Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 05:35:07 -0500
From: "B. Metcalf" <bmetcalf-AT-ultranet.com>
Subject: Re: Deleuzian Repetition


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Hi Paul,

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<excerpt>Although Deleuze is deeply influenced by Hume and takes up some
Humean teachings, I think his transcendental empiricism is radically
different than Humean empiricism.  As I see it, Deleuze is much closer to
process philosophy than Humean empiricism.  But I won't tell that story
now.  At any rate, Hume is driven by an atomism of impressions, whereas
for Deleuze-Bergson impressions cannot be atoms in and of themselves but
must be the result of a process of individuation and differentiation.
Experience, in Deleuze, is not built up from atoms, but results from
dissociations or divergences of a whole that is never given in and of
itself.  Hume = from parts to whole.  Deleuze = from whole to parts.

</excerpt><<<<<<<<

I agree that Deleuze's empiricism is very different from Hume's.  Hume's
influence is seen primarily in Deleuze's first synthesis of time.
However, that does not mean Hume's empiricism is an atomism, at least not
according to Deleuze.  Deleuze says, (E&S 27) "...to confuse
associationism with atomism is a curious misunderstanding...Since the
mind is in itself a collection of atoms, a true psychology is neither
immediately nor directly possible:  the principles do not make the mind
an object of possible science without first giving it an objective
nature.  Hume therefore does not create an atomistic psychology; he
rather indicates, inside atomism a state of the mind which does not
permit any psychology."  It is in following Hume that Deleuze says, (E&S
31) "The essence and the destiny of empiricism are not tied to the atom
but rather to the essence of association; therefore, empiricism does not
raise the problem of the origin of the mind but rather the problem of the
constitution of the subject.  Moreover, it envisages this constitution in
the mind as the effect of transcending principles and not as the product
of a genesis."


Deleuze does not see Hume's empiricism as a product of atomistic genesis
(i.e., a homogeneous genesis of representation).  Rather, Deleuze sees
Hume's associationism as a heterogeneous genesis at the level of
sub-representation.  This means that Deleuze sees Hume's empiricism as a
process of two heterogeneous series of repetition at the
sub-representative level.  (E&S 26-7) "In Hume's work, we witness the
unequal development of two lines of diverse inspiration."  These are the
two lines of repetition at the sub-representative level described in D&R.
 These two heterogeneous series are Hume's atomism (not to be confused
with a homogeneous-representational atomism) and his associationism.
(E&S 105) "Atomism is the theory of ideas, insofar as relations are
external to them.  Associationism is the theory of relations, insofar as
relations are external to ideas, in other words, insofar as they depend
on other causes."  What is this if not the two lines of repetition at the
sub-representative level described in D&R?  Therefore Hume's, like
Deleuze's, empiricism does not go from parts to whole or from whole to
parts (which would be representational generality).  Rather, there is
nomadic distribution of sub-representative multiplicities.  (E&S 92)
"...it is entirely incorrect to say that the whole, in Hume's atomism, is
nothing but the sum of its parts, since the parts, considered together,
are defined, rather, according to their mode of temporal, and sometimes
spatial, appearance." 


Beth     

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