Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2002 17:45:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Paul Bryant <levi_bryant-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Ground, grounded, Quality? D&R enigma


--0-2053579852-1023669943=:40376


 Dear Beth--
Here's an example.  I have the requirement that people are tolerant of each other, that needs are satisfied and that people live in a state of relative comfort in which they are able to pursue their desires and actualize their abilities without a repressive regime of Law sadistically monitering their every action.  Now clearly this is a requirement that hasn't been met.  Moreover there have been a number of strategies which have been offered for meeting this requirement without doing the job.  In this case the requirement persists while the solutions are inadequate to meeting that requirement.  We could say that the solutions fail to properly map or articulate the problem (requirement) they are attempting to solve.  Now, similarly Hegel sets for himself-- I'm not inventing this, it's Hegel's own claim, one that Deleuze himself acknowledges when he speaks of Hegel's incessant monocentering and in his review of Hypollite --that immanence be attained through the dialectic.  Deleuze will praise Hegel in this early review for having recognized that ontology is to be conceived in terms of sense, which amounts to a rejection of the distinction of transcendence between appearance and reality.  Look it up, it's all there.  You can find it elsewhere as well.  To say that Hegel aims for immanence is to say that Hegel wishes to reconcile existence and the concept such that the two terms are no longer opposed.  In other words, Hegel refuses to admit the being of anything *outside* of his system.  Hegel's system is a system in which the universal and the particular are *supposedly* reconciled in a single unity which he calls the absolute.  In other words, for Hegel the universal or concept (read essence) is no longer transcendent with respect to being as was the case perhaps in Plato.  This just is immanence.  Now, whether Hegel is successful in attaining this requirement of this aim is another question.  In this case, the aim (the requirement) is there while the realization of the aim remains unfullfilled.  As Deleuze has taught us again and again, problems persist in their solutions.  How to think immanence presents a problem.  The history of philosophy presents us with many solutions to these problems.  The fact that the problem persists, as if in the form of a demand, is what allows different philosophies to resonate with one another and enter into relations of critique with respect to their adequacy to the problem.
As someone recently pointed out on this list, Deleuze writes in his essays critical and clinical that immanence has been the aim of all philosophy.  Put in Deleuzian terms, we could say that THE problem of philosophy has been to conceive being in terms of immanence.  Whether the various philosophies have been successful in this aim is a question that should be asked independently of whether they have this requirement is there aim.  After all, is this (immanence) not what differentiates philosophy from theology?
Although I am no big fan of Hegel, I am suspicious of the claim that Hegel remained a thinker of transcendence.  This does not seem to correspond to the letter of Deleuze's criticism of Hegel.  There, it will be recalled, Deleuze draws a distinction between organic and orgiastic representation in which difference is subordinated to difference in two ways.  In organic representation it makes a great deal of sense to maintain that identity remains transcendent to being insofar as there is a gap that is retained to the relationship between the individual and the species.  Here we have all the problems of participation in Plato and the problems of substance in Aristotle, which carry through the philosophical tradition in various ways up to present.  In orgiastic representation we have identity carried to the infinite in such a way that it's able to capture both the individual and the universal in a single unity of the infinite (for Hegel anyway...  matters are different with Leibniz).  Here the issue isn't that identity is transcendent, but that negation is a derivative concept of difference.  In other words, Hegel's mediation fails to get at the articulations of the real in his dialectic of the universal and the particular.  Consequently, it is not that Hegel remains tied to transcendence but that his privilaging of identity fails to get at difference.
