Nietzsche's Dog, A Philosophy Study Circle: Reading Gilles Deleuze
Details
Every fifth Saturday, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., join us on Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/tnt-fnkp-uhp.
In this session, we will read, analyse, and discuss the Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet essay, 'A Conversation: What is it? What is it for?'
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1shTkZj4B1dUMvwcoFsOy1BvMYUxoszfQ/view?usp=sharing
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Nietzsche’s Dog is our philosophy study circle. We meet every fifth Saturday of the month, tackle some prominent texts and excerpts by acclaimed philosophers and try to grasp their meanings and limits.
Nietzsche called his pain and suffering a dog. His pain was as loyal, obtrusive, shameless, and clever as a dog. Coming together and reading philosophy is one way of doing away with some of that pain and suffering - the parts that come out of ignorance, the staleness of our thinking, and the rusting bolts of our old beliefs.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, the father of modern analytical philosophy, said that philosophy's task is to show the fly out of the jar. In other words, reading and practising philosophy translates to problem-solving and critical thinking.
As aspiring writers, we can never have enough of that.
The Text:
In this session, we will discuss the works of Deleuze and Guattari (and co-author Claire Parnet). It is the first essay from Deleuze's book, Dialogues II, called 'A Conversation: What Is it? What Is It For?', which we will read and analyse.
Deleuze's ideas are complex. But Dialogues II is an accessible book. It serves as a great entry point into his concept of subjectivity and identity, which is fluid, transformative, and coming from a place of lack (as per the Freudian and psychoanalytical tradition).
This is a dynamic, movement-driven and highly original view of the being and its becoming, different from the post-structuralist views. It also challenges the dualist and binary position of traditional continental philosophers.
Below is the link to the complete essay. We will read its two parts in two sessions. In the first session, we will take on the first part, from page 16 to page 34.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1shTkZj4B1dUMvwcoFsOy1BvMYUxoszfQ/view?usp=sharing
The Host:
Ishita Lohani is an aspiring writer. She has been an avid philosophy reader, deeply interested in the works of continental philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Husserl. She has a soft spot for postmodernists like Derrida, Guattari, Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. She is also a Young India Fellow, where she pursued cognitive science and philosophy through the works of Nagel, Chalmers, Searle, Dennett, and Chomsky.