"if you think childlike, you'll stay young. If you keep your energy going, and do everything with a little flair, you're gunna stay young. But most people do things without energy, and they atrophy their mind as well as their body. you have to think young, you have to laugh a lot, and you have to have good feelings for everyone in the world, because if you don't, it's going to come inside, your own poison, and it's over" Jerry Lewis "I don’t believe in the irreversibility of situations" Deleuze
by Corry Shores
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Entry Directory for
David Hume
An Enquiry concerning Human Nature
Section IV:
Sceptical Doubts concerning the Operations of the Understanding
Hume, David. 2007. An Enquiry concerning Human Nature. Peter Millican (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University.
PDF of another version available at:
https://archive.org/details/enquiryconcernin02hume
Online text available at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9662
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by Corry Shores
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[Logic & Semantics, Entry Directory]
[C.S. Peirce, entry directory]
[Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, entry directory]
[The following is summary. Boldface and bracketed commentary are mine. Proofreading is incomplete, so please forgive my typos.]
Summary of
Charles Sanders Peirce
Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce
Volume 1: Principles of Philosophy
Book 3: Phenomenology
Chapter 2: The Categories in Detail
A: Firstness
§8: Presentments as Signs [1.313]
Brief summary:
A feeling or presentment can serve as a phenomenal sign by calling forth to our mind some other resembling feeling or idea. Odor especially has this effect, because it has the power to presentmentate, that is, to fully dominate our conscious states. But the reason for these associations is not simply from the contingent fact of us having past experiences that for one arbitrary reason or another have come to be grouped together, as with empiricist theories of association. Rather, the things themselves in the world causing these presentments have certain qualitative feels. Violet for example has the qualitative feel of delicate fineness. It is not that most people we see wearing violet have delicate fineness inherently, and we thus come to associate the color with the personality trait. Rather, it is by wearing violet that their own essences come to be mixed with the essence of violet, and thereby when we look at the people wearing violet, we see that they themselves have violet’s essential feeling of delicate fineness.
Summary
1.313
[A feeling or presentment can serve as a phenomenal sign that calls to mind other resembling and thus associated feelings. This is not from arbitrary connections between experiences but rather because the things causing the presentments have a spiritual qualitative essence that mixes with that of whatever physical things are combined with them.]
[In the prior sections we were discussing feeling, and just previously we examined the example of the blind person wondering if a trumpet’s blare is like the color scarlet. Now instead of the term “feeling” Peirce is now using the term “presentment”. (The editor notes that this part of the text comes from a different source than the just prior one.) But given that the example of the blind man hearing a trumpet blare is repeated here, we might think of a presentment as a feeling, more or less. Peirce’s notion here seems to be that feelings or presentments are evocative of similar feelings and in that sense also perform a phenomenal sign function. A color can be sad or happy, for instance. So by seeing the color, it can call to mind another feeling like happiness, and thereby be something like a sign for happiness as well. Peirce then says that odors especially have this power. We might smell something and then call to mind a very distinct memory. Peirce’s explanation for this is that smell experiences completely dominate our consciousness. For this he uses the term “presentmentate” which means “to occupy the entire field of consciousness, so that one almost lives for the moment in a world of odor [or whatever sense modality is at work].” Then, by means of association, the smell or other feeling can call to mind other feelings, mental contents, states of mind, and so on. His next idea is difficult and yet absolutely fascinating. He says that presentments, odors especially, “have a remarkable power of calling to mind mental and spiritual qualities”. I am not entirely sure what is meant by “spiritual”, but let us continue to the examples. He then says that “A lady’s favorite perfume seems to me somehow to agree with that of her spiritual being.” And, if the woman wears the color violet, “she herself will have the very same delicate fineness” of the color itself. He then gives a more specific example. He notes two woman he knows, each with a distinct personality. One is “an artistic old virgin, a grand dame”, and the other is a “noisy young matron” who is “very ignorant.” So he has established certain basic properties of their personality which are not identical. However, both wore rose perfume, and he says that the two woman “were strangely alike”. So it is not that their personalities were alike, but that something else about them, perhaps something “spiritual” was alike about them. He says that “surely there must be some subtle resemblance between the odor and the impression I get of this or that woman’s nature.” At this point we might wonder if he is merely saying something like what Hume says about association. So in this case, does Peirce associate the second woman with the first, simply because the perfume makes him recall the first when smelling the second? In light of what Peirce said in the prior section about the world outside us having psychic qualities to it, and also in light of his current use of the term “spiritual”, perhaps he means something different than that simple sort of association. Possibly he is saying that the perfume itself has a certain feeling or character or to it, which is not based on mental associations but rather on some aspect it has inherently. Since Peirce tells us specifically what feeling violet has (and not the feeling that rose perfume has), let us work with this color example first. Violet as a presentment serves as a phenomenal sign for “delicate fineness”. This is because the actual perfume odor itself bears that psychic quality. So regardless of the character of the woman wearing it, she will call to our minds the trait of delicate fineness. Thereby by extension, any woman wearing violet can remind us of any others who wear violet. Furthermore, it seems another idea might be that the woman’s inherent spiritual essence is transformed by it becoming mixed with that of the color or odor she wears. (As he says, the perfume will agree with her spiritual being, and that by wearing the color they then have that color’s quality.) So in other words, our essence is something intimately bound up with the essences (that is, with the “spiritual beings” or the psychic qualitative feelings) of the physical things we combine to ourselves. What I am wondering is the following. Suppose we see this more from a metaphysical perspective than a phenomenological one. Is Peirce suggesting that the world is composed of things with psychic essences that mix synthetically when the objects physically mix? It would be interesting to see the world and our behaviors this way. Perhaps we might not want to be seen doing certain actions or possessing certain things, for fear that other people will see these things or actions and associate us with bad notions. But perhaps instead we might think that we should not do these actions or possess these things, because our very essence / spiritual being / psychic being will be contaminated by them. (This idea also makes me think of a superstitious kind of thinking.)]
