heidegger and deleuze on death.pdf

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Heidegger and Deleuze on Death (Nihil Unbound - Chapter

IV)

6.1 Who is time?

Departing from Heideggers 1924 lecture The Concept of Time Brassier traces how the question what is

time? transforms into the question who is time? Whatness corresponds to essence (Das Was), and essence

(Ousia) is understood in turn as presence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit); being-present. Therein lie the roots of

metaphysics of presence: the essence of things is prefigured by a prior understanding of time as being-

present in time, i.e. whatness or essence determines the being of intra-temporal entities as being-present.

However, time cannot merely be one more entity among others, since time is not one more entity present in

time; so we must first inquire into the different ways of being-in-time as well as how temporalization and its

configurations become possibly accessible on the basis of a specific entity for whom temporal entities are

encountered, our own being:Dasein.

Its two defining characteristics are 1) temporal specificity (Jeweiligkeit) and mineness (Jameinigkeit). That

Dasein is always mine means it is the determinate being (-in-the-world) which is specified in the I am. But if

temporal specificity is of Dasein, and the latter is in-each-case-mine, then it follows that I am my time: each

of us is time and time is in each case our own. Heidegger reaches this conclusion Am I my time? is

tantamount to Am I my Dasein?, since Dasein as being-in-the-world is the entity on whose behalf temporal

specification is given: the question what is time? becomes who is time? since the question now turns on the

specification of the being which in each case mine. To ask about this propriety Daseins being is defined in

terms of its outmost-possibility: death. The being of Dasein is being-towards-death so that it is running

ahead of itself against its own past, i.e. projected into the future, in each case thrown beyond the specificity

of the present, onto its final determination in death (its finitude). This accomplishes the specification and

individuation of the entity which is in each case mine; this running-ahead is then characterized with

respect to resolute anticipation in being-towards-death. So individuation and temporal singularization

remain the defining features of finite transcendence. Death allows for Daseins temporal individuation. The

question then becomes whether Daseins mineness can be said to be ones own authentically or

inauthentically. [NU: Pg. 154] Unlike Being and Time, Brassier notes, Heidegger here avoids attempting to

go beyond time and establish a connection with other categories, it does not stipulate to draw the connection

between Daseins time and temporal being in general. This tension between Sein andDasein is, on the other

hand, what becomes proper to the philosophical enquiry ahead ofBeing and Time.
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In Being and Time Daseins being-in-the-world is the synthetic unity of the three ekstases of Daseins self-

temporalizing: being-already, being-alongside, being-towards: The phenomena of the toward, the to,

the alongside, make temporality visible as the ekstatikon pure and simple. Temporality is the

primordial outside-of-itself in and for itself (Heidegger 1962: 377). It is here that the crucial difficulty for

the project of B&T will become concentrated. For this we must remember that the existential analytic of

Dasein was to serve as a provisional doorstep into clarifying the relation between Daseins individuated

temporality (Zeitlichkeit) and the Temporality of being in general (Temporalitat). Being cannot be

coextensive with Dasein, it must be pre-individual. But clarifying this pre-individual dimension was precisely

the impasse which led Heideggers project of fundamental ontology into an abyss, as Theodore Kisiel points

out, and which prefigured the writing ofBeing and Time before theKehre of the 1930s, as evidenced by the

insistent use of the impersonal pronoun It to describe the pre-theoretical, pre-individuated event of being,

the primal-something (Ur-etwas). But this ekstatikon in and for itself (which appears like a periodizing

Hegelian absolute without dialectical closure) makes the idea of a Dasein-independent time rather

mysterious, as is the idea of being as temporalization apart from Daseins finite transcendence. Is there then

only my time, Daseins time? Brassier detects in Heidegger the attempt to render ontological time to

existential time in The Concept of Time:

Dasein is time, time is temporal.Dasein is not time, but temporality. The fundamental assertion that time is

temporal is therefore the most authentic determination and it is not a tautology because the Being of

temporality signifies non identical actuality [] Insofar as time is in each case mine, there are many times.

Time itself is meaningless; time is temporal. (Heidegger 1992: 21E)

Time-in-itself is meaningless since it would amount to no ones time, so Heidegger finally surrendered in his

attempt to and gave up on the ontological autonomy of Temporality in favor of Daseins temporal ekstasis.

6.2 Ekstasis and ekstema

Brassier recapitulates Daseins threefold ekstasis in Being and Time as the temporalization of temporality,

synthesizing future (ahead of) past (already) and present (alongside):


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1)As ahead-of-itself- Daseins existence is grounded on futurity, coming into its own, death as its own

possibility.

2)As being-already - In coming into its own, it is appropriating what it already was, thereby returning

to and appropriating its facticity. Resolute anticipation makes Dasein return to its-always-have

been, appropriating its finitude, its own time.

3) As being-alongside - Becoming what it already was, Dasein accesses entities by enpresenting or

making-present (Augenblick).

The resolute anticipation of death triggers the synthetic unity of Daseins time insofar as it individuates it by

giving closure to its being outside-of-itself, fixing death as its ownmost possibility, normally dispersed in the

One (Das Man; Brassiers translation here as the They is indeed misleading since the crucial fact is that in

being irresolute, it Dasein simply lets itself be identified with the being of presence, the occlusion of its

temporal ekstasis as thrown against death. In fact this is already the germinal seed for Heideggers later

characterization of ontotheology as guiding the Seinsgeschikte in the configuration of metaphysics of

presence. So it is Daseins being which specifies time as the ekstatikon in and for itself, while death limits

thrown-projection individuating Daseins on the basis of its outmost possibility (for death, as transition from

Dasein qua being-in-the-world to mere presence-at-hand; the dead individual who is subject for mourning

for other Daseins).

Heidegger nonetheless distinguishes existential temporality (Zeitlichkeit des Dasein) from ontological

temporality (Temporalitat des Seins), and their precise connection (left for the never completed third

division) is the root of the collapse of fundamental ontology. In his 1927 lecture The Basic Problems of

Phenomenology he nonetheless envisages the problem, as Brassier develops. Finite transcendence is not the

beyond, but stepping-beyond, not what is being stepped over into; Dasein oversteps and is not immanent.

There is always a whither determining Daseins ekstasis as overstepping transcendence. This would be

being-as-such, the ekstema which is correlate to the ekstasis of Dasein. Such whither is finally the the

transcendens pure and simple (Heidegger 1962: 62). This, however, is meant to be distinguished from the

Husserlian distinction between noema and noesis, insofar as the latter is still construed in terms of

intentional consciousness, which for Heidegger merely remains at the ontic level, and which is derivative

from primordial ontological transcendence. So the ekstema is not simply an object, not an intratemporal

entity as such, but also prefiguring the formal conditions of Daseins being-carried-away-to (also called

removal), in which ekstasis is predetermined by this nothingness since it is non-localizeable. However,


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Brassier underlines that given that this ekstematic correlate is entirely prefigured form the horizon of finite

transcendence is seems to depend on it for its production/generation/effectuation. Being and Time is

nothing but the elucidation of how being-in-the-world generates from ecstatic temporality qua Daseins finite

transcendence. The ekstematic correlate cannot be reduced to a mere objective beyond, but has to take place

in constitution with the stepping-beyond proper to Daseins activity. Otherwise the ontological status of

Daseins transcendence becomes jeopardized [NU: Pg: 158].

