"Immanence: A Life", Deleuze's ultimate metaphysical vision 

@shakie6074 only one of these philosophers is a nihilist and another is afirmative to life, guess which one is which…

Oh thank you so much! I can't speak to Baudrillard's crystal but there's a very interesting paragraph in Bergson's "Matter and Memory" where he talks about "crystallisation". I'm almost certain Deleuze noted the term, being the careful reader that he was. Bergson says: "The nascent generality of the idea consists, then, in a certain activity of the mind, in a movement between action and representation. And this is why (...) it will always be easy for a certain philosophy to localize the general idea at one of the two extremities, to make it crystallize into words or evaporate into memories, whereas it really consists in the transit of the mind as it passes from one term to the other" (p.324 in the old edition). He uses the same expression elsewhere in the book. It seems to me this is pretty much what Deleuze is pointing at: the (mediated) general idea has an immediate aspect as well. It would be quite interesting to see if Baudrillard uses it in a similar way. Great paper topic imo!

@@exlauslegale8534 Baudrillard is somewhat jokingly pessimistic in his writing, yet he lived to 77 with cancer sadly taking him, whereas Deleuze was quite optimistic at least in his writing, yet he did commit suicide at the age of 70...its not so easy to pigeonhole a person as you may think

@@deleuzephilosophy I’ve never gotten into Bergson but have been meaning to. Any recs on a good starting point for his project??

@@shakie6074 I'd just read his texts tbh, they are very accessible. "Matter and Memory" is incredible, you'll recognise a lot of Deleuze's own themes, and his PhD, "The immediate data of consciousness", is particularly brilliant as well.

I really appreciate it, thank you very much!

You're very welcome, thank you for watching! I'm glad this content is helpful. I don't know if you've heard of the seminars? Deleuze is quite tough to read but he was an incredible teacher, and thanks to his students some of his seminars were recorded. I've regrouped the audio archives we have on my soundcloud if you want to give it a listen: soundcloud.com/user-375923363

​@@deleuzephilosophy Your Soundcloud is amazing !!! I know his seminars indeed, I discovered him through his lessons on Spinoza actually (I guess I'm not the only one... Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, Foucault, Deleuze, they constitute a little galaxy of its own, I went down the rabbit hole :p), and I know of a YT channel (@sociophilosophy ) which gathered a lot of these seminars. I think your Soundcloud will have my preference from now on though, because I much prefer podcasts to videos, I don't like having YT running for hours (especially for that kind of content), so you're solving a problem for people like me :D And I agree he was a fantastic teacher, his tone, his pace, his way of chaining ideas... Clarity and intelligibility aside, there's something almost poetic in his speech, a very distinctive energy at least that makes him quite enticing to listen to. In France anyway, he's still famous for his Abécédaire and his little seminar in La Fémis, which are more than enough to get hooked :D Thanks again for your work and these ressources, have a great day 🍻 (And I apologize if my english is a bit clunky)

​@@deleuzephilosophy Your Soundcloud is amazing !!! I know his seminars indeed, I discovered him through his lessons on Spinoza actually (I guess I'm not the only one... Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, Foucault, Deleuze, they constitute a little galaxy of its own, I went down the rabbit hole :p), and I know of a YT channel - @SocioPhilosophy - which gathered a lot of these seminars. I think your Soundcloud will have my preference from now on though, because I much prefer podcasts to videos, I don't like having YT running for hours (especially for that kind of content), so you're solving a problem for people like me :D And I agree he was a fantastic teacher, his tone, his pace, his way of chaining ideas... Clarity and intelligibility aside, there's something almost poetic in his speech, a very distinctive energy at least that makes him quite enticing to listen to. In France anyway, he's still famous for his Abécédaire and his little seminar in La Fémis, which are enough to get hooked :D Thanks again for your work and these ressources, have a great day 🍻 (And I apologize if my english is a bit clunky)

​​@deleuzephilosophy This is amazing !!! I know his seminars indeed, I discovered him through his lessons on Spinoza actually (I guess I'm not the only one... Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, Foucault, Deleuze, they constitute a little galaxy of its own, I went down the rabbit hole), and I know of a YT channel (SocioPhilosophy) which gathered a lot of these seminars. I think your soundcloud will have my preference from now on though, because I much prefer podcasts to videos, I don't like having YT running for hours (especially for that kind of content), so you're solving a problem for people like me :D And I agree he was a fantastic teacher, his tone, his pace, his way of chaining ideas... Clarity and intelligibility aside, there's something almost poetic in his speech, a very distinctive energy at least that makes him quite enticing to listen to. In France anyway, he's still famous for his Abécédaire and his little seminar in La Fémis, which are enough to get hooked :D Thanks again for your work and these ressources, have a great day ! (And I apologize if my english is a bit clunky)

@@ColinMusique Merci beaucoup, pareillement!

