Pt3.Ch8 Somers-Hall’s Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. ‘Hegel, Deleuze, and the Structure of the Organism.’ summary

by Corry Shores
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[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall, Entry Directory]
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[Note: All boldface and underlining is my own. It is intended for skimming purposes. Bracketed comments are also my own explanations or interpretations.]

 

Henry Somers-Hall

 

Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation.

Dialectics of Negation and Difference

 

Part 3: Beyond Representation

Chapter 8: Hegel, Deleuze, and the Structure of the Organism

Very Brief Summary:

Deleuze’s response to representational philosophy, and not Hegel’s, is compatible with evolutionary theory. For, Deleuze’s virtual explains novel variation in the organism’s structure, but Hegel’s dialectic does not. Also, Deleuze’s three criticisms of Hegel exhibit themselves when we relate Hegel’s ideas to evolution: [1] dialectical movement would halt evolutionary movement, [2] Hegel’s logic circles around a center, the sublation of organ and organism, which blocks evolutionary progress, and [3] Hegel’s account misses the ambiguities and variations that are vital to evolution.

Brief Summary:

We will apply Deleuze’s and Hegel’s responses to representation to evolutionary theory to see which one is more compatible and also to see if Deleuze’s three criticisms of Hegel still hold: [1] Hegel’s is a false movement, [2] Hegel’s logic revolves around a single center, and [3] Hegel’s dialectic does not provide enough precision for characterizing the world. For Hegel, nature is the one totality and it externalizes into multiplicity, but these form unified systems where parts and their whole are reciprocally determining. Hegel’s dialectic is  not temporal, so it does not describe an evolutionary progress through time. The structure of the organism is the reciprocally determining relation between organism and organs, which are opposing dialectical pairs like the one and the many. Individuals and species bear this organ/organism relation too for Hegel. Hegel’s structure of the organism is more closely tied to Cuvier’s anatomy, which is functional and teleological, meaning that organisms’ anatomical structures can be understood in terms of their functional purposes. Geoffroy’s homological theory of the unity of composition does not identify anatomical parts on the basis of their functions. Rather, he looks to see if the relations between the parts are isomorphic to a transcendental model which is so abstract that it can actualize in a wide variety of forms, such that a fin can be identified with an arm. This is compatible with Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism and theory of the virtual, which sees there being a transcendental level that is actualized in various ways. Cuvier’s and Hegel’s theories, as teleological, regard deformations or mutations in negative terms, as degradations of the organism’s structure and thus functioning as well. But evolutionary theory needs a positive view of aberrations. Geoffrey’s and Deleuze’s theories see variation positively, because variations are considered novel actualizations of the virtual model. Thus Deleuze’s response to the problems of representational theories is better than Hegel’s at least with regard to its application in evolutionary theory. We also see that Deleuze’s three criticism’s hold, because [1] Hegel’s movement is a matter of (infinite) representation, but because it cannot explain novel evolutionary variations, there is no real evolutionary movement involved. [2] Hegel’s structure of the organism has a teleological unity, and so there is a ‘monocentering of circles’ [around the organic unity of the organism.] [3] Hegel’s account is not precise enough. Because it understands the differentiation in the natural world in terms of determinate oppositions, Hegel’s dialectic too strongly divides the world rather than seeing the blurrings of boundary that allow for evolutionary variation.

 

Summary

Previously we saw that if Hegel wanted to critique Deleuze’s philosophy of difference, he would show how Deleuze’s virtual and actual as contraries dialectically sublate, which collapses the basic distinction of Deleuze’s ontology. However, because Deleuze’s virtual and actual are two tendencies of the real and not contraries, such a Hegelian critique would not hold. From a Deleuzean perspective, Hegel’s dialectic could be viewed as a false movement, with Deleuze’s genesis of difference being the real movement. Yet Hegel purely from a logical standpoint might say that Deleuze’s difference does not exist.

So in this chapter we will apply their theories to a field outside logic, something that is a real phenomenon in the world, evolution. This is the chapter’s aim, and also to see if in this application Deleuze’s three criticisms of Hegel hold: [1] Hegel’s is a false movement, [2] Hegel’s logic revolves around a single center, and [3] Hegel’s dialectic provides enough precision for characterizing the world.

We then saw that for Hegel, the Idea is The One Totality and it is self-determining reason. This totality is nature, but it becomes other to itself as externality and multiplicity. Nature is rational. The movement in nature involves the identity of difference and identity. So while there are multiplicities of bodies, they form whole systems. In physics bodies form indifferent relations to one another. In chemistry chemicals combine and transform, but their processes are not self-perpetuation. They are however in organic life. Here we have unity and difference in the form of the unity of the organism being constituted through the differences of its organs, and its processes are self-perpetuated.

Now, Hegel’s ideas on the dialectical movement in nature might suggest a compatibility with evolutionary theory, even though Hegel’s thinking precedes Darwin. However, evolution as a theory precedes Hegel. For Hegel, the dialectical movement in nature is not to be seen as something unfolding in time. So Hegel’s philosophy of nature is not easily seen as compatible with evolutionary theory.

However, we can still examine his philosophy of the structure of the organism, which is based on his dialectic, to see if it is compatible with evolutionary theory. For Hegel, we cannot understand the organism as a mechanically related set of indifferent material parts, because it maintains a characteristic unity and acts spontaneously. Instead the organism is structured on the integration of unity and multiplicity, identity and difference, part and whole, one and many; for, it is organ and organism, with the two mutually dependent on each other [each organ is reciprocally determinate with the others, but also the organism and its organs are reciprocally determining]. The best model for the structure of the organism would be one with the greatest differentiation that is still unified. Plants can be divided and the parts regenerate new plants, so they were not organs so much. Animals go up a scale of differentiation, with humans at the top, because they also have the greatest sense of how each individual is an organ in a social body.

 

We will compare and contrast by relating Hegel’s and Deleuze’s ideas on the organism’s structure to Cuvier and Geoffrey. Cuvier, like Hegel, thinks that animals should not be classified in terms of differences of degree. Unlike Hegel, he uses a non-unified system, one with four branches. Nonetheless, like Hegel, Cuvier’s system is functional and teleological, meaning that organisms’ anatomical structures can be understood in terms of their functional purposes.

Geoffroy, on the contrary, offers a theory of anatomy based on homology. There is a transcendental unity of parts to which actual empirical cases correspond isomorphically. The theory was most demonstrable in application to embryonic forms. Thus both fish and human embryonic skeleton’s share a one-to-one correspondence to a transcendental arrangement of parts. This goes against Cuvier’s anatomy, and Hegel’s as well, because for them, anatomical parts are understood teleologically, in terms of their purposes or functions for the organism. So a fin and arm in Cuvier’s and Hegel’s approaches would not share the same designation, because their functions are different, however in Geoffrey’s they will. The relation between transcendental and empirical resonates with Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism.

We then noted that Geoffroy’s homological theory provides an account of the variations in anatomy, which becomes central to the theory of evolution. For Darwin different species have homologous forms on account of common ancestors. And anatomical parts can evolve according to how their functions alter. Cuvier's teleological theory of anatomy is not compatible with evolution, [because were a part’s function to change, it is no longer the same part, and thus such an evolutionary connection cannot be observed using this approach.] Also, Geoffrey’s homology or unity of composition is like Deleuze’s Idea.

