Deleuze on Nietzsche: Against the Dialectic

[@HugaHoodie95]

"You're about to get a metaphysics lecture from a youtuber with a backwards hat on" - I feel like this will be a perfect quote for a retrospect of early 21st century culture.

[@chriscaventer596]

Our concepts of philosophy are right to change with the times.

[@naas_the_serpent]

2024 here 🃏 clocks are broken - time is wild

[@flyingteeshirts]

"someone with greater tolerance for boredom will recognize, after a while, that walking as such is what bores him. Consequently, he will be impelled to find a kind of movement that is entirely different. Running, or racing, does not yield a new gait. It is just accelerated walking. Dancing or gliding, however, represent entirely new forms of motion." (Burnout Society) Deleuze is not an accelerationist, but a dancer. He does not run where Hegel walked but creates a new movement of concepts out of boredom with state philosophy.

[@MGHOoL5]

Boredom is when your relation with the other you identify with (i.e. attentively and actively participating in) is not at its highest potential (hence being driven to change it). Schopenhauer's boredom reflects how there is no activity that could ever relinquish our hunger for life (and since all identification with the other is negation for self-affirmation, we say there is nothing that can truly make us feel alive). Whereas Deleuze would see dancing/concept-creation as that which affirms the self (i.e. make us feel alive/eradicate boredom), Hegel would say that there is nothing but one dance: all towards self-actualization (hence his absolutism). Hegel starts off from the beginning with a science of logic. Nothing escapes the beginning of philosophy: not a question of being, but an affirmation of it (Heidegger). People just don't realize how foundational Hegel is, and as such keep on attacking him with historical creations as if not subsumed in his philosophy. Dances are like historical arts which are presentations of consciousness to Hegel.

[@JohnMoseley]

Maybe his shoes are too tight.

[@HybridHalfie]

beautifully put. this is why i like to read Deleuze as an artist (I enjoy deep house music while reading him). The Dionysian archetype as Nietzsche would say like Zarathustra the dancer.

[@lexparsimoniae2107]

That's a magnificent analogy.

[@heartache5742]

@@mootytootyfrooty we call them new "subjectivities"

[@camiloandrews5708]

Low IQ: Nietzche is a genius. Average IQ: Nietzche? I'm not a teen anymore, dude. Such a basic normie. High IQ: Nietzche is a genius.

[@Joe-ol5bq]

Lmaoooooo

[@garruksson]

Legit best comment I've read this year, perfect!

[@armchairpraxis7760]

yep

[@mjolninja9358]

*sniffs

[@heartache5742]

since when were we calling age "iq"

[@michaelboring8185]

This is an excellent lesson on Deleuze. I have been a philosophy professor for 25 years and this is an excellent example of making very difficult ideas accessible to anyone with a basic familiarity with the history of Continental philosophy. Your use of humor brings a lightness to a very heavy topic (maybe a performative explication of difference, lol). Keep up the great work. This is the medium where philosophy will reach people now given the dire condition of academic philosophy.

[@mammamiapizzeria4911]

Hello, what do you mean by "dire condition of academic philosophy"?

[@Ganitiya_Saundarya]

What do you mean by “dire condition of academic philosophy”?

[@VioletDeliriums]

what do you mean by "philosophy professor"?

[@lizardguy7624]

what do mean

[@johnmuckelbauer699]

Just came across this on Reddit. For whatever it’s worth, As someone who has been teaching and writing about Deleuze and Nietzsche for a while, this is actually a very good treatment (surprisingly, given the popular versions I usually encounter). Thanks for this!

[@LustStarrr]

Pills is pretty good at this! Check the rest of his stuff out too.

[@johnmuckelbauer699]

@@LustStarrr I have been. it's impressive. and our interests overlap, so I'm gonna send some of my students here

[@JW-bs7xp]

@@johnmuckelbauer699 i don't think he'd want your lowbrow and likely brainwashed students polluting this space though John

[@channelvessel]

completely agree. A lightness of touch combined with clarity of understanding. Not seen any better.

[@ResGestae0]

@@JW-bs7xp wtf Jonny

[@WeltgeistYT]

Awesome video. Love the graphics and presentation style. Glad to see another person pay attention to Nietzsche's metaphysics of the will. It gets overlooked.

[@drey1407]

Instantly liked after seeing "Greg"

[@POZOLEDECARAMELITO]

Well, time to rewatch the videos on Deleuze for the fifth time

[@way2goated]

Pills, don't let anyone (including yourself) convince you that you aren't funny. Or great at explaining difficult philosophical concepts to laymen. Easily my favourite youtube channel these days. Oh, and I haven't been a 20 year old for quite some time now, if that helps.

[@ruptureswithreality]

Really well put together and thanks for your efforts!

[@MMAneuver]

3:16 "It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms." Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human 4:00 ""I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer." section 276 the Gay Science

[@stephencarter2385]

I just wrote an essay on nomadic ethics and the ghosts of our citations. I wanted to to thank you for bringing me into Derrida and hauntology. All ur stuff is so interesting

[@bravovince3070]

Have you guys read "On The Superiority of Anglo-American Literature" by Deleuze? Its an essay that perfectly encapsulates his philsophy and also serves as a vicious yet cheeky criticism of Bataille (and therefore Baudrillard).

[@cityferkel2579]

Thanks for the heads up. Could you elaborate on "...of Bataille (and therefore Baudrillard)"?