Thank you very much! Really glad you enjoy this content. Yes I'm doing a PhD on Deleuze's theory of affect at the moment. Philosophy is definitely worth pursuing if you have an interest in it, on your own or academically. It's something for life. Personally I did both, I left academia after my MPhil but kept working on Deleuze until I found this research position thanks to incredible people in Deleuzian circles. I was quite fascinated by the seminars (still am), but they were all scattered so I reassembled them (you can access them here if you like: soundcloud.com/user-375923363). It's a good complement to the texts. There are many ways to read Deleuze, I think it's perfectly fine to read him on your own in a more "affective" way, you can get a lot from it. An academic angle will help you get some of the allusions and technicalities, it's a rewarding experience for sure.

Does that link work for anyone else?

You're welcome, thank you for watching! I agree, it's a unique text that would need volumes to be covered. Thanks for the suggestions as well, I'll keep them in mind. I've been wondering about Deleuze's relation to phenomenology for a while and I don't have a definitive answer, but I think he would side with Bergson rather than the phenomenologists (at least as far as metaphysics is concerned). An argument could be made, perhaps, that this is because Bergson does not being with the "consciousness of" something, rather he begins with the "image", the foundation of consciousness. This is not to say that Deleuze would completely disagree with the phenomenologists, in fact I think he uses phenomenological language quite often... A delicate point for sure, but quite fascinating!

​@deleuzephilosophy Thanks for the response! I was using phenomenology to just reference broadly an understanding of lived experience to talk about the phenomena in the field of psychology called flow state/optimal experience or as implicit learning in cog sci that engages with how people lose their sense of self when fully immersed in a task that requires the right balance of skill and difficulty. A band lost within the flow of creating music together is one way I've been trying to think practically about the value of this view of a life. But to more specifically engage with your concern for the limits of consciousness within a more technical engagement with phenomenology, I absolutely agree and have gotten a lot of value out of the philosopher Erin Manning who takes a schizoanalytic approach to using Bergson and Whitehead to explicate neurodiverse phenomenology in relation to affect theory to deconstruct standard assumptions about agency/intentionality/volition

@@76Terrell Thanks for the precision, I see what you mean. If I had to make a guess I'd say these states have to do with the third synthesis of time as defined in D&R, that is, the impersonal process of selection which selects affects of joy, those that increase the power to act. It's quite interesting to relate almost mystical experiences, such as making music, to learning, as you suggest. I never thought about it but this may perhaps be why Deleuze develops the theme of learning in D&R!

Thanks for the sub!

You're welcome. Yes, there definitely could be a parallel there.

Thank you for watching!

@@deleuzephilosophy So, even better - I watched this prior to falling asleep last night... and I dreamt about this concept, and it began to make even more sense! My brain can do nice things for me sometimes...

You're very welcome, thank you for watching I appreciate it!

Thanks for watching!

Thank you for watching!

Which, by way of electrophysiology and parapsychology makes me think of the physics part of deleuze's metaphysics, could the plane of immanence akin to the something like a unified quantum field? Now, to be clear, I don't understand quantum physics enough to talk about stuff like that scientifically, but I think so.

Thank you very much!

You're very welcome, thank you for watching :)

Many thanks 🙏

Thanks a lot! Very true, we're not done exploring the rhizome. Finding the authors that you like in a field can be a very individual thing, but personally I enjoy reading Ian Buchanan, Dan Smith, Charles Stivale, Nathan Widder, James Williams, Chantelle Gray, to mention a few. In French, Jean-Clet Martin, Frédéric Worms, François Zourabichvili and Igor Krtolica have been great reads. There is a lot to gain in reading Deleuze's references, in particular Bergson, Peirce and Nietzsche, but also some contemporaries of Deleuze, including Barthes, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and of course Foucault. The best strategy, I'd say, is to grab everything that comes near you and give it a look without feeling that you must read the whole texts. The quick turnaround will help you find the authors that suit you best.

