Gilles Deleuze and the Genesis of Real Experience

Home , Beth Lord, Iain Hamilton Grant, Levi Bryant

Mitchell Harper

This thesis is submitted to the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales in fulfilment of the requirements of a PhD in Philosophy

School of Humanities and Languages Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

June 2018

Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname/Family Name : Harper Given Name/s : Mitchell Eden Abbreviation for degree as give in the University calendar : PhD Faculty : Arts and Social Sciences School : Humanities and Languages Thesis Title : Gilles Deleuze and the Genesis of Real Experience

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

This thesis investigates Deleuze’s genetic account of real experience in Difference and Repetition (hereafter DR) as a systematic form of metaphysics. While there is broad agreement on the aims of DR as a thesis in metaphysics, there is significant disparity in accounts of how this is accomplished. The overall goal of this thesis is to examine and clarify the processes involved in Deleuze’s metaphysical account of genesis in DR (the three syntheses of time and space, differentiation, individuation, differenciation, and dramatisation), how these processes involve a metaphysics of difference (intensive quantity), how they form a system (the relationship between the virtual, the actual, and the intensive), and how this has been understood in the secondary scholarship. Chapter 1 examines Deleuze’s reading of Kantian critique for two reasons. Firstly, it outlines Kant’s account of the conditioning of possible experience in order to provide a framework from which to understand how Deleuze radically transforms transcendental philosophy. Secondly, it critically examines Deleuze’s reading of Kant’s genetic account of real experience in order to outline its philosophical limitations. Chapter 2 explores Deleuze’s reconstructive reading of Nietzsche’s metaphysics of becoming as a rewrite of Kantian critique in order to show, on the one hand, that a metaphysical account of transcendental genesis necessitates a theory of time that attempts to grasp the perpetual emergence of the absolutely new, and on the other, that it provides a preliminary sketch of Deleuze’s own metaphysical system in DR. Chapter 3 aims to illuminate the three syntheses of time in Chapter 2 of DR by examining both how they form an interdependent unity and how they have been interpreted in the secondary scholarship. Chapter 4 analyses the secondary scholarship on DR and puts forward a novel interpretation of Deleuze’s metaphysics by arguing, on the one hand, that individuation signifies a process of intensive quantity split between differentiation (the virtual) and differenciation (the actual), such that, intensities comprise both the virtual and the actual, and on the other, that this entails a metaphysical (or panpsychist) conception of thought that involves a parallelism between Ideas and sensibility.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank, first and foremost, both my supervisors, Paul Patton and Anne Sauvagnargues, for their assistance and support throughout the duration of this project. Over the years Paul Patton’s guidance has been invaluable, and this project would not have come to fruition without his countless suggestions, countless edits, and all-round patience for the twists and turns this project took. Anne Sauvagnargues’s support has also been most appreciated, and her clear and detailed seminars on Deleuze engendered a number of ideas in this project. Moreover, I was fortunate to receive an Australian Postgraduate Scholarship, and this material necessity made this project possible. Finally, of course, I would like to thank Aniela for her loving support over the last couple of years.

vi Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ...... III

Abbreviations ...... VI Introduction. Gilles Deleuze and the Genesis of Real Experience ...... 1 Chapter One. Kantian Critique ...... 13 Section One. Kantian Critique: The Conditioning of Possible Experience ...... 14 1.1. A Critique of Reason ...... 14 1.2. Kant and Metaphysics ...... 17 1.3. Kant’s Metaphysics of Experience ...... 20 1.3.1. Receptive Sensibility: The Pure Forms of Intuition (Space and Time) ...... 21 1.3.2. Active Understanding: The Categories ...... 22 1.3.3. The Imagination: Synthesis ...... 24 1.3.4. The Imagination: Schematism ...... 27 Section Two. Kantian Critique: The Genesis of Real Experience ...... 33 2.1. The Three Critiques: A Doctrine of the Faculties ...... 33 2.2. The Genesis of the Intelligibility of Phenomena ...... 39

Chapter Two. Nietzschean Critique ...... 44 Section One. A Metaphysics of Becoming ...... 45 1.1. The Universe Unlearned ...... 45 Section Two. A New Form of Synthesis: Forces and Will to Power ...... 50 2.1. Introduction ...... 50 2.2. The Unpublished Notebooks: Forces and Will to Power ...... 51 2.2.1. Inner World or Inner Will? ...... 52 2.2.2. Causation and Succession ...... 53 2.2.3. Process Over Causality: Struggle as Pathos ...... 55 2.3. The Published Works: Forces and Will to Power ...... 56 2.4. Deleuze on Forces and Will to Power ...... 58 2.4.1. Qualities of Forces: Active and Reactive ...... 58 2.4.2. The Will to Power: A Transcendental Principle of Synthesis ...... 60 2.4.3. The Will to Power: A Principle of Sufficient Reason ...... 62 Section Three. The Eternal Return ...... 66 3.1. Introduction ...... 66 3.2. The Eternal Return of the Same: Forces, Space, Time ...... 67 3.3. The Eternal Return of the Different: Deleuze’s Interpretation ...... 77

Chapter Three. The Three Syntheses of Time ...... 83 Section One. The Three Syntheses of Time ...... 87 1.1. Passive Synthesis: The Need for a Subject of Repetition ...... 87 1.2. What Does Passive Synthesis Synthesise? ...... 89 1.3. Passive Synthesis as Contemplation-Contraction ...... 90 1.4. The Living Present: Asymmetry and Irreversibility ...... 95 1.5. The Living Present Which Passes ...... 98 1.6. Signs: The Interaction of Passive and Active Syntheses ...... 100 Section Two. The Second Syntheses of Time ...... 104 2.1. The Need for a Second Synthesis of Time: The Pure Past in General ...... 104 2.2. The Passive Synthesis of Memory: The General and the Particular ...... 105

vii 2.3. The Four Paradoxes: An Argument from Representation ...... 107 2.4. Bergson’s Pure Past: The Cone ...... 113 2.5. Deleuze’s Pure Past: The Cone ...... 119 Section Three. The Third Synthesis of Time ...... 125 3.1. The Third Synthesis of Time: The Affirmation of Becoming ...... 125 3.2. Descartes and Kant: The Cogito and Time ...... 126 3.3. The Pure and Empty Form of Time: Time Out of Joint and the Caesura ...... 130 3.4. Totality and Series: The Event ...... 133 3.5. The Eternal Return: The Future ...... 137 3.6. The Three Syntheses of Time and their Interdependence ...... 138 3.7. The Dark Precursor: The Logic of Communication ...... 142 3.8. The Three Syntheses and their Domain ...... 146

Chapter Four. Deleuze and the Genesis of Real Experience ...... 148 Section One. Differentiation (Virtual) ...... 150 1.1. Ideas as Problems: Kant ...... 150 1.2. Ideas as Multiplicities ...... 152 1.3. Ideas and the Reality of the Virtual ...... 159 1.4. Questions as Imperatives ...... 164 1.5. Static Genesis ...... 167 Section Two. Intensity ...... 168 2.1. Introduction ...... 168 2.2. Intensive Quantity ...... 171 2.3. The Three Characteristics of Intensive Quantity ...... 173 2.4. Intensity: The Sufficient Reason of Phenomena ...... 178 Section Three. Individuation ...... 179 3.1. Introduction ...... 179 3.2. Simondon and Individuation ...... 182 3.3. The Model of Embryogenesis ...... 185 Section Four. The Three Syntheses of Space (and Time) ...... 188 4.1. Introduction: The Eternal Return, Depth, and Distance ...... 188 4.2. Spatiotemporal Equality ...... 191 4.3. The Third Synthesis of Space: The Eternal Return ...... 199 4.4. The Second Synthesis of Space: Depth ...... 200 4.4.1. Depth: A Topological-Structural Space ...... 200 4.4.2. Deleuze and Riemann: Multiplicities and Manifolds ...... 201 4.4.3. The Organism as a Biological Idea ...... 206 4.4.4. The Perception of Depth ...... 208 4.5. The First Synthesis of Space: Distance ...... 209 4.5.1. A New Science of the Sensible: Intensity as the Being of the Sensible ...... 212 4.5.2. Spatiotemporal Dynamisms ...... 217 4.5.3. Spatial Dynamisms ...... 218 4.5.4. Temporal Dynamisms ...... 220 4.5.5. Spatiotemporal Dynamisms: The Sensible ...... 222 Section Five. Every Thing Thinks ...... 224 5.1. The Thinker of Eternal Return ...... 224

Conclusion ...... 233

Bibliography ...... 240

viii List of Abbreviations

Works by Baruch Spinoza Ethics Ethics

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Monadology Monadology

Works by Immanuel Kant CPR Critique of Pure Reason GMM Critique for the Metaphysics of Morals CPrR Critique of Practical Reason CPJ Critique of the Power of Judgment

Works by Friedrich Nietzsche BT The Birth of Tragedy PTG Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks Z Thus Spoke Zarathustra GS The Gay Science BGE Beyond Good and Evil GM Genealogy of Morals TI Twilight of the Idols AC The Anti-Christ WP The Will to Power LN Writings From the Late Notebooks

Works by Henri Bergson MM Matter and Memory CE Creative Evolution DS Duration and Simultaneity

Works by Gilles Deleuze WIG What is Grounding? NP Nietzsche and Philosophy KCP Kant’s Critical Philosophy B Bergsonism DR Difference and Repetition EPS Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza LS Logic of Sense SPP Spinoza: Practical Philosophy Foucault Foucault Fold The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque DI Desert Islands and Other Texts (1953-1974)

Works by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari AO Anti-Oedipus ATP A Thousand Plateaus WIP What Is Philosophy?

ix Introduction

This thesis aims to examine and clarify Deleuze’s genetic account of real experience in DR. In terms of the secondary scholarship, there are many variant readings of DR, but at bottom they tend to fall in either one of two camps: (1) DR provides a genetic account of real human experience;1 (2) DR provides a genetic account of real experience as it pertains to all phenomena or the world broadly construed.2 In the most general sense, this thesis sides with the latter and argues that Deleuze works through various domains—the physical (quality-extensity systems), the biological (species-part systems), and the psychic (I-Self systems)—in order to construct a metaphysical image of the world in becoming. For even if one were to take Deleuze’s focus on psychic systems as fundamental, as some commentators do in reading DR as a thesis on the genesis of human experience, a psychic system is nonetheless involved with a biological system, which is involved with a physical system. So even the attempt to provide a genetic account of human experience would inevitably lead one to stake some claims about the nature of the world surrounding the human animal. While there is broad agreement on the aims of DR as a thesis in metaphysics, there is significant disparity in accounts of the nature of this thesis and how it is accomplished. To provide an initial overview of this interpretive disparity, which also highlights the essential aims of this thesis, there appears to be three main reasons for it—yet these three main reasons often overlap. So in no particular order: (1) Making sense of Deleuze’s genetic account of real experience, or transcendental empiricism, as a form of metaphysics—in the very least—requires an understanding of the connection between the dominant processes involved (the three syntheses of time and space, differentiation, individuation, differenciation, and dramatisation) and consequently an understanding of the relationship between the virtual, the actual, and the intensive. I will come to explain that there is little agreement within the secondary scholarship concerning these matters, and so the final two chapters

1 Joe Hughes (2008; 2009); Levi Bryant (2008); Edward Willatt (2010); Beth Lord (2011); Daniela Voss (2013); Marc Rölli (2016). 2 For analyses that read DR as a thesis in metaphysics, see: Manuel DeLanda (2002); Miguel de Beistegui (2004); Jeffrey Bell (2006); Peter Hallward (2006); James Williams (2011); Henry Somers-Hall (2012).

1 of this thesis will critically examine some of the various interpretations in the secondary scholarship with respect to my own. (2) Deleuze creates his metaphysical “system” by combining parts of other philosophies. His approach is therefore synthetic and constructive, and so like his reading of the history of philosophy, DR is a “collage” (DR xx). For this reason, it is easy to reduce Deleuze’s own thought to their source, whether to the philosophers themselves (e.g., Bergson) or to his prior reading of them (e.g., in Bergsonism). Nevertheless, his constructive approach does not negate the ingenuity of his own project. For the component parts of his own system differ—sometimes radically—from their source. Moreover, selecting certain sources as central to Deleuze’s own project can create great differences in understanding. This thesis proposes that the essential philosophical concepts and problems incorporated into Deleuze’s metaphysics in DR are: Kant’s transcendental philosophy and pure form of time; Maimon’s call for the genesis of real experience; Nietzsche’s eternal return; Bergson’s virtual-actual distinction and conception of intensive quantity; Simondon’s model of individuation; Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason, principle of the identity of indiscernibles, and monad-world relation; and Spinoza’s God as possessing an infinite power of thought. Of course, there are other sources—Freud and Lacan, Plato and Aristotle, Ruyer and Lautman, to name a few—but the simplest reason I will engage with the figures mentioned is because I believe they best characterise Deleuze’s genetic account of experience as a metaphysical system. Thus, my selection is ultimately bound up with my interpretation of the metaphysical system outlined in DR and the manner in which it is developed. (3) Making sense of DR as a form of metaphysics also requires understanding certain faculties proposed by Deleuze as metaphysical capacities, such as that of “sensibility” and “thought”. This point, however, is frequently overlooked in the secondary scholarship. For it not only makes Deleuze’s thesis speculative and highly experimental, but it also raises the troubled question of “panpsychism”: for if “sensibility” and “thought” equally apply to physical, biological, and psychic systems, then it would seem that even a rock can be said to “sense” and “think”. The overall goal of this thesis is to examine the relationship between the processes involved in Deleuze’s genetic account of real experience, to understand their systematic connection, to survey how this has been received in the secondary literature, to make

2 sense of (what I take to be) the fundamental sources of inspiration and how Deleuze diverges from these sources, and to illuminate the way in which his “system” involves the metaphysical powers of “sensibility” and “thought”. With this noted, I can begin to outline how this thesis progresses and how DR should be understood as “metaphysical”. The problem central to this thesis—the genesis of real experience—is a leitmotif that runs through all of Deleuze’s monographs prior to DR. Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson, and Proust are all cast as providing genetic accounts of real experience. Yet both “real experience” and “the conditions of genesis” differ for each of these figures. In fact, not every genetic account of experience can be considered, in the proper sense of the term (as Deleuze uses it), as a form of transcendental or superior empiricism. Deleuze’s idiosyncratic readings of Kant and Nietzsche, I argue, offer important insights into the aims of DR as a thesis in metaphysics. The first chapter of this thesis deals with the nature of Kantian critique. I begin with Kant for two reasons. On the one hand, presenting Kantian critique as concerned with the conditions of possible experience in the CPR, which involves a dualism between concept (active understanding) and intuition (receptive sensibility), provides a framework within which to understand how Deleuze radically transforms transcendental philosophy, initially, in his reading of Nietzsche (Chapter 2), and afterwards (with influence from the former), in DR (Chapters 3 and 4). On the other hand, beginning with Kant allows me to examine Deleuze’s reconstructive reading of Kant’s CPJ in order to explain that although he follows Maimon and argues that we can find a genetic account of experience in Kant—albeit only a “genesis of the intelligibility of phenomena” (Deleuze 2007: 72)—this account of genesis introduces a form of transcendence. For although the Ideas of reason are explained to be responsible for engendering the free and indeterminate agreement between the faculties, the so-called “ground” that allows for the determinate relationships of knowledge (CPR) and morality (CPrR) to form, this does not change the fixed and determinate relationships between the faculties that gives rise to knowledge and morality. Rather, it merely justifies them. I will come to explain that Kantian Critique retains a certain timelessness because it remains grounded in the unalterable nature of reason. One of the recurring arguments throughout this thesis is that a transcendental account of genesis necessitates a theory of time that attempts to grasp the perpetual emergence of the absolutely new, or in the words of Bergson, “the

3 continuous creation of unforeseeable novelty which seems to be going on in the universe” (Bergson 2002: 223). Therefore, although Deleuze identifies a genetic account of experience in Kant, it cannot be considered, in Deleuze’s sense of the term, a true form of transcendental empiricism. The second chapter of this thesis addresses Deleuze’s reconstructive and systematic reading of Nietzsche’s account of becoming (or Nietzschean critique) in NP, which he presents as a form of transcendental empiricism, “superior empiricism” (NP 46), or “pluralism” (NP 4). Nietzschean critique is comprised of the systematic arrangement of differential forces (multiplicity), the will to power as a transcendental principle that relates force and force (the principle of becoming), and the eternal return of difference as a principle for the temporal affirmation of force relations (the affirmation of becoming). It provides a metaphysical genesis of phenomena as signs, or symptoms, as all phenomena are symptomatic of a state of force relations. The idiosyncrasy of Deleuze’s interpretation will be demonstrated in two ways. Firstly, by showing how he reads Nietzschean critique as a radicalisation of Kantian transcendental philosophy by incorporating Maimon’s call for a genetic account of real experience, Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason and principle of the identity of indiscernibles, and Bergson’s theory of time. Secondly, by showing that Deleuze’s reading of the will to power as a transcendental principle of becoming and the eternal return both as the eternal return of difference and as a theory of time lack support in Nietzsche’s texts. Nevertheless, Deleuze’s reconstructive and systematic reading of Nietzschean critique creates a problematic that becomes central to DR: a true genetic account of experience (as a form of transcendental empiricism) necessitates a theory of time that attempts to grasp the perpetual emergence of the absolutely new. In many ways, as I aim to show, Deleuze’s interpretation of the eternal return in NP provides a preliminary sketch for the three syntheses of time in DR, and the schema of Nietzschean becoming provides a preliminary sketch for the metaphysical framework developed in DR. The third chapter of this thesis aims to illuminate the three syntheses of time in Chapter 2 of DR by examining how they form an interdependent unity. I will also discuss the various ways in which they have been interpreted in the secondary literature and argue that commentators have tended to read the three syntheses as either constitutive of human experience, constitutive of biological experience, or constitutive of all phenomena. I will show that although in the final chapters of DR Deleuze comes

4 to expand the three syntheses so they apply to physical, biological, and psychic systems, the three syntheses as outlined in the second chapter extend only as far as the biological domain. In this way, times emerge—living presents and virtual pasts—from the synthesis of intensive differences (affirmed in the third static synthesis of time) in the organic world. Deleuze can thus be read as using biology as a “technical model” (DR 273) which allows for the exposition of the three syntheses of time. Now, while his reading of Kant and Nietzsche play a pivotal role in his construction of the third synthesis of time, the primary inspiration for Deleuze’s theory of time in general is Bergson. For the latter’s distinction between the present and the past, or the actual and the virtual, forms an essential feature of the three syntheses and thus an essential feature of Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism. So when explaining the second synthesis of time, I devote significant space to Bergson and argue that although he is a principle influence for thinking about time, especially the nature of the pure past in general, Deleuze’s theory of the passive synthesis of Memory differs markedly to both Bergson’s account of the pure past and his reading of it in Bergsonism. The fourth and final chapter of this thesis aims to examine and clarify Deleuze’s genetic account of real experience, or transcendental empiricism, as a metaphysics of becoming. I address this issue by outlining the nature of Ideas and differentiation (Section 1), the nature of intensive quantity (Section 2), the role played by individuation (Section 3), how the three syntheses of space and time, as spatiotemporal complexes, are involved in the differenciation of the virtual (Section 4), and the movement from “Ideas” to “sensibility” via “thought” in Deleuze’s metaphysical system (Section 5). Schematically, I show that Deleuze’s genetic account of experience runs from differentiation (the virtual) to differenciation (the actual) via individuation (the intensive) and thus takes the form “indi-drama-(different/ciation)” (DR 308). But more specifically, with respect to competing interpretations, I put forward my own account by arguing that individuation (the process of intensive quantity) is split between differentiation (the virtual) and differenciation (the actual), such that intensities comprise both the virtual and the actual. Ultimately, my approach here is reconstructive, as I argue for the specific relationship between the virtual, the actual, and the intensive by examining how the three syntheses of time are involved in Deleuze’s genetic account of experience as laid out in chapters 4 and 5 of DR.

5 Implied in this outline, however, is a specific form of metaphysics. So below I present six points that provide a schematic overview of Deleuze’s metaphysical commitments in DR. Firstly, DR addresses a metaphysical problem as old as philosophy itself: that of identity. But Deleuze redirects the focus by contending that the true problem of identity lies in the way identity has been privileged throughout the “dominant” history of philosophy, which includes Plato (DR 71-77), “Aristotle to Hegel via Leibniz” (DR 38- 65), and Heidegger (DR 77-79). The issue is not that previous philosophies have been unable to adequately define identity, but rather that they have been unable to provide its genetic conditions. In such accounts, generally speaking, the opposite of identity, difference, has been conceived as secondary and mostly in terms of general differences between two or more things: “The difference 'between' two things is only empirical, and the corresponding determinations are only extrinsic” (DR 36). A red rose differs from a white rose, for instance, in terms of the quality of colour, but categorically they are instances of the same identifiable nature—whether in the form of a concept, an idea, an essence, a substance, or being—that persists over time. Deleuze takes issue with philosophies that prioritise identity over difference for two main reasons. On the one hand, they are unable to account for the genetic conditions or sufficient reason of the objects of their analysis, namely, actual identities or unities. On the other hand, the identities in question remain immune to the reality of time that perpetually brings forth the absolutely new. For when identity precedes difference the notion of repetition, which Deleuze presents as an essential feature of temporal relations, remains tied to this logic: to repeat something means to repeat the same thing, for example, according to Freud, we repeat on account of a repression of a prior state of affairs. Deleuze aims to remedy these shortcomings by providing a metaphysics of difference (difference in itself), which, consequently, provides a metaphysics of repetition (repetition for itself). Deleuze’s concepts of difference and repetition are therefore entirely co-dependent. So when difference precedes identity, both identity and the repetition of the same are, on the one hand, empirical, and on the other, derived from the repetition of differences that are transcendental rather than empirical, individual (individuating) rather than general, and internal rather than external. The problem of difference and repetition is thus neither logical nor epistemological but ontological, for as I will come to explain throughout the

6 third and fourth chapters, it provides the differential ground—the universal 'ungrounding'” (DR 289)—for his metaphysics of becoming. Secondly, DR is a synthetic work that draws upon various fields (e.g., the calculus, embryology, thermodynamics) and a variety of philosophical and non- philosophical figures (e.g., Kant, Simondon, Riemann). So the question of its relation to science, on the one hand, and philosophy, on the other, is frequently in play. Deleuze can be read in light of a number of his contemporaries ranging from, but not limited to, Georges Canguilhem, Raymond Ruyer, and Gilbert Simondon who address classical philosophical problems with the aid of contemporary science. As Deleuze writes of Simondon’s L'individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (1964), “few books can impress a reader as much as this one can: it demonstrates the extent to which a philosopher can both find his inspiration in contemporary science and at the same time connect with the major problems of classical philosophy—even as he transforms and renews those problems” (DI 89). Considering Deleuze’s use of mathematics for the construction of Ideas or multiplicities, embryology for dramatisation, and thermodynamics for intensive quantity, the same admiration could be applied to DR. The specific relationship between philosophy and science, however, is not the central concern of this work, and I will not be addressing this issue in any greater detail. Because DR is centred on the metaphysical problem of the valuation of identity over difference, then I presuppose that Deleuze uses contemporary science as a source to construct his metaphysics of becoming. He basically says as much when he states that “mathematics and biology appear here only in the guise of technical models which allow the exposition of the virtual and the process of actualisation” (DR 273). Thirdly, DR can be read as Deleuze’s initial attempt at a systematic philosophy— in his own name—that “put[s] metaphysics in motion, in action” (DR 9). As Deleuze writes in a letter to Jean-Clet Martin dated 1990,

I believe in philosophy as system. The notion of system which I do not like [me déplaît] is one whose coordinates are the Identical, the Similar, and the Analogous. Leibniz was the first, I think, to identify system and philosophy. In the sense he gives the term, I am all in favor of it. Thus, questions that address ‘the death of philosophy’ or ‘going beyond philosophy’ have never inspired me. I consider myself a classic philosopher. For me, the system must not only be in perpetual heterogeneity, it must also be a heterogenesis, which as far as I can tell, has never been tried (Deleuze 2007: 361; translation modified).

7 It is important to point out why Deleuze would hold Leibniz’s identification of system and philosophy in high esteem. “For Leibniz, a system integrates multiplicity into unity: it combines a diversity of content under the accompanying aegis of linking principles” (Rescher 1981: 118). In the simplest terms, Deleuze’s system in DR is comprised of concepts (e.g., Ideas or multiplicities, contemplation-contractions), processes (e.g., differentiation, individuation, differenciation, dramatisation), and transcendental principles (e.g., the eternal return, intensive quantity). It can be conceived as systematic in the narrow sense stated because the component parts form an organic unity. But the essential point is that Deleuze’s system is grounded in a metaphysical principle of difference; thus, it does not represent the world, or determine it in advance, in terms of identity in the concept, resemblance in perception, opposition in predication, and analogy in judgment (DR xiii-iv). Instead, the principle for the perpetual repetition of difference (eternal return) means that the system itself is open to apprehend the world in its radical becoming: the world that perpetually brings forth the absolutely new. Deleuze’s system is thus opposed to any notion of finality or ends, for as we will be shown in Chapter 3 (Section 3), it is a “system of the future”. However, considering that Deleuze creates a system of philosophy by combining parts of other philosophical systems, then in another sense he would also appear to hold Leibniz’s approach to a philosophical system in high esteem due to its constructive nature. As Leibniz comments on his own system, “This system appears to unite Plato with Democritus, Aristotle with Descartes, the Scholastics with the moderns, theology and morality with reason. Apparently it takes the best from all systems and then advances further than anyone has yet done” (Leibniz 1996: 71). Now the quote from Deleuze’s letter to Martin characterises a metaphysical system that is itself in “perpetual heterogeneity”, that is itself “a heterogenesis”. This characterisation, however, applies to Deleuze and Guattari’s “pragmatics” in ATP, where concepts can be connected with others across different plateaus in order to form new heterogenous connections (assemblages) that, in turn, form new modes of analysis, new ways of connecting with the outside, and new ways of discovering the intensive processes underlying things and their moments of stability. In this way, ATP works as a sort of conceptual handbook which allows users to create their own concepts, their own lines of flight, their own lines of thought (cf. ATP 4-5, 24-25). A system in “perpetual heterogeneity” can therefore be understood as lacking a single systematic unity. By

8 contrast, DR is quite classical in its form. For although it posits the world itself in perpetual heterogeneity, and thus in the most general sense presupposes the same “world” as ATP (i.e., one in radical becoming), as a metaphysical system—as a systematic unity of concepts, processes, and transcendental principles—it presupposes a single form. This, I argue, applies even if one were to criticise DR for lacking coherence. So in the final chapter, I critically examine the competing interpretations for the nature of this coherence and put forward my own account. Fourthly, the first two chapters of this thesis address Deleuze’s reading of Kant, his post-Kantian reading of Kant, and his post-Kantian reading of Nietzsche, so the degree to which Deleuze’s own metaphysics of becoming is “Kantian” requires introduction. Deleuze frequently criticises Kantian idealism for its inherent psychologism: “Kant traces the so-called transcendental structures from the empirical acts of a psychological consciousness” (DR 171). So while Kant has the “merit of discovering the transcendental” (WIG 138), he nevertheless provides a false image of it insofar as it is traced from the empirical. One of the leitmotifs throughout his monographs prior to DR, and in DR itself, is that if the transcendental is to explain the genesis of the empirical, it must differ in kind. It appears, then, that Deleuze simply ignores the limits set by Kant’s transcendental idealism—that all possible experience is bound to human sensibility—and by extension he simply ignores Kant’s distinction between the phenomenon and the thing in itself. With the three syntheses of time, as we will come to see, Deleuze clearly goes beyond the bounds of human sensibility, beyond mere appearances, when he addresses the problem of repetition and explains that the synthesis between intensive differences gives rise to times within the biological domain. Alain Badiou characterises Deleuze’s philosophy as “resolutely classical. And, in this context, classicism is relatively easy to define. Namely: may be qualified as classical any philosophy that does not submit to the critical injunctions of Kant. Such a philosophy considers, for all intents and purposes, the Kantian indictment of metaphysics as null and void” (Badiou 2000: 44-45). Indeed there is an element of truth in this statement. Deleuze does not accept Kant’s indictment of classical or dogmatic metaphysics because he does not submit to Kant’s critical injunction of the limits of possible experience. But in contrast to Badiou’s suggestion that Deleuze does not “return to Kant” (Badiou 2000: 45), I argue that Deleuze blurs the distinctions between pre-Kantianism, Kantianism, and post-Kantianism. He is Kantian insofar as he expands

9 upon transcendental philosophy, post-Kantian insofar as the transcendental signifies the genetic conditions of real experience, but also pre-Kantian or classical insofar as he grounds his metaphysics of becoming in a principle of sufficient reason—intensive quantity as the noumenon behind empirical diversity (DR 280)—thus making him somewhat of a contemporary rationalist. So while, for Kant, the noumenon can be thought but not known; for Deleuze, the noumenon is entirely intelligible. It is in this sense that the concept of pure difference inaugurates a new “Copernican revolution” (DR 50), which, in contrast to Kant’s necessary submission of objects to subjects, necessarily submits objects and subjects to pure or intensive differences. Fifthly, Deleuze’s metaphysics of becoming is characterised as “transcendental empiricism”, which is simple enough to define: accounting for the genetic conditions of real experience. But the question as to why he thinks this is the necessary philosophical approach needs introduction. This can be answered by noting that transcendental empiricism signifies a “science of the sensible” (DR 68), and that the essential problem lies in previous analyses of “the sensible”. Deleuze presents this problem as a failure on behalf of both transcendental idealism and classical empiricism for their inability to account for the genesis of their subject matter.

It is strange that aesthetics (as the science of the sensible) could be founded on what can be represented in the sensible. True, the inverse procedure is not much better, consisting of the attempt to withdraw the pure sensible from representation and to determine it as that which remains once representation is removed (a contradictory flux, for example, or a rhapsody of sensations). Empiricism truly becomes transcendental, and aesthetics an apodictic discipline, only when we apprehend directly in the sensible that which can only be sensed, the very being of the sensible: difference, potential difference and difference in intensity as the reason behind qualitative diversity. It is in difference that movement is produced as an 'effect', that phenomena flash their meaning like signs. The intense world of differences, in which we find the reason behind qualities and the being of the sensible, is precisely the object of a superior empiricism (DR 68-69).

In classical empiricism, such as we find in Locke and Hume, “the sensible” signifies the sensations we immediately perceive in the mind (“sense-data”), which Deleuze refers to above as “that which remains once representation is removed” (DR 68). In essence, classical empiricism is an epistemological thesis that rests upon the primacy of the sensible, such that the latter forms “an irreducible feature of experience and ground of all subsequent knowledge” (Bryant 2008: 11). In Kant’s transcendental idealism, the

10 immediate given are mere appearances, and although they are already spatiotemporally structured by the pure forms of intuition, the faculty of receptive sensibility only presents the immediate objects of perception to which concepts are applied. Thus aesthetics is merely a discipline of “what can be represented in the sensible” (DR 68). The problem with classical empiricism and transcendental idealism is therefore one and the same: they are content to assume the brute existence of the sensible as immediately given. By contrast, Deleuze’s transcendental philosophy goes beyond “the sensible” by accounting for the way by which it is “given as diverse” (DR 280). Here intensive quantity provides the reason for “the sensible” and thus makes the genesis of “the sensible” intelligible. But unlike Kant and the classical empiricists, “the sensible” is not solely indicative of our sensibility. Indeed “the sensible” refers to our sensibility in psychic systems, and in this manner Deleuze frequently frames the problem as a response to Kantianism (see: DR 68-69, 81-82), but it also applies to physical and biological systems, and as such it belongs to matter as much as to ourselves (Chapter 4, Section 4.5.5.). As I will come to clarify, transcendental empiricism provides a genetic account of phenomena, empirical diversity, or sensibility—the terms are more or less synonymous. Finally, Deleuze frequently conceptualises what appears to be human faculties as metaphysical capacities. This is the case, most importantly, with the powers of sensibility and thought. I briefly addressed the former, so the latter needs an initial introduction. Although Deleuze pays the most attention to “thinking” with respect to psychic systems (especially in Chapter 3 of DR), he also provides a largely overlooked metaphysical conception of thought, namely, the individual as the “thinker” of eternal return (DR 317). The final section of this thesis (Chapter 4, Section 5) examines this with respect to the troubled question of panpsychism. I suggest that Deleuze takes up— yet radically alters—Spinoza’s idea that God or Nature possesses an infinite power of thought. In effect, Deleuze proposes that Ideas (virtual) and sensibility (actual) parallel one another and involve a univocal power of thought (intensity). It should be evident by the outline of the thesis so far that my approach is not only selective, and thus interpretive, but also reconstructive. I admit in advance that not all the issues raised in the course of this thesis will be resolved, but by attempting to follow some of the more obscure and elusive aspects of Deleuze’s thought I hope to make a small contribution for understanding Deleuze’s metaphysics in DR as a highly

11 experimental system. At best, I hope the account given here is found to be somewhat convincing and thought-provoking. At least, I hope it sheds light on the wildly divergent interpretations in the secondary literature and shows why—due to the, at times, ambiguous nature of certain concepts and processes in DR—these divergences might arise.

12 Chapter One. Kantian Critique

Kant’s problem of “critique” provides a starting point from which we can understanding Deleuze’s philosophical engagements both prior to and in DR. The point of this chapter is to give an overview of Kant’s transcendental philosophy as a form of metaphysics. This will allow us to see how Deleuze radically transforms the Kantian project both in his reading of Nietzschean critique and in his own metaphysics in DR. Firstly, this chapter outlines the meaning of Kant’s critical philosophy in the CPR as an account of the conditions of possible experience. It introduces what Kant means by “metaphysics” both negative (i.e., dogmatic) and positive (i.e., critical), and highlights that the CPR is a thesis in metaphysics, namely, the faculty of knowledge as a “metaphysic of experience”. This will be further explained by showing that the faculty of knowledge represents the systematic connection of receptive sensibility (intuition) and active understanding (concept) by means of the imagination (synthesis and schematism). More specifically, Deleuze argues that the understanding legislates in the faculty of knowledge, meaning that it unifies the faculties and makes them harmonise. Secondly, this chapter outlines Deleuze’s reading of the systematic connection of the a priori faculties of the mind in the three Critiques, which comprises a “doctrine of the faculties”. Deleuze’s point is that the understanding legislates in the faculty of knowledge (CPR) and reason legislates in the faculty of desire (CPrR), but the faculties themselves must have already been in an initial free and indeterminate state, or “ground”, in order for them to harmonise in such a way that they give rise to knowledge and morality. According to Deleuze, Kant, being influenced by Maimon, accounts for this in the CPJ by arguing that this initial “ground” is engendered by the Ideas of reason. Here I argue that the conditions of knowledge and morality are in fact merely justified, not themselves engendered. The overall point of this chapter is to explain that although Deleuze provides a novel reading of genesis in Kant, where the Ideas of reason engender the intelligibility of phenomena, it is not as important to his own philosophy as his reconstructive reading of genesis in Nietzsche.

Section One. Kantian Critique: The Conditioning of Possible Experience

13 1.1. A Critique of Reason

It would be a mistake to state that “critique” begins with Kant, for in the CPR he refers to his era as an “age of criticism”, in which everything must be submitted to critique, including religious dogmatism and legislative authority (CPR Axi-ii fn.). No doubt, such an “age of criticism” is a reference to the age of the Enlightenment. But the critical spirit of the CPR is more specific, with a central focus, insofar as it addresses the problem of how to ground knowledge in the age of criticism. Kant’s “critique” of pure reason leads him to his self-professed discovery of reason’s sources and limits, its boundaries and capacities for tasks both negative and positive, in short, its hidden identity. Accordingly, reason itself is self-reflexive and self-knowing, and as such it possesses not only the capacity to investigate its own powers and claims but also the capacity to know its own powers and claims.

It is […] a powerful appeal to reason to undertake anew the most difficult of its tasks, namely that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of appeal which should protect reason in its rightful claims, but dismiss all groundless pretensions, and to do this not by means of despotic decrees but according to the eternal and unalterable laws of reason. This court of appeal is no other than the critique of pure reason itself (CPR Axi-ii).

Kant takes reason to be pure and a priori, universal and necessary, timeless and unalterable; thus, an investigation into the nature of reason need not rely upon anything “outside” of reason itself, which is to say, anything empirical or a posteriori, particular or contingent, timely or alterable, psychological or historical. To say that only reason can be the judge of reason is to say that the critique of reason is an immanent task, as Deleuze writes, “immanent critique—reason as the judge of reason—is the essential principle of the so-called transcendental method” (KCP 3). This is why Kant states that the CPR does not provide a “critique of the books and systems of pure reason” but rather a critique of the “pure faculty of reason itself” (CPR A13/B27; cf. Axii). In saying this, however, it is not always clear in the CPR what reason signifies, and therefore what needs to be brought under critique. In the broadest sense possible, reason represents “the entire higher faculty of cognition” from which all a priori cognitions are traced (CPR A835/B863), and as such reason could just as well be called the “mind” [Seele]. But from this broad characterisation Kant shows that reason is, on

14 the one hand, the source of knowledge (as outlined in the “Transcendental Analytic”), and on the other, the source of illusion (as outlined in the “Transcendental Dialectic”). Regarding the former, Kant writes of the CPR: “this work is difficult and requires a resolute reader to think himself little by little into a system that takes no foundation as given except reason itself, and that therefore tries to develop cognition out of its original seeds without relying on any fact whatever” (P 4:274). So in order for reason to “know itself” it must know not only all possible a priori cognitions but also how they systematically connect, which is to say, how they harmonise. Kant states that he worked on this problem “synthetically, namely by inquiring within pure reason itself, and seeking to determine within this source both the elements and the laws of its pure use, according to principles” (P 4:274). Such a synthetic approach is seen in the way Kant unveils the concepts and principles of speculative cognition, one by one, from the pure forms of intuition (space and time), to the categories of the understanding, to their connection with sensibility in judgment via the imagination (synthesis and schematism), to the regulative role played by reason. And so by systematically connecting the a priori faculties of the mind, Kant provides the conditions of possibility for knowledge or experience. The essential point is that knowledge or experience is determined in the relation between sensible intuition and categories of the understanding. Anything that lies outside the bounds of sensible intuition—such as the Soul, the World, or God—is “thinkable” (noumenon) but not “knowable” in the proper sense of the term. Concerning the nature of reason as the source of illusion, the faculty of reason, more specifically, signifies a faculty of a priori principles, whereby a principle is a form of cognition in which a particular is cognised in the universal through concepts (CPR A299-300/B356-7). Reason as such is syllogistic or inferential: “a concept of the understanding being given, reason looks for a middle term, that is to say another concept which, taken in its full extension, conditions the attribution of the first concept to an object” (KCP 16). This can be made sense of with reference to the often-quoted “Socrates is mortal” syllogism. Firstly, the major premise is given as a universal rule by the empirical understanding (All men are mortal). Secondly, the minor premise makes a judgment by subsuming a particular (Socrates) under a general concept (man) by means of a rule (Socrates is a man). And thirdly, reason concludes by drawing an inference or syllogism by determining the minor premise from the major premise (Socrates is mortal) (CPR A304/B360-1). In sum, reason conditions the attribution of “All men are

15 mortal” to the object “Socrates is a man” and concludes “Socrates is a mortal”. Yet this is only a logical example of syllogistic reasoning. The true novelty of Kant’s account is the transcendental use of reason, where the syllogistic nature of reason works on the a priori categories of the understanding. Here reason “frees” the relational categories of the understanding (substance, causality, community) from the bounds of possible experience (sensible intuition) by extending them to the level of the unconditioned (CPR A409/B435). This is due to what Kant calls the “supreme principle” of pure reason (CPR A308/B365), which he formulates as follows, “if the conditioned is given, then the whole sum of conditions, and therefore the absolutely unconditioned (through which alone the conditioned was possible) is also given” (CPR A409/B436). So in its logical use, reason draws connections between a major premise and a minor premise. But in its transcendental use, reason aims for the complete systematic unity of knowledge by attempting to find the “conditions” for every “condition” such that it goes beyond the bounds of sensible intuition by seeking the final reason or ground, that is, the “unconditioned” (CPR A331/B388). Kant outlines three pure concepts of reason central to the history of metaphysics that seek the “unconditioned”. From the category of substance (i.e., an unalterable subject) comes the “Soul”, namely, the Idea of the absolute (unconditioned) unity of thinking substance, the ultimate ground of all thought (CPR A334/B391). From the category of cause (i.e., every event necessarily has a cause) comes the “World”, namely, the Idea of the absolute unity of the series of objects and events in space and time (CPR A334/B391). And from the category of community (i.e., causal reciprocity) comes “God”, namely, the Idea of the absolute unity of the conditions of all objects of thought in general, or simply, the ultimate ground of everything that could possibly be thought (CPR A334/B391). So whenever Kant refers to the “Soul”, the “World”, or “God” he is not referring to objects themselves but rather to concepts produced from reason, namely, “concepts of reason” or “transcendental Ideas”. The Ideas of reason are indeed objective, in the sense that they are objects of reason, but such objectives remain “indeterminate” or “problematic” because they could never be given in sensibility (CPR A642/B670). Kant argues that the central problem of traditional metaphysics lies in the fact that its proponents, on the one hand, took the Ideas of reason as things in themselves, and on the other, treated them constitutively, that is, as objects of knowledge. This comes hand in hand with the way Kant reads the history of (European) metaphysics as an endless battlefield of illusory claims to

16 knowledge, where one critique of metaphysical error was predicated on another erroneous metaphysical system, which snowballed, on and on, only to be halted by his categorisation of them in toto as illusions inherent to reason (cf. CPR Avii-viii; Bxiv- xxv; A422-423/B450-45; A751/B779). And so all traditional metaphysics fits under the rubric of what Kant titles “dogmatism”, which means that its proponents failed to provide a critique of the powers of pure reason before laying out its a priori principles and concepts (CPR Bxxxv). As Kant candidly states, “All attempts which have hitherto been made at establishing a metaphysics dogmatically may and must therefore be regarded as though they have never occurred” (CPR B23). Kant thereby discards traditional metaphysics to the dustbin of history on the grounds that its proponents were blind to what he credits himself as discovering: reason’s true identity. So when reason is left to its own devices, it is responsible for producing illusory claims to knowledge of concepts central to the history of traditional metaphysics (Soul, World, God), but when limited and given its proper coordination, it becomes the source of the a priori faculties of the mind which provide knowledge or experience.

1.2. Kant and Metaphysics

Kant’s genius is to show that reason is the problem, not metaphysics per se. For even though Kant deems traditional metaphysics problematic, he continues to hold metaphysics in the utmost esteem: “Metaphysics is the spirit of philosophy. It is related to philosophy as the spirit of wine is to wine. It purifies our elementary concepts and thereby makes us capable of comprehending all sciences. In short, it is the greatest culture of the human understanding” (LM: Ak. 29:940). The overall aim of the CPR is to revitalise the spirit of metaphysics, but bearing in mind Kant’s antagonism towards traditional metaphysics, it is not immediately obvious in the bulk of the CPR that his account of knowledge or experience is a form of metaphysics. For Kant, metaphysics is “indispensable” because it is grounded upon the unalterable truth of reason (CPR B18), and thus metaphysics and rationalism go hand in hand. This is why he titles his own metaphysics “critical rationalist” (LM Ak 28:619, 953, 992), as the “critical” aspect of his rationalism represents the establishment of the limits and structure of this a priori knowledge through reason’s self-critique. But in doing so, as Karl Ameriks notes, Kant changes the whole procedure of metaphysics, for metaphysics is no longer “about

17 objects but rather about reason—that is, about the structure of human cognition” (Ameriks 1992: 259). We see this in the way Kant presents three positive senses of the term “metaphysics”: the critique of pure reason, transcendental philosophy, and the metaphysics of nature and morals. All in all, these “levels” of metaphysical reasoning constitute the spirit of philosophy in the genuine sense. As Kant outlines in his Lectures on Metaphysics, the critique of pure (speculative) reason demarcates the boundaries and possibility of all synthetic a priori cognitions in the speculative interest of reason; transcendental philosophy contains the highest principles of synthetic a priori judgments; and metaphysics is the “science or system that sets up all principles of possible synthetic a priori judgments” given in transcendental philosophy (LM 29:970). The purpose of the critique of pure reason, then, is “to change the old procedure of metaphysics” (CPR Bxxii), as it serves to “purge rather than expand our reason” in order to guard it from error (CPR A11/B25). Simply put, the critique of pure reason outlines the possibility of all synthetic a priori cognitions, while transcendental philosophy contains such synthetic a priori judgments. “Transcendental philosophy is here only an idea, for which the critique of pure reason is to outline the entire plan architectonically, i.e., from principles, with a full guarantee for the completeness and certainty of all the components that comprise this edifice” (CPR A13/B27). But Kant also states that he only “marks out the whole plan” of metaphysics in the CPR, “both with regard to its limits and with regard to its inner organisation” (CPR Bxxii). In this case, “metaphysics” refers to a metaphysics of nature (speculative) and a metaphysics of morals (practical), which Kant had long intended to write after CPR. The fundamental point is that both the critique of pure reason and transcendental philosophy comprise a form of metaphysics in a narrow sense, while his proposed metaphysics of nature and morals signify metaphysics in a broad sense.3 This is why in a letter to Marcus Herz (May 11, 1781) Kant describes the CPR as difficult because it “includes the metaphysics of metaphysics” (C Ak. 10:269). The essential point about transcendental philosophy is that it does not concern objects themselves (whether physical or supersensible) but rather the manner by which we know objects a priori (CPR A11-2/B25). Characteristically, “a priori” means prior

3 “Thus the metaphysics of nature as well as morals, but above all the preparatory (propaedeutic) critique of reason that dares to fly with its own wings, alone constitute that which we can call philosophy in a genuine sense” (CPR A850/B878).

18 to experience, but for Kant it also means universal and necessary (KCP 4). Thus, “the transcendental” refers to the a priori (universal and necessary) capacities of the mind that constitute the conditions of possibility for knowledge and experience. As Deleuze clarifies, the faculty of knowledge has both a higher and lower form: in its higher form, knowledge is a transcendental synthesis of a priori faculties of the mind; in its lower form, it is an empirical synthesis which “[finds] its law in experience and not in itself” (KCP 4). And so while the higher form of knowledge is a synthesis of a priori faculties, it applies only to experience: “although all knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience” (CPR B1). With this in mind, Kant argues that transcendental philosophy addresses the “real problem of pure reason” (CPR B19). In the first edition of the CPR, he lays out the problem of pure reason quite generally: “What, and how much, can understanding and reason know independently of all experience?” (CPR Axvii). But in the Prolegomena and the second edition of the CPR, he specifies this problem with a more specific question: How are synthetic a priori judgments possible? (CPR B19; cf. P 4:276). Ultimately, this allows Kant to unify all investigations of the CPR under a single problem, and in effect the solution to this problem also answers the question of what, and how much, the understanding and reason can know independently of experience. At times Kant titles the synthetic relation of the transcendental predicates to appearances “transcendental philosophy” and subsequently equates transcendental philosophy with his solution to the main transcendental question in the faculty of knowledge, namely, how are synthetic a priori judgments possible (Progress 20:260, 273-4, 281, 286; LM 28:541, 29:949). But in both editions of the CPR and the Prolegomena, transcendental philosophy was seen as a philosophy of mere speculative reason (CPR A15/B29; cf. P 4:280). In fact, Kant was explicit that the practical interest of reason and morality did not belong to transcendental philosophy.4 But by the time of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals—and even though it was published two years prior to the second edition of the CPR—transcendental philosophy came to include the practical interest of reason and morality. Then again, in the CPJ, transcendental philosophy underwent further development as it came to include

4 “Hence, although the supreme principles and basic concepts of morality are a priori cognitions, they still do not belong in transcendental philosophy. For they do of necessity also bring [empirical concepts] into the formulation of the system of pure morality: viz., the concepts of pleasure and displeasure, of desires and inclinations, etc., all of which are of empirical origin” (CPR A14-5/B28-9).

19 aesthetic and teleological judgments.5 All in all, Kant came to extend the main transcendental question—the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments—beyond speculative cognition so that it included moral, aesthetic, and teleological experience. Therefore, all human experience came to be grounded in the question of synthetic a priori judgments. So to be more precise, in the CPR, the transcendental analytic is responsible for knowledge in the domain of transcendental philosophy: “the proud name of an ontology, which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognitions of things in general in a systematic doctrine (e.g., the principle of causality), must give way to the modest one of a mere analytic of the pure understanding” (CPR A247/B303).

1.3. Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience

The faculty of knowledge can be considered, in the words of H.J. Paton (1936), as a “metaphysic of experience”. But considering the breadth of transcendental philosophy then it would be more accurate to title it a “metaphysic of (speculative) experience”. The essential point about the faculty of knowledge is that each a priori faculty of the mind has its own capacity (e.g., sensibility, imagination, understanding), but in order for knowledge to be at all possible these faculties must be able to form a unity. In the simplest sense, (speculative) knowledge is possible insofar as sensible intuitions conform to the categories of the understanding, as although all knowledge begins with experience, it does not arise from it. This means that the limit of knowledge is bound by the limit of sensible experience. Thus, the faculty of knowledge is constituted by the passive faculty of intuition (receptive sensibility) and the active faculties of the imagination (synthesis and schematism) and the understanding (unity or identity). Deleuze explains that a problem of harmony lies at the heart of Kant’s account of knowledge or experience, but unlike classical rationalism, Kant’s problem of harmony no longer concerns the union of two substances; instead, it concerns the union of two capacities of the same subject. “The fundamental idea of what Kant calls his ‘Copernican Revolution’ is the following: substituting the principle of a necessary submission of objects to subject for the idea of a harmony between subject and object (final accord)” (KCP 12). As Kant writes,

5 “[T]hus this problem of the critique of the power of judgment belongs under the general problem of transcendental philosophy: How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?” (CPJ 5:289).

20 Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind […] Further, these two faculties or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding is not capable of intuiting anything, and the senses are not capable of thinking anything. Only from their unification can cognition arise (CPR A51/B75).

So the central problem in explaining knowledge as experience is explaining how the faculties of receptive sensibility (intuition) and active understanding (concept) harmonise, that is to say, how they differ in nature yet form a determinate relationship. Framed alternatively, how do the categories of the understanding apply to the sensible manifold of appearances? Deleuze addresses this by arguing that the understanding “legislates” in the faculty of knowledge. And “to legislate” means three things: (1) to determine a purpose or aim, (2) to determine an object, and (3) to determine the other faculties involved in its purpose or aim (DI 57). In what follows, I provide a brief overview of how the understanding legislates in the faculty of knowledge, namely, by subsuming sensible intuitions under its categories by means of the imagination (syntheses and schematism).

1.3.1. Receptive Sensibility: The Pure Forms of Intuition (Space and Time)

Kant’s theory of knowledge begins with the faculty of sensibility, which is conditioned by the a priori forms of intuition (space and time). Kant argues for this point in the “Transcendental Aesthetic” by drawing upon a matter-form distinction: the a posteriori matter of sensation (empirical intuition) is conditioned by the pure a priori forms of intuition (space and time). Accordingly, the a priori forms of intuition provide the first requisites for the central problem of transcendental philosophy, namely, the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments (CPR B73). It is a crucial feature of Kant’s Copernican turn because it shows that all possible experience relates to “mere appearances” (CPR Bxxix; A45/B62; A49/B66) rather than things in themselves. Although at times Kant refers to the faculty of intuition as an a priori “representation”, more precisely, as Deleuze explains, it is an a priori “presentation”: “The phenomenon appears in space and time: space and time are for us the forms of all possible appearing, the pure forms of our intuition or our sensibility. As such, they are in turn presentations; this time, a priori presentations” (KCP 7). For strictly speaking, an a prior

21 “representation”, such as a category of the understanding or synthesis of the imagination, is a “re-presentation”, that is, an active taking up of that which is presented (KCP 7). Kant’s methodological approach explains that although we cannot peek behind the curtains of appearances, we can nevertheless determine the conditions which explain how these curtains were initially drawn. He argues that if we take away the appearance of objects from the concept of space, and the appearance of successive moments from the concept of time, we are left with the impression of space and time as underlying a priori forms (CPR A23-4/B38-9; A29-31/B46). For we could neither imagine a body without space nor the relation of moments without time. Space is the a priori form of outer intuition, which structures outer appearances, that is, appearances outside of ourselves; and time is the a priori form of outer intuition and inner intuition, which structures both outer appearances and inner appearances, such as non-spatial sensations of inclinations, desires, and emotions. The essential point is that the pure form of time has primacy, as it forms the immediate condition of inner appearances and the mediate condition of outer appearances (CPR A34/B51). Deleuze continually stresses the primacy of time and its liberation from spatial movement as a revolution of Kantianism (KCP vii; Kant Seminars 14/03/1978 and 21/03/1978; ECC 27). He argues that time “is the form of everything that changes and moves, but it is an immutable Form which does not change” (KCP viii); as Kant puts it, “time itself does not alter, but only something which is in time” alters (CPR A41/B58). And so all change and movement—which, for Kant, is change and movement of appearances—occurs within time. In this manner, the pure form of time provides a pure and empty order of relations. The overall point to draw from the “Transcendental Aesthetic” is that the a priori forms of space and time cannot themselves be perceived, but that which is perceived—empirical intuitions or mere appearances—is always structured by the a priori forms of space and time.

1.3.2. Active Understanding: The Categories

In the “Transcendental Analytic”, Kant explains how “mere appearances” become constituted as objects of experience proper, that is, as phenomena. For although we perceive empirical intuitions, they are not yet “objects” in the full sense of the term (even though at times Kant refers to mere appearances or empirical intuitions as “objects of intuition”). For our experience or knowledge of “objects” requires—in

22 part—the conditions of objectivity. This is where the faculty of the understanding comes in: “Pure reason leaves everything to the understanding—the understanding alone applying immediately to the objects of intuition” (CPR A326/B383-4). In his lectures on metaphysics, Kant follows Aristotle when he states, “Ontology is supposed to be the science that deals with the general predicates of all things” (LM 29:784). Yet Aristotle acquires the general predicates from experience, in other words, the general predicates are empirical concepts. In contrast, Kant claims to acquire—that is, “discover”—the general predicates through a critique of pure reason. In this sense, the categories are pure (contain nothing sensory whatsoever) and a priori (independent of experience). To give a crude summary, Kant derives the categories through a transcendental deduction, which explains that knowledge is constituted by objects rather than mere appearances. The essential conclusion of the deduction is that the understanding provides the “objecthood” of objects by supplying the “categories”, the pure “concepts of an object in general” (CPR B28), the “transcendental predicates” (CPR B114), the “ontological predicates” (CPJ 5:181), or the “object = x” of an object in general (CPR A105 and A109). So while all objects of experience have specific empirical characteristics, transcendentally, they all share the same underlying ontological form. For instance, not every object is red, and not every object is a rose, but every object—including red things, roses, and red roses—are substances, are the cause and effect of other objects, and are involved in a relation of reciprocity with other objects. (Notably, there are twelve categories in total.) In sum, the categories are responsible for unifying the manifold of appearances and producing, in turn, objects of experience proper. The application of the categories to appearances provides the fundamental conditions of possibility for knowledge as experience. However, the categories and the pure forms of intuition (space and time) are a priori faculties of the mind, while empirical intuitions (the matter of sensation) are derived from “outside” the mind. Therefore, sensibility and understanding differ in kind, or empirical intuitions and categories “are entirely un-homogeneous” (CPR A137/B176). And so in order for the categories to have objective validity, Kant must demonstrate how they apply to empirical intuitions. He accounts for this by arguing that the categories of the understanding (the abstract) apply to the sensible manifold (the concrete) by means of a mediate faculty, the imagination, which both synthesises and schematises

1.3.3. The Imagination: Synthesis

Commencing with the synthesis of the imagination, Kant defines synthesis in general as “the action of putting different representations together with each other and comprehending their manifoldness in one cognition. Such a synthesis is pure if the manifold is given not empirically but a priori (as is that in space and time)” (CPR A77/B103). In this sense, as Deleuze puts it, the synthesis of the imagination bears on “the diversity of space and time themselves” (KCP 13). However, there is also an empirical synthesis of the imagination that bears “on diversity as it appears in space and time” (KCP 13). So the main concern here is how the imagination carries out two forms of active and empirical syntheses, the “synthesis of apprehension” and the “synthesis of reproduction”, and the essential point is that it does so in conformity with the activity of the understanding and its categories, namely, “the synthesis of recognition”.6 Firstly, the “synthesis of apprehension” is “aimed directly at the intuition” (CPR A99) and is responsible for combining moments in succession in a single intuition, one after the other. Kant explains that every empirical intuition contains a manifold (or diversity) that distinguishes the time in the succession of impressions from one another, and thus every manifold forms a single moment, namely, an “absolute unity” (CPR A99). For example, standing in proximity to a large building, the parts (appearances) we independently perceive—bottom, top, middle—are synthesised such that one successively follows the other. The other point to keep in mind is that underlying this empirical synthesis is a pure or transcendental synthesis of apprehension, which gathers together an original combination of the pure forms of space and time themselves (cf. CPR A100; KCP 13), and thus makes the empirical synthesis of apprehension possible. Secondly, the unity of these parts in the same temporal series requires another synthesis, the “synthesis of reproduction in the imagination” (CPR A100), which reproduces the preceding parts of the apprehension with the parts following (KCP 13). As explained previously, although all appearances are “in” time, time as an a priori form neither changes nor passes away; thus, in order for experience to have any form of

6 There is a wealth of scholarship dedicated to understanding Kant’s Transcendental Deduction by addressing the differences between the A-Deduction and B-Deduction (see especially: Guyer 1992: 123- 160; Allison 1983: 131-172; Henrich 1994: 123-208; Longuenesse 1998: 35-80; Longuenesse 2006: 129- 168). Here I am referring solely to the A-Deduction because Deleuze’s reading is concerned with the active role the imagination plays in the synthesis of apprehension and reproduction (KCP 13).

24 continuity, the imagination must be able to retain the appearances that have passed away (in time). Kant asks us to imagine drawing a line in thought: if we were unable to retain the preceding representation (e.g., the first part of the line) and reproduce it with the manifold following (e.g., the next part of the line) it would be impossible to have a whole representation (e.g., a straight line) (CPR A102). He argues that each moment that was apprehended, and that passed away, is incorporated within the present moment of experience. For example, we look at a building, first, we focus our attention at the bottom, then at the top, and afterwards at the middle. Through the synthesis of reproduction, the middle part we perceive includes our previous perception of the top and bottom parts, the top part we perceive includes our previous perception of the bottom part. The temporal sequence involves a reproduction of parts passed with parts present. In this manner, our overall experience of the building is given consistency. But again, underlying this empirical synthesis is a transcendental synthesis, which conditions the form of empirical association involved in the synthesis of empirical reproduction. Thirdly, although the imagination apprehends the parts in succession and reproduces them as a unity, we still require another synthesis—“the synthesis of recognition in the concept” (CPR A103)—that allows us to recognise that the apprehended parts reproduced in the present moment belong to the same temporal series. Kant is hereby accounting for the unity of sensible diversity over time. “Without consciousness that that which we think is the very same as what we thought a moment before, all reproduction in the series of representations would be in vain. For it would be a new representation in our current state” (CPR A103). The “synthesis of recognition in the concept” is the most difficult of the three because Kant also introduces the idea that a unity of consciousness is involved in the synthesis. On Deleuze’s reading, only the syntheses of apprehension and reproduction are acts of the imagination (KCP 13), and by themselves they are not sufficient for knowledge, as knowledge necessitates two other conditions: (1) “consciousness, or more precisely the belonging of representations to a single and same consciousness within which they must be linked”, namely, the “I think”; and (2) a necessary relation to the “object in general” or “object = x” (recognition) (KCP 13-14). On this latter point, we see that the “synthesis of recognition in the concept” belongs to an entirely different faculty, the understanding and its categories. Thus, the connection between the imagination (apprehension and

25 reproduction), the unity of consciousness (I think), and the understanding (recognition) needs to be clarified. Deleuze’s argument is that the categories provide the a priori rules which, on the one hand, unify the syntheses of apprehension and reproduction (“[the understanding] is the unity of synthesis and expressions of that unity”), and on the other, unify consciousness (“[t]he unity of the ‘I think’ is the understanding itself”) (KCP 14). On the first point, Kant writes that “all synthesis, through which even perception itself becomes possible, stands under the categories, and since experience is cognition through connected perceptions, the categories are conditions of the possibility of experience, and are thus also valid a priori of all objects of experience” (CPR B161). In short, the third synthesis presupposes the predication of the object form (categories) to the syntheses given in the imagination (apprehension and reproduction). It allows us to recognise that the parts of the manifold given in the imagination are parts of the same object. As Joe Hughes clarifies, “Recognition is a rule-governed synthesis, and the categories are precisely the rules for the unity of synthesis” (Hughes 2009: 96). For without the categories, we would have no consciousness of a unified synthesis—we would perceive a part of the building as one appearance, another part of the building as another appearance, and another part of the building as another appearance, but we would not be able to recognise that they are parts of a single object (the building). On the second point, the unity of consciousness (“I think”) is both consciousness of the conceptual unity of the manifold and a unity itself. As Deleuze writes, “My representations are mine in so far as they are linked in the unity of a consciousness, in such a way that the 'I think' accompanies them” (KCP 14). Significant in this regard is Kant’s introduction of the need for a principle of apperception from the B-version of the CPR: “The I think must be able to accompany all my representations: for otherwise something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is as much as to say that the representation would either be impossible or else at least would be nothing to me” (CPR B131-2). For if each of these representations (and, by extension, representations over time) were not able to be recognised as belonging together in a single and same consciousness—notably, they need not actually be recognised as belonging together, as much of our experience is unconscious and unreflective—we would be left with a random assortment of appearances. The point Deleuze wants to stress is that these representations are not linked to the unity of consciousness unless

26 they are related to an object form: “representations are not united in a consciousness in this way unless the manifold that they synthesise is thereby related to the object in general” (KCP 14; translation modified). And so like the syntheses of apprehension and reproduction, the necessary unity of the “I think” is carried out by the activity of the categories (KCP 14; CPR B134 fn.). Therefore, the conditions that make possible the unity of consciousness and our knowledge of objects in general is one and the same. Hence Deleuze writes that “the real (synthetic) formula of the cogito is: I think myself and in thinking myself, I think the object in general to which I relate a represented diversity” (KCP 14). In sum, the third synthesis shows that the categories of the understanding provide the object form of objects, the unity of the syntheses of the imagination (apprehension and reproduction), and the necessary unity of consciousness (“I think”). Knowledge, whether of outer objects of experience or of oneself, involves the unification of the active understanding and receptive sensibility; but insofar as the former apply to the latter, “[t]he imagination embodies the mediation, brings about the synthesis which relates phenomena to the understanding” (KCP 15). So the essential point is that a spatiotemporal diversity (empirical intuition) is subjected by the syntheses of the imagination (apprehension and reproduction) in accordance with the activity of the understanding (recognition) (KCP 15).

1.3.4. The Imagination: Schematism

In another sense, the imagination schematises. On the question of what the understanding does with its concepts, or its unities of synthesis, Deleuze states, “It judges” (KCP 16). In short, the categories are conceptual determinations that make judgment possible; the subsumption of a sensible diversity under the categories is an act of judgment; and an act of judgment is constitutive of knowledge. In “On the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding”, Kant accounts for the unification of receptive sensibility and active understanding in an act of judgment by explaining how empirical intuitions are subsumed under the categories, or, put otherwise, how the categories apply to empirical intuitions (CPR A137/B176). The question is: do the categories apply directly to the a priori forms of intuition, or do they apply directly to the matter of the a priori forms of intuition, namely, empirical

27 intuitions or mere appearances? Due to the fact that the categories (a priori) and empirical intuitions (a posteriori) differ in kind—or are “entirely un-homogenous” (CPR A137/B176)—then the former are not directly applicable to the latter. As Henry Allison suggests, in the “Transcendental Deduction”, Kant already accounted for the application of the categories to human sensibility “by connecting the categories first with the forms of sensibility (particularly time) through the transcendental synthesis of the imagination, and then with the empirical content of sensibility through the synthesis of apprehension” (Allison 1983: 175). But in the “Schematism”, Kant provides the conditions under which empirical intuitions are subsumed under the categories (Allison 1983: 176). Regarding this point, Kant writes,

there must be a third thing, which must stand in homogeneity with the category on the one hand and the appearance on the other, and makes possible the application of the former to the latter. This mediating representation must be pure (without anything empirical) and yet intellectual on the one hand and sensible on the other. Such a representation is the transcendental schema (CPR A138/B177).

