@@VioletDeliriums This is so kind and really warmed my heart🥹I’m glad my teaching methods are suitable and I’m really excited for your upcoming Deleuze readings! Happy New Year to you as well, and thank you again :)

@@gavinyoung-philosophy Getting through May's book is difficult for me. It is not couched in difficult language, but you really have to figure out what the words mean to the philosophers and many of these things are new to me. Another thing May does well, is he repeats throughout his book. But I really reference the terms back to the page I found them on too so I can review along the way and really know the book. It is worthwhile to go slowly. The good thing is, I am finding that I already think similarly to Deleuze about many things, but I am learning new words and expressions to actually say things in a different, sometimes more articulate way. :)

No, it’s “elites” trying to comprehend how “the prols” could vote for Trump’s isolationist, bigoted insanity.

@@shannonm.townsend1232 Yup, it is striking how much the West wishes to obfuscate and scapegoat Middle Eastern groups to deflect from their and Israel’s blatant disregard for international law and wartime conventions.

@gavinyoung-philosophy The W⁹est is getting lessons in statecraft, and it somehow escalates things.

It is a result of their capabilities, not that they are smol little angels. Israel and Hamas broke international law in the first week of fighting and your comment doesn't track the reports we have from the ground. Furthermore narrativizing and talking about a collective West response is inadequate, yes, if we compare the quantity of the support given by different Western countries, but you need also to understand that throughout the years Israel has been building up national production, that can continue to function even without Western support. I need to find the reports but I believe their dependence on US parts for their military was around 18%.

@@juliusbourodimos142 Contribute to the accelerated downfall of society, or my channel?😂

@@addyhadmelike655 Haha no worries, I get it. The video’s visibility has already been restricted; so goes the world of online censorship :/

KZbin makes the Glavit/Schriftleiter look like amateurs!

​@@gavinyoung-philosophyif you were serious about your take on what really happened you shouldn't haha over unwarranted censorship. Just think of how many top secret documents keep us in the dark about what really happened on 9/11. A fair review of his books, thnxs 🙏

@cg8096 Hey there! Thanks for your very in-depth comment. 1) I am using populism in one of many ways, so I admit that there are more than a few ways to define the term. Here it refers to a co-opting of the “voice of the people” my a politician or party who acts as the locus of such a voice. I find politics necessarily hierarchical (at least in modern representative government), so Trump is certainly imposing a unified and hierarchical vision dictated by his whims. The fantasies of America’s past and his constituents’ hope for its future seems to me to be at the beckon and call of Trump. 2) To that end, I do not think Trump is a fascist in the Hitlerian of Mussolini sense of the term; but I don’t think anyone can anymore! Those are past forms of fascism, and since fascism is constructed in such a piecemeal way, as you articulate well, contemporary fascism looks different. All of Trump’s rhetoric and candor seems to point in the direction of an authoritarian and fascistic mode of governance that can reasonably be said, at the very least, to be fascism in many regards. 3) I never mention Žižek. He is not a descendent of Deleuze in this regard, and I quite honestly don’t think Žižek really has read Deleuze.

Great communication, very hard to read by the way

​@@gavinyoung-philosophy No, you missed the point I raised here. Fascism isn’t a political ideology. I have read Žižek extensively, who is a modern descendant of Lacan. The mention of Žižek here emphasizes that fascism is the set of spirit of a group put into function. If tomorrow, hypothetically, America turns fascist, it would encourage a new form of radical consumerism because American spirit inherently embodies consumerism as a trait of its essence. The point, therefore, is that there exists a fascist spirit within every ideology. Take "woke" or the New Left, for instance. You can observe their policy of imposing a structural value system upon others. Ironically, "woke" emerged as a protest against objective ideological thinking but eventually metamorphosed into objective ideological thinking itself. Thus, fascism becomes a natural element within any ideology. A similar transformation occurred in the USSR, where the dream of a global communist revolution devolved into a one-state revolution. In the book Difference and Repetition, which I have read, Deleuze positions himself as anti-dialectical, challenging the Hegelian tradition. Deleuze proposed an alternative mode of thinking-"genealogy." He argued that genealogy elucidates the origins of values, which are often overlooked in Hegelian frameworks. To understand Trump, one must engage in a double affirmation of becoming and being in becoming, rather than relying on faith in eternal return. One cannot separate metaphysical reasoning from physical reasoning. To embody fascism, one must transcend mere "rhetoric and candor" pointing toward an authoritarian mode of governance, as you claimed, and instead impose a cohesive, hierarchical vision dictated by an intrinsic will. Labeling Trump as a fascist is inaccurate; his actions align more closely with nationalistic fanaticism. Fascism, in the context of Nazi Germany, did not label its elites as "Prussian" but rather constructed a racial identity tied to National Socialism, which was far more racialized than Mussolini’s ideals. Italian fascism, as Mussolini envisioned, was predicated on the continuous expansion of the nation, following Darwinian principles where existence was synonymous with struggle, not peaceful coexistence. Your labeling of Trump is thus highly inaccurate, and I would even argue it is biased by your own political beliefs. I am not American, but as a part of the intellectual community, these misrepresentations undermine the integrity of intellectual discourse.

