The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2003) Vol.

XLI

Thought after Dialectics:

Deleuzes Ontology of Sense
Nathan Widder
University of Exeter
In one of his first publications, the 1954 review of his teacher,
J e a n Hyppolites, Logic and Existence, Deleuze sets the
direction for his subsequent work i n relation to Hegelian
dialectics. In this review, Hegel is praised, through Hyppolites
reading of him against the anthropological readings of the likes
of KojBve, for demanding t h a t philosophy be a n ontology of
sense: Philosophy must be ontology, it cannot be anything else;
but there is no ontology of essence, there is only a n ontology of
sense.2By this one gesture, Deleuze places his thought and
Hegels on a common t e r r a i n a n d with respect to a single
question: what concept of difference is needed for an ontology of
sense to be adequate to a philosophy of immanence?
Hyppolite maintains t h a t Hegels concept of speculative
contradiction eliminates all reference to a second world beyond
~
the world of appearance, so that Immanence is ~ o m p l e t e . He
further criticizes the likes of Bergson, Spinoza, Leibniz, and
Hume-who are all marshaled by Deleuze against Hegel-for
relying on conceptions of difference that are less than contradiction and therefore inadequate to the demands of immanence.
Deleuze, however, turns this criticism around: although Hegel
shows that philosophy must be an ontology of sense, his negative notion of difference as contradiction is not up to the task.
Indeed, for Deleuze, it is dialectical contradiction that is less

Dr. N a t h a n W i d d e r i s a Lecturer in Political Theory a t the

University of Ereter. His research focuses on issues of power, identity,
meaning, and knowledge, and he has approached these issues through
explorations of contemporary Continental philosophy on the one hand
and ancient, early Christian, and medieval philosophies on the other
hand. Dr.Widders journal publications include articles in Angelaki,
Contenental Philosophy Review (formerly Man and World), Parallax,
Theory & Event, and History of Political Thought. He has recently
published his first monograph, Genealogies of Difference (University
of Illinois Press, 2002), and is currently working on a second book on
the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze.

45 1

Nathan Widder

t h a n difference, a n d i t fails on its own terms to provide a

concrete unity of being and expression because i t completes
immanence only i n abstraction. This failure shows how
Hegelian sense, for Deleuze, rests upon an abstract conception
of difference, while the concomitant deconstruction of Hegels
thought at the point highlighted by Hyppolite himself-the
transition from phenomenology to logic-clears the path for a
positive, non-dialectical difference to underpin a concrete
ontology of sense and, through this, complete a philosophy of
immanence. One can thus see in Deleuzes review of Logic and
Existence a n d his l a t e r works a sustained answer to t h e
ontology of contradiction presented by Hyppolites Hegel.
The following will trace Hyppolites explication of Hegels
ontology i n order to locate t h e point of r u p t u r e where t h e
dialectic falters. This rupture helps to specify the criteria for
a n o t h e r concept of difference. Turning to Nietzsche and
Philosophy4-a text often admonished for giving a reductive
a n d caricaturish account of Hegels a n d demonstrating
Deleuzean philosophys inability to coherently move beyond
dialectid-Deleuzes conception of non-dialectical synthesis
will be presented through his rethinking of Hegels notion of
force and his dialectic of quantity and quality. Finally, drawing
primarily upon The Logic of Sense,7 Deleuzes alternative
ontology will be outlined in his account of the Event of sense
that brings together Ideas and bodies. What will be shown is
t h a t Deleuzes thought poses a consistent response to dialectics, working with a n d a g a i n s t Hegelian philosophy a n d
reflecting t h e question Deleuze poses n e a r t h e end of h i s
review: can we not construct a n ontology of difference which
would not have to go up to contradiction, because contradiction
would be less than difference and not more?* One might even
see Deleuze as both rivaling and completing Hegels project of
immanence-just as Deleuze sees Nietzsche as rivaling and
completing Kants project of critical philosophyg-appreciating,
at t h e same time, t h a t Deleuzes work may be seen to rival
and complete any number of philosophical projects.
1. Hegel and the Ontology of Sense

What is meant by sense? Hyppolite quotes Hegel to explain the

ambiguity of the term.
Sense is t h i s wonderful word which is used in two opposite
meanings. On the one hand i t means the organ of immediate
apprehension [i.e., the sense of smell], but on the other hand we
mean by it the sense, the significance, the thought, the universal
underlying the thing. And so sense is connected on the one hand
with t h e immediate external aspect of existence, and on t h e
other hand with its inner essence.O

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Thought after Dialectics

Sense therefore invokes the divergent realms of thought and
thing, concept a n d object, universal a n d singular. It also,
however, refers to surface. A surface covers or hides what is
underneath, even if there is really nothing underneath to hide.
Here sense is at least initially opposed to essence or being,
though it may eventually sublate being or show itself to be the
essence of being, leaving nothing but a surface hiding only that
there is nothing to hide: There is nothing to see behind the
curtain ... t h e secret is t h a t t h e r e is no secret. But t h e
surface also refers to the plane where divergent realms meet
and relate, as the surface of the ocean divides but also connects
water and air. And no matter how thin it is, the surface remains
different from these realms, even while these realms a r e
nothing without the surface that delimits them.12 Surface sense
is here posed as a n excess. Hegelian sense brings all these
diverse aspects into play, together with t h e additional
meaning-found in the French sens and the German Sinn but
not the English term-of direction:13 sense is the surface t h a t
divides, holds together, and constitutes through its synthetic
function, leaving nothing outside of sense in either the depths
of things or the heights of Ideas. Even nonsense is therefore
part of sense. Moreover, for Hegel sense is expressiue-sense
expresses being, even while there is no being prior to or outside
of this expression. Sense is indeed the self-expression of being,
indicating t h a t a n ontological language of being exists that is
different from, even though it may appear within and speak
through, empirical or human language.
An ontology of sense overcomes the remaining aporias of
metaphysical thought between the empirical and the essential,
t h e singular a n d t h e universal, subjective certainty a n d
objective truth, the subject who speaks and the object about
which one speaks. I t surmounts the ineffable, in the form of
either the absolutely individual or the universal, both of which
seem to escape the expressive powers of language and which
philosophies of transcendence have always declared to be limits
to kn0w1edge.l~It thus reaches actuality ... the concrete unity
of essence and appearance, the presentation which presents
only itself and tests its necessity not in a separate intelligibility,
but in its own movement and de~elopment.~
All this means
t h a t the ontology of sense is not anthropology: Anthropology
wants to be a discourse on man. I t assumes, as such, t h e
empirical discourse of man, in which the one who speaks and
t h a t of which one speaks a r e separated. Reflection is on one
side and being on the other.lGWhatever lacks the concreteness
of actuality is abstract because it is one-sided:17 rather than
grasping the totality of what is, empirical and anthropological
discourses take a piece of reality and make it the whole. An
ontology of sense moves us beyond the empirical, toward the
many, mutually imbricated layers of reality residing within the
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Nathan Widder

