Hi again Yves,
>===== Original Message From Yves Winter <winter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> =====
>Nathan,
>
>Thanks for your responses. I am still somewhat confused about your concept
>of 'ontology of difference' and I would like to take the opportunity to
>press you a little more on that point.
Ok, I'll do my best to answer.
>
>1. You mention Hegel as your starting point and you invoke his ontology of
>sense. At the same time you discard what you call 'metaphysics' by
>separating it from ontology. Are you saying that ontology is not
>metaphysical once it rids itself of notions like substance, essence etc.?
>Hegel's 'ontology', (his dialectics) certainly get around these classical
>metaphysical concepts, but most people would still regard it as deeply
>implicated in a metaphysical project (sure, you could criticise this
>perspective, and argue that Hegel was insufficiently hegelian, as for
>example Adorno does in his Negative Dialectics). In any case, to put it
>briefly, I somewhat question the popular displacement of metaphysics by
>ontology. Does it amount to anything but semantics? Is not any philosophy
>'metaphysical' in the sense that it makes statements about the possibility
>of knowledge, values, social reality etc? In what way would an 'ontology of
>difference' be different? You talk about the becoming conscious of
>'metaphysical remnants'. Is this not a typical enlightenment theme, bound
>within an ultimately 'metaphysical' conception of rationality and the
>potential of self-knowledge (even if the self, here is not necessarily
>individual)? I like Deleuze's rhetorics on difference, repetition,
>relationality, fluidity and what have you, but, understood as an ontology,
>does it not simply reconstitute a body of statements about the nature of the
>social world (even if that nature is dynamic)? In short, don't you simply
>replace the (admittedly unfashionable) term 'metaphysics' by 'ontology'?
>
I suppose the best way to begin is to say that when I talk about separating
ontology and metaphysics I'm following Heidegger a bit: metaphysics is one
answer to the question of the being of beings, and not the only answer. The
metaphysical answer is the answer that is structured around identity. I admit
completely that this is a restricted meaning for metaphysics: if you want to
say that any philosophy is metaphysical insofar as it makes statements about
the possibility of knowledge, social value, etc., then what my work is doing
is metaphysical. And in this sense maybe the differentiation I'm trying to
make is just semantical. But in a lot of political philosophy, metaphysics is
a derogatory term, so that most, if not all philosophy, gets charged with
anachronism because it is supposedly metaphysical. But what I want to argue
is that the anachronism lies in being stuck in the "identity thesis" -- as I
think that is what Adorno often calls it -- and that a mistake is made if all
ontologies are dismissed on grounds of being "metaphysical" or "invoking
transcendence" or in any event "because they're too difficult to read and so
obviously are written by intellectual imposters." If I manage to articulate
where I place my work in relation to other contemporary philosophies, then
I've succeeded in what I intend to do with the separation.
Now, an ontology that avoids the identity thesis is not one that simply does
away with terms like substance, cause, etc., the displacement of these terms
doesn't mean they get banished from the dictionary. But there is a
revaluation that needs to be performed. Nietzsche, for example, doesn't speak
of getting rid of truth, but of experimentally putting the will to truth into
question, and he doesn't say that the error of traditional philosophy is that
it believes in causes but that it reverses cause and effect, that most of what
it puts down as a first cause is nothing more than an effect, moreover that
these reversals are the product of (and thus in a certain sense "caused by") a
certain will (the will to truth).
As for whether my work is despite itself stuck in the Enlightenment's will to
progress, I'll leave that to Habermas. Let's just say that all enlightenings
aren't necessarily part of the Enlightenment.
>2. 'difference that is different from identity and difference' - I am not
>quite sure what to make of this. I can think of two ways to conceptualise
>such a difference: a) a difference that always differs from itself and
>therefore always exceeds its representation, but is nevertheless to some
>extent contained in it- i.e. an immanent difference. b) a difference that is
>radically exterior to any representation - in Benjaminian terms (or
>Derridian, if you will) a difference that is always yet to come and whose
>absence conditions the possiblity of meaning - some type of transcendence. I
>suspect, due to your Deleuzian spin that you would opt rather for the first
>type of difference. If that is the case, then in what way does this
>'different difference' differ from Hegel's statement that being is becoming?