A mere presentment may be a sign. When the traditional blind man said he thought scarlet must be something like the sound of a trumpet, he had caught its blatancy very well; and the sound is certainly a presentment, whether the color is so or not. Some colors are called gay, others sad. The sentiment of tones is even more familiar; that is, tones are signs of visceral qualities of feeling. But the best example is that of odors, for these are signs in more than one way. It is a common observation that odors bring back old memories. This I think must be due, in part at least, to the fact that, whether from the peculiar connection of the olfactory nerve with the brain or from some other cause, odors have a remarkable tendency to | presentmentate themselves, that is to occupy the entire field of consciousness, so that one almost lives for the moment in a world of odor. Now in the vacuity of this world, there is nothing to obstruct the suggestions of association. That is one way, namely by contiguous association, in which odors are particularly apt to act as signs. But they also have a remarkable power of calling to mind mental and spiritual qualities. This must be an effect of resemblance-association, if under resemblance-association we include all natural associations of different ideas. I certainly would do this; for I do not know what else resemblance can consist in.
A lady’s favorite perfume seems to me somehow to agree with that of her spiritual being. If she uses none at all her nature will lack perfume. If she wears violet she herself will have the very same delicate fineness. Of the only two I have known to use rose, one was an artistic old virgin, a grande dame; the other a noisy young matron and very ignorant; but they were strangely alike. As for those who use heliotrope, frangipanni, etc., I know them as well as I desire to know them. Surely there must be some subtle resemblance between the odor and the impression I get of this or that woman's nature.
(Peirce 156-157)
Peirce, C.S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vol 1: Principles of Philosophy. In Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce [Two Volumes in One], Vols. 1 and 2. Edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1965 [1931].
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by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]
[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall, Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall’s Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, Entry Directory]
[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
Chapter 2. Repetition for Itself
Chapter 2 of DR examines the role of repetition in the three syntheses of time and of the psyche. A) The three syntheses of time. The first time synthesis is of habitual contraction, which synthesizes the living present. The second is of the memory, which synthesizes the pure past. The third is of the pure form of time, and it synthesizes the future. This third synthesis is ‘time out of joint’, which takes two forms: time 1) as formal and pre-successive, as with Kant’s a priori intuition of time, 2) as passively synthesized by the eternal return. When we affirm the eternal returnability of the present, we anticipate not the same states of affairs in the future but rather that, like now, the future will be composed of differential intensity. It impregnates the present with the future, which liberates us from the past. B) The three psychic synthesis. The first is the compulsion to repeat, which is a habitual synthesis. The second is the virtual object, which recalls a past experience that never happened, but which satisfies a current need. The third is the death drive, which for Freud tends backward toward a prior inorganic state but for Deleuze tends forward toward a future self-variation.
Very brief summary:
Chapter 2 examines repetition in the three syntheses of time and of the psyche. The first synthesis is of the contraction of habit and of the living present. Often one experience will follow another. We then anticipate the second when experiencing the first. In these habitual contractions we constitute the living present as an experience of “waiting.” The second synthesis is of memory or of the pure past. All present experience is from the beginning integrated in with all other past experiences in the pure past. The past then determines the character of the present, while the present at the same time alters that character. We can experience the past-in-the-present either in expansion as individual parts of the past come to mind or in contraction when we express past moments all in one habitual action, like performing something we rehearsed many times. The third synthesis is of the pure form of time as the eternal return or of the future. Time experienced as a regular and unitized motion of success is “in joint”. It can be out of joint in two ways: 1) when it is not successive, as with Kant’s a priori intuition of time. 2) when it is not constituted actively by a transcendental ego, as with Kant, but rather passively or automatically by the eternal return. This happens when we affirm the present as eternally returnable. It liberates us from the past by impregnating the future in the present. (By the way, we see this structure with Hamlet, only not in an affirmative form. He is stuck in the past, and lingers in an uneventful present, with the past and present relating to an anticipated but delayed future). What is affirmed as returnable is not the current states of affairs but rather the world as composed of differential intensities, like it presently is. This brings the future into the present, and thus is the synthesis of the future. Deleuze sees repetition and time involved also in Freud’s three psychic syntheses. The first synthesis is the compulsion to repeat. This compulsion contracts traumatizing excitations into the psychic system, which manages them in accordance with the pleasure principle. It is thus also a synthesis of habitual contraction and of the present. The second synthesis is of the virtual object. We might substitute something we need with a virtual object that recalls a satisfying experience in the past, like sucking the fingers while waiting for the mother’s breast. But since this substitute was never a real source of satisfaction in the past, it is a pure past. Thus it is a synthesis of memory and of the past. The third synthesis is of the death drive. For Freud, the compulsion to repeat strives to bring the organism back toward a previous inorganic state, and is thus a variation on the death drive. For Deleuze, however, this death is not a movement to a past inorganic state but rather toward a future mutation. It is identity in its variability. As such, it is the synthesis of the pure form of time as the eternal return and of the future.