@@whatever-fz9rd thanks

@ D&G’s whole point is that there is a fascist spirit in every ideology (and every individual): microfascisms. That’s the whole point of this lecture, so I’m not sure we ever disagreed there. With regards to the Trump and fascism contention, I think you’re just splitting hairs at this point. Ask any scholar on the subject of fascism (or postmodernism or any other such contentious term) and they’ll tell you that fascism is so broad and manifestly different in each of its iterations that we cannot have an all-encompassing, trans-historical definition that will adequately suit all discourses. Even Hitler and Mussolini’s fascisms were markedly different in many respects. Fascism is commonly (and tentatively) defined as pelingenetic ethnonationalism. Trump’s nationalist, fanatic, and isolationism rhetoric of America as mighty nation and Latin American immigrants as an infectious cancer is certainly in line with fascist sensibilities, and it seems trivial to try to distance him from the bigoted reality of his rhetoric by claiming fascisms is plainly inaccurate. One could say it is inadequate to fully articulate his political (any single term is inadequate for such a task, regardless of the case), but to wholly deem Trump not fascist seems an error.

I’ve definitely done some other lectures focusing on the real, material, and immanent implications of colonialism (among other -isms) that may solve the quip you bring up (see for example my stuff on Maurizio Lazzarato). You’re right that it’s important to discuss these terms in ways that don’t abstract them into a purely academic discourse. They should open up onto the real political and personal struggles of subjugated peoples. This is an introductory lecture, so I focused on general theoretical insights, not specific historical examples, so hopefully you’ll forgive what your comment seems to castigate as abstractism.

@@aegritudo Thanks!

Scrambles eggs

@@pichirisu Nah, I just use my brain and dedication

@ It’s ok, I give it a few years after you get to read a bit more and and you’ll realize how silly this tier arrangement is. Arrogance shouldn’t fuel your strategy.

@ It’s not being arrogant to say I have my own opinions which are valid and informed by laborious effort. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean you have to condescend me.

@@gavinyoung-philosophy Not what you said buddy.

That’s just the success of ideology to paint this demonic caricature of “the left” as baby-eating, communism-loving, liberal sissy enemies of democracy and freedom. We all desire simple answers to complex problems or uncomfortable realities, and such right-wing stereotypes box in their adherents in a comfortable cocoon of ideology and satisfying beliefs about how their lives could be better and who threatens their way of life.

That doesn’t explain how you could get a population to support the expulsion and oppression of an entire ethnic group (ex. the Jews in Nazi Germany). For that you need ideology to motivate people to do and support horrendous things, establishing them as in the peoples’ interests. Inflation is something abstract without ideology to package it into some actionable project

​@@gavinyoung-philosophySure, but that's an entirely different question to the particular one of why people voted for Trump. That has a direct contextual answer, not a politically essentialist one that also applies to other time periods e.g. Nazi Germany.

@@animanoir You’re welcoooommmee

@@johncoltranesethic18 A pre-ontological understanding of being [Sein] is the immediate and tacit familiarity we have with being; our ability to seamlessly use the word being and understand the implications of what it means to understand other beings as being implicated in our own existence. It is pre-ontological because it comes prior to any ontology, and thus prior to the formal recognization (as in literally re-cognizing our experience when we logically and rationally think about it philosophically) of any determinate categories, such as “objects”, “subjects”, “beings”, “spatiality”, etc. I know that’s a really technical way of stating this, and I don’t know if it’s any help. I go into more depth in my Being and Time series where I discuss this over the course of several lectures. The long and short of it: pre-ontological understanding is prior to the formal articulation of specific categories. It is an intuited, lived, and continuous flux punctuated by events of various importance. In our ontological thought, we recognize (an action) certain ontological categories which we use in our philosophical thinking, retroactively “discovering” those categories as having already latently been there. If one is not careful, one can impose the ontological over the pre-ontological, reducing life to a formulaic, rationalistic, and systematic philosophy, minimizing or absorbing the primary nature of pre-ontological experience to one’s daily life.

@gavinyoung-philosophy Thank you i got it🦆. If i may, one last question. When you say "re-cognizing" you mean that the point of cognition is the creation of a piece of the conceptual web that then is integrated in the ontology; in other words a "stopping" of the flow than reintegrated, when active, in the analysis of it?

