James Williams (5.1) Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time, 'Only Difference Returns and Never the Same'

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 four 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

5.1 Only Difference Returns and Never the Same

Brief Summary:

Deleuze's three syntheses of time are processes not in the sense of input/output production but rather in the sense of each operating on all the others in a non-hierarchical fashion. For this reason, although the eternal return might be construed in terms of something that is timeless, Williams will consider it instead as an ongoing process. For Deleuze, what returns is not the same but is rather always difference. This notion might at first seem incoherent, but it is important to grasp for the sake of a thorough comprehension of Deleuze's philosophy of time.

Summary

Deleuze's interactive syntheses of time are processes not so much in the sense of input/output production but rather in the sense of operating transformatively on one another.

All these syntheses are processes, where process means a transformation of events and their relations. This is unlike a familiar sense of process taken from production, where a machine processes a material input and produces a product. In the syntheses of time the process is transformation across all parts such that any notion of independence is rendered obsolete. The machine is itself ‘processed’. The syntheses of time are not processes by something, but in and involving something, for instance, a transformation of the past and the future in the living present when habit transforms a series of events.

(Williams 113c)

Also there is no hierarchy of the syntheses because "each one has a moment where it is prior to the others and because even when there is a relation of priority, this depends on other such relations" (114a).

Williams will explain the eternal return as a process rather than an unchanging circle of time (114).

Deleuze formulates the eternal return as the return of pure difference.

‘The same does not return, the similar does not return, but the Same is the return of that which returns, that is, of the Different, the similar is the return of that which returns, that is, of the Dissimilar’ (DRf, 384). The capitals on ‘Same’, ‘Different’ and ‘Dissimilar’ indicate the universal idea of each rather than a correspondence to particular cases or instances. Thus anything that is the same is the return of pure difference, rather than any identified difference. Any similarity is the return of pure difference.
(Williams 115b)

Difference is "not a difference between two identities or the negation of an identity" (115c). For, "Any identified or comparable ‘this’ or ‘that’ will never return and has only appeared thanks to differences we cannot identify" (115d). So nothing that is the same on account of identity or resemblance can return: "the only thing that remains the same is the return of difference and the only thing that remains similar is the return of dissimilarity" (115d). This means that Deleuze's eternal return temporality does not portray time as a circle or as a redundant recurrence of same or similar things (116a). So when hammers pound metal, they seem to do so in a way that is similar to long-past occurrences and to others in distant parts of the world. That is not the repetition. The repetition is what makes each instance differ from the others through the eternal return of pure difference. (116-117) [It is only on the basis of the situation being again new that it may secondarily be regarded as similar to prior events.] What is also different are the syntheses involved.

These are not only differences within each new stroke of the hammer, but rather differences in syntheses running back through every living present, through every past blow. They are differences in syntheses in the relations between the differences introduced in every past blow, in the whole of the past as pure past, or store of past differences. They are syntheses destined to return in the future differently within any new blow, new edge and new resounding clang. It is not that we cannot compare such blows or even the tipping point when a blow and reverberation trigger the return of an unbearable migraine. It is rather that when we do so we miss the complete process unless we also take account of the return of difference. It is not that we have to abandon regularity, patterns, statistical rules or probabilities. It is that these are only ever a partial representation of real processes and, if they are taken as the best or only way of relating to future events, they lead to a fundamental misunderstanding of the open nature of the future. The same and the similar are only the necessary media through which difference works and is expressed each time in a new drama encompassing all that has come before and all that will come later.

(117b-c)

[The following is added June 2016]

Williams continues  by asking a series of questions. Should we go along with what Deleuze is claiming? How does Deleuze's philosophy of time here fit in with others in the history of philosophy? "If only difference returns, is there any identity through time at all? If there is no such identity, is there anything at all in any meaningful sense?" (117cd). In fact, are we even the same moment to moment? [As we will see in the following question, Williams here seems to be calling into question the coherence and relative philosophical worth of Deleuze's notion of the eternal return.]

Williams further wonders if we can ignore Deleuze's philosophy of the eternal return. "Does eternal return matter within Deleuze’s philosophy, or could we simply bracket off these claims about the return of difference from those points where Deleuze makes more sense or runs in a consistent way alongside contemporary science?" (117d). [I recommend reading Terence Blake's discussion of the place Deleuze's notion of the eternal return takes in his broader philosophical development. See Blake's post. I reference it here.]

Williams claims that we must take this notion into account in order to maintain the overall richness and coherence of Deleuze's philosophy of time.

This last question at least can be easily answered. If we choose to discount the work on eternal return as in some way aberrant or unimportant, we will be | severing off large parts of his philosophy, to be left with no doubt interesting and productive remarks, but with no consistent system and with many gaps and lacunae. We can see this through the interdependence of the syntheses of time. If we remove eternal return, then we also neuter Deleuze’s accounts of habit as repetition and memory as repetition; in fact, we turn his novel definition of repetition into a mild conjecture mapped onto a series of observations. For an interpretation of Deleuze that seeks to give the strongest and most consistent version of his philosophy, there is no alternative to a full investigation and explanation of eternal return.

(Williams 117-118)

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

Eros and the Virtual. Ch.4.6 of Williams'; Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time

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Eros and the Virtual

James Williams'

Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:
A Critical Introduction and Guide

Chapter 4: The third synthesis of time

Part 6: Transcendental Dogmatism? 

