Deleuze and Repetition

Mimesis has a wide range of instances. For example, an 'imitation of Nietzsche' could describe a parroting of his views, an aphoristic style of writing, or an application of his critique of Schopenhauer to Heidegger. Likewise, 'Repetition' can denote a slavish reproduction, an oblique reference, or a re-creation of a distinction. According to Deleuze, the former is typical of the traditional concept of Repetition, i. e. it is a Repetition of the Same, in contrast with which, he proposes that it be defined as the structure of the latter, i. e. a Repetition of Difference. However, the range of the concept demonstrates that he would be mistaken to insist that his is the exclusively correct version. For, Repetition, in general, is a combination of Identity and Difference, to varying degrees of proportion. Thus, in the traditional concept, Identity predominates, while in Deleuze's, Difference does, but with neither escaping entailing a vestige of the subordinate concept, i. e. in the former, there is a difference between original and copy, while in the latter, the difference that is recreated is the same as that which obtains in the antecedent case. So, as innovative as Deleuze's concept of Repetition is, it is as one-sided as the one it challenges.

Deleuze, Fold, Monad, Nomad

While Deleuze initially derives his image of Subjectivity as a 'Fold' from Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, his full development of it comes in its application to Leibniz' Monad. As he shows in his book on Leibniz, a Fold consists in enfoldings and unfoldings, e. g. perceptions and actions, respectively, though, an unfolding is a transition to an eventual refolding. Hence, he demonstrates that, for Leibniz, at least, these processes are ultimately internal to a Monad. However, the application of the pattern to his own concept of Subjectivity remains uncertain. For, while elsewhere, his other predominant image of Subjectivity, the 'Nomad', seems implicated in a process of social unfolding, in his book on Leibniz, he presents it as a special case of Monad, i. e. one whose unfolding is only a transition to an eventual refolding. On the other hand, he might define 'Nomad' as the 'Repetition of a Monad', and on the basis of Difference and Repetition, assert that it, therefore, is the primary principle of the two. In either case, though, his analysis of Fold reveals that fundamental to both Monad and Nomad are the processes of Enfolding and Unfolding, the Difference between which each suppresses.

Deleuze and Monad

One of Deleuze's career-long ambitions is the development of what can be termed 'Immanent Puralistic Subjectivity'. For example, simple atoms are not subjects, since they lack interiority. Furthermore, while Spinoza's Modes are immanent entities that possess interiority, on Deleuze's reading, they are not truly Pluralistic, since they are ultimately only parts of Substance, and, hence, reducible to it. In contrast, the Perspectivism of Leibniz' Monads entails all three of Deleuze's requisites. First, an entity with a Perspective is a Subject. Second, Perspective co-implicates every other Subject, so these subjects comprise an immanent system. Finally, since each perspective uniquely and irreducibly defines a subject, the system is Pluralistic. However, while the existence of God pre-establishes for Leibniz inter-Monadic harmony, for the atheistic Deleuze, society consists of only random accords and discords. Since, for Hume, the natural Sympathy that produces inter-subjective harmony is, at best, contingent and partial, Deleuze's apparent attribution to him of a subscription to Leibnizian "pre-established harmony" is puzzling.

Deleuze, Hume, Leibniz

Deleuze's later appreciation of Leibniz re-affirms what his book on Hume tries to accomplish--a subordination of Hume's Atomism to his Associationism, culminating in Hume's apparent espousal of Leibniz "pre-established harmony" principle. However, the concomitant reduction of Externalism to Internalism is not as eccentric as it might seem. While the atoms of Hume's concept of Experience are mutually external, that they are 'impressions', and not, say, Bergsonian images, or Sartreian phenomena, marks them as already experientially internal. So, because, for Hume, experience is constituted by the internal association of these internal elements, it begins as, and remains as, windowless as Leibniz' Monads.

