Radio DelEuZe: the use of philosophy

5.12.10

the use of philosophy

When someone asks ‘what’s the use of philosophy?’ the reply must be aggressive, since the question tries to be ironic and caustic.

Philosophy does not serve the State or the Church, who have other concerns. It serves no established power. The use of philosophy is to sadden. A philosophy that saddens no one, that annoys no one, is not a philosophy.

It is useful for harming stupidity, for turning stupidity into something shameful.

Its only use is the exposure of all forms of baseness of thought.

Is there any discipline apart from philosophy that sets out to criticise all

mystifications, whatever their source and aim, to expose all the fictions without

which reactive forces would not prevail?

Exposing as a mystification the mixture of baseness and stupidity that creates the astonishing complicity of both victims and perpetrators.

Finally, turning thought into something aggressive, active and affirmative.

Creating free men, that is to say men who do not confuse the aims of culture with the benefit of the State, morality or religion.

Fighting the ressentiment and bad conscience which have replaced thought for us. Conquering the negative and its false glamour.

Who has an interest in all this but philosophy?

Philosophy is at its most positive as critique, as an enterprise of demystification.

And we should not be too hasty in proclaiming philosophy’s failure in this respect.

Great as they are, stupidity and baseness would be still greater if there did not remain some philosophy which always prevents them from going as far as they would wish, which forbids them — if only by yea-saying — from being as stupid and base as they would wish.

They are forbidden certain excesses, but only by philosophy.

Nietzsche and Philosophy_ 106

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__________AnD What I most detested was Hegelianism and dialectics.

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__________AnD

What I most detested was Hegelianism and dialectics.

And : The question of speed is important and also very complex. It doesn't mean the first in the race: you can be late through speed. Speed is to be caught in a becoming_ which is not a development or an evolution. One must be like a taxi, queue(ligne d'attente), line of flight, traffic jam, bottleneck, green and red lights, slightly paranoid,brushes with the police. To be an abstract and broken line, a zigzag which glides 'between'. The grass and speed. What you misnamed style just now_ charm or style_ is speed.

And :One only discovers worlds through a long, broken flight.

_AnD______as_______for___

As for the method of deconstruction of texts I see clearly what it is, I admire it a lot, but it has nothing to do with my own method. I do not present myself as a commentator on texts.

For me, a text is merely a small cog in an extra-textual practice. It is not a question of commenting on the text by a method of deconstruction, or by a method of textual practice, or by other methods; it is a question of what use it has in an extra-textual practice that prolongs the text ..

Professor D Challanger speaking

in Clinical Critical terms as the hat was in the wind

How else?

How else can one write of those things which one doesn't know, or knows badly? It is precisely here that we imagine having something to say. We write only at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which separates our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one to the other.
Only in this manner are we resolved to write. To satisfy ignorance is to put off writing until tomorrow -or rather, to make it impossible. Perhaps writing was a relation to silence altogether more threatening that that, which is supposed to entertain with death.
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Difference and Repetition.