Explore every episode of the podcast Thinking With... A Rhetorical Theory Podcast

Episode 12 – Plant Sex Everywhere!

Gay Science Book 5 continued

0:30 – 1:50 – How to Lose Listeners

1:55 – 19:45 Nathaniel went on strike: normally likes complexity but sees the allure of dogmatic anger, though that is exhausting. Hard to find joy again; Booboo’s physical unhealth; reading N as therapy for both; section 348/9; 370 – every philosophy as suffering through either excess or poverty of life; Needing rest and calm; The poison of ressentiment. Disgust with capitalism infects everything; anger and judgment isolates and individuates; the metaphorics of dancing

19:50-30:15

Scholar vs. experimentalist; the form of the essay vs “vignettes”; the professional risk; stylistic experimentation; postmodern vs. “posthuman”

30:20-47:00

“overcoming the human” as the goal; Foucault’s “human” is a recent invention; thinking v “the concept”; 351 thinking not detached and bloodless; 372 idealists as cold and bloodless, but can be from overfullness of senses (in Plato); will to power drives all philosophy regardless; what kind of life asks “what kind of life?”; philosophy ignores its inability to transcend. Always an expression of a way of life; needs a mask (of religion, for example); masking of contingency is irreducible – concepts abstract and so do sensations;

47:10-55:00

The will to truth becomes suspicious; 346 turning “unbelief” into a faith (“we” are not simply atheists), “abolish your veneration”; camel, lion, child in Zarathustra – we recognize the constructedness of things and yet entirely necessary for creation; do you have to allow yourself to be duped? Abolish your reverence, including to irreverence

55:10- 1:04:50

Speed of thinking vs. affect (body); the body is too slow; biology is still angry; the only way to act from overabundance is if you’re not aware its an overabundance; reconfigure the coordinates of consciousness – not privilege it, but don’t despise it either; consciousness is expression; “I” as a burp; co compensation or not? If you start from survival, you miss everything – crazy overabundance of nature; plant sex! Allergies!

00:30 – 1:55 Gay Science Book 5 (which we hardly mention)

2:05 - 30:00   the recurring end-of-semester dilemma; applying a policy vs. making a decision; “fairness” as a way to avoid making a decision?; the desire for a calculus; Nate tries to make John feel better; absolving oneself of the responsibility of a decision; the architecture of the teaching situation is messy; accommodations and their discontents

30:30 – 45:20   diff between private and public college demographics and the way it impacts a teacher’s jobs – their real lives are heavy; vs. University’s endowment; sports as the college opiate; smaller teacher/student ratios; we need the policies to offload responsibility (for the sake of health); the calculus is also a leap of faith; probability; why do we do this job? Is it just who we are?; arguing for the nobility of our teaching and writing: to create a different world; attentiveness to alterity might be the same as anxiety?

45:30 – 55:10    Finally turn to Nietzsche? section 327; to prove the prejudice of sincerity wrong – don’t have to be “serious” to be a thinker; why do we connect learning to seriousness? It is not a necessary link; the importance (sic?) of laughter to N’s thinking: “at any master who lacks the grace to laugh at himself, I laugh”; not every teacher is a teacher for us;  the mission as emergent;

55:25 -  1:14:30 section 335-there are many styles to listen to one’s conscience; 334-love itself must be learned, generosity and patience toward what is strange - and you must be willing to change;  not just acceptance; graduate teaching is so much more interesting because it happens over years rather than weeks; responsibility is not a weight but the fun part; the delight of misunderstanding; 339 – life is dissimulation and uncertainty, and if you are patient and generous, it can be wonderful; affirmative Nietzsche vs. nihilist and gloomy; the importance of writing to a posthumous audience

Gay Science – Book 4 continued

00:30-3:30

Quitting tobacco and scotch (or not);

3:38-13:45

Like the stoics; 308 – advice vs. diagnostics (both are actions); 301 and 306 – no blanket advice, it always depends on the style of life involved

14:00-28:45

Amor fati – enduring vs. affirming fate; not acceptance (of being) – the diagnostic move is the advice; just different types of life; 307 – not reason first and then will, we needed our errors; active forces shedding skin – in favor of criticism; negation as shedding; pre-conscious negation in Hegel?; viewing someone negatively as a symptom of a disposition (not what leads you to a disposition); not getting better (not climbing ladder), but different; Our reasons are symptoms not the basis for decisions; Booboo’s prior frustration with Barad and its change; messier than just skin shedding or contradiction; a person is always multiple

29:00-36:30

281, knowing how to end, geologyincluded; not a metaphor?; living in Genoa as a pedagogy; monkeys anticipating storms; Ns fascination with all different modes of life

36:45 – 42:40

312-314 nudging trajectories;footnote to 311, the sweet rapport of stranger; not conflict avoidance or politeness

42:45 – 58:30

341 – eternal return – cosmological principle? existentialtest? Return of the same or difference – ontological “test”?;  related to affirmation? In N, nothing is identical to itself, so… ; what I am willing is the return of difference (or the relation); isn’t time at stake too?; “the autopoiesis of natural laws” – panic attack thought; Dead End’s favorite thought – is thinking the return of the same (as singularity)? Return as the being of becoming. Re-turning, turning again.

