Empiricism and Subjectivity

Rating:
Summary: super duper
Review: an excellent intro to deleuze. the book speaks of motivation, subjectivity, and habit, praising hume's empiricism and theory of mind. latter deleuze texts are oft' full of fanciful prose, but this one is clear and concise. the thesis: the blank slate, nothing is innate, except habit. the habit of habit.

Rating:
Summary: Densely-Packed, Gasket-Blowing Explosives Within
Review: Most of the Deleuze I'd read before this was from his various collaborations with Gattari. This book is very different. While it does read like an academic endeavor, it is anything but dry. Personally, I found it a tad uneven in the following way: some sections read more easily than others. Rather than puzzling over every line, though, it's short enough to just make another pass.

Few things that are great about this book:

1. Hume was a genius, yeah, we knew that, but the degree to which he laid the foundation for many of what we wrongly deem as our modern conceits is astonishing.

2. The title is a joke, one that resonates through the whole text, no need for the usual neon, strobotic authorial irony, works all by itself.

In a world cluttered full of futile, spasmodic attempts to work the shopworn means of subversion on an over-titillated audience, this book is a great exercise in a truly effective variety: it will make you rethink many things you've probably taken for granted for a long time.