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

 

by Corry Shores

 

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

 

 

 

Summary of

 

James Williams

 

Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time:

A Critical Introduction and Guide

 

Chapter 5

Time and eternal return

 

5.2

Eternal return and death

 

 

 

Brief Summary:

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

 

 

 

 

 

Summary

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

 

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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.

Terence Blake on Deleuze’s Eternal Return

by Corry Shores
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[Bracketed commentary is mine.]

Terence Blake consistently writes very interesting and important posts, but I wanted to focus on this one:

 

DELEUZE WITHOUT RETURN

 

He explains that Deleuze’s problematic in Difference and Repetition and in the Logic of Sense evolved over time, and “so not only did his terminology evolve but also his concepts.” He continues, “Particular cases of this are the relative importance of the concepts of difference and of the eternal return in his later philosophy” (from Blake, and the following quotes and paraphrase are also from this source).

 

Because Deleuze moved away from his earlier way of conceptualizing the eternal return, Blake sees “no reason to insist on the Eternal Return as a central Deleuzian concept”. He gives a couple reasons why he thinks so. The first is that we rarely see the term eternal return appear after Difference and Repetition and the Logic of Sense. [The second reason I will misconstrue. **See Blake’s clarification in the comments and ignore the following**  The idea seems to be that the notion of the eternal return from Deleuze’s earlier thinking was later absorbed into Deleuze’s and Guattari’s notion of rhizome. I am not certain, but it seems one point is that there is an important feature of the eternal return, namely, that it somehow lacks an obvious unity although it does have a unity at a higher level. I assume the higher level has to do with its eternal structure. This feature can be found as well in rhizomatic thinking. I do not understand this material enough to explicate it. The idea might be that a rhizomatic pattern of concept-relations may seem at first to have no coherence or unity. However, somehow on a higher level such unity can be found. I am not sure how. Perhaps the unity is found as an interconnected totality that is apparent not when looking at the parts but only when seeing the whole network of concepts. Or perhaps the unity is to be understood in terms of the dynamics of the connections, and the eternal return of rhizomatic thinking would have something to do with how concepts form connections non-linearly in an ongoing fashion. Let me quote, as I will only misrepresent Blake’s ideas:]

Secondly, in RHIZOME it [the eternal return] is assimilated to the fascicular system aborting explicit unity but maintaining it at a higher level:

“Nietzsche’s aphorisms shatter the linear unity of knowledge, only to invoke the cyclic unity of the eternal return, present as the nonknown in thought” (ATP,6).

(Blake, bracketed insertion mine)

 

Blake then concludes that he does not “think it correct to treat Deleuze’s later philosophy as a philosophy of difference (but rather of multiplicity) nor a philosophy of Return (but rather of consistence)” (Blake). [I highly recommend also his post on Deleuze’s later philosophy being more a philosophy of multiplicity than a philosophy of difference. Blake’s excellent post here. I mention it also here.] [I am also very interested in this idea of Deleuze’s later philosophy being a philosophy of consistence. I would love to learn more!]

 

Blake then makes the interesting point that Deleuze’s move away from eternal return is a sort of progress in his thinking, because this earlier notion of a return of difference is incoherent and not what Nietzsche had in mind anyway.

In the later work, all the mystagogical mantras about a “return” of difference have been jettisoned. Which is just as well as they were incoherent, and a falsification of Nietzsche. The terminology has changed, but so has the concept, and I think this is an improvement.

(Blake)

[I would be curious to know more why the earlier notion of eternal return of difference is incoherent. Perhaps it has to do with the conceptual tension between the notions of return and difference. For, how can something new or different return, since in order to be different or new, it would need to have never happened or existed before?]

 

Blake further offers some criticism of this notion.

Changing the name of a concept is not an empty gesture but changes its dimensions as well the concept. The “return” is a bad name and DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION is full of inflated empty rhetoric to get across the notion of a “return of difference”, an ultimately incoherent idea, and an unnecessary part of the concept of a deterritorialised time. So the usage is quite different. Both these concepts of difference and return came under attack from Badiou and Laruelle, and rightly so, but Deleuze had already moved on. It would be a rather strange affair if the philosopher of becoming and transformation always had the same ideas, and never changed.