[@bravovince3070]

@@cityferkel2579 "The great secret is when you no longer have anything to hide, and thus when no one can grasp you. A secret everywhere, no more to be said. Since the signifier has been invented things have not fallen into place. Signifiance and overinterpretation are the two diseases of the earth, the pair of the despot and the priest. The signifier that little secret that never stopped hanging around mommy and daddy. We blackmail ourselves, we make ourselves out to be mysterious, we move in the air saying "see how weighed down i am by a secret". The thorn in the flesh. The little secret is generally reducible to a sad narcissistic pious mastrubation: the phantasm! Bataille is a very french author. He made that very secret the essence of literature, with a mother within, with a priest beneath and an eye above. New races of priests are always being invented for the dirty little secret, which has no other object than to get itself recognized, to put us back into a very black hole, to bounce us off a very white wall. Your secret can be always seen in your face and in your eyes. Lose your face. Become capable of loving without remembering, without phantasm and without interpretation, without taking stock. Let there just be fluxes, which sometimes dry up, freeze and overflow, which sometimes combine and diverge. A man and a woman are fluxes. All the becomings which there are in making of love, all the sexes, then sexes in a single one or two, which have nothing to do with castration."

[@bravovince3070]

Baudrillard saw the Bataillean "secret" as a way to escape the logic of western utilitarian modernity. His famous question "After the orgy (of signs caused by globalization) , when they ask you who you are, what are you going to say? The options seem to be less and less." is here answered by Deleuze: "Im naked, isnt it obvious?" The great secret is when you have nothing to hide.

[@heartache5742]

great job replies but i'll still need half a dozen blog posts to get that one quote

[@Microtherion]

Oh, I see. You can most easily (sometimes) 'hide in plain sight'. The inverse of Chesterton's message in the story of the corrupt/sadistic general: 'Where do you bury a suspicious body? In a pile of un-suspicious bodies'. Or hide a tree in a forest. Etc (?)

[@ketdagr8]

There will never be too many deleuze videos....Extremely helpful stuff!

[@mathieucharbonneau2710]

I love how these are great videos for newbies- but that on top of that, they are even more enjoyable for those of us who’ve studied these thinkers and can catch the humor in them. 👌

[@lexparsimoniae2107]

By far the best exposition of Deleuze I have seen - and I have seen many. Thank you sir.

[@mridulsharma7994]

Literary theory student from India. Though I know better than to take your videos as replacements of actual reading, you have made many concepts particularly lucrative for me. Will be sharing these videos on the batch group.

[@Hakajin]

Not to correct you for correction's sake, but because I think you might really want to know: I think you mean "clear" instead of "lucrative;" "lucrative" means "profitable" in a strictly monetary sense. I agree, though, about these videos. I've been taking classes in postmodernism, and... I struggle, because I can watch a video like this, and I get it, I'm totally on board! On the other hand, trying to read it is... With someone like Deleuze, I'm either wondering exactly what they're trying to say or wishing they'd move on to the next point!

[@faiz3711]

I watch your videos multiple times with ads i don't skip any, i need to watch them multiple times to understand them well as long as i can and help you with ad-watch time and views

[@alexhirsch9971]

Every time I see this guy on screen I'm sure he's about to start singing a metalcore song. Is there a second channel for that?

[@anneallison6402]

hahaha lol same

[@tomstein7131]

i like watching your stuff when i’m going to sleep. i don’t know what you’re talking about. it’s very relaxing

[@Necromancyr]

Read that in Binky's voice.

[@jackvaughan7265]

Sick intro pills, your animations skills are getting to be absolutely insane

[@Kaspar502]

That dialectic graph with the spinning wheel on the plane reminds me so much of wheel of time and how a sin curve is the projection of the spinning of a wheel over time from a single point. 10/10

[@agus.90]

Dude, that was brutal on Greg. Think you should apologize before he starts gazing into the abyss a bit too long 😂. Awesome video, love this channel!

[@timothycalco8089]

Marx wasn't trying to perfectly encapsule hegelian dialectics and use it to prove that class contradiction creates inevitable change in society. He was explaining objective historical material change through the lens of Dialectics, tying most relevant ways in which society changed to class struggle, especially within capitalism, to show that the contradiction between class interests are the impetus for social change, and he was doing it in order to convince working class people to seize production and in turn seize power. If working people view the capitalist class as public enemy number one, they can enact societal change through revolution, and society as a whole transforms dialectically. Common people want nothing in common with their class enemies, those who colonize them and those who oppress them. If they are US, and not THEM, then they deserve empathy. Marxism tells them that all humans could come together as one society, and that class contradiction is a one-into-two division of society upon the lines of class material interests. In reality, the logical conclusion that comes from analyzing historical transformation through the lens of dialectics is that society is one, and that elements of change and contradictions internal to it cause its form to shift. It erks me when philosophers look at political propaganda from marx and use it to show the weaknesses of his philosophy, and when they look at the failures of revolutionary groups in the past to prove that socialism as a political movement is bunk. They are no Dialecticians. Any true Dialectician would recognize how difficult of a task Marx set out to accomplish: the most radical process of changing class stratified society by predicting what factor alone plays the largest role in creating inequality, and telling working class people to understand their enemy.

[@CheongChengWen]

The production value of this is so high. Well done sir.

[@MuseSick_]

Your videos have more substance, thought and nuance than most videos on these subjects. Thanks for the great content.

[@egonomics352]

Great video. Another reason for why Deleuze is criticial of the dialectic is that Hegel's promise is that the dialectic can begin from the abstract and concretize itself, but Deleuze's point is that it never does. Hegelians are very critical of Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy because Deleuze critiques Hegel's understanding of forces when it doesn't sound like he is talking about Hegel's understanding of forces at all. And that's the point. Forces are stronger than other forces. They are quicker than other forces. And so on and so on. Without this affirmative seemingly anonymous personification of a force it isn't concrete because we aren't considering it's becoming. But this personification isn't that we take ahold of these forces. Rather they take ahold of us. That is Nietzsche's point about forces. This is a perspectivism not a relativism. Imagine we have various boxers. We can abstractly take them out of the ring and match and put them up against a wall. We can measure their heights, weights, lengths, etc, but when we do so we are abstracting them out of their concrete contextual becomings and relations. In the ongoing match itself one boxer will be stronger or quicker. And the other boxer if they're unable to be stronger or quicker even moreso must become reactive through cleverness to win. The problem is the long philosophical tradition that even Bergson falls prey to is treating quantity abstractly. To have a concrete understanding of forces we must have a concrete understanding of quantity which is a more or less without how much. Here quantitative differences precede qualitative identities. See more below in the replies

[@egonomics352]

I had forgotton to mention that in addition to a concretization of quanitity by understanding it as more or less without how much Deleuze will say the re-thinking of force-relations something more than assessing them in their quantitative differences and interpreting them in terms of their individual qualities it also requires a determination of their sense and this sense is what will-to-power expresses and expression is a perspective

[@Autists-Guide]

This needs more 'lack'. aka paragraphs.