6.3 Finite possibility and actual infinity

How can the relation between ekstema and ekstasis be construed without objectifying the former, or

reducing the former to the latter? The former option vitiates ontology; the latter implies the reduction ofSein

to Dasein. The options for Heidegger then seem to be between objective and subjective idealism, while his

attempts to purge subjectivism become threatened by the traditional transcendent dichotomies of noesis and

noema, transcendence and transcendent, which Heidegger claimed to have dispensed with in fundamental

ontology. So it is ironic, Brassier notes, that its Heideggers resistance to the reification of the world as a

present-at-hand entity which ultimately threatens to deliver it to the idealist thesis that without Dasein there

is no world is there either (Heidegger 1962: 417). The following quote from Introduction to Metaphysics

condenses the Heideggerean version of the correlationist hypothesis, which is doubtlessly important insofar

as many Heideggereans struggle to rescue Heideggers account from idealism, and which is challenged byMeillassouxs account of the arche-fossil or the prospect of human existence:

Strictly speaking we cannot say: there was a time when there were no human beings. At every time, there

were and are and will be human beings, because time temporalizes itself only as long as there are human

beings. There is no time in which there were no human beings, not because there are human beings from all

eternity, but because time is not eternity, and time always temporalizes itself only at one time, as human,

historicalDasein. (Heidegger 2000: 88)

Brassier anticipates the correlationist impasse afflicts Heidegger: the space-time in which dates Daseins

coming into existence cannot coincide with ekstatic temporality, and thereby this time cannot be an

ekstematic correlate. By the same token, the cosmological disintegration of thought cannot take place within

the temporality of Daseins being-towards-death. But Brassier reminds us of the precise ontological status

Heidegger confers upon death, separating it from intratemporal entities in being the impossibility of

possibility which precisely makes possibility and thus presencing possible, which determines Daseins


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ekstatic temporal projection in anticipatory resoluteness, which we know envelops Heideggers tragic

existential narrative. Because death is not a singular event in life or Daseins time, but Daseins condition as

being-towards-death makes it impossible for death to be an ontic fact, but its the truth of facticity at large,

ontological possibility (authentic) rather than ontic actuality (present-at-hand, inauthentic representation).

However, here I think Brassier might be slightly off the mark in the details, since inauthenticity is not

exclusively tethered to Daseins dealing with present-at-hand entities; being lost amidst Das Man does not,

for example, imply perpetual conceptualization such as that where objects appear themselves. Ones daily

routine business at the office or queue when purchasing coffee are obviously not cases of authentic behavior,

yet they do imply the equipment-integrated (Zeug) dealings proper to readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit). Of

course herein lies another undecided part in Heideggers account, since he often distinguishes between the

carpenters workshop, for example as authentic comportments, whereas from more urban cases of mindless

behavior where it seems Heidegger tilts towards the inauthentic. But this might be simply the provincialist

nostalgia already diagnosed by others (Zizek (2003), Badiou (1998)). In any case, resolute anticipation seems

is not exhausted by non-representational comporting; although this is notoriously elusive in Heideggers

account. Perhaps this can be fine tuned in the near future. For now let us continue to trace Brassiers

argument.

There seems to be an irreconcilable gap between the space-time which registers the bio-physical demise of

Dasein from the latters mode of being as pure possibility. So the ontological separation between presencing

and presence is tied to the transcendental separation of death as ontological possibility and as biological

actuality as a function of temporalization (NU: Pg. 159). Death as transcendental condition of impossibility is

unactualizeable; its perpetual deferral as a possible event guarantees that the beings temporal opening is

correlative to Daseins ekstasis as finite transcendence. Brassier writes that the temporalization of existence

which is brought about resolute anticipation synthesizes the threefold of temporal ekstasis of past, present

and future and by deferring the actualization of death prevents the reduction of presencing to presence.

Nonetheless, we should specify that temporalization is not relative to resolute anticipation; which is rather

rare by existential standard; what it does is open Daseins ontological insight into the synthetic unity of

temporalization, and the appropriation of time as ones own. Inauthentic comporting blocks this ontological

insight insofar as it remains blindly delivered to temporal specificity unilaterally and not in the

equiprimordial threefold structure of ekstasis, thereby ignorant of how temporalization is opened by death as

belonging to each Dasein as its outmost possibility, and thus as condition for presencing. In any case,

Brassier underlines how this renders incommensurable the gap between Daseins temporal ekstasis of


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presencing and the static biological factuality of actuality. This gap Brassier calls an actual infinity (Ibid, Pg.

160).

There can be no point in the human history when it becomes Dasein, and there can be no future intra-

temporal point in which Dasein will cease to be Dasein. This is to be taken with a grain of salt, since the

transition from Dasein to an entity present-at-hand is precisely what Heidegger describes as deaths

occurrence, insofar as it is defined as being-Dasein-no-longer. However Dasein as such can not cease to be

temporalizing, since it is pure potentiality which does not arise nor perishes, for Heidegger, in time but is its

transcendental condition. So there can be no transition within time which would initiate temporalization; the

latters already presupposed in Daseins finite transcendence and cannot ever be exempted from its

constituting activity. The same impossibility applies to the history of the species, not just to individual

history, of course, and so anything that is not human cannot have a world properly (see his lecture The

Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics from 1933). This is what identifies Daseins finite transcendence with

infinity, since Heidegger is cornered into two options by accepting the timelessness of the disjunction

between temporality and time:

1) Timelessness neither begins nor ends it will always obtain, so finitude is jeopardized.

2) Temporalization emerged in time But how or when? Heideggers account of Daseins finite

transcendence leaves no room to think of another time since Dasein is originary transcendence as

such, to stipulate its origin form the outside would instantiate a meta-genesis of sorts which would

reintroduce objectivist idealism of some sort.

Here we finally see how Heideggers ontologization of Daseins primordial historical opening to the event of

being renders unthinkable the history where this entity is intelligible, without bloating this entity into

infinity. This infinite abyss would be required to mediate the temporal disjunction of ekstema and ekstasis,

the time of death and time of dying, time and temporality. But as Meillassoux had shown, the introduction of

a disjunction between two temporal orders, the bio-physical and ontologico-transcendental, finally occludes

the dependence of the latter on the former. So Brassier continues; Heideggers subordination of bio-physical

time and death to Daseins transcendent phenomenological time and death turns death into an impossibility

which conditions everything else, thereby making sure can never happen. Transcendental conditions of

representation cannot be represented; death as transcendental condition can not be registered as a

contingent fact. Even if the possibility of death remains entirely commensurable within transcendental


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finitude, it is its reality which remains forever separated from Dasein; the time of death is disjunctive to the

time of its separation. It is the same thing to say in this context that death can never be registered as an intra-

temporal fact and to say death remains impossible.

However, I think Brassier here fails to address one aspect of the Heideggerean plot, which is Daseins

transition to being-Dasein-no-longer and thus to the being of an entity present-at-hand. In other words,

Brassier here oversteps the concrete role of the ontologicalcontinuity between the transcendent time which is

in each case mine proper to every Dasein, whose death marks closure, and the intersubjective space of

facticity where death provides the possible apprehension of Dasein as an entity: it is always the death of

others which we experience, and the closure of death is only ontologically intelligible insofar as Dasein can

become objectified in death and pass into the register of a mere present without presencing. In any case, this

still retains the problem insofar as it presupposes the communalMitdasein as an ontological characteristic

precondition. In this sense, Heideggers space for intersubjective practice does not escape the clutch of

correlationism; if anything it reinstates it insofar as it makes the factual intratemporal death of Dasein

entirely subordinated to the presencing of some other Dasein that objectifies it in registering its static

presence.

Brassier says that the reality of the time of death finally implies the inexistence of the time of anticipation.

And because the time of death has a reality prior and posterior to existential temporality the former cannot

be reduced to the latter. But the real problem comes in the differentiation of two times, that of thought and

that of death. Guided by his belief to the sphere of hermeneutic sense as the final guarantor of authenticity,

the ontological difference between being and beings is emptily presupposes as the forgotten dichotomy which

must be resolved through interpretation of Daseins pre-theoretical understanding of being. Just the same,

the disjunction between biological and existential death remains caught in the presupposition knit by the

ontological difference which inflates our transcendent finitude as preconditioning the basis for any encounter

of beings as such, and on the basis of our being alone: Heidegger does not argue for ontological

transcendence; he insists upon it, then castigates those who would deny it for remaining in thrall to

metaphysics and/or representation. [NU: Pg, 162] This ends up making the emergence of transcendence

somewhat impossible, since it must already be presupposed in each and every case (something which

perhaps can be said to also be part of Laruelles itinerary, insofar as he must presuppose transcendent

objectification as occasional ideal cause only for thought to effectuate its identity with the immanent real as

cause in the last instance- always already there, in axiomatic ultimation).