Kant is arguing that because there is no direct connection between categories and empirical intuitions, their only means of connection is through a mediate representation, transcendental schema, which shares something in common with intellectual categories and sensible intuitions. Kant discovers the mediating role of transcendental schemata by examining the pure form of time (inner sense) as both present in all appearances and capable of being conceptualised by the categories. In other words, the a priori form of time is the secret link between the categories and empirical intuitions.

The concept of the understanding contains pure synthetic unity of the manifold in general. Time, as the formal condition of the manifold of inner sense, thus of the connection of all representations, contains an a priori manifold in pure intuition. Now a transcendental time- determination is homogeneous with the category (which constitutes its unity) insofar as it is universal and rests on a rule a priori. But it is on the other hand homogeneous with the appearance insofar as time is contained in every empirical representation of the manifold. Hence an application of the category to appearances becomes possible by means of the transcendental time-determination which, as the schema of the concept of the understanding, mediates the subsumption of the latter under the former (CPR A177-178/B138-139).

To clarify, “schemata” are products of the imagination, and “schematism” is the

28 procedure by which schemata are determined by the categories (CPR A140/B179). More specifically, “schemata” are conceptualisations of the pure form of time according to the rules (categories) given by the understanding; as such, they are “time determinations” which mediate the relation between the categories and appearances. As Deleuze puts it, schemata “embody or realise [in appearances] relations which are in fact conceptual” (KCP 16; translation modified). Kant outlines four modes of thinking the conceptualisation of time, which accord with the four groups of categories given by the understanding (quantity, quality, relation, modality). “The schemata are therefore nothing but a priori time-determinations in accordance with rules, and these concern, according to the order of the categories, the time-series [quantity], the content of time [quality], the order of time [relation], and finally the sum total of time in regard to all possible objects [modality]” (CPR A145/B184-185). This can be highlighted with reference to the “order of time”, which finds its determination in the relational categories of the understanding (cause and effect, reciprocity, substance). The essential point is that the “order of time” deals with objective rather than subjective temporal orders. With respect to the syntheses carried out by the imagination, perceptions come together only subjectively and contingently, namely, through the empirical apperception of moments in succession and the reproduction of previous moments with the present ones (CPR A176/B219). For example, two people standing side by side perceive the same building from the perspective of their individual consciousness, but the order by which they apprehend the parts of the building, whether commencing from top to bottom or bottom to top, is arbitrary. By contrast, the order of time as a transcendental time determination, along with being a universal and necessary characteristic of a phenomenon in time, is representative of an “objective temporal order”, namely, an “intersubjectively valid order of events or states of affairs in the phenomenal world” (Allison 1983: 183). Such an objective temporal order, to be clear, is not a characteristic of time itself, since time (as a pure form) cannot be perceived; instead, it is only ever characteristic of phenomena in time. There are three orders of time. Firstly, “[t]he schema of substance is the persistence of the real in time, i.e., the representation of the real as a substratum of empirical time-determination in general, which therefore endures while everything else changes” (CPR A144/B183). The “real” refers to the matter of sensation represented by

29 a subject (CPR A207/B165), and so although time as a pure form can neither change nor be perceived, the “real” within time changes and is perceived. With every sensation that appears to change, then, there is something unchangeable underlying it, namely, substance. Kant is arguing that we can only perceive that something changes, and likewise we can only perceive the passage of time with reference to an underlying, unchanging form (substance). Secondly, “[t]he schema of the cause and of the causality of a thing in general is the real upon which, whenever it is posited, something else always follows. It therefore consists in the succession of the manifold insofar as it is subject to a rule” (CPR A144/B183). And so even before we come to encounter a sensation we can say, a priori, that it will be in a relation of succession, one following the other. Thirdly, “[t]he schema of community (reciprocity), or of the reciprocal causality of substances with regard to their accidents, is the simultaneity of the determinations of the one with those of the other, in accordance with a general rule” (CPR A144/B183- 184). “If I consider a ball that lies on a stuffed pillow and makes a dent in it as a cause, it is simultaneous with its effect” (CPR A203/B248). His point is that at every moment in nature, immediate causes exist simultaneously with their immediate effects. Although the role the other schemata play in the application of the categories to the a priori forms of intuition have not been addressed, this is enough to highlight that all possible experience is structured by time-determinations, which are distinct from time as a pure form of intuition. Importantly, not only for Kant’s argument but for the connection between the three syntheses of time (Chapter 3, Section 3.6.), Kant provides further support for the schemata of the order of time by arguing that they must exist because our experience is organised by three modes or relations of time. In the “Analogies of Experience”, Kant explains that the existence of appearances in time accords with three modes of time, which, like the schemata of the order of time, are determined by the relational categories of the understanding: the persistence of material substances in time, the succession of appearances in time, and the simultaneity of the existence of appearances in time. The essential point is that the analogies of experience account for both the necessary and objective connection of perceptions. In other words, persistence, succession, and simultaneity are necessary modes of objective phenomena. But insofar as a thing (phenomena) cannot be defined by its modes, then this means that time itself is neither inherently successive, nor space inherently simultaneous, nor

30 permanence inherently eternal. Kant outlines the first analogy as follows, “In all change of appearances substance persists, and its quantum is neither increased nor diminished in nature” (CPR B224). All appearances are given in time, but the pure form of time in which all appearances change is fixed and unchanging, and thus that which changes in time does not affect the form of time itself. Although time itself cannot be perceived, something embedded within appearances must be able to express time in general (CPR A183/B226). The only thing persistent in appearance that expresses the unchangability of time is material substance. Persistence is therefore a mode of time in which something within the appearance remains unchanging—substance—even when alteration has taken place. The second analogy establishes the principle of causality: “All alterations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect” (CPR B232). In the mode of succession, all appearances succeed one another in time objectively (an “objective sequence of appearances”) rather than subjectively (a “subjective sequence of apprehension”) (CPR A193/B238). Here Kant is attempting to prove the objective validity of the principle of causality in the “occurrence” or “event” of succession in the object, where a preceding state is objectively followed by a succeeding state. Kant gives the example of a ship driven downstream by a current: in such an experience, the perception of the ship downstream follows the perception of the ship upstream; because this is an objective sequence of appearances, rather than a subjective sequence of apprehension, the reversal of the order of perceptions would be impossible (CPR A192/B237). The mode of succession posits that in every occurrence the sequence of appearances accords with a rule of the understanding, the category of cause and effect, and so in every occurrence we can presuppose a priori that something preceded it (yet in saying this, the nature of this “something” cannot be given a priori, as it relies upon experience). The third analogy establishes the simultaneity of substances: “All substances, insofar as they can be perceived in space as simultaneous, are in thoroughgoing interaction [or reciprocity]” (CPR B256). “Simultaneity” signifies the existence of a manifold at one and the same time. Two or more things are objectively simultaneous if our perception of one thing follows our perception of another thing reciprocally rather than sequentially. “I can direct my perception first to the moon and subsequently to the earth, or, conversely, first to the earth and then subsequently to the moon, and on this

31 account, since the perceptions of these objects can follow each other reciprocally, I say that they exist simultaneously” (CPR A210/B257). In the case of the syntheses of apprehension and reproduction, we could individually perceive three houses standing side by side, starting from right to left or left to right, but the order given in the imagination is merely a subjective sequence. The mode of simultaneity, then, in accordance with the category of reciprocity, allows us to experience the existence of objects in space as objectively simultaneous. So far we have seen that in an act of judgment, empirical intuitions are subsumed under the categories by means of transcendental schemata, which shares something in common with pure intuitions (time) and the understanding (categories). But regarding the general role played by the imagination in experience, Deleuze notes that there is an important difference between synthesis and schematism. The synthesis of the imagination (apprehension and reproduction) is a determination of a particular space and a particular time in conformity with the categories of the understanding (recognition) (KCP 16), which is to say, a spatiotemporal diversity is unified by the categories. The schema in the imagination is a “spatiotemporal determination” that embodies (or realises) the conceptual rules of the understanding (KCP 16), which is to say, the categories are applied to the forms of intuition. To be more precise, the synthesis of the imagination (apprehension and reproduction) is only carried out if a sensible diversity is actually given in space and time (e.g., the parts of a building). By contrast, the schematism of the imagination does not deal with the here and now but is instead carried out and valid at all times (Kant Seminar: 04/04/1978; cf. KCP 16). This is because the schema is not a rule of recognition, like the synthesis of the imagination, but rather a rule of production. For example, Euclid’s definition of a straight line, “the straight line is equal in all its points”, gives us a rule which allows us to produce a straight line (“equal in all its points”). So whereas the synthesis of the imagination is a rule of recognition over sensible diversities (e.g., it’s a building), the schematism of the imagination is a rule of production which can give us the means to construct an object in thought (e.g., a building). With the difference between synthesis and schematism noted, in any act of judgment, the syntheses of apprehension and reproduction in the imagination presuppose the schema in the imagination and vice versa. When we (subjectively) apprehend and reproduce the parts of a building in space and time, for instance, the

32 schema of substance, and, furthermore, the temporal mode of persistence, are incorporated in the act of judgment insofar as the parts of the manifold are experienced as coexisting parts of a persisting object (substance), namely, a building (recognition). The point is that both the synthesis and schematism of the imagination are involved in every act of judgment insofar as they are responsible for mediating the relation between the understanding (concept) and sensibility (intuition). Thus they form the mediate conditions of knowledge or experience as synthetic a priori (judgement). So to conclude on this brief overview on Kant’s metaphysic of experience, Deleuze’s point is that the understanding legislates in the faculty of knowledge: (1) it determines the concepts for a speculative purpose, (2) it determines an object by applying concepts to intuitions, and (3) it determines the other faculties (e.g., imagination) to carry out certain functions (e.g., synthesis and schematism) by unifying them for its speculative purpose.

Section Two. Kantian Critique: The Genesis of Real Experience

2.1. The Three Critiques: A Doctrine of the Faculties

In KCP, Deleuze takes on the task of showing how the a priori faculties of the mind are systematically connected in the three Critiques as a “doctrine of the faculties”. Deleuze seems to have taken his cue for reading the three Critiques from the second “Introduction” to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, where Kant outlines the three fundamental—yet irreducible—faculties of the soul [Seele]: (1) the faculty of knowledge or cognition (CPR), where the understanding legislates; (2) the faculty of desire or morality (CPrR), where reason legislates; and (3) the faculty of the feeling of pleasure and displeasure (CPJ), where reflective judgment (by means of the imagination) is responsible for connecting the understanding and reason (CPJ 5:177- 179). It seems fair to assume that Kant himself understood the three Critiques as representing a systematic totality—transcendental philosophy in its final form—as he affirms that his newly-devised reflective power of judgment “bring[s] [his] entire critical enterprise to an end” (CPJ 5:170). Deleuze’s account of the doctrine of the faculties likewise focuses on the connection between the understanding and reason by means of reflective judgment. In KCP, he explains how reflective judgments in teleology, that is, judgments of purposes or ends, are responsible for connecting

33 concepts of nature (understanding) and concepts of freedom (reason). That is, reflective judgments in teleology bring about the sought-after unity of the Critical system.7 The details of Deleuze’s argument, however, are not important for the development of this thesis, so I will leave them aside. For in addition to bringing unity to the Critical system, Deleuze highlights another important reason for the introduction of “reflective judgment” into the Critical architectonic. Accordingly, the free and indeterminate agreement of the faculties in reflective judgments in aesthetics provides the “ground” presupposed by the other two Critiques. Deleuze argues that in each Critique the a priori faculties of the mind enter into “various relationships under the chairmanship of one of these faculties” (KCP 48). In the faculty of knowledge (CPR), the understanding, the imagination, and reason enter into a harmonious relationship such that the understanding legislates. In the faculty of desire (CPrR), the understanding and reason enter into a harmonious relationship such that the latter legislates. This can be initially explained with reference to the GMM (1785), where Kant devises (or “discovers”) the categorical imperative, a synthetic a priori principle in the practical interest of reason, which he formulates as follows: “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (GMM 4:421). The categorical imperative (GMM) or moral law (CPrR) functions as the litmus test for all moral choice and action. It is significant that Kant finds a way to determine the higher faculty of desire from pure reason because in the CPR he stated that all desires (e.g., inclinations, passions, affects) are of empirical origin; thus, they did not belong to transcendental philosophy (CPR A15/B29). In the GMM, he defines the faculty of desire in general as “the capacity to be, through one’s representations, the cause of the objects of those representations” (GMM 6:211); or, more succinctly, in the CPrR, he defines it as the cause of such objects in terms of their actuality (CPrR 5:9n). In this sense, one has a desire if one has the capacity to move towards the realisation of such objects, or objectives, in actual existence—the attempt to search for food, to become a skilled painter, or to live a more “flourishing” life are examples of such. And this definition holds whether one is successful in attaining the objective or not. But Deleuze explains that in its higher state, when desire is free of any empirical sensation, it ceases to be a representation of an object (whether sensuous or

7 Deleuze’s analysis can be found here: KCP 51-63. For further discussion on how the reflective power of judgment brings unity to the Critical system by connecting the understanding and reason, see: Guyer 1989; Guyer 1990; Allison 2012.

34 intelligible) and becomes a representation of a pure form of the law (KCP 5). This can be highlighted with reference to the third antinomy given in the CPR, which concerns the division between natural causality and freedom. In the speculative interest of reason, the concept of freedom is shown to be problematic because phenomena are strictly subject to the law of natural causality (i.e., the category of cause in the understanding); but in the practical interest of reason, reason takes the category of cause from the understanding and extends it to a supersensible object, namely, the subject as a free and originating cause (KCP 29). In this latter case, the essential point is that only the “form” of the category of cause is extended to the supersensible, as unlike natural causality, the faculties of intuition and imagination (synthesis and schematism) are not required for free causality. In the CPrR, Kant argues that the concept of causality and freedom united in the practical interest of reason “as it were by a fact” (CPrR 5:55-56), that is, the “fact of reason”. As Deleuze states, “reason does not reason: the consciousness of the moral law is a fact, ‘not an empirical fact, but the sole fact of pure reason, which by it proclaims itself as originating law’” (KCP 24; CPrR 5:31; see also: CPrR 5:42, 47). And due to the “fact” of the moral law, the practical interest of reason positively determines freedom as the condition of the moral law. Hence why Kant refers to freedom as “transcendental”.8 Therefore, the concept of freedom is not contained in the moral law—or, to say the same thing, it is not analytically derived from the moral law— but rather the concept of practical reason (moral law) leads us to the concept of freedom. For although freedom is the condition of the moral law, it is only through the moral law that the “concept of freedom acquires an objective, positive and determinate reality” (KCP 25). Keeping in mind that synthetic a priori judgments express the necessary relation between two concepts, then the concept of “freedom” and the concept of the “moral law” is an a priori synthesis that determines the autonomy of the “will” in the faculty of desire. Therefore, freedom in action and choice (i.e., by will) is not lawless; instead, all action and choice is deemed free—and thus autonomous—insofar as it is determined by the moral law. To give an abrupt summary, reason legislates in the faculty of desire by (1) determining the understanding for a practical purpose, (2) determining the category of cause (understanding) by applying its form to a

8 “[T]ranscendental freedom, which must be thought as independence from everything empirical and so from nature generally, whether it is regarded as an object of inner sense in time only or also of outer sense in both space and time; without this freedom (in the latter and proper sense), which alone is practical a priori, no moral law is possible and no imputation in accordance with it” (CPrR 5:97).

35 supersensible object (the free and spontaneous subject), and (3) determining the other faculties (e.g., understanding) to carry out a certain function in accordance with the practical interest of reason. Deleuze’s point is that although “the first two Critiques set out a relationship between the faculties which is determined by one of them; the last Critique uncovers a deeper free and indeterminate accord of the faculties as the condition of the possibility of every determinate relationship” (KCP 42; cf. DI 58-59). In this manner, an entirely new problem of harmony is introduced in Kant’s transcendental philosophy. As stated previously, the problem of harmony in the faculty of knowledge signifies the relation between two faculties which differ in kind yet harmonise, namely, receptive sensibility (intuition) and active understanding (concept). But the problem of harmony that pertains to the entire Critical system concerns an accord of the faculties in which the imagination is free and the understanding is rendered indeterminate. Here Deleuze is attempting to uncover the initial free play of the faculties which provide the condition for both the faculty of knowledge and desire: “the Critique of Judgment, in its aesthetic part, does not simply exist to complete the other two Critiques: in fact, it provides them with a ground. The Critique of Judgment uncovers the ground presupposed by the other two Critiques: a free agreement of the faculties” (DI 58; translation modified). This can be clarified by turning to the two roles carried out by the faculty of judgment in the CPJ: “determining judgment” and “reflective judgment”. “Determining judgment” subsumes particulars under universal concepts that are already given or known (CPJ 5: 179). Such a form of judgment was presented in the first Critique, where the manifold of appearances, in accordance with the synthesis and schematism of the imagination, is determined by the a priori categories of the understanding. In determining judgment, then, the imagination conforms to the legislation of the understanding and its categories, and so the imagination is unfree insofar as it is determined by the categories of the understanding. “Reflective judgment”, by contrast, discovers the universal concept for the given particular (CPJ 5:179). In this case, we reflect upon the form (or content) of the sensible manifold and draw from this a universal concept. The essential point is that the understanding remains indeterminate because the categories have not been called upon to conceptualise the sensible manifold, and thus the imagination itself is free to reflect upon the form of the sensible manifold. Furthermore, “reflective judgments” come in two forms: aesthetic and

36 teleological. As mentioned previously, “reflective judgments” in teleology (judgments of purposes or ends) bring unity to the Critical system by connecting concepts of nature (understanding) and concepts of freedom (reason). But the main concern here is how “reflective judgments” in aesthetics provide the ground presupposed by the other two Critiques. In general, “aesthetic judgments” recognise the beautiful in nature and art (e.g., “this is a beautiful sunset” or “this is a beautiful painting”) and the sublime in nature (e.g., “this vastness of the ocean is sublime”). As a mode of judgment pertaining to the faculty of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, aesthetic judgments are neither speculatively nor morally cognised but “felt” (KCP 41-42). Aesthetic judgments relate representations

entirely to the subject, indeed to its feeling of life, under the name of the feeling of pleasure or

displeasure, which grounds an entirely special faculty for discriminating and judging that contributes nothing to cognition but only holds the given representation in the subject up to the entire faculty of representation, of which the mind becomes conscious in the feeling of its state (CPJ 5:204).

Similar to how the faculty of knowledge and desire are universally cognised, aesthetic judgments on the beautiful and the sublime are universally felt. Yet there is a fundamental difference between these forms of judgments, as the feelings of pleasure we receive from aesthetic judgments are subjective rather than objective. Kant goes on to explain aesthetic judgments in four moments. (1) They are pure and disinterred. Aesthetic judgments as such concern the judgment of the object, and not the object itself, that is, the material. For this reason, aesthetic judgments are “pure” because they are not concerned with the existence of the object per se. Kant argues that the purity of aesthetic judgments makes them “disinterested” because instead of judging the object (the material) itself we reflect upon the intuition received from the object (CPJ 5:204). “Disinterested” does not mean that we find the object uninteresting or dull; rather, it means we lack interest in its existence (CPJ 5:205). In this manner, we receive a feeling of pleasure from the object because we judge it beautiful, rather than judging the object beautiful because we find it pleasurable. With respect to this latter point, and in contrast to aesthetic judgments, judgments of the agreeable (“material aesthetic judgments”) provide a satisfaction that pertains to a desire, that is, to an interest in the physical object (cf. CPJ 5:207, 223). To find a particular chocolate agreeable, for

37 example, is to have a materially invested interest in the object and its existence on our state. Thus judgments of the agreeable are subjective, but they can never be universal. (2) Aesthetic judgments are universal and subjective. In this case, universal validity does not arise conceptually, as is the case with determining judgments, which are unified by the categories of the understanding, but instead it belongs to the judgment itself. For aesthetic judgments are neither cognitive nor logical but “singular” (CPJ 5:215). For instance, an aesthetic judgment of the beautiful judges this rose to be beautiful, and not roses in general to be beautiful. The latter is not an aesthetic judgment per se, but an “aesthetically grounded logical judgment” (CPJ 5:215). It is important to bear in mind the difference between the universal and the general. Aesthetically grounded logical judgments are general. In general, roses are beautiful; however, it is not the case that every rose is beautiful. To account for the singular and universal form of judgment, “this rose is beautiful”, Kant introduces a non-conceptual form of universality, namely, “subjective universality” (CPJ 5:212). This means that judgments of the beautiful demand universal agreement, for instance, everyone who experiences this rose ought to judge it as beautiful. (3) Aesthetic judgments are “purposive without purpose” (or “final without end”). Usually understood, the concept of an object has a determinate purpose or end. For example, the cup on my desk has a conceptual purpose insofar as it is used to drink water—so there is no cosmic mystery why it sits on my desk filled with water. But the notion of “purposiveness” in aesthetic judgments means “purpose-like”, namely, a “purposiveness without purpose or end”. This means that instead of the determining ground of an object being a concept, the determining ground of a judgement is a feeling (CPJ 5:222), but a feeling of pleasure without reference to a concept which explains this pleasure. The essential point is that beauty is a subjective feeling we all share, and so although it may feel purposeful, we need not know why, or how, or for what purpose the object we find beautiful gives us pleasure. (4) Aesthetic judgments are necessary and subjective. The form of necessity in question is not conceptually derived, and so it is not apodictic; instead, necessity refers to the relation between beauty and satisfaction (CPJ 5:236, 240). And so the experience of beauty necessarily produces a subjective feeling of pleasure. In sum, aesthetic judgments produce a subjective feeling of pleasure communicable by everyone (aesthetic common sense). “The subjective universal

38 communicability of the kind of representation in [an aesthetic judgment] […] can be nothing other than the state of mind in the free play of the imagination and the understanding” (CPJ 5: 217-218). That is, the imagination is free insofar as the understanding is indeterminate. As we saw previously, the understanding in the faculty of knowledge and reason in the faculty of desire legislate: (1) they determine a purpose or aim, (2) they determine an object, and (3) they determine the other faculties involved in its purpose (DI 57). But unlike such legislative cases, firstly, the imagination in aesthetic judgment does not determine a purpose or aim because “[a]esthetic pleasure is itself disinterested pleasure: it is not only independent of any empirical purpose, but also any speculative or practical purpose” (DI 58). So whereas the understanding legislates over phenomena in the faculty of knowledge and reason legislates over the thing in itself in the faculty of desire, reflective judgment has no domain proper to it. For it is neither legislative nor autonomous but “heautomous”, that is, it legislates over itself (KCP 40; DI 58; CPJ 20:225; CPJ 5:186-7). Secondly, the imagination does not determine an “object” because reflective judgment neither conceptualises phenomena (understanding) nor produces things in themselves (reason); instead, reflective judgment judges a thing to be beautiful based on the subjective feeling of pleasure it evokes. And thirdly, neither the imagination nor the understanding determine the other faculties involved in the reflective judgment; instead, they are both involved in a “free play”.

2.2. The Genesis of the Intelligibility of Phenomena

Deleuze sets out a novel reading of the CPJ by arguing that the free and indeterminate agreement of the faculties (ground) cannot be presupposed a priori but instead must be shown as produced within us (KCP 42; cf. DI 60). As such, “Kantian Critique in general ceases to be a simple conditioning to become a transcendental Education, a transcendental Culture, a transcendental Genesis” (DI 61). The influence for Deleuze’s reading can be traced back to Maimon, as Deleuze commences his reading of Kant’s transcendental genesis by highlighting Maimon’s argument that the first two Critiques took knowledge and morality as “facts”, searched for the transcendental conditions of these “facts”, and found these conditions in the assumed harmonious relationship between ready-made faculties (DI 60). The central criticism here is that Kant’s critical methodology traces the transcendental structures of cognition

39 from the empirical, and so the conditions of possible experience represent a mere image of the empirical reality they supposedly condition.9 In Essay on Transcendental Philosophy (1770), Maimon argues that in order to avoid such a tracing of the transcendental from the empirical, it is necessary to provide a transcendental philosophy that accounts for the genesis of real experience. Maimon accounts for this in his own philosophy by positing “a principle of difference as the fulfilment of this condition” (Smith 2012: 67). To give a crude summary, for Maimon, “the real” (matter of sensation) is engendered by “noumena” or the “ideas of the understanding”, namely, “differentials” that are “roughly equivalent to the mathematical concept of the infinitesimal, a number that is infinitely small but not equal to zero” (Lord 2011: 118). Maimon evidently uses the terms “noumena” and “ideas” in an alternative manner to Kant, as they signify the largely unconscious differential elements that produce “the real” of experience, and thus they fulfil the requirements of a “principle of difference” highlighted by Smith.10 The essential point is that Maimon attempts to give an account of genesis that pertains to the real of human experience. Ultimately, this thesis is concerned with the problem Maimon poses rather than his own philosophy. For as we will see in the next chapter, Deleuze reanimates Maimon’s problematic of the genesis of real experience through Nietzschean critique, which provides a metaphysical account of transcendental genesis that pertains to the world broadly construed. Now we know from a letter to Marcus Herz that Kant read the first two chapters of Maimon’s Essay in 1789 while working on the CPJ (Maimon 2010: 230-238). Deleuze contends that Kant actually responded to Maimon’s call for a transcendental genesis in the CPJ by arguing that the free and indeterminate agreement of the faculties (ground) is engendered immanently in the subject by the Ideas of reason. Previously I outlined that the Ideas of reason are rational concepts of objects that remain indeterminable or problematic because they could never be given in sensible intuition. The Ideas of the Soul, the World, and God are the three fundamental Ideas that form the proper ends of metaphysics (CPR B395), but there are many more. For instance, “pure earth, pure water, pure air” (CPR A646/B674), a “straight line”, and a “perfect circle” are also

9 This runs counter to how Kant understood his Critical project, as he claimed to have used a synthetic method in the CPR, which uncovers the (transcendental) conditions of the (empirically) conditioned in reason itself, rather than an analytic or regressive method, which proceeds from the (empirically) conditioned to the (transcendental) conditions (P 4:265-276). 10 For readings that deal with Maimon’s genetic transcendental philosophy and its influence on Deleuze see: Lord 2011: 105-154; Smith 2012: 65-69; Voss 2013: 74-142; Sauvagnargues 2015: 44-59.

40 rational ideals that could never be given in sensible experience. Kant’s point is that although these rational Ideas could never be given in experience, they still have a role to play in comprehending nature. Deleuze’s argument hinges on the view that reflective judgment maintains a certain relationship to various Ideas of reason, which are themselves responsible for engendering the agreements between the faculties that give rise to the feeling of the sublime (mathematical and dynamic), the feeling of the beautiful, genius, and purposiveness in nature (although Deleuze does not give much detail regarding this latter one). I will only address the genesis of the mathematical sublime, as my primary concern is with the consequence that results from Deleuze’s reading of genesis in Kant.11 The aesthetic experience of the sublime is a feeling (and not a characteristic of phenomena) that arises when faced with formlessness or deformity of nature. There are two types of feelings of the sublime. Our feeling of the “mathematical sublime” concerns our experience of nature in terms of immensity (quantity), such as our experience of the vastness of the ocean or the starry sky. Our feeling of the “dynamic sublime” concerns our experience of nature in terms of power (quality), such as our experience of a raging of storm or overhanging cliffs. The essential point is that the feeling of the sublime arises from the inability of our power of the imagination and understanding to grasp and comprehend the totality of the manifold. In experiences of the mathematical sublime, our imagination is confronted with the immensity (quantity) of sensible nature and becomes subjected to its own limitations (KCP 42-3). For instance, in perception, the imagination apprehends parts in succession, one after the other, but it is not yet confronted by its own limitation because in principle it can continue to process infinitely. The limit of the imagination’s power comes when it tries to reproduce the parts it apprehended. Here the manifold is too immense, the parts cannot be held together, and the imagination fails to comprehend the diversity. This is where reason chimes, as it “forces us to unite the immensity of the sensible world into a whole”, that is, into “the Idea of the sensible” (KCP 53). In other words, reason forces the imagination to confront its own limitation when compared with its own power to totalise. For insofar as the imagination cannot reproduce the parts of the manifold, it cannot comprehend; thus, it frees itself from the constraints of the understanding’s conceptualisation. “The Sublime thus confronts us with a direct subjective relationship

11 For comprehensive readings of Deleuze’s analysis of transcendental genesis in Kant, see: Smith 2012: 110-116; Voss 2013: 157-179.

41 between imagination and reason. But this relationship is primarily a dissension rather than an accord […] the imagination-reason accord is not simply assumed: it is genuinely engendered, engendered in the dissension” (KCP 43). The dissention between the imagination and reason, and the “violence” experienced by the former (KCP 43; DI 62; CPJ 5:245), is the necessary precondition for the feeling of the pleasure of the sublime. In this way, the Idea of reason is the genetic principle for the feeling of the sublime. Deleuze goes on to analyse the dynamic sublime, the feeling of the beautiful, and genius in order to explain that the ground which remained hidden in the CPR and the CPrR (the free play of the imagination and understanding) find their genesis in the Ideas of reason. The specific details of Deleuze’s argument are not essential because ultimately “[t]he three geneses of the Critique of Judgment […] converge on the same discovery: what Kant calls the Soul, that is, the suprasensible unity of our faculties, ‘the point of concentration’, the life-giving principle that ‘animates’ each faculty, engendering both its free exercise and its free agreement with the other faculties” (DI 69). Here the suprasensible Soul is thought, on the one hand, to house the Ideas of reason, and on the other, be responsible for animating the faculties and giving them life (although Deleuze does not give any more detail about the Soul as the “life-giving principle”). In this way, Kant’s theory of genesis does not change the fixed, determinate relations between the faculties which give rise to knowledge and morality; rather, it merely justifies their validity by showing that the presupposed initial free play of the faculties (ground) finds its genesis in the Ideas of reason. This also means that each principle of genesis (Idea of reason) remains immanent “to” the Soul it is enclosed within, and the a priori faculties of the mind remain immanent “to” reason as the assumed foundation of the Critical philosophy. Therefore, Kantian genesis does not go far enough, as the faculties of knowledge and desire, as well as the a priori faculties involved in such relationships, remain fixed and unchanging capacities of the mind. This is why Deleuze states that Kant’s genetic account of experience provides only a “genesis of the intelligibility of phenomena” (Deleuze 2007: 72). Hereby the intelligibility of phenomena itself maintains a certain timelessness; for insofar as the a priori faculties of the mind provide the universal and timeless conditions of human experience (speculative, moral, aesthetic) their “universality” and “timelessness” makes them appear as though they were put there by God. Even Kant appears to admit as much when he writes to Marcus Herz about Maimon: “If we wanted to make a judgement

42 about the origin of these faculties (although such an investigation lies completely beyond the limits of human reason), we can provide no further ground than our divine creator” (Maimon 2010: 234). But even before his reading of Kantian genesis, Deleuze had already provided—what we will come to understand as—a “superior” theory of genesis in Nietzsche.

Chapter Two. Nietzschean Critique

The overall aim of this chapter is to understand Deleuze’s reconstruction of Nietzsche’s philosophy in order to show that it provides a model for his own genetic account of real experience in DR. Reflecting on his work more than twenty-years later, Deleuze explains that his Nietzsche book “sets out, primarily, to analyse what Nietzsche calls becoming” (NP xi; translation modified). This chapter outlines the central principles of Nietzsche’s account of becoming, which is presented as a relation between becoming and its temporal affirmation, between the will to power and the eternal return.12 As a guide for what follows, Nietzschean critique can be understood as a rewrite and radicalisation of Kantian critique in five interrelated ways. Firstly, Nietzschean critique does not rely upon established values such as truth, knowledge, and morality but aims to create new values. Secondly, Nietzschean critique, with reference to Maimon’s problematic dealt with earlier, focuses on the genesis of real experience rather than the conditioning of possible experience. Thirdly, Nietzschean critique dispenses with a “two-world” metaphysics, split between an intelligible world and an apparent world, in favour of a metaphysics of becoming, namely, a “superior empiricism” (NP 46) or “pluralism” (NP 4). Fourthly, Nietzschean critique is grounded in two metaphysical principles: (1) the will to power as a principle of sufficient reason (i.e., the reason of one thing rather than another, of this rather than that); and (2) the eternal return as a principle of the identity of indiscernibles (i.e., no distinct things can exactly resemble one another). Finally, in contrast to both the Kantian conditioning of possible experience and the Kantian genesis of the intelligibility of phenomena, Nietzschean critique goes beyond human experience and provides a metaphysical genesis of phenomena itself, that is, phenomena as it pertains to the world broadly construed. As such, it deals with the problem of how individual entities—humans, organisms, rocks, societies, et cetera—have become what they are. Architectonically, Nietzschean critique is comprised of differential forces (multiplicity), the will to power as a transcendental principle which conditions the relation of force and force (the unity of multiplicity or becoming), and the eternal return of difference as a principle for the

12 Deleuze’s reading is significant because not many works have been dedicated entirely to Nietzsche’s account of becoming and its relation to time. The most substantive treatments are: Stambaugh 1987; Dries 2008; Small 2010.

44 temporal affirmation of force relations (the affirmation of becoming). Hereby forces (differences) find their principle of difference in the will to power and their temporal affirmation in the eternal return. Now, although Deleuze presents Nietzsche’s philosophy as a radicalisation of Kantian transcendental philosophy, it is so in a highly specific manner. For Nietzsche is shown to provide a pre-Platonic, post-Kantian, and neo-Leibnizian form of critique: with the aid of Leibniz’s principles of sufficient reason and identity of indiscernibles, he returns to the spirit of Heraclitus’ philosophy of becoming and provides a transcendental account of the genesis of real experience.

Section One. A Metaphysics of Becoming

1.1. The Universe Unlearned

Deleuze singles out the fundamental difference between Nietzsche and Kant at the levels of values: “One of the principle motifs of Nietzsche’s work is that Kant had not carried out a true critique because he was not able to pose the problem of critique in terms of values” (NP 1). For although Kant provided a critique of reason that grounds knowledge and morality—and thus truth—he never brought the value of knowledge, morality, or truth themselves into question. “Kant merely pushed a very old conception of critique to the limit” (NP 83). At the forefront of Deleuze’s reading is the view that Nietzsche criticises old or established values. These values are not “historically” old but “forever” old, which is to say, eternal and universal. As Deleuze writes, “we must begin from the fact that the philosophy of values as envisaged and established by [Nietzsche] is the true realisation of critique and the only way in which a total critique may be realised, the only way to ‘philosophise with a hammer’” (NP 1; emphasis added). Yet values, however, are not always explicit, like the democrat who values democracy, or the socialist who values collective action; instead, they can be largely implicit. Nietzsche’s work is animated by critiques of morality, religion, culture, and society— critiques of religious, philosophical, and scientific claims to “truth” and “knowledge”. Taking a metaphysical approach to the problem, Deleuze narrows his focus by addressing Nietzsche’s critiques of the values of unity, being, necessity, and the one, and their respective replacement with the values of difference, becoming, chance, and

45 multiplicity. In essence, these latter values form the basis of Nietzsche’s metaphysics of becoming. Because Deleuze presents Nietzschean critique as a metaphysics of becoming, then the first values we are confronted with are those presupposed by classical metaphysics. For although Nietzsche is critical of metaphysics, he has a specific conception of “metaphysics” in mind: “The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in oppositions of values” (BGE 2). That is to say, the value of truth over falsity, being over becoming, reality over appearance, the intelligible world over the sensible world. As Deleuze writes, the critique of metaphysics “means the critique of the idea of a second world. Metaphysics for Nietzsche is the affirmation of an intelligible world” (Deleuze 2007: 80). As we saw in the previous chapter, Kant’s transcendental conditions make experience possible, and thus make the world intelligible, but the transcendental itself is sourced from the purity of reason, which is thought to be universal and necessary, eternal and unchanging, fixed and static. In Nietzschean terms, the transcendental is just another fictitious “true world” which presides over becoming. For Nietzsche, nothing lies “behind” becoming. Although his philosophy attempts to break from classical metaphysics and thus any form of the “true world”, he is quick to see that when we rid ourselves of the “true world” we rid ourselves of the illusory or apparent world too (TI “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable”). The question is: What do we have left? His response is that we have only the “apparent world” and nothing else beside. Evidently, if the “apparent world” is no longer connected to the “true world”, then the “apparent world” in question is of another kind. A fragment from 1888 gives expression to this point:

Critique of the concept 'true and illusory [or apparent] world' of these, the first is a mere fiction, formed exclusively out of invented things 'illusoriness' itself belongs to reality: it is a form of reality's being, i.e. in a world where there is no being, a certain calculable world of identical cases must first be created by illusion: a tempo in which observation and comparison are possible, etc. 'illusoriness' is a trimmed and simplified world on which our practical instincts have worked. It suits us perfectly: we live in it, we can live in it—

46 proof of its truth for us ... : the world apart from our condition of living in it, the world we have not reduced to our being, our logic and psychological prejudices does not exist as a world 'in-itself it is essentially a world of relationships: it could have a different face when looked at from each different point: its being is essentially different at every point: it presses on every point, every point resists it - and these summations are in every case entirely incongruent (LN 14[93]).

The illusory or apparent world is the liveable world of truth for us. Our interpretations and evaluations of the world, of existence—whether good or bad, or good or evil—are useful and even necessary. They are essential for our existence in the world, and they are expressive of our creative potential too. Yet according to Heidegger, “Nietzsche says that the ‘true world’ of morality is a world of lies, that the true, the supersensuous, is error. The sensuous world—which in Platonism means the world of semblance and errancy, the realm of error—is the true world” (Heidegger 1991: 73). Quite literally, for Heidegger, Nietzsche’s philosophy represents a “reversal of Platonism” (Heidegger 1991: 162, 188), a switch of roles, as the sensuous world becomes the true world and the supersensuous world becomes the false world. But perhaps it is not so simple. To repeat: when we rid ourselves of the true world we rid ourselves of the apparent world too. The roles are non-reversible. However, in saying this, the fragment above indeed appears to split the apparent world in two. On the one hand, the apparent world is a created world, fashioned from our practical instincts, “proof of its truth for us”; on the other hand, the so-called “world” beyond the apparent world does not exist in-itself but exists as a complex of relationships, all the way down. On Deleuze’s reading, there is nothing but the “apparent world”, which is a world of phenomena as signs, or symptoms, as all phenomena are symptomatic of a state of force relations. Deleuze does not explicitly address the apparent world as our world, as a world of truth for us; but his focus on the interpretation of sense and evaluation of values commits him, to an extent, to such a view. “Nietzsche’s most general project is the introduction of the concepts of sense and value into philosophy […] Nietzsche made no secret of the fact that the philosophy of sense and values had to be critique” (NP 1). We ourselves are signs, and we interpret them too—as the famous statement goes: there are no facts, only interpretations (LN 7[60]). So to interpret a phenomenon as a sign— the sense of something—is to interpret the forces that engendering it, give it form; while

47 to evaluate the value of something is to evaluate its genesis. In this way, Nietzschean critique is “genealogical” as it deals with the value of values—"the value of origin and the origin of values”—and thus the problem of their creation (cf. NP 1, 3). But, for Nietzsche, genealogical critique is no longer in the service of pursuing the values of the true or the real. Instead, Deleuze argues, its objective is thinking the value of existence: “‘Has existence a meaning?’ is, according to Nietzsche, the highest question of philosophy, the most empirical and even the most ‘experimental’ because it poses at one and the same time the problems of interpretation and evaluation” (NP 17). Thinking in terms of interpretation and evaluation “mean[s] discovering, inventing, new possibilities of life” (NP 94), new modes of existence. Thinking as such is critical and creative, diagnostic and constructive, practical and pragmatic. But over and above this aspect of Nietzschean critique, Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche’s metaphysics of becoming truly comes into its own by focusing on the nature of the “world of relationships”. He argues that every phenomenon, every sign, is itself an appearance, and that every sign is a part of the apparent world. Thus, there remains such a thing as an apparent world. Nietzsche defined the world as a complex of relationships, which, when summated, fails to produce a congruent systematic unity. Hereby the world does not exist in-itself, as a totality, as a unified whole. Deleuze sees such a disunity as the “foundation” of a philosophy of force and will to power. This can be made sense of by juxtaposing two passages quoted by Deleuze (NP 21). In TI (1889), Nietzsche writes,

A person is necessary, a person is a piece of fate, a person belongs to the whole, a person is only in the context of the whole,—there is nothing that can judge, measure, compare, or condemn our being, because that would mean judging measuring, comparing, and condemning the whole … But there is nothing outside the whole! (TI “The Four Great Errors” 8).

The point here is that there is a “whole” in which we inhabit. But Deleuze emphasises that Nietzsche’s most profound argument comes from his notebooks (circa 1886-1887), where he says that there is no “whole”: “It seems to me important to get rid of the universe, unity, any force, anything unconditional; one could not avoid taking it as the highest agency and naming it God. The universe must be splintered apart; respect for the universe unlearned” (LN 7[62]). In support of this fragment, another circa 1887- 1888 reads,

48 Assuming we have recognised how the world may no longer be interpreted with these three categories [“unity, “purpose”, and “being”] and that upon this recognition the world begins to be without value for us: then we must ask where our belief in these three categories came from—let us see if it isn't possible to cancel our belief in them. Once we have devaluated these three categories, demonstrating that they can't be applied to the universe ceases to be a reason to devaluate the universe (LN 11[99]).

At face value these passages appear to conflict with one another, but such a conflict can be resolved if we take them as pointing towards the same problematic: there is a “whole”, but it does not signify a systematic totality. When Nietzsche states, “there is nothing that can judge” the whole (TI “The Four Great Errors” 8), he means there is neither an Archimedean point of view nor a givable unity which can take perspective on this “whole”. Neither metaphysics, nor religion, nor morality, nor science can “give” us the whole. God is dead. The world cannot be represented in its totality. Usually understood, the “world” or “universe” tacitly assumes a given or givable totality, for instance, a systematic causal nexus (science) or in-itself in the eye of God (theology). The “whole” in question is not a systematic arrangement of parts, in the sense of parts producing a whole, but rather the whole itself is only ever a partial view: “[the world] could have a different face when looked at from each different point: its being is essentially different at every point: it presses on every point, every point resists it—and these summations are in every case entirely incongruent” (LN 14[93]). Thus, the world as a whole is neither given nor givable, but instead it signifies a process of constant change and transformation, of force relations in mutual interaction, of becoming itself. Deleuze refers to such a world in becoming—the universe unlearned—as a world of “chaos” or “multiplicity” (NP 24). And so by substituting the value of the multiple for the value of unity, Nietzsche substitutes the value of the apparent world (becoming) for the value of the intelligible world (being). Deleuze reads the concept of “multiplicity” as forming the basis of Nietzsche’s account of becoming.13 Throughout Nietzsche’s work, the term “multiplicity” is most frequently used with reference to the self as a “multiplicity” [Vielheit] of drives and

13 Commentators have noted a distinct Bergsonian influence on Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche in general, especially that on the concepts of difference and multiplicity (Alliez 1998: 227-228; Borradori 1999: 140-145; Lundy 2017: 176). Indeed this is logically true in the sense that a multiplicity signifies a relation between differences, but Deleuze’s reading of the concepts of “difference” and “multiplicity” in NP are uniquely Nietzschean. For Bergson, a “continuous multiplicity” is characteristic of real time or duration, a continuous unfolding of heterogenous differences (see: Chapter 3, Section 2.4.), while for Nietzsche a multiplicity is characteristic of force relations (differences).

49 affects (see especially: BGE 12, 16, 19; LN 38[88], 11[83]). But in PTG, Nietzsche praises Heraclitus for providing an account of “eternal substantive multiplicities” [ewiger und wesenhafter Veilheiten] outside the dual world order of the many and the one (PTG 6). Heraclitus had an “extraordinary power to think intuitively”, Nietzsche writes, for he “altogether denied being” and saw nothing other than becoming (PTG 5). Accordingly, Heraclitus provided a distinctly monist philosophy insofar as he claimed that everything derives from a “single primal substance”, namely, “fire” (PRG 14). Fire is a substantive multiplicity, the “cosmic creating force”, the drive of “physical processes” (PTG 6). Fire is therefore a process, not a thing; and as “cosmic creating force”, it engenders empirical diversity. It would not be too far a stretch to say that the closest modern equivalent to Heraclitus’ concept of fire is energy, a capacity of constant flow and transformation, the character of what Deleuze calls “active force”. With reference to Heraclitus, Deleuze writes, “Multiplicity is the inseparable manifestation, essential transformation and constant symptom of unity” (NP 22). As Nietzsche says of Heraclitus, “the one is the many” (PTG 6), and as Deleuze adds, “unity is multiplicity” (NP 22). This means that the world as a whole, as a process of fire, is a multiplicity (one) comprised of multiplicities (many). The world does not conform to the dual order of the one and the many, but rather the one is the many. Deleuze takes Heraclitus to be a pivotal influence on Nietzsche’s account of “multiplicity”, which for him signifies a logic of differential relations between forces. The clearest definition Deleuze gives of “multiplicity” in NP is: “multiplicity is the difference of one thing from another” and “multiplicity is unity” (NP 178). As we will come to see, the relation between differential forces is a multiplicity, and the unity of multiplicity is brought about by the will to power as the differential and transcendental element. Logically speaking, the will to power as the unity of multiplicity is the different that connects difference with difference. The point for now is that the world as a whole, as chaos, is a multiplicity comprised of multiplicities (“the one is many”). This, for Deleuze, is the essential nature of the apparent world: the world of relationships.

Section Two. A New Form of Synthesis: Forces and Will to Power

2.1. Introduction

50 The first place to start the analysis of Deleuze’s reconstruction of Nietzschean critique is his reading of forces. Deleuze’s systematic account of forces and the will to power is drawn almost entirely from Friedrich Würzbach’s selection of the Will to Power (La Volonté de Puissance (1935)). As Mazzino Montinari notes, the Will to Power is in reality a non-book, a piece of historical forgery, as all the fragments published in the Will to Power were ideas already used in Twilight and The Anti-Christ (Montinari 1996). Deleuze was well aware of the suspect nature of the WP after NP. For he admits that the concepts of the will to power and the eternal return “were hardly introduced at all” (DI 117), that “Nietzsche gave no exposition of the eternal return” (DR 370), and that “We cannot make use of the posthumous notes, except in directions confirmed by Nietzsche's published works, since these notes are reserved material, as it were, put aside for future elaboration” (DR 370).14 If he was aware of this when writing NP, then he took it for granted, as he uses the WP as the primary source to reconstruct a systematic reading of forces, the will to power, and the eternal return. Whether or not Deleuze is justified in doing this is not the primary concern, as the goal of this chapter is to show how Deleuze’s reconstruction of Nietzsche’s philosophy influences his own account of the genesis of real experience in DR. So with respect to making sense of Deleuze’s reconstruction of Nietzsche, likewise, I will focus largely on Nietzsche’s notebooks, but I will also draw correlations with his published work where possible.

2.2. The Unpublished Notebooks: Force and Will to Power

Nietzsche was analysing the concept of force as early as 1873, after reading Roger Joseph’s Boscovich’s Theory of Natural Philosophy (1758) in the same year,15 but he did not focus in detail on the concepts of force and will to power in his published work until Beyond Good and Evil (1887) and the Genealogy (1887). In order to make sense of his treatment of these concepts in his published works, I will turn to Nietzsche’s notebooks and highlight the problems that the concepts of force and will to power aimed to address. Here Nietzsche gave many renderings of forces and the will to power

14 See also: Foucault 1967: 562; DI 128. 15 A short but complicated fragment from 1873, “Time-Atom Theory” (Nietzsche 2000: 1-4), shows that Nietzsche had worked through Boscovich’s text and become influenced by his dynamic theory of forces. For analyses of Boscovich’s account of forces and its influence on Nietzsche, see: Ansell-Pearson 2000: 15-22; Poellner 2000: 48-52. For analyses of “Time-Atom Theory”, see: Whitlock 1997; Whitlock 2000; Ansell-Pearson 2000; Porter 2000a; Porter 2000b; Small 2010: 55-77.

51 concerning life, organic processes, physiology, art, society, politics, history, religion, and morality. Although Deleuze is the first to admit that forces and the will to power as a coherent theory is nowhere spelled out, he nevertheless provides a strict ontological reading. In this manner, Deleuze’s reconstruction of forces commits Nietzsche to claims about the nature of reality. If the mechanist believes the physical world is comprised of “uncuttable” atoms, then Nietzsche believes the physical world is comprised of dynamic forces. This appears to be an attempt to purge these concepts, especially so with the will to power, from the psychological interpretations to which they have been subjected. In support of such a metaphysical reading, this section aims to show that Nietzsche initially formulated the concepts of force and will to power in reference to physical problems, most notably, that of cause and effect. From this we will be able to see that Nietzsche’s mature conception of force applies beyond the realm of physics, such that thought or human subjectivity can be conceived as formed by the forces of morality, society, or culture.

2.2.1. Inner World or Inner Will?

In an important passage from 1885, Nietzsche designates the will to power as completing the physicists’ concept of force. “The triumphant concept of ‘force’, with which our physicists have created God and the world, needs supplementing: it must be ascribed an inner world [Innere Welt] which I call ‘will to power’, i.e., an insatiable craving to manifest power; or to employ, exercise power, as a creative drive, etc.” (LN 36[31]; emphasis added)). The Kaufmann translation of the Will to Power, along with the French translation and selection quoted by Deleuze (La Volonté de Puissance), reads “inner will” (une vouloir interne) instead of “inner world” [Innere Welt] (WP 619; VP 2 309). Deleuze notes this as one of the most important passages which describes the will to power (NP 46). Accordingly, he argues that the will to power is an “internal will” which manifests itself within the relation of force and force; it is “the differential and genetic element, as the internal element of its production” (NP 46-47). So when Deleuze writes, “Force is what can, will to power is what wills” (NP 47), he means there is a separation between force and will to power in principle, but not in fact. In principle, forces are empirical (material) and the will to power is transcendental. In fact, the will to power is a “plastic principle that is no wider than what it conditions, that changes

52 itself with the conditioned and determines itself in each case along with what it determines. The will to power is, indeed, never separable from particular determined forces” (NP 46). Deleuze is thus attempting to turn the relation between force and will to power into a superior or transcendental empiricism. However, on closer analysis, the will to power appears to simply mean a centre of force relations. Although Nietzsche says that the will to power is “inherent in all that happens” (LN 11[96]), a position he also holds in GM (GM 2:12), this need not imply that there is an “inner will” between or among forces. For “all driving force is will to power” (LN 14[121]; emphasis added). In contrast to Deleuze’s interpretation, there is no distinct separation between force and will to power. Heidegger seems right to suggest that what “Nietzsche calls ‘force’ becomes clear to him in later years as ‘will to power’” (Heidegger 1991: 87). Thus the “inner world” [Innere Welt] of a complex of force relations—the will to power—denotes the driving force or creative drive of the complex, and so each and every multiplicity of forces is directed by a driving force which Nietzsche calls “will to power”. Here we are moving away from a simple cause- effect paradigm, where a subject A (cause) produces an effect on a subject B, to a relational view where forces interact with one another as process. The “inner world” of each and every complex of forces, the will to power of the relationship, refers to the driving force of the process. This is why even the weak can dominate the strong: the strong are not always triumphant; rather, the creative are always triumphant. In any complex of forces, then, a will to power is always active. And by extension, the world as a whole, as dynamic and open, is comprised of wills to power.

2.2.2. Causation and Succession

In Nietzsche’s notebooks circa 1885-1886, prior to BGE and the Genealogy, the concept of the will to power is introduced to remedy a problem he finds inherent in both mechanistic atomism and Boscovichean forces (LN 2[88], 36[21], 36[31]). The cause- effect paradigm of physics and its model of succession presupposes subjects or substances. Nietzsche calls this a false conception of causality because the subjects/substances are nothing but abstract and durable points added to bolster logical necessity or causal regularity (LN 2[142], 11[73], 35[55]). As Nietzsche argues in Twilight, causation is simply an error: the will, consciousness, the subject, motives, or

53 the atom accompany “processes” or nothing at all (TI “The Four Great Errors” 3). Furthermore, although Boscovich was a pivotal influence on his account of forces, Nietzsche comes to make a similar point against him. Boscovich argues that the natural world is comprised of forces and fields of forces, that forces explain modifications of matter such as motion and change, and that forces constitute matter. In doing so he offers a “midway” position between Leibniz and Newton. In line with Leibnizean monads, he holds that matter is composed of “simple and perfectly non-extended primary elements”; in line with Newtonian mechanics, he views the universe as a sum total of “mutual forces, which vary as the distances of the points from one another vary”, but where Newton only posited the idea of attractive force, Boscovich adds the idea of repulsive force (Boscovich 1922: 35). The essential point is that Boscovich provides a new atomic theory of “forces” or “point-atoms”, namely, non-extended and massless physical points. Forces never touch one another but interact through either attraction, when in spatial distance to one other, or repulsion, when in spatial proximity to one another. And so matter itself, and even nature as a whole, is a continuum of attractive and repulsive force points acting upon one another. Nietzsche’s only published treatment of Boscovich is found in BGE, where he states that against materialistic atomism, “Boscovich taught us to renounce belief in the last bit of earth that did ‘stand still’, the belief in ‘matter’, in the ‘material’, in the residual piece of earth and clump of an atom: it was the greatest triumph over the senses that the world had ever known” (BGE 12). Nevertheless, Nietzsche comes to realise that Boscovich’s theory falls into the same abstraction as atomism. Perhaps this comes as no surprise, as Greg Whitlock suggests, the dynamic worldview is spawned both “historically and conceptually” from the mechanistic worldview (Whitlock 1996: 215). Nietzsche argues that the idea of dynamic-atoms or force-points acting at a distance through either repulsion or attraction can only “form an image of the world”, which is to say, it fails to provide an adequate explanation of the processual nature of force relations (LN 2[88]). In essence, Boscovich’s theory of forces evokes the same form of causation we find in material atomism: the presupposition of points or subjects succeeding one another via the relationship of cause and effect.16 The only difference is that material atoms are durable (“lasting, final units” (LN 11[73])) while Boscovichean forces are ephemeral.

16 “Here the implication is always that something is moved, and whether in the fiction of a lump atom or even of its abstraction, the dynamic atom, we still conceive of a thing which effects—that is, we haven't left behind the habit that senses and language seduce us to” (LN 14[79]).

54 Nietzsche thus argues that forces of attraction and repulsion are simply “fictions” or “phrases” (LN 2[83]), for they can neither explain the struggle between or among different quanta of power nor the effectiveness of the dominant or commanding force within such a relation; instead, only the will to power explains how these relations are directed towards the increase of power (LN 2[88]). When explaining forces or the will to power Nietzsche continues to use the notion of a centre of power as implying a “quantum” of power. Nietzsche is therefore not critical of the notion of force-centres per se but rather of the way they are thought to causally interact with one other.

2.2.3. Process Over Causality: Struggle as Pathos

Robin Small points out that after the “Time-Atom Theory” (1973) Nietzsche replaces the concept of “causality” with that of “process” [Geschehen] (Small 2010: 75). This seems to be a fair assessment of the development of Nietzsche’s thought concerning forces and power. For example, circa 1885-1886 he writes, “Mechanistic theory can […] only describe processes, not explain them” (LN 2[76]). The essential point is that a faction of forces emerges from differential quanta of power (LN 14[79], 14[121]). Against causal succession, “The will to power in every combination of forces—resisting what's stronger, attacking what's weaker—is more correct” (LN 36[21]). Here it is not a case of one force-point acting upon another in terms of logical succession, as we get with the cause-effect paradigm of both mechanistic and dynamic atomism, but a processual emergence of one among the many. This is “a process in which the individual factors that succeed one another do not condition each other as causes and effects” (LN 2[139]). Therefore, insofar as the will to power replaces causality it also provides a new form of succession. For succession is conceived as the penetration and interconnection among forces rather than a linear conception of force- points. The will to power is the dominating, effective, or commanding force/power in the struggle between forces; thus, it is not conditioned by a preceding force but emerges from the processual conflict between forces. (This form of succession is similar, as we will see in the following chapter, to how Deleuze conceives of succession in the first synthesis of time.) Strictly speaking, forces are purely relational, as they derive their mode of existence when in relation with one another. The emphasis on a struggle of one among the many means that forces have neither being nor identity in-themselves but

55 instead derive their capacities of transformation and change within relationships. This is one of the fundamental points Deleuze makes about Nietzsche’s conception of forces: differences in quantity drive change.

What interests [Nietzsche] primarily, from the standpoint of quantity itself, is the fact that differences in quantity cannot be reduced to equality. Quality is distinct from quantity but only because it is that aspect of quantity that cannot be equalised, that cannot be equalised out in the difference between quantities. Difference in quantity is therefore, in one sense, the irreducible element of quantity and in another sense the element which is irreducible to quantity itself. Quality is nothing but difference in quantity and corresponds to it each time forces enter into relation (NP 40; emphasis added).

The quality of force is its difference in quantity, and its mode of interaction is one of processual conflict. By adding the concept of the will to power to that of force relations Nietzsche is attempting to explain how force, by its very nature, flows, converts, and discharges itself in a certain direction: towards the increase of power. Deleuze is therefore right to point out that the will to power does not signify the aim for power, as though power is something the will “wants or seeks” (NP iv-x), thus implying the will’s transcendence. Instead, a dominating power/force is something expressed within each relationship between forces. The “one” that dominates the many is the will to power. The will to power is therefore a direction, not a purpose. “People are accustomed to consider the goal (purposes, volitions, etc.) as the driving force, in keeping with a very ancient error; but it is merely the directing force—one has mistaken the helmsman for the stream” (GS 360).

2.3. The Published Work: Forces and Will to Power

After seeing that Nietzsche first formulated the concepts of force and will to power as a remedy for the physical problem of cause and effect, we can turn to his treatment of forces and will to power in his published work circa 1887. There are two passages worth mentioning, and although they are brief they highlight certain ideas Nietzsche was experimenting with in his notebooks. In §17 of BGE Nietzsche criticises the idea of positing the subject “I” as the centre of thought. He argues that it is “a falsification of the facts to say that the subject ‘I’ is the condition of the predicate ‘think’”, which would be not only a critique of the Cartesian cogito but of the Kantian

56 transcendental “I” too.17 As Nietzsche writes, “a thought comes when ‘it’ wants, and not when ‘I’ want”. The interesting point is how he draws a comparison between the causal structure of atomism and the subject of thought:

Following the same basic scheme, the older atomism looked behind every ‘force’ that produces effects for that little lump of matter in which the force resides, and out of which the effects are produced, which is to say: the atom. More rigorous minds finally learned how to make do without that bit of ‘residual earth’, and perhaps one day even logicians will get used to making do without this little ‘it’ (BGE 17).

In the same way as atomists attribute a cause to an atom, treating it as substance, philosopher-psychologists attribute the cause of thought to the “I”. But for Nietzsche, the “I” is simply one “it” among many. Keeping in mind that much of Nietzsche’s work on the notion of the self or body (i.e., the unconscious) prior to BGE was concerned with the self as a multitude of drives and affects (D 109 and 119; Z 1 “On the Despisers of the Body”), he goes on to speculate whether we can translate drives and affects into the language of force and will to power in §36:

we must venture the hypothesis that everywhere ‘effects’ are recognized, will is effecting will— and that every mechanistic event in which a force is active is really a force and effect of the will.—Assuming, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire life of drives as the organization and outgrowth of one basic form of will (namely, of the will to power, which is my claim); assuming we could trace all organic functions back to this will to power and find that it even solved the problem of procreation and nutrition (which is a single problem); then we will have earned the right to clearly designate all efficacious force as: will to power. The world seen from inside, the world determined and described with respect to its ‘intelligible character’— would be just this ‘will to power’ and nothing else (BGE 36).

By positing the will to power as the “efficacious force” within each force relation, Nietzsche not only replaces the cause-effect model central to the mechanics of atomism but also rejects the “history of metaphysics” by stating that there is no being behind becoming, no intelligible world behind the apparent world, as the “intelligible character” of the world is “just this ‘will to power’ and nothing else”. Nietzsche does not further detail why this is the case. But by the time of the Genealogy (1887) he appears to wholly adopt the idea of the will to power as operating in all phenomena

17 For a substantial critique of the Cartesian cogito and transcendental “I” see: BGE 54.

57 when he says that the will to power “is acted out in all that happens” (GM 2: 12). This also means that “all that happens” is not localised to the physical world but applies more broadly to the moral, societal, historical, and cultural forces that shape human subjectivity.

2.4. Deleuze On Forces and Will to Power

2.4.1. Qualities of Forces: Active and Reactive

Deleuze is right to argue that Nietzsche’s account of forces offers a concrete rather than abstract physics (NP 54), for any analysis conducted on forces is inseparable from the event of their determination. Deleuze goes to great lengths to characterise Nietzsche’s “force” as a philosophical concept proper. First of all, he gives a rather simple but acute definition of force, which accords with Nietzsche’s mature thought: a force is a difference in quantity (NP 40). More specifically, for Deleuze, quantitative differences explain process as multiplicity. A quantitative difference is not a determinable amount countable by number, as “differences in quantity cannot be reduced to equality” (NP 40). A difference in quantity is an irreducible difference, an irreducible quantity of power. When a force relates to a force, neither of which become equalised; rather, they form an entirely new complex (multiplicity), which goes on to interact with other forces, forming in turn another new complex, and so on. What Deleuze calls “quantitative differences” Klossowski calls “fluctuations of intensities” (Klossowski 1997: 61-62). Deleuze does not use the term “intensity” in NP, but at a 1963 symposium on Nietzsche he praises Klossowski for his translation of Nietzsche’s interest in energetics as “pure intensities” or “intensive fluctuations”.18 Nevertheless, Deleuze argues that the quantitative difference between forces is expressed as a “quality” (NP 46). Yet although quantitative differences produce qualitative differences, qualitative differences cannot be reduced to the quantitative differences from which they derived. “Reducing all qualities to quantities is nonsense: what follows is that one

18 “Nietzsche's taste for the physical sciences and energetics has occasioned much surprise. In fact, Nietzsche was interested in physics as a science of intensive quantities, and ultimately he was aiming at the will to power as an ‘intensive’ principle, as a principle of pure intensity—because the will to power does not mean wanting power; on the contrary, whatever one desires, it means raising this to its ultimate power, to the nth power. In a word, it means extracting the superior form of everything that is (the form of intensity). It is in this sense that Mr. Klossowski wanted to show us a world of intense fluctuations in the will to power” (DI 122).

58 thing and another stand side by side, an analogy” (LN 2[157]). As Nietzsche continues, qualities are signs of quantities (ibid.). Frequently, however, Nietzsche provides anthropocentric readings of qualities:

Quality is a perspectival truth for us; not an ‘in-itself […] we experience even relations of magnitude as qualities (LN 5[38]).

Qualities are our real human idiosyncrasy: wanting our human interpretations and values to be universal and perhaps constitutive values is one of the hereditary insanities of human pride, which still has its safest seat in religion (LN 6[14]).

But Deleuze dispenses with any anthropocentric reading of qualities by reconstructing a typology of forces: forces themselves have either an “active” or “reactive” quality. Nietzsche only appears to use the term “active force” once in his published work, in the Genealogy where it is used as a synonym for “creative force” (GM II 18), which means that it would apply to any form of the will to power, negative or affirmative. On the other hand, he does not appear to use the term “reactive force”. Nevertheless, Deleuze reconstructs a typology to define the qualitative character of dominating and dominated forces respectively. As we saw previously, the creative are triumphant, which is why the weak can dominate the strong. In essence, Deleuze’s “active” and “reactive” forces can be understood as characterising how the creative triumph. The closest Nietzsche comes to such a reading is when he explains “active” as “reaching out for power” and “passive” as “an act of resistance and reaction” (LN 5[64]). For Deleuze, “active forces” are superior to “reactive forces” because they go to the limits of what they can do; they possess, subjugate, dominate, and appropriate by imposing forms on exploitable circumstances. Active force “affirms its difference” as the “power of transformation, the Dionysian power” (NP 39, 57). By contrast, “reactive forces” are inferior because they deny difference from the outset, a characteristic we see in the first essay of the Genealogy, where the slave herd inverted the “value positing-eye” of the masters and deemed anything “not-itself”, “outside”, or “different” as evil (GM I 10). Reactive forces exercise the quantity of their force by “securing mechanical means and final ends, by fulfilling the conditions of life and the functions and tasks of conversation, adaptation and utility” (NP 37). But when reactive forces triumph over active forces they do not themselves become active. This is why active and reactive forces differ in

59 kind rather than degree. Nietzsche’s obscure phrase, “we must protect the strong from the weak”, makes sense if we understand that “reactive force, even when it obeys, limits active force, imposes limitations and partial restrictions on it” (NP 52). In the most extreme cases, reactive forces triumph by separating active forces from “what they can do” (NP 57). In sum, Deleuze’s distinction of the active and the reactive refers to the various ways of dealing with the process of forces as multiplicity: active forces affirm the multiple from the outset, while reactive forces deny the multiple from the outset.

