Somers-Hall, (2.5), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘2.5 The Third Synthesis 1: The Pure Form of Time (85–9/107–11)’, 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

2.5 The Third Synthesis 1: The Pure Form of Time (85–9/107–11)

 

 

Brief summary:

For Deleuze, time is something that is synthesized, and there are three ways it is synthesized. Perhaps the most important and the most difficult to conceptualize is the third synthesis. The basic idea here [it seems] is that time is most fundamentally a pure form rather than an actual activity or process. To elaborate this notion, Deleuze says that in this synthesis, time “comes out of joint.” An analog clock-hand has a central spinning “joint” or “hinge,” in the sense of a 360-degree door hinge, as in a turnstile. Similarly, the stars in the sky seem to circulate yearly in perfect circles around the north star, and the sun seems to wheel around the world circularly each day. These regular motions give value to one another by means of ratios. For example, the sun makes about 365 turns around the sky by the time a star returns to its original position in the night sky (when we observe the star the same time each night). This is time that is “in joint,” perhaps meaning that it is time formed or conceived by means of motional regularities whose ratio comparisons produce a measure for a linear, progressive, and steady flow of time. Such an ongoing, steadily-moving sort of time is one of succession, where we have one day coming after the other, one year following another, and so on. One way to understand how time is out of joint is to remove this concept of successivity. Deleuze, then, turns to Kant’s notion of the pure a priori intuition of time. Before we can even experience time as a succession of moments – that is, as having a linear order and a sequence that can be enumerated as ‘moment one, moment two, moment three, and so on’ – we first need a basic mode of receptivity which would allow us to experience something as temporal in the first place. Then somehow secondly we may give temporal order and measure to our experiences.

Summary

 

[We previously examined Deleuze’s first and second syntheses of time. The first is the synthesis that contracts habitually experienced pairings. This causes us to anticipate the future and to experience time as moving in that direction. The second one synthesizes the past with the present such that our memorial past is always expressing itself entirely in the present, although it does so to more or less degrees of activity or detachment.] The first synthesis depends on the second, since we can only bring the past to bear on the future if we first retain the past. Both of these syntheses will themselves depend on the third one. The third syntheses does not constitute the subject. Rather, it comes prior to a constituted subject. [SH says, “prior to the subject as either constitutive or constituted”. I am not entirely certain what is meant by ‘constitutive’. Perhaps we might also say ‘constituting’ in the sense of the subject constituting its world or somehow itself. There may be some other important meaning, too.] [Now, since it does not constitute a subject,] the third synthesis is not a passive synthesis [that happens automatically and provides the mental material out of which the subject somehow finds formation. And since it is not an activity performed by the subject] the third synthesis is also not an active synthesis (72). As we saw with the prior two syntheses, Deleuze will explain how it is that the third syntheses leads to the “illusion that a representational active synthesis is responsible for the constitution of our world” (72). First Deleuze, following Kant, claims that the argument for positing a substantial subject is fallacious. Kant’s solution is positing a “transcendental unity of apperception”. Deleuze will show that this solution “rests on Kant’s false belief that all synthesis requires a subject” (72). For Deleuze, however, it rests on time itself. SH then outlines his plan. First, he will look at how Kant’s unique philosophy of time opens the possibility of a pure time (73a). Next, he will look at the problem of the subject in Kant’s account. Thirdly, he will look at the pure and empty form of time in dramatic works. Lastly, he will look at the “‘esoteric’ doctrine of the third synthesis,” and he will relate it to intensive difference (73).