 

We then saw how these theories of the structure of the organism apply in evolutionary theory. To explain evolution, we need an account of accidental, contingent variations. These can be seen either positively or negatively. A theory of anatomy like Cuvier’s or Hegel’s is teleological, meaning that it identifies anatomical parts in terms of their functionality, their purpose in the function of the organism. This means that if there were to be a deviation, a slight mutation, then this changes the structure of the organism’s functioning and thus degrades its functioning. Geoffrey’s homological theory of anatomy does not regard anatomical parts in terms of their purposes but rather in terms of how their interrelations correspond isomorphically to an abstract or transcendental model. This means that parts can change both form and function so long as their structural relations match the mold. A deformity then is the model expressing itself in another way, so this would be a positive account of variation rather than a negative one. This notion of homologous variation is central to evolution which is a process of the natural selection from a pool of variations.

 

So Deleuze’s ideas are more compatible than Hegel’s for explaining evolution. Deleuze’s three criticisms also hold in this context of evolution. [1] Hegel’s movement is created with words and representations, so nothing follows. [The movement of evolution cannot be explained with the infinite representation of the contraries organ and organism, individual and species being thought together.] [2] Hegel’s structure of the organism has a teleological unity, and so there is a ‘monocentering of circles’ [around the organic unity of the organism.] [3] Hegel’s account is not precise enough. [Because it understands the differentiation in the natural world in terms of determinate oppositions, Hegel’s dialectic too strongly divides the world rather than seeing the blurrings of boundary that allow for evolutionary variation.]

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, Henry (2012) Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. Dialectics of Negation and Difference. Albany: SUNY.

Pt3.Ch8.Sb4 Somers-Hall’s Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. Hegel’s Account of the Structure of the Organism’. summary

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall, Entry Directory]
[Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation, Entry Directory]

[Note: All boldface and underlining is my own. It is intended for skimming purposes. Bracketed comments are also my own explanations or interpretations.]

 

Henry Somers-Hall

 

Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation.

Dialectics of Negation and Difference

 

Part 3: Beyond Representation

Chapter 7: Hegel, Deleuze, and the Structure of the Organism

Subdivision 4: Hegel’s Account of the Structure of the Organism

Very Brief Summary:

For Hegel, the organism is made up of the organic relation between the organism and its organs, and it is best exhibited in humans, which have the greatest differentiation that is still unified.

Brief Summary:

For Hegel, we cannot understand the organism as a mechanically related set of indifferent material parts, because it maintains a characteristic unity and acts spontaneously. Instead the organism is structured on the integration of unity and multiplicity, identity and difference, part and whole, one and many; for, it is organ and organism, with the two mutually dependent on each other [each organ is reciprocally determinate with the others, but also the organism and its organs are reciprocally determining]. The best model for the structure of the organism would be one with the greatest differentiation that is still unified. Plants can be divided and the parts regenerate new plants, so they were not organs so much. Animals go up a scale of differentiation, with humans at the top, because they also have the greatest sense of how each individual is an organ in a social body.

Summary

Previously we saw how Hegel’s dialectic of nature is not temporal and thus not compatible with evolutionary theory.

We now see how much Hegel’s theory of the organism is antievolutionary. In the previous chapter we saw how for Hegel, the concept of the universal depends on that of the individual, and vice versa. We will see Hegel in his account of the structure of the organism turning to Aristotle and Kant.

We might regard the organism’s basic building blocks as its constituting matter. “Such an understanding of the organism will allow us to see the organism purely in mechanical terms as the mutual interactions of its parts.” (217) But this explanation “suffers from the limitation that it appears to ignore two central features of the organism: that it is unified and that it is organized.” (217) [But the mechanistic/atomic model will not explain its autonomous self-organization, its spontaneity, etc.]

As these features appear to be essential determinations of the organism, if we are to give an account of them, we need to present an alternative explanatory framework that allows us to explain the structure of the organism. Hegel claims that Aristotle's basic determination of the organism, "that it must be conceived as acting purposively, has in modern times been almost forgotten till Kant, in his own way, revived this concept in his doctrine of inner teleology, in which the living being is to be treated as its own end" (PN, § 360, Rem.). [217]

For Kant, “nature as something commensurate with the understanding implies our seeing nature as created by an understanding.” (218a) [Our understanding sees things in terms of their purposes. Nature for Kant is commensurate with the natural world. Thus things in nature should be seen in terms of their purposes, like grass is there for the cow to eat.]

Kant's argument is therefore that seeing nature a s something commensurate with the understanding implies our seeing nature as created by an understanding. With this move, we open up a whole new category of descriptive concepts that can be applied to nature. If nature is seen as the creation of an understanding, we can view creatures in categories applied to other forms of intelligent creation, such as one would apply to the human creation of art or tools, where the final goal of the object enters into our understanding of the object itself. Thus, according to Kant, if we are to see nature as being commensurate with the understanding, we must see it as purposive. (218)

This presupposition that nature is purposes is not something we learn through empirical investigations but is rather the grounds for our investigation of nature; it is a transcendental principle. It is because we use the category of purposiveness when studying nature that we see it as being more than an “agglomeration of mechanical interactions.” (218)

According to Kant, something is a natural purpose if it is both cause and effect of itself, and it is so in two senses of this. [1] The thing as natural purpose is a member of a species and thus reproduces itself through the species’ perpetuation.  [2] The thing as natural purpose is an individual, and “it reproduces itself through the incorporation of raw matter into its structure and d1rough its self-preservation.” (218) And there are two requirements for the thing to be considered a purposive unity. [a] The parts must depend on their relation to the whole; for, the whole defines their relations to one another, and [b] “the whole must be determined by the reciprocal relations of the parts.” (218) So because the parts, the organs, exists for the sake of the others and the whole, we consider them as instruments [thus purposively]. Hegel takes up Kant’s four features. “The two Kantian notions of self-causation, as an individual | and as a species, form the two determining principles of the structure of the organism for Hegel. These two principles are treated separately by Hegel, although they operate simultaneously.” (218-219)

So we notice the similarities: “The organism consists in a set of parts which reciprocally determine one another in relation to a whole. Furthermore, this whole is simply a product of d1e interaction of the parts.” (219) Now, the particles of matter can exist independently, so the parts of the organism, as reciprocally determining, cannot be seen as mere particles of matter; rather, they are processes.

The organism consists in a set of parts which reciprocally determine one another in relation to a whole. Furthermore, this whole is simply a product of the interaction of the parts. It should be clear from this understanding of the organism that while the organism may be fully physical, the basic elements of the organism, its parts, cannot simply be equated with matter, since particles of matter are at least apparently capable of existing independently of one another. Instead, the constitutive parts of the organism are processes. "It is said that after five, ten, or twenty years the organism no longer contains its former substance, everything material has been consumed, and only the substantial form persists" (PN, § 356, Add.). [219]

 

So notice the double status of organism parts. [1] they are processes, but [2] their being processual does not mean they lack structure. Hegel follows an idea of Aristotle [I don’t know what that idea is; Somers-Hall says:]

Hegel acknowledges a central point of Aristotle's account when he writes that "in so far as d1e animal's members are simply moments of its form, and are perpetually negating their independence, and withdrawing into a unity which is the reality of the Notion, the animal is an existent Idea. If a finger is cut off, a process of chemical decomposition sets in, and it is no longer a finger" (PN, § 350, Add.) . [219]

And Hegel we have seen is also following Kant. We now need to distinguish two kinds of organic life, plant and animal.

