To begin, there are a few objectives I wish to make clear that I hope to achieve throughout our study of the Phenomenology. Of course, at the simplest level, I would like to obtain a greater degree of confidence about just what Hegel’s philosophical project is and how to clearly differentiate the concepts that he uses. This has already been coming along nicely in the span of the past month. The more specific concepts I am interested in have to deal with negativity/negation/determinate negation, subjectivity/identity, and history/nature. This is a segue into my next objective, which I expect to be more difficult than the first. I would like to have a decisive picture of how Adorno conceives of Hegel in relation to Deleuze’s conception of Hegel. Being well acquainted with Adorno’s work, my understanding of the relation between Hegel’s philosophical project and his at the very least feels somewhat clear. I currently have two essays left to complete in the 3 Studies , and I think the biggest hole in my Adorno knowledge would be in Negative Dialectics, which really seems to warrant a solid understanding of Hegel. Deleuze, on the other hand, is the tricky one. As some of you know very well by now, I have some serious issues with much of the scholarly engagement with Deleuze. That is why I mostly stick to the plethora of primary works. I firmly believe now that the apparent incommensurability between Adorno and Deleuze represents a much larger philosophical crux. And to some degree, I believe people are correct in identifying this crux as stemming from Hegel, or Hegelian concepts. But the two philosophers may represent two poles of scholarship that I shrink from. It always has to deal with Deleuze’s famous rejection of dialectics. Frankly, I’m nauseated by this issue and quite sick of discussing it. Deleuze and Hegel both share a deep initial ambiguity in their respective writing. It would be hypocritical to refuse to engage with Deleuze on the basis of this ambiguity if one calls themself a Hegelian. One has to read Deleuze in the same way that one would read Hegel, that is, by truly abandoning oneself to the matter at hand, the movement of the concept. In a certain sense, not to make Deleuze roll in his grave, I am finding that he might fulfill, or even do a better job at, a task Hegel takes up, a “scientific” task. Deleuze, as the transcendental empiricist, doesn’t want to only follow the dialectical movement of the concept, but also to map this movement, to follow its contours, its geography. This is the emphasis of geophilosophy that links the transcendental and the empirical. Benjamin takes us in this direction in the Theory of Knowledge/Progress section of the Arcades Project. Benjamin’s concepts are faithful enough to dialectics to genuinely open up a world of concepts that, at least to some extent, go well beyond the subject and object — for example, the very element of the “polarization” of historical elements found within the dialectic is what opens up into the forcefield, the constellation (AP 470). In many respects, this is the starting point for Deleuze’s philosophy, and it seems as if a thorough understanding of Benjamin might be required before even engaging with Deleuze. This section of the AP is the heart of the link between Adorno and Deleuze as it becomes the conceptual core of the most rigorous philosophical concepts that they naturally approach. And, most importantly, almost none of this would exist without Hegel. This makes the Deleuzian who takes Deleuze’s word regarding Hegel and refuses to critically engage with the latter’s thought one who, at the very least, commits the crime of dogmatism which might annul the possibility of understanding both Deleuze’s own thought or the possibility of even being able to critically engage with philosophical concepts to the degree that they demand at all. I believe that because Hegel is the one who Deleuze refused to write a monograph on, this is all the more reason to engage with Hegel more seriously than any other philosopher (Deleuze still engages with Hegel, not even always in a negative context, throughout his career, such as in A Thousand Plateaus and even in Cinema 2). And any Deleuzian who disagrees with this may very well be misunderstanding Deleuze’s project — what would really make Deleuze roll in his grave is taking his statements at face value without criticism, in fact, his entire project is to an extent one big productive act of critique. The glaring contradiction is obvious because what Deleuze asks of his readers, more than anything, is to take up his contributions to philosophical concepts and extend them in the same way that he himself did, which requires doing the “dirty work” of approaching the concepts that we presuppose the most about, assessing with the most patience the degree to which they can be rescued, released, set into motion, or evolved. Thus the third and final goal stems from the last goal — to attempt, to the best of my ability, to begin to follow Hegel in the manner of a new experience, open-mindedly. The critique can come after the movement subsides. My hunch is that, if done correctly, this reading can open up some truly unconventional, exciting, scary, and maybe even extremely philosophically important opportunities in the future.