Episode 9 – The tone of affirmative thinking

Gay Science Book 4

00:30-12:40

Nietzsche’s affirmative direction; 276; 307; reason is a symptom of a way of life; 278 – how great that we aren’t always honest, esp about death; 289

12:50-

a delight in the prospect of becoming; joy of philosophizing as the production of new ways of living; 324 life as an experiment; not redemption – to see what is necessary as beautiful; not arguing against, but situating your ‘opponent’ within your narrative; concepts have different senses; cultivating the capacity to sense; thinking as therapeutics; life is not endurance for N – some fresh air into philosophy; Ns health

27:30-46:00

295 - Brief habits; Endurance is heavy; amor fati; BooBoo misses disc golf; do different stuff; put onself in situations that can induce dispositional shifts; Deleuze’s refrain; repetition and speeds and slowness; breaking stability vs figuring out how things are ever stable; become suspicious of unity of anything; academic freedom is unprecedented (this was 2024 btw); capitalism and subjectivity; nietzsche vs. marx;

46:00-1:01:01

Existence of embattled humanities has always been the case; whats a worthy enemy?; to criticize is to honor (for some); straw-manning; learning to not have a position on something; teaching as the way to learn – liking what you teach; generosity is more interesting; harold bloom; teaching the cognitivists; Habermas; a method for teaching generous responses to texts; different styles of life

1:01:10-1:17:00

282 the stride of thinking; teaching as installing a speed of thinking and writing; modulating speed; conversations are too fast; writing thinking; slogans; teaching as entertainment; booboo’s pedagogy; teaching strategies; being open but decisive

Episode 8 - The Smell of Thinking

End of Book3

00:30 - 4:00  section 213 cause and effects - cause is added later as an intervention;  

4:00 - 18:15

Reading the short maxims vs. reading aphorisms; teaching. Section 192 on good natured people, Section 193 on Kant, section 195 - distilled. Like kafka short stories; section 152 on different colors; diagnosing styles of life; changing questions - ontology is still a style question; reality-making intervention; ethics v ontology: N solves the Heidegger/Levinas conundrum

18:20 -34:50

Learning to hear religion differently (not as dishonest); transcendence sounds like life-hating; interpretation of the world as bad is what makes the world bad; John believes that nothing is necessarily anything; BooBoo’s resentment is to blame for this podcast; the smell of thinking; education as movement without a telos (not growth but transformation); intelligence is really about the capacity to learn/change, not about knowing; is this just a new learning outcome? Critical thinking; 

34:55 - 53:05

Nietzsche’s perspectivalism; 159-160; a non-human sense of agency/context; 177 laughter as a means of education and 200; this is a book on pedagogy; learning environments are all seriousness: “fuck those fuckers”; BooBoo’s joy; camel, lion, and child from Zarathustra; 324 en media vita; thinking is itself an activity, an experiment; Nietzsche as the teacher of laughter

53:10-end

Asymptotic relations - without any failure/truth; specificity is not on the way to truth but creating more points of contact; “truth” can serve to increase exposure; cutting vs. clarity; “suffering” fools; Cogito, the outside as an intrusion - discovering something other than endurance; sovereignty as promising to make the future; promise as object of affirmation (rather than obligation); compliments as dismissal?; teaching evals;

Book 3 (again)

0- 3:15 Bad intros

3:20 - 16:00

Nietzsche’s materialist comedy; section 124 - the infinite;  panic attacks - cognitive models vs. affective experiential; subjectivity; thinking as terror/comfort; what meaningless means; 

16:00 - 39:20

section 143: advantages of polytheism; vs. monotheism; agonism vs. true/false; section 149 Plato and Pythagoras as failed founders of religions; the conditioning of “the people”; biodiversity; “it wasn’t me. god did it through me”; the alleged fragmentation of contemporary society; multiple monotheisms? polytheism and monarchy/monarchies; John is skittish about all transcendence;  different orientations to difference (pluralism v dogmatism); 

