Nietzsche and Philosophy

Rating:
Summary: Interpretation as Force
Review: After having reading much of Neitzsche over the years, it was not until I read this little book by Deleuze that he really came alive for me. Deleuze's guiding notion is that "force" lies at the heart of interpretation. Force also lies at the heart of Nietzsche's Will to Power. Like Wittgenstein's "games" or Derrida's "play," force is always with us. But not just in language, discourse and text, unless you consider our need to "order" the world in these terms (which you can). For force is the play of forces, of greater and lesser forces -- like Derrida's differance. But differance can be torpid and sluggish (whatever happened to the "white mythology" that lay "inscribed in the palimpsest -- active and stirring"?). In Nietzsche's The Will to Power he has a long section on chemistry and refrences to science. He equates the phyisical forces at work in the sciences as "moral." Why? -- Deleuze asks. Because it is our innate need and desire to order the universe -- to make things greater and lesser -- in science as well as morality. Thus Neitzsche writes a Geneology of Morals, with greater and lesser morals. And so it goes, with each force affecting other forces in infinite regression and progression. "Is this a kind of Hegelian dialectic?" -- you might ask. Maybe, but it seems far too messy to me. You see forces do not play within privileged paradigms. They are all about unintended consequences. There is Nietzschean repitition here but more of a mindless extrapolation of power. Like Deleuze's writings on "Nomadology" and "Rhizomes" we cannot keep track of the connections, the diversions, the diggressions. This is a kind of metaphysical madness.
Kind of like life.
A brilliant book.

Rating:
Summary: the double affirmation
Review: contrary to some beliefs, gilles deleuze was NOT a psychoanalyst. in fact, neither was (strictly speaking) felix guattari. if anything, the "anti-oedipus" was set to univocally destroy without remission any notion of the psychoanalyst and his couch. nevertheless, it wouldn't be inaccurate to read nietzsche as a psychologist since he himself prided himself in that dimension among philosophers.

the amazing thing about "nietzsche and philosophy" is how deleuze does a nietzschean reading of nietzsche: basically in gathering the force of nietzsche's writings, appropriating them, and extending them without corrupting the radical implications of nietzsche's philosophy. here, deleuze remarkably reinterprets many of nietzsche's key concepts (the will to power, the eternal return, active and reactive forces) and creatively channels them into what was the initial stages of his own philosophical project. what would be striking to readers familiar with deleuze's later works (especially those with guattari) is the lucidity and rigour of his meticulous presentation here.

"nietzsche and philosophy" is illuminating precisely because it allows us to situate poststructuralist theories/thinkers and their relationship to nietzsche's writings. in particular, this book had a huge influence on michel foucault of which his debt to deleuze is outstanding, especially seen in his genealogical work from then till the end of his life.

Rating:
Summary: the double affirmation
Review: contrary to some beliefs, gilles deleuze was NOT a psychoanalyst. in fact, neither was (strictly speaking) felix guattari. if anything, the "anti-oedipus" was set to univocally destroy without remission any notion of the psychoanalyst and his couch. nevertheless, it wouldn't be inaccurate to read nietzsche as a psychologist since he himself prided himself in that dimension among philosophers.

the amazing thing about "nietzsche and philosophy" is how deleuze does a nietzschean reading of nietzsche: basically in gathering the force of nietzsche's writings, appropriating them, and extending them without corrupting the radical implications of nietzsche's philosophy. here, deleuze remarkably reinterprets many of nietzsche's key concepts (the will to power, the eternal return, active and reactive forces) and creatively channels them into what was the initial stages of his own philosophical project. what would be striking to readers familiar with deleuze's later works (especially those with guattari) is the lucidity and rigour of his meticulous presentation here.

"nietzsche and philosophy" is illuminating precisely because it allows us to situate poststructuralist theories/thinkers and their relationship to nietzsche's writings. in particular, this book had a huge influence on michel foucault of which his debt to deleuze is outstanding, especially seen in his genealogical work from then till the end of his life.

Rating:
Summary: The best book about Nietzsche
Review: Nietzsche was not a systematic thinker and so it is very difficult to construct a book on his difficult thought. Deleuze has, however, successfully accomplished that. A combined reading of this work and Pierre Klossowski's "Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle" would provide an understanding of Nietzsche that is well beyond what is presented in most books on the author. It is sad, but we english speakers have collectively written most of the bad literature on Nietzsche. It was the french after WWII that picked-up the mantle set forth by Nietzsche after the embarrassing abuse of his thought by the Nazis.

