philosophy stuff (possibly)

https://t.me/+HFj-u6t7DR44ZDdi Please join.

Gary Genosko's timely study traces McLuhan's influence on the work of Jean Baudrillard, arguing that McLuhan's ideas have been far more influential than hitherto imagined in the development of postmodern theory. Genosko explores how McLuhan's ideas persist and are distorted through Baudrillard's work. He argues that it is through Baudrillard's influence that McLuhanism has had its greatest impact on contemporary cultural thought and practice

Addresses societal challenges associated with the Anthropocene • Explains and illustrates the function of "the atheist machine" in Deleuze’s philosophy • Brings Deleuzian philosophy into dialogue with developments in computational modeling and social simulation that complement and support his arguments for a metaphysics of immanence • Shows the relevance of empirical findings in the bio-cultural sciences of religion for Deleuze’s understanding and use of the concept of atheism In What is Philosophy? Deleuze argued that atheism is not a drama but “the philosopher’s serenity and philosophy’s achievement.” One of Shults’ main goals in this book is to illustrate the uses and effects of an “atheist machine” throughout Deleuze’s work, demonstrating its central role in his philosophical achievements in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

"When I was a child I loved a little girl of my own age who had a slight squint. The impression made by sight in my brain when I looked at her not-quite-focussed eyes became so closely connected to the simultaneous impression that aroused in me the passion of love that for a long time afterwards when I saw persons with a squint I felt a special inclination to love them simply because they had that defect; and I didn’t know that that was why. But as soon as I reflected on it and saw that it was a defect, I was no longer affected by it. So, when we’re led to love someone without knowing why, we may conjecture that it’s because he has some similarity to someone we loved earlier, even if we can’t say what the similarity is. What attracts our love in this way is more often a perfection than a defect, but it can be a defect—as in the case of my youthful self—so a wise man won’t altogether yield to such a passion without first considering the worth of the person to whom he feels drawn. But because we can’t love equally all those whom we observe to be equally worthy, I think that our only obligation is to esteem them equally; and since the chief good of life is friendship, we have reason to prefer those to whom we are joined by our secret inclinations, provided we also see worth in them. And when these secret inclinations are aroused by something in the mind, not in the body, I think they should always be followed. How are we to know which is which? Mainly by this: the inclinations that come from the mind are reciprocated, whereas the others usually aren’t..." Letter from René Descartes to Hector Chanut (June 6th, 1647)