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

Second Series of Paradoxes of Surface Effects

moves to a new dualism:

Stoic distinction between bodies and events

• Stoics are trying to reconfigure the field in which things can be thought

broken down into three parts, four paragraphs each

1-4: moves from Platonic dualism to Stoic dualism; 5-8: drawing out implications of Stoic dualism for philosophy (9-12: echo of that in Lewis Carroll)

Paragraphs 1-4

straight reading of Stoicism

PARAGRAPH 1:

STOICS: distinction bw bodies (para 1) and events (para 2) implications for understanding of matter, causality, time

1) materialism: Stoics claim that all that exist are bodies; bodies that we see are mixtures of elements; Deleuze says we can refer to a particular arrangement of bodies (state of affairs) overall State of Affairs is arrangement of bodies as a whole

2) causality: when we say body A has causal relationship with body B; can only talk about causes, not effects;

3) time: from the point of view of bodies, there is only one present; from a divine perspective, there is only one present; time as unwinding of a rope (Cicero) -- Cicero's notion of fate == Deleuze's use of the term Destiny -- events have different relationship to time

---

Stoic map of reality;

distinction between existence [BODIES] and subsistence [EVENTS]; ex. Mickey Mouse / centaurs / etc. have different form of Being than real person; Mickey Mouse has no body; someone with a body can dress up as Mickey Mouse, but it isn't Mickey Mouse

PARAGRAPH 2:

effects, events don't exist but SUBSIST or INHERE; they're verbs, INFINITIVES

not just INDICATED by verbs, but ARE verbs -- pure verbs, which we don't speak in, vs. conjugated verbs

series of presents; only the present exists in time only the past and future SUBSIST, dividing time simultaneously

PARAGRAPH 3:

event is being cut; there are bodies involved (person, knife) -- but cutting is event this is INCORPOREAL

effects don't happen bw bodies -- you can say a body is cut, but the being cut is not a body

void is not a body, and a sayable is not a body; Deleuze is primary interested in incorporals that are "sayables"

PARAGRAPH 4:

more summary of points he's made above

Paragraphs 5-8

what difference does this make for how philosophy operates?

PARAGRAPH 5:

if causes are only happening in the realm of bodies, you can't have effects in that register; causes only concern events, and events are not bodies;

freedom -- Stoics preserve freedom in both registers (events and bodies), in the realm of bodies: thru co-fatedness, con-causality; in the realm of events: by not assigning causes

in Homeric epics, there is certain fated events, but many paths to that one fate; Stoics say no, there must be a chain of causes; this leads to understanding that all things are fatalistically determined

see Cicero, "On fate" -- Chryssipus argues that this kind of fatalism can be remedied by splitting events into simple vs. complex; complex events are "co-fated": two things must be fated together for it to happen -- nexus of causalities allows you to act like there's freedom, even though everythign is fated; con-fatality

[this is different from the Atomists, w/clinamen or "swerve"]

PARAGRAPH 6:

Stoics have category "something", biggest genus , with "bodies" as subspecies

reversing Platonism (see appendix)

PARAGRAPH 7:

important dualism in Plato is not form and image, but form and copy;

for the Stoics, this no longer matters -- Stoics "discovered surface effects" (7), recovering common sense from Platonism;

the things that Plato wanted to attribute to Ideas all migrate into events in Stoic philosophy; stripping apart Plato and porting them to a different register

PARAGRAPH 8:

"becoming unlimited"

PARAGRAPH 9:

paradoxes of Stoics, entirely new way of thinking about paradoxes

"Paradox appears as a dismissal of depth, a display of events at the surface, and a deployment of language along this limit." (9)

many critics say these paradoxes are NONSENSE by changing the REFERENT; Deleuze interested in peculiarity of language in paradox

there are dialectics of events, but not of bodies -- bodies just proliferate in materiality; there's no pressure on the world to solve this paradox (the way there is in Hegel); maintains separation between bodies and effects -- affirmation of the nonrepresentational