>
I probably should have written different from the identity of identity and
difference, that is to say, different from the Hegelian formula of mediation
of differences (here, just to refer back to what you wrote about Adorno, I
think he says more that Hegel is not dialectical enough, not that he is not
Hegelian enough -- his Hegelianism comes because he doesn't take dialectics to
it's conclusion, which is non-identity, but maybe we're just playing with
semantics here too). My take is that the identity of identity and difference
mediates differences only in abstraction, and that once this abstraction is
razed you end up with an ontology of difference -- and in this sense, an
ontology that despite certain initial parallels with Hegel is not the same as
his being of becoming. There are people who argue that this is in fact what
Hegel does -- Judith Butler, Zizek, both of whom say that it is wrong to think
of Hegel as a thinker of totality/identity -- but you'll notice that they
continually conclude their analysis halfway through the Logic of the
Phenomenology. I think, their arguments would never be sustainable if they
actually read to the end. But if you go to the end you'll find exactly what
Marx and Adorno criticize Hegel for -- the positing of a unity above a world
that in fact remains divided. To raze this abstraction means to move
dialectics, in Adorno's terms, into a dialectics of non-identity. If Hegel
sees difference, and therefore negation, simply as the negation of identity
(the non-X that is ultimately in a mediated synthesis with its identity), then
non-identity is the even more "radical" negation that is _neither_ X _nor_
not-X. For all of his talk about positivity against Hegelian negativity, I
think this is very much what Deleuze is up to as well, in his talk of
opposition being an abstraction of differences that places differences on a
flat plane and misses the more original dimension of depth on which these are
organized and synthesized (i.e., the Difference in Itself chapter of
Difference and Repetition), and also in his talk about the disjunctive
synthesis in relation to the conjunctive syntheses of identity.
Now, how to conceptualize this difference? I prefer variant two, the immanent
version, though I'm willing to concede that if you refuse to see Derrida as
being a closet negative theologian (and I'm not sure that you can really
refuse this), then the difference that is "radically exterior" to
representation can be similarly immanent. But I think the terms regularly
used in version (a) -- the margin, the radical exterior, the constitutive
outside -- are often unhelpful and tend to miss key aspects of this
difference, mainly the way the spatial metaphors of fronteir and outside are
inadequate to it because they similarly imply a two dimensional plane that
misses a dimension of depth. I wouldn't even bother with this critique of
version (a), except that proponents of the version regularly adopt these terms
when criticizing Deleuze, claiming that he is the one who is seeking some
radical outside or exterior, and so is really falling into the trap of
transcendence. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but there it is -- and hey,
it's in the footnotes to the book, yet another reason to take a look at it.
>Finally, a minor point: I like your argument about the rethinking of time
>that is required by an ontology of difference. However, on a purely
>conceptual level, I still don't understand why this makes an ontology of
>difference necessarily genealogical. Sure, it necessarily involves
>theorising at a diachronic and synchronic level, i.e. going beyond linear
>and chronological conceptions of time and history, but genealogy is only one
>form such a theorisation can take.
>
I suppose it doesn't have to be genealogical, there is more than one way to
skin a cat or otherwise to do things. But the way my interests in this
project developed it took me into reading the likes of Aristotle and Duns
Scotus and I didn't want for that reason for it to be thought of as a
historical project. But I also think that in the context of a fairly standard
(but I think often completely fallacious) complaint that "postmodernists"
rejects modernism and its past without having adequate knowledge or
appreciation of it (note, this complaint issues from the same mouths that also
complain that these damned postmodernists historicize everything), there is a
need to show that an ontology of difference implies a reapproach and
reengagement with philosophies of the past, and that there is a way of reading
them rigorously that is not for that reason "historical". Even Derrida, in
Positions, explains his deconstruction of philosophy in terms of a "structured
genealogy of philosophy's concepts" that has been dismissed by the history of
philosophy.(p. 6 of the English translation).
>Anyway, I am looking forward to having a look at your book. Is there going
>to be a paperback edition?
>
The press doesn't issue paperbacks until later, but as I've said, the
hardcover is pretty reasonably priced (I've seen harcovers of similar length
sold for 70 bucks, which makes it basically impossible for these to make it
beyond university libraries), and at some point, at least until too many
people do this, there's the free download from the Illinois Press website.
Take care,
Nathan
>Yves
>
Dr. Nathan Widder
Lecturer in Political Theory
University of Exeter
Exeter EX4 4RJ
United Kingdom
Web page: http://www.ex.ac.uk/shipss/politics/staff/widder/
MA in Critical Global Studies: http://www.ex.ac.uk/shipss/school/ma/global.php
>===== Original Message From Yves Winter <winter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> =====
>Nathan,
>
>Thanks for your responses. I am still somewhat confused about your concept
>of 'ontology of difference' and I would like to take the opportunity to
>press you a little more on that point.