SH will begin first with Deleuze’s notion of “time is out of joint.” What does it mean for time to be in joint? To explain how that could be so, Deleuze refers to a mythological account in Plato’s Timaeus (73d). The cosmos begins in disorderly motion. But this is before there was time. So we first note that this  myth conceives of motion of as being able to exist without time. Out from this chaos the Demiurge arranges the celestial bodies into orderly circular orbits. The Demiurge is eternal, and the perfect motion of the bodies is the best way this eternity could present itself in a temporalized world that is limited to actual, ongoing motions. The regularity of the bodies’ movement allows for time to be measured. For example, there are so many days (cycle of daylight) in a year (cycle of the stars’ movements in the night sky or the sun’s peaks and valleys in the daytime sky). Time then becomes the measure of [regular] motion (74). This means however that time does not have an “empty form”. Rather, it is constituted by comparisons of actual motion. [I wonder why the form of the ratio of two motions is not considered an ‘empty form’. So for example, perhaps it could be something like the formula, a : b, where a is one regular motion and b is another to which the first is compared. For instance, the second hand makes sixty rotations for every rotation of the minute hand. Maybe it is formal, but just not “empty,” because it only has real value if actual motions are used in the comparison. Nonetheless, the formulation I would think is formal, and in its abstract form as a simple formula it would seem to be empty.]  [The heavenly bodies’ motion is ceaseless and unchanging. This makes it like eternity. But it is unlike eternity in that the motion that time is measuring is occurring in some present moment rather than somehow standing outside of all momentary time, like eternal things are normally thought to do. Thus] “Time is simply an imperfect way in which the eternal patterns of the world present themselves” (74). [The regularity and commensurability of the heavenly bodies’ motions make it such that they take on numerical ratio relations, and therefore this means that their motion is intelligible, as it can be understood conceptually. But] if we remove the movement, time becomes unintelligible. However, if we do not make time based on these patterns, that is, if we make it such that “time is out of joint,” then we would have a sort of time that is not like Plato’s “subordination of time to intelligible motion” (74). Now, “the subordination of time to an eternal, intelligible and also representational model is central | not just to Plato’s conception, but also to pre-Kantian philosophy in general” (74-75). But if “To be ‘in joint’ is … to be hinged, tied to cardinal numbers, and tied to a prior representational order” (75), then what does it mean that Kant makes time be ‘out of joint’?

 

[Before we continue, let us note a couple of Kant’s interesting ideas regarding space and time. We might normally think that we get to know space and time from experiencing them. We see things in space, we then get a sense for what space is. Or we experience the flow of time, and that tells us what time is like. But in fact, we seem to have knowledge of them even before even experiencing them in the first place. How can this be? Space is for the most part something we sense outside ourselves, since we sense the spatial relations of the external world. “By means of outer sense (a property of our mind) we represent to ourselves objects as outside us, and all as in space. In space their form, magnitude, and relation to one another is determined, or determinable” (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason A22/B37; p.157). But, in order to sense something outside us as being in fact something that really is outside us with spatial features, we  need already to have a basic conceptual structure in our understanding which enables us to distinguish inside from outside. Yet, this distinction is already a spatial structure, since it places one thing or area exterior to another in a spatialized sort of way. Thus, we have an “a priori” conception of space, one that precedes and even preconditions our experiential, a posteriori notions. For time, first think of how we are constantly aware of the world around us or inside us. So, our inner or our outer world is constantly appearing to us. Now, try to imagine one instance of the inner or outer world appearing to you, but it does so without it happening in time. So, the appearance has no temporality to it, no duration, no location in a sequence of experiences, and no temporal relation to other appearings, such as being simultaneous with or coming before or after them. Can you imagine such an appearing without any temporality to it? I cannot, because any such appearing will have some experiential context that provides temporal indicators that tell me about its temporal features. If I imagine seeing a tree, I cannot imagine experiencing that tree unless I also imagine the experience happening at some moment and having some duration and location in my ongoing stream of consciousness. Now, imagine the inverse situation. Imagine instead that you are experiencing the flow of time, but during this temporal experience, nothing appears to you. Can you imagine experiencing time without experiencing the things appearing within time? Kant seems to say that we can experience just time without any appearings within it. I am not so sure that is the case. So perhaps I am misconstruing the situation by placing it in experiential terms. However, I also do not know how else you can have an appearance (in the context of an ‘Aesthetic’) without that also involving the experience of an appearance. So, if nothing appears to me, I think it is possible then that I also do not experience time. If my head and senses were completely “dead” or entirely blank, I am not sure I would know that time is passing, since nothing is passing before my mind. At any rate, even under this situation we are still assuming that there is an objective time that is passing even if I cannot perceive it. This is what Kant writes: “Time is a necessary representation that grounds all intuitions. In regard to appearances in general one cannot remove time, though one can very well take the appearances away from time. Time is therefore given a priori. In it alone is all actuality of appearances possible. The latter could all disappear, but time itself, as the universal condition of their possibility, cannot be removed” (A31/B46; 162).] [So SH just asked, “In what sense, therefore, does Kant make time ‘out of joint?’” He says he will answer the first question, but I do not recall any but this one. Later we may return to the other one that I am forgetting.]