Rating:
Summary: Fine for people who know Nietzsche or philosophy
Review: Nietzsche would be the primary example of a philosopher who produced his work without being subject to the limitations which a publisher who was aware of refined taste and the boundaries of public opinion might have imposed. Reading NIETZSCHE AND PHILOSOPHY by Gilles Deleuze in an English translation by Hugh Tomlinson, with a new Preface by Deleuze written for the translation in 1983 of a work originally published in French in 1962, serves as a reminder of the limits imposed on thoughts which are expressed within a scholarly milieu. Philosophy is a goal which can easily be imposed upon Nietzsche because Nietzsche's writings show an in depth knowledge of pre-Platonic and Schopenhauer's philosophies, and a meaning restricted to the confines of decent philosophical practice is entirely praiseworthy.

What else could Nietzsche show? Pornographic practices hardly fit well in a social setting, and Nietzsche's tendencies to show autoerotic mental patterns in his approach to what Deleuze designates as species activities and culture lie beyond the scope of anything considered in this book. Nietzsche might also be thought to emphasize jokes and laughter somewhat more than Deleuze, who is not afraid to devote sections of this book to The Essence of the Tragic, The Problem of Existence, Hierarchy, Will to Power and Feeling of Power, Against Pessimism and against Schopenhauer, Realisation of Critique, The Concept of Truth, Art, The Problem of Pain, Bad Conscience, Responsibility, Guilt, Nihilism, Analysis of Pity, Nihilism and Transmutation: the focal point, Affirmation and Negation, and even Dionysus and Zarathustra. In fantasy as in reality, Nietzsche's ideas are suitable for consideration in a book on philosophy because they are capable of operating on a high level where "the selection of being which constitutes Nietzsche's ontology: only that which becomes in the fullest sense of the word can return, is fit to return." (Preface to the English translation, p. xi).

Before proceeding to compare this book to the works of Nietzsche which it discusses, it behooves me to remind myself and others how I obtained knowledge of the market for books by building a collection of rejection slips for MY VIETNAM WAR JOKE BOOK, which culminated in a letter informing me that such a book was extralimital to the presses' goals, particularly in philosophy. Even NIETZSCHE AND PHILOSOPHY seems to be aware of the joke which made a free world attack on godless Communists ironic:

"Pluralism is the properly philosophical way of thinking, the one invented by philosophy : the only guarantor of freedom in the concrete spirit, the only principle of a violent atheism. The Gods are dead but they have died from laughing, on hearing one God claim to be the only one, `Is not precisely this godliness, that there are gods but no God?' (Z III `Of the Apostates', p. 201). And the death of this God, who claimed to be the only one, is itself plural; the death of God is an event with a multiple sense. This is why Nietzsche does not believe in resounding `great events', but in the silent plurality of senses of each event (Z II `Of Great Events'). There is no event, no phenomenon, word or thought which does not have a multiple sense." (p. 4).

The very funny thing that separates Nietzsche from this totally philosophical reflection on his work is the declaration "and I have seen the truth naked, truly! barefoot to the neck." (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II, "Of Great Events" translated by R. J. Hollingdale, p. 153). Considering this pornographic is a sign of the loss of appetite for further thinking along this line. Nietzsche appropriately saved this thought for after:

"And this is the tale of Zarathustra's conversation with the fire-dog:

"The earth (he said) has a skin; and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called `Man'.

"And another of these diseases is called `the fire-dog': men have told many lies and been told many lies about him."

The sense of condemnation that clings to experiences of this nature might be considered anti-social when applied to an existing society. Social activity is a narrow form of human endeavor, compared to which philosophy might be considered a vast wasteland, but one that is subject to considerable change. Comparing books about philosophers to the philosophers themselves, including the things which they did not say in their books, but sometimes only in their notebooks, is an activity fraught with confusion. Deleuze can be given credit for devoting much of his book to the philosophical context in which each philosopher has a unique self occupying a particular point in the grand sweep of ideas, but Deleuze and Nietzsche might not coincide in their views on particular individuals. The first example in the book, on "Nietzsche's twofold struggle: against those who remove values from criticism, contenting themselves with producing inventories of existing values or with criticising things in the name of established values (the `philosophical labourers', Kant and Schopenhauer, BGE 211)" (p. 2), does not mention the same philosophers as BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL section 211, in which Nietzsche observed:

"Those philosophical labourers after the noble exemplar of Kant and Hegel have to take some great fact of evaluation--that is to say, former assessments of value, creations of value which have become dominant and are for a while called `truths'--and identify them and reduce them to formulas, whether in the form of logic or of politics (morals) or of art."