empirical but going unnoticed by empirical thinking-layers

that, while different, are not simply exterior to one another but
rather folded into each other. This is why sense, although i t
exceeds both the empirical and the conceptual, does not form a
second world transcending our own, but instead grasps t h e
totality of all t h e r e is even while grasping t h a t it is itself
different from a merely empirical or conceptual totality. Sense
remains immanent to our world, though it resides within it as
something different from the worlds immediate appearance.
And for this reason, sense must show itself in t h e internal
passage from one side of t h e divide t o t h e other, i n t h e
movement from the empirical to the conceptual and back.
The issue for Hyppolite is where to locate the final sublation
of the empirical into the Absolute and, consequently, how to
understand t h e reverse movement by which t h e Absolute
actualizes itself concretely. The Phenomenology provides two
possible moments. The first is the transition to self-consciousness, which completes the dialectic of consciousness. Here, upon
reaching the stage of Understanding, consciousness remains
separated from t h e reality it experiences, grasping reality
through laws that never fully reconcile universal and singular.
The means to surpass t h i s aporia, however, a r e found in
understanding itself, which, by introducing t h e concept of
Force, knows the unity of a n object t o be the product of i t s
negative relations to others. Going beyond the object as a thing
prior to its relations, consciousness recognizes that, in being
separated from its object, it is in fact negatively related to i t
and so always already part of its identity. The subject in this
way finding itself in its object, the promise of Hegels Introduction is fulfilled: t h a t when consciousness is no longer
burdened by some alien other, it will signify the nature of
absolute knowledge itself.18 The remaining chapters of the
Phenomenology then detail the actualization of the Absolute in
abstract (the dialectics of self-consciousness and reason) and
eventually concrete ( t h e dialectics of spirit a n d religion)
accounts of human history.
Hyppolite, however, argues t h a t t h i s reading of Hegels
thought illicitly makes human self-consciousness the Absolute
Subject, resulting i n a n anthropological account t h a t Hegel
rejects. Phenomenology and human history do present a being
t h a t speaks or expresses the sense of itself, but i t remains a
merely human being, not the being of the Ab~olute.~
Hyppolite
therefore turns to a second appearance of the Absolute: at the
transition to the Logic t h a t closes the Phenomenology. Under
this reading, a gap remains between subject and object, between
what is said and t h e sense of what is said, throughout t h e
account of human experience and history. Though it elaborates
the self-reflexivity of the Absolute, the Phenomenology studies
the anthropological conditions of this reflection; it starts from
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Thought after Dialectics

human, properly subjective, reflection in order to sublate it, in

order to show that this Phenomenology, this human itinerary,
leads to absolute knowledge, to an ontological reflection which
t h e Phenomenology presupposes.2o Human experience and
history a r e therefore merely t h e focal points where a selfdetermining Absolute beyond man realizes itself in time and
space. While the anthropological readings remain restricted to
t h e Phenomenology, Hyppolites account links together all
aspects of Hegelian thought: logic, phenomenology, and nature.
It also secures the special place of philosophical language. Surmounting the discourses of mathematics, understanding, and
poetry, which use linguistic signs to signify empty concepts,
merely empirical concepts that vary with context, or to make a
show of escaping conceptuality altogether, philosophical logos
goes beyond human thought to grasp the self-expression of the
Absolute itself.21
But here a new problem emerges. Unlike the passage from
consciousness to self-consciousness, where the means for sublation a r e found in consciousnesss understanding, if the same
were true of the passage from history to the Absolute, it would
affirm the anthropological thesis that the Absolute is no more
than the realization of human self-reflection and self-knowledge
at the culmination of history. At stake is the question of why
Hegelian logos is not another metaphysics: if the Absolute is
reached only by moving beyond the human, phenomenological,
and empirical, how can the conclusion be avoided that the logic
is another essence, a t r u t h behind appearances? Hyppolite
answers that the Absolute is neither substance nor essence but
mediation, making it nothing other t h a n difference, which
maintains dualisms such as subjectlobject without being held to
them.22As such, logos, phenomenology, and nature all effectively mediate one another, though in different ways: nature
presents spirit and logos immediately and without reflection;
spirit connects logos and nature through reflection, but t h e
reflection remains finite; a n d logos is t h e infinite unity of
immediacy and reflection, making i t the highest form of the
Nonetheless, It is true that the historicity of this
absolute knowledge poses at the very heart of Hegelianism new
a n d perhaps unsolvable problems.24 Only by virtue of the
Absolute-and therefore the logos beyond history-can history
have meaning and direction. Historical forms of self-consciousness develop towards reconciliation and reciprocal recognition,
so that history, in temporal dispersion, incarnates this supreme
sublation t h a t is t h e absolute Idea.2SBut the logos and its
movement of self-determination a r e eternal r a t h e r t h a n
historical. And while the historical can still be conceived as the
self-negation of the eternal, there is no negation internal to
history that reunites it with the eternal: History is indeed the
place of this passage, but this passage is not itself a historical
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Nathan Widder

Nonetheless, i t is claimed, the sense of this eternal

Absolute is not another world behind history.27
Here, for Deleuze, the possibility for an alternative ontology
of sense arises. On t h e one hand, The relation between
ontology and empirical man is perfectly determined, but not the
relation between ontology and historical man; on t h e other
hand, t h e lack of a n internal passage from history to logic
assumes, at t h e least, not only t h a t t h e moments of t h e
Phenomenology and the moments of the Logic are not moments
i n t h e same sense, but also t h a t there a r e two ways of selfcontradiction, phenomenological and logical.28The persistent
gap between phenomenology and logic signals the failure of the
Hegelian philosophy of sense, as i t reinstates transcendence
through its equivocation between the sense of the logic and the
sense of history: at best history can have a sense only analogous
to the logic, even though i t is supposed to incarnate the logic.
The highest form of Hegels Absolute thus remains an abstraction, and this is further highlighted by the distinction Hyppolite
draws between the concrete and the actual, a distinction that,
absent any dialectical mediation between the two, seems only to
invoke a standard metaphysical idealism: Logic is not concrete
truth, that of the Idea in nature or in spirit, but the pure truth,
the development of the concept in its actuality and of actuality
in its concept, the life of the concept.29
Deleuze therefore locates this failure in Hegels logic, which
understands the being of difference in terms of contradiction:
Being can be identical to difference only insofar as difference is
carried up to the absolute, that is, up to contradiction. Speculative difference is the Being which contradicts itself.30 The
subsequent question is whether contradiction is a n adequate
expression of being: is i t t h e same thing to say t h a t Being
expresses itself and t h a t it contradicts itself?31 Is there, in
short, a difference adequate to the requirements of an ontology
of sense that is different from Hegelian contradiction?
2. Difference vs. Contradiction

Deleuze asks, Is not contradiction itself only the phenomenal

and anthropological aspect of d i f f e r e n ~ e ? This
~ ~ might suggest
a simple inversion of the historical and logical that, as with
Marx, would see our logic as a product of our history, not the
reverse. But Deleuze refuses this route: a historical dialectic, for
him, advances no further than a logical or ontological dialectic
toward a conception of difference adequate to a philosophy of
immanence. What is really needed is a notion of becoming
exceeding the becoming of history. 33 A parallel may be found in
Hegels logos, which becomes, but not in a historical manner,
a n d which underpins t h e movement of history. Hegels becoming, however, is one of contradiction, which negates itself
into t h e phenomenological passage of history. Deleuzes, i n
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Thought aRer Dialectics