Brief summary:
Chapter 2 looks at the role of repetition in time synthesis and in Freud’s model of the psyche, and also it looks at how time synthesis can be seen as passively constructive of subjects rather than actively conducted by a pregiven subject. Deleuze discusses Freud’s and the time syntheses using Kant’s three syntheses of time: the sense intuition constitutes the moving present of experience, while the imagination constitutes the memorial past, all while the understanding conceptually prefigures all futures of experience. Deleuze’s first synthesis of time is of habit and the living present. We find patterns of correspondence between events that are frequently coupled in succession. Then when we experience the first, we anticipate the second, which is contracted with the first even before we experience it. In this way we experience time in the form of waiting, which is the living present. The second synthesis of time is of memory or the past. All present moments from the beginning are also registered in the memorial past. They are expressed at some degree of expansion or contraction. It expands when we imagine it in sustained recollection, and it is contracted when many past moments express themselves at once in our habitual behavior, like when performing something we rehearsed many times. The third synthesis is of the pure or empty form of time, which is the synthesis of the future. Time is in joint when it is seen as following a mechanically regular circular motion that can be measured by means of units when it enters into fixed ratios with other regular movements. This enables an extension of successive moments. It is out of joint when it is not successive. This is the case for Kant’s a priori intuition of time, which is time in its structure (in its pure form) prior to the experience of actual successions. For Kant, the unity of the formal transcendental “I” is needed to unify all the temporally various moments of experience. But for Deleuze, it is not needed, since the synthesis of the world and of the self comes about by means of a passive synthesis. That synthesis is the eternal return. When we affirm the present, we are affirming a situation of intensive difference, and what repeats is not the same states of affairs but rather another such situation of intensive difference, unique all its own. Zarathustra first is stuck in the past, since he is fixated on revenge. But when he affirms each moment as eternally returnable, he is freed from the past. Hamlet, however, since he is stuck in the past (he never decides on the past command to commit murder) remains in the present (in his present indecisively), with the past and present relating to the future (of the coming murder). Zarathustra has this same structure, but it is affirmative. He is liberated from the past, and sees each present as more vital since it is pregnant with the future. So for Deleuze, the eternal return synthesizes time by bringing the past, present, and future into relation, since the eternal return impregnates the present with the future in liberation of the past. As such, the eternal return auto-synthetically synthesizes time, and unlike with Kant, it does not require an active transcendental ego. We then see the three syntheses in Freud. Freud thinks our psyche is a system that minimizes damage by managing destabilization excitations. The pleasure principle is what does this managing. But sometimes the excitations are so powerful that they cannot be managed by the pleasure principle. On account of such traumas, there is then an excess of excitations that spill outside or remain outside the system. The compulsion to repeat habitually contracts them into the system. This is the first synthesis of psychic habitual contraction. The disruptions can lead to destabilizing the psyche in a way that can cause it to mutate. So since the compulsion to repeat wants to maintain that stability, it wants to move the organism back closer to a non-organic material state. As such, it is a variation of the death drive. Freud’s second synthesis is of the virtual object. A child may suck the fingers as a virtual object for sucking the absent mother’s breast. This is a pure past that is brought into the present, since there never really was a time that the fingers gave milk. The third synthesis is the death drive. For Freud it is a personal loss. But for Deleuze, it is the flexibility of self-identity that allows for evolution, adaptation, and self-creation.
Summary
(2.1 Introduction) Chapter 2 has two themes. 1) Repetition seems to require two conditions which are impossible together: the repeated thing needs somehow to be the same, or else it is something new entirely and not something repeated, while also, it needs somehow to be different from prior instances, since otherwise it is a continuation and not a repetition of the prior thing. So how is repetition possible? 2) How can the world be constituted without a unified subject performing the synthetic unification of the parts of the world? (2.2 Background: Kant’s Three Syntheses of Time) For Kant, the unity of a subject is the basis for the synthetic unification of the world we cognize. Sensibility receives the manifold of intuition. Imagination retains chucks of it from recently passed moments and arranges them coherently. It does this constructive arranging on the basis of the unities of concepts in the understanding. These unifications allow us to make representational subject-predicate judgments. Also, since the parts are given at different moments, the a-temporal unity of the subject is the basis for them all to come together in one act of cognition. (2.3 Deleuze’s First Synthesis of Time: Hume) Deleuze has three time syntheses that follow Kant’s three levels of synthesis, starting with sense intuition. The first synthesis is the synthesis of habit and the present. We undergo a series of experiences, A, B, C, D, etc. But certain patterns in the series form pairings in our mind. So we see smoke, then we look down and see fire. We see this often, such that when we see smoke, we anticipate seeing fire. This creates an experience of duration. When we see the smoke, it contracts implicitly the future experience of fire into it. So the first synthesis of habit constitutes the experience of the living present. It is the experience of time as “waiting”. A self is any entity or activity that contracts anything whatsoever. So a heart contracts blood, and it is always “waiting” for more blood. It is thus a self, and we have many such selves inside us. All of which are waiting and thus have their own temporality. (2.4 Deleuze’s Second Synthesis: Bergson) Deleuze’s second time synthesis is of memory or the past. The present moment is replaced by a new one. But that means firstly the present needs to make room for the second. But that can only happen if there is a place in the past into which it is moving. But this means that the present somehow almost from the beginning and in its actual act of passing is in the past. For Bergson, this is so, because the past and present form one large entity with no discrete parts. When we remember something, we expand some layer of the past. When we are not expanding memories to be seen by our mind’s eye, we are expressing them implicitly in our