[1] Plant life:

If we separate some part of a plant, that part can grow itself into a new plant. So the parts are not subordinate to the whole, and thus the parts are all individuals and not really organic parts [that are reciprocally determining, thus] plant life does not perfectly embody the Notion.

For Hegel, plant life is not a perfect embodiment of the Notion. Hegel argues that this is because it is possible to separate a part of the plant from the whole and for this part of the plant itself to develop into a complete organism. Thus, the parts of a plant cannot be considered to be truly subordinated to the whole. The plant "unfolds its parts; but since these its members are essentially the whole subject, there is no further differentiation of the plant: the leaves, root, stem are themselves only individuals" (PN, § 337, Add.). "Each plant is therefore only an infinite number of subjects; and the togetherness whereby it appears as one subject is only superficial" (PN, § 377, Add.). [219]

So we will be concerned with animals and not plants, and we will see how “this purposive explanation of the organism expresses itself in the determinate structure of the organism.” (219). There are two stages of this.

First Hegel sets out the basic determinations of sensibility, irritability, and reproduction as they occur in all organisms. Second, he attempts to show how differences in the | determinacy of these moments can be explained through the particularities of the needs of the organism and the extent to which the organism recognizes itself as a moment of the concrete universal of species.” (219-220)

 

So for Hegel, the organisms basic structure is found in the the interrelation of three of its functions: sensibility, irritability, and reproduction.  On account of these functions, the organism is both unified and differentiated. The self-feeling of the animal is its source of integrity. And sensation affects a small part of the body but these sensations relate to the unified organism as a whole, so sensation combines moments of unity with moments of difference. [220]

When something touches my skin, while the contact is limited to a particular area of my body, I still characterize it as I who have been touched. This functional role for sensibility, irritability, and reproduction in turn gives rise to certain structures within the organism. These moments give rise to the nervous, circulatory, and digestive systems. The distinction between these different systems differentiates the animal from d1e plant, since the animal is differentiated according to a function that is subordinated to the structure of the organism as a whole. Each system is therefore made up of elements that can only exist in relation to the system as a whole. In turn, we discover that each system maintains some of the functional roles of other systems, thus preventing the abstract separation of any one system from the unity of the organism as a whole. The differentiation of the organism into parts plays the role of allowing the organism to move beyond plant life, but it also admits of a series of gradations, from the simplest animals to the most differentiated. [220]

The perfect animal is the human organism.

The human is the most differentiated organism. The three functions of sensibility, irritability, and reproduction are both determined and related to the organism’s unity. Also, advanced species have a sense not only of their own organic parts, but they understand themselves as playing an organic role in the species, like how parents care for their young. There is a unity of process from parent to child, and it is mirrored in the organisms objective structure, for example, the mammal’s breasts which give milk from mother to child. Hegel thinks that humans are the perfect animal and they should be regarded as the model to understand less differentiated animals (this seems to go against his immanent understanding of dialectic and instead think in terms of genus and species.) (220-221) For example, insects have complex motor systems but internally not much differentiation, as “digestive and circulatory systems are completely undifferentiated from one another." (221) As we go down the chain to simpler organisms, internal differentiation becomes less. The least differentiated animals are very close to plants, and if we cut them into pieces, the organism will not die. (221) But we need more than a taxonomical account, because that only tells us the degrees of difference of animals’ structures, but we also need to take into account the particular forms of differentiation too. So Hegel turns to Cuvier.

 

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, Henry (2012) Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. Dialectics of Negation and Difference. Albany: SUNY.

Pt3.Ch8.Sb2 Somers-Hall’s Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. ‘The Philosophy of Nature.’ summary

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Deleuze Entry Directory]
[Henry Somers-Hall, Entry Directory]
[Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation, Entry Directory]

[Note: All boldface and underlining is my own. It is intended for skimming purposes. Bracketed comments are also my own explanations or interpretations.]

 

Henry Somers-Hall

 

Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation.

Dialectics of Negation and Difference

 

Part 3: Responses to Representation

Chapter 7: Hegel, Deleuze, and the Structure of the Organism

Subdivision 2: The Philosophy of Nature

Brief Summary:

For Hegel, the Idea is The One Totality and it is self-determining reason. This totality is nature, but it becomes other to itself as externality and multiplicity. Nature is rational. The movement in nature involves the identity of difference and identity. So while there are multiplicities of bodies, they form whole systems. In physics bodies form indifferent relations to one another. In chemistry chemicals combine and transform, but their processes are not self-perpetuation. They are however in organic life. Here we have unity and difference in the form of the unity of the organism being constituted through the differences of its organs, and its processes are self-perpetuated.

Summary

For Hegel, the idea is self-determining reason.

More than this, through the recognition that the Idea relates to itself, much as the moments of infinity did in the doctrine of being, we come to realize that the Idea itself is "the One Totality" (EL, §242). That is, it forms a self-referential whole. (212)

The totality is nature, but it is an immediacy, which makes it a one-sided determination of nature. The Idea as totality then becomes other to itself as multiplicity or externality.

We can note, however, that Hegel argues that while this idea of a unified totality is already nature, as a strict unity, it represents an immediacy and is therefore a one-sided determination of nature. In order to counteract this one-sidedness, the Idea "resolves to release out of itself into freedom the moment of its particularity or of the initial determining and otherness, [that is,] the immediate Idea as its reflexion, or itself as nature" (EL, § 244). In order to thus become determinate, the Idea therefore becomes the other of itself as immediate unity. Nature is thus first presented as multiplicity, or pure externality. (212)

Even thought the Idea becomes other to itself, nature is not governed by reason; rather, it become reason that is expressed otherwise than as self-determining idea. So [1] nature is immanently rational, it is a moment of reason and not a creation of it. [2] Yet reason is not in the form of reason in nature.

however, reason is not present in the form of reason in nature . In fact, it is other than itself. Because of this, we will encounter in nature moments of contingency, where there is an incommensurability between the particular forms of nature and their rational Notion. (213)

Nature is a system of stages. The movement between states is governed by reason, which is the movement of the inner Idea of nature. The Idea’s governing principle is the unity of identity and difference. The moment of difference is what first predominates in nature. Nature we said is externality in its opposition to the pure idea. This externality we find described in Philosophy of Nature, where it is discussed in terms of matter. Because matter is infinitely divisible, this implies the parts’ indifference to each other, which would be their externality. But externality is one side of the Idea and unity is the other, so matter contains the idea of unity. So while the planets seem indifferent to one another, in fact they form one system of “bodies in reciprocal relations to one another”. (213)

The Philosophy of Nature describes an immanent movement with there “arising of more and more explicitly unified systems of diverse parts, culminating in the animal organism.” (213) Space, as externality, is the first moment. It gives rise to time and matter. The physics of matter gives us a universal system that allows us to relate all material bodies to one another. but because it is universal, it is too abstract to capture the particularity of the world. (213)  This makes the determinate content become isolated and detached from one another, lacking any necessary connection. So in physics, bodies enter into relations of movement, but in chemistry, different bodies can enter into transformative relations, and this will mean that chemistry does more to develop the moment of unity in difference. For example, acids and bases combine to form salts, which are chemicals with properties different to both acids and bases. [Different salts can mix in water. But chemistry does not completely tell us about the identity of difference and identity.]

