Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 11:05:12 -0800 (PST)
From: Paul Bryant <levi_bryant-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: Dialectics (correction)


Nathan--

Thank you for taking the time to engage in this debate surrounding
Hegel.  It's refreshing to see someone interested in working out the
details of Deleuze's arguements (and he does have arguments) without
taking his word as the gospel.  Contrary to popular opinion, I do not
think it represents being a reactive force of the "academy", but
instead is the sort of careful and concerted engagement representing
active forces in knowing ones enemy.  In failing to do that, one
insures that Hegel will return, though he hasn't left yet...  Which is
to say, one's thinking becomes all too Hegelian, as Beth's simple
oppositions between molecular/molar, active/reactive, virtual/actual
aptly demonstrates.  (Why hasn't anyone raised the point that the
molecular/molar distinction doesn't arise until Anti-Oedipus anyway? 
Doesn't this set it outside the domain of _Nietzsche and Philosophy_
in important ways?").

At any rate, I'm writing because you quoted Foucault with respect to
the project of overcoming Hegel.  I was wondering if you could remind
me what that quote was, and where to find it.

Thanks!

Paul (Kalapsyche)

P.S.  In regard to Beth's reticents about admitting the ontological
nature of Deleuze's project, do you think this might arise because of
the distinction that Deleuze makes in the Nietzsche book between
"philosophy of being" and "philosophy of will"?  Over an above the
many references Deleuze makes to ontology in D&R and LOS, a simple
reference to his book review of Hyppolite's _Logic and Existence_
seems enough to dispel this misunderstanding:  "Philosophy must be
ontology, it cannot be anything else; but there is no ontology of
essence, only an ontology of sense."  Also, it seems to me that
Deleuze has two major arguments against Hegel.  The first revolves
around the master/slave dialectic and appears to be a response to the
Kojevian reading of Hegel.  The second, found in D&R and the review of
Hyppolite's book, revolves around non-conceptual difference.  I know
that you've referred to this latter argument a number of times, but
I'd enjoy hearing more of your thoughts regarding it.  It seems to me,
that of the two arguments, the one revolving around non-conceptual
difference is much stronger...  Though it might fail against the
opening chapter of the Phenomenology, and again, in the transition
from being to essence in Hegel's greater logic.







---"Widder,NE" <N.E.Widder-AT-lse.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > > >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
> 
> 

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