Deleuze, Purposiveness, Pragmatists

Deleuze asserts, in Empiricism and Subjectivity, that the concept of Practical Subjectivity entails the thought of an agreement between the course of Nature and the sequence of human ideas. By calling this thought 'Purposiveness', he distances this contention from both Kant, who uses the term differently, and Hume, who does not use it all. Thus, his citation of Hume elsewhere describing that agreement as "a kind of pre-established harmony" suggests that Deleuze's inspiration for it is, instead Leibniz, and, perhaps, Spinoza. In contrast, the pioneers of the priority of Practice, i. e. Peirce, James, and Dewey, reject the implication of such a thought in Praxis, instead proposing the fundamental Pragmatist thesis that Experience is an ongoing adjustment between Subject and environment. Dewey, in particular, appreciates the etymological kinship of 'empirical', 'experience', and 'experiment', all rooted in uncertain 'attempting'. Even Santayana's 'animal faith' in an accord between inner and outer experience is instinctual, not an explicitly articulated 'thought'. So, Deleuze's assertion that Purposiveness is entailed by Practical Subjectivity is, at best, questionable, and tends to underscore a chronic inattention to those Pragmatists that is unworthy of his otherwise astonishing erudition.

Deleuze, Hume, Kant, Purposiveness

According to Deleuze's interpretation, Hume's theory of Experience as a pursuit of ends integrates both the subject of experience and its environing world. Deleuze terms the thought of the agreement between the internal and external dimensions of Experience 'Purposiveness', a notion plainly derived from Kant. However, this reference to Kant is perplexing, because, for Kant, 'Purposiveness' primarily denotes the thought that observed phenomena are intentional--a thought which, of greatest significance to Kant's system, grounds his concept of Deservedness, i. e. that happiness is not circumstantial but the effect of a intentional reward for Virtue. In contrast, Deleuze's use of the term is more directly evocative of a Kantian principle that he asserts Hume does not subscribe to, and that is antithetical to Empiricism--that the unity of Experience is, at the same time, the unity of the objects of Experience. Such inaccuracies in Deleuze's interpretation of Hume suggest that it is more properly a development of his own concept of 'Empiricism' than either, say, 'A Humean Response to Kant', or 'Hume: Transition From Locke to Kant'.

Deleuze, Hume, Empiricism, Locke

Deleuze derives from his reading of Hume a concept of 'Empiricism' as a theory of not The Given, but of the appropriation of The Given by Imagination. Accordingly, he defines 'non-empiricist' as any theory in which "relations are derived from the nature of things". However the applicability of these notions to the prototypical theory of Empiricism, one that plainly influences Hume, namely Locke's, is problematic. For Locke, the decisive moment of his theory does pertain to The Given, i. e. his 'tabula rasa' thesis. Furthermore, his theory of Primary Qualities does seem to imply that a class of relations, e. g. Mathematical ones, are derived from the nature of things, not constructed by Imagination. So, the absence of any attention to Locke significantly weakens Deleuze's interpretations of both Hume and Empiricism.

Deleuze, Hume, Subjectivity, Activation

The concept of Subjectivity that Deleuze finds in Hume's texts determines a discrete natural entity within environing Nature. Such discreteness is not given, but must be created, a process the decisive moment of which, according to Deleuze, requires an internal "activation". As his later works reveal, he finds e. g. in Spinoza's theory, as principles of Activation, Reason and Intuition. In contrast, in part accounting for his classification of it as 'Empiricist', the principle of Activation that he finds in Hume's theory is Imagination, which invents a 'subject' and a cultural 'world' that it inhabits. Now, Deleuze's book on Hume can be appreciated as self-exemplifying--an inventive appropriation of Hume's given texts. But, if so, then the concept of Subjectivity that the book develops is not necessarily one that Hume subscribes to, or would even recognize.

