Concept Vlog - Derrida on Friendship

Knowledge is the ancient pharmakon. Not the one or the other, but both at the same time. To know the Cartesian other is to annihilate oneself and become the other, was there any 'self' in the first place. You're doing great. Just suck it up and bring good shit up. Learning new stuff here, as you might well be.

Mrityunjay Awasthy

yooooooo 1Dime i love your videos

Raúl Rodrigues

Totally agree with philosophy making you feel less alone. What I love about philosophical concepts and systems is that they can really help explain the world, they can organise it in a way that makes way more sense than before knowing these concepts. And I've actually articulated some of them to the best of my ability to a friend recently and when it clicked with them, it felt amazing. You're definitely a political friend in the way you're describing, and there are a number of times in which you've said something, I'd have an initial feeling of disagreement, but after thinking about it a bit, I'm like 'fuck, he's right and he articulated my thoughts about it in a way I couldn't express before.' This definitely happened when you were talking on a livestream (I think the ideology one) where you said that online politics isn't politics because you're not actually changing anything, and this was further reinforced by the bit in the D&G vid where you talk about the camps in the social and political zones which don't actually affect the material conditions. Same with the uncertainty you mention in this vid. Major depressive disorder gang here too btw. It's funny how Fisher and Debord where 2 of the theorists who I resonated massively with when reading or hearing them speak (particularly the former) and then only after I've experienced this resonance I find out that they, you know, did what they did at the end and I feel such empathy. To the point where I get this feeling of missing Fisher sometimes, and I never even met him lol. You do soy great pills, I hope you do more if it's what you feel like doing at the time. In fact, I will outsoy you and say I'd have happily given you a hug at the end of the vlog xD

anacidcommie

1DimeMan

A video and/or podcast on speculative realism and/or object-oriented ontology would be great.

Guillermo Garrido-Lestache Vidal

I appreciate this video. Funnily enough, a few weeks back, I thought to myself, "It's strange, Pills seems like an old friend to me."

Profit Overlord

This last half-or-so year that I am a patron of yours has given me a lot of interesting input. Thanks to you I have been exposed to Deleuze and have read 2 Books (Negotiations and his book on Foucault) and 2 others are in the pipeline: "Difference and Repetition" and his book on Nietzsche -- I am still somewhat unsure about "Anti-Oedipus" and "A Thousand Plateaus" -- but I will get to that in due time. Take your time off, I hope you can enjoy it! Have a good start into the new year! In the name of friendship, greetings from Leipzig.

Mathias Vonende

Yay for Spinoza

Andrew Grossman

My friend just sent me this poem literally yesterday. I try to not be too superstitious but that is mind-boggling!

Andrew Grossman

You are a brave young man.

jose david guevara

From Spinoza's Ethics-Part 4: PROP. LXX. The free man, who lives among the ignorant, strives, as far as he can, to avoid receiving favours from them. Proof.—Everyone judges what is good according to his disposition (III. xxxix. note); wherefore an ignorant man, who has conferred a benefit on another, puts his own estimate upon it, and, if it appears to be estimated less highly by the receiver, will feel pain (III. xlii.). But the free man only desires to join other men to him in friendship (IV. xxxvii.), not repaying their benefits with others reckoned as of like value, but guiding himself and others by the free decision of reason, and doing only such things as he knows to be of primary importance. Therefore the free man, lest be should become hateful to the ignorant, or follow their desires rather than reason, will endeavour, as far as he can, to avoid receiving their favours. Note.—I say, as far as he can. For though men be ignorant, yet are they men, and in cases of necessity could afford us human aid, the most excellent of all things: therefore it is often necessary to accept favours from them, and consequently to repay such favours in kind; we must, therefore, exercise caution in declining favours, lest we should have the appearance of despising those who bestow them, or of being, from avaricious motives, unwilling to requite them, and so give ground for offence by the very fact of striving to avoid it. Thus, in declining favours, we must look to the requirements of utility and courtesy.---Spinoza--Ethics----Part IV.