contrast, is a movement of difference surpassing contradictioni n Nietzschean terms, also employed by Deleuze, i t is a
becoming that is untimely or in the time of the eternal return.
What is therefore needed is a difference that exceeds the terms
of contradiction, implying a temporal but nonetheless nonhistorical movement. Here, too, Hyppolites Hegel s e t s t h e
requirements that Deleuze must satisfy to develop a n alternative ontology of sense.
Only speculative contradiction, for Hegel, can fully determine identity and meaning, and hence provide sense. Merely
empirical differences and transcendental contradictions that fall
short of speculative reflection ultimately establish indifference
and reinstate a philosophy of essence. Empirical thought denies
that negative difference can determine a thing: to say what a
thing is not tells u s nothing of what it is; instead knowledge
requires a positive content. This position, however, contradicts
itself, since any positive content-i.e., X is Y-refers the thing
beyond itself, so t h a t it both is and is not itself.34While Kant
recognizes this contradiction and the totality that follows from
the synthetic character of understanding and judgment, he fails
to appreciate its full implications. Kant reduces the Absolute to
an Idea posited by thought as its condition and limit, failing to
surpass the understandings separation of subject and object
and falling back onto psychologism and a n t h r o p o m o r p h i ~ r n . ~ ~
Both Kantian and empirical thought t h u s carry residues of
indifferent positivity-empirical diversity or t h e noumenal
thing-in-itself. Speculative knowledge surpasses these essentialisms, showing that there is no essence behind appearance
because the Absolute is mediation.
Speculative difference, however, must t a k e t h e form of
contradiction. The Absolute can express itself only by sustaining
its unity through diverse forms; to be self-determining, it must
distinguish itself from its opposite without becoming one pole of
this opposition. Negation must be compatible with identity and
only opposition sustains genuine diversity a n d therefore
identity, because a thing can be individual only by being
different from everything it is not: Opposition is inevitable ...
because each is in relation with the others, or rather with all
the others, so that its distinction is its distinction from all the
Negation must also be a n aspect of both subject and
object, thought a n d existence. Only t h e n can speculative
thought raise the Absolute from substance to subject, becoming
the self-expression of being.37
If negation is real, it cannot be limited to human thought or
propositions. Bergsons errors, according to Hyppolite, a r e to
deny any real negativity and to hold t h e apparently equal
s t a t u s of positive a n d negative propositions to be illusory
because the latter can only correct error and never determine a
thing.38 The second criticism, however, applies only to empirical
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Nathan Widder

propositions, and Bergson contradicts the first by admitting to

distinction in nature, since negation and distinction imply one
another.39 Once negation is accepted as an aspect of being, only
contradiction can raise being to subjectivity. Spinoza and
Leibniz fail here: Spinozas substance lacks self-reflection and
produces diversity beyond itself r a t h e r t h a n mediates
difference; Leibnizs monads incorporate self-reflection but
remain in-themselves while referring to a God beyond them
who creates them.40 Ultimately, contradiction proves to be the
maximal form of difference and other conceptions of difference
pass into it.
Hegelian dialectic will push ... alterity up to contradiction.
Negation belongs to things and to distinct determinations insofar
a s they are distinct. But t h a t means that their apparent positivity t u r n s out to be a real negativity. This negativity will
condense the opposition in negation; negation will be the vital
force of the dialectic of t h e real a s well a s t h a t of logical
diale~tic.~~

Although Deleuze employs Spinoza, Leibniz, and Bergson

against Hegel, he affirms the basic principles underlying these
Hegelian criticisms-that philosophy must be a n ontology of
sense and therefore a n ontology of internal difference t h a t
leaves no indifferent remainder: If philosophy is to have a
positive and direct relation with things, it is only to the extent
t h a t i t claims to grasp t h e thing itself i n what i t is, i n i t s
difference from all t h a t it is not, which is to say its internal
Deleuze echoes Hegel by criticizing
d i f f e r e n ~ e . Unsurprisingly,
~~
Spinozas priority of substance over modes43and Leibnizs chessplaying
What, then, is Deleuzes response to Hegel? Put
simply: if the objection that Bergson made against Platonism
was that it stopped at a still external conception o f difference,
the objection t h a t he makes to a dialectic of contra-diction is
t h a t i t remains with a merely abstract conception of differe n ~ e . Contradiction
~~
may demonstrate the internal passage of
a thing into what it is not, but it remains an abstract difference
mediating abstract beings. Though this parallels Marxs critique
t h a t Hegel merely derives abstractions from abstractions,
Deleuze aims to show not t h a t Hegel h a s misplaced t h e
dialectic in consciousness rather than labor, but t h a t contradiction is necessarily less than difference and not more.
We a r e told t h a t t h e Self is one (thesis) and i t is multiple
(antithesis), then i t is the unity of the multiple (synthesis). Or
else we a r e told t h a t the One is already multiple, t h a t Being
passes into nonbeing and produces becoming ... To Bergson, i t
seems t h a t in this type of dialectical method, one begins with
concepts that, like baggy clothes, are much too big. The One in

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Thought after Dialectics

general, the multiple in general, nonbeing in general ... The
concrete will never be attained by combining the inadequacy of
one concept with the inadequacy of its opposite.46

More profoundly, contradiction and negativity a r e false problems, whose expression does not respect difference in nature.
They are retrospective illusions and merely external views of
t h i s internal d i f f e r e n ~ e but
~ ~they are also products of this
d i f f e r e n ~ e . ~Hegelian
*
contradiction, Deleuze argues, presupposes and is a symptom of difference, making the dialectic of
contradiction a superficial image of a more complex dynamic. 49
Deleuze does counterpoise dialectical mediation to a n
immediate differentiation. He says that, According to Hegel,
the thing differs from itself because it differs in the first place
from all that it is not, such that difference goes to the point of
c o n t r a d i ~ t i o n , seeming
~~
to miss that for Hegel a thing is at the
same time what it is
Moreover, he pits Nietzsches
affirmative forces against the negative forces of the dialectic,
holding that In Nietzsche the essential relation of one force to
another is never conceived of as a negative element i n t h e
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 d i f f e r e n ~ e . These
~~
comments suggest a return to the kind of immediacy and positivity Hegel easily dismisses and the reference to difference in
the essence seems odd given Deleuzes acknowledgement t h a t
Hegels is a philosophy of sense, not essence. However, Deleuzes
line of thinking becomes clear when realizing t h a t Hyppolite
refers to contradiction as essential difference because it defines
.~~
is not
t h e identity of a thing through o p p ~ s i t i o n Deleuze
seeking a return to some pre-dialectical immediacy, because
such immediacy remains within a paradigm of identity-but
dialectical contradiction is a maximal form of difference only
within this same paradigm.54 Immediate differentiation, then,
refers to a difference that is greater because it goes beyond any
mediation that would make difference compatible with identity.
Deleuze calls this excessive difference affirmative or positive,
but this is not the positivity of a n indifferent thing-in-itself.
Rather, it is a difference t h a t synthesizes diversity more
concretely t h a n t h e Hegelian identity of identity a n d difference-a synthesis t h a t Deleuze calls disjunctive. This
difference and disjunction, however, produce the very conditions
that allow them to be mistaken for identity, contradiction, and
dialectical mediation.

3. A New Relation of Forces

How, then, does Deleuze develop a conception of internal difference to rival Hegels, within the parameters discussed above?
Nietzsche and Philosophy is often criticized as a flippant
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Nathan Widder

reading of Hegel, yet if its generally poetic rather than

argumentative style is forgiven, a subtle argument can be seen
in Deleuzes deployment of the Nietzschean concept of force
against Hegel. Nietzschean forces may appear t o have little in
but Deleuze
common with those presented in Phen~rnenology,~~
argues early in Nietzsche and Philosophy that they must not be
confused. Despite his vitalist presentation, then, Deleuze seems
intent to rival the Hegelian concept of force and, in this way, t o
rethink the dialectical synthesis of difference.
For Hegel, force designates the movement, from unity t o
multiplicity and back, into which the object of perception
dissolves. At stake is the how the object can have meaning or
sense given that it is supposed to have a content on its own, yet
it is defined through its properties, which relate it to others. As
a substantive unity, a being-in-itself, the object relates t o others,
expressing itself in multiple properties; but as these properties
interpenetrate and define a substantial whole, the plurality
constitutes the unity. The notion of force sublates this contradiction within the perceived object by encompassing t h e
moments of being-in-itself and being-for-another, performing the
synthesis necessary for understanding, wherein the object, in
referring outside itself, nonetheless refers t o itself alone.
Initially, the being of force appears in its unity, while its
expression is found in its multiple relations t o others-expression is here understood as external t o force. But these others,
though external, are also internal t o force, since forces
expression is n e ~ e s s a r yand,
, ~ ~ as external, the others themselves must be forces, since they must have their own substantiality in order t o solicit expression. This plurality of forces,
reciprocally determining one another while being internal t o
each other, reverses the priority of being-in-itself and being-foranother: since force attains unity only through its relations t o
other forces, unity becomes a mere moment in a more encompassing movement of being-for-self through being-for-another.
Force is essentially relational, gaining specificity through its
differential relations to other forces that are also identical to it:
in other words, for Hegel, these are relations of opposition or
contradiction. Force sunders itself into its other, which defines it
by opposing or negating it, appearing t o be what the force is
not; yet this opposite, by defining the identity of force, relates to
it internally and is therefore part of its identity. The synthetic
being of force can thereby totalize itself, as anything outside of
or opposed t o this totality is always already part of it. The
result is the Hegelian Absolute: the identity of identity and
difference. This mediation is the sense expressed in any object.
Like Hegel, Deleuzes concept of force displaces simple
substantive notions such a s the ego, the thing-in-itself, the
atom, o r more generally the object prior t o its relation^.^'
Moreover, it is linked to meaning and sense: We will never find
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Thought after Dialectics