Brief summary:

Deleuze’s philosophy of time is speculative rather than dogmatic, because it posits “certain principles or events without further grounding argument. These speculative assumptions are then tested, for instance, in terms of how they contribute to a consistent theory.” (107) For example, Deleuze’s Freud material (on Eros and habit) in his discussion of the time syntheses does well for illustration, but it is not essential for the validity of the concepts. And “Eros allows for a return of the pure past in present attractions and selections through virtual objects drawn from the pure past” (110).

Summary

Williams says that "In order to avoid accusations of dogmatism based on a contingent and therefore illegitimate selection of given components for Deleuze’s philosophy, I have described it as speculative." (107b) "it is speculative in having to posit certain principles or events without further grounding argument. These speculative assumptions are then tested, for instance, in terms of how they contribute to a consistent theory, as shown in the previous chapter on the first synthesis of time." (10bc)

If an old philosophical text is anchored to outdated research, it becomes a historical relic rather than something that is still scientifically valid. Difference and Repetition might have this problem since it refers to scientific research. (108a) Regarding time, Deleuze refers to biopsychological examples, but his work does not rest on them.

Eros plays a part in explaining the way that attraction connects the first and third syntheses: "a living present is also a selection of the past driven by an attraction towards the new in the future." (108cd) But Eros is not mentioned when discussing the third synthesis.

The future in the third synthesis is not determined by the living present or the pure past. (108d) This makes the future unconditioned. (109a)

Deleuze offers a critical reading of Freud to further explain this. (109b)

"The key point to insist upon is that the reading is critical and that this critique is based on the work on the three syntheses of time. Deleuze follows Freud’s work on the pleasure principle not in order to deduce these syntheses, but rather to show how they allow for an explanation of passive syntheses in Freud by mapping them, first, on to habit, then on to pure memory and finally on to Eros." (109b.c)

Pleasure and displeasure presuppose habit. Thus habit is not a result of the search for pleasure. "The argument is thus that in order for there to be an idea of an acquired pleasure or of a pleasure to be acquired there must first have been many syntheses connecting many events over time." (109d)

The Freudian material does well to illustrate the syntheses of time, but they are not essential for the validity of the concepts. (110b) "Therefore, Deleuze’s work is not in danger of accusations of dogmatism on the grounds that it rests on scientifi c views that are prone to be viewed as false or incomplete over time. Neither is it open to the accusation that it rests on patently false science (via Freud, for instance)."

Deleuze discusses Eros in relation to Bergson and the pure past.

"Eros allows for a return of the pure past in present attractions and selections through virtual objects drawn from the pure past. Any novel drive is not to be explained by a simple attraction to real objects because an active synthesis in the present never presents us with the full object | explaining that attraction." (110-111) Passive syntheses underlie the virtual object. But we cannot get the virtual object from the past or living present, so we are really attracted to the new, but this attraction remains unfulfilled. This means we are drawn towards something that is more than can be recognized or grasped. "This need not only be viewed in terms of human sexuality. It is rather that any novel drive and binding is made through virtual objects. These objects cannot be real, in the sense of accounted for fully from within a set of known objects, yet neither are they completely unknown or unmanageable." (111b)

Virtual objects are fully determined by the past, but also they are drawn by the pure past. So "Any attraction and binding to the new is not a leap into complete indetermination and a chaotic set of relations, but rather a partial move through the virtual object." (111b)

The novelty of the virtual object is drawn from the pure past, but its real part is drawn from the present.

"That is why Deleuze describes the virtual object as having an eternal positive lack at its heart. It is neither fully any real object, nor any past object, nor fully pure difference or a set of varying relations in the pure past. It is all of these in an unstable mix, where unstable is also not a negative term, but rather an explanation of the attraction and eternal novelty allowed for by virtual objects: Drawn from the real present object, the virtual object differs from it in its nature; it does not only lack something in relation to the real object it subtracts itself from; it lacks something in itself, by being half of itself, where the other half is posited as different and absent. (DRf, 135)." (111c.d)

Deleuze's novel treatment of Eros shows how his philosophy of time is independent of psychoanalysis.

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

 

Time Cut. Ch.4.3 of Williams' Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time

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Time Cut

James Williams'

Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:
A Critical Introduction and Guide

Chapter 4: The third synthesis of time

Part 3: Pure and empty form of time


What does the cut in time got to do with you?

The moment right now is significant. It opens you to a new future. But that means it cuts time apart, making it fork off into a new direction.

Brief Summary

Deleuze turns to drama to further explain the third synthesis of time. It is a dramatic cut that determines before and after. It presents an undetermined future. It is the condition for novelty. As a condition for something undetermined, it is pure and empty. Time is out of joint, because it loses its cardinal points of orientation, and is pure ordering rather than an ordering governed extrinsically. The cut is not a point but an event or process of dually cutting moments apart while joining them in succession. Something is before when it is too great for the underlying processes the subject is passive to.

Points Relative to Deleuze:

Drama determines temporal order.

Summary

There are two concepts that will help us answer certain questions regarding Deleuze's third synthesis of time:
1) "open determinability as a given, and"
2) "drama as form." (87a)

Deleuze will turn to Hölderlin and Hamlet.