39:30 - 58:20

Rome vs. Judea; imperialism and religion; is science monotheistic?; absolutist responses to COVID; the CDC couldn’t be provisional; polytheism as just a moment without a dominant monotheism; experimental science seems to potentially lead toward overman also - despite piety and fealty

§108-125

0- 3:00 Podcasting and Romance; new intros; 

3:00- 22:40

Book 3 Gay Science §108— The Death of God; theology of atheism; §109 anthropomorphism and will to power; the need for error life v knowledge ; §110

22:42 - 41:55

John’s “famous” saber tooth tiger anecdote; the recurring problem of identification; thinking was/is risky; perceiving complexity dangerous for life; the advantage of unjust and coarse perception (errors); at some historical, slow cautious thoughtful judgment ALSO became advantageous for life, Socrates as inverted instinct; disputation is not conversation

41:55 - 57:00

Nietzsche’s interpretive historicism; section 113 - doctrine of poisons; when will artistic energies join with science; is it like Hegelian history? Multiplicity and negation; Booboo agrees to write the Hegel v Nietzsche book

0:00–14:25

The sections on “woman” are not distinct from the rest of the book; §68 “Will and Willingness” §64 “Skeptics” superficiality of existence ; the feminine operation and the body marked by the feminine operation.

14:30–36:20

John’s writing project ; maybe these aphorisms are more interesting now? §74 “The Unsuccessful” and §75 “The Third Sex” ; Kaufman can’t handle it anymore ;  §80 “Art and Nature” the fantasy of good speech and the self-controlled cogito ; are we talking about Platonic ideals when we talk about woman as a “ship at a distance”? ; the prospect of metaphysics ; coordinating these aphorisms “on woman” with the rest of the book ; §59 “We Artists,” woman, god, and property.

36:20–60:00

The multiplicity of misogyny ; Nietzsche is a strange pathway by which to engage feminism;  Beyond surfaces and depths (or between them); why gender is impossible to think and why that’s important; politics vs. metaphysics; deconstructive feminism; the political conditions for thinking; the #FigureItOut movement; exceptions and institutions; honoring Sinèad. 

0:00–22:30

What does The Gay Science have to do with rhetoric? ; §57 “To the Realists”, §58 “Only as Creators”, §59 “We Artists” ; our drunken passion for reality and reason ; our ridiculous desire to transcend reality ; creation, destruction, and the insanity of maintenance ; is there a political valiance to this dynamic? §76 “The Greatest Danger” ; the dangers of the exception and the rule ; what happens when “the exception” wears tin foil hats and joins the tea party? ; Is this dichotomy too clumsy?  

22:30–31:50

Complicating Nietzsche’s argument about “truth and lying in a nonmoral sense” ; the active power of rhetoric to “make equal,” which is always a verb and never a noun ; constructivism is an “ism,” not a thing – always the activity of formation ; John wonders why Nathaniel’s brain is in the 12th century ; repetition of difference ; the fascism of territorialization ; dragons are real now ; the repetition of a name builds alliances

31:50–36:35

Rhetoric doesn’t communicate, it builds alliances, associations, the socius communus ; the social and the production of desire ; the production of the social is the production of desire is the production of persuasion ; rhetorical intervention is not parasitic on the social, psychological, or the real – it is the production of their production ; Nathaniel’s been reading Deleuze again. 

36:35–40:45

Nate asks the question: is this shit also destructive? ; communities of exclusion, Joe Rogan and the Pope

40:45–End

Why does Nietzsche think our stupidity has been valuable for the species? ; Nietzsche is a symptomtologist: take the perspective of life ; evolution without telos, without reaction ;  evolution of the exception, not the herd.

0:00–18:30

Intro; Approach for a second read; Nate gratuitously makes it about Hegel; §26 “What is Life?” ; the positivity of becoming; §23 “The Signs of Corruption” and §24 “Different Forms of Dissatisfaction” ; §39 “Changed Taste.” The active power of taste & decay; the non-linearity of futurity; taste vs opinion; §11 “Consciousness” the body doesn’t trust consciousness – it’s still in beta testing ; Napoleon & Decay; the individual

18:40–31:15

The value of consciousness; not your baseliner’s materialism; structure of the aphorisms; intellectual irritability; do I contradict myself? : invention and resolution; contradictions are bodies

31:20–41:20

What is a body? Is the intellect in the business of forming bodies? ; the taste of concepts; what does the “equal sign” of the concept do? ; § 37 “Owing to Three Errors” ; What can take up and animate the production of scientific knowledge?