habitualized behaviors, which contract all prior experience. This is evident for example when we perform something that we rehearsed many times before, and thus the performance is the sum of all those rehearsals. Or afterward we might sit back and recall one such rehearsal. The past is inserted into the present and helps determine it, just as the present determines modifications in the whole of consciousness. We cannot control these things. But we can control which parts to expand and when to expand them. This mixture of freedom and determinacy Deleuze calls Destiny. (2.5 The Third Synthesis 1: The Pure Form of Time) The third synthesis is the pure/empty form of time and the synthesis of the future. Time that is “in joint” is like the steady motion of a wheel around an axle. Ratios between such regular circular motions enable the flow of time to be unitized and measured. But time can also come out of joint. One sense of this is the experience of time without the experience of successive moments. Kant’s pure a prior intuition of time gives us this pure form of non-successive temporality, and is thus time out of joint. (2.6 The Third Synthesis 2: Two Different Paralogisms) We further understand time out of joint in the context of Kant’s cogito argument. For Kant, the “I think” accompanies all representations. But it does not alone determine us, like Descartes argues. Kant notes that there still needs to be some determination. Our “I” for Kant is formally just the glue that unifies all the variations we experience of the world and of ourselves through time. But it is just a unity, and it does not itself make any determinations of who we are. This requires we experience ourselves in the flow of time. We never actually experience our “I” or fundamental formal self. At any rate, for Kant, this transcendental, formal self actively synthesizes all empirically given intuitions. But Deleuze thinks that the unities of our world and of ourselves arise from a passive synthesis not conducted by a pre-given active subjectivity. (2.7 The Third Synthesis 3: Hamlet and the Symbol of the Third Synthesis) Deleuze uses Hamlet and Zarathustra to further elaborate the notion of time out of joint and how the third synthesis synthesizes the future. Hamlet is initially indecisive, so we do not know whether or not Hamlet’s actions conform to law, and thus time is out of joint. Also, Hamlet is stuck in the past when he was charged with his murderous task, which makes him live in a suspended present. Both this past and present gain their significance in relation to the anticipated future when he will commit murder. Zarathustra, also is stuck in the past, since he is concerned with revenge. But when he instead can fully affirm each present moment, he is freed from the past and sees each present moment as anticipatable as repeating eternally in the future. In a way like this, to break from time in joint is to see the future in the present, and in this way the future is synthesized. (2.8 The Third Synthesis 4: The Esoteric Doctrine of the Eternal Return) For Kant, time is a form of intuition, and is thus different in kind from the understanding. Kant could have further developed this insight by looking at how time and the subject synthesize passively or “auto-synthetically” rather than somehow be governed by the understanding and a transcendental subject. However, he instead holds to a formal subject that performs the active synthesis of time. Deleuze instead thinks time can be synthesized without the help of a transcendental ego. It is instead synthesized by the pure empty form of time understood as the eternal return, which is responsible both for the newness of each moment (as a return of intensive difference) while also it is responsible for the synthesis of time (since it anticipates a future as an affirmation of the present). (2.9 Freud) Freud is interested in the repetitions of past traumas in our actions and mental life. They result from a repressed experienced. As such, they cannot be represented, but only repeated. The psychic system for Freud manages excitations that threaten the stability of the system. When excitations are minimized or maintained, this leads to pleasure, in accordance with the pleasure principle or principle of homeostasis. When it cannot manage the excitation, there is displeasure. The system might defer pleasure now in exchange for pleasure in the future, in accordance with the reality principle. But since past traumatic events are unpleasant, their repetition cannot be explained by the pleasure principle. (2.10 Freud’s First Synthesis) Sometimes we have so strong of a threatening excess of excitation (a trauma) that in order to minimize its destructive influence, we habitually contract it and distribute it into our psychic system. This is the compulsion to repeat and the libido. The compulsion to repeat comes prior to the pleasure principle, since it merely contracts the excitations into the system, while the pleasure principle is what secondarily manages those contracted excitations. But these disruptive excitations also cause a system to mutate and evolve. Because the compulsion to repeat wants to return the system back to an earlier stage, which is closer to our inorganic origins, it is a variation of the death drive. (2.11 Freud’s Second Synthesis) To manage the trauma of the absent mother and the lack of milk, the child can realize the breast will come in the future, and in the meantime suck on their fingers. It serves then as a virtual object that provides excitations that lessen their inner distress. The fingers refer to a past experience of the breast. But since the fingers never actually gave milk like the breast did, it is a pure past. (2.12 Freud’s Third Synthesis: The Death Drive) For Freud, the death drive fuels the compulsion to repeat, since it is the tendency toward our inorganic material origins. As such, it is a material repetition. Deleuze however sees the compulsion to repeat in the creation of the virtual object. It is the repetition of a pure past, and as such is a spiritual repetition. Also, death for Freud is a personal loss, where for Deleuze death is more the variation of self-identity involved in evolution, adaptation, and self-creation.
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.
by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]
[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall, Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall’s Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, Entry Directory]
[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.
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
2.1 Introduction [Introductory Material For Ch.2]
Brief summary:
In Chapter 2 of DR, Deleuze will elaborate on two themes from the prior text. He will look more at how repetition is possible. The difficulty is that repetition requires a new and different iteration (or else something is continuing and not repeating) while at the same time, the new reiteration needs to be identical to predecessors (for otherwise it will be something new altogether and not something occurring again). The other theme is explaining how the world can be constituted without supposing a unified subject that provides the basis for the coherence of the world.