[@CynicalBastard]

Hegel needs more Marx.

[@Marcin_Pawlik]

For anyone interested, search Nathan Widder Deleuze or something like that on YT. Pretty good series of lectures.

[@sayresrudy2644]

all of which interesting when you read Hegel's short essay "who thinks abstractly?"

[@danciagar]

I just binge-watch all your videos (

[@amraouza4937]

Dude , this video is fire , i am commenting é minutes in so it is form rather than content , the intro draws you in , i could watch an hour of that ! the script is brilliant , the visual effects are amazing . IT IS CLEAR THAT INSANE AMOUNT OF EFFORT WENT INTO THIS PIECE OF ART IN VIDEO FORM . Thank you for sucha ravishing feast for both eye and mind ! PHENOMENAL

[@shamanverse]

Ameego, wow! May your awesomeness prevail. I have been Deleuze adjacent for decades. Your delivery of his affirmations is such a joy to watch. Keep going!

[@masterful9954]

"Nietzsche's overman is a man who exceeds this definition, trailblazing unassailable paths whilst refuters argue if it can or shoul d be done,"

[@TexasFriedCriminal]

So, like a mass shooter, yeah? The resentful small people just complain, but he went and acted, making it real, brave trailblazer with a semi-auto, while small minded refuters argued if it should be done. Action. Will. Affirmation. A swamp of horrors.

[@masterful9954]

@@TexasFriedCriminal well, one problem with abandoning objective moral truth is that you couldn't so easily condemn such an act. Also, Greg (guy at start of vid) may think he is an ubermensch, but he isnt. And the case is most likely the same with mass shooters.

[@ganjaericco]

@@TexasFriedCriminal The mass shooter destroys others, he doesn't create. It's an act of ressentiment.

[@christopherlin4706]

Super logical dialectic is probably the best way to reconcile Deleuze and Hegel. Differences do exist not as accident but as a feature of reality, but within each characteristic of difference, there lays in it deficiencies. The deficiencies are what we perceive as contradictions, but through a “dialectic” we affirm the deficiencies, which then fixes itself and then sublates until we come to a closer idea of an unity and perhaps not an understanding, but an affirmation of it

[@pipersolanas3322]

The editing is so good on all of these videos

[@scottygordon3280]

This might be my favorite video of yours so far, if not my favorite KZbin philosophy video.

[@magvad6472]

You know, it may be because I'm slow as fuck, but I feel like your content is really dense and I fully enjoy that. Requires a few rewatches but I get something more out of it every time. Glad you are pushing this out.

[@platoniczombie]

HAHAHA! Greg. So, one day, during my college Philosophy program studies, I was reading Nietzsche for the first time and was talking about how great this was, and, I kid you not, this guy looked at me, and said, "Oh, yea. I read that in high school." Haha, totally dismissing my excitement. I looked around the room, and wondered why he thought that made him better than me when we were in the same place studying the same thing at virtually the same time. Haha! That guy, what a tool.

[@brandonmiles8174]

I'm first. Now give my recognition. Recognize me.

[@brandonmiles8174]

@@Barklord I now feel valid. But it's surprisingly not as rewarding as you'd expect. Like I just peaked Mt Everest only to realize the journey was over and I'm no longer reaching for greater heights. The erasure of hope.

[@deadmeme2403]

@@brandonmiles8174 i envy your acknowledgement, you seem complete. Please acknowledge me.

[@anneallison6402]

I aknowledge you

[@justinroberts2158]

I see you, I recognize your substance

[@JohnTaylor-fh4et]

Damn fucking right, save the living. The dead are already gone.

[@cgsrtkzsytriul]

You had me with Greg. I’ve been struggling with Nietzsche since the age of 13 and still don’t know if he’s right about anything. Perhaps that is the mark of a great philosopher.

[@koldengeese2214]

soon as I get a job I am supporting. Thank you for this

[@moxarie]

I've literally rewatched this video like 10 times since it was uploaded so much insight and great video

[@johnterencejr]

At ~15:20, when he’s talking about the “Yes” of Deleuzean metaphysics compared to the “No” of dialectics, I immediately thought of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Joyce’s “Ulysses”, which both and starts and ends with the word “yes”, and crescendos in affirmation. Not only that, but apparently in a 1921 letter, Joyce actually indirectly referenced Nietzsche when talking about Molly (a.k.a. “Penelope”) and his decision to end the book the way he did: “In a 1921 letter, Joyce said, “The last word (human, all too human) is left to Penelope." He noted that the last word of the episode, as well as the first word, is "yes, a word that Joyce described as "the female word" and that he said indicated "acquiescence, self-abandon, relaxation, the end of all resistance”

[@phi6337]

I dare Plastic Pills to make a video solely on Hegel and dialectics.

[@meguca201]

I'm curious how Deleuze could fathom a world without negation when negation is so readily apparent and available in all things. Hegel's whole argument is that even in a pure affirmation, a will to power so to speak, there exists an internal contradiction that will emerge when that force expresses itself through time. In Nature and in thought, in the heart of mankind, discord, strife, doubt, hatred, envy, etc, are clearly there; they animate us, they are arguably the very forces which compel artistic creation and culture in the first place. I'm not sure I follow Deleuze's insistence on removing the Negative from our ontology when it is so ubiquitous in our experience.

[@carloscamachopsychologist4800]

Awesome man. You have a gift. Difficult subject matter, but yet, clear, concise, and entertaining. Please keep going, we need more of this kinda stuff on the net for the young people of the world.

