@@deleuzephilosophy Really!? I assume it is not one of the ones translated into English, I don't see it on Dan smith's site yet. But truly his lectures are so rich, I'm working through vel of thought rn
@@cathel. The "problematic" is a core tenet of Deleuze's thought, so for example the velocities of thought would be the specific problem he raises in relation to Spinoza's book V of the Ethics. Which is one of the best seminars imo. Agree, the seminars are extremely interesting.
This is a great video. It’s got my mind going. To comment on the first synthesis of time: it reminds me of Susanne Langer’s concept of the sign. An example of a sign would be “smoke therefore fire.” For Langer, this logic isn’t one of contemplation or the mind but of perception itself. What we perceive are these signs. Perception, in this case, is prelinguistic and comes before the faculty of the understanding is engaged. JJ Gibson has a concept called “affordances” that is similar. For Gibson we perceive affordances in our environment which gives us prelinguistic information about the affectivity of our environment. For example: we tend to perceive “walkable” surfaces and this affordance is perceived specifically because we have feet that can step. The main similarity between all these concepts is that this fundamental logical system isn’t located in the mind but in the body and the environment. For Deleuze, the first synthesis of time constitutes the foundation of logic and the mind. For Langer, the embryo of logic and mind is signs. For Gibson, affordances are the impetus of logic and mind. Now for the second synthesis: Langer’s concept of the symbol seems to coincide here. She believes that creatures using symbols (mostly humans besides a select few apes) is a sign of a memory that functions as Deleuze has described the second synthesis of time. I’m not sure if Langer gives us an account of how or why this capacity of memory, the complimentary actuality and virtuality, emerges. It’s interesting though because she says that an ape she studied showed signs of engaging with this pure past when the ape began using symbols to comfort itself when its caretaker was absent. What’s interesting is that the ape was upset and “split” because the caretaker was absent and to try and complete the “whole” or the circle (the whole being the ape and caretaker together) the ape would cuddle with some overalls from the caretaker, the overalls bring the symbol: the overalls symbolized the caretaker. This behavior of being upset that something one cares for is absent reminds me of the split when someone asks “Am I the cause or the effect? Am I mind or body?” Either way, symbols represent the absent past in a present. I wonder now if the trauma of losing people to death in combination with our capacity to perceive signs lead to our ability to create symbols so fluidly. Symbols, in the case of Langer, are pacifiers to the tragedy of loss: this reminds me of Deleuze’s idea that we are “forced to think.” If my memory serves me, Gibson’s notion of memory was founded in perception. His idea was that memory was just a consequence of the function of our perception, the function being not to perceive reality as it is but to perceive affordances that give us information about the affectivity of the environment. More specifically, we perceive the invariant structures of the environment which signals what the affordance is. For example, edges of objects tells us there are parts of the object that exist even though we aren’t actively looking at the occluded side. He extends this idea of “being able to “perceive” things which are absent due to occlusion” to memory. For instance, he can remember how his home looked from his office by virtue of using the capacity of perception to perceive beyond the present surfaces: perhaps we can say we don’t only perceive surfaces but also depth and depth is the path towards the past. I’m still not quite clear on Gibson’s notions here and I’m not sure how they link up with Deleuze’s or Langer’s ideas either. Now that I’ve gotten through the third synthesis, I’m far less confident in what I wrote above but far more intrigued by the whole thing. I think for Langer the next step for the ape, as I described above, would be to undo the circle of time to the third synthesis in order to do something about the situation. Maybe instead of being pacified by the symbol the symbol drives the ape to action, to come up with a plan, to actualize an intention. This is something humans have done: something in our development made it so we cannot be simply pacified with our symbols (perhaps we can say we built a tolerance). Symbols now prompt people to act, as we’ve seen very thoroughly in the 20th century. Now, in the age of social media, I’m not so confident symbols quite activate the affective faculty anymore and perhaps now pacify more than anything, at least for many. Or perhaps affirmative action is burned out through mindless tweets. For Gibson, I’m even less certain about it all. I think Gibson’s notion of time is similar to Deleuze’s third synthesis where memory is founded on perception which is founded on affectivity. For Gibson, I believe the future is prioritized and we work backwards from there. I suppose for Gibson, perception (a function of the body) perceives things that are distant from the body and this gives us information about how much time and effort it would take something to reach us or us to reach it, which is a sense of future action. The aggregate of images (Bergson’s term from Matter and Memory), that being the contraction of distances and times between the sense organ and objects around it, coordinates the singular self which gives us a sense of the present, especially if something does collide with us (we feel the pain now). I believe Manuel DeLanda has something to say about this sort of thing in his latest book. And then I would suppose that perceiving things over and over again, the repetitions of our lives (seeing the same parents everyday, the same home everyday, the same dog, etc etc as we grow and have more diverse repetitions) begins this process of developing a sense of the past. The expectation of something familiar reappearing constitutes the past, or something like that. So that was a lot. Lol. It’s all very interesting. Sorry it wasn’t super concise. I’m still working out these ideas. I’ve had the idea that Langer and Gibson would pair well with Deleuze and this video gave me a bit more motivation to figure it out. Thanks a lot for all your efforts!
