Objectivist responses to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

[HappyDays]

I’m curious if the community here either knows of, or is willing to provide, criticisms of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari from the perspective of ayn Rand and objectivism, if you are not familiar with their theory the best way I can summarize now is that they believed in a Monistic but pluralistic conception of being, that being is interconnected but chaotically manifests differently, to my understanding they also believed based on Immanuel Kant that spacio-temporality is  construct of consciousness, and their philosophy rejects systemic classifications of identity because they believe that being will continuously change and identity is how human minds categorize things, as opposed to the objectivist view of the law of identity. I recommend before responding looking them up 

[Boydstun]

 

Gilles Deleuze (and Felix Guattari)

HD, I haven't studied these. This link to them is at SEP, and I'm sure it's a reliable layout of their views for anyone who wants to learn about those thinkers.

However, I've seen from other online spots that you identify as a theist. And if that is important for you, I encourage you to not go at an exchange on that here in any roundabout way. If you'd like to raise objections to Objectivist thought on atheism or find out more about what their reasoning about it is, please just come at it directly with the folks here. Some of us still take time for and have an interest in that issue because of its role in the history of philosophy and because we realize the central place of theism in the world-view and lives of people to this day.

Edited September 3 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

HD, it occurred to me that I have in my personal home library a book by those two authors. Its title is What Is Philosophy? (1991). It looks worthwhile, but I've not read it. In recent years, I buy books for my library that look good to have for future possible reading should my studies and writings drift into their area. I'm seventy-five, and I've finally gotten over anxiety of buying books that I may never get to and have no immediate need of. I have collected the right sort of library needed by me. It is at my fingertips, and it really is more current than would be a good university library which is available to me by an hour train ride.

I keep this book on my shelf with this little bunch: What is the Use of Philosphy? by Philip Kitcher (2023); Was Ist Philosophie? by Bernard Bolzano (1849); What Is Philosophy? by José Ortega y Gasset (1928); and What Do Philosophers Do? by Penelope Maddy (2017).

I have written my own metaphysics, informed by history of philosophy and physical sciences and engineering. What I've written in epistemology is informed by past philosophy on that and by developmental cognitive psychology and by mathematics. The ethics I've formulated is informed by past philosophy and by biology and by psychology.

For all those coordinations of philosophy and science, I still want to reach a precise, explicit, and durable distinction between philosophy, science, mathematics, and their inter-relations. Kant tackled that. I can do better, pretty sure.

[DavidOdden]

On the assumption that you are not familiar with Objectivism, I offer a few elementary signposts that may help you to predict answers to your question. My first observation is that to the extent that Deleuze and Guattari do not agree with Rand, Objectivists will disagree with Deleuze and Guattari. By “agree with”, I mean “accept as true the conclusions of, and for the same reasons as”. While this may seem shocking, it is a consequence of the Law of Non-contradiction. So what remains is determining, “what do D&G claim to be the case in the universe?”.

Another fact to consider is the sociology of Objectivism. That may seem like an odd to bring up, but it is important to understanding the response of Objectivists. There are two kinds of people in the world, professional academic philosophers, and everybody else. The vast majority of Objectivists are not professional academic philosophers, though there are some. I’m not one. Stephen Boydstun is close to being one. My interest in Objectivism is purely practical, I find that it offers a framework which makes sense of a number of real-world problems (such as ethics), and provides a solution to a major professional puzzle of mine (the nature of scientific theories and human cognition). I have nearly zero interest in comparison of competing philosophical approaches, except insofar as understanding Plato vs. Aristotle helps to understand the history of western civilization. I am strongly disinterested in taxonomizing ideas, I prefer to understand ideas. I do find certain philosophical works to be of interest when they break free of the tyranny of arbitrary idea-classification and when they engage in the enterprise of idea-exposition. Popper, Eddington and Hayek are tolerable to me for that reason, even if I disagree in various ways, because they tend to set forth ideas in objectively-understandable terms. Unfortunately, the interpretive literature on modern philosophy, as well as the original sources, tend to use a mystical technical vocabulary that I cannot make sense of.