Nietzsche sometimes considered Schopenhauer a better kind of philosopher, as in "it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind," but subject to the question, "Are there such philosophers today? Have there been such philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers?" (BGE 211).

Politics and philosophy have much in common. As Deleuze wrote, "It is difficult in fact to stop the dialectic and history on the common slope down which they drag each other. Does Marx . . . ?" (p. 162).

Rating:
Summary: Dire
Review: The reason why I do not think this is a good book on Nietzsche is because, even though I admire Deleuze outside his Nietzsche schoarship, it is the attempt to systemize Nietzsche's thought. This text is notorious, at least I believe and from the conversations on it that I have had with others, for being just down right bad because of the way in which Deleuze attempts to appropriate Nietzsche into some sort of systemized philosophical position. I know this does not get to the particulars of the book and what Deleuze argues, take this review as a gentle warning: if you love Nietzsche for all that Nietzsche is and what he has done, this book may proove to be a dissapointment. Honestly, I find it all to often (and i do realize that there is a level of interpretation at play) that students and readers of Nietzsche go about their studies of Nietzsche in a very casual and lax way, identifying with his style as a means in which serious and penetrating study of Nietzsche is overlooked. All I can say, is read Nietzsche for yourself (in German if you can) and dont think that the will to power counts, for more info on that read my review on it.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond Neuro-Syphilis
Review: This is a classic, bitterly controversial study. Along with Klossowski's writings, it almost singlehandedly revolutionized Nietzsche studies in the early 1960s. And like all experimental "revisionist" treatises, it reaped an undertow of resentment and scholarly dissensus.

Some have accused Deleuze of "fetishizing" the Nietzschean trajectory into something it never was, assimilating concepts and motifs that served his post-Bergsonian project while omitting the very weaknesses and blindsights that crippled Nietzsche's thought, promulgating his dubious teachings of the Ubermensch without taking into account the latter's embedded shortcomings. William H. Gass, an otherwise brilliant critic-philosopher, went so far as to dismiss Deleuze's project as "pretentious and barbaric," another pitiable attempt out-Heideggerize Heidegger in the French game of jargon-laden reflexivity.

While these arguments are defensible, any patient reader of Deleuze's book will find it impossible to dismiss outright this complex, wheels-within-wheels exegesis, for it is precisely the "selective" or affirmative character of Nietzsche's thought that is being put on the rails here, a brave attempt to EXPERIMENT WITH the greatest of 19th-century philosophical experimenters. Deleuze refuses to read his mentor as a displaced novelist, or a mad poet, or a befuddled classicist, or an inverted priest, or even a pretentious non-philosopher, but rather allocates to him the capital role(s) of Clinician and Pathologist, a visionaire who went deeper and further than Freud in disseminating "the psychopathology of everyday life," the highest achievement possible for a thinker who rejects the soul-on-ice "sanity-mongering" of Kripkean analytical philosophy.

Granted, this may be more the Nietzsche many of us *want* than the Nietzsche that catastrophically "is" (at least according to conservative exegetical consensus). Many dimensions of his thought are purposefully laid aside or forgotten in favor of the Heraclitian firestorm that would reach its apotheosis in such works as *Difference & Repetition* and *The Logic of Sense*. Also, nearly half the citations are from *The Will to Power*, rather than Nietzsche's fifteen other key texts, which divests Deleuze's arguments of the culture, history, and politics that supplemented the former's adventures into counter-Kantian nomadic critique. In his attempt to compose the most absolutely condensed and shattering language possible, much of the breadth or "life" of Nietzsche's writings seems squashed and suffocated, where "machinic" discourse veers dangerously close to the merely machine-like. But then, the title *Nietzsche AND Philosophy* seems to connote Deleuze's critical focus on cognitive, ethico-genealogical models, taking precedence over any rampant excursion into history and politics.

In the end, I wouldn't want this book to be any longer (or shorter) than it is. Deleuze has done a stirring job of breaking down then reassembling his great forbear into a fresh and exhilarating image of thought, one that may have gone undiscovered without his sublime intervention. I can't imagine any serious Nietzsche student who hasn't taken the time to work through the issues of this startling treatise. Forty years on, Deleuze's book is still flinting sparks in the great Nietzsche debate.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond Neuro-Syphilis
Review: This is a classic, bitterly controversial study. Along with Klossowski's writings, it almost singlehandedly revolutionized Nietzsche studies in the early 1960s. And like all experimental "revisionist" treatises, it reaped an undertow of resentment and scholarly dissensus.

