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 4. Ideas and the Synthesis of Difference
4.10 The Origin of Ideas (195–202/244–52)
Brief summary:
Ideas for Deleuze are bound up with problems, solutions, and questions. The problem is an encounter with an intensive field of differential relations that we cannot process using our given resources. It causes us to put together Idea fragments to formulate an Idea on the basis of which we find solutions. The question is what relates the Idea as a basis for a solution to the problematic situation. So consider if we without ever swimming before are thrown in rough waters. We encounter the intensive field of differential relations of the waves, which threaten our survival, and in response we pose the question, “how do I not drown?” On the basis of how we come to understand the particulars of the problematic situation, we formulate our own particular arrangement of Idea fragments to make an Idea. This Idea then serves as the basis for the particular kind of solution we find, which would be one of many possible swimming strokes we spontaneously learn to enact to save ourselves from drowning. Deleuze uses the metaphor of the dice throw to illustrate. So again, when we learn, we encounter a problematic situation that presents to us a question (we are handed dice to throw). But how we understand the problematic situation and formulate the Idea for its solutions is a matter of chance, since we could have made many other arrangements of Idea fragments but we happened in this case to choose certain ones (the faces of the dice in a way are as such by chance and rolling them and getting some particular outcome is the affirmation of chance). Our Idea for the solution can in fact find many different kinds of solutions (there are many combinations that can be rolled). But only one solution is found at a time (we in fact roll one particular combination). However, we could have devised many other solutions from the same Idea, and also the Idea could have been formed differently depending on the different components we use to form it, and thus there is the repetition of difference built into the system (we can roll many other times or we can obtain different dice and repeat the process of solving problems).
Summary
We have been discussing Deleuze’s notion of Ideas in this chapter, and now we will ask, what is the origin of Ideas themselves? [Recall from the prior section that problems are not merely conceptual things but are inherent to actual states of affairs.]
Deleuze begins by noting that what we have encountered so far is a reorientation of the nature of a problem. Rather than a problem being seen as a purely subjective matter, we have seen that exploring the nature of the problem is a properly ontological or metaphysical matter. Thus, as he has noted, the organism can be seen as a solution to a problem. In fact, the question-problem complex is ‘the only instance to which, properly speaking, Being answers without the question thereby becoming lost or overtaken’ (DR 195/244).
(SH 159)
We now ask, what is the relation between a problem and a question? (SH 159). [It seems the answer is that we encounter problems when the world presents us with things we cannot comprehend so well, and these situations challenge us to think creatively since our given inner resources are at that moment inadequate for processing the situation. In Plato we saw this happened when we encounter contrary properties. But for Deleuze it is instead happens in situations when we experience extreme intensity, which erupts the field of representation. I am not sure how that works yet. I am also not sure I follow the next ideas about the fractured I. It seems the idea is that we have the sense that we have a fixed self-identical I, which also serves as a basis of our representations, but really this I is constantly mutating since it has certain frailties or cracks. Thus our representations as well are unstable. So it seems those experiences which shatter our I also erupt the field of representation. This seems to happen when we encounter problems and engage them with Ideas, which is also, as we noted, when our faculties operate discordantly. Maybe we might say the following. When we jump in the water for the first time without yet learning to swim, in order to survive, we need to reconstitute ourselves, going from non-swimmer to swimmer. Our identity is not fixed, and in the same process, our concepts, reflexes, and habitual behaviors are also shattered as we figure out how to swim. The next sentence is: “Questions map this relationship between the encounter with intensity and the problematic unground responsible for it” (159). We later learn what unground means. For now the important idea is that there is a relation between the encounter with intensity and the problem underlying it, and the question is what maps that relation. Perhaps when we jump in the water, we have the encounter with intensity, which is the very different way that the parts, that is, the differentials, of the waves operate and affect our bodies, and the problem is this situation of the water differentials which calls us to change ourselves. The question then might be simply, “how do I not drown?” or “how do I swim to safety?” but I am not sure.]
