Putting an End to “Man”: Nature and the Human in Hegel, Becoming-Animal and Abolitionism

Abstract

The article attempts to reconstruct the difference between the ontologies of Hegel and Deleuze. The question of nature and Man (as different from the human animal) in both philosophies can provide crucial insight into the fundamental ontological disparity between the two philosophies. Nature, according to Hegel, is truly external to the idea and (as such) is at the same time a moment in the movement of the concept becoming what it is. Deleuze, in contrast, goes back to pre-Kantian ontology without abandoning the transcendental level of analysis. This enables him to bestow upon nature real externality and to transform the dialectic into a mechanism of opening to the inexhaustible outside, not of confirming the primacy of the concept. The case of becoming-animal demonstrates the political implications of this ontological choice: it can be understood as a way of putting an end to “Man,” an enterprise compatible with abolitionist  postulates.