Summary
Chapter 2 brings together two themes that were previously developed. The first is the idea that somehow repetition must involve something new occurring [for otherwise it would just be a continuation of the prior thing and not a reiteration] while at the same time, it must be identical somehow, for otherwise it would not be a recurrence but rather something radically new.
Chapter 2 explores the phenomenon of repetition, where we have elements that are absolutely identical (if they are not identical, then there is no repetition), but yet must also be different (if they are not distinguishable, then we once again have no repetition, as we only have one event).
(SH 56a)
We might think that it is possible using representation. [At one moment we experience something. Later we remember it, for example. But each time we remember it, picture it in our mind, give it some symbolic representation like a word, and so on, our mind is different. I suppose this means that each instance of the representation cannot be identical, but specifically why is not clear to me yet. Perhaps each instance of representation has its own context that colors the concept differently, thus making it not absolutely identical. But I am not sure.] However,
As Deleuze notes, representation might try to provide a concept of repetition by noting that while the elements that make up the repetition are identical with one another, ‘a change is produced in the mind which contemplates: a difference, something new in the mind’ (DR 70/90).
(SH 56)
[I am not exactly sure how to summarize the next points. It seems that in the case of representation, the differences are synthesized into a unified concept. Then somehow there is the appearance of sameness, but really the foundation is difference that is secondarily synthesized into unities/identities.]
Repetition is in this case made possible by the way in which the subject takes up the elements. In this sense, repetition is tied to the notion of synthesis. Once again, we will find that there are two forms of repetition: bare, material repetition, which operates at the surface, and a clothed, spiritual repetition which makes bare repetition possible. Furthermore, beneath the representation of repetition, the second mode of repetition will be an intensive repetition, reiterating the result of Chapter 1.
(56)
The next theme has to do with the structures of our mental operations (synthetic activities) involved in our making sense of the world. Kant thinks that we can know things about the world a priori (based on a basic conceptual analysis rather than on judgments based on experience) because our mind is structured in such a way that the world is given as having certain structures. For example. the outer world is spatial. But this is because our mind structures visual data spatially. Yet, since there is always such an organizing structure, there is central identity [I think for example, the structure of space (non-temporal juxtaposition)maintains its identity despite the variation of exterior things we see.] This means that Deleuze needs a viable alternative to a Kantian sort of synthesis.
Deleuze will draw from Hume [as part of his effort to offer an alternative]. In his book on Hume, Empiricism and Subjectivity, Deleuze distinguishes a transcendental from an empirical critique. [The transcendental critique assumes a constituted subject to whom things are given and who conditions that givenness. The empirical critique looks first at the given, then secondly asks, how by means of the given, or how in relation to the given, is the subject constituted?]
Deleuze begins Chapter 2 with an analysis of Hume, and it is in Deleuze’s early 1953 book on Hume, Empiricism and Subjectivity, that we can find an account of the difference between Hume’s project and Kant’s [The following quotes Deleuze]:
We embark upon a transcendental critique when, having situated ourselves on a methodologically reduced plane that provides an essential certainty – a certainty of essence – we ask: how can there be a given, how can something be given to a subject, and how can the subject give something to itself? . . . The critique is empirical when, having situated ourselves in a purely immanent point of view, which makes possible a description whose rule is found in determinable hypotheses and whose model is found in physics, we ask: how is the subject constituted in the given? The construction of the given makes room for the constitution of the subject. (ES 87)
(SH 57)
SH note the distinction. For Kant, we begin with a subject and an object, then we explain how they can enter into a relationship with each other. SH interprets “methodologically reduced plane” to mean “the field of representation, with its concomitant positing of judgement” (57). But this will in the end run us into similar difficulties to the ones we had with Aristotle’s representation. However,
Hume’s approach instead begins with the ‘given’ that precedes the subject, and attempts to show how it is constituted, which in turn allows us to explain how the subject systematises the given into its own categories.
(57)
In Chapter 2, Deleuze will take this Humean path, and he will try to explain how the world can be constituted not on the basis of a subject. This will involve distinguishing active from passive synthesis.
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.
ES:
Deleuze, Gilles. Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature, trans. Constantin V. Boundas, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
by Corry Shores
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[Central Entry Directory]
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[Note: All boldface and underlining is my own. It is intended for skimming purposes. Bracketed comments are also my own explanations or interpretations.]
Henry Somers-Hall
Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation.
Dialectics of Negation and Difference
Part 1: The problem of Representation
Chapter 1: Deleuze and Transcendental Empiricism
Subdivision 2: Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason
Brief Summary: Our concern is the transcendental field in Kant. This would be the conditions for the possibility for our concepts to correspond to our intuitions. For Kant, this correspondence revolves around a self whose own synthetic unity makes it possible for us to synthetically unify intuitive representations into a coherent object.
