Gilles Deleuze For You

At the limit, dividing oneself into lots and punishing oneself become the characteristics of the new judgment or modern tragedy.

as it does of the formal judgment of God. A final bifurcation takes place with Christianity: there are no longer any lots, for it is our judgments that make up our only lot; and there is no longer any form, for it is the judgment of God that constitutes the infinite form.

leading to delirium and madness, when man is mistaken about his lot, and in the form the ‘judgment’ of God, when the form imposes another lot. ‘Ajax’ would be a good example. The doctrine of judgment, in its infancy, has as much need of the false judgment of man

Men judge insofar as they value their own lots, and are judged insofar as a form either confirms or dismisses their claim. They judge and are judged at the same time, and take equal delight in judging and being judged. Judgment burst in on the world in the form of the ‘false judgment’

We never know how someone learns; but whatever the way, it is always by the intermediary of signs, by wasting time, and not by the assimilation of some objective content.

by their nature, they would be signs, but by their function, they could bring us out of the world of signs.

I get the impression that constantly in Spinozism, in Spinoza, there is a kind of functionalism; what interests him is really the functions, how things can work. So, signs, which by their function, which by their nature would be signs, this would be quite paradoxical:

Very unfortunate, but if you want to think what you want, well, I don’t see how you could. I don’t know how anyone can think what they want. It’s in the very nature of thought that you can’t think what you want.

Generally speaking, the ideal for thought is precisely not to think what it wants, meaning to be forced to think something. Before a painting, a Rembrandt, say, you can’t think what you want, it’s unfortunate but that’s the way it is.

this is what provokes thought.

The outside is what provokes thought, what prompts thought. All the more reason for me to reiterate, restate my warning: it is not a form of exteriority, it is not an external world. It is the most distant. This is what prompts thought, this absolutely distant. This is what prompts thought,

There are only ever practical critiques.

There are people who do not have the right to critique representation because, when they critique representation, it is really lip-service, and they critique representation while claiming to represent something or someone. I would say that this is the academic critique of representation.

I make, remake and unmake my concepts
along a moving horizon, from an always decentred centre, from an always displaced periphery which repeats and differenciates them. The task of modern philosophy is to overcome the alternatives temporal/non-temporal, historical/eternal and particular/universal.

There are no universals, only singularities. Concepts aren't universals but sets of singularities that each extend into the neighborhood of one of the other singularities.

It involves either a rule of construction, a rule of production, or a rule of acquisition (obtention). How do I obtain this?

What logicians call a "real definition," you understand, is a definition that not only defines its object, but, at the same time, shows the possibility of what's being defined. That is, it implies a rule of construction, for example, in mathematics.

The very distinction of a deep Self and a superficial Self forms part of a set of problems - I'm not at all saying that this is a false problem - but it's part of a set of problems that has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about today.

Leibniz doesn't at all distinguish between a deep Self and a superficial Self. He distinguishes between a clear and distinct portion of what the Self expresses and an obscure and confused portion. But for him, this is neither deep nor superficial, it is something else.

Maybe it has no personality, but a manner of being has a very strong individuality, a manner of being.

You have to repeat it over and over: No, no, I’m not a substance; I’m a manner of being. Eh? Yeah, so fine! A manner of what? Well yeah, a manner of being. Huh! So, does a manner of being endure, having a personality, an individuality?

finally we realize, if that appeals to you, you realize, quite obviously, he’s right, but this story is completely twisted. It’s quite astounding! He’s introducing a completely strange aspect of this! Try for a moment to think of yourself in that way!

So, necessarily, I am a being since I am a manner of being. Necessarily, there is immanence, there’s the immanence of all manners of being. Spinoza is in the process of creating a thought, but we realize at once, well obviously,

A manner of being is a mode of being. I am not a substance. You understand, a substance is a person. Well no, I am not a substance. I am a manner of being. Maybe this is a lot better! We don’t know!

And you’ll only understand if you have first grasped something that appeals to you.

The question, I assure you, regarding philosophy texts, the question is not at all: do you understand? Because the question is above all: what appeals to you in the texts? You may very well feel that something appeals to you without yet understanding it.

it's just the set of more or less negative preconditions that make it possible to experiment with something beyond history. Without history the experimentation would remain indeterminate, lacking any initial conditions, but experimentation isn't historical.

Nietzsche is talking about the way things happen, about events themselves or becoming. What history grasps in an event is the way it's actualised in particular circumstances; the event's becoming is beyond the scope of history. History isn't experimental,

The thing is, I became more and more aware of the possibility of distinguishing between becoming and history. It was Nietzsche who said that nothing important is ever free from a "nonhistorical cloud." This isn't to oppose eternal and historical, or contemplation and action:

(that's what Nietzsche means when he says: "neither God nor man," it's anarchy triumphant).