41:25–51:10

Back to the structure of the aphorisms; modalities of life’s violence; a very different sense of the individual; punk-rock-Nietzsche: it’s only one tune; perpetual variation

51:15–58:10

Is reduction avoidable? ; reduction as a style of inflection; how do you teach this stuff? ; teaching vs. writing: the production of theory-bodies; shout out to Marco’s Provocations series

58:15–End 

Teaching theory; John’s old age let’s us all learn; John’s dating profile; parting provocations

0:00-8:50 – Intro; §2 “Intellectual Conscience” ; My questioning, my certainty, my injustice.

8:50-28:30 – The instinct to evaluate; The art of questioning; The mystical allure of authorial intention; the inadequacy of quantification, the absurdity of grading, and other equivalences

28:40-39:45 – Back to the intellectual conscience; reading for understanding? lol; teaching bad (?) movies; §3 “Noble and Common” ; Tyranny of the instrumental; Wait, was it a bad movie?

39:50-46:30 – Diagnostic of dispositions; §14 “The Things People Call Love” ; Common desire for possession; Noble desire for transformation; Nathaniel makes it about Phaedrus again; the eternal injustice of the noble

46:30–55:15 – Varieties of elitism: Joe Rogan  

55:25–1:10:50 – No evil can harm the species; test case: Jordan Peterson; teachers of purpose and corrective laughter; the perspective of life; the future of laughter: the gay science

0:00–5:20 – Pedagogical query: “Why can’t white dudes follow simple instructions?” 

5:20–18:50 – Intro to the new season; Structure of the book, tone, question of completeness, title: gay, joy, queer? 

19:00–34:55 – Philosophy’s blind pursuit of truth, value of the veil with nothing behind it, philosophy and health, the careful art of not knowing – Serena Williams example: the context is not separable from the content – Nate’s angry dissertation 

35:00–36:40 – Distance and Superficiality “The Greeks were superficial out of profundity.” 

37:50–47:40 – Different kinds of superficiality; Fighting to win? Sisyphus’s new rock.

47:45–1:01:25 – Pedagogy, distance, middle ground. Is this philosophy or art? Bad question. Is teaching a matter of speed and proximity? 

1:01:30–1:11:10 – Method for engaging The Gay Science this season. Reading, content, text. Who knows where it will take you? You can’t know – except maybe Hegel, somehow.

In this ep, we discuss Derrida's "White Mythology." 

Some themes and talking points: 

- metaphor as an organizing principle of philosophy

- how to ground or "unground" a philosophical system

- catachresis vs metaphor

- Hegel vs Derrida 

- Heidegger's nostalgia 

In this special episode, Dr. Brooke Rollins, an Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University, joins the Thinking With crew to discuss Derrida's "Nietzsche and the Machine" interview, as well as Brooke's research in risk, gambling, analytics (in sports and in life), and rhetorical theory. 

In this ep, we talk through Derrida's essay, "From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism Without Reserve." Much of this episode is dedicated to teasing the orientational differences between Hegel and Derrida, as well as the difficulties and affordances, generally, of the post-Hegelian project. 

In this episode, we discuss Derrida's essay, "Structure, Sign, and Play." 

Topics covered include: 

- the relationship between ethnocentrism and metaphysics

- our culpability in metaphysical structures of engagement

- Derrida’s version of rigor in critical theory

- Derrida’s treatment of Levi Strauss

- the limits of deconstruction

- the bricoleur vs engineer

- the relation between contingency and universality

In this episode, we talk through Derrida's "Signature Event Context," which is primarily a reading and extension of J.L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words. Our conversation covers, among other things, Derrida's notion of iterability, Austin's concepts of performativity and illocutionary force, the Searle vs. Derrida exchange, and the desire for truth and certainty in philosophy. 

First ep of 2023! We took a lil break for the holidays. In this ep, we're talking about Derrida's "Plato's Pharmacy" again, among other things. Good episode -- no effort in the episode description.

In this episode, Nathaniel, John, and Nate talk through the first half of Derrida's "Plato's Pharmacy." 

In this episode, we talk through the first 25 pages of Derrida's Of Grammatology: 

- the primacy of writing 

- embeddedness of metaphysics 

- who needs Saussure anymore? 

- signifiers, signifieds, and signifier/signifieds 

- writing instruction as constitutively theological

We cover a lot of ground in this episode, but not a lot of this ground is tied directly to Derrida. In the beginning of the episode, we talk about the dynamics of appropriation, math, physics, the terminology of becoming, and Heraclitus. Towards the middle and end, we discuss the brevity of history, how Hollywood must save us, and the genius of the Matrix. 