In the preface to the Phenomenology Hegel writes, “Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. This power is identical with what we earlier called the Subject, which by giving determinateness an existence in its own element supersedes abstract immediacy, i.e. the immediacy which barely is, and thus is authentic substance: that being or immediacy whose mediation is not outside of it but which is this mediation itself” (¶32). Before this quote, Hegel writes that Spirit directly confronts death. Instead of shrinking from this ultimate negativity, Spirit “maintains itself in it” (¶32). Spirit “wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself” (¶32). This requires the greatest of strength, which can only be drawn from this very negativity or dismemberment, as the positive “closes its eyes to the negative” (¶32). Negativity is, therefore, necessary for Spirit. It is what allows Spirit to actualize itself, becoming historically reflected upon rather than being unexamined like Hegel criticizes popular science for doing up until this point. This act of self-reflection is essential, it is a “magical power” (I’d like to come back to this language. “Magical power” at first appears as something mythic – do we believe in critique only up until the point in which it is actually initiated? This can’t entirely be the case because this shift from mere sense-perception toward the consciousness of perception is a question to be followed through the very experience of the Phenomenology. If there is a truth-moment to this mythic language it is that even this “magical power” is not entirely realized in the human body, a historical people, hence it bears the traces of myth. It seems like this is a place in which something positive can be drawn from myth, an entirely new world, as long as we are aware that we are still in the clutches of mythic thought in order to use it against itself rather than accepting it at face value unreflectively. We can see these elements when Benjamin and later Adorno refer to the “magic circle” drawn by certain objects).Hegel, like Kant, proposes self-reflection, critique, as a faculty of the subject. But Hegel extends Kant in that this power of self-reflection “is identical with [...] the Subject” — self-reflecting consciousness is Subject. Mediation is not outside of the Subject, a tool, the Subject “is this mediation itself”. If consciousness is indeterminate to itself it is not yet Subject, this can’t be conjured a priori. This indeterminacy, immediate abstract sense-perception, “barely is” in comparison to the determinacy of the Subject. Hence, once again, the magical power as carrying the force of realizing what is essentially a world that was previously hidden.
After finishing Adorno’s essay, “Skoteinos, or How to Read Hegel”, I’d like to mention two particular passages that stood out to me. First, Adorno writes, “in its microstructure Hegel’s thought and its literary forms are what Walter Benjamin later called ‘dialectics at a standstill,’ comparable to the experience the eye has when looking through a microscope at a drop of water that begins to teem with life; except that what that stubborn, spellbinding gaze falls on is not firmly delineated as an object but frayed, as it were, at the edges” (133). I find it quite interesting that already in Hegel, in Hegel’s “microstructure” in particular, the phenomenon of dialectics at a standstill appears. I think what is essential here are the “literary forms” in particular — already in the preface certain images stand out (the veil, shadows, traces, flashes, ripening, wandering/travelling). Of course, Hegel is not the inventor of these “literary” concepts, they permeate the history of philosophy. But my question is how might Hegel in particular be using these concepts, concepts that appear somewhat apparitionally (hence the focus on the dialectic at a standstill), in his own particular way? How might this "microstructure” be proper to Hegel to some degree? An even harder question to answer is what are the historical tensions that give rise to these moments in the specific places in which they occur (since consciousness is not entirely independent from history, as Hegel emphasizes with the movement of Spirit)? This is all difficult since we are, to some degree, enchanted by these moments, our gaze is spellbinding, and at the same time indeterminate (we aren’t looking at a scientific “object”, the edges that demarcate objectivity are frayed). This is one of many reasons why Adorno continually emphasizes that something of Hegel’s writing continually escapes the reader, and that the task of exegesis is to some extent doomed from the start.
But, we have some tips nonetheless. Adorno writes, “Hegel has to be read against the grain, and in such a way that every logical operation, however formal it seems to be, is reduced to its experiential core. The equivalent of such experience in the reader is the imagination. If the reader wanted merely to determine what a passage meant or to pursue the chimera of figuring out what the author wanted to say, the substance of which he wants to attain philosophical certainty would evaporate for him” (139). While Hegel is certainly still putting forth “arguments”, we must note that the “microstructure” again attests to something that goes well beyond the static argumentative form. The preface to the Phenomenology emphasizes the illusoriness of pursuing the sense of certainty that will devolve into dead forms. The combination of experience and the faculty of imagination feels like where Hegel really picks up the torch from Kant, which is in turn a responsibility placed upon the reader. I find that in the thinkers that I am a broken record about (Adorno, Benjamin, Deleuze), this high degree of imagination is an absolute necessity for truly engaging with concepts (I appreciate Deleuze’s conception of geophilosophy for this reason, since imagination is required to map, create a cartography of, a given concept). But what better place to practice this skill than in Hegel? I think this aspect of imagination should continue to be in the background of our discussions and even the experiential aspect of working through the Phenomenology.