2.4.2. The Will to Power: A Transcendental Principle of Synthesis

Deleuze explains that active forces and reactive forces have a complement, an affirmative or negative internal will, which respectively give active forces the power to affirm the multiple and reactive forces the power to negate the multiple. The will to power has “primordial qualities” which provide the power of “becoming-active” and the power of “becoming-reactive” (NP 39). The essential point is that Deleuze transforms a simple empiricism into a transcendental empiricism by separating “will” from “force”, so this section focuses on the will to power as the transcendental (genetic and differential) element, the principle of becoming, which relates the different (force) to the different (force). The will to power as such manifests itself within each relation of force and force and is therefore “inseparable from each case in which it is determined” (NP 80). In this manner, the transcendental not only differs in kind to the empirical but arises contemporaneously with—and thus changes with—the phenomena it conditions. Here Deleuze presents Nietzsche’s transcendental genesis of real experience as replacing Kant’s transcendental conditioning of possible experience. In doing so, “synthesis” becomes a capacity of material forces rather than a capacity of the a priori faculties of the mind. In reference to Kantian Critique, Deleuze writes, “We require a genesis of reason itself, and also a genesis of the understanding and its categories: what are the forces of reason and of the understanding?” (NP 85). But in saying this, the central point is that forces are responsible for engendering the understanding and reason, and so the human subject, with its capacity to understand and reason, or interpret and evaluate, is just like any other phenomenon: a product of material forces. Echoing Maimon’s call for the genesis of real experience, Deleuze writes,

60 Kantianism centres on the concept of synthesis which it discovered. Now, we know that the post- Kantians reproached Kant, from two points of view, for having endangered this discovery: from the point of view of the principle which governs the synthesis and from the point of view of the reproduction of objects in the synthesis itself. They demanded a principle which was not merely conditioning in relation to objects but which was also truly genetic and productive (a principle of internal difference or determination19). They also condemned the survival, in Kant, of miraculous harmonies between terms that remain external to one another. With regard to such a principle of internal difference or determination they demanded grounds not only for the synthesis but for the reproduction of diversity [divers] in the synthesis as such. If Nietzsche belongs to the history of Kantianism it is because of the original way in which he deals with these post-Kantian demands. He turned synthesis into a synthesis of forces—for, if we fail to see synthesis in this way, we fail to recognise its sense, nature and content. He understood the synthesis of forces as the eternal return and thus found the reproduction of diversity at the heart of synthesis. He established the principle of synthesis, the will to power and determined this as the differential and genetic element of forces which directly confront one another […] Nietzsche seems to have sought (and to have found in the ‘eternal return’ and the ‘will to power’) a radical transformation of Kantianism, a re-invention of the critique which Kant betrayed at the same time as he conceived it, a resumption of the critical project on a new basis and with new concepts (NP 48; translation modified; emphasis added).

To clarify, Deleuze is not claiming that Nietzsche aimed to provide an account of the genesis of real experience in specific reference to the post-Kantians such as Maimon and Fichte, but rather that his focus on the concept of synthesis aligns him with the post- Kantians more broadly. So when Deleuze refers to the Genealogy of Morals as a rewrite of the Critique of Pure Reason (NP 82), we must take this to mean simply that the former provides an account of the genesis of real experience rather than the conditioning of possible experience. On the one hand, Deleuze argues that Nietzsche changes the Kantian enquiry by making the will to power a transcendental principle of becoming that governs the synthesis of forces themselves. Deleuze also adds that insofar as Nietzsche’s will to power brings about a synthesis of forces it fulfils the requirements of an “internal difference”. Hereby the unity of the subject and its concept is an “internal difference” (DI 33), which is to say, every subject has an individual concept for that subject alone. (This links directly to Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason, which will be dealt with in the following section.) On the other hand, the eternal return is the transcendental principle responsible for the reproduction of diversity

19 There is a mistranslation here, as the original translation reads “eternal difference or determination” instead of “internal difference or determination” [principe de différence ou determination interne].

61 (differential forces) within the synthesis. It promises that the different (forces), and only the different, will return. So while the will to power is the transcendental principle for the synthesis of forces, the eternal return is the transcendental principle for infinite modulation—the affirmation of the world in perpetual becoming. The fact that Deleuze references the post-Kantian criticism levelled at the harmonious relationship between “terms that remain external to one another” (NP 48), namely, receptive sensibility (intuition) and active understanding (concepts), implies that the eternal return replaces the synthesis and schematism of the imagination. As we saw in the previous chapter, the synthesis of the imagination is carried out on appearances (apprehension and reproduction) in accordance with the legislation of the understanding (recognition), while the schematism of the imagination accounts for the application of the categories to sensible intuitions (i.e., transcendental schemata as a priori time-determinations). This is why Deleuze presents the eternal return as a doctrine of time, namely, a synthesis of time and its dimensions (past, present, future). But as will be explained further on (Section 3.5.), Deleuze’s conceptualisation of the eternal return represents a move away from temporality (i.e., time as it pertains to human experience) to a metaphysical account of time.

2.4.3. The Will to Power: A Principle of Sufficient Reason

Deleuze turns Nietzsche into somewhat of a neo-Leibnizian—or more accurately, a post-Kantian neo-Leibnizian—when he states that the will to power “[fulfils] the requirements of a truly sufficient reason” (NP 45). An exegesis of the meaning of “sufficient reason” is lacking in NP, so I refer to Deleuze’s 1956-1957 seminars entitled “What is Grounding?” [Qu’est-ce que fonder?]. For the purposes here, these seminars are important for two reasons: (1) they provide an analysis of the relation between force and phenomena in Leibniz that mirrors what Deleuze says of Nietzsche, and (2) they provide an analysis of Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason. This section does not attempt to provide a comprehensive study on Leibniz’s metaphysics, as the goal is to show that Deleuze’s early reading of Leibniz works as a precursor to his reading of Nietzsche’s forces, will to power, and, as will be pointed out, eternal return.20

20 Although Deleuze’s seminars on Leibniz circa 1980 are far more clear and comprehensive than what he says of Leibniz in “What is Grounding”, I take such an approach in order to maintain some historical

62 Firstly, Deleuze argues that Leibniz’s concepts of “force” in physics and “the principle of sufficient reason” in metaphysics complement one another (WIG 96). Forces are simple substances that provide the reason for composites in extension. “Force is expressed in extension. It is substance, which is to say a power of unification, of dynamism, of a completely different order than the physical (WIG 97-98). In support of this, Deleuze quotes Section 2 of the Monadology, which I provide in full: “And there must be simple substances, since there are composites; for the composite is nothing but an accumulation or aggregate of simples” (Monadology Section 2; cf. WIG 100). As Leibniz clarifies in Section 1 of the Monadology, “[s]imple means without parts”, and as he states in Section 3, these simple substances or “monads are the true atoms of nature, and, in a word, the elements of things”. Deleuze thus takes monads to be irreducible forces: “extension expresses force, the relative expresses the substantial, that is to say monads and their relations” (WIG 103). Now, although Deleuze does not say this explicitly, it is clear that he conceives of the relation between force-monads and phenomena as a form of genesis, as force-monads are not parts of composites, but instead they constitute composites, that is, force-monads are the reason for composites. In this way, Leibniz founds “a grand theory of the phenomenon” where the phenomenon signifies the “being of what appears” (WIG 99); thus, we find in Leibniz a reading of nature as “the interpretation of signs” (WIG 101). Deleuze does not give much detail on what such an “interpretation of signs” entails, but it implies that understanding nature requires an interpretation of the forces that engender phenomena; therefore, a particular phenomenon is a sign insofar as it reflects a state of force relations. This leads us, secondly, to the principle of sufficient reason: “all being has a reason” (WIG 102). Leibniz defines the principle of sufficient reason as follows, “we consider that no fact can be real or actual, and no proposition true, without there being a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise, although most often these reasons just cannot be known by us” (Monadology Section 32). In short, the principle of sufficient reason asserts that the real or the actual is entirely intelligible. As Nicolas Rescher clarifies,

the Principle of Sufficient Reason is not a principle of explicability, and it is certainly not an epistemic principle of cognitive competency to the effect that everything that is the case can (in consistency. For a clear and concise overview of Deleuze’s reading and use of Leibniz, see: Smith 2012: 43-58.

63 principle) be explained by us. Rather, in its application to this world—to the domain of contingent truth—it is an ontological principle that asserts (in Hegelian language) the rationality of the real (Leibniz 1991: 116).

And so even if a particular phenomenon is not epistemologically intelligible to us at a particular time, in principle, it is assumed to be ontologically intelligible. Therefore, it should always be possible to provide a reason for why something is like this rather than like that. Considering Deleuze’s focus on the relation between force-monads and sufficient reason, then the sufficient reason of a thing provides the reason for the individuation of individuals—how a thing is engendered by force relations—and thus it concerns the domain of “existence”. More specifically,

The genius of Leibniz was to make the concept an individual. The reason is what contains the totality of what arrives and can be attributed to the corresponding object. Therefore, the concept can no longer be a general idea. It is an individual notion. The concept goes all the way to the individual itself (WIG 103).

In other words, the principle of sufficient reason does not explain the general idea which applies to many individuals, for example, the general idea “human” which applies to all individual human beings, but rather explains the individuality of the concept or notion of a thing—what makes it it. To clarify this, Deleuze adds that the principle of sufficient reason presupposes the principle of identity, “A is A”, which governs the domain of “essences” (WIG 109). This means that “each true proposition”—that is, each true subject predicate relation—“is analytical” (WIG 102, 106). And so by analysing a thing’s existence (individuality) we can find its essence (identity): “every identity is retrievable in what exists” (WIG 106). In sum, the sufficient reason of a thing means that all true predicates, that is, anything that happens to a subject with truth, are analytically contained not in a thing itself but in the concept or notion of a thing (individuality). This comprises, as we saw above, the “internal difference”. For example, in the statement “Caesar crossed the Rubicon” the predicate “crossed the Rubicon” is true and therefore contained in the notion “Caesar” (WIG102). The same is true of the predicates “betrayed by Brutus” and “was assassinated”; in fact, everything that happened to Caesar with truth, every single event, ever, is analytically contained in the notion of Caesar, while everything that is not true, such as “met Socrates”, is not contained in the notion of Caesar. Yet, importantly, this is the case for predicates past,

64 present, and future. For even if the predicate of a notion has not yet occurred, that is, when it is not yet expressed in the predicate, it is still contained in the notion, not actually, Leibniz explains, but “virtually” (Leibniz 1960: 416). And so even at the time of his birth, “crossed the Rubicon” was virtually contained in the notion of Caesar. Leibniz writes in section 22 of the Monadology, “as every present state of a simple substance is a natural consequence of its preceding state, so is its present pregnant with the future”. From our point of view, then, the world changes, it is in becoming; but everything that has ever happened, and will ever happen, is already represented in God, the infinite intellect, which provides the complete determination of all beings:

every [individual] substance is like an entire world and like a mirror of God, or indeed of the whole world which it portrays, […] for it expresses, although confusedly, all that happens in the universe, past, present and future, deriving thus a certain resemblance to an infinite perception or power of knowing (Leibniz 1960: 418).

In this way, each individual notion “expresses the totality of the world”, but it does so from its own “point of view” (WIG 102, 103, 104). The point of view is not constituted by the individual notion, but rather the individual notion is constituted by the point of view. Thus, a point of view is the sufficient reason of an individual notion: “The point of view of each monad is one and the same as its individuality” (WIG 104).21 Although this background is only implicit in NP, it nevertheless provides evidence of a Leibnizian influence on Deleuze’s systematic and metaphysical reading of forces (sufficient reason), the will to power (the principle of sufficient reason), and the eternal return (the affirmation of sufficient reason). For Nietzsche, quantitative differences— forces—are the sufficient reason of phenomena, and so each and every phenomenon has

21 In Deleuze’s seminars on Leibniz circa 1980 he makes this point by arguing that the principle of sufficient reason accords with the principle of causality. “The sufficient reason of a thing is the notion of the thing […] whereas cause expresses the relations of the thing with something else” (Seminar Leibniz: 15/04/1980). This means that every thing has a sufficient reason, but its sufficient reason includes the relation of the thing with other things. For example, a particular event “crossing the Rubicon” is encompassed in the notion “Caesar”; but “crossing the Rubicon” includes a cause, which includes a cause, ad infinitum, and, looking the other way too, this same event produces an effect, which produces an effect, ad infinitum. In this manner, Smith defines the principle of sufficient reason as follows, “for every thing, there is a concept that gives an account both of the thing and of its relations with other things, including its causes and its effects” (Smith 2012: 46). Therefore, the individual notion of a thing contains everything that can be said of it with truth, every event that ever happened to it, as well as the causes and effects of those events, past and future, stretching all the way to infinity, as a totality. In this sense, each individual notion “expresses the totality of the world” from its own “point of view” (Seminar Leibniz: 15/04/1980).

65 its reason in a singular set of force relations. This is true whether we know the forces that take hold of a phenomenon or not. But in contrast to Leibniz, forces are not analytically contained in the concept or notion of an individual phenomenon; instead, forces, being synthetic, engender actual phenomena. Deleuze can hereby only take this Leibnizian experimentation so far. For although forces produce phenomena, they are not contained “in” the phenomena they produce. Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche can be read as a preliminary sketch of the principle of sufficient reason in DR, where intensive quantity—the sufficient reason of phenomena or empirical diversity— represents the internal differences that engender phenomena. Hereby every set of intensive differences (synthesis) which produces a phenomenon is contained, that is, virtually insists, not within the concept or notion of the phenomenon but within the actual phenomenon itself (Chapter 4, Section 2.2.). Although Deleuze claims that the will to power fulfils the requirements of a principle of sufficient reason, without the concept of the virtual at his disposal, namely, the contemporaneity and coexistence of the past with the present, he cannot fully affirm this position. For Nietzsche, then, every individuated phenomenon has the same sufficient reason, differential forces, but the forces that at one time or another actually produced an individual phenomenon are not contained “in” it. It is interesting to note that Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche experiments with what happens to a Leibnizian-type metaphysical system after the death of God. For Nietzsche, each individual phenomenon continues to take a perspective on the world, and likewise perspectives on the world can be seen as the sufficient reason of subjects; but unlike Leibniz, the world is not a totality of the double play of causes and effects stretching infinitely forwards and infinitely backwards, and thus the world does not mirror God; instead, with God dead, the world is a whole in becoming: it is pure chaos. We came across such a view in Deleuze’s reading of the apparent world as the world of force relationships—“the universe unlearned” (LN 7[62])—but Deleuze expands upon this with the principle of the eternal return.

Section Three. The Eternal Return

3.1. Introduction

Deleuze presents the eternal return as a cosmological doctrine that affirms the

66 being of becoming. As he famously claims, “We misinterpret the expression ‘eternal return’ if we understand it as ‘return of the same’. It is not being that returns”, for example, a same or similar complex of forces, “but rather the returning itself that constitutes being insofar as it is affirmed of becoming and of that which passes” (NP 45). Here the “element” of return, the that which eternally returns, is returning itself: “Returning is the being of that which becomes (Revenir, l’être de ce qui devient)” (NP 44). Deleuze puts this a number of ways by stating that “being is selection” (NP 179), that “the eternal return is being and being is selection” (NP 66), and that returning as being is the “same” that selects becoming in the form of the different, the diverse, the fortuitous: “only that which becomes in the fullest sense of the word can return, is fit to return” (NP x). In sum, the return of the eternal return selects the “different”, promises that only the “different” will return, and thus affirms that all that exists is in becoming. Nietzsche’s cosmological speculations concerning the eternal return are found almost entirely in his unpublished writings. This section will show that in his late writings—which Deleuze draws upon from La Volonté de Puissance—the eternal return represents the eternal return of the same. The eternal return of the same, as a cosmological speculation, posits that the same combination of forces return again and again because the world is a giant interconnected complex of finite forces, undergoing processes within a finite space, over an infinite period of time. Deleuze, however, presents the eternal return as a doctrine of time, “a synthesis of time and its dimensions [past, present, future]” (NP 45), which affirms the world in perpetual becoming. It would be difficult to defend the view that the eternal return is a doctrine of time in light of Nietzsche’s texts, but as Small points out, the eternal return is nevertheless “about time” (Small 2010: ix). Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche’s eternal return might be debatable, but the fact that Nietzsche never published a cosmological account of the eternal return immediately brings into question whether there is such a thing as a “theory” or “doctrine” of the eternal return at all.

3.2. The Eternal Return of the Same: Forces, Space, Time

Nietzsche speculates in his notebooks that the same combination of forces will return again and again because of three underlying features of the universe. Firstly, he posits that the world is composed of a finite amount of forces. Hill suggests that

67 Nietzsche never rigorously argues for the finite conception of forces but simply takes it as axiomatic (Hill 2005: 128). On my view, Nietzsche appears to arrive at this view only negatively when he states that any account that takes the world to be an infinite capacity of transformation is simply a vestige of theology. The clearest expression of this comes around 1885 when Nietzsche criticises Spinoza for positing the world (or Nature or God) as capable of infinite transformation:

They would like the world, if no longer God, to be capable of divine creative force, an infinite force of transformation; they would like the world to prevent itself at will from falling back into one of its earlier shapes, to possess not only the intention but also the means of guarding itself from all repetition […] This is still the old religious way of thinking and wishing, a kind of longing to believe that in some way or other the world does, after all, resemble the beloved old, infinite, boundlessly creative God—that in some way or other 'the old God still lives'—that longing of Spinoza's expressed in the words 'deus sive natura' [God or nature] […] But what, then, is the proposition and belief which most distinctly formulates that critical turn, the present ascendancy of the scientific spirit over the religious, god-inventing spirit? Is it not: the world, as force, must not be conceived of as unlimited, for it cannot be conceived of that way—we forbid ourselves the concept of an infinite force, as being incompatible with the concept of ‘force'. Thus—the world also lacks the capacity for eternal novelty (LN 36[17]).

There are some significant details in this passage we will return to, but the single point to highlight for now is that Nietzsche thinks the total amount of forces that comprise the world is finite. Secondly, Nietzsche posits space as both filled with moving forces and finite. He writes circa 1885 that “empty space” is an erroneous concept and that space everywhere is filled with moving forces (LN 36[23]). There is a nuance, however, in the way Nietzsche thinks of forces as filling space. For instance, Descartes’s “corpuscularism”, the view that everything physical in the universe is made of tiny “corpuscles” of matter, holds that corpuscles or extended bodies fill space. As he writes in The Principles of Philosophy, “the extension in length, breadth, and depth which constitutes the space occupied by a body, is exactly the same as that which constitutes the body” (Descartes 1982: 43). For Descartes, empty space is not possible, for even at the miniscule scale there exists something which fills it (e.g., air) (Descartes 1982: 47). Thus, space simply is matter. Nietzsche also thinks that empty space is not possible, but unlike Descartes he does not equate matter with space. Although forces fill space, the latter are not equal to the former. In 1885, Nietzsche writes,

[the world is] enclosed by 'nothingness' as by a boundary, not something blurred, squandered, not something infinitely extended; instead, as a determinate force set into a determinate space, and not into a space that is anywhere 'empty' but as force everywhere, as a play of forces and force-waves simultaneously one and 'many', accumulating here while diminishing there (LN 38[12]).

Space is filled with moving forces and set within a boundary. Therefore, the quantity of forces and space itself are both finite. The “nothingness” which encompasses the world is an assumption. Considering Nietzsche takes all space to be filled with moving forces, then this “nothingness” cannot be vacant space. Now the nature of this “nothingness” is unimportant for our concerns. The essential point is that although these speculations do not provide an account of the nature of space itself, they do posit, axiomatically at least, that space is finite. Thirdly, alongside his “anti-theological” interpretation of forces as finite, Nietzsche provides an “anti-theological” interpretation of time as infinite. Deleuze refers to a fragment from the WP circa 1888 (NP 46), which reads,

If the world may be thought of as a certain definite quantity of force and as a certain definite number of centres of force […] it follows that, in the great dice game of existence, it must pass through a calculable number of combinations. In infinite time, every possible combination would at some time or another be realised; more: it would be realised an infinite number of times. And since between every combination and its next recurrence all other possible combinations would have to take place, and each of these combinations conditions the entire sequence of combinations in the same series, a circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the world as a circular movement that has already repeated itself infinitely often and plays its game in infinitum (WP 1066; translation modified).

Nietzsche’s main reason for accepting infinite time is because he sees any account that posits a beginning in time, such as a moment of creation, as having “ulterior theological motives” (WP 1066).22 Considering God is dead, and his analysis takes place prior to any conception of a cosmological singularity (which in itself does not provide an irrefutable solution to the origin of the universe), he bluntly states that there is no good reason to assume the world as having a beginning, and logically following, no good

22 Nietzsche says elsewhere, “Among all the questions dealing with motion, none is more annoying than the one which asks for its starting point. For though one may imagine all the other movements as causes and effects, the one original primal motion has still to be explained” (PTG 100).

69 reason to deny the infinity of past time (WP 1066). Nietzsche is hereby not providing a positive argument for the nature of infinite time; instead, he is simply highlighting its conceptual possibility from a negative standpoint. Deleuze, however, paraphrases a more convincing argument for the infinity of past time. He proposes that “the present moment”, which expresses the passage of time, “forces us to think of becoming, but to think of it precisely as what could not have started, and cannot finish, becoming” (NP 44; emphasis removed). Assuming the past is infinite, it follows that if becoming were becoming “something”, such as an equilibrium or terminal state, like the heat-death of the universe, then it would have already become this. But this is not the case. So becoming is not becoming “something”. The fact that the present moment passes gives reason for an infinite becoming without beginning and without end. Deleuze claims that Nietzsche found this idea in earlier thinkers, most notably Anaximander (NP 44; see: WP 1066); but although Nietzsche may have come across this idea in earlier thinkers, there is a modern version of this argument most influential to Nietzsche’s thought, which begins with Kant and passes through Schopenhauer. The argument commences with Kant’s antinomy of space and time in the CPR (A426-29/B454-57). The thesis states: the world has a beginning in time and is spatially finite. The antithesis states: the world has no beginning in time and is spatially infinite. The thesis rests on the argument that if the world had no beginning in time then up until every point in time an eternity and infinite series has passed away. By definition, an “infinite series” means that it cannot be completed through succession. Therefore, an infinitely elapsed series is impossible because from the present moment an infinite series could not have passed away, for in principle there could always be more successive series. Time and space are finite: time has a beginning and space is limited or bounded. The antithesis rests on the argument that if time had a beginning there would have to have been a preceding time in which the world did not exist, which is to say, an “empty” time. Likewise, a finite world bounded in space would have to have existed in an empty and unbounded space. Time and space are therefore infinite: time has neither beginning nor end and space is unlimited or unbounded. Now, we should not be concerned with Kant’s solution to these antinomies, namely, the transcendental ideality of appearances (CPR A506/B534), for the problem lies in the premise. Regarding the thesis half of the antinomy, Schopenhauer writes,

If the proof of the thesis in the first conflict is allowed to be valid, it proves too much, since it applies to time itself just as much as it does to any change in time, and thus proves that time itself must have a beginning, which is absurd. Besides, the sophism consists of the fact that instead of the series of states lacking a beginning, which was initially at issue, we are now suddenly talking about the series lacking an end (being infinite), and something is proven that nobody doubts, that the idea of completeness logically contradicts this endlessness, and yet every present is the end of the past. But we can always conceive of the end of a beginning-less series without detracting from its lack of a beginning, just as conversely, we can conceive the beginning of an endless series. But nothing at all is brought forward to counter the actually correct argument of the antithesis, that the alterations of the world absolutely and necessarily presuppose an infinite, regressive series of alterations. We can conceive the possibility that the causal series will one day end up in an absolute standstill, but we cannot remotely conceive the possibility of an absolute beginning (Schopenhauer 2010: 524).

Summarising Schopenhauer’s point: there is no contradiction in conceiving the infinite series of past states from the perspective of the present moment. Returning to Nietzsche’s fragment quoted previously,

Lately one has sought several times to find a contradiction in the concept ‘temporal infinity of the world in the past’ (regressus in infinitum): one has even found it, although at the cost of confusing the head with the tail. Nothing can prevent me from reckoning backward from this moment and saying ‘I shall never reach the end’; just as I can reckon forward from the same moment into the infinite. Only if I made the mistake—I shall guard against it—of equating this correct concept of a regressus in infinitum with an utterly unrealisable concept of a finite progressus up to this present, only if I suppose that the direction (forward or backward) is logically a matter of indifference, would I take the head—this moment—for the tail: I shall leave that to you, my dear Herr Dühring! (WP 1066; translation modified).

This means that Kant got it all backwards. He posits the empirical conception of time as only asymmetrically countable, running from the past to the present toward the future. Therefore, if the past were infinite, it would be possible to start counting the succeeding series of moments from the most distant past and declare the present moment “infinity”. In this sense, of course the past cannot be infinite. But Nietzsche holds that there is no reason why we cannot posit the past as infinite by starting with the present moment and working backwards, from head to tail. Consequently, if the past is infinite, then it denies the possibility of a final state of the world, or a goal to which the world is directed.

If the world could in any way become rigid, dry, dead, nothing, or if it could reach a state of equilibrium, or if it had any kind of goal that involved duration, immutability, the once-and-for-all (in short, speaking metaphysically: if becoming could resolve itself into being or into nothingness), then this state must have been reached. But it has not been reached (WP 1066).

In saying this, Nietzsche provides a speculative refutation of the second law of thermodynamics, the principle of entropy, which holds that dynamic processes within a closed system increase towards disorder. The second law of thermodynamics is responsible for generating the idea of the heat death of the universe. For the universe is a closed system, where heat neither enters nor leaves, and thus the universe itself is increasing in entropy or disorder. Nietzsche rejects such an account by speculating that without a clear starting point, such as a moment of creation (or cosmological singularity), we can assume the existence of the infinite past, which means that the universe has not, and will not, disperse into total disorder. For if the past is infinite, this would already have happened. So whereas Kant’s antinomies posited the World as either infinite in space and time or finite in space and time, Nietzsche rejects the premise and posits the world as infinite in time and finite in space (and force). The argument presented pertains to Kant and Schopenhauer, but the real reference in this passage is to the philosopher Eugen Dühring, who in his Course of Philosophy [Cursus der Philosophie] (1875), which Nietzsche read the year of its publication, laid out Schopenhauer’s criticism of Kant’s antinomies. Dühring rejected the infiniteness of space and infiniteness of past time, maintaining that only the future is infinite, which is why Nietzsche accuses him of, like Kant, confusing the head for the tail.23 Putting the three points made above together, Nietzsche writes circa 1885,

This world: a monster of force, without beginning, without end […] not something infinitely extended; instead, as a determinate force set into a determinate space, and not into a space that is anywhere 'empty' but as force everywhere, as a play of forces and force-waves simultaneously one and 'many', accumulating here while diminishing there, an ocean of forces storming and flooding within themselves, eternally changing, eternally rushing back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and flood of its forms (LN 38[12]).

23 For further detail about Nietzsche and Dühring see: Hill 2005: 142; D’Iorio 2014: 73. Furthermore, D’Iorio discusses three other philosophers who influenced Nietzsche’s thought regarding the final state of the world, namely, Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner, Eduard von Hartmann, and Otto Caspari (D’Iorio 2014).

The world “as a determinate force set into a determinate space” means that it is finitely extended; the world “without beginning, without end” means that past and future are temporally infinite. But we see that the world is “simultaneously one and 'many', accumulating here while diminishing there”. As mentioned previously, the world as a whole—that is, as a multiplicity comprised of multiplicities—is one and many. This is the basis of Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche’s apparent world, the world of relationships. But here Nietzsche is claiming that the world accords with the first principle of thermodynamics, that is, the total amount of energy in the world remains constant: “if something happens, the total energy of the system remains unchanged” (Kragh 2008: 32). For when a force concentration increases here, it at the same time decreases there: the world is “a whole unchanging in size, an economy without expenditure and losses, but equally without increase, without income” (LN 38[12]). Merging this with Nietzsche’s criticism of Spinoza quoted earlier: conceiving of the world as an “infinite power of transformation” is a mere expression of “the old religious way of thinking and wishing”, and so Nietzsche starkly rejects a moment of creation and thus denies that the world has the capacity for “eternal novelty” (LN 36[15]). Here Nietzsche is aiming for the “de-deification of nature” (GS 57, 109). He thinks that there is no good reason to identify nature with God, no good reason to retain the “old” value of God. For Nietzsche, nature is chaos: the world of becoming itself. Nietzsche therefore conceives the world as having only a finite capacity for transformation and change: “Let us beware of thinking that the world eternally creates new things” (GS 109). And so even though the world undergoes infinite transformation and can be understood as a perpetual process of becoming, no internal logic makes it “prevent itself” from a repetition of the same combination of forces. If the world does not possess the purpose, intention, or means to prevent itself from a repetition of the same, it does not possess the purpose, intention, or means to repeat the same either. The world as chaos is intensionless and fortuitous. Therefore, the eternal return of the same is a consequence, not a goal. As Milič Čapek suggests, although Nietzsche was critical of a mechanistic interpretation of the world, he seems to have retained certain aspects of atomism, such as the view that matter—even if it is processually individuated through the dynamic play of forces—is capable of forming only a finite combination (Čapek 1983: 143). Similarly, Joan Stambaugh states, “It cannot be denied that Nietzsche

73 attempted a purely mechanistic explanation of return” (Stambaugh 1987: 156). So after positing forces and space as finite and time as infinite, Nietzsche can say, “The principle of the conservation of energy demands eternal recurrence” (LN 5[54]). This model of the eternal return of the same can be seen in Nietzsche’s published work. In Zarathustra, “On the Vision and the Riddle”, Zarathustra speaks of a gateway entitled “Moment”, which signifies an instant in time that separates two paths continuing on to eternity, one towards the past and the other towards the future. To this the dwarf replies, “All that is straight lies […] All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle”. Immediately Zarathustra becomes vexed at the dwarf and responds “Do not make it too easy on yourself!” It appears that Zarathustra’s frustration arises from the Dwarf’s hasty acceptance of the doctrine, without hesitation, in ignorance of its consequences. As Zarathustra continues,

“See this moment! […] From this gateway Moment a long eternal lane stretches backward: behind us lies an eternity. Must not whatever can already have passed this way before? Must not whatever can happen, already have happened, been done, passed by before? And if everything has already been here before, what do you think of this moment, dwarf? Must this gateway too not already – have been here? And are not all things firmly knotted together in such a way that this moment draws after it all things to come? Therefore – itself as well? For, whatever can run, even in this long lane outward – must run it once more! – And this slow spider that creeps in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things – must not all of us have been here before? – And return and run in that other lane, outward, before us, in this long, eerie lane – must we not return eternally? –” Thus I spoke, softer and softer, for I was afraid of my own thought and secret thoughts (Zarathustra III “On the Vision and the Riddle” 2).

By stating that the eternal past represents everything possible has happened, that this actual moment too has already existed, and that likewise everything that “can” happen—that is possible—will happen an infinite number of times, shows that Nietzsche thinks that forces can form only a limited number of processes over infinite time. Thus, each and every moment will return: “And are not all things firmly knotted together in such a way that this moment draws after it all things to come? Therefore –

74 itself as well?” There is significant debate surrounding the nature of the Moment and its lanes stretching infinitely towards the past and infinitely towards the future. Before moving on to Deleuze’s interpretation below (Section 3.3.), it will be helpful to outline a few of these competing accounts to give a sense of some of the interpretive disparity. Now, the Dwarf who proclaims, “time itself is a circle”, interprets the eternal return as a closed form of time. We must keep in mind that the Dwarf represents the “spirit of gravity”, or Zarathustra’s “devil and arch-enemy […] half dwarf, half mole, lame, paralyzing, dripping lead into my ear, lead-drop thoughts into my brain” (Z III “On the Vision and the Riddle” 1). When Zarathustra climbs to “great heights” to present the Dwarf with his idea, the latter is shown to possess only the power to reduce the thought of eternal return to his own basely way of thinking. By taking an existential approach to the Moment and its lanes, both Löwith and Richardson argue that although Zarathustra does not agree with the Dwarf’s interpretation of time as a circle, he nevertheless conceives of the eternal return as a circular form of time.24 Hatab and Small address the existential significance of the eternal return (Hatab 2005; Small 2010), but in terms of the Moment and its lanes as signifying a formal conception of time they argue that Zarathustra does not endorse the Dwarf’s interpretation: Hatab maintains that we are simply told that a finite set of events will inevitably return in an

24 In his Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Return of the Same (originally published in German in 1935), Karl Löwith maintains that the eternal return “splits into a double equation, one on the side of man, the other on the side of the world” (Löwith 1997: 62). “[T]he real difficulty consists in bringing the vision of the eternally revolving world into harmony with the purposeful willing of the man of the future” (Löwith 1997: 69). Accordingly, Zarathustra does not endorse the Dwarf’s immediate interpretation of time as a circle because “[the Dwarf] himself is only the burden of existence”, thus he makes it too easy on himself, meaning that the burden has not been overcome (Löwith 1997: 69). Yet although Zarathustra does not accept the Dwarf’s interpretation, Löwith maintains that the symbol of the gateway entitled “Moment”, with its lanes stretching infinitely towards the past and the future, signifies a ring and represents a circular form of time: Zarathustra “becomes the advocate of the circle […] As the overcomer of man and time, he finds this exit by joining the two endlessly straight paths, which end in the nothing, into the eternal circle of Being […] the man of the Christian age thinks of an imperishability, a timeless ‘eternal life’, when he thinks of eternity; whereas the ‘eternal vitality’ is an eternal recurrence of the same that justifies precisely what comes into being and passes away as such” (Löwith 1997: 71). John Richardson conceives of the two paths as meeting and forming a ring because they are symbolic of two human stances of comportment: “When Nietzsche speaks of the paths ‘out’ (hinaus) and ‘back’ (zurück), he may mean not just (and even not mainly) the future and the past, but these two different stances or modes of comportment (of intentionality). The path ahead refers to our projective thrust towards ends—to our willing. And the path behind refers to that ‘retrospective’ pause or interruption in this willing, which distinguishes humans and reaches its fullest form in our knowing” (Richardson 2008: 105). “That these two paths, back (zurück) and out (hinaus), meet each other and join in a ring symbolizes how these two basic stances of humans […] find their own completion by joining one another. So eternal return is the emblematic attitude in which one holds together the contrary stances of retrospection (or theory) and will. It symbolizes the fusion of retrospect and prospect, hence of will to truth and will to power (life). It shows life how to face the past, and keep willing” (Richardson 2008: 111).

75 infinite process of becoming, while Small argues that the eternal return presupposes a linear model of time.25 On the outline given so far, and in agreement with Hatab and Small, Nietzsche conceives of the eternal return as the return of the same combination of forces. Through the chance interaction of a finite complex of forces within a finite space and over infinite time, every possible combination would have been realised, and will be realised, an infinite number of times. The eternal return of the same neither implies that identity precedes difference nor that the world is teleologically driven towards the return of the same combination of forces and matter. Quantitative differences or unequal degrees of power (forces) still drive processes. Difference or the unequal (forces) can still be understood as the sufficient reason for empirical diversity—if one were so inclined. But inevitably over time—over fantastically long periods of time—a previous combination of forces repeats, ad infinitum. Interesting enough, in an 1873 fragment mentioned previously, “Time-Atom Theory”, Nietzsche attempts to formulate a Boscovichean-like account of forces in terms of a novel conception of time. He argues that time rather than space explains movement and change, and thus all forces are a “function of time” (Nietzsche 2000: 1). The essential point is that Nietzsche rejects the idea of a single and universal continuum of time “in” which forces inhere in favour of a view where particular syntheses of time- points create particular temporal series: “We can only speak of time points, no longer of time” (Nietzsche 2000: 4). A particular body, for instance, is a series of time-points rather than an entity persisting in a single and universal space and time. Thus, times splinter, crisscross, and intersect with one another. Although this fragment is speculative

25 Hatab argues that “[t]he gateway image can be said to ‘mix’ the implications of linear and cyclical time. Moreover, ‘deciding’ between a linear and a cyclical course of time—indeed the very assumption that some kind of objective, conceptual ‘model’ of time must be implicated in the account of eternal recurrence—seems to me unnecessary in coming to terms with Nietzsche’s thinking on this matter, at least with respect to the published accounts. We are simply told of a finite set of possible events repeating itself in an infinite procession of becoming” (Hatab 2005: 72). According to Small, “[t]he word ‘eternal’ suggests infinitude, and the concept of a recurring cycle is that of a sequence of events which occur not just once but many times—in this case, infinitely many times. Yet a circle is a closed line which has a finite magnitude, in that two points on it cannot be separated by more than a certain distance. If that is what symbolizes time, then time is finite. Hence, the dilemma seems inescapable: we can speak of a circular time, within which any event occurs just once, or at most a finite number of times, or else of an infinite time within which a finite number of events occur again and again, but not both. In other words, any talk of ‘cyclical time’ is a sign of confusion. The conclusion of this analysis is that eternal recurrence presupposes an infinite linear time, and that the figure of a circle can serve only to represent the sequence of events that recur infinitely many times […] eternal recurrence presupposes a linear model of time” (Small 2010: 129-130).

76 and experimental, it raises the question as to why Zarathustra would evoke what appears to be a single, continuous, liner form of time “in” which force processes take place. For the same set of force combinations repeat again and again because they inhere in one, and only one, temporal series. Although Deleuze does not reference this fragment, unknowingly he addresses this conundrum by arguing against a singular and universal continuum of time in favour of a view where particular forces connect with particular temporal series and form singular complexes.

3.3. The Eternal Return of the Different: Deleuze’s Interpretation

Deleuze is right to note that the “mechanistic” interpretation of the eternal return, where processes pass through the same set of differences again and again, is problematic if it entails the consequence of a “final state” (NP 45). But questionably he states, “The cyclical hypothesis, so heavily criticized by Nietzsche, arises in this way” (NP 45). Deleuze relies upon a single fragment from 1881 for this claim. Indeed Nietzsche criticises a cyclic hypothesis in the fragment quoted (VP II 334), but it is not his cyclic hypothesis. As D’Iorio explains, Nietzsche in fact criticises Johannes Gustav Vogt’s cyclic hypothesis of the eternal return presented in his Force: A Realistic and Monistic Worldview (D’Iorio 2014: 42-44). Each one of Nietzsche’s texts on the eternal return without exception supports the eternal return of the same combination of forces in time. But insofar as Nietzsche supports the eternal return of the same, he implicitly supports a mechanistic view of forces. For the world as a whole is capable of forming only a finite quantity of force combinations. Nietzsche tracked down the theological presuppositions which hid themselves in the philosophies and sciences of his time, but his hard-line assassination of these presuppositions and consequential denial of eternal novelty hindered him from affirming a truly substantive account of the multiple. His mechanistic account is troubling. For instance, the actual present—you reading this— has happened, and will happen, an infinite number of times. But it logically follows that all possible combinations—combinations unknown to us as of yet—have happened, and will happen, an infinite amount of times too. The eternal return therefore denies genuine novelty in toto. All combinations of force will repeat; any combination whatsoever is a repetition; and any future event is a repetition of the same. So although Nietzsche’s cosmological speculations might be dated and untenable,

77 as Hatab suggests, the “novelistic” interpretation of the eternal return (eternal novelty) seems to be the most plausible alternative to the one Nietzsche gave (Hatab 2008: 154). Deleuze does not directly address whether the world has the potential for eternal novelty. For Deleuze, the reciprocal principle of the will to power—which fulfils the requirements of a principle of sufficient reason—is the eternal return. For Leibniz, the reciprocal principle of sufficient reason is the identity of indiscernibles. “According to a principle of sufficient reason, there is always one concept per particular thing. According to the reciprocal principle of the identity of indiscernibles, there is one and only one thing per concept” (DR 14). In DR, the field of individuation, which is virtual and filled with individuating differences, is ungrounded by the third synthesis of time as eternal return. “This plenitude must be immediate […] to such a degree that the principle of indiscernibles would indeed have the formula given it by Lucretius: no two eggs or grains of wheat are identical” (DR 314). For Deleuze, then, the identity of indiscernibles applies to actual things. Every event, every spatiotemporal determination of a thing, is contained virtually in the thing itself (sufficient reason), and for every set of individuating differences, there is one thing and one thing only. Deleuze does not argue that eternal return as the being of becoming fulfils the requirements of a principle of the identity of indiscernibles, but it is implied in Deleuze’s interpretation of the eternal return as a principle which selects difference and promises that only becoming will return. Now, Deleuze predominantly formulates the eternal return as the being of becoming. Here it is not a question of denying “being” all together but thinking “being” on different terms. We must “stop believing in being as distinct from and opposed to becoming” (NP 44), for we need to rethink “being” as independent of the two world order, of the world of being and the world of becoming, of the intelligible world and the apparent world. As previously explained, by ridding ourselves of the “true” world we are left only with the “apparent” world (becoming). Deleuze is thus taking on the problem of the “being” of this world. He quotes a fragment circa 1883-1885 as support, “That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to a world of being” (NP 44; WP 617).26 “Being” is no longer otherworldly but resides on the side of becoming, that is, being is an “appearance” (WP 617). The rest of the quote addresses the possibility of “knowledge” within a world of becoming: as will to power, as error, as

26 This quote in the Late Notebooks, dated 1886-1887, reads, “That everything recurs is the most extreme approximation of a world of becoming to one of being” (LN 7[54]).

78 invention, as art, as the “[imposition] upon becoming the character of being” (WP 617). This fragment could be taken to mean that the distinctly human interpretations we project onto the world of becoming (chaos) is analogous with “being”, that the return of the same combination of forces is the closest approximation we have of “being”, but here Deleuze equates “being” with returning (or recurrence) itself. The “same” of the eternal return, returning, is “the being of becoming, the unity of multiplicity, the necessity of chance: the being of difference as such or eternal return” (NP 178). “Being” is thus selection or affirmation—it selects or affirms becoming—and insofar as returning returns, it reproduces becoming (NP 179). The question is then: How often does the same of the eternal return, “returning”, return? How often is becoming reproduced—With each process? With each event? With each moment? Deleuze begins his analysis of the eternal return as a “cosmological and physical doctrine” by focusing on Nietzsche’s argument for the infinite past and his denial a final state or heat death of the world (NP 43). Because becoming is not becoming “something”, implying that the future is contingent rather than determinate, we can speak about a becoming without goal, intension, or finality. Deleuze calls this “pure becoming”. It is important to stress that he understands “pure becoming” as a thought rather than a cosmological thesis: “the thought of pure becoming” serves as the foundation for the eternal return (NP 44). Experience presents us with becoming and change and nothing else besides. But the thought of pure becoming takes us beyond experience, beyond the given (phenomena), in order to address the conditions of the given. In short, the given is our observation of the passing present, and the passing present provides evidence of an infinite past. Deleuze transforms the problem of becoming into a problem of temporal passage and thus makes the eternal return a doctrine of time. In this way, he reads Nietzsche’s assumption of the infinite past as a transcendental deduction. Our observation of becoming, of the passing present, is proof that the past is infinite. With the condition of the infinite past it follows that if becoming were becoming “something”, such as an equilibrium or terminal state, like the heat- death of the universe, then it would have already become this. This is not the case, so becoming is not becoming “something”. Along these lines, the eternal return provides an “answer to the problem of passage”, as it signifies a synthesis of time and its dimensions (present, past, future) (NP 44-45). In a footnote, Deleuze claims that “[t]he account of the eternal return in

79 terms of the passing moment is found in [‘On the Vision and the Riddle’ in Zarathustra]” (NP 45f8). This means that the gateway entitled “Moment”, with its lanes stretching eternally forwards and eternally backwards, is a symbol for the passing present. According to Deleuze, there are two interpretations of the Moment.

[I]n Zarathustra's exposition it is always the entanglement of causes or the connection of moments, the synthetic relation of moments to each other, which determines the hypothesis of the return of the same moment. But, from Dionysus' perspective by contrast, it is the synthetic relation of the moment to itself, as past, present and to come, which absolutely determines its relations with all other moments (NP 182).

Zarathustra’s interpretation of the Moment was expressed when he said, “And are not all things firmly knotted together in such a way that this moment draws after it all things to come? Therefore – itself as well?” (Zarathustra III “On the Vision and the Riddle” 2). Deleuze reads such view as an “entanglement of causes”, as a deterministic relation of causes and effects (NP 182). He thinks that we must affirm chance over causality in order to reject finality (NP 26-27), for otherwise the world is causally driven towards “something”—an end goal or final state—which contradicts everything Nietzsche said about the infinite past. But the eternal return of the same is a consequence, not a goal. Forces are not causally determined and directed towards a world-goal, as we have seen, they involve chance and undergo contingent processes. The passage above, “all things firmly knotted together”, applies equally to Nietzsche’s force processes as having the capacity to form only a finite combination. Nevertheless, Deleuze raises a genuine problem with such a view: “The cyclic hypothesis is incapable of accounting for […] the existence of diversity within the cycle” (NP 45). As we saw with the eternal return of the same: all combinations of force will repeat; any combination whatsoever is a repetition; and any future event is a repetition of the same. So if we take “diversity” to mean genuine novelty, then Nietzsche’s philosophy of becoming is incapable of affirming diversity. Although Deleuze thinks that Zarathustra does not accept the Dwarf’s interpretation of the Moment, he also takes Zarathustra’s interpretation to be no less questionable. In an ironic twist, Deleuze admits that Nietzsche’s eternal return signifies the eternal return of the same combination of forces, but he justifies his own alternative reading by stating that Zarathustra only introduced the eternal return: “He is the cause of the eternal return, but a cause which delays

80 producing its effect. A prophet who hesitates to deliver his message” (NP 181). This is where Dionysus chimes in. And it is not difficult to see that Dionysus represents a Bergson-inspired Deleuze, such that Deleuze becomes Zarathustra’s monstrous child— critiquing his master through creation. For Deleuze, Nietzsche’s eternal past not only conditions the passing present but coexists with it too. As he writes of the Moment,

How can the present pass? The passing moment could never pass if it were not already past and yet to come—at the same time as being present. If the present did not pass on its own accord, if it had to wait for a new present in order to become past, the past in general would never be constituted in time, and this particular present would not pass. We cannot wait, the moment must be simultaneously present and past, present and yet to come, in order for it to pass (as to pass for the sake of other moments). The present must coexist with itself as past and yet to come. The synthetic relation of the moment to itself as present, past and future grounds [its] relation to other moments (NP 44-45).

Deleuze is arguing that the Moment, with its lanes stretching eternally towards the past and eternally towards the future, represents a synthesis of dimensions (present, past, future). Each Moment is singular, and as such it is connected to a singular line of the past and a singular line of the future yet to come. A particular Moment does not exist in a universal continuum of time; instead, each and every Moment takes a perspective on the eternal past and the eternal future. The world itself is comprised of a multiplicity of Moments—passing presents—which are connected to one another because they take a perspective on the past and on the future, that is, on the universe as a whole. It is clear that Deleuze presents the “Dionysian interpretation” of the Moment through a Bergsonian problematic, which Deleuze dealt with in a 1956 article on Bergson, “Bergson’s Concept of Difference” (DI 44-47). But the contemporaneousness and coexistence of the past with the present is a radical thesis that requires elaboration and demonstration. Here it is thrown in as a short, incomplete, and convoluted interpretive experiment. There is no need to reconstruct such an account with reference to the concepts of duration and the virtual as presented in Deleuze’s earlier texts on Bergson. Nietzsche is not a theorist of time of the same calibre as Bergson, and neither did the eternal return prefigure Bergsonian duration. Nevertheless, we see that by emphasising the role of the future as the yet to come, Deleuze is attempting to understand the problem of passage in an alternative manner to Bergson. For if the eternal return is an answer to the problem of passage, the present moment does not pass because another

81 moment pushes it forward, but passes because difference is eternally introduced within the form of time. The present passes because it simultaneously differs from the past and the yet to come. The “being” of becoming, the “returning” of the eternal return, is a synthesis of the present, past, and future. But insofar as returning returns—at each moment—it expresses the principle of becoming: the will to power (NP 45). In this way, the eternal return is a sort of temporal synthesis—and not a temporal schema, as schemata are determined by concepts—that affirms the perpetual reproduction of diversity within the synthesis of forces (will to power). As such, it selects or affirms becoming, not as a single and continuous process, as though the world is in becoming and each and every phenomenon has jumped on board, but as a multiplicity within a world as a multiplicity (chaos). This gives a whole new sense to the world in flux. For the world as becoming is comprised of becomings, each one of them, it seems, with their own duration. The essential point to draw from Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche is that a theory of becoming worthy of merit requires an adequate theory of time. Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same relied on a standard linear conception of time, infinite in both directions. Force processes repeat again and again because they are finite, take place in a finite space, and undergo processes “in” a linear form of time. Deleuze attempts to supersede such a model by making relations of forces (force processes) involved in the synthesis of the dimensions of time (past, present, future). There is no universal “flow” of time, and so forces are not undergoing process “in” time. Ultimately, the litmus tests for the success of Deleuze’s reading of Nietzschean critique comes down to whether he has adequately explained the systematic relation between forces, the will to power, and the eternal return. Forces are the (material) differences, the will to power is the transcendental principle that fulfils the requirements of a principle of sufficient reason, and the eternal return—a sort of temporal synthesis—affirms becoming and, to an extent, fulfils the requirements of a principle of the identity of indiscernibles. But Deleuze’s Bergson-inspired interpretation of the eternal return as a temporal synthesis was never articulated sufficiently. The relation between force processes and time remains ambiguous. So my suggestion is that we should read the “Dionysian interpretation” of the eternal return as an experiment that prefigures the three syntheses of time in DR.

82 Chapter Three. The Three Syntheses of Time

In Chapter 2 of DR, Deleuze presents a theory of time comprised of three syntheses. Over and above the obvious abstract and technical difficulties that comes hand in hand with thinking about time, one of the main difficulties making sense of the three syntheses derives from attempting to discern whose position Deleuze is presenting; for as many commentators have noted, he practices a kind of “philosophical ventriloquism”. The diversity of views Deleuze draws upon, no doubt, makes the chapter profound and interesting, but also somewhat maddening. Yet on top of this, it is just as difficult, at times, to discern what domains Deleuze is speaking within—is it the physical, the biological, or the psychic? This has led to much divergence in the scholarship. For the purposes of this chapter, I provide four main categories. This may tend to oversimplify matters, as each analysis of the three syntheses of time, in their own right, is highly nuanced, but nonetheless it offers a helpful guide. Firstly, the three syntheses have been set within the transcendental reduction and aligned with the phenomenological tradition.27 Secondly, they have been treated as productive of human subjectivity or experience.28 Thirdly, they have been read as primarily focused on the

27 Joe Hughes reads Deleuze’s account of the three syntheses in close alignment with the tradition of phenomenology, providing a nuanced argument that there is a profound Husserlian influence behind his work (Hughes 2008: ix, 3-19; Hughes 2009: 8-11, 88-91). For Hughes, broadly speaking, the three syntheses of time are involved in Deleuze’s genetic account of real experience as a form of genetic phenomenology, and as such they are involved in Deleuze’s “doctrine of the faculties”, which runs “from sensibility to imagination to memory to thought” (Hughes 2009: 103). In this manner, the three syntheses of time closely mirror Kant’s three syntheses of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition, such that structurally they are “almost straightforwardly Kantian. A first synthesis apprehends what was given in sensibility. A second synthesis reproduces what was apprehended. A third synthesis tries to recognize what was apprehended and reproduced, but it fails. In the failure of recognition a new synthesis, the ‘ideal synthesis of difference’, emerges” (Hughes 2009: 100; cf. Hughes 2008: 129). 28 Levi Bryant provides an illuminating analysis of Deleuze’s metaphysics (Bryant 2008: ix) and draws insightful connections with how it sits within the history of philosophy more broadly, but he focuses largely on Deleuze’s project of a transcendental empiricism as a genetic account of real human experience (Bryant 2008: 3-48). His analysis of the three syntheses of time (Bryant 2008: 175-219) centres on the human subject as split by the pure form of time, and thus opened onto immanence or the transcendental field: “we are subjects, and as subjects we are split. To claim that we occupy the transcendental field, that we know it, would be tantamount to claiming that immanence is immanence to us. It is true that we are within time, that we are split by time, and that we are thus in immanence. But it is no less true that we are transcendent to immanence. The critical point that Deleuze invites us to recognize is not that forms of transcendence are mistaken because immanence is immanent to us, but rather that views based on transcendence are mistaken because they fail to take into account this constitutive split in our subjectivity which perpetually renders experience open” (Bryant 2008: 216). François Zourabichvili draws attention to the idea that the first synthesis of time pertains to the “organic level” (i.e., organs and organisms) and thus corresponds to “organic cycles” (Zourabichvili 2012: 94-95), but his focus is largely on how the three syntheses constitute the temporal modes of real human experience, namely, thought and action (Zourabichvili 2012: 94-102). Somers-Hall provides a metaphysical reading of DR (Somers-Hall 2012:

83 organic in general, especially with respect to the first synthesis of time.29 And finally, they have been regarded as providing a metaphysical account—yet in vastly different ways—of temporal becoming.30

1), and his reading of the three syntheses of time could also be considered metaphysical insofar as he argues, on the one hand, that the passive synthesis of Habit “operates throughout the world […] the world is constituted as a field of co-existing rhythms operating with different tones, rather than as pure succession” (Somers-Hall 2012: 64-65), and on the other, that the third synthesis of the future as eternal return signifies a field of intensive differences responsible for engendering the forms given in the passive synthesis of Habit and Memory (Somers-Hall 2012: 82-83). Ultimately, Somers-Hall’s cogent analysis of the three syntheses provides important insights into its possible metaphysical extension, and his analysis of how the three syntheses form a systematic connection (which I will address below: Chapter 3, Section 3.6.) provides a lucid account of their unity, but the central focus of his analysis, unlike the biological readings in the following footnote and the purely metaphysical readings in the footnote after that, is that the three syntheses aim to uncover the temporal conditions of the genesis of real human experience. For after outlining Kant’s model of synthesis (apprehension, reproduction, recognition), he argues that “Deleuze’s approach is therefore going to be to try to provide an alternative account of the synthesis of time which does not rely on this sharp divide between the activity of consciousness and the passivity of the given […] In doing so, he will try to show how our experience is also the result of syntheses which occur prior to consciousness” (Somers-Hall 2012: 61-62). Daniela Voss centres her analysis of the three syntheses of time on the genesis of the human thinking subject: the “first synthesis of time is constitutive of the subject, the second synthesis of time is a constitutive condition for acting and thinking”, and the third synthesis of time “enacts a power of repetition” responsible for creating the split in the thinking subject, such that “the identity of the thinking subject is dissolved and turned into a series of little selves or simulacra” (Voss 2013: 210). In this way, “Deleuze's three syntheses of time offer an explanation of the formation of the subject, that is its various habits, practices, agency, memory and creativity” (Voss 2013: 251). 29 Ansell-Pearson takes a largely biological approach in his concise exegesis of the three syntheses and the problem of repetition. He argues, firstly, the first synthesis of time (Habit) comprise the habits that give consistency to biopsychic life and the organism, which can both be conceived as forms of life “constituted through the expression of need, habit, and contemplation”; secondly, the second synthesis of time (Memory) is the “being” of the past that allows the present to pass; and thirdly, the third synthesis of time involves a repetition of the future as eternal return (Ansell-Pearson 1999: 99-104). He goes on to provide an immensely rich reading of the eternal return, vitalism, and the event (Ansell-Pearson 1999: 104-138), which goes beyond DR and draws upon Deleuze’s writings on biology, biophilosophy, psychoanalysis, ethics, and literature, and thus would be impossible to reproduce here. The essential point that emphasises his biological approach is his idea that the eternal return, in opposition to Freud’s death drive as the desire of the organism to return to inanimate matter, forms a model of death that shows “how in life there is a creative evolution that involves a constant play between the organismic and the nonorganismic. On the human plane this involves a play between the self and the field of intensities and singularities it finds itself implicated in and which present it with new possibilities of existence. Death is not, therefore, merely the negation of life but a sign of the vital life that arrives from the future and which seeks to emancipate organic life from the fixed and frozen forms which entrap it” (Ansell-Pearson 1999: 113-114). Jay Lampert provides a lucid and comprehensive analysis of Deleuze’s three syntheses of time as well as some insightful critical reflections on Deleuze’s arguments for it (Lampert 2006: 12-70). In my view, Lampert provides the most comprehensive analysis of the passive synthesis of Habit as a form of organic temporality to date (Lampert 2006: 12-30), and his critical analyses of the passive synthesis of Memory (Lampert 2006: 31-53) and the future as Eternal Return (Lampert 2006: 54-70) are essential for understanding the nuanced details of Deleuze’s arguments. Ultimately, Lampert recognises that Deleuze’s “theory of time is […] an experiment in thinking difference without identity” (Lampert 2006: 13), but his analysis wavers between how the three syntheses give temporal consistency to biological and psychic systems, and in this sense, insofar as it provides the genetic temporal conditions of real experience, then “real experience” wavers between the biological and the psychic. Unlike the theorists in the following footnote, and the focus of this chapter, Lampert does not address the metaphysical extension of the three syntheses of time. John Protevi provides a comprehensive and detailed biological analysis of Deleuze’s passive synthesis of Habit (rather than an exegesis on the three syntheses of time themselves) and links it with contemporary debates in biology and biophilosophy, arguing, on the one hand, that the passive

84 We will see that although the three syntheses of time can be read as constitutive of human subjectivity or experience, they are not solely in the service of producing a form of temporality, that is, a form of time as it pertains to human existence. Although indeed DR could be read, and has been read, as influential for such an account. The question remains as to whether Deleuze provides a form of organic temporality (i.e., a form of time pertaining to all life) or a metaphysical account of time (i.e., a form of time pertaining to all phenomena—to the universe as a whole). This analysis highlights a conflict between the first synthesis of time’s focus on organic life in general and the potential metaphysical extension of the three syntheses a whole—the latter appearing to have been Deleuze’s intention. The point is that Deleuze only sets the groundwork for a metaphysical account of time in Chapter 2; he does not provide the product, as the three syntheses extend only as far as the biological domain. We will see in the following chapter that only in Chapters 4 and 5 of DR, when Deleuze presents a more parsimonious account of the three syntheses of time and links them with the three syntheses of space, that he provides a metaphysical account of temporal becoming. Beneath the excess of conceptual variations and philosophical figures and obscure references and problematics Deleuze incorporates into his account of organic temporality, there is an underlying transcendental architecture. As a brief overview of this chapter, the first synthesis of time (Habit) is empirical/actual and gives rise to the synthesis of Habit constitutes a form of “organic time”, and on the other, that it can be understood as a form of “biological panpsychism” (Protevi 2013: 155-179). I will come to address Protevi’s reading, especially his account of panpsychism, further on (Chapter 3, Section 1; Chapter 4, Section 5). 30 Manuel DeLanda takes a reconstructive rather than exegetical approach to Deleuze’s theory of time as outlined in DR and LS by drawing upon theoretical resources in physics and biology (DeLanda 2002: 82- 116). He conceives of Deleuze’s theory of time as metaphysical insofar as it provides the temporal requisite for Deleuze’s ontology, namely, “one characterizing a universe of becoming without being. Or more exactly, a universe where individual beings do exist but only as the outcome of becomings, that is, of irreversible processes of individuation” (DeLanda 2002: 84). Miguel de Beistegui also provides a reconstructive account of the three syntheses by showing that along with Deleuze’s analyses of space (as outlined in Chapters 4 and 5 of DR) they account for the genetic movement or process of individuation that actualise Ideas as individuated phenomena (de Beistegui 2004: 290-329). Hereby this “theatre of individuation, this depth from out of which phenomena flourish”, is both a spatial and temporal unity: “Depth unites the two dimensions of space and time in a new configuration of spacetime. And the unity of the two constitutes the ‘theatre of all metamorphosis’” (de Beistegui 2004: 315). James Williams provides the most detailed and comprehensive metaphysical reading of the three syntheses of time to date, situating it within the philosophy of time more broadly and arguing that “it suggests a metaphysical model of time relating to problems concerning time in evolutionary theory and in questions of genesis as they impinge on action” (Williams 2011: 1). Reading Deleuze with Whitehead in mind, Williams argues that the three syntheses can be conceived as “a process philosophy of time” in which times emerge from “multiple synthetic processes” (Williams 2011: 2-3). I cannot reproduce the nuances of his arguments, but in marked difference to the theorists from the previous footnote, at almost every turn, Williams provides a strict metaphysical reading of the three syntheses, for instance, the first synthesis of time does not pertain to the organic domain in general but extends metaphysically (e.g., living presents or habits pertain to rocks (Williams 2011: 38-39) and metals (Williams 2011: 47)).

85 variable living present, which pertains to organic life in general (Section 1). The second synthesis of time (Memory) is transcendental/virtual and gives rise to the pure past that never passes (or ceases to exist), which conditions the passing of the living present (Section 2). And the third synthesis of time (Eternal Return) is purely transcendental and gives rise to the purely contingent future that never arrives, which necessitates the perpetual introduction of novelty (difference in itself or difference in intensity) in both the living present and the pure past (Section 3). The point to be mindful of, which will be addressed in the discussion of the third synthesis below, is while Deleuze presents the three syntheses as independent of one another for methodological reasons, in reality they are entirely interdependent—take one synthesis away and the whole doctrine falls apart. In the most general sense, the three syntheses (as a whole) may be contrasted with any account that posits time as having a single and universal form of continuity, such as a single and universal uniform flow. Time is not some kind of “substantive force” responsible for change and movement. The essential point is that there is no singular temporal becoming or uniform speed of time, only multiple temporal becomings and variable durations that intersect and cross one another. The three syntheses of time as such present organic life as a kind of polyrhythmic network of becoming. And so in contrast to more common views of entities as in time: entities, events, syntheses, and dynamic processes give rise to temporal relations. Times are emergent, while dates are simply markers of historicity. Following the trajectory of this thesis thus far, Deleuze could be read as reconceptualising Kant’s active syntheses of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition with the passive syntheses of Habit and Memory and the static synthesis of the Eternal Return. But on the reading of the three syntheses given here, this would be only a rough approximation. Kant provides the conditioning of possible (human) experience, while Deleuze provides the genesis of real (biological) experience. Over and above these major differences in focus and domains, the essential point is that with Deleuze’s account of difference and repetition (synthesis), we completely lose the Kantian distinction between the subject and the object, the subjective and the objective, the subject that actively carries out the syntheses and the object (appearances) synthesised. For Deleuze, times emerge (living presents and virtual pasts) from the synthesis of intensive differences (necessitated by the third static synthesis of time) in the organic world. A living present, as we will see, is indeed a passive subject, but its

86 passivity is a mark of its composition; thus, because it is not active, then it could just as well be thought of as an object composed of differences in intensity. As both subject and object, a living present passes because it is grounded in a line of the pure past (Memory), which is not a reproduction of a former present, as it is in Kant’s case, but a singular condition of passing that was never present. In this manner, each living present takes a perspective on the entire pure past (Memory as a “whole”). Finally, unlike the understanding, which unifies the syntheses of apprehension and reproduction (recognition), the third synthesis, on the one hand, distributes difference in intensity, and on the other, promises that the same or the similar will never, and can never, return. Thus the third synthesis as eternal return does not unify the other syntheses; instead, insofar as it distributes difference to them it introduces “disunity” at their heart. On this last point, Chapter 2 of DR not only presents a theory of time comprised of three syntheses but shows also that a concept of pure difference suitable for the conditions of real experience is possible. Working through a host of different thinkers, Deleuze traces a trajectory within the history of thought concerning the relations of difference and repetition and in the third synthesis arrives at an account of pure difference, where “repetition is, for itself, difference in itself” (DR 118). As we will come to see, this is the “secret” to his theory of time as a whole.31

Section One. The First Synthesis of Time

1.1. Passive Synthesis: The Need for a Subject of Repetition

The passive synthesis of Habit testifies to something we are already well aware: if we continuously repeat an action, we form a habit; sometimes these habits are efficacious and desired, other times not. Usually understood, the repetition of a habit implies the repetition of the same. Take, for example, Freudian repetition, where we repeat on account of a repression of a prior state of affairs. Ultimately, Deleuze inverts this relation by arguing that a continuity of habits or variable presents arises from the

31 Deleuze also engages with psychoanalysis in order to provide an alternative model of the unconscious with respect to his account of difference and repetition, as the psychoanalytic model (largely Freudian, in this context) is representational (see: DR 128). Deleuze’s alternative model of the unconscious is part of the psychic domain. Nevertheless, the three syntheses of time as a coherent argument works without reference to psychoanalysis, and this is the analysis I will present. For texts that deal in full with psychoanalysis and the three syntheses of time, see: Faulkner 2006; Kerslake 2007; Somers-Hall 2017.