Thinking With... is back! This season, we cover a variety of Derrida's texts, including "Différance," Of Grammatology, "Plato's Pharmacy," "Signature Event Context," "From General to Restricted Economy," "Nietzsche and the Machine," and "White Mythology." 

In this episode, we do a short intro where we discuss the details of this season as well as the new intro music. 

In the episode, proper, we discuss Derrida's "Différance," the various components of Derrida's central (non)concept, the differences between Heidegger and Derrida, the dynamics of contemporary theory, among other things.  

Sampled conversations from previously recorded episodes on Heidegger that did not make the cut (but are still potentially worth your time). 

0:00-16:00 as thinkers of movement, why don’t Hegel and Heidegger use the term, “becoming”? Heidegger’s celebrating of ancient Greek thought the duality of “Being” and “being” the performative undercurrent of representational thinking 16:00-29:00 H’s fetishizing and essentializing of Greek thinking essence for Heidegger vs. essence for Nietzsche trying to think the problematic of representationalism H’s seeming obsession with origins vs. Nietzsche’s disinterest in origins 29:00-41:00 what counts as philosophy for Heidegger the ambiguity and fundamentality of the “Being” vs. “being” dualism how the opposition functions in Heidegger 41:00-end H’s emphasis on the verb (as a constitutive linguistic-ontological element) H’s weird example of “blossoming” the simultaneity of difference and identity

0:00-13:00 thinking as perceiving dwelling in the problematic slogans in philosophy H’s notion that philosophical questions cannot (structurally) have answers 13:00-19:00 thinking the movement of thinking rendering the unthought thinkable Heidegger’s ambitions as a philosopher 19:00-31:00 essence as ambiguity Heidegger’s fetishizing of ambiguity the problem of common speech and language 31:00-40:00 calcification as a way of enabling difference and complexity how posing a definitive answer to a philosophical question is not inherently reductive or restricting why representational thinking is “too advanced” for Heidegger 40:00-end the anti- or post-Hegelian project why is Nate bringing up Hegel again? Karen Barad’s orientation negotiating intellectual subject positions the violence of subjectivity

0:00-13:00 teaching deconstructive moves in the classroom meta-reflection Nathaniel’s exploratory essay assignment 13:00-27:00 AF / AM critical discourse Teaching Ta Nehisi Coates an argument in favor of difficult writing 27:00-46:00 Heidegger’s mysticism / nostalgia the ambiguity of H’s notion of authenticity 46:00-end H’s etymological linking of “thinking” and “thanking” human being’s indebtedness to the other

0:00-16:00 Heidegger’s central question diagnosing representational thinking propriety / purity in Heidegger the fascism built into the text 16:00-38:00 Heidegger’s disdain for commonness and traditional thinking differences between Heidegger and Hegel social constructionism difficulties with language and representation 38:00-end the functions/effects of education fear of death provisional thinking

The Heidegger Files: What is Called Thinking? By Martin Heidegger Lecture X With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, & Nathaniel Street Time Complicates Being, Eternal Return of the Same, Deliverance from Revenge, Let Will be Will (Start-11:55) Why does the “same” return?; what’s up with the “eternal”?; this is why no one writes about time anymore; linear time, blurred (12:00-21:50) Dasein and the pros and cons of representational thinking; time, history, eternity; perspectivalism, epistemological or ontological?; (22:00-29:30) Cosmological Eternal Return; What’s up with eternity?; Eternity of being/will/presence; how does the will will itself? (30:00-40:20) Nathaniel resurfaces; Eternal will, willing itself; it’s okay Nathaniel, we already figured it out; (40:30-47:50) Misreadings of the Eternal Return; how to not engage/think; contingency of essence and destiny (48:00-end)

0:00-13:00 teaching on zoom unpacking theory for students lectures 9 and 10 what makes Heidegger and this text so compelling how Heidegger rehabilitates Nietzsche 13:00-24:00 the “treasure of metaphysics” for Heidegger how Heidegger and Derrida relate to metaphysics the relative inescapability of metaphysical thinking 24:00-43:00 the eternal return overcoming the will’s desire for revenge representational thinking as a way of enacting revenge on difference Hegel’s Aufhebung vs. Nietzsche’s transformation via overman 43:00- more on sublation in Hegel transition of last man to overman what is involved in the negation of negation of Absolute Spirit

0:00-4:00 Nate trying to learn the game, “Go” John’s golf game 4:00-20:00 instinct or “feel” vs analysis / cognition Heidegger’s commitment to authenticity (and to pluralism / becoming) Heidegger’s strange etymological interpretation of “blinking” 20:00-33:00 the importance of Nietzsche for Heidegger’s thinking (and post-structuralist thinking) Heidegger’s attempt to surpass Nietzsche Heidegger’s slowness 33:00-end the “superman” or “overman” the characteristics of the overman and the last man