[@sajjadsaberi556]

Pleasant to watch. Nicely put. Thank you.

[@sarsedacn]

Respect for discarding the "Thesis/Antithesis/Synthis" right from the beginning! Just for that you're channel gains my respect 🙂

[@chasesaladino6669]

I would love to see a video/podcast on Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza. I’ve seen people rank his holy trinity of philosophers in every conceivable combination, but it’s hard to really put one as a definitive #1 since he uses the other two to evaluate/select/interpret the other one. His Nietzsche is Nietzsche seen through the perspective of a Bergsonian anti-dialectal process philosophy. But I have a harder time understanding where exactly Spinoza fits in as the key philosopher among the three... probably down to my own ignorance but would love to learn more

[@POSTELVIS]

the more I learn about this Deleuze fella, the more I like him

[@channelvessel]

Has to be the best Deleuze video I've seen. Really clarifies affirmation and what I have come to think of as material vitality. if like me you struggle with the idea that pleasure is defined by pain pure difference helps. Beauty needs no framework of contrasting comparison. "idle chatter justifies the status quo that permits idle chatter in the first place" x

[@lokiestraven]

Great Video! I think the best way to visualize the difference between Hegel and Deleuze is to envision a ladder in contrast to a map or terrain. Every part of the ladder leads to the next but the whole thing embodies only a small space that can only go up faster or slower. You cant move sideways, the stratification wont change, the ladder cant move and so on. With Deleuze your mind tasks itself with mapping a landscape with erosion and accumulation, with creation and destruction, affirmation of "one" substrate that by the very act of moving creates and doubles down on difference, which than battles to become/assert itself (will to power) through repetition. The "Many" and the "one" are still collapsed into a monism, but a very different one from Schopenhauer. Sidenote: There is a difference between Buddhism and Nietzsche, but it is hard to explain (and obscured due to his eurocentrism and racism towards chinese people). Fact is that he valued buddhist thought more highly than christianity. The easiest way i can put it probably is: Nietzsche is to Schopenhauer what a Zenbuddhist is to earlier Forms of (indian) buddhism (Mahayana/Theravada). Zen ofcourse is a chinese-japanese religion-philosophy, which focuses on affirmative action (a lot of martial arts has its roots in Zen) and critical doubt (form is void, void is form). "Balance" in Zen is a very dynamic concept (the influence of Daoism comes in here), it explicitly rejects stagnation (which Nietzsche, probably thinking of Confucius, sees in "the chinese"). Nietzsche (and Schopenhauer) ofc. also add to those traditions, but not to their disadvantage (it certainly honours their philosophical legacy much more than this despicable McMindfulness-Stuff that subsumes western "Buddhism" today). In other words: Eternal recurrence is not reincarnation, but reincarnation remains conceivable under the guidance of eternal recurrence. Is this metaphysical? (Nietzsche certainly hated metaphysical philosophy) If it is, it is a very different metaphysics from everything we have seen before like buddhism is a religion very different from a belief-system build around gods.

[@exlauslegale8534]

@Phasmate Nova difference between Buddhism and Nietzsche is so easy, Buddhism is negating life (the veil of Maya), and Nietzsche (or Deleuze) are life affirming...

[@arguellescisnerosmovies2442]

@@exlauslegale8534 Can you say that Nietzsche only uses the nihil not to negate life itself but the concepts around life language has built?

[@exlauslegale8534]

@@arguellescisnerosmovies2442 I’m not sure that I understood your question correctly. What does “to use the nihil” mean?

[@lokiestraven]

@@exlauslegale8534 Read the whole comment pls. Not all Buddhism negates life, like every tradition it is complicated tradition which (the racist) Nietzsche didnt have the full picture of. But he did understand that in Buddhism there is far less ressentiment than in christianity. And "affirmation" with Nietzsche/Deleuze does not merely translate into "positive attitude". The "Will to power" asserts itself without concern for life or death, suffering or well-being, mere survival as "living for being alive" (Nietzsche did criticize Darwin and Spencer). The will to power is the pursuit of a "work" ("Werk") that becomes in your body, lineage, ideas and so on (and therefore is artifically constrained by biological survival and/or cultural ressentiment). The ancient greek ideal that dieing young, but heroically is preferable to dieing in old age without having done anything shines through here. That is the point. "man is something to be overcome" is a vision beyond pessimism and optimism and it is not hard to see the similarities to the daoist ziran/wuwei. Zen is the fusion between buddhism and daoism.

[@lokiestraven]

@@arguellescisnerosmovies2442 Nietzsche is not a nihilist but his core project becomes "negate the negation" in culture that imprisons the potentiality of life in morality (ressentiment). That for him is nihilism because it transfixes "Becoming" in service of an artificial dreamworld, lessening it.

[@EpicBeard815]

If I close my eyes you sound kind of like Saul Goodman. Great video, by the by. Terrific reminder as to why I adore Deleuze so much.

[@mitchellmcgill138]

Love it. Thanks for the direct quotations.

[@kintoki-lite]

Just started reading Nietzdche and Philosophy so the timing of this video is perfect. Thanks!

[@dream2beats200]

Yoo I’m so happy you did this, thanks

[@epsilonzeromusic]

I really liked your visual representation of accidental, relative and pure difference. was quite helpful in getting what is probably a minute sliver of understanding

[@addadd8784]

thanks so much for this. i know very little of philosophy let alone metaphysics but this was so well done.

[@sapereaude6274]

"All I'm going to say is that the Hegelians take Hegel REALLY seriously" - that got a nice, long laugh out of me

[@ΚόκκινηΑυγή]

You just made the book of Deleuze about Nietzsche clear.

[@BolshephobicBabe]

I think a lot of people are curious about Buddhism and religions in relation to these ideas, because you can intrepret it as not negating the "Self," but the identity, which then wouId be in line with finding their "True will/self" or some kind of detachment with which they can view themselves (their self, desires, ignorance, reality). This is why I think your videos are great. I think for people trying to figure out their identities, or what they want, and don't know where to start, the authors and topics you cover can help one navigate those concepts. So thanks for doing the work, panning for the gold, for everyone :)

[@EthanNoble]

They definitely relate to Zen and daoist ideas.

