If, according to Nietzsche, all manifestations of life are manifestations of the 'will to power', and there is no ultimate 'right' or 'wrong' way to manifest it (someone in the classical tradition would perhaps say that the 'right' way is what fulfills the nature of the will, but Nietzsche rejects that), it is somewhat inconsistent to write books glorifying some way of living and criticizing others.
Mind you, I think that Nietzsche had pretty interesting things to say (e.g. about how resentment works and can condition our thoughts, about creativity and so on). But his extreme 'voluntarism', expressed in his mature 'amoralism' and 'will to power' etc is IMO more consistent with an empty philosophy rather than a philosophy that can teach a 'way of life'. To put it differently, the 'pars destruens' was so pervasive than no 'pars construens' seems consistent with it, not his. — boundless
This gets complicated, but with NOS4A2 I would say that the act of activism precludes this response to one extent or another. The activist is treating everyone, friend and foe, as a means to an end. Even if we grant for the sake of argument that we should prefer compassion and understanding, the advice that we should treat everyone with an equal amount of compassion and understanding turns out to be false. It is false because it is fitting to treat those who are attempting to use us as a means to their end with less understanding and compassion — Leontiskos
The subject receives those intensities and translate them into ultimate truth. Feeling of ultimate moral certainty resembles the ‘return of all names and intensities of history.’ It is the result of hyper-intensified machinic affect. — Number2018
“This is how it should be done: Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions [intensities] here and there, try out continuums of intensities [plane of consistency] segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times. It is through a meticulous relation with the strata that one succeeds in freeing lines of flight, causing conjugated flows to pass and escape and bringing forth continuous intensities for a BwO. Connect, conjugate, continue: a whole "diagram," as opposed to still signifying and subjective programs.
We are in a social formation; first see how it is stratified for us and in us and at the place where we are; then descend from the strata to the deeper assemblage within which we are held; gently tip the assemblage, making it pass over to the side of the plane of consistency. It is only there that the BwO reveals itself for what it is: connection of desires, conjunction of flows [intensities], continuum of intensities [plane of consistency]. You have constructed your own little machine, ready when needed to be plugged into other collective machines.
If so, then an ‘anything goes’ relativist would have to embrace the proliferation of an unlimited multiplicity of diverse and incompatible totalitarian systems.
Why? Are they committed to some sort of inviolable principle that leads from the truth of relativism to this sort of open-ended tolerance? I don't see why they would be. — Count Timothy von Icarus
When we say that the eternal return is not the return of the Same, or of the Similar or the Equal, we mean that it does not presuppose any identity. On the contrary, it is said of a world without identity, without resemblance or equality. It is said of a world the very ground of which is difference, in which everything rests upon disparities, upon differences of differences which reverberate to infinity (the world of intensity). The eternal return is itself the Identical, the similar and the equal, but it presupposes nothing of itself in that of which it is said. It is said of that which has no identity, no resemblance and no equality. It is the identical which is said of the different, the resemblance which is said of the pure disparate, the equal which is said only of the unequal and the proximity which is said of all distances. Things must be dispersed within difference, and their identity must be dissolved before they become subject to eternal return and to identity in the eternal return…
If repetition exists, it expresses at once a singularity opposed to the general, a universality opposed to the particular, a distinctive opposed to the ordinary, an instantaneous opposed to variation, and an eternity opposed to permanence… in univocity, univocal being is said immediately of individual differences or the universal is said of the most singular independent of any mediation…In this manner, the ground has been superseded by a groundlessness, a universal ungrounding which turns upon itself and cause only the yet-to-come to return.” (Difference and Repetition)
…the thesis from Deleuze's late 1960s writings holds identity to be a simulation or optical illusion…identity and fixed markers, which may be considered natural and pregiven or contingently constructed but indispensable, are surface effects of difference. Identities and fixed markers, I want to say, are like patterns on the surface of water, which appear fixed when seen from a great distance, such as from the window of an airplane in flight: their stability and substantiality, in short, are a matter of perspective.” ( Nathan Widder)
If it's inevitable, we should value all the more the restraint our conservative nature gives us: first, do no harm. — frank
But let’s say for the sake of argument that wokism’s roots contribute nothing innovative or valuable to the canons of philosophical thought.
— Joshs
I'm certainly not committed to the idea that all philosophy is good...
— Count Timothy von Icarus
-
What I am talking about is humanizing (as in respecting)the claim as if it is made by a serious person.
— Antony Nickles
Isn't it confusing precisely because it involves lying to ourselves? Because it involves treating someone who we believe to be unserious as if they were serious?
— Leontiskos
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It seems that a fundamental disagreement here is over the question of whether humans are capable of bad ideas. The woke, as well as Antony Nickles and @Joshs, seem to lean into the idea that humans are not capable of bad ideas.