Deleuze, Hume, Empiricism, Practice

According to Deleuze's interpretation, the Humean 'Subject' is both Practical and Empiricist. It is Practical because its fundamental mode of experience is the pursuit of the satisfaction of its interests, and it is Empiricist because that pursuit is informed by Knowledge gained from previous experiences. However, that knowledge, in seemingly all the examples from Hume's texts that Deleuze cites, is knowing-that, e. g. that A and B have been constantly conjoined. Thus lacking, are examples of knowing-how, e. g. that B can be expected to occur upon the performance of A. Likewise, the only Humean habit-formation that Deleuze cites is a cultivation of expectation, not one of motor habits. Hence, Deleuze falls short of deriving from Hume an Empiricism that is truly a "theory of what we are doing" as he claims at the end of the book to have presented in its course.

Deleuze, Hume, Kant

One of Deleuze's primary ambitions in Empiricism and Subjectivity is to defend Hume against Kant's critique of his theory of Experience. That critique holds that Hume's Atomisim and Associationism do not suffice to account for the synthetic structures of experience. Deleuze's response shows how Imagination accomplishes for Hume the same constructions that Schematism and the Categories do for Kant. Furthermore, he demonstrates how Sympathy extends itself from a partial to a general bonding with others. However, Deleuze, following Hume, does not seem to appreciate the significance of the distinction between Universality and Generality--the latter only approximates to the former, which, according to Kant, can never be derived from the particular or the contingent, e. g. from Imagination or Sympathy, but only from Pure Reason. This shortcoming is profoundly crucial to Kant's Moral theory, which is based on precisely that distinction. In other words, Deleuze fails to argue away how antithetical to Kantianism Hume's formulation 'Reason is the slave of the Passions' is.

Deleuze, Hume, Existence of the External World

Deleuze's study of Hume transforms the 'problem of the existence of the external world' from a Cognitive to a Practical topic. Since, for Hume, following Berkeley, the immediate data of experience are private, the positing of extra-experiential existence is fiction concocted by the Imagination, and, hence, is subject to skepticism. However, insofar as, as Deleuze shows, Experience is fundamentally practical for Hume, so, too, then, is the functioning of the Imagination. Hence, the transcending of the given by the Imagination is, likewise, fundamentally at the service of practical activity. In other words, the traditional cognitive problem of deriving an in-itself from a phenomenon is an abstraction from the practical problem of transforming the given to an imagined modification of it. Thus, the traditional cognitive solutions to the problem, as well as some prominent dismissals of the significance of the problem, are beside the point.

Deleuze, Hume, Empiricism

The title of his book on Hume is 'Empiricism and Subjectivity', but Deleuze perhaps unwittingly demonstrates how 'Empiricism' is an inadequate classification of Hume's theory of experience. The latter is usually classified as such as a reference to the principle that all experience is derived from sense impressions. However, 'Empiricism' is an Epistemological category, and, as has been previously discussed, Deleuze interprets Hume as holding that Doing, not Knowing, is the fundamental character of Experience. For example, it is not impressions, in general, that are revealed as the basis of Experience in Hume's theory, but one impression, in particular--Pleasure. As Hume's formulation 'Reason is the slave of the Passions' expresses, cognitive operations are at the service of the pursuit of Pleasure, e. g. the 'cause-effect' connection is an abstraction from what is more fundamentally a 'means-end' structure. Hence, on Deleuze's reading , a more adequate classification of Hume is a Moral category--'Sentimentalist', if not 'Hedonist'.

Deleuze, Hume, Subjectivity

Deleuze's earliest major work, a study of Hume, while more conventional than the pieces from his mature period, anticipates some of their main themes, and still presents a relatively unorthodox reading of Hume. The predominant tradition is primarily interested in Hume's Atomistic Empiricism, based on the principle that all experience is based on simple sense impressions, and in two of its most significant derivations--the 'Self' as a 'bundle of perceptions' and 'Causality' as 'constant conjunction'. Retrospectively, the attraction of both to Deleuze is obvious--they are each examples of internal difference, but his primary ambition at this juncture is to combine them to produce a concept of Selfhood that is not the standard interpretation of Hume's. He begins by noticing that 'constant conjunction', i. e. an association of a perception and perception, is, for Hume, more precisely, an association of a perception and an expectation, an association that is habitual. In other words, the 'bundler' in the cognition of Causality is Habit, which Deleuze extends to all experiential associations, including that between a perception and an action. Hence, on Deleuze's interpretation, the Humean subject is primarily practical, not cognitive, as the standard reading tends to have it. Consequently, Deleuze's conclusion in the book is that "Philosophy must constitute itself as a theory of what we are doing, not as a theory of what there is", an affirmation of Pragmatism that seems more applicable to his book on Spinoza than to Difference and Repetition.