Some have accused Deleuze of "fetishizing" the Nietzschean trajectory into something it never was, assimilating concepts and motifs that served his post-Bergsonian project while omitting the very weaknesses and blindsights that crippled Nietzsche's thought, promulgating his dubious teachings of the Ubermensch without taking into account the latter's embedded shortcomings. William H. Gass, an otherwise brilliant critic-philosopher, went so far as to dismiss Deleuze's project as "pretentious and barbaric," another pitiable attempt out-Heideggerize Heidegger in the French game of jargon-laden reflexivity.

While these arguments are defensible, any patient reader of Deleuze's book will find it impossible to dismiss outright this complex, wheels-within-wheels exegesis, for it is precisely the "selective" or affirmative character of Nietzsche's thought that is being put on the rails here, a brave attempt to EXPERIMENT WITH the greatest of 19th-century philosophical experimenters. Deleuze refuses to read his mentor as a displaced novelist, or a mad poet, or a befuddled classicist, or an inverted priest, or even a pretentious non-philosopher, but rather allocates to him the capital role(s) of Clinician and Pathologist, a visionaire who went deeper and further than Freud in disseminating "the psychopathology of everyday life," the highest achievement possible for a thinker who rejects the soul-on-ice "sanity-mongering" of Kripkean analytical philosophy.

Granted, this may be more the Nietzsche many of us *want* than the Nietzsche that catastrophically "is" (at least according to conservative exegetical consensus). Many dimensions of his thought are purposefully laid aside or forgotten in favor of the Heraclitian firestorm that would reach its apotheosis in such works as *Difference & Repetition* and *The Logic of Sense*. Also, nearly half the citations are from *The Will to Power*, rather than Nietzsche's fifteen other key texts, which divests Deleuze's arguments of the culture, history, and politics that supplemented the former's adventures into counter-Kantian nomadic critique. In his attempt to compose the most absolutely condensed and shattering language possible, much of the breadth or "life" of Nietzsche's writings seems squashed and suffocated, where "machinic" discourse veers dangerously close to the merely machine-like. But then, the title *Nietzsche AND Philosophy* seems to connote Deleuze's critical focus on cognitive, ethico-genealogical models, taking precedence over any rampant excursion into history and politics.

In the end, I wouldn't want this book to be any longer (or shorter) than it is. Deleuze has done a stirring job of breaking down then reassembling his great forbear into a fresh and exhilarating image of thought, one that may have gone undiscovered without his sublime intervention. I can't imagine any serious Nietzsche student who hasn't taken the time to work through the issues of this startling treatise. Forty years on, Deleuze's book is still flinting sparks in the great Nietzsche debate.

Rating:
Summary: Not an Introduction to Nietzschean Studies
Review: This is a wonderful text - much more accessible than Anti-Oedipus; however, it is not a faithful representation of Nietzsche's philosophy. Deleuze is a psychoanalyst, and he has a (bad?) habit of turning Nietzsche into an analyst, as well. If, however, one is willing to accept that we all tend to interpret our favorite philosophers as representatives of our own convictions, and that we should consequently read this text not as being about Nietzsche so much as the way in which Nietzsche can be used to understand a particular Deleuzian psychoanalysis of power, then all is dandy. . .

Deleuze develops the notions of active and reactive forces in the formation of individual consciousness, simultaneously playing with Nietzsche's notion of the will to power and Freud's conceptions of the id and the ego. For Deleuze, the truly active forces responsible for the development of conscious thought are essentially unknowable - they are Freud's id, and the only traces of these truly powerful cognitive forces are to be found in the ego - the reactive forces. One is reminded of Anaximander's Aperion, the origin of all things existent, yet itself consisting of a substance unlike any particular existant. Whereas Anaximander's Aperion was meant as an explanation of substance, however, Deleuze, as any good analyst will do, concentrates on the origin of conscious life.

To reiterate, this text is an excellent introduction to Deleuze and the psychoanalysis of power, and any lover of Nietzsche will find Deleuze's playful extension of Nietzschean doctrines enjoyable. But if you're looking for an introduction to Nietzsche's philosophy, then keep looking. The decadent spirit is there, but the historical particulars are not, nor were they meant to be, found.