(Blake)

[Like with Blake’s other post about Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, I find these observations to be very important for understanding and interpreting Deleuze. I have little comment of my own on the concept of eternal return, because I never grasped its meaning well enough to know if I could make any use of it. If Blake is right, then we need not give this notion too much weight when trying to understand Deleuze’s philosophy on the whole. But if someone will disagree with Blake’s assessment, then I would kindly request a clear and coherent explanation of the meaning and philosophical importance of Deleuze’s concept of an eternal return of difference. For example, is the idea merely that change is always happening? ...that what returns and is the same is simply the structure of renewal? If so, why would it be a “return” and not an ongoing status? Is Deleuze’s point that there are breaks of some kind between each renewal? What Deleuze is trying to do with this concept is not entirely clear to me. Even when I encounter certain convincing explanations of the notion, I still wonder why Deleuze could not have found a more effective way to formulate it.]

 

 

Terence Blake, ‘DELEUZE WITHOUT RETURN’

https://terenceblake.wordpress.com/2016/04/30/deleuze-without-return/

 

Somers-Hall, (Ch.2), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘Chapter 2. Repetition for Itself ’, summary

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

Chapter 2. Repetition for Itself

 

Very, very brief summary:

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.

 

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, (5.3), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘5.3 Merleau-Ponty and Depth (229–32/288–91, 241–4/302–5)’, summary

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 5. The Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensiblence

 

5.3 Merleau-Ponty and Depth (229–32/288–91, 241–4/302–5)

 

 

Brief summary: 

Parallel to Deleuze’s three syntheses of time are his three spatial syntheses. 1) Intensive differences are localized by being distributed into various spatial locations, and they move from place to place according to how they interrelate and interact (in thermodynamics, for example, heat moves from its location to where cold is located, normally). 2) The extensive space into which these intensities are distributed and the qualities belonging to those things in extensive space come about somehow by means of intensive depth. 3) These distributions of intensities and their explications into extensive properties and other qualities continues to remain fresh and in a perpetual state of renewal. This is because the intensive depth responsible for them returns eternally, that is, it never ceases to inject newness and variety into the system, counteracting the entropy which would otherwise cause the system to eventually die.

Summary

We will want to explain the constitution of systems, which operate in extensive space. But we need to explain also the genesis of those systems as well as the space they occupy. [For some reason,] this is not something we can do from within space or extensity. [“If we are to explain the constitution of systems, Deleuze claims, then we cannot do so within space or extensity. Rather, we need to explain the genesis of space as well as the systems it contains” (SH 170). Perhaps the idea is that since we need to explain the origins of extensive space, we cannot assume it as a concept in our explanation.] [The next points are a little complicated, so let us first run through them. 1) For Kant, the intuition of time is given to a subject. 2) But this means that the subject is in a sense outside of time, and thus we cannot give an account of how the subject emerges within time. 3) Deleuze makes a similar point about space. 4) Spatial relations and properties can likewise be (perhaps erroneously) seen as given to a subject existing outside space. 5) Deleuze, however, proposed a view of the self that is not preconstituted and pregiven, but rather is something that is produced through passive synthesis. 6) There were three syntheses of time involved in the production of the subject (at least the third one is). 7) Similarly there are three syntheses of space. 8) We noted in the last section that on account of entropy we might think there is an arrow of time directed toward the heat death of the universe, that is, from particular, ordered systems to generalized disordered ones. 9) We also saw this arrow of time with the first synthesis of habit. (See by the way James Williams’ very excellent explanation of the arrow of time in the first synthesis. The memorial past is particular and determinate but the anticipated future is general and indeterminate, thus time of the first synthesis is asymmetrical, pointing like an arrow to the future). 10) (Perhaps we are not focusing on the first spatial synthesis here, because we discussed it in the prior section. It is hard for me to characterize it.) “The second spatial synthesis will give an account of how a horizon of intensive depth constitutes the qualities and localised intensities presupposed by thermodynamics”. And this synthesis of space can be equated with the temporal synthesis of memory. 11) Just as the in the third synthesis of time there was the pure intensity of the eternal return, in the third spatial synthesis there is pure depth as intensity.]