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Next we will see Brassiers treatment of death by Deleuze, and how he posits that the separation between

deaths ontologico-formal side and its material side emerges within ontology rather than preconditions it.

Before, I quote in full a fantastic passage by Brassier schematically outlining the embarrassing fate of

philosophies of access around Heideggers attempt to unlock the access to the truth of being, in ever more

esoteric procedures which finally devolved on a pathetic quasi-Zen renunciation of thought in an attitude of

passive release (Gelassenheit); proceeding to make bombastic claims such as that three-hundred years of

silence might be required to undo the damage by the tradition (in addition to the whole apocalyptic itinerary

that concluded in the famous Spiegel interview and the claim that only the Gods could save us):

No doubt this difficulty had something to do with Heideggers abandonment of the project of fundamental

ontology. But why does the latter unravel precisely at that point where the existential analytic, outlining

Daseins ekstatic structure of transcendence, was to be surpassed towards an account of the temporality

proper to being as such? Heideggers retrieval of the ontological problematic in Being and Time was to be

effected via a critical radicalization of transcendental philosophy. The fundamental question is not just of

being but of our access to being: how do we originally access the being of phenomena?Dasein is in the world

but also not just something in the world. Herein lies the rub: where Kantian transcendentalism cultivated

suspicion of unmediated access to phenomena, transcendental phenomenology countered with the revelation

that the mediation is immediate, i.e. unmediated. That which is accessed is mediated, but the access as such

is not, whether it be intentionality or finite transcendence. Finite transcendence is the condition of possibility

for all access to the being of phenomena indeed, according to Heidegger, it is the condition of possibility for

those merely metaphysical conditions of possibility identified by the ontotheological tradition but this

condition of conditions is necessarily unconditioned: it is the ekstatikon in and for itself. Recognizing the

taint of idealist subjectivism in this latter, Heidegger went on to seek an even more originary access to the

primordial happening, and ever more radical means of unearthing the conditions for conditions:Ereignis,

the fourfold, etc. The phenomenological radicalization of transcendentalism initiated by Heidegger finds

itself excavating deeper and deeper into the primordial: uncovering the conditions for the conditions of the

conditions, etc. Yet the deeper it digs towards the pre-originary, the greater its remove from things

themselves and the more impoverished its resources become. Heidegger and his successors up to and

including Laruelle end up burrowing ever deeper into reflexivity in order to unearth the pre-reflexive,

exacerbating abstraction until it becomes reduced to plying its own exorbitant vacuity. Derrida introduces

both a healthy measure of skepticism and a fatal dose of irony into this meta-transcendental problematic by

revealing how the immediacy of access was always already contaminated by diffrance as inclusive

disjunction of mediation and immediacy. But he is trumped by Laruelle, who unveils the unobjectifiable

immediacy of man as that which is always already presupposed by and hence the ultimate determinant

fordiffrances inclusive disjunction of mediation and immediacy (cf. Chapter 5).


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Once the problematic of access, and of the access to access, has reached its absurd denouement in the claim

that this man without qualities is the primal phenomenon determining the conditions of the conditions of

access, it is no surprise to see the very notion of a world indifferent to our access to it recede into

unintelligibility. But if the idea of a world independent of our access to it becomes unintelligible, then

perhaps the fault lies with the correlational criteria of intelligibility stipulated by the philosophy of access,

rather than with the world. One cannot but be struck by the comic spectacle of the later Heidegger trying to

uncover the roots of the primal phenomenon, the Ur-etwas, in old Greek words. The phenomenology that

sought to begin again with the things themselves is redirected by Heidegger and ends up poring over words,

nothing but words ... Perhaps this is the inevitable fate of the philosophy of access. (NU: Pg: 269)

6.4 Difference and repetition

Deleuzes Difference and Repetition follows the Heideggerean attack on Kantian transcendentalism on the

basis of an ontology of temporal difference and of being as differentiation. For Deleuze time is said in the

same sense in all instances and across all differences or modalities, even if these are divergent (Deleuze 1968:

53, 1994, 36). Already having conceived being as pure differentiation, Deleuzes Bergsons Conception of

Difference (1956) made the equation between being and duration: Duration, tendency, is self-differentiating;

and what differs from itself is immediately the unity of substance and subject.[1] The idea seems to be that

duration can never be a mere substance of subject, but it is what perpetually defers self-identity andmediation so that the pure continuity of unitary substance/subject being/thought is underlying in

differentiating multiple being. However, although this has been oft quoted as a symptom of a materialist

monism, Brassier underlines the privileged status of a particular being in Deleuzes edifice in the psyche,

insofar as it is only through the latter that individuation can becomepotentiatedas differentiating difference;

that is to say, insofar as difference becomes effectuated by thoughts Ideal differentiating act of individuation.

Deleuze presents this through his third synthesis of time, in association with Freuds death-drive

(Todestrieb). Unlike the latters assignment of death to the compulsion of a return to the inorganic, Deleuze

denies the materiality of death at large, and along Heidegger distinguishes between deaths objective

repetition and deaths intensive form of individuation (Deleuze 1968:28, 1994: 17). Death is for Deleuze

purely formal, given in thoughts individuation where the future un-grounds the past and death is subject to a

time which splits the self, a time which is no-ones rather than mine.

Perhaps we can anticipate an underlying disjunction in Deleuzes account between the individuated objective

being which forms the self, and the ontological-multiple differentiating univocity of subject/object for

difference as time qua duration. Because this time is what differs itself immediately from the individuated


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subject, Deleuze seems to be suggesting that time is not relative to subjective transcendence, thereby severing

the correlationist link between existential finitude and beings temporality (Temporalitat). Being here is not

tethered to finite transcendence, but to the self-differentiating unity of duration which renders the univocity

of being and the identity of the dyad being-thought. But Deleuze also speaks of deaths intensive subjective

individuation: Death does not appear in the objective model of an indifferent, inanimate matter to which

what is living would return; it is present in the living as a differentiated subjective experience endowed with

a prototype. It does not pertain to a state of matter; on the contrary, it corresponds to a pure form that has

abjured all matter the empty form of time (Deleuze 1968: 148, 1994: 112 tm).

Note that by saying death does not appear in the subjective Deleuze remarks the way in which death

somehow is itself intensively an experience potentiated by thought, insofar as through psychic individuation

one prototypically differentiates subjective life from thepure form of death which corresponds with times

duration and its ontological uniformity, abjuring all matter (and thus spatial individuation). Because death

separates itself as intensive individuation, Brassier claims Deleuze finally turns thinking into the actor of an

apocalyptic individuation where the ideality effectuates its dissolution in differentiating from its univocal

being as time or duration. But this is a self-differentiating time which admits of no bearer, no

phenomenological pole or transcendent delivery, but which nonetheless is potentiated as thought identifies

itself in ideal separation from deaths empty temporal uniformity, from merelyobjective death. Perhaps I am

reading too quickly into this, and am running the risk of introducing more of Laruelles identity-in-the-last-

instance into this than I should; but it surely seems similar in many respects on these broad grounds. Isnt

the psyche here the Ideal occasional cause which would finally determine its identity with the real immanent

as cause in-the-last-instance, here given as duration? And doesnt Deleuzes privileging of the psyche consist

in the unilateralizing difference on the side of (transcendental?) intensive individuation by forcing the

distinction between objective death and the intensive separation of death as pure form of time (real as virtual

immanence?) devoid of material specificity? In any case, we should be vigilant of these possibilities without

being precipitate.

Brassier reads Difference and Repetition as a rewriting of Kants Critique of Pure Reason informed by

Bergons Matter and Memory, reevaluating representation by abjuring the understanding in its mediatory

role between reason and sensibility, folding the Dialectic into the Aesthetic. Instead of the synthesis of the

understanding, Deleuzes aesthetic manifold bears intrinsically the differential structure of ideal multiplicity

(NU, Pg: 163). The conceptual mediation of the Analytic is thereby replaced by the spatio-temporal

individuation of the aesthetic manifold as a non-conceptual synthesis of reason and sensibility, which itself

gives shape to the dialectical structures of ideal multiplicities. Conceptuality as representation overburdens


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the individuated entity, which is nothing but the actualization of a virtual multiplicity as univocal

determination of both ideal/real: thought/being are co-implicated-. Individuation thus determines

actualization and forces the continuity between ideal origination and real empirical actuality. Individuation

gives the actualized virtual multiplicity the form of the One by ideal genesis.