0:00-4:00

• The therapeutics of reading philosophy

4:00-9:00

• Heidegger’s pace and style
• preliminary reflections on H’s notion of authenticity
• essences of being and thinking

9:00-23:00

• critique of representational or technological language
• abbreviations, acronyms, etc.
• styles and tones of thinking (Heidegger and Nietzsche)

23:00-39:00

• overman
• being “in the zone”
• how might one channel the overman?
• some necessary basketball talk in here

39:00-49:00

• what disposition is Heidegger attempting to cultivate?
• ways of inhabiting language, texts, life
• Heidegger’s anthropocentrism

49:00-end

• Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity
• the ontological conditions (and ethical implications) of Heideggerrian thought
• being grounded in groundlessness

The Heidegger Files Focus: What is Called Thinking? By Martin Heidegger Lectures I, II, III With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, & Nathaniel Street Opening Gambit: Thinking is not simply a mental event but always emerges in-relation; the irksome problem of essences; antagonistic progressivism (Start–11:00) Heidegger’s Pedagogy, teaching, learning, thinking; example of the wordworker, authenticity and pluralism; involvement vs confrontation; Externality and Simulacrum vs Internality and Authenticity; Tuna Production (11:10–27:15) Pluralizing disclosures; the luxury of authenticity (27:20–32:30) The intimacy of reading and thinking – questions: answers and responses; Socrates’ orientation to questions and responses, the dialectic; what is called thinking – "was heißt" vs "was ist"); “one track thinking” – it’s not laziness, it’s the essence of technology; Heidegger+ now with 10% more Performativity (affirmative reading required) (27:25–53:05) Posthumanism + Nostalgia = ??; Confrontation and Affirmation; Rerouting ruts; Challenging the forms that slumber within (53:10-1:03:35) Woodworking and Nathaniel’s secret Heideggerianism (seriously, he’s hand-making hammers now); Authenticity vs Difference; Nate’s construction-worker mask; the role of telos in involvement; John’s macro-agoraphobia (1:03:40–1:13:10) Thinking as the becoming-molecular of the molar (or the deconstruction of the model); the therapeutic value of the molar (thinking as the becoming-molar of the molecular?); Vertigo; thinking is only thinking in relation – should philosophy incorporate the biography of thinking?; Illustration vs Reflection (serial connection vs general/particular) (1:13:15-end)

In the season finale of Deleuzecast, we talk through the appendix of Deleuze’s Logic of Sense: "The Simulacrum and Ancient Philosophy." 0:00-14:00 difference and identity atomism clinamen 14:00-23:00 color and perception color as object or as relation species differences limits of perspectivism 23:00-30:00 eternal return of the same Deleuzian repetition 30:00-45:00 evolution error and mutation / the Deleuzian complication to this logic of error and development sexual reproduction / diversity the conjunctive “nature” of nature the orchid and the wasp differential pedagogy 45:00-1:00:00 reversal of platonism absolute difference and absolute sameness back to the eternal return the molar and molecular theology as a tendency or form of thinking 1:00:00-end the issue of “fragmented” ontologies and certain theories of difference advocating difference over identity, or fragmentation over unity, or the molecular over the molar the posthuman subject the nietzschean version of posthumanism the overman how the prescriptive, or policy-writing, dulls theory the need to have deliverables in scholarship / theory application

Focus The Logic of Sense “Twenty-Sixth  Series of Language,” “Thirty-Third Series of Alice’s Adventures” and “Thirty-Fourth Series of Primary Order and Secondary Organization” With: “Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, & Nathaniel Street Nathaniel’s excellent sense of “the cool” (Start-1:35) Reflection on Logic of Sense as a whole; Re-Intuiting Representation; John’s Resistances to Psychoanalysis; Deleuze’s Engagement with Psychoanalysis; (1:40-17:00) Hegel and Concrete Universality; Structuralism and Psychoanalysis; Psychic-Policing; Lacan’s Domineering Tone; Super-Zizek saves Hegel and Lacan; Voluptuous Vitriol for Derrida; Derrida doesn’t save Nietzsche; Allen Iverson is the Answer (17:10-30:15) Humor, Satire, Irony; Irony and Community; Satire and Stephen Colbert (30:25-39:50) Life is Like a Sit-Com; Topological Free Radicals; Community again; Hey we should watch Bo Burnham (40:00-48:20) Re-Intuiting Representation; Being/Becoming; Representation≠Capture; Representations are Productions; Potential and Constraint; (48:25-End)