We have already seen in Chapter 2 that for Kant the intuition of time was given to a subject. | As such, an account of the emergence of the subject within time was rendered impossible. Deleuze makes a similar point here about space. So long as space is seen purely as an ‘anticipation of perception’ (DR 231/291), the subject will be seen as given. With the subject comes the constituted realm of qualities, as well as ‘the high and the low, the right and the left, the figure and the ground’ (DR 229/288) as structures that show themselves for a subject. In Chapter 2, Deleuze introduced the notion of a passive synthesis, that is, a synthesis that constituted a subject rather than presupposing one. Just as there were three syntheses of time, so there are three spatial syntheses. When we looked at the notion of entropy in the previous section, we noted that the system of differences of intensities constituted an arrow of time. This arrow moved from particular, ordered systems to generalised, disordered systems. This directionality from the particular to the general forms a rough analogue of the first temporal synthesis of habit. The second spatial synthesis will give an account of how a horizon of intensive depth constitutes the qualities and localised intensities presupposed by thermodynamics. This synthesis can be equated with the synthesis of memory. Finally, just as there was a third synthesis of time in terms of the pure intensity of the eternal return, there is a third spatial synthesis of pure depth as intensity. In this section, I want to go through the second and third of these syntheses.
(SH 170-171)

Recall from section 1.11 “how for Merleau-Ponty, forgetfulness of the perspectivism of our experience led us to posit a world of objects” (SH 171) [I do not remember how this worked. I think the idea was that objects are phenomenally constituted perspectivally, with our own being a center of origin, but this also means that given that our perspective is limited, objects are never entirely constituted. So we need to forget the perspectivalness of object constitution in order to regard the world as being made of objects that exist fully independent of any perspectival awareness of them]. [Objects are related to one another by phenomenal implication. The red carpet has a particular way its color appears. Just by looking at it, we implicitly are aware of the lamp shining down on it to give it that particular illumination we see. And likewise, the variations in shading imply the objects interposing between the light source and the carpet. So the phenomenal constitution of any one object already carries in it implicitly spatial relations to other objects affecting its appearance. And that distance is also depth.  That might be what SH means here:] “Within this world, objects were understood in terms of their relationships with other objects, that is, the distances they held to their surroundings. As such, we cannot explain the nature of constituted objects without also explaining the possibility of these distance relations: we need an explanation of space. In this regard, Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of depth is central” (171). [If we think about our field of vision, it extends up and down and left and right. So we directly perceive height and width. However, the layers of depth all stack up in a way that appears much more two-dimensional that in fact they are. However, there are clues in the relatively two-dimensional field of vision that tell us there is also a dimension of depth away from us. For example, things further away appear smaller and less apt to come into clear focus. Painters work with a two-dimensional surface but they place visual clues in the image so that we can view spatial relations of depth in the painting.]

As he notes, traditionally depth has been considered to be different from the other dimensions of height and breadth. Whereas those dimensions are directly perceivable by us, depth is imperceptible. If we take a naive view of painting, we can see a painting as presenting a number of signs that allow us to reconstruct a three-dimensional space on the basis of the two dimensions given by its surface (lines that converge to a point in the painting are used to recreate lines that remain parallel in space itself, more boldly coloured objects are taken to be closer to the viewer, etc.). On this reading, which Merleau-Ponty notes is the foundation of Renaissance painting (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 174), depth would be a construction on the basis of extensive magnitudes that are visible to us. | ‘Depth is a third dimension derived from the other two’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 172).
(SH 171-172)

However, [unlike with the painters using visual clues in the two dimensions of the painted image to indicate spatial depth] Merleau-Ponty does not attempt to derive depth from the other two dimensions but rather he sees depth as “that by which the given dimensions of extensity are given to us” (172). [I cannot figure out how this works. Maybe depth is to be understood as a more basic structure, like spatial juxtaposition itself. I am not sure what else depth would be such that the other dimensions would be made possible on its basis. So maybe the idea is that when we see depth, we see a unification of many different juxtaposed layers of extensive space. On the basis of this spatial synthesis we can order the points of space in height and width as being side-by-side. Or maybe somehow depth is to be understood simply as something like spatial variation in a very general sense. The following seems to be our best description of it, “Depth thus understood is, rather, the experience of the reversibility of dimensions, of a global ‘locality’ – everything in the same place at the same time, a locality from which height, width, and depth are abstracted, of a voluminosity we express when we say that a thing is there. (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 180)”. From this I still do not understand how it works. Let me quote:]

