Somers-Hall, (Ch.4), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘Chapter 4. Ideas and the Synthesis of Difference’, 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 4. Ideas and the Synthesis of Difference

 

Very brief summary:

Chapter 4 characterizes the sorts thinking that deal with the fundamental intensive level of reality and also the Ideas that are involved in this thinking. An Idea has two important features: 1) it is made of indeterminate parts that are determined by means of a binding differential relation, and 2) it can find many various spatio-temporal actualizations. The differential in calculus is determinate only through reciprocal relations, and it describes the basic structure of Ideas. There are three other examples that more or less fulfill the two criteria of Ideas: 1) Epicurus’ and Lucretius’ atomism, since atoms become determinate only when in vibratory collision and many combinations are possible, 2) Geoffroy’s homological anatomy, where there is a transcendental template whose parts gain sense only in their combined network and many instantiations can be actualized from it, and 3) the Marxist notion that there are invisible networks of relations that underlie and determine the social, political, and economic surface conditions. Learning happens when first we encounter a problematic situation, then on the basis of a question, we gather fragments to form an Idea, implicated within which are many actualizable solutions. The discordant exercise of our faculties is itself a solution to the problem of unrepresentable Difference that we encounter. Also, negation is not a part of the fundamental levels of reality and thinking. It comes about either when we formulate propositions, which are negatable, or in actualization, which generates determinate properties that can oppose one another. Actualization is dramatized, meaning that it begins with intensive variations in the speeds and distributions of development, then secondly these form the extensive and qualitative properties, but all this occurs dramatically in an unpredictable way.


Brief summary: 
Now that we know what thinking should not be like, we look at how Ideas and thinking should be understood. Deleuze thinks that Ideas should not be formulated propositionally, in which case it would take on empirical determinations. Kant’s Ideas at first seem to fulfill this requirement, but in the end they do not. Deleuze characterizes the Idea as having three intrinsically related moments, which are expressed in an unorthodox tradition in calculus. Bordas-Demoulin sees the differential as undetermined, since in the differential formulation for the circle we get the essence of a circle without needing reference to particular circles, as with Descartes’ algebraic formulation. Maimon thinks that the differentials involved in intuitive givenness by themselves are not sensibly determined but gain it when they are differentially related. In this way he describes the conditions for determinability. And Wronski is concerned with notable moments in a variation that are numerically determinable, thus he shows the role of determination. Other fields might have Ideas with this structure, but only calculus looks at the structure itself. Ideas emerge under three conditions: the parts gain determination only through their differential relation, they then lose their independence, and the Idea applies to a variety of spatio-temporal differential relational situations in the world. Deleuze offers three examples. The first is Epicurus’ and Lucretius’ atomism. Here the atoms are insensible until colliding, and they can take many various arrangements of combination. The second is Geoffroy’s homological model of anatomy. Here there is a template of sorts that is really just made of differential relations of parts that take a wide variety of instantiations in the different species. The third is Marxist social ideas. Here we are to think of an invisible network of underlying relations that are responsible for the surface conditions in the political, economic, and social situation. Ideas also have three dimensions: vertical (Ideas can be rearticulated in more basic fields), horizontal (one Idea can find different variations within one area), and depth (one Idea can underly seemingly different Ideas in otherwise incommensurable domains). An Idea is virtual, and it explicates into actuality. It is not possible, since the possible is a deprivation of reality, but the Idea has no such deprivations.  There are three stages in the formulation and actualization of Ideas, and this is learning. First we encounter a problematic situation. Secondly we gather little Idea fragments, which are differential relations, that we combine to form the Idea. We do this in part by means of the question, which creates the framework for how the Idea should be composed and what sorts of actualizations it implicates. Thirdly this Idea is like a map or graph implicated many actualizable solutions, which may find determinate actualization. Our body itself is a solution that evolution has found to certain problems. Our faculties also, insofar as they operate discordantly, are a solution to the problem of the unrepresentable fundamental Difference, which can only be thought about through this discordant exercise. Negation is not found at the levels of the problem or the Idea. It comes about in two ways. The first is when we formulate the problem propositionally, which allows us to negate the sentences. The second is in actualization, which creates determine properties that oppose one another. This actualization however happens by means of dramatization, since development is unpredictable and involves a complicated network of “actors”. Actualization is first spatio-temporally intensive, as it involves intensive variations in developmental speeds and distributions. Then only secondly is it extensive and qualitative.

