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A review by inkdrinker
Nietzsche and Philosophy by Hugh Tomlinson, Gilles Deleuze, Michael Hardt
challenging
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
My opinion of this book is too ambivalent to give it a star rating. I both loved it and hated it (which also accurately describes my relationship with Nietzsche's philosophy more directly). I spent a lot of time thinking about it, mulling it over, reading and re-reading passages.
What I really respect in this book is that it doesn't even pretend to be an accurate portrayal of Nietzsche's philosophy (unlike, say, Kojevè's book on Hegel) - the Nietzsche presented here is a thoroughly Deleuzian Nietzsche, systematized and put in Deleuzian terms. This is why I think this book must be read more as an introduction to Deleuze than as an introduction to Nietzsche.
I found Deleuze's interpretation of the Eternal Return much more interesting than the way in which it was originally meant to be interpreted. Rather than being merely a thought experiment meant to reveal to the one who performs it how they truly feel about their own life, the Eternal Return appears to be, for Deleuze, the return of the symbolic "dice-throw," or the continual return in each moment of the freedom of the individual to "take a chance" and make new and creative decisions in response to each situation as it reveals itself to them and to affirm the consequence of each decision made, regardless of what it is. Yet, in keeping with the original spirit of the concept, the Eternal Return remains, in Deleuze, a formula of defense against ressentiment, or the impotent blaming of the dice-throw, of the chance-conditions of the past or present which shape one's life, as opposed to a creative and active, "affirmative," response to those conditions.
My biggest issue with this book is how often Deleuze protests - and he protests far too much - that Nietzsche was "anti-dialectical" despite how often he expressed Nietzsche's "revaluation of values" and "transmutation" in thoroughly dialectical terms (p. 70: "Only the eternal return can complete nihilism because it makes negation a negation of reactive forces themselves." p. 71: "In Nietzsche's terminology the reversal of values means the active in place of the reactive (strictly speaking it is the reversal of a reversal...)").
"Negation of a negation," "reversal of a reversal," - these phrases are dripping with dialectics. Kaufmann, in his book, had no problem viewing Nietzsche as a dialectician. I can't help but think that the only reason why Deleuze insists on Nietzsche's supposed "anti-dialectics" was because he was, ironically, "reacting" against Hegelianism because it was a popular thing to do at the time. While I definitely agree that Nietzsche was "anti-Hegelian" (or maybe just "non-Hegelian"), he wasn't "anti-dialectical," and Deleuze's Nietzsche at the very least articulates a very clear dialectic occurring in the movement of human history, of active forces becoming-reactive and then becoming-active, again.
I would say that Deleuze-Nietzsche's dialectic is structurally different from Hegel's and based on different presuppositions (eg. the relation of the positive to the negative is hierarchical, there is nothing presupposed as positive in negativity and there is no third-term like Hegel's Aufhebung which subsumes the previous two terms of the positive and negative, just a transformation of the negative into a mere function, or appendage, of the positive), but IT IS STILL ABSOLUTELY A DIALECTIC.
My other, lesser criticism would be that the last chapter, specifically in the section called "The Double Affirmation: Ariadne," was hopelessly repetitive and circular to the point of nausea which made it seem like Deleuze was circling around a concluding point that he wasn't able to articulate clearly enough, giving off the impression of mental constipation.
Overall, I loved the book for how challenging and thought-provoking it was and for the strong feelings many of the concepts had invoked (that was also Nietzsche's strength) and for its refreshing take on Nietzsche's thought, but it was also incredibly irritating all the same.
What I really respect in this book is that it doesn't even pretend to be an accurate portrayal of Nietzsche's philosophy (unlike, say, Kojevè's book on Hegel) - the Nietzsche presented here is a thoroughly Deleuzian Nietzsche, systematized and put in Deleuzian terms. This is why I think this book must be read more as an introduction to Deleuze than as an introduction to Nietzsche.
I found Deleuze's interpretation of the Eternal Return much more interesting than the way in which it was originally meant to be interpreted. Rather than being merely a thought experiment meant to reveal to the one who performs it how they truly feel about their own life, the Eternal Return appears to be, for Deleuze, the return of the symbolic "dice-throw," or the continual return in each moment of the freedom of the individual to "take a chance" and make new and creative decisions in response to each situation as it reveals itself to them and to affirm the consequence of each decision made, regardless of what it is. Yet, in keeping with the original spirit of the concept, the Eternal Return remains, in Deleuze, a formula of defense against ressentiment, or the impotent blaming of the dice-throw, of the chance-conditions of the past or present which shape one's life, as opposed to a creative and active, "affirmative," response to those conditions.
My biggest issue with this book is how often Deleuze protests - and he protests far too much - that Nietzsche was "anti-dialectical" despite how often he expressed Nietzsche's "revaluation of values" and "transmutation" in thoroughly dialectical terms (p. 70: "Only the eternal return can complete nihilism because it makes negation a negation of reactive forces themselves." p. 71: "In Nietzsche's terminology the reversal of values means the active in place of the reactive (strictly speaking it is the reversal of a reversal...)").
"Negation of a negation," "reversal of a reversal," - these phrases are dripping with dialectics. Kaufmann, in his book, had no problem viewing Nietzsche as a dialectician. I can't help but think that the only reason why Deleuze insists on Nietzsche's supposed "anti-dialectics" was because he was, ironically, "reacting" against Hegelianism because it was a popular thing to do at the time. While I definitely agree that Nietzsche was "anti-Hegelian" (or maybe just "non-Hegelian"), he wasn't "anti-dialectical," and Deleuze's Nietzsche at the very least articulates a very clear dialectic occurring in the movement of human history, of active forces becoming-reactive and then becoming-active, again.
I would say that Deleuze-Nietzsche's dialectic is structurally different from Hegel's and based on different presuppositions (eg. the relation of the positive to the negative is hierarchical, there is nothing presupposed as positive in negativity and there is no third-term like Hegel's Aufhebung which subsumes the previous two terms of the positive and negative, just a transformation of the negative into a mere function, or appendage, of the positive), but IT IS STILL ABSOLUTELY A DIALECTIC.
My other, lesser criticism would be that the last chapter, specifically in the section called "The Double Affirmation: Ariadne," was hopelessly repetitive and circular to the point of nausea which made it seem like Deleuze was circling around a concluding point that he wasn't able to articulate clearly enough, giving off the impression of mental constipation.
Overall, I loved the book for how challenging and thought-provoking it was and for the strong feelings many of the concepts had invoked (that was also Nietzsche's strength) and for its refreshing take on Nietzsche's thought, but it was also incredibly irritating all the same.