What, therefore, is the relationship between a problem and a question? Deleuze presents his answer in the following manner: ‘Problems or Ideas emanate from imperatives of adventure or from events which appear in the form of questions’ (DR 197/247). Such an imperative would be the kind of encounter that we discussed in the previous chapter, paralleling Socrates’ discovery of the incommensurability of his categories of thought (the large, the small) with the purely relative determinations found within the world of becoming. Rather than operating in terms of contrary properties, however, the encounter for Deleuze is tied to the eruption into the field of representation of a moment of intensity. In the discussion of the fractured I in Chapter 2 (2.6), we saw that representation was subject to a natural illusion that the ‘I’ had a substantive nature. Deleuze’s claim was instead that the ‘I’ could be traced back to a pre-individual field of intensive difference. As we saw in relation to Blanchot however (2.12), this illusion to which representation is prone is perpetually threatened by the disruptive influence of intensity. For this reason, Deleuze makes the claim that ‘Ideas swarm in the fracture, constantly emerging on its edges, ceaselessly coming out and going back, being composed in a thousand different manners’ (DR 169/216). These encounters with intensity raise the faculties to a transcendental operation, and hence allow them to engage with Ideas. Questions map this relationship between the encounter with intensity and the problematic unground responsible for it. As such, ‘questions express the relation between problems and the imperatives from which they proceed’ (DR 197/247).
(SH 159)
So far Deleuze’s account parallels Plato’s [since for both there is an encounter that challenges us to formulate a question]. But, Deleuze notes, in Plato’s account, the problem leads us to necessarily true, or ‘apodictic’, principles serving as grounds. [I am not sure how this works, but we worked with the example of imperfectly equal things causing us to recall perfect equality, which is perhaps an apodictic principle grounding all our empirical knowledge of imperfect or inconsistent equality in our experiences.] For Deleuze, however, the process of dealing with problems leads instead to an “unground of the problem” (SH 160). SH then distinguishes ground and unground: “This difference between grounds and ungrounds ultimately simply relates to the fact that apodictic principles have the same structure as the system of propositions they ground (they are amenable to the structure of judgement)” (160). [So the pure Idea of perfect Equality perhaps takes a structure of conception that is similar to the system of propositions it grounds. I am not sure how this works, but perhaps the Idea of perfect equality takes a subject-predication form which is shared in all experiences of imperfect equality.] “On the contrary, the problem differs in kind from the solutions it engenders.” [I am not sure how this would work with the swimming example, but perhaps the problem again is this field of differential relations of the parts of the wave, with their own special significant relations among them, and the solution is a mode of swimming, which is somehow different in kind. However, I am not sure about this, since I would think that modes of swimming are also fields of differential relations with special significant points.] “As such, it [the problem] cannot ground solutions by providing a principle that we know to be true, because truth is a function of judgement, and the problem is different in kind to judgements” (160). [This one is harder to follow, but it seems fairly straightforward. It seems the point is that we cannot in the first place speak of truth in problems, since truth is a function of judgment, which is different in kind from the problems (since one is propositional and representational and the other is non-propositional and sub-representational). Therefore, we cannot say that because some principle of the problem is true, we can therefore say that its solutions are true or at least ground their truth in the truth of the problem.] “Thus, rather than a ground, it serves as an ‘unground’, destabilising the vision of the world as amenable to judgement in its entirety” (160). [I guess then ‘serving as an unground’ here means making ungroundable. So the problem is the origin for the solution, but it makes that solution not have any ground of truth. Perhaps for that reason there can be many solutions to the same problem, since none have any greater basis to claim more truth than others, but I am not sure.] [The next notion about the dice throw is a bit hard to follow. Let me quote it first:]
Rather than invoking ‘the moral imperative of predetermined rules’ (DR 198/248), Deleuze instead therefore invokes the notion of the dice throw and decision [the following up to citation is Deleuze quotation]:
It is rather a question of a throw of the dice, of the whole sky as open space and of throwing as the only rule. The singular points are on the die; the questions are the dice themselves; the imperative is to throw. Ideas are the problematic combinations which result from throws. (DR 198/248)
The imperative is the problematic instance within the state of affairs (the throw), that points beyond itself, through the question (the dice itself), to the problem that engenders the state of affairs and the problematic instance itself (the combination on the die). The Ideas result from this process as the result of our going beyond the state of affairs to find its conditions. The remaining moment of the analogy to explain is the significance of the points on the dice themselves. We can explain this by introducing the moment of decision. As we saw in the first case of learning, we move to the sub-representational level by combining ‘adjunct fields’, or similar cases, to reach the problem (in Bergson’s example, we relate walking to swimming). Now, depending on which cases we combine to form the problem, our understanding of it will differ. How we relate together different encounters, and which encounters we relate, will give a different emphasis to the problem (a different set of singularities), and hence to our Ideas. If the relation of different adjunct fields gives us different Ideas, then how is it that a given throw is able to ‘affirm the whole of chance’ (to provide an objective Idea) (DR 198/248)? When we looked at the example of the conic section (4.7), we saw that depending on how we took a section on the cone, we would derive a different curve, and with it, a different set of singularities. Each of these | curves was, nonetheless, an objective characterisation of the cone. In a similar way, each enquiry gives us an objective problem, but these are not exclusive, since different enquiries will take a different section of the cone, and hence derive different singularities.