t h e sense of something (of a human, a biological or even a

physical phenomenon) if we do not know t h e force which
appropriates the thing, which exploits it, which takes possession
of it or is expressed in it.58But as opposition and contradiction
remain abstract, a more concrete form of force relations must be
conceived. I n Nietzsche and Philosophy, t h i s is performed
through a rethinking of quality and quantity. This move too can
be usefully framed in relation to Hegels thought.
In Hegels logic, quantity is derived from quality, the quantitative unit being the dialectical synthesis of limit and alternation implied by qualitative or determinate being; but quantity
also reinvokes quality, since a sufficient change in quantity
becomes a qualitative change, resulting i n t h e synthesis of
quantity and quality as measure.69This order of deduction from
quality to quantity is significant, for it defines quantity as a n
external modification of being t h a t must be reintegrated
dialectically. This reintegration is performed by repeating the
moves of the dialectic of quality-the equalization of quantitative units60 and the rejection of the spurious infinity of extension.61 The externalization of quantity allows Hegel to dismiss
mechanism a n d atomism as abstract understandings t h a t
derive quality from external quantitative relations among
entities thought to exist independently.62 The equalization of
quantities drives a dialectical progression t h a t makes all
quantities and qualities measurable.
For Nietzsche too mechanisms purely quantitative determination of forces remained abstract, incomplete and ambigU O U S . ~ ~However, t h e chief problem with mechanistic
quanti-fication is not t h a t it t r e a t s a n external notion of
quantity as t h e whole of reality (although this is one of its
problems). Rather, it is in the equalization of quantities, which
is affirmed by Hegelian logic even in its critique of mechanism.
In short, it is equality-the linchpin for dialectical mediation in
general and t h e mediation of quantity and quality i n particular-that carries a problematic abstraction. It is not quantity
that is an external modification of being. Rather, it is quality, in
the form of equality, that is imposed externally upon quantity
and that annuls the difference germane to quantity.
Once t h i s abstraction is razed, a new kind of quantity
emerges, designating a n i n t e r n a l r a t h e r t h a n a n external
difference. To say now that forces are linked through unmediatable relations that differ from contradiction and the identity of
contradictories is to say that they differ quantitatively. Quantity-or, rather, difference i n quantity-is now t h e internal
difference by which forces a r e specified, but this is neither a
mechanistic nor a dialectical quantity. It is instead quantity
that cannot be equalized, where differences in quantity cannot
be measured by any fixed scale. This internal difference
maintains the heterogeneity of forces in their passage into each
46 1

Nathan Widder

other, so that heterogeneity does not become a merely empirical

diversity failing to go as far as contradiction. Difference in
quantity thereby denotes another synthesis of forces, in which
they are neither things-in-themselves relating externally nor
moments within a dialectical synthesis of identity and opposition. Forces are rather part of a disjunctive synthesis, relating
through their difference r a t h e r t h a n through identity. This
synthesis, again, follows from t h e elimination of abstract
equality.
Quality now becomes t h e externalization of quantity or
quantitative difference. It expresses forces that gain meaning or
sense only through internal but unmediatable relations-that
is, relations of difference in quantity. Qualities a r e therefore
heterogeneous, just as quantities, since they follow from differences in quantity that cannot be e q ~ a l i z e dThe
. ~ ~difference
in quantity of related forces is a difference in power: in unequal
relations, one force necessarily dominates while another resists.
This difference in power is internal, no force being strong or
weak of itself, but only through its relations. However, these are
not simply relations of inequality but rather of disequilibrium,
meaning t h a t resisting forces can always overturn t h e
dominance of t h e strong, though t h i s is not a dialectical
reversal that would resolve the heterogeneity of forces. This is
crucial: force relations are not relations of simple inequality, but
a n inequality i n flux. Otherwise, Nietzsche would be reestablishing a simple hierarchy of dominator and dominated
that, because it measures inequality by a fixed scale of power,
remains as much an abstraction as the equality he challenges.
The quality arising from this quantitative difference is the
will to power. The will to power is the in-itself of force, t h e
independence that, like the dialectical movement of forces, is a
moment within a more encompassing relation. It therefore has
dual aspects, Deleuze argues, as a complement to force and a n
i n t e r n a l factor of force, as a differential element a n d as a
genetic element of forces, and as a product of force relations and
the determinant of these relation^.^^ The will to power, constituted by relations of domination and resistance among forces, is
active or reactive, and here, too, the qualitative differences that
emerge cannot be dialectically reconciled. The will to power of
the strong is not the opposite or contradictory of t h a t of the
weak and these a r e not the two wills of Hegels master and
slave-indeed, only from the slaves perspective do they appear
as opposites.66The slavish perspective, which for Nietzsche and
Deleuze arises from the non-dialectical play of forces, presents
the illusion or false problem of contradiction, but this makes it
nothing more than a superficial image, a falsification of internal
differences in quantity.
The will to power of the slave stamps contradiction onto a
world that is, morally and otherwise, much more complex and
462

Thought after Dialectics

ambiguous. It initiates a moral reversal that takes what is good

also to be pure, unchanging, and universal, and what is bad or
evil to be the negative or the opposite of these. This reversal is
driven by force relations themselves, as t h e force unable to
a s s e r t itself must still express its will to power a n d i n its
frustration with its weakness it wills a n ideal in which forces
are equalized or measured on a timeless scale. It matters little
whether purity is subsequently mediated with i t s opposite
because opposition is the falsification that dialectics takes up
and continues.67 Opposition, contradiction, and their correlate,
identity, constitute a n inverted image of an internal difference
in quantity that cannot be reconciled, equalized, or fixed in an
unambiguous hierarchy. This inverted image then presents
itself as a universal sense.68 Only the weak who are unable to
act and who must consequently view action only as recipients or
third parties would initiate this
That they are only
recipients of action, however, implies another perspective and,
consequently, another mode of thinking, being, and acting-that
of the active will to power.
I t is often held that Deleuze cannot offer a coherent way to
distinguish this active, non-dialectical perspective from the
slavish universalization of identity and opposition. Deleuze
himself highlights this difficulty, stating that the negative will
to power alone is knowable, although it finds its essence in a n
affirmative will to power exceeding it.70Vincent Descombes
argues that Deleuze must distinguish the opposition willed by
slave morality from noble moralitys non-dialectical difference,
through which the noble affirms and enjoys his difference. But
this, Descombes says, is not possible. If t h e noble seeks to
differentiate rather than oppose himself to the slave, then the
slaves oppositional logic will appear t o the master as another
non-dialectical difference; conversely, if t h e slave opposes
himself to the noble, t h e nobles affirmation will appear as
another negative opposition. From the perspective of both noble
and slave, then, opposition and differentiation appear to be
identical: The non-identity of difference and opposition will
appear to both as an identity. 71 A further difficulty appears in
the practice of noble affirmation: if he truly affirms difference,
the noble must relate to the slave, otherwise he affirms only
identity-in-itself; but if the noble defines himself in relation to
t h e slave, it is impossible for this differentiation to appear
different from opposition.
The day that the Master, with all his self-assurance meets, not
another Master (i.e., another affirmation destined to negate him)
but a Slave, he will learn the difference between a Master and a
Slave, between a difference and a n opposition. Thenceforth he
will see that what he negates in the Slave is not another affirmation, but the actual negation of his own affirmation. He refuses

