From: "Widder,NE" <N.E.Widder-AT-lse.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Dialectics (correction)
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 11:48:48 -0000


> > >Again, none of this excludes the virtual being ontologically prior. 
> > > For Deleuze, the question is not a matter of ontology, because D
> doesn't
> > ask the ontological 'What is...?" question.  Rather, for D the problem
> is
> > about *Repetition*.
> > 
> 	Hegel was not concerned with that question -- at least in terms of
> predication, which is how Deleuze outlines it in D&R.  That is why I said
> back in Nov., 97 that his reading of Hegel on this point was bizarre and
> unfair.
> 
> 	More to the point, Deleuze does not even reduce ontology to the
> 'what is' question -- he would be a true fool if he tried to do that, and
> Heideggerians would then have a genuine reason to laugh at him.  He
> instead suggests another direction for ontological thinking, in both N&P
> and D&R in the form of 'what is the one that is', or 'which one is'.  That
> these are ontological questions is confirmed by one of his footnotes on
> Aristotle in D&R, the Difference in Itself chapter (I don't have the book
> in front of me at the moment), where he suggests this was really
> Aristotle's meaning and usage.
> 
	Now that I have the text in front of me, I should correct myself:
the footnote in question is actually n. 12 of Ch. 4 (English translation).
The main text is p. 188, where Deleuze suggests that very few philosophers
ever put their trust in the 'What is X' quesiton.  He, of course, suggests
Hegel does (which, if Beth had her way, would make Hegel one of the only
ontologists of Western thought), but as I said above, and as I said back in
Nov. 97, that is simply not what Hegel is doing.

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