Consider an analogy. Human beings and human culture are, in part, ideational. In part, they are collections of ideas. In both cases the ideas are domesticated into a sort of garden. Now gardens have lots of weeds, and require weeding. The camp that leans into the no-bad-ideas direction is effectively claiming that weeds do not exist, or that gardens should not be weeded, or that weeds can be pruned but should never be uprooted. I think that's crazy wrong. There are bad ideas aplenty, and they should be uprooted. Indeed, I would argue that the very idea that there are no bad ideas is itself a bad idea. This is true even though weeding requires energy and constant diligence, and even though it is possible to learn from bad ideas (because evil is a privation of goodness).
So backing up, do bad ideas exist? — Leontiskos
I didn't say the activists who ran the transitioning facilities were idiots. I said we were. The whole society took a vacation from reason. It's a drama that echoes the eugenics craze in the US. That also started with pseudo-science that was caught up in a campaign to engineer a better human. If there is a Spirit of Progress, this is its dark side. — frank
I must still agree that it is important for the psychological researcher to see the efforts of man in the perspective of the centuries. To me the striking thing that is revealed in this perspective is the way yesterday's alarming impulse becomes today's enlivening insight, tomorrow's repressive doctrine, and after that subsides into a petty superstition.
Getting rid of absolutism doesn't necessitate a move away from totalitarianism; it can in some cases motivate the opposite move (indeed, I think the case in point is such an example). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Was lobotomy idiotic?
— Joshs
Yes. Have you read much about the advent of transitioning pre-pubescent people? — frank
↪Joshs That has nothing much to do with me. What I'm telling you is they are not synonymous (which is an empirical fact. Wokists do not play out hte tenets of legitimate critical theory. They play dress-up to justify shitty, incoherent moral points of view (on my view)). You can say that you think their actions are justified under CRT and Ill say no, they expressly are not. I'm not personally interested in that debate because it is clear to anyone who has a clue about CRT that things like BLM (2019-2021 type of BLM action, anyhow) were not part of the agenda. We don't need some theoretical approach to notice this. I assume you've read the basic texts. There is no debate here.
If, on the other hand, you are saying that the basis for what's called wokism is something legitimate, so we should trying to tease out what that is - yes, but that has nothing to do with understanding those wokist actors. — AmadeusD
Appeals to status seeking can be merely descriptive as well. It doesn't seem they are prima facie wrong. If they were categorically off-base, then it would also be the case that segregationists and white nationalists cannot be acting to defend their own status and interests. Yet that is, quite explicitly, what they claim and understand themselves to be doing. In their newer forms, they just claim that everyone else is also doing the same thing, covertly or not, and that they're at least honest about it. However, earlier defenders of segregation were much more covert about their ends, and yet I hardly think we can avoid the conclusion that these too were also partly motivated by defending their status and control over resources. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Second, I think I'm the only one who mentioned fascism and the idea (Milbank's, although the seeds can arguably be found in Dostoevsky) is that the logical conclusion of the ontologies of violence is fascism. That is, when there is no transcendent order of peace, goodness, or truth, instead only contingent systems of power, difference, and conflict—when truth, law, and morality are not a participation in Logos, but are rather constructed through acts of force (e.g., discourse, statecraft, capital, language games)—then violence is original, and there can be no counter-violence which truly transcends violence. There is only ever assertion over and against counter-assertion, will to power against will to power (plus or minus some post hoc rationalization, which is itself merely another assertion of value). This is precisely the spiritual logic of fascism. — Count Timothy von Icarus
As for Woke becoming the dominant ideology the way Neoliberalism has been in 50 years, in 50 years China and India will be the world's largest economies. The EU in particular is on a growth trajectory to become increasingly irrelevant, and the war in Ukraine has shown that it seems likely to continue to underperform its economic standing in both hard and soft power. It would take a radical sea change for these ideologies to be allowed to get anywhere in China, even if they were popular there (whereas they are popularly ridiculed on Chinese social media). I don't think India will prove exceptionally fertile ground either. Whereas sub-Saharan Africa will be to that epoch what Southeast Asia was to the 90s-2020s, the main target for new investment and consumer markets, and there are a lot of reasons to suspect Woke would need to be radically transformed to have an appeal there too. I'm just not sure that it will make sense in these settings, and a look at how Woke analogs have developed in Japan and Korea might be a good indicator here. In particular, the Sexual Revolution seems key to Woke, and yet this is probably the number one area where thought indigenous to the developing world has said: "no thanks," and "please stop trying to force this on us." — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think the problem is that the interests and needs of young trans people was created by woke culture. — frank
The question is: was this catastrophe just the cost of progress? Or is it a sign of something gravely wrong under the hood of wokism? — frank
Do you think there is something internal to Critical Theory that would adjudicate between these many divergent views? Can CT tell us whether Rorty or Adorno or Habermas is the better way? Or is indeterminacy inherent to CT, and we will always need to wait for something even better, and/or always return to something left unfinished? — Fire Ologist
As someone who began studying for his doctorate in Paris in 1989, Barron knows a fair bit about figures like Foucault and Derrida. — Leontiskos
As someone who began studying for his doctorate in Paris in 1989, Barron knows a fair bit about figures like Foucault and Derrida. — Leontiskos
Critical theorists and realists are distinct groups, but there is overlap between some critical approaches and a philosophical position known as critical realism. In general, most critical theorists are not realists in the traditional philosophical sense—especially within the Frankfurt School tradition and related approaches, which often critique the very idea of objective reality and emphasize the role of social constructions and power in shaping what counts as "truth"...