87 repetition of different instances. This contrasts any view that takes instances as prior identities and ex post facto brings repetition to bear upon them. The aim of this section is to show that the repetition of differences produces various habits, continuities, or living presents that interrelate with one another within the entire biological domain. The obvious place to start this analysis, considering the chapter is titled “Repetition For Itself”, is why repetition for itself? Repetition can be understood as grounded in the relations of identity and difference: two elements must be distinguished as identical or similar so a repetition can be classified, yet these same two elements must be shown as different so they can be distinguished from one another. Deleuze introduces two notions which begin to explain this. On the one hand, matter itself is inherently discontinuous, and on the other, a subject of repetition is needed in order to account for repetition. “The rule of discontinuity or instantaneity in repetition tells us that one instance does not appear unless the other has disappeared—hence the status of matter as mens momentanea [momentary mind]” (DR 90). Here Deleuze uses the notion of matter as mens momentanea in order to explain that a fundamental discontinuity lies at the heart of repetition.32 At various times Deleuze refers to this fundamental discontinuity as independent successive instants, elements, cases, or times. For example, “there is an independence of ‘cases’ or a discontinuity of ‘times’ such that one appears only when the other has disappeared” (DR 357). In order for these independent instants to be combined, synthesised, or bound, a subject of repetition is needed. One example Deleuze gives of such a subject comes from Hume: “Repetition changes nothing in the object repeated, but does change something in the mind which contemplates it” (DR 90; emphasis removed). With Hume’s thesis, the repetition of each case or sequence of AB, AB, AB, AB shows that each A-B contraction is independent of the others. When the mind contemplates this repetition something new, a difference, is introduced in the mind: when A appears we expect the appearance of B (DR 90). Each independent case is neither grounded in memory nor in the understanding but in the imagination. Hume’s

32 The reference here is Leibniz. In “The Theory of Abstract Motion: Fundamental Principles”, Leibniz writes, “every body is a momentary mind [mens momentanea], or one lacking recollection, because it does not contain its own conatus and the other contrary one together for longer than a moment” (Leibniz 1989: 140). It is only in human minds, in their capacity of memory and thought, that “conatus” lasts longer than a moment. For “conatus” signifies the indivisible part of motion, its beginning and its end— “Conatus is to motion as a point to space” (Leibniz 1989: 140).

88 account of the contractile power of the imagination is a model Deleuze will radicalise, so it is important to quote this in full.

The imagination is defined here as a contractile power: like a sensitive plate, it retains one case when the other appears. It contracts cases, elements, agitations or homogeneous instants and grounds these in an internal qualitative impression endowed with a certain weight. When A appears, we expect B with a force corresponding to the qualitative impression of all the contracted ABs. This is by no means a memory, nor indeed an operation of the understanding: contraction is not a matter of reflection. Properly speaking, it forms a synthesis of time (DR 90-91).

There are three points in need of being highlighted. Firstly, contraction forms a synthesis of time. Secondly, contraction is carried out by the imagination. Thirdly, contraction takes place in the human mind. Deleuze comes to reconceptualise Hume’s thesis by arguing that indeed contraction forms a synthesis of time, but the imagination and the mind in question are nonhuman. Before characterising this subject of repetition, I start with what passive synthesis synthesises.

1.2. What does Passive Synthesis Synthesise?

The answer to the question what passive synthesis synthesises is almost entirely absent in the first synthesis of time. The reason is simple enough: we can only acknowledge the answer to this question from the perspective of the first synthesis of time; for only in the third synthesis of time can the answer to this question be affirmed. In the first synthesis of time, Deleuze speaks of repetition as a whole, which “implies three instances: the in-itself which causes it to disappear as it appears, leaving it unthinkable; the for-itself of the passive synthesis; and, grounded upon the latter, the reflected representation of a 'for-us' in the active syntheses” (DR 92). The important point is that repetition for-itself presupposes repetition in-itself. In this sense, passive synthesis is responsible for contracting or binding the discontinuous instants that lie at the heart of matter (i.e., matter as mens momentanea). Many commentators fail to address the in-itself of repetition and focus exclusively on both the for-itself of repetition (passive synthesis) and the for-us of repetition (active synthesis). Here we can acknowledge that the in-itself of repetition refers to intensive differences. The reason this can only be acknowledged from the perspective of the first synthesis of time is

89 because Deleuze has not yet arrived at an account of pure difference, difference in itself, or difference in intensity. This needs to be highlighted because it is the only way to make sense of the technical arguments throughout this section. As I will come explain in Section 3, the third synthesis of time—the future as eternal return—provides the transcendental condition for how novelty perpetually emerges within the living present. In fact, the eternal return of difference necessitates that the first synthesis of time can only be a synthesis of difference in itself, pure difference, or difference in intensity. For the eternal return of the future affirms that the multiple, the different, and the fortuitous lie at the heart of Repetition as a whole, and so each and every passive synthesis is entirely singular. The best we can do for now is acknowledge this.33 Deleuze does not outline his account of intensive difference or intensive quantity until Chapter 5 of DR, which will be dealt with in the following chapter (Section 2.), but to provide a preliminary definition: intensive differences are fundamentally synthetic, each difference in intensity is already in relation with other differences in intensity, and intensive differences account for “the sufficient reason of all empirical phenomena, the condition of that which appears” (DR 281).

1.3. Passive Synthesis as Contemplation-Contraction

There is one thing we can say about the first passive synthesis of time with certainty: it is a monstrosity. It represents a kind of topological experiment, a folding of concepts into one another, which displaces their original use and referent and creates, in turn, a new conceptual multiplicity. The first synthesis of time offers a prime example of Deleuze as a creator of concepts. As Deleuze and Guattari write, “There are no simple concepts. Every concept has components and is defined by them. It therefore has a combination. It is a multiplicity, although not every multiplicity is conceptual” (WIP 15). This is exemplified by the manner in which Deleuze folds Husserl’s account of “passive synthesis”34 into Hume’s form of “contraction” in the imagination, then into

33 François Zourabichvili acknowledges this point when he writes, “Forces and affects refer to a field of exteriority or pure heterogeneity, a field of absolute difference. Deleuze arrives at the conception of this field through a meditation on time. He shows that when difference is raised to the absolute it becomes an authentic relation, so that the motif of the exteriority of relations is achieved in the articulation of difference and repetition” (Zourabichvili 2012: 94). 34 Joe Hughes, for instance, takes Deleuze’s notion of passive synthesis to parallel Husserl’s account of passive synthesis as a perceptual synthesis (i.e., a transcendental aesthetic) that “take[s] place outside the

90 Plotinus’ thesis of “contemplation”, then into Bergson’s idea of “the image” as a set of actions and reactions, and, like origami, creates the hybrid concept of the “contemplative soul” or “contemplative mind”—or, the designation I continue with throughout, “contemplation-contraction” (DR 109). This may sound like a “mystical or barbarous hypothesis” (DR 95), as Deleuze admits, but it provides, on the one hand, a receptive and generative power, and on the other, an alternative to the cause-effect paradigm. For instance, “The eye binds light, it is itself a bound light. This example is enough to show the complexity of synthesis” (DR 120). The point is that the light does not “cause” the eye to see—although generally speaking, it does—but rather that the light and the eye are bound to one another as an internal relation.35 Alternatively, Deleuze says that a contraction is a “fusion” of repetition in the contemplative soul (DR 95). Here we could just as well refer to this soul as a “force”, as Deleuze and Guattari do in WIP (WIP 211-212), but I continue with the preferred designation of DR. The influence for the concept of “contemplation” comes from Plotinus’ “all is contemplation!” (DR 96). In Plotinus’ Enneads, “contemplation” operates at all levels of being, from the lower level of Nature up to the higher levels of Soul [Psyche] and Intellect [Nous], and it designates the unitary power of all existents: it is through contemplation that every existent expresses the One or the Good. What Deleuze finds of interest in this Plotinian concept is the notion of contemplation as signifying both a receptive and generative power: if every entity is (being), contemplation signifies how every entity has, which is to say, how every entity receives its being from somewhere else: “To contemplate is to draw [soutirer] something from” (DR 95). The French verb “soutirer”, as Williams explains, is a technical term used in winemaking—the English equivalent is “racking”—that signifies the process of drawing wine “from one barrel into another, for instance, in order to remove sediment” (Williams 2011: 40). Of course, Deleuze is not referring to winemaking, but he does seem to be referring the underlying process involved; thus, “to draw something from” means to draw off or extract something from something. The repetition involved in the passive synthesis of Habit is a repetition of difference (intensities), and so “soutirer” means to draw off or extract a difference, or, as Williams puts it, “a differential variation” (Williams 2011: 40). So

jurisdiction of the ego” (Hughes 2008: 11). But this misses the complexity of Deleuze’s conceptual experimentation. 35 Williams provides a detailed account of the passive synthesis of Habit as an alternative to the cause- effect paradigm (Williams 2011: 41-45).

91 habit as contemplation-contraction signifies a process that draws off differences from repetition (contemplation) such that these differences are incorporated (contracted) in the habit. In this way, the eye that contemplates (draws off or extracts) the light is a contraction of the light. Together the eye and the light form a singular perspective within the continuous field of other contemplation-contractions. Here we have arrived at required subjects of repetition outlined previously. Insofar as contemplation-contractions are receptive and generative powers they are engendered subjects of repetition, or, as Deleuze says, “passive subjects”: “material repetition has a secret and passive subject, which does nothing but in which everything takes place” (DR 358). Passive subjects and passive syntheses are synonymous, but we still need to understand what makes a subject or synthesis passive. The “passivity” of passive synthesis does not refer to the products of the synthesis but the synthesis itself. As Deleuze writes, receptivity (sensible and perceptual syntheses) is only a consequence of “the passive self [which is] more profoundly constituted by a synthesis which is itself passive (contemplation-contraction)” (DR 109; emphasis added). This is an essential point widely overlooked in the secondary scholarship.36 The “passivity” of passive synthesis refers to the independent successive instants (i.e., matter as mens momentanea) drawn into repetition and thus occurring in the contemplative mind or soul. Passive syntheses, contemplative souls, or contemplation-contractions are passive subjects which represent the in-itself of repetition. Deleuze writes in the Conclusion, “in order to represent repetition, contemplative souls must be installed here and there; passive selves, sub-representative syntheses and habituses capable of contracting the cases or the elements into one another, in order that they can subsequently be reconstituted within a space or time of conservation which belongs to representation itself” (DR 357). The broad argument of DR is that a representation is always linked to a subject, and although the “I think” and the “psychic system of the I-Self” (DR 323) are human, contemplative souls are not. In this way, a passive subject (contemplation- contraction) synthesises the different, the intensive, the unequal, or the disparate and makes the in-itself of repetition present, producing, in turn, a represented and conserved time, a time of actualisation (or differenciation). These times and spaces of actualisation

36 Ansell-Pearson takes the common view of the “passive” character of passive synthesis as meaning “it is not carried out by the mind but rather takes place 'in' it prior to memory and reflection” (Ansell-Pearson 1999: 100). Hughes reads the passivity of passive synthesis as carried out by the passive faculty of the human mind (Hughes 2008: 11; 2009: 91). And Voss reads the passivity of passive synthesis as constitutive of (human) subjects (Voss 2013: 210 and 219).

92 (or differenciation) will be further analysed in the following chapter with respect to spatiotemporal dynamisms (Sections 4.5.2.-4.5.4.), but we can note for now that the first synthesis of time is a clear example of this. The importance of highlighting the fact that passive synthesis is a synthesis of difference in intensity allows for an additional characterisation of this form of synthesis (even if Deleuze does not state so himself): the passivity of passive synthesis is purely contingent due to the nature of the individuating factors which constitute the synthesis. Each contemplative soul is an actual particular, a passive subject of constitution; and likewise each contemplative soul expresses a world of chaos or pure contingency.37 Insofar as contemplative souls are engendered by intensities, they are constantly formed by intensive relations, constantly undergoing transformation. Commentators who take the first synthesis of time to be constitutive of human subjectivity or experience take passive synthesis to mean that it “is not carried out by the [human] mind, but occurs in the [human] mind which contemplates” (DR 91). Although this may be the case for Hume and Bergson, this is not true for Deleuze. In the Conclusion, Deleuze states that matter itself is “populated or covered” by contemplative souls (DR 357). But in Chapter 2, the process of contemplation-contraction is only shown to apply as far as the biological domain.38 This is most clearly seen with regard to the two “levels” of passive synthesis. Deleuze presents Hume’s and Bergson’s accounts of passive synthesis as occurring in the human mind as opposed to being carried out by the human mind. In both cases, passive synthesis is sensible and perceptual, due to their contraction in the imagination for Hume, and their contraction in psychological duration for Bergson (DR 90-93). Although there are significant differences between Hume’s and Bergson’s accounts of passive and active synthesis, Deleuze is not concerned with the superiority of either of their positions. For they both refer to the power of the human mind and leave “us at the level of sensible and perceptual syntheses” (DR 93). The problem is that these syntheses cannot account for their own constitution. Therefore, Deleuze introduces the idea of a more profound “level” of passive synthesis: “perceptual syntheses refer back to organic syntheses which are like the sensibility of the senses; they refer back to a primary sensibility that

37 For alternative accounts of the passivity of passive synthesis, which are far too complex and nuanced to reproduce here, see: Lampert 2006: 17; Williams 2011: 27. 38 Deleuze notes that contemplation applies to all entities, “from rocks and woods, animals and men”, but this is a reference to Plotinus (DR 95).

93 we are” (DR 93).39 The organic passive syntheses are responsible for producing the organs of sensation and perception, and likewise they make possible the “level” of sensible and perceptual passive syntheses.

We are made of contracted water, earth, light and air […] Every organism, in its receptive and perceptual elements, but also in its viscera [or metabolism], is a sum of contractions, of retentions and expectations (DR 93).

The nods of the chicken’s head accompany its cardiac pulsations in an organic synthesis before they serve as pecks in the perceptual synthesis with grain (DR 97).

Even when Deleuze refers to the human being (psychic system) he states that the receptivity of the transcendental aesthetic itself is formed by such passive syntheses (DR 121-122). We will see how these various “levels” of syntheses communicate when we deal with natural signs below. For now we can note that Deleuze’s claim implies that organic, sensible and perceptual passive syntheses relate to all organisms, not just humans. As an aside, it would be fair to ask: if organic passive syntheses condition sensible and perceptual passive syntheses, would we not need a condition of organic passive syntheses, and then a condition of that condition, ad infinitum? This is why it is imperative to understand the passive synthesis of Habit as signifying a passive synthesis of difference in intensity, namely, the sufficient reason of all phenomena. So although each and every domain has their own specific conditions—e.g., the physical, the psychic, the linguistic, et cetera—each and every domain has the same sufficient reason. In terms of “the organic” referred to here, it is clear that Deleuze’s distinction is not taken from the chemical dichotomy between the organic and the inorganic, as so-called inorganic elements are also part of contemplation-contraction (e.g., “water, earth, light and air” (DR 93)). The biophilosophical concepts of vitalism, life, and inorganic life, treated at length in ATP, are not dealt with in the first synthesis of time. And the notion of the organism as socio-political (AO) or metaphysical (ATP) is also not addressed. Deleuze arrives at the level of organic passive syntheses by accounting for the condition

39 Many commentators fail to make reference to these “organic syntheses”, for example, Williams (2003), de Beistegui (2004), Hughes (2009), and Zourabichvilli (2012). Ansell-Pearson (1999: 100), Somers-Hall (2012: 64-65), and Voss (2013: 221) pay respect to the organic syntheses. For the most comprehensive accounts see Lampert (2006: 19-22) and Protevi (2013: 158-165).

94 of sensible and perceptual passive syntheses. Whereas in ATP inorganic life (or the plane of consistency) synthesises heterogeneous elements, creates assemblages and becomings (ATP 507), and “far from being restricted to complex life forms, fully pertains even to the most elementary atoms and particles” (ATP 335), in Chapter 2 of DR, life and the organic, organs and organisms, are self-organising systems restricted to what Deleuze generally conceives as “the biological domain”. Deleuze only begins to provide certain characterisations of the biological domain with reference to embryology and spatiotemporal dynamisms in Chapter 4.

1.4. The Living Present: Asymmetry and Irreversibility

So far we have seen that passive syntheses or contemplation-contractions synthesise the in-itself of repetition (difference in intensity), but Deleuze notes also that their “entire function is to contract a habit” (DR 95). “[Passive] synthesis contracts the successive independent instants into one another, thereby constituting the lived, or living, present. It is in this present that time is deployed” (DR 91). Living presents and habits are synonymous. The first point to note is that within the living present the past and the future have no autonomy of their own but inhere as dimensions, and the dimension of the living present itself is asymmetrical or one-way directed. The asymmetry runs from the past to the future in the present. The passive synthesis of discontinuous matter or instants in the living present forms the dimensions of the past (as retention) and the future (as expectation). More specifically, via the living present, the preceding instants are retained as “cellular hereditary” (past) and the expected succeeding instants are guided by organic “need” (future). Examples of cellular heredity in biology include phenotypic and genotypic inheritance, cellular epigenetic inheritance, and horizontal gene transfer. But these are all complex empirical discoveries. Deleuze’s concept of “cellular heredity” should not be understood as a shorthand summary of these empirical findings, for it signifies something more general: the retention of previous instants or elements within a habit or living present. In turn, the retention of past intensive relations (cellular heredity) conditions an organism’s needs and expectations of the future. Organisms as such are comprised of living presents or habits. In the same manner as Bergson, who understood the importance of the concept of habit as creating the stability essential for life (CE 110 and 120), Deleuze posits habit as

95 providing a form of “continuity” (DR 95). Habit manifests its full generality because it deals not only with our psychological sensory motor habits but all the passive syntheses of which we (and all other organisms) are organically composed (DR 95). The essential feature of habit is that it “draws something new from repetition—namely, difference (in the first instance understood as generality)” (DR 94). That is, the passive synthesis of independent instants or discontinuous elements draw off or extract difference from these intensive relations, such that drawn or extracted difference becomes bound within the passive synthesis itself (contemplation-contraction). When we repeat an action, for example, each time is different, but through such repetitions a continuity is formed. At one and the same time, contemplation-contraction is produced and product, contracted and contraction, contemplated and contemplation, synthesised and synthesis. This is what makes each passive synthesis an actual particular. As Deleuze writes, contemplation-contractions “must be attributed to the heart, to the muscles, nerves and cells” (DR 95). The example shows that habits are not centrally controlled (e.g., by a central nervous system) but temporally localised in various parts of the organism. Difference as “generality” refers to the formation of habitual continuities as actual particulars, such that between each singular repetition there is always a slight variation of prior repetitions covered over by the power of identity: “material or bare repetition, so-called repetition of the same, is like a skin which unravels, the external husk of a kernel of difference and more complicated internal repetitions” (DR 97). The process of drawing off difference from repetition, however, not only provides the condition for generalised continuity but opens up the potential for change within established continuities. Habits offer a guide rather than a pre-determined path. In this way, we can read Deleuze’s account of habit as a “chrono-organism”, where the interconnection of varying passive syntheses provide a stabilisation and consistency in the organic world. Protevi provides a fine example of this in the human organism: “There are thousands of rhythmic periods that compose the organic being of humans: from the long periods of childhood, puberty, adulthood, and menopause to monthly hormonal cycles to daily cycles (circadian rhythms) to heart beats and breathing cycles, all the way down to neural firing patterns” (Protevi 2013: 161). The next point to address is the irreversibility of the living present. “Passive synthesis or contraction is essentially asymmetrical: it goes from the past to the future in the present, thus from the particular to the general, thereby imparting direction to the

96 arrow of time [et par là oriente la flèche du temps]” (DR 91). The arrow of time is associated with the second law of thermodynamics and can be formulated as such: entropy (or disorder) increases in the direction of the flow of time. Entropy has been shown to be the driving force of irreversible processes operating on the microscopic, macroscopic, and cosmological scale.40 “If you bring together two liquids such as water and alcohol, they tend to mix in the forward direction of time as we experience it. We never observe the reverse process, the spontaneous separation of the mixture into pure water and pure alcohol” (Prigogine and Stengers 1984: xxvii). So with the increase of entropy within a system comes the irreversible nature of the process. This example, however, refers only to a tendency within a closed system, where heat neither enters nor leaves, which is true of the universe as a whole. But Deleuze’s analysis pertains to the living present, to the organic world, to organised and ordered systems (organisms), which do not express the principle of entropy as clearly as the example cited. For living organisms are ordered beings which exist in an open system, where the earth receives a continual source of solar radiation (heat). Here we can turn to Bergson’s take on the matter. Citing the second law of thermodynamics as the law of the degradation of energy (an alternative way to state the principle of entropy), Bergson notes that for matter in general, energy gradually degrades into heat, but

All our analyses show us, in life, an effort to re-mount the incline that matter descends. In that, they reveal to us the possibility, the necessity even of a process the inverse of materiality, creative of matter by its interruption alone. The life that evolves on the surface of our planet is indeed attached to matter […] In fact, it is riveted to an organism that subjects it to the general laws of inert matter. But everything happens as if it were doing its utmost to set itself free from these laws. It has not the power to reverse the direction of physical changes, such as the principle of Carnot determines it [i.e., the principle of the degradation of energy]. It does, however, behave absolutely as a force would behave which, left to itself, would work in the inverse direction. Incapable of stopping the course of material changes downwards, it succeeds in retarding it (CE 268).

In sum, living matter accords with the second law of thermodynamics, with the way by which matter gradually degrades into heat, but its difference to matter in general lies in the way it retards the general process of energy degradation. Deleuze was well aware of

40 For a comprehensive account that argues for a pluralistic view of the world in which reversible and irreversible processes coexist, see: Prigogine and Stengers (1984).

97 Bergson’s thesis (see: Deleuze 2007: 86-88), and we find a similar thesis in Deleuze. For although passive synthesis imparts direction to the arrow of time, it does so non- uniformly, namely, through variations in duration. To say that passive synthesis imparts direction to the arrow of time is to say that the first synthesis of time provides the fundamental reason for the empirical observation of the asymmetrical and irreversible nature of organic processes on the micro- and macro-scale. No doubt this is a speculative claim. Although, to be fair, nowadays all biochemical processes are thought as irreversible (e.g., cell growth, decay, evolution, et cetera). The underlying point is that asymmetrical passive syntheses are irreversible processes which give rise to living presents with varying durations.

1.5. The Living Present Which Passes

By accounting for the asymmetrical and irreversible nature of the living present Deleuze begins to make sense of how it passes. Firstly, it is imperative to highlight that although the living present necessitates its own passing, it does not give us the reason for its own passing—hence the need for a second synthesis of time, which will be dealt with in the following section. For now, Deleuze is concerned with how the living present passes according to its own duration. As Deleuze puts it, each passive synthesis (or contemplation-contraction) which constitutes a living present is “intratemporal” (DR 97). So rather than using the term inter-temporal, which would imply that each particular living present is a present present that lies “between” a living present that has just passed and a living present that does not yet exist but is next to come, Deleuze makes use of the prefix “intra-” to imply “within”.

[T]he contraction implied in any contemplation always qualifies an order of repetition according to the elements or cases involved. It necessarily forms a present which may be exhausted and which passes, a present of a certain duration which varies according to the species, the individuals, the organisms and the parts of organisms under consideration (DR 98).

Any contemplation-contraction whatsoever neither occurs within a single present nor operates along a single, universal line of succession. Each contemplation-contraction has its own order of repetition and in turn produces a living present specific to its own duration. The living present in question indeed conforms to a mode of succession, as we

98 will see, but such a mode is non-uniform. The intra-temporality of passive synthesis means that a particular passive synthesis occurs “within” other passive syntheses, that living presents occur “within” other living presents, and, most importantly, that each of them possesses its own duration. Each variable present intersects and overlaps with other variable presents. We saw that the organism is given consistency by living presents or habits, and so the organism as such is polydurational, composed of a practically infinite multitude of varying rhythms and durations, with the possibility that one living present commands a multitude of other variable living presents within a given situation. So unlike Kant’s passive self, which is strictly anthropocentric and defined “by means of the capacity to experience sensations” (DR 100), Deleuze’s passive self is engendered by a multitude of passive syntheses and pertains to all organisms. In this sense, the organism is constituted as a self-system in perpetual modification (DR 100). There is no underlying self-identity which undergoes change. The self comprised of selves, or, the self comprised of “larval subjects” (DR 100), is nothing but a modification, a larval subject itself.41 The organism as a system of a dissolved self does not exist in a state of anarchy, but instead it has varying continuities and consistencies which provide the necessary requirements for any derived identity or unity. Deleuze hereby formulates a new model of succession, which accounts for the durational limit of each contemplation-contraction, inscribed in terms of “need” and “fatigue” (or “satiety”). “The duration of an organism’s present, or of its various presents, will vary according to the natural contractile range of its contemplative souls” (DR 98). Taking the organism itself as a myriad of contemplative souls: “need” marks the durational limit of a passing present, the natural contractile range of the contemplative soul in which it is inscribed; “fatigue” marks the moment at which the soul becomes full or satiated, “the point at which the soul can no longer contract what it contemplates, the moment at which contemplation and contraction come apart” (DR 98). Need and fatigue are organic, but, at least in this context, they do not signify energetic composition or decomposition. Neither is need the striving for sustenance nor fatigue the depletion of energy from the lack of sustenance or high-level activity. Taking from what Deleuze says about spatiotemporal dynamisms in Chapter 4, need and fatigue refer to various speeds: needs are “accelerations” while fatigues are

41 “This 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” (DR 100).

99 “decelerations” (see: DR 269).42 So although the point is that each contemplative soul has a natural contractile range, we must be clear that each so-called “natural contractile range” is engendered. Through repeated instances each contemplative soul has an inscribed contractile range which produces a habit or tendency. This habit provides a certain acceleration for future times, while the satiation of such a habit provides a deceleration of the habit’s need. The so-called “coming apart” of contemplation- contraction is not a complete breakdown of the process but a slowing down, a deceleration. Living presents can still be thought as succeeding one another, one before and one after, but the essential point is that the mode of succession in question is non- uniform. Figuratively speaking, successive instances do not conform to clock time. In this sense, every organism is comprised of habits, of variable living presents; but, at the same time, the organism itself is a habit, a variable living present. And so even the duration of a human life can also be conceived as a single passing present.

1.6. Signs: The Interaction of Passive and Active Syntheses

Thus far I have explained that organisms and their organs (or parts) are comprised of a practically infinite multitude of habits or presents of varying durations. The problem yet to be answered is how the various “levels” of syntheses—organic passive syntheses, sensible and perceptual passive syntheses, and active syntheses—interrelate. Deleuze argues that the various levels of passive syntheses and active syntheses form a rich domain of “signs”. Organic passive syntheses and sensible and perceptual passive syntheses interrelate by means of “natural signs” (or signs of the present). Such natural signs, in turn, are redeployed in the “active syntheses of a psycho-organic memory and intelligence (instinct and learning)” (DR 93) and interrelate by means of “artificial signs” (or signs in which the past and the future inhere as dimensions of the present). Although Deleuze notes that the movement from natural signs to artificial signs is at the same time a movement from the “spontaneous imagination” to the active faculties of “representation”, “memory”, and “intelligence” (DR 99), which appears to link signs to the human faculties, this is only part of the picture. For natural and artificial signs pertain to all organs and organisms. In the most general sense, signs interiorise the various levels of passive and active syntheses and animate behaviour (see: DR 94).

42 Lampert also makes this point (Lampert 2006: 24).

100 The organic passive syntheses communicate with the sensible and perceptual passive syntheses by means of natural signs. In line with Stoicism, Deleuze writes, “every sign is a sign of the present” (DR 98). The Stoic example of a scar as a sign of the “present fact of having being wounded” (DR 98) means that the moment of the wound’s infliction is contracted, and thus contained, in the fact or presence of the wound. All the instants that separate the infliction of the wound are contemplated and contracted into a living present (“the present fact of having being wounded”). Just as a scar is the sign of the “present fact of having been wounded”, so thirst is the sign of the present fact of having not received sufficient fluid. The organism’s thirst is formed through organic passive syntheses, the retention of past instances into one another (cellular heredity), and provides the organism with a need for hydration. This need for hydration, furthermore, influences sensibility and perception and commands the organism to reach out to its environment. In this way, a difference in kind lies between the organic passive syntheses and the sensible and perceptual passive syntheses. “The signs by which an animal ‘senses’ water do not resemble the elements which its thirsty organism lacks” (DR 94). Yet the organism’s thirst is only one of the many variable presents of which it is comprised. We saw above that natural signs were referred to as an operation of the “spontaneous imagination”, but Deleuze also argues,

The role of the imagination, or the mind which contemplates in its multiple and fragmented states, is to draw something new from repetition, to draw difference from it. For that matter, repetition is itself in essence imaginary, since the imagination alone here forms the 'moment' of the vis repetitiva from the point of view of constitution: it makes that which it contracts appear as elements or cases of repetition. Imaginary repetition is not a false repetition which stands in for the absent true repetition: true repetition takes place in imagination. Between a repetition which never ceases to unravel itself and a repetition which is deployed and conserved for us in the space of representation there was difference, the for-itself of repetition, the imaginary (DR 97; emphasis added).

Evidently, as a power of the contemplative mind or soul, the imagination is neither psychological (Hume) nor denotive of a faculty (Kant; Husserl). If “true repetition takes place in imagination”, then what Deleuze calls “the imagination” or “the imaginary” is the constitutive force of passive synthesis (“vis repetitiva”). By conceiving of the power of the imagination as ubiquitous in the organic world Deleuze is not attributing to the latter mind-like properties but rather drawing a structural connection between the

101 psychological and the material. Whether as a force of the organic world or a capacity of the human mind, the imagination draws off difference from repetition. In one sense, it forms habits, but at the same time, it offers the power to transform such habits. The three syntheses deal respectively with the powers of the Imagination, Memory, and Thought. Yet neither one of these powers are properly human.43 The various passive syntheses and their communication by natural signs, then, constitute the organism and its capacity to sense and perceive. Artificial signs of active syntheses, on the other hand, allow organisms to interpret what they sense and perceive. Whereas passive synthesis concerns the formation of actual particulars, active synthesis concerns the selection of general possibilities. Initially Deleuze presented the active form of synthesis as carried out by the human mind: for Hume, it was carried out by memory and the understanding (DR 91-92), for Bergson, it was carried out by empirical memory and psychological reflection (DR 92). But we must follow Deleuze’s argument: insofar as passive synthesis occurs in the contemplative soul, then active synthesis too must be carried out by the contemplative soul. So when Deleuze characterises the active synthesis as the “for-us” of repetition—which he scare-quotes: “a 'for-us' in the active syntheses” (DR 92)—he must be taken to mean “us” as organism.44 Active syntheses are therefore carried out by the human mind and give rise to modes of human representational thought in fact but not in principle. Hence all organisms have a form of

43 Although Deleuze notes that “the doctrine of the faculties is an entirely necessary component of the system of philosophy” if we avoid tracing the transcendental from the empirical, which is to say, if we provide a transcendental empiricism (DR 180), he also states, “Our concern here is not to establish a doctrine of the faculties. We seek only to determine the nature of its requirements” (DR 181). The tendency of a doctrine of the faculties is to outline the systematic connection between the faculties or capacities of the mind or body involved in human experience, but in Chapter 4 of DR Deleuze opens up the possibility of non-human faculties by applying them to the orders of Ideas or multiplicities (e.g., a faculty of sociability, of biology, of physics (DR 243)). For in a world of univocity, human faculties are only instances (more complex instances, we may admit) of fundamental capacities. It would be possible to read the three syntheses of time as demarcating the temporal conditions that would make such a doctrine of the faculties possible, but considering that Deleuze does not present such a doctrine—in any of his works—it hardly seems necessary. 44 Considering all the phenomenological and existential tropes of the first synthesis of time—e.g., passive and active syntheses, the living present (à la Husserl), the for-itself and the for-us of repetition—one significant (albeit hidden) influence is Raymond Ruyer. In Neofinalism, Ruyer criticises “existentialism” and “human Dasein” for “sidelining the problem of organic life”, as human Dasein “no longer has any conceivable connection to the human organism” (Ruyer 2016: 16). Such an approach will never be able to account for the “senseful” activity of humans, which, for Ruyer, arises in actions rather than signification, because “the senseful activity of humans stems from their organisms. The correct way to avert the vagueness of a philosophy of life does not seem to lie in ignoring life purely and simply or in interpreting it according to a more ambiguous dialectic. On the contrary, we have to examine how senseful activity can emerge, not from ‘life’ in the vague sense, but from the apparently material organism, on which biology teaches us precise lessons” (Ruyer 2016: 16). Deleuze may not follow Ruyer’s account of sense as end or finality, but he can be read as going beyond the phenomenological and existential traditions by taking up the problem of the constitution and activity of the organism itself.

102 “psycho-organic memory and intelligence (instinct and learning)” (DR 93). The whole domain of organic behaviour presupposes “the intertwining of artificial and natural signs, the intervention of instinct and learning, memory and intelligence” (DR 99). Each and every organism not only has its past (cellular heredity) and its future (organic need) embedded within its living present, but it also has a means of interpreting or deploying what it senses and perceives, both internally and in its environment. Simple examples of such would be an organism’s ability to distinguish objects within its environment, recognise signs of danger, signs of food and water, and so forth.45 It is in this sense that organisms, comprised of a multitude of organic passive syntheses and therefore varying modes of sensibility and perception, possess unique forms of “lived experience” (DR 267). Organisms thereby act from their lived experience with reference to their environments by picking up on the nuances of transformation within systems (i.e., themselves and their environments) expressed as signs. So in contrast to the Kantian form of (human) experience as knowledge, experience is experimentation. It is not a question of how organisms know the world but how they learn from the world, or, alternatively, how they solve problems. In this sense, organisms have a primitive mode of thought in the form of interpreting signs.46

45 Protevi provides an illuminating example of organic, sensible and perceptual syntheses in E. Coli chemotaxis (Protevi 2013: 172-177). 46 The question left open is whether this can be read as a form of panpsychism. In the broadest sense, “panpsychism” is an ontology linking being and mind (Skrbina 2005: 4). Yet it is as equally broad as the domains of ontology and theories of mind themselves. Common definitions of panpsychism such as “mind as ubiquitous in nature” or “all things contain mind or mind-like properties” are too general to be of use here. Deleuze neither espouses a fully-fledged theory of panpsychism nor engages with the basic contemporary arguments in favour of it. For instance, he neither criticises emergentist theories which suppose that evolution gives rise to mind only in “higher animals” and humans, nor attempts to provide an account of how mind emerges in evolution, nor presents a positive theory on the nature of mind or mental states, nor outlines an explicit relationship between mind and matter (for a list of basic arguments in favour of panpsychism, see: Skrbina 2005: 1-5). Nevertheless, elements of panpsychic thought emerge from these notions of organismal sensibility, perception, instinct (memory), learning (intelligence), lived experience, and a primitive mode of thought in the form of interpreting signs. So although the first synthesis of time does not espouse a theory of pan-psychism in the strict sense—for instance, passive syntheses are not shown to apply to molecules and particles, metals and rocks—it does seem to offer a more limited “organic panpsychism”. John Protevi provides the most comprehensive panpsychic account of the first synthesis of time, which he titles a form of “biological panpsychism”. According to Protevi, “every organism has a subjective position, quite literally a ‘here and now’ created by its metabolic founding of organic time and space; on the basis of this subjective position, an evaluative sense is produced that orients the organism in relation to relevant aspects of its environment” (Protevi 2013: 156). Protevi characterises Deleuze’s biological panpsychism as a radical form of post-Kantianism when he argues: on the one hand, an organism’s subjective position constitutes a “biological Transcendental Aesthetic”, and on the other, an organism’s capacity of sense-making constitutes a “biological Transcendental Analytic” (Protevi 2013: 182). This is a slight reconstruction, as with regard to the first synthesis of time, Deleuze only uses the notion of a “kind of Transcendental Aesthetic” with reference to his alternative model of the human unconscious, that is, with reference to I-Self systems (DR 121). Now, in the first synthesis of time, Deleuze does not give details regarding the spatial syntheses and the

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Section Two. The Second Synthesis of Time

2.1. The Need for a Second Synthesis of Time: The Pure Past in General

The first passive synthesis of time as Habit constitutes the present which passes. Deleuze refers to this as the empirical foundation of time and characterises it as “the moving soil occupied by the passing present” (DR 101). We will come to see how this passing present works in conjunction with a “space” in the following chapter (Sections 4.5.-4.5.5.). Deleuze’s focus for now concerns solving the paradox to which the first synthesis of time leads. “This is the paradox of the present: to constitute time while passing in the time constituted” (DR 100). For if the present passes, the paradox tells us, then how does the present constitute time while passing in the time it supposedly constitutes? Deleuze proposes that there must be another form of time in which the first synthesis of time can pass, namely, a second synthesis of time that grounds the foundation of time. He calls the second synthesis of time “the pure past in general”, “the being of the past”, “the a priori past”, or “Memory”. The passive synthesis of Memory signifies the “sky”, the ground of the foundation, and provides the dynamic backdrop which coexists with the ever-changing earth [la terre] in which the present passes— “Habitus and Mnemosyne, the alliance of the earth and the sky” (DR 101). Before making sense of the pure past in general, it is imperative that we do not confuse the various notions of the past and memory put forward. The first synthesis of time (Habit) presented two forms of the past: the past retained as cellular hereditary (passive synthesis) and the organism’s form of memory as psycho-organic or instinctual (active synthesis). The second synthesis of time introduces another two notions of the past, indicated by the distinctions “memory” and “Memory”. The first of which,

constitution of milieus which would be required for such a “biological Transcendental Aesthetic”. Protevi therefore turns to Deleuze’s account of spatiotemporal dynamisms as intensive processes and argues that because spatiotemporal dynamisms relate to the whole world—that is, “the entire world is an egg” (DR 269)—then Deleuze provides a “second new transcendental aesthetic” (Protevi 2013: 190), which surpasses the biological panpsychic model and embraces a “total panpsychism”: all spatiotemporal dynamisms, including rocks and islands, for instance, have a psyche in which information transfer and self-organisation occurs, such that spatiotemporal dynamisms themselves are “self-organizing cybernetic mind[s]” (Protevi 2013: 194-195). The virtue of Protevi’s account streams from the fact that he is able to unify Deleuze’s work in order to link it with contemporary theories of biological panpsychism and panpsychism more generally (e.g., Evan Thompson’s Mind in Life). The nature of panpsychism in Deleuze’s thought will be re-addressed in the final part of this thesis (Chapter 4, Section 5).

104 “memory”, refers to a human-centred representational account of the past constituted through active synthesis. With the active synthesis of memory, former presents are reproduced within a present present and at the same time the present present is reflected upon within the representation. The complex procedure arises from the need for representation not only to “represent something but to represent its own representativity” (DR 102). In this way, the present present represents itself and the former present at the same time; it “reflect[s] itself at the same time as it forms the memory of the former present” (DR 102). The essential point is that the former present does not constitute the past any more than a present present constitutes the past. When we remember a childhood event we reproduce the event as a former present within the present state of reflection. We are not “revisiting the past”, so to say, but simultaneously reproducing the former present within our reflection on the present present. Hence, the active synthesis of memory produces an actual present. In contrast to this, Deleuze proposes that the deeper, more profound sense of the past is “Memory”, the pure past in general, which is produced by passive syntheses or contractions (of a completely different kind to contemplation-contractions). Ultimately, the passive synthesis of Habit constitutes the general possibility of any present, in this sense, the active synthesis of memory is empirically founded upon the passive synthesis of Habit. But in order for the active synthesis of memory to focus upon a former present in the first place, it needs a condition; in this way, the active synthesis of memory is grounded upon the pure past in general (Memory) (DR 103). The pure past in general (Memory) is transcendental, providing, on the one hand, a transcendental solution to the paradox of the passing present (Habit), and on the other, a condition for memory.

2.2. The Passive Synthesis of Memory: The General and The Particular

One of the most telling differences between the passive synthesis of Habit and the passive synthesis of Memory is the way they express the general and the particular and thus the difference in their asymmetries. With the passive synthesis of Habit, asymmetry runs from the past as retained in the present (actual particulars) to the future (general possibilities). This constitutes the past and the future as dimensions of the living present. With the passive synthesis of Memory, asymmetry runs in reverse, from the present (actual particulars) to the past (“generality”). This provides the condition of

105 possibility for the passive synthesis of Habit and memory. So with the second synthesis of time, the present and the possible future are retained as dimensions of the past. Importantly, though, the notion of “the present” in Deleuze’s discussion of the second synthesis of time varies. Sometimes it refers to the living present of Habit and sometimes it refers to the actual present produced by the active synthesis of memory (i.e., the representation of a former present in the present mental state). The essential point is that both these forms of the present are actual particulars, which are transcendentally grounded in the pure past as general. The pure past in general is a “generality” which contains the passing of the present. As Deleuze states, “there must be another time in which the first synthesis of time can occur” (DR 100; emphasis added). The passive synthesis of Habit may create the “general possibility of any present” (DR 102), but because the pure past is transcendental rather than empirical then its “generality” has a specific sense. In fact, because the pure past is transcendental, that is, a priori and necessary, then characterising it as “general” appears strange. For a start, it is not the case that an empirical event passes away and afterwards sets the “general conditions” for another event of a same or similar type, for example, a past event stored in human memory does not set the general conditions for current actions. The reason is because this conception posits the past as a storage of actual particulars: it conceives of the past in terms of empirical associations, where instances are related to one another in terms of resemblances and contiguities (DR 102). Although this may be empirically true in the context of psychology, and not to mention other domains such as history, it does not provide the necessary conditions for real experience. For the pure past in general, the conditions of pastness for a present event are formed at the same time as the event takes place. This is one of the two central features of the conditions of real experience which we will continue to encounter throughout DR: the transcendental differs in kind to the empirical and transcendental conditions arise alongside, that is, contemporaneously with, the phenomena they condition. As such, the pure past in general prescribes the conditions of pastness for real experience, that is, for this passing present or this represented former present. So just like a human memory, a line of the past can only be singular. Therefore, the pure past as “general” cannot signify a realm of “general possibilities” because this would assume that the pure past is analogous with the passing present it conditions. Deleuze does not precisely characterise the nature of “generality” which qualifies the pure past. As he writes in Bergsonism, “there is a pure

106 past, a kind of ‘past in general’” (B 59). We will come to understand that the pure past signifies a general field of potentiality, of ideal relations, while the asymmetry of the second synthesis of time means that the present (actual particular) moves always to the pure past (general potential). More precisely, actual presents pass into the past in general as condition, yet the pure past itself does not pass (or cease to exist). Deleuze sets the challenge of conceiving of the past as pure (without empirical content), a priori (prior to any given experience), and differing in kind to the actual or the conditioned (for otherwise it would simply double the empirical). This makes the pure past almost impossible to visualise. Kant’s form of the transcendental is relatively easy to visualise precisely because he traces it from the empirical. To give a crude example, the everyday macroscopic world is given to us as three-dimensional and Euclidean because we have a priori faculties of the mind that provide the possible conditions of this experience. Deleuze evokes the “Bergsonian metaphor of the cone” (DR 104) as a way to visualise the pure past in general. This will be analysed in greater detail further along, but it is important to keep in mind that the cone itself is a metaphor for the transcendental necessity of a singular past as relating to a singular present, such that the former encapsulates a set of relations which forms a perspective on the entire pure past in general. This makes each actual or empirical present part of an infinitely larger temporal “Whole”. “We have great difficulty”, Deleuze writes in Bergsonism, which also applies to the second synthesis of time, “in understanding a survival of the pure past in itself because we believe that the past is no longer, that is has ceased to be” (B 55). Yet the sheer “abstractness” of a pure past which neither passes nor ceases to exist must—to an extent—always be maintained. For attempting to explain it through empirical examples only “represents” it and distorts its purity.

2.3. The Four Paradoxes: An Argument from Representation

Deleuze arrives at his account of the pure past by working through four paradoxes: the contemporaneity of the past with the present; the coexistence of the past with the present; the pre-existence of the past; and the entire coexistence of the past with itself. According to Deleuze, “If Matter and Memory is a great book, it is perhaps because Bergson profoundly explored the domain of this transcendental synthesis of a pure past and discovered all its constitutive paradoxes” (DR 103). The essential point is

107 that the pure past in general is transcendentally deduced from the representation of actual presents. Here the representation of actual presents leads us to four paradoxes that force us to search for the transcendental conditions for the actual present, as the actual present itself cannot account for its own passing. Therefore, it is from the empirical perspective that a past as pure, a priori, and transcendental becomes necessary.47 A transcendental argument provides the necessary and universal conditions for a selected premise. If we accept the representational accounts of the actual present, we can begin to accept the transcendental necessity of a pure past in general. Here the need for a solution to the paradox of the passing present and the need for a pure memory (Memory) as condition of empirical memory (memory) are instances of, what Deleuze puts more generally as, the need to ground (fonder) the foundation (fondation), that is, the need to account for the necessary conditions of a representational account of the actual present in which time is conserved and identified. The pure past in general may be conserved in itself, as we will come to understand, but the actual present is conserved, represented, and identified in time. The essential point we need to be clear on is how Deleuze differs from Bergson. Deleuze argues that Bergson’s “pure past” or “pure memory” is without psychological existence (i.e., the image-memory) and thus opposed to representation (DR 104fn.5). It appears for a moment that Deleuze simply follows Bergson’s deduction when he characterises the pure past as Memory or the condition for psychological memory. But Deleuze neither affirms Bergson’s pure past nor follows Bergson’s deductions faithfully. Instead, he expands upon Bergson’s deduction by making the paradoxes applicable to non-human subjects of repetition and their way of representing the present. As Deleuze outlines in Bergsonism, Bergson (in Matter and Memory) deduces the ontology of the pure past from the psychology of the present (B 56). In DR, the pure past in general is likewise the transcendental condition for the psychology of the present (i.e., the representation of a former present within a present mental state), but it is also the transcendental condition for the living present (contemplation-contraction). The obvious point of difference is that the paradoxes as outlined in Bergsonism do not apply to a passive synthesis of time (Habit) that pertains to the entire biological domain. In order to clarify this, I provide a slight but necessary reconstruction. For if the paradoxes

47 For a comprehensive and critical analysis of Deleuze’s various arguments for the necessity of a pure past over the course of his writings (including Bergsonism, Proust and Signs, Logic of Sense, Cinema 1, and Cinema 2) see: Lampert 2006: 31-44.

108 from Bergsonism were equivalent to the paradoxes as outlined in DR, the first synthesis of time would not be susceptible to the deduction, as the Bergsonian form of the deduction applies only to representations of consciousness. In consequence, the living presents that comprise all organs and organisms could only be accounted for with reference to human consciousness. For Bergson, however, the human being in a sense “is the purpose of the entire process of evolution”, not as a teleological superlative, as if the human being were the most sophisticated living being to come out of nature, but in the sense that the élan vital (the actualisation of the virtual) finally “gets through” (B 106). For human memory has access to the fluidity and creativity of the living world through the virtual coexistence of the pure past, for the point of departure into the virtual “is in a certain state of cerebral matter” (B 107). As Deleuze puts it, “man is capable of scrambling the planes, of going beyond his own plane as his own condition, in order to finally express naturing Nature” (B 107).48 In DR, however, Deleuze seems to be presenting an alternative way to enter into the virtual pure past. Although Deleuze’s transcendental deduction tends to read as though it applies only to the representation of former presents in the present mental state (see: DR 102-103), the active synthesis of the past is also founded upon the passive synthesis of Habit and therefore both require the same ground. The past is indeed “presupposed by every representation” (DR 103), but the pure past can also be deduced from both forms of the present by virtue of the simple fact that they are both representational. The former present is represented in the present present by means of active syntheses carried out by human consciousness and memory, while the living present is a representational account of the present, as we have seen, contemplation-contractions represent the in-itself of repetition (DR 357). This approach furthermore clarifies the status of the present with respect to the passive synthesis of Habit and the passive syntheses of Memory. In both cases, the present is the result of a contraction, but with respect to different dimensions and asymmetries. In the passive synthesis of Habit, the living present is a contraction of intensities. In the passive synthesis of Memory, the present is the maximal contraction of a whole past which coexists with itself. The point is that any present whatsoever is an actual particular. So like the two sides of the same coin, on one side, the living present is grounded in the past, and on the other, it is founded in the present. This is why Deleuze will come to say that the first passive synthesis of time (Habit) and the second

48 For a comprehensive overview of this theme see: Ansell Pearson (2015).

109 passive synthesis of time (Memory) by themselves—that is, without the third static synthesis of time (Eternal Return)—appear to form a circle which centres around Identity (the same or the similar), as the pure past in general “serves only to render the representation of presents” (DR 110). In order to deduce the pure past in general, Deleuze analyses the nature of the actual present and shows that it leads to four paradoxes. The first paradox, the contemporaneity of the past with the present, begins the deduction by focusing on the problem of what permits actual presents to pass.

It is futile to try to reconstitute the past from the presents between which it is trapped, either the present which it was or the one in relation to which it is now past. In effect, we are unable to believe that the past is constituted after it has been present, or because a new present appears. If a new present were required for the past to be constituted as past, then the former present would never pass and the new one would never arrive. No present would ever pass were it not past 'at the same time' as it is present; no past would ever be constituted unless it were first constituted 'at the same time' as it was present (DR 103).

To follow the argument, assume for the moment that a contemplation-contraction as productive of the living present is a present which simply is: it is a snapshot of time which contains its own boundaries and lies in a successive relation with other living presents, one before and one after, like beads on a necklace. How, then, would such a living present pass? The paradox is twofold: either the present slips into the past and becomes constituted as past in its own right, or the present becomes past because a new present takes its place and thus distinguishes it as past. These are both unsatisfactory solutions, according to Deleuze. Firstly, if the present is thought to be entirely self- contained then no characteristic of the present will allow it to pass in its own right. Although Deleuze previously defined the durational limit of a living present by means of need and fatigue, this only gave the reason for its variable duration and not the reason for its passing per se. For if presentness is the only state of a living present, then how would it pass, become-past, if presentness is its only state? Or, to phrase things differently, if a present is identified as a present and nothing else, then it can only be present; to then say that this present is not-present is contradictory, but we commonly assume, the paradox tells us, that this present can pass, become-past, even though it is nothing but present. Secondly, a new present cannot take the place of the former present because, on the one hand, the former present would already have had to have passed

110 away (first point), and on the other, if the former present had not passed away there would be no room to allow for the arrival of a new present. We seem to be left with two options: either the world we live in is a perpetual present, or the present has some other dimension which permits it to pass. Deleuze takes the second option, as he already argued in his discussion of the first synthesis of time that contemplation-contraction forms a present of a certain duration which may be exhausted and which passes, even if he was yet to provide the condition of its passing (see: DR 78). “This is the first paradox: the contemporaneity of the past with the present that it was. It gives us the reason for the passing of the present. Every present passes, in favour of a new present, because the past is contemporaneous with itself as present” (DR 103). Deleuze is not arguing that the past is contemporaneous with the present present or any new present; instead, he is arguing that the past is contemporaneous with the “present that it was”. In other words, the past is in relation to, and contemporaneous with, a present which has passed away. The present never simply is, as it always contains its own past. Deleuze seems to be using the term “past” as meaning “passing”, “becoming-past”, or “pastness”. As Lampert clarifies, “Pastness must be a temporal property of the event that does not result after something has happened to the present (just as the future cannot just be presents that have not happened yet). Its pastness must be as much a part of the actual event as its presentness is” (Lampert 2006: 45). Hence, the living present passes because it has an added dimension of “pastness” which permits it to pass: it is contemporaneously present and past, presenting and passing. Deleuze is yet to determine the nature of this added dimension of pastness, but we are thus far invited to accept it as a transcendental condition. The second paradox, the coexistence of the past with the present, emerges from the first paradox: “If each past is contemporaneous with the present that it was, then all of the past coexists with the new present in relation to which it is now past” (DR 103). In other words, each past not only maintains its relation to a present that has passed away, but all the past coexists with any new present which contains its own pastness. Each new present passes not just with respect to its own pastness, and not just with respect to the pastness of the previous present, but with respect to the entire past. Hence, all the past coexists with each new present. “The past does not cause one present to pass without calling forth another, but itself neither passes nor comes forth. For this reason the past, far from being a dimension of time, is the synthesis of all time of which the

111 present and the future are only dimensions” (DR 103). Whereas contemplation- contraction produces variable living presents in which the past (as retention) and the future (as expectation) are dimensions, the second synthesis of time (as the “synthesis of all time”) produces the past which contains the present and the future as dimensions. The past as such does not pass or cease to exist; instead, the past

insists with the former present, it consists with the new or present present. It is the in-itself of time as the final ground of the passage of time. In this sense it forms a pure general, a priori element of time. In effect, when we say that it is contemporaneous with the present that it was, we necessarily speak of a past which never was present, since it was not formed ‘after’ (DR 103- 104).

To clarify, the pure past is not some “virtual realm” which houses all former presents or events. To say that “the entire past coexists with the present” does not mean that all the former presents that have passed away continue to exist and play-out like some cosmic movie. The obvious problem with this view is that former presents are events which were once present. The pure past which insists with the former present and consists with the new present was never present. All former presents or events indeed pass away, but it is their transcendental conditions of their passing that is remembered (Memory), such that remembrance itself does not pass away or cease to exist. Each and every living present is therefore simultaneously forgotten and remembered: eternally forgotten empirically and eternally remembered transcendentally. The second paradox therefore explains that although the past coexists with the present, it differs in kind from it, as the pure past was never actual because it was never present. The third paradox, the pre-existence of the past, makes further sense of the nature of this “remembrance”. “The paradox of pre-existence thus completes the other two: each past is contemporaneous with the present it was, the whole past coexists with the present in relation to which it is past, but the pure element of the past in general pre- exists the passing present” (DR 104). Each living present was shown to pass because it contains its presentness and pastness contemporaneously. Here we learn that the pastness it contains is the pure past in general, which pre-exists each and every singular process that gives rise to a living present. Thus far the three paradoxes show only that a pre-existing transcendental past is the necessary requirement of a passing actual

112 particular. Deleuze only begins to characterise the pure past in general and its nature of pre-existence with a fourth paradox. The fourth paradox, the entire past coexists with itself, finalises the transcendental necessity of a pure past by using Bergson’s metaphor of the cone as a way to characterise its insistence and, consequently, pre-existence. At the same time, however, this does not mean that the second synthesis of time is the same as Bergson’s pure past. With respect to the second synthesis of time,

the present designates the most contracted degree of an entire past, which is itself like a coexisting totality. Let us suppose, in effect, in accordance with the conditions of the second paradox, that the past is not conserved in the present in relation to which it is past, but is conserved in itself, the present present being only the maximal contraction of all this past which coexists with it. It must first be the case that this whole past coexists with itself, in varying degrees of relaxation ... and of contraction. The present can be the most contracted degree of the past which coexists with it only if the past first coexists with itself in an infinity of diverse degrees of relaxation and contraction at an infinity of levels (this is the meaning of the famous Bergsonian metaphor of the cone, the fourth paradox in relation to the past) (DR 104-105).

As mentioned previously, the actual present of the first and second syntheses of time is one and the same, but, from different perspectives, it has different dimensions and asymmetries. And so any living present which passes is also the most contracted degree of the pure past, of the pure past as a “coexisting totality”. Deleuze evokes Bergson’s metaphor of the cone, comprised of more or less contracted degrees and levels, as a means to visualise the pure past, but we must keep in mind that it is only a metaphor, as the pure past could never be visualised as an actual image without distortion. The pure past in general is transcendentally necessary, but because it differs in kind to the empirical world of experience, then, in itself, by its very own nature, it remains “unthinkable” in the sense of being unrepresentable. Yet this does not render it unintelligible. In order to clarify the nature of the pure past in general, I will explain Bergson’s cone as a metaphor of the pure past, and afterwards show that although the second synthesis of time (Memory) is influenced by Bergson’s pure past, it nevertheless significantly differs from it.

2.4. Bergson’s Pure Past: The Cone

113 In all three texts on Bergson prior to DR, the pure past is said to survive in itself in the form of duration as virtual coexistence: “duration” is difference itself (or self- differentiation) and the “virtual” is the coexistence of these differences in the pure past itself (DI 29; DI 47; B60).49 In DR, this notion of duration as connected with the survival of the pure past is not cited, most probably because Deleuze is using the four paradoxes to provide his own account of the second synthesis of time and how the pure past coexists with itself. Bergson’s metaphor of the cone (Figure 1.) presented in Matter and Memory represents the entire past of one’s life. Bergson notes that

we are so strongly obsessed by images drawn from space, that we cannot hinder ourselves from asking where memories are stored up. We understand that physicochemical phenomena take place in the brain, that the brain is in the body, the body in the air which surrounds it, etc.; but the past, once achieved, if it is retained, where is it? (MM 148).

Deleuze insists on a strong ontological reading by noting that the pure past in general is neither psychologically nor physiologically stored in our brain but instead indicative of an “ontological Memory” (B 59) or “ontological unconscious” (B 71) which coexists with itself at varying degrees of contraction and expansion. Simply put, memories are in time, in real duration, insofar as duration continues to coexist with itself as the pure past. The totality of one’s recollections or memories continue to insist, although not as actual, that is to say, present, but rather as virtual. Nevertheless, the virtual is as real as the actual. The only difference is that the present “acts”—it is constantly “being made” (MM 144)—while the pure past “has ceased to act or be useful” (B 55). The present is a psychological state consisting of both sensation and movement, that is, it is “sensori- motor” (MM 138). A memory or recollection, on the other hand, is not a “nascent sensation” itself but something quite different. Sensations are “extended and localised” while pure memories are “inextensive and powerless” (MM 140; translation modified). Memories or recollections are best understood as traces of previous psychical life, of passed away psychological states (cf. MM 146 and 148). It is precisely through the

49 Bergson’s account of “the virtual” is inextricably tied to his account of “duration”, whereby the latter can be defined by the two properties of continuous multiplicities: “continuity and heterogeneity” (B 37). Duration is a form of temporal fluidity, a continuous internal succession of heterogeneous elements. Deleuze defines “duration” as that which differs in kind, both in itself and from itself (cf. DI 25-26, 38; B 38). In a word, duration is self-differentiation. And so duration is difference from itself (or self- differentiation) and the virtual is the coexisting degrees of this difference, that is, the coexisting degrees of this difference as constitutive of the pure past. “The past […] has ceased to act or be useful. But it has not ceased to be. Useless and inactive, impassive, it IS, in the full sense of the word: It is identical with being in itself” (B 55).

114 actualisation of pure memory that such recollections come to be involved in the psychology of the present. Referring to Figure 1 below, the psychological present (S) represents the maximal of contraction, the most immediate past, which coexists with all the levels of the past (AB, A’B’, A’’B’’, et cetera) (MM 168). AB represents the totality one’s memories, while between S and AB lie the thousands of repetitions of our psychical life (A’B’, A’’B’’, et cetera) (MM 162). Each level of the cone represents a particular region of the past that takes a perspective on, and thus includes, the whole of our past in more or less contracted states. For instance, A”B” is more contracted than A’B’. But if we think of the degrees of contraction as being “more or less” due to A’B’ being “more” temporally distant in the past than A”B”, for example, yesterday’s breakfast is here (A”B”) while last year’s birthday is back there (A’B’), then we “spatialise” the pure past and misunderstand the metaphor. The cone is not arranged chronologically. This is why Deleuze writes that the levels of the cone “measure the degrees of a purely ideal proximity or distance in relation to S” (B 60). In other words, such an ideal distance depends upon the present (S): “it is from the sensori-motor elements of present action that a memory borrows the warmth which gives it life” (MM

153). Due to the action of the present (S), then, we “leap” into the pure past in general and then into a region of the past (B 61). Take, for example, the present sensation of sipping red wine (S). Such a sensation may provoke the association of a collection of memories or recollections, such as, all the times you have drunk red wine (A’’B’’). As Bergson puts it, a “[pure memory] will beget sensations as it materialises, but at that very moment it will cease to be a memory and pass into the state of a present thing, something actually lived” (MM 139; translation modified). Pure memory is not a storage of sensations, as sensations are always actual; instead, pure memory conditions present sensations, giving meaning to statements like: “This may be the best wine I’ve ever had” or “I haven’t tried this variety before but it’s similar to…” or “Has it oxidised? It tastes different to when I opened it last week”. The A’’B’’ level of the cone might be all the times you have drunk red wine, and is therefore “more” contracted with respect to the present (S), but, at the same time, it takes a perspective on the whole of your past (AB); thus, it provides a unique order of relations, which includes pertinent memories that are also “more” contracted, such as everything you have learnt about red wine (A’B’), and seemingly unrelated memories that are “less” contracted, such as all the times you have kicked a soccer ball. Hence the variations of contractions of more or

115 less, which are larger or smaller depending on their nearness to the base or to the summit, gives the totality of your memories the shape of a cone with respect to the present perception. But perhaps this example is too thematic. For memories are not “photograph-like images” stored in the pure past, in ontology, that spring back into the psychology of the present fully formed. Rather, they are somewhat confused. As Bergson writes, “from the virtual state [a recollection] passes into the actual; and as its outlines become more distinct and its surface takes on colour, it tends to imitate perception” (MM 133-134; translation modified). Recollections have already been associated with other recollections in the pure past, creating a sort of assemblage of recollections which become involved in the present sensation or perception. So continuing with the example, say you take another sip of wine which makes you recall an apartment you once lived in, at a particular stage of your life—suddenly the cone changes: the times you have drunk red wine become less contracted and the memories of this period of your life become more contracted. From one sip to the next the entirety of your past is rearranged in various orders of contraction and expansion (levels). In this sense, the pure past itself is a continuous multiplicity: it “changes in kind in the process of dividing up” (B42).

Figure 1.50 So the cone itself represents a continuous multiplicity, a collection of heterogeneous elements that change when divided. Between each level there is a difference in kind, for instance, there are differences in kind between “all the times you have drunk red wine” and “everything you know about red wine”. But each level itself is comprised of differences in kind, for instance, “all the times you have drunk red wine” are individual experiences that each differ in kind. Thus, the cone is composed of

50 Taken from MM 162 and B 60.

116 a practically infinite variety of differences in kind. But what, exactly, does it mean for the pure past to change in kind through division? We can make sense of this by addressing the ceaseless exchange between the present and the past, the actual and the virtual, where according to Deleuze’s reading of Bergson, “We do not move from the present to the past, from perception to recollection, but from the past to the present, from recollection to perception” (B 63). If this seems at all counter-intuitive, it is due to our habit of thinking the present as being-present and the past as no longer, as having ceased to be. But suppose that the entire past coexists with itself and remains contemporaneous with the present—keeping in mind too that the present itself is only the most contracted level of the past—then the actualisation of the pure past can be thought as moving from the past to the present. For it is through the present (e.g., the sipping of wine) that we “leap” into a region of the past with particular memories that come to be actualised. It is therefore through actualisation that such and such regions of our entire past lose their ineffectiveness or inactivity and become embodied in the present, as Deleuze says, “through these stages and these degrees it is actualisation (and it alone) that constitutes psychological consciousness” (B 63; translation modified). In short, the movement from the past to the present expresses the actualisation of the virtual. Without dealing with the entire process of Bergsonian actualisation, we can glean that it is due to this process that a change in nature occurs through division. As Deleuze writes of the pure past as a virtual multiplicity, “On the one hand, it divides into elements that differ in kind; on the other, these elements or these parts only actually exist insofar as the division itself is effectively carried out” (B 81). He clarifies this point with a quote from MM, which I provide in full:

The parts of our duration are one with the successive moments of the act which divides it; if we distinguish in it so many instants, so many parts it indeed possesses; and if our consciousness can only distinguish in a given interval a definite number of elementary acts, if it terminates the division at a given point, there also terminates the divisibility (MM 206; emphasis added).

Insofar as our present consciousness (S) seizes upon or is seized upon by “something”, it provokes an actualisation of the virtual; but as soon as our consciousness is no longer involved in this “something”, the division terminates. There is a ceaseless exchange between the present and the past, as our red wine example highlighted, but it is precisely through such exchanges that the pure past divides and changes in kind.

