Difference and Repetition [part 2] Masks and Sacred Geometry

[@javedani66]

This series are in depth seminars...I just take notes and wait for the next one! marvelous!

[@ShdwftheSuN]

Thank you SO MUCH for this series!!! I am using it to help me understand the book and also to apply it to my own art and writings.

[@deleuzephilosophy]

You're very welcome, thank you as well :) I'm very happy to hear that this series can help you in your own works!

[@ilyataraschansky9527]

Thank you for your enlightened explanations of the obscured concepts ! It’s a great delight to see new contents from your channel !

[@deleuzephilosophy]

Thanks a lot Ilya, glad it can be of use :)

[@jonasdornelles7094]

Amazing to see such great content in a youtube content. In this one you should have worked hard, but here we have the concentraded juice. It's such dense thinking... thanks for the new video!

[@deleuzephilosophy]

Thank you very much Jonas! Yes it took me a while to figure out how to present this part. It's an eternal dilemma: how to be as "general" as possible and yet not loose too many details. Anyways, glad you liked it!

[@animefurry3508]

This strangely reminds of of the holographic principle in physics! Great video, I may be a Zizekian myself, but I seek to understand Deleuze anyways!

[@heartache5742]

you're literally the best

[@deleuzephilosophy]

Thank you Emma, glad you like this content!

[@sammyDAbull2]

I got through the intro and chapter one a few months ago and found myself way out of my depth. Really helpful to have some of this broken down a little more. One question at the moment, is deleuze equating representation and concept? Are these synonyms for him here? Or are they distinct ideas

[@sammyDAbull2]

Its the quote you have at 6:05 that had me a bit confused. Thanks!

[@deleuzephilosophy]

@@sammyDAbull2 Thank you! Good question. Generally speaking, a concept is the idea of a singular thing ("that which can only be thought"). Representation is the process by which this singular idea is then over-generalized. Hence why Deleuze often talks of culture and higher abstraction as forms of "delirium". There are contexts in which Deleuze uses "concept" in a sense that is closer to "representation" (i.e., as an abstraction rather than a singular thought), but roughly put, the main idea is this: singularity (concept--creation) vs. generalization (representation--abstraction). For example, if you pet your cat, the ideation you have here-and-now is a concept, "this cat". But when you apply this ideation to other cats, through memory and self-consciousness notably, by saying "all cats are like my cat", that's representation as it implies an essence ("cat-ness"). Of course this is a silly example, there's always a back-and-forth in reality, but concepts such as "substance" or "signifier" generally behave like this. Hope this helps a little!

[@sammyDAbull2]

@@deleuzephilosophy thanks for the response! Ill digest this a bit and give the vid another watch, see if things click!

[@deleuzephilosophy]

@@sammyDAbull2 You're welcome, good luck in your journey!

[@sankethota1088]

excellent work i have watched your videos multiple times

[@deleuzephilosophy]

Thank you very much, glad you like this content!

[@tfw2997]

Hey thanks for the video its well done! something i dont understand though at 07:54 is why you state that if you limit the comprehension of the concept logically that implies that it will designate an infinite number of objects. wouldnt it be the opposite since by saying that "cats are not plants", you are reducing the number of extensions since now plants are not part of said extension?

[@deleuzephilosophy]

Thank you! So, the logical limitation of the concept refers to definitions that are based on negation: it's Hegel in a nutshell. As opposed to this, there is "finite representation": if you say "all cats are mammals", you place "cat" within an objective finite and countable set: it's what Deleuze calls the "propitious moment", "neither too large or too small" as he says, and it's how the Greeks go about the problem of difference, they reduce it to a change within a genus. But Hegel would like to reach infinite representation, or "invade the infinite" as Deleuze says, and he does so by using logical negation: the set of "non-x" (negation) presupposes the whole of Being and therefore a potentially infinite or uncountable set of objects. As soon as the negative logical operator intervenes (as in "A is not non-A"), definitions reach the infinite. But they do so only by reducing difference to logical negation, itself grounded in identity, meaning that infinite representation through logical limitation fails to give us a positive definition of difference. Sorry if it's a bit of a blunt explanation, hope it helps a little.

[@chase8536]

Thank you for more 🔥🔥 content

[@deleuzephilosophy]

Thank you Chase, my pleasure!

