Repetition, then, does not happen "naturally," by natural law. "If repetition is possible, it is due to miracle rather than to law." True repetition is against the law, "against the similar form and the equivalent content of law." Repetition can only happen by means of a power that works against, underneith, or above law. Repetitions are not recurrences of particulars but of singularities, because particulars fall under genuses, but singularities are all to their own.
Scientific experimentation is used to show how repeating occurrences of some phenomena are governed by a law. The method chooses two parameters usually, for example, Space and Time for movement of bodies in a vacuum: the quantitative values of the change in distance is analyzed separately by itself, as are the changes in time, and then the two are placed in a functional relation to each other. But here we see how the orders of resemblance and equality are themselves exchanged, because repeated experiments of similar instances are generalized into mathematical formulas and equations. We move from the order of resemblance to the order of equivalence by moving from the physical appearances of things to their underlying mathematical relations.
For Deleuze, the repetition in this case is not the repeated instances of the experimental phenomena continually proving the law; rather, the repetition is that jump from one order to another, from when the implicit mathematical dimension of physical phenomena becomes explicitly expressed in the realm of mathematics. He says, "it is as if repetition appeared between or underneath the two generalities." It is not important that in one order something passes through a number of instances, what matters is that something passes between degrees or levels,
what is important in principle is 'n' times as the power of a single time, without the need to pass through a second or third time (3c).
ce qui vaut en droit, c'est « n » fois comme puissance d'une seule fois, sans qu'il y ait besoin de passer par une seconde, une troisième fois.
(10c)
And even though sometimes repetition expresses itself as the "artificial passage from one order of generality to another," repetition involves a "singular power" that is inherently different from generality.
Just as in the natural world where we seek laws governing repetition, so to do we in the moral sphere. Bad repetitions are habits and behaviors we need to avoid, and good repetitions are duties and virtues we must uphold (10c.d/3-4). Kant's categorical imperative, for example, is a test for the repeatability of a maxim.
But when we take up such laws of repeating behaviors, on the one hand we presume our moral laws to be above the natural laws governing our more animal behaviors, and on the other hand this moral repeatability is modeled after natural law: we are to act as lawfully and regularly as gravity does. And as based on the model of natural law, moral law leaves us not with repetition but again with generality (11d/4d).
Moral law is further like natural law, because we also find in it the two major orders of resemblance and equality: 1) good repeatable actions are to resemble an exemplary model of good behavior, and 2) once the repeated habitual action is in place, each enaction of the habit is to be taken as morally equivalent to the others. So, to fit to the model, we must slowly change our actions to suit our intent of becoming morally regular. But also, because the actions must obtain equal value, we then perform the same action despite differences of intention and context. So repeated instances of the same thing is not achievable in moral law. However, true repetition could come about if something passed from the order of action-modification to that of action-integration. In other words, if one were in a confused situation where one must at the same time create one's moral behavior while trying to deal with ambiguities in its application, then there might be a repetition that moves from the order of action-perfection (making the action better despite ambiguities in application) to the order of action-integration (making the action apply universally no matter the ambiguities). (12a/4-5)
Thus repetition is opposed to moral law. One may overturn it in two ways: ascending towards the principles, or descending towards the consequences.
1) Ascending towards the principles:
In this case, one presumes something more fundamental than the moral laws. This more fundamental principle is an "original force" that becomes diverted when we try to channel it into regular patterns; and it is an "original power" that we usurp when over-controlling it. This way is considered "ironic," because it overturns moral principles by ascending to the principles of these principles.
2) Descending towards the consequences:
Here one over-adopts the moral laws with a "too-perfect attention to detail" so to show the absurdities that result. For example, if we adopt certain moral laws of selflessness, and practice them to their extreme, we might result in some disturbing or absurd form of masochism. This way is considered "humorous" because it involves falls into absurdity.
Repetition belongs to both the irony and the humor of these two tactics, because in both cases we reveal singularities of morality rather than particulars of generality; for example, we find that each behavior, even if repeated, is unique in each circumstance, and hence no general rule can govern it. (12b.c/5b)
Deleuze, Gilles. Différence et répétition. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968
Deleuze, Gilles, Difference & Repetition. Transl. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
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