The SEP synopsis of Deleuze saying that “multiplicity replaces that of substance, event replaces essence and virtuality replaces possibility” is utter gibberish as far as I can see. Supposedly he is upset at the “privilege of identity over difference”, and he offers “a radicalized reading of Kant”, finding “genius” in “conceiving of a purely immanent critique of reason”. I have no idea what that really means, but insofar as Kant has the world’s worst epistemology, I’m pretty sure that I would not agree with Deleuze. Of course, this reaction is based on a glance at an interpretation of Deleuze, if I were a professional academic philosopher, I would be duty-bound to read and fret over the original texts. I’m not, and I don’t. I am interested in the ideas, and much less interested in the history of the ideas, at least until I know that the idea is itself correct. The labored historical approach of contemporary philosophy inverts horse and cart. We should not care primarily how an idea developed from another idea, we should care what idea is correct, and what it says. When we understand what is, it may be useful to understand how we came to know that it is. What is the utility behind knowing the origin of something that may or may not exist?

What I can say for certain is that based on this interpretive introduction, I would be stunned if there is any significant similarity between Rand’s philosophy and Deleuze’s.

 

[HappyDays]

What other  place did you find out I was a theist, and how do you know that was me? These questions aren’t roundabout ways of asking about religion, they’re intellectual curiosity about how one school of philosophy critiques another 

[Boydstun]

24 minutes ago, HappyDays said:

What other  place did you find out I was a theist, and how do you know that was me? These questions aren’t roundabout ways of asking about religion, they’re intellectual curiosity about how one school of philosophy critiques another 

Four days ago, someone on Reddit under the category Deleuze/Guattari had asked the following converse question to your questions here: 

Quote

 

Deleuze/Guattari response to objectivism and ayn Rand

Okay, I know my title probably makes some of you want to pull your hair out, however putting aside personal biases, does the community here know of any metaphysical or epistemological criticisms of objectivist philosophy and ayn Rand from the perspective of Gilles Deleuze or Felix Guattari. As a disclaimer, I am personally neither deleuzian or objectivist (I’m a theist with some influence from Karl jaspers, Jordan Peterson, Carl Jung, Søren Kierkegaard etc.). Purely out of intellectual curiosity.

 

That is enough overlap to infer the morning star is the evening star, so to speak. There was no serious response at that site. I can't recall what I had google-searched on originally for that post to come up. But I was able to find it again, searching specifically for it.

I imagine you can sift through Rand and D/G well enough to formulate what either side would or should say of the other. 

The main comparison of philosophers I've made between Rand and other ones are:

Aristotle – Entity and Ousia / Rand and the Greeks / Your Love of Existence / Thought's Living Existence

Descartes – Foundational Frames: Descartes and Rand

Hume – Induction on Identity

Wolff – Rand v. Wolff

Kant – Kant's Wrestle with "Happiness" and "Life" / Rand versus Kant: Much No to Walsh and Miller

Guyau – Rand and Guyau

Nietzsche – Nietsche v. Rand

Dewey – Dewey and Raand

I don't expect to get to Deleuze and Rand. So there you go. You have a niche for dratting that comparison.

 

[aliambere]

Hello,

As per my knowledge, they seem to propose a monistic yet pluralistic view of existence, where everything is interconnected but manifests differently in a chaotic way. They also appear to draw from Kant, suggesting that space and time are constructs of consciousness, and they reject rigid classifications of identity, arguing that being is always changing—quite the opposite of the Objectivist law of identity.

I hope this will help you!

Thanks!

[Boydstun]

Goodness Gracious

[Boydstun]

8 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Goodness Gracious

I put that link here to show the 41 different names that appear online attached to this same image used by the member here named aliambere. Does anyone besides me think there is something amiss in such a great number of persons who look identical and took exactly the same picture of themselves? On the multiple accounts having this same profile photo on Facebook, the ones having FB friends are friends who are young men declaring their religious faith and love of Allah. No problem with such FB friends of persons not myself and no problem with the pretty woman in the image, but seriously, who or what is our new member making the post above?

Edited September 5 by Boydstun

[tadmjones]

Certainly has the feel of a singularity of plurality.