"W as in Wittgenstein"

I tried to read Deleuze - once. I gave up when it dawned on me that I didn't understand a word of the book. It was, in several senses of the word, Greek to me. He is actually the philosopher I have found the most difficult. In comparison to him, types like Husserl, Kant and Derrida belong to the Sidney Sheldon league (I haven't read Hegel - yet). Maybe I'll be more patient with reading Deleuze later. I stumbled upon one of Deleuze's comments on Wittgenstein in a transcription of a series of TV-interviews with him from 1989. Deleuze was challenged to comment on an assortment of concepts, "from a to z", among them 'opera', 'question' and 'desire'. His rejection of Wittgenstein is very amusing:

"W as in Wittgenstein"

Parnet [the journalist] says, let's move on to W, and Deleuze says, there's nothing in W, and Parnet says, yes, there's Wittgenstein. She knows he's nothing for Deleuze, but it's only a word. Deleuze says, he doesn't like to talk about that... It's a philosophical catastrophe. It's the very type of a "school", a regression of all philosophy, a massive regression. Deleuze considers the Wittgenstein matter to be quite sad. They imposed a system of terror in which, under the pretext of doing something new, it's poverty introduced as grandeur. Deleuze says there isn't a word to express this kind of danger, but that this danger is one that recurs, that it's not the first time that it has arrived. It's serious especially since he considers the Wittgensteinians to be nasty and destructive . So in this, there could be an assassination of philosophy, Deleuze says, they are assassins of philosophy, and because of that, one must remain very vigilant.

Wittgenstein - a catastrophe, an assassin of philosophy! Well, look who's talking...

(You can read the transcriptions here and if you know French (I don't, because I am George W Bush :( ) then go here - it's fun to see Deleuze's facial expression changing from depression to disgust and amusement as he is attacking the wittgensteinians. And his dry laugh, don't miss it!)