Image courtesy of DALL-E.
Deleuze may be considered one of the last noteworthy thinkers to engage in systematic metaphysics, and one of the only among that exceptionally brilliant generation of the French postmoderns whose shadow we live under today.
But Deleuze is not a simple thinker. And he is often one of the prime targets of those who accuse humanities theorists of being dogmatically verbose. Whether or not Deleuze himself falls into deliberately obscurantist prose is I believe an open question, though nearly all who talk in his parlance are guilty of congealing hazy word soup, more often than not.
I have been re-reading Difference and Reptition, the magnum opus of Deleuze's metaphysics before he entered a partnership with Guattari which had controversial impacts on the quality of his later work.
Here I hope to break down in a succinct, and at least slightly clearer frame, the ideas Deleuze sought to put forth in the introduction to his book. The density and philosophical sophistication of these ideas though are rather off-putting and assume the reader has a very thorough intimacy with the questions and conceptual parlance of philosophy across the Western tradition.
But for those initiated in these metaphysical questions, I believe it is a rather illuminating read. One that brings systematicity to thinkers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche who seem so intrinsically anti-systematic themselves.
It is the "latest and greatest" of metaphysical tracts, and I do not believe a successor has yet been published in the West, at least to my knowledge.
(This summary will undergo a few iterations of clarification. It remains still in its early stages.)
Introduction - Repetition and Difference
I - Repetition vs. Generalities
Things are typically reduced to some generality. Cats, dogs, and muffins. A number of particulars fall under each of these general species. A generality which erases the particularity and individuality of that which it subsumes. The universal dilutes the richness of variety.
But this is not the way it has to be. Instead of reducing all things to generalities, Deleuze would like to introduce an alternative: repetition.
How can we understand what it is to be general? Generality can be divided into two classes: cycles and equalities. Cycles are a qualitative order of resemblances while equalities are a quantitative order of equivalences. The blueness of the sky today indicates that we have clear weather, something we also had two days ago. The generality tricycle includes all vehicles with the quantitative equivalence of three wheels. In both, generality presupposes the substitution of various particulars while still maintaining some sense of generality. It is rooted in this exchange. You can swap in your idea of your dog with my idea of my dog, and we've still got a "dog" in mind. The particulars come and go through this trade which support this more general idea.
By contrast, repetition is concerned with singularities that cannot be exchanged or substituted for one another. Reflections, echoes, doubles, and souls cannot simply be swapped in the way generalities can. Repetition does not swap in and out it merely strikes again. Repetition is rooted thus in theft and gift. It goes as it comes.
By its nature, repetition occurs in relation to something that is singular, something that is without equal. This is externally true but perhaps also internally true. There is a sense in which repetition interiorizes and reverses itself. The Bastille falls in 1789 as a historical event. But it is celebrated every year and in this sense falls again and again. This singular fall celebrates and repeats itself for every subsequent year it is celebrated. The holiday repeats itself through its annual re-enactment.
In this way, the generality of the particular (i.e. a dog) exists in opposition to the universality of the singular (i.e. Fido). This surfaces prominently in the case of art. Art is a repetition which reiterates singular things, even if it is as simple as a vase of flowers. It is a singularity that repeats. At the same time, the art itself has no general concept in itself but yet it remains universal as it belongs universally to the vase of flowers.
To draw this out further, generality belongs to law. Law determines the resemblances between its subjects, and their equivalence to designated, common terms. Think of how we apply law to designate animals into their classes and species. In cases like this, repetition is impossible for pure subjects of general law because these can only be particulars. A general idea of bumblebee cannot repeat itself, as it lacks that singular bumblebee. This is an empty form of difference. One cannot simply say that the same bumblebee repeats itself by remaining its constant itself. At some deeper level, any constant dissolves into a variable. Permanence always dissolves upon some foundational bedrock, no matter how deep.
Repetition is more like a miracle than a law. As Deleuze says, “If repetition exists, it expresses at once a singularity opposed to the general, a universality opposed to the particular, a distinctive opposed to the ordinary, an instantaneity opposed to variation and an eternity opposed to permanence. In every respect, repetition is a transgression.” (2-3)
Natural phenomena are produced in a free state where all inferences are possible among the cycles of resemblance. The world unfolds in chaotic free play. To understand it, we must siphon and snip off minuscule components to analyze. Scientific experimentation encloses phenomena within a territory of minimal variation. Controls, isolation, replicability, etc. In this way, phenomena are transformed from a quantitative generality (cycle) to a quantitative generality (equality). Resemblances are unpacked to identify equality between subjects.
