The Problem of Absolute Difference

In the last episode, I explained why difference was a monstrosity – more precisely a cut on a totality, engendering at the same time a mutilated body and nothingness. I was maybe too hasty in my promise to find a harmonious concept of difference in the next episode. Truth is I need two more steps to reach this harmonious concept. So let's go back to Aristotle before coming back to Deleuze. One shouldn’t be mistaken about my intent here: going back to Aristotle is not an attempt at deciphering the historical narrative of difference – Derrida warned us: “Difference belongs neither to history nor structure.” (Derrida, 1997, p. 47) – but rather marks the start of a conceptualization process aimed at overcoming the monstrosity attributed to difference and better understand its mechanisms. Aristotle states:

Since things which differ may differ from one another more or less, there is also a maximal difference, and this I call contrariety. That contrariety is the maximal difference is made clear by induction. For things which differ in genus have no way to one another but are too far distant and are not comparable; and for things that differ in species the extremes from which generation takes place are the contraries, and the distance between extremes – and therefore that between the contraries – is the greatest.

But surely that which is greatest in each class is complete. For that is greatest which cannot be exceeded, and that is complete beyond which nothing can be found. For the complete difference is the fulfilled difference (just as the other things which are called complete are so called because they have attained fulfilment), and beyond fulfilment there is nothing; for in everything it is the extreme and includes all else, and therefore there is nothing beyond fulfilment, and the complete needs nothing further. From this, then, it is clear that contrariety is complete difference; and as contraries are so called in several senses, their modes of completeness will answer to the various modes of contrariety which attach to the contraries. (Aristotle, 1966, Metaphysics, Book I, 4, 1055a - modified translation)

The maximal difference is thus an opposition. Aristotle here shows that the greatest distance, the greatest spacing inside genus produces completeness, a type of perfection: one can say that, at least between species, this maximal difference, this completeness, is achieved. Aristotle and Deleuze correct and specify my perspective about the most perfect opposition type: the contrariety. The question shifts again: at this point, I need to understand how contrariety can pass this perfection onto difference. Things which differ in kind don’t communicate with one another, are not even connected with one another, but are the most far apart from each other: where the difference is the greatest. Let’s remember Aristotle’s examples from book I, 8, paragraph [1058a]:

One might raise the question, why woman does not differ from man in species, when female and male are contrary and their difference is a contrariety; and why a female and a male animal are not different in species, though this difference belongs to animal in virtue of its own nature, and not as paleness or darkness does; both 'female' and 'male' belong to it qua animal. This question is almost the same as the other, why one contrariety makes things different in species and another does not, e.g. 'with feet' and 'with wings' do, but paleness and darkness do not. Perhaps it is because the former are modifications peculiar to the genus, and the latter are less so. And since one element is definition and one is matter, contrarieties which are in the definition make a difference in species, but those which are in the thing taken as including its matter do not make one. (Aristotle, 1966, Metaphysics, Book I, 8, 1058a)

We can immediately understand what this is about: for as long as it is the subject taken as matter, “the contrarieties which affect it are corporeal modifications which give us only the empirical, accidental concept of an extrinsic difference” (Deleuze, 1968/2011, p. 46) – female and male, whiteness or blackness – , one has to consider that only essential or formal contrarieties can modify the genus, thus creating an essential difference: opposites are then modifications affecting the subject in its genus. Genus is the locus of division by difference – winged and not winged for example. “In short, contrariety in the genus is the perfect and maximal difference, and contrariety in the genus is specific difference” (Deleuze, 1968/2011, p. 15). Specific difference seems to be what I’m looking for – an harmonious concept of difference –, at least it has all the required attributes: pure, intrinsic, qualitative, quality of the essence itself according to Deleuze. But when returning to our first steps tracking down this concept of harmonious difference, it's easy to notice that the “easy” argumentation behind the harmonious concept being the specific difference doesn’t make sense and collapses like a house of cards:

Here we find the principle which lies behind a confusion disastrous for the entire philosophy of difference: assigning a distinctive concept of difference is confused with the inscription of difference within concepts in general — the determination of the concept of difference is confused with the inscription of difference in the identity of an undetermined concept. This is the sleight of hand involved in the propitious moment (and perhaps everything else follows: the subordination of difference to opposition, to analogy, and to resemblance, all the aspects of mediation). Difference then can be no more than a predicate in the comprehension of a concept. Aristotle constantly reminds us of this predicative character of specific difference, but he is forced to lend it strange powers such as that of attributing as much as that of being attributed, or of altering the genus as much as of modifying its quality. All of the ways in which specific difference seems to satisfy the requirements of a distinctive concept (purity, interiority, productivity, transportivity ...) are thus shown to be illusory, even contradictory, on the basis of this fundamental confusion. (Deleuze, 1968/2011, p. 46)

Let’s sum up this crystal clear section from Différence et Répétition : specific difference is not a concept in itself, Deleuze determines the fact that it is merely a predicate of an undetermined concept (genus) Aristotle keeps twisting to force the cylinder in a star hole. In fact the confusion is about the concept and nothing else: the specific difference is still maximal and the most perfect but only as predicate of an undetermined concept. This condition immediately stops the movement I initiated and makes me definitely drop the idea of a harmonious difference in this context. Nevertheless, I learned two valuable pieces of knowledge in the process: 1/ the analysis of Aristotle helped me understand the relationships between objects, species and genus, vital to the concept of difference; 2/ I now know that certain kinds of differences cannot exist. Let’s take a step back and try to redefine our problem. So far, this is what I know:

Difference is empirical : it’s the product of our experience, nothing more.
The determinations shaping it are outside itself.
The difference implies a principle of dissymmetry, of asymmetrical relation.
Difference is the lacked in a whole which has been altered by the lack and could be restored by the synthesis of the lacking and the existent.

An immediate question has not been addressed yet: according to Aristotle, things which differ in genus have no way to one another, but are the most distant, where the difference is maximal. A thing would then be different from other things in its own genus – so from a finite number of things – as well as outside its genus – then from an infinite number of things? Does this mean that there are two existing type of difference – relative and absolute? How to link both? Further on, shouldn’t I conceptualize difference beyond the scope of an identity concept and think difference in terms of gap, spacing, reflection as the verb differere supposes?

Is any object necessarily distinct from all other objects? Therein lies the question of absolute difference. The fruits in this basket can be differentiated from one another, the book laying next to this same basket and my body from all other objects in this room and this town, and from all the worlds one can define as raised to the power of n+1. Drawing up the list of all possible objects to compare it to an unknown object would only nihilate it: I wouldn’t grasp anything about it apart from the fact that it is identical to itself and not to the others. But no positive information allowing for its identification would emerge. To know a subject, something about it has to be learned – a positive information – and that something can’t be the tautology that it is identical to itself, nor the (again tautological) proposition that it is different from all other objects. In short, the subject’s identity can’t be assimilated to its difference with all others.

Yet, it remains true that I can determine or define an object by its difference from a few others. But it’s not an absolute difference anymore, for it allows me to learn something about the object whereas the absolute difference is completely meaningless and empty from an informational point of view. That’s precisely this point that “makes” the difference: the specification of the object’s concept by acquiring a positive information about it enabling a distinction from a group of others objects. This is exactly why an absolute difference is in fact a misuse of language: it can’t exist as a difference because it is always meaningless and bears no information. The only kind of difference is the relative difference. Now I have crossed the absolute difference out, I need to explore the idea of relative difference before being able to forge a harmonious concept of difference and add a fifth point to my list : 5. The objects of difference belong to the same genus.

Bibliography

Aristotle. (1966). The works of Aristotle: Vol. VIII (W. D. Ross, Trans.; 2nd ed). Clarendon Press Oxford.
Deleuze, G. (2011). Différence et répétition (12e éd). Presses universitaires de France. (Original work published 1968).
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). Columbia University Press.