117 Thus, the pure past is a continuous multiplicity composed of multiplicities, of differences in kind, and changes through division. But each level of the cone, each more or less contracted state, is also a difference in degree. Deleuze proposes, “is Bergson not reintroducing into his philosophy everything that he had condemned—the differences in degree and intensity that he so strongly criticised in Time and Free Will?” (B 91; translation modified). Here Deleuze takes Bergson’s critique of intensive quantity to be not only unconvincing but ambiguous (B 91). In Time and Free Will, Bergson takes aim at the psychophysics of his period for “speaking of one sensation as being more intense than another, of one effort as being greater than another, and in thus setting up differences of quantity between purely internal states [… such that] a sensation can be said to be twice, thrice, four times as intense as another sensation of the same kind” (Bergson 2001: 1). The notion of intensity in question is intensive quantity or magnitude, which is thought to involve a unity of homogenous elements, measurable in terms of quantitative equivalences. Bergson dismisses the idea that intensive quantity can be otherwise, for instance, non-numerical and relational in terms of “greater or smaller” rather than “how much?”, on the grounds that intensity is a “quantity” and to think intensive quantities as different to extensive quantities is contradictory (Bergson 2001: 3-4). And so all quantitative magnitudes, whether we call them intensive or extensive, represent differences in degree, that is, differences in the degree of elements thought as homogenous. Bergson thus thinks that psychophysics is mistaken to take intensive quantities as explicable of internal psychic states because it fails to consider the properly qualitative character of sensations, namely, the differences in kind beneath the differences in degree. Ultimately, psychophysics confuses differences in degree and differences in kind: “the notion of intensity involves an impure mixture between determinations that differ in kind” (B 19). For the qualitative element is duration, a continuous unfolding of heterogeneity, which Bergson characterises as that which changes when divided. Deleuze maintains that Bergson’s “critique of intensity in Time and Free Will is highly ambiguous” because it is not clear whether his critique applies to intensive quantity in general or the intensity of inner psychic states (B 91-92).51 Regardless, Deleuze argues that Matter and Memory provides a positive account of intensity or difference in degree (in terms of the more or less) and shows that intensities quantities are “included in duration” (B 92), that is, included in duration insofar as it

51 For more detailed accounts of Deleuze’s reading of the Bergsonian critique of intensity, see: Widder 2011; Lundy 2017.

118 coexists with itself as the pure past. I will return to Bergson’s account of intensive quantity when explaining the spatiotemporal equality involved in the connection of the three syntheses of time and the three syntheses of space (Chapter 4, Section 4.2.). For now I am concerned with a single point Deleuze makes. In MM, all the “different intensities or degrees” coexist “in a single Time, in a simple Totality” (B 94), in duration as a continuous multiplicity. And Deleuze could not be any clearer on this point: “The coexistence of all the degrees [or intensities], of all the levels is virtual, only virtual” (B 93; emphasis added). In sum, the cone itself is a multiplicity: on the one hand, each level of the cone is comprised of differences in kind (multiplicities) and the relation between each level is a difference in kind (multiplicity), and on the other, each level is a “more or less” contracted state, namely, a difference in degree or intensity, which also means that intensive differences are fundamentally temporal.

2.5. Deleuze’s Pure Past: The Cone

In Deleuze’s case, the cone metaphor does not solely apply to a human life but appears to extend to the whole biological domain. And so each and every living present, which, from the perspective of the second synthesis of time, is the most immediate or contracted past, has some form of a cone-like pure past that coexists with itself. The first three paradoxes show the necessity of a pure past that is contemporaneous with the present, that coexists with the present, and that pre-exists the present, but the fourth paradox is meant to characterise the pure past as coexisting with itself and therefore demonstrate the nature of its insistence. Keeping in mind that the second synthesis of time applies to the passing of a living present, and noting furthermore that in the final chapters of DR the virtual past extends metaphysically insofar as it pertains to physical, biological, and psychic systems, then, after working through the four paradoxes, Deleuze presents a number of seemingly tangential remarks about the nature of repetition as it applies to a human life (i.e., repetition within a spiritual life (DR 105)) and Proust’s account of how we live and penetrate the in-itself of the past and “save it for ourselves” (DR 106-107). The question I am concerned with here is how do we move from the standpoint of the conditions of “pastness” for human experience to the conditions of “pastness” for biological experience? More specifically, how do we move

119 from a pure past that contains recollections or memories that are recalled in the psychological present to—what I will call for now—a “gigantic organic Memory” that grounds the passing of a living present, such as, for example, a biochemical reaction? Can a biochemical reaction be said to “remember” regions of its past in more or less contracted states insofar as the conditions of its passing are formed at the same time as it passes? Does each and every individuated organic entity, just like each and every human life, have a pure past that resembles a cone? Or does the entirety of organic life have a cone-like pure past? Deleuze’s reading of Bergson offers a clue. In Bergsonism, Deleuze takes up the problem of whether duration is “one or many”. Is there a single duration to which physical, living, and psychological beings conform? Or are there multiple durations specific to each and every being? Deleuze provides three hypotheses: (1) Bergson presents a “generalised pluralism” or “radical multiplicity of Time” in Matter and Memory; (2) Bergson presents a “limited pluralism” in Creative Evolution; and (3) Bergson presents a “monism” in Duration and Simultaneity. Briefly outlining Deleuze’s argument, firstly, in MM every material thing is said to partake directly of duration: “Movement is no less outside me than in me; and the Self itself in turn is only one case among others in duration” (B 75). Thus, there are many durations. Each entity endures in its own way. MM therefore affirms a “generalised pluralism” or “radical plurality of durations: The universe is made up of modifications, disturbances, changes of tension and of energy, and nothing else” (B 76). The cone metaphor intended to illustrate duration as pertaining to psychological beings thereby provides “an opening onto ontology” (B 76), which Deleuze invokes when speaking of the cone as an “ontological Memory” (B 59) or “ontological unconscious” (B 71). Such an “opening onto ontology” entails that our duration is merely a single duration with respect to the infinite durations that comprise reality itself. Secondly, in CE Bergson focuses on an alternative account of evolution and posits virtual coexistence as comprised of an infinite plurality of specific durations. Deleuze highlights the fact that “life itself is compared to a memory, the genera or species corresponding to coexisting degrees of this vital memory” (B 77). Bergson writes,

It seems as if life, as soon as it has become bound up in a species, is cut off from the rest of its own work, save at one or two points that are of vital concern to the species just arisen. Is it not plain that life goes to work here exactly like consciousness, exactly like memory? We trail

120 behind us, unawares, the whole of our past; but our memory pours into the present only the odd recollection or two that in some way complete our present situation. Thus the instinctive knowledge which one species possesses of another on a certain particular point has its root in the very unity of life, which is, to use the expression of an ancient philosopher, a ‘whole sympathetic to itself.’ It is impossible to consider some of the special instincts of the animal and of the plant, evidently arisen in extraordinary circumstances, without relating them to those recollections, seemingly forgotten, which spring up suddenly under the pressure of an urgent need (CE 184).

In this instance, life itself has a gigantic conic Memory. According to Deleuze, it is precisely at this moment that individual living entities “lose” their own duration, their own conic memory. Living entities indeed endure, but “it is less in themselves or absolutely than in relation to the [duration of] the Whole of the universe” (B 77). So when Bergson writes, “we live the duration immanent to the whole of the universe” (CE 14), he thinks of the universe as setting a certain tempo for duration. Therefore, not every physical thing has its own duration, for instance, a piece of sugar dissolving in water opens out onto the duration of the universe as a whole (see: CE 12-13). In saying this, however, each and every psychological being and living being is thought to have their own duration, but again such forms of duration open out onto the duration of the “Whole of the universe” (B 77). The pluralism of durations thus become limited. Although psychological beings and living beings are partial views of the durational Whole, Deleuze admits that the nature of this “Whole” remains mysterious (B 78). For it is not the case that there is a single and universal form of time or duration that sets a single and universal Rhythm; rather, it is more vague because psychological beings and living beings are said to have their own durations, endure in their own way, and although they are involved with the duration of the universe as a whole, they are not entirely attuned to it. Thirdly, in DS we find a “monism” of duration: “There is only a single time, a single duration, in which everything would participate, including our consciousness, including living beings, including the whole material world […] a single Time, one, universal, impersonal” (B 78). Deleuze comes to the conclusion that Bergson was not focusing on the question of whether duration is “one or multiple” in DS but rather on the more profound problem of discerning what type of multiplicity duration is. As Ansell-Pearson suggests, Deleuze does not hesitate to affirm the monism of Duration even though Bergson had hesitations in his own texts (Ansell-Pearson 2002: 36). Accordingly, Bergson presents a single Duration, a single time as One; however, such a

121 One-Duration is a continuous multiplicity (B 85), and as Deleuze puts it in DR, “everything is a multiplicity, even the one, even the many” (DR 230). Taking into account everything said, Deleuze writes in DR, “The Bergsonian schema which unites Creative Evolution and Matter and Memory begins with the account of a gigantic memory, a multiplicity formed by the virtual coexistence of all the sections of the 'cone', each section being the repetition of all the others” (DR 264; emphasis added). What is of interest here is the fact that MM and CE converge on the “discovery” of DS: whether or not we have a “generalized pluralism” or “limited pluralism” of duration appears less important than the fact that duration comprises the pure past, gigantic memory, or cone—that is, the virtual itself—as a continuous multiplicity. In a sense, we have simply returned to a point already made when explaining the metaphor of the cone in MM: the pure past is a continuous multiplicity. But during the analysis we have gathered an additional characterisation because insofar as Deleuze affirms the monism of Duration he affirms its radical consequence: every being endures in its own way, every being is a multiplicity within a multiplicity, every being has a pure past that is a multiplicity within a gigantic past that is a multiplicity. Is this not, then, a radical affirmation of the infinity of “durations” that comprise the pure past itself? The first synthesis of time showed that the whole of organic life in general is comprised of living presents which pass (habits) according to their own “durations” (DR 98). The second synthesis of time provides the condition (ground) which permits each and every living present to pass. The specific nature of—what I previously titled—a “gigantic organic Memory” has no support in DR. It will become clear in the following chapter, when Deleuze outlines his own account of Ideas as virtual multiplicities or virtual structures (Section 1.), which, in their sheer complexity, differ from Bergson’s continuous multiplicities, that the virtual, as the coexistence of the entire past with itself, extends to the entire universe insofar as it grounds physical, biological, and psychic systems. And so each and every individuated entity can be seen as having their own “cone” which comprises a partial perspective on a gigantic “conic” memory which extends to the universe as a whole. The essential point for now is that like Bergson’s “cone”, Deleuze’s “cone” changes in kind with reference to the actual present (i.e., the living present and the most immediate past).

122

Each present contracts a level of the whole, but this level is already one of contraction or relaxation. In other words, the sign of the present is a passage to the limit, a maximal contraction which comes to sanction the choice of a particular level as such, which is in itself contracted or relaxed among an infinity of possible levels (DR 105).

There is a ceaseless exchange between the actual and the virtual. But in reference to the examples given previously, for Deleuze, it would make no sense to speak of “all the times we have drunk red wine” as comprising a “level” of the cone. These recollections are too empirical, as they are actual presents which have passed into the past. While Bergson understands memories or recollections as traces of previous psychical life, of passed away psychological states (cf. MM 146 and 148), Deleuze understands these memories as ontological (B 59, 71) and without any form of psychological existence (DR 104fn.5). In both Deleuze’s reading of Bergson and his own philosophy in DR, the pure past was never present. So if we wish to say that a biochemical reaction “remembers” regions of its past in the moment it passes, we must be specific about that which is “recollected”. The essential point is that the second synthesis of time only explains that a pure past is necessary, and so Deleuze is yet to analyse the nature of these “levels”. In essence, Deleuze can be read as providing a “structuralist Bergsonism”, as in Chapter 4 we learn that such “levels” are Ideas or multiplicities, namely, virtual relations between differential elements that structure actual qualities and extensities, actual species and parts, actual Egos and Selves. Deleuze only alludes to this in his discussion of the second synthesis of time when he notes that the pure past which was never present is a “substantial temporal element” that includes “non-localisable connections, actions at a distance, systems of replay, resonance and echoes, objective chances, signs, signals, and roles which transcend spatial locations and temporal successions” (DR 104-105). The point of the passive synthesis of Memory is to explain that there is such a thing as a substantial temporal realm in which multiplicities coexist with themselves and pre-exist what they come to structure. The passing of a living present, such as one involved in a biochemical reaction, does not “remember” a past that was once present when it passes; rather, it forms the conditions of its passing at the same time as it passes, and, if we were so inclined, it “remembers” a multiplicity which was never present (or actual), a multiplicity whose nature is to ceaselessly become, and so that which is remembered is that which becomes. The levels of the cone

123 metaphorically represent the order of singular pasts in relation to a singular present, such that each “level” represents a set of relations (multiplicity) that takes a perspective on the entire temporal Whole (an Multiplicity). And so each “level” (multiplicity) expresses all other “levels” (multiplicities) in a unique variety of relations (more or less contracted states). By reflecting on an early childhood memory of learning to write, for example, we enter a level of “our” past, but this level of the past is connected to, and coexists with, all other levels in more or less contracted states, levels we have never and could have never personally experienced, such as the emergence and transformation of the art of writing, the English language, the technological innovation of pen and paper, the evolution of our species, the formation of our galaxy, and so forth. In this sense, “our” cone is simply a perspective on, or partial view of, the ever-cumulative “gigantic cone” that applies to the universe as a Whole. So the pure past in general is constantly changing, constantly forming new combinations and rearrangements, and therefore, as a virtual multiplicity—as a gigantic Memory—it represents a structural whole in perpetual becoming. Yet we are still left with a fundamental problem: the pure past coexists with itself, but what is it comprised of? An answer to this is essential for understanding how the first, second, and third syntheses of time form a transcendental architecture. Indeed the pure past is comprised of multiplicities (levels), and is thus a multiplicity in itself (Whole), but like Bergson’s cone, it is also comprised of differences in intensity. Speaking of the first and second syntheses of time, Deleuze writes,

The former is a repetition of successive independent elements or instants; the latter is a repetition of the Whole on diverse coexisting levels […] As a result, the two repetitions stand in very different relations to 'difference' itself. Difference is drawn from one in so far as the elements or instants are contracted within a living present. It is included in the other in so far as the Whole includes the difference between its levels (DR 106; emphasis added).

More specifically, the present, as the most contracted degree of the past, includes difference insofar as it “contracts a differential level of the whole which is itself a matter of relaxation and contraction” (DR 106). And so each and every “level” is distinguished from one another by means of their degree of difference or intensity, that is, their degree of contraction. The pure past may pre-exist the present, but each time it is called upon to ground a passing present the relations which comprise a pure past are

124 entirely unique, singular, or different in themselves. Because we can only acknowledge that the second synthesis of time synthesises intensive differences, I will leave this as a point in need of confirmation. There will be two moments that provide this: (1) when the dark precursor, as a differential element responsible for making difference communicate with difference, is shown to relate intensive differences (divergent series) with intensive differences (divergent series) (Chapter 3, Section 3.7.); and (2) when the differential relations of Ideas are shown to be differential relations between differential elements or differences in intensity (Chapter 4, Section 1).

Section Three. The Third Synthesis of Time

3.1. The Third Synthesis of Time: The Affirmation of Becoming

Deleuze’s discussion of the third synthesis of time ties together a diverse variety of concepts, problematics, and theories drawn from philosophy, history, physics, drama, literature, and psychoanalysis. Underneath the wealth of resources, however, there is a developing argument. Like the monstrosity of the passive synthesis of Habit as contemplation-contraction, the third static synthesis as eternal return involves the same conceptual experimentation of folding concepts into one another. The aim of this section is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to explain how Deleuze conceptualises the third synthesis of time by showing that it is comprised of a number of conceptual components: Kant’s “pure and empty form of time”; time “out of joint”; Hölderlin’s “caesura”; the creation of a “series and totality of time”; Nietzsche’s “eternal return of difference”; and the connection of divergent series or heterogeneous times by “dark precursors”. On the other hand, it proposes to outline the necessary links between the static synthesis of the future, the passive synthesis of the pure past, and the passive synthesis of the living present. Ultimately, the third synthesis provides the transcendental condition for the perpetual emergence of difference or novelty within the living present and the pure past. In this way, it ungrounds the relation between the first and second syntheses of time by showing that every representation of an actual present is entirely singular. So far we have seen that the passive, asymmetrical, and irreversible nature of contemplation-contractions in the organic world invites us to accept the claim that novelty is constant and ubiquitous in the biological domain. For if the organic

125 world was confined to a fantastic multitude of repetitions of the Same, how would we explain the emergence of the absolutely new, the absolutely different, the absolutely contingent? In order for novelty to arise in the biological domain in the first place, and thus in order to account for the genesis of real experience in the organic world, a level of openness susceptible to the new or the different must be shown as necessary. In the third synthesis of time, as Zourabichvili puts it, “Becoming is not simply acknowledged but affirmed: all that exists is in becoming” (Zourabichvili 2012: 97).

3.2. Descartes and Kant: The Cogito and Time

The transition from the second synthesis of time to the third synthesis begins with Deleuze’s analysis of the difference between the Cartesian and Kantian cogito “from the point of view of the theory of time” (DR 107). The analysis centres around Kant’s criticism of the Cartesian cogito, the way Kant introduces a pure and empty form of time into thought, and his discovery of the “Copernican Revolution”. Although the split subject or fractured I is a dominant “character” in this analysis, it is not the central point. For it is the way by which the subject becomes split that is most important, namely, by means of the pure and empty form of time. Therefore, Kant’s form of time is the starting point for Deleuze’s conceptualisation of the third synthesis of time. Now, considering that Kant’s Critical philosophy is markedly anthropocentric, then the split subject in question is human. In Deleuze’s terms, the analysis takes place with respect to psychic or I-Self systems. Although organisms possess the capacity for sensation and perception (passive synthesis) and a primitive mode of thought in the form of interpreting signs (active synthesis), they are not split subjects because they are not I- Self systems.52 At this point, Deleuze’s method of conceptualisation is analogous to what we saw in the passive synthesis of Habit, where he begins with Hume’s and Bergson’s conception of contraction as taking place in the human mind, but reconceptualises the notion of passive synthesis so that it extends to the entire biological

52 Commentators such as Hughes and Voss argue that the third synthesis of time (as a whole) is necessarily linked to the split subject (Hughes 2008: 117-120; Voss 2013: 212). Although I agree that Deleuze’s analysis at this stage applies to the split subject as a psychic system, the psychic system is merely a moment in Deleuze’s analysis: it is not the basis for the third synthesis of time as a whole. In contrast to my view, Williams argues, “The core of the argument [of the split subject] is then neither about the subject, not about time as such, but rather about the importance of a philosophical method and the consequences it implies for the end of the subject as philosophical foundation of any kind (logical, intuitive, phenomenological)” (Williams 2011: 80) … “any interpretation of the fracture of the subject as the fracture of the human subject is mistaken” (Williams 2011: 90).

126 domain. So in the same way that we cannot reduce the passive synthesis of Habit to Husserl’s passive synthesis, Hume’s contraction in the imagination, or Bergson’s contraction in psychological duration, we cannot reduce the third synthesis of time to Kant’s pure and empty form of time, as Deleuze works through Kant’s theory of time for the sole purpose of expanding upon it. In his seminars on Kant, Deleuze characterises Descartes’ revolutionary importance in modernity as emanating from the fact that he provided a non-empirical form of subjectivity (Kant Seminar: 28/03/1978). Descartes creates a real relation of identity between thought and being. In doing so, he establishes a ground of certainty from which we can understand ourselves and the world. I can doubt the existence of everything in the world, but insofar as I doubt I am still thinking; therefore, I cannot doubt my own existence. The Cartesian method of doubt operates according to the logical values of “determination” and “undetermined existence”: the “I think” determines the undetermined “I am” as a thinking subject—“I think therefore I am, I am a thing which thinks” (DR 108). Kant criticises this view when he argues that thought cannot relate directly to being, or, more technically, the determination (I think) cannot bear directly upon the undetermined (I am). Although it is possible to say, “I think therefore I am”, one cannot conclude, “I am a thing which thinks”, as this excludes the determinable form in which the determination (I think) determines the undetermined (I am). Deleuze highlights three moments in the Kantian cogito: “the I am as an indeterminate existence, time as the form under which this existence is determinable, and the I think as a determination” (DR 216). This is seen most clearly in sections 24 and 25 of the Transcendental Deduction (B150-159), where Kant notes that the self of determination (I think) both differs from and remains the same as the undetermined self (I am). “It may seem difficult to understand how the I who thinks can be distinct from the I that intuits itself […] and yet be identical with the latter by being the same subject” (CPR B155). The explanation is simple enough. Firstly, space is the pure form of the appearances of outer sense (i.e., appearances outside of ourselves) and time is the pure form of the appearances of inner sense (i.e., inner states of the mind such as sensations, inclinations, desires, emotions, et cetera).53 But we can neither perceive the pure form of

53 “By means of outer sense (a property of our mind) we represent to ourselves objects as outside us, and all as in space. In space their form, magnitude, and relation to one another is determined, or determinable. Inner sense, by means of which the mind intuits itself, or its inner state, gives, to be sure, no intuition of

127 space nor the pure form of time themselves; instead, we only ever represent them to ourselves when we synthesise a manifold of appearances. Kant gives the examples of time being represented in the drawing of a straight line and space being represented by “placing, from the same point, three lines perpendicular to one another” (CPR B154). His point is that in doing so we synthesise the appearances which comprise the manifold at each moment. The drawing of a straight line, for instance, produces an image of the unfolding of time, as though we are tracing its unfolding while drawing the line in thought. So in terms of outer sense, we know objects outside ourselves (outer appearances) “only insofar as we are externally affected” by them, and in terms of inner sense, we intuit ourselves “only as we are internally affected by ourselves”; and so just like any other object, “we know our own subject only as appearances, and not as it is in itself” (CPR B156). Kant clarifies this point in a footnote in section 25 of the Transcendental Deduction. In each and every moment of thought the “I think expresses the act of determining my own existence”. In this sense, my own existence (the I am or being) is given or intuited. What is not given, however, is the “manner” by which this manifold of appearances is given. “In order for the manifold to be given, self-intuition is required; and such intuition depends on an a priori given form, that is, on time”. Insofar as I am given to myself I am never conscious of the “that”—i.e., the thing—in me which determines my existence; rather, I am only conscious of the spontaneity of this “that” (thing). “I cannot determine my existence as that of a self-active being […] my existence remains only sensibly determinable, that is, as the existence of an appearance. It is, however, on account of this spontaneity that I call myself an intelligence” (CPR B158fn.). Deleuze takes up this point and argues that the pure form of time is responsible for generating a transcendental or internal Difference between the I think (thought) and the I am (being). In response to Descartes,

Kant therefore adds a third logical value: the determinable, or rather the form in which the undetermined is determinable (by the determination). This third value suffices to make logic a transcendental instance. It amounts to the discovery of Difference—no longer in the form of an empirical difference between two determinations, but in the form of a transcendental Difference between Determination as such and what it determines; no longer in the form of an external the soul itself, as an object; yet it is still a determinate form, under which the intuition of its inner state is alone possible, so that everything that belongs to the inner determinations is represented in relations of time” (CPR A22-3/B37).

128 difference which separates, but in the form of an internal Difference which establishes an a priori relation between thought and being. Kant’s answer is well known: the form under which undetermined existence is determinable by the ‘I think’ is that of time (DR 108).

Time as an a priori form of intuition unfolds, but Deleuze adds that it unfolds as a synthesis of pure differences, of pure heterogeneity, of temporal duration. As such, it can only be represented or thought when given as a combined manifold of appearances, such as in the image of drawing a straight line. Deleuze argues that insofar as the pure form of time establishes an a priori relation between the I think (thought) and the I am (being), it represents a moment in Kantianism in which time engenders real experience. For at each and every moment the determination of the I think generates an internal difference between thinking and being. Consequently, the “I am” of which we are conscious is only that of a passive, empirical, and psychological self: “I have no knowledge of myself as I am but only as I appear to myself” (CPR B158). We therefore live and experience ourselves as an appearance among others, as a passive phenomenon in time, perpetually fractured from that which enacts thought. Thus, the self can only represent its own spontaneity, “its own thought—its own intelligence, that by virtue of which it can say I—being exercised in it and upon it but not by it” (DR 108). Its own spontaneity (the that) is therefore an “alienation in principle” (DR 70), or, as Deleuze famously puts it, “I is an other” (DR 109). The self-referential subject is no more in time than constituted by time. For a moment, then, there is no fixed self, no prior self- identity, but only a self dissolved in temporal heterogeneity and set in perpetual becoming.

It is as though the I were fractured from one end to the other: fractured by the pure and empty form of time […] Time signifies a fault or a fracture in the I and a passivity in the self, and the correlation between the passive self and the fractured I constitutes the discovery of the transcendental, the element of the Copernican Revolution (DR 108-109).

Stating that time is “the element of the Copernican Revolution” at first appears strange, and it is. For it does not refer to Kant’s well-known Copernican revolution, where objects of experience conform to cognition (CPR Bxvi), but to an alternative, more profound Copernican Revolution of the Different.

That identity not be first, that it exist as a principle but as a second principle, as a principle

129 become; that it revolve around the Different: such would be the nature of a Copernican revolution which opens up the possibility of difference having its own concept, rather than being maintained under the domination of a concept in general already understood as identical (DR 50).

In the Copernican Revolution of the Different, the I that thinks and the I that intuits itself is indeed identical or same (as mentioned above: CPR B155), but it is an identity or sameness said of the different, of the unequal itself. So a silent Revolution takes place when Kant discovers a pure or internal Difference between being and thought,54 even though, as Deleuze explains, the fracture in the I and the passivity of the self is “quickly filled by a new form of identity” (DR 109), namely, the practical postulate of the soul and the transcendental unity of apperception which retain their identities over time. We saw in the first chapter of this thesis that Deleuze conceptualises the focal point for the genesis of real experience in the three Critiques as “the Soul, that is, the suprasensible unity of our faculties, ‘the point of concentration’, the life-giving principle that ‘animates’ each faculty” (DI 69). But here Deleuze discovers an alternative principle of genesis, and it is as though Kant already “rewrote” the CPR as an account of the genesis of real experience within the CPR itself. But the passage above (DR 50) also turns to Nietzsche’s eternal return as carrying out such a Revolution of the Different; in this way, it connects Kant and Nietzsche as both philosophers of the Different. Over and above such textual interpretations, this coupling highlights the conceptual development of the third synthesis, for Deleuze expands upon Kant’s pure and empty form of time by way of his interpretation of Nietzsche’s eternal return as the eternal return of difference.

3.3. The Pure and Empty Form of Time: Time Out of Joint and the Caesura

Deleuze further characterises the concept of the pure and empty form of time as “out of joint” (Hamlet) and as a “caesura” (Hörderlin). I commence with Hamlet’s pronouncement of “time out of joint”, which Deleuze reads as a form of time that conditions all change or movement.

[T]ime out of joint means demented time or time outside the curve which gave it a god, liberated

54 For alternative and concise accounts of Deleuze’s reading of Kant’s determination, the determinable, and the undetermined, see especially: Bryant 2008: 178-181; Lord 2011: 143-148.

130 from its overly simple circular figure, freed from the events which made up its content, its relation to movement overturned; in short, time presenting itself as an empty and pure form. Time itself unfolds (that is, apparently ceases to be a circle) instead of things unfolding within it (following the overly simple circular figure). It ceases to be cardinal and becomes ordinal, a pure order of time (DR 111).

This short narrative makes it clear that “time out of joint” arises from a prior conception of “time in joint”, namely, time as subordinate to change, movement, and the empirical events involved. To make sense of the former we can start with the latter. With “time in joint”, the metaphorical “joints” or “hinges” are the cardinal points, namely, the privileged points that mark time’s measure. Cardinal points refer to the cardinal conception of number (e.g., 1, 2, 3…), which concern quantities or magnitudes with equivalences, for instance, the difference between 5 and 7 is equivalent to the difference between 50 and 52. The essential point of a form of time in joint is not only that it is determined by empirical content, but that it treats the past and the future in terms of cardinal proportions. Regardless of Plato’s dated astronomy, he provides a good example of this. In the Timaeus, Plato proposes that before there was order there was disorder (or chaos), before there was an orderly universe there was disorderly matter, and before there was time (the order of movement) there was disordered movement. According to Plato, the Demiurge gave order to the primordial chaos and created the universe in the likeness of his eternity and oneness. As such, time represents the eternal sequence of number that expresses the coordinates of order.

This was how the god reasoned and planned for the creation of time. As a result, in order that time might be created, the sun and the moon and five other heavenly bodies—the so-called planets— were created to determine and preserve the numbers of time. Once he had made bodies for each of them, he put them into the orbits within the circuit of difference, seven bodies for seven orbits. He put the moon into the first circle around the earth, he put the sun into the circle second closest to the earth, and the Morning star […] (Timaeus 38c-d).

In other words, the orbits of these celestial bodies around the earth pass through the cardinal points which act as the markers of time—the orbit of the moon around the earth marks a month, the orbit of the sun around the earth marks a year, and so on. In this manner, Plato’s conception of the universe provides a theory of time as a perfect celestial clock, where time is circular or cyclical and moments are repeatable. The significant point is that periodic movement gives rise to a past and future in equal

131 measure. Plato argues that days, months, and years are “parts” of time (Timaeus 37e38a), and such “parts” can be seen to determine the past and the future in cardinal proportions—two years in the past is equivalent to two years in the future. Plato’s circular or periodic time is therefore symmetrical: the past and the future rhyme. As we have seen, the passive synthesis of Habit is periodic and circular, but it is also asymmetrical. So whereas Plato’s periodic and circular time is primary, Deleuze’s periodic and circular time (repetition of the same) is secondary. Hence, the transcendental condition of this form of time, the third synthesis of time as condition of the new, can only be “out of joint”. Accordingly, the third synthesis is static rather than passive (or dynamic), formally empty rather than empirically conditioned, and ordinal rather than cardinal. The first and the second syntheses of time are passive syntheses because they vary with the content synthesised. That is, their dynamism necessitates content; for without content there is nothing to synthesise. The a priori form of the third synthesis, on the other hand, does not itself change by receiving content for synthesis, as Deleuze writes, “The synthesis is necessarily static since time is no longer subordinate to movement”, and drawing from Kant’s account of time as an immutable form, “time is the most radical form of change, but the form of change does not change” (DR 111; cf. KCP viii). The third synthesis of time indeed conditions all movement, change, and events, but it is “static” because it has an a priori form which remains the same. With reference to Hölderlin, Deleuze characterises this a priori form of time as a “caesura” (DR 111). Each singular “caesura” creates a division by unequally distributing the series of time into a before (or past) and after (or future) via a during (or present). In this manner, the caesura cuts time, draws together a before and after in unequal proportions, and creates a “totality of time”. Time no longer rhymes because empirical content no longer provides the equivalent parameters or cardinal points which determine the before (past) and after (future). Without such content, time becomes a “pure and empty form” (DR 114), and as a pure and empty form, time loses its cardinal measurement and becomes “ordinal”. The “ordinal” conception of number determines the order or position of objects (e.g., 1st, 2nd, 3rd…), but, most importantly, it conceives of the relations in question unequivocally, for instance, the difference between 1st and 2nd implies no equivalence to the difference between 2nd and 3rd. In a running race, for example, regardless of the empirical content, such as the distance between 1st and 2nd place and the distance between 2nd and 3rd place, the order itself is never affected. The

132 true novelty of time as ordinal is that the past and the future are no longer determined in equal measure. In fact, only time can measure. Time as static, pure, empty, and ordinal no longer has a point of return which gives it the form of a circle or cycle. Time is therefore “out of joint”, “demented”, or “outside the curve” (DR 11). Kant’s theory of time as a pure and empty form, as liberated from spatial movement and thus “out of joint”, forms a central conceptual component of the third synthesis of time; but as mentioned previously, the latter cannot be reduced to the former. The essential point Deleuze takes from Kant, and what he expands upon, is the static conception of time as an immutable form, namely, a form of change which conditions all change and movement, but a form of change which does not itself change (KCP viii; DR 111). In Kant’s case, time is a subject-based immutable form of intuition that gives order to appearances but lacks the capacity for synthesis itself. Deleuze’s third synthesis of time (note: it is a synthesis) is neither subject- nor object-based but perpetually ungrounds and dissolves (human and non-human) subjects and objects. So when Deleuze states that the caesura of the third synthesis of time is the exact point at which the fracture in the I appears (DR 111), he is referring to his previous analysis of the human split subject as an I-Self system. In Deleuze’s case, the caesura is an “event” in the series of time that pertains not only to human subjects but all phenomena within the biological domain.

3.4. Totality and Series: The Event

The third synthesis of time is “defined not only by a formal and empty order but also by a totality and a series” (DR 111). Deleuze explains the idea of a “totality of time” as follows,

the caesura, of whatever kind, must be determined in the image of a unique and tremendous event, an act which is adequate to time as a whole. This image itself is divided, torn into two unequal parts. Nevertheless, it thereby draws together the totality of time. It must be called a symbol by virtue of the unequal parts which it subsumes and draws together, but draws together as unequal parts (DR 112).

The caesura signifies the “during” (or present) which cuts and orders time into an unequal distribution of a “before” (or past) and an “after” (or future). In a similar way to

133 the manner in which the passing of a living present is conditioned by the Whole pure past, each caesura produces a “totality of time” that can likewise be understood as a multiplicity or temporal microcosm. However, there are two difficult things to make sense of in this section. Firstly, the notion that the caesura “must be determined in the image of a unique and tremendous event” (DR 112; emphasis added). Secondly, that this image “must be called a symbol” (DR 112; emphasis added). The first thing to point out is that the events in question are not empirical. In fact, whether or not an event has occurred or will occur, Deleuze argues, is neither here nor there. Large-scale empirical events such as the asteroid impact 65-million-years ago had an effect on the pure past (transcendentally) and the future (what resulted empirically), but events like these, or all empirical events for that matter, do not give time its static form. So even though empirical criteria have no influence on the form of time, what does it mean to say that the caesura must be determined in a unique and tremendous symbolic image? The symbolic image in question may draw together the before and the after of the caesura, but only the caesura itself “creates the possibility of a temporal series” (DR 112). The essential point is that the symbolic image, which signifies an event, does not produce the static form of time; rather, as Deleuze states in the Conclusion, the image is an “a priori symbol of the form” of time (DR 366). To say that the caesura must be determined in the image of the symbolic event therefore means that the symbolic image expresses how time is ordered into a totality and a unique series (an unequal distribution of a before and an after) by means of a caesura. The point is that although every event is determined by a caesura, not every caesura has the “uniqueness” or “tremendousness” to express how it affects the totality of time. As Williams suggests, “in the third synthesis every event on the line of time has an ordering of before and after in relation to it. Every event is such a cut” (Williams 2011: 91). The concept of “the event” in Deleuze’s philosophy has many variations. Here I deal only with a single conceptualisation of the time of the event, which is free from “the [real or empirical] events which [make] up its content” (DR 111). Over and above such real or empirical events, which accord with the time of the living present, the event in question is what Deleuze calls an “ideal event” (DR 237-240). And there is an “ideal event” in every real event, empirical occurrence, or solution. Now, there are two forms of “ideal events”. On the one hand, “ideal events” have a problematic form insofar as they are problems themselves: “problems belong on the side of events, affections or

134 accidents” (DR 236) … “[Ideal events are] more profound than and different in nature from the real events which they determine in the order of solutions” (DR 202). In essence, these “ideal events” are Ideas or multiplicities that insist within the pure past (see: Chapter 4, Section 1). On the other hand, “ideal events” emanate from questions as imperatives, which, like problems, have an ontological scope: “Problems or Ideas emanate from imperatives of adventure or from events which appear in the form of questions” (DR 247; see: Chapter 4, Section 1.5.). The point is that there are ideal future events and ideal past events: questions complete problems, and the former render the latter solvable (DR 239). The fact that ideal events are both of the past and of the future make them appear to correspond to what Deleuze conceptualises as “pure events” in the LS. A comparison between these two texts, however, lies outside the scope of this thesis. The point for now is that, in DR, the time of the solution, the time of the problem, and the time of the question respectively correspond to the passive synthesis of Habit, the passive synthesis of Memory, and the static synthesis of Eternal Return. Deleuze provides a number of dramatic examples for the image and symbol of the totality of time which can be used to extract the nature of the ideal future event. The examples also highlight, figuratively speaking, that from the perspective of “clock-time” a caesura or event is not always instantaneous but may cover a long period. With respect to the characters (I-Self systems) involved in the dramas Deleuze uses to express such a tremendous event, Hamlet and Oedipus, the caesura or ideal event of the third synthesis of time is the point at which the fracture in the I appears and the Self dissolves.55 The image of a unique and tremendous event, the symbol for the totality of time as an unequal distribution of a before and an after, is symbolised by the act of killing the father (Oedipus) and finding revenge (Hamlet). In the before, “the imagined act is supposed ‘too big for me’” (DR 112), that is, too big for the self. The characters live the before of the event, which is to say, they live the past: Oedipus had already killed his father, but he is unaware that it was his father, and so unknowingly Oedipus has already carried out the act while he continues to contemplate it; Hamlet is yet to avenge his

55 For alternative accounts: Faulkner provides an analysis of Harold Rosenberg’s thesis on drama (which Deleuze refers to (DR 114-116)) and a psychoanalytic reading of the dramatic persona of Oedipus and Hamlet (Faulkner 2006: 109-116); Somers-Hall provides an overview of Deleuze’s analysis of Hamlet, Oedipus, and Zarathustra (which Deleuze gives in the Conclusion of DR) and its difference to Rosenberg’s concept of drama (Somers-Hall 2012: 78-81); Voss provides a lucid account of the central themes of Oedipus Rex and a brief overview of Hamlet in order to explain Deleuze’s interpretation of Oedipus and Hamlet (Voss 2013: 231-236); and Williams provides a unique metaphysical reading of the drama (Williams 2011: 89-94).

135 father’s murder, he continues to doubt (both himself and the reality of his father’s ghost) and so he is yet to carry out the act. The characters live the act (patricide and revenge) as “too big” for them, as a burden which throws their own identity, their own pastness into question. It brings about, quite literally, an alteration of their entire past. The during is “the present of metamorphosis, a becoming-equal to the act and a doubling of the self, and the projection of an ideal self in the image of the act” (DR 112). This is where the heroes (Hamlet and Oedipus) become “capable” of the act. They project an image of an ideal self “capable” of performing the act, and this ideal self is a “becoming-equal” to the image of the act itself. Hence, we have “a doubling of the self”, that is, an ego ideal that becomes-equal to the ideal self capable of carrying out the act. But Deleuze also writes,

since to become similar or equal is always to become similar or equal to something that is supposed to be identical in itself, or supposed to enjoy the privilege of an originary identity, it appears that the image of the action to which one becomes similar or equal stands here only for the identity of the concept in general, or that of the I (DR 368).

In this sense, the self (Oedipus or Hamlet) becomes capable of the act by modelling an ego ideal on the ideal of the act itself. The essential point is that all the while the supposed “originary identity”, that is, the ideal ego or I, is simply an illusion. For the after (future) takes time “out of joint”, fractures the “I”, insofar as it

signifies that the event and the act possess a secret coherence which excludes that of the self; that they turn back against the self which has become their equal and smash it to pieces, as though the bearer of the new world were carried away and dispersed by the shock of the multiplicity to which it gives birth: what the self has become equal to is the unequal in itself (DR 112).

By the time the action has supposedly attained the “ideal future” or “event” the self has changed, dissolved, been smashed to pieces, undergone a repetition of differences and become equal to “the unequal in itself”. Hence, there was no single, same self that carried out the action. Both the past that was “too big” and the present of metamorphosis signify an assemblage and continuity of multiple selves: of “a Self which is divided according to the temporal series” (DR 112). Oedipus and Hamlet are passive subjects, selves in perpetual modification. The “ideal future” is shown as the condition for their actions, for it introduces not only a caesura in time but a fracture in

136 the I of which they are forced to live. The result: Oedipus learns that he killed his father and married his mother to great distress; Hamlet attains revenge but is killed in the process. Ultimately, the nature of the ideal event of the future is that it will never arrive: it is always yet to come. This is because it signifies a purely contingent future. And the ideal future, the event, is the element of repetition: the future itself, as a transcendental principle of novelty, of difference, is the static element that is repeated in each and every event, repeated as a pure form of change which does not itself change. In fact, it is the affirmation behind one of Deleuze’s reprises “we do not know what a body can do, what it is capable of” because the future as condition forms the necessary condition for action and leaves the future—a body’ capability—indeterminate and open. The example given of drama pertains to psychic systems, but the future as the always yet to come is also the necessary condition for change in the biological world. So just as the passing of any living present whatsoever—such as a simple biochemical reaction—provokes the rearrangement of the Whole pure past into a unique multiplicity, so any event whatsoever introduces a caesura which creates a unique temporal series and totality of time, even if a certain totality is not unique or tremendous enough to be expressed as a symbolic image. But we are yet to see precisely how this caesura occurs.

3.5. The Eternal Return: The Future

Through a reading of Nietzsche’s eternal return of difference, Deleuze argues that the pure and empty form of time orders the series of time by means of a caesura that eternally introduces difference. Now the eternal return, for Deleuze, signifies the eternal return of returning itself, that is, the static element of repetition: the pure and empty form of time. As such, it has three main characteristics: it distributes repetition or difference, destroys identities, and selects the superior forms or simulacra (DR 365). The static synthesis of Eternal Return distributes repetition for itself as difference in itself to the first synthesis of Habit, where difference is drawn off (contemplation- contraction), and to the second synthesis of Memory, where difference is included within the levels. “The role of [repetition in the eternal return] would not be to suppress [bare repetition and clothed repetition] but […] to distribute difference to them (in the form of difference drawn off or included)” (DR365). But at the same time, the third

137 synthesis also destroys: it “promises and implies ‘once and for all’ the death of that which is one” (DR 141). This is not a morbid fascination but an affirmation of generation and change, of becoming itself: that which arises will never return, and that which returns is always different. Thus, a living present and its grounding in the pure past passes away, never to return as it was. Taking both characteristics together, the third synthesis selects the superior forms or simulacra, that is, systems in which difference relates to difference through difference (DR 153-154), systems in which differences are primary (individuating) and identities are secondary (simulated).56 So consequently, when pure difference lies at the heart of a system, the logic of identity changes sense, as identities are no longer primary categories of representation (the Same and the Similar) but secondary notions of difference (the same and the similar). With these three characteristics together, broadly speaking, the eternal return of difference is a transcendental principle for the necessity of chance. Put otherwise, the necessity of chance is the affirmation of chaos: “chaos and eternal return are not two distinct things but the same affirmation” (DR 69). Yet insofar as the third synthesis of time is purely transcendental, it says nothing about the physical nature of time; for it merely states that physical things—most notably, biological systems—are always subject to a pure form of time which does not itself change.

3.6. The Three Syntheses of Time and their Interdependence

Like the first and second syntheses of time, the third synthesis of time has its own asymmetry. To recall: in the passive synthesis of Habit, the past and the future are dimensions of the present; in the passive synthesis of Memory, the present and the future are dimensions of the past. In the static synthesis of Eternal Return, the present and the past are dimensions of the future, such that the asymmetry runs from the future to the present to the past. If all three syntheses are interdependent, then any living present whatsoever is contemporaneously a form of repetition which produces the same or the similar (Habit), the most immediate past (Memory), and a present of metamorphosis (Eternal Return). This will be explained in three points: (1) the nature of

56 “Simulacra are those systems in which different relates to different by means of difference itself. What is essential is that we find in these systems no prior identity, no internal resemblance. It is all a matter of difference in the series, and of differences of difference in the communication between series” (DR 372- 373).

138 the present and the past as dimensions of the future; (2) the nature of the third synthesis as “the royal repetition”; and (3) the nature of each synthesis of time as a “mode” of repetition Firstly, “in this final synthesis of time, the present and past are in turn no more than dimensions of the future […] the present is no more than an actor, an author, an agent destined to be effaced; while the past is no more than a condition operating by default” (DR 117; emphasis added). Recall that the living present and the pure past form a necessary relationship, founding and grounding, where the point of the metaphorical cone has an empirical half in the present (the passing of a living present) and a transcendental half in the past (the most immediate past). In this way, any living present whatsoever is at one and the same time a passing present and the most immediate past. The third synthesis of the future as eternal return signifies the ungrounding of this relationship, as the present becomes “an agent destined to be defaced” and the past becomes “a condition operating by default” because the third synthesis affirms that this singular relation between the present and past will never return. Deleuze states this explicitly in the Conclusion: “the condition of the action by default does not return; the condition of the agent by metamorphosis does not return; all that returns, the eternal return, is the unconditioned in the product” (DR 370). Secondly,

the secret of repetition as a whole lies in that which is repeated, in that which is twice signified. The future, which subordinates the other two to itself and strips them of their autonomy, is the royal repetition. The first synthesis concerns only the content and the foundation of time; the second, its ground; but beyond these, the third ensures the order, the totality of the series and the final end of time (DR 117; emphasis added).

Here the final synthesis is the “royal repetition” because it affirms (rather than acknowledges) that “repetition is, for itself, difference in itself” (DR 118). As such, it distributes repetition as difference in itself or difference in intensity to the other syntheses. The essential point to clarify is that the eternal return is purely transcendental, and so it does not distribute in the sense of “give” differences in intensity to the other syntheses; instead, it necessitates that both the passive syntheses of Habit and Memory synthesise (draw off and involve) differences in intensity. In this way, it ensures the “final end of time” because these intensive differences drawn off and

139 involved will never, and can never, return. Thirdly,

In all three syntheses, present, past and future are revealed as Repetition, but in very different modes. The present is the repeater, the past is repetition itself, but the future is that which is repeated […] A philosophy of repetition must pass through all these 'stages', condemned to repeat repetition itself. However, by traversing these stages it ensures its programme of making repetition the category of the future: making use of the repetition of habit and that of memory, but making use of them as stages and leaving them in its wake (DR 117; emphasis added).

So each synthesis of time is a mode, that is, a mode by which difference relates to repetition. In the passive synthesis of Habit, difference is drawn off from repetition by contemplation-contractions, that is, passive subjects of repetition (“the repeater”). In the passive synthesis of Memory, difference is included within the levels of the entire pure past (“repetition itself”). In the static synthesis of the Eternal Return, difference is distributed to the other syntheses insofar as the future as eternal return is “that which is repeated”. But the eternal return is not “added” after the relation between the passive synthesis of Habit and Memory have formed. Deleuze scare-quotes the varying modal operations as “stages” because he is speaking methodologically (DR 117). Each synthesis can be separated in principle, but not in fact. For as a unity, these three modes of repetition reveal one and the same process: “Repetition” as temporal becoming. Somers-Hall illuminates the connection of the three syntheses when he writes,

Habit and memory can relate to each other because they are simply different modalities or expressions of the form of time itself. We can think (somewhat figuratively) of memory and habit as simply being different ways of presenting the same underlying form of time. By taking this approach, the problem of the priority of succession over co-existence, or vice versa, is put out of play. They are both expressions of the same ontologically prior temporal form, which in itself is neither successive nor co-existent. As such, while they are different modalities, they are related by being different modalities of the same empty form (Somers-Hall 2012: 82).

Deleuze implies above that each synthesis of time is a mode. In this way, Habit and Memory are modalities of the static synthesis as eternal return, the royal mode, which necessitates that the differences that Habit and Memory synthesise are differences in themselves. Hereby the three syntheses can be understood as entirely interdependent, together forming a holistic process: temporal becoming as “Repetition”. But Somers-

140 Hall’s point is that the passive syntheses of Habit and Memory are related to one another because they are both modes of “the form of time itself”, the pure and empty form of time, which is an “ontologically prior temporal form” (ibid.). Here a comparison with Kant’s modes of time can be drawn. As we saw in Chapter 1 (Section 1.3.4.), Kant explains that the existence of appearances in time accord with three modes of time, which, like the schemata of the order of time, are determined by the relational categories of the understanding (substance, cause and effect, reciprocity): the persistence of material substances in time, the succession of appearances in time, and the simultaneity of the existence of spatial appearances in time. The essential point about the modes of time is that they are not modes of time itself but rather modes of the “temporal relations of appearances” (CPR A177/B219). Furthermore, in each and every experience, the modes of time make possible the “unity of time” (CPR A186/B229; A188/B231), which is to say, all moments of time are moments of a single time. For instance, in order to discern a succession of appearances and a simultaneity of appearances, it is necessary to posit that something endures—in this case, material substance—while change takes place. This allows us to experience various moments as moments of the same time. The notion of a “time itself”, on the other hand, is merely a pure form of intuition, the form of inner sense, which Deleuze characterises as a pure form of change which does not itself change. The way Deleuze methodologically presents the three modes of time as “stages” seems to correlate with Kant’s modes, for as a unity they form a single process: temporal becoming. For Deleuze, however, the syntheses of time are not syntheses of appearances but rather syntheses of intensive differences. And from the syntheses of intensive differences times emerge, succession and coexistence, within the biological domain. Insofar as Habit and Memory synthesise intensive differences, furthermore, they presuppose in each and every moment the static synthesis of the eternal return, the pure and empty form of time. So in place of material substance, Deleuze posits the event of the future as that which underlies succession and coexistence. Indeed the third synthesis of time is a pure form which does not itself change, the eternal return, but as such it is merely a transcendental principle for the world in infinite modulation—it does not presuppose the physical nature of this underlying form of time. With this in mind, I continue with Somers-Hall’s suggestion that Habit and Memory are modalities of the pure and empty form of time, but preface this with the

141 idea that such an “ontologically prior temporal form” (Somers-Hall 2012: 82) is only “ontologically prior” in principle, for as a transcendental principle it is actualised (drawn off and included) in each particular case. Somers-Hall seems to imply as much when he writes, “We can now see that repetition occurs not because the same forms repeat, but because the same field of intensive difference engenders these different forms. What returns, therefore, is the pure form of time in the form of intensive difference, in different actual expressions” (Somers-Hall 2012: 83). On the reading given here, the three syntheses are interdependent because they form a holistic process: there is no transcendental without the empirical, and no virtual without the actual. One of the central features of the genesis of real experience must always be kept in mind: conditions arise alongside—that is, contemporaneously—with what they condition. And so any living present whatsoever is at one and the same time a repetition which produces the same (Habit), the most immediate past (Memory), and a form of metamorphosis (Eternal Return). With respect to the interdependence of the three syntheses, this chapter has explained that the passive synthesis of Habit can only be a passive synthesis of intensive differences, and that the first and third syntheses of time form the respective relation of conditioned and condition. But it is yet to explain how the passive synthesis of Memory is conditioned by the static synthesis of Eternal Return, and thus how ideal past events are conditioned by ideal future events. The next section on the “dark precursor” attempts to clarify this.

3.7. The Dark Precursor: The Logic of Communication

So far we have seen that each caesura creates a totality of time in which the before and the after are unequally distributed, and that such a totality is comprised of heterogeneous times or divergent series (differences). But we are yet to deal with how communication takes place within such systems. The problem Deleuze needs to address is how the different relates to the different, or, more specifically, how “first-degree differences” or “intensities”—in the form of heterogeneous times or divergent series— relate to other “first-degree differences” or “intensities” (DR 143-144). In order to avoid reintroducing a form of mediation into the heart of this relation, which would posit the elements of representation as its own ground, Deleuze’s solution is simple: through difference. As such, the communication between divergent series or heterogeneous

142 times (intensities) is structured by the logic of “internal difference”, the “in-itself of difference”, the “differently different,” the “second-degree differences”, or, most characteristically, the “dark precursor” [précurseur sombre]. Deleuze, however, does not present the “dark precursor” as a fully-fledged concept but instead defines it by how it acts. Ultimately, the “dark precursor” is the “third term” (difference) that relates intensive difference to intensive difference. Now, each and every system or domain (e.g., the physical, the biological, the psychic) is constituted by two or more divergent series, where a series is a chain of intensive differences or multiple times. (As an aside, although divergent series or heterogeneous times are intensive differences, not all intensive differences are temporal.) The immediate criticism Deleuze foresees is that the dark precursor must have some form of identity in order to make the differences between the divergent series communicate, as the dark precursor is the “differenciator of these differences” (DR 146). His response is that its only identity is its lack of identity, and so the dark precursor is “perfectly indeterminate” (DR 146). For identity and resemblance are only effects of the dark precursor, as the dark precursor itself, like the pure past in general, is completely unrepresentable.

Because the path [the dark precursor] traces is invisible and becomes visible only in reverse, to the extent that it is travelled over and covered by the phenomena it induces within the system, it has no place other than that from which it is ‘missing’, no identity other than that which it lacks: it is precisely the object = x, the one which ‘is lacking in its place’ as it lacks its own identity (DR 146).

Paradoxically, the dark precursor is an empty placeholder which presides over the structural order (e.g., the biological, the social, the linguistic, et cetera), but it has no assignable place itself. Only in retrospect, and from the point of view of phenomena (or the surface), is the dark precursor made visible. For although the dark precursor precedes the intensities or divergent series it makes communicate, it does not pre-exist the unique relations between divergent series it creates, as it “perpetually displaces itself within itself and perpetually disguises itself in the series” (DR 146). It is concealed by its own effects, but even when its own effects are manifest it has already created the unique relation, all the while changing throughout the process, and therefore it is “missing” or “lacking in its place”. The communicative function of the dark precursor can be clarified by way of

143 example. According to Deleuze’s reading of Freud, a phantasy is constituted on the basis of at least two divergent series or heterogeneous times that succeed one another from the point of view of the “solipsistic unconscious of the subject in question” (DR 151). The first series (before) is infantile and pre-genital, while the second series (after) is post-pubescent and genital. The problem Deleuze wishes to take up is the “delay” between the time it takes for the first series in infancy to “produce its effect at a distance” on the second series in adulthood (DR 151). A “standard” reading of Freud may argue that the second series (the adult phantasy) derives from, and thus resembles, the first series (the infantile phantasy), such that the first series is repressed and stored in memory and the second series is an actualisation of this repression (unbeknown by the subject) with different content (e.g., the subject’s love for his wife is a repetition of his infantile love for his mother). This kind of analysis, however, is precisely what Deleuze avoids, as it presupposes two things: on the one hand, the notion of a “solipsistic unconscious”, and on the other, a view of time as a repetition of the same, for that which is repeated is a prior state of affairs. The problem is only well formulated, Deleuze maintains, once we “take into account the instance in relation to which the two series coexist in an intersubjective unconscious” (DR 151).57 In line with the pure past in general, all the divergent series or heterogeneous times coexist. The infantile event (e.g., the love for one’s mother) is the dark precursor, the agent of communication, because it “establishes communication between the basic series, that of the adults we knew as a child and that of the adult we are among other adults and other children” (DR 152). In this sense, the dark precursor brings into communication, and makes repeat with difference, not only all the instances of adult-child relations experienced, but also—taking into account that the unconscious is intersubjective—those given to us through literature, film, television, and so on. The infantile event (before) precedes the interaction of heterogeneous times and pre-exists the adult-child relations of adulthood (after). Indeed it influences future relations, events to come, but once made visible in retrospect it is “lacking in its place”, as it has already made a singular connection of divergent series or heterogeneous times, creating a pure past that was never present. The essential point is that insofar as the dark precursor establishes communication between

57 Deleuze is evidently influenced by Lacan on this point: “The unconscious, according to Lacan, is neither individual nor collective, but intersubjective, which is to say that it implies a development in terms of series: not only the signifier and the signified, but the two series at a minimum organize themselves in quite a variable manner according to the domain under consideration” (DI 182). On Lacan, the object = x, and the intersubjective unconscious, see also: DI 182-189; LS Sixth Series.

144 two or more different times, it undergoes a change itself. The infantile event is neither the ideal nor the origin of the phantasy; instead, it is the perfectly indeterminate or empty placeholder. Put otherwise, the multitude of adult-child relations that comprise the intersubjective unconscious signify a kind of intercommunication of coexisting heterogeneous times. The dark precursor sets the infantile event and the adult event into communication and consequently explains the delay between the before and after within the pure form of time (DR 152). The divergent series or heterogeneous times of the pure past are actualised with respect to the adult event; thus, they are lived in accordance with the passive synthesis of Habit and the passive synthesis of Memory, for insofar as the pure past is actualised with respect to the passing present it undergoes a change in nature. Most significantly, when two or more heterogeneous times are brought into communication, we lose the distinction between the “originary” phantasy and the “derived” phantasy, between the identity of the “model” and the resemblance of the “copy” (DR 152). Deleuze’s conclusion is that each and every series is neither originary nor unchanging but in and of itself in perpetual becoming. The dark precursor causes coexisting heterogeneous times or divergent series to communicate in such a way that change occurs both simultaneously and contemporaneously in each series.

The essential point is the simultaneity and contemporaneity of all the divergent series, the fact that all coexist. From the point of view of the presents which pass in representation, the series are certainly successive, one 'before' and the other 'after'. It is from this point of view that the second is said to resemble the first. However, this no longer applies from the point of view of the chaos which contains them, the object = x which runs through them, the precursor which establishes communication between them or the forced movement which points beyond them: the differenciator always makes them coexist (DR 151).

To clarify, communication does not take place exclusively between a single adult phantasy and a single infantile phantasy, which would be an abstract oversimplification of the reality of experience, but between all the coexisting times and series that comprise a system—in this instance, all the child-adult relations. So when an event in adulthood provokes an infantile event, the relation between the past (childhood) and the present (adulthood) is determined by the determinable, namely, the pure and empty form of time. The future as eternal return introduces a caesura; the caesura creates a during in time that unequally distributes a before and an after; the unequal distribution

145 produces a singular totality of time; the past events which coexist with themselves and remain contemporaneous with the present are subject to the necessity of chance effects of the future as eternal return; and the divergent series or heterogeneous times that comprise the pure past are actualised and lived in the present. Simply put, the dark precursor is the delay within a system: the past is the precursor to future chance effects, but it is dark because the way it changes—becomes—is unprecedented. The logic of the dark precursor thus explains how the pure past is subject to the necessity of chance, how ideal past events are conditioned by ideal future events. In the section on the second synthesis of Memory, we saw that the pure past coexists with itself and pre-exists each and every living present, remains contemporaneous with each and every passing present, and changes as a virtual multiplicity with respect to each and every passing present. However, it was only acknowledged that the pure past as a virtual multiplicity, as an ever-cumulative storage of conditions of pastness, is rearrangeable and recombinable. Here we see that insofar as the future as eternal return affirms chance, it necessitates that the pure past is a dynamic capacity for selection which involves differences in intensity. Thus, it affirms the pure past as a system of pure becoming without “origins” or “models”. Deleuze’s interpretation of Bergson’s metaphor of the cone in Bergsonism showed that each “level” of the pure past is a difference in degree or intensity, of contraction or of expansion. Yet it was unclear in what sense Deleuze’s pure past included intensities. For Deleuze, each “level” of the cone represents a shred of the pure past as a divergent series, heterogeneous time, or difference in intensity. And insofar as divergent series or heterogeneous times are subject to the future as eternal return and the logic of the dark precursor, they are given the fundamental quality of, what Deleuze will come to characterise as, “intensive quantity”, namely, changing in nature through division.

3.8. The Three Syntheses and their Domain

This chapter has outlined the three syntheses of time and the nature of their interdependence. But it never fully clarified what domain the syntheses operate within. Because all syntheses are interdependent, and the first synthesis of time goes only as far as the biological domain, then, in the strict sense, the three syntheses provide a form of organic temporality. Thus, biological organs and organisms, as well as psychic systems,

146 are quite literally, as Deleuze characterises it later, thinkers of the eternal return (DR 317). But in the later chapters of DR, thinkers of the eternal return—signal-sign systems—become pure individuals, namely, vectors of secondary intensities embedded within intensive fields of individuation (primary intensities). Here these individuals are shown to pertain to physical, biological, and psychic systems. As I will come to explain, only in the final chapters, when the temporal syntheses are connected with the spatial syntheses, are the three syntheses given their proper metaphysical extension. The problem we will have to address is whether the specific characteristics (or specific conditions) of the first synthesis of time—organic needs and fatigues, capacities of sensibility and perception, a primitive mode of thought as interpreting signs—operate in the world. Do rocks and islands, which are given as examples of spatiotemporal dynamisms involved in differenciation (DR 271-272), have such capacities? More pressingly, why should we conceive of rocks and islands as “thinking” the eternal return?

147 Chapter Four. Deleuze and the Genesis of Real Experience

In Chapters 4 and 5 of DR, Deleuze constructs a metaphysical image of the world in becoming by drawing upon the domains of the physical (qualities-extensities systems), the biological (species-parts systems), and the psychic (I-Self systems). To narrow things down for a moment, as Smith points out, “[the] two demands laid down by Maimon—the search for the genetic elements of real experience and the positing of a principle of difference as the fulfillment of this condition—could be said to be the two primary components of what Deleuze came to call his transcendental empiricism” (Smith 2012: 238; emphasis added). Here the principle of difference appears in the form of the principle of intensive quantity as the sufficient reason of phenomena, empirical diversity, or the sensible. But understanding the movement from individuating difference to empirical diversity involves a comprehension of the systematic connection of the processes involved—the three syntheses of time, the three syntheses of space, differentiation, individuation, dramatisation, and differenciation—and thus a comprehension of the relationship between the virtual, the actual, and the intensive. As I will come to explain, there is almost no agreement in the secondary scholarship regarding this point, and so throughout this chapter I will shed light this disparity and put forward my own account. As a guide for what follows, in Chapter 4 of DR, Deleuze uses a “mathematico- biological” model to explain the movement from differentiation to differenciation. “Differentiation” is the process involved in the production of the virtual, while “differenciation” is the process involved in the production of the actual. The virtual and the actual represent two halves of the Real. This has been frequently referred to as a “two registers” view. Although it is a convenient designation, it can be somewhat misleading. The virtual and the actual are not separate in the sense that the former is the dominant and the latter is the dominated, or the former is the active and the latter is the passive. For the separation between these two registers is only temporal: the persistence of the pure past, and the preservation of the present. In this manner, the virtual and the actual are always interacting, inextricably tied together, reciprocally influencing one another, conditioning and conditioned at one and the same time. So if something happens in the actual, something happens in the virtual. It is possible to separate these realms in principle, but not in fact. In general, the terms “virtual” and “actual” can be

148 understood as temporal designators, for instance, virtual Ideas are multiplicities insisting within the pure past while actual qualities and extensities are signs persisting within the multitude of variable presents. But we will also see that the concept of the virtual designates more than just the preservation of the past and its coexistence with the present; therefore, it does not equate with the pure past in general. So with respect to the relation between differentiation and differenciation, Ideas or multiplicities (coexisting elements) structure and remain immanent with (not actually, but virtually) the actual world of qualities and extensities (physical systems), species and parts (biological systems), Egos and Selves (psychic systems). In Chapter 5 of DR, Deleuze explains that the movement from the virtual to the actual runs via the process of intensive quantity, that is, individuation. Now although there appear to be three separate movements, in reality an individuated entity is comprised of the whole network of processes and relations running from differentiation (virtual) to differenciation (actual) via individuation (intensive quantity). Differentiation and differenciation are interdependent and neither half exists without the other, while individuation has one foot in each register. This will be shown by the important—yet frequently overlooked—distinction between primary (enveloping) intensities and secondary (enveloped) intensities. In individuation, primary intensities pertain to the field of individuation, which is involved with differentiation, and secondary intensities pertain to the intensive individual, which is involved in differenciation. The connection between differentiation and differenciation via individuation will be explained with respect to the relation between three spatial and temporal syntheses and the way they involve intensive quantity as a whole (the pure or intensive spatium). So by shedding light on the interdependency of the processes involved in the movement from differentiation (the virtual) to differenciation (the actual) via individuation (the intensive), we will be able to see that everything takes place “in between”, namely, the genesis of real experience as “indi-drama-(different/ciation)” (DR 308). Following this, I examine and attempt to clarify two perplexing components of Deleuze’s metaphysics, non-human sensibility and non-human thought (the “thinker” of eternal return), and explain that even a rock can be said to “sense” and “think”.