Summary

(4.1 Introduction: Kant and Ideas) Deleuze seeks a model of thinking where thought does not consist of propositional solutions that relate to empirical objects. So Ideas for Deleuze should not have an extrinsic relation to the empirical world. Instead a) they should be intrinsically related, while b) maintain a difference in kind such that thinking on the level of Ideas is not done using empirical determinations. Kant’s Ideas are problematic since they have no empirical object, but this also means they have no propositional solutions. So they would seem to involve a sort of thinking that deals with problems that are not understood in terms of their possible solutions as articulated in propositions using empirical determinations. However, in the end, the Ideas for Kant receive empirical determinations and thereby extrinsically relate to the empirical world. (4.2 Ideas and the Differential Calculus) Deleuze thinks that the Idea has three intrinsically related moments, namely, indetermination, determinability, and determination. One place where they obtain such a relation is in an unorthodox tradition in the history of calculus that grants the differential its proper metaphysical status. The three main thinkers in this tradition are Bordas-Demoulin, Maimon, and Wronski. They will relate the three moments intrinsically in this way: the differentials dx and dy are by themselves undetermined, but they obtain their determinability when brought into differential relation, which can then be determined numerically. Bordas-Demoulin shows how the differential formulation for the circle gives us its essence, since ydy + xdx = 0 tells us that its points tend back steadily to its point of origin. Descartes’ alternative formulation x² + y² – R² = 0 only tells us what specific values of a circle are, and thus it requires determination. But since the differential formula tells us what circles are without needing to deal with specific ones, it sees the differential as being undetermined. For Maimon, the differential terms dx and dy by themselves cannot receive sensible determination, but they can when they are differentially related. In this way he gives the conditions for determinability. Wronski is concerned with moments in a variation that are drastic while also being numerically determined, thus he supplied the notion of determination. Again, the differentials begin undetermined on their own, but they are determinable when differentially related, which creates a value that may be numerically determined. (4.3 Ideas and the Wider Calculus) The Idea for Deleuze has these structural features, and differential calculus brings that structure to light. Other fields generate Ideas, but unlike calculus they might not explore the structure of Ideas themselves. An Idea is a multiplicity since it is composed of many differential relations. An Idea emerges under three criteria: 1) the parts gain their determination through their differential relation, but they are undetermined prior to this relation, 2) after differentially relating, they lose any independence they might previously have had, and 3) the Idea that emerges applies to a variety of spatio-temporal differential relations in the world. (4.4 First Example: Atomism as a Physical Idea) Deleuze gives three examples in the history of philosophy that seem to fulfill these three criteria for the emergence of the idea. 1) Epicurus’ and Lucretius’ atomism. The atoms that make the world are falling downward too quickly to be perceived, thus on their own the parts are undetermined. They only become sensibly determined when they collide repeatedly and vibrate in a general region. Thus the parts gain their determination through their differential relation. And since they may enter into a variety of relations, they apply to a variety of spatio-temporal configurations. Deleuze is not completely satisfied, since this model understands determination too much as sensible determination. (4.5 Second Example: The Organism as Biological Idea) 2) The second example is Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s homological model of evolutionary anatomy. The alternative model by Cuvier, comparative anatomy, gives the same name to different species’ parts that are similar in form and function. Thus a fish fin and a human arm have these different names. But as species evolve there might be evolutionary connections between these parts, even though their form and function mutated. Cuvier’s model will miss these connections. For Geoffroy, however, there is a transcendental structure that is merely a set of relations between parts. All species, then, have these relations, even though their parts differ. Thus it is the same relational juncture in the transcendental structure that in fish takes the form of a fin and in humans an arm. So, the parts in the transcendental model on their own have no sense or conceptual content were they taken on their own, but they gain some conceptual determination when they are understood as occupying their place in the whole total network of differentially related parts, and there are many possible evolutionary instantiations of this transcendental structure. It would seem then that Geoffroy’s model fulfills Deleuze’s requirements for an Idea, but Deleuze thinks that it is still too much tied to actual instantiations. (4.6 Third Example: Are there Social Ideas, in a Marxist Sense?) 3) The third example is Marxist social ideas. There are certain visible surface structures like laborers and means of production. Althusser thinks that Marx is not so concerned with these but more so with deeper, invisible, unspecifiable political and ideological relations that are responsible for the generation of the visible surface structures. These deeper structures also fulfill the three requirements for an Idea, since the parts of these deeper structures have no sense taken independently, but they gain it as a network of such relations, which can take on many different manifestations under different historical circumstances. (4.7 The Relations of Ideas) There are three dimensions of varieties of Ideas. 1) Vertical: an Idea for a problem or solution can be reformulated in a more basic or general domain. So biological ideas might be reformulated using chemistry concepts, which can be reformulated into physics notions, which finally might be reformulated in mere mathematics. 2) Horizontal: here an Idea finds variations of itself within one domain. For example, Geoffrey’s transcendental structure finds many different arrangements (perhaps for creatures with different basic structures, like plants and vertebrates), each being its own Idea. 3) Depth: two systems might seem to be very different and to have very different Ideas might on a deeper level share the same Idea. Geometry and arithmetic for example seem very different, since the one can represent irrational values simply and the other cannot. But on a deeper level they share fundamental structures and thus the same Idea underlies the seemingly different Ideas in each system. (4.8 Essence, Possibility and Virtuality) Ideas for Deleuze become actualized, but we are not to understand them as if there were essences in the traditional sense of the term. For Aristotle the essence is obtained by removing everything that is inessential. The essence for Bergson however is something like the combined network of all actualizable manifestations of the Idea, which are folded in together in a complicated way. His analogy is color. White light is like the essence of color, since it can be broken down into any actualizable color, all of which when recombined form white light. This notion of the Idea involves the concepts of virtual, actual, and possible. The Idea is virtual, and it explicates into actualities. The virtual is not the possible, since the possible is the real deprived of actuality. However the virtual is fully real and lacks nothing, since it implies its infinity of actualizable instantiations. The virtual has three important properties: 1) it is real without being actual, since it is responsible for the genesis of actualities 2) it is complete without being entire, since it contains all actualizable instantiations (making it complete), but since they are infinitely many and various, it can never be exhausted by its actualizations (making it not entire). 3) it is differentiated without being differenciated, since it is composed of a network of differential relations (making it differentiated), but these relations and its terms cannot be ascribed predicates (and so it is not differentiated). (4.9 Learning and the Discord of the Faculties) Learning for Deleuze does not involve drawing inferences from propositions. Instead, we learn when we engage with the problematic situation at hand, then take from many sources little Idea fragments in the form of significant relations in the situation, and combine them into a map or graph of sorts that implies a wide variety of directions to pursue, which is the Idea, then lastly to develop solutions that can change the conditions of the original situation in such a way as to solve its problematic elements. Evolution has already done such a thing, since each of our organs is like a solution to certain problems. Likewise, each faculty is like such a solution. Now, the world is composed fundamentally not of distinct recognizable entities but rather with intensive differences. This means that were our faculties to operate concordantly to recognize a common object, they are not thinking about this fundamental layer of reality. Instead, their discordant exercises, whereby each has its own object of a different kind, enables such a thinking of intensive difference, and thus the discordant exercise of the faculties is like a solution to the problem of Difference itself. (4.10 The Origin of Ideas) So the problem is found in our encounter with an intensive field of differential relations that we cannot process using our given resources. We then formulate an Idea by putting fragments together, and on its basis we find solutions to the problematic situation we originally encountered. What relates the original problematic solution to the Idea we come to form is the question, which sets a particular framework for the construction of the Idea. Deleuze uses the metaphor of the dice throw to illustrate this. The problem is like being in a situation that calls for the throw of the dice, which will be the solution. The dice themselves are the Idea, since they contain the actualizable outcomes, only one of which at a time is in fact actualized. Also, the dice faces can be redesigned, just as the Idea can be reformulated. And the continual reformulation of the Idea is like the repetition of difference. (4.11 The Origin of Negation) For Deleuze, negation is not a part of how things are generated. However, there can be negation after they are generated. The problematic situations do not have negation in them, nor do the Ideas and the actualized solutions. We get negation however when we formulate the problems propositionally, which allows “it is not the case that…” to be affixed to them. This propositional denial is one origin of negation. But it misleads us into thinking that there is negation in the fundamental levels of reality. There is another origin of negation, which is the process of differentiation by which distinct actual states of affairs are generated. But this negation is secondary to the non-representable fundamental structures where there can be no negation. (4.12 Actualisation) Implicated in the Idea are many actualizable instantiations of the Idea, which serve as solutions to problems. But there is dramatization in actualization. It is like the development of egg, where new stages are not predictable from prior ones, and also there are many interrelated parts that interact complicatedly like dramatic actors do. Actualization in this form of dramatized development is initially spatio-temporally intensive, because it involves intensive variations in the accelerations of development and in the distributions of elements. Then, as a result of the intensive spatio-temporal dynamics, extensive and qualitative features come about secondarily.




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, (4.8), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘4.8 Essence, Possibility and Virtuality (186–8/235–7, 208–14/260–6)’, 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 4. Ideas and the Synthesis of Difference

 

4.8 Essence, Possibility and Virtuality (186–8/235–7, 208–14/260–6)

 

 

Brief summary: 
For Deleuze, Ideas are actualized, but they are not essences in the conventional sense of the term. Deleuze, following Bergson, notes two ways we may understand essences. The first is the Aristotelian way of removing everything non-essential. So if we wanted to know the essence of color, we would remove each of their accidental traits. But this gives us only an abstract and empty notion of color. The other way to understand the Idea as an essence is to consider how it implicates complicatedly (that is, how it ‘perplicates’) all actualizations it can take. To make an analogy, the essence of color under this view would be like white light, since we can break white light down into every actualizable color of the spectrum and also recompose that white light by recombining all actual light colors. This notion of the Idea is tied to the distinction between the virtual, actual, and the possible. The Idea is virtual, and the instantiations in spatio-temporal reality that the Idea somehow generates are actual. The virtual is not the possible, since the possible is a deprivation of the existant and also since the possible is not “real,” while instead the virtual is real and is also not deprived. The virtual, then, has three important features. 1) The virtual is real without being actual, since “it provides the structure responsible for the genesis of the qualities we find in actual entities”. 2) The virtual is complete without being entire, because it implies all actualizable determinations and thus is lacking nothing (it is complete), but at the same time, it is infinitely rich in such implications, and thus it can never be exhausted by its actualizations (it is not entire). 3) The Idea is differentiated without being differenciated, since it is composed of differential relations (it is differentiated) whose related parts are by themselves undetermined, meaning they lack an identity to which predicates may be ascribed (it is not, then, differenciated).

