third essay is on Nietzsche, and should also be read in conjunction with dude’s earlier text on same (and which text, again, I have not read). Noting that Nietzsche shed the burdens of “a certain nationalism and a certain sympathy for Bismarck” by 1870 (55), Deleuze argues that “the abandonment of old beliefs did not assume the form of a crisis,” which is kinda a cool way to read an intellectual transformation. Some time spent in analysis of Nietzsche’s ill health: “Illness is not a motive for a thinking subject, nor is it an object for thought: it constitutes, rather, a secret intersubjectivity at the heart of a single individual” (58). Nietzsche credited with replacing “the ideal of knowledge, the discovery of truth, with interpretation and evaluation” (65). Some agambenian interest in how “modes of life inspire ways of thinking; modes of thinking create ways of living” (66)—i.e., the plotinian eidos zoe. Something about philosophy and degeneration (68 ff). Asks, curiously, “did we kill God when we put man in his place and kept the most important thing, which is the place?” (71). (“In his work, there are at least fifteen [!!!!] versions of the death of God, all of them very beautiful” (72).) Something thereafter regarding slaves, nihilism, degeneracy again (74 ff). Nietzsche’s ‘psychological discoveries’ inhere in resentment, bad conscience, the ascetic ideal, the death of God, the ultimate man (77 ff). A reading of the eternal return (87 ff). Interpretations to avoid: that the will to power means a desire to dominate; that the most powerful in society is ‘the strong’; that the doctrine of the eternal return is an ancient cyclic mysticism; and that his final works are simply crazed (92).
Recommended for readers who dethrone the interiority of is, persons who think that the problem of governance is a matter of credibility rather than representation, and the killers of god, those ugliest of men.
August 13, 2024
Late style Deleuze. There’s honestly something really sad about this book. The culmination of a philosophy about the shortcomings of sadness.
“My wound existed before me.”
“My wound existed before me.”
October 29, 2018
Persist through the first essay; aside from its own qualities, it provides context for the second (earlier) essay about Hume, which in turn contextualizes Deleuze's own empiricism. But the star of this collection, for my money, is the third essay on Nietzsche - it is, by far, the best intro to Nietzsche I've ever read, beautifully reinstating the savant's position as the great philosopher of affirmation, of creation, of multiplicity.
May 21, 2017
"The only clever word is Yes."
November 9, 2021
Ik ben bijzonder onder de indruk van Deleuze als historicus van de wijsbegeerte, hierin gaat hij onder meer aan de slag met Hume maar in het bijzonder met Nietzsche op een productieve en creatieve manier. Nieuwe inzichten worden gecreëerd, ookal is het slechts een kort essay.
July 23, 2024
Pure Immanence consists of three relatively short essays that touch upon different aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy. While the first of these essays, “Immanence: A Life”, is one of his final texts, the other essays on Hume and Nietzsche stem from way earlier in his career and help us understand how he conceptualizes these philosophers’ work and how they have fundamentally influenced him. While I’m not a trained philosopher, I’ll try to rephrase some of the essays’ central insights and arguments.
In “Immanence: A Life”, we become more acquainted to some central Deleuzian concepts, such as immanence, transcendental field, and transcendental empiricism. Deleuze starts out by defining the transcendental field as a thing that “doesn’t refer to an object or belong to a subject” (p. 25), hence appearing as “a pure stream of a-subjective consciousness” (p. 25). His transcendental empiricism, moreover, stands in contrast to all “that makes up the world of the subject and the object” (p. 25). Consciousness, he argues, only becomes a fact when “a subject is produced at the same time as its object” which then appear as “transcendents” (p. 26). In other words, the subject and object thus produced take on qualities that give equip them with some kind of spatio-temporal reach; they take on an existence; they somehow differ from a-subjective consciousness. Deleuze moreover defines “absolute immanence” as “in itself: it is not in something, to something; it does not depend on an object or belong to a subject” (p. 26); immanence, we will come to see, is the indefinite life: a life. What is a life? “We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and nothing else. It is not immanence to life, but the immanent that is in nothing is itself a life, A life is the immanence of immanence, absolute immanence: it is complete power, complete bliss.” (p. 27) The plane of immanence is defined by a life (p. 28). He mobilizes a story from Charles Dickens to exemplify his concept of a life, pointing to an in-between moment between life and death, a “pure event freed from the accidents of internal and external life, that is, from the subjectivity and objectivity of what happens” (p. 28). A life is “a haeccity […] of singularization: a life of pure immanence, neutral, beyond good and evil, for it was only the subject that incarnated it in the midst of things that made it good or bad” (p. 29). A life, we moreover learn, does not have moments, it only has “between-times, between moments” (p. 29). Crucially, a life might even “do without individuality”; it is about singularity. Kids, Deleuze suggests, lack individuality but display singularities: “a smile, a gesture, a funny face – not subjective qualities” (p. 30). Later, we learn that immanence is prior to transcendence: “all transcendence is constituted solely in the flow of immanent consciousness that belongs to this plane. Transcendence is always a product of immanence.” (p.31). In closing, Deleuze remarks: “There is a big difference between the virtuals that define the immanence of the transcendental field and the possible forms that actualize them and transform them into something transcendent.” (p. 32). What a difficult text.