Discussing the section of the Phenomenology on sense-certainty, Hyppolite writes, “we can consider the sensuous certainty with which consciousness starts as at once its highest truth and its greatest error. This consciousness thinks that it has the richest, the truest, the most determinate knowledge, but its knowledge is the poorest where it imagines itself the richest, the most false where it imagines itself the truest, and, above all, the least determinate where it imagines itself the most determinate” (G&S 82). Simply put, any immediate sense-perception which imagines itself to fully grasp the true, or the object in its entirety, is at the same moment highly indeterminate and false. This reversal or movement from the experience of truth back to the reality of the false anticipates the ressentiment-filled false-consciousness that Nietzsche continually attacks, especially with regards to morality. The sense in which immediate sense-perception is at its “highest truth” is in its apparent proximity to the object, it is not yet clouded by assumptions, false notions, etc. Sense-perception experiences itself as not yet negating anything of the object, hence the feeling of entering into the object infinitely (¶91). But this is the most abstract form of truth in that consciousness fools itself, imagines, this immediacy to the object (¶91). Sense-certainty is appearance, semblance. This is because there is actually no knowledge of the object, “all that it says about what it knows is just that it is; and its truth contains nothing but the sheer being of the thing” (¶91). Immediate sense-certainty has no account of difference, the specificity of the object, or its uniqueness and relation to other objects in the world. This simple observation of Hegel carries some pretty damning consequences for much of philosophy’s current focus on phenomenology and Heidegger. At the very least, if we are to take Hegel seriously, it seems legitimate that if we wish to have a critical account of this abstract being, we cannot engage with it at the level of immediate phenomenological experience since we will be continually fooled by the semblance of truth in the object. On Nietzsche again, it seems that conceptual falseness, false morals, to some degree result in a kind of human that can not yet fully, or at least finds it difficult to, discern the immediate from the mediated, falsehood from truth. For this reason molar kinds of societal structures like religion are supported by the very minute orientations of the individual ressentiment-filled consciousness.
If sense-certainty and perception are relatively straightforward to grasp, it is the section on force that begins to present the crux of Hegel’s progression thus far. This section is both complex but also highly indicative of Hegel’s conception of the dialectic throughout the Phenomenology. For this reason, Henry Somers-Hall’s Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation identifies this chapter of the Phenomenology as offering particularly interesting insights with regards to the similarities and differences between Hegel and Deleuze’s project. While I will attempt to not be a broken record regarding Deleuze in a class that is to focus on Hegel, I agree with Somers-Hall that this section of the Phenomenology seems to more broadly characterize certain key elements of Hegel’s thought, which necessarily lends itself to comparison in order to begin broaching the second key question I posed in my first post. This comparison may even lead us to a better understanding of what Hegel is up to in this section. Furthermore, rather than walking through each individual step Hegel takes, we will instead jump to the key elements in order to analyze their broader role in Hegel’s system. This is already an open mistake if we were to read Hegel in this way, so I am presupposing a familiarity with the constant twists and turns of this section (there are a lot).
In the perception section, we left off with various qualities within given objects but we did not yet entirely broach the relationship between multiple objects or objects in their actual movement. This leads us to force, as it, according to Hyppolite, “expresses the necessity of the transition from one moment to the other” (G&S 120). Force introduces a temporal element that was not fully expressed in our preceding two sections. But force also expresses movement, or change. Hegel defines force as a movement, a movement between a unity which unfolds into diversity, and then arrives back again at a unity (¶136). But we can also conceive of force in two different ways — it is “distributed across two levels: force proper, which preserves the unity of force, and force as expressed manifoldly in appearance" (Somers-Hall 190). This leads us to some issues. First, this distinction just amplifies our initial tension between the universal and particular. Second, this opens up the relationship between forces: “it could only be force that was solicited by force” (Somers-Hall 191).
A partial resolution is found in the recognition that the truth of force is in thought, which leads us away from how it is differentiated in actuality (¶141). This is what takes us firmly to the realm of appearance: “play of forces is conceived of as a nonbeing, a surface show (Schein), the totality of which is appearance” (Somers-Hall 192). But appearance creates yet another conundrum: “the absolute universal of the inner truth of things appears as the rejection of appearance, as its pure negation [...] The beyond therefore turns out itself to be simply a void” (Somers-Hall 192). If we look for an absolute that extends beyond appearance now, a determinate inner truth, the pure negation of appearance now becomes nothing but a void. This leaves us with, according to Hegel, two decisions: “stop at the world of appearance, i.e. to perceive something as true which we know is not true” or to “fill [the void] up with reveries, appearances, produced by consciousness itself” (¶146). To go beyond mere form toward Truth, to the matter of understanding itself in its infinite diversity and variation, an understanding of content, requires addressing this void (G&S 127). Anything else is accepting the false as true. But the solution is for consciousness to produce appearances in which to populate the void, which is at least better than emptiness (¶146). This move is because “if consciousness relates not to the beyond, but to appearances, then the only content it is able to apply to the beyond is that found in appearance itself” (Somers-Hall 193). We still have a beyond, as this “does not imply that there is no supersensible world, but rather that the essence and ‘filling of the supersensible is appearance itself” the “supersensible is therefore appearance as appearance” (¶147, Pinkard). The supersensible is saved in and only through appearance, through this “filling” which is itself appearance.