Williams outlines the significance of this turn to drama.
1) The dramatic actions of the subject determine the self in time.
2) But because the subject depends on a passive self, it is fractured.
3) This means that the subject is not the condition for determinability. Rather, it is "the vehicle whose actions are further conditioned by passivity." (87b)
4) Thus there is a circular relation between dramatic actor and determinable self. "The actor is conditioned by the self that is created by the actor’s dramatic action." (87b)

Even though the passive self determines the subject, activity "is still undetermined in relation to novel differences that can be introduced into ongoing processes." (87c) In the third synthesis of time, "only difference returns and never sameness. This is the synthesis’s capacity for genuine novelty, rather than a repetition of the past. The third synthesis of time is the condition for novelty, which is why it must be pure and empty." (87c.d)

Deleuze turns to Hamlet and Oedipus to illustrate why "time has to be dramatised, that is, it must be assembled through a novel creative attempt where past, present and future are unified but only also as divided around an encounter with the new." (87d)

Williams then explains Deleuze's meaning for 'time is out of joint', from Hamlet. When we lose points of orientation in our lives, time comes out of joint.

"The Latin root for ‘gond’ is ‘cardo’ the hinge or axle, the north–south axis in a city, or orienting direction and cardinal points for a circle, for instance north on a compass. The number of revolutions of a circle can then be measured thanks to cardinal points, for instance, in the number of times a clock passes midday or a horoscope passes a birthday. The passing of time, as much for the soul as for the world, he says, is measured thanks to such cardinal points. When these go missing time goes out of joint and becomes maddened and disordered, as it does for Hamlet and the kingdom of Denmark when he receives the news, from his father’s ghost, of his uncle’s betrayal: ‘Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother’s hand / Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched’ (Hamlet: I, v, 74–5)." (88b.c)

Time is empty because loses ordering, and pure because it is not contaminated by that ordering. There is no cardinal point to orient the cycling of events.

"Time out of joint or the third synthesis of time is therefore empty, in the sense of lacking cardinal numbering, and pure, in the sense of lacking hierarchies associated with numbering. We can understand this disruption further by returning to Deleuze’s critique of Plato. In the Platonic context, time out of joint means that the ideal is removed from the circle; we therefore are left with simulacra with no principle of resemblance. For Hamlet, once | his father’s ghost has spoken, the numbering and legitimacy of kings is out of joint and his time becomes empty (there is no next numbered ruler) and pure (there is no legitimate ruler). Hamlet’s task is then to revenge his father by killing his uncle, thereby re-establishing numbered order and legitimacy based upon it." (88-89)

Rather than cardinal, time becomes ordinal, pure ordering without orientation to that order. (89b) In the third synthesis, this ordering is a cut or caesura. Every present is a cut in the present into an ordering of before and after. (89c) "the third synthesis is static because its sole characteristic of order always remains the same, the before and after of each cut always remain." (89cd) "If novelty is accepted in any process (animal, vegetable, mineral) then a third synthesis of time is implied as condition for the new." (90a)

[Our self is fractured into an active and a passive part. The active selects novel differences. The passive part of us is determined by synthesis that the active side cannot control. The subject is the process doing the selection.] The fracturing of the subject should "be read as implying that any activity is also passivity and fracturing of the subject of that activity, where active means selecting by introducing a novel difference, passivity means determined by syntheses outside the control of activity, subject means process of selection, and fracturing means dissolution of the subject through the syntheses it is passive to." (90b)

The third synthesis, on account of its caesura, is both a break and a division into unequal parts. (90d)

Every point on the line of time is such a cut. This cut is not point-like or instantaneous. (91a) Deleuze elaborates with the concepts of assembly and series. (91a)

Deleuze time is not a time-line series of points succeeding before and after one another. (91b) The caesura is an event and dramatic division that is not a point between points but is something that gathers the points before and after together dramatically. (91c) So events in time are both assembled, by relating them dramatically, but also severed, because that ordering occurs on the basis of cutting them apart. (91d)

"Each point on the line has a set of points before and after it. This is not Deleuze’s model. Instead, the caesura is an event and has a depth to it. It is not instantaneous but rather must be considered with its effect on the points before and after it. This is why the caesura implies a drama: it divides time such that a drama is required to encompass this division. This event-like and dramatic division is in contrast with the thin logical point and set account of the line of time where an arbitrary point is taken on a line and every point before it is defined as before in time and every point after as after in time." (91b.c)
"the ensemble is rather a process of gathering and tearing apart. Why is this? It is because the whole of time is ordered, but it is ordered differently, that is, into before and after. The events of time are gathered in an ordering, but they are also torn apart, since some are irreparably before and others irreparably after the dividing event." (91d)

Drama establishes what is before and what is after.

"A series is ordered by a dramatic event according to the following principles: ‘before’ is determined in accordance with the assembly of the line of time in an image operating as a symbol for that assembly. When the image is posed as ‘too great for me’ for a given event, then we have something before." (92b)

We should not, as the English translation suggest, consider the action under consideration as being imagined. (92d) "However, the difficulty remains that Deleuze is referring to actions by subjects and to what certainly appears to be a conscious awareness of an image that is ‘too great for me’ is posed as ‘too great for me’ for a given event, then we have something before." (93b)

"the image is too great for the self, that is, for the underlying processes the subject is passive to. It exceeds those processes as past or before. None of this depends upon an empirical experience. It is rather a formal connection between processes of cutting, assembly and setting into series in relation to the future as novelty: As for the third time that uncovers the future: it signifies that the event and the action have a secret coherence that excludes the coherence of the self. It has become equal to them and they shatter it into thousands of pieces, as if the bearer of the new world were taken up and dissipated by the shattering of what it, in the multiple, gives birth to. The self is equal to the unequal in itself. (DRf, 121)" (93d)

The cut, assembly, and serialization produces the future not as a dimension of the past and present. Williams then offers a helpful summary.

