The Toronto Philosophy Meetup

Guru Dutt’s intense, melancholy drama is an icon of Hindi cinema’s golden age, when India's newfound independence sparked a robust, questioning artistry. Dutt, who counts among India’s greatest directors, also stars in the film as Vijay, a destitute Urdu poet ridiculed by his brothers and scorned by publishers for writing on social issues rather than romantic topics. Set in Calcutta, Pyaasa (which means "thirst") considers the position of the creative underclass amidst postcolonial India’s uncompromising developmental agendas. The enigmatic Waheeda Rehman plays Gulabo, a sex worker who finds solace in Vijay’s poetry and offers encouragement. The film also features some of Bollywood’s most enduring love songs, composed by S.D. Burman and Sahir Ludhianvi.

"The film's tale... is worthy of Dickens, but what really comes through is a portrait of a rapidly modernizing society obsessed with money, status, and power — and the lonely romantics who foolishly, heroically refuse to give in to it." (MUBI)

"Possibly one of the most remarkable transpositions of poetry on screen." (Sight and Sound)

"Dutt manages to take a poignant personal narrative and turn it into an outward-looking commentary about the state of unemployed youth in postcolonial, poverty-stricken India that is political, philosophical, and still very personal." (Rotten Tomatoes)

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We'll be starting from page 89 (German 6:44). As a break between Series One and Two in Kierkegaard's Works of Love, and to celebrate Kant's 300th anniversary, we will be reading Part I of Kant's Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason, which is titled, "Concerning the indwelling of the evil principle alongside the good or, Of the radical evil in human nature."

No familiarity with Kant (or Kierkegaard) is required, but one should expect comparisons between them as we read this text.

The Apology by Plato is an account of the famous trial of Socrates, who was charged in 399 BC with impiety and corrupting the youth. One of the most famous and important works of Western philosophy, the Apology is less concerned with asserting any particular philosophical doctrine than it is with creating a portrait of the ideal philosopher. On trial, with his life at stake, Socrates maintains his cool and unwaveringly defends his way of life as unassailably just. He explains why he has devoted his life to challenging the most powerful and important people in the Greek world. The reason he says is that rich and famous politicians, priests, poets, and a host of other people profess to know what is good, true, holy, and beautiful, but when Socrates questions them, they are revealed to be foolish rather than wise. Socrates' speech has served as an inspiration and justification for the philosophical life ever since.

The Apology, along with the Euthyphro, Crito, and Phaedo comprise the quartet of Plato’s works that are sometimes collectively called "The Trial and Death of Socrates". It is part of the first tetralogy of Platonic works and was composed in the late 390s or the early 380s BC.

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This is a live reading of the Apology. This Plato group meets on Saturdays and has previously read the Philebus, Gorgias, Critias, Laches, Timaeus, Euthyphro and other works, including texts for contextualisation such as Gorgias’ Praise of Helen. The reading is intended for well-informed generalists even though specialists are obviously welcome. It is our aspiration to read the Platonic corpus over a long period of time.

Today we're discussing the first part of Gilles Deleuze's essay Nietzsche (pp. 53-82) from this volume:

Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life (Zone Books, 2001)

You can find a PDF of the text by clicking on the Google folder link at the verry BOTTOM of this event description - scroll all the way down 👇 See below for some notes on the text.

Reading Schedule
Dec 14: "Immanence: A Life" (pp. 25-34)
Dec 21: Introduction by John Rajchman (pp. 7-24)
Dec 28: Holiday break
Jan 4: Hume (pp. 35-52)
Jan 11: Nietzsche I (pp. 53-82)
Jan 18: Nietzsche II (pp. 82-101)

Please take the time to read and reflect on the reading prior to the meeting. Everyone is welcome to attend, but speaking priority will be given to people who have read the text.

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GROUP RULES

• Please spend 1-2 hours per week reading and preparing for the discussion.
• Keep your comments concise and relevant to the text.
• Please limit each comment to a maximum of 2-3 minutes. You're welcome to speak as many times as you wish.
• Virtual meeting courtesy: let's not interrupt each other and keep mics muted when not speaking.
• We'll focus the discussion with key passages and discussion questions. Be sure to bring your favorite passages, questions, comments, criticisms, etc.

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A FEW NOTES ON THE TEXT
Deleuze presents Nietzsche as a thinker of life, whose work is dedicated to the diagnosis and overcoming of the problem of Western nihilism. We’ve learned from Deleuze that a life consists of singular, virtual, impersonal events that actualize themselves in the concrete biography of an individual. Nietzsche's life, marked by precocious talent, early loss, violent illness and nomadic itinerancy, is not just his own personal biography but actualizes the event of a great cultural transformation in late-modern Europe.

Nietzsche diagnoses nihilism as the triumph of reactive and slavish values over the active, creative side of existence. This malaise dates back at least to Socrates and Plato and was amplified by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Nihilism is not just a historical accident, however, but is rooted in the very core of the human will. The will always strives for power, but it can go about its striving in a dual way: it is either active or reactive, depending on whether it is rooted in affirmation or negation. Nihilism springs from negative values, those that deny and negate as their primary relation to existence. Negative values stem from an allergic reaction to the plurality, change and becoming of life, and the chance quality of living events. Growing fearful and weary of life’s dynamism, the slavish will affirms a transcendent world free of becoming, chance and multiplicity: the Platonic-Christian world of the One, a Being strictly necessary and eternally unchanging.

Life is then judged by these transcendent values. Normative judgment is the core of nihilism, and it has been the central trope of mainstream philosophy since Plato and Socrates. The outward projection of judgment against life is soon introjected as the superego that produces a bad conscience. This internalized guilt is then sublimated into the transcendental ideal in all its forms: the One, True, Good and Beautiful that define Being in the Western tradition. This ideal produces an ethic of asceticism that pronounces all real life guilty – after all, existence can only be judged to fall pitifully short of the perfection of the ideal world. Life under the weight of idealism is transformed into a beast of burden, the camel from Nietzsche's parable, bearing transcendent values on its back and negating its own vitality under their weight.

It would seem that modernity has shaken off this burden by declaring the death of God. Not so, according to Nietzsche. He argues that modern humanity has only renamed the ascetic ideal without abolishing it. Nihilistic values are reincarnated as the dead objectivity of natural science, alongside the equally dead ethic of accumulation, efficiency and maximization that drives capitalist production. The death of God has only given rise to the last man, the human being as laborer, consumer, voter, wielder of technology, social media animal — yet more beasts of burden in Nietzsche’s eyes. Arguably even in the 21st century, the long-lost active and affirmative forces immanent to the will are still subjugated under the weight of transcendent values. It is not until nihilism finally turns against itself and produces the man who wills his own destruction, that their liberation becomes possible. At this stage, the lion, the figure of the second metamorphosis, makes its appearance.

Some critical questions:

• How is liberation brought about by Nietzsche’s last man willing his own destruction? Surely suicide is not the answer, since it only means falling prey to nihilism instead of overcoming it. But then what is the meaning and value of “willing one’s own destruction”?

• Deleuze touts Nietzsche’s affirmative philosophy, yet the Hegelian structure of a double negation is unmistakable in Nietzsche’s history of nihilism: nihilism must turn against itself to attain liberation. How Hegelian is Nietzsche? What relation is there, if any, between the negative/nihilistic act and the act of affirmation?

• Deleuze points out that Nietzsche had a difficult relationship with the women in his life. Could this have influenced his thought? How could the early death of Nietzsche's father be relevant here (considering the function of the Lacanian Name-of-the-father, for example)?

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