 Hello and welcome to yet another philosophical improvisation. Today we start with the new experience, which is the explanation of this book, What is Philosophy? by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Gattari. This is the translation by Graham Bertolt and Hugh Tonlinson. And the idea, I don't know if I will achieve it, but at least I will start, is to slowly read the book, to produce a philosophical reading of the book and at the same time, an introduction to the contemporary validity of the question of what is philosophy. So I will be reading also directly from the French when there is some doubt or questions about the English translation. So they start in the introduction by saying that the question what is philosophy, which might sound obvious, is actually a question that was not so often asked and that comes, as they say, late in life. By that they mean that perhaps the philosopher, in the first decades of his philosophical life, preoccupied with his agonies, combat in the territory of concepts, but also in the territory of existence. And also occupied, as we will see, with the selection of the ingredients that will allow him to elaborate a few concepts of his own, ideally at least carrying his signature. So there is this sentence, it is a question, what is philosophy is a question posed in a moment of quiet restlessness, but meet nigh. This might be heard as a reference to Hegel who said that wisdom is a posteriori, the famous bird of knowledge that only raises after the battle, after the events. It was asked before that question, it was always being asked, but too indirectly or obliquely. It is also the case that philosophy has become an institutional discipline, right? So before that, philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz or even Plato, they didn't really have to justify a position. What is it that you're doing as a lecturer of philosophy? No, they just followed the passion of interrogation, but also of meaning giving. So what is philosophy is also a question that is determined by how philosophy has become today, not only institutionalized but also used, transformed, violated into some sort of a communicational device or a fancy device. And Deleuze and Guthrie lament the use of the term concept, which is really the main concept of philosophy. Philosophy deals with concepts and they're very sad that the term of concept is used today in marketing or advertising or design. So in order to ask what is philosophy, we need to be sober, sober enough. If you have too much desire to do philosophy, you cannot yet ask what is philosophy. And of course, in a way it's more important to do philosophy. Ask what it is later. And in fact, what they're doing here is that they're doing philosophy in asking what it is. And this is what we are doing right now, slowly. There are times when old age produces not eternal youth, but a sovereign freedom, a pure necessity in which one enjoys a moment of grace between life and death, and in which all the parts of the machine come together to send into the future. A feature that cuts across all ages. Tissue, Turner, Monet. This is the first introduction of what Deleuze and Guthrie call conceptual characters, personages, conceptuel in French. And this is important because it introduces the notion of embodiment. We will see that philosophy is embodied. The philosopher is the friend of wisdom, meaning someone who has an emotional relation with abstractions. Think about it, it's not very common, right? People are usually enmeshed into twine in personal relationships with other people. And that's actually, I would argue, what makes human life so difficult, is that most people don't elevate themselves to the concept. And then, of course, once you elevate yourself to the concept, you need to return to the singularities, the differences, the diversity of life, but you need to make this movement in order to detach yourself from misunderstandings, rather than illusions. Likewise, in philosophy, Kant's critique of judgment is a non-restraint work of old age, which his successors have not, still not caught up with, all the mind's faculties overcome their limits, the very limits that Kant had so carefully laid down in the works of his prime. And we'll stop with this idea because I want to keep every unit around 10 minutes or under 10 minutes. If this idea that the philosopher doesn't know where he's going, doesn't know what the elaboration of the compass are going to produce, even in his own cognitive world. And we can say that Kant only becomes Kant. Not only at the end of his life, but also as he is interpreted, as the concepts that he has elaborated make their journey across the world. So we'll stop here for today. Hopefully we'll continue tomorrow. As you see, this is a slow reading. We'll see where it takes us. It is an improvisation. See you tomorrow.