Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation: Dialectics of Negation and Difference (Suny Series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory)

Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation provides a critical account of the key connections between twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and nineteenth-century German idealist G. W. F. Hegel. While Hegel has been recognized as one of the key targets of Deleuze's philosophical writing, Henry Somers-Hall shows how Deleuze's antipathy to Hegel has its roots in a problem the two thinkers both try to address: getting beyond a philosophy of judgment and the restrictions of Kant's transcendental idealism. By tracing the development of their attempts to address this problem, Somers-Hall offers an interpretation of the sweep of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, providing a series of analyses of key moments in the history of thought, including the logics of Aristotle and Russell, Kant's own philosophy of judgment, and the philosophy of Bergson. He also develops a novel interpretation of Deleuze's philosophy of difference, and situates his philosophy in relation to the broader post-Kantian tradition. In addition to Deleuze's relation to Hegel, the book makes important contributions to the study of Deleuze's philosophy of mathematics, as well as to the study of several underappreciated areas of Hegel's own philosophy. Contents 6 List of Illustrations 10 List of Abbreviations 12 Acknowledgments 16 Introduction 19 PART ONE: THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION 27 1. Deleuze and Transcendental Empiricism 29 Introduction 29 Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason 32 Sartre and The Transcendence of the Ego 41 Deleuze and The Logic of Sense 53 Conclusion 56 2. Difference and Identity 59 Introduction 59 Aristotle 61 The Genus and Equivocity in Aristotle 67 Change and the Individual 70 Aquinas 73 Symbolic Logic 74 Preliminary Conclusions 79 Hegel and Aristotle 80 Zeno 82 Conclusion 84 PART TWO: RESPONSES TO REPRESENTATION 85 3. Bergsonism 87 Introduction 87 Bergson's Account of Kant and Classical Logic 88 Bergson's Meth od of Intuition 96 Bergson and the Two Kinds of Multiplicity 103 Conclusion 107 4. The Virtual and th e Actual 109 Introduction 109 The Two Multiplicities 111 Depth in Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty 129 Deleuze and the Structure of the Problem 137 Bergson on Ravaisson 139 Conclusion 140 5. Infinite Thought 143 Introduction 143 Kant and Hegel 143 The Metaphysical Deduction and Metaphysics 152 From Being to Essence 154 The Essential and the Inessential 157 The Structure of Reflection 160 The Determinations of Reflection 164 The Speculative Proposition 168 The Concept of Essence in Aristotle and Hegel 173 Conclusion 175 PART THREE: BEYOND REPRESENTATION 177 6. Hegel and Deleuze on Ontology and the Calculus 179 Introduction 179 The Calculus 180 Hegel and the Calculus 184 Berkeley and the Foundations of the Calculus 188 Deleuze and the Calculus 190 Hegel and Deleuze 196 The Kantian Antinomies 197 Conclusion 204 7. Force, Difference, and Opposition 205 Introduction 205 Force and the Understanding 206 The Inverted World 213 Deleuze and the Inverted World 218 The One and the Many 222 Conclusion 227 8. Hegel, Deleuze, and the Structure of the Organism 229 Introduction 229 The Philosophy of Nature 230 Hegel and Evolution 232 Hegel's Account of the Structure of the Organism 235 Hegel, Cuvier, and Comparative Anatomy 239 Deleuze, Geoffroy, and Transcendental Anatomy 242 Teratology and Teleology 247 Contingency in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature 251 Conclusion 254 Conclusion 257 Notes 265 Introduction 265 Chapter 1 265 Chapter 2 272 Chapter 3 276 Chapter 4 278 Chapter 5 281 Chapter 6 284 Chapter 7 288 Chapter 8 289 Conclusion 291 Bibliography 293 Index 303