 

Summary

We have been looking at how for Deleuze, Ideas find many actual instantiations. But this does not mean for him that Ideas are essences. We could only call an Idea an essence if we mean it in a different way than we normally do, namely as instead “the accident, the event, the sense” (SH 250 qtg. DR 191/241) [But I am not sure what that means yet].  SH says that this claim [that Ideas are not essences at least in the conventional sense] “is inseparable from his claim that Ideas ‘perplicate’ or interpenetrate one another (DR | 187/236)” (SH 150-151). To explain more what he means by Ideas, Deleuze makes reference to examples in Bergson’s “The Life and Work of Ravaisson,” namely that the Idea of color is like white light and the Idea of sound is like white noise. Bergson is concerned with the question of what different colors have in common. [Since what they would all have in common is something very general about color] this inquiry  is about the question of “how we are to think, philosophically, the notion of colour. In effect, we are therefore asking the question ‘what is X?’ for colour, the question Deleuze takes to be ‘the question of essences’ (DR 188/236)” (SH 151). Bergson says there are primarily two ways to answer such a question as this. 1) With an Aristotelian manner of determining essences by removing from each instance whatever is non-essential to it:

The first is the traditional answer to the question of essences provided by Aristotle. In order to determine the essence of something, we abstract from it those properties that are inessential (or accidental), to arrive at purely those properties that every individual in the class has. Thus, ‘we obtain this general idea of colour only by removing from the red that which makes it red, from the blue what makes it blue, from the green what makes it green’ (Bergson 1992: 225). If we try to answer the question ‘what is colour?’ by this means, we end up with a concept that is abstract and empty, as we have proceeded ‘by gradual extinction of the light which brought out the differences between the colours’ (Bergson 1992: 225).
(SH 151)

2) By means of “perplication” [This one is harder to grasp, so let me quote it first.]

The alternative is what Deleuze takes up with his concept of perplication. Bergson suggests that rather than proceeding by abstraction, we proceed by [the following up to citation is Bergson quotation]

taking the thousand and one different shades of blue, violet, green, yellow and red, and passing them through a converging lens, bringing them to a single point. Then appears in all its radiance the pure white light which, perceived here below in the shades which disperse it, enclosed above, in its undivided unity, the indefinite variety of multicoloured rays. (Bergson 1992: 225)

Such an account can only be an analogy, as light is still seen in this case too much along the lines of actual phenomena, but it clarifies the interpenetrative notion of the Idea. Just as the conjunction of the two terms of the differential relation allow us to specify all of the points on a curve, the differentials of the Idea together specify all of the possible states of affairs that a given system can exhibit. Rather than achieving this by excluding what is non-essential, it does so by positively specifying the genetic conditions for each of these states. In this sense, for Deleuze, the Idea does not so much contain the essence of a state of affairs, as the grounds for the totality of possible accidents a system can | exhibit. Depending on how the elements are related to one another, different states of affairs will be generated.
(SH 151-152)

[What we need to take from the example perhaps is that if we start with white light, we see that it implies the full range of color possibilities, since it can be broken down into them, and also the white light can be recomposed were all those colors of light combined. So white is the “essence” of color, in Deleuze’s sense of the Idea, since it contains ‘perplicated’ (perhaps meaning something like ‘implicated complicatedly’) within it implicitly “the totality of possible accidents” the system of color can exhibit. I wonder then if this is like what SH says about state diagrams in his Hegel-Deleuze book. This is another of the great sections in this other book.]

[The next point seems to be that Ideas as these totalities of possible accidents are not of the same nature as the accidents themselves and thus are not of the same nature as the states of affairs, which are actualizations of the accidents. Yet, recall in the example of light that the colors together imply white light and vice versa, even though they are qualitatively different sorts of things, since one has color and the other has none. Thus the genetic conditions for states of affairs, that is, the Ideas, are immanent to the states of affairs while being different in kind. I quote to be sure:]

Clearly, if an Idea is to be understood as forming a multiplicity of interpenetrating elements, then it cannot have the same nature as states of affairs. Elements in states of affairs are determined in an opposite manner to the interpenetrative structure of perplication, namely by determining their limits (what they are not). Furthermore, we can see that just as problems were immanent to their solutions, the genetic conditions for states of affairs (Ideas) are simultaneous with states of affairs themselves. Thus, for Epicurus, atoms co-existed with the sensible objects that they constituted, and for Althusser, the mode of production co-existed with the actual relations that it determined. We thus have two series that differ in kind: actual events that occur within the world, and the ideal events of ‘sections, ablations, adjunctions’ that engender them (DR 188/237).
(SH 152)

SH will now jump [it seems by about 20-30 pages in DR] to the related topic of the Idea and possibility. For Deleuze, the Idea is virtual, and he makes three claims regarding the virtual: 1) it is real without being actual, 2) it is complete without being entire, and 3) it is differentiated without being differenciated. SH will go through these claims, all the while being sure to contrast them with the structure of possibility, since for Deleuze the virtual should never be confused with the possible (152).

1) The virtual is real without being actual. We first consider Kant’s point that there is not difference between a possible and a real object. A hundred real silver coins has the exact same value as a hundred possible ones. The only difference between them is their existential status, since the one actually exists physically and the other does not. “Now, the virtual is instead ‘Real without being actual, ideal without being abstract’ (DR 208/260)” (153). [SH then gives two reasons why this is so. The second one I grasp much better. It is that since the Idea provides the structure responsible for the genesis of actual entities’ qualities, it therefore must be real, even if it is not actual. The first idea I am not sure about. Let me just quote it since it seems to be presented as the less important idea and since I will not interpret it properly myself. Perhaps the thinking here is that actuality and possibility are different in kind, and that is already a strong enough distinction that we do not need to bring into the matter their difference in terms of reality, and then this has something to do with the issue of the virtual being real without being actual. I will quote since as you can see I got it wrong:]

Now, the virtual is instead ‘Real without being actual, ideal without being abstract’ (DR 208/260). Throughout this chapter, we have seen that Ideas are different in kind from actual states of affairs, just as differentials differ from actual numbers. In this sense, we do not need to distinguish possibility from actuality in terms of reality, as they can be distinguished by this difference in kind itself. More than this, however, the virtual is real to the extent that it provides the structure responsible for the genesis of the qualities we find in actual entities. ‘The reality of the virtual is structure’ (DR 209/260). It provides a complete account of the structure of the actual state of affairs that results from it, and is no less a real part of the object than the actual object itself.
(153)

2) It is complete without being entire. [I do not follow this one very well either. Let me quote it first.]

‘The reality of the virtual is structure’ (DR 209/260). It provides a complete account of the structure of the actual state of affairs that results from it, and is no less a real part of the object than the actual object itself. In this regard, Deleuze notes that it is ‘complete without being entire’ (DR 214/266). Deleuze’s point is that the virtual does not rely on any reference to the actual, although in fact it is always found to be associated with the object which it engenders. In this sense, it escapes from the limitation of possibility we discussed in the previous chapter. There, we saw that the concept of possibility could not give us the sense of an object, because it merely reduplicated it at a higher transcendental level of analysis. As such, a possible object is not complete, since it is dependent on the notion of a real object to which we add the concept of non-being. The completeness of the virtual is thus what allows us to understand it as giving the sense of a proposition, even though it is not whole, since ‘every object is double’ (DR 209/261).
(SH 153)

[I do not recall off the top of my head this point about possibility from chapter 3. Perhaps it is in reference to possible states of affairs suggested by the sense of a statement, from section 3.8. There was also discussion of a problem understood in terms of the possibility of its solution in section 3.9, but that does not seem related enough as far as I can tell. I am sorry that I cannot pin this one down. At any rate, we might still be able to extract the important idea here. Perhaps the notion is the following. A possible object is not complete, since we obtain it first by taking the notion of a real object and then subtracting the notion of its actual existence. But that is not how we obtain the notion of the virtual. Rather, it is perhaps like a map of all the differential relations which can find various instantiations in actuality. So it is complete in that no differential relation that could be actualized is left out, just as every variety of color is implicated in the white light. However, perhaps also it can never be exhausted by any actualizations or by any series of them, as perhaps it is infinitely rich, and for that reason it perhaps is complete without being entire, since it can never be fully exhausted. I am guessing.]