"The third synthesis of time, or pure and empty time, is a cut, an assembly, an ordering and a seriation. It is deduced as an a priori condition for action, which in simple terms claims that any novel action depends on a cut in time. This cut though must also assemble what comes either side of it. This assembly is itself dependent on a putting of time into an order of before and after the cut. The third synthesis of time is therefore a division of time and an ordering of time. This ordering though is also a seriation; it distinguishes the before and the after, rendering time asymmetrical. This complex third synthesis is the time of the future making the present and the past, which become dimensions of it, because the action it is posited upon is essentially determined by an open future. Neither the subject nor the self is a foundation for Deleuze’s philosophy, because in the third synthesis of time they are both ungrounded. The subject is divided by selves it is passive to. These selves though are shattered by the structure of the third synthesis that makes them past in relation to a future they cannot determine. All of these components of time are formal and deduced as necessary conditions for any novel action. So though Deleuze depends upon examples and vocabulary from drama to introduce and explain the third synthesis of time, this drama is strictly defined formally as the cut, assembly, ordering and seriation which can be explained by reference to Shakespearean drama but is not derived from it. As Deleuze insists all the way through his work on the third synthesis of time, it is a priori and not dependent on empirical observation." (94b.d)

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

Cycles of Synthesis. Ch.4.2 of Williams' Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:

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Cycles of Synthesis

James Williams'

Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:
A Critical Introduction and Guide

Chapter 4: The third synthesis of time

Part 2: Back to Plato


What does Deleuze's modification of Plato's circle of time got to do with you?

You once returned to a place that you haunted in your childhood. The past returned to you, but as completely new, because wasn't the experience so much different than when you experienced that place as a child? But in every moment of our present living, doesn't the past inform us? It is never as though we see the things around us for the first time. They have become familiar. But the present moment itself, doesn't it always feel fresh? Even when we are bored, isn't the problem really that the present keeps imposing itself anew, and we are doing something unstimulating with that freshness of the moment? Is boredom maybe a tension we feel, having before us the immediate feeling of newness accompanied secondarily by forced distracting redundancies?

If you get bored staring at a clock, is it because the past keeps returning redundantly as the same? Or is it that the past keeps returning differently; each moment of seeing the clock has its own unique qualities and feels, but the situation compels us to ignore the differences from moment to moment, hence we become frustrated? Perhaps an interesting exercise might be not so much a meditation where you try to keep your focus on the clock or some other thing and stabilize your awareness, but rather an antimeditation where you keep your focus on the clock and experience each moment in its new freshness. Perhaps then boredom will be less a factor in your life, as you come to find normal redundancies continually renewed. The past is cycling back into the present always as something new. We can feel it.

Brief Summary

To expand the concepts of pure and empty time, Deleuze turns to Plato's theory of reminiscence and circular time. The main difference is that the return of the past is not based on an ideal and resemblances, but rather the past returns as something undetermined and yet also determinable.

Points Relative to Deleuze:

Deleuze has a cyclical temporality.

Summary

To further explain a pure and empty form of time, Deleuze turns now to Plato's theory of reminiscence: "knowledge must be remembered ... rather than acquired through the senses." Yet because knowledge is recalled, it must have been first forgotten. (84b) The Plato material also fits nicely with the concepts of the pure past and circular nature of time in the eternal return.

"On the one hand, there are aspects shared by the two philosophies: a circular notion of time, a relation between a phenomenal world and a world of Ideas (the actual and the virtual in Deleuze), and the foundation of time through the past rather than the present (explaining the priority of reminiscence for Plato and the necessity of the second synthesis of time for Deleuze). " (84-85)

Yet there are important differences between Deleuze and Plato. For Plato, the circle of time has layers of resemblance that culninate in the in-itself of the ideal. Things resemble the ideal, and they do so to more or less of a degree. If the soul can preserve the ideal or in-itself, it can escape the circle. "It does not return but is always the same ideal other things return to – to greater or lesser extent in relations of resemblance. In Deleuze’s circle, taken from Nietzsche’s eternal return, there will be no order of resemblance, no ideal or in itself and no escape through true knowledge." (85a)

For Plato, our lives are circular, because we undergo the cycle of death and rebirth.

"But each soul can return to the ideal or immortal part of its former incarnations through knowledge of the Idea, that is, through a return of the Idea as the same origin from which all phenomena decline. This means escaping the circle, because the ideal remains the same and hence does not revolve." (85b)

The only things that revolve are things that resemble, the simulacra. Deleuze's pure past is a 'founding' rather than a 'foundation', because it is a process that allows the present to pass. Plato's
past is a foundation and is

"still a present, because it is a present that has become past. However, it is not a present like any other, since all other presents | exist in relation to that foundation. So the present as foundation has to be a mythical present: ‘[. . .] the Idea is like the foundation from which successive presents are organised into the circle of time such that the pure past that defines it must necessarily still be expressed in terms of the present, as an ancient mythical present’ (DRf, 119)." (85-86)

Thus

"Deleuze’s objection to Plato is then two-fold. First, the past becomes the ground for identity and representation in the circles of resemblance of presents to mythical present. Second, this mythical present subsumes the past itself to representation and identity, and thereby it turns the past back on to presents that it is supposed to found, in the sense of make pass or dissolve in terms of identity: ‘This is the insufficiency of the founding, to be relative to what it founds, to borrow the character of what it founds, and to be proven by them’ (DRf, 119)." (86a.b)

Because of Deleuze's restricting representations from the cycling returns, "when the past returns with a new present it does so free of any determinations." (86c) This means that the new present is radically new; it is completely undetermined, although it is determinable. "This is why he adds the work on Plato to the work on Kant: it allows him to introduce the idea that time is circular with the paradox that this circle must not involve the return of identity and representations, of the same and the similar." (86c.d)

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

Rescuing Your Past. Ch.3.4 of Williams' Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time

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Rescuing Your Past

James Williams'

Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:
A Critical Introduction and Guide

Chapter 3: The second synthesis of time

Part 4: How to save all the past for us?