Awesome stuff, thanks for sharing! Langer and Gibson sound like super interesting authors, definitely worth a read (which reminds me yet again of how little time I have :D) but I agree, the importance of signs, for us and perhaps for primates as well, can't be overstated. In fact, in the books on cinema, Deleuze does a typology of signs based on Peirce's pragmatics. Peirce's notions of firstness/secondness/thirdness are arguably very close to the three syntheses of time. I also share the interest for the social media phenomenon, but I don't know what to make of it. The rate of information sounds like a key to understanding it, because on the one hand there's the immediate tweet which is like a cut in the flow of information ("we're all going to die in 5 minutes! Run!"), and on the other there are podcasts that last 3+ hours... Let's hope the internet won't turn Hegelian! Anyways, thank you for watching and happy thinking :)
@@deleuzephilosophy I’ve been meaning to learn more about Peirce but haven’t brought myself to do so. Perhaps now is the time! Perhaps I’ll do the reading of Langer is Gibson and give you my essays on the topics. I’ve got a lot of brainstorming but I shall have to organize it into concrete essays eventually. I’ll try to share them with you! I’ve also brainstormed a lot about social media and have quite a few thoughts on it. Hopefully I’ll gather all those thoughts as well and I’ll send those as well. Thanks again for your videos!
Just need a clarification about Proust's reminiscence. The present that you are referring to is the present moment of the person elsewhere and not at Combray itself? And the telescoping is his memory of what Combray was when he was there last time intertwining with the memory of what he believes Combray is right now while he is not there? I'm not too sure about the "present that could be" part - seems like we dont always really think about what the place is like right now while we aren't there to experience it in the flesh, could you elaborate Deleuze's point about this? The way I see the past is similar to Merleau-Ponty's. That the past is already saturated by the current desires of the person in the present - ie. that the past is not the same as it was experienced while the person was there, but the past is experienced in a highly selective manner in which the person projects what he believes his experience was like back then, now exaggerating some details (foreground) while fading away other details (background).
Oh thinking about it now, I think what I said is wrong. Of course, reminiscence has 2 halves inseparable from each other. The first is to let the memory of being there in the past wash over me (the present that was). The second is how I imagine it to be like (the present that i think it was FOR me), not what its like right now in the present, but the filling in of details to complete the picture of what my memory of the place is like. In other words, to make Whole the pure past by projecting what I believe it to look like or want it to be like - we go into the past to retrieve something. The first is a passive memory (concrete), second is active (abstract). Or more or less in mixtures and degrees of intensity between passive and active.
@@Spiritchaser93 Good point. One answer may be found in the three syntheses of time themselves: habits-memories-intellect. Each of which is, of course, subject to the disjunctive synthesis of disparate elements (meaning that each projects its own singularities). If I recall correctly, Deleuze's point in this passage is to define the process of reminiscence from the perspective of the intellect, which does not apprehend the past as a representation exclusively (Deleuze says "the past that the present WILL become" somewhere). Of course, Merleau-Ponty's view (which I'm not familiar with, but I trust your interpretation of it) would be compatible with Deleuze's, if we agree that concrete repetitions are mixes of past, present and future repetitions, and that they will at some point present a "subject-oriented" facet which is apprehended in the present, and therefore determined by expectations and other conscious factors. Not sure if that answers your question, but I would suggest reading or re-reading the relevant passage in the book as your reading is quite advanced.