3) The Idea is differentiated without being differenciated. SH says this means, “That is, it operates according to an entirely different procedure of determination to that of the possible” (153). [The following is very complicated, and so I am afraid my summary will lack overall coherence. I will just follow the ideas as they are presented, and I will quote it all in the end so it can be understood better.] We first need to recall from chapter 1 how we differentiated things on the basis of ascribing to it its own properties, and thus we needed a concept of identity [in order to make predications to it]. So when “we describe an object by ascribing predicates to a subject,” “we differenciate it” (153). “The other procedure of determination generates structural properties by bringing into relation with each other elements which are in themselves undetermined (they are differentiated, in the sense of the differentials we looked at in 4.2)” (153) [I am not sure what might be an example of this, but perhaps the light example somehow works here]. SH explains that Deleuze uses Leibniz’ distinctions between clear and confused, and distinct and obscure in order to characterize these two sorts of organization. Recall how Leibniz traces the world back to possibility, that is, to possible worlds that God chooses from. So at first it seems that Leibniz will not provide for us a good philosophy for the notion of the virtual. However, his ideas regarding perception will give us “an important insight into the relationship between virtuality and actuality” (154). [The next idea is very complicated. We begin first with an example Leibniz gives of microperceptions, which are the small perceptions of, for example, all the tiny sounds each little wave makes, which together give us the composite total perception of the roar of the sea. What makes this seem complicated at least at first is we have these two levels of micro and macro perceptions, but we also note two languages, which each having two counterpart concepts. So we have the language of the roaring noise of the sea. It is a language of the clear-confused. The clarity comes from the roar being one unified thing that we might distinguish from other things. The confusion comes from the fact that we mix up all the constituent parts in order to make one coherent whole. Then we have the language of the individual waves themselves. This is the language of the distinct-obscure and also of the virtual (but I am not sure if the language of the whole roar is of the actual). It would be distinct if we hear each differential relation, that is, each wave by itself, but that would make the whole obscure, since we then would not be able to take in the roar as a whole mixture of them all. So the basic idea seems to be that there is always a tradeoff. Either we hear it coherently and clearly as a whole, in which case we lose the distinctness of the parts, or we hear the parts distinctly, and thereby lose the sense of the whole that the parts together are making up. Now we need to relate this to the notion that Idea is differentiated without being differenciated. The way this is so is not directly stated, so let us work with the definitions given above. SH explained that we differenciate when “we describe an object by ascribing predicates to a subject”. And something is differentiated when “determination generates structural properties by bringing into relation with each other elements which are in themselves undetermined,” and this is differentiation like in the calculus. In that case, it seems the Idea is differentiated in the sense of it being made of differential relations, but it is not differenciated, since each differentially related undetermined part is not perceived or conceived distinctly from one another, as none have an identity to which predicates can be ascribed.]

Finally, the virtual is differentiated without being differenciated. That is, it operates according to an entirely different procedure of determination to that of the possible. As Deleuze puts it, ‘one [the possible] refers to the form of identity in the concept, whereas the other designates a pure multiplicity in the Idea which radically excludes the identical as a prior condition’ (DR 211–12/263). We saw that Chapter 1 of Difference and Repetition deals at length with the claim that in order to determine something through the properties it possesses, we need some kind of concept of identity. This is because we describe an object by ascribing predicates to a subject (we differenciate it). The other procedure of determination generates structural properties by bringing into relation with each other elements which are in themselves undetermined (they are differentiated, in the sense of the differentials we looked at in 4.2). Deleuze characterises these two modes of organisation in terms of Leibniz’s distinctions between the clear and confused, and the distinct and obscure. We saw in Chapter 1 that Leibniz’s understanding of the world ultimately traces | it back to the notion of possibility, as God chooses the best of all possible worlds. Nevertheless, in his claim that perception of spatio-temporal objects is a confused perception of conceptual relations, we have an important insight into the relationship between virtuality and actuality. In the New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz puts forward the claim that perception of objects is based upon microperceptions below the threshold of the senses. In support of this theory, he gives the following analogy [the following up to citation is Leibniz quotation]:

To give a clearer example of these minute perceptions which we are unable to pick out from the crowd, I like to use the example of the roaring noise of the sea which impresses itself on us when we are standing on the shore. To hear this noise as we do, we must hear the parts which make up this whole, that is the noise of each wave, although each of these little noises makes itself known only when combined confusedly with all the others, and would not be noticed if the wave which made it were by itself. (Leibniz 1997: 54)

Deleuze interprets this passage as presenting ‘two languages which are encoded in the language of philosophy and directed at the divergent exercise of the faculties’ (DR 214/266). On the one hand, we have the language of the roaring noise of the sea. This is the language of the clearconfused. It is clear, in so far as I am able recognise the roar of the sea as a whole and take it up as an object, but it is confused as I only do so in so far as I do not take account of the elements (the waves) which together determine it as an object. On the other hand, we have the language of the waves themselves, which is the language of the virtual, and of the distinct-obscure. If, on the contrary, we focus on the noise of the waves themselves, the waves are perceived distinctly, as we grasp the differential relations that make up the noise as a whole, but also obscurely, since our focus on these particular relations precludes our comprehension of the ‘white noise’ of the sea as a whole. In contrast to Descartes’ notion of clear and distinct ideas, Deleuze’s claim is that ‘the clear is confused by itself, in so far as it is clear’ (DR 254/316). It is this radical divergence between the two languages of philosophy that allows us to give the sense of a proposition, or the conditions of experience, without simply falling into a banal reiteration of the structure of actuality.
(153-154)

 

 

 

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.

Bergson, Henri (1992), The Creative Mind, trans. Mabelle L. Andison, New York: Carol Publishing.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1997), New Essays on Understanding, trans. and ed. Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

 

 

Somers-Hall, (2.11), Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, ‘2.11 Freud’s Second Synthesis (98–111/122–35)’, 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 2. Repetition for Itself

2.11 Freud’s Second Synthesis (98–111/122–35)

Brief summary:
The pleasure principle is what makes our inner workings manage surplus excitations, trying to minimize their harmful effect. But sometimes doing so blindly leads to more damage to the system. A hungry child without its mother present might become traumatized by the distress of concluding that they will die. So the active syntheses that manage the excitations need a further principle to govern them more effectively. They need the reality principle, which defers gratification. But this requires an active interaction with the external world of objects. The child must recognize that the mother comes and goes. So her breast will arrive at some point in the future. In the meantime, the child sucks its fingers. This is a virtual object which provides excitations that lessen the inner distress. Because it is linked to a past experience of breast-feeding that it substitutes, it is a shred of the past. This past is pure, because there never was a real event when the fingers provided the nourishment they are substituting. Also, virtual objects are what link past and present “associatively,” since what is shared by such linked events of different times is not resemblances each have to the others but rather that all somehow share the same virtual object.

 

Summary

We previously examined the first synthesis in Freud, which is the habitual contraction of external surplus energies into the internal organic system. We now note that there is more to the story, because organisms do more than merely deal with their own inner workings. They behave in ways that are directed outwardly to the world. This means that there could be as well an active synthesis. SH says that in fact the second synthesis has both an active and a passive synthesis, and he begins with the active since it is more straightforward.

[Recall Kant’s complicated theory of active synthesis. An object is given in a manifold over a series of distinct moments. What allows it to become unified in our cognitions is that we have an active transcendental ego whose a priori unity provides the basis for the temporally distributed manifold to become unified. However, we cannot cognize our transcendental ego. We can only cognize our empirical ego, since it is given in intuition, which is necessary for cognition. I am not exactly sure, however, if this is what SH is saying in the following sentence:] “We can start by recalling one of the central axioms of Kant’s model of active synthesis, which was that the subject makes the object possible, and vice versa” (91). Deleuze also thinks that since we interact with external objects, this necessitates a subject or ego. For Deleuze, our ego actively unifies all our composing passive egos. In Freud’s model,

Sometimes one drive may seek satisfaction in a way which threatens the integrity of the organism. Freud therefore supplements the pleasure principle with the reality principle, which overrides the interests of the particular satisfaction of drives in favour of the pleasure (and survival) of the organism as a whole. This in turn leads to the constitution of the represented subject
(91)

The reality principle, then, postpones gratification and temporarily tolerates unpleasure as a means to later obtain pleasure (91).

