Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 10:39:39 -0500
From: "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com>
Subject: RE: dialectic


Hi Nathan,

I don't know Hegel nearly as well as you do.  So I don't know whether I
would share your interpretations if I were to study him in depth.  However,
I do think I understand D's criticisms of H.  And, so far, I don't think
you have addressed them.

>>>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).

Please don't lose sight of what my response was in reference to.  You said
the "double conditioning...is...easily appropriated into a Hegelian logic."
 THAT is what I am disagreeing with.  H's consciousness is not double, so
how can it be called "virtual"?  Even if I saw a molecular level in H, that
wouldn't necessarily mean there is a virtual doubling.  The crux of the
problem is to show whether dialectical opposition is similar to D's
affirmative doubling movement.  To me, it is not.  And this difference
happens right from their first few steps.
>
>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.

To me, their difference is in the first steps.  Later, H's dialectics can
be accounted for in D's molar level.  There is no molar opposition between
them.
>
>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 would have to demonstrate that H's atomistic thing and its relations
are not on the level of the molar.  That is, you would have to demonstrate
that elements of the atomistic thing are not related (externally or
internally) to the concept of the thing. 
>
>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.

You have misread my response.  I have said D is not *just* criticizing
those atomistic experiences you say H also criticizes.  I am saying D is
also criticizing H's atomism.  They are not doing something similar.  D is
saying there must not be just a pointing beyond on the molar level, but a
differentiation on the molecular level.

>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).  

I admitted no such thing.  I merely said you *claimed* it was the prior
condition.  I never said you "showed" it.  In fact, I said you had not
shown it. 
>>
>>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?

See also N&P p. 64-5.  It is my interpretation that this becoming reactive
of the active forces is that process which cancels difference in the
development of the molar level. 
>>>
>>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?

I did not say that oppositions have nothing in common.  Real polar
opposition, as I have said all along, allows no escape from the identity of
the Same.  Further, I have not refused to admit any similarities between H
& D or H & N.  I have merely refused to admit the same similarities you see.

Beth