463

Nathan Widder
the Slaves negation of him, but t h e discovery weakens him
immediately. The time is coming when the Master, having discovered his own likeness to the Slave, will emancipate him.
Indeed, how can it be distinguished, after a number of encounters
between affirmation and negation, whether the no t h a t one of
the adversaries has just uttered precedes the yes, or follows it?72

This reading, however, misses many subtleties. I t conflates

power relations between forces and the will to power, illicitly
holding the existence of a non-dialectical movement of forces to
require the capacity of some will to recognize the difference
between this movement and negative opposition. It treats noble
and slavish wills as exhaustive alternatives, when clearly for
both Nietzsche and Deleuze the overman fits neither category
neatly. Nietzsche himself acknowledges a falsification within
noble morality, saying the nobles mischaracterize the slaves
even if the slaves mischaracterize the nobles more.73 Ironically,
the error in both cases is a reduction of difference to opposition:
the slaves, unable to comprehend noble affirmation, compress it
onto a moral schema of good a n d evil in order to a t t r i b u t e
intentional harm to the nobles; t h e nobles characterize the
slaves as their opposite-weak rather than strong-and fail to
see t h e slaves as a threat. Ultimately, Descombess reading
foists upon Deleuze t h e very alternative Deleuze considers
spurious-either an abstract, incoherent identity-in-itself or a
relation to otherness that must ultimately be oppositional. This
alternative, however, is viable only if noble morality affirms
self-identity.
Here lies what Deleuze finds interesting about noble morality: i t affirms a n immediate differentiation t h a t exceeds
identity and opposition. That is to say, it affirms a relationship
of irreducible heterogeneity, of internal quantitative difference.
Two Nietzschean ideas cited by Deleuze are central: t h a t the
friend is someone between I and me who helps me overcome
myself; and t h a t going beyond good and evil does not mean
going beyond good and bad (which does not make it identical to
the ethic of good and bad).74When the noble calls himself good,
he affirms not his identity, which would require opposition to
another, but his ability to transcend his limits and overcome
himself. This overcoming requires a relation to another who
need not be recognized as the same but only as sufficiently
strong to offer a challenge. This other must therefore be another
noble, but t h e term noble does not establish a recognized
identity or sameness. This immediate affirmation thus embodies
not a solipsistic withdrawal into self but rather a pluralism,75
whereby the noble affirms himself, his adversary, and their
struggle. Affirmation is immediate, then, not because it has no
relationality, but because its relation is not a comparison or
measurement of oneself to another via a fixed hierarchy of
464

Thought after Dialectics

values. Nobility does compare itself to t h e weak, but as a

consequence of its definition of goodness as overcoming, not as a
precondition of this definition: no comparison interferes with
the principle. I t is only a secondary consequence, a negative
conclusion that others are evil insofar as they do not affirm, do
not act, do not enjoy.76 This self-differentiation, achieved
through a relation of strife (and hence difference) with another,
is misunderstood as selfishness and egoism by a slave morality
that sees only identity and opposition: the difference between
forces seen from the side of reaction becomes the opposition of
reactive and active
By acting to pluralize, overcome identity, and dissolve
oppositional relations, noble morality acts a n d affirms t h e
eternal return. The eternal return, Deleuze says, is a return not
of identical events in history (i.e., given a n infinity of chronological time all events will eventually repeat themselves) but of
immediate differentiation: We misinterpret the expression
eternal return if we understand it as return of the same ... It
is not some one thing which returns but rather returning itself
is the one thing which is affirmed of diversity or m~ltiplicity.~~
The r e t u r n must therefore be understood as a synthesis
constituting the passage of time-not as a chronological connection of different moments of time, but as a n expression of
the synthetic structure of the moment itself: it is the synthetic
relation of the moment to itself, as past, present and to come,
which absolutely determines its relations with all other
moments. The return is not the passion of one moment pushed
by others, but the activity of the moment which determined the
others in being itself determined through what it affirm^."'^
This is how the eternal return offers an explanation of diversity and its reproduction, of difference and its repetition.60But
what returns is nothing more than the disequilibrium of forces
relating through a n internal quantitative difference t h a t
includes both power and resistance. The synthesis effected by
the eternal return answers the dialectical synthesis of identity,
providing a n alternative to the sense offered by dialectics-in
place of t h e mediation t h a t relates a n d speaks through all
differences there is immediate disjunction. But this sense is
denied a n d reduced to opposition by a certain perspective
produced by these very force relations. By eliminating t h e
abstraction of equality that underpins dialectical mediation, a
new philosophy of sense emerges, one that, like Hegels, denies
t h e indifferences of traditional metaphysics, seeing these
indifferences as products of difference a n d i t s synthetic
operation.
4. The Logic of Sense

Contradiction-the notion that X is at the same time both itself

and not-X-is the nonsense t h a t creates dialectical sense. I t
465

Nathan Widder

provides the mediating surface that stitches together thought

and thing, concept and object, what is said and that of which it
is said. Deleuze counterpoises difference to opposition,
immediate overcoming to mediating contradiction, and disjunction t o t h e Hegelian identity of identity a n d difference.
Disjunction is now the nonsense that constitutes sense and i t
too connects thought and being, but in a way that prevents any
simple correspondence between them. The sign now takes a new
role: i t is neither t h e simple reconciliation of thought a n d
reality nor the human site where the Absolute speaks, but a
paradoxical element causing t h e heterogeneous domains
brought together by the surface of sense to resonate. Having
located the inadequacies of Hegels philosophy of immanence
and the pushed internal difference beyond abstract contradiction, it is now possible to outline Deleuzes alternative ontology
of sense.
Depth, height, and surface are the three dimensions at play
in this new ontology. None can be reduced to the others. Height
and depth refer to a hidden Platonic dualism found beneath the
more obvious dualism of Idea a n d copy. An aspect of bodies
must escape the action of Ideas or else there would be nothing
but Ideas. This aspect neither conforms t o nor copies the Idea
but instead characterizes a simulacrum that is neither Idea nor
copy. The simulacrum implies a pure and paradoxical becoming
that escapes the present, a becoming in two directions at once
t h a t is a t r a i t of the material and sensible.81 There is also a
surface produced by bodies and their excessive becomings that
is irreducible to the material or physical. Here Deleuze refers to
the Stoic cleavage between cause and effect. Causality applies
to bodies and their interactions, yet while bodies are causes in
relation to one another, their effects are not bodies but events,
which form another simulacrum-or, rather, a phantasm differing from the simulacrum of bodies. Bodies for the Stoics may
combine, fall apart, or break one another, but the meaning or
sense of these interactions is something in excess of bodies.
Such excessive events occur on the surface and while they refer
back t o the bodies t h a t cause them they also relate to each
other through a kind of quasi-causality. Events are therefore
always submitted t o a double relation-the sense they express
derives from not only the bodies and interactions that produce
them but also their relation to other meanings or meaningful
events. The surface therefore retains an independence from the
depths, as the surface tension of water gives it an independence
from t h e depths i t covers. Events remain autonomous only
insofar as they relate to one another distinctly from their
relation to bodies.
Neither body nor Idea, sense is t h e fourth dimension of
propositions, relating concept and thing at and through the
surface. Propositions relate directly to things by denoting states
466