SH writes, “As well as the extension of active synthesis, we also have an extension of a passive synthesis” [Although I am not entirely certain what is meant by “extension”, it seems that the pleasure principle is already a sort of active synthesis, since it operates on the passively synthesized energies, and the reality principle is an extension of it, since it governs and manages the ways this is done. The passive synthesis again is the contraction, but we will see there is an extension of it as it will be also mediated through signs.] This extension of the passive synthesis involves “the somewhat obscure notion of a virtual object” (SH 91), with the example from Deleuze being, it seems, that the child in the absence of the mother’s breast places several fingers in its mouth, thereby relating to the virtual object of its “virtual mother” (SH 91-92, referencing DR 99/123).

So, to deal with passive synthesis, we need “a separate conception of an object” (SH 92) [I am not sure but it seems SH is saying we have one concept of the object, as for example the mother, being the source of external excitations, and another separate concept of an object, the virtual object, being some sort of significatory substitute for that original object.] SH then explains why we need this other concept. His first point is “if the child is going to continue to be able to bind excitations, then clearly it needs to relate in some way to a source for those excitations” (92) [I am not exactly sure why the child cannot merely operate internally by managing the contracted excitations. Perhaps this is because of the problem mentioned before where doing so blindly can be bad for the organism, and so it needs the reality principle, which necessitates an active governing ego. And this ego needs to be aware of external objects in order to do its job. It would be nice to have an illustration. Perhaps the idea with the child is that in the absence of the mother, it will be distressed that it is not being nourished. Were it only operating internally on contracted excitations, it would not know how to deal with that distress, since it would seem to be possibly a permanent condition and thus it will die. However, by being aware of the external world where the mother is sometimes there and sometimes not, and also that the fingers are always there, it can suck on the fingers to lessen its internal distress.] Since the child needs to relate to its external excitations in order to manage its inner workings, it must have a relation to the outside. [The next point builds from an idea I did not understand from the prior section. Let me quote it again:

The pleasure principle therefore rests on the integration of excitations that are originally unbound. It’s helpful here to note that there are parallels with the first synthesis of time. Just as there the contraction of impressions led to the constitution of a subject, here the binding of free flowing energy leads to the constitution of a system capable of supporting the pleasure principle. The binding of energy is, therefore, for Deleuze, a process actually constitutive of a subject with the pleasure principle operating as an active synthesis on top of this process: ‘an animal forms an eye for itself by causing scattered and diffuse luminous excitations to be reproduced on a privileged surface of its body. The eye binds light, it is itself a bound light. (DR 96/120). Deleuze’s point is also that as the self is constituted by the integration or contraction of excitations, it simply is these excitations. This gives us the reason why Deleuze calls these contracting egos ‘narcissistic’. What they relate to is, in a sense, themselves, or an image of themselves, in the form of the excitations | that they bind. The movement of binding therefore finds satisfaction in a narcissistic relation to its own image. In this sense, the fact that the egos constituted by the binding process are narcissistic parallels the way in which the selves that were contracted habits in the first synthesis of time related not to objects, but to signs. So just as a heartbeat appears as a sign in our world that doesn’t resemble the movement of the heart itself, the binding of excitations constitutes egos that do not relate directly to objects, but to images of themselves.
(88)

This refers to a prior section. Let me quote it too:

Deleuze has said that the heart contemplates, and obviously, the heart is a part of us. What is the relation between us and our heart, and all of the other organs and constituents of organs that make us up? We ourselves, according to Deleuze, are systems of syntheses [the following up to citation is Deleuze quotation]:

The self, therefore, is by no means simple: it is not enough to relativise or pluralise the self, all the while retaining for it a simple attenuated form. Selves are larval subjects; the world of passive syntheses constitutes the system of the self, under conditions yet to be determined, but it is the system of a dissolved self. (DR 78/100)

The notion of sign is important here, because the relations between levels of the self cannot be understood as if the self were a series of distinct elements brought into relation with one another. We don’t have interactions between different substances, but interactions between levels of the same substance. Rather than a causal interaction between entities, we therefore have signals between levels. Our heartbeat appears as a ‘sign’ in our world, but this sign does not resemble the movement of the heart itself. The signs transmitted between levels are different in kind from the selves that generate them.
(65)

I still do not understand what SH means by sign here. My best guess is that we are first to understand our body as being made of many parts each doing their own sorts of habitual contractions. Our heart habitually contracts muscular movements and blood pulses. Our brain contracts nervous signals. But our brain is not contracting blood, and our hearts are not contracting nervous signals. So they are not interacting on the same level with each other. But they are communicating. The brain does not know what it is like to contract blood, but it can read the signals coming from the heart as signs of certain properties of its operation, like speed and intensity. The heart also receives information in the form of triggers that change its workings. This cannot be the correct interpretation, but I am unable to conceptualize very clearly what SH means by a sign in these contexts. At any rate, returning to the current section, his next point seems to be that since the inner and outer worlds are on different levels, they can only relate by means of signs. The point that follows seems a bit more complicated. It appears to be something like the following. The child’s passive synthesis of contraction can only deal with external excitations. When it sucks the mother’s breast, it is dealing with the excitations resulting from that process. In absence of the breast, the child’s inner active syntheses compel it to place its fingers in its mouth. But this does not mean that the child is dealing with a representation of the breast. The fingers only replicate the action of sucking. Since that action is not an object that can be represented, the excitations are contracted by a sub-representational passive synthesis. SH might really be saying something a bit different, so I will quote.]

Why might we need a separate conception of an object to deal with passive syntheses? Well, the first point to note is that if the child is going to continue to be able to bind excitations, then clearly it needs to relate in some way to a source for those excitations. This implies some kind of relationship to the outside (it needs to relate to some kind of object that generates excitations). Now, as we noted, binding does not relate to objects, but rather to signs – binding is an integration of excitations rather than a relation to a representation. This means that the kind of external object that allows for the generation of excitations will be different in kind from the actual objects of representation ( just as the heartbeat doesn’t resemble the motion of the heart). Bearing this in mind, we can understand Deleuze’s claim that ‘sucking occurs only in order to provide a virtual object to contemplate in the context of extending the passive synthesis’ (DR 99/123). Here we find a similar situation, since in sucking its thumb, the child is not interested in the actual object it relates to (the thumb), but rather in providing virtual signs for a passive synthesis. Thus, the thumb takes the place of the mother’s breast as providing excitations for the organism. Now, given that passive syntheses do not operate with representations, the child does not take the thumb to be the breast, but rather that aspect of the breast which satisfied the original binding process. This aspect is an action, or an image of an action. The thumb therefore provides a series of excitations that can be bound by a sub-representational passive synthesis.
(92)

[The next paragraph is also a bit complicated. The first point is that we see we have both an actual object and a virtual object. The next point is that the virtual object is dealing with “shreds” of the pure past. I am not exactly sure how. Perhaps in the case of the finger sucking, the child is dealing with part of their past experience of feeding. So when it does suck the breast, it is actual and present, but when it sucks the fingers, it is virtual and past. The third point is trickier. The idea seems to be that on the one hand, our virtual objects are fragments of real things. The fingers are not as complete as the breasts, since they only substitute for the action of the breast and not for all its other features. But on the other hand, we need that representation to be complete, thus we incorporate it “in the series of reals”. The reason the virtual object needs to be complete is that “a representation has to be a coherent object separate from the particular perspective from which it is presented, the process of subtraction actually changes its nature (a gesture without a gesturer is incoherent as a representational object, for instance)” (93). But I do not know why it needs to be coherent. What would go wrong if it were incoherent? Would the child for example lose the sense of an overall coherent reality? The other thing I do not understand is how the virtual object is incorporated into the series of reals. Is it by regarding it really as a food source? Or is it by regarding it really as fingers but virtually as nourishment? I will quote.]

