From: "Widder,NE" <N.E.Widder-AT-lse.ac.uk>
Subject: RE:  Dialectic
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 20:03:35 -0000


Hi Beth,
>
>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.

Your ignorance of one infects your understanding and ability to evaluate the
other.  I must say that I am amazed with the breadth of the "Hegel" you have
built from Deleuze's comments.  Mostly, this has come from mere assumptions
on your part that Deleuze is referring to Hegel and dialectics in passages
when Hegel is never mentioned by name.  But since you do not have much
knowledge of Hegel -- you say you do not have as much as I, but I think you
have demonstrated that you don't really have any direct knowledge at all
(I'm also suspicious of you knowledge of Nietzsche:  could you demonstrate
or describe any of Nietzsche's ideas independently of N&P?) -- it is clear
that you are not in a position to reliably make such assumptions.

Now, I think I understand Deleuze's criticisms of Hegel, some of which I
think are incorrect as stated, others which I think have a content which
Deleuze does not really supply.  Actually, most of what I am taking issue
with is the characterization of Hegel's philosophy that YOU are creating on
the basis of Deleuze's N&P.  If Deleuze really thinks that there is no
double conditioning in Hegel, or no molecular or virtual realm (or something
like it), or that Hegel's thought is at the level of the atomistic thing and
its relations, then I would say that Deleuze's reading of Hegel is
completely pitiful.  But I actually think Deleuze is not that bad -- as a
matter of fact, I am really taking issue with your reading of Deleuze's
criticisms, and the license you take in constructing a Hegel to which you
say these criticisms apply.

Hopefully the above paragraph will clear up some things.  There seems to
have been a tendency in this discussion to treat my criticisms of your
vision of Hegel as being the same as my criticism of Deleuze's criticisms.
That is probably as much my fault as anybody's.  Hopefully, however, these
issues can be kept more separate.


>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.

But you have insufficient knowledge of Hegel to take issue with in the first
place.  You mentioned this double conditioning in relation to the opening
page of N&P.  Hegel is not mentioned here, you are simply assuming it is
against him (and not, say, Kant, who is clearly mentioned).  You have taken
to heart the idea that Nietzsche is INTRODUCING sense and value into
philosophy, and taken it to mean that no one else has done this before him.
Hence, your connecting this up as a criticism of Hegel is your own
invention.  Now, if Deleuze really thinks that there is no double
conditioning in Hegel, I say he is wrong.  If it is only you who think that,
then I say you are wrong.  Either way, your ignorance of Hegel doesn't seem
to permit you to respond very adequately to either position (and you haven't
adequately responded, you have simply re-stated your caricature of Hegel).

So, let's look a bit closer at this double-conditioning in the opening page
of N&P: evaluations/judgments are said to be expressions of prior values,
but these values in turn presuppose evaluations or as D will later say,
virtual expressions (that is, sense), the result being that we each have the
values we deserve given our mode of being or way of life.  Now, Hegel
(though this is to put it in the language of N&P, not quite his own) is
quite clear that evaluations rest upon a social network of values, and that
this network refers to an expressive Spirit in its unfolding.  This is each
person has the consciousness he ought to have not only given the place he
holds in his society but also given the developmental unfolding of Spirit.
This is a double conditioning, not the same as Deleuze's Nietzsche, but a
double conditioning nonetheless.

>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.

You don't know what Hegel's first steps are.  And you have an odd idea of
Nietzsche's first steps as well -- you are treating first steps in order of
their presentation in N&P.  N&P begins by stating Nietzsche's most general
project, it does not say "this is the first step Nietzsche takes."  More on
the difference below.

>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. 

First, I cannot demonstrate anything if you keep misreading me.  I have said
several times that for Hegel the idea of an atomistic thing and its
relations IS MOLAR (to the extent that you can apply such terms to his
thinking).  I have also said that Hegel attacks this conception.

But you are also here demonstrating an ignorance of internal/external
relations.  Internal/external is conceptual and refers to concepts, not to a
relation between concepts and extra-conceptual things.  Perhaps I have added
to your confusion here by referring to the atomistic thing and its relations
on one hand, and the concept and its relations on the other.  But the thing
at this stage in Hegel's thinking is a conceptual thing.  What is internal
to the thing are its necessary predications -- that is, its essence -- and
what is external is the accidental relations to other things (that is, other
essences).

Now, as for a "demonstration", I think I will try to make this short.  To
put the matter as briefly as possible, Hegel says that the concept of a
thing and its relations, of an essence-in-itself that is prior to its
relations to other essences, runs into various contradictions and cannot
sustain itself.  Hence he introduces the concept of force, as necessarily
relational, and says that the essence of a thing can be understood not as
the foundation but rather the product of these relations.  That is why
relational forces are on another ontological level.  That forces can account
for essence and relations is what makes it prior to an atomistic notion of a
thing-in-itself or an essence.  This is, I'm sure you realize, what Deleuze
says about force in the early pages of N&P.

>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, as I've told you FOUR times now, is not an atomist.  If you are going
to remain ignorant of Hegel, at least don't remain ignorant of the fact that
I have told you this is not what Hegel thinks.  Again, if Deleuze thinks
Hegel's philosophy is one of atomism, he is wrong.  But again, you are here
assuming that the first few pages in N&P refer to Hegel even if he is not
named, and it is probably you rather than Deleuze who doesn't understand
Hegel.

>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. 

Well, I have explained the logic behind it, by saying that force accounts
for essence and relationality, whereas essence as a primary term cannot
account for its relations.  I don't know how to 'demonstrate' or 'show' you
in this respect.  But since Deleuze doesn't demonstrate or show why force is
prior to idea of the atom, I think I'm in pretty good company.

>>
>>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. 

This also says nothing.  It says that on a molar level we only experience a
becoming reactive of forces, it does not say that the separation of force
from what it can do does not occur on a molar level.  Look, in simple terms,
the triumph of reactive forces is an event.  As such, it always occurs on a
level of virtuality.  That is why the slave revolt in morality is not MERELY
an historical event which occurred back in the days of early Christianity.
And the fact that p. 64 says that becoming reactive is constitutive of man
indicates that it occurs on a molecular level -- if it was simply molar, it
could not constitute man at all.

If you can't figure this out from Deleuze's book, and you can't build a case
from looking at Nietzsche's own text, I suggest you look at Foucault's essay
on "Nietzsche, Genealogy and History".

>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.

Here you simply display your ignorance of philosophy.  It is only with Hegel
that the idea that there is no escape from identity, that oppositions reduce
to the Same.  Hegel seeks to mediate an opposition between Being and
nothing, for example, that Aristotle says cannot be bridged.

>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.

You have also refused to state any similarities, even though I have asked
you to.  You have de facto maintained an opposition between them.

>Beth

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