Focus The Logic of Sense “Twenty-Fourth Series of the Communication of Events” With: Caddie Alford, Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, & Nathaniel Street John Discovers Conditioner (Start–2:20) Deleuze Contra Hegel; Productivity of Distance  (2:25–18:10) Idioms and Defense Mechanisms; Social Media, Narcissism, and Community Production (18:15–23:40) In/Compossibility, Leibniz, and Disjunction/Conjunction (23:45–35:20) Infinitives; Expressions – “To Butterfly”; the Place and Function of Logic (35:30–45:25) Do we “do” affirmation?; First Philosophy: Ontology or Ethics? (43:35–51:16) Hegel and the Unity of Opposites; The Eternal Return… of the same or difference?; Logic at the Level of the Event; The Town within the Town; Im/Material Expressionism (51:28–!:07:55) Limits of Human Consciousness; Overcoming the Human; The (Meta)Consciousness-Zone; Make More Towns (1:08:05–End)

Focus: Logic of Sense “22nd Series – Porcelain and Volcano” and “23rd Series of the Aion” With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street Hard Times with Time (Start – 5:45) Derrida and the Deconstructed Present; Vulgar Time (6:00-11:48) Kant, Time/Space, Faculties; Heidegger and the relationship of change to bodies (12:00-25:40) Deleuze’s book on Kant; Sublime: Limits of Representation, “'God', for example” (25:50-33:30) (Failed) Representation: What’s the point of language?; Freedom, choice, and self-transformation; Events and Spacing (33:40-43:05) "Crossing the Rubicon," for example; Language – Container or Modulator?; (43:15-51:40) Emergence of Language; Wait, is language a thing? Do we have it? Do we speak it?; Molar, Molecular, the Trope (51:50-1:07:08) Burping and Talking; The Logic of Sense and the Sense of Logic; (1:07:15-end)

Focus: Logic of Sense "Twentieth Series on the Moral Problem in Stoic Philosophy" and "Twenty-First Series of the Event" With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street hair / beard care pedagogical approaches to intro classes / infusing theory in the classroom interpretive lenses Deleuze’s ethics “not to be unworthy of what happens to us” “getting in the zone” affirmation of becoming

Focus: The Logic of Sense – "Seventeenth Series of the Static Logical Genesis," Eighteenth Series of the Three Images of Philosophers," and "Nineteenth Series of Humor" With: Caddie Alford, Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street Teaching the Enthymeme (Start-4:30) Taste, Enthymemes, and Disrupting Subjectivity (4:30-5:30) Enthymeme and the Syllogism (5:30-7:50) Socratic Irony, Mania, Pedagogy of the Dialogue  (8:00-15:45) Romantic Irony; Humor; Individual and Personal; (15:50-37:35) Masters of Ironic Comedy; Vagabond Humorists; Feminism and Bodies (37:40 - 45:00) Heights, Depths, and Surfaces; Ticks (45:05-49:50) Fogged Up Window Panes; Two Ways of Unravelling String; Ticks, again (50:00-57:10) More Ticks; Diogenes; Lines, Planes, and thickness; a Platonism of Surfaces?; Groundlessness of the Surface (57:15-1:09:25) Problems, True and False (1:09:30-1:22:00)

Focus: Not Deleuze With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street Superfans; Calcifying/Undoing Mimetic Rhythms; Nietzche’s Mustache Oil; Impossibility of Non-Individuation (Start-16:45) Podcast Pedagogy; Instructional Tidiness; Heuristics of Learning; Narcissism and the Undoing of the Ego, Borges and Epochs of Reading One’s Own Writing (17:00-33:00) Course Design, Lecture/Seminar; Pacing Course Reading; Degrees of Structure; Teaching Derrida, Performativity, Phaedrus and other Theory Stuff; Jeffrey Nealon gets Plugged (33:00-44:30) No Deleuze (44:30-End)

Focus: Logic of Sense "Sixteenth Series of the Static Ontological Genesis"  With: Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street - on being lost when reading Deleuze - an attempt at an intro to Leibniz - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - immanence / transcendence  - 3 images of philosophy: heights / depths / surfaces - Nathaniel's version of Plato's Phaedrus - analogies of philosophies to music  - calcification of styles (and why bones aren't your enemy)  - diagnosis itself is not transcendent (nor is critique)

For this special episode, Nate, Nathaniel, and John are joined by Caroline Wigmore, and the group riffs in response to Bo Burnham's recent Netflix comedy special Inside. We discuss different styles of contemporary comedy, the role of self-awareness in critique, the dynamics of cancel culture, branding, and many more concepts that Burnham's provocative special engages. 