Once we accept this account of the nature of the virtual object, we can start to piece together Deleuze’s analysis of it. The fact that we have two types of objects, one of which is actual, and one of which is virtual, should put us in mind of the notion of the pure past that Deleuze introduced in his discussions of the syntheses of time, and in fact, he characterises virtual objects as ‘shreds of pure past’ (DR 101/126). So how are they constituted? Deleuze gives the following description of the constitution of the virtual object [the following up to citation is Deleuze quotation]:

We see both that the virtuals are deducted from the series of reals and that they are incorporated in the series of reals. This derivation implies, first, an isolation or suspension which freezes the real in order to extract a pose, an aspect or a part. This isolation, however, is qualitative: it does not consist simply in subtracting a part of the real object, since the subtracted part acquires a new nature in functioning as a virtual object. (DR 100/125) |

When we are dealing with an object of representation that we intend towards, we cannot help but think of the object as a totality. We cannot help but think that if we walked around the object then we would continue to be presented with different perspectives on it. Now, the binding process isn’t concerned with the totality of the object, but only with those aspects of the object which are capable of generating excitations. It thus subtracts from the total object those aspects that are capable of creating excitations in it. It is only interested in a particular gesture, motion or aspect, and not, for instance, the object which actually moves to create the gesture. But as a representation has to be a coherent object separate from the particular perspective from which it is presented, the process of subtraction actually changes its nature (a gesture without a gesturer is incoherent as a representational object, for instance). Virtual objects are then incorporated in the series of reals. Virtual objects have to in some sense motivate behaviour – they have to be found in the world somewhere. So when the child sucks his thumb, it is relating to a virtual object, but only on the basis that this is incorporated into, or supervenient on, an actual object.
(92-93)

[So the first function of the virtual object is that it helps maintain the homeostasis of the organism’s inner workings.] The virtual object also has another function. First recall the problem of association that we discussed before. Supposedly a new present has a resemblance to a former present, and on the basis of that resemblance, we recall the former present experience. But all experiences bear some resemblance to many others. So on what basis do we say the present experience recalls some certain other one rather than any of the others it is similar to? The answer SH seems to be saying that Deleuze now gives is that the past and present moment share the same virtual object. I am not sure how to exemplify this, as the child-fingers example might not apply. SH gives the example that we see similar actions of a person in different situations. Perhaps an example would be something like the following. The child, instead of seeking out the mother or crying out for her, instead substitutes the fingers. That child later in life deals with their problems passively rather than taking actions to meet their needs. This is because in all situations of needs not being met, they share the same virtual object of the breast substitution. But I am not sure, so I quote again.]

The virtual object performs a second function, which is that, once again, positing a non-actual series paralleling the actual world allows us to explain the notion of association. Deleuze poses the following question [the following up to citation is Deleuze quotation]:

The difficulties in conceptualising repetition have often been emphasised. Consider the two presents, the two scenes or the two events (infantile and adult) in their reality, separated by time; how can the former present act at a distance upon the present one? How can it provide a model for it, when all its effectiveness is retrospectively received from the later present? (DR 129)

When we looked at the syntheses of time, the problem with understanding association as operating purely in terms of actual memory was that everything was like everything else in some way. That meant that it was impossible to explain why a particular experience conjured up this memory. For Deleuze, what ties together two series of events is that the same virtual object is at play (incorporated) in both series. This explains why a past event can still influence the present, not because of the actual events themselves, but because of the virtual object incorporated into them. This also explains why it is the case that we can see, for instance, in someone’s character, a repetition of the same relationships, or the same actions, in different situations. The subject does not reason by | analogy on the basis of their past responses, but is reacting to the same event incorporated into a different state of affairs.
(93)

[The fingers as really nourishing was never an actual, present experience for the child. They were only ever experienced as a substitute.]

In this sense, we can say that what is repeated is something that has never actually been present, but rather that the ‘same’ virtual object is present in disguise in the various states of affairs that make up the repetition. There is no first term to the series itself, however, as repetition takes place in response to the drives rather than the ego and its object.
(94)

 

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.

 

 

Pt3.Ch7.Sb4 Somers-Hall’s Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. ‘Deleuze and the Inverted World.’ summary

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

[Central Entry Directory]
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[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 7: Force, Difference, and Opposition

Subdivision 4: Deleuze and the Inverted World

Brief Summary:

For Deleuze, the actual and the virtual are not opposed terms but are rather two tendencies of the real. Thus they do not succumb to a Hegelian critique which would try to sublate them.

Summary

Previously we examined how from a Hegelian perspective, Deleuze’s ontology could be undermined by dialectically sublating his virtual and actual.

Deleuze distinguished his virtual from Hegel’s essence in Logic of Sense. For Deleuze, possibility creates a beyond or behind to appearance and it also draws a sharp distinction between existence and non-existence. Denying this second aspect is part of his rejection of Hegel’s argument. Deleuze rejects the all-or-nothing dichotomy, which allows him to characterize the virtual as existing as real but not separate from the actual. For Deleuze, the virtual and real are tendencies within the real, and not states of it. Everything is between virtual and actual rather than being “simultaneously in one or both states.” (201a)

Indeed, the pure virtual and pure actual are themselves abstractions created by taking tendencies to the limit. As Deleuze writes in Negotiations, "it's not beginnings and endings that count but middles. Things and thoughts advance and grow out of the middle, and that's where you have to get to work, that's where everything unfolds" (N, 161). In making this move, Deleuze is setting out a conception of the real as a process: "The individual is not only the result, but the milieu of individuation" (S, 43) .

[So the virtual (individuation or creation?) and the actual (that which is produced?) are both continuous with one another. Hence the transcendental is not indifferently related to the empirical, so there are no opposites to be united.]

What Deleuze means by this is that individuation, or creation, cannot be understood as something that is indifferent to that which is produced, something that comes to an end with the coming into being of the created, but it is rather continuous with the existence of the thing in question. It should be clear from the structure of Hegel's criticism that if Deleuze's conception of the transcendental field is such that ultimately it cannot be seen as indifferently related to the empirical, the further move, the unity of opposites, whereby each retains its distinctness likewise cannot be made. Without the difference between virtual and actual being pushed to the limit, there are no opposites to be reunited. (201)

But there are problems with this approach. If there is no pure actuality [then there is nothing purely self-same? and so] then we have trouble understanding how representation itself emerges. For, “it is only when the tendency toward actuality is conceived of as pure actuality itself that we develop a representational image of thought.” (201) We only get forms of the negative and finite affirmations appearing limited in themselves [thus representational forms] when we cut the actual off from the virtual, which we said was impossible. The not-A of opposition is a second order power where it is as if things are spread out on a flat surface. Instead Deleuze has us consider a stereoscopic image. [What makes the illusion of depth are the differential relations between the flat images happening on many virtual layers in the illusory depth. Difference produces the representational imagery. But I’m not sure actually what Somers-Hall is saying here:]

This understanding of representation allows us to answer the second question of the status of opposition in Deleuze's rejection of the symbol not-A, as here it is from the standpoint of representation that the opposition is being envisaged. There is therefore a tendency toward opposition in the Deleuzian conception of the real, but opposition is a "second order power, where it is as though things were spread out upon a flat surface, polarised | in a single plain" (DR, 50). Rather than this single plane of representation, or actuality, Deleuze puts forward the model of the stereoscopic image: "Stereoscopic images form no more than an even and flat opposition, but they depend upon something quite different: an arrangement of coexistent, tiered, mobile planes, a 'disparateness' within an original depth" (DR, 51). Here then, representation is seen as the result of a process, or rather as the result of creating an artificial difference between the process and the result. (201-202)

[I also cannot make the connection Somers-Hall is making between virtual and actual and process and product. Is the virtual sometimes mistakenly seen as a process of production that is independent to the product, when in fact instead they are part of the same process of actualization?]

