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12 - The Joy of Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Claire Colebrook
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Ian Buchanan
Affiliation:
University of Wollongong
Adrian Parr
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati
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Summary

Why philosophise? Why think? What is the function, purpose or point of philosophy in a world directed more and more towards efficiency, outcomes and economy of effort? Why suspend action and life for the sake of an idea? It is possible to answer these questions, via Deleuze, with two mutually exclusive sets of answers. The first ‘Platonic’ path would stress the incompleteness of actual life. Existing life, the life of the organism that strives to maintain its own being (to remain as it already is), perceives and responds to a given world. However, that world can only be said to be, to be actualised, because there is some condition or logic beyond being. What exists beyond beings is the Idea: a thing can only exist as this or that actual being because it instantiates or actualises some form. For Plato such forms – the logic that is the truth and proper being of the world – require a turn away from the physical and sensible life that fluctuates through time, to those forms from which time unfolds. This Platonic logic has a curious status in contemporary continental philosophy. On the one hand, there is Heidegger's classic critique of this logical turn whereby Plato establishes a being which will become the proper object or paradigm for human self-development (Heidegger 1998: 166). This critique of a separate or higher being that is other than this world is anticipated by Nietzsche, who will diagnose the belief in a ‘higher world’ or ideal of man as a failure of life and will.

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Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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