From: "Widder,NE" <N.E.Widder-AT-lse.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: dialectic
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 14:50:56 -0000




	Hi Beth,

> 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.
> 
	Well, I wouldn't go that far.  But I refuse to accept the dichotomy
of Hegel and Nietzsche or Hegel and Deleuze that seems to get implied in
texts like N&P.  And, to return the due respect, the way in which you seem
base your understanding of Hegel ENTIRELY on what Deleuze says about Hegel
is to show that you are in fact reading Deleuze onto Hegel -- that is to
say, you are criticizing Hegel because he is not Deleuzean.  That is about
as un-pluralistic as one can get.


> >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."  
> 
	Ontological evaluation/expression are intimately Hegelian, as
Charles Taylor points out very well (one of the few things he does generally
well).  The double conditioning you are referring to here, as it stands, is
fairly easily appropriated into a Hegelian logic.  You could even argue that
Hegel's is critical and creative, as many have, provided you separate those
terms from the way Deleuze eventually employs them.  But Hegel DOES insist
upon a primary ontological differentiation.  This is not to say it is going
to be the same as Deleuze's or Nietzsche's, only that it is incorrect to
make, in an unqualified way, a distinction along the lines of:  Hegel is a
thinker of identity, Deleuze/Nietzsche is a thinker of difference.

> 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.
> 
	Deleuzean sense, as I'm sure you are aware, is not given in
experience -- that is why it is the surface, excess, call it what you will,
the virtuality that is implicated in experience and language even though not
actual.  And regarding Hegel, if you were to examine his historical
writings, you will find that most everything changes its meaning or sense in
dialectical unfolding.  There could be no unfolding if this was not the
case.  Again, it is not that Hegel and Deleuze are the same, only that
simple opposition between them is at best unhelpful.

> 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.
> 
	You say they are not doing the same thing because you are accepting
on face-value what Deleuze says.  The pluralism that Hegel does criticize --
i.e., simplistic empiricism which holds that the meaning of a thing is
nothing more than its immediate presentation, that isolated, atomistic
experiences do not point beyond themselves -- is also what Deleuze
criticizes, and Nietzsche.

> 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.
> 
	I'll say this again, Hegel is highly critical of represenational
consciousness.  He is quite insistent that mere concepts used to represent
the world, or laws designed to express necessity, are abstractions that
point beyond themselves.  Why can't you accept that Hegel IS operating on an
ontological level which cuts beneath the molar, even if his "molecular"
isn't the same as Deleuze's?  I would probably be willing to accept the
statement that Hegel is treating the virtual realm in a reactive fashion,
but not that he doesn't have a realm corresponding to Deleuze's virtual.

>  On page 6, D says N implies a critique of atomism, which I take to
> include
> Hegel's logic of the "atomistic thing".
> 
	You take it incorrectly.  As I have been trying to say in all these
posts, Hegel is criticizing the 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." 
> 
	As Hegel says.  That's why he thinks the theory of gravity, in
treating this as an attribute of atoms, makes no sense.

>  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." 
> 
	As I pointed out from the beginning, this is the area where
Nietzsche is differentiated from Hegel.  (Why do you think Deleuze only
brings in Hegel at this point?  Could it be because even he recognizes that
up to this point he's pretty much said what Hegel also says?)  The relation
of one force to another is not reducible to equality, because that is an
abstraction.  The positing of equality, of difference understood in terms of
spacing, of opposition as understood in terms of infinite spacing, is an
abstraction which Hegel never gives up.  But you didn't need Nietzsche to
tell you that -- look at Marx's criticisms of Hegel, or Adorno's, or
Adorno/Horkheimers.

>  "N's "yes" is opposed to the
> dialectical "no";  affirmation to dialectical negation..." 
> 
	In and of itself, this is nothing more than crude polemic.  You
might as well say that the difference between Derrida and Foucault is that
Derrida is optimistic and Foucault is pessimistic (I bring this up only
because I very recently came across someone who made this idiotic
distinction).

>  This is the
> case only because N is on the level of molecular difference.  H is on the
> molar level of reactive forces.
> 
	That doesn't follow even in Deleuze's philosophy.  Reactiveness is
an aspect of forces, and is therefore an aspect of the virtual.  It is not
some crazy thing created only on the level of actuality.  It follows
directly from the necessary inequality and antagonism of forces.  There
could be no conflicts among forces, no virtual event in which reactive
forces separate active forces from what they do, if this were the case.

> On page 10 "N presents the dialectic...as
> the way of thinking of the slave..."
> 
	Yes, but no one is arguing with that.

> H's master/slave dialectic is of
> molar oppositions (reactive forces).
> 
	The slave revolt in morality occurs at the level of forces, hence it
occurs at the level of the virtual.  The slave revolt refers back to forces
which give it meaning, and the force relations which give it meanings form
the event in which active forces are separated from what they can do.

> 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.
> 
	This statement clearly indicates that it is not in their first few
steps, insofar as the eternal return doesn't present itself in the first few
steps of Nietzsche's philosophy.  It follows after the articulation of
forces, the theorization of necessary antagonism, and the differentiation of
active and reactive wills to power.

> 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.  
> 
	You say you don't want to argue Hegel with me and yet you make
claims about Hegel's thought which are nothing more than quotes from N&P.  I
don't see why you continue to do this, nor on what basis -- other than some
sort of hero-worship of Deleuze -- you can continue to say this.  I've made
my position pretty clear:  Hegel is not simply the polar opposite of
Nietzsche, nor could he be.  If Deleuze at times seems to say that, then he
is simply talking crap.  I suppose there's no real way to demonstrate this
to you, except to invite you to read some Hegel and not simply rely on some
offhand comments that Deleuze makes and which, to be blunt, he is rightly to
be ridiculed for making.

> Beth
> 
	Nathan
	n.e.widder-AT-lse.ac.uk