Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 08:08:41 -0500
From: "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com>
Subject: RE: dialectic



Hi Nathan,
I don't want to argue Hegel with you.  I wouldn't even try.  However, may I
say with all due respect, I think you are reading Hegel into Deleuze.

>Nathan wrote:
>Also, Deleuze doesn't speak of a double movement of forces that marks the
>event in the first pages of N&P (by which I mean the first 10 pages or so)
>-- which is not to say that he doesn't talk about it elsewhere.  But I never
>said that Deleuze/Nietzsche and Hegel were doing the same thing, only that
>their first few steps are the same.

My reading of the first 10 pages of N&P regarding force is very different
from yours.  I do not agree that Deleuze/Niezsche and Hegel are doing the
same thing---not even in their first few steps.  I believe Deleuze does see
a double movement of forces in Nietzsche's thought.  On page 1 there are,
what I think of as, two lines of repetition.  Value is the content.  But
corresponding to value is the expression or evaluation as the differential
element of the corresponding values.  "Evaluation is defined as the
differential element of corresponding values, an element which is both
critical and creative."  On page 3, section 2. Sense--Deleuze sees
Nietzsche as being on the level of sense.  "All force is appropriation,
domination, exploitation of a quantity of reality."  This is a
semeiology--the double articulation.  "The same object, the same phenomenon
[i.e., content] changes sense depending on the force [expression] which
appropriates it.  This means (p.4) that Nietzshce's philosophy is a
pluralism.  "A thing is sometimes this, sometimes that, sometimes something
more complicated--depending on the forces which take possession of it.
Hegel wanted to ridicule pluralism, identifying it with a naive
consciousness which would be happy to say "this, that, here, now"...".
These very different outcomes in N & H come about because they are not
doing the same thing in their first few steps.  N is on the
active-molecular-intensive level of difference (and its virtual double).  H
is on the reactive-molar-extensive level of representational consciousness.
 On page 6, D says N implies a critique of atomism, which I take to include
Hegel's logic of the "atomistic thing".  "...atomism attempts to impart to
matter an essential plurality and distance which in fact belong only to
force.  Only force can be related to force."  This differential, double of
force is called will (p.7).  On page 8, section 4. Against the
Dialectic---D says of N's anti-Hegelianism,  "In N the essential relation
of one force to another is never conceived as a negative element in the
essence...For the speculative element of negation, opposition, or
contradiction, N substitutes the practical element of difference, the
object of affirmation and enjoyment."  "N's "yes" is opposed to the
dialectical "no";  affirmation to dialectical negation..."  This is the
case only because N is on the level of molecular difference.  H is on the
molar level of reactive forces.  On page 10 "N presents the dialectic...as
the way of thinking of the slave..."  H's master/slave dialectic is of
molar oppositions (reactive forces).  N's intensive difference is the
differential active-molecular of the eternal return.  This difference in H
& N is already in their first few steps.  N's is double articulation.  H's
is molar representation on the level of reactive force where difference is
cancelled.            
>
>Finally, if anything, what Hegel describes as the movement of forces is not
>molar in Deleuze but molecular or virtual.  
>It is rather a virtuality that Hegel tries to show is
>identical to actuality -- that is to say, he tries to do what D&G say cannot
>be done, to go from the actual back to the virtual and from the virtual back
>to the actual.  In contrast, in WiP? they insist that we cannot go back the
>other way, because it is not the same virtual in the two movements (pp.
>155-156).

I disagree that Hegel's movement is molecular or virtual.  Rather, it is
reactive-molar and Ideal.  For Hegel, there is return of Same because on
the molar level all difference is cancelled.  For Nietzsche, the
virtual-molecular is eternal return of differential difference which cannot
make the return to the same virtual.  

Beth