Amidst the various movements of a phenomenon, “what subsists throughout this instability of the phenomenon, throughout the continuous exchange of its moments, is indeed difference, but difference taken up into thought and become universal, that is, the law of the phenomenon” (G&S 126). To Hegel, difference is the only site of continuity amidst the various moments of a phenomenon, and it is this difference that becomes law. Hegel sketches his system with the example of a lightning strike: “The single occurrence of lightning [...] is apprehended as a universal, and this universal is enunciated as the law of electricity; the ‘explanation’ then condenses the law into Force as the essence of the law. This Force, then, is so constituted that when it is expressed, opposite electricities appear, which disappear again into one another; that is, Force is constituted exactly the same as law” (¶154) [Contrast to Deleuze: “Lightning [...] distinguishes itself from the black sky but must also trail it behind, as though it were distinguishing itself from that which does not distinguish itself from it” (D/R 28)]. Our movement is from force as universal, which is then enunciated as a law, but then our explanation of the law, as tautology, brings us back again to force as the essential aspect of law. So our conundrum between universal and particular, and the implications that this has for a concept of difference, continues on. In other words, law, as in the realm of appearance, now has the same difficulties we found within force. The movement is as follows: “what is present [in Force] is not merely bare unity in which no difference would be posited, but rather a movement in which a distinction is certainly made but, because it is no distinction, is again cancelled” (¶155). It is this very movement that now permeates the supersensible.
If our first supersensible world is characterized by laws, a “tranquil kingdom” of identity, appearances, still immediate, the second supersensible world, the inverted world, is introduced as a way in which to keep the self-identity of the first from becoming totalizing or collapsing in on itself (¶156). The inverted world still remains appearance, but one characterized by pure difference, by “the principle of change and alteration” (¶157). The inverted world takes the form of the complete opposite of the word of laws, because difference was already present in the selfsame in the moment of negation and returning to itself. (¶156-7). In fact, the inverted world is exactly what completes this movement of the dialectic, as “the supersensible world of laws captures that which is identical, or permanent within the perceived world, it was unable to capture the other aspect of the world, namely, the movement inherent within it” which the inverted world solves on account of its principle of change (Somers-Hall 195).
But it is important to note that the inverted world does not add anything to the first supersensible world, it merely inverts the existing world of law (Somers-Hall 195). There is no actual split between worlds, because we end up with a spatialization in which one “opposite” is put “here” while the “other” is put “there” — we end up with a simultaneous arrangement in which one opposite is immediately present in itself, but at the same time it has the “other immediately present in it” (¶160). Therefore, the supersensible world becomes the inverted world, the inverted world prevails as difference, but not without a spatialization that simultaneously “underlies those differences and thus allows the opposite and the other to subsist without one another [...] in different places” (Somers-Hall 196). Inversion leads to a contradiction in appearance between an absolute inner difference and the sameness of this very difference — the contradiction itself motivates this “pure flux, or the opposition within itself” which prevents a collapse in the dialectic (¶160, Pinkard). The contradictory nature of the dialectic has practical implications, as Hyppolite writes, “by introducing contraction into thought, we avoid both the formalism of explanation and the empiricism of random differences” (G&S 134). In order to maintain the identity between identity and difference, this contradiction must be infinitely perpetuated by thought (¶161).
We can see that the dialectic as a system/movement relies upon several key elements: Identity, tautology, appearance, representation, etc. As Hegel progresses throughout the force section, it is as if we have a tower of blocks in which each moment is necessary in order for the whole system to not come tumbling down. But hearkening back to our starting point with sense-certainty, our foundation of this tower has fundamentally to do with these aforementioned concepts in particular. While certain a priori assumptions are truly unavoidable, we begin with, at the very least, the bare bones of a subject/object distinction: x senses y. We then introduce negation: y ≠ x. The force section, and especially with the conclusion of the inverted world, complicates these appearances significantly, but it still preserves a representative model built upon appearances. We can introduce difference into the x/y relationship, but it always serves a mediating, relational role between appearances. The subject may change, but so will the object then, and vice-versa. As Adorno continually notes (and as implicit in Hegel already), this is a historical/societal condition.