Summary
Previously we gave a preview of chapter one, [part of which discussed what according to Kant allows our cognitions to correspond to the empirical world given to our senses. Kant tries to find a new way to ensure this connection between our concepts and our (sense) intuitions. One older way says that God ensures that our cognized concepts will match up with the world we sense. But this theory requires that we posit such a God without very strong support. Another older theory argues that we obtain our concepts secondarily by means of processing our sense data. But Kant identifies a problem with this approach. He discovers a way to understand certain kinds of propositions, for example, 5 + 7 = 12. We do not learn from our senses that 12 results from the synthetic combination of 5 and 7, so the proposition is a priori rather than a posteriori. However, contained in the definition of 12 is not ‘5 + 7’. So it is not an ‘analytic’ statement like ‘all bodies are extended’ or ‘all bachelors are unmarried’, in which cases the subject cannot be defined without explicitly including the predicate, either with that exact terminology or with synonymous terms. So we might define a body as something that occupies space, but ‘occupies space’ is synonymous with ‘extended’. However, if we define 12 as “the combination of ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ ”, this is not synonymous with ‘5 + 7’. For, ‘5 + 7’ requires an additional act of synthetic consciousness, that combines “ ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ ” to get 5, then combines “ ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ and ‘1’ ” to get 7, and then additionally combines 5 and 7 to get 12. So 5 + 7 = 12 is a synthetic a priori statement. But if all our knowledge comes from experience as empiricists claim, then such a priori claims as this would not be possible. So Kant instead accounts for the correspondence of our cognitions with our empirical knowledge with a unified subject. It is called the transcendental apperception or the ‘I think’ that accompanies all acts of consciousness. But now we should first review Kant’s three syntheses of time: apprehension, recollection, and recognition. Each instant we apprehend representations given in intuition (by means of our senses), grouping them into tiny blocks of our awareness of the object we sense. Our reproductive imagination keeps all the parts together, maintaining the ones that have passed out of our immediate awareness, so that our productive imagination may synthesize the parts together in such a way that our understanding may recognize the synthetic manifold using its concepts. But note that what is being synthesized, the moments of our sense apprehension, are temporally exclusive, one disappears from our present awareness while the next one takes its place, however, the imagination’s act of synthesis and the understanding’s act of recognition (matching the proper concept to the synthesized sense-manifold) regard the temporally exclusive moments as being simultaneous, as if something in us stays the same while our moments of awareness change. Kant thinks that we have an a priori unified self-consciousness that remains the same despite the fact that it accompanies acts of consciousness that are always changing. So there is a synthetic glue that is already there in our ‘I think’ which assumes it is the same ‘I think’ as all ‘I think’s from before and all to come; and since it is already glued to its future instantiations even before they have manifested in empirical consciousness means that it is an a priori unity of consciousness. This constant self-consciousness is what allows us to glue together successive parts of our awareness and successive parts of our cognition, and so it accounts for the coherence within each realm. But, what glues together our concepts with our intuitions (our sense apprehensions of the world around us)? We may think of there being two self-apperceptions (two forms of our self-consciousness). There is our empirical apperception, which is our grasping of ourselves as being slightly different or slightly modified each instant. Our transcendental apperception, however, has no intuitive content. In order for the ‘I think’ to be cognitionally aware of itself, it needs the intuitive content of empirical apperception, its awareness of its temporal self-inconsistency. Regarding the transcendental apperception, we have a self-awareness not of our empirical apperceptive awarenesses, but rather just of the unified identity that any and all acts of self-awareness belong together to the same self-aware subject. So it is a consciousness that our transcendental subjectivity, on the side of concepts and understanding but not yet cognition, is always glued to any and all acts of empirical self-awareness, despite each one giving a differently modified intuition of the self. So the unity of the transcendental apperception is what guarantees that our concepts are always linked to our intuitions. This is because this a priori unity of the self ensures that every act of empirical awareness has an accompanying empirical self-awareness that is an awareness of a self who is the same self as the a priori unified self that unifies all these varying temporally exclusive empirical self-intuitions. Thus Somers-Hall opens chapter 1 with:]
Deleuze's break with Kant concerns the nature of the transcendental field and the isomorphism between the functions of judgment, which allow us to make judgments about the empirical world [ft.5] and the categories, which as transcendental allow the synthesis of the empirical manifold. For Kant, this parallelism of the operations of the understanding is essential, as it is this that allows us to attribute to the subject the power to condition the empirical manifold and therefore to know with certainty that the understanding is able to apply its concepts to this manifold. Since our consciousness of the empirical manifold is generated through categories of the understanding (the same understanding that employs the functions in order to form judgments), then the structure of judgment will mirror that of the world, thus allowing certain synthetic propositions about that world to be guaranteed valid. By showing that the categories apply to the world, Kant is able to follow Hume in granting that all knowledge begins with experience, while at the same time allowing contentful propositions about the structure of that experience to remain necessarily true, since these fundamental structures are imposed on experience by the subject as the conditions under which experience is possible at all. The transcendental for Kant therefore contains those structures that concern the nonempirical determinations of the object, those that make experience of the object possible . (14)
{footnote 5 explains that there are also judgments outside the empirical domain, but we will turn to this topic in chapter 6.} Deleuze is not a transcendental idealist like Kant, but is rather a transcendental empiricist [this terminology will become clearer as we continue the discussion in this chapter.] For Kant, the transcendental “contains those structures that concern the nonempirical determinations of the object, those that make experience of the object possible.” (14) What interests Deleuze regarding the transcendental
is not its ability to guarantee knowledge, but rather the generative principles that it provides for the empirical world. In this change of emphasis, what is at stake is both the structure of the transcendental field and the rules that govern this structure and through this the structure of empirical experience, these rules being what Kant would call "transcendental logic" (CPR, ASO/B74 ). [14]
For Kant there are two conditions for such a transcendental logic.