149 Section One. Differentiation (Virtual)

1.1. Ideas as Problems: Kant

Deleuze’s account of differentiation begins with an analysis of Kant’s theory of Ideas as transcendental problems. The central concern is how Kant’s faculty of reason, as a faculty of Ideas, poses problems in general (DR 214). As we saw in the first chapter (Section 1.1.), Kant maintains that reason, by its very nature, aims for the complete systematic unity of knowledge by attempting to discern the “conditions” for every “condition” such that it extends beyond the bounds of sensibility by seeking the ultimate reason, namely, the “unconditioned” (or, what Deleuze calls, “the complete and infinite determination” (DR 216)). More technically, reason “frees” the relational categories of the understanding (substance, causality, community) from the bounds of sensibility (possible experience) by extending them to their ultimate ground (Soul, World, God) (CPR A409/B435). For instance, from the category of cause (i.e., every event necessarily has a cause) comes the World, namely, the Idea of the absolute unity of the series of objects and events in space and time (CPR A334/B391). Yet although Ideas are as natural to the capacity of the mind as the categories of the understanding, they remain problematic because in their speculative use they could never be given in experience. Taking influence from Bergson, Deleuze interprets this in a positive sense and argues that Kant’s critical project can be read as distinguishing problems as either “true” or “false”.58

For every solution presupposes a problem—in other words, the constitution of a unitary and systematic field which orientates and subsumes the researches or investigations in such a manner that the answers, in turn, form precisely cases of solution. Kant even refers to Ideas as problems 'to which there is no solution'. By that he does not mean that Ideas are necessarily false problems and thus insoluble but, on the contrary, that true problems are Ideas, and that these Ideas do not disappear with 'their' solutions, since they are the indispensable condition without which no solution would ever exist (DR 215).

So although problems are always insoluble, they are insoluble in different ways: “false problems” signify the transcendent (or illegitimate or constitutive) employment of

58 On Bergson’s account of problems as either “true” or false”, see: B 15-21.

150 Ideas, while “true problems” signify the immanent (or legitimate or regulative) employment of Ideas. All in all, Ideas or problems are both immanent and transcendent (DR 215). In their transcendent use, Ideas have been taken to provide “knowledge” of things outside the bounds of sensible experience (e.g., Soul, World, God). In their immanent use, Ideas have a positive role to play in the acquisition of knowledge by directing our enquiries into the empirical world towards ideal goals, that is, “imaginary foci” (CPR A644/B672). So while we cannot acquire actual knowledge about the nature of the Soul (Rational Psychology), the World (Rational Cosmology), or God (Rational Theology), these Ideas can nevertheless regulate knowledge if we treat them analogously: it is “as if” all our mental capacities are connected to a fundamental mental capacity with a persisting identity (Soul); it is “as if” nature forms an infinite interconnected causal network without a first cause (World); and it is “as if” all possible experience forms an absolute unity with an intelligible cause (God). Deleuze highlights that even though Ideas are problematic, they still designate a dimension of objectivity. “The object of an Idea, Kant reminds us, is neither fiction nor hypothesis nor object of reason: it is an object which can be neither given nor known, but must be represented without being able to be directly determined” (DR 215). Accordingly, problematic Ideas contain three moments. (1) Ideas are undetermined insofar as the problematic objects they produce (focal points or imaginary foci) could never be given (or solved) in experience. (2) Ideas are determinable insofar as the objects they produce are “indirectly determined” or “determined by analogy” with the actual objects of experience to which it gives unity. For instance, the idea of the Soul is determinable by means of investigations in psychology: it is “as if” the Soul as substance is the ground of the mental faculties. (3) Ideas provide the ideal of a complete and infinite determination insofar as they extend the categories of the understanding to their infinite potential, that is, their greatest systematic unity possible. In sum, the undetermined of the Idea signifies the problem itself, the determinable of the Idea signifies the actual objects of experience through which the Idea is determined, and the ideal of infinite determination signifies the representational concept that could never be given in experience. Over and above any intrinsic problem pertaining to Kant’s Ideas, Deleuze takes from Kant two notions which he goes on to expand upon: (1) Ideas are problems which are both immanent and transcendent, and (2) Ideas are comprised of three moments: the

151 undetermined, the determinable, and determination. Yet for Deleuze, Ideas are not capacities of the human mind—“[Ideas] do not exist only in our heads but occur here and there in the production of an actual historical world” (DR 239)—but rather ideal problems. They are ideal neither in the sense of ideal archetypes, such as the Idea of God as a supreme being, nor in the sense of idealism expressed in Kant’s doctrine of the ideality of space and time, but instead in the sense of ideal relations that insist in the world and give structure to actual entities. Deleuze argues that by making the undetermined, the determinable, and determination intrinsic characteristics of the Idea itself, we would be able to arrive at a true “critical” or “focal” point that would serve as a principle for the genesis of real experience, namely, the critical point—the different— which relates difference and difference (DR 216-217). In fact, this is the aim of Chapter 4 of DR, “The Ideal Synthesis of Difference”, where differential relations reciprocally determine differential elements. Now, Deleuze has already shown that a principle of difference suitable for the genesis of real experience is revealed by the eternal return of the future (“repetition is, for itself, difference in itself” (DR 118)). But in Chapter 4, taking influence from the calculus, he argues that Ideas as virtual multiplicities provide an alternative version of a principle of difference; and in Chapter 5, he argues that intensive quantity (a metaphysics of difference) accounts for the sufficient reason of phenomena. The problem, then, lies in connecting these different notions of difference and differential relations. I will argue that his analysis of Ideas returns to the thesis of the eternal return as the affirmation of difference in itself, for ontological questions (imperatives) distribute difference to ontological problems (Ideas) (Section 1.4.). Thus the ideal relations between differential elements of Ideas are ideal relations between intensive differences.

1.2. Ideas as Multiplicities

Sitting between Deleuze’s account of Kantian Ideas as problems and his own account of Ideas as multiplicities is an extensive and complex analysis of differential calculus. Deleuze reconstructs an alternative history of the calculus by focusing on the ontological status of the differential itself (dx) in order to show that a superior model for thinking relations of pure difference is possible. He argues that the status of the differential or symbol of difference (dx) offers a “philosophical richness” (rather than a

152 scientific referent) important for a philosophy of difference: “there is a treasure buried within the old so-called barbaric or pre-scientific interpretations of the differential calculus, which must be separated from its infinitesimal matrix” (DR 217). It is clear that mathematics, and therefore differential calculus, serves only as a “technical model” (DR 273). The immediate point to stress is that the nature of differential elements, differential relations, and singularities are not “mathematical metaphors” but “categories of the dialectical Idea” itself (DR 239). And so what Deleuze says regarding the differential (dx) does not necessarily apply to his account of Ideas as multiplicities. In large part, I will leave aside Deleuze’s turn to the differential calculus59 (although at times it will be necessary to refer to it for explanatory purposes) and focus instead on his account of Ideas as multiplicities. In saying this, however, Ideas as multiplicities play an essential role in Deleuze’s account of depth as a structural-topological space, so I will highlight the influence of Riemannian manifolds on Deleuze further on (Section 4.). Deleuze’s unique brand of empiricism differs markedly to classical empiricism, the view that knowledge originates from sensory experience. In Chapter 1 of DR, Deleuze presents a failure on behalf of classical empiricism for its inability to account for the genesis of its subject matter, such as we find in Locke and Hume, where “the sensible” signifies the sensations we immediately perceive in the mind, namely, “that which remains once representation is removed” (DR 68). In this way, as I highlighted in the introduction to this thesis, classical empiricism is content to assume the brute existence of the sensible as immediately given. Aside from the fact that Deleuze comes to explain the reason for the genesis of the sensible (empirical diversity) with the principle of intensive quantity (see: Section 2), Ideas as multiplicities provide a transcendental or superior logic of relations for Deleuze’s empiricism. In Deleuze’s empiricism, that is, his transcendental empiricism, relations are not only external to their terms, but productive of them. So when relations are no longer attributes of subjects, when relations are external and productive of their terms, they can be seen as forming differential relations between differential elements: multiplicities or the virtual structures of actual phenomena. Hereby the first point to note is that multiplicities are substantive: “multiplicity

59 There is a wealth of detailed and illuminating resources which deal with Deleuze’s alternative history of the calculus (Duffy 2006b; Duffy 2013; Smith 2003) and the influence of the calculus on his account of Ideas as multiplicities (Smith 2006; Voss 2013: 74-209; Somers-Hall 2012: 131-143).

153 must not designate a combination of the many and the one, but rather an organisation belonging to the many as such, which has no need whatsoever of unity in order to form a system” (DR 230). While a philosophical monism reduces the many to the substantive one (e.g., Thales’ monism reduces empirical diversity to water), Deleuze replaces substance with multiplicity such that the multiple itself is the one. The relations between differential (or ideal) elements are not representative of a gathering of pre-existing elements, of partes extra partes, but rather indicative of elements and relations both in constant transformation. Ideas are the “concrete universals” of real experience (DR 223) that become incarnated in many different domains but must be analysed in each particular case. Yet although the positive metaphysics of structure and, as we will see, difference in intensity provide the necessary and universal conditions of real experience, they cannot account for the particularity of a real experience. For each real experience is a case in need of further explanation. If we analyse a poem, a language, or a biochemical reaction and state that it involves multiplicities, namely, differential elements, reciprocal relations, and singularities, we simply recognise the elements and relations of Deleuze’s metaphysics and fail to address the particularity of the real experience itself. Deleuze’s metaphysics demands that we must be specific when dealing with a certain type of phenomenon. I will address Deleuze’s example of the organism as a biological Idea further on (Section 4.4.4.), for now the focus is on Deleuze’s metaphysical account of multiplicities. Deleuze defines the intrinsic relation of Ideas or multiplicities in terms of four moments. In the first three moments, an Idea is comprised of (1) differential elements (“determinability” or “quantitability”), (2) reciprocal relations between those elements (“determination” or “qualitability”), and (3) the singular and ordinary points that correspond to the reciprocal relations (“complete determination” or “potentiality”) (DR 348). In the fourth moment (4), these three moments are systematically united in a moment of “progressive determination” (DR 262). The first moment is the “quantitability” of the Idea, where a principle of determinability corresponds to the undetermined “elements” (cf. DR 229-231). With respect to differential calculus, Deleuze highlights that differentials (dx, dy) are undetermined in and of themselves: “In relation to x, dx is completely undetermined, as dy is to y” (DR 219). In this way, dx and dy represent undetermined quantities. But insofar as dy relates to dx, they become perfectly determinable: “a principle of

154 determinability corresponds to the undetermined as such” (DR 219). The point is that each term lacks an independent variable on its own, or lacks its own identity, and only becomes reciprocally determined once brought into relation in the second moment, which qualifies the relationship and consequently produces the terms (dx/dy). Deleuze uses this logic in his account of Ideas as multiplicities when he explains that the undetermined “elements” are neither sensible, nor conceptual, nor actual, but instead “inseparable from a potential or a virtuality” (DR 231). In other words, the undetermined elements have the capacity to take on a variety of differential forms in their state of differentiation, which means they have no prior identity and thus “their indetermination renders possible the manifestation of difference freed from all subordination” (DR 231). But we need to be precise about the ontological status of these “ideal elements” or “differential elements”. It is fair to say that Deleuze is never clear about this point. But a clarification of this is essential because an adequate understanding of Deleuze’s metaphysics of intensity relies upon an answer to this problem. In the simplest sense, elements are undetermined quantities—hence the “quantitability” of the Idea. Elsewhere Deleuze writes, “Difference here is internal to an Idea” (DR 29). That is, elements are differences, internal to Ideas themselves. Some commentators—such as Williams,60 Lord,61 and Voss62—take the differential elements to be intensive quantities or differences. I will come to outline Deleuze’s account of the transcendental principle of intensive quantity below (Section 2), but it is important to highlight that intensive quantities are fundamentally relational, such that intensities are always coupled to one another, thus making the notion of a principle of determinability, where differential elements are in and of themselves indeterminate, compatible with what Deleuze says of intensive quantity. This is not something immediately solvable in the section where Deleuze outlines his account of Ideas as multiplicities, however. For

60 “Reality [i.e., for Deleuze] is a structure of virtual Ideas, virtual intensities and actual things” (Williams 2003: 185), or, “The virtual is made up of Ideas and intensities. The actual consists of actual things or actualities” (Williams 2003: 199). But more specifically, intensities are virtual because multiplicities are structures of pure differences or differences in intensity (i.e., ideal elements) (Williams 2003: 9, 11, 42, 147). 61 “For Deleuze as for Maimon, the real transcendental conditions of the given are ideas, within which intensities flow and surge. Ideas and intensities are virtual in the sense that they are real but not actual” (Lord 2011: 135; emphasis added). 62 For Maimon, “the differential is not a quantity in the common sense of the word, but a quality or intensive inner magnitude” (Voss 2013: 109). As Voss writes of Deleuze, “It is important to emphasise that the differential genetic elements do not exist independently from one another, but always in a reciprocally determined relation (dy/dx). This means that the differential relation does not externally relate determined quantities. Rather its relata are ‘qualities' which are defined as intensive differences (where a difference intrinsically relates to a difference)” (Voss 2013: 193).

155 although in Maimon’s case the differential (dx) is not restricted to mathematics but pertains to the phenomenal world, such that reciprocal relations are relations of “genetic elements” (DR 220), or, as Lord and Voss clarify, “intensive magnitudes” (Lord 2011: 135; Voss 2013: 193), this position does not necessarily apply to Deleuze. Evidently, if this is Deleuze’s position then it would be possible to arrive at it by other means. So I will continue to address this issue throughout the remainder of this chapter. The second moment is the “qualitability” of the Idea (DR 229), where a principle of reciprocal determination not only brings elements in relation with one another, but in doing so produces the terms (dx/dy). Differential elements are hereby reciprocally determined, by reciprocal relations, such that once the elements have been brought together they undergo a change which “allow[s] no independence whatsoever to subsist” (DR 231). Here it is no longer possible “to indicate an independent variable” (DR 219) because the initial undetermined elements brought into the reciprocal relations have vanished. Deleuze also refers to these reciprocal relations as “non-localisable ideal connections” (DR 231), which are involved in topological spaces that transcend spatial locations and coexisting times that transcend temporal successions. We will deal with the former when we come to spatial depth (Section 4.4.), but an example of the latter came with the intersubjective unconscious in the previous chapter. The dark precursor was responsible for making two divergent series or heterogeneous times communicate with one another and accounted for the “delay” between the time it took for the first series in infancy to “produce its effect at a distance” on the second series in adulthood (DR 151). The first series (differential element: dy) and the second series (differential element: dx) are reciprocally determined (dy/dx) and thus form a singularity within the continuum of singular and regular points (e.g., “the adults we knew as a child and that of the adult we are among other adults and other children” (DR 152)). The dark precursor is therefore exemplary of a reciprocal relation insofar as it is the “third term” that connects difference (differential element) with difference (differential element). So although Deleuze did not specify his terms in Chapter 2 of DR, we see that the logic of the dark precursor signifies a logic of multiplicity. Notable with regards to the point made in the previous paragraph, dark precursors involve differences in intensity, namely, divergent series or heterogeneous times (DR 143-144). The third moment is the “potentiality” of the Idea (DR 229), where a principle of complete determination carries out the differentiation and distribution of singular and

156 ordinary points (DR 262). A singularity does not oppose the universal, as with classical logic, but opposes the ordinary or the regular. “A singularity is the point of departure for a series which extends over all the ordinary points of the system, as far as the region of another singularity which itself gives rise to another series which may either converge with or diverge from the first” (DR 348). For a start, both singular (or remarkable) points and ordinary (or regular) points correspond to differential relations: “distributions of singularities, distributions of remarkable and ordinary points, correspond to these differential relations, such that a remarkable point can engender a series capable of being prolonged along every ordinary point, all the way to the vicinity of another singularity. Singularities are ideal events” (DI 99-100). Although singularities correspond to the reciprocal relations between differential elements, and ultimately arise from them, they are not reducible to them, as any attempt at a reduction fails because the “original” differential elements have vanished. Thus, insofar as singularities result from the repetition of differences, they do not present themselves ex nihilo but are instead formed against a backdrop of the ordinary, the regular, and the continuous. The simplest example of this comes from geometrical figures, where singularities produce the form of squares, triangles, curves, et cetera. The four corners of a square signify four singular points, and between these singular points lie an infinite series of ordinary points. The repetition of differential relations produces both ordinary and singular points, but the singularities, that is, the series of singular points which form a multiplicity, produce the form of the figure. Likewise, the three points of a triangle signify three singular points. It becomes more complicated with curves, however. As Duffy explains,

A singularity is a distinctive point on a curve in the neighborhood of which the second order differential relation changes its sign. This characteristic of the singular point is extended into or continuous with the series of ordinary points that depend on it, all the way to the neighborhood of subsequent singularities. It is for this reason that Deleuze maintains that the theory of singularities is inseparable from a theory or an activity of continuity, where continuity, or the continuous, is the extension of a singular point into the ordinary points up to the neighborhood of the subsequent singularity (Duffy 2013: 26-27).

A multiplicity is therefore composed of a continuous series of connections between the singular and the ordinary, such that the singular, in the most general sense, marks a point of change in the continuum.

157 It is easy enough to make sense of the relation between the singular and the ordinary with respect to simple geometrical figures such as squares and triangles. But singularities mark points of change within the entirety of real experience. In swimming, to use one of Deleuze’s examples, we comport the singularities of our body with the singular points of the surrounding body of water. In LS, Deleuze lists a number of other examples: “Singularities are turning points and points of inflection; bottlenecks, knots, foyers, and centres; points of fusion, condensation and boiling; points of tears and joy, sickness and health, hope and anxiety, ‘sensitive’ points” (LS 63). Heat a pot of water on a stovetop, for instance, and a singularity has been reached once the water reaches 100°C. In the simplest sense, it is not wrong to say that singularities are primitive or “implicit forms” (ATP 408) that differ in kind to the actualised phenomena they structure. DeLanda provides a useful example of this:

There are a large number of different physical structures which form spontaneously as their components try to meet certain energetic requirements. These components may be constrained, for example, to seek a point of minimal free energy, like a soap bubble, which acquires its spherical form by minimizing surface tension, or a common salt crystal, which adopts the form of a cube by minimizing bonding energy. We can imagine the state space of the process which leads to these forms as structured by a single point attractor (representing a point of minimal energy). One way of describing the situation would be to say that a topological form (a singular point in a manifold) guides a process which results in many different physical forms, including spheres and cubes, each one with different geometric properties (DeLanda 2002: 15-16).

The virtue of this passage lies in the fact that it not only provides an example of how singularities (or topological forms) guide processes, but how the empirical forms that result from such processes no longer resemble the primitive forms which guided their actualisation. Deleuze constantly reminds us that to avoid tracing the transcendental from the empirical, the transcendental must be shown as differing in kind. The spherical form of the soap bubble is not a realised form of “sphericalness”; instead, it represents a solution to the problem of minimising surface tension, such that the problem itself continues to insist within the solution; likewise, the same problem of minimising surface tension guides the formation of water droplets. Such a “problematic” is an ensemble of singularities and their conditions (i.e., the repetition of differential relations between differential elements in a series) which provides the “distinctness” of the Idea

158 itself (DR 223). Previously we saw that Kantian Ideas are problems with their own dimension of objectivity, which are never fully exhausted—that is, solved—in the objects of experience. But here Deleuze expands upon Kant’s thesis by way of Albert Lautman’s definition of problems and solutions (see: DR 226).63 In one sense, problems are transcendent to their empirical solutions insofar as they differ in kind from them; in another sense, problems are immanent to their empirical solutions insofar as they condition and insist (virtually) within them. “Problems are always dialectical: the dialectic has no other sense, nor do problems have any other sense. What is mathematical (or physical, biological, psychical or sociological) are the solutions” (DR 226-227). The fourth moment unites and characterises the previous three moments in a “progressive determination”, where the reciprocal relations between differential elements form singular and regular points in a fluid yet asymmetrical manner. “In going from A to B and then B to A, we do not arrive back at the point of departure as in a bare repetition; rather, the repetition between A and B and B and A is the progressive tour or description of the whole of a problematic field” (DR 262). Such a progressive determination gives expression to the nature of continuous change involved in each “step” of the movement: from differential elements, to differential relations, to singular and regular points, to the formation of Ideas as multiplicities, all prior “identities” have vanished yet remained (virtually) within the continuum. As Deleuze puts it, every Idea or multiplicity “has a purely logical, ideal or dialectical time”, that is to say, a “virtual time” (DR 262). This “virtual time” provides the differential relations which structure (i.e., determine) times of differenciation (spatiotemporal dynamisms), and as such it marks “the passage from virtual to actual” (DR 262). The following section addresses the nature of this “virtual time” and shows that it is one of the essential features of the reality of the virtual itself.

1.3. Ideas and the Reality of the Virtual

Ideas are of a “structural-genetic nature” (DR 232). At present I will deal with their structural nature and afterwards address their genetic nature (Section 1.6.). The first point to stress is that “the real” is comprised of the virtual and the actual. Deleuze

63 For a detailed discussion on Deleuze’s use of the French philosopher and mathematician Albert Lautman, see: Duffy 2009 356-379; Duffy 2013: 117-136.

159 never stops reminding us that “[t]he virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual” (DR 260). In Chapter 2 of DR, he argues that the pure past not only grounds the passing present but insists contemporaneously with it. Yet he only alludes to the “coexisting elements” which insist within the pure past. Here we find that Ideas are the “complexes of coexistence” (DR 235) that insist in a state of dynamic variability within the reality of the virtual itself. Insofar as Ideas correspond to “virtual time” they never follow the order of a simple succession. For Ideas “are objectively made and unmade according to the conditions which determine their fluent synthesis. This is because they combine the greatest power of being differentiated with an inability to be differenciated” (DR 235; emphasis added). This means that Ideas or multiplicities do not themselves become actual but instead only structure actualisation. This also accords with the notion that the pure past was not once present (or actual) and passed away, but that it was never present. So while all the relations and elements of Ideas insist simultaneously (the passive synthesis of Memory), all actual entities as incarnations of these Ideas are successive (the passive synthesis of Habit). Deleuze continuously reminds us that differential relations structure qualities (or species or Egos) and singularities structure extensities (or parts or Selves). The precise way in which this takes place, however, is not explained until he introduces spatiotemporal dynamisms and (intensive) individuals, which together form the intensive agencies that actualise Ideas. So although Ideas do not “become” actual, they continue to virtually insist within the actual entities they structure. In this manner, they change in accordance with the change undertaken by the actual entities. An actualisation of a virtual Idea refers to a singular incarnation of a virtual and continuous structure, a structure which continues to insist in the pure past as virtual. Therefore, the empirical incarnation (solution) of a problem is only ever partial: it never exhausts the problem, but actualises it as the absolutely new. For instance, three successive water droplets that drip from a tap are each a separate and temporary incarnation of the ideal problem of “minimising surface tension” (singularity), but although each droplet is a variation of this ideal problem—the conditions arise contemporaneously with the conditioned—the ideal problem itself continuous to insist within the pure past as virtual. It is important to be clear, however, about the ontological status of Ideas. Williams makes the point that Deleuze’s turn to the calculus shows that “an Idea can only ever be approximated through constructs that reveal aspects of its internal

160 relations” (Williams 2003: 143; emphasis added). Indeed this is true in the case of our search for and analysis of Ideas, which Deleuze addresses when he substitutes an apprenticeship of learning for epistemology. In an apprenticeship of learning, to learn is to confront problems-Ideas. Taking influence from Leibniz, he calls this a method of “vice-diction”, which is a procedure for how we discover and define Ideas and their themes, how we form connections between them (DR 238). Central to the method of vice-diction, which comes as a consequence of Deleuze’s positive conception of thinking as a practical and creative activity as laid out in Chapter 3 of DR, is the fact that everything—to put it crudely—is a matter of interpretation: there is no overarching reason or principle which allows us to “know” whether we have sufficiently approximated the nature of an Idea or multiplicity.64 So the example just used, the ideal problem of “minimising surface tension”, is merely an approximation of the problem which guided the actualisation of the water droplet. But at the same time, there is truth in Bowden’s assertion, “It is clear that Deleuze is a realist about Ideas”, as Ideas themselves are not dependent upon human understanding or comprehension (Bowden 2017: 234). For if the eye is a solution to the problem of light, even if “the problem of light” is a mere approximation, it is assumed that the eye is a solution of a real problem nonetheless. That is to say, the formation of the eye necessitated a structural condition. So even though we can assume that Ideas have a real structure independent of human understanding, these structures are not fixed essences or categories but rather ideal events, namely, substantive varieties of differential elements, differential relations, and singular and regular points. So Ideas might retain a level of consistency over time— from the perspective of clock time, figuratively speaking—insofar as they coexist in the pure past, but they also structure actual phenomena, form the conditions that arise contemporaneously with the conditioned, and therefore must be open to varying combinations if they are to provide the absolutely new conditions of the absolutely new. This will be further explained in the following section when I show that problem-Ideas

64 Deleuze notes that Ideas are varieties or multiplicities which include sub-varieties or sub-multiplicities. He presents three varieties of dimensions: ordinal (i.e., domains such as the mathematical, the physical, the psychic, the linguistic, et cetera), characteristic (i.e., Ideas are characterised by their differential relations and singular points), and axiomatic (i.e., differential relations and singularities from various orders or domains and merge with other relations and singularities from other orders or domains, e.g., the psychic and the biological) (DR 235-236). Ultimately, it seems, Deleuze’s typology of the sub-varieties or sub-multiplicities of Ideas provides a method to search for Ideas and their relations within the structural network of real experience rather than a rigid categorisation of the various types of sub-varieties themselves. For regardless of their order or domain, all Ideas are coexisting structures that insist within the pure past.

161 presuppose pure difference at their core (questions as imperatives). The problem needing to be addressed is what, precisely, “the virtual” denotes. Deleuze provides a positive account of the virtual when he opposes it to the possible. Taking influence from Bergson’s essay, “The Possible and the Real”, Deleuze contrasts the virtual with the possible in terms of how they presuppose entirely different forms of existence (cf. DR 263-264).65 Here it is not a specific instance of the genesis of real experience versus Kant’s conditioning of possible experience, as although the latter relies upon the modality of the possible, all philosophies that conceive of the world as grounded in the logic of the possible fail to account for, in Bergson’s words, “the continuous creation of unforeseeable novelty” (Bergson 2002: 223). As we saw in chapter 2 (Section 3.3.), insofar as Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same relies upon the possible it consequently denies the absolutely new: with space and force finite, and time infinite, all possible combinations have happened, and will happen, an infinite number of times; thus, all combinations of force will repeat, any combination whatsoever is a repetition, and any future event is a repetition of the same. So conceiving of reality in terms of the virtual means accounting for the conditions which arise contemporaneously with the conditioned, such that both of which are absolutely new; but conceiving of reality in terms of the possible means conceiving of the possible as categorically pre- existing each and every one of its realisations. Deleuze argues that, firstly, the possible is opposed to the real and undergoes a realisation, while the virtual is fully real and undergoes an actualisation. Secondly, the possible occurs within a uniform space and time (e.g., Kant’s pure forms of intuition), while the virtual occurs within variable spaces and times. Thirdly, the possible refers to a form of identity in the concept (e.g., that which can be identified, without change, over time), while the virtual refers to the multiplicity in the Idea. Finally, the possible resembles the real, such that the possible is simply a projected image of the real, while the virtual differs in kind from the actual, and so it follows that differenciation is always a genuine creation. In sum, every actualisation of the virtual is absolutely new, both in itself and with respect to the spatiotemporal relations it presupposes. Now the common description of the virtual as the realm of pure potentiality or pure becoming and the actual as the macroscopic world of empirical objects is not entirely incorrect, but it is fairly imprecise. The “potentiality” of the virtual refers to its

65 For a comprehensive overview of Bergson’s essay, see: Ansell-Pearson 2002: 74-86.

162 capacity to be differenciated into divergent lines, to undergo a genuine creation each time and in each case, for all times and all cases, such that the actual qualities (or species or Egos) and extensities (or parts or Selves) produced have no resemblance to the differential relations and singular points which guided their actualisation. This is why, as we will come to understand, “the element of potentiality in the Idea” (DR 274) requires the power of intensity for its actualisation. But defining the virtual in these terms is defining it from the perspective of its capacity for actualisation. The virtual is indeed a capacity for actualisation, but this fails to bring us to the essence of the concept of the virtual, as the virtual has a reality proper to it. Deleuze primarily associates the concept of the virtual with the temporal dimension of the pure past. The clearest example of this in Deleuze’s work comes from the short essay, “The Actual and the Virtual”: “The distinction between the virtual and the actual corresponds to the most fundamental split in time, that is to say, the differentiation of its passage into two great jets: the passing of the present, and the preservation of the past” (D 151). In essence, this is a purely Bergsonian distinction: “at each instant pure duration divides in two directions, one of which is the past, the other the present” (B 95). No doubt this distinction applies in DR, such that there is an ontological separation between the actual present and the virtual past. However, in DR, the concept of the virtual is not synonymous with the pure past. Indeed the reality of the virtual designates the preservation of the entire pure past, and can be understood as a giant multiplicity itself, but it also designates the coexisting structural elements of the pure past—differential elements, differential relations, and singularities—which (in no particular order): (1) produce coexisting times (e.g., the connection of divergent series or heterogeneous times (dark precursors)); (2) produce topological spaces (see: Section 4.4.); and (3) structure qualities and extensities, species and parts, and Egos and Selves. It is therefore not wrong to say that the dimension of the virtual designates structures within a structure, multiplicities within a multiplicity, for “[e]very structure is an infrastructure, a micro-structure” (DI 178), and “everything is a multiplicity, even the one, even the many” (DR 230). Deleuze, in fact, states this clearly: “the reality of the virtual consists of the differential elements and relations along with the singular points which correspond to them. The reality of the virtual is structure” (DR 260; emphasis added). So when an Idea insisting within the pure past is actualised, the dimension of the virtual itself continues to insist in a state of change and

163 alteration (pure becoming). Thus, every actualisation of the virtual is local. Now inasmuch as Ideas insist within the pure past in general, they are at one and the same time completely determined and constantly undergoing stages of progressive determination. Ideas are “complete” but not “entire” (DR 266), Deleuze notes, for the latter refers to both halves of the real. But irrespective of their domain, “completeness” signifies the coexistence of all the Ideas in the pure past in a continual state of variation, pure becoming, or “perplication”.

[A]ll the Ideas, all the relations with their variations and points, coexist, even though there are changes of order according to the elements considered: they are fully determined and differentiated even though they are completely undifferenciated. Such a mode of 'distinction' seemed to us to correspond to the perplication of Ideas—in other words, to their problematic character and to the reality of the virtual which they represent (DR 314).

We saw in the previous chapter that each singular level of the (metaphorical) cone represents a set of relations (microcosm) which includes all the varying relations of the pure past itself. In this way, Ideas as multiplicities, their relations and singular points, are connected to all other relations and singular points, across all the levels, within the entirety of the pure past. It is in this sense that each and every actual entity expresses an Idea which takes a perspective on the entire pure past, that is, the Whole of the pure past as a continuously changing multiplicity. In this state of perplication, Ideas exist as “distinct” and “obscure”: they are “distinct” insofar as they form a network of interpenetrating differential relations and singularities, yet they are “obscure” insofar as they are not yet differenciated (DR 265-266). In sum, “the Idea is precisely real without being actual, differentiated without being differenciated, and complete without being entire” (DR 266).

1.4. Questions as Imperatives

Problems cannot emerge ex nihilo; therefore, they must have a source. Deleuze argues that Ideas and problems—problematic Ideas—emanate from questions as imperatives. We have already seen that the problem has an ontological scope. In the same way, the nature of the question is not a form of subjective positing which calls for an epistemological response, as though the question refers to the questioner who asks

164 the question, but rather questions also have an ontological scope. Deleuze provides a meditation on the ontological scope of the question with reference to Joyce, Blanchot, Plato, Descartes, the post-Kantians, and Heidegger. In sum, his argument centres on the notion that the question is an ontological concept which accounts for the origin of problematic Ideas. The central concern becomes how to think the “ground” of problems without projecting into this “ground” an image of identity. Ideas provide a way to account for the structural formation of empirical unity (identity) without presupposing an image of this empirical unity as its own ground. But Ideas as such are complexes of differential relations and singularities which can only maintain their state of differentiation insofar as they presuppose difference as their ground. In this context, the differential ground is the “ungrounding” [enffondement], and questions provide the ontological origin from which Ideas as problems emanate. “Questions are imperatives—or rather, questions express the relation between problems and the imperatives from which they proceed” (DR 247). Hereby the point of origin, Deleuze argues, streams from the event, the accident, or the affection in the form of the dice throw:

the throw of the dice affirms chance every time; each throw of the dice affirms the whole of chance each time. The repetition of throws is not subject to the persistence of the same hypothesis, nor to the identity of a constant rule. The most difficult thing is to make chance an object of affirmation, but it is the sense of the imperative and the questions that it launches. Ideas emanate from it just as singularities emanate from that aleatory point which every time condenses the whole of chance into one time (DR 248).

Yet the dice throw appears to be a metaphor, in the same way that the cone is a metaphor for the pure past. Now Deleuze also uses this dice throw metaphor when outlining the third synthesis of time as the “system of the future” (DR 141-142). He thus seems to be implying in the passage above that the point of origin refers to the affirmation of chance or chaos in the third synthesis as Eternal Return, where ideal future events condition ideal past events (see: Chapter 3, Section 3.4.). But at the same time, Deleuze can be read as expanding upon his thesis for the necessity of chance by noting that chance is never truly affirmed when distributed within a pre-existing uniform space but only becomes affirmed when it is “adequate to the place and the mobile command of the aleatory point” (DR 248). The “aleatory point” is the point at

165 which the question is formed, or the point “at which everything becomes ungrounded” (DR 250). So the “aleatory point” signifies not only the affirmation of chance in the future as eternal return but also the affirmation of chance in the eternal return of space (see: Section 4.3.). Deleuze further confirms that questions condition problems when he asks whether questions themselves have an origin. “The fact is that every thing has its beginning in a question, but one cannot say that the question itself begins. Might the question, along with the imperative which it expresses, have no other origin than repetition?” (DR 251). The first point to note is that repetition is always tied to difference, such that neither exists without the other. We saw this with the third synthesis of time, the royal repetition, where “repetition is, for itself, difference in itself” (DR 118). Here Deleuze writes, “the repetition which is consubstantial with the question is at the source of the 'perplication' of Ideas. The differential [i.e., differential element] of the Idea is itself inseparable from the process of repetition which defined the throw of the dice [or the pure and empty form of time]” (DR 251; emphasis added). Ideas-problems involve their own form of the repetition of difference, clothed repetition in the passive synthesis of Memory, which condenses singularities into one another, at one and the same time producing problematic Ideas and bringing them together (DR 251). But the source of the perplication of Ideas, their state of pure becoming in the pure past, is the question as repetition. In the three syntheses of time, both passive syntheses (Memory and Habit) are syntheses of intensities, made possible by the future as eternal return, which affirms difference in intensity. Even though it is alluded to throughout DR, the concept of intensive quantity is not formulated until Chapter 5, which is why the eternal return comes to be explained as “purely intensive” (DR 303). So with respect to the relation between questions and problems, we return to a similar point from the second Chapter of DR, namely, how the pure contingency of the future conditions the pure past in general and how these two dimensions are interdependent yet inseparable. For insofar as the source of problematic Ideas is intensive and therefore transcendental, it hinders the infinite regress of sources and shows that Ideas involve differences in intensity. This means that by necessity the reciprocal relations between ideal elements of Ideas are reciprocal relations between differences in intensity. The “inseparability” of problematic Ideas and the repetition of the question (DR 251) thus signifies the inseparability of the virtual and the intensive. The virtual is not the intensive and the

166 intensive is not the virtual, but the virtual involves intensities such that the latter constitute the former. So far I have only drawn a correlation between the future as eternal return and the ontological question. In Chapter 5 of DR, Deleuze argues that the eternal return of space distributes intensities to the other syntheses of space (depth and distance) (Section 4.3.), so we will come to see that repetition in the question is involved in the distribution of intensities within both the modes of time (Habit and Memory) and the modes of space (distance and depth).

1.5. Static Genesis

The final point to address concerning the Ideas is their genetic nature. Insofar as Ideas coexist within the dimension of the virtual they never follow the order of a simple succession in time, although indeed they condition such states of succession. The genesis of the Ideas as structure

takes place in time […] between the virtual and its actualisation—in other words, it goes from the structure to its incarnation, from the conditions of a problem to the cases of solution, from the differential elements and their ideal connections to actual terms and diverse real relations which constitute at each moment the actuality of time. This is a genesis without dynamism, evolving necessarily in the element of a supra-historicity, a static genesis which may be understood as the correlate of the notion of passive synthesis, and which in turn illuminates that notion (DR 231-232).

To call the genesis from differentiation to differenciation “static” seems entirely counterintuitive. But to recall, passive synthesis pertains only to Habit and Memory, as the synthesis of Eternal Return is a static synthesis. In a similar sense, “static genesis” is “static” because it neither moves nor changes, is neither dynamic nor passive, precisely because it is transcendental. To appropriate a passage from Chapter 2: “[static genesis] is the most radical form of change, but the form of change does not change” (DR 111). Deleuze is clear on this point elsewhere: “Genesis, like time, goes from the virtual to the actual, from the structure to its actualisation; the two notions of multiple internal time and static ordinal genesis are in this sense inseparable from the play of structures” (DI 180; translation modified). This makes the genesis of structure take place outside of history, outside a linear conception of time which uses dates as markers of historicity,

167 which means genesis itself progresses “in the element of a supra-historicity” (DR 232). Thus, the static genesis is purely intensive, and while it neither moves nor changes itself, it nonetheless conditions the movement from the virtual to the actual. The difficult thing to understand, however, is how the transcendental principle of difference in intensity can be the source of Ideas (questions) and the source of the movement from differentiation to differenciation (static genesis). The first thing to point out is that ontological questions do not produce the Ideas but only condition their state of pure becoming (perplication). Likewise, the static genesis does not produce the movement from differentiation to differenciation but only conditions it. For the movement from differentiation to differenciation is carried out by the process of intensive quantity, namely, individuation, which is immanent with differentiation and differenciation. It is to these issues I now turn.

Section Two. Intensity

2.1. Introduction

In the latter half of Chapter 4 of DR, after outlining Ideas as virtual multiplicities, Deleuze introduces spatiotemporal dynamisms, the agents of differenciation, which account for the process of individuation (dramatisation) that, in turn, respectively differenciate the differential relations and singularities of Ideas into qualities and extensities, species and parts, Egos and Selves. Instead of commencing with this process, I commence with the determinate power of this process, namely, intensive quantity, which Deleuze outlines in Chapter 5 (“Asymmetrical Synthesis of the Sensible”). This allows us to begin with what appears to be the central problem in determining the genesis of real experience, namely, the relation between the virtual, the actual, and intensity.66 The scholarship is largely divided on this point. The aim here is not to present an exhaustive typology of views but to give a number of perspectives. Some commentators argue that the virtual, the actual, and the intensive constitute three

66 Dale Clisby offers an important survey of this problem within the secondary literature (Clisby 2015: 127-149). See also the Deleuze Studies volume 11, Issue 2: The Virtual, the Actual and the Intensive: Contentions, Reflections and Interpretations (May, 2017), edited by Dale Clisby and Sean Bowden.

168 independent ontological registers.67 Other commentators argue that the virtual and the actual constitute two independent registers, in which case intensities are on the side of the virtual.68 Other commentators also argue that the virtual and the actual constitute two independent registers, but qualify this by saying that intensities are on the side of the virtual insofar as they are constitutive of Ideas, which is to say, more specifically, that the differential relations of the Ideas are relations between intensities.69 Other commentators also take the two registers view but argue that intensities are on the side of the actual.70 While others posit intensities as fundamentally temporal.71 These views will be reintroduced and engaged throughout the remainder of this chapter. My overall aim is to explain the relation between the virtual, the actual, and the intensive by outlining the various interdependent processes running from differentiation to differenciation via individuation. I have already argued that due to the affirmation of the eternal return then out of necessity intensities (differential elements) constitute virtual Ideas or multiplicities and thus they insist throughout the virtual. This view was

67 This view is most characteristic of DeLanda, who argues that there are “three ontological dimensions which constitute the Deleuzian world: the virtual, the intensive and the actual” (DeLanda 2002: 51). Protevi also adheres to this view when he states that spatiotemporal dynamisms [or intensive individuals] are intensive processes of individuation that constitute their own register (Protevi 2013: 190-191). However, in his review of Hallward’s Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation, he is slightly ambivalent towards a strict three registers view: “The relations among actual, virtual and intensive form the most important issue in explicating Deleuze's ontology. I would argue that we should consider the intensive as an independent ontological register, one that mediates the virtual and actual, which are its limits. Even if one doesn't accept this and insists on a dualism of virtual and actual, one would have to say that the intensive belongs with the actual” (Protevi 2007). 68 Constantin V. Boundas argues that “Intensities are not entities, they are virtual yet real events whose mode of existence is to actualise themselves in states of affairs” (Parr 2005: 134). Hallward also seems to support this view when he argues that there is an “essential dualism” between the virtual and the actual, whereby the virtual is “out of this world” and intensities are purely virtual: “Differentiatings or creatings are virtual, and are intensive rather than extensive” (Hallward 2006: 27). 69 Williams 2003: 9, 11, 42, 147; Lord 2011: 135; Voss 2013: 193. 70 Roffe states that “intensity is the actual: it is actual being. For all his (important) remarks about the reality of the virtual, and even taking into account the structuring role of virtual Ideas, it is intensity that characterizes the being of the actual, both as implicated intensive quantity and as explicated quality and extensity […] the actual, for Deleuze, is not a fixed state of affairs, but a fluid and charged reality, where the movement of explication grounds and brings about ever new states of affairs”; furthermore, intensity “has a kind of structuration or determination proper to it, to which Deleuze gives the name individual” (Roffe 2011: 142-143). Clisby follows Roffe’s lead and argues that intensities are actual: “the intensive and the extensive form the two poles of the actual” (Clisby 2015: 145). 71 For Levi Bryant, intensities are equivalent to the second synthesis of time and are thereby (I must add) virtual: “Intensity does not denote a particularly vibrant or lively sensation or quality, but instead denotes a precise temporal relation pertaining to increase and diminution” (Bryant 2008: 241); moreover, “the concept of intensity will be important insofar as it will allow [Deleuze] to show how extensities emerge from time, which, as we saw in the second chapter, is the domain of internal difference” (Bryant 2008: 243). Joe Hughes, on the other hand, argues that intensities rest upon the three syntheses of time, and although he is slightly unclear about the precise relation between the virtual, the actual, and the intensive, it appears that intensities are both virtual and actual: “‘Depth’ comprises all three syntheses [of time] and the various kinds of difference that result: difference, distance and intensity”, such that the three syntheses puts difference in relation to one another (Hughes 2009: 157).

169 also supported by the fact that dark precursors (temporal reciprocal relations) are responsible for making heterogeneous times (intensities) communicate. In what follows I add to this by arguing that intensities are involved in the differenciation of the virtual, and as such they both constitute and persist throughout the actual. Therefore, intensities insist and persist throughout the entirety of the Real. This will be shown by the fact that there are two orders of intensity: “primary” or “enveloping”, which constitute Ideas in the virtual, and “secondary” or “enveloped”, which are explicated in qualities (or species or Egos) and extensities (or parts or Selves) in the actual. In this manner, the process of intensity, as individuation, is involved in the processes of differentiation and differenciation, of producing the virtual and of producing the actual.72 So the ontological separation (two registers view) neither entails that the virtual past has some kind of ontological priority over the actual present, nor that the virtual past signifies the creative force while the actual present signifies the created product.73 Like Williams and Smith, I want to stress that the actualisation of the virtual also produces the virtual.74

72 The view given here differs from the idea of the virtual as responsible for actualising itself. In fact, this idea was a central theme running through Bergsonism: “the characteristic of virtuality is to exist in such a way that it is actualised by being differentiated and is forced to differentiate itself, to create its lines of differentiation in order to be actualised” (B 97; translation modified). Although Deleuze argued in Bergsonism that the virtual involves intensities (B 93), by applying (yet altering, as we will see) Simondon’s model of individuation he finds a new way to account for the actualisation of the virtual. 73 Badiou argues for the ontological priority of the virtual: the “virtual” is “without any doubt the principal name of Being in Deleuze's work […] an actual being univocally possesses its being as a function of its virtuality. In this sense, the virtual is the ground of the actual” (Badiou 2000: 43) … “Deleuze's concern was with a Platonism of the virtual. Deleuze retains from Plato the univocal sovereignty of the One, but sacrifices the determination of the Idea as always actual. For him, the Idea is the virtual totality, the One is the infinite reservoir of dissimilar productions. A contrario, I uphold that the forms of the multiple are, just like the Ideas, always actual and that the virtual does not exist; I sacrifice, however, the One. The result is that Deleuze's virtual ground remains for me a transcendence” (Badiou 2000: 45). Similarly, Hallward expands upon this view when he writes that “every distinct event or creating gives rise to a certain kind of existent creature—an organism, a personality, an object, an experience, etc. […] The crucial point is that all of the productive, differential or creative force in this dual configuration stems from the virtual creating alone, and not from the actual creature” (Hallward 2006: 27-28) … “In short, the actual is constituted, the virtual alone is constituent. This is the key to Deleuze's whole ontology of creation: the one is creative, the other created; the one composes, the other is composed” (Hallward 2006: 37). 74 Although Deleuze only uses the term “reciprocal determination” with respect to virtual Ideas, Williams reapplies the term and argues that there is a “reciprocal determination” between the virtual and the actual: “The search for conditions is then a search for the reciprocal determination of the virtual and the actual. It is justified by Deleuze's transcendental deductions and by his view that the complete view of a thing must be actual and virtual […] So the search for conditions takes place in both directions of the construction of reality: from the virtual to the actual (what Deleuze calls 'differenciation') and from the actual to the virtual (differentiation)” (Williams 2003: 21). The view given here agrees with the notion that any thing in general is always actual and virtual, and that there is some form of mutual interaction between the virtual and the actual. “Reciprocal determination” is a helpful characterisation because differenciation is always involved in the actualisation of the virtual and differentiation is always involved in the formation—or, at least, perpetual change—of the virtual. Smith makes a similar point when he writes, “the actualization of the virtual also produces the virtual; the actual and the virtual are like the recto and

170 For example, any empirical event not only needs conditions—i.e., an actualisation of the virtual—but at the same it brings about a formation of an Idea-multiplicity in the passive synthesis of Memory (moves from the actual to the virtual) and thus brings about a change in the virtual itself. The essential point of my argument is that this occurs because individuation is the process of intensive quantity (“in between”) split between the virtual and the actual; thus, it is involved in both actualising (a part of) the virtual (differenciation) and producing the virtual itself (differentiation). Now the first point of call for making sense of this is the nature of intensive quantity.

2.2. Intensive Quantity

Throughout DR, the concept of intensity is treated briefly and evoked in various guises. But it is not fully conceptualised until Chapter 5. This might provoke the question whether, after finishing Chapter 5, we should substitute difference in intensity for pure difference, internal difference, intrinsic difference, individuating difference, difference in itself, and absolute difference. Deleuze suggests as much in Chapter 2 when he posits the dark precursor as the communicative agent between first-degree differences or differences in intensity. If this is the case, then “intensive quantity” or “difference in intensity” represents Deleuze’s metaphysics of difference. “Difference in intensity” can initially be thought in terms of differential quantities of energy which drive physical processes, for example, variations in temperatures, speeds, tensions, and potentials. But Deleuze takes this empirical notion of “intensity” from the science of energetics—thermodynamics, largely—and reconceptualises it as a transcendental principle (intensive quantities) (DR 281, 291, 301).75 Intensity is therefore a philosophical concept, not a scientific referent. The essential feature of intensive quantity is that it is relational and synthetic, such that the notion of “difference in intensity” is tautological:

Every intensity is differential, by itself a difference. Every intensity is E - E', where E itself refers to an e – e’, and e to ε – ε’ etc.: each intensity is already a coupling (in which each element verso of a single coin. This is what Deleuze means when he says that conditions and the conditioned are determined at one and the same time, and that conditions can never be larger than what they condition” (Smith 2013: 253). 75 The focus here is on the concept of intensity as outlined in Chapter 5 of DR. For a concise overview of the philosophical richness of Deleuze’s concept of intensity with respect to Aristotle and Medieval philosophy, see: Mader 2014: 225-248.

171 of the couple refers in turn to couples of elements of another order), thereby revealing the properly qualitative content of quantity (DR 281).

Throughout DR, Deleuze deals with the way intensive differences—individuating differences—give rise to physical qualities and extensities, biological species and parts, psychic Egos and Selves. Which means that intensities are not “out there” buzzing around in the world; instead, psychic, biological, and physical systems are all undergoing empirical processes which are transcendentally defined as intensive. As a transcendental principle, then, intensive quantity signifies the sufficient reason of phenomena. Similar to what we saw in the second chapter of this thesis, all phenomena are signs insofar as they are symptomatic of a state of intensive (rather than force) relations. In an often-quoted passage Deleuze writes, “Difference is not diversity. Diversity is given, but difference is that by which the given is given, that by which the given is given as diverse. Difference is not phenomenon but the noumenon closest to the phenomenon” (DR 280; emphasis added). On initial reading the point seems fairly straightforward: (pure) difference engenders empirical diversity. But the adjective “closest” gives an enigmatic sense to the relation between difference and diversity. Elsewhere Deleuze notes that difference “creates diversity” and is also “distributed throughout diversity in such a manner as to disappear” (DR 285). The noumenon closest to phenomena produces diversity, but produces it in such a way that it becomes such produced diversity. In other words, difference remains immanent with the diversity it produces. There are two concepts central in explaining the differential production of empirical diversity: “implication” (to fold) and “explication” (to unfold). On the one hand, “implication” is the essential nature of intensive difference and accounts for its inherent logic, as the im-plication of difference gives sense to a folding of difference with difference ad infinitum. Deleuze also calls this “disparity”: “We call this state of infinitely doubled difference which resonates to infinity disparity. Disparity—in other words, difference or intensity (difference of intensity)—is the sufficient reason of all phenomena, the condition of that which appears” (DR 281). So whereas for Kant the noumenon can be thought, but not known; for Deleuze, insofar as the noumenon signifies the sufficient reason of phenomena, it remains completely intelligible. On the other hand, “explication” refers to the dynamic process by which intensity is cancelled,

172 equalised, identified, or drawn outside itself “in extensity and in the quality which fills that extensity” (DR 287). In other words, explication is the intensive process that differenciates qualities (species) and extensities (parts) (cf. DR 317). Yet although intensity produces the qualities and extensities in which it “disappears”, these same qualities and extensities are constantly surrounded by intensities and are therefore continuously undergoing change. The genesis of real experience is therefore never a simple movement from a primordial realm of intensities to a finished and final product. This becomes clear with Deleuze’s account of individuation. But in order to get a better sense of the intensive quantities which produce phenomena, it will be essential to turn to the three characteristics of intensity. After this I will be able to address the broader meaning behind intensive quantity as the sufficient reason of phenomena (Section 2.4.).

2.3. The Three Characteristics of Intensive Quantity

A number of differences internal to the concept of intensive quantity are brought to light by the three characteristics of intensive quantity. Firstly, “intensive quantity includes the unequal in itself” (DR 291). Secondly, “intensity affirms difference” (DR 293). Thirdly, “intensity is an implicated, enveloped or ‘embryonised’ quantity” (DR 297). On the first characteristic, intensive quantity signifies an unequal in itself that can neither be cancelled nor equalised, for such inequality is maintained by means of a relation to other inequalities. Here the “inequality” of intensive quantity refers to its ordinal nature: “Ordinal construction does not imply a supposed same unit but only […] an irreducible notion of distance” (DR 292). For Deleuze, “distances” establish connections between two or more intensive series, and, due to their ordinal character, and unlike metric distances, they do not presuppose homogenous elements. The influence for defining “distance” as ordinal and intensive rather than metric and extensive comes from Meinong and Russell.76 Here the non-homogenous elements which become synthesised in distance are irreducible inequalities. In fact, Deleuze had already given a similar definition in NP when he characterised forces as a difference in quantity that cannot be equalised (NP 40). When a force relates to a force, neither of which become equalised, they form an entirely new complex, which goes on to interact

76 DR 298 fn. 13; ATP 483. For a detailed comparison of Russell and Deleuze on distance, see: Mader 2017: 262-268.

173 with other forces and forms another new complex, and so on. But here Deleuze notes that in the order of extensity the inequality of intensive quantity becomes cancelled or equalised. So while intensive quantity in itself is uncancellable, it can indeed become cancelled in being distributed and equalised in “the extensity which it creates” (DR 292). The second characteristic results from the first: insofar as intensive quantity includes difference in itself and comprises the unequal in itself, then “intensity affirms difference” (DR 293). To affirm difference is to conceive of difference in its full positivity, in other words, as primary—hence the constant reference to difference as individuating. Qualities and extensities, on the other hand, are engendered by intensive quantities, and therefore they explicate the intensive quantities from which they derive. But insofar as intensive quantities affirm difference, there is no pre-existing unit of measurement, no hierarchy of magnitude, which can be used to determine the relation between intensities prior to their interaction. For such a unit of measurement presupposes homogenous elements, which belong on the side of actual extensity. The affirmation of difference means only that differences produce, that differences are primary, that differences are individuating, which consequently presupposes a heterogeneity of productive elements, namely, irreducible inequalities. This leads to the third characteristic, which binds the first and second characteristics, “intensity is an implicated, enveloped or ‘embryonised’ quantity” (DR 297). To make full sense of this we must raise an important distinction Deleuze makes between “primary” or “enveloping” intensity and “secondary” or “enveloped” intensity. “Primary” or “enveloping” intensity (depth) refers to all intensities, namely, the great chain of differences in which difference relates to difference through difference; in turn, this constitutes the totality of “individuating differences” that make up the field of individuation (DR 316). In the same sense that intensive differences constitute the being of the sensible, primary intensities as implication constitute the being of difference: “every individuating factor is already difference and difference of difference” (DR 320). “Secondary” or “enveloped” intensity (distance) constitutes the “individual differences”, the “individual”, or the singular set of differences that condition a particular individuated entity (DR 316). Put otherwise, each and every phenomenon— e.g., a human being (psychic system), a lion (biological system), a rock (physical system)—“reduced to its intensive reasons” is an “individual” (DR 316-317). Secondary

174 intensities thereby constitute the intensities which become explicated in extensities and in the qualities which fill these extensities. But Deleuze also refers to implication and explication as two orders of implication, namely, “a secondary implication which designates the state in which intensities are enveloped by the qualities and extensity which explicate them; and a primary implication designating the state in which intensity is implicated in itself, at once both enveloping and enveloped” (DR 300). The important point is that these “levels” of intensive differences are thoroughly connected: “all the intensities are implicated in one another, each in turn both enveloped and enveloping” (DR 314). So with respect to the difference between enveloping (or primary) intensities and enveloped (or secondary) intensities,

Intensity is primarily implicated in itself: implicating and implicated. We must conceive of implication as a perfectly determined form of being. Within intensity, we call that which is really implicated and enveloping difference; and we call that which is really implicated or enveloped distance. For this reason, intensity is neither divisible, like extensive quantity, nor indivisible, like quality (DR 297).

What Deleuze is saying is decisive: within intensity as a whole, that is, as implication, which includes both primary and secondary intensities, intensity “is neither divisible, like extensive quantity, nor indivisible, like quality” (ibid.). In the negative, this highlights the fundamental quality of intensive quantity. On the one hand, extensive quantities (e.g., length, mass, clock time) can be divided with cardinal numbers (e.g., 1, 2, 3…) into equivalences (e.g., cm, kg, mins.). For example, cut a ruler in half and you have two 15cm pieces, take a teaspoonful out of a bag of sugar and you reduce the weight of the bag by a few grams, drive double the usual speed from home to work and you get there in half the usual time. On the other hand, qualities such as hardness and happiness cannot be divided in this way. For example, a piece of steel is not x times less hard than a diamond (although approximations can be made of course), someone is not x times less happy after discovering something tragic. So unlike extensive quantities, intensities cannot be divided into equal units; however, they can be divided into heterogeneous terms. And unlike qualities, intensities are divisible; however, insofar as they divide they change in nature: “no part exists prior to the division and no part retains the same nature after division” (DR 297). Putting these points together we get a positive characterisation of intensive quantity: intensities can be divided into heterogeneous

175 terms, but insofar as they divide they change in nature. Now, as mentioned previously, intensities are fundamentally synthetic: “each intensity is already a coupling (in which each element of the couple refers in turn to couples of elements of another order)” (DR 281). Evidently, a change in nature must also occur when intensities are added—brought into synthesis—and not just divided. This is indeed the case because the notion of “division” in question should not be contrasted with addition. For something to change in nature (or kind) we need a “moment” of division. (I am using this notion of the “moment” loosely, as when Deleuze speaks of the passing of a living present as a “moment” or “instant”.) Therefore, there must be a “moment” of division that takes place within a unique space and a unique time rather than a uniform space and a uniform time. What, exactly, is the nature of this “moment” at which a difference in kind emerges? The first thing to note is that Deleuze’s three syntheses of time has shown that as soon as a synthesis of intensive differences has occurred—affirmed by the Eternal Return—a time has emerged, contemporaneously in the pure past (Memory) and in the passing present (Habit). With this in mind, “difference in depth is composed of distances, 'distance' being not an extensive quantity but an indivisible asymmetrical relation, ordinal and intensive in character, which is established between series of heterogeneous terms and expresses at each moment the nature of that which does not divide without changing its nature” (DR 298; emphasis added). Here we see that enveloping or primary intensities provide the “differences” (heterogeneous terms), while secondary or enveloped intensities provide the “distances”, namely, the “moments” which express a change in kind through division. Differences are therefore intimately connected with distances and vice versa, and so intensities divide and change in kind because they are involved in the actualisation of the virtual. As an example of the role intensive quantity plays in the division between the virtual and the actual, tearing a blue shirt in half does not affect the shade or tone of the colour, but mixing navy blue and white divides the initial blue into, say, sky blue, which brings about a change in kind through division. Certainly, the qualitative differences between navy blue, white, and sky blue are not themselves intensive differences, but the reason behind such qualitative differences are intensive differences, in this instance, secondary intensities. The division occurred in the variable present, but it also brought about a change in kind through division in the pure past, that is, in the Idea of colour.

176 Thus each and every set of secondary intensities is intimately connected with the great chain of primary or enveloping intensities: “all the intensities are implicated in one another, each in turn both enveloped and enveloping” (DR 314). Regardless of whether they are primary or secondary, constitutive of the virtual or constitutive of the actual, intensive quantities still have the same fundamental quality: they change in nature through division.77 The focus is on real experience—this set of intensive relations for that individuated phenomenon—and thereby each singular division of intensive quantity can only be analysed in terms of the greater or smaller, the more or less, rather than in terms of quantitative equivalences. There are ways, of course, to determine and predict in advance how an intensive system may operate. But Deleuze’s primary focus is on explaining that intensive differences provide the transcendental condition for the emergence of empirical diversity. The three characteristics of intensive quantity show that intensive quantity as a whole—the being of implication—has varying differences: “intensive quantities are therefore defined by the enveloping difference, the enveloped distances, and the unequal in itself which testifies to the existence of a natural 'remainder' which provides the material for a change of nature” (DR 298; emphasis added). “Difference” is primary or enveloping intensity, “distance” is secondary or enveloped intensity, and “inequality” is the affirmation of intensity proper, that is to say, it provides the “material” for difference and distance. The way such differences fit together will come to be explained with the three syntheses of space and time (Section 4.). As a working definition for the role intensive quantities play in individuation (as an intensive process): intensities are synthetic, asymmetrical, and change in kind when divided. In the previous chapter, however, we saw that the fundamental difference between the passive synthesis of Habit and the passive synthesis of Memory is the way they express the relation between the general and the particular and thus the difference in their asymmetries (Section 2.2.). In the passive synthesis of Habit, asymmetry runs from the past as retained in the present (actual particulars) to the future (general possibilities). In the passive synthesis of Memory, asymmetry runs in reverse, from the present (actual particulars) to the past (general potentialities). We will come to see that if primary

77 “[T]he secondary intensities represent the fundamental property of the primary intensities—namely, the power to divide in changing their nature. Two intensities are never identical except abstractly. Rather, they differ in kind, if only by the manner in which they divide within the intensities they include” (DR 316).

177 intensities constitute the virtual and secondary intensities constitute the actual, then indeed primary intensities and secondary intensities are synthetic, asymmetrical, and change through division, but it is their differing modes of asymmetry that serve as the decisive factor in their difference. Deleuze does not address the asymmetry of primary intensities, as he focuses exclusively on the asymmetry involved in the actualisation of the virtual, namely, the asymmetrical synthesis of the sensible—hence the title of Chapter 5—where Ideas and intensities (both primary and secondary) asymmetrically constitute the being of the sensible, that is, the being of sensible particulars (Section 4.5.1.).78

2.4. Intensity: The Sufficient Reason of Phenomena

The broader meaning of intensive quantity as the sufficient reason of phenomena can now be addressed. For Leibniz, the principle of sufficient reason explains the identity of the subject and its concept, for instance, any event that happens to a subject is analytically contained in the individual concept of that subject (see: Chapter 2, Section 2.4.3.). It provides a reason for the individuation of individuals—why a thing is like this rather than like that. In the second chapter of this thesis we saw that Deleuze posited Nietzsche’s quantitative differences—forces—as signifying the sufficient reason of phenomena as signs. Yet forces were not understood as analytically contained in the concept of a particular phenomenon; instead, they were thought as responsible for actually producing the phenomenon. Similarly, in DR Deleuze shows that intensive quantity produces empirical diversity—it is the sufficient reason of phenomena—but he adds that the intensive events responsible for producing phenomena are contained, that is, virtually insist, within the phenomena itself. In this manner, each and every phenomenon can be understood as taking a point of view on the world. While for Leibniz each and every individual concept expresses the totality of the world, where the “totality of the world” signifies “all that happens in the universe, past, present and future, deriving thus a certain resemblance to an infinite perception or power of knowing [i.e., God]” (Leibniz 1960: 418). For Deleuze, each phenomenon, reduced to

78 The distinction between primary intensities and secondary intensities implies that intensive quantities are involved in both the actualisation of the virtual and the “counter-actualisation” of the actual. So while the asymmetry of actualisation runs from the virtual to the actual, the asymmetry of counter-actualisation runs from the actual to the virtual (see also: DeLanda 2002: 113-114). Although counter-actualisation is not developed until LS, it appears to exist in DR at least in an embryonic form.

178 its intensive reasons (an individual within a field of individuation), takes a perspective on “the world” as a virtual Whole in continuous change. “In short, sufficient reason or the ground is strangely bent: on the one hand, it leans towards what it grounds, towards the forms of representation; on the other hand, it turns and plunges into a groundlessness beyond the ground which resists all forms and cannot be represented” (DR 344). In this sense, God is replaced with the “universal ungrounding”, which affirms the necessity of chance: the world in perpetual becoming. This problematic will be addressed in detail with respect to Spinoza, Leibniz, and Nietzsche in Section 5 on the “thinker” of eternal return.

Section Three. Individuation

3.1. Introduction

Before addressing the processual role played by intensities in individuation, we must be aware of the different intensive processes involved in the genesis of real experience: individuation is the process of intensive quantity; intensive quantity is the determinate power of differenciation; and the determining power of differenciation is carried out by dramatisation (spatiotemporal dynamisms) (DR 306-307). The first thing to be clear about is where individuation sits with respect to differentiation and differenciation. Intuitively, it seems reasonable to sandwich individuation neatly between differentiation and differenciation, between the formation of the virtual and the formation of the actual, between the pre-individual and the individual. As we saw previously, DeLanda and Protevi espouse such a three registers view (DeLanda 2002: 51; Protevi 2007; Protevi 2013: 190-191). But it is hard to defend such an ontological divide. Perhaps there is some order of priority in principle, such as when Deleuze states that “individuation precedes differenciation in principle” (DR 308). By extension, this would also mean that individuation, insofar as it involves the virtual- ideal field, precedes the differentiation of Ideas in principle. But this need not entail that individuation (intensive quantity) is ontologically separate from differentiation (virtual) and differenciation (actual) in the way that the virtual is ontologically separate from the actual. For in the latter case, the reason for this ontological separation is the split between the pure past and the living present.