While salts are neutral , by combining certain salts, mediated by another substance such as water, we can, in special circumstances, get them to exchange their respective salts. In the chemical sphere, we therefore have a concrete unity between the different elements. Salts and acids, for instance, appear to be inherently relational. While this is the case, chemical interactions do not give us the complete idea of the identity of identity and difference that we are looking for, however. (214)

Various chemicals can be separated and unified. These processes repeat, making them conceivable as part of one greater unified process. If the produces of these chemical processes spontaneously renewed the processes of combination and separation, then they would be life. So it is in the organism where Hegel locates the unity of difference in nature. An organism is a whole but it is made of separate organ parts. And unlike bare chemical processes, it can perpetuate its own processes rather than have them perpetuated by means of external intervention. Because it is about organs and organisms, it refers to the problem of the one and the many. (214)


Somers-Hall, Henry (2012) Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. Dialectics of Negation and Difference. Albany: SUNY.

Body Parts: Merleau-Ponty's Corporeal Organism and Deleuze's Funky Machine-Body

by Corry Shores
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[Other entries in the Merleau-Ponty phenomenology series.]

[May I sincerely thank the source of the image
Stephen Worth at ASIFA
Credits are given below the image and at the end.]

Body Parts:
Merleau-Ponty's Corporeal Organism and Deleuze's Funky Machine-Body

What does your body's organization got to do with you?

When we notice how the parts of our body remain coordinated, we get the sense that there is something complete and consistent about us. But do we also not feel that we are more than just a mere machine? Who we really are is not something mechanical in this way. We might look at the mechanical workings of our body in a different way. Perhaps our parts function differentially from one another. And this might be what makes us more than the machines we build.

Brief Summary

The parts and workings of our body are thoroughly integrated organically for Merleau-Ponty. And there is more. Our body is thoroughly integrated organically with the parts of the world around us as well. It is on this basis that the phenomenal world can be given to us.

Points Relative to Deleuze

Yet for Deleuze, a phenomenon is given to our body on the opposite conditions: 1) our body must be working differentially within itself, and not organically, and 2) our body must be differentially relating to the world.



For Merleau-Ponty, the parts of our bodies are thoroughly integrated organically with one another, especially in their functioning. This is something already there from the beginning. When we reach for an object, that requires a coordination of our bodily parts. And if a child reaches for an object, she does not need to be conscious of the motions of each part in order to do so. The parts of her body began already in a state of coordination.

We find in the unity of the body the same implicatory structure as we have already described in discussing space. The various parts of my body, its visual, tactile and motor aspects are not simply co-ordinated. If I am sitting at my table and I want to reach the telephone, the movement of my hand towards it, the straightening of the upper part of the body, the tautening of the leg muscles are enveloped in each other. I desire a certain result and the relevant tasks are spontaneously distributed amongst the appropriate segments, the possible combinations being presented in advance as equivalent: I can continue leaning back in my chair provided that I stretch my arm further, or lean forward, or even partly stand up. All these movements are available to us in virtue of their common meaning. That is why, in their first attempts at grasping, children look, not at their hand, but at the object: the various parts of the body are known to us through their functional value only, and their co-ordination is not learnt. Similarly, when I am sitting at my table, I can instantly visualize the parts of my body which are hidden from me. As I contract my foot in my shoe, I can see it. This power belongs to me even with respect to parts of the body which I have never seen. (172b.d)
Nous retrouvons dans l'unité du corps la structure d'implication que nous avons déjà décrite à propos de l'espace. Les différentes parties de mon corps, ses aspects visuels, tactiles et moteurs ne sont pas simplement coordonnés. Si je suis assis à ma table et que je veuille atteindre le téléphone, le mouvement de la main vers l'objet, le redressement du tronc, la contraction des muscles des jambes s'enveloppent l'un l'autre ; je veux un certain résultat, et les tâches se répartissent d'elles-mêmes entre les segments intéressés, les combinaisons possibles étant d'avance données comme équivalentes : je puis rester adossé au fauteuil, à condition d'étendre davantage le bras, ou me pencher en avant, ou même me lever à demi. Tous ces mouvements sont à notre disposition à partir de leur signification commune. C'est pourquoi, dans les premières tentatives de préhension, les enfants ne regardent pas leur main, mais l'objet : les différents segments du corps ne sont connus que dans leur valeur fonctionnelle et leur coordination n'est pas apprise. De même, quand je suis assis à ma table, je puis instantanément « visualiser » les parties de mon corps qu'elle me cache. En même temps que je contracte mon pied dans ma chaussure, je le vois. Ce pouvoir m'appartient même pour les parties de mon corps que je n'ai jamais vues. (185b.c)

Recall that when we are aware of one thing, all the other things it is related to are within the range of our awareness, but at the horizon; we are marginally aware of them. We might instead say that we are aware of them, but only indeterminately, or indirectly, or implicitly. In a similar manner, small parts or aspects of our body speak the body as a whole. Our body, in fact, is already given to us from the beginning as an organically integrated whole being.

everyone recognizes his own silhouette or his own walk when it is filmed. Thus we do not recognize the appearance of what we have often seen, and on the other hand we immediately recognize the visual representation of what is invisible to us in our own body. [...] Each of us sees himself as it were through an inner eye which from a few yards away is looking at us from the head to the knees. Thus the connecting link between the parts of our body and that between our visual and tactile experience are not forged gradually and cumulatively. I do not translate the ‘data of touch’ 'into the language of seeing’ or vice versa—I do not bring together one by one the parts of my body; this translation and this unification are performed once and for all within me: they are my body, itself. Are we then to say that we perceive our body in virtue of its law of construction, as we know in advance all the possible facets of a cube in virtue of its geometrical structure? But—to say nothing at this stage about external objects—our own body acquaints us with a species of unity which is not a matter of subsumption under a law. (173a.b)
We do not merely behold as spectators the relations between the parts of our body, and the correlations between the visual and tactile body: we are ourselves the unifier of these arms and legs, the person who both sees and touches them. (173d)
On a pu montrer que nous ne reconnaissons pas notre propre main en photographie, que même beaucoup de sujets hésitent à reconnaître parmi d'autres leur propre écriture, et que, par contre, chacun reconnaît sa silhouette ou sa démarche filmée. Ainsi nous ne reconnaissons pas par la vue ce que nous avons cependant vu souvent, et par contre nous reconnaissons d'emblée la représentation visuelle de ce qui dans notre corps nous est invi- | sible. [...] Chacun de nous se voit comme par un œil intérieur qui, de quelques mètres de distance, nous regarde de la tête aux genoux. Ainsi la connexion des segments de notre corps et celle de notre expérience visuelle et de notre expérience tactile ne se réalisent pas de proche en proche et par accumulation. Je ne traduis pas « dans le langage de la vue » les « données du toucher» ou inversement, - je n'assemble pas les parties de mon corps une à une ; cette traduction et cet assemblage sont faits une fois pour toutes en moi : ils sont mon corps même. Dirons-nous donc, que nous percevons notre corps par sa loi de construction, comme nous connaissons d'avance toutes les perspectives possibles d'un cube à partir de sa structure géométrique? Mais - pour ne rien dire encore des objets extérieurs - le corps propre nous enseigne un mode d'unité qui n'est pas la subsomption sous une loi. (185-186)
Nous ne contemplons pas seulement les rapports des segments de notre corps et les corrélations du corps visuel et du corps tactile : nous sommes nous-mêmes celui qui tient ensemble ces bras et ces jambes, celui qui à la fois les voit et les touche. (186c)

Consider when we feel something hit our arm. At the same time that we feel it, we can in a way see it too, even if we are not looking at it. From how it feels, we can see certain visual qualities of it, we can 'see' for example that it has a hard smooth surface, if that is how it feels. This is because all the parts of our body, all its senses, integrate together into shared actions.