Thank you for this. I have been reading Stephen Zepke's book 'Sublime Art' where he speaks about Deleuze's three syntheses of time but more deliberately in relation to Deleuze's engagement with the Kantian sublime and the connection between the 'empty form of time' and the sublime feeling or 'sensation' (in Deleuze's sense of the word). (Mentioning it in case it might be of interest to you) Your explanation helped me to fill some of the gaps that I was unclear about, especially with regards to the relationship between the empty form of time and action. Also, for this video, did you refer only to 'Difference and Repetition' or 'Kant's Critical Philosophy' as well? In the introductory section of the latter, there is a very dense but great section on what Deleuze calls as the "four poetic formulas" in Kant's critical philosophy. The first two especially, on Kant's formulation of time as "inner sense" and "I is another" seem like succinct paraphrases of what you were speaking about in this video.
Thanks Ivan, this sounds quite interesting, I wasn't aware of this book. But I agree, Deleuze develops a similar theme in "Kant's critical philosophy". In D&R (which is studied here), he explicitly uses Kant's passive synthesis to characterize the transcendental movement of habit creation (the first synthesis) and the intervention of memory (the second synthesis). That's how he can formulate the problem of the active synthesis, which is one of the points of this chapter and, in a sense, of this whole book (creation or the repetition of difference). Great point, also Hamlet's formula "Time is out of joint", one of Deleuze's favorite formulas ever I think, has a lot to do with this process since time is the determinable form under which the indeterminate can acquire a determination (Kant's Cogito). If you're interested, we talk about the paradox of inner sense in this series, referring to the "fractured I" which inevitably emerges at the term of the second synthesis when the subject becomes both determinant and determined.
@@deleuzephilosophy Sure, I will check that out. Just one more question. You said that active synthesis has to do with time being the determinable form under which the indeterminate acquires determination. But is not time the determining (rather than determinable) form where the indeterminate (Kant refers to the cogito as a "logical necessity" which cannot be given substantial form or be "known" strictly speaking) only ever acquires a partial and as you say, "fractured" determination? I'm asking only because - and maybe I am completely ignorant and wrong about this - but it seems as if Deleuze does not really seem to say something radically new here that Kant has not himself articulated in the Paralogisms, for instance. Yes, Kant maybe does not connect the "logical necessity" with "inner sense" as explicitly as Deleuze does, but it seems as if the paradox and it's implications - of the subject as being determinant (transcendental logical necessity) and the determined (empirically determined) - are already implicit in Kant's theory. Sorry for the long question and if I have not made sense.
@@ivan987100 You are completely correct to say that Deleuze inherits a lot from Kant (according to himself), and actually takes up the battle where Kant left it (at the level of pre-established harmony, where Kant "retreated"). He follows Kant in the first and second syntheses (of habit and memory, i.e. the passive synthesis), and then leaves him at the level of the reason-understanding distinction, which is exactly where Kant is forced to reintroduce a pre-established harmony between the senses and the intelligible world (the opening argument of "Kant's critical philosophy" addresses this point). As to your question, Deleuze says quite formally (relaying Kant) that existence is determinable by the Cogito under the form of time (D&R p.86).The undetermined "I am" is determined by the determination "I think". But the distinction is not between two substances, as for Descartes, but between two moments in time that follow each other (logical time, or cause and effect). It's Kant's novelty over Descartes' Cogito, which only had two elements (determination and determined). Deleuze's novelty in this context is the "discordant harmony" of the faculties, against Kant's harmony. Hope this helps a little bit.
@@deleuzephilosophy Excellent. Yes, this definitely helps. Thank you. You have put it very well. Though this does of course open up a lot more I suppose 🙂, especially the discussion around the way that Deleuze already sees a move (a hesitant one nevertheless) towards this "discordant accord" between the faculties in Kant's sublime, but which for 'reasons' he (Kant) doesn't follow through with. But in any case, though this has not made my life any easier :p, it has been a fruitful discussion. Thanks again.
@@ivan987100 Completely agree, the sublime is the unique moment in Kant where a faculty transcends itself, which Deleuze then makes the rule, not the exception. Thank you too, glad it's useful!
Given that Deleuze's work on time is to be understood ontologically rather than psychologically, how are we to understand his use of the term "Self"? What does it mean for the self to be split (this seems to have a psychoanalytic undertone) ? I am also confused by the circular conception of time (something that goes as far back as at least Hegel) and why Deleuze thinks that this needs to be overcome. If you could recommend any literature on these issues I wold greatly appreciate it.
