What is an event?

The form of chapter 6 is very simple.  Deleuze develops an analogy between Leibniz and Whitehead, both of whom conceive of the event as the fundamental building block of reality.  In a sense, we might think of this as Deleuze's attempt to articulate the assumptions necessary for any sort of 'psychic atomism'.  But before we get to the details of what makes an event, we can approach the question by asking what problem the concept is meant to solve.  Deleuze articulates this problem quite clearly.

For it is with Leibniz that there emerges in philosophy the question that will continue to haunt Whitehead and Bergson: not how to attain the eternal, but under what conditions does the objective world permit a subjective production of novelty, that is, a creation? The best of all worlds had no other meaning: it was neither the least abominable nor the least ugly world, but the world in which the Whole [le Tout] left open the possibility of a production of novelty, a liberation of veritable quanta of "private" subjectivity, even at the price of the subtraction of the damned. (F, 105)

We don't often consider how our discussions of qualia or consciousness or mind are related to the concept of novelty or creativity.  But what, after all, would be the point of being conscious if consciousness always felt the same?  What makes consciousness interesting is less the fact that it exists than that it so continuously varies qualitatively.  In fact, its pretty hard to separate these two.  Would a static consciousness merit the term?  And, conversely, doesn't any true change implicate the quality of knowing that change?  Each moment of experience feels unique, and there seems to be no way to stop this variation, which I suppose is equivalent to our sense of the passage of time.  If the universe consisted of nothing but moving particles it would be hard to understand how anything truly new could happen.  There would be movement without any qualitative change.  It would all be simply rearranging deck chairs.  To avoid this, we have to hypothesize that there is something built into the ground floor of reality that allows for the continuous stream of novelty that a 'first person' perspective on the world represents.  It's easiest to imagine this as a sort of hidden dimension that opens orthogonally to the physical universe in a way that adds to it without interrupting it.  This is precisely part of the image of the fractal fold -- a continuous line so curvy that, when taken to its limit, it appears to fill a whole space. 

So how does the event, whether it's Whitehead's actual occasion or Leibniz's monad, address this requirement?  Basically, the theory of the event adds a depth to every individual.  Unlike our normal conception of the smallest physical unit, which is inherently a static surface with no interior, the event is the smallest and simplest unit of change -- an inflection.  And yet, because of its fractal nature, each inflection is also the beginning of a possible inclusion that contains an infinity of other inflections.  The event opens up a novel qualitative dimension precisely because it never stands on its own in an isolated manner, but necessarily leads on to other events in an infinite nexus of connections that trails off into obscurity.  It's the folding-in of inclusion that creates a new "private" dimension that lends a depth to every unity.  Fractal folding is the only way that Everything can still be Open.  

When we state the problem this way it's easier to see what's unique about the event as a solution.  The creativity of the event does not 'emerge' nor does it 'evolve'.  It doesn't arrive on the scene when some fortuitous combination of particles crash into one another.  Despite the best efforts of their proponents, these versions of creativity are inevitably limited and reductive.  The merely lend the magic power of naming to a new configuration of particles without explaining where the magic came from.  The whole model of emergence or holarchy (see ENDNOTE) leads us towards the bad kind of infinity, where we keep adding more and more units in concentric circles without ever actually changing anything or reaching Everything.  Instead, the creativity of the event is a sort of involution rather than an evolution, an unfolding rather than an emergence.  It is built into the ground floor of reality, or better yet plunges through the ground floor to reveal that its apparent solidity is full of openings.  There is a topological distinction between these perspectives -- the event cannot be reduced to a series of concentric circles because the 'higher' levels are folded into or feed back into the 'lower' ones.  As a result, the event is inherently or intrinsically unfinished even though, like the good infinity, it is still bounded in some sense.  Change is inherent and ceaseless in principle in this scheme, not merely a matter of counting to higher and higher numbers.  No new units are created, and yet there is room in Everything for an infinite variety of novelty. 

With that overall picture in mind, we can turn to a few details of the correspondence of Leibniz and Whitehead.

It's no accident then that the four components of Whitehead's "actual occasion" match the four types of subject Deleuze covered in chapter 4.  The only surprise is the way the order of their presentation shifts around.  Extension, Intensity, and Individuality are the more easily understood components of Whitehead's events.  These correspond to Leibniz's definables (a series of relations of wholes and parts), conditionables (a series of relations that tend towards internal limits) and individuals (a series of relations that tend towards and external limit).  We can think of these roughly as the quantity, quality, and personality variables needed to define an event and distinguish it from all others.  These map reasonably well onto our central image of the curve of continuous variation.  The event is an inflection point.  But each inflection point 'extends' itself up to the neighborhood next inflection point in a "prolongation" of singularities.  However, this extensive neighborhood is not uniform or undifferentiated. As we zoom in on the fractal curve, we find it filled with all sorts of folds, which differ in quality depending on our starting point.  In fact, we can keep zooming indefinitely, at which point we notice that the counterpart to each nested set of inflections is a point off the curve that acts as the center of curvature of their world.  This is the individual point of view that, according to Leibniz, contains everything, even though it's always situated in the middle of the curve (if we zoom out).  Not a simple scheme, but by this point I think I understand the basic idea.

