Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 14:09:41 -0500
From: "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com>
Subject: RE: dialectic



>Nathan wrote:
>There is no thing-in-itself, therefore all things are nothing but their
>relations.  Hence Hegel says the logic of the atomistic thing gives way to
>relational forces -- just as Deleuze outlines in the opening pages of
>Nietzsche and Philosophy.  

>	[]  
>....Hegel is operating on a different level..
> -- and I think Nietzsche and "pomo" are as well.  If anything,
>they are operating on a level that is ontologically prior to the
>internal/external relations distinction, at least insofar as I understand
>the terms as they are used in Anglo-American philosophy.

Nathan,

Your post of 1-6-99 (see first paragraph above), regarding Hegel's
dialectic describes "the logic of the atomistic thing" and its relations.
It seems to me that this can only be on the level of the concept and its
relations (i.e., the atomistic elements relate interally or externally to
the concept of the thing).  What you describe as Hegel's movement in the
idea of the identity of identity and difference is still at the level of
the concept and its relations.  It is what Deleuze regards as molar.  It is
therefore, not similar to what Deleuze outlines in his reading of Nietzsche
in the opening pages of N&P where he speaks of the intensive double
repetition of forces and their differential relations at the level of the
event.  Hegel is pre-structuralist.  Deleuze is post-strusturalist. 

If, on the other hand, as you claim in your post of 1-8-99 (second
paragaraph above), "Hegel is operating on a different
level....ontologically prior to the internal/external relations
distinction...", that is, if you are reading Hegel as operating on the
level of a pure negation of all conceptual relations, then you need to
explain how anything is given to experience at all.  

>Nathan wrote:
>	But anyway, to get back to Hegel -- force relations are
>ontologically prior because they account for independence, inter-relatedness
>and identity.  That is precisely what "the power of the negative" means for
>him.  And that is why the movement of forces is ontologically prior to the
>idea of an atomistic thing and its relations -- be they internal or
>external.

As for "force relations [being] ontologically prior because they account
for independence, inter-relatedness and identity"...that just says they are
prior because it is the prior condition.  It does not explain how they
condition the concept, let alone how they could possibly be given to
experience.

>	To put it simply:  force relations are immanent, but immanence is
>not the same thing as internal.  It is a mistake to think that Hegel is
>positing the priority of internality over externality in the way that some
>would like to think.

Of course, Hegel does not *posit* the priority of internality over
externality.     However, Hegel's dialectic, working on the level of the
concept, can only divide the concept in homogeneity with itself.  It can
not escape return to itself.  Internality is the unintended consequence of
Hegel's dialectic.   

Beth