In seeking out the ideal conditions capable of generating the individual entity of actual experience, rather

than the particular object of possible experience, Deleuzes transcendental empiricism treats the concept

(i.e. the Idea as virtual multiplicity) as the object of an encounter which is no longer governed by the logic of

recognition: thus Deleuze declares, concepts are the things themselves, but things in their free and untamed

state, beyond anthropological predicates (Deleuze 1968: 3, 1994: xxiii tm).

It is in representation that the two registers, difference and repetition, are shown to be codependent and

mutually implied; while at the same time each term displays a double aspect depending on whether they are

grasped according to representation or in themselves. This is even though one can superficially sense an

affinity between difference and thought on the one hand, and repetition and sensibility. Material repetition

displays passive syntheses which support ideal differentiation, while the latter is implicated in material

repetition. Temporal difference and material repetition finally converge in an account of individuation.

Brassier provides a neat, but somewhat confusing, separation of the principal qualities pertaining to each

term in its variation:

1) Difference in representation / in the concept identity in concept, opposition in predicate,

resemblance in perception, analogy in judgment.

2) Concept of difference (in itself) exhibited in the Idea, simulacral, dialectical, intensive and

univocal.

3) Repetition in representation (without concept) bare, material, extrinsic, reproductive. Repetition

is that which reproduces itselfwithout difference.

4) Concept of repetition for itself (repetition of difference) clothed, spiritual, intrinsic, productive.

The actualization of multiple difference as that which repeats for itself, and therefore as inherently

productive.


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So while difference in representation delimits identity conceptually (it determines the condition for what

counts as identical / x is x insofar as it is not y) repetition in itself. and so outside the concept. prevents or

blocks conceptual difference (I interpret this to mean that what repeats itself in itself can not be

differentiated conceptually, but I have no clear understanding of this). We might stipulate the following: x

distinguishes itself from y, but x1 cannot distinguish itself from x2. It is repetition-in-itself, outside the

concept that enables the productivity of a posterior stratification of differences by that which repeats itself

within a field of differences, and thus blocks the legitimacy of the original conceptual differentiation. It is

only when the concept of difference in itself (non-conceptual) is repeated for itself (conceptually) that

representation becomes undone. That is to say, once difference in itself can be thought to be repetitive for

itself it is disassociated from the idea of a representation, and it rather becomes identifiable with the

intensive productivity of the virtual actualization of multiplicity in an intensive ideal differentiation. So

repetition is finally productive since thought actively produces difference this way; which Brassier sees in the

third synthesis of time as the eternal recurrence (of repetitive difference for itself). The repetition of

difference however is triggered by the act of psychic individuation. Brassier insists in the irreducibility of the

fourfold opposition laid above to the Manichean disjunction between temporal heterogeneity and spatial

homogeneity, virtuality and actuality. Ideas are virtual multiples expressed and enveloped by intensive

repetitions while they also are actualized as species/parts in the process where intensive quantity is

expressed as extensive quality (NU, Pg 165). This thereby separates Deleuzes account from the traditional

Bergsonian dichotomy of quantity and quality, by saying that it is futile to attempt to express the

irreducibility of quality to quantity, or life to extensity, since they are mutually implicated and present in

intensivity; difference in degree and difference in kind are mutually implied as intensive quantities: between

the two are all the degrees of difference, under both lies the whole nature of difference: the

intensive (Deleuze 1968: 299, 1994: 232):

a)Extensive quantities - are proportional to the size (?) of the system which they measured

and the part/whole relation (energy, mass, volume or entropy).

b) Intensive quantities - measure in accordance to the ratio of two differences and co-

variation (speed, density, pressure, temperature). Intensity is:

i) Unequalizable intensity is what cannot be cancelled in quantitative difference,

what underlies it as unequalizable in quantity itself, since it is the quality of

quantity as such. It is the essential inequality which makes up every quantitative

determination. Every number is based upon this essential inequality and remains

relative to it. Fractions, for example express an inequality in the relation of two

magnitudes which cannot be reduced to whole numbers, an inequality which it


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cancels in the quotient. Irrational numbers express the impossibility of obtaining

a common quotient between integers cancelled by equal geometric relation (NU:

Pg 181). But intensive inequality remains implicated by quantitative extension,

and so there is an incommensurable gap between the two: even as extensity

cancels intensity, inequality remains implicated in it.

j) Affirmative principle Equivalence is asserted by affirming inequality rather than

identity: A and B are equal just in case A is distant from every C which is distant

from B. Inequality is intrinsic to intensity, always constructed on series of

differences implicated in it constructed on more series of differences, all

implicated. The intensive synthesis which explains intensity in qualities/parts of

extensive magnitudes requires inequality in distance. So the depth of intensity is

affirmed by the affirmation of inequality in distance.

k) Enveloped and enveloping Intensive difference can not be negated since it is

implicated / implicating as enveloping difference and enveloped distance: it is

only secondarily extensional as parts. Difference in depth is composed of

distances, but distance is not an extensive quantity but an indivisible

asymmetrical relation, ordinal and intensive in nature, which is established

between series of heterogeneous terms and which expresses each time the nature

of what does not divide without changing nature (Deleuze 1968: 306, 1994: 238).

This enveloped distance of intensive difference renders it indivisible into parts,

and therefore a continuum whose division entails a change of state. Intensive

distance expresses itself in three extensive dimensions: left-right, up-down,

figure-ground: but remains implicated within extensive space as pure for of

depth of intensive space.

It is intensive difference which explicates illusion of change from differentiated to undifferentiated, from

disequilibrium to equilibrium. Entropy is thus rendered an illusion occasioned by representation mistaking

the extrinsic implication of intensity with intrinsic implication in itself: Instead of creating an extensive

factor with intensive existence to account for intensity, Deleuze says intensity intrinsically explicates itself

implicated within itself. Its being is implication and explicates itself as individuating (Deleuze 1968: 293,

1994: 228tm). Brassier anticipates challenging the denouncing of entropy as illusion and the avowal of

vitalism, i.e. the view that chemical/physical processes are insufficient to explain biological functions and

processes). But before he sets to examine two Deleuzean claims: the being of the sensible is intensity; the


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being of difference is implication (Deleuze 1968: 305, 1994: 236). For this, Deleuze re-inscribes the

Heideggerean ontological difference in the dichotomy between

1) Virtual differentiation Of the Idea as problematic multiplicities.

2) Actual differenciation Into parts and qualities of extensity.

Being does not represent the actual, but relates to how differenciation actualized virtual multiplicities.

Intensity is the paradoxical ideality whereby the fully differentiated becomes differenciated. It is at once what

cannot be sensed and the only thing that can be sensed. For example, intensive depth is implicated in the

three dimensions of spatial extensity as imperceptible (sentiendum,ontological dimension of sensibility) but

which is only sensed, and opens the way for the immemorial which can onlybe remembered (memorandum,

ontological dimension of memory) and the un-thought (cogitandum, ontological dimension of thought)

which can onlybe thought. (Deleuze 1968: 183, 1994: 140-1). Since this imperception generates sensibility,

intensity devolves in the combat of the faculties claiming their own in a divergent effort. The faculties

exercise a discordant-transcendence with regards to their object in which they become individuated for the

world. And yet sensibility retains a privilege as the source of all access to the intensive by triggering thought:

From the intensive to thought, it is always by means of an intensity that thought comes to us. If sensibility

enjoys a privilege as origin it is because that which forces feeling and that which can only be felt are one and

the same in the encounter, whereas the two instances are distinct in the other cases (Deleuze 1968: 188,

1994: 1445 tm). Entropy is an illusion in overstepping this transition in intensivity from sensibility to

cognition, stipulating an external objectivity rather than psychic activity.

