Williams (5.2) Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time, ‘Eternal return and death,’ summary

 

by Corry Shores

 

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[The following is summary of Williams, with boldface and bracketed commentary being my own additions. Note, I drafted this six years ago so it may seem discontinuous with current entries. For example, I do not in brackets here try to clear up what is said or note what I failed to understand.]

 

 

 

Summary of

 

James Williams

 

Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time:

A Critical Introduction and Guide

 

Chapter 5

Time and eternal return

 

5.2

Eternal return and death

 

 

 

Brief Summary:

The eternal return is not a recycling of identical things, because “then there would be no sense of return in them due to the lack of any way of telling there had been a return.” (119b) The eternal return also opens the third synthesis of time, which is thus somehow both circular while also having a before and after and an asymmetrical series. This is conceivable if we view it as the cycling of pure difference, which combines the features of return with non-identity. As conscious beings, we are to live time’s passage in such a way that we participate in the eternal return of difference, and if we fail in that, we die. Deleuze critiques the Freudian notion of the inorganic death drive, because the eternal return is not cycles of life and death. Rather, it is “the passing away of that which is inanimate in sameness and identity and the eternal return of multiple forms of difference.” (123bc) Humans in fact do not dread the inanimate state of death but instead that which makes all beings who are fixed in their identity pass away in time. We should distinguish this sort of death resulting from remaining self-same while time moves past us with the vital death involved in evolving, growth, and change where we affirm continuous differentiation and thereby participate in the eternal return of pure difference. Thus the third synthesis of time is tied both to death and eternal return.

 

 

 

 

 

Summary

 

 

The eternal return in its purest form also involves death, violence and “the most difficult tests put to living beings” (118c), and

 

Williams then gives an excellent formulation for why the eternal return is not of something similar or identical. “No two cycles of return could be internally identical, for then there would be no sense of return in them due to the lack of any way of telling there had been a return.” (119b) If we hold this view, we might suffer from two sorts of anguish, the anguish we feel as dear things pass-away, and the anguish about the return of things we do not want to see again. (119c.d) Anguish is what humans feel, but the eternal return is a process applying more broadly than just human experience. (120c) Deleuze writes that we must conceive eternal return as the selecting thought. (120d) But this does not mean it depends on our thinking to operate. (121a) It is the highest test to conceive eternal return as purely differential [perhaps because preexisting concepts will be inadequate?]. (121c)

 

Williams wonders, how can the third synthesis be both circular but also have a before and after and an asymmetrical series? “The answer is that the third synthesis is both an irreversible series and a cyclical return.” (122a) The third synthesis orders things that remain the same, but for pure difference it is the cycling of pure difference. As conscious beings, how are we to live time’s passage so that we participate in the eternal return of difference? (122b) Deleuze says that if we do not pass this test, we die, as would any being that did not pass the test. (122c)

 

Williams writes that there are different kinds of processes at work, those working towards an identity and those working in becoming and change, novelty, and transformation. (123a) So a process resisting change is doomed to fall out of existence.

 

Deleuze critiques Freud’s work on death and also he critiques “any definition of death as a return of the living beings to undifferentiated and inanimate matter.” (123b) For Deleuze, the eternal return is not cycles of life and death, but rather it is “the passing away of that which is inanimate in sameness and identity and the eternal return of multiple forms of difference.” (123bc) So death is not the inanimate state humans dread. It is rather what makes any and every being that remains fixed in its identity pass away in time. (123cd)

 

But death is not just about the passing of identities but also the survival of difference. Thus evolution and change are forms of death, because they involve the passing of certain beings but also “the moving towards new processes through difference in itself.” (124a) Thus there are two deaths, our personal one concerning the I and self, and the impersonal one that causes things to persist. (124b) “death as subject and death as difference affirming process”. (124b) Because the future is “the deployment and explication of the multiple” (Deleuze qtd 124bc) and because the eternal return promotes the death of all fixed things, we can see how the third synthesis is tied both to death and eternal return. (124bc)

 

 

 

 

Williams, James. Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time: A Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.

 

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