179 Now the biggest challenge for the reader of the final two chapters of DR is making sense of how the various processes fit together. A clue to this is given here: “For each type of system, we must ask what pertains to Ideas and what pertains to implication- individuation and explication-differenciation respectively” (DR 319). So whatever “pertains to Ideas” pertains to differentiation (perplication). Whatever pertains to “implication-individuation” pertains to primary intensities (individuals) and secondary intensities (field of individuation). And whatever pertains to “explication- differenciation” pertains to the “figures of differenciation” (DR 319), namely, qualities and extensities, species and parts, Egos and Selves.79 Moreover, the latter are drawn out

79 It is important to note that the concept of “expression” highlights a connection between Ideas as perplication, individuation as implication, and differenciation as explication. In fact, in the Conclusion of DR, Deleuze presents a summary of his entire system by means of a logic of expression: “complication” signifies an expressive state of pure chaos, “perplication” signifies an expressive state of coexisting Ideas or multiplicities, “implication” signifies an expressive state of primary (enveloping) and secondary (enveloped) intensities, and “explication” signifies an expressive state of the phenomena (qualities and extensities, et cetera) which cover the system (DR 351). In Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, Deleuze provides an extensive discussion on the concept of “expression”. But such an extensive discussion is absent in DR. The most detailed account of expression given in DR is: “By 'expression' we mean, as always, that relation which involves a torsion between an expressor and an expressed such that the expressed does not exist apart from the expressor, even though the expressor relates to it as though to something completely different” (DR 323). Thus, “expression” designates a relation between two things, which, at the same time, remain different to one another. One example of this can be taken from the passive synthesis of Habit, where organic passive syntheses and sensible and perceptual passive syntheses interrelate by means of natural signs (Chapter 3, Section 1.6.). “The signs by which an animal ‘senses’ water do not resemble the elements which its thirsty organism lacks” (DR 94). The organism’s search for water is thus an expression of its need for hydration—they both relate to one another yet differ from one another at the same time. So differenciation expresses individuation and individuation expresses Ideas, and all three relate to one another while differing from one another at the same time. Although reconstructing an account of expression suitable for DR has its own merits, this thesis will instead attempt to account for the relation between Ideas (perplication), individuation (implication), and differenciation (explication) in two ways: (1) by drawing upon Deleuze’s turn to embryogenesis as a model of individuation (Section 3.3.), and (2) by drawing upon the relation between the three syntheses of space and time (Section 4.). Sean Bowden, however, provides a comprehensive reconstructive account of the features of expression, taken largely from Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, and maps them onto the relation of expression between Ideas and intensities in DR (Bowden 2017: 217-239). This is not the place to outline Bowden’s reconstruction of expression in DR, but simply to note a point of disagreement. Bowden’s analysis concludes that intensities are neither virtual nor actual themselves, but rather have “a type of ontological priority with respect to the virtual and the actual”, such that “actual entities are intensive”, “the actualisation of the virtual depends upon intensity”, and “the potentiality characteristic of the virtual Idea is constituted by intensity” (Bowden 2017: 236-237). He argues that although virtual Ideas are “ontologically inseparable from the intensities that express them in the production of concrete entities […] virtual Ideas are not identical with intensities, and do not resemble actual terms and relations—the qualities and extensities—in which Ideas are said to be intensively incarnated […] the virtual Idea has its own reality, which can be independently defined in terms of a structure of reciprocally and completely determined elements—elements which in themselves are, as it were, ‘merely determinable’ or fully differential” (Bowden 2017: 229). The point, in short, is that the “merely determinable” terms of the Ideas, namely, differential elements, “do not resemble the asymmetrical elements involved in the intensive processes that express them, which is to say, the intensive processes that both constitute and determine the actualisation of these ideal relations” (Bowden 2017: 236). Although it is true that Deleuze is not clear on whether the differential elements reciprocally determined in Ideas are intensive differences, I have explained this to be necessary for three reasons: (1) the fact that

180 by spatiotemporal dynamisms (dynamic processes or dramas). In Chapter 4, Deleuze shows only that spatiotemporal dynamisms dramatise Ideas, while in Chapter 5, he argues that intensity gives spatiotemporal dynamisms the power to dramatise Ideas. Therefore, spatiotemporal dynamisms, when merged with the power of intensity, become individuals (secondary intensities). This point is also highlighted when Deleuze explains the products of individuation. In physical systems, individuation gives rise to qualities and extensities. In biological systems, individuation gives rise to species and parts (or organs). And in psychic systems, individuation gives rise to an I (“the quality of a human being as species”) and a Self (“psychic organisation”) (DR 319). Hence species and organs, qualities and extensities, Egos and Selves are all “figures of differenciation […] borne by individuals” (DR 319-320). Deleuze makes this suggestion that each figure of differenciation presupposes a particular set of secondary intensities a number of times. “The essential process of intensive quantities is individuation. Intensity is individuating, and intensive quantities are individuating factors. Individuals are signal-sign systems. All individuality is intensive…” (DR 307). The point to be clear on is that (intensive) individuals are systems of signals and signs. “In so far as a system is constituted or bounded by at least two heterogeneous series, two disparate orders capable of entering into communication, we call it a signal. The phenomenon that flashes across this system, bringing about the communication between disparate series, is a sign” (DR 280). Deleuze explained in Chapter 2 of DR that dark precursors are responsible for bringing about communication between intensive differences (heterogenous times or divergent series) within such systems. The reason individuals are systems of signals and signs is because they are always connected, always implicated, in fields of individuation (primary intensities). Below I argue that individuation signifies the intensive processes taking place between the individual (secondary intensities) and the intensive field of individuation (primary intensities) (DR 307), and as such individuation is immanently involved in differentiation (the production of the virtual) and differenciation (the actualisation of the virtual).

dark precursors, as exemplars of (temporal) differential relations, reciprocally determine intensities (i.e., heterogeneous times or divergent series); (2) the fact that ontological questions (eternal return) distribute difference to problematic Ideas; and (3) the fact that there is an important distinction between primary intensities (field of individuation) and secondary intensities (intensive individuals). Although, in general, I agree with the notion that intensities constitute actual entities insofar as they engender them, and that the actualisation of the virtual depends upon intensity, I disagree with Bowden insofar as I argue that intensive differences also constitute the virtual.

181 3.2. Simondon and Individuation

If Bergson is the primary influence for Deleuze’s virtual-actual distinction, then Simondon is the primary influence for his account of individuation, even though his treatment of Simondon is fairly brief. In L'individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (1964), Simondon takes aim at the traditional conception of the principle of individuation as modelled on an already individuated entity. As a prime example, the Aristotelian hylomorphic model conceives of being as composed of matter and form. An empirical object such as a brick becomes individuated by means of the relationship between the clay (matter) and the mould (form). “Here the principle [of individuation] is thought to be contained either in the matter or the form, because the actual process of individuation is not thought to be capable of furnishing the principle itself, but simply of putting it into effect” (Simondon 1992: 299). Although such a simple example of brick formation could be deemed problematic because it signifies an artificial process, it nevertheless highlights the presumption of forms as preceding the matter they give form. For Simondon focuses primarily on natural systems, self-organising processes, which, unlike the mould which pre-exists the clay it gives form, do not presuppose forms as pre-existing that which they give form. Deleuze argues that Simondon’s originality comes from positing the principle of individuation which constitutes an individual entity as genetic, not only preceding the individuated entity itself [i.e., the brick] but its process of becoming an individual [i.e., the relation between the clay and the mould] (DI 86). By situating the principle of individuation prior to the individual itself, Simondon is able to explain the real genetic process of how individuals become beings, or, more accurately, become beings in becoming. Hence the principle of individuation is the essential principle for Simondon’s account of ontogenesis: we should “try to grasp the entire unfolding of ontogenesis in all its variety, and to understand the individual from the perspective of the process of individuation rather than the process of individuation by means of the individual” (Simondon 1992: 300). There are three “stages” to ontogenesis: the pre-individual field or metastable state, individuation, and the individual. As Deleuze summarises, individuation determines a passage from the pre-individual to the individual such that “the individual is not just a result, but a milieu [milieu] of individuation” (DI 86; translation modified).

182 The notion of the “milieu” in question implies not only an environment, in the sense that a bowl of water is the environment for a goldfish, but also a “centre” of the process. For example, Georges Canguilhem, both a great influence on Simondon and his thesis advisor, writes, “the milieu on which the organism depends is structured, organised, by the organism itself. What the milieu offers the living is a function of demand. It is for this reason that, within what appears to man as a single milieu, various living beings carve out their specific and singular milieus in incomparable ways” (Canguilhem 2008: 118; translation modified). Hence, for Simondon, individuation “not only brings the individual to light but also the individual-milieu dyad” (Simondon 1992: 300). Simondon is thus attempting to understand the passage from the pre-individual to the individual within individuation as an active centre. The individual influences the milieu and vice versa. Now, the pre-individual field or metastable state is the prior condition of individuation, and it signifies a distribution of differences in potential energy in the form of an objective problematic field of discrete singularities, most importantly, “without any interactive communication” (DI 86-87; cf. DR 307). On Deleuze’s reading, the metastable state is a state of intensive quantity, of difference in itself, which establishes itself between disparate levels or heterogeneous orders—it is “the structure (not yet the synthesis) of heterogeneity” (DI 87). The significant point is that the metastable state is comprised of differences in potential energy and pre-individual singularities: it “is perfectly well endowed with singularities that correspond to the existence and the distribution of potentials” (DI 87). Deleuze does not give much detail regarding what Simondon means by singularities but appears to incorporate his own understanding, namely, points that mark a significant or remarkable change within a continuum of ordinary points. Interestingly, though, he also implies that singularities are formed from differences in intensity: “the distinctive or singular points are defined by the existence and distribution of intensities” (DR 307), and again, the actualisation of potential energy is at the same time an actualisation (integration) of singularities (DI 87). Thus, the metastable state is a reservoir of charged potentials (intensive quantities) and singularities, a structure but not yet a synthesis. Andrea Bardin sheds some light on this by clarifying that Simondon adopts the term “metastability” from physics and chemistry.

[Metastability] defines a condition of equilibrium in complex systems, the stability of which can be easily broken by the intake of a little bit of energy or information and, conversely, needs a

183 continuative and regular energetic support to counter its tendency to entropy. What is important, according to Simondon, is that a ‘metastable system’ can be ‘structurally’ defined by an inhomogeneous distribution of potential energy, since it has no other ‘substance’ than the differential relations constituting it (Bardin 2015: 6).

The central point is that individuation forces the heterogeneous orders (differences in potential and singularities) of the metastable state to enter into communication with one another. Simondon himself refers to this as a series of exchanges between “structure” and “process” (Simondon 1992: 304). As Deleuze writes,

Individuation emerges like the act of solving such a problem, or—what amounts to the same thing—like the actualisation of a potential and the establishing of communication between disparates. The act of individuation consists not in suppressing the problem, but in integrating the elements of the disparateness into a state of coupling [i.e., a synthesis] which ensures its internal resonance. The individual thus finds itself attached to a pre-individual half which is not the impersonal within it so much as the reservoir of its singularities (DR 307-308).

In other words, individuation engenders communication within the system, creates an information transfer between energetic potentials and singularities by synthesising the heterogeneous elements into a state of internal resonance. The “individual-milieu dyad”, as Simondon calls it, is a product of its metastable state, produced through the process of individuation. Simondon turns to crystallisation as a paradigm example of a physico-chemical individuation. In crystallisation, the metastable state includes a small seed crystal (i.e., a simple individual) and a supersaturated solution (i.e., a milieu). This metastable system is “rich in potentials: form, matter and energy preexist in the system” (Simondon 1992: 304). Here an internal resonance within the system is brought about by increasing the temperature, which can be seen as an instance of the “intake of a little bit of energy or information” within the system itself (Bardin 2015: 6). The seed crystal placed in the supersaturated solution communicates its shape with its milieu while the molecules within the supersaturated solution attach themselves to the seed crystal.80 The individuation of the crystal itself, how it develops from a seed crystal into a complex crystal, forms through a series of “phase-shifts”. This process repeats until the

80 “[T]he form of the crystals express certain molecular or atomic characteristics of the constituent chemical types” (Simondon 1992: 304).

184 emergence of “the individual-milieu dyad”, the complex crystal and the de-potentialised solution. Finally, the physico-chemical process has reached its limit and settled at a “stable equilibrium”.

3.3. The Model of Embryogenesis

Deleuze takes up Simondon’s model of individuation, although with some conceptual variations. Firstly, individuation is “essentially intensive” (DR 307). And secondly, the pre-individual field is “a virtual-ideal field, made up of differential relations” (DR 307-308). The overall point of turning to embryogenesis as a model of individuation is to provide a schematic overview of two things: (1) how intensive quantity in individuation relates to Ideas, that is, the pre-individual or “virtual-ideal field”; and (2) how individuation precedes differenciation (explication) in principle yet gives rise to it at the same time. For the question of how individuation provokes differentiation and differenciation will be explained in the following section on the three syntheses of space (and time). Deleuze’s interest in embryology lies primarily in the fact that the egg-cum- embryo undergoes a radical form of transformation and change by means of dynamic folding, stretching, and differential rhythms of speeds and slownesses. “The destiny and achievement of the embryo is to live the unlivable, to sustain forced movements of a scope which would break any skeleton or tear ligaments” (DR 267). The egg-cum- embryo is an intensive self-organising process rather than a development of parts into a whole according to a fixed pre-existing plan. Deleuze posits “the egg” as the field of individuation (primary intensities) and “the embryo” as the intensive individual (secondary intensities). “The vital egg is nevertheless already a field of individuation, and the embryo is a pure individual, and the one in the other testifies to the primacy of individuation over actualisation—in other words, over both organisation and the determination of species” (DR 312). The brief account of Simondon’s model of crystallisation presented above evokes the image of a progressive movement from the metastable state (or pre-individual field), to individuation, to the individual, as though the process takes place in three stages. Firstly, the seed crystal and the supersaturated solution are in a metastable state. Secondly, this primordial state of matter, form, and potential energy undergoes a series of phase-shifts in individuation. And thirdly, the

185 process of individuation reaches its limit and produces an individual-milieu dyad, namely, a complex crystal and a de-potentialised solution. For Deleuze, as for Simondon, individuation is asymmetrical. But Deleuze’s account of individuation is all the more difficult to pin down because it spans the processes of differentiation and differenciation. The development of an embryo into an organism from an egg is a progressive yet interdependent process of differentiation-individuation-differenciation. The egg may be in a metastable state, ripe with differential relations and singularities, with potential differences (virtualities) and differences in potential (intensities), with an Idea of its own production and field of intensities “awaiting” production, but its process of becoming-embryo—before it is yet an embryo—is undertaken by folding, stretching, and differential rhythms, in other words, spatiotemporal dynamisms; while at the same time—contemporaneously, that is—the egg can be seen under a microscope and manipulated with a needle; thus, the egg has extensive and qualitative features: it is as actual as the organism it becomes. Even the individual organism that comes to be produced, no doubt, continues to exist within an intensive field of individuation and remains (perhaps to a lesser extent) embryonic. This is why the individual is also referred to as a “larval subject” (DR 267). As Simondon puts it, “the living being conserves in itself an activity of permanent individuation. It is not only the result of individuation […] but is a veritable theatre of individuation” (Simondon 1992: 305). For only when a physical system results in physical equilibrium and a biological system results in biological death has a complete explication (or cancelation) of intensity been achieved (DR 318). The point is that we need to understand the egg, the embryo, and the organism as contemporaneously undergoing differentiation-individuation- differenciation—that is, as in becoming. Throughout DR, Deleuze repeats that the differential relations and singularities of Ideas are respectively differenciated into qualities and extensities, species and parts, Egos and Selves. There are two essential processes involved in embryogenesis as individuation. Firstly, there is an affinity between primary intensities and the differentials and singularities in the Ideas, which involves a relation between the pre- individual field of virtual Ideas and the egg (or intensive field). Secondly, there is an affinity between secondary intensities and the qualities and extensities in phenomena, which involves a relation between the embryo (or individual) and the individuated

186 species and organs. For a start, with respect to individuation in general, Deleuze posits an affinity between intensive quantities and the differential elements in Ideas.

A whole flow of exchange occurs between intensity and Ideas, as though between two corresponding figures of difference [i.e., “the dialectical half and the aesthetic half” (DR 274)]. Ideas are problematic or 'perplexed' virtual multiplicities, made up of relations between differential elements. Intensities are implicated multiplicities, 'implexes', made up of relations between asymmetrical elements which direct the course of the actualisation of Ideas and determine the cases of solution for problems (DR 305; emphasis added).

Here Deleuze states that “implexes” signify a relation between multiplicities and intensities. Now, in Chapter 5 of DR, he deals with “the asymmetrical synthesis of the sensible”, which explains that “the element of potentiality in the Idea” is determinately actualised in qualities and extensities (the sensible) by means of intensive quantity (DR 274). Deleuze is not always clear about what form of intensity expresses the differential relations and singularities of Ideas (see: DR 306-307, 313-314), but this is clarified when he presents intensities as “clear” and “confused”.

[A]ll the intensities are implicated in one another, each in turn both enveloped and enveloping, such that each continues to express the changing totality of Ideas, the variable ensemble of differential relations. However, each intensity clearly expresses only certain relations or certain degrees of variation. Those that it expresses clearly are precisely those on which it is focused when it has the enveloping role. In its role as the enveloped, it still expresses all relations and all degrees, but confusedly. As the two roles are reciprocal, and as intensity is in the first instance enveloped by itself, it must be said that the clear and the confused, as logical characteristics in the intensity which expresses the Idea—in other words, in the individual which thinks it—are no more separable than the distinct and the obscure are separable in the Idea itself. The clear-confused as individuating intensive unit corresponds to the distinct-obscure as ideal unit (DR 314-315).

To recap, perplication signifies the coexistence of all Ideas in a state of continuous variation (pure becoming). From the perspective of the pure past, Ideas are distinct insofar as they form a network of interpenetrating relations and singularities; from the perspective of the actual present, Ideas are obscure insofar as they are not yet differenciated. Here we see that all intensities express the differential relations and singularities of Ideas. Because they constitute the virtual, primary or enveloping intensities (the field of individuation) clearly express certain relations and variations of

187 the totality of Ideas; because they constitute the actual, secondary or enveloped intensities (individuals) confusedly express the totality of Ideas.

We think that difference of intensity, as this is implicated in the egg, expresses first the differential relations or virtual matter to be organised. This intensive field of individuation determines the relations that it expresses to be incarnated in spatio-temporal dynamisms (dramatisation), in species which correspond to these relations (specific differenciation), and in organic parts which correspond to the distinctive points in these relations (organic differenciation) (DR 313).

So the egg (intensive field or primary intensities) expresses virtual Ideas (implexes), while spatiotemporal dynamisms (individuals or secondary intensities) form the second part of this process inasmuch as they signify the actualising agencies which differenciate a virtual structure according to differential rhythms, “comparative speeds or slownesses” (DR 234). Deleuze continually puts the most focus on the intensive individual as the determinate power of individuation (dramatisation). Intensive individuals thus form the time at which the primary intensities (differential elements), differential relations, and singularities of Ideas are forced out of their state of coexistence into states of simultaneity or succession. In other words, intensive individuals, insofar as they are involved in dramatisation, are responsible for actualising the element of potentiality in the Idea in qualities and extensities (the sensible). Hereby virtual Ideas, which are firstly comprised of primary intensities in the intensive field of individuation, are teased-out via individuals undergoing dramatisation. Thus, we must understand individuation-dramatisation (the “in between”) as constantly provoking the processes of differentiation and differenciation: “indi-drama-(different/ciation” (DR 308). This will be explained in what follows.

Section Four. The Three Syntheses of Time (and Space)

4.1. Introduction: The Eternal Return, Depth, Distance

There are three spatial syntheses operating within the domains of the virtual and the actual: the synthesis of the eternal return, the synthesis of depth (or the implication of depth), and the synthesis of distance (or the explication of extensity). Deleuze also calls the connection of the spatial syntheses the “original depth”, “space as a whole”, or

188 “the pure spatium” (DR 289). Elsewhere he states that “Difference, distance and inequality are the positive characteristics of depth as intensive spatium” (DR 298). Insofar as “depth” signifies the pure or intensive spatium, it represents all three syntheses of space. But if we separate these syntheses we see that the “eternal return” rumbles in space as a whole, “depth” has a more limited sense insofar as it rests upon the passive synthesis of Memory, and “distance” is the most immediate synthesis involved in the explication of extensity. This can be highlighted by the fact that the three syntheses of space interrelate with the three syntheses of time. In this way, Deleuze implies that the spatial syntheses and the temporal syntheses form space-time complexes.

We should not be surprised that the pure spatial syntheses here repeat the temporal syntheses previously specified: the explication of extensity rests upon the first synthesis, that of habit or the present; but the implication of depth rests upon the second synthesis, that of Memory and the past. Furthermore, in depth the proximity and simmering of the third synthesis make themselves felt, announcing the universal 'ungrounding' (DR 289).

Deleuze is not exactly forthcoming as to how the spatial syntheses “repeat” and “rest upon” the temporal syntheses. In fact, his most sustained analysis of space pertains to human experience, namely, our sensation of intensity, perception of depth, and experience of extensive magnitudes (see: DR 288-291). With this in mind, his spatiotemporal analyses seem almost incongruent. The three syntheses of time pertain to the biological domain, spatiotemporal dynamisms are illustrated with reference to the biological domain but also extend to the physical domain (e.g., rocks and islands), and the implication of depth and the explication of extensive quantities are illustrated with reference to the psychic domain. Nevertheless, there are some similarities between the various accounts and some suggestive examples which allow us to link the spatial and temporal syntheses. Deleuze can thus be read as providing a number of conceptual experimentations on space, for although he may not provide a holistic account of spacetime complexes as his quote above leads one to believe, it seems to have been his intention. As Gregory Flaxman suggests, “If space constitutes one of the most perplexing and elusive concepts in all of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy, this is undoubtedly because its conceptualisation never amounts to any kind of traditional definition” (Flaxman 2005: 176). But with respect to DR, it could just as well be argued

189 that Deleuze does not provide a sufficient, or at least clearly articulated, account of space. In terms of sophistication and detail, the spatial syntheses pale in comparison to the temporal syntheses. Below I survey the various syntheses of space within the various domains in order to shed light on the spatial and temporal syntheses involved in the genesis of real experience as indi-drama-(different/ciation). As a guide for what follows, the eternal return of space rests upon the eternal return of the future and both affirm or distribute intensity; the synthesis of depth rests upon the passive synthesis of Memory and both implicate or involve intensity; and the synthesis of distance rests upon the passive synthesis of Habit and both explicate or cancel intensity in extensity. This section commences with third synthesis of space in order to show that every spatial formation is a synthesis of intensive differences. Following this it addresses the relation between the second synthesis of space and the first synthesis of space, between the implication of depth and the explication of extensity, between depth and lower depth, or between depth and distance, in order to show that extensive space is engendered from a topological or structural form of space via intensive spatial syntheses. I start with the second synthesis as a virtual-topological form of space in order to highlight that it forms the underlying structure of extensive space. Furthermore, in explaining this I show that this form of space is significantly influenced by Riemannian manifolds. Following this I explain that the first synthesis of space and time are the determinate spatiotemporal process involved in the differenciation of the virtual, and that the differenciated objects form what Deleuze broadly calls “the sensible”. We must always keep in mind that the first synthesis of time and the first synthesis of space (as well as spatiotemporal dynamisms) are not actual themselves, but, from out of intensive differences, through explicating such intensive differences, produce the actual world of successive presents and coextensive spaces, of habits and milieus, of qualities and extensities, of species and parts, of Egos and Selves. For inasmuch as depth implicates intensity and distance explicates intensity in extensity, both are representative of states of individuation.

4.2. Spatiotemporal Equality

Before addressing the three syntheses of space and their connection with the three syntheses of time, it is imperative to understand that there is no privileged hierarchy

190 between temporal syntheses and spatial syntheses. With Kant, as we saw in the first Chapter (Section 1.3.1.), time, as a pure form of intuition, maintains a certain primacy over space because it is the immediate condition of inner appearances and the mediate condition of outer appearances (CPR A34/B51). Thus all change and movement of appearances occurs within the pure form of time, while the pure form of time itself neither changes nor moves. But such a theory of time is a form of (human) temporality, whereby the faculty of intuition cleaves the subject from the world of things in themselves. Indeed the static synthesis of Eternal Return is a pure form which conditions all movement and change, but it is merely a transcendental principle for the world in infinite modulation—it does not presuppose the nature of time itself. We saw that Deleuze’s three syntheses of time are representative neither of temporality nor time itself. Time is not some “substantive force” which brings about change and movement; instead, times emerge from the synthesis of intensive differences within the biological and psychic domains. The passive synthesis of Habit, for instance, where contemplation-contractions engender living presents within organs and organisms, giving them a form of temporal consistency, also relies upon organs and organisms as in some sense spatially organised. Why, then, should time be primary to space? Deleuze begins to make the point about spatiotemporal equality directly after presenting the three characteristics of intensity. The motive arises from the fact that his account of intensive quantity has the same quality as Bergson’s continuous multiplicities, namely, the power of changing through division (DR 298-300). I will begin to address this issue with reference to the relation Bergson posits between duration and space. As is well known, Bergson diagnosed the problem of the spatialisation of time, but only at the expense of privileging the temporal over the spatial. Deleuze writes that “the principle Bergsonian division [is] that between duration and space. All the other divisions, all the other dualisms [e.g., memory and matter, past and present] involve it, derive from it, or result in it” (B 31). Deleuze refers to this as a “pure dualism”, namely, a rigid division of the world into two halves, for duration represents differences in kind (continuous multiplicities) and space represents differences in degree (discrete multiplicities). In short, duration is composed of heterogenous elements, and it does not cease to divide and change in nature; space is composed of homogenous elements, and it is fully divisible into distinct units. So a difference in kind lies not only between duration and space, but, logically following,

191 between all the differences in kind and differences in degree (see: B 92). But as John Mullarkey points out, “The idea that Bergson never goes beyond the position that all space is homogeneous, rests wholly on a reading of [Time and Free Will]” (Mullarkey 1999: 25). Deleuze would agree as he begins to dissolve this pure dualism when he argues that “[space] is not matter or extension, but the ‘schema’ of matter, that is, the representation of the limit where the movement of expansion (détente) would come to an end as the external envelope of all possible extensions” (B 87). The point is that space is the schema in which matter or extension is organised. Deleuze expands upon this point through a reading of MM:

there is always extensity in our duration, and always duration in matter […] matter is never expanded enough to be pure space, to stop having this minimum of contraction through which it participates in duration, through which it is a part of duration […] Conversely, duration is never contracted enough to be independent of the internal matter where it operates, and of the extension that it comes to contract (B 87-88).

This implies that the separation between duration and space is only a separation “in principle” rather than “in fact”. For differences in kind (duration) and differences in degree (space) are separated by a “difference between” rather than a “difference in kind” (B 93). Deleuze indicates that this represents a move beyond a pure dualism to a “neutralised, balanced dualism” (B 93; translation modified). The point is that a difference between duration and space is still evident, but the relation between the two tendencies involves an immanent connection. In this way, both dualisms—pure and balanced—are simply moments in the development of his method, for Bergson’s analysis of the relation between duration and space concludes in an ontological monism: “between the two [tendencies] there are all the degrees of difference or, in other words, the whole nature of difference […] Differences in degree are the lowest degree of Difference; differences in kind (nature) are the highest nature of Difference” (B 93). All these degrees of difference—the nature of difference—are intensive differences, which coexist “in a single Time, in a simple Totality” (B 94), “in a dimension of depth” (B92). Thus, they are “virtual, only virtual” (B 93; emphasis added). We know that duration, insofar as it is formative of the pure past, is virtual, but if differences in intensity coexist in the virtual, then space is not purely actual, but also to some degree virtual. This makes sense in light of the fact that space, as the schema of matter, is the most

192 contracted degree of the pure past itself: “matter is never expanded enough to be pure space” (B 88; emphasis added). The essential point is that by addressing the notion of intensive quantity in Bergson’s work, Deleuze broke down the rigid dualism between duration and space and came to understand them as forming a composite. After working out his own account of intensive quantity in DR, Deleuze appears to criticise Bergson for “attribut[ing] to quality [i.e., virtual multiplicities] everything that belongs to intensive quantities” (DR 299). But as Lundy has shown, a closer analysis proves this to be a recognition of affinity rather than a critique (Lundy 2017: 183-187).81 The first point to note is that Deleuze characterises two forms of actual differences: actualised extensive quantities are characterised by differences in degree, while actualised qualities are characterised by a specific form of differences in kind, namely, those that differ in kind “within a supposed order of resemblance” (DR 298). As we know, for Deleuze, intensive differences are the reason behind such actual extensities and actual qualities, and although he had already alluded to this being the case for Bergson in Bergsonism,82 after outlining these two forms of actual differences he appears to criticise Bergson for failing to account for their genesis:

This is why the Bergsonian critique of intensity seems unconvincing. It assumes qualities ready- made and extensities already constituted. It distributes difference into differences in kind in the case of qualities and differences in degree in the case of extensity. From this point of view, intensity necessarily appears as no more than an impure mixture, no longer sensible or perceptible. However, Bergson has thereby already attributed to quality everything that belongs to intensive quantities [i.e., changes in kind through division] (DR 299).

Now, before continuing with Deleuze’s analysis, it will be helpful to recall something I touched on in the previous chapter (Section 2.4.), namely, Deleuze’s point in Bergsonism that over and above his “highly ambiguous” critique of intensities in TFW, Bergson came to formulate a positive account of intensity in MM, in which differences

81 Lundy argues that Deleuze’s earlier readings of Bergson’s account of intensities (“Bergson, 1959- 1941”, “Bergson’s Conception of Difference”, and Bergsonism) provide the conceptual resources for his conception of “intensive quantity” in DR (Lundy 2017: 183-187). His argument is well-documented and convincing, but my own reason for passing through what has been taken as Deleuze’s “critique” of Bergson is twofold: (1) to show that Deleuze’s conception of intensities in DR differs from his reading of Bergson’s conception of intensities in Bergsonism and DR insofar as the latter constitute the virtual while the former constitute the virtual and the actual; (2) to show that although Deleuze already overcame the sharp division between space and time in Bergsonism, in DR he posits intensive spatiotemporal composites as responsible for engendering sensible diversity. 82 “If it is true that intensity is never given in a pure experience, is it not then intensity that gives all the qualities with which we make experience?” (B 92).

193 in intensity, as “more or less” rather than “how much”, are included in duration insofar as they coexist with themselves as the pure past, that is, as virtual (B 92-94). More specifically, each level of the cone and the relation between these levels are comprised of multiplicities (differences in kind), and each level is itself a “more or less” contracted state (difference in intensity). Directly after his supposed critique in DR, Deleuze immediately incorporates his previous analysis of Bergson’s positive conception of intensities.

There comes a moment, however, in this philosophy of Difference which the whole of Bergsonism represents, when Bergson raises the question of the double genesis of quality and extensity. This fundamental differenciation (quality-extensity) can find its reason only in the great synthesis of Memory which allows all the degrees of difference to coexist as degrees of relaxation and contraction, and rediscovers at the heart of duration the implicated order of that intensity which had been denounced only provisionally and from without (DR 299; emphasis added).

Following this, he returns to his own position on the matter, which, again, he initially presented in Bergsonism (B 93):

Let us take seriously the famous question: is there a difference in kind, or of degree, between differences of degree and differences in kind? Neither. Difference is a matter of degree only within the extensity in which it is explicated; it is a matter of kind only with regard to the quality which covers it within that extensity. Between the two are all the degrees of difference—beneath the two lies the entire nature of difference—in other words, the intensive. Differences of degree are only the lowest degree of difference, and differences in kind are the highest form of difference. What differences in kind or of degree separate or differenciate, the degrees or nature of difference make the Same, but the same which is said of the different (DR 300).

Here we see that differences in degree and differences in kind are both actual: there are differences in degree in actualised extensity, there are differences in kind in actualised quality; but “between” the two and “beneath” the two lies all the differences in degree, namely, the quality of intensive quantity as changing through division. In other words, intensities are “beneath” actualised extensities and actualised qualities because they engender them, and they are “between” actualised extensities and actualised qualities because they are responsible for engendering the “passage” from one extensity to another and one quality to another, as Deleuze notes, through “delay[s] and plateau[s], shocks of difference, distances, a whole play of conjunctions and disjunctions, a whole

194 depth” (DR 299). In the second chapter of this thesis (Section 3.3.), we saw that Deleuze provides a Bergsonian reading of Nietzsche’s eternal return in NP, but capping off his brief investigation of Bergson’s conception of intensive quantity he provides a Nietzschean reading of Bergson as he states that “perhaps this ‘same’, the identity of nature and degrees of difference, is Repetition (ontological repetition) …” (DR 300). On my reading of Deleuze’s account of intensive quantity thus far, an important distinction persists between Deleuze and Bergson—or, more accurately, Deleuze’s reading of Bergson. Whereas, for Bergson, intensities are “only virtual” (B 93) or only found “in the great synthesis of Memory (DR 299), for Deleuze, intensities constitute the virtual and the actual. In a footnote, Deleuze notes that Bergson’s differences in kind (duration) and differences in degree (extensity) represent two forms of multiplicities, namely, virtual or continuous multiplicities and actual or discrete multiplicities, and repeating what he argued in Bergsonism, MM shows that the “nature of difference” (i.e., intensive differences) coexist in duration as the pure past (DR 299 fn. 14). Deleuze can be seen to diverge from Bergson because he is not concerned with the specific relation between virtual or continuous multiplicities and actual and discrete multiplicities; instead, he is concerned with another two forms of multiplicities: “those represented by distances and lengths respectively: implicit as opposed to explicit multiplicities; those whose metric varies with division and those which carry the invariable principle of their metric” (DR 298; emphasis added). In other words, multiplicities are either intensive or extensive.83 Hereby explicit-extensive multiplicities apply to actual extensities, while actual qualities are characterised by empirical differences in kind that are “within a supposed order of resemblance” (DR 298). Thus, there is a difference “between” and “beneath” extensive-explicit multiplicities because they are engendered by intensive- implicit multiplicities. Put otherwise, Deleuze is no longer concerned with the divide between time and space; rather, he is interested in explaining that intensive spatiotemporal processes are responsible for engendering sensible diversity. Further support for the dissolution of any metaphysical hierarchy between space and time comes from the relation between actual quantities and actual extensities. Deleuze never stops reminding us throughout DR that no quality exists without an extensity and no extensity is devoid of a quality. Here he can be read as taking up

83 Notably, Deleuze and Guattari retain this idea of multiplicities in ATP: “arborescent multiplicities” are “extensive, divisible, and molar”; “rhizomatic multiplicities” are “molecular” and “intensive” (ATP 36- 37).

195 Bergson’s suggestion that quality is a contracted quantity, a contraction of intensities, which belongs to matter or extensity.84 Above we saw that the same intensive quantities, with the same quality, are explicated and produce, on the one hand, differences in kind (actual qualities), and on the other, differences in degree (actual extensities). The question is: What forces one and the same intensive quantity to become differenciated into differences in kind and differences in degree? In a rather complicated passage, Deleuze writes, “There is in general no quality which does not refer to a space defined by the singularities corresponding to the differential relations incarnated in that quality” (DR 261). Therefore, the answer is in the structure: differential relations, when expressed by intensities, give rise to qualities; singularities, when expressed by intensities, give rise to extensities. The virtual-ideal field is an intensive field of individuation, while the determinate power of actualisation is carried out by individuals and spatiotemporal dynamisms. Temporal dynamisms differenciate differential relations into qualities (or species); spatial dynamisms differenciate singularities into extensities (or parts). “[T]he species gathers the time of the dynamism into a quality (lion-ness, frog-ness) while the parts outline its space. A quality always flashes within a space and endures the whole time of that space. In short, dramatisation [the power of individuation] is the differenciation of differenciation, at once both qualitative and quantitative” (DR 270). Spatiotemporal dynamisms will be explained in detail below (Section 4.5.), but for now it is important to highlight that they are involved in the synthesis of the intensive differences which constitute the actual. Previously we saw that Roffe and Clisby argue that intensities are actual (Roffe 2011: 142-143; Clisby 2015: 145). They support this with reference to a passage from Deleuze:

In fact any confusion between the two processes [of individuation and differenciation], any reduction of individuation to a limit or complication of differenciation, compromises the whole of the philosophy of difference. This would be to commit an error, this time in the actual, analogous to that made in confusing the virtual with the possible. Individuation does not

84 “When we perceive, we contract millions of vibrations or elementary shocks into a felt quality; but what we contract, what we ‘tense’ in this way, is matter, extension. In this sense there is no point wondering if there are spatial sensations, which ones are or are not: All our sensations are extensive, all are ‘voluminous’ and extended, although to varying degrees and in different styles, depending on the type of contraction that they carry out. And qualities belong to matter as much as to ourselves: They belong to matter, they are in matter” (B 87; emphasis added) … “Matter and Memory recognises intensities, degrees or vibrations in the qualities that we live as such outside ourselves and that, as such, belong to matter” (B 92; translation modified).

196 presuppose any differenciation; it gives rise to it. Qualities and extensities, forms and matters, species and parts are not primary; they are imprisoned in individuals as though in a crystal. Moreover, the entire world may be read, as though in a crystal ball, in the moving depth of individuating differences or differences in intensity (DR 308-309; emphasis added).

I argue that it is not the case that intensities are actual, but rather that intensities are involved in giving rise to the actual. More specifically, as indicated in this passage, secondary intensities (“individuals”) constitute actual qualities and extensities, actual forms and matters, actual species and parts. But at the same time, primary intensities (the field of individuation) constitute the Ideas that insist within the virtual. It is in this sense “that individuation precedes differenciation in principle, that every differenciation presupposes a prior intense field of individuation. It is because of the action of the field of individuation that such and such differential relations and such and such distinctive points (pre-individual fields) are actualised” (DR 308; emphasis added). Here “the action” of the field of individuation is carried out by individuals and spatiotemporal dynamisms (dramatisation). Thus, “the entire world”—that is, the entire world as virtual and actual—“may be read, as though in a crystal ball, in the moving depth of individuating differences or differences in intensity” (DR 308-309; emphasis added). “Depth” signifies the pure or intensive spatium and represents, on the one hand, all three syntheses of space and time, and on the other, intensive quantity as a whole. Therefore, the role played by intensive difference in the genesis of real experience can only be answered by means of a close analysis of the spatiotemporal syntheses involved in individuation. To make a conclusion on the initial point, for Deleuze, the temporalisation of space is just as erroneous as the spatialisation of time. For any interrelation of temporal rhythms, such as the intratemporality of living presents that constitute the organism within its environment, necessitates a proximity of relations (spatial dynamisms) that bring intratemporal relations (temporal dynamisms) into communication.85 Times and

85 As noted previously, Bryant and Hughes argue that intensities fundamentally denote a temporal relation (Bryant 2008: 241, 243; Hughes 2009: 157). This neither seems to be the case with respect to DR nor generally. Prioritising the temporal leads to a number of irresolvable issues. Take a simple example: mixing two separate vats of water, one at 25 degrees and the other at 75 degrees, would form an asymmetrical intensive relation. The fact is that by pouring one vat into the other the whole system changes qualitatively. This intensive relation tends toward equalisation (i.e., the temperatures reach an average temperature and then settle at room temperature). It is clear that temporal syntheses play a part in setting intensities in relation to one another: on the one hand, the intensive relation between the two vats of water forms its own duration, namely, a succession in terms of an acceleration or deceleration of the

197 spaces form interdependent composites; the distinction between them is always relative.86 Therefore, the relation between space and time and the role such relations play in differenciation must be analysed in each particular case.87 With respect to dramatisation, “It is not wrong to say that time alone provides the response to a question, and space alone provides the solution to a problem” (DR 269). So while time provides the response to the question of how long qualities or species persist, space provides the solution to the problem of the organisation of extensities or organs. The overall point is that the first synthesis of space and the first synthesis of time— alternatively treated as spatiotemporal dynamisms—are non-hierarchical, interdependent, and relative. This is enough to show that Deleuze’s conceptualisation of intensive quantity, both in his reading of Bergson and his own philosophy, allows him to overcome a rigid dualism between space and time. Moreover, insofar as intensive difference permits such a dualism to be overcome, it opens up the possibility to explore new relations between space and time. The challenge is to understand in what way the other syntheses of space and time dissolve a hierarchy between the temporal and the spatial, and in what way the virtual is as spatial as it is temporal. We have already begun to see Deleuze’s divergence from Bergson’s concept of the virtual (Chapter 3, Section 2; Chapter 4, Section 1.3.), and no doubt such a “spatialisation” of the virtual only furthers this divergence. So if Deleuze’s conceptualisation of the virtual in any way represents a “return to Bergson”, it should not be understood as a faithful reproduction but a “renewal or extension of his project” (see: B 115).

4.3. The Third Synthesis of Space: The Eternal Return

process, and on the other hand, the duration of the system at the same time forms a duration with its external environment (i.e., the room temperature). But one vat had to be poured into another, and so a spatial synthesis occurred, as intensities were brought into contact or localised. Intensities can neither be thought as ordered by temporal relations nor spatial relations alone, but must be thought as involving both forms of synthesis. This holds regardless of the fact that in a particular situation a temporal or spatial process might take priority. Indeed dark precursors are reciprocal relations between temporal intensities (divergent series or heterogeneous times), but in general intensities are not fundamentally temporal. 86 “Consider the following example, concerning sterility and fecundity (in the case of the female sea- urchin and the male annelid): problem—will certain paternal chromosomes be incorporated into new nuclei, or will they be dispersed into the protoplasm? Question—will they arrive soon enough? However, the distinction is obviously relative, for it is clear that the dynamism is simultaneously temporal and spatial—in other words, spatio-temporal (in this case, the formation of cones of division, the splitting of chromosomes and the movement which takes them to the poles of the cones)” (DR 270). 87 In The Method of Dramatisation, Deleuze states, “We would have to distinguish what belongs to space and what belongs to time in these dynamisms, and in each case, the particular space-time combination. Whenever an Idea is actualised, there is a space and a time of actualisation. The combinations are clearly variable” (DI 111; translation modified).

198

We have repeatedly seen that the third synthesis of time—the future as eternal return—affirms chance or chaos, necessitating, in turn, that the passive synthesis of Habit synthesises (draws off) intensive difference and that the passive synthesis of Memory synthesises (includes) intensive difference. Similarly, the third synthesis of space is the eternal return, “the universal ‘ungrounding’” (DR 289), the “theatre of all metamorphosis” (DR 301), or the “volcanic spatium” (DR 302) that transcendentally conditions all spatial relations.

[E]nergy in general or intensive quantity is the spatium, the theatre of all metamorphosis or difference in itself which envelops all its degrees in the production of each. In this sense, energy or intensive quantity is a transcendental principle, not a scientific concept […] there is an intensive space with no other qualification, and within this space a pure energy. The transcendental principle does not govern any domain but gives the domain to be governed to a given empirical principle; it accounts for the subjection of a domain to a principle. The domain is created by difference of intensity, and given by this difference to an empirical principle according to which and in which the difference itself is cancelled. It is the transcendental principle which maintains itself in itself, beyond the reach of the empirical principle. Moreover, while the laws of nature govern the surface of the world, the eternal return ceaselessly rumbles in this other dimension of the transcendental or the volcanic spatium (DR 301-302).

If the spatial syntheses “repeat” and “rest upon” the temporal syntheses, then the third synthesis of space necessitates that the first and second syntheses of space involve intensive differences. Thus, the third synthesis of space transcendentally conditions “space as a whole” (DR 289). Now, “space as a whole”—the pure or intensive spatium—is neither some unbounded set of variable relations, which comprise, in turn, a sort of malleable container in which determinate spatial structures and bodies form, nor some kind of cosmic field of forces. For it signifies a constant connection of heterogeneous spaces, the affirmation that each differentiation and differenciation of space is absolutely new. Overall, then, the Eternal Return represents the principle for the necessity of chance or chaos in the world broadly construed.

4.4. The Second Synthesis of Space: Depth

199 4.4.1. Depth: A Topological-Structural Space

The second synthesis of space, depth, signifies an intensive field of space which not only grounds extensive phenomena but must be definable independently of it. For out of depth emerges the organisation of matter within extensity, or, more specifically: the extensio (extension), the (metric) distance or length between objects; the extensum (extensity), the three-dimensional space that is also a “term of reference of all the extensio”; the qualitas, the primary physical qualities that fill extensity (e.g., motion, figure, organisation); and the quale, the secondary perceptual qualities (e.g., colour, sound, taste) (DR 281 and 290; see also: Somers-Hall 2012: 173). This is a more complete description of the quality-extensity complexes—phenomena, empirical diversity, or “signs” (i.e., from signal-signal systems)—outlined earlier (Section 2.2. and 4.2.). The central point is that any object in general is composed of a synthesis of qualities and extensities, which express the actualisation of Ideas, such that the latter continues to insist virtually (in a state of constant change) within the former. And so all extensive spaces (extensio-extensum) “flow from a ‘deeper’ instance—depth itself, which is not extension but a pure implex” (DR 288). Here the “pure implex” signifies the spatial syntheses within the structural-virtual domain, the structures within a structure, the multiplicities within a multiplicity, or the not-yet-localised spatial syntheses involved in the intensive field of individuation. The notion of “depth” seems to evoke the image of an intensive spatial expanse ontogenetically prior to the extended empirical world we commonly experience. Yet this is not entirely accurate. Depth is not a vast spatial expanse but a virtual, continuous, non-localisable space of multiplicities that structure the phenomenal world of extensities. Depth as such has its own reality insofar as it rests upon the passive synthesis of Memory and therefore correlates with the entire pure past. “This synthesis of depth which endows the object with its shadow, but makes it emerge from that shadow, bears witness to the furthest past and to the coexistence of the past with the present” (DR 289). In this manner, extensive spaces not only emerge from an intensive field of spatial depth but also from an intensive field in which all intensities and multiplicities (structures), on the one hand, coexist with themselves in a state of perplication, and on the other, remain contemporaneous with the phenomenal world of qualities and extensities they structure. So while the pure past represents a virtual

200 Whole, both open and durational, it also represents a virtual depth, both open and topological. The synthesis of the pure past “rests upon” depth just as much as the synthesis of depth “rests upon” the pure past: depth is grounded in the pure past and the pure past is as if folded in depth. Elsewhere Deleuze refers to such a theory of space as a form of structural or topological space.

It is not a matter of a location in a real spatial expanse, nor of sites in imaginary extensions, but rather of places and sites in a properly structural space, that is, a topological space. Space is what is structural, but an unextended, pre-extensive space, pure spatium constituted bit by bit as an order of proximity, in which the notion of proximity first of all has precisely an ordinal sense and not a signification in extension […] places in a purely structural space are primary in relation to the things and real beings which come to occupy them (DI 174).

In general, the branch of mathematics known as topology deals with the structure of space and its capacity for transformation. It studies the properties of geometric figures preserved through transformations such as bending, twisting, and stretching; as Smith explains, “under such transformations, figures that are theorematically distinct in Euclidean geometry, such as a triangle, a square, and a circle, are seen as one and the same ‘homeomorphic’ figure, since they can be continuously transformed into one another” (Dan Smith 2012: 292). So when one figure is transformed into another we are not dealing with two different figures, that is, their forms, but the same underlying space, that is, the continuity of the space itself. But considering that depth is virtual, then the nature of this topological space is rather unique.

4.4.2. Deleuze and Riemann: Multiplicities and Manifolds

In order to make sense of the synthesis of depth as a structural-topological space I need to return to the nature of multiplicity as structure. The aim here is twofold. On the one hand, to show that Deleuze’s structural-topological depth is influenced by Riemann’s mathematics, even though Deleuze only mentions Riemann by name when he states that the term “multiplicity” is Riemannian and therefore must be understood as a substantive form (DR 230). On the other hand, to show that although structural- topological depth is influenced by Riemann’s mathematics, it is still fundamentally ontogenetic, which is indicated by the fact that depth is responsible for the emergence of extensities and the qualities which fill these extensities.

201 Deleuze and Guattari give a detailed account of Riemannian multiplicities in ATP,88 but here I limit myself to the way in which this mathematical concept is used in DR. In Bergsonism, Deleuze provides a brief summary of Riemann’s two genera of multiplicities or manifolds. As indicated in a footnote (B 29fn.4), this is based on Riemann’s Habilitation lecture (“On the Hypotheses Which Lie at the Bases of Geometry”) and Hermann Weyl’s exposition of Riemann’s multiplicities in Space, Time, Matter.89 (As a note: the terms “multiplicity” and “manifold” are interchangeable, but I use the term “manifold” when referring to Riemann to save confusion.)

Riemann defined as ‘[manifolds]’ those things that could be determined in terms of their dimensions or their independent variables. He distinguished discrete [manifolds] and continuous [manifolds]. The former contain the principle of their own metrics (the measure of one of their parts being given by the number of elements they contain). The latter found a metrical principle in something else, even if only in phenomena unfolding in them or in the forces acting in them (B 39).

So while discrete manifolds contain “the principle of their own metrics” (B 39) in themselves, that is, a priori, they represent a connection of homogenous “elements” countable by number (e.g., metric distances or quantities). But while continuous manifolds find their “metrical principle in something else” (B 39), as Riemann states, “in the binding of forces that operate on it” (Riemann 1998: 11), they represent a connection of “points” that cannot be considered homogenous. In this latter case, it is only through measuring (rather than counting) that a set of points that comprise a continuous manifold can be determined. Riemann notes that differing magnitudes— more specifically, intensive magnitudes—can be measured either by superimposing one magnitude on another so that it works as a standard for the other, or, in the case where one magnitude is part of another, by measuring their differences in terms of “the more or less and not the how much” (Riemann 1998: 2-3). In essence, a continuous manifold is a set of points (coordinate system) that defines a given space, such that any point in the manifold can be related to an arbitrarily selected initial point. Simply put, a manifold is a space, which is defined by the number (n) of dimensions of which it is comprised.

88 See: ATP 474-500. For works that deal with Deleuze and Guattari’s use of Riemannian multiplicities with respect to their theory of smooth and striated space, see: Plotnitsky 2006; Plotnitsky 2009; Calamari 2017. 89 The main works that deal with Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari’s reception and use of Riemann’s multiplicities also pay attention to Weyl’s influence on their understanding (Plotnitsky 2006; Plotnitsky 2009; Calamari 2015).

202 Hence manifolds are “n-dimensional”. A straight line or circle is a one-dimensional manifold (n = 1); for instance, any point on the straight line can be related to any other arbitrary point. If we were to select a point in the centre of the line, any point in reference to this point in the centre is either forwards or backwards; therefore, there is only one-dimension of continuous movement on the line. Surfaces such as planes and spheres are two-dimensional manifolds (n = 2); for instance, any coordinate on a sphere can be determined by two points. For example, say we have a globe of the world, the location of Sydney can be located with reference to any other coordinate on the globe with respect to two points (forwards and backwards; right and left). A three-dimensional space is a three-dimensional manifold (n=3), with three points of continuous movement (forwards and backwards; right and left; up and down). But Riemann notes that there are manifolds in which the determination of position requires “either an endless series or a continuous manifold of determinations of quantity” (Riemann 1998: 4). Examples of such manifolds are the possible determinations of a curvature (or function) for a given space (e.g., a hilly landscape) or the possible shapes of a solid figure. In other words, n-dimensional manifolds are potentially infinite. Important for the purposes here, Riemann turns his focus to physical space. Although he admits that physical space could form a discrete manifold, he focuses exclusively on the possibility of space as a three-dimensional continuous manifold, while acknowledging at the same time that a conformation of this would require a move into the domain of physics (Riemann 1998: 11-12). Nevertheless, Weyl argues that

Riemann rejects the opinion that had prevailed up to his own time, namely, that the metrical structure of space is fixed and inherently independent of the physical phenomena for which it serves as a background […] He asserts, on the contrary, that space in itself is nothing more than a three-dimensional manifold devoid of all form; it acquires a definite form only through the advent of the material content filling it and determining its metric relations (Weyl 1922: 98).

The points that define a three-dimensional space/manifold relate to one another intrinsically, and thereby they need not be conceived as enclosed within an all- encompassing Euclidean space. To make sense of this we can turn to Lautman’s two important dualities that pertain to mathematical entities, which Deleuze also utilises in his account of multiplicities. The first is the intrinsic-extrinsic distinction. The “intrinsic” properties of a mathematical entity “belong literally to the entity under

203 consideration”, while the “extrinsic” properties “can only be attributed to a mathematical entity if one is referred to something other than it” (Lautman 2011: 110). So the relation between points in a continuous manifold is an example of an intrinsic characteristic, while the Euclidean form of space as a reference system is an extrinsic characteristic. The other duality is the local-global point of view. The “local” point of view studies the specificity of the elements of reality and seeks to connect these different parts “so that an idea of the whole emerges from their juxtaposition” (Lautman 2011: 95). The “global” point of view “seeks instead to characterise a totality independently of the elements that compose it. It immediately tackles the structure of the whole, thus assigning elements their place before even knowing their nature” (Lautman 2011: 95; translation modified). It is not difficult to intuit what applies where. In the words of Arkady Plotnitsky,

A (continuous) manifold is a conglomerate of (local) spaces, each of which can be mapped by a (flat) Euclidean or Cartesian, coordinate map, without allowing for a global Euclidean structure or single coordinate system for the whole, except in the limited case of a Euclidean homogenous space itself. That is, every point has a small neighbourhood that can be treated as Euclidean, while the manifold as a whole in general cannot (Plotnitsky 2006: 194; emphasis added).

Without dealing with the technical mathematics of how coordinate maps are used to calculate the manifold, the general point is that a Riemannian manifold/space is a connection of points or local spaces, or, according to Weyl, “pieces of space” (Weyl 1922: 101). Most importantly, these points are determinable without reference to a global space they can be imagined as enclosed within. To describe Mars as a sphere, like a tennis ball, floating through space, gives a global description. But to say that a rover on the surface of Mars could set out from any-point-whatever in a “straight line” and return to its point of departure provides a local description of the space itself. And so the trajectory of the rover can be mapped as a connection of local spaces independent of the global (Euclidean) space it can be thought to travel within. A local space is essentially a neighbourhood, namely, a continuous set of points infinitely near to one another that form the space. In this sense, points are infinitesimals. This is why the Riemannian conception of manifoldness as spatiality leads to a Riemannian differential geometry, whereby the points of a manifold/space are determinable by the calculus and shown to move at different rates of speed and slowness to one another. We will come to

204 see that the synthesis of distance and the spatial half of spatiotemporal dynamisms can be read as a “Riemannian-type differential geometry” (DR 201) (Section 4.5.3.). The essential point for now is that Riemannian space as a three-dimensional multiplicity “acquires a definite form only through the advent of the material content filling it” (Weyl 1922: 98). Thus, contra Newtonian absolute space and its Euclidean form, where bodies are independent of position, Riemannian space is devoid of all inherent form. The form of a piece of space, or the creation of a form by connecting two or more pieces of space, always depends upon the material content filling it, that is, the forces acting within and upon it. Although Riemann’s Habilitation lecture concludes with what appears to be a modest confession that the nature of real space as a three-dimensional (continuous) multiplicity could only progress in knowledge by means of the domain of physics, Weyl holds that Riemann was right in asserting space to be a three-dimensional (continuous) multiplicity. For his conviction—lost with his contemporaries—was revealed by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which posited the metrical principle of multiplicities in the “binding forces of gravitation” (Weyl 1922: 101) that, in turn, force the manifoldness of space—or, more accurately, spacetime—to curve. Deleuze offers a radically different approach to Riemann and Einstein. The obvious underlying difference comes from the fact that Deleuze is neither a mathematician nor a physicist, but a philosopher, or pure metaphysician. A prior philosophical approach to Riemann came from Bergson who, according to Deleuze, “profoundly changed the direction of the Riemannian distinction. Continuous multiplicities seemed to him to belong essentially to the sphere of duration. In this way, for Bergson, duration was not simply the indivisible, nor was it the nonmeasurable. Rather, it was that which divided only by changing in kind” (B 39-40). In DR, Deleuze can be read as dispensing with the Bergsonian interpretation of continuous multiplicities as purely durational—as a multiplicity of this kind, for Deleuze, is implicit or intensive—and to an extent returning to, while also reconceptualising, Riemannian manifoldness as spatiality. Whereas Riemann offers a mathematical model of space, where physical space as a continuous multiplicity has mathematically precise, numerical features (Plotnitsky 2006: 191; ATP 483-485), Deleuze’s structuralist-topological form of depth neither has nor requires reference to number. Deleuze draws influence from Riemannian manifolds when he defines Ideas or multiplicities as “n-dimensional” and “continuous” (DR 230), but most significantly he writes, echoing Lautman’s dualism of

205 the intrinsic-extrinsic, “In all cases the multiplicity is intrinsically defined, without external reference or recourse to a uniform space in which it would be submerged” (DR 231; emphasis added). Ideas or multiplicities as such comprise one of the spatial requisites for the genesis of real experience. So when Riemann talks of physical space as a three-dimensional (continuous) manifold, it is clear that this form of space is actual; when Deleuze talks about depth as a structuralist-topological space comprised of multiplicities, it is clear that this form of space is virtual. Deleuze thus paves a way between Riemann’s intuition of real space as a continuous multiplicity and Bergson’s conceptualisation of continuous multiplicity as duration. For Ideas as multiplicities structure all (spatiotemporal) phenomena. More precisely, Ideas as multiplicities involve singularities, which structure extensities, and differential relations, which structure qualities. We have seen that singularities are “implicit forms” (or problems) which guide the actualisation of processes (Section 1.3.). Spatially speaking, then, the development of an embryo is a perpetual actualisation of its parts into a unity in accordance with guiding (topological) problems: “An organism is nothing if not the solution to a problem, as are each of its differenciated organs, such as the eye which solves a light 'problem’” (DR 262). But Deleuze also provides an example of topological-structural depth with respect to the organism as a biological Idea.

4.4.3. The Organism as a Biological Idea

Deleuze discovers an example of a biological Idea in Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s morphological conception of animal structure. Geoffrey took a morphological approach to comparative anatomy—a “transcendental anatomy”, as he called it—by accounting for the connections and homologies between both the parts of different animals and the parts in a single animal. As Toby Appel explains,

Instead of describing each class of animals separately, using different names for different structures in each class, Geoffroy believed one could discover a generalized vertebrate anatomy, a single structural plan that could be traced throughout the vertebrates […] The key to determining the ideal plan, Geoffroy showed, was to ignore the form and the function of the parts and concentrate instead on the connections between parts. Geoffroy's ‘principle of connections’ became, in fact, the main guide in the nineteenth century to determining homological relationships. In 1820 Geoffroy extended ‘unity of composition’ from the vertebrates to the invertebrates by assuming that the latter represented stages in the

206 embryological development of higher animals. Thus, invertebrates shared the same basic plan of organization, though they lacked many of the structural elements of higher animals in fully developed form. For Geoffroy, then, the unity of plan in the animal kingdom preceded particular modifications of the plan to suit functional requirements (Appel 1987: 4).

Deleuze bases his interpretation of Geoffroy’s transcendental anatomy on his “dream [..] to be the Newton of the infinitely small, to discover 'the world of details' or 'very short distance' ideal connections beneath the cruder play of sensible and conceptual differences and resemblances” (DR 233). Accordingly, Geoffrey proposes an Idea of an Animal in itself, which depends upon the ideal relations between differential elements. On Deleuze’s reading, Geoffroy appears to provide a kind of biological structuralism, both differential and genetic. For the “purely anatomical and atomic elements, such as small bones, are linked by ideal relations of reciprocal determination: they thereby constitute an 'essence' which is the Animal in itself. It is these differential relations between pure anatomical elements which are incarnated in diverse animal configurations, with their diverse organs and functions” (DR 233). That is, the entirety of ideal relations between anatomical elements constitutes the Idea of the Animal in itself. An example of such ideal relations between anatomical elements is: “the hyoid of a cat has nine small bones, whereas in man it has only five; the other four are found towards the skull, outside the organ reduced in this way by the upright position” (DR 233). The overall importance of Geoffroy’s view is that the relations between anatomical elements, the connections between parts, can be considered independent of form (i.e., the developed form of the organism or species) and function (i.e., teleological requirements). Considering that Deleuze’s suggestive reading takes the Idea of the Animal in itself to be virtual, then perhaps what makes Geoffroy’s theory interesting and valuable post-Darwin is the fact that the Idea of an Animal in itself is constantly differentiating, constantly combining and recombining differential elements and ideal relations. The Idea of the Animal in itself signifies a single (heterogeneous) composition or structure, a whole virtuality or potentiality that undergoes continuous differentiation and thus changes with the advent of the new, such that the differential elements and ideal relations are continuously differenciated in accordance with spatiotemporal dynamisms. As Deleuze writes, the “genesis of development in organisms must therefore be understood as the actualisation of an [Idea of an Animal in itself], in accordance with

207 reasons and at speeds determined by the environment, with accelerations and interruptions, but independently of any transformist passage from one actual term to another” (DR 233). Before I address the agential role spatiotemporal dynamisms play in the differenciation of Ideas or multiplicities, there is a significant point concerning the topological nature of the Idea of an Animal in itself. In ATP, Deleuze and Guattari state that “Geoffroy thinks topologically … [he] is a great artist of the fold” (ATP 47). For Geoffroy held that there is a similarity in the structure of organisation (isomorphism) between different organisms, which can be shown via folding: “To go from the Vertebrate to the Cephalopod, bring the two sides of the Vertebrate's backbone together, bend its head down to its feet and its pelvis up to the nape of its neck ...” (ATP 46; cf. Foucault 106). If we follow this suggestion, such a topological way of thinking allows for a conception of the Animal in itself as a multiplicity of varying topologies, a composition of differential elements and ideal connections, of singularities or implicit forms, which become differenciated in actual organisms through the determination of a species and the differenciation of their organs (or parts).

4.4.4. The Perception of Depth

Deleuze’s most sustained analysis of depth pertains to human perception (i.e., psychic systems). In the broad sense, depth as intensive spatium includes all three syntheses of space. This also seems to be the case when Deleuze states, “Extensity as a whole comes from the depths. Depth as the (ultimate and original) heterogeneous dimension is the matrix of all extensity” (DR 288). Here the central concern lies with the limited notion of depth, the implication of depth, which rests upon the passive synthesis of Memory: “This synthesis of depth which endows the object with its shadow, but makes it emerge from that shadow, bears witness to the furthest past and to the coexistence of the past with the present” (DR 289). Deleuze’s turn to our perception of objects within an extensive space provides an account of a dynamic space “defined from the point of view of an observer tied to that space, not from an external position” (DR 29). Accordingly, we perceive empirical extensity in three dimensions: the first dimension (length) as right and left; the second dimension (height) as high and low; and the third dimension (breadth) as figure and ground. Sitting in front of a table upon

208 which objects are placed we can distinguish those objects right and left of each other, those higher and lower, and those that form the figure (i.e., those in front) and the ground (i.e., those in the background). The same is true, for example, with certain drawings or paintings; for although the surface is only two-dimensional—right and left, high and low—the shadings or colour variations produce a figure and ground and thus a three-dimensional image (when perceived from the right distance). Psychologically speaking, depth perception is our ability to perceive the world in three dimensions and gauge the (metric) distance between objects. But Deleuze has something else in mind when he states that depth “is the ultimate dimension of extensity, but we see this only as a fact without understanding the reason” (DR 288). Now each coordinate of three- dimensional space can be measured by length and size alone, but depth makes the perception of these relative lengths and sizes significant for an observer tied to that space. For depth is not actually part of the extensive space we experience, like length and size, but instead it is manifested in the experience itself. For instance, even though an observer standing in front of a table with objects may “know” the size and composition of the objects, depth is that which is involved in the perception itself, which is neither a property of the objects on the table (like length and size) nor a sole capacity of human experience. For depth is expressed relative to the perspective of the observer tied to that space. But, at the same time, depth is not solely responsible for perception, as the “power of the diminution of the intensity experienced” also “provides a perception of depth (or rather, provides depth to perception)” (DR 289). In this way, perception (as well as sensation) has an “ontological aspect” (DR 289). Implied in all this is the notion that Ideas as multiplicities give structure to the observer’s perception of the right and left, the high and low, and the figure and ground. We will return to this and the role played by intensive quantity in perception and sensation with respect to the being of the sensible below (Section 4.5.1.).