But Brassier insists in that intensivity only explicates itself outside itself while being implicated in itself as

enveloping difference and enveloped distance (NU: Pg, 170). It should not appear all that strange that this

bilateral implication proper to intensivity and the virtual differentiation of the multiple is something of a self-

generating real in Deleuzes discourse, demanding thought artificially for its actualizing individuation and

synthetically leveling the ontological tripartite structure of sensibility, memory and thought. So Brassier asks,

why does intensivity externalize itself to begin with? This necessitates delving further into Deleuzes theory of

individuation, and why intensivity does not remain in-itself but passes through the (repetitive) for-itself

which individuates difference and subverts representation in actualizing the extensive from the virtual. This

happens in three stages: spatial, temporal and psychic. It is only through individuation that differenciation

actualizes the virtual multiple Idea which is an intensity (Deleuze 1968: 317, 1994: 246). It is through


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intensity that Deleuze rehabilitates ontological univocity, since every differentiating extensity reveals itself

from and asintensity. This is the hypostatizing of psychic intervention, since individuating differences are

actualized by and ofthought. As thought repeats beings individuating differentiation in differenciation and

moves from representation to ontological production, Deleuze thereby accomplishes, says Brassier, a double

genesis of thinking and being (NU: Pg. 171).

By realizing univocal being, thinking transcends representation and accesses the intensive noumenon

underlying the extensive phenomenon. Thus the reciprocal presupposition between the thinking of

individuation and the individuation of thinking marks the point at which univocal immanence is articulated

with ontological transcendence. (Ibid).

6.6 Individuation and the individual

Deleuze explains individuation through the spatio-temporal dynamics of intensities insofar as they actualize

differenciation and introduce distinctive quality and extensity where there was bare, naked indistinct

differentiation (Deleuze 1968: 276, 1994: 214). Intensities are individual, while individuation is the dynamic

process circling between an intensive individual and the pre-individual singularity of the Idea (the Ideal

differentiated idea doesnt change, it is bare, naked, immaterial; it needs individuation through the dynamic

implication in the sensible which actualizes them). This is all very confusing at this point, so lets grind away.

Individuation is the juncture between b) dynamic implication of intensive sensibility and b) Ideal static

differentiation. Intensities in themselves are only differential relations; individualized singulars presuppose

Ideas; the latter exist un-differenciated in a state of virtual perplication. The Idea is distinct in its perfect and

yet static differentiation, obscure in insofar as it is not yet distinguishable through individuating thought, not

yet intensified. Likewise, intensities are clear as enveloping depth (expressing Ideas in existing points) and

obscure as enveloped distance, once Ideas come individuated into the field of implication. This confuses me;

I can vaguely interpret this as meaning that intensities have a sensible depth that is transparent in the Ideal

relations they express. Having an enveloping role means that it ideally fixes the depth in differentiating

relations, they will later be specified into species in the dynamics of what it includes in its field. As enveloped,

however, in-differentiated distance makes the entirety of other relations obscure since what is not enveloping

can only be included in it confusedly.

At the same time it is this obscurity which targets individual differences between the clearly differentiated

field: for example if we clearly distinguish stars and planets we obscure the relations between the matter in


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the star, but these individual envelopeddifferences individuate the former enveloping ones, and dynamically

allow for further instances of actualization. This is the role of repetition qua enveloped differences, whose

repetition mobilizes the dynamism towards productive acting. So if for the Idea what is confused is the

possibility of differenciation, what is obscure in the intensity is precisely the differentiating univocity of

relations excluded by those clearly expressed by the Idea. Enveloping intensities (depth) correspond to

individuating differences, while these are filled by enveloped (distances, space between distinctly enveloping

depths) composed of individual differences. Intensities are implicated to one another, as the changing

totality of Ideas which regulates the entirety of differential relations dynamically (Ibid: Pg. 252). This is why

individuation, which is the result of spatio-temporal dynamism, corresponds to thought as agent so that in

the individuated intensity of the sea, for instance: our perception of the noise of the sea, which confusedly

includes the whole and clearly expresses only certain relations or certain points by virtue of our bodies and a

threshold of consciousness which they determine. In any case, it should be understood already that for

Deleuze the expression of the individuating Idea remains the act of thought; so finally Ideas find expression

in the juncture of individuation with the sensible, outside the confines of representation in the

indissociability of thought/being, ideal/real:

Every spatio-temporal dynamism marks the emergence of an elementary consciousness which traces

directions, doubles movements and migrations, and is born at the threshold of those singularities condensed

relative to the body or the object of which it is the consciousness. It is not enough to say that consciousness is

consciousness of something; it is the double of this something and each thing is consciousness because it

possesses a double, albeit very distant and very foreign to it. (Deleuze 1968: 316, 1994: 220 tm)

Of course, Brassier asks the question about the precise relation between this consciousness and its spatio-

temporal dynamic doubling object; insofar as this doubling is not representation but not mere idealist

production. The answer to this comes in the twofold characterization of individual intensity as clearly-

obscurely expressing intensity and the distinct-obscure difference of the expressed Idea. The univocity of

being is split in actualization between the expressing thought (larval subject of spatio-temporal dynamism)

and the expressed Idea which finds itself individuated in its sensible repetition. The split of thought-being is

intrinsic to beings-in-themselves; this ambiguity is intrinsic to the intensification of virtual multiple

differences in their Ideal actualization effectuated by andas thought (Ideal) in the sensible (intensity). Each

thing expresses the Idea and the thought through which the Idea is expressed: being is split into the circular

knot of expressed Idea /expressing thought. Everything is a thought and thinks insofar as it expresses the

Idea whose actualization it determines, reduced to its intensive reasons (Deleuze


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1968: 327, 1994: 254). Intensivity thus provides the sufficient reason for the expressive actualization of the

Ideal as thought and in the sensible; that which is expressed Ideally is expressing thought at the same time

and by the same intensive effectuation:

Thus things themselves determine their own actualization insofar as they are the loci of spatio-temporal

dynamisms inhabited by larval subjects whose thought is the clear/confused expression of a distinct-obscure

difference in the Idea. The individuating difference expressed by the larval subject of the spatiotemporal

dynamism is the agent of differenciation through which the disparity in potential between these

heterogeneous series crosses a critical threshold of disequilibrium, resulting in a sudden exchange of

information whereby ideal differentiation enters into a relation of internal resonance with extensive

differenciation (NU: Pg: 173)

Individuating difference then marks the juncture between the Idea and differential intensive in individuation

as the intensifying Idea which actualizes the virtual through the agency of the larval subject. We must

remember that Ideal differentiation is not some subjective creation, or a priori categorial register for

transcendent constitution, but that it is in the virtual realm of pure difference as the multiple as such. So

individuating difference finally resolves a potential disparity between virtual and actual in differenciation as

follows: differential relation becomes correlatively differenciated in a biophysical instantiation which can be

subject to partition or specification. This is condensed the expression of intensity as extensity in the larval

subjects differenciating actualization. Thus the notion of a differenciator of difference (t), and the obvious

nod in Deleuzes philosophy towards differencial calculus (as opposed, say, to Badious exclusively

extensional set-theoretical domain, which forecloses any appeals to virtuality). We will see next the precise

connection between the larval subjects expressing thought and the expressed Idea in the passive syntheses of

space-time.

6.7 The syntheses of space and time

Intensity synthesizes the three dimensions of time (present, past, future) and those of space (explication,

implication, ungrounding). First, we get the temporal passive synthesis of habit as the contraction of

difference in two (bare) spatial repetitions in the living present. This is undertaken by what Deleuze dubs the

passive self: contracting contemplation defines the organic passive syntheses, providing the presentation of

repetition as well as the foundation for all psychic phenomena, such as representational consciousness.