Deleuze takes issue with the representative system for many reasons. Primarily, even if difference or historical change is a part of the dialectical system via the inverted world, it seems as if it renders the x/y relationship as permanent through infinite thought. From the point of view of representation this is a good thing, as, anticipating the dialectic at a standstill, a collapse in this system would potentially result in barbarism, pure chaos, totalitarian irrationality. But if we think of the x/y relationship as the master/slave dialectic, infinite representation preserves this fundamental relationship in continually modified forms. This is not only possibly reactionary and anti-revolutionary, but it maintains a historical outlook in which actuality always negates possibility, since, as soon as the possible is actual the possible reveals itself as never actually possible all along, but always actual. Possibility would only become actual in a truly spontaneous rupture. Therefore possibility is semblance. It is never considered real. Like Leibniz, the best of all possible worlds is the only one that is actual. Hegel, in the Jena Logic writes that force is “the cause, as infinity, which itself is only in the form of possibility and has its actuality outside it” (47). But this leads to the very tautology of force that is sought to be overcome through the inverted world (Somers-Hall 198).
Both Hegel and Deleuze are in agreement over the skepticism toward possibility (Somers-Hall 199). Furthermore, they are still in agreement over the inverted world’s “principle of change and alteration” (¶157), which can be akin to the phenomenon of doubling that takes place in objects for Deleuze (D/R 209, 52). But more than just the historical implications of Hegel’s conception of the dialectic, Deleuze’s critique of representation finds that, from our starting point of sense-certainty, we were already too idealist. Since we start with the skeleton of the x/y relationship, Hegel is unable to account for what leads to this most basic form of sensory-input in the first place. In other words, what allows for any sensory experience at all? In order to answer this, Deleuze asserts that our starting point cannot be the x/y relationship, there must be something else that allows for us to start here at all. For Deleuze, the key to this question lies in an understanding of difference. He wants an account of difference on its own terms, since we are always, in the representative framework, only conceiving of difference in terms of negation with regards to at least two objects. Therefore, in the system of representation we are not actually speaking of difference, we are speaking of the x/y instead. This means, in order to actually understand difference, we cannot do so via representation — an account of difference must be non-representational altogether. Whereas the inverted world, for Hegel, allows for the spatialization of the ‘here’ and ‘there’ in one world via the dialectic, the concept of difference itself requires a radical split in worlds or “planes”, a split between the representational and the non-representational. These two worlds inform one another, but the split implies that in no way can we cram actual difference into representation. But this split in worlds allows Deleuze to use Bergson’s concepts of the actual and virtual, where the virtual is in no negative relationship to the actual and remains “fully real” (D/R 208). The virtual is not in any case the same as the possible then (D/R 211). Instead of the relationship between the possible and actual, which would be the unreal versus the real, the virtual and actual act as two pure abstractions in which every phenomena or state falls between. Although this is now very different from Hegel, there is a strange affinity between the two thinkers here [For Hegel, the immediate givens of consciousness furnish not a discontinuous sequence of terms but, as Bergson later showed, an inexpressible transition” (G&S 131)]. If it is the moments of transition, the moments of doubt or refutation that thought stumbles to in the dialectic that are some of the most important moments of the phenomenology, Deleuze finds a similar tendency in the non-representational, as he writes, “It’s not beginnings and endings that count but middles” (Negotiations, 161). Deleuze, therefore, does not eschew the actual or representation altogether, his interest lies in the in-between space of the actual and the virtual, of the representational field and the non-representational field.
An objection might be raised that non-representation is the same as an empty void or the black cow night, therefore this kind of thought is entirely blocked. To a certain extent this is correct, we cannot think of non-representation in-itself or else we get entirely lost in the void. But it is important to note that what precedes the x/y relationship in the non-representational field is not pure emptiness but an immense chaos. It is only when this chaos is organized, brought to a standstill and then represented, that we can have either perception or sensory input. So pure abstract representation appears as totalized reification, while pure abstract non-representation is total chaos. This means that, “Deleuze is [...] forced to walk a fine line between not pushing difference as far as opposition, as this would allow the Hegelian dialectic of the inverted world to come into operation, but giving it content, in order to avoid it becoming a pure beyond” (SH 202). It is a narrow but necessary tightrope.
We must still begin to think to what degree it is possible to think non-representationally. To do so would be to require putting “non-thought” into thought, or to force thought to think. The non-representational thought is to be contrasted to the kind of “common-sense” presuppositions that representational thought is built upon (D/R 138-9). It is this element of beginning with common sense that preserves the historical conformity of philosophical thought. Non-representational thought essentially universalizes Kantian critique to the point where no a priori is safe, which is why Nietzsche pioneers this mode of thought. When representational thought points toward the paradoxical nature of non-representational thought, it correctly identifies paradox or non-sense as the state of non-representational thought. So as soon as we begin to think in a way in which, once again, thought is literally forced to think in terms that can no longer apply to the x/y relation, we are already proving the state of paradox as such.