Incidentally, you might wish to rethink your use of "sub-representative" difference in describing Deleuze's project.  The "sub" (meaning below, underneath, beneath) of "subrepresentative" makes your discourse sound as if it's still tied to the logic of representation in the sense of attempting to account for it.  In articulating Deleuze's project as an attempt to get at the subrepresentative domain of difference your language suggests that representation is the telos of these subterranian processes.
Regarding whether I manage to reach the plane of immanence, that was not at all my aim in the post in question.  Ivind, who asks very good questions, was asking for an elucidation of a very specific passage in Deleuze where he is criticizing the Platonic conception of grounding.  Now, how is it at all possible to understand Deleuze's criticism is someone does not first understand what Plato's theory of grounding is?  Understanding Plato is thus a preliminary step to understanding Deleuze's criticism of Plato and the aim of my post was to shed some light on what Deleuze was referring to IN PLATO so that Deleuze's criticism might become more clear.  Deleuze's text is so literred with the history of philosophy, with references to conceptions of other thinkers, that it's nearly impossible to untangle without discussing these references in some detail.  That was my aim...  Nothing more, nothing less.  I was not attempting to discuss immanence, virtuality, intensity, multiplicity, difference, singularity or any of the other master-signs we might attribute to Deleuze, but simply Plato.  These other terms get deployed on a different plane of commentary.  Similarly, in Ivind's previous post he was asking a question about a specific passage in which Deleuze discusses Leibniz's conception of natural blockage with respect to concepts.  In these contexts it was appropriate to discuss Plato and Leibniz and not Deleuze's alternative to their conceptions.  Hopefully you will agree that Deleuze was very well grounded in the history of philosophy and that a great deal of DR is taken up with an *informed* critique of various moments in that history which continue to influence our thinking today.  Well if you concede that point, then you will agree that part of understanding the *radicality* of Deleuze's new conception will consist in precisely understanding the terms of this critique.  My exegesis was thus not so much devoted to elaborating Deleuze as it was devoted to making clear what he was referring to with respect to Leibniz and Plato.  I did not even begin to discuss his concrete criticism of these figures, nor the alternative he gives us.
You say you have an honest disagreement with me at all, given that the content of your posts sound as if you are not even addressing me.  Your tendency to attribute claims to your interlocutors that they did not make when they were quite clear, to ignore various levels of the text in question, and to emphasize only particular aspects of Deleuze suggests that you are addressing someone quite different than the person sitting here behind this screen.  In other words, there seems to be something fantasmatic in the perverted Deleuze you attribute to those who you respond to.  Your interlocutor loses either way.  If your interlocutor speaks of some other issue or philosopher besides Deleuze s/he is suddenly accused of remaining tied to the philosophy of representation, despite the fact that the interlocutor already recognizes that they are speaking of a philosopher of representation.  If your interlocutor discusses a particular passage in which Deleuze is criticizing another philosopher, s/he is suddenly suspect for not having discussed other passages...  Despite the fact that one cannot say all of Deleuze at once.  This, I think, is a dishonest form of disagreement which does more to obscure than to illuminate Deleuze's difficult texts.  As for being picked on, I am at least flattered that your name seems to appear inevitably two days apart from mine.  Given the passion you clearly have for Deleuze-- an idolatary perhaps? --these words of response from you must not amount to nothing, for we all know that the idolator loathes the contamination of the idol by anything mundane.  Somehow or other I've managed to get myself in the position of the claimant with respect to who gets to own the true Deleuze.  All of it smacks of a battle over the father.
Paul
  "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com> wrote: Paul wrote:

"Your dogmatism and myopia concerning all things Deleuzian is astonishing.
If you insist on misconstruing my claim, I would much appreciate it if you
would cease "correcting" me. You seem to have a penchant for pointing out
the obvious, of pointing out what's taken for granted by anyone who
seriously reads Deleuze, such that you ignore all context regarding the
claims being made. It's interesting that your name only appears on the
list when either Nathan or myself post."


Dear Paul,

How can Deleuze, as you said, "meet Hegel's requirement of immanence"?
Deleuze does not even agree that Hegel HAS a requirement of immanence. If
I am "misconstuing", then I'm sorry it was not clear to me. 

OF COURSE, it is obvious to you and any serious reader of Deleuze that his
plane of immanence is Spinozist. I am trying to suggest that, even though
you KNOW this, you are still not reaching that plane.

I am not trying to pick on you. I have an honest disagreement with you.






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Dear Beth--

Here's an example.  I have the requirement that people are tolerant of each other, that needs are satisfied and that people live in a state of relative comfort in which they are able to pursue their desires and actualize their abilities without a repressive regime of Law sadistically monitering their every action.  Now clearly this is a requirement that hasn't been met.  Moreover there have been a number of strategies which have been offered for meeting this requirement without doing the job.  In this case the requirement persists while the solutions are inadequate to meeting that requirement.  We could say that the solutions fail to properly map or articulate the problem (requirement) they are attempting to solve.  Now, similarly Hegel sets for himself-- I'm not inventing this, it's Hegel's own claim, one that Deleuze himself acknowledges when he speaks of Hegel's incessant monocentering and in his review of Hypollite --that immanence be attained through the dialectic.  Deleuze will praise Hegel in this early review for having recognized that ontology is to be conceived in terms of sense, which amounts to a rejection of the distinction of transcendence between appearance and reality.  Look it up, it's all there.  You can find it elsewhere as well.  To say that Hegel aims for immanence is to say that Hegel wishes to reconcile existence and the concept such that the two terms are no longer opposed.  In other words, Hegel refuses to admit the being of anything *outside* of his system.  Hegel's system is a system in which the universal and the particular are *supposedly* reconciled in a single unity which he calls the absolute.  In other words, for Hegel the universal or concept (read essence) is no longer transcendent with respect to being as was the case perhaps in Plato.  This just is immanence.  Now, whether Hegel is successful in attaining this requirement of this aim is another question.  In this case, the aim (the requirement) is there while the realization of the aim remains unfullfilled.  As Deleuze has taught us again and again, problems persist in their solutions.  How to think immanence presents a problem.  The history of philosophy presents us with many solutions to these problems.  The fact that the problem persists, as if in the form of a demand, is what allows different philosophies to resonate with one another and enter into relations of critique with respect to their adequacy to the problem.

As someone recently pointed out on this list, Deleuze writes in his essays critical and clinical that immanence has been the aim of all philosophy.  Put in Deleuzian terms, we could say that THE problem of philosophy has been to conceive being in terms of immanence.  Whether the various philosophies have been successful in this aim is a question that should be asked independently of whether they have this requirement is there aim.  After all, is this (immanence) not what differentiates philosophy from theology?

Although I am no big fan of Hegel, I am suspicious of the claim that Hegel remained a thinker of transcendence.  This does not seem to correspond to the letter of Deleuze's criticism of Hegel.  There, it will be recalled, Deleuze draws a distinction between organic and orgiastic representation in which difference is subordinated to difference in two ways.  In organic representation it makes a great deal of sense to maintain that identity remains transcendent to being insofar as there is a gap that is retained to the relationship between the individual and the species.  Here we have all the problems of participation in Plato and the problems of substance in Aristotle, which carry through the philosophical tradition in various ways up to present.  In orgiastic representation we have identity carried to the infinite in such a way that it's able to capture both the individual and the universal in a single unity of the infinite (for Hegel anyway...  matters are different with Leibniz).  Here the issue isn't that identity is transcendent, but that negation is a derivative concept of difference.  In other words, Hegel's mediation fails to get at the articulations of the real in his dialectic of the universal and the particular.  Consequently, it is not that Hegel remains tied to transcendence but that his privilaging of identity fails to get at difference.

Incidentally, you might wish to rethink your use of "sub-representative" difference in describing Deleuze's project.  The "sub" (meaning below, underneath, beneath) of "subrepresentative" makes your discourse sound as if it's still tied to the logic of representation in the sense of attempting to account for it.  In articulating Deleuze's project as an attempt to get at the subrepresentative domain of difference your language suggests that representation is the telos of these subterranian processes.