Although it happens in the mind, it is not activated by it; prior to memory and reflection but passive. This is


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the originary presentation of repetition and which is presupposed in all representation. Consequentially, a

contracted present is a retained past and expectancy of a future, both which are integral to this living

present. Repetition is presented to consciousness, but not representationally, but which constitutes it. Time

moves like an arrow from particularity to generality, from disequilibrium to equilibrium (of causal

efficiency?), so synthesis constitutes sense, canceling its intensivity in extensity (Deleuze 1968: 289, 1994:

224). So the contraction of the present is the spatial synthesis which explicates intensity as extensity,

producing generality itself insofar as it differentiates rules in repetition for future anticipation:

Time is constituted only in the originary synthesis which operates on the repetition of instants. This

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. To it belong both the past and the future: the past in

so far as the preceding instants are retained in the contraction; the future because its expectation is

anticipated in this same contraction. The past and the future do not designate instants distinct from a

supposed present instant, but rather the dimensions of the present itself in so far as it is a contraction of

instants. (Deleuze 1968: 289, 1994: 71)

Yet the present presents a paradoxical feature: it is simultaneously presupposed as the empirical ground for

time, but this foundation in turn requires the synthesis of the past wherein the present can pass. In other

words, even if experience opens up to time by way of living presencing, this presencing is only ever given

relative to a time which is in itself unconstituted by such experience, but which then requires a synthesis of

this time as past for the present to pass. For time to become contracted as present it must synthesize the

time which can be said toprecede this presentas a whole; or more precisely, the time into which this present

passes as it comes. So the constitution of every present is also at the same time the constitution of a time to

where this present passes. If the past needed to wait for another present to become past then the old past

wouldnt recede and the new one wouldnt arrive (NU: Pg: 175). A new present, discontinuous with the time

which is past, and which does notpass in this time but which pushes time to recede would not be conceivable

as present in this time, and to this past. The present passes into the past continually as it is constituted in

simultaneity with it, the latter does not wait for the former since the present is nothing but the synthesis of

accumulated past which projects forward and thus passes. The past as a whole thus coexists with every

present, it can no be said to be included in this present relative to which it is now past (thus it cannot be

discontinuous) nor can it follow a past present which it has been: presence is this self-estrangement which

passes in a synthesized past as a whole and which anticipates the future. It is the most contracted point of

the past as a whole, to which the past belongs as retention and the future as anticipation, i.e. the present


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doesnt need to go outside itself to reach past and future, but rather constitutes these going from the

particular to the general, presenting and thus distinguishingrepetition.

Another way of saying this is that the present has no intrinsic duration irrespective of the time in which it

passes, as a distinct point in a line, but it is always the contracted synthesis of the line of that which has

passed as a whole. Contemporaneity and coexistence with the past are thus two paradoxical features of the

present. Although it makes the new present pass and the new one come forth this past is never past as such:

one cannot say that it was: it doesnt exist, but it consists and is. The third paradoxical feature is that the

pure past, Deleuze says, pre-exists the passing present as an a priori precondition for all time. The synthesis

of these three moments is transcendental memory, not only grounding passive sub-representational habit

but preconditions representation of the past in the active synthesis of memory (NU: Pg, 176).

The present qua contraction of all past instants as a whole is thereby the psychic pre-representational effect

of repetition in the synthesis of the past as lived present: The past and the future do not designate instants

distinct from a supposed present instant, but rather the dimensions of the present itself insofar as it is a

contraction of instantsthe living present goesfrom the particulars which it envelops by contraction to the

general which it develops in the field of its expectation (Gilles Deleuze Difference & Repetition, pg. 71).

This fleeting present which passes requires the past has no intrinsic duration, since it can only pass in a past

without waiting. On the other hand, the pure past never passes, it formally preconditions although it properly

never exists or becomes actualized; it rather is the pure form where individuation can occur. The following

diagram can help us heretofore understand the three temporal syntheses in Deleuze, which will be clarified

as we proceed grinding through the text.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CQM8EB8En9Y/S5XyfNRfEOI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/Uhufd_ou-fM/s1600-h/deleuze.JPGhttp://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CQM8EB8En9Y/S5XyfNRfEOI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/Uhufd_ou-fM/s1600-h/deleuze.JPGhttp://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CQM8EB8En9Y/S5XyfNRfEOI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/Uhufd_ou-fM/s1600-h/deleuze.JPG


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Deleuze distinguishes the retention of the past in the living present, from the reproduction of the past in

memory. The first past belongs to an actual present contracted as the element of generality oriented towards

the anticipated future. The reproduction in memory however relates to the pure past insofar as it is not

merely the retention of the past in the lived present, but relates to a non-present which was and which allows

the general form of distinction between all presents, past and actual, thus functioning to mediating them.

Particularity is thus given by the contraction of the past in the living present, while the pure past gives its

general condition as that which mediates all presents and the past as that which was. And yet in this

representation of past in the actual is also the reproduction of the past as actual, that is, as lived present since

it is only given in the living present and having been in the living present. This means that the actual present

represents itself as actual:

Accordingly, the pure past is the element of generality within which the old present can be represented in

the actual present. But every representation of a past present in the actual present also involves the

representation of the present in which this past is. Thus representation always represents itself (Deleuze

1968: 109, 1994: 80)

This is the double dimension of the active synthesis of memory: reproduction of the past present in the

present and the reflection of the actual present as presentwhich retains the past. The pure past remains a

condition for representation (active synthesis of memory) and grounding the sub-representational passive

synthesis (of habit). This second synthesis is supported by the passive synthesis of the imagination in habit.

Thus on the basis of the retained imagination, reproduction in memory can incite the reflexive and

representative particularity. Likewise the future passes from the anticipation to the reflexive future of

prediction, of the reflection of theunderstanding as such since the understanding weights the expectation

in the imagination in proportion to the number of distinct similar cases observed and recalled (Deleuze

1968: 109, 1994: 71). Deleuze summarizes the three moments of the syntheses in this great moment: The

constitution of repetition already 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. (Ibid).

So the passive synthesis of habit constitutes time in the contraction of instants to the living present, and the

active synthesis embeds presents in relation to one another with respect to the pure past as precondition, and


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which allows its reproduction in the present. The synthesis of time as pure past is thus the non-representable

ground for representation; making possible the presentation in the actual present of the past present and the

reflection of the actual present. All past presents and future presents are given through this pure past which

remains in-itself, non-represented and preconditioning all representation. Further, the past as a whole is

characterized, following Bergson, in terms of degree of contraction and dilation of duration; the latter is

differentiated internally with respect to the multiplicities and governing their actualization. The pure past

exhibits different layers of coexistence and in degrees which point to differential relations in the Idea.

Brassier continues and claims that the present has two faces: as point of outmost contraction of duration of

intensive repetitions of the past as a virtual whole grounded in memory; and also its maximal dilation

founded on the repetition of habit contracting difference from bare/spatial repetition: The present is always

a contracted difference; but in one case it contracts indifferent instants, while in the other, by going to the

limit, it contracts a differential level of the whole which is itself one of dilation or contraction (Deleuze 1968:

114, 1994: 84 tm). Let us group the corresponding terms accordingly to remind ourselves of the associations:

- The first two temporal syntheses

- 1)Passive synthesis of habit (present) Contraction of pure past in living present. Retention of the past.

Empirical condition for time.

- 2) Transcendental synthesis of memory :

i.Passive synthesis of memory Transcendental a prioricondition. Pure past as form of generality, grounds

the sub-representational synthesis of habit, precondition of representation

in active synthesis. .

ii.Active synthesis of memory- twofold reproduction in memory: reflecting the present and reproducing the

past in the present. Ground for representation, distinguished from

retention.

The present is thus given as twofold as the act of the larval subject:

a) Passive contraction of present in habit passive synthesis of instants/

space, bare/spatial repetition of indifferent instants, maximal dilation

of duration. Explication in extensity. Enveloped. Present is reflected as

it is given.

b) Contraction of the past in memory Clothed repetition of intensive

differentiation of the virtual whole, most contracted point of duration.


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This second contraction is of a differential level which is itself one of

contraction (of time by space) or dilation (of space by time)

intrinsically to the temporal synthesis of the pure past. Implication in

intensity. Enveloping. Past is re-produced.

