Somers-Hall, (2.3), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘2.3 Deleuze’s First Synthesis of Time: Hume (70–9/90–100)’, summary

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary. All boldface, underlining, and bracketed commentary are my own. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos and other distracting mistakes. Somers-Hall is abbreviated SH and Difference and Repetition as DR.]

Summary of

Henry Somers-Hall

Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition:
An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide

Part 1
A Guide to the Text

 

Chapter 2. Repetition for Itself

2.3 Deleuze’s First Synthesis of Time: Hume (70–9/90–100)

Brief summary:

We often see pairings of things, like: smoke-fire, smoke-fire, smoke-fire. After a while, when we see smoke, we then call to mind fire and expect to see it, and indeed, after looking below the smoke, we see the fire. This is because we contract all the prior instances of the pairings into one forceful association. Since it unites our past memories with our future anticipated impressions, this is a “contraction,” which somewhat inexplicably Deleuze also terms “contemplation”.  From an empiricist view, we are not some preconstituted subject who performs these contractions. Rather, the contractions happen automatically on a very basic level of experience, by means of a passive synthesis that does not involve our conscious understanding or the use of any concepts. Yet, [somehow] we can see every part of the world performing these contractions, including our hearts (and other organs) and all other things (including rocks, somehow). This means that we are composed of a ‘symphony’ (you might say) of different temporal contractions of past and future. This also means that all the world is such a symphony of selves each with their own temporality. Time then is not a linear, quantifiable sequence of successive events. It is rather a multiplicity of things feeling time in their own way, and is thus qualitative.

Summary

Deleuze first evokes in this chapter the Humean idea that repetition does not change anything about the object that is repeating. It only changes the mind that “contemplates” the object. Why do the objects not change? Well, if they did, then there is not a repetition of the same thing. We think of repeating pairing like smoke-fire, smoke-fire, smoke-fire, or AB, AB, AB, etc. If the repetition changed the objects, then it would be AB, CD, EF, …, and thus not a repetition. [SH moves to another point in this paragraph, but I am not sure if it is connected with the prior]. We now want to know, what allows us to expect B when perceiving A? [We might say that we “habitually” see fire after first detecting smoke. I am guessing that is what is meant by ‘habit’ here is not repeating actions that we have little control over, like smoking habits or superstitious habits. If this normal meaning of ‘habit’ is to be included here, I do not know how exactly. But it also seems strange to use the word ‘habit’ if this predominant meaning is not meant to be included. The next idea I think is clearer. We have different instances of AB, AB, AB, .., but they all contract together in the present when we see A and call to mind B. The force of the tendency to make that association is a product of the number and significance of the prior repetitions. Perhaps also the normal meaning of habit can be understood here, if we regard all habits as being responses to something else. We feel stress, the our minds automatically call to mind smoking.] In other words, we want to know, “what is it that allows us to contract habits?” (62). We already saw how the synthesis of reproduction of the imagination calls to mind past impressions that associate with current ones. But Hume thinks that “the ability to contract habits is not restricted to creatures with cognitive faculties as subtle as those Kant describes, and so any explanation in terms of those faculties cannot be accurate” (63). [I think the idea here is that for Kant, the imagination can only associate reproduced past moments on the basis of conceptual relations between the parts. So we see something that we match with the concept of smoke, and that concept is then matched conceptually with its correlate fire.  Where for Hume, no concepts are needed. In fact, what we call concepts are really just very strong associations.] For Kant, there is a “quantitative relation of the understanding, which relies on storing a sequence of prior moments. [I do not at all understand the quantitive relations. Perhaps for Kant we calculate how many times the pairing was found in the past. I do not know.] But for Hume, the imagination “operates like a ‘sensitive plate’ in order to develop a qualitative impression of the AB relation”.

Hume’s point is that the ability to contract habits is not restricted to creatures with cognitive faculties as subtle as those Kant describes, and | so any explanation in terms of those faculties cannot be accurate. Rather than an inference from a number of supporting cases, Deleuze argues that Hume sees habit formation as a process whereby past instances of the AB sequence are contracted together to form generalities by the imagination. The imagination operates like a ‘sensitive plate’ in order to develop a qualitative impression of the AB relation, rather than the quantitative relation of the understanding, which relies on storing a sequence of prior moments.
(62-63)

[We see smoke. We think fire. We then turn our eyes downward from the smoke, and we actually see fire. Thus] habit allows us to anticipate the future by means of the past, thus giving us “a relation between the past and the future”. SH then addresses what makes this a synthesis. [It is not entirely clear how the following point is different from the prior one. He seems to reiterate that on the basis of the past we anticipate the future. Please read to see if there is more in it.]