[@andrewsmith3257]

Your videos are fascinating. Thanks for explaining this

[@exalted_kitharode]

That's great. I hope you'll continue

[@moolenify]

That was so much fun to watch, well done

[@AsifKhan-bv3iu]

Beautifully presented.

[@svperuzer]

Holy shit dude! Thank you for making these videos!

[@lunis8819]

you're my favourite KZbinr. thanks a lot for the videos you make, and for making deleuze understandable for me.

[@craigjackson3550]

As a novelist who embeds philosophical concepts into my conflicts, this is exactly what I needed.

[@EasaYahiya]

how I'd love to read something like that! all the best to you

[@loganrooks4957]

Just happened upon your vids they are such high quality I'm so surprised you don't have more viewers

[@MGHOoL5]

Got to say, I can't see the difference between Hegel and Nietzsche here (Hegel's philosophy sublates all negation I guess). Hegel's sublation or overcoming of negation does not eradicate the negation, it unites with it. For example, Hegel would talk about recognition theory or Master-Slave dialectic and how it is only when I perceive the other as a subject (unique and individual like me) instead of an object/mere pure other to be controlled --that I can recognize myself through them. In doing so, I return to myself and affirm their being simultaneously. As such, the affirmation of the other negates me, and in overcoming my negation I can recognize myself. (i.e. through differentiation comes self-affirmation of self-actualization). So, you could picture it as a subject going through the world, recognizing another person, affirming the other person's subjectivity, and as such see themselves objectified in the other's subjectivity and so the person gains a sense of selfhood through such a negation: the overcoming of pure being/nothingness to consciousness (subject being aware of its own objectivity; affirmation through differentiation). What Hegel and Heidegger got is how one cannot talk about being or ask questions about it before affirming it. To Heidegger this is not a metaphysical question (hence the Kierkegaardian sense of 'I think therefore I am not'). Hegel agrees with that (he believes you are the absolute incarnated in your own history, and that your historical becoming is the place of your absolute being), but tries to study the logic of relations (history/negation) to get to understand what consciousness/being (Geist) are (hence being an absolutist. As such, Hegel is not anti-existential as Kierkegaard would put him, but wants to cultivate our essence from the nature of our existence i.e. consciousness (Nietzsche's power) is created through differentiation/dialectic). And since being starts off as nothing and is only affirmed or cultivated through overcoming negations (i.e. becoming one with its negative relation with the other), existentialism is born ('Existence precedes essence'). The leap of faith of Kierkegaard to recognize oneself through negating your finitude with the infinity of God (i.e. finite self vs. infinite God = Real Self i.e. Jesus) --is the same logic of Geist in which you gain consciousness by overcoming the other/objet a (the creative power of the holy spirit?). "Starting with negation is slavery.. every negation is a no, every affirmation of difference is a yes" Critique without creation (slavery morality) = Negation without sublation (self-negation in master-slave dialectic in which you kill the other but by that you lose your sense of self.) Hegel does not start with a lack. He starts with pure Being. Yet, it is nothing. And it grows indefinitely towards greater sublation/consciousness. To negate your being by the other (i.e. surrender yourself/kill the other) instead of overcoming the negation (i.e. becoming dual-in-one) is losing your self and freedom (Geist). Also, it is this creative power itself and growth that is the absolute/Geist. There is nothing new in Geist. All there is is the journey to it itself, but you have to lose yourself to find it. "This is not the critical, not the negative but the affirmative attitude towards the world. This is ultimately, then, an affirmative attitude to the world that reflects the world's own attitude towards itself: to create and to repeat the creative act... creation affirms power.. our power" Hegel would agree. Sublation is not an act of negation of being, but an affirmation. Yet, one cannot affirm oneself without difference/negation i.e. differentiation/dialectic is creation, and creation affirm the self. To Nietzsche this is power, to Hegel this is consciousness and freedom. All in the end talk about self-actualization through self-affirmation (existence precedes essence). We start with pure being that is nothing, and build up our consciousness/essence which affirms us and also differentiate us from all other. All being have the will to power to affirm difference to create (Nietzsche) = All being is in dialectic to sublate difference to self-actualize (Hegel)(i.e. cultivate essence by difference).

[@JS-dt1tn]

Good comment. All readings of Nietzsche fail when they do not consider his problematization of unity, being as problems pertaining to the failure of our memory to observe such concepts as metaphors. All perception and consciousness are already tirelessly metaphorical, and as a result often also metonymic and synecdochic (see the moral imperative). In this way, Nietzsche is below (or at least before) Hegel here. Nietzsche performs a genealogy of communication by evoking the fundamentally metaphoric nature of all communication. By problematizing truth, being, unity not directly (as Hegel attempts to do, by working naively within the framework of communication and rhetoric), but indirectly by looking at the correlative beliefs in such concepts as fundamentally constitutive of them. And where does the belief in truth, unity, intelligibility, etc. come from? From our belief in the unity of willing. Nietzsche just bursts out and says 'negation, sublation, and becoming' are meaningless if not situated within an appreciation for the always-already quality of the game of communication and understanding. These concepts only have meaning with reference to a preexisting constellation of meaning that presupposes the unity neccesary for communication, these concepts must first be validated by the rules of the concept as such. Hence Nietzsche's incessant observation of the value of laughter and play; we must laugh at our 'being in the world' that is hopelessly metaphorical, metonymic and synecdoche BELOW consciousness. If we dont start from excavating the origins of our belief in the concept, all philosphical efforts are a part of the reactive process native to or consitutive of forgetting.