Kant’s 2 conditions for a transcendental logic:
[1] It contains only the pure thought of an object, and it excludes the modes of knowledge that have empirical content [thus it deals with a priori propositions]
[2] It deals with the non-empirical origin of our knowledge of objects [so it deals with the origins of our a priori knowledge] (14d)
Deleuze also holds these requirements for a transcendental logic. The only difference is that Deleuze removes references to the subject. For Deleuze
Kant has not shown the necessity of the transcendental field being generated in relation to a subject. Thus transcendental logic for Deleuze would first concern purely the Idea of an object, while still excluding those structures of the object as an empirical (actual) manifestation of that Idea, and second, | must concern itself with the origins of the object as experienced, insofar as this origin is not attributed to the object (or even of an objectival nature) (14-15)
{In ft.6, Somers-Hall explains that by objectival he means “an entity that has a subject-property structure, or a proposition or logic, that is isomorphic with this structure. Objectival therefore loosely means structured according to the classical conception of an object. A parallel meaning has been given to the term subjectival These neologisms have been coined to prevent confusion or conflation with the similar terms subjective and objective.” (249)} [Somers-Hall will later explain this.] Somers-Hall will first examine Kant’s account of the necessity for the subject “in the structuration of experience” (15b)
In the Transcendental Aesthetic of the first critique, Kant shows how sensibility deals with a priori forms of intuition, “that is, that space and time are ideal forms through which objects are presented to the subject” (15) [Because space and time are ideal forms, they are a priori, and so he is laying the groundwork for his transcendental idealism which will correlate a priori concepts to a posteriori intuitions.] So Kant first shows how objects may be presented to consciousness, and then he turns to his Transcendental Analytic to explain how objects can be thought by consciousness. He will then need to show how the faculty of sensibility and the faculty of understanding interact with one another. In the Metaphysical Deduction Kant relates the categories to the ordinary functions of the understanding. This for Deleuze is one of the most important sections of the first critique, because “it is here that the conditions for the possibility of objects are first equated with the condi- | tions for the possibility of knowledge of objects through their joint origin in the understanding.” (15-16)
This Metaphysical Deduction establishes “an isomorphism between the functions of the understanding and the categories, as shown in the tables of functions and categories.” (16) The understanding deals only with representations, and it relates representations in such a way that they are subsumed under other representations and in that way are unified. This is happens by means of judgments, which take the subject-predicate form. Consider this judgment: ‘all bodies are divisible’. There is a general representation that ranges over a wide range of entities, namely, [entities that are divisible] or ‘divisibility’ and a specific representation, a body, that relates directly to some object, like a body. Here the understanding unifies different representations of bodies together by subsuming them under the more general representation ‘divisibility.’ Because all thought takes on this structure more or less, all thinking is judging. For this reason, all thinking requires synthesis, [namely, the synthesis (a) of all the representations that will be grouped together and subsumed under a general concept and (b) of this unified manifold representation and the general concept it is subsumed under]. All judgments must enact a particular function from each of four [more general] functions: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. This means that some given judgment will relate to either all, some, or one entity in a class of subjects, and in this way express quantity. [And at the same time, the judgment expresses quality, relation, and modality too.] Now, “if we are to understand the nature of the pure concepts or categories of the understanding, as opposed to the functions, which Kant claims to have thus far discovered, we have to consider these functions in terms of transcendental logic.” (16d)
So, all acts of understanding require that the judgment take on the subject-object form. This means, our understanding of an intuition must also take on an objective (subject-predicate) form. (17) But this requires first that the intuitions be synthesized so that they may become the subject of judgments. But the functions of judgments, quantity, quality, relation and modality, deal only with judgments, so they do not help unify the intuitions, which are not judgments.
This unity must therefore be provided by concepts other than, but compatible with, the functions of judgment, if judgment is to be validly applicable to intuition at all. Therefore, the unification of the manifold will be carried out by categories, which correspond to the functions, while also containing a conceptual reference to intuition. Thus, for instance, the hypothetical function, if A then B, will be mirrored in the category of causality and dependence, which takes the form, if . . . then, and relates it to a manifold (17)
Thus we see that
for Kant the transcendental field is structured according to the model of classical logic, as this will allow Kant to explain the synthetic nature of the transcendental and to provide it with a differentiated structure. Deleuze's own metaphysical deduction will rest not on classical logic, but on the differential calculus, and will thus attempt to overthrow the double nature of the understanding as both synthesizing the manifold and formulating judgments upon which the Kantian model relies. (18)
What we have been dealing with so far is the metaphysical deduction. It shows relation of the categories to the understanding. We now turn to the transcendental deduction, where “this isomorphism rests on the presupposition of an 'I' that provides a point in the transcendental field around which the empirical field is unified.” (18)
For Hume, we do not derive the concept of causality from experience but instead a tendency of association arising from constant conjunction. [After every first glimmer of light on the day’s horizon we experience the sun rising. Thus the next time we see morning light our minds automatically tend to associate with all our prior impressions of sunrise. This is Hume’s version of causality. ] But “While Hume's notion may explain how the concept comes to be recognized by the understanding, such a derivation obviously cannot show us whether its application is justified (hence | Hume's skepticism).” (18-19) What Hume describes is an empirical deduction and only provide contingent truths. The alternative is a transcendental deduction, which “moves to the necessary preconditions of experience” (19); “we must ask whether there are any conditions that need to be met in order to ‘know anything as an object’ (CPR, A92/B125 ).” [In order for us to unify the manifold of sensible parts of an object into that object, we need already to have a concept of an object as unity of a manifold of representations, the object = x.] But this concept cannot come from experience. “the task that Kant faces is to show whether the concept of an object in general itself requires certain other a priori concepts in order to be comprehensible.” (19)
For Kant, in order to apply the categories, there must be an ‘I think’ that accompanies all our representations. (19 citing CPR, B131). [First requirement for the conceptual categories to apply to the intuitive manifolds is that all the parts of the manifold be available to the same self so that this self may unify them. Thus we need an “I”. The second requirement is that all the parts belong together amongst themselves so they may be synthesized into objects. Thus we need a unified I. It cannot arise from our fluctuating experiences because then it is not unified, so it is an a priori I, and because it is the condition for thinking, it is transcendental.]