What does saving your pure past got to do with you?

Whenever we remember a past moment, we are not remembering it perfectly. In a way, we are continually recreating our past. But this in a way keeps it alive and relevant to our present experiences.

Brief Summary

If we want to save the pure past, we cannot use representation and we cannot consider it as the present it once was. We can save it by reliving it creatively, and this happens through forgetting. Because we forget the past as it was when it was present, we continually recall and relive it as different.

Points Relative to Deleuze:

We recreate the past in recollection.

Summary

Our past is in continuous flux. But how should we act then? And if we cannot adequately represent our past, do we have any responsibility to it? Such practical questions lead Deleuze to a third synthesis of time. (76b)

Deleuze wonders how we may penetrate the pure past without reducing it to the former present that it was or to the actual present happening now, in related to which it is past. "How to save it for us?" (Deleuze qtd 76c)

To address this matter, Deleuze shifts from Bergson to Proust. Proust

"through his study of reminiscence, has shown how the past can be saved for us without reducing it to representations of a former age or to representations of our age (the past as how it could be). Instead, the past is given ‘as it was never lived, as a pure past revealing its double irreducibility to the present that it was, but also to the actual present that it could be, in favour of a telescoping of the two’ (DRf, 115)." (77c)

Thus "Reminiscence shows that the past is lost and forgotten as a past present. It accepts it." (77c) But also, reminiscence takes both the past and present representation together, and makes a third image, and in this way saves the past. "It is in this special kind of forgetting and recreating that the past is lived with in forgetting." (77cd)

We can save the past because it is a necessary process for present moments to pass. And we can save it in how our forgetting recreates it in the present. (77d) "Only as a recreation of past presents | as forgotten, as in need of being lived differently, can the past be saved for us." (77-78) Yet the pure past "what we must create with, it does not show us how." (78a) For this we need a third synthesis. Deleuze's explanation of how Eros allows us to penetrate Memory takes him to the third synthesis. (78ab)

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

Destined to be Free. Ch.3.3 of Williams' Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time

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Destined to be Free

James Williams'

Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:
A Critical Introduction and Guide

Chapter 3: The second synthesis of time

Part 3: Destiny and freedom


What does the destiny and freedom implied in the pure past got to do with you?

You are free to let your past haunt you, teach you, distract you, etc as much or as little as you choose. But because your past never goes away, you are destined to always live it freely as new moments of your life act like plot twists that change the way your past appears to you.

Brief Summary

In the second synthesis, repetition is found as the degrees of contraction in our memory. [We live the whole of our lives each moment at a different level of Bergson's cone.] This is destiny [although it is somewhat unclear why]. But although it is destiny, we have the freedom to choose that level of intensity. The pure past is virtual, because it is real and not actual, and it is noumenal, because it is the condition for the present's passage. Repetitions cannot be represented.

Points Relative to Deleuze:

Freedom and destiny are intertwined in the pure past.

Summary

Previously Williams ended with this question.

"‘condition’ has a different meaning to Deleuze’s. Bergson is not deducing a general transcendental condition for a formal process (such as the passing away of the present). Instead, like Deleuze, he is offering an alternative to the concept of cause, but unlike Deleuze, he is doing so in order to give an account of how each individual consciousness relates to its past as shown in the true operation of memory. This is where we can raise the question of the legitimacy of Deleuze’s work when compared with Bergson’s. What is the validity of an account of the past that does not base itself on a scientific account of causality (or some other contemporary candidate for explaining relations between states of affairs scientifically) but equally does not observe the operations of memory in detail or offer a full theory of memory in relation to consciousness, but instead constructs a speculative transcendental frame with abstract terms such as the pure past?" (68a.b)

Williams now addresses a possible objection to Deleuze, "that he does not observe memory or consciousness in a thorough or consistent way." (68bc) Williams offers as an answer to this objection:

"He is not primarily concerned with human memory or consciousness, but rather in a general study of repetition in relation to time. He is not constructing a philosophy according to an empirical approach, but rather combining a minimal observational element with a series of transcendental deductions guided by a speculative conceptual frame." (68c)

The way that repetition operates in the first synthesis is different from how it works in the second. In the first, repetition is based on a succession of elements that are contracted. In the second, repetition is found in "degrees of contraction of a whole ‘that is in itself a coexistent totality’ (DRf, 112)." (68d) [It does not seem here that Williams is thinking yet of the degrees as layers of the cone.]

Deleuze will relate these concepts to destiny, determinism, and freedom in our lives. Quoting:

"‘Nevertheless, we have the impression that, however strong the possible incoherence or opposition of successive presents, each one plays “the same life” at a different level. This is what we call destiny’ (DRf, 113)." (Deleuze qtd in Williams 69d)

To explain [again, rather than turning here to the layers of the cone], Williams notes that we have durations of differing lengths, like the time we have to finish our coffee or our life as a father. These can be incoherent. To explain destiny, Williams writes: "This preliminary definition of destiny is explicitly loose and Deleuze is careful to point out that it is based on an ‘impression’, that the incoherence and opposition are ‘possible’." (70a)

To further develop his concept of destiny, Deleuze contrasts it to determinism. Destiny is not determined; our life is not a single continuous line. (70c) But how can one life be multiple in this way?