Merleau-Ponty’s claim about this form of understanding of depth is that, while it recognises the perspectival nature of our experience, this perspectivism ultimately sees perspective as a subjective feature of our representations of an objective and pre-existing spatiality [the following up to citation is Merleau-Ponty quotation]:

What I call depth is in reality a juxtaposition of points, making it comparable to breadth. I am simply badly placed to see it. I should see it if I were in the position of a spectator looking on from the side, who can take in at a glance the series of objects spread out in front of me, whereas for me they conceal each other – or see the distance from my body to the first object, whereas for me this distance is compressed into a point . . . For God, who is everywhere, breadth is immediately equivalent to depth. (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 255)

While representation attempts to derive the field of depth from the two given dimensions, thus characterising depth itself as an axis of extended space, Merleau-Ponty reverses this procedure. That is, rather than seeing depth as derived from the given dimensions, he sees it as that by which the given dimensions of extensity are given to us. Depth is not merely breadth seen from another angle, but rather is something different in kind that, by making possible a field of autonomous but interrelated objects, also makes possible the system of extensive distances taken as foundational by representation [the following up to citation is Merleau-Ponty quotation].

Once depth is understood in this way, we can no longer call it a third dimension. In the first place, if it were a dimension, it would be the first one; there are forms and definite planes only if it is stipulated how far from me their different parts are. But a first dimension that contains all the others is no longer a dimension, at least in the ordinary sense of a certain relationship according to which we make measurements. Depth thus understood is, rather, the experience of the reversibility of dimensions, of a global ‘locality’ – everything in the same place at the same time, a locality from which height, width, and depth are abstracted, of a voluminosity we express when we say that a thing is there. (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 180)

As Merleau-Ponty notes, this primordial depth here is no longer simply a ‘container’ for objects and qualities which are found within it. A consequence of this is that the genesis of quality and the genesis of space can no longer be seen as two separate projects: ‘We must seek space and its content as together’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 180). In ‘Eye and Mind’, he makes the claim that the enigma of depth is one of the primary inspirations of modern painting, and takes the work of Paul Klee and Paul | Cézanne as exemplary of the new project of showing ‘how the things become things, how the world becomes world’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 181).
(SH 172-173)

[So we are going along with this idea that somehow it is out of depth that the other dimensions are generated. Deleuze thinks this too. Again, I am not sure how this is for Deleuze, if for him this also applies in matters of perception. Merleau-Ponty does think that depth is non-extensive, but he does not equate it with intensity. Deleuze however does. Now we note how in the first “thermodynamic synthesis”, intensity was localized (perhaps because it was a matter of one particular temperature differential at some place in some system). Somehow (and I do not know how this works) in the second spatial synthesis intensity is what allows localization, since it is “a horizon that allows things and qualities to be constituted” (173). The spatial world has four features, and thus intensity is responsible for them: 1) the extensive distance between things, 2) the three dimensions of space which allows for things to have distance between them, 3) “the milieu of intensive differences recognised by thermodynamics as responsible for the appearance of qualities” (but I still do not know how that works), and 4) the qualities themselves that appear (in objects in space). The third synthesis of space is space just as an intensive quantity or pure spatium. Now, the second synthesis of space explains how intensity explicates into spatial extensity (the “how” part I still do not grasp). The next idea seems to be that this is as far as Merleau-Ponty goes, but since Deleuze sees depth as different in kind from the other dimensions and thus for him it is definable independently of extensity, then that means Deleuze goes further than Merleau-Ponty.]