[@MGHOoL5]

​ @J S Do I understand you correctly that you are saying that Hegel builds upon a taken-to-be solid framework of communication and rhetoric whereas Nietzsche excavates the historical genealogy of communication to recognize the metaphorical nature of consciousness? How unity and truth are not fixed/real, as it were, but there is always the ironic embeddedness in history and how our presence is merely the outcome of history which makes us unable to reach an absolute but always merely reacting to the world (until we try to know where we are in history), and this is why play and laughter, here, are helpful to both act the act of history, yet recognize its contingency? This is a Romantic theme that Hegel agrees to. Being a systemic absolutist doesn't change the fact that he talks about necessity coming out of contingency and the absolute being nothing but history itself. He believes of the split nature of consciousness, of how the self is only real via the other (hence the metaphorical nature of the split self) which we historically attribute to ourselves (hence necessity of the self comes out of the contingency of our sublation). You mention "problematizing truth, being, unity... indirectly by looking at the correlative beliefs in such concepts as fundamentally constitutive of them" and how "If we don't start from excavating the origins of our belief in the concept, all philosophical efforts are a part of the reactive process native to or constitutive of forgetting." But, how is that not Hegelian? He literally traces the history of consciousness in its embodiment in art, religion, philosophy, with many other concepts like personhood etc. and says there is nothing but history to us and Geist. Hegel's concept are never fixed nor are absolutists, he always traces them in history and believes that "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk." hence we cannot know but our own historical truth.

[@JS-dt1tn]

@@MGHOoL5 There are many things to be found between Hegel and Nietzsche that are similar. Nieztsche said something very similar to Hegel's owl of minerva. The difference here is that Nietzsche is more linguistically oriented (our words as a symptomatology, but not of a knowable whole or concept as such), and as a result more perspectivist than Hegel ever was (if we can speak of one Giest, there are also an infinity of Giests that evade us; therefore, why create the concept, even if it contains the incompleteness that Hegel ascribes to it? It must be therefore a symptom, not of consciousness, but of an instinctual drive for life that found unity and being useful. Hegel's project is in this way yet another manifestation of the will to power, and Hegel fails to read his project as ONLY a text, as the body-writing of things he cannot know but only interpret). And more specifically, instead of Giest or absolute being, Nietzsche speaks of drives and active and reactive forces. Are they similar in reflexive affect? Probably. Here is the linguistic specificity that we don't see in Hegel, however, articulated by Kofman: "So the will to power is not the truth of being, but the correlate of a method, a pure name which designates the 'intelligible character' of being, the fundamental unity of the different forms of life in their diversity: a diversity which expresses the plurality and the greater or lesser differentiation in the relations between forces. Generalizing the hypothesis allows the oppositions between 'subject' and 'object', 'matter' and 'mind', 'life' and 'spirit' to be effaced. The will to power designates every force which acts. Posited in the name of a method, it is the correlate of a certain art of interpretation, the rigorous philological art of a 'strong will'. Every hypothesis is the expression of a previous 'thesis', a foreground thesis, a prejudice of the philosopher: 'will to power, is my theory'." Nietzsche is basically the first deconstructionist; "everything is a text, and even the attempt at a pretext, at a homo natura, would be still yet another text". While Hegel in his own way admits this, Nietzsche looks at the constructions of man and says 'and why do you need the walls of the fortress of your imagination?'. In this way his project is psychological in a way that Hegel's only was implicitly. I'm probably not giving an answer satisfactory for you, so I suggest reading Nietzsche's on The Use and Abuse of History for Life. Nietzsche is only not Hegelian in that he is against any systematology of philosphy, and so therefore disagrees with him not so much in theory, but in Hegel's philosophy of history (which no one would deffend seriously today) and in his philosophy of right and so on.

[@MGHOoL5]

@@JS-dt1tn I don't understand how, in a sense, you say that Nietzsche was the first deconstructionist whilst recognizing that Hegel's whole dialectic is about how the truth is of a greater united-duality between opposites, recognizing how such a dialectic is of tension and opposition yet say that Hegel didn't see this as a dialectic of power (Master-Slave dialectic?), that Hegel's wasn't psychological enough when his project is recognizing how one cannot talk about others' personal life (only you can be yourself) but only of the general science of phenomenology as that of recognition and becoming oneself and hence doesn't attempt to give an answer (of who are you) but merely a methodology and a history to his day (as to how to find yourself)? Instead of it being a will to power, Hegel recognizes, also, the nature of the thing in itself, the ineffable unity, the being which sees and senses the united-split it feels and the power it has to destroy it and how there isn't just a 'will to power' that is 'strong' and hates 'weak morality of Christianity' and tries to become a 'superman', but for something truly intrinsic such as Being, Geist itself, in which you are yourself and recognize yourself and belonging to yourself (where self here is one with its other); how is will to power meaningful by itself? How does it belong to others? How is it absolute and fundamental as the nature of being hence being really psychological and intrinsic? Hegel creates a scientific, systemic, absolutist system of relativity and historicity in which humans attempt to realize themselves, which is both the essence of truth and value and hence create a path towards the infinite that is nothing but history itself (Geist is a negative/imaginal greater, a beyond that is nothing but the affect it creates in going towards it and getting closer to it. To Hegel, God is constantly creates in history, I don't know about Nietzsche but it seems that to him we have to become a complete God.)

[@JS-dt1tn]

@@MGHOoL5 will to power is not meaningful in itself, thats the whole point. It's meaningful to us, and only ever to us, because all human activity is metaphorical. There is no such thing for Nietzsche as a concept that is meaningful in itself, because such a system forgets the anthropomorphic lense that must always accompany any and all interpretation; that is the definition of interpretation, and there is no real being behind it, waiting to be dialectical uncovered that isn't also just another anthropomorphic interpretation, full stop.Giest in itself, Being being with itself, these are nothing more than metaphors which are blocked absolutely from grasping 'absolute being' as if there was anything to grasp at all.

[@apartofthewhole6639]

Schopenhauer may have thought it was the same will but I think the leads more to Schopenhauer linking with higher dimensions and matrix theory. And the same will manifests differently depending on time and location of it's occurrence.