Now, on this level we have a conception of time, in that habit anticipates the future on the basis of the past. After having observed AB enough times, we anticipate a future, B, when we perceive A. So habit gives us a relation between the past and the future. In what sense is this a synthesis of time? Hume says the following about our perception of time: ‘For we may observe, that there is a continual succession of perceptions in our mind; so that the idea of time being for ever present with us’ (Hume 2000: 1.2.5). Habit turns this succession into a synthesis of time by systematising it, thus generating a field of past instances and a horizon of anticipation of the future. Rather than simply having a succession, certain impressions are retained (qualitatively), and others are anticipated on the basis of our retained impressions. We therefore have a model of time whereby aspects of the past are retained, and aspects of the future are anticipated from within the present.
(63)

SH then addresses “Deleuze’s account of method” [I am not sure what method SH is referring to here. None was mentioned before, so it must be a new concept, but I do not see what that concept is in the following material.] This account of method shows how active syntheses are possible by means of passive ones [I am also not sure what the difference is. I suspect that the passive ones are like the automatic habitual contractions, and the active ones are more explicitly, willfully, and conceptual performed. So we do not just see smoke and call to mind fire. We think about smoke and its significance, and we think about fire and its significance, and their connection. Probably there is a better explanation of what the active syntheses are.]. SH first notes that the subject is constituted through “the systematisaton of the flux of experience” (SH 63). Habit constitutes the subject. And the subject is the synthesis of time, namely, the synthesis of the past with the future. SH then says that on the basis of the fact that syntheses constitute subjects, we can now see how active syntheses are possible. [The next point is very complicated and very difficult to re-explain. SH deals with this Deleuze quotation. “Deleuze claims that once the subject emerges, then ‘on the basis of the qualitative impression in the imagination, memory reconstitutes the particular cases as distinct, conserving them in its own “temporal space”. The past is then no longer the immediate past of retention, but the reflexive past of representation, of reflexive and reproduced particularity’ (DR 71/92)” (SH 63). SH says that “we represent this process to ourselves”. But I thought Deleuze was saying that the past becomes represented as distinct memories, and these memories are the representations, and not that the process itself of reconstituting that past is represented. But let us assume what SH is saying. I suppose that means we are thinking about and representing in our minds the process of remembering something. SH continues to say that we represent it using Kant’s structures, I suppose the faculties. Maybe it works like this. We see smoke, and we think fire. We then say to ourselves, ‘oh, I must have conceptualized smoke and then using operations of my understanding I associated it with fire, even though all these operations were invisible to me.’ Somehow this operation of the understanding constitutes the relation of past and future, which I suppose means that we use our understanding to tie together past with anticipated impressions. This I suppose is an active synthesis which can be conducted secondarily to the original one in the imagination. But really all of this is done by the passive synthesis of habit. The final point is that this original synthesis cannot be accurately represented by the faculties, but I do not yet understand why.]

Deleuze’s account of method aims to show how active syntheses are possible on the basis of passive syntheses, and so we also need an account of how these higher syntheses are possible. The first point to note is that the systematisation of the flux of experience is, for Deleuze, the constitution of the subject: ‘Habit is the constitutive root of the subject, and the subject, at its root, is the synthesis of time – the synthesis of the present and the past in the light of the future’ (ES 92–3). I want to come back to this point in a moment, but if syntheses are constitutive of subjects, we can now see how the active syntheses are possible. Deleuze claims that once the subject emerges, then ‘on the basis of the qualitative impression in the imagination, memory reconstitutes the particular cases as distinct, conserving them in its own “temporal space”. The past is then no longer the immediate past of retention, but the reflexive past of representation, of reflexive and reproduced particularity’ (DR 71/92). So Deleuze’s claim is that when we represent this process to ourselves, we do so through the types of structures Kant has outlined. Doing so gives us a false impression that the work of synthesising time is being carried | out by those faculties themselves, whereas in fact by simply representing the process they have falsified it. The synthesis of a temporal manifold therefore, according to Deleuze, relies on a prior synthesis whereby the notions of past and future are generated, and the indifferent moments of sensation are related to one another through habit. Thus, Kant’s active synthesis in terms of the higher faculties relies on a prior synthesis that cannot be accurately represented by these faculties.
(63-64)

We said before that the subject is constituted through the contraction of habit, and it is not that an already constituted subject is doing those contractions. Now we ask what is the nature of this subject? SH says that it is “simply the organisation of impressions themselves” (64). So habit is not an activity that the subject performs. It is rather a mode of expectation or ‘contemplation’ using Deleuze’s term. And “it is this contemplation of time as involving anticipations and retentions that Deleuze claims is the subject. We now address some implications Deleuze draws from this.