But in a more concrete way, materialism gives us numerous examples where the negativity of the subject/object relationship is irrelevant. Deleuze, in advocating for the non-representational, uses the Bergsonian example of white light, “[in] which all of the colors are united in such a way that they maintain their difference [...] the elements do not now exclude one another but interpenetrate” (Somers-Hall 207). This displays how Deleuze accounts for both a representational and non-representational field — as representation, white finds its identity in all that it is not, but as non-representation, white becomes a medium, field, or plane, in which no color excludes the others but instead they exist together simultaneously (It is for this reason Deleuze writes, “forms of the negative do appear in actual terms and real relations, but only in so far as these are cut off from the virtuality which they actualise” (D/R 207). See the next paragraph). This simultaneous relationship is what makes the non-representational field a multiplicity, as multiplicity is not “a combination of the many and the one, but rather an organisation belonging to the many as such, which has no need whatsoever of unity in order to form a system” (D/R 182). Multiplicity contains difference within itself that does not exclude. Once again, Nietzsche pioneers non-representational thought: “In Nietzsche the essential relation of one force to another is never conceived of as a negative element in the essence. In its relation with the other the force which makes itself obeyed does not deny the other or that which it is not, it affirms its own difference and enjoys this difference” (Nietzsche and Philosophy, 8-9). Simply put, the representational field is defined by negation as pseudo-difference, while multiplicity is defined by the affirmation of pure difference, which ends up carrying great metaphysical implications especially with regards to the eternal return in contrast to the movement of Spirit (The issue then is that Nietzsche describes a historical movement that is real, but it errs extremely close to an abstract pure virtuality – the ubermensch does not exist as mostly actualized yet).
Somers-Hall sums up where we conclude perfectly, as he writes, “The Hegelian philosophy of negation can be understood from a Deleuzian perspective [...] This fact does not [...] entail a rejection of Hegelian dialectic” (210). As Adorno implicitly points toward, there are moments in Hegel’s thought in which it feels as if the dialectic itself creaks and groans under the weight of its constant contradictions that force its rapid movement, and it is only in this sense that Hegel is not empty bourgeois apologetics (as this tendency is just as present in Kant). While Hegel may not be able to account for the Deleuzian perspective, the sheer strain thought is put under in his writing anticipates the real complications that begin when we steer philosophical thought toward multiplicity. And maybe thought is not yet ready for this kind of chaos, maybe we are too afraid or too weary, beat down, or full of ressentiment. Furthermore, the picture we have painted of both Hegel and Deleuze in this post is extremely crude. The Nietzschean position of rage against the injustice of representation is warranted but leads toward a crude picture of the dialectic that erases its intricacy. This is an error Deleuze makes. So it seems that the best understanding of Hegel possible is necessary, not only because the dialectic includes many intricacies and hidden gems in its very movement, but also in order to understand the role representation has in its relation to multiplicity, which is absolutely essential to keep us from falling into the traps of contentless abstraction which continually perverts the precision that defines the truly cutting-edge nature of Deleuze’s thought.
I believe it is worthwhile to briefly return to ¶109 of the Sense-Certainty section, to its conclusion. Last class, I asked what the role of Hegel’s conception of nature is in regards to the “mystery” of “sense-objects”. After sitting with this paragraph I think it displays the elements of Hegel’s thought that Adorno in 3 Studies identifies as anticipating the dialectic at a standstill.
The act of initiation, of being initiated into the mystery of objects, plays a crucial role in metaphysics in general. Hegel’s repeated emphasis on initiation hearkens back to Plato’s Phaedrus, in which Socrates re-initiates Phaedrus to the Dionysiac elements of eros that can be found in the rituals of “bread and wine”. But, as Hegel also points out, initiation, like initiation into a philosophical mode of thought, leads to despair in doubting the immediacy of things, as the “mystery” itself points toward what is beyond the immediate.
Both Nature and animals celebrate “these open Mysteries”. Rousseau’s influence on Hegel seems clear here, as the state of Nature is not to be returned to in a historically reactionary way (not a move away from society), but instead Nature’s relationship to mystery can be radically transformed, or perhaps fully realized in a just society. This obviously requires a conception of the state of Nature.