[@marscrasher]

great video. only just got round to it and was pleasantly surprised that it was about difference and repetition as ive been wondering on this topic for a while

[@KymHammond]

Don’t forget that Greg, as a twenty year old, also knows infinitely more than all those who have lived, just lived a full life already. Greg knows then intimately the very essence of their lack, how could he not - he is twenty. Yet, the only thing Greg has, really, is being twenty - if only Greg could see it. Greg, ...?

[@Zing_art]

And remember Greg’s favouritest is Peterson

[@tomstein7131]

you mean jreg

[@KymHammond]

@@tomstein7131 you mean the Canadian extreme centralist vlogger who parodies to protect and preserve what he thinks are moderate political views?

[@ganjaericco]

Honestly, people of every religion, ideology, political and philosophical position etc at 20, think they know what's best and everyone else is just ignorant. It's a shame if they think the same at 30.

[@nakaine7]

We get it

[@detektivlord2077]

Maybe one can say, that what (zen)-buddhism tries to aim, is to create the foundation from which someone is able to create something -the part in the "a thousand plateus" about the bodies without organs Deleuze and G. are somehow describing how to create your own body without organs by slowly and carefully overcoming the process of Subjectification. Maybe interesting books on this matter could be "The Supreme Doctrine: Psychological Studies in Zen Thought" from Hubert Benoit and "Deleuze and Buddhism" from Tony See & Joff Bradley.

[@Khemith_Demon_Hours]

Great video. I also enjoyed your Nietzsche discussion on your podcast. I appreciate the way you always try to make things clear in both your videos and your podcasts. You have the heart of an analytic philosopher 😄

[@maximereny5449]

Nice creative affirmation in video format

[@Epsomgwtfbbq]

great video, you're getting better and better

[@angelal3144]

The production is getting too good! 🔥

[@alexanderbuchanan3552]

Buddhism is not “some self-negation of your will,” it is the recognition that life is unsatisfactory when we identify with that which is impermanent, for we grasp and cling. When you try to deny your will, you realize that only a will can deny itself, which is a paradox. And this core paradox can help to free your mind from the confusions of representational thinking, which is structured around identities.

[@hellucination9905]

I think being completely will-less is the same as dying while still alive. I don't like this. It seems like half of the picture. I wanna "play" life without whining about it being ultimatively "unsatisfactory". Satisfaction is stasis, death. I don't need to be satisfied!

[@alexanderbuchanan3552]

@@hellucination9905 We all die while we’re still alive, many times over, whether it be through La petite mort of sex, or Ego death brought about by various mystical practices, including the use of psychedelics. Life and death are linked in a complex way, this is a meditative insight which comes from reflecting on the unreality of identities. Who would want to live forever? This would be a fate worse than death. There is no one alive who hasn’t experienced suffering, or in its more neutral form, the mere unsatisfactoriness of life, which comes from the realization of mortality. No one has or ever will be completely satisfied by life. This is the insight of realizing that even desiring to no longer desire is a paradox. So I say we should desire, but desire in a disinterested way. Though of course as Blake says, “the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom;” so one has to go towards various extremes before understanding exactly what balance is, which is subjective to every category. Desire in a disinterested way; that is, free from the chains of fetishism; extreme attachment, which is always linked to commodity fetishism in a capitalist realist society. I agree with the notion of Randolph Bourne, that we should have an “impossiblist élan”! Indeed, we should desire the impossible; never being satisfied with the status quo, such that with the power of our imaginations we can bring revolutionary change into being. Nothing is ever fully stationary, that includes death! So I content myself with the disinterested desiring which comes from understanding the impermanence of identity. But desiring never to be satisfied? I can’t see how that will help unless we can harness its power towards a collective desire for a more free and equal society.

[@fk9277]

our desires are never fully satisfied. This is how it is and what keeps you moving about in the world looking for food, sex, places to shit, a tit to suck on or any combination of these.

[@Werdna27]

Will you do Stiegler?

[@orthostice]

Thank you so much for these videos.

[@ericcam1998]

There are multiple schools of Buddhism and some like Therevada and Mahayana have vastly different views on Cosmology. As someone who has researched pretty heavily into Mahayana Buddhism, it's not interested in negation. Its metaphysics are based on a positive conception of loneliness based around the view that all processes are interdependent and in their interdependence they become different. Due to this everything is empty and is a part of Buddha-nature. Achieving liberation is based on coming to terms with this and realizing that everything is one because everything is different. That sounds very stupid but if you read books on the Buddhist cosmology of Indra's net it makes more sense.

[@rangeetsengupta4299]

and that's uncannily similar to Deleuzean (non-essentialist) 'difference'

[@afbf6522]

This video got me to read "Nietzsche and Philosophy". 👍💙

[@MichaelJames-kl6ho]

I’m really enjoying your takes! Thank you.

[@billmatney7066]

Nice detailing and making relevant, and funny! Not an easy task at all. Very well done!

[@sterlingweston]

I wonder how much Deluze read Fichte, because there is huge congruence behind the ideas of Freedom and Consciousness being a determined act of Willing which creates Difference.

[@filipecarvalho2775]

Very cool video, love the intro on Greg. Quick correction tho: the concept of A = A being false because of the element of time was not introduced by Hegel, but by Fichte, in the Foundation of the science of knowledge. Hegel then got the concept from fichte, along with other concepts from german idealists

[@MK0118]

Shit. I just realized, I was part of the Gregalian school of Nietzschian philosophy, when I was like 18. Question: Where do you get your background music?

[@Bojoschannel]

I think we all were friend, no shame in believing you were a wolf among sheep in your younger years because you read Nietzsche, feel ashamed when you're 30 years old and still believing that shit

[@Illuminated1102]

@@Bojoschannel why

[@moch.farisdzulfiqar6123]

Oh boy, this is gonna be my jam. I'm just started to reread What Is Philosophy? for the 5 times, and make a list of DnG's concept into a mind map. Thank you so much, Pills.