Nonetheless, to ask a Deleuzo(Guattarian) philosophical question: what does ‘a life’ enable us to think and perceive? I read this text as a kind of aspirational attempt that foregrounds the generative possibilities of de-individualization, of going against the grain of the transcendence of subjects and objects. How can one center the moments (or, rather, in-between times) that are truly singular, those defined by a pure immanence; where we become lost in the middle-of-things, in medias res, as kids are all the time? These are moments which cannot really be singled out, hence Deleuze’s insistence on these being in-between-times. Experiences of a life are always possible in principle, but they do not occur to us as bounded subjects. They occur when we are freed from the shackles of subjectivity and objectivity; when we are outside the limits of transcendents. A life, then, also only becomes interpretable as such in hindsight – at least insofar as interpretation and reflection about one’s life are only possible as somewhat bounded subjects. To live a life, not THE life – for the life is always bound to subjects and objects – means to become, means to attend to immanence, means to attain the body without organs.
The second essay on Hume starts by accusing the history of philosophy of depicting empiricism as “a critique of innateness, of the a priori” (p. 35); Deleuze wants to discuss some further promises of empiricism. According to Him, Hume’s originality stems from his claim that “relations are external to their terms” (p. 37). Hence: “the real empiricist world is thereby laid out for the first time to the fullest: it is a world of exteriority, a world in which thought itself exists in a fundamental relationship with the Outside” (p. 38). Moreover, he shows how Hume places belief at the basis of all knowledge (p. 40). The second great change that Hume effectuates: he substitutes for “the traditional concept of error a concept of delirium or illusion” (p. 42). Moreover, Hume “is probably the first to have broken with the limiting model of contract and law that dominated the sociology of the eighteenth century and to oppose to it a positive model of artifice and institution (p. 47). This essay is extremely difficult to grasp without a thorough understanding of Hume’s philosophy. However, it helps us see how relations and exteriority figure as important in Deleuze’s work; and, in addition, his project of a transcendental empiricism.
