Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 17:30:46 -0500
From: "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com>
Subject: RE: dialectic


Nathan,
> I refuse to accept the dichotomy
>of Hegel and Nietzsche or Hegel and Deleuze that seems to get implied in
>texts like N&P.  

I see no dichotomy or opposition.  I just don't see the similarity you see.
 
>The double conditioning you are referring to here, as it stands, is
>fairly easily appropriated into a Hegelian logic. 

I disagree.  Hegel's is not differential difference.  It cannot give
pluralistic incommensurable perspectives of difference.  It leads to
exclusion and negation rather than pluralism and affirmation.  If I'm
wrong, you will have to demonstrate this to me. 
 
>Again, it is not that Hegel and Deleuze are the same, only that
>simple opposition between them is at best unhelpful.

I may have sounded like I was making a molar opposition between Hegel-molar
vs. Deleuze-molecular.  But of course, Deleuze does not set up a dualism
between them and includes also the molar.  If you think Hegel includes
something like the molecular, you will have to demonstrate that to me.

>	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.

No.  Deleuze is criticizing even those atomistic experiences in Hegel which
point, as you say, beyond themselves.  Hegel points beyond immediate
presentation of the atomistic thing to its relations.  But these point to a
theological kind of Ideal totality which excludes the plurality of
incommensurate perspectives of difference.  It excludes the plurality of
sense.    

>	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.

To me, Hegel's atomistic thing and its relations are molar.  I can't accept
that Hegel IS operating on a level beneath the molar until you demonstrate
that to me.    

>>  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'.

Sorry.  I should have said, D says N implies a critique of atomism, which I
take to include Hegel's relational forces at the level of the atomistic
thing.  If you say relational forces are beneath the level of the atomistic
thing, then please tell me how.  To me, the atomistic thing and its
relations are molar.

> 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.

Reactiveness is an aspect of forces, but reactive forces are not virtual
(the will-to-power is virtual).  (p. 54 N&P) "Negation is not simple
reaction but a becoming reactive."  Reactive forces come together and
separate active forces from what they can do (i.e. they cancel difference).
 Therefore I take Hegel's negation (according to D-N) to be the reactive
becoming of the molar.

>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.

That's right, Hegel is not the polar opposite of N, nor could he be.  I
have never said they were in opposition.  That would not be a very
Deleuzean thing to say.

Beth