jose david guevara

From Spinoza's Ethics--part 4: PROPPP. LXXI. Only free men are thoroughly grateful one to another. Proof.—Only free men are thoroughly useful one to another, and associated among themselves by the closest necessity of friendship (IV. xxxv., and Coroll. i.), only such men endeavour, with mutual zeal of love, to confer benefits on each other (IV. xxxvii.), and, therefore, only they are thoroughly grateful one to another. Q.E.D. Note.—The goodwill, which men who are led by blind desire have for one another, is generally a bargaining or enticement, rather than pure goodwill. Moreover, ingratitude is not an emotion. Yet it is base, inasmuch as it generally shows, that a man is affected by excessive hatred, anger, pride, avarice, &c. He who, by reason of his folly, knows not how to return benefits, is not ungrateful, much less he who is not gained over by the gifts of a courtesan to serve her lust, or by a thief to conceal his thefts, or by any similar persons. Contrariwise, such an one shows a constant mind, inasmuch as he cannot by any gifts be corrupted, to his own or the general hurt.-------------------------------Spinoza--Ethics------ Part IV

jose david guevara

I also remember Zizek in one of his egs lectures talking fondly of Deleuze. From what I can remember he said that he was always the most dignified person in the room and linked this with his refusal to accept visits from close friends during his last days due to his poor state.

Dimitri

i wonder what marcel mauss would say about online gift giving too..

realm lich

I think your notion of looking the same way even applies to when the analyst constructs for the psychotic a calculated lie in order to stabilize his/her delusional metaphor. A lot more could be said on this though.

Dimitri

Thanks for your back-and-forth about what friendship is. I guess I’ll be reading Levinas over the next few weeks. What you were saying around us as friends leaves me thinking about the work on imagined communities. The basics are that an imagined community is a real community because people believe they are a community, act in alignment with that belief, and work to ensure that their community is temporally continuous. The other key point is that imagined communities see themselves as distinct from others. The interesting point is that this does not require behaviours that are normally categorised as “interactions” – like physical proximity, trading of physical goods, relations of employment/employee. I wonder if this is where people start to get all judgmental about Internet-mediated communities, that is, they think because Internet communities don’t exchange physical goods or coronavirus-laden sneezes, then they are “imaginary” in a fake way, but the reality is that imagination is real, and the physical is just happenstance. Anyhoo, please enjoy your break from Youtube and thank you for all of your work this year.

Matthew Williamson

34: 10 - If you keep this up you'll soon have as big a following as Russell Brand or Joe Rogan! Be careful what you wish for... You are speaking straight to the absent heart of the (subject's) matter. Perhaps I shouldn't say such stuff...

Steve B

29:53: Yeah, you believe in the God of Spinoza!

Steve B

At around 21:30 Pills talks about looking at a horizon, and lines from Yeats come to mind. I was just going to quote a few lines but, the poem is so apt for our troubled times, not to mention Derrida and even Xmas, here's the whole thing. The Second Coming Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Steve B

So while you guys are debating the place of sentimentality, I'm just going to throw it out there that I cried watching this video 😂 others may disagree and I know I sound like a weirdo but I don't care, I think it's kind of a compliment. A heartfelt thank you for the content, for articulating things I cannot . I really appreciate it.

Jennifer

I think “soy” is something more specific than sentimentality. I interpret it as more of an affect that evades skepticism and uncertainty... a recoil from impotence that in turn projects a normative and conservative conception of the world on others under through the display of empathy and progressive politics. Definitely not trying to be agressive with this comment, as much as work out this idea, which I consider regularly in my own circumstances. I also firmly believe in a place for sentimentality in philosophy.

Justin Booz

I like this. Obviously I empathize and can relate to the sense of critical/cynical observations, and just a general malaise of paranoia. The one thing I think is kind of interesting about this vlog is the negation of the "soy," which I'm reading as a negation of sentimentality. Is that good? Should rationality completely supplant sentimentality? Is there a home for sentimentality within philosophy?

realm lich

I support you taking time away to read. I know a lot of YouTuber's content starts to drift as they get more popular and have more and more people watching and commenting and sharing ideas. Deleuze might be onto something when he says you have to "have no friends" to develop your own content. If not, at least you have to have the time away from all the distractions (including this comment lolz) to formulate and integrate concepts in your head in a coherent sense. Plus from a sensory processing perspective, the more popular a YouTuber you are, the more there is a constant bombardment of stimuli from adoring fans, and that's probably not conducive to keeping a level head.

Andrew Grossman

I also have a paranoiac depressive personality. Maybe that's why I resonated with your content? The paranoia led me to the philosophy, that's for sure. It took observing other people's behavior and not trusting authenticity to trigger the questions which lead to further involvement with philosophy. I'm interested in a future where psychology and philosophy aren't so distinct from each other. I think your channel's content approaches this future especially through Lacan, Deleuze, Derrida, etc. But that's my biased paranoiac take!

Andrew Grossman