Deleuze, Whitehead, Difference, Individuation

Absolute differentiation is equivalent to instantaneous disintegration. In contrast, Deleuze's concept of Difference, as the producer of discrete novel entities from an undifferentiated background, is thereby revealed as a Principle of Individuation. Because he is keen to avoid a concept of Individual that is dominated by Identity, his Difference involves three complementary but distinct differential dimensions. First, an Individual is constituted by an internal differential structure. Second that internal differential structure is an actualization of a 'virtual' differential structure. Finally, the virtual and the actual structures are differentiated. With these elaborations, Deleuze avoids the subsumption of Difference to Identity that he perhaps observes in Whitehead's Principle of Individuation, i. e. Creativity becoming defined by Concrescence, not by Discrescence, as has been previously discussed. On the other hand, Deleuze introduces a complication into the problem that Whitehead resolves, namely, the relation between the two preconditions of Difference--the undifferentiated background and the virtual structure, which for Whitehead are reconciled in God. Still, it seems likely that Deleuze would prefer a messy complication to a solution that arguably entails an ad hoc implementation of Identity.

Deleuze, Difference, Identity

For Deleuze, Difference is independent of Identity. But, while in Difference and Repetition he exhaustively liberates Difference from its traditional subordination to Identity, the book offers little consideration of the status of Identity. Three general options seem open to him--Identity is subordinate to and derived from Difference, Identity is irreal, or Identity is independent from and covalent with Difference. Examples of the first possibility are from thinkers that Deleuze admires--Nietzsche and Bergson. For Nietzsche, Identity is Recurrence, while for Bergson, Identity is hypostasized Flux. However, both formulas suffer from the same inadequacy--they are question-begging, i. e. the former presupposes a distinction between Occurrence and Recurrence, and the latter presupposes that Flux can of its own accord lapse into stasis. In both cases, the presupposed thesis entails an ungrounded concept of Identity. One problem with the second option, which inverts Parmenides' thesis is that only The One is real, is similar to that of the first, namely, it leaves unexplained how even illusory Identity is derived from Difference. A deeper problem with it is that it does not explain how Difference does not instantaneously disintegrate the entire universe, which can only be prevented by some countervailing force that introduces coherence of some sort into reality. Thus, that Identity and Difference are independent, covalent, and possibly complementary principles, seems the most viable option, in the absence of which Deleuze's philosophy of Difference is as one-sided as the tradition that it seeks to overturn.

Deleuze, Difference, Expression

Some of the main themes of Difference and Repetition are taken up, in different terms, in Deleuze's contemporaneous book on Spinoza. The concept of intensive difference that is central to the former appears in the latter as that of immanent multiplicity, which is the structure of Spinoza's Pantheism, i. e. God is both One and Many. For Deleuze, the process in Spinoza's system that is analogous to Difference is Expression, e. g. God expresses himself in a diversity of attributes and of modes. However, Deleuze's analysis of Expression neglects one of its significant features--that it entails an extending beyond itself, as is most evident when it communicates its content--which is eventually re-interiorized upon completion of its movement. So, the immanent multiplicity that Deleuze finds in Expression presupposes a transcending beyond unity, of which it is the product.