To understand how time can be out of joint for Kant, we first note how in his theory of intuition that

rather than time being a mode of succession, succession is a mode in which time appears to us. In fact, for Kant, succession is simply a way in which we organise time. (SH 75).

[SH then turns to Deleuze’s explanation from a course lecture. In fact, it is from the excellent and well-known Kant lectures. Here Deleuze explains succession and coexistence as “modes” of time. By this I guess we are to think of time more substantially, and it can have different modalities. This is something I would like to know more about, but perhaps it is not necessary to go deeper into how time has modalities or modes. I can maybe understand instantaneity and duration as modes of time, as in quantitative variations, and in that sense they might be quantitative “modulations”. So we have a more substantial sort of time, and it can be modulated longer or shorter. But succession and coexistence I only knew as temporal relations between things in time. So one event in time can be simultaneous with or successive to another. I am not sure yet how simultaneity or successivity would be a modification of time itself (or a variable feature of some kind) like varying its length might be. Anyway, the important point is that we cannot define time on the basis of perdurance, coexistence, and succession. There would have to instead be a more basic structure or form of time that we have a priori, and on its basis are we able then to experience or know temporal endurance, coexistence, and succession. This is remarkable, of course, because succession seems essential to time, when instead under this view it would not be. SH seems to be saying that we already have time somehow (maybe even an intuition of it somehow), and then secondly we somehow give order to it by means of succession. At this point it is hard to picture how this is the case, so perhaps we get more explanation and elaboration later. How do we secondarily give order to time? Is it that we firstly experience a jumble of events, and later we only break them apart and organize them in a linear series of separate events? Bergson seems to discuss something similar to this with his example of counting the clock tower bell-tolls from memory by dissecting the more holistic and qualitative experience of their quantity.

Whilst I am writing these lines, the hour strikes on a neighbouring clock, but my inattentive ear does not perceive it until several strokes have made themselves heard. Hence I have not counted them; and yet I only have to turn my attention backwards to count up the four strokes which have already sounded and add them to those which I hear. If, then, I question myself carefully on what has just taken place, I perceive that the first four sounds had struck my ear and even affected my consciousness, but that the sensations produced by each one of them, instead of being set side by side, had melted into one another in such a way as to give the whole a peculiar quality, to make a kind of musical phrase out of it. In order, then, to estimate retrospectively the number of strokes sounded, I tried to reconstruct this phrase in thought: my imagination made one stroke, then two, then three, and as long as it did not reach the exact number four, my feeling, when consulted, answered that the total effect was qualitatively different. It had thus ascertained in its own way the succession of four strokes, but quite other- | wise than by a process of addition, and without bringing in the image of a juxtaposition of distinct terms. In a word, the number of strokes was perceived as a quality and not as a quantity: it is thus that duration is presented to immediate consciousness, and it retains this form so long as it does not give place to a symbolical representation derived from extensity. (Bergson, Time and Free Will, §77, pp. 127-128).

I do not think that this is what SH means, because the original experience here does not seem to be of a pure form of time but rather of a concrete experience of a “living” duration. So at this point we might wait on how to give more definite shape to this idea, since he continues to discuss it in the following sections. Perhaps when we examine the dramatic elaborations in a forthcoming section, we will have some illustration or example that can make the idea more graspable like how Bergson illustrated his idea with the above bell-toll situation. Here is SH’s conclusion to this excellent section:]

Thus, by making time a faculty that is different in kind from the understanding, Kant presents it as something more than simply derivative of succession. Rather, succession is a way of ordering time. This opens the way for a consideration of the empty form of time as time prior to succession. Deleuze will take up this notion to make the claim that the successive structure of habit and the co-existent structure of memory are both simply modes of one underlying pure form of time. (SH 75)

 

 

 

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.

Kant. Critique of Pure Reason. Eds. & Transls. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.