It never fails to surprise me when someone has read my work. It’s always a pleasant surprise, and I take more pleasure in it the more I can see someone has connected with me, recognised me, and seen what I’m trying to say. If Hegel was right about anything, it was the sheer structural importance of mutual recognition both personally and socially. To be read, and to be read well, is always a unique delight.
Skholiast over at Speculum Criticum Traditionis always reads me well, with the gentle care of someone trying to trace the shape of each and every thought, so that they may slot them into their appropriate space within the whole history of philosophical thinking. He has a deep intellectual charity that expresses itself in a sincere and amiable style. He is, in short, one of the best friends one could hope for, in precisely the sense of the word that he himself examines. Though we have never met, he has gifted me another unique delight. I can only say that the recognition is mutual.
I point people to your work wherever I can, on account of the systematicity, style and originality, sensitivity to our current conjunctures, and sensitivity to the history of philosophy.
It’s appreciated!
No problem.
PS: any word on whether you will ever put out the third installment of the Song of Sufficient Reason article?
Oh god, that’s an old one. I’ll probably talk more about Deleuze eventually, but it won’t recognisably be the third instalment of that series. I have been doing a little work on Deleuze recently, as I understand the mathematics much better now.
What do you recommend looking at to brush up on the mathematics? I haven’t really touched that stuff since taking a course on ordinary and partial diff eqs in college. What do you make of Delanda’s claim that non-actualized trajectories quasi causally influence actual trajectories? What do you make of the role of quasi causation in Deleuze’s system in general? The idea that non actual trajectory shapes actual would suggest to me that the non actual trajectories are themselves each reciprocally shaped by one another, which to me suggests a form of super determinism. Is this what Deleuze is talking about when he goes about the single cast?