A certain tactile experience felt in the upper arm signifies a certain tactile experience in the forearm and shoulder, along with a certain visual aspect of the same arm, not because the various tactile perceptions among themselves, or the tactile and visual ones, are all involved in one intelligible arm, as the different facets of a cube are related to the idea of a cube, but because the arm seen and the arm touched, like the different segments of the arm, together perform one and the same action. (175c)
Une certaine expérience tactile du bras signifie une certaine expérience tactile de l'avantbras et de l'épaule, un certain aspect visuel du même bras, non que les différentes perceptions tactiles, les perceptions tactiles et les perceptions visuelles participent toutes à un même bras intelligible, comme les vues perspectives d'un cube à l'idée du cube, mais parce que le bras vu et le bras touché, comme les différents segments du bras, font tous ensemble un même geste. (188b)

But it is not just the parts of the body which are organically related. Our body itself integrates organically with the world around it. Merleau-Ponty offers his famous example of the blind person who learns to walk with a stick. At first she might feel the stick making contact with her hand. But after a while, it becomes as though the end of the stick is her new point of contact with the objects around her. She no longer feels the contact between her hand and the stick, but instead between the stick and the ground or other things she is feeling. We see that we are inherently geared to be organically integrated with the objective world around us. The blind person's awareness wants and tries to extend into its surrounding world. We use phones to reach into distant places. Our organic integration with the world is what is given to us from the beginning of our lives when we first start extending our awareness to the world around us. This is "the organic relationship between subject and world, the active transcendence of consciousness, the momentum which carries it into a thing and into a world by means of its organs and instruments" (176d, emphasis mine); "le rapport organique du sujet et du monde, la transcendance active de la conscience, le mouvement par lequel elle se jette dans une chose et dans un monde par le moyen de ses organes et de ses instruments" (189c, emphasis mine).

Even the way we look at things is like the walking stick; it is our way of extending our bodily organizations into the worldly organizations that we are organized together with.

In the gaze we have at our disposal a natural instrument analogous to the blind man’s stick. The gaze gets more or less from things according to the way in which it questions them, ranges over or dwells on them. To learn to see colours it is to acquire a certain style of seeing, a new use of one’s own body: it is to enrich and recast the body image. (177bc)
Le regard obtient plus ou moins des choses selon la manière dont il les interroge, dont il glisse ou appuie sur elles. Apprendre à voir les couleurs, c'est acquérir un certain style de vision, un nouvel usage du corps propre, c'est enrichir et réorganiser le schéma corporel. (190b)

Deleuze presents to us a very different view on the body, and we will try to expand on it. If our bodies were perfectly integrated, within themselves and with the world, then they would be like automatic machines. It cannot be that this internal and external integration is our consciousness extending into the world. No, instead it is our being unconsciously aware of ourselves and world. Often we have conversations over a meal or drinks, and we reach for a glass without any awareness of it, without looking at it. For Merleau-Ponty, this is the organic integration within our body and between our body and the world. But for a Deleuzean phenomenology, this would be the opposite of an experience of a phenomenon. We are not perceiving anything really, not being conscious of the glass. A phenomenon would occur if someone drank from our glass when we were not looking. We then lift it with too much force, causing the drink to splash in our face. Our hands were assuming they were feeling one sort of thing. What they were also feeling was another sort of thing. The phenomenon is that impact of difference we feel when these two incoherent perceptual facts clashed with one another. In that case, we find ourselves not organically integrated with the world. And we find our body's parts not properly coordinated. So for a Deleuzean phenomenology, the organic integration within the body and between the body and world is not what is phenomenologically interesting. The opposite concerns us. We are interested in moments of incoherence, which is the real source of phenomenal content.

And yet, somehow our bodies hold together. And we continue relating to the world. Does that not mean there is some fundamentally important coherence at work? That might be so. But is it the integrated sort of coherence Merleau-Ponty speaks-of? Is our consciousness for example coordinated and interwoven with our body like strands of a fabric? Or perhaps is it in a way doing its own thing, while our body does its own thing, with the two dancing along together, each doing it's own dance? Do the parts of our body blend and make a harmony? Or do they operate in their own ways, like the disjointed parts of funk music? Do things need to be organically related integrationally in order for there to be an overall functioning? Or perhaps is it the opposite case, that proper functioning requires disjunctive functions? Consider the workings of a Rube Goldberg machine.

(Thank you Stephen Worth at ASIFA)

Its parts differentially relate. These parts' functions are incoherent. Can we not see our body this way too? What the eyeball is doing and what the stomach are doing are two very different things. If they were both doing the same thing, there would not be the need for both of them. It is only because they differentially relate that they can find themselves together with one another. Different functions combine to make a machine. That is what a machine is, a combination of different functions. Just consider. What if we saw the whole world like a Rube Goldberg machine, and we saw our own bodies made-up like such a machine, and furthermore, we saw our bodies as part of the greater Goldberg world machine? Is that inconceivable? We are not saying that the world is an absolute chaos. We are not also saying that the world is something between chaos and order. We are saying that the world is differentially mechanical. Suppose we insisted on saying that parts of the world are integrated together, like the parts of the solar system or the parts of our bodies. Do we still need to say it is because the parts are organically integrated? The earth is pulling at the moon. But the moon is pulling itself away from the earth. Together they spin around. It is on the basis of the incoherence of their forces that the two can maintain their differential relation. It is not that there is a harmonic balance in their motions. It is that there is no end yet to their differential relations.




Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Transl. Colin Smith. London/New York: Routledge, 1958.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1945.


Rube Goldberg machine
http://www.animationarchive.org/2008/10/comic-strips-rube-goldbergs-side-show.html
(Thanks Stephen Worth at ASIFA)

Merleau-Ponty's Panoptic Perceptions & the Infinitely Doubled-Vision of Deleuze

by Corry Shores
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Merleau-Ponty's Panoptic Perceptions
& the Infinitely Doubled-Vision of Deleuze

What does the phenomenal integration of our world got to do with us?

What we can do with our lives has a lot to do with how free we feel. When we think that we are now too old to accomplish some former goal, we sense a limitation in our freedom, and this leads us to not making an attempt at it. Let's suppose that we consider any little thing we see to be thoroughly related to everything else in the world, seen or unseen. Imagine for example that we set up dominoes in a chain, so that they could fall in sequence if the first one is pushed. We look at the set-up, and we see that the last of the series is intimately connected with the first, because if the first falls, so eventually will the last. When we look at the first domino, we in a way are also looking at the last one, expressing itself in the first. We know that to touch the first is to also touch the last. This means we will be very careful with our domino set up. We will restrain ourselves from pushing the first until just the right moment, when we would also like to see the last one consequently fall as well.