This process by which a primordial depth is expressed in the form of qualities and extensions is, for Deleuze, the second spatial synthesis. ‘Depth as the (ultimate and original) heterogeneous dimension is the matrix of all extensity, including its third dimension considered to be homogeneous with the other two’ (DR 229/288). In a move that goes beyond Merleau-Ponty, he equates this non-extensive depth with intensity (‘Depth is the intensity of being, or vice-versa’ [DR, 231/290]). Now, we can note that while in the first thermodynamic synthesis, intensity was localised, in this second synthesis, intensity is rather that which allows localisation to take place – it is a horizon that allows things and qualities to be constituted. It is therefore responsible for four features of the spatial world: extensio, as the individual distances between objects; the extensum, as the three dimensions of space themselves (the frame of reference for the extensio); qualitas, as the milieu of intensive differences recognised by thermodynamics as responsible for the appearance of qualities; and quale, as these qualities themselves. Just as there were three temporal syntheses, here there are three spatial syntheses. The third synthesis of time was the pure form of time, prior to its expression in habit or memory. Deleuze describes the third spatial synthesis as ‘space as a whole, but space as an intensive quantity: the pure spatium’ (DR 230/289). While the second synthesis provides an account of the process by which intensity as depth generates the three dimensions (the explication of extensity), Deleuze notes that the fact that depth is different in kind from the dimensions it constitutes means that it is ‘definable independently of extensity’ (DR 230/289). The third spatial synthesis therefore goes beyond Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account by considering intensity independently of this process of the constitution of perspective.
(SH 173)

Just like with the third synthesis of time, Deleuze equates the third spatial synthesis with the eternal return (173). The eternal return is not like Plato’s doctrine of the circularity of time where the same situations repeat. [I do not follow the next points. Maybe the idea is that depth does not repeat but is prior to all things that do repeat. I will quote because I am missing the idea here:]

Just as Deleuze equated the third synthesis of time with the eternal return (2.8), in so far as it presented us with the pure field of intensity that gave rise to the two modes of temporality, the third spatial synthesis is also equated with the eternal return. Once again, as we saw in Chapter 2, Deleuze makes the point that the eternal return is not to be seen as something like the Platonic doctrine of an actual circularity of time, with a concomitant replication of a prior state of affairs. Rather than the eternal return being the claim that ‘things revolve’ (DR 241/302), | depth is precisely what is responsible for the constitution of things, and hence must be prior to them. Thus, ‘things must be dispersed within difference, and their identity must be dissolved before they become subject to eternal return and to identity in the eternal return’ (DR 241/302). If we are to think the unground from which things emerge, this unground cannot be thought in terms of things without leading to an infinite regress.
(174-175)

[I do not get the next paragraph very well. It seems the ideas are the following. For Deleuze, intensity generates extensity and the intensive differences distributed within extensity. Thermodynamics takes extensive space and its intensive distributions as givens. This means it is not aware that there is a creative and productive force that brings them about and that perhaps continues to somehow add energy or imbalance or life or something which would mean that there is not a certain heat death in the end. And maybe also the fact that intensity keeps injecting these anti-entropy factors into the world is like the eternal return, which is the continual repetition of new conditions in the world whose outcomes are not pre-calculatable.]

These three syntheses therefore explain why for Deleuze the increase in entropy proposed by thermodynamics is a transcendental illusion. Thermodynamics notes that intensive differences that we find already constituted and located in a spatial milieu tend to equalise themselves, but such an account only gives us half the picture. What is missing is the account given by the second and third syntheses whereby the extensive magnitudes thermodynamics presupposes, and with them the systems of intensive differences, are constituted. This presupposition that extensity is already constituted in effect rules out any consideration of these syntheses, thus leading to the transcendental illusion that intensive difference can only be equalised, but not constituted. The thought of depth is the thought of the eternal return because it is the thought of a field of intensity that is not cancelled by the laws of entropy. In fact, Deleuze claims that the eternal return is the thought of that which gives rise to the laws of nature, mirroring his analysis of repetition we looked at in the introduction (0.2). In the next section, we will address an issue brought up by this third synthesis. While we may have an understanding of intensity operating within extensive space (the difference in temperature between two locations, for instance), what does Deleuze mean by intensity defined independently of extension?
(SH 174)

 

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.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1964), ‘Eye and Mind’, trans. Carlton Dallery, in The Primacy of Perception, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 159–90.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962), Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.