The main idea is that the self is what emerges in experience, not what precedes it or makes it possible (which would be the classical and/or empirical view). The circular form of time is one moment in the genesis of thought. Imagine the most simple of all experience: you're looking at a tree. The classical (empirical) view would state that you recognize this object as a tree because 1) you are a formed individual and 2) the tree's essence causes you to recognize it as a tree. In other words, everything is given in advance, prior to your experience (emphasis on "given"). As against this, Deleuze would say, like Kant, that your experience is not founded in the given but *grounded* in space and time, which means that "you" appear in relation to the tree you see (not prior to it). This gives way to the second moment in the genesis of thought, which begins when the pure past appears: you begin to see yourself and the world not just as given, but as grounded. The problem now is that your present becomes a representation, rather than a presentation: the living present gives way to a view in which activity and passivity are separated. You experience yourself as both immediate and mediate, you become "self-conscious" so to speak, and "you" are now on both sides of the arrow of time: as cause and as effect--you don't know which one you are. That's a big issue, obviously, and the solution comes in the form of the third synthesis, in which Deleuze leaves Kant: action (rather than representation or mediation) becomes the focus: that's how you break the circularity of time in which the self was split. Perhaps you can see how Deleuze follows Kant's transcendental tradition and how he departs from it on one specific point, which the theory of faculties: where Kant maintains that the faculties (sensation, imagination, memory, reason) are modes of the self (i.e., they depend on a unified self for their exercise), Deleuze objects to Kant that the faculties do not require a pre-established harmony in the form of a given self in order to function. There is no psychological or psychoanalytical determination here, only the synthesis of time (all of this is actually the topic of the next chapter. This gives way to Deleuze's "transcendental empiricism", which is a solution to the empirical/Kantian divide). Hope this helps a little bit. As far as literature goes, I would advise you to read or re-read "Nietzsche and Philosophy" and "Kant's critical philosophy" (both by Deleuze), they are accessible and they present these themes quite well, in particular N&P.
@@deleuzephilosophy Thank you so much for a detailed reply. If I may bother you with a follow up: Is Deleuze's contention, then, that the self, rather than being given, is produced by the synthesis of time; such that we can speak of the self as "subjectivized (though not psychological) time" perhaps? Or is his position more radical, asserting that there is no self as such, and that the synthesis of time merely provides the illusion of a self? But if this were the case, how could one even begin to speak of, even if only tentatively, of a self, or the relationship of time to what one takes to be a self, if "time" is all there is? I am also confused by the concept of the pure past, as well as the difference between the given and the grounded. Is the given not always already grounded? I apologize for the barrage of questions; thank you for your time.
@@nnxj6125 You're welcome, happy to help. Your first proposition about the self sounds correct: the self appears in the first synthesis of time, it is split in the second synthesis, and finally it becomes (or changes) in the third. The self is very real, there's no illusion there. But it's also true that we change (we become who we are, as Nietzsche says). The masks we wear ("personas") often give rise to certain abstract illusions about who we are, and what the world is: Deleuze often describes how we tend to become "delirious". Watch out when you see words like "individual", "self", and "I", they tend to be used in relation to different syntheses (I think this is particularly clear in Logic of sense). So in short, yes the self is very real, but it is also temporal and subject to change (Interestingly, Deleuze says that it is eternal only insofar as it actualizes a certain degree of intensity, which in itself is eternal). The pure past is what allows the present to pass (otherwise the present would remain present forever, like the living present of the first synthesis to which past and future are subordinated). It's like the mental state in which you place yourself when you try really hard to remember where you put your keys, i.e., it's when you try to re-live the past as it was--but of course, you can't. So you realize that the past is "its own thing" somehow. Yes, the given (mind and matter, space and time) is always already grounded, because it is conceptualized in the second synthesis. But precisely, we tend to reduce our real or empirical experience (which is the foundation) to what Deleuze calls the "order of conditions", which is the logical order of experience. For example, my empirical experience of a tree is something like: 1) seeing a vague shape and a green color (presentation of a tree) 2) recognizing a tree (representation of a tree). But in the order of conditions, which begins in the second synthesis, what I do is that I elevate a principle (say, space and time) as the absolute condition of my experience, I put it first and I say: "This is a tree--which I know because it is in space and time", that is, I think I know it by virtue of representation, when in fact representation (the grounding) is founded on my real experience. The reversal between the empirical and the transcendental order is what leads to the failure of representation. This is one of the problems that "transcendental empiricism" will try to solve. Sorry if this is still a bit confusing but we should get back to these points in the next chapter I think, and if not, very soon! Don't hesitate if you have other questions.
@@deleuzephilosophy I get it. Basically it's like saying "this thing is a tree because I say it's a tree". not because of some outside perspective telling you it's a tree. but because you recognize it as such based on your experiences with trees.