I might be doing something about "Empiricism and subjectivity" (Deleuze's first book about Hume) at some point, yes. Not sure exactly what yet, we'll see. Thanks for the comment and happy readings!

Very good point

What is the decisive difference between a structure and a machine, in the eyes of a poststructuralist?

​@@deponensvogel7261 Perhaps that a structure is given, linear and static, it produces predictable outcomes (hence for example Oedipal reductionism), whereas machines are constructions, active syntheses of time that can create feedback loops

@@deponensvogel7261 Structure conflates the virtual and the actual, or the molecular and the molar. Structure is static, it lacks becoming. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3Xsbru_lEdg.html

Thank you for watching, glad you enjoyed it! Well, my thoughts on Deleuze and Levinas are probably not more conclusive than yours but it likely has to do with Deleuze's relation to Existentialism and phenomenology. If I'm not mistaken Levinas makes transcendence an ethical concern and assigns it to the demands of the other, so he maintains it within personalist coordinates (don't quote me on this), whereas for Deleuze transcendence remains completely metaphysical.

Thank you for the comment, I agree: this text is quite profound metaphysically speaking. Actually, some of the Germans, especially Schelling and Fichte, are good to have in mind when we approach Deleuze.

@@deleuzephilosophy exactly agree mate. I have just finished with both Fichte and Schelling and I see the turn taken by Hegel (the dialectical being internally consistent within itself in difference) which Delueze strongly disagrees with. I may read the logic of sense before DR.

​@@teugene5850 Sounds good, LoS is more practical, while D&R is very dense and theoretical. I do have series on both on this channel if you want to have a look. I'm currently reading Henrich's "Between Kant and Hegel" which is excellent I think, but if you happen to know another good reader for that period I'd appreciate your advice.

@@deleuzephilosophy will comment there.

So, to me, and I don't have this quite figured out; the real would be a universal term that holds the diverse singular instances of that term in a relation of multiplicity so that the quality is apprehended by a transcendent (or immanent, I don't know if the distinction made here still holds) unity in each instance. So I fail to see how that sort of real is opposed to the possible along with contingency and necessity, not saying that it can't be, it's just that I'm having difficulty in translation. A comparative study of Peirce and the projects deleuze worked on is very interesting and tricky especially since they are opposites in their approach to terminology. But I tend to agree with Peirce that the problem of universals is a key to understanding, even though I don't quite understand.

So Deleuze develops this opposition in a few places in the seminars, it's related to the philosophy of essences, the Platonism that Deleuze proposes to overturn in D&R and which dominated philosophy probably up until Nietzsche (with exceptions, in particular the Stoics, Scotus and Spinoza, who offer another view of essence and being). To give a simple example, if you say "There will be a naval battle tomorrow" (which is a possible statement), and then it turns out that there is no naval battle, then the possible statement becomes impossible. It's the problem of future contingents. As Deleuze says, the problem, which created a huge stir in Antiquity and which motivated much of Stoic philosophy, is that "out of the possible emerges the impossible". And so, possibility cannot be real. Hope that helps!

@@deleuzephilosophy thank you very much for your answer, and yes it did help answer my answer, though the original answer I posted was malformed and ignorant, apparently I only have short memory because I like weed and couldn't recall some things I should have known. And I definitely need to watch your video again now, thank you for the content and reply. These problems especially regarding futurity are important for me to figure out to understand what happened. This passage, and others, from Fredrick Sternjfelt's Diagrammatology In turn helped answer our answers and I think it may relate what the two of us are talking about. _3) Continuity thus forms the central feature of Peirce’s realism with respect to such “real possibilities”: That which is possible is in so far general and, as general, it ceases to be individual. Hence, remembering that the word "potential" means indeterminate yet capable of determination in any special case, there may be a potential aggregate of all the possibilities that are consistent with certain general conditions; and this may be such that given any collection of distinct individuals whatsoever, out of that potential aggregate there may be actualized a more multitudinous collection than the given collection. Thus the potential aggregate is, with the strictest exactitude, greater in multitude than any possible multitude of individuals. But being a potential aggregate only, it does not contain any individuals at all. It only contains general conditions which permit the determination of individuals. (“The Logic of Continuity”, 1898, 6.185)_ Have a good day, any person who reads this

