Reviews for Impressions of Hume

The average rating for Impressions of Hume based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-01-02 00:00:00 Phill Powell The Signature of the World is an odd book. Ostensibly about Deleuze's and Guattari's last coauthored work, 'What Is Philosophy?', this isn't so much a commentary as it is a kind of 'extension' of WIP, a postscript or an unwritten eighth chapter, riffing on WIP's themes while moving in directions not exactly prescribed by the book itself. Not quite a guide, but more of a chaser to the main event, if could be put that way. Comprised of three small essays and a pair of appendices (this isn't a big book), Signature works best when magnifying and extrapolating from the many suggestive lines scattered across WIP itself. Pursuing, for instance, the resonances between the philosophy of Alfred Whitehead and D&G (perhaps among the first secondary discussions to really do so), as well as fleshing out the scholastic notions of 'real', 'formal', and 'numerical' distinction in the work of Descartes and Spinoza (as read by D&G), Alliez has a knack for illuminating some of the more finicky and underdeveloped themes of D&G's final work. On the other hand, the clear familiarity that Alliez has for his subjects tends, as far the reading experience goes, to somewhat work against his own book. Although pregnant with instances of suggestion, both the pace and density with which Signature moves across its subject matter has the effect of obscuring the many legitimately interesting points otherwise raised. After proposing the intriguing notion of reading Deleuze and Guattari in terms of an 'ontobiology', for example, the term itself more or less disappears from the rest of the book, lost amongst Alliez's flurry of forward-momentum. If this were a longer work, one could perhaps forgive the many instances of this kind of thing. Yet at just over a hundred pages, these flash-in-a-pan insights (of which there are many!) never seem to cohere in any sustained manner, leaving a distinct feeling of 'yes, but… what exactly was that all about?' at the end of each essay. Granted, this is as much an effect of the demands placed upon the reader by Alliez himself, and someone with a bit more patience, a bit more sympathy, might be more willing than I to work through and pursue the many suggestions and implications developed through the book. After all, Signature does have the distinction of in fact engaging with many points of reference that are only now really coming to the attention of the English speaking world - the work of Gilbert Simondon, Fransisco Verela, Raymond Ruyer and the aforementioned Whitehead all stand out - but again, the scattered nature of the discussions here make this a book far easier to cite from (there are choice quotes everywhere!) than to be properly taught from. If anything, it's the two small appendices which 'save' book, insofar as they take a line of thought and simply run with it; the reprinted talk, 'Deleuze's Vritual Philosophy' is especially helpful in its reconstruction of Deleuze's intellectual and philosophical trajectory. So like I said - an odd book: one that tries to do a little too much in much too little a space. Read if you have the time and the interest.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-05-07 00:00:00 April Reed I bought this book because I was curious about what Alliez had to say about "Deleuze's Virtual Philosophy" and was not disappointed!