However, it's less easy to understand the fourth component of Whitehead's event, the "ingression" of an eternal object, and the way this corresponds to the first 'class' of beings in Leibniz's scheme -- the infinite identities that comprise the attributes of God.  This aspect of the event is meant to account for the sense of repetition or object permanence we have, despite the fact that all the other aspects of the event seem to be enmeshed in a ceaseless flux.  We saw these many years ago as the "footholds" that the world provides, something like the conditions of possibility of experiencing Repetition.

In effect, extensions are ceaselessly displacing themselves, gaining and losing parts that are carried along by movement; things are ceaselessly altered; even prehensions are ceaselessly entering into and leaving variable composites. Events are flows [flux]. What then allows us to say: it is the same river, it is the same thing or the same occasion…? It is the Great Pyramid… A permanence must be incarnated in the flows [flux], and must be grasped in a prehension. The Great Pyramid signifies two things: a passage of Nature or a flow, which loses and gains molecules at every moment, but also an eternal object which remains the same throughout these moments. While prehensions are always actual (a prehension is a potential only in relation to another actual prehension), eternal objects are pure Possibilities that are realized in the flows, but also pure Virtualities that are actualized in prehensions. (F, 106)

The eternal objects seem to correspond to the unconscious background assumptions that accompany any conscious experience.  Things like the fact that the experience is happening here, and now, and to me, and consists of a determinate form, and so on.  These unconscious accompaniments stretch off into the distance just like the monad stretches off into the obscure background that contains the whole world.  This sort of convergence to the horizon line suggests that ultimately all the eternal objects are aspects of a single eternal object that we could call God or Nature or World.  All these self-identities are a stabilization of the world of flux.  They are the common world that each monad individually expresses.

If the eternal objects are the collection of stable footholds that the world affords, it is still true that they cannot stand on their own.  Eternal objects always remain virtual, never themselves actual, and so are in some sense parasitic on the actual occasions or monads.  This is part of the paradox of the event, and the core of what makes a 'spiritual' form of atomism distinct from its physical counterpart.  The event is completely individuated and differentiated, yet completely connected to everything else.  Like a quantum wave function that spreads out as we try to pin it down, the events is not a simple form we can outline, but a chiaroscuro drawing that inherently combines the distinct and obscure -- the more distinct, the more obscure (F, 43).   Thus connecting up with other events is not an accidental misfortune that may or may not befall an event, but part of its core definition.  Which is to return to the book's starting point -- the event is a fractal concept, folded up so that it confuses the distinction between inside and outside.  In short, the event always going to infinity, and we might even say that all the events go to the same infinity. 

So far, we spoken as if Leibniz and Whitehead had interchangeable notions of the event.  But our observation that events all occupy the same world brings us to the important difference between the two philosophers.  For Leibniz, all the events converge on a single world, the best world, and all the eternal objects together define a single comprehensive concept of God.  This condition of convergence is why every monad can enclose the same world.  For Whitehead, by contrast, the events are all related, and any event can in principle connect up with any other, but they don't necessarily converge on a single world.  In other words: for Leibniz there is a single curve, infinitely folded, but ultimately closed, topologically equivalent to an infinitely large circle, whereas for Whitehead, the single curve branches and diverges and becomes a proliferating rhizome.  As Deleuze says, "It is a world of captures instead of closures." (F, 108). 

Deleuze provides a perfect metaphor for the difference between these two by invoking the "Baroque concert" at the heart of Leibniz's philosophy.

There is a concert this evening. It is the event. Sonorous vibrations are extended, periodic movements flow through [parcourent] extension with their harmonics or sub- multiples. The sounds have internal properties: height, intensity, and timbre. The sonorous sources, whether instrumental or vocal, are not content simply to emit the sounds: each perceives its own sounds, and perceives the others in perceiving its own. These are active perceptions, which are expressed through each other, or again prehensions that are prehended through each other. "At first the piano complained alone, like a bird deserted by its mate; the violin heard and answered it, as if from a neighboring tree. It was like the beginning of the world…." The sonorous sources are monads or prehensions that are filled with a joy of themselves, an intense satisfaction, insofar as they are filled with their perceptions and pass from one perception to another. And the notes of the scale are eternal objects, pure Virtualities that are actualized in the sources, but also pure Possibilities that are realized in the vibrations or flows. "As if the musicians were not so much playing the little phrase as performing the rites it demanded before it would consent to appear…." But within this ensemble, Leibniz adds the conditions of a Baroque concert: if we suppose that the concert is divided into two sonorous sources, we presume that each hears only its own perceptions, but that it accords with those of the other even better than if it had perceived them, because of the vertical rules of harmony that are enveloped in their respective spontaneity. These are the accords or chords [accords] that replace the horizontal connections. (F, 107)

The monads all play the same tune without needing to listen to one another because they are all reading off the 'best' score, composed by God.  The monad has no windows, but only because God assures that it doesn't need them, and guarantees that its full expression of itself will harmonize perfectly with that of every other monad.  The concert stays in tune even though the musician's cannot hear one another.  By contrast, Whitehead's concert has no score.  All the musicians listen to one another and respond to one another continuously, without any guarantee that they will harmonize.  Thus, Whitehead's 'monad' also has no windows because it has no need of them -- it is continuously open to all the others, flush with the ever-evolving real.