Date: Fri, 15 Sep 95 12:58 BST
From: WIDDER-AT-VAX.LSE.AC.UK
Subject: Re: Susan Says Here It Is, There It Isn't


Well, Chris, no one on this list would ever suggest you weren't clever!

Univocity of Being.   It's an issue that develops from Aristotle through
neo-Aristotelian scholastic theories (which I'm sure you know, having read
DIFF/REP).  Aristotle is, of course, concerned with essence as definition,
and to that end, has established a hierarchy of conceptual predicates moving
from species to genera and eventually to categories.  What divides each 
category into its subcategories (i.e., a genus into species) are differentia.
I.e., in the case of a genus divided into species (as the genus animal is
divided into man, bird, etc.) the differentia are 'specific differentia' --
i.e., winged, bipedal, rational, etc.

Moving up the scale, one reaches the highest categories of substance, quantity,
quality, location, etc.  Nothing, however, unifies these highest categories --
in other words, there is no highest genus.  Being is not the highest genus
because it is predicated of differentia, whereas the genus is not predicated
of specific differences (i.e., we predicate the genus animal of man, we say
'man is an animal', but not 'bipedal is an animal', but we do say that 
'bipedal is').  This means that the hierarchy of conceptual predicates does
not refer to an ultimate totality which it divides, which thereby compromises
the entire system itself.

In Aquinas and Scholastic philosophy, Being, which is not the highest genus,
becomes 'transcendens' -- as Heidegger points out in BEING AND TIME.  To be
transcendental is to exceed both the particular and the universal while being
predicated of all beings.  The three transcendens are Being, the One and the
Good.  This is where the issue of analogy vs. univocity comes up.  Being is
not the highest genus, but all beings still refer to Being.  But they cannot
be predicated of Being in the same way -- that is, Being cannot have the
same sense when predicated of different Beings -- or it would serve as an
identity or highest genus unifying them.  As Heidegger illustrates, when one
says 'God is' and 'the world is', the 'is' cannot have the same sense, because
there is an infinite distance between God and the world.  So Being assumes
different senses when spoken of different things -- it becomes equivocal, it
becomes the Being of analogy.

What analogy and equivocation allows is for Being to maintain itself as a 
'quasi-identity' underlying all beings, differentia and categories, while
maintaining even infinite differences among them.  This is why Deleuze refers
to analogy as a 'theistic' conception of Being.  But as Deleuze also points 
out, analogy does nothing to solve the problems at the other end of the
Aristotelian hierarchy.  That is to say, while analogy allows neo-Aristotelian
thinkers to suture the system of conceptual predicates at the highest level,
it does nothing about the bottom level.  For Aristotle also maintains that 
definition can only be given at the level of species, never at the level of
individuals (basically, the reason you can't define an individual like 
Socrates is because no matter how many predicates you attach to him, one can
only complete the definition by saying 'and he is made of the particular 
material of which Socrates is made.  Because matter is indefinable and the
ultimate individualizing element, definition of individuals becomes
impossible).  Deleuze writes:

"It is henceforth inevitable that analogy falls into an unresolvable 
difficulty:  it must essentially relate beings to particular existence,
but at the same time it cannot say what constitutes their individuality.
For it retains in the particular only that which conforms to the general
(matter and form), and seeks the principle of individuation in this or
that element of the fully constituted individuals" (DIFF/REP, p. 38).

So Deleuze introduces the concept of univocity (which is also to be found
in Heidegger and Lacan -- those 'dick-munches').  If Being can be retained
as a quasi-identity by being equivocal in its sense, it can become univocal
to the extent that it speak to a groundless difference that can be said 
of all beings.  As Deleuze describes it, this is a nomadic excessive 
difference, inhering in all beings, which drives them to the limits of what
they can do and beyond those limits.  Being is said in the same sense of
all beings insofar as all beings -- regardless of their equality or difference
with each other -- go to their limits -- that is to say, they repeat (in the
Deleuzean sense).

Now this, Chris, is what univocity of Being is about.  It is not about comments
like Susan makes that 'the realm of the brain is the same as that of a rock'.
And it has absolutely not opposed to the 'delay and deferral' of signs.
You constant claims (or are they Susan's -- it's tough when your fictional
character ends up saying the exact same things you do  -- even Nietzsche didn't
make Zarathustra say the EXACT same things he said) that univocity is 
opposed to Derridean differAnce on the grounds that "Being is present
immediately everywhere, without delay or deferral."  A smart Derridean would
simply say, "well, the virtual delay and deferral of differAnce is also present
in all beings, and serves as the motor force by which they repeat 
differentially, hence differAnce is tied to iterability."  In fact, since the 
univocity of Being in Deleuze has everything to do with the dissolution of 
identity (hence it reaches its climax in the eternal return) it has everything 
to do with the delay and deferral of identity that differAnce speaks to.

As Susan's claims about idealism are largely based upon this mistaken 
understanding of signs, and a separation of thought and being that none of
the people she is commenting on is making (Hegel certainly doesn't make this
separation from thoughts and things), I suggest someone tell her to actually
do her reading.  Perhaps Tim could tell her?  Could you get him to give her
that message?

And its not like Lacanians and Heideggerians don't have their own univocal 
Being.  What the hell is Lack other than that which is present immediately 
in all beings regardless of their status with other beings?  That's why 
Deleuze states there has only been one ontological proposition, Being is
Univocal, which cries out from Parmenedies to HEIDEGGER.

As for your comments on space and force:  I'm not quite sure what the big
deal is.  Who are you suggesting believes in empty space?  I think relativity
theory has been around long enough for people to understand that space is not
a neutral medium but is rather formed by the objects that move through it.
Everyone already knows that space bends and is not 'empty' in the sense which
you describe it.

I am not fond of tracing the concept of force back to Hegel.  I have said that
you won't have the slightest idea what Deleuze is doing IN RELATION TO HEGEL
if you don't know what Hegel is saying about force.  That little caveat will
hopefully stop people from believing I'm saying you can only understand
Deleuze by reading Hegel, or some similar nonsense.  In any event, I brought
up Hegel's conception of force in terms of relationality and positive and
negative difference, which is not the same sense as that which you brought up
force in relation to space -- although you have said that you'll show how
your concept will get rid of the negative if you're asked to do so.  First,
though, I suggest you figure out what is meant by Hegelian negativity.

Nathan


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