Professional Documents
Culture Documents
3 days ago
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
I have been examining Continental philosophy in terms of five criteria: pluralism, diachronicity,
apophaticism, testability, and democracy.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
These have been my criteria for 40 years. They determined my interest in Feyerabend's
philosophy, which is much more than an epistemology.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
These 5 criteria were behind my enthusiasm for Deleuze's philosophy, ever since I began reading
his works in 1978.
3 DAYS
AGO
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
I have written much on Deleuze's pluralism, and have always contested his reduction to a
philosopher of difference: terenceblake.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/del
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
This is why I have never really been a "Deleuzian" or even a "Feyerabendian", as I evaluate their
work from a more general perspective.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
This is why I do not think that we are going through a very special period of metaphysical
speculation.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
I see the same quest for a pluralist, diachronic, empirical, dialogical metaphysics extending over
two centuries.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Developments like object-oriented ontology, speculative realism and scientism are pitiful little
regressions in this more general movement.
3 DAYS
AGO
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Since the beginning pluralism has been criticised for being a form of relativism, and this critique
has been partly justified.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Pluralists like Feyerabend and Deleuze have struggled to find some way to keep the pluralism
without the relativism.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
This quest for a non-relativist, or realist, pluralism is the motive force of much contemporary
Continental philosophy.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Latour, Stiegler, Laruelle, even Badiou are all working on this task, under different names: Latour's
"empirical metaphysics", Badiou's
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Mostly people specialise in one or other of these philosophies without seeing the connections.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Recently there have been attempts to find connections between these figures in terms of the
vacuous concept of "Continental naturalism".
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
One sees long-winded demonstrations aimed at establishing that for example Stiegler is a
"naturalist". This is no news.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Naturalism is the default position of all these figures, and yet they see it not as a solution but as the
source of many problems.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Naturalism is one name for immanence (if we exclude a scientistic acception). But it is no use
repeating "immanence" as a mantra without
3 DAYS
AGO
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
seeing the problems it poses, in particular relativism. This is why a certain "Deleuzian" style is a
danger to thought.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Both Badiou and Laruelle, even if they are wrong about Deleuze (and I think they are never fully
wrong) are right about deleuzian doxa.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Some people have made careers out of writing about Deleuze from the perspective of the history
of philosophy, however groovy they try to
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
make it sound. I eagerly await the anthology DELEUZE AND WHOLEMEAL SPAGHETTI to
complete my collection.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
I make an exception for those who are trying to engage with Deleuze in their lives. But scholars will
be scholars.
3 DAYS
AGO
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Deleuze's last word was probably not immanence, but "re-injection" (if one can say that he had a
single "last word").
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
We see a similar movement in Latour's @AIMEproject when on the basis of his immanent ontology
he re-injects "mini-transcendences".
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Badiou's idea is that our default position today is immanence, called by him "democratic
materialism". He describes this as the thesis that
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
there are only bodies and languages. He re-injects mini-transcendence by adding except that there
are truths.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Badiou recently has stated that he recognises in Deleuze's notion of "sense" this same concept of
immanent truth.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Laruelle has chosen among his English representatives some very intellectually dubious characters
and deserves every misreading he receives.
3 DAYS
AGO
Giovanni Fanfoni
@GiovanniFanfoni
@TPBlake When Deleuze and Guattari talk about a concept as the product of an "absolute
overflight, at infinite speed"....
@TPBlake 3 DAYS
AGO
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
This movement can be seen not only in philosophy but in all the culture. I have argued that it
underlies Neal Stephenson's novel ANATHEM.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
In ANATHEM the world of Platonic ideas is given a science fiction treatment, immanentised (as in
Badiou and Deleuze), but also pluralised.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
ANATHEM provides us with a vista not only of multiple empirical causal worlds, but also of multiple
noetic Platonic worlds.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
ANATHEM comes closest to those who advocate loosening up or pluralising Badiou by giving
category theory primacy over set theory
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
It is in this more general context that I would like to talk of Rocco Gangle's book: "DIAGRAMMATIC
IMMANENCE Category Theory and Philosophy"
3 DAYS
AGO
Gangle's book "develops an immanent ontology of relations based on the dynamics of formal
diagrams". pic.twitter.com/911P8A5Vdm
TERENCE BLAKE @TPBLAKE 3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
The first theme of my blog is the articulation of a mode of thinking that is pluralist, diachronici,
empirical, apophatic, and democratic.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Deleuze, Badiou, and Latour have no problem with this terminology. Laruelle implies that he is not
doing "metaphysics". But this is true
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
In terms of the Popperian definition of a MRP as combining both testable and untestable
hypotheses in a heuristically evolving program.
3 DAYS
AGO
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
It is shocking to see so-called philosophers of a Laruellean bent blithely repeating that Laruelle is
"outside" philosophy whereas Deleuze
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
or Badiou isn't.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Laruelle whatever he may claim is doing very much the same thing as these others and sometimes
simply repeating them in more obscure terms
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
A third theme of my blog is individuation. Philosophy is not just abstract thought, but involves real
encounters.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Today we have many university professors talking about "Digital Humanities". This is a potentially
contradictory situation as their training
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
their major expression, and, above all, their paycheck come from the non-digital academy.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
This is what the Laruelleans and the Obectarians have not forgiven me: I am not their colleague,
so they have done everything in their power
3 DAYS
AGO
Erratum: objectarians
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
to consign me to silence. This, independently of anything I can say or do to confirm it, shows up
their total conformism.
3 DAYS
AGO
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Thus digitality and what it means to be a "digital philosopher", and not a philosopher of the digital,
constitute a fourth theme of my blog.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Philosophy can be done on twitter, on facebook, on blogs, despite what some thinkers try to tell us.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Lived digitality is not the same as academics mouthing off about code and algorithms as if that
somehow made them beyond Deleuze & Foucault.
3 DAYS
AGO
Terence Blake
@TPBlake
Usually they are lagging far behind, such is the misplaced concreteness of their thinking.
3 DAYS
AGO
https://storify.com/TerenceBlake/lived-digital-philosophy-an-experiment-in-pluralis