Deleuze, Levinas, Eversion

According to Deleuze, one process that neutralizes Difference is Eversion. At one point he asserts that the essence of extension, which he holds to be the process by which intensive difference is homogenized, is that it turns intensive difference "inside out". Now, one problem with this formulation has previously been discussed--Deleuze's lack of appreciation that dynamic Extension is a process of Differentiation that is the source of intensive difference. Accordingly, he is unable to consider that Eversion could constitute Extension in precisely that sense, and, hence, could be fundamental Differentiation. Furthermore, 'inside out' presupposes a difference between Interiority and Exteriority that he leaves unexamined. This neglect is especially noteworthy, given that that difference is a main theme of Levinas' Totality and Infinity, with which Deleuze is surely familiar at the time of the writing of Difference and Repetition. Of specific relevance to Deleuze's formulation is Levinas' alignment of Exteriority with Alterity, and Interiority with Ipseity. On that basis, Eversion produces Difference, and it is Inversion that neutralizes it. Since Deleuze never addresses theses challenges, his interpretation of Difference remains flawed.

Deleuze, Difference, Intensity

The originality of Deleuze's concept of Difference is that it is unmediated by Identity, i. e. it is not homogenized, hypostasized, equalized, or suppressed. An instance of Difference that is important to him is Intensity, the differences of which are asymmetrical, as opposed to Extensity, which is constituted by symmetrical, and, hence, equalized differences. For example, altitude is an intensive magnitude, because any two parts of it are not interchangeable, whereas distance is an extensive magnitude, since the distance between any two points is the same as that between their reverse. However, if altitude B is an intensive magnitude by virtue of its difference from included lesser altitude A, that difference presupposes a prior ascending from A to B. In other words, it presupposes a differentiating extending of A to B, and while it preserves the difference between A and B as 'A is internal to B', it suppresses the differential relation 'B is external to A'. So, at the heart of Intensity is a dynamic differentiating Extension which it homogenizes. Deleuze thus errs in conceiving Intensity as more fundamentally Differential than is Extensity.

Intensity--Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze

Bergson argues that all quantities are extensive, so that intensities are only qualitative. Whitehead conceives Intensity as the feeling of contrast, which Bergson would seem to maintain as entailing simultaneity, and, hence, as entailing Extension. Deleuze proposes, implicitly against Bergson, that there are two kinds of magnitude--scalar and vectoral--and the latter, e. g. altitude, is successive and cumulative, not simultaneous and reversible. Hence, according to Deleuze, there is a species of of Magnitude, i. e. vectoral, which Intensity possesses, and, since for Whitehead, Concrescence is vectoral, Bergson's critique does not apply to its Intensity. However, rather than showing that there is a species of Magnitude that Bergson misses, Deleuze's example demonstrates that there is a mode of Extension of which he seems unaware. While the first hundred feet and the second hundred feet of an altitude are, for sure, not simultaneous and not exchangeable, the latter is an extension of the former. That is, the transition from the former to the latter is created by an active extending, that is distinct from the hypostasized concept of 'Extension' to which Deleuze, as well as Philosophy since Descartes, with the possible exception of Spinoza, subscribes. In other words, Intensity presupposes Extension, but not in the sense understood by Bergson, Whitehead, or Deleuze.

Whitehead, Heidegger, Epistemology

Aside from being approximately contemporaneous, Process and Reality and Being and Time seem to have little in common. Yet, they are both influenced by Bergson: Whitehead's Metaphysical principle Creativity, and Heidegger's Ontological principle Being is each an appropriation of Bergson's Biological principle, Elan Vital. Their kinship is borne out as each, following Bergson, interprets cognitive processes as special cases of their respective fundamental principles. The historical significance of these derivative statuses of cognition is that Knowledge does not occupy a privileged position in these systems, which departs from the Modern tradition initiated by Descartes. Accordingly, Epistemology is for neither Whitehead nor Heidegger the preeminent branch of Philosophy, i. e. that in which the criterion for Certainty regarding Truth is established, but one subordinated to Metaphysics and to Ontology, respectively.

