What Is Philosophy?
by Felix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze
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Book Summary Information
Author: Felix Guattari, Gilles DeleuzeTranslator: Hugh Tomlinson
Translator: Graham Burchell
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); French (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1996-04-15
ISBN: 0231079893
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Book Reviews of What Is Philosophy?
Book Review: If you liked Khalil Ghibran, you will swoon over this.
Summary: 1 Stars
Here is the big picture: thought has "three great forms -- art, science, and philosophy...."(197) This three-part framework is not explicated, but these categories clearly refer to culture, leaving out distasteful areas of culture, such as technology, which are certainly merely "material."
To explain culture, the writers move back and forth between two varieties of positivism: intellectualistic positivism and anti-intellectual positivism. Intellectualistic positivism is the position associated with Hume, Hobbes, and Locke that reduces culture to ways of thinking, especially among intellectuals. Anti-intellectual positivism is the position associated with Malthus and Darwin, and that derives culture from some underlying biological forces.
The book is divided into two parts.
Part I says that "forms" of culture arise from composing one's feelings (art), referring to instants of experience by measuring motion (science), and forming concepts (philosophy). "Concept" is some entity of "thought." "Concept" is never defined but is catalogued by words like "fragmentary whole, plural," and "incorporeal." Concepts, references, and feelings make up "planes," also never defined, which are "immanent" for concepts, "referent" for science, and "monumental" for art.
The "plane of immanence" among the academic philosophers is the highest plane, of course:
"If the three ages of the concept are the encyclopedia, pedagogy, and personal commercial training, only the second can safeguard us from falling from the heights of the first into the disaster of the third -- an absolute disaster for thought, whatever its benefits might be, of course, from the viewpoint of universal capitalism." (12)
Philosophers communicate their concepts by "personae...leaping like Kierkegaard, dancing like Nietzsche, and diving like Melville." (71) Scientists communicate their references by "observers," like Maxwell's demon (129). Artists communicate their feelings by compositions. All these are variations on the theme of intellectualistic positivism, the center of which is the philosopher's acting like an atom, swirling about, intellecting concepts.
Part I closes with a digression on sociologistic positivism shading into radical anti-intellectualistic positivism. The digression is on "geophilosophy." The writers adopt a form of radical anti-intellectualistic positivism: animals form territories, abandon them, and recreate them. So "social fields are inextricable knots in which the three fields are mixed up so that in order to disentangle them, we have to diagnose real types or personae." (68) Geopolitics means that some concepts, observations, and compositions are good ones, because they are "territorialized" by relation to the values of a particular society, as among the ancient Greeks. They are "immanent."
But others are bad ones because they are "deterritorialized" by political domination. They are "transcendent." Transcendent geophilosophy is "imperial," and "paradigmatic, projective, hierarchical, referential" (89) like Chinese, Hindu, Jewish, Islamic "pre-philosophy." Immanent "geophilosophy" is "syntagmatic, connective, linking, and "consistent" (91). Because of transcendent geophilosophy, the "two great modern revolutions, American and Soviet, have turned out so badly." (100) We are in just a terrible state today, having damaged our environment with our transcendent concepts. "The Greeks lived and thought in Nature, but left Mind in the "mysteries," whereas we live, think, and feel in the Mind, in reflection, but leave Nature in a profound alchemical mystery that we constantly profane." (102)
Part II recovers from geopolitical environmentalism, and the writers return to science, portraying science as measurements or "functives...propositions in discursive systems" (117) in a "plane of reference" (127) among states, "enunciated" by..."partial observers." (129). While science has reference, philosophy has logic, which "wants to turn the concept into a function" (135), but is just the confrontation of opinions about "virtuals." Art has "composition," by which the artist memorializes his sensations, especially the unhappy depressed ones like Van Gogh, Woolf, Dickenson, and Klee. Here a variety of cultural idealism emerges, as the concepts and the compositions take over. We are treated throughout to many precious metaphors ("The philosopher is the friend of the concept") and obscure references ("Kant's hose suspenders") which show how piquant it is to be an intellect aware that "immanence is only immanent to itself." (48)
The last chapter, "From Chaos to the Brain," returns to the intellectual and anti-intellectual themes. Thought (intellectual) must be localized in the brain (organic, anti-intellectual), because opinions are an umbrella we put up to protect us from chaos. "The brain is the "junction" of the three planes: immanence of philosophy, reference of science, composition of art...." (217) In sum, "Art struggles with chaos...to render it sensory...science is perhaps inspired by a sinuous reptilian movement. (205) Philosophy struggles in turn with the chaos as undifferentiated abyss or ocean of dissemblance." (207)
Their position that the object world is grounded in chaos is really an assumption that science is impossible, because "chaos" has no intrinsic order. The book has an extensively commented bibliography of mostly continental writers in the footnotes and an index that valiantly substitutes a heroic catalogue of page references for definitions, since, in the end, they say concepts cannot be defined.
Summary of What Is Philosophy?
Called by many France's foremost philosopher, Gilles Deleuze is one of the leading thinkers in the Western World. His acclaimed works and celebrated collaborations with Félix Guattari have established him as a seminal figure in the fields of literary criticism and philosophy. The long-awaited publication of What is Philosophy? in English marks the culmination of Deleuze's career.
Deleuze and Guattari differentiate between philosophy, science, and the arts, seeing as means of confronting chaos, and challenge the common view that philosophy is an extension of logic. The authors also discuss the similarities and distinctions between creative and philosophical writing. Fresh anecdotes from the history of philosophy illuminate the book, along with engaging discussions of composers, painters, writers, and architects.
A milestone in Deleuze's collaboration with Guattari, What is Philosophy? brings a new perspective to Deleuze's studies of cinema, painting, and music, while setting a brilliant capstone upon his work.
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