(160-161)
[So we first acknowledge that we are dealing with a metaphor, and it seems the task it to find the analogies between the dice metaphor and this issue of problems and questions. (By the way, you can find some discussion of the dice throw metaphor from Deleuze’s Nietzsche book here.) I get lost in the explanation of the analogy here, I am sorry. Let me try to establish some possible analogies:
1) the problematic instance: the possible combinations implied by the given sides of the dice
2) the question: the dice themselves
3) the pressure to solve the problem: the imperative to throw the dice
4) the Ideas as solutions: any one outcome from an actual cast
Let me just quote it again since I am certain I got it wrong: “The imperative is the problematic instance within the state of affairs (the throw), that points beyond itself, through the question (the dice itself), to the problem that engenders the state of affairs and the problematic instance itself (the combination on the die). The Ideas result from this process as the result of our going beyond the state of affairs to find its conditions”. It further gets complicated, and I will miss this point too. We still have to explain what is analogous to the significant points on the dice themselves. (I do not know what they are even in the metaphor. Maybe they are the sides? Or maybe it has to do with combinations?) I will again quote the following sentences, but first I will make some guesses. We need now to introduce the moment of decision, which I suppose is the moment when the outcome of the dice throw is determined (unless it is the moment we decide to throw it). Now it seems that we are dealing with the notion of learning as gathering Idea fragments, and it seems that we form the problem (and not the Idea?) in different ways depending on which parts we select. I suppose also that other selections and arrangements will have other solutions, and thus it is by chance that we selected the ones we did, and thus any one throw (any one attempt at a solution) is an affirmation of chance. I quote again: “The remaining moment of the analogy to explain is the significance of the points on the dice themselves. We can explain this by introducing the moment of decision. As we saw in the first case of learning, we move to the sub-representational level by combining ‘adjunct fields’, or similar cases, to reach the problem (in Bergson’s example, we relate walking to swimming). Now, depending on which cases we combine to form the problem, our understanding of it will differ. How we relate together different encounters, and which encounters we relate, will give a different emphasis to the problem (a different set of singularities), and hence to our Ideas. If the relation of different adjunct fields gives us different Ideas, then how is it that a given throw is able to ‘affirm the whole of chance’ (to provide an objective Idea) (DR 198/248)? When we looked at the example of the conic section (4.7), we saw that depending on how we took a section on the cone, we would derive a different curve, and with it, a different set of singularities. Each of these | curves was, nonetheless, an objective characterisation of the cone. In a similar way, each enquiry gives us an objective problem, but these are not exclusive, since different enquiries will take a different section of the cone, and hence derive different singularities” (160-161).]
[The next idea seems to have to do with the inexhaustibility of the Idea (or of the problem). There are many solutions that will come from the same problem/Idea. But for each solution is a different (arrangement of the) Idea. Thus we should not repeat the same question but rather reformulate it anew each time, perhaps.]
This is the reason why in spite of each throw being an objective constitution of the problem, ‘there are nevertheless several throws of the dice: the throw of the dice is repeated’ (DR 200/251). In this sense, there is no ultimate characterisation possible, as there would be with knowledge, but rather a whole series of questions, each of which generates its own field of singularities. Each philosophical enquiry therefore puts forth its own question, on the basis of an imperative, which constitutes its own field of singularities. Remaining true to the encounter does not, therefore, lead us to one apodictic principle, but rather to an objective organisation of a problem. Just as each conic section gives us a different curve, each question gives us a different distribution of singularities. But as each conic section also repeats the structure of the others, each question is also a repetition, albeit a repetition that differs, not just in terms of solutions, but also in terms of its Ideas: ‘Repetition is this emission of singularities, always with an echo or resonance which makes each the double of the other, or each constellation the redistribution of another’ (DR 201/251). At this point, Deleuze notes an affinity with Heidegger’s emphasis on the question, while also cautioning that the emphasis on one single question risks covering over the real structure of the dice throw [the following up to citation is Deleuze quotation]:
Great authors of our time (Heidegger, Blanchot) have exploited this most profound relation between the question and repetition. Not that it is sufficient, however, to repeat a single question which would remain intact at the end, even if this question is ‘What is being?’ [Qu’en est-il de l’etre?]. (DR 200/251)
(SH 161)
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.
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