1) “First, this synthesis of time is organised according to rhythms of anticipation, rather than simply as a succession of moments. Rather than mathematical time, which is modelled on space, the time of habit is qualitative, and, like Henri Bergson’s duration, forces us to wait” (SH 64). [What is a rhythm of anticipation? That is not clear to me. And what does it mean for time to be qualitative? That it feels like something? So we feel like something will happen, because we anticipate it? Thus time is experienced as a sort of tension of waiting?]

2) The self is anything that contracts. This includes hearts. So selfhood is not psychological. [This next part is hard to follow. For it to work, we need to accept that rocks are performing some kind of contemplation, thus some sort of habitual contraction. What would that be? I do not know. Maybe the rock was formed by a contraction of particles. Put I am not sure what this has to do with the habitual contractions we are talking about. At any rate, assume that somehow this is happening, that means the rock has both selfhood and its own temporality. In fact then, everything in the world has selfhood and its own temporality. Furthermore, all time is organized. So far the organization has meant organized into habitual contractions. That means that time is not pure succession, because it is contracted all over the place. I will quote this paragraph, since I cannot explain it.]

Second, if the subject is simply the synthesis of time into an organised structure, then it is going to be the case that wherever we encounter such a synthesis or organisation of time, we will encounter a self: ‘there is a self wherever a furtive contemplation has been established’ (DR 78/100). This means that habit is not itself a psychological phenomenon, but instead operates throughout the world. In fact, as this synthesis is constitutive of the psychological realm, it will operate in the material world prior to it. We can see, for instance, that the heart contracts, not in the sense of the actual movement it makes, but to the extent that it organises an essentially indifferent succession into a series of moments of a particular duration (the heartbeat). Now, if the heart can be seen as operating according to a habit, then so can almost everything in the world. Deleuze puts this point as follows: Perhaps it is irony to say that everything is contemplation, even rocks and woods, animals and men, even Actaeon and the stag, Narcissus and the flower, | even our actions and our needs. But irony in turn is still a contemplation, nothing but a contemplation. (DR 75/96) A consequence of this is that if everything is a contemplation, then although the organisation of time is subjective, all time is organised. Essentially, the world is constituted as a field of co-existing rhythms operating with different tones, rather than as pure succession.
(SH 65)

3) [This third inference says a lot but gives no explanations. I will just quote it since I cannot explain anything in it.]

Third, when we look at how habit functions, even when a habit is driven by a need on the part of an organism, it is not the case that the habit itself is constituted in terms of the objects themselves. If I am thirsty, for instance, I do not anticipate or expect the molecular structure, H2O, but rather water. Habit does not operate in terms of that which generates impressions, but rather in terms of signs. Habit does not, therefore, operate with representations of things, but rather with what Deleuze and Guattari will later call affects.
(65)

So recall that our heart is contemplating. We have other organs too that must be contemplating. Thus we are a system of syntheses. We dissolve into these syntheses and thus we are larval subjects. [This notion of larval subjects is very interesting, but it is not explained here, even though it is in the quotation. A larva is a younger form of an animal before it metamorphosizes into its adult form. What does us having many internal contemplations have to do with our subjectivity being larval? It would seem to imply that our constitutive multiplicity or complexity of selfhood makes us be in a state before metamorphosis. Why? Is it because it prevents us from taking a final form? How?]  [This next part also seems to need some clarification and elaboration] SH also says that the “notion of the sign is important here” [but he does not explain what is meant by the sign. It is very difficult to explain what SH is saying in the rest of the paragraph about signs, since it introduces concepts without clarifying their meanings. So please read it for yourself.]

This leads us on to the fourth point. Deleuze has said that the heart contemplates, and obviously, the heart is a part of us. What is the relation between us and our heart, and all of the other organs and constituents of organs that make us up? We ourselves, according to Deleuze, are systems of syntheses [The following up to citation is Deleuze]:

The self, therefore, is by no means simple: it is not enough to relativise or pluralise the self, all the while retaining for it a simple attenuated form. Selves are larval subjects; the world of passive syntheses constitutes the system of the self, under conditions yet to be determined, but it is the system of a dissolved self. (DR 78/100)

The notion of sign is important here, because the relations between levels of the self cannot be understood as if the self were a series of distinct elements brought into relation with one another. We don’t have interactions between different substances, but interactions between levels of the same substance. Rather than a causal interaction between entities, we therefore have signals between levels. Our heartbeat appears as a ‘sign’ in our world, but this sign does not resemble the movement of the heart itself. The signs transmitted between levels are different in kind from the selves that generate them.
(65)

 

 

Citations from:

Somers-Hall, Henry. Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition. An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013.

Or if otherwise noted:

DR:
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994/London: Continuum, 2004.