Repetition only emerges here in the movement from qualitative to quantitative, and yet undergirds both of these orders. But one should not mistake a qualitative difference of kind for a quantitative difference of degree for the two are fundamentally separate.
Repetition refers to a singular power that differs in kind from generality. It should not be assumed from the law of nature as the Stoics erroneously do in their philosophy of ethics. In their view, the morality of Good and Evil is merely a test of repetition. Evil ensnares us in despair or boredom while choosing Good is a repetition, an act out of duty. And because of this conscience rests on an ambiguity which supposes that moral law is both external to and superior to natural law. But yet moral law also must conform to natural law, bringing the self in accordance to nature. Moral law is thus built on a generality. A generality of habit as a second nature. The obligation to make a habit of acquiring natural habits.
However habit never produces repetition. Action and intent remain comparable variables across real world cases. If repetition were possible here, it would appear beneath the generality of perfection and integration, and these rest on an entirely different power.
Instead, repetition is opposed to moral and natural law. Moral can be overturned in two ways: (1) by ascending toward the principles and challenging the moral law as something derived from something else or (2) by descending toward consequences and analytically breaking down the applicability of these principles, reducing them toward absurdity. The first is the way of irony, the second the way of humor. Repetition belongs to both humor and irony as transgression and exception, singularity that opposes the particulars established in the law of generality.
II - Repetition in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Peguy
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Peguy all elevate repetition as a superior pathos and pathology in thought and language, though they do so in different ways. All three oppose repetition to generality and share these four points:
- Repetition makes something new as a free act of will.
- Repetition is opposed to nature. It is by the most interior repetition of will that change occurs, in the eternal return of Being.
- Repetition is opposed to moral law. It suspends ethics. It is the logos of the singular. The solitary private thinker stands as an individual against the particular public moralist, operating from generality.
- Repetition is opposed to general habit and particular memory. Habit is built upon the idea that a little Self extracts something new from an external repetition, but it contemplates an external generality. Memory grabs up particulars out of this contemplation. These are past-bound, while repetition is the thought of the future. Forgetting is a power of positivity.
Kierkegaard's God and Nietzsche's Dionysus both overcome philosophy. Both reject Hegel's false movement which is mediation through some abstract motion. It cannot be a representation of movement, for this is already mediated as representation. Rather one must produce a movement that affects the mind outside representation. This is theater, the root of real movement. Movement is not opposition or representation but repetition through drama.
Nietzsche grounds repetition in eternal return, itself built on the death of God and dissolution of the Self. For Kierkegaard, there is an alliance between God and rediscovered self. But doesn't Kierkegaard merely reinject the aesthetic repetition he ardently condemns? This is a problem that cannot be solved here or now but this does provide a theatrical confirmation of the irreducible difference between generality and repetition.
III - Four Blockages of Concepts
A concept may conceptualize a particular existent thing, i.e. that Socrates right there. This concept extends over one singular entity and thus infinitely comprehends it. This infinity of comprehension is not virtual nor indefinite but actual. Predicates in the moments of concepts are preserved through this. They have an effect on their subject, causing remembrance, recognition, memory, or even self-consciousness. Consequently, representation is the relation of a concept to its object under this double aspect of memory and self-consciousness.
A "vulgarized Leibnizianism" may be derived from this. Difference entails that every determination is conceptual in the last instance and belongs to the comprehension of a concept. The principle of sufficient reason states that there is always one concept per particular entity. Additionally, according to the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, there is one and only one entity per concept. When these two principles are combined, difference is thought of as conceptual difference.
However, a concept may be obstructed at each level of its predication. Something that prevents it from forming fully. Deleuze ennumerates one artificial blockage, and three natural ones: discrete, alienated, and repressed.
When a predicate is determined, the predicate must remain fixed in the concept while becoming something else when it subsists in its entity. In this case, the comprehension of the concept is infinite. It becomes other in the thing as a resemblance. In this way the determination of a predicate may remain general. If there is a resemblance between a particular and this predicate, it may be applied to it. It is applicable to an infinite number of particulars and so the concept has an infinite comprehension. While this is true, it remains logically blocked. The concept's comprehension no longer applies to one singular entity but to many more, so no individual can correspond to this concept "here and now". Comprehension and extension of a concept are thus inversely related.