I just mean that it’s a reflection on one’s own cognition; on the process by which one becomes aware of and is able to articulate one’s own cognition. It is a necessarily logically mediated and categorized way of thinking that acts within certain rational bounds.

Okay. Thank you. Good video and I appreciate the engagement. 🦆💚

@@rcherrycoke7322 Thank you?

@trysaratops Not sure that it’s available online. It was featured in a printed box set by Semiotext(e) entitled “Schizo Culture”, this essay being in the second of the two books, “Schizo Culture: the Event”. Here’s an Amazon link to the box set: a.co/d/3CmwYwv

@@victoralfonssteuck What a great way of expanding Hegel’s thought! You’re totally right that women would nourish the creative spirit (pun intended) within their womb and thus be part of the process. I think Hegel was probably just wed to certain misogynistic values about the value of “active” masculinity to create, as opposed to “passive” femininity. Thanks so much for your kind words as always man :)

He’s pretty technical. The play of forces, dialectic of the One, the terminological distinctions between Notion, idea, and concept, etc

You are totally right! I’m with Deleuze and his critique of Hegel in Difference & Repetition: negation cannot act as a positive motor for historical development and progress. True production and creation, rather than mere negation that subsumes contradictions into a wider and wider domain, is the only way history can unfold.

@@gavinyoung-philosophy kzbin.info/www/bejne/rZiQq2N7g6mFeKc

can u imagine? this interpretation happening in any academic seats around academic institutions around the world? yet, world runs like this... most people will never get it. imagine... finding and building up your ritualized conscious life (hyper-contemplation) (*not a job but more like 도... really...) so that few words change reality... kinda cool no no?

But you don’t create me. That’s the difference. God’s perfect knowledge entails that every outcome of his initial creation of human beings is known in advance with perfect fidelity. Any illusion of choice we have is merely due to the narrowness of our perspective and inability to grasp the totality of all states of affairs. Because God created us and knew exactly which states of affairs would result from that creation, he is ultimately responsible for any actions that we “freely” make; he has effectively dictated every action, it just appears as if we choose of our own independent volition. We are effectively extensions of God’s will, since every action and state of affairs plays out according to God’s will, which cannot err in describing, predicting, and knowing all states of affairs. Therefore, any “choice” made by any human can ultimately be traced back to God’s creative hand. Perfect foreknowledge prior to any choice means he is responsible for any outcomes of any choice since all things play out according to God’s will, meaning that he both desires it to be as such and created everything prior to that choice in order to ensure a particular outcome resulted.

@@averybloch Thanks man! I’m excited for you to start the Wake! I hadn’t even heard of FWEET till you mentioned it, so thanks for introducing me to it! In terms of KZbin material, I’d recommend “Relax, It’s Just Finnegans Wake”, which is a nice resource for the thunder words. Also, Anthony Burgess’ program on Finnegans Wake that’s posted here on KZbin is a gem. That’s basically it tho :/

Thank you! I’ll check those out I learned about a book, Zettels Traum, You might be interested! Since you like postmodernism, German lit and FW, it seems extremely up your alley Supposed to be as hard as finnegans wake or harder, haha Also, have to say it’s cool how much you bring the Germans into those video, haven’t seen others do that with FW at all

@@victoralfonssteuck To talk about “existence” as a formal concept is to describe a state of affairs. A state of affairs consisting of true opposites which simultaneously occupy exactly the same space and time and exist in exactly the same respect (aka a true contradiction) seems entirely nonsensical to me. Like we literally cannot think, perceive, or act without presuming the LONC. I even agreed with Hegel at one point that it was unnecessary to invoke the LONC, and a truly systematic philosophy must deny it to be all encompassing (ie both multiple and one), but then I had my senses knocked into me by a philosophy graduate friend of mine. It seems to me that those who want to point to contradictions that actually exist show their inability to grasp the logical impossibility of a true contradiction: something which both is and is not at the same time *and* in the same respect. The latter part seems to me the real caveat that prevents true contradictions from existing.