Regarding whether I manage to reach the plane of immanence, that was not at all my aim in the post in question.  Ivind, who asks very good questions, was asking for an elucidation of a very specific passage in Deleuze where he is criticizing the Platonic conception of grounding.  Now, how is it at all possible to understand Deleuze's criticism is someone does not first understand what Plato's theory of grounding is?  Understanding Plato is thus a preliminary step to understanding Deleuze's criticism of Plato and the aim of my post was to shed some light on what Deleuze was referring to IN PLATO so that Deleuze's criticism might become more clear.  Deleuze's text is so literred with the history of philosophy, with references to conceptions of other thinkers, that it's nearly impossible to untangle without discussing these references in some detail.  That was my aim...  Nothing more, nothing less.  I was not attempting to discuss immanence, virtuality, intensity, multiplicity, difference, singularity or any of the other master-signs we might attribute to Deleuze, but simply Plato.  These other terms get deployed on a different plane of commentary.  Similarly, in Ivind's previous post he was asking a question about a specific passage in which Deleuze discusses Leibniz's conception of natural blockage with respect to concepts.  In these contexts it was appropriate to discuss Plato and Leibniz and not Deleuze's alternative to their conceptions.  Hopefully you will agree that Deleuze was very well grounded in the history of philosophy and that a great deal of DR is taken up with an *informed* critique of various moments in that history which continue to influence our thinking today.  Well if you concede that point, then you will agree that part of understanding the *radicality* of Deleuze's new conception will consist in precisely understanding the terms of this critique.  My exegesis was thus not so much devoted to elaborating Deleuze as it was devoted to making clear what he was referring to with respect to Leibniz and Plato.  I did not even begin to discuss his concrete criticism of these figures, nor the alternative he gives us.

You say you have an honest disagreement with me at all, given that the content of your posts sound as if you are not even addressing me.  Your tendency to attribute claims to your interlocutors that they did not make when they were quite clear, to ignore various levels of the text in question, and to emphasize only particular aspects of Deleuze suggests that you are addressing someone quite different than the person sitting here behind this screen.  In other words, there seems to be something fantasmatic in the perverted Deleuze you attribute to those who you respond to.  Your interlocutor loses either way.  If your interlocutor speaks of some other issue or philosopher besides Deleuze s/he is suddenly accused of remaining tied to the philosophy of representation, despite the fact that the interlocutor already recognizes that they are speaking of a philosopher of representation.  If your interlocutor discusses a particular passage in which Deleuze is criticizing another philosopher, s/he is suddenly suspect for not having discussed other passages...  Despite the fact that one cannot say all of Deleuze at once.  This, I think, is a dishonest form of disagreement which does more to obscure than to illuminate Deleuze's difficult texts.  As for being picked on, I am at least flattered that your name seems to appear inevitably two days apart from mine.  Given the passion you clearly have for Deleuze-- an idolatary perhaps? --these words of response from you must not amount to nothing, for we all know that the idolator loathes the contamination of the idol by anything mundane.  Somehow or other I've managed to get myself in the position of the claimant with respect to who gets to own the true Deleuze.  All of it smacks of a battle over the father.

Paul

  "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com> wrote:

Paul wrote:

"Your dogmatism and myopia concerning all things Deleuzian is astonishing.
If you insist on misconstruing my claim, I would much appreciate it if you
would cease "correcting" me. You seem to have a penchant for pointing out
the obvious, of pointing out what's taken for granted by anyone who
seriously reads Deleuze, such that you ignore all context regarding the
claims being made. It's interesting that your name only appears on the
list when either Nathan or myself post."


Dear Paul,

How can Deleuze, as you said, "meet Hegel's requirement of immanence"?
Deleuze does not even agree that Hegel HAS a requirement of immanence. If
I am "misconstuing", then I'm sorry it was not clear to me.

OF COURSE, it is obvious to you and any serious reader of Deleuze that his
plane of immanence is Spinozist. I am trying to suggest that, even though
you KNOW this, you are still not reaching that plane.

I am not trying to pick on you. I have an honest disagreement with you.