The final essay on Nietzsche is very interesting, yet also quite challenging. It starts out with an analysis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: the camel signifies the weight of established values; the lion the critique of established values; and the child is she who represents play and a new beginning, the “creator of new values and new principles of evaluation” (p. 53). Moreover, Deleuze suggests that with “Nietzsche, everything is a mask” (p. 59); Nietzsche speaks of the ultimate importance and positivity of masks. In the essay’s next section, Deleuze argues that Nietzsche introduce both the aphorism and poetry as modes of expression into philosophical discourse (p. 65). Moreover, the ideal of the discovery of truth was replaced “with interpretation and evaluation” (p. 65). Interpretation, crucially, “establishes the ‘meaning’ of a phenomenon” (p. 65); evaluation determines the hierarchies of value of these meanings. Accordingly, “the philosopher of the future is both artist and doctor” (p. 66). Nietzsche, very interestingly, also affirms the “unity of life and thought” (p. 66): “Life activates thought, and thought in turn affirms life.” (p. 66). A crucial point: future philosophers, according to Nietzsche, will “diagnose the perpetuation of the same ailment beneath different symptoms; values can change, man can put himself in the place of God, progress, happiness” (p. 71). He also wants to do away with an important misconception of Nietzschean philosophy: the idea that the will to power denotes a will to dominate (p. 73). If we do this, we commit a central mistake: “We then cannot recognize the nature of the will to power as an elastic principle of all of our evaluations, as a hidden principle for the creation of new values not yet recognized. The will to power, says Nietzsche, consists not in coveting or even in taking but in creating and giving.” (p. 73). In other words, the will to power is “that which wants in the will” (p. 73). The will to power, hence, makes it so “that active forces affirm, and affirm their difference: in them affirmation is first, and negation is never but a consequence, a sort of surplus of pleasure” (p. 74). The victory of slave morality is what he calls “nihilism” a situation when “Everywhere we see the victory of No over Yes, of reaction over action.” (p. 75). If this situation were different, if action won out over reaction, the will to power would find very different manifestations. Hence, it is only “when nihilism triumphs” that “the will to power stops meaning ‘to create’ and starts to signify instead ‘to want power,’ ‘to want to dominate’” (p. 76). Nietzsche, thus, seeks a return to affirmation; and a departure from negation. The stages of the triumph of nihilism are five-fold: 1) resentment; 2) bad conscience; 3) the ascetic ideal; 4) the death of god; 5) the last man and the man who wants to die. When this last stage has been reached, then everything “is ready – ready for a transmutation” (p. 82). This transmutation, then, is “an active becoming of forces – a triumph of affirmation in the will to power” (p. 82). We now better understand the figure of Zarathustra: “Thus Zarathustra is pure affirmation but also he who carries negation to its highest point, making of it an action, an agency that services he who affirms and creates. The Yes of Zarathustra is opposed to the Yes of the donkey, as creating is opposed to carrying.” (p. 83). What nihilism, throughout its functioning does, essentially, is it denounces and condemns becoming and multiplicity (p. 84). These, becoming and multiplicity, are crucially elevated in the transmutation. Becoming and multiplicity, of course, are central concepts in Deleuze’s overall philosophical project.
Where does this leave us? It is impossible to impose an artificial unity on these vibrant texts. In their different ways, they illuminate Deleuze’s philosophy. Perhaps the most interesting was Immanence: A Life; both because it is extremely dense and because it nonetheless contains seeds that are intelligible after having reading A Thousand Plateaus. The essay on Hume was the most difficult to make sense of. The text on Nietzsche, however, was more digestible and certainly interesting. All in all, a wonderfully thought-provoking and lively set of texts.
In “Immanence: A Life”, we become more acquainted to some central Deleuzian concepts, such as immanence, transcendental field, and transcendental empiricism. Deleuze starts out by defining the transcendental field as a thing that “doesn’t refer to an object or belong to a subject” (p. 25), hence appearing as “a pure stream of a-subjective consciousness” (p. 25). His transcendental empiricism, moreover, stands in contrast to all “that makes up the world of the subject and the object” (p. 25). Consciousness, he argues, only becomes a fact when “a subject is produced at the same time as its object” which then appear as “transcendents” (p. 26). In other words, the subject and object thus produced take on qualities that give equip them with some kind of spatio-temporal reach; they take on an existence; they somehow differ from a-subjective consciousness. Deleuze moreover defines “absolute immanence” as “in itself: it is not in something, to something; it does not depend on an object or belong to a subject” (p. 26); immanence, we will come to see, is the indefinite life: a life. What is a life? “We will say of pure immanence that it is A LIFE, and nothing else. It is not immanence to life, but the immanent that is in nothing is itself a life, A life is the immanence of immanence, absolute immanence: it is complete power, complete bliss.” (p. 27) The plane of immanence is defined by a life (p. 28). He mobilizes a story from Charles Dickens to exemplify his concept of a life, pointing to an in-between moment between life and death, a “pure event freed from the accidents of internal and external life, that is, from the subjectivity and objectivity of what happens” (p. 28). A life is “a haeccity […] of singularization: a life of pure immanence, neutral, beyond good and evil, for it was only the subject that incarnated it in the midst of things that made it good or bad” (p. 29). A life, we moreover learn, does not have moments, it only has “between-times, between moments” (p. 29). Crucially, a life might even “do without individuality”; it is about singularity. Kids, Deleuze suggests, lack individuality but display singularities: “a smile, a gesture, a funny face – not subjective qualities” (p. 30). Later, we learn that immanence is prior to transcendence: “all transcendence is constituted solely in the flow of immanent consciousness that belongs to this plane. Transcendence is always a product of immanence.” (p.31). In closing, Deleuze remarks: “There is a big difference between the virtuals that define the immanence of the transcendental field and the possible forms that actualize them and transform them into something transcendent.” (p. 32). What a difficult text.