For Deleuze, both difference and identity are tendencies in the real. And also, “the transcendental field requires identity, or extensity, in order to express itself.” (202) Hegel tries to put everything on a single plane, but Deleuze wants to give “a field of depth to supplement this plane.” (202) For Hegel, determinateness is

"non-being . . . taken up into being in such a way that the concrete whole is in the form of being" (SL, 110). This means that the concept of a difference that is not understood in terms of negation is an impossibility. It is a concept that would simply collapse back into indeterminacy.

[We cannot have determinate difference without limitation, thus a concrete whole has in it the concept of non-being, perhaps.] Deleuze cannot make difference opposition, for then it falls to Hegel’s dialectic of the inverted world, but it needs to have content or else it is too indeterminate.

Deleuze is therefore forced to walk a fine line between not pushing difference as far as opposition, as this would allow the Hegelian dialectic of the inverted world to come into operation, but giving it content, in order to avoid it becoming a pure beyond, which would leave it open to Hegel's claim against Schelling that we have an "Absolute as the night in which, as the saying goes, all cows are black" (PS, 9), where instead of inwardly saying "Om, Om, Om" (SL, 97), we are saying "difference, difference, difference." (202)

Deleuze in fact wants his difference to have determination. Deleuze writes

"In a certain sense, all Ideas coexist, but they do so at points, on the edges, and under glimmerings which never have the uniformity of a natural light. On each occasion, zones of shadow correspond to their distinction. Ideas are distinguished from one another, but not at all in the same manner as forms and the terms in which these are incarnated" (DR, 186-7). [203]

We saw before how Deleuze explains a difference that is not negation through geometries based on differential calculus. This allowed him to present a new logic that “operates outside of the categories of representation”. (203) This logic we have seen enables Deleuze to escape “from the dialectical reduction of the beyond to appearance”. (203) Hegel gives two options, but Deleuze’s is neither of these two but is rather a third: [1] “difference is not the same as it is for immediate law, so it does not collapse into appearance immediately,” [2] “it is not the difference of the inverted world, which is a difference taken to the level of opposition, so it is not open to reconciliation through contradiction”, but [3] “it proposes a new set of relations among the concepts of limitation, determination, and negation.” (203)

We noted before the role of the limit in Science of Logic. The limit shows how one thing requires another against which to be contrasted in order to become determinate; in this way the limit determines something’s being. So the limit “both distinguishes elements from one another and determines them as necessarily related to one another,” and this is also how Hegel characterizes the calculus. This means that determination is relational. The limit determines something finite by determining that thing with something outside it. But this means that it is the end of the thing, its ceasing to be, that determines it. “As we saw, this notion of the finite limit brings the idea of the infinite into play, as in going beyond itself, each finite reaches its end or ceases to be, but the overall movement of finitude persists, generating its contrary.” (204) Deleuze’s account of the calculus sees the differential relation’s components as undetermined but determinable. So we can have a purely affirmative notion of determination, [so we can view the world of appearing as made of determinable indeterminacies, somehow]. [But since determinability is a property of things in the world of appearance, ] “Deleuze is forced to move to a transcendental account in order to open up a space for difference that is not to be conceived of in spatiotemporal terms.” (204) [Hegel likewise said that we could not understand his concept of difference when using the spatialized form of understanding concepts that places them apart without being contained within one another.]

There is thus a similarity between the approaches of Hegel and Deleuze to the problem of difference. Just as Hegel argues that it is only because we are dealing with a spatialized conception of difference that we cannot reunite the world of laws and the inverted world into one common world, Deleuze argues, against Hegel, that difference is understood in terms of negation only because we base our notion of difference (implicitly or not) on an empirical difference, the idea of something being determined by not-being something else. (204)

So we have the Hegelian and the Deleuzean notion of limit. We see it in Deleuze’s distinction between sedentary and nomadic distributions.

The sedentary "proceeds by fixed and proportional determinations which may be assimilated to 'properties' or limited territories within representation" (DR, 36). It is this type that Deleuze claims Hegel has infinitized in his theory of orgiastic representation. The second distribution, the nomadic, is "no longer a division of that which is distributed but rather a division among those who distribute themselves in an open space-a space which is unlimited, or at least without precise limits" (DR, 36). It is this second kind of distribution that Deleuze takes as characterizing the transcendental field. (204)

 

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

Pt3.Ch7.Sb3 Somers-Hall’s Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of Representation. ‘The Inverted World.’ summary

by Corry Shores
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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 7: Force, Difference, and Opposition

Subdivision 3: The Inverted World

Brief Summary:

Deleuze opposes virtual and actual, and difference in itself from negativity. From the Hegelian perspective, this means Deleuze is using spatializing thinking of finite thought. If Deleuze had used infinite thought, he would have seen that the opposed terms dialectically converge, and thus this fundamental distinction in Deleuze’s philosophy does not hold.

Summary

Previously we saw how Hegel could critique Deleuze’s actual and virtual by showing that the forces involved in each are dialectically inherent to one another, thus collapsing the ontological distinction on which Deleuze bases his transcendental empiricism. But the concept of the law of forces proved tautological, so we will turn to the inverted order of law.

Recall how for Hegel the tautology A = A requires a moment of difference to prevent the two terms from collapsing into each other. “Likewise, the world of pure identity, law, opens up a world of pure difference, its absolute negation, the inverted world.” (195) The supersensible world of laws capture the permanent, the identical, in the world we perceive. But it could not capture the movement inherent within it. In the inverted world, the identical moves back into itself.

The inverted world is not simply the world of change and alteration, however, but in its very determinateness it seems to present itself as the opposite of the world of laws. "What tastes sweet is really, or inwardly in the thing, sour; or what is north pole in the actual magnet in the world of appearance, would be south pole in the inner or essential being; what presents itself as oxygen pole in the phenomenon of electricity would be hydrogen pole in unmanifested electricity". The inverted world appears to take us no further than the world of law therefore, as it simply posits the inner as being the exact opposite of the world. (PS, 97-98). In the end, it fails to supply any extra content, as it is purely formed from the negation of appearance. As such, it is just as inert as an explanatory principle. (195)

But “ultimately the separation of the inverted world and the world of laws cannot be maintained”. (195)

Our [finite] understanding understands differences as being fixed in a different sustaining element, and thus we do not understand difference on its own terms. Namely, it presupposes [relational] space as the medium that allows opposites to stand beside one another and also allows one to subsist independently of the other. But if we no longer use this spatial medium to conceive difference, then we need not create such a sharp divide between difference and that which it differs from.

"But just because I have the 'opposite' here in and for itself, it is the opposite of itself or it has, in fact, the 'other' immediately present in it" (PS, 99). Once this move has been made, Hegel's resolution of the problem of the inverted world is simple enough. (195)

For this we need infinite thought. Because law has the character of infinity, it is both self-same and different.

