Because I am currently considering some aesthetic changes for this blog - changes that probably will occur just before the migration to YouTube - I am thinking that a more "cosmic-looking" layout for After Nature would be most appropriate to match some of the more "sparse" or "bleak" abstract problems I'll be working on.
We'll see, as the current After Nature design is now two years old, which is the maximum I tend to leave a layout go for without being updated. So, we're due for an update - the final one I am sad to say; but, onward to other places deeper in the cosmos.
This update and eventual migration to the After Nature YouTube channel will really will fit with the research into speculative and systematic philosophy that I'll be doing for the next two years - whether re-reading Hegel's Science of Logic, two of Kant's critiques, Fichte, Schelling, and so on. All bright life will be drained into the singularity of the Hegelian black hole of negativity, pace Alex Galloway's recent post (see HERE) opining the general consensus that a break-up with Deleuze ought to take place. So I am moving from Deleuze over to the ranks of Kant, Hegel, German idealism, et al.
I commend Galloway though, as his arguments are far and away from the dumb "Deleuze is old wine in a new bottle" complaints that have been made by others critical of Deleuze (mostly by the "object ontologists," so called). The "old wine new bottle" complaint is, by the way, only matched in its stupidity by the claim (also made by object ontologists incidentally) who cry "We ought a priori not read Whitehead because Whitehead is a theist!" But to this I respond: look at how that has turned out! Whitehead scholarship is on the rise moreso than ever before. People read Whitehead, whether Whitehead was a theist or not, whether his metaphysics entails God or not.
Moreover, the anti-Deleuzian object ontologists of whom we speak also somehow believe in the rather disturbing angle of "philosophy as bloodsport." They claim that the Deleuzeans, rather than themselves, are somehow the ones carrying "billieclubs" and looking for a fight - this to match the fact that they believe philosophy is justifiably a "bare-knuckle" sport. That is sick in my opinion. I'm sorry. Absolutely sick. Perhaps violence is intrinsic to their ethic-less ontology? Who knows, or frankly, at this point, who cares. I just cannot but help be very disturbed sometimes by any philosopher (object ontologist or otherwise) who calls philosophy bloodsport or refers to "striking back" with "bare knuckles." Billieclubs, knives, shots fired, dodging bullets, etc. etc. etc. Keep in mind that these are pudgy late 40-something year olds with their threats of intellectual violence, usually (of course) male, and usually having something to prove in order to try to stay relevant. Is this what has become of what it means to say that one intellectual camp has challenged another? When we speak of, say, Deleuzians versus Heideggereans, or whathaveyou?
Back to the matter at hand: I've argued, in THIS post, that synthesis between Deleuze and Hegel is possible. Calls to such intellectual violence (or otherwise, apparently) are not necessary. Synthesis is more productive than divisiveness and derision when it comes to scholarship and behaving like a mature adult. It's just that when I hear of these divisions cast in such ways I wince. On the other hand, you do have people like Galloway out there who are producing excellent work and furthering the debate in productive ways. Like I said, in ways that are far and away from the inanity perpetrated by some of these other folks.
'll soon be off to confront Hegel yet again to see if this is truly possible, as much as I believe that it is, I should say. Research into the cosmos of Hegel, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling proceeds in 5...4...3...2...1...