[@nnxj6125]

You are a brilliant exegete. May I ask if you are in graduate school?

[@deleuzephilosophy]

Thank you very much! Yes, I'm doing a PhD research on Deleuze.

[@Anarchistontologyenjoyer]

@@deleuzephilosophy how did you look for programs that offer this area of study?

[@deleuzephilosophy]

@@Anarchistontologyenjoyer I got in contact with people in the field, who gave me advice on how to proceed. My best advice is to first do things (e.g., write articles, organize something, etc.) and then show people your work. It's a good way to start a conversation ;)

[@lukeskirenko]

I started reading Difference and Repetition, then switched to Todd May's introduction to Deleuze, and at the end of it was left with the impression that there's likely no need for any of this, because a common-sense scientific view of the physical world (which I think is a necessary component of Deleuze's metaphysical quest) combined with a philosophical view which understands the errors and naivety of ancient assumptions about language and concepts that were dependent on ideal forms or essences, already provides coherence (yes, language and conceptual mapping gets extended over time through experience). That combination doesn't provide access to some sort of metaphysical substrate, but it provides coherence. Isn't Deleuze trying to conjure a metaphysical substrate, and failing, because there's no way to access the thing in itself which lies beyond the conceptual? And isn't this the reason why his use of the word 'repetition' is so jarring, because he's extending into a realm where he's losing the connection to the origin of the word, into that which can't be defined, or can only be motioned towards with words like 'substance' or 'being' etc.? What does one gain by trying to cast in metaphysical terms the fact that our picture of the physical world involves an understanding that the structures within it are in a sense never 'totally' identical? And I might add to that, that picture, as I understand it, relies on notions of particles which are self-similar, and therefore which stand outside of the change which occurs through time... though of course I don't really have a clue about quantum physics and whatever implications go with it... it's way above my head.

[@kylerodd2342]

Deleuze explicitly states that being is not a substrate or substance at all and that instead, being is difference in itself covered over by the structure of repetition. He’s not so much concerned with “what is” but rather “what we are doing,” and maybe that’s why it’s confusing for you. He diagnoses that philosophy, in general, has become stagnant in its thinking, subsuming thought into knowledge and losing sight of its genesis: learning. He then tries to give us a sense of how to reignite thought into motion so we can find a power between thought and the concrete world. It’s very easy for philosophers to become ineffectual in a world of abstraction, within their own thoughts, relinquishing their power to act as a difference in the real world. Especially in his time when academics were being charged as just another dominating pole in the dynamics of political power. Deleuze has no problem with science and its ability to make things happen but he might critique the results of the replication crisis where it seems some scientists publish paper after paper not in order to further their thought or experience but to instead keep their careers alive for the sake of survival, capital and recognition. Deleuze will say, against Hegel and the dialectic, that we don’t become conscious subjects from recognition but through learning, which is to stare into the abyss and allowing it to change you.

[@lukeskirenko]

​@@kylerodd2342 Very interesting, thanks. Is he not, however, aiming at a rigid metaphysical framework himself, in the ambition to schematise ontological foundation vs concepts? I think there are some serious problems in what I've read of difference and repitition, which I doubt there's any way out of. For instance, there's an assumption of inherent difference in what he calls repitition, but by what means could that claim be made? It's made with reference to an atomistic view of the world, the idea that every snowflake is uniquie. The only foundational method to assume uniqueness is via an atomistic sameness. And this relates to the drive in the sciences towards fundamental particles, the conceptual layer in which the physical world and the conceptualisation are self-identical. It strikes me that there's another error also, in that Deleuze talks about repetition as though it's an event in the noumena. But it's more accurate to say that it's an event that arises as a relation between the noumena and the perceiver/agent. Thus the thing that repeats can indeed be a reiteration of the same, in the sense that the criteria of the perceiver/agent in conceptualisation is met. So why assume a metaphysical 'difference' at all? The assumption seems to come, as I said, from a scientific idea involving fundamental particles, but if that's the case then at a fundamental level there is self-similarity and not difference. Deleuze's analogies and metaphors can be quite nice in picturing the type of structures one sees in complexity science, but I'm not convinced it makes sense on a metaphysical level.