Thank you! Yes, in the books on cinema, Deleuze speaks of novels by Robbe-Grillet and others who are part of the "Nouveau Roman", as well as certain movies by Welles and the Nouvelle Vague (Godard most notably, as well as Resnais, the Straubs, etc.) which display pure images of time, in which the subordination of time to movement is reversed and we can see time in its pure form. Definitely worth a read/watch!
I have a somewhat practical question. What software do you use to produce these graphics? It seems to me that the schematics with the arrows and Venn diagrams are made in tikz perhaps? I love your visual style and would love to learn to make similar high quality presentations myself.
Thanks for the compliment! Actually I use Adobe products: Premiere pro for the vids, Illustrator for the graphs and Photoshop for the visuals. I've tried a few other stuff but this is what works best for me. Love to see what you come up with!
Hi, you just got yourself a fan ;) I’ve been interested in filosophy for about two years now and this Deleuze guy of whom I’ve first heard on „Philosophize This!” podcast and daaaamn, it made me applying for a weekend philosophy course at university. I’ve been reading this book for a while now and I went through the introduction and first introduction quite smoothly, even without the help of yours ;) Understanding Rhyzome kinda helped here and I think I really get it, but this chapter… ah, I find it super weird. :/ Even after watching your explanation, this system of understanding time seems to have many contradictions. It begins with the first synthesis already: that claim, where he says that recognizing AB patterns is comming from our minds, but rather presuppouses it. This sounds completely conjured in a magician way. Starting with a dog example: is it really the case, that associating the ring of a bell with food happens outside of active thinking? To me it looks like for a being like a dog there needs to be some intelectual work being done to start creating a connection between those events. It sounds like the effect of intelligence and very active process of mind to me. I also don’t see the point in how he justifies that statement. „Because we consist of…” - like come on, it sounds like some panpsychism in a very mistified form. I doubt my friends dog can contemplate events in a passive way (joke), but how could a water or air do it? It looks like this: we can understand a world in a specific way ^ we consist of specific substance ^ the other parta of world consist of the same substance => other identities in our world have the same contemplation ability. I am not sure about it, because I am aware of being kinda greenhorn, but this looks like a completely false assumption. Maybe it’s just a wrong example, but it looks to me, that he is doing an „entertainers trick” (of what he IMO correctly accusses Hegel) here. Conjuring the foundation as a specific… force, law of nature? But it looks like a wish to me that the whole world would function in a way corresponding to one feature of our minds. I invite you all people to discussion ;) Cheers from Poland and thanks a lot for your work!
Hi Maciek, thank you for your appreciation and welcome aboard ;) Glad to have you in team Deleuze! Well, Deleuze is a complicated and very conscientious writer. You'll see that his style is a little bit like the flight of a hawk, flying in circles over his topic, coming back to certain points again and again. So don't assume that he is wrong about anything, if something doesn't make sense yet then either wait until it does, or if you watch these videos, then put the blame on me ;) As to that topic you mention I would invite you to read or re-read the passage about the syntheses of time and the theory of the faculties: you'll see that the subject is formed as a consequence of the synthesis, it is not a cause of it. The notion of habit pertains to the relations that form in this process (in particular through "contemplation", where Deleuze has this beautiful passage, inspired by Butler if I recall correctly, about wheat contemplating water and earth and contracting them). These contractions form a certain rhythm, the cosmos breathing, and rhythm or habit formation is the basis of all things, matter and mind, which includes subjectivity (though more complicated rhythms, in the case of the human mind, cf. the passage on death and otherness at the end of the book). The world is a set of relations that become subject, i.e., that turn onto themselves and contemplate not just the world, but themselves too, their own movement. If reading the book doesn't make sense yet, don't worry: it takes time. Some people have worked their whole careers on "Difference and repetition". My advice is simply to trust Deleuze (or any thinker that you approach for that matter), let him convince you that he has seen something important and give him the time to explain. It'll be rewarding very soon.
That's a good question! Tbh I'm not familiar with Jaynes' works but perhaps he and Deleuze could meet on the theme of introspection as an unmediated experience, metaphors as partial objects, or on consciousness as a genesis? (though for Deleuze it's not culture that determines consciousness, rather culture is more like a kind of collective illusion). I wonder if his concept of metaphor could be compared to Jung's archetypes, in which case Christian Kerslake's book, "Deleuze and the unconscious", could be of use.
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