From: "michelle phil lewis-king" <king.lewis-AT-easynet.co.uk>
Subject: RE: dialectic
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1999 12:45:49 -0000


Paul Bains asked:

> Could someone kind person give me some brief indication of the
> problem with
> Hegel's dialectic. I have never read Hegel so please bear with me and give
> an example if possible.
>
> 'all problems are dialectical'. Deleuze (DR 164).
>

>
> Paul.
>
 I've been caught up for a while in Klossowski's passages on Hegel's 'Master
Slave ' dialectic so bear with me for a moment as I think about your
question.

On one page('Nietzsche et le cercle vicieux pp32 ) Klossowski  references
Nietszche, Hegel, Kojeve, Bataille and Deleuze.

a.Hegels 'Phenomenology of Spirit'.pp?

b.Kojeve's commentary on the master slave passages in that book.

c.Bataille's 'intimidated genius' in his 'L'Experience Interieur' when he
underlines Nietzsche's 'ignorance' as the later attacks the Hegelian
dialectic at its root.

d.Deleuze, recommended for his passages on the relation between Nietzsche
and Hegel in 'Nietzsche and Philosophy'pp10.

Here is a reading I made of the relevant passage in D+R:

-For Deleuze  the perversion of the dialectic into its Hegelian form is
caused by a lazy tracing of problems from propositions. The relation is
implicitly perverted to a dialectical relation between hypothetical solution
and problem. The problem becomes the slave of the sovereign proposition
rather than being an autonomous dialectic in itself. Deleuze "distinguishes
completely" between all the terms. Isolates them -

This reading is informed by Klossowski's description of Nietzsche's attack
on the Hegel's dialectic where he sees it as a continuation of christian
morality that takes this morality into the 'mise en commun' of bourgeois
culture and then on into the socialisation caused by industrialization. The
attack is on the notion of a shared culture.

Nietszche refuses the needs of reciprocity ( between slave and master,
problem and solution etc ) that define Hegel's dialectic.  He remains
stranger to its common nature.  Nietszche chooses to ignore the passage of
the dialectic. This ignorance becomes his force.

Deleuze does not have this choice. He cannot ignore Hegel's Dialectic so he
chooses to seperate its terms, granting them their own relations within
themselves and the ability to forge 'liaisons'.

'problems' do not share a common nature with 'solutions'. Each problem can
dialectically produces its own nature (as can each solution?). A
multiplicity of possible unrelated 'Minds'. The tragedy which must be
affirmed.

Thanks Paul.

Phil(?).