Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wg55d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-03T02:31:25.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Hegel, Deleuze/Guattari and Political Immanence: The Sons of Rousseau

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2018

George Hristov*
Affiliation:
University of Regensburg, Germanygeorge.hristov@gmail.com
Get access

Abstract

In the article I argue that Hegel and Deleuze/Guattari construct two distinct political paths toward immanence. Both of these paths have as their starting point Rousseau’s bourgeois. I show that both thinkers follow Rousseau in his attempt to construct political immanence and abandon the position of private man. However, in doing so they move in opposite directions. Hegel seeks to convert the bourgeois into the citizen, with the intention of reformulating the immanence of state-life presented in the The Social Contract by extending mutual recognition a distinct space in the form of civil society. In contrast Deleuze/Guattari move in the direction of becoming-animal along the lines of the Discourse on Inequality, by reformulating the relationship between life and society. At the same time, I argue that the overcoming of the problems that Hegel and Deleuze/Guattari identified in Rousseau introduces new ones and that the dangers inherent in the project of immanence cannot disappear.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Deleuze, G. (1960), A Politics of Things. Deleuze’s Course on Roussea u, ed. and trans. A. Kleinherenbrink. Available online at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxeTjgod3jSSS3pvdkh4U2s0Nlk/edit, accessed 28 April 2018.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G. (2004), ‘Gilles Deleuze Talks Philosophy’, in Desert Island and Other Texts 1953–1974, ed. D. Lapoujade, trans. M. Taormina. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1986), Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. Dritter Teil, Werke, Vol. 10. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (2001), The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree. Kitchener: Batoche Books.Google Scholar
Koselleck, R. (1988), Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Riley, P. (1970), ‘A Possible Explanation of Rousseau’s General Will’, The American Political Science Review 64:1: 8697.Google Scholar
Rousseau, J. J. (1983), On Public Happiness, trans. P. de Man. Available online at: http://ucispace.lib.uci.edu/bitstream/handle/10575/1094/15demanportablerousseaupublichappiness.pdf?sequence=21, accessed 28 April 2018.Google Scholar
Rousseau, J. J. (1997a), Discourse on the Sciences and Arts or First Discourse, in ‘The Discourses’ and Other Early Political Writings, ed. and trans. V. Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rousseau, J. J. (1997b), Julie, Or, The New Heloise: Letters of Two Lovers who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps, The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 6, ed. R. D. Masters and C. Kelly, trans. P. Stewart and J. Vaché. Hannover and London: University of New England Press.Google Scholar
Rousseau, J. J. (1999), Political Economy, in The Social Contract, trans. C. Betts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rousseau, J. J. (2003), ‘Letter to M. de Franquières’, in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. V. Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rousseau, J. J. (2005), Considerations on the Government of Poland and on Its Planned Reformation, The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 11, ed. C. Kelly, trans. C. Kelly and J. Bush. Hanover and London: University Press of New England.Google Scholar
Russon, J. (2013), ‘Desiring-production and Spirit: On Anti-Oedipus and German Idealism’, in Hegel and Deleuze: Together Again for the First Time, ed. K. Houle and J. Vernon. Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar