Pt2.Ch5.Sb10 Somers-Hall’s Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. ‘Conclusion’. summary

by Corry Shores
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[Note: All boldface and underlining is my own. It is intended for skimming purposes. Bracketed comments are also my own explanations or interpretations. Also, proofreading is incomplete.]

 

Henry Somers-Hall

 

Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation.

Dialectics of Negation and Difference

 

Part 2: Responses to Representation

Chapter 5: Infinite Thought

Subdivision 10: Conclusion

 

 

Brief Summary:

Hegel’s dialectic overcomes the problems in Aristotle’s and Kant’s representational systems. It does so because it conceives its terms as both in opposition yet inter-inclusive. This allows him to give totality to his system and to explain becoming.

Summary

Aristotle’s and Kant’s systems had problems that Hegel’s ontology resolves. For Hegel, thought develops immanently. One of the limitations of Kant’s method of deriving the categories was that it was based on the assumption that thought can only be finite. But for Hegel, the finite contains the infinite. In fact, we are capable of infinite thought, which means we can conceive of such contradictions as speculative propositions, for example God is being. Here we have identity, as God and being are equated, but difference, because they are both subjects and they are both different. Yet there is movement here, as God is thrown back upon himself but as different from himself, as being.

We can now see that Hegel and Deleuze provide two divergent attempts to overcome representation. We have also seen that in their diagnoses, both systems agree on what is problematic in classical thought. In the final three chapters we will explore these two systems' relations to each other, and in particular whether difference itself is sustainable or must always be pushed to its limit as contradiction. We will do so by drawing on the genetic account of their divergent development from a shared problematic given up to this point. (157)

 

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, Henry (2012) Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. Dialectics of Negation and Difference. Albany: SUNY.