Whitehead and Evil

Whitehead seems to struggle to define 'Evil'. In some places, he proposes that it is 'Destruction', which would be logically entailed by his thesis that Creativity is the fundamental principle of the universe, except that that thesis also seems to preclude any actualization of its antithesis. For perhaps that reason, he clarifies that by 'destruction', he means 'disintegration', in its literal sense, namely, a process that undoes established harmony, and he seems to settle on that as a definition of Evil. However, perhaps recognizing that every novel occasion disrupts settled harmony, he acknowledges that any evil is ultimately redeemable in God's universal Concrescence, thereby implying that Evil is always localized and ephemeral. Nevertheless, he continues to under-appreciate the implication of his insight into the structure of Intensity, i. e. that Harmony is the achievement of a balance between Discrescence and Concrescence, not the correction of the former by the latter. He thereby misses that what is truly antithetical to Creativity, and, hence, what is truly 'Evil' in his system, is Stagnation, which is an imbalance between Concrescence and Discrescence, i. e. an excess of one, or of the other.

Whitehead, Deleuze, Difference, Recreativity

According to Whitehead, Creativity is the fundamental principle of the universe. When he characterizes it as "an appetite towards a difference", he thereby anticipates Deleuze's and Derrida's appreciations of Difference as an independent fundamental principle. However, when he proceeds to focus exclusively on the Concrescent pattern of Creativity, to the neglect of its Discrescence, he reverts to what for Deleuze is the traditional subordination of Difference to Identity. Still, despite that lapse, Whitehead manages to preview another of Deleuze's cardinal concepts. Though he usually characterizes Creativity as a singular fact, he presents it as Pluralistic, the generating of a multiplicity of novelties. Hence, Creativity, for him, consists in recurring Differentiations, which is how Deleuze conceives Repetition, in contrast with the standard concept of it as mechanical reproduction, which entails a subordination of Difference to Identity. Thus, Deleuze's 'Repetition', can also be understood as 'Recreativity'.

Whitehead, Dewey, Experimentalism

Whitehead agrees with Dewey that Experience is fundamentally Aesthetic, i. e. the seeking, by an organism, of Harmony, and that it is episodic, i. e. consisting of discrete experiences, with their discrete terminal moments of satisfaction. However, as Ratner argues, in his introduction to a Dewey collection, Whitehead does not share Dewey's appreciation for experimental experiences, especially in the sphere of Scientific inquiry. For example, he quotes Whitehead as dismissing experiment as "cooking the facts". Now, as Whitehead's theory of Propositions, and his analysis of Hume's 'Missing Shade of Blue' problem, show, he allows that Truth is provisional, that Error is a constructive opportunity, and that Imagination can be the locus of discovery. On the other hand, what is lacking in his theory of Experience is an account of the creating of facts, in general, of which "cooking" them for Scientific purposes is a special case. For, as has been previously discussed, the arc of an experience, for Whitehead, begins with the de-stabilizing reception of a novel influx of energy, and terminates in a theoretical or practical decision regarding it. Hence, any subsequent efficient causality, originating in an emergent Superject from that experience, is outside the scope of that arc, even though, as has been suggested, Whitehead is not lacking in the systematic resources for accommodating such an active experiential process. What he is lacking in is Dewey's appreciation for the creative Artistic dimension of Aesthetic Experience.

Whitehead, Concrescence, Discrescence

Whitehead's vision of experience as fundamentally Aesthetic is compromised by his thesis that every Process is essentially a Concrescence, i. e. a transition from Multiplicity to Unity. That thesis, therefore, denies the essentiality to experience of the inverse transition, i. e. from Unity to Multiplicity, which, can, accordingly, be termed 'Discrescence'. But, Creativity entails Discrescence--as he explicitly recognizes, the generation of novelty publicly increases the multiplicity of existent entities, and privately is experienced as a "principle of unrest", and as an "appetite towards a difference". So, insofar as Whitehead disregards the Discrescent dimension of Creativity, or subordinates it to eventual Conscrescent operations, he abstracts from Aesthetic experience one of its essential characteristics.