Nonetheless, to ask a Deleuzo(Guattarian) philosophical question: what does ‘a life’ enable us to think and perceive? I read this text as a kind of aspirational attempt that foregrounds the generative possibilities of de-individualization, of going against the grain of the transcendence of subjects and objects. How can one center the moments (or, rather, in-between times) that are truly singular, those defined by a pure immanence; where we become lost in the middle-of-things, in medias res, as kids are all the time? These are moments which cannot really be singled out, hence Deleuze’s insistence on these being in-between-times. Experiences of a life are always possible in principle, but they do not occur to us as bounded subjects. They occur when we are freed from the shackles of subjectivity and objectivity; when we are outside the limits of transcendents. A life, then, also only becomes interpretable as such in hindsight – at least insofar as interpretation and reflection about one’s life are only possible as somewhat bounded subjects. To live a life, not THE life – for the life is always bound to subjects and objects – means to become, means to attend to immanence, means to attain the body without organs.
The second essay on Hume starts by accusing the history of philosophy of depicting empiricism as “a critique of innateness, of the a priori” (p. 35); Deleuze wants to discuss some further promises of empiricism. According to Him, Hume’s originality stems from his claim that “relations are external to their terms” (p. 37). Hence: “the real empiricist world is thereby laid out for the first time to the fullest: it is a world of exteriority, a world in which thought itself exists in a fundamental relationship with the Outside” (p. 38). Moreover, he shows how Hume places belief at the basis of all knowledge (p. 40). The second great change that Hume effectuates: he substitutes for “the traditional concept of error a concept of delirium or illusion” (p. 42). Moreover, Hume “is probably the first to have broken with the limiting model of contract and law that dominated the sociology of the eighteenth century and to oppose to it a positive model of artifice and institution (p. 47). This essay is extremely difficult to grasp without a thorough understanding of Hume’s philosophy. However, it helps us see how relations and exteriority figure as important in Deleuze’s work; and, in addition, his project of a transcendental empiricism.
The final essay on Nietzsche is very interesting, yet also quite challenging. It starts out with an analysis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: the camel signifies the weight of established values; the lion the critique of established values; and the child is she who represents play and a new beginning, the “creator of new values and new principles of evaluation” (p. 53). Moreover, Deleuze suggests that with “Nietzsche, everything is a mask” (p. 59); Nietzsche speaks of the ultimate importance and positivity of masks. In the essay’s next section, Deleuze argues that Nietzsche introduce both the aphorism and poetry as modes of expression into philosophical discourse (p. 65). Moreover, the ideal of the discovery of truth was replaced “with interpretation and evaluation” (p. 65). Interpretation, crucially, “establishes the ‘meaning’ of a phenomenon” (p. 65); evaluation determines the hierarchies of value of these meanings. Accordingly, “the philosopher of the future is both artist and doctor” (p. 66). Nietzsche, very interestingly, also affirms the “unity of life and thought” (p. 66): “Life activates thought, and thought in turn affirms life.” (p. 66). A crucial point: future philosophers, according to Nietzsche, will “diagnose the perpetuation of the same ailment beneath different symptoms; values can change, man can put himself in the place of God, progress, happiness” (p. 71). He also wants to do away with an important misconception of Nietzschean philosophy: the idea that the will to power denotes a will to dominate (p. 73). If we do this, we commit a central mistake: “We then cannot recognize the nature of the will to power as an elastic principle of all of our evaluations, as a hidden principle for the creation of new values not yet recognized. The will to power, says Nietzsche, consists not in coveting or even in taking but in creating and giving.” (p. 73). In other words, the will to power is “that which wants in the will” (p. 73). The will to power, hence, makes it so “that active forces affirm, and affirm their difference: in them affirmation is first, and negation is never but a consequence, a sort of