It is the passive synthesis of memory that differentiates the virtual whole, and which gives the pure form of

time which preconditions any contracted instance of the present in general, whether past or future, and

which thus synthesizes time as a whole. At the same time, the synthesis of memory presupposes empirically

the passive synthesis of habit, insofar as it is in the contraction of instants into the living present which is

always given, only to ground it later transcendentally. This is since in the active synthesis of memory every

present is doubly articulated. The past present is reproduction, the living present is reflected; the contracted

living present reveals the pure past as its general ground as that which insists while at the same time gives

itselfas and in the present. So, it is finally the pure pasts, as form of generality for all representation, which

grounds the living present and every instant through the active synthesis of memory. This double

articulation is the work of the larval subject, and how extensive repetition (in reproduction) implicates

intensive difference in the actualization of the virtual past as a whole (NU: Pg 177). This means that the

temporal synthesis as actualized by the larval subject distinctly express the enveloping Idea and the obscurity

of the perplicated intensive field. So actualization remains a function of reciprocal variation of the enveloping

intensitys expression of distinct relations in the Idea, and the intensive confusion as obscure perplication.

These rhythmic variations determine degree of intensive implication and extensive explication. The larval

subject thinks individuating difference as the contraction of memory; it expresses distinction in the Idea thus

dreaming matter into being. The implicated intensive clothed depth of space as time is implicated by the

explication carried forth in the active synthesis of memory.

The contraction of memory constitutes the originary sub-representational depth of intensive difference

without which the contraction of habit in extensity would be impossible. Moreover, since the latter is merely

the envelope of the former, extensive space is merely the de-differentiation more precisely, the

individualizing actualization or indi-different/ciation of intensive time. Accordingly, the relation between

space as maximal contraction of temporal intensity and the as minimal dilation of spatial extensity is entirely

internal to time. If time qua duration pertains essentially to mind (esprit), it is precisely the mind of the

larval subject, whose thinking of individuating difference determines the actualization of the virtual as a

contraction of memory. (Deleuze 1968: 114, 1994: 84 tm)


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6.8 The fracture of thinking

How does the correlation between expressing thought and expressed Idea emerge? Or put differently, what

guarantees the correspondence between intensity and Idea through actualization? The two syntheses are

related as between a) the empirical contraction of the present in the passive synthesis of habit as thephysical

presentation of time in the organism and b) transcendental/metaphysical ground of the contraction of the

pure past by the active synthesis of memory which represents time. This dual ground of the second synthesis

of memory is at once transcendentalinsofar as it is the being of the pure past wherein any present can pass,

and metaphysicalinsofar as it in-itself preconditions consciousness of the present as pure past. Presentation

is transcendental, representation is metaphysics. The latter is properly metaphysical insofar as it makes the

form of the past, into which the present passes in simultaneity in order to be represented, the original and

general model for it. Brassier explains, somewhat obscurely, that Representation institutes a series of

concentric presents expanding outward in ever-widening arcs from an originary but always already past

present. (NU: Pg 179) This image of concentric presents with widening arcs should be understood as follows:

representation constantly brings contracts time into new presents which are stretched into the future from

the always already form of the past present as presupposed form for the former. The a priorigrounding past

and the empirically given grounded present are related by resemblance; while their difference thus becomes

subordinated to identity in the concept (which, as we saw, corresponds to the representational concept of

difference) (Deleuze 1968: 351, 1994: 274).

However, actualization happens as individuating difference is the determination of differentiation in the

Idea, and not specification in the concept. So determination must be distinguished from specification and

Idea from conceptuality. How so? Determination is to be understood as the distinction in the Idea as the pure

virtual realm, whereas specification in concepts already refers to given differentiated concepts. The Idea as

pure virtual is non-conceptual difference in-itself, insofar as it is merely latent in the whole, not already

specified by conceptual identity. Thus actualization achieves an individuated difference by determining an

immanent difference in the Idea. Determination in actualization determines a) extrinsic different of

instances contracted in the present and b) the intrinsic difference between degrees of contraction in memory;

the difference between present and past is determined as the difference between extensive repetition related

to successive instants (living present of habit, expressing thought or larval subject) and intensive repetition

of co-existing levels in the past (past as whole, contraction of time (pure past) by space / dilution of space by

time (pure past) / expressed Idea of the virtual undifferenciated being). (Deleuze 1968: 114, 1994: 84). It is a

third synthesis of these two moments, as expressing and expressed which guarantees their correspondence,

and their unitary being. Thought determines in the passivity of the larval subject (present as contracted past,

empirical ground), the Idea is undifferenciated being (pure past as transcendental/metaphysical ground);


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between them is the pure empty form of time which transcendentally guarantees that the indeterminate

(Idea) can become determinate (Deleuze 1968: 220, 1994: 169). This is a purely logical, non-chronological

time void of empirical content (living present of habit) or metaphysical substance (contractions/dilations of

ontological memory) and guaranteeing the correspondence between thinking and being, expressing and

expressed. Brassier writes:

Accordingly, it establishes the correlation between the determination of thought as individuating difference

borne by the intensive thinker, and the determinability of being as differentiated but undifferenciated pre-

individual realm. Thus it is the third synthesis of time which accounts for the genesis of ontological sense as

that which is expressed in thought, and which relates univocal being directly to its individuating difference as

the expressed to its expression. In this regard, it is indissociable from the transcendent exercise of the

faculties through which the Idea is generated. (NU: Pg 179)

This is a little confusing since it almost seems to indicate the Idea is not merely expressed but actually

generated; which seems to be non-sensical. Yet what we should retain from this is precisely that in

individuating difference the undifferenciated but differential virtual is actualized, and that only in this

actualization the Idea is expressed. We should thus understand generation as the actualization of the Idea by

which larval thought weds it to the sensible and introduces it in a differenciated field of extensity: it only ex-

ists as ex-pressed by thoughts ex-pression. This synthesis of pure time is the ontological backbone of sense

as given to thought since it guarantees the correlation between the univocity of being in the Idea and the

differenciation of intensified actualization and individuation. This synthesis finally allows the production of

the future in bringing together the separating past and present (the contracted instants of the living present

and the degrees of contraction/dilation of time-space in active memory in pure past): For just as difference

is the immediate gathering and articulation of what it distinguishes, so the fracture retains what it splits, and

Ideas also retain their sundered moments (Deleuze 1968: 220, 1994: 170 tm). The pure form of time sublates

the representational ego or constituting subject as the fracture of identity which separates the larval subject

which contracts in memory pre-individual Ideal singularities, which Brassier calls the un-differenciated

groundlessness of the Idea. Deleuze neatly condenses this point as follows:

It is the empty form of time that introduces and constitutes Difference in thought; the difference on the

basis of which thought thinks, as the difference between the indeterminate and determination. It is the

empty form of time that distributes along both its sides an I that is fractured by the abstract line [of time],

and a passive self that has emerged from the groundlessness which it contemplates. It is the empty form of


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time that engenders thinking in thought, for thinking only thinks with difference, orbiting around this point

of ungrounding.(Deleuze 1968: 354, 1994: 276 tm)

Thoughts determination of the passive self and the indetermination of the fractured I in the pre-

individuated Idea thus the pure form of time can thereby establish the correlation between expressing

individuated intensity and expressed virtual Idea. In this way, thought is finally the agent that overthrows

the autonomy of the self and the identity of the I in intensive activity, and prepares it for the split which the

pure form of time brings together in its correlational separation. So Brassier finally states that the crucial

distinction must be for Deleuze between ontological differentiat/cion carried by thinking and the thought of

the larval subject expressing this difference. Thought is then twofold: the agency which enacts the correlation

by pure time in the ontological possibility of the expression of different/ciation between the larval subject

(actual) and fractured I (virtual), and the clear-confused actual expression of difference in the act. It is

thinking which determines this difference for pure time to knit it back together as an empty form.

