Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 10:20:05 -0500
From: "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com>
Subject: RE: Dialectics


Nathan,

>	A typically ignorant and dogmatic answer from a thoughtless person.
>Since you remain ignorant of Hegel, you don't even know ones that you could
>mention, regardless of whether they were important enough to mention or not.
>Since you have not read my many explanations, you have not even adequately
>responded to the important similarities I have outlined.

Nathan, I have tried my best throughout this exchange to try to see things
from your point of view.  Now I must say, I don't know why you can't be
more patient with such an "ignorant" and "thoughtless" person.  I don't
know why, if you really think Hegel is so similar to Deleuze, that you
can't be more tolerant of someone who sees folds of perspective which are
different from yours.  Why must there be a homogeneous way of looking at
Hegel?  Why is it so important that I agree with you?

I have learned something about Hegel from our exchange.  I thought it was a
worthwhile exchange.  But I still think there is room for different ways of
looking at this.  

Beth

P.S.  I still don't understand how your description avoids the category of
the possible, in that there is still repetition of forces in the form of
the identity of the concept.  I don't understand how H can escape merely
conceptual possiblity.  But I guess I am just too ignorant to understand.
So I won't ask you to explain it a twelfth time.

>	To repeat yet again (why are you forcing me through an eternal
>repetition of the same?):  The realm of relational forces that Hegel posits
>presents a movement which is not a possibility that may or may not be but is
>fully real.  It is also not an actual movement because it does not actually
>appear in immediate experience, but immediate experience is led to it as the
>condition of this experience having sense or meaning.  That this movement of
>forces in Hegel is one of being-in-itself to being-for-another to
>being-for-self THROUGH being-for-another, of course, means that it is
>ultimately a movment of identity.  But that does not mean it is an actual
>movement, nor a merely possible one, in his thinking.  Thus, it has a
>structural similarity to the virtual in Deleuze's philosophy, insofar as its
>relation to given experience is concerned, and the role it plays in
>establishing sense and meaning.  It is also similar to Deleuze in the way it
>follows from a critique of atomism.  Now, that does not make it identical to
>Deleuze's virtual, only similar in certain respects -- respects which are
>bypassed in certain ways by Deleuze and in every way by your Hegel you have
>dreamt up for yourself.  But it is also an important set of similarities
>because it indicates how Hegelian thought, when stripped of its commitments
>to identity and to the spatialization of difference, becomes something more
>like a Deleuzean thought of difference.  This last aspect is important not
>only because it helps establish helpful linkages with other thinking -- so
>that, say, some Heidegger disciples might actually come to recognize what
>Deleuze is doing and won't be so apt to dismiss him -- but also because it
>helps strip Hegel of the aura of being the "enemy", which is precisely the
>way he is so often characterized by Deleuzean disciples, as well as by
>Deleuze in some unfortunate passages, especially those found in N&P.  These
>passages are unfortunate because they lead to ridiculous caricatures of
>Hegel like the one you have been parading across the list for the last
>couple of weeks.
>
>	Explanation done.