surplus of pleasure” (p. 74). The victory of slave morality is what he calls “nihilism” a situation when “Everywhere we see the victory of No over Yes, of reaction over action.” (p. 75). If this situation were different, if action won out over reaction, the will to power would find very different manifestations. Hence, it is only “when nihilism triumphs” that “the will to power stops meaning ‘to create’ and starts to signify instead ‘to want power,’ ‘to want to dominate’” (p. 76). Nietzsche, thus, seeks a return to affirmation; and a departure from negation. The stages of the triumph of nihilism are five-fold: 1) resentment; 2) bad conscience; 3) the ascetic ideal; 4) the death of god; 5) the last man and the man who wants to die. When this last stage has been reached, then everything “is ready – ready for a transmutation” (p. 82). This transmutation, then, is “an active becoming of forces – a triumph of affirmation in the will to power” (p. 82). We now better understand the figure of Zarathustra: “Thus Zarathustra is pure affirmation but also he who carries negation to its highest point, making of it an action, an agency that services he who affirms and creates. The Yes of Zarathustra is opposed to the Yes of the donkey, as creating is opposed to carrying.” (p. 83). What nihilism, throughout its functioning does, essentially, is it denounces and condemns becoming and multiplicity (p. 84). These, becoming and multiplicity, are crucially elevated in the transmutation. Becoming and multiplicity, of course, are central concepts in Deleuze’s overall philosophical project.
Where does this leave us? It is impossible to impose an artificial unity on these vibrant texts. In their different ways, they illuminate Deleuze’s philosophy. Perhaps the most interesting was Immanence: A Life; both because it is extremely dense and because it nonetheless contains seeds that are intelligible after having reading A Thousand Plateaus. The essay on Hume was the most difficult to make sense of. The text on Nietzsche, however, was more digestible and certainly interesting. All in all, a wonderfully thought-provoking and lively set of texts.
May 11, 2023
I took away very little textual information from this book, missed the forest for the trees by the time i got to nietzsche. The three parts made me feel very “yes! yes! mhm!!” as i was reading it but as i sit at the end of it honestly all i got was some neat history, some “let the records show”s about hume and nietzsche, and a VERY cool way to look at metaphysics, through immanence, that there is a plane of immanence through with “transcendental” things come into graspability (, it stands against transcendence, duality, but these are the words at my fingertips right now). Oh it also follows VERY smoothly off of Agamben the coming community. god is the taking place, the grasping, etc.
March 23, 2023
Immanence: A Life
May 18, 2024
Ocena dla polskiego wydania.
March 30, 2012
tare faina.
sunt trei eseuri. primul e despre imanenta (si e ultimul text pe care l-a scris deleuze, inainte de moarte).
al doilea despre hume. pe care il citeste in cu totul alt fel decat filosofii analitici - ca pe un ganditor al relatiilor, nu doar al atomilor logici.
si al treilea, cel mai lung, despre nietzsche.
ma cam speriam inainte sa citesc din el (cand am inceput cu diferenta si repetitie) apoi am citit una din cartile lui despre spinoza, bucati dintr-o cartulie despre kant si mi s-a parut mai accesibil.
ei bine, asta e cel mai accesibil din toate textele lui deleuze prin care m-am uitat.
sunt trei eseuri. primul e despre imanenta (si e ultimul text pe care l-a scris deleuze, inainte de moarte).
al doilea despre hume. pe care il citeste in cu totul alt fel decat filosofii analitici - ca pe un ganditor al relatiilor, nu doar al atomilor logici.
si al treilea, cel mai lung, despre nietzsche.
ma cam speriam inainte sa citesc din el (cand am inceput cu diferenta si repetitie) apoi am citit una din cartile lui despre spinoza, bucati dintr-o cartulie despre kant si mi s-a parut mai accesibil.
ei bine, asta e cel mai accesibil din toate textele lui deleuze prin care m-am uitat.
October 3, 2015
With this, Deleuze shows us the internal patterns of his thoughts on immanence, Hume and Nietzsche. By all means not the most incredible of his books, but the last and shortest. Here we get exposure to his thoughts on causation, immanence, subjectivity and epochal events. Nearly too tight to be an introduction and yet brief enough to be solely an introduction, this book is a good measure for calibration when you are feeling overwhelmed and need a breath of the outside.
