Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation provides a critical account of the key connections between twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and nineteenth-century German idealist G. W. F. Hegel. While Hegel has been recognized as one of the key targets of Deleuze’s philosophical writing, Henry Somers-Hall shows how Deleuze’s antipathy to Hegel has its roots in a problem the two thinkers both try to address: getting beyond a philosophy of judgment and the restrictions of Kant’s transcendental idealism. By tracing the development of their attempts to address this problem, Somers-Hall offers an interpretation of the sweep of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy, providing a series of analyses of key moments in the history of thought, including the logics of Aristotle and Russell, Kant’s own philosophy of judgment, and the philosophy of Bergson. He also develops a novel interpretation of Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, and situates his philosophy in relation to the broader post-Kantian tradition. In addition to Deleuze’s relation to Hegel, the book makes important contributions to the study of Deleuze’s philosophy of mathematics, as well as to the study of several underappreciated areas of Hegel’s own philosophy.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE: THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION
1. Deleuze and Transcendental Epiricism
Introduction
Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason
Sartre and The Transcendence of the Ego
Deleuze and The Logic of Sense
Conclusion
2. Difference and Identity
Introduction
Aristotle
The Genus and Equivocity in Aristotle
Change and the Individual
Aquinas
Symbolic Logic
Preliminary Conclusions
Hegel and Aristotle
Zeno
Conclusion
PART TWO: RESPONSES TO REPRESENTATION
3. Bergsonism
Introduction
Bergson’s Account of Kant and Classical Logic
Bergson’s Method of Intuition
Bergson and the Two Kinds of Multiplicity
Conclusion
4. The Virtual and the Actual
Introduction
The Two Multiplicities
Depth in Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty
Deleuze and the Structure of the Problem
Bergson on Ravaisson
Conclusion
5. Infinite Thought
Introduction
Kant and Hegel
The Metaphysical Deduction and Metaphysics
From Being to Essence
The Essential and the Inessential
The Structure of Reflection
The Determinations of Reflection
The Speculative Proposition
The Concept of Essence in Aristotle and Hegel
Conclusion
PART THREE: BEYOND REPRESENTATION
6. Hegel and Deleuze on Ontology and the Calculus
Introduction
The Calculus
Hegel and the Calculus
Berkeley and the Foundations of the Calculus
Deleuze and the Calculus
Hegel and Deleuze
The Kantian Antinomies
Conclusion
7. Force, Difference, and Opposition
Introduction
Force and the Understanding
The Inverted World
Deleuze and the Inverted World
The One and the Many
Conclusion
8. Hegel, Deleuze, and the Structure of the Organism
Introduction
The Philosophy of Nature
Hegel and Evolution
Hegel’s Account of the Structure of the Organism
Hegel, Cuvier, and Comparative Anatomy
Deleuze, Geoffroy, and Transcendental Anatomy
Teratology and Teleology
Contingency in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
Conclusion
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