Deleuze correctly identifies how Rousseau is the precursor to Kafka with regards to both “anti-conformism” and humor (Desert Islands, 52). But we can extend this and say that it is only through the animal that mystery finds the degree of intensity that Hegel identifies as necessary to emphasize, and furthermore, it is through the animal that Kafka constantly points toward the stakes of the dialectic at a standstill. Hegel mentions that the twofold movement of initiation and despair just as much applies to animals, in fact, animals are the “most profoundly initiated into it”. But it is the subsequent despair that allows for the violence of self-preservation. Kafka’s short story “A Crossbreed” fully reveals how the dialectic at a standstill is anticipated in the animal’s relationship to mystery. The story follows the same movement: the lamb/cat is initiated into a becoming with the narrator in their shared tears, and in a moment where the animal speaks to the narrator and the narrator acts as if he understands in a moment of mimesis, of recognition, the animal joyfully dances around, a joy and humor shared between Rousseau and Kafka. But the story quickly shifts in the last paragraph, where the narrator wonders if the blade of the butcher’s knife would be a release for the animal, to which the story ends by describing how the animal looks at the narrator with “human understanding, challenging me to do the thing of which both of us are thinking”. But this action itself remains a mystery. Would it be the move away from recognition toward the affirmation of their difference as a collective entity, where the new crossbreed is a kind of human that shares the childlike joy of the animal? Or would it be mutual destruction, the nothingness of death, the blade prevailing? We now have a trajectory of thinkers that lead us to combining the concept of the mystery to the dialectic at a standstill, all of which is implicit in this striking passage of the Phenomenology.
The obvious concept to discuss in this week’s reading according to our shared interests is the role of labor in Hegel’s thought, or rather, in thought itself. To begin, an understanding of labor initially requires an understanding of desire. To Hegel, “self-consciousness is Desire in general” (¶167). Self-consciousness seeks to cement itself as recognized through a battle in which the stakes are death. The other is that which desire seeks as a means of recognizing its very self. Hegel illustrates this struggle through the section on lordship and bondage. This section culminates in a description of labor: “work [...] is desire held in check, fleetingness staved off” (¶195). Hegel’s characterization of labor cannot be understated. Labor becomes a necessary means for establishing permanence. Hence, labor comes as a direct result of the death-struggle consciousness has with itself. The slave itself is characterized as, “the slave not of the master, but of life; he is a slave because he has retreated in the face of death, preferring servitude to liberty in death” (Hyppolite 173). Self-preservation is the root of this violent struggle for recognition: the master seeks recognition through the slave, the slave seeks recognition from the master as a means of avoiding the non-identity of death, and labor becomes the means for maintaining recognition through the sublimation of desire. In Hegel’s words, “without the discipline of service and obedience, fear remains at the formal stage, and does not extend to the known real world of existence” (¶196). This leads us to the unhappy-conscious, “the truth of this entire dialectic” (Hyppolite, 156). Fear is then the necessary force for actualizing labor as a means of avoiding totalitarian fleetingness. Adorno sums up the role of labor in what we now can characterize as representative thought: "Because nothing is known but what has passed through labor, labor, rightly and wrongly, becomes something absolute, and disaster becomes salvation [...] For the absolutization of labor is that of the class relationship: a humankind free of labor would be free of domination. Spirit knows that without being permitted to know it; this is the poverty of philosophy” (Adorno, 3 Studies, pg 26). Because everything we know passes through labor, what we know is the bracketing or reification of self-consciousness that leads us to schuld and ressentiment. But the truth-content of labor is that which transcends mere self-preservation, the fulfillment of labor as its own abolition and thus a genuine freedom not conditioned by discipline and obedience. Because the class relationship is the form of universalized labor, the territorialization of desire, Adorno notes we cannot by any means snap our fingers and step into an unmediated world no longer characterized by labor. Furthermore, neither could we abstractly will the virtual’s transformation into the actual. This would take the form of the vulgar idealism that utopian thought gets accused of. Instead, as materialists (to which we can see Hegel’s idealism already strongly pointing toward), labor must turn against itself in order to become something more akin to the joyful transience of play, or lead us toward something of a Dionysiac wisdom.
After our discussion today, I have a few pretty broad connections to make. As I pointed out with Hyppolite, we move from the strict causality of laws to the limits of nature. This is the moment in which reason must transcend nature, which does not have history, toward an actual history. Furthermore, our notion of history now constitutes an objective or goal, which is to realize the dialectical movement Hegel has been sketching. We are then able, from the standpoint of the goal, to retroactively understand each necessary moment or determination that got us to this point.
Once Hegel critiques crude Kantian idealism, he applies the same critique to the understanding of nature at the time. It is in these moments of the Phenomenology that Hegel cannot be pinned as dogmatically idealist or materialist. Furthermore, it seems that the key of this section lies in the relationship between history and nature. Hegel’s understanding of history lends itself to be applied to biology. This is the link between Cuvier and Hegel — because reason finds itself in nature, our move toward a retroactive construction of a given process applies for biological phenomena as well. Humans just happen to be the ones who can fully exercise this faculty. So both Cuvier and Hegel share this emphasis on a retroactive construction.