October 6, 2020
"It is a complex unity: one step for life, one step for thought. Modes of life inspire ways of thinking; modes of thinking create ways of living. Life activates thought, and thought in turn affirms life."
December 2, 2022
3 great essays (the first of which was one of the last Deleuze ever wrote) on transcendence & life, Hume’s analysis of empiricism and Nietzsche’s ideas. The final essay on Nietzsche is genuinely one of the best I’ve ever read, Deleuze had such a great talent in tying together someone’s life events and thoughts and making them almost feel predestined (though given his secularism this becomes an even higher praise of his subjects’ intentions and writings). Even though it’s infinitely more accessible than Capitalism and Schizophrenia, it’s clear to me, now that I’ve read both their solo stuff, that Guattari really brings out the quirkier and funkier side of Deleuze. Sure,it’s at the cost of being almost unintelligible to beginners but god I love that first chapter of 1k Plateaus. Anyway, if you’ve read any Hume or Nietzsche you’ll really dig this.
Shameless plug (I’m sorry) but I do have an essay I wrote about Deleuze and the digital economy I never really promoted much so if anyone is interested…
Shameless plug (I’m sorry) but I do have an essay I wrote about Deleuze and the digital economy I never really promoted much so if anyone is interested…
June 19, 2023
A quick read if somewhat challenging in sections. The first two essays are definitely tougher and more “philosophical”. The third is a more accessible primer on Nietzsche which I really enjoyed. I’ve always felt that many people misinterpret Nietzsche and over simplify to fit the horrors of what the Nazis twisted some of his thoughts into but I haven’t been able to really articulate why I felt that. But the idea of man freeing himself from a reactive and therefore powerless life by choosing death, really spoke to me. I once read in a book about addiction that the real dark night of the soul is that moment when an addict actively says “NO” to the life of addiction and a first tentative but profound yes to life. That death can be a death of your old reactive life and a choice to an active new life.
March 13, 2020
An excellent short work in three parts. The first part is on A life, and the power of life in its pre-subjective state, or a life before it becomes individuated, with an identity and such things. The second part is on Hume and probably the work I'm least familiar with. It concerns transcendental empiricism and the relations between things. The final work is on Nietzsche, his life and works. Being more familiar with Nietzsche I found this essay the most interesting of the three. It clarifies Nietzsche's will to power as force, not as domination, as it is often construed. The distinction between thought that affirms the world and reactive thought, that judges the world, is explored in some detail.
December 23, 2022
These are by far my favorite essays by Deleuze that I’ve read. The Plane of Immanence, Hume, and Nietzsche. This is late, poetic Deleuze. He’s done the work, and has already demonstrated his projects. In this text, he shows off his beautiful writing style.
May 28, 2017
A very thin book whose argument I am still trying to understand.
June 10, 2019
Read it back to front.
January 28, 2020
Recommend for Nietzsche readers and perspectives on Hume's philosophy
April 27, 2021
Could it be... Deleuze? that I can actually understand? (Hume was the best chapter and I will stand by this until the end of time)
December 7, 2021
One of Deleuze's clearest and concise piece of writing without losing his poetic style.
Read
July 23, 2022Very dense and perhaps a good introduction to deleuze. (Did not read the neitschze chapter)
March 19, 2017
Indispensable. I have read Deleuze book on Hume and parts of his book on Nietzsche, and parts of other works. I feel as though I read this book at the right time to make sense of it. I think some of its concepts have yet to be taken up in creative, affirming ways.
February 10, 2023
första halvan var i det stora hela rätt tråkig men essäen om Nietzsche var uppfriskande.
April 23, 2023
i'm 12 years old and what is a transcendental field?
September 21, 2009
Deleuze's last book before he met the reaper. As his last living testament it seems less than life affirming to me. His understanding of "A Life" as impersonal seems fairly bleak. Are we all merely unknowingly living in the Matrix being inscribed with the dominant discourse of Secular Humanism? While easier to read than just about everything else in his back catalogue, I would recommend it to an upper level undergraduate class on Hume, Nietzsche, and/or Immanence. "A Life" is impersonal and therefore it is distinct from Foucault's conception of "The Self," which is all about painstaking care and the repetitious but immoderate experimentation with the use of pleasure to affirm existence.
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