From: "Widder,NE" <N.E.Widder-AT-lse.ac.uk>
Subject: FW: dialectic
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 00:37:23 -0000


>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.

Well, this is what you say now, but your refusal to note similarities
and the way you note them seems to imply opposition.  Deleuze in N&P
says there can be no reconciliation between Hegel and Nietzsche and you
seem to have taken that to heart.  But I'm willing to admit that this is
just the way I'm reading you from my perspective.
 
>>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. 
> 

Fine, Hegel's is not "differential difference", but I have been saying
that from the beginning.  Go back and read the 1/6 post from beginning
to end, and you'll note where I point out the differences between them.
As I've said twice in this exchange and about four times during last
year's exchange, the difference is in the form of synthesis (conjunctive
vs. disjunctive).

And I said "as it stands."  In other words, as you have put it in your
post, it is easily appropriated into Hegelian logics.  Look, I'm not
saying you are wrong to differentiate Deleuze and Nietzsche from Hegel,
I think you are doing it at a stage in which they are not yet different.
You make things ridiculously easy on yourself by first claiming Hegel
and Nietzsche are not the same at points where they are, and then
switching to the ultimate conclusions they reach.  Well, their being
different in the latter doesn't preclude their being similar in the
former.


>>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.

Well, there are moments when Deleuze SEEMS to set up an opposition
between them (i.e., there can be no reconciliation between Nietzsche and
Hegel, his statement at the end of N&P) and others where he does not
(i.e., p. 12 of WiP?).  But yes, I think you have sounded all along like
you were making a molar opposition between them throughout, and that is
one of the things I have been taking issue with.

As for this demonstration, I don't honestly know what to say anymore.  I
have written three posts explaining how Hegel moves from the idea of
immediate experience (ch. 1 of the Phenomenology) to conceptual
objects/atomistic thing and its relations (ch. 2) to the notion of force
(ch. 3), and I have explained why this last move opens up a realm which
is something like the virtual or molecular.  I can't think of how else
to "demonstrate" this to you.  I can only ask you to re-read the posts
I've written.

You can say I haven't demonstrated this all you want too, but that won't
make it true.

>>
>>	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.    

Beth, have you actually READ anything I've written in this exchange???
If Deleuze is criticizing those atomistic experiences which I have said
Hegel is also criticizing, THEN THEY ARE DOING SOMETHING SIMILAR, NO???
That is ALL I have claimed.  Further, look at how Deleuze criticizes
these atomistic experiences.  He does so by showing how they point
beyond themselves, just as Hegel does.

As for Hegel eventually reaching a theological kid of Ideal totality,
well, yeah, but so what?  At that point Deleuze and Hegel are going off
in very different directions, but you have just admitted that the first
two stages they are moving in a fairly similar direction.

>>	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.    
>
For the THIRD time, I will say that Hegel's thinking DOES NOT END with
this idea of an atomistic thing and its relations.  Yeah, ok, that's a
molar conceptualization.  Well, Hegel criticizes it and goes on to
something else.  Why do you consistently claim that this is Hegel's
final stance, when I have told you it is not?  Each time you make these
sort of claims, you demonstrate not only that you haven't read your
Hegel, but that you haven't even bothered to read my posts on him.

>>>  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.

Well, you take it incorrectly once again.  Hegel's relational forces ARE
NOT TO BE TAKEN AT THE LEVEL OF THE ATOMISTIC THING AND ITS RELATIONS.
Hegel's relational forces are beneath that level.  And I have already
shown you how they operate beneath that level -- you admitted that
yourself when you said that I only showed how it was a prior condition
(which, I would hope you realize, is an ontologically prior condition).
You then said that I hadn't then told you how the Notion then conditions
atomistic concepts and immediate experiences, but I have responded that
that is done elsewhere (i.e., the Logic, the later chapters of the
Phenomenology).


>> 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.

Your quote from p. 54 says nothing.  There are virtual becomings and
actual becomings.  How does the above quote show that the becoming
reactive of forces is 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.

An odd claim on your part.  Oppositional logics, certainly those prior
to Hegel, have usually claimed that there is nothing in common between
opposites.  Every suggestion I have made regarding a similar direction
or commonality between Nietzsche and Hegel you have dismissed.  Since
you refuse to admit any similarities between Hegel and Deleuze or Hegel
and Nietzsche, you imply a classical form of opposition between them.
Care to explain how you have not set up an opposition between Hegel and
Nietzsche or Hegel and Deleuze?  Care to "demonstrate" that you have not
done so?

>Beth

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