"Organisms awake to the sublime world of the third Ennead: all is contemplation!" (Difference and Repetition, p. 75). I have a problem acknowledging my philodendron's contemplative soul. At the same time, I wouldn't want to absolutely deny that the philodendron's life has meaning. What exactly is Deleuze asking me to believe (not without irony) with respect to the philodendron? In the first place, I would have to believe that the philodendron experiences passive synthesis, a prereflective consciousness of the living present. This living present would have to include a retention of whence it's been and an anticipation of whither it's going. Minimally, the philodendron would have to know that it's alive. This would seem to resemble a practical sort of knowledge, a knowledge based on habitus. However, Deleuze suggests that habits are acquired not through action but through contemplation (p.73). For Deleuze contemplation means "to draw something from" the contraction that is habit, the fusion of elements (tick tick) or cases (tick tock) in a contemplative soul (p.74).
In the second place–and it is not at all clear to me that Deleuze would extend this analysis to plant life, except that he would have me acknowledge the contemplative soul of the plant–Deleuze says that "[e]ach contraction, each passive synthesis, constitutes a sign which is interpreted or deployed in active synthesis" (p.73). At this point I have to balk. It is one thing to say that my philodendron has a knowledge of its own life; it's quite another to say that is capable of active synthesis, of signifying, or questioning (which is another meaning Deleuze gives for contemplation (p.78)). To be fair to Deleuze, he is offering a special definition of signs. He says, "Signs as we have defined them–as habitudes or contractions referring to one another–always belong to the present," and he distinguishes a class of natural signs, based on passive synthesis only, from artificial signs which imply active synthesis.(p.77). This is a bit confusing. What would be the role of interpretation in the case of natural signs?
Finally, what power of imagination does the philodendron possess? How are its repetitions thinkable? Deleuze says that repetition is essentially imaginary (p.76). He also says that "[t]he 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 synthesis" (p.71). If the philodendron's repetitions are not unthinkable, then it must have a power of "spontaneous imagination" (p.77), an image of its own life. Again, this is a problem for me, because I don't want to anthropomorphize my philodendron, and yet I can't be certain that it's life doesn't mean something to it.
Labels: Deleuze, panpsychism, passive synthesis, philodendron, Plotinus