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

efore or after something, the living present contains the past and the future in or as itself. “It is
in this [living] present that time is deployed. To it belong the past and the future: the past in so
far as the preceding instants are retained in the contraction; the future because its expectation is
anticipated in this same contraction” (DR 71). For this reason, Deleuze argues that past and
future are not instants different from the present time. Instead, they are the dimensions of the
present time. “The past and the future do not designate instants distinct from the supposed
present instant, but rather the dimensions of the present itself in so far as it is a contraction of
instants” (DR 71). In other words, the only time there is is the living present. “The synthesis of
time constitutes the present in time. It is not that the present is a dimension of time: the present
alone exists. Rather, synthesis constitutes time as a living present, and the past and the future as
dimensions of this present” (DR 76). Imagination is a passive synthesis. “In any case, this
synthesis must be given a name: passive synthesis. Although, it is constitutive it is not, for all
that, active. It is not carried out by the mind, but occurs in the mind which contemplates, prior to
all memory and all reflection. Time is subjective, but in relation to the subjective of a passive
subject” (DR 71). Kant argues that sensibility precedes the thinking self. However, he also
argues that sensibility is blind without the Cogito. On the other hand, for Hume imagination
names the sensibility that can see without the Cogito. “Hume explains that the independent
identical or similar cases are grounded in the imagination. The imagination is defined here as a
contractile power: like a sensitive plate, it retains one when the other appears” (DR 70). In other
words, sensibility is constitutive even before there is the Cogito. In Deleuze and Guattari’s
Philosophy of History, Jay Lampert makes a similar point: “so called ‘experience’ is no more a
starting point than any other formed matter in flux. In this context, it is not accidental that
Deleuze starts with Hume. For Hume, ‘experience’ need not be founded on subjectivity; it is first
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