— Perplexity AI
So my intimation that your claim is highly inaccurate is now stronger. Note too that the folks on TPF who gravitate towards Critical theory generally do not consider themselves realists. — Leontiskos
Deconstruction shows what continues to bind together groups on either side of an oppositional divide, so one can never simply overcome what one opposes.
— Joshs
Now apply that to your post, because you transgress this principle multiple times. You say, for example, that Derrida was critical of Marxism and therefore Marxism cannot be used to explain his thought. On the contrary, a critic of Marxism is by that very fact informed by Marxism - especially one who holds that one can never simply overcome what one opposes. — Leontiskos
critical theory moves away from Cartesianism by showing the subject to be formed through structures of bodily, material and social interactions. Postmodernists like Derrida and Foucault go much further, making the subject nothing but an effect of these worldly interactions.
— Joshs
I just wonder why this process which sounds like it should be neutral as to outcome always yields the same political conclusions. Liberal wokism is the only result of postmodernism - how is such uniformity of outcome possible given such undefined unformed clay as “bodily, material and social interactions.” Why is there no legitimate facist dictator, but there can be a legitimate woke pontificator? — Fire Ologist
reform of wokist excesses can take place within the bounds of these philosophical ground
— Joshs
They can't, it appears. Theory isn't particularly of any moment here — AmadeusD
the problem with Nietzsche's philosophy is that it is inconsistent here IMO. If the 'highest form of life' is a life where we impose our values and there is no critierion in which we distinguish, in a non-arbitrary manner what is the best way to 'affirm life' then a 'life affirming' stance is no 'better' than a 'life denying' one, as both are said to be manifestations of the 'will to power'. Why should a manifestion of the will to power be better than another if there aren't criteria to tell which is better? In other words, I do not see in Nietzsche's philosophy enough convincing arguments for avoiding a compeletely arbitrary stance of life where absolutely any stance is no better or worse than any other. — boundless
0. Suffering is not the problem to solve, but the meaninglessness of it.
1. Aesthetic justification: “It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.”
2. The Will to Power. Suffering acquires its meaning through overcoming it. — kirillov
That the world's "Value lies in our interpretation (- that somewhere else other interpretations than merely human ones may be possible -); that previous interpretations have been perspectival appraisals by means of which we preserve ourselves in life, that is, in the will to power and
to the growth of power; that every heightening of man brings with it an overcoming of narrower interpretations; that every increase in strength and expansion of power opens up new perspectives and demands a belief
in new horizons - this runs though my writings. The world which matters to us is false, i.e., is not a fact but a fictional elaboration and filling out of a meagre store of observations; it is 'in flux', as something becoming, as a
constantly shifting falsity that never gets any nearer to truth, for - there is no 'truth'.
The 'meaninglessness of what happens': belief in this results from an insight into the falseness of previous interpretations, a generalisation of weakness and despondency - it's not a necessary belief.
