Depth of Time (Temporal Depth)

The temporal counterpart of spatial depth: the felt thickness of time as inherent to a perspective, not a distance representable "in profile." Décarie-Daigneault 2024 develops the structural parallel with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of spatial depth (PhP, Eye and Mind): just as spatial depth cannot be reduced to objective distance without translating it into a 2D projection seen by an outside spectator, temporal depth cannot be reduced to a sequence-on-a-timeline without translating all dimensions of time into the eternal present of an abstract observer (a Kosmotheoros). And just as spatial depth is opened by perspective, temporal depth is opened by memory.

The figure that organizes the concept is the inverted Bergsonian cone of memory: instead of recollection descending from the heights of pure memory down to the precise point of present action (Bergson's own diagram), the cone should be read upside-down — its depth is the virtual past, its apex is the perspectival surface, and the action is ascent from depth to surface called by the present.

Key Points

  • Inherence to perspective. Temporal depth is irreducibly given to a perspective and cannot be abstracted from it without flattening. This is the temporal analogue of MP's PhP claim that depth "is not indicated upon the object itself, it clearly belongs to perspective and not to things" (PhP p. 305/267).
  • Memory is to temporal depth what perspective is to spatial depth. The structural-parallel claim: spatial depth is opened in perspective; temporal depth is opened in memory. Both modalities are implicated in the present rather than explicated on a flat axis.
  • Implicated, not explicated. Following Deleuze's distinction in Difference and Repetition: the present is implicated with depth (the farness of the farmhouse is implicated in the landscape; the farness of a memory is implicated in its sense). To explicate depth is to flatten it into a 2D projection — and this presupposes a Kosmotheoros spectating from outside. To live in depth is to live in implication.
  • Inverted cone of memory. Bergson's cone (apex at present action, broadening upward into the totality of the virtual past) should be read upside-down. The cone is the depth of time; its apex is the perspectival surface — the present from which the appeal to memory arises ("it is from the present that the appeal to which memory responds comes," Bergson, Matter and Memory p. 153).
  • Opened by encounter. Specific events — encounters — are what summon the depth of time into the present. Encounters are events at the surface that open depth in the virtual past. Some encounters are proximal (historical, on our scale); some unravel memory (the fossil's vertigo); some sit at the limit (cave paintings as the liminal class of encounter).

Details

The Spatial-Temporal Analogy

Décarie-Daigneault 2024 §1.1 builds the analogy carefully. Photography is the paradigm: a 2D image conveys spatial depth not by literal projection of depth-as-distance but by the relational composition of elements in the field. The depth of field arises in the perspective itself, not in any element of the picture. To represent depth as objective distance is to introduce a third spectator viewing the scene from the side — to translate three-dimensional depth into a two-dimensional width seen "in profile." MP at PhP p. 304/266: "In order to treat depth as a breadth considered in profile and to arrive at an isotropic space, the subject must leave his place, his point of view upon the world, and conceive of himself in a sort of ubiquity."

The structural parallel: the "translation" of three-dimensional spatial depth into a two-dimensional representable distance has its temporal correlate in the understanding of time as a sequence of events on a timeline. To represent past–present–future on a single line is to project all dimensions of time into the eternal present of the Kosmotheoros. This is what Deleuze calls explication: the laying-out that flattens depth into a representable order ("the explication of extensity rests upon the first synthesis, that of habit or of the present; but the implication of depth rests upon the second synthesis, that of Memory and of the past," DR p. 230/296).

Both flattenings — spatial and temporal — require the Kosmotheoros. To affirm depth (spatial or temporal) is to refuse the regulative phantasm of the all-encompassing perspective and to take seriously perspective's own irreducible inherence.

The Inverted Bergsonian Cone

Bergson's Matter and Memory presents memory as a cone whose apex is the present action and whose body is the totality of the virtual past. Recollection is described as a "descent from the heights of pure memory down to the precise point where action is taking place" (Bergson, Matter and Memory p. 153).

Décarie-Daigneault 2024 §1.2 inverts the figure:

"Bergson's cone of memory would have to be represented upside down, as the contraction that calls the virtual past to the actual present, rather than being a 'descen[t] from the heights of pure memory down to the precise point where action is taking place', is better understood as an ascent from the depth of time to the surface of presence. The cone is the depth of time or the virtual past, and its apex is the perspectival surface, the point of view that opens the past in the present."

The inversion is not a correction of Bergson's metaphysics but a re-imagining of the diagram that aligns it with the spatial-depth analogy. The depth is down there; the present is up here; memory is the ascent of fragments of virtual past to the surface in response to the present's appeal.

This is what allows the spatial and temporal depth-figures to share a single rhetoric in the paper: the well of time, the bottomless depth, the slippery walls one climbs down via "few holds available" (encounters with traces being the holds).

Levels of Temporal Depth (the Graded Series)

The paper distinguishes encounters that open temporal depth at different levels:

  • Historical past — on our scale. Marie-Antoinette in Petit Trianon; the multi-generational construction of the Egyptian pyramids; the train accident reported yesterday in the journal. These encounters open depth comfortably; the past is appreciable on our human scale, contributing to the "solidity of the present."