Thought aRer Dialectics

of affairs, which may be true or false, possible or impossible;

they relate to subjects by manifesting t h e intentions of a
speaking 1;and they relate to concepts by signifying universal
predicates. Each of these three aspects depends on the others:
denotation refers to manifestation, since words must express
the intentions of a speaker before they can be used to designate
states of affairs; yet both manifestation and denotation function
only with the constancy of signified concepts; but even though a
series of propositions may move from one implied concept to
another, it must ultimately affirm a state of affairs to be true or
false, making signification dependent on denotation.82 Sense,
however, cannot be subsumed under these relations: a proposition signifying an incoherent concept (i.e., square-circle) still
has sense and propositions denoting opposite states of affairs
(i.e., God is and God is not) may nonetheless have the same
sense. Exceeding the universal and particular of signification,
the subject of manifestation and the object of denotation, sense
must be a difference t h a t escapes these orders of identity. In
this way, Deleuze maintains, sense is a singular event that is
best expressed through t h e infinitive form of verbs. While
qualitative s t a t e s such as green a n d not green denote
opposite states of affairs (i.e., the tree is green and the tree is
not green), the verb to green expresses a becoming found in
both states of affairs that gives the propositions and the states
to which they refer their sense. This sense is also nonsense,
expressing a difference whose only identity can be as t h a t
which differs from itself-in Nietzschean terms i t is a n immediate, internal differentiation. This difference is found in
language only and so remains within propositions, but i t is
attributed to s t a t e s of affairs without representing these
Through the event of sense, the surface of bodies
(incorporeal events) and the surface of thought (propositions)
meet and interact.
As a field of events, sense not only retains its independence
a n d indifference from t h e propositions representational
relations to thoughts and things, but also constitutes these
relations. Signification must be organized into a hierarchy of
concepts, the more specific classes encompassed by the more
general. But, as is well known, t h i s ordering refers to t h e
paradox of a s e t of all sets, which must include itself as a
member, making it at once a highest identity and a member
dividing the identity t h a t i t presuppose^.^^ Signification thus
invokes a paradoxical sign t h a t expresses its own sense-as
opposed to conventional signs whose expressed sense must be
designated by other signs.85 Moreover, signification, denotation,
and manifestation all presuppose individual identities, but the
individual is a product of a synthesis and, as dialectical synthesis remains abstract, this must be a synthesis of disjunction. On
the one hand, the individual is distinguished by the verb-events
467

Nathan Widder

it actualizes. In the Nietzschean conception of forces, this is the

role of the will to power, which arises from and determines the
convergence of quantitatively different forces. On the other
hand, the full identity of an individual is established only with
reference to relations extending across divergent worlds: Adam,
for example, sins in this world but not in another, incompossible
world; Caesar crosses the Rubicon in this world, but in another
he is constituted and helps constitute a world in which he does
not cross. Only after the individual is established as a nexus of
differences can it be predicated of categories, becoming a n
object of denotation or a subject of manifestation. But precisely
because the individual is a product of disjunctive events beyond
the order of identity, these predications remain partial and
incomplete.86 The sense of any proposition thereby continues to
refer back to an excessive becoming.
Although sense is a disjunctive synthesis, it differs from the
disjunction i n the depths of bodies. It differs also from t h e
dimension of heights and Ideas, which invokes identity rather
t h a n disjunction. Schizophrenic language collapses words
directly into bodies, and the nonsense of schizophrenia destroys
any possibility of sense because i t cannot express the incorporeality of meaningful event^.^' The Platonist appeal to
transcendent Ideas, on t h e other hand, remains bulky a n d
abstract.88 The surface subsists only as a persistent non-correspondence between concept a n d thing, and sense therefore
functions only to the degree that the divergent realms it brings
together communicate while retaining their difference. These
realms a r e i n fact two series or orders-of word and thing,
denotation and expression, what is seen and what is said.89
Deleuze here speaks of three syntheses that together form the
field of sense: connective, conjunctive, and disjunctive. The first
constitutes a single series by linking heterogeneous elements,
the place held by each element determined by i t s not being
another element and not being confused with the others-an
example would be the different sounds t h a t form words. The
second links separate series together, as when t h e sound
patterns of words a r e associated with corresponding ideas.
Finally, the third synthesis causes the series to communicate
and the surface connecting them to resonate.g0 This disjunctive
synthesis invokes a n element t h a t circulates through both
previous series while being unidentifiable by either one: This
element belongs to no series; or rather, it belongs to both series
at once and never ceases t o circulate throughout them. I t has
therefore the property of always being displaced in relation to
itself, of being absent from its own place, its own identity, its
own resemblance, and its own e q u i l i b r i ~ m . The
~ ~ element is
the paradoxical or nonsensical sign that underpins denotation,
signification, and manifestation. Surface events, differing from
themselves and being expressed by the infinitive form of verbs,
468

Thought after Dialectics

refer to t h i s pure sign or univocal Event as a repetition of

difference t h a t all events embody-the Event of eternal
return.92
An unlikely source of elucidation here is Saussures linguistic theory-unlikely because Saussure is often thought to hold
t h a t language contains only negative differences. Deleuze too
holds this reading.93 But Saussures thinking is more subtle. He
proposes two connective series, one of sounds a n d one of
concepts-signal and significant or signifier and signified. In
each series, concepts a n d sounds find their places through
negative relationships to other concepts and sounds. But this
negativity holds only for signifiers and signifieds taken in
abstraction. Once considered in terms of meaningful linkages of
sound and concept-that is, as signs-another relation appears.
Everything we have said so far comes down to this. In the
language itself; there are only differences. Even more important
than that is the fact that, although in general a difference
presupposes positive terms between which the difference holds,
in a language there are only differences, and no positive terms ...
But to say that in a language everything is negative holds only
for signification and signal considered separately. The moment
we consider the sign as a whole, we encounter something which
is positive in its own domain.94

Saussure calls this positive relation among signs opposition, as

distinct from (negative) d i f f e r e n ~ e It
. ~is
~ not a relation between
units in themselves: the language itself is a form, not a substance.96When properly considering the realm of language,
which Saussure compares to a sheet of paper holding together
thought a n d
negative difference cannot account for
meaning and sense. Signs a r e fully determined only through
various chains of signification t h a t they bring together.
Syntagmatic relations a r e those a sign has with others in a
proposition. Here, any unit acquires i t s value simply i n
opposition to what precedes, or to what follows, or to both.98
Associative relations are those a sign has with signs not in the
proposition, such as those sharing its prefix or root, or
overlapping in meaning, but also with signs whose meanings
contrast with it. Quadruplex, for example, links to one chain of
signs that includes quadrupes, quadrifons, and quadraginta,
and to another t h a t includes simplex, triplex, and centrup l e ~ The
. ~ ~sign is t h u s a nexus where divergent chains of
meaning converge and these relations give the sign a value
independent of the represented meaning or the materiality of
the signs pronunciation.loO
There is no resonance yet within this structure, nor could
t h e r e be given Saussures theoretical commitments. His
absolute division between the synchronic and the diachronic
469