For my representations to belong to me, it is a minimal requirement that I be able to assert of them that it is I who thinks them. If this were not the case, there would be thoughts that both belonged to me (as they are my representations) and did not belong to me (I could not lay claim to them ). This 'I' has the further function of unifying my experience, for it allows perceptions at various moments to be integrated together, as the unity of the ' I' grants a unity to the various moments of experience, tying them together as they share a relation to the self-identical structure of the ego. This allows the subject to conceive of the manifold as a manifold. As everything empirical is itself within time, and thus is also affected by change, an empirical entity is unable to provide the identity that is required to effect this unification of the manifold. For Kant, this therefore excludes the empirical ego, which is the self of which the subject is conscious, from fulfilling this function. "No fixed and abiding self can present itself in this flux of inner appearances" (CPR, A107) . Kant believes, therefore, that the unity of apperception must be instead a transcendental structure, the source of Sartre and Deleuze 's opposition. Such a self cannot itself be intuited, but instead must | be posited as a presupposition of our having successive representations. (19 - 20)
This transcendental I is not a substance; it is precategorical. “It amounts simply to the correlate of the unity of experience to which it must be possible to attach the 'I think'.” (20) [However, it is still a subject]. This subject is aware of the synthetic unity of the objects it synthesizes and he is aware of that synthesis he enacts to generate it. (20) “The function it fulfills is related to the faculty of judgment, to the extent that it is simply a posited unity that allows judgments to be formed and perceptions to hold to a unified structure.” (20) It is free of all content. “The transcendental object must therefore be conceived, like the transcendental unity of apperception, as a self-identical, singular transcendental condition for the unity of the manifold for the understanding.” (21)
We still do not know why and how the transcendental subject and the transcendental object allow the categories to relate to intuition. (21) To answer this, we turn to the conditions for the possibility of the subject and object. The subject and object determine each other reciprocally. The subject makes the object possible, because as we noted we need a unified subject to unify the objects representations. The subject is grounded by the object, because it only comes to know itself by being aware that it is the subject that unifies the objective manifold. And,
The concept of an object allows the subject to recognize representations as representations of the object and thus to distinguish itself from them. Thus the subject becomes aware of himself through the | unification of representations into an object, through his recognition of himself as a spontaneous consciousness. The subject therefore makes the object possible for Kant, and the object makes the subject possible. (21-22)
So we see that in the transcendental field for Kant, the presence of the subjectival invokes the presence of the objectival, and vice versa. Deleuze will try to provide an analysis of the transcendental field without appealing to the subjectival and the objectival.
This in turn will allow Deleuze to conceive of the transcendental field as generative, rather than merely conditioning, as the transcendental will no longer be structured analogously to the empirical but will instead give rise to the objectival from a nonobjectival field. Instead of the transcendental having the form of the empirical, therefore providing the merely formal conditions of the empirical, the structure of the object in general, we will be able to understand the transcendental as actually generating the empirical. (22)
We will now see the role of the categories in all this. The subject constitutes the object synthetically. He does so using rules. The rules cannot be derived from empirical concepts, because we are looking for the preempirical conditions for the possibility of experience. “The categories, as concepts which apply to an object in general and are transcendental, seem to be the only choice for the rules of this synthesis. The categories are therefore legitimated through the role they play in allowing the subject to actively synthesize the object.” (22) Yet also “The manifold is in fact synthesized by the schemata, which play the role of intermediaries between the conceptual and the intuitional, thus allowing the two heterogeneous matters to be brought into relation. They perform this role by sharing characteristics of both”. (22)
Somers-Hall concludes with a summary and lead into forthcoming topics.
We now see how Kant conceives of the understanding as both being responsible for synthesizing objects through the categories and uniting representations through judgments. We can also see how the transcendental subject is thus generated through the synthesis of objects and is also its precondition, through the reciprocal determination of the subject and the object. The subject's role in actively synthesizing the object is not given directly but rather is established through our knowledge of the subject's spontaneity, gathered through its ability to perform analogous acts of unification in the domain of judgment. These two threads reinforce each other, as the isomorphism of the categories and judgments guarantees the subject-object structure of the transcendental, because the categories extend the objectival logic of judgment into the transcendental domain, and the subject-object structure makes possible the isomorphism between transcendental logic and the logic of judgment, as it allows the analogous structures to operate in both domains. As we shall see, Deleuze will attempt to refute both theses simultaneously in order to move away from Kantianism while maintaining the concepts of the transcendental and the empirical, redesignated as the virtual and the actual. This would allow him to propose a transcendental philosophy that was generative, rather than just conditioning. We are now ready to analyze Sartre's critique of the transcendental ego, which is a transitional point on the journey to transcendental empiricism. (23)
Somers-Hall, Henry (2012) Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. Dialectics of Negation and Difference. Albany: SUNY.