[Here Williams seems to consider the 'levels' as overlapping durations, perhaps like the coffee and father examples above, rather than the layers of the cone] "The condition for connecting fragmentary durations into a life is that they are playing the same life but at different degrees and levels." (71a) What is destined is that each moment gives us the freedom to 'reprise' past moments. (71c) "The meaning of freedom in relation to destiny in Deleuze is then not the freedom to add to a sequence, for instance, when a new director adds a new film to an established franchise (My Life IV). Instead, we are free to make a new cut of an existing film (My Life, The Director’s Cut)." (71c.d)

Williams then seems to interpret the degrees and levels in terms of how much significance we regard past moments, and at each moment we have the freedom to grant those moments more or less significance. "Freedom exists in relation to destiny and determinism for Deleuze because we are free to change the relations of level and degree given to all past events through our present acts." (72d) Williams then seems to offer an interpretation of the levels and degrees more like the cone layers of differing expansion and contraction of the past.

"We are not free to change determined relations between actual presents. Here, changes in level and degree can be understood as changes in the intensities of distinctness and obscurity of relations in the pure past, that is, some relations in the past will be made more distinct as others become more obscure. For example, an act of atonement in the present can change nothing of the actual acts it seeks to atone for. It is free, though, to change the hold such acts have on new passing presents, perhaps by making them less significant in their relations to other events, or by making them more obscure and distant, and thereby diluting their hold on novel ones. Thus, to heap betrayal upon betrayal might increase the intensity of treach- | ery as a line leading from the past to the present, whereas to forgive might weaken it. Within Deleuze’s metaphysics, this freedom exists because the pure past makes all presents pass and coexists with them." (72-73)

To distinguish the second synthesis with actual presents, Deleuze appeals to Kant's noumenal and Bergson's virtual. The pure past is virtual, not actual, and as the condition for the present's passage, it is noumenal. (73b) Deleuze's noumenal then is not like Kant's realm of things-in-themselves but rather a transcendental pure past, a "realm that all actual things determine and are determined by. It becomes a virtual and ideal realm as condition for all events and not just those of human memory." (73c)

Deleuze also articulates these ideas in terms of 'metempsychosis."

"Since each one is a passing present, a life can take another on, at a different level: as if the philosopher and the pig, the criminal and the saint played the same past, at different levels of a giant cone. This is what is called metempsychosis. (DRf, 113)" (Deleuze qtd 74a)

Williams explains: "for Deleuze, humans are not fully human until they express the pig within them and the true philosopher is one who is also or even foremost a fool." (74b)

Deleuze also then discusses "the return of difference" in terms of material and spiritual repetition. (74d)

"In material repetition, the synthesis of the living present or first synthesis of time, difference is subtracted, because a selection is made of a particular series within many differences. In ‘spiritual repetition’, the second synthesis of time, difference is included, because all differences are taken up, but at a particular level and degree." (74d)

This sort of difference cannot be represented. "When repeated elements are represented the subtraction that representation depends upon is erased. When repetition within the pure past is represented a subtraction is imposed on it such that it is no longer the whole of the past." (75bc) "difference is between the living present and the passing present that they belong together. One subtracts from the other while the other adds it back, but always differently in an ongoing creative process." (75cd)






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

The Presence of the Past. Ch.3.2 of Williams' Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:

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The Presence of the Past

James Williams'

Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:
A Critical Introduction and Guide

Chapter 3: The second synthesis of time

Part 2: The deduction of the pure past


What does the transcendental deduction of the pure past got to do with you?

You carry your past around with you in your memories. But how did those past moments, back when they were happening, pass into the past? It might be because present moments begin already with the character of the past. We might be living in the past right now. Each present moment might from the beginning take the form of a memory. Do we not often feel like certain intense present moments are 'memorable', even before enough time has passed for us to recall them?

Brief Summary

In the second synthesis of time, what enables the present to pass is the past in general, which is not to be understood as all past moments taken together. The pure past is like an a priori for the present's passage. Deleuze explains the pure past by means of Bergson's Matter and Memory. He identifies three paradoxes of the second synthesis, building from Bergson's analyses: "the past must be contemporaneous with the present that it was; all the past must coexist with the new present in relation to which it is past; and the pure element of the past pre-exists the passing present." (63c) Each synthesis is its own unique time and process, and the others are dimensions of it. The present is a dimension of the pure past, and the past forms its present-dimension as having the character of something that passes. Deleuze's description varies from Bergson's in that it "constructs a speculative transcendental frame with abstract terms such as the pure past" (68b)

Points Relative to Deleuze:

Deleuze's explicates his second synthesis by means of "a speculative transcendental frame." (68a)

Summary

The pure past of the second synthesis is general, because it is the condition for the possibility of the present to pass. Active recollection however is the particular selection of moments in memory: "the aiming present as active memory is now particular, since it approaches the past in a particular way and for a particular aim, whereas the past as condition for any possible past present that could then be aimed at is general." (59d) Yet, Williams wonders why this past must be general and not instead a collection of particular memories. (59a)

Active memory as associative only selects artificial signs.