Nathan Widder

reduces linguistic change to historical changes between static,

synchronic states. Such transformation is consequently understood in terms of individual modifications that over time mutate
t h e entire synchronic structure.lo What is missing from
Saussures analysis is the sort of non-historical becoming found
in Hegel and Deleuze-a becoming within the present moment
itself and internal to the sign. Even while remaining within
Saussures terms of thought, such a becoming might be
glimpsed i n the repetition of signs, which is not a linguistic
potential but is necessarily actual: a sign used only once could
not be a sign, s o any sign must always already have been
repeated. As a general law of signs, this feature is necessarily
synchronic.lo2But while dialectical repetition would retain
identity through t h e differences traversed by t h e sign,
Deleuzean repetition would return a difference. What, then,
could t u r n a Saussurean sign into a Deleuzean sign, which
flashes across the intervals when a communication takes place
between disparities?lo3If signs remain deprived of sense as
long as they do not enter into the surface organization which
assures the resonance of two series,lo4this organization still
requires t h e nonsense sign t h a t differs from itself a n d is
unresolvable within the terms of concept, thing, and the surface
connecting them. Indeed, the paradoxical sign is not one surface
sign among others, but is a crack of the surface. The time of this
crack is the eternal return, through which difference and divergence as such return.
The structure of sense, for Deleuze, requires this crack or
empty square, which circulates through the heterogeneous but
mutually imbricated layers brought together by the surface. But
this emptiness is not a simple absence of sense or a lacuna to
be filled. Such ideas impose t h e same false alternative as
metaphysics and dialectics, between structured sense a n d
indifferent chaos: either an undifferentiated ground, a groundlessness, formless nonbeing, or an abyss without differences and
without properties, or a supremely individuated Being and a n
intensely personalized Form. Without this Being or this Form,
you will have only chaos ....lo5 Surface sense and surface nonsense a r e not opposites. Rather, both oppose t h e absence of
sense: Nonsense is that which has no sense, and that which, as
such and as i t enacts the donation of sense, is opposed to the
absence of sense. This is w h a t we must understand by
nonsense.106 And the reason for this is that any simple
opposition between sense and nonsense is an abstraction that
fails to reach difference. Sense and nonsense are not opposed
but disjoined, which is not surprising given that disjunction is a
synthesis of difference that exceeds contradiction. Here we can
see how Deleuze both completes and breaks with Hegel: the
completion of a philosophy of immanence must move beyond the
dialectics of identity and opposition, and so must move from a
470

Thought after Dialectics

nonsense of contradiction that reconciles sense and its opposite

to a nonsense of difference t h a t constitutes sense in terms of
divergence. This is the direction Deleuze takes thought after
dialectics.

Notes
I would like to thank Robin Durie, Daniel W. Smith, Will Large,
Matthew Hammond, Len Lawlor, and Yves Winter for their helpful
comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This paper consolidates and
builds upon readings of Hegel and Deleuze that I have presented in
previous publications, in particular Towards a n Ontology of t h e
Name: Hegel, Nietzsche, Foucault, Issues in Contemporary Culture
and Aesthetics 10111 (April, 2000):5-23; Whats Lacking in the Lack:
A Comment on the Virtual, Angelaki 513 (December, 2000): 117-38;
and Genealogies of Difference (University of Illinois Press, 2002),ch. 2.
1 Jean Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, trans. Leonard Lawlor and
Amit Sen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997).The
importance of Hyppolites reading of Hegel for the philosophies of
Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault has been noted by Leonard Lawlor,
who h a s detailed this importance with respect to Derrida. See
Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, Translators Preface, pp. ix-xv; also
Leonard Lawlor, Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem o f
Phenomenology (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 2002),88-104.
Gilles Deleuze, Review of Jean Hyppolite, Logic and Existence
in Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, 191-195,a t 191.
Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, 176. See also Lawlor, Derrida
and Husserl, 89: Hegels philosophy, for Hyppolite, completes
immanence without eliminating difference.
Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson
(London: The Athlone Press, 1983).
Commentators aspiring to examine the relationship between
Hegel and Nietzsche seriously often see Nietzsche and Philosophy a s
a prominent reading of Hegel whose inaccuracies must be critically
exposed and rebutted. Two studies, which approach Hegel a n d
Nietzsche very differently but similarly attack Deleuzes reading, are
Stephen Houlgate, Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Criticism of Metaphysics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) and Elliot L. Jurist,
Beyond Hegel and Nietzsche: Philosophy, Culture, and Agency (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000).I have reviewed Jurists book in
Radical Philosophy, 109 (SeptemberIOctober, 2001):38-40.
Catherine Malabou (WhosAfraid of Hegelian Wolves in Paul
Patton, ed., Deleuze: A Critical Reader [Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
19961,114-38) holds that Deleuzes own oppositional stance to Hegel
undermines the philosophy of multiplicity he seeks to articulate and
reintroduces the very Hegelian negative he seeks to overcome. Vincent
Descombes, who will be addressed l a t e r in this paper, also takes
Deleuze to task for his reading of Hegel. Michael Hardt holds t h a t
Deleuzes initial attacks on Hegel are crude and oppositional but that
his later thought matures and adopts a strategy of more indirect
attack. See Hardt, Gilles Deleuze: A n Apprenticeship in Philosophy
(London: University College London Press, 1993),esp. 27-8, 52-3.

47 1

Nathan Widder
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, t r a n s . Ma r k Lester w i t h
Charles Stivale, ed. Constantin Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).
Deleuze, Review of Jean Hyppolite, 195.
See Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 1,87-97.
lo Hegel, quoted in Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, 24.
l1 Hyppolite, Logic a n d Existence, 60, 90; quoted i n Deleuze,
Review of Jean Hyppolite, 193.
l2 Sense is never only one of t h e two terms of t h e duality ... it is
also the frontier, the cutting edge, or the articulation of t h e difference
between the two terms, since it h a s at its disposal a n impenetrability
which is its own and within which it is reflected (Deleuze, The Logic
of Sense, 28).
l3 Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, Translators Note, pp. xvii-xviii
l4 Ibid., part I, ch. 1.
l5 Ibid., 4.
l6 Deleuze, Review of Jean Hyppolite, 192.
l 7 Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, 5.
G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of S p i r i t , t r a n s . A. V. Miller,
foreword by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), $89.
I will not detail t h e progression of t h e f i r s t t h r e e chapters of t h e
Phenomenology here, but see my Genealogies of Difference, 21-7.
l9 See Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, 20.
2o Ibid., 34.
21 See Hyppolite, Logic a n d Existence, p a r t I, ch. 3; also Lawlor,
Derrida and Husserl, 91-4.
22 Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, 60-1.
23 Ibid., 103-4.
24 Ibid., 36.
25 Ibid., 185-6.
26 Ibid., 189.
27 Ibid., 188.
Deleuze, Review of Jean Hyppolite, 194, 195.
29 Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, 164.
30 Deleuze, Review of Jean Hyppolite, 195.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 The thing is, I became more and more aware of the possibility of
distinguishing between becoming a n d history. It was Nietzsche who
said t h a t nothing important is ever free from a nonhistorical cloud.
This isnt t o oppose e t e r n a l a n d historical, or contemplation a n d
action: Nietzsche is talking about the way things happen, about events
themselves or becoming. What history grasps in a n event is t h e way
its actualized in particular circumstances; t h e events becoming is
beyond t h e scope of history (Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, t r a n s .
Martin Joughin [New York: Columbia University Press, 19951, 170).
34 The rule of empirical knowledge lies in not contradicting itself
in its object, and, since this rule is merely negative, the rule amounts
to looking for t h e t r u t h i n t h e content, which is alone considered
positive. But to say that A is B is already to contradict oneself, because
this is to come out of the A in order to affirm something else about it;
it is to say t h a t it is not-A a n d not merely A (Hyppolite, Logic and
Existence, 79).
35 Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, 82-3.

