Deleuze 1990

Deleuze, Gilles. Logic of Sense. Trans. by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale. Ed. by Constantin V. Boundas. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990.

First Series of Paradoxes of Pure Becoming

five paragraphs:

1) introduces peculiarity to paradoxes

• any phrase of becoming is pointing in two directions at once:

to say that Alice becomes larger is to say that she is becoming smaller than she will be

• it IS just a verbal game, but a verbal game we can't think around
• we don't have any capability of thinking of the world OUTSIDE this game

"SENSE" --> wants to connect to a directionality; we talk about things as having "sense" when they point in one direction for comparison or change

-- "Good sense affirms that in all things there is a determinable sense or direction (sens); but paradox is the affirmation of both sense or directions at the same time."

2) connects this to Plato, who helps us see these events of becoming

• Plato and Socrates as founding a defense of the life of the mind, "philosophy" as a discipline
• quotes from Philebus and Parmenides, aporetic dialogues (dialogues in which paradoxes presented are not resolved) --> Plato acknowledges problems but doesn't deal with them

3) suggests Plato was aware that strange events of becoming have connection to language

• paradoxes resist theory of Forms; is there a Form for hotter, colder? verbs? -- hotter is something that an individual JUDGES; how does that match the theory of Forms?
• see Sophist 235-6
• see pg 256 in Deleuze
• perhaps act as two languages; or two dimensions in language in general, only one of which Plato focused on
• true proportions of the object, but don't correspond to what we see
• Plato distinguishing betwee true objects and claimants, false reproductions (philosopher vs. sophist)

4) Lewis Carroll helps us see these paradoxes

• paradox of pure becoming goes in two directions at once;
• Deleuze wants to call this paradox of infinite identity: identity as sameness, but infinite in that it continues/persists in sameness
• Sorites paradox: when does a pile of pebbles become a heap? --> a heap is a LINGUISTIC thing, at which language assigns limits;
• but language also transcends limits "and restores them to the infinite equivalence of an unlimited becoming" (3)
• "infinite equivalence" -- "hotter" & "colder" are equivalent in some sense, but at the same time cannot be

5) undercuts common sense

• "infinite identity" vs. "personal identity"
• infinitives vs. substantives