Ok, I'll do my best to answer.
>
>1. You mention Hegel as your starting point and you invoke his ontology of
>sense. At the same time you discard what you call 'metaphysics' by
>separating it from ontology. Are you saying that ontology is not
>metaphysical once it rids itself of notions like substance, essence etc.?
>Hegel's 'ontology', (his dialectics) certainly get around these classical
>metaphysical concepts, but most people would still regard it as deeply
>implicated in a metaphysical project (sure, you could criticise this
>perspective, and argue that Hegel was insufficiently hegelian, as for
>example Adorno does in his Negative Dialectics). In any case, to put it
>briefly, I somewhat question the popular displacement of metaphysics by
>ontology. Does it amount to anything but semantics? Is not any philosophy
>'metaphysical' in the sense that it makes statements about the possibility
>of knowledge, values, social reality etc? In what way would an 'ontology of
>difference' be different? You talk about the becoming conscious of
>'metaphysical remnants'. Is this not a typical enlightenment theme, bound
>within an ultimately 'metaphysical' conception of rationality and the
>potential of self-knowledge (even if the self, here is not necessarily
>individual)? I like Deleuze's rhetorics on difference, repetition,
>relationality, fluidity and what have you, but, understood as an ontology,
>does it not simply reconstitute a body of statements about the nature of the
>social world (even if that nature is dynamic)? In short, don't you simply
>replace the (admittedly unfashionable) term 'metaphysics' by 'ontology'?
>
I suppose the best way to begin is to say that when I talk about separating
ontology and metaphysics I'm following Heidegger a bit: metaphysics is one
answer to the question of the being of beings, and not the only answer. The
metaphysical answer is the answer that is structured around identity. I admit
completely that this is a restricted meaning for metaphysics: if you want to
say that any philosophy is metaphysical insofar as it makes statements about
the possibility of knowledge, social value, etc., then what my work is doing
is metaphysical. And in this sense maybe the differentiation I'm trying to
make is just semantical. But in a lot of political philosophy, metaphysics is
a derogatory term, so that most, if not all philosophy, gets charged with
anachronism because it is supposedly metaphysical. But what I want to argue
is that the anachronism lies in being stuck in the "identity thesis" -- as I
think that is what Adorno often calls it -- and that a mistake is made if all
ontologies are dismissed on grounds of being "metaphysical" or "invoking
transcendence" or in any event "because they're too difficult to read and so
obviously are written by intellectual imposters." If I manage to articulate
where I place my work in relation to other contemporary philosophies, then
I've succeeded in what I intend to do with the separation.
Now, an ontology that avoids the identity thesis is not one that simply does
away with terms like substance, cause, etc., the displacement of these terms
doesn't mean they get banished from the dictionary. But there is a
revaluation that needs to be performed. Nietzsche, for example, doesn't speak
of getting rid of truth, but of experimentally putting the will to truth into
question, and he doesn't say that the error of traditional philosophy is that
it believes in causes but that it reverses cause and effect, that most of what
it puts down as a first cause is nothing more than an effect, moreover that
these reversals are the product of (and thus in a certain sense "caused by") a
certain will (the will to truth).
As for whether my work is despite itself stuck in the Enlightenment's will to
progress, I'll leave that to Habermas. Let's just say that all enlightenings
aren't necessarily part of the Enlightenment.
>2. 'difference that is different from identity and difference' - I am not
>quite sure what to make of this. I can think of two ways to conceptualise
>such a difference: a) a difference that always differs from itself and
>therefore always exceeds its representation, but is nevertheless to some
>extent contained in it- i.e. an immanent difference. b) a difference that is
>radically exterior to any representation - in Benjaminian terms (or
>Derridian, if you will) a difference that is always yet to come and whose
>absence conditions the possiblity of meaning - some type of transcendence. I
>suspect, due to your Deleuzian spin that you would opt rather for the first
>type of difference. If that is the case, then in what way does this
>'different difference' differ from Hegel's statement that being is becoming?