[@zackeryr.4398]

Buddhism isn't a self negation of the will it's more like a dismissle of the affirmation of the difference between the individual's current and future states often in the form of desire. It sees that difference as a lack and then tries to equalize everything.

[@NegationOfNegation]

There's something about this one, which I keep coming back to again and again. The re-watchability of your content is tremendous truly. - It keeps clearer and better after every viewing. I had a couple video suggestions for the channel. My favourite quality about your content is that you act like Hermes, as an intermediary/interpreter between any two of the greatest minds in the history of philosophy. There is something deeply hermeneutic and phenomenological about your philosophical thought, and the gift to render such ideas comprehensible and sticky examples. Was really cool to see you do the patreon video on Baudrillard vs Deluze, which I think you already planned on doing, but I too, made the suggestion probably a week before that. - In any case, I'm really happy you take video suggestions seriously and I my first suggestion would to do video on Heidegger 's Reading of Nietzsche, why? In the start of the video you mention how bad the videos on Nietzsche on this platform are with Gregs and would be of great service to redeem Nietzsche for us. In that process, you can even create a dialogue between Hegel and Heidegger. The second suggestion would be a Merleau Ponty's phenomenology vs Heidegger's phenomenology. Third would be Deleuze's reading of Whitehead and Spinoza. Fourth would be Husserl vs Heidegger. Fifth would be Lacan vs Heidegger. Sixth would be Nietzsche vs Hegel. Seventh would be a video on Wittgenstein. (So many versus videos, might as well do the OG on Schelling vs Hegel). If you're still reading this, Lacan vs Heidegger; Deleuze or Baudrillard against any of their contemporaries who you have not touched upon. If you are looking for more suggestions and don't wanna kill me yet, would be great to see you make more videos on Phenomenology, content on Hermeneutics and PLEASE some negative theo-ontology. Thanks!

[@Dank_Engine]

The way this evokes my understanding of Buddhism is everything is one thing. Rather people draw distinctions between things. So the dialect makes the error that everything is a separate thing, when in fact all things contain the seeds of other things. Hauntology in this sense is a very Buddhist idea

[@robins7730]

your discussion of Deleuze's way of reading philosophers reminded me of one of my favorite quotes of his: "What got me by during that period was conceiving of the history of philosophy as a kind of ass-fuck, or what amounts to the same thing, an immaculate conception. I imagined myself approaching an author from behind and giving him a child that would indeed be his but would nonetheless be monstrous."

[@xoohooo6277]

lmao where is this from💀

[@mattheworegan5371]

These videos are always so informative and well-made. I'm surprised you don't get more views, subscribers and likes

[@cudi313]

Wish i could like these videos twice.

[@floowedoo]

Very nice! Although, as a summary it seems to me just a rephrasing of what Bataille had already said. I would be curious to find out about Deleuze‘s position on him.

[@givepeaceachance940]

Great stuff man, keep it up

[@dn8601]

It's kinda hard to pin down buddhism. It does deny desire but not in the Schopenhauerian way. It's a very wordly philosophy that goes against any Hinterwelt. Nirvana is not transcendent but it's this world when it is accompanied by acceptance, non-desire and meditative affirmation. It's also very proccesual and shows the hidden multiplicity behind the imagined unity of a self. There are actually some interesting parallels between Nietzsche and Buddhism/Taoism/Zen. Great video btw.

[@carsoneastman5709]

Reading Nietzsche besides Zhuangzi is fascinating. The themes of “loving” ones fate, embracing a sort of inevitable perspectivism while not falling for relativism, skepticism towards fixed identities really reinforce one another.

[@dn8601]

@@carsoneastman5709 Exactly. Reading eastern philosophy alongside western philosophy in general is fascinating. Especially in how many eastern philosophies offer existential approaches to life which are close to non existent in Europe and brake our ideas of what religions are. But parallels also arise and you reframe concepts. Zhuangzi is very swag

[@danielholdridge5581]

wait I understand deleuze now you're the best dude

[@MattAngiono]

The end of this reminds me of my favorite Alan Watts quote about life: "It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played." Maybe there are some parallels to eastern philosophies after all....

[@purplemonkeydishwasher9818]

I like Nietzsche and Peterson....am I Greg? Well at any rate I enjoyed the Philosophical lesson. I hadn’t read Deluze and he seems to discuss Nietzsche in an interesting way.

[@pygmalion8952]

You will probably drop peterson or deleuze after a while when you start reading deleuze. Because peterson protects statues quo with reactionary world views but deleuze do not do that. Peterson is not a philosopher and, frankly, he does not understand any philosophical concept, as far as i see. I would advise you to not take peterson seriously.

[@purplemonkeydishwasher9818]

@@pygmalion8952 like which concept?

[@bradspitt3896]

@@pygmalion8952 I don't understand how you can be reactionary when your principles are rooted in Metaphysics, not the enemy. It seems people use reactionary and platonist (or something which posits unchanging identity) synonymously.

[@exlauslegale8534]

"Deleuze situates his thought as a 'generalized anti-Hegelianism: difference and repetition took over the place of identical and negative, identity and contradiction. Because difference implicates the negative and allows itself to lead to contradiction, only up to a measure in which its subordination to the identical remains' _(Difference and Repetition,_ XIX). For Deleuze, Hegelian logic remains a 'false movement', that is, it remains on the level of a mediation which is established as a movement of the concept. Deleuze will never stop opposing this mediation inside the concept, this consideration of the movement primarily through the process of the concept, indicating also by this opposing his propinquity of his theoretical project to Hegel's." Anne Sauvagnargues, _Artmachines_ , a footnote from part 4.

[@Nick-wq5sf]

Really liked the video! I did wonder about something, why is the classic difference accidental and the dialectical difference relative? Seems to me you could swap these and it would also be true.

[@PlasticPills]

I don't think so, it's that an accidental difference doesn't matter. A relative difference does matter, but only relative to a positive term. Difference in itself is immanent to itself, instead of to a dominant term.