So the rough translation into Peirce would be virtual-firstness-actual-secondness-(this should be understood like double articulation, lobsters, as in the virtual is the secondness of the actual's firstness and vis-versa) and the discontinuity or rupture from immanence made by the pairing of the two would be realized by transcendence for deleuze and would be realized by a third term for Peirce that would stand in a relation of thirdness to each of the first two terms. Something like that.

Also, a little later on pdf pp 31 sternjfelt quotes ''The logic of continuity" yet again and I just have to copy and paste here because it really drives what the two of them were talking about home with simple example _Let the clean blackboard be a sort of diagram of the original vague potentiality, or at any rate of some early stage of its determination. This is something more than a figure of speech; for after all continuity is generality. This blackboard is a continuum of two dimensions, while that which it stands for is a continuum of some indefinite multitude of dimensions. This blackboard is a continuum of possible points; while that is a continuum of possible dimensions of quality, or is a continuum of possible dimensions of a continuum of possible dimensions of quality, or something of that sort. There are no points on this blackboard. There are no dimensions in that continuum. I draw a chalk line on the board. This discontinuity is one of those brute acts by which alone the original vagueness could have made a step towards definiteness. There is a certain element of continuity in this line. Where did this continuity come from? It is nothing but the original continuity of the blackboard which makes everything upon it continuous. What I have really drawn there is an oval line. For this white chalk-mark is not a line, it is a plane figure in Euclid's sense -- a surface, and the only line there, is the line which forms the limit between the black surface and the white surface. Thus the discontinuity can only be produced upon that blackboard by the reaction between two continuous surfaces into which it is separated, the white surface and the black surface. The whiteness is a Firstness -- a springing up of something new. But the boundary between the black and white is neither black, nor white, nor neither, nor both. It is the pairedness of the two. It is for the white the active Secondness of the black; for the black the active Secondness of the white. Now the clue, that I mentioned, consists in making our thought diagrammatic and mathematical, by treating generality from the point of view of geometrical continuity, and by experimenting upon the diagram._ (“The Logic of Continuity”, 1898, 6.203-4). Now Peirce says this mere secondness is nothing without a thirdness, correctly, this is where peirce and deleuze differ though it seems they reach the same conclusion. Peirce, an imminently repressed man of state, concerned his logic with extracting Law from God's judgement, thirdness is a lobster. whereas Deleuze, who understood the vital importance of nothing, was more concerned with Life's answer to the judgement of God. Deleuze is Peirce's evil twin.

Looking forward to it!

how the fuck is this intuitive. Are you out of your mind?

Is that a compliment or an insult?

@@tristanreynolds5748 neither

@@jacksonelmore6227 Intuition is one thing, consistently applying it in your thought and action is another , but even then, a personal philosophical system is not the main thing at issue. It's the very "image of thought" that he's aiming at. If all we did was use our intuition to concoct philosophical schema we would merely be projecting our unconscious minds, it wouldn't be a free, artistic creation of concepts. To take two examples of how pure immanence isn't the prevailing image of thought, take the new athiests rejection of god, and the Marxist dogma of false consciousness, with the former you see them paradoxically elevating imagination to a transcdent realm, and therefore rejecting it as fantasy with no bearing on reality. Same with false consciousness, except they denigrate the beliefs they label such to the lowest rung on the hierarchy, and therefore dismiss them as only products of the domination of ideology or material conditions. That's my spiel.

@@jacksonelmore6227 Intuition is one thing, but consistently reshaping your thought and action is another. Even then, one's personal philosophy is not at issue, it's the "image of thought" (in politics, criticism, religion, etc). If we merely used our intuition in building philosophical systems, they would just be a projection of our unconscious minds, not actually a wild, free, artistic creation of concepts. That's my spiel

it's not out of disrespect, that he writes the way he does, it's out of respect for his intended readers of whom will have a background knowledge on previous philosophers, concepts and theories that will actually understand it.