I think you may be missing a trick wihch is implicit in all our comments here... These are not synonymous. At all. — AmadeusD
But I think wokeness is correctly construed as wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater. — Leontiskos
A terrible line has been crossed when transgression is valued for transgression's sake, but I want to say that the precursor is the undervaluation of the conservative instinct, or the status quo, or tradition (or whatever else one wants to call it). I don't think that line ever gets crossed without this preliminary — Leontiskos
I’ve read only one work by Brassier on Deleuze, in ‘A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy’, so I’m not familiar with his overall perspective on Deleuze. However, I read a few works by Brian Massumi, who is an affect theorist — Number2018
These are beliefs and activities that seek to confer a certain status and halo upon those that express them, while damaging those who they claim to support — NOS4A2
However, I disagree with your claim that Foucault and Deleuze do not offer a full-scale critique of affect. Your statement that “the analyses of Foucault and Deleuze are not critiques of affect per se, but of how affect is disciplined and made legible—subsumed into power/knowledge formations” is only partially accurate. While insightful, it risks downplaying the ontological commitments both thinkers make toward affect and desire.Foucault, for instance, interrogates the bodily, emotional, and relational dimensions of power. Power, in his view, does not merely repress; it incites, induces, and seduces. His concept of the microphysics of power within disciplinary regimes becomes a theory of affective modulation. His method reveals how affect is produced, channeled, and governed. In this sense, his theory of power becomes a philosophy of affect, in the sense that is thoroughly conditioned by and entangled with power relations. — Number2018
What the Civil Rights Movement in the US fought for or labour laws in my view isn't anything to do with woke or wokeism. Just as isn't the shortly lived protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. The proponents of DEI surely might see them as the continuation or those that continue to further these past political struggles, but in fact they are not — ssu
I'm not saying there aren't issues, but what I’m looking for are concrete, institutionalised examples, something with real substance, that's meaningfully different from, say, right-wing identity politics where people view all of life through the lens of gun ownership, MAGA, or Christian nationalism, where ridicule and debate are also used to silence dissent. We know this group censors libraries, for instance. — Tom Storm
I've wondered about this myself. Simple question: do you think wokism is a significant and growing issue in society? — Tom Storm
Critics argue that emotional discomfort has become a trigger for restricting speech, displacing debate with moral claims based solely on feeling hurt or offended — Number2018
Whereas the wokeness machine induces emotions like shame, guilt, and vulnerability to generate moral authority and political legitimacy, the philosophical machine must resist this affective economy by refusing to be coded within it. Instead, it amplifies its own intensity and its capacity to think and feel. In this sense, the line of flight is an experimental process that exceeds the coordinates of recognition and representation. It constructs an autonomous plane of consistency where thought is no longer mediated by identity, morality, or social function, but engages directly with the real. — Number2018
↪Joshs
Timothy Snyder and Jason Stanley appear in the video. They are completely genuine in expressing not just their concerns about fascism, but also about wokism.
— Joshs
But what is your assessment of the academic content of this video—especially considering that Snyder is a leading scholar on fascism and Nazi Germany? — Number2018
I am no fan of wokeness either but I think there are more careful considerations and critiques of it from the likes of Sam Harris to name one, or Zizek, from the little I watched of the latter, but I doubt this guy will fall into that category. I suspect it will just be the usual right-wing dog whistles of cultural marxism and such — unimportant
What is your take on this video about contemporary fascism? It highlights the stance of critical intellectuals against authoritarian regimes that are increasingly targeting academic freedom. They are completely genuine while expressing their concerns. The video constructs a stark us vs. them narrative. In fact, its moral binary and emotional framing reflect characteristics often associated with “woke culture”: strong normative certainty, oversimplification, moral urgency, and an appeal to identity and belonging. This resemblance suggests that the crisis revealed by wokeness is not merely cultural or political. Also, it reveals a deeper epistemic, ethical, and moral rupture — Number2018
In the case of wokeness, the issue is not one of disagreement or misunderstanding. Rather, it lies in the complete blurring of boundaries between the authenticity of identity performance and the sincerity of moral expression — Number2018
The similarities lie more in the focus on identity, grievance, narratives of power, skepticism of institutions (instruments of power), and as Doyle puts it, "admission of spectral evidence," (i.e., personal feelings of grievance as indicative of moral wrong). There is also a similar distrust of scientific, journalistic, academic, etc. institutions as mere instruments of power, a sort of epistemology of power to go along with the metaphysics of power. The "nu-right" is a heavily aesthetic movement, drawing a lot from ancient epics and art, and so you also have an "aesthetics of power." The preference for classical art styles for instance, is not mere reactionary preference for the old, but obviously because these are taken to by symbols of imperial power and warrior spirit. — Count Timothy von Icarus
There is the transformation of the foundations of normative, intersubjective argumentation, particularly in the realms of identity politics and online discourse. In this emerging framework, factual accuracy and logical coherence are increasingly overshadowed by emotional expressions of identity and marginalization, which come to serve as autonomous validations of truth and moral authority. — Number2018
it wouldn’t take me very long to demonstrate that he never even attempts to analyze the underlying philosophy
— Joshs
For for it. Review his entire output on this topic, including books, podcasts, lengthy posts and articles. I'm not going to claim to hav ea citation to hand, but he has explicitly spoken about the Marxist, and then Frankfurtian bases through Critical Theory and on into CRT - running that through the milieu of the 60s-70s civil rights activations and then making his conclusions from there. He is not an idiot. I do recall him going relatively deep into this in The New Puritans.
It seems you've rejected his position without knowing it. Odd. — AmadeusD