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Thought after Dialectics

Ibid., 115.
See ibid., 76.
38 Ibid, 108-11, 122-4.
39 Ibid., 109.
40 Ibid., 150.
I1 Ibid., 113.
42 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsons Conception of Difference in John
Mullarkey, ed., The New Bergson (Manchester and New York:
Manchester University Press, 1999),42-65, at 42-3. Hegel explains
inner difference in t h e following terms: we must eliminate t h e
sensuous idea of fixing t h e differences in a different sustaining
element; and this absolute Notion of the difference must be represented and understood purely a s inner difference, a repulsion of the
selfsame, as selfsame, from itself, and likeness of the unlike as unlike.
We have to think pure change, or think antithesis within the
antithesis itself, or contradiction. For in the difference which is a n
inner difference, the opposite is not merely one of two-if it were, i t
would simply be, without being a n opposite-but it is the opposite of
a n opposite, or the other is itself immediately present within it
(Hegel, Phenomenology, $160).
43 Spinozas substance appears independent of the modes, while
the modes are dependent on substance, but a s though on something
other t h a n themselves (Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition,
trans. Paul Patton [London:The Athlone Press, 19941,401.
44 While using Leibniz to develop the conceptions of vice-diction
and incompossibility against dialectical contradiction, Deleuze also
holds Leibniz to have limited these ideas by relying on a transcendent
God who chooses the best possible world according to a principle of
maximum convergence or compossibility. See Deleuze, Difference and
Repetition, 42-4, 45-51; and The Logic of Sense, 59, 110-12, 171-2,
259-60.
45 Deleuze, Bergsons Conception of Difference, 53.Hardt seems to
miss the distinction Deleuze draws between Platonist and Hegelian
dialectics, holding Deleuze to admonish Hegelian contradiction for
being a n external conception of difference (Hardt, Gilles Deleuze: An
Apprenticeship in Philosophy, 4-5, 7-8). Deleuze does locate a
continuing externality in Hegelian dialectics related to its treatment
of difference a s contradiction, which creates a gap between logic and
phenomenology. Nonetheless, i t is quite wrong to say, a s Hardt does,
that Hegelian contradiction posits a n external other. Indeed, if Deleuze
were to say this of Hegel, i t would be undeniable that he gets Hegel
wrong.
46 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara
Habberjam (New York: Zone Books, 1991),44.
47 Deleuze, Bergsons Conception of Difference, 46,53,49.
48 We will see how this illusion is born, and what in turn grounds
it in differences of nature themselves (Deleuze, Bergsons Conception
of Difference, 45-6).
See Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 156-9.
6o Deleuze, Bergsons Conception of Difference, 53.
61 However, in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze writes of
Hegelian contradiction: Each contrary must expel its other, therefore
expel itself, and become the other it expels (45).
62 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 8-9.
36
37

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Nathan Widder
53 If identity suits things, dissimilarity or intrinsic difference also
s u i t s them, since they m u s t be distinguished or differentiated i n
themselves from all t h e others. This difference (found within them) is
essential difference, because it is the difference posited i n the identity
of the thing; the difference is what puts the thing in opposition to all
the rest (Hyppolite, Logic and Existence, 119).
54 See Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 49.
55 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, $$132-65.
56 Ibid., $137.
s7 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 6-8.
s8 Ibid., 3.
59 G . W. F. Hegel, Hegels Logic: Being Part One o f the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans. William Wallace, foreword
by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19751, $589-111.
6o Ibid., $100.
Ibid., $$104-6.
62 Ibid., $498-9, 195.
63 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 43.
64 See ibid., 43-4.
Ibid., 49-52. See also Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 125:
the eternal return is indeed t h e consequence of a difference which is
originary, pure, synthetic and in-itself (which Nietzsche called will to
power).
66 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 10.
67 There would have been no need to put the dialectic back on its
feet, nor to do a n y form of dialectics if critique itself had not been
s t a n d i n g on i t s h e a d from t h e start (Deleuze, Nietzsche a n d
Philosophy, 89). Also, The Hegelian dialectic is indeed a reflection on
difference, but it inverts its image (Ibid., 196).
68 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 55-8.
69 Ibid., 73-4.
70 Thus nihilism, t h e will to nothingness, is not only a will to
power, a quality of t h e will to power, but t h e ratio cognoscendi o f the
w i l l to p o w e r i n g e n e r a l . All known a n d knowable v a l u e s a r e , by
nature, values which derive from t h i s ratio ... The other side of t h e
will to power, the unknown side, the other quality of the will to power,
the unknown quality, is affirmation. And affirmation, i n t u r n , is not
merely a will to power, a quality of t h e will to power, it is t h e ratio
essendi o f the w i l l to p o w e r i n general (Deleuze, Nietzsche a n d
Philosophy, 172-3).
71 Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, trans. L. ScottFox a n d J. M. H a r d i n g (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
19941, 165.
72 Ibid., 167.
73 Even supposing t h a t t h e affect of contempt, of looking down
from a superior height, falsifies the image of t h a t which it despises, it
will a t any r a t e still be a much less serious falsification t h a n t h a t
perpetrated on its opponent-in effigie of course-by t h e submerged
hatred, the vengefulness of the impotent (Friedrich Nietzsche, On the
Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale
[New York: Vintage Books, 1967],37).
74 Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 6, 122.
75 Nietzsches philosophy cannot be understood without taking his
essential pluralism into account (ibid., 4).

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Thought aRer Dialectics

Ibid., 120.
Ibid., 125.
78 Ibid., 48.
791bid., 193. On t h i s point, see also Widder, Genealogies of
Difference, 44-8.
8o Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 49.
81 Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, 2.
82 See ibid., 12-16.
83 See ibid., 21-22.
84 Ibid., 68-9.
86 Ibid., 28-31.
86 Ibid., 109-17.
87 Ibid., 82-93.
88 Platos use of irony to appeal to hypostatized significations,
Deleuze says, is countered by humor and monstrous examples, a s
when Diogenes the Cynic, answering Platos definition of man a s a
featherless biped, brings forth a plucked fowl. See Deleuze, The Logic
of Sense, 134-5.
89 Deleuze analyses Foucaults genealogical method on the basis of
this last pair. See Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, trans. Sean Hand (London:
Athlone Press, 1988),47-69.
See Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, 47,174-6,231-2.
91 Ibid., 51.
92 Ibid., 52-65.
93 Why does Saussure, a t the very moment when he discovers that
in language there are only differences, add that these differences are
without positive terms and eternally negative? (Deleuze, Difference
and Repetition, 204). See also, a s one example among many of this
error, Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 19771,19-28.
94 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course on General Linguistics, trans. Roy
Harris (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1986),118.All pages refer
to the translation, not the original page numbers in the margins.
95 Ibid., 119.
96 Ibid., 120.
97 A language might also be compared to a sheet of paper. Thought
is one side of the sheet and sound t h e reverse side. J u s t a s it is
impossible to take a pair of scissors and cut one side of paper without
a t the same time cutting the other, so it is impossible in a language to
isolate sound from thought, o r thought from sound. To separate the
two for theoretical purposes takes us into either pure psychology or
pure phonetics, not linguistics (Saussure, Course on General
Linguistics, 111).
98 Ibid., 121.
99 Ibid., 128.
loo See ibid., 106-9.
Iol This potentiality is used to explain analogical changes in
language (Ibid., 160-6). Saussure admits, however, t h a t even after
diachronic changes are accounted for, there still remains a residue
(141)that creates difficulties in maintaining the synchroniddiachronic
division.
Io2 See Ibid., 91.
Io3 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 20.On the sign as the object
of a fundamental encounter see Daniel W. Smith, Deleuzes Theory
76

77

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Nathan Widder

of Sensation: Overcoming t h e Kantian Duality in Deleuze: A Critical

Reader, 29-56, esp. 30-3.
lo4 Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, 104.
lo5 Ibid., 106.
lo6 Ibid., 71.

476