If it isn’t too crude, we can dive in and out of the spheres of both history and biology, or simply discuss the plane between the two. As many have noted, some aspect of Hegel’s thought lends itself to historicism. This is an issue. Hegel/Cuvier’s biologism cannot account for deviance from the “goal” just as a historicist understanding of human history cannot account for any deviation from a notion of “progress” prescribed in advance by those who historically dominate others. So the key lies in Benjamin’s theses as we discussed today. Benjamin wishes to understand what we could call historical deviance. This is because it is only in deviance, or rather, those who must be exterminated for the sake of progress, that any revolutionary potential lies. Without this, the resolution or goal of Hegel’s system would actually end up as pure determinism toward totalitarianism. Biologically, Deleuze and Guattari note that it is Geoffroy who upholds a science of deviance, of monstrosity. Thus, while Cuvier views deviances from a goal as negative or perhaps cannot even account for them, Geoffroy attests to monstrosity as a positive form. This is because there is no teleology in the form of a goal, only immanence in the continual processes of nature itself. For this reason, the revolutionary moment does not answer every mystery of human experience, as long as there is life there will be new questions.
One might object and say that Benjamin still fundamentally agrees with Hegel’s emphasis on retrospection — the revolutionary moment would allow for a new history that is no longer predicated on the erasure of domination from memory. We can already practice this through historical materialism. But I think this is a moment where we must recall the differentiation between representative thought and non-representative thought we discussed in post #5. Any thought that firmly cements itself in either pole is an abstraction (although this can still be helpful). The memory of the historicist must crudely capture events while excluding others. Furthermore, it is always the memory of the subject. Historical materialist memory takes us a step further toward non-representation, which happens to perhaps be attested to in its strongest form by Proust, because the illusoriness of both subjective and societal memory is replaced by a genuine historical force, one immanent to the nonrepresentational which becomes actualized. Simply put, if historicism projects the ressentiment of a memory that is symbolic and subjective, the actual world of class domination, the genuine revolutionary moment that the historical materialist points to replaces memory with the eternal return. The law of the eternal return does not destroy the principle of retrospection, but it does destroy any semblance of historicity.
The philosophy of science was so important to Deleuze and Guattari for the reason that it attests to the shared vision of the historical materialism of Benjamin’s. If the true subject of the historical/political sphere for Benjamin was the oppressed, for Deleuze and Guattari it is the minoritarian. Strangely enough, it is probably Hegel, better than anyone else at the time, who begins to think nature and history as mutually playing a necessary role in the same process.
Now that we have finally arrived at Spirit, there were a few moments that Hyppolite in particular points toward that I found worth sharing. One observation regards the law of the heart. Hyppolite notes that Hegel is somewhat explicitly referring to Rousseau throughout this section (285). But the most important moment regarding the law of the heart is that the law does not find itself fully actualized. This has noteworthy implications for our previous discussion of nature, and Rousseau’s conception of nature, but the law of the heart also serves as the bridge between nature and society, the social contract for Rousseau and what we soon see in the relationship between our fledgling Spirit and Law for Hegel. Furthermore, Hyppolite notes, “universal spirit is the milieu in which specific individuals subsist, and it is the product of their activity” (Hyppolite 278). Activity is essential to go beyond mere introspection, turning within oneself, and instead move toward actual creation, human history. Activity enables Spirit’s historical movement as a milieu of individuals in a greater whole, a kind of political community that Rousseau often emphasizes (and we’ll see in Marx, as per Chelsea’s emphasis). Essentially, we are beginning to approach some serious moments of potential “reconciliation”, but at the same time we cannot get too ahead of ourselves and simply will it in advance, as Hegel continually emphasizes. But it is interesting just how much Hegel and Rousseau here seem to be in accord.
In a crucial passage, Hyppolite describes Spirit as the “‘I that is a we and the we that is an I.’ This genuine work, the spiritual subject as history, has not yet been posed. In order for that to happen, the thing itself must be transformed from a universal predicate to a subject. And this requires a consideration of the interplay of individualities which as we have noted repeats in another form the mediating movement of self-consciousness” (310). This is a very high-stakes moment in the Phenomenology, as we have clearly arrived at the potentially utopian element(s) of Spirit. Until this point, we have continually dealt with predicates, objects, as a kind of necessity in the movement of the dialectic. But, as we have seen, true self-consciousness is also the consciousness of the object. This is the moment of the transformation of the universal predicate to the subject. But now we have a new can of worms: has this transformative, or rather, revolutionary moment happened? Is it possible? More specifically, does the harmony between we and I keep the identity of these terms, these representations, or does the dialectic completely, finally, explode? To what extent does this moment then, as a moment of “cuddling” up to the object, entail identity, or rather, is the moment of “cuddling” rather a moment of “becoming”? We must continue with these questions in mind.