Yet it's possible we do not see things this way. Perhaps when we look at the first domino, the last one comes to our mind only as much as it dares us to push the first, out of its defiance of our supposing it to be determinately related. We do not then push the first because we want to touch the last, but because we put it to fate to decide if really the relations are determined. When we glance at the first domino, the last one appears in the first only when the last one says, 'no! I am not found in the first, I am me, not he!' That is what makes us tip the first, when the last dares us the most to defy its differentiation from the rest. In other words, it is not their coherent relation that makes the last appear in the first, but the forces that wedge them apart, making them appear to us as not glued together, not cohered. Perhaps some would very scientifically tip the first to demonstrate the determinacies. But perhaps others tip the first out of rebellion of the determinations, as if saying, 'all determinations must prove themselves! none are assumed as granted'. In such a spirit, tipping the first is a rebellion against coherence. If domino chains were so clearly determined, why would we find them so fascinating? It's because we see the motion in disbelief, as if we assumed from the beginning that such a continuous connection could not have been so. In other words, the dominoes continue to astonish us because our world is not given to us as connected.

And also, if the last domino were so thoroughly implied in the first, it would not appear through the first one. This is because the difference between the first and the last would not be substantial enough for us to feel compelled to distinguish them in the first place; there would no longer be two dominoes for us but just one.

All this might be a matter of our perspective on life. We might take the view that things appearing to us already speak the others. An electrical power line speaks to us the poles suspending it, even if they range out of our field of vision. But under such a view, we might be less tempted to challenge the order of things. What would happen if an inventor saw a mechanical part always as it holistically relates to other mechanical parts? He would never invent a single thing with it. He first must say, 'no, this is not an x, it does not relate to y, instead I say it is a z, and its other relations are not yet determined.' This way he can invent new machines. So it is only on the basis of perceiving the parts of the world as incoherent that we can live in the world more freely, courageously, and creatively.

Brief Summary

For Merleau-Ponty, the things we perceive are so thoroughly integrated with one another that to focus on one is to implicitly perceive all the others.

Points Relative to Deleuze

But for a Deleuzean phenomenology, it is only on the basis of the incoherence of the parts than any one of them either stands-out explicitly or remains implied. For it is only on the basis of one part not gluing with another that we can perceive them either apart or in another.

We will continue our discussion on phenomenal horizons and the dynamic integration of objects in our world.

Consider if we look at something. We focus on it. But there are other things in the background. We are not unaware of these things, because if something strange happens in the periphery of our field of vision, we might instantly turn to it to see what is going on. This periphery, which is on the horizon of our attention, is perceived under a mode of awareness that is different from our attention to what we are focusing on. So would we say that we are merely less aware of the periphery? We could instead say that we are aware of it in a different way. There would be a reason for this in Merleau-Ponty's thinking. We see something now. But the way it appears to us has much to do with what appears marginally in its context. Before we considered the example of the moon near the skyline looking larger then when higher in the sky. While seeing the moon when it is near the skyline, we are focusing on the moon, and all the nearby things are in the periphery of our awareness. But it is these very marginal things which cause the moon to appear so largely to us. Hence we perhaps should not say that we are less aware of the things on the periphery of our awareness. Rather we might just say it is a different form of awareness, no less or greater than our focal attention.

To see an object is either to have it on the fringe of the visual field and be able to concentrate on it, or else respond to this summons by actually concentrating upon it. When I do concentrate my eyes on it, I become anchored in it, but this coming to rest of the gaze is merely a modality of its movement: I continue inside one object the exploration which earlier hovered over them all, and in one movement I close up the landscape and open the object. The two operations do not fortuitously coincide: it is not the contingent aspects of my bodily make-up, for example the retinal structure, which force me to see my surroundings vaguely if I want to see the object clearly. Even if I knew nothing of rods and cones, I should realize that it is necessary to put the surroundings in abeyance the better to see the object, and to lose in background what one gains in focal figure, because to look at the object is to plunge oneself into it, and because objects form a system in which one cannot show itself without concealing others. More precisely, the inner horizon of an object cannot become an object without the surrounding objects’ becoming a horizon, and so vision is an act with two facets. (78a-c)
Voir un objet, c'est ou bien l'avoir en marge du champ visuel et pouvoir le fixer, ou bien répondre effectivement à cette sollicitation en le fixant. Quand je le fixe, je m'ancre en lui, mais cet « arrêt » du regard n'est qu'une modalité de son mouvement : je continue à l'intérieur d'un objet l'exploration qui, tout à l'heure, les survolait tous, d'un seul mouvement je referme le paysage et j'ouvre l'objet. Les deux opérations ne coïncident pas par hasard : ce ne sont pas les contingences de mon organisation corporelle, par exemple la structure de ma rétine, qui m'obligent à voir l'entourage en flou si je veux voir l'objet en clair. Même si je ne savais rien des cônes et des bâtonnets, je concevrais qu'il est nécessaire de mettre en sommeil l'entourage pour mieux voir l'objet et de perdre en fond ce que l'on gagne en figure, | parce que regarder l'objet c'est s'enfoncer en lui, et que les objets forment un système où l'un ne peut se montrer sans en cacher d'autres. Plus précisément, l'horizon intérieur d'un objet ne peut devenir objet sans que les objets environnants deviennent horizon et la vision est un acte à deux faces. (95-96)

So we might not say that the horizon is a lesser form of awareness, because our focal perceptions could be substantially different if the horizonal intentions were otherwise. However, the things on the horizon of our awareness take some form concealedness, because there is something about them which is not yet disclosed and which calls for its unveiling.

Merleau-Ponty now notes something else. Consider when we turn our attention from one thing to something on its horizon. Let's say someone hands us a large bar of gold. We give it back. He then holds up an identical one and asks if we want to buy the second one for a really low price. From our visual perspective, both bars of gold look exactly the same. But something does not seem right, and we are not sure what. The way the second bar relates to his hands and arms is not the same as with the first bar. We also somehow sense that the second one is hollow, which in fact it is. By looking at the way the hollow one relates to his arm, we also were aware of the visual appearance of the inside. The inside of the gold appeared to us not because we could see it, but because we could see other things related to it. So the hollow inside was on the horizon of our awareness while the outside was in the focus.

Whenever we move our attention from one thing to another, the first will still be related in the second, because it will condition the way the second appears. But this also means that when we arrive upon the second thing in our attention, it is expressing the first as well, because all components of our phenomenal world are integrated in this way where each has the other on the horizon. This means that when we turn our attention away from some object, it is no longer to be found explicitly in our field of awareness, but it remains there implicitly, on the horizon. So the persisting identity of things in our world depends on all parts of our awareness having all others on their horizons.

