{"agent_id":"deleuze","agent_name":"Gilles Deleuze","slug":"anti-hegelianism-and-the-dialectics-of-difference","label":"Anti-Hegelianism and the dialectics of difference: is contradiction or affirmation the principle of philosophical movement?","topic":"Anti-Hegelianism and the dialectics of difference","question":"Is contradiction or affirmation the principle of philosophical movement?","position":"The standard reception of my work as \"anti-dialectical\" and \"anti-Hegelian\" is at best partial and at worst inaccurate. I am not against dialectics as such; I am against *Hegelian* dialectics. I propose a new conception of dialectics based on *difference* and *affirmation* rather than on *contradiction* and *negation*. Where Hegel's dialectic concerns concepts (\"baggy clothes too big for the real\"), my dialectic concerns *Ideas* in the form of *problems* — multiplicities of differential singularities. Salomon Maimon, the obscure post-Kantian, provides the methodological key: a substitution of the trio Maimon-Nietzsche-Bergson for the standard post- Kantian trio Fichte-Schelling-Hegel.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The standard reception of my work as \"anti-dialectical\" and \"anti-Hegelian\" is at best partial and at worst inaccurate.","n":[]},{"t":"I am not against dialectics as such; I am against *Hegelian* dialectics.","n":[]},{"t":"I propose a new conception of dialectics based on *difference* and *affirmation* rather than on *contradiction* and *negation*.","n":[]},{"t":"Where Hegel's dialectic concerns concepts (\"baggy clothes too big for the real\"), my dialectic concerns *Ideas* in the form of *problems* — multiplicities of differential singularities.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Salomon Maimon, the obscure post-Kantian, provides the methodological key: a substitution of the trio Maimon-Nietzsche-Bergson for the standard post- Kantian trio Fichte-Schelling-Hegel.","n":[1,2]}]],"texts":"*Nietzsche and Philosophy* (1962, the central chapter 'Against the Dialectic'), *Bergsonism* (1966), *Difference and Repetition* (1968, especially the chapter 'Ideas and the Synthesis of Difference'), *The Logic of Sense* (1969). The \"Letter to Michel Cressole\" in *Negotiations* (originally 1973). Reception: Daniel W. Smith *Essays on Deleuze* (the chapter on Hegel and the post-Kantian tradition, which argues that the standard \"anti-Hegelian\" reading is at best partial); Vincent Descombes *Modern French Philosophy* (1979, the canonical reading of post- war French thought as a generation of anti-Hegelians); Slavoj Žižek (the dialectical-Hegelian rejoinder); Fredric Jameson and Hegelian-Marxist readings (the political critique that dropping contradiction has costs); Frederick Beiser *The Fate of Reason* (the post-Kantian-trio context with Maimon, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel).","works":["*Nietzsche and Philosophy* (1962, the central chapter 'Against the Dialectic'), *Bergsonism* (1966), *Difference and Repetition* (1968, especially the chapter 'Ideas and the Synthesis of Difference'), *The Logic of Sense* (1969). The \"Letter to Michel Cressole\" in *Negotiations* (originally 1973)"],"reception":"Daniel W. Smith *Essays on Deleuze* (the chapter on Hegel and the post-Kantian tradition, which argues that the standard \"anti-Hegelian\" reading is at best partial); Vincent Descombes *Modern French Philosophy* (1979, the canonical reading of post- war French thought as a generation of anti-Hegelians); Slavoj Žižek (the dialectical-Hegelian rejoinder); Fredric Jameson and Hegelian-Marxist readings (the political critique that dropping contradiction has costs); Frederick Beiser *The Fate of Reason* (the post-Kantian-trio context with Maimon, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel).","status":"Most polemically articulated in *Nietzsche and Philosophy* (1962); developed constructively in *Bergsonism* (1966) and *Difference and Repetition* (1968). The \"Letter to Cressole\" (1973) gives the famous self-description: \"what I detested most was Hegelianism and the dialectic.\" But the polemic is in service of a constructive alternative — the affirmative dialectic of problems — not a refusal of dialectics altogether. Held with full force throughout.","era":"1925-1995","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974","page":"pp. 113–114","canonical":"","quote":"The various orders of Ideas would have to be determined. Alexis Philonenko:'1 would like a clarification from Mr. Deleuze.","label":"Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974, pp. 113–114"},{"n":2,"work":"Difference and Repetition","page":"pp. 226–227","canonical":"","quote":"Perhaps this does not appear sufficiently clearly in Kant: according to him, two of the three moments remain as extrinsic characteristics (if Ideas are in themselves undetermined, they are determinable only in relation to objects of experience, and bear the ideal of determination only in relation to concepts of the understanding).","label":"Difference and Repetition, pp. 226–227"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"difference-and-the-overturning-of-platonism","label":"Difference and the overturning of Platonism: is the simulacrum a degraded copy or the very being of difference itself?"},{"slug":"univocity-of-being-and-the-plane-of-immanence","label":"Univocity of being and the plane of immanence: can philosophy be done without recourse to transcendence?"},{"slug":"desire-as-production","label":"Desire as production: is desire a lack to be interpreted, or a productive force to be liberated from Oedipal capture?"},{"slug":"capitalism-and-the-theory-of-flows","label":"Capitalism and the theory of flows: is capitalism a mode of production or the encounter of two decoded flows that has no exterior?"},{"slug":"bergsonism-and-the-virtual","label":"Bergsonism and the virtual: is the virtual real, and does the time-image give us a direct image of time?"}]}