"As shown in the previous chapter on the first synthesis of time, these signs are not about the synthesis of the past in the living present, but instead depend on a distinction drawn between past and present such that something in the present is taken to represent something in the past." (60bc)

When we select past presents, we place them in relation to the aim of our present search, and in that way, "When a past present is actually represented, this representation also includes a representation of that actual representation to itself." (61bc) [So there is past moment that satisfies the search, but there is also the moment in the former present when we initiated that search.] But the actual passing present of the search is different from the represented past selected moment.

"The passing actual present that set out to recollect has a different status to the ones it set to search within: ‘The actual present is not treated like the future object of a memory, but as that which is reflected at the same time | as it forms the remembrance of the former present’ (DRf, 109–10)." (Williams 61-62)

There are "two processes are at work in the active synthesis of memory: reproduction and reflection." (62a) And, there are "two distinct ways in which the presents are represented." (62a)

"When it is a particular former present represented as the aim of a search, we have recollection and memory. When the present that embarked on the search is represented we have reflection, because it is represented to itself with the added element of the memory." (62a)

These reflected moments index deeper layers which index deeper ones, and in this way contain one another. The condition for this containment is the past in general. (62bc)

In order to recall past events, the past cannot be a collection of former presents but must instead be a past in general allowing for any reproduction. "It must therefore not be a past dependent on a particular experience of presents, a subset of occurrences, and must hence be a priori (prior to any given experience)." (62d) Also, the past in general is pure in the sense of it not being characterized or limited by any particular set of past presents. (62d)

Deleuze explicates the pure past through Bergson's Matter and Memory. However, Deleuze's portrayal of the general past is not exactly the same but rather a development on it. Williams then notes how

"Deleuze identifies three paradoxes relevant to the pure past in Matter and Memory. These are: the past must be contemporaneous with the present that it was; all the past must coexist with the new present in relation to which it is past; and the pure element of the past pre-exists the passing present. Rephrased in more simple terms, the first three paradoxes are: since the past adds nothing to the present that passes into it, it must be contemporaneous with that present; since the past must be contemporaneous with each passing present, all the past is contemporaneous with each passing present; and since all the past is contemporaneous with each passing present, the past is contemporary with all of time and pre-exists any passing present." (63c.d, emphases mine)

These paradoxes have both critical and productive functions.
1) Critically. They are critical of the notion of the past as a collection of particular moments, and they are critical of the notion of an active memory as the power to recall the past presents. (63d)
They "support the transcendental deduction of another version of the past, the pure past, not resembling such a collection." (63d) [This might be productive instead of critical.]

2) Productively. In the first paradox, the past is set within the passing present that is contemporaneous with the pure past but not identical to it. (64b)

"the creative move is to replace the idea that the past is the same as the present that was, with the idea that the past is a different kind of condition for the passing of the present occurring with the present or contemporaneously: ‘A present would never pass, if it was not past “at the same time” as it was present; a present would never be constituted, if it was not first constituted “at the same time” that it was present’ (DRf, 111). Deleuze has therefore replaced a notion of simultaneity where two things of the same kind are simultaneous, with a relation of contemporaneity between an actual present that can be represented (as present or past) and a different element, the pure past, accompanying every present and making it pass." (64bc)

Recall that the second paradox is "about the coexistence of all of the past with any present." (64d)

"the pure past is the whole of the past and cannot change in relation to each new present in the way a collection of copies of presents might: ‘That’s why, far from being a dimension of time, the past is the synthesis of the whole of time and the present and future are only its dimensions’ (DRf, 111)." (65ab)

So we see that in each synthesis there is only one time, and the others are dimensions to it. And also, each time has its own unique processes. (65bc)

"In the second synthesis, the present is the most contracted state of the passive synthesis of all of the past. It is no longer a synthesis of a particular pattern from the past in the present, but rather a dimension of an ongoing synthesis of all of the past in the past. We therefore have two sides of any present (as we shall see, there will be another with the third synthesis of time). There is the present as contracted synthesis, a particular stretch in the present, and there is the present as the most contracted state of the all of the past, of the pure past. Neither of these times can be reduced to one another and Deleuze’s philosophy of time is therefore one where time is only complete when taken from different sides or perspectives: a time of the living present and a time of passing present in relation to the pure past." (65c.d)

In the second synthesis, the past precedes the present "because the present is only a dimension of the pure past that must therefore pre-exist it." (66a)

Williams examines the vocabulary in this Deleuze quote:

"The paradox of pre-existence therefore completes the other two: each past is contemporary to the present that it was, the whole of the past coexists with the present in relation to which it is past, but the pure element of the past in general pre-exists the passing present. (DRf, 111)" (66a)

Williams seems to read "each past is contemporary to the present that it was" to mean that a past moment is contemporaneous not with a present moment but rather with a moment that has passed. And it is not that the whole of the past is contemporaneous with the present, but rather that it 'coexists' with a present in relation to which the whole of the past is considered past. But the past in general, as the condition for present moments to pass into the past, preexists the present's passing. (66b)

In the first synthesis, the present makes the past as a dimension of the present. But in the second synthesis, the past creates the present as one of its own dimensions in that the past creates the present's "essential properties, the main one of which is that every present must pass and is accompanied by the pure past." (66d)

Deleuze's reading of Bergson in this case varies slightly.