4.5. The First Synthesis of Space: Distance

So far I have addressed the structures (differential relations and singularities) of depth as the pure or intensive spatium. The essential point is that neither multiplicities nor the intensive field (where Ideas and primary intensities insist) have the capacity to differenciate themselves. Therefore, another process is required. The synthesis of

209 distance can be understood as the immediate spatial synthesis involved in the explication of intensity in extensity, such that intensities themselves become homogenised and divisible (explicit multiplicities). Now Deleuze does not use the term “synthesis of distance” with respect to the first synthesis of space; instead, he prefers the term “explication of extensity”. But if the explication of extensity “rests upon” and “repeats” the passive synthesis of Habit, then it involves a synthesis of intensities. Initially, Deleuze turns to a discussion on thermodynamics, the science that deals with the transfer of heat, to highlight that within thermodynamic systems intensive differences become explicated in phenomena (DR 281-288). Deleuze makes the point that classical thermodynamics focused on explicated systems (extensive systems) rather than the reason for the genesis of such systems, namely, intensive quantity. Here I address the specific process of the explication of extensity (or synthesis of distance) in Deleuze’s account of the genesis of real experience rather than the initial influence for the importance of the difference between the intensive and the extensive.90 We can begin to make sense of the synthesis of distance by focusing on the relation between depth and distance. Deleuze argues that depth and distance are both in a state of implication: “depth envelops in itself distances which develop in extensity” (DR 289). “Everything goes from high to low, and by that movement affirms the lowest: asymmetrical synthesis” (DR 294; emphasis added). Press the valve on a bike tyre, for example, and the air flows from the tube to its surrounding environment, from high pressure to low pressure, and never the other way around. But the high and the low, Deleuze admits, is “only a manner of speaking. It is a question of depth, and of the lower depth which essentially belongs to it […] it is there that distance develops” (DR 294). The movement from depth to lower depth, then, is the movement from depth to distance. Yet it is not always clear precisely how depth and distance relate. Deleuze writes that “difference in depth is composed of distances” (DR 298). But the notion of depth as composed of distances refers to depth in the broader sense, as comprised of all three spatial syntheses. At the same time, Deleuze also appears to hold a clear

90 Somers-Hall provides a discussion on thermodynamics and argues that the first synthesis of space correlates with the explication of extensity in thermodynamics (Somers-Hall 2012: 171). While this is no doubt textually accurate, and gives a broad account of the first synthesis of space by linking it to thermodynamic systems as physical systems, I take an alternative approach by attempting to make sense of how intensities (secondary intensities or distances) are involved in explication in general. Intensive explication occurs in physical, biological, and psychic systems, and Deleuze provides the most detail of this with respect to the being of the sensible (psychic systems) and the spatiotemporal dynamisms involved in embryogenesis (biological systems).

210 distinction between depth, in the narrow sense, and distance. Simply put, they are syntheses respectively involving primary intensities and secondary intensities. “The enveloping intensities (depth) constitute the field of individuation, the individuating differences. The enveloped intensities (distances) constitute the individual differences. The latter necessarily fill the former” (DR 315-316). It is in this sense that I continue with distance as separate from difference. The “explication of extensity” involves a synthesis of intensities, and the synthesis in question is an “asymmetrical synthesis” of secondary intensities, which refers to the intensive movement from the virtual to the actual: the actualisation of the virtual. But inasmuch as it actualises the virtual (differenciation), contemporaneously, it produces the virtual as well (differentiation), that is, it changes the field of individuation. So just as the passive synthesis of Habit, which produces variable presents, involves contemplation-contractions (i.e., a drawing off of intensities), the explication of extensity, which produces extensive spaces, involves syntheses of distances.91 Deleuze’s most explicit analysis of distance comes with reference to the psychic system and a new science of the sensible. But the spatial processes of spatiotemporal dynamisms share the same fundamental features of the synthesis of distance while the temporal dynamisms share those of the passive synthesis of Habit. I will come to argue below (Section 4.5.2. – 4.5.4.) that spatiotemporal dynamisms can be understood not only as a conceptual simplification of the synthesis of distance and the passive synthesis of Habit.

4.5.1. A New Science of the Sensible: Intensity as the Being of the Sensible

91 Importantly, the asymmetrical syntheses in question are the immediate syntheses of intensive differences which, for instance, give rise to the asymmetry of Habit. The notion of “asymmetrical synthesis” as signifying the actualisation of the virtual (from low to high) differs to the asymmetry of the passive synthesis of Habit. The asymmetry of the passive synthesis of Habit refers to the synthesis of dimensions (past, present, future) within the living present. The living present goes from past to future (DR 284) because the passive synthesis of intensities in the living present forms the dimensions of the past as retention (“cellular hereditary”) and the future as expectation (“need”). In this way, the passive synthesis of Habit “[imparts] direction to the arrow of time” (DR 91), which is to say, as argued previously, that the first synthesis of time provides the fundamental reason for the empirical observation of the asymmetrical and irreversible nature of organic processes on the micro- and macro-scale (Chapter 2, Section 1.4.). Here Deleuze refers back to the passive synthesis of Habit as imparting direction to the arrow of time and adds that from our own understanding (common sense), the past is understood as being “improbable or less probable” and the future as somewhat “predictable” (DR 284). The problem lies in taking the world itself to be more or less probable and more or less predictable. For in reality, this is only a “partial truth” (DR 284), as it ignores the intensive reasons which gave rise to such probability and predictability, and it ignores the intensive differences which engendered the passive synthesis of Habit and its dimensions.

211 “Intensity is not the sensible but the being of the sensible, where different relates to different” (DR 335). For a moment, it appears that only intensive quantity is the being of the sensible. But Deleuze also states that we arrive at a transcendental or superior empiricism “only when we apprehend directly in the sensible that which can only be sensed, the very being of the sensible: difference, potential difference and difference in intensity as the reason behind qualitative diversity” (DR 68-69). As we will see, Deleuze shows that Ideas or multiplicities are also involved in the being of the sensible. Deleuze commences Chapter 5 of DR by arguing that intensive quantity signifies the sufficient reason of phenomena, empirical diversity, quality-extensity composites, or signs. So intensity as the sufficient reason of phenomena is linked here with the Ideas, which are said to have their own sufficient reason, namely, determinability, reciprocal determination, complete determination, and progressive determination (DR 273-274). For now, the specific concern is the way by which the being of the sensible involves the synthesis of distance. Intensity as the being of the sensible is indeed “that by which the given is given” (DR 176), but the most immediate processes involved in giving the given are the syntheses of distance and the passive syntheses of Habit. This is what Deleuze implies when he says that every limitation we are confronted by “presupposes a swarm of differences, a pluralism of free, wild or untamed differences; a properly differential and original space and time” (DR 61). The essential point to be clear about regarding the being of the sensible is that in this context “the sensible” refers to a capacity of psychic systems. Below I will explain that sensibility applies more broadly to organisms and physical qualities themselves (Section 4.5.5.). Thus physical systems, biological systems, and psychic systems all have intensive quantity and Ideas as the being of their sensibility. For now it is a question of how the synthesis of intensive difference in distance constitutes the being of our sensibility. We caught a glimpse of this in the first synthesis of Habit, where the (human) faculty of sensibility, “a kind of transcendental aesthetic” or “passive self” (DR 121), is not merely a capacity to receive sensations, but is itself constituted by contemplation-contractions. Here Deleuze addresses two fundamental (yet seemingly contradictory) points concerning our relationship to intensity: intensity is “imperceptible” [insensible] and intensity is that which can only be sensed (DR 296-297). Intensity is “imperceptible” because insofar as it engenders qualities and extensities it is cancelled. Thus, the objects

212 of perception are not intensities themselves but their products. We can understand the second point with reference to Plato’s distinction in The Republic between two types of sensations. Deleuze notes that there are “those which do not disturb thought” and “those which force us to think” (DR 175). On the one hand, the former can be recognised and represented. Examples of which include fingers, tables, bumping into a friend on the street. Deleuze wants to make the point that although thought is involved in such cases of recognition, thinking itself has not taken place. He argues for this by turning to a Kantian model of recognition. “In recognition, the sensible is not at all that which can only be sensed, but that which bears directly upon the senses in an object which can be recalled, imagined or conceived” (DR 176; emphasis added). Hereby any object that bears upon the senses presupposes the exercise of the other faculties, for instance, we do not only sense a finger, but recognise it insofar as the other faculties (imagination, understanding, reason) are called upon to produce the representation. So that which is sensed is at the same time thought. On the other hand, the types of sensations which force us to think can only be sensed, for they do not call upon the exercise of the other faculties. These types of sensations are evoked by a “fundamental encounter. What is encountered may be Socrates, a temple or a demon. It may be grasped in a range of affective tones: wonder, love, hatred, suffering. In whichever tone, its primary characteristic is that it can only be sensed” (DR 176). Deleuze refers to such sensations as “signs”. Previously he defined “signs” as part of signal-sign systems, meaning that “signs” are synonymous with quality-extensity composites, empirical diversity, or phenomena. But here “signs” are responsible for a superior activity of thought: they give “something” to be sensed (rather than recognised) and as such engender the “act of thinking in thought itself” (DR 176). In this case, then, it is as though the pure contingency of the world encroaches itself upon us in unrecognisable ways, forcing us to think and pose new problems. For the sign “moves the soul, 'perplexes' it—in other words, forces it to pose a problem: as though the object of encounter, the sign, were the bearer of a problem—as though it were a problem” (DR 176). With an understanding of intensity as both “imperceptible” [insensible] and that which can only be sensed, further detail regarding the being of the sensible can be given in light of two criticisms aimed at Kant. Firstly, Kant’s a priori forms of space (and time). Secondly, his account of intensive magnitude (or quantity). Concerning the first point, Kant’s science of the sensible (aesthetics) focuses on

213 “what can be represented in the sensible” rather than the “being of the sensible” itself (DR 68). We saw in the first chapter (Section 1.3.1.) that space is the a priori form of outer intuition, which structures outer appearances, and time is the a priori form of outer intuition and inner intuition, which structures outer appearances and inner appearances. The focus here is on the a priori form of space, which signifies a “geometrical extension” (DR 290) or Euclidean substrate. Kant writes,

if we separate from the representation of a body what the understanding thinks in regard to it, such as substance, force, divisibility, etc., and likewise what belongs to sensation, such as impenetrability, hardness, colour, etc., there still remains something of this empirical intuition, namely extension and figure. These belong to pure intuition, which, even without an actual object of the senses or sensation, exists a priori in the mind, as a mere form of sensibility (CPR A20-21/B35-36).

So if we take away all the concepts which give a body its identity (the understanding) and all its sensible qualities (empirical intuitions), we are left with the a priori form of space itself, namely, extension and figure. Accordingly, a sensible manifold (empirical intuition) is presented by means of this “one and the same unique space” (CPR A24/B39). As Deleuze notes, the a priori form of space is the presentation of a whole which grounds the possibility of the parts (DR 290). Now, there are two problems with Kant’s view. Most obviously, Kant takes our common experience of extensive space as a Euclidean form and regresses from the conditioned to the conditions. Insofar as the a priori form of space itself is a Euclidean form (extension and figure), it simply doubles the empirical. This is not an error on Kant’s behalf but a direct result of his transcendental idealism. The other problem with Kant’s view, which is most pertinent to Deleuze’s own project, is the fact that quality and extensity are separable. Take away the sensible qualities which fill an extensive space (colour, hardness, et cetera) and we are left with a Euclidean-type a priori form of space. As Flaxman suggests, “Kant's procedure strikes us as counter-intuitive, since the form of pure intuition empties space of the very properties that we tend to consider important or even necessary” (2005: 181). For the separation of quality from extensity is a figment of the imagination rather than a true articulation of real experience. Deleuze never stops reminding us throughout DR that space and qualities are inseparable: no quality exists without an extensity and no extensity is devoid of a quality. For the genesis of real experience shows that

214 extensities and qualities are phenomena engendered at one and the same time. This leads us on to the second criticism, namely, Kant’s account of intensive magnitude (or quantity). According to Deleuze, Kant’s “mistake is to reserve intensive quantity for the matter which fills a given extensity to some degree or other” (DR 290). In “The Anticipations of Perception”, Kant writes, “In all appearances the real, which is an object of sensation, has intensive magnitude, that is, a degree” (CPR A166/B207). The real of appearance is something pertaining to the matter of sensation, and thus something we are subjectively affected by. Kant is arguing that every object of sensation, which, as Deleuze puts it, is the matter which fills a given extensity, has an intensive magnitude, namely, a magnitude of continuous degrees, of more or less, starting from the absence of a sensation (=0) up to any amount of sensation (CPR A166- 8/B207-11). But Kant’s transcendental philosophy can only tell us, a priori, that the reality of an appearance differs in degree. He bluntly states: “Everything else [concerning the reality of an appearance] is left to experience” (CPR A176/B218). Such intensive magnitudes are involved, for example, in our experience of empirical qualities such as colour, taste, heat, and sound. What appears so strange about this is that we can always anticipate, a priori, that the real in each and every appearance, which is necessarily given in experience (a posteriori), has an intensive magnitude. Even before we come to perceive a particular colour red, a particular temperature of a room, or a particular sound of a trumpet, we can say, apodictically, that it will vary in its degree: an object will be more or less red, a room will be warmer or cooler, a trumpet will be louder or quieter. The problem Deleuze identifies with this view is that Kant put intensive magnitude on the side of the matter which fills an extensity. In Deleuze’s terms, this makes intensive quantity involved in the actual objects of sensation, that is, intensive quantity is on par with the actuality of the sensation itself. Deleuze notes that intensive quantity is indeed involved in the degree of the sensation, but this is because it engenders it (DR 289). Now although Deleuze’s initial focus was on our capacity of perception and sensation, in one clean stroke he shifts the focus from the conditions of human experience to the genesis of empirical diversity itself (!).

Space as pure intuition or spatium is an intensive quantity, and intensity as a transcendental principle is not merely the anticipation of perception but the source of a quadruple genesis: that of the extensio in the form of schema, that of extensity in the form of extensive magnitude, that of qualitas in the form of matter occupying extensity, and that of the quale in the form of

215 designation of an object (DR 291; cf. DR 281, 290).

One of the supportive arguments for such a move comes from enantiomorphic bodies, namely, handedness or chirality. For Kant, space and time (sensibility) are irreducible to concepts (understanding), that is, they differ in kind. Concerning space, Kant asks us to image two hands that are absolutely identical. Although each hand is identical in the concept, they are not superimposable: one hand is right and the other is left. Therefore, there must be spatial determinations irreducible to conceptual ones (Kant Seminar: 14/03/1978; Prolegomena §13). Deleuze’s point is that although Kant recognised such spatial determinations, internal differences, he “could refer only to an external relation with extensity as a whole in the form of extensive magnitudes” (DR 290-291). In other words, Kant attempted to explain internal differences by means of extensive space. Yet there are real spatial determinations internal to space itself, for example, some chiral drugs have enantiomers that produce vastly different reactions on the body: one is therapeutic and the other is inactive (see: Chhabra et al. 2013: 16-18). The point is that the Kantian paradigm cannot account for the genesis of real spatial phenomena, and so an explanation of the internal, structural formation of such phenomena is required. The final point Deleuze makes is that along with the engendering role of the transcendental principle of intensity, Ideas are responsible for giving structure to the right and left, the high and low, the figure and ground and the phenomena of enantiomorphs: the affinity between space and Ideas “cannot […] be denied—in other words, its capacity (as intensive spatium) to determine in extensity the actualisation of ideal connections (as differential relations contained in the Idea)” (DR 291). This is to say that intensive quantities are involved in the dramatisation of Ideas. So whatever the precise relationship is between depth and distance, perception and sensation, Deleuze’s account of the being of the sensible in psychic systems, on the one hand, does not provide an adequate account of the immediate spatial synthesis involved in the explication of extensity (synthesis of distance), and on the other, does not seem to fully explain the intensive genesis of Ideas in phenomena. We get a better understanding of this with respect to spatiotemporal dynamisms in biological systems.

4.5.2. Spatiotemporal Dynamisms

Spatiotemporal dynamisms are intensive asymmetrical processes that explicate

216 intensity in qualities (species) and in extensities (parts). As mentioned previously, there are two sections where Deleuze addresses the role of spatiotemporal dynamisms. Firstly, he outlines them in Chapter 4 with reference to embryogenesis, specifically with respect to the way they drive the development of the embryo. It is notable that he also applies them to rocks and islands (DR 271-272), thereby gesturing towards their metaphysical extension. For this reason he states that biology is only a “technical model” which aids in explaining “the exposition of the virtual and the process of actualisation” (DR 273). Secondly, at the end of the Chapter 5, he explains that intensive quantity is the determinate power of spatiotemporal dynamisms. Therefore, spatiotemporal dynamisms, when merged with the power of intensity, become individuals, namely, asymmetrical vectors of secondary intensities. Previously Deleuze had conceptualised the notion of “passive synthesis” (contemplation-contraction) when explaining the production of living presents within the biological domain, but here he begins to conceptualise the notion of a “dynamic process”. For in the most concrete sense, a “drama” is a “dynamic process”, and so “dramatisation” signifies the dynamic spatiotemporal processes which actualise Ideas (DR 266). Now although Deleuze notes that a correlation between dramas (spatiotemporal dynamisms) and Kant’s schemata can be drawn, he argues that they fundamentally differ (DR 270). Transcendental schemata realise categories in empirical intuitions (see: Chapter 1, Section 1.3.4.), while spatiotemporal dynamisms actualise Ideas in empirical diversity. More specifically, spatiotemporal dynamisms are the agencies of differenciation, the self-organising processes, which, on the one hand, differenciate differential relations into species (or qualities) by means of temporal rhythms of accelerations and decelerations, and on the other, differenciate singularities into parts (or extensities) by means of topological processes of deformation, folding, and stretching.

4.5.3. Spatial Dynamisms

Dynamic spatial processes “create or trace a space corresponding to the differential relations and to the singularities to be actualised” (DR 268-269). Spatial dynamisms, on the one hand, constitute internal spaces comprised of multiple spaces, and on the other, constitute the way in which these internal spaces both extend and

217 occupy regions of external extensity, thus forming, in turn, relations with other entities within this external extensity (DR 269). Deleuze provides an example of an organism within its environment to explain this process, where (1) is genetic and (2) is ecological.

A living being is not only defined genetically, by the dynamisms which determine its internal milieu, but also ecologically, by the external movements which preside over its distribution within an extensity. A kinetics of population adjoins, without resembling, the kinetics of the egg; a geographic process of isolation may be no less formative of species than internal genetic variations, and sometimes precedes the latter. Everything is even more complicated when we consider that the internal space is itself made up of multiple spaces which must be locally integrated and connected, and that this connection, which may be achieved in many ways, pushes the object or living being to its own limits, all in contact with the exterior; and that this relation with the exterior, and with other things and living beings, implies in turn connections and global integrations which differ in kind from the preceding. Everywhere a staging at several levels (DR 269).

Here Deleuze highlights that speciation is driven equally by genetic mutation and population migration insofar as it permits gene flow. Although one of these processes could take primacy in a given situation, there is no ontological primacy and therefore no hierarchy between the internal spaces and external spaces which comprise and preside over the organism. The relation between the genetic and the ecological can thereby be understood as giving rise to spatial continuities. But more importantly, considering that the synthesis of depth is a structural- topological space where multiplicities and intensities insist within the pure past, then the way in which intensive topological processes, spatial dynamisms, differenciate virtual multiplicities needs to be addressed. Deleuze writes that “there is no revolution so long as we remain tied to Euclidean geometry: we must move to a geometry of sufficient reason, a Riemannian-type differential geometry which tends to give rise to discontinuity on the basis of continuity, or to ground solutions in the conditions of the problems” (DR 201). In the simplest terms, we cannot assume space itself to be a pre- existing structure. Riemannian differential geometry studies the intrinsic properties of a manifold, independent of any extrinsic space or privileged set of coordinates in which the manifold could be embedded (Lautman 2011: 112). For such a global conception of space could never account for the intrinsic morphology of space. As stated previously, topology is a branch of mathematics that deals with the morphological capacity of

218 space. For example, take a lump of modelling clay, firstly, mould it into a cube, and from that, mould it into a tetrahedron. If we only wanted to describe each of the various figures, or determine their size, a Euclidean description would suffice. But what about the production of these figures? How would we explain the internal morphology involved in the clay’s transformation from one figure to the next? As DeLanda writes,

In differential geometry, for example, one takes advantage of the fact that the calculus operates on equations expressing rates of change and that one of its operators (differentiation) gives as its output an instantaneous value for that rate of change. The points that form a space can then be defined not by rigid lengths from a fixed coordinate system (as in the metric case) but by the instantaneous rate at which curvature changes at that point. Some parts of the space will not be changing at all, other parts changing slowly, and others changing fast. A differential space, in effect, becomes a field of rapidities and slownesses, and via these infinitesimal relations one can specify neighbourhoods without having to use rigid lengths. Mathematicians refer to such a differentia space as a 'manifold' or a 'multiplicity' (DeLanda 2005: 84).

By applying pressure to the surface of the clay, say, by shaping it with our hands, the clay/space becomes transformed from one figure to the next. Throughout this process the particles in the centre remain roughly in the same location, while the particles that comprise each of the eight corners of the cube end up in different locations, at different distances from one another than initially, and can be thought as having undergone such movements with respect to one another at different speeds and slownesses. The progressive development of the embryo from an egg can be viewed externally, and as such can always be thought as changing within an extensive space, for instance, the embryo can be located within an extensive space, measured, and divided into parts. But

Embryology shows that the division of an egg into parts is secondary in relation to more significant morphogenetic movements: the augmentation of free surfaces, stretching of cellular layers, invagination by folding, regional displacement of groups. A whole kinematics of the egg appears, which implies a dynamic. Moreover, this dynamic expresses something ideal. Transport is Dionysian, divine and delirious, before it is local transfer. Types of egg are therefore distinguished by the orientations, the axes of development, the differential speeds and rhythms which are the primary factors in the actualisation of a structure and create a space and a time peculiar to that which is actualised (DR 266).

So dynamic spatial processes drive the development of the embryo while expressing

219 “something ideal”, namely, virtual multiplicities. Deleuze draws from this that the egg—and even more generally, the world itself—is ontogenetically topological. Deleuze’s “Riemannian-type differential geometry” thus posits the thesis that spaces themselves have an underlying, continuous morphology. However, unlike the infinitesimal relations of the calculus that measure the rapidities and slownesses of rates of change, spatial dynamisms neither have nor require reference to number. For Deleuze provides a more general account of variable rates of change with temporal dynamisms.

4.5.4. Temporal Dynamisms

With respect to the temporal half of the drama, “the times of differenciation incarnate the time of the structure, the time of progressive determination. Such times may be called differential rhythms in view of their role in the actualisation of the Idea” (DR 269). The first point to note is that a “progressive determination”, as we saw previously (Section 1.2.), signifies the virtual or dialectical time where the undetermined elements, reciprocal relations, and singular and regular points of Ideas insist in the pure past in a continuous state of change (perplication). This also makes sense in light of the fact that a field of individuation is “the condition of the organisation and determination of a species” (DR 314) and that “the individuals of a given species are distinguished by their participation in other species” (DR 316). Thus, like the intersubjective unconscious of psychological systems, there is a virtual whole which provides an underlying consistency for biological systems. Hereby temporal dynamisms differenciate Ideas by way of “differential rhythms”. Deleuze lists four of these rhythms central to embryogenesis: (1) rates of growth, (2) paces of development, (3) accelerations and decelerations, and (4) durations of gestation (DR 269). Ultimately, these various temporal processes can all be summarised as accelerations and decelerations, speeds and slownesses; for growth rates, developmental paces, and durations of gestation all undergo change via such rhythmic processes of accelerations and decelerations. The differential rhythms of spatiotemporal dynamisms can be read as providing a more parsimonious account of the variable present than what was given with the passive synthesis of Habit (contemplation-contraction). In Chapter 2 of DR, Deleuze explained that passive syntheses are productive of successive living presents, and that the

220 durational limit of each living present, that is, the time it takes the living present to pass according to its own succession, is inscribed by means of organic need and fatigue. But in the case of “dynamic processes”, Deleuze focuses exclusively on differential speeds and slownesses, accelerations and decelerations. In saying this, however, these dynamic temporal processes need not be read as replacing the passive synthesis of Habit, where the durational limit of each living present is inscribed by means of organic need and fatigue, but rather showing that these needs and fatigues are a matter of accelerations and decelerations. Deleuze’s account of “dynamic processes” furthermore appear to be influenced by Spinoza. As Deleuze writes of Spinoza elsewhere,

a body is defined by relations of motion and rest, of slowness and speed between particles. That is, it is not defined by a form or a function. Even the development of a form, the course of development of a form, depends on these relations, and not the reverse. The important thing is to understand life, each living entity, not as a form, or a development of a form, but as a complex relation between differential velocities, between acceleration and deceleration of particles (SPP 123).

In Deleuze’s case we can understand not only living beings, but all empirical entities, or, more accurately, all empirical entities engendered by intensive individuals, as primarily distinguished from one another in terms of their different rates of motion rather than in terms of their form (quality, species, Ego). A lion differs from a sloth, for example, in virtue of its greater capacity for accelerated movement, while igneous rocks differ from sedimentary rocks in virtue of their superior speeds of movement (over timescales of millions of years). Such an account allows for the variability of presents to extend metaphysically and include domains such as the physical (e.g., rocks and islands). For insofar as every object has a spatiotemporal dynamism, every object has a time that accelerates and decelerates and a space that alters.

4.5.5. Spatiotemporal Dynamisms: The Sensible

We have seen that intensity, Ideas, and spatiotemporal dynamisms give rise to the sensible, but what “the sensible” signifies is yet to be addressed. Deleuze characterises his transcendental empiricism as a “science of the sensible” (DR 68), and so an adequate answer to this is pivotal. The question remains as to whether intensive

221 individuals or larval subjects—whether living or non-living—have a primitive mode of sensibility. This would mean that the faculty of sensation extends beyond the psychic and the biological. Deleuze notes that sensibility is of the order of physical multiplicities, “the physical multiplicities of sensibility and sign” (DR 243), but we need a more precise account of “the sensible” if there is good reason to think that it can attributed to physical phenomena such as rocks and islands. I did not address this in the second chapter of this thesis, but in NP Deleuze was interested in similar form of sensibility with respect to the will to power. He argued that any body whatsoever—whether physical, biological, social, or psychological— possesses a capacity for being affected. It is interesting that there is a Spinozist influence in Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche, as in the following section I will come to highlight Spinoza’s influence on his account of the relationship between sensibility and thought, as he writes in NP, “Spinoza […] wanted a capacity for being affected to correspond to every quantity of force. The more ways a body could be affected the more force it had” (NP 58). Deleuze highlights that this capacity is not a physical passivity, and similarly, for Nietzsche, “the capacity for being affected is not necessarily a passivity but an affectivity, a sensibility, a sensation” (NP 58). So when the will to power manifests itself between force and force it can be considered a capacity for being affected: “the will to power manifests itself as the sensibility of force” (NP 58). Deleuze can be read as retaining a similar account of sensibility in DR but with some important modifications. On the one hand, he substitutes (transcendental) intensive quantities for (material) forces, and on the other, he argues that the capacity for being affected, for producing a sensibility, is carried out by the passivity of the passive subject. Here we can turn to Deleuze and Guattari’s Bergsonian-Plotinian approach to sensation in WIP, as apart from conceptual clarity, nothing about their view radically differs to what we find in DR. Sensation is the preservation of vibrations, the contraction of “vibration[s] that has become quality, variety” (WIP 211). To recall, for Bergson, sensation is the contraction of intensities or vibrations into a felt quality, where such qualities “belong to matter as much as to ourselves” (B 87). Deleuze and Guattari add a Plotinian element to this when they argue that such a contraction of vibrations takes place in a “soul” or “force”, in other words, in a passive subject which preserves the contraction of vibrations (WIP 211).

222

Sensation […] is on a plane of composition where sensation is formed by contracting that which composes it, and by composing itself by other sensations that contract in turn. Sensation is pure contemplation, for it is through contemplation that one contracts, contemplating oneself to the extent that one contemplates the elements from which one originates. Contemplating is creating, the mystery of passive creation, sensation. Sensation fills out the plane of composition and is filled with itself by filling itself with what it contemplates: it is ‘enjoyment’ and ‘self- enjoyment’. It is subject, or rather inject. Plotinus defined all things as contemplations, not only people and animal but plants, the earth, and rocks […] The plant contemplates by contracting the elements from which it originates—light, carbon, salts—and it fills itself with colours and odours that in each case quality its variety, its composition: it is sensation in itself (WIP 212; translation modified).

In Chapter 2 of DR, Deleuze needed to account for the organism’s capacity to sense and perceive, so contemplation-contractions were presented as a “level” of organic syntheses, a “primary sensibility that we are” (DR 93), which engender the biological organs of sensation and perception and make the “level” of sensible and perceptual syntheses possible. In the Conclusion, Deleuze states that matter itself is “populated or covered” by contemplative souls (DR 357). So he comes to affirm Plotinus’ thesis, as he does with Guattari above, that contemplation applies to all entities, “from rocks and woods, animals and men” (DR 95). Considering that contemplation-contractions are fundamentally temporal, and that organs (or parts) are produced by spatial syntheses, then I need to be more precise. A physical quality, whether pertaining to the organic or the inorganic, is a sensation in itself produced by a contraction of intensities (or vibrations) in accordance with the structuring role of physical Ideas or multiplicities, more specifically, differential relations and singularities. Contemplation-contractions (or temporal dynamisms) produce the time of the quality/sensation, that is, they give a durational rhythm to intensive vibrations and produce the presentness of a passive subject in which the elements contemplated and contracted inhere as sensation; while the synthesis of distance (or spatial dynamisms) produce the variable extensive spaces (or parts) filled by such qualities/sensations. Admittedly, it at first appears strange to attribute a faculty of sensation to rocks and islands. But the central point is neither mystical nor barbarous because it simply means that the intensities that compose an entity gives the entity itself a sensation, namely, the quality of its variety. This also accords with what Deleuze says

223 about the nature of “the sensible” with respect to psychic systems: unlike Kant, sensibility is not a pre-existing faculty of the human mind which receives sensations, but a faculty engendered by contemplation-contractions, that is, a passive subject comprised of intensities (sensation) (DR 121-122). With psychic systems (I-Self systems), intensities produce the sensibility of the passive Self and such sensibilities can in turn be interpreted by a conscious I. But Deleuze’s broader conception of sensation posits “rocks and woods, animals and men” as all having intensive quantity and Ideas as the being of their sensibility.92

Section Five. Every Thing Thinks

5.1. The Thinker of Eternal Return

Throughout the past two chapters we have encountered what are usually considered human faculties expanded as metaphysical capacities, for example, contemplation as a contractile power, the imagination as the capacity to draw difference from repetition, Memory as the preservation of the entire pure past, and sensibility as the composition of intensities into a quality or variety which belongs to matter as much as to ourselves. The final point left to explain is why (intensive) individuals—whether pertaining to species, humans, embryos, or rocks—are “thinkers” of the eternal return. As a kind of poetic summary of the intensive expression of Ideas in differenciation, Deleuze writes,

Every body, every thing, thinks and is a thought to the extent that, reduced to its intensive reasons, it expresses an Idea the actualisation of which it determines. However, the thinker himself makes his individual differences from all manner of things: it is in this sense that he is laden with stones and diamonds, plants 'and even animals'. The thinker, undoubtedly the thinker of eternal return, is the individual, the universal individual. It is he who makes use of all the

92 There are a number of other accounts that take “the sensible” as solely indicative of human sensibility but nevertheless provide important readings of the being of the sensible in psychic systems. Levi Bryant provides a lucid and detailed introduction into transcendental empiricism by situating it within the history of philosophy by focusing on its relation, and antagonism towards, classical metaphysics, classical empiricism, transcendental idealism, and phenomenology (Bryant 2008: 15-48). But he argues that the aim of Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism is to uncover the genetic factors responsible for producing our intuition (Bryant 2008: 11). Hughes reads Deleuze in correlation with Husserl and presents transcendental empiricism as a form of genetic phenomenology (Hughes 2008: 3-19 and 2009: 5-11). While Lord and Voss present insightful readings of how Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism addresses Maimon’s demand for the genesis of real experience (Lord 2011: 130-154; Voss 2013: 74-141).

224 power of the clear and the confused, of the clear-confused, in order to think Ideas in all their power as the distinct-obscure. The multiple, mobile and communicating character of individuality, its implicated character, must therefore be constantly recalled (DR 316-317).

Here Deleuze is asserting that every (intensive) individual “thinks” the eternal return insofar as it actualises an Idea in sensible intuition. The question arises: what is the pragmatic use of such an account of thinking? Why should a rock, reduced to its intensive reasons, be said “to think” just because it expresses a virtual multiplicity, more specifically, differential relations that give it qualities and singularities that give it an extensive form? Here I must return to the question raised in Chapter 3 (Section 1.6.): Is Deleuze a panpsychist? There is no easy answer to this question, as there are many variants of panpsychism. In general, panpsychism tends to address the relation between being and mind, with the overall goal of providing an ontology that “links being and mind” (Skrbina 2005: 4). The focus is largely on what minds or mind-like properties are, and how, and at what level, they fit in nature. For example, Thomas Nagel defines panpsychism as “the view that the basic physical constituents of the universe have mental properties, whether or not they are parts of living organisms” (Nagel 1979: 181). But panpsychism is a broad and complex field, which is difficult—if not impossible—to capture with a single definition. For instance, there are more palatable, less contentious variants of panpsychism, namely: “pansensism”, where all things have a form of sense or sentience that permits them to react to external stimuli; or “panexperientialism”, where all things have a form of subjective experience (Skrbina 2005: 20-22).93 Elements of Deleuze’s metaphysics in DR, such as his conception of contemplation-contraction, can be read as falling under the rubric of these “experimental” variants of panpsychism, which, in the simplest sense, posit individuals as having a subjective experience of the world (its milieu).94 It is important to note, however, that Deleuze implicitly approaches

93 Skrbina provides a concise and detailed analysis of the various forms of panpsychism in Western philosophy, which not only works as a useful introduction into the diversity of the field but also shows that there is a diversity of figures who either implicitly or explicitly engaged with panpsychic views, including, but not limited to, Spinoza, Leibniz, Samuel Butler, William James, Charles Sanders Pierce, Bergson, Gabriel Tarde, Whitehead, and Gregory Bateson (Skrbina 2005). There has also been a surge of interest in panpsychism in recent times, which has been well captured in a number of edited volumes (Strawson et al. 2006; Skrbina 2009; Blamauer 2011). 94 Skrbina outlines a number of positive arguments in favour of the panpsychism. One of these that is arguably implicit in Deleuze’s metaphysics, especially with respect to his account of the passive synthesis of Habit (e.g., contemplation-contraction, organismal sensibility, instinct (memory), learning (intelligence), lived experience, and a primitive mode of thought in the form of interpreting signs), is the

225 the problem of panpsychism as a metaphysical problem, and not as a problem pertaining to a theory of mind. The metaphysical conception of thought I develop below could also be catagorised as “panpsychist”, but it is so in a highly specific manner. For with respect to the claim, “Every body, every thing, thinks”, Deleuze’s primary focus is not on mind, but on thinking.95 Perhaps Deleuze could be charged here with an anthropomorphism, but such an accusation would rely on the assumption that thinking is uniquely human. Here I suggest that by inverting the argument and viewing the thought of a psychic system as merely an instance of thinking, Deleuze can be read as attempting to dissolve the classical metaphysical dualism between being and thought. As Iain Hamilton Grant frames the problem (although not in reference to Deleuze), “if nature does not think, dualism follows; if it does, then nature is capable of more than the production of anoetic and inert substances with which it is usually and, in some quarters, grudgingly accredited” (Hamilton Grant 2009: 287). For if thinking is the intensive expression of Ideas, then thinking is problem solving. No doubt Deleuze pays the most attention to “thinking” with respect to psychic systems, which he addresses in two sections of DR. In Chapter 3, he outlines a new image of thought in opposition to the dogmatic or representational image of thought, which relies upon identity in the concept, resemblance in perception, opposition in predication, and analogy in judgment (DR xiii-iv). Deleuze is not totally at odds with representational thought; his point is that by taking this image of thought as primary,

“Argument from Dynamic Sensitivity—The ability of living systems to feel and to experience derives from their dynamic sensitivity to their environment; this holds true for humans and, empirically, down to the simplest one-celled creatures. By extension, we know that all physical systems are dynamic and interactive, and therefore all, to a corresponding degree, may be said to experience and feel” (Skrbina 2005: 250-251). 95 Yet in saying this, Deleuze writes, “Actualisation takes place in three series: space, time and also consciousness. Every spatio-temporal dynamism is accompanied by the emergence of an elementary consciousness which itself traces directions, doubles movements and migrations, and is born on the threshold of the condensed singularities of the body or object whose consciousness it is. It is not enough to say that consciousness is consciousness of something: it is the double of this something, and everything is consciousness because it possesses a double, even if it is far off and very foreign” (DR 273). Roffe suggests that the reference to “consciousness” here is a reference to Ruyer’s “self-survey” or “overflight” [survol] (Roffe 2015: 49). I do not have the space to recount Ruyer’s argument in detail, and neither is it essential for understanding the metaphysical conception of thinking I will propose, but the point is that the “self-survey” is a “true form” or “form in itself that does not refer to an external point of view […] It is an absolute constituent form that surveys itself independently of any supplementary dimension, which does not appeal therefore to any transcendence” (WIP 210). For Deleuze in DR, then, this elementary consciousness is an intensive individual, a spatiotemporal dynamism, and as a “true form” it does not refer to a supplementary dimension—or to a pre-existing space and time—to explain its emergence, but rather it is “endlessly ‘being formed’” (Fold 117) as an internal dynamic process. For more on Ruyer’s survol and its influence on Deleuze, see: Bains 2002: 101-116; Alliez 2004: 62-71; Bogue 2009: 300-320; Roffe 2015: 48-50.

226 which has been the case with the history of philosophy, we preclude that which underlies thought itself, namely, the intensive differences which not only engender these representational elements of thought,96 but also provide the potential for non- representational or superior images of thought. In a superior activity of thought, thinking takes place when the psychic (I-Self) system is provoked by a “fundamental encounter” (DR 176), which is to say, when it is provoked by the being of the sensible: Ideas and intensities. And inasmuch “thinking” involves the intensive expression of Ideas in sensible intuition, it signifies a creative, experimental, problem-solving activity. In Chapter 4, Deleuze outlines how Ideas as multiplicities constitute speculative and practical problems in thought by formulating the method of vice-diction, a procedure for how we describe, confront, and draw connections between problems (DR 238). Hereby problems need to be discovered, and the virtual-ideal field of individuation, the virtual realm of problems-Ideas, signifies the unconscious of thought. Learning is ultimately an “infinite” task, writes Deleuze, for to learn is to present (a part of) the “unconscious”: “the Idea and ‘learning’ express that extra-propositional or sub- representative problematic instance: the presentation of the unconscious, not the representation of consciousness” (DR 241). But the unconscious in question is “collective or cosmic” (DR 129), which is to say, it refers to the World as a whole: Ideas as both distinct and obscure and intensities as both clear and confused. So while the intensive expression of an Idea presents a part of the World, the focus here is on Deleuze’s metaphysical conception of thought rather than how this conception of thought applies more specifically to psychic systems and learning. The proposition “every body, every thing, thinks” is a univocal one. It is not the thought of univocity, but a univocal thought. Deleuze’s univocal ontology affirms that everything “is” in one and the same sense because everything “is” difference. “Being is said in a single and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of which it is said differs: it is said of difference itself” (DR 45). A plant “is”, a rock “is”, and a human being “is” in the same sense because the intensive differences of which they are composed differ. Likewise, every thought “is” in a single and same sense because every thought is different—or every thought solves a problem but every problem is different. The proposed ubiquity of thinking provides a smooth and continuous interpretation of

96 “Opposition, resemblance, identity and even analogy are only effects produced by these presentations of difference, rather than being conditions which subordinate difference and make it something represented” (DR 182).

227 the world by positing reality itself as problem solving: “to think” is to dramatise, to actualise an Idea in sensible intuition. But considering that thinking is determined by the pure form of determinability (eternal return), that it is always subject to a universal groundlessness, then a more complete formula would be: to think is to dramatise, but to dramatise is to think the eternal return. So in any case, each and every individual— whether psychic, biological, or physical—“thinks” the eternal return insofar as it dramatises a problem-Idea in sensible intuition.97 With such a metaphysical conception of thought, the metaphysics of classical Rationalism exemplified, on the one hand, by Spinoza’s God or Nature, and on the other, by Leibniz’s universe as a totality (which mirrors God’s understanding), can be seen to culminate in Nietzsche’s eternal return or chaos. The problem here is not whether Deleuze is a “Spinozist”, a “Leibnizian”, or a “Nietzschean”, for he should be read as creating a metaphysical collage out of their respective philosophies. Thus, his univocal conception of thought is a conceptual multiplicity. I will attempt to shed some light on this issue in three points. Firstly, Deleuze can be read as dissolving the classical metaphysical dualism between being and thought, and thus presenting thought as an immanent capacity of the world, by turning to Spinoza’s thesis that God or Nature possesses an infinite power of Thought. Spinoza defines God as the one absolutely infinite substance which consists of an infinity of attributes (Ethics 1D6). In EPS, Deleuze defines God’s “absolute” power of existence as twofold: “God, that is the absolutely infinite, possesses two equal powers: the power of existing and acting, and the power of thinking and knowing […] If the absolute thus possesses two powers, it does so in and through itself, involving them in its radical unity” (EPS 118). This “radical unity” is seen when Spinoza defines God as “what is in itself and conceived through itself”, meaning that he does not require the concept of another thing to explain his formation (Ethics D3); for he is neither caused nor effected but necessarily exists (Ethics P11). But as a unified substance, God nevertheless possesses attributes that are “really distinct” (Ethics 1P10), which are not

97 For alternative accounts that provide a metaphysical analysis of the individual as thinker see: Williams 2003: 202-206; Roffe 2015: 51-56. This is not the place to reproduce their arguments, but as a brief guide: Williams argues that the individual as thinker is representative of “a process of individuation, of actual and virtual relations that work against a necessary identification” (Williams 2015: 205); Roffe argues that while the representational thought of a psychic system is indicative of a “subjectal thought”, the individual who thinks the eternal return, whether of the order of a physical, biological, or psychic system, is indicative of an “objectal thought” synonymous with “expressive individuation: what is expressed is the virtual, by way of the individual” (Roffe 2015: 51-53).

228 numerical (i.e., “ontological”), as numerical distinction is not real and real distinction is not numerical, but instead “qualitative” or formal (EPS 35-37; cf. DR 50). This means that each and every attribute is an infinite quality that expresses “the essence of substance each in its own way” (Voss 2017: 161). So while God possesses an infinity of infinite attributes, all equal to one another, neither of which inferior or superior, we know of only two because we ourselves are modes of them. “Thought is an attribute of God, or God is a thinking thing” and “Extension is an attribute of God, or God is an extended thing” (Ethics 2P1 and 2P2; emphasis removed). Correlatively, minds and bodies are the respective modes of the infinite attributes of Thought and Extension. Importantly, although we are modes of Thought and Extension, as we possess a mind and a body, we are not the only modes of these attributes—or to say the same thing, we are not the only minds and bodies. For each and every thing—e.g., a human, a plant, a rock—is at once mind (or idea) and body (or thing): “it is in this sense that all individuals are animate” (SPP 86; cf. Ethics II P13 schol.). Deleuze, however, provides a broad conception of modes as “degrees of power”, which is to say, on the one hand, that the modes are the intensive realities of the attributes, and on the other, that they inhabit substance “like individuating factors or intrinsic and intense degrees” (DR 50). As I mentioned, we are such modes and thus we know of only two of God’s infinite attributes, meaning that our knowledge of God’s attributes and modes are limited; however, our knowledge of God’s absolutely infinite power itself is not limited: for God possesses the absolute power of existing and so he produces an infinity of attributes in an infinity of modes, and God possesses an infinite power of thinking and so he thinks an infinite power of attributes in an infinity of attributes (EPS 118). With this in mind, Spinoza conceptualises God as existing independent of the attributes and the modes, as “substance is prior in nature to its affections” (Ethics P1), and he conceptualises anything that “is”, such as a mode, as “in” God (Ethics P15). Although the outline presented is merely schematic, the essential point is that we find in Spinoza a division into substance, attributes, and modes. In DR, Deleuze does not appear to be interested in the role of the attributes in Spinoza, as his primary concern is the relation between the modes and substance. He criticises Spinoza when he argues that the modes are dependent on substance, but substance pre-exists and is thus independent of the modes, which means the modes are

229 as though dependent on something other than themselves […] Substance must itself be said of the modes and only of the modes. Such a condition can be satisfied only at the price of a more general categorical reversal according to which being is said of becoming, identity of that which is different, the one of the multiple (DR 50).

For Spinoza, then, God precedes the modes, Identity precedes difference, or the One precedes the many (cf. DR 50). We will see in the third point below that Deleuze substitutes his theory of eternal return for Spinoza’s God or substance in DR, which provides a categorical reversal such that identity revolves around the Different. Setting aside Deleuze’s criticism of Spinoza, he can nonetheless be read as influenced by his theory of God or substance insofar as he proposes that the world itself possesses an infinite (but not absolute!) power of thought. For when an intensive individual expresses an Idea in sensible intuition, thinking takes places. The movement runs from the virtual to the actual via the intensive, which is to say, from Ideas to sensibility via thought. In EPS and SPP, Deleuze provides a complex discussion on the “parallelism” between ideas and extensive things, or minds and bodies, in Spinoza (EPS 113-117, 126-128; SPP 86-91). The essential point about this notion of “parallelism” is that it accounts for a corresponding relation without causal interaction. The mind (idea) and the body (extensive thing) do not causally interact due to the fact that they depend upon entirely different attributes, respectively, the attributes of Extension and the attributes of Thought, but nonetheless as two different modes of the same substance (God) they parallel one another such that what occurs in one occurs (although not in the same way) in the other (SPP 87-88). Irrespective of Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza, which is far more nuanced than what I just presented, we find in DR a form of “parallelism”—a non-causal interaction—between the virtual and the actual, or between Ideas (differential relations and singularities) and sensibility (qualities-extensities, species-parts, Egos-Selves). More specifically, we have an ontological parallelism between two metaphysical capacities that differ in kind, Ideas and sensibility, such that these capacities participate in a metaphysical and non-representational form of thought. I have explained throughout this thesis that in the case of the actualisation of the virtual, the virtual does not become the actual; instead, it merely structures actualisation. Likewise, Ideas do not become sensibility; instead, they merely structure it. With this in mind, the parallelism between the virtual and the actual, between Ideas and sensibility, can be characterised in three ways: (1) it is non-causal (e.g., the virtual does not cause

230 the actual and vice versa), (2) it maintains a difference in kind between the “two halves of difference, the dialectical half and the aesthetic half” (DR 274), insofar as (3) it is determined by the intensive power of thought, which is to say, as I will explain below, it expresses the eternal return. Secondly, insofar as an individual expresses an Idea it expresses all Ideas and all intensities by making “use of all the power of the clear and the confused, of the clear- confused, in order to think Ideas in all their power as the distinct-obscure” (DR 317). Hence each individual “is laden with stones and diamonds, plants 'and even animals'” (DR 316-317) precisely because each individual takes a perspective on the whole world of Ideas and intensities. As Williams suggests, “An individual […] is like the Leibnizian monad […] It is the whole world but only under a singular perspective” (Williams 2003: 186). In EPS, Deleuze notes that a Leibnizian monad and a Spinozist mode both refer to “an individual as an expressive centre” (EPS 327; translation modified). But for Deleuze in DR: unlike Leibniz’s metaphysics, each individual is not a monad that expresses the universe as a totality; and unlike Spinoza’s metaphysics, each individual is not a mode that expresses God. I do not have the space to go into detail regarding the similarities and differences between Spinoza and Leibniz, so I limit myself to making two essential (albeit brief) points. On the one hand, both Spinoza’s God and Leibniz’s world as a totality (which mirrors God’s understanding) pre-exist their expressions. For Spinoza, God as substance is independent of and pre-exists the modes that express it. Similarly, for Leibniz, the world does not exist apart from the monads that express it, but “the world, as that which is expressed in common by all monads, pre-exists its expressions” (DR 58; emphasis added). On the other hand, both Spinoza’s God as substance and Leibniz’s world as totality are atemporal and thus unchanging. For Spinoza, God is an infinite and eternal substance, and his eternality contrasts with duration (SPP 66). Thus God as substance does not concede to the powers of duration, but exists necessarily. For Leibniz, “all that happens in the universe, past, present and future” bears a certain resemblance to God’s “infinite perception or power of knowing” (Leibniz 1960: 418). Every monad that expresses the world from its own perspective, or every individual notion of an individual, is preordained in God’s infinite understanding. In this manner, every individual is merely a possible realisation of the world as a totality, and the totality of the world itself is a being (without duration), not a becoming. So in contrast to an atemporal world that pre-exists its expressions, that remains

231 grounded in the logic of Identity or the One, Deleuze posits the world itself as one of infinite modulation: eternal return (see: Chapter 3, Section 3). Thirdly, the individual as the thinker of eternal return expresses the world in its perpetual becoming, which Deleuze calls, borrowing the neologism from James Joyce, the “chaosmos” (DR 249, 372). For the individual who dramatises an Idea in sensible intuition, who expresses the world from a singular perspective, not only expresses the absolutely new insofar as the eternal return as transcendental principle is evoked as an infinite power of modulation, but also brings about a change in the world as a whole— of all Ideas and all intensities. So although Deleuze states that the pure past in general “pre-exists” the passing of a living present, this is only in principle, for in fact it is constantly undergoing change in accordance with the actual (parallelism). The world as a whole does not exist independently of the individuals who express it, and it does not pre-exist its expressions without changing in accordance with them. Like Simondon’s seed crystal in a supersaturated solution, the individual and the world are inextricably tied to one another: the individual changes the world and vice versa. Certainly, this change might be infinitesimal, but it is change nonetheless.

232 Conclusion

This thesis set out to examine and clarify Deleuze’s genetic account of real experience, or transcendental empiricism, in DR. I commenced this project by using Deleuze’s earlier readings of Kant’s metaphysic of experience (knowledge), Kant’s genetic account of real experience, and Nietzsche’s metaphysics of becoming as an entry point into DR as a thesis in metaphysics. In Chapter 1, I examined Deleuze’s interpretation of Kant’s faculty of knowledge in the CPR as a “metaphysic of experience”, where metaphysics, for Kant, is no longer “about objects but rather about reason—that is, about the structure of human cognition” (Ameriks 1992: 259). We saw that Kant splits the (human) subject into two faculties, receptive sensibility (intuition) and active understanding (concept), such that these two faculties differ in nature yet harmonise. On Deleuze’s interpretation, these two faculties harmonise insofar as the understanding legislates in the faculty of knowledge by subsuming sensible intuitions under its categories by means of the imagination (syntheses and schematism). I explained that, for Deleuze, the essential problem with Kant’s approach is that he traces the transcendental structures of cognition from the psychological self, and so the former forms a mere image of the latter. While Deleuze argues that Kant responded to Maimon’s demand that transcendental philosophy needs to be genetic rather than conditioning by providing a genesis of the intelligibility of phenomena in the CPJ, I showed that this notion of genesis remains tied to a form of transcendence, namely, reason as the timeless ground of the Critical philosophy. Therefore, Kant’s form of transcendental genesis cannot be considered a form of transcendental empiricism because the latter, as I explained in the following chapters, necessitates a theory of time that accounts for the emergence of the absolutely new. In Chapter 2, I examined Deleuze’s systematic reconstruction of Nietzsche’s metaphysics of becoming (transcendental critique) as comprised of differential forces, the will to power as the transcendental principle of becoming, and the eternal return of difference as the temporal affirmation of becoming. I showed that it “rewrites” Kantian critique: (1) by making synthesis a capacity of force relations rather than a capacity of the mind (e.g., the synthesis between concept and intuition or the synthesis of appearances by the imagination); (2) by making synthesis genetic (i.e., of phenomena as signs) rather than conditioning; and (3) by providing a metaphysical account of time in

233 terms of the synthesis of the past, the present, and the future rather than a form of (human) temporality given by the schematism of the imagination and the modes of time. With respect to Deleuze’s interpretation of the will to power, I showed that there is no distinct separation between force and will for Nietzsche, and thus the notion of the will to power as a transcendental principle lacks support. I also showed that Deleuze’s reading of the eternal return of difference was not supported in Nietzsche’s texts—as for Nietzsche, with force processes and space finite, and time infinite in both directions, the same set of forces consequently return ad infinitum. Regardless of these disparities between Nietzsche’s texts and Deleuze’s reading, his account of the will to power as a principle of sufficient reason provided a means to move beyond Kant’s phenomena-noumena distinction, which he developed in DR (Chapter 4, Section 2). Furthermore, his Bergson-inspired “Dionysian interpretation” of the eternal return, which accords with Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles, led to a remarkable conclusion about the nature of the world in flux. For the relation between the will to power and the eternal return of difference posits the world in flux as comprised of becomings, each one of which possessing its own duration (pure chaos). This chapter not only showed that a superior or transcendental empiricism necessitates a theory of time that accounts for the perpetual emergence of the absolutely new, but also that NP provides a preliminary sketch of a post-death of God, post-Kantian, neo-Leibnizian metaphysics where each composite of force relations (or body) takes a perspective on the world as a whole (chaos). This proved to be important because both these readings came to be developed as central aspect of DR (as I showed in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, Section 5). In Chapter 3, I aimed to illuminate the three syntheses of time, the nature of their interdependency, and the divergent ways they have been interpreted in the secondary scholarship. Times were shown to arise from the synthesis of intensive differences: each and every contemplation-contraction (Habit) is a synthesis of intensive differences and gives rise to a variable living present; each variable living present takes a perspective on the whole pure past (Memory) that neither passes nor ceases to exist; and the eternal return of the future necessitates the perpetual introduction of intensive difference in both Habit and Memory. I concluded that because the three syntheses are interdependent, and the first synthesis of time goes only as far as the biological domain (the living present as contemplation-contraction), then, in the strict sense, the three syntheses provide a form

234 of organic temporality. In this way, Deleuze primarily used a biological system— although he also relied upon psychic systems throughout (e.g., the intersubjective unconscious)—in order to expound the three syntheses as a metaphysical thesis. In Chapter 4, with reference to some of the diverse interpretations in the secondary scholarship, I examined the systematic connection between the processes involved in Deleuze’s metaphysical account of transcendental genesis (the three syntheses of space and time, differentiation, individuation, differenciation, dramatisation), how these processes involved a metaphysics of difference (intensive quantity), and the relation between the virtual, the actual, and the intensive. I argued for a two registers view of reality, the virtual and the actual, where neither of these has superiority over the other. For the actualisation of the virtual (differenciation) also produces the virtual (differentiation), as throughout the process of actualisation Ideas themselves are combined and recombined in the pure past as multiplicities (perplication). I claimed that the process of intensive quantity—individuation—is the determinate power of this movement, and therefore intensities are involved in both differentiation (the field of individuation: primary intensities and Ideas) and differenciation (the individual: secondary intensities and spatiotemporal dynamisms). In contrast to the three registers view adopted by DeLanda and Protevi, I explained that intensive quantity should not be understood as comprising its own register because the ontological split between the virtual and the actual is temporal: it involves the preservation of the pure past, and the passing of the present. Thus, individuation must have a foot in each register, which is why Deleuze’s genetic account of real experience takes the form indi-drama-(different/ciation). This was demonstrated in my reconstruction of the connection between the three syntheses of time and the three syntheses of space (spatiotemporal complexes), where intensive individuals as dynamic spatiotemporal processes actualise the differential relations and singularities of Ideas (the virtual) in qualities and extensities, species and parts, Egos and Selves (the actual). In the final section of this chapter, I examined the notion of individuals as “thinkers” of eternal return and indicated that they “think” the eternal return insofar as they intensively express (or dramatise) problems-Ideas in sensibility (as empirical diversity). This can be seen as concluding on the issue with which the thesis started. For Kant, thought is anthropocentric and representational: the two human faculties that differ in kind, receptive sensibility (intuition) and active understanding (concept), form

235 a unity (harmonise) insofar as the understanding legislates over sensible intuition. For Deleuze, thought is panpsychist and non-representational: the two metaphysical capacities that differ in kind, Ideas (virtual) and sensibility (actual), parallel one another and involve a univocal power of thought (intensity). Thus, insofar as an individual thinks the eternal return, insofar as it expresses an Idea in sensibility, then it quite literally brings about a change in the entire world: all ideas (distinct-obscure) and all intensities (clear-confused). Throughout the final two chapters I have attempted to clarify Deleuze’s synthetic and constructive approach to metaphysics by drawing upon the ways he incorporates yet alters (sometimes radically) various philosophical concepts and problems (e.g., Maimon’s problematic of transcendental genesis, Bergson’s virtual-actual distinction, Simondon’s model of individuation, et cetera). Much more, of course, could be said on each of the figures addressed and their influence on Deleuze; and much more could be said on the nature of the component parts of his system and how they form an organic unity. This is especially the case with my schematic overview of the connection between the three syntheses of time and space and my analysis of Deleuze’s connection of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Nietzsche. My concluding view is that DR can be read as sympathetic towards aspects of panpsychist metaphysics, and that there is room for much more exploration on this issue. I have shown three key points that highlight Deleuze’s panpsychist commitments. (1) In my discussion on the passive synthesis of Habit, I suggested that contemplation-contraction denotes a form of organic panpsychism (Chapter 3, Section 1.6.), but afterwards I came to show that contemplation-contractions apply to matter itself (DR 357) and have a distinctly Plotinian and Bergsonian influence (Chapter 4, Section 4.5.5.). In this way, the concept of contemplation-contraction can be read in accordance with Skrbina’s “Argument from Dynamic Sensitivity”, which asserts that “all physical systems are dynamic and interactive, and therefore all, to a corresponding degree, may be said to experience and feel” (Skrbina 2005: 250-251). (2) I pointed out that intensive individuals as spatiotemporal dynamisms involve an “elementary consciousness” (Chapter 4, Section 5), which, as Roffe suggest, can be read as a reference to Ruyer’s “self-survey” or “overflight” [survol]. Although a number of commentators have addressed Ruyer’s psycho-biology and its influence on Deleuze

236 in DR (see especially: Bogue 2009: 300-320; Roffe 2015: 48-50), there is room for further exploration on this connection in terms of the problem of panpsychism. (3) In the final section of this thesis (Chapter 4, Section 5), with respect to the “thinker” of eternal return, I made a conceptual connection between Deleuze and Spinoza on the nature of thought and parallelism. Further analysis, however, could be conducted on this relationship in terms of the problem of panpsychism, as for Spinoza, every individual is at once mind and body, or idea and extensive thing, while similarly for Deleuze, every individual is at once Idea and sensibility and every individual involves a univocal conception of thought. Although a number of works deal with Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza in detail (e.g., Howie 2002; Duffy 2006a; Voss 2017), they do not address the issue of panpsychism. The one work I am aware of that does address the relation between Spinoza and Deleuze in terms of the problem of panpsychism only briefly notes that Deleuze’s account of contemplation-contraction bears a resemblance to Spinoza’s thesis that all levels of reality contain mind (i.e., each extensive thing has a corresponding idea) (Beever and Cisney 2013: 357-360).98 Although I did not address the specific problem of panpsychism with respect to Leibniz, but only invoked Leibniz’s theory of the monad and how it expresses the world, he can be seen as another important influence, as he held that all individuals are capable of perception and appetition, and thus to some extent all individuals possess minds or souls: “there is a whole world of creatures—of organisms, animals, entelechies, and souls—even in the least piece of matter” (Monadology Section 66). Furthermore, Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari address Whitehead’s concept of “prehension” in a number of works (ATP 78-79, 311; Fold 88-93; WIP 154), for instance, Deleuze writes in The Fold: “Prehension is individual unity. Everything prehends its antecedents and its concomitants and, by degrees, prehends a world. The

98 In terms of the secondary scholarship more broadly, I have noted that Protevi provides the most comprehensive account of Deleuze in DR as a panpsychist (Chapter 3, Section 1.6.). He argues: firstly, that Deleuze provides a form of “biological panpsychism” in his discussion on the passive synthesis of Habit, as every organism has a subjective position and a capacity of sense-making (Protevi 2013: 156); and secondly, that in the final chapters of DR Deleuze embraces a “total panpsychism”: all spatiotemporal dynamisms, including rocks and islands, have a psyche in which information transfer and self- organisation occurs, such that spatiotemporal dynamisms themselves are “self-organizing cybernetic mind[s]” (Protevi 2013: 194-195). Although I focused primarily on the individual as the thinker of eternal return and thus dealt with Deleuze’s metaphysical account of thought rather than the nature of mind, Protevi’s analysis is invaluable insofar as it laid the groundwork for understanding Deleuze’s implied panpsychist commitments in DR. Nevertheless, he provides a reconstructive account that aligns Deleuze with modern views of panpsychism (e.g., Evan Thompson’s Mind in Life), rather than focusing on the source of Deleuze’s influence, which makes his reading somewhat tendentious.

237 eye is a prehension of light. Living beings prehend water, soil, carbon, and salts” (Fold: 88). There is an obvious similarity here with his own account of contemplation- contraction, as presented in both DR and WIP. A number of commentators have drawn comparisons between aspects of Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari’s thought and Whitehead’s concept of prehension (Cloots 2009; Halewood 2009; Stengers 2009; Williams 2009), but not specifically with reference to DR and the problem of panpsychism. In sum, Deleuze’s conception of the individual as the thinker of eternal return, as both spatiotemporal dynamism and contemplation-contraction, is: (1) conceptually comprised of parts of (at least) Plotinus, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bergson, and Ruyer’s philosophies; and (2) can be read as sharing a conceptual similarity with Whitehead’s concept of prehension. This makes Deleuze’s concept of the individual conceptually rich and experimental, but at the same time open for multiple interpretations. Yet with all this said about the experimental and speculative nature of Deleuze’s metaphysics in DR, it nevertheless retains a classical form. We saw this systematic form with both his reconstruction of Nietzsche’s superior empiricism and his own account of transcendental empiricism in DR. For although these systems are open to apprehend the absolutely new insofar as they are grounded in a principle of difference, they are entirely classical when compared to ATP as a system in “perpetual heterogeneity” (Deleuze 2007: 361; emphasis removed), that is, as a “system” that lacks a single systematic form but is capable of forming a diversity of systematic forms—for a particular time and a particular place—through the connection of concepts with others across different plateaus and with the “outside”. My suggestion is that Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari can be read as constantly readdressing and reassessing the problem of the genesis of real experience throughout their work, and that this radical difference between DR and ATP is a case in point. In his preface to the English translation of DR, Deleuze claims that the third chapter, which deals with the traditional image of thought and the search for new images of thought, seems to him “the most necessary and the most concrete” (DR xv). But he also states: “All that I have done since is connected to this book, including what I wrote with Guattari (obviously, I speak from my own point of view)” (DR xiii). I take the suggestion that the third chapter was “the most necessary and the most concrete” to mean that it dealt with a particular problem in detail (i.e., the image of thought) that

238 became central to his work thereafter. Be that as it may, one might equally argue that the experimental aim to arrive at a genetic account of real experience, like the search for new images of thought, serves as an “[introduction to] subsequent books up to and including the research undertaken with Guattari” (DR xv). The problem of the genesis of real experience, no doubt, played a pertinent—if not central—role in Deleuze’s monographs prior to DR, and he appears to hold to this position up until his final essay, Immanence: A Life, where he speaks of transcendental empiricism as a means to explore the transcendental field (or plane of immanence) that eludes the transcendence of the subject and of the object (IL 25-26). I am not claiming that Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari’s work “as a whole” attempt to provide a genetic account of real experience, or that they aim for an ideal—or superlative—genetic account of experience, or that this is the fundamental problem that drives their work. Rather, my point is that the idea of genesis, the elements of genesis, and real experience itself are constantly re- problematised throughout their work—as the difference between DR and ATP highlighted. Overall, I am in agreement with Patton’s suggestion that “[Deleuze’s] philosophical works do not form a single continuous texts. His practice of philosophy is more problematic or problem driven than this way of reading it would allow. There is always movement and discontinuity in his thinking from one problem or series of problems to the next” (Patton 2010: 10). So even though we cannot excavate a “genetic account of real experience” from DR to use for subsequent works, DR nevertheless offers a wealth of conceptual and thematic resources useful for tracing the genealogy of latter conceptual innovations (e.g., multiplicities and spatiotemporal processes), not just in terms of their similarities but also—and more importantly—in terms of their dissimilarities and divergences. This thesis aimed to shed light on the systematic connection of Deleuze’s metaphysics in DR and highlight some of the more elusive and speculative aspects of his thought, most notably, his metaphysical account of thinking. So whether or not it has been found somewhat convincing or thought-provoking, I hope nonetheless that it has provided some groundwork that will assist future readers in deciding between the wildly divergent interpretations of DR in the secondary literature.

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