In normal vision, on the other hand, I direct my gaze upon a sector of the landscape, which comes to life and is disclosed, while the other objects recede into the periphery and become dormant, while, however, not ceasing to be there. Now, with them, I have at my disposal their horizons, in which there is implied, as a marginal view, the object on which my eyes at present fall. The horizon, then, is what guarantees the identity of the object throughout the exploration; it is the correlative of the impending power which my gaze retains over the objects which it has just surveyed, and which it already has over the fresh details which it is about to discover. No distinct memory and no explicit conjecture could fill this rôle: they | would give only a probable synthesis, whereas my perception presents itself as actual. The object-horizon structure, or the perspective, is no obstacle to me when I want to see the object: for just as it is the means whereby objects are distinguished from each other, it is also the means whereby they are disclosed. To see is to enter a universe of beings which display themselves, and they would not do this if they could not be hidden behind each other or behind me. In other words: to look at an object is to inhabit it, and from this habitation to grasp all things in terms of the aspect which they present to it. But in so far as I see those things too, they remain abodes open to my gaze, and, being potentially [( virtuellement)] lodged in them, I already perceive from various angles the central object of my present vision. Thus every object is the mirror of all others. When I look at the lamp on my table, I attribute to it not only the qualities visible from where I am, but also those which the chimney, the walls, the table can ‘see’; but back of my lamp is nothing but the face which it ‘shows’ to the chimney. I can therefore see an object in so far as objects form a system or a world, and in so far as each one treats the others round it as spectators of its hidden aspects and as guarantee of the permanence of those aspects. Any seeing of an object by me is instantaneously reiterated among all those objects in the world which are apprehended as co-existent, because each of them is all that the others ‘see’ of it. Our previous formula must therefore be modified; the house itself is not the house seen from nowhere, but the house seen from everywhere. The completed object is translucent, being shot through from all sides by an infinite number of present scrutinies which intersect in its depths leaving nothing hidden. (78-79c, emphasis mine)
Au contraire, dans la vision, j'appuie mon regard sur un fragment du paysage, il s'anime et se déploie, les autres objets reculent en marge et entrent en sommeil, mais ils ne cessent pas d'être là. Or, avec eux, j'ai à ma disposition leurs horizons, dans lesquels est impliqué, vu en vision marginale, l'objet que je fixe actuellement. L'horizon est donc ce qui assure l'identité de l'objet au cours de l'exploration, il est le corrélatif de la puissance prochaine que garde mon regard sur les objets qu'il vient de parcourir et qu'il a déjà sur les nouveaux détails qu'il va découvrir. Aucun souvenir exprès, aucune conjecture explicite ne pourraient jouer ce rôle : ils ne donneraient qu'une synthèse probable, alors que ma perception se donne comme effective. La structure objet-horizon, c'est-à-dire la perspective, ne me gêne donc pas quand je veux voir l'objet: si elle est le moyen qu'ont les objets de se dissimuler, elle est aussi le moyen qu'ils ont de se dévoiler. Voir, c'est entrer dans un univers d'êtres qui se montrent, et ils ne se montreraient pas s'ils ne pouvaient être cachés les uns derrière les autres ou derrière moi. En d'autres termes : regarder un objet, c'est venir l'habiter et de là saisir toutes choses selon la face qu'elles tournent vers lui. Mais, dans la mesure où je les vois elles aussi, elles restent des demeures ouvertes à mon regard, et, situé virtuellement en elles, j'aperçois déjà sous différents angles l'objet central de ma vision actuelle. Ainsi chaque objet est le miroir de tous les autres. Quand je regarde la lampe posée sur ma table, je lui attribue non seulement les qualités visibles de ma place, mais encore celle que la cheminée, que les murs, que la table peuvent « voir », le dos de ma lampe n'est rien d'autre que la face qu'elle « montre » à la cheminée. Je peux donc voir un objet en tant que les objets forment un système ou un monde et | que chacun d'eux dispose des autres autour de lui comme Spectateurs de ses aspects cachés et garantie de leur permanence. Toute vision d'un objet par moi se réitère instantanément entre tous les objets du monde qui sont saisis comme coexistants parce que chacun d'eux est tout ce que les autres « voient » de lui. Notre formule de tout à l'heure doit donc être modifiée; la maison elle-même n'est pas la maison vue de nulle part, mais la maison vue de toutes parts. L'objet achevé est translucide, il est pénétré de tous côtés par une infinité actuelle de regards qui se recoupent dans sa profondeur et n'y laissent rien de caché. (82b-83, emphasis mine)

How would things be different in a Deleuzean phenomenology? In the first place, our field of perception is made entirely of differences. We have microperceptions, which are like the differentials between infinitely small divisions of our perceptual field. Let's say we see a green apple. The green of the apple is made of very small pereptions of yellow and blue that are infinitely small and that differentially relate to one another.

(Animation above is my own, made with Open Office Draw and Unfreeze.)

The microperceptions of yellow and blue are infinitely small, yet somehow green flashes between them all. Would we then say that the green happens because of an integrated organization of similar parts which creates a homogenous field? If the green of the apple appears to us, does that not suggest that we perceive the world as a thorough organization of parts? For otherwise there would not be a patch of green but rather a complete chaos of sense impressions.

But we can be looking at an apple tree without first noticing the color of its apples. For Merleau-Ponty this is because the green of the apples is on the horizon of our awareness. It could later be made explicit by turning our attention to it. But let's consider a Deleuzean phenomenology. We would first assume that the green apple is like everything else; it is really made-up of differentials between vanished parts. One microperception of the differential relation between two parts of the apple is not necessarily a stronger difference than the differential relation between a part of the apple and a part of the tree branch. So we are equally motivated to see the apple as different from the tree or just the same as it. Certain forces, like our hunger, will add variations to the differential values in the field of our heterogeneous perception. It could cause the green to jump out from the brown of the branch. The differential relations between the apple's parts and the branch's parts cause one another to resonate and shake, as if we pushed two magnets together, same-pole-to-same pole.

When we go to pick the apple, what is most important to us is not the apple itself, but the difference between the apple's parts and the branch's parts, because it is only on the basis of this difference that we think we can separate them and satisfy our hunger. So what matters to us then is the incompatibility of the apple and the tree, their not-belonging together, their pushing one another apart, hence the grounds for us to pluck the apple from the branch. We might still say that the differential relations here that stand-out are not random. They are between two general regions, the region we consider the tree and the region we consider the apple. So while the relation between the apple and the tree is one of no-longer-hanging together, no longer cohering, all those differential parts of the apple seem to cohere together in their contiguity. This might be so, but we can peel the apple too. It is not that the differences making up the apple were replaced with compatibilities. Instead, just extra forces of difference pushed those in the apple more strongly away from those of the branch. What is most important to note is that when we pick the apple, when we make this important constitution, in that very moment what really appears to us is neither the apple nor the branch, but a crack between them, because it is by wedging that crack that we are able to pick the apple. But this does not just apply to when we physically divide things. Anytime something appears to us, we 'pick it out' from our field of awareness. Our perceptions are continually making divisions, which is really just amplfications of certain differences over others.

According to Merleau-Ponty's theory of how we see the world, each part of it includes many different other relations to the other parts, such that to see the front side of something is really also to see the backside, reflected in the way the backside relates to everything else around it that we do see and also the way everything else is relating to the back's side. Thus even though we might say that our perceptual field is constituted by all these different relations, we still see that their relating is based on how they all integrate coherently with one another.