[@kylerodd2342]

@@lukeskirenko So I can’t say that I’m confident in answering to your critique but I’ll give it my best. I don’t think difference is assumed but rather concluded. What I mean is that Deleuze charges the history of philosophy of subsuming the concept of difference in representation, meaning that difference has never been given its own concept. In other words, we have a signifier by the name of difference but no signified concept for difference. Deleuze’s project here is to investigate philosophy and develop a concept for difference that isn’t mediated by the four shackles of representation. And in order to do this he finds that to conceptualize difference that we need to intersect it with repetition. Deleuze is taking on the task of pushing thought into what was thought unthinkable, by moving passed the need for representation and in effect, giving us access to the noumena in a certain way. Which is to say, reconnect abstract thought with the concrete reality and action. And I don’t think it’s accurate to say that repetition is an event but rather is that which allows an event to even be conceptualized in the first place. That repetition is the condition that produces time for an event. We must remember that Deleuze gives us two notions of repetition, one from the point of view of representation and one from the view of difference. I have to admit, I’m not really sure what you’re getting at when it comes to atomic particles. As far as I’m aware, Deleuze isn’t looking for difference in itself by taking a finer resolution of matter but instead pushing thought to its limit. Hope this helped.

[@lukeskirenko]

@@kylerodd2342 My limited understanding is that he's using difference to get at something like, the constant possibility of greater specificity, greater specificilty beyond 'generalisation'. But the way I see it is that that notion of greater specificity is based on a scientific notion of the physical world which has come about through an attempt to reduce phenomena to underlying constants. So then if we turn to the noumena, it's fair to regard it as unknnowable in a sense, and in another sense knowable through our interaction with it. So the noumena has a structure, which allows the perceptions generated from it to have an order, and furthermore, the structure of our perception is what allows for conceptual generalised notions of repetition, sameness, identity. And so it's not exactly as though our concepts are always short of the specificity of the actual world beyond concepts, because we're not exactly using concepts to constantly map the world in a sort of logical positivist manner. We're doing a bunch of weird funky stuff with symbolic representation that is hard to track, and the fact that we can form generalised concepts imples that our neurobiology is consistent enough to generate the impression of sameness, or regularity, as we navigate the world. It's not exactly that we're always sticking a label on a thing, expecting the label to match exactly with a physical referent. I suppose what I'm saying is that I get the impression that Deleuze's metaphysics are flatteniing out the compexity of language and the world as though it were merely signifier and referent.

[@kylerodd2342]

@@lukeskirenko well, I don’t think you’re on the money there at all with your first statement in your last comment. Sorry mate. If this is your general understanding then there’s just far too large a gap between how we understand Deleuze to even bridge it. At least not in a KZbin comment section.

[@samcopeland3155]

You guys know there's like real, empirically and deductively robust theories out there, right?

[@deleuzephilosophy]

Indeed, these would be part of the second synthesis of time. But they presuppose things (axioms) that they can't explain, like an impartial subject or an objective world, meaning that they're limited to reductive representations that can't really seize their object (especially with cognitive theories) and end up "chasing the noumenon" forever

[@jobebrian]

@@deleuzephilosophyDeleuze seems to me one of those thinkers who could most benefit those who begin reading him skeptically or even denying his insights into the nature of reality, and of course the reality of nature. Or so he has been for me.

[@drisoubouzoubaa]

AWESOME

[@deleuzephilosophy]

Thanks Idris! How did that paper go by the way?

[@drisoubouzoubaa]

@@deleuzephilosophy well actually the dead line is just before summer, it is a research work that we have to return at the end of the year Im slowly progressing, trying to draw conclusions on the relationship between concepts of time, sign and learning

[@deleuzephilosophy]

@@drisoubouzoubaaActually in the intro of D&R Deleuze has this awesome observation about learning, you probably know it already: "We learn nothing from those who say: 'Do as I do'. Our only teachers are those who tell us to 'do with me', and are able to emit signs to be developed in heterogeneity rather than propose gestures for us to reproduce" (p.23 in the English translation). Learning is not about imitation but about encountering problems, like a swimmer encountering a wave. It's similar to what he says about concepts (in the seminars I think), namely that the best way to understand a concept is by understanding the particular problem it addresses. Anyways, hopes this helps a little :D

[@drisoubouzoubaa]

@@deleuzephilosophy thank you very much for taking the time to show me this, it has been useful