That is to say, instead of seeing both moments as essentially indifferent to one another, they need to be seen as implicit moments of a single unity. "The two distinguished moments both subsist; they are implicit and are opposites in themselves, i.e. each is the opposite of itself; each has its other within it and they are only one unity" (PS, 100). [196)

Take the example of revenge. From  [the law of the non-inverted world], revenge requires that we destroy our enemy (who does not consider us a person) as an individuality. But from the law of the inverted world, were we to destroy the other as an effort to reinstate ourselves, we instead are committing self-destruction [because we are co-defined by our enemy?]. If we use finite understanding these two laws are opposites, then neither case allows us to achieve personhood, because in the first one our enemy does not recognize us as a person, and in the second case we destroy ourselves as a self. But if we use infinite thought, we no longer see each subject as distinct and self-subsisting. Instead, with the infinite thought of reason, we see that [somehow] revenge affirms our personhood [I cannot explain this passage, I will go back to the finite part]:

This movement is indeed clear in the inverted world provided we do not take the 'superficial' viewpoint of the understanding. In another example of the inversion, for instance, Hegel cites the case of revenge. In the immediate world, revenge requires me to "confront [my enemy] as himself a person who does not treat me as such, and in fact bids me destroy him as an individuality" (PS, 97), whereas the law of the inverted world instead proclaims that "the reinstatement of myself as a person through the destruction of the alien individuality is turned into self-destruction" (PS, 97). These two laws are opposites, and, taken as such, neither allows me to achieve personhood, as in the first case, I am not seen as a person by my enemy, and in the second, the destruction of my enemy is also the destruction of myself as a self. When understood according to infinite thought, however, we are able to achieve a resolution of this dichotomy. The diffi- | culty emerges for the understanding because each subject in this case is seen as distinct, and self-subsisting, much in the same way that the immediate and inverted worlds were. From this perspective, it is likewise impossible for me to recognize myself in the other, so the destruction of the alien individuality can only be understood as a destruction tout court. From the perspective of reason, however, both of these moments can be reconciled, as now destruction of the alien in the other amounts to my recognition of myself therein and thus becomes a condition of my personhood, rather than of its destruction. Likewise, this equally opens the possibility of the other confronting me as a person in tum, thus generating the infinite movement of self-consciousness that Hegel takes as determining the subject as a person. Thus, from the standpoint of reason, these opposites are reconciled precisely through an infinite movement that allows them both to subsist without a radical split into two worlds. (196-197)

So we see that “dialectic of consciousness and self-consciousness is therefore implicit in the dialectic of the inverted world.” (197) When we conceive of identity in a way that excludes the possibility of maintaining differences within it, we fall into tautology in our explanations. But when we use the infinite thought of reason, “the universal nature of law can be maintained without having to abstract from all differences.” [I did not understand the time space example so I will quote it here, as it is important to Somers-Hall’s explanation.]

As we saw, explanation turns out to be tautologous because it relies on a difference being created that is in fact not a difference. Thus, for example, space and time are separated from one another in order to later reunite them in the laws of motion. The reason for the fall into tautology was essentially that identity was conceived of in such a way that it in itself excluded any possibility of maintaining concrete differences within it. It remained purely abstract. From the perspective of reason, however, the universal nature of law can be maintained without having to abstract from all differences. Instead, we have a concrete universal that allows the differences between time and space to be preserved while at the same time maintaining the necessary connections between the parts. It is important to note in concluding this exegesis of Hegel's dialectic of force that this resolution of the inverted world is only available to us as readers of the Phenomenology. The consciousness that moves through the dialectic instead remains trapped in an understanding of the world as doubled: "It is true that infinity itself becomes the object of the Understanding; but once again the Understanding falls short of infinity as such, since it apportions to two worlds, or to two substantial elements, that which is a difference in itself-the self-repulsion of the selfsame and the self-attraction of the unlike" (PS, 102). (197)

 

We now wonder how much this dialectic relates to Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism. One of the dialectic’s targets is a Kantian sort of transcendental philosophy. In Kant’s philosophy, we posit appearance, which we can understand, and a beyond to appearance that we cannot understand. Hegel’s dialectic goes further.

While consciousness may stop, as Kant does, with the notion of an empty thing-in-itself, the dialectic impels a move to the notion of law, which in tum, in order to capture the movement as well as the permanence of the phenomenal world, necessitates the positing of an inverted world. (198)

But the understanding cannot sustain an “indifferent relation relation between the immediate realm of laws and the inverted world.” (198) Then with infinite thought difference and identity are “brought together in one unified world”. (198) “Infinite thought allows us to conceive of the coexistence of contrary, and hence, to the understanding, contradictory, determinations within the same world. It does this by overcoming the understanding's desire to situate these determinations in a spatial milieu of the 'here' and the 'there'.” (198)

First the similarities between Hegel’s and Deleuze’s positions. Hegel’s concept of force is derived from Aristotle’s metaphysics. We saw there are two moments of force, it expressing itself into multiplicity and it turning back onto itself as unity. But they are only different in our thinking. [But in the Jena Logic, Hegel defines force as a possibility whose actuality is outside it. So force is understood both as force’s possibility and also as force’s externalization as its reality. But this leads to tautologous explanations, for example we might say that a falling rock unites with the ground because it has a ground-uniting force. So here force is understood as a possibility, that a rock with a ground-uniting force has the possibility of uniting with the ground, and the actuality is its uniting with the ground.]

In the Jena Logic, Hegel defines force as "the cause, as infinity, which itself is only in the form of possibility and has its actuality outside it" (JL, 47). This leads to the two moments of force being understood as, on the one hand, its possibility, and, on the other, its extemalization as its reality. Ultimately, this means that the concept of force simply relies on a doubling of the kind found in the parodies of Aristotelian physics, and this doubling leads to the inevitable tautologous nature of explanation. "To explain a rock's falling to the ground (that is, uniting with the ground) it is said that it unites with the ground not because it unites with the ground but because the force in the rock unites it, namely, the force uniting the rock with the ground" (JL, 62). These explanations come about because "the content of the appearances and of the force is the same; the totality of utterances is gathered together within the force. Internally sundered as the relation may be, it still counts as one in name, a simple togetherness; and the separating that is posited with respect to the relation is one that is alien to it, a separating of force as something possible from force as something actual; so the tautology of explanation remains the same" (JL, 63). What is therefore key to Hegel's rejection of the notion of force, and consequently the first notion of law, is that it provides a mere repetition of possibility in terms of actuality. | Within this repetition, nothing new is actually added to the explanation, since the division between the two is a division for the understanding and is not present in force itself. (198-199)

Deleuze sees the situation similarly. “we saw that Deleuze's chief concern with the Kantian schema was that by providing conditions of possibility that simply mirrored the functions of judgment, Kant was only able to offer a theory of the conditioning of experience, rather than to actually explain the genesis of experience itself.” (199) [Hegel thinks we need to go beyond finite thought, which thinks force in terms of possibility and actuality being separate, but this leads to tautologous explanations. Deleuze thinks Kant in giving the conditions for understanding only repeats the functioning of judgment and is unable to explain the genesis of experience. But for Deleuze we need to go beyond the conditioning (of possibility) of experience and go to the actuality of its genesis.] But virtuality and possibility are not the same. Possibility is opposed to reality, but virtuality is real. But conceptually the possible has all the same features as the actual, except one is existing and the other not.

In these comments, we can see that Deleuze is in agreement with the first movement of the dialectic of force and understanding. If force or law is posited in terms of possibility, then ultimately our explanations become empty. For both thinkers, therefore, the movement from possibility to actuality is the movement from the same to the same and is only a movement in thought. (199)

[Deleuze moves from a view of the transcendental as the same to the transcendental as different. Why would we not next think of these opposites being reconciled in the infinite movement of reason?]

[In order to prevent Deleuze’s notion of the transcendental as different being sublated with it as same, and thus to preserve it as different, as Deleuze wants it,] “Deleuze therefore requires a response to the immanent dialectic that Hegel attributes to force.” (199) To overcome tautologous explanations, consciousness turns to the inverted world, which “completes appearance by providing the "principle of change and alteration" (PS, 97), which was lacking in the realm of law.” (199) Deleuze opposes difference in itself to negativity, so they are in opposition. So perhaps he is using spatializing thinking, and he is “ignorant of infinite thought's reconciliation of these two moments”. (200) “Thus, from a Hegelian point of view, in separating virtual and actual, Deleuze has spatialized their relation.”

 

 

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