For Deleuze, any sort of organization, like a conglomerate of microperceptions giving us the macroperception of green, is not based on how these microperceptions integrate with one another [1]. The are all differentials to one another. The green appears not just because its parts differentially relate, but also because these parts differentiate with parts around it. And these differentiations stand-out with more force to us. So the green field never ceases to be a heterogeneous multiplicity of differences for us, because when we perceive it as a green field, really we are fundamentally and at first noticing the differences between the colors' differentials and those of what it stands out from. So we notice the green only on account of a magnification of the incoherences between the green's parts and the other things parts.

So how then would a Deleuzean phenomenology explain the illusion of the moon's increased size near the skyline? When the moon is high in the sky, it is often surrounded by stars and dark. But when near the skyline, the moon draws near many other things whose parts are competing for our attention, like trees, buildings, and so forth. So when the moon does appear into our focal attention, it did so only on account of very strong differential forces that made the microperceptions of the moon stand-out more than the others in the region. So perceiving the moon near the horizon is seeing something in an intense differential conflict with many other things. So we sense the moon being filled with a lot of intensity, as if it were on the verge of bursting-out into the sky. Even though the moon on the skyline is the same size in our retinas as when high in the sky, its powerful tendencies to stand-out cause us to see it as more magnified in our field of awareness.


[1] Note: the differentials in the green do not integrate in the Merleau-Pontian sense of each implying the others. However, they do seem instead to integrate in the sense of an integral sum, which would be a sum of differentials, a sum of differences, and not an interwoven 'flesh'. Later we will look to Salomon Maimon's Essay on Transcendental Philosophy for more on this idea.





Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Transl. Colin Smith. London/New York: Routledge, 1958.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1945.

Departing Individuals. Creative Evolution. Bergson. Ch.1 Part 3: Organized Bodies and Real Duration

by Corry Shores
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Departing Individuals

Henri Bergson

Creative Evolution

Évolution Créatrice

Chapter 1

The Evolution of Life – Mechanism and Teleology

Chapitre Premier

De l’évolution de la vie. – Mécanisme et finalité.

3. Organized Bodies and Real Duration

3. Les corps organisés

Previously Bergson discussed how material objects might seem to exist without being affected by duration. However, like all things, they undergo change throughout durations. As well, material things are never parts of isolated systems.

§ 17 Cutting-Up the World

Material bodies only seem isolated because we want to perform some action that is better served when we demarcate discrete beings around us. We would like to cut paper, so we distinguish the scissors from the table. Then we may handle the tool and use it. This feat that designates a certain body from the flux of reality is in fact performed by another body; it is our own body.

the body which is to perform this action, the body which marks out upon matter the design of its eventual actions even before they are actual, the body that has only to point its sensory organs on the flow of the real in order to make that flow crystallize into definite forms and thus to create all the other bodies in short, the living body. [12-13, emphasis mine]

Mais le corps qui exercera cette action, le corps qui, avant d'accomplir des actions réelles, projette déjà sur la matière le dessin de ses actions virtuelles, le corps qui n'a qu'à braquer ses organes sensoriels sur le flux du réel pour le faire cristalliser en formes définies et créer ainsi tous les autres corps, le corps vivant enfin. [13a, emphasis mine]

Bergson wonders if this body is just like the scissors or any other material body.

§18 Reproducing the Tendency to Reproduce

Our own bodies are at least in some way extensional parts of a larger Whole. So there is some aspect of us that is subject to the laws of physics and chemistry. Now, we can arbitrarily designate some part of the material flux around us as we did with the scissors. But we can then also think of it as being two blades. Our bodies, however, have parts that hang-together so coherently that it seems much less arbitrary to distinguish our body from the world around us. We are individuals. But other objects are not. To be an individual means

a) “being composed of unlike parts that complete each other,” and

b) performing “diverse functions that involve each other” (8bc).

Hence even a crystal is not an individual; for, it has “neither difference of parts nor diversity of functions” (8c). But then, animals and plants could fit these criteria. Later Bergson will discuss the difficulties we would have when trying to determine the individuality of organisms. He will explain that individuality is never found in a pure form. We find different degrees of it, and that holds for humans as well. This is because the vital properties of individuality never materialize completely; really they are tendencies.

A perfect definition applies only to a completed reality; now, vital properties are never entirely realized, though always on the way to become so; they are not so much states as tendencies. And a tendency achieves all that it aims at only if it is not thwarted by another tendency. [13d, emphasis mine]

Une définition parfaite ne s'applique qu'à une réalité faite : or, les propriétés vitales ne sont jamais entièrement réalisées, mais toujours en voie de réalisation ; ce sont moins des états que des tendances. Et une tendance n'obtient tout ce qu'elle vise que si elle n'est contrariée par aucune autre tendance [14a, emphasis mine]

Living individuals have both the tendency to reproduce and the tendency towards being an individual. These tendencies compete, and neither is fully realized. For, when we reproduce, part of us detaches and lives separately. That means there was an independent part of us, and hence we are not entirely individual.

Individuality therefore harbours its enemy at home. Its very need of perpetuating itself in time condemns it never to be complete in space. [14b]

L'individualité loge donc son ennemi chez elle. Le besoin même qu'elle éprouve de se perpétuer dans le temps la condamne à n'être jamais complète dans l'espace. [14c]

Biologists, then, would not be able to fully define individuality.

§19 The Coherence of Cut Worms

The complexity of life forms causes us to be mistaken about their individuality. We might for example observe an animal that breaks into pieces that then regenerate. We see this with Lumbriculus worms,

hydra,

and sea urchin eggs. [The image depicts urchin egg cleavage, which may or may not be the ‘fragments’ Bergson here references].

But consider instead if we tip a dresser and all its drawers fall out. We previously thought it was one individual, but now it is many. Yet unlike the regeneration of Lumbriculus worms for example, there is nothing more to the dresser and its parts than were there when it was first made. The dresser is an unorganized body, and so it is regulated by the following law:

the present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause. [15a]

le présent ne contient rien de plus que le passé, et ce qu'on trouve dans l'effet était déjà dans as a cause. [15b]

However in organized bodies such as our own, we begin as one being, and result in many beings through reproduction. Organized bodies are individuals because before dividing into fragments, our parts cohered into a system that was reproduced in the new being. So it may be difficult to find absolute individuals in the organic world. Yet,

life nevertheless manifests a search for individuality, as if it strove to constitute systems naturally isolated, naturally closed. [15d]

la vie n'en manifeste pas moins une recherche de l'individualité et qu'elle tend à constituer des systèmes naturellement isolés, naturellement clos. [16a]

[Next entry in this series.]

Images from the English translation [click to enlarge]:

Images from the original French [click to enlarge]

Bergson, Henri. L'Évolution Créatrice. Ed. Felix Alcan. Paris: Librairies Félix Alcan et Guillaumin Réunies, 1908. Available online athttp://www.archive.org/details/levolutioncreatr00berguoft

Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Transl. Arthur Mitchell. London: MacMillan and Co., 1922. Available online at:http://www.archive.org/details/creativeevolutio00berguoft

Hydra Regeneration

http://odelberglab.genetics.utah.edu/regen_mech.htm

Lumbriculus regenation

http://www.eeob.iastate.edu/faculty/DrewesC/htdocs/REGENERATION-Lv.htm

Sea Urchin cleavage

http://www.luc.edu/faculty/wwasser/dev/urchdev.htm