6.9 The caesura of the act

The encounter with intensity and the transcendent exercise of the faculties generates thinking in thought:

this is the act. Thinking is caused by intensive difference, not the effect of a pre-constituted or individuated

field. The psyche folds back into individuation depriving the I of specificity and self-organization: as act, it

precludes condensing habitual differentiation into the I and the explication of intensities into the material

self. The psyche is thrown back into the process of individuation, Thinking remains the most individual act

insofar as it displays the determination correlating larval consciousness (thought, actualization) with pre-

individual singularities (Idea, virtuality) in an individuation which dissolves actual consciousness, which

fractures the time of the I and the egoistic stable intensified temporal dynamism through the ontological

determination of thinking which split the two irrevocably in the correlation between fractured I (as given by

the active reproductive memory) and dissolved self (passive larval subject)(Deleuze 1968: 332, 1994: 259). So

what is equal to intensive individuation must be characterized as the unequal in itself, insofar as it is split by

this divide. The thinker is the individual affirming the eternal recurrence which Deleuze dubs the universal

individual. But this affirmation requires an act of ontological repetition (as a condition for action) which

provides the difference between psychic repetition of the past and physical repetition of the present, all the

same while avoiding the straightjacket of representation.


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This is all extremely confusing at this point; I have no clear idea of what Deleuze is saying, or Brassier, for

that matter. Whereas actualization as established in the synthesis of habit restricts the psyche to the

repetition of the present just as that of memory restricts it to the repetition of the past (as present), the third

synthesis in a certain way deprives the repetition from both sides. It actualizes itself by repeating the past in

such a way that it erases itselfas repeated condition, and repeats the present erasing itself as repeating

agent,producing the future. The physical repetition of the past in habit as living present, and the repetition of

the present in memory as represented past are interjected by the ontological repetition productive of the

future as a repetition of repetition that determines their differences while eliminating the past as repeated

condition and the present as the (contracting) repeating agent (which of course must refer back to the larval

subject qua agent of individuation):

Repetition now pertains imperatively to repetitions; to modes or types of repetition. Thus the frontier or

difference has been singularly displaced; it is no longer between the first time and the others, between the

repeated and the repetition, but between these types of repetition. It is repetition itself which is

repeated. (Deleuze 1968: 377, 1994: 295 tm)

This repetition is thus the caesura which fractures time and introduces it into thinking by effecting the

ordination of time into a before, during and after as relative to the static synthesis separating time as pure

form from its chronologically and empirically determinate content. This act is finally the configuration of

time as a whole, by throwing it out of joint: the joints are cardinal points which stand for measures of

succession; past, present, future, not just in singular series, but sets of series and terms in successive series.

Time as jointed it is subordinated to intra-cyclic/inter-cyclic repetitions (intra-cyclic: - 2 repeats 1, 3 repeats

2 / inter-cyclic - 1(b) repeats 1(a)) and their relations are configured conforming to stricture of analogy and

resemblance. It thus remains subordinated to identity; while the caesura devolves in a static synthesis

outside representation and the dynamism of empirical content. Terms are series are distributed univocally

outside measures of succession and thus avoid subordination by determination of analogical judgments

(perplicated) or perceptual resemblance (implicated) - since this would tether them to identity-in-the-

concept. Difference is already intrinsic to the repetition enacted by the caesura of pure time into thinking: the

past is no longer model or condition for repetition just like the present is no longer a repetition of the past.

This ultimate repetition repeats itself once and opposes itself to that which must repeat itself every time,

infinitely. Even if the time before the caesura is condition for the act, it is retroactively determined by the act

(similarly to Laruelles determination of the real in-the-last-instance).


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In the same way, the time during which the caesura occurs is its agent only to reveal itself as retroactively

cancelled by the time produced coming after it. The future is this unconditioned production of the caesura,

since it simultaneously subverts the present as repetition of the past and the past as condition for the

repetition of the present, generating a repeated projection of repetition itselfin its undetermined modality.

The pure form of time thus repeats repetition in producing an unspecified future wherein all temporal

modalities can occur, i.e. which differentiates them. This is the decisive import of the third synthesis: it once

and for all provides the caesura wherein thinking can generate itself splitting from the twofold dynamic

between the present/past in the synthesis of habit/memory, as the locus for all actualization and dynamism,

to be finally delivered to a pure static form wherein difference in-distinguishes both poles in the production

of the future. This is what Deleuze names the eternal return. Difference in-itself is repeated for-itself: the

future is an absolute novelty as dependent on the introduction of the caesura by the act of thinking: Only

consciousness can be folded back into its own pre-individual dimension; only the psychic individual can

become equal to its own intensive individuation. Ultimately, it is the thinker the philosopher-artist who

is the universal individual. (NU: Pg 185). So even if it is the pure form of time which finally introduces

thinking in thought, causing it, thought must necessarily mediate in order to provide this caesura, the act is

filtered by and as thinking. The third synthesis is the locus for the movement from thought as contemplation

to production. Here Deleuze is at his best:

The Before and the During are and remain repetitions, but repetitions which only repeat once and for all. It

is the third repetition which distributes them in accordance with the straight line of time, but which also

eliminates them, determining them to operate only once and for all and keeping the all times for the third

time alone [] The frontier is no longer between a first time and the repetition that it renders hypothetically

possible, but between the conditional repetitions and the third repetition or repetition in the eternal return,

which renders the return of the other two impossible [] As we have seen, the condition of the action by

default does not return; the condition of the agent by metamorphosis does not return; what alone returns is

the unconditionedin the product as eternal return. (Deleuze 1968: 37980, 1994: 297 tm)

6.10 The two faces of death

Psychic individuation as given in the caesura of thinking shows a sense of dying which is irreducible to bio-

physical death. There are two deaths: external/extensive (disappearance of the person which cancels

represented difference by I and self; qualitative and quantitative return to inanimate matter: the extrinsic,

scientific, objective definition) and internal/intensive (the field of pre-individual differences unbound from

psychic individuation). This last state is defined as that without the effect of the I or differences without


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identity and subjective agency. This second death is never mine, but rather it is no-ones death: an

impersonal anonymous death where the reintegration into the inorganic releases pre-individual

singularities in the fractured time within the psyche. Following Blanchots reversal of Heidegger, death

remains thus the impossible (im)personal possibility since it disintegrates the self into an anonymous pre-

individual realm of in-differentiation. However, for Deleuze this latter pre-individual realm is the locus for

psychic maximal individuation, as the universal individual who introduces thinking into thought; it is

ultimately the latter which dies as the nexus for an act which intensifies the pre-individual in-difference in

individuation. We thus get the distinction between intra-psychic death asmaximized difference in times

fracture in the pre-individual (intensive), from the minimization of difference through explication in

extensity which closes the gap between organic and inorganic being. The former is the apex of intensive

individuation in which differences are released, the latter of extensive in-differentiation of the big split

between living/dead, i.e. it cancels representational extensive difference in the return to the inorganic

(Deleuze 1968: 333, 1994: 259 tm).

Yet in intensive death we find the death-drive which is understood, radicalizing Freud, not as the libidinal

compulsion of the organism thriving to return to the inorganic, but the maximal potentiation of the

difference between intensive differentiation (pre-individual differences released from psyche) and extensive

de-differentiation (of the organic into the inorganic). This complicity between the intensive dying and the

death-drive comprises the irreducibility of drying to death, or of death to the death of bio-physical

envelopment. So the death-instinct triggers the affirmation of recurrence in an act of thinking wherein

repetition in intensity and repetition in extensity are differentiated as a function of the repetition of

difference in pure/negentropic time: The time which is empty and out of joint, with its rigorous formal and

static order, its crushing totality, and its irreversible series, is precisely the death-instinct (Deleuze 1968:

147, 1994: 111 tm). Brassier connects the caesura of thinking the fracture of time the affirmation of

recurrence, and the experience of death which re-implicates the psyche in individuation insofar as they

indicate an ontological conversion whereby representation is undone by thinkings occasioning for the

eternal return of difference-in-itself. It is the caesura of thinking that implication in intensity is finally freed

from its explication in extensity and intensive difference liberated from extensive repetition. This act is non-

confined to the individual psyche, since everything thinks and is a thought, as established in the third-

synthesiss correlation between expressing thought and expressed Idea. The caesura is thus univocally

distr

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heidegger and deleuze on death.pdf