Thousand Plateaus
by Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari · first published 1987
28% recommend69% neutral3% critical
Why HN recommends it
Dense, idiosyncratic continental philosophy whose concepts, like rhizome and radical materialism, stay with readers for years; best for those willing to read slowly and return to it.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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I imagine I’ll take heat for this, but the first answer that comes to mind is A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze & Guattari. It has been justifiably criticized by many people on many grounds, but as with OP and Freakonomics, certain of the concepts in that book frequently appear in my thoughts 20 years…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗"Will to Power" by Friedrich Nietzsche, who you'll probably love if you like Rand. "A Thousand Plateaus" by Deleuze & Guattari. A psychedelic philosophy of complexity. Not exactly an airtight philosophical system, but it will blow your mind several times per page. "Being & Time" by Martin Heidegger.…
on “Ask HN: Good books?” ↗…provides. My recommendation is to dive into the rabbit hole of continental philosophy. Deleuze has a great radical materialism (inspired by Spinoza?!), and wonderfully blurs psychology and philosophy in A Thousand Plateaus. Heidegger has an exploration of the experience of language being the bootstrapping tool of consciousness in Being and Time. And some psilocybin never hurt.
on “Consciousness as a State of Matter” ↗…that order. Oh, and https://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/netzkritik/societyofcontr... His mind-meld with Guattari has a lot of the themes of his solo work, but is much more experimental and out there. A Thousand Plateaus is, well, you already know this: pretty friggin' wild. So it's not so much "student of philosophical history" as it is "holy shit." To me at least. This is the stuff DeLanda and a lot of secondary literature…
on “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy” ↗My favorite book is "A Thousand Plateaus" by Deleuze and Guattari. It's quite the challenge, and I find new things every time I pick it back up.
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite books of all time, and why?” ↗And no A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze & Guattari, in spite of having an impact on the anti-globalization movement over the last two decades-plus that is hard to overestimate. Plus, that work isn’t just relevant for contemporary…
on “Eminent Philosophers Name the Most Important Philosophy Books from 1950-2000” ↗A sequel that diverges from and dwarfs its predecessor -- Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (translated into English) https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816614028/a-thousand-plateaus...
on “Seven books I keep close because I love them” ↗Dao De Jing - Lao Tzu A Thousand Plateaus - Gilles Deleuze + Felix Guattari
on “Ask HN: What books have made the biggest impact on your mental models?” ↗tl;dr read it with friends or drugs, or as a drug. Wild shit. I was with a group of a couple friends who loved A Thousand Plateaus - we would read bits of it allowed together and laugh and generally have a good time talking about it. Probably the best way to have approached it. Also on the advice of one of these folks, I read just…
on “Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself” ↗…bring clarity to the works of Derrida, Foucault, etc. For example, I've always had an interest in Deleuze & Guattari, but it sure is helpful to have someone like Manuel DeLanda when reading works like A Thousand Plateaus. If not for him, I doubt I would've made sense of the original text at all.
on “Deconstructing Jackie” ↗Retroactively, I would also add "A Thousand Plateaus" by Deleuze & Guattari to this list, except that I haven't yet read the actual thing, but only dipped my toes into related studies, like e.g. "The Allure of Machinic Life" by John Johnston that traces…
on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?” ↗…read several books by Deleuze and Guattari, but haven't had any formal instruction on postmodernism. They're hilariously opaque, but also pretty interesting if you have the patience. At one point in A Thousand Plateaus, the authors say that vaginas are just penises travelling faster than the speed of light. Does anyone think this is meant to be analyzed scientifically? To say that there's no scientific rigor in this…
on “Postmodernism Disrobed by Richard Dawkins” ↗My thoughts instantly go to Deleuze & Guattari's rhizome Idea in A Thousand Plateaus. Why wouldn't our brain run small connected pieces of software that together emulate how the world works and especially how other people are expected to act/behave. This way the network of networks can…
on “Brain's wiring: More like the Internet than a pyramid?” ↗I think a lot about this. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari talk about the opposition between the state apparatus and the "war machine" (their term for a nomadic/decentralized structure). They talk about how it seems like nomadic societies…
on “Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web” ↗Deleuze was always my favorite too, it's been years since I read his works but I've been thinking of going back for the fun of it. I had stumbled upon DeLanda who helped clarify A Thousand Plateaus, but do you have any recommendations for reading and understanding Deleuze? Unfortunately I don't have a very extensive philosophical background beyond some undergrad courses and personal exploration…
on “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy” ↗