@gavinyoung-philosophy thank you for your detailed and thought-provoking reply. I’d like to expand on my position, particularly around contradictions and alternative logical frameworks. First, I believe it’s crucial to differentiate between true contradictions and false contradictions. As I argue in one of my pieces, false contradictions often arise from limitations in our frameworks or understanding. True contradictions, however, reflect intrinsic tensions within reality itself, which cannot be resolved by classical logic but require alternative approaches to be meaningfully addressed. You argue that the logical impossibility of something “being and not being” at the same time and in the same respect prevents the existence of true contradictions. While this holds within classical logic, alternative systems like paraconsistent logic and the framework of meta-consistency allow us to model situations where contradictions exist without collapsing into triviality. These systems do not reject the utility of the PNC outright but challenge its universality. About your critique of existence and contradictions: you state that true opposites occupying the exact same time and space in the same respect is nonsensical. Yet, I think this assumes a static and binary view of existence. In another text, I discuss the Platonic concept of metaxy-the “in-between.” It represents a liminal space where opposites coexist productively, not as resolved contradictions but as simultaneous truths. This mirrors the kind of contradictions we encounter in real-world phenomena, like the wave-particle duality in physics, where the classical dichotomy of “either/or” breaks down into “both/and.” You also mentioned initially agreeing with Hegel’s dismissal of the PNC’s necessity before reconsidering. While I respect your reasoning, Hegel’s dialectical method wasn’t merely a denial of logical consistency but an effort to capture the dynamic movement of concepts and reality. Contradictions in Hegel’s system aren’t inert absurdities but engines of development. To dismiss them as impossible or nonsensical risks ignoring their productive role in thought and existence. My proposal is this: Rather than seeing contradictions as fatal to systematic thought or metaphysics, could we view them as signposts indicating where our current frameworks are insufficient? True contradictions, as I see them, invite us to expand our logic and metaphysics, not abandon them. Paraconsistent systems, meta-consistent frameworks, and even dialectical approaches are all ways of grappling with this richness. One concept I’ve been developing is that of meta-irony, which I explore in other texts. Meta-irony serves as a way to navigate the coexistence of contradictory truths without necessarily resolving or negating them. It’s a mode of thought that embraces the provisional and paradoxical, allowing contradictions to function as tools for deeper understanding rather than barriers to it. Building on this, I’ve also been working on the idea of anti-logic, where we assign the designated value as “false.” Anti-logic doesn’t seek to invalidate other systems of logic but acts as a counterbalance. Ultimately, I believe contradictions -both true and false - are invitations to expand our intellectual horizons. Whether through paraconsistent logic, meta-consistency, or the creation of anti-logics, they compel us to rethink the boundaries of thought itself. I share this perspective not to dismiss classical logic but to enrich our toolkit for understanding reality. It’s because of these shared interests that I plan to become a supporter of your work in the future. I’d love the chance to engage with you and others who are passionate about these topics on a deeper level. Conversations like these, I believe, are where philosophy truly thrives.

@ You know, Victor, your response is extremely compelling. I think you’re right: even within a Hegelian framework, contradictions are mobile nodules signaling and entailing historical development. The concept of metaxy reminds me of Homi Bhabha’s concept of liminal identity he explicates in “The Location of Culture”. Even from a dialectical framework, he focuses on the in-between temporalities opened up by resistance to binaries and codes that are achieved through the resistance of their universality. This indeed is the key benefit to viewing ontology as necessarily fragmentary, incomplete, and open to contestation. Thanks for formulating things so nicely!

@@victoralfonssteuck I had no idea! What does it mean exactly?

@@gavinyoung-philosophy it sounds something like "buttcrack" if you say it in a specific way kkkkkkk in that sentence i wrote something like swety buttcrack kkkk I'm sorry.

@@gavinyoung-philosophy it means something like "Buttcrack" 🤣🤣🤣🤣

@@gavinyoung-philosophy I'm sorry if I'm flooding, maybe there's a anti-curse word filter here, so I'll try again. In portuguese, hegel's name sound something like B U T T C R A C K . In that other coment said something line "I have a swety B U T T C R A C K.

@ Haha love it! I’m holding onto this reference like my life depends on it🤪

@@nath9000 Not a problem! It’s Rilke, one of the great German romantic poets. His Duino Elegies are stunning and would doubtless interface with Hegel nicely :)

@@gavinyoung-philosophy thank you very much! I'll check that out, poetry is very much up my alley and i haven't read any Rilke yet -- although one of my professors recommended i read some of his work last year. since you've replied i'd also like to say that i very much appreciate your videos and community engagement. i'm an undergrad student studying english literature and have leaned towards more philosophy oriented modules as my degree has progressed. last year i wrote an essay on post-structuralist thinkers with a focus on deleuze and guattari and found your videos both comprehensive and engaging. this is my go to channel for thinking. keep up the good work! i look forward to future videos and thoughts.

@ Thank you so much for your kind words! Glad you’ve got to do some work on post-structuralism for your degree! I’ve yet to run into them at all in my university education, but hopefully they’ll change soon. Really glad I could be of some help, and best of luck as you continue your degree!🫶

Good catch! Perhaps a better translation would simply be the cruder “pisser”. Seems like Miller softened the language to bring out the generation-differentiation dichotomy (even though the German doesn’t have the same endings in both words as the English does!)