>
I probably should have written different from the identity of identity and
difference, that is to say, different from the Hegelian formula of mediation
of differences (here, just to refer back to what you wrote about Adorno, I
think he says more that Hegel is not dialectical enough, not that he is not
Hegelian enough -- his Hegelianism comes because he doesn't take dialectics to
it's conclusion, which is non-identity, but maybe we're just playing with
semantics here too). My take is that the identity of identity and difference
mediates differences only in abstraction, and that once this abstraction is
razed you end up with an ontology of difference -- and in this sense, an
ontology that despite certain initial parallels with Hegel is not the same as
his being of becoming. There are people who argue that this is in fact what
Hegel does -- Judith Butler, Zizek, both of whom say that it is wrong to think
of Hegel as a thinker of totality/identity -- but you'll notice that they
continually conclude their analysis halfway through the Logic of the
Phenomenology. I think, their arguments would never be sustainable if they
actually read to the end. But if you go to the end you'll find exactly what
Marx and Adorno criticize Hegel for -- the positing of a unity above a world
that in fact remains divided. To raze this abstraction means to move
dialectics, in Adorno's terms, into a dialectics of non-identity. If Hegel
sees difference, and therefore negation, simply as the negation of identity
(the non-X that is ultimately in a mediated synthesis with its identity), then
non-identity is the even more "radical" negation that is _neither_ X _nor_
not-X. For all of his talk about positivity against Hegelian negativity, I
think this is very much what Deleuze is up to as well, in his talk of
opposition being an abstraction of differences that places differences on a
flat plane and misses the more original dimension of depth on which these are
organized and synthesized (i.e., the Difference in Itself chapter of
Difference and Repetition), and also in his talk about the disjunctive
synthesis in relation to the conjunctive syntheses of identity.
Now, how to conceptualize this difference? I prefer variant two, the immanent
version, though I'm willing to concede that if you refuse to see Derrida as
being a closet negative theologian (and I'm not sure that you can really
refuse this), then the difference that is "radically exterior" to
representation can be similarly immanent. But I think the terms regularly
used in version (a) -- the margin, the radical exterior, the constitutive
outside -- are often unhelpful and tend to miss key aspects of this
difference, mainly the way the spatial metaphors of fronteir and outside are
inadequate to it because they similarly imply a two dimensional plane that
misses a dimension of depth. I wouldn't even bother with this critique of
version (a), except that proponents of the version regularly adopt these terms
when criticizing Deleuze, claiming that he is the one who is seeking some
radical outside or exterior, and so is really falling into the trap of
transcendence. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but there it is -- and hey,
it's in the footnotes to the book, yet another reason to take a look at it.
>Finally, a minor point: I like your argument about the rethinking of time
>that is required by an ontology of difference. However, on a purely
>conceptual level, I still don't understand why this makes an ontology of
>difference necessarily genealogical. Sure, it necessarily involves
>theorising at a diachronic and synchronic level, i.e. going beyond linear
>and chronological conceptions of time and history, but genealogy is only one
>form such a theorisation can take.
>
I suppose it doesn't have to be genealogical, there is more than one way to
skin a cat or otherwise to do things. But the way my interests in this
project developed it took me into reading the likes of Aristotle and Duns
Scotus and I didn't want for that reason for it to be thought of as a
historical project. But I also think that in the context of a fairly standard
(but I think often completely fallacious) complaint that "postmodernists"
rejects modernism and its past without having adequate knowledge or
appreciation of it (note, this complaint issues from the same mouths that also
complain that these damned postmodernists historicize everything), there is a
need to show that an ontology of difference implies a reapproach and
reengagement with philosophies of the past, and that there is a way of reading
them rigorously that is not for that reason "historical". Even Derrida, in
Positions, explains his deconstruction of philosophy in terms of a "structured
genealogy of philosophy's concepts" that has been dismissed by the history of
philosophy.(p. 6 of the English translation).
>Anyway, I am looking forward to having a look at your book. Is there going
>to be a paperback edition?
>
The press doesn't issue paperbacks until later, but as I've said, the
hardcover is pretty reasonably priced (I've seen harcovers of similar length
sold for 70 bucks, which makes it basically impossible for these to make it
beyond university libraries), and at some point, at least until too many
people do this, there's the free download from the Illinois Press website.
Take care,
Nathan
>Yves
>
Dr. Nathan Widder
Lecturer in Political Theory
University of Exeter
Exeter EX4 4RJ
United Kingdom
Web page: http://www.ex.ac.uk/shipss/politics/staff/widder/
MA in Critical Global Studies: http://www.ex.ac.uk/shipss/school/ma/global.php