stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

the third synthesis of time we sidestep the Cogito altogether, which is to say that we sidestep this
dichotomy itself. An action need neither be universal nor relative. In both of these cases, the
value is already given. In one case, it is given positively as the Good. In the other case, it is given
negatively as the lack of the Good. “But is it not rather judgment that presupposes preexisting
criteria (higher values), criteria that preexist for all time (to the infinity of time), so that it can
neither apprehend what is new in an existing being, nor even sense the creation of a mode of
existence?” (CC 134-5). However, to the extent that in the third synthesis of time the passive self
acts without the standard means that it creates the standard. This creation is nothing other than
the demonstration of the power of difference. There is individuation beyond the Cogito: “to have
one more birth, and to break with one’s carnal birth—to become the offspring of one’s events
and not of one’s actions, for the action is itself produced by the offspring of the event” (LS 149-
150). The difference between the Cogito and the Overman is clear. The Cogito individuates in
terms of the myth, that is, in terms of the Platonic Idea that exists above and beyond the univocal
being. The Overman on the other hand individuates in terms of the power of difference, that is, in
terms of the univocal being. He is neither universal, nor relative. He is singular. “As for the
subject of this new discourse (except that there is no longer any subject), it is not man or God,
and even less man in the place of God. The subject is this free, anonymous and nomadic
singularity which traverses men as well as plants and animals independently of the matter of
their individuation and the forms of their personality. ‘Overman’ means nothing other than this—
the superior type of everything that is” (LS 107). This is why I said earlier that we need not
understand the second and the third syntheses of time in linear terms. The second and the third
syntheses of time name two and mutually exclusive relationship to the first synthesis. “As a
result, the two repetitions stand in very different relations to ‘difference’ itself” (DR 84). In one
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