From: "Widder,NE" <N.E.Widder-AT-lse.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Dialectics
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 18:38:03 -0000




> 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?
> 
	So, you curtly dismiss the question I have asked you several times,
and YOU are offended by my response?

	The thoughtlessness of your position comes from your inability to
consider possible linkages as well as differences.  It comes from simply
taking as given Deleuze's comments on Hegel, and not critically evaluating
them.  It comes from being nothing more than the sort of disciple that
Deleuze -- as well as Nietzsche and Zarathustra -- wish to avoid.  The
ignorance of your position comes from the way you base it entirely on
Deleuze's reading of Hegel.  Since Deleuze hardly provides an in-depth
reading of Hegel, what else can it be called but ignorance of Hegel on your
part?  And since you thoughtlessly hold to this position of ignorance with
regard to Hegel, and you engage in a discussion where you refuse to answer
questions which you have suggested, and since you then finally answer with a
dismissal, you show yourself to be an ignorant and thoughtless person.

	It is not important that you agree with me.  I have no problem with
differing readings of Hegel.  I am more than happy to engage with them and
defend them.  But you don't provide a different reading of Hegel, you simply
construct one from Deleuze.  And then you try to defend it as if it is a
reading of Hegel himself.  You are surely aware of writers who have made
nothing but scant, off-hand remarks about Deleuze.  What if someone were to
come to you with a reading of Deleuze drawn entirely from such off-hand
remarks?  I imagine that after two weeks of their attempts to twist what you
said, you'd get a bit impatient.

	If you don't think I've been patient with you, take a look at the
number of posts I've written in response to yours, multiply by 30 minutes
per post, and you'll get some idea of how much time I have patiently put
into this discussion.  A discussion, may I remind you, which began with your
claims that there are similarities between Hegel and Deleuze, just not the
ones I've identified, and has ended with your dismissal of any possible
similarities as being unimportant.  Such dismissal on your part is what led
to the comments about your ignorance and thoughtlessness.  If you cannot see
why, then I'm not quite sure what to tell you.


	As I said, you don't need to accept my reading of Hegel.  It is
somewhat important, however, to be consistent in your arguments, positions
and so forth.  Other than a general rejection of Hegel, you have not done
this.  I.e., in all these exchanges, you have done nothing but dodge the
questions I have asked you, and simply repeat yourself, ask me to explain
things, then refused to recognize when I have done so.

	I think I have been pretty patient with you.  We have had how many
exchanges now?  I have given you reasons for the similarities and you have
not responded to them.  Why don't you go back and look at your responses to
my posts.  Perhaps you will notice how much of my posts you edit out and
have not addressed in your responses.  There have been a lot of them.

	And you have objected to my positions and provided nothing to back
them up.  First you say that what I identify as similarities are not
similar, but each time I have explained why you have dodged the issue, or
come up with a new one.  You have yet to answer, for example, the following
ways in which I have identified similarities between Deleuze's and Hegel's
thought -- i.e., the way in which Deleuze's virtual and Hegel's realm of
forces both follow from a critique of atomism (it took half a dozen posts to
get you to stop attributing atomism to Hegel), or how they function in
underlying meaning and sense.  You have consistently repeated the
differences between Hegel and Deleuze that I identified from the very first
1/6 post.  You have engaged in mere sophistry, trying to change the issue of
similarity between Deleuze and Hegel to a question of how each conceives of
similarity within their respective philosophies.

> 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.  
> 
	Well, I'm glad you found the exchange worthwhile.  As for whether
you have learned something about Hegel, I am less sure.  You have
consistently done nothing more than tow a Deleuzean line.

> 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.
> 
	Because, to put the matter simply, the fact that Hegel's movement of
forces is one of return to identity does not define it as possible.
Deleuze's point about the possible in terms of identity is that realization
is understood in terms of identity with the possibility it realizes.  But
that is the relation between the possible and the real, not the definition
of the possible itself.  To put it in plain English, what is possible is
what may or may not be realized.  Hegel's realm of forces is not a mere
possibility in this sense, just as Deleuze's virtual is not a mere
possibility in this sense.

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