  • Geological deep past — beyond our scale. Toadvine's fossil. "The phenomenological encounter with the vertigo of deep time, of which I catch a glimpse in the fossil, is the echo within my body of an asubjective time of matter, of an unfathomably ancient passage that haunts the heart of the present" (Toadvine 2024 p. 59). Here memory unravels: the encounter removes all sediments from under our feet at once, leaving us in the bottomlessness of the well.

  • Liminal: cave paintings — at the limit of our capacity to contract the past, but not breaking it. The double-sidedness (voluntary expression + collateral trace) generates a transtemporal plane that fossils cannot. This is Décarie-Daigneault's contribution: a third class of trace alongside the historical artifact and the fossil.

The "liminality" of cave paintings is structural, not chronological: paintings are objectively much closer to us than ammonite fossils, but they make a different kind of encounter possible. See double-sided-artifact.

Vertigo, Unraveling, Disruption of Memory

The depth of time, when the encounter is sufficient, does not just register; it unravels the present's solidity. Décarie-Daigneault 2024 §1.3:

"The encounter with the fossil can be read as a geological event in which all the layers of earthly sediments that separate us from the geological epoch to which it belongs get suddenly removed from under our feet all at once, revealing an incredible depth, leaving us contemplating the bottomlessness of this well of time."

The vertigo is the felt sense of free fall when memory cannot contract the depth. The encounter with cave paintings produces something between solid history and unraveling deep time: a "perturbation of memory" rather than a complete unraveling. The depth shows itself, but a plane of transtemporality allows it to cohere with our present.

Empirical Data and the Hyle of the Past

Empirical data (carbon dating, morphological analysis) are typically generated within a Kosmotheoros schema (time-on-a-timeline). They do not, however, flatten the encounter. Décarie-Daigneault 2024 §2.2:

"Such empirical data may result from a schema of time represented on a two-dimensional axis, but insofar as they infuse the phenomenon to which they are attached with additional information, they participate to the encounter that unveils the third dimension of time. They endow the footprints with an additional sense of temporal farness that affects me in my position of observer in the present, thus preparing my confrontation with what Merleau-Ponty calls the 'hyle of the past'."

The hyle of the past (MP IP p. 56) is the irreducible reality of the past that I cannot invent or create — only encounter. Carbon dating delivers this hyle into the encounter as additional sense of temporal farness. The 2D-projection knowledge does not collapse the depth; it infuses the encounter with the felt thickness needed to make it the encounter it is.

Connections

  • is the temporal counterpart of depth-profondeur — the structural-parallel claim is that perspective is to spatial depth what memory is to temporal depth
  • is opened by encounters — events at the surface that summon fragments of virtual past into implication with the present
  • grounds the disclosure of passence — passence is the modality in which a singular other inhabits the depth of time
  • is the structural condition of transtemporality — transtemporality circumscribes a plane on which heterogeneous temporalities cohere; that plane lives within the depth of time
  • contrasts with explicated time / time-on-a-timeline — the latter requires a Kosmotheoros; the depth of time refuses ubiquity
  • is anchored in the inverted Bergsonian cone — the cone is the depth; its apex is the perspectival present
  • is realized through memory the way spatial depth is realized through perspective

Open Questions

  • What is the relation between depth-of-time and MP's ontogenesis-of-time? The wiki's existing concept page on the ontogenesis of time engages with the constituting structures of temporal sense; depth of time is a complementary register. Whether the two are facets of one phenomenon or distinct phenomena needs cross-referencing.
  • Does the structural parallel extend further? Spatial depth and temporal depth share the perspective/memory pair. Are there other sense-modalities with their own depth (auditory depth via memory of sound; tactile depth via the body schema)? The PhP material is suggestive but not systematized.
  • How does the inverted cone interact with Bergson's own metaphysics? Bergson's cone has the past widening upward away from action; the inversion turns it into a well-shape with the present at the surface. This works as a rhetorical figure for the paper but may be in tension with Bergson's own commitments about the relation between memory and action.

Sources

  • decarie-daigneault-2024-crooked-finger — primary source for the spatial-temporal analogy (§1.1) and the inverted-cone figure (§1.2).
  • merleau-ponty-1945-phenomenology-of-perception — PhP p. 304/266, p. 305/267, p. 317/279 for spatial depth as inherent to perspective; the basis for the temporal extension.
  • merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — V&I p. 22 ("the perspective contraction is not a deformation"); the broader perceptual-truth argument that the depth-account is part of.
  • henri-bergson — Matter and Memory (1896) for the cone of memory and the appeal-from-the-present formula (MM p. 153). Décarie-Daigneault's inversion of the cone is the contribution.
  • gilles-deleuze — Difference and Repetition p. 230/296 + p. 295 for the explication-vs-implication distinction; p. 80, p. 82 for memory as the grounding synthesis.
  • ted-toadvine — The Memory of the World (2024) for the vertigo of deep time and the haunting figure.