Focus: Logic of Sense "Fourteenth Series of Double Causality" and "Fifteenth Series of Singularities" With: Caddie Alford, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street

Focus: The Logic of Sense "Twelfth Series of the Paradox" and "Thirteenth Series of the Schizophrenic and the Little Girl" With: Caddie Alford, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street 0:00-16:00 the metaphorics of the schizophrenic Alice in Wonderland Deleuze’s style of reading / diagnostics 16:00-28:00 the “meta” move the tendency to romanticize becoming (vs being) in philosophy or theory the simultaneity of identity and difference 28:00-46:00 how to live in the face of deterritorialization the terror of becoming the conceptual assumptions that are necessary for survival the necessity/impossibility of categories 46:00-end the quasi cause / double causality how doxa are engendered provisionality vs transcendence

Focus: The Logic of Sense "Tenth Series of the Ideal Game" and "Eleventh Series of Nonsense" With: Caddie Alford, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street 0:00-15:00 Deleuze’s concept of time kairos and chronos the challenge of not thinking linearly time vs relationality 15:00-32:00 Kant’s concept of time chance good or common sense attending to sense in its complexity 32:00-50:00 paradox and doxa the paradoxes of thinking thinking as irreducible to consciousness 50:00 - end sense as both structure and event thinking relationality outside of the categories of identity making relations into a new object or foundation of a philosophical system

Focus: The Logic of Sense "Seventh Series of Esoteric Words," "Eighth Series of Structure," and "Ninth Series of the Problematic" With: Caddie Alford, Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, Brooke Rollins, and Nathaniel Street What are the stakes of Deleuze’s project? (Start)      Structure/Event and Series      Langue & Parole      Logic of Serial Invention Methodology (10:15)     Literary Methods     Barthes’ “Order of the Known”     Differential Ontology     Place of “Sense” in all of this     Displacement on the Flat Plane     Reflection without eHeight What the Hell is Sense? (17:00)    Seriously, what the fuck is going on?    Alexius Meinong Flattening Out the Plane (31:30)     Ideational Material     Problems & Solutions          E.G. Pandemic Early vs Late Deleuze (43:10)     Methodology for Reading Structure of Invention (56:30)     Chance and the Random

Focus: The Logic of Sense  "Fourth Series of Duality," "Fifth Series of Sense," and "Sixth Series on Serialization" With: Caddie Alford, Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street 0:00-15:00 - the word "sense" - Deleuze on Carroll (vs. Derrida on Austin) - selective reading  15:00-25:00 - denotation (against formal logic) - subjectivity and non-subjective desire 25:00-44:00 - summarizing vs. intervening - subjective unity/failure to totalize (refrain) - causality vs association 44:00-55:00 - parataxis vs. hypotaxis - what teaching is - imposter syndrome and expertise 55:00-end - Isocrates - corporate "thinking outside the box"

Focus: Logic of Sense "First Series of Paradoxes of Pure Becoming" and "Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Events" With: Caddie Alford, Nate DeProspo, John Muckelbauer, and Nathaniel Street 0:00-8:00 - why we each want to read Deleuze  8:00-13:00 - Deleuze vs Hegel's writing style 13:00-16:00 - Deleuze's Body  16:00-24:00 - our reading speeds - Caddie's current book project - start book with bi-directionality of sense 24:00-34:00 - The task of rethinking Plato for our field  - Nathaniel's current essay on Plato's Phaedrus 40:00-60:00 - Who is "Plato?"  - What is the "field" of rhetoric?  -demagoguery  - self-awareness / against self-awareness  60:00-end  - Why the stoics are important to Deleuze - Hegel (success/error); totality 

In this brief episode, Nathaniel and Nate preview the forthcoming second season of the podcast, in which we dive into Gilles Deleuze's The Logic of Sense. We also discuss the neuroses of the writing process and finish with some NBA talk. When season 2 releases in a week, Nathaniel, Nate, and John will be joined by Dr. Caddie Alford, an assistant professor at VCU. 

EP 12 - The Essence of Genius 

0-6 philosophy as "bad writing" 7-13 the case of Judith Butler 14-19 thinking and emotions (scapegoating) 19-24 developmental writing/from simplicty to complexity 24-36 the impact of grammar on thinking 37-42 beyond representing/universals 43-49 animals 50-54 writing that is "messy" v "clean" 54-70 violence 71-72 and contingency 72-76 Theory as therapy in this political climate