Whitehead, God, Propositional Function

For Whitehead, 'God' is the primordial creature, which, in Spinozistic terminology, is a Mode, not Substance, nor naturing nature. This entity is the actualization of the normative ordering of all the Eternal Objects, i. e. the exemplification of a perfect being. It is, in this respect, thus comparable to, for example, the 'Adam Kadmon' of Kabbalistic Judaism, and to 'ens realissimum' of Medieval Theology. What distinguishes Eternal Objects from Platonic Forms is that they are, according to Whitehead, essentially incomplete without applicability to actuality, and God's normative ordering of them transforms them into what in Principia Mathematica are called 'Propositional Functions', which range over concrete instances, in combination with which, Propositions are formed. A Heideggerian might thus interpret Whitehead's God as supplying propositions with a cupola. And, in terms of Christian Theology, Whitehead's concept of God implies that "in the beginning" is the Propositional Function.

Whitehead and Aesthetic Experience

The detailed references in Process and Reality to Locke and Hume distract from Whitehead's interpretation of experience as fundamentally an Aesthetic, rather than as a Cognitive or Moral, phenomenon. That is, on that interpretation, the arc from sensation to knowledge, or from desire to satisfaction, is a special case of that from creative urge to organic harmonization. Thus, Whitehead's critique of Hume is, at bottom, not of the inadequacy of Impressions to found either Cognitive or Moral experience, but of the derivative, delimited nature of either of them. Still, he does maintain agreement with Hume that experience originates in a sentient moment, i. e. in an awareness, of some sort, of an object, of some sort. Hence, he precludes the possibility that an internal motor process can be an original creative impulse, and, hence, that e. g. graceful physiological motion constitutes an Aesthetic experience.

Whitehead and Valuation

Whitehead recognizes two categories of Valuation, which can be characterized as 'immediate' and 'mediated'. Immediate Valuation is a simple feeling of like or of dislike. Mediated Valuation evaluates immediate Valuations, via reference to some objective criterion, which, in Whitehead's system is attributable to 'God'. Prominent classical examples of an objective criterion are Aristotle's 'Mean' and Kant's 'Universalizability', while Emotivism reduces any such purportedly 'objective' concept to immediate Valuation. Whitehead's incorporation of 'God' into experience exposes a crucial shortcoming in Hume's Moral theory more effectively than does even Kant. For Hume, Valuation is primarily immediate. However, he further argues that sympathy with another is more worthy than merely private like or dislike, and that universal sympathy is more worthy than localized sympathy. Whitehead's scheme demonstrates that in the absence of some objective criterion, Hume has no grounds for his mediated Valuations.

Whitehead, Subject, Superject

Whitehead's repeated use of the term 'subject-superject' obscures that in some contexts he sharply divides 'Subject' from 'Superject'. In general, the former is the terminal phase of one Concrescence, the feeler of its feelings, while the latter is the initial stage of the subsequent Concrescence, an efficient cause of eventual Subjects. In particular, the formulator of a purpose is a Subject, but Whitehead does not explore a concept of Superject as the executor of purposes. He thereby misses an opportunity to develop a general notion of Superject as agent, i. e. as originator of physiological processes. Thus, by homogenizing the two as 'subject-superject', Whitehead abstracts from Organism the motor dimensions of Experience.

Whitehead and Transmutation

One categorial factor in any experience, according to Whitehead, is 'Transmutation', the projection of private phenomena into a perceptual object. Three well-known examples of Transmutation include one that he explicitly credits--Locke's Secondary Qualities, and two to which he implicitly alludes--Gestalt Theory's homogenization of perceptual data, and Santayana's analysis of Beauty as 'objectified pleasure'. However, he misses its potential application to Hume's 'Missing Shade of Blue' problem--that the inferring of an unsensed shade from given shades is a Gestalt homogenization of them. Furthermore, he nowhere explicitly entertains the relevance of Transmutation to purposeful action, i. e. that the physical modification of an environment for practical purposes effects a transmutation of it. Whitehead therefore has no occasion to consider that physical Transmutation is not a special case of the category, but its original.