"‘condition’ has a different meaning to Deleuze’s. Bergson is not deducing a general transcendental condition for a formal process (such as the passing away of the present). Instead, like Deleuze, he is offering an alternative to the concept of cause, but unlike Deleuze, he is doing so in order to give an account of how each individual consciousness relates to its past as shown in the true operation of memory. This is where we can raise the question of the legitimacy of Deleuze’s work when compared with Bergson’s. What is the validity of an account of the past that does not base itself on a scientific account of causality (or some other contemporary candidate for explaining relations between states of affairs scientifically) but equally does not observe the operations of memory in detail or offer a full theory of memory in relation to consciousness, but instead constructs a speculative transcendental frame with abstract terms such as the pure past?" (68a.b)

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

Memory in Passing. Ch.3.1 of Williams' Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time

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Memory in Passing

James Williams'

Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time:
A Critical Introduction and Guide

Chapter 3: The second synthesis of time

Part 1: A time within which time passes


What do the conditions for time to pass got to do with you?

The moments of your life slip away. Where do they go? What makes them leave? Or do you carry them with you always? In what way? How is it that you have a past?

Brief Summary

The second synthesis of time is a memory process that allows the present to pass into the past, all while this process is conducted completely in the present. This is because Memory is the condition of possibility for the past to be ordered and for the present to enter into determinate (but not determined) relations with the future.

Points Relative to Deleuze:

Deleuze's second and first syntheses interact.

Summary

The second synthesis is a 'synthesis of the past'. Deleuze's temporality involves multiple interacting syntheses. "Time is therefore manifold for Deleuze, with different syntheses interacting in a fractured and complex manner, allowing for dislocations and changes in perspective." (51bc) "Time and process coexist like reflections in a hall of broken mirrors, offering multiple perspectives to follow and recreate, but never a full image." (51c) The fact that we are now considering two different syntheses raises many questions regarding their relations and the temporalities they produce. (51-52)

Deleuze builds from features of the first synthesis: "the first synthesis is originary but not a pure origin; the present in the first synthesis of time is a passing present; the present is constituted of many durations or stretches that overlap." (52a)

The first synthesis operates in the second synthesis. (52d)

There is a paradox to the present. It both constitutes time while also passing into that constituted time. The time we constitute is both passing away and yet is a present process. "If the present constitutes the past first, then it must pass away into a past that it has not constituted, since there will be an interval, a difference, between the constituted past and the one the present passes away into." (53b)

To handle the paradox, Deleuze separate two things: a) the time that the present passes away into, and b) the first synthesis.

In Williams' reading, the syntheses of time are productive processes. The present does not pass into another time acting as a container. The first synthesis of time transforms as it passes into the second.

"Both syntheses of time are active in many different ways and passivity must itself be understood as a process in Deleuze, rather than inertia or indifference. So the meaning of ‘to pass away’ should not be seen as an inert falling into disuse. It is quite the contrary. To pass away is to pass away in a synthesis of the past as memory defined as the second synthesis of time." (54a)

There are two important principles in Deleuze's speculative metaphysics:

1) nothingness or void can never serve as an explanatory principle, and
2) all processes are two-way and asymmetrical

Deleuze speaks of necessary consequence and necessary referral. It is not logical necessity (because it "does not follow from formal logical operations") but rather it is speculative necessity (because it "follows logically only if we accept the structure of a complex speculative metaphysics.") (54bc)

Yet, perhaps Deleuze is wrong, and time passes into a void of some sort. (54-55) Williams also finds problematic Deleuze's distinction between the two process of foundation and founding. "The first synthesis of time is a foundation because it is a process of ‘occupation’ and ‘possession’, that is, it determines an open space according to patterns and to differences." (55bc) But, what is not given is the form and determination of the passing away of living presents. And what is the condition allowing for past things to be recalled? (55d) Here we turn to the concept of founding. The second synthesis makes present moments pass by placing them into well-determined relations of what is to come. (56a) However, this is not a final determination. (56cd)

"This is because the second synthesis of time as that which makes the present pass through a process of foundation cannot depend upon or lead to a finally established and identified true foundation. It has to allow the present to be determined differently as proper and appropri- | ate." (56-57)
"The pure past will be defined as determining the form of the passing present – that it must pass, and how it must pass – but it does not determine or cause the content of any particular passing present. The pure past cannot be the cause of the present or completely determine it. Deleuze’s philosophy cannot be deterministic." (57a)

Williams considers an objection. Note again how signs of the past are not in the past, but are given immediately in the present. Recall is not necessarily a going back to past presents but is instead an inspecting of present codes and signs. (57a) So if recall happens in the present, why is it necessary that there be a founding of past presents? The problem is that these interpretations of present signs of the past are active processes, yet the second synthesis is passive. (57d) The second synthesis does not synthesize particular moments but instead it synthesizes 'levels' that provide the conditions for an ordering of the past.

"the passive synthesis of the past is a synthesis not of particulars but of levels, that is, not of the passing presents themselves, but of the conditions for any ordering of them. For all passing presents to be ordered and related the successive levels created by their passing have to be connected or, to use Deleuze’s term, they have to be encased in one another." (58a)

Deleuze distinguishes capitalized Memory from uncapitalized memory:

"‘Memory’ as capitalised for the process of the second synthesis and ‘memory’ for active memory: ‘Habit is the originary synthesis of time, constituting the life of the passing present; Memory is the fundamental synthesis of time, constituting the being of the past (making the present pass)’ (DRf, 109). The being of the past is not the representations, records or codes of an active memory in the present. It is the condition of possibility for all the different active memories, their differences, but also their connections, above all their connections with the passing presents that came before them – all of them." (Williams 58b)

The different temporal processes condition one another asymmetrically. (59b)


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